Genesis 7:1-12

“Then the Lord said to Noah, ‘Come into the ark, you and all your household, because I have seen that you are righteous before Me in this generation. ² You shall take with you seven each of every clean animal, a male and his female; two each of animals that are unclean, a male and his female; ³ also seven each of birds of the air, male and female, to keep the species alive on the face of all the earth. ⁴ For after seven more days I will cause it to rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and I will destroy from the face of the earth all living things that I have made.’

⁵ And Noah did according to all that the Lord commanded him. ⁶ Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters were on the earth. ⁷ So Noah, with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives, went into the ark because of the waters of the flood. ⁸ Of clean animals, of animals that are unclean, of birds, and of everything that creeps on the earth, ⁹ two by two they went into the ark to Noah, male and female, as God had commanded Noah.

¹⁰ And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were on the earth. ¹¹ In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. ¹² And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights.”

Last week, we began to take a look at the pictures of Jesus in the Old Testament, and our intent is to show that the entire Bible is about Jesus. There continues to be this heresy among too many who call themselves Christians, and sadly, many preachers who say that either the Old Testament is not relevant to modern Christianity or that the Jesus we see in the New Testament is not the same as the God of the Old Testament. But in Hebrews 13:8, we see that Paul tells us that Jesus is the same, “yesterday, today and forever.”

In John 5:46, Jesus says this, “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me.” That means that the Torah, Genesis through Deuteronomy, written by Moses, is about Jesus. There are stories and pictures in these writings that picture and tell us about Jesus.

Just this morning I was reading in Isaiah 9, and there we see in verse 2, the prophecy of Jesus being a great light to the people in Galilee, and He fulfilled that in Matthew 4:16. In Isaiah 11:1-4, Jesus is the Branch that will come from the line of Jesse, King David’s line, and that He will be righteous judge. We can go on and on, but I hope that you are seeing the picture here.

Today, we will look at a very familiar story, the flood. Now we understand what is happening here, and the people on earth are just evil. All of men’s thoughts are evil all the time. Genesis 6:5, “Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

It seems that we are living in a similar situation today. I listen to people talk about abortion like it is nothing; that the killing of a child is just something one does. Just yesterday here in Canada, one of our Federal Ministers of Parliament proposed a law to make reading or teaching certain parts of the Bible illegal. I will bet you that they will not propose the same for the Quran. They know that someone would die. And in fact, the very fact that they are not banning the Quran shows that it is not about ‘hate speech’; it is about the Word of God. But I digress.

Noah, we are told in Genesis 6:9, “This is the genealogy of Noah. Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God.”

For many years, I heard a lot about the ‘Noah walked with God’ part, and that is good. But in the first part of the verse, there is an important reference to Jesus in that Noah’s bloodline was ‘perfect in his generations.’ He had a direct, unpolluted bloodline back to Adam. As such, he needed to be preserved to make sure that Jesus, the second Adam, would have a perfect, unpolluted bloodline so that He could truly be the Savior of Mankind.

This is how we know, by that way, that the ‘Sons of God’ mentioned in Genesis 6 are NOT a human bloodline through Seth. These ‘Sons of God’ that cohabited with women were able to pollute the bloodline with their non-human ‘DNA’. Thus, to save Mankind, to preserve the promise of Genesis 3:15, Noah had to be saved and preserved for the bloodline to trace perfectly back to Adam.

Now, how do we preserve the bloodline of Adam through Noah? We are to build an Ark. If you have ever been to the Ark Encounter in Kentucky, you will have an idea of the massive endeavor that God called Noah to take on. The flood is one of the very first demonstrations of God’s patient grace, how He made a way and prepared a way for others to live if they chose to do so. God would have saved others who did not have pure bloodlines if they had entered the Ark, as well as preserving Noah. It was simply an act of Faith.

Like Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness, so too, these folks just had to believe God and get in the Ark. Noah built the Ark; he was obedient. Genesis 7:5, “And Noah did according to all that the Lord commanded him.”

We do not know exactly how long it took to build the Ark. We know that Noah was a ‘preacher of righteousness’ (2 Peter 2:5). But we see in our verses above that Noah and his family entered the Ark, and God left seven (7) days of grace for others to enter (verse 4). God did not shut the door right away. Even a skeptic who simply out of curiosity had entered and stayed would have been saved. But no others believed and obeyed God.

The Ark is a picture of Jesus and His salvation. All those ‘in Christ’ are saved. Those who trust the word of God, obey the word of God, and all those who stop trusting in their own righteousness and ONLY trust in His righteousness to cover their sins, are saved. For almost 2,000 years, God has extended Grace and sent ‘preachers of righteousness’ to call people to be in Jesus. Get in the Ark that saves eternally and guarantees us eternal life. But like the millions of Noah’s days, many scoff and walk past the open door of the Ark.

Genesis 7:11-12

“In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights.” The flood came, just like Noah had said, just like God had promised, and only those in the Ark were saved. It terrifies me to think how many scratched at the door, banged on the sides of the Ark, and yet, there was no hope. The window of God’s grace for that period was over.

Soon, sooner than we think, God’s grace for our age will come to an end, and His wrath, like the time of the Flood, will be poured out on all mankind, and we who are in Christ will be saved. What an awesome peace to have in our hearts! We have to keep trying to tell the story of Jesus.

The doors of salvation are still open, and the grace is still being extended. I leave you with 2 Peter 3:8-10, “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.”

Jesus is coming to get us soon!

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario