Jesus said, “For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” Our Lord explains two things: what will happen when He returns again in glory—maybe in the next 30 seconds, maybe in the next many years. We don’t know. Jesus also explains what was happening in the days of Noah.

People were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, caught up with the concerns of this life, not realizing—totally ignoring—Noah’s warning of judgment. They were like the rich man who built bigger barns, stored his grain, and said to himself, “You have grain for many years—relax, eat, drink, and be merry.” Meanwhile, God said to him, “You’re going to die tonight.” People during Noah’s day were carrying on, planning their futures, building their wealth, advancing their careers, accomplishing their legacies—all worried about earthly things. It was all for nothing.

The God they refused to acknowledge and cling to for their salvation brought judgment as the rain began to fall when Noah was 600 years, one month, and seventeen days old. That was a marker for change. Noah and his family had loaded up the ark. The animals had come by God’s directing: seven pairs of clean animals and birds and a pair of unclean animals. Noah had loaded enough food on the ark.

Questions arise about the ark and its occupants. Firstly, there are doubts about the ark. How was Noah able to build such a massive barge-like vessel? I mean, he probably hired workers. But I dunno. How was the Great Wall of China built? How were the Egyptian and Mayan pyramids built? How did Greece and Rome have the technology to build what they built? I dunno. But they did and I have no reason to doubt the ark—and one Jesus reason to believe it. I mean, the guy who died and rose again believes it.

Secondly, the ark didn’t necessarily carry full grown animals. Young animals of a smaller size could suffice. It also wouldn’t have been necessary to take all the animals on the ark. Limited numbers of kinds of animals could suffice—like say a certain number of dogs and cats. Then as they mate, you get the types of breeds we see today. So this isn’t actually the big concern many think it might be or that critics want it to be.

God Himself closed the door of the ark, protecting them from anybody outside who might attempt to gain entry. For this is the Creator of the heavens and the earth and everything therein literally raining down judgment because the entirety of the world—except eight people—had refused to acknowledge the Lord of life and embraced the opposite. Death. God judged the unbelief and wickedness of the world, but He also mercifully saved sinful, yet believing, Noah and his believing family.

For what must have been a very long 375 days the Lord used the waters of the flood as a mighty means of deliverance that bore the ark on the surface. But below the surface there was a chaotic deluge of violence and death. Two things happened to cause the flood.

It rained for forty day and forty nights. We can’t imagine that. It just doesn’t seem possible. And yet, when I preached on Genesis one, I mentioned that some theologians and scientists theorize that in the beginning, before the flood of Noah, God had created a massive canopy of water vapor that surrounded the earth, making it the perfect habitat. And if the canopy theory is true, then the forty days of rain came from God causing its collapse.

Following the collapse of the canopy, the atmosphere and weather patterns as we know them would have emerged. This is where I’ll also point out the possibility that a collapsed atmospheric canopy could have caused many atmospheric and air changes, such as changes in oxygen levels and temperatures. These just might explain a number of things of which a few I’ll mention.

The length of human life-spans. Noah and his descendants lived anywhere from 777 years to almost 1000 years. Following the flood, lifespans begin to slowly but consistently decline, so that by the end of Genesis Joseph lived to be 120 years old, Moses 120, and Joshua 110.

Many theorize that the loss of a canopy and all the resulting atmospheric and climate changes could have caused the ice age and that both caused the extinction of the dinosaurs that were taken on the ark.

Again, many theorize that with a perfect canopy, there would have been no rain and therefore no sightings of rainbows in the sky prior to the flood. So the very first rainbow appeared after the flood.

Now, we have no thus sayeth the Lord, and so I will not say “this is what happened.” Having said that, these things make sense to me and seem to fit what God does declare to be true. As time goes on, sincere Christian scientists continue to learn more and more. So, we’ll see what’s discovered in the future.

Rain wasn’t the only thing that deluged the world in a flood. God caused “the fountains of the great deep” to “burst forth.” It appears there was a ton of water under the land. No big surprise to us today, except it was a lot more water. Seas may not have been as deep as the oceans today and so forth. So, God causes the deep waters to burst forth, possibly through earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and such. We don’t know what they were, but it’s not a stretch to imagine terrible seismic changes to the earth—tectonic plate changes, mountain changes, sea floor changes, possibly causing not only preserved fossils, but also fossil fuel and iron deposits, as the flood started and continued.

What would this mean for the earth’s occupants? A massive amount of death and destruction because of sin. Here's where we see the snake’s lie most prominently. All life on earth—except Noah, Ham, Shem, Japheth, and their spouses, the animals, and birds—died. All living beings who were not protected inside the ark perished. The Lord emphasizes in no uncertain terms that He blotted out every… living… thing. The potter destroyed a significant amount of His handiwork. A great number of living creatures were blotted from the earth as the raging flood waters continued for 150 days.

Then, we are told that “God remembered Noah.” Those are beautiful words. “God remembered Noah.” Oh, please don’t misunderstand! It’s not as though God shut Noah, his family, and the animals in the ark, and then forgot all about them! He never forgot them. In the Bible, God “remembering” is code for “God’s about to do something gracious and merciful.”

Where else do we see God “remembering”? When the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, God “remembered” and delivered them. When God was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, we are told, “God remembered Abraham,” because Abraham asked God to spare the righteous.

When God remembers, He’s about to act on behalf of His people. You may be familiar with these words. “This do in remembrance of me.” Jesus says that as the last sentence of the words He spoke to institute the Lord’s Supper—Holy Communion. When we partake of Holy Communion, we are to remember Jesus: remember what He has done through His death and resurrection, remember that He gives us His body and blood, and remember that He does so for the forgiveness of sins. Another word for our remembering of Jesus is faith. To remember Jesus is to trust in and fix our eyes on Jesus.

We can’t do that unless He remembers us. And so, the phrase “This do in remembrance of me” in the original Greek could also be translated “This do in my remembrance,” as in “the remembering is mine.” So it could be that we are remembering Jesus in faith because He’s remembering us. He’s doing something gracious and merciful for us. He’s acting on behalf of His people. We receive it through faith.

So, the Lord acts for Noah and the earth’s only living creatures aboard the ark. He caused a wind to begin drying earth. He closed the fountains of the deep. God restrained the rain, which likely didn’t pour with the intensity of the first forty days.

The drying process took many days. Noah sends a raven and then a dove to monitor the drying. When the dove came back with the olive leaf—a modern symbol of peace—Noah knew plant life was regrowing. Then, the third time Noah sent the dove it never came back. Earth was dry as of the first day of the first month of the six hundred and first year of Noah’s life. A lot of firsts! In a sense a new beginning.

As he obeyed the Lord’s command to build the ark, so Noah waited for the Lord’s command to leave the ark. And 375 days after God shut them in the ark, they left the ark. Just as all living creatures were brought to Noah in an orderly fashion, so they left the ark in the same way.

It’s tempting to think of Noah’s ark as a redo. Okay, mankind messed it up the first time, really went off the rails, and so we’re going to see a do-over. That’s not it. Noah, his wife, their sons, and their wives were all still sinful by nature and would pass that sinfulness to their descendants. The earth never was fully cleansed, because all of sinful man would have had to have died. The flood didn’t deal with sin directly. It dealt with sinners.

The flood showed the seriousness of God’s judgment. Hence, Jesus’ declaration at the beginning of my sermon: “As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” There is a final judgment coming in the future.

The flood also reveals that God will ultimately deal with sin through a different means. Killing most sinners doesn’t eliminate sin, but Jesus’ death on the cross for the sins of the world and His resurrection from the dead on the third day does put an end to the reign of sin and death for all who believe. Christ Jesus has brought you through the waters of Baptism into His cleansing forgiveness and eternal life in paradise. He has remembered and delivered you to salvation, just as He delivered believing Noah and his family. Amen.