Noah's Ark Pt 1: Noah Builds the Ark

[0:00] The word of the living God. Breathed out for our sanctification, for our good, for reproof and correction and training and righteousness to make us more like Christ.

[0:14] ! Did it really happen?

[0:34] Did Noah really build a massive ark that really housed the lone survivors of mankind and the animals? And was there really a worldwide flood that wiped out everyone else?

[0:48] Is Genesis 6-8, this flood narrative in Scripture, is it describing actual historical events in time and space? Now I want to tell you what I believe the answer to be, which most of you probably can guess.

[1:04] And then over the course of the next few weeks, though, we're going to keep coming back to this question and providing different angles at answering that question that I think supports the conclusion that I have about this.

[1:17] I firmly believe that the simple answer to that question is yes. Yes, this was a real historical event that occurred in time and in space in this world.

[1:28] And why do I believe that? Why do Bible-believing Christians believe that? Well, for starters, it's most fundamentally, it's the same reason that I believe in the Genesis 1 creation narrative that we covered earlier.

[1:44] It's the same reason that I believe that Moses really did part the Red Sea and that, yes, Balaam's donkey really did talk. If you don't know that story, read it in Numbers 23. And that the Son of God was, in fact, born of a virgin Mary.

[1:58] I believe that these things are true because I believe that Jesus Christ died and rose again, which we just celebrated last week. And if Jesus of Nazareth died and rose again bodily from the grave, then he is truly the Son of God.

[2:15] And he is truly the Lord of everything. And everything that he says is true. And we need to take him at his word. Everything hinges on the resurrection of Christ, which we just celebrated last week.

[2:27] So if you have trouble believing in some of the accounts of Genesis, put that aside for a minute and go to the resurrection of Christ and wrestle with that. Because we believe Jesus rose from the dead.

[2:38] And if Jesus says that Genesis is history, which he does over and over again in the scriptures, then we need to take Jesus Christ, the Lord, at his word. So again, Jesus tells me this is history.

[2:51] And so I believe that this is history. You know, God, the only God, has revealed himself to us in Christ, the incarnate word, the word made flesh, and also in his written word.

[3:04] And this word is the source and the foundation of truth. And so that's why I believe that Genesis describes real historical events that occurred in time and space.

[3:16] And if that's the case, then our joy and our responsibility as followers of Christ is to submit ourselves to the authority of God's word and to interpret, this is really important, to interpret our worlds based on God's word and not the other way around.

[3:31] So important. And that includes this, that included the imago Dei, the image of God, man being made, male and female in his image. Really important then. That includes this catastrophic flood that we see here.

[3:45] Now here's another thing. This is kind of more anecdotal. Did you know that in most parts of the world, from China to the Middle East, to even the Native Americans, that there are stories of a great flood that have been passed down for thousands and thousands of years?

[4:00] Now they all differ widely. I was looking at some of them this past week. They all differ pretty significantly. But I want to ask, how did it come to be that all over the globe, such stories of a cataclysmic widespread flood are told?

[4:16] Could it be because it happened and that story has been passed down and it all finds its origin in this story, the one true story?

[4:28] The story that's been passed down, as Derek Kidner writes, by a family tenacious enough of its traditions to preserve its genealogy from Shem to Moses.

[4:39] Like we see this, the genealogies being passed down, meticulously kept records of. Could it be that they also preserved the real account of the flood? You know, as Francis Schaeffer concludes, he says, We would say then that the Bible gives us the history of the flood.

[4:55] The myths all over the world are contorted, but show that men everywhere have memory of it. Now, Scripture's true account of the flood narrative, it occupies a significant amount of space here in Genesis.

[5:07] Three whole chapters. And so we're going to be covering those over the next three weeks. Today is Noah's Ark Part One. Noah builds the ark. I didn't get too creative with the title this time around.

[5:20] Noah's Ark Part One. Noah builds the ark. Now, we're going to be walking through the narrative together first, and then at the end, we're going to seek to apply what we've learned to our lives. So are you ready to dive in to the flood narrative this morning?

[5:34] Okay, so the first thing, setting the scene. These are the generations of Noah. The passage begins. Now, if you've been part of our Genesis series and you've been trained to see the phrase, these are the generations of, as an indicator that we are turning the page and starting a new section in Moses' account, the chapters and verses in your Bible, they were brought along much later, but they don't necessarily indicate when the author intended for a new section to begin.

[6:04] We look at these are the generations of and realize, okay, he's bringing us into a new section of his narrative. In chapter 5, if you remember, the camera was following the godly line of Seth.

[6:16] It was the seed or the offspring of the woman through whom God had promised in Genesis 3.15, one would come to crush the head of the serpent.

[6:27] And so we were tracing that godly line of Seth. We had learned it wasn't Abel, right? Because Abel in chapter 4 was murdered. And it wasn't Cain, the murderer.

[6:38] He showed himself to be not from the godly line, but the ungodly line, the seed of the serpent. But hope was renewed when Adam and Eve gave birth to Seth.

[6:48] But then it wasn't Seth either because Seth died. And each generation to follow, as we saw that drumbeat in Genesis 5, and he died and he died and he died. That was a sign of the curse of death that was reigning over humanity because of sin.

[7:03] Except God interrupted that sequence. Do you remember that? He took righteous Enoch straight to heaven, right? Enoch didn't have to pass final exams. I don't know if that was your analogy, Brad, or not.

[7:15] Enoch walked with God and he was not for God took him. But Enoch wasn't the promised seed to save humanity. And then we saw a few generations later, Lamech fathered Noah.

[7:29] And Lamech basically prophesied that Noah, whose name means rest, would be the one to give humanity rest from the painful toil of life under a curse. But then a few weeks ago, we saw humanity had attained these new heights, new degrees of wickedness.

[7:47] Their corruption was total, we said. Externally, with the hands, internally, with the heart. And God saw that mankind was superlatively bad and he regretted making mankind.

[8:01] And it grieved him to his heart. So God resolved to blot out humanity and then the animals with them from the face of the earth. But, the text reads, Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

[8:17] There was inexplicable grace. And so the section concludes and we turn the page, so to speak, for the camera now to zoom in and then remain on Noah for the next four chapters.

[8:30] And what Moses first wants us to see, having set all that context here, is Noah's righteousness. Look in your Bibles, Genesis 6 verse 9. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation.

[8:45] Noah walked with God. Moses wants us to see Noah as shining in pure white. To be righteous is to live rightly according to God's standards.

[8:59] It's to follow, to obey God's moral law in actual everyday life. To be blameless, it speaks of the consistency or the wholeness of one's devotion to the Lord.

[9:13] The same word is actually used in the law, especially in Leviticus, of the unblemished, the blameless, unblemished animals required by God under Israel's sacrificial system.

[9:24] In terms of speaking of humans, it's not saying sinless perfection, because none of us can attain that, but rather a wholeheartedness towards the Lord. And then that final phrase, that Noah walked with God, it points back most immediately to Enoch, right, who also walked with God.

[9:43] And it points even further back to what Adam and Eve lost in the garden. We saw in chapter 3, God was coming to walk with them in the cool of the day. That's what they lost.

[9:54] But Noah here, he enjoys this intimate fellowship with his creator God. That's what God made us for. And it's part of that. Noah is submitting himself to God's loving authority.

[10:05] He's living out his faith in God through righteous deeds. And in many ways, I think Noah is what Adam was supposed to be. He is a type of second Adam.

[10:18] Now, the very next phrase may be one way that Moses wants us to see that connection between Noah and Adam. Adam had Cain, Abel, and Seth, among others, but those are the three that we see most prominent.

[10:31] Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Moses also uses that phrase to connect to the different sections. We're going to see that phrase over and over again, and Moses just connecting the sections together.

[10:42] He's also foreshadowing that all the nations of the earth are to come through those three men. But what is most prominent right here is Noah shining in purity, shining in righteousness.

[10:54] And that becomes even more apparent when we go to the next part and we see humanity's corruption. So verse 11 says, Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence.

[11:06] And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. Three times the text says that mankind was corrupt.

[11:18] Now this description here repeats what we already saw in chapter 6, verse 5, that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

[11:30] This is kind of just repeating that. It's bringing that back to the fore. Now the addition here, though, of the word violence, it adds to the gloomy scene that we already saw. The world in Noah's generation was basically like Gotham City.

[11:44] Right? Just wicked, violent, a terrible place to be. Now remember the connection we saw a few weeks ago. That same connection is even more evident here.

[11:55] At the end of Genesis 1, the text says, And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And now look at the text here, verse 11 to verse 12.

[12:09] And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt. And so a great and terrible reversal has occurred. Mankind was charged to spread life, to spread the goodness of God, the imprint of God.

[12:25] And mankind has been multiplying sin and violence rather than God's glory and goodness. And Noah, though, is the one righteous man amid an entire generation of the wicked.

[12:40] And so God turns to his righteous servant Noah like he would later speak with Moses, like he speaks with Abraham. And look at verse 13. God says to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them.

[12:54] Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. So note the third thing that we see here as the scene is being set for the flood. God's resolve to destroy. The word for destroy, interestingly, is the same word in Hebrew as corrupt.

[13:10] So mankind was corrupt. They were corrupt. They were corrupt. God says, I'm going to destroy. Same word, actually. And as Derek Kidner concludes from this, what God decided to destroy had been virtually self-destroyed already.

[13:26] God had already made this declaration that he's going to destroy the earth back in verse 7. But now he's telling his righteous servant Noah. He's disclosing his plan to Noah. And so the scene is now set for this flood narrative to follow.

[13:40] And it leads us into this next act of the drama. And so here we see God's command to build the ark and Noah's obedience. The first part of that is this.

[13:52] God instructs Noah to build an ark and he provides the specs to Noah. The specifications for building arks is what he provides to Noah here. Look at verse 14.

[14:02] Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it. The length of the ark, 300 cubits. Its breadth, 50 cubits.

[14:13] And its height, 30 cubits. Make a roof for the ark and finish it to a cubit above and set the door in its side. Make it with lower, second, and third decks. So God doesn't just tell Noah to build an ark.

[14:25] He does. He also provides Noah with the specifications for building it. Now your Bible might have a little footnote that tells you that a cubit is equal to about 18 inches today.

[14:36] And so that means that the dimensions of the ark would have been about 450 feet long. So try to envision this on a football field, taking one and a half football fields, right?

[14:46] 450 feet long by 75 feet wide by 45 feet high. Now that makes it, as one commentator describes, eminently seaworthy.

[14:59] Eminently seaworthy. Now this is not actually a minor point. So at the start of the sermon, I mentioned that there being flood stories all over the world. The flood story that is most similar to what we find in Genesis is the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh.

[15:14] Now there's a lot of differences between the accounts, but one of them is that in the Babylonian account, the ark is a perfect cube. It's a perfect cube. Now imagine that ark in the water, right?

[15:28] It wouldn't have survived the wake coming off of a stand-up paddleboard going down the Mystic River, right? So EB employees, try presenting the cube submarine design at the next concept to the Navy and then see where that goes.

[15:43] Now as I said before, I believe we're dealing here with actual history here in Genesis, right? Events that occurred in time and in space. And so it should be no surprise to us that the dimensions that God gives to Noah for this giant seafaring vessel are actually consistent with what we would expect for a ship to survive the harsh ocean environment, right?

[16:06] And also to house all the animals, but we're going to talk about that later. So after giving the specks of this ship, God then gives the reason why. Why is he telling Noah to do all this?

[16:18] Look at verse 17. For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven.

[16:30] Everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. So why does God instruct Noah to build the ark?

[16:47] Because he's flooding the earth. But he's covenanting with Noah. That's why. The phrase, all flesh in which is the breath of life. That phrase recalls how God breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of life, Genesis 2.7.

[17:05] God alone is the one who by his spirit animates all living creatures which are but flesh. And what he gives, he can take away.

[17:15] So Elihu declares this in Job. Job 34.14.15. One of Job's friends. He says, If he should set his heart to it and gather to himself his spirit and his breath, all flesh would perish together.

[17:30] And man would return to dust. Is that not what is happening here in Genesis? Now God has already revealed three times his intention to wipe out corrupt humanity.

[17:42] But now he reveals for the first time the means of that judgment. He says, A flood of waters. And so in light of that, the ark that God just prescribed is the gracious means of salvation for Noah and his family.

[17:57] And so we see here, God is choosing to establish a covenant with Noah. Now this word covenant is massively important in scripture. And this is actually the very first appearance of that word.

[18:11] A covenant, it's like a contract, but it's relational. It's personal. It's parties entering into a committed relationship with one another. Like when a man and a woman enters into a marriage covenant.

[18:25] Now here we're not yet told the details of God's covenant with Noah. We're going to see that in a few chapters. But for now it's clear, God's covenant with Noah means that God is promising to graciously preserve Noah and his family from death.

[18:41] And that by means of this ark. Even though this flood is coming. So the next thing that God does, he instructs Noah what to take on the ark. And you shall come into the ark.

[18:52] This is still verse 18. You shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. So he's, bring your family. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you.

[19:06] They shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their kinds. And of the animals according to their kinds. Of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind. Two of every sort shall come into you to keep them alive.

[19:19] Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten and store it up. It shall serve as food for you and for them. Now the language that is used here. Male and female according to their kinds.

[19:30] The birds, animals, and creeping things. What does that all remind you of? Genesis chapter 1. Right? The creation account. God is preserving a remnant of his living creatures through his righteous servant Noah.

[19:46] And I think we're supposed to see, and this will become more clear in a couple weeks, that this is a kind of new creation. I said that Noah is like a second Adam. This is sort of like a new creation in a sense.

[19:58] Now again, the question of historicity arises. Could this really be true? Is it really possible for Noah and his family to have taken on board all of these animals to survive months on an ark?

[20:16] And again, yes, I believe it's true. This is the word of God. The breathed out word of God. Now verse 20 says that all these birds and animals shall come into you to keep them alive.

[20:26] Passive there, right? And I think it's suggesting God's almighty power is going to be operative in the animal. They don't have to go out on a safari to the ends of the earth and bring animals to them.

[20:38] Representative kinds are going to come to them to be loaded onto the ark. Now I have not been there. Actually, I know there's at least two of you. Who has been to the ark encounter in Kentucky?

[20:49] Oh, we've got a number. I'm the minority here. Yeah, I really want to get out there. It looks really cool. The ark encounter is a part of the ministry of Answers in Genesis, which is one I would commend to you if you have questions about a lot of these things that we're talking about, the historicity of these things.

[21:07] The ark encounter is a full-scale model of Noah's ark in Williamstown, Kentucky. And it is a demonstration of the viability of the ark to really hold Noah and his family and all of those animals and for them to be adequately fed with the food that would have been available to them.

[21:27] Now it is helpful to remember here, the Bible isn't saying that two of every single species of animal came on board the ark. They would not fit in the ark.

[21:38] Two of every kind. And Answers in Genesis has actually gone to great lengths to technically show how this could have been possible in a real physical ark of the size we see in Genesis chapter 6.

[21:51] And then how all the variations of species that we see today, or the ones that have gone extinct, could have come about through that remnant of animals. And so I think that's really cool.

[22:02] But again, the fundamental starting point is this is the word of God. Christ is risen. What he says is true. So all that's really neat. And I think we keep seeing over and over again that things that we're learning today are actually confirming what we see.

[22:15] Archaeological digs that show, oh, maybe there was a real Jericho that really fell down. I mean, we keep finding evidence of stuff in Scripture. It's not a surprise. It's God's word. What he says is true.

[22:28] Okay, so why does God say all these things? To preserve life. To preserve life. Now again, this is significant. Think about this. God was under zero obligation to create.

[22:42] He was just fine among the Trinity. A relationship of perfect love. But he chose to create life, us, for our enjoyment, for his glory.

[22:53] Right? And then we fell. And he was under no obligation whatsoever to make a promise in the garden that mankind would be saved through some deliverer to come from the offspring of Eve.

[23:05] Right? God did not have to do that. But he did. He chose to do that. And so God is going to ensure the continuing existence of humanity. And then in connection with humanity, the living creatures that he made subject to our rule and authority.

[23:21] The ones that he cares about because he formed them by the word of his power. Now all of this is a sign of God's majestic grace. His goodness. His faithfulness.

[23:32] And these are going to be themes we're going to keep seeing over the next year in Genesis. God's instructions are to preserve, like I said before, a kind of new creation. This remnant to repopulate the earth after the flood.

[23:45] And the paragraph concludes, verse 22, chapter 6. Noah did this. He did all that God commanded him. This is the third sub-point here.

[23:56] Noah does all that God commands. Now again, against the backdrop of Noah's wicked generation, right, this highlights all the more. This wholehearted commitment that Noah has to the Lord.

[24:09] Now I want you to listen to how the author of Hebrews reflects on Noah's obedience. This is Hebrews 11, 7. By faith, Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear, constructed an ark for the saving of his households.

[24:26] By this, he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. So the ark having been built, God issues Noah another command, right?

[24:37] A command to enter the ark. And then we see Noah's obedience. And so look at chapter 7, verse 1. Then the Lord said to Noah, Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation.

[24:52] God instructs Noah to enter the ark. Why? The text tells us because of Noah's righteousness. Now as we've seen, Noah represents the godly line of Seth.

[25:05] Those who walk by faith. Those who walk with God. Those who submit to God's authority. Those who call upon the name of the Lord. Those who are righteous by faith. And so for this reason, God is graciously choosing to spare Noah and his family with them.

[25:21] And then God instructs Noah which animals to bring. Take with you, verse 2, Now some see a contradiction between this and the earlier instructions.

[25:40] But it's not a contradiction. It's just a clarification. It's all. Now it's interesting because it's not until the giving of the Mosaic law that this distinction between clean and unclean is expounded.

[25:52] But just like we saw earlier with the offerings of Cain and Abel, apparently there were aspects of worship that God had already revealed to men. And so it's likely that the additional pairs of clean animals would have been for the purpose of sacrifice to the Lord.

[26:08] We don't fully know. But again, God gives a reason. Why is he instructing Noah to do this? He says, To keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth.

[26:19] For in seven days I will send rain on the earth, forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground. So once again, why? Why?

[26:30] To preserve life in the midst of this life-destroying flood that is coming. And God gives Noah here this seven-day notice. That's going to take time to load the animals on board the ark.

[26:43] It's going to take time to be fully stocked out and make ready the provisions. And then we see here that the flood is going to begin and it's going to last for forty days and forty nights. And so again, in faith, Noah does all that the Lord commands.

[26:59] He does all that God commands. Now I want to, here, we've reached the end of walking through the narrative. Now as we sort of step back and consider this first third of the flood narrative, we should be asking, what is God through Moses seeking to communicate to his audience, right?

[27:17] The nation of Israel. What is he seeking to communicate to them? And in light of that, and in light of the gospel, what is he seeking to communicate to us today? And that's just, that's what we do anytime we're reading scripture.

[27:29] And I think the message that Israel would have heard, and the message for us today is the same, only amplified in light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And here it is, and this is going to sound fairly similar to what we said three weeks ago.

[27:43] Judgment is coming for the wicked. Judgment is coming for the wicked. But salvation, by grace through faith, for the righteous. I think that's kind of maybe a main message here in this passage.

[27:58] But the question is, what does that mean for us today? And here's the first thing that it means for us today. It means that we need to heed the warning that judgment is coming.

[28:10] Now the flood narrative here, it beckons us to heed the warning that God is surely going to punish the wicked. The wages of sin is death, Romans 6.23. Now three weeks ago we used the analogy of hiking a mountain, if you remember this.

[28:24] The trail has a summit, and the path of sin has as its destination death. That is the inevitable end point. If you're on that path, then it is going to lead there.

[28:37] God's judgment is surely going to come. Now Jesus actually looks back at Noah and his generation. In Luke chapter 2, Jesus says this, Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man.

[28:52] That's a title for Jesus. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Jesus isn't saying that eating, drinking, and marrying is bad.

[29:07] He's saying that they were just going about their normal earthly activities, right? They were going to work. They were going to school. They were folding laundry. They were mowing the yard. They were attending weddings, right?

[29:18] Entirely unaware of the devastating destruction that was upon them. And so we today are called to learn from Noah's corrupt generation.

[29:29] Heed the warning. Judgment is coming. An eternity awaits. The wicked will be punished, but the righteous will be saved. And even if it doesn't seem to be the case, it is.

[29:43] Peter also looks back on Noah in the flood narrative, in both 1 and 2 Peter. In 2 Peter 3, he also compares the current generation to the generation of Noah.

[29:57] And Peter urges us to see God's delaying of final judgment, not as evidence that it isn't coming, but as evidence that God is kind and patient, and he is giving us more time so that more people might repent and be saved.

[30:16] Heed the warning. Judgment is coming. And so answer the call and live in light of eternity. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7 29, Now I've got news for you.

[30:35] Either you're going to die, or Jesus Christ will return. Unless he does that awesome Enoch thing, or the Elijah thing. He could do that. But for most people, you will die, or Jesus Christ will return.

[30:48] But either way, this present age is coming to an end. It's coming to a conclusion. And it's giving way to an eternity that awaits. And that reality, the eternal reality, ought to shape and inform how we live in this life.

[31:05] And so the question becomes, what does it look like to live in light of eternity? What does it look like? Well, here's the first thing it looks like. It looks like faith in God's righteous servant, Jesus Christ.

[31:19] Now as we consider this story of Noah, we're absolutely right to see Noah in his unwavering faith in God amid a crooked generation, his resolve to obey the Lord by faith, even when the commands seem a little crazy.

[31:36] Awesome. Thanks, Jason.

[31:57] We're right to look at Noah's example and to seek to imitate his example. But before Noah is an example to us, Noah is something else, right?

[32:09] Noah is first a type. Noah is first a shadow of the greater servant to come, right? The only one who has actually ever lived a perfect life, who has been perfectly righteous, the only one who was truly, spotlessly blameless before God and who carried out all of God's commands, even amid a crooked generation.

[32:32] Jesus Christ is God's greater and more righteous servant. And through him, by his death on the cross, by his resurrection from the grave, salvation has come to the race of Adam.

[32:47] And salvation has gone out to the ends of the earth. By faith in him and him alone, our sins are forgiven since Christ endured God's punishment, his judgment once for all.

[33:03] The sins of all who trust in him are fully forgiven. And because our sins are forgiven, we will be spared from the destruction that is to come.

[33:13] And so this first and most important way that we live in light of eternity is by placing our faith and our trust in Christ and God's righteous servant Jesus to be the Lord and the Savior of our lives.

[33:26] Now here's the next thing that it means. It means, for the saints, faith expressed in loving obedience to God. That is righteousness. It means faith expressed in loving obedience to God.

[33:40] But the order is crucial. Right? Because we can never be righteous apart from Christ. We're actually going to see in Genesis 9 that Noah is not righteous.

[33:52] He sins. Okay? That's coming. It's sort of a new fall after the new creation. Christ is the righteous one. And by grace, he imputes to us.

[34:03] It's a sort of a theological term. He gives to us as a gift his righteousness by faith in him. We don't earn the favor of God. We don't earn the righteousness of God. We're given it.

[34:14] And that's what makes grace, grace. But having been united with Christ, our joyful response, our loving response to God, our calling in the gospel of Jesus Christ is to then live out that new identity that we've been given.

[34:32] Right? To live out our righteousness. We, over and over in 1 Corinthians, we said the phrase, be who you already are in Christ. He has made us righteous. Now we're called to live out our righteousness by faith.

[34:45] Romans 1.17, the righteous to live by faith. And so we can look at Noah's shining example against the backdrop of his wicked generation.

[34:56] And we can seek in the Spirit's power to imitate him. And so this means first, like Noah, loving the Lord wholeheartedly.

[35:07] And we demonstrate that through obedience to his word. Jesus says, if you love me, you will obey my commandments. I mentioned 2 Peter 3 before.

[35:18] After he keeps making those comparisons to Noah's generation, he says to his audience, since all these things are thus to be dissolved. In other words, since eternity is coming, judgment is coming, a new heavens and a new earth are coming, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God?

[35:40] Lives of holiness, lives of godliness. Those are lives of faith, expressing themselves in loving obedience to God and to his word. Those are lives that look like righteous Noah, walking with God, obeying God's commands.

[35:57] Those are lives that look like Jesus Christ. And we're called to this kind of life even when it doesn't seem to make sense and looks foolish to the world.

[36:10] Now think about Noah for a second. Think about Noah's faith to construct this behemoth boat on dry land over the course of probably decades.

[36:22] We don't know how long. We know that God gave him about 100 years. And so somewhere in the course of that, it would have taken probably decades. Think about the real investment. Like, it didn't just appear.

[36:33] He's planning. He's strategizing. He's thinking about where he's going to get the materials from. He's getting the materials. Maybe he amasses a small team. I don't know. I guess his family probably. He's using his time, his money, his labor.

[36:46] Okay? The rest of Noah's generation, what are they doing? They're living their lives as normal. They're eating. They're drinking. They're marrying. They're being given in marriage. But crazy Noah, I mean, like, he's off over there just doing his thing, building this giant boat, probably telling everyone how God is going to come send a flood to destroy everything.

[37:05] I mean, what a lunatic. What a lunatic. Like, Francis Schaeffer again. So Francis Schaeffer, he ran La Brie Fellowship.

[37:15] It's a Christian retreat center in Weymaz. I think I got that right. It's French, and I don't know French. Weymaz, Switzerland. And Weymaz is a town set in the Swiss Alps. And the only reason I tell you that is because of what he says in his quote.

[37:27] He says, what a picture of Christian faith this is. It is not that there are no propositional promises. Like, God gives him a promise. The flood's coming. I'm going to save you.

[37:38] It is not that there are no good and sufficient reasons to know that the things are true. But listen to this. Faith is standing against what is seen at the moment. This is what I can see with my eyes.

[37:49] It's standing against that and being willing to be out on the end of a limb in believing God. It's not a leap. It's not a denial of rationality. But it is sitting in this boat out in the middle of Weymaz when most people say it just doesn't make sense.

[38:04] Friends, if we're going to follow Christ, if we're going to walk with God, it is going to look at times foolish to the world.

[38:16] And it ought to. And if it doesn't ever look foolish to the world, we might need to step back and assess, am I really following Christ the way that I'm supposed to? Jesus tells us that we're to be in the world, but not of the world.

[38:30] Right? He's left us here as a witness, but we're no longer of the world. And so, Tim Keller, the men are going through a book called Everyday Revolutionaries by J.D. Greer, but he references a Tim Keller sermon in which Keller talked about how there are kind of three ways that Christians have looked about being in the world.

[38:48] And I think this is really helpful. He says, first, there's the tourist. Right? And so, what does a tourist do? A tourist goes to a place. They have no intention of staying there. They're kind of just there for themselves. And then they're going to leave.

[38:59] Right? So, you don't need to worry about it. There's also the immigrant. Right? The immigrant comes and intends to set roots down. They're going to be, they're going to fully assimilate into the culture and become part of the culture.

[39:11] The tourist, the immigrant. Well, there's also the exile, which is what we're called to be. Now, what, how does the exile live? The exile is in a foreign land that's not their final home.

[39:23] But they're going to be there for a while. And they're going to care about that land. And so they're going to set down roots, kind of. But they know that it's not their final home. They're going somewhere else, ultimately.

[39:34] So they're going to work and live among the Babylonians in exile. But knowing that they're going to a heavenly home, that that's an eternal home. And that means that they're going to look different at times because their values are different.

[39:49] Their destination is different. And that's what we're called to be. We're going to look crazy to the world. I think we get that right now because of the direction that our culture has gone. And I'll talk about that a little more in a bit.

[40:00] But, you know, as I was reflecting on this, doing things that don't make sense to the world. I mean, this looks like a lot of things. It looks like how we hold up marriage and children, which are despised in the world.

[40:13] And we're having lots of kids. And that looks crazy, right? Like the Leach family is a little crazy for how many kids they have. And it's because we care about children. They're made in the image of God. And I was thinking about the Hulls.

[40:26] So we support Harold and Christine Hull and their missionaries in Papua New Guinea. And just think, like, what does that look like to the world? The Hulls have left the comforts of modern life in America, all of their family, their home, their friends, everything that they know.

[40:40] And they've chosen to move to Papua New Guinea, a culture they don't know, a language they don't speak, to go to a remote tribe that they've never met so that that tribe might hear the gospel and be saved.

[40:53] Now that's nuts. That's absolutely nuts. Why would they give that up? It's because of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's because they know that God is true and Christ is risen and their eternity is in heaven.

[41:07] They know that that's their story and that changes how they view their life in this world. And so I think we can look at Harold and Christine Hull and be inspired. Not all of us are called to the mission field but there are so many ways that we're called to live lives differently here in our context.

[41:24] Here's the other thing. Even when we're a tiny minority, we're called to a life of faith, expressed in obedience to God, even when we're a tiny minority.

[41:37] Now for a long time in this nation, evangelical Christians were something of a majority. Culture, and if they weren't a majority, at least culture viewed us positively.

[41:48] Right? And then that began to change. Right? And culture kind of morphed and shifted and they saw evangelical Christians not as positive, not as negative yet, but as sort of neutral.

[41:59] Like, we'll tolerate you. It's okay. You probably need to change, but it's okay. That's not the case anymore in most, it hasn't been in New England for a while. Christianity is viewed not as positive, not as neutral, but as foolish and as actually destructive and hateful.

[42:19] We have become, we are a minority in a secular culture. And I think sometimes we sort of want to hang on to what it used to be. It's not what it used to be anymore.

[42:29] We're a minority in a secular culture. But here's something we need to remember, saints. Listen to these words again from Derek Kidner as he reflects on the flood narrative. He says, sin now at full spread must bring forth death.

[42:42] And the first full-scale exercise of judgment demonstrates that with God, the truth of a situation prevails regardless of majorities and minorities.

[42:53] If as few as eight souls are saved, seven of these owe it to a single one, and this minority inherits the earth. Christians, majority doesn't mean right, and minority doesn't mean wrong.

[43:08] We are a minority within our culture. And we might be, we don't know what the future entails. We might become a smaller and smaller minority. We pray that the Lord saves more people and adds to the church, but we don't know.

[43:21] But no matter how small of a minority we become, no matter what opposition we may face in the days ahead, we know that God's truth always prevails.

[43:33] Many of you are the only followers, or maybe one of just a few, of Christ, where you work, in your department, or in your class at school, or in your neighborhood, or some even in your family.

[43:47] And our joyful calling, brothers and sisters, in light of eternity, is to, no matter the cost, to surrender our lives to Christ in wholehearted devotion to him, because we know how this is going to end, and we know what he has done for us.

[44:04] And so it's our joy to do that and to cling to the word of God, even as we look foolish, and even if we become a smaller and smaller minority. And church, as we do that, as we increasingly do that, Christ gives us the analogy in the Sermon on the Mount.

[44:21] We shine even brighter and brighter and brighter in the midst of an evil generation, like a city on a hill. Right? The city on a hill, its light is visible in the darkness all around.

[44:33] And it's beckoning the lost world, come and see Christ and worship the Father. That's what we do as we live these lives that are so different from the world.

[44:44] We're beckoning them into the ark of refuge, which is Christ himself, and to be saved from the destruction to come. Please pray with me.

[44:54] Heavenly Father, we thank you for this story. It's not just a fable, this is history that you have put into your word, your written word, which has survived thousands of years, and it is such a good message for us today.

[45:12] Ultimately, we cling to Christ. He is our righteousness, and he has clothed us in his righteousness by faith. By faith. Which is the same way that Noah was made righteous.

[45:24] By faith. And so, Lord, we look to you first to give, to replace these filthy, sin-stained rags with your righteousness, and in your righteous clothes, Lord, we want to actually live out that identity as the righteous, chosen ones, the elect saints.

[45:41] For your glory, first and foremost, God, because we want to please you, we want to honor you in the conduct of our lives, but also because we want to be a witness to this generation.

[45:54] We want our kids to be a witness in their generation, that there is one name through which salvation comes. We want the world to see that and to be drawn to it, Lord, and even if they're not drawn to it, we want to honor you.

[46:10] So, God, help us to do that as we go from here today. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen.