The Voyage Of Faith

 Whenever you trust the source of a warning, it brings about a change in your life. Noah trusted God completely, and because of God’s warning, Noah’s life would never be the same.

2. Noah’s faith changed the direction of his life.

[illus. When we watch the weatherman, if we believe him, it changes the way we live our lives, at least for that day. It determines what we wear, whether we take an umbrella with us or not, whether or not we have to go to school, or whether or not that urge to not even get out of bed gets the better of us. Our faith in the weatherman, who is statistically not a very good prophet, changes the way that we live our lives.]

Noah believed God, and that belief turned his life inside out. Two things in particular were changed in Noah’s life by his faith.

 It changed his attitude. “fear”

 Your beliefs control who you fear and who you don’t. [illus. “Monsters, Inc.” – monsters have been told that children are a dangerous thing and have the capability of destroying their world. This belief controls their fear and therefore their behavior when they are confronted with a harmless little girl]

 Noah didn’t fear people. He preached to them.

 Noah did fear God. He took God seriously. He didn’t play around with God. [illus. You don’t play around with medicine that is prescribed by your doctor. You follow the directions completely especially when those medicines if used incorrectly might have very serious side effects]

 Noah’s attitude was the motivation for the next thing that changed about his life.

 It changed his actions. “built”

 Some people allow their fear to stifle their activity. But that’s because they have a fear of men, not a fear of God. A fear of God always motivates to activity.

 God was very specific about the blueprints for the boat. (450 ft. long, 75 ft. wide, 45 ft. tall; gopher wood; 3 decks; coated with pitch or tar inside and out; one window; one door)

 It was basically a giant floating box.

 What if Noah had said, “Ok, God. I believe you about the coming judgment, and I believe that a boat is the answer. But I don’t much like your design specs. I want to build it out of pine. It’s a lot closer to my house. The gopher wood is a lot harder to get to. And I don’t want the boat to be so boxy. It needs to have some grace and some style. It needs a jacuzzi and a sushi bar. It needs his and her staterooms and a shuffleboard on the top deck. And it definitely needs a lot more windows to air out the smell of all those animals. I want to be a classy captain looking down on all those drowning people. I want to be sitting in my captain’s chair looking down my nose at those people when I say, “Told you so!” And one more thing, Lord. Why don’t we change the name of this boat from Noah’s ark to “Noah’s yacht”?” Noah didn’t make any of these changes because he knew that the ark wasn’t built for pleasure; it was built for survival.

 But there were some things left out of the plans that even a ship built only for survival should have. There were no lifeboats. There was no “plan B”. If this ark didn’t work, then all was lost. Noah’s total faith and trust had to be in God’s one means of salvation. So it is with us. There is no plan B apart from Jesus. We’ve placed all of our trust in Him.