“And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth” (Genesis 7:17).
This first occurrence in the Bible of the verb “lift up” is in a scene of judgment on a wicked world. The earth had been filled with such evil that God sent a global flood to destroy the old world and begin a new dispensation.
But there was an ark of safety, and it bore all the battering of the storm for those who had entered the door in its side. The waters which buried the world merely lifted up the ark above the earth and “eight souls were saved by water” (I Peter 3:20) from the sins of the old world.
Another greater judgment was yet to come, this one for the combined sin of the whole world and every age. Once again the judgment fell on one who would be lifted up from the earth, not this time by water but “by wicked hands” and “crucified and slain.” (Acts 2:23).
Jesus said: “Now is the judgment of this world: . . . And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. This He said, signifying what death He should die” (John 12:31–33). The ark of Noah, lifted up from the earth to save those who trusted their lives to it, is a type of the greater Ark of safety, lifted up from the earth on the cross to die for the sin of the world and to save all who trust Him.
The Lord called Noah and all his house into the ark to shield them from judgment. Similarly, the Lord Jesus said: “I . . . will draw all men unto me,” and Paul assures us that “There is therefore now no condemnation [or ‘judgment’] to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). And as “the flood was forty days upon the earth” to assure the fulfillment of its purpose, so Jesus “showed Himself alive after His passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days” (Acts 1:3). HMM
