When the Waters Recede | Genesis 8-9
This message was preached at Sherwood Community Friends Church on Sunday, March 15, 2026. You can watch the video in full by clicking below.
Series Context: Where We’ve Been
For the last six weeks, we have been taking a deep-dive look into the first chapters of the Bible. We are treating Genesis chapters 1 through 11 as exactly what they are. It’s the Preface of the Bible. This is not a science textbook. Not a myth. It is an ancient Near Eastern theological prologue written to answer the deepest questions any human being has ever asked:
Who is God?
Who are we?
Why were we created?
Why is the world broken?
Is there any hope that it won’t always be this way?
We started at the beginning. God spoke order into chaos. He made humanity in his image, as the pinnacle of his creative work, and called them to partner with him in caring for what he made.
Then in Genesis 3, that partnership shattered. Adam and Eve chose autonomy and self-reliance over God’s invitation to be reliant on Him alone. The vertical fracture that followed affected everything. By Genesis 4, the fracture moved horizontal when Cain murdered his brother. By Genesis 5 and 6, the violence had been woven into the fabric of human society. This grieved God to his core over what his creation, his masterpiece, had become.
Last week, we met Noah. One man, walking faithfully with God while the entire world unraveled around him. The flood came as God’s response to a world so saturated with disorder and corruption that there was no path forward. The flood wasn’t a light or arbitrary decision by God. And it wasn’t a callous punishment. God knew that only through a reset, a new beginning, a re-creation — order would be restored.
So, Noah and his family entered the ark. The waters rose. And then came silence.
That silence is where we pick up today.
The Weight We Carry In
Before we open the text, I want to name what we are holding. something that I think most of us carry into rooms like this one.
There is a kind of exhaustion that has nothing to do with your personal life. It comes from the news cycles, the social media feeds, and the emails that bombard our inboxes. The world has a gravity to it right now—a pull toward the noise, the chaos, the outrage cycle, the political tension—and most of us have felt ourselves getting drawn in deeper into human affairs.
Well, this is not a new issue for us. Jesus says something similar to his disciples in Mark 8:33. Peter had just correctly identified Jesus as the Messiah, the one who had been promised for centuries and who would save them. As Jesus goes on to tell them of the persecution and death he will experience in the days ahead, Peter assures Jesus that he will not allow that to happen to him. Jesus responds:
“Get behind me, Satan! You are not thinking about God’s concerns but human concerns.” Mark 8:33 CSB
He said that to Peter. Peter, whose eyes were opened to call Jesus the Messiah. Peter, who loved Jesus and was trying to protect him. Jesus still called it out as a posture rooted in human concerns rather than God’s concerns. It was an orientation failure. Peter’s eyes were fixed on the wrong thing.
The invitation of Genesis 8 and 9 today is to reorient us and to set our minds on the matters of God.
With that, let’s dive in.
But God Remembered
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.” Genesis 8:1
Does this sound familiar? I hope it does. Listen to this again: “God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the water began to subside.” This is re-creation language. This is intentional and the narrator wants you to catch it.
Remember Genesis 1?
Verse 2 “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.”
Jump to verse 6
6 Then God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters, separating water from water.” 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above the expanse. And it was so. 8 God called the expanse “sky.”[b] Evening came and then morning: the second day. 9 Then God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land “earth,” and the gathering of the water he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.
The flood narrative follows the same pattern as the creation narrative: watery chaos, a wind sent by God, dry land emerging. Soon we will see creatures coming forth and God blessing and commanding fruitfulness.
Biblical Scholar John Walton says this: “The narrator intends for people to understand that from God’s perspective, this is about re-creation. He was bringing order and wanted his people to start again.”
What God did in Genesis 1 is happening again in Genesis 8. Despite the chaos that humanity created, God continues to move toward us with order. This is who he is. He is the God who brings order out of chaos, as many times as it takes.
There is something else to note in 8:1. Notice the word remembered.
God remembered Noah
This is not a matter of God forgetting Noah and then suddenly recalling him, as one might do when they forget where they put their car keys.
In Hebrew, this word is zakar. This word indicates active, purposeful engagement. Think more of movement. God moves toward Noah with intention and purpose.
Stepping Out
When the time has finally come for Noah’s curiosity about what is happening outside of the ark, and he sees the peaks of the mountaintops after about 8 months, he decides to do some exploration.
Noah opens the window and sends out a raven. The raven went here and there but with no methodical purpose and no return mentioned. Noah is not discouraged, but rather resourceful.
We see Noah then sends out a dove. In fact, it wasn’t only one time that Noah sent out the dove. There were three separate times he sent this dove. Each time, it was purposeful, responsive, and on task–different than the raven. The first time, it found no dry land and returned. The second time, it came back with an olive branch. The third time, it did not return. This is when Noah knew the earth was ready to receive them.
“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.” Genesis 8:13-14 CSB
When did Noah and his family enter the ark? On the 10th day of the 2nd month A YEAR PRIOR.
It’s only then that God speaks to Noah. Noah waited an entire year of catastrophic upheaval — one of the most disorienting experiences any human being had ever endured — with no recorded word from God. And Noah waited. He did not spiral. He did not demand answers. He stayed.
That is the posture of a man who has learned to set his mind on the things of God rather than the things of man. He trusted the One who sent him IN to be the One who would tell him when to come OUT. Even when God was silent.
And when God finally speaks in v.15, what does he say?
“...‘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.’” Genesis 8:15-17, CSB
The Altar Before Anything Else
“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.” Genesis 8:18-20
Noah steps off the ark and what is the first thing that he does?
He doesn’t survey the land or put together the rebuilding plan. Instead, Noah offers his worship before any work or agenda or planning.
If you’ve been around here for any length of time, you know that I’m a planner. I spend time at the beginning and end of each day reviewing my priorities and scheduling my tasks. Every week on Saturdays, I plan the following 6 days, reviewing what projects must get done that week. Every month, every quarter, and yes, every year I spend time dreaming, planning, and even deciding what isn’t mine to do. It’s why the title “executive” pastor fits me so well!
But, every morning, before I plan, I pray 3 verses first.
“Let me experience your faithful love in the morning, for I trust in you. Reveal to me the way I should go because I appeal to you.” Ps 143:8.
Teach us to number our days carefully so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts. Ps 90:12.
Let the favor of the Lord our God be on us; establish for us the work of our hands—establish the work of our hands! Ps 90:17.
Before I work, plan, and formulate my calendar, I go to God first in prayer. Before any emails are sent, phone calls made, or meetings entered, I commit to him. I acknowledge with sacrifice that God, the Creator of the universe and yet also the Creator of my soul, is the one who provides my shelter, my food, and yes, even my work. Nothing that I think I have would be mine at all if it weren’t for the Father who gives me absolutely everything.
What is God’s response to this sacrifice?
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.” Genesis 8:21-22
This is the beginning of the Noahic Covenant. It’s one of five covenants throughout scripture, but this one is unique. God is giving humanity a covenant in which he alone has a side to uphold. It is not dependent on any act of obedience from humanity. God knows our human hearts. He doesn’t extend his covenant because of hoped-for improvement or because of some moral corner that has been turned with this creation reset.
God says something far more astonishing: I will never do this again EVEN THOUGH the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth onward. God is not responding to human improvement. He is responding to Noah’s worship, as imperfect and inadequate as it might have been, with a unilateral declaration of grace.
This is who God is. He is a God of love, grace, and redemption. He does not abandon his people — even when, and this will always be true, even when we do not keep our end of the relationship. Even when we give our hearts to other things. Even when we choose OUR chaos over HIS order.
He does not abandon us.
The Covenant and the Bow
As God continues to speak to Noah and his sons, he reissues the creation mandate.
God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.b 2 The fear and terror of you will be in every living creature on the earth, every bird of the sky, every creature that crawls on the ground, and all the fish of the sea. They are placed under your authority. 3 Every creature that lives and moves will be food for you; as I gave the green plants, I have given you everything. Ge 9:1–3.
Let’s look back again to Genesis 1:
“God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.” God also said, “Look, I have given you every seed-bearing plant on the surface of the entire earth and every tree whose fruit contains seed. This will be food for you, for all the wildlife of the earth, for every bird of the sky, and for every creature that crawls on the earth — everything having the breath of life in it — I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so.” Genesis 1:28-30 CSB
Where else do we see a command for multiplication? The Great Commission. Jesus is about to ascend to heaven, to be seated with the Father, as he gives his final words to the disciples.
Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. 19 Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Mt 28:18–20.
God told Adam and Noah: I have given you all authority!
Jesus told the disciples: I have given you all authority!
God told Adam and Noah after he brought order to the chaos: Go multiply and fill the earth.
Jesus told the disciples after he brought eternal order to eternal chaos: Go multiply more of my followers.
God told Adam and Noah: I have even provided what you need to make this happen.
Jesus told the disciples: I have even provided what you need to make this happen. I am with you always!
These words to the disciples sealed the final covenant, made through the blood of Jesus. They remain for us today!
God sealed his words with Adam with the introduction of the Sabbath, representing completion. Jesus sealed his words with the disciples by sending the Holy Spirit.
How does God conclude this covenant with Noah?
“I establish my covenant with you that never again will every creature be wiped out by floodwaters; there will never again be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all future generations: I have placed my bow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.’” Genesis 9:11–13 CSB
This covenant scope is not about Israel, the church, or the followers of Jesus. This covenant is for every living creature on earth. The breadth of God’s commitment here is staggering. He is not a tribal God, managing one group of people. He is the God of all creation and this promise is for all of creation.
The sign he gives–the bow in the clouds–carries more weight than we understand. In ancient Near Eastern literature, a rainbow or war bow was understood as a sign of hostility, a weapon in the hands of the gods. It was a sign of who held the judgment. Here, God takes that symbol and turns it upside down. The bow is pointed upward, away from the earth. If it were an archer’s weapon, the arrow would be directed toward the heavens, not toward humanity. God has laid his weapons down.
It doesn’t stop there.
Whenever I form clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all the living creatures: water will never again become a flood to destroy every creature. 16 The bow will be in the clouds, and I will look at it and remember the permanent covenant between God and all the living creatures on earth.” Ge 9:14–16.
This says that the rainbow is not just for us to remember the covenant. God says he himself will look at it and remember. This word for remember is the same one we looked at in 8:1. God will remember us. He’ll move toward us, even in our most disordered state, God commits himself to the relationship.
The Fracture Lives On
Now we come to a passage that is confusing and uncomfortable. But we aren’t afraid to talk about uncomfortable texts in the Bible. It’s important we learn from it and see what it holds.
So… The flood is over. The Noahic covenant is sealed. Order has been restored by God. And almost immediately, the darkness in humanity reasserts itself. As I’m sure you have assumed, this was no surprise to God.
Before we read, let me say plainly: what this passage describes is disturbing. It should disturb you. But understanding it will change how you read the rest of the Old Testament.
Here is our reminder that we must put on our cultural glasses. The Ancient Near East culture was different than our own. So, putting on our ANE glasses, we read the text keeping in mind their language, culture, ways of communicating, and life-living.
Okay, here we go! Noah plants a vineyard. Vineyards take four to five years to produce grapes suitable for wine. So what happens next does not occur the morning after stepping off the ark. Significant time has passed. Then something disordered unfolds inside Noah’s own household.
“Noah, a man of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard. He drank some of the wine, became drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. Shem and Japheth took a garment and placed it over both their shoulders, and walking backward, they covered their father’s nakedness. Their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father naked. When Noah awoke from his drinking and learned what his youngest son had done to him, he said: ‘Cursed be Canaan; the lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.’” Genesis 9:20–25 CSB
To a modern reader, this looks like a wildly disproportionate response. A man gets drunk, his son accidentally sees him naked and acting a fool, and the result is a generational curse? That reading seems almost inappropriate and certainly misses entirely what the original audience would have understood.
The phrase “saw his father naked” and the related phrase from another Bible translation, “uncovered his father’s nakedness” are Hebrew idioms. They are not describing an accidental glimpse. In Leviticus chapters 18 and 20, these same phrases are used specifically to describe sexual relations.
The nakedness of the father is the father’s wife.
What Ham did was violate Noah’s wife — his own mother. This was not passive or accidental. It was an aggressive, calculated power move in which Ham asserted himself as the Alpha male. In the ancient Near East, to take a man’s wife was to claim his authority, his household, and his legacy. Ham was making a bid for patriarchal dominance. He was asserting himself as the new head of the family by the most egregious means available to him.
There is a second possible interpretation that some scholars hold alongside this one: that Ham castrated his father. The text notes Noah was quite intoxicated. An act of castration would have severed Noah’s ability to produce more heirs, permanently removing him from patriarchal authority. Either way, sexual violation of Noah’s wife, or castration, holds to the intent being the same. Ham committed a profound act of betrayal and domination. It was not a moment of weakness or an accidental glimpse. It was a calculated seizure of power.
When Noah awoke and understood what had happened, he did not curse Ham directly, which would have made sense. Instead, Noah cursed Canaan, the child born from Ham’s violation of Noah’s wife. Yes Canaan was innocent here. However, he was the living evidence of the sin. And by cursing that child, Noah was cursing Ham’s legacy at its very root.
Are you still with me? Do you still have those ANE glasses on? Because here is where we need to stop and pay careful attention, because something important is happening in the structure of the Biblical story.
Up to this point, only God had ever issued a curse. In Genesis 3, after the Fall, God cursed the serpent and cursed the ground. No human being had ever stood in the place of divine judge and pronounced a curse. Noah does that here. He took on an authority that belonged to God alone.
What we are watching is the same old story: human beings reaching for power on their own terms, setting their minds on human concerns, stepping into the place that belongs to God.
The curse of Canaan echoes through the rest of the Old Testament as the Israelites encounter the Canaanite people groups in constant conflict that carries forward the ancient tension introduced in Genesis 3:15. Canaan in the literary arc of Genesis represents that seed — all things opposed to God’s order. And the one who will ultimately crush it is the one who comes through the line of Shem, through Abraham, through the tribe of Judah.
His name is Jesus.
Shem and Japheth, who refused to participate in Ham’s dishonor — they are blessed. The line through Shem is the line of promise. The covenant is going somewhere. The story is not over.
Conclusion
We started this morning by naming an exhaustion that most of us know. The gravity of the world’s chaos. The pull toward human concerns, human noise, human anxiety. The slow drift away from the places where God speaks to us. Genesis 8 and 9 are an answer to that drift, the exhaustion and the noise.
We see a God who remembers. Who sends a wind over the waters when everything feels submerged. Who makes covenants he intends to keep, not because humanity earns them, but because that is who he is. They also show us that the darkness in human hearts did not end with the flood — and will not end with any human solution, any political movement, any cultural reset we might engineer on our own.
The only answer to the orientation problem is the one Jesus named.
“You are not thinking about God’s concerns but human concerns.” Mark 8:33 CSB
And then, immediately after, this:
“Calling the crowd along with his disciples, he said to them, ‘If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.’” Mark 8:34 CSB
That is the call. We’ve seen in this story that Noah was not perfect. He was a drunk with a rash temper. But he also built an altar before he built anything else. He waited in the ark until God said move. He walked with God when the world was completely falling apart around him. That is what commitment looks like. Not a flawless record but a consistent orientation to God’s order.
The bow is in the clouds. God has laid his weapons down. He is for humanity. He has not forgotten us. He has not grown tired of us. And he is for YOU! He has not looked at your mess and walked away. He looked at it and remembers you-he moves toward you with intention through his covenant-through Jesus.
Maybe you’ve been trying to be your own answer to the chaos, fixing and managing and controlling, and you are tired. You don’t have to do that anymore. I’ve heard it said, “God will never give you more than you can handle.” I don’t believe that is scriptural. What God does say is that he will provide for us in all we endure. And when we come out the other side, when we survive the flood of our life’s turmoil, we can only come out with praise and adoration because it is God alone who has delivered us. So, here is the invitation for today.
Deny yourself. Not because you don’t matter — but because the self that keeps reaching for control has never once been able to hold your world together. It is God who brings order to our chaos. Nothing we do or say can do that. So take up your cross. Follow him.
Then, receive the provision he has for you. God gives you what you need to survive the flood in your life. On this side of the cross, we have the Holy Spirit who empowers us!
Finally, we go and we multiply. We find someone else who is in chaos and we bring them to the peace that is only found in Jesus Christ. We are called into the work of bringing more people to Him.
The waters have receded. Dry ground is beneath your feet. The God who remembered Noah remembers you. He’s calling you to come out. All you have to do is take the next step.
Earlier we sang Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus: “and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.” What a fitting song that we leave here with in our minds.
