Noah’s Ark - for Adults
Scripture: Genesis 6:1-9:17
Introduction:
This week, about Tuesday, I asked Ron what I should preach on today and he said, “Noah, Building the Ark.” So, I thought about that, and then in the evening I read the story of Noah.
Noah and the Ark is usually relegated to Sunday School, or children’s stories. And maybe because we have done that, we’ve missed some of the most important lessons God has for us from stories like,
David and Goliath
Noah and the Ark
The Firey Furnace
Joseph and his Coat of Many Colors
and others...
So today, I’ve called the message, “Noah’ Ark, for Adults” because these four chapters are really not a children’s story.
Children enjoy hearing about the animals and the big boat and the rainbow and how God rescued Noah and his family, but really, this story of Noah is a sobering account of divine judgment upon ALL of humankind.
This story talks about the moral state of humanity back then. And perhaps we relegate this story to a children’s story because, maybe, just maybe, it’s a little too close to what is happening in our world today, so it makes us uncomfortable.
And we do that, don’t we. We take the scripture, especially some of these very severe Old Testament stories, and we take the pretty parts of them, the rainbow and the dove with the olive branch, and so many other nicer parts of the story, and we focus on those - and we miss the lesson. Or at the very least, we miss the whole of the lesson, and so our teaching and therefore, our learning, becomes scewed.
We live in an age of biblical illiteracy. Very few people know even the basic or once most popular stories of the Bible. But even with that, there are very few people who have not heard of Noah’s Ark. There are cartoons about it, movies made of it, toys, campgrounds named after it, and even jewelry and clothing depicting it.
In almost all of ancient world history there are catastrophic flood stories. Anthropologists have collected about 275 such stories.
Let’s look at what the story of Noah’s Ark actually tells us. The story really has three parts to it. Three things ABOUT God that we can learn from the story. We’re going to look at God’s Heartache, God’s Joy, and God’s Grace.
And I hope in looking at each of these areas we’ll have a better understanding of God, and who HE is, but we’ll also have a better understanding of ourselves, and where we stand with God.
Let’s look first at:
GOD'S HEARTACHE
What grieves the heart of God? I mean, can he even sense grief, or sorrow - since he knows everything anyway?
In verse 6, we’re told God’s heart was filled with pain. He was filled with sorrow, over how his creation had responded to his provision.
See . . .
1. God sees evil (vs 5, 12)
God sees the evil in our lives. I wonder sometimes if we fully understand that God truly is watching us. He sees the evil in our lives and in our world. When we think it’s just a little sin, or we think we can get away with one thing or the other. God sees. There’s the little children’s chorus we’ve sung here - “Oh be careful little feet where you go.” God is not blind to us. He sees our joys and our sorrows, our righteousness AND our sinfulness. He sees where we go, what we look at, the things we listen to.
Gloria Gaither is the one I first heard talk about how it was never really hard for her to believe that God made the universe and all of creation and all those big things. But, she said, that God chose to get involved in my Monday mornings. That’s what she said was hard for her to grasp.
God is involved in our lives. He’s watching. And maybe there are times you just feel like crying out to the Lord - ‘Lord, don’t you see what’s going on around here?! Don’t you see this abuse, the wickedness of our world?” Make no mistake about it. God knows. He sees. He’s aware. Now for some us, that will bring comfort. For others of us, it will make us squirm - make us feel quite UNcomfortable. God sees. And he knows.
And . . .
2. God will not contend with sin forever (vs 3)
God is patient. And he’s kind and loving. But verse three tells us that God will not put up with sin forever. And there came a point in Noah’s day - in Noah’s generation when God decided his creation - the people he had made, who disobeyed him at the very beginning, had now crossed a line. They had sunk to a level of living in the flesh - a sinful state of living - where God’s patience had run out.
I might be wrong, but I tend to think that SOME people - some churches, put such an emphasis on God’s love and his grace and his mercy and his patience that we get this idea in our head that God WILL contend with our sin forever. That’s not what my Bible tells me. There comes a point in our lives, both personally and as a nation, where God says, “Enough is enough.” We see it with Jesus when he drives the desecrators of the temple out of it with a whip.
We play Russian Roulette when we become flippant with God’s grace. When we take his patience as a given. When we become loose, and non-chalante in our attitude toward sin.
God WILL NOT contend with sin forever.
Why? Because . . .
3. God grieves over our sin (vs 6)
It breaks God’s heart when we follow a sinful path. When we relegate God to the back burner.
In verse 6 we’re told God was “grieved” and “His heart was filled with pain.” God feels pain. He experiences sorrow.
Are we truly aware of how our sin affects our heavenly Father? It breaks his heart when he sees us striving to be more like the world than like him. He LONGS for us to hunger and thirst after righteousness. Are we too busy.
I am - sometimes.
See, this story of Noah isn’t about what we think of as the REALLY BIG sins. What we classify today as the BIG ones. Just hold that thought. I’ll come back to that at the conclusion of my message today.
What we need to know, in all of this, is that . . .
4. God judges those who are sinful (vs 11)
This is the hard one for all of us to hear. No matter where we are in our walk with the Lord. No matter how close we think our relationship with Christ, is. This is a hard concept for ANY of us to grasp.
God is not in the business of tolerating sin. And this story of Noah, tells us, without question, that God will show us, that he takes sin seriously.
Now, here’s the deal. God holds us accountable for our thoughts and actions. God holds us accountable for our sin.
How many of you have heard that little saying, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” Sure, we all have. It’s a good saying. It helps us, especially in these days of terrible atrocities leveled against those we judge as having sin in their lives. It helps those of us who tend towards judgmentalism and legalism to take a step back and be careful of an unloving, unforgiving spirit.
But there is another side to that coin. It’s called accountability. Responsibility.
Folks, we can love the sinner and hate the sin until the cows come home - an I hope we do - but in the end - when all is said and done, the sinner (that’s you and me by the way) - the SINNER MUST take responsibility for his or her sin.
It’s true! God loves the sinner - everyone of us! And he hates the sin! And the reality is, the SINNERS DROWNED!!
The sinner must OWN their sin. That is what leads to repentance.
I AM a sinner. I don’t just HAVE sin. I AM a sinner.
God forgive me!!
In Noah’s day, they didn’t think much about their sin - they just did it. Our society glamorizes sin. The Boston Globe ran an article not too long ago on recent books and moves that glamorize serial killers. We live in a culture of death, in a morally toxic society. People are attracted to dark humor. We make pain and killing into a comedy and laugh at it.
Verse 5 tells us, the Lord how great wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the heart was only evil all the time.
God knew what he was doing when he told us NOT to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He knew, if we knew, we would choose evil over good. We would rebel.
That’s our depravity. The heart is deceitful above all things, and wicked.
And God’s heart aches.
So God chose to send a message to the world. A message that he will not overlook sin. And while God will not overlook sin, he is not indifferent either. God chose to spare one man and his family. Noah.
Noah was God’s Joy. He was God’s joy for at least three reasons.
GOD'S JOY
First,
1. Noah was righteous (vs 9)
Verse 9 tells us Noah was a “righteous man and blameless among the people of his time.
Noah walked with God, by faith, as a living example to those around him. Noah means “rest” or “comfort.” He lived a lifestyle of courage. He found his rest, his comfort in God, because no-one else apparently was living that way. Just Noah and his family.
Do we follow God even when those around us are going in other directions? Noah conformed to God’s standards and expectations - not the world’s.
Noah is also called “blameless” in verse 9. That’s the idea of being “complete.”
It doesn’t mean Noah was sinless. What it does mean is that he had a relationship - a daily, walk with God - communion with God.
And
2. Noah was obedient (vs 22)
Verse 22 tells us Noah did everything just as God commanded him.
Noah built the entire Ark before the first raindrop ever fell. Before the earth opened up and flood waters rose. And the Ark was big - it wasn’t something you could hide. Noah’s was not a private, personal faith. (There’s a whole sermon in there!) The Ark was big - it was visible. It was 450 feet in length. 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. It was BIG!!!
Now let me ask you something. How ridiculous do you think Noah looked building that Ark? What do you think, people thought, about Noah?
Now let me ask you something else?
How ridiculous does your obedience look in the eyes of the world? Does your obedience look comfortable, safe, warm, doable? Or does your obedience look courageous, noticeable, risky, challenging?
It’s just my opinion, but I think Noah’s obedience was likely pretty tough. The Bible doesn’t tell us - it’s only inferred in the children’s stories, but I imagine Noah got ridiculed quite a bit about what he was doing.
But still . . .
3. Noah was faithful (7:1)
We’re told “when everything was ready” God told Noah and his family to go into the boat with the animals and provisions and Noah did it.
Noah was a faithful witness to his generation.
Again, it’s just my opinion, but I think Noah’s lifestyle likely stood out like a sore thumb in contrast to the wickedness of his generation.
And then in chapter 8, verse 1, we’re told these wonderful words, that I’m sure we all would want to hear, “God remembered Noah.”
GOD'S GRACE (8:1)
Now here’s the deep, deep significance of this story. This is the transition right here from judgment to grace. We often call this story “The Great Flood” or “Noah’s Ark” but perhaps what it really needs to be called is, “God’s Rainbow.”
Even though the world was wiped out, God still gave the world a second chance - through Noah and his family.
In 1 Peter 3:21, Peter compares the ark to baptism - life rising out of death. From the shelter of the ark, out of the death and devastation of the flood, a new world rose.
There was only one door into the ark and there is only one Gospel. Jesus is the door. Jesus is the Ark. He rescues us from death.
In Noah’s day, simply knowing there was an ark didn’t save anybody. It was being IN the ark that saved Noah and his family. And we have to be IN the ark too. It is being IN Christ that saves us.
Conclusion:
The Adult version of Noah’s Ark is what we would today call a tragic love story. The flood was horrible. But what would be even more horrible would be if God ignored sin and literally, all hell would break loose on earth.
I said early on that this story of Noah wasn’t about what we call the REALLY BIG sins. I want to clarify that.
In Matthew’s gospel, chapter 24, verses 37-39, it says this, “
When the Son of Man returns, it will be like it was in Noah’s day. In those days before the flood, the people were enjoying banquets and parties and weddings right up to the time Noah entered his boat. People didn’t realize what was going to happen until the flood came and swept them all away. That is the way it will be when the Son of Man comes.”
What was it really like in Noah’s day?
Everything normal.
In Noah’s day they were not having orgies in the street, or doing drug deals in broad daylight, or abusing babies.
In Noah’s day they were enjoying parties. They were getting married.
In other words, they were have a good life! And I submit to you this morning, in conclusion, that that is the greatest danger we, as Christians, - the world is a whole other matter - we who call ourselves Christians, are facing today a normalcy that is not normal in God’s eyes. God sees that for us today, it is as it was in the days of Noah - we are eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage.
And God is calling us to build an ark.
I read just this week - I think it was in my devotions, I’m not sure. I read this. “We ask God to do great things, and then we think it strange when he tells us to build an ark.”
I believe God is calling us to build an ark. He’s calling us to live a life that is in stark contrast to the “normal” of this world - of the society we live in.
I don’t know exactly what that will mean for you. It might mean giving up something that is perfectly innocent - normal by today’s standards - but GOD is telling you it’s not his best for you.
It might mean rearranging your priorities and taking a stand against those normal, perfectly acceptable things that use up too much of your time and leave you little to no time for God’s work.
It might mean a complete change of lifestyle. I don’t know - but I know these things are hard. I know it can be pretty easy to take care of the big sins in our lives. It’s a whole lot harder to build an ark when there is no sign of rain on the horizon. But I do believe God is calling us to the hard places. He’s calling us to make Noah’s Ark OUR story. It’s a lesson for adults, not just a children’s story anymore.
Let’s pray.
Note: Some of the ideas for this message, and the title, came from Robert Leroe's message "Noah - for Adults."
