Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. This is study #27 of Genesis, chapter 6 and we are going to read Genesis 6:18-20:

But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee. And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.

I will stop reading there. We have already gone over verse 18 and we saw that the “covenant” is the Word of God, the Bible. God makes a covenant with His people through His Word, whether it be Abraham or Noah or Jacob, or whoever it may be. It is the same covenant.

Then God foretold 120 years in advance who it would be that would enter into the ark. It would be Noah, his wife, their three sons and their wives. That was it. The Lord did not specify any other persons, except for Noah and his immediate family. In the next chapter when the flood takes place 120 years later, we know that it was only those eight souls that did enter into the ark. We discussed in our last study how that fits with God’s program of predestination. Before the foundation of the world, He named the people that would become saved and their sins were laid upon the Lord Jesus Christ. As time unfolded and the history of the world transpired, God found only those people to apply His salvation and deliver them from His wrath. They were brought into the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ and hidden from the wrath of God. God’s naming of the people to enter into the ark is a figure of His overall salvation plan in which He elected and named each individual that was to come saved.

Let us go on to Genesis 6:19-20:

And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.

In these verses the Lord refers to the animal world and his deliverance of these animals. They are to be brought into the ark. Here, God is again “foretelling” because the ark has not been built and the flood had not come, but just as He named the people that would enter into the ark He is also telling us the animals that will enter in, two of every sort. He repeats this in verse 20: “two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.”

Just as the people were a picture of God’s salvation program, the animals typify the same thing – they are figures of all God would save, His elect. We know from several verses in the Bible that the Lord refers to animals in similar ways to people. For instance, it says in Jonah 3:7-8:

And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.

You cannot separate or distinguish what God is saying of man and what He is saying of the beasts. Both were not to eat or drink anything and both were to be covered with sackcloth. Again, look at the wording in verse 8: “But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God.” It is almost as if God is saying that the beasts, along with man, will cry mightily unto him. Of course, that did not happen in regard to the beasts. The people of Nineveh cried unto God, not the beasts, but the picture places the animals in the same predicament as man and everything man does the animals are to do because God does typify man as animals. Let us look at a few more verses. In Numbers 22, we have the account of Balaam and his donkey and this is the point at which the donkey disobeyed his master, Balaam. It says in Numbers 22:32-33:

And the angel of JEHOVAH said unto him, Wherefore hast thou smitten thine ass these three times? behold, I went out to withstand thee, because thy way is perverse before me: And the ass saw me, and turned from me these three times: unless she had turned from me, surely now also I had slain thee, and saved her alive.

Of course, this is one of those amazing Bible stories. It is a true historical account of God opening up the mouth of an animal. He not only opened the mouth of the ass, but He also opened the eyes of the donkey to see the angel of JEHOVAH (God Himself) standing in the way with a sword to slay him. The donkey turned aside three times and refused to go forward, so Balaam smote the ass. God pointed out that the ass saved Balaam’s life. If she had not turned, God would have slain Balaam and saved her (the ass) alive. Here we see very clearly that this animal typifies someone God has saved – He opened her mouth and He saved her alive. The man in the story is a representation of any unsaved person, while the donkey is a representation of a saved individual. God used the animal to picture someone He saves.

It is similar to what we see in God’s command in Exodus 13:13:

And every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb; and if thou wilt not redeem it, then thou shalt break his neck: and all the firstborn of man among thy children shalt thou redeem.

This Scripture has all sorts of Gospel meaning. To “redeem with a lamb” points to the redemption that the Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, obtained for His people, so in this Law of God every firstborn man was to be “redeemed” and every “firstling of an ass” was also to be redeemed with a lamb. As a matter of fact, if it was not redeemed, it was to have its neck broken, to signify they are under the wrath of God. When Eli fell backward and broke his neck it was a picture of an individual that is under the wrath of God. The ass would also be counted as under the wrath of God if it were not redeemed with a lamb, so God is using animals to picture His salvation program.

The Lord says in Isaiah 53:6:

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and JEHOVAH hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Again, God typifies His people as sheep. We are the sheep of His pasture and He is our Shepherd. There is a lot of Biblical language that go along these lines, but sometimes we do not stop and think that God is picturing His people as animals, like sheep.

In the New Testament there was a woman that besought the Lord to heal her daughter, but the Lord Jesus said He was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. That is another reference to sheep and, yet, the woman came and worshipped him. It says in Matthew 15:26-28:

But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs. And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.

Here, the woman identified herself with a “dog” waiting for a crumb to fall from her masters’ table. There are other instances in the Bible where God is really speaking of His elect, but He is using the figure of animals and that is what is going on in Genesis 6:19-20:

And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.

The phrase “keep them alive” is repeated in verse 20. Of course, the people that went on board the ark were also “kept alive.” This language relates to what we read in Psalm 41:1-2:

Blessed is he that considereth the poor: JEHOVAH will deliver him in time of trouble. JEHOVAH will preserve him, and keep him alive; and he shall be blessed upon the earth: and thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of his enemies.

The “poor” typify God’s people. Here, JEHOVAH considers the poor and will deliver him, preserve him, “and keep him alive.” All those that were kept alive in the ark are a picture of the poor in spirit, God’s people, and it is represented by the people as well as by the animals. They are kept alive in the ark, which was a craft designed by God and built for the salvation of Noah, his family and all the animals. Yes, the Lord wanted to deliver the animals in order to keep the species of animals alive, but the deeper spiritual meaning is that all the animals that were delivered from dying in the flood is a picture of the salvation of God’s people.

Of all the animals on the earth, those in the ark were only a remnant, were they not? There was only “two of every sort” in the ark, but the total number of animals that found refuge on the ark was nothing compared to the great number of animals outside the ark in the world. How many sheep were there on the earth? We do not know. There could have been tens of thousands or millions. We do not know how many dogs, cats, elephants, mice or rabbits there were, but there were tremendous numbers of animals that populated the earth. And, yet, God spared only a remnant and He had to work to do this, but we will talk about that in the next chapter as God brought the animals to the ark. Noah was not running around trapping and catching all these animals. That would not have been possible because he could not have gathered every species God intended to place on the ark. It would have taken Noah a tremendous amount of time to collect all these animals to load on the ark, but none of that was necessary because God moved the animals to come to the ark. In other words, God “drew” them just as He drew people in salvation, as Jesus said in John 6:44:

No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.

God drew the animals to the ark. He led them there and they may have “waited in line” as they boarded the ark, or, at least, we are not presented with a picture of chaos, but of order. Noah and his sons and their wives did not have to chase animals around, like we might do with chickens, and somehow get them into the ark. The way the Bible presents it is that it was very orderly. The animals got on board because God directed them. As the Creator He worked in them and had the necessary species of animals arrive at the proper time and they boarded the ark according to God’s timetable.

Then God shut the door when Noah and his family and all the animals were on board. None that were predestinated of God were left out. None of the animals called and drawn by God were left outside, but there were male and female of each animal species. God is painting a picture of saving a remnant of the whole, just as He did with His overall salvation program. He saved a remnant of people, but there were billions that were unsaved. He saved a remnant of animals from the death of the flood and, yet, millions of other animals died in the flood. They were “kept alive” and this ties in with the statement in 1Thessalonians, chapter 4 where the Lord speaks of the second coming of Christ at the time of the end. It says in 1Thessalonians 4:15:

For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.

Then He repeats it in 1Thessalnians 4:17:

Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Noah and the other seven human beings were “kept alive” on the ark. They were “alive and remain.” Of all the people in the world, none of the others were “alive” and neither did they “remain.” God is picking up on that figure (as we would expect) because the Lord began Judgment Day on May 21, 2011, a day that identified with the shutting of the door of the ark and the beginning of the flood exactly 7,000 years earlier. Therefore, the shutting of the door was not only a judgment upon those without, but it was also a necessary safety mechanism to protect all that were within the ark in order that they could be kept alive and remain until the flood was over. So, God uses this language concerning those that were brought into the ark as being “kept alive.” Their lives were preserved and all of God’s people were saved prior to the shutting of the door (to heaven) on May 21, 2011 and they are “alive and remain” and will do so until God takes them in physical death or until the very last day when they will be “alive and remain” unto the coming of the Lord.

But the Lord does not keep alive the wicked. It says in Deuteronomy 20:16-17:

But of the cities of these people, which JEHOVAH thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as JEHOVAH thy God hath commanded thee:

None of the wicked are kept alive. It also says in Job 36:6:

He preserveth not the life of the wicked: but giveth right to the poor.

It is not God’s purpose to preserve the life of the wicked, so when He brings judgment He slays the wicked. For example, the walls of Jericho fell down and He killed everyone but Rahab the harlot and her family. She is a picture of His elect, but all the rest of the people of the city (man, woman and child) were slain by the sword. They were killed.

That is how it was with the flood. All that found grace in God’s sight (Noah and his family and all the animals that were delivered) were kept alive because of God’s purpose and His good pleasure and the rest of mankind and the rest of the animals in the world with the breath of life were destroyed. God does not preserve their lives. They had no provision made for them. The ark was constructed for the people and the animals that God brought on board. There was no provision made for anyone else.