7:5 - How would you like that to be said about your life? "And Brandon did everything the Lord had commanded of Him." That would be awesome. I need to stop making excuses for myself and live out the life God is calling me to live.
7:11 - I like the term the ESV uses, "The windows of heaven were opened...". I think maybe there were different types of cloud layers at this point in earth's history. Maybe the clouds were insanely low and thick so that the entire earth was like a greenhouse...enabling the people to live hundreds and hundreds of years. You will notice that after the flood, the ages of people start to drastically decline. Maybe God caused the greenhouse clouds to collapse causing the flood and He didn't put them back the way they were?
8:17 - God gives Noah and his family the same promise/command that He gave Adam and Eve - "be fruitful and multiply." God has started over from square one.
8:20-21 - This is why Noah was chosen - he is a righteous man. The first thing he does after getting off the ark is worship God. There are very few animals left to sacrifice, but Noah trusts God and offers up what he has. And whoever said that worship and prayer are not powerful...when God smells the aroma of Noah's sacrifice and sees the righteousness of his heart, He promises to never destroy all of creation again, no matter how vile they become.
9:4-ff - Life is sacred to God...blood is required for life and it is also sacred. God is serious about blood, because when the blood of a man is spilled - the very image of God he carries is being destroyed, trampled, dishonored.
9:9-17 - I find it interesting that God's covenant with Noah includes the animals. Seems like God cares a great deal about creation/animals and not just people. This kinda flies in the face of people who have the, "It's all gonna burn anyway mentality." As stewards of the earth, it is a part of our worship and honor of God to take care of creation.
9:21-ff - Ham shames his father by running out to tell his brothers that he saw their father naked. He mocks his father and dishonors him. His brothers put an end to the shame by refusing to look at their father's nakedness and by covering him up. When people have shamed themselves like Noah did, it is evil to pile on more shame through gossip and laughter...it is good and God-honoring to refuse to let the shame continue on. Hopefully you and I will be people who refuse to let shame continue on around us...hopefully we can be people who put an end to other peoples' dishonor.
4 comments:
Thanks for clearing up 9:22. I didn't understand that Ham was making fun of his Father, I thought he was just telling his brother's that his dad was drunk. But I think you're right about gossip and humiliation...it's a lot more serious than we make it out to be. I mean, if they're some of the first sins covered in the Bible, we ought to watch out for them in our lives; they can be pretty sneaky.
Verse 9:4 is pretty awesome. I haven't ever thought about blood that way. I knew it was the source of our living but it means so much more to God than that. It makes me think about all the things God has given me that I take for granted.
7:11- i've also heard that there was a large layer of liquid water in the atmosphere that put a lot more pressure on the earth. This would give better protection against the sun as well as super-saturate the blood with oxygen; like in a hyperbaric chamber.
Sounds just as feasible to me Matty-cakes. That would explain longevity, and when God cut it loose...the flood.
yes- and the fact that water sprung up from the deep explains mountains and sliding plates and fault lines.
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