GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
GENESIS 6:8-9
8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.
The Lord God Almighty had just declared that all life would be wiped from the face of the earth on account of sin. Now Noah is made to understand that God had mercy on one person: him. Noah “found favor in the eyes of the LORD.” This is the same phrase that the angel Gabriel used when he spoke with the virgin Mary: “You have found favor with God” (Luke 1:30).
These words set aside the merits of the person who has been addressed, because it praises faith alone, not actions. It is by faith alone that any person is justified and declared righteous before God; faith alone in Christ. Those with faith are acceptable to God, and please God. The name “LORD,” we recall, is the special gospel name of God, the name that declares God to be a gracious and forgiving God.
Imagine what this would have meant to Noah! To have heard that God was certainly going to destroy everything; that everyone was going to die– Noah would have understood that he, too, despite his faith and his faithfulness, was going to die as well, caught up in the Lord’s wrath upon sinful mankind, since we are at the same time saints and also sinners.
Then, the unimaginable. Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Luther understood and explains: “Such great wrath of the Divine Majesty would have slain Noah if God had not added the promise to preserve him. Nevertheless, it is likely that his faith was still troubled even though he heard this promise. It is unbelievable how much the contemplation of the wrath of God depresses the heart” (LW 2:54).
When a man has lost everything except his faith, and feels the certainty of death coming, the weight of many uncertainties, of wonder, and doubt can become new enemies. But God in his mercy sends the gospel, through word and sacrament, even the word of God preached long ago in his life but dearly remembered, and his faith is made strong.
9 This is the account of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.
A new account begins here in Genesis: The account of Noah. Noah believed God, and trusted in him. His whole life was a walk with God. God credited his faith as righteousness.
Some men are tested by having to see their families fall away, either into unbelief or into error. Those wounds are not shallow; that pain runs deep.
Some men, such as Martin Luther, are tested by seeing the gospel restored to many, only to see the world turn upon him in wrath. We cannot imagine the wounds he suffered, yet persevered.
Noah saw the end of life on earth coming, and only he himself was to be spared. The whole world, not part of it, despised him. How deeply could the grief of one man run?
Being a “preacher of righteousness,” as Peter calls him (2 Peter 2:5), Noah must have gone out to people to warn them of the coming wrath. First, to those family members, cousins and second cousins, who had fallen away from the faith. Luther wonders about the response he got: “Are all the rest of us in error? Shall we all be condemned? Is it you alone who is not in error? Is it you alone who will not be condemned?” (LW 2:54-55).
Then he surely went to his neighbors; people he had known his whole life, had known their grandparents and great-grandparents, had helped them build their houses and barns. But similar words must have come back to him: “Is it you alone who pleases God?”
Then, having failed with the people he loved and the people he knew by name, he would have tried others; strangers over the hills, in the next valley, downstream from this or that river that still led upstream to the Garden of Eden, a sermon of law and gospel in running water, little waves chuckling over stones in the stream bed as an ominous miniature of what was on its way. And without any doubt, the same responses: “Is it you alone who is wise?”
This preacher turned aside, turned back home again, for his grandfather Methuselah and his father Lamech were waiting for him. A prayer and family worship would have followed, and then what? The Lord would tell him what to do.
There are times when we just don’t know what to do. We try things; try to make peace with people when there are strained relationships. We try to reconnect with people long since gone from our lives. We try to encourage stopped-up ears and hard hearts to listen to the Word of God once again. Sometimes nothing seems to work. But it is God who accomplishes. It is God who does the work. We keep praying for the people we fear are lost, but we are not the ones who condemn them. We keep holding out the word. There are times when it is all we can do just to keep a civil tongue and behave in a welcoming way, so that maybe, perhaps maybe, one day someone might listen, or remember, or ask something we could answer. This is a heavy cross. Ask your Savior to help you bear up under this kind of a cross. “May your hand be ready to help me, Lord… help me, for men persecute me without cause” (Psalm 119:173, 86).
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Now on Spotify: “God’s Word for You with Pastor Tim Smith”
Listen or watch Bible classes online. https://splnewulm.org/invisible-church/. Archives at St Paul’s Lutheran Church https://splnewulm.org/daily-devotions/ and Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: www.wlchapel.org/connect-grow/ministries/adults/daily-devotions/gwfy-archive/2026
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Genesis 6:8-9 Blameless in his generation