Preparing for the Rain
Genesis 6:1-22

Introduction

On August 29, 2003, we turned on our TVs to watch in horror as hurricane Katrina moved across Mississippi and Louisiana leaving in its path over 1800 people dead, tens of thousands homeless, and over 81 billion dollars in damage.  It was the sixth strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic.  Now four years later, that area and those people have still not fully recovered.  In Katrina, we saw a frightening example of the power of nature.  

Yet even a horror as tragic and disturbing as Katrina can barely give us even a small glimpse of how utterly devastating was the world-wide catastrophe, that happened over 4000 years ago when God unleashed His wrath, and allowed the entire Earth to be flooded.  Every living man, women, and child, and every land animal died in those waters…except 8 people and a sampling of the animal kingdom who were aboard God’s Ark of Redemption.

There is much to be learned about God’s justice, holiness, and grace, and about our needed response of faith and hope from the account of the flood and the life of Noah.  So we are going to take the next four weeks exploring together “Faith Lessons from Noah.”

Let us pray…            Scripture reading…


Overview of the Flood Account

Many scientists and liberal scholars debate the reality of a catastrophic flood that once wiped out all life but a remnant.  But as for me, and for the orthodox and Reformed stream of Christianity that we embrace, we accept the Biblical account as a literal and accurate record of a worldwide flood and a literal ark.

Such a global catastrophe is supported by geological evidence such as the speeding up of natural water erosion like the Grand Canyon, and the redwoods being only 4000 years old.  The Biblical account is unequivocal, when the prophets, Christ, and the New Testament authors refer to Noah and the flood, they refer to it as an actual event.  

Another fascinating aspect of studying the account of Noah and the flood is that there is a record of such a flood found in the histories of many ancient civilizations.  These records not only speak of a flood that destroyed all human and animal life, but they also speak of one man and his family escaping the flood by building a boat.  

Now many skeptics have used the existence of such accounts to argue that the Biblical account of Noah and a great flood is just one more ancient myth among many.  But we can just as easily argue back that the existence of so many like accounts is in fact one of the most convincing proofs that such a worldwide flood and rescue of one family did indeed actually occur.  In fact, it seems as if the Biblical account was written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in parallel form to so many of these other accounts in order to clearly correct these other accounts.  

The closest parallel flood account to the biblical account comes from Mesopotamia.  Both accounts tell of a man who was advised by his god to build an ark to escape the flood.  The man did so, loaded it with goods and animals, floated on the floodwaters for a short while, and sent out birds to see if the waters were abating.  Eventually the ark grounded on a mountain top, the flood survivor emerged and offered sacrifices, which greatly pleased the gods, who rewarded him with eternal life.  Now there are some trivial differences in details, but much more important are the theological differences between these accounts.  

In the Babylonian versions, the gods agreed on a flood to stop human population growth.  But one of the gods dissented and tipped off his worshipper Atrahasis (the equivalent of Noah).  Contrarily, in the Noah account, the flood is God’s judgment against sin.  When the flood was unleashed, the gods cowered before it like cowards unable to control it.  Contrarily, the God of the Bible is all-powerful and sovereign over the flood.   

After the flood, the gods hurried to the sacrifice, as they were hungry, since sacrifices had stopped during the flood.  The God of Noah has no need.  One of the gods in the Babylonian account was surprised to find a man had survived the flood (evidently this god was neither omnipotent nor omniscient).  Finally, while the Atrahasis epic ends with the gods inventing miscarriage and female infertility to curb population growth, Noah is urged three times to "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.”

I presented all this background introduction for two reasons (besides it just being interesting!):
1.    To affirm with strong apologetic truth that we don’t have to shy away from embracing the account of Noah, the ark, and the flood as a literal, actual event as recorded in the Bible
2.    Since this is an actual event, we can learn many powerful and important truths about faith by exploring the story of Noah


Faith Lessons from Noah

Now over the course of the next few weeks, we will be exploring many faith lessons.  But just like in business, athletics, or music, if you want to succeed, you must always revisit and be strong in the fundamentals.  So today, we are going to examine three fundamentals of faith that we learn from Noah.

When we look at the moral state of the world, it is seemingly getting increasingly and excessively worse in a speeded up fashion every year.  Even in my short 48 years, I’ve seen a dramatic and frightening increase in wickedness and violence.  Things are so bad right now, it is easy to make a judgment that the human race is the worst it has ever been.  Yet, Genesis chapter six begins by presenting a deeply disturbing assessment of the human race far worse than even our own corrupt times.  With a description that sounds like a scene out of a Tolkien fantasy novel, we read that at this time in human history, you had fallen angels inhabiting the bodies of humans and producing offspring who were evidently giants called the Nephilim, and who must have been exceptionally strong, perhaps even possessing some supernatural powers.  They were worshiped as demigods, and given positions as kings.  As we read in the Bible, they were the “heroes of old, men of renown.”  These were the race of beings that Israel had to face in some of their battles, and from whom Goliath was a descendant.

God assessed the human race and declared, “every inclination of their heart was only evil all the time.”  We read that “the Lord was so grieved that he had made humans on the earth that his heart was filled with pain.”  So utterly corrupt had we become that the only solution that even a merciful God could come up with was to annihilate the entire human race and start over!  All seems dark, devastating, and hopeless.  

But then, like one thread of light shining through a hovering storm, we read this, “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.”  

Most versions use the word “favor” instead of grace.  But the Hebrew word here is translated grace elsewhere in the OT.  In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the OT, the authors use the word “Charis,” which is grace.  Why is this important?  Because to understand the next verse in our passage and why God choose Noah, we must grasp that God’s choosing and Noah being described as “righteous” is all based on grace!   

God the Father, creator and judge looked down from heaven, determined that the human race needed to be exterminated, and even in the face of such a just judgment, God choose to grant grace to one family, and through them to the whole human race by being allowed to continue.  Noah wasn’t selected because he was more righteous in his behavior through his own power than every other human, and so deserved to be saved.  Noah was declared righteous first by God, and then empowered by God to live a righteous life.  Noah was granted the gift of being saved in the ark because God chose to grant Noah grace!

God’s plan of salvation whether administered through an ark, animal sacrifice, or the cross is always the same…by faith through grace.   


And so this is our first fundamental faith lesson from Noah: 

1. Faith is a gift from God

Noah’s ability to “walk with God” was because God chose to grant him the gift of faith.  Noah’s ability to believe God’s warning that a devastating flood was about to be unleashed was because God granted him the gift of faith.  Noah’s ability to persevere for 100 years building an ginourmus ark while preaching the gospel with zero converts was because God granted him the gift of faith.  

Faith is always a gift.  The faith that saves us is a gift.  No one accepts Christ as savior by an act of free will.  The depravity of the human soul left to itself will never choose Christ.  God through the Holy Spirit must grant one through pure grace the gift of faith to believe and surrender to Christ.  The faith that keeps us saved is likewise an ongoing grace gift.  The faith that transforms us into Christlikeness is a gift.  The faith the claims the promises of God is always a gift.  The faith that gets a vision from God to join God in some risky adventure to redeem humanity is always a gift.

Since faith is always a gift of grace, there is one way, and one way only, to sustain and increase our faith.  We learn this second faith lesson from Noah in verse 9, Noah “walked with God.”  This phrase “walked with God” is used in the Old Testament to describe someone who maintained a close, intimate relationship with God and thus is declared by God to be righteous.  So our second faith lesson from Noah is this:  


2.    Faith is an ongoing relationship with God

Now please listen close.  This is a fundamental, critical truth of living as a fruitful Christ-follower that most of us forget all the time.  Everything in the Christian life must be understood in relational terms, not just propositional terms.  All truth is ultimately relational.  

So what does this mean or matter?  This means that for us to be deeply changed by any truth of the Christian faith, it must be experienced, not just understood in our heads.  To simply write out a true statement of the Christian faith on a piece of paper, then to read and believe that statement is not to have life-changing faith in that truth.  

For example, I write out the truth, “I am saved by grace through faith alone.”  I read that, I agree with that, I even declare that aloud.  But if my relationship with that truth only operates on the level of mental, or even heart level, agreement, that truth will never change my life.  It remains an academic truth, not an embraced reality of faith.  Information never fosters transformation!  

Both the Hebrew and Greek concepts of truth is based on truth as experienced, experiential truth not just academic, proportional truth.  Truth must be experienced to have any deep, lasting impact in our life.  So it is with faith.  And when we speak of Christian truth, that experience comes in the form of an ongoing, growing, intimate relationship with Christ.  It is impossible to be changed by Biblical truth without a close relationship with Christ.

Faith is not a mental believing in a truth written of a page.  Faith is an ongoing, personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  Do you want your faith to grow?  It will not happen by just reading and studying the Bible.  It will not happen by going to seminars of “having more faith in your faith.”  Your faith won’t grow through prayer, worship, service, or fellowship when done as duty.  It will only happen as you grow in your relationship with Jesus through the Word, prayer, worship, service, and fellowship.  

Everything in the Christian life must be understood relationally.  Holiness is a relational term.  Righteousness is a relational term.  Faith, hope, and love are relational terms.  All of these come to us not as doctrine to be believed but as a relationship to embrace.  A relationship with Jesus Christ.

Noah was granted grace gift of faith by Father God.  This gift of faith and grace brought Noah into an intimate relationship with God.  It was because of this relationship that God declared Noah righteous.  It was because of this relationship Noah was empowered to walk with God and live a righteous life in the midst of a violent and wicked world.  And it was because of this gift of faith, and God-empowered righteousness, that God then invited Noah to participate in God’s plan of redemption for humanity. God invited Noah to build an ark that would 100 years to build!  

Many scholars believe that up until the flood it had never rained before.  Rather there was a water canopy over the Earth that kept us in the ideal whether condition was lent to the long life spans in those times.  So when God told Noah it was going to rain.  Noah’s first response quite likely was “What’s rain!?”  God often calls us to participate in a new thing that requires fresh revelation and therefore much faith!

God called Noah to preach God’s judgment and grace during this 100 years to a world that only mocked God and ridiculed Noah and his family.  This is our third fundamental faith lesson we learn from Noah:


3.    Faith is radical and risky obedience for God

Back in the early 90’s, Our Lord used a man named Henry Blackaby to bring back to the global Church a forgotten and critical truth about how God operates.  In Blackaby’s “Experience God” material, he reveals a pattern of how faith operates when God calls us to partner with Him in some adventure to advance the kingdom.  We see this pattern in some form throughout the Bible such as in the life of Noah, and throughout the history of the Church.  Knowing this path of  faith is key for us to learn how to respond in radical and risky obedience so let me present them here in summary form:   
a. God is always at work in the world to bring redemption.
“I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life…But I will establish my covenant with you.”
b. God longs for us to partner with Him in this plan, so first He calls us into an intimate relationship with Him.
“But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord….and he walked with God.”
c. God invites us to partner with Him in His plans (and reveals that plan to us.)
"So make yourself an ark of cypress wood.”
d. We adjust our life to obey the calling (sometimes there is a crisis of faith here.)
 “You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you.”
e. We obey and experience God.
“Noah did everything just as God commanded him."

As congregation, we are at a place in our missional renewal journey where we are going to need lots of faith!  And how does faith grow?  By pursuing an intimate relationship with the Father, Son & Holy Spirit!  This is why we need to become more and more a praying, worshipping, Bible-saturated people.  We are on step three of the pattern of faith I showed you earlier from Blackaby.  God longs for us to partner with Him in His plans to rescue the captive, restore the wounded, and redeploy the equipped in Dubuque.  We need to seek our Lord’s face to hear directly from Him what specific plan of redemption He wants us to participate with here in Dubuque.  As we expressed this last week, we need to hear from Jesus where and how to fish.  If we do not become a praying people, we will become like the people left out of the ark..… dead in the water!