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That's connectwithskip.com. Now let's get into today's teaching from Pastor Skip Heitzig. 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, 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. And 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, etc. You 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 upon a hill overlooking the library of Columbine where his son was killed. I'll never forget the story. 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 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, 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, space 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 cadre of animals.
So according to Whitcomb and Morris, there were no more than 70,000 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 us, one 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. It must 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? And you would need a clear story window that would go, it's 18 inches long. It's a big window. It's a big window. It's a big window. And 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're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before we return to Skip's teaching, if you want to understand something, it's important to examine its foundations. That's why studying the book of Genesis is so vital to understanding the rest of the Bible. In Skip Heitzig's book, You Can Understand the Book of Genesis, he takes you on a fascinating journey to where it all began. From Adam and Eve and the fall of man to the birth of the nation of Israel. So you can understand the amazing story of God's love and our redemption in Christ. We'll send you a copy of You Can Understand the Book of Genesis as thanks for your gift of $50 or more to reach more people with God's love through Connect with Skip Heitzig.
Go to connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888 and request your copy when you give. Now, let's get back to Skip for more of today's teaching. You shall set a door on the side. You shall make it with a 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 son's 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 and these eight and the whole race starts because of that. Verse 18 is important. I will establish my covenant with you. This is the first mention of the word covenant and we're going to point this out in the scripture when you get first mentions of something it's important. You're going to find the word covenant is an important concept throughout scripture. It's the Hebrew word berit and it simply is an agreement.
It's a platform by which God can interact with man. There were two types of covenants in the ancient world. One was called a parity covenant.
Parity. Parity simply means equal and so this was an agreement between two people who were equal. So Abraham makes a covenant with Abimelech of Egypt.
That's a parity agreement. They were equal. One was the king of a local area and Abraham was a sheikh or a notable gentleman. They made a covenant that was equal because they were on the same par. The second form of ancient covenant was the suzerainty covenant.
Suzerain is a word that means a superior over an inferior. So if you have a king that reigns over a vassal state that's that kind of a covenant. The covenant that God makes with man is that kind of a covenant.
God is superior and makes covenant with people and you'll find different forms of covenant throughout the Bible until we get to this covenant the new covenant which is an unconditional covenant and I'll describe more of what those different kinds of covenants are. Don't want to overwhelm you in one night. We'll just leave it there and go on. Of every living thing of all flesh you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female of the birds after their kind of the animals after their kind of every creeping thing of the earth after its kind. Two of every kind will come to you and keep them alive. Now this answers another question that people have. That is the problem of getting all those animals there. It's not like God said okay now Noah you're gonna have to do a lot of walking dude. You got to find all those animals.
No they're gonna come to you. Just like God could could put some little wire some GPS chip sort of just send a signal for them to come to him. Now understand that if there was a canopy around the earth that brought the leveling of temperatures worldwide like we have talked about and suggested in previous studies. Then the animals on the earth would not have been as widely dispersed as they are in our day.
They would all since the relative temperature of the earth would be the same everywhere. You'd find those species that he brought on the ark close by and so those close by could come on the earth and the rest would be destroyed. Those would be saved and regenerate the earth. But they will come to you verse 20 verse 21. And you shall take for yourself of all food that is eaten you shall gather it to yourself and it shall be food for you and for them. Thus Noah did according to all that God commanded him so he did. In Hebrews 11 we have a little bit of a comment on this. It says by faith Noah built an ark to the saving of his household. He was moved the bible says in Hebrews 11 with godly fear. The fear of the Lord to build an ark to the saving of his household. Now in building the ark he demonstrated his faith. He says he did it by faith. I suppose to get out there and nail one plank to another to another to another day after day month after month year after year and say there's a flood coming on the earth would be quite a demonstration of faith. Because as he hammers the first nail I'm sure he's thinking what am I doing?
This is nuts. But then when his neighbors would say no no no no no no no no no no uh what are you building? I'm building a boat.
Yes we can see that now we want to know why and why it's going to be so big. Well God told me he's going to send a flood. Oh so God speaks regularly to you huh? Well I do walk with the Lord and the Lord did tell me he's going to judge the earth. No what have you been smoking lately?
Or what are you into lately? It would be quite a demonstration of faith to build that and to bring that message year after year 120 years until the flood did come on the earth and those first second and third days of rainfall would change their minds. So thus Noah did according to all that God commanded him and so he did.
I'm going to throw this in. This is the fifth condition worldwide that was going on at the time of Noah that I think is going on now and we'll bring that into the prophetic picture as it was in the days of Noah so shall it be in the coming of the Son of Man. Unheeded preaching. Unheeded preaching. Noah preached year after year and yet only his family entered the ark.
Nobody else listened to him. There's not even a record that when the rain came and the water started filling up the local areas that somebody banged on the door of the boat and said please let us in. We believe. I'm sure God would have spared them if they would have.
There's no record of that. Unheeded preaching. Preaching year after year. Nobody listens.
Nobody wants to apply. Nobody wants to also demonstrate that faith as he did. Now I have a question. I want to throw this in as we bring to a close.
We're going to close on time. Praise God. Do you think that Noah, the son of Noah, the son of God, the son of God, that Noah theologically was conservative or theologically liberal? And please understand I'm not talking politics here. I'm talking theology.
A liberal theologian is somebody who says I don't believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible. I think it's all figurative and it's all really just sort of you know it meant to mean something else. It's all an analogy. It's all a myth. It's all an allegory. Somebody who's conservative theologically believes that the Bible is the word of God, is inspired by God.
All of it. And it's to be taken literally. Do you think Noah was literal in his theology when God gave him the exact dimensions of the ark? Or do you think Noah said well actually that could be an allegorical number that could mean so many things? I think he was believing the word of God literally.
I think it was very very conservative in his theology and he was going to make it exactly the dimensions God told him to. And thus Hebrews 11 is fulfilled. By faith he was moved with godly fear and he built an ark and so as God commanded it underscores that.
So he did. Now there's a salvation element in the ark. That is the ark is a symbol of salvation and I close with this. The ark was invented by God not by man.
Noah didn't come up with the idea. It was God's idea. It was God's blueprint. It's completely by God.
It's God's design. Number two, the only way to be saved from the judgment. There weren't three or four different paths or ways.
There was only one way and that was get on the boat or die. If you're outside the boat saying well I don't believe there's only one ark. I believe there are many arks.
Go ahead and believe that. There only is one though and only eight made it. Number three there was only one door to the ark and Jesus said I am the door. I am the only way. I am the way the truth and the life.
No one comes to the father but through me. If I were to give a type or an analogy I would say that if I'm to take now that judgment and move ahead to the great tribulation judgment I see a parallel. Okay I mentioned that there were two great catastrophes in past history.
One is the creation. The second is the flood. There will be a third, the tribulation that will then usher in the millennium that will usher in the destruction of the earth and a new and a new heaven and a new earth.
So there's more cataclysm to come. In the tribulation when God again judges the earth there's going to be a believing remnant of Jewish people 144,000. They will be spared through the tribulation period sealed by God the Bible says on their foreheads and protected during the great tribulation period.
The final three and a half years that believing Jewish remnant 144,000. Believers according to the way I read the Bible won't be here for the great tribulation. Some of you believe they will be and that we will go through the tribulation and I believe that you have the right to be wrong.
You can believe whatever you want. Doesn't happen to be right but that believers will be raptured before the tribulation period off the earth. Just like Noah I see him representing the Jewish remnant preserved during the time of the flood but there was someone who was raptured before that and his name was Enoch. He walked with God and he was not for the Lord took him and what the Lord did in the past I believe the Lord will do in the future and take those who walk with him who are his children saved by grace by the blood of Christ. So salvation is is up to us now. He says there is the way judgment is coming it can be escaped but you got to get on board and you can only come through one door and that's through Jesus.
We're glad you joined us today. Before you go remember that when you give $50 or more to help reach more people with the gospel through Connect with Skip Heitzig we'll send you Pastor Skip's insightful book You Can Understand the Book of Genesis to help you better understand the story of God's great love and his amazing plan for our redemption. To request your copy of You Can Understand the Book of Genesis call 800-922-1888 that's 800-922-1888 or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate. For more from Skip be sure to check out the many resources available at connectwithskip.com slash store. Come back next time for more verse by verse teaching of God's word here on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast your burdens on his word. Make a connection, a connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever-changing times.
