When God was about to destroy the whole human race (except for eight chosen souls), he provided an ark for the saving of his chosen. What a blessed picture of Christ our Savior and of our salvation in him! It was an ark of God’s providing. God called Noah and his family into the ark, an ark built specifically for him. God shut them in! Then God poured out the fury of his wrath upon all the earth. All the wrath of the Almighty fell upon the ark. Yet, not one drop of the water of God’s terror fell upon Noah, his wife, his sons, or their wives. The ark absorbed it all. That is what Christ, the Ark of our salvation, did for us. The holy Lord God prepared him and sent him specifically for the saving of his people (Matthew 1:21, Hebrews 10:10-14). He put us in Christ in electing grace before the world began (Ephesians 1:3-6). At Calvary the holy Lord God poured out all the fury of his wrath and justice upon all his chosen, to the full satisfaction of his justice, when he sacrificed his darling Son for us. But Christ bore all the hell of God’s wrath alone. Not so much as an angry look falls upon us, his redeemed.
When Noah came out of the ark, God put a rainbow in the clouds of the sky and promised never to destroy the earth by water again. God told Noah the bow would be a token of his covenant and promised to remember his “everlasting covenant.” As it was God’s covenant with Noah that preserved the world from another flood, so it is God’s everlasting covenant (the bow encircling his throne — Revelation 4) that preserves the world for the salvation of his elect, because he is not willing that any chosen sinner for whom Christ died perish (2 Peter 3:9).
How we ought to rejoice in covenant love! Let us ever give thanks to our great God for his purpose of grace, his performance of grace and his perseverance in grace toward his covenant people! Here is our comfort, encouragement, joy and confidence in this world. God says, “I will remember my covenant.” Noah’s drunkenness would not make him forget his covenant. Ham’s exposure of his father’s sin would not alter God’s purpose of grace toward that man who “found grace in the eyes of the Lord.”
-Don Fortner
