The Calm Before the Storm Genesis 6:9-22

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Last week, we undertook the difficult task of determining what caused the flood.
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What led God to judge the earth by sending a deluge of water over the planet?
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What I presented to you last week was that the godly line of Seth intermarried with the ungodly line of Cain that polluted the world.
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Before this intermarriage happened, the problems in the world were bad enough. Several weeks back, we saw that Cain murdered
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Abel, and the seventh in his line, Lamech, also murdered a man. The line of Cain was known for their independence from God and their heinous sins against God.
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The line of Seth was known as the good line, the blessed line. But things came to a head when this intermarriage between these two lines happened, and most of the world had turned against God.
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This led to an era known for widespread violence. So the question is, what was
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God going to do about it? We know that God is gracious, merciful, he abounds in steadfast love, he's patient.
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But his patience will not go on forever, he will judge the wicked, his justice demands it.
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And that's what we saw last week. God said in Genesis 6 -7, But as we saw last week, there's hope.
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God plans for a man to continue the human race. And that man is
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Noah. And that is where we are today. As we continue to make our way through Genesis, we are in Genesis 6, starting in verse 9, and we'll go through verse 22, which is the end of the chapter.
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So if you have a Bible, please turn with me to Genesis 6, starting in verse 9. It's just a few pages into the
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Red Pew Bibles, in the pews. And our big idea that we're going to focus on today is,
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So God's judgment will be shown in destroying the wicked, but his grace is shown in preserving the righteous.
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And there are three ways that this is shown. The first is, he describes his children with glowing remarks as they reflect him.
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What we see at the beginning of our passage this morning is Noah's family line mentioned again. And God says some very kind words about Noah.
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About his character. And we read this in verses 9 and 10. Noah walked with God.
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And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Jepheth. When we read the generations of a man, we know that this is previewing a line of people that are following it.
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In chapter 5, it said that these are the generations of Adam. And then his family line was detailed in the rest of the chapter.
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In chapter 6, we don't get this long line of Noah. Because the focal point of this chapter is the preparation for the flood.
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Noah's three sons are mentioned at the end of verse 10. Shem, Ham, and Jepheth.
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Noah and his wife and his three sons and their wives are going to be the ones to continue the human race.
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So if you count that, that's eight people. That's it. These eight people will continue the human race.
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Now in the middle of these verses, there are glowing remarks about Noah.
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In 9b and 9c, it says Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation.
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Noah walked with God. This sounds similar to how the
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Bible describes other godly people in the Old Testament. For example, this was said of Job in Job 1 .1.
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He was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.
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When Noah is described, first of all, it says that he is righteous. Now, was
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Noah righteous in himself? No. Noah, as a follower of God, had
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God's righteousness. We know that he followed God because this verse says that he walked with God.
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And if you remember that language from a few weeks ago, remember it said that Enoch walked with God?
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Do you remember what that means? It means that he followed God. So we know that Noah was a faithful man. We know that he followed
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God. In Genesis 5 .24, that's where it mentions that about Enoch.
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Now, no one is righteous in himself, but as one who follows God, he had God's righteousness.
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A little later on in Genesis, in chapter 15, verse 6, and we'll see this in a few months, the text says that Abraham believed
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God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. The Apostle Paul explains how this works in the
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New Testament, in Romans chapter 4. Early on in Romans 4, he mentions how
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Abraham was justified by faith alone. Last week we talked about the
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Reformation. That's what they fought over. You are justified. You are saved by grace, through faith, alone.
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And that's what Paul says here in Romans 4. That Abraham was justified by faith alone, and he was counted as righteous.
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And so what that means is that when you believe in God, obviously in the Old Testament, they weren't believing in Jesus because Jesus had not yet come to the earth.
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But at that time, they were believing in the one true God, and when they believed in God, they were counted as righteous.
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And today, when you believe in Jesus Christ, what happens is that God counts his righteousness as your righteousness.
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It's so beautiful when you think about that. I mean, think about that. You'll be on your deathbed someday.
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And you're not going to be thinking about all these little things you might think about in your life right now. You will be thinking about,
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Jesus is my righteousness. That will be on your mind. Because when you stand before God, it's his righteousness that makes you right with him.
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And in Romans 4, what Paul says is this, in verses 23 through 25.
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He says, So that's beautiful news.
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People aren't saved differently in the Old Testament. Everybody's saved the same way. By grace, through faith, in the one true
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God. So, Noah was righteous in this way that I just explained.
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He was righteous. He was counted righteous. Just as Abraham was, and just as you are in Christ. He was also blameless, as verse 9 says.
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Another way to say this is without blame. As people looked at his life, they couldn't point out all these faults.
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Because it was hard to find faults in this man. You might know some people like that. This person is a really good man or a really good woman.
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You could say that about Noah. In a world that was full of rotten people, Noah stood out.
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Hebrews 11 describes men of faith. Some of you are familiar with that passage. Where it says, this man, by faith, did this.
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And so on. Noah is described there. In Hebrews 11, 7.
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This is what it says about Noah. By faith, Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen.
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In reverent fear, constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this, he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness.
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That comes by faith. At the end of this chapter.
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At the end of chapter 11, the author of Hebrews says this. Have you ever noticed this?
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This is what he says. He says that this long list of faithful people throughout history.
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That the world was not worthy of them. It says here that Noah was blameless in his generation.
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So the world was not worthy of Noah. And you know what that means too? If you belong to Jesus Christ, you are a person of faith.
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That means that the world is not worthy of you. You stand out in this world.
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Now, we are going to be reminded once again. As to why the Lord sent the flood on the earth.
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Verses 11 and 12 detail this. Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight. And the earth was filled with violence.
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And God saw the earth and behold it was corrupt. For all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.
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We learned this last week. These times were known for widespread violence. It was unprecedented in these days.
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The violent men of this age were known as the Nephilim. Also known as the mighty men of old.
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Who were the men of renown. These were warriors who contributed to violence all over the world.
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But Noah stood out as righteous. And blameless. And as a follower of Jesus Christ in a generation, in a world.
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That is every bit as messed up as Noah's generation. You stand out in a dark world as well.
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If you belong to Jesus, you stand out. You are a light in the world. And that is what Jesus said in Matthew 5 .13.
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He said, you are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.
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Think about that. As you go around this community. Eureka Center. The St. Croix Valley. You stand out.
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And you might not even know it. You are just going through your day. But you stand out.
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You are different. Because Jesus is with you. The Holy Spirit is pulsing out of you.
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This is the first way that the Lord's character is shown. And it is shown in his grace.
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The Lord describes his children glowingly as they reflect him. The second way that his character is shown.
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Is he rightly shuts the door on rebellious humanity. The Lord rightly shuts the door on rebellious humanity.
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What we saw last week is that God was not going to put up with this forever. He can't.
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He's just God. He can't put up with evil forever. He was going to send his judgment.
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Verse 7 of chapter 6 says that God is going to wipe out all living creatures.
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Humans and animals. We are not informed how he is going to wipe it out at this point in the text.
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Obviously, I've spoiled it. It's going to be a flood. But at this point in the text, we don't yet know how he's going to destroy it.
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But the Lord just said, I'm going to destroy it. Now the
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Lord talks to Noah directly. You'll notice this as you read early on in the Bible. These people didn't have a
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Bible. Because the Bible is the word of God. They didn't have pieces of paper to look at that were written down, that were inspired.
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God spoke to these people directly. He spoke to these people audibly. And this is what he does in verse 13.
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And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them.
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Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. This verse says that God plans to end all flesh.
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And the earth has become violent through them. Now the flesh mentioned here is referring to humans.
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Humans are the reason that there are all these problems on the earth. That God is going to send this judgment.
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And I say that flesh is humans because of what verse 3 says. Verse 3 says, The Lord said,
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My spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh. You see that word there?
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He is flesh. So the flesh here is referring to humans. We learned last week that God told
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Adam that in the day you eat of the fruit, you will surely die. Dying, you will surely die.
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And eventually, Noah died. Or sorry, eventually, Adam died. But Adam lived to be a long time.
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He lived to be over 900 years old. But the wickedness became so bad that God said,
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I'm not going to let these people live several hundred years. I'm going to shorten their life to 120. That's what he did.
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That's what we have today. Nobody lives past 120. What we saw last week was that we learned that flesh means weakness and corruption and that man is mortal.
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Meaning that he will die on the earth because of corruption or sin. The Lord says that flesh or the sins of mankind are the reason that there is violence all over the earth at this time.
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So the heart of humankind is the problem here.
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Their sin is what's going to lead to God's judgment. At the end of verse 13, it says that the
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Lord will destroy flesh with the earth. And I take this to mean not only will he wipe out mankind, but he will also wipe out everything else that is on the land.
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Animals, birds, some fish, and trees. I mean, everything that's on the earth, he is going to wipe out.
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Up to this point, God still has not revealed how he is going to destroy the earth. But he just tells them,
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I'm going to wipe them all out. And then that leads us to what we'll see here in a second about the construction of the ark.
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The Lord reveals that Noah needs to build a boat before he tells him what's going to happen.
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And so I'm going to read here the Lord's instructions to Noah about building this boat.
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Starting in verse 14, the Lord says, This is how you are to make it.
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The length of the ark, 300 cubits. Its breadth, 50 cubits. And its height, 30 cubits.
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Make a roof for the ark. And finish it to a cubit above. And set the door of the ark in its side.
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Make it with lower, second, and third decks. For behold, I will bring a flood.
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Stop right there. So he tells him to build the ark out of gopher wood.
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Ever heard of gopher wood? This is an unknown kind of tree that is transliterated from Hebrew.
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So we don't know what kind of tree that he told him to build this out of. But generically, a tree.
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Then they are told to make rooms to be able to handle all the activity that is going to be taking place.
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These people are going to be living on this boat for months. So they needed a lot of preparation.
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Now we get the dimensions. This is very fascinating. Some of you in this room, I know, have been to Northern Kentucky to see the construction of the ark that Andrews and Genesis built a couple years ago.
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Now a cubit is 18 inches. So a foot and a half. And we think better in terms of feet.
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So I'll explain this in feet. The ark would have been about 450 feet long. Or 150 yards.
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And for the football fans out there, that's a football field and a half in length. That's how long the ark is.
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Now breadth means width. It would have been about 75 feet wide.
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That's pretty wide. And the height would have been about 45 feet high.
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It would need to be high enough for there to be three decks in it. Now in verse 16, they are told to make a roof.
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I don't need to explain why this is important. Obviously, there's going to be loads and loads of water that are going to be falling from the heavens.
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They need a strong roof to be able to hold the water out. And then there was a door.
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Verse 16 says that there was a door that was to be on the side of the ark. This is an important application to make here.
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We don't know how long it took Noah to build the ark. It probably took him years. But we know that it would have taken a long time.
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He was probably made fun of. He was probably mocked by people. They probably thought he was crazy for doing this.
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As he finished building the ark, the door would have been wide open. So he's constructing the ark, and then there's this door flat on the ground, wide open for anybody to walk in.
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The only way of escape from the waters that would come would be to get into the ark.
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But eventually the door shut, and there were only eight people inside, Noah and his family.
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No one from the outside world got into the ark, just Noah and his family.
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Many people in church history have referred to Jesus as the ark.
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Jesus actually refers to himself as the door in John 10, verse 9.
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Jesus said, I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.
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So my question to you is, have you entered the door? Earlier I read
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Matthew 24, where Jesus paralleled what happened in Noah's day with what is going to happen in the future.
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And the way that you plan to be safe is not to build a structure like Noah, but that you enter the door of Jesus Christ.
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So have you entered the door? I know many of you have, but if you have not, I pray that you do. Because I read last week in 2
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Peter 3, 5 -7, and that passage says that destruction will come upon the ungodly.
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But if you have entered Christ, you will be safe. You will be safe from the wrath of God.
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And you will have eternal life. So there was a door on the ark to escape
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God's judgment, and there is a door with Jesus to escape God's holy wrath and enter safely.
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One thing we have to recognize here is that God is gracious. God is a gracious God.
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He offers this to you. This door for you to enter. This literal door of the ark was about to be shut on sinful humanity.
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And eventually it was. But the door of Jesus Christ is an offer. Anybody on planet
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Earth right now can receive this. But one day that door will shut. So I pray that everyone here has entered that door, and I pray that you tell people about Christ.
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Say, have you found refuge in Jesus? He paid the penalty for your sins.
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He made you right with God. He is your righteousness. So that when you believe in Him, your sins will be forgiven, and His righteousness will be yours.
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That is the most important news in the world. And I hope that you understand that and you are embracing it.
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This is the second way the Lord's character is shown. He shows His just judgment. He rightly shuts the door on wicked humanity.
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The third way the Lord's character is shown is that He mercifully opens the door for the righteous. He mercifully opens the door for the righteous.
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And we just looked at the description of the ark. Now we are going to see why the ark needed to be built.
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Namely, there was a flood on the way. Verse 17. For behold,
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I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven.
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Everything that is on the earth shall die. Now all flesh in this verse isn't just referring to humans.
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This is referring to humans and animals. We see the breath of life show up here.
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And we've seen this term, or this phrase show up several places in Genesis, including
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Genesis chapter 2 verse 7. Remember when God made Adam, He made him from the dust of the ground and then
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He breathed the breath of life into his nostrils. And so Adam not only had a physical side to him, but he also had a spiritual, immaterial side to him.
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And so what this says in verse 17 is that everything which has the breath of life shall be destroyed.
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And so He's saying, I'm going to wipe out all humans and all animals. These people and these creatures that have the breath of life.
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And verse 17 concludes by saying that all of them will die. Now what we will see in verse 18 in the following verses is that God once again shows
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His favor toward Noah. So God shows His judgment towards the destruction of the ungodly, but He's showing
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His favor toward this man. He says here in verse 18, But I will establish My covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you.
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So the Lord says here that He is going to establish a covenant with Noah.
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A covenant is an agreement between two parties. And what God is doing here is that He is initiating this covenant.
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Actually, every covenant in the Bible is initiated by God. He is going to give the details of this covenant at the end of Genesis 8 and the early part of chapter 9.
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But this is just a preview. And the Lord, I think, gives a preview of this covenant that He's going to make.
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And I'll give you a little hint here of what that covenant is going to be. He says, I'm not going to destroy the earth anymore with water.
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That's the covenant. In order to preserve humanity. But the Lord gives this preview of this covenant to ensure them that they are going to make it out of this okay.
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This is security. That not only will they make it out of this okay, but there's going to be a future for humanity.
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Of course, this future covenant will be enacted with a rainbow, and there won't be any future destruction of the earth by water.
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And so every time you look at that photo on the back of our newsletter, which is on the newsletter today, just think about God made this covenant with Noah, and the way that we know the covenant is there is by a rainbow.
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Rainbows aren't just a natural phenomenon. God created it so that we would be reminded that He will never again flood the earth with water.
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It's amazing to think about that. We see God's fingerprints all over the place. Don't miss it.
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Please see it. It's incredible. Stop to think about the wonders of God.
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So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to talk much more about this in a few weeks, and I look forward to doing that. But first, we see
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God's provision of humanity by placing them in the ark and promising this future covenant. Now we are going to see not only
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His provision of humans, but His provision of animals, verses 19 through 22.
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And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you.
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They shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds.
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Of creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive.
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Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten and store it up. It shall serve as food for you and for them.
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So the flesh referred to here in verse 19 is animals. Since He already talked about humans, now we're talking about animals.
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He tells them to take two of every animal on the ark. And it's obvious why He tells them to take two.
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He tells them to take a male and a female so that they can have children and keep that animal going.
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And in verse 20 we see the word kind show up again. Verse 20 where it says,
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The birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds. Of creeping thing of the ground according to its kind.
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This is a very significant term. And it's worth noting again, I mentioned this in Genesis chapter 1, what kinds means.
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The Bible is far ahead of what science even says on this. And so we should never interpret science first and then the
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Bible. We should interpret the Bible first and then see if science fits it. That's what we always must do.
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What the Bible is describing here is what we would say in modern language when referring to the animal kingdom as a family.
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So kind is a family in the animal kingdom. So a family would be dogs.
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That's a family. Or cats. That's a family. Or bears. That's a family.
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And this is significant when you think about what animals were on the
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Ark. Ancestors in Genesis, the ministry that built the Ark in Northern Kentucky, also has made a point, a strong point on this.
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Because when you look at children's books, they have all these animals on the Ark. They have polar bears, and grizzly bears, and black bears.
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What's the problem with that? They weren't on the Ark. Only one of those was on the
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Ark. And critics of Noah's Ark look at that and they say there's no way there could have been all these animals on the
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Ark. But what they fail to realize is what the Bible already said. He said get them according to their kinds.
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So there wouldn't have been a grizzly bear and a polar bear and a black bear. There would have only been one bear.
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A male and a female. And then eventually over time, these bears come about.
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So eventually you get grizzly bears. Eventually you get polar bears and black bears. We don't know which bear was there, but there was some kind of bear, some kind of cat, some kind of dog.
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And what's interesting is that dogs will always be dogs. Cats will always be cats.
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Bears will always be bears. Certain birds will always be certain birds. There's never this crossover like evolution teaches.
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It's right before our eyes. And the Bible had it right, right from the beginning. And so we just need to see it with our eyes as we look at this.
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So that's the significance of the word kinds here. These kinds, these families, would have been brought on the
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Ark. Male and female. And notice too here that fish are not mentioned. Sometimes we forget to realize, what do they do with the fish?
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Obviously, God judged the world with water. Fish have fins.
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They can live in water. Actually, they can't live on land. They only live in water. So some fish would have died during the flood because of the violent water and the currents, but many would have lived.
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So we see how fish were preserved through this. Verse 21 tells us that Noah and his family were also supposed to gather food for the eight humans and all the animals.
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And I look forward to going to northern Kentucky sometime to see this Ark, but I know that they have it set up to show what it might look like as far as all the different places where they have the food to be able to keep the humans alive and to keep the animals alive.
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So this is the third way that the Lord's character is shown. He mercifully opens the door for the righteous.
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And if you are a follower of Christ today, he has opened up that door of salvation for you, and that door is
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Jesus Christ. So please see that. Noah and his family get on the
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Ark, and if you believe in Jesus Christ, you enter that door and you belong to him and you are safe.
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What we saw this morning is that as the flood approaches, the Lord's character is shown in three ways. He describes his children with glowing remarks as they reflect him.
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He rightly shuts the door on wicked humanity. He mercifully opens the door for the righteous. We conclude this morning with the last verse of this chapter.
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And what this verse says is worth highlighting. It says that Noah did this.
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Okay, so he built the Ark, he did everything that God told him to do. That is significant.
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The Lord commanded Noah to do this, and he did it. Noah is living up to the faithfulness mentioned of him in verse 9, where it says that Noah was righteous and blameless, and he walked with God.
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The Lord told him to do this monumental task of building this enormous Ark, and Noah listened and he built.
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Now listen to me very closely here. This is a very important application to make. I mentioned earlier that Noah is saved by grace, through faith, alone, just like we are.
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But true faith is always accompanied by works. That is the clear teaching of Scripture.
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I'm not saying that your salvation is earned by works. It's earned by what Jesus Christ did, 100%.
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But your works prove that you are saved. I hope that makes sense.
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I've said this a lot, and I'm going to say it over and over again, just so everybody understands what
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I'm saying. Noah demonstrates his faith that he's saved by grace, through faith, alone.
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He demonstrates his faith by trusting in God and building this Ark. He demonstrated a lot of faith doing this.
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People probably mocked him, but he built this huge structure. Noah demonstrated through it all his faithfulness to God.
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And we demonstrate our faith to God by what we do. We can't say we have faith if there is no evidence in our life.
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As James says, faith without deeds is dead. He says, as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
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So Noah clearly demonstrated his faith in this passage today. And while we are counted righteous through faith in Jesus, we demonstrate that we have been saved by our life, by the fruit in our life.
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And so, it's good to examine that in your life. What fruit am I showing in my life to show that I really have believed in Christ?
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That his righteousness really has been credited to me? That my sins are really erased?
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So, we need to stress that. And last night, I shared that passage, the parable of the sower. Remember the fourth seed, the fourth people described?
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It says that this seed takes root in the ground and it produces a beautiful crop and produces a hundredfold.
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That is a genuine believer. No question about it. And so, at Eureka, we want to be people who are saved by grace through faith alone, but have this fruit that shows that this is real.
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And the Lord lets us in the door. He saves us with the goal of bringing us to reflect him.
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Next week, the waters will come. We will see the flood take place and we will look at one of the most important and significant events in world history and that's the global flood.
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Let's pray. Father in heaven, I pray,
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Lord, that we would see the importance of this. That we would see how significant it is to enter the door of Jesus Christ.
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Where Jesus says, I am the door. Any who enter by it will be saved.
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So, I pray that we would realize that, Lord. Enter it. And I pray for, Lord, that when we believe in Jesus Christ, that's not the end of our walk with you.
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That's the beginning. And you call us to continue to walk with you, to demonstrate fruit.
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And I pray that this would show in people's lives. I pray that as the word of God is placed on each person's heart here, that it would take root.
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That it would change them. It would change me more and more. And that we would grow to become more like you.
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That we would be that fourth seed in the parable of the sower. And be like Noah.