God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. (Genesis 6:12-15)
As the population of the world increased, evil increased along with it. God’s heart was broken. His indictment upon humanity was that “every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time” (Gen. 6:5). Mankind’s sin was universal, and God prepared for a universal judgment – a worldwide flood.
“But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord” (Gen. 6:8). God would deliver Noah and his family from the flood through the building of a boat, an ark. We don’t even need to know the story to guess what Noah used to build the ark.
The ark was made from wood. Wood comes from trees, more trees of the Bible. We’re only six chapters into the first book of the Bible and trees have told us most of the story. These trees in Genesis 6 carried Noah and his family safely through God’s righteous, divine judgment of sin.
God command to Noah was specific. The ark was to be made of cypress wood (Gen. 6:14). Older Bibles (KJV & NASB) used the term “gopher” wood here.
I think the gopher wood came from Minnesota.
Maybe not. But Noah’s salvation came through trees.
Thousands of years later, our salvation would come through another tree.
But first, trees still have another role to play in the telling of the flood story. We’ll look at that next time.
Prairie Pastor 