Hebrews 11:7 (HCSB)
By faith Noah, after he was warned about what was not yet seen and motivated by godly fear, built an ark to deliver his family. By faith he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.
The next exhibit in “the Hall of Faith” is Noah.
A mere ten generations after Adam, the sin and the brokenness caused by his original sin had multiplied and infected all humanity, so that “every scheme his mind thought of was nothing but evil all the time,” (Genesis 6:5). But in the midst of that deep spiritual darkness, the righteousness of Noah shone out like a beacon. In the whole of Scripture, only two men, Noah and his great grandfather Enoch, are described as “walking with God” (Genesis 5:22; 6:9).
God shared with Noah His plans to destroy all air-breathing life on the face of the earth with a global flood. But He also promised to save Noah and his family if he would be faithful to God’s commands and make an ark, a huge boat, exactly the way He showed him.
Noah demonstrated true faith, not by just believing what God told him, but by immediately acting on what he had been told. He got started at once constructing the ark, and he built it to exactly the specifications God had given, and with exactly the materials God had specified.
When it was finished, Noah stocked the ark with food and water as God had directed and made it ready for the animals. When they all showed up a week before the flood waters came (Genesis 7:8-10), Noah put them on board and prepared to depart.
If Noah had merely believed what God had told him was going to happen, but took no obedient action in response, he and his whole family would have been lost in the flood along with everyone else. That kind of faith, belief without obedient action, cannot save (James 2:14-20). It is the faith that not only believes, but obeys, that instantly acts on the command, the promise, the prophecy, that is able to save.
Father, so many of us have been taught that faith is all about what we believe, and we have been taught to divorce our actions (or inaction) from the equation. But this example from the writer of Hebrews puts the lie to that concept and vindicates much-maligned James in his insistence on the marriage of belief and action into the organic whole that You call “faith”. Help me, Lord, to not just believe what You have told me. Help me to let that firm belief also move me to faithful, obedient action every day. Amen.