Noah

I called it The Sacred History in Late Antiquity, and that's because Rewritten Bible is kind of, um, it's kind of a bad word Right now, it is a term that emerges from a pair of articles written by Geza Vermes, a series of essays that he, he wrote in the 1960s following the discovery of the Genesis Apocryphon, which is one of the first, uh, Dead Sea Scrolls that was discovered.

It's an Aramaic text that covers early portions of Genesis, and kind of defies, defies description if, if your reference for ancient Jewish text is a rabbinic canon, as it's written in Aramaic, but it's not a Targum, and it deals with extra-biblical legends about Noah and Abraham primarily, but it's not a midrash.

And so what do you call it? So Vermes called it Rewritten Bible, and he wrote a pair of articles, one of them tracing it forward in time to a text called Sefer HaYashar, which is a medieval Hebrew text with great affinities to Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer, and then he went in the other direction.

So kind of a virtuoso thing.

Okay.

So it's basically the idea is that in Genesis 6, there is a reference to sons of God, Bnei HaElohim, commingling with the, the daughters of men, and they produce these, these giants, and Genesis is rather non-committal about this.

It kind of moves on to the wickedness of the land in the time of Noah.

And in Enochic literature, the giants, the presence of giants is a bad thing.

In verse 29 of chapter tw- uh, 15, Jesus departs and skirted around the Sea of Galilee to go to the mountains.

And in that same, uh, chapter, he does go, in verse 39, he got into a boat and came to the regions of Magdala.

Chapter 16, verse 4, he left them and departed.

You can see this, and he's building up to verse 21 in chapter 16 when he began to show his disciples that he would go to Jerusalem and suffer many things.

So they all ate and were filled, and they took up seven baskets full of the fragments that were left.

Now, those who ate were 4,000 men, besides women and children.

He sent away the multitudes and got into a boat, came to the region of Magdala.

Uh, Burt, let me ask you this because we've, we've seen now two feedings of the multitudes, and I think there's a lot here to glean from this.

So it isn't just our family.

It's, you know, all the way from Adam and David and Noah and Abraham, the Apostle Paul, Peter, all these people.

Uh, but you know, I always encourage people to think about, you know, that, that will really pale in comparison to God.

Mm.

Exactly

...

God's people will ever prosper." So Noah had a son named Shem, uh, which means name, the people of the name.

And from Shem came Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, uh, and Jacob had a son named Judah.

Yesterday we began with the first part, today we begin with the second section.

Chapter 32, verse 7. zecher yimei selam, recall in the olden days, binu shnei zderveder, contemplate in the years of the generation, sha'ala in the generation and the generations, meaning the generation of Enosh, referring to the generation of Noach, sha'ala vidcha v'yagetcha, ask your father, meaning the prophets, and he will tell you about God's promise, The elders, you inquire by your elders, which is the sages, and they will tell you.

about the events in the past.

Let's see how Rashi explains it.

And among all the workmanship of mine hands, there has not been so great weakness as among five brethren.

but behold their sins shall be upon the hands of their fathers sin shall be their father and misery shall be their doom and the whole heaven shall weep over them even all the wicked shall mine hands wherefore should not the heavens weep seeing they shall suffer but behold these which find hands that are upon shall perish in the floods and behold i will shut them up the prison have i prepared for them and that which i have chosen hath prayed before her face therefore ye suffered for their sins and as much as they will repent in the day that my chosen shall return unto me and until that day they shall be in torment wherefore for this shall their efforts sweep yea in all the worship of mine hands and they came to pass that the lord spake unto enoch and told enoch all the doings of the children of men wherefore enoch knew and looked upon the wickedness and the misery and wept and stretched forth his arms and his heart swelled wide as eternity and his bowels yearned and all eternity shook and Enoch also sought Noah and his family, that the posterity of all the sons of Noah should be saved with their temporal salvation.

Wherefore Enoch saw that Noah had built an ark, and that the Lord smiled upon it, and held it in his own hand, but upon the restitude of the wicked the floods came and saw them up.

And as Enoch saw this, he had bitterness of soul, and wept over his brethren, and said unto the heavens, I will refuse to be comforted.

But the Lord said unto Enoch, Wait up your heart, and be glad, and look.

And it came to pass that Enoch looked, and from Noah he wearied all the families of the earth, and he cried unto the Lord, saying, When shall the day of the Lord come?

Hey, it's Bobby Bones.

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Genesis 6, and we're just going to read from verse 8 down to the end of the chapter, if you'd like to follow along in your Bibles.

The Bible reads, "...but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." These are the generations of Noah.

Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.

And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.

And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt.

For all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.

God said unto Noah, the end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

And it's always a blessing to see his hand of faithfulness there.

all right trust you have your bibles there this morning and would you turn with me please to genesis and chapter 9 the book of genesis chapter 9 we're continuing with our sunday morning series through this very foundational book of the bible foundational because it is the first book of the bible and so important that we get a firm foundation laid down in the book of genesis that we might then have a good understanding of the rest of scripture Well, this morning we're dealing with Noah's final chapter.

That's the title of the message this morning, Noah's final chapter.

And we come to the covenant that God makes with Noah after the flood.

You remember that after Noah and his family left the ark, Noah erected an altar to the Lord and made sacrifice.

And then God now reveals in chapter 9 his covenant with Noah.

But as part of this final chapter, we're also going to see Noah's compromise at the end of his life and a very sad ending in many ways to the life of a man of God that was otherwise of good reputation.

And there's some warnings for us there about that this morning.