Genesis 6:8: “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.”
“The Lord came down and look around a spell,
There he saw Mr. Noah behaving’ mighty well
That is the reason the Scriptures record,
Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.”
I remember as a child my father came home one day with a new stereo high fi. The first record we put on was an album by Tennessee Ernie Ford with the song: “Noah Found Grace In the Eyes of the Lord.” I remember thinking, even at seven years of age, “Did Noah really find grace in the eyes of the Lord for behaving’ mighty well?” I also wondered what it was to find grace in the eyes of the Lord. What is grace?
After years of Bible College, Seminary, graduate school and teaching in a Bible College, I don’t think I really know what grace is and I am still not sure if you get it for behaving’ might well.
The first thing to catch my attention is that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Now that is really metaphoric as the Lord does not have eyes. The word eye is the Hebrew word ayin. The Ayin represents deep spiritual insight and discernment. It is looking beyond the surface of things. I once saw a documentary on television where a well digger was using a divining rod to search from a deep hidden spring. The divining rod was shaped like an ayin. It was used to locate the source of a stream. So it is with the Ayin, peering into the very heart of things. For Noah to find grace in the eyes or Ayin of the Lord is for Noah to find grace in the very source or heart of God. To know the heart of God like a bride knows the heart of her bridegroom. Note he found grace. He did not just get it but he searched for it until he found it. The word found in Hebrew is masa. Curiously it sounds much like Mossad which simply means the institute and is a shortened name for the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations, the Israeli spy network. It is almost like a play on the Hebrew word masa. Like the Mossad, masa is a Hebrew word for a search that goes beyond the surface, a search were you go very deep for information that is not available on the open market.
Noah searched for grace through a search for God with all his heart, soul and might and he found it in the very heart of God. Now our normal understanding is that grace is unmerited favor. That would be the Hebrew word chasad which is generally rendered as grace. Yet the word that is rendered as grace in this passage is ken which comes from the root word chanan. Chanan in the Hebrew does not mean unmerited favor, although it is still a favor, it is a favor given for a special reason. What that reason is, will require an examination of the word Chanan. You see Chanan is spelled Chet, Nun and Final Nun and…
“Would you guys cut that out, I am trying to think here.”
Chet, Nun and Final Nun (Chanan – grace) are playing around my Looking Glass swinging it back and forth as it hangs from my Daleth. Suddenly the Chet says, “Follow us if you dare, the answer is right in here.” Well, I am certainly not getting much accomplished right now, so I follow Chanan as they run through my Looking Glass. I suddenly find myself in the midst of a beautiful garden wedding. The bride and groom are standing under a large Chet which looks to be a canopy or a Chupah. I recall how the Chet is shaped like a Chupah. This is the canopy that a Jewish couple stand under during a wedding ceremony. I take a closer look and I find the bride and groom are both Nuns. The bride is the letter Nun and the groom is the Final Nun and the Chupah is really the Chet which spells out the word chanan or grace, Chet, Nun and Final Nun. I am standing next to my old buddy Ayin (deep spiritual insight) who whispers to me that the Chupah is a picture of a shelter and gateway in the journey of married life. As the betrothed pair stand beneath the Chupah or Chet, they are in sort of a liminal space, a highly, holy charged moment in between realms. An orthodox Jew will even ask the groom to say a prayer for him while under the Chupah as one is considered to be in the very close to God at that moment. When they emerge from Chupah their lives are profoundly changed. In a sense they are said to be born again into this world, they are re-born into the world as a married couple.
Then Ayin winks at me as asks, “Does that remind you of something from Scripture?” Indeed it does. I began to understand Nichodemus’s question as to how can a man be born again when he is old (John 3). Nichodemus was not mocking Jesus’s statement about being born again. This concept of spiritual re-birth was common in Judaism during the time of Jesus, it is just that they could not figure out how to accomplish it. This idea of being born again was a picture of being married to God.
I watched the ceremony as the two Nuns made their vows and commitments to each other. They gave each other their lives. Each belonged to the other. I began to think of Robert Lewis Stevenson’s story: “The Poor Thing.” In that story a poor fisherman wishes to wed the daughter of a wealthy nobleman. He proposes by saying: “Come, behold a vision of our children, the busy hearth, and let that suffice for that is all God offers.” His appeal was to everyday life, not to a life of wealth, but just a life together. Ayin understanding my thoughts whispered to me that the Nun evokes everyday life. The Chet joining the Nun’s together is a rebirth into this world just as one is re-born as the bride of Jesus and together you pass through this journey in life, hand in hand with Jesus and it is in that relationship that we find the treasure of this life, not in material or monetary reward, but in a simple everyday life together with Jesus. When the ceremony ends the two Nuns step from under the Chet or canopy hand in hand ready to enter a life where whatever they do they for the sake of each other, just as we enter a new life, we are reborn in Jesus so that everything we do we do for the sake of Jesus and He in return does for our sake.
I returned from behind the Looking Glass and looked at this passage again. I realize that this grace or favor as we like to call it came to Noah because He was indeed behaving mighty well. He was behaving’ mighty well because he joined his heart with God and he and God were walking hand in hand together through this world. He had this grace or favor with God because his heart belonged to God’s heart. That is the difference between chasad, unmerited favor with God and chanan, favor with God. We are first saved through chasad, unmerited favor with God. But after we are saved our favor comes through chanan, favor given for a special reason and that reason is because we are His beloved bride.
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