Transcript: Verse by Verse Study – Genesis Chapter 6:1 to Chapter 6:22: Zac Poonen

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The only human being who was directly created by God was Adam. So Adam alone is called the son of God.

When we are born again, we read in John 1:12 that we also become children of God and sons of God. That is because in each person who is born again, God does a direct personal work. That’s what makes him a son of God. Otherwise, it’s impossible to be a son of God.

It’s interesting to see the usage of this phrase in the Bible. The son of God is a direct creation of God, spiritually also today. Nobody can be a son of God by being born in a Christian family or by being born to spiritual parents. God has to do a direct personal work, creating something new, a new heart in that person. If that has not taken place, then that person is not a son of God.

In Job 38, we read of the angels also being called sons of God because they were directly created. Job 38, the Lord speaks to Job here and says, “Where were you?” (verse 4) “when I laid the foundation of the earth.”

And when God laid the foundation of the earth, that means when God first made the earth. It says here in verse 7, “at that time the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” This is God telling Job that long back when He laid the foundation of the earth, the sons of God shouted for joy. Those were the angels.

In the first chapter of Job also, we read in verse 6 that “there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan came among them.”

So from these verses, we know that the angels are also called sons of God. In fact, apart from Adam as the son of God, in the Old Testament, nobody was called the son of God except the angels. It’s only in the New Testament where God began to bring people to new birth that you could say that those who are born again become children of God and then sons of God. But in the Old Testament, that phrase could only be used of Adam, who was the only direct creation, and of the angels. Nobody else was called a son of God in the Old Testament.

The Fall of the Angels

And so, when we see that, we come to Genesis 6:2. We read “the sons of God saw the daughters of men.” This must refer to the angels. There were certain angels who did not fall away when Lucifer fell or perhaps fell away along with Lucifer. But when Lucifer and the angels fell away, they were not sent to hell.

They were cast out from the third heaven and they were sent to the second heaven. And as we have seen before, one day they’ll be cast down to the earth and then finally to the bottomless pit and to the lake of fire. But these sons of God were in the second heaven perhaps among the fallen angels. And then they were stirred up by a lust after beautiful women – an amazing thing.

And it says here “they took wives for themselves.” We don’t know how exactly they did all that, how they could take a human form, and whether they possessed living people, but in some way, they had this terrific sexual lust. So they wanted to satisfy it and they went for the beautiful ones.

Here we see the beginning of what we can apply spiritually today, when the sons of God look at the beautiful daughters of men and don’t consider whether that beautiful girl is spiritual and go ahead and marry her. It’s the same principle. It began with these fallen angelic beings who also saw that the daughters of men were good looking and beautiful and lusted after them, went after their beauty, and took wives for themselves. And the Lord saw all this.

God’s Judgment on the Fallen Angels

Now, if you turn to the book of Jude, you see a New Testament commentary telling us something of how God judged these angels, and that is written as a warning for us in this day. In the epistle of Jude, verse 6, we read: “I want to remind you about some of these things.” One, how the Lord after saving a people out of the land of Egypt destroyed, that is six hundred thousand people were destroyed in the wilderness.

And he says, “I want to give you another example.” He gives us three examples. Two of those examples most believers are familiar with. That’s the example of those who perished in the wilderness (verse 5), and the example of Sodom and Gomorrah in Lot’s time (verse 7). But this other third example, many believers are not familiar with.

That’s also given as an example by Jude. He said, “I want you to remember these three examples.” And the middle one is about the angels who did not keep their proper habitation. And that word “habitation” is used in 2 Corinthians 5 to speak of our body – how we will change this for another habitation.

And the angels did not keep to the limits that God had placed for them. God has not ordained sex for the angels. They didn’t stay within there. They couldn’t keep control on their desires. They abandoned their proper abode.

That means, with the circle that God had drawn around them, they left it. It’s just like when a young unmarried person whom God has not given facility for release of his sexual desires yet because he’s not married, and he seeks for some release in ways which God has not ordained through various sinful ways. These angels, whom God had not ordained sex for, did not stay within that circle, but they left it.

Therefore, God has kept them in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day. These angelic beings, God punished them by sending them to a pit and binding them in the darkness. They are not loose today.

We read of them also in 2 Peter 2:4-6. Here it’s speaking about false prophets in verse 1. And it says about these false prophets that they will go along a life of sensuality (verse 2). And it says how God will judge them because “if God did not spare the angels when they sinned” (verse 4). And that’s referring to these angels in Noah’s time who sinned sexually, but cast them into hell.

These are not Satan’s hosts because Satan’s hosts have not been cast into hell. They are in the second heavens. But these are another group of angels who sinned sexually, who were cast into hell, and that’s not the same hell that the rich man went to. It’s another word in the Greek called “Tartarus,” where they were cast and committed to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment and “did not spare the ancient world but preserved Noah.” So you see, it’s talking about Noah’s time when the angels sinned.

And Noah is called a preacher of righteousness with seven others when God brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly. So we see from these New Testament passages that the sons of God referred to in Genesis 6 are these angels who sinned.

We read another passage in 1 Peter 3:19. It says about Jesus that when He died, He went down and made proclamation to those spirits who are now in prison, who were disobedient when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah. There again it’s referring to these evil spirits who sinned, who are kept in bondage, the only angels who have been punished because they did not stay within their circle. They went outside their circle and sinned in a way which was terrible in God’s eyes.

A Warning for Our Time

And there we see the seriousness of sexual sin. And if we can take these warnings, they are a warning for us because we read in Luke’s gospel chapter 17:26-30: “And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man.”

That means Noah’s time is going to be similar to the last days just before Jesus comes. There’ll be a lot of similarity. And then it says, “It’ll also be like in the days of Lot” (verse 28). What do we know about the days of Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah? We know that they sinned sexually in Sodom. We even have a word in English called “sodomy,” which is unnatural sexual sin.

And it says about Noah’s time also, that the last days will be like that. And in Noah’s time also, there was, in the case of the angels, unnatural sexual sin. That’s exactly what we see in the world today. Unnatural sexual sin.

Ordinary sexual sin has always been there, but unnatural sexual sin has also been there, but more in secret. But now particularly since the Second World War in the last few years, it’s spread tremendously and become accepted. There are churches for homosexuals in America now. So you can see how far things have gone.

And it was in such a day that Noah lived, seeing all these things happening around him. And those times are being repeated. And so we know as we look around at these things that the end must be very near.

God’s Patience Has Limits

And we return back to Genesis 6:3. And we can say that the Lord is saying the same words even today as He sees the world. God looked at that world in those days and saw these things happening, saw these spirit beings trying to move out of their abode. And the Lord said in Genesis 6:3, “My Spirit shall not always strive with man because he also is flesh. Nevertheless, his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”

Or as the margin says, “In his going astray, man is flesh.” There is a description for the first time in the Bible of the flesh by God Himself. In his going astray, he has become flesh. And it is in that flesh that Jesus came to redeem us. The first time God uses that and says, “In his going astray, he has become flesh.” That’s what the margin says. Therefore, his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.

That means God is still in patience, waiting, hoping that man will yet repent. The patience of God, we read that in Peter’s epistle: “The patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah.” There was a patience of God that kept waiting for hundred and twenty years. There was a patience of God that kept waiting in Sodom and Gomorrah. And there’s a patience of God keeping waiting, that’s waiting still today on the earth.

But the Lord also says, “My Spirit will not always strive with man.” Or “in his going astray he is flesh.” We see that in the world today, but his days will be numbered. We can say his days are numbered.

What we learn here from this hundred and twenty year period is that there is a time limit. God is patient, long suffering, but there is a time limit after which the Holy Spirit stops striving. There is a line drawn in front of each man. He keeps on rejecting the call of the Spirit, rejecting, rejecting, rejecting, rejecting. One day he crosses that line, and then the Holy Spirit stops pleading with him and allows him to go to hell. Such a man can never repent.

Jesus spoke about such people that they could never be forgiven because they have sinned against the Holy Spirit by continuously resisting the voice of the Spirit. God is very patient. Imagine, even with such sinners, He still gave them a hundred and twenty years to repent. And He had a witness during those hundred and twenty years – that was Noah.

And when the Word of God says that the last days will be like Noah’s days and Lot’s days, we can say that also on the earth, just like conditions around, people will be like the people in Noah’s day and Lot’s day. There will also be witnesses for the Lord.

# Noah: A Righteous Man in an Evil World

Some believers are like Noah, very few in number, and some are like Lot, which is a bigger number. Lot was the compromiser. He was a sort of believer, but he compromised. Noah was different. In the last days, there’ll be the Noah type of believer and the Lot type of believer.

There’s a world of difference between the two. Lot lost his whole family. Noah saved his whole family. That’s one important thing we learn about the last days: the importance of preserving our family, wife, and children for the Lord. We must not allow them to be polluted by the evil influences in the world today through cinema, television, and all types of things.

In Noah’s day, these things were not invented, but the sins were out there openly. Now it has come right into people’s homes—suggestive thoughts and ideas through all these things, books and novels, and all types of ways in which pollution seeks to come in. In the midst of this, God wants people like Noah, who preserve their homes for God.

The Giants of Noah’s Day

In verse 4, the giants were on the earth in those days. The Nephilim is a word for giants who were born as a result of this supernatural union between these angelic beings and the beautiful women of those days.

I think those beautiful women had perhaps also a lust to have gigantic, massive children. In those days, intelligence didn’t count for much. It was brute strength. That was the big thing. It says, “When the sons of God came into the daughters of men, they bore children to them, these giants.”

Those were the mighty men of old, men of renown. You were renowned in those days if you were a giant. Therefore, I can imagine these women opened themselves up to these evil spirits because they wanted children who were smart according to the smartness of those days.

They didn’t want godly children. They wanted smart children. There are women like that today also who want smart children, not godly ones. When we long not for godliness in our children, but for some worldly thing—that our children will be “men of renown,” as it says in this verse, renowned in the city, in the country, in the world—then what are we doing? We are opening ourselves to evil spirits in the same way those women opened themselves to evil spirits.

The Hebrew word “nephilim” means giant or a bully or a tyrant. They’re all people who open themselves to evil spirits, these bullies and tyrants.

Man’s Opinion vs. God’s Opinion

Verse 4 gives man’s opinion: these people were men of renown. But see the contrast in verse 5 of God’s opinion of the whole situation. The Lord, when He looked at all these men, saw that their wickedness was great on the earth, that every intent of the thoughts of their heart was only evil continually.

In verses 4 and 5, we have a contrast between man’s opinion of these massive giants—men of renown—and God’s opinion as He looked down. He was not impressed by their size and their fame, but He looked at their heart and saw that their heart was filthy. He saw that the imaginations of their heart were only evil continually.

This is a description of Noah’s day. The wickedness of man was great on the earth, and all his thought life was corrupt. God is interested in the thought life. We see that right back in Noah’s day. Purity in the thought life is not just something we suddenly discover in the New Testament. It is even before the law, written in the time of Noah.

God looked and saw that the imagination, the fantasies—and you know what fantasies are: we imagine certain people in our mind and imagine certain situations—that we are in certain situations. That is imagination. Fantasies in their thought life were only evil, particularly in the sexual area. That is Noah’s day, and that is what Jesus said would characterize the last days.

Can you imagine if Noah’s thought life was also like that? Then he would have also perished with the flood, even if he claimed to be a believer. And his children would have seen his hypocrisy and would have turned away. Lot’s children saw the hypocrisy of their father, but Noah’s children saw that their father was not a hypocrite.

How is it with us? We live in a repetition of Noah’s day. The fantasies and the imaginations and the thoughts that go on in people’s minds—all these decent-looking, cultured, civilized people walking, men and women walking down the roads, looking so clean and neat and smelling of perfume. If you could only look into their heart, it would be quite another smell that comes out from there.

Man smells all these fancy perfumes, and God sees and smells something quite different. It’s more important to have purity in our heart, my brothers and sisters. Purity in our heart. That’s our calling in these days.

God’s Grief and Delight

And the Lord was sorry. Think of that. One would think God was mightily angry. But there we see the love of God for those whom He had created. He looks at their filthy thought life, He looks at them polluting their mind, polluting their bodies. He doesn’t get angry. He feels sorry.

Think of a father who sees his own son ruining his life in an evil way. He doesn’t get angry. He feels sorry that this son of his, who could live such a good life, is just messing up his life and ruining it. That’s how God looked at His creation.

The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. There was a time in Genesis 1 when He made man and He looked at him and said, “Excellent. Very good.” And now, a few hundred years later, He’s sorry. He’s grieved at that condition.

But we read here that there was not only grief in God’s heart. There was also someone who brought gladness to God’s heart. We read in verse 6 there was grief in God’s heart, and in verse 8, “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.”

God said, “I will blot out man whom I’ve created from the face of the land, from man to animals, to creeping things, to birds of the sky, for I am sorry that I made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.”

So along with all that grief that God had as He looked out over this world, this earth that He had created and all the human beings He had created, finally His eyes lighted on one person who brought delight. It says here, Noah found grace. He could not come under grace—that could not come until Jesus Christ brought grace—but he found it. He found grace in God’s eyes. He could not receive it and come under it like we can today, but “he found grace in the eyes of the Lord” means that God was delighted when He saw one man.

There we can learn something, my brothers and sisters, and I hope that it will grip your heart like it’s challenged my own heart. When God looks out at a city like Bangalore or any other city and sees all the evil, it grieves His heart. It brings delight to His heart when He sees in the midst of all this one righteous man. One righteous man among all those millions brought delight to God’s heart.

There we have an understanding of how much righteousness and uprightness delight God’s heart. We should never lose sight of the heart of God that we have a glimpse of in these verses. The challenge that should come to us should be: “Lord, as You look out over a world that grieves Your heart to see the way man’s living, may I be one who brings delight to Your heart. May there be nothing in my life that grieves You.” It says, “Grieve not the Holy Spirit.” One man found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

Noah’s Character

Verse 9: “These are the records of the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, perfect in his time, and walked with God.”

Three things that made God delight in him:

1. He was righteous. He was not like these other people, polluted in his mind and imagination, with evil fantasies, trying to sit and pretend to be a spiritual man. He was not that type of a humbug. He was pure in his imaginations and thoughts. He was a man—he didn’t have some other flesh. He was tempted, but he fought these things. He battled these things, we can imagine, because he knew it is not righteous. He feared God.

2. He was perfect or blameless. That means according to the light that he had, he was perfect. We can be perfect only according to the light that we have. And according to the light that he had, he was perfect.

3. He walked with God.

Noah’s Inspiration from Enoch

Noah’s grandfather was Methuselah. Methuselah lived during all the six hundred years that Noah lived before the flood. The flood came when Methuselah died, and Noah was six hundred years old when the flood came. So Methuselah and Noah lived together, grandfather and grandson, for six hundred years.

What do you think Methuselah would have told Noah? What do you think Noah would have been interested to hear from Methuselah? I think Noah would have loved to hear about Methuselah’s father, Enoch. I think Noah, even as a young boy, must have gone up to his grandfather and said, “Tell me about your father Enoch.”

Enoch died about sixty-nine years before Noah was born. Noah never saw him. Methuselah would have told him about his father, how his father walked with God for three hundred years. As a young lad, this must have gripped Noah’s heart—the testimony of a man he never saw, but who had walked with God in the midst of all this evil generation. That challenged him, and it says here in verse 9, “Noah walked with God.”

I think it must have been the challenge of Enoch’s life that made Noah say, “Lord, give me also that.” Noah never saw Enoch, but to hear about him from other people who had seen him—that’s why I always advise young people particularly to read biographies of great men of God, those who’ve known them, to be challenged by how they lived selflessly, not seeking their own, lived for God, walked with Him, walked by faith. That should be a challenge to us. And if we take that challenge seriously, we can walk in the footsteps of those men.

That’s how Noah walked with God too, like his great-grandfather whom he never saw, Enoch. He must have also heard from Methuselah how Enoch was a preacher. Methuselah would have told him how his father Enoch was a preacher who preached judgment against the ungodly. And Noah would have been challenged by that.

The Cost of Speaking Up for God

He would have realized that it’s not enough just to walk with God. It’s also necessary to testify for God. If you just live a holy life, you won’t be persecuted. You won’t be unpopular.

Jesus would never have been unpopular if He had kept His mouth closed. If He had just lived a holy life, overcoming all temptation, living in love and goodness and purity and holiness, He would never have been crucified. He could have lived a long life. He was crucified because He opened His mouth and testified to the truth.

Nobody is killed for living a holy life. Nobody in your office will persecute you for living a holy life. It’s only when you open your mouth and speak up for God, then you will be persecuted.

But if you don’t believe in opening your mouth, if you just believe in living a holy life, you cannot follow Enoch or Noah or Jesus or Paul or Peter. You’ve got some other example of a man who wants to live a holy life and wants to seek honor, to be popular. You can be popular while living a holy life, provided you don’t open your mouth.

And Noah didn’t want that popularity. We read in 2 Peter 2:5 that Noah was a preacher of righteousness. A preacher of righteousness—that’s what he was, particularly in those last one hundred and twenty years before the flood came.

The flood is a picture of that final judgment that’s going to come upon the earth in the battle of Armageddon. And our calling is to be like Noah: preserve our families in these days, live before God’s face, keep our imagination particularly pure, be careful in our thought life, live a godly life, be righteous, blameless according to the light we have, walk with God, and proclaim the truth with our mouths.

Of course, we’ll be unpopular, but God will be able to say when He looks at us among all this evil that grieves His heart, “I find one person who delights My heart.” Like we sing in the song, “There was a man who stood for God.” And like the last verse of that song says, “Lord, may I live in such a way that it can be said about me that there was a person who stood for God, who feared Him and who would not walk the way sinners walked.”

Genesis 6:1-22 – Noah’s Time and Our Time

Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. He was righteous, he was blameless, and he walked with God. And we read here in verse 10, Noah became the father of three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And the earth was corrupt in the sight of God. That’s also true today, corrupt in the sight of God.

And the earth was filled with violence. What is the other sin that we read in Noah’s time? Violence. Sexual sin and violence. Violence begins with anger.

Anger is the beginning of violence. Anger grows like a little seed in the heart and comes forth in words, finally with fists, in some cases with knives, then with pistols, then with missiles and atomic bombs, it develops. But it all begins with this little seed called anger, violence, sexual sin and violence. In Lot’s time in Sodom also, it was like that. It says about those people who banged at Lot’s door when the angels came.

They wanted to break the door down till the angels blinded them. Violent people, sexual sin and violence. People sometimes ask, why don’t you let your children see the movies? I say, don’t all movies have two themes, Sex and violence. Can you produce a movie that’ll be a hit which doesn’t have these two?

Impossible. Sex and violence, the two sins of Noah’s day, the two sins of Lot’s day. Blessed are those who have light to see it, so that they stand against these two sins particularly. If we have not judged them in our own lives, we will not be able to judge them in the lives of our families or those around us. We will not be like the salt that retains its savor.

Jesus said about the salt as they lost its savor. So what are the two sins that were preeminent in Noah’s day? Anger and sexual sin.

The New Covenant Standard

Brothers and sisters, when Jesus spoke about the new covenant in the sermon on the mount in Matthew chapter 5, He said these words. Turn to Matthew chapter 5.

He said in verse 20, this is comparing the old covenant with the new covenant. “I say that unless your righteousness, that is the new covenant righteousness that God requires, exceeds, surpasses the old covenant righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” What’s that? The old covenant righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees was one on the outside. He says, your righteousness must be more than that, which means it must be on the inside.

That’s mainly what that verse means. And then the Lord says, now I will explain in practical terms what I mean. Number one, let me speak about anger. Verse 21. The old covenant righteousness was, you shall not commit murder.

Verse 22, but I say to you, you shall not be angry. That’s new covenant righteousness. That is where your righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees. It begins with being angry. It goes on to speaking words that come out of our mouth, calling other people names.

Raqqa, you fool. It begins with anger in the heart. When it is not judged in the heart, it flows out through the mouth. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Finally, it can flow into your hands.

And then we don’t know where it will stop. It can be with children. Anger towards our children can find its expression through words and then through our hands. Those poor children are smaller than us.

We can do what we like. We can be like those Nephilim, giants, bullies towards our children because size-wise we are like the Nephilim towards those small children. You know, there can be something of that attitude. We have to cleanse ourselves from anger.

And then the Lord says, I’ll give you a second illustration of what I mean. And that is sexual sin. Verse 27, the old testament was you shall not commit adultery. I say to you, you shall not even look on a woman to lust for her. To lust for her means what? To lust for her does not mean that you want to commit adultery with her. No. You may not want to commit adultery with her. You may just lust to see her beauty and admire it. That’s all. You just want to stop there.

But Jesus said that that’s enough. You have lusted. It’s adultery. Why did Jesus speak about these two things first? Because those were the two preeminent sins in Noah’s day and Lot’s day, sex and violence.

The Seriousness of These Sins

Why do we speak about these two things so much in the church? Because we are living in Noah’s day and Lot’s day. Why do we say so many times, my brothers and sisters, if you don’t get victory in these two areas, you might as well pack up and forget about the fact that you’re a Christian. You’re just deceiving yourself. I’m not saying if you don’t get victory. I’m saying if you’re not even making an attempt to overcome in these areas.

If you can sin with your eyes sexually and you’re not disturbed, you sleep peacefully at night. There’s something wrong with your Christianity. I wonder whether you’re really converted. If you can sleep peacefully after lusting after a woman with your eyes.

I would seriously question whether you’re really born again. I would doubt it. I think you got some third rate conversion experience in some evangelistic crusade where you signed a decision card and raised your hand, but you never repented. Because you can sleep peacefully after lusting after a woman with your eyes. How can that be?

Or you’re sitting in some church where they pat you on your back and tell you to do evangelism and give out tracks and never tell you what Jesus said about getting victory in this area. And the same thing with anger. Anger. You can be angry and sleep peacefully at night. There’s something wrong with your conversion.

I would doubt whether you’re born again. If you can be angry and sleep peacefully that night. If you’re angry and you’re disturbed that night, your conscience disturbs you. Yeah. You’re converted.

But if your conscience doesn’t trouble you, my brother, my sister, don’t deceive yourself. Hear the truth. If you never heard it before, hear it today. That you better check up on your conversion. Be converted properly.

Take it seriously these two sins, the preeminent sins of Noah’s day.

The Corruption of the Earth

Genesis chapter 6, “All flesh had corrupted God’s way upon the earth.” Verse 12, “God looked on the earth, behold it was corrupt” – three times. That word corrupt, corrupt, corrupt comes in verses 11 and 12. The earth was corrupt. God looked on the earth, it was corrupt. All flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.

And what were the two chief sins with which all flesh had corrupted God’s way? That is anger and sexual sin. And I want to tell you, if you got victory over anger, and you trip up in the sexual area, don’t despise that fellow who loses his temper. You’re just as bad. Or maybe you got victory on the sexual area and you lose your temper. Don’t despise the person who trips up sexually. You’re just as bad. Your anger in God’s eyes corrupts you just like that fellow’s sexual thing corrupts him.

Just the same. No difference. Corrupt. Corrupt. Corrupt.

That’s God’s description of an earth that was filled with sexual sin and violence. And that’s exactly God’s opinion about all the movies and most of the books and novels written these days. Corrupt. Corrupt. Corrupt.

Better see them from God’s viewpoint. That’s why I warn young people, don’t read these filthy novels that are written these days. Don’t read them. There were novels written in the eighteenth, nineteenth century which have a certain amount of decency about them. But the novels written these days are filthy.

Corrupt, corrupt, corrupt. Something has happened in the world after the second world war. The flood of evil spirits. Remember that? Things have changed.

We have entered Noah’s day, finally.

God’s Warning to Noah

And then, verse 13, then God said to Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before me.” And God has said that to the church today. The church is in Noah’s place today. And God has said to us, the end of all flesh has finally come.

We are reaching the last days. The end times. We can say that Noah was living in the end times of those days. And now we are living in the end times of these days. And the Lord has said to us, the end times have come.

When we look around what’s happening in the earth? Because the earth is filled with all these angry people who don’t bother about their anger. It was violence those days. In these days, it’s anger and violence.

“And I’m about to destroy them with the earth because of their sexual sin and their anger about which they are not even bothered.” God grant there’ll be nobody sitting here about whom God will have to say that they sin in any of these two areas and they’re not bothered about it. Not even a single day.

My brothers and sisters, this is how we should walk in these days. Not even a single day should we sin in these two areas and be able to sleep comfortably that night. Yeah. We sin, it should disturb us. Disturb us in our conscience that we have sinned, sinned, sinned in the same old area, same old sin. And that it disturbs us, disturbs us, disturbs us. We weep and we plead, we cry out to God, and we confess and we repent.

And gradually, it gets better and better and better and better. And becomes purer and purer and purer. Take it seriously.

God Reveals His Plans to His Prophets

And the Lord says to him, now, I’m going to destroy the world. I want to point out a verse to you in Amos, towards the end of the old testament, after Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos.

Amos chapter 3 and verse 7. Amos 3:7, it says:

Surely the Lord God does nothing unless He reveals His secret counsel to His servants, the prophets.

God does nothing without revealing His secret first to His servants, the prophets. And Noah was a prophet, and therefore God told him, I’m going to do something, but I’ll whisper a little secret to you. I’m gonna judge the earth.

All these other ungodly people, I won’t give them any revelation. The secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him. Noah feared Him. So God whispered a secret in his ear. We read in Genesis chapter 18 and verse 17.

Genesis 18:17, the Lord says, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” No. Abraham is a prophet. I will not hide from him. What did they tell Abraham then? You read the rest of the chapter. I am going to judge Sodom and Gomorrah.

In Noah’s day, God told Noah. In Lot’s day, God told not Lot, but Abraham. There was a Noah in Noah’s day, and there was an Abraham in Lot’s day. And our calling is to be like Noah in these Noah type of days, and like Abraham in these Lot type of days, to whom God can whisper His secrets and say, the end is near now. Be faithful, only a little more time, and you won’t regret it that you were faithful to me. Live for the things that are eternal. Blessed are those who heard God saying that.

Building the Ark

And therefore, the Lord says in verse 14, Genesis 6, “Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood. You shall make the ark with rooms and cover it inside and out with pitch.” That is something like tar, so that it will be watertight. “And this is how you shall make it. The length of the ark is three hundred cubits.”

We don’t know exactly what that means. A cubit, people say is the length from an elbow to the tip of the middle finger. It’s about eighteen to twenty inches perhaps, which means that must have been about five hundred feet long or something like that. And its breadth fifty cubits means about eighty feet wide, and height thirty cubits means about fifty feet high. Five hundred feet by eighty feet and fifty feet high, approximately around that figure.

And it was the biggest ship, I think, that’s ever been made until about the nineteenth century. It’s amazing that from Noah’s day till about the last century, people could never make a ship so big. You can imagine what a man Noah was capable of. God made this massive ship, asked him to make this massive ship, and “you shall make a window for the ark. Finish it with a cubit from the top and set the door of the ark. In the side of it, you shall make it with lower and second and third decks.”

The window speaks of an opening towards heaven in terms of prayer and worship. And the door speaks of an opening towards the earth in terms of witness and evangelism and inviting people to come in. Because the ark is a picture of Christ and therefore also a picture of the body of Christ, which is the church. And that is what Noah was asked to build.

And then we see how relevant it is for our time. Build the church in these days and invite people to come in. Keep a window open towards heaven and keep a door open towards the people to come in. Build the church. Make it. And we know that Noah spent the rest of his life building the church, building the ark.

He did other things perhaps to somehow earn a living, but he knew this world’s passing away. The only thing that will remain when this earth is destroyed is this ark. Are you convinced about that? The only thing that will remain when this earth is finally destroyed is the church, the true church. Not Babylon, Jerusalem.

Build Jerusalem. And I thought about something here. Who’s gonna pay for it? It’s interesting question. There was no America in those days, where you could send reports and photographs to.

Building the Ark: A Lesson in Sacrifice

Who’s going to pay for this ark? Think that God never said a word about money. You read the Acts of the Apostles, there’s no mention about where they got their money from. That which is most important today for Christian work was least important for Noah and for the early apostles because they served God, today’s Christians serve mammon. That’s the reason.

Who was going to pay for it? I’ll tell you. Noah. Are you challenged by that? Serving God out of your own pocket?

Think of that, my brothers and sisters. We live in a world where everybody feels if I serve God, somebody else must pay for it. Not Noah. He served God from his own pocket and think of the cost of that ark. He said, Lord, all that I have is Yours.

I’ve spent it all on the Ark and that was the best bank into which he could have put his money. Because after the Earth was destroyed, it was still there. All the other banks collapsed. If he had put all his money somewhere else, it all got lost. But because he invested it all in the ark, it all came through the flood.

And that’s a lesson for us, my brothers and sisters. Think of being a servant of God like that. Say, Lord, I don’t want to pay. Not only I don’t want pay, I go one step further. What I have is for Your work.

That’s the quality of person to whom God gives revelation. To build the church, your attitude to money is very important in building the church. There was a test for Noah. I think if Noah was like some of today’s preachers and Christian workers, just said, Lord, what about the cash? Where am I going to get that from?

Who’s going to pay for it? Noah didn’t ask a question. He knew I have to pay for it. There was no question about it. It was clear.

Of course, I’ve got to pay for it. If you’d gone to Noah and said, who’s going to pay for all this? No question. Me, of course.

Who else? I’m the only one who got revelation. I’ve got to pay for it. And that attitude can make you and me a servant of God like Noah. He worked and he preached for nearly one hundred years, and he paid for God’s work in all those one hundred years out of his own pocket.

A Family Committed to God’s Work

He and his children, and his children had the same attitude. Think of their parents to raise up children like that, who will serve God out of their own pocket, use their own money, and who will spend their time. Noah and his children building the church. Noah and his wife building the church. Their children and their wives building the ark.

Blessed are you, if you can be like that. For many many years of my life, I have longed, I have thought when I go to heaven, one of the people I want to meet first is Noah. He’s been a hero of mine for years. Because I say, what a man for a hundred and twenty years, he stood like that alone like a rock. He wouldn’t shift.

He and his family, and he gave his money and his time and everything for building the ark. That’s an example for us. And Jesus said in the last days, it’s going to be like that. And I tell you, it wasn’t easy. It was a lot of hard work to build it.

A lot of hard work. Now, I’m going to bring a flood of water upon the earth to destroy all flesh which is the breath of life from under heaven. Everything that’s in the earth shall perish (verse 17), but I will establish My covenant with you. Covenant, beautiful word. We’ve also had that with the Lord saying that to us.

I’ll enter into a covenant with you.

And you shall enter the ark, you and your sons, your wife and your sons’ wives with you. And of every living thing, all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark. Keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female, birds after their kind, animals after their kind, every creeping thing after its kind, two of every kind shall come to you and to keep them alive.

And you take food which is edible, gather it for yourself and for you and for all these animals. Can you imagine how much food you require for all these elephants and lions and tigers and a massive hippopotamus, and all these things. And Noah had to collect food for all these animals and build the ark. Who’s going to pay for it? Noah, of course.

And his children, and his sons, their life was not cushy. It’s not an easy thing to serve the Lord. It costs us everything if we want to serve God like Noah and his sons. But if we are like him, the reward is very great because God honors those who honor Him. Let’s take that challenge seriously, brothers and sisters, to be like Noah.

Thus did Noah, verse 22, according to all that God commanded him, he did. Amen.

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