Faith of Noah Part II

Noah didn’t have proof, applause, or even a weather forecast. He had one thing: God’s Word. We pick up the story of Noah’s faith from Hebrews 11:7 and ask what it means to trust God about “things not yet seen” when your world has no visible signs that change is coming. If you’ve ever felt stuck waiting for confirmation before you obey, Noah’s 120-year build will challenge you in the best way. 

We talk about why authentic Christian faith isn’t positive thinking or a gut feeling, but a confident response to what God has said in Scripture. From Romans 10 to James 2, we explore the link between faith and works, why real belief shows up in real action, and why passive “faith” can quietly turn into spiritual drift. We also reflect on 2 Peter 3 and the confronting reminder that the day of the Lord comes suddenly, pushing us to live cleaner, steadier, more Christ-like lives now. 

Then we zoom in on the gritty reality of obedience: the sheer size of the ark, the long grind of building, and the courage it takes to keep going while people laugh. Finally, we connect the ark to Jesus as the true ark of salvation (1 Peter 3:20) and our calling to “people the ark” by sharing the gospel and living as witnesses. If this helped you, subscribe, share it with a mate, and leave a review. What’s one work of obedience your faith is asking for right now?

Good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are in the world - Welcome to Grapevine Ministries.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Now, continuing on from where we left off last week, um, I was talking about, you know, um Noah and his faith and the fact that we had to uh destroy everything, you know, human fools for centuries have ruined life everywhere that there was little worth saving.

Noah’s Faith Starts With God’s Word

SPEAKER_01 0:27

And okay, we understand that this is talking about authentic faith, the faith of Noah. All right, and uh we've set the foundation last week, and now we need to get a better understanding of Noah and why the flood was going to happen. Firstly, I think Noah's life shows us that true faith has a basic foundation. Noah would say that faith in God is not a hunch, it's not positive thinking, it's not a leap in the dark. No, he would tell us that faith has a basic foundation. Hebrews eleven seven says, Noah did what he did. When warned by God about things not yet seen, the word warned means Noah was divinely instructed. God spoke to him and told him what he was going to do. So that basic foundation, the foundation that Noah's had enabled him to have faithful action, and it was based on the word of God. And the Bible teaches us principles of faith. In Romans 10, it says that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. So genuine faith has a basic fundamental foundation for us to launch our faith on. It also says that we're all giving a measure of faith, the size of a muscle sea. So everybody's got faith, but what are you going to do with it, the faith that has been given to you by God? Specifically, it is founded on the things God says. In fact, a faith that doesn't rest on the word of God is not faith, and it's not worth having. True faith has a sure foundation, it is not based on our feelings or our emotions, it is based on our traditions. No, our source of authority. The basic fundamental foundation of our faith is the word of God, and the word of God has authority. And note that the text says that God warned Noah of a thing not yet seen. God's word that the flood was to come was all that Noah had to go on. There was no visible sign of any impeding flood. In fact, it was 120 years out there in the future. And what it's worth, Noah had never seen rain. The Bible infers that it had never rained until the flood. Genesis 2 says that God had not sent rain on the earth, but streams came up from the earth

Trusting A Flood With No Rain

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and watered the whole surface of the ground. This means that Noah had never seen a flood because you can't have a flood unless you have rain. I mean the word rain and flood weren't even in the vocabulary. So I'm sure that Noah Noah's peers or Noah's friends or people that he associated with or everybody that he knew, okay, they were sort of like looking at him thinking, is this guy crazy? You know, and they're laughing at him because the closest water was like 500 miles away, and that's where the nearest ocean was. And he was building something thousands of times bigger than was necessary for just his family, and to put a few animals in it. God sent, I'm just imagining this, right? I mean, this is what I'm I'm thinking in my head as I'm preaching this sermon. He was warning them that there was an impending cataclysmic event was going to take place, encouraging them to repent, turn from their perversion and violent lifestyle, humble themselves and seek God. Now, I can only assume this, but I mean, so Noah's there and he's building an ark that's got to take him 120 years, right? Obviously, he's going to be interacting with uh other people, and he will be trying to you know convert them and bring bring them under an understanding of placing God first and foremost in everything they say and everything they do. And obviously, this wasn't working because otherwise, all of a sudden, there'd be like 300 other people building their own arc of some kind, but that didn't happen. But the thing I want you to note is that Noah had nothing to base his actions on, his construction and his preaching on other than God's word. I doubt if you or I would have trusted God under these circumstances, but Noah had the faith to do it. He believed God's word, he accepted what God had told him for a hundred and twenty years. He worked on this huge ark on the basis of God's word alone, and in all that, nothing happened to make him think that he was it was going to come true. There was no like early warning signs, you know. Now it might have been easier for Noah if like every three or four days God had blown up some clouds and let a little bit of lightning flash and just a few little sprinkles of rain. That may have encouraged Noah, but that didn't happen. And if Noah could believe and obey God's word for a hundred and twenty years under those conditions, then surely you and I ought to be able to do so with the fuller revelation that we have. We have the entire Bible, so that's Old Testament and the New Testament under the new covenant with Jesus. So we have the entire Bible filled with God's words upon which to base our faith. We have his risen Son in our hearts to guide us through life. We know that God's words are true. Do you hear the words of so many spiritually written songs just alone? I was gonna list a whole heap of songs here, but I just haven't got time. But you you hear artists singing songs that have been given to them through the Holy Spirit. I give you I I I said I wasn't gonna do this before, but I'm gonna do it one movie, okay? Uh one movie. This is one my wife's really crazy on at the moment, and it's about um Bart, what's his last name? I can't think of it otherwise I get it wrong. Miller, okay. Bart Miller, he was the lead singer of um

Songs That Stir Faith In Hard Times

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Mercy Me, right? And so they did a they did a movie about his song. Um and uh and you know, just like that, I've had a mental blank. Okay, to movies the movies called uh oh now I've totally lost it. Okay, I cheated, alright? I um I went and looked it up, okay. The movie's called I Can Only Imagine, okay, and Mercy Me is the American to contemporary Christian band founded in Edmund, Oklahoma. And it's all about Bart Millard. Uh, and the the song that he actually brought out uh was I Can Only Imagine, and that's what the movie is all about, and it's it's very moving. Um, you get your tissue box, I don't care whether you're male or female, but uh it's something that you need to listen to, and it'll give you some sort of insight because it is a true story, and um the movie depicts everything according to what Bart went through, and so it's very, very accurate. All right, now I'm getting off track. Okay, now our faith does and needs to have a firm foundation because a person who embraces this kind of faith builds his or her life on the word of God, and this is our foundation, this is what we base our against

Living Ready For The Day Of God

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the flow actions on, and listen, just had God promised in the days of Noah to destroy the world because of man's wickedness, so he has promised that he will destroy the world again in 2 Peter, God cites the examples of Noah and the flood, and then in chapter three, verse ten it says this, in case you haven't read it, but the day of the Lord will come like a thief, the heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be destroyed. This text goes on to ask us in light of this, based on his word, the written word of God, what kind of person ought we be? What kind of lives should we live? Well, it doesn't say we should build an ark, but you never know. Verse 14 does command that we make every effort to live lives that are spotless and blameless, even though we know that there was only one that was spotless and blameless, but we need to try and be more Christ-like each and every day. Now we know he's not going to flood the world again, but here he's very clearly uh talking about destroying the earth, which could be something totally different. And uh I haven't preached on it, I haven't done enough research yet, but coming up there will be stuff about the rapture and the end times, but I don't want to be doom and gloomy, all right? We need to have our faith in check, and we need our faith built up strong and powerful through the word of God. So we know Noah's life shows us that our faith in God is to be based on a but basic basic foundation. Our faith is founded on God's word, that's the foundation, the things that he has said in his book, which leads us to the second thing that Noah's life teaches us about faith, and that's if someone lives by faith, it will be evident. Okay, simple as that. I mean

Faith Shows Up As Obedience

SPEAKER_01 14:39

we already know that faith is not invisible. I've said this time and time again in different podcasts that I've done. Hebrews 11 7 says that Noah did something because of his faith, he built a huge ark, something anybody could have helped him with, and they couldn't notice or not notice that it was there, because if they were going to another village or down in the ocean, they would either have to walk past the ark or around it, so there was no way of hiding what he was doing. But anybody could have come along and asked to help him, but they didn't. Noah's faith expressed itself in obedience to God's words, to God's command, and real faith, genuine faith, always expresses itself in that way. Faith always acts in accordance with God's word. You know, many people think that men and women of faith are so occupied with the future that they sit around twiddling their thumbs, doing nothing in the now. You know, they're just like a prayer warrior or something. Now, it has been said that people like this are so heavenly minded that they are not earthly good to anybody. Have you ever heard that? You're not earthly good to anybody. People say that time and time again, oh, and there's a lot of ways that people express that, but some of them aren't very nice, so I'll leave them alone. But living with this way is not faith, it's what they call faithalism, okay, because you're so occupied with obtaining faith that you are so engrossed in it you basically miss the boat. All right, faith works. Faith is doing something now in the view of the future. Faith is not passive, it is dynamic and forceful. Listen, there's a magnificent summary of the action of faith in Hebrews 11, 32 to 35. And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell you of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jeffaniah, and of David and Samuel and the prophets, who, through faith, conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, received promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of a sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. So that's faith in action, right? Now these words aren't poetry, they are history. This is faith at work. These activities of faith have changed the course of history, so faith without works is dead. That says it in James 2, 14 to 16. Look, Noah did something about his faith. He preached for twelve decades, he built the ark, and we need to remember that this construction project was no small task. I'll give you some uh examples, right? Okay. Now, the boat was about 450 feet long. Now, for those younger people, that's about 137.16 meters long, so it's one and a half times the length of an American football field or the height of somewhere between a 30 and a 45 story skyscraper.

The Ark Was Hard Work

SPEAKER_01 19:25

Alright, it was 75 feet wide, which is like 22.86 meters, or lining up seven standard motor vehicles end to end. That's the width. It's the biggest wooden vessel ever built. In short, Noah's Ark was a monster of a ship, and it was forty-five feet or thirteen point seven meters high with three decks, and it was covered with pitch inside and out. Can you just imagine how much pitch that was? I bet Noah and his sons smelled like tar for the rest of their lives. Now, uh, I'm telling you, Noah didn't just go down to Bunnings and tell them to deliver the lumber to the Ark, or like as you see in that uh that movie, oh no, I'm not gonna do that, I'm not gonna go to another movie because I'm not very good at remembering what they are. But he didn't tell them to deliver the the lumber, right? No, Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japhtem, Japtim, had to cut all of these trees, saw them into lumber, and by the way, this was way before the inventor of power tools or other things like trucks or anything like that. So had to cut down the trees, chop it all up, and then physically carry it all the way to the ark, and just with ropes and pulleys put the thing together. And so, no wonder it took over a hundred years to build it, right? You can understand how Noah must have been considering the biggest aspect of his life was everybody seeing that he was the biggest, most weirdest fool in in history. People saw him lay the kneel on that great hulk of a boat, and they must have laughed themselves silly. But Noah endured. And he continued to build the ark because he believed what God had told him. Every tree he felled shouted faith. Every board he sawed shouted faith. Every swing of his hammer shouted faith. Every seam to which he applied the pitch shouted faith. Let me ask you this do you and your work reflect your faith? Faith will make us work and usually that work will be counted countercultural or counter basically opposite to the entire world. Because we're we're actually beating a different drum. Or should I say they're out of step with us because we're in step with what God wants us to be. Now, I know me and you, we haven't been told to build an ark, but as God told you to go somewhere or to do something that you deem too hard, that ark was done once and for all. But Christ is the ark of salvation. 1 Peter 320 teaches us that the flood story is a picture of the coming of Christ, and let's pause to note the parallels in relation to this. Now I say this a lot, and I believe it to be so unless someone tells me otherwise. The New Testament

Jesus As The Ark Of Salvation

SPEAKER_01 24:02

is a type and a shadow of the Old Testament. In the building of the ark, God was telling us now something about that job, and there was no way for anybody to prepare for the flood other than to follow God's instructions in the immoral world of the people that were around, they saw everything that was going on, and not one of them stopped to think to themselves, could this guy Noah be actually right? You know, in the immortal words of Bill Crosby, Noah could have asked himself, How long can you tread water? Well, not long enough. The world was flooded for over a year, and in the same way, there is no way on our own strength to escape the possibility of our sinfulness. We need a Savior just like Noah needed the Ark. We need Jesus. We need someone to gather us into his arms and protect us. Just as the flood came suddenly, another cataclysmic event is coming. People in Noah's day were eating and drinking and going to weddings and living out their corrupt, uncomfortable existence when the deluge erupted and came flooding down. Some day Christ will come just as suddenly. So just like Noah, there is a lot of work for us to do. As Christians, we are called to people the ark. Jesus said, You shall be witnesses unto me. Our work of faith is not to build an ark, but rather to share the gospel news that people may be saved by entering the ark of safety provided by Christ to do this. We must have faith in Noah. A faith that expresses itself in works. Because as James writes, faith without works is dead. I read a story once about a fisherman who kept two oars in his boat. One had written the word faith and one had written the word works on it. And someone asked him once why he'd done this. And so he got that person in the boat, goes out into the middle of the lake, and then he picked up the oars with faith and he started using it. And all the boat was doing was flowing with the current and going round and round and round in circles. So he put that down and he picked up the other one that said works. And he did exactly the same thing on the other side of the boat. And all it did made the boat go in the other direction around in circles. But when he put both oars in and started rowing, he was going in a forward direction of where God expected him to be going. And we continually do this, we will continue to move forward. See, the obvious point of this story is that we need both faith and works to get anywhere in our Christian life. Faith without works doesn't amount to much. If we had faith but not works, then as Paul wrote in Ephesians, we will be tossed back and forth around and around in circles by the waves and blown here and blown there, wind of teaching and by the cunning and the craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Faith and works go together. Faith gives us the courage to do the works God calls us to do, and doing those works grows our faith. So to review, I'm just gonna quickly sum up now. Okay, we need faith like Noah, and faith without works doesn't work, but faith has a foundation, and that faith is the word of God. His life, Noah's, also shows that genuine faith has a visible expression. Faith and works literally go hand in hand, and when we can do this, we can learn more and more about faith and Noah's lifestyle. We see that storms like Noah endured will stretch and mature our faith in God. The storms of life develop us into strong, more powerful, developed disciples. And this truth is seen when we look at the way Noah's voyage of faith ended. Scripture says

Storms Mature Faith And Expose Drift

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that after 150 days, the rains finally stopped. At this point, there is a very stark statement in Scripture. Look what Genesis 7.23 says, Everything living on the face of the earth was wiped out, men and animals and the creatures that moved along the ground, and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. But notice this next phrase only Noah was left. Now imagine Noah felt as the winds and the rain stopped and the waves disappeared and the boat stopped moving and floated in a calm way. Now, I could go on about this for a little while and fight tell you about what happened afterwards. But in a quick summary, okay, Noah was not the same person that built the ark and stayed in the ark with his family and all the animals. When he was finally told to come out of the ark, Noah was, let's say, not, you know, in his right mind, and he suffered severely, and the blindness from the outside that Noah had was there to push him in the wrong direction. He saw that he was not a good specimen of which to build a new earth. He found out that he was capable of you know hardiness, angry, embarrassing, and godless behavior, and embarrassing that godless behavior as the same as anyone else. And I believe these months of silence that God Joseph, I mean, sorry, Noah was not hearing from God, okay, had allowed him to drift away from God. In summary, what I want to say is that we need to be hearing from God all the time, spending time with him and his word. And if we're not doing that, then we can drift apart from where he is. We need to make sure that we always keep him in our lives, and we need to always make sure that he is there. Just like Noah, after spending all that time in the Ark, God had grace, and what he has done for one, he will do for another, and he is no respecter of persons. So now we know that grace, faith, and works all go together. There's there's no one thing in the Bible that we can endure on our own. So we need to make sure that we actually continually follow up on these things and spend time in the Word and make sure that we're not too early and not too late. We're in His presence. Amen. Talk to you soon. Bye for now.