God was very specific here, and again, God is instructing Noah to build a floating box or chest, providing him the length, width, and height; to build a window, to build a door. But what is missing from these instructions that was given to Noah? There is no rudder and there are no means of propulsion. Boats and ships are built to navigate the waters, to transport people or something from Point A to Point B. The ark did not have the ability to do this because it had no way to determine where it would go. Why? Because the ark was not designed to go anywhere. In fact, once the earth was flooded there was no place for it to go. Its only purpose was to stay afloat and keep its occupants alive. God was the navigator of the ark. Noah did not know what was happening on the outside of the ark at all. They could not see outside.
It is clear that Noah was made motivated by a deep and abiding respect for God and took the warning of God of this impending crisis very seriously. We know that Noah walked with God. And it is interesting to me that in these scriptures about Noah, Noah does not talk to God like Abraham and Moses did. If you will notice, Noah is only listening to what God has to say and he obeyed. He obeyed everything that God told him to do no matter how difficult it would be. There is no evidence at all that his faith in God ever wavered; and he accomplished a significant undertaking which consumed approximately 120 years. There is no implication of any hesitation of obedience to God on Noah's part.
After God's first set of instructions He gave him, Genesis 6:22 says, "Noah did everything just as God commanded him." And then in Genesis 7:5, it also says, "And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him." And he did not do just that. In II Peter 2:5, it says that Noah was a preacher of righteousness. So during that 120 years, as he was building this enormous construction, he was preaching, he was warning people, and I am sure that Noah became very famous as they watched this huge vessel being constructed. And for what reason? And so I am sure that he had, probably, every day an opportunity to warn the people that they need to repent because there was an approaching doom.
Now, these were two very special men and I do not think it is a coincidence that they are linked here, and I want to just go over just a few parallels between these two men. Both Moses and Noah were saved by an ark. Noah, along with his family and the animals, were saved in this huge, massive vessel and Moses in this miniature basket of a vessel. Noah and his sons carefully coated the massive structure with pitch so no water could seep in and Moses' mother covered the little ark with the pitch and what it calls sludge.
What is interesting about the subject of pitch is that it is covered under the Day of Pentecost. It was a covering. The blood of Jesus Christ's sacrifice is our only means of truly having our sins covered and our hope for eternal life. Noah's only hope was the covering of pitch on the inside and outside to be saved. When our sins are covered, they are completely hidden. It may not be pretty, but since we do sin, we can have a continued life without guilt, which leads into my next point. Both arks were under divine protection. Noah and Moses, their only purpose in these arks was to stay afloat. These vessels, again, had no means of navigation or able to steer. How could a three month old baby steer anyway? And when Noah and his family entered the ark, it says the Lord shut them in. What would you think inside as those waters were rising not knowing what was going on on the outside.
We're coming to the time when human nature is going to feel free to expose itself to the fullest. Jesus, in Matthew 24, drew attention to the days of Noah, and most specifically to those days just prior to the flood.
I don't think that we have reached the depths to which these people had gone, but I think that you will agree that news reports indicate that we are well on the way. It says, "And God saw." It's so interesting because I think you will agree that most people live life as though God (if there is a God) has turned His back, that He is not paying attention, that He is not watching, that He is not cognizant of what is going on, and that He's not impressed by the evil that is going on. But you and I know better than that.
It says in the Psalms that His eyelids test the sons of men and that He is watching, He is waiting, and the only reason that He hasn't intervened yet is that in His wisdom and in His love, He has deemed that it is not yet time. The wickedness of the Amorites is not yet full, and if He intervened now, it would not have the effect that it is going to have when He finally does intervene. I think that you and I will fully agree that it has got to get to the place where everybody is going to admit that if God hadn't intervened, it would have been too late, and that repentance may very well would have been impossible. We aren't there yet.
It was so evil that the Hebrew more literally says that "man was evil every day." Even the most evil people, we think, have good days. But in those days mankind was evil every day. It went on without any intermission.
The reason that this was occurring was because there was no fear of God before their eyes. There was nothing to restrain human nature. It was so bad in verse 7 it literally says, "I will wipe man from the face of the soil." It is such a strong statement it indicates that one time you see mankind, and then a minute later mankind is gone.
That's what it indicates. "I will wipe man from the face of the soil." Was God aware? He sure was. There's going to come a time when He is going to intervene in events during our lifetime. In verse 13, He summarized then why He was going to bring the flood—because the earth was filled with violence. And that is the fruit of human nature without restraint. That was the effect of Satan virtually having complete access to the control of men's minds.
What we're seeing here is the culmination of mankind's refusal to live within the God-given bounds. What began in the Garden of Eden with what seems like such a little sin—they desired the fruit, they took the fruit, they ate the fruit—and it ended this way. The seed was sown, and then without restraint, 1,656 years later came the flood. It took awhile to build up, but once the ball got rolling it didn't stop.
So here earth is used in two different ways. It is used as the population of the earth and it is used as the land mass of the earth.
Jesus' words back in Matthew 5:13 makes sense in a preservation sense if we understand the earth to mean primarily the planet and its inhabitants, only by extension. So He is talking about earth as the planet and in a lesser sense, the inhabitants. Think of this using this parallel between what happened in Noah's day and what is happening in our day. He was the salt of the earth then, we are the salt of the earth now. God will not destroy the earth while His disciples, the salt of the earth like Noah, do His work on it. So in that sense, the fact that salt of the earth people are there, that is, Christ's disciples are on the earth, He will not destroy the earth. They will not be there in a preserving sense. You could think of it as holding back His wrath.
So Christians are preservatives in the sense that in them, in their character, some good still exists in the world preventing it from becoming totally wicked and sinful like the society before the Flood. So, a little bit of of goodness in the world stays God's hand because there are things yet to be done. And God's people are still witnessing of goodness in the earth. So God's people are still living there displaying very varying levels of goodness, doing His work, and influencing others in the world to turn to Him. And so in this way, Christians forestall God's wrath until the appointed time. So they preserve the earth from wrath until God has done His work completely.
And it is interesting that God destroyed the earth by water once He ensured Noah's safety. He removed Noah and his family from the equation before He let loose His wrath on all those wicked people before the Flood. So I am just going to leave that, take it as you will, but God does protect His people. So in this vein, Jesus' warning in the second half of Matthew 13 makes sense.
Turn over to Genesis 6, verse 13. In one sense, this sermon is a word study, not completely but partially. And it is always interesting to look at the meanings. There are various meanings that even a single word has in Scripture. The judgment encourages preparation for the coming of Christ. So the idea of judgment spurs us to righteous living. And this preparedness is not simply a matter of intellectual knowledge, but a faithful response to God's grace.
As an act of grace, God warns Noah of a coming judgment and reveals a plan of salvation, that is, the construction of the ark. Noah prepared for the judgment by obedience, literally building his own salvation.
So Noah is being told to do something physical in preparation for what was coming and going to happen to the world.
We should take note of that in our own lives today. That God told Noah to prepare for what he could see was coming and what God told him was coming to the world. We know what is coming to this world and we should take heed to this and be preparing ourselves for what is coming, because we do not know how much of it will have to go through. Hopefully not the Tribulation, but it can get pretty bad before that. So we should take this to heart about preparing. And that is what I mean by judgment because it can encourage people to prepare because knowing there is a coming judgment upon our nation or around the world that we do not want to end up being part of, we should prepare for that.
It takes faith and a lot of it. And we need God's help to be able to grow in faith.
Similarly, prior to the destruction of the firstborn in Egypt, the Lord graciously revealed to Moses the provisions for the Passover. Reminiscent of the description of Noah's obedience, the Israelites are said to have prepared themselves according to the Lord's instructions. They obeyed and were spared.
This ties into something that we are living through today. Every one of us knows Jesus said that when the time occurs for Him to return to earth and establish His government, and the resurrection of the just in Christ occurs, it is going to be a time like the days of Noah.
God waited 120 years through part of the life of Noah. All told, from the creation of Adam until we get to the flood was at least 1,656 years. It took that long for the end of God's patience. The end was when it had reached the point where perhaps these people would never be able to repent. Unless God intervened and kept their minds, their spirit, and their conscience from so being seared, that repentance would be impossible.
God intervened for the sake of His purpose. He did not intervene and spare Noah's life because Noah was sinless. Noah was a man who was not involved in the sins of the time. He was what we would call an upright person. He was a man of wholehearted integrity, and so he was not caught up in the iniquity of the age, and God gave him grace. God's judgment at the flood simultaneously showed both His justice in executing these people, and also His grace. He gave grace to Noah, and to the people He executed before their minds became absolutely seared. But He waited a long, long time. Every minute of that was an extension of His grace.
The earth was not filled with violence because they agreed with one another! It is obvious that they were disagreeing with one another and the result was that they were separated. They were divided from life itself because of the tragic quality and quantity of their disagreements with God and with each other. I think that these scriptures are extremely interesting in that they fall right at the beginning of the Book. The narrative that God provides in the Bible immediately shows the effect of what Adam and Eve did—and the effect of their separation from God. People began to divide into camps. They were not only divided from God but from each other and the source of life itself!
