We all have read the story of Noah in the book of Genesis Chapter 7 of the Bible. We can learn four important lessons about the ways of God from this story.
Our God is holy and He wants us to serve Him in truth and righteousness. Noah was found worthy before God, and he had a good relationship with God. In Genesis 7:5-7 it says, “And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him. And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood.”
Through Noah, God was able to save generations of humans, and God’s word matters a lot in our life today, These are some important lessons to learn from the life of Noah:
1. Sins grieve God’s heart
God is a good Father and He loves His children. Just like any good Father, our disobedience and sin grieve the heart of our Heavenly Father. In Noah’s days, the people were so sinful that God’s heart was deeply grieved. God was grieved by sin then and He’s grieved by our sin now. He can’t just ignore it because He is a holy and righteous God.
“The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.” Genesis 6:5-6
2. A new beginning with God
God judges man’s sin but he is also merciful, loving, and full of grace. He will never leave us, nor forget us. He will always keep a way to come back to Him. God wants a relationship with us and is always willing to go above and beyond to provide a way for that. Even though a worldwide flood, God provided a way for Noah and his family to be saved by shutting them in the ark.
He is willing to do the same for you today. It’s never too late for new beginnings because God will always provide a way.
“In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And the rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark…Then the Lord shut him in.” Genesis 7:11-13,16b
3. Trust Him, even when we cannot fully understand His ways
Noah must have wondered if God’s plan was best because, after all, a worldwide flood seemed very harsh. However, he still trusted God. God had an eternal plan in mind. He knew the state of the world was self-destructive but he loved the world enough to intervene.
His plan ultimately provided a way for you and me to come to salvation. God sees the bigger picture, so we must trust Him even when we don’t understand His ways.
In Isaiah 55:8-9 we are reminded that God says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
4. Be obedient to God in everything
Speaking of things that are hard to understand, Noah must have faced lots of opposition when he was building the ark. People must have been unkind and laughed as he built a massive ark even though there wasn’t a drop of rain. Yet, Noah obeyed and held fast to what he knew was right, and God rewarded his obedience. Sometimes obeying God means believing and doing things that the world won’t understand, but we know that God honors our obedience to him.
“And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him. And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood.” Genesis 7:5,7
Image Credit: 陽 李