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No Comments The Ark
We all know the story of Noah’s ark. The Bible leaves out much of the details and so we can possibly assume some things without damaging the message. Let’s take a look and try to make sense of what must have taken place for this to happen the way it’s told.
I’m not concerned with the number of animals which is probably the main thing people are skeptical about. More important perhaps is the what the backdrop had to look like for this to happen.
Noah took probably seventy-five years to build the ark. No doubt he had some help from his sons but I would presume a project that large so far from water outside labor would be needed. This would lead me to believe that Noah was a rich man. Noah had to have been mocked for building such a monstrous barge far from the sea. Men were glad to take the wages for their work and so continued building the old man’s delusion and couldn’t wait to laugh at him when it was finished.
The Bible says that God brought the flood because men’s imaginations and deeds were continually wicked. Noah had three sons and at least two of them were old enough to have had children. Why didn’t they?
When the whole world is against you it’s pretty intimidating and just like Lot, four men and their wives had to be very afraid of what’s going on around them. Children, it would have been natural for his sons to have children. Remembering the wickedness of rest of the population it is possible that their children were taken violently from them.
If you read the accounts of missionaries or even the news you come to understand how brutally savage men can be. It makes no sense that Noah’s sons had no children. Men like sex and kids just happen. This thought doesn’t add or take away from the text or intent of the message.
One other thought is why would a man spend seventy-five years building a big boat to load up with animals to save them from a flood that had never happened before? One reason is fear of man but he could have possibly escaped and headed to the hills (Idaho) and found a way to hide.
Noah saw the things that men were doing. There was no safe place to hide. Noah was afraid of men but more importantly he was afraid of God. He was afraid God was telling him the truth. God was going to wipe men off the face of the earth and the only vehicle Noah and his family had to escape was in the ark. God has told us the same thing.
We’ve been building an ark for two thousand years. The church of Jesus Christ is the ark of today. It’s our only vehicle for getting out of here. Violence seems to be becoming the norm and once again the world is preparing itself for the judgment of God.
The world is still willing to take our money to facilitate advancing what they consider a preposterous message. When Christ returns there may not be many if any looking for him. The mocking isn’t coming just from the world but from the church itself. Noah had other family, another thing we can easily assume. He was out on the fringe of what was acceptable beliefs. His family thought Noah was nuts. The world thinks the same of us.
We’ve got to be willing to be ridiculed for our faith even by our family and the church itself. It’s why the apostle Paul said that he didn’t want to know anything among people except Christ and him crucified.
Jesus said we might have to give up family and friends for his sake. He didn’t come to unify us but to divide us. Noah’s family gave up on him and the same may happen to us. When Noah closed the door on the ark he was leaving a whole lot of people behind. People he loved. His brothers and sisters, maybe his parents; he counted it all as lost because it was.
Getting on that ark wasn’t something he wanted to do. The whole idea was revolting. Just like Christ I’m sure he asked God if there was any other way. In the end God’s will was more important than Noah’s will. So he picked up his cross, his burden, to follow God. He humbled himself to being the slave of God, performing the most humiliating act (building the ark) year after year in front of a scoffing world.
So here we are, promoting a two thousand year old message to a enlightened Christ-rejecting world. If the gospel was foolishness before, it’s ten times that today. So we must make sure of our election, make sure that we are true believers, doers of the word and not just hearers. Noah heard from God and then went to work and working on the impossible task of saving mankind. Noah’s effort did not go unrewarded and neither shall our work.