MAKING GOD SMILE
(All my sermons use illustrations that can be found at www.sermoncentral.com and all scripture is NIV unless otherwise noted)
A few weeks ago we had Vacation Bible School, a slightly obnoxious camel puppet, from Brooklyn New York, taught the kids lessons about Noah. The first day the lesson was based on a very simple scripture, found in the book of Genesis chapter 6, verse8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. I have always wondered if God looks down upon His children, and cracks a smile.
Here in this one verse is a profound lesson, here we see in the midst of chaos, in the midst of evil and sin and people that had made God so mad He was ready to wipe them out.
Gen 6:5-7 The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. 6 The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. 7 So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth--men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air--for I am grieved that I have made them."
PRAYER
Have you ever looked at you’re your children and thought, “I brought you into this world, and I will bring you out?” I know I have. This scripture says that God saw how bad mankind, that every inclination of every thought was EVIL. ALL THE TIME.
He looked at His children, that which He created and He said, “I am sorry I ever made this mess, time to take out the trash.” But the Bible says, NOAH FOUND FAVOR IN THE EYES OF GOD. I think it is important for you and I to know what that means, the living version of the Bible says that NOAH WAS A PLEASURE TO THE LORD. I looked up the word used for FAVOR and found that it can mean to be a blessing, a pleasure, to be pleased with and favorably disposed toward. This means that Noah was able to do something that we ALL really need to do.
Eph 5:8-10 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light 9(for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) 10 and find out what pleases the Lord.
We are actually commanded here to FIND OUT WHAT PLEASES GOD.
This morning I want to use our vacation Bible School lesson to discuss three things that scripture says PLEASES GOD.
I. DO WHAT HE SAYS
There are numerous places in the Scripture that tells us simple that we must do what God tells us to do.
James 1:22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. How many times have you and I encountered this with our own children? “Bobby, I want your room clean now” “OK Dad, I hear you” Only to find the room still the regular pig sty a week later. “ Betty get your homework done first thing” “Ok Mom, I know, I will get it done now” Only to have the teacher call two days later to tell you that little Betty has not done her homework all week?
It is not enough to listen to what God tells us to do, we must DO IT.
Jesus Himself told us that if we love Him we will do what He says we must do.
John 14:15 "If you love me, you will obey what I command.
We see in the Book of Genesis that this is exactly what Noah did. Gen 7:5 And Noah did all that the LORD commanded him.
You know how you smile when your child does what you have asked them to do? This must have been how God felt to look at His faithful servant Noah and see that His child DID everything just as God had asked Him to.
COMPLETE OBEDIENCE! Not half way, not on Noah’s terms, not with shortcuts, but COMPLETE OBEDIENCE.
Folks, we are told to do many things, we are told to OBEY, and yet I can not see that God is smiling when His church won’t do as He has commanded.
Churches who have people who won’t give:
The Bible tells us to give to everyone, give and it will be given to you, give to the poor, it is more blessed to give then receive, give generously, give cheerfully, give of yourselves, and give thanks. GIVE! And yet so many churches don’t give, the people don’t tithe, the money is not there, and the church does not grow. I don’t think God is smiling then.
The Bible also tells us to serve: Serve God only, no one can serve two masters, you cannot serve both God and money, serve without fear, serve with our whole heart, serve one another in love, and each one should use whatever gift they have received to serve others, and still I hear our Father in heaven say: Matt 9:37 Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.
I don’t think God is smiling then either.
The Bible tells us we must have unity: Reach UNITY in faith, brothers live together in unity, be bound together in unity, shine like stars in unity, be completely united as the Father and the Son are united. And still there is such great division in God’s church as people work against each other and not with one another.
I don’t think God is smiling.
So many times we find people fooling around, wasting time and not doing what they have been commanded to do, and the results are tragic.
Listen to this description of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in northern Ukraine:
"There were two electrical engineers in the control room that night, and the best thing that could be said for what they were doing is they were 'playing around' with the machine. They were performing what the Soviets later described as an unauthorized experiment. They were trying to see how long a turbine would 'free wheel' when they took the power off it.
"Now, taking the power off that kind of a nuclear reactor is a difficult, dangerous thing to do, because these reactors are very unstable in their lower ranges. In order to get the reactor down to that kind of power, where they could perform the test they were interested in performing, they had to override manually six separate computer-driven alarm systems.
"One by one the computers would come up and say, 'Stop! Dangerous! Go no further!' And one by one, rather than shutting off the experiment, they shut off the alarms and kept going. You know the results: nuclear fallout that was recorded all around the world, from the largest industrial accident ever to occur in the world."
This city, which formerly had 55,000 people, is now largely abandoned.
The instructions and warnings in Scripture are just as clear. We ignore them at our own peril, and tragically, at the peril of innocent others.
When we argue, God frowns. When we gossip, God frowns. When we with hold our tithe, God frowns. When we give the call of the world priority, God frowns. When we judge each other, God frowns. When we use unwholesome speech, God frowns. When we are lazy, God frowns. When we steal His glory, God frowns.
So if we are to make God smile we must DO WHAT HE SAYS and:
II. WAIT PATIENTLY ON HIM
Noah waited a very long time, he was 600 when God revealed His plan, He was out on the water, alone with animals, his three sons and their wives. He waited, patiently. Ps 37:7 Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for Him.
The Bible tells us so many benefits of being patient, of waiting on God, and yet so many people really do NOT wait on God. Instead they take things into their hands and force open the door. I have been guilty of this, of forcing God’s plan, only to watch it fail, and then say something stupid like: “I guess it wasn’t really God’s will.” The truth is that it could have been God’s will if I had allowed it to happen in His time instead of trying to make it happen when I wanted it to happen.
The Bible tells us that LOVE is PATIENT, so when we are not we do not display love. And the Bible tells us that we should be patient in the hope we have.
James 5:7-8 Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord's coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for the autumn and spring rains. 8 You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord's coming is near.
Folks, I too have struggled here. For many years I have prayed that people would get the message that God speaks so loudly in His Word. “IT’S NOT ABOUT US, IT’S ALL ABOUT HIM” I have prayed for many years that people would hear God speaking that we as His bride, the church, would reach out and bring in others with little or no care for our own comfort. As you can imagine, most people do not see it that way, they hear, but they do not see, and therefore there is no action.
Dr. Bernard Nathanson was the leading abortion doctor in the United States in the 1970’s. He had campaigned vigorously for the legalization of abortion and he himself had performed 60,000 abortions. He even believed his intentions were good and that he was doing a righteous thing by providing a service that guaranteed a woman’s right to control her body.
But something changed Dr. Nathanson’s point view. It was a medical breakthrough called the ultrasound, introduced in 1976. This device literally opened a window on fetal development. The first time Nathanson saw an ultrasound in action, he was with a group of residents gathered around a pregnant patient in a darkened examining room watching a demonstration by a technician. The technician applied a conductive gel to the woman’s abdomen and then began working a handheld sensor over her stomach. As the screen clarified, Nathason was amazed. He could see a throbbing heart. When the technician focused closely on the image, Nathanson could see all four chambers of the heart pumping blood.
And during the scan Nathanson became convicted. He said that his mind had dropped the word fetus in favor of the word baby. Suddenly, everything he had been learning about the child in the womb since his entry into the medicine snapped into focus. He had known what took place in the womb but somehow seeing it for the first time changed everything.
Bernard Nathanson, the leading abortion doctor in America, became convinced that human life existed with in the womb from the onset of pregnancy. In an article he wrote for the New England Journal of Medicine he wrote, in abortion “we are taking life.” That fetus is not mere tissue it is human life
Perhaps if we could see, people would respond to God’s Word, and so there is a lesson in patience, ONLY GOD CAN OPEN THE EYES OF OUR HEARTS. We are to do our best and pray for others to see their way to God.
WAIT on God.
Ps 27:13-14 I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. 14 Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.
Isa 30:18 Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!
God wants to give us so much, but normally we don’t have the patience we need to WAIT for HIM.
Every time we push ahead without God, He frowns. Every time we try and force our plans to work ahead of God’s schedule, He frowns. Every time we try and do God’s Will with our own power, God frowns.
Perhaps it is time to DO WHAT COMMANDS & time for us to learn how to WAIT UPON THE LORD.
III. GIVE GOD THE GLORY
One lesson I learned during the time we served for Vacation Bible School is how difficult it is to get a children’s song out of your head when you sing it every night for four nights in a row. Just saying the words “Give God the Glory” stirs thoughts of the song Arky Arky, as our camel friend (puppet) Vinny Cameduchi would say, “Give God the Glory, Glory, children of the Lawd.” But it is a lesson we ALL need to learn if we are to make God smile. Noah did exactly what God commanded him to do, he built the ark to the plans of God, not his own plans. He marched the animals on the boat according to God’s plan not his own. He was at sea for a very long time, he waited on the Lord. He finally gets off the ark and the Bible tells us:
Gen 8:20-21 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21 The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.
Noah built an altar to God and gave Him the glory He so deserves and God was SMILING.
How many times in our lives do we see the hand of God working in our lives, or in the lives of others, and forget to give God the Glory He deserves. How many times has the hand of God protected you, guided you, supplied you, healed you and comforted you? How many times do we steal the glory for these things and cause our Father in heaven to frown?
James tells us: James 1:17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
ALL GOOD things come from God and so He deserves the glory for those things.
GOD has given us the greatest gift and the Bible tells us how we can repay Him.
A family was out vacationing at the lake one summer. Dad had been puttering out by the boat house. Two of his sons, a 12-year old and a 3-year old were down playing along the dock. The 12 year old was supposed to be watching his little brother, but he got distracted. The 3 year old, little Billy, thought that would be a good time to check out the shiny aluminum fishing boat tied up at the end of the dock. So he went to the dock and put one foot on the boat, and one foot on the dock. He lost his balance and fell into the water, which was about 5 or 6 ft deep.
The splash alerted the 12-yr old who let out a piercing scream. Dad came running from the boat house, jumped into the water, swam down, but unable to see anything, came up for air. Sick with panic, he went right back down into this murky water, and began to feel everywhere around the bottom. He couldn’t feel anything. Finally, on his way up, he felt little Billy's arms locked in a death grip on one of the posts of the dock, about 4 ft under water. Prying the boy's fingers loose, they burst up together thru the surface to fill their lungs with life giving air.
Finally when the adrenaline had stopped surging, and nerves had calmed down a little bit, the Father asked his son, “What on earth were you doing down there hanging onto the post so far under the water? And little Billy’s answer was a classic, laced with the wisdom only a toddler could give. He said, "I was just waiting for you dad. Just waiting for you."
Friends, today we celebrate that 2000 yrs ago, the God of the universe left the glory and the splendor of heaven, a place where there was no pain and no sickness, no accidents, no hurt, and no death.
The Bible tells us that we should give God the Glory in all we do.
1 Cor 10:31 So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.
There is one thing each of us should be doing every chance we have to bring God the glory He deserves.
There is a legend which recounts the return of Jesus to glory after His time on earth. Even in heaven He bore the marks of His earthly pilgrimage with its cruel cross and shameful death. The angel Gabriel approached Him and said, "Master, you must have suffered terribly for men down there."
"I did," He said. "And," continued Gabriel, "do they know all about how you loved them and what you did for them?" "Oh, no," said Jesus, "not yet. Right now only a handful of people in Palestine know." Gabriel was perplexed. "Then what have you done," he asked, "to let everyone know about your love for them?"
Jesus said, "I’ve asked Peter, James, John, and a few more friends to tell other people about me. Those who are told will in turn tell other people about me, and my story will be spread to the farthest reaches of the globe. Ultimately, all of mankind will have heard about my life and what I have done."
Gabriel frowned and looked rather skeptical. He knew well what poor stuff men were made of. "Yes," he said, "but what if Peter and James and John grow weary? What if the people who come after them forget? What if way down through the centuries people just don’t tell others about you? Haven’t you made any other plans?"
And Jesus answered, "I haven’t made any other plans. I’m counting on them."
Twenty-one centuries later He still has no other plan. He’s counting on you and me to continue His work of reconciling the world to Himself, to continue the work so many have faithfully carried out before us. Will we do so well?
Do you want to make God smile? I know I do. I may not have all the answers, but His Word gives us the examples and direction we need to give God something to smile about.
IF WE OBEY HIS COMMANDS
IF WE WAIT PATIENTLY ON HIM
IF WE GIVE HIM THE GLORY
INVITATION
