The God who Remembers

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. If you would like to learn more about us, please visit us at our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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You can also find us on Instagram, Grace Church, Y -E -G, all one word, or on Facebook.

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You can also find us on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever else you listen to your favorite podcasts.

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Please enjoy the following sermon. So we're back in the book of Genesis, now in Genesis chapter 8, and I invite you to turn there with me as we look at the first 19 verses of this 8th chapter of Genesis.

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And as we do, I want to orient ourselves historically for a moment.

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If we were to go back to the year 1882, there was a

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German philosopher in that year, a man named Friedrich Nietzsche, many of you might recognize that name, who made a bold declaration in one of his written works, and I don't even want to mention the name of that written work because it will distract you.

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He wrote this, God is dead. God remains dead, and we, we have killed him.

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Believing that Christianity was the enemy of all things excellent and of true progress,

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Nietzsche asserted that the God who once was, was no more. That the God of the

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Bible, the God of Christianity specifically, had become unbelievable and therefore this

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God must be exterminated. The German philosopher amused that the

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God that once existed in the minds of his people to lighten their hearts had become a burden upon them, and then being that burden he uttered these notorious words, forgive me

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I'll repeat myself and then I will add to the lunacy of what he said, or I will add to the quote what he said to show you the lunacy of it all.

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He said God is dead, God remains dead, and we have killed him, and then he continues, we are the murderers of all murderers.

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What was holiest and mightiest of all has bled to death under our knives.

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What water is there for us to cleanse ourselves? What festivals of atonement?

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What sacred games shall we have to invent? And then adding blasphemy, and this is blasphemy, upon blasphemy he wrote, he is not the greatest of this deed, too great for us.

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Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

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It echoes another phrase that he said at another time where he said we are God in miniature.

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Nietzsche felt that if there was a God at all he had forgotten his people, and in turn his people should use one of the greatest powers that they possessed, namely their forgetfulness.

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In the words of one Nietzschean scholar he counsels humanity must kill God by forgetting

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God. Now there are few claims, I hope you agree with me, few claims as bold and as outrageous as this claim, and likely many of you are familiar at least with part of this quote that I have just shared, but very few of you probably know the story behind the philosopher and these brutal words.

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Friedrich Nietzsche was not always an atheist, nor was he raised in an incubator that may him ripe for such atheism.

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He was the son in fact of a beloved Lutheran pastor, a man named

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Karl Ludwig Nietzsche, and more than that when young Friedrich Nietzsche entered into university at the

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University of Bonn in the 1860s, about 20 years before he wrote this quote that God is dead, he entered into university to study theology, desiring to be a minister of the gospel like his father was.

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But there was a nagging thought that lived in Nietzsche's mind. When he was just four years old his

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God -fearing father died from an excruciating brain disease. Though he loved and faithfully served his savior, his father spent the final year of his life at just 35 years of age withering away in agony as his brain rotted from the inside.

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And as historians would later note, this created deep -seated feelings of abandonment and resentment in the younger

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Nietzsche, until one day despite his desires to be a minister of the gospel, he gave himself over to these feelings and abandoned the

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God that he felt had abandoned him. Now I could go on, it's a fascinating story to look at his life, but instead

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I want to pose a few questions to each of you. And I want to pose them if you were here last week even within the framework of what we heard last week about what it means to live for Christ, to treasure him above all things.

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Is it possible that there is in some of us the faith of Friedrich Nietzsche?

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Not that we would ever claim to have killed God, not that we have intentions now of abandoning him, but is it possible that some of us live as if God is, as Nietzsche thought, not near to us, but far off and forgetful of us.

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Is it possible that many of us feel in our heart of hearts below that the theoretical and into the practical that God is not active in our lives, providentially guiding every circumstance of our days in love, available to commune with us at every moment?

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It's a serious question, as serious in fact as it gets. In practice, do you, dear friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, treat

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God as if he is distant, or dare I even say dead, functionally speaking?

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Now most of us would answer this question with an emphatic, no, absolutely not, I do not have the faith of Nietzsche.

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But let me pose a few questions to you, a few more diagnostic questions, and answer them silently in your heart, honestly before the

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Lord. Dear friends, do you seek God as if he may be truly found and known personally, or have you contented yourself with a vague and distant acquaintanceship with him?

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Content even with a second hand or a third hand knowledge of him?

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And what I mean by this is we read biographies of faithful Christians who have wonderful experiences of God, and we love those biographies, but we never go further than we are, nor do we ever seek to enjoy the fellowship that they enjoy with God.

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Do you come to God's Word believing that he will meet you here, that these are the living and abiding words of the one true

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God, and that when they come to us it is as if God is speaking to us audibly through the page?

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Or do you treat your Bible as a mere spiritual discipline to be engaged in as a good

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Christian is, to be checked off and to be continued? Do you pray as one who enjoys sustained and close communion with God?

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Or do you not pray with the feeling that the energy and time needed to pray would be better spent doing something else that needs to get done?

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Do you have a calm assurance that God is in control of every detail in your lives?

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Or do you live in a steady state of perplexed anxiety, fearful of the random happenings that are sure to come?

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As I've been reflecting on this over the last week, what we heard last week, and now what

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I have been studying in Genesis chapter 8, I see actually a tremendous connection. And I fear as I read what we are going to look at in Genesis 8 and what we heard last week,

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I fear that modern Western Christianity, that the Christianity that we are so familiar with today, has more in common with the faith of Friedrich Nietzsche than the faith of Scripture.

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I fear that we have allowed an unbiblical conception of God to cloud our vision of him.

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Even more terrifying, I feel that many Christians who call themselves Christians, professing

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Christians, are little more than Christian deists. And what

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I mean by that is they are those whose faith is in a distant God, who can be studied, who can be analyzed, who can be looked at, who can be known theoretically, but never once ever known experientially.

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A God who lives in a continual state of forgetfulness toward his people.

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I fear, dear saints, that some of us believe in Jesus Christ as a mere historical fact and sacrifice, rather than the present living

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Savior of the world. But that is not the

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God of the Bible. And that is not the God of Genesis 8. What I want to show you as we go through this passage, oh that the

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Lord would show me as he shows you, that here we find a

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God who remembers his people. We will look at what that means.

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But here we find a God who is near. A God in whom we can trust. A God in whom we can wait upon and oh a

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God that we would believe and know and follow. The God of the

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Bible himself. So, as we come to Genesis 8, let's reorient ourselves to this book and to this chapter in particular.

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As we come to verse 1, we come to the second half of the flood narrative.

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If you were here two weeks ago, you heard our brother Sam preach on chapter 6, the latter half, and chapter 7.

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And we looked at the catastrophic nature of that flood. And at the tail end of chapter 7, it really does paint a bleak picture of the universality of God's judgment upon the earth.

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If you look, I know I had you turn to chapter 8, just glance over at chapter 7 in verse 19.

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We read there that the waters prevailed so that every mountain on the face of the earth, and in verse 20, that they were submerged even under up to 20 feet of water, if we were to use that measurement.

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In verse 23, we read that God blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground so that only

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Noah and his family were left. And in verse 24, we're told that these waters prevailed, that they ruled the earth for 150 days.

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And at the beginning of chapter 8, this is the scene that we find. That the earth is in the very state that we found it in when we began our study in Genesis.

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In Genesis chapter 1 in verse 2. Without form and void, with the spirit of God hovering over the waters.

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If you could look at earth at this moment in Genesis chapter 8, as it begins from outer space, you would find a planet in which every square inch of the earth is covered itself in water only.

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And if you were to zoom in with the most powerful satellite telescope camera, hone in on what is happening on the earth, we would find only water except for one small speck in an endless sea.

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In the midst of the churning waters of God's judgment, one could find a relatively speaking small vessel, 510 feet long, 85 feet wide, 51 feet tall.

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And on that vessel, the last remaining survivors of the great flood. And this is where we find ourselves in chapter 8 in verse 1.

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And it seems probably most appropriate now to read the passage and then we'll look at it together.

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This is God's word from Genesis chapter 8. But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark.

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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.

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The rain from the heavens was restrained and the waters receded from the earth continually.

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At the end of 150 days, the waters had abated. And in the seventh month, on the seventh day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.

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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.

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At the end of 40 days, Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent forth a raven.

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It went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. Then he sent forth a dove from him to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground.

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But the dove found no place to set her foot. And she returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth.

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So he put out his hand and took her and brought her into the ark with him. He waited another seven days.

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And again he sent forth the dove out of the ark. And the dove came back to him in the evening.

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And behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth.

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Then he waited another seven days and sent forth the dove. And she did not return to him anymore.

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In the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried off the earth.

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And Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked. And behold, the face of the ground was dry.

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In the second month, on the twenty -seventh day of the month, the earth had dried out. Then God said to Noah, Go out from the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons' wives with you.

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Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, birds and animals, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth that they may swarm on the earth and be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

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So Noah went out and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him. Every beast, every creeping thing, every bird, everything that moves on the earth went out by families from the ark.

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We will consider three truths today as we study this text. The first of these truths that I want to bring before you is this.

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The God who remembers his people. You'll find it in the outline if you need it.

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The God who remembers his people. In verse one, we find the hinge, the very turning point of the entire flood narrative.

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And up to this point, the predominating theme has been judgment. If you recall the picture that I just painted a moment ago of this formless earth.

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And though we often read this passage, we see it in children's storybook Bibles as our brother

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Sam pointed out at the ark encounter. If you ever go to Kentucky, they have a whole section devoted to how the story of the ark is undermined by the

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Christian publishing industry in all of the children's books that are there. We often read this and we truck along right through this passage without lingering, without thinking for a moment what it might have been like for Noah in what he thought and in what he felt.

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But let's stop and let's put ourselves in Noah's shoes for a moment.

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At this very moment, apart from his immediate family, there was not another human being in the entire universe that Noah could befriend.

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Noah could not visit his brother. He could not consult a doctor if he had appendicitis.

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He did not have so much as a single peer on the earth outside of this boat. On our loneliest of days, we have never felt even for a moment the fraction of loneliness that Noah felt on that ark.

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Besides this, there was nothing but desolation around him. His home was gone.

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The landscape that he was familiar with had been washed away. Everything that was familiar to him had been permanently erased, never to be seen again.

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The sounds, the sights, many of us, we know a smell that brings back a memory instantaneously.

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The smells, all gone. Only a faint memory. And it has been pointed out, in fact, that when

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Noah, when the Lord came to Noah to tell him about the flood, he warned him of the coming flood.

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But there was no promise, at least no recorded promise, of that flood ever receding.

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Floating atop the waters of that endless ocean, Noah and his family might as well have been on the moon or on Mars.

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Nothing was familiar. And I think that if we want to drill in a bit more, we can enter into Noah's frame of mind even, just by looking at the precautions that he took before coming off of the ark.

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In verse 4, if we look there for a moment, we're told that the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat on the seventh month.

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This was five months after the flood initially began. It was, however, not until the tenth month that Noah could begin to see the tops of the surrounding mountains in the distance.

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Nevertheless, we see this in verse 6, Noah waited another 40 days before he was bold enough to open the windows of the ark.

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Then, over the course of the next several weeks, Noah sent out ravens and then doves to ascertain if the flood had finally receded.

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And even after a dove brought back a fresh olive leaf, he waited another seven days, we see this in verse 12, to send her out again.

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And only after all of these precautions, did he finally remove just the covering of the ark to see if the land was dry.

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But still, this was not the day that he left the ark. But Noah waited nearly two more months, until verses 15 and 16, when he exited the ark, and only after God's command.

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Now, there is some debate about how long this took place, but the general consensus is somewhere around one year and ten days, or I think

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John MacArthur would say 378 days after the flood began, did

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Noah and the animals finally make their way off the ark. Now here,

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Noah and his family survived the most terrible judgment that this world has ever seen.

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Only the judgment that is to come on that great and awesome day of the Lord will surpass this judgment as we see it.

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And surely, if there ever was, putting ourselves in Noah's shoes, if there ever was one individual who may have been tempted to feel entirely alone, to feel entirely abandoned, to feel entirely forgotten by God, it was not

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Friedrich Nietzsche. It was Noah and his family in the ark. Alone on that ark, no doubt terrified at the judgment of God all around him, and almost altogether unwilling even to open the window in the ark, months after the rains had stopped, let alone the door.

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And I'm not the only person that thinks on this in this way, that the challenge that Noah must have experienced on that ark.

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John Calvin, speaking on this passage, he asks the question, and it's a good question.

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Why was not the world destroyed in three days? Why is it that God did not destroy the world in a mere three days?

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Bring the floodwaters up, the floodwaters go down. I know that I am not shredding water for three days, and I know that many others won't in terrible conditions.

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But even for five days, or ten days, or twenty days, why a full year inside the ark?

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And Calvin provides this answer. He says, because God was purposely exercising

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Noah's faith and Noah's patience. And he adds this, he says, though he would have been assailed by many temptations,

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Noah tenaciously held fast the promise which he had embraced even to the end.

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And as we see in verse one, God remembered Noah.

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Now what does it mean that God remembered Noah? The Hebrew word conveys something far more than simply recalling, as if God had forgotten about him, and then at some point looked back towards the earth and saw the speck in the water, and again it came to his mind that Noah existed.

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This is not at all what it means, no, but what it conveys is that God knew

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Noah, that God was mindful of him, that throughout the flood, throughout the difficulties, throughout the distresses,

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Noah and his plight was on God's mind. That though Noah may have felt perfectly alone, feeling perhaps as if all memory of him had been washed away with the flood, though there was no other human being outside of this ark that had a memory of his seemingly puny existence, even in the midst of judgment,

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God remembered Noah. There never was a moment in time when the all -seeing, all -knowing

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God was not mindful of Noah and his family. There was never a moment in time when he was not with Noah in his perfect omnipresence.

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The comfort of all comforts in this vast sea of God's judgment was that God always remembers his people.

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From this we discover a remarkable truth, I would suggest, that even brethren when we feel all alone, when the greatest of tragedies strikes closest to us, when we even like Job must scrape the rotting sores of our flesh with broken pottery, when we endure

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God's chastening discipline for our besetting sins,

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God is not absent from us nor is he absent from any one of his people.

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He has not forgotten us, that our Father is not aloof, tending to his garden on some distant sphere in the cosmos, but he is mindful of us, that he will remember us and he will be with us.

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Now, you might look at this and say, Shane, how can you be so sure that God remembering

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Noah in the life now in 2025 in Canada?

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How do we draw a straight line from Noah to you, from Noah and God's relationship with him to you and God's relationship with you?

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This remembrance and this nearness of God was not merely for Noah, but it is a reality of God's covenant promises and of his faithfulness to all of his people, every last one of you.

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We can in fact draw a straight line from Noah to you simply by connecting the dots of God's covenant promises and of his promises of remembrance to his people.

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And I want to show you this with me. We'll do a little bunny hopping through the text of scripture. If we were to look at Genesis chapter 9 and verse 15,

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God makes clear to Noah that his remembrance of him is rooted not merely in his recalling him to mind, but it is an intentional remembrance of him rooted in covenant.

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In Genesis 9, 15, he says, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.

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Notice the remembering of the covenant. If we were to go a bit further to Genesis chapter 19 and verse 29, we see that there's proof not only that this remembrance is for Noah, but for all of God's covenant people now, including

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Abraham. In Genesis 19, 29, and notice the exact same language in the midst of judgment.

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So it was that when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent

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Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which

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Lot had lived. If we fast forward a bit further to Exodus chapter six and verse five, we see that this promise was not only for Noah, not only for Abraham, but now for all of Israel where God says, moreover,

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I have heard the groanings of the people of Israel, whom the Egyptians hold as slaves.

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And I have remembered my covenant and this place or this remembrance, excuse me, finds its place not only in the old testament, but in the new and in the new true

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Israel of God. And we see this in Luke chapter one and verse 68.

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This is the last one. I thank you for following along. Here we read Zechariah's prophecy at the birth of his son,

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John the Baptist. And speaking of the salvation that was to come to God's people, he says this, blessed be the

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Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant,

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David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant.

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We see the remembrance again, the oath that he swore to our father Abraham to grant us that we being delivered from the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

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Theologians will often talk about the transcendent nature of God. And we would agree with that, that God, he is transcendent.

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And you've heard me mention this, I believe either this or maybe it's in our systematic theology class.

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Now I'm thinking about it, but God is transcendent. He is over and above his creation.

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And yet at the same time, he is imminent, that he is near to his people, that we have absolutely no warrant as Christians to live as Christian deists, because we do not have a

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God who is far off, removed from us, one with whom we cannot relate, but we have a

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God who is near, who remembers us and remembers us even by promise in covenant.

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And so it begins to help us to understand other passages like Psalm chapter 8 in verse 4.

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You don't have to go there, but I'll read it, where it says, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him.

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Now does this find its fulfillment in Christ? Yes. And at the same time, it finds its fulfillment in us.

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Matthew Henry says of this passage, he says, what is man so mean a creature that he should be thus honored, so sinful a creature that he should be thus favored with good reason?

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Speaking of later on in that Psalm, does the Psalmist conclude as he began, Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth.

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And he adds to it that none of our praises that we speak can possibly meet that which is true fully of God.

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Believer in Christ, if you have believed in Christ, if you are a partaker of the new covenant with all of the new covenant promises, the

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God of the Bible is not the small g God that we often hear spoken of as being cold and dead or dull.

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He who set the world into motion has not left us now to our own devices.

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This is not who he is at the at the most basic level of his character.

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But he is a God who is near a God to be known a

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God to be walked with a God that if we do not relate to him in this way, we either do not know him or we do not treat him as he is.

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And as he has revealed himself to us, he is the same God. This is

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God, the son. Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

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We serve a God. And if we fully grasp this,

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I don't think we could contain ourselves. Who remembers us? And the question

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I put to you is this. Do you remember him? Do you serve a

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God that is living, a God who is near? Or have you been forgetful?

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And for this reason, have you been prayerless and joyless and loveless and lifeless?

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We must repent of such an atheistic view of God and take hold of that which was purchased by Christ's own dear blood, a relationship with the

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God who is near. And if we can take a lesson, just a small one, from Noah in that ark, to seek this

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God, to wait upon this God patiently, to pursue a relationship with him beyond the first barrier, the first speed bump that we come upon.

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Oswald Chambers said, one of the greatest strains in life is the strain of waiting upon God.

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But brethren, I must say, surely it is worth the wait. We cannot live if we have any longer as Christianized deists.

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But we must live as Christians, enjoying communion with a God who is near, who is on your lips, who is at your very fingertips.

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And we must start today. I ask you, do you have faith in the

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God of the Bible, a God with whom you can commune, or the

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God of Nietzsche? But there are more truths to draw out here.

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And the second that I want to draw attention to is this. We have a

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God who remembers his people, yes. And we have a God who remembers his people for salvation.

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God's remembrance of Noah conveys a mindfulness, an imminence, a nearness, we would agree.

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But it also speaks to his salvific work for Noah and his family.

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One observer writes, speaking on this passage, that God's covenant with Noah brought provision and protection in the midst of severe judgment.

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The remnant was preserved and God initiated steps toward establishing the created order on earth.

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What this means is that Noah and the ark does not ultimately point to Noah and the ark, but that Noah on that ark points to the great deliverance that the

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Lord God has for his people in Jesus Christ. I'm reminded of a story that D .L.

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Moody, or that was once told about D .L. Moody's life. As he was interacting with a man, a man said to him, sir,

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I lack an assurance of salvation. I do not feel saved. And D .L.

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Moody said to him, will you tell me, was Noah saved because he felt secure or because he was safe in the ark?

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And the man immediately opened his eyes to understanding that my assurance is not in my feelings, but it's in my place in God's protected world, in his protection, in his son, the

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Lord Jesus. Now, as I listen to that story, and even as I retell it, I'm inclined to disagree just a little bit with D .L.

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Moody. Was he saved by his feelings or was he saved by the ark or was he saved by God through the ark?

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Ultimately, God is the one who gets the glory. And this ark, this whole story speaks not only to God's preservation, his redemption, his deliverance of the man

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Noah, but of his deliverance and of his salvation for us. And we find this is true because scripture itself teaches this, that scripture itself interprets this event.

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And if we were to go together to 1 Peter 3 and verse 20, we would see this as Peter is speaking about those who formerly did not obey.

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He says, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, he says this, the ark was being prepared in which a few, that is eight persons,

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Noah and his family, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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Now, this is not teaching baptismal regeneration, that in order for us to be saved, we must first be baptized.

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I'm mindful of a conversation we had, and I thank you for your prayers, that we had with a member of our family this week.

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And my wife, Nicole, pointed this out, that what of the thief on the cross, be baptized, be placed back on the cross, and then it might be true of what

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Christ said to him, today you will be with me in paradise? Absolutely not. But what

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Peter is doing here is that baptism is very closely related to a person's profession of faith.

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We see this in Peter earlier, on the day of Pentecost, when people were cut to the heart and they asked, what must we do to be saved?

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And what did he say? Repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins. Not that baptism itself is an efficacious work bringing salvation, but that it is part and parcel with a saving faith.

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To repent and to be baptized demonstrates a repentance and a faith in the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And yet there is something fascinating here.

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We've talked about how long Noah stayed on the ark, some 378 days.

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And yet if we were to go and look, for instance, at Genesis chapter 7 and verse 12, what we would find is that there are insulated periods of time during that period.

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In chapter 7 and verse 12, we see this repetition begin, that there were 40 days of rain as it fell.

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And then if we fast forward to Genesis chapter 8 and verse 6, there were 40 days of drying.

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And what we find, the question becomes, what do these numbers represent? Well, throughout the

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Bible, the number 40 often represents a of testing. When we saw our

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Lord Jesus tempted in the garden, being tested, as it were, in his fasting, in the wilderness, how long was he there?

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40 days. When we found the nation of Israel in their wilderness wanderings, being tested by the

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Lord before entering the promised land, how long were they there? 40 years.

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I think Christ's being tempted in the wilderness is representative of those 40 years, but this 40 represents a period of testing.

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And so what we have in the life of Noah is a period of testing lasting 40 days in the rain and a period of testing lasting 40 days in the drying of the water.

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What I believe is at play here is that God is, in this moment, testing

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Noah's faith. And on the other side of that testing of Noah's faith is the very salvation of God.

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Now, I want to say this, and I want to say it carefully, but all of us are going to go through a period of testing.

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It is true that our salvation is an event, that a person is saved in the moment that they believe, but the tested genuineness of that faith is demonstrated through times of testing and of trial.

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And some of you, I know this, some of you at this very moment are experiencing that testing.

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Where do we see this? Is this a biblical concept? I had us in 1 Peter 3, forgive me,

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I want to take us to 1 Peter 1 quickly, in verse 3. And this passage speaks to a couple of realities.

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One, that those who are saved are saved. That you can be assured that if the

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Lord has saved you, you are not going to lose that. And yet at the same time, a genuine and a saving faith is a persevering faith.

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Our Lord said in Matthew, but the one who endures to the end will be saved.

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And 1 Peter 1, I think, teaches us that the one who is saved will endure to the end.

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In 1 Peter 1 .3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

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To an inheritance that is imperishable. Hear the qualities of this salvation. To an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power, not your own, by God's power are being guarded through faith.

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That's the means for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials.

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Why are these suffering Christians that Peter is writing to enduring various trials?

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He says, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

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Dear friends, not only does God remember us in that he is near to us in his relations, but God himself will remember us through judgment in Christ for a salvation that is ready to be revealed at the last day.

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And yet, like Noah, you will endure times of testing. You will endure times of trial.

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And I say with Matthew Henry on this point, he says, the same hand that brings the desolation must bring the deliverance.

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To that end, therefore, we must look. The devil would seek, and I am not being dramatic, would seek to sift you at this moment.

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That there are a myriad of things that are out there vying for your faith, vying for your attentions, vying for your allegiance.

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And let us not, any one of us, think that we can withstand this test apart from the gracious help of our

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God. That the very one who brings the judgment is the very one who brings the salvation.

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That this ark points itself, points us to Christ. And dear saints, our confidence, our faith, our trust, our all must be in this

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Christ. That it is only in Christ that we are remembered for salvation.

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It is only in Christ that we become a partaker of this covenant. It is only in Christ that we may be saved.

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And I wish with all my might that this warning could just be a hypothetical one.

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But it is not a hypothetical warning. Just as Noah needed to be in the ark, so we need to be in Christ.

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And nowhere else ever may it never be said of us, as Paul said to the

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Galatians, who has bewitched you? Oh foolish Galatians, you have turned to another gospel as if there were another gospel.

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As Noah was in the ark, remembered by God. So we must be found always in Christ.

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Looking to his life, his death, his burial, his resurrection, his ever living now to make intercession for us.

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And it is of those who are found in Christ that it is said in Hebrews 13, 5,

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I will never leave you nor forsake you. But there is another remembrance.

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God remembers his people. He remembers us for salvation in Christ. And he remembers for, and I struggled with what to call this.

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It is a little bit awkward. But he remembers us for recreation or maybe new creation.

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What does that mean? In verse 1 we read that not only did God remember

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Noah, but that God made wind to blow over the earth. That picture of wind, that Hebrew word for wind is the

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Hebrew word ruach. The same word that is translated as spirit in Genesis chapter 1 and verse 2.

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And what we see here is a recreation or a new creation of the post world, sorry, of the post flood or the, what am

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I trying to say? I'm going to try this all over again. We see a recreation or a new creation of the world.

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There it is. Post fall. R .C. Sproul points this out. He says that the successive recreative acts mirror the original creation pattern.

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That we see the gathering of waters in verses 2 through 5. The placing of the birds in the heavens in verses 6 through 12.

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The establishment of dry ground in verse 13. The emergence of animals and humans upon the earth.

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The command to be fruitful and to multiply. And the divine blessing that will later appear in chapter 9.

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Now I wanted to go into the use of birds, but I'm running out of time quickly. But suffice it to say, what

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Noah is doing here is not something that is odd. That sailors, if you were to go back in history, sailors have for centuries used birds, perhaps even millennia, to find land.

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There's a group of Polynesian sailors that we can look back in history that used to bring birds called frigate birds.

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I believe frigate is a nautical or a marine word. And they were not able to land on water.

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And so what these sailors would do is they would release the birds into the air. These frigate birds, they were not like seagulls.

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They couldn't land in the water. If they landed in the water, they would become waterlogged and they wouldn't be able to escape it.

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Eventually they would drown. And so if the frigate bird was released and it came back to the ship, they knew that they were not near land.

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But if the frigate bird was released and then it began traveling due west, well they immediately thought, well there is land there.

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Whether by instinct or by the bird's view from that altitude, from that elevation, there was land.

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And so they would follow that bird almost always faithfully to a body of land somewhere in the ocean.

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Now what was happening here as Noah is releasing a raven? Ravens are unclean birds.

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They could be easily sacrificed. That's why some rabbis thought they were released. But they're also hardy and intelligent birds.

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Omnivorous scavengers that they can find. If there is something to sustain life, they can find it.

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And so we see that Noah releases a raven. After releasing a raven, we're not told if it returns or not, he releases a dove.

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And again another dove. Now this too strengthens the argument of this being a new creation in that in this new creation, a dove is often representative of the

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Holy Spirit. We see this in Luke 3 .22. But this action on Noah's part shows that what he's trying to do is to discern the recreated earth's ability to sustain life.

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Now at the sending of that first dove, we're told that it had no place to set her foot.

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And that word to set her foot is the Hebrew word Manoah. Now if you know what

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Noah means, Noah means rest or peace. And so it found no place of rest.

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Now not only did that dove not find a place of rest, but upon sending it out the following time, it finds a place of rest and freshly plucked olive leaf.

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Now why an olive leaf? Is there any significance to this? Again, scholars have looked at this olive leaf and appreciated that from this olive plant comes olive oil, which was used frequently in services offered to God.

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Kenneth Matthews writes it was obviously something that pleased God. And so what this dove goes out and finds is both a place of rest and a place that pleases

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God or something that pleases God. And in the mountains of Ararat, I realize

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I have way too much information here. As it came upon the mountains of Ararat, there are two peaks there where it's commonly held that the ark landed is in a region called

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Urartu, located in what is now northeastern Turkey in Armenia. There are two mountains there, volcanic mountains, the mountains of Ararat.

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One stands at 17 ,000 feet and the other at 13 ,000 feet. And this would have been a strategic place for the

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Lord to land the ark. It is located to the nearest possible center point on the desert route between Africa and Asia.

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It has been called by some a cool, airy, well -watered mountain island in the midst of the old continent.

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Another who studies geography says it is the most suitable spot in the world for the tribes and nations that sprang from the sons of Noah to descend from its heights and spread into every land.

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And what this means is that not only did God establish Noah and his family in a dry place, but in a good place.

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Representing a new creation, a new garden where man can thrive in the midst of his

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God. And yet, it does not merely point, I would suggest, to the

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Middle East or to the land of Canaan that was to come, but it points once more to Christ and to the new creation, to the new heavens, and to the new earth that we will enjoy with him.

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Now, I'm drawing a lot of lines, aren't I? I'm going from Genesis to 1

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Peter, Genesis to Hebrews, Genesis to 1 Peter. I'm going to take us to 2 Peter one last time to show you that I'm not making these connections up, but they do exist.

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In 2 Peter 3 and verse 5, for they deliberately overlook this fact that the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water through the water by the word of God.

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And that by means of these, we're talking about Noah's flood, by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.

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But by the same word, the heavens and the earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

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The first flood points to a second flood, but it is not a flood of water, but it is a flood of fire, a flood in its final form, a flood that ushers in the new heavens and the new earth.

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Now, I hope I've not completely lost you. I'm looking at your faces and I think I have. Hebrews 3 and 4 speaks of a future place of rest for the people of God.

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And what Noah's flood, what the re -emergence of land, what this new creation represents isn't merely a new start then, but a new start, a new place of rest in the future.

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So that when our Lord says, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am, you may be also.

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You brethren, the Lord will not only remember his people for a relationship to be near to you, he will not only remember you for salvation, but he will remember you for a new home, a new heaven, a new earth, a new creation for you.

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Now, who here has read, I want to ask, the Pilgrim's Progress? Do I have a few? Okay, I've got a few.

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Not enough of you. I commend that book to you. Go back and read that book.

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But at the very end of the book, I had my wife reading me portions of it on the way here,

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Christian and hopeful come to the shores of the celestial city. And as they approach that celestial city, it's described in this way, that the reflection of the sun upon the city, for the city was pure gold, was so extremely glorious that they could not as yet with open face behold it, but through an instrument only made for that purpose.

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That the new world, the celestial city that God had prepared for his people was so good and so wonderful that they couldn't even behold it with their own eyes.

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Dear Saints, there are times when you must admit defeat. I admit defeat, that I don't think

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I drew a clear enough line in this point, but I want to say to you in biblical terms, on biblical authority, that such a place awaits us in Christ.

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That the new creation that is coming is so glorious that we could not at this very moment behold it with our own eyes.

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That God himself dwells in inapproachable light. And yet as Christian and hopeful are approaching this celestial city, they come upon something that we too must come upon.

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They came upon a river, a river representing death. And as Christian came to the river, he noticed that there was no bridge to his left or to his right, and he was told you can only enter the celestial city by one way, and that is through the river.

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If you're acquainted with that story, you'll know that Christian and hopeful, as they enter in, they are told that the depth of the river will be measured to the extent of their faith as they cross that river.

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Hopeful crosses that river with great ease. And meanwhile, Christian, at times he can barely feel the bottom.

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He feels as if he will be ripped away and swept downstream down to the river, never to reach the celestial city.

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But by God's help, he makes his way across the river to the celestial city.

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And the question is posed is this, what must we do in this holy place?

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This is John Bunyan's description of the new heavens and the new earth, of the new world that God is creating for us on the other side of the ark that we are on, on the other side of the

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Christ in whom we are trusting. He says, you must receive the comfort of all your toil and have joy for all your sorrow.

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You must reap what you have sown, even the fruit of all your prayers and tears and sufferings for the king by the way.

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In that place, you must wear crowns of gold and enjoy the perpetual sight and vision of the holy one.

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For there you shall see him as he is. There also you shall serve him continually with praise, with shouting and thanksgiving whom you desire to serve in the world, though with much difficulty because of the infirmities of your flesh.

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There your eyes shall be delighted with seeing and your ears with hearing the pleasant voice of the mighty one.

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There you shall enjoy your friends again who are gone there before you, and there you shall with joy receive even everyone that follows in this holy place after you.

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There also shall you be clothed with glory and majesty and put into the equipage fit to ride out with the king of glory when he shall come with trumpet sound in the clouds as upon the wings of the wind you shall come with him and when he shall sit upon the throne of judgment you shall sit with him yea and when he shall pass sentence upon all the workers of iniquity let them be angels or men you shall have a voice in that judgment because you were his.

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Also when shall again the trumpet sound and you will be ever with him.

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Isaiah says when you pass through the waters of God I will be with you and through the rivers they shall not overwhelm you when you walk through fire you shall not be burned and the flame shall not consume you.

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When we read about Noah's ark we're reading about this very moment that dear saints we can pass through that river and we are finished when we are finished we will be with the

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God who remembers us. So I will finish with where I started.

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Nietzsche was studying to be a pastor. By the 1880s, 20 years later, he said that God was dead.

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Within just a few years of that he endured such a violent mental breakdown that all he could do was write short letters and in writing those short letters he would sign them not as himself but as Dionysius, the

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Greek god of fertility and of winemaking and of ritual madness.

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At other times he would write small notes and sign as the crucified one.

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He lost his mind and before losing his mind he said God is dead but given the way of men there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown and we we shall have to vanquish his shadow.

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Dear saints let us be those men and women in the ark in Christ remembering and praising the

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God who remembers us. Let's pray. Thank you for listening to another sermon from Grace Fellowship Church.

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If you would like to keep up with us you can find us at Facebook at Grace Fellowship Church or our

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Instagram at Grace Church y -e -g all one word. Finally, you can visit us at our website graceedmonton .ca.