I missed a lot

Great to have Clive with us this morning. I was really excited when he said he was going to preach from Genesis 6 as I have recently blogged that chapter http://marcusbible.blogspot.com/. I remember waxing lyrical about rainbows and The Wizard of Oz ("somewhere over the rainbow..." etc). I wondered if he would say the same sort of things as I did. To my surprise and delight he drew out of the passage one thing after another that I had totally missed. The word of God is so good like that. If I ever get to the end of blogging through the bible I will be able to start right back at the beginning again and get a whole fresh lot of revelation. God's word is inexhaustible.

I wish I had made some notes. He looked at the chapter from the point of view of "living on the water's of judgment; what life was like for Noah on the ark". Off the top of my head I remember these things:

• God shutting Noah up in the ark/difficult circumstances for his good and deliverance.
•  Being in the ark being a picture of being "in Christ" and "in the church".
•  Looking out from the ark seeing nothing but water, no end in sight, not knowing where God was leading him or what would happen next.
• Sending out raven prayers that never returned / never receive an answer, sending out dove prayers that returned with hope / where answered.
• The rainbow, that symbol of God's steadfast love being placed among the clouds of judgment. Jesus' blood shed on the cross expressing God's love in the place of judgment.
• As we go down into the waters of baptism we close our eyes, our ears fill up, our mouth shuts. It's like we are dead. The waters of judgment go over us but we rise to new life in Christ.  
• The lion laying down with the lamb in the ark symbolising people who were previously hostile to one another being at peace in Christ.     

Wow. And he didn't mention "the wizard of Oz" once!