As I mentioned in my last post, the ancient story of Noah and the ark affords to us a glimpse of the perfect holiness and righteousness of God, both of which form a divine character that cannot accommodate the flourishing of human sin.
But there is more to the glimpse than this. In the story, we also discern God’s relentless desire to provide a means of deliverance and salvation. The means of deliverance and salvation in this case is is a boat—a big one— to be occupied by those like Noah and his family who are willing to honor God and who are willing to subordinate themselves to God’s ordinances. “Make yourself an Ark” God says to Noah, “because the waters of judgment will come, and I want there to be a means of deliverance for the only people on earth who are humble enough to acknowledge my sovereignty.”
What’s God’s motive here? Why does God even care about the building of the ark? The answer, in one word, is covenant. “I will make a covenant with you, Noah, because you have seen fit to honor me. I will make a covenant with you and your family.” Even in this story about God’s righteous judgment, the nature of God is a covenant-making nature. Which is to say, the nature of God is to provide for his people a gracious means of deliverance from the crushing waters of sin and death.
I did my seminary work at the Divininty School of Duke University. One of the symbols in Duke Divinity School’s logo is a boat. In fact, if you were to go to the divinity school’s website, you would see the words “Duke Divinity School,” accompanied by the small image of a wooden boat with a cross in it. Why the boat? Quite simply, that boat represents a vessel like Noah’s ark.
Throughout the church’s history, Noah’s ark has been looked upon as a symbol for the church. Because the church, like Noah’s ark, is for people who are willing to participate in God’s covenant of grace. The church, like Noah’s Ark, is for people who are desperate for God’s deliverance from the raging waters of sin and death. The church at its best, in other words, is the spiritual ark for those who are spiritually drowning. Which is to say, the church’s ministry, like the ark itself, is a tangible manifestation of God’s gracious deliverance from a sinful condition to which God stubbornly refuses to give the final word.
So, this strange ancient story affords to us an unsettling glimpse of a God’s righteous judgment. But it also affords a reassuring glimpse of God’s gracious deliverance. In that sense, the story of Noah’s Ark reminds of the story of Jesus, a savior who himself becomes the ark of grace onto which drowning sinners are invited to climb. It is the same pattern, after all—the pattern of a God whose rightesousness compels him to take sin seriously, but whose mercy compels him to provide a way out. It is the story of Noah. It is the story of the church. It is the story of Jesus Christ.
I suppose lingering question is obvious: How do we respond to this kind of God? How do we respond to a God who is so awesomely holy and so relentlessly gracious?
Perhaps the best response is the one at hand. We respond to this God in the way that Noah responded to this God: with radical obedience and commitment, even when the thing to which we are being called is hard, and sacrificial, and even seemingly absurd. My favorite verse in the entire story is Genesis 6:22, which reads this way: “Noah did all that God commanded him to do.”
They are revolutionary words, really—words that communicate a willingness to do something radical and absurd for God in a world that preferred to ignore God altogether. Can we afford to offer to God anything less? Can we afford to make our response to God anything less than a Noah-like obedience and commitment?
Or, think about it in this way: Can we afford to offer to God anything less than our passionate commitment to building the “ark” of faithful, radical, and obedient discipleship that God is calling us to build?