00:00Hello everyone, this is William Chambers. It is good to be here with you all today.
00:04It's good to be here with you every day, looking at the Word of God.
00:09Let us just dive in. I have a lot to say.
00:11If I had a title for this message, I would call it,
00:14Don't Get Distracted. You Still Have an Art to Build.
00:22What I mean by having an art to build is each and every believer
00:26has stewardship, responsibilities before God.
00:30You have something you're responsible of building.
00:33Some people built an ark, some people killed Goliath,
00:36some people built temples for God, some people.
00:38But we have something to build for God.
00:43By faith, Noah being warned of God of things not seen as yet.
00:48Move with fear. Prepare an ark to the saving of his house
00:52by the which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness,
00:58which is by faith.
01:02So, Noah was warned.
01:05The Bible says Noah was warned of God.
01:09Meaning, Noah had a word from God.
01:13Before Noah ever swung a hammer,
01:16before Noah ever put some boards down,
01:18he had received a word from God.
01:20He was given his assignment.
01:23He was given divine instructions on what he was supposed to do.
01:28Now, Noah's job was not an attractive one.
01:31To build a huge ark, having never seen rain,
01:35many of us are distracted because we spend a lot of time
01:39comparing our assignments to others.
01:41Well, my assignment don't look like theirs.
01:44Their assignment looks better than mine.
01:46Noah did not do that.
01:48Noah's responsibility was not to impress other people.
01:51Noah's responsibility was not to impress his generation.
01:55His responsibility was to obey God,
01:59and that goes for us as well,
02:01no matter what it looked like.
02:02It might look foolish.
02:04Building a ship, he looked foolish.
02:05The Bible says that he was building things not seen as yet,
02:09meaning nobody understood what he was doing.
02:14Noah likely looked foolish and strange to the culture around him.
02:20And sometimes God will call you to do something that looks silly, look foolish.
02:25And everybody around you thinking it looks dumb,
02:28don't make no kind of sense at all.
02:30Nobody around you may not understand the purpose,
02:33but you are to show your faith by moving in something that looks crazy.
02:39Many people abandon their mission because they don't want to look strange.
02:43They don't want to look weird.
02:44They don't want to look, they don't want to be embarrassed.
02:47They don't want to stand out.
02:48And they missed their whole entire mission
02:51because they want the approval of men above the approval of God.
02:55What will people say when they see me doing this?
02:58People are not supporting me.
03:00Help us today.
03:01Faith calls Noah to prepare for a reality that no one else could see.
03:08You got to be careful of telling people your mission sometimes
03:11because sometimes people don't see it and they'll discourage you.
03:14But Noah didn't let anything distract him.
03:16Nobody could see his faith, kept him moving,
03:19though nobody seen the purpose of why he was doing what he was doing.
03:23Sometimes the hardest part of obedience is for us to work before it makes sense.
03:29It don't make no kind of sense.
03:31Ain't no water, ain't no floods, nowhere, Noah.
03:33Noah was probably a laughingstock.
03:36They're probably saying, oh, you're pulling a Noah right now
03:39when you're doing something that don't make no sense.
03:41Noah was doing something that don't make sense.
03:44His name was probably a household laughing joke.
03:47But it did not stop him.
03:49Help us, Lord.
03:50Noah refused to allow how foolish he looked to distance him from the assignment.
03:56I'm going to look foolish.
03:58That's not going to distance me.
03:59No matter how it looks, I'm going to do what God called us to do.
04:05Noah kept consistent with it, too.
04:08Anyone can start building for a few days.
04:10But Noah continued year after year without seeing a flood.
04:15Year after year being ridiculed.
04:17This means Noah had battles to face.
04:21And if you're going to do the will of God,
04:22you're going to have some inward battles while you're doing it year after year.
04:25Meaning, he was battling discouragement.
04:30Oh, I know.
04:31Oh, Lord, help me.
04:33Battling discouragement like, you know, I didn't hear God correctly.
04:37He was battling loneliness.
04:39Because when you're doing something for God, people don't want to follow.
04:42All he had was his family.
04:43Everybody wasn't, all his friends and neighbors wasn't trying to get on board.
04:46And when you're doing something with God, you oftentimes have to stand alone and do it.
04:52So, he was battling loneliness.
04:54Battling ridicule.
04:55They're ridiculing him.
04:56Battling embarrassment.
04:58And sometimes doing the will of God, you know, it's embarrassing to our human pride.
05:02But that shouldn't stop us.
05:04He was battling delay.
05:06Because you know there had to be some setbacks in what he was doing every now and then.
05:09So, he was battling a lot of things.
05:12But none of that stopped him.
05:14Noah refused.
05:16To be stopped.
05:17Noah refused to be distracted.
05:19The Bible says that he prepared that art.
05:23Nothing distracted him.
05:24Imagine the distraction that Noah faced.
05:26He was ridiculed, mocked.
05:29Of course, there was opposition.
05:30He probably got tired.
05:32He was doing daily labor all the time.
05:35Yet, the art kept going up board by board.
05:38Keep doing what God called you to do brick by brick.
05:41Board by board.
05:42I will not let anything stop you.
05:44We're talking about not getting distracted because you have an art to build.
05:49Lord, help us today.
05:51He was preparing the art in a generation filled with violence, corruption, and spiritual blindness.
05:57Yet, he did not allow the culture to pull him away from his assignment.
06:01I'm not going to let friends, family, pull me away from my assignment.
06:04I'm not going to let my agenda pull me away from God's assignment.
06:07This is the mindset that you have to have a Noah mindset.
06:11Noah built through distractions, through criticism, through exhaustion.
06:15And everything that he did, every board he put up was a great act of faith because his faith sustains
06:24focus.
06:24And that's where people get off track.
06:27Can you sustain focus until the mission is complete?
06:32Can you keep going?
06:34Help us.
06:35Have mercy on us, Lord.
06:36Many people believe God, but very, very few focus on God long enough to complete what they are called to
06:45do.
06:46Very few people focus on a mission long enough to understand the mission, to complete the mission.
06:53A lot of people start off and get discouraged somewhere along the way.
06:58See it all the time.
06:59Let me move on.
07:01Noah outlived the opinions of men.
07:05And the Bible said that he became an heir, meaning that he inherited the promises of God.
07:13He entered into the rewards of God.
07:18He became an heir of what, of the promises that, he became an heir of the promises.
07:25Meaning that he, so he out, so Noah outlived the opinions of men.
07:29The same people that was mocking Noah, they disappeared eventually when the flood came.
07:34But Noah's ark remained a testimony of obedience.
07:37That ark is still there.
07:39Of one man, it's testifying that one man was obedient to God and saved his family.
07:47Faithfulness to God leaves a testimony.
07:51It speaks against, your faithfulness speaks against a culture that ignores God.
07:56Your faithfulness says that God is worth obeying to a culture that ignores God.
08:02Your faithfulness convicts a culture because you're doing what they ought to be doing.
08:08So, so faithfulness leaves a testimony behind.
08:11Be faithful to God and it'll convict the world.
08:15It'll leave a testimony towards this world that God is worth being obeyed.
08:20Noah's obedience produced a legacy that outlived the generation that mobs him.
08:26His legacy, we're still talking about Noah.
08:29We're not talking about his generation that much.
08:31Help us have mercy today.
08:34Noah didn't even prove of his generation to do what God called him to do.
08:37You don't need this.
08:38You don't need people around you and your generation to approve.
08:41Because they don't even understand.
08:43Oftentimes, you don't even understand.
08:45All Noah needed was to be faithful to the voice of God.
08:49All you need to complete what God called you to do is to be faithful to the voice.
08:53Help us have mercy today.
08:55Keep building what God told you to build.
08:57And in time, people, your wisdom, the wisdom of your obedience will be revealed.
09:03In time, the wisdom of the obedience to God, people will start to see.
09:09Like they sing with Noah's ship.
09:11I mean, like they sing with Noah's ark.
09:13After a while, people got it.
09:14Oh, no.
09:16This could have saved us.
09:17This is the ark that was meant to save us.
09:19Oh, Lord.
09:21Well, all I'm trying to say is don't get distracted.
09:24Men and women of God, you have an ark to build.
09:27Help us to do that.
09:28In Jesus' name, we pray and say amen.
09:30Amen.
09:36Amen.
09:37Amen.
09:40Amen.
09:44Amen.
09:45Amen.
09:54Amen.
09:56Amen.
09:56You
