The time of building and preparation were done. This devotional reading looks at the command to enter the ark.
Nuggets
- Things happen in the fullness of God’s time.
- God invited Noah and his family to enter the ark.
- Personally, I think the translators have it wrong when they say only Noah was righteous.
We always hear about how Noah was ridiculed by his neighbors for building the ark.
It would be logical. Noah was living his life counterculture to everyone else. Now, he was visibly — and verbally — telling people they will be held accountable for their lifestyles.
When Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of their sinfulness, the townspeople came and harassed Lot. And that was just a couple of hours.
But it doesn’t say that about Noah’s time in God’s Word. It skips 120 years. It goes from build it to get in.
When God was ready, He got the show on the road — or water, in this case.
Let's Put It into Context
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Devotions in the Creation’s Do-Over series
When Everything Was Ready
“When everything was ready, the Lord said to Noah, ‘Go into the boat with all your family, for among all the people of the earth, I can see that you alone are righteous” (Gen. 7: 1 NLT)
Things happen in the fullness of God’s time.
God had a plan. He wanted a redo for the creation He had made. It had become corrupted, and God wanted to cleanse and liberate it.
But it wasn’t something that could happen right then. Oh, it could if God had just gone and done it all.
God doesn’t work that way. He allows things to happen when it is the best time for them to happen.
Time is also allowed to pass to allow God to call us to do His work. In this instance, Noah had to prove his obedience by building (which he may or may not have known what to do) this huge ark (which he may have had no concept of what it was) to withstand a flood (when he had never seen rain).
Noah’s faith stood the test of time and service.
Go into the Ark with Your Family
God invited Noah and his family to enter the ark.
God told Noah when it was time to get into the ark. He didn’t leave Noah to figure it out on his own.
Yes, God calls us to do His work. He then doesn’t turn around and walk off then. He stays with us and leads us.
I am sure, when the ark was completed — and probably several times in between — Noah looked at God’s directions on how to build it (Gen. 6: 14-16). He most definitely did when God said it was time.
Had Noah obediently followed every direction God had given him? Yes, he had, so he could confidently enter the ark.
I wonder what Noah was feeling. He was probably glad that the labor of building the ark was over. The mocking was over, too.
Oh, but I bet Noah’s heart was breaking. He had to have family that was on the outside. Even if he didn’t, he had friends and neighbors.
Tears of Noah’s heart if not tears of his eyes were probably falling like rain.
I like the way Exell put it. He wrote,
“This termination [of building the ark] would inspire a sad but holy pride within his heart. And so Christian service often reviews its work, its calm faith, its patient energy, and its palpable result, with sacred joy, but when it is associated with the judgments of heaven upon the ungodly, the joy merges into grief and prayer. The best moral workman cannot stand unmoved by his ark, when he contemplates the deluge soon to overtake the degenerate crowds around, whom he would fain persuade to participate in the refuge he has built.”
Resource
When God calls us to witness to others as our marching orders say, our success doesn’t hinge on our message being accepted. We just have to be obedient.
It is up to the wicked to choose whether nor not to accept God’s love for us. Just as in the Days of Noah, those who choose against God will suffer the consequences.
Only Noah
We talked about Noah being the only one called righteous. His wife, the triplets, and their wives got to enter the ark, too.
That is logical. The earth would need to be repopulated. God would do that through the family, as He had the first time.
Ever since we talked about this in Genesis 6: 9, I have been mulling around what the rest of the family not being righteous really means. I am not sure I have this figured out, so let’s think it through.
“These are the toldot [accounts] of Noach; Noach was an ish [man] tzaddik (righteous or just] and tamim [complete, wholehearted, blameless] among those of his time, and Noach’s halachah [way to behave or way of walking] was with HaElohim [God]” (Gen. 6: 9 OJB).
That doesn’t say anything about Noah being the only righteous person. It just comments on his spiritual condition, no one else’s.
We talk about it here, too. “And Hashem [God] said unto Noach, Come thou and all thy bais into the tevah (ark); for thee have I found tzaddik [a righteous person or saint] before Me in dor hazeh [this generation]” (Gen. 7: 1 OJB).
Interestingly, if those are put together, Tzaddik Ha-Dor refers to the most righteous of this generation — with the potential of becoming the Messiah.
Back to this generation. Noah was considered a righteous person in this generation but not necessarily the most righteous.
That makes sense to me. Methuselah would have died the year the rain came. He was righteous. When I googled it, AI said that he even helped Noah witness to the wicked about the flood.
But then, it doesn’t evaluate his family’s spiritual condition at all. It doesn’t call them Tzaddikim — righteous ones (plural). (This would be the Hebrew word for Christians.)
The rest of the family may have been righteous; they may not have been. We could say that – whatever they believed of God – they believed in Noah.
But I think they were righteous. God only talked to Noah. To me, that is why the you are righteous is singular, but doesn’t mean only.
If the were not righteous, why were they saved, and others weren’t? Most agree they got the ark ticket because it was Noah’s reward.
I agree and disagree. He hadn’t said it yet, but I would think God blessed those who blessed Noah. “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you” (Gen. 12: 3 NLT).
In other words, God would bestow His divine favor on them. One purpose of building the ark was to save Noah and his family.
I don’t think this would extend to spiritual salvation.
- “But blessed are those who trust in the LORD and have made the LORD their hope and confidence” (Jer. 17: 7 NLT).
- “Then Jesus told him, ‘You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me’” (Jn. 20: 29 NLT).
- “You are blessed because you believed that the Lord would do what he said” (Lk. 1: 45 NLT).
Believing leads to salvation.
- “If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10: 9 NLT).
- “They replied, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, along with everyone in your household’” (Ac. 16: 31 NLT).
Now, that last verse brings us back full circle. Could Noah’s family have gained salvation because Noah did?
Acts 11: 14 talks about the household coming to salvation. “He will tell you how you and everyone in your household can be saved!” (Ac. 11: 14 NLT).
Well, that doesn’t sound like it is a household pardon. Peter would have told everyone in Cornelius’ household the one way to be saved: through believing in Jesus. Believing in Jesus as our Savior and Redeemer is an individual decision.
- “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him. There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son” (Jn. 3: 16-18 NLT emphasis added).
- “Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends” (Rev. 3: 20 NLT emphasis added).
- “For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved” (Rom. 10: 10 NLT emphasis added).
- “If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me” (Jer. 29: 13 NLT emphasis added).
Probably the most appropriate verse for this discussion is Ezekiel 14: 20. “As surely as I live, says the Sovereign LORD, even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were there, they wouldn’t be able to save their own sons or daughters. They alone would be saved by their righteousness” (Ezek. 14: 20).
That verse was talking about the certainty of judgment in Ezekiel’s time. If Noah couldn’t even do it in his time, how can anyone else?
Anyone and everyone who believes. And it isn’t just believing, it is believing wholeheartedly and openly declaring that belief. That’s what leads to salvation.
I don’t really like how the New Living Translation translates John 3: 18. It isn’t that we will be judged, and a sentence be passed. It is we will be judged and condemned if we do not believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and wholeheartedly, openly declared that.
So, I think the family’s spiritual condition was right with God. That allowed them to go forth and multiply is done through the family unit.
Whatever the case, the family’s spiritual condition didn’t reflect on Noah and his success in carrying out the marching orders. Like Enoch, Noah pleased God and walked with Him.
Making the Connections #1
Noah was obedient in building the ark. It took him 120 years, and he never wavered.
But now was D day. The time had come to make the final decision.
Noah and his family still had a choice after all that time. They could get into the ark, or they could stay home and die.
They had until the door was shut on the ark to make their decision.
Look what Spurgeon said about that. He wrote,
“Now it would have been of no use for Noah to have gone on making preparations for his dwelling in the ark: that he had done long enough. Neither would it have done for Noah to go round the ark to survey it again. No longer look at Christ externally, nor survey Him even with a grateful eye for what He has done for others, but come now and commit yourself to Him. There stands the door, and you have to go through it, and enter into the inner chambers, or you will find no safety. Neither would it have been of any use for Noah to go up to the ark and stand against the door and say, “I do not say that I am not going in, and I do not even say that I am not in already; I have got one foot in, but I am a moderate man, and like to be friendly with both sides. I am in and yet not in. If the door was shut I do not know but that it would cut me in halves; but, anyhow, I do not want to be altogether out, and I do not want to be quite in. I should like to stand where I could hurry in as soon as I saw the water coming up; but, still, while there is another opportunity of taking a walk on the dry land I may as well avail myself of it. There is no hurry about it, is there? You see, if a man keeps his finger on the latch of the door he can pop in as soon as ever he sees the first drop of rain descending, or the water coming up anywhere near him; but is there any reason for being so decided all at once? No, that would not do for Noah.”
Resource
That shouldn’t do for us, either.
How many many books have I started to put together of these devotions (8), and how many have I gotten published (0)? What am I waiting for — Christmas?
How many times do we keep one foot in the ark and one foot on the (for now) dry land? But that is just compromising with the worldview.
How many times do we let the water get to our knees before we decide for God? Do we let it get waist high? Head high?
How many times do we keep a hand on the latch so we can flip it when the going gets tough? We want it to be a prosperity gospel, not a relationship in which we are tested and tried.
There’s the door. Use it as a door.
Making the Connections #2
Fuller made a good point. He wrote,
“The righteousness of Noah is repeated, as the reason of the difference put between him and the world. This does not imply that the [favor] shown to him is to be ascribed to his own merit; for whatever he was, he was by grace, and all his righteousness was rewardable only out of respect to Him in whom he believed; but being accepted for His sake, his works also were accepted and [honored].”
Resource
We find favor with God when we have faith and obey Him. The righteousness is tied more to the faith than the obedience.
There is no way we earn anything from God. Everything — grace, mercy, faith, salvation— is all a gift from God. Obedience is how we express we have that. Faith is the first greatest commandment; obedience, the second.
How Do We Apply This?
- Don’t let time run out on you to choose to obey God.
- Evaluate the work you do for God.
- Serve God completely in the way He calls you.
- Hear, believe, and obey.
- Understand we are called to be righteous even in the difficult, sin-filled times.
Resources
Father God. Lord, just as You called Noah into the ark, You call us to You. Help us to heed your call and come as righteous, blameless, and obedient children of Sovereign God.
What do you think?
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