(Delmont Record – 7/21/2016)

Safely on Board the Ark

Excerpted from Genesis 6-8 (NIV), This is the account of Noah and his family.  Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God…God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth…But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark – you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you…Noah did everything just as God commanded him…For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth…Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark…Then God said to Noah, “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives.  Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you…so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it.”

This past week in Delmont we held a day-camp sponsored by Lutheran Social Services called Camp Noah. This camp is geared toward helping children whose communities have been impacted by disaster and teaches them basic resiliency skills and ways to cope with the wide variety of feelings and fears they may still be experiencing. During this week, it has really given me an opportunity to reflect on what the true Biblical account of Noah’s Ark means to our faith.

So often, people portray Christianity as a religion of judgment but nothing could be further from the truth. For without God the natural result of the world and humanity is that we are doomed. In fact, this is the teaching of strict secularists – that there is no afterlife, you die and that’s it, and eventually the sun will collapse and all life on earth will perish. Where is the hope in that? The obvious result of a world without God is judgment and destruction. Yes, it is also true that the message of Christianity includes this. Scripture clearly teaches that this world is headed toward judgment along with its inhabitants, but this message of judgment is not the main point. The main point of Christianity through Scripture, is not the declaration of impending judgment, but it is the proclamation to the world that God has built His people an Ark. You can be saved! There is hope! This hope sets Christianity apart from atheism. Atheism can only destroy hope; it cannot create it. God alone gives us hope. For just as God provided a physical ark in the form of a large boat to save Noah and his family from the destructive flood, so too, in Jesus Christ, God has provided the means of escape for any who will get on board. Jesus is the Ark of God’s people. Peter tells us this. In 1 Peter 3:20-22 we are told, God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built.  In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also…it saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand – with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.

Whether you believe in God at this point or not, most likely, you believe that you and this world are naturally headed for destruction. Our only hope to escape this impending physical destruction is not found in the natural but the supernatural. Are you willing to hope? Are you willing to take advantage of the way of escape that God has provided for you? This is the invitation given in the most famous of Bible verses, John 3:16-17, 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.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Too often in life, we can become so focused on the flood that we miss seeing the true heart of God – the heart revealed in the safety of the Ark – the heart revealed in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ.