Monday, April 12, 2021

REHEARSAL FOR THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD

  Noah found grace… but was building the Ark “grace” or “tribulation?” Did Noah find grace and Grace leave him? No! He found grace and Grace remained with him. How could he have built such as Ark without grace. There is no record of his sons assisting in the Construction of the Ark. By the grace of God, from Noah to them, they were allowed on the Ark.

  Just as temptation begets sin and sin “grows” on the person until they are choked to death, [i] grace grows once it is planted. Once grace is found, simply, “He giveth more grace.” [ii] Just as Adam had life breathed unto him by grace, and Adam shared his newly acquired grace with Eve, Noah found grace and shared it with his family. For a time, they were safe because of the grace that their father found. What happened to Adam when grace was bestowed upon him? He became the image of God. God breathed the same Holy Spirit unto Adam that He breathed unto His Son, Jesus, at His baptism. Noah had grace breathed unto him because he was open to it.

  Then, what did Jesus do? He breathed life unto those who follow Him. Jesus found grace at His baptism, and thereafter grace left him and entered others. “Grace” is the Virtue that Jesus lost when He healed and saved. When Jesus died, he gave up the Ghost and rested on the seventh day — the Sabbath. Just as God worked for six days when He generated mankind, He worked for mankind for six days — Palm Sunday through Good Friday and rested on the seventh day. In the creation, God generated mankind; during passion week of the Passover, God regenerated mankind. Indubitably Adam was one of the first to rise from the grave on the “eighth day” or what is called “Easter Sunday.”

  On the Sabbath, Jesus ceased His ministry. His work was “finished” and He “gave up the Ghost” [iii] When Jesus gave up His Ghost, He felt all the virtue that he had, had gone from Him just as with the woman with the blood issue when she was healed. Jesus lost a small, almost undetectable, amount of virtue gone when she was healed, but with the healing of the nations, Jesus lost all His virtue, until life was exhumed from Him. God breathed life unto mankind in the beginning, and mankind breathed life out of Jesus at the crucifixion.

  That was horrible ingratitude for the One who made all of Adam’s kind. What did they do to God when Jesus died in the cross? Remember that the premise of Christianity is to diminish mankind and exalt God? The first thing that happened after all animal kind was saved on earth is that Noah built an altar to God to exalt Him! All the animals did, some by dying, to wit: “Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar” (Gen 8:20).

  Clean animals represented animal kind, and exalted God by giving up their breath of life. God had saved all breathing life, including the beasts that breathe. [iv] Soon after, Noah did the reasonable thing: he made the sacrifice to exalt God. God gave abundant grace; He lost tremendous Virtue in flooding the world to preserve what He had made. With that done, God would need to rest again. At the end of forty days, the water rescinded to the depths. God had breathed “Living Water” to float them to safety, and once the work was done, He gave up the Living Water. The Spirit of God was given up when His work was finished. The Holy Ghost supported the Ark, not the water, because He is the Living Water!

  Of course, it was not merely turbulent flowing water which flowed from the “river” of God that saved, but His loss of Virtue. Goodness flowed from God to mankind just as in the beginning!

  God had grace on dominant man and mankind’s soon-to-be meat. For the first time, meat could be eaten. [v] Because God preserved animal life, mankind would preserve them for food. Hence, animal kind must be revered but not worshiped. They would be used to worship, though, throughout hisory. When the Hebrews sacrificed animals, it was sacrificing their own preservation, in that they were the life-giving meat until Jesus was born; then it was His Flesh that was “meat.”

  Noah exalted God at the altar he built. He would kneel at the altar in humility. He did not preserve mankind; God did. Thus, Noah diminished himself when he exalted God, and He did so on behalf of the other animals that breathed like him.

  Water was important because air-breathing animals cannot breathe water. God saved them from losing the breath that He had breathed unto them. Water is not soterial, but destructive. God uses water to perish; not to preserve.

  Noah was honoring and blessing God who had blessed them. He also did so by an animal sacrifice. It was not time yet for Noah to pick up his cross and follow Jesus, but he did the next best thing. He provided a valuable animal for the sacrifice just as righteous Abel had years before. In the end, the sacrifice that Noah made from the Holy Mountain would be repeated:

And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, “Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.” (Rev 5:13)

  That was the same as Noah was doing. He did it on behalf of him, his family, and all the life-breathing creatures. “Every creature” that breathed life was represented before the altar that Noah built, and in the end, the altar is then a “throne.” God had been on that boat. The Lamb that Noah sacrificed was killed rather than Jesus whose hand was on the rudder, working hard to save His creatures.

  What happened on Passover Sabbath? Because of blood on the Cross, all God’s creatures were passed over except for one — His only Son. Jesus was the Passover Lamb. The forty days on the Ark represent the forty days of Lent when Christians sacrifice for the lamb. They often give up meat, and the same occurred on the Ark. They would lift-up Jesus by keeping the lamb for the offering.

  On the other hand, at the Christian Passover, God invisibly lifted-up man by Him bearing the “Ark.” The Ark, this time, is the heavy Cross that Jesus would bear. We think of mankind lifting-up Jesus on the Cross when they hoisted it from the earth. Well, it was neither Jews nor Gentiles that lifted the Cross; it was God. He Willed it to be lifted and like a staged play, those who did not know the script, lifted it as if in a performance. Jesus validated that when He said, “They know not what they do.” [vi]

  Now look at what God did; He rehearsed the Passion Play:

And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth(Gen 7:17)

  The waters were troubled. That represents tribulation. Just like Jesus would be with the Temptations of Christ, Satan troubled the ones on the boat for forty-days, likely without food as they fasted during “Lent.” Jesus would provide His body — the Bread of Life. They would need nothing to eat because they had Jesus on board.

  He closed the door to the Ark. Why would He not be with them on the Ark to save? It is implied later that Jesus was on the Ark because the Mercy Seat of God was on the Ark of the Covenant. Not only that, but Jesus was with the apostles when they were preserved from the waters of the storm. [vii]

  Again, water was in the boat, and was about to perish the apostles, but Jesus on board preserved their lives! That too is a developed picture of the Ark.

  Now back to the Cross. It is always Living Water from the Cross that life is saved. The Ark was the “Cross” for Noah and mankind. Even the wooden members which supported the hull would be shaped like a Cross. The waters “bare up he ark.” It was God’s “hands” that bare the Ark just as Jesus would bear the Cross. Then, when the Holy Mountain was reached, the ark was “lift up above the earth.” That is a picture, or a prelude, to the Cross, to be “lift up above the earth.” Again, it was not the soldiers who lifted the Cross anymore than the water gets the credit for lifting up the Ark. God did it both times. He lifts-up and the nature of man is to put down.

  God “bare the Ark” and “lifted it” on the Holy Mountain, just as Jesus bare the Cross and lifted it on the Holy Mount Calvary. The story of Noah and the Ark was an early Passion Play that Shem should have observed more closely, as the father of the Jewish Semites!

  Now you know the story — the Greatest Story ever told from beginning to ending. The “final bow” of gratitude for the Great Performance has not been done yet because the “play” goes on! When is it over? When all life-breathing animals do the “Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power … unto Him that sitteth upon the throne!”

(picture credit: Pinterest; "Jesus Lifting the Cross")





[i] Jas 1:14-15

[ii] Jas 4:6

[iii] John 19:30

[iv] Gen 7:15

[v] Gen 9:3

[vi] Luke 23:34

[vii] Luke 8:23-25

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