Noah did everything just as God commanded him.
GENESIS 6:22
Do you ever think about what you might want written on your tombstone as an epitaph, or said at your memorial service? What greater tribute could be made than the qualities of godliness that Moses attributes to Noah?
God watched in horror as the human race degenerated right before his eyes. All mankind – the people of the earth he created – were now in rebellion 24/7. Violence was rampant. And God despaired at what he saw, he was in pain, and something dramatic had to be done. Earth needed a reboot.
But what about Noah? He couldn’t be lumped in with everybody else, could he? God is just, as Abraham reminded him:
Far be it from you to do such a thing–to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike.
Far be it from you!
Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
GENESIS 18:25
Spurgeon contrasts Enoch with his grandson Noah:
We may take pleasure in thinking of Noah as a kind of contrast to Enoch. Enoch was taken away from the evil to come: he saw not the flood, nor heard the wailing of those who were swept away by the waterfloods.
His was a delightful deliverance from the harvest of wrath which followed the universal godlessness of the race. It was not his to fight the battle of righteousness to the bitter end; but by a secret rapture he avoided death, and escaped those evil days in which his grandson’s lot was cast.
Noah is the picture of one who is the Lord’s witness during evil days, and lives through them faithfully, enduring unto the end. It was his to be delivered from death by death. The ark was, so to speak, a coffin to him: he entered it, and became a dead man to the old world; and within its enclosure he was floated into a new world, to become the founder and father of a new race.
As in the figure of baptism we see life by burial, so was it with this chosen patriarch; he passed by burial in the ark into a new life.
In Noah we see those who will engage in the conflict, and bear themselves bravely amid backsliding and apostasy, until they shall see the powers of evil trodden under their feet as straw is trodden for the dunghill. The fire-flood will devour the wicked, and only the righteous shall inherit the new earth, wherein dwells righteousness.
These are evil days, and judgement is inevitable. As Jackson Randall preaches this coming Sunday, may we be given the grace required to stand firm, persevering to the very end.
You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God,
you will receive what he has promised.
For, “In just a little while, he who is coming will come
and will not delay.”
And, “But my righteous one will live by faith.
And I take no pleasure in the one who shrinks back.”
But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed,
but to those who have faith and are saved.
HEBREWS 10:36-39