Can We Be Sure About the Future — Ian Paisley

Pick up the authorized version of the Holy Scriptures in front of you in the pew and turn with me to the New Testament, to the book of Hebrews, and we're reading at Hebrews chapter 11, the 11th chapter of the book of Hebrews.

We're singing, we're reading from verse 1 to verse 12. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, for by it the elders obtained a good report. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts, and by it he being dead yet speaking. By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death, and was not found, because God had translated him.

For before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God. But without faith it is impossible to please him, for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

By faith Noah, being warned of God that things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness, which is by faith.

By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place that he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed, and he went out not knowing whether he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise.

For he looked for a city which had foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Through faith also Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised.

Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the seashore innumerable. God will bless the reading of his infallible book to all our hearts for Jesus' sake.

I take the promised Holy Ghost, the blessed power of Pentecost, to fill me to the uttermost. I take. Thank God you undertake for me. And the people of God said, Amen. Can we know the future, the mystery and destiny of the unknown?

Humanity's Fear of the Unknown Future

The world dreads the very thought of things defined in the Bible as not seen as yet. People fear the incoming billows of time because of what they may uncover or what they may abolish and utterly destroy.

So the worldly man and woman seek to insure themselves by heaping possessions together so that they will not be left empty in time of terrible need. They will still have their possession as a sort of insurance against the worst of happenings.

Others throw reason to the wind. They excel in plunging into the pleasures of this world. They seek to drug themselves against the overwhelming tragedy of the calamities of our times. What fools man and woman can be.

What crazy fools, sinful man and sinful woman can be. Here at the beginning of this tremendous eleventh chapter of Hebrews, three men come to the parade ground. Ebal, Enoch and Noah. God places them in this order together because all three of these men had a most remarkable approval of God himself.

They were not man pleasers. They were indeed God pleasers. Of Ebal, we read that God himself testified of his gifts. Of Enoch, we read before his translation, he pleased God. Of Noah, we read he found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

By way of contrast, Enoch walked with God. He walked up to God and he remained with God. But Noah also walked with God but he walked on with God. There is a contrast between Enoch and Noah. Enoch was taken away from the wrath that was to come.

He never heard the wheeling of the damned. On the other hand, Noah heard those wheels and knew the terror of the wrath that was to come. He was delivered himself from death by death. The flood which marked the doom of the world was for Noah the means of his own deliverance.

The means of the deliverance of his family and the means of delivering the creeping things of the world and the fowls of the air. The ark was his coffin. He entered it and became a dead man as far as the old world was concerned.

So by death he was delivered from death. He floated to a new world and he became the founder of a new race. Enoch reminds us of all the saints that shall miss the last and final Armageddon on this earth.

They will be taken before the final onslaught begins. In Noah we have a picture of the latter saints who bear bravely the onslaught of the apostate world and will themselves witness the finality of its torture.

Noah's Faith and Justification by Faith

If you look with me at Hebrews chapter 11 and read with me the verse 7. By faith Noah being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear prepared an ark to the saving of his house. By the which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness.

Which is by faith. In those words we have seven most important matters brought to our attention. First of all we have the justification of faith. This is one of those scriptures which ends with the same word with which it opens.

A good bible study would be for you to start in Genesis and mark every text of scripture that begins with the same words as it ends. That would be a good study for you. And when you do that, do it again so that you will be sure you made no mistakes as you pass through the word of God.

The text commences with the words by faith. It ends with the words by faith. The text rings the bell of truth to commence it. And it rings the bell of truth again to conclude it. True religion is in the person of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

We can only intimately, we can only spiritually, we can only eternally be linked to Christ by the golden chain of justifying faith. It is by faith and by faith alone which we can be made part of Christ and part of His flesh as the scripture declares and His bones.

Faith is described in the bible as believing on the name of the Son of God. That is on His person. That promise, Thomas Watson the great Puritan said, is but the cabinet. Christ is the jewel in the cabinet.

That promise is the dish. Christ is the food and the dish upon which the soul feeds. And as faith rests on Christ's person, so in His person, under this plan, Christ crucified. Faith glories only in the cross.

God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus. To consider Christ as He is crowned with all manner of excellencies. To rather stir up admiration and wonder, but to look on Christ as He bleeds and dies.

That is the proper object of our faith. Therefore it is, Thomas Watson rightly says, faith in the Savior's blood. Faith is a secret which eternally links us to the blessed Savior. This is what justifies the soul and saves it eternally.

Who was the secret of Noah's life? Noah built the one that it represented. It was a type of the Savior. Noah's secret, Noah's salvation was Christ. Noah's strength was Christ. Noah's sanctity was Christ.

Noah's sacrifice was Christ. Noah's sky bowl was Christ. And Noah's security was Christ. Christ to Noah was his all and in all. Justification by faith. But look secondly, motivation by fear. Noah being warned of God.

Fear as the Motive for Obedient Faith

The true believer is not partly a believer and partly an unbeliever. A true believer in Christ is totally a believer in Christ. Noah believed God's gracious promises, but he also believed God's threats.

There's no use saying I believe the promises, but I don't believe God's judgments. The true believer believes in all. The Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending. Faith is something for everywhere.

Grace is something for anywhere. Noah required faith to saw up the trees. And he required as much faith when he sawed the trees, to get the wood for the ark, as when he pitched the finished ark, with pitch, without and within.

His faith was active at all times. When God delivered to him the commandment to make the great ark. His faith was active when he did everything necessary to complete that great colossal task. His faith was active when he entered the ark and the door was shut.

His faith was active when he sealed the massive ocean, produced by the flood, an ocean without a bottom, a brim or a shore. His faith was active when he uncovered the sides of the ark and came out again into the dried up world.

You'll notice that the door that God shut him in with never opened again. Please mark that. That door that God shut never opened again. How did he get out of the ark? By opening the door, no. By removing the covering, the covers that were on the ark.

That's what the Bible says. Please read it. Because when God shuts a man into himself, he's shut in with God forever. I give unto my sheep eternal life and they shall never perish. Neither shall any man pluck them out of the fathers.

Noah's faith was active when he looked out the window of the ark. His faith was active when he opened the window and sent forth a raven and a dove. His faith was active when he was fruitful and multiplied and replenished the whole earth.

Noah believed what God revealed to him. You've got to believe what the Bible says about everything. For everything in this book is God's eternal truth. You can't pass by a chapter or a verse and say I'm not accepting that.

You have to accept it all. The dot in the I, the stroke in the T, the tittle, all must be received. And Noah believed what God revealed to him. He had the holy fear of a thrice holy God overcoming and controlling his heart every day.

Every part of Noah was in captivity to Christ. He was propelled forward by the almighty fear of God. The unction of that movement within his soul helped him to preach a sermon 120 years long. Preacher of righteousness for 120 years.

He was never discharged from the duties of that unique and unparalleled preaching. True religion, let me repeat, is in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. We can only be intimately, spiritually, and eternally linked to Christ by that golden chain.

Noah as a Preacher of Righteousness

Look with me at 2 Peter chapter 2 and verse 5. Here's what Peter tells us. And spared not the old world, but seeded Noah, the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly.

2 Peter 2 and 5. That same unction led him to complete the 120 years of building the mighty ark of three stories, which had only one door and one window. That movement of fear enabled him to fill that ark with the food necessary to feed all animals and birds who would seal with him.

Noah felt it not. He stayed himself on the almighty power of God. Oh, that this fear, the fear of God almighty, would seize on all our hearts. That it would imprison us with its might. It would drag us away from our follies with sin and wickedness.

It would bring us to a place where we would know that we would be willing in the day of the manifestation of God's power. This is the way. And this is the way we all must go. There is one thing you can be absolutely certain of, that the fear of God will deliver you completely from all the fears which dominate the minds and the souls of men and women in this present evil world.

Noah is commanded by God to make such a vessel as would save him and his family from a flood which would drown the whole world. Someone said to me the other day, were there many people in the world when it was overthrown?

Yes, there were millions. The increase in the population of the earth was tremendous because the length of the life of people in the pre-flood area was almost a thousand years each. Just think about that.

There was millions in this world. People laughed at him. They said, the poor old man's doped in. He's had a bad dream. Did Noah care? No. Noah continued to preach. He didn't change a comma in a sermon.

He didn't change one line of the message that God called him to deliver. He stood and faced the total world and he delivered as God's ambassador the same message for 120 years. I'm sure if you had listened to the BBC in the days before the flood, you would have heard a queer character of Noah.

They called him for everything, but he was no fool because he was the intimate friend of the God of all wisdom. The true fear of God was upon him. All the shots fired about him were only paper shots as far as he was concerned.

He carried himself by the help of God through all the 120 years of hell upon earth that the devil raised against him. And he compromised none, but stood true to the God who had instructed him to stand up for Jesus as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

God's Revelation of Things Not Yet Seen

Notice, thirdly, the communication of God. Things not seen as yet. What did God communicate to Noah? It seemed to the whole world with the exception of his family that no one was to be saved but his family.

Do you think of that? Noah knew that not one person through his preaching would be converted. He didn't give up. He didn't say, I'm not going to preach sermons that are not going to be converting sermons.

He preached what God gave him to preach. I am not responsible for what happens when I preach the word of God. God is responsible for what happens. I am told to preach it as it is. And that's what happened to Noah.

Look at the strange situation. Theists, for 120 years, to construct a great ship miles away from the sea or any great river. How would this lumberer's ark ever ride the waters? Where were these waters that would be sufficient enough even to float such a colossal ship, let alone sail in it?

But this did not alter one iota what Noah set out to do. He was determined and he was dedicated. The boat, he was absolutely sure, would seal the waters of such immensity as those of the days preceding the first day of creation, which was called, the waters were called, the face of the deep.

You see, this man, Noah, had a vision of things not seen as yet. As the whole world in its entirety walked in impenetrable darkness into an unknown future, Noah saw as clearly as 120 years ahead into the future.

He was a child of the light, walking in the light. He knew that God was the God of the impossible. Therefore, he built the ark as confidently miles from the water as if it was being built beside the greatest water in all the world.

In 120 years, he took no time off. He did not work to trade union hours. He invested every minute to do the work and will of God. He was known to be the madcap of his age. A scoffing world and a filthy race abused him daily as he went out to do the will of God.

I see him go into the forest. I see him take off his cloak. I see him rolling up his sleeves and taking his axe and instructing his sons, his three sons, to do likewise. I see this man kneel in prayer before he started the day's work.

This man did not want to be subtle in intellect. He just wanted to be childlike in his faith. And so he was. That's why he saw things to come. Notice the preparation of deliverance. He prepared an ark.

Total Dedication to God's Work

This task was colossal. It was an impossibility made possible, an undertaking beyond achievement yet achieved, and a goal unreachable, yet it was reached. Noah's faith was no flash in the pan. It burned with white heat for 120 years.

Only almighty faith, divinely imparted, could make any man do this job. Some saints cannot survive 120 seconds in prayer, but this man survived and conquered 120 years. These years of prayer, these years of preaching, these years of boat building matured the faith of Noah.

The graying and aging creature grew stronger than strong. It was unstoppable what a preparation this was. To it, the human race owes its survival. Here was one man with a faith that could not be quenched.

With a determination which would not capitulate. With zeal that would not be dulled. With energy that refused to be tired. With force that would not weaken. And with a patience which made him more than a conqueror.

God's work demands our total dedication and wholehearted zeal. Not one ounce of our body, not one ounce of our soul, not one ounce of our spirit must be withheld from God when God gives us an engagement to do something for the saving of our houses.

God demands our souls. God demands our all this very day. God gave His all for our salvation. How can we hold back anything for the furtherance of His work on earth? And especially for the salvation of our homes.

All our energies must be spent in view of the last day we will serve the Master on this earth. Noah's eye for 120 years was on that day when the boat would be finished. When the animals and the birds would come in.

When he would lead his wife and his sons and their wives in. And when God would shut the door. Once that door was shut, all Noah's labors were over. Were finished. He had fought a good fight. He had finished the course.

Noah's Condemnation of the World

He had kept the field. But notice fifthly the condemnation of the world by which he condemned the world. What a word is that? The world judged by Noah. They treated him as a madman. They judged him to being out of his mind.

But in reality, he was a very sane judge. They were the fools. But he was the wise philosopher. Noah took part in no debates. He entered into no arguments. He entered into no polemics. The world might jest about him.

But he simply proclaimed the truth and went on to do the business that God ordered him to do. By this he condemned them all. They could not answer the eternal truth. Notice first of all Noah's confession of faith.

He condemned the world. He repudiated the religion of the flesh. Carnality and fleshly lust all against God and God's truth. Jesus Christ said, as in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man.

They did eat, they drank, they married wives who were given in marriage until the day that Noah entered into the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all. There was only one head of a house who was firmly glued to the old faith.

And that was the man Noah. He never faltered during the 120 years. The true confession to Adam and Eve after their fall in the Garden of Eden Noah proclaimed without apology. The power of Christ to save.

He who was the seed of the woman would bruise the serpent's head. And Noah made the building of that ark his testimony to the supernaturalness of the God whom he worshipped. The members of the antediluvian societies of his day could laugh at this old man.

But when the 120 years of propitiation finished they were exposed for what they were. The enemies of God. Secondly, Noah's conduct condemned the world. Noah's conduct was an irritant to this world. The worldling might laugh but it was Noah who had the last word of the argument.

His confession condemned him. His conduct condemned him. His words condemned him. The great ark condemned him. Every kneel was a protest against their lies. I wonder how they all felt. As thousands and thousands of people watched that ark flowing.

How did they feel? And as Noah condemned the world as the ark left where it was built guided by the great pilot which was Almighty God Himself. Noah condemned the world by his condemnation sermons. God spared not the old world but saved Noah the 8th person a preacher of righteousness.

What a sight! An old man, 600 years old taking on the whole world. What a condemnation! The very fact that he had no converts to his ministry but only his own family added fire to the rebuking conflagration which his preaching kindled and increased.

All the while he walked with God. He was always in step with God. And no one could gainsay that. But he became something. Look at the Bible. He became the heir of the righteousness which is by faith. What a verdict that was!

He says, I have seen thee, Noah righteous before me in this generation. God searched the millions on earth but he found only one person was heir to the righteousness. Noah had righteousness which was not his own.

It was the impudent righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ. Clothed in our Lord's own righteousness he stood as a marked man in an age of the deepest and darkest apostasy. God approved him and used him to preserve the whole human race.

Righteousness, Adoption, and Inheritance

Noah had no Bible. He had no law. He had no prophets. He had no Psalms. He had no Gospels. He had no epistles. He had no book of Revelation. But he had the living Word of God in his soul. And he knew that blessed truth.

He that hath the Son hath life. Life that no flood could drown. While others perished he endured. While others drowned he was delivered. While others perished he was pardoned. The epistle to Hebrews has much to say of heirship.

Christ is appointed heir of all things. The heirs of salvation are mentioned. The heirs of promise are mentioned. The heirs of righteousness are mentioned. The heirs of Jacob are mentioned. We should never forget what we are made by our adoption into the family of God.

Our own catechism defines the question what is adoption? And it says, Adoption is an act of God's free grace for it he pardoneth all our sins and accepteth us as righteous in this sight only for the righteousness of Christ impure to us and received by faith alone.

Salvation by Faith and the Security of Christ

Finally and seventhly, this righteousness was by faith. Here we have the secret and sign and seal of it all. Righteous which is by faith. This was not a works salvation. This was a faith salvation. I picked up an old hymn book this week.

And I read these words in it. And I'll finish with them. When Noah with his people were ordered to embark, eight human souls, a little crew, entered on board the ark. Though every part he might secure with bar or bolt or pin, to make the preservation sure, Jehovah shut him in.

The waters that might swell, their billows rage and roar, they would not stay of the assaulted sides, nor burst that battered door. So souls that enter Christ believe are quickened by vital faith, eternal life at once received, and never shall see death.

In Christ his ark the Christian rides, not wracked by death nor sin. How is it he so fast abides? Why? Because the Lord has shut him in. I finish this sermon with one question. Will you be shut in by God on the judgment day?

Or will you be shut out by God on the judgment day? That's the question we all must answer with Judgment Day Honesty. Let's bow our heads. Father in heaven, we thank thee for the goods and blessed word of God.

We thank thee for Noah and his testimony. And in this evil day in which we live, make us faithful unto death, and thou shalt give us a crown of life. Bless the other services tonight. Fill them with thy presence.

And if there be a man or woman, a boy or girl here lost, and on the road to hell, save them this night. Bring them to the Savior. Wash them in the blood. Number them among the heirs of God and the joint heirs with Jesus Christ.

And may God's grace and God's mercy go with us in Jesus' name. And everybody say, Amen and Amen.