Letter to the Hebrews Volume 124

 The Faith of those Elders in Early Human History Part 4

Hebrews 11:7 By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an Ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. KJV

Our own human understanding of 'fear' is defined for us by our human dictionaries with these words; An emotion experienced in anticipation of some specific pain or danger (usually accompanied by a desire to flee or fight); A feeling of profound respect for someone or something. Human beings fear many things, however, the One Person that every human being should fear (God) is not feared at all by the majority of humanity because of their (in most of them) obsessive, odiferous (morally offensive), and obstinate disregard for Him and their unwillingness to believe in Him and His Word, as it is written here by the Psalmist King David, "The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart, that there is no fear of God before his eyes." (Psalms 36:1) (KJV) and also as it is written here by the Apostle Paul, "There is no fear of God before their eyes." (Romans 3:18) (KJV). Instead of this being (as many of them think) a good thing to have no fear of God (whom they cannot see) it is the worst thing that any human being can do, as it is written with these words from the Proverbs in Scripture, "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction." (Proverbs 1:7) (KJV) and these words, "Better is little with the fear of the LORD than great treasure and trouble therewith." (Proverbs 15:16) (KJV). The next Elder that the writer of Hebrews documents for us is a man named Noah. Many unbelievers have heard or read of the story of Noah and haved dismissed it as a fable, a work of fiction, or a complete fabrication. However, we true believers in God/Jesus know for certain that this is no work of fiction because it comes from the Word of God. So, here is what the writer of Hebrews declares of the man Noah, "By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith." (Hebrews 11:7) (KJV). Noah being warned by God Almighty Himself believed Him and moved with fear to prepare the Ark exactly as the Lord God had instructed him to do, as it is written with these words, "And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make thee an Ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the Ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the Ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make to the Ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the Ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die. But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the Ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee." (Genesis 6:13-18) (KJV). Let us recall that Noah was 500 years old when he had his three sons, as it is written, "And Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth." (Genesis 5:32) (KJV). Let us also recall that right around 100 years went by before the Lord God sent the flood upon the earth, as it is written here, "For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth. And Noah did according unto all that the LORD commanded him. And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth." (Genesis 7:4-6) (KJV). Can you imagine what went on during those 100 years as many people saw Noah building this giant ship on dry land thinking he had gone mad, yet surely Noah warned them of the flood to come and even offered those who would believe safe passage within the Ark, however, no one believed him and they all drowned under flood waters sent upon the earth by God. Likewise, the Ark of God is our Lord, Master, and Savior Jesus Christ and all who are 'in Him' by faith will escape the wrath and judgement of God upon sin, as it is written, "For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him." (1 Thessalonians 5:9-10) (KJV). Just like in the days of Noah where safety from the flood was only found in being 'in the Ark' so is it today and in the future days that safety from the eternal wrath of God is only found in our Lord Jesus Christ, not in Hinduism, Buddhism, Occultism, Islam, or any other belief system that is outside of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through faith, as it is written, "But to him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin." (Romans 4:5-8) (KJV). Here is how this same passage of Scripture reads in the Contemporary English Version, "But you cannot make God accept you because of something you do. God accepts sinners only because they have faith in Him. In the Scriptures David talks about the blessings that come to people who are acceptable to God, even though they don't do anything to deserve these blessings. David says, 'God blesses people whose sins are forgiven and whose evil deeds are forgotten. The Lord blesses people whose sins are erased from His book.'" (Romans 4:5-8) (CEV).

Here is what Alexander MacLaren had to say of Hebrews 11:7, "The creed of these Old Testament saints was a very short one, and very different from ours. Their faith was the very same. It is the great object of the writer of this Epistle, in this magnificent catalogue of the heroes of the faith, the muster roll of God’s great army, to establish the principle that from the Beginning there has only been one kind of religion, only one way to God and that, however rudimentary and brief the articles of belief in those early days, the faculty by which these far-away believers lay hold on them, and its practical issues, were identical in them and in us, And that is a principle well worth getting into our minds, that the scope of the creed has nothing to do with the essence of the faith. If we think of the incident brought before us in these words, we shall see how the confidence with which Noah laid hold of a dim future, about which he knew nothing, except Because God had spoken to him, was, at bottom, identical with that great attitude of the soul which we call faith, as it is exercised towards Jesus Christ. No doubt in this Epistle to the Hebrews, the aspect of faith by which it lays hold of the future and the unseen, is the one on which the writer’s mind is mainly fixed. But notice, that whilst the near object, so to speak, to which Noah stretched out his hands, and of which he laid hold, was that coming catastrophe, with its certainties of destruction and of deliverance; there was only one reason why he knew anything about that, and there was only one reason why he knew or believed anything about it, and that was because he believed Him who had told him. So, at bottom, God who had revealed the unseen future to him was the object of his faith. He trusted the Person, therefore he believed in that Person’s word, and therefore he had the assured realisation of things not seen as yet; and the future, so dim and uncertain to unaided eyes, became to him as certain as the past, and expectation as reliable as memory. His faith grasped the invisible things to come, only because it grasped the Invisible Person, who was, is, and is to come, and who lifted for him the curtain and showed him the things that should be. So is it with our faith; whether it lays hold upon a past sacrifice on Calvary, or upon a present Christ dwelling in our hearts, or whether it becomes telescopic, and stretches forward into the future, and brings the distant near, all its various aspects are but aspects of one thing, and that is personal trust in the personal Christ who speaks to us. What he says is a matter of secondary importance in this respect. The contents of God’s revelation vary; the act by which man accepts them is always the same. So the great question for us all is - do we trust God? Do we believe Him, and therefore accept His words, not only with the assent of the understanding, which of all idle things is the idlest, but do-we believe Him, revealing, commanding, promising, threatening, with the trust and affiance of our whole hearts? Then, and then only, can we look with quiet certainty into the dim future, which else is all full of rolling clouds, that sometimes shape themselves to our imaginations into the likeness of stable things, but alas! change and melt while we gaze. Only then can we confront the solemn future, and say: ‘I do not expect only, I know what is there.’ My brother, if our faith is worth calling faith at all, it rests so absolutely and confidingly upon God, that His bare Word becomes to us the infallible source of certitude with regard to all the shifting hours of time, and to the steadfast day of an eternity, whose change is blessed growth to an un-reached and undeclining noon. And what was the future that loomed before this man? The coming of a destruction as certain as God, and the coming of a deliverance as complete as His love could make it. Never mind although Noah’s outlook related but to a temporary catastrophe, and ours has reference to an eternal condition of things. That is a difference of no real moment. We have what Noah had, a definite, Divine Utterance, as the source of all our knowledge of what is coming. Both are alike in having two sides, one dark and menacing with a certain destruction, the other radiant and lustrous with as certain a deliverance. And now the question for each of us is, do I so believe God that that future is to me what it was to this man - far more real than these fleeing illusions that lie nearer me? When Noah walked the earth and saw his contemporaries busy with buying and selling, planting and building, marrying and giving in marriage, how fantastic and unreal their work must have seemed to him, when behind them he saw blazing a vision, which he alone of all that multitude believed. Do not let us fancy that we have faith if these near trifles are to us the great realities, and the distance is dim, and unsubstantial, and doubtful, hidden in mist and forgotten. The years that stretched between the Divine Utterance and its fulfilment were to this man as nothing, and for him the unseen was the reality, and the seen was the shadowy and phantasmal. And that is what faith worth calling the name will always do for men. Ask yourselves the question if your dim apprehension of that future, in either of its aspects, is anything so vivid as the certitude which blazed ever before the eye of this man. One of our old English writers says, ‘If the felicities of another world were as closely apprehended as the joys of this, it were martyrdom to live.’ That may be an exaggeration, but surely, surely there is something wrong in men who call themselves believers in God and His word, to whom the things seen and temporal are all or nearly all important, and the trifles an inch from their eyes are big enough to shut out heaven and all its stars. No doubt there were plenty of witty and wise things said about him. 'Prudent, far-sighted, practical men' would say, 'How fanatical! What a misuse of energies and opportunities'; and so forth. And then, one morning, the rain began, and continued, and for forty days it did not stop, and they began to think that perhaps, after all, there was some method in his madness. Noah got into his ark, and still it rained, and I wonder what the wits and' practical men,' that had treated the whole thing as moonshine and folly, thought about it all then, with the water up to their knees. How their gibes and jests would die in their throats when it reached their lips! And so, my dear friends, the faith of the poor, ignorant old woman that up in her garret lives to serve Jesus Christ, and to win an eternal crown, will get its vindication some day, and it will be found out then which was the 'practical' man and the wise man, and all the witty speeches and smart sayings will seem very foolish, even to their authors, when the light of that future shines on them. And the old word will come true once more, that the man who lives for the present, and for anything bounded by Time, will have to 'leave it in the midst of his days,' and 'at his latter end shall be a fool,' whilst the 'foolish' man who lived for the future, when the future has come to the present, and the present has dwindled away into the past, and sunk beneath the horizon, shall be proved to be wise, and shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars for ever and ever."

If you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ and His amazing healing power, pray this from your heart to the Lord Jesus Christ (you speaking directly to Him), Dear Lord Jesus, I confess to You that I am a sinner and I need Your forgiveness. I believe You shed Your Blood and died for my sins. I believe that You rose from the dead proving that You alone are God. I repent of my sins. I want to turn from my sins. I ask You Dear Lord Jesus to come into my heart and take control of my life. I want You to be my Lord, Savior, and my God. Amen...


Sincerely in Christ,


Clifford D. Tate, Sr.


Author of “Silent Assassins of the Soul - Are you Broken by Pornography and Masturbation? You can be Restored by the Lord Jesus Christ and brought into Deliverance, Freedom, and Victory! A Guide for Men and Women in the Enemy’s Crosshairs” e-book available now @ Amazon Kindle, @ Apple I Bookstore for IPod, Barnes and Noble for Nook, Reader Store for Sony Reade, Kobo, Copia, Gardners, Baker and Taylor, and eBookPie…