Noah & The Flood

Noah & The Flood Genesis 6:1-9:17

Introduction & Review - We’re in the middle of our “Big Picture of the Bible” series that we’re teaching through what is called “Chronological Bible Storying”. The idea is to learn & internalize the Word of God by applying lessons we learn from the major stories of the Bible. Each story reveals God’s plan of redemption through human history. It helps us remember Scripture and the Lord will use this to draw us closer to Himself as He reveals Himself to us through these stories He recorded for us. These stories will also help you share your faith with others and I encourage you to tell these stories to someone outside of church each week. I’ve been doing this and it’s amazing to see how people are interested in hearing them. Romans 10:17 says “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.”

Review: Since we have had a couple of week break with Dr. Richard’s and our praise & testimony service last week, we need to remember what we learned in our last Bible story. After the Fall of Mankind into sin, God expelled Adam & Eve from His perfect Garden, the Garden of Eden. He specifically didn’t want mankind to have access to the Tree of Life and live forever in a sinful condition because our God is a God of redemption who rescues us from our sins.

God is still the author of life as He gave Eve a son, her first born son she named Cain - because she acquired him from God. God gave Eve another son she named Abel.

Both Cain & Abel grew up and began to make their own way in the world, Abel tended sheep, Cain was a farmer growing crops.

Both Cain & Able knew to worship God and both brought God an offering.

Because God is the only God & Creator, He has the absolute right to choose how He is to be approached and worshiped by sinful man.

God respected Abels offering but rejected Cains. Why did God reject Cain’s offering?

It is critical we understand it is a simple matter of faith. The Bible says in Hebrews 11:6 “But without faith, it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” Genuine faith is always based on the Word of God. Abel believed what God said, Cain disregarded what God said. We might have thought that Abel’s offering was received because he obeyed, but that’s not right. Hebrews 11:4 tells us “By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts and through it, he being dead still speaks.” Abel believed God, took God at His Word and God accepted Abel’s faith offering. Cain rejected God’s Word, tried to start his own religion and did what pleased Cain, not what pleased God.

God graciously warned Cain about his offering & his attitude. God invited Cain to come back in faith and promised he too could be accepted on the basis of faith and not on his works. Isaiah 64:6: “But we are all like the unclean thing, and all our righteousness are like filthy rags.” Abel’s offering was a faith offering that originated in the heart of God, Cain’s offering was a false offering that originated in the heart of man.

Sin & rebellion against God lurks at the doorstep of the human heart and wants to consume us like it did Cain to the point where he murdered his brother.

Unresolved anger and bitterness leads to devastating actions and consequences causing humans to do the unthinkable, even to their closest relatives.

God holds individuals accountable for their sin. Adult children are responsible to God for their choices and decisions, not the parents.

God is a gracious God, even in the face of angry rebellion and desires for man to repent when God convicts of sin.

God is still faithful and true to His Word, in spite of evil & wicked sinful rebellion and is always carrying out His redemptive plan. His plan of redemption included Adam & Eve’s 3rd son named Seth.

Today’s story comes from Genesis 6:1-9:17

In God’s Word in Genesis chapter 5, we are given a list of Adam’s descendants through his son named Seth. Adam’s children lived for 100’s of years. Adam was 130 years old when he had his 3rd son he named Seth. After Adam had Seth, he lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. All the days Adam lived were 930 years and he died. It was the end of an era, the first man created in the image of God who was told by God if he ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil he would surely die. Satan lied to Adam and Eve and said they wouldn’t die. Even though it took 930 years, Adam died as part of the devastating consequences of his sin. God is always faithful and keeps His promises.

One of Adam’s offspring was a man named Enoch. Enoch loved God and worshipped God in close fellowship. God’s Word tells us that Enoch walked with God and He was not because God took him (Gen. 5:21-23). When Enoch was out walking with God one day and he was 365 years old, apparently they were closer to God’s house than Enoch’s so God just carried Enoch to Heaven and no one saw him again. We only know what happened to Enoch b/c God told us in His journal the Bible.

It’s interesting too b/c Enoch was inducted to God’s Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11:5, God said: “By faith, Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death, and was not found b/c God took him; for before he was taken, he had this testimony that he pleased God. The very next verse in Heb. 11:6 tells us w/o faith it is impossible to please God.

The Bible even tells us that Enoch warned his generation that God’s judgement was coming. God saw fit to record Enoch’s message in Jude vs. 14-15. Another interesting fact about Enoch is that he fathered a man named Methuselah who was the oldest man who ever lived. Methuselah lived 969 years, but guess what? Methuselah died too. Methuselah fathered a man named Lamech, who fathered a man named Noah. Methuselah was Noah’s grandfather, Enoch was Noah’s great-grandfather. From Adam to Noah, there are 10 generations of people who descended from Adam.

Noah was 500 years old and had 3 sons named Shem, Ham & Japheth.

PROBLEM: What’s really sad is how fast sin in mankind corrupted the human race and each generation became increasingly evil. Jesus would later say in the days of Noah, it was a big party. Eating, drinking and marrying whoever they wanted (Matt. 24:36-39). The Godly line of Seth, the Bible calls them the sons of God were marrying the daughters of men - that’s how the Bible refers to Cain’s ungodly line of descendants. There was no thought or consideration for spiritual things when it came to choosing whom to marry - sounds a lot like what’s going on in the world today! We may think it’s not important who we marry but God most certainly does!

God made a promise: He said: “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh, yet his days shall be 120 years.” That was a warning from God judgement was on the horizon. Then God tells us about the heart condition of man in Gen. 6:5-7 of His journal the Bible: “Then the Lord saw that extent of human wickedness on the earth, and He saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. 6 So the Lord was sorry He had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke His heart. 7 And the Lord said “I will wipe this human race I have created from the face of the earth. Yes and I will destroy every living thing - all the people, the large animals, the small animals that scurry along the ground, and even the birds of the sky for I am sorry I ever made them (NLT).”

Now we’ve already seen how when God makes a promise, He always, always keeps it. So this promise of judgment and destruction from God is deadly serious!

It almost sounds hopeless, however, I said earlier that God is a God of redemption and rescue in spite of the wickedness of humanity, God is working out His plan of redemption & rescue! God makes it clear He takes no pleasure in the judgment & death of the wicked. He had Ezekiel the prophet write that down too in His journal the Bible: “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die…?” (Ezekiel 33:11)

Right after this promise of judgment and destruction, we have a glimmer of hope, a flash of light pouring through the clouds & dark skies of God’s promised judgment: “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” (Gen. 6:8) Grace is God’s unmerited favor, not getting what we deserved. To be clear, Noah was a sinner and not perfect, he was rescued by faith and was a recipient of the grace of God.

God declared Noah was a just man before God based on his faith in God and the grace of God. Noah walked with God by faith and God said he was without blemish in a morally corrupt world that was corrupt and filled with violence. Three times, God described the world Noah lived in as corrupt - a word that means ruined, spoiled or putrid. So Noah’s life stood out in great contrast, like a diamond laying on a black velvet cloth under a jewelry store bright light.

RISING TENSION: God came and spoke to Noah and said the end of all flesh was coming soon. So in preparation, God told Noah to build an ark, we would call it a boat. It was a way to escape the coming judgment against mankind on the earth. It was to be made out of a hearty wood called gopher wood. We know this wood today to be one of the hardiest woods in the world, cypress. God told Noah to line the inside and outside with pitch, or tar, to seal the boat. God even gave dimensions to Noah of how big this ark was to be. It was massive!

The measurements God gave were in cubits, the distance from the tip of the fingers to the elbow of an adult man, roughly 18 inches. 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, 30 cubits high. It would have one door, and one window in this floating rectangle box. In our modern measuring system, that’s about 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 30 feet high. To give you an idea, the football field down the street at Danaher stadium is 360 feet long or 120 yards long tip to tip from the back of the end zone to the other end. It’s also 160 feet wide. Noah’s ark as it’s called today was also 45 feet high, as high as a 3 story building.

To give you even further perspective, it wasn’t until the mid 1800’s that an ocean liner was built near the size of Noah’s Ark. In 1843, an iron hulled, steam powered, ship named the “Great Britain” was launched. It was the largest vessel afloat at that time, 322 feet long, 51 feet at it’s widest and 32 feet high. The Ark was still bigger than the “Great Britain.”

The ark was to have 3 decks or levels inside. God told Noah He would destroy the world by flood, everything that had breath. Except God made a covenant and promise of safety for Noah, his wife, his 3 sons and their wives and the animals God would bring onto the ark, a male and female of each kind of animal and bird in order to keep part of God’s creation alive.

All the different species, two by two had to be accounted for so God could replenish the earth after the flood. Some might scoff that such a structure was impossible or not near big enough to hold all the animals. The animals didn’t need to be full grown mature animals. Besides, the size and scope of the Ark was plenty big. In fact, it had a cubic capacity of 1,400,000 cubic feet of cargo space. This is the equivalent of 522 standard livestock railroad cars. About 240 sheep can be carried in one stock car, so that’s about 125,000 sheep that could have been carried on the ark. The average size of land animals is less than the size of a sheep and only about 11% of the animals are larger than a sheep and certainly having younger animals on board would allow for plenty of room.

God in His grace was allowing for plenty of room for humans who listened to Noah’s call to repent and be forgiven. Sadly, only Noah, his wife, their 3 sons and their wives, 8 people, entered into the Ark by faith.

Now it’s important to remember that up until now, it had not rained on the earth and God watered the ground with a mist or dew that came up from the ground. Noah had never seen rain, he’d never seen a flood, but He took God at His word and he went to work.

For 120 years Noah and his sons worked at building the ark. I can hear the catcalls and mockery ringing out in between the blows of Noah’s hammer. “What in the world are you building Noah?” “I’m building an ark b/c God is going to judge the wickedness of the human race by bringing rain for 40 days and 40 nights and will destroy everything with a catastrophic flood. So in order to avoid the judgment of God, you must repent and ask God to forgive you.” Haha haha - rain! Flood! Well, that’s never happened in the history of the world. Crazy old Noah, I’m sure he’ll get tired soon enough and quit!

Day after day after day, for 120 years, Noah, his sons and most likely their wives as well labored as a family to do what God said. We know that Noah warned the people because the Apostle Peter recorded that Noah was a “Preacher of Righteousness.” Can you imagine the mockery and the hateful things that were said to Noah and his family all those years? This is especially true because no-one had seen anything like what Noah described to the party crowd around him.

Just like his godly ancestor Enoch before him, Noah was included in God’s Hall of Faith for in Hebrews 11:6 we read: “By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with Godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.”

Noah’s labors to build this massive structure without power tools but by the sweat of his brow is a testimony to his incredible faith.

CLIMAX: The Bible tells us when Noah was 600 years old, God told him it was time, in 7 days, the rain was going to come down. So God told Noah and his family to take their provisions and food into the ark as well as two of all the animals, male and female, each according to its kind. God also told Noah to take 7 of every clean animal, male and female into the ark as well as 7 of every bird of the air, male and female for the express purpose of keeping them alive on the face of the earth. God as the Creator, brought the animals to Noah and they all went into the Ark through the one door, and God shut them in and secured the door! Everyone else who refused to listen to Noah’s message was shut out of the Ark!

Just as God said, the heavens were opened, rain began to fall and the fountains of the deep, the waters in the earth were broken up and it rained for 40 days and 40 nights! The Bible says the flood water was so great, the waters covered the whole earth under heaven. So much so the flood waters rose 15 cubits higher than the highest mountains! That’s 22 1/2 feet above the highest mountain! Mount Everest is the highest point on earth, an incredible 29,032 feet. The Bible says that everything, all living creatures that had the breath of life died in the flood. All of it except Noah and the 7 people in his family and the animals in the ark.

After it quit raining, the flood waters remained on the earth for 150 days, about 5 months, Noah and his family, and all the animals floated in that massive ship waiting on God.

SOLUTION: One day the Ark came to a rest on the mountains of Ararat in modern day Turkey. The highest peak is 16, 854 feet, a testimony yet again to the complete and utter devastation of a world-wide cataclysmic flood from the judgment of God. After 150 days, the Bible tells us God remembered Noah. It is a poetic way of ascribing human feelings and experiences to God. As though God could possibly forget! Indeed God’s compassionate concern was for Noah, his family and all the creatures on the ark. It took just 6 days to create the Heavens and the earth, and 40 days to destroy it by flood, but 150 days passed until the water receded. God is never in a hurry, He’s always on time - His time.

Noah could see the tops of the mountains, so he waited 40 days and then sent out a raven which just flew and flew until it could find a place to land. I’m sure that raven found plenty of human and animal carcasses to feast on. So after a while Noah sent out a dove, but the dove found no place to rest so it came back to the ark.

Noah waited another 7 days and sent that dove out again, this time it returned but it came back with a fresh olive leaf in her mouth. So Noah waited another 7 days and sent the dove out a 3rd time and this time it didn’t come back! From the time the Ark rested on Mount Ararat, 56 more days passed, 206 days total, and in the 601st year of Noah’s life, the Lord command Noah and his family and all the animals to leave they ark & they stepped out onto dry ground!

PEACE RETURNS TO VILLAGE: The first thing Noah did was build an altar and he offered to the Lord one of every clean animal and bird (there were 7 each) and made a burnt offering to the Lord. Remember a blood offering was the prescribed offering God would accept and Noah, like Godly Abel before him, offered that offering to the Lord by faith. The Bible tells us the smell of the offering was pleasing to Him, a soothing aroma. Then God made a promise to Himself and to Noah, that He would never again destroy the World by flood. God hung a rainbow in the clouds as a perpetual reminder of His promise to never destroy the world again by flood.

God then commanded Noah and his family and all the animals to “be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth, to repopulate it and scatter over the face of the earth. God also said he’d put the fear of man in every animal and Noah could eat both animals and herbs, but blood was not to be consumed because it provides life. God also said that whoever sheds blood, by man his blood would be shed.God promised to hold both animals and humans accountable for shedding human blood b/c they are made in the image of God.

‌SET UP FOR NEXT TIME - Next time we’ll see God continue working out His plan of redemption through another special man who received the grace of God like Noah.

II. EXPLAIN HOW THIS FITS INTO BIG PICTURE OF THE BIBLE - Key concepts from this story.

God sees into human hearts and sees that every human heart is wicked, the thoughts and imaginations of the human heart are only evil continuously.

God is broken-hearted by the wicked condition of man’s heart. God said through the prophet Jeremiah “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9)

God is patient and calls man to repent from his wickedness, but God has limits and will not strive with our spirit forever. Because God is Holy, righteous and just, He must punish sin. The Bible says “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” Rom. 3:23. It also says the “wages of sin is death.” Rom 6:23a

When God makes a promise to judge or to bless, He always delivers on His promises and is faithful to do what He said.

God is a God of redemptive grace and mercy. He was gracious to Noah and his family that responded to God by faith.

God gave Noah exact instructions to provide a means of escaping His judgement. God gave humans 120 years to repent before sending judgment.

God alone was able to save Noah and his family as well as the animals in the ark. Noah his family were saved by faith in God, taking God at His Word and acting on what God said, even though they had never seen rain or a flood before!

God promised to never again destroy the world by flood and hung a rainbow in the clouds as a reminder of God’s judgment against wickedness and His promises.

III. GIVE 2-3 IDEAS/APPLICATION POINTS FOR HOW THIS APPLIES TO US TODAY/IMMEDIATELY

Life Lessons from this story:

1. God is still grieved by the sinful wickedness & rebellion of mankind and will be faithful to judge sin. God is still calling people to repent and trust Him by faith. CF 2nd Peter 3:3-9

2. God provides an exclusive way to be rescued from His coming judgment and will secure those who respond to Him in faith. I’m sure there were people who were religious people in Noah’s day, there were people who did good deeds, who were generous, but only Noah & his family were saved b/c they believed God in faith & entered the Ark. The Ark was God’s exclusive remedy, it pictures Jesus. John 14:6 - ABC’s

3. Noah walked with God by faith and obeyed God. You can walk with God by faith & obey His Word each day through prayer and the study of God’s Word. SOAP!

4. God will not be mocked. The rainbow belongs to God & not to vile wicked, sexually immoral people who have corrupted God’s designs for marriage - one man, one woman, united for one life time. Gal. 6:7 “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.”