Divine Grace and Redemption: Understanding Noah’s Story

Mark Bates explores the theme of divine grace as found in the story of Noah from Genesis 7. He discusses how God’s grace not only preserved Noah and his family from the flood but also underscores a broader theological message of redemption and salvation that is central to Christian faith.

The following unedited transcript is provided by Beluga AI.

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Good morning. Someone told me this week, said, you know how, you know when winter is over and spring has sprung in the Rockies? It’s snowing. Yeah. What a beautiful spring. Isn’t that exciting about the ESL and the refugee ministry? I think that just, you know, as a Christian, that’s got to get you excited. That has to get your heart pumped. It’s God doing what he said he would do. He promised to Abraham. We’ll see later in Genesis 12.

He said all the nations of the earth will be blessed through you, and we get to be a part of that.

³ I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:3, ESV)

God is blessing the nations through us and not only sharing the good news of Jesus Christ but doing it in a very practical way, teaching them something that they. That they really need to know to function well here in this country and learn English. So, so thankful for that ministry and for those of you who participate in that and hope many more of you will choose to get involved.

Well, turn with me in your bibles. Genesis, chapter six. Genesis, chapter six. We’ll be looking at verses eight. And actually, we’re not going to go through, all the way through chapter eight. I wanted to, but we’ll just get through seven. Chapter seven, verse five. This morning at 03:20 a.m. March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was coming home from her work as a bar manager. She parked her car in a parking lot adjacent to her apartment building in a quiet neighborhood in Queens.

She started to make the walk to her door, which is a mere 30 yards away. She noticed out of the corner of her eye a man at the end of the parking lot. She looked at him, and as he started to move towards her, she ran a half block down the street looking for the police call box. As she started to run, the man overtook her. He grabbed her. He stabbed her. She began to cry out, he stabbed me. He stabbed me. Lights go on in the apartment building surrounding where she is.

One man opens the window and cries out, leave that girl alone. The assailant shrugs and walks off. Lights go off, windows close. He comes back. He begins stabbing her again, and she begins to cry out, I’m dying. I’m dying again. More lights come on, more windows open. No one does anything. Finally, the assailant gets in his car, and he drives away. Kitty Genovese then crawls to her apartment. She opens the door and gets to inside the apartment. The assailant returns a third time and kills her. During that time, not one neighbor intervened. No one called.

One man did call a friend to get advice about what he should do. And his friend told him he should call the police. So he went down and he persuaded another neighbor to call the police. The neighbor did call the police, and the police arrived within two minutes. They could have saved their life if they had been there earlier. But no one called. No one intervened. Interviewed afterwards, the neighbors admitted, sometimes sheepishly, I didn’t want to get involved. One man said he was just too tired to get up and to call the police.

The kitty Genovese incident was so dramatic, so appalling, and so public that it was perhaps a defining moment in our nation’s consciousness about our apathy. When it occurred, it shocked our nation, a nation of polite, courteous people, people who did not want to get involved, people who wanted to keep to themselves and mind their own business. Yet we realized then that a world where people do not get involved, where evil is permitted to operate with impunity, is a world that is uninhabitable. It is inhumane and certainly immoral to allow evil to go unchecked.

We cannot do that now. If it is immoral for us as mere human beings to allow evil to go unchecked, how much more wrong would it be for a holy, all-powerful God to let evil go on and violence to continue to destroy a beautiful world? This morning, we turn our attention to the biblical account of the flood. And in this story, we’re going to read over the next few weeks, after Easter, we’ll get back to it about how God wipes out the entire human race, except for one family, through one great act of judgment.

And many people are bothered by this. Certainly, it should disturb all of us and get all of our attention, because it is. It is God exercising the nuclear option. And we see this, and it should be disturbing to us. But I hope that after looking at it this morning, that you’ll not only see that this is an account of God’s justice, but also a triumph of God’s grace.

So turn with me, Genesis 6:8, and we’ll read to Genesis 7:5.

⁸ But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. ⁹ These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. ¹⁰ And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. ¹¹ Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. ¹² And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. ¹³ And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. ¹⁴ Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. ¹⁵ This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark 300 cubits, its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits. (Genesis 6:14-15, ESV)

The ark is to be 450ft long, 75ft wide, 45ft high.

¹⁶ Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above, and set the door of the ark in its side. Make it with lower, second, and third decks. ¹⁷ For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die. ¹⁸ But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. ¹⁹ And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. ²⁰ Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground, according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive. ²¹ Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten, and store it up. It shall serve as food for you and for them.” ²² Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him. (Genesis 6:16-22, ESV)

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.” (Genesis 7:1-5, ESV)

This is God’s holy and inspired word.

As we look at this passage this morning, the first point that we will see is God’s gracious justice. God’s gracious justice. The judgment of God is a gracious judgment. Let’s go back again and look at verses eleven and twelve of chapter six. And let me read those again and let me see if you notice anything about these. And I’ll read it with some emphasis, so hopefully you’ll pick this up.

¹¹ Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. ¹² And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. (Genesis 6:11-12, ESV)

¹³ And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. (Genesis 6:13, ESV)

I’m surely going to destroy both them and the earth.” Notice anything? Okay. Whenever he continues to repeat a word, particularly in close proximity, that is always a clue for you. And in reading the Bible, and so four times God uses the same word.

He says the earth was corrupt, the earth has become corrupt, and the people had corrupted their ways. And so he’s emphasizing this corruption that is upon the earth. And so what he’s saying is that the earth is rotting because the people are rotting. The word corrupt means to spoil, ruin or destroy. And he says, the people of the earth are destroying and ruining God’s beautiful creation. The glory of God’s creation is in danger of being destroyed.

Even mankind, whom God has made in his own image, has become so corrupt, so violent, and so destructive that it’s ruining everything. And a just, loving, and gracious God could not stand idly by and watch this happen. If God did not act, if God did not act, then everything would be lost. And so we see this corrupt, corrupt, corrupt. Now, I know some of you are thinking this mark, you said, he says it four times, and some of you probably elbowed your spouse. He can’t count because he says corrupt three times.

And I said, he says it four times. Well, actually, I have an advantage. In the hebrew verse 13, he used the same word again that he’s used for corrupt. And he says, I’m surely going to destroy both them and the earth. That word destroy is the same word for corrupt. Now you catch that? You notice there’s some poetic justice here that is happening. Mankind is corrupt. The earth is corrupt. The earth has become corrupt. The people of the earth have corrupted their ways. And God says, so you’ve corrupted the earth. I’m going to corrupt you.

You’ve destroyed the earth. I’m going to destroy you. And so what we see here is God is doing, in a sense, what is just. He’s bringing about the destruction of the earth because humanity is already destroying it. God is destroying the earth and wiping out the human race, not in an uncontrollable rage, but as a just God who loves his creation and who always keeps his promises. See, the flood is not God’s uncontrollable rage. It’s not God throwing a massive temper tantrum. Do you remember? I always hate saying, do you remember?

Because half of you don’t, because you’re younger than me. But years ago, there used to be a commercial about parquet, and Mother Nature would get mad. We’d see Mother Nature fuming and having this temper tantrum. That is oftentimes people’s image of God, that God has a short fuse, that he’s easily set off, and that something irritates him. He just brings the fire and the brimstone and the floodwaters and the lightning. That’s not what is happening here. God is not out of control in his anger.

He’s bringing a very measured response to, to man’s wickedness and the destruction that man has brought on the earth. And so God’s justice is a controlled, measured, specific response designed to accomplish his purposes. A few years ago, Florida was suffering a terrible drought, which is ironic, because if you’ve ever been to Florida, it’s nothing but lakes with a little bit of land scattered in there.

But we were having this terrible drought, and it was so dry that the worst thing that could happen during a drought is actually a thunderstorm, which is, again, rather ironic because a thunderstorm brings rain that you need, but it also brings lightning. And the lightning started numerous forest fires. So, I was flying in from out of town and coming back in, and it was at night. You literally could see across the state as there were forest fires burning throughout the state of Florida. And it was quite an image.

The firefighters, in an attempt to stop the spread of these wildfires, would build fires. They would burn up some of the fuel where the fires were spreading, consume all of that so that the fire would not be able to continue to spread. They literally fight fire with fire. And that is what God is doing here. Mankind’s evil is bringing about destruction. God begins to fight fire with fire by bringing destruction on it to stop the violence from spreading.

And so while this notion of God’s judgment should give us pause, ultimately this should be a very comforting thing for us, because what it’s saying is God will not let evil go unchecked. He’s not going to let evil and violence take over the world. He loves his creation too much. He will stop it. He will put an end to it. And so there are times when you look out at the world and you say, this is a mess, this is a wreck. Is anyone going to do anything about it? And God says, I am. I am. I’m not going to let the violence and the evil continue to go unchecked. I’m not going to let it destroy the planet. I will destroy it so it doesn’t destroy what I love.

There is a man by the name of Myrcelov Valve. He’s a theology professor at Yale, recently became familiar with some of his stuff. Not overly familiar, but he is a Croatian, and he’s seen firsthand the cycle of endless vengeance and retaliation of the Balkans that hasn’t just gone on for the past few decades, but it’s been going on for centuries there, as these different groups have been fighting with one another. And he notes that the cycle of retaliation is not fueled by a belief in God’s judgment. Some people say if you believe in a vengeful, judging God, then you’re going to be a violent person. Valve says just the opposite.

He writes, if God were not angry at injustice, that God would not be worthy of worship. The only means of prohibiting all recourse to violence by ourselves is to insist that judgment is legitimate only when it comes from God. My thesis that the practice of nonviolence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many Christians, especially theologians in the West.

He says it takes the quiet of the suburban home to believe that the human nonviolence results from a belief in God’s refusal to judge and a land soaked in the blood of the innocent. It will invariably die with other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind. He says, “If you think that this idea that a God who doesn’t bring about justice is actually going to bring about peace on earth, you’re living in a quiet suburban home in the west.” Those of us who live in violent places know that there has to be a God of justice.

Otherwise, if you don’t believe in a God of justice, what are you going to do? you’re going to take justice into your own hands. If you don’t believe that there’s a God who’s going to judge the world. If you believe that you are on your own, that it’s all up to you, then you are the one who’s going to have to retaliate.

But if you believe in a God who is just and a God who is going to bring about justice, then you can live, in a sense, by faith and live, in a sense, in peace. So, in other words, if you live in a world where there appears to be no justice, where authorities are unwilling to do anything, you will be a vigilante. But as Christians, we believe in a God who is just, a God who, not in spite of his love and grace, but because of his love and grace, will bring judgment on sin.

He must punish evil. He must be the destroyer of destruction because he is just. We know that ultimately love will triumph over evil. Without a just God, we have no hope in the world at all. And so God brings about justice because he is a God of grace, because he is a God of love, not in spite of those things. So we see God’s gracious justice. Secondly, we see God’s gracious deliverance. We see God’s grace and judgment.

I know that’s a novel idea, but again, think about that some more and you begin to realize how true it must be. But we also see God’s grace when he shows mercy as well. And we see this with Noah. God is going to destroy the whole earth. He’s going to destroy all flesh. By the way, Niv, translate that. All humankind. He’s not just destroying humankind. It’s not only humankind that’s gone out of control. Nature, the animals are out of control. They are doing evil as well. Man’s become corrupt, therefore the whole world has become corrupt.

But God determines to spare and to rescue one man. And in verse eight, we read,

⁸ But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord . ⁹ These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. (Genesis 6:8-9, ESV)

Now, verse eight actually is the last verse in the previous section, but it serves as a bridge to the next section. And in the next section, we read about the generations of Noah, starting a new section of the Book of Genesis.

And in verse nine, we learn, before we learn about the corruption of the world, we learn three things about Noah. Number one, he’s righteous. Now, that word does not mean sinless. Noah is a sinner. We’ll look at Noah’s sin and the sin of his children when we get to chapter nine. But Noah is born with original sin. Like everyone else. He has that corruption, but he is righteous. That is, he seeks to live his life in conformity with the law of God. He’s moral. He lives with integrity.

In fact, the word blameless, which is the second characteristic of Noah, means to live with integrity, to be consistent. He’s not one you’re going to find fault with. That is, if you were appointed to a cabinet position, you wouldn’t find any dirt. He’d make it. Okay.

Thirdly, we read that Noah walked with God. And that sentence, in a sense, sums up the others. Noah walked with God. He lived by faith. He put his trust and his hope in God when no one else was doing so.

And it’s because he walked with God that he was a righteous and a blameless man. Now, why was Noah a righteous man and a blameless man when everyone else was corrupt? Why did he stand apart? What made Noah different? Now, I’m going to state something that’s patently obvious, yet easily overlooked, and that is, Noah had a father. Noah had a father. And back in Genesis, chapter five, we read this genealogy. That is the birth line of Seth, which is the godly line where the promise of God is going to be fulfilled.

And in that line, we read about a man named Lamech. It’s the second Lamech that we’ve come across. But this Lamech is a good man, a godly man. And it says in chapter 5:28,

²⁸ When Lamech was 182 years old, he became the father of a son. ²⁹ Lamech named his son Noah, for he said, “May he bring us relief from our work and the painful labor of farming this ground that the Lord has cursed.” (Genesis 5:28-29, NLT)

Lamech believes the promises of God. Lamech believes what God has said God will do. Back in Genesis 3:15, which is the topic sentence for the whole Bible, God promised. He said that there will be one born of the woman, an offspring of the woman who will crush the serpent’s head. That is, he’s going to undo the curse. He’s going to get rid of evil. He’s going to destroy evil. And Lamech is believing by faith that God is going to do what he says he’s going to do. He’s putting his confidence that God will deliver his people from the evil of this world.

And so, because he believes that when Noah is born, he says God somehow is going to bring about the fulfillment of this promise through Noah. So you imagine what type of home Noah grew up in, a home where he’s taught the promises of God. He’s taught about the faith of God. He believes these promises that have been passed on from generation to generation.

And so Noah believes, and because he believes, he’s a righteous man and he’s a blameless man, which, again, of course, shows us the importance of why we are to pass on the faith of our children. It’s not something that we are to neglect. Their very lives are at stake with this, their very future is at stake. We don’t simply teach our children to be good. We teach our children, ultimately, that their hope is in God.

When the world around them says that hope is in something else, when the world around them is getting corrupt and more and more corrupt, now, every day, it seems to many of us that the world becomes more and more like the days of Noah. What is it that’s going to get your children through those days? Well, Lamech understood. He passed on the promise. He passed on the gospel as it were, and we are to do the same. And so, Noah is a man who lives by faith.

And so as a man who lives by faith, he believes the promise of God. God promised judgment on the earth, but he promises salvation to this man. And so God brings Noah into his confidence and he says, I’m going to bring flood. I’m going to wipe out all flesh, all life on the earth. He says, build an ark. He tells him to build an ark. Now, the ark was about one and a half times the length of a football field. So imagine that. It’s certainly a lot longer than this. It would be about 45ft wide.

So it’s about half the width of a football field. And then, excuse me, I got my measurements wrong there, didn’t I? It was. I lost my place. And so either way, it was wide, right, okay, it’s one of those days. And then it was 45ft high. I remember that. And 45ft high. Think of about a four-story building or something like the bottom of the sanctuary to the top of our pyramid, at least that high. So we’re talking about a massive, massive structure, 450ft long, 65ft wide, 45ft high. It is huge.

And Noah begins to build this massive structure because he is believing by faith. And while Noah is the one building the ark, it’s not the ark that saves. It’s not Noah that saves. Ultimately, it is God who saves. And in verse 18, God says to Noah, he says,

¹⁸ But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. (Genesis 6:18, ESV)

Now, a covenant is very similar to a contract, and it’s an agreement that God is entering in where he is making a promise.

And here, in this case, it is a one-way covenant. There’s no negotiation. God simply says, “Here it is, here’s the deal. I’m making a covenant with you, and I’m going to save you and I’m going to save your family.” Now, interestingly, the word used here is “establish.” Literally, it is confirmed that word is used for a contract or covenant that’s already in existence. Whenever they’re making a new covenant, God will say, “I’m going to make or cut a new covenant here.”

He says, I’m going to confirm a covenant, which means this covenant is already in existence. So it is. This covenant with Noah is a fulfillment of a covenant that God already has made. And what covenant is that again? Back to Genesis 3:15, where God has promised that one day there will be one born of the woman who will crush the serpent’s head. He says, God has promised salvation to humanity. And God says, Noah, it is through you I’m going to keep my promise.

Yes, I’m bringing judgment on the earth, but that does not mean I’m not going to keep my promises. God says, I am a faithful God. I’m a covenant keeping God. I’m a God who always keeps my promises. And so that is our confidence in God. When it seems that the world is falling apart, when it seems like everything is just going the wrong direction, when it seems that there is absolutely no hope at all, when there’s nothing left, God says, I will remember my covenant. I will confirm my covenant.

I will do what I’ve promised to do. And as Christians, we live by faith in the promises of God. Again, why was Noah righteous? Why was Noah blameless when it seemed crazy to be so? He was righteous and he was blameless because by faith he believed God would do what he said he would do. And so, out of grace, God tells Noah to build the ark.

How does Noah respond to this message of grace? Noah did everything just as God commanded him. God then tells Noah to get into the ark.

And how does Noah respond to these instructions? And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him. Notice the pattern? God speaks. Noah obeys. What does this tell you? Well, it tells us that Noah believed what God said. In commenting on this story, the writer of Hebrews says this: In Hebrews 11,

⁷ By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. (Hebrews 11:7, ESV)

Noah certainly was a righteous man, but he was not saved through his moral goodness. How was Noah saved? By faith. By faith, he believed the promises of God. And because he believed God, he obeyed. Noah survived because he believed God. God says, I’m going to bring a flood. Noah believed him. God says, you need to build an ark. Noah believed him. God said, you need to get in the ark. Noah believed him. Noah believed God and therefore he lived by faith. How do we know that we believe God?

How do we know that our faith is real? Living by faith ultimately means living in obedience to what God says. your faith is proven by your actions. Faith is not seen in your profession; faith is seen in the way you live. In the 1960s, a social psychologist named Howard Leventhal conducted a study at Yale University on human behavior, and he wanted to see if he could persuade students to get a tetanus shot. And so they did several things they created.

First, a brochure that simply had the facts about why you needed to get a tetanus shot. And they distributed these brochures on the campus. And a few students did go and get tetanus shots. They created a second brochure called the high fear brochure, and it showed pictures of what happens when you don’t get tetanus shots and you get an infection. And it had graphic pictures and stories and everything else about what happens from infections. And then 3% more students got tetanus shots. Just a blip. Well, then they created a third brochure.

The third brochure had all the information as the first one, and then it had a map to the clinic. Suddenly, the number of students getting tetanus shots rose dramatically. Now, what’s interesting about this is the brochures were distributed to upperclassmen, students who would have known where the clinic was already. But something about having the map there saying where to go, how to get the shots, dramatically increased the number. But here’s what we learned from this. Probably all the students who got the first brochure believed that they needed to get a tetanus shot.

All the students who got the second brochure believed they needed to get a tetanus shot. But none of them actually exercised faith. They never really believed, in a sense, until what they actually got, the tetanus shot. See, faith is not merely giving a sense to certain things being true. Instead, faith ultimately is practicing what you believe. A person’s faith is shown not in the words that he says, but in the life that he lives. And so, ultimately, we see that there are two options, or two ways of living.

Either you can live by faith or you can live without it. And living by faith ultimately means believing that the promises of God are true. If you believe that God is real, if you believe that God is a righteous judge, that he hates evil, that he’s not going to let evil take over the world, that he’s too good to do such a thing as that.

If you believe those things, if you believe that God also, as with Noah, has provided a way of escape for the judgment, then it’s going to change what you do with Noah. God said, get into the ark. Trust me. Put your life in the hands of this boat that you have made with us. God says, get into the ark. But the ark is my son. My son who faced the judgment so that you might be free of it. My son who endured the curse so that you might be saved.

And if you are in him, then you don’t have to fear the judgment, but only hope is not by reforming your behavior, not by doing anything else, but hope ultimately is by trusting in Jesus and what he has done. Only through believing in him can you find salvation and find hope. And so what this means then, if you believe, though, if you believe, that means certain things are going to be different.

If you really believe that God is a loving God, and God is a gracious God, and God is a God who loves his children, then you’re going to want to live a life. In response to that, if the gospel is true, it means that you don’t have to be judgmental. Why don’t you have to be judgmental? Because God is the judge, and so you don’t need to be the judge. God will handle that. Living by faith means not being judgmental. Living by faith means being forgiving. Why?

Because if you believe that God has forgiven you, then certainly you can forgive others. And so living by faith means being forgiving. Living by faith means living a holy life. Why? Because if you believe that God actually has your best interests at heart, you’re going to want to do what he says. If you believe that God truly loves you, you’re going to want to do that which pleases him. Faith ultimately leads to a change in behavior. And so belief is not merely an intellectual act.

It’s not merely agreeing that the resurrection is true or that Jesus is real. Belief ultimately is, is putting your faith, putting your life in God’s hands, which means trusting his word and doing what it says. So ultimately, faith results in a change of behavior. You know, there’s a story about a man who was in Kenya and he was trying to explain Christianity to some tribal people there in Kenya. And he was looking for the right word to translate faith, and he was having some difficulty with it.

And his assistant there, he chose one word, which the word literally meant to agree to, and his assistant, who was a Kenyan who was helping him with the translation, says, “No, no, no, that word won’t do.” And he explained why. He says to believe like that is similar to a white hunter shooting an animal with his gun from a great distance. Only his eyes and his fingers take part in the act. For a man to really believe is like a lion going after its prey. His nose and his eyes pick up the prey.

His legs give him the speed to catch it. All the power in his body is involved in a terrible death. Leap and single blow to the neck for the front paws. That actually kills it. And as the animal goes down, the lion envelops it with his front legs, pulls it to himself, and makes it part of himself. This is the way the lion kills. That is what faith is. Faith involves your whole being. For Noah, he looked at the judgment of God, but even more, the promise of God.

He put his hope in one thing and one thing only: that God keeps his promises and takes care of his children when they throw themselves at his mercy. And God calls us to do the same. Let’s pray.

Our Father, we come before you today as people who live in a world that in many ways is like Noah’s world. It’s full of violence; it’s corrupt. And, Father, if we are honest before you, we will confess that we have contributed greatly to that. We have corrupted our ways. We have corrupted others.

We brought ruin and destruction with our sin. Lord, we see the ways that we have treated one another, the way that we despise people, our lack of love, our lack of charity. And, Lord, we recognize that we are the people of the generation of Noah. But we thank you that you are a good and gracious God and that you have given hope to us, not through our own good effort, not through our own morality, but you have provided a way of salvation for us, even as you did for Noah.

And so, Lord, this day we come and we throw ourselves at your mercy. We thank you for Jesus that he has endured the judgment of God so that we might receive the mercy of God. And we put our lives in your hands completely. Father, we ask that you forgive us for our lack of faith that shows in our lack of obedience. We pray that you’d show us our lack of faith, which results in a lack of love for our brother and for our neighbor.

Lord, we pray that we’d be a people full of faith who desire to see many people come to know your great love and your great mercy. And may we walk in faith with you today because you have shown mercy to us. We pray all this in Jesus Name, Amen.