The flood is a story of verdict and deliverance which serves to illustrate Jesus' work of verdict and deliverance. It illustrates it through similarity and also through distinction. In other words, Jesus' deliverance is like the flood, and in other ways it isn't, but in all these ways, we gain clarity about Jesus' work.
Peter Leithart writes: "God did not send another flood: instead of destroying flesh by destroying humanity, God in Christ targeted flesh and condemned it to death. Jesus brought God's warfare, his prosecution of flesh, to its climax and sealed the case against it." (Delivered, 285)
Indeed, the flood was a unique event in that God set about destroying flesh by destroying humanity. God's preliminary judgment is given in Genesis 6:3 that humanity is totally consumed with fleshly violence and, after a 120 year period to repent, God brings a verdict and judgment on the world in the form of a flood.
We also see judgment in the beginning of Jesus' ministry in the form of John the Baptist. John warns Israel to repent:
"You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, 'we have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire." (Matt. 3:7-10)
We see here a verdict that Israel and its leaders were in league with sin, flesh, and the devil. They were back in the land of Israel, but spiritually, they were in opposition to the Lord and his will. The ultimate verdict will come in how they respond to the Lord at his appearing. And Jesus comes to be baptized.
This is interesting because Jesus has not sinned. He comes forward in response to John the Baptist's witness testimony in God's lawsuit against Israel, submits to the baptism that constitutes repentance and deliverance, but he has not sinned. Rather, he submits to baptism for "righteousness' sake." What sort of deliverance will this be?
We have reason here to look back at the imagery from the flood because of the dove. We are told that the Holy Spirit descends like a dove when Jesus is baptized and it is a dove which brings to Noah and his people the sign that waters have receded. We see that the ark, the branch, and the land show us things about the type of deliverance that Jesus will bring.
The ark is interesting for being a boat which is built more like a house. Meredith Kline writes that the ark was:
"a spiritual house of God, which has its symbolic external prototypes in the Creator's cosmic house of heaven and earth and later in Israel's microcosmic Tabernacle and Temple. What is now to be observed is that the design of the ark suggested that it was intended to be a representation of God's Kingdom in this cosmic house form. For the ark, however seaworthy, was fashioned like a house rather than like a sailing vessel. All the features mentioned in the description of the ark belong to the architecture of a house; the three stories, the door, the window." (quoted in Through New Eyes, 170)
This house-ark thus has more symbolic connections to the tabernacle and temple than a mere boat would. It also has symbolic connections to baptism itself. Land often represents Israel in the Bible, while the sea represents the Gentiles, the undifferentiated mass of humanity under flesh and death. Israel is delivered from watery death in the flood and also in the exodus as a way of showing that humanity - through humanity's representative, Israel - will be delivered from death. Baptism is a sign of this deliverance. That Jesus undergoes baptism means that he is a representative of Israel, undergoing baptism for "righteousness," to deliver into from death to life. Jesus is thus the ark, the temple that sails the seas, that carries the righteous to their deliverance. As the ark was filled with animals miraculously living at peace with one another, so the new creation will be filled with animals living at peace in Jesus: "The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra's den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper's nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." (Isaiah 11:6-9)
We see in Isaiah that the ark is a picture of what the new creation will be. And Jesus is the fulfillment of the ark.
Jesus is also like the branch. Noah and his family sail on the seas. They are saved, but not saved. They are waiting. They send out birds to forage for any sort of sign that things are different, that there is anything other than watery wilderness, that there is any sign of the separating work God did at the first creation of dividing water from land so that the land can be filled. The sign comes when a dove brings an olive leaf. "When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth." (Genesis 8:11) The leaf comes as good news from a far off land that there is a new world, a new order of things. In keeping with the foliage imagery, Isaiah prophesies that deliverance will come in the form of a branch: "A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit." (Isaiah 11:1) And this branch will be the one who lives by Spirit not by flesh: "The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him - the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord - and he will delight in the fear of the Lord." (Isaiah 11:2) Baptism illuminates Jesus to be a new Israel, but also Israel's "strength and consolation," the olive leaf, the branch, that the Spirit brings to nurture hope for deliverance.
And Jesus isn't only the sign of deliverance, but also the great resting place. With regard to the Noah story, he is the land. There is a fruitful, sabbath rest for Noah and his family. Of course, the world becomes broken again. But Jesus is a sabbath rest that can't fail, a land which will always be fruitful. The heavens open at Jesus' baptism. This is a sign that the heavens will reunite with the earth. Jesus is the heavenly man come down who will renew the earth and present it as a bride to the Lord. All the yearning for a promised land, a place to rest, "safe and secure from all alarm" is fulfilled in Jesus.
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