Sunday Night Sept 17 2017

That's a great question, Karis. I like it that you pointed out that they had a book and you had a book.

You each had a book, didn't you?

And that as you tried to talk to one another from your books, you each thought the other book was silly, right?

Yeah.

And honestly, that conversation that you had has been had many, many times over. And it's something, I think, that Hebrews talks to us about a little bit in Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 3. Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 3.

Now, verse 3 says, by faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. This verse is well worth memorizing if you have the opportunity.

It's well worth reflecting on. Let's think about the difference between the two books that you all were talking about. In the Bible, in verse 3, how do we understand? By faith. So by faith we understand.

But what about the book that they had? What might they be saying about how we understand the world in which we live and where we come from? By sight. Now, sight we might think of as the primary sense.

Hearing, feeling, taste, all the senses are very important. But we may think of sight as the most important, especially when you think about the scientific method. As you observe different facts in the world around you and see if such and such is true, then you repeat it and see if it happens over and over again so that you come up with ideas of how this world works.

The way we understand the world around us is primarily by sight. Now notice in the verse, it says by faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.

You have two words there, seen and visible, and these things are important, but it's by faith we understand what is seen. Now some people would say by sight we understand, and they would discount, they would say this is silly, and we would say it was silly to only live by what you can see.

So when you get into that conversation, you kind of already have your mind made up and they kind of already have their mind made up before you even start talking. So how can you convince them that your book is true?

Well you have to back up to why is it that they've already made up their mind and why is it that you've already made up your mind? You're talking about who are humans, are they accidentally evolved monkeys?

Or have they been fashioned in the image of God, by the word of God? That's a very important thing to talk about, but you've already made up your mind, so you've got to back up and figure out why that is.

Why have you already made up your mind? I think that this is why, by faith we understand, we've already decided that this is the truth. How can you convince them? Well, they need faith. Now faith is the gift of God, not of works, it's by grace through faith.

Faith is a gift of God, and you need to pray for your friends that God would grant them.

Faith.

Now faith comes by hearing, and the hearing of the word of God, so read more of your book to them, even if they think it's silly. Even if they think it's silly, read it to them some more. This is not at all well received in the world today, but one of the smartest men of all Christendom, Augustine, this was his motto.

By faith we understand. It's by faith we can truly understand the world around us, and again, C .S. Lewis' illustration of the tool shed and the stream of light coming through the roof. When he walks into the tool shed and looks up through that shaft of light, he sees everything.

That's by faith we understand. Everything becomes clear when we begin by faith, by believing what the word of God says. The reason why some people believe that we came from monkeys is because, believe it or not, that's the best idea anyone's ever had about why we exist if there is no God.

If there is no God, if you take God out of the way and say, well, there's no God now, why are we here? The best explanation that anyone's come up with is, it was an accident and we're from monkeys. That's the best we can do in our reasoning apart from God.

If they really stick to it, they're not going to be convinced because you give them a lot of information. Go ahead and give them the information and read it to them from the Bible. That'll be really, really good, but pray that God will grant them faith.

That's a really important question, isn't it? Praise God. Yes, more fruit because of the rain. Anything else? Let's go to Genesis, chapter 7. We finished up Genesis 6 last time and we thought about the condition that the world was in, the sinfulness and the depravity of man, God's grace on Noah.

Noah's righteousness and his obedience. Now we come to Genesis 7, verse 1. Then the Lord said to Noah, enter the ark, you and all your household. For you alone I have seen to be righteous before me in this time.

You shall take with you of every clean animal by sevens, a male and his female, and of the animals that are not clean too, a male and his female. Also of the birds of the sky by sevens, male and female, to keep offspring alive on the face of all the earth.

For after seven more days I will send rain on the earth, forty days and forty nights, and I will blot out from the face of the land every living thing that I have made. Noah did according to all that the Lord had commanded him.

So what does God say about Noah? You alone I have seen to be righteous before me in this time. Now applying, as we talked about last week, applying the full weight of scripture, we know that this isn't Noah by his own inherent goodness performing his way into salvation.

It's the grace of God at work in his life, and that he is an obedient, faithful servant, a preacher of righteousness we find in Peter, and that the Spirit of Christ preaches through him in this time. But notice how vital Noah is to this whole situation.

So, what goes in the ark?

Who goes in the ark?

His family.

Okay.

You and household, right? Let's put the household over here. And then what else goes in the ark? Animals. And we have the animals over here. There's the clean ones, and then the unclean ones. And then there's a bunch of birds.

And so, these animals go in the ark. Notice it says, with you, right? You shall take with you of every clean animal, so on and so forth. Enter the ark, you and all your household, for you alone. It's heavily dependent on Noah.

There is, if you skip ahead just a little bit, verses 13 through 16, we hear that on the very same day, Noah and Shem and Ham and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, entered the ark.

It's just Noah, Noah, Noah, Noah, Noah. They and every beast after its kind, after all the cattle after their kind, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth after its kind, and every bird after its kind, all sorts of birds, so they went into the ark to Noah.

By twos of all flesh, in which was the breadth of life, those that entered, male and female of all flesh, God entered, as God had commanded him, and the Lord closed it behind him. It's very centered on Noah.

It's Noah's obedience that has made the way for there to be salvation from the flood. God has chosen Noah. Noah is righteous.

He's obedient.

He walks with God. He hears what God has to say, and then he goes about and does it, and he builds this ark, and he does everything that God tells him to do, so that at the accomplishment of all the work of Noah, those with Noah, his household, because of who Noah is and what Noah has done, they get to come into the ark, and they're saved, and then all these animals, the remnant of all the creatures in God's creation, they, because of Noah and what he has done, they get onto the ark, and so they are preserved, so that after the flood is over, there's going to be this continuation of the created order, that there's still going to be life and a refreshed existence on the earth.

This is, I think, very important when we think about the pattern of God's salvation. It's all contingent on Noah. It all comes back. This is the pattern where God sets forth a chosen servant by whose obedience God's people and, indeed, the whole created order is saved and preserved.

This sets us up for thinking about the way in which God is progressively showing the way that he saves. We've been told that there's a seed who's going to crush the head of the serpent. We've been told that there's going to be one who's coming, will bring about salvation.

Noah's own father named Noah, Noah, because he said, this one will give us rest from our.

Labors.

He was very hopeful that Noah would be the seed to end the curse, and in some small way, Noah did. I mean, they stopped farming for a while. There was a rest, and there was definitely a cessation of all the violence and all of the corruption on the face of the earth.

So, in some way, there was a fulfillment of it, but it wasn't the fullest fulfillment. But Noah, nonetheless, served as a pattern, a model of salvation. As we think about how Noah is highlighted, of course, we are not meant to look at Noah as our Savior any more than we should look at David as our Savior, although he so much points to Christ.

We should be looking at the pattern that God works in Noah's life and what that draws on to think about how Christ fulfills that. In verse 6, we are updated as to the time frame. Now, Noah was 600 years old when the flood of water came upon the earth.

Then Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him entered the ark because of the water of the flood. Of clean animals and animals that are not clean, and birds and everything that creeps on the ground, there went into the ark two Noah by twos, male and female, as God commanded.

Noah.

It came about after the seven days that the water of the flood came upon the earth. In the 600th year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the 17th day of the month, on the same day, all the fountains of the great deep burst open and the floodgates of the sky were opened and the rain fell upon the earth for 40 days and 40 nights.

It stands out to me that specific date. Anybody who has ever been through something traumatic, maybe the loss of a loved one or some car wreck or some disaster, they will remember the day. They can tell you what year, what month, and what day.

This is exactly what's happening here, isn't it? This is the most traumatic of all traumatic events. Nothing gets more traumatic than this. And it is imprinted upon the memory of Noah and his descendants.

And there is this oral tradition passed down faithfully. Obviously, the Spirit is inspiring Moses to write this, but obviously also it was passed.

Down.

They remembered. They remembered. Now, it's interesting that most ancient civilizations all have a flood story. And if you read the writings of the Egyptians or the Sumerians or the Assyrians or whoever, there's some great flood story.

Or if it's not a flood, then it's some great disaster that wiped everything out except for just a few. This is, even in the societies where the oral tradition of Scripture was not preserved, they still remember.

They still remember. And there's plenty of stories about a great flood and somebody building a boat, even if it's really wacky in the details and unintelligible. This is very intelligible. And this is the real story.

But there is just this echoing memory in ancient civilization about this happening. As I think about the time frame and the mechanics of it, we find that the fountains of the great deep burst open and the floodgates of the sky were open, so there's water coming down and water coming up.

Water everywhere. And this is when Noah's obedience to God's instructions proves really important. The size of the ark, the dimensions of the ark, the putting of the pitch all over the ark, all the instructions now seem really, really important as this great big barge is lifted up off the ground and floats.

It's not a sailing ship. It's just a life preserver. And it works. Now, let's read verses 17 through 24. And before I do, I'd like to give you the perspective from something Karis mentioned.

Earlier.

For those who would like to still have a loyalty to the scriptures and yet want to believe that we, including Jesus of Nazareth, are just an accidentally evolved ape who believe in an old earth because godless science says so, which I don't think is very objective.

Science.

When it comes to the story of the flood, every single person who believes that somehow God controlled the disease and disaster and death of evolution to bring about a good creation, for those who hold to that idea, none of them believe in a worldwide flood.

None of them. You probably know Hank Hanegraaff's name, doesn't believe in real six-day creation, doesn't believe in a worldwide flood. The Bible Answer Man says that the flood was not global, was not worldwide.

But, for me wise Bereans, let's read it for ourselves. What does the text seem to say? And the flood came upon the earth for 40 days and the water increased and lifted up the ark so that it rose above the earth.

The water prevailed and increased greatly upon the earth and the ark floated on the surface of the water. The water prevailed more and more upon the earth so that all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered.

The water prevailed 15 cubits higher and the mountains were covered. All flesh, all flesh that moved on the earth perished. Birds and cattle and beasts and every swarming thing that swarms up on the earth and all mankind of all that was on the dry land, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life died.

Thus, he blotted out every living thing. It can also be translated, he blotted out all existence that was upon the face of the land from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky. And they were blotted out from the earth and only Noah was left together with those that were with him in the ark.

The water prevailed upon the earth 150 days. Now, does that sound like a bad regional flood? That's not a bad regional flood. That is a flood that covers the whole face of the earth to the degree that it covers all the mountains.

Now, of course, in the hegemony of neo-Darwinian science, they say that's impossible. That's scientifically impossible. It never happened. Never mind that they don't allow people who don't believe like them into certain areas to run those tests.

But there's plenty of science coming out saying that, yeah, it's true. Something interesting that happened just a couple of years ago. Lo and behold, beneath the crust of the earth, in the lower portions of the crust of the earth, there's enough water to seven times more water than all the oceans on the surface of the planet, saying that if all of this was released to the top, it would cover even the highest mountains.

Imagine that.

It was scientifically impossible for almost 200 years of the enlightenment science of Darwin, but all of a sudden they discover, hey, there is a bunch of water down there. Imagine that. But this is the way that science works.

Science is constantly going back to the blackboard and erasing everything and redoing it. The Bible doesn't work that way, does it? We don't have to go back to the Bible and erase everything all the time because, oh, it was wrong.

This is the same thing that happened with the person of King David. The person of King David was seen by liberal scholars as to be a myth. This guy never lived. He never existed. We can't find any mention of him anywhere in all of archaeology.

And they said this for about 100 years. And then, lo and behold, they found his name on some pottery. Oh, I guess he did exist.

Right?

Oh, these books of the Old Testament couldn't have been written until way, way late because they talk about events that are such and such. Oh, but then we discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls. Oh, I guess we have to say something different now.

The hard and fast declarations that the Bible isn't true here, here, and here, every single one of them, one by one, just keep on getting disproven. You just have to wait a little while and God will prove the wisdom of the world as folly.

So, Charis and everybody else, don't worry if someone has a book that talks about monkeys.

Okay?

Because, eventually, all of this gets disproven as God's Word just keeps on saying what is true and, lo and behold, it is true. Now, you know, that can kind of strengthen our faith a little bit, but still we don't base our faith on what we see.

But it should be no surprise to us that what we understand by faith correlates with what we see, that what God says is true. Any questions or thoughts about Genesis 7? I've got five minutes, Norm, go for it.

Seven sets of two? Yeah, and the Hebrew does read that way. The Hebrew has the idea of reading seven and seven as if you would have, here's a line of seven males and here's a line of seven females. And even the two by two is parsed the same way in the Hebrew.

Here's two right here and here's two right here. There's two males and two females. And, again, that may very well be what it means. And I think that's a good reading of it. So there would be 14 of the clean animals because there's seven pairs and four of the unclean animals.

There's some, you know, again, the classic non-careful reading of it would be there was only two animals of every single kind on the ark.

Right?

There was one female cat and one male cat.

That was it.

Probably there were two female and two male. Now, if it was the other way, you know, scientists have a real problem with this because of the genetic codes and all of that. But if you've got seven males and seven females to repopulate the earth, you've got no issue with the science at all.

And the Bible's always said that. It's just we've got to read it carefully. Well, when they come out of the ark, they certainly did offer sacrifices. As far as the food, God gives instructions to Noah to gather the food for the animals.

I want to find that. It's going to be in chapter 6.

21.

Thank you. As for you, take for yourself some of all food which is edible and gather it to yourself. It shall be food for you and for them. So the food that Noah would have gathered for himself was also the food of similar substance that he would be giving to the animals.

No, they weren't. And in fact, you find a very specific instruction about that in chapter 9. As the eating of meat begins to be regulated and there's instructions about what to do if somebody murders someone, what happens if an animal kills a person, and all of that is sorted out in chapter 9.

So, well, yeah, it just kind of pops out right there, doesn't it? Of course, Moses is writing this down. When he reads it to the children of Israel, they've got a pretty clear definition of that because they've been given very specific instructions.

But it just kind of pops out of nowhere here in this story, doesn't it? But apparently Noah knew what it was. You know, we don't have a record of him being told, but apparently he knew what they were.

This is something that Dr. Mudaliar talks about, that they knew more than was written down. They knew a whole lot more about God and about the world and about the truth of God than what was written down.

But what was written down is sufficient for our faith and practice. But they knew more about what was going on than what was written down. So Noah knew, yeah, God brings all the animals to him. So, yeah, I don't know.

Isn't that odd? I mean, the fact that you would have in Cain's lineage that we hear evil Lamech talk to Ada and Zillah and he knows that their names get mentioned, but Noah's wife's name isn't mentioned or his son's wife's.

I don't really have a clear reason why. I don't know.

Yes?

I think the main focus is that God is the one who gives life, that God had given all these people and creatures life, and all who were breathing no longer were breathing anymore. It's a way of saying that every single thing died.

In Psalm 104, which emphasizes the creation, God's power in creation, and as the sustainer of his world through his providence, in verse 27, speaking about the possessions of God, the creatures, and the people that they all wait for you to give them their food in due season.

He's the one who provides food. You give to them, they gather it up. You open your hand, they are satisfied with good. You hide your face, they are dismayed. You take away their spirit or their breath, and they expire and return to their dust.

You send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground. As he sends forth his spirit, he makes life, he creates life. If he withdraws his hand, then life expires. He is the God of life.

Psalm 104, and I read verses 27 through 30. This comes after when Paul says that a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him. That comes after this discussion about the wisdom of the world versus the wisdom of God.

It essentially says that those who are wise in the world's estimation and those who are wise in God's estimation are looking at one another and saying, your books are kind of silly. I think that was profitable.

Thank you, Karis, for the excellent question that led right into our study in Genesis. We'll come back next time and look at Genesis 8 and move on into chapter 9. Let's close with singing the doxology.

Praise God from whom...