I remember admiring a beautifully finished cedar table-top made by the second man. "Dad isn't happy about it," the daughter-in-law told me. "You probably can't see it, but the finish is ever-so-slightly thicker over here. He's going to strip it down and start again."
Look as I would, I couldn't detect the fault, but for the perfectionist, "near enough" is just not good enough.
This reminds me of a father and son who were out fencing. The father held the post and asked his son to sight it up, so the fence would be straight. The lad looked and called out, "That's near enough, Dad!" "Near enough isn't good enough, son! It's got to be 'xactly!" The son crouched down and had his father move the post slightly this way and that. Finally he called out, "It's 'xactly, Dad!" "That's near enough, son!"
Is God a perfectionist? We have to keep in mind that we are living in a fallen world. In many respects things aren't as the Creator intended them to be. Human rebellion and sin has had an impact on the natural world, as well as on our own physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. Is God a perfectionist? Of course he is!
Take a look at the eye. I know! We have trouble with short- and long-sightedness, with cataract, glaucoma and a range of other complaints. But isn't the eye wonderful? It was designed by a perfectionist.
Think about the water cycle. I know! We have el Niño and la Niña as well as the droughts and floods they are said to bring. But have you reflected lately on the marvellous distillation system which gives us fresh water out of the salty ocean? Thought up by a perfectionist.
The modern aeroplane is a marvellous invention. Who would ever have imagined such massive heavier-than-air objects flying through the air at 35,000 feet? Only those who have watched the birds soaring and darting about - a perfectionist's design.
In Genesis 1 at the end of a number of the "days" of creation, we are told that "God was pleased with what he saw" - literally, "See! Good!" (vv. 4,10,12,18,21,25). At the end of the sixth day we read, "God looked at everything he had made, and he was very pleased" - literally, "See! Exceedingly good!" (v. 31). The Lord was pleased with what he had made.
When human rebellion and sin entered in, the perfection of creation was broken but not lost. From that point on, we see the Lord desiring to relate to people on the basis of grace.
So we have Cain and Abel, sons of Adam and Eve, offering sacrifices. "The Lord was pleased with Abel and his offering, but he rejected Cain and his offering..." (4.4b,5a).
Some folk seem to think the issue in this account was about getting the ritual right - a meat offering is acceptable, but a grain offering isn't. But that's not the point. We need to have the heart right. God sees us from within and knows whether or not what we do is a response to him.
So the words in Gen. 5 come over with sombre reality. "When the Lord saw how wicked everyone on earth was and how evil their thoughts were all the time, he was sorry that he had ever made them and put them on the earth. He was so filled with regret that he said, 'I will wipe out these people I have created, and also the animals and the birds, because I am sorry that I made any of them.' But the Lord was pleased with Noah..." (vv. 5-8).
It sounds a bit like the perfectionist I was telling you about - destroying the polished surface to start again. Or the writer who fills a bin with scrumpled pages that didn't make it. "But the Lord was pleased with Noah...." Here is the word of grace.
We read that "Noah had no faults and was the only good man of his time. He lived in fellowship with God, but everyone else was evil in God's sight, and violence had spread everywhere. God looked at the world and saw that it was evil, for the people were all living evil lives" (vv. 9-12). The King James had "Noah was... perfect..." - literally, the word means, "complete, sound, having integrity" - "and Noah walked with God." Living under grace, Noah is expressing the kind of relationship with God that was always intended to be.
A terrible judgment fell on earth's inhabitants - with the provision of a new beginning with Noah, the man of grace. "The Lord destroyed all living beings on the earth - human beings, animals, and birds. The only ones left were Noah and those who were with him in the boat" (7.23).
God is a perfectionist. He expects perfection. The downfall of humanity into rebellion and sin and the fallout - including the breakdown of fellowship with God and one another as well as exclusion from the garden and the tree of life - does not mean that the Lord has abandoned the human race. He comes to humanity with his own costly grace. The tragedy of the generation that died in the flood is that their minds as well as their actions were filled with evil. It is possible, as Jesus made clear (Mark 3.29), to resist and reject the grace of God presented to our conscience through the Holy Spirit to a point where forgiveness is no longer possible.
There have been all sorts of speculations about what life on the Ark must have been like - as well as the typical modern scepticism that the whole story is just a bit of folk-lore or legend.
It is rather striking that in every culture there is a story of a flood in which one family and the animals escape in a boat. It is also worth noting that the ship The Great Eastern, a vessel noted for its stability rather than its speed, was chosen to lay the telephone cable across the Atlantic Ocean. Its dimensions were remarkably close to those of the Ark. (By the way, it is the same Hebrew word that is used for Noah's "ark" and the "ark" of the covenant in the tabernacle. It simply means "box".)
What was it like on the Ark? Recently, we watched a video on animals in the dry regions of southern Africa. As the water-hole dried up, animals usually hostile to one another came down together to drink. There are many questions we would like to ask about life on the Ark - and dramatic dialogues that attempt to answer them.
But - "God had not forgotten Noah and all the animals with him in the boat..." (8.1a). It was six months before the waters started to subside and twelve months before the land was dry enough for them to leave the boat.
God said to Noah, "Go out of the boat with your wife, your sons and their wives. Take all the birds and animals out with you, so that they may reproduce and spread over all the earth" (vv. 15, 16).
This was to be a new beginning for the creation under the man of grace, the man with whom God was pleased.
Grace is part of a relationship. We shouldn't think of grace as a gift that guarantees heaven, but as the God who reaches out to bring us into relationship with himself - the relationship we were always meant to have. God saw all that he had made and he was very pleased. Sin and rebellion entered in, but God was pleased with Noah. God's purpose was that Noah and his descendants live under that grace - in that restored relationship, with a goodness that flows from grace and forgiveness.
"Noah built an altar to the Lord; he took one of each kind of ritually clean animal and bird, and burnt them whole as a sacrifice on the altar. The odour of the sacrifice pleased the Lord..." (vv. 20-21a). Noah was continuing to respond to the grace and presence of God and God was pleased about that.
In Matthew 3, we read about the baptism of Jesus. Jesus was baptised under protests from John the Baptist. When he came out of the water, we read that the heaven opened and he saw the Spirit descending like a dove and resting on him. And a voice from heaven said, "This is my own dear Son, with whom I am pleased" (v. 17).
A couple of years later, Jesus took three of his friends, Peter, James and John, up a high mountain. There his appearance was transfigured before them. They heard a voice from the cloud saying, "This is my own dear Son with whom I am pleased - listen to him!" (17.5)
Jesus is the one person who has lived without sin. Paul calls him the Second Adam. He says that "just as all people die because of their union with Adam, in the same way all will be raised to life because of their union with Christ" (1 Cor 15.22).
Jesus alone - the Son of God who emptied himself and became a human being - Jesus alone perfectly fulfilled the Father's will. He alone perfectly responded to the presence and love of the Father. He didn't have to live under grace in the sense that we do. Yet from the cross we hear him cry out, "My God, my God, why did you abandon me?" (27.46) It was the moment when the perfect one was identifying with sinners, when he was experiencing to the full our alienation from God, when he was taking on himself the full consequences of our sin. It was the moment when heaven was being opened so that sinners like Noah - and you and me - could experience the grace of God (note Rom. 3.21-26).
But God was not pleased with Cain's offering. God was filled with regret about Noah's compatriots. Jesus called people to "repent and believe the good news" - but a whole crowd of them wanted him crucified. It is still possible to ignore or reject the grace that is offered - and to nullify for ourselves the efficacy of that sacrifice one offered for all people.
Jesus is the Son with whom the Father is well pleased. Listen to him. Believe in him. Receive him. Live under his grace. Then you too will know that God is pleased with you!
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