Grace through the Flood

Almost 70 years after Enoch was taken from the earth to the LORD, a great grandson named Noah was born.  We may reasonably conclude that the stories of his great grandfather’s righteousness and faith had a strong spiritual impact on Noah because Scripture tells us, “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God” (Genesis 6:9). Clearly, the character of Enoch inhabited his great grandson, and like his great grandfather he delighted in the company of the LORD.  As He did for Abraham generations later, God took Noah into His confidence and shared His plans with Noah.  “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them” (Genesis 6:13).  God told Noah to build a huge vessel in which He would preserve the life of Noah and his family, along with two of every kind of animal through an earth-shattering flood.  His faith was evident in that “Noah did everything just as God commanded him” (Genesis 6:22).  When Noah’s work was complete God told him, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation” (Genesis 7:1).  How is it that Noah was “found righteous” before the LORD?  Just like Enoch, Noah too was a sinner.  And just like Enoch before him and Abraham after him, Noah was accounted righteous before the LORD by grace through faith.  “By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith” (Hebrews 11:7).

God was gracious to Noah and preserved his life through the flood.  When the rain had ended and the waters receded, God told Noah and his family to leave the ark, along with all the animals.  Just as He had previously blessed Adam and Eve, so now God renewed His blessing to Noah and his family.  “Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth’” (Genesis 9:1). God’s grace would cause Noah and his family to repopulate the earth.  God also granted Noah a new source of food that had not been given to Adam and Eve: “Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything” (Genesis 9:3).  However, in a world where animals could now be killed for food, God carefully defined the doctrine of human exceptionalism.  “And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man. ‘Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man’” (Genesis 9:5-6).  By this gracious proclamation, God would restrain some of the violence that led Him to destroy the pre-flood world.  This decree was based upon the grace that God poured out on us at the time of creation when He made us in His image.  It is the image of God that makes our lives worth preserving and protecting from conception in the womb to natural death.  It is the image of God that gives us unspeakable dignity and inestimable worth. It is the image of God that makes us worth redeeming, even at the price of God’s own Son.  Thus, God’s grace in creation was renewed after the flood, to protect the life of every human being, so that living and believing in Him we might be redeemed by His grace.

The grace of God would be revealed in an enduring way through the covenant that God made with Noah and his family after the flood.  “And God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.  Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life” (Genesis 912-15).  Although the wickedness of mankind would increase and multiply with the repopulation of the earth, God promised to be gracious and never again destroy all people with a flood.  Every rainbow in the sky, then, is a sign, first to God to remind Him of His gracious promise to us, but the rainbow is also to us, to remind us that God keeps His promises.  He is faithful, and because of His grace we know that we will be spared the fate of Noah’s generation.  Just as God made gracious provision for Noah and his family to be saved, so He has also made provision for our salvation.  “God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also” (1 Peter 3:20-21).  Just as God saved Noah and his family through the waters of the flood, so He has graciously saved us through the water of Holy Baptism.  In this life saving flood our sins were washed away.  Every application of water to our bodies, therefore, should be as rich a reminder of the grace of God as is every rainbow in the sky.  

Copyright by the Author.