by Ed Goode
Applying the imagery in the Song of Solomon to the relationship between God and His church, it tells us that the Lord sees His church being as “beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun, awesome as an army with banners” (6:10, ESV). However, we are sometimes tempted to doubt this depiction when we walk into a meeting house to find weak coffee, ordinary people, and a minister who might be doing his best but cannot hold a candle to the preaching on our podcast feeds. Notwithstanding our best intentions, we struggle with distraction and discouragement.
In such instances, we can be tempted to think that the Biblical authors were writing to and about people who were removed from our daily struggles. But their situations were not altogether different from ours. Let us briefly remind ourselves of the setting of Peter’s two epistles. The apostle was writing to Christians scattered across Asia Minor, who were experiencing persecution and were tempted to compromise the hard edge of truth for the sake of an easier life. Sound familiar?
Peter’s references to Noah caught my attention while I was preaching through the Petrine epistles last summer. Peter introduces Noah without warning in 1 Peter 3:20 and in a way that has inspired much speculation. Then in 2 Peter 2:5, he mentions Noah again at the start of a long list of examples that illustrate the certain judgment of the unrighteous. What was it about the ancient shipwright that caught Peter’s attention? What has Ararat to do with Asia Minor?
What do we know about Noah? We know that he was not a well-liked man leading a popular movement. Only eight people were on the ark when the flood came. We can imagine that Noah was often misunderstood. What exactly was he doing building this large ship?
Noah had tremendous and persevering faith in the promises of God. Building a boat as big as the ark was not a weekend job. If anything can be described as a “long obedience in the same direction,” surely it is this!
I wonder if the quickest route to understanding why Peter looked to Noah is found in three short words in the middle of 2 Peter 2:5. Noah was a “herald of righteousness.” Perhaps Peter just means that Noah’s act of obedience amid a godless generation heralded the righteousness of God. However, it is more likely that when Peter says herald, he means that Noah proclaimed the coming judgment, which is why the boat builder (Noah) attracted the attention of the fisherman (Peter). Likely Noah regularly paused from his work to warn his contemporaries of what was coming and found hope in God’s promises when he was rejected. We can picture Noah warning them that the only safety from the impending storm was the salvation provided by God.
Even though Noah’s witness was ignored by most, he was safe in the promise of God when the floods washed everything else away. Like building a boat in preparation for a storm, our church meetings can seem bizarre: a book, prayer, hymns, financial gifts, water, unleavened bread and a cup, and a basin and towel. We share the same conversations, hopes, and dreams with the same people week after week. We rejoice with the joyful and weep with the aggrieved. But we do not want to do anything too extreme in the eyes of the watching world. Still, maybe that is part of the point.
How does this disposition help us quiet our wandering hearts on a Sunday morning? Noah was a righteous man who lived in an adulterous generation. Noah’s work crafting a boat was perhaps the ultimate Old Testament call to repentance from the Lord. The eight who were saved from the waters were a clear image of a gathered community that trusts wholly in God’s promises. This group of eight stand in a long line of faithful witnesses in this fallen world and are by no means the least of these witnesses.
We too serve as heralds from the Lord, calling people to faith in Him and living faithfully in a godless age. David Wells writes “The temptation the church always experiences is to be like the world. It is the temptation to enjoy the comfort of a majority, to be at home, to be at peace, to have no enemies.”[1] Instead, Peter calls us to be like Noah and herald God’s righteousness to a world that does not want to hear of it. By remembering that point as we trust God’s promises, we can prevail.
Peter calls us to a high and robust view of the church that can energize and sustain us in times of persecution—a view that grabs our attention on another routine Sunday morning—a view that keeps the important things primary in our estimation. Ashley Lande, in her spiritual memoir, describes her first impression of the church as “pathetic . . . but somehow beautiful.”[2] Did Noah look pathetic building his boat? Probably. Was his faith in God’s promise beautiful? Definitely. Surely by the standards of the pagan worship in Asia Minor, the church was pathetic. But just as surely it was beautiful in heralding the righteousness of God and inviting faith in His promises. Whether you gather for worship in a thousand-year-old cathedral or the lunchroom of a public middle school, the church has a beauty that hardship cannot take from it.
What has Ararat to do with Asia Minor? Or with us? Why does Peter draw our attention to Noah twice? Noah formed and led a prophetic community shaped by the promises of God, calling those around him to repentance and faith during times of rejection and hardship. This was the disciple’s mission. It is ours too.
About the Author:Ed Goode grew up in a happy home and came to Christ at the age of seventeen. He has been married to Rachel since 2009. After serving at churches in North Carolina and Virginia, he has pastored Bridge Free Will Baptist Church, a plant in Champaign, Illinois, since 2021. You should join him! He has a C. S. Lewis reference or a Wycombe Wanderers fact for every situation.
[1] David Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-Lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 224.
[2] Ashley Lande, The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever: Transcendence, Psychedelics, and Jesus Christ (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2024), 216.
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