Just believe: It's easy right?

Once again, some thoughts from Hebrews 11. This week I'm teaching on Noah and Abraham's faith, and something that I have been burdened about for a while comes up in this text.

Somewhere in Mesopotamia between the Tigris and the Euphrates River, miles of miles from any ocean, Noah’s whole life was one continued concentrated prepara­tion for that which God said would happen. What would possess him to do that?? He believed God. Saving faith leads to obedience. Don’t think, as so many modern Christians do, that the faith you see in this chapter is just add on to Salvation and has nothing to do with it. That these are super saints. The faith that saves will lead to a life of obedience. Not perfection, but a measure of obedience nonetheless.

Let’s think for a minute. Let’s say God warned Noah, and he said, “Oh, ya I believe you God, that’s gonna be terrible”, but then he never built an ark. Would he have been saved? No. But this is key!!!! Why not? Was it primarily because he didn’t build the ark, or because he didn’t really believe God? It was because he didn’t really have faith.
Put it in today’s terms. Let’s say God warns someone, “If you don’t receive my son as Lord and Savior, as the one who paid the price for your sins, you will have no forgiveness of your sins, and you will face judgment for eternity. Repent and believe!” And that person says, “Oh ya, I believe you God, I’m saved, I did that back when I was a kid ya, it’s gonna be terrible”, but then their life is characterized by complete disobedience and they couldn’t care less about God. According to the example of Noah, will that person be saved?? No. Is it because they didn’t obey and love God? Not primarily, it is primarily because they didn’t have saving faith. They didn’t really believe God.

That is what this chapter is all about, because if these Hebrew Christians to whom he is writing, left following Jesus and went back to temple Jewish worship, they weren’t Christians. They never really believed. That’s why the verse right before this chapter says “But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.” In other words, the evidence of authentic, real, saving faith is the fact that it presses on, it doesn’t draw back.

Praying a prayer one time, "asking Jesus into your heart", and then living for yourself is not salvation, it’s delusion, and it’s playing games with God, and it reveals the fact that you never really believed him.

I am so burdened about this, because I feel that there are so many people in our small town American Christian culture where everybody’s a "Christian", that will say, Lord, Lord, I did this in your name, and he will say, depart from me, I don’t know you. How many people have a false assurance of some prayer they prayed as a kid, or the fact that they grew up in church, or whatever, and they don’t know God. This is serious.

Noah’s faith pleased God because it was real, and that was evidenced by the fact
that he built the ark.