How many of us know that one of the most basic cries of an individual is for
significance? It's a God-born drive. It’s a value that's not a wrong desire—it’s
just in us. There are certain essential ingredients that make up a pleased
person, and one is affirmation. Everybody needs to be affirmed and loved.
Every person needs to have some measure of significance. Now understand,
when I talk about significance, I'm not referring to being famous or popular.
You can be very famous and be totally insignificant. Significance has to do
with its effect on humanity.
Do we understand that the greatest tests you and I face in life, we don't know
about when we're facing them? When we are under pressure for a decision,
those are tests, but they're not as big as the ones we're unaware of. What is
really valuable is examining our values, for example, as David talked about
“being tried in the night.” How can we be tried in the night? We're sleeping.
It's just that the Spirit of God is working on the heart of the person, working
to discover what the makeup and the value system is, that's been ingrained
into that individual.
Some of the great tests that we go through in life, really have to do with how
fast we drive through town at night, when nobody's looking, or when nobody's
there in the room and we've got the TV changer to see what entertains us.
The tests are when we don't know we're being tested. When someone tells
us a rumor, what do we do with that rumor, what do we say to the one
bringing the rumor? It’s the little things that oftentimes are the most
significant. When God’s word tells us to hear that our temples may be fit, yet
we elect to not listen to God’s directions and instead listen to the preacher or
the friend.
As with David. Go to Psalm 16. There is a passage here that is also quoted
in Acts 2. Let’s read both of them. Verse 7: “I will bless the Lord who has given
me counsel. My heart also instructs me in night seasons. I have set the Lord
always before me. Because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.”
Look at verse 11: “You show me the path of life. In Your presence is fullness
of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Back to verse 8: “I have
set the Lord always before me.” And because of that, “I shall not be moved.”
I'm stable and circumstances are not going to move me.
Now in Acts 2 it’s quoted this way: “David says concerning him, I foresaw the
Lord always before my face.” Another version says, “I saw the Lord always
before me.” This is a huge principle. In this particular passage David is
saying, “I set the Lord before me.” But how many of us know, we can't set
God before us? What we can do is set our eyes on the presence of God,
who's before us. We can't bring Him and put Him here; He's here. What we
can do, is adjust our heart as we realize that He's already here. The ongoing
realization of the presence of the Lord is probably one of the most, if not the
most, vital elements to the believer’s life. It is the awareness of God in me,
upon me, and with me.
David became the great leader over Israel and led them into their greatest
hours of prosperity and blessing. They had the greatest military victories.
They finally got all the land that was promised to them through David. All the
years from Joshua onward, were just dormant until David came and brought
them into their inheritance. He was the greatest of warriors; he was the
greatest of worshippers. He wasn't even a Levite (the tribe in Israel that
served as priests), but he was the ultimate priest. He was at the top of his
game in all these important areas. Notice this one thing he said, “I always,
every day, I set Him before me. Every day, I set my eyes on the presence of
the Lord who is with me.” Now, the confidence level of people reaches an
unprecedented level, when the presence of the Lord becomes more manifest
to them. How many of us know that if we saw a fiery cloud above us and
heard the voice of God coming out of it saying, “I'll heal whoever comes into
the cloud of all maladies,” all of us would be praying for wings to get into that
fiery cloud? The more clear the manifestation of His presence is, the greater
the dimension of faith we operate by. To live by the theory of His presence is
wrong. It is not good enough to say, “Well, I know He's always with me.” No.
That truth must launch us into an experience or we're violating the truth. The
truth was not given to equip us with concepts and ideas to debate and to
discuss. The truth was given as invitations for divine encounter so we would
know by experience that God is upon me, and He is with me.
David's entire life as a warrior, as a priest, was focused on this one thing.
This is one intimation we get out of his life. Take time before Him, until you
can see Him. Can you think of a place where He isn't, then know He is with
you. So, David gives us the key, which was the absolute heartbeat of his life.
It’s kind of like he's saying, “This is how I make it. Every day I behold Him
with me.”
When God is silent He is still with us…
The story of the deluge begins with an awful roar and ends with an awful
silence. Genesis 7:11, 12 is a powerful statement of the beginning of the
awful event: “In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month,
the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the
great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the
rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.” Downpour and darkness
and the thundering of rushing water shook the earth, for forty days and forty
nights of awful, frightening uproar. Then it ended with silence. Look at 7:23,
24: “And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of
the ground, both man and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the
heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained
alive, and they that were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon
the earth an hundred and fifty days".
The statement at the end of verse 23 is instructive: “And Noah only remained
alive, and they that were with him in the ark.” The text could have read, “Only
Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth and their families were left.” The statement
as written declares something about how it felt for Noah. Everything was
gone. Death was everywhere. Now there was only silence. Noah was left
with the awful difficulty of no movement, no answers, no word from God.
As Noah floated on the water in this great wooden structure, there was no
explanation, no prompting, no voice of hope from God. Noah faced what so
many face in their spiritual life: the period of wilderness and struggle that
comes after the great salvation, the great act of God, the great beginning,
the powerful word of release and hope.
Let's review a couple of things. First of all, the giant wooden ark in which
Noah found himself was closed in everywhere. It was thirty cubits high and
covered with pitch. Genesis 6:16 has an ambiguous phrase that is probably
describing a small window. It was covered over during the storm. The door
through which the animals and people entered the ark was closed by God
and covered over with pitch. Noah couldn't see out, he could look only
upward from himself.
Noah was told very little about what would happen to him as he began this
adventure. In 6:18 God spoke to Noah and said he was the only righteous
one in all his generation, the only one who had a heart for God. So God gave
him this word: “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.” The ark was the source of salvation for him; he would be protected
from the storm. But what Noah didn't hear was any word about getting out of
the ark, about the end of the story. Would he ever be allowed out? What
would be the conclusion of this adventure in following God?
So now Noah was in this period of silence, encased in a place where he
couldn't see out, or get information. He wondered what was going to happen
next, but he had no word from God as to what the end of the story would be.
Time went by. Noah was in a period of self-discovery.
One of the important questions to ask at this point, and at similar points in the
Scriptures is, why God allows for these silences, these periods in the
wilderness. Why does he set us on our way and then seem to withdraw his
hand from us? Why are there times when he gives us no answers? What are
we supposed to learn in those kinds of times?
Why was the nation of Israel allowed to experience the powerful, miraculous
salvation of God in the Exodus through the Red Sea, and then wander in the
wilderness, obediently for three years and then disobediently for 40 more?
Why was David anointed king and then driven into the wilderness by Saul?
Why was Jesus driven to the wilderness after the dove descended on him at
his baptism, and forced to undergo that time of testing and temptation? Why
did the apostle Paul, after his conversion, spend months in Arabia? Why this
pattern? What does God achieve in the silence when he doesn't seem to be
doing anything, and we're not sure that he remembers us?
We consider always the beginning of our hope…
We're going to come back to that question, but that's exactly where Noah
was in this story. That's why 8:1 is so powerful:
"And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that
was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and
the waters assuaged;"
There are a number of points in this account where God is described in
human terms. The Bible does that frequently. In fact, the Lord had not
forgotten Noah. But Noah's experience was that he had been forgotten, and
so he described what appeared to be God's renewed interest in him as a
remembering. The same thing will happen later in the story when we read of
God's smelling the aroma of the sacrifice that Noah offered, and making a
decision based on that. That again is a human way of describing something
much more complex--God's decisions and actions. But we can observe
important truths about God in human language.
Read verses 2-12:
The region in Turkey where Mount Ararat stands has a number of hills and
peaks. Presumably the ark landed on the promontory that had higher peaks
available around it, which Noah could see out of the window of the ark. After
floating silently for 110 days without being able to see where he was going,
having no idea of the conditions outside the boat, wondering if it would ever
come to an end, the hope began to come in stages. The first thing God did
was send a wind. Just the simple facts that the wind was blowing the ark was
beginning to move again, and the water would eventually recede, were
reminders to Noah that God had not forgotten him. As the water receded, the
ark came to a place where it rested. The ark moved by the breath of God,
and then stopped by the purpose of God. And Noah realized that indeed God
hadn't forgotten him, that there was going to be an end to this story, he didn't
know what.
In trying to discover what the world outside was like, Noah sent these two
birds off as an experiment. He was using them to get information, and
reading that information for knowledge. But this is also a parable. Bible
students see the story of the two birds as instructive of spiritual things. The
raven was a member of the family of birds that were carrion-eaters. It was at
home with dead things. Noah wondered whether death and destruction still
reigned. The raven went out, and there were enough carcasses floating in
the water that it could survive outside the ark. The death bird didn't tell Noah
anything about what was out there. So he sent out a bird that needed life to
survive, a living tree to set its feet on, fruit growing from the earth to eat. It
came back with no information, but at least it came back. Then the second
time, it came back with a leaf in its beak.
The dove of Noah with the olive leaf in its beak has been one of the most
profound symbols of peace in every place, and every age, where the Bible
has been known. Something good was going to happen. You can imagine
Noah's relief to know that the end of the story was not destruction, and that
the ark was not going to be his home forever.
We consider lessons learned in the wilderness…
Read Chapter 8 verses 13-22:
There are two important comments about Noah's behavior that we ought to
look at, and then we'll try to answer the question of why God had required
this period of silence.
Noah removed the covering of the ark and saw that the ground was dry. That
was on the first day of Noah's 601st year, ten-and-a-half months after the
flood began. But he didn't come out. Then a month and twenty-seven days
later, he could see that it was growing increasingly dry. But what he saw was
devastation. The result of the flood was not a cleansed, beautiful, green,
thriving world. He sat in the ark and realized that the lessons he had been
learning gave him no information about what would happen next. Noah would
not come out of the ark until God spake to him.
The first thing Noah did, upon disembarking, was worship God with a
sacrifice.
Cover chapter 9:1-22, we won't read it here. I ask you to read it in your own
Bible and reason with it in the presence of God. In this passage we hear
language that recalls the creation to us. Noah knew that as Adam, his great
forefather had been, now he too was the man whose family would populate
the earth. Now he too was the one who was caring for animals as Adam had
been told to care for the living things of his day. Noah knew on some level
that what God had done in Adam, he was going to do another time through
Noah's family. But Noah knew, too, as he examined himself in the dark,
repetitive, quiet, forgotten days that he had nothing of the innocence of
Adam. His flesh, his sinfulness, his capacity for anger and lust and lies,
became increasingly apparent to him.
Think about what it must have been like as Noah built the ark. He was the
only righteous person on earth that would go through the deluge, the
preacher of righteousness, as II Peter 2:5 says. And as long as he had all his
wicked contemporaries to compare himself to, he would never see his own
heart. He must have felt that there was something special about him. He was
also busy building an ark, the first, only and last one of its kind. It was difficult,
and it required attention. He was so obedient to the cause as his custom was,
that he didn't discover anything new about himself during that period. But
when he floated in the ark with nothing to do except the repetitive work of
feeding animals, when he seemed forgotten by God, he realized the tensions
that existed between him and his sons and their families. He thought on the
great burden placed upon him of showing forth the truth of the word of God,
and our life’s dependency upon always being faithful unto His word,
regardless of the obstacles, regardless of the jeers snorted from those who
say they are family members or friends, in spite of our feeling a need to
succeed and bring about individual accomplishments; we must recall God’s
purpose for us every moment, knowing that we must watch, and be sober in
all our doings, we must be ready now to give up all and every thing, and trust
God. He realized all his capacity for anger at God, for feeling sorry for
himself, for when we pray and beseech God for that which we think we need,
and He in our understanding, does not grant it, we think ourselves slighted
because we see the material reward of the wicked. But the flood was for the
cause of the wicked. Where now should we stand, seeing the tempered wrath
of God. The awful realization dawned on Noah that the world was going to
be started again by him, and his heart was as much in need of grace as
anyone else's. He was not a good specimen from which to build a new earth.
He was as capable of tawdry and angry and embarrassing and godless
behavior as anyone else.
Doesn't God often teach us that lesson about ourselves when he's quiet? As
long as we can compare ourselves to other people, we can fool ourselves.
And as long as we can be active in God's work, we don't have to discover
anything about ourselves. But when we are put in some kind of wilderness,
and there's nothing but the spiritual reality of who we are on the inside to
occupy our thoughts, the awful discovery begins to take place: “I'm capable
of anything. I'm not as great and courageous and godly as I thought I was.”
We discover weakness and inadequacy. We discover our undoings. We
search for something, anything good in us, and with each assessment we find
filthiness. We discover that we know good, but are incapable of good, we
know right, but prefer wrong, we speak goodly words, but harbor ungodly
motives.
When the day finally came to see the world, Noah was a man who had
discovered his own inadequacy; and he was looking out on a world that was
still suffering the effects of a terrible destruction. This had to be an
extraordinarily low point for him.
He would not come out until God invited him out. There wasn't presumption
in Noah. He didn't leap into the arms of his Lord, because his own failures
were ringing in his thinking. He didn't dance around on the newly dried earth,
because it was still reeling from the destruction, and it was not a place of
beauty and splendor.
So Noah sacrificed to God. It may have been a thank offering or a sin
offering; it was probably both. At the invitation of God, Noah walked out into
his presence and said, “I need help. Thank you for saving my life. Now please
save me from the sins I've discovered in my heart.” He was the man on whom
God would rebuild human experience, and he was a man who was not up to
the task in his own strength.
God’s loving commitment is always present with us…
The Lord had been silent but now we hear him speak again. At the end of
chapter 8 God reveals His thoughts to us and in chapter 9 there's a
conversation with Noah and his sons. God's thought of the human
predicament was contemplated. He had judged them and brought Noah, the
only righteous man, with his family into the ark, and now as Noah offered a
sacrifice for his own sins, it was clear that there was no fixing the human
race. Time wasn't going to fix them. They weren't going to educate
themselves to become righteous. Each generation would repeat the
problems of the previous generation in a deeper context. In the context of
the sacrifice, the Lord made a promise: “I won't destroy them again.” But he
didn't say how he would answer the problem. What could God do for a race
like this?
This counsel of God with himself is instructive. The problem of a righteous
God and a sinful population, and his refusal to destroy them completely,
leaves him ultimately with only one determined choice - its the greatest story
of all, the story of how God would take our punishment on himself.
The conversation God made with Noah and his sons is in 9:1-17.
He was using the same language that he had used with Adam. He was
deliberately saying, “We're starting over now. You be masters of the earth as
the first human pair were.” But it’s an awful dimming down of vision. In the
first case, when God made everything, he saw that it was beautiful. At the
end of every day of creation he said it was good, and finally very good. God
delighted in the things he had made. Here he would only say, “I refuse to
destroy the things I've made.” He told Noah to be the master of the animal
kingdom that was coming out of the ark, but he gave him permission to eat
designated animals, whereas he had required Adam to care for them. And
he assumed that human beings were murderers; it was impossible that this
race would not be; so laws were required to deal with killing. And so we have
the re-establishment of human life, but with a broken heart. This is a broken
people who will live far below the beginning point of the first human couple.
Then, contrary to all the discouragement, the bad news, Noah's discovery of
his sinfulness, the blight on the earth, the need for an animal sacrifice to
atone for Noah's sins, and the unfortunate commentary about the human
beings who would replenish the earth, eat the animals, and kill each other;
God interposed this promise in 9:8-10:
The promise of God, standing in marvelous and immense contrast to the
hard news and the struggle, is the basis on which we live our lives. That is
the way every generation has survived since, not deserving God's mercy but
being given God's mercy. The covenant with Noah was only the first one.
God would restate in better and better terms his unwillingness to destroy us,
his compassion, and his insistence on love. It contradicts all expectations.
He shouldn't have acted this way, and yet he did. What he had to work with
wasn't worth it, yet he had fallen in love with us. He cannot, and will not, act
destructively toward human beings that choose His way again. We can
choose destruction for ourselves, but he means good to us.
Though this account doesn't tell us what will come after, it’s the beginning of
the story that leads to the cross. God would take on himself what we
deserved. He made a promise with a beautiful witness (the rainbow) because
the story was going to be beautiful. His refusal to judge us meant that in the
long run, he was going to bless us. The promise of the love of God is the
extraordinary thing in this story. The dove flew back with a leaf in its beak,
and it was offering a hope that has inspired people ever since. The rainbow
repeats the theme of hope.
Peter refers to “His precious and magnificent promises” (II Peter 1:4). Do you
reflect very often on God's word to you? Do you read the announcement of
his love and believe his commitment to people who are broken? Are they
love letters to you? Do you believe God can intend good even when we don't
deserve good, that he can bring blessing in the lives of people whose self-
discovery is of tragic insides? Are the promises of God believable to you,
though they contradict everything we know about ourself?
This love story of God for failed people began as Noah disembarked the ark.
God made a promise. It was only the promise of God, not the beauty of the
earth, that Noah had to cling to. It was enough. And we have the same
promise.
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