I went to see Darren Aronofsky’s “NOAH” last Saturday Night. Kim was away at the ladies retreat and when the movie was over, she sent me a text. “Was it true to the Bible?” I replied, “well, they did spell NOAH right!” That my friends is about where the similarities end. Oh, there is a flood, and a wooden boat, but beyond that the film is a fantasy based on a biblical story whose purpose is to promote secular environmentalism.
So today I want to speak on the Real Story of Noah. Some might wonder, “why preach a sermon just because there is a controversial Hollywood film?” I understand that question. I have two primary reasons for addressing this in a Sunday morning sermon.
First, NOAH the film is a reflection of our culture and as such, we should understand its message.
Second, because this is cultural issue related to our faith, I want to equip the Church to share the truth of the Bible with our friends. Aronofsky’s film has generated a great amount of interest in biblical story of the flood. I think that use that interest to point people to Genesis 6-9. If God can use a donkey to get the attention of a false prophet (Balaam), he can use an atheists film to get the attention of millions of people and stir their interest in the true story of Noah.
Should you see the film? If it allows you to share the gospel, YES! Don’t go for the entertainment value - we don’t need to support Hollywood when they twist the Bible into something it is not. I don’t think that NOAH will not cause you to lose your faith, BUT I am very concerned about Christians who are not able to discern and interpret film, TV, books, music, news and politics. We do not recognize how much that Worldview is more influenced by the culture than the Bible.
Before we look at the issues we should ask who is Darren Aronofsky? He is both the writer, and director. The idea for NOAH was his own, so he is really the central figure when it comes to understanding the film and the world-view it presents. Aronofsky comes from a conservative Jewish home. He grew up on Long Island, where he filmed major portions of NOAH. Some of the filming was interrupted by hurricane Sandy in 2012.
Aronofsky is a self-professed atheist. Themes from Jewish Kabala and mysticism come through in the film, but it was not his intention to use the medium of film to explain or tell the biblical story of the flood. We will say more about this. The secular nature of his work is reflected in an interview he did with a British paper. “To the delight of the atheist and the concern of the pious however, Aronofsky's film is pushing an environmentalist rather than religious agenda.” “He described Noah to The Telegraph as "the least biblical biblical film ever made", and sees its protagonist (played by Russell Crowe) as the "first environmentalist". independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/noah-is-the-least-biblical-biblical-film-ever-made-says-director-9214686.html
The FIRST QUESTION to consider in comparing the film with the Bible concerns the character of Noah. Was Noah an Environmental Crusader, or a Preacher of Righteousness? According to the film, Noah was the first true environmentalist, saving the earth from the destructive, polluting, resource-using sons of Cain. Noah is morally flawed in the film. A major conflict in the film is whether Noah will kill his own grandchildren to prevent the earth from being re-populated with humans. Noah is shown as a warrior, fighting off the attackers who sought to get into the ark.
But the Bible tells us that Noah was a man of faith, a preacher of righteousness. Genesis 6:9 offers this character description: “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.” 2 Peter 2:5 describes Noah as a “preacher of righteousness.” The people of his day were night fighting to get on the ark. In Matthew 24 Jesus tells us that they were “eating and drinking” not aware of the coming destruction.
The SECOND QUESTION is Why did God send the flood?
According to the film, humans were using up all of the earth’s natural resources.
The scenes show that the Earth is a barren landscape. The Trees are all cut down, the minerals all used up. People were carnivores, eating all of the animals. The opening of the film starts with Noah lecturing SHEM for picking a flower to look at its beauty. The environmental message is clear from the beginning to the very end.
According to the film, God sent the flood to save the innocent animals from destruction at the hands of humans. The film NOAH is an apologetic for Secular Environmentalism! Aronofsky twisted the biblical story to promote a 21st century view of environmentalism that teaches that humans are equal with animals and that we should all be vegans and not do anything that interferes with the environment.
Environmentalism is one of the most powerful controlling political forces of our day. Forces used to control the masses have changed over the years. Let me explain why this happens and why secular environmentalism is not really about the environment, it is about controlling people’s behavior. Through secular environmentalism, people worship the creation over the creator. “because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” (Romans 1:25, ESV).
The reason that environmentalism is used to control people today is because our society has abandoned the Christian foundation that guided our nation. That Christian foundation of RIGHTEOUSNESS brought us great freedom. In that freedom we found PEACE and ORDER. This is the “Law of Liberty” as described in James1:25 and 2:12. But sinners REJECT God’s Righteousness because they want to be FREE from the commands that come with it. Rather than FREEDOM, they reap CONFLICT and DISORDER. When peace and order are lost, something must be done to restore order. This is when an alternate must be found to control the population in an attempt to maintain order.
Francis Schaeffer, wrote about this in 1976 in his book “How Should We Then Live?” It is amazing that his words are almost prophetic. “As Christian consensus dies, there are not many sociological alternatives.... In the days of a more Christian culture, a lone individual with the Bible could judge and warn society, regardless of the majority vote, because there was an absolute by which to judge. There was an absolute for both morals and law. But to the extent that the Christian consensus is gone, this absolute is gone as a social force..... Some group of some person will fill the vacuum. An elite will offer us arbitrary absolutes, and who will stand in its way. ..... I believe the majority of the new silent majority, young and old, will sustain the loss of liberties without raising their voices as long as their own life-styles are not threatened. And since personal peace and affluence are so often the only values that court with the majority, politicians know that to be elected they must promise these things. Politics has largely become not a matter of ideas - increasingly men and women are not stirred by the values of liberty and truth - but of supplying a constituency with a frosting of personal peace and affluence. They know that voices will not be raised as long as people have these things, or at least an illusion of them (223, 226-7). The central message of biblical Christianity is the possibility of men and women approaching God through the work of Christ. But the message also has secondary results, among them the unusual and wide freedoms which biblical Christianity gave to countries where it supplied the consensus. When these freedoms are separated from the Christian base, however, they become a force of destruction leading to chaos. When this happens, as it has today, then, to quote Eric Hoffer, “When freedom destroys order, the yearning for order will destroy freedom.” At that point ..... [Authoritarianism] .... will gradually [increase] so that [society] will not go on to chaos. And most people will accept it - from the desire for personal peace and affluence, from apathy, and from the yearning for order to assure the functioning of some political system, business and the affairs of daily life. (244-5)
The one thing that Schaeffer did not see 40 years ago was exactly what would be used to control people. It ends up that secular environmentalism is the tool.
By this I mean that people today are taught from the time of their earliest school encounters that humans are destroying the planet. We are told that we consume too much, waste too much, and that animals are of equal value as humans. Just think about what our children learn about the animal world from Hollywood. Our children’s only encounter with the animal world include a mouse that sings, lemurs that crack jokes, and a panda that does kung-fu! This personification of the animal world may seem simple enough, but it forms fertile ground in our most impressionable ages that we are one with the animal world, when in fact God has placed us over his creation to manage and control it (Genesis 1:28; 9:1-3).
Secular environmentalism controls because it keeps people in a state of FEAR that they might be doing something to harm the environment. It conditions people to accept greater government regulation over almost every aspect of life including the use of land and methods of farming, building. Practically every activity of Americans are controlled by environmental rules.
As Christians our understanding of the environment is that we are stewards of God’s world. Our motivation to keep his world clean and functioning well is a higher motivation than the secular environmentalists. We do not favor waste, pollution or the destruction of God’s natural beauty. But we also understand that the God placed us over his creation and that our efforts to maintain it are a part of our worship to him. We will be held accountable by the Lord regarding the manner in which we care for his creation.
According to the Bible, the earth was not destroyed because the earth dwellers polluted the planet. That perception is the modern version of what offends US, not what offends God. The flood came about because “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (Genesis 6:5, ESV)
Wickedness is = "evil, wrongdoing, harm, i.e., that which is not morally good." It is used to describe rape and murder (Judges 20:12), bribery (Nehemiah 13:7) and Genocide (Esther 8:3). It is a word that describes great moral sin. (Swanson, Dic of Biblical languages)
Further in Genesis 6:11-13 we read, “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.” (Genesis 6:11–13, ESV)
The film eliminates the key issue of moral decay and replaces it with a modern day version of environmentalism.
Another Question to answer is How many people were on the Ark?
According to the "Noah" film there were seven people. Noah, his wife, their three sons, Shem's wife and "Tubal-Cain," a person mentioned in Genesis 4:22. (In the film, Tubal-Cain is an antagonist representing the wicked people of earth through the descendants of Cain.)
In contrast, the Bible is explicitly and repeatedly clear on the fact that there were eight people on the ark. Of course, Aronofsky knows this, but he creates an alternate story to the one presented in Scripture. (Both Old and New Testaments testify that there were eight people on the ark: Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives. See Genesis 7:6, 13; 8:16-18; 9:1-2, 8-9; 1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 2:4-5 and Hebrews 11:7).
The Next Question is Who is the God of the story of Noah?
In the "Noah" film the only name used for God is "The Creator." This unnamed character is a mystical force, not a person. That is significant, because the God of the Bible is a Person that makes himself known to his creation. The God of Aronofsky’s film is NOT loving, powerful or communicative God.
The Bible teaches that God speaks to Noah. This is vital because he also speaks to us today through his Word and his Son.
Who are The "sons of God" and the "Nephilim" of Genesis 6:1-4?
In the "Noah" film there are a group of characters referred to as "The Watchers." They are a form of fallen angels that were banished to the earth and condemned to become encrusted in rock. These mystical rock-creatures help Noah build the ark and protect him and his family from the descendants of Cain.
Several passages should be studied to understand the identity of a group of fallen angels who corrupted the lineage of man prior to the flood. Understanding this corruption is crucial in seeing the necessity of a judgment as overwhelming as a world-wide flood. "Sons of God" in Genesis 6:1-2. These characters must be significant to the entire story of the flood because this is the starting point for Genesis 6-9. In the book Job (which is closest in timing to the events of Noah), "Sons of God" are angelic beings (Job 1:6, 2:1; 38:7).
In 2 Peter 2:4-5 and Jude 6 we read of fallen angels in the days of Noah that were placed in severe judgement because of a unique sin. We are not told what that sin was, but it may have been that fallen angels (demonic spirits) cohabited with women to create a race of depraved individuals with the intention of corrupting all of humanity and preventing the Messiah who was promised would come through the seed of the woman (Genesis 3:15).
Some Bible scholars believe that Satan was attempting to prevent the coming of the One that would be born of a woman and bring about his destruction. This promise for a coming Deliverer was given to Adam, Eve and the Serpent in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:15). It may be that Satan attempted to defile the human race through demonic intermarriage with humanity. If this is correct, God thwarted Satan's plan by preserving Noah and his family. God preserved an uncorrupted lineage for the Messiah by destroying the corrupted earth and beginning again with Noah.
We also should answer the question, Did the flood really happen?
In the film, the story of Noah is treated as mythology. The illustrations above and many other comparisons demonstrate that the film writer used the biblical story as a theme, not as a record of history.
We should note that the Bible never questions the validity and accuracy of the flood of Genesis 6-9. The story in these chapters is told with great detail. This is not presented as fable but as history.
Jesus believed in the Truthfulness of the Old Testament and the biblical account of Noah and a world-wide flood. Matthew 24:38-39; Luke 17:26-27; Matthew 5:18; 11:13.
As further evidence that the Bible treats the flood as real, God promised to never again destroy the world with a flood (Genesis 9:21-22). The Bible also uses the flood as a warning that the coming of Jesus is near. Matthew 24:37-40; 2 Peter 2:5-9.
But there is also powerful evidence of the flood from sources other than the Bible!
There are over 200 cosmogonies from around the world that contain a story of a flood. These stories are from areas of the world not known to have any historical connection to each other. For instance, the Pawnee tribe in Nebraska has the following tradition: the creator Ti-ra-wa destroyed the first people, who were giants, by water because of his indignation about their corruption and after that he created a man and a woman like present people, who became the Pawnees’ ancestors.
In addition, the Miao tribe who resides in southwest China had a tradition which is like the Genesis account even before they met Christian missionaries. According to their tradition, when god destroyed the whole world by the flood because of wickedness of man, Nuah the righteous man and his wife Matriarch, their three sons, Lo Han, Lo Shen, and Jah-hu survived by building a very broad ship and embarked on it with pairs of animals.
95% of these flood traditions have common elements with Genesis, even though there is no possible literary or historic link between many of the various records. For more concerning this see the article by Nozomi Osanai, 8/3/05 “Answers in Genesis” answersingenesis.org/articles/csgeg/comparison-secular-historical-records
Recently, another objection to the possibility of the Biblical account of the flood was dispelled by a new discovery. Skeptics of the biblical account have argued that a global flood would have been impossible because there would have been no place for the water to recede. Recently, an article in the science journal “Nature” shed light on the fact that “scientists had found an elusive mineral pointing to the existence of a vast reservoir deep in Earth's mantle, 400-600 kilometres (250-375 miles) beneath our feet.
It may hold as much water as all the planet's oceans combined, they believe.”
uk.news.yahoo.com/earth-secret-reservoir-water-scientists-191039455.html#s6SdSO8
This coincides exactly with the biblical testimony of great “fountains of the deep.”
“In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.” (Genesis 7:11, ESV)
“The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained,” (Genesis 8:2, ESV)
“when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep,” (Proverbs 8:28, ESV)
Finally, the key question to all of this is What is the message of Noah?
In the "Noah" film, humanity is a corrupter of the environment. Humanity’s greatest sin is the consumption of natural resources. At the end of the film, Noah resists the temptation to kill his own grandchildren. When asked why he spared them, he replies, “When I looked at them I could only see love.” This conveys the idea that Goodness can only be hoped for and is found when people rise above their natural instincts and allow the good within them to manifest itself.
But this is not what the Bible presents. Why did Aronofsky change the story? The story of the flood is a GRAND STORY of Sin, Grace and Forgiveness. When properly understood and creatively told, it is a powerful story needing no embellishment. Why change one of the most spectacular stories mankind has evern known? I believe that Aronofsky CHANGED the story because he doesn’t understand the Greatness of the biblical story because the biblical story is about REDEMPTION!!!!! The writer’s departure from the truth of Genesis stems from the fact that he is spiritually blind, incapable of understanding spiritual truth. “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:14, ESV)
The Word is headed for another great flood. Not a flood of water, but a flood of judgment.
Have you come to Jesus as your ark of safety?
The circumstances of our day today are JUST LIKE the days of Noah. Matthew 24:37–39 (ESV) 37 For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, 39 and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
God's judgment on this world is coming. There is only one place to go to for safety. Jesus said in John 5:24 "Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life."
