Welcome to Lakeside! I had this idea of working through some of the greatest stories of the Old Testament. On the one hand, I want to understand how some of the most renown people in history wrestled with God. I want to put myself in their shoes. But even more importantly, I want to grow to know and trust God ever more profoundly. Romans 15:4 says, “For whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction, so that we may have hope through endurance and through the encouragement from the Scriptures.”
We began this series on Easter, looking at Adam's failure to find satisfaction, immortality, and wisdom apart from God. But then we saw how Christ Jesus, the “second Adam”, “the man from heaven" taught us to trust God as our Provider, trust God for life and immortality, trust God for wisdom and knowledge.
This morning, I want to look at the life of Noah. Most everyone knows the gist of the story. God became angry about how corrupt humankind had become. God called Noah to build an ark, filling the ark with genetically representative pairings of animals. God's wrath burns and he opens the floodgates of heaven and earth. Every living creature on earth is destroyed. Only Noah, his family, and the creatures on the ark survive. From Noah’s family--eight is enough—the earth is repopulated.
Over in Williamstown, KY you can see the “Ark Encounter." It’s a modern marvel, spanning 510 feet long, 85 feet wide, and 51 feet high. The attitude today is the story of Noah is a complete myth with zero plausibility. The Ark Encounter has become an object of ridicule for scientists, esp. atheists. Personally, I’ve been struck by two undeniable realities, one historical, one topographical.
Historically, culture after culture has in its history a vague remembrance of a man, a boat, and bunch of animals surviving a cataclysmic global flood. It’s the single oldest, most widely attested story in all human history. But it’s only in the Bible that we learn the exact details down to the guy’s name, exact circumstances, and the theological reason he had prophetic intuition to prepare for such an apocalyptic event. How did cultures, across continents, come about such a singular belief, if there weren’t minimally a globally catastrophic event?
Then topographically, we are in midst of a scientific evolution in the way scientists use satellite imagery, drones, lasers, and artificial intelligence to analyze the topography of the earth. There is profound evidence that most all topography on earth was shaped by violent torrents of water, ice flows. The Grand Canyon. The Niagara Falls. Scientists are documenting watersheds and geological features of a scale only comprehensible if there was indeed cataclysmic flood.
Anyway, it isn’t my concern to defend the Biblical account of Noah. You will believe what you want to believe; I trust God’s Spirit to guide you into all truth; I take pleasure in the way in which God’s foolishness continually confounds the wisdom of the wise. What I do want to explore is the peculiar way in which Noah surely wrestled with this whole moral construct the Bible calls “Righteousness.”
Some things to consider. (1) Noah lived among a people who completely jettisoned the notion of righteousness—the notion of right and wrong, truth and error, good and evil, light and darkness, clean and unclean, pure and impure. (2) Noah lived among a people who completely jettisoned the notion of a spirit or soul. People saw themselves as mere creatures, mere flesh and blood animals, merely fleshly or sensual, even sexual creatures. As Jesus indicates in Luke 17, people were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, carrying on. They had a saying, “eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow we die.”
(3) Noah lived among a people who completely jettisoned any fear of God. People believed that could brazenly live and act any way they chose without any concern for personal consequences… any concern for punishment… any concern for fairness or justice or equity… nor any concern for judgement. In Noah’s day there was an explosion of violence. Why? A violent person, a violent society has only one concern: Do I have the power to do it...Not, “is it right?” “Is it good?” “Does a thing honor God?” But can or will anyone stop me? Let’s go waylay some poor soul on the street corner for fun. Let’s flash mob the local CVC. Let’s build an island offshore where we can channel stolen wealth, or enslave young girls into the sex trade. Let’s fly world leaders there to abuse young girls without any fear of prosecution. Let’s rig the system so that those at top can act with impunity!
This past week a woman was arrested for stealing a $1000 of goods from Walmart. First of all, Walmart deserves it, right? Those greedy capitalists, right? But when they arrested her, she was laughing. She said she and her friends were playing a game to see who could steal the greatest value of goods. Again, she’s laughing, telling the cops, “This game is really, really fun!” And then came realization, “wait, am I going to jail?” No worries… you’ll be out this afternoon with bail reform. Don’t want to work or provide for your needs, go squat in someone’s home while they are hospitalized.
If there is no fear of God, why not just do what you want, you animal? In the days of Noah everything was being decriminalized because the notion of crime itself, the fear of God was becoming obsolete.
(4) Noah lived among a people who completely jettisoned all sexual, marital constraints. Men were taking “whoever” they wanted in marriage, without any regard for God’s will. There are some cryptic references in Genesis 6 of sons of God, Nephilim, maybe demons (who knows?), intermarrying with human race.
There is no more pathetic assessment of the human race given in all of Scripture than what we see in Genesis. Genesis 6:3, “And the Lord said, “My Spirit will not remain with mankind forever, because they are corrupt. Their days will be 120 years.” Genesis 6:5-7, “When the Lord saw that human wickedness was widespread on the earth and that every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time, 6 the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and he was deeply grieved. 7 Then the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I created, off the face of the earth, together with the animals, creatures that crawl, and birds of the sky—for I regret that I made them.” Genesis 6:11-13, “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with wickedness. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth was, for every creature had corrupted its way on the earth. 13 Then God said to Noah, “I have decided to put an end to every creature, for the earth is filled with wickedness because of them; therefore I am going to destroy them along with the earth.”
If at this point you are having trouble understanding the Days of Noah, look no further than the local news. In 2 Timothy 3:1-5 Apostle Paul prophetically writes, “But know this: Hard times will come in the last days. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, proud, demeaning, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, without love for what is good, 4 traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 holding to the form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid these people.”
Who among us has a righteous soul? Am I concerned about the next generation? I am concerned about “this” adult generation. No sense of righteousness. No conscience. No notion of right, wrong. No moral compass. No transcendent basis to establish meaning, purpose, value. No fear of God. No gender, sexual, marital, relational, moral, legal constraints. Lawlessness. No spine, no backbone, no justice or truth. No one who stands for righteousness, for principles. We’ve become pleasers of ourselves, pleasers of the corrupt, of the criminal. We criminalize the innocent; we coddle the corrupt. It’s the fearless days of Noah, the fearless days of Sodom and Gomorrah. We are in same boat!
How many of you wrestle with God over the corruption of fellow man? How many of you are tormented, how many of you are distressed (like Noah), by the lawless deeds you see and hear every day? How many of you grieve? I do, and I hate it. I’d rather wish myself to be free of all moral concern like so many around me, but God’s Spirit hasn’t released me from such!
How did Noah navigate corrupt people of his day? First, Noah found favor with God. Genesis 6:8, “Noah, however, found favor with the Lord.” Do you want to know how to find favor with God? Favor means “grace.” This might surprise you. You don’t find favor with God by being perfectly righteous you find grace by humbling yourself before God. The constant refrain of Scripture is that God resists the proud and arrogant but gives grace to the humble. The humble person is as tune to his own unrighteous as that of others but instead of doubling down cries, “Help me God! And help my fellow man!” 2 Chronicles 7:14. “If my people, who are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. Noah found favor by humbling himself.”
Second, Noah built what God command him to build. Noah was commanded to build an ark. Jesus commanded us to build his kingdom, build disciples, build the church. There are days when I look at what God has me building and I say, “No way this thing is going to float. No way this church is storm worthy. No way God’s design for church is going to work.” But Noah resolved himself to trust God and keep building. Like Nehemiah, he labored under constant ridicule and resistance of his fellow man.
Third, Noah became a preacher of righteousness. How many of you find yourselves afflicted with a concern for righteousness? How many of you are afflicted with a fear of God, with a God-shaped conscience? How many of you feel like you’re an alien or stranger living in morally foreign land? Do we speak, do we not speak? Do we care, do we become cold and indifferent? How many of you think it is your duty to warn others off from their folly? How many think it a complete waste of time? Noah kept humbling himself, trusting God, building what God wanted built. He kept preaching and warning.
Fourth, Noah made a covenant with God. When God made covenant with Noah, he sealed it with a visible symbol, a rainbow in the sky. Never again would God destroy earth by flood. But we live in a day where there is no fear of God. Even Christians, especially Christians, trivialize sin. They see notions of God’s wrath, judgement as antiquated. The modern church is going way of Sodom and Gomorrah. The rainbow is no longer a cautionary symbol, to make us pause and fear God. The rainbow is the banner of the godless and immoral, who flaunt their freedom, who live in the flesh, who think righteousness matters not! Hebrews 11:7, “By faith Noah, after he was warned about what was not yet seen and motivated by godly fear, built an ark to deliver his family. By faith he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.”