Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Alright everyone,

I’ve got a couple things as we start our time off tonight.

First, I wanted to recognize some of our people in this room.

If you are a youth group leader, or you served this past weekend as a leader at LIFT…would you stand up just for a minute?

Let’s show them some honor.

Here’s why I wanted to recognize that:

Being a part of the body of Christ is so much more than just consuming Sunday content.

Being a healthy disciple is so much more than just showing up to events.

It’s being a part of the body in a way that allows you to use your gifts…and your stage of life to serve others.

That’s what these people are doing…and did do this past weekend at our student conference.

One of the best things about this weekend, was being able to look around the room during worship and see…college min.…college

min.…college

leader…college min.

It was God revealing to me the influence that this ministry…and the people in this room can have on our church…can have on others.

If you’re not serving in ministry somewhere…and this is your church home.

I want you to consider how you can be serving.

Where Jesus might want you.

And if you’re unsure…come talk to me.

I’m sure I can help you find a ministry that needs someone like you.

Anyway…Romans says:

I wanted to show them a bit or respect and honor…because they deserve it.

Second thing I want to do before we dive into our passage...

I wanted to start tonight by giving you a little update with where we are at in our series in Hebrews 11.

I want to do this in order to give you some direction.

I know that many of you are actually reading Hebrews as a way to prepare yourself for Thursday night messages…and I’ll just tell you.

I love that.

Like, I’m here for that.

I love the questions you’ve been sending in..both to leadership and into our podcast.

We’ve answered a few of them, so keep on listening in the weeks to come and you’ll hear a few questions answered.

But anways…here’s where we are at.

We’ve had our introduction where we defined faith.

We spent essentially two weeks there as I preached one and we watched a message from Pastor Matt Chandler.

And then we spent our third week in this series looking at the faith of Abel, and the faith of Enoch.

Now, because we had to take a week off when my Dad passed away, I’ve had to shift a few things around.

Here’s what you should expect the next few weeks.

Tonight: We are covering the Faith of Noah.

And then over the next couple of weeks we will be almost in a little mini series covering the faith of Abraham.

Actually next week we will be starting with Abraham and Isaac, as Regent Erickson brings us the word…and then we will go back and talk about the faith of Abraham to be called out of

So let’s get into our passage tonight.

And as we do, I want to remind you of the foundation that the author of Hebrews has laid down.

First, is the definition of faith.

We need to keep this in mind as we look at each one of these people in the OT.

Our definition of Faith comes from the first verse of this chapter.

VERSE 1 SLIDE

That’s our working definition as we see the words “By Faith”.

Which, if you’ll remember, is seen at least 20 times in this chapter.

So when we see “by faith”…we are seeing the author say that by having assurance in the things hoped for…and being convicted of things not seen…this event came to pass.

That’s the first thing to keep in mind.

The second is found at the beginning of Hebrews 12…which is the capstone of Hebrews 11…the purpose statement behind it.

CHAPTER 12 SLIDE

So not only do we need to keep in mind the definition the author has given us…but we need to keep in mind the purpose behind looking at each one of these OT characters.

The purpose is that by looking at these witnesses in the OT, we would lay aside our weights/burdens....and our sins…and we would be encouraged to run the race of faith with endurance…and that we would turn our eyes to Jesus…who has authored and is perfecting our own faith.

So, with those two things in mind…let’s look at our passage for tonight.

Like I said, tonight we are looking at...

THE FAITH OF NOAH

And we see Noah come up in verse 7 of chapter 11.

Let’s look at it together…and go ahead and keep your eyes there because I’ll read the whole verse and then take it a few words at a time.

So BY FAITH…there’s that phrase again.

Meaning, by the vehicle of having assurance of things hoped for…and being convicted of things unseen…by that vehicle…what did Noah do?

He constructed an Ark.

And I love that in this first sentence…just in case we were starting to lose focus, the author of Hebrews makes sure to include part of the definition…Noah, by faith, constructed and ark…and why did he do that?

Because it says he was warned by God concerning events as yet unseen.

So, God warned him of something…something he couldn’t see (remember our definition of faith), warned him of something he couldn’t see…and that warning gave Noah the conviction to act.

The first thing we can learn about our own faith when looking at Noah is this.

FAITH PRODUCES ACTION

And first and foremost we need to revisit this time and time again that...

FAITH PRODUCES ACTION...TO SAVE YOU

Let’s look at this at the most basic ground level, and then build upon it.

Let’s start with the faith we are first given for salvation.

Remember our scripture from Ephesians a couple of weeks ago?

I’ll put it on the screen.

EPHESIANS SCRIPTURE

And also Jesus speaking in John.

JOHN SCRIPTURE

That’s Jesus saying that salvation starts with the Father drawing us…and Ephesians saying that the faith we have is a gift from God.

So in your life…if you are a Christian.

God gave you the gift of faith.

He opened your eyes to himself.

But what happened then?

If you were truly given the gift of faith…your were spurred into action.

Because...

FAITH PRODUCES ACTION

The faith placed in you, caused you to be spurred into the action of repentance, the action of confession, the action of submission, the action of belief.

Faith is the charger you plug your phone into every night that allows your phone to produce the actions that it does on a daily basis.

So without that action that Faith has produced in your life…you wouldn’t desire to be here.

You wouldn’t find this beneficial.

You wouldn’t want this.

But if you are a Christian…you do desire those things because God has given you a faith that has produced in you the actions to become one of his children.

Actions that we can’t boast in because God gave them to us in the first place…but actions that nonetheless were spurred on by Faith.

We have that, and we know that Noah had that type of faith as well.

Now, you’ll notice that we haven’t gone into the Genesis to read the story of Noah just yet, let’s do that now.

Go ahead and turn to Genesis 6.

I want you to see that Noah had the type of Faith we are talking about…the faith that led him to be a child of God.

Look at Genesis 6:9

Noah.

Walked.

With.

God.

Meaning…he was in relationship with him.