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"Biblical
Lessons from the Life of Noah" January
12, 2003 The Rev. Dr. Will Eisenhower You may want to turn with me to Hebrews chapter 11, the seventh
verse. This is the chapter of the
New Testament devoted to describing faith to us.
I decided that I wanted to talk about the biblical lessons taken from the
life of Noah. I planned to preach
on this text and, in fact, created my outline before I knew most of the things
that I shared with you at the beginning of the service.
So it is not the case that I knew a deluge was approaching and decided to
preach on Noah! But if God knew
that, I'll let you decide. But in Hebrews 11, we are given examples of faith.
And in verse 7 we read this: By faith Noah, warned by God about events as yet unseen, respected
the warning and built an ark to save his household; by this he condemned the
world and became an heir to the righteousness that is in accordance with faith.
Now right here, we learn some important things about faith.
The first thing--there are four of them--the first thing is we learn:
Faith responds to what is yet unseen.
Faith is willing to commit to what cannot be empirically verified as yet.
Now it shares--on the appearance plane, it seems to share
something--with, we could call it "wishful thinking," we could call it
"presumption." And
sometimes religious people call it "faith" when actually they're not
using faith, they're using wishful thinking, or presumption, or naivete, or the
Greeks would say hubris. What's the difference between when we commit to something that we
can't see and it is wrong of us to do so because we're going to be let down,
we're going to be disappointed, and those times when by faith we commit to
something that is not seen and God lifts us up and sustains us?
Well, the Bible gives us a clue by telling us Noah responded to what was
not yet seen. Very, very real in its approach and in time would be very,
very real, but by faith he knew about something that was not yet seen.
In our wishful thinking, or in our naivete, or in our hubris we can call
it faith, but if we're committing ourselves to things that are not now seen and
are never going to be seen, then that's not what the Bible means by faith.
Faith is being able to rely on, place your weight on, the things that no
one else can yet see, but God makes us aware and faith says "yes" to
that, commits to that. So, "By faith Noah, warned by God about events as yet unseen,
respected the warning and built an ark . . ." Now faith acts on what is made known to it.
Faith builds on God's promise. When
God promises something, faith commits to that and builds on it.
Faith does not simply give it lip service.
Faith invests itself. Faith
lets its walk actually line up with its talk.
And so the first character of faith was faith responds to what is not
yet seen--very, very real and soon to be evident, but not yet seen. Faith builds on what God promises. Third thing: It says,
"By this he condemned the world."
And we just need to just sort of pause and look at that because honestly,
of all the things the Bible teaches us, "There is therefore now no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."
I'm not watering this down, but I'm just calling our attention to the
fact that to say "by faith Noah condemned the world" really needs to
be seen as a shorthand telling us about something, because it is not the case
that Noah condemned the world. I
mean, historically we know that the Bible does not teach that Noah condemned the
world. The world condemned itself,
but by Noah's faith he separated himself from the world that was headed toward
condemnation, that was headed toward destruction.
And the point here is this one:
By faith we are required to depart from the herd, to be independent of
the crowd. There are peer pressure
realities that influence us all our life long, and every one of us, but for the
grace of God, will end up being influenced by our desire to find safety and
security by just blending in, doing what everybody else does, saying what
everybody else said. And Noah
didn't condemn the world literally, but he separated himself from a world headed
for condemnation. And faith does
that. Faith responds to what is not
seen. Faith builds on the promise.
Faith separates you from the crowd.
And then, last of all: "and became heir to the righteousness
that is in accordance with faith." Faith
allows us to receive from God His stamp of approval.
That's the righteousness that is by faith.
The righteousness that is by faith is God's stamp of approval.
It is not the case that we become fully righteous. It is not the case that by faith I become morally perfect.
(I know you think that I have, but ask my wife and she'll tell you,
"No, Will is not quite morally perfect yet.")
That's not the righteousness that is received by faith.
It's God's stamp of approval. God
commits to look at you with the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
So that when God looks at you, because of your faith He does not see the
imperfections. He sees the
perfection of Jesus Christ. I have a wonderful story to illustrate that that I learned from the
author Bruce Larson. Bruce Larson
tells the story about a Roman Catholic priest named Father O'Shaughnessy.
And Father O'Shaughnessy had a problem in his parish--at least he thought
he did. And that was that every
Sunday morning at the end of one of the services of mass at his parish, one of
the elderly ladies in his church would come up and would say (it was the same
lady every week) she would come and say, "Father, Jesus appeared to me in a
dream last night." Now, Father O'Shaughnessy hated this because Jesus never appeared
to him in a dream and he didn't think it was fair and he didn't think it was
true. Since Jesus never appeared to
him in a dream, he didn't think that it was true.
So time after time he became more and more fed up and he got a plan.
So next Sunday the lady comes up and says, "Father, Jesus appeared
to me in a dream last night." And he said, "OK, now (and he put his plan into action) now if
this is really true, if Jesus is really appearing to you in dreams, then the
next time He appears to you I want you to say, 'Jesus, what is that sin that
Father O'Shaughnessy committed that no one knows about?' " And she goes, "OK. I'll
ask Him." She went away and she came back the next Sunday.
She said, "Father, Jesus appeared to me in a dream last night." He said, "And did you ask Him my question?" She said, "Yes, I did." He said, "What did Jesus say?" And she said, "He said, 'I don't remember.' " Which is the Bible's teaching on our sin.
We receive righteousness from Jesus Christ so that when God looks at you,
He doesn't remember. When God looks at you, He doesn't remember.
We may carry around guilt from the things that we have done, but God does
not see us as guilty. God says, "I don't remember." So faith, we are taught here, responds to what is not yet seen, builds on God's promise, is willing to (because the influence of God is so real and so
prominent in our lives) step aside, step apart, steps away from the crowd, away
from the herd, and last of all because of all that, faith receives the promise. Now, we're going to conclude with a song and you get to sing part
of this song. There's a chorus that
is a sing-along. I should tell you
that the words to this song I wrote, but some of you will recognize that the
tune to the song I did not write. The
part that you get to sing along with me goes like this: Noah, Na, Na, Na, Na, Noah, Na, Na, Na, Na, Noah. Try that: Noah, Na, Na, Na, Na, Noah, Na, Na, Na, Na, Noah Very good. OK.
Watch for opportunities to join in and sing along as this song goes
forward. God made the world in the first six days so that we could have a place to give Him praise. And the world was a wonderful place. But people turned mean and when God looked down there was chaos, crime, blood on the ground. On the hills was pride and disgrace. God needed someone not stained with lust, not marred by sin, a godly man He could trust who would listen and not be ashamed. He found a little rowboat-maker by trade whose heart beat true, a man who prayed with feeling. And what was his name? [get ready] And what was his name? Noah, Na, Na, Na, Na, Noah, Na, Na, Na, Na, Noah Noah, Na, Na, Na, Na, Noah, Na, Na, Na, Na, Noah Well, all the other rowboat-makers way back there they did slapdash work and they didn't really care if their rowboats would float at all. But Noah was a standout in the rowboat guild and he'd always dreamed someday he could build a little something the world would recall. So one night God said, "Noah, this is your chance. Take a hold of your shirt, put your feet in your pants and get going while it's still dark." "Make it forty by forty, a flotation zoo then go out and get the animals two by two. And when you're finished you can call it the ark. You can call it the ark. [spoken:] Actually,
that's not entirely true. Not many
people remember this anymore, but the original plan, Plan A, was not to call it
an "ark" at all. It was
to call it an Animal Refuge Kayak. Yes.
Now, not very many people remember that any more, but, no, originally the
idea was to call it an Animal Refuge Kayak, but unfortunately right toward the
end, Noah began to run a little short of paint and so he had to abbreviate it. Noah, Na, Na, Na, Na, Noah, Na, Na, Na, Na, Noah Noah, Na, Na, Na, Na, Noah, Na, Na, Na, Na, Noah Well, the sky came down and the rain turned black. But Noah was safe inside the Animal Refuge Kayak. And God got to start all over again. But the world soon enough went back into sin. And now God still has to settle the score. But the Lord always saves the ones who believe, so when the storm comes up and you're ready to leave just pray and God will show the way. God'll show the way, like He did for Noah, Na, Na, Na, Na, Noah, Na, Na, Na, Na, Noah Noah, Na, Na, Na, Na, Noah, Na, Na, Na, Na, Noah once again: Noah, Na, Na, Na, Na, Noah, Na, Na, Na, Na, Noah one more time: Noah, Na, Na, Na, Na, Noah, Na, Na, Na, Na, Noah Thank you. We just
close with this thought: God always
provides His people with a way forward. Amen. The Rev. Dr. Will Eisenhower Interim Pastor Faith Presbyterian Church Minnetonka, Minnesota [Transcribed from an audiotape of the
10:30 a.m. worship service on January 12, 2003.] |
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