As It Was in the Day of Noah
"As it was in the days of Noah, even so will it be also in the days of the Son of Man. They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Likewise, even as it happened in the days of Lot: they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but in the day that Lot went out from Sodom, it rained fire and sulfur from the sky, and destroyed them all. So it will be in the day that the Son of Man is revealed" (Luke 17:26-30).
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Put yourself in the sandals of a person back then: "There's that crazy Noah again, building that huge ship! Why on earth does he need such a big boat? There's no water anywhere near here deep enough for it to float in! All we need is a rowboat or a little sailboat to get around on the Euphrates and in the marshlands!" So they decided to get on with their lives: business as usual, preoccupied with everyday, mundane things, getting their sons and daughters married off, partying... until it was too late. And in the days of Lot, they ate and drank, engaged in homosexuality and wickedness: even Lot's own sons-in-law ignored his pleas to flee the city.
"The thoughts of their hearts were only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5-8). There was a lot of wickedness in Noah's time, but that is not what Jesus mentioned, as we see in Luke ch. 17. The ordinary tasks of daily life kept them from really thinking about what Noah was preaching and doing. They were so busy with the normal affairs of life that they failed to prepare to meet God. We can be so busy with a thousand and one different things. We have our jobs, families, household activities, education, recreation, entertainment – a whole host of things which occupy our time and interest. It's easy to become busy with so many different things that our spiritual life becomes choked: "That which fell among the thorns, these are those who have heard, and as they go on their way they are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity" (Luke 8:14).
We are so busy with the daily stuff of life that we fail to dig deep and try to understand what is really going on around us. We take our cues from what most of the people are saying and we repeat it, until it becomes an axiomatic truth in our thinking. He who controls the narrative ends up having it written in history books. How many people at Christmas time actually think about the Incarnation of God, His partaking of human nature so that we can become partakers of the Divine nature (2 Peter 1:4)? Compare that to the constant barrage of songs and TV shows about a fat, old Santa Claus in a red suit with white fur trim, flying around the world in a sleigh drawn by twelve reindeer, led by Rudolph with a glowing red nose.
Santa knows who's naughty and nice, and will put a lump of coal or a switch in the stocking of naughty little boys and girls, so "be good for goodness' sake" (that's circular logic – 'be good because it's good to be good" – for sure!). And the jingle about Rudolph ends – "You'll go down in history!" Hardly anybody today knows that Saint Nicholas who stood against the heretic Arius at the First Ecumenical Council is the origin of the Santa Claus myth. So we end up thinking that the story about Jesus being born of the Virgin Mary is just as much a myth as Santa Claus and Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer. Which has gone down in history these days?
Or we get drawn into vast conspiracy theories if we're politically oriented, or mind-boggling theories about the "End Times" and the "Rapture" if we're religiously oriented. At the end of Luke ch. 17, the disciples asked Jesus – "Where, Lord?" He said to them, "Where the corpse is, there will the vultures also be gathered together" (v. 37). What does this mean, anyway? As I understand it, Jesus is saying – "If I were to answer your question, it would be a dead give-away: all sorts of evil birds would swarm around it!" Perhaps that's too folksy an interpretation, but in Matthew chs. 24-25 when He told His disciples parables and teachings about the "end of the age," He said at least three times that nobody can know the day or hour when all these things will take place. Our task is to be always prepared, to pray without ceasing – be in communion with God at all times, and share the Good News.
And yet, some persist in insisting that they have inside knowledge of the "End Times," causing sectarian and heretical splits such as "pre-millenial," "post-millinial," pre-tribulational," post-tribulational," and "dispensational" divisions and denominations. In the first verse of Luke ch. 17, we read that Jesus said to His disciples, "It is impossible that no occasions of stumbling should come, but woe to him through whom they come!" That double-negative construction might be a little confusing, so let's look at how Matthew phrased it: "Woe to the world because of occasions of stumbling! For it must be that the occasions come, but woe to that person through whom the occasion comes!" (Mat. 18:7).
There will always be people who dream up their own distorted doctrines by misinterpreting Scripture or focusing only on a few phrases, ignoring all other relevant passages and what godly men before them have taught. Freedom of speech doesn't mean that any and every idea is just as valid and true as others: that's relativism. The real reason for allowing freedom of speech is so that the truth will ultimately be made clear: "No doubt there must be divisions among you so that the ones who are in the right may be clearly seen" (1 Corinthians 11:19).
In my last essay, "Cancel Culture," I quoted 1 Peter 3:15 – "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts; and always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason concerning the hope that is in you, with gentleness and respect." This is how we should respond to hard times, but then the why follows:
"Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring you to God; being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; in which He also went and preached to the spirits in prison, who before were disobedient, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, while the ark was being built. In it, few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water. This is a symbol of baptism, which now saves you – not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 3:18-21).
Note carefully what the Apostle Peter wrote: the Ark is a symbol of baptism, which now saves us. He doesn't say that baptism is merely a symbol. The Ark is the symbol or the type, and baptism is the antitype – the reality of what the symbol or allegory represents. The Scriptural teaching here is that baptism saves us, not by washing the dirt off our flesh, our bodies; but by washing away the sin and guilt of our conscience, dying to the old self in baptism and being resurrected with Christ to a new life, the life in the Spirit. In the Apostle Peter's second letter, he wrote:
"But there also arose false prophets among the people, as among you also there will be false teachers, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, denying even the Master who bought them, bringing on themselves swift destruction. Many will follow their immoral ways, and as a result, the way of the truth will be maligned. In covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words: whose sentence now from of old doesn't linger, and their destruction will not slumber. For if God didn't spare angels when they sinned, but cast them down to Tartarus and committed them to pits of darkness, to be reserved to judgment; and didn't spare the ancient world, but [God] preserved Noah with seven others, a preacher of righteousness, when he brought a flood on the world of the ungodly; and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly; and delivered righteous Lot, who was very distressed by the lustful life of the wicked (for that righteous man dwelling among them, was tormented in his righteous soul from day to day with seeing and hearing lawless deeds): the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment" (2 Peter 2:1-9).
Again, Peter alludes to Noah and the Ark, and to Lot and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. About the false teachers he says – "Many will follow their immoral ways." The Church Fathers and Saints (holy, godly men and women) all teach that the primary sin of the flesh is not sexual immorality, but rather gluttony. The former is more blatant – you either do it or you don't – but the latter is less obvious – everybody needs to eat, right? So why not enjoy it, indulge yourself and eat a little more... and a little more? The Fathers and Saints tell us that such yielding to the desires of the flesh little by little, bite by bite, opens us up to the more blatant sins of the flesh such as sexual immorality, drunkenness, and drugs. But the answer is clear: if "God preserved Noah" and He "delivered righteous Lot," He will also "deliver the godly out of temptation" – so entrust your life to Christ and His Body, the Church, the Ark of our salvation, to do it!
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!
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