It’s Dangerous to Be Friends With Jesus— Noah, Part III.

The third thing we can embrace from the life of Crazy Noah in Genesis is: his faith, unshakable at its foundation, was a form of condemnation on the corruption of the world.  Which is one of the reasons it’s so dangerous to be a Friend and Follower of Jesus!

No one who lives in and from the Kingdom of Grace sets out with a spirit of condemnation, a self-righteous superiority complex, or an elitist attitude.  But it seems this way sometimes because your Light shines in the darkness, your confident Hope amidst swirling despair, your Love in exchange for hate.  This is a form of judgment {legitimate judgment}, and the kingdom of darkness despises it.  History tells the Story of a brilliant and reckless young Athenian commander by the name Alcibiades.  He was rumored to have said to Socrates the great philosopher: “I hate you, Socrates.  For every time we meet, you show me what I am!”  One of the greatest men in Greek History was Aristides, whom the Athenians called ‘the Just,’ meaning ‘the Righteous.’  You know what happened to him?  The Athenians voted to banish him from Greece.  When asked why, one man replied, “Because I’m sick of hearing Aristides called ‘the Righteous’!”  At least he was honest.

Holiness is dangerous.  So is being part of the Kingdom of Light in a world bound in darkness and death.  As Jesus so aptly pointed out, “Everyone who does evil hates the Light, and will not come into the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed” {Jn. 3:20}.  “Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil,” v. 19.

Our fourth and final lesson?  Noah’s righteousness came by grace through faith.  Sound familiar?  Moses tells us, “Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD” {Gen. 6:8}; the Hebrew cheyn means ‘grace’ in the eyes of God.

It just so happens he’s the first man in all of Scripture to be called dikaios, “righteous.”  “This is the account of Noah.  Noah was a righteous man [Tsadiyq is ‘justified,’ like dikaios in the New Testament: ‘acquitted of all his crimes, declared not guilty by the Judge of the Living and the Dead’], blameless among the people of his time [Tamiym means ‘wholesome, having integrity’], and he walked with God,” 6:9.

Noah’s righteousness began by taking Abba at His Word.  When God spoke, he listened; and once he heard, he believed, he embraced in faith what God set before him.  Looks like a pattern here, doesn’t it?  Maybe even one we could follow.  What do you think?  When the entire Earth had ravaged God’s righteousness and cast caution and restraint to the wind, Noah obeyed.  When the world went deaf to the warnings of God, Noah listened.  When the men and women of the Matrix laughed and scoffed and mocked the Almighty, Noah worshipped Him ...in reverence.  I thought this statement was amazing, the clarity of it.  One ancient writer said, Noah “threw the dark skepticism of the world into relief against his own shining faith in God.”  Hoooaahhh!

In the Antediluvian Age, the time before the Flood, when mankind so casually disregarded the King of All Creation, He remained for Noah the Ultimate Reality of Life— the Stronghold of his strength in a world of chaos, the Rock of his redemption in a Sea of utter madness!  And so He remains, for those who are willing to trust Him... trust Him with their lives and trust Him with their love.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously

Fools For Messiah’s Sake— Noah, Part II.

Again, even beyond Abel’s blood and Enoch’s faith, Noah rises up in Genesis as a Hero of Faith.  There are four lessons we can put into practice from the Story of Noah in Scripture.

The first is that Noah took God at His Word.  And so do we.  The choice is ours, and often ours alone.  Each of us will have to choose what we’re going to do with the Message God sends us concerning the Mission He’s given us.  Will we heed it as divine direction, an unfolding of His eternal will in Time, or cast it aside as just one more set of words taken from Scripture?  Biblically accurate, theologically sound, reflections of reality ...but in the end just words.  Nothing to see here, and certainly nothing to do.

Secondly, Noah wasn’t swayed by the shame, mockery or insults of others.  You know they called him a nut, right?  In fact, one of the legends surrounding his life says this very thing.  People laughed at him, mocked him, his generation counted him crazy as an out-house rat.  And rejected him, shamefully.  “A boat... for what?  Look at Crazy Noah, building an Ark for the animals.  And you’re going to put the animals on the Ark, is that right?  Two of ‘em, all the animals?  Haaaa haaaaa haaa!”

So when the Sun was high, and the gleam of these great warriors’ shields shone bright in the fields and the valleys, on the mountains and by the river-sides, Noah must’ve looked ridiculous.  Who builds a massive mountain of a ship on dry land far from the sea?  Listen to me, and listen closely.  You who take God’s Word by faith, who embrace it as your own, may adopt a course of action which looks like madness to The Matrix.  The Wisdom of God often looks like foolishness to men.

One of the hardest challenges of following Jesus is the willingness to look like a fool for the sake of the Son of God.  I’ll give you an example.  In 1 Corinthians 4:10a Paul say’s, “We are fools for the sake of Christ....”  Why “fools”?  He goes on to tell us in vv. 12b-13a.  “When we are cursed, we bless [eulogeo]; when we are persecuted, we endure; when we are slandered [‘insulted, spoken ill of’], we answer kindly.”  Right about now you’re probably saying, “This is going to make me look like a fool.”  It’s possible, even probable; but it’s better to look like a fool than to be a fool.

Paul said, “We are fools,” not for our own sake {which is where many people are} but “for Messiah’s sake.”  You may look like a fool in the eyes of the world, which has a twisted definition of what it means to be a man or a woman anyway, but the one who utters vicious threats and evil curses which he or she has neither the guts nor means to carry out is a fool!  “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be” just “like him”— Proverbs 26:4.

This part I can promise you.  If you believe in, if you converse in, if you seek to share with the broken people of this arrogant Age, the spiritual reality of redemption by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of God alone, you’ll be mocked as a fool, laughed at as ludicrous, and have your beliefs set aside as narrow-minded.  Never seriously considered.  But if you stand tall as an Ambassador of the King, if you ‘hold fast to the straight line of the Hope’ you have in Jesus {Heb. 10:23}, and are faithful to make the Son of God and His finished Work the only issue in the Gospel one Day you will hear from the Master’s lips, “Well done, My good and faithful Slave.  Enter into the joy of your Master” {Matt. 25:23}.  And upon your brow He will set, with nail-scarred hands pierced for you and I, the ‘wreath of joy’ {Phil. 4:1 and 1 Thes. 2:19-20}.  And your ‘folly’ will have all been worth it!

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously

Nutjob Noah, the Hero of Faith— Part I.

Even beyond the blood of Abel and the faith of his forefather Enoch, Noah rises up in the Scroll of Genesis as a Hero of Faith.  There are four lessons here, four things we can learn and put into practice from this man’s amazing Story.

 I.  Noah took God at His Word... and so do we.  He trusted the Message God sent him because He trusted the Messenger God provided.  This is for those of you whose trust in any human messenger, at any level of life, is near non-existent, or teetering on collapse.  When we’re talking about the Word of the Living God— Holy Spirit-authored and divinely overseen— we’re not talking about the mere opinion of man, the unenlightened insight of some individual’s agenda.  This may be the case in cults or in some twisted congregations somewhere, but for those who hold the Word in the highest esteem we’re talking about divine revelation, the heart of God revealed for humanity.  This is a horse of an entirely different color!  And it is preeminent in our priorities that we learn to believe what He tells us, to have faith in His Word to us, to trust His heart toward us.  You following here?

The warning of Deluge and certain death or Deliverance in the Redeemer, to a generation who had never seen rain, seems ridiculous.  Loony as a road-lizard!  But Noah believed it, announced it, and staked his entire world on it!  This is why he and his family survived: cause He took God at His Word and trusted Him enough to act on it.

Think about what this required.  If he was going to build something the size and scope of the Ark, he was going to have to lay aside every other activity, all the normal details of life, and concentrate on this single command.  Noah’s entire life now became one continuous and concentrated preparation— spirit, soul, and body— for what God warned him would come.  You see where we’re headed here?

The choice ultimately is ours.  It comes to us, softly and gently, in the whisper of the Spirit, or powerfully and forcefully in the thunder of Life, whether to listen and live or disregard and die.  We choose, each of us, what we’re going to do with the Message God sends us concerning the Mission He’s given us.  Is it nothing ...or is it everything?

Noah heeded the warning, and was saved from disaster and destruction.  The warnings, and the words of Sonship and Daughterhood, may come from our conscience, the counsel of wise and compassionate others, through a song or cinema, in the words of a good friend or the ruthlessness of an enemy, directly from Abba— Spirit to spirit, soul to soul, heart to heart— or in the gifts of a glorious Creation.  It might leap upon us suddenly or slowly blanket our souls, but however, whenever, and through whomever, we neglect it at our peril.  Amen?

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously

The Gateway to Genuine Courage.

We “love one another” {Jn. 15:12-13, and 17} in the Family of Faith by caring for each other and connecting with each other— spiritually, emotionally, and above all, relationally.  Every human being is hardwired for two things, every man, every woman, every child who’s ever walked this Earth.  Love and belonging.  And when these two pervasive, and God-given needs, are not met ...pain is the lasting result.

In learning from Jesus how to love like He does, we might start with something as simple as making honesty and openness a priority in relationships— by tearing off the masks and dropping our defenses.  It’s a rather difficult proposition for most people, I know.  Yet as counterintuitive as it seems, and as frightening as it feels {and it does, on both counts}, as author and statistical researcher Brene Brown discovered: vulnerability is the gateway to courage, to showing up and being seen, to living authentically as one uniquely made in Abba’s image {Imago Dei}.  And not just ‘allowing’ others to do the same but actually making the ‘space’ for it relationally, a safe and trusted space for their hearts to be known.  That’s how we learn to love.  And to love like Jesus loves is something we must learn, as He pours out within our hearts more and more of Himself and more and more of His love {Rom. 5:5}.

Listen to this Rabbinic commentary on Micah 6:8 and how it speaks to the proposition of loving in a way that doesn’t come naturally to any of us.  “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.  Do justly, now.  Love mercy, now.  Walk humbly, now.  You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”  Neither are we free to abandon it.

You see, vulnerability isn’t just ‘letting it all hang out,’ or telling our really hard Story, our traumatic Narrative, to anyone who will listen.  We tell our Stories to those who have earned the right to hear them.  Just blasting out our intimate details to any and every willing ear is arrogance masquerading as ‘authenticity.’  It might be neediness, approbation lust, a desire to shock people, any number of things, but it’s not genuine courage borne out of vulnerability.  Genuine bravery, real spiritual and relational courage, is owning our Stories while loving ourselves through the process.  Yes, love means learning to love ourselves as well {self-hatred is corrosive to our hearts and lives in the Master}, learning to accept that in Christ and through Christ we are enough.  We are loved by the Majesty on High, the God of this Universe, where we are and as we are.  We are fearful and wonderful creatures: the fingerprint of the Father for all the world to see.

May the Lord of All Life be magnified as we learn to live for Him and from Him.  Amen.

HJC	Ric Webb  |  Shepherd Heart’s Journey Community 9621 Tall Timber Blvd. |  Little Rock, AR 72204 t +1.501.455.0296
hjcommunity.org
Heart’s Journey – Live Generously and Love Graciously