Welcome to Man Talk, a ministry sponsored by TAWCMM, talking and walking Christian men's ministry, where we're devoted to breaking down the walls of race and denomination, and to point men to their God-assigned roles.
Now here's your hosts, Will Hardy and Roy Jones Jr. Today's guest is a man who was 500 years old when he started building the art, as you had mentioned earlier in our very first session. This might suggest that it is never too late to obey God, right? Amen. Consider that today.
And so that I'm considering. It's interesting because I told my wife yesterday, or actually it was this morning, I said, you know, I'm motivated to get a lot of things done, but I said I'm not motivated to get a lot of things done. It's like, I think, yeah, I'd really like to be doing this stuff, but it's not the same today as it was, you know, 20 years ago, or 10 years ago. Exactly. It's just your body's different, your mind's different.
Exactly. And some would say I don't have a mind, but that's a whole other conversation. Yeah, I went out the other day, I went out the other day, I had a manual tamper and I was just tamping down some high spots, you know, in the yard.
And after about 50 or 60 tamps, I was ready to go inside and take a nap. I can relate to every bit of that. So what is the ratio of disobedience and obedience to God in your life, Will?
Well, you know, I would say it's probably like 90-10 or 85-15. And the reason why I say that is because none of us are perfect. And there are some things I think that we fall short on, but because of where God had placed me and what I do almost on a daily basis, I'm always interacting with people. And so through this interaction, it keeps you in tune and in touch with God because people are calling and they're asking questions and they want to know, hey, what about this, what about this?
And that's happening constantly. So I think that that keeps me on the straight and narrow with respect. But the time that God had me alone, you know, and I'm thinking about things that maybe I need to do around the house or where I need to go to take care of this or that or the other thing, sometimes these things become a distraction, you know, because it's things that you've got to do, but you still want to keep God in the forefront while you're doing them. So you want to say, God, well, you know, I'm getting ready to go over here, talk with this man about a quote about such and such, you know, give me the wisdom.
Instead of just getting in the car going, oh, I'm almost late for my appointment, let me get over there fast, you know, and not not acknowledge God in the actions that I'm doing. You know, so so that's that's about where I am, probably about 85, 15. Wow. Yeah, that's great, you know, because I I would have to say I'm probably in 80, 20, you know, maybe 80, 20, 80, 15. But it's interesting when you really look at like we were talking earlier, you get to a certain point and you feel like you're in a fairly good place, knowing that that could change at any second.
Absolutely. If you turn or even get arrogant about that. And I don't mean that from an arrogant standpoint, just from a thankful standpoint, blessed standpoint.
So I would agree somewhat similar to what you're saying, Will, in terms of ratios. What do you consider a good definition of obedience, Will? Well, I think obedience, Roy, comes through wanting to do what God said, regardless of the consequences. So it's pressing through because remember, Abraham, God told Abraham, get up, leave everything.
And I'm going to send you to a land where I'm not even going to tell you where it is yet. That's obedience. So Abraham was obedient. On the other hand, disobedience is Jonah. So we see we see Jonah. He did just the opposite. God said, OK, and God told him the place where he needed to go.
This is where you need to go. And it's like, no, no, those folks need to be destroyed, God. No, I ain't going.
I ain't praying for them. Nothing. And then all of a sudden things started happening to him to get him pointed in the right direction. So the question is, see, and it's no different.
It's no different for us today, Roy. You know, we find ourselves going through things and we wonder why we're going through them. Because we're not being obedient.
That's exactly right. So I think obedience is just being able to say within your spirit that I'm going to step out and I may not know all of the circumstances surrounding why. You need to go to Thailand, son. But that was just a little caveat in there.
But Will's going to Thailand in case you didn't pick that up. Set up a Bible school. So these things, I think, take us, Roy, to a point in time to where if we understand that whatever it is we have to go through is going to benefit us in the end. Look at look at the life of Joseph.
There's another there's another example of sort of like a type and shadow of Christ. See, Joseph went was on his way. All of a sudden we're going to kill him. We're going to pretend like he's dead.
You know, send the coat off. Jealousy creeped in there. But then God used him as the savior because he made him second to Pharaoh. And then all of a sudden he knew exactly what to do when the famine came and people had to come to him for food.
We need to come to Jesus Christ, Roy, for food. Amen. So there you go.
That type and shadow again. That's good, Will. Noah did exactly as God commanded him. Genesis six twenty two. So Noah did everything as the Lord commanded him.
Seven five. Then God said to Noah, leave the boat. All of you, you and your wife and your sons and their wives release all the animals, the birds, the livestock and the small animals that scurry along the ground so they can be fruitful and multiply throughout the earth. So Noah, his wife, sons and their wives left the boat, eight fifteen to eighteen. Noah could have been told by God to build an ark and never say another word. Noah had to obey with very little information. Like you said earlier, didn't know why, didn't know when, didn't know how. Exactly. Farmer living in a land that had never experienced rain.
God gave him the chance to trust him more by giving him directions down to the details. What type of wood? Cypress. What dimensions? Four hundred fifty feet long. Seventy five feet wide. Forty five feet tall. Need of a roof within 18 inches of the top. A door on the side. Lower, middle and upper decks.
Rooms in it and coated with pitch inside and out. Now, just think about this, Roy. Noah, if you caught this man, you got to you got to catch this. Noah was a farmer.
He was not a carpenter. So he had to depend on God to be able to do the things that he did because of his faithfulness. God instructed him what to do, how to do it, but he didn't tell him how long it would take, but God kept him alive to complete the project. Just had to inject that. Yes, very good. This was a test of his obedience to God's instructions.
There you go. So Noah didn't let his concerns or questions, whatever they may have been, cause him to ignore any of God's directions. He was totally obedient doing everything he was told to do.
This task took him 100 years from the age of 500 to the ripe old age of 600. Interestingly, nowhere in the text is it recorded that God told him how long it would take to build. Another test by God is obedience for as long as necessary. To build an ark under those circumstances with a perverse society surrounding him and certainly some doubts from his family was true obedience to God. Some define obedience as doing exactly what you're told to do immediately with the right heart attitude. We've already read the passages above which verified Noah did, commanded, but let us review the three emphasis of the definition. As you mentioned earlier, while doing exactly what you're told to do, there are persons of scripture who didn't do as told and altered the final outcome. Like King Saul when he met with Samuel after a war with the Amalekites and Nanias and Sapphira who kept back part of their land's purchase price and then lied saying they had given all. Both were disobedient and paid the penalty for it. Exactly means accurately and precisely.
It does not mean as you see fit or I see fit under our current circumstances. I think that is a great moment here for Paul. I think that's where most all people get in trouble.
Absolutely. That comes back to self-justification, comes back to rationalizing why it's okay to break God's law or why it's okay to sin. If I go back early in my life, I can think of times when I knew there was something I shouldn't have done, but I did it thinking, well, it's no big deal. God's got it.
He does have it. Then the consequences of having that attitude weren't very good. That's the thing about it. We say God's got it and I should have been careful, but we're still going to have to endure whatever happens that we chose to do instead of not doing it. That's great, Will. Well, we're coming up on the end of our show here, Will.
Any closing comments around this? Well, I think we noted that Noah's obedience came through his faithfulness to God and trusting in God. So faithfulness and trusting, being faithful to what God said and trusting God that he knows what's best. And in this case, it was Noah and his family repopulating the earth. You know, Sham, Ham and Japheth, if you read the word, each one of them went off into their own areas and they began to have sons and daughters. And we see from that lineage, if you read down through there, you know, Sham, for example, or Ham, Ham, his descendants were mainly those of that northern Turkey and southern or northern Africa, southern Turkey, northern Africa region. It's basically when you go back and see where he populated. So when you look at through history and you look at the names of what the countries are called under the old covenant, you can go back and see when all of these descendants that came down and you read through their lineage and you say, wow, there's Tubal. Tubal is in the lineage of Ham.
And we know Tubal is one of the countries, of course, up there in that Turkish region, where the people are going to be used to come against Israel. All of the Ethiopians, northern Africa, all of those regions in there, and of course, not to mention the China and those Asian regions, Japan, you know, China's going to be the bear. Roy is coming. And when it's come, it's going to come like the whirlwind. So it's just like God said, you sow the wind and you reap the whirlwind. Second coming.
It's coming. Yes, indeed. Well, Will, thank you so much for your insight and it's great to see you again.
I guess I'll see you next week. And would you like for me to close us in prayer? Yes, sir. Father God, we just come to you this evening, Lord, just asking you to help us to be more obedient, more like you, Father. And when we get in those distracted times that you tune us in, Father, that we walk closer with you.
And when we recognize, and maybe if we don't recognize, Father, that we're getting pulled away, that you create an alarm within us that says, hey, this is where you need to be, not where you're headed. And, Lord, we just trust you for that. We lift up all of our listeners. We thank you for their time, Father. We thank you for all that you do.
Thank you for your love. We thank you for your saving grace. And we thank you for providing a pathway back to you, Father, through your son, Jesus Christ. And, Lord, we just give you all the praise, honor and glory tonight in your son's precious name. Amen.
Amen. As we conclude today's show, TAWCMM, Talking and Walking Christian Men's Ministry, are building a community of men to be servant leaders in their home, communities, churches and work environment. Check us out at our website for upcoming events and regular scheduled meetings. Don't forget to send us an email for topics that you would like us to visit in the future. Thank you for joining us today on Man Talk. Visit us at tawcmm.com.
