Read | Genesis 8:1–22
God remembered Noah, as well as all the wildlife and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the water began to subside. The sources of the watery depths and the floodgates of the sky were closed, and the rain from the sky stopped. The water steadily receded from the earth, and by the end of 150 days the water had decreased significantly. The ark came to rest in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat.
The water continued to recede until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were visible. After forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made, and he sent out a raven. It went back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. Then he sent out a dove to see whether the water on the earth’s surface had gone down, but the dove found no resting place for its foot. It returned to him in the ark because water covered the surface of the whole earth. He reached out and brought it into the ark to himself. So Noah waited seven more days and sent out the dove from the ark again. When the dove came to him at evening, there was a plucked olive leaf in its beak. So Noah knew that the water on the earth’s surface had gone down. After he had waited another seven days, he sent out the dove, but it did not return to him again. In the six hundred first year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the water that had covered the earth was dried up. Then Noah removed the ark’s cover and saw that the surface of the ground was drying. By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the earth was dry.
Then God spoke to Noah, “Come out of the ark, you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you. Bring out all the living creatures that are with you—birds, livestock, those that crawl on the earth—and they will spread over the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.” So Noah, along with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives, came out. All the animals, all the creatures that crawl, and all the flying creatures—everything that moves on the earth—came out of the ark by their families.
Then Noah built an altar to the LORD. He took some of every kind of clean animal and every kind of clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. When the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, he said to himself, “I will never again curse the ground because of human beings, even though the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth onward. And I will never again strike down every living thing as I have done.
As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, and day and night
will not cease.”
Click here to listen to the Scripture in ESV.
How does God’s remembrance of Noah and his family bring you comfort and assurance?
In this passage, God promises never to destroy the earth with a flood again. How does this promise shape your view of God’s faithfulness and mercy?
Focus
Read this devotional about the upcoming Sunday sermon’s passage’s connection to the whole story of Scripture from Kraig McNutt, a Story of Scripture team member. Would you like to learn more about how to see the whole Bible as one story? Join us on January 30 and 31 for the Story of Scripture at the Olathe Campus. Sign up HERE.
Devotional on The Flood - Genesis 6:9-22; 9:1-17 by Kraig McNutt
Noah was a righteous man, blameless among his contemporaries; Noah walked with God. (Genesis 6:9)
The earliest chapters of Genesis reveal the relational consequences of sin (Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, etc.). But in chapters 6–9, the story widens, moving from micro consequences to macro-ones. Yet through it all, one thread holds: God desires a relationship with his imagers—but always on his terms.
At the core of the flood narrative (Gen 6–9) is the simple but loaded statement in Genesis 6:9: “Noah walked with God.” That line deliberately echoes back to the earlier scene in Genesis 3:8, where the Lord God is said to be walking in the garden. This is the language of intimacy. God’s original design and desire for an up-close, relational presence with humanity (i.e., his imagers).
How would the original readers of Genesis have understood the idea of the relational presence of God? In short, they would’ve been astonished. The gods of the Ancient Near East were viewed as capricious, distant, unpredictable, and generally uninterested in human affairs. Insert the Genesis narrative here, and we learn that God wants to have an intimate, personal relationship with his imagers—one in which his imagers reflect (image) his character to others.
From Genesis 1-9, we see a God who draws near, walks with humans, speaks with them, grieves over their sin, rescues them, and binds himself to them in covenant.
How amazing it is to realize that we worship a God who desires authenticity and intimacy. God longs for his imagers to flourish, to become all he intended us to be. He invites us to walk with him in the cool of the morning or the heat of the day, in a harmony made possible because he finds favor in us through Christ.
Pray
Ask God to help you walk with him in faithful obedience.
God who draws near, I want to walk with you and not rush ahead or drift behind. Form in me a steady faithfulness and help me to trust you even when the world around me is broken or confusing. Help me live as your image bearer with integrity, humility, and confidence in your covenant promises.
Going Deeper
If you are also following the BibleProject’s One Story That Leads to Jesus reading plan, complete today’s reading.
