Genesis Part 1: The Primeval History — Episode 5: Noah: A Man Who Found Grace
Genesis 5 ended with a man who walked with God.
His name was Enoch.
Genesis 6 begins by showing us what the world around him had become.
It is not a pretty picture.
Humanity was multiplying. The earth was filling with people. But the increase in humanity was not accompanied by an increase in righteousness.
Instead, something had gone terribly wrong.
Genesis tells us:
“The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth.”
And then comes one of the saddest statements in the Bible:
“The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.”
The world that God had created “very good” had become a world filled with wickedness.
And yet, in the middle of that world, there was one man.
His name was Noah.
When God Looked at the World
Genesis 6 gives us a picture of humanity moving steadily away from God.
The chapter begins with the mysterious account of the “sons of God” and the “daughters of humans.” Much has been written about exactly who these figures were.
Christians have understood the passage in different ways, and Genesis does not give us enough information to settle every question with certainty.
But the larger point is unmistakable.
Humanity was becoming increasingly corrupt.
The story that began with Adam and Eve had moved through Cain and Abel, through Lamech and his violence, through generation after generation of sin and death.
Now Genesis says:
“The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth.”
There is an important word there.
Saw.
God saw.
Nothing was hidden from Him.
The violence of the world was not overlooked. The corruption was not unnoticed. The wickedness of humanity did not somehow escape heaven's attention.
God saw what was happening.
And what He saw grieved Him.
“Every Inclination”
Genesis goes even further:
“Every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.”
That is a devastating description.
The problem was not simply that people occasionally did evil things.
The problem had reached the heart.
The imagination itself had become corrupted.
Sin was no longer merely something people did.
Sin was shaping what they wanted, what they thought, what they planned and what they pursued.
The human heart was bent away from God.
That is why the judgment that follows is so severe.
Genesis is not describing a world that was basically good with a few bad people scattered through it.
It is describing a civilization in which wickedness had become pervasive.
And yet there is something else in this passage that we should not miss.
Genesis says:
“But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.”
But Noah.
Two little words change the direction of the story.
The world was going one way.
Noah was going another.
Noah Found Grace
The King James Version says that Noah “found grace in the eyes of the Lord.”
That is one of the beautiful phrases in the whole account.
Noah did not manufacture grace.
He did not earn God's favor by becoming sufficiently impressive.
He found grace.
God looked upon Noah with favor.
And Genesis immediately tells us why:
“Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God.”
Notice how closely this connects Noah with Enoch.
Just one chapter earlier we were told:
“Enoch walked with God.”
Now we are told:
“Noah … walked faithfully with God.”
The same description appears.
The world had changed.
The generations had multiplied.
The violence had grown.
But God still had a man who walked with Him.
Noah Was Not Perfect
There is another detail worth noticing.
The word translated “blameless” does not mean that Noah was sinless.
The Bible does not present Noah as a man who never sinned.
Indeed, after the Flood, Genesis 9 will tell us about Noah's own failure.
That is important because the Bible's heroes are not plaster saints.
Noah was a real man.
He had a family.
He had responsibilities.
He lived in a corrupt society.
He was capable of failure.
And yet Genesis calls him righteous.
Why?
Because Noah lived by faith and walked with God.
The New Testament makes this even clearer. Hebrews says:
“By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family.”
Noah believed God before he could see what God was talking about.
That is faith.
A Strange Assignment
Imagine being Noah.
God tells you that judgment is coming.
You cannot see the judgment.
There is no flood.
There is no ark.
There is no evidence in front of you that the world is about to be destroyed by water.
And then God gives you instructions for building an enormous vessel.
Noah could have argued.
He could have asked for more evidence.
He could have looked around at the world and said, “Everyone else seems to be doing fine.”
Instead, Genesis gives us the simplest possible statement:
“Noah did everything just as God commanded him.”
That sentence may be one of the greatest testimonies to faith in Scripture.
Noah heard.
Noah believed.
Noah obeyed.
The World Was Full of Violence
Genesis gives us another word that deserves our attention:
“Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence.”
Not merely sin.
Violence.
The Hebrew word describes wrongdoing, injustice, cruelty and violence.
The world had become a place where human beings were hurting one another.
That is a sobering progression.
Cain killed Abel.
Lamech boasted about killing a man.
And now, generations later, Genesis says the whole earth was filled with violence.
Sin that begins in the human heart eventually reaches the streets.
What begins as rebellion against God eventually destroys relationships between people.
That is one of the great themes running through Genesis.
Sin never stays where we put it.
God Grieved
Perhaps the most astonishing statement in Genesis 6 is not about the wickedness of humanity.
It is about the heart of God.
“His heart was deeply troubled.”
The God who created humanity was grieved by what humanity had become.
This is not the picture of a distant God who mechanically watches the world from heaven.
The Bible presents us with a God who cares deeply about what happens to His creation.
Human sin matters to God because human beings matter to God.
The judgment of the Flood is therefore not presented as an arbitrary act of divine anger.
It comes after God has seen the corruption of the earth.
He sees.
He grieves.
And He judges.
But even here, judgment will not be the end of the story.
Because there is Noah.
One Man and His Family
There is something else about Noah that is easy to overlook.
God's plan will involve his family.
Noah is not simply an isolated individual who escapes the world.
He has a wife.
He has sons.
He has daughters-in-law.
They will enter the ark with him.
God's work in Genesis repeatedly moves through families.
Adam and Eve.
Seth and his descendants.
Noah and his household.
The biblical story is never merely about isolated individuals.
God is working through generations.
The same man who walks with God also has a responsibility to those who walk beside him.
Noah's faith will become a matter of life and death for his family.
Noah Did Not Know Everything
There is something encouraging about Noah's story.
Noah did not know everything God was going to do.
He knew enough to obey.
He did not know what a worldwide flood would look like.
He did not know what life inside the ark would be like.
He did not know how long the waiting would last.
He did not know what the world would look like when the waters finally receded.
But God had spoken.
And that was enough.
Faith does not always mean knowing what comes next.
Sometimes faith means knowing who has spoken.
From Enoch to Noah
There is a beautiful connection between the two men.
Enoch lived before Noah.
Enoch walked with God.
Then God took him.
Noah lived in the generations that followed.
Noah walked with God.
And God told him to build.
Enoch's story is remarkably brief.
Noah's story will occupy many chapters.
But both men demonstrate the same truth.
A person can walk with God when the world around him is walking in another direction.
That may be the most important connection between Genesis 5 and Genesis 6.
The world did not become righteous because Enoch walked with God.
And the world did not become righteous because Noah walked with God.
But neither man allowed the wickedness around him to determine the direction of his own life.
They walked with God.
And Then God Said, “Build”
The next step is extraordinary.
God tells Noah:
“So make yourself an ark of cypress wood.”
The judgment has been announced.
The dimensions are given.
The rooms are specified.
The covering is described.
The animals will come.
Noah will enter.
And the waters will rise.
But Genesis 6 does not end with the Flood.
It ends with obedience.
“Noah did everything just as God commanded him.”
That is where we should leave him for now.
A man standing in a corrupt world.
A man who has heard something no one else seems to believe.
A man building something that must have looked absurd to his neighbors.
A man who cannot yet see the judgment that is coming.
But a man who has found grace.
A man who walks with God.
A man who obeys.
The Man Who Built Before the Rain
There is something almost haunting about Noah's obedience.
He built before the rain came.
He believed before he saw.
He obeyed before there was visible evidence that obedience made sense.
The ark was being built while the old world continued on its way.
People ate.
People drank.
People married.
Children were born.
Business continued.
Life appeared normal.
But Noah knew something the world did not know.
God had spoken.
And Noah believed Him.
The story of Noah is often remembered as a story about the Flood.
But before it becomes a story about water, it is a story about faith.
Before Noah entered the ark, he had already made his choice.
He would walk with God.
The world around him was full of violence.
God saw it.
God grieved over it.
God judged it.
But grace was still present.
And grace had a name.
Noah.
The man who found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
The man who walked with God.
The man who built before the rain.
And soon, the whole world would discover why.
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It will not come, it will not come;
They reck not of the flood.
And wherefore with such weary toil
Build up that pile of wood?
How should thine ark e’er reach the sea?
How on this midland floated be?
The sea’s great gulfs are broken up;
Heav’n’s windows opened are;
For forty days the rain prevails;
The mountains disappear.
The faithless die; the ark, their scorn,
Safe on the flood, their grave, is borne.
Lord, give us willing hearts to hear
Not this world’s voice, but Thine,
To fear Thy warnings, and to love
Thy means of grace divine;
Go in Thine ark, and there abide,
Unscarred by wind and foaming tide.
So when another flood shall come—
Not water, but of fire—
When in the billowy surge of flame,
All nature shall expire,
We in Thy heav’nly ark may be,
Anchored on Ararat with Thee.
Christian Neefe (1748–1798)
Words: Christopher Wordsworth, The Holy Year (London: Rivingtons, 1862)
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