You Will Pass Through the Waters

Image by Elias

​The story of Noah’s ark is one of the most misrepresented stories in the Bible. We see this story depicted in children’s bibles and nursery room walls in cute, colorful illustrations of animals floating in a boat, with a long giraffe neck sticking outside the boat because it is too long as they float peacefully on the waters. You would never see a children’s book drawn that way about hurricane Katrina. There would be no happy looking people floating in boats in New Orleans. Why? Because people would rightly complain that we wouldn’t be capturing the devastation that the hurricane brought. What we are looking at here makes Katrina look like a sunshower. This story is of the judgment of God against sinners who finally exhaust His patience. But those children’s bibles and nursery walls captured something right about this story. Because it is also the story of surprising grace given to Noah and the future humanity that will come from him. God is going to do something amazing through Noah, and the amount of work that Noah is going to do to make that happen is going to provide a great encouragement for us. Our two points today are God really did flood the whole earth for human sin, and God really did save His people from it.

God really did flood the whole earth for human sin
We can’t forget that this is a story of God handing out punishment for the entirety of mankind at the time, save one remarkable person, Noah. We find out that he is “righteous” “blameless” and “walked with God.” The last time we saw someone walk with God he walked straight into heaven, so here is another figure who has this same level of faithfulness to God. He is also called blameless and righteous. Righteous means that he is in covenant with God and is living up to the standards of that covenant (Ross, 193). “Blameless” means “'complete, sound' and indicates moral uprightness and integrity in a person's behavior” (Matthews, 358). Lest we think this means Noah is perfect, One scholar comments “This description of Noah does not suggest that he is sinless; rather it indicates that his life reflects a wholeness of character in which what he professes to believe is actually how he lives his life." (94) Indeed, we will see later on that Noah is not morally perfect, but he is certainly better than the people around him (Matthews, 358). Still, he is in need of God’s Grace. 

Noah’s uprightness is in deep contrast to everyone else around him. Notice that the word “corrupt” is used three times here to really drive home the point of what is going on. The place is absolutely filled with violence, so God needs to respond. Interestingly, when God says that He is going to destroy them, it is a play on words in Hebrew. The same root is used in both “corrupt” and “destroy.” In essence, God is saying, “They have destroyed themselves, so I am going to destroy them” (Ross, 193). This reminds me of Romans 1 where God simply gives people over to their sins, and this seems like a radical example of that. It would be like God saying, “Oh, you like violence and destruction? Well, here, have a flood.” 

This contrast between Noah and the world should cause us to sit up a bit. All of the Bible is relevant, but this is pretty easy to apply to us today. All around us is a culture of violence and disobedience to God, yet we are called to be different. We are called to live a life honoring to God in spite of our surrounding culture. We are called to a different standard. We are called to righteousness. John Calvin put it this way, “We know how great is the force of custom, so that nothing is more difficult than to live holily among the wicked, and to avoid being led away by their evil examples. Scarcely is there one in a hundred who has not in his mouth that diabolical proverb, 'We must howl when we are among the wolves...'" (252). In other words, we can tend to think that we must live the way our culture does at least somewhat. How would we get along if we didn’t celebrate what the world celebrates, laugh at what the world laughs at, hate what the world hates. Pastor Reeder once said in contrast to this that “the world is not your measuring stick, it’s your mission field.” So often we don’t even know we are howling with the wolves because we’ve never taken the time to seriously examine our lives against the Bible. If you think something is ok for a Christian to do that looks like the world, how did you come to that conclusion? “Well,” you might say, “I’m not living any differently than other Christians around me.” Who says they are the standards? God’s Word is our standard no matter what other people say. 

The consequences on this are severe. Folks, this isn’t about getting an A+ in life. Living in a way opposed to God brings real judgment. That’s why I’ve called this point that God really did flood the entire earth because of sin. 

When you were in school, did you have someone whom everyone called “the hard teacher”? I remember hearing of one student getting the following comment on his research paper, “You should have titled this paper ‘A Survey of a Bunch of Opinions’” with an accompanying bad grade. Alone, this might be written off as a student problem, but this particular professor was known for this across the board. His was the only class that as soon as he walked in the door the entire conversation of the class came to a dead stop. Why? Because he had a reputation. 

We’ve lost that perspective on God. Yes, it is 100% true that in Christ we are completely safe from ultimate judgment, but we treat God like He didn’t one day flood the whole planet over sin, and has already warned us that a judgment of that scale is coming again in Matthew 24, which we read this morning. It could happen today. Will we be found when Christ comes back looking and acting just like the world for whom the judgment is coming? Noah stands as a good example for how to live properly and really condemns us if we don’t (Matthews, 358). The world isn’t as bad today as it was then.  

“But Pastor,” you might say, “you get to stay in your ivory study safe from all the pressures of the world. You don’t have people threatening to fire you for standing on Biblical principles, you don’t have people in your family living against God’s Word, it’s easy for you to say to be obedient.” You are right, but the command to live for God doesn’t come from me. It comes from the One who rules the world, the One who destroys those who destroy themselves with sin. 

But it isn’t all judgment. Let’s take a look at our second point: God really did save His people from it.

It is quite clear later on that this flood was planet-wide, and the Earth has the scarring to prove it. So the fact that we are all here tells us that God really did save his people from it. God has accomplished this through a command to Noah to build the ark. We don’t tend to mark things in cubits, which would be from the tip of your tallest finger to your elbow, or roughly 18 inches. With that estimate, this boat that God is telling Moses to build would be about 450 feet long (or a little longer than your regulation football field), 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high (Matthews 364). Noah only has to accommodate kinds of animals, not every individual species, and he probably took on juveniles of the animals as they would be smaller (see more here.) I won’t spend the time here to show that this could have actually happened because that has been done in many other places. There are a variety of ways in which you can explain how Noah could have achieved all of this, but the point isn’t really how Noah mathematically accomplished it but rather that he was obedient to God. Certainly, I believe every word that is written here literally happened; God doesn’t lie, and He is very powerful. 

And most surprisingly of all, He makes promises to His people. Here we see in our passage the very first mention of the word “covenant.” This is an especially gracious promise, as one scholar draws out: "Divine charter is a proclamation made by the Lord and is not in agreement. We find this in the Noahic covenant where the Lord obligates himself…to save the Noahic family and preserve the new world, also forever, without specific demands placed upon the patriarch…” (Matthews, 368). This would be something that Noah would have had to cling to in earnest for the rest of this project. Even Noah, while better than the people around him, still could not have earned this covenant. God made the covenant with Noah before the first tree came down. But this doesn’t make the work that Noah did meaningless. It was a great demonstration of the faith that Noah had. 

We oftentimes forget what a massive undertaking this would be for Noah. When I was studying for this John Calvin was the only one to take the time to walk us through what Noah was asked to do. In order to build this 400+ foot boat, Noah would begin not by going to Home Depot, but by felling all the trees, by yourself (after all, it's not like the rest of humanity is going to help you). Yes, you have three sons, but that doesn’t lighten the load by much. Then you have to carry all of those trees, again by yourself, to the place to put it all together. This is going to be done over the course of 100 years of very hard manual labor. This has been looked at, and it is indeed possible, but boy is that a lot of work. Beyond that, everyone around him is given to violence, and Noah is out there hogging up all the trees to build his yacht! Plus, it wouldn't be surprising if the people around him messed up his work to set him back (everyone is given to evil in all of this). And if all that wasn't enough, once you've got the boat put together, now you gotta gather up enough food to last you the year's voyage for yourself, family, and oh yeah all the animals! And let's be real real here: you're on a boat with animals; it's not like they don't create a stink while they're on the boat. (259-261). This is all being done when it had never even rained before, much less flooded in this sort of way. This is an unprecedented amount of work for something that no one had ever seen before. In short, we are looking at nothing less than an absolute, total commitment to serve the Lord no matter what He asks. Another scholar put it convincingly, "'Noah did according to all that God commanded him – so did he'" is most important. Here the reader may catch a glimpse of what it means to walk with God, or to be righteous." (194). In other words, walking with God isn’t something that makes sense to the world. Noah has faith, acting on what cannot be seen or materialistically proven (Matthews, 369). Calvin ties off this section by saying this, “Moses, indeed, says in a single word that he did it; but we must consider how far beyond all human power was the doing of it: and that it would have been better to die a hundred deaths, then to undertake a work so laborious, unless he had looked to something higher than the present life" (261).  

God has a habit of having His people do things that don’t make sense to the world. Moses, who wrote down this story, while out leading sheep around was asked to go back to the country where he was a wanted man for murder to lead millions of people, representing the most powerful country’s economic engine, out of the country, across the desert, into the promised land (Exodus 3). I can imagine Moses thinking, “Me, too, Noah.” Later on, those same people would march around Jericho and take down the city with a shout (Joshua 6). These same people would later form a nation attacked by so many powerful armies yet defending themselves with jars and trumpets (Judges 7), and sometimes by doing absolutely nothing at all (2 Kings 19:35). What all of these things have in common is the fact that God is the one making them possible. Yet, Israel had to trust that God would defend them, Gideon had to take 300 people against a countless army, Joshua still had to march his army around the city for a week, Moses still had to travel into Egypt, and Noah still had to build the ark. 

But here’s the key: they all did so under the covenant of God. All of these people had their eyes on God to do what they did, and the same call goes to you. It is going to make less and less sense (from a worldly logic) to follow Christ. Sure, a hundred years ago, going to church made you a respectable member of society, but increasingly, that is going to make you a bigot. How do you hold on? 

You hold on by keeping your eyes on the ultimate act that doesn’t make any sense: Jesus dying on the cross for you. Why on Earth should God the Father give His Son to us and indwell us with His Holy Spirit? We’ve not done anything to deserve that, but Jesus did. Judgment is coming again, but rather than running to a ship, we run to a Savior. Noah built the ship with lots of work. Jesus built our salvation by breaking His body, and pouring out His blood. By keeping our eyes on what He has done, we will have the strength to do what He calls us to, not to earn our salvation, but to display the salvation already received. 

We’ve been called to a committed life, but we do so under the covenant of God, which we have a picture of here in bread and grape juice before us. 

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