How the New Testament Uses Noah and the Flood to Preach the Gospel

If everybody could grab their favorite. See, it is my privilege to bring the word of God. to us this morning, Pastor Milton and Donna are in Albania, and they're doing well. if you looked at his Facebook, he posted a picture of Brad Ley, our missionary there, and he said the gospel runs strong in him.

The gospel, the gospel runs strong in this one. And so keep praying for Pastor Milton and Donna as they're ministering in Albania. I also wanna just make a special notice, Ron and Emily, could you guys stand up? We're just, glad to have Ron and Emily Needham here.

And the reason we're clapping is these are founders of our church. Was it 1982, 198981, and Ron was the chairman for over 20 years. He was responsible for bringing Pastor Milton to this church. Also, I met my wife in their living room.

So, back in the college career days, and, Ron is one of the smartest men I've ever met in my whole life. So go ask him any question. He's helped me fix things like my dryer. And The phrase that we joke around about is for Ron, everything's easy.

It's easy. Yeah, you can do it. So we're really glad to have Ron and Emily here. also, I've been told that Megan and Justin, our newlyweds are back.

Where are these guys at? OK, so welcome. Congratulations, you guys. Seasoned veterans now.

I've been married for what, a week? A week and a day. All right. It's awesome.

Praise the Lord. last week we took a team down to Tijuana, to the Tijuana Boys Home New Generations Ministry. Just wanna just mention a couple things real quick, very thankful for the roofing team, that did stuff that I would not do, and, And just did a great job up there putting on a new roof that was very important that they had had rain coming in on their older boys and so they spent time roofing. Dave Rocky, I want to thank Dave Rocky for bringing his guys out to do a ton of expert, expert labor.

They also supported, I think it's called the tresses or no, the, I forget what that's called. Trust, OK. There was some sagging and so they, they did put up some supports there. We also had a team that was playing games and did lunch.

They just did a great job, had some testimonies. I love that shot. And, and so just very thankful for the whole team and so we're hoping to go down, we're actually hoping to go down 3 or 4 times a year if I can stop trying to just do it by myself and actually get a team around me to help me plan these things. but just had a great, great time and appreciate your guys' gifts because that helped us do that roof and be a blessing, to these boys.

It's a wonderful Christian ministry. So we'll be talking more about new generation. as we, move forward. It's, it's bittersweet for me though because I was actually planning on bringing my Nissan, my 2002 Nissan, down to Tijuana with me to have my catalytic converter changed out.

But several months ago, I, my light had come on in my Nissan saying that, hey, something's wrong. Take it to the mechanics, Cadillac converter. He says, yeah, no problem. You don't have to get this fixed right away, just make sure you get it fixed before the next, smog check.

So I was like, great. I contact my friends down in Tijuana. Ryan's gonna hook me up. We're gonna put that, catalytic converter on for real cheap, have some of his friends do it down there.

The problem was, when I was driving on the toll road 241 a couple of months ago, I started going up the hill and my car started overheating, went off to the side. Long story short, tow truck to my mechanic. I burned up two of the cylinders. And I guess the catalytic converter, I didn't know this, neither did my mechanic who I got the expert advice from.

the catalytic converter had clogged up and then my engine had started running to, I'm not sure if it's wet or lean, I forget which one somebody told me. And, anyway, I burned up my engine. So now it's sitting in my garage just with laundry and other things on top of it. My son's trying to save up money to put a new engine in it and perhaps continue where I left off.

Well hopefully better than I left off. All that to say, sometimes small things, cause big problems. I didn't think that my catalytic converter was gonna be a big deal. there's other places don't even require a catalytic converter, but I went to the expert, even the expert didn't know that it could cause a big problem and now I have a car sitting in my garage that is worth nothing.

we have a membership class here and when we do our membership class, in fact, it's coming up May 15th, is that right? OK, May 15th our membership class is coming up. And when I get up to do the doctrine part of our membership class, a lot of times we talk about major and minor doctrines. We'll, we'll talk about capital D doctrines and we'll talk about little D doctrines, which is a little bit deceiving because the little D doctrines, while there are things that we don't necessarily divide over, they can have impact on big D doctrines.

especially sometimes when we try to make little D's big D's. Let's, let's take like something like a, a circumcision, not a huge doctrine. We're, we're not up here preaching about circumcision every week. But if someone like the Galatians, the Galatian heretics come along and say now you need to do cir be circumcised to be saved, now it's a big doctrine, right?

so what, what are some of those doctrines that you would say are non-negotiables for the Christian faith? What are some of the teachings that are so core to Christianity that if we were to lose them, we would say, man, we're, we're losing some of the cores of our faith. Would you say the gospel is a big D doctrine? Yeah.

How about the Trinity? Yeah, it's a big doctrine. What about Christ's life, burial, death and resurrection? Yeah, those are big D's.

What about justification by faith? I would say so. What about Christ's return in judgment? Yeah, it's a big D doctrine.

Even baptism, if we understand it as, Christ is part of the great commission, we're supposed to go out and to to go all the world baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. If somebody says, we don't need to baptize at all, that could turn into a big D. Or if somebody says you have to get baptized in order to get saved as one of the works of salvation that could turn into a big D, right? so these would be some of the items that we would say are big D doctrines.

But I want to propose to you this morning that these doctrines that we've just mentioned are not isolated to the New Testament. But these capital D doctrines that we've just listed. do not exist in a vacuum, but they actually flow out of an Old Testament historical background. And the New Testament ju juxtaposes doctrines just like these with historical matters in the Old Testament.

And even historical matters that seem pretty small in the Old Testament get picked up by the New Testament and are linked and tied to pretty big doctrines. And so, I want to try to address this morning a challenge that comes from Robert R. Cargill and other people like him. this is a professor now at the University of Iowa.

He used to be at UCLA. the quote that I'm gonna give you, he was at UCLA at the time. And Doctor Cargill and others like him, even evangelicals, people in the evangelical church, believe that people like us here at Cornerstone are making mountains out of molehills when we talk about biblical literalism and inerrancy. And Doctor Cargill is not alone.

I want to give you a quote from one of the articles that he wrote about challenging biblical inerrancy and biblical literalism. He says this, it is time for Christians to admit that some of the stories in Israel's primordial history are not historical. It is OK to concede that these stories were crafted in a pre-scientific period and were designed to offer ethical answers to questions of why And not questions of how Christians and Jews must concede that the Bible can still be inspired without being historically or scientifically inerrant.

He goes on to say, let me go back one.

It is time for Christians to concede that inspiration does not equal inerrancy. And that biblical does not equal historical or even factual. Some claims like the flood and the sixth day creation are neither historical nor factual. They were written to communicate in a pre-scientific literary form that God is responsible for the earth.

It is time for Christians to concede there was no flood. And when Cargill wrote this article, I believe that he was a professing Christian. He definitely grew up in the church. And so I want to ask the question, is it time for Christians to concede that there was no flood?

And make no mistake, when Cargill is saying this, he's not saying there was no local flood in Mesopotamia. He says there was no global flood, like the Bible reports in 6 to 9. Does the New Testament avoid the controversial topic of a historical Noah and the worldwide flood in order to get the more essential matters of the gospel? Well, if you've been around for Pastor Milton's preaching through the Book of Genesis, Pastor Milton did an excellent job preaching through chapters 678, and 9.

And if you weren't around to hear those messages, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to them. I wanna do a little bit of review of some of what Pastor Milton said in his messages, but also some of what we did in our Sunday school. And so I want to review what flowed out of our sermon series as support or review for reasons why or reasons for a global flood. And from Pastor Milton preaching, first of all, we could see that the Old Testament, there's Old Testament textual reasons.

This is still part of the introduction, so don't get nervous if you're looking down and you don't see that there's something to fill in on your outline. This is still part of the intro. The Old Testament textual reasons for a global flood. Pastor Milton, described to us that the language used in Genesis 7:17-24 particularly describes the flood as global.

There's phrases like all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered. All flesh died that moved on the earth. The waters prevailed on the earth. When you listen to Pastor Milton preaching from 678, and 9, it just became absolutely obvious at least from the text.

Now we can deny it maybe scientifically. We're gonna, we're gonna leave that question for a moment, but at least from a reading of the text, it's undeniable that Moses believed that the globe, that the flood was global. The language is just undeniable. You also see the depth and the duration of the flood that the Bible describes the flood being 15 cubits over the, over the mountains and that it was 371 days in total.

There's no local flood that's gonna stick around for 371 days and there's no way that a local flood is able to cover all of the mountains or you have something ridiculous like this. when my, when my little boy Sam, I tell him to go take a bath and they turn the water on and sometimes I forget about what's going on and he loves it because the water fills up more and more and more and he puts his goggles on and he can go swimming in the tub. But what happens if I, if I wait too long, what happens to the water when it gets to the brim?

It flows over.

It doesn't keep going up. And so if all of the mountains under the all high heaven were covered by at least 15 cubits, 22 ft or so, then the whole earth must have been covered because if it was just a local flood, then the water would have just gone over the ridges of the valley and dipped into the next valley and, and you'd have something just strange like this. And so there's, there's textual reasons. Finally, there's the rainbow covenant that Pastor Milton talked about.

That God made a covenant never to flood the whole world again. If it was just a local flood, there have been plenty of local floods as big as the Mesopotamian supposed Mesopotamian flood. And Pastor Milton in his sermon series documented those. And so these are 3 Old Testament textual reasons to support a global flood, a seemingly small doctrine on the pages of the Old Testament.

But there's also geological reasons that we've covered in Sunday school. first of all, there's Nicholas Steno, known as the father of stratigraphy, a branch of geology which studies rock layers and layering. He developed his ideas with a firm belief in the Bible and the authority of the word of God, and here's what he postulated. With this understanding, he reasoned that the worldwide flood of Noah's day would have had a tremendous impact on the land surface.

In fact, if the flood described in Genesis 6 actually occurred, the science of stratigraphy would demand the formation of stratified rock layers all over the earth filled with fossilized remains of the plants and animals that lived in the antediluvian world. And when he went out to do the research, what did he find? Exactly that. That's what leads Ken Ham to say this.

This is a famous statement from Ken Ham. If Noah's flood were true, you'd expect to find millions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth. What do we actually see in the fossil record? Millions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth.

Now, from an evolutionary standpoint, there's explanations for that. They just say, well, all those mountains used to millions of years ago be down below the valleys. But from a biblical worldview, when we look at the text, we start with the authority of the Bible, it's undeniable that there, that the Bible at least reports a global flood. We could say that, well, maybe Moses was wrong.

But there does seem to be also geological support for what we seem to see in the pages of scripture. But then there's also anthropological reasons and that is flood stories all over the world, over 200 of them. In fact, a, a researcher who, who did research on the history of the Indian tribes of the United States, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, 1847 traveled all over the United States studying the history of Native American peoples. Here's one of the first things that he noted about his research of the Native American peoples.

There's one particular in which the tribes identify themselves with general traditions of mankind. It is in relation to a general deluge by which races of men were destroyed. The event itself is variously related by the Algonquin, the Iroquois, the Cherokee, the Muskogee, and the Chickasaw, but all coincide in the statement that there was a general cataclysm and that very few persons were saved. This is just the one of the first things that he noticed that was common and this is, this is reported all over the world and so there's anthropological reasons.

There's Old Testament texts, geological, anthropological, but this morning, my focus is going to be on the New Testament gospel reasons for why we believe that Noah and everything that's reported of him is true in the Old Testament and why that impact should impact us significantly today. There are New Testament gospel reasons for believing in a global worldwide flood. And so here's the basic title of this message, which if you look in your outline, you already know. How the New Testament uses Noah the flood to preach the gospel.

I'm going to propose this morning. basically this, that the New Testament uses Noah and the flood to preach the gospel and making at least 6 links between Christ and Noah. And so there's a warning. I'm going to attempt to demonstrate that, that there's a link between Christ and the ark, Christ and Noah, and that this link attaches Noah and the ark to significant doctrines on the pages of the New Testament.

So much so that if we deny the flood or if we deny the history city of Noah and the ark, we are putting major doctrines in jeopardy. That's my thesis. Whether it's proved or not is up to you. But what I'm proposing this morning is that there are things that we would say, yeah, these are little D doctrines but they can impact big D doctrines in a very significant way and if we ignore them, we could end up with a Nissan in the garage with laundry on it.

And so let's talk about 6 links between Christ. And Noah. The first link is this. The New Testament links Noah to the Trinity's inauguration.

Of Christ's earthly ministry. Open up to Luke chapter 3. Open up to Luke chapter 3. I'm reading from a New King James.

Just so, The New Testament links Noah to the Trinity's inauguration of Christ's earthly ministry. Let's start in verse one actually, where Luke says, now in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, being governor of Judea, Herod being Tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip Tetrarch of Eura in the region of, I practiced this earlier, Traconicus and Lisenius, Tetrarch of Abilene, while Annas and Caiaphas were high priests, the word of God came to John. The son of Zacharias in the wilderness.

Now, let's do a little bit of hermeneutics here.

Do you think that this is purporting to be narrative, historical narrative, or mythical? Historical narrative. Luke has given us all kinds of historical details because he wants us to know that what he's about to report is seeped in history. And so then he begins to tell us about John the Baptist and what John the Baptist was doing to prepare for Christ's coming and, and then Jesus shows up on the scene.

So let's turn over to verse 21. When all the peoples were baptized by John in the context, it came to pass that Jesus also was baptized and while he prayed, the heavens were opened. And the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven which said, You are my beloved Son in whom in you I am well pleased. Now we have something spiritual that happens that cannot be verified by the scientific method, but it's still couched in this historical context is the Luke is reporting to us that a miracle occurred, that Jesus Christ was baptized when he came out of the water, God the Father spoke from heaven.

The Holy Spirit was visible in the form like a dove while Jesus Christ was right there. So what we have is the building blocks of the Trinity right in this text. We don't have the full doctrine of the Trinity, but we do have the distinction in the persons. The Father's distinct from the Son and the Son's distinct from the Spirit, right in this setting of Jesus Christ being baptized because he must fulfill all Righteousness, right?

Jesus Christ must come and fulfill our righteousness. One of the first things he does is he gets baptized, not for his own sins, but just to fulfill righteousness to do what a good Jew should do in this setting. Now look at verse 23. And in my Bible, it starts with a now because the Greek has a day, a conjunction that tells us there's a connection between what was just said and what's going to happen be said next.

A conjunction, a day or a now or, or an end. Now, Jesus began his ministry at about 30 years of age, being as was supposed the son of Joseph. So right after this baptism scene where the Trinity's involved, there's a conjunction that says, here's the connection. I want, we, we need to demonstrate to you Jesus' pedigree.

And so now he begins to give the pedigree of Jesus Christ. Starts with Joseph and he says, as supposed was because we know that Joseph wasn't his physical father, but then it continues down. And if you look down at verse 31, we see David is mentioned. If you look at verse 34, we see Abraham, and then down in verse 36, we see Noah.

And then down at the end of the context, we see Adam. So let me ask you, Luke, who starts it with the historical setting of what's going on at the time, Jesus Christ is baptized and we have the whole Trinity showing up. We have the conjunction day that links us to this genealogy. Would it make any sense to drop into this context and say, well, Adam and Noah and maybe David and Abraham are all just mythical characters are just there to kinda try to teach us something moral or ethical.

No, that wouldn't make any sense. What would this accomplish if Noah or Adam were just this mythical characters? And by the way, when you hear the name Noah and when any of the original readers see Noah, that comes with a lot of baggage. It's not just Noah.

Any Jew, and any and God-fearing Greek that has familiar with the Old Testament, when they hear Noah, what do you think of? When you hear Noah, what do you think of immediately? You think of the flood. You think of the ark.

You think of judgment. And so Noah here, the name Noah is wrapped up in all of the context that comes right from chapter Genesis 6 to 9. And so let me just suggest something that to drop into this context and say that, that perhaps Luke's talking about a make-believe Noah and I a make-believe flood and a make-believe arc. Why then should we believe in the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit, Trinitarian baptism baptism of Jesus Christ, which is a spiritual matter.

A miraculous matter that cannot be demonstrated with the scientific method. Let, let's talk about a hermeneutical principle that we've been talking about in our Sunday school class. You can't drop into a narrative text and say this is historical and this is not without really good reasons. You can't just suddenly, you can't drop right in the middle of something that's very narrative like the beginning of Luke.

And all, everybody admits, at least all evangelicals admit, the front, the front part of Luke is narrative. We would put most of us in this room would probably say that the baptism is narrative. Now to drop into the genealogy and say Noah is mythical does not make hermeneutical sense. And it puts the inaugural ministry of Jesus and his Trinitarian baptism at risk, I would suggest.

Moreover, Christ's baptism is connected to the atonement. Since the atonement is not just about Christ's death, but it's about what he did in his life to secure our righteousness and the imputation of righteousness. Christ fulfilled our righteousness and then he suffered and then he died and he grants us His righteousness, part of which is his baptism right here as we see in Luke 3. So, the Bible uses Noah to preach the gospel.

Let's look at the 2nd link. The New Testament links Noah and the flood to Christ's suffering, death, and resurrection. Open up to 1 Peter chapter 3. First Peter chapter 3.

Now, I wanna just say something by way of admission that this sermon, the way I've crafted this message is not necessarily to convince the unbeliever. You may be sitting here and you're just like, I don't believe the Bible. Well, that's fine. You, you may have really good reasons for just doubting everything in the Bible and doubting everything in the flood and, and we can talk about that.

I'll, I'll mention a few things. This message is largely for Christians who would, we would all say we believe the Bible. And so part of what I'm trying to demonstrate, if we say that we do believe the Bible and we believe in the authority of Scripture, then my thesis is, is that there are very important reasons why we need to affirm Noah and the flood. Does that make sense?

So I'm talking to Christians here who believe in the Bible. So, first Peter chapter 3, let's look at verse 14 and following. Starting at 14 And Peter says, one of the apostles, but even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you are blessed, verse 15, but sanctify the Lord in your hearts and always be ready to give a defense. Everyone who asks for a reason for the hope that lies within you with meekness and fear.

It's our great apologetics passage. I look at verse 17, for it's better, if, to suffer for the will of God, and so on. And so we have suffering in the context. In order to encourage these suffering Christians, Paul then gets into the gospel.

He goes to Christ, verse 18, for Christ also suffered once for sins. The just for the unjust that he might bring us to God being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit. So Christ suffered, you're suffering, but Christ suffered before you. And by the way, he suffered for your sins, and he was put to death, but made alive, what does that mean?

Resurrected by what? The Spirit. Now notice verse 15. By whom?

Who's the whom the antecedent is the Spirit. I love that. That's a really nice, I love that too. And so Hum goes back to spirit.

And so Christ by through the Spirit went and preached to the spirits in prison, i.e. who are now in prison who formerly were disobedient. let me read the whole verse here and then we'll explain it, who were formerly disobedient when once the divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared in which a few, that is 8 souls were saved through water. It's a very interesting connection.

Jesus Christ, trying to encourage suffering Christians. Jesus Christ suffered, he died. He was raised by the Holy Spirit. And by the way, Christ was preaching in the days of Noah through the Spirit, i.e.

through Noah, who was spirit-filled to these people when he was building the ark who since died in the flood and are now in prison. That's the interpretation, go look it up in Grudem. We don't have time to fully exposes it, but look up Wayne Gruden on the Nicene Creed and you'll see his exposition of that particular interpretation. But I just want to draw your attention to verse 20 that right in this context of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, what do you see a reference to?

Noah, while the ark was prepared, so Peter's saying that he prepared this ark just like we have in Genesis. In which, how many souls were saved? 8. Through water.

Out of all of the human race, Peter tells us that 8 souls were saved. So let me ask you, what sense does it make for Peter to try to comfort Christians through the suffering and the death-bar and resurrection of Christ? So this is, is that gospel stuff? Christ suffering, death, bearing and resurrection?

That's gospel stuff. What, how does that help us if Peter then turns to the mythological story of Noah building an ark with animals? No, Peter clearly believed that Noah was a real person. Who built an ark and that only 8 souls were saved.

Not just 8 people in the Mesopotamian Valley, that's, we've talked about that in the Sunday school class. It's silly to think that after 1600 years of human history that the whole human race had confined themselves to the Mesopotamian Valley, that they hadn't spread out from there. Never mind the fact that if there was going to be a flood only in this little valley, why didn't God just say, hey, take a hike a few weeks up north and escape the floods instead of building an ark for 100 years or so to escape the flood.

no, this is tied.

Noah, so we're preaching the gospel, comforting Christians through historical Old Testament narrative. Let's look at a third link. The New Testament links Noah the flood to the doctrine of righteousness by faith. Is righteousness by faith an important doctrine?

I would say yes. Let's take a, let's take a look. At Hebrews Now why am I preaching this sermon to a bunch of Christians, a bunch of evangelicals? Because brothers and sisters, we're living in a day where evangelical Christians are denying the flood.

They're saying that it's allegorical, mythical, and it's just meant to teach us moral stories. And if it happened at all, it was just a local flood in the Mesopotamian region. And I want to convince you today, I want to implore you today that If we buy into that line of reasoning that is being postulated by many evangelical teachers or scholars that we're putting other doctrines at risk. Leviticus, where did that come from?

Hebrews. Oh, it's because Hebrews has some ties Leviticus, there you go. OK. so Hebrews 11, let's start in verse one.

Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. I love that verse. The evidence of things not seen. The Bible is very much about giving evidence of things not seen.

For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. So how do we know that the worlds were framed by the Word of God? By the scientific method, No, by measuring, testing, and repeating.

No, by faith. That's how we know that the worlds were framed by the by the Word of God and that we have seen things that were formed from unseen ex nihilo. Now look down at verse 6, but without faith, it's impossible to please him, for he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he's the rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. If you want to come to God, you got to believe.

We understand that there, when we look out at reality through our biblical glasses, we see that reality comports with our faith, but that doesn't change the fact that you've got to believe that God is who he claims to be. Now look at verse 7. By faith, Noah being divinely warned of things not yet seen. He hadn't seen the flood yet.

Moved with godly fear, he's a worshiper of God, prepared an ark for the saving of his household by which he condemned the Mesopotamian world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. Did you just condemn, condemn the Mesopotamian area? No, he condemned the world. That would be the world of humanity and became the heir of what?

Righteousness, which is according to what? Faith. That sounds a lot like Paul, justification by Faith So the author of Hebrews teaches that Noah demonstrates his righteousness by faith through building a mythological ark. Is that what he teaches?

Does that make sense? No, he demonstrates his righteousness by faith through the work of building an ark. And just as the New Testament speaks of us being, we can be an aroma of life or an aroma of death. Noah was an aroma of life to 7 other people, and he was an aroma of death to untold thousands, perhaps millions.

He passes the baton of justification by faith. Every piece of wood, every plank was a mark of condemnation on the world in which he lived. Is justification of faith important? He condemned people around the world.

Let's look at a 4th link. The New Testament links Noah the flood to the significance. Of Christian baptism. Turn back to First Peter.

This is 1 Peter chapter 3. first Peter 3, actually, we're gonna, yeah, we'll look at the 20 to 22 actually. You guys remember the context who formerly were disobedient when once the divine love suffering was waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared, in which a few that is 8 souls were saved through water. Now notice the language here very carefully.

There is also an anti-type which now saves us. Baptism. What do you mean, Peter? Well, not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but an answer of good conscience towards God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand, right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers having been made subject to him.

Boy, there's a lot there. But we could preach a couple of sermons just on this passage. But first, let's, let's start with the idea of an anti-type. Anti-types have what?

Types, OK? Anti-types are things that correlate to an Old Testament type. Something happens in the Old Testament and there's an anti-type in the New Testament. As we look at biblical history, what we understand is, is that God is sovereign over all of history and as he was moving history along, he caused history to form in such a way to where there were certain historical happenings that really happened in history.

But they were also meant to point to something in the future that would be the anti-type. Let me give you some examples like the Aaronic priesthood. Was the Aaronic priesthood historical according to the Bible? Yes.

But once Christ came, who's the anti-type? Did they need any more Aaronic priesthood? No. The sacrificial system, was there really sacrifices going on in the Old Testament or is it mythological?

No, it's really historical. Once you have the sacrifice of Christ, do we need any more type of of the sacrifices? No, you don't. and that happens all over the New Testament.

What Peter is telling us is that the ark is a type of this anti-type of baptism and don't get confused when he says which now saves us. We're talking about people getting into the waters of, of baptism and calling upon the Lord out of a pure conscience, not just getting wet. That's what he clarifies there later. It's, it's the place, it's the environment in which people call upon the name of the Lord.

But clearly the ark is meant to be the type of an anti-type of baptism and moreover, this baptism and the ark that is the type points to the resurrection of Christ and it also points to the, the ascension what we call the session of Christ. So baptism reminds us, it points us to the resurrection and to the session of Christ, that is Christ ruling in heaven. And, and this type of baptism harkens back to, the anti-type of baptism points, harkens back to the type of, of the ark.

Now, let me suggest something to you.

Anti-types never refer back to mythological historical types in the Bible. If there's one, if this is it, this is the only one in the Bible. You understand what we're saying here? If the flood never occurred, as this text claims, if it's just an ethical story to teach us good ethics, then it's the only place in all of scripture where the historical type does not answer to the anti-type in a historical way.

Brothers and sisters, I, I have trouble believing that. Unless convinced otherwise, unless somebody can demonstrate to me that this is the one place and there's something in the text that would demonstrate that this is the one type that's all historical, then I'm gonna continue to believe that the flood is a historical event, according to the authority of the word of God. And moreover, it's connected, it's all wrapped up here in the resurrection and the ascension of Christ and so the links just get really, really messy if you're trying to break them apart.

Let's talk about a 5th link.

The New Testament links Noah and the flood to the cological Day of Judgment. This is a big one. Turn to 2 Peter, not that the other ones weren't big, but But 2 Peter Chapter 4 The New Testament links knowing the flood to the escological Day of Judgment. This is just one of my favorite passages in the Bible.

You may say that's weird. It is because of what it tells us about how God protects his kids. Verse 4 For if God did not spare the ancient or the angels who sinned, but cast them down into hell and delivered them in the chains of darkness to be reserved for judgment. OK, so we've got it, we're starting an if statement.

Let me just set you guys up grammatically. We're going to be talking about an if then statement, right? You guys have done some grammar, even some syntax, but you have the if. If these things are true, then the then part of the statement is also true.

If the if is not true, then the then is not true, right? OK, so we set up an if. If God did not spare the angels. Verse 5 and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah.

One of 8 people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing the flood on the what? The world of the ungodly, not just the world of the valley, the world of the Mesopotamian, the world of the ungodly. Ungodly is the modifier of the world here. That's everybody.

And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly and delivered righteous Lot, who oppressed, was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked for the righteous man dwelling among them, tormenting his righteous soul, from day to day by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds. And the only thing about the context, Lot was the righteous one. Then the Lord knows. Here's the then statement.

It's implied in the grammar. The Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and reserve the unjust on punishment for the day of judgment. So if all these things are true, look at how God was able to carry out his business in the Old Testament. If all these things are true, you, people who are getting persecuted and just, just beat up, God knows how to deliver you as well.

So, let's summarize what's going on here. God did not spare the ancient cosmos of the ungodly. God saved Noah and 7 others, a preacher of righteousness. He punished demons.

He rescued Noah. He punished the ancient world. He punished Sodom and Gomorrah. Conclusion, God knows by experience how to rescue the righteous from their trials and punish the wicked.

You have a God who can handle all that the world dishes out against you just fine. He's proved it in the past. So, let's consider another scenario. What if Peter were to say, God has historically shown you that he is just and has poured out justice on the ungodly.

Just like Noah in the myth of the flood. Does that have any bite or ring to it? No, it to me it doesn't. And to us that are, sitting here in the United States today.

we look at what's going on around the world and we see other Christians just getting hammered. If you're paying attention to the news. We're still here living in relative peace. But just imagine if you were one of the Christians two years ago when Boko Haram Islamists pretended to be preachers and came into a Nigerian village and said, hey everybody, come on, we're gonna preach the gospel.

Come gather around into this church. And, and group after group came into these various churches around the village and then they machine gunned them and killed up to 200 people. Imagine if one of your relatives was one of the ones that was machine gunned by these Islamic terrorists and how would you feel? What would you be saying?

Would you be crying out to God like those saints in Revelation saying to the Lord, how long, how long, oh Lord, until your judgment comes? What were the people that Peter was writing to as they were getting persecuted? What types of things, what type of anguish, what types of tears and sorrow were they crying to bring about this type of response? Hey, don't worry, remember, God punished the demons.

God saved Noah and punished the ancient world by flooding the whole world. God poured fire down on Sodom and Gomorrah, and God will deliver you. Now that gives me comfort. If my, if my family, my kids had just been machine gunned by Islamic terrorists, and I'm crying out, Lord, how long?

What's, what's up? And God tells me about these historical things that he's done to rescue his people in the past, and he will rescue you. That has some bite. And that's an important link.

Number 6, the New Testament links Noah and the flood to the second coming of Christ. Open to Luke, we're gonna, both these are parallel passages, but let's, let's look at the Luke passage, chapter 17. Luke 17 Luke 17:26 to 27, these are the words of Jesus Christ. And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man.

They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage until the day that Noah entered the ark and the flood came and destroyed. Damn, what? Oh Jesus Christ our Lord. said that his return.

is linked inextricably to the days of Noah. In the days of Noah, everybody was acting like even by seeing Noah plank after plank and what have you. The day comes, the flood comes, everybody was destroyed. Jesus Christ comes, and those that are not in the ark of Jesus Christ will be destroyed, every last one of them.

A Jew who knows his Old Testament would never come up with the idea that Jesus is just referring to the Mesopotamian Valley. That just hermeneutically makes no sense. Remember when we're reading our Bibles, we always consider that it's the Holy Spirit who's inspiring an original author writing to an original audience. We start there.

How would the original author have communicated to the original audience and how would they have understood it first before we bring it to our day and then start making applications? If we skip the original author and scrip, skip the original audience, we get bad results. Or perhaps as some say, maybe Jesus Christ is just accommodating himself to the air or the the errors of the time. I want to suggest that if we're going to deny Noah's historicity, then how can we not question the veracity of Christ's return and the veracity of his own words in this text.

And why is it that we would even want to deny the historicity of Noah the flood? Let me tell you that People that have trouble with Genesis and the creation narrative, their biggest trouble is not Genesis one. The biggest problem that people have is Genesis 6 to 9. Because Science allegedly has proven That there is no worldwide flood based on certain presuppositions.

You begin to approach geology from a certain presupposition that ignores things like the fall, ignores the flood and other things like that, and you come to completely different conclusions. Fish, fossils that are on top of mountains, the reason they're there is because over millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of years, those mountainous ranges were once underneath the ocean. There's another explanation for everything if you start apart from the Bible.

But if you start with the Bible, there are rational reasons to interpret the data out there according to the Bible.

Let me answer an objection and then we're gonna bring it into a conclusion. Some people would respond to this and I have friends who've responded this way. And say, yeah, Mike, I understand, I agree with you that it seems that of, when you just are taking a textual approach that the Old Testament. Seem to argue for no one a worldwide flood.

And, and they've, and then, and then sometimes they'll say that, I've never really considered the New Testament evidence, but you make a, a good case for how that's connected to the New Testament. But Mike, what about geocentrism in Copernicus? What about the fact that the church for hundreds of years believed that the earth was the center of the universe and that they believe that that's what the Bible taught. But once Copernicus rose up through science, not the Bible, he demonstrated that the sun was the center of our universe.

And, and guys like Luther and Calvin were saying he was wrong based upon their understanding of the Bible. We've got to take into consideration the clear facts of science. In our interpretation of the scripture. What do we say to that objection?

Because that's the main objection that I hear against what I've just presented this morning. And here's my reply to it. is geocentrism did not originate with the church. It originated with Ptolemy.

Ptolemy is the one that established geocentrism in the Greco-Roman world. It was the Ptolemaic system that was the science of the day. And the church began to interpret the Bible within the air and atmosphere of the Ptolemaic system. And so as the early church began to read their Bibles and they wanted to accommodate themselves and get shoulder and buddy to buddy with the academics and make sure that all the scientists were their friends, they had to interpret the Bible in a Ptolemaic way.

And so as they began to see figures of speech that seemed to report as the the sun rising and the sun setting, they obviously began to interpret the universe in a Ptolemaic way. There was no other way to think about it. And so the church shouldn't get the blame for the Ptolemaic system. But let me, let me give a second response.

The Old Testament doesn't give 4 chapters of Genesis to geocentrism. How much of the Bible argues for geocentrism? There's a few, few references of figures of speech, and that's it. Neither do Jesus and the apostles use Ptolemy to preach the gospel.

But they did make prolific use of Noah in the global flood, however, the Old Testament gives all kinds of space to Noah and the flood. The Jesus and the apostles give all kinds of links as we've demonstrated this morning to Noah and the flood, and nowhere do you see that space dedicated to geocentrism. So the idea that we have to somehow bow before the science of our age, I think we're falling, falling into exactly what the early church did when they bowed to Ptolemy or Ptolemy, Ptolemaic system.

It's the same thing that the early church did in the early days when they were embarrassed by the Old Testament and a lot of the stories of the Old Testament, and so they then they begin to allegorize the Bible and we have 1000 years of allegorizing until the rise of the Reformation.

There was a plague on the church during the medieval period. Let's, let's wrap, wrap it up with a few things here. I, I'm beginning to be more and more convinced as a Christian. That rather than avoiding the topic of Noah the flood in order to get the more important matters, the gospel, I'm starting to use Noaah the flood to preach the gospel just like the apostles did.

I'm bringing it up early in the conversation. I'm bringing up Adam and Eve early in the conversation. Because what happens is I start talking to people about sin and Jesus Christ on the cross. And what happens?

It's surprising how often this happens in in gospel conversations. I'm not 5 minutes into the conversation and somebody says, yeah, but I, I can't believe the Bible with all that nonsense about animals and an ark and the flood. That comes up right almost very early in the conversation. I'll say, well, hey, have you ever read the text?

No, I haven't. A lot of times I'll take them and just read, read through it with them. talk to them about what the Bible says about the flood, give them some reasons for the global flood like we talked about earlier. a lot of times when I'm sharing the gospel these days, I'll start off with Adam and Eve, how they fell in the garden, how the God killed an animal, dressed them in, in, animal skins, and the blood sacrifice is a key component of the Old Testament, including when Noah got off the ark and he sacrificed the Lord and that judgment of the whole world in, in the ark.

This is a type of an anti-type that comes up in the New Testament. And that's why Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins is so important as we see it all throughout the Bible. And I find that more and more that people are listening when I'm bringing into them the historical background of the gospel. So, I want to encourage you guys to consider that.

Maybe the writers of the New Testament knew what they were doing when they referenced Noah and the ark. You can preach the whole gospel just on Noah and the ark passages. But consider this also. Remember, the rich man had died and, and, and gone into, to hell and he was pleading, for somebody to send somebody back to go warn his His family and you have this statement, if they wouldn't believe Moses and the prophets, neither would they believe even if somebody rose from the dead.

Jesus Christ rose from the dead and people, Lazarus rose from the dead and they still don't believe. the fact is, if people just aren't gonna believe the Bible, they're just not gonna believe. I've, I've presented all kinds of evidence to different people, friends, family, people who don't know Christ. And the reality is, it's the gospel that is the power of God unto salvation.

And yeah, I can, I can try to help them understand the gospel set in a historical context, but it's the gospel. We come in patience and humility, just like First Timothy says, just teaching in patience, humility, waiting, if God will perhaps grant them repentance, so that they can escape the clutches of the devil having been taken captive to do His will, because they've been ensnared and their heart's been hardened, but if you just, if we just patiently preach the gospel, we can see change.

Let me give you brass tacks and then we're gonna pray. Something that may seem very small can actually be very big.

If we ignore the small things, it can have devastating consequences. There was a terrible fire that happened in Boston at a club called the Coconut Grove in 1942. it was a very popular club. It had a capacity of 460, but they had doubled it on this particular evening in 1942.

The busboy mistakenly caught something on fire and fire just ravaged through the place, and it was something very small that could have saved hundreds of people. It was door hinges. Very small thing. Nobody really thought about it a whole lot until then.

All of the door hinges of this place only opened inward. And so when people were rushing to get out of the place, they, they all rushed so hard at the door and they, that they couldn't open the doors and they burned to death. There's a reason why we have doors that push out. And it's because of things like this, a little thing like a door hinge, it just seems very unimportant.

can be a huge deal. Something that many people today like Doctor Cargill says we need to give up this idea of a flood. Christians need to stop playing the part of the idiot, get with the times, give up the flood, give up biblical literalism, even give up inerrancy. Sad thing is, is Doctor Cargill, who was raised as a Christian, now describes himself as an agnostic.

And spends most of his time arguing against things like inerrancy, infallibility, biblical literalism. You just wonder, was it just a little thing? Was it something very small that began to lead to the decline in his faith? What about you?

I want to encourage you to be confident in the word of God. If we can demonstrate. What the Word of God really says, there's every reason to take confidence in it and to believe in its authority. Brothers and sisters, it is a sweet, sweet thing, just in simple faith to trust Jesus Christ.

Saints have been doing it for hundreds of years. When scholars were laughing at Christians because there was no historical evidence outside of the Bible of Nineveh, people still believed, and then we found a Nineveh. People used to laugh at Christians about all kinds of things. And time and time again, the Bible proves itself true.

If the Bible really does teach these things, we believe it because God has put it in his word. That's the brass tacks. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much that your word is clear.

And we pray that we would believe the gospel that was believed by Noah, who was this godly man who was warned, and by faith, he reached out and did things that seem completely crazy. Completely crazy. A fool. And yet he condemned the world of his age and was able to save not a lot but save a few.

Through the ark, and Lord, we pray that in our day that we would see many saved through Christ as you promised, the fields are white with harvest. Let us not be ashamed of the gospel, the gospel from Genesis to Revelation, knowing that it is the power of God and the salvation to those who believe. Lord, may we trust you. In simple faith, in Christ's name we pray.

All God's people said, Amen.