Reward For Obedience

Text: “This Noah did; according to all that God commanded him, so he did” (Genesis 6:22).

The story of Noah is one of my favorite Bible stories. As a young fellow, living in the hills of a coal mining town in Ohio, I remember listening to the story of Noah in the small one-room country church on the side of the hill. At that time, I did not question nor did I understand why God would single out one person to carry out such a monumental task of building a large boat.

Neither did I understand the state of creation, at the time God asked Noah to start this project. I was just an innocent child thinking that everything in the world was just like it was at home. I thought there was love and understanding among all people because that is the way it was in our family.

I was under the impression that your neighbor was ready to come and lending a helping hand in time of need. The people in our small town and the surrounding area helped one another. If a barn had to be build, all the men in the area pitched in and helped. If it was time to prepare the fields for planting or if it was harvest time, help just appeared.

I did not know what the word “violence” meant. I heart about World War II and I knew that young men left their families to go to war, but that was a continuation of the helping-hand. I did not understand the sinful nature of mankind. I did not know the sins of envy, jealously, hatred, pride, impurity, greed, stealing, gossip, unfaithfulness, dishonor, or backbiting.

Now that I am a little older and understanding, I realize that man has a sinful nature which leads him to live a life that is not always in line with God’s Word. The sins that are committed today are the same sins that were committed in the days of Noah. The world is in a state similar to that of Noah’s day. Many people today are living ungodly lives just as they were in the days before the flood.

The bottom line to all this is that God is not happy with what is taking place in the world. He was not happy with the people in the days of Noah. Mankind was wicked and evil in God’s sight.

Scripture say this concerning the thoughts of God: “The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the LORD said, ‘I will wipe out mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth – men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air – for I am grieved that I have made them” (Genesis 6:6-7).

People of Noah’s day and many people of this day do not understand how much pain and grief our sins bring upon our Father. God cannot stand sin of any kind. There is no such thing as a small sin. A sin is a sin which hurts the person committing it and also it hurts God.

As God looked out upon His creation of mankind, He chose one man who was faithful, trustworthy and obedient to carry out His plan to give mankind another opportunity. “Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD” (Genesis 6:8).

Scripture tells us that “Noah was a righteous man” (Genesis 6:9). If a person is righteous, that person is meeting certain standards of what is proper or just. In this case, Noah was meeting the standards set by God. He was in the world, but he was not part of the world.

In other words, Noah lived among the multitude of people who were living outside God’s standards and committing act unacceptable in God’s eyes, but Noah was not living their style or type of life. He was meeting the standards set forth by God.

The people in Noah’s day chose to ignore the fact that they were drowning in the depths of evil and the flood of violence was about to wipe them off the face of the earth. God created mankind out of love, but His love ceased to flow through mankind because of mankind’s sinful nature.

Whenever we quit looking to God for guidance and start looking at other people, we are headed for trouble. When we stop living the way God intended us to live and start living the way of the world, we are sailing in the murky waters of self-destruction. When we forget who created us and why we were created, life will be a meaningless journey into eternity.

People in the days of Noah seemed to have fallen into a daily routine that did not include God. Their idea of life seemed to be one of do whatever feels good. They did what made them happy and content. The people were not worried about what was morally right or wrong. Life was being sacrificed because of intermarriage. The human race was being weakened through the sinful acts of mankind.