Noah Found Grace
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“But Noah found favor in
the eyes of the LORD” (Gen. 6:8). God
saw that the evil of man’s heart was rampant. God responded with a verdict. The
entire human race must be exterminated. “But Noah!” The small words of the
Bible many times make the greatest impact. Here is the one exception. “But
Noah” is in contrast to an entire civilization of corrupt people. Every
living thing in which was breath was about to die. “But Noah!” Though it is extremely
difficult for our human minds to grasp precisely why God would destroy all of
mankind, He reserves the right to be God. His wisdom and the ways that He brings about His justice
are beyond us (Rom. 11:33). God
always provides an exemption from judgment. He will always preserve a line of
grace. Noah became the recipient of God's grace. The Hebrew word for “grace”
here is “chan,” favor. There is absolutely no explanation of
why Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. God simply chose to set His
love upon him. Grace is that which depends entirely upon God. Grace is the
work of God on man's behalf. Grace has absolutely nothing to do with
man. Man can never do anything
to earn or deserve God’s favor. But
Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. That’s it! That’s all we
have. God,
through Noah, is going to preserve humanity to fulfill His promise to bring
the Seed of the woman into the world (Gen. 3:15). “These are the records of
the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time;
Noah walked with God” (Gen 6:9). Noah’s Faith Noah was “a righteous man.” He was right
before God. He had evidently responded to God’s favor by mental attitude faith.
He had not been given a right standing with God by anything of his flesh. God
responds to faith and faith only
(Heb. 11:6). Faith is the
channel through which one attains a right standing before Him. “But to the one who does
not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted
as righteousness” (Rom. 4:5). “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” (Heb. 11:7).
Noah’s
faith was placed in the right object. The object was God’s command to build
an ark. By faith Noah built an ark.
The ark would preserve the race of human beings through whom God would send
His seed into the world. Though Noah did not see the Lord Jesus Christ in
that floating barge, He was there nonetheless. What
does it mean that Noah was “blameless in his time”? The King James translates
the Hebrew phrase, “perfect in his
generations.” This
could imply that Noah had not been corrupted by the angelic infiltration of
the human race (Gen. 6:1-4). Noah was pure in his physical generations. God
preserved the uncorrupted
human race that would eventually lead to the Jews. Through them He would come
into the world. But it could also mean simply that Noah had found grace in
the eyes of the Lord and responded by faith and by living a right lifestyle. Noah
walked (halak -
synonym of peripateo in the Greek) with God. Like
Enoch, Noah had an intimate relationship with God. Walk is to "go on continually." It is a word
that points to a quality of life.
“By
faith, Noah.” Noah believed God for things that He had never seen before.
There was no precedent for the things that happened to him. He had never heard of a flood! He had never seen
rain. He had no idea what an ark was or what it was supposed to do. But Noah
believed God! “Noah became the father
of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth” (Gen. 6:10). Every
member of the human race came from these three people just as the
pre-Noachian flood's generation came from Cain and Seth. The
Corrupt Human Race “Now the earth was corrupt
in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence” (Gen.
6:10). (See “The Attack of the Angelic Realm.”) Man
is filled continuously with the lusts of the flesh. God knows every thought
of every person who has ever lived. He is the only one who does. God judges based
on a thorough knowledge of all the facts. “O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You
know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar.
You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with
all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O LORD, You
know it all. You have enclosed me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon
me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain
to it” (Psa. 139:1-6). The
human race was “filled with violence.” “Filled” is a Hebrew word which means
to be filled to the brim, to fill to overflowing. There is no room for any
more. Matthew 25 explains that the days just prior to the second coming of
Jesus Christ will be like the days recorded here. History is cascading helplessly toward this ultimate
end. “God looked on the earth,
and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the
earth. 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. Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood; you
shall make the ark with rooms, and shall cover it inside and out with pitch’”
(Gen. 6:10-12). The
word “ark” should be translated “chest,” like a cedar chest. This boat was to be a barge designed
for floating, not a ship meant for sailing. Kapher God
never judges in any generation without giving adequate information concerning
the judgment and providing a way of escape. But He gives only one way to escape. The ark represented the only way to life, the
only way to be delivered, the only way of salvation. Every
member of the human race was either going to be in the ark and saved, or off
the ark and lost. There would be no other option. There was no “Plan B.” God
always allows time for a change of mind. In this case, he gave the people 120 years to change their
minds (Gen. 6:3). Peter
insinuates that Jesus Christ Himself made a proclamation through Noah to that
generation (1 Pet. 3:19-20). God
instructed Noah to cover the ark inside and out with pitch. The “pitch was to keep the water
out! “Pitch” is the Hebrew word
"kapher." We pronounce it
"kippur." This is the word translated
"atonement" or covering.
The people were safe in the ark because of the kapher. The
ark is in many ways a symbol for Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ became our kapher; our covering for sin. Jesus Christ immerses Christians into
His body (1 Cor. 12:13). After being
placed into Christ, we are sealed in Him by the Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:13-14).
The Holy Spirit becomes our kapher. “This is how you shall make
it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and
its height thirty cubits. 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” (Gen. 6:15-16). I am
indebted to Dr. John Whitcomb and Dr. Henry Morris for their excellent work
in the book, The Genesis Flood, from which we learn these details
of the ark: A cubit is 17.5 inches, therefore the ark was 437.5 feet long,
72.92 feet wide, 43 feet high, and had three decks. Based upon that size, it would contain 1,400,000 cubic
feet. There was room available for 522 standard livestock railroad cars. It
would be almost impossible to capsize this huge barge. One
Door The
ark had only one door. There was
only one way in! God has
provided only one way to life, the Lord Jesus Christ. Only by personal faith
in Him can we escape death. “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other
name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
No one comes to the Father but through Me’” (John. 14:6). Sources
New American Standard Bible Chester McCalley The Genesis Flood; John Whitcomb, Henry
Morris Brown, Driver, and Briggs Hebrew
Definitions Bible Knowledge Commentary Old Testament |
When God slammed
the door on the entire race, why did He choose to save Noah and his
family? |