Watch the Devotion

Based on Genesis 8:15-22

To my friends in the Navy, happy birthday! This October 13th you will celebrate 250 years as a branch in our nation’s military!

Speaking of the Navy reminds me of the world’s first sailor; at least he’s the first recorded sailor. He was neither a commander nor a captain, not even an ensign. He was a civilian, just a passenger along for the ride. No one was steering his ship. No one maintained and executed a navigational course for the cruise. He just floated up for a year and ten days and then floated back down again.

God had looked down on the earth and his heart was grieved. He saw the wickedness, depravity, and violence and needed to do something. In love he sent a flood and rainfall this world has never seen. Everything with the breath of life in it died, except for those on the ship. Everything and everyone on it survived. Was it because of the construction of that ship? No. The Lord had made a promise. His undeserved love and generosity preserved Noah and his wife and their three sons and their wives and all the animals with them on that ark.

God also promised to throw a life raft to humankind. His name was Jesus. He traced his ancestry back to Noah and his son Shem.

And what was Noah’s reaction after 375 days cooped up in a massive barge with all those animals and his family? The first thing he did was show genuine gratitude and thanksgiving to God. He offered an animal sacrifice to say thank you.

Martin Luther, the 16th-century reformer, made a connection between your baptism and this ship in the flood. At your baptism you were placed in the safety of the ark of the holy Christian church. God could rightly say to you, “Fair winds and following seas!” Even though the ark of the Church is rocked by storms, winds, and floods—wicked people who attack the words and works of Jesus, wars, controversies, and false teachings—that ship . . . she will never perish. God has promised it.

And one day for you and me this ark will dock at the port of heaven. You will say to the officer of the deck, “Request permission to go ashore.” He will respond, “Bravo Zulu. Well done, good and faithful servant. Come and enjoy all that your captain has prepared for you.”

While we wait for that day when we disembark upon the shores of heaven, we hear God’s promise that he made to that first “sailor” and his family: never again to curse the ground with a worldwide catastrophic flood. His rainbow in the sky is a picture of that promise. Remember that promise every time you see his rainbow.

He also promised this: “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease” (Genesis 8:22).

Your Creator God promises to provide all you need as long as you live. Live in confidence as you sail on, confident in God’s providence for you.

Prayer:

Eternal Father, strong to save, whose arm hath bound the restless wave, who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep its own appointed limits keep: O hear us when we cry to thee for those in peril on the sea. Amen. (Christian Worship: Hymnal 805 v. 1)

Written and recorded by Rev. Paul Horn, WELS National Civilian Chaplain to the Military, San Diego, California.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. Note: Scripture reading footnotes are clickable only in the web version.