Noah-A Qualified Life (Part B)

Not only did Noah preach, but every tree that fell in the forest, every echo from every hammer preached the coming judgment of God. How many times in our generation is a person entitled to hear the gospel and reject it?

One lifetime. There are people who die without ever hearing the gospel. Yet in westernized civilization, the gospel is all around folks.

And they don't want it. And it is up to us to get it to them. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Genesis.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Now here's Pastor Rick with part 2 of his message called, Noah, a Qualified Life in Genesis chapter 6. 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'd 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 a 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—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 drama 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. And so he was able to write, the sinner abounded. Grace did much more.

It super abounded. And so when grace takes the front seat, law takes the back seat, but it's not thrown out of the car. It's just better defined. So when Paul writes, it's the goodness of God that led me to repentance, he's saying it's the grace of God. It's his goodness. It's not his wrath.

It's not his fire. You can preach fire to people. You can let them have it. And they'll say, yes, give it to me, but they won't change a bit and they won't come to the cross.

They feel like they've done their penance by enduring a hot sermon. Grace changes the heart. It changes everything. It is what we say or used to say, it is a game changer. It changes everything. Grace opens the doors of evangelism, God's kindness and justice and blood, the blood of Christ. So when Cain comes to God, when he comes to God, he brings this fruit basket because the blood is uncomfortable.

It's gross. Let me put it this way. He wants to come to God without Calvary.

That's what he wants. He wants to come to God on the basis of his own merits and God rejected him and put a mark on him. And the mark was to protect him from other people. But no one can protect you from God. And if you die with the mark of sin on your soul and the blood of Christ is not washed away, you're doomed and you're doomed forever. And this notion about, well, there's a way we can get you out is not only sinister in that those who teach this stuff get rich off of it, but it's damning for them and those who would like it because they're saying, God's too harsh.

We need to be a little bit more kinder than him. And so we found a loophole in the law. The first time the word grace appears in the scripture actually is in reference to Noah. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

That's the first time the word grace shows up. Of course, it's in the context of judgment to come. That is the New Testament church. That is what we are supposed to be in. That's why the church is so ugly when she is unfaithful to her groom.

How do we know when she's unfaithful? We just look at the scripture and we find them trampling it in his name. That's why she is so hideous when she wants to invite in to the house of God those who have no stomach for Calvary, those who have no stomach for the place of the skull, those who reject the cross of Christ. When there were revivals and days long ago, they preached the cross of Christ. That's why it's in so many hymns.

They preached blood, blood religion. We must too. Don't think that the recipient is that unreachable, that he's not going to get it. If the Holy Spirit is ministering to them, they're going to get it. Enough to make their decision. But we cower. We want to relate to everybody. We want to show everybody that we're still like them. We're not like them. Our children are different. We are different. We're still human. And we still live in a society where we can do things that are otherwise decent without being corrupted. But that does not make us like them. We can wear suits and ties like they do. We can drive cars to some degree, like they do. But we are not like them. Their God's not like our God.

Okay, all right. Are our people like their people? That's the question that has to be answered. Is there any mark of the cross on us? This whole message is a very powerful message. And if you've ever preached the gospel to a lost soul, you've never preached it as a born-again believer as being tired of the message.

It always stands you up, strengthens you up, makes you want more. That was pretty good, Lord. Who else can we save? And that's when we get into trouble. What do you mean?

What's this we? And so Noah's preaching is what this is coming to. As we started off in 2 Peter, Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness. He preached it. He preached what he lived, even though there were still things in his life that were showing up that could cause problems.

This is before the flood. And according to 1 Peter chapter 3 verse 18 through 20, the Spirit of Christ through the patriarchs preached to the disobedient spirits in that world. Do you understand that? When Noah was preaching, when Lamech was preaching, when Seth was preaching righteousness, it was the Spirit of Jesus Christ in their message, in their spirit. And this is what Peter says in his own tongue-in-cheek, clumsy way in 1 Peter chapter 3 verse 18, for Christ also suffered once for sins. You see the suffering is part of our message.

The just for the unjust, this is grace, but it's still justice, that he might bring us to God, oh man, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the Spirit by whom also he, Jesus Christ, went and preached to the spirits in prison who formerly were disobedient, who when once the divine long sufferings waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight souls, were being saved through water. While the ark was being prepared, Noah was preaching. Now I'll get back to that statement, but I also said I'd get back to this statement from verse 5 of Genesis chapter 5 verse 29 where it says, beginning verse 28, Lamech lived 182 years and had a son and he called his name Noah.

Why? Well, we already commented on that. Lamech incidentally means wild man. I don't know what Methuselah had in mind, being that old. But Lamech uttered prophecy at the birth of his son.

He connected it. He said, maybe this one will bring us rest, relief, comfort from all this. And he did, not as Lamech envisioned it, but he brought it. He foresaw that in some way Noah would bring comfort to a troubled race. And he did by being that righteous man who God was waiting for, who God knew would come because he would raise him up, because he would find in him the port necessary to connect to. If as few as eight souls were saved, seven of those souls owed their salvation to one man, Noah. I want to be that guy. I want to be that guy in heaven where others owe their salvation to Jesus Christ, but Jesus Christ used me to be part of it. That's Noah, qualified life.

You'd have to be a fool to be a born again Christian and not want such a testimony. And there's many of them. We've been covering them.

This one's outstanding. It's outstanding not because of the flood only. That's part of the story. Just like with Jonah, the Navy part is part of it, but there's so much more that belongs to it. One of the most striking things about me, to me, about the man Jonah is that he told everybody what a foolish prophet he was. It wasn't like, well, I was just a foolish new believer.

He was already a prophet. He was supposed to get it right the first time. He messed it all up.

I know that when I'm put in humiliating circumstances or I humiliate myself, I'm like, why did you let that happen? Didn't I pray? Didn't I lay it all out to you, God?

Where were you when I was saying this? If you would just listen to me. Now, I don't ever say that. I don't even think that. I just accept what God does.

But I say it that way because there are people who think that way. And if you do think somewhere along those lines, then you need to understand that God is so far ahead of that stuff. Eight souls, seven saved in addition to Noah because of a single qualified life. 1 Peter chapter 3 verse 20. When once the divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah while the few, that is eight souls were saved through water, Noah protected his family.

Now, you can say in a sense he was the first prepper, but not too much. Just be careful. I've been carrying that around for a long time. We want relief from our problems and not necessarily lessons, but it's the lessons, the lessons that we get that bring us relief. And this is something that's difficult for the immature Christian to understand. The lessons from the Scripture will contribute to relief from the problems or in the midst of the problems.

God does not promise to get us out of trouble, not all the time, except of the trouble to come to those who die without Him. But Noah, here he is a preacher of Christ, and he had a child in his family, and it could be, you know, for Hosea it was a wife, for Abel it was a brother, for Noah it was Ham, his second oldest. It must have hurt Noah to know that unrighteousness brought the flood that he and his family survived. And get this, Noah was 500 years old before he had his first child.

Now, you want to talk about how to plan a family. Five hundred years before he has Shem. And then at some point before the flood, he has Japheth, Ham, and then Japheth. My point is when these men were about to go into the ark, they were grown men.

And Ham seems to never really get it. Ecclesiastes chapter 9 verse 18, wisdom is better than weapons of war. Noah had wisdom. But one sinner destroys much good.

One sinner can come along and undo it all, except for the presence of God. So my point with this is that Noah knew he had some family issues. He knew there were some problems with Ham. Well, it's not a dietary statement. That's why we Jews don't eat pork.

And it would be nice if his name was Mitch or Dale. But it's hard to do lessons and you're saying and Ham and people, well anyway. Genesis chapter 5 verse 32, Noah was 500 years old and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And if that is consistent with the other verses that does tell us that he was an old man, though he lived to be 900 and I don't think 950, Noah lived to be relatively a young man. And so looking at this man Noah and his problems and living, he was, outside of whatever problems life was giving him in the presence of God and the commentary of God on him, one has to say my remaining ambition, therefore no matter what is going on in my life, is to preach righteousness. Now, our preaching of righteousness cannot be done without preaching the cross. As I've already said, and there's no preaching of the cross without preaching the name and the title and the position of Jesus Christ. Romans chapter 1 verse 16, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ where it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes.

For the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, the just shall live by faith. In it is the righteousness of God.

I can identify with that. I like this man Noah. While he was preaching the gospel of his day, the good news that a flood has come and get right with God, get into the ark, that was essentially his message. The very thing that they all agreed with, that they were all willful in doing, was refusing and resenting the preaching of righteousness. You can preach anything you want to preach, just don't give me this righteousness of Jesus Christ. The preaching of repentance and regeneration is not what the world wants to hear in Noah's day and our day. The preaching of conversion and conduct and character and a qualified life before God, don't want to hear it.

The preaching of being perfect and walking with God. Hebrews chapter 11 verse 7, by faith Noah being divinely warned of things not yet seen. In other words, the message that he was preaching required the others to believe it as he had believed it because he was divinely warned.

The unseen had become visible to Noah and it was available to everyone else. He continues, 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. He condemned the world by his lifestyle.

What was his lifestyle? Building an ark. What was the ark about? God's judgment on the violence and corruption that was all around him. And the very people that contributed to the building of the ark perished because they refused to get on it. Not only did Noah preach, but every tree that fell in the forest, every echo from every hammer preached the coming judgment of God. How many times in our generation is a person entitled to hear the gospel and reject it?

One lifetime. There are people who die without ever hearing the gospel. Yet in westernized civilization, peoples all around folks, they don't want it.

And it is up to us to get it to them. Without righteousness in our character, we're not respected. Men don't want to hear what you have to say if you're the loafer in the business. They don't want to hear what you have to say if you're always borrowing and destroying and taking.

And there's nothing decent about your behavior. But if we work as though we work unto the Lord, this is what Paul was trying to say, if you work as though you're serving the king, God's going to bless you because these are evidences of God living in you. And so Noah preached the coming judgment and the way to avoid death, just like we do today. Qualified life is such because it walks with God and because it agrees with God and it agrees with God on God's terms and God's word. Now close with this verse because this is how it is going to happen at the end of it all, as it was in the days of Noah.

They were dancing and singing and moving to the grooving and lost. And that's how it will be, Genesis chapter 7. Then the Lord said to Noah, come into the ark, you and all your household, because I have seen that you are righteous. You are righteous before me in this generation. In the midst of all this wicked influence, you still have a heart for me.

You still, not only do you walk with me, but you want to walk with me. 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.