Focus: While warning us of
the coming final judgment, the Scriptures assure us that God knows how to
rescue his people from judgment upon all evildoers.
Function: To warn and encourage the people in light of the coming final judgment to seek their refuge and salvation in Christ Jesus.
Texts: Genesis 7:1-24; II Peter 2:1-9
God is Creator. That I know. But I don’t know how the
Lord made the moon, the stars, and the entire universe with its mind-boggling, ever
expanding, numerous galaxies and planets. Only the Lord knows how.
I know that God made human beings. He formed a clump of dust and shaped it into his own image—male and female; he blew breath into the nostrils of Adam and Adam became a living, human being. I don’t know how the Lord did it. Only the Lord knows how.
There are many things I just don’t know. So many things I simply accept by faith, because I trust and believe the truthfulness of God’s Word, and because I recognize that we are creatures, while God is Creator, that you and I are finite, limited, while God is infinite.
You and I may have all kinds of questions for which we do not know a quick and readily accepted answer. For example, I know that God sent the floodwaters in Noah’s days. I know that God saved believing Noah and his family. I know that God ordered the evacuation of animals and sheltered them in his ark, together with Noah.
But I don’t know how God moved these animals in a controlled, subdued manner. I don’t know how God suspended these wild animals’ behaviors in such a way that they all could live together in relative harmony in Noah’s boat. I know that God is just and merciful. He is capable of showing awesome grace; he is also capable of unleashing astounding fury. How God’s grace and wrath, however, balance out—I don’t know.
But this is what I do know and declare with certainty today: While warning us of the coming final judgment, the Scriptures assure us that God knows how to rescue his people from judgment upon all evildoers.
The apostle
Peter is writing to Christians who are persecuted by people outside the church
for their faith, and who are plagued by false teachers inside the church. These
teachers tend to exalt themselves, rather than God; they preach a message that
is contrary to the good news found in Jesus Christ. Peter warns them saying
that they are “bringing swift destruction on themselves.”
In fact, Peter holds before us the coming of God’s final judgment. All of us, including false teachers, will be held accountable on the great and final day of judgment, when Jesus Christ will reveal himself as the Judge over all. And Peter speaks the truth—clearly and unmistakably: False teachers will be held accountable for their evil actions and instructions: (vs. 3) “In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping,” so tell us the Scriptures.
It’s not only false teachers or evildoers, but also Christians who will be subject to God’s final judgment. God, however, will rescue his people, and God will hold the “unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment.” How God will do these things in details? I don’t know. God, however, knows how to save his people from his wrath and how to judge those who oppose him by their evil disposition and actions.
Peter makes this clear by referring to three situations: the first one deals with God judging evil angels; the second one deals with God judging the ancient world by means of the flood “on its ungodly people,” while sparing and protecting believing Noah and his household; and the third reference concerns God’s dealing with Lot and his daughters being rescued from God’s judgment upon Sodom and Gomorrah.
The point is this: if God did not spare angels when they sinned, if God did not spare the ancient world, and if God did not spare the Sodomites and people of Gomorrah, then God knows how to judge the wicked; and if God spared believing Noah and his family, and if God saved Lot and his daughters from destruction, then surely God knows how “to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment….” You and I may not know exactly how, but the Lord knows how.
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The story of Noah and the ark going through the flood waters, functions as a warning and an encouragement. It is a mistake to assume that the Flood story is nothing but a legend or myth. It is also a mistake to treat the story of Noah and the ark on sentimental terms—how cute and fascinating, for example, the sight must have been to see these animals come to the boat and clamber inside their cages. To be sure, the story appeals to our senses and imagination. But the Scriptures tell us the story of the Flood to warn and to encourage us.
Consider, for example, the following outstanding features in Genesis 7. The first feature centers on God’s instructions to Noah and God’s hand in the entire cataclysmic event. Listen: (vs. 1) “The Lord then said to Noah, ‘Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation…Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.’” From the text it’s unmistakably clear that God’s hand and fingerprints are all over the floodwaters. God instructs Noah and his family to enter the ark for protection and safety. And God foretells the coming doom upon Noah’s generation and contemporaries.
God warns; God protects; God judges; God saves. Take, for example, vs. 16: “The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord shut him in.” God secures the creatures inside the ark by locking them in; God knows how to judge and to destroy, cleanse, and wash the rest of creation by keeping them from entering the ark when the floodwaters arrived. Clearly, God is doing a wondrous but also terrifying work. Be encouraged! Or be warned!
The second feature centers on Noah’s believing response. Listen to this pattern of repetition: (6:22) “Noah did everything just as God commanded him.” (7:5) “And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him.” Yes, indeed, Noah is in tune with the Lord God. And the critters of the wild followed Noah’s response of obedience to the word of the Lord. For the text says: (vs.8) “Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah.” (vs. 16) “The animals going in were male and female of every living things, as God had commanded Noah.”
In other words, the animals do not protest, and Noah does not argue with the Lord. Noah is “on the same page” with the Lord. And so are these animals entering the ark. They respond with obedience. The inspired writer of Hebrews comments on Noah’s response and says: (Hebrews 11:7) “By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.” Noah’s response of faith, then, is instructive for us: it warns the unbeliever; and it encourages believers to respond to God’s word with trust and obedience.
The third feature of the story in Genesis 7 is the destructive nature of the floodwaters. Imagine reading these words in the Star Tribune today: “The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet. Every living thing that moved on the earth perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out: men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.” Surely, this sounds like an eyewitness account that could have come only from Noah and his family members, because all other people were wiped out.
Come to think of it, you and I would not be reading this story in the Star Tribune, because the waters would have swept us all away too. The point, I hope, is clear: God’s judgment in the days of Noah is severe indeed.
These features lead us to an insight: The flood story points to God’s justice and wrath on sin, as well as to God’s mercy on believing Noah and his family. The story of the flood is not all gloom and doom. For out of the devastation of the flood God raises up a renewed, cleansed creation, with Noah as the head of a renewed humanity. God’s wrath on sin is devastating, to be sure. And we therefore must take our sins seriously. God’s mercy, however, is reassuring. God knows how to rescue us from sin and final judgment.
The Bible gives us glimpses of this truth. Do you remember how God saved baby Moses in that little basket floating in the Nile River? In the midst of Pharaoh’s devastating decree to wipe out the future of God’s people, God saved Moses. And through Moses, God saved Israel and led them out of Egypt into the Promised Land.
Later on in history, when Nebuchadnezzar threw Daniel in the lions’ den, God showed Nebuchadnezzar how to rescue his people. God restrained the lions. Indeed, God knows how to rescue his people from judgment upon all evildoers!
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Do you have any doubts that God knows how? Have you forgotten these words of Scripture: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”?
God knows how to rescue us. He sent his Son, to take on our human nature or flesh, to live in obedience, to die sinlessly on our behalf, to pay the wages of our sins. God raised up this Jesus, exalted him and seated him at his right hand, to reconcile all things to himself, to usher in his royal heavenly rule here on earth, and to judge the living and the dead in due time.
Remember the Scriptures: (II Peter 3:10ff) “…the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare…That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with (God’s) promise, we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.”
When the space shuttle returns from space seeking to go home and land on the earth, it must go through the earth’s atmosphere. In order to save the space shuttle and its crew, NASA has covered vital parts of the space shuttle with heat tiles. These heat tiles shield the shuttle from the burning and devastating friction encountered by the space shuttle as it enters the earth’s atmosphere. Without this heat shield the space shuttle and its crew would be doomed.
Do you remember the story of Daniel’s friends? Nebuchadnezzar threw them into a fiery furnace because they refused to worship Nebuchadnezzar as a god. God knew how to rescue Daniel’s friends. He sent the angel of the Lord to protect them in the midst of the fire.
That was in the days of Daniel. It was a picture of things to come. For today God has provided his people with a “heat shield.” Anyone who is found in Jesus Christ, (through faith in him), will be rescued. For Jesus is our ark. On the final day of judgment, all of creation and all humanity must face the destructive and yet at the same time the restorative fires of judgment. Wicked and unrepentant, unjust people will perish, but, says Scripture, God will save this world and his people by sheltering us in Jesus Christ. “For there is now no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” That’s good news!
The door of the ark is still open; the beckoning voice of the Lord Jesus can still be heard: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Friends, now is the day of salvation. Be warned! Be encouraged. God knows how to rescue his people from judgment upon all evildoers.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.