Genesis: AUTHORITY
Forged In Action: Genesis 6:9-7:9
Pastor John Weathersby
Sunday November 27, 2022
Notes/Not a Transcript
In our passage today, we’re encouraged to trust in God. We’re encouraged by the impossible circumstances and by seeing Noah ready to follow after God.
Genesis 6:9–7:9 (ESV)
Noah and the Flood
9 These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.
Remember, Genesis, tells the beginning of things, has an arc to the story that tells the redemptive history, and foreshadows both the need for and the future-coming Christ. We learn Noah was “a righteous man, blameless in his generation .”This isn’t to say Noah was sinless, consistent with:
Romans 3:10 (ESV)
10 as it is written:
“None is righteous, no, not one;
Psalm 14:1 (ESV)
1 The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds;
there is none who does good.
Psalm 53:3 (ESV)
3 They have all fallen away;
together they have become corrupt;
there is none who does good,
not even one.
Instead, Noah is described like Job 1:1 in Job 1:1, blameless and upright who feared God and turned away from evil. What makes a man be describable as “righteous”?
Job 1:1 (ESV)
1 There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.
Psalm 32:1–2 (ESV)
1 Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.
2 Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
Psalm 32:10–11 (ESV)
10 Many are the sorrows of the wicked,
but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord.
11 Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous,
and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!
Hebrews 11:7 (ESV)
7 By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear, constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.
In the book of the Hebrews, we get commentary on Noah’s blamelessness and righteousness. At the same time, we see God’s consistent standard. Salvation and positional righteousness are always by God’s grace through faith.
We New Testament saints see this in 2 Corinthians 5:21:
2 Corinthians 5:21 (ESV)
21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
1 Corinthians describes our positional righteousness, but Hebrews, Psalms, Job, and Genesis help us understand Noah. We find Noah in Hebrews 11 together with 15 others who lived by faith; Able, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, and Samuel.
He was righteous, and blameless and he walked with God.
Hebrews 11:7 (ESV)
7 By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear, constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.
He believed in God’s word. He didn’t just believe in God’s word. It inspired a reverent fear in him.
Spurgeon said on faith that “[…]the faith which accepts one word of God, and rejects another, is evidently not faith in God, but faith in our own judgment, faith in our own taste”. Noah was righteous, upright, and blameless and walked with God, fearing His word and acting on its whole truth.
Romans 14:23 (ESV)
23 But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.
1 John 3:4 (ESV)
4 Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.
So what of this faithful, blameless, upright Noah?
10 And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence.
12 And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.
Noah’s three sons, pick up from an earlier note in 5:32 where we see his line, following a pattern of other prominent patriarchs fathering three sons scripture is giving us everything we need to rest the total weight of our faith on God. His Gospel and His word so that we, too, can live by faith.
Genesis 5:32 (ESV)
32 After Noah was 500 years old, Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
In verses 11-12, we see a focus on corruption, repeating three times to clearly show the human condition we saw in 6:5 the hearts of man was wickedness continually, angles had intervened and were working against God’s plan to populate the earth and multiply Godly generations and so…
Genesis 6:5 (ESV)
5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
13 And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
14 Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch.
15 This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark 300 cubits, its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits.
16 Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above, and set the door of the ark in its side. Make it with lower, second, and third decks.
17 For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die.
18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you.
19 And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female.
20 Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground, according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive.
21 Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten, and store it up. It shall serve as food for you and for them.”
22 Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.
This was what Hebrews 11:7 described
Hebrews 11:7 (ESV)
7 By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.
Noah was in a world with his little family described by God as Corrupt, having corrupted their way, and was full of violence. The warning from God and reverent fear inspires Noah to live among these conditions for some time, and according to the timeline of the births of his sons (the fact that they brought with them wives), building the prescribed Arc for presumably between 50 and 70 years.
There is plenty of mystery around how the arc was created because the arch of the Genesis story tells of God’s plan and redemptive history, not an exhaustive historical treatment. However, there are interesting threads to pull. For example, Genesis 5 gives a great genealogy. Here we’ll see that Methuselah (Noah’s pap) died in the same year of the flood’s start, and Lamech, Noah’s dad, died five years before that.
God gives instructions on how the ark is to be made in14-16 gives some reasoning for why, together with instructions for what to do, how to fill it, and feeds everyone for the journey in 17-21, and in verse 22, we see faith forged in action.
In verse 18, we see that God says:
Genesis 6:18 (ESV)
18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you.
This is the first mention in the scripture of Covenant. God says that he will enter into a covenant with Noah and will describe that covenant in a few chapters, this is more evidence of the hope of Noah’s faith, and that is the footnote of
Genesis 6:22 (ESV)
22 Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.
And so then,
7:1 Then the Lord said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation.
Maybe you’re someone who understands the phrase laying down roots. Generations of people know your family, and you know them. You give directions seemingly perpetually in the past. We do that here all the time. We say things like: which sandwich man, oh the one over past the old gander mountain, where the CVS was the old bank property… if you’re not from here, you cannot even get directions from anyone because you don’t know what the old anything was, you just know what is!
How much more a 600 yearly Noah,
Noah, 600 years of living here – I’m going to destroy it. Now hop onto the boat.
2 Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate,
3 and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth.
4 For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.”
5 And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.
6 Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth.
7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood.
8 Of clean animals, and of animals that are not clean, and of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground,
9 two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah.
The ark is created 50-70 years after, and God says now you and your household (Noah and his wife, 2, his three sons and their wives + 6 for a total of 8). God tells the story of preserving this faithful family, preserving lineage in Adam (not some new race or creation), and saving faith. Further, we see the Sethite (Semite) line preserved in this Christ type of Noah with harking forward to Moses in a line of Seth that will bring Abraham and track forward to Christ – the fulfillment of God’s promise in Genesis 3.
What do we learn, then? Why would a good God do all this?
By His grace, God, in the fullness of time, will create an eternal new heaven and a new earth, populated with those who’ve lived in a sin-sick world that doubted God, seen its ramifications, and now live as a people redeemed in Christ.
By His grace, he provides a way through faith to restoration and calls His people into that grace.
What presses your faith? What pushes you to the edges of belief?
In Genesis 7:5, Noah did all that God commanded him.
Genesis 7:5 (ESV)
5 And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.
God restored humanity to himself, providing Seth’s line for the future Messiah Christ. He flooded the earth, creating a means for 2 of each kind of animal who came and went willingly (Genesis 7:3). The demonstration of Noah’s faith strengthens ours. As that passage mentioning the 15 examples of faith starts like this
Genesis 7:3 (ESV)
3 and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth.
Hebrews 11:1 (ESV)
By Faith
1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Let us be assured through the story of creation and the flood, in the example of Noah, of saving faith forged in action to trust God.
Pray, Observe, App
