What Do You Get a Man for His 600th Birthday?

  I was reading Genesis Chapter 8 about the Great Flood.  Verse 13 says:

  "And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, in the first day of the month [of Noah's life, if I read this right.  Deeds of God author] the waters were dried up from off the earth, and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry."  End quote.

  I had never put it together that since it was in the '601st year' of Noah's life (it tells you that a few verses earlier) then the 'first month and first day of the month' that they referred to would also have referred to that month and that day in Noah's life, rather than the calendar year, month, and day (I think!).  So, it was the first day of Noah's 601st year, if I am understanding that right.  If so, it was his Birthday.  He had completed his 600th year of life, and was now beginning his 601st year of life, starting that very day.

  And what did God give Noah that day?  What did Noah receive from God for his 600th birthday, there in the midst of the most cataclysmic and destructive event yet known, even today?  A glimpse of dry land.  The first glimpse of dry land since the mountain tops had been covered with water around a year earlier.  That must have been about the most joyfully received birthday present of all time!! 

  Of course, Noah would have been hard to shop for just then....as far as possessions were concerned, he had everything that there was to have on Earth.  All else was just water, and floating debris.

  The ancient Jewish historian Josephus says that before the flood men had studied astronomy and had found that the stars in the heavens went through their motions in a great 600-year cycle.  So, odd that Noah would begin a new cycle for mankind on the morning of his 600th birthday.  And how interesting that the ark of Noah is said by eschatologists to be a type, a symbol of, Jesus.  After all, it can save those it holds from the great destruction and the wrath of God.  Jesus also can do that.  And Noah 'removed the cover' from the ark, and then he caught his first glimpse of the renewed Earth.  There was a cover on the tomb that Jesus was placed in after He was crucified.  It was when the cover of the tomb was removed that Christ came out of the tomb alive, and a new era started. 

  The Old Covenant (which had only led to death for all mankind, because no one could keep it perfectly) was finished, and was left behind.  And through the One that came out of the tomb.... through Jesus....a new world was revealed.... a New Covenant with a fresh clean chance to get it right!!  A Covenant that could lead to life this time!!