It's all getting a bit 'Wonky donkey'

Starting question's: 

1. Do you need the flood waters of the story of Noah to have covered the WHOLE earth..? 
2. Do you need all of mankind punished for their wrong doing in order to understand the message of the flood story? 
3. Are you prepared to accept that the writer’s view of the whole earth may not literally have been the WHOLE earth?

Some might argue that the flood story demonstrates that due to the wickedness of people, our early civilisation needed to have been totally wiped-clean through the total immersion of water that covers the whole earth, in order for God to set his ‘new-birth’ plan into motion (We'll come back to this idea of baptism later). Or are you prepared to accept that the writer may have had a limited view of the world and it may not have been a literal world-wide flood, but rather a narrative?

The writer of the Genesis story would have had a world view that was only as big as the eye could see; he would also have had a limited view of the world due to the distances that could be travelled… Does the idea that God may not have destroyed everything, detract you from the meaning of the story within the scripture?

God is supernatural and can cover the whole earth with water if he chooses but perhaps considering the amazing variety of flora, fauna, insect and bird life… this story may not be a literal text, but a narrative text regarding the need for Yahweh to secure a people who recognised that he was the one-true-God; a people who recognised that only Yahweh was worthy of our worship, and a people who believed he was in control of the natural word.

The bible is big enough for both scenarios don’t you think? 

There are some who could not come to faith when presented with the idea that God would willingly kill so many people, preferring the idea of the narrative to a literal translation… The story is designed to show that God is interested in having a relationship with man. In looking at God's relationship with Noah, the story reveals the basis of that relationship, where Noah is credited by the writer as being righteous, and the actions that Noah takes to honour God in that relationship.

Hebrews 11: 7 – “It was by faith that Noah built a large boat to save his family from the flood. He obeyed God, who warned him about things that had never happened before... that was outside of his understanding, therefore causing Noah to trust God. By his faith Noah condemned the rest of the world because he lived separately from it, and he received the righteousness that comes from God in displaying this faith.”

Noah is a symbol of the redemptive work of God in the ancient world, and not one of destruction. Destruction was a consequence of sin as ‘Man’ had become wicked and corrupt in nature, rejecting God as creator and living lives that were unjust and unrighteous. The people rejected God because in their opinion, a flood of such magnitude had not happened before. They believed more in their own wisdom than that of the word of God spoken through Noah, so they rejected his claim. The people were so distant from God that they didn't expect it to happen just because one man said that 'God said it was so'.

Noah was considered by God to be living a righteous life, giving us a picture of what God was searching the earth for, in a person such as Noah. In seeing Noah’s righteousness God is empowered to show him favour and offer mercy to him (Genesis 6). In response to God, Noah stands tall in his society to warn his neighbours of the coming danger and builds a visible representation of God at work in their world through the construction of the 'Ark'. A symbol of how the people could be saved by God.

We can read the unfolding story in Genesis 7 - 9. Noah’s peers mocked him for what he was doing despite the fact that he was being derided by their taunting, Noah was unmoved from his conviction or his sense of purpose. When the time comes for the earth to bear God’s judgement, Noah and his family are rescued by their faith in Yahweh and the ‘Ark’ he advised them to build. The start of this new life is sealed with a new covenant – “Yes, I am confirming my covenant with you. Never again will flood waters kill all living creatures; never again will a flood destroy the earth." (Genesis 9: 11)

Noah’s new life is protected by Yahweh and his needs are provided for by the new life emerging from the receding waters. Noah appears to have immediately failed in his righteous living in this new world, after a fertile growing season and the fermentation of his new wine, He celebrates the harvest and all that Yahweh has provided, which ultimately leads him to the consumption of a large amount of wine… he got drunk.

The story is a symbol that man is not simply a product of his environment, but rather that the inner core of man was ultimately ‘wonky-donkey’ from the beginning – it looks OK from the outside, but what goes on inside reveals that there is something not quite right – in theological terms we refer to this as being spiritually dead,caused by the effect of sin in our lives.

It is too simplistic to look at the story of the flood and think of the judgement on man that warns us that God is someone we should ‘fear’ and out of this fear, learn to do what is right or else! People get the point that God is righteous and cannot allow sin to go unpunished. That’s why we tend to reject the idea that there is a deity that could do that! The consequence of sin in this story of Noah which runs parallel with life today, is our self-determination that leads to the breakdown of their civilisation, the desecration of their humanity, and the abuse of the natural world.

Don’t be shocked about Noah getting drunk… I know that God wasn't shocked by Noah’s celebration of all that Yahweh had provided… it would be Noah who had to live with the morning hangover! What is very clear however, is that it is the actions of his grandson in revealing Noah’s sorry state that needed addressing. It seems quite complicated but bear with me. It is Ham’s son Canaan that is cursed for a tell-tale like approach to uncovering Noah’s indignity… Noah’s other son’s Shem and Japheth try to cover-up Noah’s modesty and retain his dignity, so what was the issue?

There is some spiritual discernment at work here. Noah has heard the call of God through his righteous life and faithful obedience in following his instruction. He has learned to listen to God and perceive what is right, from that which is wrong. In this incident, Noah has insight into his grandson’s inner thinking. He recognised the influence of the old civilisation in the heart of the young man and with insight, declares that through Canaan’s descendant’s, he will be cursed not for what he did, but for the disclosure of his heart. 

So the story is not about what some might perceive as a vengeful God exacting rightful justice, but as a wider contextual realisation of the character of God. It’s about God looking out for those who stay faithful to him; understanding that God is against those who reject that which is dishonest and unjust; being fearful if we do not obey what is right in the eyes of God; and in understanding this, realise that God prefers to lift up those that bring honour to the lost and broken in society and in so doing, bring honour to Yahweh through their faithful obedience.

In this ancient civilisation, none but Noah and his immediate family were found to be worthy of saving… however even in his family, there was disunity. In Canaan’s actions, Noah had identified a descendant that would cause conflict with the new life they were building. In fact, the descendants of Canaan became a constant source of trouble to the people of Israel. Shem, the brother of Canaan became the ancestor to Abraham, the father of the nation of Israel, but the Canaanite's and Hittites both attacked Israel over generations. So Noah’s prophetic ‘curse’ became true with the passage of time.

You have always got to read the bible within its context to determine the truth that lies within its pages. You have in the story of the flood, an almost folk-like narrative of a time when people were generally living without any knowledge of their purpose in the creation of the world. Without this knowledge, they lived how they pleased and developed a sense of morality that suited their civilisation. We know later in the story about the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, that mankind had reached a point in its development where they believed they could reach up and touch the heavens. They saw that they had learned so much and achieved such greatness that they saw equality with God something they could grasp (Compare Paul's letter to the Philippians 2: 6).

In the Babel story, we can see that God was displeased with this behaviour because it was not the purpose of men and women to attain to be ‘like’ God, but to reach out to all corners of the earth as the image of God... as a testimony to God. At the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, God banished his creation from the place where God would walk in the evening breeze (Genesis 3: 8); we could no longer stay in his presence due to our rebellion (Genesis 3:22 -23). Although banished from the garden, we were tasked with tending to creation and to honour God for what he provides through the growing of produce and the tending of animals.

Instead of honouring God for what he provided, the people were building the tower as a monument to their own achievements and in so doing, believed they were like God (Genesis 11). Again, you can see that in the peoples failure to honour God through spreading civilisation to the four corners of the earth, God intervenes by mixing up language so that they would indeed go their separate ways to conquer the world. Again this isn't a spiteful action, but a reaction to sin and its effect on our behaviour.

This was done because God has always had a purpose for his creation. He desired to create a world teeming with life, filled with men and women birthed in God’s image and in whose breath filled our lungs. He looked on his creation and said that it was good, and that men and women were very good! His desire was to develop a relationship with those he had created, as an expression of the wholeness and uniqueness of God. Our purpose was to tend to the earth and all of the creatures within it. We lived in unity and had all we needed. In Adams relationship with Eve, he was to fill the earth with descendants in a wonderful symphony of life that gave glory back to God.

In today’s broken world this seems implausible. We know that we could help to feed starving people in all parts of the globe but due to the unequal balance of wealth, we still prefer to be extravagant and build huge towers that go high into the sky as a symbol of wealth, status and engineering, just as Babel did. Yet we fail to correct the inequalities of capitalism and the effects of globalisation such as starvation, the lack of sanitation or clean water. God was not angry that the people of Babel built the tower… it was the desire of the people’s hearts and minds in extolling their own virtues rather than honouring God that concerned him.

Man was created for the edification of the whole of creation; not for a select few. We were designed for the proliferation of God in a world where those that look, will find evidence of his bounty and provision for all that choose to seek it; not for self-seeking individualism or the building of kingdoms at the expense of others… And yet with God’s purpose clear for all to see, we still reject him.

Later in the bible meta-narrative  the Nation of Israel was to be the witness of God in this world. Yet despite the miraculous events surrounding their release from captivity by the mighty Pharaoh, they were unable to attain the standard to which God aspired of them. God knew that a plan was needed to reconcile people back to himself in a once-and–for-all act that would even abolish our banishment from the Garden, and the curse of sin - death. 

God wants us back… He wants to restore our natures back to that which we were designed for. He never desired for us to toil and work for our salvation, this was the work of sin. How often people dismiss God because they think he wanted to punish us, or that there are too many horrible things going on in the world to believe in him… God NEVER wanted it to be this way!

When I look at Jesus, I see a man who was truly at one with his sense of purpose. Jesus, who was both God and man, felt that he could not be equal with God… He became a servant, referring to himself as a ‘Son of Man’… a son of Adam. He knows what it is like to be us, warts and all! He proved that he was able to resist the temptation of his human nature through his understanding of scripture, and in his humanity, he listened to the wisdom of men and challenged their reasoning; he interacted with people from all sections of society, and more importantly, still interacts with us today.

As Noah’s ark was being built in the centre of the land and in full view to all, similarly, Jesus was lifted high on the cross to reveal to the world that the Son of Man was capable of sealing a new covenant between God and men. Only Jesus has the personal integrity in his humanity to stand before God as a man and whose divine nature, was able to take the punishment that we deserved upon his own spirit. Only Jesus, the Son of God, could call on his father as an equal, asking him to forgive the likes of you and me. Like any father, God is willing to accept any petition from his Son… yet the price the Son had to pay for the request was through the sacrificial act of his saving grace… his own death.

Jesus lays down his life as a ransom for sin; death. This was not simply a cleansing as in the water of the flood, but a re-birth. Jesus’ spilled blood was the only way that death could be broken because he has power over life and death… “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Matthew 20:28) John the Baptist who baptised with water said of Jesus: “The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29)

In one of the creeds used in the Church of England called the prayer of humble access, we recite the following phrase: ‘We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs from under your table. But you are the same Lord, whose nature is always to have mercy.’ It is part of the communion service that the Anglican Church does so successfully in its form of worship, and echo’s the point I have been trying to communicate here… God is doing-all-the-running! It’s HIS nature to have mercy; it’s HIS nature to want to reach out and save ALL who are lost and broken in this world. We are invited to share in the celebration of Jesus’ sacrifice by sharing the meal he taught his disciples to use… Take the bread; this is a symbol of my body, broken for you; Take this wine; this is a symbol of my blood, which is shed for you. Eat and drink the bread and wine in remembrance that he died for you, for the forgiveness of sins and for the promise of new life.

In the Vineyard tradition within the UK, we do communion really badly… dipping bread into a plastic cup of wine! But the meaning is more than sentimental ritual. Repenting (giving up) of our sinful nature and believing in Jesus, prepares us for the in-filling of the Holy Spirit, whose purpose is to comfort and counsel us on our journey through faith. Where once we stumbled through life being distracted, we can come back to God and ask him to forgive us for all the things we do, all the things we have done in the past, and all that are going to get wrong in the future.

In the Old Testament, Job speaks of the earth being able to tell of Gods glory and his provision in the natural world. We first have to accept that as we observe the natural world, we get a sense that we are God’s creation, able to make rational choices that may cause us to stumble and get things wrong. Recognising our need for God, we can repent of our sin and receive through Jesus, an inheritance far greater than I can achieve with my own strength. Like Noah, we can make mistakes but as we learn from him, the most important aspect of our lives is to recognise when God is calling to us to action. To be able to live and do the right thing, no matter what the consequences could be; and to continue to honour God with our worship.

HALT TIME… grab a coffee!

The story so far may be enough for you right now as it contains a lot to digest ad you may want to come back to this section later… If you want to continue, great! I have tried to build up a picture of the state of mankind, our sin, and the narrative throughout the bible of God breaking into our world for good. He has been influencing our journey throughout the generations through a variety of men and women of God to ensure that we stay true to our purpose. So for a moment I want to focus on a comparative view of our civilisation. 

Now this may seem like an odd section so please bear with me. In our sceptical post-modern world where people always question what truth is, I heard a very peculiar argument for the denial of the existence of God and dismiss the notion that we all carry a sense of right or wrong from a universal truth that is locked into each of us. 

The argument involves the pursuit of scientific knowledge and the naturalistic philosophy that our physical bodies are just a bag of cells that have emerged from nothing… that there is no creator God. As natural biological organisms, we have developed our reasoning through our social interactions in what we know to be true; our education; and the significant influence of parents or other adults.

However as biological systems, we are prone to having a break down. If a person became a murderer, we cannot so much as blame the person, as blame the fault that has developed in the person’s machine. So as a member of society, we will interact with one another as each machine has been conditioned, until a fault occurs. However some may function irrationally through some defect without any notion that it is wrong… it is just broken. So like any defect in any machine, we need to repair it… you get the idea.

What is very odd with this position is that being physical beings that are programmed by our upbringing and the collection of our natural properties, we do not have free will… we cannot have free will because we do not need to make choices about what we have been programmed to do. Therefore we do not make intellectual choices in our decision making because we do not need to choose between different courses of action; we function through pre-programmed instinctive reason and action - cause and effect. There are no choices to be made! So if what we do appears faulty, there is no one to blame but the fault, it’s just a malfunction. There are no standards of behaviour that we have to adhere to.

Free will isn't allowed because If we had it, we could make our own choices; therefore we could choose to murder knowing it is wrong…? So how do we know when our physical machine is working or whether it has malfunctioned? Murder isn't any more acceptable today knowing that it may not be our fault because we have a defective body... murder is exactly that; a choice to take a life or not. Alongside this idea that there isn't a sense of what is right or wrong, is the idea that if I try to persuade you that murder is indeed wrong, then I am simply trying to gain power over another using words. That gaining power over another is evil; so religion by default due to their philosophy of social justice is evil because we cannot do something wrong if we merely respond to inputs that could be faulty.

DO those proposing this form of human interaction really believe this stuff? It all seems to be a bit of an extreme piece of reasoning and without any sense of logic. We know murder to be wrong… it cannot be justified by the faulty machine model as there would be no sense of justice. There is no sense of Justice because there are no standards that have either a correct or incorrect option; they would argue that there is nothing to judge? 

We know that this is not true… it’s the same type of logic that those who say that the holocaust did not happen; that it was all propaganda… Yet we have a mountain of evidence, a variety of first hand evidence from the victims and the perpetrators, interviews and corroborating artefacts. We know that the holocaust took place and that it was wrong because there is something much ‘bigger’ than simply our understanding of the evidence… it’s our ability to use our deductive reasoning of the facts to reveal our conductive understanding of truth and untruth?  

Just as the ancient civilisation in the time of Noah rejected the notion that there wasn't to be a flood because they had not experienced one before, today we use the same kind of decision making around righteous and unrighteous actions. Some today still reject the idea that there are actions that demand justice; actions that lead to consequences; and consequences that involve some form of punishment.

As Christians, we understand that as people we are spiritually dead. Yet some people who do not profess to have any belief in God, exhibit a graciousness and gentleness of spirit that seems greater than that possessed by some people of faith! Those that serve in charitable work for a wide range of medical or humanitarian causes show a thankless determination to help those that cannot help themselves. However, no matter how much we may honour those who serve, the fact still remains that as descendants of Adam, we were born into ‘sin’. Good works do not solve the issue that at the very core of our being we are capable of sin.

Jesus was born a man; he is our greatest and only defender and mediator before our God who is Holy. We read the story of Jesus being tested in the wilderness for 40 days (Matthew 4: 1-11). Hungry and tired, his resolve was tested in three ways… food for sustenance; questioning Gods word and his promise; and the worship of God. These are familiar forms of distraction today. Providing for our physical needs can be found in the pursuit of our careers in order to provide for our families with the comforts of modern life; what short cuts can I make in order to get the best for my family? Could those short cuts be at the expense of my ethics and/or the needs of others?

Questioning our purpose and the call of God on our lives was the second challenge for Jesus, that remains with us today. Our post-modern sceptical view of God leads to doubt and disbelief in the existence of God, who he is and the promises he has for us; preferring instead to believe in the security of our own knowledge of the observed world and our understanding of the natural order. We try to sustain a sense of purpose through what we can get out of the world, and how we can improve our status in this one life. 

The final test for Jesus being the recognition of the correct form of worship that God desires; we place so many other things in our lives before God, that we don’t give him a second thought during our day. We fill our lives with so much 'stuff' that we can fail to listen to what we really need... Christians know that we have a God shaped hole at the centre of our soul that can only be filled with the presence of God.

The symbolism of Jesus in the wilderness for 40 days and Noah’s flooding rain for 40-days-and-40-nights for the cleansing of the earth, is also linked to the story of Moses revealed in the book of Numbers. It took 40 years in the desert to rid the Israelites of the sin they had learned from the habits picked up when living in Egypt: "The LORD was angry with Israel and made them wander in the wilderness for forty years until the entire generation that sinned in the LORD's sight had died.” (Numbers 32:13)

Jesus shows us through his test, that even in human form, he could conquer sin through his blameless response to the three challenges he faced in the wilderness. Jesus, born as the son of man, achieved victory over sin and the penalty of sin, death, could not bind him. Being both God and man, he could break the curse of sin that leads to death, and in his bodily resurrection, have victory over sin for all people (1 Peter 2: 22-24).

The waters of the flood are a symbol of the cleansing effect of water to wash away sin, as declared by John the Baptist in Luke 3. John knew that he could only prepare people for the one who was to come… “I baptise you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire…” (v16). The flood waters could only cleanse the land for a moment as we found earlier with Noah and his grandson Canaan… Jesus is able to remove our sins completely because being man and deserving death, his righteousness in resisting sin saved him from the punishment of death, and his divinity raised him from the dead…  “For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.” (2 Corinthians 5: 21)

We are not machines as described in the naturalistic, new atheist philosophies, where man is simply a pre-programmed physical body through which some root command code has been pre-installed that cannot be altered due to it being flashed into our subconscious. In this philosophy, you do what you do because your body operates at a cause and effect level… there is no moral perspective for what you do; it’s a product of your gene. In this view point, you only trust what you see and have no free-will to decide what is best for your self-preservation… It makes my head hurt just trying to find the best way to describe this philosophical viewpoint!

We try to eliminate God from our social functioning because we do not want to deal with the idea that we might get things wrong. It may seem easier to ignore the God thing, but why are we not content with whom we are? It is too simplistic an idea to suggest that humans exist and there is no meaning other than to enjoy the present… why worry about the future?

Having choice and the free will to do what is right, points to a rudimentary set of standards or principles that we must follow… we make a choice… we choose to believe that there is a right way, or we choose to reject that truth. My faith is a reflection of the truth I hold dear… I believe that by holding onto truth, no matter how I might be feeling, my faith remains. I can only find peace knowing that the love of Jesus Christ is at work in my life, the lives of my friends, my community, and this earth.

We are born to be free; we are not trapped in a pre-programmed loop without feedback to keep us in check. If our lives can be described as a system, we are an open one... one that CAN respond to feedback - the influence of God on our lives through the filling of the Holy Spirit is the feedback that we all seek. Jesus is the most liberating rational choice you can make. He stands in history as the one who can bring light to the darkness – let him illuminate the door of your heart and as he knocks, open the door and receive him. Then you will see all that you ever thought possible.

Going to finish with some scripture from Luke 24: 3–34… as you read it, I pray that the Holy Spirit will open your eyes to see the truth just like these two followers on their journey. That the real Jesus will reveal himself to you, not just as some story, but as an experience alive in your heart, making it burn within you; encouraging you to make your own journey into faith.

³ That same day two of Jesus’ followers were walking to the village of Emmaus, seven miles from Jerusalem. As they walked along they were talking about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things, Jesus himself suddenly came and began walking with them. But God kept them from recognizing him.

He asked them, “What are you discussing so intently as you walk along?”

They stopped short, sadness written across their faces.Then one of them, Cleopas, replied, “You must be the only person in Jerusalem who hasn't heard about all the things that have happened there the last few days.”

“What things?” Jesus asked.

“The things that happened to Jesus, the man from Nazareth,” they said. “He was a prophet who did powerful miracles, and he was a mighty teacher in the eyes of God and all the people. But our leading priests and other religious leaders handed him over to be condemned to death, and they crucified him. We had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to rescue Israel. This all happened three days ago.

“Then some women from our group of his followers were at his tomb early this morning, and they came back with an amazing report. They said his body was missing, and they had seen angels who told them Jesus is alive!Some of our men ran out to see, and sure enough, his body was gone, just as the women had said.”

Then Jesus said to them, “You foolish people! You find it so hard to believe all that the prophets wrote in the Scriptures. Wasn't it clearly predicted that the Messiah would have to suffer all these things before entering his glory?” Then Jesus took them through the writings of Moses and all the prophets, explaining from all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

By this time they were nearing Emmaus and the end of their journey. Jesus acted as if he were going on, but they begged him, “Stay the night with us, since it is getting late.” So he went home with them. As they sat down to eat, he took the bread and blessed it. Then he broke it and gave it to them. Suddenly, their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And at that moment he disappeared!

They said to each other, “ Didn't our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?”