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Lesson 3  Is Your Faith in Action?

    As we move into examining Noah, we know that this is where the flood took place. Therefore, Noah is a bridge from the first stage into the second stage. For Noah to start the promise & flood stage he had to come out of the promise & pre-flood stage. What did he do? What was going on around him that caused God to want him included in the faith chapter? In order to answer these questions, we need first to read Hebrews 11:7, which states the following:

Hebrews 11:7

    7. 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.
The second word in this verse tells us what kind of person Noah was. We have talked about the word faith in lesson 1 and hopefully we understand the depth of this word. Also remember this verse follows “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him (Hebrews 11:6.)” You may be asking why that is so important.

    The answer to that question comes in the form of investigating Noah’s ancestors. Noah’s father was Lamech and Lamech’s father was Methuselah who was the son of Enoch. Noah had his grandfather around him for at least 600 years before he died. Remember that Enoch was 300 years old when Methuselah was born and God did not take Enoch home until he was 365 years old. Read Genesis 5:22 – 32, to come up with these numbers. We also know that this family was committed to following God and not keeping up with the rest of the world. In fact, this is what keeps a lot of Christians today from using their faith as they should, because they want to be liked by the folks around them even when they know they are evil, mean, and NO GOOD.

    Next, we need to examine the following in Hebrews 11:7: “… being warned of God of things not seen as yet,…” This is a very important part of this verse because it says that God warned Noah about something that has not been seen on the earth before. Remember Noah’s family had a long life here on earth and his family line went all the way back to the beginning of mankind. Therefore, whatever this was, it was going to be something Noah had to trust God in order to handle it. Some of us are going to have a hard time dealing with what is about to be said. In Genesis 7:4, the LORD said he would cause it to rain for forty days and nights. You see the earth had not known rain, for there were mist and rivers that watered the earth. Read Genesis 2:5 – 6. Therefore, we can see why his faith was very important to this project that God called Noah to do. In fact, there is no record in the Bible of a ship being built before this time. Therefore, Noah is dealing with two new things, which the world had not seen nor heard about. Yet Noah believes God and begins to do what God asked him to do. How would we act if God asked us to do something that the world had not seen or experienced before?

    Let us examine the condition of the world when God makes this request of Noah. In reading Genesis 6:1 – 7, we see the “sons of God” who are the seed or line of Seth, who professed to be religious, and the “daughters of men” who were of the seed or line of Cain. We know that these scriptures about “the sons of God” are not talking about angels because of what Jesus said in Matthew 22:30.

    In addition, there is a question that needs to be discussed. How long did it take Noah to build the ark? There are wide ranges of thinking on this. The ranges go from 55 – 120 years. Many of these folks who picked these dates use Genesis 5:32 and 11:10 for dates earlier than 120 years. The 120 years come from Genesis 6:3. The fact of the matter is that the time is not the issue here. What is important is that Noah did what God called him to do when he had never seen rain nor an ark.

    When we talked about Enoch, do you remember that God’s Word says that he walked with God? The reason I ask this question is that there is only one other person that this is said about. It is Noah. Both Enoch and Noah walked with God physically and spiritually in this world. It is so important to understand that these two lived a life in the same world we live in and had to deal with the same kind of problems. However, in Genesis 6:9, we are also told that he was just (righteous) and perfect (complete, blameless). Read Genesis, chapters 6 – 10.

    Now that you have read Genesis, chapters 6 – 10 we can move on. Take some time and list the additional promises God made to Noah and his sons.

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Let us look at these promises that God made with Noah and his sons (and us). Remember that we are examining our faith as we study the faith of these listed in Hebrews 11. One of the first promises made is that of life and not death found in Genesis 6:17 – 21. This promise is told to Noah before the flood and before he had all of his sons. He is also told that his sons will have wives. In Genesis 9:1, God confirms Genesis 6:17 – 21 by telling him to come out of the ark and be fruitful, and multiply.

    There is a promise that we all know about, it is the rainbow. Read Genesis 8:20 – 22 and 9:9 -17 so that we get the fullest understanding of this promise which is still at work. So what did God say that the bow would stand for? Would the ground be cursed for man’s sake again? Did God take away mankind’s imagination? It must be possible to control our imagination because not all of mankind was destroyed. We read in Genesis 6:5 that most of mankind had evil thoughts continually and in Genesis 8:21 that it started in their youth. Then we read what God said about Noah in Genesis 6:8 -9, which also tells us about how his sons would be raised.

    In reading Genesis 9:1 – 7, we find more promises that relate to life, protection from beast and man, and provision of food. Again, there is the promise that Noah’s seed would multiply all over the world.