Genesis 6:9-22 "Portraits of Faithfulness: Noah"

1:22Can you relate? Perhaps now, can you think of a few areas of your life where you're most aware of the Seeming impossibility to live faithfully before God? What are those areas of your life that seem to look no different than the world or the culture around you? Perhaps it's in how you handle your finances. Are you aware of a lack of faithfulness as seen by being in debt because of unchecked spending, perhaps always desiring the latest and the greatest?

1:58Or perhaps there's a lack of faithfulness that's seen in operating out of a scarcity mindset that tells you that you never have enough, and so you don't cheerfully, sacrificially, and generously give from all that God has given to you. Maybe for you, it's in your entertainment choices. Does the quantity or the quality of the shows you stream, the music you listen to, or the apps you scroll, does that look more like someone who's seeking to faithfully follow Jesus? Or does it look more like the world? And of course, in our hyper-sexualized society, perhaps there is no area of our lives that's more challenging to live faithfully in our faithless world.

2:44Perhaps for you, the Spirit has brought something else altogether to mind. But whatever it is, while it's true that the struggle to live faithfully is real, the good news that we've been seeing these last few weeks is that faithfulness is not impossible. Possible. Challenging, yes, but impossible, no. Scripture is full of examples of women and men who, though they were not perfect, they lived faithfully. And if you and I want to live faithfully in our faithless world, we need to know what was it that enabled them to live faithfully? What was it that so controlled their thoughts, their emotions, their actions that they could stand as examples of faithfulness for you and for me today? Well, we've seen many examples. And this morning, in our passage, as we look at the life of Noah, we are going to see that to remain faithful in our faithless world, we need to remember that we have received God's favor and that He will never forget us. To remain faithful, we need to remember that we have received God's favor and that He will never forget us. This is where the battle to be faithful is won or lost in remembering these two things. And this morning, we're going to look at each of these in turn. So, first, let's see that to remain faithful, we need to remember that we've received God's favor.

4:22In Genesis 6, when we are first introduced to Noah, we see that he is set up as a direct contrast to the Rest of the world. Before we read about how Noah is described, let's first hear again how the world is described. Look with me beginning in verse 11. In verse 11, we read, Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence, and God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. Such a stark contrast with what we've seen in Genesis 1 and 2.

5:04In the creation narrative, God looks out on his new creation, and we read over and over again that God saw that it was good. At the end of the creation week, as it comes to a climax, God looks out on his creation, and he declares that it is very good. But after Adam and Eve disobey God's life-giving command, after sin enters into the world, we see creation and everything in it enter into a downhill spiral. What God once looked at and declared very good, he now looks at and sees only corruption and violence.

5:46Did you hear the repetition in verses 11 and 12? Four times in these two verses, we hear the terms corruption or violence. Things had become so bad that God decides that he's going to make an end. Of all creation. In Genesis 6, verse 7, God says that he's going to wipe mankind off the face of the earth. Every last person, animal, and living thing is going to be destroyed. Everything and everyone will be destroyed. But then, Noah enters from stage left.

6:24In the faithless world, Noah stands out as one who is faithful. Here again, how he's described in verse 9. We read that Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. In contrast to the rest of humanity, we're told that Noah was a righteous man. That is, he did what was right in God's sight. Noah, in contrast to the world around him, lived an obedient, just, and faithful life. Two times in this story, Noah's obedience to God's word is highlighted. Look at him on the screen. In Genesis 6, 22, we read, Noah did this. He did all that God commanded him. And again, in Genesis 7, 5, we read, and Noah did all that the Lord commanded him. As we read through the life of Noah, the author of Genesis Moses wants us to see that Noah was an obedient man who did all that the Lord commanded him. In fact, it's this point that the author, the writer to the Hebrews, highlights when speaking of Noah in Hebrews 11, 7. He writes, By faith, Noah, being warned by God concerning events yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this, he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. In a world that openly disregarded God and his word, Noah showed himself to be a righteous man by faithfully obeying all that God commanded him, even when it didn't make sense and even when it singled him out as the only person living and acting differently.

8:18Back to Genesis 6, 9, we see that not only was Noah a righteous man, but he's described as someone who is blameless in his generation. Noah interacted and he related to those around him in a way that was above reproach. The end of verse 9 tells us that Noah walked with God. This is a phrase that would have jumped off the page to anyone reading or hearing this story. Because not just anyone walked with God. Up to this point in the story, we're told that of all the people who have ever lived, only three people walked with God. Adam and Eve in the garden before the fall, and in Genesis 5, we read that Enoch walked with God. To walk with God is to experience an ongoing sense of nearness or intimacy with Him. Just like a parent and a child, or perhaps a couple walking hand in hand, conveys the closeness and the intimacy that they have with each other. That's what's supposed to come to mind for us when we hear this phrase. Just like Adam and Eve and Enoch before him, Noah experienced intimate fellowship with God. He's an example of someone who lived faithfully in a faithless world. Now, as the story normally goes, it's because of Noah's faithfulness that God chose to save him and his family from the flood. If that's the case, brothers and sisters, then the application for you and for me is to simply be like Noah.

9:59In our faithless world, we need to try harder and do better to be just like Noah. Or as one of my dear friends in San Diego was fond of saying, we simply need to faith harder to live faithfully like Noah. Now, I don't know how that's landing on you, but personally, I find that to be an incredibly discouraging and demoralizing application. Because try as I might, it just seems like I'm not going to be able to As though I am never faithful enough. Can you relate this morning?

10:37No matter how hard we try to be like Noah, we can just never line up. We are never faithful enough. Well, thankfully, brothers and sisters, that is not what God wants us to take from this passage. Because before God says anything about Noah's faithfulness in Genesis 6, he first speaks of his gracious favor. Before we read anything about Noah's righteousness, we first read about Noah receiving God's grace. Look with me at Genesis 6, verse 8, which we skipped over earlier and which the Bible chapter divisions unhelpfully separate in our Bibles. In Genesis 6, 8, we read, but Noah found favor, that is, grace in the eyes of the Lord. Against the backdrop of declaring that he's going to send a flood, undoing creation and killing every living thing, we see that God graciously chooses to show Noah favor.

11:50You see, contrary to how we normally think about Noah, God did not save him from the flood and show him grace because he was Righteous man. No, it's the exact opposite. Noah was righteous because God showed him grace. This is what our passage is showing us. In Genesis 6, 8, Noah receives favor. Then and only then do we read in Genesis 6, 9 that he was a righteous man. Noah didn't deserve to be shown grace. What Noah deserved was death and judgment just like the rest of creation. The thing that set him apart, the only thing that set Noah apart, was that God freely chose to show him grace. In fact, here in Genesis 6, 8 is the first time that we come across the word grace in Scripture. Grace is God's unmerited, it is his unearned favor. As I learned in Iwana, grace is God giving me a free gift I don't deserve. Noah received a free gift that he did not deserve, and that changed everything for him. And friends, receiving God's grace is meant to change everything for you and for me as well. Because it is only when we remember that we have received God's grace, that we have received his favor, that we will be able to live faithfully in our faithless world. Sisters and brothers, God deserves. Not want us to miss this. His grace is the only thing that can rightly motivate and sustain faithful living in our faithless world. It is only God's grace that can empower us to live faithfully day in and day out. You see, all too often we struggle to live faithfully because we can convince ourselves that God's grace is dependent upon our performance. And this is just simply a burden too heavy for any of us to bear and one that will eventually crush us. Because while it's possible that willpower can help us live faithfully for a few days or for a few weeks, when we eventually fail, which we are going to do, when that happens, for many of us, we are just going to end up in this cycle of guilt and shame that will just keep us down, that will keep us from pursuing faithfulness.

14:33And that's because we have turned faithfulness, and that happens when we turn faithfulness into a prerequisite for receiving God's grace, instead of seeing as we're meant to, as God wants us to, to see faithfulness as a response to God's grace. Faithfulness is a response to God's grace, brothers and sisters, not a prerequisite for it. This is the Heart of the good news that we call the gospel. Jesus didn't die for the best of the best. Jesus didn't die for those who had their acts together. No, in his grace, Jesus died for the weak, for the ungodly, for those who were his enemies.

15:19He bore our penalty that we justly deserved, so that now all we will ever know is God's grace. If you're trusting in Jesus this morning, God's grace was a free gift that you didn't deserve when you first received it, and it's a free gift that you continue to receive each and every day of your life. Because God is gracious, we do not have to prove ourselves. We don't have to prove ourselves to God. We don't have to prove ourselves to other people. And we don't have to prove ourselves to ourselves. The pressure is off now, and we have been freed to be faithful. So you and I, we can pursue faithfulness knowing that when we inevitably fail, that our standing before God is not in jeopardy. And this is when real change happens. Hear what Pastor Dane Ortland, the author of Gentle and Lowly, says about this reality, about knowing that true change happens when we know, when we've received God's grace. Dane Ortland says, the Bible teaches that healthy spiritual growth. Takes place only when God's commands land on those who know they are safe or accepted and safe, irrespective of the degree to which they successfully keep those commands. You hear what he's saying there? He's saying that true spiritual growth happens when we realize that God's commands, as they come to us, that God's grace and his love for us are not dependent upon our performance. As one of my favorite pastors, David Zahl, has more succinctly said, he says that people only truly change when they no longer feel they have to in order to be loved. This is what Noah is showing us. He's showing us that we do not have to be faithful to be loved by God. Instead, our faithfulness comes only when we realize that we have already received God's love, that we can rest securely in God's love, and so now we have been freed to be faithful because it's not based on our performance. Whatever that area of your life is that you are wanting to become more faithful in, the first step towards pursuing faithfulness is to remember and reflect on the reality that you have already received God's grace. And so you can confidently pursue faithfulness, knowing that God will continue. Continue to pour out his grace on you. Grace that can actually motivate and empower you to change, and grace that will gently comfort and correct you when you fail. Before we move to the second point, I just want to briefly speak to those who are here who are not yet trusting in Jesus. First off, I just want to thank you so much for being here this morning. But secondly, I just want to highlight that in the story of the flood, we not only see that God is gracious, but we also see that God has promised to justly judge our sin.

18:40But just as Noah freely received God's grace, you can too. Because of what Jesus has done in his life, death, and resurrection, taking the punishment that our sins justly deserved, you can receive God's grace this morning. And just like Noah did not have to clean himself up before God showed him grace, you don't have to clean yourself up this morning either. All you need to do is turn to Jesus, trusting in his life, death, and resurrection for you, and you will know his grace. So this morning, I just invite you to turn to Jesus. If you have questions about what that means or what that looks like, I would just invite you to ask someone sitting to talk about that with someone sitting next to you, with anyone you've seen on the stage this morning. We would love to talk with you about that. So, first, to remain faithful in our faithless world, we need to first remember that we have received God's favor. But there's a second thing that God wants us to see, and that is to remain faithful, we need to remember the God who remembers us. Turn in your Bibles to Genesis 8, chapter 1.

19:52Between Genesis 6, 9 and 8, 1, a lot happens. God commands Noah to build an ark, and after directing the animals to the ark, Noah and his family go in, and God shuts the large door behind them. After this, the flood comes as creation is literally undone. All that God has separated and brought to order in the original creation is once again thrown into chaos as the waters above the sky collapse to flood the earth, and every living thing except for those on the ark die. While we love to sanitize the story of Noah and the ark, using it to decorate our children's rooms and nurseries, making little kid toys out of it. Don't know about you, but our little kids had a little tyke Noah set where they would bring the animals by twosies, twosies, into the archiearchy.

20:51We love sanitizing this story, but the reality is that what happens here in Genesis 6 and 7 is hardly Appropriate for children. You see, in reality, instead of seeing that the Lord told Noah to build him an archie archie, what we should be seeing is that the Lord told Noah that he is going to kill everybody. Like, that's what happens here in this story. Here, what happens in Genesis 7:22 and 23. This is God recording what happens. We read that everything on the dry land, in whose nostrils was the breath of life, he blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground. Man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, they were blotted out from the earth.

21:45God has judged sin. He has sent this flood to destroy all living things. And as we turn to Genesis 8, chapter 1, we find Noah and his family are on the ark, and it's been over 200 days since God shut the door behind them. As the days go by, I can only imagine what would have been going through Noah's head. As the days turn to weeks and the weeks turn to months, it doesn't take much imagination to picture Noah wondering where God was. Perhaps picturing Noah running to the window of the ark every morning, looking out of it, seeing, has anything changed?

22:30Now I realize that I might be unique here, but I can hardly stand waiting like the two or three days that it takes Amazon to deliver me something after I've ordered it. But I can only imagine what is going through Noah's mind, where it has been 200 days that he has been on this ark with no indication in the text that he has heard anything from God. And here in Genesis 8, it's been over 200 days, and Noah is still waiting. And then in verse 1, we read, but God remembered Noah, and all the beasts, and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. Oh, how we love the butt gods of the Bible. In the midst of Noah's waiting, as he wondered and questioned, how long, O Lord, we read, but God remembered. God remembers Noah, he remembers him, and then he acts. Now we need to understand that when we read in the Bible God remembering someone, it doesn't mean that he has forgotten them. And it's also much more than simply mentally assenting or mentally recalling that person or that event. When the Bible says that God remembers, it means that he is choosing to take action, to work for the good of that person, to work for the good of someone. And this is just very differently than how we normally think about remembering. So just let me illustrate. Try, as you might, imagine two guys. Let's call them Joshua and Cody, since he's not here to defend himself.

24:17Joshua and Cody both remember their wives, their respective wedding anniversaries, but in two very different ways. Joshua's landed him in his wife's good graces, and Cody's lands him in the doghouse. And here's why. You see, Joshua, great guy that he is, he remembers his wife's anniversary by sending a beautiful bouquet of her favorite flowers, Geberadaisies, to her work. He makes a reservation to her favorite restaurant for supper, and he buys her a little gift that says, I love you, and I am just so grateful that you are my wife. Cody remembers his anniversary in a much more dangerous way. He remembered it in the same way that he remembers that 2 plus 2 equals 4, or that in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, and that he needs to change the oil in his car. At the end of the day, Cody sees his wife is upset, and he asks her, Why are you upset? And instantly, she begins crying, going, You forgot. Our anniversary, to which Cody is just thoroughly surprised. And he replies, No, honey, I didn't forget our anniversary. I remembered it when I woke up this morning and looked at the calendar. I've been remembering it our anniversary all day long. Poor Cody will spend the night, if not the entire week, in the doghouse because he had a wrong understanding of what it means to remember. Unlike Cody in the Bible, when we read that God remembers, it means that he's about to act, that he is about to do something good. God remembering is always tied to action. I mean, just think about what Pastor Micah preached on with God remembering Hannah. He remembers her, and then she conceives a child. God remembering is always tied to his acting. And in Genesis 8:1, when God remembers Noah, he doesn't just think about Noah, but he acts. And the text says he remembers Noah, and then he makes a wind blow over the earth, causing the waters to recede. Can you imagine how comforting it would have been for Noah to look out the window and to begin to see the tops of the mountains and then to eventually feel the boat begin to settle as the boat finds land? And in these actions here, to know that God has remained faithful, that God has remembered him, that God has kept him. His promises to him. Well, brothers and sisters, just as Noah needed to remember that God remembered him, if you and I are going to remain faithful, we need to remember that God remembers us. Because the reality is, is that one of the biggest challenges to remaining faithful is facing circumstances in life that cause us to think that God has forgotten us. When the trials, when the challenges, when the suffering begins to pile up, when things go from bad to worse, when the days and weeks of unanswered prayer and seeming silence from God turn into months and years, it is just so much easier for us to give up and to give in. It is just so much easier for us to take things into our own hands, doing things in our own way, in our own timing. It is so much easier for us to look for wisdom and help anywhere other than God in His Word. And it is just so much easier to simply lose hope. I mean, it is really hard to take refuge in a God we think has forgotten us.

28:20But as we see here, God doesn't want us to think for one second that He is the type of God who forgets His children. He remembered Noah. And he remembers you. This is a truth that we see all throughout Scripture. Just hear what God says in Isaiah 49. Such a powerful illustration. This is God speaking. He says, Can a woman forget her nursing child? That she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will never forget you.

29:02As unthinkable as it would be for a mother to forget her nursing child, yet even if this unthinkable thing did happen, God promises us that He will never forget us. He will never forget you. No matter what the circumstances of your life might be screaming at you right now, God wants you to be absolutely certain that He remembers you, that He remembers His promises to you, and that He will always act for your good. Where is it hard to remain faithful in our faithless world this morning? Perhaps for you, it's just been the day in and day out waiting, where the weeks have turned into months and years, as you find yourself waiting and praying and asking for God to meet you and faith. Faithfulness just seems impossible. Brothers and sisters, here in Genesis, God wants you to know that He has not forgotten you, that He remembers you, and He promises to act for your good.

30:16Perhaps for you, it's just the day-in and day-out challenges of seeking to live faithfully in the little things of life. Perhaps it's just the challenge of being faithful in the parenting task. I mean, there is really no season in life where parenting children is easy. Even just this past weekend, I was just hearing other brothers and sisters talk about just the challenge of raising adult children, the challenges of that. And so, my hopes that it will get easier were a bit smashed this weekend here. But in the midst of the struggle to remain faithful, to trust that God sees and knows, or in this struggle to be faithful, God wants us to see and remember that he knows what we are going through.

31:08When your three-year-old or your 13-year-old is throwing that fifth tantrum for the day, God wants you to remember that just as he remembers Noah, he remembers you. And in those moments, he wants you to remember his promises to you, that his grace is made perfect in your weakness, that he will give you the strength that you need to continue going on. Perhaps it's in the challenge to remain faithful in your fight against sexual sin. Here in the story of Noah, God wants us to remember that He has promised to act for our good, to remember that He is not withholding any good thing from us. But as we remember that God kept His promise to Noah, He's also kept His promises, and He will keep His promises to us, as He's promised to give us everything that we need for life and godliness. He's promised to provide a way of escape, and He's promised that He is better, and every one of those things is true. Brothers and sisters, we can remain faithful when we remember that God faithfully remembers us, and He will act for our good. And when we remember that we have received His grace, so we don't have to earn it, but we have been freed to be faithful and to live righteous lives. Pray with me.

32:40Father, we Father, we thank you that, Lord, you are more committed to our faithfulness than we are. Father, we thank you that even when we are unfaithful, you continue to remain faithful to us. Spirit of God, I pray that whatever area of our life that you brought to mind this morning, as we are just so aware of our struggle to live faithfully, oh Spirit of God, I pray that you would give us the faith to believe what we've heard and seen in the story of Noah this morning. Oh, Father, give us the faith to believe that we do not have to earn your grace, but that we can live from it. Oh, and give us the faith to believe that you remember us even when, Lord, the circumstances of life seem to show that you have forgotten us. Oh, Father, give us the faith to truly believe those things and the grace to live in the good of them. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

33:51Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.