Throughout biblical history, God chose certain individuals to carry out His work at that particular time. One of these individuals was Noah.
A Look at Noah
Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit the apostle Peter penned these words about the Old Testament patriarch: “For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly” (2 Peter 2:4-5). In this passage, we draw attention to the fact that Noah was a “preacher of righteousness.” Since Psalm 119:172 states, “My tongue shall speak of Your word, For all Your commandments are righteousness,” we can know as a fact that whatever Noah may have taught all those years while he was preparing the ark, he was a man who taught the truth of God.
Does God still want that kind of man proclaiming His Word? Will He tolerate any other kind? We notice from Genesis 6 that Noah operated under the grace of God. Because of His grace, God gave Noah the opportunity to be saved from the impending worldwide flood that was to come upon the earth. Noah was free to accept or reject this offer of God’s grace.
Noah was a man of faith, faith that comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10:17). The writer of the Book of Hebrews wrote, “By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith” (Hebrews 11:7). There can be no doubt that Noah was a man of faith. He believed that God wanted him to be saved. He believed God when He gave him instructions on how he was to be saved. He believed that God would save him if he followed precisely the commands that God gave him.
Thus, not only was Noah a man of faith, he was also a man of obedience, obedience to the right things – the things that God told him to do. Inspiration records, “Thus Noah did; according to all that God commanded him, so he did” (Genesis 6:22). When the record states that Noah did “all,” we can be assured that he did exactly what God commanded, nothing more, nothing less. Noah was not bound by any system that stated that he needed to first check to see if what he was doing or saying was offensive to those to whom he preached. When preachers of righteousness “speak the truth in love,” that truth will offend those who don’t want to hear it. One simply cannot please all men, but he is commanded to please God. “For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ” (Galatians 1:10).
Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if men today adopted the same attitude that Noah had? If they did, it would mean the termination of every religious denomination on the planet, and all men would be members of the one church for which our Lord died, and which He purchased with His own blood.
