I guess it was about 3 and a half years ago that my dad called me up and said he had hurt his back and wouldn’t be able to make the drive up to Runaway Bay where he had been the interim pastor for a while, and he wanted me to go take his place for a couple of weeks until he got better. I said I would. I had preached a few times before but I was not called to be a preacher or a pastor.
Long story short, Pop wound up having to have back surgery and the church just kept asking me to come back and so that gig seemed to be working out pretty good for all of us; it worked out until somebody casually mentioned that I should be the pastor. I blew that off because it wasn’t a real option, I was just sure. But then later somebody else mentioned it and then it was even brought up at one of the many business meetings we had and I knew I had to finally explain to them why that was impossible.
And so I thanked them for the nice thought and then laid out plainly how that was not going to happen for all these different reasons. First off, I am divorced and for most churches, I wouldn’t have to go any further. That would be a deal-breaker right there. Also, I wasn’t called by God to be a pastor. I wasn’t educated and I had no experience. Thank you. Let’s move on.
And I thought I was plain. I thought I laid it out so that it was easy to understand. I explained all the reasons why it would never work, no way, no how! But do you know what happened? You’ll never guess. That church…this church called me to be their pastor. The first time I prayed about it, God made it plain to me just like He had been making it plain to the church all along.
In spite of what my resume said; in spite of what the world said, in spite of what other churches said, in spite of what even I said, this church followed what God said. And because this church did what God said to do, this church has been blessed. And it doesn’t have anything to do with me. From all the reports I have gotten, if these last 2 Sundays have shown anything, it is that God is at work at Christ Fellowship. God is at work, not Todd.
And God is at work at Christ Fellowship because it lives by faith. Hebrews 11:6 says that it is impossible to please God without faith. What that tells me is that the other side of the coin is that with faith you can please God. And this church has proven over and over again from Runaway Bay to Lake Bridgeport that this church will do what God says to do no matter what other people might say.
For us at Christ Fellowship it doesn’t matter what other churches think we ought to do. It doesn’t matter what the Southern Baptist Convention thinks we ought to do. It doesn’t matter what the banker or the realtor or the neighbors think we ought to do. We want to know what God says to do. And God has honored that attitude. He has honored our efforts. He has blessed us AND has blessed the convention, the banker, the realtor and He has most certainly blessed our community through this church.
And do you know why He has blessed us? It’s not because we are special or super-Christians or more spiritual than others. He blesses people who are obedient to Him. And when He says in 2 Corinthians 5:7 that we should live by faith and not sight then we know that there are blessings of obedience just like there are consequences of disobedience.
For today and for the next 3 Sundays I want to talk more about faith and obedience. And I want to do it by going back and looking at some of the great stories of the Bible. Do you remember when you were a kid and you would go to the doctor’s office or the dentist, there would always seem to be a big blue book on the shelf called the Great Stories of the Bible or something like that. Do you remember? Before I could read I used to look at the pictures of all the great stories like Noah and the ark, Daniel in the lion’s den and the exodus from Egypt. I was fascinated by those stories then and I still am today. And the one thing that all of those great, miraculous stories teach us is about faith.
It took faith for Abraham to be willing to sacrifice Isaac. It took faith for Elijah to call down fire from heaven. Just like it took faith for a little Wise County church to call a pastor nobody else would have. And because this church has already shown great faith, I know I am not teaching something new here, but I do hope to encourage all of us to continue to live by faith and grow in our relationship with the Lord by seeing how God works when His children are obedient in faith.
So turn, if you would, to Genesis chapter 6 as we start our story time for this week with a look at Noah and the ark. We will hit a few verses from chapter 6, a few from chapter 7 and a few from chapter 8 to get a good picture of this great miracle. Let’s start with Genesis 6:9-22. Then we will immediately go to chapter 7:17-24. And then we will read chapter 8:1-2 and 18-21. It’s not really as long as it sounds. Have faith!
“This is the account of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. 10 Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. 11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways.13 So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.14 So make yourself an ark of cypress[a] wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high] 16 Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit[c] high all around.[d] Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. 17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. 18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you.19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. 21 You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.” 22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.”
Chapter 7 “For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. 18 The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 19 They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. 20 The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits.21 Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. 22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. 23 Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark. 24 The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.”
Chapter 8 “But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. 2 Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky.”
18 “So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. 19 All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on land—came out of the ark, one kind after another. 20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21 The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.”
Ok. So after reading all that, I think we can all agree that this is just a fairy tale, right? It’s just a myth; a story told to entertain young kids and maybe to teach a good moral lesson. Oh, sure, just because Jesus believed it and Matthew, Luke, Peter and the author of Hebrews all believed it doesn’t mean we have to. I know it’s not true because “scientists” *wink wink* have proven that many animals could never fit in a boat that size.
And if they did fit, there wouldn’t be enough room to hold food and water for all of them. And how would only 8 people be able to take care of that many critters? There would be chaos. Not only that, but if the ark floated up to the top of the mountains and lodged there, how would the people, much less the animals, get down from such heights? It’s all just too much to believe for anybody with common sense.
On the other hand, if you have a hard time believing all of that then you must have a hard time believing that the sun comes up in the east every morning. You can’t surely believe that cells multiply in the body, that babies are born or that hair grows on heads! At least some heads. Because I dare you to explain how that works if there is not an infinite Creator Who can and does do miracles!
If you want to argue all that then you have missed the point. And the points I want to make this morning are that God gives instructions, God gives judgment and God gives promises. Let’s look quickly at how God gives instructions. You can have faith that God has given you instructions on how to live your life just like He gave Noah instructions. God gave Noah detailed instructions on how to build that ark. You see in chapter 6 that no detail was left out.
God told him how long, how wide, what to put on and what to leave off. And God gave those instructions because it was a matter of life and death for Noah. Do you realize that the only kind of boats they had in those days were only big enough to hold a few people and not meant to go any further than maybe a couple hundred yards from land? Nobody had ever imagined a vessel this big or imagined a need for one. Talk about thinking outside the box!
But in chapter 6 did you read the part where Noah asks God why and how? No? Did you see in chapter 7 where Noah complained that it was too hard and too much work? Or maybe it was in chapter 8 where Noah doubted God and His instructions. No. In fact, there is no record of Noah ever saying anything. But it does say in 6:22 that “Noah did everything just as God commanded him.”
Oh, I wish that could be said of me! I wish that God could have faith in me that when He told me to do something, I would just do it instead of trying to figure out why and then figure out a “better” way and then make excuses for not doing what I was told to do. God has given us detailed instructions on how to live our lives and He has given them in His Word because it is a matter of physical and spiritual life and death that we follow them.
So many times though we want to pray and ask God what His will is for something when He wrote it in His Word thousands of years ago. “Yeah, but God, see, my case is a little more complex than most and so I need to hear a new word from you. See, I have these feelings that make this different. I have certain beliefs that you have to fall into. I’m different, so talk to me differently. God, why don’t you speak to me?!”
Maybe He won’t speak to you because He has already spoken in the Bible and you have not read it or choose not to follow it. Why should He speak again if you choose not to listen? You can have faith that God has given you instructions for your life and you can have faith that not following those instructions will lead to judgment. Because God gives judgment. He always has and always will judge sin.
Just before the death of actor W.C. Fields, a friend visited Fields' hospital room and was surprised to find him thumbing through a Bible. Asked what he was doing with a Bible, Fields replied, "I'm looking for loopholes." Fields was a comic and that’s a humorous thing to say but at the same time a tragic reality for too many people. They want a loophole to what God has commanded. They want a way to live like they want to live and yet slip into Heaven on a technicality.
Well, you can have faith that God is a just God and there is no loophole. No man comes to the Father except through the Son, Jesus Christ. The people of Noah’s day didn’t think they were going to hell. Their good deeds outweighed their bad deeds. Well…almost sorta kinda. Oh, sure, there was some violence and disobedience but it’s not that big of a deal. Surely God would understand.
Well, from the first part of Genesis to the last part of Revelation you can see that God judges sin. Sin is anything that displeases Him and the Old Testament says in Psalm 7:11 that “God is a righteous judge, a God who displays his wrath every day.” The New Testament says in Romans 14:12 that “So then each of us will give an account of himself to God.” And we saw a few weeks ago that there will be a judgment to come for everybody. Not only did the other people around Noah suffer the consequences of their wrong living in this life, but they also will suffer eternally.
God gives instructions and God gives judgment. You can have faith in that. But you can also have faith that God gives promises. The beginning of Genesis chapter 8 says that God remembered Noah. Noah worshiped God and God blessed Noah and made the promise that He would never again destroy all living creatures as He had just done. Do you know that God gives His obedient children promises even today?
2 Peter 1:4 says, “And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises.” The Bible is filled with literally thousands of promises from God but I want to remind you of just a few. Matthew 11:28 says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Or how about “"But my God shall supply all your needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus"? That's Philippians 4:19.
1 Corinthians 10:13 says, “No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”
And one more: John 10:28 says, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.
God’s instructions are plain. His judgment is sure. And His promises are eternal. And for those followers of Jesus that are obedient, we can have faith in God. We can have faith that whatever we are going through, He is with us.
We can have faith that He will protect and provide for us. We can have faith that He loved us enough to send His Son to die for us and to pay the debt we owed for the sins we have committed. We can have faith that that is enough. Have you done that?
Have you asked Jesus to be Lord of your life and to forgive you of your sins? When we do that, His Word says that He is faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And you can have faith in that forever.
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