Have you heard the news? This week a group of Chinese and Turkish archeologists say they found Noah's ark. Their discovery is on Mt. Arafat in Turkey at the elevation of 13,123 feet where people do not live. Their find has wood and artifacts they carbon dated at 4,800 years old.
Time will tell if what they found is really Noah's ark. Such claims have come and gone yet there is a fascination to think that the biblical account of Noah could be true. When you consider that, suddenly you are faced with the possibly the entire Bible might be true.
Genesis 6:5-8, "The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the Earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the Earth, and his heart was filled with pain.
"So the Lord said, 'I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the Earth ... for I am grieved that I have made them.' But Noah found favor (grace) in the eyes of the Lord."
God spoke to Noah and told him that he was done with people who ignored him and did whatever they pleased. Violence and evil saturated their culture and that was not what God had intended.
God finds one man, Noah, who finds grace before God. If the finding Noah's ark is true, then the grace Noah found must still be what saves people from the flood of judgment that the Scriptures say is coming.
2 Corinthians 5:10, "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad."
How will anyone face that day except by the same grace that Noah found? The Bible tells us that it is by God's grace that people are "justified" or made right with God. Where do we find such grace? How do we, like Noah stand out in a world full of violence and evil?
Hebrews 4:14-16, "Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet was without sin.
"Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need."
There is a high priest, Jesus Christ, who sympathizes with human weakness, he was tempted yet without sin, he gave himself as the final offering for sin, that all who believe in him are able to approach God. Like Noah found grace when he needed it, you too find this same grace in Christ.
I don't know if this discovery of the ark is the real deal or not, but I do know the Bible says that Jesus came, died and rose from the dead, that whoever trusts in him (by grace) has everlasting life.
Pastor Rich Lammay of High Sierra Fellowship is a member of the Carson Valley Ministers' Association.
