Noah’s Floating Cross

In commenting on the next passage, I will cover all of the apologetics and logistical questions about the physical ark, the extent and manner of the flood, any change to the earth’s atmosphere and topography, and the dispersion of the animals across the globe afterwards. A few exceptions to that will feature in the gospel symbolism from here in 6:14-7:10. You should also hold a place in Peter’s two letters because the third chapter to both of his letters become a New Testament interpretation and application of this account.

• Universal Judgment

• Covenant Inclusion

• Creational Preservation

• Sacrificial Provision

About those points two through four, we will notice that the basic realities of the covenant that God will make with Noah on the other side of the Flood are anticipated and placed into the boat on this side of the Flood. That will teach us something about how the work of Christ does not eradicate the original plan of God, but in fact redeems and restores it.

Doctrine. When God judged the world the first time, He set a type and a norm, by sending a man to gather a people into a wooden wrath-shelter.       

Universal Judgment

Remember the words from the end of last week’s text: ‘And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh’ (v. 13). It is echoed here in five verses:

“For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die … and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground … And all flesh died … Everything on the dry land … He blotted out every living thing” (6:17; 7:4, 21, 22, 23).

This is a clear, universal judgment. In 7:4, where God reveals what is coming, the regular Hebrew word for ‘rain’ (מָטַר) is used—so that it accumulates gradually at first—rather than something indicating an immediate monsoon. It may have been fitting for the fear of the death that awaited them to be drawn out over a period of a few days.

The work ‘ark’ (תֵּבָה) ordinarily means a box or chest.1 It is used in Exodus2 about the basket that the infant Moses was placed in upon the Nile to escape Pharaoh’s purge. Clearly this was more to ocean-liner scale, as one estimate, converting the ancient measurements to ours, has it at “450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high,”3 the length being “one and a half football fields.”4 And while we don’t know much about what ‘gopher wood’ (v. 14) is, it is interesting that the three-letter root of the word for ‘pitch’ (v. 14) which Noah is instructed to cover the wood with for sealing is k-p-r (כֹּפֶר), the very same as the Hebrew word for “atonement,” from which we derive the holiday Yom Kipper, or “day of atonement.” Now that may be, as one commentator says, “a happy verbal coincidence,”5 but this covering is to insulate Noah and his family from the waters of divine judgment.

Covenant Inclusion

Note the address to Noah: ‘But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you’ (v. 18). The audience is the patriarch. It is inclusive of all under his roof, which may, for the sake of clarity of the account, include three other distinct homes coming from him. After all, all three sons are depicted as married. We who have studied covenant theology are “so far up the road” that it is easy to skip the most simple things we are supposed to take from this. For Noah, what mattered what God’s word of promise, as Calvin said, “we freely embrace the commands of God when a promise is attached to them.”6 For Noah, the only question was, “Am I going to make it? Is this going to work? What’s going to happen to my wife and children?” And God’s word here to him is, in effect, I will bind myself to you in that narrow strip of wood at sea.

Noah is also a type of Christ here—his family following him into that ark: “All that the Father gives to me will come to me” (Jn. 6:37). As Jesus became the ultimate fulfillment of the Prophet, Priest, and King, so this type of Christ played the role of prophet, priest, and king to those in his line. As prophet, he spoke for God, being called “a herald of righteousness” (2 Pet. 2:5). As priest, he would sacrifice on behalf of his family (Gen. 8:20). As king, we are told that “By this [the same acts of faith] he condemned the world” (Heb. 11:7). And he would be the lesser mediator—the recipient and representative—of a covenant which we will unpack in two weeks, which contained both sacred and secular dimensions.

Peter makes the waters of judgment also represent waters of cleansing.

“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” (1 Pet. 3:21).

First, what is the meaning of THIS? What do the baptismal waters correspond to? Answer: the flood waters. So when he says in the next breath ‘now saves you,’ most people already forget the words just before. This new water corresponds to that water of old. Did those waters of old save Noah and his family? I think not. They were the judgment. They were just as symbolic as baptism is. They are the signs, not the substance. So it makes sense that the waters of baptism are not the ultimate cleansing he is talking about, since the waters of the Flood were not the ultimate judgment either.

Our third and fourth points are very brief, but they are worth marking as distinct points about CREATIONAL PRESERVATION and SACRIFICIAL PROVISION.

Creational Preservation

The very next words after the covenant language is introduced are these:

“And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female” (v. 19).

In other words, the sense in which man is in that creational covenant with God maintains man’s place over the animals—yet another clue of post-fall dominion. This point will be drawn out more at the end of chapter 9. But what can seem like a paradox at first—God judging everything AND God is committed to that whole creation that He had first made.

The very labor of ark-building, year after year while being mocked, also points to this building for the long haul: ‘Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him’ (v. 22). Preaching to those outside of his home, carefully instructing those inside of his home, and building what would be a floating bridge to the future world, are all what Christians who would lead should always be doing.

Sacrificial Provision

Interestingly, directly after his righteousness is reaffirmed in the last verse of chapter 6 and first verse of chapter 7, it says, ‘Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate’ (v. 2). The need to eat and to propagate the species is also reaffirmed, but don’t skip over these words too quickly—CLEAN ANIMALS. Hamilton points to the Hebrew words, where the word for “clean” is not coupled with the ordinary word for “unclean” used in Leviticus.7 So the point does not seem to be that some of these animals will pollute you, but that there is a division between those of common use and those for holy use. In other words, some animals are being brought on board for the first sacrifices to God on the other side.

But Noah was given both (common food, holy food), and he was given to do both (secular realm, sacred realm). Both kingdoms got on that boat with Noah, so that both kingdoms could get out onto dry land afterwards—both kingdoms under one ultimate Head (ultimately Christ), but the Christian is to reign and rule with Christ over both, as Christ is given as “Head over all things to the church” (Eph. 1:22).

Practical Use of the Doctrine

Use 1. Instruction. We Christians must expect scoffing as much as Noah received. Peter’s second letter contains two applications for us about the Genesis account of the Flood. First, we are instructed about scoffers:

knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly (2 Pet. 3:3-7).

Recall 1 Peter 3:19’s words, that Christ “went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey.” Who are those spirits that are now in prison in the first century and when did Christ preach to them? The next words say: “when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared.” Some read that to mean that Christ preaches to that generation in the present; others that Christ was preaching, through Noah’s preaching, to that generation in that generation. However you read it, the Christian is called to warn even scoffers because God is patient with them.

Use 2. Admonition. That very next words of 2 Peter gives to us one more type, now of the universality of the final judgment.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn!  (2 Pet. 3:10-12)

Notice that it doesn’t matter whether a cataclysmic judgment is The Final Judgment or whether it is the end of a particular epoch or nation. The action item would still be the same—“lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God.” Do you see the two parts of that sentence? A disturbing amount of professing Christians can’t. We live either on the extreme of Distinct (God-glorifying) lives for this world alone! or else Jesus is coming back: just say No to this world! So the first action item is No, read Peter’s words again and put those two things back together.

The kingdom of God is always drawing near for that next judgment, and the one at the end is the Big One. Therefore—warn the people, get on the ark, and God will bring His people through the other side of the Flood, either to the new heavens and new earth, or (until then) to the dry land of that next staging ground for the growth of the church.

Use 3. Consolation. Augustine spoke of the typology, that,

“this is certainly a figure of the city of God sojourning in this world; that is to say, of the church, which is rescued by the wood on which hung the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”8

Augustine goes on to speak of the dimensions, while a much bigger scale, yet being the same, in proportion, as a man’s body lying in a coffin—the length “six times its breath from side to side, and ten times its depth or thickness.” Now Augustine takes some allegorical license beyond that,9 but in the basics, it is no different than Peter had said.

Now remember that pitch to cover the ark—if that pitch had God’s own guarantee to seal that ark and to keep Noah and his family safe and secure, much more so does the blood of Christ seal you, the believer, into that ark of His finished work—where not a drop of the sea of divine judgment will condemn: “how much more,” the author of Hebrews says, “will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Heb. 9:14).

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1. Hamilton records that “The OT uses another word ’ărōn, for the ‘ark of the covenant,’ although Mishnaic Hebrew also uses têḇā for this receptacle” (The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17, 280).

2. Exodus 2:3, 5.

3. Belcher, Genesis, 94; Hamilton has the measurements at “440 feet long, 73 feet wide, 44 feet high” (The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17, 282). Diverse numbers should not be surprising for the reason given by Boice: “There is some disagreement among scholars on the exact value of a cubit, the unit of measurement by which the dimensions of the ark are given. The Babylonians had a cubit about twenty inches long. The Egyptians and the later Hebrews each had two different cubits, one of which was slightly longer and one of which was slightly shorter than the Babylonian measure” (Genesis, I:327).

4. Hughes, Genesis, 135.

5. Kidner, Genesis, 95.

6. Calvin, Commentaries, I:258.

7. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1-17, 287.

8. Augustine, City of God, XV.26.

9. Augustine said, “Of the ark and the deluge … we cannot agree with those who receive the bare history, but reject the allegorical interpretation, nor with those who maintain the figurative and not the historical meaning” — City of God, XV.27.