Noah’s Ark: Faith Built Without Sight
by Jeremy Painter
October 29, 2025 · Abundant Hope Fellowship, Bremerton, Washington
Kind: Bible study
Scripture: Hebrews 11:7, Genesis 6:5-10, Genesis 6:11-22

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/jeremy-painter--noahs-ark
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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One verse of text for our Bible study. Hebrews 11 and 7 reads, By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. And by this he condemned, rather, the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. All right, one more time. By faith Noah, being warned by God, one concerning the events that he did not yet see, two, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of what? Not himself, just himself, but his household. And by this faith he condemned the world and became an heir of the right that comes by faith. Okay, so he was warned and in response to the warning, he constructed an ark for his household. And then third, God's response to Noah's faith, he refers to him as a kind of testimony that condemns the world. Okay, so the whole idea for the author of Hebrews is, these patriarchs,

these people, the Old Testament, they lived long before, long before the incarnation of God in Christ. They lived long before the outpouring of the Holy Ghost. And yet they still, in spite of not having the Holy Ghost dwelling within them, in spite of not having seen the incarnation of God in Christ, all of the promises were still in the distant future for them. And yet they still, they still responded appropriately to God and God's instruction. All right, the idea is, if they were able to, by faith alone, make it to the very end and respond appropriately to God, how much more should we, who have the indwelling Holy Ghost and have the Gospels in our hands? It's not future for us, it's past. All right, that's the author of Hebrews. Really, that's a summary of his entire book. And he speaks here, he uses Noah as a perfect example of this principle, of the appropriate response to God by faith and faith, faith

in God, in spite of him promising unseen things. All right, so very important. All right, so let's go to Genesis 6. And we've already read several times, if you've been here each of the last couple of weeks, we've read the first four verses, and we've actually combed over every word as carefully as possible. That's the setup or the prologue to the flood. And I just want to say, in case you haven't been here for the last couple of Wednesdays, I'm not going to go into all the details, but I would like to say in summary that there was what led up to the flood was an invasion, a satanic invasion being unleashed upon the earth. And now there's a satanic invasion, so why isn't Satan punished? Why is mankind punished? Because mankind welcomed it, all right, and integrated by choice. And it seems that if you read through scripture, it seems, and if you've read through scripture, and if you've read, if you're

familiar with scripture, you're familiar with history, there are times in history where the wickedness is unleashed upon the earth. There seems to be something almost a supernatural level of wickedness that's extraordinary. And in the time of Jesus, when the Son of God is here upon the earth, there is an unleashing of the powers of darkness. Okay, if you're reading through the prophets, you never hear about a man being possessed by a devil, do you? You could read from the book of Isaiah all the way to Malachi, and you'll never hear about somebody being possessed by a devil. You'll never hear about a devil speaking. All right, the presence of the enemy, you can see the influence of the enemy is kind of there, but there's not this mask off sort of situation. It's more hidden. But with the revelation of God in Christ, the revelation of God in Christ exposes or almost seems to provoke a manifestation of the devil into the world.

It exposes the devil. All right, so there's this kind of mushrooming of satanic manifestations when you open up the gospels. It's so strange if you go straight from the prophets in the Old Testament, and then you flip the page over into Matthew and you start reading, you're wondering, where in the world, where have all these demon possessions been? Where's Legion? Where's all of these exorcisms? You never hear about these things. Well, it's because it seems to have something to do, again, with a supernatural occurrence that coincided not coincidentally with the coming of God in Christ. All right, and then at the end, Jesus promises, and you can see this in the book of Revelation, that there'll be yet another invasion of satanic attacks, a manifestation of the enemy in the world very, very clearly. And this is why the people of God have always watched carefully what's going on in the world, and when there are things that you can't understand that's going

on, when there's wickedness that you can't seem to find a clear motive for. You know something is afoot. I can't explain right now the level of self-destruction that I see going on, that you have seen going on over the last 10 to 15 years. It's very difficult, and I know generation after generation, we tend, the old guys tend to say, young people these days, we tend to talk about how evil and wicked these times are compared to when we were kids. I know that's the case. I know that's a common and natural thing for people to do. But can you really? I'm talking to my kids. My kids are saying these things. It's not old people that are saying this anymore. It's the kids that are saying, what in the world has happened? This is not the world I knew when I was 10 years old. I can't just be coming familiar with this stuff. Again, the level of what appears to be

self-inflicted wounds, the level of self-destruction that we're seeing out there suggests that we may be at the onset of something on the level of the flood and something on the level of the incarnation of God in Christ 2,000 years ago. That's the stage. The stage is set. There's great wickedness upon the earth and God is done. He saw that the wickedness, verse 5, of man was great. Every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him to his heart. I have a hard time picturing our God grieving. It is perhaps a failure or a fault in my theology, but you have to picture the God who once not so long ago had declared, had beamed with such pride upon the earth that he had made and called it very good is now very grieved. And so the Lord said, I will blot out man whom

I've created from the face of the land, man and animals, animals and creeping things in the birds of the heavens. I'm sorry that I have made them when God says I'm sorry. That's a, that's quite a phrase coming from the lips of the Almighty. I'm sorry. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. It's amazing to me. It's amazing to me. God's anger and his emotions. Yes, God has emotions. In Christ Jesus said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. And we saw Jesus weeping in front of the tomb of a tomb is because God weeps and God can be craved and he can be furious and ready to completely wipe everything out. His anger is spilling over, but he's always looking for an excuse to save. He's always looking for some exception. His eyes are on the lookout. He's not looking for an excuse to destroy. He's looking for an excuse to save. Noah found favor in the eyes

of the Lord. But ladies and gentlemen, we're going to, we're going to trace the career of Noah and he has some very strong highlights and we're going to highlight them, but he's also quite, quite flawed. We're going to see that his story actually ends on the lowest of notes. God saw that, but still he found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Verse nine says, these are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. If you recall the book of Philippians, the apostle Paul said that he was, that he has much more to boast in or he has as much to boast in as any of his detractors. He says he was an Israelite born on the circumcised on the eighth day of the tribe of Benjamin and he says, it's concerning the law, blameless. Here this, this kind of phrasing is used to describe Noah, blameless. You can't really find fault or can't find fault in the

way he has conducted himself and in the raising of his family. He's blameless in his generation, but he's set in contrast to his contemporaries. That's what means, what it means by saying in his generation. Okay, you're looking at all of Noah or looking at Noah and his contemporaries and you set Noah alongside his contemporaries and compared to them, he's blameless. And then a great statement is made, he walked with God. Now the last time we saw that was Enoch in the previous chapter five. The scripture says that Enoch walked with God and then he was not. He never saw death in the midst of all of these tombstones we're reading. We're going through the graveyards and looking at all the years they lived and all who their descendants were, who survived them and death, death, death, death, death, death. But then when we get to Enoch, there's no death. He lives the shortest of any man that we have recorded in the genealogies.

The rest of the men live seven, eight, six years. Enoch walked with God and God took him at 365. I took him when he was young and as he often seems to do. But here Noah walked with God. I really appreciate the verb walked with respect to God. We tend to use the phrase today, having a relationship with God. I don't have a real big problem with relationship with God, but I wish there were a little more biblical precedent for that particular description. See, here's the problem with saying, you got to have a relationship with God or saying, I have a relationship with God. The truth is, is that everybody has a relationship with God. It's a matter of whether or not it's a good one or not. Sometimes you can use the phrase, I have, you know, you need to have a relationship with God and you kind of leave it up to the person to dictate the terms of the relationship.

But when you talk about walking with God, that means an everyday persistence. That means a consistency. That means faith that you're walking with God every single day. It's something you have to actively do. I'm walking with God really hits different than I have a relationship with God. Even the devil has a relationship with God. Again, it's not a good one, but he has one. No one walked with God. You ever walked with taking a long walk with anybody? I was walking with my brother, Terry yesterday. He's a decade younger than me and he kept on walking four or five paces ahead. And I kept on calling Terry. What are we doing? Adjust to me. I'm the one calling him back. Hey, I can't keep up. You're walking way too fast. It's 75 degrees. We're in San Diego. We just got done with a funeral. Why don't we just chill out for a little while? I had to remind him a couple of times.

It feels awkward walking behind someone, you know? When you take a walk with somebody, every step there's a, there's a, it has to be a, you have to sink, sink up them. You have to be intentional about it. And I'll tell you what, you know, when, when I got behind Terry, you know what was happening? Whenever it happened that we were not walking together is because it had been a while since we talked. But when we start talking with each other, we're shoulder to shoulder. See what I mean? There's a lot. There's a term Noah walked with God or anyone walked with God. It really depicts something that's very common to human experience is supposed to initiate something in your mind. You know, when you walk with somebody, you're having to be very sensitive to their steps. And you're also, you also tend when you're walking with somebody to talk to them. You could read this, Noah walked with God or anyone walked

with God. And you know, without even having to say it, this is somebody who talked with God. He talked with him. That's good. See how rich this terminology, see how much richer it is than relationship. Relationships vague. It's an abstract term. Walk does not. It's very concrete. Try to bring that one in that word into your, your, your, your talk about God a little more instead of just always speaking about a relationship. Are you walking with God? And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Japheth. Adam had three sons. And I believe Enoch had three sons, either Seth or Enoch. I'm sorry, I shouldn't be speculating at this point, but I know that there were three patriarchs here who had three sons. It seems to be a special indicator of some kind. Don't know what. Now the earth, verse 11 was corrupt in God's sight and the earth was filled with violence. God saw the earth and behold it was corrupt. You

hear the repetition. For all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. So this isn't the angel's fault. There, it's not all laid at their, at, at, at the responsibility is not given to the fallen angels. They have their punishment, but human beings do too. They have their part of the blame. And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth, with the earth. In other words, I'm not just going to snap my fingers and they're going to die, cease to exist. I'm going to actually use creation against them. I'm going to turn creation against them. Has anyone ever read, let me ask this first. Anyone ever heard of Jonathan Edwards, the Puritan preacher from this early 1700s? Anyone ever heard of the sermon that he preached called Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God? All right, a few of

you. Anyone read Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God? It'd take you a half hour, maybe 20 minutes. All right. Man, except for Stephen, I could bring that sermon in here next Sunday and preach it, and it would be all new. It's a, it's a, it's a rager. I mean, it's, it's a barn burner. It, it, it, it as bad as the title sounds, it's even worse than that. And I mean worse in a good way. Jonathan Edwards preached, I believe in 1713 or 14, his first manuscript of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God in, in his Northampton church in Massachusetts. And it's long before the age of television and radio and newspapers. So entertainment sermons were about as much entertainment as you might get if you're an older person, especially. And some of the sermons could go on very, very long, but this was a shorter one. And he had a weak voice, a very soft voice, and he

never lifted his voice. He didn't scream. I've seen reenactments of Jonathan Edwards, Edwards Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. And when I have seen the reenactment, I see great, I see men imagining that he was very demonstrative and very loud and shouting and glaring at everybody and maybe walking on the backs of pews and standing on top of the pulpit and that sort of thing, veins popping, popping out of his neck and out of his forehead. But he didn't do that. He just spoke in a very soft, quiet voice. He had a weak, sick body constitution and he spoke with a fragile voice and he had bad eyesight and he had to read it by candlelight. He read every word of his sermons, kind of like I do. I'm usually reading and, but he would hold the paper this close to his face so that he could see the words and there are a couple of descriptions in that sermon about

the unleashing of creation in judgment of the sin of mankind. And it is startling. He says at one point, do you not know that at every moment God is holding back the oceans from overwhelming you? They are angry with your sin against their maker. He goes on in this fashion. No wonder by about 15 minute mark there are people falling out in the aisles and crying, asking for an altar call. I think he must have taken a suggestion from this verse that I just read. God said, I will destroy them with the earth. And then he says, make yourself an arc of gopher wood. Make an arc of gopher wood. What's an arc? He doesn't know what an arc is. You see, what, what was our text? And what was the, what was the, what was the first thing that Noah was commended for? He was warned by God in response to the warning in response to the warning. Oh, sorry. He was

warned by God of something unseen, that there was going to be a flood. No one had ever seen a flood before. Noah had never seen a flood before. Noah had never seen an arc before. All right. So do you see, you see how, and when God speaking, we're going to find out, God tells Noah this and it's not for 120 years that God unleashes the flood. 120 years. You see the faith of Noah? He didn't have to see it in order to respond. And this is the mark that, that, that, that the author of Hebrews wants to commend in Noah and use as an example for our faith. It, it, it, it's not always going to be seen. Oftentimes, you're not going to see, you're not even going to understand some things, but, but respond in obedience to the word of God and, and, and, and watch what happens. Watch, watch, watch that God vindicates in time. Brother, brother Moe and I were

having a discussion. I think maybe it was after Sunday service, maybe, maybe it was a week before we were, we were talking about the, the text in Hebrews, by faith, we understand that the worlds were, the visible things of the world were made out of the invisible things, the invisible hand of God. So that, that, that this is a description of faith. You, by faith, we understand. Now what the world wants to do, what our human nature wants to do is we want to understand first and then have faith. But the Bible teaches us the opposite because it understands human nature better. By faith, we understand. If Noah had waited to understand before he started building the ark, he's going to be drowned like the rest of them. And the example I think we were talking about was Peter. Jesus says to Peter and all the rest of the disciples after all kinds of people left him, he said, are you going to

leave too? And he said, where else would we go? Only you have the words to eternal life. He had just said, you're going to have no part with me. You're going to die in your sins unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood. And the people said, whoa, goodbye. We don't understand. And it sounds terrible. And Peter and the other 11 disciples hung around. They're just as confused as everybody. But something kept them there. What kept them there? Faith. They didn't understand, but they had faith. And then only after the crucifixion and then the resurrection and the pouring out of the spirit on Pentecost did they understand what Jesus meant by eating of his flesh and drinking of his blood. Then you understand. See, you had to have faith before you could understand. If you don't have the faith, you're not going to stick around long enough to understand. Understanding always comes after believing. And this was the nature of

Noah's faith. He didn't have to understand. God could say, build an ark out of gopher wood. And Noah responded, make rooms in the ark and cover it inside and out with pitch. The word ark there, I should mention, make yourself an ark of gopher wood. I'm not really sure what gopher wood means. It could just mean it's like a translation of an unknown Hebrew word. And it might mean wood that has been made smooth or cut in squares. But whatever the case, the word ark is used only one other time in the Old Testament, and it's used to describe the little basket, the Miriam, sorry, that Amram in Yacobed, the parents of Moses used to save Moses. It was also called the same word ark. And all right, make rooms in the ark, cover it with pitch. This is how you're going to make it. The length of the ark is 300 cubits. A cubit's about 18 inches, a foot and a half.

All right, so you could imagine that a 300 cubit long ark is about 450 feet. Its height is, sorry, its breadth is going to be 20 cubits. So 75 feet or so long, or wide, rather. So 450 by 75. That's about a six to one ratio. Now, if you go out to the shipyard down there and look at the ratio of those boats, they're somewhere between six to one to seven to one, length to width, because that's just a principle by which boats float and manage to stay seaworthy. Now, no boat, it seems, had ever been constructed that we know of in human history, and Noah constructed it exactly according to scientific principles that survived a 40-day onslaught from beneath and above. Its height was 30 cubits, so we've got what, 45 foot or so, from the top to the bottom. So that would include not its height from when you're standing in the floor up to the ceiling, but from the draft

of the boat, the bottom most part of the boat to the very top. All right. Now, make a roof for the ark and finish it to a cubit above, and set the door of the ark in its side. So this idea of build a roof for the ark and then finish it to a cubit above seems to mean that that's how the ark was ventilated and how light came in. So you have this gap between the roof and the walls of the ark. You're going to need a lot of ventilation on there, aren't you? Not only there are eight people, but I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but I heard an estimate one time that this ark is, this is absolutely massive. There's been no construction of anything like this to this point in human history, and he doesn't even know what he's building it for. Okay, but he does, and it could fit 520 boxcars, trained boxcars worth of animals. And

so the estimate is that you take the average size animal from the biggest to the littlest, the average size, if you take the biggest to the littlest, is the size of a sheep, an individual sheep. It could fit 125,000 sheep. So this is massive. Make it with a lower and a second and a third deck, so three decks. Behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die. All right, how are we to understand the universal nature of this flood, at least as it is understood here in Genesis? And there's been a debate for a long, long time, is this a universal worldwide flood, or is this a local flood? And the problems with saying it's a universal flood is that how do you possibly fit two of every kind of animal and creature and bird on the ark? How do

you get two caterpillars, two of all the thousands of different kinds and varieties of spider, and then two of every swallow? And how do you fit all of these animals? So the idea seems to be that he gathered up two of every kind of the local habitat. The problem with all of this is you always need to ask yourself a question. How did Jesus interpret? How did Paul interpret? How did Peter interpret the story of the flood? And if you look at how the apostles and how Jesus interpreted the story of the flood, it was universal worldwide. We're going to find out that the waters covered the earth up to 15 cubits higher than the top of Mount Ararat. Mount Ararat is about a 17,000 foot mountain. We're talking about something that's covering the whole earth. The Himalayas can get up higher than that, don't understand all of this but nobody can live up above 17,000 feet. It was enough to kill everybody.

There are only eight people that survive. Again, I say, yeah, but I don't understand how that's going to work. It doesn't seem to work. It doesn't seem to match scientifically. Don't really understand all of that. What were we talking about just 15 minutes ago? You don't understand, and you're in this life not going to understand everything but have faith. You're going to have to believe in a lot of unseen things and unseeable things. I just want to tell you, if I'm going to go down one of these days, I'm going to go down believing in the Bible. I'm going to throw my lot in with that. Where else can I go? I'm just kind of narrowing it down here. I'm placing my whole bet over there with the only answer and solution. You're going to do like the apostles did. The general sentiment that we should have towards Scripture is we should default to belief. Default. I might end up being wrong about

it in the end and somebody in heaven might show me, well, you took that one a little bit to face value. You could have had a more sophisticated reading of that particular passage of Scripture or that particular story in the Bible. Great. I'm in heaven. That's the time to learn. I don't want to take myself and other people with me, the other direction. I'm going to trust in the Word of God. It's just what I'm going to do. And this is not necessarily a salvation issue. It's not like that, but it's a general attitude that you have towards Scripture. Believe. Believe. Where else can we go? All right. Oh, by the way, I think there's a good reason scientifically to believe in a worldwide flood. I mean, even the scientists talk about an ice age when most of the earth was covered in ice. All right. That's sort of equivalent. But then again, but think about this. I remember going to I remember

going to the Rocky Mountains and we were seven, eight thousand feet up in the air right around somewhere in Colorado. I can't remember exactly where it was. And I went into a little museum and they had done an excavation about 50 years ago in the area up way up high, a couple of miles high. And there's this collection of seashells that they had there curated in that museum that they had just dug up locally here in an excavation. What are seashells doing up in the middle of the Rocky Mountains? You know how many thousands of miles away they are from the Pacific? There are more things in heaven and earth than are conceived of in your philosophies. All right. Everything that's on the earth shall die. All right. That seems to be a statement about everything that breathes air. All right. It doesn't talk about fish. Fish could, of course, survive a flood, presumably, but not birds, not a worldwide flood. They would

have no sustenance. They can't fly for, and from the time the flood began to the time that the water subsided, we had about 374 days. No bird could survive that. All right. Keep losing my place. All right. I will establish a covenant with you. It's the first time in Scripture that covenant is used. And you shall come into the ark, you and your sons and your wife and your son's wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. Of the birds, according to their kinds, and of the animals, according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground, according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive. So then you've got this other impossible, something that's impossible to imagine. How is Noah going out and rounding up two aphids, or

two spiders? Was he going out in the woods with tweezers? You know, you get this ridiculous picture in your mind, but that's, the Scripture says right here that Noah didn't go out and gather them up. They will come to you, he said. They shall come to you to keep them alive. Also take with you every sort of food that's eaten stored up. It shall serve as food for you and for them. By the way, they didn't eat meat before this time, or at least that wasn't the main staple of their diet. Most of it was fruit, vegetables. So they're, so we're talking about seeds, bringing seeds onto the ark. Take, oh sorry, now Noah did this, verse 22, he did all that God commanded him in totally something totally unseen. Now it might, it might hit you with a little more force when you hear by faith Noah being warned of God concerning events yet unseen in reverent fear constructed an ark for

the saving of his household. And by this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. All right, that's the end of chapter seven, or six rather, and next week I'm going to go into chapter seven, and I want to talk about the waters being unleashed and then the waters subsiding. And we might even have enough time to cover the disobedience of Noah that comes at the end of his life. Okay, now I haven't done this in a long time, said I would at the beginning, and we've gotten away from it a little bit, but why don't we take five minutes? And if there are any questions or comments on this passage of scripture or anything that's been taught, it's, this is a good time to speak up and it might generate some really good discussion, anybody. Go ahead, brother.