Scripture
Genesis 6:14-15
[14] Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood; you shall make the ark with rooms, and shall cover it inside and out with pitch.
[15] This is how you shall make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits.
This is Genesis Lecture 102.
After only about 1,600 years had passed from the time Adam settled down on this earth, this world was already full of sin and evil.
When it reached the limit that couldn’t be forgiven in justice, God eventually ruled on it.
He decided to judge it with ‘Great Flood,’ and God had Noah build an ark and prepare for the flood.
God Himself taught him how it should look and how it should be built.
What He taught Noah is found in tonight’s scripture.
God told him about the materials to build the ark with, its size, and its structure. Each of these things had spiritual meanings.
That is, how Noah and his descendants should live and what they should learn and remember from the Judgment of Great Flood; God put these meanings in every corner of the ark.
And now, I’m going to explain those meanings.
First off, in Genesis 6:14, God said, “Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood.”
Here, an ‘ark’ spiritually symbolizes the ‘word of God.’
Noah and his family obeyed the word of God; they built the ark, stayed inside the ark, escaped from the judgment of flood, and were saved.
Likewise, we can also reach salvation only when we live in the word of God.
God precisely presents the way of salvation and the standards of forgiveness of sins.
Each person’s salvation is decided according to this law that God set.
For instance, our Lord said in John 3:18, “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
Jesus also said in Matthew 7:21, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter.”
In addition to these, the Bible, which is the word of God, has detailed instructions concerning how one can receive salvation
Those who live by the word of God will go to Heaven, but those who don’t will go to hell.
Just as those who didn’t go into Noah’s ark died in the Judgment of the Flood, whoever disregards the way of salvation that God set will receive the punishment of death forever.
Through the Sunday Morning Service, I deliver detailed messages about the sins depriving of salvation, and the sins leading to death.
I hope you can understand these messages that act in the role of the ark of salvation.
You must understand whether or not you are inside or outside the ark of salvation. Once you have entered the ark you must never go outside of it again.
I urge you to hold on to the hope of salvation until the very end, and to look up to Heaven by faith until your spirits get there.
Dear brothers and sisters.
God set ‘gopher wood’ as the building material for the ark. It also contains a spiritual meaning.
Let me tell you about the characteristics of gopher wood.
Gopher wood is a pine needle-leafed evergreen tree.
It grows to a height of 30 meters, and to 1 meter in diameter.
It takes its root deep down, and its branches are straight.
The wood is strong and hard.
This wood is used for pillars or rafters in buildings.
It is also used as in the mainframe of furniture to maintain its basic shape.
In addition to these uses, thanks to its firmness and strength, it is used to build ships.
Although it is difficult to work with due to its resin, this resin also increases and preserves its resistance to deterioration.
God made this gopher wood the building material for the ark.
Noah’s ark had to be able to withstand the rough waves in the midst of the great flood.
It had to be strong and solid enough to endure waves as huge as a house.
Regarding this, God told Noah to build an ark using the strong and hard gopher wood.
To endure tough waves of the world until you safely get to Heaven, you need the characteristics similar to the gopher wood.
Just as gopher wood is straight and strong, you should have an upright heart and never change your mind in any given situation.
1 Peter 4:12 says, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you.”
As you keep your faith in this world, you may encounter fierce tests from time to time.
For example, you may be persecuted by your un-evangelized family just because you don’t bow down at the rites table.
You may wrongfully experience disadvantage when you refuse your senior’s offer of drink.
You try to live in the light as you believe in God, but the spirits of darkness hate it, and they incite evil people to cause trouble for you.
Those who are upright in their heart will never compromise with the world even when they face a fierce test.
Their faith will neither get weak nor sway.
Just as they made up their minds in the beginning, they will accomplish righteousness in the sight of God.
Since God is alive, He will surely make it work for the good.
1 Peter 1:9 also says, “obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.” Those who keep faith with upright hearts can eventually reach salvation.
Now, God says in Genesis 6:14, “you shall make the ark with rooms.”
It was to put partitions inside the ark to divide its space.
I said that the ‘ark’ spiritually symbolizes the ‘word of God.’
If the ‘ark’ as a whole symbolizes the ‘Word of God,’ what does the ark that is divided with partitions symbolize?
It symbolizes the heart that can discern all things according to the word of God.
It is to know how to discern truth and untruth, goodness and evil, and light and darkness.
When you live in this world, you must have this ability of discernment.
Otherwise, you may be guided by a blind man and fall into a pit together.
You might also go the way that is opposite to the will of God.
Romans 12:2 says, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
You should know what is the ‘goodness’ that God acknowledges, not the goodness in your sight.
You need not understand according to your own righteousness, but by what God considers righteous.
To do so, you should completely deny yourself in all things, and make the word of God the standard of everything.
As you pull out evil from your heart, you can understand the good will of God at the same time.
To properly discern all things according to the word of God, first of all, you must understand and memorize the word of God as knowledge.
You must spiritually arm yourself at the same time.
In other words, your heart must change into truth.
Those who change their hearts into truth can receive the voice and guidance of the Holy Spirit, they can discern the will of God.
In particular, you must have the heart of spirit to perfectly discern spiritual things.
It is just as 1 Corinthians 2:13 says, “…combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.”
Therefore, I urge you to arm yourself with the word of God which is the knowledge of spirit, and then make bread out of it.
Dear brothers and sisters.
God told Noah to make an ark of gopher wood, and to “cover it inside and out with pitch.”
Pitch can be made from petroleum products or plants. Petroleum-derived or naturally derived pitch from tar is also called “asphalt”.
This pitch is used for waterproofing or antiseptic materials.
In Exodus 2:3, when the baby Moses was put in a wicker basket and set by the bank of the Nile, the wicker basket was covered over with tar and pitch.
Likewise, if covered with pitch, it becomes waterproof and it easily floats.
Now, God told Noah to cover the ark ‘inside and out’ with pitch.
He told him to apply the pitch even between woods so that no water would leak in.
It would be more than 1 year that Noah and his family would stay inside the ark.
If there had been any cracks in the wood of the ark, water might have leaked in and threatened their lives.
Even a small amount of water would cause any cracks to become bigger and bigger, and would have put Noah and his family into an uncontrollable situation.
Then, what is the spiritual meaning of covering the ark ‘inside and out with pitch’?
It means that while you live in this world, you shall never take the worldly things into your heart.
While receiving cultivation, you live in this world.
Those who turn their backs on world and live hermit-like lives in seclusion cannot receive true cultivation.
However, though you lives in this world, the worldly things should not allowed into your lives.
Just as God had the ark covered inside and out with pitch, you must cut yourself off from the world so that the world will cannot ‘trickle” into our lives.
I have a good reason for telling you to quit taking in worldly music, TV, and movies, and to be careful with Internet use.
It is because the forces of anti-christ control the worldly culture and take advantage of it as their instrument.
Not to mention the violent and lewd video images, and the ideas of anti-christ that have already infiltrated into general pop culture.
Even if you watch it for fun, you will receive its negative influence unconsciously.
Our Jesus said to you, “You are the salt of the earth.”
Salt not only makes food salty, but also stops it from decaying.
Then, what is the use if the salt has become tasteless?
Those who become soaked bt things of this world are like this tasteless salt.
I urge you in the name of the Lord to keep yourself by the truth and to become the salt with the original taste.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
In Genesis 6:15, God tells us the size of the ark.
“This is how you shall make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits.”
‘Cubit’ in this verse is a unit of length based on the length from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger.
One cubit is equivalent to approximately 46 to 56 centimeters.
Cubits of various lengths were employed in many parts of the world over many periods of time.
Therefore, to make it easy to calculate the size of the ark, let’s assume one cubit is 50 centimeters long.
Since ‘the length of the ark’ was 馄 cubits’, it is about 150 meters long.
A regular football field is a little less than 100 meters.
And so, the ark of Noah is much longer than a football field.
The ‘breadth’ was cubits’, which is about 25 meters.
And its ‘height’ was ཚ cubits,’ which yields about 15 meters.
Usually, a floor is about 2.5 to 3 meters, and thus the ark of Noah was 5 to 6 stories tall.
To help you actually feel it, I will compare the size of Noah’s ark to that of this Main Sanctuary.
The inner length of this main sanctuary is 75 meters.
It is about half the length of Noah’s ark.
The breadth of this main sanctuary is 24 meters, which is almost the same with the breadth of Noah’s ark.
This main sanctuary is 10 meters high.
The height of Noah’s ark is 15 meters, which is 1.5 times higher than this main sanctuary.
Now, can you feel how big the ark of Noah was?
By the way, Noah’s ark had 3 floors.
This ark of Noah’s was big enough to load all the animals that God designated along with the food for them all.
It has been calculated to be factually true by scientists.
It is an amazing fact that such a huge ark was built about 4,400 years ago.
Moreover, amazing wisdom of God is contained in the ratio of the ark design.
Marine engineers discovered the ‘safety ratio’ in designing large vessels after the long years of research.
That is, a vessel is the safest when the ratio of a vessel’s length to its breadth is 6:1, and to its height, 10:1.
Then, what about the ark of Noah?
Its length (300 cubits) is 6 times to its breadth (50 cubits), and 10 times to its height (30 cubits).
You can see that it is exact to the safest ratio of a large vessel.
The first large vessel that was 100 meters long was built in 1843.
Its length was 98 meters, breadth was 15.5 meters, and height was 9.75 meters; it complied with the standard safe ratio.
God already knew about the ratio that marine engineers discovered in modern times, and He had Noah’s ark built according to the ratio.
Around 1890, a battleship was constructed in the States, and it was built by the same design ratios with that of Noah’s ark.
It was the U.S.S Oregon, which is considered as one of the toughest battleships constructed so far.
Dear brothers and sisters
An interesting experiment related to Noah’s ark was done in June, 1992 in Korea.
The Maritime Technology Research Center, a national institution, conducted marine engineering research and experiments on Noah’s ark at the request by Creation Research Association.
Its name has been changed to ‘Maritime & Ocean Engineering Research Institute of KIOST (Korea Institute of Ocean Science & Technology).’
This institute is world renowned for its vessel test and evaluation.
Most of export sea vessels constructed in Korea are evaluated in this institute.
They made a model of Noah’s ark with a scale of 1:50 for various tests.
They floated the model in a big pool which could generate artificial waves, and tested various stability features of the ark.
Generally speaking, the stability of a sea vessel is evaluated using 3 criteria.
They are restoration stability, stability in waves, and structural stability.
Simply put, a ship is evaluated to check whether it can be overturned by high waves, or how well its passengers or freight are maintained.
They generated 30 meter tall artificial waves, which is the height of the highest waves observed so far; this model ark was invulnerable to such waves.
For fair comparison, they made 12 other model ships and did the experiments under the same conditions.
From this experiment, the model of Noah’s ark passed all 3 criteria, and became the top scorer in total stability.
Therefore it has been scientifically proven that Noah’s ark had amazing stability that could compete with modern sea large vessels that are built in accordance with highly developed technology.
This news was carried in the papers like the Kook-Min Ilbo, and the Hankook Ilbo on Feb. 17, 1993.
Here are the headlines.
“The Ark of Noah, Proved to Be Very Safe, by Scientific Research”
“A Scale Model for Maritime Engineering Evaluation”
“Capable of Handling Waves as High as 30 Meters”
“A Design Leaving No Room for Controversy”
“Request by Creation Research Association to Support Historicity of the Bible”
It was scientifically proved that the ark of Noah was strong enough to survive the great flood that covered the entire earth.
The reason it was possible 4,400 years ago was that it was God Himself who is the origin of knowledge and wisdom that designed the ark of Noah.
Therefore, I hope you can depend on this God in all things.
Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight.”
How wonderful it will be if God Himself leads you as you trust Him and follow Him!
God the Father wants you to acknowledge Him with all your heart and to depend only on Him.
I wish there is none who might say, “I can do it with my strength. I am wise enough.”
1 Corinthians 3:18-19 says, “Let no man deceive himself If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, he must become foolish, so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God For it is written, “He is THE ONE WHO CATCHES THE WISE IN THEIR CRAFTINESS.””
Those who have true faith cannot but become humble before God the Father.
They will seek the help and grace of God in humbleness.
I urge you to always kneel down before God the Father in humbleness and seek His grace, mercy, strength and wisdom.
May you accomplish great works that reveal the glory of God the Father, in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ, I pray!
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