Noah: The Gift That Comes From Faith
Hebrews 11:7, Genesis 6-7

In the 1880s, if you wanted a good life with a good job, you moved to Johnstown, PA. The Pennsylvania Main Line Canal came through town, so that brought jobs. So did the Pennsylvania Railroad. And the Cambria Iron Works. Not to mention there are beautiful mountains, covered with forest, all around town. And right through the town runs the Conemaugh River. Families were moving in from Wales. From Germany.

In fact, the area is so beautiful, the country’s richest people – Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon – would come out from Pittsburgh to hunt and fish at a private club up above town, where an old earth dam had been modified to make a fishing lake for them.

On May 30, 1889, a huge rainstorm came through and dropped six to 10 inches of rain. Despite that weather, the next day the town lined up along Main Street for the Memorial Day parade. The Methodist pastor, H. L. Chapman, said, “The morning was delightful, the city was in its gayest mood, with flags, banners and flowers everywhere … The streets were more crowded than we had ever seen before.”

And then the old dam miles above town collapsed, releasing almost four billion gallons of water. When that wall of water and debris hit Johnstown 57 minutes later, it was 60 feet high and traveling at 40 miles an hour. People tried to escape by running toward high ground. But over 2,000 of the 30,000 people in town that day died. Some bodies were found as far away as Cincinnati 350 miles away, and some were not discovered until 20 years later.

The Johnstown Flood remains one of the greatest tragedies in American history, behind only the Galveston Hurricane and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And in every one of those cases, life was fine. Until it wasn’t. In a moment, in a way that was unexpected and most people were not prepared for, something cataclysmic occurred, and people were swept away.

We’re in the middle of a sermon series from the New Testament book of Hebrews, which, if you remember, is really the written form of a sermon sent to a struggling church that included a number of Jewish, or Hebrew, followers of Christ. It was sent to encourage them to hang in there, to keep hanging on to Jesus no matter what they faced, because their culture and their government were turning up the heat on them because of their faithfulness to Jesus. They were losing businesses and homes, friends and family, and they were starting to be imprisoned. And death, martyrdom, was looming on the horizon. It was already happening to some.

And we’ve come to Hebrews 11, one of the most famous chapters in the Bible. We call it the great “Hall of Faith,” or “Faith’s Hall of Fame.” The writer lists person after person from the Old Testament who held on to God regardless of what life threw their way. But this list of people is no list of heroes. These men and women were very flawed. They had problems. They dealt with sin. There were times when they struggled to be faithful to God. They were ordinary people, people like you and me, who had faith in an extraordinary God. Turn with me in your Bibles to Hebrews 11:7.

Now, the story of Noah is probably one of the three most iconic stories in the Bible. If you surveyed the general population here in America today about the parts of the Bible they’re familiar with, the top three that almost every one knows about, whether they’ve ever set foot in a church or not, are Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, David defeating the giant Goliath, and Noah and the Ark.

There used to be a daycare center in this church used by people from all over the community called what? Noah’s Ark Daycare. In fact, if you into the men’s restroom downstairs, and it’s a single use restroom so women, you can look too, there’s a mural of Noah’s Ark painted on the wall. It looks like an ad for a Fischer-Price Noah’s ark toy for kids. All of he animals are kind of bubbly and cute and smiling. There’s two smiling lions right next to a smiling, waving Noah. Maybe the lions are smiling because they’ve just eaten Noah’s mother-in-law. And Noah is smiling because the lions have just eaten his mother-in-law, I don’t know.

I find it interesting that we’ve turned the story of Noah into some kind of children’s tale because truth be told, it’s one of the most terrifying passages in the entire Bible. We have the children’s rhyme, “The animals went in two by two, the crocodile and the kangaroo.” But the truth is, this passage is terrifying, because in it we see God’s judgment of sin promised and then meted out. And it was God’s saving grace, and Noah’s trust in God’s saving grace, that saved him and his family.

You see, it’s Noah’s response to God’s grace and his obedience to God in response to God’s grace that the writer of Hebrews emphasizes. Flip over in your Bibles for a few minutes to Genesis chapters 6 and 7. The first thing we need to notice about Noah is that he lived in an incredibly dark time in human history. In fact, it might just be the darkest time ever to exist in human history.

The first few verses of Genesis 6 set up the story of Noah by describing that darkness. Look at Vv. 5-7. Look at the words used here. “GREAT wickedness.” “EVERY intention of his heart was ONLY evil CONTINUALLY.” Now look down at Vv. 12-13. “ALL flesh was corrupt.” And therefore “ALL flesh” is now under God’s judgment. “The earth is COMPLETELY FILLED with violence.” Every, only, continually, completely filled, all. Genesis 6:12 begins with the words “And God saw.” Those words stand in opposition to the exact same words in Genesis 1:31, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” Now God sees the opposite. Because of sin, his creation was the opposite of what he had created it to be.

Genesis paints a very dark picture of the human heart. Human beings, created in the image of God, created to walk in relationship with God, were acting like animals. In fact, they might have been acting worse than animals. For the most part, animal predators only kill when they are hungry. They don’t kill unnecessarily. But the human heart was filled with a lust for blood, for violence, for doing damage.

All because God created us with the ability to be in real relationship with him, and that means there is a real risk that we will choose to turn our backs on that relationship and go our own way. And that’s exactly what happened. When the first humans sinned, believing the serpent and turning their backs on God, something deep inside the human soul fractured. Broke. And that brokenness, which the Bible calls sin, became not just an decision made in a moment in time, but a characteristic, passed from human being to human being through the generations, of what it means to be human.

To be human is to be created in the image of God, but parts of that are shattered and broken in each one of us. We are deeply valuable, and deeply loved, but also deeply broken. And in just 10 generations, the darkness and evil of sin had overtaken the entire planet. The earth was shrouded in the darkness of sin.

If you didn’t look closely, you wouldn’t see any light at all. But God looks closely. And he saw one tiny pin prick of light in a violent, blood-thirsty, dark world. Noah. Look at Genesis 6:8. Before Noah’s righteous obedience of God is mentioned, before anything good about Noah is mentioned at all, God’s grace sets the stage. “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.” When Greek-speaking Jews later translated the Old Testament into Greek, the word “favor” here was translated as “grace.” The Greek Old Testament reads “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” The best way to read that verse would actually be backward. Not “Noah found grace” but “grace found Noah.”

God in his grace and desire for relationship with humanity was actively seeking someone, anyone, on the earth who would respond to his invitation to know him. And while every single other person on the earth said no to God’s gracious invitation, Noah said yes. Noah was still human. He still messed up and made mistakes. But he sought to turn away from the selfishness and greed and lust and violence all around him and he turned toward a relationship with God. And that relationship with God led to a different kind of life, a righteous life, with God. This was before the law of Moses and the whole system of law and sacrifice that would come later. But in whatever way people sought forgiveness for their sin in that day, Moses was doing it.

So when humanity was rightly the target of God’s righteous judgment, Noah was warned, and instructed by God in what to do to avoid that judgment, and Noah obeyed. He heard God’s warning, and he responded in faith.

Truth is, we’re comfortable with the idea of God’s judgment, so long as we aren’t in it’s devastating path. We’re perfectly fine with our enemies coming under God’s judgment. We’re fine with the really bad people – people who rape and molest children, those who take innocent lives, those who profit off the addictions of others, those who use and abuse others – coming under God’s judgment. But we also have a tendency to view ourselves, not as perfect, but as better than the worst of the worst. And truth is, most of us are.

But then Jesus comes along in Matthew 5 and tells us that if we hold on to anger against someone, we are under God’s judgment. Not just if we murder them in anger. And if we even look at another human being lustfully, we have already committed adultery in our hearts. I may not be a murderer, or a child molester, or run a drug cartel, but there is enough darkness in me that I come under God’s judgment.

And God’s judgment actually grows out of God’s love. When someone breaks a law and it hurts us, we want the court to find them guilty and punish them. If they just said, “Oh well, they didn’t mean it.” Or, “Well it’s not like they’re trafficking children, so we’re going to just let them off,” we wouldn’t be satisfied, would we? We’d cry out for justice. Justice is simply the rightful punishing of wrongful acts. Justice is a good thing. But unlike imperfect human justice, which can be impacted by plea bargains or bought by money or influenced by uncontrolled fits of human emotion, God’s judgment is always right. It is always righteous. It grows from God’s goodness and heart for those who are being mistreated. The problem is that just as every human soul has been mistreated in this life, so every human soul has mistreated someone else. So we are all guilty, and rightfully under the judgment of a good and loving God who will set things right.

But God’s grace finds Noah, and Noah responds to God’s invitation to relationship. So when it is time for God’s judgment, God offers salvation to Noah. The only thing Noah has to do is believe that God will judge, and then obey. And that wasn’t easy. Severe flooding wasn’t unheard of in the area where Noah lived. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers sometimes overflowed their banks. But nothing that would spark fear in the hearts of the people who lived there and were used to it. So when Noah started building a giant ship, it was noticeable. The ark would up being one and a half football fields long, and a full football field wide. Not the width of a football field wide. The length of a football field wide. And it was four stories tall. It wasn’t something he could hide in his garage or behind a privacy fence out back.

When you hear about someone building a fallout shelter deep underground on their property somewhere … some kind of deep bunker, where they’re stockpiling food and guns and ammunition and things, what do you think? This person has lost their mind, right? We think they’re eccentric at best, but flat out crazy seems more like it most of the time. And yet that is exactly what God told Noah to do. Now, God isn’t telling us to build shelters under our houses or stockpile food and supplies. That isn’t the point. Don’t go do that. In fact, Jesus tells us that no matter how bad life gets, he wants us to stay engaged, sharing his love and helping those in need until he returns.

You see, God’s judgment has already been meted out fully on Christ on the cross, and those who place their faith in him, will be saved from the future judgment of God on the evil that has rejected Christ and his cross. Why? Because God’s judgment and justice has already been satisfied. Christ’s death satisfied it. Now, flip back over to Hebrews 11:7.

God’s grace had found Noah, and God warned Noah about something that was coming that no one could predict or see coming. And yet, even though it made no sense, Noah obeyed, and it was a costly obedience. The work. A massive four story floating structure. No cranes or other modern construction equipment. No power tools. Just crude hand tools at the time. Most scholars would say that it took Noah anywhere from 50 to 120 years to build the ark, based on the time clues given in the biblical narrative, although the Bible doesn’t say how long it took. The ridicule. And then getting inside, God shutting the door behind them, before the flood came.

The ark itself wasn’t a ship. It was more like a floating tomb that saved them. It had no motor or rudder or mast. There was no navigating it. It went where the waters took it. It floated until it came to rest as the waters receded. Noah and his family were completely in God’s hands while they were inside. And it was for more than 40 days. It may have rained that long, but it took the waters the better part of a year to recede.

It was dark. The sounds and smells of the animals. The buffeting the ark took as it floated around. Floods don’t come from still waters. They tend to be rushing waters coming quickly, faster than the earth’s natural drainage can handle. And this was the mother of all floods. Whether it literally flooded the whole earth or that region of the earth, the world known to them at the time, doesn’t matter. What matters is that those who trusted God, and who obeyed him were saved.

God in his love continued to reach out to humanity as sin covered the earth, a flood of darkness flowing from the human heart. Noah responded in faith and, in faith, obeyed God. And so God in his grace saved Noah and his family.

God promised that he would never again destroy the earth in a flood. But his goodness and love mean that his justice and judgment are still there. And he has promised that he is bringing his entire creation, including you and I, to his desired goal. In Christ, his justice has already been meted out for sin. He invites us to respond in faith. Not just agreeing that Jesus died for our sins, but responding in obedience to him. Walking with him. Obeying his voice, even when that obedience is costly. Knowing that the cross of Christ is our ark in the face of the coming flood of God’s judgment. It is there, completely in the hands of God, that we find the security we long for.

Biblical scholar David Atkinson, in writing a commentary on the book of Genesis, pauses almost mid-sentence to plead with us. “People of God, when things are going well for you, the nation is secure, the king is on the throne, the economics are good, there is money in the bank and food on the table: beware of the temptation to forget the Giver. You are what you are by grace.” Remember, Noah didn’t find grace. Grace found Noah, and Noah responded in faith. He goes on to say, “And when things are hard, when the hand of judgment in heavy around you; when the fountains of the deep burst forth, and all you have it at sea, even then God will not let you go.”

Noah was declared righteous not because he earned it or deserved it, but because he responded “Yes” to God’s gracious offer of relationship. God offers the same to each one of us. How will you respond? Let’s pray.