Noah didn't wait for his ship to come in, he built one.
Plan ahead. It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark.
Stay fit. When you're 500 years old, someone might ask you to
do something REALLY big.
Speed isn't always an advantage. The cheetahs were on board
the ark, but so were the snails.
Remember that the ark was built by amateurs and the Titanic
was built by professionals.
And above all else... don't miss the boat.
There are a lot of good messages in the story of Noah’s ark.
There is a message
about the way people behave “that every inclination of the thoughts of the
human heart was only evil all the time.”
They were incapable of thinking a kind, loving, hopeful, God-filled
thought. (Gen. 6:5)
There is a message about how sin affects God’s heart. “The
LORD regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was
deeply troubled.” That must be the most tragic sentence in all scripture. “The
lord regretted that he had made human beings.” (Gen. 6:6)
There is a message about consequences for sin, “So the LORD said, ‘I will wipe from the face
of the earth the human race I have created” (Gen 6:7) You may remember that in the end God said, “I
establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by
the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the
earth.” (Gen 9:11) Do not make the mistake, however, of thinking that there are
no consequences for sin. There are many.
There are messages about faithfulness, and patience, and
hope.
But today I want to focus on one particular part of the
story. God’s calling and Noah’s response.
Noah was a standup
guy. Everybody knew that he was honest to the bone, as reliable as they come,
as generous as anyone could be, and he lived a good life following God’s
commands. The Bible says, “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people
of his time, and he walked faithfully with God.” (Gen 6:10)
So much so that, as offended as God was, Noah caught God’s
eye as someone who was different. Noah and his family would not be destroyed.
God spoke to Noah and said, “‘I am going to put an end to all
people…’ So, make yourself an ark of
cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out.”
Clay said he once
compared the size of the ark to the size of the church in a children’s sermon.
I am going to try using Boeing 747’s.
The ark was big enough to hold 6
Boeing 747 fuselages (That would be the plane without the wings but including
the tail.) 2 rows of three fuselages
would fit in the ark. And it was about
as tall as the top of the tail of the 747.
Is that bigger than you thought? Even having done this kind of comparison
before, when I put it in terms of these huge flying beasts, I even surprised
myself.
God said, “Noah, make
yourself an ark.”
I think there are parts of the conversation that the authors
didn’t record, so (if you will indulge me) I will take the liberty of filling
it in.
I suspect Noah looked around for his jokester youngest son
and said, “Japeth, I know it’s you. Come on out. Joke’s over. “
The thing was, it was not Japeth, and it was not a joke. It
was God. And God was completely serious.
When God calls you, will you recognize God’s voice? That
would be the first step to faithfully answering God’s call. Would you recognize the voice of God?
Casting crowns has a song called “Voice of truth.” The last line of the chorus says, “Out of all
the voices calling out to me, I will choose to listen and believe ethe voice of
truth.” Only by walking with God and
listening to God’s voice in our lives on a daily basis will we recognize God’s
voice when it calls us to do something big.
Only by being connected to God, walking with God, talking with God,
listening to God can we ever recognize the voice of God among all the other
voices in our lives.
Continuing to fill in
the conversation, I am pretty sure that Noah’s second response was. “Build a what?” That would be my first question. I can only
think of two occasions in history and literature where the word “ARK” is used.
Noah’s ark and the Ark of the Covenant the Israelites carried through the
wilderness. I looked it up, and in the
first two definitions I saw only
referred me to those two biblical stories.
Websters, however, says that an ark is “something that provides
protection and safety.” A safehouse
would be an ark. A vault would be an ark,
Seeing I couldn’t find any other uses for the word “ark” I’m
pretty sure that when God told Noah to build an ark, Noah said, “I don’t know
what an ark is, but I am almost 600 years old and I’m not building nothing.”
Noah probably felt like he had done his part and was ready to pass it on to his
sons. He was old and he had walked
faithfully with God all his life. We can all relate to that. No matter our age,
sometimes we get tired and we are ready to let someone else take over. I get
that way sometimes. We all do. But that didn’t stop Noah and it shouldn’t stop
us. We keep walking with God.
Besides being old,
Noah had no idea how to build an ark. He lived all his life in the desert. What
does he know about boats? And even if he
knew how, it would be foolish to build a boat in the desert. It was hundreds of miles to the nearest body
of water big enough to accommodate a boat of that size. This seemed truly foolish.
But in the end, Noah walked with God and did what he asked.
Finally, as though
building a boat as big as 6- 747’s wasn’t hard enough. Noah had to deal with
the jeers and probably hatred of the neighbors. You see, it wasn’t just that
Noah heard God’s voice when everyone else in the human race was listening
to anything but God’s voice. It wasn’t
just that Noah was building a boat in the middle of the desert. Noah was a prophet with a message of judgment
that got bigger and bigger right along with the ark.
Do you remember why he is building the ark? Because people
are so wicked that god is going to destroy them. How do you suppose the
neighbors took that news? I’m sure Noah would never be as childish as to say,
”Nana nana boo boo, I have a room in the ark, and will have to sleep with the
fishes.” But that’s exactly what the
ark said to the neighbors every time they looked out their window. And how could you NOT look out the window
just to see what those neighbors are doing?
For Noah, and for us, the Ark is a symbol of safety and
salvation. For those whose “every
inclination and thought of the heart was only evil all the time,” it was a
tombstone with their names engraved on it just waiting to be put to use.
Don’t you suppose people jeered at noah…don’t you suppose
they called him names? Don’t you suppose someone probably stole his tools a few
times or hid is material? Don’t you suppose there was a good deal of anger and
resentment toward Noah? I would be
shocked to find out that it wasn’t true!
But did that stop Noah? NO. He continued to walk with God
every step of the way, even when the going was really, really hard.
Has God ever asked you to do something that seemed kind of
foolish? I’m not talking about building an aircraft carrier. I am talking much smaller. What about
inviting that new neighbor to church, forgiving someone, teaching or serving
some way in the church, going on a youth mission trip, speaking up about
racism, or homelessness, or immigration. Some of those might seem foolish to
you, but I have an even crazier thing.
Sitting at lunch with other pastors and on conference calls,
I can’t find anyone who ever dreamed of pastoring a church through a pandemic.
It is the last thing we want to do.
Frankly, for me, It is harder than the fire and rebuilding of Musserville church. I thought that was the
hardest thing I would ever do. But here we are, the church is on the precipice
of what I called last week a new easter.
Things will never be the way they were. There is no going back now. Some
days I think it would be easier to build a boat out in the middle of the
desert.
God is not calling us
to build an ark. God is calling us to walk with him into the new future of our
church. It will take every single one of us…Listening to the voice of truth,
looking for God’s little nudges, walking together with God into the beauty of
the easter God has prepared for the Carroll United Methodist church. Will some
label us as foolish? Probably. So let’s be foolish for god together. Let’s
join God’s ark building, church building, kingdom building post-pandemic
adventure. Together, I think we just might be foolish enough to become what God
wants us to be.
AMEN
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