And Noah said, “Verily, I have been doing my best. But ye Council saith that my garden meeteth not the criteria necessary for an ark of this scale and it refuseth me planning permission. They see not how I shall get thine ark out of the garden and believe me not when I say unto them that I expect it to float away. Also, the Heritage Office came forth and spake unto me. It seemeth that thine ark hath a detrimental impact upon the character of the neighbourhood.
And lo, it came to pass that Weights and Measures did say unto me that, in any case, I am allowed in no wise to build anything in cubits – it all hath to be centimetres these days. So, I paid a hundred sheckels, yea even a thousand, for an architect to redo the plans. But then, ye Fire Brigade did weep and gnash its teeth, saying unto me I must install a sprinkler system. A sprinkler system during a flood! Verily, how daft is that?
And lo, I have problems gathering enough cypress wood, for there is a new ban on smiting cypress trees. I explain with exceeding tongue unto them that I need it, but alas, I talk as unto a brick wall.
And it also came to pass that ye Equal Opportunities people spake unto me saying that I must employ Amorites, Hivites and Jebusites. And, woe is me, for Immigration hath seized my passport for what if I depart with animals that have not been micro-chipped, even a hundredfold? So, in short, I have not started thy construction. Thou knowest how it is, Lord…”
The sky cleared, the sun began to shine, and a rainbow appeared. Noah looked up and smiled. “Thou meanest thou art not going to destroy the world after all?” And God said, “Let’s find another way to judge the earth without all the bureaucracy!”
Over the next two weeks, we’re going to be thinking about the real story of Noah. If we were brought up in a Christian environment of any sort at all, it’s likely we know the story quite well – or at least a version of it. There’s a Noah’s Ark duvet cover with matching sheet and pillowcase that all four of our children slept under, no doubt dreaming contentedly about running around in some kind of floating zoo. Of course, Christian parents will do anything to get their kids interested in the Bible and I plead guilty. Animals are a pretty good bet for the under 8’s.
But I think it’s time that someone wrote a book called “Noah for Grown-ups,” because Genesis 6-9 is really not really a children’s story at all. Kids love hearing about the big boat, the animals going in two-by-two, the pitter-patter, splish-splash and the rainbow at the end. But wait! This story is about a scary slide into violence and corruption and vice. It’s about God getting badly upset over things much more serious than red tape. It’s a harrowing account of awful and sweeping divine judgment. It’s about a cataclysmic environmental catastrophe on a massive scale. It’s the ultimate disaster movie. It’s enough to give most kids nightmares.
We’ll come to the deluge itself next week. This morning we’re asking, “Why did this happen?” We’ll be looking at life before the flood to try and gather some clues. The Bible, in fact, gives us a very mixed picture of what it was like in the time immediately preceding the deluge. On the one hand, Noah and his family were godly and decent people; Noah in particular, according to Hebrews 11, was one of the great heroes of faith, not just of his day, but of all time. He was a total legend.
But on the other hand, it seems there was unprecedented spiritual darkness. Chapter 6.5 says, “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil all the time.” That’s a triply damning verdict on the spiritual state of affairs at that time. “Every inclination, only evil, all the time.” God is telling us here about a degree of depravity perhaps never equalled before or since.
But even though the moral atmosphere of that generation was toxic, we know too that people just went about their business very much as normal. Jesus talked about this time saying (in Luke 17.26-27) “People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark.” In other words, the world kept going round as if nothing was up. The people of Noah’s generation were like villagers living on the edge of a sleeping volcano; indifferent to the danger and oblivious to the disaster that was about to visit them.
In v6, it says that God regretted ever making human beings. “He was grieved,” it says. “He was sorry he had made the human race in the first place; it broke his heart” as the Message version has it. One of the saddest, most distressing and most painful things you can hear is when parents say, ‘We wish we had never had children.’ When human relationships break down to that extent you know that something has gone disastrously wrong. It’s surprisingly common actually. Kathie is a hospice nurse and she tells me quite often about families of dying people who don’t talk, and won’t visit from one generation to the next. ‘We wish we had never been born into this family’ or ‘we wish we had never had children.’ For a loving, compassionate, merciful and gracious God to say those words means things must have become unspeakably and irreparably bad.
So what was it? What had broken down so completely at that time? The verses right at the beginning of chapter 6 hint at what it was and at why God decided to take such radical action. “Every inclination, only evil, all the time.” But the verses before that give us some clues about how this situation came to be. They talk, obscurely, about angelic beings (sons of God) intermarrying with human women and producing a kind of hybrid being called Nephilim. This whole development seems to have created conflict and friction between men, women and God. “My Spirit will not contend with human beings forever,” says God in v3, and it seems that it was at this time that the human lifespan became noticeably shorter; I think to limit the damage one person could do in his or her lifetime. This is the language of conflict, of struggle and of sanction. But that’s all it says about the matter here.
We have to turn to another text, written between the Old and New Testaments, called the book of Enoch, to get more information on this weird episode. The book of Enoch is not part of the Word of God, but it is quoted by both Peter and Jude in the New Testament, so I think we can regard it as a useful source of information, even if it clearly isn’t on the level of inspired Scripture. In chapter 7 of Enoch there is an expanded version of the story we have at the beginning of Genesis 6.
It says there that 200 angels left heaven, intermarried with women and had offspring who grew into giants with unusual strength. It also says that this was responsible for the origins of occultism. The angels taught the women sorcery, incantations, and divination, which then spread. And then it describes how people quickly descended into destroying the environment, gratuitous vandalism, fornication and even cannibalism. Society became anarchic. I believe that this was the world Noah knew, and this is the reason why God regretted ever having created life, and why he decided to wipe the slate clean and start again.
But you’ve got to dig around a bit in obscure literature and the back pages of Scripture to find this out. It’s as if God doesn’t like to talk about it much; there’s something that upsets him deeply about what happened in Noah’s day. It upset him so much that he decided to take radical action against the creation he called “good” and the human race he called “very good”.
When the rain finally did come, it was no surprise. It had been warned of and preached about, not for days or months or even years, but for four generations. Talk about a weather forecast! When Noah’s great grandfather Enoch was 65 years old, he began to walk with God, and at that time he was given a prophecy that a great judgment would come. You don’t find this in Genesis; it’s in the New Testament letter of Jude. Enoch had a son at that time, whom he called Methuselah, and all the evidence suggests that he named him after this prophecy. It means, “When he dies it shall be sent forth.”
As long as Methuselah lived, the flood would be delayed; but the day he died, the great judgment would be visited on the earth. All the time Methuselah was alive, Noah warned his generation that God was going to send this torrential rain. Peter called Noah a preacher of righteousness. He was calling people back from the brink, urging them to repent, begging them to change their ways. And nobody listened. Methuselah grew older. Noah kept urging his generation to turn back. No one listened. And Methuselah grew even older. Noah kept on preaching and still nobody paid any attention.
The day Methuselah died, it began to rain. According to Genesis 5.27 he was 969, the oldest recorded lifespan in the whole Bible. You know why? It’s because God is incredibly patient. “Every inclination, only evil, all the time.” And still God waited and waitd. “God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built” it says in 1 Peter 3.20. God has a long, long fuse. He doesn’t lose it easily. He is slow to anger and abounding in love.
God is patient with you too. Thank heavens he’s patient with me. And I’m not just saying that to show how humble I can be. I mean it. But even though God is almost absurdly longsuffering, and even though he always immediately forgives sinners who are truly sorry for what they have done, he doesn’t tolerate evil forever.
God’s amazing grace doesn’t mean he is relaxed about unconfessed sin. And we should always militate against becoming casual about it. Rick Warren once said, “God doesn’t expect you to be perfect, but he does insist on complete honesty.” Being transparent with God and with each other is one of the keys to healthy living. “The truth is,” says Warren, “whatever you can’t talk about is already out of control in your life.” He’s right; the secrets we keep about the darkness inside us are the biggest enemy to our spiritual growth.
There was little darkness to hide in Noah’s life though. Spiritually, he was an open book. That’s what it means to walk with God and it says here that that is what Noah did; he was honest with the Lord and lived a life of integrity. Noah was not only a godly individual; he was clearly very industrious as well. How does one man preach consistently for a period of 120 years, warning about God’s coming judgment, build an ocean liner and find time to eat? The ark, given the dimensions here, was a colossal vessel. It was the length of one and a half football pitches and as high as a four-story building. It was also exactly six times longer than it was wide, which is, incidentally I’m told, the same ratio modern shipbuilders use to build the most efficient and stable ships that sail the seas.
I imagine Noah wondering if the scale and scope of this project weren’t rather too much for him. Do you worry that God is calling you to attempt something that is beyond your talents and gifting? Well, God doesn’t call the equipped; he equips the called. God commissioned Noah to start building this gigantic craft and because, as it says in v9, “Noah walked with God” there is no trace of negotiation, and certainly no protest. In fact v22 simply says that Noah did all that the Lord commanded him. Obedience is a very simple concept, it’s about saying “yes” and saying “no.” It’s about doing the right thing - and doing the right thing can be quite an adventure.
John Kenneth Galbraith, who died two years ago, was a renowned economist. He was a trusted advisor to Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson. In his autobiography, he talks at one point about the dedication of Emily Wilson, his housekeeper.
“It had been a wearying day, and I asked Emily to hold all telephone calls while I had a nap. Shortly thereafter the phone rang. President Lyndon Johnson was calling from the White House. “Get me Ken Galbraith. This is Lyndon Johnson.” “He is sleeping, Mr. President.” “Well, wake him up. I want to talk to him.” “He is asleep, Mr. President. He said not to disturb him.” “Look, this is the President of the United States of America and I have urgent business to discuss with Kenneth Galbraith.” “Mr. President. I work for J.K. Galbraith, not you. You’ll be calling later. Goodbye.”
Then Galbraith says this; when I called the President back, he could scarcely control his pleasure. “Tell that woman I want her here in the White House,” he said.
Obedience to God means remembering who’s in charge. Simple obedience often comes into direct conflict with the overwhelming urge to go with the flow. It did for Noah and he said, “Lord, you’re in charge.” I know many of you can point to times at work where you have been under pressure to compromise your obedience to God’s word in order to implement some company decision or carry out a request from one of your superiors. It happens in relationships. It happens in business. It happens when you log on to the Internet. It happens at parties. It happens at some level almost every hour of the day. “Lord, you’re in charge.” That’s obedience.
The film Chariots of Fire hinges upon such a moment. You know the story. Eric Liddle, a Christian middle-distance champion refuses to compete on a Sunday, in the 1924 Paris Olympics, as it will clash with a principled decision he has made to set aside that time for rest and for worship. They summons him to stand up before the Olympic Committee, the Ambassador, the Team Coach and the King himself. They try to reason with him but he reasons back. They make him know that he is exasperating His Majesty, the King. He apologises for the inconvenience. They try to intimidate him. He doesn’t buckle. They try to order him. He respectfully refuses to comply. In the end, he missed the race and was disqualified. But he did enter in a different event; a distance that wasn’t his best – and Liddle hit the tape first and won gold.
Choosing to obey God and not to obey men is basically a question of trust. Trusting God can be demanding and stretching and hard. It’s a white knuckle ride. But would you prefer a dull life of predictable monotony? Aren’t you ambitious for more? Don’t you get excited about trusting God that he will deliver, against all odds, and that he will honour the stand you make, come what may? That’s where I want to be.
A man named James Brown wrote a very entertaining book about learning to fly. Here’s an extract of his diary; “My instructor told me to put the plane into a steep and extended dive. I was totally unprepared for what was about to happen. After a brief time the engine stalled, and the plane began to plunge out-of-control. It soon became evident that the instructor was not going to help me at all. After a few seconds, which seemed like eternity, my mind began to function again. I quickly corrected the situation.
I turned to the instructor and began to vent my fearful frustrations on him. He very calmly said to me, ‘There is no position you can get this airplane into that I cannot get you out of. If you want to learn to fly, go up there and do it again.’ At that moment God seemed to be saying to me, ‘Remember this. As you serve me, there is no situation you can get yourself into that I cannot get you out of. If you trust me, you will be all right.’”
So Noah, his wife (who is not named, but I call her Joan - Joan of Ark), their sons and their wives embarked on this huge vessel, with the animals, and God shut the door. God’s patience was up; it took 969 years for it to finally run out, but in the end even God couldn’t wait any longer, Methuselah died at long last, and the rain started to fall.
There won’t ever be a flood as bad as that again, God has promised that. As bad as it seems to get sometimes the truth is that there probably won’t ever be a society as corrupt as that again either. But God is still looking for individuals who will stand out in their generation as those who walk with him, who will trust him to deliver, whatever the odds, who will choose to simply obey him, whatever he says. The question is are you going to be one of them?
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 22nd March 2009
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