Damariscotta Baptist Church

“The Account of Noah”

In fact, the New Testament either directly quotes or clearly refers to at least 165 passages in Genesis. 

In the beginning, we are told that God created the heavens and the earth. Right off the bat we need to recognize the importance of ancient literature. The Old Testament is made up of ancient literature and in order to understand what is written we need to take off our 21st Century mindset and look at what is written from the mindset of an ancient Hebrew reader. The ancient Hebrew word for God is Elohim. Grammatically it is a plural word used as if it were singular. This signifies that God is three persons, in one. 

The three of them, God, Son and Holy Spirit, create the heavens and the earth. Within this creation we have plants, animals, humans and all is good. 

Chapter 2, we have the completion of creation, a day where God takes a rest. Then we are given the history of the heavens and the earth, told by God to either Moses or Adam of what happened, because remember, there were no eyewitnesses. In this account, we are told that a human was made out of the dust and God breathed into the nostrils and it became alive. The Hebrew word for breath is ruach which is the same word for Spirit so for the Hebrew reader there would have been the implication that the human was specially created by God’s breathing some of His own breath into him.

God had this human and decided to build a garden for him, called Eden. Every tree in this garden was pleasant to the sight and good for eating. 

Among these trees were the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. He places Adam in the Garden and informs him that he is allowed to eat from any tree in the garden, except from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. 

God soon realizes Adam needs a helper comparable to him. So God creates Eve. All is fine and good until a talking snake appears. Satan, steps in and turns things around and the humans get messed up. Darts of confusion were thrown into the woman’s mind and she found it difficult to make a decision between what is good and what is not good. What will lead to life and what will lead to the opposite of life? Adam and Eve had access to this information all along, they personally walked and talked with God on a daily basis. God wasn’t holding any knowledge from them. Yet, Satan convinced them they were capable of knowing this without God. 

This was true, but without God, there was no “Tree of Life,” which meant the price to pay for knowing good and evil on your own, without God, was death. 

God teaches them wisdom with a riddle, as it were. They needed to trust God’s wisdom about good and bad, and learn by listening to His voice, or they could take the knowledge of good and bad into their own hands, seize it for themselves, and then unleash a whole series of consequences that they had no idea would follow. 

They choose the latter. 

So, what’s the way back? God reveals the way back in chapter 3. Ultimately, the seed of the woman would eventually appear and overcome Satan. 

Before this happens, we read in chapter four, the sons of Adam and Eve have this intuition that a way back would be to surrender what God has given them, back to God. Cain and Abel make offerings to God as a possible doorway back to Eden, but jealousy gets in the way. Cain murders his brother out of jealous anger then goes to build a city where that violent impulse increases and spreads. 

And then, there is another act of rebellion. This time it’s not people trying to grab the knowledge of the gods, but rather divine creatures, the sons of Elohim, inappropriately crossing out of their realm and boundary and co-mingling with the daughters of Adam, chapter 6.  

The problem of violence has evolved to a point where it has become the norm. 

The Nephilim, the giant warrior kings of old, are in the land, Genesis six. And the violence is so bad, and the taking of innocent life has shed so much blood on the land, that the outcry rises up to God, Genesis 6:5&6, 

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. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.

And so, God hands creation over to the chaos and ruin that humans and spiritual beings have unleashed upon it, and you get the story of the flood. 

This is an actual de-creation. When we get to the flood story we will see that it is packed with upside-down phrases from the seven-day creation narrative.  Today, we are at the point of the story where God calls Noah to build the Ark.

The narrative tells us that, verse 9,

“Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God.”

This doesn’t mean that Noah was “perfect.” Noah’s character, however, was righteous.

We are also told that Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth. God will use these three sons in a significant way as a foundation for the rest of the human race. 

Because of the extent of the violence on earth, God told Noah that He would judge the wicked along with the earth. God had had enough. However, because Noah was righteous, God would save him and his family. God’s grace appears, God preserved a remnant instead of wiping out the entire human race. 

God’s next instruction to Noah was that he was to build an ark. God provided specific dimensions which in essence describe a well-ventilated barge meant only to float rather than a vessel in which to sail anywhere. An ark is actually a chest, the shape of a shoebox, not a ship. God was specific on telling Noah, this was his job, no one else’s. 

Put yourself in Noah’s shoes. You have worked diligently to be a righteous man and what results do you receive? God telling you to build a huge boat, in a land that has seen no rain, what could this mean? God doesn’t tell Noah why he must build the ark, all Noah knew was that God would judge the earth and it was his job to build a big barge. 

Lo, and behold, Noah DID make it. 

Finally, God reveals what He plans to do. Everything that was on earth was to die, except for those under the covenant between God and Noah. God called Noah to an essential role in the greatest judgment and greatest salvation the world had seen. God’s covenant with Noah meant that he and his family would be saved. 

God would also use Noah to save a remnant of each animal so that the earth would once again be populated with humans and animals. 

Noah obeys. We don’t read of any complaining or rebelling, he simply obeyed. The work of building an ark, in the desert, was laborious, costly, tedious, dangerous and seemingly foolish and ridiculous. Yet, Noah obeyed. 

Not because Noah was perfect, but because he was righteous, because he placed what God said over what people said around him. Because Noah put what God told him to do above what his doubting conscience must have questioned. 

That’s what it means to be “righteous.” It means doing what is right, even when the world tells you it’s wrong. 

In Hebrews, chapter 11, the chapter of faith we read in verse 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.”

I stand in awe of Noah, having faith like his during a time when the world was bent on evil, and everyone and everything around you was seeking only what was best for themselves couldn’t have been easy. Noah had only heard about God, he had no Bible to read, no church to attend, no podcasts to help him understand, just a narrative that he had heard since a child, to believe in. Yet, God only needed one who was faithful, not perfect, just faithful. 

When you think about it, although I have no basis of comparison, I can honestly say when I look around, our world often seems much like it was in Noah’s day. 

Not so sure about the Nephilim, but evil certainly seems to abound and people seem to agree or take little notice. I believe God is calling His followers to be righteous. To do what is “right” even when those around are not. Today, we live on the opposite side of the cross. The women’s seed has conquered Satan. We come today to celebrate that event, in the Lord’s Supper. Today we can put our faith in what God has done through His Son and rest assured He the story is over yet, He is coming again.