Genesis 6:9-8:22

The Roots of the Kingdom: Faith working through Love

Last Lord’s Day evening we began to look together at Genesis 6:9-8:22 and we saw that in this passage there are two major actors, God and Noah. The whole passage breaks down into a basics dialogue between God speaking and acting and Noah responding. And we looked last time at the words and works of God in the sending of the flood. The flood story we said speaks to us about God’s wrath on sin, it speaks of God’s covenant love for Noah, and it speaks of God’s plan for the world to come.

Now this evening we are going to focus on Noah and his response to the words and works of God in the flood. While as we said last week Noah is not like us, he is a unique figure in God’s redemptive program and he is a type or picture of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, Noah-like, passed through the baptism of Divine wrath on the cross to begin a new era of life and covenant blessing, while in these respects we are nothing like Noah, it remains true that Noah is a sinner and a believer. He is used in scripture as an example for Christians, and so we are warranted to look at Noah not just as a pointer to Jesus but as a model for Christ’s followers.

And there are two important lessons from Noah’s response to God in this passage I want us to think about this evening:

I Noah Believes

II. Noah Obeys

And God willing next time we’ll look together at one final aspect of Noah’s response to God in this chapter: III. Noah worships.

So first of all then, Noah believes.

Look at verse 9, “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among all the people of his time, and he walked with God.” Noah was a man in relationship with the Triune covenant Lord. He was righteous in God’s sight and blameless among men. He walked with God. And out of that relationship sprang all that Noah did as naturally as water from a stream.

And when the book of Hebrews reflects on the narrative of Noah here it has this to say in chapter 11:7, “By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.”

Now in a real sense these words are a commentary on 6:9. And its fascinating to note that Hebrews uses justification language, (“Noah was an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith”), to explain what Moses states simply and plainly, “Noah was a righteous man”. Noah was righteous with God. And Moses goes on, Noah was ‘blameless among men’, mud didn’t stick to Noah. He was godly. But how come? How was Noah justified (declared to righteous in God’s sight), and sanctified (made blameless in character amidst a generation of corruption and violence)? Moses answer in Genesis is that he “walked with God”.  The writer to the Hebrew’s answer is that he did it all ‘by faith.’ In fact the writer to the Hebrews is somewhat insistent on this point. Three times in this one verse we are told that Noah acted “by faith”. There’s no getting away from the faith of this man. It is faith that makes Noah righteous before God and blameless before men. Faith walks with God.

The first blind man to climb Everest is named Eric Weihenmayer. He works nowadays as a business consultant. When asked what he looks for in a team member his answer sounds like he has been reading Hebrews 11, “I hear people say, 'seeing is believing.' I want people who believe the opposite, 'Believing is seeing.' You've got to believe first in what you're doing and be sure you have a reason to believe it.”

How can a blind man climb Everest? ‘Impossible!’ you cry. Not at all, the answer comes back, “'Believing is seeing.' You've got to believe first in what you're doing and be sure you have a reason to believe it” he said.

How can Noah find security from the flood? How can a sinner find acceptance with a holy God? Impossible? Not at all. It can be done by faith alone. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the certainty of things not seen” says Hebrews 11:1.  “By faith Noah when warned about things not yet seen, built an ark” says Hebrews 11:7.

Lets have a closer look at the analysis of the story of Noah that Hebrews gives us here.  to help us to unpack a little more the passage in Genesis.

First of all we are told that Noah’s faith responded to the word of God. “By faith Noah when warned about things not yet seen built an ark.”

God spoke his warning to Noah and Noah believed. The flood God warned Noah of in 6:13 was ‘a thing not yet seen’. There was no sign of a flood at all. People must have thought poor Noah had stayed out too long in the blazing sun with all this talk of a flood!

What is he playing at? How bizarre! What a fruit cake! “Tell us again Noah, why on earth are you building this floating zoo? Oh yes, silly us, there’s a flood coming! How could we forget?” How they must have laughed at Noah right up until God opened the springs of the great deep and the floodgates of heaven for 40 days!

When all the world scoffed, faith saw the rain clouds gather, even when the skies were still blue. When all the world laughed at Noah’s boat building, faith saw the waves smashing over treetops and mountain summits, even though there was no sea for miles. While all the world wallowed in the debauchery and lust into which it had plunged, unaware of the wrath shortly to fall, faith saw one covenant family saved when all others were drowned. And when nothing was left, and the waters of the flood still covered the earth, when God had returned creation to that state of chaos over which his creative Spirit first brooded a the dawn of time, faith sent out a raven, and then a dove, believing the flood will not last forever and God will keep his promise.

The God who brooded over the surface of the waters in Genesis one, and brought order and light and life, will renew his world and begin again. Faith sees through the cataclysm to the new world to come and trusts God to keep his word.

Faith heeds the warnings of the word of God. Judgment is coming! And faith trusts in God’s grace. Faith heeds the warnings of Hebrews, “Today if you hear his voice do not harden your hearts” When God talks, faith takes note, faith believes, faith accepts.

And by this faith, says the writer to the Hebrews Noah ‘condemned the world’, and made him ‘an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith’.

Now note carefully the judicial language there. Noah’s faith made him pass the judicial sentence ‘condemned’ over the world, and that same faith obtains the judicial verdict, “righteous” for himself from God.

And faith continues to have that twofold reference. It condemns the world. The fact that there are those who take God at his word, who believe the gospel, who know of the wrath to come, who follow Jesus Christ, the fact that there are those who believe God’s word, in a world where it is viewed with such disdain, utterly condemns society. That some in this culture still believe leaves the rest without excuse. It condemns them. It is in itself a declaration of the verdict of God over them.

And by faith, like Noah of old, we too condemn the world in its unbelief. And that, friends, is an immensely solemn thing. How painful for Noah, the man of God, to look out over his generation and to view the fallen covenant line of Seth, prostituting themselves with the Cainite daughters! We can picture the tears of Noah as, with each nail hammered into the ark he was building, he contemplates the condemnation of the world that then was.

Even our Lord Jesus wept for Jerusalem, Matt. 23:37, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look your house is left to you desolate.”

Noah, that preacher of righteousness, as 2 Peter 2:5 tells us he was, doubtless also agonised for the generation among whom he lived. He had called them to turn form their sin to the living God. He had pled with the Sethites and Cainites to repent and turn to the God of covenant love. But they were not willing. And now in 7:16 he is shut into the ark by God himself. And as the door slams shut, Noah knows what the world outside would soon know too, the opportunity for mercy was now past, the day of grace for that generation was over, and the door was forever closed.

Our Lord Jesus speaks about the last day of this world in Matthew 24 :36-37 like this, “As it was in the days of Noah so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.”

A day is coming, Jesus is saying, when the door of the ark will close again. A day is coming when the way of escape from the wrath of God will be gone.

Now for those of us who believe, like Noah, that brings a certain urgency to our service and our witness in the world. It brings a new measure of solemnity to our pilgrimage this side of eternity. This is a dying generation. Do you weep for them? Do you long to see it gathered to Christ like chicks under the wings of a mother hen? Are you a preacher of righteousness like Noah? Understand that by your faith you will condemn the world in its unbelief. Knowing that to be true, let us resolve to do all we can to win the lost to Christ that they, with us, might press into the ark of Christ Jesus before the flood tide of God’s fiery wrath begins to fall.

And for all who remain unbelievers, for the sceptic and the doubter, the fact is, condemnation is what awaits you. But today remains the day of salvation. Today is still the day of grace. Noah still preaches righteousness to you. Christ still longs to gather you under his wings. The door of the ark is not yet closed.

But the words of Genesis 8:16 should send shivers of horror down your spine. The Lord shut them in. God did it. God closed the door. The righteous were saved and the ungodly destroyed because God terminated the only avenue of escape for sinners. Hear the sound of that door slamming shut! It shall sound again one more time at the end of the age. Will you be sealed inside the ark that is Jesus Christ y faith in him like ancient Noah, or will you be shut out forever?

Faith, says Hebrews 11:7 makes us ‘an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith’. Faith puts you into the same category as Noah as he faced the flood-wrath of God. Faith made Noah an heir of righteousness, and, as the rest of Hebrews11 demonstrates he stood along side a galaxy of other believers, stretching back to Enoch and back still firther to Abel, and reaching forward to Abraham, Moses, and David, and even, Hebrews teaches, forward to you and me, if we will join Noah in believing the message of God… “Flood’s coming! Wrath will descend! Judgment day is fast approaching! But the seed of the Woman has already come and crushed the head of the serpent. The greater than Noah has appeared to give us rest from all the toilsome labour that the curse has caused. One has born the flood wrath for us that we might take refuge in him. Jesus Christ Crucified is the object of our faith as he is held out to us in God’s word. He is  the saviour of sinners who believe his word, and he is the judge of sinners who ignore it. Which are you?

So Noah believes. But then secondly notice that Noah obeys.

Hebrews 11:7 says, “ by faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark”

Faith not only justifies. Faith does not only bring us into union with Christ and there perform the glorious swap of our guilt and his righteousness. Faith also sanctifies. It makes us like the Christ to whom we have been united.

Faith does not simply produce a new status. It does not stand at rest, its work finished, once the title ‘righteous’ can be claimed as ours in the courts of God’s justice. Faith wants to make us blameless among men as well. As Thomas Watson puts it, “not a grace stirs till faith sets it to work” Or again, “faith is not an idle grace: just as it has an eye to see Christ, so it has a hand to work for him…As the chameleon is changed into the colour of that which it looks upon, so faith, looking on Christ, changes the Christian into the likeness of Christ”

Noah was both righteous with God and blameless with men. He not only believed God’s word but his faith had hands that immediately went to work living out that faith. Look at chapter 6 verse 22. God has given Noah detailed instructions about the flood, what the ark should look like, and how the animals are to be gathered. And verse 22 give eloquent testimony to the faith of Noah that there are no questions, nor complaints, no doubts, no hesitation. God has spoken, and Noah did everything just as God had commanded him.

Or look again at chapter 7:5. Once more God has given instructions on the procedure Noah is to follow when the flood comes, and again we hear nothing from Noah. He does not open his mouth. Noah’s chorus of praise is ore eloquent than that, “And Noah did all that the LORD commanded.” You find the same thing again in verse 9, “ as God commanded Noah” and again in verse 16, “ the animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah.” And you see it even after Noah has opened the ark up and he knows that the earth has dried up and there is whole new world to be explored, even then he waits in the ark, until verse 15 , The  God said to Noah’ Come out of the ark…..verse 18 So Noah came out.”

Noah has real faith. The faith that justifies also sanctifies. You can’t have faith I Christ and not have a growing concern for obedience to his word. Holiness as well as righteousness, right living as well are as right standing, likeness to Christ as well as hidden in Christ is the concern of every true believer.

So the question stands for each of us: do I think my faith genuine though I live like the Sethites of Noah’s day? Do I believe myself safe from the flood because I believe, even though my faith makes no impact on my living?

Or to phrase the question positively: do I respond to God’s law with obedience? Is doing what God requires my desire and goal in everything at all times? Do I simply and happily obey, without question without argument without doubt? God speaks and that is enough. Whatever he says I will do wherever he calls I will go?

This is the evidence of true faith. It is not, it cannot be faith without works. Faith that cannot be seen by what you do is dead faith. It is faith that drowns in the flood. It is faith more like a millstone around your neck when the flood comes than an ark to float above the waves in.

 “What good is it my brothers if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such a faith save him?...But someone will say, ‘You have faith; I have deeds.’ Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. You believe there is one GOD. Good! Even the demons believe that and shudder. ….as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.” James 2: 14-26

Orthodox belief cannot save. Knowing the catechism cannot save. Confessing your faith cannot save. Even the demons are orthodox in their faith says James. Something more is needed. Faith to be living must evidence itself in obedience. Faith without deeds is dead.

So are you alive? Or is your faith only as good as the devils? Noah heard and obeyed God. Obedience evidenced the reality and truth of his faith. He was both righteous with God and beamless among men. He did what God says.

Do you?

Amen