A Seeker of God, part 2

Genesis 9:20 “Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard.” Even though the new world is exciting, you still have to eat, you still need to provide for your family, you still need to involve yourself in the work-a-day world.

As an old friend and I talked a couple weeks ago, our conversation turned to our accounts of our own salvation. He said to me, “I don’t know how your new-birth experience was, but mine was so transformational that I could not see how anybody would ever want to go back to the world they had just come from. I would leave church on Sunday and drive by the bars I used to spend my days at and I just couldn’t even imagine giving up what I had with Jesus to go back to that dark world. I wanted nothing to do with it. However, as exciting as things were for me, I still had to work. I still had to pay my bills.” 

As we read this account in Genesis, we see that Noah, just like my friend, still had to work. He got busy and planted a vineyard.

The altar represents that which is truly important. That was true for Noah, and it’s still true today for us. The daily prayer life is crucial to our spiritual well-being. Noah began his new life at the altar, and as long as he went to the altar on a daily basis, he was fine. However, after he planted a vineyard, the daily grind, replaced the daily prayer. In other words, the urgent superseded the important. The altar is the “important;” the needs of the vineyard are the “urgent.” When the urgent supersedes the important, our priorities get out of order. If the urgent supersedes the important, the urgent will control our lives and we won’t like the outcome.

I am sure that, in Noah’s vineyard, the weeds were threatening to kill the vine. There were many urgent things to deal with. Here is where we need balance in our lives. The urgent is real. The urgent needs attention. The problem isn’t the urgent. The problem is priorities.

Genesis 9:21 “And he drank of the wine and became drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent.” This is a most embarrassing moment in Noah’s life. In fact, Noah is the first person in the Bible of whom it is recorded that he was drunk. There may have been others before him but he is the first one mentioned. What led up to Noah getting drunk? It was the fruit of his labors - the urgent superseding the important. The very thing that replaced the altar in Noah’s life produced that which caused him this embarrassing moment. Can you imagine all the rationalizing that went on in Noah’s head, as he gave himself to the urgent and forgot the important?! The weeds were growing; he needed to feed his family, he needed to work the soil.

What I’ve discovered as a lifetime truth is this: The needs of the urgent never really end. 
 

If we back up a couple of chapters (in Genesis) in Noah’s life, we find that he was a seeker of God; he walked with God. Genesis 6:8-9 “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD… Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God.” 
 

Prior to this one incident, the important superseded the urgent. Subsequently, he was used by God to direct one of the most significant events in the history of this world. He had a prayer life, he walked with his God, and he talked with his God. His God spoke to him and used him. All the while Noah was still taking care of the urgent. He was still feeding his family. He was man of God. He was righteous and blameless in his time. 
 

But somehow, after the flood, and the family was back on dry land, the urgent superseded the important. He backed off on the altar and gave his attention to the needs of the vineyard. Subsequently, the very thing that he put before God produced that which gave him the reputation of being the first person mentioned in the Bible to become drunk.



Continued tomorrow