As in the Days of Noah

“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” Matthew 24:37-39

This is an interesting verse. Usually when I think of the time before the flood I think of violence, hatred and unholy marriage, but never as “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage.” What’s so wrong about that? If we don’t eat and drink we will die and if we don’t get married and have children the population would quickly go down! So why does Jesus bring these two things up?

Eating and Drinking. There is nothing wrong with eating. What is wrong is living to eat. Think about it. Have you ever seen a generation so consumed with food? Every time you turn on the TV you see advertisement of restaurants, grocery stores, and cooking shows. Fun and food seem to go hand in hand now. Every social event is bound to have refreshments and if there are none, some would see no purpose in going.

Food is so easily accessible in this day and age! There are countless stores and restaurants in town where you can buy something and be eating a second later. I really doubt people use to eat so much in days of old because it took time to prepare the food. If they wanted to bake a cake they had to grind and sift the wheat. Then they had to heat the wood burning stove which would use up their wood supply pretty quickly if they baked extra food a lot. I’m sure cleaning up wasn’t so easy either. They didn’t have paper plates or dishwashers so all the plates and bowls had to be cleaned by hand. (Don’t forget that most families back then were usually large. They had more than just four plates to clean up.) Do you think they had time for this? There were probably more important jobs that kept them so busy they didn’t have time to bake or cook extra goodies whenever they wanted. This world lives for food.

Marrying and giving in marriage. The desire to get married is natural, placed there by God. It is not wrong to get married, but it is when our life goal is to be a wife or husband. Marriage isn’t taken seriously any more by most people. All they know is that they want it. Couples are getting married (or sinfully “shacking up”) right and left without giving it much thought. It is so awful when young adults get so eager to get married that they leap at the first opportunity they get instead of waiting for God’s timing.

What Jesus was saying in Matt. 24.37-39 is that in the time before the return of the Lord we will be so wrapped up in our lives (particularly eating and marrying)that we will not even be thinking about Christ and his return. We have made these two things more important than serving God. It reminds me of 2 Timothy 2:4. “No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.” This verse is not telling us to have no life. It is saying that we shouldn’t get so tangled up in the affairs of this world that we choose our friends or materialistic things over serving God.


I wish I could say this verse is only referring to the lost world, but I’m afraid even Christians have become entangled with our own life and have forgot that our focus should be on Christ. Maybe we should evaluate our life and see where our priorities lie.