The Lord then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. 2 Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. 4 Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.”
5 And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him.
6 Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth. 7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. 8 Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, 9 male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah. 10 And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth.
11 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. 12 And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.
13 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. 14 They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. 15 Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. 16 The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord shut him in.
17 For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. 18 The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 19 They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. 20 The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits.[a][b] 21 Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. 22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. 23 Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.
24 The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.
Footnotes
- Genesis 7:20 That is, about 23 feet or about 6.8 meters
- Genesis 7:20 Or rose more than fifteen cubits, and the mountains were covered
Genesis 7:5
And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him.
In Genesis 6:22 and 7:5, the Scripture tells us that Noah did EVERYTHING or ALL that the Lord had commanded him.
Here's the problem: Everything and All sounds like a lot. Couldn't Noah have just done Some and Most, and been okay? I mean, he still would have been far beyond everyone else of his time in his obedience level! Some and Most would have been good enough, right?
Maybe.
God is merciful, after all. It's possible that He would have accepted Noah on the basis of Some and Most.
But does God ever do Some and Most?
Never! God is all in, all the time. He never wavers in His goodness, never falters in His love, and never takes a break from reaching out to us.
God is committed, and He deserves commitment.
Noah trusted that God would do what He said He was going to do. If God said He was going to flood the earth, that was what was going to happen. If God said that the way for Noah to be saved was to build an ark of such and such dimensions, that was the way to do it. If God said to take this many of each kind of animal, then those kinds of animals would come to him.
All Noah had to do was do what God told him, and he would be saved. And not only would he be saved, but his whole family would be saved, the animals would be saved, and his big boat project would be a wild success.
If we are to be saved, if we want God to help save our loved ones, if we want Him to bless the things we're working on in life, do we dare answer His Everything and All with only Some and Most?
Commit yourself to follow Noah's example of complete obedience to the One who is fully committed to you.
As we read in Genesis 6 and 7, God saved Noah from the Flood because he was living righteously. No one had anything against him that they could blame him for and he walked faithfully with God (Genesis 6:9). He had submitted his life to God's Lordship both internally and with his dealings with others, and he was rewarded for it. He was saved from the Flood.
In the same way, if we live under the Lordship of Christ and submit our lives to Him, we will be saved. God will count us as righteous in our generation, just as He did Noah in his.
But after Noah was found to be righteous, God continued to give him instructions, and Noah continued to submit. When God told him to build the ark to the exact measurements God prescribed and to take the animals with him, the Scripture says that Noah did all that the Lord commanded him to do (7:5).
So it is in the Christian life. God will give us instructions, reward us, and then give us more instructions. We are never finished submitting our lives to God, and God is never finished rewarding us for our faithful service. It's a continual cycle of service and reward.
How has God rewarded you in the past? What new instructions for service is He giving you today?
Genesis 7:1
The Lord then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation.
In Genesis 7:1, God tells Noah to take his whole family with him into the ark. This includes his wife, his three sons, and his sons' wives. All of them are to be saved in the ark. Why?
"Because I have found YOU righteous in this generation," God explains.
Now, that "you" is not plural. God isn't saying He's found Noah and his whole family to be righteous. He's saying He's found Noah to be righteous. That's it.
The truth is that we don't know the spiritual state of Noah's wife or his sons or his sons' wives. Were they like Noah or were they like the rest of people in Noah's day whose "first inclination of their heart was only evil all the time"?
Let me ask you this: What's the spiritual state of your family? Are they all Christians?
No doubt Noah had a profound impact on his wife and his sons. In the same way, you can have great influence over your family. Your faith and leadership can help guide them closer and closer to Christ. Keep being righteous in your generation and let your faith continue to influence them, just as Noah's did in his family.
Then the Lord Shut Him In
Genesis 7:16
Then the Lord shut him in.
This is the sentence we read in Genesis 7:16. The verse before it says the animals "came to Noah and entered the ark."
Noah didn't have to go out and find the animals; they came to him! And he didn't even have to shut the door of the ark; God did it!
Can you imagine if Noah had needed to go out and find all those animals? Could he have done it if God hadn't helped him? How long would it have taken to track down those animals, and which ones would he have forgotten to include in his list?
Could he have shut the door of the ark if he had tried? Being such a large vessel, and needing such a large opening for the taller or wider of the animals, he might not have been able to lift the door after constructing it on the ground.
So, what did Noah do? He did his part by building the ark, then let God do His part. Noah didn't try to do more than he could. He didn't try to force the animals in or strain his muscles lifting something he couldn't. He did what he could and let God do the rest.
Are there areas in your life in which you need to stop trying to do more than you can and let God do the rest?
A major part of spiritual growth is learning to cooperate with God without trying to take His role on ourselves.
Cooperate; don't co-opt.
Genesis 7:17-18
For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. 18 The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water.
In the last paragraph of Genesis 7, destruction comes. A world that has never seen rain (Genesis 2:5) is flooded. All people, all animals, all trees, all mountains are drowned and submerged beneath the violent waves.
But not Noah and his family. For them, the Flood has the opposite effect. Instead of destroying and bringing them down to the depths of the ocean, it raises them up. "As the waters increased, they lifted the ark high above the earth. The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water."
To me, this is a poignant picture of what God does for each of us in the difficulties of life if we allow Him to. As believers in a faithful and redeeming God, we don't have to let the troubles of life overwhelm and bury us. We don't have to let failures or temptations drag us down. With God's help, we can rise above our situations and trials. He can lift us up "high above the earth" in our spirits as we take the high ground over the mundane and temporary things of this passing-away world.
What has you down today?
How is God calling you to rise above it? How can you, with God's help, turn that situation to your good?
With Noah, let us say, "Let trouble come, and watch us float on top of it."
Do you have another insight into Genesis 7? Please share below!
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