WITHOUT POWER TOOLS Perhaps you’ve seen one of those wildly popular home makeover shows. Remodel a room in two or three days, or tear down and rebuild a house in just a week. Teams of designers, engineers and carpenters tackle the creative chaos of those huge projects. Imagine, for a moment, that while you’re reading today’s passage you’re watching a new reality construction show on television. Talk about a challenging reality premise! God commands Noah to undertake a massive construction project. This boat ain’t no little dinghy, folks. The blueprints call for a vessel that will eventually stand one-and-a-half football fields long, half a football field wide and several stories high. And Noah and his family are to build it without help from the Craftsman® catalog—no nail guns, cordless drills, power saws or razor-sharp planers. Season One of this show ends with Noah walking around inside this massive structure. Season Two is even more stressful. The first twist is that Noah’s work isn’t complete. God then instructs him to collect two of every kind of living creature, along with food for all the animals—and for his own family. How will he do that? Just wait and see, folks! And Season Three is the ultimate producer’s dream—the Survivor® series to beat all Survivor® series. The only problem is that everyone already knows who’s going to be left standing after the last tribal council. When you consider all that Noah had to accomplish, God’s command must have seemed almost impossible. Yet Noah obeyed, trusting God completely by preparing for something he couldn’t even see coming. While we don’t have to build an ark by hand, round up pairs of animals or slosh around in a wooden ship while the perfect storm rages outside, the New Testament alerts us that we face a situation similar to what Noah faced. We’re living in a time of unbelief. We’re waiting for God’s coming judgment on the wickedness of the earth (see 2 Peter 3:6 –7). As Noah waited for new life after the flood, we’re also waiting for the promise of resurrection and eternal life. God asks us to do what Noah did—to trust him, to stake everything on his Word, to the extent that if his promises should fail us, “we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19). Of course, God’s Word will not fail us. He always keeps his promises. He didn’t ask Noah to trust him in vain. And he doesn’t ask us to trust him pointlessly either. Noah survived the flood. And through Jesus, God promises that we will survive the flood of events in our lives until we find eternal safe passage and sure victory over death.
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 00:09:53 +0000
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