amazing jakes

“for i determined to know nothing amongyou except jesus christ, and him crucified” (1 cor. 2:2). all right, let’s turn to hebrews chapter11...hebrews chapter 11 and we’re going to look at noah and the work of faith, thegreat story of noah is summarized in one verse, verse 7 of hebrews 11, "by faith, noah beingwarned by god about things not yet seen in reverence prepared an ark for the salvationof his household by which he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousnesswhich is according to faith." now one of the things you would note fromthat is you just read a bible verse that condenses genesis 6, 7, 8 and 9...in that sense, itis a very cryptic verse, it assumes that you

know the story. and that’s a fair assumptionbecause after all, this book was written to whom? to whom? hebrews. they knew the story,they were extremely familiar with the story. in fact, the whole chapter is cryptic, thereferences to abel, brief. the references to enoch, brief. the references to noah, brief.a little more detail with regard to abraham and sarah, references to moses relativelybrief, references to others, brief. and in verse 32, you just have names, gideon, barak,samson, jephthah, david, samuel, the prophets. so the assumption here is that these peopleknow the old testament. they’re familiar with these characters and their stories. andcertainly every jew was familiar with the astounding story of noah. noah is the nextin the list of faithful men, men whose lives

were marked by faith. i remind you that jamessaid, “faith without works is dead.” what he meant by that is true faith is supportedby action. and noah is certainly the classic illustration of that fact in the old testament.his action of faith is in some ways more remarkable than anyone else. the bible everywhere andalways teaches that men come to god by faith alone and then go on to live in faith, thatsimply means to take god at his word and trust in that word as true. never by works or self-effort,or ceremony, moral achievement do you reach god.. you always come to god by faith. ithas always been so, it has never been any different. but when the gospel of grace and the gospelof faith came along, being preached by christ

and the apostles, it seemed to the jews ofthat day like a new message because judaism which, of course, originally was a messageof salvation by grace through faith had been corrupted into a system of works. the hebrewshad been exposed their whole lives to a kind of judaism that taught that you attain salvationby your efforts, your moral efforts and your religious efforts. and while there were somegodly believing jews, they were but a remnant. and the jews in general had been taught thatsalvation comes by works. god hated that, as he always does. but thejews had placed their hopes in nationality, circumcision, possession of the law, conformityto the law, observance of ritual, all the externals. and maybe the model of that, themost well-known model of that would be the

apostle paul, right? he was circumcised theeighth day of the tribe of benjamin, a zealous jew as measured against the law, openly blameless,a traditionalist...which he thought was gain to him. but when he found the true gospelof faith and grace through christ, he said it was nothing but rubbish. the theme of salvation has always been grace.and that’s the whole point of the chapter, to say to these hebrews, “this is not new,this is old,” and the lead in to chapter 11 comes, as you’ve noted if you’ve beenwith us, in verses 38 and 39 where the writer of hebrews quotes from habakkuk 2:4, “thejust one shall live by faith.” faith has always been god’s way. it has never beenany different than that.

so the gospel of grace and faith is not new.and the rest of chapter 11 makes the message crystal-clear by giving us a list of all thosewho can be classified as men and women of faith. the means of righteousness, both inthe new covenant and the old covenant was faith. now we have seen the example of abel and thelife of faith. we’ve seen the example of enoch and the walk of faith. and now we cometo noah and the work of faith. noah’s story is really amazing. and in verse 7 you justget a very brief summary. the writer of hebrews knows they know thestory. most of you know the story, but some of you may not know and the story really needsto be told in its fullness, or you’re not

going to know what this verse is talking aboutbecause there aren’t any details here. the only detail here is that he prepared an ark.we don’t even know for what. it refers to things not yet seen. what things not yet seen?and how did he condemn the world? and how did he become an heir of righteousness? so in order for us to get the full accountof noah’s faith, we have to go back to the great story. now what begins the verse isthe first thing to be known. “by faith, noah being warned by god..” he had nothingto go on but what god had said. he had nothing to go on but the word of god. and god toldhim something was going to happen that had never happened in the history of the world.was noah going to believe this? was he going

to be committed that what god said was infact true. let’s go to the story back in genesis chapter6. it is, in some ways, the most remarkable old testament illustration of faith and oneof the most remarkable in all of history because of what it involved. now let’s go down tochapter 6 and verse 13...genesis 6:13. “then god said to noah, ‘the end of allflesh has come before me for the earth is filled with violence because of them and behold,i am about to destroy them with the earth.” god comes to noah and tells him he’s goingto destroy the entire earth. about 1500 or more years have passed since the creation,the story of man on earth had just gotten worse and worse and worse and worse sincethe fall. sin is frankly running rampant.

it is an ever-increasing escalating offenseto god and so god delivers a decree that he’s going to destroy the whole earth and thengoes on to say specifically by water he is going to drown the human race, sparing onlynoah and his family and no one else. as in verse 18, “i will establish my covenantwith you and you shall enter the ark, you and your sons and your wife and your sons’wives with you.” now this is the most remarkable judgment eventin the old testament, the destruction of the entire human race, with the exception of eightpeople. history tells us that god will judge sinners. the bible tells us that god willjudge sinners. and he does and he judges every sinner one at a time. it is appointed untoman once to die and after this, the judgment.

every sinner faces the judgment of god, onesinner at a time. but periodically there are these massive judgments. for long periodsof time, god leaves sinners to their own devices and the fulfillment of their own desires,and then suddenly and devastatingly intervenes in human history in cataclysmic fashion. thisin human history is the greatest of all cataclysmic judgments. it is the second most astoundingevent in the old testament, the first and most astounding event in the old testamentis the creation, the creation of the entire universe in six days. this is next to thatas a monumental event. now we don’t have the time to go throughall the detail. we have done that in a study of genesis and you can get a hold of that,you can download that, if you want, on an

mp3 file or you can get the cds or whateveryou want from grace to you and go through the details of this judgment. but for us,for this time, we’re just going to look at what god said he was going to do, whathe asked noah to do an dhow noah demonstrated his faith. what brought about this judgment by god? let’sgo back to verse 5...genesis chapter 6 and verse 5. “then the lord saw that the wickednessof man was great on the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was onlyevil continually. the lord was sorry that he made man on the earth and he was grievedin his heart. the lord said, ‘i will blot out man whom i have created from the faceof the land, from man to animals to creeping

things to birds of the sky, for i am sorrythat i have made them.’” that was what did it. god saw that the iniquity,the wickedness of man was great on the earth. it was so sweeping that every intent of thethoughts of his heart was only evil continually. this is chronic rather than spasmodic. everythought, every idea, every motive, every imagination and therefore every deed, the result of everythought was an expression of the fallenness of man, the depravity of man. verse 11 adds, “the earth was corrupt inthe sight of god and the earth was filled with violence.” by the way, the hebrew wordfor violence is chamas, used of abuse of people and general rebellion. the septuagint, thegreek translation of the old testament, translates

that as adikia, unrighteousness. verse 12, “god looked on the earth and behold,it was corrupt for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.” you’ve probablynoticed the onlys and the alls, there’s a sweeping condemnation of judgment. verse 6 tells us that the lord was sorry thathe had made man on the earth and he was grieved in his heart. this is a kind of anthropomorphicstatement. god doesn’t undo anything he does and he doesn’t do things that he wisheshe hadn’t done in the truest sense, but this is to express an anthropomorphic emotionthat god regretted what he had done...similar to the statement our lord makes about judas.“it would have been better for that man

if he had never been born.” this is a kindof hebraic way to express consummate grief. so verse 7, the lord says, “i will blotout man whom i have created from the face of the land from man to animals to creepingthings to birds of the sky for i’m sorry i made them.” blot out...that is a verystrong hebrew word, machah, precise, graphic language, it is a word that expresses theidea of erasing something. that is to say, removing it all together. i will erase manfrom the planet, a promise of wholesale death and destruction. now that gets us back to verse 13. god thenspeaks to noah and tells him, “the end of all flesh has come before me, for the earthis filled with violence because of them. behold,

i’m about to destroy them with the earth.” there’s one incident in the beginning ofthis chapter, the opening four verses, that tells you how bad it was, that people literallywelcomed demons to come into them, men welcoming demon-possession, cohabitating with womenand the fruit of that was satanic alliances, horrendous children that carried on the wickednessto its extreme levels. so here god speaks in verse 13 for the firsttime personally to noah. he will speak to him three more times, chapter 7 verse 1, chapter8 verse 15, chapter 9 verse 1. and the message that he gives to noah is this message of massive,massive judgment. you know, it must have been so staggeringfor noah to hear this. there were millions

of people in the world by this time. we can’tknow the exact number but i’ve heard everything from eight million to a hundred million. imean, the world is densely populated. in the first place, people lived for nine hundredplus years and you can produce a lot of children in that amount of time. just to believe thatthis is actually going to happen is certainly an act of faith. there must have been somethingin him that would sort of parallel the skeptics that peter tells us that when they hear aboutthe second coming say, “that’s never going to happen, all things continue as they werefrom the beginning.” the same kind of skepticism must have existed in the mind of noah, atleast at one point when he talked to himself, but everything goes along normally the sameway. how can this possibly be?

and if that’s hard to swallow, try thison. verse 14, “make for yourself an ark of gopher wood. you shall make the ark withrooms and shall cover it inside and out with pitch.” now god hasn’t told noah how he’s goingto destroy the world yet, right? he just says in verse 13, “the end is coming. i’m goingto destroy the whole human race.” noah doesn’t know how. so he gives him a command withoutan explanation. the explanation doesn’t come until verse 17, “i’m bringing theflood of water upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life fromunder heaven. everything that is on the earth shall perish.”

so at the beginning, god says to noah, “builda big box, ark, tebahin hebrew. the word is used throughout the flood narrative and itreally means box, or chest. it’s not shaped like a boat, it’s not shaped like a ship.it has no propeller. it has no pilot. it has no sails. it has no rudder. it has no captain.it has no navigator. it’s a box. and, by the way, it’s only used this word one othertime in the old testament and it is used in exodus chapter 2:3 through 5 to describe thebox that baby moses was put in, to float down the nile. god used a box to save moses sohe could save israel. god used a box to save noah so noah could save the human race. in both cases, the box was a refuge from deatht o provide a future in one case for israel,

and another case for the human race. the arkof the covenant is a different hebrew word all together. now god then says, “make a box,” backto verse 14, “make it of gopher wood.” we don’t have any idea exactly what thatis. there’s some suggestions as to what it is. it appears nowhere else in scripture.it may have been a kind of a cedar pine which was plentiful. now remember, noah was nota ship builder and this wasn’t a ship, this was a box. this is an immense task, he can’tdo it on his own, very likely, even with three sons helping him. he would have to had tohire multiple carpenters and design people to effect this thing and to move around thepieces of this giant box. and he says, god

does, “you shall make rooms, compartments,or dwellings.” likely they numbered in the thousands. “and then cover it inside withpitch.” and that is a kind of calking substance. pitch, by the way, is related to the hebrewverb to smear, smear it, seal it so it doesn’t leak. then verse 15, it gets very interesting. “thisis how you shall make it.” now if he’s thinking of a box just for him and his family,hey, that would be an 8 by 10 would do. he doesn’t know what the box is for. “thisis how you are to make it. the length of it is three hundred cubits, the breadth, or widthis fifty cubits and the height is thirty cubits.” that’s 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, 45 feethigh. this is not a design for speed. this

is not a design for easy guiding. this isa design for stability. it is the largest vessel ever built until the nineteenth centurywhen giant ships were built because steel was used, iron was used. the largest shipever built was launched by the p. & o. line, it was called the himalaya. it was 240 feetlong. that was t he largest ship in history. later that year, in 1858, they built the greateastern which was almost 700 feet long, a massive ship. and when that ship was built,historians say it was five times the tonnage of any ship before it. so big that it wasbigger even than ships that were built after it was built. so when you back all the way back thousandsof years to the time of noah, this is far

larger than any ship anyone would have everimagined or conceived of...unheard of to build a box this big. in 1844 brunell built thegreat britain which was 320 feet by 51, by 32. what’s interesting is, the people whostudy the ratios of ships understand that all these ratios are similar. when you cometo modern ship building in the nineteenth century, the ratios are the same as the ratiofor the ark. at a ratio of about six to one, length to width because god knows about stabilityand later ship builders even today will tell you six to one to eight to one is requiredfor stability. the ark then is way ahead of its time. nobodywould have understood this kind of design, another indication of the divine nature ofscripture. its length is six times its width

and keeps it stable in the midst of tossingseas. as a rectangle it has more stability and because it’s a rectangle and doesn’thave pointed ends and then rounded sides, it is one third larger in capacity than asimilar sized ship with a hull. the gross tonnage, 1415 thousand tons. the internalspace, a hundred thousand square feet. the volume, 1.5 million cubic feet. it’s a massiveboat. some have calculated that the capacity isequal to five hundred and twenty-two boxcars. and each boxcar can carry 240 sheep so youcould carry in this box a total of 125 thousand sheep. the reason people calculate that withsheep because sheep would be a sort of average sized animal...some smaller, some larger.so it could handle as many as 125 thousand

animals. thousands of compartments are built in thismassive box to house, at this point, no one knows not what, but it’s certainly sufficientlylarge to carry what the lord finally tells him it’s going to carry, two of every speciesof animal in the world. and then enough space for noah and his family and some additionalanimals for sacrifice and food. only supernatural revelation could so design a ship of thatsize, of that dimension to contain that population of animals. now when god gives noah the command to dothis, it is 120 years until the flood. this is what you would call a long-term project.did he start building immediately when god

commanded him? well it’s very likely hestarted thinking about building, and then he had to figure out how to build. and thenhe had to try and find some people who could design a building like that, a box like that.we don’t really know how long it took to build it but the assumption could be he probablystarted very early and began to put the design together and thoughts together and then toassemble the components and begin to build. there are people who think that the floodstory is a fictional invention. it’s pretty hard sell because of the precision with whichthe dimensions of this ship are designed. now what god told noah to do was to builda flat-bottom barge with no rudder. and you would ask yourself, “what in the world wouldi be doing that for?”

well god gives him more detail. “you shallmake a window,” verse 16, “for the ark. finish it to a cubit from the top.” nowthe best way to understand that is probably that the roof overhangs the box and just belowthe roof there’s an opening all the way around for much needed ventilation...as youwould imagine. the origin of the word used here for window, tsohar, is very obscure butit seems to connect with sources that mean light. the thing would be dark if there wasn’tsome light coming in. though it is very likely that below the overhanging roof there wasan opening between the beams that held the roof up. an opening 18 inches wide betweenthe roof and the sides of the ark just under the roof and interrupted only by the posts,providing ventilation and light, set back

under the roof so that the rain wouldn’tcome in. set the door on the side of it, he is told. “set the door on the side of itand you shall make it with lower and second and third decks.” one door. now in this box, noah doesn’t know it, he’sgoing to spend a year. he’s going to spend a year floating over a drowned planet. this is a cruise without a stateroom, withouta porter in the most primitive conditions imaginable. this is a year in a stable. butthere’s enough room here with three different floors and thousands of compartments for everything. why am i doing this? verse 17, “cause i’mgoing to bring the flood of water upon the

earth to destroy all flesh in which is thebreath of life; from under heaven everything that is on earth shall perish.” i love thisbeginning, “behold, i, even i..” supernatural judgment is coming. i’m doing this. i’mgoing to drown the world. the word “flood of water” is a technicalterm, mabbul, that is used only in genesis 6 through 9. it is as if god picked a wordexclusively to describe the flood. it has one other use in psalm 29:10. his purposeis to destroy all air-breathing creatures, everything excluding those in water who willsurvive. everything that is on the earth shall perish. this is not a local flood. this is a worldwideflood. and if we had time we can go through

the rest of the story and see how it has tobe a worldwide flood because all humanity on the face of the earth dies. chapter 7 verse23, “he blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the earth from man toanimals to creeping things, to birds of the sky, they were blotted out from the earthand only noah was left together with those that were with him in the ark.” we also know that it was a worldwide floodbecause of the depth. it couldn’t be a local flood because it covered mount ararat andmount ararat is more than 17,000 feet high. simple mathematical calculations will tellyou that if the flood rises to above 17,000 feet, it doesn’t go down like that. it spreadsover the planet. we know it’s a worldwide

flood because its duration is 371 days, ayear. and it is the reason why i have on my desk a seashell found about two miles eastof my house in santa clarita. what’s a seashell doing in santa clarita? what are sea animalartifacts doing all over the grand canyon? and why do you find a buried mastodon in thetundra in the northern edge of russia frozen and when uncovered, dug up and the contentof his stomach examined, his stomach is full of tropical plants? this is a universal flood. by the way, i have a tusk from one of thosemastodons, pre-noah. pretty neat. and by the way, the piece of the tusk that i have iscarved by a man in a hut on the northern edge of siberia and he carved it into a mastodon.the massive flood.

the bible is clear when it discusses the theologyof the flood, that this is a universal flood because it compares it to the coming destruction.second peter 3 it tells us that in the way that god destroyed the world by water, hewill destroy the world by fire. and that is a universal destruction in both cases. so there’s lots of indications that thisis a worldwide flood. and the most obvious one is that is exactly what the bible says,only eight people survived. there’s a promise and i read it to you in verse 18, “i’llestablish my covenant with you,” this is the first time covenant appears in scripture,it is a covenant with noah and his family, to spare them. “and of every living thingand all flesh, you shall bring two of every

kind into the ark.” now he’s startingto get the details of why the box is so big. “keep them with you alive, male and female,of the birds after their kind, of the animals of their kind, of every creeping thing ofthe ground of its kind, two of every kind will come to you to keep them alive.” you know, that would be my first questionwhen i heard the part about you’re going to bring two of every kind. you immediatelysay, “just exactly how am i going to do that? how am i going to get two of every kingof animal, bird, creeping thing into this thing?” a little further information tells us thatthey will come...they will come. god is going

to gather them. this is an astounding responsibility.this is a great opportunity to exercise a little doubt, wouldn’t you say? “ areyou kidding me? a flood? what is that?” there had never been one. “rain? what isthat?” there never had been any. up to this point, a mist watered the earth, there wasa canopy around the globe. it was all a tropical environment. there were no seasons as we knowthem. there were no ice caps on poles. it was one universal climate under a common kindof canopy, mist. and that’s why you find mastodons on the upper edges of the arcticcircle with tropical vegetation in their stomachs. what are you talking about, rain? what doyou mean, flood? here? and by the way, noah was living in a wilderness.there’s no water there. this is a remarkable

opportunity for a little bit of sensible doubt,i would think. i suppose if it were any of us we would have said, “could you go overthat again? rain? flood? float? boat? two of every kind of animal?” that’s what makes it so remarkable in verse22 when it says, “noah did according to all that god had commanded him. so he did.”folks, that is a monumental act of faith, an absolutely monumental act of faith. andbecause of that, of course, he was spared. why him? go back to verse 8, “noah foundfavor in the eyes of the lord.” why did he find favor in the eyes of the lord?verse 9, “cause noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time and noah walked withgod.” i think that’s pretty amazing because

it was noah, mrs. noah and the kids and theirwives in the world. and you think living the christian life is tough and you’re surroundedby all these folks stimulating you to love and good works? can you imagine what it waslike for noah and his family to live in a world that was so corrupt, every other humanbeing was drowned? this is a remarkable man, not to be underestimated.this is a man who believed what god said was true, which tells me he believed in sacrificelike abel did. which tells me that he believed that he was a sinner and needed a sacrificefor his sin and he needed to receive grace and forgiveness from god. this tells me thathe knew what it was. and it says it here as it did with enoch, that he walked with god.he was in true righteous communion and fellowship

with god. he was a righteous man and god madea promise. that’s what a covenant is to this man. and he head the promise and he obeyedthe promise. now all of that sort of gets us to the pointof hebrews chapter 11. as i said, we don’t want to go in to a whole lot of detail, solet’s go back to hebrews chapter 11 and consider what the writer tells us. and it’sa remarkable testimony of this man’s faith. “by faith, noah being warned by god aboutthings not yet seen.” what are things not yet seen? cataclysmic world judgment, by meansof, secondly, a flood, as a result of, thirdly, rain. did noah know the world was corrupt?absolutely. did he know that he was different than everybody else? absolutely. did he understandthat god was holy and righteous and a god

of judgment? of course he did. he’s notliving in the dark, by the way, folks. not at all, you don’t want to underestimatethis man. there was a lot that he knew. remember now, we’re 1500 years into human historyand god has revealed himself and he knows his god and he walks with his god and he trustshis god. so being warned by god about things not yetseen, he acted. now i just want to tell you three things about his faith, okay? just threethings, they’re listed here. one, he obeyed god’s word. he obeyed god’s word whenit was way beyond anything he could experience or conceive or comprehend. it says, “inreverence he prepared an ark for the salvation of his household...in reverence he preparedan ark for the salvation of his household

for 120 years.” over that period, he builta massive 15,000 ton ship in the middle of the wilderness, for one reason, because godtold him to do it and god told him the flood would come and the judgment was inevitableand he obeyed. this is the essence of faith. faith doesn’thave to understand, it doesn’t have to comprehend. faith reaches out for something that is beyondexperience, beyond comprehension. i think we understand that a little bit. we walk byfaith and not by sight, right? we’ve talked about that. we’ve entrusted our eternityto god. we’re living in faith, trusting christ for a heaven we’ve never seen, toescape a judgment we’ve never seen. the bible says that all sinners will go to hell.the bible says that there will be a holocaust

of divine judgment on the earth in the futureby fire. we believe that, we have not seen that. but we live in faith and by faith weobey the gospel which is the ark of safety for us. god has provided for us an ark torescue us from future judgment and we have gone into that ark, the ark is christ. so his faith is, first of all, demonstratedin his obedience to god’s word in a matter which he could not experience, or even conceive.secondly, his faith not only showed up in his obedience but it showed up in his preaching.we could say it this way, he obeyed god’s word and he announced god’s judgment. youmight say, well he believed it but it was so bizarre he really didn’t say much aboutit because he was afraid people would think

he’s crazy. but no, it says also in verse7 that by his obedience in building this massive box in the middle of the wilderness becauseit was going to rain and there was going to be a flood the likes of which no one had everexperienced, he condemned the world...he condemned the world. that very act was a constant statementfor 120 years that judgment was coming...judgment was inevitable. and that is why it says, “noahwas a preacher of righteousness, and god preserved him with seven others when he brought a floodupon the world of the ungodly.” noah was a preacher of righteousness. as long as he built the box, he was preachingcoming judgment. he was declaring coming judgment. and god was so patient, right? a hundred andtwenty years, 120 years of patience, as genesis

6 says, god preaches this message throughthe building of the box. it must have been the topic of everybody’s conversation constantly.“crazy noah.” do you remember what we looked at when wewere...and i’ll just review this because i think it’s worth to be reviewed, whenwe were considering enoch back in chapter 5 of genesis. we also saw the patience ofgod because, you remember, enoch lived 65 years and became the father of ...whom?...methuselah.and i told you, methuselah means “sent out,” “shot out.” the name methuselah was aprophecy, a divine revelation was fixed in the name methuselah. when that child was giventhe name “shot out,” or “sent out,” god was connecting that child with the timewhen his judgment would fall, when he would

send his judgment. and the year that methuselahdied is the year the flood came. and to show you the grace of god, methuselah lived longerthan any man, 969 years. the grace and the mercy and the patience of god. people knew things. the institution of sacrificehad been in place since abel. they knew that sinners need to come to god not offering theirown merit, their own achievement, their own works, but recognizing their own sin and thatthey are worthy of death and understanding that god will provide a sacrifice in theirplace. they knew the seriousness of sin because they knew cain. cain’s life overlapped.he lived for centuries and the mark of cain went with cain and everybody understood thecurse of sin, the horror of being cursed by

god. cain was a living illustration of howdeadly sin is. by the way, adam lived 930 years and toldhis tragic story of the fall probably every day of his life. and then there was the preachingof enoch who was a preacher of righteousness, according to jude 14 and 15. and then therewas the ministry of the holy spirit, “my spirit will not always strive with man,”which means the spirit was striving with sinners, doing his work of conviction. and then therewas the preaching of noah. all these lives overlapping. as long as methuselah lived,he would talk about his father who three hundred years after he was born, after methuselahwas born, took a walk with god one day and walked right into heaven. and how many peopledid methuselah tell his story of a father

who walked with god and lived in such a waythat he didn’t even die? and methuselah’s father, enoch, was an illustration of whatwill happen to every believer who will some day enter into the presence of the lord andconquer death. so the generation of noah’s day had to spurnsacrifice and atonement, they had to reject repeated warnings and repeated messages ofjudgment and righteousness. divine revelation had to be despised and rejected in this maddash into corruption. and yet god waited and waited 969 years, in the case of methuselahand 120 years in the case of noah. but noah’s faith is marked by his obedience in doingexactly what god told him to do and his willingness to be a preacher of righteousness and givethe message that went along with the work

he did, proclaiming the inevitable coming,devastating, worldwide judgment in the drowning of the human race. he was preaching that theonly escape is righteousness. how amazing and how many converts did he have? none. the third thing that is said about him ishe obeyed god’s word, he preached god’s judgment, he received god’s righteousness.he became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. boy, that sounds likea pauline concept, doesn’t it? that sounds so new testament. he became an heir of therighteousness which is by faith. he believed god and because he believed god’s word,god granted him righteousness, imputed righteousness to him. that’s what it means in verse 8of genesis 6, “noah found favor, or grace,

in the eyes of the lord. he was a righteousman, blameless in his time, noah walked with god.” chapter 7 verse 1, “then the lord said tonoah, ‘enter the ark, you and all your household, for you alone i have seen to be righteousbefore me in this time.” he is an old testament illustration of justification by faith. incovenant relationship with god, he believed god and god accepted his faith and grantedhim righteousness. he is a righteous man. he is blameless before god. is he perfect? oh no, no, no. we know that,don’t we? when you get in to chapter 9 you find that he was guilty of a sin. he was caughtnaked and drunk. noah’s not a perfect man

before men, but he is a perfect man beforegod because by faith, righteousness was credited to his account. we understand that as a new testament truthbut this is telling us it’s an old testament truth. if you read romans, you will read inchapter 3 that by the works of the law no flesh is justified. if you read philippians3, as i quoted it earlier, paul says, “i went about to establish my own righteousnessuntil i found the righteousness of god granted to me by faith in jesus christ.” the great sweeping doctrine of justificationis that to the one who believes god, in noah’s case, he believed all that god had revealed.in our case, we believe all that god has revealed

and that means that we believe the full message,all the way through his son jesus christ. and when you believe that message from theheart, god will grant righteousness and cover you with his own righteousness and view youas blameless. and you will, having been captured into the ark of safety who is christ, be deliveredfrom all future judgment. peter understands this so very well. he understandsthat christ is the ark of safety. christ is the one who protects us from judgment. peterwrote about that in his epistles. i won’t take time to get into it, but he uses thatas kind of a warning for the future in chapter 3 when he says, “in the future there’sgoing to be another judgment, the day of the lord will come like a thief in which the heavenswill pass away with a roar, the elements will

be destroyed with intense heat, the earthand its works will be burned up.” there’s coming another holocaust of proportions likethis and even greater. and the only ark is faith, faith in the word of god all the wayto the complete revelation in jesus christ. father, again your word has spoken to us withits clarity and its power. we thank you for its consistency, how it stands every testof scrutiny, examination, comparison. we rejoice in its truth while on the one hand like john,it is sweet to our taste, it is bitter to our stomachs, it must have been so for noah.it must have been, in many ways, both a joy to know that he was to be saved and rescuedfrom judgment and a horror to know that everybody around him would perish and thus there wasa kind of passion surely in his heart as he

proclaimed judgment and called people to faithand righteousness. so it is for us as we think about the future, on the one hand, gratefulthat we have found our way into the ark of safety who is jesus christ and we rejoicein that and yet at the same time we sorrow over those who will perish in the devastationof that final judgment. we thank you that when christ comes in judgment,it won’t be as it was in the days of noah in the complete sense. yes, the comparisonis made so as it was in the day of noah, will it be in the coming of the son of man, peoplewill be going about their business, marrying, given in marriage, doing all their daily tasksand they will be swept away in fiery judgment as they were swept away in a flood of judgment.but the difference will be, and we thank you

for this, there won’t be eight souls saved,there will be many...there will be thousands, there will be millions, and we thank you forthat hopeful promise and reality. may we be faithful as noah was, to be preachers of righteousnessto this generation, warning them of judgment to come and calling them to the gospel ofgrace and the righteousness which is imputed to those who have faith. thank you, father, for the greatness of yoursalvation, given to us though we are utterly unworthy. we give you praise in your son’sname...amen.