We are not to understand that up to this point that God has somehow lost sight of Noah or forgotten him. What this expression means is that God actively called Noah and his situation to mind because it was the appropriate moment for God to act once more in Noah's favour.

The same idea crops up with a certain regularity in the Bible. In Gen.19:29 it is said that God remembered Abraham – Lot was delivered from destruction as Sodom was destroyed. Remembrance on God's part once again involves an active intervention.

We have a further example when we look at two different barren women, Rachel and Hannah. They are remembered by the LORD and they become pregnant.

Israel in Moses time are in great difficulty in Egypt and they cry out in their anguish to the LORD – the result? He remembers His covenant that He has established with His people. It is quite striking just how often the LORD refers to His covenant when He is said to remember His people. We have variant forms such as:

I will remember my covenant – I have remembered my covenant – He remembers His covenant forever.

How comforting this is for the LORD's people! Their situation may have become very difficult but God knows and God sees – and God prepares to enter their varied situations to procure release and deliverance!

For this reason we frequently find the people of God calling upon Him to remember them:

Eg. Ps 74:22 "Arise, O God, defend your cause; remember how the foolish scoff at you all the day!"

Ps 89:50 "Remember, O Lord, how your servants are mocked, and how I bear in my heart the insults of all the many nations,"

These are not requests that the LORD might do some memory work – they are calls upon to act!

And the people of God regularly celebrate the fact that God does indeed remember them – He doesn't overlook the fact that His people are weak and needy but intervenes to help them and even when He has had to discipline them or is saddened by abandoned devotion He remains faithful:

Ps 98:3 "He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God."

Ps 103:14 "For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust."

Ps 115:12 "The LORD has remembered us; he will bless us; he will bless the house of Israel; he will bless the house of Aaron;"

Ps 136:23 "It is he who remembered us in our low estate, for his steadfast love endures forever;"

Jer.2:2 "Thus says the LORD, “I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride,"

Jer.31:20 "Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he my darling child? For as often as I speak against him, I do remember him still. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I will surely have mercy on him," declares the LORD."

And of course as we turn the pages of our Bibles and reach the NT we still find the LORD God to be behaving in the same way as the Messiah's imminent arrival on the scene is celebrated in the prophecy Zechariah delivered after the birth of his own son John the Baptist:

Lk.1:62 "to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant,"

What confidence we can have in our good and faithful God that He will remember His covenant!

There is just about one thing that He promises to His faithful people that He will not remember and that is their sin:

Is.43:25 “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins."

Though we must not exaggerate – it is only the sins of His faithful people that God promises to forget in this way. There are a number of occasions in the Bible where He does promise to remember sin: when His people abandon Him, for example:

Jer.14:10 "Thus says the LORD concerning this people: “They have loved to wander thus; they have not restrained their feet; therefore the LORD does not accept them; now he will remember their iniquity and punish their sins.”

Or in the case of the wicked who don't believe: In Revelation evil Babylon is spoken of in these terms:

Rev.18:5 "her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities."

Back to our text we're told that after several months had gone by with Noah shut up in the Ark that God remembered him. It was time in God's plan to move on to the next phase. Noah couldn't be left indefinitely in the Ark with his seven family members and his floating menagerie so the Lord now does what is necessary to cause the floodwaters to begin to subside.

God is at work – Noah is not forgotten. However it did not mean an instant deliverance for Noah. The rains might stop falling and the fountains of the deep might well have been closed but the waters would still take a long time to recede.

Our Christian lives are in many respects similar. God hasn't forgotten us but at times we can't see any immediate improvement in our circumstances and we need to follow Him with a simple trust.

During all these months not a word is recorded as coming from the LORD to encourage Noah or to let him know what was going on. Noah had to count upon the fact that the LORD had committed Himself by establishing His covenant with Noah (6:18).

The Flood Ends

Moses carefully records just how the flood comes to an end upon the earth before going to explain how Noah reacted to it all.

What was it like, I wonder, when the rain finally stopped? And then the wind got up – something was happening. I wonder how they all felt as they realized that the ark was no longer floating but had become grounded?

Are we to detect a certain note of impatience? Noah hasn't received any further instructions but he opens the window to let the raven go. And then as that didn't help him any he sends out a dove. The dove returns, then a week later after a second release returns with an olive leaf – life was springing from the earth once again – how exciting that must have been. Then the third release and the dove doesn't come back again.

It's at this point that Noah decides to have a good look around so he removes the cover and surveys the land. The surface is dry but doubtless still soggy. Still the LORD doesn't speak and so Noah waits on in the Ark. He will investigate within limits but it was the LORD God who had shut him up in the ark and he will stay there until the LORD tells him it is time to venture forth.

Maybe he was tempted to trust his own appreciation that the earth was dry but he prefers to wait a further two months until the LORD speaks.

There is a good lesson for us here. How impatient we can be! How easy it is to take things into our hands and not to go on with the simple business of trusting day in day out.

Obedience is very simple in principle isn't it? And yet at times oh how difficult it can prove to be particularly if there is a delay of any sort!

For just over a year Noah had been kept safe and sound in the ark. His family had been kept safe and so too had the animals entrusted to his care. But now with the flood at an end the time finally came for him to leave the safety and security of the ark to launch out into the new life on the cleansed earth.

The ark was the only safe place to be during the period of the flood. Noah, inside the ark, was safe and sound. We will never have to experience God's judgment in the form of a global flood and we have no need of an ark as Noah did. But we will have to confront God on His throne and if we are to survive that experience then we too will need to secured safely in the one place of refuge. In Christ, united to Him by faith and trust, we too can be kept safe and not be destroyed.

Noah's First Action on Leaving the Ark

The chapter began with a look at how God remembered Noah now as the chapter comes to a close we read of how Noah remembered the LORD.

The first actions of Noah once again are religious ones:

· He builds an altar – although we have read of sacrifices being offered before in the Book of Genesis this is the first mention of an altar being built.

· He offers burnt offerings to the LORD.

Now it is very natural for us to read this as an act of thankfulness to the LORD for His goodness and this is most appropriate. We should learn to follow Noah's prompt example of offering our sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving to the LORD for all His acts of kindness towards us. Each time He delivers us from some difficulty, each time He answers our prayers and of course we should always be thankful to Him for the salvation He has given us in the Lord Jesus Christ.

But there is something else here too. A burnt offering speaks of something other than mere thankfulness. A burnt offering was offered to the LORD in order to make atonement; a burnt offering dealt with the problem of sin.

Noah has been preserved from destruction because the LORD showed His favour, grace that he did not deserve. Noah is conscious that sin remains a problem in his life and confronted by the judgment of the flood Noah's conscience has been further sensitised. So he offers his burnt offering.

Notice through this just how serious the whole matter of sin is. The Bible underlines this again and again for us and how slow we are to take this truth on board.

Notice too that the burnt offering was the bloody sacrifice of living creatures that had been with Noah in the ark. The flood had caused massive loss of life as men and land animals and birds had been completely wiped out with the exception of kept safe in the ark. Noah is now back on dry ground and with limited numbers of animals he is to repopulate the earth. And yet he doesn't hesitate to sacrifice some of his animals! How easy it would have been for Noah to argue that to establish new herds etc. he needed to keep all he had – but no! For Noah being right with the LORD God was primordial.

Is that the case with you? Or does this behaviour of Noah's smack rather too much of fanaticism and exaggeration to you?

One thing is certain the LORD didn't rebuke or reprove Noah for what he did! No, the LORD approves of whole-hearted responses to His loving compassion and graciousness. And so our chapter ends with the LORD being so well-pleased with Noah that He begins to make more promises concerning how He will deal with earth dwellers in the future. These promises will be taken up and further developed in ch.9 but a consideration of them will have to wait for a future occasion.