Back to the Beginning No.12 A Lesson in Obedience

Let's turn in God's holy word to the fifth chapter of Genesis, and let's just have a selection of readings. If you weren't present last week, you'll have missed a connecting link in this series, and you might find it helpful to get hold of the tape, not necessarily to purchase, but at least to borrow. We'd be glad to take your order for that in the normal way.

We have had a look at the rather difficult verses at the beginning of chapter, did I say five? Chapter six, and we're going to pick up from the seventh verse, Genesis 6-7, somber words. The Lord said, I will wipe mankind whom I have created from the face of the earth, men and animals and creatures that move along the ground and birds of the air, for I am grieved that I have made them, but Noah found grace, favor in the eyes of the Lord. This is the account of Noah, and Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.

Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways.

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'm surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So make yourself an ark of cypress wood, make rooms in it, and coat it with pitch inside and out.

This is how you are to build it. The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. Make a roof for it and finish the ark to within 18 inches of the top.

Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle, and upper decks. I'm going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens. Every creature that has a breath of life in it, everything on earth will perish.

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. You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal, and every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come up to you to be kept alive.

You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them. Noah did everything just as God commanded him. The Lord then said to Noah, Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation.

Verse 5, And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him. Verse 16, The animals going in were male and female of every living thing as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord shut him in.

Chapter 8, verse 1, 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. Chapter 9, verse 1, Then God blessed Noah and his sons.

Coming down on the train from London, where I spent a great deal of yesterday, I was thinking to myself, which three men had, pardon me being personal for a moment, in some measure influenced me more than any others this century. And I thought of the reading of the autobiography of Nelson Mandela, and fast came to the conclusion that he must have been one of the most remarkable men of our age, inasmuch as despite the fact that he could have been quite bitter on release from 20 years plus in jail, there is not a tinge of bitterness in his life. Seemingly, in the way that he handles the power that he has at the moment, it's not used for him personally, but in the benefit of others.

And then I thought, on a completely different track, the influence of Billy Graham, a remarkable man. His autobiography reveals him to be almost incredibly naive at times. The sheer honesty of the man breaks forth, and I thank the Lord for memory of his ministry.

And then being particularly personal, I thank God for Lloyd-Jones and the effect that he had on the British evangelical scene. And then in my musings, you know what it's like on a train when you're sort of halfway between mentality and sleep. I thought of the men who'd influenced the world for good since the Reformation, and I thought of John Calvin, great, great man, asthmatic, who had to move around because politically he was virtually always in trouble till he finished up in Geneva and sorted that place out.

Then I thought, perhaps because I'd just been at Westminster Central Hall and saw the statue of John Wesley and what he achieved in our country, it really was quite remarkable. Wesley, who pushed a method in terms of gathering his converts, the converts God had given him, and bringing them into a structure where they could be taught and continue to push forward the gospel message. Remarkable man, Wesley.

And then I thought just across the river of the man who picked up later on Wesley's mantle, though not a Methodist himself, a Baptist, Charles Spurgeon, the way that he influenced British society and particularly the metropolis of London. And then in my musings, I thought, what about the men in the Old Testament that really had made an impact upon their society? And there was a time when Ezekiel was engaged in the same sort of mental recall and thought as I engaged. And if you turn to his prophecy in the 14th chapter and the 14th verse, repeated in the 20th verse, he again speaks of those who have particularly left a mark on the spiritual history of Israel.

Ezekiel 14, 14, these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job. The context really doesn't concern me right now, apart from the common denominator between the three. They were good men, different from most in their time.

The 20th verse, he makes a similar reference. Noah, Daniel, and Job, these men who were different, who cut against the grain, who swam against the tide, who were loners, who were courageous, and who impacted their civilization. And it's to the former that I direct your attention this morning as we consider this great hero of the Old Testament, Noah.

I was listening to or reading one American commentator earlier on this morning, and he said, spiritually, Noah was a giant, and the world has perhaps never seen his equal since. And of course, he was excluding the person of our beloved Lord. What can Noah become to us, not just in terms of a historical figure, but in terms of a challenge for our own lives? My answer to that question right now is, he becomes a lesson in obedience.

God told Noah to do certain things, and verse 22 of the sixth chapter of Genesis gives the record. Noah did everything just as God commanded him. Let me just open it up in a threefold fashion, and we'll go through this overhead quite quickly, and then perhaps take it a little bit more slowly.

Here I suggest as you look into chapters 6, 7, 8 through to 9 is the issue of history, the issue of history. Is this account fact or fiction? What are you to make of the flood that befell Noah's generation? What is more, I want to suggest that when you look at Noah, you have to consider what I've called a matter of pedigree, the answers that he, or rather the ancestors that he had and the person that he became. You'll see the references to that in a moment or two.

And then thirdly, the challenge of difficulty. You see, if you think you've got it rough in your day, if you've slogged your heart out for FEBA for a long time, or AWM, or one of the Christian organizations, and you think that the challenge of Islam is so great, you may as well give up. Then you will get a lot of comfort from Noah, because at the logical level, if any man should have given up, it was Noah.

Well, we'll have a look at the challenge that he presents in a moment or two. But first of all, the issue of history. I mean, is this fact or is it fiction? The whole of these personalities who are in Genesis, did they really live? And the answer has to be that as far as the rest of biblical history is concerned, the rest of the Bible is concerned, it assumes that they were literal personalities.

The Bible looks on Noah and the flood as being something that actually… In fact, when you move from these chapters, the sixth, seventh, and eighth of Genesis, into the rest of the Bible, you find imagery that really is stimulated from the account of the flood, assuming therefore on the part of the writer that the flood was literal. Go to the 18th chapter, or rather the 18th Psalm, for instance. Here is David, and he's in difficulty.

Now, where does he take his imagery? And I think the answer is, he takes it from a great cataclysmic disaster that occurred in earlier centuries. And this seems to him, in one sense, to illustrate his life. Psalm 18 verse 7, the earth trembled and quaked, and the foundations of the mountain shook.

They trembled because he was angry. Verse 9, he parted the heavens and came down. Dark clouds were under his feet.

Verse 11, he made darknesses, covering his canopy around him. Verse 12, out of the brightness of his presence, clouds advanced. With hailstones and bolts of lightning, the Lord thundered from heaven, the voice of the Most High.

And here is the lovely reference of David's physical salvation from his difficulties. Verse 16, he reached down from on high and took hold of me. He drew me out of deep waters.

You get exactly the same thing in the 29th chapter. The idea of God having control over the elements. The voice of the Lord is over the waters.

Verse 3, the God of glory thunders, the Lord thunders over the mighty waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful, and so on and so forth. It's not just in the imagery of the flood and the way that it helps to illustrate the difficulties that men and women in future generations have lived.

It's also the habit of biblical writers to refer back to Noah, as I've quoted from Ezekiel, so we could go on to the ministry of our blessed Lord Jesus, who on a couple of occasions cites Noah and the generation of his time as having the sort of ingredients that will be in society at the time when God will again judge the world and bring about a cataclysmic disaster. And as the earth surfaced again from the waters of Noah's flood, so He will renew the heavens and the earth. And as Noah and his family were preserved in the ark, so the church that finds safety in the ark, our Lord Jesus Christ, will go on to live in a renewed, rejuvenated, glorious earth and heaven when heaven comes down on earth and there is no distinction between the two.

I say that the Bible looks upon the account of Noah as the account of Adam, as the account of Enoch, as being factual. That is not to say there is not within Genesis poetry and metaphor, but you find that throughout the whole of Scripture. But the essence of what is taught here is in concrete historical form, and we're grateful because, you see, if Noah and his light were just legendary, then I would be wasting your time asking you to consider these men, these women today or any other time when you come and listen to my ministry or whoever else is in this pulpit.

These were men and women of flesh and blood like you and me, with strengths and weaknesses like you and I. These are the people who meet us on the page of Scripture. Fact or fiction? The answer is most definitely fact, as far as the writers of the Old and the New Testament are concerned. But this flood that came across the earth, was it just within the Mediterranean area or was it a universal flood? Again, there are differences of opinion, and I always think that an argument is weak that ridicules the opinion of people with whom you don't agree.

It happens to be my opinion that this was not just a local flood. The way that I read the account, the many references, I think 30 in these chapters to the earth in terms of the cosmos which God creates and is shown to create in Genesis 1, it seems to me that the flood was universal, and I argue it on other grounds too. Later on, as I shall have the pleasure of showing you, God enters into a new covenant, and that covenant with Noah is sealed.

There's all covenants that God makes are sealed. It's sealed with a rainbow. Every time you see the rainbow, you should remember God's promise to Noah that he will not flood the earth again.

Now, if it was just a regional flood, then I would be in great difficulty if I was preaching in Poland this morning. Why? Well, you've seen on the television the tremendous devastation as a result of flooding, or when I have the privilege of being with my brothers and sisters in Bangladesh, it wouldn't be easy to interpret that promise to them, and because there is often an occasion when the Ganges Delta is flooded, and alas, many people often are drowned. It seems to me that this incident we find, or these incidents in these early chapters in Genesis, are fact and not fiction, and the flood is global, not just local.

You get the use of a Hebrew term, or rather a Greek term in the Septuagint, katakloumos, which is a most unusual term to describe a flood. Generally, that word is not used. It's something that is employed to affirm a disaster beyond all proportion.

So, our English word kataklismic, I believe that when Jesus Christ returns, there will be a kataklismic reaction on the part of the universe, as well as the transformation of human beings made to be like our Lord Jesus as He brings in the eternal era, the saved rejoicing, the damned in terror at what is happening, and when the Bible refers to this in the New Testament, it uses this same concept as the kataklismic opening up of the bowels of the earth, and this incredible flood that affects Noah and his civilization. Here is a challenge, which is an issue, if you like, as far as I understand it, of historical fact. But let's move from the wider to the more local, in terms of moving from the flood itself to the individual Noah.

What can we say about Noah? Well, I mentioned to the boys and girls, he was well named. His name means comfort. It seemed, just picking up on what I was teaching last week, that Noah was very much influenced by his immediate pedigree.

Now, that's nothing new, at least it's new because it's at the beginning of Scripture, but it's not going to be unusual in Scripture. You'll find that when Paul is talking to Timothy, he makes reference to his parent, his mother, and to his grandmother. And here we find in Scripture that Noah goes back to his father Lamech and to Methuselah and to Enoch, this man who, as we were reminded so movingly and so graphically, walked with God.

This was Noah's ancestry, and like the descendants of Jonathan Edwards, who remarkably, to the second and third generation, expressed faith in Jesus as Edwards had. So, it seems that the sort of spiritual seed, for want of a better term, was firmly planted in Enoch, and he, alas, became just one who was remaining true to God in his day. And so, this ancestry in the grace of God affirmed within Noah a character which was unusual, if not in his day unique.

We're told that Noah was a righteous man. Now, isn't it interesting that when you commence reading from the first verse of the fifth chapter, you're introduced to Adam's genealogical line, in other words, Adam's descendants. And yet, when you get to the ninth verse of the sixth chapter, you're into a new phase of genealogy, and the link is Noah.

And this is what is said right at the end of the first genealogy, verse eight, chapter six, Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Then, introducing the next genealogy, this is the account of Noah, possibly written by his sons. And what did they do? They link in to the previous statement.

They link in to the earlier document. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

And you know that little expression, which is descriptive of Noah at the end of the first genealogy, is actually a sort of Hebrew colloquialism. I mean, by that it was a proverbial expression. If you were to go on in Genesis, you come across this character Laban.

He's a twister and a cheat, but he meets his match in the author daily of the Old Testament, Jacob. I'll apologize to Jacob when I get to heaven. But at the beginning of his life, he would have bought a second-hand camel from him.

And Laban says, and there's humor and deceit in this. I mean, it's riddled with deceit. He says to Jacob, I have found favor in your sight.

And you've got these two sort of twisted characters vying with one another in the degree of corkscrew sort of personalities which they were representing. On a happier note, you've got the elderly Jacob, now quite a transformed character, and he's on his deathbed. And he says to his son, and it's a very intimate scene, he says to his son, Joseph, put your hand on my thigh, near my pre-creative organ, and swear to me, very holy, a very intimate thing, if I have found favor in your sight, Joseph, don't let my body stay in Egypt.

Take me back to the land that was given to my father and grandfather. Now, this is the thought of Noah. You see, he finds favor.

He finds favor in the eyes of the Lord. But let's just apply this for a moment. Why are you here, the vast majority? I mean, it's a warm day.

You could be down on the beach, or you could be up on the hills. You could be enjoying yourself. It would be quite honorable so to do.

But you feel that at least for an hour, an hour and a half, two hours on a Sunday morning, you want to be in church. Why? Well, you found favor. The grace of God has come to you.

It's not something you deserved. God called you. As He preserves Noah, so He preserves into the twentieth century men and women who shall endeavor to live for His glory.

Noah finds favor. Has Ruth found favor in the eyes of Boaz? Noah finds favor in the eyes of God. And what does a grace-discovering, righteous, loving man, as Noah was, do? Righteous man? Look at the last part of verse, the middle part of verse 9. Blameless amongst his people, a grace-discovering, righteous, living man, what does he do? Well, he walks with the Lord, as though the latter is a corollary of the former, as though if you are grace-discovering and blamelessly living, then what will follow naturally is that God will be comfortable with you and walk with you.

Now, the blameless, of course, is relative. There was only one who was impeccably blameless, our Lord Jesus. But over against, over against the rest of society, Noah's life stood out like Mother Teresa's does in Calcutta.

Different, as your life and ours should be, and hopefully is in some measure different. I'm glad to call amongst my friends, though I don't have much close contact with him, James Packer. I think he's one of the most remarkable Anglican theologians that the church has today.

And alas and alack, he's now in Canada. We could desperately do with him in the United Kingdom. The Anglican church could at the crisis point that it's in, in several areas.

Now, Packer has produced a number of best-selling books. One not so known as his famous book, Knowing God, is entitled, Keep in Step with the Spirit. Keep in Step with the Spirit.

Yesterday, and I'll make reference, because I had some very interesting experiences in London yesterday. I'll make reference this, this evening. I was near Horse Guards Parade, and I remember, remember the story of the, of the boy.

It's probably apocryphal. And you know, the parade is, is filled with the guards and so on and so forth. And they're all marching with great precision, hundreds of them in the company of the, of the Queen.

And there's one out of step. And the little boy identifying his dad says, everybody's out of step, but my dad, everybody was out of step in Noah's day, apart from Noah. His critics might have considered him to have been the Mr. Bean of the ancient world, but far from that.

He was the one who was in step with the Lord, as Enoch had been. One step after another step, one day after another day, one week after another week. And let's not romanticize it.

It wasn't easy. He didn't have his Scripture Union notes. He didn't have Every Day with Jesus.

He didn't have his books. He didn't have tapes. He didn't have a church, but nonetheless, he kept in step.

The matter of his, of his pedigree. An earlier commentator that I read, that is, lived earlier than the American. Personal communion with God was the taproot of this outstandingly good life.

Personal communion with God, the outstanding attribute or taproot of this man's life. So let's hasten on. We've looked at the issue of history and the matter of pedigree.

Let's consider the challenge of difficulty, because there was difficulty for Noah. Incredible difficulty. What was he by profession? Well, he got three or four.

He was a carpenter. At least I'm assuming so. Although my sort of picture of the Ark is the sort of job that I might have done myself without, you know, the sort of stand bond and ability of making little bits of wood stick out and interlocking with another joint, I think they called them and so on and so forth.

But maybe Noah did it like this. I guess he got to really. So perhaps I'll back off.

He's a brilliant carpenter. Noah, I apologize. Good that I didn't live in your day because I would have been hopeless in helping you.

The Ark would have sunk. He's an agriculturalist. Later on, you find that he plants his own vines.

He's a zoologist. He knows about animals like Adam. He knows about flora and fauna.

A botanist, zoologist. Now, these aren't just terms that sort of come out of my mouth. I mean, these are descriptive of the intelligentsia that these early men represented.

They were not primitive. They were not cavemen. They were not unsophisticated.

They had minds of their own. They had thinking ability. They had creative ability.

And on top of all this, he was a preacher and he was a communicant with God. On one occasion, on his walk with God, God told him what he was going to do. He's going to reupholster the earth.

John Calvin says, we ought to consider the assaults of temptation to which Noah's breast was subsequently exposed. You see, Noah, I'm going to eclipse this civilization. I'm going to wipe it out.

But because you are exceptional, I will make it possible for you and for your family to survive. And you will go into a rejuvenated earth and the human story can continue on after you and your descendants and so forth. Well, again, this is all good and all terribly interesting, but the fact of the matter is that you, you lose the novelty of it because you've read this book too often.

I mean, I'm not in any way criticizing you for that because we're into pushing people to read the Bible in this church. But the freshness of it sometimes escapes us. We've seen the end of the story.

I told you once, one of my wife's favorite novelists is Agatha Christie. I can't cope with Agatha Christie because I have a habit of always reading the last chapter of any book. It's just something I started to do when I was at college.

And, you know, it just makes the whole purpose of reading a novel less exciting. And you've read the end. But Noah, I mean, bless my soul, he hadn't seen rain.

And neither had the men and women with whom he was living. You see, you interpret this in terms of the climate that you have known, the world that you have known, but it's essentially a different climate. It's essentially a different world in one sense prior to the flood in which these antediluvians lived out their lives.

I mean, the prodigious size of the ark. It's going to take some time. I mean, it wasn't sort of a Friday job.

He was at this not just for one or two months or one or two years. He was at this for a hundred years. And during the time of the construction of the ark, he was preaching.

And he was ridiculed for his preaching, as preachers have always been ridiculed. I came across a comment from Lloyd-Jones the other day, which encouraged me. He said, God always uses ugly men.

And he sort of stood up in history. All those who seem to be a little strange. And if you went to some of the Old Testament preachers, I guess they did look a bit strange.

I mean, would Ezekiel have been welcomed into your pastoral group on Wednesday? George Whitefield, he got a cast in his eye. They called him Dr. Squintus. Some of the great men who have been used had no charismatic or naturally handsome gifting.

And here is Noah, what he looked like, I don't know. But he's ridiculed for his preaching. And you can understand these antediluvians.

Here is this man and he's making this monstrous thing for what purpose? And what did Noah have to go on? He didn't have the record of history like you and I have the record. He just got the word of God. And if you move into Hebrews chapter 11, you'll find that one of the things that singles Noah out and makes him a worthy occupant of the corridor of biblical heroes is the fact that Noah believed God.

He had God's word. Nothing else. We're not even told in Scripture, and it's hard to understand just how it all came about, whether God was walking with Noah in such a fashion that day by day or month by month he conversed with him, or was there a periodicity about it? Did he wait 10 years for God to speak to him again? I rather hope it was the former, but it could have been the latter.

If it was the latter, then it increases the faith concept, the faith challenge of Noah, this prodigious arc that he's building, the prodigious size and nature of the ministry. And again, I go to you, folk, in fever at AWM and what have you. How difficult is the task that is yours? How difficult is the task that is ours of the church, reaching the unreached with the gospel? I had an email from Saudi Arabia just last week to tell me of two Christians beheaded out of 20 people whose heads were chopped off in Saudi Arabia during the last months, facing a task unfinished.

And here is Noah, and he continues, and thank God he does. It helps us to realize that though our task is enormous, we have men like Noah who were faithful. It was so impracticable, a project.

I mean, not only did he have to put this great thumping arc up, but he moves away from his agricultural task, and yet God places on him the responsibility of getting the food. And then what about getting the animals in? I mean, bless my soul. I was very glad to realize, isn't it amazing how even though you've read Scripture many times, some things don't quite hit you.

And I was glad to realize that in the 20th verse, it seems to suggest that the animals, through some instinct that God gave them, would actually at one point move along the ground and go into that arc. That must have been a snapshot picture. Can you imagine all the animals, all the selection of animals that God is going to preserve through the instinct that God builds into them, they make their way into the arc.

This is the only example of animal livestock export that I'm prepared to agree with as being humane. And here is Noah on top of this, has him built this big arc, he's going to go in it. Calvin refers to it as though it was descending into the grave.

Better to have died a hundred deaths, says John Calvin, than take up a task so laborious. But he's commanded to forsake the world that he may live in a sepulcher, which he had been laboriously digging himself through more than a hundred years. Some Americans were with me, at least I was with them on Friday at the lack of his home.

And I was telling them that was a denomination in England called the denomination of the peculiar people. Wedding tabernacle is a part of that denomination. I'm just disclosing it.

You didn't know that before. I just, in that respect, but there was a denomination called the peculiar people. Now, don't you think that Noah must have seemed like a peculiar person, a man who lives and acts as a result of God's word being entrusted to him.

And he gives us, as I try and bring this whole thing to a conclusion, he gives us lessons of obedience. Noah did everything just as God told him. One word summarizes his life, obedient.

King Saul was admonished by Samuel to obey, says Samuel, in a context where Saul has acted precipitously, is better than sacrifice. Jesus says to his disciples, if you love me, prove it. Do what I tell you to do.

Paul, at the end of his life, says to Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. Old Testament, New Testament affirm this, that obedience is one of the things that God is looking for and one of the prerequisites for a close walk with him. So, Noah is told to go into the ark.

The Lord then said to Noah, go into the ark. The Hebrew sustains a translation, come, come into the ark, because Noah is not going to be on his own. The Lord will be there too.

The Lord will shut the door and despite the smell of dung and the unpleasantness and the claustrophobia of this time of being in this ark, nonetheless, Noah will be able to cope and his sons will be able to cope because God is manifesting his presence. And don't you see, my friend, as you move into the New Testament, check Hebrew 1 Peter 1, check the second epistle of Peter, this is just an illustration of what God in Christ has done for us. He makes it possible to enter into a relationship with him.

Jesus becomes as the ark. First time in the Bible the word ark is referred to is in Genesis in those verses. It's the ark that is used in terms of describing the ark of the bulrushes.

The ark is covered and the idea of covering also is a Hebrew term that is used to talk about the covering of our sins. The word grace is for the first time used in Genesis 6 and it's grace that is absolutely necessary for the sinner to come to a knowledge of Jesus as Lord and Savior. Stacked into these early chapters, I tell you afresh, is the beginning of that theology which will be made so much clearer as the Bible unfurls and as we move into the New Testament.

What does Noah teach you? He teaches you that a man who responds to the grace of God against incredible odds can live successfully. Noah found grace in the eyes of God. He responded to the offer of salvation through Jesus Christ.

Have you known your sins being covered? Are you washed in his blood? Are you saved? Are you in the church? Not the church as a denomination, not the church as an organization, but the church as an extension of the life of Christ. Are you in it? Have you got certainty? Do you know that whatever happens to you in your life, you are indissolubly linked with this great God and Father of our Lord Jesus? You can. How? By committing yourself to him right now.

Father, we thank you for your word, so much packed into it. How can you preach this sort of stuff in 20 minutes? Lord, we just thank you for your grace that allows, even in some churches, lengthier times for the exposition of scripture. Send us out in the good of what we have learned this morning to live for you, to be serious about spirituality, about making a distinction between ourselves and the rest of humanity, not on the basis of Pharisees, but on the basis of dedication to Jesus and the truth which is precious to us.

Help us to handle it lovingly as we place it before others. For your sake. Amen.

Do we have on the overhead, see will I love? Is that the one that Okay, then we'll go to our last hymn. I wasn't too sure whether that was available this morning. 144 in our supplement, a lovely old hymn comes from the Wesleyan era.

The will I love my strength, my tower, the will I love my joy, my crown.