Waiting on the Promises of God

Suddenly, one day, God appears to Abraham, and he delivers to Abraham this singular message. I want you to leave your family, leave your city, leave your country, and I want you to follow me and go to a land that I'm going to reveal to you and give to you. For from you will come a seed and a promise, ultimately a Messiah and a kingdom. And Abraham placed his faith in the reality of this living God, who at that moment shattered the myths of moon gods. When God appeared to Abraham, he made the remarkable promise that Abraham would be the father of many people.

What happened next? Waiting. Waiting on God is hard enough when he hasn't promised a child or a spouse or a dream job. But what if God makes a specific promise and then years go by without him keeping that promise? Imagine how difficult it must have been for Abraham, who waited nearly a lifetime to see the fulfillment of God's promise. He isn't called the father of faith for no reason.

This is wisdom for the heart. And today, Stephen Davey has a message called waiting on the promises of God. Now in this session, I want to make two more observations about this man's faith. So if you turn to Hebrews chapter 11, the first thing I want you to notice is that Noah's faith is going to be demonstrated by perseverance in the midst of mockery. If you look at chapter 11 and go back to verse 7, we're told by faith Noah being warned by God about things not yet seen and reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household. Now notice, by which he condemned the world and became an heir of righteousness, which is according to faith. In other words, Noah's actions are going to reveal his genuine faith in the Word of God, which would be the gospel. And his actions, did you notice, by them he condemned the world.

Now let's think about that for a moment. Genesis informs us that for a hundred years Noah is building the ark. He's periodically preaching to the crowds that come to mock him. I mean, can you see him turning around on that scaffolding? And it's four stories high, periodically preaching to them, inviting them to be saved from the wrath of God, and that those who don't will perish in a coming flood. I mean, can you imagine how foolish that must have sounded to his generation?

He got this 18,000 ton barge sitting in your back pasture. That was going to be on everybody's radar. I mean, this is going to be on Ripley's Believe It or Not tour. You could just see tour buses pulling up if they had tour buses. I mean, everybody's got to see this.

And can you imagine the conversation? What are you doing, Noah? I'm building an ark.

Well, what's an ark? Well, I've never seen one before, but according to the blueprints, it's flat bottom barge, kind of like a raft with sides and a roof. And it's going to float on a flood. Oh, it's going to float on water.

Yes. No, you're 100 miles away from the nearest body of water. Well, God will bring the water. Okay, if he does, let's just assume he does. Why is it so big?

Well, it's got to be this big because it's going to hold up a pair of every species of land animal which breeze through the nose or nasal passages. Oh, and you're going to round them all up. No, God's going to do that. How? I don't. I don't know. I'm not sure. Well, how are you going to take care of thousands of animals on that boat?

Well, I really don't know that either. What about us? You know, people, we breathe through our nose too, except during hay fever season. What about us? Well, you're invited to come and join me. There's plenty of room for hundreds, if not several thousand that I'm hoping will believe. And what if we don't?

You'll die. Oh, well, who said that? God did. You mean everybody that doesn't buy your story about this boat and animals and a flood is going to be killed by the judgment of God. That's right. And you can imagine at that moment, you know, that the tone of the conversation is going to change.

Why? Because Noah is delivering a message of potential judgment by God upon people we've already been told do not care about God. Genesis chapter six and verse five has already informed us that the thoughts and plans of everyone was entirely given over to evil continually. That's the description of Noah's generation. Try warning your world the way Noah warned his. The Apostle Peter informs us that the next worldwide cataclysm is going to be not water, but what?

Fire. The end of human history. Fire is going to destroy the earth and God's going to remake a new heaven and a new earth.

Second Peter chapter three. And then just before the creation of this new world, judgment is going to take place and all who refuse to believe the gospel message will be cast into an eternal lake of fire. You mean to tell me that a billion Muslims and two billion plus Hindus and a lot of other people are going to face the judgment of God if they don't believe your gospel? Is that what you're saying?

No. That's what God said. And I'm just repeating his warning. You see, it's actually easy to miss the fact that Noah was a messenger of rescue. It's actually easy to miss the fact that everything Noah is doing is calculated to save, not condemn. But you see the gospel has two sides to it.

One of rescue and then the other obviously if you're not rescued, judgment. Listen, a worldwide global flood is coming and everybody's going to drown who does not get into the art and nobody believes them. Nobody beyond his immediate family.

They mock him. Imagine 100 years of preaching and at the end of it, nobody has bought it. Let me say here at this point that Noah is a man of great faith.

Not because people responded to his voice, but because he responded to God's voice, right? Or you willing to persevere in your faith even when surrounded by mockery? Are you willing to be a lonely man?

A lonely woman or young person? Do you understand that even though your message is an invitation to rescue, it's also a message that surfaces sin and causes people to confront their guilt? Do you understand that you expose people when you shine the light? I felt sorry for that one little kid.

He was standing right in front of that speaker the whole time he's got his ears closed. Man, he put them right there. That's the world. You put a light right in front of their eyes and it hurts.

That's what you do. You not only show the way, but you bother people with the message you're delivering. Alcibiades was a brilliant yet ungodly young man living in Athens during the days of Socrates around 400 years before the birth of Christ. And one day Alcibiades said to Socrates, Socrates, I hate you so for every time I meet you, you show me what I am. Historians say that one of the godliest men who lived in Athens was a man by the name of Aristides. He was even nicknamed Aristides the righteous. Eventually, however, the leading citizens just didn't want him around.

In fact, the court of Athens voted to exile him, just sent him away. And one of the men was asked why he so voted that way and he responded, because I am tired of hearing Aristides called righteous. What does that make me?

Are you willing to stand alone? Are you willing to persevere in your faith even in the midst of mockery? Have you ever been called goody-touches? You know that phrase, I don't know why it came back to me when I was studying this text, some ancient Hebrew probably ministry I was reading, but at any rate, goody-touches just came to my mind. And I thought about that, you know, it receives the scorn of people, it's kind of a deriding comment toward people, godly people, good people. I had no idea where the phrase came from, so I did a little digging and found that it originated in a children's story about a little orphan who only had one shoe.

It was all tattered and beat up. A wealthy man in kindness gave this little orphan girl a pair of beautiful new shoes and she was so changed because of this gracious gift that she wanted to live up to her new shoes for her life to match her shoes. And so people would refer to her not in a deriding fashion but simply as, there she goes, goody-touches. She was so remarkably changed after receiving the gift and I couldn't help but think, obviously, shouldn't we all, having been given by our Father the gift of forgiveness, the shoes of the Gospel, should we not live up to them? But when we do, remember the danger of a godly life is it means exposure to your world. You live an ethical life and it may not be appreciated. You do the right thing and it may not be applauded.

You might be a lonely man or woman. As a freshman, getting a job working on an assembly line making microwaves, they'd come down this assembly line, this conveyor belt, and I was given the job of a guy they moved to another part of the line and the job was just to simply take a little motor and attach a couple of brackets to it and stick a fan on it and bolt it down and then hand it to the assembly line and I watched this man do it and I was kind of nervous because he got it done just in time to hand it to the guy on the line and I thought, man, I'm not going to be able to keep up. So for the first hour I'm just kind of sweating it and I finally figured out if I repositioned the stock a certain way and I can limit my movements for efficiency and I could get this thing done and I found that halfway through my shift I was getting way ahead.

In fact, I had gotten to the point where I had stacked on top of my desk these motors and for the rest of my shift it was just boring. I just stood there and handed them to this guy and realized that what I could do is position them so all he had to do was just turn and grab it whenever he wanted to grab it and I went down the line to help people that needed help. I didn't know that the guy whose place I'd taken was absolutely infuriated with what I had naively exposed.

He had made it seem like he could just get it done in time. I'll never forget he came over to me and at one point his face was beet red and he said, why are you trying to make me look so bad? And I was stunned. I didn't know what to say. That thought hadn't crossed my mind. Later on I wanted to walk over to him and say, hey, you're a lion. Every time you show up to work, why don't you get busy, you lazy sluggard? But I didn't.

He was bigger than I was and so I just kept my mouth shut. Listen, you do the right thing and sometimes it backfires. You're going to make waves. You live a life of honesty and purity and trust in Christ. You demonstrate that kind of faith and then you're going to need to get ready to demonstrate that faith in the midst of those waves you have created. Faith demonstrates perseverance in the midst of mockery. Let me make another observation about faithful Noah.

Secondly, faith is demonstrating patience in the midst of silence. Now, I don't want you to underestimate the task God called Noah to do just because we know the end of the story. Yeah, big boat, you know, animals, flood, great, everything worked out.

Now, slow down. God is asking Noah to believe in something that's never happened. He's asking Noah to buy into something that is unimaginable.

And here's the point that is so staggering to me. For the most part, after the initial visit by God, where God gives him instructions, tells him about the flood that's coming and the animals and gives him the blueprint, for the most part, after that initial meeting then, in fact, from that point until 100 years later, Noah has no further word or visit from God. Now, I don't know about you, but if I'd been put in that predicament, I'd like God to show up at least once a year, you know, on the anniversary of his first visit. Hang in there, Stephen.

You can do it. I'm going to keep my word. I mean, at least a year out, maybe five, ten would be nice. A hundred. A hundred years. It's remarkable to me to think that he did this when God was silent. And then we have the record of God coming at the end of a hundred years when you get to chapter 7 of Genesis and God tells Noah to enter the ark with his family and they obey and then, most people don't read far enough to get this, they're told to wait in the ark for seven more days of silence. We're not told why they're seven days. It could have been a period of mourning for the death of the patriarch whose death would bring the judgment.

We don't know. If they were mourning Methuselah's death. Seven days. Can you imagine the neighbors? Come the animals? Noah and the family get on. They get on.

Door shuts. Day one, nothing. Day two, nothing. Day three, nothing. Day four. Day five.

Day six. By now the neighbors, you know, they got a barbecue going outside the ark and they're playing badminton and volleyball and can you imagine the Noah jokes? Can you imagine the flood jokes? Can you imagine the blasphemy against the God of Noah? And they're sitting in the ark with every reason to believe, according to scripture, it was nothing but silent. And then some raindrops begin to fall and dance off the sand next to people mocking and sizzle off the top of that barbecue grill.

And people looked up. And then according to the Hebrew text what we do know is that suddenly the springs of water under the earth's surface erupted. And the judgment of God came. Now since the lens of our focus isn't on the flood but on Noah, let me fast forward the DVD to the end of the flood. Turn over to Genesis 9. Noah picks up life back on the planet.

He exits the ark, goes back to farming. God not only records the successes of biblical heroes, he records their sins. In Genesis chapter 9 we read the first mention in the Bible of the word wine.

And at its introduction it means trouble. In verse 20 we're told Noah began farming and planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk. Now there are some commentators that I read that said well poor Noah didn't know what he was doing and just drank too much.

No, I think he knew what he was doing. He got drunk and uncovered himself in the tent. In his drunkenness he just shed his clothes in an embarrassing display. Ham the father of Canaan, verse 22, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it upon both their shoulders and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. The key to understanding this text is that Noah's failure is going to reveal the condition of his three sons' hearts. That's all it does. In other words, that for some time he had evidently resented his father's faith and his walk and now he sees his father's failure and instead of helping his father retain some modicum of dignity, he rejoices it and he goes out without helping his dad and he says to his brothers, hey this is great! You'll believe it! Look at what old dad's doing!

He mocks them. It's interesting to me that all of the human race descends from not only Adam but Noah, right? Both Adam and Noah sinned while partaking of fruit.

Noah, the fruit of the vine, and Adam, the fruit of the tree, and as a result each of them became naked and had to be covered by someone else and their actions will lead to a curse and mankind has been affected in some way ever since. While I'm on this thought of analogy, let me give you some relative to the ark of Noah and the gospel of Christ before we wrap it up. First, if you study the story, you'll know, in fact we looked at this text in Genesis 6-8 I believe where we're told that Noah found grace in the eyes of God.

I love that phrase. He found grace in the eyes of God. It was because of the grace of God that Noah found his place of safety on that ark, rescued from the coming wrath of God. So we also find our place in Christ, the ark of our salvation.

Now by grace alone, we are rescued by grace in Christ and the coming wrath of God will not touch us, right? Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. There's another, the ark symbolized God's atoning work for mankind. In fact, if we had taken just a little more time, which we didn't, but I want to bring up this one particular fact, the Hebrew word for pitch, that tar-like substance that Noah was commanded to cover the ark with, it's the same root word, kafir, used for atonement. In the sacrificial system later, that's the word used. In a very real way, the word atonement first appears in the Bible in relation to Noah's ark. In the ark, mankind is covered from the wrath of God.

Here's another analogy. The ark was strong enough to handle the waves and the storm that pounded against it for more than a year. Jesus Christ is strong enough to carry us safely through the storms, not only of life but protect us from the storm of God's wrath. He is our shelter. No matter what winds may blow, he is our ark of safety.

And there's another came to our mind in studying this. There was only one door into that ark. There's only one way in. Only one way to safety as the judgment of God came.

Unlike rabbinical legends we talked about earlier today, Noah wasn't feeding a guy out on the rung of the ladder with a hole he punched through the ark to feed the king Gog and his sons. There's only one door and you had to go in to be saved. There's only one door that leads to everlasting safety from the wrath of God. Jesus said, I am the way, say it with me, the truth and the life.

No one comes to the Father except by me. John chapter 14 verse 6. Jesus Christ said, I am the door. If anyone enters through me, he will be saved.

John 10 9. Have you been saved? Well, the answer to that is have you gone through the door of Christ?

Have you entered through the door into the one who was both the door and the ark of your salvation? I can remember knowing full well that I was not saved as a teenager. I didn't want to get my life to Jesus Christ, but I knew I wasn't safe either. I knew enough about the Bible. In fact, I believe the Bible was true and that's what scared me because I knew it was true. I knew that Christ could come at any moment for his church to rapture it away.

First Thessalonians chapter 4 verse 17. And I was, I was afraid I was terrified of being left behind, left behind as God began to pour out on the earth, his bowls of judgment that occupied most of the book of Revelation, Revelation 3 10 all the way through chapter 19. And I was afraid because I knew I was not safe. As a teenager, I would get out of bed at night and tiptoe down the hallway and look in on my little brothers who shared a room. I would quietly open the door to see if I could make out the silhouette of their bodies.

And then when I could, I tiptoe back down the hallway into my bedroom and try to sleep. You enter the ark by faith in Christ because of the grace of God and you are not only saved, think of it this way, you are also safe. Let me give you two final timeless truths from the biography of this hero of faith. First of all, faith is trust in the word of God even when it seems impossible. Even when it seems impossible. Beloved, faith is not a leap into the dark. It is walking in the light of God's word even when all around you grows dark. Secondly, faith is obedience to the will of God even when it requires everything. There was no middle ground for Noah.

It was all or nothing and he gave everything. Amy Carmichael, that Irish missionary to India for some 60 years, in fact once she got over there she never came back, she said there is much talk in the church but so much shallow living. She would write and I quote her, I wonder if it is because there are so few who are prepared to be like a pine tree on a hilltop alone in the wind for God. That is the testimony of this hero of faith, faith beloved as demonstrated in this man's life as perseverance in spite of the scorn of unbelievers and the silence, for the most part, the silence of God.

I'm glad you joined us today. You're listening to Wisdom for the Heart, the Bible teaching ministry of Stephen Davey. Today's lesson is called, Waiting on the Promises of God. It comes from Stephen's teaching series through Hebrews chapter 11, a series called Heroes.

Stephen's latest hardback book also comes from that series. The book is entitled Hebrews 11, as Stephen looks at this hero's hall of faith from the pages of scripture. If you'd be interested in getting a copy of this brand new book, the phone number here in our Cary North Carolina office is 866-48-BIBLE. That's 866-48-BIBLE or 866-482-4253. Please join us at this same time on tomorrow's broadcast right here on Wisdom for the Heart.