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That's connectwithskip.com. Now, let's get started with today's message from Pastor Skip Heitzig. 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, this theology of what God is doing and why is of utmost importance. So, verse 23, destroyed all living things which were 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, et cetera. But were there music behind this 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. Then the waters greatly increased 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.
Verse 1 of chapter 8. Then God remembered Noah and every living thing and all the animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters subsided. Now, this doesn't mean that God forgets things or that God forgot Noah because he was busy doing something else, and one day he went, oh, that's right.
That little boat's bobbing around up there. I've got to do something about Noah. The Hebrew word is zakar for remember. It's used a total of 73 times in scripture whenever God is the subject, and it is simply an anthropomorphism, a description of God in human language.
That's all. It's a way that we can understand the importance of the relationship between God and Noah. God didn't forget about that little boat bobbing around on the surface of the waters. He knew all about those animals and all about Noah. And it says God remembered. God is going to enact the subsiding of the waters, the preservation of the family, and the repopulation of the earth.
That's all that means. God remembered Noah and every living thing. Now, if you were to look at it from Noah's perspective, picture yourself being Noah. You're on a boat.
It actually happened. The impossible, what you thought was the improbable, what everybody told you was just a myth and would never happen has now happened. And you're on a boat and there's only seven other people besides you and a whole bunch of animals that stink really bad. And everything below you is water and death. Hundreds of thousands of humans dead, animals dead, everything dead. You might feel abandoned.
You would feel lonely. You'd feel isolated, especially since there's no record that God was speaking to Noah at all during this time. He spoke to him before. He will speak to him afterwards. But there's no record that God said anything. He's just on the water. And he would feel abandoned and he would feel lonely. But God made a wind to pass over the earth and the waters subsided.
Now, it could be, and I don't want to try to unravel this too much because there's too much behind it and I'm incapable of doing it. It could be that up until this time, there wasn't any wind on the earth before the fountains of the great deep, before the flood. Because of the canopy and the earth, there would be no mass air movement, scientists tell us. A whole different hydrology existed, but now that canopy is gone.
It has broken up. A kind of typical evaporation and movement of air and clouds would happen. But up to that point, it hasn't happened.
Now it's happening. And the wind's going to help the water subside. Now, the word for wind in Hebrew is ruach. And it's exactly the same word in Genesis 1, verse 2 for God's Spirit. And it says the Spirit of God hovered over the water.
Same word, ruach. Spirit and wind in Hebrew is the same word. I don't think it means anything other than what the English translators say that it means. I think in chapter 1, verse 2, it was the Holy Spirit. And here it's a actual wind. I think the translators were accurate in it.
But just know that the word is the same but often translated differently. And the fountains of the deep, verse 2, and the windows of heaven were also stopped. Another metaphor for the rain that fell and perhaps the breakdown of the canopy.
Stopped and rain from heaven was restrained. And the waters receded continually from the earth. At the end of the 150 days, the waters decreased. So, no doubt the surface of the earth was greatly changed after the fountains broke up. And with that volume of water upon the face of the earth for a long time, it would be responsible for such things like the Grand Canyon, four fossils over 7,000 feet, and all the things we told you last week. There would be rapid movement of sediment that would occur. And a lot of things that are observable on the earth are explained by a worldwide flood. But probably it wasn't until the flood that the height of the mountains that we have existed because of the flood, because of the breakup, because of the continental drift, because of the mass movements of water, et cetera. Now it's going to recede and it's going to fill the basins of the deep that were created because of that opening up of the caverns and those huge basins in the ocean and the 70% of water that is now prevalent upon the surface of the earth. So the water receded continually.
At the end of 150 days, the waters decreased and the ark rested in the seventh month on the 17th day of the month on the mountains of Ararat. Now there is a mountain in the Soviet Armenia border of Turkey area called Mount Ararat. It's 17,000 feet, somewhere around the 14,000 foot level there is something. We don't know exactly what it is. Some have supposed that it is Noah's ark. And I have met people who have gone on searches, they've gone on expeditions, they've spent their money, they've spent months trying to get up to that level. Some have actually said they have. Pieces of wood have been allegedly discovered and have been dated to be between 1,100 years old and 5,000 years old. But there's all sorts of interesting appearances of an ark on Mount Ararat as far back as 275 BC. Now we don't have enough evidence to say it is it. But there's enough other evidence throughout history that at least peaks our curiosity.
So here's the first one. 275 BC, a Chaldean priest, a Babylonian historian wrote that the Ark of Noah was on Mount Ararat and people in his day were taking pieces of the pitch and making amulets out of it. Josephus, the Jewish historian who writes after Jesus, said that the ark was there and that people were taking bits of it, making relics out of it.
Theophilus of Antioch, 180 AD, said that the ark in certain places in the mountain range was visible from a lower elevation. In the early 1900s, some Soviet aviators were flying over the area and they took pictures of it. They discovered it. They even got the czar of Russia interested in finding the Ark of Noah.
But the Russian Revolution broke out and interest was quickly lost. Back in the 90s, I remember CBS did a special on Noah's Ark and had photographs, etc. and this thing gets resurrected every few years. We don't exactly know what it is, but we know something is up there. It can be photographed. I've seen pictures of it.
I've talked to people who have gone up there and gotten very, very close. We just don't have enough evidence. We know that something at 14,000 foot is there that oddly looks like a boat and it's covered in ice. Maybe one day we'll find out. Some people think that it will be revealed.
We just don't know. By the way, it doesn't have to be on Mount Ararat because it says the mountains of Ararat and that's an entire range. Now the possibilities are even opened up more should you desire to go and look. The waters decreased continually until the 10th month. In the 10th month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen. It took a long time for Noah to be around that boat and let the waters reside before he would even get out of the ark. So it came to pass at the end of 40 days that Noah opened the windows of the ark, which he had made, and he sent out a raven which kept going to and fro until the waters had dried up from the earth.
He also sent out from himself a dove to see if the waters had receded from the face of the ground. So now Noah becomes a bird watcher and he sends out a raven. Now the raven didn't come back because ravens would feast on carrion, dead flesh.
There was a lot of it. So anything that was there because they're omnivorous, he could go from corpse to corpse to corpse to corpse and not return and just have a heyday. It was considered an unclean bird.
A dove is considered a clean bird and it needs something clean and dry. And so that bird just returned back, as you'll see. 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. The dove found no resting place for the sole of her foot, verse nine, and she returned to the ark to him, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth. And so he put out his hand and took her and drew her into the ark to himself. And he waited yet another seven days, and he sent the dove out from the ark. And the dove came to him in the evening, and behold, a freshly plucked olive leaf was in her mouth, and Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth. So he waited yet another seven days and sent out the dove, which did not return to him anymore.
Now that was the sign that it was safe. Not one dove, not two doves, three. Three launchings of a dove. It's always interested me that the symbol of peace has been a dove with an olive branch. It's interesting because that wasn't the symbol to Noah. When that dove came back with an olive branch, it was the symbol that God's judgment was still on the earth. The symbol that peace was coming to the earth is when the dove did not return. And it's like, ah, good, things are really good now. That was really the symbol of peace, the absent dove. It came to pass in the 601st year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, that the waters were dried up from the earth and Noah removed the covering of the ark.
Don't you know that felt really good? And looked, and indeed the surface of the ground was dry. And in the second month, on the 27th day of the month, the earth was dried. Noah got out of that boat and it was a brand new world. And the world that Noah stepped into is the world we now live in. The Grand Canyon was there when Noah got out, responsible for its etching by the flood. The great mountain chains, including the Sandia Mountains, were there when Noah stepped out of the ark.
The great valleys and streams and lakes were all there. It was our world that he stepped into, a very different world than the antediluvian world. Then God spoke to Noah, saying, go out of the ark.
I'm thinking, he's saying, gladly. Go out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons' wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that is with you, birds and cattle and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, so they may abound on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth. Noah went out and his sons and his wives and his sons' wives with him.
Every animal, every creeping thing, every bird and whatever creeps on the earth, according to their families, went out of the ark. And then Noah built an altar to the Lord. This is the first altar built in the Bible.
See, there's a lot of firsts in these chapters. Here's the first altar ever built. It's built by Noah post-flood. He built an altar to the Lord, and he took every clean animal and every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. Now you know why God said, bring seven.
You can use two of them to reproduce. You can sacrifice some of them, and perhaps some of them were even used for food during that time he was on the ship. And the Lord smelled a soothing aroma, and that's when the Lord gives this promise. So it says in the beginning of the chapter, the Lord remembered Noah.
But that's not all. Noah remembered the Lord. Now just let that sink in, because it is our human nature to forget the Lord. It is our human nature to promise God great things in a catastrophe, and then when the catastrophe is over, to forget the Lord.
Life goes on as normal. Remember the story in the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem, and he's passing through Galilee at the border of Samaria, and there are 10 lepers, and they cry out, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. Jesus healed them and said, now go to the priest and offer the offering, and go through the ritual purification, and he'll pronounce you clean. One of them, out of 10, one of them returned and thanked the Lord for doing that, and Jesus said, huh, so where are the other nine? Only one-tenth of those who were blessed that day returned to thank the Lord, and I wonder if the ratio is any different today.
It's probably about the same. Probably a tenth of all that God blesses will return and go, thank you, Lord, I remember it. I love you. Noah remembered the Lord. There's a lot of ways we can remember the Lord. Seeing grace before a meal. The food comes. It's hot. It smells so good.
You're so hungry. But you pause to remember, thank you, Lord. This came from you.
I remember that you blessed me with it. That's one way to do it. Another way to remember the Lord, according to Proverbs, is with the first fruits of your increase, what the Bible calls a percentage of your income. That's a biblical way of saying it. So when you write that tithe check, you're saying, Lord, I could use this for a lot of things, but I love you, and I want to honor you, and I remember you.
Here's another way. Sunday morning, the alarm goes off. The bed is warm.
The air outside is cold. You don't want to get up. But you get up and rally the troops, get them fed, get them clothed, put them in the car, bring them to church, because you want to remember the Lord.
Or it's Wednesday night, and it's cold. But you come. You want to remember him. You want to honor him. That's not human nature. That's not natural, but it is supernatural. And the life of Christ within you craves that, doesn't it?
Because you know the blessing that comes when you seek him that way. Well, the Bible says in Ecclesiastes 12, by the way, remember the Lord in the days of your youth. And I love that, because if, as a young person, you come to Christ and you set the pattern early of remembering the Lord, your whole life will change.
Everything will get aligned. I came to Christ when I was just turning 18, and I remember setting some disciplines early on in that first stage of my Christian development that have stuck with me to this day. And just help me to remember him. I did it in the days of my youth.
Those days are long gone. The Lord said in his heart, verse 21, I will never again curse the ground for man's sake, although the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth. Notice that God knows the depravity of all men and women, nor will I again destroy every living creature.
Notice, as I have done. He didn't say, I won't destroy every living creature. God says, I won't do it in the same way that I did it in the flood. He'll never again by water destroy the earth whilst the earth remains. Seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer.
Now notice the changes. Some believe that the flood is what tilted the earth 23 and a third degrees on its axis. It's not perfectly straight, it's tilted. And it's the tilt of the earth 23 and a third degrees that gives us, in its rotation that way, our four seasons. And here the four seasons are mentioned. Cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night, shall not cease. Now, we have just four minutes left. Plenty of time to look at a text. 2 Peter chapter 3.
You probably have it marked from last week. That's where we started. Somebody said, yep, still there. 2 Peter chapter 3, verse 5 again. For this they willfully forget that by the word of God the heavens were of old, the earth standing out of the water and in the water by which the world that then existed perished being flooded with water. Peter said, there's people who forget that a worldwide flood swept this earth. They're uniformitarianists. They believe all things continue.
They don't. This earth, says Peter, has a history of catastrophic geology. I am interpreting slightly different. But the heavens, verse 7, and the earth which are now preserved by the same word are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But, beloved, do not forget this. One thing that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise. Promise of what?
Judgment. But his long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise and the elements will melt with fervent heat. So the earth is going to be destroyed by fire, not by water. And the works that are in it will be burned up. Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness?
Now, there's a great question. Let's answer it. If this earth is temporary and is going to burn up, what kind of a person should you be?
Certainly not materialistic, because everything you own will burn up one day, and you won't be able to take it with you, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God because of which the heavens will be dissolved being on fire and the elements will melt with fervent heat. Okay, process that as we close. Some hear that and go, oh, ho, ho, ho.
I don't think so. Even if there was a flood that was so long ago, thousands of years, well, just remember this, a thousand years is like one day to the Lord, and a day is like a thousand years. It is going to happen.
It is going to happen. Now, why is it that the skeptic does not want to believe in a worldwide flood contrary to the enormous amount of evidence that exists? And I believe the evidence for the flood is one of the great witnesses against the unbelieving world.
Here's why. Because it's a preview of coming attractions. What God did in destroying sinners, God will do again in worldwide decimation in the Great Tribulation period. If you want the details on 2 Peter, you read the second half of the book of Revelation. It will detail it.
It will detail it. But there is an ark. There is an ark of safety, there is an ark of hope, and His name is Jesus Christ. And if you give your life to the one who gave his life as a payment for your sin and my sin, God will remember you.
He'll remember you like He remembered Noah. That's the message of the New Testament gospel. 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.
That's 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate. And did you know that you can get a weekly devotional and other resources from Pastor Skip sent right to your email inbox? Simply visit connectwithskip.com and sign up for emails from Skip. Come back next time for more verse-by-verse teaching of God's Word here on Connect with Skip Heitzig. ... Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever-changing times.
