Havasu Christian Church
July 26, 2026
Character Studies in Genesis
Genesis 6:1-
“Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord” (part 1)
INTRO: Today, we begin our study of Noah. He’s kind of a “big deal.” Not because he was perfect, but because he was faithful. Hebrews 11:7 (NASB95) By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.
Before we deal with Noah, it makes sense to look at what kind of world Noah lived in.
- The world wasn’t so bad, but the people were terrible!
Genesis 6:1-7 Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them,
2 that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.
3 Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”
4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.
5 Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
6 The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.
7 The LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.”
- People multiplied!
- As we’ve seen previously, people lived a LONG time. And as we’ve seen previously, people were fertile for a long time.
- They had “Other sons and daughters…”
- Not just the ones in the genealogies.
- This leads to a population explosion that has been estimated on the low end in the millions… and at the high end, in the Billions!
- There are a LOT of people!
- They are healthy.
- There hasn’t been time for radiation to degrade people’s D.N.A.
- They are almost certainly very intelligent.
- We already have people inventing musical instruments, and learning to work metals, including iron.
- The ark may have been held together with wooden pegs, but it didn’t have to be.
- The “Sons of God” begin taking “daughters of men” as wives.
This verse has given lots of people room to let their imaginations run free!
- Some folks think that fallen angels (demons) are mating with human women.
- Nowhere in Scripture are demons ever described as anything but disembodied spirits.
Matthew 22:30 (NASB95) “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
- Other people take this to mean that godly men saw pretty women and decided “What she believes doesn’t really matter.”
- But it did matter!
- This was your partner, working with you to build a life.
- This was your partner, raising your children.
- If you are “pulling in different directions” it’s hard to get anywhere!
2 Corinthians 6:14–18 (NASB95) Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?
15 Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever?
16 Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said,
“I WILL DWELL IN THEM AND WALK AMONG THEM;
AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE.
17 “Therefore, COME OUT FROM THEIR MIDST AND BE SEPARATE,” says the Lord.
“AND DO NOT TOUCH WHAT IS UNCLEAN;
And I will welcome you.
18 “And I will be a father to you,
And you shall be sons and daughters to Me,”
Says the Lord Almighty.
- Somehow these guys “didn’t get the memo.”
- This intermarrying of the godly and the ungodly continues.
- From this come the Nephilim… Giants.
- Apparently, both groups (Cain and Seth’s descendants) carry a recessive gene for humans of extraordinary size.
- Someone on the Ark carried these genes as well.
- Later, we will see Goliath and others.
- In our own time, the “watered down version of that gene” still shows up from time to time in guys like Shaquille O'Neal.
- In his prime, he was 7’1’’ tall and weighed in at 325 pounds.
- God starts a countdown!
- 120 more years is all God’s going to take!
Verse 3 Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”
- Even with this countdown, we see God’s mercy.
- “I’ll give them another 120 years to repent.”
- Why did God come to this conclusion?
Verse 5-7 Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.”
- Men were wicked!
- How wicked were they?
- Evil was all they thought about!
- What an awful time and place in which to live!
- You would live like a prey animal… in constant fear.
- But you would also be planning how to hurt those around you. Maybe even your own family.
- All this evil grieved God to the point that He decides to start over!
- And here is where we meet Noah!
- Noah is NOT all the things that everyone else is!
Genesis 6:8-9 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. These are the records of the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God.
- Noah is Righteous!
- He is doing the right things.
- Noah is “blameless in his time.
- Compared to everyone else, he’s near perfect!
- Noah “walked with God!”
- His life reflected his relationship with His God!
- He is living as God would have him live!
- God is pleased with this man.
- If he “walked with God,” why didn’t God “take him up” like He did his Grandpa Enoch?
- God had a job for Noah to do!
- He is going to bring humanity, and the animals, back from the brink of destruction!
- Noah gets a “job description!”
Genesis 6:10-22 Noah became the father of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. 11 Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence. 12 God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.
13 Then God said to Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence because of them; and behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth. 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. 16 “You shall make a window for the ark, and finish it to a cubit from the top; and set the door of the ark in the side of it; you shall make it with lower, second, and third decks. 17 “Behold, I, even I am bringing the flood of water upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life, from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall perish. 18 “But I will establish My covenant with you; and you shall enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. 19 “And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. 20 “Of the birds after their kind, and of the animals after their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, two of every kind will come to you to keep them alive. 21 “As for you, take for yourself some of all food which is edible, and gather it to yourself; and it shall be for food for you and for them.” 22 Thus Noah did; according to all that God had commanded him, so he did.
- Only 12 verses, but boy is there a lot there!
- First, let’s answer a big question… “How long did it take to build the ark?”
From Answersingenesis.org, by, Dr. Tim Chaffey
Why do so many people assume that it took Noah 120 years to build his ark? This idea comes from assumptions drawn from Genesis 6:3, a verse located in the middle of that mysterious and controversial passage about giants (Nephilim) and the sons of God (Genesis 6:1–4). Answers in Genesis does not take an official stance on the identity of the sons of God. For a balanced overview on this subject, see “Battle over the Nephilim.”
Genesis 6:3 states, “Then the Lord said, ‘My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.’” Like the rest of the verses in this passage, the verse’s meaning is disputed. One view sees the 120 years as a countdown to the flood, and based on that understanding, some people have assumed that this is how much time Noah had to build the ark. However, even if the 120 years should be understood as a countdown to the flood, nothing in this verse or its immediate context says that this is when Noah started building the ark. In fact, the ark is not mentioned until Genesis 6:14, and the flood is first mentioned in Genesis 6:17. So the context of Genesis 6:3 has something to do with the sons of God and the Nephilim rather than the construction of the ark.
Some interpreters have assumed that Noah had 100 years to build the ark. This time period is calculated from the following verses.
After Noah was 500 years old, Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (Genesis 5:32)
Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth. (Genesis 7:6)
There was a 100-year period between the time when Noah’s oldest son was born and the flood was unleashed upon the earth. While this is accurate, there is nothing in Scripture to indicate that Noah started building the ark when his oldest son was born.
I believe the Bible provides a couple more hints that allow us to reach a more accurate conclusion than the two views described so far. Immediately after instructing Noah to build the ark and sharing certain details about it, God said, “For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you” (Genesis 6:17–18). This passage seems to indicate that Noah’s sons were already married when God told him to build the ark.
If this reasoning is correct, then the amount of time Noah had to build the ark was considerably less than 100 years (the gap between the birth of his oldest son and the start of the flood). How much less time depends on how long it took for his sons to be born, to grow up, and to get married. It is typical to view Japheth as the oldest son, although Bible translations vary on whether Genesis 10:21 tells us that Shem was the brother of “Japheth the elder” (NKJV, NIV) or whether Shem was “the elder brother of Japheth” (ESV, NET).1 Shem seems to have been born when Noah was 502 or 503, since Genesis 11:10 tells us that Shem was 100 years old when his son Arphaxad was born, and that this occurred two years after the flood. Genesis 9:24 reveals that Ham was Noah’s youngest son, but the text never tells us how much younger he was. For the sake of argument, let’s assume Noah was 505 years old when Ham was born.
Next, we need to know how old the boys were when they married their wives. Since the Bible is silent on this issue as well, we are left to speculate. If we go with a minimum age of 20 years for each of them, this would mean that Noah was approximately 525 years old when his youngest son married. And since the flood began when Noah was 600, this would leave a maximum of 75 years for building the ark.
There is one more detail to consider. The genealogies in Genesis 5 tell us how old the men between Adam and Noah were when their son of record was born. The youngest age listed for any of these men was 65 years old (Mahalelel in Genesis 5:15 and Enoch in Genesis 5:21). Of course, this does not mean they were married when they were 65, but it may indicate that people either matured slower when they lived 900+ years or that for some reason they waited longer to get married. If either of these ideas is correct, then Noah’s sons may have been much older than 20 when they married. If they waited until they were close to 65, then Ham would have married his wife when Noah was about 570 (if our speculation of Ham’s age is accurate). This would leave only about 30 years to build the ark.
Given that there are just too many unknowns related to this topic, it seems best to simply provide a range for the maximum amount of time Noah had to build the ark. Because it seems that Noah’s sons were already married when God gave the command to build the ark and because Noah was likely at least 525 when his youngest son married, then we can tentatively conclude that Noah had about 75 years maximum to build the ark, and it may not have even taken him that long.
- I’m sure that God put a bit more detailed set of plans into Noah’s head, but this is the bones of what God wants him to do.
- Build this Ark. (box)
- “This is how you shall make it:” (Build it to My specifications!)
- Build it out of Gopher wood and coat it inside and out with pitch. (Waterproof it)
- Build it with rooms.
- Length: three hundred cubits. Using an ancient royal cubit of 20.4 inches, the ark is roughly 510 ft. Breadth (width) fifty cubits. The is approximately 85 ft wide. Height thirty cubits. This makes the ark about 51 feet tall.
- With these dimensions, The Ark has a volume of about 1.88 million cubic feet, which is large enough to hold 450 semi-truck trailers.
- There’s plenty of room for everybody.
- Also, you don’t take big, old, animals, you take young breeding stock!
- Make a window for the ark, and finish it to a cubit from the top
- Set the door of the ark in the side of it
- Make it with lower, second, and third decks
- Have your sons help!
- Bring the animals I send you aboard!
- 2 of each…
- Bring plenty of food! All kinds!
- For the animals… and for people!
- Noah took up the challenge!
Genesis 6:22 Thus Noah did; according to all that God had commanded him, so he did. WOW!!!!!
Conclusion: Imagine, coming home and explaining all this to your wife!!! She must have really loved and trusted Noah.
- I guess the first thing to learn from this today is that if you are married to a godly spouse, trust them!
- Be Godly!
- “Walk with Him!”
- Do what God says to do.
- Don’t “modify the blueprints!
- Live for the Lord even when no one else around you is doing so!
- You are a Missionary to the place God has put you!
- They are yours to try to reach!
- Even when the world we live in tries to deny it, the Bible IS TRUE!
- It is God’s Word!
- When it says God told Noah to build a Giant floating zoo, it means exactly that!
- The flood would cover the whole world.
- When the water receded, it would be a very different place!
- Look at God’s world and process what you see through the knowledge of what God says He has done! Don’t trust those who don’t follow God to get it all right!
