"So the Lord said, 'I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.' But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. This is the genealogy of Noah. Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations; Noah walked with God (Genesis 6:7-9)."
"By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith (Hebrews 11:7)."
IDEA: The problem with people who are confident that God will provide is that they think that God will provide.
PURPOSE: To help listeners appreciate that to live by faith doesn’t mean that we are to be passive.
There are slogans that Christians sometimes use to sum up the life lived by faith:
• Let go and let God.
• The Christian life is not something we do for God; it is what God does for us.
What inferences might you draw from statements like these?
David Maine in his novel, The Preservationist, fills in the imagined background of Noah and his three sons and their wives who were with him on the ark. Maine gives Noah’s daughters-in-law names. His eldest son, Shem, is married to Bera. She is an unflappable down-to-earth woman who gets stuck with a lot of the animal-gathering chores. She complains, “The problem with people who think that God will provide is they think God will provide.”
What do you think that means? Is there any truth in what Bera says?
II. Do you think a person who lives in faith before god should be passive?
Many of the people in the Bible who are singled out for their faith were people of action.
1. Noah did not have the ark built for him by angels. He and his sons did the work.
2. Abraham did a lot of work in following God’s calling.
3. Paul was not an armchair general.
How would you evaluate the observation, We should pray as though ti all depended on God and work as thought it all depended on us?”
What does it mean in practical terms “to live by faith?