Chapter 1
The First Cruise Ship
The Reading: Genesis 6:1 – 7:24
The Problem:
In the account of Noah, we read that God looked down upon the earth and saw that the wickedness of man was great. And in Genesis 6:6, we read that God “regretted” that He had made man. God’s regret stemmed from His holiness. God knew that man’s sin deserved to be punished, and that He would be required to pour out His wrath against that sin. But because He loves all of mankind, that broke His heart.
The Turning Point:
But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. So God came to Noah and revealed His plan to destroy all flesh, with the exception of Noah and his three sons and their wives. He gave Noah precise instructions for building the ark, and promised to establish His covenant with Noah and his family. Noah didn’t take time to ask all his neighbors what they thought before going into action. He didn’t call for a family meeting, and talk it over with all the relatives. It was simple for him - God commanded, and he obeyed.
Now think about this. Noah and his generation had probably never seen rain before, yet God told Noah to build a large seagoing vessel nowhere near a body of water. Noah’s trust in God was such that he began without delay to prepare the colossal cruise ship. With every step of the construction, he faithfully followed the divine directions God had given him. To build so large a boat, such a one as he had never seen, and to stock it with food for all the living creatures who would come aboard, required a great deal of faith and persistence, hard labor, and personal expense.
The Bible does not specifically say exactly how long it took Noah to build the ark. When Noah is first mentioned in Genesis 5:32, he was 500 years old. When Noah entered the ark, he was 600 years old. The time it took to build the ark would depend on how much time passed between Genesis 6:14, when God commanded Noah to build the ark; and Genesis 7:1, when God commanded Noah to enter the ark. Some scholars teach that it took Noah 120 years to build the ark, based on Genesis 6:3. Others say that it took 100 years, based on Noah’s age in Genesis 5:23 and his age in Genesis 7:6.
Noah must have been preaching repentance to all those who came to mock him. And everyone must have been laughing at him. I imagine some people traveled several miles away from home, just to see the odd structure that Noah was building. But in spite of all such objections and ridicule, Noah completed his God-given task. Having begun to build, he did not stop until he was finished. And, as my father was a carpenter, I am blown away at the thought of all the trees he had to cut down, and the amount of lumber he must have hauled, sawed, sanded, and hammered.
The Miracle That Followed:
Finally, the day came when God told Noah it was time to gather his family together, load up the animals, and enter the ark. God brought the animals to him, and then shut them all in and sealed the door. Immediately the rain began, and at the same time the fountains of the deep burst forth (vs. 11). This indicates there was also massive volcanic and seismic activity. What Noah and his family experienced must have been far worse than the most powerful monsoon storm any of us have ever heard about on the news. The ark would not have just risen steadily, but rather was probably thrown around violently in the turbulent waters.
No doubt as the waters rose, Noah and his family heard the cries of people who were fighting to keep their heads above the water and save their lives. Many of these would have been friends and family with whom they had grown up, and with whom they had pleaded to repent and turn to God – but to no avail.
The rain continued for forty days and nights, until the highest mountain peaks were covered by water and all flesh that had once moved on the earth was dead, including all mankind with the exception of Noah and his family.
The Bottom Line:
At the beginning of Genesis 7, God told Noah and his family it was time to enter the ark, and He called Noah and his family “righteous”. This is the first time in the Bible that anyone had been referred to as being “righteous”. That certainly didn’t imply that Noah was completely sinless, because since the fall of Adam no man has been free from sin except Jesus Christ. Surely, the incident of drunkenness reported in Genesis 9:20-27 wasn’t the only instance of impropriety in Noah’s life. Like all of us, Noah was born with a sin nature.
However, Noah was counted as righteous, just and blameless because of the way he lived by faith (Hebrews 11:7 and Galatians 3:6-9). Having been warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, Noah constructed the ark according to God’s blueprint. Because he was willing to walk by faith and not by sight, and because he acted in obedience by building the ark to God’s exact specifications, Noah became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. And because of this act of obedience, Noah and his family were saved from the flood.
