Join us on a journey through one of the Bible’s most compelling narratives—the story of Noah’s Ark. This episode dives deep into the contradictions and complexities of God’s nature, exploring themes of repentance, grace, and divine action. Discover how the severity of God’s decisions ties into His overarching grace, providing profound insights for modern believers.
00:00:03 Introduction to Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
SPEAKER 02 :
Sometimes the Bible can be very disturbing. One reason is that the Bible presents disturbing ideas, and the ideas upset us because they are not what we want to hear. Most of us have a personal theology. We have our own unique way of looking at God. It’s a compilation of things we have heard from our parents, our teachers, oh yes, and our preachers. And if we’ve read the Bible, we probably did our own job of interpreting it. And that was colored by, well, by what we want God to be like. Church-going people, oddly enough, can have more trouble with the Bible than someone who approaches it fresh. It doesn’t have any preconceived opinions. The church man or woman has a set of beliefs to which they ascribe a kind of orthodoxy. And man, it’s hard to get past your orthodoxy. Once you have said, this is what I believe, you tend to see everything you read in the light of that belief. But the problem with the Bible is that in places, it is so plain that we cannot escape what it’s saying. And that’s where the trouble comes in. Take Genesis 6 and the story of Noah’s flood as an illustration. In Genesis 6, verse 6, we read these words, And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast and creeping things, the fowls of the air, for I’m sorry I ever made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Now, the idea of God repenting is really completely foreign. God doesn’t make mistakes he needs to repent of, does he? But you see, the word repent, as it’s used in the Bible, doesn’t necessarily include the idea of sin. In this case, it goes no further than to say that God is sorry that he made man on the earth. Not, mind you, because of a mistake God had made, but because of the mistakes, the great cumulative swelling up of mistakes that man had made. We have our own ideas of the nature of God, and they include words like omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. That means God’s all-powerful, can know everything, and is everywhere. Into our ideas, this short sentence about God repenting just doesn’t fit. But I’m going to suggest to you that the best way to approach this is just to take it, as it is. Because the truth is, there are many aspects of God’s nature that seem contradictory to us. And when you go about trying to reconcile those contradictions, apologizing for God, explaining away the things that God does, says, feels, or what have you, you’re making God in your own image. It’s far safer to take God, contradictions, and all. maybe with a little bit of faith, that someday we’ll understand that the contradictions really aren’t. But nevertheless, just take the story as it is. God was sorry he made man, and he determined to destroy him off the face of the planet. Even a child can understand that. But in a way, the latter part of this equation is more disturbing than the first. God was not only sorry he made man, he determined to wipe him out. Man, woman, child, animal, everything. Now, I don’t know about you, but I would rather hear about a God who is patient, merciful, compassionate, long-suffering, and loving. This severity is very troubling, and it doesn’t fit our theology very well. But if it doesn’t fit our personal theology, just maybe we should rethink our theology.
SPEAKER 01 :
I’ll be right back, and we’ll talk this over. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-44.
SPEAKER 02 :
Now why do you think that God would take such drastic action? Why would he step in and just say, I’m sorry I did this, let’s just scrub the earth clean and start over again? Well, the first hint is in his description of the shape that the world was in. Verse 5 of Genesis 6, And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that the imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. You know, there are people like that. I mean, they go to sleep thinking about evil, and they wake up in the morning thinking about evil, and it’s evil all day long. And apparently this had gotten so bad, that everyone was that way. Man hadn’t spread that far this early. Every indication is that everybody lived in the land of Mesopotamia. If you have an atlas, that’s what’s called the land between the rivers, and the rivers are the Euphrates and the Tigris. Even Cain and his descendants had not gone that far. The land of Nod, where they went, most authorities think, was just beyond the Tigris on over toward the east, but still in the very basin of land around the rivers. And the land around these rivers was fertile, very fertile, but it was also limited. It wouldn’t take long for men to fill it up, and once they filled it up, They could easily begin to fight over scarce resources, and apparently, apparently it got bad. In verse 12, And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt. For all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth. And God said to Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me. For the earth is filled with violence through them. And behold, I will destroy them with the earth.” You know, it’s hard to imagine how the land and the times back then could have been much worse than a lot of times in living memory. But you know, Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany were bad places to be, but they were not the whole world. I mean, there were islands and continents of well-meaning people here and there. If the time of Noah was not worse than today, at least it was more pervasive. It was the closeness of everything that made it impossible to escape the corruption and to escape the violence. So, God just decided to wipe the slate clean and start over. We can only assume that it was better to do that than to allow the misery to continue. To borrow a phrase from Paul, Behold, therefore… the goodness and the severity of God. The loving, merciful, compassionate God that we all desire is there. But he is not a grandfather in the sky. He can be terribly severe if and when it’s called for. Now, in a passage we’ve just read, there’s a ray of hope. When God said, I’ll destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, man, beast, creeping thing, fowls, everything, for I’m sorry I made them. It is followed immediately by this short sentence. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Now Noah was a good man, but it was not his goodness that saved him from the flood. God intended to destroy the whole thing and start over, and that would have included Noah, except for one thing. The grace of God. I could wish that the word grace had not been used and abused so much. The word has so many meanings that it ends up having none. It’s like a lot of words in the Bible that preachers have used and used and used and used until their audience is in front of them. The word goes in one ear and out the other with nothing really changing on the way through. But grace, grace is like a crack in the severity of God. Mercy is his, what shall we say, his weakness. And mercy opens the door for grace. And you know, Noah never could have gotten good enough to save himself from the destruction that was on the way. There was nothing he could do. It wouldn’t have done him any good to become a better swimmer. Either he did this God’s way, either he responded, or he was dead. Bill Cosby had a funny routine about the conversation between God and Noah about the building of the ark. Noah’s working in his workshop one day, sawing away on a piece of wood, and a voice comes from the ceiling that says, Noah. Well, I won’t try to do Bill Cosby’s routine. But they chat back and forth about this whole thing, and Noah thinks the whole thing is a joke. And it’s really easy to understand why he would have. Even the movie The Bible portrays Noah as a kind of humorous figure. But in Bill Cosby’s routine, after all of the Noah doubting that this is really God talking to him, he thinks it’s some friend of his who’s kidding him along. But finally he figures out that it really is God, and he’s dragging his feet a little bit. And finally, God asks, Noah, how long can you tread water? And Noah says, well, right, you and me, Lord. And in that question, the whole thing comes into focus. Noah and his family were saved because Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. He couldn’t tread water long enough. Now, you may not want to hear about the severity of God. But unless you understand it, I think you will never understand His grace. So Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, but he still had to build a boat. And God said to Noah, The end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with violence. And behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make you an ark of gopher wood. Rooms you shall make in the ark, and you shall pitch it within and without with pitch. And on go the instructions about the ark, the dimensions, the rooms, the different decks, the food supplies. All this information was just given to Noah. It was a graciousness of God, a grace that caused him to do so. But Noah had to do the buildings. He actually had to get the wood. He had to drag it down. He had to shape it. He had to drive pegs in it. He had to pitch it on the inside and the outside so that it would not leak. God did not build the ark for Noah. And God goes on to say, But with you I will establish my covenant. You shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort, shall you bring into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. You know, I think there’s a useful comparison here between Noah and the Christian. He was saved by grace, but he still had to work. He had to build the boat. He had to gather in all the supplies. It took a very long time. Some say 120 years from the time God told him to build until the flood came. We know, all of us know, that as Christians we are saved by grace. I honestly don’t know how anyone could doubt it. Not after what Paul says in Ephesians 2, verse 8. For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them. You know, in a way, and no pun intended, we’re in the same boat with Noah. He was saved by grace, but he still had a lot of work to do. If he doesn’t build the boat, he and his family die like all the rest of them, like rats in a trap, even having found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Without grace they die, but even with grace they die unless they do their work. And one wonders why we should assume that having found grace in God’s eyes in Christ, we should think that there is nothing left for us to do. But some people apparently think that way. In chapter 7, verse 1, the Lord said to Noah, Come you and all your house into the ark. For you have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Mind you, a good man, a righteous man, but his righteousness would not help him tread water. And so continues this beautiful analogy between Noah and the modern Christian. For the truth is that none of the things that we do are good enough. We can be a good person, a righteous person, obedient person. We can have all the ceremonies and rituals down pat. We can follow the letter of the law of the Bible and the spirit of it to the best of our knowledge. But it won’t save us because we can’t tread water long enough. By grace are you saved through faith. And so God goes on to say, of every clean beast you shall take by sevens, the male and female, and the beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. You know, this is a truly curious condition. What’s he doing that for? First, it’s curious in the notation that there were clean and unclean animals because the conventional wisdom is that this distinction between clean and unclean animals was purely a condition of the Israelite covenant. But apparently not. because here we find clean and unclean animals going on the ark. Well, one reason is clean animals could be eaten, so maybe they were food for the journey, or more important, they were food for the post-flood period. We do find Noah a little later making an offering of one of the clean animals, which presupposes somehow that even in this time there was a distinction in the ceremonial offerings to God between between clean and unclean. The ceremonial law, then, existed a long time before Moses, which again sort of runs counter to the conventional wisdom. Well, God continues, verse 4, “…for yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth for forty days and forty nights, and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.” And Noah did whatever God commanded him that he did. And Noah was 600 years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth. This has always seemed so strange how long those people lived. And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark because of the waters of the flood, of clean beasts and beasts that are not clean, of fowls and of everything that creeps upon the earth. They went in two and two unto Noah in the ark, the male and the female, as God commanded Noah.” And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. In the 600th year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the 17th day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened, and the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. How widespread was this flood? Well, first let’s make a note of an important distinction. Whenever you find the word earth in the Old Testament, it is not talking about the planet. In fact, I don’t know that they really had a conceptualization of the planet at that time. The word is eretz, and it means literally the land. So, mind you, the word earth doesn’t require that. Now, how we interpret the word land depends upon the context in which we find it. For example, there will later be scriptures that talk about Eretz Israel, which means the land of Israel, and therefore isn’t talking, obviously, about the whole planet. There’s long been a debate over whether the flood was worldwide or limited to the habited world of the area of Mesopotamia. But, you know, for the people who are actually living in the area, the distinction turned out to be not very important. because everybody except Noah and his family died. The flood was forty days upon the earth, and the waters increased and raised up the ark, and it was lifted up above the earth. And the waters prevailed and were increased greatly upon the earth, and the ark moved upon the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered.” Now, it’s easy to see how someone reading this could conclude that, well, that means the whole planet then, all the hills, every mountain was all covered with water. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail, and the mountains were covered. The other side of the story is that, well, yeah, but what it’s talking about is the sky under the heavens in this area and the mountains in this area, and I don’t honestly know of any way you can resolve that to everyone’s satisfaction. All flesh died that moved upon the earth, both fowl, cattle, beast, every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth, and every man, all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And since everybody lived in Mesopotamia, whether or not it was a worldwide flood is really kind of irrelevant. And every living substance was destroyed, which was on the face of the ground, both man and cattle, creeping things, foul of the heaven. And they were destroyed from the earth, and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days. We’ll see how this story turns out when we come back after these words.
SPEAKER 01 :
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SPEAKER 02 :
It’s a funny thing, you know, but the whole planet shows signs that at one time or another, all of it was in submergence. and more than once. They tell us the ice ages account for a lot of it, the shifting of the Earth’s crust for yet more of it, and even the poles have apparently shifted far enough and catastrophically enough to send seas over continents in the past. No one has been able to find physical evidence that the whole planet was underwater at one time, but they don’t have to for the Genesis account to be true. There was an enormous flood in the area of Mesopotamia at one time in the distant past. That much we definitely know. And it seems to have affected every tribe of man because no matter the ancient culture, whether they be the Indians on the North American continent or the Polynesian people or the African people, all of them have a story in their traditions of a great flood. And that’s exactly what we would expect if their remote ancestors were flood survivors. Well, after all was said and done, God remembered Noah and every living thing and all the cattle that were with him in the ark. And God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged. Genesis 8, verse 2. The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained. And the waters returned from off the earth continually. And after the end of the hundred and fifty days, the waters were abated. And the ark rested in the seventh month, in the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. That must have been a strange feeling. After being at sea for seven months and bobbing around and wondering, really wondering about what was outside the ark because they had no windows in there. and all of a sudden the thing settles on solid land again for the first time. It’s interesting, too, that the area in the mountains of Ararat, the waters that flow down from it, are the headwaters of the Euphrates, and all Noah and his family had to do was follow the river back down into Mesopotamia again. But before he did, he opened up the window of the ark and sent forth a dove from him to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground. And the dove couldn’t find any place to light, so she returned to him into the ark. And he stayed seven days, and he sent her forth out of the ark again. This time she brought back a little leaf of an olive tree. And he stayed another seven days, and he sent her out, and this time she didn’t come back. and he knew that she had found a dry place to land. It came to pass in the 601st year, in the first month and the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from the ground, and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry. And through the grace of God, Noah, his family, his children, and indirectly you and I, survived. And God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him and said, Behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you, making you a promise. And with every living creature that is with you, the fowl of the cattle, of every beast of the earth with you, and from all that go out of the ark to every beast of the earth, I will establish my covenant with you. Neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of the flood, neither shall there be any more a flood to destroy the earth. God promised, I’m not ever going to do this again. And he gave a rainbow in the clouds as a token of it. So every time you see a rainbow, you’re looking at God’s promise that he will never, ever again destroy the earth in the way that he did before. And the sons of Noah that went out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah. And of them was the whole earth overspread. And one of these fellows was your great-great-granddaddy. You know, the losers never figure out the goodness and the severity of God. They’re oftentimes hung up on what some people call cheap grace. You know, I don’t have to do anything. God did it all for me. And I’ve given my hand to the preacher and my heart to the Lord, and that’s that. I’ve got nothing more to do. On the other hand, you have those who seem to think they have to do it all. I guess they think they can tread water all the way between here and the kingdom of God. But the winners understand the grace of God. The winners understand that when you have received His grace, you still have to build the boat. As Paul said, we are saved by grace, but we are His creatures unto good works. Until next time, this is Ronald Dart, and I was just wondering, how long can you tread water?
SPEAKER 01 :
The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560 White House, Texas 75791 you may call us toll free at 1-888-BIBLE-44 and visit us online at borntowin.net.
