The backdrop of Noah finding grace in
the eyes of the LORD (Gn 6:8) is the slated destruction of all life from the face
of the earth (Gn 6:7). “Grace” (Heb, chen)
makes its first appearance in our English translations in the chronology of the
earth amidst such deep and vast spiritual darkness (Gn 6:5, 11). This was not
the first act of grace as we see in Gn 3:21, “Also for Adam and his wife the LORD God made tunics of skin, and
clothed them.” What this
wondrous verse of grace reveals to us is that only God can provide a
suitable covering for sin, and this shedding of blood business is a necessary
part of the process (Heb 9:22). The first physical deaths should have been Adam
and Eve; instead, it was two innocent animals, a foreshadowing that God would
someday kill a substitute to redeem sinners, His Son (2 Cor 5:21)….
Grace in Noah’s
context and our context is purely unmerited favor in the face of deserved
wrath. This fearful wrath of the Creator God was soon to be unleashed upon all
life on earth, except for Noah and his family, eight in all (Gn 6:18; 1 Pet 3:20).
The earth was already inundated in spiritual darkness, a world of
demonic-delight. Now there was a devastating flood coming in Divine judgment (Gn
6:17, “I Myself am bringing the
floodwaters on the earth,” emphasis mine); it was 120 years out (Gn 6:3). What
was Noah’s response?
Well, most know that Noah built the ark in the so-called “fables” of Genesis 1-11, but
listen to what the writer of Hebrews said about that which separated Noah and
his family from all of the inhabitants of the earth on that day,
“By faith
Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear,
prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the
world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith” (Heb
11:7, emphasis mine).
Noah was
justified by faith, being graciously and judicially declared righteous by the
Almighty! As a result, he constructed the largest “pulpit” ever known to man (450
x 75 x 45 feet, Gn 6:15); Noah prepared an ark “by which he condemned the
world.” This period of the construction of the Ark was described by the Apostle
Peter as “the Divine longsuffering” (1 Pet 3:20). In 2 Pet 2:5 Noah was
described as “a preacher of righteousness bringing in the flood on the world of
the ungodly.”
All of his
words from the bully pulpit for 120 years unmoved the lost. Peter gives us a perspective of the wrath of God upon the billions of people inhabiting the
antediluvian civilization, “and [He] did not spare the ancient world” (2 Pet
2:5). We see a God of love in Noah and a God of wrath among all the inhabitants
of the earth, minus 8. The same faith that saved Noah and his household is the
same faith that saved Abraham and Sarah. It is the same faith that saved Peter
and his wife, and it is the same faith today that is needed to avoid the wrath
of God that is surely coming.
Our Ark is Jesus (Acts 4:12; Jn 3:16; Rom 6:23; Eph 2:8-9)! Without the Holy Spirit living within the heart, the Creator
God will “not spare.” Please take it to heart! He will not spare you if you are found outside the door of salvation at the time of death! A believer is
only inside the Ark of safety
because of grace, nothing more, nothing less; he or she is only a sinner saved by the
grace of God. As in Noah’s day, anyone found outside the closing of the door is without hope, but what a consolation it is for us who have
the Holy Spirit! We, like Noah, are not appointed to wrath (Rom 5:9; 1 Thes 5:9).
Water was the agent of destruction in Noah’s day, but
the wrath to come upon the earth will be fiery according to John’s Revelation. Nuclear proliferation may be
that Divine agent, but God doesn’t have to use nuclear missiles for they
obviously didn’t have nukes when Sodom, Gomorrah, and the cities of the plain
were destroyed (Gn 19:24, 28; Deut 29:23). The flood of the fiery judgment of God’s
wrath is coming as surely as the watery wrath fell upon the inhabitants of the
earth in Noah’s day.
It makes you wonder about the number of survivors on
the day of the second global wrath of God visiting the earth; there will be a
much larger host than eight. When the dreadful day of His wrath has come, billions
will die; it will not be a time for love for many (Jn 3:36; Rom 1:18; Rev 6:17; 9:18). <><
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