GOD'S PLAN
The Flood
In the Age of Conscience leading to the Flood, we covered why God caused the great flood to cleanse sin from the world. In this lesson, we address the consequences of sin and the alternative God offers the world to avoid punishment. For a refresher on why punishment for sin is necessary, see the lesson on Free Will and Sin.
The flood is a global cleansing of sin. It is all encompassing and complete. The only escape from it is faith in God and not your own works. That faith is displayed through Noah’s Ark. Let’s investigate the ark and what it means.
Noah's Ark
In Genesis 6:3 (KJV) it says, “And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.” Many people, included top biblical scholars struggle with the meaning of this verse. Some take it to mean mankind’s life span shall now be 120 years, but that doesn’t match what the text goes on to say. This verse comes at the start of chapter 6 before the flood. Noah lived 500 years after the flood and many of his offspring lived for well over 120 years.
The best way to understand this verse is in the context in which it is written. We are dealing with a fallen, sinful world that is about to be punished. God says in this verse the His spirit will not always strive with man. What does it mean to strive with? The Hebrew word for strive is “din”, which means to contend with, to plead with, to execute judgement upon. God is always precise in His numbers, so if He says 120 years, that is what He means. This is saying God will only put up with mankind’s sinful ways for another 120 years before He will punish the world with the flood. God is giving the world a 120-year warning. That is a lot better than a 2-minute warning! God is very patient and does not want anyone to perish.
God tells Noah what is going to happen, and that Noah needs to build a gigantic boat to put his family on, along with male and female animals of every kind in order to be saved from the worldwide judgement.
Let us look at the state of the world from a physical perspective. At this time, the world had never had rain from above, as described in Genesis 2:6, “But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.” Noah is tasked by God to build an ark, which is equivalent to a barge that is somewhere between 450’ to 600’ long, depending on your definition of a “cubit”. The most commonly accepted dimension is 18” and this boat was specified to be 300 cubit long and 50 cubits with and 30 cubits high.
At this time, we world had never seen rain and Noah was likely going to be building this on dry ground. Talk about needing to have faith! God tells Noah the flood will happen in 120 years and to get started building something about the length of 1.5 football fields. Can you imagine the ridicule he must have received from all of his unbelieving neighbors! Surely they called him a crazy old man.
The study of the ark itself is very interesting. It turns out to be a perfect design for the task at hand. Modern structural engineers have reviewed the plans and verified it would indeed be seaworthy. That, however, is not the focus of this study, so we will leave that for another time.
The point of the ark from God’s Plan perspective is that it offered a place of refuge from sin for the people of the time. In 2 Peter 2:5 it says, “And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;”. Noah preached to the sinful world around him and told them to repent of their sins and trust in God. That would be counted as righteousness and they could be saved. All they had to do was get on the boat with Noah and his family and they could be saved. No one listened.
God Called Them to the Ark
In Genesis 7:1 (KJV) it says, “And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.” God is always the one doing the calling. God invites them into the place of refuge. It is up to us to accept what God is offering us. If we accept it, we have salvation, as Noah and his family did. If we do not, we have damnation, as everyone else on earth did. God gives us that same offer today through believing in Jesus.
Many people assume there were two each of the land animals and birds, but Genesis 7:2 (KJV) clarifies that. “Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.” Why seven male and seven female of the clean animals and only two of the unclean? Remember the coat of skin God gave Adam and Eve? How about the offering Able made that God accepted? The clean animals are used as a sacrifice for sin, and that is why more of them are needed. The unclean animals are not, hence one of each, male and female is enough. It is not for food. At this time they are not eating animals. That comes shortly after the flood, but not yet.
In Genesis 7:10 (KJV) it says, “And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.” And in Genesis 7:16 (KJV) it says, “And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in.” God closed the door to the ark Himself, 7 days before the start of the flood. Image being on the ark after a few days, wondering, if they are doing the right thing. They needed to have faith to get through just the waiting for the waters to come.
The Flood
[Gen 7:11 KJV] “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.” The flood waters came from underneath and from above. This was the first time it had rained. The more interesting phrase is “the fountains of the great deep.” The land itself opened up and water gushed out for forty days. This flood was universal, not local, as some suggest. The biblical text makes it clear it is a judgement on all life, not just that in the local area. This is explained in Genesis 7:19 (KJV), “And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.” Every high hill under the heaven was covered. Heaven here is used as the visible sky, or universe, meaning the whole earth. For anyone not on the ark, the game was over.
This flood was punishment for sin. It was cataclysmic and final. No one could escape unless you did it God’s way, which was to have faith in God and get on the ark. God is showing us that faith in God and not your own works is the way to salvation. There was nothing anyone could do themselves to save themselves, nothing.
After the Flood
The flood ended, according to Genesis 8:4 (KJV), ”And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.” Most people read this and move on. Let’s translate that date into something we can understand. The Jews have two calendars. They had one from the beginning of time that went up until the time of the first Passover in Egypt. At that time God gave Moses the instructions to start a new calendar that shifted the starting month. Prior to this, which is when this event took place, the starting month was Tishri and the seventh month was Nisan. That doesn’t mean much to English speaking people, but hang in there and you will see where this ends up. That puts this date as the 17th of Nisan.
Here is a graphic that will help us relate what that looks like on the new calendar, which starts in the month of Nisan.
(Placeholder for Jewish Calendar image)
We know from Matthew that Jesus was in Jerusalem for the Passover when he was crucified. We know that He was resurrected on the Sunday after the Passover and that it was 3 days after His crucifixion. The Passover is always on the 14 of Nisan and that puts the date of the resurrection on the 17th of Nisan, the exact same day the Ark came to rest. The Ark is a “type” of salvation. Jesus fulfilled what the ark was intended to show us. Jesus offers us the way to escape spiritual death and have everlasting life, where the ark provided a way to escape physical death.
After the flood, in Genesis chapter 9, Noah received a new covenant from God. In this covenant, God tells him that they can now eat meat and all the animals will fear humanity. Also, they are now required to enforce capital punishment for anyone who sheds the blood of another. [Gen 9:6 KJV] “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” We, being made in the image of God must punish those who do evil to others. God is now implementing new rules to help us learn that we must pay for our sins. We have to enforce these rules on each other, making us more responsible than prior to the flood. God also promises not to destroy the world by water again and gives us the rainbow as a reminder to us of this promise.
In Genesis 8:20 (KJV) it says, “And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.” One of the first things Noah did after existing the ark was make an offering to the Lord. He needed to make an offering for sin right after the cleansing of the earth. God had him bring 7 male and female of each of the clean animals so that they could continue to make sacrifices for sin. This will continue until the time of Jesus.
Summary
The world has changed a lot as a result of the flood. All humanity that did not trust in God has paid the price for its sins. There is now rain, the people can now eat meat and the animals fear us. We must enforce capital punishment for murders. We now have our first form of human government.
