A human body is mostly water.
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| The Flood of Noah by William de Brailes, circa 1250 |
Only after the whole face of the ground was watered by a mist or a flood did the Lord God form a man out of dust from the ground and breathe life into his nostrils so that he became a living soul (Gen 2:6-7). So there was water in the mix and not just dust when God made Adam, which is why some people say he was made out of mud. It's hard to shape dust into anything unless you add a little water.
After the Lord God made man and woman – the man out of the earth and the woman out of the man’s flesh – and gave them the breath of life, it seems he would walk with them in the garden (3:8).[i] It’s kind of interesting to note that the Hebrew word for walking here has many senses, and one of them is to flow like a river (halak, 2:14). This is interesting because so much of us is water and water plays a role in our creation, our recreation, and our being and walking with God.
The Lord God wants to walk with us, even though “he knows of what we are made, [and] he remembers that we are dust” (Ps. 102/3: 14). He who breathes life into earth wants us – the sons of Adam and the children of dust – to walk with him. Cain walked away from him, which we are free to do, but it's not what God wants for us (4:16). He wants to be with us.
Not all the sons of Adam walked away from God. "Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him" (5:24). And "Noah walked with God" (6:9). I think somehow I missed that until this year. I knew better that Enoch walked with God, but Noah also walked with God. He is righteous and blameless and so the Lord guides his steps and the Lord does not forsake him but walks with him (Gen 6:9; Ps 36/7:23,25).
God wants us to walk with him like this – to "walk in the way of the good and [to] keep to the paths of the righteous" (Prov 2:20). He wants us to be with him. Walking together is a beautiful image of this. The other day, I walked with my youngest daughter to the park and she held my hand the whole way. Then, I stood by her as she swung and swung on the swings and ran all around. Then, she held my hand again the whole way home. We felt much closer to each other after this. The Lord wants to be closer to us – to walk with us in the cool of the day – simply to spend time with us, regardless of what we’re doing – to be with us – because he loves us as a father loves his child.
Much of the time we are obsessed with what we should do. There's the important question – and it is an important question: What does God want me to do? (Well, for starters, keep his commandments.) But I think ultimately even more important than the question of doing is the experience of being – just simply being with God. Walking with God is, I think, a good image of this. If we walk with God, he will order our steps, and we can worry less about what we need to do. We'll simply find we have done it – step by step as we walk with the Lord.
Yet, Noah was the only one in his generation to walk with God.
"Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth" (Gen 6:11-12).
How can the earth itself be violent and corrupt? Well, remember that we are dust. Our flesh is earth with life breathed in – and this gives us the power to bring violence upon the earth. In us and as us the earth becomes violent. The earth is filled with violence because our hearts, which are made of earth, are filled with violence.
The Lord therefore determined to "bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life" (6:17). It is remarkable and often missed that this is the second time that the Lord watered the whole face of the ground. The first time was, as I mentioned before, just before he created the first man (2:6). Before he forms earth into a human, he adds water.
Now, he is covering the whole face of the ground with water in order “to destroy all flesh.” Not only this, however, but also, in a way, to form a new human. This is a death, but it is also a resurrection – a kind of recreation of humanity. Because the Lord is not only destroying all flesh, he is also establishing his covenant with Noah (6:18). He preserves Noah and his family and two of every creature in the ark and he establishes a covenant with them that he will never again destroy the earth and all flesh with a flood.
I want you to remember another kind of death and resurrection we experience in the water: baptism. When we enter into this water, the mortal flesh of the old man is destroyed as all flesh was destroyed by the waters of the flood. When we rise up from this water, we are clothed with Christ and, even though we die, yet shall we live (John 7:25). Through this water, we are given a life that cannot be taken away, like all the descendents of Noah who can no longer be destroyed by a flood.
And the ark upon which we are delivered from the flood of the world is the Church.
And the ark upon which we are delivered from the flood of the world is the Church.
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