Sermon Central
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Noah: The Man With Perseverance Series
Contributed by Rik Wadge on Dec 2, 2006 (message contributor)
Summary: Part I of a six week series demonstrating how God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things.
From Ordinary to Extraordinary - Week 2
(Noah: the Man with Perseverance)
Dr. Rik B. Wadge
Opening Story:
+It was one of the darkest nights, which the little town of Salem had ever experienced. +The darkness beckoned to the enemies of all that is good... to come. +Salem as of late, had been experiencing evil as never before. If it were not for all this having been confirmed by the most highly +respected Rev. Cotton Mather, one would never have believed that such occurrences could ever have taken place. Let me give just a short example of what those days in Salem were like. I’ll retell them from Cotton Mathers’ diary, dated 1689:
+"In the night, a man named Morse was pulled by the hair and pinched and scratched. He was also hit until he bled from parts of his body. A little boy was the principal sufferer of these horrors, for he was flung about at such a rate, they feared that his brains would be beaten out. All the knives which belonged to the house were one after another stuck into the little boy’s back, and many times the boy would be thrown into the fire. There were occasions when they could actually see this shadowy figure strike the boy, but they couldn’t catch hold of it."
+These events in the history of America, remind me of the time in which +Noah lived. The earth was destroyed because of man’s wickedness.
Genesis Ch. 6:1-8
+"The Moral Climate"
“When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, {2} the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. {3} Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal ; his days will be a hundred and twenty years." +{4} The Nephilim were on the earth in those days--and also afterward--when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. {5} The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. +{6} The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. {7} So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth--men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air--for I am grieved that I have made them." +{8} But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.”
Notice:
+vs. 2 says "the sons of God, .... the daughters of men" +Alexandrian translation reads “Angels” for sons of God.
+vs. 2 says "they married any one they chose..."
+vs. 3 says that God was "contending" with the people then. This means “to plead (the cause) with someone.”
vs. 4 a race of people (giants) called +"Nephilim". They show up again in Numbers 13:32-33 (NIV) +"… They said, "The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. {33} We saw the Nephilim there. We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them."”
Were there such beings as the Nephilim, the Bible says Yes! The Rabbis indicate a number of ancient legends about these giants… who or what were they… we really don’t know for sure, but they may have left a mark for us to explore.
Just outside of Fort Worth Texas, lies the Paluxy river with some strange imprints left during the time of the dinosaur.
+ could these be the footprints of Nephilim?
+ These prints are 19 to 24” in length and were etched in stone at the same time that the dinosaurs walked the earth…. Who were these people?????
If these were the same race of giants....
Gen. 6:5, 6 suggests that these people were so bad, so evil, that it caused God pain.
Though there have been horrible, godless times on the earth, God hasn’t destroyed it because of the wickedness. +Genghis Khan of the twelfth Century, who with 60,000 warriors destroyed everything in His path. To this day there is no parallel in all of history. They conquered all of eastern Asia, all of Central Asia, India, Persia, the Near East, and Russia. Never since has so much of the earth’s surface been ruled by one nation.
+WWII Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany. Where more than 6 million Jews were brutally murdered because of a nation’s prejudice. More Christians have been martyred in this century than in all previous 19 centuries combined. +Yet, the time when Noah lived was the most horrible period in the history of the human race.
