Amazing Grace

Noah found favor with the LORD.   Genesis 6:8

Even as humanity’s wickedness increased, God did not abandon people or lose interest in them. All throughout the Bible story we find God reaching out to save people by grace, through faith. This pattern is established right at the beginning in the story of Noah.

Noah found “favor” with God. This is the first word we find in the Bible that means “grace.” God looked with kindness and compassion on Noah, and the first way he expressed this grace was by warning Noah about the coming judgment: “I have decided to destroy all living creatures, for they have filled the earth with violence” (Genesis 6:13).

It is possible that Noah actually heard an audible voice, or maybe he had a dream. Either way, God spoke to Noah and made it clear to him that judgment was coming. Noah didn’t keep this message to himself. The New Testament tells us that he was “a preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5, NIV). Noah was the first preacher in the Bible. God spoke to him and through him so that a whole community would hear the Word of God.

The Bible records a number of occasions when God brought judgment on particular communities—including the Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC. These examples of God’s judgment in history point forward to the final calamity when God will judge the whole world in righteousness.

Notice that God demonstrated his grace to Noah in a second way, by telling him clearly and specifically what he should do in order to be kept safe from the judgment: “Build a large boat from cypress wood” (Genesis 6:14). Knowing about a coming judgment would not be of much help to Noah unless there was some way he could be saved from it.

The message of judgment is not merely the angry outburst of a fierce God; it is the gracious call of a loving God, who says, “I must destroy evil, and I will destroy it. But I do not want to destroy you, so here is the way you can escape.”

For further reading, see Genesis 6