Genesis 1-11: Noah's Flood

1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, 2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. 3 And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. 4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. 5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 7 And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. 8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

Body

Between Adam and Noah

Dispensation of Conscience

A time of incredible violence

Genesis 6:13 “13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.”

Violence: “violence, particularly physical violence, wrong"

Same word is used in scriptures such as:

Psalm 11:5 “5 The Lord trieth the righteous: But the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.”

Proverbs 4:17 “17 For they eat the bread of wickedness, And drink the wine of violence.”

Man’s full time job was to devise new and improved ways to commit evil

Genesis 6:5 “5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

Jesus compares the end days to the days of Noah

Matthew 24:37-39 “37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, 39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”

There were Giants in the earth in those days

Nephilim

Genesis 6:2 “2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.”

Genesis 6:4 “4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”

Modern translations translate “giants” to “Nephilim”

Numbers 13:32-33 “32 And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature. 33 And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.”

Numbers 13:33 (ESV) — 33 And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”

Mention again the antediluvian climate and environment

Increased atmospheric pressure

Increased oxygen levels

No cosmic radiation to contend with

One is popular but quite unscriptural, stating that the Nephilim were space aliens.

Of those four that have some biblical support:

Fallen angels bred with women and resulted in giants called Nephilim (most popular of the four)

The sons of God were the result of fallen angels who overtook ungodly men to breed with women

The were the Sethites (descendants of Adam’s son Seth). There are some variations that fall under this theory

Godly men took ungodly wives, and their descendants (Nephilim) followed after false gods, rejected the One True God, and fell far from God into wickedness.

Which view is correct?

I believe the most biblical view is the fourth (Godly men took ungodly wives, and their descendants (Nephilim) followed after false gods, rejected the One True God, and fell far from God into wickedness.)

In Genesis 6:1, Genesis 6:2, and Genesis 6:3 the Hebrew word used here means “man” or “mankind”

Same word used all through the O.T. to indicate mankind as a whole. Human beings, not human/fallen angel mix

The testimony of Jesus

Matthew 22:23-30 “23 The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection, and asked him, 24 Saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. 25 Now there were with us seven brethren: and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and, having no issue, left his wife unto his brother: 26 Likewise the second also, and the third, unto the seventh. 27 And last of all the woman died also. 28 Therefore in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her. 29 Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. 30 For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.”

Do fallen angel possess the proper anatomy to produce children with men?

Marriage, the entire reproductive process, is given to humans to populate the earth, and, more specifically, to produce godly seed

That’s not a requirement of immortal spirits

The same word is used for the Nephilim in the book of Numbers, who were not survivors of the flood, but were born post-flood, and were most certainly simply very large humans.

Noah

Man’s wickedness is so great that God is going to destroy them Himself!

He’s not sending an agent to bring judgment

He’s intervening Himself

God finds one righteous and so will not only spare him, but uses him to warn his generation

Hebrews 11:7 “7 By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.”

II Peter 2:5 “5 And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;”

Given very specific instructions as to how to build the Ark

The Ark was not built to sail upon the waters, but to simply float.

The Ark was built for sturdiness and for room

When God gives details, those details are extremely important!

Details in the Word of God

Details in what He expects of His people

Details in what He’s commanded us to do, and to be

Instructed to take seven of every clean beast and two of the unclean

Clean were for sacrifice, and later, for meat

Clean were the domesticated animals, the unclean were predators and those not good for meat or sacrifice

He is 120 years in building the Ark and preaching to his generation

And then the rains begin to fall

The Flood

Universal flood vs. a Local flood: Why we assert a universal flood

First of all, why do people want to believe in a local flood?

Geology “indicates” billions of years

Fossil record “indicates” millions of years

A universal flood speaks to catastrophism when people want to believe in uniformitarianism

Define terms

The Depth of the Flood

Genesis 7:19-20 “19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. 20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.”

A measure of the waters is now made by comparison with the only available standard for such waters — the mountains. They are said to have been “covered.” Not merely a few but “all the high mountains under all the heavens.” One of these expressions alone would almost necessitate the impression that the author intends to convey the idea of the absolute universality of the Flood, e.g., “all the high mountains.” Yet since “all” is known to be used in a relative sense, the writer removes all possible ambiguity by adding the phrase “under all the heavens.” A double “all” cannot allow for so relative a sense. It almost constitutes a Hebrew superlative. So we believe that the text disposes of the question of the universality of the flood. —H.C. Leopold, Exposition of Genesis

The Duration of the Flood

From the time that the forty days of rain started to the time that God declared the earth dried and commanded Noah to exit the Ark was 371 days

Imagine the amount of water that would need to explode out of the earth as well as pour from the sky to cover all the mountains in six weeks!

Imagine the absolute destruction, the complete devastation that would cause (fault lines, plate tectonics shifting, etc.)

A local flood would have drained off much earlier

The Geology of the Flood

Genesis 7:11 “11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.”

This references Genesis 1:2-10 where God divided and fixed the waters above and below the firmament, and specifically in Genesis 1:2 referring to the “deep”

Scripture indicates that this “breaking up of the deep” lasted for a staggering 150 days, ending in Genesis 8:2 “2 The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained;”

This is very strong evidence for a universal, rather than a local flood

The Size of the Ark

A little bit bigger than what we’ve all seen in Sunday School

Assuming humans were as small then as we are now, the Hebrew “long” cubit was 20.4 inches and a “common” cubit of 17.5 inches

Using the shorter cubit, the Ark measured 437.5 feet long, 72.92 feet wide, and 43.75 feet high.

It had three decks, giving it a total area of 95,700 square feet

Its total volume would have been 1,396,000 cubic feet

Why would you need an Ark of this size if the flood was only local?

The Need for an Ark at all

If the flood was local, move!

The Testimony of the Apostle Peter

II Peter 3:3-7 “3 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, 4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. 5 For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: 6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: 7 But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.”

People will be adhering to the concept of uniformitarianism and will not accept a universal judgment of God (flood or fire)

The Apostle Peter compares the universal judgment of God during the flood with the coming universal judgment of god by fire

If the flood were local, then the coming judgment would also have to be local as he is saying the one will be as the other

If the flood was universal, then the coming judgement by fire will also be universal

The entire human race outside the ark was destroyed

I Peter 3:20 “20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.”

2 Peter 2:5 (NASB95) — 5 and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;

Luke 17:26-30 “26 And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. 27 They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. 28 Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; 29 But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. 30 Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.”

As it was then, so it shall be

We can begin to see the interrelatedness of all of scripture

We start to tug on a loose string and we begin to unravel many other areas

These foundational doctrines we first encounter in Genesis form the basis of our understanding of the rest of scripture

Our belief about Creation and the age of the earth affects our salvation (death before or after sin?)

Our belief about the flood, we discover, affects our belief of God’s coming judgment

Conclusion

Next week:

Finish up our study of the Flood

Talk about Radiometric and Carbon 14 dating methods

Talk about the Fossil record

Radiometric Dating Methods

Radiometric dating methods, of which there are several, measures the half-life of a radioactive element and uses that to determine the age of the object being measured

These rates are all known and measured and so we can extrapolate backward to determine age

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