The Floating Zoo
Genesis 6:5-9:17 (HCSB)
How hard is it to do everything the Lord commands of
us? I bet if you were to ask that
question to a child they would say, “Not very.” I know when I asked my oldest daughter (who is 5yrs old)
that question she replied with the “not very” answer. Ah, faith like a child. And if we as adults could only hold onto that kind of faith,
just imagine what amazing things we could do for God!
Like maybe...
Building a rocket
Or fighting a mummy
Or climbing up the Eiffel Tower
Discovering something that doesn't exist
Or giving a monkey a shower
Sorry, I had a little Phineas and Ferb moment there. Remember I have a 5 year old. However, with faith like a child or
even as small as a mustard seed (Matthew 17:20) we could do so many great
things for God. We could do
everything he commands us to do…even if that means building a massively large
boat.
Story Time:
Along time has now passed from when Adam and Eve sinned and
were kicked out of the Garden of Eden.
Sin was running rampant in the world and God was very upset. How upset? Well the Bible describes it as, “the Lord regretted that He
had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart” (Genesis 6:6). How upset? God decides to totally destroy all of mankind along with the
animals and birds. God is going to
take a do over. Safe to say God
was pretty upset. However, there
was one guy who lived right. Noah
was so good and loved God so much, he and his family would be spared.
God informs Noah of the wickedness that has corrupted every
creature He has made. He tells
Noah to build an ark. Not like the
Ark of the Covenant that the Israelites will eventually carry around, but a big
boat. (Side note: if you get a
chance, listen to Bill Cosby’s comedy routine on Noah and the ark. Funny!) Have you ever thought about exactly how big the ark
was? I know in most translations
when the measurements for the ark are given they use cubits, but the Holman
translation gives the dimensions in feet.
Needless to say the ark was huge, and Genesis 6:15-16 explains just how
huge. “This is how you are to make
it: The ark will be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. You are to make a roof, finishing the
sides of the ark to within 18 inches of the roof. You are to put a door in the side of the ark. Make it with lower, middle, and upper
decks.”
So let’s try to picture this in our mind. Take a football field and remove the
end zones. You are now looking at
a 100 yard field equaling 300 feet.
So the ark was one and a half football fields long. The width of the ark is almost half of
the football field wide and as tall as one and a half goal posts. So in other words…big.
And now your thinking, “Yeah that is big, but not every
single animal would fit.”
Remember, God told Noah that all creatures were corrupted with
wickedness. So the ark only needed
to fit a small amount to be used to start over with God’s do over plan. And according to verses 19-21 of Genesis
chapter six, there was two of every kind of animal on the ark plus food. Plenty of room, right?
Before we continue on I want to take a look at the last
verse in chapter six. “And Noah
did this. He did everything that
God had commanded him.” This will
not be the only time we see this language used, when referring to Noah. We will talk about it more later.
Chapter seven starts off sounding a little familiar to what
we just read in chapter six, but with a little more information. So why not compile it all together and
just say it once? Hebrew writing
builds on itself. If you look back
at Genesis 1 you get the creation story, but at the beginning of the next chapter
you get it again with a little bit more.
It is the same here with the story of Noah and us reading in chapter six
that Noah was going to be saved on the ark with two of every kind of animal,
male and female. The beginning of
chapter seven repeats most of chapter 6 in the first few verses but adds a
little more information. We now
understand that Noah and his family will enter the ark. We now see that there was more than
just two of every kind of animal.
Here is a fluff moment. You were probably told as little kids that Noah took two of
every kind of animal on the ark.
You may have even been told this as an adult. But we see here in Genesis 7:2-3 Noah was instructed to take
“seven pairs, a male and its female, of all the clean animals, and two of the
animals that are not clean, a male and its female, and seven pairs, male and
female, of the birds of the sky — in order to keep offspring alive on the face
of the whole earth.” Why the
extra? God said in the previous
chapter, when just two were mentioned, they would be used to keep everything
alive, but now more animals have been added. Take a look at Genesis 8:20. Do you see what it says? “Then Noah built an altar to the
Lord. He took some of every kind of clean animal and every kind of clean bird and
offered burnt offerings on the altar.”
Noah used the extra animals in order to offer burnt sacrifices to the
Lord. Why then do we teach two of every kind? Simply because it is easier for us and for our children to
understand and remember the number 2 than to have to be taught 7 pairs of
clean, 2 of unclean and 7 pairs of birds.
Then you might have to get into the whole clean and unclean thing, and
that would just add even more confusion.
So now you know the correct numbers and you can retell the story however
you want. Either way, it does not
misinterpret what we can learn from Noah.
My apologies for the brief de-fluffing moment we just had,
but hey…that’s what this book is all about. Continuing on with the story… Noah and his family and all the animals enter the ark. They wait seven days and then the flood
comes.
It starts to rain for 40 days and 40 nights. During that time the waters begin to
rise covering everything on the earth, even the very tops of the
mountains. The ark rose with the
waters and floated on top of the water as the floodwaters rose higher and
higher.
If you were to ask most people how long the flood lasted,
what do you think they would tell you?
A) 40 days and 40 nights B) About 6 months or C) Just over 1 year? Do you know the answer? If you guessed “A” then you would be
wrong, but you would more than likely be in the majority of people who chose
that answer. If you guessed “B”
then…well I don’t really have anything to say other than you would just be
wrong. If you guessed “C” then
give yourself a high five and pretend it was from me. If you were to go through and count up all the days from
when Noah entered the ark to when he opened the doors to get off it totals over
a year.
7 days on the ark before the rain
40 days of rain
150 days of the water rising
150 days of the water receding and the ark coming to rest on
Mt. Ararat
40 days till Noah sends out the raven
? days till Noah sends out the first dove
7 days till Noah sends out the dove again and returns with
the olive leaf
7 days till Noah sends out the dove the third time and it
does not return
+? days until Noah leaves the ark
401 days (plus a few extra)
If we go by a 365-day calendar, then Noah was on the ark for
1 year 1 month 6 days. From most
of the research I did to confirm my math, I found most others diving into the
question coming up with any where from a 1 year 1 week to 1 year 1 month. Any way you slice it, Noah was on that
boat for a long time. And one more
thing, you can see from the description in the days above that Noah sent out a
raven as well as the dove. He also
sent out the dove several times. A
lot of times this story is told that Noah sent out a dove one time and it came
back with the olive leaf or branch, but nothing is mentioned about the raven or
the dove’s multiple trips.
Why? Because it is easier
to just mention the most significant flight when the dove returns with the
evidence the water was going down.
God now tells Noah to get everybody and every animal off the
ark and to get to work in repopulating the earth. But don’t worry, God instructs Noah in this using the PG
rated Biblical language of “be fruitful and multiply”. Noah then builds an altar to sacrifice
to God and worship. He takes all
the clean animals we talked about earlier and presents them as a burnt offering
and God goes into the promise of never to flood the earth again speech at the
end of chapter eight and the beginning of chapter nine. God also places the rainbow in the sky
as the sign that he will never destroy the earth again by means of a flood.
My Thoughts:
Do you think you could build a big boat if some random
person asked you to? Do you think
you could build a big boat if God asked you to? I know I would definitely try if God asked me to, but me
trying to use tools to build anything would be a pretty funny sight. Besides God said he would never flood
the earth again, so I’m good.
Like I said at the start of the chapter, imagine the things
we could do if we had faith so strong we did everything the Lord commanded…if we
had faith like Noah. We briefly
mentioned at the beginning of the story the scriptures said Noah did everything
the Lord told him. As far as we
can tell Noah followed those commands without hesitation or question. At least the Bible doesn’t say anything
about Noah questioning God as to why he had to build an amazingly huge boat.
Take a quick minute and look through the chapters in the Bible
that we are focusing on. Try to
find all the places where the Bible references Noah following God’s
commands. Did you find them all? Let me help you out…
Genesis 6:22, “And Noah did this. He did everything that God
had commanded him.”
Genesis 7:5, “And Noah did everything that the Lord
commanded him.”
Genesis 7:9, “…just as God had commanded him.”
You will discuss this more when you get to the questions,
but why is it so hard for us to do everything God asks us to do? The simple answer is because we are
adults. The deeper answer is once
we turn a certain age and stop looking at the world through rose colored
glasses, we take on a mindset and a thought process that help us look out for
ourselves. Not in a selfish kind
of way that gets in you trouble because you were being a jerk, but in a selfish
kind of way that causes you to protect yourself. We develop logical reasoning and a conscience that forces us
to look at all the outcomes of a given situation. Sometimes that reasoning brings us to say no, even if that
no goes against the Lord.
Look at this way.
As a father I always have the best interest in mind for my
daughters. I would never ask them
to do anything that would bring them harm. We are at the pool and I can ask my 2 ½ year old daughter,
Brynn, to jump in from the side to me and she will do it without
hesitation. Why? Because she fully trusts her daddy will
catch her. Now, I can ask my 5
year old daughter, Natalie, to do the same thing and sometimes she hesitate and
tells me no. Why? Because her mind is able to process one
of two things, “Either my daddy will catch me and I will be ok, or he won’t and
I could drown.” If you were to ask
Natalie, “Would your daddy ever let anything bad happen to you?” She would say no as fast as would
answer “not very” to the how hard is it to do what God asks question. However, in the pool situation where
she has to act, sometimes fear takes over and sometimes she jumps into my arms
before I can even finish asking her to jump.
The same applies to God and us. There are times God asks us to build a boat and we do
whatever He asks to be done to the last minute detail. And then there are times God asks us to
do something big and we hesitate.
We begin to logically rationalize all the possible outcomes of moving
forward with God’s plan and we stand at the side of the pool with some fear. Our Father is holding out His arms
asking us to jump, and we say no.
But why does it seem so easy for Noah? Was it because Noah always dreamed of
owning his own boat? Was it
because God knew Noah was feeling sad and needed a project? Was it because God spoke directly to
Noah and asked him to build the ark?
It wasn’t any of those. Look
at Hebrews 11. This chapter that
explains how people like Noah were able to accomplish such greats things for
the Lord. Faith. “By faith Noah, after he was warned
about what was not yet seen and motivated by godly fear, built an ark to
deliver his family. By faith he condemned the world and became an heir of the
righteousness that comes by faith” (Hebrews 11:7)
Noah had faith mixed with godly fear. That combination helped Noah to know
what God was asking him to do was right and purposeful. The godly fear Noah had wasn’t like the
fear my daughter sometimes has about jumping into water deeper than she is tall,
it is a fear that produces trust and respect for God. This fear is developed through love for God, a relationship
with Him and having faith that God’s ways are better than our own.
Never stop making your faith stronger. Always have a healthy fear of God. Do your best to do everything the Lord
commands of you. You never know
when God is going to ask you to build a really big boat.
Discussion Questions:
- Why is it hard for us to do everything God
commands?
- We could list the things that can be done to
build up your faith, but what do you personally need to do to make your own
faith stronger?
- Do you think God should speak to us today like
He did with Noah? Why or why not?
- How would it make things easier if God spoke directly
to us? How would God speaking
directly to us negatively affect our faith? Or would it?
- How do you
hear God’s voice speak to you?
- Why does our faith and relationship with God
need a healthy does of Godly fear?
What would they look like if we didn’t have a Godly fear of God?
- What kind of boat do you think God is asking you
to build?
- One last thing…make sure you end in prayer.
