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