Daily Devotion

The Old Testament story of Noah is in Genesis 6-8. The earth was so wicked that God decided that there remained nothing to do but to destroy it. He told Noah His purpose of judgment and instructed him to build an ark in which he, his family, and the representatives of the animal creation might be saved. With reverence and obedience, Noah took God at his word, and so in the destruction of the world, he was preserved.

 

Even more than Abel and Enoch, Noah stands out as a man of faith. Noah took God at His word. He believed the message that God sent him. God’s message might have looked foolish at the moment, but Noah believed it and staked everything on it. If he was going to accept that word of God, he had to lay aside his normal activities and concentrate on doing what His message commanded. Noah’s life was one of continued and concentrated preparation for what God had said would come.

 

The choice comes to every man either to listen to or to disregard the message of God. He may live as if that message is of no importance or as if it is the most important thing in the world. We may put it another way—Noah was the man who heeded the warning of God, and because he heeded, he was saved from disaster. God’s warning comes to us in many ways. It may come from conscience; it may come from some direct word of God to our souls; it may come from the advice or the rebuke of some good and godly person; it may leap out at us from the Bible or challenge us in a sermon. Wherever it comes from, we neglect it at our peril.

 

Noah was not deterred by the mockery of others. When the sun was shining, his conduct must have looked like that of a fool. Whoever in his senses built a great hulk of a ship on dry land far from the sea? The person who takes God’s word may often have to adopt a course of action that looks like madness.