One Person Makes All The Difference: Learning from Noah

What lessons can the contemporary Christian learn from the story of Noah in the book of Genesis? The twenty-first century is filled with true stories of everything that could go wrong with human relationships, community and international conflicts that do not only threaten human survival but threatens whole life of God’s creation environmentally, politically, socially, emotionally and psychological in addition to dangers of ill-health. Security and trust have evaporated as despair, fear, and state of uncertainty reign on earth. What can one man, or even one woman do to make a difference morally and spiritually to stop corruption and restore integrity locally and across the globe? Situations are overwhelming on the ground but one person can make the difference in God’s world.

We will see the lessons we can pick from the life of one man called Noah. What happened? What can we learn? Are there men and women who have made a huge difference in a desperate world? Who are some of those people? What was special about them? The author of the book of Genesis introduces Noah as a tool to facilitate creation of his role as God’s servant with a special mission. The audience is prepared for the task of Noah in God’s mission by Lamech, Noah’s father, who at the age of 182 years expressed great hopes for his newborn son. Lamech believed that Noah would do something great that would cancel effects of God’s curse on Adam “He will comfort us in labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the Lord has cursed” (Gen. 5:29). The Lord God had cursed the ground saying “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return” (Gen.3:17-19). By the birth of Noah, Lamech hoped that life would return to the golden age before God cursed the ground. “He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the Lord has cursed” (Gen. 5:29). It echoes the contents of Genesis 3:17-19.

The cursed ground will produce thorns and thistles for man who would since eat plants of the field in agricultural engagements. Lamech must have wished that mankind would be saved from toiling for livelihood.
The story of Noah will demonstrate that men and women may pray, that God answers prayers, but God is not bound to answer prayers in the same way they are offered. God, many times has his own sense of humor. This process will evolve as we continue with the story of Noah. It would take Noah 500 years before he had children. The long waiting becomes training for a servant to know what exactly God wants him or her to do and how best to do God’s will.

When God calls a person to do a task, He makes that task known to His servant. The readers of this text of Genesis know the mind of God (Gen. 6:2) that God was sad and disappointed with man. God confessed “My spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal / corrupt; his days will be 120 years” (Gen. 6:3). Remembering that Lamech had lived 777 years, God’s decision reduced human lifespan drastically. When people chose corruption over righteousness, they choose to part ways with God’s Holy Spirit who empowers them to live holy and godly lives in the world. They loose the mandate to speak for and on behalf of God the creator. One of the ways in which corruption expressed itself, and still expresses itself, was sex practice without respect for boundaries. Sex is great and good, provided it is practiced within confines of set limits that match accompanying responsibilities. Loose sexual practices are inacceptable. They cannot be condoned even when ‘everybody else is doing it.’ It has no justification.

In a corrupt world, sex is known to be used to secure employment, college grades; its demands to demonstrate power over the weak and disadvantaged in demeaning and oppressive situations. Sex is used as a tool of the powerful over the weak socially, politically, economically or financially. Sex that should be practiced with a sense of sacredness is used too casually and disrespectfully to communicate its intended meaning in a rotten and stinking society. This is sexual abuse. It cannot be described as love when it has no regard for boundaries, respect or accountability. A good sex life is a sound indicator of a healthy community. Lack of good sex practices are markers of corrupt communities on the earth where thought and behavior do not match. Loose sexual behavior between sons of God and daughters of men was an abomination to God. The sons of God saw that daughters of men were beautiful, “and they married any of them as they chose” (Gen. 6:2). That was abuse of power and immoral behavior. It is recorded that children born into the marriages although became famous heroes, the end did not justify the means. God was not impressed.

Strength and fame did not impress God. Human actions offended God. Our requirement to do the right thing cannot be compromised. It is in doing the right thing that we practice both holiness and righteousness. The two belong together as the two sides of the same coin. God would not allow corruption to have a upper hand in life for a world He has created. The world belongs to the Lord and He has the obligation to correct human behavior where and when it goes against God’s will. God sees beyond what human beings display on the face. He noticed that man’s wickedness and that the very inclination of his heart was evil. God decided to wipe out mankind from the face of the earth. The wiping out of the face of the earth would include animals that moved on the ground and birds of the air. Those were all creatures that God had made and entrusted to man to manage as God’s stewards. The steward had betrayed God’s trust by his irresponsible behavior (Gen. 6:6, 7). God would surely do what he planned to do but He adjusted the mode of operationalization. He chose to mix grace and mercy in the process of execution. God chose to use Noah in the execution process. God had not forgotten Lamech’s wish for his son to become the means by which God would bring comfort by saving the world from total holocaust.

Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. That made all the difference because Noah’s favor before the Lord brought redeeming value that would save man and animals from total annihilation that God announced. Noah’s role becomes a mitigating condition that enables him to operate differently from what God had threatened to do. The story of Noah conveys one message that righteousness of one person in the thick darkness of sinful and corrupt is enough to turn things round. Noah becomes a type of second Adam whom God uses to build the ark (Gen. 13-16, 22-24) in which animals and bird species are saved in pairs of male and female for salvation. Noah himself, wife, sons and there are saved to preserve humankind. The rest of human population was destroyed in the deluge that followed. One righteous man or woman to do the right thing and take courage and make commitment to work for change ends up achieving far much more than he or she had envisaged. The daredevil commitment by William Wilberforce who against all odds, committed himself to abolish slave trade through the British parliament legislation; Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. who fought discrimination against Blacks in the United States; Mother Teresa of India carried with passion mission to the poor and the sick without forgetting the impact of the late Prof. Wangari Maathai of Kenya on environmental conservation. One can begin small and may never tell the total impact of works of righteousness in saving difficult situations in any corner of the world.

When we see a mountain of a problem, we should not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by it. We should consider ways of solving the problem bit by bit. Once it picks the momentum, we will be amazed by how God will bless what we do, to become the seed that transforms the situation for God and for His people. You could be the Noah that God calls to be righteous enough to build the ark by which God will save the world. Why don’t you volunteer to become our Noah in your situation before the flooding begins? Put voices of discouragement behind you and move forward. Righteous people who find favor before God and men and women just like you. Begin. If God has revealed to you the gravity of the problem before you, get ready to begin to solve. God will accomplish it through you in spite of all your fears and doubts. It is God who will work with you to accomplish the task. Your service is God’s business. He looks for humans like you to execute it.