Noah...the Incredible Animal Whisperer Series

THE INCREDIBLES:

WHEN ORDINARY PEOPLE TRUST AN EXTRAORDINARY GOD

BRAD KELLUM

SEPTEMBER 21, 2008

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“By faith Noah, after being warned about what was not yet seen, in reverence built an ark to deliver his family. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.” – Hebrews 11:7 (CSB)

• SHOW NOAH VIDEO WITH CHRIS SEAY

Why did God tell Noah to build an ark?

I want you to notice THE SITUATION that caused God to come to Noah in the first place.

“When the LORD saw that man’s wickedness was widespread on the earth and that every scheme his mind thought of was nothing but evil all the time, the LORD regretted that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. Then the LORD said ‘I will wipe off the face of the earth: man, whom I created, together with the animals, creatures that crawl, and birds of the sky—for I regret that I made them’. Noah, however, found favor in the eyes of the LORD.” – Genesis 6:5-8 (CSB)

What kind of sins could these human beings have been doing that grieved God’s heart so much?

They were murdering each other. Raping each other. Stealing from each other. Lying to each other. Spreading lies about each other.

There was a kind of anarchy that had spread on the earth.

Every man for himself. And that’s exactly how people lived: For themselves. No thought for God. No thought for their fellow man. No thought for the good of others.

Greed, selfishness, murder and lust ruled every human heart.

And God looked down and said, “Look what you’re doing to each other. Look how you’re mistreating your fellow man. This can’t go on.”

TIME OUT. Let me ask you: If you had been God, what would you have done?

Have you ever found yourself in a really bad situation, I mean really negative, where things have gone seriously wrong, you ever found yourself in that kind of situation and wished you could start over?

Have you ever been involved in a relationship with someone and it wasn’t going well and you wished, “I wish we could just start over again.”

I’m not sure how it got to this point, but wouldn’t it be nice to start over.

Could we try this again? Could we start over?

I think God was at that place in this story.

This passage says that God was in pain. God was in a lot of pain over the anarchy and rebellion that mankind was spreading.

It’s the kind of pain a parent feels when their child grows up and turns out not to be such a good person.

That’s painful. To see someone you love taking a wrong path, destroying their life and the lives of others.

That is a pain that only a parent can know.

And this is how God felt. He was hurting over the fact that people were making such bad choices, destroying their lives and each other’s lives.

Now, it’s at this point that the story takes a twist because God does something unexpected.

Instead of trying to rehabilitate all of these humans He makes the decision to end their suffering.

Instead of allowing these humans to continue hurting themselves and each other, which if left to themselves they would have continued doing God decides to end their lives and thus their ability to sin which was creating their suffering.

And the way He decides to do this is by sending a massive world-wide flood.

If God destroys all human life then what will the future look like?

God decides that He will save one human and his family and start over with them.

Enter Noah: The incredible animal whisperer.

God decides to save Noah and his family and annihilate the rest of the human race.

What do you think about that? That God saved Noah and his family but destroyed other people and their families.

God dealt with Noah in a much different way than He dealt with other people.

Is that okay with you? That God deals with people differently?

I mean, some people God decides to heal them from cancer. And other people He doesn’t.

Some people God decides to use them greatly and other people God decides to use them sparingly.

How do you feel about that?

Does it bother you that God deals differently with some people than He does with others?

Does God not have the right to do with His creation what He wills?

Paul asked the question this way in Romans 9:21 (CSB): “Or has the potter no right over his clay, to make from the same lump one piece of pottery for honor and another for dishonor?”