Noah-A Qualified Life (Part A)

We have an advocate with the Father.

It's the Son. By consent, by design, by edict of God the Father. It's not said with thunder and lightning and trauma about it. Though it will be, when we are in heaven, there be quiet in heaven for the space of about an hour. We'll be quiet.

I think we'll just be blown away. And so we know when Christians keep grace in the front seat and law in the back seat, fruit comes. After today's message, you'll hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of Genesis chapter 6 as he begins his message, Noah, a Qualified Life. You have your Bibles. Let's turn to Genesis chapter 6. The character is Noah, and the section of his life that we want to address is his qualifications, are his qualifications. And so the title is Noah, a Qualified Life.

And I say it that way because you can take this text that we're going to use and concentrate on different parts. Here's the text, Genesis chapter 6, verse 9. Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God. Well, you could just focus on the walking with God and make a whole sermon out of that, but that's not the objective tonight.

His qualifications are clearly stated. He is remembered, perhaps unfortunately, as the one who made the ark and little else by so many. The ark that he built, but not the life that qualified him for the building of the ark. The life that qualified him to be used by God for the very things that he accomplished and why he is a special character in the Scripture. He would be in the category of hero. And he won the contract to build the ark, not because he was the low bid, but because he had the high character. And those are the kind of things that leap out to me. When I read such a verse, he was a just man, perfect in his generation.

Noah walked with God. We'll talk about all of that as we move through this, but that high character, it attracts us and it scares us. It attracts us because we want to have that. We want to be that righteous influence wherever we find ourselves. But we find out that we're easily tripped up by sin and that it's not as easy as it sounds. And yet, in spite of that, it is still our ambition to the grave.

And that's a part of our message to the lost world. Yeah, we do have a high standard. Yes, we don't make it, but we keep the high standard. But what you do is you toss the high standard.

You start making your own. And as a result, sin rules. This was the way it was in the days of Noah. Character qualified him. Character built on faith, of course. So much so that even after four full chapters that Moses dedicates to Noah, Peter in the New Testament makes a very important addition to our knowledge about Noah.

After Moses is done, centuries later, 1600, 1700 years later, almost 70, here comes Peter and he makes this statement in the power of the Holy Spirit, 2 Peter 2 verse 5. Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly. Well, we knew about the flood, we knew about the ungodly, but what we did not know is that Noah was a preacher of righteousness. That's what he was.

A text. Noah was a just man. In the Hebrew, a more accurate translation of that Hebrew word translated just man is righteous.

Noah was a righteous man, perfect in his generation. God's characteristic way of meeting evil when he is going to move on it, as we learn from the flood of Noah, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Armageddon, his characteristic way with evil is to meet it not with half measures, but with the simultaneous extremes. Two extremes at the same time.

The first one we're very familiar with, and the second one we're very familiar with. Judgment and salvation. That's how God deals with evil. Judgment and salvation.

You are either with him or you are against him. Now, there is more to the story, but that's where the story ends. And each individual has a say-so as to how it will end for them. But as we've been going through this life and times of the people of the Bible, the times that they lived in have very much to do with the life that they lived. The person who they were.

The application to our lives. So dark and so violent were these days that Noah lived in that God promised two things. First, a literal flood of judgment to wipe them off the face of the earth.

That was the first promise. That was the judgment. Then, the wrath was so severe that when it was over, he promised never to do that again. That's how severe the judgment was, and that's how keen on what God was doing God was. Well aware of how extreme this was and putting into the human experience measures that would prohibit him from having to exercise such ferocity in judgment ever again. Genesis, chapter 9, verse 11.

Don't turn there, but you can write it down. Thus I established my covenant with you. God's speaking to Noah. Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood. Never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.

You catch the emphasis coming from the mouth of God. Never again, never again. This is not who I am. This is not what I want to do. But I did do it, and I did it intentionally.

But I'll never do it again. You see, during this time, the deep things of Satan dominated mankind. It comes out very clearly in the scripture. Look with me at Genesis, chapter 6.

We'll take verses 5 through 7, and then we'll do verse 11. It says, Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on earth, and he was grieved in his heart. So the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing, and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.

Now that's anthropomorphic. It's God expressing the break in his heart in terms that we will understand without him ever becoming human and actually experiencing a regret as if he made a mistake. And then verse 11, the earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. Well, we have the effect that this wickedness, this violence, this corruption had on God. We've covered that in verses 6 and 7. But what we need to really zoom in on is that here in these verses with devastating force, evil is presented as being extensive and intensive. In the very words, look at me again in verse 5. It says, great in the earth, every intent, only evil continually.

Again, great every only continually. That is God's commentary on the times Noah lived in. In verse 11, he says those times were corrupt and they were filled with violence.

Satan's seed had been busy and it had been successful. Satan, he doesn't change either. He cannot change. He is who he is, and who he is is evil. And so to the extent that only eight people on earth survived God's wrath because of this man, because of Noah, qualified life. The influence of that character, the potential that each one of us hold within ourselves. Well, we may not be as righteous as Noah, but we may be righteous enough to do what God needs us to do wherever he finds us because you see, when God received us into his kingdom, it was long before we were ever born.

He already had plans to use those who had come to him. Another fair indicator of the hardship attending the life and times of Noah is found in chapter 5 of Genesis in verse 29. And there we read, And he called his name Noah, saying, This one will comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands because of the ground which the Lord has cursed. Now those are the words of Lamech, the father of Noah.

We'll get back to him later. But out of this 29th verse, what we understand is that the ground was not freely giving itself. Food was difficult to come by. There were famines. There were tough times. And they wanted relief. These are the days that he was born into. They lamented their day and they hoped for relief. And the name Noah means relief.

It means comfort. And that's why his dad named him Noah. And then in these difficult times of violence and corruption, there were the Nephilim.

Now we read about them. And let's look at verse 4 of chapter 6. It says, There were giants on the earth in those days and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men, and they brought children to them, and those who were the mighty men, who were men of old, men of renown. I do not believe that these, now many good men of God do not share this view. But I'm not alone in my view.

But I don't care if I am alone in what I believe. I do not believe that these are mystical beings. If these were angelic beings coming down, corrupting men, then God should have put a flood on them. That would be a violation of justice.

I'm not going to go into all of that, as tempting as it is. But the word giants there in the Hebrew is Nephilim. The King James primarily, well there's two, but the King James chooses to translate that word as giants. But the idea really is tyrants. These were bullies.

And it is found even in the definite, or the etymology, the origin of the word. But Nephilim were bullies who fell upon others and enslaved them. That's why they were men of renown. They were slave owners. They were corrupt. They had success in even corrupting the line of Seth. They were successful in mixing the righteous with the wicked.

We call it leaven, and there is nothing good about it. And the word Nephilim comes from the Hebrew root meaning to fall upon. And that's who those men were, and they were around for a long time. And they brought hardship on others while they enjoyed life. This is not something that should be difficult to believe.

We see it all the time. It's all through history. The elite class enslaving others. The violence and the evil emphasized by the narrator. The violence and the evil emphasized by the narrator was because of the Nephilim, the tyrants, the bullies. So when Noah came along, after hundreds of years of this lifestyle on the earth, evil seemed to be something that could not be uprooted. It could not be done away with. I don't have any problem with any of that. To me, all of this is real.

I can see fragments of it today. If you live in certain parts of the world, it's all you know. How many people in history have been born in slavery and have died a slave and have lived a slave's life? And simply because we happen to belong to a part of civilization in history which has been relatively stable does not give us the right to forget the evil that man is capable of executing on his fellow man. Think of the Mayan empire, the Aztecs, the violence in the name of religion, the enslaving of other people simply to offer them as human and living sacrifices, cutting out their hearts while they were still alive.

And that's just one little town. So we can understand why God's heart was grieved in his heart. Men had rejected him, and the outcome was that men were suffering profusely, so bad it was that there really was not a solution for it except to wipe it out. And that is what God did. He wiped it out. And so what does those days have to do with our days?

They were in many ways identical. Matthew chapter 24 verse 27. Listen to this. Remember, again, God, when he makes a statement, he expects the listener to say, God said it, it is accurate, it is true, it is probably greater than what I can grasp, and therefore God just makes a statement and he doesn't try to insist upon his yes. He doesn't really, really believe me.

Hell is hot, hot, hot, hot. He does not do that. He says, I'm telling you, it's unending. Its worm does not die.

And he expects the listener to say, this is not good. The Bible is clumsy in its attempt to describe heaven. It's an emerald throne.

It's a sea of crystal and gold, the streets, and the reflection. Well, what does that do for me? Nothing. What does it for me is when he says, there's no more death, there's no more sorrow.

That does it for me. But still, they do not get me to what is awaiting us, the glory, the splendor. Today you will be with me in paradise, and if you only knew, before you got to this cross, oh outlaw, if you only knew what God had for you, you'd never have died an outlaw's death. But it says here in verse 37, but as the days of Noah were, so will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark. You see, the days at the end will not be much unlike the days they were at the end for those antediluvians. That means those people who lived before the flood of Noah. Do we believe that? Tyrants, dictators, great wickedness, every, only, continually. Do we believe the scripture record?

Do we live like we believe the record? I believe most born-again Christians really want to do it, and I believe many of them do. And so it will be with the rapture, in the midst of hard times, in the midst of violence, in the midst of corruption, as it was in this day when there stood one who was qualified, a qualified life made a difference for seven other souls. Genesis chapter 6 verse 8, but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. That's the church.

That's the New Testament church. We're told in the book of Acts that they continued to grow in the grace of God. Noah found grace. The church has found grace. Noah was saved from the judgment. The church will be saved from the judgment. What is God supposed to do?

Video record these things and give them to us? Then there wouldn't be much faith and then people would corrupt that also because such is the nature, the fallen nature of man. And so Noah, the man, those are his times. But Noah the man found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Our text again, verse 9, Noah was a righteous man, perfect in his generation. Noah walked with God. Literally, with God he walked to and fro.

That's closer to the Hebrew. He emerges not only as the best in a bad generation, but as a remarkably complete man. Where it says that he was righteous, that primarily has to do with his manward experience. He was righteous towards other men. When the day came where he had to hire people to help build the ark, there's no way he and his boys could have built that ark.

I mean if you say, well a miracle, well then God could have just poofed your ark. But no, he had to cut wood. And he had to get people to help him. And I'm sure people didn't mind working for him because he was fair, he was a righteous man. But the perfect, perfect in his generation, that is Godward. What God saw when he saw Moses was a man who would actually walk with him because he was submitted to him.

And the two can't walk if it be any other way, if it's anything less than that. So these words are descriptive of qualified life for God's purposes to save lost souls. And it's not supposed to intimidate us because, because, it's critical because, the key is grace. Undeserved kindness. That's what grace is.

You don't really deserve this, but it's more than that. It's not only undeserved kindness, it does no violation to justice. It is a maker of things wrong into right. That's what grace is.

It is holy, it is high, it is expensive. Hebrews chapter 4 verse 15. This verse is given to us that we would not lose heart, that we would not say, look, who can be a righteous man, perfect in his generation, walking with God with all the temptation around, swirling around all the failures.

Who can even do it? I quit. To intercept that spirit of defeat, we have such verses as this in Hebrews chapter 4 verse 15. For we do not have a high priest, that is Jesus Christ, who cannot sympathize with our weakness, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us, therefore, come boldly into the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Well, when's the time of need? When I'm weak. When I've, not failing, when I've already failed, again and again and again.

It doesn't come with a shelf life. It doesn't say you get 18 forgiveness and that's it. The high priest ministers continually, morning and evening, the sacrifices were offered, all speaking of the coming of Christ in his finished work. The high priest's role was to intercede.

He is the go-between. He is the one that speaks to God on behalf of men. Whereas the prophet speaks to men on behalf of God. But here, he being both, here he is presented as high priest. There's no higher.

There's none above him. This happens to be our high priest who is also our God, acting as our intercessor, our go-between, the one who is our advocate. When John said in his first letter, if we sin, you can insert there, regardless of how many times, though you cannot insert there carelessly, we have an advocate with the Father.

It's the Son, by consent, by design, by edict of God the Father. It's not said with thunder and lightning and trauma about it. Though it will be, when we're in heaven, there'll be quiet in heaven for the space of about an hour.

We'll be quiet, I think we'll just be blown away. And so we know when Christians keep grace in the front seat and law in the back seat, fruit comes. At no point is grace a surrender of righteousness. Noah was a righteous man. He was perfect before God. He walked with God because he found grace with God. There was a relationship, a reality, bigger than anything that could strip this man down. Paul says it this way, we're sin-abounded. Grace whooped the snot out of it.

That's what it says. It's not the Greek, it's the reek. But anyway, I get, you know, it gets a little intense up here sometimes.

I have to have like a Rick commercial and just kind of break it because I don't know if I've lost you or not. Just because I enjoy the Scripture like I do, I don't know if you're saying, oh, I've heard this before. Ephesians chapter 3 verse 7, of which I became a minister according to the gift of the grace of God given to me by the effective working of his power. It wasn't that Paul was killing Christians and then he was saved. Okay, he did stop going after Christians, but he was still a sinner.

He's just saved now. His course changed. And in his heart when he felt malice towards a Christian, he checked it in grace. Whereas before he acted upon that feeling of contempt and hatred. So he was able to write what sin abounded, grace did much more.

It super abounded. You've been listening to Cross Reference Radio, the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. Pastor Rick is teaching from God's word each time you tune in.

As we mentioned at the beginning of today's broadcast, this teaching is available free of charge at our website. Just visit CrossReferenceRadio.com. That's CrossReferenceRadio.com. We'd also like to encourage you to subscribe to the Cross Reference Radio podcast. Subscribing ensures that you stay current with all the latest teachings from Pastor Rick. You can do so at CrossReferenceRadio.com or search for Cross Reference Radio in your favorite podcast app store. That's all for today. Join Pastor Rick next time for more character studies right here on Cross Reference Radio.