Noah: Favor, Faith, and Foreshadowing

Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen. For by this our ancestors were approved. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible. By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was approved as a righteous man, because God approved his gifts, and even though he is dead, he still speaks through his faith. By faith Enoch was taken away, and so he did not experience death. He was not to be found because God took him away. For before he was taken away, he was approved as one who pleased God. Now without faith it is impossible to please God, since the one who draws near to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. By faith Noah, after he was warned about what was not yet seen and motivated by godly fear, built an ark to deliver his family. By faith he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.

“You’re not David/Noah” - While we can learn from the Old Testament characters, we should not see ourselves as the main character of the story. We should not try to find the giants, the floods, the dreams in our lives and allegorize the history of the Old Testament. This would be a man-centered reading of the Bible. We must remember that these men and women were also sinful people, just like us. Any righteousness they displayed was the work of God and was used to help humanity to get a clearer picture of it’s redeemer: Jesus, and understand what he would do. The whole story is about him, not me. Not you. Not the battle against financial struggles, not a flood of criticism, not our hopes and dreams.

The Roadmap:

Review

The Story and character of Noah

Noah as a shadow of Jesus

The Hope and The Warning

Review:

What is faith?

Faith is confidence and hope in the promises that God has made, even though the fulfillment is unseen.

Sacrifice of Abel

Enoch, the man who walked with God

The promises:

A redeemer is coming (Genesis, 3.15)

God would accept a proper sacrifice (implied, by Hebrews and the Story of Abel)

The Main Point: True Faith Produces Faithful Obedience

The Story of Noah:

Genesis 6:5–14 CSB

When the Lord saw that human wickedness was widespread on the earth and that every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time, the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and he was deeply grieved. Then the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I created, off the face of the earth, together with the animals, creatures that crawl, and birds of the sky—for I regret that I made them.” Noah, however, found favor with the Lord. These are the family records of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among his contemporaries; Noah walked with God. And Noah fathered three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with wickedness. God saw how corrupt the earth was, for every creature had corrupted its way on the earth. Then God said to Noah, “I have decided to put an end to every creature, for the earth is filled with wickedness because of them; therefore I am going to destroy them along with the earth. “Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it with pitch inside and outside.

Genesis 6:17–19 CSB

“Understand that I am bringing a flood—floodwaters on the earth to destroy every creature under heaven with the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark with your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives. You are also to bring into the ark two of all the living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you.

The Highlights:

The evil of mankind had become out of control and was so deeply rooted in the heart of man that God decided to flood the world and start over.

But unlike the rest of the world, Noah was righteous.

God decided to rescue Noah from the flood, and gave Noah instructions on how to build a boat to survive.

God sent the flood as promised, and Noah and his family were saved.

This story seems rather straightforward, and it is in many ways, it is. But as we take a closer look at its parts, we will see just how bad the world had become, just how different Noah was, and how the story of Noah and his faith points us to Jesus. This is all the more important as the overall message of Hebrews is a call of faithfulness to Jesus.

Great Wickedness

Genesis 6:1–7 CSB

When mankind began to multiply on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of mankind were beautiful, and they took any they chose as wives for themselves. And the Lord said, “My Spirit will not remain with mankind forever, because they are corrupt. Their days will be 120 years.” The NephilimE were on the earth both in those days and afterward, when the sons of God came to the daughters of mankind, who bore children to them. They were the powerful men of old, the famous men. When the Lord saw that human wickedness was widespread on the earth and that every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time, the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and he was deeply grieved. Then the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I created, off the face of the earth, together with the animals, creatures that crawl, and birds of the sky—for I regret that I made them.”

This Passage is one of the most pessimistic, tragic, and downright strange passages in the Bible.

Just a few chapters earlier, God had created the world and called it “Very Good.” God had created a man and woman who did not know evil, and yet when tempted, they rebelled against God and brought death into our world, though it would come so slowly for Adam and Eve, since Adam lived 939 years.

Not only did sin and death enter the world, but Adam and Eve’s son Cain brought about even greater sin by committing history’s first murder.

And things only go downhill from there as one of Cain’s descendants proclaims his ruthless wrath with pride.

And then we get to this passage that we just read, where we hear about the “sons of God” taking the daughters of men as their wives, and producing the Nephilim: a race of giants. What is meant by “Sons of God” and “Daughters of men” has been debated, but I am becoming convinced that what is meant here is that there were angelic beings who sinfully began to interact with mankind in marriage and their offspring was supernaturally strange and brutal. In the days of Moses, when the people of Israel sent out 12 spies to inspect the promised land, they found a remnant of Giants, of Nephilim there, and they make a strange statement about the land and its inhabitants: “The land through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim, and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them” (Numbers, 13:32-33).

This is a strange phrase, “the land devours its inhabitants.” What some have said is that this is a reference to cannibalism. Though not Scripture, one of the things that the Book of Enoch says is that the Nephilim, this race of giants had turned cannibalistic. And while these writings are not scripture, Biblical writers took some things to be factual, and this might be one of them.

So by the days of Noah, we have unholy marriages between the angelic and the human. We have rampant violence. We likely have cannibalism. And every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time.

By the time we get to this point, we see only one man, Enoch, who has received exceeding approval from God. He is the only one since the creation that it was declared “he walked with God.”

Noah, The Deliverer who Walked with God

In the midst of this darkness, this hopelessness, we are introduced to Noah - in a genealogy of all places. And there was a hopeful expectation with the birth of Noah,

Genesis 5:28–29 CSB

Lamech was 182 years old when he fathered a son. And he named him Noah, saying, “This one will bring us relief from the agonizing labor of our hands, caused by the ground the Lord has cursed.”

And in Chapter 6, this is said about Noah:

Genesis 6:8–9 CSB

Noah, however, found favor with the Lord. These are the family records of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among his contemporaries; Noah walked with God.

We don’t know much about his early life, but we are given the prophetic statement, the hope that he would deliver people from the curse. Other than that, we see he was righteous, blameless even, and that “Noah walked with God.”

We can draw out certain things about Noah’s life though we don’t know much about his early life.:

He was righteous, blameless. We can infer what this means because he is offered up as a contrast to the rest of humanity.

While the rest of humanity was engaging in vile relationships, violence, and all kinds of evil, Noah was not.

As I was preparing for this sermon and came across this declaration regarding Noah’s righteous life, my mind was drawn to another Old Testament man: Job.

God says this about Job: “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is non like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil.”

When we see Noah contrasted to the people of his day, the same could have been said of Noah, since he did not engage in their evil, and his family was the only family decided to spare.

Since Abel had found favor with God through his proper and faith-filled sacrifice, and Job was constantly offering sacrifices pleasing to the Lord, it is not hard to imagine that Noah would also be different from his fellow man, offering sacrifices to the Lord.

He was like Enoch:

he walked with God, which means he had a special relationship with God.

Though Adam physically walked with God in the Garden of Eden, this phrase is not used of Adam. This means that Enoch and Noah were unique in their time, and quite frankly, throughout biblical history.

These were aspects of Noah’s special relationship to God.

Because Enoch walked with God, he was spared from death, and taken into heaven by God, as Kyle preached on last week.

So, imagine you are children, having just heard that Enoch walked with God and was taken into heaven. And in the footsteps of his great grand-father, you hear the phrase “NOAH WALKED WITH GOD.” You might gasp with anticipation, with delight. “Is Noah going to be taken to heaven too? Will God Rescue him from death? But what about the hope his family had? Will Noah make their work easier?”

To these questions, we might reply with a “Wait and see” or perhaps “Sort of....”

As I mentioned earlier, I see this expectation as a kind of prophecy, in the vein of what Caiaphas, the high priest said about Jesus:

John 11:49–53 CSB

One of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all! You’re not considering that it is to your advantage that one man should die for the people rather than the whole nation perish.” He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to unite the scattered children of God. So from that day on they plotted to kill him.

Caiaphas was speaking from a pragmatic and political mindset, but what he said would come true in a beautiful and redemptive way.

Lamech’s expectations of Noah, however, were not met in the hopeful way he wanted, but in a much more tragic way. Mankind would be relieved of the agonizing labor of their hands - through the judgment of God on their wickedness. They would be relieved of their labor - through death. And God would bring about a new being, a kind of new creation, as he wiped the earth clean and began his work anew with a righteous man who walked with him. In a sense, Noah was a deliverer, because he obeyed God, and humanity was spared from total destruction in the flood because he and his family survived.

Noah: A Faith that Works

As we turn our attention away from Noah’s early life, we turn our attention toward his faith and his works.

As Kyle talked about last week, we often want a list of things to do to earn acceptance or favor from God. But like the story of Enoch, we don’t find many details about Noah’s life before God announced that he would destroy the world with a flood.

While Noah certainly had a special relationship with God, lived righteously, and avoided evil, The first thing we are told about Noah in Chapter 6 is “Noah, however, found favor with the LORD.”

The fact that the story mentions nothing of Noah’s first 500 years of life before telling us that he “Found favor with the LORD” and declaring him to be one who walks with God before telling us about Noah’s famous works fits within the Biblical framework that we see in both the Old and New Testaments:

Romans 4:1-3 - Abraham believed, then he lived in obedient faith

Romans 4:1–3 CSB

What then will we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found? If Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about—but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness.

Romans 9:10-13 -Jacob found favor with God before he had done anything good or bad, and he did many wicked things early on in life.

Romans 9:10–13 CSB

And not only that, but Rebekah conceived children through one man, our father Isaac. For though her sons had not been born yet or done anything good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to election might stand—not from works but from the one who calls—she was told, The older will serve the younger. As it is written: I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau.

Ephesians 2:8-10 - We are saved by Grace through faith, so that we might do good works, not earn salvation because of them.

Ephesians 2:8–10 CSB

For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—not from works, so that no one can boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.

The Grace and Favor of God, in a saving sense, always comes before works that are obedient and pleasing to God.

After Noah found Favor with God, we see his faith: for which the author of Hebrews mentions him in the Hall of Faith.

Hebrews 11:7 CSB

By faith Noah, after he was warned about what was not yet seen and motivated by godly fear, built an ark to deliver his family. By faith he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.

This section of Hebrews, as it discusses the great heroes of faith will give us insight into each of these Old Testament characters, and in the case of Noah, we are given two actions, two results, and the proverbial engine behind his life: faith.

By faith, Noah obeyed God by building the Ark. God gave him the dimensions of this boat and it was massive. According to Answers in Genesis, who built an Ark to house a museum, the Ark’s proportions were likely about 500 feet long, 50 feet high, and 80 feet wide! It could store roughly the same amount of cargo as 450 semi-truck shipping containers. And for an animal count, a normal livestock trailer can hold about 250 sheep. So if we do the math, the Ark could hold about 112,500 sheep.

The sheer size of this boat, the number of trees needed, the amount of wood cutting, the work to shape the hull, and build the decks is mind boggling. With such a monumental task, Noah needed faith to see it to completion.

What was Noah’s faith in? He had faith in God: Namely that God will follow through on what he says. In Hebrews 6 we read about the unchangeable nature and sureness of God’s declarations and promises. Though we should believe what he says, he helps us to have faith by making promises or Oaths.

In the case of Noah, God made a promise, a covenant, that he would rescue Noah and his family, through the Ark that God was commanding Noah to build.

So Noah, had to believe God when he spoke, even though he could not see God.

Noah had to believe that God was going to flood the earth, something which had never been done before.

Noah had to believe that God was going to send this strange thing called “rain” to flood the earth, even though he may not have known what rain was (the first time rain is mentioned is the flood story. In the beginning the ground was watered by a mist and a great river).

Noah had to believe, to hope that God would save him, as promised. He had to believe that the Ark that God told him to build was sufficient to save him, his family, and a Remnant of all living creatures.

According to Hebrews, Noah’s faith and obedience came from a holy fear of God. He knew God follows through on his promises. He knew that God takes sin seriously, as he was not far removed from humanity’s exile from Eden and the arrival of death. And since the time of Noah, we have been given many warnings by God about God’s hatred of wickedness, that there will be a day of judgment when we will all face God and the wicked will receive eternal judgment. He believed God and what he had said.

The second thing that Hebrews tells us that Noah condemned the world, BY FAITH. So what does that mean? How did Noah condemn the work BY FAITH?

Well, there are three ways this happened: Righteous living, Building the Ark, and Preaching. Because Noah knew that God takes sin seriously, he lived righteously, which was in direct contrast to the wicked and violent world around him. By his blameless living, the world around him was condemned. Because Noah had faith in God, he built the Ark, which was a physical testimony for the need to turn from sin and receive salvation from judgment. Because Noah believed God, Noah preached, according to 2 Peter, 2:5. We don’t know whether that applies to his whole life or to the time after God told Noah about the coming flood. But being a preacher of righteousness set Noah up as one who condemned their wickedness, just as his righteous living and the building of the Ark did.

The example of Noah fits so well with what we are told in James 2: Faith without works is dead. Faith is shown by works. Noah’s faith was put on full display as he lived righteously, built the Ark, and preached righteousness to a wicked world.

Noah: The Shadow of Jesus

He Walked with God (Righteousness)

Jesus fulfilled the law (Matthew, 5:17)

Preacher of Righteousness

Jesus did this in his 3.5yr ministry

Deliverer of Mankind

Jesus provides escape from God’s righteous judgment (Romans, 5:6-11)

Patriarch of a New Humanity

Just as through Noah’s obedience, his family became a new people to fill a cleansed earth, Jesus is the head of a new family, by faith, which is becoming a numerous people who will fill and enjoy a renewed earth in the resurrection. (Hebrews, 7:22; Colossians, 1:18; Ephesians, 2:8-10; Revelation,7:9-10; Revelation, 21).

The Cross and the Ark, The Pitch and the Blood

True Faith leads to Faithful Obedience

Jesus entrusted himself to the Father, and did all that the Father showed him (1 Peter, 2:23; John, 5:19)

The Hope and the Warning:

Hope: If you or a Friend or Family member is near death and is unsaved and you feel hope is lost because there may be no action, no time to live out of Faith, well there are 2 sources of hope:

Obey the Gospel

2 Thessalonians 1:5–8 CSB

It is clear evidence of God’s righteous judgment that you will be counted worthy of God’s kingdom, for which you also are suffering, since it is just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to give relief to you who are afflicted, along with us. This will take place at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels, when he takes vengeance with flaming fire on those who don’t know God and on those who don’t obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.

The hope here can be easily overlooked, as it comes right at the end, and is found in the midst of a passage about judgment.

If you Obey the Gospel, or obey the Gospel Command, “Repent from your sin and believe in Jesus as your only way of escape from Judgment,” then will be saved.

2. A real Example: The thief on the Cross

Luke 23:32–43 CSB

Two others—criminals—were also led away to be executed with him. When they arrived at the place called The Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals, one on the right and one on the left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided his clothes and cast lots. The people stood watching, and even the leaders were scoffing: “He saved others; let him save himself if this is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One!” The soldiers also mocked him. They came offering him sour wine and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself!” An inscription was above him: This Is the King of the Jews. Then one of the criminals hanging there began to yell insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other answered, rebuking him: “Don’t you even fear God, since you are undergoing the same punishment? We are punished justly, because we’re getting back what we deserve for the things we did, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And he said to him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

This is good news for the Penitent, not the complacent who wants to live in sin and use Jesus as a Get-Out-Of-Hell-Free card.

Notice this man recognizes he is rightly guilty.

In this case, he doesn’t even ask for mercy, likely believing he doesn’t deserve it, and yet he reaches out to Jesus in a way. and Jesus grants him salvation too.

Repent & Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ For the Forgiveness of sins.

The Hope for the Christian that has sinned:

- If you, as a Christian, look at your life, and see big sins that you committed after professing faith in Jesus, but you are repentant, are turning away from them, but you still believe “Maybe I am not good enough. Maybe I have lost God’s favor for good.”

Then Read Genesis Chapter 9:

While the faith of Noah is put on display in the building of the Ark, The Bible presents its heroes with their sins on display.

After having faith and being rescued by God, he plants a vineyard, makes wine, and drinks himself into a drunken stupor.

Yet, Moses wrote that he walked with God. Yet, the author of Hebrews holds him up as an example of great faith.

God can and does save in spite of failures.

God can and does use people in spite of sin.

Faith in God and faithfulness will determine whether or not you will hear “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

The Warning for the Complacent:

God will not spare the ungodly in judgment (2 Peter, 2:4-10; 1 Corinthians, 6:9-11)

God commands us to obey (Matthew, 28:18-20)

Obedience is the proof of saving faith (James, 2:14-26)

Obedience is the proof that we love God (John, 14:15; 1 John, 5:3)

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