Noah - Another Man who Walked with God
Ian Goligher
November 27, 2020
Noah – Another Man who walked with God.
Enoch was the man who walked with God. Noah was the man who walked with God and worked for God. He built an ark to save himself and his family from the worldwide flood that God sent upon a wicked world.
Noah’s name means comfort. Comfort was needed because life on earth was very hard. Because of Adam’s sin, God had cursed the ground. You know that weeds grow faster and stronger than pretty flowers. That’s because of God’s curse upon the ground. Briars, thorns, and weeds multiply to choke the good plants, like the tares among the wheat.
Noah was born into this cursed world close to 1000 years after creation, and when Noah was 500 years old he became a dad to three boys, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. They were over 100 years old when the flood came upon the earth.
By that time millions of people were born into the world. Through very large families and through people living for hundreds of years the population of the world multiplied rapidly. But the more that the people multiplied; the more that sin multiplied. That black sin in Adam and Eve’s hearts was in their children’s hearts too and in the hearts of all the people born into the world. All were sinners in their hearts and were depraved in their decisions. Each and every single person was totally depraved.
You remember what totally depraved means! It means that from the head to the foot there is corruption in every part of human nature, and that includes you. All have sinned and come short of God’s glory. None wanted to walk with God or live for God.
Even though God’s law was written on their hearts, people resisted the truth and rebelled against God.
People were not careful about making friends. Young men married young women who were evil and wanted to live for the pleasures of sin. Their children became bullies, proud, boastful with wild and evil plans finding ways to live without God.
Because they were totally depraved people were the opposite to good.
Instead of being loving, they were hateful.
Instead of being kind, they were cruel.
Instead of being joyful, they were angry.
Instead of being peaceful, they were riotous.
Instead of caring for each other, they were murderous to destroy each other.
The Bible says that at that time violence filled the earth. It was dangerous to walk the streets. Homes were locked up for fear of angry attackers. Even inside homes husbands fought with their wives in anger. Parents hated their children and children fought back with their parents.
Could you imagine hitting your mother to make her cry in pain? That is a terrible sin and God will judge the wicked, always. In fact, God looked down and saw such terrible sins in the earth and he decided that He was having no more of it. God warned Noah that a great flood was coming upon the world and that he needed to build an enormous ark to save himself and his family.
Why Noah? The Bible says that “Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” That meant that God was going to be very kind to Noah. He would be blessed by being spared from the judgment. Noah was to be the builder of a huge wooden boat, or a large vessel that would float above the waters that would come upon the earth.
You see God talked with Noah, and Noah listened, and he believed everything that God told him. That is always a mark of a believer. If you believe in God, you must listen to His word and do what He says. Noah was to do two things. He was to build the ark and he was to exhort the people to trust in God’s way of salvation by entering the ark.
So, for over 100 years Noah went to work to build the ark. He had to cut down the trees, haul the wood, shape the wood, and fit everything together. God gave him the size and shape of the ark. God gave him the skills to do it. God told Noah to seal the ark with black pitch, or tar. Can you imagine seeing Noah and his sons, and perhaps others who were paid their wages, working at building the ark? They worked with hammers, nails, wooden pegs, saws, and hand tools with a lot of sweat each weekday, apart from working on the Sabbath, for over 100 years.
During that time, Noah preached to the people who came to see the ark being built. He warned them that there would be terrible torrential rains, and the water would rise and rise until the whole earth is covered over.
The people thought that Noah was mad. They had never seen rain. They didn’t believe that there could even be so much water to cover over the whole earth. They thought that Noah got something all wrong and they would not believe that God spoke to Noah. The people were filled with unbelief.
That is the same attitude people have to the gospel of the Lord Jesus today. Preachers are sent to warn people to flee from the wrath to come. Sin is renounced and wickedness is exposed by faithful preachers like Noah, but people don’t listen. They just laugh it off and scoff. They makeup jokes about the preacher and at the idea of God judging the whole world. People think it’s a joke.
But it is not a joke. Listen to the words of the Lord Jesus:
“And as it was in the days of Noe so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all” (Luke 17:26 – 27).
That is exactly what happened in the days of Noah. There came the day for Noah and his family to enter the ark. Then all the animals went in two by two, male and female. Some animals, like sheep came in pairs of seven, for they were needed for sacrifices.
God gave a final warning seven days before the flood came. Then on the seventh day, the door of the ark suddenly shut solid-tight. What did it mean, the people wondered? Then for the first time in the history of the world rain began to fall. What is this, they asked. People cried out, I’m getting wet, and then they saw the water rising and the boat lifting off the ground by the swelling of the water. Then all the people outside the ark were panicking. They began to bang on the door of the ark, crying out, “Let us in, we are drowning!”
Some tried to run for the hills, but the water caught up with them. The water kept on rising and rising, until it went over the people’s heads, over the hills, and over the mountain tops. Everything was covered over in water.
And so the whole world perished. Every living thing that had breath died. People and animals, and even all birds were destroyed by that great world-wide flood. No-one and nothing outside of the ark survived. Only eight people were saved – those in the ark – Noah, his wife, their three sons, and their wives. They were saved because God treated Noah in mercy and because Noah listened to God’s instructions to build an ark, and because Noah trusted in the ark to save him from the flood.
You too are warned to flee from God’s judgment. You are commanded to trust in the Lord Jesus as God’s only way of saving your soul. Will you listen? Will you prepare for the judgment that is yet to come upon this world, when God will destroy the wicked with the earth. It will not be by a flood, but by fire. Then the whole world will be burned up and every soul without the Lord Jesus will perish. You need to be saved. You must call on the Lord Jesus to be your Saviour. Believe on the Lord Jesus and call on Him to save you so that you don’t perish along with this sinful world that is condemned to hell-fire, at the outpouring of God’s wrath on that great and terrible judgment that is coming upon all the world.
November 29, 2020