Nothing makes a good sermon quite like a good story. When I think back to some of the most memorable messages that I listened to or some of the best speeches I heard in college, it’s not the three points that I remember or all of the words on the screen. It’s the stories. Our real God working in the real lives of real people. Some of the most revealing points made about God’s majesty, love and grace are found right smack in the middle of these stories.
We all learned the story of Noah as children. I heard about the story of Noah in Bible School, in Sunday School, in pictures and posters that I see around the churches. We sang songs about Noah in my kindergarten class. It probably is one of the best known stories in the bible. Even if you ask non-Christians to tell you the story of Noah, they can.
If you ask them about Ruth or Esther or tell you about David, or John the Baptist or the Story of Paul, many of them probably won’t know what you are talking about, but they can get the story of Noah Pretty close. And many people believe that Noah has his own book in the bible, which is not true. The whole story of Noah is really told over the course of 4 chapters in the book of Genesis, there’s no book of Noah. The story is found in literally the fifth chapter of the Bible.
To really start looking at the story of Noah, though, you really need to look back a couple of chapters to the story of Cain and Abel. Now, I could write a whole sermon on the story of Cain and Abel, even though it is really only one chapter, but for the purposes that I’m telling it I’ll just give you the spark notes version. See, They were the children of Adam and Eve...
-Cain worked as a farmer growing vegetables and Abel tended to flocks
-Both of them brought a burnt offering to the lord, but the difference was Abel brought the very best he had, and Cain brought basically what he had lying around. Good looked pleasingly on Abel’s sacrifice but not Cain’s, which makes Cain pretty mad.
-So God shows up to Cain and says in Genesis 4:7 “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.”
-And even after this direct conversation with God himself, without missing a beat, Cain takes Abel into the field and Kills him.
I tell this story because this pretty much sets the scene for the story of Noah. In chapter 6 the bible says that God shows up on the scene and pretty much sees the story of Cain and Abel over and over again. We get to Genesis chapter 6:5 where it says: “The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.”
I can’t imagine how God felt in this moment. I mean, God laid out his expectations back in Genesis 4, and we know by the way that verse is written that this is not a new concept for them. Yet, everyone thought they could get by without God. Without missing a beat, people were stealing from each other, killing each other, and just doing whatever they pleased. Everyone, that is, except for Noah.
And you know the story. God shows up to Noah, who the bible tells us was “a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.” It doesn’t say Noah was sinless, but it says that he walked with God.
"If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.”
Noah understood this concept and walked with the Lord. He was not free with the bondage of sin, but he had enough control over it to understand what the will of the Lord is, and he found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
So, towards the end of Chapter 6, God gave Noah his instructions starting in Verse 14
14 So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. 16 Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening 18 inches all around. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. 17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish.
So we’ll just stop here for a minute, and if your Noah, what is running through your head at the moment? Is it surprise? Is it fear? I mean, after all, every single thing around so that you know is about to be destroyed. Is it relief? Did Noah kinda know that this was coming. Was he sick of a world filled with violence and anguish, and people living like they would as soon kill you as to look at you? Was he stuck in awe by the wonder and the majesty of his God at that moment or was he thinking practically about his strategy to accomplish such a task on his own? We never find out the answer for sure, and here’s why:
18 “But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. 19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. 21 You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.” And without missing a beat in the very next verse: 22 “Noah did everything just as God commanded him.”
I’m sure he faced persecution from people around him while building the ark.
I’m sure he faced ridicule even from his own family.
Noah was 600 years old when the flood waters came on the earth, so for a task that size I’ll bet it was grueling hard work. However, Noah took God seriously. He understood that a life without God would be a life that comes to an end. He understood that he needed to listen to God.
And so the Ark was finished, and Noah and his family along with all the animals entered the Ark and God shut the door and sealed it. Some bible scholars speculate that 45,000 animals may have fit on the Ark. Can you just imagine the fear that must have come over him and his family at that very moment?
The waters increased on the earth for 40 days, and the waters remained on the earth for 150 days until the Ark came to rest on a Ararat. After 40 more days Noah sent out a Dove to see what the status of the receding was, but it returned with nothing. A week later he sent it out again and it returned with an olive leaf, and the next week when he sent it out, it didn’t return.
And when the waters finally dried up God told Noah and the animals to come out of the Ark, and be fruitful and fill the earth. And without missing a beat, without a second thought, Noah built an altar to the lord and prepared a burnt offering for him. Noah immediately placed God first, and showed it with his actions. And then Noah looked up in the clouds, and you know the story from here, he saw a gorgeous rainbow. God said to Noah that this was the first and the last time I will ever destroy the earth because of sin, and this rainbow is a covenant of that truth. And Noah lived 350 more years after the flood until he died at the age of 950. And he basically became a legend. Noah, the only man of God in his time. You go all the way to Hebrews and he is referenced:
Hebrews 11:7 : 7 By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.
The Tower of Babel:
Now we know that Noah had three sons. Their names were Shem, Ham, and Japeth, and it was from these sons that the earth was filled. And chapter 10 in Genesis goes on to talk about these descendants and who they were, and then you get to Chapter 11. Chapter 11 in Genesis is the story of the Tower of Babel.
It’s interesting that we stop here because whether you know it or not, there is a lot of foreshadowing in the connection between the story of the flood and the tower of Babel. This seems to be the start of a theme throughout the old testament of the bible.
Here’s what I mean, In the beginning of the story of the tower of Babel, things are going good. The bible does not say that there was ramped violence or sin amongst this group of people, however they did have a specific instruction. Chapter 9:1 in Genesis “Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.”
Well, the Bible says that at these descendents were moving along they landed in a place called Shinar. Here, they decide to stop and build a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens. Now you would think at this point that this is not a bad plan at all. So far it seems as though no sin is being committed. However, this is not what God instructed them to do.
Now God shows up again and sees their plan which they believe is to honor him. But what does God think about this?
Genesis 11:6: The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
In other words, God says I know how this is going to end, because I know their hearts. In this very place, in the comfort of the city they have made, they will develop the impression that life is good without me. They will get the impression that they can make it through life on their own, and they’ll forget that verse that “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.” So in order to fix this, God scattered them all over the earth and confused their language…
Have a Good Week!
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