In Hebrews 11:7 Noah is staring at something. He has seen a sight so real and so overwhelming that he spends 120 years preaching about it and building a huge boat. No-one could see with their eyes what Noah was seeing by faith and as a result, they felt no compulsion to listen to him seriously. See how this ability to see the devastation that lay ahead changed his life and drove him year after year for more than a century. His lifestyle has been well captioned in this verse as “Holy Fear”. If you or I were to look at Noah getting up early every morning to continue to preach, crying out to the millions of souls around him, and then continuing work on his ark, the nature of his life could be described as holy fear. One only comes to this driving holy fear by seeing what lies ahead, by seeing what other people don’t see with their physical eyes. Noah was seeing into the intentions of God and that was enough to drive him in obedience every day.

You may say, “But the text doesn’t actually say that Noah saw what lay ahead, God warned him.” Take a quick glance at verse 13. Verse 13 groups all these people, Noah included and says that they saw them from a distance. Notice something else. Not only did they see something in the distance, but they welcomed it. Isn’t it strange that Noah built an ark in holy fear and preached in holy fear, but at the same time he welcomed what lay ahead? If it seems a strange mix of emotions in Noah’s mind, consider the exact same struggle you and I have in this New Testament age.

We also are driven by both holy fear and welcoming the eternal pleasures of God. None of us lives in a society where everyone we know and love is saved. We experience the anguish of looking at dear people we love so much, and imagining them burning in the everlasting fires of hell! The thought is so overwhelming that we are driven by nothing else as we think about them and pray for them day after day. We weep over their souls before the throne of grace, we confront them with the truth over and over, we preach the word of God with passion and beg them to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus. Year after year however, like those who perished around Noah, the mass of unbelievers, among whom we once belonged, shuffles closer and closer to the unimaginable anguish and misery of eternal damnation. We are driven by holy fear.