Can We Ignore God Without Consequence?
We return to the book of Beginnings this morning. Our text is drawn from one of the most well-known stories in the Bible, found in Genesis 6 through 9. The account of Noah.
With apologies to David Letterman, here’s a Top Ten list of lessons learned from Noah!
10. Don’t miss the boat.
9. We are all in the same boat.
8. When you’re stressed, float a while
7. Stay fit. When you’re 600 years old, someone may ask you to do something big.
6. Build on high ground.
5. Speed isn’t always an advantage. The snails were on board with the cheetahs.
4. It might stink on the Ark, but it’s better than being in the water.
3. Plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark.
2. Remember, the Ark was built by amateurs; the Titanic by professionals.
1. No matter the storm, when you are with God, there’s always a rainbow waiting.
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Just about everybody knows the Noah story. Most of the time it’s told as a children’s story, complete with neat pictures of a little, round, white-haired Noah; lots of animals of the African kind- lions, elephants, giraffes, turtles; a vivid rainbow! Back in 1999 Jon Voight starred as Noah in a TV Miniseries that was far from the Genesis account. In fact, the "God" in that series was so ungodly many considered it beyond irreverent and inaccurate.
The story, as told in Genesis, is a serious account of the reality of human accountability to God, a story that, if believed, would cause people to shake in their shoes!
It’s a lesson about Disobedience, Destruction, and Deliverance.
I wish we could read the whole story, but given that it runs to 3 long chapters and 4 pages of single-spaced Bible text, we won’t! Instead, we will look at excerpts from the text.
Turn with me first to Genesis 6:1-8. These verses form a kind of prologue for the story. [READ]
If we try to pull the meaning out of every line in those opening verses, we will quickly be distracted into all kinds of debate about the meaning the phrases ’sons of God’ and ’daughters of men.’ Let me be truthful with you and tell you that nobody knows what those phrases mean. IF we focus on what we do not understand, we will miss what we can understand which is: The world was in a sorry state, morally.
DISOBEDIENCE
Lust and violence were everywhere. It was a decadent world. V. 3 clues us in to God’s displeasure- "I’m not going to put up with these people as I have in the past, so I’ll limit their lifetime to 120 years."
V. 5 says, (The Message) "God saw that human evil was out of control. People thought evil, imagined evil - evil, evil, evil from morning to night."
We live in a depraved society that mirrors that in which Noah lived!
We are a sexually insane society. I’m not a prude, but I find many network TV shows too ungodly to watch. Either they are given to praise of violence as the solution to problems, or they laud materialism as the meaning of life. Or, they feature sex!
Seems that the writers of the sit-coms don’t know much humor that isn’t centered on sex - how much, how often, with how many, and in what varieties. Something I’m not getting at all is the gay-ing of America! I’m not homophobic. I don’t want homosexuals singled out for mistreatment or discrimination, but I don’t want the "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" thrown in my face either!
We are a society of death. A tragedy played out in Florida this week. A woman who had a heart attack in 1990, at age 25, was left severely handicapped by brain injuries. Her husband sought court approval to take away her feeding tube and water so she would die! Sadly, he was praised widely in the media as a courageous hero! Some courage! His wife is severely disabled so he wants her life ended. We need to pray for Terri Schavio and her family.
Our sexual insanity meets our culture of death in doctor’s offices where an average of abortions end over 3000 lives every day of the year! Only a tiny fraction of those abortions are related to legitimate medical conditions. Most are performed to spare a couple from dealing with the result of their sexual choice. I am pro-choice - PRIOR to pregnancy. I believe every woman has the right to say no to pregnancy! But I staunchly defend the little life that is conceived as bearing the image of God.
Greed wracks our economy - everything from workers who waste time and resources to corporate executives who create multi-million dollar deals for themselves while the companies they lead collapse!
Our justice system is a system in disarray that all too often dispenses ’in-justice’ based on wealth and skin color!
Evil breaks out in all the world sometimes stunning even the most hardened among us. We see young Palestinian teens blow themselves and the Israelis who live among them to bits and are stunned at the cynicism of leaders who would allow young lives to end so violently. We hear of atrocities of Nazis, the Soviets, those in Cambodia, Kosovo, Somalia, and Rwanda where millions die in spasms of hatred. We read of the cruelty of despots like Saddam Hussein and find such evil hard to understand.
And how does God see all this? Does He just shrug and say, "there they go again." That is not what our text teaches. Let’s go back to the text again. Take a look at how God saw the world in 6.11-12.
"CORRUPT" The Hebrew of the text at that point is a word rich in its meanings. It was used to describe a shirt that was stained too badly to be used or a clay pot that was marred in the production process making it unusable.
V.6 says that all the sin He saw caused God to be (6:6) "grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain." We don’t find God responding as we might expect with a fit of anger. Instead, He grieves. Something has gone terribly wrong and He must make it right. He must restore the balance. Some translations say that God was sorry He had made man, but that is a poor understanding of the Hebrew word used in that passage. The better understanding of the word used to describe God’s emotion at seeing the wicked of humanity is that He weighed the world in the balance and found it had fallen far short of His plans for Creation so a remedy to ’balance the books’ was called for.
It’s a word for us - as a culture and as individuals. Sin still grieves God’s heart and in keeping with His holiness, God will establish limits and boundaries. He will not wink at our disobedience. He will not overlook sin as just ’being human.’ Many people foolishly assume that God will not intervene. They foolishly conclude that because His judgment is delayed, it will never come. Peter alludes to the Noah account as an example of the folly of those who think God will not act. He wrote: 2 Peter 3:3-8 (NIV)
First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, "Where is this ’coming’ he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
Jesus refers to the story of Noah as an example of the indifference of humanity to God and the certainty of God’s response of judgment. He said, Mt 24:37-39
As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.
God’s response to the disobedience was to prepare for -
DESTRUCTION- (READ Genesis 6:13-17)
Modern skeptics point out how impossible the whole scenario is. Others debate whether the Flood was world-wide or localized to the region of Mesopotamia. Others get caught up in measuring the ark or searching for it on Mt. Ararat.
All that misses the point of the inclusion of the story in our Bible. It’s there as a warning that God acts. A flood happened and God caused a righteous man and his family to be preserved. That’s enough for me. Spare the speculations about canopies of water above the earth, about the size of cages inside the ark, or even the shape of the ark.
Just learn the lessons of the story! We are warned of another Day of Judgment that will come. Will we dismiss it as unlikely, as impossible, as beyond belief? IF we do, we do so ignoring every clear warning found in the Bible.
Galatians 6:7-9 sounds out to us like a trumpet call. "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."
If God declares destruction, it will happen - not necessarily in a way or manner we expect or understand - but it will happen!
But there is a HOPEFUL word - DELIVERANCE
In the story line, we come ’round time and time again to the provision of God for the man who lived righteously in faith. Take a look.
Genesis 6:8 (NIV) But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD...
Genesis 8:1 (NIV) But God remembered Noah...
We learn why Noah found that favor in other verses.
Genesis 6:9 (NIV) Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.
Genesis 6:22 (NIV) Noah did everything just as God commanded him.
Genesis 8:20 (NIV) 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.
Noah’s faith was such that it led him to a life of obedience! God saw that obedience and met it with saving grace!
It isn’t hard to imagine the distress of a man like Noah who lived among such evil! It isn’t hard to imagine the mockery that was likely heaped on him as he built the ark.
It was a monstrous thing that would have been hard to ignore. If Leno and Letterman had been around, I’m sure they could have found endless material for their monologues. The ark was constructed like a barge. According to Genesis, the ark was 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. By comparison, the Staten Island Ferry, that has been prominently in the news this week, is 300’ long, 70 feet wide, and about 50’ high. Noah built the ark in the open plain, far from the sea, surely attracting derision. It was hard work that required sustained effort over years and years time. But he BELIEVED and OBEYED God as a result of his faith. God honored that faith by providing a means of salvation for Noah and his family.
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So what can we take from this story? How does the ancient account of one man’s great faith speak to us?
It shows us the pattern that humans have ignored to their own loss:
Disobedience to God leads to Destruction by God, but Deliverance is the blessing for the faithful.
As I close today, I want to urge you to bring this down to focus on your own life. Set aside questions you may have about the plausibility of the events. Set aside applications that might be made to our nation or the world.
What about YOU?
Does the Spirit of God find self will or obedient faith in your heart and mind?
What shapes your day to day decisions... a desire to ’do your own thing’ or a passion for Jesus Christ and His Kingdom?
Are you filled with a powerful faith that causes you to build an ark of salvation for yourself and your family?
That calling is hard work! We are called to participate with God in that labor. But, we won’t do it unless faith is strong. It was faith that kept him going: "By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith." (Hebrews 11:7, NIV)
For example - Training your children to love and serve God is not a task for a lazy man or a coward. They will not always like the choices you lead them to make, but do it because you have faith in God that leads you to obedience. God’s rewards are not often handed out at the end of the week!
Your spouse may resist you as you desire to live on less so you can invest more of your time and money in compassionate ministry to the needy. But stay steadfast because you have a genuine faith that God’s way is the only way.
A time of destruction will come again on this world. It will be God’s act in balancing the books once again. This judgment will be followed by the Return of Christ Jesus and the unveiling of His Kingdom.
Deliverance is promised to the faithful! As I said at the beginning of this message, one of the lessons of Noah’s story is told in brilliant colors- the rainbow of promise. But before Noah got to see a rainbow, he had much work to do. What is God calling on you to do for Him? I doubt that He’ll ask you to build a huge boat in your backyard. But, He’s got a job for you. It might not be what others expect of you. It may invite ridicule. It will surely require an eternal focus.
As I close, let me tell the story of a man who had that kind of faith, a man who yearned to see God’s work done in his world, a man who built an ark of a different kind, to carry the world he knew to a place of safety in God’s blessings.
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Clarence Jordan, best known for writing a brilliant modern paraphrase of the Gospel called "The Cotton Patch Gospel" was a man of unusual abilities and commitment. He had two Ph.D.s, one in agriculture and one in Greek and Hebrew.
So gifted was he, he could have chosen to do anything he wanted. In radical obedience to the call of Jesus Christ, He chose to serve the poor and attempted to live his life by the Sermon on the Mount. He wasn’t content just to live his own life. He tried to convince others to live that way too.
In the 1940’s, he founded a farm in Americus Georgia, and called it Koinonia Farm. It was a community for poor whites and poor blacks. Dr. Jordan was convinced that Jesus’ call was to defeat racism and poverty by living peaceful Christ-centered community. As you might guess, such an idea did not go over well in the Deep South of the ’40’s. Ironically, much of the resistance came from good church people who followed the laws of segregation as much as the other folks in town. The town people tried everything to stop Clarence. They tried boycotting him, and slashing worker’s tires when they came to town. Over and over, for fourteen years, they tried to stop him.
Finally, in 1954, the Ku Klux Klan had enough of Clarence Jordan, so they decided to get rid of him once and for all. They came one night with guns and torches and set fire to every building on Koinonia farm, except Clarence’s house, which they riddled with bullets. And they chased off all the families except one black family, which refused to leave.
Clarence recognized the voices of many of the Klansmen, and, as you might guess, some of them were church people. Another was the local newspaper’s reporter. The next day the reporter came out to see what remained of the farm. The rubble still smoldered and the land was scorched, but he found Clarence in the field, hoeing and planting. "I heard the awful news," he called to Clarence, "and I came out to do a story on the tragedy of your farm closing."
Clarence just kept hoeing and planting. The reporter kept prodding, kept poking, trying to get a rise from this quietly determined man who was planting instead of packing his bags. So, finally, the reporter said in a haughty voice, "Well, Dr. Jordan, you got two of them Ph.D.s and you’ve put fourteen years into this farm, and there’s nothing left of it at all. Just how successful do you think you’ve been?"
Clarence stopped hoeing, turning toward the reporter with his penetrating blue eyes, and said quietly but firmly, "About as successful as the cross. Sir, I don’t think you understand us. What we’re about is not success, but faithfulness. We’re staying. Good day." Beginning that day, Clarence and his companions rebuilt Koinonia and the farm is still going strong today. - Tim Hansel, Holy Sweat, pp. 188-189.
That is the story of a man of FAITH! He heard, he obeyed, and God’s reward for him, despite the earthly sufferings are GREAT. What’s God calling you to do today? Are you willing to hear, willing to obey, full of faith that anticipates the coming Judgment and builds an ark for deliverance?
Amen
Jerry D. Scott, 2003
