To Encourage You

1 Peter 3:20-22 “God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.  Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.”

Jesus likened the period prior to His second coming to the time of Noah prior to the worldwide flood in the following words from Matthew 24:37-39: “For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.”  In Noah’s day, the flood was an instrument of judgment that brought death upon the whole world with the exception of Noah and his immediate family. They were the only ones that believed God and so they were the only ones who sought refuge in the ark when the floodwaters came.  Up until the day the rains began people were living a relatively carefree life. To their everlasting peril, death was the furthest thing from their minds.  Another place that the Bible likens Noah’s flood to our day and age is the passage from 1 Peter 3 above. Here it speaks about how it was the ark that brought eight, and only eight, persons safely through water. Again, the water was an instrument of death.  Peter then lays the death and resurrection of Jesus alongside the metaphor of the ark. But here he’s speaking of the death of the people who have lived since the time of Noah.  That includes you and me.  

As in the days of Noah, judgment is certain to come upon this world. And while the vehicle for that judgment may not be a flood, whatever it is, the end result will be death. The Bible tells us that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), and it then tells us that the wages of that sin is death (Romans 6:23). It’s coming to every one of us.  It’s approaching us like a worldwide flood that none of us can escape. However, the nature of that experience will depend on whether we are safely in the ark. And that ark is the Lord Jesus Christ.  Unless we are “baptized” into Him, in the language of 1 Peter 3, we are in jeopardy.  This is not speaking of water baptism, although water baptism is symbolic of what occurs. Rather, it is speaking about entering into the death of Jesus by our faith in what He accomplished on the cross. It is only as we do this that we will be carried in Him through the waters of death into the safety of His resurrection.  As we are told in Romans 6:5, “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” And that resurrection is a resurrection to the safety of heaven. That’s where the waters of death always lead the Christian, for he or she is carried there in the ark which is Christ.  However, anyone who is not in this ark, anyone who has not entered into a relationship with Christ by faith, everyone who is not a part of His body because they have refused to believe, will find themselves in the same devastation that the flood brought on the whole world at the time of Noah. 

So, what is your choice?  Do you have the attitude of Paul at the time of his impending death? Listen to his words as he faces death in the ark of Jesus Christ: “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:55-57).  Or are you unaware of what awaits you as you go merrily through life in the face of the certain inevitable judgment of God. 

You see, as in the days of Noah, so will the coming of the Son of Man be.  There were only eight saved in Noah’s day. Jesus warned us with the following words that it will be very much like this when the final judgment comes: “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:13-14). Have you entered the narrow gate that provides entrance to the Ark?  Do you realize that it is only Jesus Who IS the gate (John 10:9)? It is only Jesus Who is the Ark. And it is Jesus alone Who is both the Resurrection and the Life.  

Doesn’t it make sense to get in God’s Ark right now while His patience waits?