When I was pregnant with my oldest and started registering for baby items, I was overwhelmed by all the choices. One online supplier of all things baby had pages and pages of themed nursery items. You know, coordinating bumper, sheets, and skirt for the crib that come with matching mobile and wall decorations and anything else you can imagine. What was really popular at that time was having a Noah’s Ark themed nursery. While part of me understood why—what child doesn’t love animals? But part of me also was confused, after all, the story of Noah is the story of God wiping out nearly all of humanity because of sin.
Noah’s story is a story of both punishment for sin and a story of redemption. It’s a story that Jesus connects with himself in Matthew 24. It’s also a story of God’s covenant commitment to his people.
In Genesis 8, we read what happens after the flood. Noah and his family had been shut up in the ark for weeks and weeks. The flood had destroyed all living things on the earth. The chapter starts with: “But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided.” But God remembered. It seems like a strange use of words. Did God put Noah and his family in the ark, shut the door, turn on the spouts of the earth, then walk away and forget it all? Did he get busy doing other things while the ark floated along on the waves? Did he not remember all that took place leading up to the flood?
Unlike you and I, God is not forgetful. He knows all things and remembers all things. “The LORD looks down from heaven; he sees all the children of man” (Ps. 33:13). “And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Heb. 4:13). That word, “remember” is a covenantal remembering. It refers to God keeping his covenant commitments. In this verse, it is used to show God remembering Noah by showing kindness, protection, and deliverance. God kept his covenant promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, by completing his work of redemption in the remnant of Noah and his family. He then makes the waters recede so that Noah and his family can leave the ark. It’s the same remembrance God had for his people when they were in slavery in Egypt. Exodus 2:24 says, “And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.”
Our God is a covenant making and covenant keeping God. It’s how he relates to us. And nothing can keep his word from coming to pass. “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?” (Num. 23:19). “…so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Is. 55:11). This means, God always remembers.
And he will keep his promises to his people.
John Calvin, in commenting on Genesis 8, pointed out that Noah may have thought God had forgotten him in the ark. After all, he and his family were in there a long time. He suggests that their endurance in the ark was so that they would “meditate the more profitably on the judgments of Gods and when the danger was past, to acknowledge that they had been rescued from a thousand deaths.” Calvin then exhorts us, “Let us therefore learn, by this example, to repose on the providence of God, even while he seems to be most forgetful of us; for at length, by affording us help, he will testify that he has been mindful of us. What, if the flesh persuade us to distrust, yet let us not yield to its restlessness; but as soon as this thought creeps in, that God has cast off all care concerning us, or is asleep, or far distant, let us immediately meet it with this shield, The Lord, who has promised his help to the miserable will, in due time, be present with us, that we may indeed perceive the care he takes of us.”
Calvin encourages us that whenever we begin to wonder if God has forgotten us, or wonder if he might be busy doing other important things, to remember God’s promises to us. As Paul points out in Romans 8, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (v.32). If God has kept his promise to redeem us from sin, how could we think that he would not meet us in our current struggles and trials? After all he has done to rescue us, how could we think he has forgotten us now?
Our God has bound himself to us in covenant love and nothing can stop that love. Our God never forgets. He is a God who remembers.
Photo by Sebastien Gabriel on Unsplash
