Build Yourself an Ark

© Curtis Forbes
www.protonministries.com

     In the days of Noah it had never rained up until the flood. All the moisture came from the ground up (much the evening dew, but much heavier), so building this huge ark looked like a totally ridiculous idea! Much could be said about this alone, but I would like to point out something right here that I have never heard anyone speak on before. When the Lord told Noah to build the ark he said “Thou shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.” That seems like a pretty clear open and shut case right?… not so fast! The word pitch here is the Hebrew word “kaphar” which means : “to cover, purge, make an atonement, make reconciliation, cover over with pitch, to coat or cover with pitch, pacify, propitiate, to atone for sin, make atonement for, to cover over, atone for sin and persons by legal rites, to be covered over, to be covered” 

     You can easily see that the emphasis is on covering, atonement, reconciliation, and it is very predominate. In fact, this word is used as “atonement” 71 times! It is used as purge, reconciliation, reconcile, forgive, purge away, a few times each, but it was only used one time as pitch! The fact that it is used 71 times as atonement speaks volumes! The main reason why I am making such an emphasis on this, is that in the Old Testament the atonement for sin was only a temporary covering, it was a “covering over” with the blood of animal sacrifices like bulls, goats, and doves. This was not a permanent removing of sin - “by grace through faith” - like it is in the New Testament. Let's substitute the word pitch for atonement here, and it starts to makes a lot of sense. This would mean that the ark would have been covered inside and out with “atonement“.  That means that when God shut the door, everyone in the ark was “sealed” in the “atonement“.  

     For this very reason Peter said it was a figure (type, symbol, representation) of baptism in 1Pet 3:21 “The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ:” Look at the Amplified version “And baptism, which is a figure [of their deliverance], does now also save you [from inward questionings and fears], not by the removing of outward body filth [bathing], but by [providing you with] the answer of a good and clear conscience (inward cleanness and peace) before God [because you are demonstrating what you believe to be yours] through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

     They (the eight saved in the ark) never touched the water, and if they never touched the water, they certainly were not immersed in the water... so if they were not baptized (immersed) in water - then what were they baptized in??? They were literally baptized or immersed in the “kaphar”- the atonement! This is the representation that now saves us in the New Testament. Being baptized in the grace of God by faith, having the ability to answer God with a good clear conscience, and an inward cleanliness with peace. In doing so we are demonstrating what we believe is ours through the resurrection of Christ from the dead!

     In the New Testament, this is a tremendous picture / symbol / representation of how the grace of God works. To better understand Grace, it is the divine influence of God upon our hearts. And it is by the constant alignment and flow of this influence upon our heart that we are “saved”. I have to be very careful not to open a can of worms here and not get caught up in a theological landmine but this is made quite clear in Matt 24:13 “But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved” and in Mark 13:13b “…but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.” we see that in Rom 10: 9 - 10 “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” 

     Both words “confess” and “believe” here are neither past or present tense and they are both verbs. I like to call this “perpetual present tense”. This confession with your mouth and believing with your heart is a perpetual lifestyle - not a one time 30 second prayer! We are not doing works to “get saved” but because we are a new man, our words and our works are different than the world.  So my point to all of this is that we need to choose wisely the things, and even the people that we keep around us and how they influence us, how they are effecting our minds and our souls. How are these things and people influencing the way you believe in your heart, and influencing the words that come out of your mouth? (your daily on-going confession)  

     Whether you admit it or not, everything influences you in one way or another! We have to choose what we will allow around us, what we will participate in, and what influences will we will drink into our very soul. I admit, there are some influences in our lives that we cannot control… we do not have control over everything in the world. What if you walk into a store to pay for some gas and there is secular music playing that is full of foul language or there is a few people in the front of the store telling a dirty joke? What I am talking about here, is how you respond to all of this within your heart. Do we take joy in these things and entertain them in our heart or do we quickly put them out of our mind.  

     We are in this world but we are not of it. Even Jesus spent time with worldly people but it was for the sake of sowing and imparting a kingdom culture into the people that he was with, not to entertain himself and feed his soul with their ungodly culture. I look at this like the old saying goes “you are what you eat” - whatever you willfully take into your mind/soul, you will reproduce that very same thing - you do not have a choice about it! Everything reproduces after it’s own kind (law of seed time and harvest) - even the words of our mouth have a very profound effect upon our own soul as well as the environment in which we live in. The words we speak influence the things we believe, and the things we believe literally form our cultures. Then our beliefs and our culture in return, help to form our words and then we are receiving whatsoever we say Mark 11:23 

     This is an awesome process if we are being influenced by the right things, but if we are believing the wrong things we are going to reproduce the wrong words, we are going to receive the negative harvest of what we are saying. This is why I believe it is so important to have the right things around us, to help foster the right believe systems. We need to surround ourselves with as much grace (the divine influence of God upon our heart) as possible. The whole purpose of what I am saying here is to have a clean conscience toward God. How many times have you entertained your mind with a movie that as a Christian you really should not have watched or music that you really should not have listened to; and then when you go to spend time in prayer and try to enter into the presence of God and feel hindrances. You may feel like something is in the way blocking your efforts and you feel like your prayers are bouncing off the ceiling. 

     I have even had people tell me before that they felt like the heavens over their head were like brass and the earth beneath their feet were like iron. They could not figure out why they struggled so bad in prayer and felt so ineffective, but yet they had a bunch of worldly garbage in their life that they needed to get rid of but had not done so! People in this position are putting stumbling stones and snares in front of their own path! 

     Here’s what happens; people feast their soul on the ways of the world, then (when) they get ready to pray, there are all these unruly thoughts and then they wrestle around with all sorts of condemnation and even fear. They feel like they are unholy and God is somehow withholding himself from them or he is even mad at them for some reason when in fact none of this is true… the Lord is always right there waiting for us to communicate and fellowship with Him! “Draw nigh to God and He will draw nigh to you. cleanse your hands you sinners and purify your hearts you double minded” (James 4:8) Notice that we have to make the effort to draw nigh to Him First! 

     When we surround ourselves as much as possible with the grace of God (the divine influence of God upon our hearts) we allow His influence to have a very powerful effect on us. Then when we go to communicate with the Lord and have fellowship with Him, there seems to be a phenomenal liberty in the spirit, it is like there are no limits! No heavens of brass! It is not because we are so perfect and so flawless … it simply means that we, to some degree, have begun to eliminate the things that were getting in the way of our spiritual liberty. “Where the there spirit of the lord is there is liberty” (2 Cor 3:17)  

     Build yourself an ark, surround yourself with the things of God and allow His grace, His divine influence, to saturate your heart, it will change your fellowship with the Lord as well as your fellowship with people. If we can learn to practice this on a daily basis, our fellowship with the Lord would seem much richer and fuller, much more satisfying! My own life has been deeply effected and transformed by this principle. If you will make the effort to be faithful and do this consistently… it will change you life!

Curtis Forbes

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