Genesis Chapter 6 Part 3

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

And welcome back. Um, in our last two lessons in Genesis chapter six, we've seen the collapse of Seth's line in verses one through four. We felt the weight of the total corruption in verse five. We stood before the grief of God in verse six, and we heard the first use of the word grace in all of Scripture that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And today we're gonna finish the chapter, and the chapter ends not with grief, but but with a commission. And I got to tell you, I'm really excited about getting more into uh chapter six and chapter seven. There's so much that we're gonna be able to talk about. Um, but before a single drop of rain has fallen, before Noah uh lifts the first piece of wood, God makes a covenant with him. And this is not an accident, this is the character of God displayed in full. He does not have to save people through the flood. He saves people before the flood through a covenant. And the chapter ends with the most uh quietly powerful sentence in in chapter six when it says, Thus Noah did according to all that God had commanded him, so he did. So let's read the text here. We're gonna go through this kind of slowly. I'm gonna grab my Bible here. Okay. Starts off in verse uh 13. It says, The then God said to Noah, The end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with uh with violence because of them, and behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth. Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood. You shall make the ark with rooms and shall cover it inside and out with pitch. I I honestly have to stop right here. I cannot wait to get to that part and explain what that means. It's it's actually amazing. And it goes on, it says, This is how you shall make it, the length of the ark, three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. You shall make a window for the ark and finish it to a cubit from the top, and set the door of the ark in the side, and you shall make it with a with lower second and third decks. Behold, I, even I, am about to bring the flood of water upon the earth to destroy all flesh, in which is the breath breath of life from under heaven, everything that is on earth shall perish. Everything on earth shall perish. Go back to our earlier lessons and in verses one through four, think about that line. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall enter the ark, you and your sons, and your wife and your s and your and your sons' wives with you. And every living thing of all flesh you shall bring two of every kind into the ark and keep them alive with you, and they shall be male and female, of the birds after their kind, and the animals after their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, two of every kind will come to you to keep them alive. As for you, take for yourself some of all food which is edible, and gather it to yourself, and it shall be for food it shall be for food for you and for them. Thus Noah did according to all that God had commanded him, so he did. So let's look here, let's open with the commission. God opens his commission to with Noah to a statement of divine perspective. Um, the end of all flesh has come before me. This is God making his decision known to the one man who would carry the future through it. The phrase to the end of all flesh is really important. God is declaring that creation as it currently exists has run its course. Not because he has finished with creation, but because the corruption has reached the point where creation in its current form cannot continue. The earth is filled with violence because of them. The violence is the visible sign of the interior corruption that we saw all the way back in verse 5. When every intent of every heart is only evil, continually the world fills with violence. And God tells Noah what he is about to do. Behold, I'm about to destroy them with the earth. Now notice the words here: destroy them with the earth, not just destroy people, the earth itself, which all flesh has corrupted, will be undone and remade. This is creation theology. The flood is not merely a punishment, it is the uncreating and recreating, a return to the watery chaos found in Genesis chapter 1, before God's ordering spirit moves again. Now, I want to pause on something that's really easy for a lot of people to miss. God did not have to tell Noah what was coming. He could have simply told him, hey, build a large boat, gather some animals, and just hang out. I'll let you know when you can come out. But God tells him everything. This is what God does with his friends. In Abraham in Genesis chapter 18, God says, I shall hide from Abraham what I am about to do, or shall I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do. And God tells him about the destruction of Sodom before it ever happens. In the book of Amos, a great book, in Amos chapter 3, verse 7, it says, Surely the Lord does nothing unless he reveals his secret counsel to his servants, the prophets. And so God takes Noah into his confidence. He shares his plan. He explains the reason. He treats Noah not as a partner. He's a man in a genuine relationship with the living God. It's really amazing. And this entire, um this is entirely consistent with what we know about Noah, because we read that he walked with God and God walked with him. And this included the darkest conversation in the pre-flood world. Now, next I want you to notice the dimensions of the ark, the design and the meaning behind that. This gets in some really deep theology. God tells Noah to build an ark from gopher wood. This is the only place the word gopher wood appears in all of Scripture. Now, there's been a lot of speculation, but we do not know with certainty what species of wood this is. Some scholars have suggested cypress, others cedar, some different types of hardwood. No one really knows. Whatever the species, it was clearly durable and appropriate for shipbuilding. God also instructs Noah to cover the ark inside and out with pitch. Now, this is amazing. The Hebrew word for pitch here is a word kofer. And here's something remarkable that most people have never been told. I was very fortunate to have a seminary professor break this down for me many years ago. Uh something I remember back from my graduate days. You go back to like 2006, 2007, and I was shocked by it then, and it still amazes me now. It reminds me constantly how amazing God's word is. So follow me on this. The word kofr pitch is the same root as the word kofar. Now, kefar spelled K-A-P-H-A-R, it means to cover, to atone for, or to make atonement. It is the root of the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. The ark was covered inside and out with atonement. The very material that kept the judgment waters out was linguistically connected to the covering that keeps divine judgment from falling on the guilty. There were two ancient writers, Tertullian and Origen, both saw this connection as very significant. The ark covered in kofer, uh the believer covered in the atoning work of Christ, the same Hebrew root, the same principle, covering protects us from judgment. So just as the ark was covered and protected, so when we are atoned by the blood of Christ, we are covered and protected. It's an amazing parallel. Next, I want you to see the dimensions of the Ark. God gives Noah these precise dimensions, 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, 30 cubits high. A cubit was a standard unit of measurement in the ancient world, is the distance from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger on average, generally understood as approximately around 18 inches. Using that exact cubic calculation of 18 inches, the length would have been about 450 feet, the width would have been about 75 feet, and the height around 45 feet. And that is a vessel roughly the size of a modern cargo ship. By any measure, ancient or modern, this is a gigantic structure. And the dimensions uh give the ratio of six to one length versus width. Now, uh, there's been a lot of study that's gone into this, and naval architects have noted that this ratio is remarkably close to the proportions used in modern shipbuilding for stability in open, rough water. Not a boxy container, but a seaworthy vessel. And here's something in the world of apologetics that is actually pretty significant. The Mesopotamian flood vessel in the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is uh the Babylonian parallel to Noah's Ark, is described as a perfect cube, six sides of equal dimensions. And naval architects have noted that a cube of that size would be catastrophically unstable in open water. It would roll and capsize almost immediately. So the Babylonian Ark is a literary device, a mythological object. Genesis describes a vessel that would actually float and be preserved during rough waters. And this is the kind of detail that rewards careful reading. Moses is not writing mythology, he is describing something very real. And what he's describing is an ark built with rooms. Literally, in the Hebrew, it's a word nest or compartments, three decks, a window near the top, and a door set on the side. And the door in the side of the ark, we'll come back to that when the flood actually begins. That's also another amazing theological truth. Because who closes that door and when is one of the most significant details in the entire flood narrative. In John chapter 10, verse 9, Jesus says, I am the door, if anyone enters through me, he will be saved. I want you to catch this. The ark had one door, one way in, one way of salvation, one door set in the side, just as the side of Christ was open at the cross. And it was Irenaeus that saw the single door of the ark as a picture of the singular way of salvation through Christ. Many waters, only one door. Eight people walked through that door in a world that was populated. And that's the pattern of the gospel that was visible thousands of years ago before the cross. Now, verse 17 opens with one of the most uh detailed constructions in the Hebrew text. He said, Behold, I am about to bring the floodwater upon the earth. The doubling of the personal pronoun, I even I, is an intensifier. In Hebrew, this construction carries the weight of I and no other. This is my deliberate action. No natural disaster, no random event. This is the direct act of God. And this is important because it prevents a naturalistic reduction of the flood. People have long speculated about natural explanations for the flood. And I'll tell you that, even skeptics have now said, okay, at one point in history there was a worldwide flood, but they come up with all types of different explanations. A catastrophic, uh catastrophic comet had an impact on the earth. It was a massive volcanic event or a glacier melting. And some of those may have been the physical mechanisms that God used. I'm not saying that they're not, but Genesis will not let us stop at a mere mechanism. I, even I, am bringing it. This is the God acting in history directly and deliberately. Now, next we see in verse 18 the sentence that changes the entire tone of the passage. When God says, But I will establish my covenant with you. There's that word again that we talked about in our last lesson. But I'm about to destroy all flesh and the earth, but I will establish my covenant with you. And this is the first use of the word covenant in all scripture. And it's going to be a consistent word throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament. But the fact that it's used here for the first time is really extraordinary because that word becomes the organizing principle of the Old Testament. Uh, the word that describes uh God's binding commitment to Abraham, to Moses, and to David appears here first, before the flood, before Abraham, before any of the covenants that most people know about. The first covenant is made with Noah, before the waters rise, before Noah has built a single plank, and before Noah has done anything except at this time just to find grace. And the covenant comes before the obedience. I want you to notice that. A covenant in the ancient world was not a business contract between equals equals. It was a binding commitment, often between a greater party and a lesser party, where the greater party initiated, defined, and guaranteed the terms. Notice God does not say, hey, build the ark, and if you do a good enough job, I will make a covenant with you. He says, I will make a covenant with you, now go build the ark. And so the covenant creates the relationship, and then obedience flows from that relationship. And here is something that deepens our understanding of this moment in a fascinating way. In the ancient Near East, particularly in what's called uh the Hittite Susarian vassal uh treaties or agreements, covenants followed a very specific pattern. They would always have a preamble. This is where uh identifying the great king who was making the covenant. They would have the historical prologue where the great king, or what their great king has done for the lesser party, and then there would be stipulations, what the lesser party is required to do, and then there are promises what the great king commits to provide for the lesser, and then the witnesses would come, and then the signers would come. And there are biblical scholars throughout time, one like Meredith Klein, who have shown that the covenants of the Old Testament broadly follow this ancient pattern. Follow this along. And because Genesis chapter 6 fits perfectly. And first you have the preamble, God identifies himself as the one acting. You have the historical prologue where he says, I even am about to bring judgment upon the earth. Then you have the stipulations, build the ark, bring the animals, gather the food, and then you have the promise, I will establish my covenant with you. This is not primitive religion. This is a sophisticated uh covenant relationship that entirely consists on how formal binding commitments were made in the ancient world. And this confirms even more that Genesis is not mythology, this is covenant history. Now let's look at the animals and the provision in verses 19 through 21. God instructs Noah to bring two of every living thing, male and female, into the ark. And this is one of the most common points of skeptical objection to the flood narrative. How could two of every species on earth fit into a single vessel? Now, there's a few important points that for the careful reader that I want you to see here. First, the text says kinds, not species. The Hebrew word is men. It's the same uh, it's the same word used through Genesis 1 for created kinds. Um, a kind in the biblical sense is a broader category than a modern biological species. Uh the dog kind, for instance, would include wolves, coyotes, and domestic dogs, all of which can interbreed, suggesting a common origin. The number of biblical kinds is far small uh far smaller than the number of modern species. You have to keep that in mind. There were far fewer animals than we have now and different kinds, different species. Um, second, not all creatures needed to be on the ark. Sea creatures were not included, marine fish, marine life fish, and the creatures of the sea would survive the flood in their own environment. The focus is on land-dwelling, air-breathing creatures whose breath of life could not survive being submerged. Now, third, many biologists and creation researchers have noted that when you work with biblical kinds rather than modern species categories, the number of animals required is well within the capacity of a vessel that was the size of the ark. So I'm telling you all that so you'll know this. This is not blind faith. It is a reading of the text with the precision the text itself uses and letting the text define its own terms. Now, go to verse 20, because verse 20 contains a detail that is very easy to overlook, where it says, Two of every kind will come to you to keep them alive. God does not say, go out and gather every creature. He says, They will come to you. This is a divine act of uh a supernatural act of divine coordination. God will bring the animals. Noah's job is to receive them and care for them. That's really, really important. This is important for us to understand, uh, to understand the nature of the whole enterprise. Noah is not the mastermind here. Noah is not the organizer of a heroic natural uh project to preserve life. Noah is the steward of what God provides and coordinates. And this is the theology of the entire flood narrative and miniature. God initiates, God provides, God coordinates, and God saves. Noah trusts God, obeys God, and receives, which is exactly the pattern of the covenant. God establishes, God commands, God fulfills. The human response is faithful obedience to what God has already purposed. Now, let's take just a minute and compare the ancient Near Eastern backgrounds. This is something that we're gonna have to do through the first part until we get to around chapter 11 and 12 of Genesis. Because if you remember from our earlier lessons, um, Moses is directly contrasting ancient world religions with what God has actually done. So we've referenced these throughout these series. But now we stand inside the Ark Commission, and it's worth doing a full comparison because the similarities between Genesis and the Epic of Gilgamesh are real. And the differences there are the point. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the flood hero receives instructions from a god to build a great boat. And here are the parallels. A single man was warned about the coming flood. He was given instructions to build a vessel, animals were brought on board, a great flood covered the earth, birds were sent out to find dry land, the vessel landed on a mountain, and a sacrifice was offered after the flood. And the existence of these parallels has led some skeptics to conclude that Genesis simply borrowed its flood story from the Babylonian tradition. But that conclusion moves way too fast. The parallel does not prove borrowing. The two documents can describe the same real event, but from different perspectives. If a global or near global catastrophic flood actually occurred in human prehistory, we would expect multiple ancient cultures. To preserve a memory of it, which is exactly what we find. Flood narratives in cultures around the world. Flood narratives all the way, Mesopotamian flood flood narratives to Greece, to India, to China, to indigenous American traditions of a worldwide flood. The parallels may be evidence that the flood actually happened and that multiple ancient cultures preserve the memory of it, but it's not evidence that Moses copied it from Babylon. Because the differences between Genesis and the Gilgamesh epic are far more theologically significant than the similarities. Let me give you just a couple of examples. In the Gilgamesh epic, the flood is sent because humanity is too noisy. The gods cannot sleep. The flood hero is warned by one god going behind the back of the chief god. The gods cower during the flood like frightened dogs. And after the flood, the gods swarm around the sacrifice because they are starving. And the flood hero is granted immortality as a personal reward. Now compare that to Genesis. In Genesis, the flood is sent because of a moral corruption across all of humanity, precisely described with people and places. God himself warns Noah openly and he provides a covenant. God is sovereign over the flood from the very beginning of the flood to the very end. And then after the flood, God accepts Noah's sacrifice out of grace, not hunger. And Noah receives not personal immortality, but a covenant, a relationship, and a commission. The Gilgamesh gods are petty. They're self-interested and terrified of the flood that they sent. The God of Genesis is sovereign, just, grieved, gracious, and present throughout. The Gilgamesh flood is a divine tantrum of a child. The Genesis flood is a moral response from God who is both just and merciful. The Gilgamesh hero survives because of clever scheming and a God who breaks ranks with the others. Noah survives because God in his grace chose to establish a covenant with him. Again, same basic event, a completely different understanding of who God is and what this all means. And that difference is everything. Now, let's move on just a little bit. We're going to look at the most important, what I believe to be the most important sentence in Genesis chapter 6, the entire chapter, because the chapter ends with 10 words in English, seven words in Hebrew, and this is what it says. Thus Noah did, according to all that God had commanded him, so he did. The repetition here is deliberate. Thus Noah did, so he did. Moses says it twice to make sure that we feel the full weight of it. Now, think about what Noah was being asked to do. He had never seen it rain before. According to Genesis chapter 2, verses 5 and 6, the pre-flood earth was watered by the myths from the ground. That's important. There was no precedent for a worldwide flood. There was no cultural memory of anything like this. And God told him to build an enormous wooden vessel in the middle of land with no body of water nearby, a structure so large that it would take decades to complete for a catastrophe that had never happened and had no natural precedent. And Noah did it according to all that God commanded him. Not most of it, not the parts that made sense to him, but he did all of it. And this is one of the most extraordinary acts of faith in all of human history. In Hebrews chapter 11, which is often called the Hall of Faith, in Hebrews chapter 11, verse 7, says, By faith, Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his own household by which he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to the faith. By faith, not by sight, not by understanding, not by natural evidence, but by faith. Noah did not build an ark because he could see the flood coming. He built it because God said it was coming, and for Noah that was enough. Now look at the words. According to all that God had commanded him. And these words are doing an enormous work here. It is the difference between partial obedience and complete obedience, between doing the things that are convenient and the things that cost something, between obeying when it makes sense and obeying when it doesn't make sense. And the contrast with the rest of the pre-flood world here is total. The pre-flood world did uh according to all that their hearts desired. Noah did according to all that God commanded. And that is the entire difference between Genesis chapter 6, verse 5, and Genesis chapter 6, verse 22. Between every intent, only evil continually, and thus Noah did. The world chose whomever they pleased. Noah obeyed whatever God commanded. And this is the clearest possible picture of what walking with God actually looks like. We're not talking about an emotion. We're not talking about a spiritual feeling. We're talking about specific, concrete, costly obedience to God, to his commands that will cost you something. An ancient church father I was reading a while back said this. He said, He said, Mark how great is the virtue of this man. He heard that the whole world was to be destroyed and was not struck with terror, that he must build an ark and ask no questions, but straightway did as he was commanded. His faith proved itself by his works, for he was 120 years building that ark. We establish in Genesis chapter 6, verse 3, that God gave humanity 120 years of warning before the flood. That means that Noah spent approximately 120 years building the ark. Let that settle for a moment. 120 years building a structure that no one believed was necessary for a catastrophe that no one believed was coming, while the rest of the world lived as tomorrow would always come. And Peter tells us in 2 Peter chapter 2, verse 5, that Noah was a preacher of righteousness. For 120 years, Noah preached, he spoke and he built. The ark itself was part of that sermon that he was preaching. It was a visible, physical, increasingly undeniable declaration that God has spoken, that judgment is coming, and there is one way to salvation through that one door. And no one except Noah and his family listened. Noah didn't wait for the results to keep obeying. He obeyed because God had spoken. And the response of others was not his responsibility. His responsibility was his faithfulness to the one who speaks. And this is one of the most important lessons in all of Genesis for anyone who is called to proclaim the truth. You are not responsible for how people respond. You are responsible for whether you build the ark or not. Now let's answer a question. And this is the question most people won't answer when studying the flood. Was the Genesis flood a global flood or just a large regional flood? Let me give you the honest landscape because this is a question where faithful Christians hold different positions. Let's start with the first one. We'll simply look at the uh the global flood position, which is the most natural reading of the text. Genesis chapter 7, which we're going to get into our next couple of lessons, verses 19 and 20 says the waters covered the high mountains under the whole heaven. Verse 21 of chapter 7 says that all flesh that moved on the earth perished. And so the language is comprehensive and universal. Proponents to uh to flood narratives and cultures around the world give evidence of a global memory. They also point to geological features like fossil deposits, um uh different layers of sediment as potential evidence for a worldwide flood event. Now, some conservative evangelical scholars hold that the flood was just a regional event, enormous civilization ending, but not necessarily covering the entire globe in a modern geographic sense. And they point out a couple of things. Like in the ancient Hebrew world, um, the known world was the Middle East, and language like all the earth or under the earth, all the heavens, often refer to the inhabited world as understood at the time. Under this view, a flood that destroyed all known human civilization would still fulfill every theological purpose of the narrative. So both positions are held by serious, conservative, Bible-believing scholars. Both positions affirm that the flood was real, that it was a real historical event, that Noah and his family were real people who really survived, that God acted directly in history to judge and to save, and the theological message is non-negotiable, regardless of the geographic scope. What neither position accepts, though, is the liberal theological view that the flood is a myth with no historical basis at all. And there's several reasons for this. Jesus treated the flood as a real historical event. Peter treated the flood as a real historical event, and the text presents it as a real historical event. Now, the one thing I don't want you to miss is that the ark is the picture of salvation. This is important. This will be our next uh part of the lesson. The ark covered in kofer with one door receiving all who enter is one of the most powerful pitchers of salvation in the entire Old Testament. Inside the ark, safe from judgment, outside the ark, perishing under judgment. No one who was inside the ark drowned, no one who was outside the ark survived. The boundary that mattered was not righteousness versus wickedness in some abstract sense. The boundary that mattered was you were either inside and covered, or you were outside and not covered. In covenant relationship with God, the God who provided the way of escape, you were either with him or you were not with him. And who was inside the ark? There were eight people inside of there, not because they were the eight most righteous people on earth, because they were the eight people who trusted God's word and walked through that one door. And this is a picture of the gospel. It's not the good people versus the bad people. Though it's those who enter through the one door and those people who do not. And these are the words of Jesus. In John chapter 10, verse 9, he says, I am the door. If anyone enters through me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. One door, one ark, one way through, one way through the judgment, and it has always been available to whoever will enter through that one door. Again, this is the first covenant in Scripture. When God says, I will establish my covenant with you, and it's made with Noah, but it foreshadows every covenant that will follow. Uh the covenant with Noah is characterized by God's initiative, God's specific promise, um, the inclusion of others, and the preservation throughout the judgment. And every one of these uh characteristics appears in the new covenant described in the New Testament. Consider this verse in Hebrews. In Hebrews chapter 8, verse 10. The scripture says, For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they will be my people. Notice the wording here. I will, I will. This is the covenant language of Genesis chapter six, running all the way to Hebrews chapter eight. God establishes, God promises, God provides. And the human response, our response, is to receive it and to build an ark that God has made specific. Now notice the final verse of Genesis chapter six. Thus Noah did. Thus Noah did. This is not just an historical note, it is the New Testament pattern of a saving faith displayed before the New Testament was ever written. It's Dr. Frank Turek who often says that there were thousands upon thousands of Christians before a single word of the New Testament was written. And he's right about that. James chapter 2, verse 17 says, even so, faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself. Noah did not just believe that the flood was coming, he built an ark. And his faith was not a private, inner disposition. I'm actually kind of tired of hearing people say my faith is private. It was never meant to be that way. It was 120 years of public, costly, visible obedience. And Hebrews chapter 11, verse 7 says that his faith condemned the world, not with his words, but with the building of an ark, with his works. Every plaint that he placed was a sermon. Every day he worked was his witness. His obedience was the most uh thought-out argument for the reality of God's word in that pre-flood world that had ever been seen. And it went unheeded. People didn't listen, which is exactly why Jesus said, for the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. Because the ark is still being built. The warning, it's still going out, and the door to salvation right now is still open. And most people today are still eating and drinking and marrying as if there is no answer for tomorrow. The question for every person hearing this is not, do you believe that a flood happened? The question I have for you today is, are you inside of the ark? Now let me bring this chapter to chapter six to a conclusion. In chapter six, the world is at its worst. Every intent, only evil, violence is filling the earth, God is grieved in his heart, and yet in the middle of the worst chapter in human history up until this point, grace appears for the first time. Covenant appears for the first time, and one man walks with God. Grace does not arrive when things are going well. Grace arrives when things are at their worst. And the covenant is always made before obedience is required. So my question is: are you in the ark? Now, next in our next lessons, we'll dive into Genesis chapter 7 and then Genesis chapter 8. We'll see the door close, the rain begin, the waters rise, and then we'll watch what happens as the God who grieves also keeps every promise that he makes. I hope that you enjoyed today's lesson. Until next time, I hope that you have a blessed day.