A collection of excerpts from Torah Club on the weekly Torah Portions, from Genesis to Deuteronomy.
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The LORD gave Noah instructions for building the ark: "Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood; you shall make the ark with rooms, and shall cover it inside and out with pitch" (Genesis 6:14). The word “ark” translates the...
Noah has a lot in common with the Messiah. The Torah's story of Noah and the flood illustrates the human condition, man’s sin, God's reaction, the horror of divine judgment, and the need for salvation. Noah was the savior of the world. In the days of Noah, the Almighty held a terrible, universal judgment over the world.
Noah demonstrated his faith in the unseen by obediently building the ark. His obedience demonstrated that he possessed the fear of the LORD: “In reverence [he] prepared an ark.” His reverent obedience manifested his assurance of things hoped for and his conviction of things not seen. “Faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected” (James 2:22).
Legend says that when God spoke the Torah at Mount Sinai, He spoke it in the seventy languages of mankind so that all humanity might hear and understand the summons. The Bible says that when He gave the Spirit at Pentecost, the Gospel was given utterance in all languages. Even today, the Word of God is still being translated into the languages of all humankind. Very soon there will be no spoken language on earth where the Gospel is not proclaimed
When compared with the standards of our present generation, we might feel fairly righteous. We can always find people far worse than ourselves. A man might say, "I'm not a murderer. I provide for my kids. I don't rob convenience stores, and I don't cheat on my wife." According to the standards of our generation, he seems to be a decent fellow. That's not a good way to measure righteousness, though. Suppose we lived in a society of cannibals, where it was considered normal to cannibalize other human beings. The same fellow might say, "Well, I enjoy eating people, but at least I don't cheat on my wife."
Human evil grieves God's heart. God is not peering down on the planet making observations like a dispassionate astronaut. Neither is He watching us like a man sitting on a sofa watching a football game. Rather, He is like a Father who observes the behavior of His children. He is like a king taking note of how events unfold in his kingdom. When a father sees his children involved in self-destructive behaviors, it grieves him. When a king sees his subjects living in open rebellion against him, it angers him. As God observed humanity in the days of Noah, He was saddened to see the rampant wickedness of His creations. He saw that every human heart harbored evil. "The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart" (Genesis 6:6).