Faith Can Make You Look Like A Fool

Faith can make you look like a fool!

Hebrews 11:7

Genesis 5-8

Last week we learned what faith is, what it can do and that without it, it is impossible to please God. We read about Abel and Enoch’s great faith and how it is important in our relationship with God.

This week, we are going to learn about how it can make us look foolish in the eyes of the world. How by living by faith, we sometimes make no sense to the rest of the world. They think we may have gone a little “looloo!”

God has given us the word to go to for instructions. If we are not in the word, and in it often, we can sometimes be lost for direction. But that is not the only way he gives us instruction! He also speaks to us through the Holy Spirit. In fact, the sometimes the specific things that God is telling us is actually spoken to us through that soft, inner voice inside of us. Though his direction for us through that soft voice makes no human sense.

Yet, by faith we seek to be obedient to God, and follow wherever he leads us. We presume that one day he will prove we heard him right. Does that always happen? I don’t think so! We must keep in mind that our will is not necessarily His will!

I can imagine how Noah must have felt. I mean, he didn’t build the arc overnight! During those Years that it must have taken, he probably looked a little odd to the people around him, right? I am sure that he really took a lot of ribbing from other people while he built it, even from friends and family!

Think about a time when God spoke to you and told you to do something that made absolutely sense at all. Maybe you had a love one that was really sick, and he told you to wait for their healing, but as you obeyed, the outcome was different than what you thought it would be. Just how did you feel? Maybe hurt, or let down? Disappointed?

A lot of people would be angry with God. They would be upset because they knew that He could answer their prayers. What they do not understand, or will not understand is that while He can do anything, there is a reason for the results he gave. We may not be able to see the ‘big picture’ yet, but we have to have faith that He is right, and all knowing. He allows things to happen for His will to be completed, not mine. Not yours. That is where faith really comes into play.

I hear stories, as do we all, of how something tragic happened to someone. Of how someone prayed fervently that the sick one would be healed, and because did not heal them, they would be upset with God. When you get down to the nitty gritty, they are mad because their will was not completed. That is a hard thing to swallow, I know, but Satan attacks us when we do not get what we want. He tells us things like, “He doesn’t care,” or there is no God. If there is, He is not loving.

That makes some people lash out at God. It makes them pull away from the one that they should be running to, the true giver of comfort and peace. They begin to fall away from their faith in God. But God does not give up on them. He never has and never will. He loves them anyway.

If you remember last weeks message, Enoch lived for 365 years. The scriptures tell us that he lived the last 300 years in ‘constant fellowship’ with God and then God took him. It says that he did not die. It says that God took him! Do you think that maybe the faith that he lived by was witness to others in his family and this faith was passed down, not genetically, but by their actually seeing this? By witnessing this faith and the reward that Enoch received for his faith? Maybe our faith, small in comparison to Enoch, is a witness to God’s love as well!

Let’s read Genesis 6:5 thru 7:5. It says, “ The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the ground, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them." But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God. And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. And God said to Noah, "I have determined to make an end of all flesh; for the earth is filled with violence through them; behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood; make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above; and set the door of the ark in its side; make it with lower, second, and third decks. For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you; and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you, to keep them alive. Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten, and store it up; and it shall serve as food for you and for them." Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him. THEN THE Lord said to Noah, "Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate; and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate; and seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep their kind alive upon the face of all the earth. For in seven days I will send rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground." And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.