Mid-Lent 2
Gen
7:1-5, 11-18;
8:6-18; 9:8-13
2/27/13
It took place so quickly – so
unexpectedly – that it was really hard to believe that it actually had
happened. When I was about seven years
old my family visited Chattanooga, TN.
It will probably not surprise you to hear that we stayed at the
Chattanooga Choo Choo – the Terminal Station in Chattanooga that had been
converted into a hotel.
There was a restaurant in the
station and passenger cars on the platform tracks that had been converted into
hotel rooms. There was also a new hotel
complex that had been built on the grounds complete with an indoor swimming pool
and café dining area next to the pool.
One day during the stay, my mom was
at the pool with my brother and me.
Matthew was about three years old at the time. He didn’t know how to swim and really was
rather afraid of the water. He would sit
down on the steps at the shallow end of the pool and just splash.
Needless to say we went to the
swimming pool several times during our visit.
And then one day – with absolutely no warning – Matthew got up ran
around to the deep end of the pool and jumped in. The boy who couldn’t swim; the boy who was
basically afraid of the water at that point in his young life, suddenly ran
around to the deep end of the pool, jumped in – and sank. I was shocked. My mom was shocked. It all happened so fast, I don’t remember
whether she actually began to get up to rescue him. The one thing I remember is that suddenly off
to my left I saw a man who had been eating in the café area bolt out of the
restaurant and fully clothed he dove head first into the deep end of the pool
to rescue my brother.
It was a traumatic experience –
probably most of all for my mom. At that
impressionable age I remember thinking that my brother could have died – that
he could have drowned. I think it was
the first time that it really dawned on me that water could be dangerous – that
it could be deadly.
The deadly character of water is of
course the focus of our text tonight as God sends a flood to destroy the world
– to wipe out every living thing. In the
flood we see the extent to which the holy God is offended and grieved by
sin. Yet we also see how he loves and
cares for those who are faithful to him. And in the flood we see how God works
through water to put sin to death and to give new life.
Genesis chapter three narrates the
Fall as Adam and Eve disobey God and sin initially enters into the world. And then as we read on we see sin rippling
out into life. The very next thing we
read about is the first murder as Cain kills Abel in chapter four. Cain is banished and then Adam and Eve have
another son – Seth.
Now when Adam
was created we are told that “God created man in his own image, in the image of
God he created him; male and female he created them.” Yet with the birth of Seth we learn things
have changed dramatically. In chapter
five we are told that Adam fathered a son “in
his own likeness, after his image,
and named him Seth.” Created for perfect
fellowship with God, humanity had lost the image of God. And the results were disastrous. In the chapter before our text we hear, “The
LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every
intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”
God saw this,
and we learn that the “LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it
grieved him to his heart.” If you want
to get some insight into how profoundly sin has changed things, consider these
words. When God finishes his creation he
looks upon it and sees that it is “very good.” Yet now that sin has entered
into his creation, we are told that God regrets that he made man in the first
place.
And so
because of this the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from
the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the
heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.”
Now in one sense, there really isn’t anything surprising about this
outcome since God had said to Adam and Eve that because of their sin they would
die.
Yet in God’s intention to wipe out all sinners we begin
to gain insight into how profoundly the holy God is offended by sin – including
ours. We often hear it said that “God
hates sin but loves the sinner.”
However, this is not true. Instead, God hates sins … and he hates the sinner. The psalmist writes, “The boastful shall not
stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers, you destroy those who speak
lies; the LORD abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.”
This knowledge needs to frame the way we view our own sin,
especially during this season of Lent. Every Sunday we confess, “We justly
deserve your present and eternal punishment.”
With these words we confess that we
are sinners who sin and therefore we
deserve nothing but God’s hatred – God’s wrath.
God is holy and just in destroying sinners who sin. But
he is also gracious and merciful. We
learn in Genesis chapter six that Noah found favor in God’s eyes. He is described as “a righteous man,
blameless in his generation” and we are told that “Noah walked with God.” This is not the claim that Noah was
perfect. Instead it is the Old Testament
talking about faith.
God saw that Noah was righteous before him – that he
alone walked by faith as he recognized God as the Creator and sought to live
according to his will. And in his grace
and mercy God acted to save Noah and the animals of his creation. He told Noah to build an ark and to gather into
it two of each animal. This means of
deliverance was itself was itself a demonstration of Noah’s faith. As the writer to the Hebrews tells us, “By
faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear
constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the
world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.”
And then God sent the water. God sent water that brought death. St. Paul
tells us that the wages of sin is death.
The sinfulness of humanity received God’s wrath in the flood and all
except Noah and his family in the ark were killed by it. The animals of creation suffered as well
because of humanity’s sin, just as they have since the first sin of Adam and Eve. Yet through Noah’s faithful act of building
the ark they were not wiped out. There remained animals to continue life on the
earth.
In tonight’s text we see God using the flood to kill all
human beings and animals, and yet we also see that in the midst of the flood he
acts to save. God is wrathful against
sin, and yet God is also loving and merciful.
This tension that we see in the flood is the same one that we are
preparing to observe during Holy Week.
Jesus goes to the cross in order to receive God’s wrath against sin –
our sin. Sin does bring death as Jesus takes
our place as a sinner and dies for us. Yet in that very event God shows himself
to be loving and merciful because the death of Jesus becomes the means by which
we are forgiven so that we will not die eternally.
During the season of Lent, we are making our way towards
the first celebration of the resurrection – the Vigil of Easter. This service
focuses upon how through Holy Baptism we have shared in the saving death of
Jesus Christ; and also on how through baptism we have received the life of the
risen One.
Tonight’s Scripture reading that deals with the Flood is
read in that service because the New Testament explicitly links the flood and
baptism. The apostle Peter writes, “For
Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he
might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the
spirit in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they
formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while
the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were
brought safely through water.”
Peter tells us that the water of the flood which brought
death to sinners, also carried Noah and his family to safety in the ark as they
were spared. The flood became an event
that killed sin and yet brought salvation to Noah. And then Peter adds, “Baptism,
which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the
body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of
Jesus Christ.”
The water of Holy Baptism has not has not merely cleansed
you of dirt. Instead, like the flood it
has killed your sin in the death of Jesus Christ. Like the flood, baptism has brought you
death, for Jesus’ saving death has become yours. However the water of the flood was not only
about death. It also was the means that carried Noah, his family and the
animals in the ark to safety. And so
because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, your baptism has brought you to
safety – to knowledge that your sins are forgiven and you will share in Jesus
Christ’s resurrection on the Last Day.
Lent is a season that confront us in our sin. Like the text about the flood, it forces us
to grapple with the way our sin sets God against us in his wrath. But Lent is also
a season that in its movement towards the Vigil of Easter returns us to our
baptism. It brings us back to the fact
that baptism now saves us because it gives us a share in the saving benefits of
Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection.
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