Do You Believe in Noah's Ark?

Sovereign Grace Family Church iconSovereign Grace Family Church

1 view

0 comments

00:02
I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Genesis chapter 6.
00:11
We're going to be reading when we read at verse 13, and we're going to read quite a bit of text today.
00:24
I don't know if we're going to get through the entire text in the sermon, but Brother Andy was talking about being here 2-3 hours, so I guess we go as long as I want.
00:35
And hear a hearty Amen as we go.
00:41
Well today we begin our journey onto Noah's Ark, and this is one of the most fascinating and awe-inspiring portions of Genesis, and truthfully one of the most frightening in the entire Bible.
00:59
When I was in seminary working on my master's degree, I fell in love with the field of apologetics.
01:10
And most of you know that when I'm preaching, often the apologist in my heart comes out, because I tend to find myself not only preaching the text, but answering the questions that those who would oppose the text might give.
01:25
And I sort of anticipate the questions, because I've spent so many years dealing with aggressive responses and people who provide all kinds of arguments against the Bible, and I guess it's just ingrained now in my spiritual DNA that that's just what I do.
01:46
And when it comes to the subject of the flood, as I was working on my degree, and I was working on my thesis, and putting together all of the things that went into that paper and that report, I did a lot of reading and study on the flood and the impact that it's had on the history of the world and mankind.
02:04
And I'm going to have to discipline myself over this week and next week and on into the next couple weeks.
02:10
I'm going to have to discipline myself to not get sidetracked, because it would be easy for me to make this an apologetics lecture rather than a sermon.
02:20
And I want to discipline myself against that, because this is the time to preach, you know, and preaching includes teaching, of course, but I want to also, I want to say this, if I get into the weeds a little, bear with me, because an understanding of the reality of Noah's Ark, I believe is essential for us as believers, because many people dismiss this entire narrative out of hand.
02:54
And when they dismiss this narrative out of hand, they do violence to the text.
03:00
And they misinterpret the history of the world.
03:07
In fact, I want to show you something before we read Genesis, I want to show you another text, and this will not be the text I preach on, but it could be.
03:17
So I'm going to have to be somewhat limited in what I say, but turn with me to 2 Peter.
03:25
Hold your place in Genesis and turn to 2 Peter.
03:28
I want you to see what Peter says about the flood.
03:35
Go to 2 Peter 3 and look at verse 3.
03:53
It says this in verse 3, Knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires.
04:08
They will say, Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.
04:18
For they deliberately overlooked this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.
04:38
But by the same word, the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
04:50
Now here's what I want to point out from this passage.
04:54
Peter is telling us that there is coming a day when scoffers will deny the coming of Jesus Christ, and they will do so by denying that anything's ever going to change.
05:09
They're going to say that everything's going to continue as it always has.
05:14
That as it's been forever, it will forever be.
05:18
And Jesus is not going to return.
05:21
Things are going to continue on as they always have.
05:25
And their argument is this, things have always been as they are now.
05:30
And to believe that, Peter says this, they must deny that God created the world like He did, and they must deny the judgment of Noah's day.
05:43
For people to say things are going to continue as they always have, they have to deny, one, that the world was created by God's word, and two, that there was once a flood that changed everything.
05:55
You see, here's the point, Noah's Ark is not just a story about a man on a boat.
06:01
It's not just a story about the saving of cute little fuzzy animals.
06:06
Noah's Ark is about God radically changing the world.
06:12
And the point that Peter is making is there's coming another day where God's going to radically change the world.
06:19
There's coming a day when Jesus is going to return, and He's going to return with the judgment of a flame of fire.
06:26
And the same people who deny He's coming back are the people who deny He judged the first time.
06:33
The people who are denying His coming in fire are the same people who deny His coming in water.
06:40
So Peter is saying this, if you can't accept the water, you don't really believe the fire.
06:48
So that's an important point for us to start, because the title of my sermon today is what? Do you believe in Noah's Ark? People deny it.
06:58
They scoff at the idea.
06:59
They mock the idea that God once judged the world in water.
07:05
But those same people mock the coming of Christ.
07:10
The same people who deny the water deny the fire.
07:15
With that in our mind, I want us to now go back to Genesis, and we're going to read the narrative.
07:23
Now, we're going to read beginning at verse 13 of Genesis 6, and we're going to read all the way through Genesis 7.
07:30
It is normally my, I normally ask you to stand, but since this is such a long text, I will allow for you to remain seated today.
07:40
But don't get too comfortable, that won't last, as I normally like for us to stand, but it's a long text today, so I'll let you sit, and we'll read.
07:49
And my hope is to show all of us today that we have every reason to believe in the historic reality of Noah's Ark, and that this event stands as a reminder to us of the wrath of God, which not only has come, but will come again.
08:07
So let's read.
08:09
And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them.
08:19
Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
08:22
Make yourself an ark of gopher wood, make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch.
08:28
This is how you are to make it, the length of the ark 300 cubits, the breadth 50 cubits, the height 30 cubits.
08:38
Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above, and set the door on the ark in its side.
08:46
Make it with lower, second, and third decks.
08:48
For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh, and which is the breath of life under heaven.
08:55
Everything that is on the earth shall die, but I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you and your sons, your wife and your sons' wives with you.
09:05
And every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you.
09:11
They shall be male and female of the birds according to their kinds, of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind.
09:21
Two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive.
09:26
Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten, and store it up.
09:30
It shall serve as food for you, and food and for them." Noah did this.
09:35
He did all that God commanded him.
09:38
Chapter 7.
09:41
Then the Lord said to Noah, Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation.
09:49
Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth.
10:05
For in seven days I will send rain on the earth, forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.
10:13
And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him.
10:18
Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came upon the earth, and Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood.
10:27
Of clean animals and of animals that are not clean, and of birds and of everything that creeps on the ground, two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah as God commanded Noah, and after seven days the water of the flood came upon the earth.
10:40
In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened, and rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights.
11:06
On the very same day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and Noah's wife and the three wives of his sons, with them entered the ark.
11:15
They and every beast according to its kind, and all the livestock according to their kinds, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth according to its kind, and every bird according to its kind, every winged creature, they went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh, in which there was the breath of life, and those that entered male and female of all flesh went in as God had commanded him, and the Lord shut him in.
11:43
The flood continued forty days on the earth.
11:46
The waters increased and bore up the ark.
11:49
It rose high above the earth.
11:50
The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters, and the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered.
12:02
The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep, and all the flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind, everything on the dry land, and whose nostrils was the breath of life, died.
12:35
He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, they were blotted out from the earth.
12:46
Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark, and the waters prevailed on the earth one hundred fifty days.
12:58
Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
13:02
I pray even now that I would be fit to preach your word, Lord, that you would take from my mind anything that would create confusion, Lord, that you would keep me from error, keep me from cowardice, and Lord, that your word might be proclaimed at this time, and that your people would be edified, and those who are not yet, who have not yet bowed the knee to Christ, that today might be the day that they see the desperate condition that they are in, and the need for a savior.
13:37
In Jesus' name, amen.
13:53
One of the most negative realities about Noah's ark, in my opinion, is that most people, including Christians, consider this to be a kid's story.
14:15
And I don't know how we got there.
14:19
I mean, I understand kids like zoos, and you know, in the simplest words, Noah's ark is like the world's most elaborate petting zoo.
14:38
But we've taken that idea, and we've sanitized this story to the point of rejection.
14:49
Ridiculousness.
14:51
We decorate our nurseries with pictures of a boat filled with animals, which looks more like a bathtub toy than what the ark would have looked like.
15:02
And we treat this grand narrative really as a myth, even among Christians.
15:11
We don't really treat it like a fact of history.
15:17
But I want to make a point about something.
15:19
Up until this point in Genesis, this is going to be the longest section of the book that we have studied so far.
15:33
Creation took one chapter.
15:37
Now you could say chapter two was another explanation of creation.
15:42
So if you want to really stretch it, you could say creation took two chapters, but really chapter two is more about the creation and command given to man and his role of that.
15:52
So at most, creation is two chapters.
15:56
And the fall of man, that event that changed everything and brought God's wrath, one chapter.
16:12
And then the preceding generations, which came out of the sons of Adam and Eve, Cain and Seth, we have one chapter for one and one chapter for the other.
16:28
But when we come to the narrative of Noah's story, four chapters long.
16:36
Longer than creation, longer than the fall, longer than the genealogies of the sons of Adam and Eve.
16:44
We will spend more time reading this text than we have read any narrative so far.
16:50
And yet people come to it as if it's just a myth.
16:56
It's not treated like a myth in the text.
17:00
It's not treated as poetry.
17:03
It's not treated as some type of mythology.
17:07
It is treated as hard fact.
17:13
In fact, I would go as far as to say, not only does Genesis give four chapters to it treating it as hard fact, but all through the Bible it's treated as fact.
17:24
Every time Noah and the ark and the flood are referenced, it's always, this is a real true historic event.
17:31
Jesus referenced it when he said his return, it would be like the days of Noah.
17:37
People marrying, giving him marriage, right, eating, drinking and all that.
17:42
He said it would be like the days of Noah when they went into the ark and the flood waters came and destroyed everything.
17:49
People say, oh, Jesus is just giving into the myth.
17:51
Do you think the Son of God gives into myths? And then again, Peter referencing the ark and the flood as a real event in human history and saying this, there will come a day when men will scoff and their scoffing will be, it never happened.
18:12
It's just a myth.
18:17
One of the things that is fascinating about the flood narrative is that it's not just found in the Bible.
18:25
You can go to almost every culture around the world and if you study the history of those cultures, you will find that a narrative about a worldwide flood is found in almost every culture around the world.
18:44
I'll give you a few examples.
18:47
In the Hawaiian Islands, they have a flood story that tells of a time when long after the death of the first man, the world became wicked and only one good man was left.
18:58
His name was Nu'u.
18:59
Sounds kind of like Noah.
19:02
He made a great canoe with a house on it and he filled it with animals and in this story, the waters came up over all the earth and killed all the people and only Nu'u and his family were saved.
19:17
Another flood story comes from China.
19:20
It records the story of Fuhi.
19:23
Fuhi had his wife, his three sons, and three daughters who escaped a great flood and were the only people alive on the earth after the great flood, Fuhi and his family repopulated the earth.
19:36
Sounds familiar.
19:39
Even the Australian Aborigines, you're familiar with the Aborigines, the Australian people, even they have a flood story.
19:50
The Bundaba flood story is about an evil act which causes Ngagawungu, pretty sure I said that right, worked on that this week, Ngagawungu is to them the great father, became angry and chose to drown people and this flood filled all the earth and many people died but there was one man and his wives and his dog who battled the storm in a canoe and they were saved by a bird that brought a leaf in its mouth and led them to a high mountain where they were saved.
20:23
Now of course, none of these stories are exactly like the one we have in Genesis but they are close and we see the remnants of the true story that is bared out in all of these stories that are found in all of these cultures.
20:38
Dr.
20:38
Duane Gish in his book Dinosaurs by Design says there are more than 270 stories from different cultures all around the world about a devastating flood and in his book he charts out all of the similarities.
20:56
Almost all of them tell of a man and his family who take animals and survive the flood and in surviving the flood are able to repopulate the earth after complete devastation through water.
21:11
That is the one thing that sort of traces the line through all the stories and it makes sense why that would be contained in every culture around the world because every culture around the world comes from Noah's Ark.
21:26
Every culture, every tribe, every people group from the most advanced civilizations around the world to the most primitive civilizations around the world all have a common ancestor.
21:42
Noah and his three sons and as I said in the last few weeks we are either Shemites, Hamites or Japhethites.
21:52
Everybody in the world traces their history back to either Shem, Ham or Japheth and therefore they all have a narrative because don't you think that is a story you would pass down? How our great, great, great grandfather saved us from annihilation? The facts get jumbled but the foundational narrative remains and the wonderful thing is we as believers in Christ, we who have been given the oracles of God are given the true account by which we can compare all of these other stories that have been passed down by word of mouth and we can say well we have it from the mouth of God.
22:41
This is how it happened and that is what we are going to be studying in this time.
22:51
Now, on your bulletin I have given you an outline.
22:57
This is from Alan Ross' book Creation and Blessings so it's not my personal outline.
23:02
I like to always reference when I use someone else's outline or work as a help.
23:07
This is the outline on the board but I imagine some of you with heavy glasses may have a hard time seeing that and I understand even with good eyes I just saw Brother Mike go ...
23:18
that's why I put it in the bulletin.
23:23
But I wanted to show you on the screen something very important.
23:29
In the Bible, often times, particularly Hebrew literature, there are structures that are given to help to understand the story and to understand what's happening and one of the structures that we see throughout the Bible is something called a chiasm.
23:48
A chiasm is something that builds to a point and then works back away from that point and if you look at it on a piece of paper and you write it out it looks like the letter key in Greek and that's why it's called a chiasm.
24:00
And you'll notice that it begins with letter A, goes down to letter F and then it builds back to letter A and that's that chiastic structure.
24:12
And so what we're going to look at today is we're going to look at A through F and then coming next week, provided we get through A through F today, next week we'll look at F through A1, the bottom half, but I want to read it to you because this is the account as the scripture gives it to us.
24:30
God resolves to destroy the corrupt race.
24:34
Noah builds an ark according to God's instructions.
24:37
The Lord commands the remnant to enter the ark.
24:40
The flood begins.
24:41
The flood prevails 150 days and the mountains are covered and then in A1, which we're going to see, I love this passage, and God remembered Noah.
24:51
Not that he forgot, but that means God looked upon Noah.
24:55
And so we see in A1 God remembers Noah and then immediately the waters that were prevailing begin to recede and for 150 days they recede and then the mountains become visible again.
25:07
And then the earth that was flooded dries and then God commands the remnant where he had commanded them to enter the ark, he commands them to leave the ark.
25:19
And then Noah, who had built an ark, now builds an altar.
25:25
And finally, where the Lord resolved to destroy the human race, he resolves never again to destroy by water again.
25:34
So this is the outline that we're essentially going to be following as we look at the text.
25:39
And I think this is a good way of kind of seeing the build up and the coming down, the going to the flood and the coming out of the flood.
25:46
And we see how there is a structure that we can understand.
25:50
There's also something else I want you to notice.
25:53
It's not in this outline, but it's something that I noticed as I was studying the text is I noticed that there are also a series of repetitive words.
26:02
And you know me, when I see a word in Scripture that repeats itself over and over, I tend to find that to be rather important.
26:10
I think that is one of the interpretive things that we can use to understand Scripture.
26:13
When you see something over and over, that's God trying to get our attention.
26:17
And I want you to notice that in Genesis 6.22, it says, Noah did this, he did all that God commanded him.
26:26
Then we see again in 7.5, it says, Noah did all the Lord commanded him.
26:31
Genesis 7.9, it says, and God had commanded Noah.
26:35
And then in Genesis 7.16, it says, as God had commanded him and the Lord shut him in.
26:40
So what do we see is the consistency between those passages.
26:44
It's the word command.
26:48
God gave a command.
26:49
Noah obeyed the command.
26:51
What's the significance of this? Well, the Hebrew word savah means to lay a charge or to give an order.
26:59
And when God called Noah, hear this because this is important.
27:05
When God called Noah, he gave him an order, not an option.
27:17
God gave Noah an order, not a suggestion.
27:24
You say, well, why does this matter? We have the wrong view of God today in many ways.
27:34
And one of the things that is really askew about our view of God is that we see God as a God of requests rather than a God of commands.
27:52
We see God as a God who begs rather than a God who says it shall be.
28:02
I'll give you an example if this is maybe helpful.
28:06
How many of you have been in churches where they talk about God as if he were like Santa Claus wanting you to come and sit on his lap? He wants you to come and he wants you to come and accept him.
28:20
He wants you to come and ask of him.
28:21
He wants you to come and beg of him rather than God has commanded you to come.
28:28
Do you understand the gospel is a command? In fact, I want to remind you that in 2 Thessalonians 1.8, it says those who perish will perish because they have not obeyed the gospel.
28:43
Think of it like that.
28:44
That's not the way the gospel is normally presented.
28:47
People do not normally present the gospel as a command.
28:50
They present the gospel as God is offering this.
28:56
The gospel is not about an offering.
28:59
The gospel is about a command.
29:00
You say, what are you trying to get to? I'm trying to get to this, simply this.
29:06
God has commanded all men everywhere to repent.
29:10
And that is not a suggestion.
29:14
Those who reject God's command will be punished.
29:22
Those who refuse God's command are not neutral.
29:28
They are rebels.
29:33
We talk about sharing the gospel.
29:35
Have you shared the gospel this week? Have you shared the gospel this week? What about proclaiming the gospel? The gospel is a proclamation of truth.
29:54
See, our language even adopts the idea that this is something that is suggested to us.
30:01
It's not a suggestion.
30:03
It is a command.
30:06
God has not given us the option to believe or not.
30:10
He has commanded, believe or perish.
30:19
It's not as if the person is going to get up to heaven, and God is sitting upon his throne, and God's going to say, you know, I gave you every opportunity, and you're a pretty good old guy, and I know you really wanted to, but you were busy, you know, you had your job and your family and everything.
30:42
God has commanded all men everywhere to repent.
30:51
God commanded Adam, do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
30:55
And when he did, he died spiritually that very day.
31:03
King Saul.
31:06
By the way, this word command, I was looking at this word command, I was looking through Scripture at it.
31:11
The first time it comes up is in the gospel.
31:13
God commanded Adam not to eat of the tree.
31:15
Well, it comes up later in 1 Samuel where Saul was told he was commanded to go and kill all of the enemies of God, and he didn't.
31:26
And when he comes back, and you remember, Samuel, what is the bleeding in my ears? I'm hearing these animals.
31:33
Why am I hearing them? And Saul says, oh, well, I brought these animals back so that they could be an offering to the Lord.
31:39
And Samuel said, no, God is not pleased with sacrifice as He is pleased with obedience.
31:45
You were commanded to do this thing, and you chose not to.
31:53
Beloved, do you understand that God is the God who is able to give us commands? God is not a beggar.
32:03
He's not a pleader.
32:05
He is not a whimsical grandfather hoping He is the King of the universe who says that His word must be obeyed.
32:22
And I think that when I'm looking at this, what are we seeing here? We're seeing Noah's obedience is on display.
32:32
Noah's obedience is on display because every time it says Noah did this, he did what the Lord commanded.
32:40
Noah did all these things that the Lord commanded.
32:44
God commanded Noah.
32:52
And I want us to look at what God commanded Noah to do.
32:56
In verses 14-16 in Genesis chapter 6, God commands Noah to build.
33:05
And then in verses 19-21, He commands him to fill.
33:08
Let's look very quickly at verses 14-16.
33:10
First, we see the materials in verse 14.
33:13
It says, Make yourself an ark of gopher wood, make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and outside with pitch.
33:19
I was tempted to make just that the sermon because there's a lot in that that we miss.
33:27
The idea of gopher wood is actually a little hard to interpret because this is the only time that word is used in reference to wood.
33:34
And so it's one of those times where we have to interpret it based on external biblical literature.
33:39
A lot of people just think it means cedar wood.
33:43
And that could be.
33:44
The ark could just be made of cedar, very plentiful wood, very easy to harvest and use.
33:49
In that part of the world, at least it is now.
33:51
We don't know what it looked like before the flood, but we're assuming.
33:53
Again, this is a pre-flood world, right? So we don't know.
33:56
But one of the things that's interesting to me is when you study this in the LXX, which is the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, it actually says, Make yourself an ark of square wood.
34:08
The LXX says square wood.
34:10
And you say, well, what's square wood? It's wood that's been milled, wood that's been cut.
34:16
So it's wood that's basically lumber.
34:20
Make yourself an ark of lumber.
34:22
Okay, that makes sense, right? Wood that's been prepared for this, right? So it's not necessarily talking about the type of wood as much as it is how the wood is to be manufactured and used in the ark.
34:35
Okay, that makes sense.
34:38
And again, I'm not demanding that interpretation.
34:41
I'm just saying that's the way the LXX interprets it.
34:43
It's a difficult word.
34:45
If you think it's cedar and that's just what it's saying, I'm fine with that.
34:48
I'm not going to argue with you.
34:49
But the other part of it I think is very interesting.
34:51
It says, and cover it inside and outside with pitch.
34:54
Now pitch was simply a sort of like tar.
34:58
You put it on something and it hardens and it makes it watertight.
35:04
It's sort of like what we use when we put roofs on houses and stuff.
35:07
We put that tar down and it makes it to where the things stick together and water doesn't seep through.
35:14
But what's interesting about that is the word pitch there, it says cover the ark with pitch.
35:21
This is the first time the word cover comes into the Bible.
35:25
But that word cover becomes very important later especially in the writings of Moses.
35:31
Because the word cover is the same word that would later be translated atonement.
35:36
When a covering was made, an atonement was made.
35:39
What did the pitch do? The pitch protected the ark, both on the inside and the outside.
35:45
It provided a covering for the ark.
35:48
That kept the water, the wrath, from making its way in.
35:52
So in a sense, the pitch is a picture of atoning work.
35:56
It's a picture of protection.
35:58
The blood of Christ atones for us.
36:00
The blood of Christ protects us from the wrath of God.
36:02
And so we have this great picture of this pitch.
36:06
And that's the materials.
36:07
He says make an ark of gopher wood, cover it with pitch, and then you are to make it And get the size dimensions of this beast.
36:18
Verse 15.
36:20
By the way, that's a play on words.
36:22
Beast, Noah's ark, animals.
36:23
It says, this is how you are to make it.
36:28
The length of the ark is 300 cubits.
36:32
Its breadth is 50 cubits.
36:33
Its height, 30 cubits.
36:35
Now, we don't use cubits anymore in our building.
36:41
We use inches and feet.
36:44
Unless, of course, you are from Europe and then you use that monstrous metric system.
36:50
But in America, where we do it right, we use inches and feet.
36:57
And a cubit, there's debate about what was a cubit.
37:01
And from what I understand, it had to do with the length of the arm.
37:04
They measure from the elbow to the tip of the finger and that would make a cubit.
37:07
So, the average length is anywhere from 18 inches to 22 inches.
37:13
So, if we take the smaller position of 18 inches and we look at that, then we're looking at an ark that was about 450 feet long.
37:23
And if you want a reference for that, go to a football field, stand on the end, and know that it's that length plus another half.
37:32
So, it's one and a half times the length of a football field.
37:37
And it is 45 feet tall.
37:41
If you want a reference for that, go to a four-story building and look up and you will see the height is about 40 feet.
37:48
So, about 45 feet would have been the height of the ark.
37:51
So, you're looking at an ark that's longer than a football field and taller than a four-story building.
37:57
And it's 75 feet wide.
38:00
This room is about 60 feet wide.
38:03
So, it's wider than the room that you are in, taller by twice of the height of the room that you're in, and much longer than our building.
38:14
Our building is right about 60 by 100 from the end of the fellowship hall to this end.
38:22
So, that's 100 feet.
38:24
Four times the length of our building.
38:28
Wider than our building four times, or twice as tall as our building.
38:32
That would have been the dimensions of the ark.
38:34
It's got, according to verse 16, it had three decks, it had a door, and it had a roof.
38:44
And this was the command, build this.
38:45
Okay.
38:48
I think part of the reason why people have a hard time believing this is just because they say, how could one guy build such a massive structure? And I want to kind of challenge your thinking on that, and again, I'm not going to hold to this dogmatically, don't get mad at me if you disagree, but there's nothing in the text that says Noah did it by himself.
39:11
I mean, he had his sons, but he also could have hired people.
39:16
There was structure in the world at that time.
39:20
You know, we talked about, if it does mean milled lumber, there's nothing saying that Noah wasn't a wealthy man and wasn't able to purchase lumber.
39:28
There's nothing saying he couldn't get workers to help him.
39:31
They don't care.
39:33
They don't care that he's crazy, because everybody thought Noah was crazy, right? Everybody thinks Noah's crazy, but he's got a paycheck at the end of the week, I'll build what you want.
39:42
I mean, Mike, you paint houses.
39:45
You don't care what that, you just, as long as he pays, right, and he's not a, you're not going to paint an ungodly, you know, you wouldn't paint a statue of Baphomet, but I mean, you do, if somebody asks you to paint a Catholic church, you paint a Catholic church.
40:01
Huh? All the time.
40:03
Even though you disagree with their theology, it doesn't hurt nothing to paint a Catholic, and that's what I'm saying, I don't think there's any issue with the idea that Noah could have hired laborers.
40:13
So the idea that this art gets built, you know, you might come with me later, you might say, well, I think Noah did it by himself.
40:20
Okay, we can disagree, it's fine.
40:23
The point of it is, it's a huge undertaking.
40:28
God gives Noah the dimensions, and what's interesting about this is we don't have a lot of the dimensions, but we have enough to get a picture of what it looked like up in Kentucky, and I know Mr.
40:41
Paul's already seen this, and I know the wards are on their way to see it, and my wife's begging me to take her to see it, but there's a replica of the ark up in Kentucky that they have built, and it's really interesting to look at it.
40:53
They have an idea of what the top would have looked like, and there's some debate over whether or not the hull looked like that or whatever, but ultimately, it's just the massive size of this giant ship.
41:07
By the way, it would have been the largest wooden ship that was ever built until, I think it's the 1500s.
41:14
I think the next time a ship of that size would have been built out of wood was somewhere around the 1500s.
41:21
I have to get that next week.
41:22
I remember reading about that this week, that a ship of that size never before in history and not after until much more recent times, but the thing is, if you look at the dimensions of the ship, if you look at the dimensions of what Noah was commanded to do, he's commanded to do this, it does fit into the structure of our modern cargo ships as far as length and height and width and design.
41:47
It was a seaworthy vessel.
41:50
It wasn't a canoe with a house on top.
41:54
It was an actual cargo vessel designed by God, in the mind of God, this is what you're going to do, this is how you're going to do it, and I imagine Noah got some more lessons along the way from God, but we're given the basics.
42:10
If you think about how much time and effort God went into putting into the temple and the tabernacle, you're going to build it this way, you're going to have it this high and this long and all this, I imagine Noah had probably a little bit more information than what we're given here, but he's given this information and we're given this information, this was a giant ship.
42:30
God says, build it, Noah builds it, and then God, there's a command to fill it, and that begins at verse 19.
42:39
It says, every sort of animal, verses 19 and 20, and every sort of food.
42:45
See, that's one thing people often ask, they ask the question, well, how did Noah get all the animals on the ark? Well, I've got other questions, because it's not just animals, right? It's food.
42:56
You've got to feed them beasts for a year, and, as Brian Borgman pointed out, I thought it was funny, what do you do with all that manure? You know, there's all kinds of questions.
43:12
That's why I'm so glad for men like Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis.
43:16
They go through the effort of answering a lot of these questions that a lot of us have, and they really do a good job of dealing with some of that, but it's good, you know, good questions about these things, but he is told to bring the food.
43:29
He's told to bring the animals, bring the food, and verse 22, Noah was obedient.
43:34
Noah was obedient.
43:35
God commanded this massive thing, and Noah did it.
43:41
Just for a moment, think about that.
43:44
What has God commanded you to do that you're still waiting on? What's God commanded of you that you say, oh, that's just too hard, or that's just too much, or I just can't give that up, or I can't be at church every week, that's just too much, or I can't, you know, I can't really dedicate myself to studying the Bible, that's just too much, or I can't minister to other people, that's just too much.
44:14
God did, Noah did all that God commanded him.
44:18
And you know what it never says? It never says he complained.
44:24
Now, one time he got drunk, and we'll talk about that later, but he didn't complain, at least that we know of.
44:36
And then there's the command, beginning at chapter 7, there's the command to distinguish.
44:41
God makes him distinguish between the animals.
44:43
He says you're going to take seven clean animals, seven pairs, so that would be 14, clean animals, and you're going to take, you're going to take two of the unclean animals.
44:52
So now, we've drastically, exponentially increased the amount of animals that are coming on this vessel.
44:58
Because the clean animals now are not only going to be twos, they're going to be fourteens of size.
45:08
Take the clean pairs.
45:10
And by the way, another big question from a theological perspective is this, and I don't really have time to break it down today, but how did he know what the clean animals were? Because the law of clean and unclean animals is given to Israel during the Exodus.
45:27
So there are some who believe that Adam and Eve were given all of the commands of God in the garden and that they had to live by all of those commands in the garden.
45:36
I don't think that that's accurate.
45:38
I think that's reading too much into this, but there is something to be said for how much revelation Noah is given that we're not told.
45:47
Noah has fellowship, he walks with God, and he is given information that we don't know about.
45:53
And one of the things he's told is, hey, these animals are clean and these are unclean.
45:58
When that information comes, how that information comes, we don't know, but he's assumed to know the answer because he's told you're going to take seven of the clean and two of the unclean.
46:07
So he knows what that is, and he's able to distinguish.
46:13
And he's told this, seven days, seven days, this is verse four, he says, for in seven days I will send rain on the earth, 40 days and 40 nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.
46:28
And what does verse five say? And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him.
46:36
He did it, he obeyed, he didn't complain.
46:39
He did all that the Lord commanded him.
46:43
Now verses six through 16 actually has a repetitive and I think an intentionally repetitive design.
46:52
If you look at verses six to ten, it tells a narrative and then in verses 11 to 16 you get the same narrative again told more elaborately.
47:04
For instance, verse six, it says Noah was 600 years old when the floods of waters came upon the earth.
47:08
Then look at verse 11, in the 600 year of Noah's life in the second month on the 17th day of the month on that day the great fountains of the deep verse four.
47:16
So it's like verse six says it's a 600 year but you go to verse 11 and it says what month and what day it was.
47:23
Then you go back to verse seven and Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives went with him into the ark.
47:27
Now go to verse 13.
47:29
On that very same day Noah and his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth and Noah's wife and the three wives entered the ark.
47:34
So you have this, again, there's this, I actually made a chart on my notes taking verses across and you can see that the story elaborates itself twice until you get down to this final verse in verse 16.
47:49
By the way, both of those sections end with God commanded him.
47:53
Verse nine says God commanded him.
47:55
Verse 16, God commanded him.
47:58
So I do think that that word command provides a structure here.
48:01
But then in verse 16 the last thing it says and the Lord shut him in.
48:09
Now why is that important? Here's why I think that's important.
48:14
And the Lord shut him in as a reminder that even in the midst of Noah's obedience God is still the sovereign hand that's bringing all this about.
48:30
Even in the midst of Noah's obedience God is the one who is giving him the strength.
48:36
God is the one who is giving him the vitality.
48:39
God is the one who is giving him the wealth.
48:42
If he had to buy that lumber if he had to hire them workers God's the one who's providing this for him.
48:47
And ultimately when he makes it into the ark God's the one who shuts the door.
48:55
So my point really for today is this.
48:58
We have all this talk about Noah's command.
49:01
God commanded him.
49:03
He obeyed God's command.
49:05
But understand this.
49:06
The only way and only reason that we are able to obey the commands of God is his grace in our life.
49:16
God's grace gives us the ability to obey.
49:22
I once saw one of the most ugly posts I've ever seen.
49:27
It said grace didn't save Noah.
49:31
Obedience saved Noah.
49:36
I'll hear it again.
49:38
Grace didn't save Noah.
49:40
Obedience saved Noah.
49:41
If that is the attitude that we have we don't understand obedience and we don't understand grace.
49:49
Because the only reason why any of us is ever obedient to God is because of grace.
49:57
And grace always precedes obedience.
50:03
When the Bible says Noah was a righteous man what did it say before that? He found grace in the eyes of God.
50:12
Abraham was taken out from the land of idolatry and he himself an idolater and God gave him grace.
50:24
Throughout the Bible God gives grace and it is grace that causes a person to believe.
50:31
It is grace that causes a person to obey.
50:34
It is grace that changes your life.
50:37
Beloved, if you are a believer you did not get there on your own.
50:41
You did not pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.
50:44
You didn't have any boots.
50:45
You didn't have any straps.
50:46
You had nothing but a cold dead heart and God changed your heart.
50:52
And by grace you have been saved through faith.
50:55
And that is not of yourselves.
50:58
It is the gift of God.
51:01
So while Noah's obedience is certainly on display God's grace is there first.
51:10
And it is the grace of God that put Noah on that ark.
51:16
It is the grace of God that gave Noah the strength and the ability to build that ark.
51:21
And it is the grace of God that held Noah afloat for 300 days inside that ark.
51:33
Beloved, may we never forget that as important as our obedience is that it is all a work of God's grace.
51:45
Let's pray.
51:47
Father, I thank you for this opportunity to study your word and though there is so much more that could be said so much more that we could study Lord, I feel this is a good place for us to stop and really meditate.
52:01
Lord, if we have been obedient in faith, it is because of your grace.
52:05
If we have been obedient to believe in you, it is because of your grace.
52:09
If we have come to you in faith and repentance it is all of grace.
52:15
Lord, may you remind us every day that we are saved by grace.
52:22
And Lord, if there are those who are here today who have not yet been made recipients of your grace, that they have not yet bowed the knee to Jesus Christ, I pray that your grace would capture them, that your grace would enrapture them, and that your grace would take out their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh whereby they might believe in you.
52:43
And know, Lord, that nothing that they have done up until this point can save them.
52:49
And everything done from beyond this point will not save them.
52:53
But only the work of the Lord Jesus Christ can save us.
52:57
And it's in his name we pray.
53:01
Amen.