Stephen gave us a case-study on Noah last night, looking at Genesis 6:9-22.
Noah was a righteous man, blameless, who walked faithfully with God (like Enoch.) He was a family man with three sons and three daughters-in-law. He was a unique man, for he was a man of perservering faith, who heard God’s call to do something that must have seemed utterly bizarre and did it faithfully. He was a preacher man (2 Pet 2:5-6), taking the opportunity to preach God’s message to all around him.
God communicates his heart to Noah. He is distressed by all that He sees on the earth and commands Noah to build an ark. Stephen reminded us of the skills in carpentry that would have been required to build a boat that was 450′ long, 75′ wide and 45′ high.
There have been many attempts to reconstruct what the ark must have looked like:
The scale of the boat (30:5:3) has proved to be a scale that produces a seaworthy vessel, as the S.S. Great Britain demonstrates:
How amazing that God knew this long before engineers could demonstrate it and that He was able to make provision for all the animals to come to Noah.
We can think that the story of Noah is just for Sunday School, a ‘nice little story’ about boat-building and animals. It’s a lot more than that. It shows us God’s heart for the world, that judgment will indeed come, that persevering faith and continued work are necessary in God’s kingdom and that God is faithful to do what He promised, even if it takes a lot longer to do that than we expect (some estimate it took Noah between 80 and 120 years to build the ark.)
Where do we stand with God? Where is our walk with God? What do we do when we hear God’s commands? May we be as Noah, obedient and faithful, persevering and diligent in telling others all we have heard from God.