When Grace No Longer Exists To Save The Soul

"When Grace no longer exists"

Revelation 21:1-7

Want to read to you from 2 Peter 2:4-5 and share the story of a man we may have never regarded as a preacher of righteousness. In Genesis 6 and 7 there is the story of a boat in time when God came down and spoke to this same preacher of righteousness giving him instructions on how he and all his family would be saved. God told Noah that a flood was coming, a time of complete destruction from an element never experienced on earth until that moment in history. In Genesis 2:5&6 it says that the Lord God had not caused it to rain and moistened the earth by a mist that rose from the earth but just because Noah had never seen the rain before that didn’t keep him from believing God and obediently carrying out God’s commands. Noah built an ark of gopher wood that was 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high coated inside and out with pitch so that 8 people and some of every creature could be saved from the destruction looming on the horizon.

Noah found grace in the eyes of God and the word of God says in John 1:14 that the only place where grace and truth can be found is in Christ Jesus. Can’t explain to you how he found Jesus but he did and I’m so thankful that you and I can still find Jesus today.

(DOG IN THE SEPTIC TANK STORY) So glad that I found grace in the eyes of God through his son Jesus that you’ll just have to excuse me if I embarrass you shouting about him. Nothing in this world means more to me than knowing that I’m saved and will go to heaven when I die! Now Peter almost 3000 years later tells us that Noah the arkbuilder was also a preacher of righteousness. That statement in the Bible always puzzled me until the day I became a preacher myself and started having to pastor people. The day I became a pastor I began to understand just a little bit of what the word of God says about Noah.

(1) Noah spent 120 years building an ark that would be the salvation of all he held dear on this earth but would also be a death sentence on a lost and dying world

Believe with every fiber of my being that Noah had a soulwinners heart and wanted to see people saved but they just wouldn’t listen to him. How can you say that Brother Mike? Noah had a pastor’s heart just like I do and your pastor does and I know a little something about the burden a pastor carries for the glory of the kingdom of God.

· Believe everytime he bent his knees to pray the name of his lost neighbor was on his lips begging God to use him somehow to help his neighbor be born into the family of God

· Believe everytime he went to the supermarket to pick up a gallon of milk he remembered the face of the little checkout girl and asked God in his prayers that night to save her soul

· Believe that everytime Noah walked by a playground on his way to the ark in the morning and he heard the laughter of children and saw their precious little faces that tears fell on the cheeks of Noah the rest of his way to work as he begged God to save their little souls and touch their families

· Believe that every night as the sun went down and he left to go home for supper that the compassion he felt for the lost people around him caused him to climb up on milkcrates or in the back of a pickup truck and preach the gospel begging people to come to God and be saved.

Revelation 12:10,11 "And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation and strength and the kingdom of God and the power of his Christ for the accuser of our brethren is cast down that accused them before our God day and night and the overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony and they loved not their lives unto the death."

That’s what Paul did beloved! They’d arrest him and beat him and put him in chains and he’d stop on the top step of the jail and say wait a minute and tell people what Jesus did for him. The reason you don’t have anything to tell people is because Jesus ain’t done nothing for you! Romans 1:16 says that I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation.