Noah’s faith: Part 3 of 7
1 Samuel 12:24 Only fear the LORD and serve him faithfully with all your heart. For consider what great things he has done for you.
Only fear the Lord . . . for consider what great things He has done for you: All of our service, all of our obedience, all of our love for God should be put in this context. We do it because of the great things He has done for us. We don’t serve God so as to persuade Him to do great things for us. He has done the great things, and asks us to receive them by faith. Then we serve Him because of the great things he has done for us.
– We can only keep perspective in our Christian lives if we keep focused on what great things He has done for us. And if we lose perspective, everything is distorted. Police in Seal Beach, California, got an urgent call from a resident looking through his new telescope: a pink Corvette was being ravaged in the surf, and the caller was afraid that someone might be trapped inside. Officers rushed to the scene, but couldn’t find the car. The man confirmed he could still see it, so officers came to his house to take a look. Through his telescope, they saw it too: a “Barbie-sized” toy car on the beach, highly magnified by the powerful lens. “Had he panned his telescope up a little from the ocean . . . he would’ve realized what he was looking at,” said police Sgt. Rick Ransdell. The cops recovered the toy, which was less than a foot long, he said. Many people tend to magnify their problems and lose sight of what great things He has done for you.
A Relationship to Obey
James reminds us that “faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:17). By faith Noah set to work building a mammoth ark. He gathered “seven each of every clean animal, a male and his female; two each of animals that are unclean, a male and his female; also seven each of birds of the air, male and female, to keep the species alive on the face of the earth” (Genesis 7:2,3). If the flood was universal then the task of gathering animals from all parts of the globe is mind-boggling, not to mention feeding and cleaning up after them! One ancient writer solved this problem by asserting that they all hibernate so they only needed feeding once! If the flood was local then the task was not as great but was still immense. Neither was Noah overwhelmed with the responsibility thrust upon him. He took that in his stride of faith too. And he was clearly not at all deterred by the apparent incongruity of what he was doing. In other words, his faith worked!
Two by two they went into the ark to Noah: God never has a problem getting the animals to do what He
wants. Only man is more stupid than the animals. The ox knows its owner and the donkey its
master’s crib; but Israel does not know, My people do not consider. (Isaiah
1:3)
Most times the readiness to obey is cancelled out by not having faith, that’s what it is. We get scared, we move by feelings instead of the Spirit more than we should. To have the release of a blessing we must learn to walk in obedience. Remember, consider the great things that He has done for you.
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