God's Power and Control

 DEVOTION

GENESIS

GOD’S POWER AND CONTROL

Gen 7:6-16

6 Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth. 7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. 8 Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, 9 male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah. 10 And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth. 11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month — on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12 And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. 13 On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. 14 They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. 15 Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. 16 The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the LORD shut him in.

NIV

We should have taken these phrases in pieces, and yet it is one story, perhaps told to us in a couple of different ways. We do not know exactly how long it took to build the ark. We know that it was not until Noah was five hundred years old that he had those three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now he was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came onto the earth. The three sons had to grow old enough to marry before the beginning of the construction of the ark. God told Noah to build it and he and his wife and his three sons and their wives were to enter it. Still, we have to remember it took hundreds of years to build and to build it so solidly to be able to withstand the floodwaters for forty days and forty nights. Two keys to this narrative bring it home for us. First, it was God who caused the flood, as it is God who has all the power over all the earth. He is the one who opened up the deep on a specific day of His choice. It was the seventeenth day of the second month. This means the earth and the atmosphere are under the absolute power of God. He caused the flood, and we will see that he caused the rain to stop, and the flood waters to recede. There is this foolish thinking today that man can affect the earth, the waters, and the atmosphere. This absurd thinking has gone so far, for example, some think we caused a hole in the ozone layer. The truth is God created the ozone layer to be from eight to fifteen thousand feet thick and it is gas, just like the air we breathe. A hole cannot exist in the air, nor the ozone. Man cannot conceive that God has absolute power over all the earth, the land, water, and the atmosphere. Let us always be thankful to our Lord for all he does to sustain our lives and this earth until the day he has decided to make a new creation, a new earth, and heaven. Secondly, we notice that God shut him in the ark, God closed and sealed the door, first so no one could open it from the outside, or from the inside. This brings us to the fact God has absolute power and authority over all creation, which includes all people. Once again, if we think we are the captain of our own ship, being able to determine our own destiny, again, it is nothing more than foolish thinking. Yes, Noah found favor with God in the middle of a corrupt world. Yet it was God who decided everything and the destiny of all mankind. Let us always be, first, living so we find favor with God, that is live or remain in Jesus, which God has decided the destiny or the destination of all who do live in Christ. Second, let us always be aware of the voice of God so that we know that God has shut us in, clothed us with his righteousness, and is and will continue to keep us from the harm he is going to bring once upon this earth, however, this time it will be by fire. God has everything under his command.