ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED FROM NOAH’S ARK
o Plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.
o Noah didn’t wait for his ship to come in, he built one.
o Stay fit. When you’re 600 years old, someone might ask you to do something REALLY big.
o Don’t listen to critics -- do what has to be done.
o Speed isn’t always an advantage. The cheetahs were on board, but so were the snails.
o Remember that the ark was built by amateurs and the Titanic was built by professionals.
o Don’t miss the boat.
o No matter how bleak it looks, if God is with you, there’s always a rainbow on the other side.
APPLY: That, of course, is humorous list of some of what someone felt were lessons we could learn from Noah and the Ark. But there ARE many Biblical lessons that God would teach us:
· Peter, for example, wrote that the flood served as an example of our salvation. He told about the people who “disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also— not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (I Peter 3:20-21
· Peter also told us that the flood was a lesson that was meant to show us that “if (God) did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah… if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment.” (II Peter 2:5 & 9)
· Jesus said Noah’s experiences should be a warning to us. Just as they did in those days, people will be eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage (Matthew 24:38), when Jesus comes in judgment.
· In fact Peter explains: “…in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, ‘Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.’
But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men” (II Peter 3:3-7).
So, let’s revue. God intended the flood to teach us:
1. About our salvation
2. About God’s reputation
3. About His desire to save godly people
4. And God’s intention to bring final judgment upon the earth – the NEXT time by fire.
AND now, here in Hebrews 11, God is telling us that Noah and the flood is an excellent example of what faith should look like.
I. Why? What is it about Noah that makes him such an excellent example of faith?
Well, God tells us WHY in one simple phrase “By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family” (vs.7a). Take special note of that phrase “things not yet seen.”
Remember the description of faith in Hebrews 11:1 “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of WHAT WE DO NOT SEE.”
Think about this for a minute: Noah had NEVER SEEN rain, much less a flood.
Genesis 2:5-6 tells us "God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground."
NO RAIN. In fact do you remember what the symbol was that God used to promise that He’d never flood the world again? The rainbow. When do rainbows occur? They usually occur after a heavy RAIN. If God gave the rainbow as the symbol of His eternal promise, that meant there had been no rain before the flood.
So… “By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family.” (Hebrews 11:7a)
That means that for 120 years, while he built the ark:
1. Noah preached to people about a flood they’d never seen before
2. He warned of massive rains they’d never experienced
3. He built a boat unlike any they’d ever beheld
II. The wonder is not that the people of his day did not believe...
...the wonder is that Noah DID believe. Why would Noah believe God about something neither he nor any other mortal had ever beheld or experienced?
There were 2 reasons that I could think of:
1st, God said so. That alone would have been enough for Noah.
And 2nd, Noah was only 2 generations removed from a man who had seen God’s judgment first hand - Adam. (He lived concurrently with Adam’s grandson, Enosh).
Through Enosh, Noah would have heard of that God had brought judgment upon mankind in the past, and Noah would have realized that "if God had done it before… He could and would do it again."
That’s what Peter said in II Peter 3:5-7 “…long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.”
God has done it before – He can do it again.
III. The Bible tells us that even though Noah preached for 120 years – nobody believed him
Peter wrote that the days would come when people would “deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed…” (II Peter 3:5-6)
In other words, Peter predicted that - what had happened in Noah’s day - would happen again. In Noah’s day, people denied a flood ever WOULD take place. Peter predicted that even centuries after Noah, there would be people who would deny such a flood ever DID took place.
And behold, over the past 100 years or so, much of what has passed for science has challenged Genesis so effectively that many Christians have struggled with whether or not there was a world wide flood like the one God describes.
ILLUS: Before I entered Bible college, I spent a couple years in a secular University. There I discovered, first hand, widespread skepticism of the Bible and it’s stories of God’s faithfulness and miraculous power. (It’s little wonder that many good Christian kids enter secular colleges only to be stripped of their faith).
The basis for much of their rejection of Scripture, I believe, was essentially a rejection of God. The skeptics chose to disbelieve that anything so miraculous as - say a flood - could ever take place. Why would they question it? Because they have questions like the following:
1. How could Noah have gotten so many different animals on the ark? After all, not only did Noah take on board 2 of every "unclean animal," but he also had 7 of every "clean animal" (believed by many scholars to have been creatures acceptable for sacrifice). That’s a lot of animals to fit on such a tiny boat.
2. Then, how could he have kept them fed and cared for? I mean, not only do you have to feed them, you’ve got to "clean up after ’em" after they’ve eaten. As our youth minister so delicately put it - that’s would take a lot of shoveling for only 8 people.
3. Are the any witnesses other than Scripture?
4. Where is the evidence that such a flood occurred?
So, this morning, we’re going to address those 4 objections as best we can:
1st – How could Noah have gotten so many animals on that single ark? Frankly, we don’t precisely know. But there are some possibilities that many have overlooked:
· Noah did not have to take every breed of dog on board. He didn’t need a couple of poodles, and a couple of bulldogs, and a couple of Cocker Spaniels. He only needed a couple of dogs. One man once asked "if you took every breed of dogs and put them on a deserted island for about a hundred years, how many breeds of dogs would you end up with? One. They’re all dogs. But these various breeds have simply been bred to the point where certain dogs are distinguishable from others and thus become "pure breds." There are many breeds of dog, but they are all dogs. The same could be said of cats and horses, and so on.
· Noah didn’t have to take on board adult animals. If you look at a child’s toy of the ark, you’ll usually see a small boat with tall giraffe’s sticking their heads out of the upper windows, and humungous elephants standing on deck. But there would have been no need to carry such large adult animals on this trip. Noah could easily have carried much younger animals and fulfilled his God-given mandate.
· Then there was the size of the boat itself. Most people labor under the misconception that this was a small boat. It wasn’t. According to the dimensions given in Genesis this was probably the largest ship ever built by man until the late 1800’s, with a carrying capacity of nearly 14,000 tons. That’s equivalent to the space available on 522 freight train cars. With 3 decks, the Ark’s total floor space was just shy of 96,000 square feet - or roughly equivalent to 20 standard basketball courts. THAT’S A LOT OF STORAGE SPACE.
2nd – How could Noah have cared and fed all those animals? Again, we don’t know how God took care of that problem. The Bible doesn’t tell us. But one suggestion does have some credibility: hibernation. Every group of vertebrate animals except birds and many invertebrates are capable of hibernating for great lengths of time.
3rd - are there any other witnesses to a world wide flood, other than Genesis? Yes. Not only did many of the nations around Israel have a similar story of a flood… but according to an article in Reader’s Digest “the legends of practically every culture on earth - even the Hopi Indians of the American Southwest and the Incas who lived high in the Peruvian Andes… attest to this monumental event” (September 1977 p. 129ff)
Sociologists tell us that whenever a story occurs in more than one culture or society, there is often good evidence that that event took place.
4th - where is there any evidence that such a flood could ever have taken place? Yes there is. For example on the tops of high mountains, researchers have found fossils of ocean creatures. Now there’s only a few ways such marine creatures could ever get up there - and Noah’s flood is one of those possibilities.
Many scientists (who believe the Genesis account) suspect that an excellent example of the aftermath of Noah’s flood can be found in the Grand Canyon. For ages we’ve been told that the Grand Canyon is the result of a meandering river over a period of millions of years. But if you look at it closely, it resembles what we often see in miniature in a barren field after an extremely heavy rain - gulleys.
The aftermath of Mt. St. Helens’ explosion a few years back seems to substantiate that. In a matter of days, the devastation brought about by that volcano’s eruption created a landscape not too much different from that which is observed at the Grand Canyon.
ILLUS: Thomas H. Maugh II wrote this in the Los Angeles Times, back in October of 2000
“A U.S. archeologist recently found the remains of a 7,500-year-old building--probably a house--more than 300 feet below the surface of the Black Sea. Robert Ballard, famous for discovering the Titanic, took photographs of the structure and recovered some artifacts from the site using a remote-controlled submersible called Argus, not much bigger than a washing machine. The building appears to have been on the beach of the Black Sea, which at that time consisted of fresh water. (Map of Black Sea?)…
“Now we know that people were living on that surface when the Flood took place, because we are finding evidence of human habitation,” Ballard reported in a telephone interview from his ship off the Turkish coast. Last year Ballard found indications of an ancient coastline with tree
branches and other debris, miles out from the current Black Sea coast.
Ballard, a National Geographic Society explorer in residence, said he had studied shells found along the ancient coastline and found two types. One group is an extinct type of freshwater shell, while the second is from saltwater shellfish. The saltwater shells date back 6,500 years, while the freshwater shells all date to 7,000 years ago and older. “We know that there was a sudden and dramatic change from a freshwater lake to a sea of saltwater 7,000 years ago” Ballard states.
”And we know that as a result of that flood, a vast amount of land went underwater. We also know that that land was inhabited. What we don’t know is who these people were, and how broad their settlements were.”
CLOSE: Aside from the evidences we’ve just mentioned, you have another remarkable and dependable witness that Noah’s Flood occurred: the voice of almighty God. God spoke of the flood in Genesis…
He spoke of it through the Apostle Peter
He spoke of it through the writer of Hebrews
And He spoke of it when He became flesh and walked among men
Expect the critics to challenge that. After all, it’s "only" God’s word. But, if it weren’t the flood they were challenging, it would be some other Biblical miracle. Skeptics thrive on challenging the Christian faith by questioning that which you "can’t prove." They’ve done it in the past with historical figures like Abraham, and Moses and King David. And every time they’ve challenged the existence of such Biblical characters, archeology has eventually unearthed something that confirms everything the Bible has said.
But, in the days of those challenges (before archeology could prove the skeptics wrong) it came down to whether a Christian was willing to trust God on something that could not be proven. Or, as Hebrews says "things not yet seen."
You see, Noah believed God even though he had no "proof." God’s word was the only evidence he had to rely on - and he believed. AND because he believed - even when he had no other basis to fall back on - Noah was one of the best examples of the faith God respects.
“Faith (God tells us) is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1)
SERMONS IN THIS SERIES
Excited Anticipation - Hebrews 11:1-11:6
Flood Faith - Hebrews 11:7-11:7
Believing God - Hebrews 11:8-11:19
