In
this study we look at all the historical statements pertaining to Noah from his
birth up to and including the time of the flood and determine their spiritual
connotations and try to see how Noah is a great typology of our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ. We will also examine some of the flood account for their gospel
meaning.
God
introduces Noah to us in this way:
Ge
5:29 “And he [Lamech]
called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work
and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed.” {Noah: Gr. Noe: that is Rest,
or, Comfort}
Noah came from Godly
parentage as evidenced by Lamech’s (his father) prophecy at the naming of Noah
at his birth. This prophecy establishes Noah as a type of the Heavenly
Comforters—the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit:
Jo 14:16 “And I [Jesus] will pray the Father, and he
[the Father] shall give you another Comforter, that he
may abide with you for ever;”
The Comforter to whom Jesus
was referring is the Holy Spirit who came from Heaven on the Day of Pentecost
following Jesus’ crucifixion in A.D. 33. However, He said that the Holy Spirit
is another Comforter implying that He, Jesus, was a Comforter himself and the
Holy Spirit is another Comforter just as Jesus was a Comforter. The original
Greek for “another” is “allos” which means “another of the same kind and
essence” and so supports our interpretation that Jesus is also a Comforter just
like the Holy Spirit. But God the Father is also a Comforter as we read:
2Co
1:3 “Blessed be
God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the
God of all comfort;”
And, so Noah is a spiritual
representation not only of God, The Lord Jesus Christ, and God, The Holy Spirit,
but also of God, The Father. As we shall see later on, from time to time, Noah
vacillates in his role of portraying these three Persons of the eternal
Godhead. We can see this more clearly as Noah was the savior of mankind in
God’s world judgment flood in the 600th year of Noah’s life (Gen
7:6-11, see Biblical Calendar—Page 10)
destroying the whole earth except for Noah and his household:
He
11:7 “By faith
Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared
an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and
became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.” {moved…: or, being wary}
2Pe
2:5 “And spared
not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of
righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;”
Noah was therefore a perfect
typology of the triune God who is (are) the Savior(s) of the elect amongst
mankind, each Member of the Godhead having their different roles in salvation
as we see below:
1Pe 1:1-2 “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers
scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect
according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through
sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling
of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be
multiplied.”
Now let us go back and deal
with the rest of Father Lamech’s prophecy in Genesis 5. He said that Noah would
bring comfort to mankind concerning our “work and toil of our hands, because of the ground
which the LORD hath cursed.” The “work and toil of our hands” is the penalty
that God placed upon mankind when Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden and
simultaneously God also cursed the ground (a portrait of the whole creation and
mankind in particular as we were made from the dust of the ground, Gen 2:7)
because man was placed as the head of the creation and all creatures receive
their sustenance from the cursed ground directly or indirectly (hence, the
reason for physical death in the world). This conclusion is seen in the passage
below:
Ge 3:16-19 “Unto the woman he [God] said, I will greatly
multiply thy sorrow [toil] and thy conception; in sorrow thou
shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and
he shall rule over thee. {to thy…: or, subject to thy husband} And unto Adam he
[God] said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy
wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt
not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow [toil]
shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles
shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; {bring…: Heb.
cause to bud} in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return
unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and
unto dust shalt thou return.”
To ensure that
we are on the path of truth, the Hebrew word translated “toil” in Genesis 5:29
(the verse quoting Father Lamech’s statement at Noah’s birth) is only found in
the two verses above where it is translated “sorrow”. So, we can see that, by
Noah saving mankind from total physical annihilation in the flood, he was a
great typology of Jesus Christ who came to save His people (Matt 1:21) who are
in Him from the curse and eternal spiritual death (the second death, Rev 20:14,
21:8) as a result of Adam’s original sin, thereby making them at peace with God
(Rom 5:1):
1Co
15:22 “For as in Adam all [every human]
die, even so in Christ shall all [the elect] be made alive.”
The word “all”
in reference to those who are in Christ refer only to those that God, the
Father, in His foreknowledge (see the Father’s role in salvation covered above)
gave to the Son, the Lord Jesus:
Joh
6:37 “All that the Father giveth me [Jesus
Christ] shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise
cast out.
And God further explains later down in the same discourse
that mankind cannot come to Jesus of their own volition:
Joh
6:44 “No man can come to me, except the Father
which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.”
Joh
6:65 “And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that
no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.”
So, we are clear
that it is not the whole human race that sinned in Adam that is in Christ from
a redemptive standpoint but only the elect of God.
There is also
one very important additional truth taught here that we should not let slip
past us—even as Christ makes “all” His people who are in him alive, so Noah
kept all the people who were in his household alive, his sons having been born
forth from his loins and so are in him. In a real sense, so are Christ’s
people, they are born again out of Christ (Ro 8:1, 1Co 1:30, 2Co 5:17, Eph 2:10,
Jude 1:1) and are a part of His body (Ro 12:5, Ga 3:28, Eph 2:6) and household (Eph 2:19, Ga
6:10, 1Pe 2:5) as God shows us:
1Co
4:15 “For though ye have ten thousand instructors
in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have
begotten you through the gospel.”
Heb
3:6 “But Christ as a son over his own house;
whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the
hope firm unto the end.”
Therefore all that we have
seen so far comports with the finding that Noah is a great type of the Lord
Jesus Christ in the atonement plan of God.
Now, going back to the Genesis account, the next thing God tells us
about Noah is:
Ge
6:8 “But Noah found grace in the eyes of
the LORD.”
This verse attests to the fact that Noah was saved but not by his good
works:
Eph
2:8 “For by grace are ye saved through
faith; and that [faith] not of yourselves: it is the gift
of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
Rather, his good works were
as a result of God’s actions from within his regenerated soul:
Eph
2:9-10 “For we are his workmanship, created in
Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should
walk in them.” {ordained: or, prepared}
Php 2:12-13 “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in
my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation
with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh [effectually
energizes—Greek: ‘energeo’] in you both to will and to do of his
good pleasure.”
Heb
13:20-21 “Now the God of peace, that brought
again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through
the blood of the everlasting covenant, {covenant: or, testament} make you perfect in every
good work to do his will, working in you that which is wellpleasing in his
sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” {working: or, doing}
Therefore we are not surprised to read of Noah, a true child of God:
Ge
6:9 “These are the generations of Noah:
Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and
Noah walked with God.” {perfect: or, upright}
Ge
6:22 “Thus did Noah; according to all that God
commanded him, so did he.”
But these declarations about Noah are also true of the Lord Jesus
Christ:
Lu
2:40 “And the child [Jesus] grew,
and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was
upon him.”
Lu
2:52 “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature,
and in favour [grace] with God and man.” {stature: or, age}
Heb
2:9 “But we see Jesus, who was made a little
lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and
honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.” {for the: or, by the}
Heb
5:9 “And being made perfect, he [Jesus]
became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him;”
Eph
4:13 “Till we all come in the unity of the faith,
and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure
of the stature of the fulness of Christ:” {in: or, into} {stature: or, age}
Re
15:3 “And they sing the song of Moses the servant
of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy
works, Lord God Almighty [Jesus]; just and true are
thy ways, thou King of saints.” {saints: or, nations, or, ages}
1Pe
3:18 “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins,
the just [Jesus] for the unjust [the elect],
that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened
by the Spirit:”
Mt
27:24 “When Pilate saw that he could prevail
nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his
hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just
person [Jesus]: see ye to it.”
Joh
12:49 “For I [Jesus] have not spoken of
myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I
should say, and what I should speak.”
Joh
14:31 “But that the world may know that I [Jesus]
love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do.
Arise, let us go hence.”
Oh, Noah, what a great man of
God was he! A great type of our Lord Jesus Christ in the atonement from every
vantage point thus far.
Continuing
in the historical narrative after Genesis 6:22, we see that God, who already is
in the ark, graciously bids Noah and family to join Him in the ark by saying
come in:
Ge 7:1 “And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all
thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this
generation.”
Also, God was outside the ark as He shuts up Noah into the
ark:
Ge 7:16 “And they that went in, went in male and female of all
flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in.”
And
God remained with Noah and his family within the ark right through the entire
judgment flood as evidenced by Him telling them to go out (indicating that He
is inside) of the ark:
Ge 8:15-16 “And God spake unto Noah, saying, Go forth of the ark, thou,
and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons’ wives with thee.”
So
we can see God’s extreme care for the ark and its precious contents in the
judgment flood by being in the ark first to invite in Noah and then by being
outside of the ark for protection shutting them in, and by being in the ark to
take them safely through the judgment. Well, with the crucifixion of Jesus
Christ as the Passover lamb in 33 A.D. and with the judgment of the world at
the end of time, God is also just as meticulous and active and He tells us:
Exo 12:5 “Your lamb shall be
without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the
sheep, or from the goats.” {of…: Heb. son of a year}
1Pet 1:19-20 “But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb
without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the
foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.”
Ps 23:4 “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of
death, I will fear no evil: for
thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
Re
20:12-13 “And I
saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and
another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were
judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their
works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell
delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man
according to their works.” {hell: or, the grave}
Next, we see that seven days of grace were still left before
the flood judgment:
Ge 7:4 “For yet seven
days, and I [God] will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have
made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.” {destroy: Heb.
blot out}
During these seven
days salvation was still possible and God was compassing the unsaved world of
Noah’s generation for the last time even as He did in
Heb
11:30-31 “By
faith the walls of
Then, after the
seven days, the judgment flood of rain for forty days and nights started:
Ge 7:4 “For yet [after]
seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have
made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.” {destroy: Heb.
blot out}
During these forty days and
nights of judgment there is no gospel to save anyone outside of the ark. This
is represented by there being no spiritual bread (the Word of God, Jesus—Joh
6:35) and no spiritual water (the Word of God, Jesus, Holy Spirit—1Joh 5:6)
outside the ark during the forty days and nights of the judgment flood due to
the sins of those under the flood (i.e., no salvation is possible when judgment
starts), but there was provision in the ark (Gen 6:21):
De
9:18 “And I [Moses] fell down before
the LORD, as at the first, forty days and forty nights: I did neither
eat bread, nor drink water, because of all your sins which ye sinned, in
doing wickedly in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger.”
Then, in the next verse of
the Genesis account, we see that Noah was perfectly obedient even as Christ was
perfectly obedient unto death at His time of judgment on the cross:
Ge
7:5 “And Noah did according unto all that the
LORD commanded him.”
Php
2:8 “And being
found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death,
even the death of the cross.”
Next,
the historical account tells us that God was very meticulous about the timing
of judgment, look at all the time clues—the year, the month, the very day of
the month:
Ge 7:11-13 “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second
month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the
fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. {windows: or,
floodgates} And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. In
the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of
Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the
ark;”
So,
too, God has afore appointed a year, a month, and a day when he would judge
Jesus as the Lamb of God and will also judge this present evil world:
Exo 12: 2 “This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you. 3 “Speak ye unto all the
congregation of
Exo 12:6 “And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of
the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of
Ac
17:31 “Because
he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in
righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath
given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.”
{hath given…:
or, offered faith}
2Pe
3:7 “But the
heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store,
reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.”
And
God also had meticulously appointed a specific hour for the judgment of Christ
and has appointed a particular hour for the final judgment of the world:
Joh
13:1 “Now
before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come
that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his
own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.”
Re
14:7 “Saying
with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment
is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the
fountains of waters.”
Next, the judgment outside
the ark extends over all the earth mirroring the final judgment that will
shortly be here wherein every unsaved person alive or dead will have to appear
for judgment even as God describes in great detail for our benefit below:
Ge 7:19-23 “And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and
all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.
Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.
And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and
of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every
man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was
in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which
was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things,
and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah
only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.”
Re
20:12-13 “And I
saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and
another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were
judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their
works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell
delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man
according to their works.”
But even as God remembered
Noah during the flood judgment and caused the waters to decrease so that Noah
could eventually leave the ark, so He also remembered Jesus Christ and would
not leave Jesus’ soul in hell once Christ satisfied the penalty of His eternal
wrath on behalf of the sins of the elect (Rom 15:3):
Ge 8:1 “And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was
with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters
asswaged;
Psa
16:9-10
“Therefore my [Jesus] heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my
flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou [God] wilt not leave my soul in hell;
neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One [Jesus] to see
corruption.
After this, God
shows us He remembered Noah by causing the ark with Noah to rest on the
mountains of Ararat on a specific year, month, and day. The ark being at rest,
no longer toiling in the waters of judgment, typifies God’s delivering of
Jesus’ soul from toiling under His eternal wrath to a place of complete rest all
within a specified time:
Ge 8:4 “And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the
seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.” [Ararat ="
the curse reversed: precipitation of curse"]
Mr
8:31 “And he [Jesus]
began to teach them, that the Son of man [Jesus] must suffer many
things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and
scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”
Act 2:26-27 “Therefore did my [Jesus’] heart rejoice,
and my tongue was glad; moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope: Because
thou [God, the Father] wilt not leave my soul in hell,
neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.”
Notice that the Hebrew word
translated “Ararat” literally means “the curse reversed” indicating that God’s
adamic curse upon those in the ark (typifying Christ and His elect) was now
reversed eternally.
Next, in the historical account, God tells us:
Ge
8:6-7 “And it came to pass at the end of forty
days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made: And he sent
forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from
off the earth.” {to…: Heb. in going forth and returning}
The
raven, represents sins of abomination (Lev 11:13-15) to God. Two ravens were in
the ark (Gen 7:8-9) and when one is released “at the end of forty days” (i.e.,
the end of the period of judgment as shown above) and it leaves the ark, this
signifies that sin has been judged and is removed for ever from the soul of Noah
(Christ) and the souls of Noah’s family (the elect in Christ) because the raven
did not return to the ark. But sin and judgment for sins remains outside the
ark over the waters showing that those outside the ark under the waters are
under the eternal judgment of God having no rest (even as the raven goes forth
to and fro, returning all over the waters without rest).
There is no rest in hell; it is everlasting even as the
raven went to and fro without rest:
Isa 28: 18-22 “And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your
agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass
through, then ye shall be trodden down by it. From the time that it goeth forth
it shall take you: for morning by morning shall it pass over, by day and by
night: and it shall be a vexation only to understand the report. {to…: or, when he
shall make you to understand doctrine} …. Now therefore be ye not mockers, lest your
bands be made strong: for I have heard from the Lord GOD of hosts a
consumption, even determined upon the whole earth.
De
28:67 “In
the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say,
Would God it were morning! for the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt
fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see.”
Re
20:10 “And the
devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where
the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and
night for ever and ever.”
The
raven that is not talked about by God in this passage but which we know is
still inside the ark, because there were at least two of each kind of animal in
the ark (Gen 6:20), this raven becomes a picture of sin (that remains hidden to
the natural eyes) in the body (flesh) after the soul of the individual is
saved:
Ro
6:12 “Let not
sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts
thereof.”
Ro
8:10 “And if
Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit
is life because of righteousness.”
Rom
7:24-25 “O
wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” {the body…: or, this body of
death} I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind
I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.”
Oh what a God? Who can fathom these matters of His?
Ro
11:33 “O the
depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are
his judgments, and his ways past finding out!”
After sending the raven, God tells us that Noah sent forth a
dove:
Gen 8:8 “Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters
were abated from off the face of the ground”
The
dove represents spiritually the Holy Spirit in His role of sanctification (1Pet
1:2):
Lu
3:22 “And the Holy
Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came
from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.”
We are next told
that the dove found no rest outside the ark and returned to the ark, thereby
illustrating that the Holy Spirit does not sanctify for salvation those who are
already in hell (typified by being outside the ark) under the judgment of God,
they will remain under God’s wrath forever without rest as is shown below:
Gen 8:9 “But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and
she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of
the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in
unto him into the ark. {pulled…: Heb. caused her to come}
Re 14:11 And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up
for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast
and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.
Then,
God informs us that Noah sent the dove out of the ark once more:
Gen 8:10-12 “And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent
forth the dove out of the ark; And the dove came in to him in the evening [same
Hebrew word as eventide in Jos 8:29—even as the
King of Ai was taken down from the tree before sun down, so Jesus’ body was
taken off the cross before the Sabbath began that Friday evening, Joh 19:21];
and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that
the waters were abated from off the earth. And he stayed yet other seven days;
and sent forth the dove; which returned not again unto him any more.” [signifying
that atonement was complete in the ark and the world outside was
now cleansed—pictured by the seven days for cleansing of leprosy (Lev 13) and
issue of blood (Lev 15:13)].
The olive leaf from the dove represents the elect body of
believers within the eternal church:
Ps 128:3 “Thy [Jesus’] wife [the eternal church-Eph
5:25] shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house:
thy children [the elect] like olive plants round about thy
table.”
Re 11:4 “These are the two olive trees [the
elect that God, the Holy Spirit and Jesus work in as they witness the gospel],
and the two candlesticks [the external churches during the church age,
Rev 1:20] standing before the God of the earth.”
And
so God is
hereby illustrating the giving of the elect to Christ from the foundation of
the earth who had been plucked out of the judgment wrath of God (that is
occurring outside of the ark on all who are sinners) by the Holy Spirit
sanctifying them (covered in more detail in this study in the section titled
“the atonement before time”) for salvation as we read:
Joh
6:37-39 “All [the
elect] that the Father giveth me [Jesus] shall come to
me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out…And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of
all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again
at the last day.”
Eph 2:3-6 “Among whom also we [the elect] all had our
conversation [behavior] in times past in the lusts of our flesh,
fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the
children of wrath [the elect, before God saves them, are under the wrath
of God just the same as every unsaved person], even as others. {desires: Gr.
wills} But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he
loved us [the elect], even when we were dead in sins, hath
quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) {by…: or, by
whose grace}And hath raised us up together, and made us sit
together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
Now, let us consider the
possible millions of earth’s population (Ge 6:1) that died in the flood. Who
were these people? Historically, some were Noah’s close kinfolks—brothers and
sisters, uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews, etc. (see Ge 5:30 where Noah had
brothers and sisters). Others were descendants of the Godly line of calendar
patriarchs given in Genesis 5, and still others were descendants of the ungodly
lineage of Cain, the son of Adam (Ge 4:17-24). And all these descendants had
wrongly commingled through time (Gen 6:2) so that by the time we get to the
flood, 6023 years after Adam sinned (See Biblical Calendar and Adam’s Likeness
and Image) in the 600th year of Noah, there is no longer any
separation of Godly and ungodly (2Co 6:14, Lev 10:10,
Ezra 10:2): All were ungodly except for Noah and the seven others of his
immediate family (Ge 6:1-18). From this population was the audience that Noah
preached to continually (2Pe 2:5, covered in more depth later in this study). That was the historical
setting. However, there is the spiritual dimension: Satan, the master of
deception (Re 12:9), worked through Cain and his descendants so that even in
the naming of their children (Ge 4:17-24) they used similar names to those of
the Godly lineage in Genesis 5. Man, being made in the image of God, is
innately religious and Satan exploits this nature of unsaved humans—making them
mimic the actions of God’s people. By, so naming their descendants in this
manner, Cain’s lineage are spiritually identifying themselves outwardly with
the people of God so that the people of God are deceived (2Cor 11:3) into
thinking that Cain’s lineage is also Godly (see 2Cor 11:13-15) and intermarries
them and the spiritual contamination occurs (Cain and his descendants in
Genesis 4:17-24, were worldly, material seekers contrary to Colossians 2:8,
bigamist contrary to Ephesians 5:31, prideful contrary to 1Peter 5:5, murderers
contrary to Matthew 19:8, and worldly musicians contrary to Ephesians 5:19; and
they like all unsaved spouses cause their saved spouses to turn away from God,
such as the outstanding illustration of King Solomon in 1Kings 11:8-10). And
the spiritual contamination just becomes progressively worse with each
successive generation till we get to the time of the flood. This spiritual
apostasy illustrates how Satan has slowly infiltrated God’s people in all ages
of this world’s existence by sowing his leaven (sin) progressively amongst the
unleavened (i.e., those who are saved) until the whole lump is leavened (1Cor
5:6, Gal 5:9, Mat 13:33) and ready for destruction. This is also how Satan has
progressively sowed tares amongst the wheat in the churches in the world (Mat
13:36-43) throughout the centuries from Pentecost (see Acts 20:29-30, 2Thes
2:3-10, Rev 2:8-9, 12-13, 3:9, 2Cor 12:7, 1Tim 5:15, 1Joh 2:18, Eph 6:10-18,
1Pet 5:8, and many others) until by the end of the church age the external
churches are mostly filled with tares! Thereby causing God’s final judgment to
begin with the churches and then to transition to the ungodly world:
1Pe
4:17 “For the time is come that judgment
must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at
us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?”
De
32:36 “For the LORD shall judge his people,
and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is
gone, and there is none shut up, or left.” {power: Heb. hand}
The house of God in 1Pet 4:17
is the church as we read in 1Timothy:
1Ti 3:15 “But if I
tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the
house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground
of the truth.” {ground:
or, stay}
Now we can see that Noah’s
audience (the congregation to which he preached) was no different in its
composition and corrupt spiritual lineage from the local churches of today and
only the few righteous persons amongst them will be spared. What message was
near and dear to Noah’s heart as he preached to his congregation? It was the
message of impending world judgment, but Noah’s audience would not heed! Do you
think it will be any different in the churches today when they hear 1Peter 4:17?
No! (Note: The topic of Satan’s abomination of desolation of the churches today
is covered more extensively in a separate study titled “ Men of Renown” – a
reflection of the spiritual condition of churches at the imminent return of
Jesus Christ). Even as Noah’s preaching centered around the world judgment so
it was that Jesus’ earthly ministry featured the message of judgment heavily
(see Mat 5:21-30, 10:15,28, 11:22-24, 12:36, 41-42, and so many others) and so
Noah’s message is a great foreshadow of Christ’s preaching.
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