Short Thoughts for Today

Today's short thoughts will focus on Hebrews 11:7 as I continue my journey of blogging through this wonderful Book of the Bible. It is here that the writer references one of the most dramatic events of human history when he writes of Noah and his faith. It is here that he is inspired to write, "By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith."

In Noah we see the consistency of God's word. Noah is named amongst those who inherited righteousness through faith. Again we see faith and obedience, or faith and reverence working hand in hand. After being warned by God of something that Noah had never seen, Noah obediently carried out the building of the ark, anticipating that what God had spoken of would become a real part of history. Remember, in the definition given in the first verse of this chapter, we saw that faith involves the "conviction of things not seen". Noah had never seen with his own eyes the sort of event that God had spoken of, but he was convinced that it would be so. God had said it and he believed God!

Although it is another topic altogether, I feel I should comment briefly on another portion of this verse. I think sometimes that we tend to believe that the ark was so large because it had been built to carry so many people who had failed to respond to some invitation to enter it. In the Genesis account we see God instructing Noah to "make for yourself an ark" and that those who would enter would be himself, his wife, his three sons, their wives and the multitude of animals.

There were no empty rooms that lay unoccupied by those who had made some choice about entering or not. It seems clear that even Noah's wife and his sons and their wives had been chosen by the Lord to enter the ark on the basis of their relationship with Noah, the one man living at that time who "found favor in the eyes of the Lord". All of the glory belongs to the Lord God Almighty, but I believe that in Noah, God has profoundly demonstrated how significant the faith of one man might be. It is a high calling to be people of faith.