Who can identify this fruit? (Show picture.) It looks a bit like a coconut, but it isn’t. It’s about the size of an orange and it grows in the Amazon. This fruit is called bacuri. The part that you eat is the sticky white pulp in the middle, which they say tastes sweet and sour at the same time. The pulp is used to produce creams, sorbets, and fruit juices. When the outside of the fruit is squeezed, it oozes a latex-like substance making bacuri a particularly sticky fruit inside and out.
What are some of the stickiest fruits you’ve handled? Mangos? Peaches? The Fruit of the Spirit is also sticky. I say this because one of the characteristics of this fruit is faithfulness. Someone who is faithful is someone who sticks with you. God is sticky. Once he makes a promise, he holds on to it and will never let it go. No one and nothing can shake that promise from his hand like yarn caught in the claws of a cat. This same God calls us to be faithful and through the Holy Spirit produces faithful-stickiness in us. Let’s see what that stickiness ought to look like in our lives as we study the interaction between God and Noah. (Read text.)
Our sermon text should remind us that there really is no such thing as the “good ol’ days.” Sin may have not been as obvious a couple of generations ago as it is today, but ever since Adam and Eve’s declaration of independence, this world has been a sin-stinking place. That was true at the time of Noah, five or six thousand years ago. When God looked at the world of that time, he saw believers carelessly putting their faith in jeopardy by choosing marriage partners based solely on sex appeal, not whether or not their spouse would help them in their walk with God. God also saw a wanton disregard for life as the strong fell upon the weak and took for themselves whatever they wanted. While these unbelievers could no doubt act like “nice” people from time to time, God was not fooled. He saw that “every inclination of…[their] hearts was only evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5b). God was disgusted by what he saw and so he prepared to cleanse the world of these people who had no use for him. Friends, it’s good for us to remember that it isn’t just automobiles that can be recalled by their maker, so can human beings (John Jeske).
And the day for total recall of all human beings is coming! Jesus promised that one day you will have to stand before his judgment throne, and we know he’ll stick to that promise. Noah was convinced that God was faithful to his promise to cleanse the world and so he resolved to stick close to God’s directions. If God said that a flood was coming and that he should build a big boat so that he and his family and every kind of animal could survive, then that’s what Noah would do.
Now you’ve seen the cutesy pictures of the ark in children’s books giving you the impression that Noah could have assembled that boat in a weekend or two. Not so. The ark he was to build was huge. It was about as high as a four-story house and a football field and a half long. It wasn’t until 1884 that a ship of that size was built again! Besides his work on the ark, Noah also had to gather a year’s worth of food for his family and for as many as 2,000 animals. It’s no wonder God gave Noah his orders over a hundred years before he actually sent the flood. Noah would need the time to prepare for what God said was coming.
Don’t you wonder what kind of insults Noah faced as he worked on the ark? We might get an idea from a modern “Noah.” In 2007 a man in Holland built a replica of the ark that is five times smaller than the original one. It still cost the Dutchman $1.35 million (CDN). It’s interesting to read the posts about this man’s project. Scoffers talk about the waste of time and effort. I mean if you had $1.35 million, would you build an ark? Why not build a comfortable home instead? In the same way Noah’s industriousness must have impressed his contemporaries as he cut down trees, dragged them to the worksite, purchased or made nails and then spent countless hours pounding the wood into place until his hands were numb. Noah then sweated in the sun slapping pitch on the ark so that it would be seaworthy. But what was it all for? A flood? Really? And yet Noah continued to stick to God’s plan for him. Noah was faithful because he knew God would be faithful to his promise to send that flood.
Like the people of Noah’s day your friends must question the time you spend here at church. And wouldn’t they really question your sanity if they knew how much money you’ve dropped into the offering plate over the last five years? With that money you could have…what? Gone on a cruise? Bought a car? Put a down payment on a condo in Arizona? And what do you have to show for that money now? Not much it would seem. But you could say that you’re building an ark. I’m not suggesting that our church is going to be a refuge come Judgment Day. This building too will burn. Your ark is your faith in Jesus because that’s the only thing that will save you. We spend countless hours here at church and pour thousands of dollars into this place to support gospel ministry so that through Word and Sacrament our faith in Jesus will be strengthened. And it’s not just our faith that we want strengthened. Noah didn’t just build the ark for himself but for his wife, his three sons and their wives. Likewise we invest much here because we want our loved ones and others to survive Judgment Day with us. Don’t give up on your efforts. Stick to the plan because God is going to stick to his plan of destroying this world and judging mankind.
Now I’m sure that when Noah first got the command to build the ark he was a flurry of activity. But how long did that enthusiasm last? If he really worked on the ark for 120 years, there must have been days when he was tempted to quit. How did he stay focused? How did he stay faithful and stick to the plan? Hebrews 11:7a gives us the answer: “By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family.” To stay focused Noah only had to regularly picture the place where he bought nails and the restaurant he liked to frequent both under water. When he was tempted to waste hours in the town square listening to the gossip of the day, he just had to picture a rogue wave smashing everything there to bits and burying it under layers of mud.
Friends, we too are living in a world that’s marked for destruction. So does it really matter whether or not you have the latest iPhone? Is it really that important to have your kids enrolled up to their eyeballs in activities? Do you really need to spend hours keeping up with the latest from Hollywood or Facebook? It’s pointless isn’t it when you remember that it’s all going to burn—all of it, your video games, your house with its renovated bathroom, even the gold and silver you have stashed away in safety deposit boxes. Live in holy fear of the day of judgment that is coming!
That doesn’t mean we should hole up here in church and only venture out to get food. That’s not what Noah did. We hear from the New Testament that he was a preacher of righteousness. While he built that ark Noah also desperately tried to convince others to come on board. You could say that Noah stuck close to his friends as he faithfully witnessed to them. And we can show the same faithfulness to our friends as we too warn them about the coming judgment, and urge them to come on board with us here.
But faithfulness will show itself in other ways too. Someone who is faithful is dependable. When you tell a friend that you’ll meet them for coffee, you do so! When you tell your parents you’ll be home to help them with the yard work, you do that too and don’t excuse your absence because “Something came up.” That’s fickleness not faithfulness.
Someone who is faithful is also a finisher. If you said you were going to clean out the garage, then do it—all the way to the end. If you told your classmates that you would do the research for that science project, don’t leave it to the last minute so that you have to make up some excuse as to why you couldn’t complete your part. This world struggles with faithfulness. One pastor said he saw a Hallmark card which read: “I can’t promise you forever, but I can promise you today.” In contrast the prophet Isaiah wrote about God’s faithfulness: “‘Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,’ says the LORD, who has compassion on you” (Is. 54:10).
God proved his faithfulness in the person of Jesus. He was utterly dependable. He was a finisher, no, THE finisher—the one who completely paid for our sins and therefore secured our salvation. He didn’t leave any lose ends for us to tie up. How can we not remain faithful and stick close to a savior like that? I pray that you are renewed in your desire to give Jesus your all—to lay your life on the line for him. But one preacher (Fred Craddock) observed that we might think giving our all to the Lord is like taking a $l000 bill and laying it on the table saying, “Here’s my life, Lord. Take it.” But the reality for most of us is that the Lord sends us back to the bank to exchange that $l000 bill for quarters. He then wants us to go through life putting down 25 cents here and 50 cents there when we listen to a co-worker’s troubles instead of wishing they’d leave us alone. Or when we attend another committee meeting, or look people in the eye and smile as we walk by them. Living for Christ is usually done in those little acts of love, 25 cents at time…and that takes faithfulness to stick with it over the long haul.
Noah stuck with it. That’s because God stuck with him. And this God will also stick with you. Actually you could say that through baptism, God, in the person of Jesus, was stuck to you. Like a locomotive that’s been attached to the rear of the train so it can push the train cars up over the mountain pass, Jesus, together with the Holy Spirit is pushing you so that you remain faithful—not just on the inside in your love for God, but faithful on the outside too in your love for others. Sticky inside and out, that’s you—just like a bacuri fruit. Amen.
SERMON NOTES
How is the concept of faithfulness related to stickiness?
How did God’s faithfulness motivate Noah to stick to the plan of building the ark?
In what sense are we also building an ark?
(2 questions) What might Noah have thought of whenever he was tempted to stop building the ark? Why should we want to imitate Noah when we’re tempted to give up on our faith in Jesus?
Being faithful means being dependable and being a finisher. In what specific areas of your life can you better apply these qualities?
(not shared in the sermon) How is it true that someone who is faithful (sticky) will take the words and actions of others in the kindest possible way?
