“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 on 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 300 cubits, its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 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 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. It shall serve as food for you and for them.’ Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.” [1]
You do have to admit that it was a crazy command. “Build a boat!” And not just any boat! The boat you are to build must be large enough to house all sorts of animals—at least two of every kind! The animals to be collected are to be representative of every kind of land animal and of every sort of flying animal. It won’t be necessary to gather up fish or sea creatures. Whatever is about to happen won’t be devastating to those creatures living in the sea.
Now, here’s the crazy part—there is no ocean, no lake, no major rivers anywhere near where the boat is to be built. There simply isn’t enough water anywhere on which to float the boat you are to build. Nevertheless, the command is clear—build a massive boat big enough to carry a great number of passengers.
And the craziness doesn’t stop with the command to build a boat. The command is to take some of all the animals of the earth, a male and female to ensure that they will be able to populate wherever it is that the boat will carry them. Oh! And you will need to make sure there is food on board—enough to feed you and your family for a long time. Speaking of food, you will need to ensure there is food for all the animals—lots of food! It is apparent that this is going to be a lengthy voyage. When all these tasks are at last completed, you and your family are to go into the boat, after which the door will be shut and locked so that no one else can get in.
Oh, and just one small point of clarification—building the boat is going to take decades. Your work will result in persecution and mockery for yourself and for your family throughout the entire time you are building that great boat. You will be mercilessly ridiculed; after all, no one needs a boat, especially a boat that large! Throughout all those years you spend building the boat, you will be mocked, laughed at, ridiculed. Little children will be encouraged by their parents to mock you, and you will just have to put up with it. Do not respond to the cruel taunts.
Why would you say, “Yes?” Why would you agree to subject yourself to ridicule, even to rejection? What is to be gained through what you will experience? What could impel an individual to jettison any hope of acceptance by neighbours, or even by family members? What would motivate ordinary people to obey the call of God to perform extraordinary tasks?
People who are even casually acquainted with the biblical account of God’s judgement on the earth in the days of Noah will have recognised by now that I’ve been speaking of God’s command to Noah to build the Ark. Noah was just a normal guy, living out his life in the midst of a world that had seemingly gone mad. Then, God spoke to Noah, and he became convinced through prayer and time alone in the presence of the Lord, that he was to build a great boat. This ordinary guy became convinced that he was to perform an extraordinary task. What would convince an ordinary guy to act in such a strange manner that seemed to defy all reason?
Let’s be honest with one another, the command God gave Noah made no sense on any level. There had never been a flood; in fact, there had never been rain! How does anyone account for what they have never experienced? To be sure, after the fact, God’s command made perfect sense; but until the judgement of God fell, there could be no understanding, no comprehension, of what this strange command was all about. Thinking about this account, I believe we can learn something essential about this business of faith. Let’s get started!
GOD’S COMMANDS DON’T ALWAYS MAKE SENSE. “Make yourself an ark of gopher wood” [GENESIS 6:14a]. Followers of the Risen Lord of Glory have been taught in the Scriptures that, “God is not a God of confusion” [1 CORINTHIANS 14:33a]. We Evangelical Christians confess that we believe this to be true, but sometimes we are confused just how we are to understand this particular teaching. We seem to imagine that the words Paul wrote are to be taken to mean that God will always act in a manner we consider to be rational, that we will always understand what He is doing. Indeed, the Living God is a rational being, but we don’t always think rationally. We distort what we claim to believe to make our belief mean that we can understand God. We convince ourselves that He will never act in a manner that doesn’t fit our estimate of reason.
And yet, God is far greater than our ability to know; He does not act as we imagine He must act. Is this not what Isaiah meant when he spoke on behalf of the LORD? Isaiah wrote,
“My thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
[ISAIAH 55:8-9]
At one point, Jeremiah was commanded to redeem a field from his cousin. At the time he was told to redeem the field, Jerusalem was besieged by the Babylonians. Jeremiah obeyed the command the LORD had given, redeeming the land, and secreting the deed in a clay pot. After purchasing the land, Jeremiah prayed, and his prayer reveals that the command which he had just obeyed made absolutely no sense. He begins by acknowledging God’s might, reviewing the great deeds that the LORD had performed on behalf of Israel throughout the generations, confessing God’s greatness. Then, the prophet looked at the situation—Jerusalem was besieged, facing imminent disaster, and the city would shortly fall to the Chaldeans. Therefore, the prophet confessed, “What you spoke has come to pass, and behold, you see it” [JEREMIAH 32:24b].
To this point, Jeremiah had presented a marvellous prayer extolling God and His might. But he had been speaking from faith and not from the reality that he could see, reality seen in every Babylonian soldier fighting against Israel. Thus, at last overwhelmed by the situation then facing him, the prophet burst out in frustration, “Yet you, O Lord GOD, have said to me, ‘Buy the field for money and get witnesses’—though the city is given into the hands of the Chaldeans” [JEREMIAH 32:25]. Jeremiah was saying, “God, I have obeyed You; but this makes no sense!”
It is one thing to trust God, and it is another thing altogether to walk with Him when all around you is darkness and the opposition seemingly towers over your life. At such a time, you will undoubtedly feel like Peter when he was walking on the water. The disciples saw Jesus coming toward them striding above the waves and they were startled. They heard Jesus’ voice as He was telling them, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid” [MATTHEW 14:27].
Peter blurted out, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.” At this, Jesus said, “Come.” So, Peter climbed out of the boat and walked on the water. He was doing a great job, until he saw the wind. At that point, he was afraid, and he began to sink. Crying out, “Lord, save me,” he was rescued when Jesus reached out to take his hand. Jesus gently rebuked Peter, saying “O you of little faith, why did you doubt” [see MATTHEW 14:28-31]?
Whatever else you might say about Peter’s lack of faith, he did walk on the water! Admittedly, he ultimately failed to stay dry, but Peter did walk on the water! And we have the same failures in our own lives. We walk with confidence surrounded by the turmoil and constant upheaval of this fallen world. We do an admirable job until we begin to look around at the tumult and the turbulence raging about us. At that point, we stumble.
I understand that none of you have ever struggled to understand what God is doing in your life. I, however, have seldom been able to understand God. I trust Him; but I seldom understand Him. I confess that I “walk by faith, not by sight” [see 2 CORINTHIANS 5:7]. I’ve walked with the Father long enough that I know that He is always good to me and to all who love Him. I have come to understand that the Lord is wise beyond anything that I could ever imagine. With the Apostle, I confess that I have come to realise that in Christ “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” [see COLOSSIANS 2:3].
Jeremiah needed to hear God’s answer, and we, also, need to hear what the LORD says. This is the LORD’s response to Jeremiah’s prayer. “The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah: ‘Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me” [JEREMIAH 32:26-27]?
Indeed! Is anything too hard for the LORD? Early in my service to the Lord, I was privileged to work with one of the black churches in the Dallas area. Worshipping with the saints, I would frequently hear the congregation singing a delightful chorus that testified,
God can do anything, anything, anything,
He can do anything but fail.
Ain’t it true! Ain’t it true! God can do anything but fail.
We tend to set ourselves at the centre of our universe, and thus we imagine that God must make sense to us. It is as if we imagine that we can coerce God into making sense according to our limited understanding. When it is true that we don’t know how a brown cow eating green grass can give white milk, we still imagine that we can understand God Who is infinite. We are so foolish that we imagine our finite minds can understand the infinite God. We would do well to allow the LORD to challenge our limited knowledge by listening again to Him as He confronts the patriarch Job. The Word informs us, “The LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:
‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Dress for action like a man;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.’”
[JOB 38:1-3]
The LORD continues by asking a series of questions and making assertions that only the Creator could know. Job is thoroughly humbled, just as we should be humbled by our lack of understanding. Job really didn’t have any understanding of how creation came about. He wasn’t there and all he could know was by revelation. The same thing holds true for us. We can speculate and we can guess at what took place at the creation, but none of us was present.
The movement of the earth and all the systems throughout the vast universe are really beyond our comprehension. We can study the movement of the stars and the planets, but we don’t actually know how they were given the initial orbits or how they manage to maintain those orbits. We can study them and guess at how things began, but none of us was present.
Modern physicists and climatologists have become pretty good at describing the nature of light and its movement, as they are at predicting the weather patterns; yet, we have no control over these aspects of our world. We are constantly humbled as we learn more about our world. Scientists are more often reduced to silence by what is not known than by what is known. The understanding that is gained by numerous scholars who devote themselves to constant study demonstrates that we have not exhausted our understanding of the world in which we live or of the creatures that inhabit this world. Despite the advance of knowledge witnessed in these days, we realise that we are not the epitome of wisdom, after all. We are dependent upon God Who gives us our being, even giving us understanding and the ability to learn and to know.
Mankind can split the atom, isolating, and describing the subatomic particles that compose the physical world, but we cannot explain why a woman will throw caution to the wind as she surrenders to the love that drives her to commit herself to one man. We can describe the physiological processes that define long-term memory, but we cannot explain why a young man will allow himself to be drawn into such bitterness that he would rebel against the love of his parents and engage in war against his own nation. We depend upon God for our understanding.
This is one of the challenges thrown at Christians when cultists attempt to “explain” God. For instance, Jehovah’s Witnesses imagine that they have Christians on the ropes when they attempt to speak of the sacrifice of Christ the Lord. These cultists sneer, “How can God die?” They cannot wrap their head around the fact that God would provide atonement by presenting Himself as a sacrifice for fallen people. They imagine they have found the unanswerable charge and the follower of the Christ will fold like a cheap suit when they pose their challenge to the Faith. The appropriate answer to their imagined flaw is that without an infinite sacrifice, there can be no forgiveness of sin. We have offended Holy God, and our sin if infinitely offensive. Only an infinite sacrifice can atone for our sin. We can’t explain it, but we can experience it.
Muslims imagine that they can easily dismiss the Living God with the charge that we who worship the Risen Son of God are in reality worshipping three gods. These worshippers of a desert demon are ignorant of God and the revelation He provides revealing His triune nature. And we could continue exposing the foolishness of multiplied cults that attempt to compel God with His revelation provided in the Word to submit to their understanding. However, if the Living God was to submit to our understanding, He would not be God. For God must be He Who is greater than our mind can comprehend.
God doesn’t always make sense. How could one man challenge the sole superpower of his day? And yet, the LORD demanded that Moses, a man who had fled in terror from the world’s sole super power must return to that very land where he would deliver Israel out of their long, extended bondage. When Moses first thought of delivering Israel, he depended on his own ability, and he failed miserably. Here is the account as given in the Book of Exodus.
“One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together. And he said to the man in the wrong, ‘Why do you strike your companion?’ He answered, ‘Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?’ Then Moses was afraid, and thought, ‘Surely the thing is known.’ When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian” [EXODUS 2:11-15a].
What Moses couldn’t do in his own strength, God would do through him. No wonder God would speak of Moses as “very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth” [NUMBERS 12:3]. He had at last learned that God alone has power to accomplish what is needed. Moses learned, as we need to learn, God will not ask us to do what our strength, what our intellect, what our ability to reason can accomplish. Don’t get me wrong! Your strength should be given to honour God now! Your intellect should be fully submitted to His purpose today. Your ability to reason should be employed in the work of the Lord at this time. However, you will quickly learn that in the service of the Living God, He is not dependent on you—you are dependent on Him!
God doesn’t always make sense. How can one person, you, transform your world by living a godly life while surrounded by such a wicked generation? How can one person, you, stand for righteousness and reveal the glory of God when all around you are people intent on dishonouring Him? How can you reveal wisdom and innocence when you are but a sheep living among ravenous wolves [see MATTHEW 10:16]? When all around me are wicked people, and the world seems darkened by evil, how can I be expected to shine like the brightness of the sky above? And when all about me appear dedicated to dishonouring God, how can I turn many to righteousness? Yet, that is precisely what God expects that I will do [see DANIEL 12:3].
WE WALK BY FAITH, NOT BY SIGHT. “Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him” [GENESIS 6:22]. No rain had fallen on the earth. There is no suggestion that sea travel was known. People were gathered on the land, and all accessible to one another. And yet, the earth was filled with wickedness. Early in the sixth chapter of Genesis, we read of God’s growing anger toward mankind. The Word of God informs us, “When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the LORD said, ‘My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be one hundred twenty years’” [GENESIS 6:1-3].
The LORD determined that He would unleash judgement upon the earth. Again, we read in this sixth chapter of Genesis, “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD regretted 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 land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them” [GENESIS 6:5-7].
Amid the brokenness of this sinful world, a world that had grown crooked and perverse, the Lord found a man who sought Him. Out of the vast numbers of descendants of Adam, only one man was found. He had some influence over his wife and over the three sons that had been born to them. And the wives which the sons had taken would benefit from the godliness of their father-in-law, for the entire family was spared when the LORD at last unleashed judgement on the earth. The LORD’s mercy was revealed when we read, “Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD” [GENESIS 6:8]. Though those then living in that antediluvian world were utterly corrupted, one man found favour in the eyes of the LORD.
One man out of the millions, perhaps out of the billions then living, was found to be devoted to seeking the LORD. David, King in Jerusalem, cautioned his son, Solomon before the young king ever had ascended to the throne, “The LORD searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever” [1 CHRONICLES 28:9b]. God searches the hearts of this present generation; and He knows the plans and thoughts that occupy the mind of each person living on the earth, just as He knew the heart of each person living in the days of Noah. I want to so live that as God searches hearts and minds He will find me seeking Him and His glory.
Here is something worthy of remembering. As Peter speaks of God’s preservation, he notes Noah’s faithfulness to the Lord. In his first missive, Peter notes that Noah was kept from judgement that swept all others from the earth. Only Noah and his immediate family were spared judgement administered by the Flood. Peter reminds readers of this when he writes, “God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water” [1 PETER 3:20b].
In the second missive that bears his name, the Apostle to the Jews provided what I consider to be a somewhat startling revelation concerning Noah. Delivering a warning, Peter wrote, “If God didn’t spare the angels who sinned but cast them into hell and delivered them in chains of utter darkness to be kept for judgment; and if he didn’t spare the ancient world, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others, when he brought the flood on the world of the ungodly; and if he reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes and condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is coming to the ungodly; and if he rescued righteous Lot, distressed by the depraved behavior of the immoral (for as that righteous man lived among them day by day, his righteous soul was tormented by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)—then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, especially those who follow the polluting desires of the flesh and despise authority” [2 PETER 2:4-10 CSB].
Did you notice what Peter reveals concerning the labours of Noah during the over one hundred years he was building the ark? He speaks of Noah as “a preacher of righteousness.” Throughout the entire period he was building the ark and gathering the animals, Noah was preaching righteousness. For a hundred years or more, Noah was pleading with his generation to worship the LORD, revealing their dependence upon the Living God through righteous lives.
As an aside of considerable significance, it is startling to think that this man preached righteousness for perhaps as long as one hundred twenty years without a single convert. Would you support the ministry of a preacher who had no converts after a century of preaching? Would you consider a preacher to be effective if he never had someone confess faith in the Lord GOD or never demonstrate faith through a righteous life? Note that God’s estimate of effectiveness differs from that which we would normally apply. God is seeking a heart that is fully committed to Him. Results lie within the realm of the Lord’s work, and not under our purview.
Note the TWENTY-SECOND VERSE: “Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him” [GENESIS 6:22]. Noah did what God commanded; in fact, “he did all that God commanded.” Nothing was left undone, and that is important. At issue was not the size of Noah’s congregation, nor how much they gave to underwrite the crazy effort to build a massive boat; what ultimately mattered was whether Noah was faithful to God’s command. Dear People, obey God, and leave the results to Him. That this was what was important becomes evident as you read the review of Noah’s life as given by the writer of the Letter to Hebrew Christians. That writer confesses, “By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith” [HEBREWS 11:7].
Some have suggested that the story of Noah and the Ark is in the Bible to help us define what biblical faith looks like. And that position certainly has the ring of authenticity. The point of noting this is to emphasise that Noah was just an ordinary guy who by faith accepted an extraordinary call from God. While we are amazed at his role in preserving the human race, God’s call for Noah to obey doesn’t differ all that much from the call we receive today.
It is no secret that God calls us to obey Him and to serve Him. Recall how we are cautioned in John’s Gospel, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” [JOHN 3:36]. That is certainly straightforward! Obedience to the Son, or the wrath of God. The choice is yours.
Or, what about the instruction Jesus gave His disciples as He was preparing them for His exodus from the world? You may recall that Jesus has taught, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” [JOHN 14:15-21].
In answer to one of the disciples, Jesus provided a statement meant to clarify what He expected of those who follow Him. Jesus said, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me” [JOHN 14:23-24]. Those who claim to follow Jesus are revealed as true followers as they obey Him. The Lord commands us to love one another [see JOHN 13:34-35], to make disciples [see MATTHEW 28:19-20], and to proclaim the Gospel to all people [see MARK 16:15]. To fail to obey these commands is a serious condemnation of the disobedient. It certainly suggests that we are not the followers we profess to be! God has appointed you, if you are a follower of the Son of God, to do these things.
To be sure, few of us are going to receive a call to some great task that will turn the world upside down, but we are charged to be faithful; and we each know some of the specific tasks we are appointed to perform. Despite challenges from the world, though we ourselves may doubt why God is challenging us to act as we do, though even friends and family may accuse us of neglecting them to pursue what appears to be a wild dream, God calls us to obey Him. To those living as outsiders, the Christian life will appear counter-cultural, even radical.
We are accustomed to results. We perform a task, expecting that what we do will yield tangible results. In the work of the Kingdom of God, we must learn that what is valued is faithfulness, not results. We believe that God will provide the results that are required for His glory and for our good. He graciously does this by working through mere mortals such as us. God delights to accomplish His work through people who are willing to serve Him. Isn’t this what Paul is teaching when he writes the Corinthians, “What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So, neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building” [1 CORINTHIANS 3:5-9].
We need to look to Christ our Master, knowing that He is the head of His church. Refresh your memory by recalling the words that the Apostle has written. “[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” [COLOSSIANS 1:15-20].
In the churches of our Lord, it is Christ Who has the pre-eminence, and not us. We are invited to work with Him, but the results of our labour always lie within His purview. We shall see the results of our labours, but we won’t always see them in this life. Nevertheless, in His time we will see what has been accomplished through the work we performed.
GOD LOOKS FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS, NOT RITES. What we witness in Noah’s response to God is obedience founded upon faith in the Living God. Most of us would say that the command Noah received was incomprehensible, utterly foolish, meaningless, and at variance with the collective experience witnessed in the world. However, Noah knew there was a God, and more importantly still, Noah knew God. As we focus on the text, it becomes obvious that Noah staked everything on obedience to God. Don’t skip past that thought too quickly: Noah staked everything on God! His life, his future, his family—everything was dependent on God’s faithfulness.
If I’m correct in this assessment that Noah determined to be utterly dependent on the Lord, then building a big boat on dry ground wasn’t all that radical. God had commanded that the ark was to be built because there would be a great flood, and Noah acted as he had determined long before the command was ever issued. Building the ark was just one more demonstration of a life devoted to God and to His service. Noah’s life was not his own; rather, his life belonged to God. Thus, Noah’s obedience to the Lord was not strange, it was normal.
There is a significant truth that may not be apparent in what I just said. Before he was ever commanded to build the boat, Noah had determined that His life belonged to the Lord. Don’t overlook the fact that there are only two ways to live your life—either by your own guidance, or under the guidance of the Lord. Living by your own guidance, you are dependent upon what you can gather from your senses. And because you are finite, because you can only rely upon what your senses have gathered, you are always limited in planning how to conduct your life. You can learn from the experience of others, but you know that ultimately even that source of knowledge is finite.
There is nothing particularly wrong with using experience, both yours and the experience of others, when making a decision. However, we need to confess that it can never be enough. We are made in the image of God, and that means we weren’t designed to exist as independent decision makers. Tripp notes that “This is why immediately upon creating Adam and Eve, God begins to talk to them.”
Adam and Eve were perfect as they were created. God said of the man and the woman,
“God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.”
[GENESIS 1:27]
Though flawless in design, the man and the woman still needed the words of their Creator if they were to understand who they were, what life is about, and how they were to live. Personal experience, collective research, and rational thought doesn’t work ultimately—we were designed to seek the mind of the Creator. We were not designed to figure out life on our own.
This means that we must look to the One Who has given us our being for the answers to life. We must believe that God is the ultimate, reliable source for wisdom and understanding. This means that even when His guidance doesn’t fit with our thought pattern, we trust Him because we know that He is good, true, right, holy, and wise. If this is our determination, even when it doesn’t make sense and when we don’t really know how things will turn out, we will trust Him and obey what He commands.
We read in GENESIS 6:9, “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God;” this is the Bible’s way of informing us that Noah had trusted God for a long time. Noah walked with God and knew that the Lord would not lead him to do anything that would lead to disaster or dishonour. In short, the command for Noah to build the ark was not the first time that he had been called to do God’s will. This was the pattern of Noah’s life.
Because he obeyed God, Noah became the means by which God would show grace to all. Those who heard Noah preach throughout the long years he was building the ark were offered grace. Do you remember when we read, “God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water” [1 PETER 3:20b]? God’s patience was a revelation of His grace. He didn’t immediately destroy all life but appointed a preacher to declare grace throughout those long years. Then, because he obeyed the Lord, Noah became the means by which God would ensure that there were people to repopulate the earth. So, God was revealing His grace through Noah, and at the same time He was bestowing grace upon Noah.
It is distressingly natural that we attempt to meet God through rite and ritual, when ever and always it is regeneration and righteousness that is required to meet the Lord. Worse still is that so very often we ignore the wisdom that God gives and pay no attention to what He commands. Isn’t it comforting for us to know that the Lord is still the only trustworthy source of wisdom. I recommend that you learn the meaning of Solomon’s words when he writes,
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,
and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.”
[PROVERBS 9:10]
Writing the Christians in Colossae, the Apostle Paul spoke of Christ, writing, “I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” [COLOSSIANS 2:1-3].
Wisdom is the heritage of the one following Jesus. Those outside of Christ can reveal a measure of wisdom, but they will never know the fullness of God’s divine wisdom. And though the one who follows Christ may be uneducated according to the standard of this world, they know Him in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Noah was proven wise because he walked by faith. You, also, will be known as wise when you walk with the Lord. Amen.
[*] The concept for this message, as well as the title, comes from an article by Paul Tripp, “Why Would You Say Yes?” July 6, 2017, https://www.paultripp.com/articles/posts/why-would-you-say-yes, accessed 5 August 2017
[1] Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2016. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
[2] See Tripp, op. cit.
[3] See Tripp, op. cit.
