Noah

Hebrews 11
:7 By faith Noah,
    Being warned of God of things not seen as yet,
        moved with fear [reverence]
    prepared an ark to the saving of his house:
    by the which he condemned the world,
    and became heir of the righteousness
    which is by faith.

If there is anyone who exemplified the following verse it is Noah.

Proverbs 3
:5 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart;
    and lean not unto thine own understanding

God tells us that it was by believing that Noah built an ark to the saving of his house. The remarkable thing about Noah was that he stood alone, no one else was believing God. God told him to build a boat because it was going to rain--do what?? It had never rained before, God had designed a mist or heavy dew to water the earth. God said build an ark--a what??--how big?? It's going to flood--do what?? This is all new radical thinking here, yet Noah believed and went to work. He definitely did not lean unto his own understanding.

Genesis 6
:5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth,
    and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart
    was only evil continually. [That is pretty bad]
:6 And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth,
    and it grieved him at his heart.
:7 And the Lord said,
    I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth;
    both man,
    and beast,
    and the creeping thing,
    and the fowls of the air;
    for it repenteth me that I have made them.

God is light and in Him is no darkness at all--I John 1:5, God is love--I John 4:8, and :16. If God is love and light how can he destroy man? This does not seem to make sense. Well, there is an idiom--a manner of speaking--used in the Old Testament, it is called the Idiom of Permission which is explained more fully in Appendix A. By attributing these actions to God, the Devil is not recognized and given the glory for what he has done. When people go against God they receive the consequences of their actions, not that God did the evil, but He could not withhold the Devil from doing it.

Mankind got out of fellowship and stayed there.

Genesis 6
:8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
:9 These are the generations of Noah:
    Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations,
    and Noah walked with God.
:10 And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

    Noah's heart was right and he walked with God, that is why God chose him. What counts is that an individual believes God and decides to walk with Him. Noah is referred to as "the preacher of righteousness" (II Peter 2:5). For God to call him a preacher he must have diligently expounded God's Word to his family and the neighbors. Yet, Noah (and his family) had to stand alone. The flood happened because wickedness was exceeding great, and he didn't succumb to its influence.

Genesis 6
:11 The earth also was corrupt before God,
    and the earth was filled with violence.
:12 And God looked upon the earth,
    and, behold, it was corrupt;
    for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
:13 And God said unto Noah,
    The end of all flesh is come before me;
    for the earth is filled [filled, no room left for more]
    with violence [violence, wrong, cruelty, injustice] through them;
    and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
           [God can no longer hold back the destructive force of the Devil]
:14 Make thee an ark of gopher wood;
    rooms shalt thou make in the ark,
    and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.
:15 And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of:
    The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits,
    the breadth of it fifty cubits,
    and the height of it thirty cubits.
:16 A window shalt thou make to the ark,
    and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above;
    and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof;
    with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.

This doesn't tell us a whole lot because we don't deal in cubits any more so let us convert this to some numbers we can understand. Stop and think about these measurements for a moment. God gave Noah the revelation to build this thing. Nothing like this had ever been seen before. What would you do if God told you to do something like this?

The Ark's dimensions:
According to a 17.5 inch cubit, a "profane" cubit (the sacred cubit is 25 inches).

Length = 300 cubits = 146 yards (approx)	1 1/2 football fields
Width = 50 cubits = 291.66 feet or 24.33 yards	4 house lots wide (70 foot wide lot)
Height = 30 cubits = 43.7 feet or 14.5 yards	4 stories high by our standard

At least there was room to stretch their legs.

Genesis 6
:17 And, behold, 
    I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth,
    to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven;
    and every thing that is in the earth shall die.
:18 But with thee will I establish my covenant;
    and thou shalt come into the ark,
    thou, and thy sons,
    and thy wife,
    and thy sons' wives with thee.
:19 And of every living thing of all flesh,
    two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark,
    to keep them alive with thee;
    they shall be male and female.
:20 Of fowls after their kind,
    and of cattle after their kind,
    of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind,
    two of every sort shall come unto thee,
        to keep them alive.
:21 And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten,
    and thou shalt gather it to thee;
    and it shall be for food for thee, and for them.
:22 Thus did Noah;
    according to all that God commanded him,
    so did he.

Noah's faith was in an invisible God that he knew was powerful. What Noah saw around him did not dissuade him from believing in God. He stood, and he had a promise that God would establish a covenant with him.

7:1 And the Lord said unto Noah,
    Come thou and all thy house into the ark;
    for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.

How old is Noah at this time? We think it is a challenge to believe God for the 60-80 years we are alive, consider Noah's age, he didn't have the written Word to read everyday either.

Genesis 7
:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life,
    in the second month,
    the seventeenth day of the month,
    the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up,
    and the windows of heaven were opened.

Yes, he was 600 years old. Nowhere in the Word does it tell us that God changed the Sun, Moon and seasons after he set it up in Genesis so it really is 600 years. Without the physical corruption of the human gene pool and food chain I can believe that people lived that long.

:12 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

It rained for forty days and nights but the water stayed around longer:

Genesis 7
:24 And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

Genesis 8
:1 And God remembered Noah,
    and every living thing,
    and all the cattle that was with him in the ark:
    and God made a wind to pass over the earth,
    and the waters asswaged;

:13 And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year,
    in the first month,
    the first day of the month,
    the waters were dried up from off the earth:
    and Noah removed the covering of the ark,
    and looked,
    and behold, 
        the face of the ground was dry.
:14 And in the second month,
    on the seven and twentieth day of the month,
    was the earth dried.

Almost two full months after the dry land appeared was Noah and Co. let off the ark.

:15 And God spake unto Noah, saying,
:16 Go forth of the ark,
    thou, and thy wife,
    and thy sons,
    and thy sons wives with thee.

In referring back to Genesis 7:11, they had been in this ark for a little over one year, with family no less. We herald the accomplishment of men these days when they have stayed in space for three months. Noah's faith must have been unwavering.

No matter if we have support or persecution we must still believe God, it all comes down to being in fellowship with God.

Genesis 9
:1 And God blessed Noah
    and his sons,
    and said unto them,
    Be fruitful,
    and multiply,
    and replenish the earth.

Noah's faith/believing was in an invisible God, one that he knew was powerful. He had a promise from God and he did what God told him to do. We are alive today because he believed, acted and received the deliverance. It must have been refreshing to be removed from people whose thoughts were only evil continually.

God has not changed. He is the same:

Malachi 3
:6 For I am the LORD,
    I change not;
    therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.

Noah is a great example of believing God when circumstances are not conducive to doing so. Except for his family the inhabitants of the earth were corrupt and filled with violence and their hearts were only evil continually. The instructions he was given to save his household were magnanimous yet he did what he was told, he trusted in the Lord to point that he acted on what God had told him. Like Noah we can rely on God and believe Him.

Proverbs 3
:1 My son, forget not my law;
    but let thine heart keep my commandments:
:2 For length of days,
    and long life,
    and peace,
    shall they add to thee.
:3 Let not mercy and truth forsake thee:
    bind them about thy neck;
    write them upon the table of thine heart:
:4 So shalt thou find favour
    and good understanding
    in the sight of God and man.
:5 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart;
    and lean not unto thine own understanding.
:6 In all thy ways acknowledge him,
    and he shall direct thy paths.
:7 Be not wise in thine own eyes:
    fear the Lord,
    and depart from evil.
:8 It shall be health to thy navel,
    and marrow to thy bones.
:9 Honour the Lord with thy substance,
    and with the firstfruits of all thine increase:
:10 So shall thy barns be filled with plenty,
    and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.