By Faith Noah Moved With Godly Fear

SPEAKER A You once to every time in the sight of the good or evil sky don't break on you that I choice of life forever with that darkness. And. SPEAKER B The Bible assures us in Ephesians two, verses eight to ten, for by grace you have been saved through faith. And that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Welcome to faith to faith Here are your hosts, Ettienne McClintock and Braedan Entermann. SPEAKER C Dear listener, thank you for joining us again on the program today. Why don't you join us as we start the program with prayer. Gracious Father in heaven, it is a wonderful privilege to have an audience with you that you can speak to us through your word and through the Holy Spirit as well. And we just pray Father, for a fresh anointing of your spirit on Braedan and myself and also on the dear listener out there who's also looking at your word. Father, may you illuminate our minds, may you give us understanding, but ultimately may Jesus be lifted up. May our conference grow in you day by day so that exercising faith will become natural to our hearts. This is our prayer in Jesus name, amen. SPEAKER D Amen. SPEAKER C So Braedan, last time we were looking at Hebrews, chapter eleven, that wonderful chapter on faith. And all these people who we highly regard and highly esteem because of faith. And we said in last week's program that these people had the same nature as us. They were also people according to the flesh, but somehow they were able to overcome and even got a testimony that they pleased God and that they were declared righteous. We were told that Abel had a testimony, he obtained a witness that he was righteous. And then Enoch was told by God, he had a testimony that he pleased God. Now who are some other people in the Bible? Also, you know those old pioneers? Now we're talking around the flood and pre flood that also demonstrated their faith. SPEAKER D Well we've got in verse seven a mention of Noah. And it's actually so interesting, isn't it, all of these people, what sets them apart? Why do we hear about them today? Why do we revere them and look up to them? SPEAKER C Yes. SPEAKER D It's not because they were intrinsically better human beings from birth. It's not like they had a special gene that made them better than everyone else. It's because they were like us, but they were willing to put their trust in God even when it didn't make sense. And that's what we're going to be looking at with Noah. SPEAKER C Okay? SPEAKER D His example of trusting God is remarkable. So verse seven of Hebrews, chapter eleven. By faith, Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with Godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness, which is according to faith. I find this so interesting, Eddie. And as I look at verse seven, noah is divinely warned about things that are not yet seen. SPEAKER C Right? SPEAKER D So he's warned about something that isn't yet apparent or seen. And what does he do? He moves. SPEAKER C Okay. SPEAKER D He moves. And it says he moves with Godly fear. When the Bible talks about fear, often it's our natural tendency to project onto that word what we understand fear to be, which is like Petrified being afraid, but it's actually a deep devotion, respect and love. So he moves. He's warned, and then he moves. But he hasn't actually seen what this is yet. Yes, by faith there's some confidence. There's some trust that he has in God. And he moves with Godly fear and starts building a big boat. He prepares an ark for the saving of his household by which he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness, which is according to faith. This story we're going to dive into now. SPEAKER C Yes. SPEAKER D And it will take us to Genesis, chapter six. SPEAKER C And as we're paging to that, it's interesting that we saw righteousness by faith in the story of Abel. By faith, Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice and that it says he obtained a witness that he was righteous. And here we see also by faith, Noah being divinely warned. And then it says that he became the heir of righteousness, which is according to faith. So righteousness by faith is not a New Testament concept. It is an Old Testament concept. And we see it in these early people first mentioned, the first human beings that were on the planet, the first 1500 years of this Earth's history. We see the evidence of righteousness by faith. SPEAKER D And doesn't it just show us the importance of reading and knowing our Bibles? SPEAKER C Amen. SPEAKER D Because for Paul, I think he'd turn over in his grave today to know and to think that people assumed that those people could be saved by anything other than faith. He was so strong in communicating that faith is the deal. That's where it comes from. SPEAKER A Yes. SPEAKER D And so in Genesis, chapter six, we have this narrative that we'll start in verse five. And we're introduced to God looking at this planet and experiencing an emotion. It says, Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the Earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil. Continue away continually. SPEAKER C Now, that's interesting. From time to time, we may think some bad thoughts, right, but you can't say it's continual. There's no glimmer of any good thoughts coming through whatsoever. But here we see a people that had moved away so far from the Lord that they followed the natural inclinations of their heart continually, that there was nothing good left that God could do actually to save them. He couldn't penetrate those dark minds with any good thoughts anymore. SPEAKER D This is so sad because God created us to be his friends and some people, they think this thought that why do I need God to have happiness or I can do it all on my own? There's this idea of independence. If you want to know what independence from God looks like yes. Take a look at this particular situation here and let's unpack that it says wickedness. That's a bit of an old fashioned word that we don't use too much, but let me just paint a picture of what the world was like. I don't think you would have been able to be a child and grow up without being abused. Yeah, I don't think you'd be able to be a lady in that society and not have been raped. This is an abusive, wicked society where everyone puts themselves first, everyone else is simply a tool for their pleasure. And if anyone crosses their path, murder and bloodshed is the go to. And so this is a picture of the world and that's the context that God is looking at right here. And verse six and the Lord was sorry, he was grieved that he had made man on the earth and he was grieved in his heart. SPEAKER C Wow. SPEAKER D Often in stories like this we lose sight of the great goodness and love of God. And grief is an emotion. SPEAKER C Yes. SPEAKER D Our god experiences emotion. The Bible talks about God experiencing joy and here we have he's experiencing grief broken heartedness as he sees these people, he's so desperately wanting to save them and to provide a way for them to know Him and to be restored to a relationship with Him again. But they don't want know. I'm thinking about very briefly here at the end of the Book of Matthew, jesus is standing on the Mount of Olives and he's looking down on the city in the temple and he starts to cry. He says, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who killed the prophets and stoned those who were sent to you. How often I wanted to gather you as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings but you were not willing. Yes, and here we have again the grief and the emotional pain of God as he sees human beings doing what they want to do and not coming to Him who is the source of all joy. SPEAKER C Well, you bring out a really fascinating aspect there because the Bible is very clear uses those two words the Lord was sorry. That's a word for saying that he had sorrow in his heart, that he had paid man on the earth because they had separated from Him. The whole idea for God being a social being was to have communion relationship and here the people have totally disregarded his relation, totally disregarded his goodness. And then it says he was grieved in his heart. So that word grieve there and we can't just dismiss it because that's actually experiencing deep and bitter grief because of the separation between God and the beings. SPEAKER D He created and doesn't that really speaks to me right now that the way I live my life affects the heart of God. To turn my back on God actually hurts God. God doesn't just treat us like chess pieces, just inanimate objects that he doesn't have any care about. Our rejection means something to God. When we say I don't like you, I don't want you, that actually means something to God and actually hurts. Interesting, verse seven. It goes on so the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I've created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them. But verse eight, but I'm so grateful for this word here. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. SPEAKER C So grace was manifest even in the Old Testament, even there thousand 500,600 years after creation, we see that Noah found grace. So Noah would have been different in regards to the way he related to the Lord, because we were told God then comes and speaks to Him, doesn't he? And it says, when Noah was divinely warned, he moved with Godly fear. And it's interesting that even the message that's sent to us, the last three warning messages of God, sends the world to prepare for the return of Jesus Christ. In Revelation chapter 14, one of the calls there is to fear God and to bring and give glory to Him as well. So the same way that Noah moved with Godly fear, so God calls the people in the last generation, just before Jesus Christ comes also to move with Godly fear. Now, Noah was divinely warned of a judgment that was to come on the earth. Those people in Revelation chapter 14, verse six and seven, it also says fear God and give Him glory. Why? For the hour of his judgment has come, there's another judgment coming on the earth. And they are also called to fear God and to give Him glory and to move with Godly fear, just as Noah did. Because Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and God is wanting to bestow his grace on every single person that hears this message. SPEAKER D That's right. And I find it so interesting. It says Noah found grace. The Bible says that God has an attitude of kindness, that's his grace, his kindness to humanity, irrespective of what we are. God actually had an attitude of grace and kindness to even the wicked. But Noah was the one who actually realized how good God was and wanted a relationship with God. SPEAKER C He's the one that was willing to receive it. SPEAKER D He's the one who is willing to. SPEAKER C Receive it, because when the Bible tells it very clear that God is no respecter of persons, that grace was available to every single person. Matter of fact, then God builds an ark and says to the people, look, we're going to build that ark. You've got 120 years. If you want to be saved, get into the ark. SPEAKER D Isn't that interesting? God always provides a way of safety. He doesn't just go, hey, hey, no, I've got a little bit of a secret. I'm going to destroy everyone. They're not going to know what's coming. No, he says, tell them, tell them what I've told you and let's get a safe haven, this boat, this place where people can come and find safety and shelter. He's always trying to find a way to save people. SPEAKER C Okay, now we know that Noah believed God. It's very evident that Noah believed God. Well, how do we know that he went and built an ark. Now, who told him to build the ark? God did. Why did God tell him to build the ark? Because he told him that the earth will be destroyed by flood and this is going to be a vessel that will be able to float on the Earth and it will save him and his household, and everyone else would receive that message of warning. Now, some people have sometimes asked me, well, look, that ark could only hold so many animals and so many people, and the UN tell me the whole earth would have been saved if they'd believed and jumped into that ark, how would they have fit in? God didn't make a way of escape for everybody. But the fact remains is the whole reason why the earth was going to be destroyed by a flood was the wickedness of the people. If they had then reconciled back to God and the relationship was reestablished, the ark wouldn't have been needed, would it? SPEAKER D No. And there's a beautiful example of that with Jonah and Nineveh. Yes, the destruction was going to come across the entire city, but they said they put on sackcloth and ashes and repented of their sins and their evil, and the judgment was not necessary. That's right, because they came back to God. SPEAKER C Yeah. And that is how God's warnings work. It says there that God repented of what he was going to do to Nineveh. Now, God's repentance is different to our repentance. Our repentance is actually a change in attitude and a change of heart. God's repentance is a change of circumstances. The circumstances in the day of Noah required judgments. If they had turned from their wicked ways, god would not have had to destroy the Earth. And the same way as Nineveh is an example, just as you brought up there. They turned from their wickedness, and therefore the destruction of Nineveh was no longer required. So God's warnings are always a sign of his love and his mercy towards people, giving them another chance to say, please, let's be reconciled. And if that doesn't work, of course, then destruction does come. And the reason for that is that God wants to preserve a knowledge of salvation and righteousness so that people can be saved. If he just left the world to keep on going as a word, there would have been no righteous people left. SPEAKER D Every interaction that God has with this planet from the very beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation, every interaction that he has with this planet is for the purpose of bringing about the restoration of this planet. And it's so easy for us to forget that and to lose sight of the fact that this hurts God. We often feel sorry for ourselves, but these days I feel sorry for God. Whenever I walk up to a wild animal, like a kangaroo or something like that, what happens? They just bound off. They just run off. And one time I was just thinking, Why? I wasn't wanting to hurt it. I was just wanting to go up and see it. But there's fear inside of the heart of this animal and it just bounds off in another direction. And it's very much like when God came walking to spend time with Adam and Eve and they ran from him and hid in the garden behind some trees and covering themselves as fear and their shame. We often feel sorry for Adam and Eve. But what about God? When someone that you have given everything to turns around and runs from you terrified? I had an experience like this. I was working at a school one time and two of the students, we advised that to keep focused on the course and not to allow relationships to consume your life and to get distracted. But they kept sneaking away. And I remember finding them one time up on a headland by the beach. I was just walking with my friend and I didn't even know that they were there. I'm like, oh, they're sitting up here now. These are adults, they can do what they want to do. And so I was just going to go say hi to them. And then my friend who was next to me said, Why are they running? And I looked up and I saw these two adults sprinting to hide behind the trees. SPEAKER C Oh, too late. SPEAKER D And I just looked at them and I just had this sickening feeling in my stomach and I was like, Why are they running from me? SPEAKER C Yeah, because you had their best interests at heart. SPEAKER D This is my friend. I care about this person deeply and why are they running from me? And it does hurt when people run from you. And I had no intention to do anything but just to say hi and to be the friend that I was always to that person. And so we forget that what it's like for God. And so here we have just imagine the joy in the heart of God where the entire world just is basically saying, get out of here, God, we don't want you. And then there's Noah who says god, I trust you. And then the faith is so strong. The trust is so strong. God says, Build a boat, there's going to be rain. Up until that point, there was no such thing as rain. And so he had never seen any of this. But he just goes out in faith and starts building this boat. It's remarkable. SPEAKER C It's incredible. Yes. So Noah believes, contrary to what he could see with his senses, or contrary to what he had experienced up to that point in time, god says, I will destroy the earth of the flood. Build a boat for the saving of you in your household. And everyone else wants to listen. He could have gone and said, well, okay, let me see if I can establish through scientific means what a flood is. But there's no rain. So how does he establish the fact that there's going to be enough of something he's never seen in his life before that's going to flood the earth? He's never seen a flood, and then he just believes God, contrary to what he can prove. In other words, faith is a substance of things not seen, the evidence of things hoped for. So here we have this man that believes God, and how do we know we come back to that point? He built an ark. Now, did the works of Noah save him? If he didn't build that ark, would he have still been saved? SPEAKER D No, he wouldn't have. SPEAKER C Yeah. So was it his works that saved him or his faith that saved him? SPEAKER D He would never have done that unless he believed in God and trusted God. SPEAKER C Well, he was the laughingstock of the people around. Why would you build a thing, a vessel that can float on water, and it's not even near the water? SPEAKER D Why would you do that, that expedition, to make a ship so big, being the laughingstock of the world, you don't just do that for the fun of it. The only thing that kept him going was the fact that God had asked him to do it. And he had absolute, irrevocable trust in God. SPEAKER C You might do something for a little while and then lose interest in it if you don't really believe. But to work on a project for 120 years, building an ark for 120 years, what made him get out of bed every morning, say, well, I'm going to complete this ark? And he does it day after day, year after year, for over a millennium, that's incredible. That shows you the level of faith he had. He believed God at the beginning and he believed God in the end. And as our program is from faith to faith, we see that faith demonstrated for 120 years in the life of Noah. Building that ark. SPEAKER D Amazing. And so I think what we catch here is God's method of doing things today in our day and age, we want to prove something before we depend on something. We want to find the proof before we step out in faith or step out on that. So we have an example of Thomas after Jesus was resurrected, and he said, unless I put my finger in the holes in his hands and in his side, I won't believe. And so basically you've got an attitude where he says, unless all of my doubts are removed, I'm not going to believe. Yes, but God wants to flip it around the other way. And this makes us very vulnerable because we often don't understand how God's going to do something. What we have to trust is that he will. And the proof comes when the rain starts to fall on the top of the ark. His faith was confirmed. Absolutely. I mean, when the world is covered with water in a flood and you're floating on this ark yeah. You can see with your eyes that's right, that God's promises are fulfilled. But God does not give us that experience first. He calls us to trust. And is it because God's trying to make life hard for us? No, he's not. God does not want us to serve Him because we have no option to do otherwise. If God just showed all the rain and said, okay, I'm going to flood this world, everyone's like they've got no option but to go, okay, well, you've proven it. I'd have to be dumb to not acknowledge that God doesn't want us to just follow Him because we have to. He wants us to follow Him because we want to. SPEAKER C It's interesting, you look at all those people listening to Noah. Now, Noah wasn't just simply building the ark and spending time there. He was not know. They talk about two kinds of people. Some people are task focused, and some people are people focused. Now, it's ideal to have a blend of two, because if you're just people focused, sometimes you don't do your work. And if you're just task focused, well, you don't really have any good relationships. But we see that Noah not only built the ark, he was also preaching to the people, warning them and telling them of the goodness of God and how God has made a way of escape. Now, we know that because we can go to two Peter, chapter two, where we read that God did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness. So he was actually proclaiming the righteousness of God and what God was doing and calling people to repentance. So he was working for the saving of the souls because he had been a recipient of the grace of God. God's grace was working through Him, and he was explaining to them the relationship that they were to sustain to God through Jesus Christ, through the promised Savior. Now, we know that they were all aware of the sacrifices because we know that the earliest of beings. So Cain and Abel already had taken sacrifices to the Lord and Abel was accepted because he blew it. Blood sacrifice. We also know that the clothing that was given to Adam and Eve right at the very beginning was made of skins. Now, these were skins from an animal, so there was a sacrifice there already. So they spoke about the blood sacrifice, and there's no righteousness apart from Jesus Christ. So he was preaching salvation through Christ. And the ark was actually a representation of that. In what way? Because if you reconciled yourself to Abraham's group, you were the laughingstock of the world. You're building an ark. There's no flood. Scientific means they demonstrated there was no such thing as rain. What are you talking about? And for you to make that stand was to say that I love God more than I love my own reputation. And the only way you could do that was by the grace of God. SPEAKER D What kind of trust, like, what kind of equality of a relationship is revealed here? We have around us, relationships fall apart and disenfranchisement that takes place over the most petty and small of things. 120 years of being mocked and ridiculed. SPEAKER C Yes. SPEAKER D And he's like, I cannot turn from this. My love for God, my trust in God, my appreciation of God is just the most important thing in my life. And that's what led him to make the boat. God could have asked all the other people to make a boat. They would have just laughed at him. It was the fact that he appreciated and valued God that led him to do something that he did not actually understand. But for him, he was as confident that there'd be a flood as if he had seen it straight up in the beginning, because he had so much confidence in God and his confidence that God would come through, that would keep his word. He's like, yeah, I'll build the boat. And he has confidence that God will keep his promises. And so here we have basically what a relationship with God looks like on enemy territory down on planet Earth, where human beings there's a terrible world that Noah was living in. It was really, really bad. But he just looks up and doesn't understand everything. But he recognizes one thing very, very clearly, and that is that God is good. And that when God says something, he always means it and will never, ever fail on that promise. And this is that great spring from which our confidence and trust in God comes from. And he and his family were saved. And it's interesting, isn't it? Like they were not saved by any other reason than because God showed them grace and kindness. SPEAKER C Yeah. That is incredible. SPEAKER D They don't have a right to we sometimes feel like we have a right to be alive. We didn't even ask to be alive. We'd have come into this world and we feel like we have a right. No, the very fact that they were given salvation is because God cared. And he put confidence in God's caringness. SPEAKER C Yeah. So God extended his hand not only to Noah and his family, but extended his hand to all those people for 120 years, warning them through the preaching, the righteous preaching of Noah. Now, if they had believed, do we have evidence in the scripture that would suggest that God would have turned away from that? We've already mentioned the experience of nineveh with Jonah, but there's a text there in Jeremiah, chapter 18, which talks about the conditional prophecies of God. If circumstances change, God will change his mind. It's called in the King James Bible. It says, God repents or he relents. I just want to read to you how that works, because it's not a change of mind for God, because God says, I am the same yesterday, today and forever. I am the God. I change not. It's a change of circumstances, and typically it's the circumstances brought about by a repentant heart or by a rebellious heart. Now, this is Jeremiah, chapter 18, and I'm going to read from verse seven. God says, the instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck it up, to pull it down and to destroy it, if that nation against whom I have spoken turns from its evil, I will relent. Another word is repent of the disaster that I thought to bring upon it. And the instant I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom to build up and to plant it, if it does evil in my sight so that it does not obey my voice, then I will relent concerning the good which I had said I would benefit it. So here we can see the conditional principle of prophecy. So when God said to Noah, I'm going to destroy the earth by a flood, if the earth had repented, God would have turned from that and there wouldn't have been a flood. SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER C The history of the earth would have been very, very different. It would have still been as magnificent and beautiful as when God had created it. SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER C But because of that and because of broken relationships, we now have that story where only eight people passed through the flood. SPEAKER D And we know this. This is really summed up well in one, Timothy, chapter two. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God, our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and all to come to the knowledge of the truth, god's deep desire. That's why he shows mercy and kindness, because he actually wants everyone to be saved. SPEAKER C Thank you. And on those words we have to close. Dear listener, we pray that God would bless you in our study today as we concerted the story of Noah, a preacher of righteousness and a man who was saved through faith. And how do we know he believed? His works demonstrated his faith. May. God bless you. Until next time. SPEAKER A All the cause of evil prosper, yet it truth. SPEAKER B Thank you for joining us on Faith. To Faith. If you would like more information about today's program or if you have any questions, please contact 3ABN Australia Radio by Phoning. 02 4973 3456. Or you can send an email to [email protected] You can also contact us on our 3ABN Australia radio Facebook page. We'd love to hear from you.