Next characteristic, and this is a big one. Characteristic number three: God often calls
us to do the impossible.
Somebody say amen. (Audience) Amen
This is one thing that separates what I am teaching right now from the conventional wisdom.
The philosophy of self improvement and personal success guru's of the world is that if we
can learn to exchange bad habits and attitudes for good
ones the end result will be health, wealth, fulfillment
and happiness.
They are kind of like cheerleaders standing on the
sidelines shouting you can do it. My friend, that is not what I am telling you
right now. If the you can do it philosophy were true
then we wouldn't need the Holy Spirit, would we?
The you can do it mind set needs to be replaced with
another one which essentially says you can't do it on
your own. But you can do all things through Christ,
through His help. Amen.
Through His help and His blessing anything is
possible. My friend if you were really going to fulfill
God's perfect will for your life it is always going
to require faith, trust and a child like dependence upon
Him. That's just how it works.
It is the way God designed the world. It's the way He intended it.
Some people seem to think that faith simply means
believing in something for which there is no empirical
evidence. That's ridiculous.
And that is a terrible misunderstanding of what faith is.
Faith is simply trust. Read the Bible and you'll see that it is full
of stories about men and women that God called to do
things that were absolutely impossible for them to do
on their own. But they trusted God and they found their
destiny in his perfect will.
What if God asked you to build a boat with the volume equivalent of 569
standard railroad box cars?
Now imagine that He asked you to do this thousands of
years ago without the aid of modern computer technology, machinery or prefabricated materials.
This is exactly what happened to Noah. It is one of the greatest stories of a man's
faith and God's faithfulness in the entire Bible.
I wanted to get a better understanding of the
sophistication of this ancient boat so I sat down with
the President and CEO of the Creation Museum, Ken
Ham, who is an expert on the book of Genesis and
one whose ministry Answers in Genesis, has done
a lot of research on Noah's Ark. (Ken Ham-)You know when you think about it,
if there was a global flood, which there was
and we see that evidence all over the earth of a global
flood. You are going to have to have a very special
type of boat to survive that flood.
Because you can imagine fountains of the great deep
breaking open. There would be tidal waves.
It would be incredible. You are going to have to have a phenomenal
sea worthy vessel.
And the Bible actually gives us a description of that
vessel. About five hundred feet long, about eighty
feet wide, about fifty feet high.
It would have stood about six stories with what we
would have looked at today in regard to buildings. So it was a massive, massive boat and it would
have taken a lot of engineering skills to build
a ship like that. We actually have an engineer who is working
with us, he actually lives in Australia and he's worked
with other engineers who has dedicated his life
to really research Noah's Ark.
Because we are rebuilding Noah's Ark out of wood.
The size of the Ark. Not just as a prop so to speak but as a real
boat actually.
How we think the boat would have been actually built.
And he has done an incredible amount of research on
that over the years. He believes that just the dimensions that
were given to Noah that itself was a phenomenal sea worthy
vessel. That it was actually built to survive the
year of the flood.
So to get a better idea of what a boat like
this would look like I took a trip to the Netherlands
where I met a real life Noah and a life size replica
of Noah's Ark. I am here in the Netherlands about fifty miles
outside of Amsterdam and I'm standing in front of Noah's
ark. Well it's not the original Noah's ark but
it is about as close as you are going to get unless you find
a time machine.
Because it is a life size, scale model replica of Noah's
Ark that one man built with his family. When I look at this the thing that strikes
me is the sheer immensity of the size.
It's absolutely huge to think of a man thousands of
years ago with primitive tools, with no computers, with
very limited understanding of engineering and of
mathematics and of science being able to build something of this size.
It seems quite remarkable. If ever God asked somebody to do something
that was impossible it was Noah.
At about five hundred feet long, eighty feet wide and
fifty feet high Noah's Ark would have been an absolutely
enormous vessel that not only had to be huge but also
functional and very sea worthy. This was the task that God asked Noah to undertake.
Looking at that scale model in the Netherlands I began
to think about what this must have been like for Noah
as he was being mocked and ridiculed for his ridiculous
project. I wonder if Noah ever felt overwhelmed by
the enormity of the assignment God had given him?
It was a journey that would certainly have required
tremendous trust in God day by day.
In the midst of the unknowns, struggles and difficulties
I wonder if Noah ever questioned the purpose or the
significance of his back breaking decades long project?
But little did he know he was building more than a boat.
He was building a refuge that would not only preserve
his family but the entire human race and the Messiah
himself who would eventually come through Noah's
blood line. Today the Ark is a monument to God's mercy
and a metaphor of salvation itself.
In Genesis 7 for instance it says the Ark then
stood for seven days. I like to call that seven days of grace.
And the door was still open and the Ark was loaded.
I often wonder, you know when the Bible says Noah
was a preacher of righteousness, was he out there at
the door of the Ark saying people there is plenty of
room. Come on board the Ark, you can be saved.
If you come on board, come on through the door.
Then the Bible tells us, God shut the door. There is an emphasis in the Bible about this
door. Think about it, God shut that door.
We read in the New Testament about the foolish virgins
that were not ready with the oil in their lamps.
And the others went in through the door and then God
shut the door. That's talking about the final judgment.
In Noah's day God shut the door. Then when God's Son stepped into history to
be one of our relatives, a descendent of Adam, he said,
I am the door.
By me if any man enter in he will be saved and He is
our Ark of salvation. That's why He died on the cross and rose from
the dead and He said I offer you a free gift of
salvation. In other words I open the door for you, I
want you to come in.
And that door is still open today by the way. And as in the days of Noah so shall the coming
of the Son of Man be.
That door is open until God brings the final judgment
and then He'll shut that door. That's why is is so important for us to be
in that Ark of salvation.
That's really the message of Noah's Ark in my opinion.
It's really a message to warn people. God is a God who judges wickedness and who
judges sin but He is a God of grace and mercy. And God provides that way of salvation so
even in His justice in judging sin with death then He
himself stepped into history to pay the penalty by
conquering death.
To be our Ark of salvation and open that door for us to
come in. What a message we can preach from the Ark of Noah
Just think today Noah's Ark is a picture of
Jesus Christ Himself.
And just as Noah preached righteousness in his
generation, his big boat is still preaching to us today.
Noah could have never imagined the significance of his
impossible project. He could never have fathomed how to build
such a gigantic boat.
He never would have known how to save humanity.
All he knew for sure is that God had spoken and step
by step Noah obeyed God and became the heir of the
righteousness, which is by faith. It's true that one of the common characteristics
of God's will is that He often calls us to do
things that are impossible for us to do in our own strength.
But as we yield our lives to Him he causes His divine
plans and dreams to become a reality. God takes great pleasure in doing things through
us that only He can do so that in the end He
receives all the glory, honor and praise.