Noah's obedience amazes me. This lesson will take you back to the time of Noah. You'll look over his shoulder and do a lot of wondering what his world was like. As you get lost in your imagination, don't miss the lessons that can be applied to your life today. The same blessings he received back then are the same blessings we can receive today. Make a legacy with your faith and obedience to God.
This is a review of John MacArthur’s book Keys To Spiritual Growth with comments and study questions along the way. Feel free to study along and answer the questions or ask your own in the comments section below to enrich our learning. To go to the start of this series click here.
Previously…
3 THE MASTER PLAN – How To Glorify God
And now…
4 OBEDIENCE – Unlocking the Servants’ Quarters
Ferdinand Waldo Demara, Jr., otherwise known as the Great Impostor, was a high-school dropout. A book and movie chronicled the story of his life and the many occupations he pursued. Without any credentials or qualifications, he served at various times as a university executive, psychology professor, a Trappist monk, assistant warden of a Texas prison, and a Canadian navy surgeon in Korea. In his role as surgeon, Demara did tonsillectomies, amputated limbs, and even removed a bullet from a man’s chest. Yet the only medical knowledge he had was what he gleaned from books on board his ship! For a while, this man was a teacher in my high school. In fact, many felt he was the best teacher there!
How did Ferdinand Demara find employment in so many unlikely roles? He would falsify evidence, forge identity papers, and brazenly feign, simulate, or fake his way through whatever functions were necessary to confirm his claim to be something he wasn’t.
I think of Demara often as a symbol of the way many professing Christians live. Did you realize that the church is loaded with impostors? Scripture repeatedly makes this clear. Paul warned Timothy, “Evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13). When Paul left Ephesus, he told the elders of the church there, “I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock” (Acts 20:29). Jesus gave His disciples a similar warning: “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves” (Matthew 7:15). Our Lord’s parable of the wheat and the tares (Matthew 13:36-43) is a reminder that Satan specializes in planting phony believers among the true.[1]
We dare not forget those warnings. Too many people in today’s church are eager to embrace and include everyone who claims to be a Christian. Not wanting to be divisive, they fear challenging anyone’s profession of faith. As a consequence, many churches today are filled with people who claim Jesus as Savior but whose behavior denies that He is Lord. The apostles recorded numerous warnings for the early church about evil influences that were creeping into the church through bogus Christians and false teachers. We must be equally circumspect, on guard against the same diabolical influences in the contemporary church.
That brings up an interesting and vital question: How can you tell genuine Christians from the impostors?[2] There are a number of criteria, but among the most important is the matter of obedience. A person may profess faith in Christ, yet live a life of disobedience to the One he professed as Lord. Something is wrong-terribly wrong. Our Savior asked the sobering question, “Why do you call Me, “Lord, Lord,” and do not do what I say?” (Luke 6:46).
People have a right to be suspicious of one who says he believes in Jesus but fails to live up to that claim. James declared that genuine faith must result in a life of good works (James 2:14-26). If you really believe God, then there should be evidence of it in the way you live, in the things you say, and in the things you do. There is an inseparable relationship between obedience and faith – almost like two sides of a coin. It is impossible to detach one from the other, though many today are trying very hard to devise a doctrine of “faith” that is disjointed from obedience.[3]
Noah: A Life of Obedient Faith
We might turn to a number of people in the Bible to illustrate a faith that obeys, but I can think of no greater example than Noah. Noah took one further step than the two most important earlier examples of faith, Abel and Enoch. Abel illustrates godly worship. Enoch embodies a godly walk. Noah depicts godly work. In fact, Noah worshiped, walked, and worked. You’ve got to worship God if you are going to walk with Him, and you’ve got to walk with Him before you can work for Him.[4] That is God’s pattern.
Noah’s faith and obedience went far beyond human reason. What he did does not even make sense to the average mind. Unless a man knew God personally and had some kind of supernatural spiritual insight, he would be a blathering idiot to do what Noah did.
That’s precisely why Noah’s faith is so remarkable. He hadn’t seen anything tangible or visible to establish his trust in God, but God’s Word was enough for him. His life of faith and obedience may be summed up in two traits. First, he responded to God’s Word. Second, he rebuked the world.
Noah Responded to God’s Word
Hebrews 11:7 tells us, “By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household….” He believed God – so much so that he built an ark. Now it may appear on the surface that Noah was somewhat foolhardy. It certainly appeared that way to his neighbors. They had never seen a drop of rain. How they must have laughed at his construction project! Why did he do what he did? Because God said to him, “Noah, judgment is coming. I’m going to destroy the world by water. You’d better build a boat.” So Noah dropped everything and spent more than a hundred years obeying God’s command.
I don’t know about you, but after seventy or eighty years, I’d begin to wonder. After all, Noah lived in Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, miles from any ocean. But faith responds to God’s Word. It doesn’t question – it just obeys.
Noah was a human being, just as we are. He had a lot of things to do to occupy his time. For him to give up such an immense span of his life to construct a huge boat took a serious commitment. He listened to God, and then he spent his life obeying what God said. Isn’t that amazing? It would have been one thing for him to run out and secure the lumber, but it was something else to see him a hundred years later still smearing bitumen on the structure. Some of us believe God, and we run out and make a start, but that’s that. We never get much past that point. Noah continued in his obedience. Jesus said perseverance is the mark of His true disciples (John 8:31). Noah was absolutely convinced of the authority that lay behind the command to him. One warning was enough for him.
Someone might argue that Noah obeyed God out of fear of the consequences. But such is not the case. Hebrews 11:7 tells us that his motivation was reverence for God, not abject fear. Noah obeyed because he revered God’s Word. The implication is that Noah acted with pious care. He treated the message of God with great reverence and prepared the ark for saving not only himself, but also his wife, his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives – and representatives from the entire animal kingdom! What amazing faith this man exhibited!
Go back to Genesis 6 and see some of the fascinating things that took place. God told Noah, “Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood; you shall make the ark with rooms, and shall cover it inside and out with pitch” (v. 14). That was a challenge to faith and obedience on an unprecedented scale. What would you do if God told you to build a 20,000 – ton ship in the middle of the wilderness? Think about it. One of the greatest acts of obedience in the history of the world took place when Noah rolled up his sleeves and chopped down that first tree.
I can’t resist a digression from our subject. The Hebrew word translated “pitch” is exactly the same word translated “atonement.” It can be either. Leviticus 17:11 might read this way: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement [to be pitch] for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement [serves as pitch].” In the ark of safety, the pitch kept the waters of judgment out. And the pitch in the life of believers is the blood of Christ, which secures us from any judgment. The pitch in the ark was what kept the water out, and the blood of Christ seals the believer from the flood of God’s judgment.
The size of the ark.
Genesis 6:15 gives us the dimensions of the ark: “And this is how you shall make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits.” God gave Noah a verbal blueprint. As you may know, there is quite a bit of variation in how much an ancient cubit measured, since it took as its standard the distance between a man’s elbow and middle finger. In general terms, the dimensions of the ark would be about 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high – about the height of a four-story building. Since the ark had 3 decks, its total area was approximately 95,000 square feet. That would be more than 20 standard-sized basketball courts. That’s big! Its size places it well within the category of large, steel, ocean-going vessels of our modern world. As far as we can tell, it was similar to a covered raft – shaped like a coffin – rather square and flat bottomed.
An instructor once gave a lecture to admirals at Annapolis Naval Academy. “For centuries,” this man said, “men built ships in various proportions. But since British naval machinists found the formula for the battleship Dreadnought, all naval construction follows the proportions of Dreadnought, since they have been found to be scientifically perfect. “Then he added, “The proportions of Dreadnought are exactly the same as the ark.”
The weather forecast: rain.
“And behold, I, even I am bringing the flood of water upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life, from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall perish” (Genesis 6:17). That must have been difficult for Noah to understand. Noah had no concept of rain, since it had never before rained (Genesis 2:5). Instead, a mist from the earth continually watered the ground.
Many creation scientists believe the earth was surrounded by a vapor canopy. That would help explain the long life spans of those who lived before the Flood. Harmful rays of the sun did not penetrate this canopy, so the process of deterioration was greatly slowed down. When the canopy collapsed during the Flood (Genesis 7:11), the protection was removed, and man’s life span immediate] y began decreasing.
More than a century of fruitless preaching.
When God first told Noah the Flood was coming, it was still a long way off – a hundred and twenty years, in fact (Genesis 6:3). Noah could easily have rationalized and taken his task casually. If he were a procrastinator, the ark might never have been built. Moreover, during those long years, Noah preached. He preached earnestly and unrelentingly, although no one believed him. As a preacher myself, I know that must have been hard to take. Yet Noah kept right on giving out the message.
Perhaps, as the years wore on, Noah began to question. He may have begun to think, I wonder if there’s something wrong with me. I’ve gone over this sermon many, many times, and no one buys it.
You can well imagine what this man of obedience must have endured as he pounded and preached.
People passing by would point to him, touch their heads, and say, “There’s that crazy Noah.”
Perhaps he would think, Even if the Flood does come, how is this monster going to float – especially with all the different animals in it? It has no anchor, no mast, no steering, no rudder, no sail – not much of anything except floor space. But through it all, Noah believed God and obeyed him.
God establishes His covenant.
In Genesis 6:18, God made this promise to Noah: “But I will establish My covenant with you; and you shall enter the ark – you and your sons and your wife, and your sons’ wives with you.” That promise, like all God’s promises, had its foundation in God’s grace (Genesis 6:8). Grace is strictly God’s to give to whom He will. Noah was a sinner, like all men. In fact, he fell into gross sin after the Flood (Genesis 9:2 1). God extended grace to Noah simply because He desired to do so. It pleased the Lord to be gracious to Noah – to spare him and to make a covenant with him.
Genesis 6:19-2 1 records God’s instructions to Noah:
“And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. Of the birds after their kind, and of the animals after their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, two of every kind shall come to you to keep them alive. And as for you, cake for yourself some of all food which is edible, and gather it to yourself; and it shall be for food for you and for them.”
God was in essence saying, “After you’ve built this boat, I want you to get the animals into it and provide for their care.”
Imagine, if you can, the day this was all fulfilled. Noah just sat at the gangplank, waiting for all those animals to come in from everywhere. He didn’t have to go out and round them up; they just came. There is no way to explain that fact other than that God was herding them into this big boat.
It’s been calculated from a spatial standpoint that the ark could easily have handled 7,000 species of animals. That’s quite a number! It doesn’t necessarily mean two of every animal in the world, since one basic species can generate a wide range of varieties. All horses, for instance, whether Shetland ponies, racing horses, draft animals, or whatever, are descended from one common ancestor. Two cows could well have represented the whole bovine family. So it is very likely that the species were limited. It is within reason to assume there was plenty of room for every species on board. It has been estimated that there is a total of about 2, 500 animal species-the average size being that of a cat, which would require less than two square feet of living space. So it was no problem to get the animals into the ark from a logistics standpoint. But that still left the matter of the feeding and care of this great number of animals. Who would feed them? How would the sanitation problem be cared for? You can see the enormous problems of preparing to spend a year on that boat.
Total obedience.
Noah was a man of obedience, so he began to build. “Thus Noah did; according to all that God had commanded him, so he did” (Genesis 6:22). What faith! Total obedience! How unlike most of us. God would have us take responsibility for some ministry or reach some person He brings into our lives, or He asks us to trust Him in a trial that we’re going through. How often we fail to obey God in such situations, let alone build an ark! We say we believe, but our faith is infinitesimal in relation to that of Noah. And some of us run out of patience very quickly. We think it’s a major victory when we obey for a week. Noah obeyed for a hundred and twenty years!
What were the grounds for his obedience?[5] Nothing more than God’s Word. He believed that God meant what He said about judgment and what He said about His promise. So Noah built the ark exactly as he was supposed to. He obeyed God to the letter. He didn’t pick and choose his points of obedience. Some people want to believe God about His promises, but not about judgment – but we must believe both equally. Charles Spurgeon said:
He who does not believe that God will punish sin, will not believe that He will pardon it through atoning blood. I charge you who profess the Lord not to be unbelieving with regard to the terrible threatenings of God to the ungodly. Believe the threat, even though it should chill your blood. Believe, though nature shrinks from the overwhelming doom, for if you do not believe, the act of disbelieving God at one point will drive you to disbelieve upon the other points.
So Noah believed God – believed not only the promise of safety in the ark, but also in the imminent destruction of the world. He believed both. He believed God totally.
Questions & Notes
- Our Lord’s parable of the wheat and the tares (found in _________) is a reminder that Satan specializes in planting phony believers among the true. ↑
- How can you tell genuine Christians from the impostors? ↑
- See John F. MacArthur, Jr., The Gospel According to Jesus (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1988) for an in-depth study of this issue. ↑
- You’ve got to _________ God if you are going to walk with Him, and you’ve got to walk with Him before you can _________ for Him. ↑
- What were the grounds for Noah’s obedience? ↑
Click on the "Keys To Spiritual Growth" tag below to see all the posts in this series. To go to the start of this series click here. For a great way to move through the Bible in short devotionals add the Grace to You App to your phone and find them under the "Read" tab of the app.