By Faith Noah

Turn to Hebrews 11, please. In God’s word, Hebrews 11. Violent, full of sin, I am. Where do you go? What will you do? Our only hope is Jesus Christ. Your only hope is Jesus Christ. Please, this morning, I encourage you, make sure you’re in Him and you believe on Him. It will not do that you die without Jesus Christ. So make sure that you rest in Him and see Him as the lover of the souls of men. He will receive you and He will forgive you.

We are in the series through the book of Hebrews, and we are now in one of the more familiar sections of this book, the 11th chapter. We want to once again read from verse one and read through verse seven. We’re going to look at verse seven with God’s help this morning. Hebrews 11, verse one:

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good report. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts, and by it he being dead yet speaketh. By faith he was translated that he should not see death, and was not found because God had translated him. For before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God. But without faith it is impossible to please him. He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by the which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness, which is by faith.” Amen.

We’ll end the reading at that section. I trust that what you have heard, you understand to be the very Word of God. You’re to receive it and you’re to believe it as such. And the people of God said, Amen.

Let’s pray once more.

Lord, Thou knowest our frame. We’re thankful that we come to a God who understands. But as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him. And to those that believe in Thee, we’re thankful that Thou wilt arise. The Son of Righteousness will arise with healing in His wings. Lord, I believe. And many here this morning believe. We pray that the Son of Righteousness, our Lord Jesus Christ, would arise in this place with healing in His wings, with a fresh blessing. We pray that He, as Abraham, was heavy with riches. Our Lord Jesus is heavy with the riches of grace. Bestow them, Lord Jesus, on us today. We will receive them gratefully.

So empower the preacher. Fall upon the congregation. Come, Thou Spirit of God, and do what only Thou canst do. Reveal Christ, that souls may feast on Him. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Before we turn to the text that will take up our time this morning, beloved, I want to issue once again a caution to you. I’ve mentioned this before when coming to Hebrews 11, but I mention it again. Often when one reads through Hebrews 11, they get caught up with the historic details that relate to each of the individuals referred to. And in so doing, they begin to see, or in their understanding, begin to focus upon what they did. They begin to think that the emphasis of the chapter is upon what they did, and somehow they receive credibility or they receive honor by what they did. But that is not the emphasis of the chapter at all.

The thrust of Hebrews 11 is what happens or what occurred in the life of these individuals. First, that they believed God and then how that faith was made visible, how that faith was communicated as they, within their own context, continued with a life of faith. Look at the last verse of the previous chapter, Hebrews 10, right at the end. What is the focus? Even verse 38, “The just shall live by faith.” Life is bestowed. Those who have true life, they have by faith. “If any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him, but we are not of them who draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.”

Justifying faith is the focus of the chapter and showing how if you truly have a faith that justifies, it will be seen in your life. But don’t confuse and think that what is detailed is how they obtained their justification before God. They obtained justification by faith. They lived by faith. And that faith was seen. The danger, of course, in any generation is that there may be those who will claim to believe and yet there’s no evidence of it. No proof. They live carnally. They live unbelievingly. They meddle with the world. They give themselves to sin without any real weight of repentance, any sense of their disobedience. And in so doing, they give evidence that whatever claim they have has no evidence that can be seen. There needs to be, if you possess this faith that justifies, this faith by which you live, and it doesn’t need the addition of your works, stands sufficient on its own, that if we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, we truly are justified. But it will show forth in your life.

So I say all of that because I don’t want you to come to a point that someone asks you, how do you know that you have eternal life, that you answer, “I prayed to receive Jesus when I was six.” That’s not how you know that you have eternal life, by looking back to an event. What followed that event? And more to the point, what is true now? Your answer, how do you know you have eternal life, is “I trust Jesus Christ. I believe in Jesus Christ. I rest in the sufficiency of Jesus Christ.” Now, today, this moment, what matters is not just a past decision, though that is often a part of it. There has to be a deciding for, there has to be a following of Jesus Christ, a taking up of the cross and obeying Him. But there must also be a present trust, right up to date. You don’t get to come to the table and say, preacher, I have a right to be at the Lord’s table because I prayed at one time. You get a right to be at the table because you still pray. You still live in the enjoyment of your sins forgiven. You still live consistent with the Christian life.

Not perfectly, don’t misunderstand me. Don’t say the preacher told me I couldn’t come because I have sin in my life. That’s not what I’m saying. If you come penitent over your sin, that repentance, keep in mind, repentance is a grace. The ability to see sin and acknowledge it is a given grace by God. Now, it’s not the only thing. It doesn’t stand alone. There are people out there who live wicked lives, and if you ask them, are you a sinner, they will say, yes, I’m a sinner. And so it’s not enough just to acknowledge it. There has to be an active trust and resting in Jesus Christ and following after Him. But, but there needs to be this recognition. And we come as God’s people, recognizing our shortcomings. Constantly seeing them, but constantly then fleeing to Christ, resting in Him.

Now, we come to verse 7 of Hebrews 11, which brings us to the person of Noah. And it is not my intention to go back and mine out the life of Noah, but just to deal with the text and the focus and what the Spirit of God has given us here and try to mine out what it is saying, what it’s communicating, what it means within the context in which we find it. I’ve titled my message very simply, “By Faith.” We were looking at it that way. We’ve been doing that so far. I do it that way again. And I have five heads under this that you see in this text. Five. Don’t worry. We’ll try to move through them just as swiftly as we would any other sermon, which sometimes isn’t too swiftly at all. You know that. But anyway, by faith Noah. We’ll see five things. First, Noah’s faith listened. Then Noah’s faith feared. Then it obeyed. Then it warned. Then it justified.

I say that in the order in which it’s found in the text, not in the order in which it happened in his life. But that’s how we see it in the text. He listens, he fears, he obeys, he warns, and you find him then to be a justified man.

So first, Noah’s faith listens. By faith Noah, being warned of God, of things not seen as yet. The Bible’s very clear. In Romans 10:17, we learn that faith, in its beginning and continuance, comes by hearing the Word. Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Now that’s a verse you don’t want to forget. It’s the first verse I remember remembering as an unbeliever. I remember the pastor as I was leaving church as an unregenerate wretch who was entering church for the first time, 19 years of age, and the pastor saying to me at the door, encouraged to see me for what may have been the second, third time at the church. As I was leaving, he shook my hand and he said, “Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” And that word was to prevail upon my own heart, and it prevails upon many. Those who are saved find the beginning and the continuance of faith is not in what they confess, but in how they hear. Faith cometh by hearing. So true faith hears, not just the voices around us, but divine communication from God Himself.

Now Noah lived in a day much like our day. Moral corruption abounded. Violence filled the earth. The thoughts of men were bent towards evil continually, we are told. And this is the atmosphere in which Noah finds himself. And in the midst of that ungodliness, God spoke. God warns Noah of a deluge that’s going to come upon the world. Now what’s interesting about this is that this warning was unheard of. There was no precedent for it. You see it in the text, “being warned of God of things not seen as yet.” There’s debate over precisely what that is about. Is it referring to the flood? And certainly, there had never been a global flood prior to this. Or is it also the means by which it came? Rain. Prior to this, it would seem, and I can see the argument for it in Genesis 2, that God waters the earth with a dew. And so the sustenance of the world is by a dew, not by rain coming from clouds in the sky.

And if that is true, if those who believe that and argue for that are right, then “warned of things not seen as yet” points not just to the fact that the world is going to be overcome by a flood, by a deluge, but it comes by means of something not yet seen. And so there had been no precedent of this. And no one’s being told that there’s going to be a flood, water’s going to come and it’s going to flood the earth and there’s nothing, nothing like it that they can reflect upon or say, “Yes, something similar to that happened before.” So when God is warning Noah of this catastrophic flood, however we understand what had not yet been seen, the fact is that he is being told of something that not just the world hadn’t seen, but he had not seen. And yet he believed. Faith in Noah bowed before God’s revelation.

Now this faith wasn’t blind faith. We sometimes get accused of having blind faith. It’s not blind faith. It’s faith that sees through or because of what God has revealed. God has revealed something and we see it by faith. Noah then finds himself being told of something that had not been known before, but it can be seen by him clearly because he looks at his world, he perceives his reality through God’s omniscient perspective. God knows all things. God has declared what is to come.

And so as faith stands in stark contrast to any society in which we must or we’ve tried to demand empirical evidence and so on, where we say, “I need to be able to see it before I can believe it.” And then, you know, it needs to be this understanding before I can believe. But the Christian takes God at His word and by that finds understanding. This is what Noah did. You live in a similar world, a world in which there is accusation. Why do you listen to God’s word? Scientists say this, and so on. Sometimes they come to you with arguments, and maybe you don’t have an answer for it. You might be tempted. You might feel the tug upon your heart. I’m gonna believe what the scientists say. Well, scientists have been saying lots of things for a long time, and many of us can look back and are old enough to see how some of those things have changed. Yet the Bible stands after millennia, it stands and still, still is being corroborated, being proved by the discoveries of men.

Every time there’s an accusation, I’ve mentioned this before, certainly said to the young people, what struck me as fascinating one time when I was doing some study of things, was that with the rise of criticism of the modernistic mentality of enlightenment movement and so on, where there was, well, how can we know that the Bible is true? You start questioning these things. We have no evidence there was ever a man, David, who was this prominent king. And we have no evidence of these Hittite civilizations and so on. All of that. And at the same time those questions were being asked, maybe for the first time in any concerted effort, a new science emerges at the same time. Archeology.

I mean, it’s hard for you to think about it when you go to the London Museum and other places where we have all these relics from the past and we pay money to go and see them and so on. There was a time not long ago where people didn’t do that. They didn’t mine out or try to preserve the past in that way. There wasn’t a digging up of the earth to discover what it might uncover about what happened before. That didn’t exist. There was an Englishman who went and pioneered this whole thing, father of a whole new science. And it coincided with man beginning to question historic details in God’s Word. And at the same time the questions arose, a new science emerges to confound them. Quite an amazing thing. Noah listened. Noah’s faith listens to God in his day and time. And you’re to be the same. You’re to read God’s Word. You must read God’s Word.

There are some people who read Christian books. There are some people who listen to topics and sermons, and they’re interested in this little subject and that little subject, and they go through waves of interest into the Lord’s return or some other thing. And it’s not necessarily bad, but it is problematic when you are not feeding yourself on the Word of God. You must systematically read through God’s word. It will never do that you ignore it. Young people, take it to heart. You might struggle with this because you haven’t got the discipline down yet. Keep at it. Keep at it. Don’t give up. When you feel, press on. Start again the next day. Don’t wallow in your failure. Just pick up the word again. Keep in that word. By and by you will find it becomes more and more precious to you and you will enjoy it more and more. You receive those promises you read and you hear all the warnings that are given.

So Noah’s faith first listened, then Noah’s faith feared. By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear or being weary. It moves in this, and he’s wary of this, what’s happened, and it moves him. The word used here is fear. Now, when you read the word fear in this context, it does not mean some cringing terror, but reverential awe. It is a reflection, again, of faith. Who said these words? Who communicated this revelation? It wasn’t his neighbor down the street. It wasn’t some doomsdayer who’s got a vision simply and wants to communicate it to everyone. He knew it was God. God came to Noah, made it plain that it was God communicating to him and told him what was to occur.

And he moves in this reverence. Yes, reverence. Something that’s greatly missing, reverence and awe of his God. He considered who God is, no doubt. He’s influenced by the comprehension of the holiness of God, of the justice of God, and it prompts him to proceed in a fashion of caution and diligence. You see, faith stands in awe of God. There’s never been someone with true, justifying faith who thinks of God flippantly. And you can assess, you can assess much of modern Christianity by this test. It’s just one among many. But when there is a conduct, personal conduct or corporate conduct of flippancy, there is no real faith. It doesn’t exist. That’s why they can do it. You say, how can they do it? They do it because they don’t possess real faith. They don’t know God.

And you may have been in the presence of someone acting flippantly and what has come to your heart is this fear. You don’t get to act that way. I’m not saying we can’t have fun. I’m not against being even jocular within a certain context and depending on things being tasteful and so on. We have a sense of humor and we can laugh. But you don’t walk in under the guise of worship and act like it’s a high school party. Noah moves with fear. There’s reverence, a sense of the weight of what he had been told, by whom he was told it, and moves with fear. He stood in awe, like a child revering his father and submitting to his instruction, so Noah revered God and submitted to his revelation. He felt the weight of it.

Now don’t confuse anything here. I know, 1 John, perfect love casteth out fear. It does. It casts out a servile fear in which you live, or you may fall into the trap of living in a form of outward obedience simply because you fear the terror of God. You’re acting purely based on the consequences. Like a people under a tyrannical regime. They don’t love the tyrant, but they can’t state it. And they obey because the consequences are too great to pay. Perfect love casts out that fear. The Christian does not live in terror of consequences. He lives in fear or reverence for the person of God. That’s a different issue. Perfect love does not cast away reverence.

Maybe that’s what’s wrong with much of modern society today. Maybe as we look at our superiors, You think, well, under this guise of love, it casts away any fear of them. I don’t want my children to live purely in fear of consequences. But I do want them to revere me, the way Scripture demands, to honor. God requires it. Actually how we relate to our superiors is a reflection of how we relate to God. We can boast loudly and proudly about our fear of God, but you will see it in how you interact with your superiors. That’s what will prove whether there’s any real reverence.

You get to And near the end of Hebrews 12 speaks of this. I’m not going to get into the text, but just verse 28 of Hebrews 12, wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. These ideas are pulled together. It’s very much companions. How we serve God. How we worship. Worship’s a part of service. Often the Bible speaks of serving, it’s speaking of worshipping. Worshipping is serving. Reverence. This is how Noah responded. And it was faith.

Is Noah really a believer? Well, when he’s warned of God of things not seen as yet, he moves with fear. Thirdly, Noah’s faith obeyed. It listened, it feared, and obeyed. By faith Noah being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house. Prepared an ark to the saving of his house. Noah’s faith, then, is not a mere inward sentiment. I have my faith and you hold it in to your own heart. No, no, it’s not kept there. It revealed itself in practical obedience. He prepared an ark, an ark. You go and you see the scale of it and you have the advantage of living in a time where some have ventured on the task of giving some form of a replica. So you can drive eight hours and go and see it for yourself, something of what it may have been like. Certainly in scale, you’re going to see that. Some of the particulars may not be precisely the way it was. We don’t know. The guess is being made. But as far as the scale, it is close. That thing is a monstrosity. I mean, it’s huge. Here’s a man without cranes.

Have you ever seen a shipyard and the kind of cranes and the devices they use to build ships today? Here’s a man doing it, not with all of that engineering. As far as we’re aware, they didn’t have certainly the things we have today. What they had again, we don’t entirely know. But he prepares an ark to the saving of his house. And yes, he probably didn’t just do it all himself. I imagine he pulled in all the resources. If you were given a job like that, would you do it yourself? No. If you had the means, and if Noah was a man like Abraham who was heavy with wealth, then he would have been using that wealth, investing it, and finding the best engineers in the world to help him construct this thing. So he gives himself to this immense, labor-intensive project. It took him years to complete.

And the very scope then of his obedience testifies to the depth of his faith. This was not do something today. Now you compare it to Abraham being asked to offer up Isaac. That was a huge thing, but it was all done within a day. It was all within a matter of hours, really, let’s say. So it’s a very intense, very concentrated moment, right, where he receives this and he has to act on it there and then. And the whole thing is done in a matter of hours. With Noah, there has to be a persistence in this way over years. When I read this, it struck me in a way that I’d never reflected upon. I’d not preached the text before. You’re thinking about it for the first time more deeply. Here you have a man who prepares an ark to the saving of his house. I saw this man, this man Noah, so acting in order to save his house. If there ever was a text to encourage how fathers are to care for their households, it’s here. Noah’s priority under God was his family.

That’s how he obeyed God. That’s how he honored God by that responsibility that providence had put in his path. You are responsible for these people. And he prepares an ark to the saving of his house. So Noah loves his wife, he loves his children, and that love is seen in action. So it should be for all fathers here. Brothers, you are to make sure that everything, everything you do communicates your concern for your family. That your children, and I know that they can turn, I know of the possibility of that, I get it. But endeavor to convince your children of your love, convince your family, I should say really, of your love. So when the children disrespect their mother, Your love for your wife will warm their backsides to those children. You don’t sit and accept on your hands thinking, that’s an awful thing. You go and you act. It should be, it’s unacceptable to disrespect those God calls you to honor. You will obey.

Now there’s a manner in which we do it so that the children are not in doubt that we continue to love them. A man once said to me, and maybe this comes across more powerfully if you have endured what we would call today abuse, oppression. Maybe it’s a more scriptural word. I said one time in my presence about learning even as we discipline our children, the Bible speaks specifically about the use of the rod. When your child knows it’s going to be disciplined, you lift the rod because the rod signifies what’s about to happen. and you never want them to connect discipline with your hand, but with a rod. If you’ve ever owned a dog, you will know if you use something to help it learn faster, classic as the rolled up newspaper or whatever on the nose. If you do it with your hand, I’ve seen this, If you discipline a dog with your hand, and you beat it on the nose with your hand, when you reach to pet it, it will wince. It doesn’t know what’s about to happen. But if you only pet it with your hand, but you discipline it with a rolled up paper or whatever, then it knows. When you reach out with your hand, you only intend to care. This really struck me. Left an impression on me. This was on Noah to prepare an ark. It wasn’t on his wife. It was on Noah.

To save his house was on Noah. To minister to his family was on Noah. His wife played a part of that, there’s no doubt. Key, absolutely crucial. This weight of responsibility was on Noah. And he saved his house. He prepared an ark to the saving of his house. He did it all for the saving of his house. You think about that. You think, if Noah was as faithful, if Noah was as diligent, let’s say, in his building of an ark, as some are when it comes to family worship, The ark would never have been built in time. And his family would have perished. This is a labor over years, just like it is to worship with your family. It’s labor over years. And you’re gonna have those times when the little ones are off and on the sofa, and they’re upside down, they’re on their heads over the sofa and all that. I get all that. I used to try to force them to sit in a certain way, but there’s a certain stage of life where you just have to accept a little bit of chaos during family, Bible time, and worship. You just accept it, because this is not gonna work. Just let them, and let the older ones learn just to carry on. And by example, they’ll begin to get it. Of course, there’s a certain time where you say, no, now’s the time. You sit up, you sit up.

Brothers, take this to heart. Noah’s family would have perished if he was not diligent every day. It’s convicting, isn’t it? Our families may perish if we’re not diligent every day. Oh, how he loved and prepared an ark to the saving of his house. And he hugged his children and kissed his children and talked to his children. And when Noah said, “The deluge is coming! God has said!” His children, his sons, did not question it. Their father was a serious man, not to be trifled with, and he had been faithful in other ways. And so when it came to the ark, his sons heeded his warning. Faith without works is dead, men and women. It is dead. Noah had this true faith, this biblical faith, this evangelical faith, and the proof of it is in the activity. He put feet to his beliefs. He put hands to his convictions. He didn’t just affirm that judgment was coming. He built an ark. Every day he built it, blood, sweat, and tears, because he loved God and he loved his family.

And I imagine people watched on. Some of the ways in which the ark—like the one you can go and see there by Answers in Genesis—some of the ways in which it’s portrayed, you see the mockery of the world. I certainly think there’s testimony to that, and we can see something of that and even rationalize and remind the likelihood of it. Looking at this man and thinking, “Old fool, what are you doing building? How are you going to get this thing to the sea? I mean, you’re building it here on land. How are you going to get it to the sea?” Well, the sea will come to it. They will laugh at him. This is lunacy. This man has lost it.

And yet Noah’s faith stood like an anvil under the hammers of a godless world. Stroke after stroke of mockery, Noah stood on. He was unmoved. That’s the way you’re going to have to be. If you have true faith in Jesus Christ, you must remain unmoved. Whatever people say, you will have God’s Word in your heart, and that will be driving you. And every time he prepared a plank of wood and assembled it, he was communicating, whether uttered or not, “I believe God more than I fear man.” That’s what faith does. It pours even resources into that which it believes God has said.

So, Noah’s faith listened, feared, obeyed. Noah’s faith also warned. Warned. By the which he condemned the world. By the which he condemned the world. Now, 2 Peter, chapter two, refers to Noah as a preacher of righteousness. It communicates something of what he was doing while he was building the ark. He was a preacher, he was a prophet, a man with a word from God communicating it to the world. But when it says here in this verse, “by the which he condemned the world,” it’s not, I don’t think, referring to his preaching ministry. The text says, “by the which,” which refers to his faith, and this I think is what is missing. You might read Hebrews 11 and think that the repetition of “by faith” is too much. If I was going to say something, I would say it’s too infrequent because the repetition is here because you need to keep making the connection with the historic details and their connection to a living faith.

So it’s true here as well. It’s by his faith he condemned the world. That’s how he condemned the world, by this lived-out faith. It’s not so much referring to him as a self-righteous judge crying out condemnation upon people, reeling incessantly at his generation. The condemnation was a result of the actions he did that were a product or a fruit of his faith. And so by constructing the ark, his very life testified to the reality of God’s coming judgment. He’s condemning the world. Every plank was a sermon declaring, “God would judge sin, repent, prepare.”

So it is with us. Oh, I am for verbal evangelism. Oral communication of the truth must be that. And I am for giving out literature. And I am for the ways in which you can share the gospel. It doesn’t require that all the time, and you can’t do it all the time. The believer quietly obeys God in a world that loves sin, and his life of obedience stands as a rebuke. You’re not called to argue all day with unbelievers. Sometimes your life, with a few words, your life is that which testifies. The consistency of a life lived for His glory. So let your evangelistic words flow out of a life that is faithful, showing charity to your neighbor.

Noah’s faith warned. His faith condemned the world. The outworking of his faith, his obedience to God condemned the world. “Prepare. Get into the ark. A deluge is coming,” all while everyone else was just eating, drinking, giving in marriage.

Finally, Noah’s faith justified. Noah’s faith justified and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. Became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. The conclusion here draws the whole matter to a sharp point. An heir of the righteousness which is by faith. You see here that Noah’s salvation was not about what he did. It wasn’t based on what he did. It was by faith. He was counted righteous in God’s sight. And his hearing of the word and his building of the ark and responding to what God revealed was the outworking of his faith.

I repeat this because you must understand it. The phrase “heir of righteousness” mirrors that which is used of Abraham when Abraham believed God and was counted unto him for righteousness. And Noah stands there in a similar line, justified by faith alone. You see it in the previous text. Without faith, it is impossible to please Him. It’s not works. The works are necessary. Works are key. But justification, this standing righteous before God, this epistle to the Hebrews, which is about being rightly related to God, is by faith. You see, that’s why I pointed you back to the end of chapter 10. We believe to the saving of the soul. So it was for Noah.

Without faith, it is impossible to please God. No, he didn’t earn righteousness by his costly, sacrificial endeavor, but he earned it by faith. Even the idea of being an heir—an heir, what’s an heir? Something that is received, freely granted. Noah received the status of being righteous before the flood ever came. He found grace in the eyes of the Lord, is what the passage tells us. It’s grace, not merit. It’s not his own works that justified him. He’s an heir. Noah is an heir by faith. Became an heir of the righteousness which is by faith. He stands righteous by faith. Oh, let this be understood because this is the heartbeat of the Bible. This is the encouragement for sinners.

A righteousness sufficient to satisfy Almighty God. Righteousness, so that you can stand complete righteousness that makes it look like you’ve lived an impeccable life. Righteousness is the message. It is the good news. Because this righteousness is not worked out. This righteousness is not by us an achievement. This righteousness has been worked out by Jesus Christ, the Son of God. You believe. That’s what you do. You believe.

Christian, hear me. You believe that. You believe that. That’s enough for me. That’s enough for me. I don’t need any more than that. I can’t add to it. What would I add? I would only tarnish it. There’s nothing I can contribute that can make it any better than Jesus, Jesus only. That’s perfection. It’s a wonderful piece of art. Wonderful building, an architect who’s crafted something, and it’s wonderful to look at. And then some modernistic idea comes in and you’re going to fashion it. And you look at it and you see this thing sticking out the side of it. You go, “What is that?” Like, who—what were they thinking? I mean, it was fine, and you went and destroyed it. Went and ruined it. And we’ve all seen things like that.

And so it is when it comes to our standing before God, Jesus, Jesus, it’s Him. He came into this world to live the life you can’t live, to obey every jot and tittle of the law, to represent, to stand in our place. So He lives in perfect obedience for you. And He dies to pay the penalty for sin for you. Your job, your response is simply this: I believe. I believe.

When you believe and you become an heir of the righteousness which is by faith, then that faith works. It does things. It hears what God says, even if you’ve never seen it before. And it responds, it moves in reverence and endeavors to save those you’re responsible for. This is the gospel. Do you have this? Do you have this faith? It can be written over your life by faith, first name. You can start listing the things that you did that prove your faith. The ways in which you obey God and trust God and rest in God and sacrifice for God by faith. You need this. You’re living in a world outside dancing and feasting and doing all the things they were doing in Noah’s day. And they’ll scoff and they’ll mock. Even the church will—the church, even the professing church—especially if you’re serious-minded.

If you’re serious-minded, if you’re the kind of person who responds to God with reverence, there will be those who profess who will say, “It’ll be fine.” I am quite sure in Noah’s day there were those who believed in a creator of the world. “Oh no, I believe God. If this was going to happen, God would have told me as well.” They were not living by faith. They had a faith, the way the devils have a faith. The devils believe, the Bible says.

The world out there who say they believe, let me mock you. Do not wince, do not deviate. Move with fear. Hear from God and move with fear. Reverence. Remember who God is. Honor Him with everything. And so, this is what you’re to do. And get into the ark. It’s a great picture, isn’t it? The ark, Noah, come thou into the ark. An invitation. The first language of “come” that you have in the Bible. Come into the ark. And people today, they’re still looking for this ark. They say they found the ark. We’ve found the ark. We’ve discovered the ark. Maybe they have, maybe they haven’t. What’s the point? You need to get to the ark that doesn’t decompose. The ark that stands. The ark that prevails. The ark that will actually stand when it comes to the final judgment. That ark you need to get into. And the name of that ark is Jesus Christ. Come thou into the ark. Come in, all children, boys and girls, come into this ark, Jesus Christ. Believe on Him. He is enough for you, just as He has been enough and will be enough for mom and dad. Come into this ark.

May the Lord help us, help us to live as Noah did. And I just remind you again of these things where if you have this true faith, what will it do? You’ll listen, you’ll fear, you’ll obey, you’ll warn, and you will be justified. May the Lord help us, let’s pray.

In just a moment we will sing and sit at the table that’s prepared. Let me issue again an encouragement to you. Eight souls made it into that ark. The ark that I point you to this morning can receive an innumerable multitude. And you don’t need to stand outside and say there’s no room. There is room for you. Come. Come today. Come now. Lord bless Thy Word. We thank Thee for our Lord Jesus Christ. He is all our righteousness. Praise God. It’s so good to come to this table. Standing complete in Him, to sit at this table as sitting with a friend, a friend that sticketh closer than a brother, a friend who is the fairest of 10,000 to our souls. What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear. Lord, we pray, all of us here will come afresh, abide in Jesus the Ark, and receive the provision, the salvation, and the protection that He promises. Bless our time around this table. Sanctify it. Give us a little sense of Thy presence. Melt our hearts to tears, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.