SAVED BY FEAR?
[Noah] and his wife, and his sons and their wives, went into the boat to escape the flood....Seven days later the flood came. Gen. 7:7-10, T.E.V.
For more than a century Noah had been pleading for people to flee from the coming Flood and enter the ark. They had known for 120 years that it was big enough for them and that the door was open to them. Preoccupied, skeptical, peer-captured, they would have none of it. Even the stunning animal procession, in the end, could not move them. And when an unseen hand shut the big door and locked it, they went on with eating, drinking, and planning weddings. They were only mildly curious.
Until the rain came. Suddenly startled, they watched in mounting terror as the waters rose around their ankles. They began to pound desperately on the doors of the big boat, begging entrance. All at once they genuinely wanted to do the very thing that Noah had wanted them to do for all those decades. They wanted in!
But it was too late. Noah couldn't open the door, and God wouldn't open it. Had He changed His mind? Or was He simply aware that a motive of frantic fear is not a saving motive?
If God could save people who come to Him out of fear, then He could have reopened the doors of the ark and welcomed them in. He could have saved Achan as the stones began to fall, or Korah and his friends as the earth opened to swallow them.
But while fear is a great motivator, it is a very poor teacher. While it tells us that there is great pain in living apart from God, it does not describe God. It pours adrenalin into the heart, but not love. It terrifies, but does not win. The dripping people outside the ark were impressed with the rising waters but not with the One who had so graciously provided them a way of escape. Any selfish person would just as soon not drown. But salvation is not the avoidance of drowning; it is adoration and trust of the Savior.
God did not send the Flood in order to scare people into salvation but to stay in touch with the bare handful of those who were still open to Him. "Believers" were an endangered species, well-nigh extinct. And He moved boldly to create a new "reserve" in which they could once again prosper and grow.
[Noah] and his wife, and his sons and their wives, went into the boat to escape the flood....Seven days later the flood came. Gen. 7:7-10, T.E.V.
For more than a century Noah had been pleading for people to flee from the coming Flood and enter the ark. They had known for 120 years that it was big enough for them and that the door was open to them. Preoccupied, skeptical, peer-captured, they would have none of it. Even the stunning animal procession, in the end, could not move them. And when an unseen hand shut the big door and locked it, they went on with eating, drinking, and planning weddings. They were only mildly curious.
Until the rain came. Suddenly startled, they watched in mounting terror as the waters rose around their ankles. They began to pound desperately on the doors of the big boat, begging entrance. All at once they genuinely wanted to do the very thing that Noah had wanted them to do for all those decades. They wanted in!
But it was too late. Noah couldn't open the door, and God wouldn't open it. Had He changed His mind? Or was He simply aware that a motive of frantic fear is not a saving motive?
If God could save people who come to Him out of fear, then He could have reopened the doors of the ark and welcomed them in. He could have saved Achan as the stones began to fall, or Korah and his friends as the earth opened to swallow them.
But while fear is a great motivator, it is a very poor teacher. While it tells us that there is great pain in living apart from God, it does not describe God. It pours adrenalin into the heart, but not love. It terrifies, but does not win. The dripping people outside the ark were impressed with the rising waters but not with the One who had so graciously provided them a way of escape. Any selfish person would just as soon not drown. But salvation is not the avoidance of drowning; it is adoration and trust of the Savior.
God did not send the Flood in order to scare people into salvation but to stay in touch with the bare handful of those who were still open to Him. "Believers" were an endangered species, well-nigh extinct. And He moved boldly to create a new "reserve" in which they could once again prosper and grow.
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