Noah
In Hebrews 11:6, we are told that without faith, we can’t be pleasing to God. It is the beginning; the seed of our hope rests in the knowledge that God is and that He will keep His promises and reward those who seek to be with Him, which has been the rule since the beginning of time, one which Abel and Enoch obviously lived by.
The fact that God is the rewarder of those who seek Him is one of His divine characteristics that assures those who worship in spirit and in truth that He will provide atonement and has, in fact, already paid for our shortcomings through the blood of His Son. This is where we build our foundation, and this belief underpins and substantiates all of our thoughts and actions throughout our lives. Our faith must be faith in action. When we look at the great men and women in the Bible and those we have met and known and loved in our own lives, their faith is evidenced in the details of their lives. Faith isn’t an intellectual pursuit. Surely, there’s logic and reason behind it, but this chapter is all about faith in action. Faith becomes the catalyst for the very intentions of our hearts.
In this great list of the faithful from the beginning of history, we can see that under every dispensation of God’s covenant with man, during the patriarchal age, the Mosaic law, and the current law of the new covenant, there has only been one kind of faith - one that moves us to look to God for all of our guidance. The laws themselves don’t determine our faith - it is our desire for God and our belief that He exists and provides a sacrifice for our cleansing which leads us to Him. And THEN we long to keep His laws…any laws He demands…because we understand that He is God, and like Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, we want nothing more than to please Him.
As I age, I see that endurance is the challenge. My faith doesn’t waver, but my energy does, and my natural selfish tendencies to take a break because “I deserve it” are hard to ignore. I don’t know if there’s many better examples of endurance in the task at hand than Noah. Hebrews 11:7 reads, “By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.”
Firstly, I think we need to talk about the fact that Noah is warned by God about something he hasn’t seen. He is asked to mentally reach into the future and understand something he has no other knowledge of. And the event that Noah must grasp is catastrophic in proportion. He is told of impending disaster the likes of which the world had not seen before nor has it seen since. It must have been difficult for Noah to understand the immensity of what God was telling him. I know there’s the debate about whether it had ever rained before, but whether it had or not really doesn’t matter. We’ve all experienced rain, and we’ve seen footage of floods, tidal waves, and tsunamis…but even we can not imagine “all the fountains of the great deep [being] broken up, and the windows of heaven [being] opened” (Gen. 7:11b). Noah doesn’t believe what he’s told because what he’s being told is imaginable or because it makes sense to him. He believes in the One who tells him these things. Noah’s complete confidence is in God. His action is all balanced on the fact that God is trustworthy and that He is the One who holds the future of the earth and all that’s in it in His hands. That trust leads Noah to endure ridicule and, I would imagine, the anger of those around him as he spends the next 100 years of his life building the ark.
Noah’s faith caused two reactions:
Fear - a fear that is a natural response to what he’s heard. Because Noah believed what God had shown him, he was afraid. This isn’t fear of his own personal safety - God had told Noah that he would be safe. This is the same word for fear that the Hebrew writer uses in 12:28 when he writes, “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.” This is a righteous fear of God - an understanding of who God is in relation to himself. This fear is a result of Noah’s faith. He trusts that God is, that He will keep His promises, and that God will reward him if he is faithful. Our own godly fear should be part of our service to God. We have received a new kingdom - we aren’t under the same laws as Noah, but we must have the same faith that moved Noah, out of a reverential fear of God, to obedience.
Productivity - a productivity that was outlined, directed, and designed by God. Noah’s action is founded upon his first natural response to God. Because he had a righteous fear of God, he “prepared an ark.” If rain had never fallen, or if rain was a rare occurrence, then an ark would have been bizarre. I think sometimes that we brush past this story - most of us have taught it 100 times in children’s classes, and we sing the songs, we march the animals in with the children, but we don’t stop to think about this man. Noah’s faith has always separated him from the people around him, but now, it’s going to make him stand out. He’s completely immersed in what would have seemed to be a completely mad endeavor. There isn’t a scripture that specifically says that Noah was mocked; however, in 2 Peter 2:5, Peter refers to him as a “preacher of righteousness,” and the Hebrew writer says that his faith “condemned the world,” so it’s not a grand leap to infer that there would have been scoffing involved! Noah preached righteousness to a world that would not receive it. We know that because nobody else was saved in the ark. If our lives preach righteousness, we should anticipate being scoffed at by those around us. Noah’s actions must have seemed fanatical to those around him. He’s trying to tell them what God has shown to him, but he is talking to a world that does not want the message. And yet, in his faith, he continues to build.
It’s incredible when you stop to consider it. And my question to myself and to you is, do we do the same? We’ve been shown a far off future event, and we’ve been told what to do to save ourselves, our loved ones, and anyone around us who will listen. Do we not just believe but have faith that God will keep His promises? Are we confident that He will reward us if we diligently seek Him? Do we love those around us enough to endure the contempt of those who refuse to listen?
If our faith does not produce action in us, then it is not the faith of Noah. I think many people believe in God. They believe that there is a creator, that each person has a soul, and that there is a heaven and hell. They believe that they should be “good”...however they define it. But that’s where their “faith” ends.
Before I moved to Germany, I worshiped in Helena, Alabama. Around the time I had John, our preacher was a man named John Clark. I was at the building one Saturday cleaning, and Mr. Clark was working in his office. My baby was sleeping in his little bucket seat, and Mr. Clark offered to watch him in his office while I finished up in the auditorium. I finished up and went to get my son before heading home, but I ended up sitting and talking with Mr. Clark for a while. I was not a new Christian, but having been weak and uncommitted for years, I was trying to get myself back together. It was a struggle - I suppose it always is. I’d had a dear friend at church who had turned her back on God and left the church, and it had shaken me. He was so kind, sitting and talking with me about the nature of our faith. In the course of our conversation, he said to me, “If only God would dangle all of our feet for a fraction of a second over the fires of hell, we would be much more committed in our service to Him.”
We like to think that, like Noah, if God showed us the flood, we’d start building the ark. Yet, He has given us a glimpse of something much more catastrophic…and I sometimes find myself without a hammer in my hands. If I’m not careful, I fear my culture - the ridicule of my peers - more than I fear my God. My fear of God will cause me to act while my fear of being cast aside by men will cause me to be idle…to be like everyone else around me. I won’t stand out, I won’t be a light, and I won’t be ready when He returns. That’s what He’s shown us - there is a day when the Lord will return; it is rushing toward us. It is as sure to occur as the flood was.
If we are to use Noah as a model for our faith, then we need to trust the One who revealed an incomprehensible future event to us. We need to approach Him with fear and trembling, confident that He has given us a means of salvation from the calamity. We need to preach righteousness to those around us - regardless of their reactions, and we need to look to God for the plan and design of the work He would have us do. And finally, we need to grab our fully-equipped toolboxes, and put our faith into action.