The Days of Noah

[0:00] Last time we discussed those verses in Genesis chapter 6 and the various theories surrounding the Nephilim.

[0:18] ! Remember those guys, they were described as giants, but their origin is very debatable.! Key verses which we examine last time included these from Genesis 6. I want to read those again starting in verse 5.

[0:36] The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens.

[1:03] For I am sorry that I have made them. We see here the devastating results of the sin that occurred in the Garden of Eden and how it has spread like gangrene throughout the human race.

[1:19] That spread, by the way, has not dissipated in our day. It's still spreading. Sin on this planet is rampant.

[1:31] We discover in Genesis that God was grieved in his heart that he had made humans. That concept is difficult for us to get our hands around.

[1:45] And also that God would blot humans out of existence. Another difficult concept. But then we come to one of the most beautiful passages in all of Scripture, verse 8.

[1:58] But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Beautiful passage of Scripture. The favor that Noah found was not based on Noah.

[2:13] It was based upon the unmerited, undeserved grace of God. It's the only kind of grace there is. It's the only kind of grace we need. Unmerited, undeserved.

[2:25] I think a quote from John Calvin is in order here. I acknowledge indeed that here Noah is declared to have been acceptable to God because by living uprightly and holy he kept himself pure from the common pollutions of the world.

[2:44] Whence, however, did he attain this integrity but from the grace of God. The commencement, therefore, of this favor was gratuitous mercy.

[2:55] After the words, the Lord, having once embraced him, retained him under his own hand, lest he should perish with the rest of the world. I have interesting discussions with my good friends that believe you can lose your salvation.

[3:10] And I say, if you can, you will. You can't keep it for five seconds. And those that believe that, I say, is that for any sin?

[3:21] Like spitting on the sidewalk or throwing your gum out the window? He said, no, no, it's got to be serious. And I said, okay, well, what about violating the greatest commandment of loving God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and you don't live up to that.

[3:36] And the second greatest commandment, love your neighbor as yourself. If you violate those. Well, he had to think about that because he had never fulfilled those and none of us have. Totally. Noah had three sons named Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

[3:52] As God surveyed the earth, he saw corruption and he saw violence. I wonder what he would say today. That corruption began in the Garden of Eden when our first parents chose the path of disobedience.

[4:07] Violence was introduced by the next generation with Cain killing his brother Abel. By Noah's time, all flesh had become corrupt.

[4:22] That is when God made a declaration to Noah, an interesting declaration. He said this, And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them.

[4:39] Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. By the way, we're not 100% sure what that is. Make rooms in the ark and cover it inside and out with pitch.

[4:52] This is how you are to make it. The length of the ark, 300 cubits. Its breadth, 50 cubits. And its height, 30 cubits. I'm not 100% sure how long a cubit is.

[5:03] We think 18 inches, but we don't know. Make a roof for the ark and finish it to a cubit above and set the door of the ark in its side. Make it with lower, second, and third decks.

[5:17] For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die.

[5:29] But I will establish my covenant with you and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring to every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you.

[5:48] They shall be male and female, of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind.

[5:59] Two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive and take with you every sort of food that is eaten and stored up. It shall serve as food for you and for them.

[6:12] Noah did this. He did all that God commanded him. I once heard of a report written by naval engineers at the United States Naval Academy that said their experiment showed that a craft of this size and construction was the most seaworthy one ever contemplated.

[6:32] Almost impossible to sink the way it was constructed. And God gave Noah many commands and instructions in the passage we just read.

[6:43] But this chapter closes with this beautiful statement, Noah did all that God commanded him. What a beautiful, beautiful statement. And of course we know that Noah worked on this ark a long time, 120 years.

[7:01] He got to preach to his neighbors who were probably standing around laughing at him that there was going to be a flood in this part of the region of the earth. There had never been a flood before. And when you come to Genesis chapter 7, I'm told by those who know the Hebrew language that the best translation of verse 1 is, Then the Lord said to Noah, Come into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation.

[7:32] Now most translations, and perhaps yours, read the command as, Go into the ark. It's time. Noah, get your family. Go into that ark.

[7:44] I like the phrase, Come into the ark. That tells me that the Lord was inside the ark. And He's going to be in there with Noah and his family.

[7:57] The Lord spoken of here is the second person of the Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ. We should also remember that the ark itself is a type of Christ. Noah and his family found grace, mercy, and protection from corruption and death that surrounded them in the ark.

[8:22] The ark was a haven, a safe haven. This is the same grace, mercy, and protection that we find in this corrupt world in which we live by being in Christ and He in us.

[8:36] So they were in the ark, which is a type of Christ. After entering the ark, the Lord told Noah that He would send rain in seven days.

[8:48] On the seventh day, it began to rain. It rained for 40 days and nights. We also know that water rose from the deep recesses under the earth.

[9:01] There was water under the earth. We also know that there was a canopy of water in the atmosphere. All that changed after the flood, but before that, it protected them from the sun's rays and a lot changed after the flood.

[9:20] And that canopy came down. Plenty of water there. The whole earth was covered with water. And all life save that of Noah, his wife, his three sons, and his three daughter-in-laws perished.

[9:39] Everything on the earth. I think a little brief comment here is in order. Many liberal seminaries teach a local flood theory.

[9:51] Their argument is God's too loving to have destroyed everybody. He wouldn't do that. The argument is that God would not destroy people well removed from that area, so He only filled up the Mesopotamian Valley, which is a group of mountains, and it became a great big pond.

[10:13] The water, they argue, was trapped inside that range of mountains, created a deep lake. That, of course, is an absurd point to the point of being laughable. Can you imagine Noah in the ark, and he's out on this body of water trapped by mountains all around, and he's floating around, as we'll see later, for a year.

[10:36] That's how long they were in the ark. He's floating around for a year, and can you imagine the people that survived, they're going to gather on those surrounding hills and watch him float by.

[10:48] I mean, that's cheap entertainment in a small area, you know. Let's go down here. It's about time for Noah to come by again. I mean, what kind of deal is that?

[11:00] I was once asked by a liberal, why do you believe the flood was universal? And I said, because sin was universal. I mean, end of discussion.

[11:11] He walked off. Interestingly, every culture retains a flood story. Now, it's like, remember when you're in the first grade, we have a teacher here, and you get all your kids, and the teacher would whisper a story, a brief story, and said, now pass it on.

[11:29] And by the time it gets to the end, it's not even close to the story that the teacher started. It's totally changed. So why did I bring that up? Well, there's been a flood story in all cultures, but it's not, it's a truth that there was a flood, but they didn't retain the inerrant flood story that's in the Bible.

[11:52] They had shifts and changes and all that. So it may have been twisted over time, but it's been reported in all parts of the earth. There is archaeological evidence for the flood in cave drawings in Africa.

[12:07] There's archaeological evidence that's been uncovered in China, in South America. They talk about the flood. There are flood stories told among Native Americans.

[12:19] I mean, my OSHA later table knew that. There are flood stories told by Native Americans in North America. I'm going to digress for a moment.

[12:29] I'm going to throw in this for free. I'm not going to charge for this. I want to talk about the Grand Canyon because we're talking about the flood and it's important. Most people have been taught and believe that the canyon was formed by trickles of water coming down the Colorado River over hundreds of millions of years, maybe billions.

[12:55] It sort of removed a molecule of rock at a time. And in this vast time, the water ate away the rocks, exposing what we see today.

[13:06] And if you've never been to the Grand Canyon, you need to go. It is absolutely gorgeous. Just beautiful. Now, since we're talking about water from the flood of Noah, I'd like to suggest an alternate creation of the Grand Canyon.

[13:26] And first, I have to say, I believe in a young earth. I don't believe the earth is five billion years old. Now, if I'm proven wrong someday, it will not impact my faith in the least.

[13:37] But I read a lot of John Morris and Dwayne Gish. I met Dr. Gish. These were creation scientists and they're well written. Most of them are with the Lord now.

[13:49] We do know geologically that there was a massive flood at some point and that the continents of the earth experienced great uplift. All the continents lifted up thousands of feet.

[14:03] Picture the North American continent. It's down here low. And all of a sudden, there's this uplift. It trapped an unknowable amount of water all across Canada and the United States.

[14:21] It's lifted up and it's like a big bowl up here. We can't even calculate how much water, how deep it was and from one coast to the other and it's all trapped up here.

[14:33] The uplift also formed the Pacific Basin which was a large hole where the Pacific Ocean exists now. And by the way, if you fly over the Atlantic, that's like a pond compared to the Pacific.

[14:49] I've flown over both. Pacific Ocean is unbelievably huge. You can put 12 Chinas in the Pacific Ocean and they won't see each other. They'll be separated so far they won't see each other.

[15:01] 12 Chinas, second largest country on earth. All of this water was trapped. This is the theory. And it breached in the southwestern part of the United States around Arizona.

[15:17] And it breached. And that water starts draining from across Canada and the United States. What is now Canada and the United States. And it's going out that way.

[15:28] That way. And it ate away rock and it formed the Grand Canyon. Now we had a miniature Grand Canyon formed when Mount St. Helens exploded and it formed in three days.

[15:44] They took pictures of that, close-ups, and they asked some scientists, how long would that take to do it? Oh, that's 100 million years at least. Three days you had a little miniature Grand Canyon after Mount St. Helens.

[15:55] The water, by the way, when it rushed, filled the Pacific Basin in what today is the Pacific Ocean. And it is huge. And it's also deep.

[16:07] You can put Mount Everest in the deepest part, the Marianas Trench, and the top of Mount Everest, if you could put it in there, is one mile from the top of the water. It's a mile under the water.

[16:18] And then all the way down, 30,000 feet. So it's huge. Anyway, that's my theory and I didn't charge for it. Back to Noah.

[16:30] If we do the math, we discover that Noah spent one year in the ark in his family. And one guy was really particularly, he said, actually it was a year and ten days.

[16:41] Okay. I don't know if he was using the Jewish calendar or our calendar or what. I want to move into the ninth chapter of Genesis. And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

[17:01] The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea.

[17:15] Into your hand they are delivered. And we know that's true, don't we? I mean, I go out, I feed deer every night and they're waiting for me.

[17:26] And I go out and when I come out, they run off. And I'm telling them, I'm not going to hurt any of you. I'm going to feed you. It doesn't do any good.

[17:37] They run off. They come back later. God has done that. Into your hands they are delivered. He's telling Noah, into your hands they are delivered.

[17:48] Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life.

[18:03] don't eat anything alive and don't eat anything that still has blood in it. And for your life blood I will require reckoning from every beast I will require it and from man.

[18:17] From his fellow man I will require reckoning for the life of man. Now listen to these words. Very important. Whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed for God made man in his own image.

[18:37] God made man in his own image. And you be fruitful and multiply increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.

[18:48] Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.

[19:09] It is for every beast of the earth. I establish my covenant with you that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.

[19:25] And God said, This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for all future generations. I have set my bow in the cloud and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

[19:42] When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature and all flesh. And the water shall never again become flood to destroy all flesh.

[19:57] Now we've had floods, haven't we? We've had them here. But not the whole earth. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.

[20:13] God said to Noah, this is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth. I hope when you see a rainbow, you remember that covenant. That's what the rainbow is there for.

[20:25] And they're beautiful. And if you go outside and you see a rainbow and it's arcing, look closely because you're going to see another one. There's usually one much fainter right above it.

[20:37] And they're just... And where we live up in the country, you know, and you can see for a long ways, they're just marvelous. They're just marvelous. Well, we see much in these 17 verses.

[20:50] And here's some major points. Mankind is ordered to fill the earth with offspring. God wants us having children. I've told my wife that when we were younger and we stopped at two.

[21:02] I wanted five and she said, go ahead. That was all she said. Remember that? I was really good to her on the second son.

[21:18] I left six days later for the FBI Academy. It was gone a hundred days. She was glad to get me out of the house. God placed fear in most animals.

[21:29] He placed the fear of men in them. God now allowed man to eat certain animals for food. Prior to that, we were vegetarian.

[21:41] I'm glad I'm in the 21st century. I mean, but now we can eat animals. God also ordained capital punishment for murderers.

[21:54] People that kill someone, and I want to say this, illegally, forfeit their life according to God's standards.

[22:05] Now, most states, or a lot of states do not have the death penalty. A lot do. When I was, before my time in the FBI, I was a detective in Fort Worth, and I worked on eight capital murder cases.

[22:20] They were my baby. And of those eight, one guy got acquitted. seven of them were convicted and got the death penalty.

[22:31] One death penalty was commuted to life without parole by the Supreme Court. The other six ran out of appeals and were all six executed.

[22:43] All six of them. Did that bother me? Did I lose any stipulation? No. What bothered me is what they did to the victims. Now, that bothered me. That bothered me.

[22:56] But now we have the death penalty. Now, there are certain grounds where we can take a human life. Police officers can, in a lawful discharge of their duties.

[23:10] Police officers can also unlawfully do that. But lawfully, soldiers in a just war. So there are. And in Israel, they even had sanctuary cities.

[23:21] If you accidentally kill someone, like your chariot ran over somebody, it was an accident, and the family wanted to kill you, you could go to a sanctuary city. And they couldn't go in there and get you.

[23:33] But you had to stay until the high priest died and a new high priest was sworn in. I mean, that could be a long time, right? God also established a covenant with Noah and his sons that he would never again destroy the earth by water.

[23:52] We would have floods. We've had them. But not a universal flood that covers the entire earth. God's not going to destroy us by water.

[24:03] He's going to destroy this earth by fire. The great uncreation. Elements are going to melt with fervent heat. And he's going to create a new heaven and a new earth for us.

[24:16] And again, God would confirm the covenant by displaying a rainbow in the sky. See a rainbow. Remember that you're under a covenant that God made with Noah.

[24:28] I'm not going to flood the entire earth again. I saw a movie. There's been several movies on the flood and most of them are horrible.

[24:41] The worst was made for TV. And this guy, he said, how am I going to do this? And God spoke to him and said, I'll take care of that. Don't worry. The next day he got up and it was like you're in a lumber yard with boards that were already cut and it had arrows.

[24:57] Connect this board to this board. It was terrible. Oh my gosh, it was horrible. And he was out there with his family and then this guy comes pedaling up in his own self-made boat and it was Lot.

[25:13] Lot didn't even exist in that period of time. I mean, it was a horrible movie. Anyway, that's enough for that. Then something strange and subject to much debate among theologians occurred.

[25:29] The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan.

[25:40] God pointed that out. He wanted that in there. God the Holy Spirit wrote that through Moses and put that in there. These three sons were the sons of Noah and from these people the whole earth were dispersed.

[25:58] Interesting language. Noah began to be a man of the soil. a farmer. And he planted a vineyard.

[26:11] Now, I don't think he got grapes overnight, but the next sentence says, he drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent.

[26:24] And let me say, we're Baptist folks. Most Baptists don't drink or they hide it. The Bible never speaks favorably of being drunk.

[26:35] It talks about drinking wine and things, but it's not the wine of today, I promise you. But drunkenness is always in a bad light. Well, Noah gets drunk.

[26:48] And it says, he lay uncovered in his tent. And that is what it says it is. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father.

[27:04] Doesn't tell us what he was doing in there, in his tent. And told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, now picture that, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father.

[27:26] Their faces were turned backward and they did not see their father's nakedness. And when Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, and we don't know how he found out, but he found out, he said, interesting, cursed be Canaan.

[27:49] That's his grandson. Ham's first boy. Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be to his brother.

[28:02] And then he says, blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth and let him dwell, but listen to where he dwells, in the tents of Shem.

[28:21] and let Canaan be his servant. Canaan's going to be doing a lot of serving, isn't he? And after the flood, Noah lived 350 years, all the days of Norwood, 950 years, and he died.

[28:35] Now, what in the world is Ham doing? We don't really know. But there's been much speculation. You know, when you really don't know something in Scripture, theologians write books about it.

[28:49] And there's books that have been written about this. And we don't know. And I have a theory, if the Bible's silent, we should be. First, we're told that Ham was the father of Canaan.

[29:04] Let me tell you something about Canaan. Canaan became the idolatrous enemy of Israel.

[29:15] people. They were horrible. They even sacrificed newborn babies and unborn babies. Pray you're never in a country that does that, beloved, because that brings the judgment of God.

[29:30] You know what I'm saying there, don't you? That brings down the judgment. And you know, let's be honest with each other. Look around the last few years in this country. You think we're not under God's judgment? They were the idolatrous enemies.

[29:45] of Israel. Abraham's descendants would later take their land, and that says, oh gosh, they took that people's people at God's direction.

[29:57] God said, that's lands for you, Abraham, go in there and take it. And they took it away from the Canaanites. The descendants of the sons of Noah dispersed across the earth eventually.

[30:12] And we'll see more of that next time because we're going to talk about the Tower of Babel or Babel. But let me say something.

[30:24] Contained in the DNA of these three sons and don't leave out their wives, takes two, right, are all the physical characteristics of the whole human race.

[30:40] out of this, you're going to have white folks and black folks and Native Americans, thank God, and you're going to have the Chinese. The whole human race is in the DNA.

[30:54] Don't know when it came out, but it's in there. It's in there. Noah, being a farmer, planted a vineyard. Because of the changed ecological conditions, fermentation took place and when Noah drank the wine, he became drunk.

[31:15] And as scriptures tell us, he lay naked in his tent. Maybe it was hot. Or perhaps in that state he didn't know what he was doing. He's inebriated.

[31:27] Ham entered the tent, saw the nakedness of his father. We don't know what transpired. But let me say this, because this is written about. There's no support in scripture, to support the notion that some type of physical act consistent with homosexuality occurred in that tent.

[31:48] There's folks that try to build that under speculation. The Bible is silent on that. There's no evidence to that. I mean, if that happened, I think Noah would have beat Ham to death.

[32:01] He'd been so mad. But there's no evidence that happened. But it does appear that Ham may have looked upon his father with some sinful thought or thoughts.

[32:15] Scriptures don't tell us what that was. But it appears that something like that happened. And Ham apparently, mockingly, went and told his brothers, I'm sure he's wanting them to go in and look too and come out and laugh with him.

[32:32] Well, they didn't share Ham's attitude, right? They didn't share that. They went in, they didn't look at their father, they covered him up, they did what sons should do.

[32:45] When Noah found out, he was furious. And it's interesting that he did not curse Ham, but Ham's firstborn son Canaan.

[32:56] We can be very confused about that. What might have happened is that God established the historic legitimacy of Israel's later conquest of the Canaanites.

[33:11] He laid the groundwork right there. These were the people whom Israel had to do battle shortly after they first heard Moses reading this passage that he wrote.

[33:23] Here, God gave the theological basis for the conquest of Canaan. The descendants of Ham received a sentence of judgment for the sins of their progenitor.

[33:39] They were under a curse. The descendants of Ham became the servants of Shem's descendants. Even Japheth and his offspring dwelt in the tents of Shem.

[33:55] You can see Shem's pretty important, isn't he? His two brothers are essentially subservient. One, a servant, the other living in his tents with him. Why did all these blessings come from Shem and his offspring?

[34:10] Because I want to tell you something. Even the church by descent has been blessed through Shem. Even the church.

[34:22] So who is his descendant? Someone descended from Shem that's blessed us. it is the Messiah. It's the Lord Jesus Christ.

[34:35] Humanly speaking, he descended from Shem. And God knew that way back yonder in the opening chapters of the Old Testament that the Messiah humanly would come from the loins of Shem all the way back through to Seth and then to Adam and Eve.

[34:55] And God knew that. So the Christ, the Messiah of God is going to come humanly from the loins of Shem. That's why Shem was blessed.

[35:07] What do you think Shem did? It's the fact that Jesus is going to come through his line. He's only going to come through one line. All of us are born descendants of one of those three, right?

[35:20] But only Shem is the one that had Jesus in his line. And you could read those in the first chapter of Matthew, the third chapter of Luke. Well, Noah lived another 150 years after the flood.

[35:36] Can you imagine the stories he told to his great-great-great-great-grandchildren about the flood? They'd come and sit on his knees and say, tell us about the flood, Grandpa. And he did. He lived another 150 years.

[35:49] He lived a total of 950 years. And then guess what happened? Well, you know, I wrote it down. He died.

[36:02] He died. Remember that recurring theme with all these guys? And he died, and he died. Death still ruled over humanity, taking us back to the curse of Adam and Eve in the garden.

[36:18] And death still rules today. 150 years from now, if the Lord hadn't come back, none of us are going to be in this room. Maybe 100 years, maybe two days.

[36:30] We don't know. We don't know. But death is the common denominator. I told someone the other day, I said, death can't be that bad. Everybody's doing it. If it was that bad, we'd figure out how not to do it.

[36:42] But everybody will die until the Lord comes back for the church. Let's close with a word of prayer. Father, thank you for the evening and thank you for your word.

[36:55] It's perfect. May we put it to memory and in our hearts. And Lord, thank you for the day. Be with us, Lord. Keep us close to you, we pray in Jesus' name.

[37:08] Amen. Thank you.