In reading the early chapters of Genesis one gets the idea that God saw himself as making a terrible mistake in creating human kind. He placed the first couple in an idyllic environment only to see them squander it all through pride and covetousness. This was followed by fratricide, one brother murdering another in envy and jealousy. As the human race multiplied, so did sin and rebellion. Even a superior genre of human beings of some sort – "sons of God" marrying "daughters of men" – only aggravated the problem.

  The writer or writers let us know that God was fed up. "My spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is carnal," God says in Genesis 6:3. His first step was to shorten man’s longevity to a mere 120 years – figuring, we may suppose, that that would give him less time to get himself in trouble. This step, along with charging him with carnality, implies that man freely chose to go astray. God made him upright, and yet free to make his own choices. He willfully chose sin, rebellion, and carnality.

  Finally, when the Lord saw that "the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually," he was sorry that he had ever created man, and he was grieved at heart. Grievously aware of his mistake, God resolved that he would destroy man from the face of the earth (Genesis 6:7). He would drown them all!

  But – there was Noah. He would be the object of his grace, and through him the billions that would yet inhabit planet earth for ages to come. He would take Noah and start over. Noah, like Adam, becomes Everyman. And he stands out in all history as the moral prototype for human kind. He is one of only two of whom it says in Scripture that "he walked with God," and he is the only one of whom it is said that "he was perfect in his generation." Perfect!

  Noah is also our example because of his faith – and he shows us what faith is. He believed what God told him, and he proceeded to build a ship as the Lord directed. He must be the only man in history who built a large ship on dry land – not a dry dock but dry land! His neighbors must have ridiculed him. And this went on for years. The New Testament calls him "a preacher of righteousness," which may suggest that while his neighbors taunted him he warned them of God’s impending judgment. He is the first man in the Bible to stand up against the crowd.

  Grace is expressed in three dramatic ways in the Noah story. The first is God’s promise never again to curse the earth as a punishment to man, nor ever again "to destroy every living thing as I have done." And this in spite of the fact that "the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth." In promising that he would never again destroy mankind God may have been saying that he never intended to do so in the first place. Grace was always there.

  Human history will go on – night will follow day and winter will follow summer – and God will bear with man even in his depravity (Genesis 8:21-22). Here we have incredible, extravagant grace in the dawn of human history. It explains why God is so forbearing in our own sinful age. It was a promise he made to Noah. But God’s longsuffering of sinful man has its limits -- "My Spirit shall not strive with man forever" — and a day of reckoning will come.

  The second expression of grace is the blessing God bestows upon Noah, and through him upon all mankind. It is spelled out in Genesis 9:1-7. The first blessing took the form of a command: "Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth." Even though it was evident to God that man would always be inclined toward evil, he is resolved that the human drama should go on. It would be a crucible between good and evil, a drama that began with Adam and Eve.

  The blessing included man’s dominance over animals and the earth – every beast, bird, fish, all that moves "are given into your hand." We are still acting upon this blessing, even to harnessing nuclear and atomic energy. There was also a built-in safeguard against murder. Since man is created in the image of God, "Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed."

  The third expression of grace was that God made a covenant with Noah (Genesis 9:8-17). While God was often to make a covenant with his chosen people, the one with Noah was the first. And this first one, unlike the covenant at Sinai, which was only with the chosen people, this one was with all mankind. It is written in the very nature of things. God will always be there for man, wicked as he is, as surely as one season follows another.

  And never again will God destroy the earth with flood waters. The rainbow in the sky will be the reassuring sign of the covenant. We are not to suppose that the writer meant that the rainbow was created only then. It had of course been there all along, but it now became a symbol of what God had done. Even today we should not neglect the majesty of the rainbow and what it stands for – God’s marvelous grace, a grace that will not give up on the recreant human race.

Ouida and I see ourselves as uniquely blessed by those who come calling, some from afar. This week Ahtapa Sinlee and his wife Leah, from Chiang Mai, Thailand, visited us. Ahtapa and I became friends when he served as my interpreter when I visited his country back in 1983. He was but a student then, assisting me as I taught Romans to a class of Thai student at Chiang Mai Bible Institute, conducted by Christian Church missionaries. He is now a missionary, supported by American churches, to Lisu tribal villages near the Laos border. He and Leah conduct a kind of halfway house for poverty-stricken kids from the villages. Leah told us how she prepares two meals a day for 58 children, the noon meal being provided by the public school they attend. She has two assistants. The Thais, like all Orientals, serve rice at every meal.

  Ahtapa was pleased to have a copy of my autobiography in which his name appears. I in fact wrote in detail about our work together in Thailand, not only in teaching Romans, but of a unique trip we made together on a motor bike to his parent’s home, a bamboo hut with dirt floor, in the hills of northern Thailand. It is a prelude to heaven to enjoy such rich fellowship with royalty, a prince and princess of the kingdom.

  All previous essays are available at www.leroygarrett.org Click on Soldier On.