Peter Howard
Noah
(The People of Faith of Hebrews 11)
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Hebrews 13:8
The whole world at the time of Noah had given itself over to evil behavior. People of immense intellect, strength, and longevity had dedicated their lives to satisfying their lusts and violently following their passions, and God was “grieved in His heart.” A millennium beforehand, a man named Enoch had a son whom he called Methuselah, whose name is translatable as “When he is dead it shall be sent.” Enoch had prophesied about an impending judgement upon the ungodly, and after Methuselah was born, something strange happened to Enoch – the Bible says he “walked with God, and he was not; for God took him.” Methuselah’s life became a living warning to the people of Noah’s world. When Noah received the apparently bizarre request from God to build a large boat,, he did so, taking 120 years as well as preaching warnings to the surrounding people. Methuselah died in the year of the flood, the time of probation for the inhabitants of the world ended and God carried out His judgement.
Our God is extending to us the same grace and opportunity that He gave to Noah and the inhabitants of Noah’s world. To everyone that believes He says, you shall “not perish but have everlasting life.” Just like Noah, we have the opportunity to grasp the salvation offered to us by Jesus, and we have the opportunity to share that Good News with our neighbors in these final hours of this world’s history.
“By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.” Hebrews 11:7