Do you believe that Noah was a
success in preparing the ark and preaching righteousness to a very wicked and
non-receptive world? Some may conclude yes on the one hand and no on the other;
in other words, he succeeded as a builder but failed as a preacher since no one
was rescued outside his immediate family! Let me ask you; are the results of
doing God’s will determined by us or God? The answer is a long-needed paradigm
shift in the way we normally think about that question.
Worded differently, does God see
us as unsuccessful if in doing His will there are negative results as in the classic
case of Noah being unable to dissuade a single soul from the path of
unrighteousness? Why did God have Noah preach if He knew no one would heed
Noah’s message of impending judgment? Why not just build the ark and be done
with it?
I think for one, that God was not willing that any should perish, but
two, it also served as a message of condemnation against them (Heb 11:7). In this we see the love and the holiness of God at work. They
failed to heed Noah’s warning of impending judgment and continued along a
self-destructive path, thinking their actions had no consequences. Do you think
Noah & Sons were ever ridiculed and laughed to scorn? I do.
Consider Adoniram Judson
(1788-1850, a Baptist missionary to Burma) who experienced 6 years in country
before witnessing his first Burmese conversion. Now, compare that to Noah who
preached 120 years, mind you, and witnessed zero conversions! Literally,
everyone outside the ark met their demise in the global deluge. The world today
would characterize the “legend” of Noah’s zeal and tenacity as noble but a
waste of time reaching out to a lost cause (cf. Gn 6:5).
The world defines success in
terms of positive results like education, power (money and influence), and
material things (cf. Jer 9:23). God, on the other hand, measures our success in
knowing and doing His will for our lives according to the Scriptures regardless
of the perceived results of being positive or negative. Therein lies one of the
vast differences between Christian and worldly thought; how success is measured.
The world looks at results to determine if one is successful or not; God wants us to measure our success by obedience to His Word not by human results
which can be misleading. God wants our every footprint in His will (cf. Josh
1:3, 7, 8, 9). Christianity is not about religious results but a relationship
between God and man.
We make a difference (not always
known until glory) by simply doing His will immediately and completely in the
here and now regardless of the circumstances or the outcomes. The world is
results-oriented and results-driven. When we think like the world we adopt the
ways of the world. We tend to lose sight of the fact that the world gravitates
and drives incessantly toward the temporal things of life; those things that
will pass away (1 Jn 2:16). We, on the other hand, are to go after those things
that last forever, defined by the will of God (1 Jn 2:17). Christianity is
relationship-oriented (salvation, then fellowship) and Word-driven.
The world determines its own
objectives, missions, and outcomes. God wants for us to be faith-oriented,
trusting in Him by knowing and doing His will and being free of the entanglements of self-imposed goals and outcomes.
Goodness, we obsess over it so much when God desires for us to be preoccupied with
pleasing Him, being faith-focused rather than fret-focused on the results.
So many get discouraged in
service to the Lord for failing to get personal or public results
because they attempt to own the outcome (God's responsibility), and if they
don't get the desired results they imagined or dreamed, it opens the door for
the accuser to do his finger pointing and belittling. When will we realize
Christianity is a personal relationship with God Almighty, not a religion of
results that attempts to please God through results rather than obedience to His Word.
We can’t save ourselves; we can’t
even live the life of Christ on our own; we cannot even grow in the Lord without help
from the Holy Spirit! Our job is not to own the results but to own up to our spiritual responsibilities to be faithful and execute His will according to His Word in the
power of the Holy Spirit. If we know all of this, why are we still
results-driven?
We are not spiritual failures
due to the results; we fail when our love for God wanes. Spontaneous obedience
(Jn 14:15) transforms into a struggle…. Noah, as a preacher of righteousness, would
have been fired today because many disobedient believers are expecting and demanding certain outcomes by placing pressure on others in producing desired
results, or else…. It’s Legalism 101.
So, according to this principle
of being faith-driven in knowing and doing the will of God for our lives for
life rather than results-driven, Noah was successful in every way during the
buildup to the flood. And the reason is crystal clear, he did exactly what God
wanted him to do (Gn 6:22; 7:5). Is that where we are, obeying from the heart
everything God is commanding us to do?
To appreciate the scale of the ark
project firsthand, pay a visit to the Ark Encounter in Williamstown, KY; it is a
phenomenal reconstruction of Noah’s ark based on the Hebrew long cubit of ~20.4
inches: L: 510ˊ, W: 85ˊ, 51ˊH (cf. Gn 6:15). By his faithfulness to God, Noah and his family were the only survivors of the antediluvian civilization (Heb
11:7).
Did the challenges of
constructing a humongous barge, preaching that fell on deaf ears, and being one
of only eight people living on the earth take its toll on Noah? We see no
evidence of it. Perhaps during the post-flood, we see a crack in Noah’s armor,
discovering (what we all knew) that this man was not a stained-glass saint; he
was a sinner saved by the grace of God as with all believers – “But Noah found grace in the
eyes of the LORD” (Gn 6:8).
If you will read the following
verses, you will see that the man in Gn 6:9 was not the same man in Gn 9:20-21,
but this decision was Noah's. Why he had a lapse or deviation of the heart is
only known to God. We get a glimpse of Noah's life before the ark (Gn 6:9),
which was in stark contrast to the lifestyle of the world around him and his
family (Gn 6:11).
During the next 120 years of an
earth filled with corruption and violence, Noah & Sons faithfully constructed
the ark on schedule (Gn 6:14; Gn 7:12-13, ESV; Lk 17:27), and Noah preached righteousness and impending
judgment (2 Pet 2:5). It is difficult to understand how demanding, unrelenting,
isolating, and overwhelming at times it must have been during the 120-year countdown to cataclysmic death and destruction and afterward, slowly
descending with the subsidence of the waters and landing on a new world of
surreal silence.
Sometime after leaving the ark,
something changed within the chambers of Noah’s heart. Something else was on
the ark from the old world other than eight humans and a bunch of animals. The
sinful nature within the heart of man revealed itself in the godliest man on
earth. <><
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| To Part 2 |
