The Book of Genesis
Part 17
It is necessary for us, not only to examine the moral attributes of God made so manifest at the time of the Deluge, but to examine the actual accomplishments of these attributes. God’s grace, righteousness, and patience resulted in the preservation of the human race. This was Divine preservation from the punishment of sin. At the Deluge “mercy and truth met together.” It is in this respect that the Deluge and the ark of safety became an excellent illustration of God’s means of saving men today from the judgment merited by their sin. The Apostle Peter uses the event in exactly this manner, “Once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved” (1 Pet. 3:20).
Salvation With Noah
There is no doubt but that each person was responsible before God, and that each had to obey the Divine call, “Come thou and all thy house into the ark” (Gen. 7:1); nevertheless, it is obvious that relationship to Noah meant salvation to everyone in his household. The proof of this is found in such statements as the following: “Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” “Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before Me.” “Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.” “And God remembered Noah and every living thing, and all cattle that was with him in the ark.”
Noah as a type of our Lord Jesus reveals in measure what we see in perfection in Christ: his character, “righteous;” his witness, “perfect in his generation;” his fellowship, “Noah walked with God;” his work, “Thus did Noah;” his accomplishment, “According to all that God commanded him.”
Just as relationship with Noah a man of perfect character and successful accomplishment resulted in the preservation of those who were associated with him in the ark, even so it is relationship to Christ that results in eternal salvation, “God, Who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved” (Eph. 2:4-5).
Salvation In The Ark
The actual means employed in this Divine act of grace was the ark, “By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith” (Heb. 11:7). In the ark Noah and those with him went under the outpouring of Divine wrath, and left in the depths below them a world buried because of sin. “And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat” (Gen. 8:4). What a picture of Ephesian truth! “God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us… hath quickened us together with Christ… and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places” (Eph. 2:4-6).
Some Bible students believe that the seventeenth day of the seventh month was the identical day on which our Lord arose from the dead. The seventh month became the first month of the year to Israel at the time of the passover in Egypt, and the seventeenth day would be the third day after the slaying of the paschal lamb which was to take place on the fourteenth day of the month. Be that as it may, it appears that in the ark we have a picture of death and resurrection.
Salvation By Water
There is a rather unusual reference to the Deluge made by the Apostle Peter, “When once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water” (1 Peter 3:20). What can be meant, “Saved by water”? Were not Noah and his family saved from water? Yes, indeed. That is the message brought before us in Hebrews 11:7, “Noah… moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house.” Peter here has the ordinance of believer’s baptism in mind, for he adds, “The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 3:21).
As the Deluge separated Noah and his family from the former state of the world in its corruption and violence, and as by its water Noah had been transported into an entirely different sphere, a renovated earth, in like manner the baptism of the believer witnesses to the fact expressed elsewhere by this same Apostle “By these ye might be partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust” (Pet. 1:4). There is a sense in which we must await the Advent of Christ to be delivered from the “bondage of corruption” (Rom. 8:21), but that sense is rather physical, whereas here the Apostle is dealing with that which is spiritual.