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That's connectwithskip.com. Now, let's get started with today's message from Pastor Skip Heitzig. Job chapters 1 and 2. Satan appears with the sons of God, and they give an account to the Lord. And God says, where have you been? And Satan goes, going to and fro throughout the whole earth. So, the translators of the Septuagint said it was angels.
Okay, you still with me? Also, there's a book that is called a pseudepigraphal book. Now, a pseudepigraphal book is a book that is given a name of an author, but that author didn't write it. So, if I said, this is from the book of Sally, but Sally never wrote it. That's pseudepigraph.
It's given a false name. Well, there is a book called the Book of Enoch. And though it's not a biblical book, it says, in those days, the angels, that is the children of heaven, saw human women, lusted after them, and said, let us marry wives and let us beget children. And they're cuing off Genesis chapter 6. That would mean nothing to us at all, except that Jude quotes from the Book of Enoch.
So, it adds some level of credibility. Now, some people have a problem with this. How could angels appear as human beings? Now, we know that they did.
They go to Genesis 18 and then Genesis 19 when they go to Sodom. But people will say, angels are non-corporeal beings. And even if they appear as having a human form, they certainly couldn't cohabitate with the human. And there are some problems with that.
And I can't quite unravel them. The second is that the sons of Seth and the daughters of Cain got married, sons of God. The only problem with that is, in all of the usages, as I mentioned in the Old Testament, in the Bible, of the term sons of God, it only refers to angels, not humans. So, you have a problem with that one, a refutation for that one. The third one, that it was rulers that cohabitated with women, basically enlarging their harem, is because some of the ancient Near East evidence, manuscripts, non-biblical, but other manuscripts, referred to earthly rulers, despotic rulers, by giving them the name sons of the gods.
Sons of the gods. Now, I don't believe that that's the best interpretation of this text, because the Bible never concedes to the secular language or seeing human beings as products of pagan gods. That's just not consistent with any thing we read in the Old Testament. So, you've got three views, and you could explore them further.
All of them have difficulties, but what's most important is this. Whatever it was, it was sexual, it was wicked, it was against God's order, and that was in part one of the reasons God judged the earth in the flood. So, let's go back to Genesis 6, and notice it says in verse 3, the Lord said, my spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh, and his days shall be 120 years. Now, here's what you've got to know. The Holy Spirit was active, evidently from this earth, very active on the earth before the flood, wanting to bring people to righteousness and salvation.
How? Primarily through the preaching of Enoch and Noah. They're called preachers of righteousness in the Bible. Noah building a boat for a long period of years, a plank upon plank, telling of a coming flood. Enoch before him walking with God, and as the New Testament said, proclaimed truth to them, preached to them. God was very active trying to draw people to himself, but he said, I won't do it forever, there comes a time when it's over. And then there were giants, Nephilim. Now, the word means fallen ones, so it could refer to fallen people. All humans are fallen people, or it could refer to some special class of being.
Again, you'll have to interpret that. And also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men, and bore children to them, those were the mighty men, men of old, men of renown. Now, what was happening back then is certainly happening right now. As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the coming of the son of man.
Just as in the days of Noah, there was this newly found sexual freedom, there was this transgressing of the traditional family, no matter what you want to interpret that with, one of those three interpretations, that was going on. There was a chief sociologist, Harvard University, who made an interesting statement about this generation. He said, this generation, this culture, is preoccupied with sex. It's now a preoccupation. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. And it certainly has captured the hearts and minds of many. It's been estimated that in the average year, the average American will view on primetime television over 9,000 sexual acts, or implied sexual acts. 81% of those are outside the bonds of marriage.
That's what we're being inundated with. A very similar situation to what was going on during the days of Noah. Let's go to the next one, in verse 5. Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Third mark, third situation, an increase in wickedness.
Now we're getting into the very mind of people before the flood, the antediluvian mind, the thought life. And that's where sin begins, in the thought life, the heart. And it says, the wickedness of man was great. The word wickedness in Hebrew is ra.
And it's saying the badness got really bad, or they went from bad to worse. And that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Berkeley translation puts it, human wickedness was growing out of bounds. Now if you want a little bit of New Testament insight into the thought life, Paul describes it in Romans chapter 1. It says their foolish minds or foolish hearts were darkened, they were futile in their thoughts, their foolish hearts were darkened.
They did not want to retain God in their thinking, so God gave them over to a debased mind to do whatever they wanted to do with themselves. A description of what was going on before the flood, a description of what is going on now, an increase in wickedness. Verse 6, And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and he was grieved in his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I made them.
It's a precious verse. God was grieved. You know what that tells me? It tells me that the deist is absolutely wrong. God is not some aloof God that wound up the universe and then stepped back to see what would happen and learns as life goes on. That God is almighty and transcendent, but somehow desires an interaction and intimacy with his creation to walk with them, to fellowship with them, so that God can feel emotion. God can be grieved, it says. He was grieved. God can be hurt. The Holy Spirit can be quenched.
The Lord can be blessed and made happy. Now it's difficult to describe exactly what this emotion is like. Theologians have a term for it if you're interested. They call it anthropopathism. And anthropopathism is describing God using human emotion.
And to what level you can make that correlation is difficult. And for our purposes, we don't need to get into that. Just know that God feels deeply when his creation goes the opposite direction than what he intended them to go. And so he was sorry that he made man.
And the Lord said, I will destroy the earth. At the turn of the 19th century, there was a book. It's still published, but it was a book that was published at the beginning of the 1800s, 19th century. By Frederick Farrar called Seekers of God.
Now listen to this little story. Seekers of God at that time was a very popular book. So there was a bookseller on the west coast that ran out of copies. Everybody was buying up the book Seekers of God. So he telegraphed to the east coast, New York, and said, would you please send as many as you have on the shelves to us? The telegraph came back. The telegram came back from New York to California, and this is what it said. No Seekers of God in New York.
Try Philadelphia. Well, in Noah's time, Noah could have telegraphed, No Seekers of God on Earth. Noah was the exception. And that's why verse 8 is so beautiful.
But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Now my English teacher told me never start a sentence with the word but. In a negative conjunction, you never begin a sentence. Actually, that's the best way to begin a sentence right about here. With all of that wickedness and all of that perversion and all of that, et cetera, et cetera, to have something that says, but in contrast to that, there was a person who walked with God and who was upright and just.
It's a welcome transition at this point. Noah found grace. See, the word grace, that's the first time it's mentioned in Scripture.
And this is the genealogy of Noah. Noah was a just man, number one. Perfect, the Hebrew word tamim, which means filled with moral integrity. In other words, what you see is what you get. He was on the inside what you see on the outside. He was true through and through.
That's the idea of the word tamim, complete, perfect. You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before we get back to Skip's teaching, understanding Genesis is critical to understanding the rest of Scripture. And in his book, You Can Understand the Book of Genesis, Skip Heitzig helps you discover the meaning and message of this foundational book. Embark on an epic journey to where it all began so you can understand the amazing story of God's love and our redemption in Christ. You Can Understand the Book of Genesis is our thanks for your gift of at least $50 today to help share biblical teaching with more people around the world through Connect with Skip Heitzig.
Go to connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888 and request your copies when you give at least $50 today to reach people around the world through Connect with Skip Heitzig. Let's continue with today's teaching with Pastor Skip. He was a just man or righteous, perfect, complete moral integrity in his generations and Noah walked with God. One of my favorite Scriptures is 2 Chronicles 16.
The eyes of the Lord go to and fro throughout the entire earth that he might show himself strong on behalf of those whose hearts are perfect toward him or loyal toward him. He was complete, loyal, perfect in his generations and he walked with God. There is a difference between reputation and character.
With Noah, they were the same. Reputation is what people think you are and see you to be on the outside. It's what you are in public. That's your reputation.
Your character is who you are when nobody's looking. With Noah, they were the same. There was a man who died. He was a scoundrel. When he died, they found a preacher to do the funeral. Preacher never met the guy before but the preacher got carried away in his sermon message and started talking about this guy whom he never met saying what a wonderful husband he was and what a great dad he was and what an awesome boss he was.
Well, his wife was sitting in the front row and had this perplexed look on her face and finally she said to her son, Go up and look in the casket and make sure it's your father. Not with Noah. He was true all the way through.
Complete. He walked with God. And what saves Noah and his family from the flood is the same thing that saved Enoch from the judgment and why he was taken off the earth because he walked with God and thus Noah walked with God.
And Noah begot three sons. Now mark who they are. They'll be important in chapters to come. Shem, Ham, Japheth. You'll need those names because they will be divided up genealogically in chapter 10 and so I can abridge chapter 10 when I get to it. It's another long list of names in the table of nations.
Know this. Shem became the father and the descendants were the Semitic races. The Shemites were the Semites. You've heard of anti-Semitic.
The idea comes from Shem. They settled in the land of, they were the Hebrews. They also settled in a lot of the lands around the Near East. They were the sons of Shem and daughters of Shem. Ham were the Canaanites that inhabited the land of Israel before Israel got there. They were the Canaanites, the original occupants. Parts of Egypt and Africa is where the Hamites settled. Now Ham, you'll discover, when after the flood Noah gets drunk and he's lying in the cave exposed, he goes in and sees it and broadcasts that to everybody saying, yeah, you wouldn't believe what I just saw.
I just saw my dad drunk in the cave without any clothes on. Because of that embarrassing moment when he wakes up, Noah will curse Canaan, the son of Ham, and make the Canaanites to be the servant of the Shemites because of that event, which has been the case historically. And then Japheth.
Japheth was the father of those in Media, Persia, Germany, Russia, the Gauls, the Greeks, some of the Roman tribes, et cetera. Just keep that in mind when you get to chapter 10. The earth was also corrupt before God and the earth was filled, verse 11, with violence.
There's the fourth mark. Violence increased in the land. And we've seen how it started. Cain killed Abel. It's the first human murder. Then Lamech killed a young man for hurting him.
We read that in chapter 4, and by this time it's now become an epidemic. We talked about this film Shattered before the Bible study. When we were filming for that, it was interesting. I did an interview of a man who was the father of one of the young boys that was killed at Columbine High School. And we did the interview up on a hill overlooking the library of Columbine where his son was killed. I'll never forget what he told me.
He said, I feel responsible for my son's death. I placed him in the environment of a secular school that taught him survival of the fittest, the evolutionary theory, the secular theories of man, and survival of the fittest that the stronger will get rid of the weaker. And these two boys who killed all of those children simply took the teaching that was taught to them by their teachers to its logical extreme.
In fact, in the basement tapes that he went through in the documents, that's what they kept saying. Evolution, survival of the fittest, we're the fittest, we will destroy the weaker ones. They took the theory to its logical conclusion and killed whom they deemed to be the weakest. There is an epidemic of violence in our culture. It's evident by what people watch, by what people will let themselves be entertained by. It's evident in the statistics, 20,000 people a year in our country, a murder every 24 minutes in America.
That's what we're dealing with. It's rampant, like in the days of Noah. So the Lord looked upon the earth, indeed it was corrupt. All flesh, verse 12, had corrupted their way on the earth. And the Lord said to Noah, the end of all flesh has come before me.
For the earth is filled with violence through them, and behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms, or literally nests, in the ark.
Cover it inside and outside with pitch, something that would resist water, and seal it. And this is how you shall make it. The length of the ark shall be 300 cubits, its width 50 cubits, its height 30 cubits. You shall make a window for the ark, you shall finish it to a cubit from above, and set the door of the ark in its side.
You shall make it with a lower second and third decks. So God gives sort of a blueprint to Noah, and it's obvious why. Noah didn't know anything about building boats.
This was a huge undertaking. Nothing like this had ever been built. Noah didn't understand the displacement of solid objects in water, that if you have something solid, and it weighs slightly more than the same amount of water that it's going to sink, unless you displace the water by moving its weight around, hollowing it out, so to speak.
He didn't understand that. God, of course, knew it and just gave him the directions, how big it's supposed to be. Okay, this is how big it was in our vernacular. 450 feet long, that's one and a half football fields long. 75 feet wide, that's seven parking spaces wide. 45 feet tall, that's three or four stories, four ancient stories, probably three modern stories.
So there were three decks, it says, three decks, spaced 15 feet apart. Again, Dr. Henry Morris and John Whitcomb in their fabulous book, The Genesis Flood, calculated that there would be 100,000 square feet of deck space in the ark. There would be 1.4 million cubic feet of storage space in that boat, or the equivalent of 522 normal size train cars, 522, and it could easily accommodate 125,000 animals or 125,000 animals the size of sheep. Now some were bigger, some were smaller. According to Whitcomb and Morris, at the time of the flood, there were less than 17,600 species of mammals, birds, and amphibians that were on the earth.
So you need to double that because you have two of each, male and female, for procreation and reproduction. So you need space for 35,000, but they had to have five of the clean animals because 371 days after the flood started, it would end, and he would be out sacrificing to the Lord of those cod rave animals. So according to Whitcomb and Morris, there were no more than 79,000 animals on that ark, and given its size, there was plenty of room because it could accommodate 125,000 animals the size of sheep. So it was big enough, and it was stable enough.
Though it doesn't look like much, as you can see from some of the drawings that were put up. It's basically a large box, but it was stable. In fact, it's the same dimensions as many a modern, either aircraft carrier or cargo boat. In fact, there's a British ship called the Dreadnought that is almost identical in proportion.
Identical. There's an American cargo ship that was called the USS New Mexico, that it's not far from those dimensions. 624 feet long, 103 feet wide, and 30 feet tall. It's not dimensionally too far off that track. I wish I had a scale model.
We used to have one around 1 to 87, like an HO train scale, that you could come up and look inside and touch it and see it, but we can't find it. Most have been destroyed in a smaller flood, we don't know. Okay, verse 16. You shall make a window for the ark. Praise God for the window. Can you imagine the stink of that many animals? A floating zoo for a year. You would need a clear story window that would go, it's 18 inches all the way around.
Something to collect rainwater for survival and something to get rid of the smell. So praise God for the window. You shall set a door on the side.
You shall make it with the lower second and third decks. And behold, I am bringing flood waters on the earth to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life, and anything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall go into the ark.
You, your sons, your wife, your sons' wives with you. So a total of eight people went onto the ark and were saved. And what we see here is the eight from which the redeemer would come. The earth was destroyed, and all of the things that happened to the human race that brought the judgment was all because of Genesis 3.15.
Remember that? God said, I'm going to bring a redeemer who's going to crush the head of Satan. So, you know, if the whole Cain and Abel thing doesn't work out, and it didn't because Seth became the favored child, now let's just destroy everybody, and everybody was destroyed except Noah because he walked with the Lord in these eight, and the whole race starts because of that. Thanks for listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. We hope you've been strengthened in your walk with Jesus by today's program. Before we let you go, we want to remind you about this month's resources that will take you back to where it all began so you can understand all of God's Word more clearly.
Pastor Skip's book, You Can Understand the Book of Genesis, is our thanks for your support of Connect with Skip Heitzig today. Request your copies when you give $50 or more. Call 800-922-1888.
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