Welcome welcome – our live congregation and those tuning in through streaming video.
If you haven’t been here before we take a deconstructed view of “doing church” and believe that the Christian experience is highly subjective.
As a result we simply begin with prayer, we sing the word of God (if you are so inclined) we sit in silent reflection for a while and then we hold a verse by verse study of the Word.
We do not care who you are or what you believe. We care that you are here and pray God’s spirit will abide upon us all, in Jesus name.
So let’s pray then we’ll sing the Word (or should I say, we will attempt to sing the Word set to music).
When we return we will continue our study of Hebrews 11 beginning at verse 7 and ending at the same!
Hebrews 11.7
Meat
July 27th 2014
Hebrews 11:7 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.
NEW TEST
(Besides Hebrews)
1st Peter 3:20 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.
2nd Peter 2:5 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;
OLD TEST
Last week we discussed Enoch and it is much easier to see how Noah was influenced by faith than Enoch isn’t it?
Because Noah was moved to some obvious action and all of his action was motivated by the fact that he believed and trusted God who told him a flood was coming and that he needed to build an ark.
Think about the obstacles to faith that Noah faced.
First of all did they even know what a flood was? There is nothing in the record that any had occurred before from which they could form an idea.
Also Noah must have been totally alone in the idea meaning nobody else came along and said, “Yeah, we stand with Noah. We’ve seen these floods. They happen ever could hundred years. He’s right.
No, Noah was alone in his revelation and belief that a flood was coming.
See, according to Genesis 6:13 he was warned of God. From the Septuagint it means he was “divinely admonished.”
Of what? The writer of Hebrews tells us:
“Of things not seen as yet.” (meaning the flood which was yet in his future).
How many years was Noah divinely admonished of a coming flood?
120!
I mean I start getting weary after a couple hours of God not proving certain things to me and here we have Noah, in very wicked times and certainly before an extremely mocking crowd building a boat (in a place bereft of any body of water large enough to hold it)!
Before we continue on here let me do a little background on Noah.
The Hebrew name Noah means rest and as we mentioned last week Noah was the grandson of Methuselah who was for two hundred and fifty years a contemporary with Adam.
His father Lamech was about fifty years old at the time of Adam’s death.
At Noah’s birth his father uttered what might be considered a prophetic line, saying in Genesis 5:29:
“And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed.”
Once Noah and the Ark take back to dry land he offers up sacrifice and because of Genesis 8:21 it is believed that God backed off on the cursedness of the land that He imposed upon Adam, and made life upon earth a little easier, thus more restful, and thus fulfilling the prophetic words spoken by Noah’s father Lamech when Noah was born.
Genesis 8:21 says (after Noah offered up sacrifice upon the dry land):
“And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more everything living, as I have done.”
We rarely speak of this fact but it is interesting none the less.
Noah is often regarded as the connecting link between the old and the new world and when we think about it He is like a giant electrical transfer station of the human race with Adam being the origin, and then his line flowing directly to Noah and everyone else getting wiped out behind him so to speak and the human race being continued out through him and his sons.
We note that the whole human race comes through Noah and his three sons as all of Cain’s progeny is destroyed in the flood.
Unless you are LDS who teach that Ham was married to Egytus, who was a black Egyptian woman and through whom the offspring of Cain made it through the flood.
Noah lived five hundred years, and then there were born unto him three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth (Genesis 5:32).
He was a “just man and perfect in his generation,” and (listen) scripture says that Noah “walked with God.”
Sound familiar? That’s because this was said twice of Enoch (as we read last week).
Prior to the flood (or deluge as scholars are wont to call it) the descendants of Cain and of Seth began to intermarry, and a race of people came about that were distinguished for their ungodliness.
As time passed men, as they are accustomed to doing, became more and more corrupt to the point that God decided that there was nothing worth keeping, and so He was going to wipe everything out.
But due to the righteousness of Noah God entered into a covenant with Noah
And was promised deliverance from the threatened deluge. (Genesis 6:18).
Then Noah was commanded to build an ark (Genesis 6:14-16) with the specific purpose of saving himself, his family, and the animals of the land (not the sea).
Genesis 6:3 tells us that a span of one hundred and twenty years elapsed while the ark was being built.
From the Apostle Peter we learn that while the ark was being prepared Noah bore constant testimony against the unbelief and wickedness of that generation.
Now last week we supposed (made the conjecture) that Enoch had done a similar thing, and preached to the corrupt people around him and we based this off some allusion the writer of Hebrews makes.
But in Noah’s case the facts are made clear.
In 2nd Peter 2:5 we read:
“And (God) 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.”
Some might think that Noah preached righteousness by his actions alone but we know he had to have said something to tie his construction activities to God – therefore he was in the most literal sense a PREACHER of righteousness.
Let’s turn to Genesis 6 and read directly from the text of what the Lord said relative to Noah and then the Ark and animals.
Genesis 6:13 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.
14 Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.
15 And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.
16 A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.
17 And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.
18 But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons’ wives with thee.
19 And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.
20 Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.
21 And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them.
22 Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.
The only time Gopher wood is mention in scripture is here.
We do not read the methods of construction or the logistics or the work force he employed.
But 120 years to work on a project is nothing but a herculean task.
Can you imagine? Just cutting the wood properly is inconceivable to me – especially if his crew was limited.
I dunno – maybe Noah was alone – maybe his sons even questioned him. We just don’t know so the irony remains – Noah was told by God to build an Ark and had no apparent basis from which to operate (no prior floods like the one coming, etc.) and We are told that Noah built an Ark to withstand the deluge and to filled with animals and we are put in a very similar position – believe and act and preach righteousness . . . of not.
In genesis 7:16 we read that “Lord shut him (and his family and animals in” the ark.
It’s a fascinating concept and one we have to assume by faith. We also have the premise presented that Noah did was He was told and left some unanswered details to faith – like how to shut the (what must have been an enormous and heavy) door before the rain fell.
According to Genesis it rained 40 days and 40 nights. We also read that The ark floated on the waters for one hundred and fifty “the fountains of the great deep were broken up,” and the windows of heaven were opened. Presumably, wells of water beneath the earth broke open to assist in the flood.
Peter says that as a result
“the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.”
The word for world Peter uses is Kosmos, which is typically used for the whole world.
The Ark floated for 150 days and then God began to recede the waters by a wind (Genesis 8) and the Ark rested in the mountains of Ararat.
Nevertheless a considerable amount of time passed before the Lord lead Noah and his family and the animals out and so a full year passed before they exited the ark.
Once they left the ark the first thing Noah did was erect an altar.
At no time before were altars mentioned in scripture so we don’t really know where the concept came from.
We don’t have altars mentioned when it comes to Adam, Cain, or Abel.
Upon the altar it appears that Noah offered up sacrifices.
For me I see some symbolism in the fact that Noah built an altar out of things of the earth – a practice that would continue forward (through the history of the Nation of Israel and even to this day).
It’s like he must have been so blessed to see dry ground that the altar in an of itself was an offering of gratitude and thanksgiving to God for saving he and his family.
Here at the altar we read that Noah offered up sacrifices of adoring thanks and praise to God.
Now a new covenant existed between God and Man – the first, apparently, where God entered into a covenant with man.
This is what the covenant was all about (as found from Genesis 8:20 to 9:17) and says
8:20 And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
21 And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. {a sweet…: Heb. a savour of rest or, satisfaction} {for the imagination: or, through the imagination}
22 While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
(And then to chapter 9)
1 And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.
2 And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered.
3 Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.
4 But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.
5 And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man.
6 Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.
7 And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.
8 And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying,
9 And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you;
10 And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth.
11 And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.
12 And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:
13 I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.
14 And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud:
15 And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.
16 And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.
17 And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.
This covenant appears to remain in force to this very day.
As a sign and witness of this covenant, the rainbow was adopted and set apart by God, as a sure pledge that never again would the earth be destroyed by a flood.
Noah “lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years, and he died” (Ge 28:22).
Of course there is more about Noah, expecially relating to his planting a vineyard, getting drunk and then having one of his Sons (Ham) discovering him naked and doing something so disrespectful to the drunken Noah that a curse was placed upon Ham and all of his progeny.
But I want to take a minute (actually a couple of weeks and talk about the flood).
I am doing this as a means to help deconstruct some of the dogma and traditions that have been “swimming” around the topic for a long time and in my opinion there is a lot of room for divergence of opinion.
Let’s me first address differences of opinion here using the flood as an example – they are permissible. In fact, I think they are healthy and do not represent faithlessness but a desire to understand.
My personal opinion is we do a tremendous disservice to the saving narrative of Christ Jesus when we refuse to teach anything other than dogmatic (or fundamentalists position’s in church – especially to our children).
I have personally seen a number of Christian kids walk from faith because once they get out in the world they often are blindsided by opposing views which may push them into a place where they feel deceived and worst of all, into a place where such feelings lead them to renounce their faith.
Of course Christians (who maintain the steady course) often say things like:
“We’ll apparently “those” kids were never saved anyway.
But for me such rhetoric is meaningless in the face of the reality – people lose faith when dogma cannot stand up to inspection.
So let’s take some time (maybe the rest of today and the next couple of weeks) and discuss the flood, the ark, the animals and the like.
First of all, what do we know about the flood FROM the Bible.
The Ark was apparently six times longer than it was wide and I am told that this is the ration that modern ship builders continue to apply.
God told Noah: In Genesis 6:17 “And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.”
Again, it took Noah 120 years to build the ark.
It was made out of gopher wood (Genesis 6:14 is the only time in the entire Bible that gopher or gopher wood is made). Apparently it was wood from the cypress tree.
Noah took seven of every clean animal and two of every unclean.
He also took his wife, and his three sons, and his Sons wives – or eight people into the ark. The world began with one couple it was now starting over with four.
The interior of the ark was smeared with pitch – a thick, black tar-like substance which would serve to make the interior water tight. The Hebrew word for pitch is the same as the Hebrew word for atonement and from this we have a type or picture that Noah, a man who walked with God, a man who preached righteousness, was saved in the ark (just as believers today are saved when found surrounded or covered by the atonement of Christ.)
Again, God shut the door before the rain fell.
And then the fountains of the earth were broken up.
Rain fell on the earth for forty days and forty nights and either the influx of water stopped then OR the water from below continued for another 110 days.
What we do know in terms of chronology is this:
Day 1 – the Ark is entered (Genesis 7:1-10
Day 7 – The flooding begins (Genesis 7:10-11)
Day 47 – Apparently all flooding stops and maybe at this point the water begin to recede (Genesis 7:12 – Genesis 8:3)
Day 197 – The Ark comes to rest (Genesis 8:4)
Day 261 – the mountains are seen (Genesis 8:5)
Day 301 – Raven released (and possibly a dove at the same time) (Genesis 8:6-9)
Day 308 – Another dove released and returns with an olive leaf in its mouth (Genesis 8:10-11)
Day 315 – Another dove released but does not return. (Genesis 8:12)
Day 351 – The face of the land is dry (Genesis 8:13)
Day 408 – the ark is exited. (Genesis 8:14)
We also know that once the flood was over God promised to never destroy mankind again by flood. This is validated by Genesis 8:21 where the Lord says:
“And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.”
Now, there are essentially two major approaches within Christianity on how to view the flood.
The Young Earth what I will call the Fundamentalist View and the Old Earth Liberal View.
Let me cover the essentials of both groups. Young Earth-er’s pretty much are biblical literalists and claim that what the Bible says is what it means – period.
For Young Eaerth Fundamentalists there is the belief that the flood took place around
2348-2349 BC
The it was global and the entire planet was about 20 feet under water.
That all people and land animals in the ark drown
And that the type of animals in the ark represented every single animal on earth.
That the flood was devastating.
Old Earth Liberals tend to say that the flood took place around
10,000 BC
That the Mesopotamian are from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea was covered over entirely by more than 20 feet.
That all peoples and land animals living in the Mesopotamian area described died.
And the only animals in the ark were those that came from that basin.
That the flood was devastating to that area.
Now, it is up to you to decide how you are going to view the flood and also to decide how you view affects Christian beliefs (if the view affects the Christian walk at all).
I personally have a very live and let live attitude toward this and most other debatable in the Bible (while maintaining my own views) and I do refuse to allow such views on this, or creation, or dinosaur questions, or even the terms and means we used to describe God to get in between me and others who claim the shed blood of Christ.
How you respond again, is up to you and the Spirit leading you.
This being said, views on the flood have served to create a tremendous amount of animus between these main groups of people who see it differently.
For Liberal Christians, the area that was the potential site for the geographical flood was a flat area about 500,000 square mile big or about the size of modern-day Iraq.
Now Old Earther Hugh Ross points out how ugly the war is on this issue, saying:
From his book The Genesis Question page 145 he wrote:
“To some Christians, a person’s belief that the flood covered the entire planet and all its high mountains (as they interpret the Genesis text) provides a reliable litmus test of his or her salvation, of membership in the body of Christ. They have drawn a line in the same where it does not belong.”
Now, because the Young Earther’s claim a literal reading of the Bible to describe the flood there is not that much to say about it. It may have been so – simple as that.
But there are questions and challenges to this literal interpretation that need to be asked – an answered – as a means to seek to worship God in spirit AND truth.
Now, a word of caution.
The fallback to hard questions (especially when it comes to fundamental believers)
Is a failsafe that says:
“Well God could have done anything!”
Let’s admit right now that God can do anything but He often does not. We cannot approach our study of the word with “magic” in mind. It’s not fair nor is it intellectually honest.
God did NOT expect us to believe in fairy tales – He gave us literal history of literal people from a literal time and place who took literal actions (like building an ark over 120 years) to survive.
If we are going to embrace a magical approach to understanding God why would He cause Noah to labor so bloody hard when He could have magically produced a miracle ark for the salvation of the world.
It seems to me that everything still needs to be accepted by faith but just as the Berean’s tested all things by the Word we have to test all things to – and accept God’s invitation when He says, “Come, let us reason together.”
So let’s reason together now for these last few minutes and then into next week.
The first problem or question I want to address is the animals within the ark.
Scientists estimate that 1,120,000 species of land animals and birds exist on earth today.
Because of extinction it is believed that there were far more back at the time of Noah (in terms, again, of species).
The Bible says that Noah took seven clean animals (three “couples” and an extra – presumably for sacrificing) and a male and female of unclean animals.
I this collection was to take from the entire planet we’re talking about polar bears, otters, and penguins from the artics, Koala bears and Kangaroos from Austrailia, pandas from Japan, kimono dragons from wherever they come from as well as llamas, flies, fleas, worms and on and on and on.
At Bible Study (dot org) one fundi scholar estimated the number of animals was 2000. This is a ridiculous underestimation.
But let’s suggest that he is correct. With eight people on board the ark who labored ten hours a day without a break each for one full year, they would have to have fed, watered, scooped and cleaned up after one animal each every 2.5 minutes.
Now, when we are confronted by facts like this we are most likely to resort to God magic and start tossing out all the possible magical explanations.
God didn’t have the animals eat (but Genesis says that God told Noah to bring food on board for all the animals).
Or God kept the animals from excreting waste (again, why even build the ark if such miracles were going to keep the animals alive. Why not just empower all the animals with an ability to sleep underwater and to never have to eat?
The proffered answers from the fundi’s can become so embarrassing that they greatly demean the reasoning together God invites us to participate in.
Some of them include God shrinking all the animals down to tiny tiny sizes or that he caused them all to fall under a deep sleep.
Possible for God? Of course. But first, NOT part of the biblical narrative, and second not reasonable when we consider the reasonable nature of the rest of the story.
But let’s try and stay reasonable, shall we?
2000 total animals in the quantities the Lord demanded is horrifically low. So let’s examine other claims.
Even if it was half that ridiculous amount the eight adults would have been able to devote 5 minutes per day per animal to keep up – no breaks.
Now Answers in Genesis estimates that there were 16,000 (!!) different animals on the Ark.
Let’s suggest that only half needed care that would require each person on board to service 17 animals per minute.
But if we look back, the Godfather proponent of world wide flood (fundamentalist Henri Morris estimated the number to be 35,000 different animals.
Bible Study (.org) estimates them at 40,000 and Christian Apologetics and Research estimates that the total number of animals on the Ark was 145,000.
I’m not going to even try and describe what would be required of the eight souls saved to keep that ark functioning.
And we have not even begun to answer how all the animals :
Got along?
Transported themselves to the arid hot desert from their native environments safely.
Next week we will pick up the final question about animals (dinosaurs) before we continue on and discuss water quantities, dispersment, planet wide issues, pagan traditions, the Arks resting place, fossil issues, flood geology, coal, and more.
Now, you may feel some irony as we are studying Hebrews 11 which is all about faith, and yet it seems like today was a lot of information that is in a way faithless.
Not at all.
In order for faith to be God honoring I believe it must be founded on research and truth. Anything less (or more) is bad faith.
Questions/Comments
