When God's Word Sounds Ridiculous

By: Stan Mast

Scripture Reading: Genesis 6-9

April 26th, 2009

In last week’s message, I made a very strong claim. I said that listening to God is at the heart of being a Christian and I elicited the words of Jesus at the very beginning of his public ministry as support for my claim. In Matthew 4:4, after the Devil’s first attempt to stop Jesus’ mission, Jesus responded with these famous words: “Man does not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” Those are Jesus’ first recorded words after he heard God’s voice at his baptism. According to Matthew 3:17, God had said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” You might call those words the great commission of Jesus, or the great blessing of Jesus that sent him on his way to the cross. Hearing God’s voice was crucial to Jesus’ mission, even though he himself was God’s eternal Son. At the end of his public ministry, Jesus gave his disciples their great commission in Matthew 28:19. “Go into all the world and make disciples, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” All of that is why I say that listening to and obeying the word of God as spoken by and in Jesus is the heart of Christian discipleship. But listening to God is not so simple or easy. Often we’re too busy to hear God’s voice. Or we get confused by the multiplicity of voices vying for our attention and mistake a false teacher or our own imagination or even a demonic voice for the voice of God. Some time ago Neale Donald Walsch was very popular because of his books about his conversations with God. As I read Walsch, I knew he hadn’t spoken with God, because the voice he heard contradicted all kinds of things the Bible says. And as I said last week, the Bible is the canon, the standard, the authoritative Word of God to humanity. If the voice we hear contradicts the Bible, it can’t be the voice of the living God who sent Jesus to be the Savior of the world. It is difficult to hear the voice of the true God because there are so many other voices competing for our spiritual ear. Other times we struggle to hear God’s voice because of the sheer difficulty of his Word to us. And that’s what I want to focus on today and next week—listening to God when God says something that is challenging or scary or sounds just plain ridiculous. Today we’re going to explore the famous and controversial story of Noah, to whom God spoke a good deal. He was the first person to hear God say a ridiculous thing. “Make yourself an ark.” Of course, when I use that word ridiculous, I don’t mean that any genuine word from God actually is ridiculous, but it can surely seem that way to us and to the world around us. This story reminds us that when you become a person who listens carefully to God, you will occasionally hear God speak a word that sounds ridiculous to you. The question is what will you do when God speaks that ridiculous word to you? And what will God do if you trust him enough to obey him even when his word to you seems ridiculous? God’s word about building an ark seems to come out of the blue, like the punch line of a joke without the rest of the joke. And it does come out of the blue, in a sense, because it comes from God who had been watching the human race. What he saw was no joke. It was a tragedy, because what he saw was corruption, says Genesis 6:12. The earth was covered by a layer of corruption, pollution, filth higher than the mountains, and it needed to be washed clean. Genesis 6:5 describes the corruption in more detail. It wasn’t composed of carbon dioxide or sulfur or other tiny air born particulates; it was composed of a great slimy smelly quivering blob of human wickedness. It was so bad that the thoughts of every human heart were inclined toward evil all the time. As a result, the earth God had filled with peace and love at the beginning was now full of violence. And God was just sick about it; Genesis 6:6 says, “The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth and his heart was filled with pain.” So God spoke his first word to Noah, a terrifying word that explains the ridiculous word that follows: “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.” Now I’m well aware that many contemporary folks are troubled by this wholesale extermination of the human race. I mean, it seems so radical, so cruel, so total. What about all the innocent people? But, of course, that’s the point of the opening verses of Genesis 6—there were no innocent people in all the earth, and they had ruined the earth. As I was preparing this message, I received a phone call from a friend who had horrifying news. Her son had been murdered and then burned to ashes. Such violence is inconceivable, but our world is filled with it. And Genesis 6 says that it was even worse in those days. We’re so concerned these days about the environment. If we ruin the earth with our pollution, we can’t live here, and neither can our grandchildren. Genesis 6 says that the moral pollution of the human race had completely ruined the earth in those days. We cannot imagine how wicked humans were and how ruined the earth was, and that’s why this story sounds cruel. But God in his love for future generations and for the earth itself simply had to do something. What he decided to do was to start over, not by creating the human race from dust again, but by wiping the earth clean with water and saving the one man who had found favor in the eyes of the Lord, along with his family. How would God do that salvation? Well, it began with this ridiculous word—“So make yourself an ark…” The popular contemporary theologian Bill Cosby helped my generation hear how ridiculous this command was. Anybody who has ever heard Bill Cosby’s comedy routine on this story knows what Noah said next. “Right! What’s an ark?” Cosby’s comedy is irreverent, to say the least, but it does help us hear how ridiculous this word from God may have seemed to Noah. Even if he knew exactly what an ark was, he must have been blown away by the proportions of this floating zoo. It was as long as one and a half football fields and as wide as one field and nearly five stories high, complete with a roof and a door and several decks inside. And here’s Noah all by himself, a 600 year old man. How could one man build something that huge, even if his sons helped him, and even if their wives joined in? Where would he get a blueprint for such a massive project? For that matter, where would he get the lumber and the nails and the tools and the pitch and the money to buy all that? And where on earth could he construct something that huge—in his backyard? I’m told that it takes an experienced construction crew with modern power tools about a year to build a million dollar home with 6000 square feet of living space. This mammoth boat would take literally years. John Calvin thought it took Noah 100 years to build it. “Make yourself an ark!” Right! Ridiculous! A recent PBS documentary on Noah’s ark said that the boat building skills required to construct a ship the size of Noah’s ark did not exist until fairly recently in history. It simply isn’t possible that this story is literally true said that program. That theory may well be true, and if so, that makes this a ridiculous story. But that documentary didn’t take into account that the God who gave this ridiculous command to Noah was the architect and engineer and builder of the universe. We’re told that Noah built the ark, but could it be that God played a role in the construction of that mammoth floating zoo using skills and techniques discovered only later by modern ship builders? The mockery of our modern media is an echo of the ridicule Noah must have heard from his neighbors, and perhaps originally from his family. “Hey Noah! Whatcha doin?” “I’m building an ark.” “Right, what’s an ark?” Or if they knew what an ark was, don’t you think they asked, “Why?” “Because God told me that he’s going to wash the earth clean of human wickedness with an immense flood and he wants to save me and my family through this ark.” “Well, isn’t that special! You say that God spoke to you? How did you know it was God? Have you been drinking too much wine again, Noah?” Can you imagine the ridicule? “Make yourself an ark.” What a ridiculous word from God! But did you hear what Noah did in response to this ridiculous word. Gen. 6:22 says, “Noah did everything just as God commanded.” He didn’t ask any of the questions raised in Bill Cosby’s routine. He did none of the second guessing we do when God’s word seems even a tiny bit difficult. He had none of the hesitation, none of the doubt that sweeps over us when God’s words cause some discomfort. He simply obeyed God. And when the ark was completed, God said to Noah in Genesis 7:1, “Go into the ark, you and your family, and all the animals as I have commanded…” He continues in verse 4, “Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.” And once again, says verse 5, “Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.” It hadn’t rained a drop. Life was going on as usual all around him. And God says, “Leave all that behind. I’m about to judge the earth and save you. Go into the ark.” And Noah simply obeys. Why? Because, says Genesis 6:9, he was righteous, blameless among the people of that time. So he obeyed because he was such a good man? No, he was such a good man because, says the end of Genesis 6:9, he walked with God. That means he had a personal relationship with God, so that when God spoke a word of command, it didn’t sound ridiculous to him. He knew God. And when God make a promise to him, he knew God would keep it. In Genesis 6:18 God made the promise that drove Noah to build the ark and that finally drove him into the ark. “I will establish my covenant with you….” Noah had such faith in God that he trusted and obeyed, even when God’s voice said a ridiculous thing. And do you know what God did in response to Noah’s faith? Genesis 7 says that awful flood lasted over a year. Can you imagine what it was like to be cooped up in that boat that long with just your family and all those animals as the whole world died around you? Day after day, month after month, you listen to the rain and the wind, you pitch and roll, you wonder where God is in this terrible time. But then, says Genesis 8:1, “God remembered Noah….” God kept his covenant promise to Noah and through that ark preserved life on earth. It was a whole new world. In fact, if you read Genesis 9 carefully, you will hear echoes of Genesis 1 and 2, where God created the world and put man in charge the first time. Because Noah trusted God enough to obey God’s voice even when it sounded ridiculous, the earth and its human rulers had a new lease on life, a long lease. Because, you see, God promised that as long as the earth endures, life would go on without interruption. Floods there would be, but never again a flood that would end the world. Has God ever spoken a word to you that sounded ridiculous? In a sexually explicit culture, God says in the 7th commandment, “Sexual intercourse belongs only in the context of marriage.” But you are deeply in love and your hormones are raging, and you say, “That’s ridiculous. Everyone’s doing it.” In a world where everyone lies, God says in the 9th commandment, “You shall not bear false witness.” But you are faced with a situation in which a carefully worded lie will get you out of a lot of trouble or make you a lot of money. So you say, “That’s ridiculous. Just this one time won’t hurt.” In a world filled with hostility and violence, Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” But you’ve been deeply wounded by an enemy, so you say, “That’s ridiculous. I’m going to get her.” In that same sermon, Jesus said, “Don’t worry about your life, what you shall eat or drink or wear. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will given to you as well.” But you can’t find a good job and your house is in foreclosure, so you say with more than a little bitterness, “That’s ridiculous.” Now, of course, not every word that you think comes from God actually does. I think of Russell Banks’ account of the life of John Brown in a novel entitled Cloudsplitter. John Brown was a fierce nineteenth century opponent of slavery who was convinced that God had told him to murder slaveholders. Everybody else thought that was ridiculous, and they were right. But Brown obeyed and the results were disastrous. When you think a ridiculous word is from God, be sure to do three things. First, check that word with the infallible word of God. Does it contradict any specific command or promise in the Bible? Second, consult with other Christ followers who are attuned to the still small voice of God’s Spirit. Do people devoted to following Jesus agree that this word comes from God? And third, consider whether that word leads you to follow Christ. Will doing this ridiculous word make you a more faithful disciple of Jesus? But when you know God has spoken to you, Noah shows you what to do. “He did everything just as the God had commanded him.” Even though it sounds ridiculous and the whole world thinks you are a crazy fanatic, “Make yourself an ark and go into the ark.” That seems so risky, doesn’t it? Going against the flood of public opinion or at least the flow of your peer group seems so dangerous. How can you do that? Well, we’ve seen that Noah could do it because he walked with God. He had a powerful faith. Where can you find the faith to obey all these ridiculous words from God? By focusing on that wooden contraption that has saved you. I’m speaking of the cross of Christ, of course. Think of it this way. Noah had to saw and hammer together a huge wooden ark to save his own life. God has already built a small wooden ark to save your life. As Jesus hung on that cross, God opened the floodgates of heaven and poured out his judgment on the sins of the human race even though the thoughts of human hearts are inclined toward evil all the time. By the death of his own Son, God has saved all who will trust God’s ridiculous word about the cross. Turn away from the sin that is everywhere, and take refuge in Christ. If you will trust what the apostle Paul in I Corinthians 1 called the foolishness of the cross, you will get a whole new lease on life. And if you obey the voice of God as it comes in the Scripture and by the Spirit, even when that voice says something that sounds ridiculous even to you as a believer in Christ, you will build a solid new life that can withstand the floods of life. Here’s how Jesus put it at the end of the Sermon on the Mount with all its ridiculous words. “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the wind blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the wind blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” So, who’s looking ridiculous now? The foolish masses who laughed at this fanatic who thought he heard the voice of God or this man of faith, who did what the Lord commanded, made an ark, climbed in, and survived the flood to start life anew?

About the Author

Stan Mast

Stan Mast has been the Minister of Preaching at the LaGrave Avenue Christian Reformed Church in downtown Grand Rapids, MI for the last 18 years. He graduated from Calvin Theological Seminary in 1971 and has served four churches in the West and Midwest regions of the United States. He also served a 3 year stint as Coordinator of Field Education at Calvin Seminary. He has earned a BA degree from Calvin College and a Bachelor of Divinity and a Master of Theology from Calvin and a Doctor of Ministry from Denver Seminary. He is happily married to Sharon, a special education teacher, and they have two sons and four grandchildren. Stan is a voracious reader and works out regularly. He also calls himself a car nut and an “avid, but average” golfer.

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