in Hebrews 11 after a pretty long break. We were gone for four Sundays, and so I remind you about what we have seen in this letter to the Hebrews. You remember that it does not begin with a salutation or greeting, as most of the letters in the Bible do, but it gets straight to the point, talking about Jesus Christ in the very first verse, and it doesn't stop, really, until the end. Right from the start, it presents Christ as the one who is the object of our faith, now that He has come into the world. And He came from heaven to save us. We're told right from the get-go that now, in these last days, God has spoken by His Son. That is how He makes Himself known fully to us, is through the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, made flesh. In a way, Christ was, of course, always the object of our faith, the people in the Old Testament. But under the Old Covenant, He was presented with shadows and ceremonies in a temple made with human hands. Now that He has come in the flesh, to be our great apostle and high priest of our faith, then we look to Him as the one that reveals God to us. He is superior in every way to what was of old, because He is the Son of God, who not only testifies to God's way of salvation, as the old ordinances did, but He also actually brings about that salvation. He's the one that that did it. He is superior to the angels, as we have seen in this book, because he is God's son, very, very God, a very God. He is superior to Adam because he has been given dominion over creation. Adam was promised that dominion. It was appointed for him at the beginning. But the fall he fell under now where he returns to dust. And yet this Christ, he is the one now that is exalted as we saw earlier in Hebrews. He is superior as our leader, as the captain of our salvation, the pioneer that goes forth and leads us in the way. He is superior to Moses. As Moses was a great apostle of the Old Testament, the lawgiver, Jesus Christ is the apostle and high priest of the New Testament. And he is the one who actually builds the house. Moses is part of the house. Christ is the one who builds the house. He gives us a superior rest to the rest that they were given in Canaan. It is eternal rest that he gives. He is superior as a priest because he is a priest after the order of Melchizedek. That means that he has neither beginning or ending of days he ever lives to make intercession for us. He is superior. He has a superior priesthood with a superior offering his own blood, not the blood of bulls and goats, but his own blood that atones for sin. And it's offered in a superior tabernacle. a temple before the very presence of God rather than in a tabernacle or temple made with human hands. He is superior as the one who came to do God's will. Psalm 40 talks about and who did do God's will as no other man ever did. All others have failed and he did God's will in our behalf, representing all of us so that we can come to God as those who are counted as having done God's will. In Hebrews 10, 19, We came to the part of this letter that is exhortation, where we're admonished about what we need to do. The whole letter is described as an exhortation that's given to us. But from here, from 1019 to the end of the letter, we're exhorted to trust in him, to have faith in him for our eternal salvation. He alone is able to secure our pardon. He alone is able to bring us to God. Now we are in chapter 11, where faith that saves is presented to us by a whole host of examples or witnesses. We saw in the beginning of this chapter what faith does in the first few verses, that it brings God into our lives, that we can't see God, but when we believe God as he's revealed to us in his word and in Christ, then we come to know who he is. It transforms our whole life. They transforms our whole life so that we live in reference to God, not as if he is not, but as if he is. When we have faith, it gives knowledge to us of God as creator, the one in whom we have our being so that we realize our our dependency upon him, even to just be we. It's he who made us. And that by faith, we know God is our Redeemer who makes us righteous. And we saw that particularly exemplified in Abel, who was accepted because he was righteous when he offered sacrifice. And the reason he was righteous was because he had faith. He trusted in God to make him righteous, whereas Cain was looking to what he was doing to please God. And he was not accepted as a result of that. And then we saw that with Enoch that we are exalted to glory. When we have faith, then we have the hope of glory. And of course, Enoch would walk with God and then he was not because he was taken. He was a testimony in the ancient world that there's life after death and that God continues to bless his people onward. And he continues to speak to us today. Abel and Enoch, then, are the first two examples or witnesses that are mentioned in Hebrews 11, or we looked at them. Noah is the one that we look at today, and he's the third witness here listed to the blessing that comes by faith. He shows us, in particular, how faith responds to God's warnings of judgment. That's what Noah particularly shows us about faith here. Our text today is only one verse. It's Hebrews 11, 7. So please listen with thanksgiving to the word of God. Hebrews 11, 7, the word of God. By faith, Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness, which is according to faith. Thanks be to God for his holy word. We have an account of Noah in Genesis 6-9, and of course we already read 6 earlier, and we saw how Noah was told to build an ark because God was going to send judgment upon the whole world. He was going to destroy everything with the breath in its lungs except for the ones that he saved in the ark because of the great wickedness of man. Here Hebrews teaches us that Noah did all of this, preparing the ark and everything, by faith. That's the reason he did it. He was a man of faith because he believed God when God's warning of judgment came. He didn't say, oh, I don't think it's going to happen. He saw, he believed, he had faith. I remind you what I have told you already about the men who are listed here in this section. They're not presented to us as just mere historical specimens, you know, that we You look at a specimen of, you know, look, oh, this is interesting, this is curious, look at what he did, look at what she did, you know, whatever. But we look rather to see what applies to us, what faith does. And you see all of these things pertain to us as God's people. We have the same faith that they had. And so they're presented to us to teach us what true saving faith looks like, What it does, the blessings that it brings, how it acts. All of this is very helpful for us as God's people. Noah shows us how true faith responds to God's warnings. And let me just pause here and encourage you. to read the Old Testament. I mean, we're just getting a little snapshots here in Hebrews, but it's very important to be familiar with all of these accounts and all of these stories, because this is part of God's revelation to us. And it's very, very important. You get more about practical living and what things really look like when they're lived out in the Old Testament than you do in the New Testament. The New Testament gives us a lot of great principles and doctrines and things like that. But you really get the the life and the narrative in the Old Testament. If we don't have that foundation, we come to the New Testament and we're not really going to get it in a in a living, dynamic way. So I want to encourage you. And as we study these things, too, that we'll be looking at these these people in these accounts. So, again, Noah shows us how true faith responds particularly to God's warnings. We'll consider five things about faith in this regard today. First, that faith hears divine warnings. Second, that faith fears God. Third, in the face of warnings. Third, that faith responds to God's gracious call of salvation. Fourth, that faith condemns the world. And fifth, that faith inherits righteousness. So there's a warning, but instead of getting the destruction that was warned about, faith inherits something entirely different. It inherits righteousness, blessing, salvation. So let's get underway, looking to God to work faith in us. It's a growing and living, meaningful faith that responds to God's warnings, as we should. Let's look at the first one. The first way that faith responds, faith hears divine warnings. We're told that Noah was divinely warned of things not seen. That's one of the characteristics of faith, isn't it? It's about things not seen. You're brought into your purview as something that you couldn't see unless you're told. And so now you're told about it, and it becomes part of what you live according to if you have faith. If you don't have faith, you say, oh, I don't think this is going to happen. I don't see it. I don't care. But it's you can't. So hearing God is essential to faith. There's a sense in which faith is in a real like kind of basic way, simply a feeling or a sense that things will come out OK. I remember a friend that I talked to about the Lord. Oh, yeah, I've got faith. I think everything is going to turn out OK. But he had no basis for that. You see, it is true about faith as far as it goes that you say, like you say, I have faith that I'll go to heaven. You have a sense that that's what's going to happen, that you trust in that. But how is that? How is that grounded? How is it founded? A person might believe, they might have faith that they can fly, but when they jump out of a high window, They find out that they were wrong. Their faith was misplaced. It's not enough just to have faith. It might make you feel better, but it has to be faith that's grounded in something solid, that is not diluted. Some have faith in what they have heard from others, from various sources. Maybe they've heard the popular notion that is kind of prevalent in our society. When we die, we go to a better place. That's just kind of a thing that everybody says, oh, yeah. Somebody dies, oh, they're in a better place now. They were suffering, now they're in a better place. Where do we get that? Well, a lot of it comes actually from preachers, doesn't it? I mean, you go to your average funeral and there's some guy that was, he didn't trust in God, he was notorious in his life and blasphemer of God even, and oh, well, he's in a better place now. Trying to comfort people. But it's not according to faith. It's not according to the truth of God. It is a kind of faith, but it's a false faith. There's a trust there, and people embrace that. And they all say, oh yeah, this is what happens when we die. And there are many souls in hell right now. that believed that, that had a false faith. Everything's going to be okay when I die. I'm going to go to a better place. And now they know, just like the guy jumps out the window, thinks he can fly. Biblical faith, you see, is distinct, because biblical faith hears God. Romans 10 teaches that faith comes by hearing. The kind of faith the Bible talks about. It comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. So it's based on what God says. It's based on what He says about things, not on how we feel about them or what others have told us out of their own heads. It's a resting in divine testimony. God is very gracious in speaking to us. He has not been silent. We greatly err if we do not listen. to what he says and receive all that he says, both the negative things that we may not like, as well as the positive things that we may think seem too good to be true. We sometimes don't believe those things either. It's all too easy for us to doubt, you know, to say. Will God really send people to hell? To doubt that, on the other hand, to say, Will God really forgive us of our sins in Jesus Christ and bring us to glory? We need to believe what God says. God brings his word to us. It is his gracious work to do so. He brings it in so many different ways. Noah had the rare blessing that very few people have of God speaking directly to him the way he spoke to his prophets. Noah was a prophet in that sense. He heard God. God came and told him what was going to happen. We aren't told how God did that. Was it an audible voice he heard? Was it a vision or dream? We don't know. But Noah definitely heard directly from God about the great flood because of the great wickedness of man, he was divinely warned. God spoke directly. Now, how do most of us hear God? You remember, let me just mention something with Solomon. You know, Solomon is confronted by the Lord when he sends that. How could you do this when I spoke to you twice? Only twice did he hear directly from God. And yet that was so significant and unusual that it stands out as a provocation for for him turning away. So this is not something that happens every day that God speaks directly to us in that way. He speaks rather through others. through prophets who have heard his word. That's the way he's chosen to reveal himself to his people. In the New Testament, he speaks to the prophets who wrote the scriptures. He did the same in the Old Testament as they also spoke to the people in their day. He has sent men to now preach in the New Testament from the scriptures. We don't have prophets today that are going about But we have a revealed word of God that is complete and sufficient. And that word God has appointed to be preached and proclaimed in the assembly of his people. Now, why did God do that? We can't say all the reasons why, but but one reason is because God wants he does not speak to each individual is because he wants to bring us together as his people. He does not want us to be isolated and independent, each receiving private revelation. That's why it's not adequate to sit at home and do live stream and say, I went to church. No, we come together as worshipers of God's people. He wants us to receive his truth together as people in an assembly like this. We are way too independent as it is already. We're isolated. We isolate ourselves from each other. We don't understand community in our day. We're so driven, so much independent minded. We're like atoms that are floating around that don't have any connection with each other. He wants us to be a worshiping, growing body of believers who worship him with praises together, united praises, who receive his word, who walk in it, who have overseers that encourage us in implementing the word and such things. We are responsible to listen to God however he speaks. You don't say, oh, well, I want God to speak to me directly. I'm not going to accept it unless he speaks to me directly. I don't like him speaking through those who revealed the holy scriptures, the prophets, and then through the ministry of preaching and reading the word. I don't want to hear that way. Well, you can't choose that. We should always be yearning to hear our creator, even in the ways that he speaks that are less direct. For example, We're told in Psalm 19 that the heavens declare his handiwork. Everyone hears the voice of creation that testifies of God. In Romans 1, we're told that God reveals his eternal power and divine nature through creation, through the things that he has made, but also that he reveals his wrath and judgment through affliction. Now that is in the world, things like death that God brought into the world because of sin testifies to every human being about that something is wrong, that we have sinned. Romans one and two tell us that he also not only uses that, but also our conscience. Our sense of wrong that we have done, right and wrong, even if it's not always accurate, even if our conscience is misguided in various things, we still have a sense that we don't always do what's right. We know that, and God testifies of it through these ways. And see, we need to make the most of those things. Even somebody that has never been exposed to actual revelation from the Word of God, prophetic revelation, the special revelation that God has given, they have a responsibility to respond to the revelation that God has given them. And it makes a huge difference when they do. When we often resist these ways of speaking to our own hurt, when we resist them, we harden our hearts against the truth. Take someone who has never heard revelation, heard special revelation, haven't heard prophetic revelation, and they have the creation testifying, their conscience testifying of God. And they resist that. They resist what is being shown them, that they're sinners, that God is displeased, that God is mighty in his divine nature and eternal power. What's going to happen then with such a person? They become hardened in their heart if they are exposed to divine revelation of prophetic revelation. they're gonna resist that too. They've already got a habit of resisting. If someone on the other hand, if God's spirit works in them and they respond to that natural revelation, God is in fact preparing them to receive more revelation and when they hear it, they'll respond with rejoicing because God has already begun to work in them. So we need to think about that, how important it is to receive whatever God gives us. Of course, the word can break in to someone who had resisted and hardened themselves their whole life. It can break in when they're 90 years old. It can break in when they're, God's spirit can transform a person just in a flash like that. But ordinarily, he works over the course of our lives. One way or another, when he wishes to save us, he brings his word to us in an irresistible way so that we receive it as the word of God. And I'm going to try to parse how he does that. He just does that. The truth is self-attesting. when the Holy Spirit works. The Spirit and the Word bear witness with our conscience that it is true and we believe. When things are true, we have a sense that they are true unless we resist them. And so truth comes because of our corruption. We pervert what revelation has given to us and resist it, and then we don't improve in our understanding of the things that we should understand about God. Jesus told us in John 16 that the Spirit would come to convince the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and He certainly does do that. When you have true faith, you receive the warnings, you receive the promises, and the commandments. You hear them, and you know that they are divine. They fit with reality. They fit with what is. Like Noah, you hear the divine warning. It is brought to you, and you hear it as the Word of God. Often the Spirit even works in those who are not elect to convince them that the things are true, which they end up resisting, even though it's been shown to them to be true. It is emphasized that the warning that Noah received was of things not yet seen. And this was radically so. It seems that God sent little disturbance in the ancient world from the time of Adam until the time of Noah. They had relative ease with not a lot of devastating storms. They lived for a really long time. That's one of the things that would tell us that. They lived for almost 1,000 years. They weren't afflicted with so many things as we are. People lived a long time and they, it appears, enjoyed a great deal of prosperity. They had music and different things that they developed. But to what extent that's true, the flood that God told Noah about was like something that had never been seen before. The fountains of the deep broke forth so that water came up out of the ground and rain came down from the sky. and continued for 40 days and 40 nights. It was a huge disturbance, such as has never been seen before and such as will never be seen again, a flood like that. Such a flood changed the whole earth, raising great mountains and creating valleys. We can see how, you know, it's apparent that mountain ranges were formed. They weren't all there to start with when big shifts in the in the ground and everything, it covered what was the highest mountain at that time before forming the great mountains that we have today. But the great thing about faith and the faith of Noah is that he believed that this would happen because God told him it would happen. It was something that had never been seen before. There's some indication that it maybe hadn't even rained. Some people believe that. I don't think it's particularly clear that we can say that, but it's a possibility. But Noah believed because of what God said. We have a similar testimony from God about something that is unprecedented. He has testified that on the day of judgment, the earth will not be cleansed by water, but by fire. We're told in second Peter three, 10, that the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise that can't imagine that can't picture that. And he says, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with the fervent heat. But the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. Now Peter testifies of how men mock that warning, because they willfully forget what God did in the ancient world in the time of Noah. Now this is an event that is found in historical records of all different civilizations, this flood or their accounts that they have passed down. There's different accounts of the flood where they perverted different things, but there's a guy with a boat basically that goes in a big great worldwide flood and he's spared in the boat and he comes forth and of course they have their pagan gods and things that they bring into the mix to add to it. But the world is willingly ignorant. of this. It's testified soundly, as anything in history, but it's rejected. So, question to you. Do you hear God? Do you hear the divine warnings? Do you believe the divine warning? Does it change your life because you've heard divine warnings? Or does it just pass over you? You don't have faith. Saving faith is impacted by divine warnings. It hears the divine warnings. And this brings us to the next thing. Faith fears God. Noah not only heard the warning, but he was moved with godly fear, it says. Just what does that mean? It means that he believed that God would do what he said he would do, even though it was like nothing that had ever happened. He respected God as the one who spoke with such authority and had such power and ability that he could do whatever he wanted. Perhaps even more than that, though, this fear, it put trembling in the heart of Noah to think about what God said He would do. He saw how angry the Lord was, that He was grieved that He had made man because of the great sin that was in the world. And instead of Noah avoiding this uncomfortable truth, as he might have been tempted to do, he took the matter to heart. He embraced it. When you fear God, you essentially realize that He has authority to bless and to curse. That's what fearing someone means. It can bring comfort to you because He has so much authority. He can absolutely bless you or He can absolutely curse you and destroy and ruin you. That's what it means when you fear God. You see that He is formidable, that He's the one with whom we have to do. It makes it, he can make it either very good for you or very bad for you. Think about how this works with another person. I sometimes use kind of a silly illustration, but I know you have the kid with the bully. So you fear the bully because he can hurt you. He beats you up when you're coming home from school. But then you've got your big brother. And he's even bigger than the bully. And so there's a sense in which when we talk about fear this way, you fear your brother. He can tear you to pieces. He can tear the bully to pieces. And you're very glad when your brother is with you because you fear your brother and you know that he can take care of the bully. So that's kind of the sort of thing that we're talking about. You see them as someone that has an ability to make a difference. When we fear God, He carries weight in our understanding. He's not insignificant. He's not something that is irrelevant, something that doesn't matter, something that we don't need to pay any attention to because it won't make any difference anyway. It makes all of the difference. And we want to be right with him. We want. So Noah's moving influence was that he feared God. He was moved with godly fear. He acted on God's warning because he feared God is the one who would bring this about. Now, what makes people of faith stand out from others is they fear God before judgment falls. They walk not by sight, but by faith. So before they see it, They already fear God. Everyone will fear God on the day of judgment. They'll be terrified when his judgment is unleashed. Once this judgment falls, it will be too late to repent and be saved. There will be nothing but terror and anguish. There'll be no hope. These are ominous words. No hope. Only ruin. How much better it is to fear God before the judgment begins, then you can take action and prepare for the judgment. You can have joy in being prepared for the judgment. That is what those do who fear God. That brings us to the next thing that faith does when it hears God's warnings. Faith responds to God's gracious call of salvation. It prepares for the coming judgment in the way that God has provided preparation. He made an ark, right? appointed an ark for Noah to make, to preserve, and said, this is how you'll be preserved. God's warnings are sent in mercy to give us an opportunity to repent. Are not all warnings like that? They're designed to steer you away from some danger or some difficulty that you would encounter if you don't take action in response to the warning. Like, you know, the wrong way the bridge is out. You go on and say, I don't care about these warnings, and you go on. Then you're going to have trouble when you go off the precipice into where the bridge used to go over. When a little child is about to touch a hot object, the parent says, don't touch that. It will burn you. There's a warning that comes. And if the child doesn't heed that, then they get burned. I explained to you before that warnings in many ways are more for the elect than they are for the reprobate. They're for both, but God uses them to keep His people doing what they would otherwise do if He didn't warn them. So warnings are good. They are real. In other words, if I really didn't listen to the warning, I would go to destruction. You say, well, if we're elect, we won't go to destruction. We'll continue in our faith. Yeah. How will we continue? God will bring warnings and we'll respond to them. Now, sometimes we might not respond to a warning, and we may have trouble on account of that, but then we'll be brought back, we'll repent, God will restore us. But we don't go to destruction because we turn away from destruction that we're warned about by God. That's how He keeps us. It's a dynamic way. Some people think that God keeps us just kind of like in a, like not in an interactive way like that, that He just keeps us. But no, it's in an interactive way. He brings his word to us. He brings people to us, brings warnings actively in our lives that we engage with. And if we don't, then we won't be kept. So warnings, you see, are very important. That's why they're all through the scriptures. You can't hardly read a page without there being some warnings. They elect here and steer clear. His preservation is done in this way. So look at Noah. He certainly did take action. We're told that he prepared an ark for the saving of his household. You know, God took 120 years from the time that he said the flood would come to the time that it did come. He told him it would be 120 years. And it was such a huge task, it probably took Noah most of that 120 years. You can imagine building that with, we assume, relatively primitive tools. I'm sure there was a fair bit of development at that time, but it would have been a huge I mean, we're talking 300 cubits. That's 450 feet. That's longer than a football field. It's huge. And he devoted his whole life to this when God told him that he was going to send the flood. In a matter of such importance, you certainly want to do this. You want to take action. You believe what God has said and you act on it. A day of judgment by fire is coming. It's time to act. We need to act. This is where many people go wrong. They hear God's warning and they may believe it at a certain level. But they procrastinate, supposing that they'll get around to it soon enough. But I warn you that if you do not get on with repenting and turning to the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. You will perish in the judgment along with the most obnoxious blasphemers who rail against God, the nice guy. He says, yeah, I think that's probably a good thing, I'm glad to see people doing that, but he's going to be in the same place on the Day of Judgment as the one that was a militant enemy against God. The proverb is true that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Oh, I'm going to I was going to come in and repent. I was going to turn to God, but I had a lot of other things going on. You know, that's not going to work. Noah did not try to figure out another way to save himself either. When you fear God. You go God's way. He's the one that knows the way. You don't say, oh, well, maybe we could do this. Maybe I could do it this way. Matter is so important. It's the saving of yourself and your household. You don't want to take matters into your own hands. The Lord has been gracious to provide us with a way of salvation that He has revealed to us, and the world is constantly taking that matter into their own hands. How can I be saved? And they come up with all sorts of different schemes and ways. We're very foolish if we begin even to modify the way in little areas, to tweak it in little ways that we don't like. We're going down a wrong path, ways that are according to our preferences because we don't like God's way. We may tweak it. We will eventually tweak it so much that we will actually miss God's salvation. Oh, I don't think it would get that bad. How do you think that so many liberal churches that don't even believe the gospel anymore and that teach things that are completely obnoxious to what God has revealed in his commandments, how do they get there? Churches that used to believe and preach the gospel some generations ago, how did they get there? So many of them. It was by tweaking. They didn't one day say, hey, let's completely reject all this and we'll go away from God and we'll just completely make up our own way. No, it's like, I don't like this that God said, let's change that. I don't like this that God said, let's change that. And it goes on and on. And you get where you get. It's a really serious matter that we need to be warned about. The Hebrews. that this letter was written about, to what was their temptation? They wanted to fit in with the Jews. You know, they'd been their families and everything that they'd grown up in the in their religion. And OK, now Christ was offensive. And so how can I I still want to have Christ, but I'm going to modify what I do a little bit. I'm going to get in with the circumcision party and I'm going to I'm going to keep the Old Testament rituals and I'm going to kind of be more so that I'll be accepted to my my Jewish brother. I'm going to tweak it a little bit. Paul warns about that very strongly in Galatians. And of course, Hebrews is all about that. Don't follow that temptation. Christ is now everything. You come to Him, the Old Testament things are now gone away. That's what the message to Hebrews is. Well, you see how that message applies to us. You know, my family, my traditions, my background, I wanna fit in, I wanna be, so I'm gonna tweak what God has said so that I'm gonna accommodate. That's the danger that we're talking about. You can think about even someone like Saul, that King Saul, when he was wanting to offer the sacrifice and he was waiting for Samuel to come because he wasn't authorized to offer sacrifice. But he decided, well, I'll just do it myself. And God was pleased with him. That's how he lost his kingdom. So taking matters into our own hands. undid him. It was a manifestation of a lack of faith and it will undo you too. The next thing that we're told concerning Noah is that faith condemns the world. That's an interesting thing, isn't it? There is Noah building this monstrous ark because he believes that water is going to fall from the sky and erupt from the depths of the earth and drown everyone and everything. As we've seen, he does this by faith because he believes what God says. He believes that the world is wicked, as God said. He believes that God is going to judge, as God said. He believes that God will save him and his household by means of the ark, as God said. So he goes on building. He goes on building. You can imagine the opposition and ridicule that would have been heaped on him by the world. What are you doing building a boat on dry land away from the sea? And it's not even a boat. Guilty consciences, in all probability, made the people more obnoxious. When a person's guilty and they're stung by what, they're even more aggressive and hostile. By faith, Noah went on building. He did not fear man, he feared God. He knew that what God thought was more important than what his neighbors thought. Do you have such faith? Again, is God real to you? Is he more real than your neighbor? Is it more important to you what God thinks than what your neighbor thinks? Is it more important that he be pleased than that your neighbor be pleased? By simply going on with his project then, Noah condemned the world. The more he'd ridicule on him, the more he condemned them by going on with God, showing that going on with God, which they were not doing, was the thing that mattered. And everyone knows that that's what mattered. Everyone knows that you should go on with God. And so he was condemning them, not that he was out to condemn them, but it was what happened by the by his life, by simply going on with this project. He condemned them. He exposed their hardness of heart and their unbelief, and he made them reckless and unwilling to respond to God. Their unbelief that made them unwilling to respond to God. Day after day, his actions testified to the world that they were condemned and that they needed God's salvation. It was a powerful testimony. But Noah did more than quietly build the ark. We know this from 2 Peter. We're told that he was a preacher of righteousness, 2 Peter 2.5. He did not hide God's warning, nor did he leave people to guess why he had decided to build this giant ark. Literally, the word ark means a box. So it wasn't really even a boat. It was a thing that was just made to float. It wasn't something that had a rudder on it. It didn't have a mast on it. It had no sails. It had nothing that you would have in a ship or a boat that you would use for trade. What is this guy doing? He told them what he was doing. He preached to them. So do you include God's judgment when you speak to others or do you leave that part out? If you do, then your testimony is deficient. It's easy to leave that part out because that's the part that people really don't like. Noah cared for his fellow man, and he preached, calling them to repent. But their response made it all the worse for them. By his preaching, he exposed all the more how wicked they were in their heart, and they became more wicked in resisting the word of God that was brought to them than they were before they had resisted it. In this way, they filled up the measure of their sins through Noah's preaching. God filled up their sins in that way. As Jesus said, if I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin. But now they have no excuse for their sin. He didn't mean that they were sinless, but he meant that now they're ripe for judgment. They have gone farther in their rebellion. Likewise, you condemn the world then by believing and proclaiming the gospel. Here God has warned us of an even greater judgment that's coming. He's done this as a measure of grace and mercy that sinners may be saved. All who are appointed to salvation will be saved. He has also shown us the way of salvation in Christ. By embracing that way, the way that God has provided, and proclaiming that way, you expose the hardness of human hearts. You condemn the world in even trying to help them. Not that your goal is to condemn them, but it's the result. Do not be surprised if they're hostile. Their guilt makes them hostile. They will not be pleased with you. True faith condemns the world in its unbelief, and they feel it. Do not think that you have done something wrong because people don't like it. It's easy to fall into that snare. Don't let Satan deceive you and cause you to shut up. Not only will you contribute to the salvation of many if you go on testifying, but you will also strengthen your faith and the faith of other believers. Besides that, you will glorify God as the only Savior of life unto life. See, that's very important. Not only as a Savior of life unto life, but also as a Savior of death unto death. God is glorified when we preach the truth, both by those that resist as well as by those that receive. He receives glory through that. Our Lord Jesus Christ did the same thing. Do not be ashamed of the gospel. God is glorified by obeying it and making it known. Moving on in our text, we're at last told what faith does for us. Faith inherits righteousness, what it did for Noah and what it does for us. Our text says, Noah became an heir of righteousness that is according to faith. What a great blessing it is to inherit righteousness. Noah was a sinner. If God had not promised from the fall that he would save the world through the coming seed of the woman, there would have been no injustice in condemning Noah, too. Noah was a sinner, too, and wiping them all out. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord because of the promise of God in Christ. Righteousness speaks of a right standing with God. By trusting God to make him righteous, Noah was made righteous. Being righteous means that though he was a sinner, there was no condemnation for him. He had a right standing with God, as if he had never sinned and had always pleased God. By faith, he was accounted to be righteous in God's sight, so that all the excellent blessings that God naturally bestows on a righteous man were his. He was blessed, for example, to have communion, fellowship with God. He was blessed to live in God's house in the days to come, to behold the glory of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He was blessed to be provided for by God in every way that would bring happiness to him. He was given the ability to know God and to enjoy Him and to live for His glory forever. He was given complete security in his relationship with God, not like Adam, who was on probation and could fall away. Now Noah was secured and righteous. He had it as an inheritance. And to top all of this off, his righteousness was given to him, you see, as an inheritance. An inheritance is not something you earn. It's given to you freely. When your parents leave you an inheritance, you don't have to go out and earn that inheritance. It's bestowed on you. You don't have to pay for it. You don't have to work for it. Such is righteousness by faith. It's given to us even though we're cut off by sin and disqualified. God sent His only Son to be the one who gained acceptance with God as a man. as a God by his godly life, he opened the kingdom of righteousness for us and was the first one to be righteous in order that he might make others righteous. And I don't mean that historically people like Abraham and Noah were righteous, but I mean that Christ was the first one who actually obeyed God fully, who pleased God, who did all that was required of God. Unless he should be the only member of that kingdom, The father also appointed that he should die in the place of those that he came to redeem so that they could also be righteous, having their sins forgiven. We've seen that in Hebrews. He was the high priest who came to atone for our sins. Not only that, but he also gives us the Holy Spirit so that we will repent and come to him, though our hearts would otherwise be too hard to do so. This is all freely given to those who believe, who simply look upon God and His saving work through Christ to make them acceptable in God's sight. It's not out of reach for anyone, because it's not based on what anyone does other than Christ. You're trusting in another, not yourself. You simply come to God and ask Him to restore you through Christ, and He does it. It's not based on your work, it's based on trusting God. works will follow, because when you come to Him to receive you and to make you righteous and to transform you, He begins His work in your life, and He transforms you. It would be of no account if faith did not transform you, but righteousness itself, you see, right standing with God, is an inheritance freely bestowed on sinners who would otherwise be condemned. Be sure that you understand that none of these benefits that come from faith are out of reach for you. Yes, Noah was an extraordinary man with extraordinary faith. He had faith in a time in the whole world. Can you imagine? The whole world was in opposition. Only one man believed what God said in the whole world and his family. That was the only one. They were the only ones. Can you imagine the pressure of that? The grace of God kept him. He was extraordinary in his faith. But the blessing of righteousness that he inherited was due to his faith in God. He simply looked from himself to God to make him righteous. And God makes him, made him righteous as he will make you righteous if you look to him. This is something that is accessible, as accessible to you as it was to Noah. It is yours by faith. It is your fault if you do not receive it. Please stand and let's ask God's blessing. Oh Lord, we thank you so much for the testimony of Noah. that you have given to us in your holy word. It's marvelous to see his faith, a faith that he stood alone in a world that was hostile and that was very wicked according to your own divine testimony. And we see how that you wiped out the world at that time. and yet you spared this one in your grace. We thank you, O Lord, for the hope that this gives to us, that we by faith are able to be saved as Noah was. We pray that we would have faith, that we would have saving faith, that we would have faith that hears your warnings, and that fears you when we hear the warnings, that we will do what you said. And faith then that prepares for salvation, that comes in the way that you have appointed for salvation, as Noah did. And Father, that faith that would then condemn the world, that it would challenge the world and their unbelief and their resistance to God and show them that they are sinners who need to be saved. We pray, Lord, that we would have that testimony. And Father, that we would be heirs of righteousness, that we would have a share in the kingdom that you have promised to your people, the kingdom of righteousness, of which Jesus is the primary member and source, the head of all, the one who builds that kingdom, who builds that house, the one who is the cornerstone and the foundation of all. the only one who himself was righteous and who therefore is able to make all of us righteous. We thank you that he went to the cross in order to cover our sins so that we could be received into this righteous kingdom forever. Father, what a glorious inheritance is ours. May we have joy and confidence and hope in it. And may we live in ways that are corresponding to that. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's now prepare to come to the Lord's Supper. Please be seated. God be with you as he was with your fathers, may he not leave you nor forsake you, that he may incline your hearts to himself, to walk in all his ways and to keep his commandments and his statutes and judgments, which he commanded your fathers. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.