Noah - Walking With God To The End Of The Rainbow Series

Series intro

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I am also glad you are here today because we are kicking off a new series called, God’s Story through God’s People.

We are going to be going through the Old Testament, but in a unique way, looking at how God worked through people. It is my hope that this will

help give you a better understanding of the foundation of Christianity, and also see how our amazing God works through ordinary, flawed people like you and I, and to learn how we can respond to God’s leading and be used powerfully by Him as well.

We are going to begin today taking a look at Noah.

We find the story of Noah in Genesis 6 through 9.

The Conflict Regarding the Origin of Life

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Now, If you are interested in the very beginning about Creation, I have preached on this before and I have reposted that message on our Facebook page this week

Go to our Facebook page and like us so you can watch that if you would like.

It is called “The Conflict regarding the Origin of Life” and looks at the available evidence regarding our origins and how they fit with the Creation account found in Genesis 1 – 10.

Reading preparation

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Also, in your bulletins are inserts that give an outline of the message and through this series, I will be putting in some suggested readings to help you each week in preparing for what you will be hearing.

This coming week, I suggest that you spend time each day reading the first 25 chapters of Genesis which will cover what we talk about today and give you some preparation for next Sunday when we talk about Abraham.

But as we go through this series, you will have read through much of the first half of the Old Testament up to Psalms and have a basic understanding of God’s story from the beginning through King David.

Sermon intro - Background

But today, we will begin in Genesis 6.

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If you have your Bibles, you can open them or there are Bibles available in the chairs for you to use as well.

As you turn there, here is a little background of what has happened up to this point.

God created the heavens and the earth and everything in it in 6 days and rested on the seventh day. God placed Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden to work the garden and have dominion over all the land and animals.

There was one rule that God gave to Adam and that was “Do not eat from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” They could eat from every other tree, but not that one. That was the plan. But Adam did not obey.

Satan came and tempted Eve and both Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and evil thereby sinning against God and bringing death and depravity into the world.

After Adam and Eve sinned, they were banished from the Garden. That may seem like a further punishment, but I believe it is an incredible act of mercy as well.

You see, also in the garden was the tree of life. If Adam and Eve had eaten from the tree of life after they had sinned, they would live forever.

That sounds good for a moment, but what if you lived forever in a fallen sinful state with all the consequences that sin has brought: Suffering, chronic illness, pain…forever.

When we look at it that way, we can see how God’s not allowing us to eat from the tree of life and live forever in that state is an act of mercy on God’s part.

Instead, he began to work out his plan for salvation prophesying about the coming Messiah in Chapter 3 when he was cursing Satan.

Genesis 3:15 - And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."

Now, because of God’s work at redeeming mankind through the Messiah, we can have the hope of eternal life apart from suffering and pain. But that is the end of the story.

First, we need to continue on with the beginning

Transition

So, death came into the world through sin and sin corrupted the world. We see the effects of sin right away as Cain kills his brother Abel over jealousy.

And sin continued to have its way until the time of Noah which brings us to our text this morning.

Genesis 6:9-22, 7:11, 20, 23

6:9 This is the account of Noah.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. 10 Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.