Hope Church LV Sermons
Not By Sight :: Faith in a Fallen World
As a church family, we are currently studying through an amazing section of Scripture. It's actually one chapter in the New Testament, it's Hebrews chapter 11. If you have your Bible, you can go ahead and turn to Hebrews chapter 11. We're going to be there in just a moment, but we've simply entitled this study through this chapter, not by sight, ordinary people, extraordinary faith. Because Hebrews chapter 11 is really a chapter in the Bible describing principles of what it is to live by faith. We've been looking at this now for several weekends, and I want to kind of just give you a couple of the principles that we've already looked at because they're so foundational to our understanding of what we're going to be looking at this morning. And the first thing we did is we began to try to answer the question, what does it mean to live by faith? And we kind of gave you a definition a couple of weekends ago that I want to put back up on the screen, and I want you to read it out loud with me off the screen. Here's what it is to live by faith. You ready? Here we go. One, two, three. To live life, not trusting in myself, but resting moment by moment in his very life in me. We're going to read it one more time together like it's not 9.30 in the morning, all right? We're going to read it like it's the afternoon and you're watching a ballgame. You ready? Let's read it together. To live life, not trusting in myself, but resting moment by moment in his very life in me. That's what it is to live by faith. It opens with that part of the definition that says to live life, meaning that this thing of living by faith is not just what happens at church on Sunday morning or in our quiet time or our small group, but it's literally every aspect of our life, moment by moment, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, we are to live in dependence, trusting in, not ourselves, but the very life of God in us through the person and work of Jesus Christ. And we said a couple of weekends ago that faith is not just a decision that we make, but that faith is a life that we live. It is true that every one of us that are followers of Jesus Christ had a moment of decision, a moment when by faith we put our trust in the person of Jesus Christ and what he did in order to receive forgiveness and righteousness from God and be made a child of God. But faith is not just a moment of decision in our lives, this idea of dependence on God is moment by moment. It's every minute of every day of our lives. Now as we continue to study through Hebrews chapter 11 this morning, we come to another character because what Hebrews 11 does is it gives us example after example after example of men and women of God from days gone by who've lived by faith. There are great examples for us to follow as we seek to live our lives by faith. This morning we come to a character that I'm sure you've heard of before. His name is Noah. How many of you have heard of Noah before, right? What do we know about Noah? He did what? He built the art, right? I mean if you don't know anything about Jesus, God, the Bible or anything, you know Noah built an art, right? Everybody knows about Noah's art. I want you to look at Hebrews chapter 11, verse 7, and listen to what the Bible tells us about that. "By faith, Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith." It's the story of this great character Noah and this building of the ark. Now as we begin to look at this this morning, I want to ask you a question and see if you'll be honest with me today. How many of you would honestly say you've asked this question before? Man, it sure would have been easier to walk with God. It sure would have been easier to live a life of faith back during the time when the Bible was written. Has anybody ever had that thought before? We tend to read the Bible through sanitized eyes. We look at our culture, we look at the world that we live in, and we see all the challenges and all the difficulties and all the obstacles to living for the Lord in our day and age. We think, man, it must have been easier. I think we read the context of every story in the Bible like its little house on the prairie, right? I mean, that's really how we see it. We read about these characters and we see ma and pa and homemade bread, right? That's how we read the Bible. But I want you to understand that the context and the culture in Noah's day was far from little house on the prairie. Turn over to Genesis chapter 6 and I want to give you just a little bit of an example of the culture that Noah lived in. It's important that we understand this as we draw principles to apply to our lives because I think when you understand the culture that Noah lived in, it helps us to take those principles and lay them down in our own life. Genesis chapter 6, beginning in verse number 5, listen what it says, "Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Now, this is the days of Noah. God is about to speak to Noah in this very chapter and the Bible begins by saying the Lord looked at the earth and the wickedness was great and that every intention of the heart was only evil all the time. Look at verse 6, "The Lord was sorry that he made man on the earth." Now, I don't care what theological perspective you read that from, that's tough to understand. That doesn't fit in our box. And he was grieved in his heart. The Lord said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky, for I am sorry that I have made them." Let's skip down to verse 11. Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God and the earth was filled with violence. Let me just quickly, for introductory sake, give you five things that we know about the world Noah lived in. First of all, we didn't read it in Genesis 6 there, but in Genesis 6 verse 1, the Bible tells us that it was explosive population growth. The Bible opens this chapter of Genesis 6 by saying it was at this time when men begin to multiply, meaning that they begin to become many. The world was exploding in population. The second thing the Bible tells us is that this was a day of rapid advance in technology. Again, we didn't read it, but if you go back to Genesis 4 and you read verses 20 to 22, you find out that business and the arts were exploding. There were brand new fields of business and brand new fields of commerce that were being created, and there were new areas of the arts that were beginning to be explored. There was a rapid advance in technology, but the third thing we learned that we read about is that the world was dominated by depraved mentality. Did you hear the verse? Every thought in the mind of the human race was evil all the time. Because they were dominated by depraved mentality, the Bible goes on to say it produced a morally decayed society, the text says that the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great. It means that immoral activity was out of control. Because of the depraved mentality, the day of Noah, that was immorality that was just rampant. It was out of control. It was abundant. And then he said that the Bible says God said the earth was corrupt. The word corrupt is a Hebrew word that means ruined or spoiled. And it's the picture of kind of, I don't know if you eat many bananas, but if you go grab a banana and it looks good on the outside and you open it up and you go to bite into it, it's just all brown and mushy, and I can see some of you've had that experience just by the look on your face. Once you've ever done that, you never forget that. I mean, it's awful. Why? Because it's ruined. That's what the Bible says. God looked at humanity, there was so much evil and so much wickedness and so much immorality. God said about humanity, it's rotten, it's ruined. And the Bible tells us that there was widespread violence. The text says the earth was filled with violence. It's the picture of a container that is maxed to capacity. It can't hold anymore. The Bible says that the earth, the human race, was maxed to capacity with cruelty, damage and injustice. This was no little house on the prairie. This was not the sun setting over the meadows. We think we got it bad in Vegas and then we got it bad in Vegas. I mean, listen, we're known for our sin all over the world, right? But not only was humanity corrupt and wicked and dominated by a depredence, all that was true, but then the Bible tells us that Noah was the only believer in God. God left on the planet. You want to talk about peer pressure? I mean, I know we think we got it tough in Vegas because most of our cities lost, right? But hey, we're not by ourselves in here this morning. I mean, it's not just you alone here today. You can talk about a small group. No, when he had a small group, it was a small group. Can you imagine the entire human race totally dominated by evil and wickedness and violence and you're the only believer, the only father, nobody else? Noah's not just a little fairy tale character. We can learn some stuff about faith from Noah. Noah lived in a tough day. Noah lived in a tough place and yet in spite of that, listen to what the text says about Noah. I skipped over it a moment ago. We read the first seven verses and skipped the verse 11, but look at verse eight in Genesis six, but Noah. Think about what had just been described. The earth has corrupt, the earth is filled with wickedness and violence, but Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. These are the records of the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time. Noah walked with God. Noah had faith in a fallen world. Noah walked with God when nobody else was walking with God and his faith found favor with God. This morning, five things that we learn from Noah's faith that I think will be beneficial for us. There are five of them, all right? I know what time it is, so you're going to have to listen fast. If I don't get through all of them, I'll just mention the last couple, all right? It depends on how quickly you're able to listen. If you're committed to listening fast this morning, say amen. Amen. That wasn't very fast, but we'll go with it, all right? Here's the first one. Noah's faith didn't start with an ark, it was a growing faith. You see, really all we know about Noah, and many people, all they know about Noah is that Noah built an ark. That's how we started this morning. We all know that Noah built an ark, and when we hear these names from the Old Testament, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Elijah, David, we almost hear them like they're superheroes, right? Captain ark builder, right? Noah. He's got the big ark on his chest and the cape-boying in the wind. I mean, we read them like they're these superheroes, these giants of the faith, and yet did you know that Noah lived for 500 years before God told him to build an ark? Now to give you a box to put that in, our country isn't 500 years old, all that you studied in school about U.S. history, all the books that have been written about U.S. history are less than 500 years, 500 years, and what do we know about Noah during those 500 years? Five hundred years of your life summed up in three phrases? Noah was a righteous man. He was blameless in his time, and he walked with God. 500 years, he was a righteous man, describes his relationship to the Father. Because of his belief, you see, his grandfather Enoch had passed down the message, the promise that one day God would redeem, God would send a substitute that would take care of our sin problem, Noah had by faith embraced that. And when the rest of the world had rejected it, Noah believed. And because of that, he was declared right with God. He was forgiven. He was given a right standing because of God's grace. And then the Bible says he was blameless in his time. Now that little phrase in his time has great meaning when you understand what we've already looked at. I mean, Noah's time, Noah's days were some bad days. But the Bible says Noah, and his day was blameless. It doesn't mean Noah was perfect. It just means nobody could point a finger at Noah's life and say, "Man, your life isn't consistent with what comes out of your mouth." Then the text says he walked with God, describing that moment by moment, trusting not in himself, not in his own, listen, Noah's own best thinking, let me tell you what Noah's own best thinking said. "Man, just do what everybody else is doing. You could only one, just go with the crowd." But Noah just didn't trust in himself. He kept trusting in the promise and the life of God in him. Noah's faith didn't start with an ark. You see, it was God growing Noah's faith through the ordinary routine of life that prepared him for the moment of the ark. Let me read you a quote by Clyde Cranford. Listen to what he said. Look at it on the screen. He says, "It is in bread in us," says Oswald Chambers, "that we have to do exceptional things for God, but we have not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, and this is not learned in five minutes. Indeed, this must be our practice for a lifetime. Only eternity will show the value of a life lived to please him." You see, before Noah ever built the ark, the Bible says Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. I think sometimes we think it was the ark that brought him, no. Before Noah ever built an ark, the Bible says the Lord found favor and no. What was that? Just moment by moment, depending on him, trusting him. Noah's faith didn't start with an ark, it was a growing faith. Number two, Noah's faith didn't dream a big dream for God. It was a simple faith. The text back over in Hebrews, chapter 11 says, "By faith, Noah being warned by God." What does that mean? It means Noah clearly heard from God. There came a point in Noah's faith journey, 500 years in of walking with God, and Noah clearly hears divine communication from God. God spoke to Noah. God gave him insight about what was coming. God gave Noah a plan and a purpose. God spoke to Noah. Here's what that means. Noah didn't go off and dream a big dream to build an ark. Noah didn't get in a room with a whiteboard and cast great vision about this ark. Noah didn't get a group of people together and come up with an incredible strategy and plan to build an ark. No, let me tell you what Noah did. He simply heard what God said, and he obeyed. I think sometimes we have the idea that the bigger the task, the greater the faith, that I've got to come up with this big plan. I've got to have this big dream. I've got to have this big idea in order to show God my faith, but that's not at all what faith is about. Faith doesn't say, "Go start something." Faith doesn't say, "Go create something." The Bible says, "Faith comes by what?" Hearing. It's only when I hear the voice of God that I can respond in faith. Now, sometimes the voice of God may say something like, "Build an ark," and I have to say it by faith, simply trust that. Sometimes the voice of God may say something much, much, much smaller than "Build an ark." Here's the point. My responsibility is not to go build an ark. My responsibility is to hear what God says and simply trust Him. You see, God is not looking for great leaders, great visionaries, great communicators, or great strategists. He's simply looking for great faith. What made Noah's faith great? What made it pleasing to God was not the size of the ark. What made Noah's faith pleasing to God was the simplicity with which he simply obeyed what God said. If we're not careful, even inside the church, we can begin to think that it's about the bigness, the vastness, the largeness of what God's called us to, but that's not the issue. Listen, God doesn't expect you or me to be Billy Graham. I don't have to measure my life up next to Billy Graham. Billy Graham was responsible for what God said to Billy Graham. God didn't say that to me. Let me ask you a question this morning. How many of you would say, "I'm ordinary?" Hey, me too. I'm Alabama ordinary, man, I'm pinto beans and collard greens and cornbread ordinary. That's me. I'm ordinary. That's who I am. I'm from a small town, Alabama. I'm just an ordinary guy. Let me ask you a second question. How many of you would say, "I trust God?" Listen, you're qualified. You're qualified to live a life of faith that finds favor with God. You're qualified to live a life that pleases the Father. You do not have to go dream a big dream for God. God does not need you to do that for him. You don't have to create a great strategy for God. Let me tell you what you need to do. Simply hear him and then do what he says. Trust him. Just trust him. We live in a culture that measures success by size. The bigger the house, the more successful the person who lives in it. The bigger the bank account, the bigger the portfolio, the bigger the company, the bigger the business, it even creeps into the church. Who's got the biggest small group? Who's got the biggest ministry? What pastor has the biggest church? You know what we need to do, we need to replace the word success in our Christian verbiage with the word pleasing. It's not about am I successful? The question is, am I pleasing? Am I pleasing to the Father? At the end of the day, Jesus, after three years of church planting, had a hundred people. He would have invited him to preach at the church planting conference. But he said, I always do that which pleases the Father. Let me read you another quote by Clay, listen to what he said. The Christian does not have to live by the world's standard of success. What constitutes success in the world's eyes is often in direct conflict with God's definition. When keeping up appearances, staying on top, that's the world's purpose for living and it has deeply entrenched itself in the subconscious motivations of God's own people. If God figures into the success scheme at all, he is seen as a resource to be used for personal gain as a means toward an end rather than the end itself. We think Noah's art, man, big deal, right? Hey, did you know that Noah spent about 120 years building the art? And the Bible tells us in the New Testament that during 120 years of building the art, he was a preacher of righteousness, meaning that he was preaching to everybody who would listen. The way of salvation, he was preaching about God, he was telling the good news, he was inviting people, get on the boat, and in 120 years, nobody responded. You know what we'd say about that? Noah's not very successful. Noah must not have heard God at all. Noah didn't dream a big dream for God, he just simply trusted him. Here's the third one, Noah's faith didn't have all the answers. It was childlike faith. Children have an unbelievable capacity to believe. I have four children, my youngest is appropriately named Faith. She's seven years old, and Faith, if I said to Faith today, Faith, in the morning, you are going to have lucky charms for breakfast. Faith is not going to stay up all night worried about how that process is going to happen. Faith doesn't understand that daddy has a job that somehow translates to money being put in the bank that enables mommy to go through the ATM and get cash, spit out of the ATM, that for some reason Smith's will take an exchange for a box of lucky charms that winds up on our breakfast table in the morning. Faith doesn't understand any of that. Let me tell you what, faith knows. Faith knows there's going to be lucky charms on the table. Why? Because daddy said so. Daddy said, "Faith, tomorrow morning you can have lucky charms for breakfast." So Faith went to bed going, "Hey, guess what? I'm having lucky charms in the morning for breakfast." Noah had that kind of faith. Look back at Hebrews 11-7, says, "By faith Noah being worn by God," listen, "about things not yet seen." The Amplified Bible says, "He was worn concerning events of which there was no visible sign yet." Did you know that most Bible scholars, most conservative Bible scholars believe that up until the time of Noah that it had never rained on the earth. Most Bible scholars believe that the pre-flood era and the reason people lived so long, five and six, seven hundred years, was because the earth atmosphere was kind of like a greenhouse before the flood that there was water above the earth's atmosphere and water below the earth's atmosphere. And it created an environment that allowed for things to grow and allowed for dinosaurs to exist and all those kinds of things. And after the flood, the earth's atmosphere changed, dinosaurs became extinct as well as some other things. And the human race lifespan began to shrink drastically because of the different temperatures and environment that existed after the flood. So up until the flood, most scholars believe they'd never seen rain, which helps us understand they would have had no context for the word flood. If you'd never seen rain, you'd never experienced a flood and then they tell us that where Noah lived, he didn't live anywhere near a major body of water so he'd never seen a ship if there were ships and he may have never even seen a boat. Now put all that in your box and then hear it this way. God comes to Noah, the only man living on the face of the earth, swimming upstream all by himself. Everybody thinks he's lost his mind and God says, "Noah, it's going to rain." Okay? It's going to rain so much and it's going to flood the whole earth. I have no idea what you're talking about, but okay. So Noah, here's the plan. I want you to build an enormous ship. Well, I better get started building. Noah, never seen these things before. Noah, it'd be like somebody coming to you and saying, "Hey, you're about to be attacked by Martians. I need you to build a transporter that'll take you to a different time." You'd be like, "Yeah, right." Listen to me, to Noah, it seemed crazy. Noah just did it. Listen to the way John MacArthur describes it. He said, "It is difficult to imagine how God's message must have sounded to Noah. To most of us, it would have been so strange, so demanding, so embarrassing, so absolutely overwhelming that we would have done anything to get out of it. We would have thought up a thousand excuses for not doing it. We would have done our best to talk God out of the whole idea or at least convince him to get somebody else for the job." But Noah, who had but a fraction of the divine light that we have, did not argue, quibble, make excuses, complain, or procrastinate. He did not question God, but simply began obeying Him. Now listen to this, he spent over a hundred years fulfilling one single command. You've got to think there were days he woke up and it was still dry out. And he thought, "I mean, you and I go a week and don't get our answer from God." You go a week, we live in a microwave world, right? I prayed God, I'm expecting the answer in the morning. A hundred, are you kidding me? A hundred years? What is that? That's childlike faith. That's my wife coming down in the morning seeing faith sitting at the table with holding a spoon. Faith, what are you doing? When Daddy said, "There's going to be lucky charms." Noah got up every day and grabbed his spoon. Let me give you an example in the scripture. You know to Mark chapter 4, Mark chapter 4, verse 35, listen to what it says, "On that day when evening came, He said to them, 'Let us go over to the other side.'" Now what did Jesus say to the disciples? He said, "Let us go over to the other side." What did He say? That's all they needed to hear. Look what it says in verse 36, "Leaving the crowd, they took Him along with them in the boat just as He was and other boats with them. And there arose a fierce gale of wind and the waves were breaking over the boat so much that the boat was already filling up. Jesus Himself was in the stern asleep on the cushion. They woke Him and said to Him, "Teacher, do you not care?" Listen, you know your perspective is wrong when you're asking Jesus if He cares. "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" He got up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Hush be still." The wind died down. It became perfectly calm and He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?" You know what He's saying there? Did you not hear me say, "Let us go over to the other side?" You know our problem? We stop listening to the promise and we start looking at the storm. Jesus said we're going to the other side. If that wasn't enough, He was so comfortable with that. He was asleep. There was no reason for panic. Let me give you your let us go over to the other side, Romans 8, 28. And we know that God calls us. What does it say? All things. Say that again. All things. It's not most things. It's not some things. It's what? All things. And we know. We don't hope. We what? No. We know that God calls us all things to work together for what? To those who love God and those who are called according to His purpose. Let me tell you what that is. Let us go over to the other side. I know there is some wind and some waves in your life right now. But stop looking at the storm and listen to the promise. Get your spoon out. There will be lucky charms on the table in the morning. Trust Him. Lord, don't you care? My job, my house, my family, my health. Stop looking at the storm. Listen to the promise. Noah's faith didn't have all the answers. God told him about something he'd not ever even seen. It was childlike faith. Number four. Noah's faith didn't just affect him. It was an influential faith. It was an influential faith. Listen to what the text said in Hebrews 11. By faith, being warned by God about things not yet seen in reverence, he prepared an ark for the salvation of his household. The word for means for this purpose, for this reason, to this end. Noah heard God and Noah acted in faith because here's what he understood. "My obedience to God, my trusting Him, it doesn't just affect me, it influences everybody around me." My father, my dad, Bob Pittman, Bob Pittman did not grow up in a Christian home. My dad is a first generation Christian. His parents and back behind them were not believers. They weren't followers in Christ. When my dad was a little boy growing up in Florence, Alabama, he lived. He lived on a street there in Florence, Ridge Avenue there in Florence. In Florence, Alabama, there was a deacon of a Baptist church that lived across the street from my daddy. This deacon had a heart for reaching people in his neighborhood. He met my dad as a little boy out in the yard one day, and he started talking to my dad about Christ and started inviting my dad to his church, Highland Baptist Church in Florence, Alabama. He invited my dad, this little boy, to come to church with him. He went and met my mom and dad's parents, and they talked to them, and my dad's parents were good with him being able to go with them to church with this other family, so my dad is a little nine, ten-year-old boy started going to church with this family that lived across the street from him. My dad, after going to church for a short length of time, heard the gospel, and my dad as a young little boy gave his heart and life to Jesus Christ, became a devoted follower of Christ, and at the age of 16, was still attending that same church, and was sitting in the choir one day, singing in the choir, and as a 16-year-old student, the preacher was preaching, and the place was full, so the choir had stayed up in the seats, and he was sitting up on the back row of the choir loft, and he so since God's speaking to his heart that God was calling him to preach, and my dad actually elbowed, he's told me this story a minute, so he elbowed the guy next to him and said, "Man, I think God's calling you to preach, because I know he's calling one of us, and it can't be me, so you need to..." And the longer the guy preached, the more my dad began and said, "No, God's calling me." During the invitation, my dad went down to the pastor's family, and I think God's calling me to preach, and my dad became a pastor, and to this day is still, in my opinion, one of the greatest preachers of the Word of God I've ever heard in all my life. He's such a faithful expositor who can take the text and just make it come alive and teach the divine principles of God in a way that six-year-olds and 60-year-olds can understand it, and I grew up in that house. I grew up in a household where my dad was a pastor, my brother and I grew up together. My brother is six years younger than I am, and we both grew up, became followers of Christ, and we both came at it from different directions, but now both of us, pastoring churches. I'm here in Nevada, my brother's pastoring in our hometown of Alabama, we're both pastoring churches that are planting churches and working around the world, and between us on an annual basis, we're involved in training thousands of leaders on continents all around the globe, where tens of thousands of people are coming to Christ. Now, why'd I tell you all that? Here's why I told you all that. Listen, how significant do you think it was that a Baptist deacon simply trusted God when God spoke and said, "Hey, go talk to that little boy. He's not going to get invited to speak at a conference for talking to a little boy. He's not going to get a book deal, but in faith, he just talked to a little boy, and here's what he understood. I don't know what God's doing, but I know it's bigger than me. Listen, I don't even know that deacon's name, but I can't wait to meet him in heaven, and tell him about Las Vegas, and what God's done here, and introduce him to some of you and let you tell him your story, what God's done in your life, and talk to him about churches on continents around the world. Let me tell you what, you never know. You never know who that next little boy is. God may say to you today at lunch, "Hey, just tell that waitress you're praying for. You have no idea. You have no -- you just to respond in faith to what God says, and trust him that it's bigger than you." It's an influential faith. Here's the last one, and I'm finished. We've got to be done. Noah's faith didn't make him popular. It was a radical faith. The text says, "By faith, Noah being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared in art for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world." Now, Noah didn't set out to condemn the world. That wasn't his objective. Noah just trusted God and did what God said, but his life of faith magnified the unfaithfulness of the lives of people around him. And the Bible doesn't really tell us. Let me tell you what I believed happened. I believed for a hundred years, daily, friends, neighbors came by. "Hey, Noah, you still building that boat?" They made fun of him. They laughed at him. They mocked him, some maybe even persecuted him. They didn't make him mayor of the town because he was building the ark. You see, sometimes when you follow him, don't be surprised if it doesn't make you popular. Don't be surprised if sometimes people criticize or even persecute you because that's what we learn from Noah. His faith was a growing faith. Every day prepared him for the next. It was a simple faith. He just heard God and he was just responsible to follow whatever God said. His faith was a childlike faith. He didn't have to have all the answers. He just knew God said and he trusted it. His faith was an influential faith. It affected just more than just him. It was bigger than him. And his faith, it was a radical faith. It didn't make him go along with the crowd. It called him to a way of life that seemed extreme to many. People didn't understand, maybe those even closest to him thought he'd lost his mind. Noah had faith in the midst of a fallen world. As you look at Noah's life, where are you living? Where are you in this journey of faith? [ Silence ]