Noah - Genesis 6-9

This morning we turn our attention to one of the most famous stories in the Bible, one known both to Christians and non-Christians alike: the story of Noah being saved in an ark during the flood. We’re going to take two weeks to address several of the questions surrounding this account. Today we are going to talk about Noah and what we can learn from his example; next week we’ll tackle some of the big questions about the flood itself, while underscoring why we believe the Biblical account can be trusted.

One of the objections people sometimes raise about the story of Noah is that many other cultures have stories of a flood sent by the gods and a man who survives it by building some sort of boat or raft on which he is saved. At least one (maybe more) of these stories was written down before the Bible was written. Some see this as conclusive evidence this is a mythical story appropriated by the Hebrew culture and given a distinctively Hebrew spin. We reach a different conclusion.

The existence of a flood narrative in many cultures lends credence to the fact that there really was such a flood, and there really was a man who survived it on a boat. I believe the biblical account is the one that is accurate. The biblical account sounds far less legendary than most other accounts, the story has an internal consistency, and the details of the story are plausible. These traits are lacking in most of the other flood narratives. Of course, the greatest reason I trust the biblical account of the flood is due to the trustworthiness of the Bible as a whole—and since many places in the New Testament refer to the story of Noah as fact, I do as well. Since we can trust the biblical account of Noah, let’s look at what the Bible actually says about it.

The Setting

As we talked about last week, the world at this time had become utterly corrupt. God had become frustrated with humanity because of its utter sinfulness.

5The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. 6So the Lord was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart. 7And 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. I am sorry I ever made them.” 8But Noah found favor with the Lord. (Genesis 6:5-8, NLT)

The world had become “consistently and totally evil.” So God decided to destroy humanity and all the other creatures on the face of the earth. As we read further in the story, we see that God planned to bring about this destruction by means of a massive flood. This flood would wipe out mankind, but God would save humanity and the animals by preserving a few of each of them to repopulate the earth.

God selects a man named Noah to be the one who survives. Notice what the biblical account does and does not say about Noah and how God chose him.

8But Noah found favor with the Lord. 9This is the account of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man, the only blameless person living on earth at the time, and he walked in close fellowship with God. (Genesis 6:8-9, NLT)

Listen to what the text says about Noah. First, he found favor with the Lord. Second, he was a righteous man, he was blameless, and he walked in close fellowship with God. Now these words all make it sound like Noah was perfect. I don’t think that’s what the text is saying. I think rather it shows us that Noah was living in a way that put God first, and his life was different from those around him. But it is important that we read these statements about Noah in the proper order. The scriptures do not say that Noah found favor with God because he was righteous, blameless, and walked with God. It says Noah found favor with God, then it also says these other things were true about Noah. Here is what I’m driving at: God didn’t choose to save Noah because Noah was better than everyone else, but God chose to use Noah, and because of that Noah became a man of great faith. Here’s why this is important for us to remember: you don’t have to have everything all together for God to start using you. It doesn’t matter where you are now—God can and will use you. You just need to follow Him. Noah shows us what that looks like.

The Ark

God tells Noah to build an ark in which he and his family will survive the flood. The instructions are clear, but we don’t have a lot of details. What we do know is that the ark was massive.

In the New Living Translation, they have tried to convert the units used in the original language into modern terms. There is some debate on exactly how large the ark was, but the numbers given here are probably pretty close.

14“Build a large boat from cypress wood and waterproof it with tar, inside and out. Then construct decks and stalls throughout its interior. 15Make the boat 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. 16Leave an 18-inch opening below the roof all the way around the boat. Put the door on the side, and build three decks inside the boat—lower, middle, and upper. (Genesis 6:14-16, NLT)

This boat was 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. Inside the boat, Noah was to build three decks. Now we read this and know it’s big, but often don’t have a good idea of just how big it actually was.

I have put together a graphic to show the footprint of the ark. The ark would have been able to fully enclose our entire church building without a problem. If the ark were laid alongside the church, it would extend across Main Street and just about to the Veteran’s Memorial in the City Park. It would have an enormous footprint. Not only that, but the whole ark would have been more than 4 stories tall, with three decks inside. That means each deck of the ark would have been almost as high as the highest point in our sanctuary (which is 18 feet). This was one spacious ship. It had the capacity to carry roughly as much as 400 semi trailers. Amazingly, this wooden ship of Noah’s stands among the largest wooden ships ever built. It was simple, but effective. Though modern steel oceanliners are much larger, the ark described in Genesis was enormous—with plenty of space to carry all the animals to be saved on the ark.

Constructing a boat this large would have been a massive undertaking. We don’t know whether Noah hired help or whether he and his sons did all the work themselves. Most people, however, believe the ark took a long time to construct. Some scholars estimate that Noah may have spent between 50 and 75 years building this wooden ark!

Think about what this meant for Noah in terms of his obedience to God. It likely meant intense ridicule. It likely meant being marginalized by the world around him. It meant years and years of faithfully carrying out the work the Lord had given to him without seeing any sign that God was going to do what He promised. It meant a huge investment of time and energy (and possibly money) to carry out the work he knew God wanted him to do.

The task he was given didn’t make sense from a worldly perspective. Noah probably wasn’t near a large body of water, and even if he was, there would have been no way for him to move a structure this large to the sea. Noah surely looked crazy to the people around him. He was building a massive ship on land, all because he said there was going to be a flood that would wipe everyone out. Add to this the fact that many scholars think it had never rained prior to the flood, and Noah’s story would have been completely implausible to his friends and neighbors. He was surely known as a crackpot. Yet Noah kept doing what God had told him to do.

I suspect there were days when Noah began to doubt whether it was worth it. The Bible only records God giving Noah instructions at the beginning of the process and at the end. That doesn’t mean that Noah didn’t hear from God throughout the process, but it is also possible that God didn’t speak to him again because He had already told Noah what to do. Genuine faith works at continual obedience to the Lord, even in times when we doubt or start to get tired or discouraged. Faith means trusting what God has said more than our ability to understand or to see what God is doing behind the scenes. Noah is a picture of great faith—one we should strive to emulate.

The Flood

When Noah finally finished building the ark, the Lord brought to Noah pairs of all the animals he was supposed to take with him. Noah was to bring every “kind” of animal onto the ark. We don’t know exactly what the term “kind” refers to, because it isn’t a scientific term (and the Bible isn’t a science book). Kind could refer to what scientists call species (a very small division of living things) or it could be a broader term referring to families or orders of animals on the earth. However we define the term, the ark had enough space to include all these animals. Once Noah had loaded all the animals and his family (his wife, his three sons, and their wives) onto the ark, we are told the Lord closed the door of the ark.

I wonder if there was a crowd watching as Noah loaded the animals. I wonder if the people gathered around still thought Noah was crazy. I wonder what they thought when the door closed behind him and his family (and I wonder how God shut the door!) I also wonder how long it took before the people realized Noah was right all along, and that God was bringing judgment upon them. Was it when it started to rain? Was it when the water started to pile up? Or did these people refuse to trust God right up until the moment of their death? We don’t have answers to any of these questions, but we do know that God did exactly what he promised, and so a flood to wiped out all humankind except for the 8 people on the ark.

Next week we will talk about the evidence for why we can believe the flood actually happened and its significance in the history of the earth, but for now it is enough to know that God did exactly what he said he would in sending the flood.

Noah and his family spent an entire year living in the ark with the animals before the floodwaters receded enough for them to come out and begin the process of repopulating the earth. I suspect it was a long year as they contemplated their new reality. And no matter how close you are, a year stuck in a boat with your family would be tough! At the end of the year God used Noah and his family to start anew.

When they departed the ark, God promised them he would never again destroy the earth with a flood and God declared that the rainbow was a sign of this promise. Even today, when we see a rainbow we should be reminded of God’s provision—but also of the truth that God will not allow sin to reign forever. One day He will put an end to sin once and for all. The rainbow should remind us both of God’s grace and His justice.

Conclusion

While the story is fascinating and there are all sorts of questions we would like to have answered, the Bible doesn’t give us a lot of answers—because that’s not the point of the story. The point of the story is to remind us that sin has consequences, and if we presume upon the grace of God we will be in deep trouble. We live at a time when our society is corrupt to its core. In many ways it is fair to describe our society as being amoral—we have no clear sense of right and wrong. But God has spoken clearly, and we reject His instructions at our own peril. Noah’s story should be a cautionary tale for us today.

It is easy to look at our world and declare that everyone else is messed up while failing apply these lessons to our own lives. There are several things we see in the account of Noah’s faith that should instruct and encourage us.

First, Noah was considered righteous and blameless. As I said before, this does not mean Noah was sinless. Noah was considered righteous because he did what was right. He lived in a way that sought to follow God. And I think Noah’s description of being blameless had to do with his reputation among those who knew him well. People may not have liked what Noah was doing, they may have thought he was crazy, but they could see there was something different about him. He didn’t live by the same rules as everyone else. He seemed to have principles that guided him in every situation. In a word, Noah’s life showed consistency.

Can people say the same thing about you? Do the people you work with, the people you sit next to at ball games, the people you spend time with in the evenings or on the weekends see you as a person of principle, a person who is consistent? Here’s my concern: quite often the people in the church live like the people outside the church. We claim to stand on principle, but we are very selective of which principles we stand on. As a result, the watching world doesn’t lend much credence to the Christian faith. They claim (in some respects, fairly) that we do not live by the standards we claim to believe. My challenge to you is to examine your own life for areas of compromise and start chipping away at those things, so you stand apart from a world that has no standard of right and wrong. You may have something that comes immediately to mind, but let me give you some ideas of places to start.

The language you use outside of the church

The way you handle conflict or people who hurt you

The way you approach romantic relationships (sex outside of marriage, getting involved with people who don’t share your faith)

The way you respond to times of hardship

Your leisure activities (engaging in drunkenness, lawbreaking, gossip, or watching, reading, or doing things you know are inappropriate)

The way you organize your time (whether you actually spend time studying God’s Word, worshiping God, or talking to Him, or whether you are too busy with “more important” things)

The way you act when things don’t go your way

These are just a few areas where Christians are apt to compromise. There are many more. My point is this—the world was watching Noah, and it is watching us. We must live in a way that is above reproach. That doesn’t mean we must be perfect, but it does mean we own up to and correct areas of sinful behavior in our lives when we see them rather than overlooking them or explaining them away.

Second, Noah was trying to tell others the truth. In 2 Peter 4:5, we are told Noah preached to the world around him. It might be tempting to think of Noah as the worst preacher ever, because no one listened to him. But Noah was faithful, which is all God asks of you and me. We must have the courage to lovingly speak the truth to a world that is headed in the wrong direction. We must be willing to help people understand their need for a savior before it is too late. This doesn’t mean we browbeat people with a list of their sins, but it does mean we explain why Jesus is their only hope. Just like Noah, we have a responsibility to preach the truth to those around us, because anyone who doesn’t listen will face judgment. The door was open to the door of the ark, but the reason people didn’t get on wasn’t because of Noah. He had done his part. We are not responsible for the response of others, but we are responsible for telling them the truth.

Third, Noah kept doing what was right, even when it didn’t seem to do any good. Our culture is very pragmatic. Our approach is if it works, it must be good. And if it doesn’t work, then it must not be. But how do we determine if something works? Usually it is whether it gets us the outcome we want. That’s the wrong approach. The right approach is for us to look to the Lord and do what He has told us. And if it means we don’t get what we want, we trust that He knows what is best. There are plenty of opportunities to compromise in our world. And there are plenty of examples we can point to of people who aren’t doing things God’s way but seem to be getting along pretty well. But just because the world’s way seems to “work” in the short term doesn’t mean it is what’s best. Noah swam against the current of his society for half a century with no results. It wasn’t until he had done all God had asked of him that he finally saw the payoff. We must remember that doing what’s right doesn’t always bear fruit right away.

Finally, we have an advantage Noah didn’t have. Noah was all alone in his obedience to the Lord. Apart from his family (and maybe not even them), no one else on the earth was willing to follow God like Noah. It was a very lonely place to be. As difficult as it is for us to stand firm in a world running away from God, we still have an advantage Noah didn’t have—we don’t have to do it alone; we have each other. This is one of the reasons God has given us the Church—so we can be stronger together than we can on our own. This means a few things for us.

We must take advantage of this privilege. It’s a lot harder to stand for the Lord when we don’t make it a point to be with believers regularly. We need to make corporate worship a priority. When we meet with other believers we find strength to stand firm in the Lord.

We need to ask for help when we’re struggling. It’s ok to admit your sins and struggles—it’s what we’re supposed to do. The church is a place full of sinners, and so it is safe to admit your struggles and ask for help in the fight. When you need help, talk to other believers about it and ask them to help you—chances are you’re not the only one who has faced this struggle, and there’s someone who can help you.

We need to be available to serve each other. God has given us each a role to play, and we need to play it. Faith is like a muscle—it only grows when it is exercised. So find a way to serve the Lord and each other. When you do, you will find yourself (and your church) getting stronger because of it.

Noah’s story is immensely practical. As we look at the world in which Noah lived we see a lot of parallels to our world today. Noah’s faith is commended by God. He continued to be faithful to the Lord no matter what the cost, even when He didn’t see how it was going to work. He simply trusted and obeyed. That’s the nature of faith, and that’s what God wants from us too.