Chapter 3
Noah
It was by faith that Noah heard God’s warnings about things he could not yet see. He obeyed God and built a large boat to save his family. By his faith, Noah showed that the world was wrong, and he became one of those who are made right with God through faith.
— Hebrews 11:7 NCV
It’s without a doubt one of the most beloved stories of the Bible. Children play with their little plastic animals and toy ark, as their Sunday School teacher tells them how the animals marched two by two into the pitch-covered vessel. Then the rains came. We picture Noah and his family huddled in the tiny cramped space of the ark, surrounded by elephants, walruses, and a couple of giraffes whose long necks jut out through the windows of the rickety boat.
But the story of Noah and the ark is more than just a children’s story. It’s a true story about God’s rage and righteousness, about salvation and damnation, and—perhaps most of all—it’s a story of one man’s faith in God. The Bible says:
The LORD observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. So the LORD was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart. And the LORD said, “I will wipe this human race I have created from the face of the earth. Yes, and I will destroy every living thing—all the people, the large animals, the small animals that scurry along the ground, and even the birds of the sky. I am sorry I ever made them.” But Noah found favor with the LORD. (Genesis 6:5-8 NLT).
Another translation says, “Noah was different. God liked what he saw in Noah” (vs. 8 MSG). So, in a world of corruption and chaos, what made Noah so different? Why did he find favor in God’s eyes? The answer is—his faith. By taking another look at a familiar story, let’s try to discover how Noah’s faith unveils itself through his life and love for God. The first thing we see is that Noah...
1. Believed
...God. I don’t mean that Noah merely believed in God, which of course he did. But Noah’s faith went beyond intellectual assent; he really believed that God meant what he said—that he could and would destroy the entire world with a catastrophic global flood. And he believed God in spite of the influence of the world around him.
Try to put yourself in Noah’s shoes. He lived in a world that by God’s estimation was “consistently and totally evil.” The Bible says, “As far as God was concerned, the Earth had become a sewer; there was violence everywhere. God took one look and saw how bad it was, everyone corrupt and corrupting—life itself corrupt to the core” (vs. 11-12 MSG). Now, at first blush we might think that this was a description of modern America, but trust me—Noah had it worst. Sure, we have our share of corrupt politicians, entertainers and supposed role models who allow their fame and popularity to corrupt their morals and integrity. But thank God that the Good News of Jesus has spread throughout this entire planet. Though we’re still surrounded by violence, crime, and corruption, there are also millions, if not billions, of followers of Jesus scattered throughout the world acting as salt and light, preserving this world in the name of Jesus.
In Noah’s day, he and his family alone had any sort of relationship with God. Imagine if you were the only person in church this Sunday. I don’t mean the only person in your church, but the only person in any church anywhere in the world! It wasn’t easy for Noah to go against the grain; to make the decision to believe God when everyone else in the whole world had turned their backs on him. And to make matters worse, it’s likely that the majority of Noah’s neighbors thought he was completely out of his mind.
Earlier in Genesis, the Bible says, “The Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land…and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground” (2:5-7 ESV). It’s difficult to discern whether the lack of rain was a temporary or permanent situation, but a lot of credible scholars believe that rain had not fallen on the earth from the time of creation up until the time of the flood, rather underground springs provided an uninterrupted cycle of water for plants and crops.
Building a massive boat so far from any large bodies of water is one thing, but preparing for a flood when no one on earth had even heard of rain before, that looks just plain crazy. Noah’s neighbors probably thought he was a little silly for talking to an invisible God all these years (maybe they thought Noah had an imaginary friend), but building an ark and predicting a flood most likely made them question his sanity.
It took a great deal of faith and courage for Noah to follow God when everyone else in the world was going the opposite direction. Mike Delcavo knows all about that. In a NCAA Cross-Country Championship held in Riverside, California, 123 of the 128 runners missed a turn. One competitor, Mike Delcavo, turned the right way, staying on the 10,000-meter course, and began waving for fellow runners to follow him, but he was only able to convince four other runners to go with him. When asked what his competitors thought of his mid-race decision not to follow the crowd, Delcavo responded, “They thought it was funny that I went the right way!”
It takes courage to go the right way, when everyone else is going the wrong way. It takes faith to keep going despite the laughter and jeers of the crowd, instead of just following them. But being right rarely means being popular and faith requires us to believe and trust in God—often in spite of popular opinion. As William Pen once said, “Right is right, even if everyone is against it; and wrong is wrong even if everyone is for it.” The second way that Noah unveiled his faith is—Noah...
2. Built
...just what God told him to build. The Bible says, “Noah did everything that God commanded him” (Genesis 6:22 NCV). And God was fairly specific with his commands. God told Noah, “Build a large boat from cypress wood and waterproof it with tar, inside and out. Then construct decks and stalls throughout its interior. Make the boat 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. Leave an 18-inch opening below the roof all the way around the boat. Put the door on the side, and build three decks inside the boat—lower, middle, and upper” (Genesis 6:14-16 NLT).
Today, we’re so familiar with this story that sometimes we may miss the magnitude of this project. Shaped like a barge, Noah’s ark was taller than a four story building and as long and wide as 1 ½ foot-ball fields. Although China and a few other cultures may have built ships of equal size as early as the 1400s, no other boat constructed exceeded the size of Noah’s ark until the late 1800s.
Now, countless critics of the Bible have tried to dismiss the story of the Noah’s ark and the flood as simply a small local flood that may have devastated a confined area of civilization. That sort of historical revisionism, however, is in direct opposition to God’s Word which clearly says that God intended to “destroy every living thing—all the people, the large animals, the small animals that scurry along the ground, and even the birds of the sky,” and that the water “continued to rise until it was more than twenty feet above the mountains” (Genesis 6:7 NLT, 7:20 NCV). The world-wide nature of the Genesis flood is also attested to by more than 270 flood legends and historic records belonging to ancient cultures from all over the world. These ancient records or legends, containing slightly varied versions of the Biblical flood story, come from cultures as far away as ancient China, Hawaii, the Toltec Indians of Mexico, and the ancient Babylonian empire. So there should be no doubt that this was, in fact, a global flood.
Others have claimed that a boat, even as big as Noah’s ark, could never have carried two (and sometimes seven) of every kind of animal on the earth for over a year. Let me just point out two quick facts, however. First, the amount of space in Noah’s ark was 1,396,000 cubic feet. That’s equivalent to as much as 533 railroad box cars. Next time you get stopped at a railroad crossing trying counting the stock cars as they pass by and see how long it takes to get to five hundred. Secondly, I don’t believe the Bible uses the word kind in quite the same way as the modern scientific community does. For instance, Noah didn’t have to bring single every breed of dog with him on the ark; he only had to bring two dogs. He didn’t have to bring a black bear, brown bear, grizzly bear and polar bear; he just had to bring two bears. All of the variations within each kind that we see today are the result of cross-breeding and micro-evolution. So, Noah surely had plenty of room aboard his massive boat for all the animals, his own family, and supplies to last them throughout the year.
The dimensions that God provided for Noah are also important. There were almost certainly very rough waters and great tidal waves while Noah and his family were in the ark. God’s design provided stability in these unstable conditions. In a test conducted several years ago in Korea, the design of Noah’s ark consistently performed among the best possible designs, which is why so many barges and boats still use these basic dimensions. If Noah had ignored God’s instruction and built the ark to different specifications, they would have likely wound up on the bottom of the ocean.
The main point is—because Noah had faith, he obeyed God in every detail. The author of Hebrews emphasizes the fact that Noah “obeyed...and built.” Roger Staubach, who led the Dallas Cowboys to victory in the 1971 Superbowl, once admitted that his position as a quarterback who didn’t call his own signals was a source of trial for him. His coach, Coach Landry, sent in every single play from the sideline. He told Roger when to pass, when to run and only in emergency situations could he change the play (and he had better be right if he did!). Even though Roger considered coach Landry to have a “genius mind” when it came to football strategy, pride said that he should be able to run his own team. Roger later said, “I faced up to the issue of obedience. Once I learned to obey there was harmony, fulfillment, and victory.”
Noah, likewise, may have been tempted to call his own plays. He probably struggled, as we all do, with doing things his own way and making his own decisions. But real faith means being willing to trust and obey—to do things God’s way no matter what. We may not understand exactly why God wants us to be baptized or give a tithe from our income—but God said it, so let’s do it. We may not always feel like loving our neighbor or being kindhearted to one another—but God said it, so we obey. Obedience is just a part of having faith. And when we learn to believe and build (or obey) as Noah did, then we, like Noah, will be...
3. Blessed
...by God. When it was all over—the rain stopped, the waters had receded and the ark ran aground—the Bible says, “Then God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, ‘Have many children; grow in number and fill the earth’” (Genesis 9:1 NCV). Following this blessing, God placed his rainbow in the sky as a sign of his new covenant with humanity.
The primary substance of Noah’s blessing was that he would be blessed with many children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren—enough to repopulate the entire earth. Although many young parents today see their children as a curse, the Bible always depicts children as a blessing from the Lord—a sign of his divine favor. It breaks my heart to think about all of the baby boys and girls throughout the world who have been made to taste death before they were even allowed to draw a breath. In America alone, there are nearly two million abortions every single year. Yet, a young Jewish or Hebrew couple acquainted with God would never have even considered aborting a baby. To them, children were a sign of God’s love and blessing on their lives.
In any case, Noah’s experience after the flood brings to the surface a Biblical principle—that is, belief coupled with obedience leads to blessing. Now, I’m not saying that if you have enough faith, or if you speak and think words of faith, that you’ll receive everything you ever wanted in life. That’s not the way it works. There is, however, a movement spreading through many Christian circles which teaches exactly that—by speaking words of faith you can have or achieve anything you want.
In the 1980 book, We Let Our Son Die, Larry Parker and his wife relate the tragic story of how they were influenced by one of America’s many “word of faith” teachers to withhold insulin from their diabetic son. The Parker’s continually spoke words of positive “faith” over their son, Wesley, believing that God would heal him. Unsurprisingly, however, Wesley slipped into a diabetic coma and eventually died. Determined not to lose faith, the Parker’s even held a resurrection service rather than a funeral service for their son and refused to acknowledge his death for several months. They were eventually tried and convicted of both manslaughter and child abuse.
Confession does not lead to possession. And faith, no matter how strong it is, does not guarantee our prosperity or healing. Abraham Lincoln once said, “Faith is not believing that God can, but that God will!” Unfortunately, Abraham Lincoln had it completely backwards, as do many “word of faith” teachers today. Genuine faith recognizes that God alone is Sovereign and although he certainly can bless us in the ways that we want, that doesn’t necessarily mean he will. In other words, genuine faith is faith in God not faith in faith. As we’ll later see, many of the men and women mentioned in Hebrews 11 were penniless, persecuted, prisoners who experienced painful deaths. Their lives were not characterized by prosperity, yet they were shining examples of faith.
So what does it mean then that belief and obedience leads to God’s blessing? It means simply that when we put our faith in him, God will always work things out in the end. In fact, that’s a promise! The Bible says, “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them” (Romans 8:28 NLT). God may not always bless us in the way that we want, but he promises to work everything out for our own good.
The greatest blessing of all is, of course, our salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. The events related to Noah’s ark and the flood are a beautiful picture of how God provided salvation in the face of certain destruction. The Bible even says, “You know, even though God waited patiently all the days that Noah built his ship, only a few were saved then, eight to be exact—saved from the water by the water. The waters of baptism do that for you, not by washing away dirt from your skin but by presenting you through Jesus’ resurrection before God with a clear conscience” (1 Peter 3:20-21 MSG).
It’s not that we, or Noah and his family, were actually saved by the water, but that the water separates those who are saved from those who aren’t. God promised to never again destroy the world with a global flood, so he won’t be commanding anymore arks to be built. Instead, he sent his Son to be our Savior. As I already mentioned in the previous chapter, while God will never again destroy the world with a flood of water, he is planning on destroying it with a flood of fire, but those who are in Jesus Christ will be saved—he is our Ark. And through him, we stand to inherit the blessing of eternal life in the Kingdom of God.
Invitation:
In a moment we’ll sing our invitation song, and that’s what this is—an open invitation to anyone who needs anything. If you’re struggling with your faith and need someone to pray with you, if you want to get on board the Ark and put your faith in Jesus—whatever you need, just let us know…
