Welcome to the MHB Podcast. This is Michael Baun. And welcome to my thirty seventh episode. Tonight I want to read and examine Genesis chapter eight. This is the account of the flood receding and Noah leaving the ark. As we work through this study, I want you to consider the following three questions:
- Should you wait on God or take action?
- How are you “releasing doves” in your own life?
- Do you believe all humans have evil inside of them?
Before we take a look at those questions, I would like to read the text to you in its entirety. Please enjoy.
Genesis 8:
The Flood Recedes
8 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and livestock with him in the boat. He sent a wind to blow across the earth, and the floodwaters began to recede. 2 The underground waters stopped flowing, and the torrential rains from the sky were stopped. 3 So the floodwaters gradually receded from the earth. After 150 days, 4 exactly five months from the time the flood began,[a] the boat came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5 Two and a half months later,[b] as the waters continued to go down, other mountain peaks became visible.
6 After another forty days, Noah opened the window he had made in the boat 7 and released a raven. The bird flew back and forth until the floodwaters on the earth had dried up. 8 He also released a dove to see if the water had receded and it could find dry ground. 9 But the dove could find no place to land because the water still covered the ground. So it returned to the boat, and Noah held out his hand and drew the dove back inside. 10 After waiting another seven days, Noah released the dove again. 11 This time the dove returned to him in the evening with a fresh olive leaf in its beak. Then Noah knew that the floodwaters were almost gone. 12 He waited another seven days and then released the dove again. This time it did not come back.
13 Noah was now 601 years old. On the first day of the new year, ten and a half months after the flood began,[c] the floodwaters had almost dried up from the earth. Noah lifted back the covering of the boat and saw that the surface of the ground was drying. 14 Two more months went by,[d] and at last the earth was dry!
15 Then God said to Noah, 16 “Leave the boat, all of you—you and your wife, and your sons and their wives. 17 Release all the animals—the birds, the livestock, and the small animals that scurry along the ground—so they can be fruitful and multiply throughout the earth.”
18 So Noah, his wife, and his sons and their wives left the boat. 19 And all of the large and small animals and birds came out of the boat, pair by pair.
20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and there he sacrificed as burnt offerings the animals and birds that had been approved for that purpose.[e] 21 And the Lord was pleased with the aroma of the sacrifice and said to himself, “I will never again curse the ground because of the human race, even though everything they think or imagine is bent toward evil from childhood. I will never again destroy all living things. 22 As long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.”
So the first thing I want to point out to you is the location of the landing of Noah’s ark. Some scholars claim that the Scripture places the ark in the mountain range of Ararat – rather than the highest peak of Mount Ararat itself. Since we are considering an entire mountain range, it is entirely possible that the final resting place of the ark was the territory where the Assyrian capital city of Nineveh would be built in the future. If this is true, then the remains of the ark would have been lost when Nineveh was sacked and burned to the ground. This would explain why no archaeologists have ever found it. They would be finding ashes of the ark, not the ark itself.
Now let’s consider the fact that Noah spent more than a year in this boat. I think it was 378 days to be exact. The Scripture indicates 12.5 months which would be 380 days – so give or take a couple days. I want you to think back to where you were and what you were doing this time last year. When you think about the details of your life from over a year ago, it seems like a long time. Can you imagine being stuck in the ark all that time? And yet, after all that waiting, Noah has to go through this process of releasing doves. He releases a dove and waits for it to come back, then waits another week and releases it again, then waits another week to release it the last time. This would require a lot of patience after having spent over a year inside the ark. This brings us to our first two questions.
First, should you wait on God or take action? I think this question is definitely context dependent. So it would depend on the circumstances and the action. But let’s just think about it as a general principle. There are at least six passages in Scripture that discuss the necessity of waiting on God. However, I don’t think the answer to this question is that straight forward. I think it’s a big mistake when Christians refuse to take action and decide to wait for God to do everything for them. I also think it’s a big mistake to move forward in any endeavor without God and expect to do well. So the proper mode of being is somewhere in between.
Let me explain. God exists outside of time – this means He can see the past, present, and future with perfect clarity. We are bound to the present. We have memories, but they are quite bad and are designed primarily to prevent us from getting eaten by predators or falling into the same dangerous situations repetitively. Our memories are more like rough tools than perfect recording devices. Not so with God – he can see the past with perfect accuracy as well as the future and the present. This means that He knows things about our plans that we can’t possibly know. I believe God reveals just the right information to us at just the right time. If he gave us too much we would mishandle it for our own selfish gain. And so with respect to having enough information, I believe we must take action and wait for God to reveal more to us while we are taking the action. Also, there are a near infinite number of ways that God can teach us through our actions. Once we know we are called by God, we must step out in faith and see what He will reveal to us across time.
Here’s a good example of this. When Jesus went to raise Lazarus from the dead He commanded the people to roll the stone away from the entrance to the tomb before He did it. Jesus could have rolled the stone away Himself. When He commanded them to do it, they questioned their faith in Him by telling Him that the body of Lazarus would smell awful since it had been in the tomb for days. It was only once the people had the faith to move the stone that Jesus came through with His miracle of bringing Lazarus back. In the same way, we shouldn’t expect God to act in our lives if we are not taking action ourselves.
The second question involves the practice of releasing doves. Here’s what I mean: Noah released doves several times to check on the status of the flood. It’s interesting that he didn’t just wait on God to tell him it was okay to leave the ark. He wanted to check for himself using worldly means. Releasing doves is analogous to when you do your own research into an opportunity that God has brought into your life. Let’s say you get a new job opportunity and you feel called by God to accept the offer. Instead of operating purely on faith, you decide to get online and research the company and the new area you will be living in. This is what I mean by releasing doves. I release doves all the time. I depend at least as much on my own mind and my own research as I do on divine revelation from the practice of prayer. I don’t think it’s wrong to check things out for yourself, but I do think it can be dangerous. It’s not uncommon for you to release doves and for them to bring back inaccurate information. The last thing you want to do is be too afraid to accept a new path in life because you were given bad information. Especially if this new path was given to you by God. So go ahead and release your own doves, but be careful in the process and always know that God’s Word is the final authority.
Sometimes I think God wants us to learn things on our own instead of Him showing us exactly how to do it. This is similar to when a parent is teaching a child how to walk. The parent doesn’t hold onto the child forever, at some point the parent has to let go of the child and watch him or her stumble and fall as they learn how to walk. In the same way, God chooses not to carry us through life because there are many things in life that we need to experience in order to be shaped into who He wants us to be.
Next I want you to notice in verse 17 how He commands them to “be fruitful and multiply.” This is like a fresh start for Noah and company. However, this phrase “be fruitful and multiply” is found earlier in Genesis 1:28 as well. In that case, God is commanding Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply.” I think it’s interesting how Adam and Eve’s “be fruitful and multiply” is followed immediately by sin, while Noah’s “be fruitful and multiply” is followed immediately by Noah building an altar to God. Noah was quick to obey and sacrifice to God.
Does this mean that Noah’s people were inherently superior to Adam and Eve? No, it does not. Verse 21 declares that the thoughts and imaginations of all human beings are bent toward evil. This must also mean that God’s promise to spare the world from destruction a second time was an act of grace on His part. It was His free gift. Noah and his people did not earn it. This is analogous to salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ – which spares any and all who put their faith in Him from the final judgment where evil will be destroyed forever. And it brings us to our third question: do you believe all human beings have evil inside of them?
Without a doubt I believe the answer is yes. There is a problematic way of thinking in western culture that says people can either be good or evil. If someone does something evil, they are cast away into a basket of evil people. Those who don’t do evil are placed into a basket of good people. There are twin dangers in doing this. The first is that if someone makes contact with the evil that is inside of them, they will feel isolated and ostracized from “normal and good” people. They will be called sick and treated as if that is just the way that they are. This is bad because it absolves them of all responsibility for their free will actions and it also robs them of the power to turn away from evil and be redeemed.
The other danger is for the people in the good basket. These people are at risk for becoming self-righteous and deceived into thinking they could never do evil. These are just the kind of people who get pushed by terrible circumstances into doing acts of horrible evil. Many of the people who consented and participated in the Holocaust and in the Russian Gulag were people who believed themselves to be good. The idea is this: how can you beware of something that is inside of you when you don’t even know that it is there? The famed psychologist Carl Jung believed that people could not reach their true potential for good until they realized just exactly how evil they could be. He called this process integration of the shadow – and I think he was right on the money with it. It’s far better to realize that you are a sinner and that you need Jesus Christ to be forgiven and healed. He can do it – He will do it – if you will turn to him.
If you find this content valuable, feel free to share it and to use it in your own studies. If you’d like to support this podcast, you can do so at www.patreon.com/michaelhbaun. There is a link in the description. Your generosity goes a long way to promoting the growth of this enterprise and the cause of free speech. Thank you all for joining me this evening, and I will see you in the next episode.
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