3rd November 2024
Old Testament Heroes 3 – Noah
Readings: Genesis 6:9-22 & Genesis 8:13-22
As I was preparing this message about Noah, I was reminded that when I was small one of my favourite Beatrix potter stories was The Tale of Mister Jeremy Fisher. I remember the book cover with the picture of him punting on a waterlily leaf with his picnic box slung over his shoulder. And I particularly remember those two immortal sentences “The water was all slippy-sloppy in the larder and the back passage. But Mr. Jeremy liked getting his feet wet; nobody ever scolded him, and he never caught a cold.”
As we just heard, God told Noah to seal the hull of the ark with pitch, both inside and out. Perhaps he was concerned that it might not have been the most watertight vessel ever built, and that it might otherwise have been ‘all slippy-sloppy in the larder and in the back passage’there too.
The story of Noah’s ark has been told in Sunday Schools and preached from pulpits for generations. But in reality, the story is not about the ark, or the animals going in, two by two, it’s about Noah.
But before we get to him, I suppose that the first question we have to ask ourselves is did the flood actually happen or is it just a myth, a nice story like The Tale of Mister Jeremy Fisher.
This is something that has been widely debated over the centuries and although people continue to search for clues, no scientific evidence either for a global flood or for the Ark has ever been found.
Nevertheless “there’s no smoke without fire” as they say, and the Bible is by no means the only religious or historical work that talks about a global catastrophe of this sort.
But however factual or mythical the story is, the thing we have to face up to this morning is that God ordained that it be included in the Scriptures, and that he did that for a reason. So we can’t just discount it as being irrelevant. Far from it! There’s a lot that we can learn from it.
If I was going to do a classic 6 point sermon my points could gon something like this:-
Noah heard
Noah listened
Noah acknowledged
Noah obeyed
Noah survived
Noah received a covenant from God and became a patriarch.
But let’s think about the actual building of the ark, just for a moment.
Noah lived in the valley plains of Mesopotamia, where the annual rainfall is seldom more than 8 inches and irrigation systems are needed for crops to grow. It is highly probable that Noah had little or no experience of building or sailing even a small fishing boat, let alone what amounted to a sizeable ship.
So imagine his reaction when he heard God say to him “I am going to send a flood to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. So make yourself a big boat out of cypress wood.”
“Excuse me God, I don’t think I heard you correctly. Could you repeat that please?”
And do you know how big that thing was to be? 450 feet long, that’s 137 meters, as long as 1¼ football fields, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. That’s the height of a 5 story building. Imagine !
There were to be three decks inside the ark, so that’s a total of nearly 4 football fields to accommodate all those birds and animals, as well as Noah and his family. That’s huge!
How long would it have taken them to build? Genesis 6:3 implies that there were 120 years between Noah receiving that ominous message and the flood itself, but it’s thought that the construction of such a vessel in those days would have taken those FOUR men, doubtless helped by their wives, anything up to 75 years.
The first job would be to source the wood, some 12,000 TONS of it, to get it on site and cut it to shape. They didn’t have machinery for transporting and handling the trees. They didn’t have CAD to help them plan it all out, or electric saws or planes, and critically they didn’t have any previous boat building and waterproofing experience.
The sheer scale of it is mind boggling.
And while it was all happening, imagine how they would have been teased by their neighbours and by passers-by – building a huge boat hundreds of miles from the sea, and without a fleet of 16 litre, V12, 380hp Ford trucks to drag it there.
But Noah had heard God’s voice, believed what he said, acknowledged what was about to happen, ignored his neighbours, and got stuck into the job.
At the end of chapter 6, which Sharon just read, the biblical account jumps forward. At the beginning of chapter 7, suddenly, there’s just a week to go – time to get everyone on board. I cannot begin to imagine how they even began. The Sunday School books show pictures of the animals all queueing up patiently for their turn to get on board – a bit like we do on Brittany Ferries. But I can’t believe it was that simple.
Finally, they’re all on board. Can you imagine the noise, the heat and the stink inside that thing? It must have been suffocating. And then someone says ‘Shhh, what’s that noise? What is it?’ It’s rain.
And it rains, and it rains, and it rains, and rains. For forty days and forty nights it rains. Then suddenly there’s a creaking noise, the whole boat wobbles and shifts, and then they’re afloat. Scary or what? And still it rains. I just hope that the roof didn’t leak.
And then finally, they woke up one morning, looked outside and the sun was shining again. Five months they’d been cooped up in that thing – drifting aimlessly, hoping beyond hope that God hadn’t forgotten all about them. At the ark had come to ground - at the top of Mount Ararat.
But, believe it or not, they had another five months more to endure while the flood subsided, before they could finally escape.
Genesis 8:13 tells us that “By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry.” That was on Noah’s 600th birthday. How was that for timing !
And what was the first thing they did, when they’d released all those poor animals and birds? You heard it in Vaughan’s reading. Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.
Noah and his family had survived. Now they had the job of starting life again completely from scratch. But first, before he did anything else, the Bible tells us “Noah built an altar to the Lord”. Would that have been the first thing I did? I’m not so sure. What about you?
That’s why Noah was a hero. Not only had he built a ship the like of which had never been seen before, or since. Not only did he live a life of incredible hardship. Noah kept God first and foremost in his life.
Psalm 121 says I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. Noah already knew that to be true.
Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you.” And who was one of those descendants? We heard last week. Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father.
Hebrews chapter 11 lists all those amazing faith heroes, and of Noah it says “By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.”
Then, in chapter 12 it says this. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders, and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us (like Noah) run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”