Genesis 31 - Noah and the Ark

God's word is from Genesis chapter 6, verses 9 to 22.

 

“These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark 300 cubits, its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits. Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above, and set the door of the ark in its side. Make it with lower, second, and third decks. For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground, according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive. Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten, and store it up. It shall serve as food for you and for them.” Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.”  

Amen.

 

Noah: Righteous Man or Recipient of Grace?

At the beginning of today's reading, it says Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. For that reason, it's easy for us to simply think that since Noah was righteous and blameless, we too must become righteous and blameless like Noah to escape God's punishment, such as the Great Flood.

 

However, as we discussed last time, this verse is actually the result of verse 8. In verse 8, we read that Noah found grace, or received grace, in the eyes of the Lord. The conclusion of Genesis 6:1-8 was that Noah received grace from God. And the very first word of that verse was 'But', showing that this verse had the opposite meaning to the preceding content. That is, it explained how corrupt, depraved, and rebellious the humans of that era were, and immediately following, in Genesis 6:8, the word that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord is proclaimed.

 

It was God's word that Noah was righteous, unlike them, and blameless, unlike them. But before the story of Noah's righteousness appears, the verse attached as its cause is precisely 'Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord'. Therefore, as a result, it says Noah was righteous and blameless. From this perspective, we can see that Noah did not receive such praise from God because he was originally righteous and blameless, but rather received this designation based on verse 8 preceding it.

 

In other words, because he received God's grace, he could become a righteous man.

 

The Paradox of Grace: A Gift Hard to Receive Because It's Free

The word grace means receiving something without any qualification, having done nothing myself. I didn't deserve it at all, yet something came to me. That's why this concept of grace in the Bible is not easy for all of us to understand.

However, on the other hand, it's also a very easy concept to accept. Because we all tend to like free things. You might remember the older generation saying, 'If it's free, I'd even drink lye.' It was really like that. Back then, it was a time of poverty, with truly nothing much to eat. In such times, if something was given for free, it was just good.

 

But God says He gives this precious grace for free. He says He gives it to us without cost. Yet why do we fail to understand such grace and even dislike it? Because we want to find the reason for what we receive from God within ourselves. Because I prayed to God, or because I worshiped God, and because I lived a relatively good life on this earth, I want to receive God's gift holding onto the fact that I have achieved something. I want to thank God for giving me something I deserve, and I also want to say that I did my part for God to receive it.

 

The Root of Sin: The Desire to Be Like God

But the Bible declares that we are not beings who can go before God by what we do, what we have, or any other condition. Nevertheless, because God says He gives us that grace, we constantly ask God questions. The question is, why on earth do You give me such grace? And along with this, we constantly want to show that we too have done this much before God.

 

This might be one of the most persistent problems holding us back in faith. And this is closely related to the root of sin. Since our origin is God, we think we are indebted to God for living, and we reject that. We think we might be indebted to people, but we don't want to be indebted to God. Why? Because I must sit in God's place.

 

So we want to lift our faces before God. We want to boast about ourselves. And we often live missing the fact that this is the deepest nature of sin.

 

The Ark: Another Evidence of Grace

Last sermon time, we examined together how Noah's entire story is the result of God's grace, and how that grace manifested through Noah. And today, I want to delve deeper into the contents of that grace.

Continuing from last week, we can see that Noah's story contains another element of God's grace. It is the fact that not only Noah but also the ark he was building was the result of God's grace. Because God had Noah build an ark, and through it, he was saved.

 

The Core of Noah's Story: Jesus Christ

And we must be able to see Jesus Christ through this story of Noah, not just the fact that Noah received grace, was considered righteous, and thus survived the flood. When we first encounter the story of Noah, various questions arise. One of them is the part where countless people sinned, but because Noah was righteous, God had him build an ark, and only his family survived.

 

So, it's easy to think the conclusion of Noah's story is that we too must become righteous before God like Noah to survive. Let me ask you this question, please try to answer. Noah survived the flood in the ark. Did Noah then live forever without dying? No. Noah eventually died too. Then, could we reach this conclusion? Noah, who would eventually die anyway, merely postponed his time of death a little by getting on the ark.

 

What meaning does this have then? If you understand this ark story only in terms of the flood happening and only Noah surviving, you inevitably miss the real core message God wants to convey to you through this ark story. If Noah's ark story is not connected to Jesus Christ, that is, if Noah does not become a shadow of Christ, and through Noah's story, it fails to explain what God's grace that saves us all is like, and how God loves us, then Noah's story will merely be a tale of a family who escaped death from the flood by ark, only to eventually end their lives in death.

 

So, what is the crucial core we must know from Noah's story? Where and how should the story of Noah in today's passage end? It is precisely Jesus Christ. Only when Noah's story today ends with Jesus Christ do we fully understand the core message God intends to convey to us, the readers, through this story. Jesus Christ came into this world as the second Noah, and the final Noah. And that Jesus Christ, as we know, is the one who embraces us within that ark, much like Noah's ark, and leads us as people of God's kingdom.

 

'My' Story in Christ

And the important point we must know is that Noah thus ends in Jesus Christ, and we must become one with that Noah whom Jesus completed by becoming one with Him in Jesus Christ. It's not just about receiving lessons from Noah in the Old Testament, but we must know the fact that through the grace by which Jesus Christ, whom Noah foreshadowed, died for us and contained us in that ark, we have now become one with Christ.

 

Christ must become all our content. Seen that way, when you read this Old Testament, you should read it not just as Noah's story, but through Christ, as my story. In other words, in today's passage 'Noah was a righteous man', you should insert your own name instead of Noah. That is precisely why Noah's event is not just Noah's event but the event of all of us. Because through Noah's event, we can see who we ourselves are.

 

What is Righteousness? Righteousness Through Faith

Therefore, the word 'righteous' in today's passage becomes extremely important. The word righteous, in other words, means becoming righteous because one received grace. In essence, it's a story acknowledging that I myself am not righteous. Then why did the Bible record Noah as righteous?

 

Since Adam sinned and departed from God, all humans have lived under sin. Noah too was born under Adam. Therefore, the meaning of righteousness we are talking about now is, as we have seen, due to grace, and the manifestation of that grace appears repeatedly in the Old Testament through Abraham, Jacob, and Moses, but it is described much more accurately in the New Testament.

 

Hebrews 11, also called the faith chapter, explains it this way: “By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.” The phrase 'by faith' in this verse shows the fact that Noah too was a desperate sinner. The Bible clearly states there is no righteous person in this world, not even one, and Noah was no exception.  

 

Paul's recording of this Romans passage was quoting the Psalmist. Let's look together at Psalm 53: "God looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all fallen away; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one." God looks down on our lives, but He cannot find anyone with understanding, anyone seeking God. The Apostle Paul quoted this verse in the famous Romans chapter 3, saying 'There is no one righteous, not even one'.  

 

Yet God calls Noah righteous. It is precisely because of Noah's faith.

 

Faith: Relying on God

Faith is not trying to think of the unseen God as if He exists. Nor is faith simply deciding with your will that God exists. The faith we are talking about here refers to the act of confessing reliance on God, not on oneself. Because faith means 'to rely on' or 'to trust'. It is relying on God, not on myself.

 

Noah's Faith: Not Relying on Worldly Conditions

If we look closely at Noah's life, Noah was someone who had many things he could rely on. His great-great-grandfather was Enoch. Enoch was truly a remarkable person. Because he was taken up to heaven without dying on this earth. That person is Noah's direct ancestor. Besides, Methuselah, the longest-living person recorded in this Bible, was his grandfather. He lived until before the flood, so he was still alive while this story was unfolding. His father Lamech would likewise have been alive until then.

 

However, the world was already corrupt, and sin abounded. And they all died. All humanity died in Noah's flood. Their many descendants also all died. Noah would have had brothers and sisters. Truly many relatives would have lived together before the flood. But they did not listen to God's warning.

 

But Noah was looking to the Lord, alone and lonely. He might have had something to say before God. 'God, I am different from my other relatives. I am different from my brothers, older and younger,' he might have been able to say to God. Not only that, but the Bible says he was blameless in his generation. The word 'generation' means the same era. In today's terms, it means he was as famous as BTS. It means Noah was such a perfect person that no one in that era didn't know him. He was a person whom everyone could acknowledge.

 

Of course, it might have been an easier task because the population was smaller than now, but still, many people knew Noah at that time. Yet he never presented his lineage before God, nor did he assert his pious life before God. He did not rely on such things at all. He did not boast before God about his family, including his grandfather Enoch, as his condition. Noah would not have told everyone around him that he was superior to them, and because of that, he received recognition of righteousness from God and was given the ark God prepared.

 

Preaching Righteousness: Acknowledging Sinfulness

Instead, the Bible tells us that he preached God's righteousness. In other words, Noah spoke about God judging our sins, and the premise of preaching righteousness is acknowledging that we are in sin, having departed from God. Noah is now acknowledging that this whole world, including himself, is in sin, having departed from God, and what he is testifying now is proclaiming to people, 'But if you know that sin and return to God, God will save us.'

 

Therefore, the statement that Noah was blameless before God, and that he was righteous, meant that he considered himself a sinner before God, and despite that sin, he turned back to God and became God's people. Thus, he cried out to many people to return to the forgiving God, and he was crying out to rely not on his own righteousness but on the forgiving God.

 

When everyone in the world commits sin, most of them do not think they are sinning. The Pharisees never considered themselves arrogant. Rather, they considered themselves righteous before God. In today's terms, they were people who had attended church since childhood, served diligently, and lived church life so earnestly as to be called God's people.

 

Living by Faith

All these facts are not words that can come out when you and I stand before God. Because you cannot stand before God with those things. Rather, we must pray. 'God, all these boasts of mine actually prove that I am a sinner. I am a sinner, but I rely on the Lord. Lord, forgive me and lead me to that gracious place of God.' This should be our appearance, having returned to the forgiving God.

 

How should the righteous live? They live by faith. If this order is reversed, our faith will end up being chased around in that inexplicable guilt until the end. Therefore, the most important foundation of right faith is knowing that I came before God because I am a sinner, and furthermore, I am a person who turns back to God despite not even realizing all my sins.

You and I do not fully know the misery and terror of sin. But we are people who have returned before God and confess how much we need God in our lives. We are people who know and confess, 'The righteous shall live by faith'.

 

What Does 'Blameless' Mean? An Unblemished Offering

Another characteristic of Noah, who was declared righteous by faith, is that he was blameless in his generation. The dictionary definition of 'blameless' (or perfect) is 'having everything, lacking nothing'. And the Bible calls Noah a blameless man. If there were a perfect groom, he would probably be someone who has everything in terms of character, appearance, wealth, ability, etc. Therefore, the word 'perfect' is used when referring to someone who has everything.

But in the Bible, does being perfect in God's eyes really mean this? This statement probably doesn't mean Noah was someone who possessed everything in the world. This Hebrew word for 'blameless' is often translated as 'without blemish' in other passages. Because this word is mostly used in connection with offerings in the Old Testament. It is used when referring to the unblemished offering we know well. Therefore, the statement 'Noah was blameless' can also be understood to mean Noah was without blemish for being offered as a sacrifice.

 

Hearing this, you might retort, does this mean Noah could be offered in sacrifice? That's not what I meant. For a more accurate understanding of this statement, let's look up the New Testament. Romans 12:1 is a passage you know and love very well: "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship."  

 

Living Sacrifice: A Life Not Conformed to the World

Now you understand a little better. It says to offer ourselves as living spiritual sacrifices before God. This is the meaning of an unblemished offering. You can offer yourselves as such living sacrifices. Why? Because we are without blemish. We became without blemish because of Jesus. Noah was the same. Because he received grace from God, Noah also became without blemish. Therefore, the story in today's passage is telling the same story as Romans 12.

 

Noah did not conform to this world. When everyone's life was flowing towards and turning to the world, Noah instead sought God. The life of a blameless person, or a righteous person, is not a life of having everything. Rather, it is a life of offering everything.

 

True Faith: Denying Self and Revealing Christ

The life of a believer is not about making one's character more noble and lofty to become a better person than now. In a way, one might think that true Christian life is all about believing in Jesus, becoming more like Jesus, and thus changing into a much better person. To some extent, that's true.

 

But let me ask you this question. Why do you want so much to be like Jesus? Our answer to that question is perhaps a bit lame, but it would be to become a somewhat better person by resembling Jesus that way. We want to become like that saint with a fine character like Jesus.

 

But friends, it's not like that. This attitude is not genuinely pursuing faith. It is still just a 모습 (appearance/figure) of pursuing my own desires. I just want to become a better me. The Bible tells us that is not the right direction. Jesus said, "Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.'" This is the command the Lord gave us. The goal of life is not to add Jesus' appearance onto ourselves to make us look like better people and live boasting about our better selves, but rather, we should make denying ourselves and revealing only Christ the direction of our lives. A believer means a person who lives revealing only Christ. That is what we call resembling the Lord. We must live each day as those who offer everything to the Lord. And this was the 모습 (appearance/figure) of Noah's life, who received God's grace.

 

Noah: Shadow of Christ

Finally, let's look at another 모습 (appearance/figure) of Noah that we shouldn't miss. Noah was someone who had never read the New Testament book of Romans. Because, naturally, Noah belonged to the Old Testament era. At that time, he called on the name of the Lord, but he probably didn't understand the meaning of 'offer your bodies as a living sacrifice' as well as we who have read the New Testament do. Because Noah was someone who did not yet fully know Jesus Christ, the unblemished Lamb, but was merely looking towards Him. He was righteous and blameless, but only served as a shadow showing that Jesus Christ is the perfect and righteous one.

 

Perfection in Christ: Old and New Testaments Meet

And when Jesus, who is without blemish and righteous, came, only then do we all become one in Christ. Even Noah, even Moses, even Abraham, only then do we all put on the perfect righteousness of Christ. That is what it means for Christ's righteousness to extend to everyone.

 

Grace Across Eras: What We Know More Deeply

You and I envy Abraham. It's natural. We envy Peter who talked and walked with Jesus. It's appropriate. But Abraham and Peter, even Paul, would inevitably envy us. Setting aside Jesus' words, 'Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed', and although we may not have seen the works and salvation history Christ accomplished in the same era as Peter and all the other apostles, we know, through the coming of the Holy Spirit, what kind of history is beginning in this era, and through Christ, we know far more than the apostles of that time about the joy of victory we can enjoy with the Lord even amidst suffering. Because we are all God's saints who have participated together in Christ's sufferings and are members belonging to one body.

 

Perhaps we are experiencing more deeply than the apostles of Jesus' time, and more than Abraham or Noah, what it means to be perfected by Christ and clothed in the righteousness of Christ. We are getting to know Christ's death and resurrection more and more deeply. We are drawing ever closer to the fact that the Lord is coming.

 

The Meaning of Walking with God

If you understand this, now we come to know the third 모습 (appearance/figure) of life that Noah's story speaks of. Because Noah received God's grace, he walked with Him. The one who receives that grace lives a life that shows Christ. And when that grace lives within us, the Bible calls such a person righteous in Jesus and calls them blameless in Christ.

It's truly astonishing. The Bible considers us perfect. And the Bible says we walk with God. As we examined in detail in the previous sermon on Enoch about walking with God, this has a much deeper meaning than God walking beside me, us talking with Him, enjoying ourselves, and having an intimate relationship. The word 'with' also carries the meaning that all of me belongs to God, all of God dwells within me together, and God becomes my everything. If you and I have strength, it is the strength we gain from God; if there is real joy, this too is joy that comes from God; if there is love, this too is love that comes from God; and if there is glory, it is glory that comes from God, the Bible says.

 

The Message of the Ark

Therefore, Noah's goal was not just to survive the flood by getting into the ark. Nor is that the message of Noah's story. By faith, he looked not to the ark of this earth but to the ark of heaven. That is why the ark he built had meaning. Through the ark, he was a person testifying to us what God's work of salvation is, and that the grace God poured out on him is precisely Jesus Christ.

 

The ark is an event that clearly shows how miserable our lives are. It also awakens us to the fact that everything will be swept away and disappear, and it's an event that makes us realize what we fear. And through this ark, we discover who God is. Perhaps our fear lies more in the great pain and suffering we must endure rather than in our dying. Death, in a way, could be considered a momentary event. But for us, what happens after death becomes a greater fear, and perhaps the many sufferings we must endure there are the greater difficulty.

 

So when we hear the phrase 'fiery furnace', we picture images of screaming in the fire and groaning in pain. But the misery of sin the Bible talks about is not such events of judgment, but the fact that God's love and mercy are not with them forever. That is the most terrifying aspect of judgment. In the Psalms, David confessed, 'If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there; we are safe.' We actually have no reason to fear or suffer pain because of Sheol. This confession of David is truly an amazing declaration. If you and I truly understand this expression in the Bible, we cannot help but be amazed. Because even if this world, in whatever situation, is like hell, if God is with us, we can say, 'My soul is at peace'.

 

Hope Beyond Judgment: God's New Creation

So, Noah not only informs us of the misery and terror of this sin, but simultaneously informs us that this judgment is not the end. That is the reason he survives. Because he is a witness showing us that judgment is not the final word, but God's new creation is. My sin is not the end of the world. This world where we live committing sin is not the end. Noah tells us that even at the very moment when everything seems finished, God's grace is there at the very end. God's grace, God's new creation, was the end of all this.

 

Jesus Christ: Our Final Hope

The dark world, this seemingly endless pandemic situation, all the problems that cause us pain and hardship, whatever problem I am currently experiencing and struggling with because I cannot solve it – none of it is the end. Even God's judgment is not the end for us. Our end is Jesus Christ, and our end is God's grace. Noah appeared in history precisely to show that. And the shadow of Noah meant to show that, and ultimately Jesus Christ, who actually achieved and showed all of that, came to us.

 

The Unnoticed King: Like Scott Wesley Brown's Song

Many people turned their backs on Noah, no one listened to his words, and no one paid attention to his words. Although he was righteous and blameless in his generation, Noah received no one's attention. Perhaps it's the same way Jesus Christ receives no one's attention today. But Christ, even at this moment as we worship, and even at this moment as we struggle with our problems, pains, and sufferings, is the King of kings.

 

Friends, do you happen to remember a singer named Scott Wesley Brown? If there's anyone who likes the vocalist Plácido Domingo, you might remember the song 'Perhaps Love' from one of his albums. It's a duet sung with the famous country singer John Denver. Included on the album containing that song is another famous song. The title of that song is 'My Treasure'. The person who wrote that song is this Scott Wesley Brown. He was a pastor, and he wrote the lyrics himself. It's the song that starts with the lyrics, ‘I don't need to follow any rainbow’. When I first heard this song on this album, I thought it expressed God's grace so well. When I checked later, it was indeed a gospel song.

 

There is another song this pastor wrote. It's a song released in 1981 titled 'This Little Child'. I will read you the lyrics of this song:

‘Who would have thought in days so long ago, a babe would be born, asleep in manger hay? And who would have thought a carpenter's son, just a little child, would be born the King of kings? And who would have thought as He laughed and played with the other boys, He would die for them one day? Oh, who would have thought this little child would make the blind to see, feed the hungry souls, and set the captives free? Oh, who would have thought this little child would forgive our sins and rise again from death? Lord, I believe, and I confess, this little child is the King, the King of kings. And many years have passed since then. Many empires have risen and fallen. Time has passed, but people still hate each other, nation against nation, brother against brother. Half the world goes to bed hungry every night, and countless unborn children are still dying, yet meetings to reduce arms just continue. They fight, each claiming to be right, but in reality, they are just busy hiding their own sins. In this darkness, the enduring light of hope is that very child whom no one noticed, the King of kings. Because He will surely return. By Him, the banner will surely be raised. In those long-ago days, that little child, Jesus Christ, our only hope, came to this earth as King at a time when no one paid attention.’

 

Why the Lord Came: Our Righteousness, Perfection, Companionship

The Lord came to be our righteousness, for the Lord to be our perfection, for the Lord to walk with us, He came to this earth like that. The Lord came so that He could be your righteousness and your name could become righteous, so that the Lord could be your perfection and you could become blameless in your generation, so that Christ could be the one walking with you and you could walk with God.

 

The Ship of Faith: No Rudder, Relying Only on God

Friends, we will examine the ark, another grace. But friends, reading today's passage, did you notice anything strange in the blueprint God gave for building the ark? This ark is a ship, but it has no rudder or helm. This ark is a ship, but it has no sail. This ark has no steering mechanism for navigation. Why? Because it is a ship of faith. It just goes, relying only on God. Because it lives solely by faith relying on God. It is the ship of the righteous, who wish only to hear the voice of Christ the King, and wish to go with Christ the King, and it is the ship of the blameless. It is your ship in Christ.

The righteous shall live by faith.

 

Closing Prayer

Let us pray. Loving Lord, because we are in Christ, we often forget what grace we are in. We forget that we, like Noah, bear the name of Christ. Lord, help us remember. Who we are, what this grace we are receiving is, therefore, how we should live, that we are building the ark, that we enter that ark, and that we lived and acted within it, Lord, help us remember. Help us confess again that precisely for that reason, we are the blameless ones called by God, the righteous ones, those now walking with God, those whom this world cannot overcome, those whom the world cannot handle, that in a life walking with God, nothing can shake us or hinder us, and nothing can defeat us. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen!