Ark Of Salvation

Ark of Salvation

By the time of Noah, humanity was consummately and constantly wicked. So God decided to destroy all humanity—except for one family. Hebrews 11 says that Noah was warned about things not yet seen. He had never seen a flood or a thunderstorm, and he may have never even seen a raindrop. But he believed God. Even though this was all new to him, he took God at his word that there would be judgment on the earth in the form of a flood.

Noah also believed that God would provide a way for him and his family to escape judgment. “Make yourself an ark,” God instructed Noah (Genesis 6:14, NIV). So Noah began building at God’s command and according to his instructions. Noah had confidence that, just as God promised, the ark would protect him and his family from the judgment that was about to fall on the earth in the form of raindrops. And sure enough, the storm came. “God wiped out every living thing on the earth. . . . The only people who survived were Noah and those with him in the boat” (Genesis 7:23).

Those who were saved and those who died all went through the Flood. But those who survived were in the ark, which sheltered them from the effects of God’s divine displeasure toward sin. In this way, the ark provides a picture of how God, through Christ, rescues his own people in the midst of judgment.

Just as Noah and his family found the ark to be a place of safe refuge, “we who have fled to [Christ] for refuge can have great confidence as we hold to the hope that lies before us” (Hebrews 6:18).

Just as the ark was a place of absolute security, so our “real life is hidden [like Noah in the ark] with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3).

Just as the ark bore the storm of God’s judgment, “Jesus . . . is the one who has rescued us from the terrors of the coming judgment” (1 Thessalonians 1:10).

My Ark of safety and refuge in the storm of judgment, I have entered into you, hiding myself in the depths of your being to escape the pounding wrath that I know I deserve. I should be on the outside—shut out from your goodness and drowning in the flood of your justice. Yet you have invited me to enter in, so I come with joy and relief, filled with anticipation for the new world that awaits once the storm is over.