6. The first preacher and the first sermon
Sermon on 29 Sept 2019 PM, at Rosebery Park Baptist Church, Bournemouth, UK.
According to the Bible, who was the world’s first preacher? And what was his sermon? The answer is Noah! We know Noah was a preacher from this verse in 2 Peter:
‘…if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others…’ (2 Peter 2:5).
But what did Noah preach about? Noah’s only recorded words in the Bible are:
‘Cursed be Canaan; lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers. Blessed by the Lord my God be Shem and let Canaan be his slave. May God make space for Japheth, and let him live in the tents of Shem; and let Canaan be his slave’ (Genesis 9:25-27).
Not much of a sermon!
However, we have some information about society at the time:
‘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).
We can also note that Peter described Noah as ‘a preacher of righteousness’. Noah’s curse on Canaan doesn’t qualify him as that. So, Noah’s sermons either aren’t recorded, or Noah ‘preached’ without words!
Before the flood Noah listened to God, trusted him (although it must have seemed crazy!) and did what God told him to. God subsequently sent a flood. So, Noah’s message (without words) is that God demands righteousness. He will deliver those who put their trust in him and obey him, but he will sweep away the wicked. It’s the first great sermon of the Bible – and it’s really the core message of the Bible!
However, Jesus draws a different message from it. He doesn’t use the story to talk about judgment or salvation. He uses the story of the flood to emphasise how unprepared people will be when another event like a flood happens – when he comes again. This is what he says:
‘But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 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, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man’ (Matthew 24:36-39).
People in Alabama and Oklahoma don’t know when a tornado might come their way. But they fix themselves up with storm shelters. Some people take their preparation very seriously indeed!
But Jesus says the opposite is true for people’s preparation for when he comes again. Why is that? One reason is that many people today simply will not accept what Jesus is saying in this passage. They can’t conceive that God would ever act in wrath.
John Stevens is the National Director of the FIEC, the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches, in the UK. He wrote:
‘Large swaths of UK evangelicalism find it difficult to believe that the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ is a Holy God, who is rightfully angry towards those who have rebelled against him. They do not believe that the great human problem is the wrath of God, nor that salvation is primarily about being rescued from the wrath to come.’
For these people, the story of Noah and the flood is unbelievable.
First, there never was a flood. But probably equally significantly, God simply doesn’t act like this. So, when Jesus draws a lesson from an event that they don’t believe happened – or could have happened – they reject it.
To help people to accept Jesus’ teaching here we need to assert that this story of Noah is believable. There are two specific issues.
First, historicity. Could a flood have covered the entire earth? Could all humans and all animals – apart from those on the ark – have been destroyed? And very importantly, does the passage require such an understanding?
Second, morality. God’s action seems so severe as to be unbelievable.
One danger, as we have noted, is that if we dismiss the story of Noah as myth then we will fail to learn the lesson Jesus draws from it.
But there is another, very real, danger lurking in the story of Noah and the flood. If we demand that the flood took place in a way that is totally odds with scientific understanding and logic then many people will not believe it. They may go further and not believe the Bible at all! So, if we demand a particular way of understanding this passage – which the passage itself doesn’t demand – we may actually prevent people from coming to faith.
So, let’s see if we can cross these hurdles.
FIRST, HISTORICITY
Jesus refers to Noah and the flood. Jesus is very knowledgeable. So, a flood – of some form – happened!
We also find support for a flood – of some kind – from ancient literature. In the mid-19th century scholars were just learning to decipher ancient Assyrian script. In 1872, an Assyriologist called George Smith was working in the British Museum. He got a huge shock when he translated an ancient Babylonian tablet and found that it also told the story of the flood. He read his translation of the flood story at a meeting which the British Prime Minister attended. What he had found was the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh, dating from about 2100 BC. It’s now regarded as the earliest surviving great work of literature. In the epic, the immortal man Utnapishtim describes how the god Ea instructed him to build a huge vessel in anticipation of a God-created flood that would destroy the world. Since then it has been found that almost every major ancient civilization has a story of a great flood and of a few people being saved by going on a boat.
But this isn’t all! In 2009 Irving Finkel, assistant keeper at the department of the Middle East at the British Museum, found that the Babylonian Ark Tablet, from about 1700 BC, contains instructions for building a round ark, which would have room for animals – and that they would go on ‘two by two’. It’s a fascinating story – well worth reading. Some people have recreated the ark that the tablet described.
So ancient literature encourages the view that a flood happened. Science and logic would also allow a localised flood.
Mount Ararat, where Noah’s Ark ended up, is near to the Black Sea. A flood in the Black Sea area is imaginable. A number of books have been written which present this suggestion. One is called ‘Noah’s Flood’. The authors, William Ryan and Walter Pitman, write ‘…the Black Sea was once a vast freshwater lake lying hundreds of feet below the level of the world's rising oceans … 7,600 years ago the mounting seas burst through the narrow Bosporus valley, and the salt water of the Mediterranean poured into the lake with unimaginable force, racing over beaches and up rivers, destroying or chasing all life before it. The people fled, dispersing their languages, genes, and memories’. Their book came out in 2000.
In 2012, Robert Ballard, noted for discovering the wreck of the Titanic, went to the Black Sea. He found evidence of an ancient shoreline, about 550 feet below the present shoreline, and remains of buildings more than 300 feet under water. So that gives support to Ryan and Pitman’s theory. The theory is controversial. But we don’t have to insist that ‘this is the way it happened’. The main thing is that a localised flood is imaginable.
However, a flood that covered the entire planet earth is very hard to believe. Science really rules it out. If such a global flood had happened, surely there would be geological evidence of it. But there isn’t. DNA shows that humans are not all descended from two people: Mr and Mrs Noah. Logic also rules out a global flood. All species of vertebrate and food for them could not have fitted onto the ark. Kangaroos could not have hopped from Australia and then hopped back again.
In short, scientific evidence and logic give us many reasons to reject the idea that a flood covered the entire earth.
What about Scripture? Can a normal reading of Scripture allow the idea that the flood was localised? Literalists would say no: Scripture is clear that the flood was universal. But the language that seems to emphasise that the flood was universal is used elsewhere for things that were not ‘universal’. Here is one example. Genesis 41:56 states, ‘So when the famine had spread over all the land…’ OK, we think, the famine was over all of Egypt. However, the phrase used here is identical to the phrase used in the flood story, for example, ‘I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land’ (Genesis 6:7), and in similar phrases.
We don’t have time to go into lots of details here. But based on examples like these, I don’t believe that the Genesis account requires that the flood covered all of planet Earth.
So, where does that leave us?
• If Jesus is Son of God, he knows what he’s talking about. If he refers to a flood there must have been a flood. We can’t take a position in which we write the flood story off as myth.
• Ancient literature supports the idea that there was a flood.
• Scientific evidence suggests there may have been a localised flood in the Black Sea area.
• Science repudiates the idea of a flood covering the whole of planet Earth.
• Scripture does not, in my view, require that understanding.
The obvious solution is that there was a flood but it did not cover the whole of planet Earth. That’s the first part of the answer to, ‘Is it believable?’ Next, we need to ask if the Bible’s explanation of WHY it happened is believable.
SECOND, MORALITY
God brings a flood and everyone is swept away. Only Noah and his family survive. Surely God could never do such a thing! We don’t recognize an angry God who destroys most of mankind.
We are not the first people to see this problem. Back in the 2nd century AD a man called Marcion just couldn’t imagine the God of love behaving in this way. He decided that the God of the New Testament was incompatible with the God of the Old Testament. The God of the OT seems harsh and unjust, very different to Jesus. Marcion’s solution was to dispense with the Old Testament! The early church considered his views heretical.
Some people today have a mental blockage like Marcion’s. They find the story of Noah unbelievable. That’s not because it was a long time ago, or because it seems mythical, but because they just don’t believe that God would act like this. That would be a shame, because it would prevent them from learning an important lesson.
Here are three reasons why Marcion is wrong, why God can behave like this.
1. My brother is in the army. At one time he did training for counter-terrorist work, what’s called ‘Black Ops’. At the same time, he had become the father of twins. One moment he was changing a nappy, and a few hours later, he could be off in a helicopter on some training exercise. But he was the same person. The fact that he could do two very different things didn’t mean that he had a split personality. How he acted depended on the situation. The same is true of most of us, and it’s true of God too.
2. We understand salvation as Christ paying the price for our sin on the cross. But there is another aspect to salvation. God has to destroy the wicked for the righteous to be saved from wars, oppression and persecution. Britain went to war with Nazi Germany. If Britain had not done so, it would not have the freedom it enjoys now.
3. God in the Old Testament and Jesus in the New Testament actually display the same character. Marcion’s problem was that he couldn’t imagine Jesus being stern. But think of the description of Jesus as the coming king in Revelation: ‘From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron’. Here Jesus seems much more like the stern God who destroyed the people of Noah’s time. God’s character and Jesus’ character are not different.
So, we’ve faced the challenges. Historically, Noah’s flood could have happened. Morally, God could have acted in this way. In short, it is believable that Noah’s flood happened, and it is believable that it was God’s doing. Now let’s go back to the lesson Jesus drew from it.
Jesus said:
‘For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 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, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man’ (Matthew 24:37-39).
Jesus is NOT saying that there is going to be a day of judgment. That was a given. The people Jesus was talking to believed that. The point Jesus was making is that IT WILL BE UNEXPECTED – just like in Noah’s day.
The story of Noah has a message for people who have not yet put their faith in Jesus. He is the one who can carry you through the deep waters of death – so put your trust in him! But the primary message Jesus drew from this story is that his coming will be as unexpected as the flood was for the people of Noah’s day. Many people will be like the thief who is surprised by the robber. Or the bridesmaids who are surprised by the late arrival of the bridegroom. The message Jesus draws from Noah is that a flood is coming. Therefore, stay awake! If we don’t the result will not be good. But if we do, the result is very nice! A few verses further on, Jesus says:
‘Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom his master has set over his household, to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions’ (Matthew 24:45-47).
So, to conclude: let’s be like Noah. Be prepared!
