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.
Slide
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.
11 Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 13 So God said to Noah, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. 14 So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out.15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. 16 Make a roof for it and finish the ark to within 18 inches of the top. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. 17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. 18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark — you and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives with you.
19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. 21 You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them." 22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.
…7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month — on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12 And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.
…20 The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet. 21 Every living thing that moved on the earth perished — … 23 Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.
Let’s Pray
Ok, Noah was certainly a man of great faith. Where did this faith come from?
I mean how is it that Noah was this man of great faith and other people were not?
We find out in verse 9. It says that He waked with God.
Slide
So often today we want to find the end of the rainbow, but we want to get there by doing things our way.
The only way to the end of the rainbow is by walking with God.
What does walking with God look like though?
As a pastor, I get to talk to people about their walk with God.
Many times people think because they pray, that is enough. They don’t need to be following what God says, or going to church, or being connected with other people to be following God, just praying.
If I call someone who hasn’t been around in a while seeking to encourage them to get connected and walking with the Lord again, often they tell me, “I still have my faith. I am praying everyday and still reading the Bible occasionally.”
Those are not bad things at all, but that is not what demonstrates our walk with God.
Noah lives a life that gives some visible aspects of what a real walk with God looks like.
And we see right off that bat that
Really walking with God is demonstrated
…in Obedience
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In Genesis 6:22 we see that “Noah did everything just as God commanded him”.
He was obedient.
But Noah wasn’t just obedient. He was obedient without having a complete understanding of what he was doing.
Sometimes we say to our kids to do something, and they ask why and we say, “Because I said so.” We want them to obey what we say because it shows that they trust us that we are not having them do something that is worthless, but has value for them even if they don’t understand it. They should obey because the should know we want the best for them.
Noah obeyed even though he did not understand it all.
Listen to what the author of Hebrews says about Noah.
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Hebrews 11:7
7 By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.
When warned about things not yet seen, he built an ark.
Imagine the situation where God is speaking to Noah.
God says, “Noah build an ark, because I am going to bring a great flood.”
“What’s a flood?” says Noah
“A flood is when I bring water from the deep to rise up and when I open up the heavens to make it rain.”
“What is rain?”
What is rain? Some argue, and I lean this way, that until this time it had never rained on the earth.
Genesis 2:4-6
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When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens — 5 and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, 6 but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground
Now this is before God created Adam, but how long did this last after he created Adam? We are not sure, but at the end of the flood when God says the rainbow will be the sign of the covenant that he is making with Noah never to destroy the earth by flood again, it seems that it is implied that this is the first rainbow that is ever really seen in the clouds.
So, Noah was obedient to do something, building the ark, because God told him about an impending flood, that he had never seen, caused by rain, which probably had never happened. And Noah did it anyway.
That is obedience. And He is obedient because, as the Scripture tells us, he walked with God.
The same holds true for us. If we want to live lives that are being used by God to do extraordinary things, then we have got to be obedient, and to be obedient to what He calls us to do, we have got to walk with God. Our obedience to God is what demonstrates we are walking with Him.
But Noah didn’t just demonstrate his walk with God in obedience in the face of not knowing some things.
We also see that
Really walking with God is demonstrated
…during Opposition
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In the text we read in Genesis says that “the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence” except for Noah who was a righteous man and walked with God.
But in the New Testament, we also have Peter tell us that Noah was “a preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5)
Imagine preaching righteous living amid corruption and violence. Oh wait. We don’t have to really imagine that. We live that.
And what do we find as we seek to tell others who are opposed to the righteous life that the Bible teaches?… we find that they oppose not just the message but often they oppose the messenger as well.
We face a couple of issues in our society today that the Bible speaks directly to that elicit a lot of emotion and controversy: abortion and homosexuality.
When we as Christians seek to express what God says regarding living righteously regarding those issues, often it is not just the message that is opposed, but the messenger, even when we are speaking in love and truly desiring to see people experience the hope and power of the Lord in their life.
To even disagree with what the world is saying regarding these issues is cause to condemn the messenger of God’s word.
Just this past week, we saw the President’s inaugural committee disinvite Louie Giglio to give the benediction at the inauguration because 15 years ago, he preached a message of hope for those who were struggling with the sin of acting out their homosexuality.
Now Louie Giglio is not alone in his desire to offer hope to all people who are in bondage to any sin.
Imagine however, being the only one, like Noah and his family, who were walking with the Lord and seeking to speak truth to the society.
No others to support you against the opposition that was sure to be happening. Only his time walking with God would be his support.
And this is not something that was happening for a few weeks or months or even a few years. This happened for a very long time.
And that is another demonstration of his walk with the Lord because
Really walking with God is demonstrated
…over a long time
Slide
We don’t know the exact time frame it took to build the ark, but a good estimate would be 50 to 75 years.
This was back in the early days when men were still living a very long time, several hundred years.
Imagine working to provide for your family. And then after work, getting you and your boys out to work on the ark for 75 years.
“Let’s go boys. Time to work on the ark”
“Aw Dad, do we have to?”
“Yes we do. We have got to be ready for the flood!”
“But dad, the kids at school’s dads think we’re crazy”
And then it may have been,” but dad the guys at the office keep ridiculing me.”
To finally, “Dad the guys at the retirement home keep calling me crazy for helping.
It hasn’t rained in …well it has never rained.”
Yet, Noah kept walking with God in the midst of opposition for a very long time.
People, faithfulness is not measured over a weekend or a couple years.
It is measured over long periods of time.
Think of it in terms of marriage.
You aren’t a faithful spouse if every few years you have an affair.
You are faithful in never having an affair.
But the only way to be faithful for the long haul is to keep walking with God, because sometimes it is going to be hard, but when we walk with God, He give us the strength to continue and endure and to succeed.
It is then that we get to the rainbow.
After Noah’s time I the Ark, God brings him and his family out of the ark and establishes a covenant to never destroy the earth and mankind by a flood again and the sign of that covenant is the rainbow.
The thing about rainbows though, is that we don’t get to see them without going through the storm, but as we walk with God, and he strengthens us to obey amid opposition and over time, he will bring us through the storm to experience his great blessing.
Transition
Now maybe some of you here today haven’t even started a walk with God yet, while others are in the midst of a storm that is happening.
I want to give you a few take aways to help us learn from this story of Noah no matter where we are.
In Noah’s day, Noah was the only one walking with God and the rest of the world was corrupt and full of violence.
The same is true for us today if we do not believe.
Listen to what Paul tells Titus.
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Titus 1:15-16
15 To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted. 16 They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him.
In Noah’s day, the only hope of overcoming the corruption of the world was to walk with God believing Him and what He said.
But people did not walk with God
People did not believe in Him
And they perished in the flood.
Today, our only hope of overcoming the corruption of the world is to walk with God believing in Him and what He has done and what He says.
That walk begins with believing in Jesus Christ and the salvation that he has brought.
Listen to what Peter tells us in
1 Peter 3:18-22
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8 For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, 19 through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison 20 who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, 21 and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also — not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at God's right hand — with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.
It is not the water baptism that saves you, but the believing God, that Jesus is God and that He died for you and rose from the dead, that saves you.
Don’t claim to know God, but by your actions, demonstrate that you don’t walk with Him.
Walk with the Lord believing Him like Noah did.
Conclusion
Maybe you are here because you heard about our Saturday evening services starting up.
Maybe you got a postcard in the mail.
Maybe you come here each week, but have yet to fully believe God and begin a walk with Him by believing in Jesus Christ and receiving Him as your Savior.
That is where the walk starts.
To get the end of the rainbow, you need to walk with the Lord.
Not walking with Him only leads to destruction.
If you would like to begin your walk with the Lord, the Bible tells us that we do that by faith, receiving Jesus as our Savior by believing in Him, in who He is and what He has done.
That is what
John 1:12-13
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12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.
Romans 10:9
if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
You will have an opportunity to do that in a moment
But maybe you have started your walk with the Lord by receiving Him as Savior, but you haven’t been walking so close lately and the opposition has been beating you down.
Maybe you are in the midst of the storm and thinking of abandoning ship.
There is hope. The hope is found in getting back up and walking again in obedience to the Lord’s commands.
If you are part of Hickory Creek, then you have many opportunities for help in your walk. One of the most important is being part of a small group or Bible study.
Sign up today and be strengthened for the walk and the storm ahead.
If you are not part of Hickory Creek, then I am so glad you came tonight. You to can take part in any of our ministries to help you in the journey, even if you are not quite sure about all this Jesus stuff yet.
Sign up to be part of a group if you want.
And if you are here tonight and realize that it is a walk with God that you need in your life, then pray with me now and confess your belief in Jesus Christ as your Savior to the Lord and begin a walk that will carry you to the end of the rainbow.
Let’s pray.
If you have prayed that prayer of confession for the first time tonight, then I would ask that you take your connection card and on the back, just check off that “I received Christ as my Savior!” We want to help you in continuing your walk with the Lord.
Just take those cards after the service to our welcome center for some more info on Hickory Creek.
Now, won’t you stand as we close in worship.
