Genesis 6 0 8:11

GENESIS 6:11- 8:14

The sinfulness of man had become so great that God prepared to sweep away the human race in a judgment of water.  He chose to use Noah, a righteous man that walked habitually with God, who had unwavering faith in HIM.  God commanded Noah to build a ship in which he and his family would escape the flood.  Obediently Noah begins the 100 year task (one commentary suggests 70 years) of constructing the ark.  When the flood arrives on schedule, Noah and his family are preserved while the rest of the human race perished in its unbelief.  Mankind has a fresh start on the earth. 

The Word states that the sons of God took wives of all they desired and chose and in the very next verse it states that the LORD said,  “My Spirit shall not forever dwell and strive with man.” After pronouncing 120 years as the days of man, the Word states that “the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination and intention of all human thinking was only evil continually…the LORD regretted and was grieved at heart! “(v.6)

Although Enoch had warned these people…Jude 14,15; Noah preached to them as I Peter 2:5 calls him a ‘preacher of righteousness’; and 6:3 sows that God had been striving with man but that is not going to continue!  The people were “without excuse”.

Although, there were already some giants, the results of the evil choice of the fallen angels and the cooperation of the lovely daughters of man are a grief to God’s heart!!!  The tyrannical Nephilim were the offspring and the earth was corrupted and the world was full of violence.  6:11-12. The final result is God tells Noah what He plans and why…God spoke to Noah SEVEN times.  As man ruined the earth, God will ruin man. 

The Word describes Noah as a righteous man…It seems that Noah was free from the contamination resulting from the intermarriage of fallen angels with women and the evil that prevailed throughout the world. 

God is not speaking of an ordinary flood that we might think of today, but a globe-covering flood that would exterminate all land vertebrates outside the Ark.  II Peter 3:6 affirms the Genesis Flood account.  Jesus confirms it in Luke 17:26-27.

v. 13 … after telling Noah what He is going to do, God began to give instructions.  It does not appear to be an option/choice for Noah.  In this section of specific but short and simple instructions that we have recorded, the LORD also made a covenant with Noah and it covered his wife, his sons and their wives.  As I, MYSELF, would desire such a record of my responses to the LORD’s directions, v. 22 tells us that “Noah did this; he did ALL that God commanded to him.”

Noah was instructed as to the human passengers (v.18) and the Animal passengers 19-20.  Skeptics overload the Ark with millions of “species” although, the ‘kinds’ are much broader.  The skeptics also include types of organisms that were not specified as passengers, such as plants, fish and even microbes.

And the building of the Ark began and was finished in 70-100 years of construction. 

Questions loosely answered: 

Fish can survive in fresh and salt water although designed for living in one or the other. 

Germs were likely very robust at the time of the flood … can survive in corpses or in the dried or frozen state or be carried by a host without causing disease. 

Fitting animals on the ark:  The Ark could have held 340 semi-trailers, each of which could hold 300 sheep.  So it could hold 102,000 sheep.  If they were only one layer deep on all decks, 19,000 sheep.  According to how we see “kind” then only 2,000 animals would have been on the Ark.  According to men who have researched and studied extensively and being generous for the benefit of the critics:  the floor space requirements for animals, ½ of the available floor space of the 3 decks would be needed for the animals, the maximum amount of food and water storage on top of the cages close to the animals. 

DINOSAURS:  Obviously dinosaurs were small when beginning their lives, hatched from eggs (no bigger than a football).  Flaws in the critics’ views:  Juvenile dinosaurs have been wrongly identified as separate from the adults.  Weights have been badly over estimated…with experimentation, concluded the larger ones weighed around 23 tons unlike the 80 ton estimates earlier.  Dinosaurs did not have to be fully grown before they could reproduce. 

FOOD FOR THE ANIMALS:  Estimation…required foodstuffs would only take 15 % of the Ark’s total volume…drinking water 9%.  A watering system could have saved labor as water and food could have filled troughs. 

SEVEN DAYS TO LOAD THE ANIMALS:  One researcher estimates that the animals could have boarded and been caged in as little as five hours

GLOBAL FLOOD:  addressed as The Flood.  Genesis 7:19- 23…use of the words all, whole, everything, every…ONLY Noah was left and those with him in the ark.    II Peter 3:3-6

THE TIME CAME WHEN THE FLOOD WAS TO COME AND THE ARK WAS COMPLETE ACCORDING TO GOD’S SPECS: 

Chapter 7 … Noah is 600 years old (when he was told again what was going to happen in SEVEN days!)  “Get the animals into the ark…Rain is on the way!  In SEVEN days it began just as the LORD had told Noah.  (v.5 and “Noah did all that the LORD commanded him.”)  Hebrews 11:7

Noah boarded the Ark with his family and all the kinds of land vertebrates.  The Flood began with enormous amounts of water from the oceans (deep) and the rain lasting 40 days.  It prevailed for 150 days and covered all the high mountains…not at their present height which comes from the post-Flood uplift.  If the earth were completely smooth, the seawater would cover the whole surface to almost 2 miles deep.

The Flood was responsible for most of the fossil record.  This records not a sequence of fast ages, but a sequence of burial as the Flood buried successive ecosystems as it encroached on the land from the sea. 

DR. JONATHAN SARFATI who wrote the Genesis book stated:  One of the results of flood…warm ocean and cool continents would result in an Ice Age lasting centuries.  The woolly mammoth fossils probably formed near the end of this Ice Age.  

v. 16 “…and the LORD shut him in and closed round about him. 

Possibly overhanging eaves, which prevented the rain from coming through the perforated window space had also prevented Noah from seeing the mountaintops.  It is well to remember that the Architect of Noah’s ark was the omniscient Scientist Whose “ways are past finding out”.  Though men have learned much from them through the centuries.  Nothing was lacking in Noah’s ark to keep it from being suited for all that was required of it.  The comfortable, light, well-ventilated watertight, perfectly planned boat large enough to accommodate all the original land animals intelligently and permit the four human couples to live separately and in peace needs no apology today. 

In 1609 at Hoorn, in Holland, the Netherlandish Mennonite, P Jansen produced a vessel after the pattern of the ark only smaller whereby he proved it was well adapted for floating and would carry a cargo greater by one third than any other form of like cubical content.  It revolutionized shipbuilding.  By 1900 every large vessel on the high seas was definitely inclined toward the proportions of Noah’s ark.  Later ships were built longer for speed, a matter of no concern to Noah. 

8:1 makes a crucial observation concerning Noah.  It says simply, “God did not forget about Noah!”  God NEVER forgot Noah and when it was time HE ended the flood and brought Noah safely to dry land.  

The LORD has not brought you or me to this point in our lives merely to abandon us in the midst of our circumstances.  God remembers you.  Psa. 139:7-10.  HE fulfills HIS promises to us and HE never leaves us in the midst of circumstances unequipped with HIS grace!

8:14…”the land was entirely dry!  (370 days duration)