Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction and Review

Whether you grew up in church or not, it is one of the most famous children stories, i.e. “fairy tales” of all time… and that’s the problem we’re going to run into today.

When you start talking about Noah, immediately there are always going to be some people saying, “Really?

I mean, shouldn’t you send that over to the Junior Church?

They can color the guy in the boat, and make all of the animal crafts, and sing the song about “Arky, Arky.

It’ll be fun!

But as adults, let’s spend some time talking about things that really matter.”

This is Not a Children’s Story

As we continue in our study through Genesis chapters 1-11, I just want to put this on the table right from the beginning.

This is Not a Children’s Story.

Now, I’ve upset some of you in the past for saying that, but it doesn’t change the facts.

This story was not meant for children.

It wasn’t intended to be the subject of baby nursery decorations.

It is one of the most violent, one of the most tragic… It is a story filled with more heartache, despair, judgment, anguish, and pain than almost any other story in the Bible.

Noah and the Ark… and yet when you hear that, some of you immediately go to a children’s story.

You immediately go to the little bearded guy looking out the window with a dove in his hand and a rainbow above him.

Maybe you had the Fischer Price set where the boat would actually split open with the little animals, two by two, or maybe you had the Weebles set.

Never mix the two, alright?

They don’t fit in the same slots!

A couple weeks ago we saw a set from the 1800’s in the Greensboro Historical Museum - they’ve been around a while!

It is a Real Story

Noah’s Ark is this childhood fixation, and yet, I have no problem today as an adult telling you that It is a Real Story, for a couple reasons.

Detail

Number one, the Detail.

This story gives so much detail, not just about the ark itself but about the time and the place… specific frames that cover the years, the months, the days with such detail that if it’s not a literal event, man, the Bible has gone overboard on this one!

When I’m reading it in just a moment, pay attention to how specific the Bible is with the details.

Multiple Mentions

For those of you who might struggle with Noah and a boat and, “Did it really happen?,” understand, this isn’t the only place we read about Noah.

So number two, the Multiple Mentions.

Noah is also found in the books of Ezekiel, Isaiah, in the Chronicles, in Matthew, Luke, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, and in the book of Hebrews.

That’s pretty good for a “fictional” character, to be mentioned in all of those Biblical texts and stories, some that were written a couple thousand years after Moses wrote his book.

Jesus Believed Noah was Real

My third thing thrown in is that Jesus Believed Noah was Real.

He referred to him two separate times.

In fact, if you were here last week, when Jesus is asked when He is coming back, remember His answer?

He went back and relied on Noah.

He said, “Just as it was in the days of Noah, that’s what the culture will be like when I come back.”

Listen, if Jesus believed in Noah, I’m going to put my chips on Jesus every single time.

As we dive into this story, like seemingly every other week in this series, there’s a lot about the story that I just don’t know.

I’ll be honest about that.

I’m also planning to point out a couple of things for those of you who are professional church-goers that may shock you because they’re not in the story of Noah, but you would swear that they are!

So, let’s get started.

Genesis chapter 6, beginning with verse 14.

If you weren’t here last week, we talked about this weird story which ended with the world getting to the point where God saw how great man’s wickedness on the Earth had become and he was grieved that He had even made mankind.

God was broken.

For over 1600 years, God watched from Adam to Noah.

For over 1600 years He watched wickedness upon wickedness until He finally decided to have a “do-over” with Noah, a man who was righteous and “blameless among the people of his time,” and here are the specifics.

God said to Noah...

(NIV84)14 So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out.

15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high.

16 Make a roof for it and finish the ark to within 18 inches of the top.

Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks.

17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it.

Everything on earth will perish.

18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you.

19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you.

20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.

21 You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.”

22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

First, I know the image that we grew up with, the little curvy ship and pointed front, something like this, but if you just take the dimensions we read, what Noah built was basically a barge.

It was 450 feet long, 45 feet high and 75 feet wide.

It had eighteen inches of ventilation all the way around the top, one door, and three different floors.

You could have laid more than twenty basketball courts end-to-end inside of it.

Five hundred and seventy railway container cars would have fit inside with 1.5 million cubic feet of space.

Now, I don’t know all of this stuff, so I had to look it up.

The average size of a land animal is the size of a sheep.

According to the dimensions, you could have fit 125,000 sheep inside the ark.

125,000!

But understand, there are currently only 18,000 different species of mammals, reptiles, birds, and amphibians.

So if Noah took two of every species, at a minimum, that means there are 36,000 animals on this barge that could hold 125,000.

There’s two-thirds of the space available, which is plenty of room for storing food and the provisions that they need.

You know, we grew up with this idea of a pointy boat, but here is the replica in northern Kentucky at the Ark Encounter.

Anybody been there yet?

It might have looked like that but again, the Bible doesn’t even tell us that it had a rudder.

It wasn’t meant to go anywhere.

It was simply meant to float.

The ark might have simply been just a huge rectangle!

But it was mammoth.

This thing was huge!

There was not a boat built that equaled its size until 1853!

And I love how detailed the instructions are.

I love that Noah’s told to use wood that floats and wood that’s not going to rot.

I love that God told him to double insulate it – “cover it with pitch on the outside and the inside” to protect it from the time it’s going to be in the water and probably also on the inside, from the animals that are trying to eat through it!

So you’ve got this giant floating barge which is different from what I used to color as a kid, but the ark isn’t the point, right?

The point is in that last verse we just read:

(NIV84) 22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

Over the next couple weeks, we’re going to look at this story of Noah from two different angles.

Next week we’re going to look at it through the lens of, “Can God be trusted?”

because that’s certainly a question that a lot of people have, both inside and outside of the church .

But this morning we’re going to look at Noah and Godly obedience.

What does that look like?

What’s involved with doing “everything just as God commanded?”

Always Obey God Even When You Don’t Understand Him

Let’s start with this statement, which is so much easier to say than to do: Always Obey God Even When You Don’t Understand Him, which, can we be honest, is pretty much most of the time.

Always obey God even when you don’t understand Him.

Let me read a few more verses and then we’ll try to unpack that statement.

(NIV84)1 The Lord then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation.

2 Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.

4 Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.”

[Here it is again.]

5 And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him.