Come See the Ark
The ark has come to rest on the mountains of Ararat … notice it says mountain(s) …. Not necessarily the mountain named Ararat.
Many today are searching for the ark, they claim it lies in the high plains of Mount Ararat, but of course it’s only a claim because the Turkish Government (where the Mt. Ararat lies) is not favourable to allowing searchers access to find a Biblical ark.
Some researchers claim that they are looking in the wrong place. Gen 11 tells us that when the population grew, they came from the East and settled in the plain of Shinar …. But, Mt. Ararat itself is not in that direction…. “From the east” would put the ark’s landing somewhere in Iran.
Simply, we do not know where the ark is. We do not even know if the ark still exists. God chose, in his wisdom, not to give us detailed directions to its location… for a good reason no doubt!
Today’s Scripture:
Gen 8:15-22
15 Then God said to Noah, 16 “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. 17 Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it.”
18 So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. 19 All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on land—came out of the ark, one kind after another.
20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21 The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though[a] every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.
22 “As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.”
Again we see the invitation of God to Noah and his family… Come out of the ark… just as God had called or invited Noah et al into the ark, now He calls them out.
God calls and He invites. He calls us, He invites you and me and all His children to join Him in His work.
Living in a fishing community I grew up with many friends and relatives working in fish plants. Our two daughters worked in fish plants while going to school and university in the summer for some extra cash. No doubt, it is stinky work, dirty work, cold work… but it pays a regular and decent wage.
When I was younger, work in the fish plants was easily found and excessive with some plants operating almost around the clock with processing and cleaning crews- at least 6 days a week. A funny thing began to happen… the crew bosses would call for the workers to come into work for the day but some workers wouldn’t answer their phones. They didn’t want to go into work on that day, it was Saturday and they wanted to play, or they had other plans, or they were just worn out from working all week… whatever the reason they let their phones ring, unanswered.
Their boss was calling, but the phone went unanswered.
God calls. God is calling you. He has work for you to do, He has a job for you to complete… are you willing to answer your phone?
God will not force you, he calls… you have to decide whether or not you’ll answer.
Noah and his family left the ark at God’s invitation.
Can you imagine what their reality was?
Muck, rocks, maybe some green sprouts and bushes and trees still remained, no animals other than what were with them, up heaved earth, new mountains and valleys, new rivers and lakes and oceans… nothing looked like it did when they entered the ark a year ago… everything had changed.
They had no doubt been changed too.
What was the first thing Noah did after they got out?
Obviously he took pictures of the ark’s landing spot for his facebook page, and of his smiling family standing in front of the vessel, followed by saving actual wooden pieces of the ark to remember this event by and maybe to sell as souvenirs, then he saved some animal doo doo for the future museum display that would eventually be built at the site, then he sealed his journal to be kept for a book manuscript with the screen rights sold to some big movie company; and to protect the site from possible looters he roped it off and then he built a roof over it to prevent it from decaying. He had an architect come by and draw up impressive plans for the multi-purpose arena/museum/theme park that would be built in a few years as a memorial to this magnificent event, and to help pay for the costs of maintaining the site for all future generations.
Of course this is ludicrous… but isn’t this what would happen today?
We want to ‘memorialize’ everything and anything, and if we can make a dollar from it at the same time, well praise the Lord!
Is there any wonder that God is His wisdom did not give us directions to the site?
Why did God bury Moses himself?
In Deut 32 we are told that Moses died and that God himself buried Moses’ body so that no man knew where it was located. Why?
We are not told exactly, but remember with me what kind of history the Israelites (and us!) had with idolatry, they easily fell again and again into the practice of worshipping creation and the created, instead of the Creator.
Moses was their hero, their leader, the one God spoke to and through, the one God had shown His glory to in the cleft of the rock… Moses was the man!
How long do you think it would have been before someone, some godly person in the congregation of Israel, came up with the good idea to build a monument over Moses’ grave site, just to show their respect for all he did, for how he served God, to remember him.
Then after the monument was built people would come and light candles at the site, and leave flowers, or momentos, or letters, poems, trinkets at the base of the monument, and some would come there to pray, or to talk (spiritually of course) to their beloved Moses, and before they could say “Idolatry” they would be in full blown idolatry again.
God knows our weaknesses, He also knows how Satan lures us into idol worship, and away from God.
With good intentions, and with right sounding ideas… we take a little step toward idolatry… and another and another and before we even realize it we are at the foot of an idol, bending and bowing to worship that abomination… but by this time it is no longer an abomination, it’s our trusted and much loved friend… it’s our memorial to someone (something) we loved so much… and Satan laughs at how easily he can fool us everytime… 5000+ years and we fall for the same trick every time.
We need to have open eyes and understanding hearts.
And what did Noah do?
He built an altar to the LORD and sacrificed burnt offerings to Him on it of the clean animals he brought on the ark.
No memorial. No monument. No idol. Only sacrifices to God.
How differently do we look at and think about things.
Our culture is dedicated to making memories, to saving momentos, to creating monuments and memorials, to erecting statutes of our heros.
Satan is crafty- and I don’t mean that he likes to knit.
He is wiley, sneaky, evil. You have to understand that Satan does not need you to bow and worship him, he only needs you not to worship God. You can worship anything else and he is happy, he has won. You can even worship godly things and he wins.
Think about that.
It happened to the Israelites. It can (and does) happen to us. We don’t see it usually, because society has given us cataracts and blurred our holy vision, afterall- everyone does it.
In Numbers 21 we are told of the Israelites who were travelling in the wilderness when they complained against God (again) and God sent poisonous snakes among them as a punishment. Many were bitten and many died.
The people repented and God told Moses to make a bronze serpent and hoist it up on a pole in the middle of their camp, and when the people were bitten and looked at the serpent on the pole, they would be healed.
Fast forward to 2 Kings 18, many years later and King Hezekiah is reigning over Judah, he loves the LORD and did what was right in the eyes of the LORD.(vs.3). In verse four we are told that:
” 4 He removed the high places, smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles. He broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it. (It was called Nehushtan.[b])”
Did you catch what had taken place?
The very bronze serpent that God commanded Moses to make to save the Israelites from the poisonous snake bites, many years later became something “Sacred” to them, a focus of their worship (maybe they simply thought they were appreciating it).
They had wanted to remember all the good things God did by using the snake to heal them, and time passed and stories grew, and someone somewhere thought was a great idea it would be to show their appreciation by making a memorial, a monument, a showcase for that item…. And there they were years later burning incense before it… and God called it idolatry, simple and clear.
Satan will use good things, even godly things to lure us into idolatry.
And Idolatry is not only a statute of Buddha that we pray to… idolatry is when we place anything (anyone- even our families, or ourselves) BEFORE God.
You do not need to build a shrine in your home to be an idol worshipper- in fact your very home could be your idol… are you thinking about it all the time, constantly cleaning it, polishing it, painting it, prettying it up, building on, improving the grounds, re decorating it, or even just thinking about doing these things…etc…?
We are not idolaters!
We are insulted when someone would even dare insinuate such a thing. We go to church! We are Baptists… Wesleyans… Pentecostals…. Fill in the blank-ists! We are NOT idol worshippers.
Oh, I think we are…. Or we have the tendency to quickly fall into it in the blink of an eye.
What are your bronze snakes?
What godly, good things have you taken and made ‘sacred’, made into your personal idol?
Is your idol the church building where you attend?
Is your idol your family?
Is your idol the Cross (notice they were to look at the snake not the pole which it was hung on … the brazen serpent lifted up in the wilderness is a ‘type’ of Christ… the saving power is in Christ’s death, in Him… not in the wooden cross he hung on… it was just the vehicle of his death)
Is your idol A Baby in the Manger?
Is your idol Christmas?
Is your idol all your service and jobs at your church?
When Noah left the ark we are never left with the impression that he ever looked back at it again. It disappears from the Bible. Gone.
Notice that Noah built an altar to sacrifice to the LORD first… before he built a shelter for himself and his family, before he tidied up the place, before he organized the animals, before… before anything else he served the LORD.
We could learn a valuable lesson from this instance in Noah’s life.
Look at all the excuses that Noah could have come up with for waiting to sacrifice to God… I’m too tired, I don’t have my house built yet, the family is hungry, the animals should multiply some first before I start killing them for sacrificial purposes… we could probably add a few of our favorites that we use all the time.
Noah left the ark and immediately built an altar to his LORD and sacrificed right there and then.
If God is not our prime focus … everything else will be out of focus.
What are you focusing on? That is who/what you are serving.
What are you focusing on?
Make sure it’s God alone.
Thanks you again dear friends ~ we serve the One True God, don't settle for anything else.
Nancy
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