There are many "firsts" that occur in the Bible with Noah. The word "grace" is used the first time (Genesis 6:8). The word "perfect" is used the first time (Genesis 6:8). The first rain fell on the earth and the first flood occurred. The first time to eat 'meat" occurred (Genesis 9:3). Noah established something that no one after him ever did. But Noah reveals more to us about what we can be - a positive image. Noah was called by God to build an 'ark." This vessel had never been built before.

Imagine a time on the earth when there were no seasons. Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall were non-existent. Every plant was producing fruit every month of the year. The weather was comfortable for each person. My wife prefers warm temperatures and I prefer to have a cooler house since I get overheated easily. The battle of the thermostat is never ending. But in the time of Noah, everyone's thermostat was equal and all were content.

With such a backdrop Noah receives a call from God to build the ark Here was a man, accustomed to living in a fertile valley and feeling dew in the morning. Yet, now God told him to build an ark because it was going to rain. Not only did he have to trust God in the building of the ark, but now when the neighbors asked why he was building a ship on dry ground far away from any water, he had to tell them it was going to rain. The people laughed at him in derision. The people could not imagine what an ark was for and they could not conceive the concept of rain. Surely this man, Noah, was eccentric, bizarre, peculiar and weird.

Yet, the word given to Noah was so sure, so real, so alive to him, that he could not doubt it. Regardless of what anyone said, thought or, did, Noah continued in the construction of the ark. He did not have time to discuss the value of his work or to plead his case with the people and try to convince them of the coming deluge. He had only time for the construction of the very vessel that would save himself.

The world played on - each man enjoying his life as he saw fit without consideration of the coming cataclysmic future. People were absorbed in their interests and oblivious to the testimony that Noah was building before their eyes, Noah did not have time for the pursuit of things of this world. His only concern was to fulfill what the Lord had required of him. In the USA there are many excuses for the pursuit of personal pleasure. Distractions abound. But Noah was of one mind, the mind of Christ, so to speak. He sought only the good pleasure of God's will. Vanity was not a choice for Noah, righteousness was (Genesis 6:8). He had his life given to him by God because he was righteous in a perverse generation.

In times like ours, 1997, we can see the rushing to and fro seeking the pleasures of this world as never before. We can relate to the time of Noah. The question is, are there any saints who have forsaken the ways of the flesh (1 John 2:16)? So many preachers and ministers focus all their attention and efforts against this or that (abortion, homosexuality, etc.) and cause the church, the body of Christ, to spend their efforts to combat the flood of filth. Yet, God would like us to be like Noah. Do not be concerned about the corruption, be concerned about your own life and the establishment of righteousness in your nature.

Noah was called by God to build an ark because in his age, in that day, he was blameless (Genesis 6:8). Now, we know, after the flood he was found drunk. How is it that he could be perfect (NAS blameless, KJV perfect) and still be drunk? We are only responsible for the light that God reveal5 to us. We did not know we needed a Savior until we knew our sin. It is only as God calls us to repentance (John 6:44, 5:30) that we come.

Noah's perfect relationship with God created the opportunity to be the deliverer of mankind. Noah's desire for righteousness and the will of God caused him to be used as a covenant breaker - one who broke free from the realm of death and was able to establish a new world order.

In this day, God is seeking covenant breakers - those who desire to remove all vestiges of the carnal nature from their being to reveal the Son of God in themselves (Romans 8:19). God will have a people who do not seek after prosperity on the natural plane which cloaked in spiritual words seems spiritual but is driven by the carnal nature. God is looking for a people conformed to His image who have no regard for the flesh and its ways but only seek to be a vessel of deliverance for mankind from the bondage of corruption. To him that overcomes the carnal nature in this life even as Noah did, he will be a son of God (Revelation 21:7).

Noah did not reason with God when God told him it was for Noah and his wife and his three sons and their wives (Genesis 6:18). Imagine building a vessel large enough to hold hundreds of people, but only eight are going to go. Eight in the scripture numerics is the number of new beginnings. It is important to note that God established the covenant with Noah - not Noah and his family. Noah's family was saved because of Noah's righteousness (see 1 Corinthians 7 13-14).

The covenant was established with the one who could walk it out. God unilaterally told Noah that this was going to be done because Noah lived the life of God as a testimony to his generation. It was Noah being an example of a godly life that convicted the world of its sin and created the vessel of deliverance. We do not have to contend for righteousness fighting against abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality etc. Rather we have to live righteously.

Noah was able to do this because his life was hid in God. He did not worry about having a fallen nature - which all inherited from Adam, Noah concentrated on developing the life of Godliness in himself. He did not believe the false notions that he could not be perfect until he got to heaven. Rather he walked in the light that lie had and knew that God would account it to him as life. He was not concerned with his faults. He couldn't see them because the faults were covered by the blood of Christ slain from before the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8) and Noah therefore walked by grace (Genesis 6:8). All Noah did was concentrate on what he could change - developing his strengths in Christ. He concentrated on making himself stronger in what he knew. We are not sinners saved by grace. We are saints now. The idea of "sinners saved by grace" still has a sinner mentality! Noah did not have time for that. He was focused on who he was now and how to live the life of God now in the flesh.

It was because Noah saw himself in right standing with God and allowed God to work through him that God chose him to be a covenant breaker with death. Noah's righteousness ended an age, a dispensation! Noah's righteousness started another dispensation! There are some who have not bowed their knee to Baal, 7,000 strong! There is an army of the hosts of heaven (they are not angels but heavenly men walking on the earth) who have been barn in and from the New Jerusalem from above, the mother of us all (Hebrews 12:22-23, Galatians 4:26).

"Noah walked with God" (Genesis 6:8).

Ponder that statement. Noah did not walk alongside of God, before God or after God but "with" God. Their steps were in agreement with one another. Their gait was the same. One did not walk faster than the other. They walked together. God did not go slower so Noah could catch up nor did God go faster to make Noah run. Of course, we are talking spiritually here. God and Noah were of the same mind in their understanding. "For how can two walk together unless they be in agreement" (Amos 3:3)? Noah understood the ways of God, the plan of God.

Paul states that he was a steward of the mysteries of God (1 Corinthians 4:1) and he challenged us to leave the elementary doctrines (Hebrews 6:1) which is what most denominations have been teaching for over 2,000 years now. Noah was not on the basics. He had come into union with God, experienced the third feast (Tabernacles) which follows after Passover (salvation experience) and Pentecost (gifts of the Spirit of 1 Corinthians 12). Noah's identity was in God. His life was in God. He did not waiver when God told him to build the ark and prepare for rain. He believed. His relationship with God was like a man and a wife. When my wife tells me something, I believe her because I know her, I have lived with her, I have walked with her, etc. Noah walked with God. He knew.

The task was greater than he knew. Noah built a vessel never created before. He had to understand the plan of an age to come in order to prepare a vessel for that age. Selah (ponder that). He had to know the end of the thing before he could build the beginning. Good that he was in union with God who is the I AM, the ever present one, who is the future.

The Ark

I am sure that it could be a literal vessel but our concern is the spiritual aspect of this ark. We note that the ark is 300 cubits long. 300 is the number of divine deliverance in the Bible. Gideon had 300 men who slaughtered the enemy (Judges 7) and Samson took 300 foxes (Judges 15) and destroyed the Philistines. God works sovereignly to show it is He who gives the victory, He selects small numbers to confound the many.

Now the ark was fifty cubits wide. Fifty is the number of Jubilee in the Bible. In Leviticus it explains it this way: A person owns some land at the beginning of the first year after Jubilee and cannot make a living on it by the sixth year. So that person sells it to his neighbor. The neighbor can keep the land for the remainder of the fifty years, forty-four years. But at the end, the land reverts back to the original owner. We may be in bondage to the fallen Adamic nature, but in the year of Jubilee we shall return to the pristine state of Eden. So, in the ark the symbolism of the number fifty is reinforced by the number three hundred, for both mean deliverance.

We also note that the ark is three levels high (Genesis 6:1 5) and is thirty cubits in its height. Thirty is the number Of Maturity in the Bible. Jesus was thirty when He came forth in ministry after growing in stature and wisdom (Luke 2:52). Joseph was thirty when he took over for Pharoah. So deliverance comes when we come to maturity. Deliverance doesn't mean a bodily change (glorified body) or going to heaven. Deliverance comes when we reach spiritual maturity in this life - blameless, as Noah was.

The three levels in the ark are of spiritual importance also. Each speaks of the three experiences that each saint is to partake of in his/her life. Below are listed some of them:

Salvation                  Baptism of the Spirit               Union with God

Way                                  Truth                                       Life

Blood                          Water                                       Spirit

30                                  60                                              100

Outer Court            Holy Place                                   Holiest of All

Passover                  Pentecost                              Tabernacles

The window of the ark was placed not on the side but on the top. This is spiritually significant. We are always to be ascending in our faith, always looking to improve and be more like Jesus. We are never to look down to the earth realm (Adamic) but toward the heavenly realm (Christ).

It is interesting to note that the ark of the covenant found in the Holy of Holies is made of wood, even as Noah's ark was made of wood. But the ark of the covenant is overlaid, inside and out with gold. Gold represents divinity in the Bible. Wood represents humanity. Humanity is going to be swallowed up with the divinity of God! The pitch works! It is He that is glorified in us (2 Thessalonians 1:10).

Noah is going to be separated from the Old World, but he is still in it. He is still surrounded by the old carnal nature, but it is the ark that delivers him to the New World. Although in the midst of sin, he remains undefiled. Many Christians cannot remain undefiled in the midst of sin, but there is a way to do this - hide in the nature of Christ and that is what Noah did. He remained focused on doing the work of God and not on his surroundings, the corruption.

But What is the Ark Really?

The ark was the salvation of Noah. The ark is the cross of Christ. It is only when we are hidden in the cross, the crucified life, that we remain in the nature of Christ The cross is our deliverance from the flesh just as the ark was for Noah. For the ark landed on the unseen world (Genesis 8:4). The ark traveled from the fertile low lands to the top of the mountain. God's deliverance is not partial but total. We exchange the depths of slavery of the Adamic nature for the heights of being a prisoner of the Lord.

The ark goes through the judgment (Genesis 7:14) just as "He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is the devil" (Hebrews 2:14). The cross delivers us to the life of the resurrection, just as the ark delivered Noah to a whole New World, a new beginning. It is the cross that separates us from corruption and carries us through death (spiritual) into life even as the ark transported Noah.

The exterior of the ark is the judgment of God, but the interior of the ark is the life of God and salvation. The people of Noah's day, I am sure pounded on the ark as the waters came. They sought relief from the flood but without a change of heart. The outside of the ark was judgment to that world. What world was destroyed? Scripture states that the earth was destroyed. What earth was destroyed? Who was made of the earth? Adam. Adam was destroyed. The world remained and Noah remained in the world. It is only as we remain in the cross that we live and move and have our being, for outside of the cross is death, outside the ark is death. The natural world was not destroyed in Noah's day, it was a spiritual world that was removed because Noah inherited the natural. The wicked are removed and the righteous remain (Proverbs 2:21-22).

Clean and unclean go into the New World. Why? The tree of knowledge of good/evil is always with us. It was in the garden The choice is to choose the tree of life. The raven/dove again is the symbol of the struggle, even in the new land. When the Israelites entered into the Promised Land they still had to remove the giants although they had been given the land. They still had to walk in the new order. They had to learn to walk a new walk in a new land because the old way would no longer work, The dove brought back an alive branch (Genesis 8:11) a symbol of the tree of life since the olive represents the anointing.

After the water recedes, Noah goes forth. Only when the earth is cleansed can we go forth into the New World. He who is blameless enters into the new life through Christ, The first thing that Noah does is build an altar to God (Genesis 8:20). He comes forth on the other side of the cross and honors the Lord in the resurrection life. The only life acceptable to God is His life. Presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1-2), our reasonable service raises the question who is the only one living in us? Christ. Adam is not acceptable to God. Only Christ is.

A new command is given Noah. Some Bible teachers feel that this new command and new state is less than the Edenic state, but I beg to differ. For we find that God allows Noah to eat meat and the animals are now brought in fear of Noah (Genesis 9:1-2). If you remember the situation of Peter and the dream he had of clean and unclean animals, God told him that what God had cleansed was clean, even though some were, according to the law of the Hebrews, unclean. Immediately, Peter was summoned to Cornelius' house, a man who the Hebrews would consider "unclean" in the sense that he was not of the faith (Acts 1 0).

Here in Genesis we find Noah finding all things clean. God called all things, even meat, clean to Noah. The cross allows grace to abound. Noah walked in grace when they didn't eat meat before the flood, but now after the flood the work of grace in his life allowed him to continue to walk in the new creation and eat meat. Remaining in the realm of grace allows us to live in both worlds and be unaffected and enjoy the fruits of the kingdom.

The ark, the symbol of the cross, makes all things new, clean. It s the cross that provides the life. For if you are not in the resurrection before you go to the cross, you will not get off the cross. You must possess the life before you cross the Jordan (means flowing down, death) into the Promised Lard. Noah had to have the work of grace done in his life before he went to the cross. That is why the scripture states that "Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." "Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." While in the midst of a perverse generation Noah was able to live the life of God, a crucified life, which was revealed to the people. Grace is a personal thing for the believer to walk in, a personal thing. The grace of God in you is only revealed to the world when the cross is made manifest to the world.