Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

We’re in week #2 of our Heroes series. In this series, God is challenging our preconceived notions of heroes. We often see heroes as someone with extraordinary powers or abilities.

Spiderman can shoot webbing from his wrists. The Green Lantern has a wicked cool power ring that can do practically anything. The Flash has super speed. The Incredible Hulk has super strength. And Superman has it all in one package. That’s what we think of when we think of heroes. A hero is someone with special abilities and powers. In other words, a hero is someone who is not like me.

God is challenging us to rethink heroes. In this series, God is using some classic heroes of the Old Testament to show us that a hero isn’t someone with superpowers. Instead, a real hero is an ordinary individual, complete with flaws and shortcomings, who does one thing…sells out to God, 100%.

Last week, God used the story of Daniel in the Lions’ Den to reveal a truth about heroes. Heroes are rebels. Instead of being soft, compliant, never-rock-the-boat kinds of people, God has called his people to rebel. Rebellion is a crucial component in being a hero.

Today, we’re going back to another classic story. Maybe you’ve heard it. It’s the story of Noah.

Let’s pray as we get ready to take another radical step toward becoming a hero of God.

Last week, God taught us that heroes are rebels.

This week, God is going to reveal to us that heroes are fools. The people that God makes into heroes are willing to look foolish in front of anyone. Most of the time, if God sees you as a hero, a lot of your friends and family will see you as a fool. The story of Noah is chocked full of apparent foolishness, but at the end of the day, God uses him as an incredible hero.

For some of you, your only knowledge of the story of Noah comes from the movie Evan Almighty. That’s a problem. Let’s just say that the movie took some artistic license with the story.

If you’re unfamiliar with the story of Noah, let me give you the Reader’s Digest version of it. You can read the complete story in Genesis 6-8.

In the story, God took stock of his creation. He looked at all the people on earth, and he wasn’t at all happy with what he saw.

Genesis 6 tells us, “The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.

So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.” (Genesis 6:5-7, NIV)

Because of the endless wickedness of mankind, God devised a plan to use a flood to wipe out his creation from the face of the earth. All people on earth would be destroyed. All people, except Noah and his family.

The Bible says, “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.” (Genesis 6:9, NIV)

Because of Noah’s righteousness, God spared him and his family. He instructed Noah to build a huge ship. You might know it as Noah’s Ark. Once the ark was constructed, God instructed Noah to gather all kinds of animals on the ship. God then sent an epic flood that destroyed the entire population of the earth, except for the inhabitants of the ark.

There’s the story of Noah in less than two minutes. Maybe it’s the first time you ever heard it. That’s cool. If you grew up in the church, then it’s probably the thousandth time you’ve heard it, isn’t it? But regardless of whether you know the story or not, we’re going to see that it is a powerful picture of the kind of person that God can use as a hero. As we dig deeper into the story of Noah, we find out that heroes are fools.

Heroes live with a foolish obedience. As you explore the life of Noah, you find that his life was marked with obedience to God time after time after time…even when that obedience seemed absolutely foolish to the people around him.

My favorite verse in the entire story of Noah is Genesis 7:1. “The LORD then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation.” (Genesis 7:1, NIV)

When you think about it, that verse could only be written about someone who lived with nothing less than absolute foolish obedience.

God told Noah, “Go into the ark.” The whole reason there was an ark in the first place was foolish obedience.

How would you react if God told you to build this huge, 450-foot-long boat in the middle of a dry, desert-like climate? Seriously, if I thought I heard God tell me to do something like that, I’d probably blame it on too many late night burritos. It’s crazy. Absolutely foolish.

And Noah obeyed anyway. He painstakingly built the ark exactly according to the specs that God gave him. He looked like a total fool in the eyes of everyone who saw what he was doing. I’m sure he received an unbelievable amount of ridicule. And he obeyed anyway.

But it wasn’t the first time that had happened. God told Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation.” (Genesis 7:1, NIV)

This sounds unbelievable, but Noah was the only righteous person in an entire generation. You think he took some heat because of his lifestyle? You’d better believe it. His commitment to God was seen as foolish by everyone else, literally.

Noah was a fool his entire life. He foolishly obeyed God by living a righteous life in the most corrupt culture to ever appear on earth, before or since. He foolishly took on the ark project, even though there wasn’t the slightest sign of a sprinkle, let alone a worldwide flood. Noah’s faith drove him to look foolish time and time again. But he never wavered.

This past week, comedian George Carlin died at the age of 71. He grew up in a Catholic family, but he left that faith in his adulthood. In fact, he built much of his comic career on his vehement hatred for faith, particularly Christian faith.

One of the blogs I read had a post on Carlin’s life this week. I watched the YouTube video included with that post. The video was ten minutes of George Carlin calling all believers stupid, idiots, morons, and a lot of other things that I won’t repeat. I watched the entire thing. I’d show you a portion of the video, but it’s way, way too offensive.

I had several different thoughts and feelings as I watched. One of the things that struck me the most was, as Carlin’s rancor got nastier, the applause got louder. The more mean-spirited he was toward Christians, the more his audience cheered.

Our culture, like Noah’s, is one that sees the people of God as easy targets. We are a walking, talking joke to our culture. Believers are weak-minded, idiotic people who, as George Carlin said, rely on some “invisible man” to give their lives purpose and meaning and hope. That has always been culture’s perception toward our faith.

But You can’t allow people’s perception to dictate your life’s direction. Most of the time, you can either please people or you can please God. Rarely can you do both. So if you’re focused on directing your life based on the perceptions of people, how do you think God perceives that?

A hero lives with a foolish obedience. Obedience to God even when their culture views them as abject failures and fools.

Look at how Noah is described in these two verses.

Genesis 6:22 - “Noah did everything just as God commanded him.” (NIV)

Genesis 7:5 - “And Noah did all that the LORD commanded him.” (NIV)

See a pattern? Two times in two chapters, the Bible tells us the depth of Noah’s obedience. I say this all the time, but I’m going to say it again. When the Bible repeats itself, stop. Don’t gloss over it. When you see something repeated in Scripture, that means that God is trying to make a point. When the Bible repeats itself, there is a critically important truth that we can’t afford to miss.

Two times in the span of just six verses, God repeats this point. Noah did “everything” that God commanded. Noah obeyed “all” that God commanded him to do. Get the picture? We can’t be selective in our obedience to God.

Certain Biblical commands aren’t that difficult to follow. The Bible says, “Do not murder.” (Exodus 20:13, CEV) Honestly, I’ve never had a problem with that one. When it comes to this particular Bible command, I’m batting 1.000. Every night, I go to bed thinking, “Man, I did it again! Another day where I didn’t murder anybody! I am awesome!” Following this command is pretty much a piece of cake for me.

But then Jesus comes along. And he said, “You have heard that our ancestors were told, ‘You must not murder. If you commit murder, you are subject to judgment.’ But I say, if you are even angry with someone, you are subject to judgment!

If you call someone an idiot, you are in danger of being brought before the court. And if you curse someone, you are in danger of the fires of hell.” (Matthew 5:21-22, NLT)

Leave it to Jesus to really mess things up. I was perfectly happy to just not murder anybody. For me, obeying that Scripture is easy peezy lemon squeezy. Then Jesus has to come along and say, “Well, murder is only part of the deal. Actually, I’m telling you not even to talk negatively about someone else. That is the same as committing murder in your heart.” When it comes to this command, my batting average drops significantly. That’s not so easy.

But heroes live with foolish obedience, and that means that we can’t have selective obedience. The Bible tells us that Noah obeyed every command God gave him…even the difficult ones.

In our lives, we have to understand that the Word of God is a complete package. When it comes to the Bible, you either accept it all or you accept it not at all. Cherry picking the stuff that I like and leaving out the stuff that I don’t isn’t an option.

There are times when obedience isn’t all that difficult. There are other times when obeying God is going royally mess things up. It’s going to turn your life upside down. It’s going to make you look like a fool. Can you obey, even in those times? That’s the foolish obedience that God uses to turn us into heroes.

But to foolishly obey God, we’ve got to foolishly trust God. Heroes live with a foolish trust.

Think of the amount of trust that Noah had put in God. He had to build this ark with no sign of rain on the horizon. He trusted that God had sovereign control over nature, and that if he said it was going to rain, then it was going to rain.

God told Noah to build this massive boat, but the Bible never says that God gave him any money for the project. Noah not only had to build it, he had to bankroll it. He had to trust God enough to put his financial life on the line. You’ve got to think that, if there had been no flood, Noah would not only have had this big, useless boat in his front yard, but he would have also been in financial ruin.

“Sir, why are you filing bankruptcy?”

“Um…I built a boat, because I thought it was going to rain. And…um..it didn’t.”

Throughout this story, you see Noah placing what seemed to be a foolish amount of trust in God. But I want to zero in on his life while he was on the ark. That part of the story doesn’t get as much attention, but God really revealed some incredible stuff to me in that part of the story this week. I had read this stuff before, but it just came into crystal clear focus for me this week.

In Genesis 7, the Bible says, “On that day Noah and his wife went into the boat with their three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives. They took along every kind of animal, tame and wild, including the birds.

Noah took a male and a female of every living creature with him, just as God had told him to do. And when they were all in the boat, God closed the door.” (Genesis 7:13-16, CEV)

Who closed the door of the ark? God. I’ve read that before. I knew that was true. But God used that truth to nail me with one question.

Can I trust God when he closes a door?

Actually, I think this had to be the moment where it was the most difficult for Noah to trust God. Beyond anything else we’ve talked about, I think that watching that door close, hearing it slam shut, required every ounce of trust that Noah had.

When he was gathering material, even when he was building the ark…he could have stopped. At any point, he could have walked away from the project. But now, when God closed that door, Noah was all in. There was no option to back out or walk away. Win or lose, he was in this thing.

Trust isn’t so hard when doors are open. When we seem to have options. But what do you do when God closes a door so tightly that you can’t open it again? How do you react when you watch him close the door on what you thought was a “sure thing?”

A few years ago, before I came to Amelia, I interviewed for several different ministry positions. I received several rejection letters, none of which were surprising. I really hadn’t gotten very far in the interview process with these churches.

But then, there was “the one.” This ministry position was the one for me. Everything in the world seemed to point to “the one.” I submitted my résumé, and I got a quick and very positive reply. I knew this was “the one.”

We set up an interview. I went to the interview, and I knocked it out of the park! I thought it was the best interview I ever had.

Apparently they thought it went well, too, because they called me back for a second interview. Ok, now, without a doubt, this position is “the one.” This is the position I’ve been looking for.

The second interview was grueling, but it still went great. I told my wife not to touch me, because judging by some of my answers, I was on fire! Then, before I left, they informed me that they were interviewing one other candidate. That took me back just a little bit, but I wasn’t worried. After all, this was a sure thing. This job was “the one.”

Then I got a phone call a couple of weeks later. That other candidate? They hired him instead. They were nice about it. The guy told me, “We think you’re an awesome candidate, but…” The rest of it really didn’t matter. What mattered was that the sure thing…wasn’t.

I didn’t have any other job prospects on the horizon. This was the only iron I had in the fire. This was it. The door that I was so sure that God had opened for me…he slammed it shut.

And I’d like to say that I reacted with Noah-like trust when he closed that door, but I didn’t. You ever yelled at God before? I did. For a while, my prayers were nothing more than rants and raves. God closed a door in my life, I was devastated by that, and I let him know.

But God saw the entire picture, and I only saw a microscopic piece of it. God knew that he was preparing me and our church here at Amelia to join forces. And I thank God everyday that “the one,” the “sure thing,” didn’t work out.

You see, when God closed that door, I viewed it as a setback. But actually, God was using it as a setup. He was setting me up for greater blessings. He was setting me up for something more. He was setting me up to accomplish something greater for his Kingdom.

Go back to Noah…when God closed that door, it had to be a moment where it was very difficult to trust God. But instead of a setback, closing that door was a setup for the activity of God.

If God hadn’t closed that door, he would have never purged the world of evil. He also would never have shown grace and mercy to Noah and his family. He would never have used Noah as creation’s second chance. Noah would have never become the second Adam which God would use to repopulate the earth. It all started when God closed a door.

When God closes a door, it always feels like a setback at the time. Some of you are there right now. You’ve seen a door slam shut in your life and it has sent you reeling. But this is where trust comes in. When God closes a door, can you trust that, instead of a setback, God is going to use it as a setup?

It may not happen quickly. It probably won’t be on your timetable. And while you’re waiting, God has a habit of falling silent.

Noah was on the ark for over a year. It was approximately 370 days from the day God closed that door to the day Noah stepped off the ark after the flood. You think that, in a year’s time on this boat, Noah had more than a few doubts?

I’m claustrophobic. Stuck on this boat, in cramped spaces surrounded by loud, stinking animals…I would have gone insane by month 2.

And not only was Noah closed up in this boat for over a year, but God, who instructed him to build this boat, fell silent. We have no record of God saying anything to Noah during that entire year on the ark.

This is often how God works in our lives. He shuts a door, then he shuts his mouth…and he waits.

When my sure-fire ministry position went up in smoke, I’d like to tell you that, the very next day, I saw a job posting for the ministry position here at Amelia. Actually, it was a long time before that happened. And during that time period, I had no significant job leads at all. I almost gave up and quit the ministry. I was really, really close. God had closed the door and then seemed to just walk away.

You ever had that happen in your life? You’ve watched God slam a door regarding your job, your family, your finances, your health. And then, for what seemed like an eternity, God sat back and silently did nothing. But now you can look back and see how that wasn’t a setback, but merely a setup for something else he had planned for you.

Others of you…you can’t look back on that situation because you’re involved in it right now. The door has been closed, God has gone silent, and that’s where you are today. I’d love to be able to tell you, “Just hang on. The end is in sight. It’s almost over.” I’d love to tell you that, but I can’t because I can’t guarantee that it’s true.

But I can tell you this. One of the linchpins of my faith is that blessings reside on the other side of the trial. Great resistance indicates even greater reward on the other side. New levels of struggle indicate new horizons of blessings.

It’s a test of trust. Can you still trust God when he closes a door? Can you still trust God when it feels like he goes silent right when you need him the most?

Heroes live with a foolish trust. It’s foolish because this absolutely makes no sense to people who don’t have God in their lives. And a lot of times, it doesn’t even make sense to us as God’s people. It defies our human wisdom and logic.

But listen to these verses from 1 Corinthians.

From chapter 1: “For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.” (1 Corinthians 1:25, NIV)

And I love these verses from 1 Corinthians 3: “Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a ‘fool’ so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.” (1 Corinthians 3:18-19a, NIV)

People have always thought that following God is foolish, even crazy. If there are people in your life who think your obedience and trust in God is foolish, you’re in good company. That’s the way people looked at Noah. It’s even how people looked at Jesus.

Look at these verses from Mark 3. “Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.” (Mark 3:20-21, NIV)

Jesus’ own family thought he was out of his mind! They thought he was foolish, wacked out, and crazy! Some of you have families who think you’re a fool because of your commitment to Christ. And I’m here to tell you that you’re in the best possible company because Jesus’ family thought he was a loon!

The fact is that heroes are fools. In the eyes of our world, our commitment to following, honoring, and pleasing God is nothing short of total foolishness.

Heroes live with a foolish obedience. Obeying God, even when it doesn’t make sense. Obeying God, even when it isn’t easy.

Heroes live with a foolish trust. Trusting God, even when he closes a door. Trusting God, even when he seems to fall silent. Trusting that, instead of a setback, he’s using our situation as a setup to do something far greater.

Heroes are fools. Are you willing to play the fool in order to be a hero?

Mike Edmisten

Tags: Genesis, Noah, obedience, trust, Heroes