Shut In, and Then Remembered

Before We Start

Through my study of God's Word, I have come to believe that if God cannot be found in the very thing He has caused to be or brought about, He has no problem destroying it. I have also learned that He is very patient and longsuffering.

In my own life, His quiet has sometimes given me time. Time to correct the wrongs. Time to see myself.

That is my experience. It is not a rule about what God's silence always means, and I will not use it to explain Noah's silence.

I have also come to believe that He does not destroy without warning. That is my conclusion from the accounts I have studied, so let me show you what it is built on.

The verse says He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets. It does not say the words I said.

Ezekiel gives me another part of that picture. God sets a watchman to warn the people, then tells us what He desires.

He delighteth in mercy.

I have experienced that mercy myself, and it changed a lot of things in me.

That is what I bring to these two verses.

Two Verses, And What Is Between Them

The LORD shut him in.

God remembered Noah.

The Space

The hundred and fifty days are the length of the waters prevailing. Moses does not say they measure the time from the shutting to the remembering.

What he does put between those two verses is water. The waters increase. The ark is lifted. The high hills are covered. Every living thing dies. The waters prevail.

No conversation between God and Noah is recorded there.

That is where I stop. I will not fill the silence for Moses.

The Shutting

Noah built the ark. Noah went in. The LORD did the shutting.

The entry gives the word as sagar, to shut, to close, to close up.

Another form of the word is used for delivering up or giving over. Those are different uses, so I will not make them both mean the same thing in Genesis 7:16.

What I hear in the shutting, and the hearing is mine, is that Noah walked into what he built, but the closing was taken out of his hands.

The Remembering

The word is zakar. The entry gives the sense of marking so as to be recognized, calling to mind, or bringing to remembrance.

I will not tell you what was in the mind of God because Moses does not tell me.

What Moses gives me is what happened next.

The remembering and the moving are in the same sentence.

What I See In The Two

Here is what I see, and the reading is mine.

The last thing God did before the water came was shut the door. The first thing recorded after the waters prevailed is that He remembered Noah.

Written. The door shut by God. Not written. Anything spoken between the shutting and the remembering. Written. God remembered, and the wind passed.

Nobody Opened That Door

God shut the ark in chapter seven. Genesis never tells me who opened that entrance.

But it does tell me something Noah opened.

The window.

Moses even tells me Noah had made it.

The Question The Window Left Me With

Something came back through that window that leaves me with a question.

An olive leaf.

Plucked off.

So where did it come from?

Genesis never tells me Noah carried an olive tree onto the ark.

Before the Flood, God had said:

And every thing that is in the earth shall die.

I am not going to make that disappear to make my question easier.

So I went backward, before the Flood, the ark, and Noah.

Whose seed is in itself.

God put inside the tree what could bring forth after its kind.

So here is my question.

Could the tree perish and the seed remain?

Could the Flood destroy what was growing without destroying what could grow again?

Genesis does not tell me that the olive tree in chapter eight came from a seed that survived the Flood. I will not say that it did.

But the question is there. An olive leaf appears after the Flood, and before the Flood God had already told me that the tree carried its seed in itself.

Then God says this:

Seedtime.

The tree could perish.

But what about the seed?

Scripture has given me enough to ask. It has not given me enough to answer.

The account picks up again with the covering.

Genesis records Noah opening the window and removing the covering. It does not record him opening the entrance God had shut.

Then God speaks.

God spoke. Noah went out.

God shut it and they came out, so the mind wants to finish it and say God opened it. Moses does not say that, and I will not finish the sentence for him.

Whether Noah ever put his hand to that entrance, Moses does not say either.

When God Shuts A Door

That door worked both ways. Nobody outside got in. Nobody inside got out.

That verse is about Christ holding the key of David. John is not talking about Noah's ark.

I am the one putting the two doors beside each other.

What I hear in both is that the shutting belongs to Him, not to the people inside.

So the question the ark door leaves me with is not how strong the door was.

Who was on the inside?

The Heart

I live in a time where I must always proclaim my thanks for Jesus and what He has done for me upon the cross.

A long time ago, I would have been cut off from God.

I am not standing outside that door looking at Noah and wondering how he managed it. I know what side I would have been on, and I know why I am not there.

This account does not promise that God will speak while I am waiting.

What it gives me is a door God shut and a remembering that came after.

The shutting was not abandonment. It was the last thing He did before the water came.

The remembering was not Him being reminded.

God remembered Noah, and the wind moved.