Deliverance through Righteousness

Then the Lord said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth. For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.” And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.

Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth. And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood. Of clean animals, and of animals that are not clean, and of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground, two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah. And after seven days the waters of the flood came upon the earth. (Genesis 7:1-10, ESV)

           

            If you were to ask the modern, average American what the definition of righteousness is, what do you think you would hear in response? If the attitudes reflected in the media are any indication, I would say that pop-culture in America would define righteousness as “being true to yourself”. We Americans love to hear stories of people who bucked the system and blazed their own paths. You can see that just in the quotes we share with each other. I see them all the time on Facebook. “No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” Or better yet, “Do not believe the road signs. There is no one way. If it’s your truth, then it’s the right way. There are many paths beyond the rules of limited thinking. Trust your instincts.”

We believe two things very strongly about righteousness. First, no one can stand in our place when it comes to righteousness. We believe that every life starts with a clean slate, without any guilt, and ultimately it is what that person does with that clean slate that makes them acceptable before God or not. Second, we believe that God will ultimately judge us to be righteous because we were being true to our own way. It’s why we have such a hard time with the idea that there can be only one way to Heaven. We think of all of those honest, hardworking unbelievers who are being true to themselves and think, “how could God judge them with doing the best they could with the slate they’ve been given?”

The Bible talks about finding our own way in the world, but it talks about it in terms that are very different from ours. Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way that seems right unto a man, but its end is the way of death.” In Psalm 1, David says that the man who does not walk in the way of the wicked is considered righteous. In Ephesians 2:1-3, Paul says that, before Christ, we all “walked after the prince of the power of the air”. You see, in Scripture, there are not many paths. In Scripture, there are two paths.

We’ve seen this develop in the stories we’ve studied so far in Genesis. The choice that Adam and Eve made was a choice between two paths: the path that leads to God’s wisdom and righteousness, or the path that follows after Satan. Cain stood before two paths, the path of faith or the path of self-righteousness. Lamech and Enoch are personal examples of a contrast of two different paths. Lamech lived life by his own standards, but Moses tells us that Enoch “walked with God.”

Now, the time of God’s longsuffering has past, and it is time for judgment. So, in verse 1, God commands Noah to take his family and the animals that he has sent and to go into the ark that they’ve prepared. The reason that God gives for Noah’s deliverance from the judgment that is to come is that God has found Noah to be “righteous” in his generation.

To understand what “righteousness” is, according to Scripture, I want you to notice three things about this story. First, righteousness is something that God defines. There are two important verbs in verse 1 that you have to notice. The first verb is “said”: God “said” to Noah. I want you to think about the other places where God has said. He spoke in Genesis 1:3, and the creation of the world started. He spoke in chapter 2 and gave man and woman the first commandments. When God speaks, he defines things. He defines the way things should be. Second, notice the verb “have seen”. God says that he has seen the righteousness of Noah. Think, again, of how this verb is used in our earlier stories. In chapters 1 and 2, God saw that each thing he created was “good”. In chapter 6, God saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth. When God sees, he judges things according to His standard of creation and purpose. So, we can see that righteousness is what God defines it to be. It is God who says what righteousness is, and it is God who judges rightly. We are not our own lawgiver, and we are not our own judge.

Second, we can see what righteousness is from the life of Noah. Look back to Chapter 6, verse 9. It says there that Noah was a righteous man because he walked with God. Then, see further down in verse 22 that Noah did all that God commanded him to do. This idea is repeated multiple times throughout this story. So, we see that righteousness is shown in the life of Noah because Noah walked after God. Now, this is extremely important to understand, because as modern Christians, we tend to think of righteousness only in ethical terms. But, as we saw from our reading from Psalm 37, that is not the way the Old Testament means it. Think about the righteous men of the Old Testament. We will see in a few weeks that Noah, though he is considered righteous, is far from ethically perfect. Abraham, Moses, and David were all called righteous men of God, and yet they did terrible things. So, when we read the term, “righteous” or “blameless” in the Old Testament, what we need to keep in mind is that distinction between the way of the Lord and the way of the Serpent. Noah was not sinless, but he walked after God.

Finally, we can see from the story of the flood that the perfect obedience of one man saves a select group of people and a remnant of the creation from the judgment of God. Does Noah enter the ark by himself? No, he enters with his family. And yet, Moses doesn’t go through each member of his family and prove that family member’s righteousness. Rather, it is because of the righteousness of the head of the household, Noah, that the others are able to enter. Brothers and sisters, you cannot miss this concept. This teaching is what is called the doctrine of the “Federal Headship”. Throughout the Bible, we find a multitude of examples of a group of people who were blessed or judged because of one federal head. One example that we’ve already seen is Adam. Because of Adam’s sin, Paul says in Rom. 5:12, all of humanity was brought into sin and death. Abraham was faithful to God’s call and because of him, all of his descendants are blessed. In Exodus 32, God is going to wipe out all of Israel because of their idolatry, but Moses mediates for them and he chooses to spare them for Moses’ sake.

Oh, this is good news, because the curse of Adam is not the end of our story. If all of the world can be plunged into sin and death through one man’s disobedience, then take heart because that same humanity can be saved through one man’s righteousness. And, like Noah, Jesus Christ walked perfectly in the way of his Father. He was not just obedient to God in one thing, but in everything he did. So, as he lived, he gave back to God the obedience that we could not because of our position in Adam. When he died, he offered himself in our place. And, when he rose again, he secured our resurrection. So, Paul says in 2 Cor. 5:21, “He made him who knew no sin to become sin for us, that we might become in him the very righteousness of God.”

Jesus has come as the better Noah who has provided the way to be saved from the wrath of God. And he will not just save 8 people, but a multitude from every tribe, race, and nation. And, he will not just save a few animals of every breed, but he will usher in a new Heavens and a new Earth.

Friend, you may be putting off the thought of judgment for another day, but you cannot stop it from coming. Jesus says in Matt 24:37-38 that it will be the same as it was in the days of Noah when the end comes. People will be marrying and given in marriage, eating and drinking, going about their daily tasks, and then it will come. Do not delay! Trust in Christ, who has provided the way through the judgment of God by his perfect life, death and resurrection.

Brothers and sisters, we are called to wait and to watch for that day, but we are also called to walk in the light of our Savior. Living righteously before God means walking after our Savior. When that day of judgment comes, may we be found faithfully walking after the Savior who has delivered us from the wrath of God.