Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. This is study #9 of Genesis, chapter 7 and we are continuing to look at Genesis 7:5-6:

And Noah did according unto all that JEHOVAH commanded him. And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.

When we read this we might think this is just a general statement, but it actually tells us a good deal about the character of Noah and the character of God’s elect. Noah did according unto all that God commanded him. This was also said at the end of Genesis, chapter 6, in Genesis 6:22:

Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.

It was also said two additional times in our current chapter. It says in Genesis 7:9:

There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.

It also says in Genesis 7:16:

And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and JEHOVAH shut him in.

God is repeating this again, and again, in order that we do not miss it. It is an important statement because the character of Noah and all that have found grace in the eyes of the Lord is the same. What is true of Noah regarding God’s commandments is true for all believers. God commanded Noah to build the ark, load the animals on the ark and gather all the food and this is an historical picture of what the elect people of God would do throughout the history of the world up until the end of God’s salvation program. We will find that that Noah was also obedient after he entered into the ark.

Let us look at some of the similarities between Noah’s obedience to the Word of God and the obedience of all the elect that God predestinated unto salvation. First of all, Noah spent 120 years constructing the ark, as he was building the ark carefully according to the design God gave him. God gave him commands regarding the size, the number of stories, the window, the door, and so forth. He did all according to God’s commandments. Likewise, the people of God have been involved in spiritually building the house of God. Christ is the architect and the builder and He is the one that sent forth the Gospel into the world to seek and to save the lost sheep and to add them as “living stones” to his building and, yet, Christ did this through His people. It says in 1Corinthians 3:9:

For we are labourers together with God: ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building.

The people of God have been witnesses of the Gospel, sharing the Word of God and building up that spiritual house, as it says in Hebrews 3:6: “But Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we…” We have been actively involved in the process, just as Noah was actively involved in the labor with God, following the design given to him of God and he built the ark.

Secondly, Noah was faithful and obedient to the commandment of God when he warned the people of his day in the world regarding the approaching judgment. We know this is true because the Bible tells us that Noah was a “preacher of righteousness.” It says in 2Peter 2:5:

And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;

Notice that God says he was a “preacher of righteousness.” How do you preach righteousness? Well, righteousness is a Person – Christ. Noah preached Christ.

We also read in 1Peter 3:19-20:

By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.

Jesus preached to the people while the “ark was a preparing.” Noah was a “preacher of righteousness,” so how did Jesus preach? He preached through Noah. Noah preached Christ. Noah was commanded by God to prepare the ark and Noah’s work on the ark was a living proclamation to all that saw it for 120 years and Noah would also have told everyone he came in contact with during that time. This was all part of the broadcasting or proclamation of the Word of God or of Christ and, thereby, Christ Jesus preached to the “spirits in prison,” the unsaved of that time. Noah preached and warned, which resulted in the saving of his house, as it says in Hebrews 11:7:

By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.

By the preparation of the ark, it served to save his house and “by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.” The building of the ark served a dual purpose. It was a twoedged sword. It saved his house and it condemned the world. This is exactly what the Word of God accomplishes as it saves Christ’s house and condemns the wicked.

It says in Ezekiel, chapter 33 God opens up things in the Bible so His people are able to see approaching judgment, just as Noah was warned in advance regarding things “not seen as yet.” God warned His people of Judgment Day and the actual date of May 21, 2011. It says in Ezekiel 33:2-6:

Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman: If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people; Then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took not warning; his blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul. But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman's hand.

This is exactly the reason why God’s people sounded the trumpet (declared what the Bible proclaimed) prior to May 21, 2011 and broadcast the message worldwide, like never before in earth’s history. It was because we saw the sword coming and we had the privilege of declaring that message. As we did so, what happened? God used the proclamation of Judgment Day to save the great multitude from the nations of the world and they were safely brought into the kingdom of God and safely hid in Christ. It was as if they were brought into the ark. Simultaneously, the rest of the inhabitants of the earth were condemned by the Word of God. They were warned that they would have until that date and then the door would shut, exactly as Noah warned the people in his day. The ark was built to the saving of his house and then the door was shut and the condemnation of the wicked was complete, in the sense that their fate was sealed because they could no longer enter into the ark.

God’s people were obedient, just as Noah was obedient, to all that God commanded them. God commanded Noah to build the ark and the building of it was a warning. Noah also preached to the “spirits in prison” at the same time and he performed the role of the watchman that sees the sword coming because God had told him of things “not seen as yet.” Without question, Noah had to warn or he would not have been a faithful watchman. To be a watchman is the responsibility of a child of God at any point in history. If God has revealed a “secret” of His Word to you, then you have an obligation to share that information with others. Lot was warned and he went to warn his family, even though he was viewed as “one that mocks” and, yet, he warned them before they were led out of the city.

Noah not only built the ark to the saving of his house that also pronounced the condemnation upon the unsaved of the world. Likewise, God’s people were instrumental in the saving of all those whose names were written in the Lamb’s Book of Life and they were also instrumental in the condemnation of all those whose names were not written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

Another way in which Noah was faithful is that he worked tirelessly and fervently in carrying out the task that the Lord assigned to him in building the ark. He was to build the ark and load the ark with animals and bring his family on board. He also gathered the food and the provisions to feed himself, his family and all the animals during the prolonged period of the flood. He worked, and worked and worked and worked, up to a point. Maybe he was weary at times, but he kept coming back to it until it was finished. This is speculation, but maybe after fifty years of building the ark, he was getting tired. Then after 100 years, the job is just seeming endless, but year after year it was slowly taking shape. He kept doing the same thing for 120 years, hammering the nails and bringing it together. He was not idle. He was “occupying” by building the ark God had commanded him to build. He kept working, and working and he did that for 120 years.

We mentioned this before, but the 120 years identifies with 12,000 years and the language of the Bible indicates that the world should be 12,000 years in duration, but in actuality it turns out to be 13,000 years. We saw this with the 12 tribes of Israel, but was actually 13 and 12 disciples, but actually 13. Christ came after 11,000 years and went to the cross and then Satan was bound for a thousand years. The world should be 12,000 years because he was loosed after that thousand and 11,000 plus 1,000 years is 12,000, but it is a figurative “thousand years” that almost stretched for two thousand years, so at his loosing in 1988 it was not the 12,000th year of earth’s history, but the 13,000th year.

So the picture of Noah laboring for 120 years is exactly as though God’s people are laboring to build the spiritual house of God throughout the history of the world right up until the end of the world, which began after 13,000 years and then there was the 23-year Great Tribulation in which God completed sending His Gospel into the world during the last part of the Great Tribulation with the Latter Rain; the last person to become saved during the Latter Rain was saved right before God shut the door on May 21, 2011. The last person to enter the ark did enter prior to God shutting the door of the ark. Once God shut Noah, his family and the animals in the ark, no other people or animals were able to enter in and everyone left outside was destroyed. Once God shut the door of heaven on the equivalent date to the flood 7,000 years later on May 21, 2011, no one else could enter into the kingdom of God. All that were to enter in had entered in and they were all safely within the kingdom of God.

This is the similarity. God’s people worked and worked and they could not imagine living on the earth without “working” on the project that God had given them to do throughout the history of the earth, just as Noah had to reprogram himself, as it were, after working for 120 years to build the ark. No matter what else he had to do (like farming or family matters), it was his priority. It was always in the back of his mind no matter what he was doing and his thought would have been, “I have to get back to work on the ark.” He was probably thinking of the next stage of the construction or how to resolve some problem or difficulty in the construction process. There were more than likely certain times when the building was going smoothly, but there may have been other times that it was a struggle with every advancement and progress was difficult. And this would be an accurate picture of the building of God’s spiritual house throughout time. In the Old Testament, there was slow progress with few people being saved. Then came the New Testament church age with more people being saved and, yet, there were difficulties with churches and denominations falling away. Then there came the beginning of the Great Tribulation and the grievous “famine” in which virtually no one was being saved. It was as if the “work” on the house of God had stopped, but then came the Latter Rain and the worldwide proclamation of the Gospel and the building of the great multitude. Everything was “sped up” and all kinds of people were coming in and the work on the building of God just took off. More people were saved in the second part of that “little season” of the Great Tribulation than in all the previous history of the world, so God’s people were more active and more consistently involved in the building the closer it got to completion.

More than likely that was the case with Noah, especially when God came to him and said, “And yet seven days,” Noah would have thought, “I need to take care of everything and everything needs to get finished.” They probably worked like bees and they worked diligently to finish in the time they had left. And then came the day, the “seventeenth day of the second month” in Noah’s 600th year. God shut him in and the rain began.

Suddenly, after all that activity that had happened for so long, there was Noah and his family inside the ark with the animals and there is nothing further to build. All work on the ark ceased, as far as building it. It was finished. That exactly parallels what happened after May 21, 2011and every day after that. God’s people had known nothing but evangelization: “Let me hand out tracts. What can I do to share with friends?” When we went into a supermarket while doing our normal shopping, we would hand out tracts: “Here, may I give this tract to you?” And we would pray and pray and pray as we shared the Gospel that people might become saved. We were constantly active and constantly going about the Lord’s business, which was sharing His Word and evangelizing the world in order that people might become saved. The closer the date got, the more active we were. Then it all ceased. It all came to an end and, suddenly, we were inactive. Suddenly, we were no longer occupying in that sense and we did not know what to do with ourselves, for the most part. It was so ingrained in us to go forth with the Gospel in the hope of salvation for others, but now it was over.

Going back to this historical account that typifies what has happened in our day, it was not until Noah was in the ark that he realized that he now had a different work that would take all his time and that was that he had to feed the animals: “Feed my sheep.” He had to go, day after day, feeding all the animals onboard. They had different diets and he had to give food to each one and nourish and take care of them. When he was done, he probably had to go back and start in again. Likewise, when the great catch of fish came in, the Lord Jesus Christ emphasized the task of the elect in our day when He told Peter, “Feed my sheep.”