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Noah’s Obedience and God’s Salvation Plan — Genesis 7 Daily Word
Explore Noah’s faithful obedience to God’s detailed instructions for building the ark and entering it with his household and animals, establishing God’s covenant and kingdom through Noah.
Genesis 7:1-9 Daily Word
1. [Scripture]
[1] 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. [2] 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, [3] 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. [4] 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.” [5] And Noah did all that the LORD had commanded him. [6] Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth. [7] 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. [8] Of clean animals, and of animals that are not clean, and of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground, [9] two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah. (Gen 7:1-9, ESV)
2. [Daily Word]
# God gives detailed instructions on how to build the ark.
The reason for this is, as stated in verse 17, that God will bring a flood to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life. God then establishes a covenant with Noah. Just as God had established His kingdom on earth through Adam, through this covenant He will re-establish His kingdom through Noah. For this reason, Noah has a task he must first carry out. As stated in verse 22, it is to do all that God has commanded — to enter the ark together with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives, and to bring into the ark two of every living creature, male and female, so that they may be kept alive together with Noah himself.
# Today’s passage is the word given to Noah as he was finishing the construction of the ark.
In verse 1, God commands, “Go into the ark, you and all your household.” He then gives instructions concerning the animals. However, the animals to be brought into the ark were not simply one pair, male and female, of each kind.
As we see in verse 2, clean animals were to be taken seven pairs each, unclean animals two pairs each, and birds of the air seven pairs each. The reason for these larger numbers is that sacrificial offerings to God were included among them. This is confirmed in 8:20, where we read that after the flood had ended and Noah came out of the ark, he built an altar to the LORD and took from every clean animal and every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. Notably, it is in verse 2 that God first uses the words “clean” and “unclean.”
This teaches us that the offerings presented to God must be clean. In this way, God makes a distinction between “what may be offered to God and what may not,” as well as between “what may be eaten and what may not be eaten.”
We must remember that God distinguishes between the clean and the unclean even within the Kingdom of God and the Church. In Matt 3:12, He separates the wheat from the chaff, and though He allows the weeds to grow alongside the wheat, we remember that at the last day He will pull up the weeds and burn them. Therefore, the question of whether we will live purely or impurely before God is an extraordinarily important matter in our lives.
# God instructs Noah concerning the flood.
Verse 4 tells us that seven days from now, rain will fall for forty days and forty nights, and God will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature He has made. The period of forty days and nights appears throughout Scripture as a significant number. It is the length of time Jesus was tempted, the time Moses spent on Mount Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments, the forty years Israel wandered in the wilderness after the Exodus, and the forty days the spies spent in Canaan. This period is ultimately a time of hardship and, at the same time, a time of new beginnings — a season of focused devotion to God. In particular, God reveals to Noah the manner in which He will judge the earth.
That method is to send rain upon the earth and sweep away every living thing He has made. Yet in (Gen 2:5-6), the LORD God had not yet sent rain upon the earth, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground. Some scholars hold the view that rain did not fall in the era before the flood. Noah, therefore, may have had little knowledge of rain. This is why God had him build the ark with great care and made known to him how the judgment would unfold.
3. Applying the Word
# Here we record the facts immediately before the flood began.
Noah carried out everything God had commanded him. That Noah was six hundred years old (v. 6) implies that he spent a hundred years building the ark to preserve life. When the floodwaters came upon the earth, he boarded the ark with his family, along with the clean animals, the unclean animals, the birds, and every creature that crawls on the ground, to escape the flood. Noah’s ark stood in the midst of the world, and it stood at the very center of the 120-year period God had appointed.
The reason God instructed Noah to build the ark was to set him apart from a corrupt world and to protect and save him from judgment. In the same sense, God established the church.
The church, too, stands in the midst of the world, and it stands at the center of our hundred-year journey of life. What is it that we must do during this time? Although we live in the world, we are called to live in a way that is different from the world. We must obey and carry out the commands He has given us. It is when we follow them to the very end that we come to live in the kingdom of God. Keep this in mind, and our hope is that today we would be people who live fully set apart within the ark of God’s Word — the ark He is building in the very midst of our lives.
Noah’s Ark, God’s plan of salvation, faith of obedience, the judgment of the flood, preservation of life
Originally published in Korean at bible2u.com
