Turn with me to Genesis chapter
6. Genesis chapter 6, verse 1 through 8 again. We'll look more closely at verse
8 today. Enough cannot be said of God's
grace. There's no way that we can expound
on God's grace enough. The thought of grace excites
my heart, and I hope it does yours. God said, I will be gracious. That's a promise, a promise of
God. I will be gracious. And there
is hope. When God says that, that makes
my ears perk up because there is hope for sinners. God said,
I will be gracious. He said that in eternity. He
said it in the scriptures. He's saying it now. And Phil
forever said, I will be gracious. Noah found grace in the eyes
of the Lord. God was gracious to Noah. Noah
was a sinner and he needed God's grace. And God was gracious to
see his need and provide to Noah that which he needed. God is
gracious. Grace, apart from the experience
of it, is only a concept. And I fear that's what it is
to some, maybe to most. It's a theory or a doctrine,
a body without life, without the experience of grace. And
I know that We must learn things. This mind must conceive things,
mull it over, think on it, consider it, give diligence to it, study
it. I know that is a process, which
of even hearing the gospel, that must be done. But yet there is such a thing
as natural understanding. and spiritual understanding of
such a thing as carnal understanding and spiritual understanding. And grace is only experienced
by the supernatural work of omnipotence, only experienced by the power
and the grace of God. Otherwise, like I said, it's
only a concept. Don't ever Place your hope in a concept. And likewise, never place your
hope in an experience. You see, the experience of grace,
and only you and God will sort this out if you're one of His,
but He'll do it by His Word and by His Spirit. You'll never know
the experience of grace until you've experienced it. And you'll
say, ah, now I know. Now I know. Now I understand.
I understand what that's saying now. I understand it with my
heart. I believe that. I embrace that. That don't mean
you have to explain everything. You know, sometimes we over-explain
things until they mean nothing. Believe what God said. Believe
it. God said it. Believe it. And you can't do that unless
God gives you faith, unless He gives you belief. But when you
believe on Him, and I know that you're much like me. I have doubts. I have times that
I wonder. I look at myself and I think,
How in the world could I be one of God's and think like I do
and do like I do, say what I do, have the attitude I do? And then
when I go through that process, I always say, Lord, forgive me
for my self-righteousness. That was me. I would look to
myself, trying to find some hope in myself. And He always brings
us back. by His grace to look to Him. Isn't He gracious? We're so much
flesh that it scares us to death sometimes we get a view of ourself,
and it should. It should. But He does that to cause us
to look to Him. The experience of God's grace
is life-changing. It really is. It changes men's
lives. It changes their hearts. It's mind changing. It changes
your mind. Think differently. Yeah. Yeah, now, I hate myself. Don't you? I say that not just being sanctimonious
and trying to say what a great sinner I am, but I do. I didn't used to hate myself.
I thought myself to be rather good and I still have a tendency
to do that. But bottom line is God's people
abhor themselves. They hate themselves by the grace
of God because we're so much different than Him. He's lovely
and pure and holy and just and righteous. And I'm all that He's
not. And when I look at myself, and we'll look at Him, oh, when
He permits me to, what glory, what sweetness, when I look at
Him, what purity. And it changes our life. The experience of God's grace
is life-changing, heart-changing, mind-changing. The experience
of God's grace is the outpouring of His love, His mercy, His favor
and goodness upon the undeserving. That's what the experience of
grace is. It is the actual experience of God being gracious to us, the experience
of it. Not just in knowing that he does
it and knowing how it's done, but the experience of it. The
experience of God's grace is God revealing Christ, giving
the life of Christ to dead sinners according to his own sovereign
will and purpose. The grace of God is salvation.
That's what Noah experienced. Noah's experience was the experience
of God's grace, and that's what I want to talk to us about this
morning. Newton put it so well, yet so misunderstood by so many. When he said, Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved
a wretch like me! Those are not just words. Saved a wretch like me. I once
was lost, but now I'm found. Scripture says, Noah found grace
in the eyes of the Lord. The eyes of the Lord were gracious
toward Noah. I once was lost, but now I'm
found. Was blind, but now I see. The experience of God's grace.
Look with me here in Genesis chapter 6. Of course, we've read these verses
two or three times, but we'll read them again just to refresh
our memory. And it came to pass, when men
began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were
born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men,
that they were fair. And they took them wives of all
which they chose. And the Lord said, My spirit
shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh,
and his days shall be a hundred and twenty years. There were
giants in the earth in those days, and also after that, when
the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, that they
bare children to them, the same became mighty men which are of
old, men of renown. And God saw that the wickedness
of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of
the thoughts of his heart was on the evil continually. And
it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and
it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy
man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man
and beast and creeping thing and the fowls of the air. For
it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in
the eyes of the Lord. You remember in the beginning,
God created man. He was a lifeless corpse. I guess you could call Adam a
corpse. Life had never been in him. He made man, formed him,
fashioned him, made him complete. And then after he made him, He
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became
a living soul. He didn't give him a soul, but
when God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, he became
a living soul. And man became a living soul. He didn't
say that Adam, only Adam became a living soul, but he said man
became a living soul. So therefore, thereafter, every
man that lives is a living soul before God. And in the process
of time, not very long I'm sure, that when God breathed into man
the spirit of life, and that's what the breath of life really
essentially means in this context, He gave him the spirit of life.
He breathed into his nostrils the spirit of life, into his
body, gave him life. And that life that he gave him
had all the faculties that was necessary to commune with God,
have fellowship with God, and be in agreement with God. And
in the process of time, being a living soul, when confronted
with that which is contrary to God, this living soul sinned
against God. And therefore, every man of Adam's
posterity is born into the world just as Adam failed. He still
is a living man with the spirit of man, but not living toward
God. All the faculties toward God
died. There was no communion with God. There was no love for
God. There was no fellowship with God. There was only sin
and rebellion against God. And in the passage of time, as
we see here, that the world became worse and worse. Sin abounded. And it came to a climax. And
God hates sin. And He must punish sin. He's
God. He doesn't change. There are
some things that never change. God changes things, but He doesn't
change Himself. God is always holy and just and
righteous and sovereign. All the attributes and characters
that are attributed to Him stay the same. Sin is the same. It's an affront to God. He hates
it, and He'll punish it. And His wrath and His fury is
set against it. And wherever it's found, it will
be punished. And the declaration of God against
sin is that the soul that sinneth, the soul that sinneth, it shall
die. Man died spiritually. He eventually
died physically. And now we come to a place here
in Genesis 6 that sin had come to a climax. It had come so rapid and so widespread
and so gross. He said the imagination of men's
hearts was on evil continually, much the way that it is now. And what men did not know how
to do to sin, they invented things, much as they do now, to make
sin worse and worse as far as its deeds and its acts are concerned. But God from eternity had set
His eyes upon one man named Noah, and He made this man to walk
with Him. The Scripture said He walked with God. And from
eternity He determined to be gracious to Adam. And the Lord
found a way to save Noah, rather. Not Adam, but Noah, I'm sorry.
Though he was resolved to destroy the world, Noah found grace in
the eyes of the Lord. It was grace in God, not goodness
in Noah that saved this man from the flood of God's wrath. It
was the goodness of God, the mercy of God, the grace of God.
Nothing about Noah. Noah was caught up in this sinful
generation as well as everyone else. He was a sinner. Grace
is mentioned here the first time, but divine purpose. Grace first
appears where the sin of man had reached its climax. And this
is to teach us something. You know, when God reveals His
salvation to His elect is when He reveals the grossness and
the awfulness of their sin to them. When He empties them of
all their self-righteousness, when He takes away all other
aids and assistance, and they see no good in themselves. It's
only then that they'll cry out to God for mercy, and He reveals
the Lord Jesus Christ. As long as we believe we're not
too bad, we'll never know the goodness and the grace of God.
But when we see we're filthy, we're sinners, and we're awful
before Him, and we have no way to escape the bondage that we're
in, the power of sin that reigns over us in this world, this evil
heart of unbelief, When we cry out to the Lord for mercy, He
calls us to do that by the revelation of our sinnerhood, and when He
does that, He appears. The only salvation that we have
is the Lord Jesus Christ. It's like a man out in the midst
of the sea, and he's all but dead. The only reason we can
say he's still alive is to give an illustration. And he's went down, you've heard,
he's gone down for the third time. He's went down two and
ninety-nine one hundredths of a percent of the third time.
And he looks and he sees a ship. He sees a lifeboat right there
on him. And he don't say, no, I'll just
wait for someone else. There's my salvation. There's
the Lord Jesus Christ. There's only one Savior. There's only one in whom the
grace of God is revealed to sinners, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ.
Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Grace is free. Aren't you glad
it's free? We say free grace a lot. We say
things sometimes so much that we lose their meanings and their
weight. Grace is free. God's free grace. God's free grace. Sometimes I find myself, almost
like some of these televangelists, I want everybody to say it with
me. God's free grace. Don't do it. Say it in your heart.
God's grace is free. God's grace is sovereign. It
rules. It overrules. Powerful, efficacious. It does its work. saves the uttermost, brings sinners
up from the lowest of degradation and hell, and brings them to
the heights of heaven. God's marvelous grace, His great
grace, dark the stain that soiled man's
nature, long the distance that he fell, far removed from hope
in heaven. into deep despair and hell. But
thank God there was a fountain opened, and the blood of God's
own Son purifies the soul and reaches deeper than the sin is
gone. God's grace is unconditional. Boy, I'm glad for that, aren't
you? He didn't say bring me anything. He just said come. But Lord,
I can't come." And he said, yeah, you can. I'm going to bring Him. You see, He's our ability. We
say, I can't. He said, I can. We say, I won't. He says, I will. God's grace
will. God's grace can, able and willing. His grace is unconditional. If
it demanded anything of us, We'd fail in the performing of that
demand because we cannot bring anything to the table that God
will accept. God's grace finds us and brings
us to the Lord Jesus Christ. The world was lost in Noah's
day. And my friends, the world is
lost in our day. It's been lost since Noah's day.
And it's coming to the point as it was in the days of Noah. Evil sin at its climax. Every imagination of people's
hearts on evil continually. A godless, perverse generation
is this which we live in. But yet, it seems that God's gospel He's raising up
preachers, pastors, and churches, and communicating the gospel
in our day, probably in a way that has not been since the beginning.
It's amazing. When sin is at its worst, its
climax, and its peak, God's gospel is being preached, and His people
believe in Him. He's saying, come, and His people
are coming. One here and there. And the way that he does it just
astounds me, just amazes me. The way that he works in this
world, bringing his people to himself. The world was lost in
Noah's day, but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. The
world was condemned, but Noah found grace in the eyes of the
Lord. The world perished, but Noah
found grace in God's eyes. God always has a remnant. to
whom he will be gracious." Noah was God's remnant. Noah was God's
servant. God caused Noah to walk with
Him. Noah's family was blessed. If you have a sibling, a dad
and mom, or a child, or anyone in your family that believes
the gospel, that knows God and worships God, committed to Him
and His gospel, you're blessed. I know salvation doesn't come
in bloodlines, and salvation cannot be learned by this carnal
mind. But God uses men as instruments
to bring others to salvation. And I know that it's not always
everyone that hears the gospel that God will save, but He does
not save anyone apart from hearing the gospel. And when the gospel
is present, it's promoted, and it's declared, and it's leoed
out as an example before our lost loved ones' eyes, God sometimes
uses those things to bring His sheep to the fold. And sometimes it might not be
the saying of the Word, It just might be that son or daughter,
that dad or mom, that brother or sister, that grandchild seeing
your love for Christ, your love for the gospel, your commitment
to Him at all costs. Noah walked with God. There is no indication in the
Scriptures that at this time any of his family knew God. Just
Noah. Sometimes we must walk alone. We must walk alone. We're not
really alone. God's with us. Noah walked with God. But I mean
as far as maybe a spouse or a family member or friends. Like Christians. I'm reading again the Pilgrim's
Progress, not Christian. He put his fingers in his ears.
He left the city of destruction, had that burden on his back.
When he saw that man on the cross, that burden fell off. He was,
by God's grace, determined to get to the Lord Jesus Christ.
He hated to leave his family behind, but he must go. He must go. Now look at this
man, Noah. He's truly a picture of God's
grace. Noah was, like we said, the grandson of Methuselah and
the great-grandson of Enoch. Enoch walked with God. His father
was Lamech. And it's indicated in the Scriptures
that Lamech believed God. This man's name is Noah, and
it means comfort or rest. The scriptures seem to indicate
that his father was a man of faith, Lamech, and he had many
sons and daughters. Noah did, or Lamech did. Noah had brothers and sisters,
but the only one who knew God was Noah. But those of Noah's
family, his wife and his children, were blessed. They were blessed
by God. to have association with Noah. God was gracious to Noah. Only Noah believed in God. He
acknowledged God's curse. He acknowledged the curse of
sin. Do you acknowledge the curse of sin? Noah, that's a gracious thing
that God would reveal sin to us and what it is, isn't it? That's a gracious gift
of God to reveal our sinnerhood to us. Noah knew what sin was, and he prophesied or preached
of God's deliverance from sin. did this through the building
of an ark. No one had ever seen a boat, but Noah built one. And he built one to save himself,
his family, and all the creatures in the ark. And by the building of this ark
and the direction of God, all those who were in the ark were
saved, and all those who were outside the ark were destroyed. And the Ark, of course, is a
picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, of which we'll speak more in
a later message. But I want us to look not to
promote Noah and glory in Noah, but rather the grace of God revealed
to Noah. But I want us to look at the
character of Noah's faith, which is the faith of the Lord Jesus
Christ, faith in him. The character of Noah's faith
was reverence. He reverenced God. Scripture
says here that he moved with fear. And that fear means reverence. He reverenced God. Every imagination of men's hearts
were irreverent. Only Noah reverenced God. He feared God. He believed God.
He had an awesome sense of God's wisdom. Don't you know that he
did? He saw the wisdom of God. Do
you see the wisdom of God in salvation? This ark was Noah's salvation. And it was by God's doing. It
was by God's construction. It was God's blueprint. God's wisdom. God was going to
send destruction, a flood of waters. His wrath upon the world
of men whose thoughts were evil continually, were rebellious
and unbelieving and hateful and spiteful toward God. Noah, because Noah walked with
God and God gave him faith, he had a sense of God's wisdom.
You know, knowing Christ gives us a great sense of God's wisdom,
doesn't it? He is our wisdom. The wisdom of God in the salvation
of sinners, who would have thought that by way of substitution we
could be saved? Only God. God is wise and He's made us wise into salvation. Noah had a great sense, an awesome
sense of God's holiness. God was holy. He was different
than Noah. He was Noah. He was different
than this generation. God was different. He's not like
us. Noah said, He's not like us.
He's not like me. He's not like this generation.
He's holy. He's not sinful, but He's holy. He's righteous. He
had a sense of God's justice. The punishment of sin. The believer
has a sense of God's justice, of His truth. God alone is truth.
Let God be truth and every man a liar of His power. Noah reveres God, His power and
His truth, His justice, His holiness and His wisdom. And don't you know that Noah
was overwhelmed with a sense of God's goodness? Have you ever
said, why me? Don't you imagine Noah many a
time? He was working and had that pitch
and he was painting that ark with it. And he looked us on and the ark
was being constructed and taking shape. Don't you imagine many
a time he thought, why me? He looked out over all the people
that was laughing and scoffing and paying no attention. And
he knew their damnation was sure, and he knew his salvation was
secure. Don't you imagine he said, why
me? Noah found grace. That's the
only reason in the eyes of the Lord. He chose to save me while
the whole world was perishing. and not even knowing it until
the flood came. The evidence of Noah's faith
was obedience. He moved with fear, with reverence,
and prepared an ark. God told Abraham, He said, get
out from among your people and your kindred, get out of this
place and go to a place I'll show you. Abraham packed up his tent and
his belongings and set out. by faith. James said faith without
works is dead. Noah wasn't saved by his works. He was saved by the grace of
God. God gave him faith that works. Faith that works. Faith makes us believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ. Faith gives a desire for the
Lord Jesus Christ. Faith reverences God. Faith is obedient to God. Immediately,
without delay, before the first raindrops fell, Noah began building
an ark, exactly following the pattern God had given him. If your child, your father, mother,
brother, sister would ask you, how can I be saved? What would
you tell them? How can I be saved? What would
you tell them? You'd tell them the best you
could, wouldn't you, what God says, wouldn't you? You'd say you can only be saved
by the grace of God. You tell them that Christ came
into the world to die for sinners. It's by His blood and His righteousness,
by His doing and dying, that sinners are saved. But you tell
them honestly and sincerely that the only way they'll ever be
saved is if God, by His grace, saves them and reveals Christ
to them. What would you tell them to do? You'd say, listen, look,
ask. Wouldn't you? Listen to the gospel.
Listen to the truth. Go where you can hear the truth
preached. Noah built that ark as God prescribed. This is what every believer does.
He tells others because he's convinced. He tells others that
the Lord Jesus Christ is the only salvation that there is,
the only righteousness there is. Noah preached to his generation
and he said, your only salvation is this ark. That's it. The only way you're
going to be saved from impending wrath is this ark. The only salvation
for sinners is the Lord Jesus Christ. Faith acts upon God's
revelation. Faith acts. The work of faith
is responding to God's revelation. Faith is belief in action. What
is the work of God? What is the work of faith that
you believe on Him? What is the result of believing
is obedience. The result of Noah's faith was
the salvation of his soul. And the cause of faith was the
grace of God. So it's all by the grace of God,
isn't it? No matter what you put a word, it's all by the grace
of God. He prepared an ark for the saving
of his house. My only hope for my children,
my grandchildren, my friends, my neighbors, for you, my only
hope is that God will be gracious
and reveal Christ. The only thing I can do is say
what God said. That's the only thing I can pray
for you. I can pray for them. And I can preach the gospel. And you as believers can tell
the gospel. When God opens a door, speak of the Lord Jesus Christ
in truth. God always honors faith. We know that there is no such
thing as salvation in bloodlines or by proxy, but God does honor
faith. And that gives some hope. You
know, you can hash these things out and look them up and mull
over them, and I don't have all the answers, but I want to affirm
this from the Scriptures that God does honor faith because
He gives it. And if He gives it, He's got
to honor it. Isn't that right? Are you with
me there? If he gives faith, he don't give
it just so you can have it. He gives it to honor it and be
glorified in it. Is that not right? Sure it is.
Noah believed God and God saved his family. Now I want to give
you some hope here. And like I said earlier, it's
not everyone that hears the gospel that will be saved, but there
ain't nobody going to be saved without it. So do you know what
I'm going to do? I'm going to preach it to anybody
who listens to me. And maybe God will have somebody there
who will believe it. I'm not going to sit down and not preach
it because God's going to sell you whoever He is no matter what. Because He uses His gospel, His
Word. It's powerful. Noah believed God and God saved
his family. Abraham believed God. And God
gave his seed the land of promise. Rahab believed God, and God saved
her household. The Canaanite woman believed
God, and Christ healed her daughter. There were four men that let
this one man down through the roof of a house, the Lord Jesus
Christ, this paralyzed man, and God raised him up. So I'm going to take my children,
my grandchildren, and you and me, By God's grace, I'm going
to take all of us to the throne of grace and say, Lord, here
we are. Will you be gracious? Will you
save? Noah preached the gospel to a
world of unbelieving rebels. And Noah was saved and his household. There's two or three things I
want to tell you about Noah. Scriptures tell us, and I want
to give them to you and attribute all of these things to the grace
of God now. I'm not glorifying Noah. I'm going to say that again.
I feel like I need to justify that for some reason. But when
we speak of these men in the Scriptures, such as Abraham or
Noah or Paul or these men, we're not esteeming them above Christ. We're showing that God does the
work of grace in these men and what He does through these men.
Noah was just. Now what does this mean? This
word is mentioned for the first time as well as grace. This doesn't
refer to Noah's character. This doesn't refer to his character,
but to his standing before God. If a man is just, In the strictest
sense, it's his standing before God. And it's true, he behaved
justly. He believed God, he reverenced
God, he looked to God's wisdom, he preached righteousness. He
behaved justly. He wasn't like the rest of the
world because God had made him different. He walked with God.
The rest of the world didn't walk with God. That's what he's
saying here in the twofold sense. He was just before God because
of the Lord Jesus Christ, but he was just before the world
because he was different than them and he walked with God. This word just refers to justification. He was justified by grace. Noah
found grace in the eyes of the Lord. We're justified by the
grace of God. If a man stands before God just, he's justified
by grace, not by his works. Noah was not justified before
God because he built the ark. He built the ark because he's
justified. You see, we're not going to heaven because of our
works. And I'm going to venture to say
this, essentially, we're not going to heaven because we believe. We believe because God has given
us life. And there's no one going to heaven
that doesn't believe. But that's not the cause. See,
the cause is all the grace of God. That's what I'm saying.
And He was just by grace and up on the grounds of Christ's
obedience, not ours. I'm justified before God because
Christ obeyed the law for me. How many times, in how many respects
did I break God's law? In every respect. How many commandments
of the ten did I break? All of them. The Scripture says if you broke
one, you broke them all. And that's just to show the strength
of the law. But not only did we break one,
we broke all of them. And we do, all the time. I wish I could keep the law,
don't you? I wish I could. I wish I could love the Lord
God with all my heart, soul, and mind and strength. And never
have another idol or God before me. I wish everything I did was
by faith and for the glory of God. But it's just not so. Let's be honest. That's just
not me. That's Christ. That's Christ. We're justified upon the grounds
of Christ's obedience, and this is revealed to us by faith. I see this by faith. And boy,
am I glad to see it. Aren't you glad that all of these,
oh, I love a believer's questions. I love their questions. So refreshing to hear questions
that are real questions and we can deal with scripturally, not
stupid stuff. I've asked a lot of stupid questions
in my life and I will again, you will too, but it's a breath
of fresh air when we get a good question. And I'm sure it is to you. Like,
how can I be saved? How can I know I'm a believer?
How can I know that I trust God? How do I know that I'm not looking
to myself? Through faith. Faith that God
gives. You see, faith, this flesh is
strong. It's strong. It's mesmerizing. It's powerful. But the grace of God and the
faith that He gives is much, much stronger. And while this
flesh and this carnal mind and this carnal understanding has
its influences, it will never prevail, never, because faith
will bring us back to Christ. Maybe we may go around in circles
with her, blindfolded for a day or two, but He'll bring us back
and take that blindfold off and show us Christ. This is where
you look. This is where you look. You don't
look at him or here or there or somewhere else. This is where
you look. Faith, that's what Noah had, faith. God was gracious
to him. He was perfect in his generation.
Perfect means sincere and upright. He had a heart to God. He had a heart to God. It doesn't
mean his flesh was perfect and he made no mistakes and he lived
a sinless life. That's not what it's saying. But he was busy about the work
of God. His heart and his desire was
to do what God said. That's what God gave him that.
He was unspotted by the world. And only God knows what that
is. But he was unspotted by the world.
And this is as much I'll tell you what that means. I don't
know all of it, but I'll tell you this. He walked with God. He believed
God. God gave him faith. He obeyed
God. He did not take the course of
the world, which was idolatry, rebellion, unbelief. He was unspotted from the world.
And I'll tell you this, for us to be unspotted from the world
is walk according to the gospel of God's free and sovereign grace,
looking to Christ and Christ alone. All of these things God
will take care of. And just fall on your face before
Him and say, Lord, I don't know, but
You do. unaffected by all in the generation
he lived in. Oh, it had its influence, I'm
sure. He had his weak moments, I'm
sure. But yet, the evil of that generation did not sway him into
following them and departing from God. As a matter of fact,
it's right to reverse. As he saw the weakness of that
generation, the more determined he was to do what God said. And so am I. The more false gospels
I hear and the more unbelief I see in my heart and yours and
this religious world, the more determined by God's grace to
preach the Lord Jesus Christ in simplicity. And so I look
to Him, Christ alone. And by God's grace, we will.
We like the five points. That's the last point of the
five. Perseverance. By God's grace,
Noah persevered to the end. And by God's grace, you and I
will persevere. Noah walked with God. And the basis of Noah's faith
was the Word of God. was the Word of God, being warned
of God of things not yet seen, things unseen yet. The Word of God, what God said,
was the basis of Noah's faith. He believed God. Abraham believed God. Paul believed
God. Do you know how Paul believed
God? Saul of Tarsus, how he believed God? God knocked him down. He said, now, this is what I
say. Saul said, Lord, what would you
have me to do? This is what you do. He said, okay, I'll do it.
I'll do it. Faith must have a foundation,
and the foundation of all true faith is the Word of God. Noah
believed because God spoke, and he believed what God spoke. Though
it seemed contrary to reason, God said it's going to rain,
and the only salvation is in this ark. The only way to be
saved in this flood is in the ark. It had never come afloat.
It had never rained. He believed what God spoke against
all reason. It's against natural man's reason
to believe that salvation by grace, well, that works. And by experience, he believed
God by experience. Noah found grace in the eyes
of the Lord. That grace, he experienced. The grace of God, he experienced
it. He didn't just believe it as a concept or as a theory or
something written down to learn. He experienced the grace of God.
By God's grace, he experienced the grace of God. And he believed
God contrary to science. To men's wisdom, if you'd ask
the learned men, the professors that day, would it ever rain?
Can it rain? They'd say, no, it can't because
of this, it can't rain. It never has and it never can't
do it. But God said it can. And I believe God and it rained. God warned him of things not
yet seen, the universal flood, and the word of promise to be
believed. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved. Noah is a picture of grace isn't
he? There is no reason whatsoever in Noah for God to save him. You look, you study it, make
that a project. There is nothing about Noah that
would cause God to save them. And it's only the cause in God
to save Noah, and that's God is gracious. And I pray that
God will be gracious to us. The faith of Noah was publicly
confessed. You know, if you believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ, if you believe the Word of God, you have a desire
to be committed to Him. And He's your life, and you want
to pledge allegiance to Him. Don't you want the world to know?
Don't you? Noah stood alone in an unbelieving,
condemned generation, and he said, I'm God's. I'm His. I'm His. I want to be counted among the
people of God. I want to be identified with
those that are followers of Christ, followers of God. I want to be
identified with them. You see the group pictures made,
you know, you get everybody in where you can see their face.
I want to get mine in there. I want to be one of them. I want
to be one of them. I want you and everyone else
to know that my only hope for time and eternity is the Lord
Jesus Christ. Now I'm going to make a confession
in that profession before the world. There's no way. Deal. That's a fire deal.