Michael-Grams: M-G: 9.25.16 // Where is Our Treasure

What made Noah any different than the world in which he lived? What makes our lifestyle any different than the man or woman who doesn’t know the Lord? Do we even care? I can think of an entire civilization that wished they had another shot at caring! We know from the biblical record that every single soul on earth drowned for their sin, disobedience, and rebellion (Gn 6:5, 7) after Noah was ordered into the ark.

Peter called the antediluvian (before the flood) civilization a “world of the ungodly” (2 Pet 2:5). It was a civilization that was anything but civil (Gn 6:5). There were only eight out of the endless masses who survived (1 Pet 3:20), but theologically speaking, we would have to assume that those who did not know right from wrong; children in the womb, or those too young to know, and so forth went to heaven though they all drowned in the rising flood waters; God knows who they are, but the record is silent. All we know for sure is the number who survived the great deluge.

Here is something you do not hear very often, the rapture of the lost. As the wicked were suddenly removed by the waters of judgment in the days of Noah, so will the wicked at the end of the tribulation period be removed along with Satan in the future, bringing the seven years of tribulation to a close and ushering in the millennial reign of Christ from Jerusalem with His second coming. The Church will be raptured seven years prior to the return of Christ at His second coming to rule and reign with Him for a thousand years.

Mt 24:37 But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.

Mt 24:38 For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark,

Mt 24:39 and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.

Mt 24:40 Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left.

Mt 24:41: Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left.

Those “left” behind are believers. Those who are lost must be removed before the arrival of Jesus Christ to earth. But did you catch v38? Life went on as usual while all along Noah was preaching of righteousness and coming judgment! What was considered loony and absurd was the monstrous construction of a boat in a landlocked area and his message behind it; I am reminded that “the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing” (1 Cor 1:18), right?

Sadly, there was absolutely no one who listened to Noah’s “foolish” message. The imposing ark aroused no fear or concern; words were heard but unheeded. No one realized that once the ark was completed that all those found outside the ark would perish! Those outside the way of the cross today are perishing and will perish should they die without Jesus Christ.

Incidentally, the foreknowledge and omniscience of God knew how big to make the ark. Did Noah fail as a preacher? Modern Churchianity would say, “Yes,” but that is not the testimony of Scripture. Talk about grueling persistence! This was to be an arduous task. Noah preached and built an ark for the next 120 years (cf. Gn 6:3). Noah was all in to performing God’s will for the long haul. He did precisely what he was instructed to do; this is what made him successful, and it saved his life and the life of his family. Results are God’s business; ours is obedience, even if it’s 120 years in duration with zero conversions to show for it!

The great flood would top all geological features of the antediluvian civilization (Gn 7:20); there was no escape. The extreme geological and topographical changes to take place would erupt and thrust upwards, downwards, sideways, split apart, and turn every which way, “the fountains of the great deep were broken up.” Nobody was laughing as the body count mounted. Grace had ended with the closing of the door of the ark for the lost.

What made Noah so dramatically different than the world He lived in? He was just, perfect, and walked with God (Gn 6:9), but He never “was not” like Enoch (Gn 5:24), for God had other plans for Noah; he and his family of seven would be transported by a humongous gopherwood pod into a world cleansed of wickedness, but not cured, for the sin nature of Noah and his family would ride along with them above the angry waters into the “new” world. What we experientially and historically know about the sinful nature of man is that it will not stay put or be domesticated. Thank God for the rainbow (Gn 9:14-15).

The world today would question with disdainful incredulity the character of Noah, or any Christian for that matter, who loves and lives for God,

“Just? Perfect? You have to be kidding me! Being super-religious and pious doesn’t make him any better than the rest of us! He is self-righteous and nothing more than a goody-two-shoes like the rest of his bigoted kind!”

It sounds vitriolic and vile, doesn’t it? If there is one term that characterizes the world of man back then and today, it is the word, “hatred.” Ironic isn’t it? The hater hating “hate” speech, particularly the kind of speech coming forth from the Word of God…!

What made Noah different than those in his world was that all his contemporaries died, and he remained! That was physical, but what about spiritually? You know the real reason. Look at Heb 11:7,

“By faith Noah…moved with godly fear, prepared an ark….”

He believed in God; it was not simply a slogan printed on paper money, “In God we trust.” “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called…” (Heb 11:8). Without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb 11:6). The god of this age has blinded the minds of those in Noah’s day and in our day “who do not believe” (2 Cor 4:4). The only difference between the sinful lost and the sinful saved is that the Holy Spirit lives within saved sinners (cf. Rom 8:9).

Imagine on day 377 (cf. Gn 7:11 with Gn 8:13-14) from Noah’s perspective walking down the ramp of the ark (Gn 8:15-19) onto dry ground and smelling the air as never before in a cleansed creation; behold, all things become new physically though he retained his inherited sinful nature. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15). The former was external; the latter is an internal transformation of a new attitude and actions, and yet, the sin nature is still left intact.

Walking down the ramp, surreal in silence the earth was to Noah. No longer did he witness or hear the sounds of the enterprises of the wicked. Satan and his vast host of demons had only eight people living on planet earth on which to focus all of their hatred. They were well acquainted with Noah and his family. The Divine hedge would be hinged by sovereign decree, though the angels of the Lord outnumbered the demons 2 to 1. In the post-flood report, the sinful nature was alive and well, thriving through the propagation of mankind.

If it were not for God’s Word, we would not have known about Noah, the ark, the great flood, the symbolism of the rainbow, or any of this! Keep in mind that this story falls within the first eleven chapters of Genesis which are regarded by liberal interpreters as metaphorical in nature. In other words, Genesis 1-11 literally never happened; it’s all figurative.

Geologists combing the earth at higher elevations and finding fossilized remains of marine life are not going to postulate, “This place was underwater at one time.” Since the Bible declares it (Gn 7:19, 20), secular geologists are not going to cut their professional credibility short by espousing the possibility of a historical cataclysmic event that buried the globe in a watery tomb. Revelation is not deemed empirical evidence. Though revelation substantiates the evidence, it is still dismissed as hocus pocus under the anti-scientific term – religion.

Allow me to speculate what a valuable lesson we learn from all of this flood stuff had the writer of chapters 1-11 employed figurative language. We need to go green because nature rebelled against man abusing his environment in Noah’s day. There you have it, folks? A biblical mandate to go green; we need to be a lean, green-loving machine so that man and nature can live in harmony without posing a threat to one another. You read it here…!

By the way, there is a biblical responsibility to use our resources wisely. The earth and all therein belong to God (Deut 10:14; Job 41:11; Psa 24:1; 1 Tim 6:17). After all, He is the Creator (Gn 1:1), and we have no right to abuse it. We may have a mortgage or possess a deed for a tract/s of land, but we don’t really own it. Everything is on loan from God, even the air that we breathe!

The imposing ark symbolized judgment (Gn 6:7) as well as grace (Gn 6:8). Its dimensions are found in Gn 6:15: 300 cubits in length, 50 cubits in width, and 30 cubits in height. The problem is no one knows for sure the length of the cubit in Noah’s day.1 If Noah built the ark based on a common cubit of 18", elbow to tip of the middle finger, the ark would be 450' L, 75' W, and 45' H.

The Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky, on the other hand, utilized the Hebrew long cubit equaling 20.4", larger than most depictions based on 18": 510' in length, 85' in width, and 51' in height or over 2,200,000 cubic feet. The outer dimensions of the ark are enormous either way and within the ballpark of accuracy.

I personally think that the design was not elegant. It was simply a huge container box or barge-like, having no shaped bow or stern (for it was rudderless). The word “ark” is the Hebrew word tebah (H8392, 25 occurrences: Genesis 23x / Exodus 2x), meaning a box or chest, designed to float in all occurrences, carrying live cargo (Gn 6:18-21; Ex 2:3, 5).

150 days after the rains began, the ark came to rest “on the mountains [note plural] of Ararat” in Armenia of eastern Turkey; the precise location is unknown (Gn 8:4). Mount Ararat itself is ~16,854'; Everest is over 12,000' higher than the Ararat ranges! How could the ark have rested on the lower elevations of Ararat (cf. Gn 7:20) while over 2,500 miles away is Mt Everest at ~29,029' above sea level today?2 The ark resting in the mountains of Ararat proves that this was no provincial or local flood, but a global one.

What made Noah different than the rest of his world? Should we seek to be different, like Noah, in our world of lost souls? Absolutely we should (cf. Rom 15:4)! He was just (lived by God’s righteous standards), perfect (not sinless, but blameless, a man of integrity), and he walked with God (intimate fellowship). Read it for yourself (Gn 6:9). Could there be any doubt in your mind that it made all the difference in the world to Noah?! In a world saturated with literally “everyone is doing it” (Gn 6:5), he chose not to follow the world down a self-destructive path.

I shouldn’t have to ask this because where our treasure is so will our heart be also (Mt 6:21), but I will; “Where is our treasure located? Is it inside the ark of God’s will or outside of it?” It really does matter! The rapture is imminent and judgment is coming. <><