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That's connectwithskip.com. Now, let's get into today's teaching from Pastor Skip Heitzig. Now, I don't know how much time you've spent out on the water, on the ocean. The ocean is fun. Now, I have such a love for ocean activities and being around the ocean. My dad used to take us deep sea fishing. But what is required to be out on the ocean, out on the sea successfully, is what sailors or fishermen call getting your sea legs. Something I didn't have when I first went out on the ocean. Deep sea fishing with my father from Davy Jones Locker in Newport Beach, California. It was so fun to get on that boat and go out in the middle of the night. We were going to spend the night out in the deep and early in the morning catch barracuda.
Couldn't wait, I thought. Shouldn't have had a meal. It was the most nauseating experience that I had as a child, being out on the sea without my sea legs. I fed the fish, if you know what I mean.
It's horrible. On another occasion, I had the opportunity of going across the English Channel with a boatload of prim and proper English men and women. And one vivid memory for me is going across the English Channel during a storm, seeing these prim and proper Englishmen.
One lady dressed in her mink stole, sicker than a dog, head hanging over the side, spilling her whatever she had for her meal. Quite interesting. Noah, his wife, his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives, would be on that boat for a total of 371 days, a little over a year if you do the math. Well, by that time, they got their sea legs.
They were ready for it, but I'm sure it was quite a breaking in period of time. Now notice, it's an invitation. The Lord says, come into the ark. This is the first time you will find the word come appearing in the Bible. The first time come. It's an invitation by God saying come.
Now this isn't the only time. You will read several invitations that are like that throughout Scripture. One that comes to mind is Isaiah Chapter 1. Come now, the Lord says, let us reason together.
Though your sins are as scarred, it will make them pure, white as snow, white as wool. The great promise of Jesus, which is still in effect today, come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. That invitation of God to human beings is found throughout the Bible until the last invitation in Revelation Chapter 22 verse 17. The Spirit and the Bride say come, and whoever is thirsty, let him freely drink of the water of life. So God inviting mankind, and here inviting Noah to come onto the ark.
Beautiful word of invitation. Now in going into the ark, it would save his life, but he was going to experience, though be preserved, the greatest cataclysm besides creation that so far has ever happened to the earth, the flood. He would be preserved, but boy would it be a storm. But I'd rather be with God in the storm than anywhere else without God. He's going to be in the storm, but he's going to be with the Lord in the storm. Better to be in the storm with God than anywhere else without him. Do you remember that promise, or do you know it in Isaiah 43? It says that when you go through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they will not overflow you. God's promise to reassure the nation of Israel that it won't be so overwhelming because God's presence will be with them in the storm.
We'll get to it. Who knows when in the New Testament. When Jesus is on the Sea of Galilee in a storm with his disciples, and the disciples flip out because they think they're going to drown. Now, Jesus is in the boat asleep. Now, if they were logical, and you're not always logical in situations that demand your emotional engagement, but they thought they were going to drown, now how could that be possible if Jesus is in the boat? Your boat can't drown if Jesus is asleep in it.
He's rested. You might feel like it's going to drown, but it's not going to drown if Jesus is there with you. So the Lord invites him in.
He goes in. You shall take with you. Oh, notice this.
I forgot the last part. Because I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. Noah was different. Noah walked with God, worked for God. That was a step of faith to build the ark and later will worship God. But he was singular in a world that was unrighteous, not walking with God, walking in their own lusts, in their own desires, in their own designs.
This guy was a break. He was refreshing. He walked with God. And God notices that.
I have seen that you are righteous in this generation. It was hard for Noah. I don't have to say, I bet it was hard for Noah. I know it was hard for Noah to worship, to walk with God, and to work for God when the whole world didn't want anything to do with God. Don't you think that building a boat year after year, when there hadn't even been rain yet on the earth, because the Bible says the earth was watered from subterranean streams and mist that came up out of the ground and watered this lush earth with a canopy around it. And so for Noah to say, God said it's going to rain. Well, what's rain, Noah? Well, you know, I don't know.
He hasn't explained that to me yet, but something's going to happen. Now, the whole world would have mocked him or whoever saw him would have mocked him. But Noah was a true nonconformist. Can I just encourage you to be a nonconformist? I've always been accused of that and I wear the title proudly. Don't go with the crowd. Don't go along with what everybody's into. Peer pressure is a real pressure. Toddlers get it. Teens get it.
Adults get it. Housewives, politicians, preachers and college students get it. The pressure to conform to the standard of whatever's cool, whatever's in. Somebody once said that college is the place where nonconformists conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity.
I read that and I said, I like that. That's true. Whatever is the standard of coolness, whether it's political or moral.
And that's the standard. Go along with us. Conform and then we'll call you a nonconformist.
You want to really be a nonconformist? Love Jesus. Walk with God.
Don't go the way of the world. God said, Noah, I notice that in you. So verse two, you shall take with you seven. Each of every clean animal, a male and his female. Two each of animals that are unclean, a male and his female. Also seven each of birds of the air, male and female, to keep the species alive on the face of the earth. For after seven more days, I will cause it to rain on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights.
I will destroy from the face of the earth all living things that I have made. God had given him one hundred and twenty year warning. Now he has the final seven day warning. You got seven days, Noah.
Get on the boat. Now, I don't know if Noah got on the boat immediately. Because the animals that said would come to him and maybe they came on. I don't know if he got on on the seventh day. He might have just sort of gotten on there early and just sat there. He had plenty of time to prepare for this.
Now he has one final week. I know when I travel, I like to get to the airport a bit early. Because if you get there early, you can get more overhead space and that's limited these days.
So I like to get there early. That really wasn't an issue, I suppose, with Noah. But if Noah did get in the boat early.
That means for seven days, he was sitting inside this huge cavernous vessel. And people stop by. Go, you dumb old man. You are so idiotic. First of all, you think God speaks to you. And then he told you to do this.
And you've been doing it a long time. And so Monday came and then Tuesday and then Wednesday and then Thursday and then Friday and the mocking continued. And Saturday and then finally the last day. And BAM! The door closed. The Bible says God shut him in. And those people looked around and said, it's looking like rain. Of course, it has never rained yet, but it's looking like what that guy said would happen. And the storm came. Now it says, verse 5, Noah did according to all that the Lord commanded him.
Noah was 600 years old when the flood waters were on the earth. Water is destructive. I've had a little bit of experience just from surfing in the ocean. I've been out on certain days when I was younger where I saw my friends who were out with me and the waves broke their surfboards like toothpicks.
Just snapped them in half. I've seen people paralyzed from the neck down because of waves too large and they couldn't handle them. Or ask the people in New Orleans, Louisiana about the force of water, especially those who had lived down in the lower ninth ward when Katrina hit. The levees broke in 05 and the walls of water 17 feet moved houses from their location down the street to another location or moved cars several blocks away. Or the people who lived through the Asian tsunami recently where walls of water 35 feet tall just leveled everything.
And hundreds of thousands of people perished because of that. We'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. In verse seven. So Noah with his sons, his wife, his son's wives went into the ark because of the waters of the flood of clean animals, of animals that are unclean, of birds, of everything that creeps on the earth.
Two by two, they went into the ark to Noah, male and female, as God had commanded Noah. And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were on the earth. Now, I just want you to watch as we go through and finish out this chapter, the kind of wording that is used in our Bibles to describe what the water does upon the face of the earth. How it increases, how it grows, how it prevails, and the language seems to mount. Now, I did mention to you last week a book by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris called The Genesis Flood.
I'll recommend it again. It's a great book by a couple of PhDs, one a scientist, one a theologian, who in one place basically say it's difficult to imagine that you can have that much water as described here upon the earth without great geological changes upon the earth. That the surface of the earth must have changed not just before the flood, which you'll see in just a minute why, but during the flood and then after when the waters receded. But that the earth went through an incredible cataclysm so that what you see today is not what Adam and Eve saw during their time, but it's a completely different environmental economy and totally different hydrology. And they point out that there is evidence in our past, and some believe even in our recent past, of mountain ranges.
And they point to the southern Rocky Mountain ranges like here in New Mexico where you have thrust faults visible and the crust of the earth that is severely buckled and been distorted by immense force. And these scientists believe it happened during the flood. Now in verse 11, we're told in the 600th year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the 17th day of the month, notice how well documented it is. On that day, the fountains of the great deep were broken up and the windows of heaven were opened up and rain was on the earth 40 days and 40 nights. People often ask, where did all that water come from for a worldwide flood and where did all that water go after the flood?
Two good questions. It came from two places, from above and below. It came from the sky and it came from the fountains of the deep, we're told in verse 11. Now those that hold to the canopy theory, the scientists who are on that side of the equation and believe that there was a canopy in the upper atmosphere that shrouded the earth and gave it even temperatures, more of a hothouse effect, say that the water that could have fallen from the canopy alone would be 2.5% of the present ocean mass of water today. There's that much water in the atmosphere. So the rest of it came from rain and I'll tell you if I get to it, if I can remember this, it's all going by memory, that the canopy would have been compromised by something that happened geologically within the heart of the earth. And so look at verse 11.
There's that interesting phrase that is used about four times in scripture or five. It says, all the fountains of the great deep were broken up. There are several scientists and one notable one, one that I had here a few years ago, he was a PhD from MIT who specialized in this stuff, creationist, holds to what he calls the hydroplate theory. That at one time pre-flood, before the flood, that there was really one supercontinent, it wasn't the distribution of land that we see today, one supercontinent, and that below the surface of the earth, 10 miles, about 10 miles, covered by mostly granite and below mostly basalt rock, was a line in chambers, interconnected chambers of water that was like a water shell around the whole earth.
And he says there's evidence of that. Subterranean interconnected chambers of water under the earth, 10 miles from the surface of the earth downward, and it was about a half a mile to three quarters of a mile thick. Pressure in those caverns, and the pressure, he said, would be equal to the explosion of the release of 10 billion hydrogen bombs, that pressure built up, volcanic pressure, and it caused the stretching of that water shroud in the earth, just like you have a balloon that would stretch, that a fissure would have occurred in the rock that could have traveled at three miles per second and covered the whole globe in two hours.
It would have opened up a chasm that would have shot water 20 miles into the air, been responsible for flooding a good portion of the earth with water, as that volume of water came up through the earth, that eventually some of the layers of rock, because of the erosion that took place over a rapid period of time in that fissure, that rock came up and began to buckle. And that is what today is, that mid-oceanic rift, those mountains in the mid-Atlantic and other ocean, it surrounds the entire earth like a baseball, like a baseball sown, if you've ever seen the mid-oceanic ridge. And that as that thing began to buckle up, that the plates, the continental plates began to drift downward, and as they drifted downwards into more of the present-day continents, as they reached a speed of 45 miles per hour, they met some resistance. And in that resistance, the earth began to buckle, the crust began to buckle. Some of it thrust upward, some of it thrust downward.
The downward thrusts are responsible for the deep water basins in the ocean, the thrusts upward are the great chains of mountain, and interestingly, those mountain chains are all parallel to the mid-oceanic mountain range or rift. That's the hydroplate theory, that those are the fountains of the deep that broke up, and that along with the water canopy created this havoc of water upon the earth. And the rain was on the earth 40 days and 40 nights. On the very same day, Noah, Noah's sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and Noah's wife, and three wives of his sons with them, entered the ark. They and every beast after its kind, all cattle after their kind, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, so all the creeps were there too, every bird of every sort. They went into the ark to Noah, two by two, of all flesh, which is the breath of life.
So those that entered, male and female, of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him, and the Lord shut him in. Now the flood was on the earth 40 days. The water increased and lifted up the ark, and it rose high above the earth.
Now notice, the waters prevailed and greatly increased on the earth, and the ark moved about on the surface of the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly on the earth, and all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed 15 cubits upward, and the mountains were covered.
15 cubits is about 22 and a half feet. Now it is thought that in the antediluvian earth, the pre-flood earth, the mountains may not have been as high as they are now. Mountain ranges in some places can be 30,000 feet, and the depths of the ocean, some of the deep basins, are 35,000 feet below the surface of the ocean. And that it was more of a level earth at that time, not quite as contrasting in distances.
The waters prevailed 15 cubits upward, and the mountains were covered. All flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, cattle, beasts, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, and all that was on dry land died. Now that's the message that is key to this chapter. God really isn't interested in the geology as much as the theology here.
You know, it's not all about how was that possible and give me the geological formations. It's the theology that is most important. Every person, every animal, every bit of flora and fauna perished on the earth all because God judged sin. And this is why you have people who will do everything they can to controvert the idea of a worldwide flood even though there is great scientific evidence for it.
They don't want to believe in a God who would ultimately judge the world for its sin by causing everyone on it to die. But He did. And we may not like that, but that's the way it is. It happened. And it's going to happen again. Not in quite the same manner. God will give His covenant at the end of chapter 8, but something similar is going to happen.
And I'll describe before I close tonight. So is this theology of what God is doing and why is of utmost importance. So verse 23 destroyed all living things which are on the face of the ground, both man, cattle, creeping thing and bird of the air. They were destroyed from the earth. Only Noah and those who were with him in the ark remained alive. And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days.
So you can do all the math of the seven days and the 40 days and 150 days and the months after they hit the ground and waited until the waters receded, etc. But were there music behind the scene and every time the word prevailed came, you'd have a little more volume music. It would crescendo. It would rise in volume. It says this happened and the waters prevailed and then the waters greatly increase and prevailed.
And you get the idea that these massive amounts of water rose and rose and rose and continued and prevailed a long time. 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. Cast your burdens on His word, make a connection, connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.
