Crazy Noah
“But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.” Genesis 6:8
Some say that we should not preach grace because it makes for lazy Christians, but nothing could be further from the truth. The grace of God always leads us to a life of faith, and this faith always nudges us to work, not to be saved, but because we have been saved. True grace doesn’t make us lazy it makes us strategists.
Noah didn’t know beans about ark building. He had never seen or heard of an ark or even rain for that matter. But faith, which worked by grace, moved Noah to build an ark as he listened to God’s instructions. Noah spent 120 years building something that won him the ridicule and mockings of the world. He spent all that time building a thing (an ark) in preparation for something (rain) that no one had ever seen. After about 100 years of ark building, we might have concluded that Noah was an old, delusional, lazy man who was wasting his time. But by faith, Noah knew that God had instructed him to do this work and that he was not delusional, crazy or lazy, but rather a strategist.
Noah’s faith would speak to him and say – Noah, don’t you listen to the naysayers, just keep building. One hundred and twenty years later, we see just how wise of a strategist Noah was when he and his family were saved from the flood.
So today, when those around us call us crazy for believing, living and teaching the scandalous, radical, liberating grace of God, all we have to do is remember crazy Noah and how “dumb” and “full of heresy” he was for spending 120 years preaching about something that people had never heard of – salvation from a flood by getting on a “stupid” boat… …which boat is
Christ.