Articles
Deliverance from God’s Wrath
Reading: Genesis 7
When we think of Noah, most of us will immediately call to mind a wide variety of creatures which God instructed him to bring aboard the ark. But as we see in this story, the animals were a subpoint of this narrative. The worldwide flood was God’s just punishment on a wicked world. Only Noah, his family, and the animals he gathered found salvation as God sealed them in the ark (v. 16).
Besides those eight souls, every other human soul perished in the flood (vv. 21-23). Imagine the screams outside the ark as the flood began, persisted, and swept people away. Yet they had been warned; though the Genesis account doesn’t go into the details, Peter later revealed that “God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared” (1 Peter 3:20). During this time, we are told that God was preaching to those people (1 Peter 3:19), working through Noah himself as a “herald of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5). God was not uncaring in executing His divine wrath. There was time and opportunity for those around Noah to hear and turn, but they chose to remain condemned—and suffered the punishment for it.
Through Peter’s writing (2 Peter 3:5-7), God makes it clear that the flood (and Noah’s deliverance through it) still has application for those living today. While He won’t flood the world again, the Lord has promised to come on a day of judgment when the ungodly will be destroyed. Just as it was in Noah’s day, the Lord’s patience must be counted as salvation (2 Peter 3:15)—every day we are given is an opportunity to draw near to God and be right with Him. But it must be on His terms: just as the ark was the only means of salvation through the flood, it is only in Christ Jesus where we will find salvation on the last day (1 Peter 3:18, 21).
