Almost a decade ago I wrote a blog post called “Grace to Build An Ark” inspired by a sermon I’d heard on grace. Even now, whenever I think of grace I think of the story of Noah.
Many Christians struggle to understand the relationship between grace and obedience, and between mercy and law. Some say that the law is done away with and grace is all that matters, while on the other extreme some say that law-keeping and obedience are the key to salvation. The story of Noah helps us understand that grace and mercy are linked with, not separate from, obedience to God’s commands.
Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was continually only evil. Yahweh was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him in his heart. Yahweh said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the surface of the ground—man, along with animals, creeping things, and birds of the sky—for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in Yahweh’s eyes.
Genesis 6:5-8, WEB
Verse 8 can also be translated, “Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” The word “grace” or “favor” comes from the Hebrew word chen (H2580). In this context, the “expression ‘find favor [in the eyes of]’ is an idiom meaning ‘to be an object of another’s favorable disposition or action,’ ‘to be a recipient of another’s favor, kindness, mercy.’ The favor/kindness is often earned, coming in response to an action or condition” (NET translation note on Gen. 6:8). This might not sound like what you think of as “grace,” but it actually aligns with the New Testament well because “grace” was originally understood as part of a reciprocal covenant relationship.
The idea of “grace” as a free gift that God is obligated to give without having any expectations of the recipients was not originally part of the Greek language or of Christianity. Several centuries before Christ’s first coming and until at least the 4th century after, charis (the Greek word translated “grace” in the Bible) was understood as something that involved obligation and reciprocity ( Relational Grace: The Reciprocal and Binding Covenant of Charis, 2015, Brent Schmidt, ch. 2 and 3). This meaning infused Greek, Roman, Jewish, and later Christian society to the point that everyone knew “receiving charis implied entering into reciprocal covenantal relationships” (Schmidt, p. 63).
With that background, we can see the similarities between us and Noah. We live in a world full of people who don’t follow God, but God has offered us grace and a relationship with Him. This grace is not something we could earn and God offers it freely, but He does expect a specific response after He makes the offer.
Noah found favor/kindness/grace in the eyes of the Lord. God then moves to provide Noah with salvation, and He does it by giving Noah specific instructions to follow.
This is the history of the generations of Noah: Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time. Noah walked with God. …
God said to Noah, “I will bring an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them and the earth. Make a ship of gopher wood. You shall make rooms in the ship, and shall seal it inside and outside with pitch. This is how you shall make it. …
Everything that is in the earth will die. But I will establish my covenant with you. You shall come into the ship, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. …
Thus Noah did. He did all that God commanded him.
Genesis 6:9, 13-15, 17-18, 22, WEB
God told Noah exactly how to build the ark and what to put in the ark. This is very much like what He does with us when He tells us what He expects from people who accept salvation through Jesus Christ. The salvation would not happen without God, yet at the same time He expects us to be active participants in the process of our salvation.
Learning about how God extended grace to Noah, brought salvation to him and his family, and expected obedience to His commands help us understand the similar process that God invites us into. Grace and salvation come to us through Jesus Christ, and we need to accept that salvation the way Noah did: by trusting God, listening to His instructions, and doing what He says.
ARC team applications for my new book are now open!
I am so excited to announce my first Christian Historical Fiction book release (though if you’re subscribed to my newsletter or follow me on Facebook you already know about it). As some of you may know, I’ve written fiction for years but mostly only published my non-fiction. That is all changing on September 1 with the release of Down to the Sea.
Boston in 1699 is a haven for pirates, but only if they keep a low enough profile that the authorities can pretend not to notice. Unfortunately for Red Flag Raphe, he drew the wrong sort of attention. Executions for maritime crimes must happen in England, though, and the merchant who testified against him is sailing there on the same ship. With Raphe’s crew still at large, it is the perfect opportunity for escape and revenge.
Healer-in-training Miriam Nevell hopes this trip to England will help her father leave behind his dealings with pirates for good. It seems she can’t do the same, though, when harsh treatment of the condemned pirate traveling on the same ship prompts her to stand up to both the ship’s captain and her father.
Raphe hadn’t believed there was any genuine kindness left in this world. When his pirate crew and their allies arrive, Raphe vows that Miriam won’t suffer as a result of his rescue. Even if that means spending his entire fortune to ransom her and then coercing her into a hasty marriage that just might save her reputation or endanger both their hearts.
Coming September 1, 2026. Down to the Sea will be available through sellers other than Amazon, but that is the only one with a live pre-order link so far. I will share links to other sellers as they become available.
Have you ever read or heard a teaching that stayed with you for years? One that has stuck around in my head was part of a message I heard from the rabbi in the Messianic group I met with for several years. He spoke on the Hebrew word hinneh, which is sometimes translated “Here I am!” I think of that every time I read this phrase in the Bible, and since it’s held such interest for me for so long I wanted to revisit the topic.
The word hinneh and the root word hen are both “An interjection demanding attention,” such as “look!” “behold!” or “see!” The root hen is used about 100 times, and hinneh “occurs over a thousand times” in scripture (Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament [TWOT], entry 510). Hinneh “emphasizes the immediacy, the here-and-now-ness, of the situation” and is often “used to point out people” (TWOT, entry 510a). In scripture, it is often used to “introduce a fact upon which a following statement or command is based,” such as “Behold, I am going to proclaim liberty” (Jer. 34:17).
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Answering God
Like many Hebrew words, hinneh includes multiple nuances of meaning. In general, though, we can say that this word calls attention to something important and focuses on here-and-now immediacy. With that in mind, there are several times that God calls to a person and they answer by saying, hinneh. Here’s one:
After these things, God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!”
He said, “Here I am.”
He said, “Now take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go into the land of Moriah. Offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I will tell you of.” …
Abraham stretched out his hand, and took the knife to kill his son.
Yahweh’s angel called to him out of the sky, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!”
He said, “Here I am.”
He said, “Don’t lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”
Genesis 22:1-2, 10-12, WEB
Abraham was responsive. When God called to him, he immediately answered hinneh: see me here, now, ready to do what you say. This is the same reaction that Moses had at the burning bush (Ex. 3:3-5). This is what the little boy Samuel said when God called him (1 Sam. 3:1-10). It’s how Isaiah responded when God said, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” (Is. 6:8, WEB). Hinneh is the sort of responsive readiness we should have when God makes Himself and His desires known to us.
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When God Says Hen
There are also some verses where God uses the root word hen to call attention to what He is doing or say, “Here I am!” Two are found in passages from Isaiah that Paul references in Romans 10. Romans is a book where Paul spend a lot of time talking about how God relates to Jewish and Gentile believers. In this chapter, he said that he desired salvation for his fellow Israelites and lamented that “they did not submit to God’s righteousness” (Rom. 10:4, NET). He quoted extensively from the Old Testament in this section, showing that belief in the Lord Jesus is necessary for salvation and in order to believe, people have to hear the good news.
How are they to call on one they have not believed in? And how are they to believe in one they have not heard of? And how are they to hear without someone preaching to them? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How timely is the arrival of those who proclaim the good news.” …
But I ask, have they not heard? Yes, they have …But again I ask, didn’t Israel understand? First Moses says, “I will make you jealous by those who are not a nation; with a senseless nation I will provoke you to anger.”And Isaiah is even bold enough to say, “I was found by those who did not seek me; I became well known to those who did not ask for me.”
One of the reasons that God opened up salvation to non-Israelite nations was to provoke the Israelite people to jealousy that would inspire them to finally turn back to following Him faithfully. Let’s look at the context for two of the places in Isaiah that Paul quotes in this passage, where God says, “Here I am!” and uses the exclamation hen.
And now, what do we have here?” says the Lord. “Indeed my people have been carried away for nothing, those who rule over them taunt,” says the Lord, “and my name is constantly slandered all day long. For this reason my people will know my name; for this reason they will know at that time that I am the one who says, ‘Here I am.’” How delightful it is to see approaching over the mountains the feet of a messenger who announces peace, a messenger who brings good news, who announces deliverance, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns!”
Isaiah 52:5-7, NET
“I made myself available to those who did not ask for me; I appeared to those who did not look for me. I said, ‘Here I am! Here I am!’ to a nation that did not invoke my name. I spread out my hands all day long to my rebellious people, who lived in a way that is morally unacceptable, and who did what they desired.
Isaiah 65:1-2, NET
God will not be mocked or slandered, either by those who claim to be His people or by His declared enemies. He acts powerfully for the sake of His name and reputation, and for the people who are called by His name. He shows up, saying, “Here I am!” to bring deliverance and salvation and to beg people to come into a life-giving relationship with Him.
Crying Out To God
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God can always hear when people cry out to Him. There are some things, though, that scripture indicates will make Him stop listening. Sin separates us from God so that He will not hear us (Is. 59:1-2). We can take steps to fix that, though, by repenting of our sins, asking God’s forgiveness, and changing our actions.
Then your light will shine like the sunrise; your restoration will quickly arrive; your godly behavior will go before you, and the Lord’s splendor will be your rear guard. Then you will call out, and the Lord will respond; you will cry out, and he will reply, ‘Here I am.’ You must remove the burdensome yoke from among you and stop pointing fingers and speaking sinfully. You must actively help the hungry and feed the oppressed. Then your light will dispel the darkness, and your darkness will be transformed into noonday.
Isaiah 58:8-10, NET
When we have a right relationship with God, He will respond, “Here I am!” when we call out for Him just like we will say, “Here I am!” when He calls for us. I had never noticed this aspect of hinneh before; I’d always just thought of it as how we can respond to God. Seeing these scriptures where He says, “Here I am!” underscores how important it is to Him that the relationship between Him and His people goes both ways. He wants us to respond to Him when He speaks, to see Him when He acts, and to benefit from His immediate presence in our lives.
It’s been almost two years since I wrote an article about “The Action Words of Faith” used in Hebrews 11, but I can’t stop thinking about one of the things I noticed while doing that study. The faith chapter is all about heroes of faith, people that we look to as inspiring examples and people we can imitate in our walks with God. And you know who is listed first in that faith chapter? We are.
But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the saving of the soul.
Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, proof of things not seen. For by this, the elders obtained approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were set in order at God’s command, so that the visible has its origin in the invisible.
Hebrews 10:39-11:3, NET
The first people mentioned in the famous faith chapter are “we,” the author and all the readers. None of us were there at the creation of the world, and so understanding God is the Creator is something we do by faith. That is just as true of us today as it was of first century Christians, and this “we” connects us modern readers to the ancient people of the Bible.
Even for those of us who understand the Bible is the word of God and that it is still relevant to our lives today, we sometimes struggle to see ourselves in the story. It is so far removed from us by time and (especially for Western readers) in terms of culture and what life looks like. But in many ways, people of the Bible were just like us, even the ones in the Old Testament. And there are many places in the Bible where God’s word speaks directly to us, not just to the original readers.
It shouldn’t surprise us that the Bible written thousands of years ago contains verses that speak directly to and include us. We can see evidence of God doing just that within scripture. For example, Old Testament books speak of the Messiah and of the New Covenant that would include Gentiles as well as native Israelites. God’s perspective isn’t limited by time.
John 17 is one place that I often see people point out modern believers being mentioned in the Bible. This is Jesus’s prayer right before His arrest and crucifixion. He’d just kept the Passover with His disciples and then, as He was waiting to die, He prayed for them and for us as well.
“I am not praying only on their behalf, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their testimony, that they will all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. I pray that they will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me.”
John 17:20-21, NET
Jesus was thinking about the church on into the future on the night in which He was betrayed. Future believers’ inclusion in God’s family was part of “the joy set out for him” as “he endured the cross, disregarding its shame” (Heb. 12:2, NET). God’s plan to grow His family and bring many children to glory includes believers of the past, present, and future and His Bible speaks to all those people, including us.
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Those Jesus Died For
In many of Paul’s writings, he is addressing a specific issue in a specific chruch. The book of Romans, though, is more general. He hadn’t yet visited this church personally and the letter contains a lot of foundational theology as Paul preached the gospel to the readers. As such, much of what Paul says in this letter applies to all people or all believers, and that includes us.
Consequently, just as condemnation for all people came through one transgression, so too through the one righteous act came righteousness leading to life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man many were constituted sinners, so also through the obedience of one man many will be constituted righteous. Now the law came in so that the transgression may increase, but where sin increased, grace multiplied all the more, so that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace will reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
What shall we say then? Are we to remain in sin so that grace may increase? Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that as many as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life.
Romans 5:18-6:4, NET
I recommend reading all of chapters 5-6 for context, but let’s focus on these few verses. We are among the people who were condemned by Adam and Eve’s sin, and who are declared righteous by believing in Jesus Christ our Lord. And for those of us who are baptized and enter a covenant with God, we are among those who were baptized into Jesus’s death to live a new life freed from sin. Like Paul’s first-century readers, we are people Jesus died for and we have a reasonability to live in obedience, not sin, after we enter a relationship with God.
Those Building on the Foundation
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When you start looking for words like “we” and “you” in Biblical writings, you see them all the time. In some contexts, it’s clear that the “you” being addressed is a specific person or group of people in the past. Sometimes the “we” clearly refers to the author and a few other specific people. But often, readers across time are being included in the “we” and “you” mentioned. Let’s look at an example in one of Paul’s letters.
We are coworkers belonging to God. You are God’s field, God’s building. According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master-builder I laid a foundation, but someone else builds on it. And each one must be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than what is being laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, each builder’s work will be plainly seen, for the Day will make it clear, because it will be revealed by fire. And the fire will test what kind of work each has done. If what someone has built survives, he will receive a reward. If someone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss. He himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If someone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, which is what you are.
1 Corinthians 3:9-16, NET
Here, “we” refers to Paul and others who preached the gospel. “You” refers to all who are building on the foundation they laid, including us who are reading his words today. We get to read his letters, and through them Paul’s preaching about Jesus Christ becomes part of the foundation where we build our faith. What we build will be tested, just as believers throughout history and in the future were or will be tested. We are all–past, present, and future believers–part of the temple of God (and I’ve talked before about how the “you” in that verse is plural).
These are just a few of the places in the New Testament that speak directly to modern readers. I think it’s amazing when we can read the Bible and see ourselves there among the people throughout time that God the Father and Jesus Christ think about and want to have join their family.
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I’ve been thinking a lot about this article I read a few weeks ago, and I thought you might all enjoy reading it as well. I’d never thought about Zacchaeus’s story this deeply before. It’s so much more profound than I assumed just reading over it with 21st-century eyes.
“What Your Sunday School Never Told You – Zacchaeus Was Not a Heartwarming Story About a Short Man in a Tree” by She’s So Scripture. Read on Substack
A few months ago, my parents gave my toddler a copy of The Character Builder’s Bible: 60 Character-Building Stories from the Bible. We’ve been reading it every day when we eat meals or snacks. One of the things I love about this book is that it actually has stories of women in it. Most children’s Bibles are collections of stories, and those stories are usually some combination of creation, Noah’s ark, David and Goliath, Daniel and the lion’s den, and Jonah and the whale. Some might have Joseph and his coat of many colors, or Moses and the Exodus, or some stories about Jesus, but there’s an appalling lack of even the most well-known Biblical women like Ruth and Ester. It’s so nice to be able to read a collection of Bible stories to my daughter with chapters on Miriam, Deborah, Ruth, Hannah, Ester, Mary, and Martha as well as all the wonderful stories about God working with men or with groups of people.
As I was trying to decide what to write about this week, my thoughts went back to the book of Ruth. We’d just reread the story in The Character Builder’s Bible, our pastor spoke on Ruth a few weeks ago in our local church, and I wrote about Ruth when I was doing my Judges 19-21 study. I’ve written about this book several times over the years, most notably in three Pentecost posts: Firstfruits From the Rejects, The Bridegroom’s Pledge, and Pentecost: A Time of Joyful, Spiritual Life. I thought today we’d focus on something else, though.
Ruth takes place during the time of Judges, and as we learn at the end of the Book of Judges one of the main problems during that time was that, “Everyone did that which was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25, WEB). As we start reading Ruth’s story, we learn that what seemed right in the eyes of a man named Elimelech was to leave Bethlehem of Judah and move his family to Moab during a famine. They lived there for about 10 years, during which time Elimelech died, his sons married Moabite women, and then both sons died (Ruth 1:1-6). Moving during a famine sounds like a good idea, but perhaps not if you know the context of Israel’s history with Moab.
No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord; to the tenth generation none of their descendants shall ever do so, for they did not meet you with food and water on the way as you came from Egypt, and furthermore, they hired Balaam son of Beor of Pethor in Aram Naharaim to curse you.
Deuteronomy 23:3-4, NET
In addition to the two incidents mentioned in this passage (Numbers 21-22), Moabite women enticed the people of Israel to worship their gods and commit sexual immorality (Numbers 25). That’s where Elimelech chose to take his family and that’s where his sons found wives. Not a great choice, or so you would think. If we didn’t know the rest of the story, we might think that the men’s deaths were God’s judgement for associating with Moabite women and that Orpah and Ruth were pagan seductresses. That would be an expected narrative. But the story takes a very different turn.
Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Listen to me! Each of you should return to your mother’s home. May the Lord show you the same kind of devotion that you have shown to your deceased husbands and to me. May the Lord enable each of you to find security in the home of a new husband.” Then she kissed them goodbye, and they wept loudly. …
Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung tightly to her. So Naomi said, “Look, your sister-in-law is returning to her people and to her god. Follow your sister-in-law back home!” But Ruth replied,
“Stop urging me to abandon you! For wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you live, I will live. Your people will become my people, and your God will become my God. Wherever you die, I will die—and there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me severely if I do not keep my promise! Only death will be able to separate me from you!”
When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped trying to dissuade her. So the two of them journeyed together until they arrived in Bethlehem.
Ruth 1:8-9, 14-18, NET
There’s no indication that either of the Moabite women were bad wives or that God was angry with Elimelech’s and Naomi’s sons for marrying them. The text doesn’t use the typical word for “taking” a wife, though; the verb used “means ‘to lift’ or ‘to carry’ [and] connotes the issues of Ruth and Orpah as other, as foreign women. This is the same verb used at the end of Judges in the scene where the Benjamite men ‘lift’ and ‘carry’ wives for themselves at the festival dance in Judges 21:23″ (Matheny, p. 299). It probably doesn’t mean Ruth and Orpah were taken against their will, but it does underscore their status as non-Israelites. It is very important to the story that we understand Ruth is a foreigner, and specifically the type of foreigner God said could not “enter the assembly of the Lord.”
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No Longer Foreign
Let’s skip ahead to the end of the book of Ruth. There, we learn that “Boaz was the father of Obed, Obed was the father of Jesse, and Jesse was the father of David” (Ruth 4:21-22, NET). Yes, the David we know as the greatest king of ancient Israel and a man after God’s own heart was the great-great-grandson of a Moabite woman. That’s certainly not in line with the pronouncement that no “Moabite may enter the assembly of the Lord; to the tenth generation none of their descendants shall ever do so” (Deut. 23:3-4, NET).
So Boaz married Ruth and slept with her. The Lord enabled her to conceive and she gave birth to a son. The village women said to Naomi, “May the Lord be praised because he has not left you without a guardian today! May he become famous in Israel! He will encourage you and provide for you when you are old, for your daughter-in-law, who loves you, has given him birth. She is better to you than seven sons!” Naomi took the child and placed him on her lap; she became his caregiver. The neighbor women gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi.” They named him Obed. Now he became the father of Jesse—David’s father.
Ruth 4:13-17, NET
The Hebrew word translated “married” in this verse is לָקַח (laqakh), which is “The more usual idiom … ‘to take’ an Israelite wife rather than אשנ (‘to carry’) a foreign one” (NET translation note on Ruth 4:13; Matheny, p. 299). By the end of the narrative, Ruth is not treated as a foreign woman. Her son is treated as Naomi’s son, someone firmly part of the tribe of Judah. We shouldn’t see this as God going back on His censure of Moabite people, but as Him keeping another promise that He makes to everyone who enters a covenant with Him. The foreigners who lived among God’s people had the same laws and the same expectations, and could even partake of holy rituals like the Passover if they joined the covenant (Ex. 12:47-49; Lev. 19:33-34; 24:22).
Let no foreigner who has joined himself to Yahweh speak, saying, “Yahweh will surely separate me from his people.” …
“Also the foreigners who join themselves to Yahweh to serve him, and to love Yahweh’s name, to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath from profaning it, and holds fast my covenant, I will bring these to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
Isaiah 56:3, 6-7, WEB
The story of Ruth, alongside words from the law and prophets, teaches a lesson about how God deals with people that didn’t really sink in until the New Testament times (Acts 10:34-35). God worked almost exclusively with ancient Israel in the past, but He always desired all people to become part of His family. He really doesn’t care what your ethnic background is; the moment you join the covenant and commit to following Him, you are one of His people.
Joining God’s Family
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The Biblical narrative treats people as if the history described in its pages belongs to all of us. We are all reflected in the story of God’s dealings with people in some way. Either we are the people chosen to be part of the covenant who were unfaithful to God, and whom He redeemed back to Himself when He died on the cross for us (Israel and Judah) or we are the people outside those covenants who are graciously loved and included in God’s people if we choose to follow Him (Gentiles). And, symbolically, sometimes we’re both (see “Two Paths into God’s Covenant Community”). Many of us are like Ruth–people who were not originally part of God’s covenants, but have now been welcomed into His family.
Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh—who are called “uncircumcision” by the so-called “circumcision” that is performed on the body by human hands—that you were at that time without the Messiah, alienated from the citizenship of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who used to be far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. …
And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near, so that through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer foreigners and noncitizens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household, because you have been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole building, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.
Ephesians 2:11-13, 17-22, NET
Whatever we were before following God, when we commit to Him at baptism and agree to live by the terms of His covenant of grace, we become part of His family. Just like it didn’t matter any more if Ruth was a Moabite woman because she’d joined herself to God and demonstrated exceptional character, our backgrounds don’t matter anymore either. The only reason to even bring them up would be to give glory to God for transforming our lives so completely. The Bible tells us Ruth is a Moabite not to shame her, but to glorify the God who sheltered her under His wings because she trusted Him. He welcomed her into His family because she loved Him, the same way He does for all of us.
Like An Anchor 