#DailyDevotion Noah Was Saved Through His Faith In God’s Promise
Heb. 11 8By faith Noah, when he was warned about the things no one could foresee, respected God and built an ark to save his family, and by such a faith he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.
So, just a refresher of the text of what happened:
613So God said to Noah: “I have decided all people must die because they’ve filled the world with crime, and now I’m going to destroy them and the world. 14Make yourself an ark of cypress wood. Make rooms in the ark. And cover it inside and outside with pitch. . .22Noah did this. He did it just as God ordered him. 7 “You and your whole family,” the LORD told Noah,“go into the ark, because I have seen that you are righteous before Me among the people of today. . . 5Noah did just as the LORD ordered him. 6Noah was 600 years old when the flood came on the earth. 7Noah, his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives went into the ark to escape from the water of the flood. 8Clean animals and unclean animals, birds, and everything that moves on the earth 9came in pairs, male and female, to Noah into the ark as God had ordered Noah. . . 21Every living thing that moved on earth died: birds, tame and wild animals, everything that swarms over the earth, and all the people. 22Everything that had in its nostrils the breath of life and that was on dry land died. 23He wiped out everything that lived on the earth – men, animals, creeping things, and birds in the air; they were wiped off the earth. Only Noah and those with him in the ark stayed alive.
No one could foresee or see the catastrophe the LORD was bringing on the earth. It was so corrupt with sin, the LORD chose the one faithful man and his family that was left to repopulate the earth (He did promise the woman that her seed would conquer the serpent). When God spoke to him to build and ark and told him of His plans, Noah believed what the LORD told him to do. He started building an ark according to the dimensions God had given him. He saved his family by his faith along with a representation of all the animals at the time.
By such a faith, he condemned the world. Certainly, people must have asked him what he was doing. Why was he building this big ark? Why did God if He exists and is all loving going to destroy the world by a flood? How was he going to fit all the animals on the boat? How was he, his family and the animals going to eat and drink all this time on the ark? Are you sure God spoke to you? I imagine they responded to him much like unbelievers respond today when we warn them of the coming wrath of God and call them to repent to escape through the ark called the Church. We are a witness to them much like Noah was to those people. As Jesus notes in Matt. 24, 37“When the Son of Man comes, it will be like the time of Noah. 38In the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, and men and women were marrying until the day Noah went into the ark. 39They learned nothing until the flood came and swept them all away.”
Noah became an heir of righteousness through his faith in God’s promise. He would, with us, inherit the earth. We are promised God has forgiven us for the sake of Jesus’ death. We also are promised to inherit the earth and God. We receive this inheritance through believing the promise. The promise itself gives us faith to believe it. (Eph. 2, Rom. 10) He has given us the gift of repentance so we may turn away from our lives of sin and to God the Father who gives us a life of faith, hope and love.
Merciful God and Father, You have graciously given us faith to repent and to believe Your promise. Keep and preseve us in this faith until we inherit the world. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.