The Bible In One Year - Day 4 (Genesis 7 - 9, Psalm 1)

 

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The Flood (Philip James de Loutherbourg/photo credit: Victoria and Albert Museum, London) 

Day 4:  The Flood

A Commentary
The FloodThe Great Adventure: Session 3 Early World Part 2 
Understanding the Scriptures - The Didache Series 

Noah is to build an ark.  The ark signifies both the Church - which bears Christians above the waters of sin and saves them - and baptism - whose waters bring both the death of the old (sinful) life and the birth of new life. This story in Genesis tells us in a symbolic way what happens when a Christian is baptized.  Our old world of sin is washed away, and we are created anew, reborn in the waters of baptism.  Like Noah, we still carry the potential of sin with us after baptism, but we have received God's blessing and his promise that he will not destroy us.  

Noah was saved because of his faithful obedience. There are a number of sevens throughout the story of the Flood.  Noah took seven pairs of each clean animal...then God shut the door behind them.  After seven days, the flood came.  

Rain poured down from the sky and water came up from the deep for forty days and forty nights.  Forty is another important symbolic number in Scriptures.  Periods of trial and repentance often come in forties. Our Lent would be one example.

For 150 days there was nothing but water surrounding the ark.  Then God remember Noah and at last the waters started to recede.  In the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountain of Ararat in what is now eastern Turkey. Noah released his passengers and the animals spread out to repopulate the earth and then Noah built an altar to offer sacrifice to the Lord.  

God made a covenant with Noah and his family and promised never again to destroy life on earth as he had during the flood.  God sealed his covenant promise with the rainbow. Then God blessed Noah and his family saying to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth."  

God gave Noah and his family all of the earth and all its goods, to have dominion over them.  But there were conditions.  A covenant goes two ways:  a blessing for abiding by its conditions, and a curse for breaking it.  "For your lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning:  of every beast I will require it and of man: of every man's brother I will require the life of man.  Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed: for God made man in his own image."  Meaning man must not eat meat that still had blood in it and man must not kill.  Mankind is made in God's image and therefore every person is precious.

 

 A Daily Defense
Day 4 Why the Cross? 

CHALLENGE:  “The Crucifixion seems irrational. Couldn’t an omnipotent God save us without Jesus dying on a cross?” 

DEFENSE:  God could have chosen another way to bring about the salvation of the world. According to the common view, he could simply have forgiven our sins and saved us without any earthly sacrifice. But there are reasons why he chose the Crucifixion. By using the Crucifixion to accomplish the redemption, God drew on a theme that first-century Jews would have understood: sacrifice.
In fact, this was something everybody in the ancient world understood. The impulse to sacrifice is found in cultures all over the world and is innate to human nature, providing a way for people everywhere to understand what Christ did for us.
In a sacrifice, people would bring a gift—often an animal—and offer it on an altar. The sacrifice could be a gesture of apology for having sinned or an act of thanks or reverence. Whatever its specific intent, it was meant in a general way to cultivate good relations with heaven.
In the Crucifixion, Jesus presented himself as a sacrifice on our behalf. Indeed, he was the sacrifice to which all other Jewish sin offerings pointed, “for it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins” (Heb. 10:4).
 More fundamentally, God communicated important lessons to us. One is just how serious our sins are—given that it took the death of the Son of God to atone for them. He also showed us just how much he loves us in spite of our sins. “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8; cf. CCC 604). 
God also drew on a theme that had special meaning for Jews: Passover. At the founding of their nation, God led them out of slavery in Egypt through the sacrifice of the Passover lambs, when God’s wrath passed over the Israelites. 
Now Jesus, “the Lamb of God” (John 1:29, 36), was sacrificed at Passover (John 19:14–16), so that God’s wrath might pass over us and we might be led out of slavery to sin. Thus Paul can say, “Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Cor. 5:7). 

Jimmy Akin, A Daily Defense: 365 Days (Plus One) to Becoming a Better Apologist