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Topic:The way of escape
READ THE SCRIPTURE: GENESIS 6: 13-22
But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark, with your children, your wife and the women of your children.
Genesis 6:18
When Noah entered the ark, God told him, “I will establish my covenant with you.” It was not simply the ark that saved Noah. That was the means by which it was possible for him to be saved, but what really saved Noah was God’s agreement with him. The word and the promise of God were what saved him. Therefore, we must also see beyond the means by which we are saved to find the great motivation that made Christ come to earth, to the promise of God that lies under everything else and establishes a pact with us, being a new arrangement to live. Whenever you encounter the word pactin the Scriptures, do not think of it as a contract that God makes with his people. It is that, in a sense, but it is mainly a new basis for life, an arrangement for living. This covenant we see here goes much further than the simple fact of saving Noah; it is something that should govern his life and the life of the world after the flood had ceased. This required only an attitude on the part of Noah, that of obedience.
I am disturbed by the ease with which many use the Lord Jesus as a Savior to save them from going to hell when they die, but they have no intention of letting them rule their lives while they are alive. But here Noah’s story is very clear. It was not simply the fact that God brought Noah to the ark that saved him, but the fact that Noah was obedient about a new arrangement for living. Noah obeyed God.
This is what saved Noah and is what saves us. It is not the fact that we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, being in that way in agreement that we belong to Him and we will be saved when we die. It is the fact that we have received him as Lord. We recognize the right He has over us: His right to rule, His right to regulate, His right to send us and to obey us. It is necessary that the heart respond immediately in obedience to all that God commands, as it did in this case Noah. That recognition of His lordship is the basis of salvation. This is the basis on which we not only survive the disaster that is imminently hanging over our time, challenging to hit us at any time, but also the individual disasters of each life,
We should rather establish it on the rock that can not be moved, that rests on the most unalterable thing in the whole universe, which is the Word of God. That is what created the universe. There is nothing else that we can depend on that is not the Word of God. In the end, everything that is present in the universe that surrounds us comes from that source. Therefore, when we rest on the Word of God, the Covenant of God, we are resting on the most secure and stable thing that the universe has ever known. “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Matthew 24:35).
Lord, thank you for the New Covenant, which is a new arrangement for living and that gives me the freedom and power to obey you.
Application to life
God established a covenant through which we can be saved and enter into the new Life through obedience. How does the image of Noah’s story reflect this new way of living?
