Genesis 7-8 Series

Genesis 7-8

Sunday Morning Bible Study

December 17, 2006

Introduction

God has given a warning that He would judge the earth because of their wickedness because …

(Gen 6:5 NKJV) …the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Noah has been commanded to build a boat, a really big boat.

Genesis 7 – The Flood

:1 Then the LORD said to Noah, "Come into the ark, you and all your household, because I have seen that you are righteous before Me in this generation.

:2 "You shall take with you seven each of every clean animal, a male and his female; two each of animals that are unclean, a male and his female;

:3 "also seven each of birds of the air, male and female, to keep the species alive on the face of all the earth.

We usually think of Noah only taking two of every animal – but he actually takes seven of each clean animal, the ones you could eat, and seven of each bird.

Was there room for all this on the ark?

The ark would have been 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. The ark would have an internal volume of 1,518,750 cubic feet, or the equivalent of 569 standard railroad boxcars. If the average sized animal was the size of a sheep it means the ark could hold over 125,000 sheep. Assuming the shape of the ark to be rectangular there would have been over 100,000 sq. ft of floor space.

:4 "For after seven more days I will cause it to rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and I will destroy from the face of the earth all living things that I have made."

Noah was given a seven-day warning before the actual flood began.

:5 And Noah did according to all that the LORD commanded him.

:6 Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters were on the earth.

If you are trying to map out the chronology of the Bible, this is an important verse, setting the date of the flood at 1656 years after Adam’s creation.

:7 So Noah, with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives, went into the ark because of the waters of the flood.

:8 Of clean animals, of animals that are unclean, of birds, and of everything that creeps on the earth,

:9 two by two they went into the ark to Noah, male and female, as God had commanded Noah.

Last week we noted that God promised to have the animals come to Noah (Gen. 6:20)

:10 And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were on the earth.

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

I’m going to “translate” the dates we’re given into our calendar, just for the sake of reference, but keep in mind, I’m not sure we know where in the year their calendar lined up, I’m just wanting to give us a picture of how long it took for the flood. So think of the flood as hitting on February 17.

There were two sources of water for the Great Flood of Noah.

Fountains of the great deep –

It is thought that there were “floodgates” at various locations of the earth, where the water came bursting out of.

Some have theorized that this is the origin of the Grand Canyon. Perhaps it didn’t take millions of years to carve out. Maybe just forty days.

The structure of the Grand Canyon is actually very similar to the canyons formed recently at Mount St. Helens.

An ICR article, dated July, 1986, written by Steven Austin, PhD., talks about the events that took place at Mt. St. Helens.

On the morning of May 18, 1980, at 8:32:17 a.m., an earthquake measuring five on the Richter scale shook its way up the mountain side. It dislodged the northern slope of the mountain, causing 1/2 cubic mile of landslide material to slide off the top of the mountain. 1/8 cubic mile of the landslide went into the Spirit Lake basin, displacing the water in some spots to over 860 feet above the pre-eruption level. Steam had been building up inside the volcano, and when the landslide moved out of the way, a blast equivalent to 20 million tons of TNT blast energy occurred. It leveled 150 square miles of forest in 6 minutes, enough trees to build 640,000 3-bedroom homes. The steam cloud moved north, 550 degrees Fahrenheit, at 200 mph. The volcanic eruption continued for 9 hours, with the equivalent of 400 millions tons of TNT blast energy, or 33,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs.