Put your finger, please, in Genesis chapter 6 and then turn with me to Hebrews chapter 11. We'll begin reading in verse 1. Let's all hear the Lord's Word. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good report. Through faith We understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts, and by it he being dead yet speaketh. By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death, and was not found, because God had translated him. For before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God. 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. By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his house, by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into the place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed. And he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Through faith also Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised. therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and the sand which is by the sea, sure innumerable. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers, pilgrims on the earth. May God add his blessing to that reading from his word for his name's sake. Please bow your head with me for a moment. Just a word of prayer. Dear Father in heaven, thou knowest we need thee. Thou knowest our own powerlessness to do anything spiritual of ourselves. Fill now thy servant with thy spirit. Empower him, Lord, to preach. Thus saith the Lord. Fill his mind, his soul, with the truth he needs to declare tonight. Take tiredness from mind and body, weariness from the heart, for all thy people. And give us a word in season. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. And amen. From what the apostle says in verse 6, faith is something we not only need to understand, but something we need to practice. Without faith, it is impossible to please him. Faith is about pleasing God, pleasing Him. That ushers us right into the world of doing something to please Him, not doing that which displeases Him. But what is faith? It's pretty important because without it you can't please God. And if you can't please God, you're rejected, flat out. It's all those with whom he's displeased, all those whom he rejects, he does not accept, they're the ones that go to everlasting torments. So what is faith and what do we need to understand about it? How does it actually affect and how does it actually change our life? If you've been a Christian for 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 years, how can you grow in faith? Because certainly the understanding is, is it not, that the greater the faith, the more the life. lives in a way that's pleasing to God. It was 500 years ago this year that not only the church, but the world was shaken by the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. And the one biblical truth that became the turning point of the entire Reformation was the doctrine of justification by faith. Reformers, brought to the light of day once again the gospel truth that had been hidden for centuries, the gospel truth that sinners are justified, made righteous and acceptable in the eyes of God by faith alone and Christ alone. The word alone is critical. To this very day, The Church of Rome will be happy to acknowledge vociferously that justification is by faith. They do not deny that doctrine. What they do deny is that justification is by faith alone, without any works whatsoever. The Reformers understood any true understanding of the gospel cannot be obtained without a true understanding of justification by faith. That's the key to grasping why the news is good. And that really is the key to grasping why the gospel that Rome preached was not good news. They and all who have followed in the Reformers' footsteps have rightly placed great emphasis on the doctrine that justification is by faith alone, totally apart from any human works. But in spite of that, God's people have not always had a good grasp on what faith actually is. It's the cardinal doctrine of the gospel, justification by faith. In spite of its central place the gospel. Christians haven't always had a clear understanding of what faith is. We know what it isn't. It's not works. Faith is not works. But what is it? In the New Testament, the apostle James warns against a faith that which is nothing more than bare belief. What doth it profit, my brethren? What good is it? What's the benefit? Though a man say he hath faith, I've got it, and have not works, can faith save him? Of course, he expects the answer of no. Because a man says he has faith in God, but there are no works accompanying it, can that faith save him? No. But in response, James anticipates that someone declares his strong belief that there is only one God. Of course, that was in light of the polytheism of his day. It was very strange, as far as culture was concerned, to believe there's only one God. That's a Jewish thing. I believe there's only one God. Good, James says, But don't forget that the demons also believe there's only one God. And they actually are afraid. They tremble because they believe that doctrine. Such is the strength of their faith in that particular theological truth. Interesting, isn't it? On many, many levels, I want you to hear this. Demons hold to an orthodox theology on many, many levels. Why in the world do you think the kingdom of Satan has been laboring night and day for millennia to introduce every false religion under the sun? Everything that contradicts what the Word of God says, because Satan knows this is God's truth, but he despises it. The demons believe in one God, but they're demons after all. So James really is saying, listen, if that's the kind of faith you have, then don't be surprised. If the faith that you have is the same kind of faith as the devil has, then don't be surprised that you end up spending eternity with the devil if you have his same faith. No, you see, faith is more than bare belief. That apostle goes to great lengths to show that wherever there is true faith that saves, faith that justifies a man in the eyes of God, wherever that is found in the heart of the justified, not just something on their lips and their mind, but in the heart of the justified, you will also find definite evidence—definite evidence—of that faith in the life of the justified. If it is in the heart of the justified, true faith, it's going to be seen in the life of the justified. Belief, in other words, affects behavior. Faith shows itself in works. It is not works, but it shows itself by works. It is vain to say that we have faith in God if there are no works in our living resulting from and giving evidence of such faith. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews gives us a long list of men and women of faith. That was—I'm sure you know this—that was the big problem for those to whom the apostle was writing. Faith was the big issue. Tempted to go back, tempted to leave the church, go back into Judaism because of the persecution, Temptations were strong. They were real. Already a number of them had apostatized. And that's why the apostle is writing. It was the sin of unbelief that was the sin that so easily beset them, surrounded them, and troubled them. So part of what the Holy Ghost, part of his plan of attack against Satan, You do know that the Word of God is part of God's plan of attack against the devil. The devil's got his plans, but God has his. His plan is to take his truth and depose Satan, warm the ways that God opposes Satan's attack upon the church, and the fear and the unbelief was to bring before them men and women who gave them examples of what genuine faith looked like. Nothing counterfeit here. This wasn't pretend. This was genuine faith. These people were justified in the eyes of God. A careful study of this chapter will show you that saving, justifying faith, is always more than bare belief or mental agreement to God's truth. Faith is active. Faith works. It does things. For example, in verse 3, we see that the faith understands. Through faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God. I can't resist, must do a sidebar here. There is a growing element in the professing church, particularly in Reformed circles, that is denying this very text. denying the literalness of the first six chapters, actually the first eleven chapters of Genesis. It's an allegory. Flat out saying, nope, the world was not created in six days. And yet it's through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God. So when God said, let there be light, when he spoke those words, there was light, instantaneous light. When he spoke, the entire universe with all of its stars and planets and comets, whatever it was, came into existence. It didn't happen over millions of years. And yet just the opposite is being touted by men who would claim to be fundamental orthodox believers. Faith enables us to understand things that the human intellect could never understand. And that's the problem. You will not understand these things apart from faith. But lest we think that saving faith is simply a matter of understanding, the apostle indicates in verse 8 that faith obeys. By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should have to receive for an inheritance, obeyed. If you can put that lengthy clause in brackets, by faith Abraham obeyed. And he went out, not knowing whether he went. Faith, you see, shows that it's in the heart, and that it is real by obeying the Lord's commands, wherever those commands lead you. It may be that his commands will lead the child of God to venture into the unknown, like he did Abraham. He knew not whether he went. The Lord just said, get up, get out of the ear of the Cowleys, pagan idol worship, I want you out. He didn't know where he was going to go. God didn't show it to him. It's the unknown. But he obeyed God. He didn't say, Lord, I want you first to show me the next three steps in your plan. No, Abraham, you take your family and you get out. That's all I'm telling you. And that's what he did. His commands may lead you to get up from the place where you are and say, as Abraham would have said, though no one join me, still I will follow. I believe that's where we are right now in the work of God in this land. Though no one join me, still I will follow. Tonight I want us to look for just a bit what we learn about true saving faith from the life of Noah. Old Noah. How relevant, how up-to-date is old Noah? Especially when you want to come to an understanding, a better understanding at least, of what faith looks like at work. Not just in the head, what it actually looks like in the life. So tonight, for a few moments, I want to speak on evidences of the grace of faith at work. Evidences of the grace of faith at work. First thing we see when we come to Noah's life—since he's the one the Spirit of God brings up here—the grace of faith, the grace of faith, Here's the voice of God above the clamor of all other voices. Turn back with me just for a moment to Genesis chapter 6, and you'll see what I'm talking about when I refer to the clamor of all of the other voices. Genesis chapter 6 and the Word of God. The world in Noah's day, his culture, society, was wicked. I would not hesitate to say it was far more wicked than what you and I are facing just now. Peter described Noah's generation as the world of the ungodly. What do we want to go down to? Look at verse 12. God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt. For all flesh, all flesh had corrupted his way. upon the earth, corrupt. So here's Noah, old Noah. Here is Noah and his family. No idea exactly how old he was, but there he is, and he is living in the world of the ungodly. A world described in verse 5, God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. How would you like to live in that kind of a culture? You are in a minority, like you can't believe. Imagine all the voices that shouted at Noah from the society that surrounded him. All of those voices that kept calling out to him, come on, follow us, indulge yourself. It's not going to hurt you. Don't you want to enjoy the pleasure? Come on, Noah, come on. Yet Moses writes about Noah, verse 8, but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. That was simply a way of saying that while it was the world of the ungodly, and that every imagination of the thoughts of men's hearts was only evil continually. And they grieved God to the point where he said, I must destroy this world and every man within it, but there's one I'm going to spare. There's one of them I'm going to show grace to, and that this man Noah. He found grace. It is because God showed grace to Noah that he was enabled to believe what God told him and ignore what everybody else told him. He was able to ignore and reject the advice and the counsel and the pleas of the majority that surrounded him and listen to the voice of God. His faith enabled him to believe the Lord's Word when all the world could not and would not believe. They would not and they could not believe. That's why I'm referring to the grace of faith, because it's a grace. I'm so glad tonight I can stand here and tell you that the faith I'm talking about is not something that you can ever work up yourself. It is something that God freely gives you. freely. It comes with Christ. It's the grace of faith. And that grace of faith enabled Noah to hear and obey the voice of the Lord in spite of all the cacophony of the sinners that surrounded him. By faith, by faith, Noah's ear was tuned to hear the Lord's words, tuned in to the throne of God, tuned in to the will of God. Verse 13 of chapter 6, And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make thee an ark. We'll stop there. Make thee an ark. You then read in verse 22, Thus did Noah according to all that God commanded him, so did he. Now, there's faith. By faith, Noah builded an ark. Here's the point of application. We give evidence—we give evidence of the grace of faith in our own souls and our hearts when we do what Noah did. I don't mean, of course, to build an ark, but on every hand we are surrounded by all these voices. They come at you through so many means. You're surrounded. the media and all of its formats, the voice of the tempter himself, the cry of your corrupt flesh saying, I want you to satisfy what I want. And don't think for a moment that I'm simply referring to sexual lusts. It's the flesh, and it always wants its way. And when those desires are long gone because of age, let me tell you one thing, there's plenty of other fleshly lusts that want to be satisfied that have nothing to do with sex. You have that constant din of a corrupt culture, society, just like in Noah's day that says, We evidence the grace of faith is in our lives when we follow the voice, the commands of God. You do that by faith. I know that grace is required, that obedience is required. These are the commands of God. But I also know something else. He gives grace to obey. The grace of faith. The grace to believe what he says is truth and what, of course, we listen to God's voice and not hell's voice. This writer of Hebrews said in the very first verse, God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these days, last days, spoken unto us by his Son. He's spoken unto us by his Son. So, what would you be taking from that that you want to be praying the Lord to give you? Lord, give me more grace to listen to your voice. Give me more grace. Give me more of the grace of faith so that my life will be clearly a declaration that I have true faith because I listen to your voice and not the enemy's voice. You can usually trace back trouble in any life of the child of God, in the relationship of the child of God, whether it's on a family level, On a church level, it makes no difference. You can usually trace it back right to this. The faith, the faith in God has become weakened, and they are not listening to the voice of God. It explains so much. about the behavior of the Lord's people. The grace of faith, secondly, obeys the voice of God, however contrary to human reason it seems to be. God said, make me an ark, an ark, a large boat. Whoever heard of an ark, whoever heard of a flood, surely there must be some mistake, some mistake. But God had said it, and the grace of faith is going to accept what God says and act upon what God says, regardless of how contrary it seems to be to human logic. didn't make sense, humanly speaking. Christians have often been called crazy when they have done his bidding. I guess the most outstanding example is when the Pharisees said, Christ hath a devil because of his behavior. He's got a devil. He's out of his mind. He's a crackpot. Don't listen to him. Ephesus said to Paul, what? Much learning doth make thee mad. You're insane, Paul. Okay, that means One of the evidences of the grace of faith is that it won't matter to you how crazy people think you may be, but if God has told you to do something, then that's what you do. It may well be that you don't understand at all what God is telling you, but you do it. William Carey's friends said he was mad when he went to India. You're crazy. But he did it because the grace of faith was at work in his life. You don't care about human opinion. When you listen to the voice of God, when you listen to the Word of God, you do not care about human opinion. You do not care about human wisdom. Had that been the case with the Apostle Paul, he would have fallen to pieces when the Corinthian Church came against him and said, Paul, your preaching has got to shape up here. It's not up to snuff with the learned philosophers of Corinth. You've got to add some wisdom to it, some deep teaching. And then the work of God here will thrive like never before. Paul rejected it out of hand. I will embrace the foolishness of preaching which you despise, because I believe God. You have to know that it was the devil behind Hudson Taylor's friends telling him he was crazy when he went to China. But from heaven's standpoint, Hudson Taylor was just giving clear evidence the grace of faith was alive and well in his heart. And what you and I I don't know, I don't, maybe the Lord is doing some kind of calling here to someone, sending them out to a mission field. Praise the Lord if He does, but I don't know that we got a William Carey or Hudson Taylor in our midst, but I do know this, we have people who profess to be the people of God, who profess to have faith in God, who say, I've been saved by grace through faith. And what this text about Noah is teaching me very plainly, teaching me as much as you, that one of the ways that I must evidence that I have faith in God, it's real faith, and not just like the demons who believe in God, is that I will do whatever God says, even when men say it's ridiculous. You see, faith will get you to a point, and that place will become more and more entrenched in your thinking. I don't care about the opinion of men, not in any mean-spirited way. But the grace of faith says, I don't care about the opinion of men when it runs contrary to the mind of God. And they can use all the reasons they want to, all the logical arguments they want to. As I shared with you recently with Paul on the deck of that ship that was in the midst of a hurricane, and he says, be of good cheer. I'm sure they thought he had lost his mind Be of good cheer, for I believe God. The ship's going down. Be of good cheer. I believe God. I don't think we understand how important that is. Thirdly, the grace of faith does the will of God, even when it's unpopular to do the will of God. It's not the end thing. I don't just mean, you know, you're crazy. It's just not the end thing to do. not popular. Noah and his message was not popular. What he was telling them to do—to forsake their wicked ways, to repent of their sins, to cast themselves upon the mercy of God, stop your sinning, It wasn't popular. No one else was seeking to do the will of God, but Noah believed God. And by faith, he just kept on doing for 120 years what God told him to do at the very start—just kept at it. Even though it was unpopular, even though he was called to do a very lonely work because it was so unpopular. Wouldn't it have been, don't you think, brothers and sisters, wouldn't it have been a great encouragement to Noah if just a half dozen families had heeded the message and cast their lot in with Noah and said, Noah, we're behind you, we're in this together, we believe God. but he didn't have that. He wasn't popular. He wasn't a popular preacher. And I'm sure you understand why he wasn't a popular preacher, because men don't like to have their sins brought to light. They don't like to be exposed. They don't like to be told that what you're doing is contrary to God's word, to God's law. It's displeasing to God. They don't want anyone to come along and tell them, you've got to stop that heathenistic practice of yours, because judgment is coming, and you are going to perish if you don't stop. That won't make you popular. But the grace of faith will keep on doing the will of God even when it's unpopular. In my humble opinion, the story of Noah's faith is as up-to-date as anything in Scripture. Because we are at a time, we are at a place in the work of God where it is not popular, it is not popular to do the will of God with any serious pursuit. The spirit, the heart, the mindset that the Church of Christ needs just now is that of Noah. All right, no one wants to join me? I'm still going to follow him. But there is this fear of being unpopular, this fear of being rejected. not just by the world, but being rejected by other Christians. The fear of persecution, and I don't just mean now the persecution of, you know, being put to death for your faith as they were in the book of Hebrews, but the persecution that comes, the subtle little persecution that comes, the shots and the arrows and the barbs that are sent because you believe the Word of God. The fear of losing the ease and the comfort and the pleasure that reverberates—this is not a life of faith in God. How can you call walking in the path of the worldlings a life of faith? And they don't want to lose, to give up the pleasure, the ease. And when you are ready and willing to reject status quo, then that's because the grace of faith is at work in your life. Like any other grace, it grows, it gets deeper, becomes more apparent, and the more apparent it becomes, the more clearly these things stand out. Noah was an oddball in society. He stood out like a sore thumb. He was definitely in the minority. God's people have always been in the minority. When the devil suggests to you that you are outnumbered and therefore doomed to failure because there are so few Christians, Remember that the grace of faith will call the devil a liar, because faith believes God and stands upon what is written. What is written. What is written. The grace of faith, fourthly, goes on with God's work in the face of every opposition and discouragement. Don't think for a moment that the grace of faith existing in the heart of the child of God and discouragement because of opposition are incompatible. I have no doubt that Noah got discouraged at times. A hundred and twenty years? Peter said he was the preacher of righteousness for 120 years. How many people did he get to walk the aisle? How many converts did he see through his preaching ministry? How many were baptized? Not one. Thankfully his family was brought in, but all the people. For 120 years he's preaching. How many times have you been tempted to ask the question, is it all worthwhile? Is all the work, all the labor, the effort, the praying, the pleading, the tears, is it worth it? Am I mistaken after all? Imagine having to put up with all the cruel taunts of those corrupt people that surrounded him. laughing at him. No one was interested in his message. How does our opposition from the world compare to Noah's? There will always be difficult times discouraging times and dark times in the work of God. But the grace of faith keeps on doing the will of God in the face of the opposition and in spite of the discouragement. It's only when you quit and walk back into the world, as a number of these Hebrew Christians had done, that you evidence there was no saving faith in you, there was no grace of faith. Fifthly, the grace of faith is seen when it accepts God's judgment without questioning his justice. The Lord said to Noah, I'm going to send a flood, and I'm going to destroy every living thing on the earth. Every old man, every old woman, Every teenager, every expectant mother, every infant, I'm going to drown in this flood. Noah's response? Better build the ark, then. But he found no fault with God. Do you understand the ways of the Almighty? No. But Noah's response was that of Abraham years later, shall not the judge of all the earth do right? We must remember the severity of God as well as his goodness. Elijah prayed for a drought, and it was a terrible drought. Noah took sides with God in his plan to destroy all living creatures by the flood. as terrible as that was. You see, what you and I know, there is another judgment of God coming. And we're going to evidence the grace of faith in our lives by accepting that judgment regardless as to whether we understand it or not. We're going to accept it. We're not going to question it. And all we're going to do is to keep on working and laboring on in light of the solemn fact that judgment is coming. It's coming. Sixthly, the grace of faith proclaims the message of God, no matter how unacceptable it is to man. There are two sides to Noah's message. You will be saved from this judgment if you enter into the ark. That's one side. but you will die if you don't." That was his message. And to sum it all up, that was his message. In the New Testament, the language—in fact, in the words of the Lord himself, he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned. Not only what I have to do as a preacher, what I must do, what I'm called to do is to proclaim that two aspects of God's message. There is salvation in Christ, pictured by the ark. There is salvation in Christ, and you come to Christ and find salvation in him and pardon in him, you'll be saved from this judgment. But I also have to tell you that there's coming a judgment that will damn you to hell. if you do not come to Christ. That's not a popular message. It was unacceptable to those who heard Noah preach it, but he kept on preaching it. That's what this church is called to do, and that's what you're called to do, not just me as the preacher. But you know, folks, you know, we have an obligation laid upon us. The grace of faith operates in us to give that same message to the lost around us. We don't have a command from God to be silent. We don't have a command from God to say nothing. We have a command from God to tell them there's salvation in Christ, but there's hell if you reject him. It won't be popular. A lot of people will get mad at you. They'll think you're a kook, a religious fanatic. But we're talking now about what faith does, how faith behaves. How'd that all work out for Noah? We're back to Hebrews 11. By faith, Noah prepared an ark for the saving of his house. His house was saved. His children were saved. And he became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. That was the reward for Noah's faith. The Lord always rewards faith, brothers and sisters. My prayers for us all, Lord, Lord, Lord, increase this grace of faith in my life. Make it more and more evident. My wife will see it. My children will see it. My church will see it. My neighbors will see it. The people I come into contact will see it. Because life is not just about getting through another week or getting through another day. Don't you see? The Holy Ghost moved the apostle and set Noah before them to be an example. Follow him. Follow him. The Lord write that word on our hearts for his name's sake. We bow in prayer, please. Let's seek the Lord together. Father in heaven, this night we ask as a congregation, increase our faith, thou to see what we need, thou to see the grace that's needed to grow it, Lord, all the preaching in the world can't bring about the change, whether in my life or anyone else's, if the Spirit of God does not work with the preaching. Lord, we are living in a very wicked day. Lawlessness is abounding on the left and on the right. And Lord, we don't want to be a people, in light of that fact, who simply try to hang on. We don't want to be a people who are unwilling to take the world's laughter, mockery, and persecution. We don't want to be a people who listen to the cries and the pleas of the world to follow them. So, Lord, in Jesus' name, I pray that Thou wilt raise up a band of Noahs in our congregation. It's not too hard for Thee, Lord. We could never see ourselves able to do that, but Lord, that's because we're looking at ourselves to do it. So now, in Christ's name, we look away from ourselves and we look unto Thee. Make us Noahs, Lord. Make us Noahs. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.