By Faith Noah Prepared an Ark for the Salvation of His House
Noah was a pattern to us, walking and living by faith in God and working together with God to build the ark as his salvation from the crooked and perverted generation he lived in.
As we all know it, faith does not originate from us – it is impossible for us as human beings to “muster up faith” or create faith by ourselves. Noah’s faith was a result of God’s continual infusing of His believing element into him, and this infusing was in God revealing Noah the wickedness of his generation, Noah walking with God, and God giving Noah the specific instructions of how to build the ark.
When we spend time with the Lord, He transfuses Himself into us to become faith in us. We don’t really know how to believe, and most people today don’t really understand HOW and WHY we believe in something and someone we have never seen, touched, spoken to, or felt physically. But we have faith because God infused us with His believing element!
Furthermore, what we see in Noah is that he worked together with God to build up the ark, which was his salvation from the age he lived in. We also need to work out our own salvation by building up the practical and present Christ in our experience.
Then, as we build up Christ and the church in our experience in a practical and present way, we will enter into God’s salvation as the ark to be saved from this crooked and perverted generation!
Noah Walked with God by Faith and He was a Herald of Righteousness
By receiving God’s revelation concerning His future redemption, Adam and Eve received a little of God’s dispensing. By taking God’s way of salvation and pleasing God with his life and offering, Abel enjoyed more of God’s dispensing.
By calling on the name of the Lord, Enosh received even more of God’s dispensing. By walking with God until God took him, Enoch constantly received God’s dispensing until he was translated.
Following in the footsteps of his ancestors, Noah walked with God by faith and was a herald of righteousness in his age (Heb. 11:7), and he enjoyed even more of God’s dispensing. He wasn’t a “special human being”; he simply walked with God by faith and had God’s element of faith infused into him!
Like his great-grandfather Enoch (Gen. 5:22-24), Noah walked with God by faith (Gen. 6:9) and as a result he became heir of God’s righteousness (Rom. 4:3, 9) and a herald of righteousness (2 Pet. 2:5) as a protest against the evil generation he lived in. Noah’s righteousness strengthened God’s standing and desire to execute His judgement upon that ungodly generation.
We are the Noah’s of today, those who not only offer Christ to God and call on the name of the Lord, but those who walk with God by faith and work together with God to build up the ark, Christ and the church, as an anti-testimony to what this evil generation does today.
If we simply come to the throne of grace today, we look to the Lord, we touch Him, and we find grace, we are infused with the believing God and we become those who have faith in God and walk by faith with Him.
As a result, we also become a herald of righteousness, one who stand against this evil generation and agree with God’s desire to judge it and bring in a new age, the age of the kingdom!
Working Together with Christ to Build Up the Ark by Working Out Our Own Salvation
Noah walked with God by faith, was a herald of righteousness in his age, and worked with God to build the ark for his salvation and the salvation of his family.
The ark is a type of Christ – we enter into Christ by building up Christ in our experience, and then we enter into Him to be saved not only from God’s judgement but also from this crooked and perverted generation.
This means that we need to build up Christ in our experience today so that we may enter into the Christ we have built up later, in order for us to be saved from God’s judgement and from this warped and twisted generation, and be saved into a new age, the age of the manifestation of the kingdom of the heavens!
For us to be co-workers with God to build up Christ in our experience we need to first be co-walkers with God, those who walk with God by faith. Then, the Christ we build up in our experience is not a historical Christ but a present Christ and a practical Christ.
As we see in Phil. 2:12-13, we need to work out our own salvation, that is, to build up Christ in our experience for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ.
Just like Noah, as we spend time with the Lord, prayerfully read His word, meet with the saints in the church, and fellowship with the Lord and the saints, we are infused with God, and His thoughts and intentions become ours.
Today we in the church life care not for many other things but for God’s interest, the building up of the church. We and our family (both our physical family and the saints in the church, our spiritual family) want to be saved from this crooked and perverted generation and to bring in the age of the kingdom!
Today we want to follow in the footsteps of our forefather Noah and walk with God, be a herald of righteousness to this generation, and work out our own salvation by building up the present and practical Christ in our experience today!
Noah was working out his own salvation when he was building the ark. We are working out our own salvation when we build Christ in our experience, when we live Him out as our salvation. We do this because it is God who operates in us both the willing and the working according to His good pleasure.
What Noah worked on and entered into was the ark – God’s salvation. What we work on and enter into is the present and practical Christ which was built up in our experience day by day!
Hallelujah, Christ and the church are the ark as our salvation from this age and from God’s judgement, and our way to be ushered into the next age!
Lord Jesus, infuse us more with Yourself as the believing ability. May we spend more time with You that Your divine element would be transfused and infused into us to become our believing ability. In ourselves and of ourselves we cannot believe. Lord, keep us walking with You by faith, so that we may also work together with You by faith! We want to be the co-walkers and the co-workers together with God. We want to work out our own salvation by building up the practical and present Christ in our experience! May we gain Christ more today so that He may be built up in us!
References and Further Reading
- Inspiration (besides the Word of God and my Christian experience): bro. Ed Marks’ speaking in this message and portions from, The Divine Dispensing of the Divine Trinity (ch. 2), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on the Crystallisation-Study of Genesis (1), week / msg 11, Noah — the Life and Work That Can Change the Age.
- Hymns on this topic:
# We need to work out our own salvation / By obeying the inner operating God.
# The ark was just God’s testimony on the earth that time. / For God had found a corporate man through whom His light could shine. / He needed something built through which He’d fully be expressed, / And now it is the local church where God is manifest.
# Dearest Lord, You’ve called us here, / And opened up Your heart. / O the joy to hear Your call / And enter in the Ark. / Saving us from day to day / O Lord, this is Your way. / In Yourself we stay afloat, / Above this wicked age today.
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