Noah's Ark: Mercy in the Midst of Evil

Show Notes

Episode 425: 
In today's episode, we explored the account of the flood in Genesis 7, where the rain lasted for 40 days and 40 nights, eventually covering the entire earth for 150 days. We discussed the debate around whether the flood was a global event or localized to where humans lived, touching on geological evidence and biblical interpretations.

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You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun in practical ways. Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of The Bible Guys. Howdy howdy, and we are here today on a Friday. If you're listening in real time or whatever day you're listening, correct, That's why I said if I did say that I caveat of this, I heard you, and I was just clarifying I didn't want anybody feel left out. And we are wrapping well, I think we're wrapping up the rain, the rain part of the flood in our story, because we've been covering this thing for several podcasts. Now, So before we get into that, we have a segment today we do in the segment is called Who's most Likely? Who's most likely? Yes? Yes, I like these? Yeah, I do too. And I haven't looked at this at all. No, I have not glaced. Well, So the goal is for us to uh say it as fast as we can, sort of like an instinct response, right to see if we agree or disagree. Okay, you ready? Yes? Number one? Who's most likely to have the best snacks? Oh me, Jeff? Sure? Without a doubt. Yes. In fact, I would say I'm really not a snack person, but I do enjoy when somebody prepares snacks for me. I like to graze like de CHRITI. That's really funny. All right, you want to take the next one. I don't even have it in front of me. Okay, I'll ask them ahead. Number two, who's most likely to hand make you a birthday present? You would be me by far. You Yes, you made skip the birthday presents. You used to hand make your your kids lunch sacks? Yeah, lunch sacks every day. Yeah. By the way, it wasn't every day, it was it was when I had time, so it was it was a couple of times a week most likely. Uh and uh so literally, you've done a thousand, You've done more than a thousand lunch back. I would definitely say that that's true. Okay, that's that's about. Let me ed it up. Carry the one a thousand more than I did, right right? Hey, by the way, Uh, it started off that I actually just drew simple things like stick figures and like, hey, how you doing kind of things? And then one day I decided to ooh, I'm gonna go downstairs like an hour early, I'm going to draw like this, you know, piece of artwork or something, and then what up happening? Was my daughter, like in junior high would go to school and they would all gather around. They'd say, oh, let me see your lunch bag. What'd your dad do? So if the next day I drew like a stick figure, they go, oh, it's another voting now. Well, yeah, they're disappointed because I have now let Tory's friends down. You push the bar too high. This is a warning to all the parents. Yes, don't start pushing the bar up or you can't live up to it tomorrow. So I'm joking. I was only joking about that. When it come people go, that's pretty wise. I'm not being good for my kids. Well, when it comes to you know this, To be honest, honest, I was glad for it to be over. I mean, I loved every second of it, but it was very I literally had to say, I gotta give tomorrow an hour early to draw in the bags. I would force myself to get up and go downstairs again. Not all the time, but I would, but I would. You know, I mean, you're a real artist. I mean some of these are really spectacular. Oh, I appreciate that. I heard that the Lover's trying to get a few of them. Yes, I'm gonna put it right next to Mona Lisa. My favorite one of all the ones that I did was I did you know Lelo and Stitch? I did Stitch and I liked that one. You liked that? It was really good? Okay, good job anyway. Okay. The second question number three, who's most likely to forget to return a borrowed item? Me? Is that you. I would definitely say you forgetful. That did not sound like me. Yeah, I really don't like borrowing things, but it's because I forget that I have them. Okay, Okay, So I really I have a hard time asking for help from people. Hey I need this fixed or that fixed. And I'm not a handy guy, but I have a hard time asking for help, And then I have a hard time borrowing things from people. Now we're alike in a lot of ways, we are very different in that way. Yeah, I have no problem asking anybody to help me. Yeah. And it's not a pride thing. It's an embarrassing thing. I just I feel embarrassed about asking somebody to take time out of their busy schedule to help me with something. Oh yeah. And then and then the other thing is when when something is not in its place. If I borrow a neighbors something or the other, and it's every day, I say, this doesn't belong here, This doesn't belong here, this doesn't bow. Or I'll say if I loan something out, I'm like, where's my rake? Where's my rake? Every day? Why haven't I had my rip yet? That's why I don't like to borrow things. Is I assume that's how they feel about it, or I haven't thought about it since the minute I used it. Yeah, I think you probably are mad at me that I haven't given it back. Not mad, just wondering where's my rate? Yeah? Yeah, I struggle. I struggle, Borro. Hey, there's a difference. We don't have very many differences. Yeah, that's that's a different Yeah all right. Number four, who's most likely to cheat at a board game? Okay, so I see, I don't think either one of us cheat. I think both of us leverage the rules to our advantage. Now that would be true, yes, but I'll be very honest, you know, I think it makes me mad when people cheating games. People know a lot of people who know me know that board games are sort of our thing. Yes, and the one thing that I am famous for in my family is I will not cheat. Yeah. Now, I win so many games with my family. They accused me of cheating, right, they do, right, But it's not. It's that I know the rules and they didn't read the rules. When I try to read the rules to everybody, everybody's like, I know, I read. Let's just start, we'll figure the game out. And then when you use the rules to your advantage, they go, you're cheating. I didn't know that, right, And it's not cheating. It's in the rules. Yeah, the rules. I'll do that if it's within the rules. Definitely. Absolutely. So I've been pitching you a few games lately. I've got a couple of games I need you to. Yeah, I need to. I need to pick you up on those. I wrote them down, by the way, so I have them. Yeah, by the So what's the answer that who's most likely to cheat? I don't think either one of us are cheaters. Oh, we're gonna say no. We're going to say no. We declined answer that question. Dare you how dare you desert dare to assume that one of us would cheat. All right, here we go impune upon our character number five, who's most likely to wind up in the er because of a paper cut? Me? No, not a paper cut you yeah Meeff's thumb can fall off. And he was like, I think we can take care of this at home. Yeah. So a couple of years ago, uh, you see that big scar on my finger. Yeah, that's a huge star. So it's kind of gross. So we had a storm blow through my yard knock down some trees. Yeah, I couldn't get my chainsaw started, so I ran a I don't like the story. I ran a cord out. You know, I grew up splitting wood, cutting wood, chainsaws, all that kind of stuff. My whole life, splitting what a fifty face court a year, I would I would use a chainsaw for hours at a time, so I'm comfortable with all that stuff. But changedaw, I couldn't get it started for whatever reason. It been a long time since I used it. So I ran a cord out and I hooked up my saws all and I had one of those long wood blades like that, and they have off setting teeth like this, so they go through wood really easy. And so I was holding this branch. I was using the saws all. My son was standing next to me. I said, David, don't ever use a saws all to cut branches with one hand because it can just jump out and get you. It was like, okay, and so you know, you got to hold it with both hands. But I was holding the branch here and it jumped as I said, it landed on my hand, cut me all the way to the bone. And so I grabbed my hand like this, and I turned to my son and I said, go get your mom. He was what just happened? And I went. He took off running to go get my wife. I have to go into the hospital and get some stitches. And the girl that was doing the stitches, it was her first time to ever do stitches. So the doctor came and you can see it was a really jagged cut, right, It was really jagged. It looks like epic, yeah, yeah, And so it was really jagged. And this is my twenty first time in the hospital for stitches. I've been that twenty one times. I had to go for stitches, so I haven't covered up. This girl comes in. The doctor goes this is her first time, but you mind, I mean, that's a mess. Do you mind if she does it? I say, yeah, that's fine. So she looks like she's gonna die, and I'm like, I'm calming her down. You're gonna be okay. Because the doctor leaves because she was nervous that he was there looking over his shoulders. She'd done it on cadavers, she never done the lie person. So I'm walking through, explained to her, you're gonna be okay. She just starts to touch my whole hands numb. She just starts to touch my I yell and she almost passed out, like like she had to get a fan. She's like like, I then it finally it calmed her down after that, right, it didn't hurt me. And then I'm guiding her through how to sow my hand to get no. No, you need to pull it on the inside because they're so wide. She had to give me stitches on the inside and then the outside to do it. It was really really funny. So, yeah, I live going to the hospital for stitches, but not for paper cuts. Usually it's cut your finger off kind of stuff. Yes, So yeah, and my family would say that I'm sort of a wimp when it comes to paint. Wimp. Delicate, delicate, yeah, delicate, yeah. I I you know, we had actually asked my family and I texted them. So if you're trying to think historically, where do we where do we fit? I think you kind of. I think I kind of fit in the Daniel Boone era, and I think you kind of fit in like the Louis the fourteenth era. Oh my word, really, the wigs, the lace, the powder on the oh my gosh, where did that come from? Buckles thought? I do not agree with this. I rebuke this idea. This is not fair. I've been attacked. Yeah, I've been accused. No, okay, he would be so funny. All right, well we need to move on. So we're going to so this is more of the flood part, right, yep, yep. So we're just going to pick right up on verse seventeen, I believe is where we're starting Genesis seven, Genesis chapter seven, and we'll just read to the end of the chapter yep. Here and it says for forty days, the floodwaters grew deeper, covering the ground and lifting the boat high above the earth. And as the waters rose higher and higher above the ground. The boat floated safely on the surface. Finally, the water covered even the highest mountains on the Earth, rising more than twenty two feet above the highest peaks. All the living things on earth died, birds, domestic animals, wild animals, small animals that scurry along the ground, and all the people. Everything that breathed and lived on the dry land died. That's incredibly sad statement. God wiped out every living thing on the earth. People, livestock, small animals that scurry along the ground, whirreds the sky. All were destroyed. The only people who survived were Noah and those with him in the boat. And the floodwaters covered the earth for one hundred and fifty days. Well, now I'm glad our segment went along, because this is terrible to talk about. Well, so, Holy Cow, and so the floodwaters cover the earth for one hundred and fifty days. A lot of people when they hear about the arc, you know, people say, oh, Noah's in the arc for forty days. But that's not true. Right, no was in the arc for rain for forty days and forty nights. Right then he was in the boat. And it said the water covered one hundred and fifty days, but then no estayed in the boat long en effort to start to drain as well. That's right, five more months. And so Noah was in the boat for how long, Jeff? So like one year? Right, seven and a half months? Oh, after the one hundred and fifty days. So it tomorrow we'll read it, Okay, I'm jumping ahead. Yeah, yeah, okay, next week it unpacks. How long all of that lasted? Okay, okay, okay, we'll get to that. So but yeah, that is pretty crazy. This is sort of a downer of a day since these are the only verses that we're talking about. Well, there's several elements to it. One I think was this a local event, this flood, or was this a global worldwide flood? Well, it said the whole earth, Yeah, it said lifting the boat high above the earth, the waters rod higher than every surface of the mountains of the twenty two feet above the highest peaks of the earth. Yeah, all living things on the earth died, which means it's so the question would be some people would say that God's goal was to wipe out all the people, right, that's the goal. The goal is to wipe out all the humans. Had the humans gone to every corner of the planet, No, did they map it all Had they already mapped it all out? If they'd mapped it all out, then it would have had to have you know, and had gone to every corner. Then he would have had to flood the entire world or did he have to flood their world? Right? Right? Like you know how we say, like the Roman world or the Greek world, it wasn't the whole world. It was just the known world at their time, right. So that there's some Christians that would say it wasn't a global, you know, a flood that flooded the entire planet, but it flooded every place that humans lived above those tallest mountains. That's what some would say. Others would say, Nope, it flooded the whole planet. Right, And so then the argument be, well, are you saying that it went twenty two feet above Mount air Rat at what five and a half miles high? Are you serious? Right? So I personally believe in a worldwide flood. What do you believe? Yeah? I mean, only because that's sort of what it says. It says, finally, the water covered even the highest mountains on the Earth, and it doesn't say the world in which humanity lived, right, it says the earth it's referring to. But it would have fulfilled God's purposes to have just flooded where people are sure, absolutely absolutely, And so that's why some people would say. Because some geologists would say there is no evidence of a global flood. Other geologists say the only way you can explain everything is by a global flood. So there's disagreement among geologists. The geologists who reject the Bible would emphatically say there is no evidence of a worldwide flood. Christians or geologists who say, look at there's a lot of evidences here that we cannot justify just by stratification from time means that there seems to be major cataclysms. For instance, most of the dinosaur levels, like say out in Montana, South Dakota, and North Dakota, they all seem to have died in this massive cataclysm. Right, So their argument is, oh, it was it was an asteroid, right. Others would say it didn't have to be. It could have been a flood. And by the way the way that it's stratified like this, they were also buried almost immediately, right. So there's all those things that they would point to great canyons in different places like this where massive amounts of erosion happened, but would have required like, for instance, in the Grand Canyon, some of the erosion that would have had to happen if everything was the same then as it is now, Some of the erosion would have had to be that the river was flowing up in order to cut through a lot of the canyon, right. So thenly way that could happen is if that there was water above it, right, draining to be able to cut down. So there's a lot of those kind of elements. People believe in an ice age covering most of the planet, but refuse to believe in water having flooded the planet. Ice and water are the same, right right, right, they're both h two oh. So it's kind of funny how sometimes we build these arguments to justify our version and rejecting scripture, as opposed to just saying what are the plausible answers? And the other one would be Mount air Rat or Mount Everest. I'm sorry, didn't need to have been twenty six thousand feet tall at that time. Yeah, not back then I could have shifted, right, So we do know in tectonic shifts, and we do know that you know, there were times when the whole planet was all one giant continent has broken into pieces. All that kind of stuff then throws up mountain ranges and all those kinds of things. So it doesn't mean that we had to have the Himalayas be completely covered. It could have been that all the mountains were the size of the mountains in Kentucky for all we know, right, but it does say twenty two feet above all of the mountains, and that the whole world I believe was flooded there. And it explains to me in a better way why we have the geologic record the way that it is, and why there are massive gaps in creatures and animals throughout that geological record. You know, something that I've never looked into. I've only seen on like quick quick little clips, is you just referenced the fact that you said, oh, we know that all continents were together and then they broke off into pieces. I've seen that before, but I've never heard about the details of that. So you're convinced that that's a trouser. Absolutely, absolutely there's a thing. I don't know if we'll get to it, but when it starts to explain the in Genesis, you want me to just jump ahead Genesis chapter ten. We're not going to read this Genesis chapter ten. They're just giving lists of families. Jeffa had these kids, they all did these things. Ham had these kids, they all did these things right, and make those long lists like the Bibles famous for. In Genesis chapter ten, under shem, it says Eber had two sons. The first was named Peleg, which means division. For during his lifetime, the people in the world were divided in different language groups. That's the only translation that says it that way. The other translations say for in his time, the world was divided, right, And so it seems to be not that it was a language thing, but it was the planet. The planet broke. I think the King James actually says was broken. Right. So it's kind of one of those things where some people would say, hey, maybe that's it, right. So the New Living translation is the only translation says it was broken by languages. Everyplace else says the planet was broken. And that would makes sense too, because people from different continents can be isolated enough to speak different language. Yah, but that would then be saying that it was so the Bible already told us when the languages were divided with Tower Babbel, with the Tower Babbel, Yeah right, and this Peleg would have been much longer after that. So yeah, it's kind of an interesting, kind of an interesting thing. I'll read it to you. Go ahead, I'll read it to you in a different translation. Genesis ten. Okay, so you're looking up a different translation of that same verse. You're saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's all I was doing, was pulling that up. It was ten twenty five. Which translation is this that you're reading from? This just new King James, for instance, says to Eber were born two sons. The name of one was Peleg, for in his days the Earth was divided. And it seems like in the original languages it's using earth, not people, it's not using world, using planet kind of words there, and so maybe maybe that was it when it divided up. But I mean, man, you can put the whole planet back together like a puzzle. Yeah, I've seen I've seen those things before. South America fits into into Africa. North America fits very well into Europe. If you look at like Ireland fits perfectly back into the island of England. England fits back into the coast of Europe you're just going through. Most of the world fits back into one great, big, giant continent. And that makes sense to me. It also explains why so much technology is the same all around the world, pyramids for instance, and different things. So yeah, interesting, Well, well i'll tell you what. That is a lot to come come from just this past, isn't it. So yeah, we're just talking about all sorts of things. So so let's we haven't talked about the sadness yet. The sadness part the fact that this portion of scripture that we've read destroys all life. So God is fed up with the evil and the corruption, and so everything gets wiped out. And it says the only people who survived were Noah and those with him in the boat. And so those with him means his family, right, yeah, yeah, So there's no indication that there was another his his wife, his three sons and their wives, right. And then I'd imagine then if there were any grand children or something like that, but doesn't mention them. Yeah, And then and then from that then he repopulates their So let's talk about that. If you think of, oh, look, how sad it is all these people died. There is a sadness in that, because every human life matters. If you look at it from God's perspective, evil is that bad. It was a full blown cancer and all they ever thought of was evil. That's that's what it says. Complete and yeah, right they were. That's all they can So God was literally cutting the evil out, this case, answer, out of the planet, and he said, hey, I've got this one family that honors me. He literally talking about patience. He let it get down to almost nobody left before he finally decided, I'm going to cut it all out. It's like the entire body is full of cancer. Becides He's going to cut all the cancer out to save the one heart or the one brain that's still not full of cancer. That's what he did. This is God's mercy on humanity. The fact that he let it go so far. What would have been worse is if there was nobody redeemable right, that would have been worse right. And so it wasn't God that decided to destroy all these things. It was humanity's choice to keep rebelling against God and going to the point where the only thing they could even contemplate think about was evil. You have one family honoring God, and God says, Okay, I got to cut this cancer out. So do you think do you think that the evil, that the unredeemable evil mind was connected to the longevity of life? So for instance, you know people YEA lived it, lived it, done it all, and then got to the place to where they experienced life to such a degree to where they were just like, hey, I'm now going to choose the pleasure only the pleasure part, the evil pleasure part, right, or the evil greed part, or that's what he says. My spirit will not put up with humans for such a long time, right, And then he cut their lifespan down to one hundred and twenty years. He's acknowledging these nine hundred year life spans are just giving them the ability to discover even more evils. Yeah. And then most of the time the evil we choose to do is self pleasure. Right. We were finding a way to please ourselves and it winds up taking us in the wrong direction. And I think, you know, nine hundred years of being able to figure those things out. Yeah, So the idea that God cut our life span down, which is crazy, that part of it is so crazy to me, but that God would cut our lifespan down for our benefit. Yeah, And even though that, you know, it's like we'd all say, man, we'd love to live nine hundred years, you know, and get you we're healthy, if you were healthy. But but yet you know, well, it just highlights the fact that this is dress rehearsal for eternity. One hundred and twenty years or nine hundred and twenty years is nothing compared to a billion and a half years in eternity. And you're just getting started at a billion and a half years, right, So, eternity, this life is not the purpose, it's not the cause. It's just the beginning for us, and then after that we have all of eternity. So it's God's grace to say, I'm not going to let you just infect yourself with so much evil for so long. I'm going to rescue you from it. I'm going to give you a merciful death physically, get out of this body, free you from it. I'm going to redeem you, set you free, and eternity for total and absolute perfection, which is what he'd always planned for us in the beginning. So the fact that he's allowing this time to play out and any evil to exist is only because he's allowing every human that he'd always always planned to come into fruition to become actual so that he can save give them an opportunity to be saved as well. Yeah, so that's it. Hey, Yeah, last thing. People sometimes ask, why do you believe in Noah? I say, because Jesus believed in Noah right right over and over. Jesus references Noah as it was in the days of Noah, so it'll be in the ndimes. Jesus says that Jesus talks about the flood, he talks about Noah's arc. Jesus believed in Noah. I believe in Jesus, so I believe in Noah. Yeah. Well that's great. That's a good case right there. So ye all right, well, hey, that is a great place to wrap this up for now, and we're going to pick up in that story on Monday. That's right on the Bible. Gosh,