Three Life Truths We Need Today - Genesis 8-9 Series

Have you ever thought about Noah and recognized that God gave a lot of instructions to Noah about how to get into the ark, about all the things to do about getting into the ark. But He doesn’t give him a lot of instructions coming off the ark. In fact there's this bird thing going on where Noah’s sending out the birds as if Noah’s trying to figure this out for himself. It leads me to this conclusion about God speaking to us that we need today. That we need to be able to position ourselves well to hear from God. And that one idea (position yourself well to hear from God) is one of the three truths that we’re going to look at today. Three truths that I think you’ll find helpful today as we’re going through this.

The first one is you want to position yourself well to hear God speak. We’re going to talk about that. It's just this story of this observation I just made now about Noah’s life. But I’m just giving you a preview of where we’re going. Because a second one that we’re going to look at is when you start over, you want to build an altar. Remember, he’s coming off the ark. He’s starting all over and he’s building an altar. I would just think that’s a great principle for all of us. When you start over in your life, you want to build an altar.

Now let’s go to one more principle we’re going to look at today as we delve into this passage. Always remember and rely on the promises of God. That comes from the rainbow and the story of the promises that take place. You know the story. I’m just taking these three principles, these three life truths that we can apply to our lives from this story.

What I want to do first is I want to look at this first one that we need to position ourselves well to hear from God. In order to do that I want to read God’s word. We're going to pick this up in Genesis 8. So if you have your Bible open it to Genesis 8. If you have one of the workbooks then you can just jot down in the notes some of the things you’re going to learn there. I want to take you through and read this passage to you so you can see what God is saying. From this we’re going to first look at this principle of what we see from the bird thing that Noah is doing and how God speaks to us. Position yourself well to hear from the Lord. Let me read this to you.

It says – But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided. The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, and the waters receded from the earth continually. At the end of 150 days the waters had abated. So in our last chapter 150 days that the water was over the earth. Then there was another 150 days that the water has abated. And in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month (these specific dates are there for you to actually do the calculations if you’d like), the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. We don’t know exactly where that is. We believe that’s in Turkey somewhere. And the waters continued to abate until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen. At the end of forty days (so now we have another forty days) Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent forth a raven. It went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth.

We’ll talk about the other birds in a minute, but I think that a lot of people have questions about this idea about how God speaks to us. Don’t we all wish that God would just speak like He did to Noah? “Get in the boat, Noah. I’m shutting the door.” When we hear from God and He speaks that way, it’s clear. We like it. We go, “Yes, I know what God just said to me.” It makes sense.

One man wrote this to me and he said this is an example of God spoke to him clearly. You can see how this took place in his life. He says, “Prayer has become a staple in my morning routine. More than ‘please keep me safe while drive.’ It's turned into open conversation with God about my heart, my struggle with depression, my kids’ emotions, my wife’s current struggle with life. I’m struggling with this constant question is divorce the answer. This morning after all of those questions, I said what would Jesus do? I know that’s very cliché to say. When I broke it down and asked that question for each situation in life, the answer was so simple it made me smile. He had an answer for it all. So I’ve decided to get the separation paperwork and not sign them. I feel like I’m the master of my relationship when I ask the question what would Jesus do. He would continue to love and forgive. Now I won’t live the rest of my life like that. But in the present moment I feel like that’s the best choice.” So obviously he’s wrestling with something very significant in his life and he feels like God spoke to him. Spoke to him when? He positioned himself. What was he doing in that story? He was praying. He turned his routine prayer life (“Lord, keep me safe while I’m driving today”) into this communication with God. And in the midst of that God spoke to him in a very powerful way.