Noah - Inconceivable

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Hey guys.

Well, good morning.

Well, I don't speak that often around here.

This is definitely the first time I've spoken after Shout On to God.

So I'm still trying to catch my breath over there doing like breathing exercises.

I have to talk now.

But okay, here's the famous uh movie quote.

I want you to keep in mind during this message.

So this is so famous, I'm pretty sure everybody's gonna know this.

If you're alive in the 90s, uh, if you have any any taste in decent movies.

So I'm gonna set it up, I'll give you the you know the first few lines, and then when I cue you, tell me what this is.

But but please, you know, out of respect, this is an important movie to me.

So if you don't really know this, you know, just let the adults play here.

Don't fake it.

So so here's the scene.

So Wesley is climbing up the cliffs of insanity to rescue his true love, Princess Buttercup.

And then you've got Vicini in Ego and uh Fezick are already on the top.

So Vicini, he cuts the rope and Wesley's left there hanging, he's dangling.

And so Fezick, he's the big Andre the giant guy, he looks over at the edge and he says, He's got very good arms.

Kind of sounds like Schwartz on here.

He's got and so Vicini comes over and he he looks down also and he says, He didn't fall, inconceivable.

And then in ego, he turns to him and says, You keep using that word.

I do not think it means what you think it means.

Clearly, y'all need to watch that movie again.

So that's I just I I imagine this big wall of sound coming back at me.

That's just sad.

I feel like we should like back up, sing shout unto God again, do the whole deal.

Inconceivable.

You keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means.

That's kind of the message this morning, uh, in a nutshell.

So my my youngest son is, uh my oldest son is, was born in 2002.

So in the 11, 12 years that we've had, uh, I've already had the opportunity to kind of live with him through several amazing things in local history that you guys will all remember.

Like when he was around kindergarten age, we had an extreme drought in Atlanta.

Like almost three years, it was worst in in 2007.

It was so bad if you remember, like Lake Lanier, you could almost see the bottom.

You could see parts of it, you could see the old Gainesville Looper Speedway that had not been visible since the 1950s when they you know dammed up the Chattahoochee to make the lake.

And I remember telling my son at the time, I was like, this is this is amazing.

This is inconceivable, unprecedented.

This probably won't happen again in your lifetime.

But yet, two years later, we have the exact opposite: record floods in Atlanta.

It was like 20,000 businesses or homes uh were damaged.

The Chattahoochee was at 500-year flood levels.

Uh, it was amazing.

And I remember telling my son at the time, this is inconceivable.

This is unprecedented.

Something like this will probably not happen again in your lifetime.

But the very next year, I remember driving home from the Christmas Eve service at his hands, and we drove over to Amy's parents, and we after we finally got settled in and went to sleep for the night, we woke up the next morning to the first white Christmas in Atlanta since 1818.

And the whole, the whole rest of the Christmas day, I'm just I'm telling my son, I was like, you don't understand.

A white Christmas is not just a first for you in Atlanta, that's a first for me.

And I'm a really old man.

So, but at this point, you know, I wonder if he's getting tired of me continually speaking in these extreme terms.

You know, let me, I know dad, unprecedented, inconceivable.

You know, let me guess.

This is probably not gonna happen again in my lifetime, right?

But the story we're gonna look at this morning is inconceivable.

It's unprecedented.

And we keep using that word, but that word inconceivable doesn't have the same meaning to God that we're gonna find.

So this is the story of Noah and the Great Flood, Noah and the Ark.

So if you've been here the last couple weeks, uh you've heard Justin, uh, somebody in our small group last week, they said this has sort of been a Noah-ish message series, because we haven't actually gotten to the story yet.

Today is the story, don't worry.

So, two weeks ago, Justin was talking about uh just in our culture, the opportunity that we have to find the good and talk about Jesus in light of this big movie coming out on Friday with Noah.

And then last week he talked about sort of the fine foundational question of why God would make the decision to send this big worldwide flood and his sovereignty and all that.

So if you missed either of those two messages, I would encourage you to listen to them online or grab them at the source.

But today we finally get to the story uh Noah, Noah and the Ark.

So if you haven't heard this story, uh it's in the very first book of the Bible, Genesis chapters six through eight, is where we're gonna be today.

So I encourage you to read that firsthand.

But uh, this story starts, you probably should let me summarize it first before we get going.

This is God decides to send a flood, and he tells Noah to make an ark to survive this.

So in this ark, Noah and his family, and at least two of all the animals on the earth are protected and they are able to repopulate the world.

So there you go.

That's the story.

I did it in like 10 seconds.

But no, that is not at all what I want to do this morning.

You know, we can't take this story that is this huge and inconceivable and try to just boil it down, you know, to boring adult-like kind of terms.

So, what I want to do this morning is to try to put this story in a modern context, kind of use today's terms, present day, where we are right now this year, just to try to give you a sense of the scope of this.

But please, you know, if you're like new to reading the Bible and stuff, don't get confused.

This did not happen this year.

This was thousands of years ago, the great flood, even long before Jesus.

Um I'm gonna use these things in modern day terms, but uh I like as maybe a good first example of this.

Uh, if you back up one chapter in the Bible into Genesis 5 before the Great Flood, one thing that'll probably strike you as you're reading through this is just how long everybody lived before the flood, and even for a little while after that.

So, as an example, Noah lived 950 years.

950 years.

That's really hard to imagine.

So let's take as our example this morning uh that let's say the flood happened this year in 2014.

The Bible tells us Noah was 500 years old when he started having kids, and he was 600 when the flood came, and he lived to 950.

So that would mean if the flood happens today, 2014, or this year, then Noah would have been born in 1414.

That's like Noah could have dated Joan of Arc.

He could have hung out with Leonardo da Vinci.

And then in 1914, he's alive for that whole time, 1914, he, right as World War I is starting to break out, he decides to start having kids, has three boys, and then he's still alive today for the Great Flood.

It's like a Highlander episode, you know.

See, if you were not alive in the 90s, if you didn't even watch The Princess Bride, there's no hope of you knowing Highlander.

So yellow are sad.

You have a lot of work to do.

But so, but not only does he survive the flood, our pretend flood of 2014, he doesn't die for another 350 years.

So if you do the math there, he's born in 1414, dates Joan of Arc, and then he survives the flood this year, and he doesn't die until the year 2364.

Let that sink in.

2364.

Now, I I know probably none of you, since you don't watch apparently 90s TV, are gonna understand this reference, but I look this up because I'm nothing if not thorough.

But the year 2364 is the actual year that uh Captain Jean-Luc Picard takes the Enterprise D out of Space Dock on its first maiden voyage to Farpoint Station.

So y'all like y'all like the Star Trek, but not Princess Bride.

So that, but you know, if ever there's an amazing moment in life to just say, now I can die in peace, that is it.

Finally, the Enterprise has a proper captain.

So sorry, that's me.

So that that'll give you a sense of cur of curves, of Noah's epic life, amazing 950 years.

And most of the generations that are in Genesis 5 there lived about that long.

So I actually want to back up a couple other generations and highlight a few other people.

Noah's great-grandfather was named uh Enoch.

And Enoch lived a mere 365 years, but his life ends uh with an amazing twist.

It says this in Genesis 5.

When Enoch was 65 years old, he became the father of Methuselah.

And after the birth of Methuselah, Enoch lived in close fellowship with God for another 300 years, and he had other sons and daughters.

Enoch lived 365 years walking in close fellowship with God, and then one day he disappeared because God took him.

So, how's that for an unprecedented life?

Inconceivable.

He walks with in close fellowship with God, and then one day God just takes him home.

But as amazing as that is, notice that Enoch's son does not have the luxury of walking the same faith path as his father.

Enoch's son is Methuselah.

And Methuselah is the guy that has the longest recorded lifespan in all of the Bible, or anywhere, as far as I know.

969 years.

He even outlives Noah.

So in our present-day analogy, I'm doing all this math just in my head, that would make Methuselah being born in the year 1064, I believe, or 45.

Like before any of the crusades.

But yet he's still alive this year for the flood.

He he dies this year before the flood.

So if you do the math in Genesis 5, that's actually the year Methuselah dies, the year of the flood.

That's an amazing life story.

And by the way, Methuselah's name in Hebrew means his death will bring judgment.

And like a dagger pointing.

So on one hand, Methuselah lives longer than anyone else, but yet even his name speaks of this impending death, impending judgment.

So that was God's faith walk for him.

But Methuselah's grandson, Noah, does not have the luxury of living Methuselah's story either.

God has a different plan for what he wants Noah to do.

So, but yet you'll notice in Genesis 6 that Noah is described precisely in the same terms as Enoch, but he doesn't end up with the same life story.

It says in Genesis 6, 9, this is the account of Noah and his family.

Noah was a righteous man, the only blameless person living on earth at the time, and he walked in close fellowship with God.

So that's the point here.

The same relationship with God, but he has us doing different things.

So God comes to Noah and tells him that he's going to send a worldwide flood, kind of like we talked about last week.

And Noah needs to build an ark to survive this flood.

Him and his family, his three sons, their wives, and then the animals.

Like you probably know the story from when you were a kid.

So he started building this ark sometime before the flood.

We don't know exactly when this was.

We just know from Genesis 5, he was 500 when he starts having kids.

So remember, born in 1414, in our analogy, starts starts having kids in 1914.

Sometime in there, he builds the ark before today.

And then the floods lasts about a year.

So some people read a verse in Genesis 6 that makes mention to 120 years and think that that means that God specifically said there was going to be a flood, and Noah knew about that for the entire 120-year time frame.

So that would mean maybe Noah knew specifically about the flood coming in 1894.

Just a sense of the time.

So there's a long time to build this really huge ark.

And the ark really was huge.

God's specific about the dimensions.

Noah doesn't make that up.

So God gives him specifically the dimensions in cubits, which is an ancient measurement standard, roughly equivalent like your forearm, the length of your elbow to your fingers, like 18 inches.

People debate exactly how long it was.

But if it was 18 inches, then that would make the arc 450 feet long by 75 feet wide, 45 feet tall.

So to take the same present-day analogy, just look around right now at the interior of the big room.

Here is a rough example of the interior of the arc.

So, like from here to the back wall, 75 feet, that's sort of close.

I didn't measure it, but 45 feet from floor to ceiling, that's that's pretty close.

But for the length of the arc, you have to imagine this room a lot longer.

So imagine one and a quarter football fields, including the end zones.

That's how long the arc was.

Six times longer than it was wide, which happens to be the precise proportions used in modern shipbuilding.

And apparently the relationship between these three dimensions provided this really precise balance between strength and stability and comfort.

So God knew exactly what he was doing.

This might have been very well the very first boat that Noah had ever built, a really big one, but it was not inconceivable to God.

And so he gave him really specific dimensions on how to do it.

So if you're anything like me at this point, you're probably wondering how someone could possibly build something that big thousands of years ago, using only ancient tools, and maybe just him and his family, his boys, there to do it.

And we really have no idea how that is.

I mean, he might have just hired a whole bunch of people, had a whole bunch of friends, who knows?

We don't know that part of the story.

I think the movie on Friday takes some liberties there.

But even if it was just Noah and his boys, then I actually Googled this too.

I'm here to help.

So, and by the way, if you don't like math, here 60 seconds, you you have my permission to just check out.

Uh as I was, I told my wife this week, excuse me, that you know, I was preparing a message on Noah, and she said, unprompted, she had not read anything that I had written, no rough drafts.

She just immediately asked, Are you gonna get up there and talk about a bunch of math?

And I was like, Why?

Why would that even be a question?

Why, you know, Noah does not equal math.

But yet she knows me because I'm I'm about to do it.

So here you go.

So if you take those dimensions, 450 times 75 times 45, you multiply that out, that's about one and a half million cubic meters of interior space, the size of it.

So if you imagine that, you know, most of that needs to be open space, like any house or boat.

But typically a house would have like 95% open space.

But say this was only 20% of actual wood, like it's pretty dense.

God said there needed to be three levels and rooms and stalls in there for all the animals.

So let's say there's 20% of that actual woodwork.

The whole thing's made out of wood, made out of gopher wood, which is the only reference to that in the Bible, so we don't really know what kind of tree that was.

But 20% of that million and a half would come out to a little over 300,000 uh cubic meters of woodwork that has to be completed.

So, you know, if you've only got, say worst case, you've only got Noah and his three boys' sons working on this, then let's say that the four of them working together could maybe do 15 uh feet cubic feet of build-out every day.

That's probably really conservative.

If they do this for decades, they get really good at it, right?

So if you take that and they work six days a week all year long, then they can do each year uh 3,000, what was it?

3,580, I believe, cubic feet of build-out every year.

So then 300,000 total job, that's about 65 years.

So really unprecedented, inconceivable.

But in the end, if you're living 950 years, not impossible.

It's just beyond what we can imagine.

But that's worst case.

We don't really know how it was built, but it requires a tremendous amount of faith and dedication to do it.

So finally, the ark is built and it's time for the flood.

So I totally lost my place.

Okay.

So, but the building of the ark, as difficult as that is to imagine, you know, that's not actually the most difficult part.

The most difficult part in this is seven days before the flood, God tells Noah it's time to start loading the ark.

And he has instructed him to have two of each animal so that they can be alive after the flood.

And for the animals that are cleaned and approved for sacrifice, there are supposed to be seven pairs of those.

So it would be literally impossible, I think, for Noah and his four sons in seven days to get from all around the world all of these animals in just the right amounts.

So God does that part.

God does the heavy lifting, like we always say, at his hands.

And all these animals come to the ark and they they load it.

God shuts the door, and then the rain begins.

So we know really specifically in the Bible, even when the flood starts.

It says on the second month, on the 17th day.

So if we take that analogy, you know, present day, let's just say February 17th is when the flood starts.

So if you remember the last time I spoke, The Hate Your Parents, that was February 16th.

So imagine it's been raining since the next day in torrential fashion, and it's still raining right now.

And 40 days will not end until uh Saturday, this upcoming Saturday, which happens to be the day after the movie comes out, and and even goes through Saturday night, so that'll be the rain will stop finally on next Sunday when Justin wraps this up, the last message in the series.

So that's 40 days.

But it it's the Bible describes it's not just rain that comes down, the the water also comes from below.

It says in Genesis 7, when Noah was 600 years old, on the seventeenth day of the second month, all the underground waters erupted from the earth, and the rain fell in mighty torrents from the sky, and the rain continued to fall for forty days and forty nights.

So the rain's coming from both directions.

But even once the rain stops, like on Saturday night here, uh, there's no hope of even the water going down for a long time.

We're all still in the boat for a long time.

It says the waters don't even begin to recede until 150 days after when the rain starts.

So February 17th, that takes us to uh July 17th.

And then God sends a wind and the waters start to go down.

But that's a long process, too.

It's not until sometime in November that Noah begins to start wondering if he can start to come out.

So he sends out first a raven uh and then a dove.

So you'll notice, um, or I should mention, let me back up for a second, the height of the the total height of the water that covered, the Bible's also specific.

It says that it rose to a level 22 feet above the highest mountains.

Which I wonder even how we know that detail.

You know, I guess God could have told Noah, but my theory is you know, you got his three boys on The boat.

And so they're passing the time, or men and they're acting like boys.

So they have probably have a big long rope with a rock at the end, you know, and they're measuring it every day.

How far is this?

Probably charting it on a big thing somewhere in the boat.

And then Noah's wife is probably like, Y'all are doing a bunch of math, right?

So 22 feet we have, and then the water slowly start to recede.

And so finally, sometime in November, Noah starts to think, is it time to go out?

He sends out these birds.

And at first the dove uh comes back immediately, and then the second time after a few days, the dove comes back with an olive branch.

Finally, the third time, the dove is gone.

And Noah knows finally it might be time to start thinking about coming out of the boat.

But that's November.

It's not until the beginning of the new year, New Year's Day, that Noah's finally able to pull the top off and safely look around.

But even then he can't come out.

It's not until February 22nd, 370 days after the rain started.

My wife's birthday, by the way, February 22nd, make a note, that God finally tells him to come out of the boat and with his family and all the animals, and then creation starts again.

And more on that next week.

So that's the huge story.

But what are we supposed to make of that?

I mean, that's a really unprecedented and inconceivable story.

It's like what I kept telling my son.

This will probably never happen again in your lifetime.

It's one of those stories.

In fact, it's the ultimate example of that because at the end, God even gives this ironclad promise to Noah and everyone that never again will the world be destroyed in a flood like this.

It says in Genesis 9, God says, Yes, I'm confirming my covenant with you.

Never again will floodwaters kill all living creatures.

Never again will a flood destroy the earth.

So what's the point in even remembering a story that is guaranteed to never happen again?

How could that possibly be relevant to us?

Well, the first reason I think that we should remember Noah is because he was such a great man of faith.

He's in this great hall of faith that we've talked about several times in Hebrews 11.

It describes Noah like this.

Hebrews 11.

It says, It was by faith that Enoch was taken up to heaven without dying.

He disappeared because God took him.

For before he was taken up, he was known as a person who pleased God.

For it's impossible to please God without faith.

Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.

It was by faith that Noah built a large boat to save his family from the flood.

He obeyed God, who warned him about the things that had never happened before.

Inconceivable.

And by faith, Noah condemned the rest of the world, and he received the righteousness that comes by faith.

It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance.

He went without knowing where he was going.

So Enoch has a unique story, but Noah doesn't have the luxury of living Enoch's story.

Same relationship with God, different story.

Abraham doesn't have the luxury of living Noah's story.

And you are not called to be Abraham.

But each of us is called to do something unique, something timely.

And that's what the Spirit does in our lives.

We can't conceive what we should do to change this world, but that's what the Spirit can do for us.

You know, loving other people, changing this world, it does not require just a reasonable response from us.

You know, we can't just have a relationship with God that says, tell me what I should do in certain situations, and then don't worry, I'll lock it in, and when that time comes, like a wind-up doll, I'll do it.

You know, there's lots of great things to learn, and our relationship with God's no less than that, but that's not like world changing.

You can't just give back and measure with what is given and have that really change the world.

That's just, you know, the world spinning around one more loop, the same old thing.

But God requires something something more from us.

You know, that only you hold this plot of ground on which you currently stand.

Your relationships, uh, who you know, uh, your maybe your job, these people that are in your family, and it's it that's why the Spirit comes to us specifically and tells us to do certain things because we're the perfect person to do it.

We are his hands, and we have to be listening to that.

The needs around us require an act of God.

There's the inconceivable, and then there's the impossible.

The inconceivable is what we can't imagine, and the impossible is what absolutely can't be done.

But those two things are different, they have the same kind of effect.

There's stuff that you'll never do on your own, like assembling all these animals into a large wooden structure.

God's gonna do that.

Having a relationship with God and being restored and standing before his throne and knowing him based on your own effort, it's not gonna happen.

Impossible.

And so God does these things.

We have a God of the impossible.

But then there's this other category of things that are just inconceivable.

They're beyond what we can imagine, but they're not beyond what we can actually achieve.

Like building a boat for 65 years of that size, and it seems so silly, but yet, in the end, it's so perfect.

And Noah had an inconceivable faith, and that's why he was able to do it.

He loved God, and so he had this close relationship with him, and he just did exactly as he was commanded.

Three or four times in that story, it says of Noah, he did exactly as God commanded him.

That's what it is to live a life that it will do the inconceivable if we listen to him.

So inconceivable, we keep using that word, but it doesn't have the same meaning to God because he doesn't live there.

Worship team, you can start coming back up.

But the the final reason that we really look at this story is because it reminds us of Jesus.

This is a great story about Jesus.

For my money, you know, every story in the Bible is ultimately about Jesus.

So in this, in this story, you know, that we we love so much as kids, you have a carpenter that single-handedly saves the world.

He's handpicked by God because of his righteousness.

Does that sound familiar?

And then we are, you know, God, Jesus, Jesus reveals to us what the father's like.

And we are the father's sons and daughters.

So as his sons and daughters, we are included in his salvation.

You know, the three boys and their wives, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, they were not necessarily righteous.

It doesn't mention that, but Noah was.

He wasn't perfect, he wasn't Jesus, but he's the one mentioned as being righteous.

And so they are included, the family, in that salvation.

And that's where we are.

I'm not righteous, but Jesus is.

And so I am in that protection of him, and salvation is coming through him.

And then finally, it's not just we're not the only ones being saved.

This is all of creation.

We're all tied up into this together, like Romans 8 says.

All of creation groans in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed, for the roof to come off.

So we're not going just to some other place, you know, we can't imagine and on a cloud.

This is a new world.

God's making all things new, even heaven.

Heaven and earth join together.

So there's the impossible, and Jesus does that.

And then there's the inconceivable, and that's why we're given the Spirit to know that.

So our imaginations can become his imagination, and we can love other people.

So, what is it in your life today that's inconceivable?

What is what's unprecedented?

What's something that has never been done in the history of your family?

But it's time for that to be done.

It's time for somebody to break that cycle.

It even looks silly, and why are you not doing this?

This is not the way this family goes.

Well, maybe it's time.

Like I was having lunch with somebody this week and sharing all this stuff, and his example of that is great.

He says, you know, the history of my family?

So much infidelity.

And that's gonna change with me.

That we can do the unprecedented.

We can have something that is inconceivable and do that.

Maybe the spirit would come to you just in small ways too and say, you need to love this other person.

You need, you don't know their story, but I do.

And you can't just say, well, they don't deserve that.

Because that's the perfect moment to do it.

Or you need to be at peace here.

And the spirit can lead you to do it.

It leads you to act in that way.

And you can have joy.

Let's do things that are inconceivable.

Let's pray.

God, we thank you so much that you love us and you give us your spirit and guide us in these situations.

And uh, we thank you most of all for Jesus that we are in Him and salvation comes only from Him.

And so we just ask you to give us joy and peace and love, patience, endurance, all these things that the Spirit does.

Because we want to be people of great faith.

And we want you to change this world, and we want to be a part of it.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.