Exemplars Of Faith: Noah

Pleasing God Requires Knowing His Character

We continue in our studies of the book of Hebrews. We might actually make a record distance in the book today. I don't know, maybe three, four verses all at once. I hope that doesn't cause any of you any disorientation given the speed at which we're going, being Reformed Baptists, but we'll be back in Hebrews chapter 11.

Hebrews chapter 11. Let's ask the Lord to bless our time together. Indeed, our Heavenly Fathers, we consider the meaning of faith, the application of faith, the life of faith. We would ask that you would be with us once again before we see another work of labor before us.

We do want to be pleasing to you. We want to know what it means to walk by faith and not by sight. So help us to understand your word this evening. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. This morning we finished off with a text that, again, I would imagine is very frequently a part of Scripture memory programs.

Hebrews chapter 11, verse 6,. And without faith it is impossible to please him. For he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is rewarder of those who seek him. And we noted the context, the fact that this is within the context of Enoch, and the fact that he was pleasing to God.

That he was pleasing to God. And I had some other thoughts about that today. I just wanted to briefly mention that when you think about being pleasing to God, what is one of the first things that you must have knowledge of to even try to be pleasing to God?

Before I answer that, let's think about that in human relationships. In human relationships, obviously the most relevant relationship we might want to think of would be the husband and the wife. And if the wife wishes to be pleasing to the husband, if the husband wishes to be pleasing to the wife, or obviously, very often, children desiring to please their parents, or even parents desiring to please their children.

What is absolutely necessary for that to take place, in any context at all? You have to know something about the person. You have to know what's pleasing to them. If my wife wanted to be pleasing to me, she's not going to offer me asparagus.

She knows better than that. Now, I actually have started eating it recently. Not much, but just a little bit. It's actually edible. I'm starting to grow up. I'm in my second half of my first century, so I'm starting to actually eat some more stuff.

Now, when we first met, that very first day, sophomore year in high school, at North Phoenix Baptist Church, would she have any idea whether I liked asparagus or not? No. Why? Because she didn't know me.

Had no knowledge of me whatsoever. And so, when you think about that, what must be absolutely necessary if we want to be pleasing to God? We have to know Him. We have to know what is pleasing to Him. Isn't it amazing?

How many people today put down the study of God's Word, put down the study of His attributes, put down the study of His character, put down the study of God's law, and as a result, if you were to ask them, are you pleasing to God?

How could they even begin to answer that question? Well, what's pleasing to God? It's not surprising then, in many liberal denominations, what's pleasing to God just also happens to be what's pleasing to man.

And yet, God's standards are very, very different from our standards. What is pleasing in the sight of a holy God is a person who is willing to walk against the flow, especially of a society, that has absolutely turned its back on God and is getting to the point where it is promoting and demanding that we revel in sinfulness.

A person who's pleasing to God is going to be a person who seeks to think God's thoughts after Him. Not force God to think our thoughts after us. A person who's pleasing to God is a person who recognizes that we are but a creature, that we live but a brief amount of time, that we know so little, and hence we don't put God in a position of having to answer to us.

We don't demand that He gives answers to us. We couldn't even begin to take in all the knowledge that would be required for us to even judge Him properly. A person who's pleasing to God is a person that recognizes it's better to spend a day in the house of mourning than a day in the house of feasting.

A person who's pleasing to God is one who recognizes the brevity of this life and the fact that I will soon be in His presence. And why do I think that if I live willfully in this life, that I'm going to actually enjoy being in His presence in the next?

We must know something about the God that we are seeking to be pleasing to if we're going to be pleasing in His presence. And yet, what are the very things that are diminished, the very things that are put aside in so much of modern-day preaching in our culture?

And the reason is very simple. The reason is actually rather obvious. We've become men-pleasers. We preach what we know people want to hear and as a result, leave them in utter darkness as to how they can be pleasing to God.

That's the situation we face in our day. And so that phrase, he was pleasing to God without faith is impossible to please Him. You have to know something about Him. And notice, even verse 6 says that.

For he who comes to God must believe that He is. You have to understand the existence of God. You need to believe that He's there. I hope it offends you as much as it offends me. I'm not given to road rage.

My kids say I'm starting to drive like I belong in Sun City. Part of that's because I'm a bicyclist and I wish everyone else drove like they lived in Sun City, basically. It would give me more time to get out of their way when they are texting and coming into my lane.

One thing that almost gets me to road rage is when I see the bumper sticker. Well, there's a lot of bumper stickers these days that get me rather upset. But one in particular, Try Jesus. Try Jesus. Who came up with that one?

I mean, honestly, who could read the New Testament? Who could read the Bible and come up with the idea, you know, there's all this stuff about commitment to God and taking up your cross and denying yourself and joining the death march and dying with Christ and mortifying the flesh and all that stuff.

But, you know, that's pretty advanced stuff. Let's try something a little easier. How about try Jesus? Like try Geico. In most people's minds, it's the exact same thing. Try it for a little while. See if you like it.

I can guarantee you something. An unregenerate, unrebentant person is not going to like Jesus. Not the Jesus of the Bible. That's why they come up with all these fake Jesuses, all these cultic Jesuses that have no resemblance whatsoever to what we find in the pages of Scripture.

Be pleasing to God. Pleasing to God. Well, we're given another example, and it is a tremendous example that I think really speaks a lot to us in our culture today. Verse 7 of chapter 11. By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household by which he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.

Noah’s Faith, Reverence, and Long Obedience

Noah. Seemingly in our day, as soon as you make mention of Noah, first thoughts are of arguing with people about worldwide floods and dating of the earth and two pair or seven pair and clean animals versus non-clean animals and what was the world like before the flood and all the rest of this stuff.

And unfortunately in that process, which is necessary. We live in a day where those things are going to come up. But unfortunately in that process we very rarely think of Noah as an incredible model of faith.

An incredible model of faith that really should speak to where you and I are today. Why do I say that? Well, think about it. We all know the amazing element of Noah's obedience to God, which interestingly enough here, again, notice obedience, faith, obedience, faith.

They're going together. If you believe God exists, you're going to obey what he says. I mean, doesn't it make sense that in essence, every time we disobey God, if we really believed he was God, would we do that?

I mean, seriously. If we really believed he was God and every beat of my heart and breath of my mouth comes from his hand, would you rebel against him? Would you do your own thing when you know he said not to do that?

Isn't there a truth in the fact that every sin is an act of unbelief? But we know what the big thing is. Hopefully you've heard sermons about it before. Put yourself in the position of Noah. It's never rained.

Now that sort of sounds like Phoenix, but I mean, it never rained anywhere. It's never rained. And God comes to Noah and God warns him. He's warned by God about things not yet seen. He's saying no one had ever seen a flood.

No one had ever seen the fountains of the deep opened up.

Faithful Witness in a Hostile World

And long, long beforehand,.

I sort of wondered, did God give him an exact date type thing? Or was it just as we got closer? I don't know. But long beforehand, God says this is what I'm going to do. Now, if God spoke to us in the way He spoke to these men, walked with Enoch and things like that, okay.

God says the earth has become filled with evil and men's thoughts are evil continually. And only you of all the people have I found to be pleasing in my sight, to be righteous. So I'm going to save you and your family and I'm going to continue the human line through you.

It would be one thing if God said, you know, way down the road a bit, I'm going to bring judgment on this earth. Okay, God. That's one thing. But in the meantime, I'm going to do it in a way that no one is ever going to believe it's going to happen that way.

And I want you to prepare for it by building a huge boat in your backyard. And then I need you to start putting together a zoo. Now, it would be one thing to go, I'm with you, God. I'm the judgment thing.

This is an evil world. This is, yeah. But I'm really going to be exposed to a tremendous amount of ridicule. I mean, Noah is a smart guy. And Noah knows that, well, first of all, he's going to have to pretty much use all of his own resources here.

I mean, do you go down to the bank and ask for a boat loan in those days? Not really. He's going to have to forego a lot of the things he would normally be doing. And it's be a lot of work. I mean, that was a pretty big ship.

And obviously, Noah had not built one before. So you're sort of, you know, having to work on it as you go along. And I wonder, how did he express this to his family? I mean, Mrs. Noah. You know, did he come home and say, well, honey, I've got a new hobby that I'm going to be doing now.

And God told me to do this. Okay, dear, whatever you say. I mean, that would be hard. I mean, we just look at the story from the overview. But Noah had to come home and Noah had to convince his family.

And what would it be like to be one of Noah's sons? Because, you know, it's one thing for your older dad to start acting a little bit weird. But you're the one that's got to go out and you've got to get animals and you've got to get wood.

And man, the amount of pitch and tar and things like that, that they had to smell. And you had to go into town.

And oh, the mockery. Here comes one of Noah's sons.

Hey, how's your wacky dad doing? And what could you say? What kind of response could you offer? But you'll notice, Noah, it says, in reverence, prepared an ark for the salvation of his household. You know why mockery hurts us?

Do you know why it has a power in our life? Do you know why it is we try to avoid it? We try to not see those looks of the people in our day who are so intense upon making us feel uncomfortable about our beliefs?

You know why? Because we reverence men. We reverence their opinions about us. We want people to think that we look good, and so we dress in such a way that they're going to say we look good. And we want people to like us.

And we want people to say positive things about us. We reverence men. And the power that a Christian has that we very rarely harness is if we truly think about reverencing God. If our first thought is to revere Him, notice how intimately connected that is with pleasing Him.

But to revere Him, to fear Him, to first and foremost think, in my behavior, in my words, in my deeds, in my thoughts, am I showing reverence for my Creator? In how I dress my body? In how I behave? In where I live?

In what I do? Am I showing reverence for the One who made me and continues to support me? And every good gift that I have comes from His hand. Do I revere God or do I revere the people of this world? Notice that in doing this, in this long-term obedience, how many of us, you and I, we've had this experience.

Ever had a mountaintop experience? You go on a retreat someplace. And you have a mountaintop experience and you know you go, I'm putting down a stake right here. I am changing my life. Three months later you look back and you're right back in the old habits.

Ever had that happen? Think about Noah. Year after year after year of the constant drag of the mockery of the people around him, the looks. Eventually, it probably wasn't so much mockery anymore as it was just leave the crazy man alone.

Isolation. We don't want anything to do with him. He's weird. Besides that, he tells us that we need to repent because you see, Noah wasn't just going off and building the ark. He told people. He was a preacher of righteousness.

They don't like that. So there certainly would have been isolation. Year after year after year of faithfulness. We have no indication. They took a vacation. Said, that's it. I'm putting the project on hold for a while.

Then God had to send an angel or something. And you see, in reverence, he prepared an ark for the salvation of his household by which he condemned the world. And Noah wasn't trying to be holier than thou.

But let's face it, folks. When we're obedient to God, the world is not going to like that. Don't be thinking that the world is going to pat you on the back for doing what Christ would call you to do. It's not going to happen.

And in fact, there's going to be frowns. There's going to be resistance. And what are we facing today? We're not facing the kind of persecution many of our brothers and sisters do. But just this past week, I mentioned this morning, the Supreme Court of Canada decided a case from back in 2001 -2002.

Men had been passing out leaflets. And the leaflets said that homosexuality is an abomination to God. Quoted 1 Corinthians 6 -9. The Supreme Court upheld his conviction. Now, we have a First Amendment.

Some words written on a piece of paper. That's all it is. And will it take longer for that to happen here? How much longer? I used to think it would be a lot longer. I don't know anymore. But the point is, it's the very same type of people there in Canada who have decided to take one particular behavior of a small minority of people that they know is opposed to the Word of God and elevate it to the point of having super rights, so much so that not only can you not criticize it, but today you have to rejoice in it and say it's good and moral.

Noah refused to say that what was going on in his day was good and moral. And in fact, he said it's evil and bring God's judgment. And I'm sure he was isolated for that. He suffered for that. And he did so for a long time.

And he did it by faith. How long will we hold out? Oh, believe me, I recognize that outside of the Spirit of God in any one of us, not very long. But the question we have to ask is, how much do we want to revere God?

Do you want to revere God more than own your house? Do you want to revere God more than the car, the job? Those questions will be facing the people in this room. It's not something down the road. It's right around the corner.

And in many ways, it's here right now. That's a question we're all going to have to ask. Do I revere God? And oh, the ways that we can find to get around that. Well, can't we do this? Or can't we do that?

Noah didn't compromise. He didn't try to find a way to work with the people around him and go, well, I'll tell you what, I'll slow down my project a little bit. Maybe it won't offend you quite as much if I only work a few hours a day on it.

No. He revered God and prepared an ark for the salvation of his household. And by being obedient to God, he condemned the world. Why? Because they weren't obedient. They observed one who was faithful and obedient and revered God and they didn't.

And in so doing, he condemned the world. See, people wonder why is it that the world hates the Gospel so much? There was an article. I'm not sure if I'm going to have time to respond to it. I might, but there was an article in the Huffington Post this week about I think it was six or seven things.

Six things a Christian should stop saying. And of course, one of them was that homosexuality is wrong and blah, blah, blah. But one of them was that Jesus is the only way. Oh, that is so offensive to people.

Oh, that's offensive! And if you're a real Christian, you won't offend people. The mindset of the people around us. They understand. They're not threatened by the liberal Christian that doesn't live the Gospel.

They don't care about the compromiser because the compromiser is saying you don't have to worry about this. This is just my personal opinion. The person like Noah who says this isn't just my personal opinion.

This is going to impact you. Can't have that. Now you're telling them. They already know that. And they're suppressing that truth. And you're prying up the fingers. And that's why they hate the Gospel.

And so Noah, by being obedient, he condemned the world. He put the world in the wrong. But in the process, he became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. Now we're going to see later the first time in the Bible where you have the specific language of believing and righteousness as regards to Abraham.

And specifically in Genesis 15 .6 which is why that's quoted so often in the New Testament. But here our writer is looking back. And remember as I said this morning, there's this line, God has never left Himself without a witness, without a people.

What he's saying is, look, you've got Abel. You've got Enoch. You've got Noah. They walked with God. They were pleasing to God. And what ties them all together was a faith that was an obedient faith. It was a true faith.

It was a faith focused upon the one true God. And it was a faith that persevered. In Abel's case, it became his testimony that he offered an offering of righteousness and died as a result. In Noah's case, persevering over time.

Persevering in the face of opposition. Persevering in the face of mockery and persecution. And in that consistency, Noah condemned the world. Every person who stood in their pride and their arrogance to mock Him and deride Him, every one of them, eventually found themselves clinging to the last rock as the waters rose.

And how many of them saw on the horizon that boat, that ship? There's Noah and his family on the deck. As the water comes up to their neck, they know. They have clear understanding that their consistent rejection of the preaching of righteousness and repentance that came from Noah, what they are receiving, is absolutely just.

And though they may know that in their hearts, I can guarantee you with their mouths they were still complaining about the unfairness of God. Because that's what sinners do. God doesn't have the right to judge.

Judge not, lest ye be judged. I think other people think that applies to God. And so by faith, Noah... That means by faith, us. By faith, us today. In this coming week, when we leave this place of worship, instruction, peace, we go out into a world filled with people who are living their lives so as to express their rebellion against God.

And they're not going to like it when they encounter people who walk the other direction and do so purposefully. You see, they reverence this world. They reverence the God of this world. They reverence themselves.

They reverence the things that are passing away. That's why they're so absolutely desperate to hold on to them for as long as they can. But they know they're passing away. The things are passing away.

They are passing away. They know that. And that's why they amuse themselves and try to not think about these things. And it just drives them crazy as they refuse to bow and they go against all this knowledge that God has put in their conscience and that's around them.

They're gritting their teeth and closing their eyes, and then they see you! You're walking in obedience. And you've bowed the knee. And all that bothers them. You bring such condemnation just by being obedient.

You're walking the other direction. They're having to fight so hard to keep going the way they're going and every time they see someone going the other way, it just disheartens them. They lash out. What are you going to do?

You can't look at them as if you're somebody special. Holier than thou. I'm better than you. You know that if God hadn't taken out that heart of stone and given you a heart of flesh, you'd just be loving that heart of stone just like they are.

But when they say, be quiet. When they say, not only don't say the words, but don't live the life. Don't make the decisions based upon godly principles. Don't behave in such a way that shows light upon my life.

Come on. Compromise just a little. Laugh at my dirty jokes. Join with me in my worldly activities. It's just Christian liberty, you know. You're going to be in that situation this week. And I don't think I'm exaggerating at all.

To say it will probably be worse the next week. And the next week. So what are we going to do? Well, you can't just go stumbling into it. You have to think ahead. You have to be aware as believers we can look back and we have all of these examples of men and women of faith.

Think about Noah. Think about how many summers and winters, spring and fall, he was faithful. All the opposition, all the isolation, he remained faithful. And by his obedience, yes, by his reverence, he saved his family.

He himself obtained salvation. But by his faithful obedience, he condemned the world. He was shown God vindicated him. That's a vindication that in our case is probably going to wait until the eternal state.

But it's no less certain just because it will come then. And so as you think about this coming week, as you think about your life, how can you show the kind of patient, steadfast faithfulness that Noah showed?

If we want to be pleasing to him, that's a question we will be asking. Let's pray together. Indeed, our Heavenly Father, we do ask that you would help us to look forward to this coming week. And as we do so, Lord, that we would consider the example of Noah.

And we often pray, let us be salt and light in this dark and dying world. May we truly be that this week. May we take a stand when the truth is challenged. May we take a stand when what is good is denied and what is evil is said to be good.

May we not back down. May we be a prophetic voice of truth in this dark and dying world. May we be faithful before you and pleasing in your sight. We pray in Christ's name, Amen.