When God Remembers

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The title of today's sermon is When God Remembers, and earlier today as I was opening up my notes and thinking about what I was going to preach today, I've decided to make a slight change in course.
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My desire for today was to go through the whole chapter, walking through the whole chapter, but I knew that it was my intention to really focus on verse 1.
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So here's how the plan changed as the Lord has led.
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Rather than trying to give an exposition of the entire chapter, I'm going to save that for next week.
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And I'm going to spend my time today preaching on verse 1, and I want to tell you sort of why this is.
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Verse 1, I believe, is the pivotal point of the narrative that we have been studying the last several weeks.
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As you all know, we have been studying the narrative of Noah and the flood.
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For the past two weeks, I've put an outline in your worship folder.
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If you have your worship folder, you can turn it over on the back, and Nate, if you'll put it up on the screen for me, this is the outline that's on the back of your worship folder, and you'll notice that the way that the outline goes is it drops down and then it goes backward, and this is what's known as a chiasm.
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I mentioned this a few weeks ago.
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This is actually one of the longest chiastic structures that we find in the Bible.
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A chiastic structure is something that builds up to a point and then builds back away from that same point, giving the same events or a reasonable similarity of events in reverse order.
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We see it in small cases, such as when Jesus said, the Sabbath was made for man, but not man for the Sabbath.
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That is a chiasm.
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That is saying something and then reversing the order and saying it again in reverse order.
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We do this all the time in our own language.
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When you say, by failing to prepare, you're preparing to fail.
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Or when we say something like, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
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That's a modern expression of a chiasm.
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You're going to a point and then you're reversing the order out.
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Well, in Scripture, we see these several times.
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This is a very common Hebrew way of bringing a narrative together or bringing a story together or bringing a point together.
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This happens in the Psalms quite a bit.
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It happens through the narratives quite a bit.
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But the longest chiastic example that we have that I'm aware of is Genesis 6 through Genesis 9 is a full chiastic structure and you see it here.
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God resolves to destroy the corrupt human race.
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Noah builds an ark according to God's instructions.
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The Lord commands the remnant to enter the ark.
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The Lord, the flood begins and then the waters prevail for 150 days.
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Then chapter 8 verse 1, God remembers Noah and then the floods recede 150 days.
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The earth dries.
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God commands the remnant to leave the ark and Noah, the great ark builder, becomes an altar builder.
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And finally, the Lord resolves not to destroy humankind.
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And so this structure is found in these three chapters and it leads us to a point and the point is chapter 8 verse 1.
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So as I said, as I was thinking about this week and praying on this, I just kept coming back to my mind.
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We need to understand why chapter 8 verse 1 is so important.
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We need to understand why this is the pivotal point of the narrative.
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And so let, as is our tradition, let us stand and I'm going to read the chapter, but I want to read the chapter with our focus on what we read in verse 1.
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But God remembered Noah.
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And all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark and God made a wind blow over the earth and the water subsided, the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens closed and the rains from the heavens were restrained and the waters receded from the earth continually.
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At the end of 150 days, the waters had abated.
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And in the seventh month on the 17th day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.
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The mountains, or excuse me, and the waters continued to abate until the 10th month.
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In the 10th 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 he sent forth a raven.
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It went to and fro until the waters had dried up from the earth.
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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.
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He waited another seven days and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark.
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And the dove came back to him in the evening and behold in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf.
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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 sixth hundred and first year in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from the earth 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 of the 27th day of the month, the earth had dried out.
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Then God said to Noah, go out from the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons wives with you, 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 on the earth.
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So Noah went out and his sons and his wife and his son's wife 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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Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
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And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.
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Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done while the earth remains seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.
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Father in heaven, we thank you for your word.
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We thank you that we get to hear your word and now Lord, as we seek to focus on not an entire chapter, Lord, not even an entire paragraph, but Lord on a single verse and even within that verse, a single word, Lord, I pray that you would fill me with your spirit, that you would keep me from error and Lord, as I preach that you would be glorified and magnified, that I would decrease and Christ would increase Lord, that your people would be edified, that your saints would be taught and corrected and rebuked if necessary and Lord encouraged.
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And Lord, if there are those here who do not know you, that you would break the heart in their chest under the weight of their sin, that they might know that there is only one savior and that they would call upon him today.
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Lord, that you might remember them today, that they might call upon you in Jesus name.
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Amen.
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As we said before, the title of today is God remembered Noah, we see that beginning in verse 8, we see that beginning in verse 8 when it says, but God remembered Noah.
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Immediately those of us who have theological training, those of us who have thought through theological things, those of us who have considered not only the narratives, but what are the narratives telling us about God, what are the narratives proclaiming to us about his truth, immediately we begin to bristle when we come to a passage like chapter 8 verse 1, because when it says that God remembered Noah, it seems to be indicating that somehow he had forgotten him.
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As if Noah was out floating on the ark and God was raining down his terrible wrath and filling the earth with water and Noah was just off floating about and God said, oh yeah, what about that guy who I put on the boat? As if God is busy doing one thing and then as, because you guys have been in that situation before, right, where you have something important that you're supposed to be doing, but you get focused on something else and then in a moment, in an inkling of time, your brain turns on and you say, oh, I remember I was supposed to be doing this.
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You say, nobody thinks that way, Keith.
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People do.
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There are people who have a very small view of God and they do believe that God forgets.
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You say, you gotta be kidding.
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I'm not kidding.
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There are people who believe that God is going through this world the same way we are, that God is going through time in flux and he doesn't know for certain what's going to happen next until it happens.
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If you want a theological nomenclature, the title for that type of thinking is called open theism.
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Open theism is the idea that the future, from God's perspective, is still open to change because God is moving through history in the same way we are and so God is not certain what's going to happen in the future because God, for us to be truly free, this is the argument of the open theist, for us to be truly free, God can't know what we're going to do because if he knows for certain what we're going to do, then we don't have really a choice from his perspective because it's already determined.
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And so in a way to try to avoid hard determinism from God's perspective, what often happens is people say, well, maybe God doesn't know what's going to happen tomorrow.
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Maybe God didn't know what was going to happen with Dale when he fell or maybe God didn't know what was going to happen with your brother that we didn't know.
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We didn't know.
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We've lived for the last two weeks not knowing.
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And I do think there are people who believe God doesn't know.
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Or that God's surprised when a hurricane hits or that God is somehow shaken when the earth itself shakes underneath people's feet.
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That God really doesn't know.
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And that somehow he forgot Noah.
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Now I know you all are much more studious theologians than that.
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But it's important that we remind ourselves why we know that when it says God remembered Noah, that it doesn't mean he forgot Noah.
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That we have to understand that there's a reason why we conclude what we conclude.
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And the reason is because we have a theological paradigm that overrides all of this, that we understand something about God that is true even in light of this verse.
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And what we know about God that is true is this, our God is omniscient.
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Which means, here's the thing, people always say omniscient, that means God's all-knowing.
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Let me tell you what else it means.
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Because if you get caught up with the omniscient, it simply means God is all-knowing and you think that's all it means? You're missing out.
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Because omniscient doesn't just mean all-knowing.
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Omniscient means God never learns anything.
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Because if you have all knowledge you can't learn anything.
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God has never learned anything.
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Neither has he ever forgotten anything.
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Because if he is all-knowing, it's impossible that he would learn and it's impossible that he would forget.
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And so when we think about God's knowing, it is so vast and beyond what we can comprehend because we all have to learn and we all go through the process of forgetting.
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The older I get, the more I forget.
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And God's old.
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He's forever.
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But he's never forgotten one thing.
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In fact, I want to just remind you of a few scripture verses.
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If you're taking notes, you can write them down or you can look them up later or whatever.
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But remember what Romans 8 tells us about God? It says, For whom he foreknew, did he also predestine to be conformed to the image of his Son? What does that mean? That means God knew us before we were ever born.
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That means God knew me.
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He knew Keith Foskey and not only did he know what I was going to do, but he knew it so perfectly that it couldn't be any different.
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You know, you've been through your life probably many struggles.
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Some of you are struggling right now and you're wondering, this was such a difficult thing.
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This caught me by surprise and maybe sometimes we think it caught God by surprise.
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But you know, the Bible says that's not the way it is.
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The Bible says God foreknew me.
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That doesn't just mean he knew my life.
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It means he loved me before he created me.
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That's what the word foreknow actually means.
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But it also does tell us that he knew everything about me.
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That's the thing that's great about God's love is he loves me in spite of all that he knows.
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God loves me even though he knows I'm a sinner.
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Even though he knew the things that I was going to do as a sinner and the things I still struggle with as a sinful man.
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God still loves me.
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There's nothing about me he doesn't know and there's nothing he's forgotten because God can't learn and God can't forget.
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God knows it and yet still loves me.
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Romans 8.28 For whom he foreknew.
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By the way, if you're a believer, that's you.
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You are whom he foreknew.
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And if he foreknew you, he predestined you by his grace.
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It's a wonderful truth.
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But also what do we learn? We learn in the Psalms, in Psalm 139, that God not only knows me intimately but he knows the very words I'm going to say before I say them and he knows the days of my life before I live them.
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It says the days of my life are fashioned before me and written in his book even though there were not one of them.
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When I was in my mother's womb, God knew how many days I was going to live.
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It's a conversation my wife got to have with her family, you know, in the struggle that we're dealing with.
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We didn't know what was going to happen over the last two weeks.
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And she got to say to her family, you understand, heed is not going to control when he dies, neither are the doctors, neither are the nurses, but God.
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God is the one who has fashioned his days and has determined his beginning and his ending.
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You will not die one day before you're supposed to and you will not live one day after.
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And I'm not trying to make you a fatalist.
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Don't ever let yourself think that I'm a fatalist.
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I do think things are important that we should do.
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I think we should live healthy, eat healthy, protect ourselves, lock our doors at night.
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I'm not saying we should tempt the dangers of this world.
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I'm not saying go stand in the street and say, I'm going to live as long as I live and wait for the truck to run you over.
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That's not, don't take that extreme.
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What I am saying though is that your life is bound up in God and he has fashioned your days before you.
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Matthew 10 30 says what? He knows the very number of the hairs on your head.
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Now for some of you, that's easy, but he also knows the number of the hairs on your face.
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God knows perfectly.
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And so when we arrive at Romans 8 1 and it says God remembered Noah, we cannot for a moment think that what that means is he forgot Noah because he can't.
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God doesn't.
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And there's no time that Noah was on that ark where God was so absent from Noah that Noah was independent and living on his own.
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The whole time Noah is on the ark.
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The ark is being held together, not just by wood and nails and pitch, but by the grace of almighty God.
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That ark is floating.
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People say sometimes, well, I don't understand how that ark could have survived such torrential waters.
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I don't understand how that ark could have survived a year on the water.
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It wasn't built by engineers.
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It was built by a primitive man, which I don't believe in that.
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But the argument is how in the world? And the answer is God's grace kept it going.
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And for a moment, just apply that to you.
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Why are you still here? I don't care whether you're 21, whether you're 40, whether you're 85.
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God's grace is what has kept you here.
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And God's grace is going to keep you here until he's done.
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And God's grace is what was keeping Noah there in that ark.
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But something did change in the situation with Noah when we get to Romans 8.1.
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Because there is a reality that we need to understand.
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Even though God hasn't forgotten Noah, and even though God hasn't lifted his hand of grace off of Noah, there's still something happening when we read God remembered Noah.
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So what does it mean when it says God remembered him if it doesn't mean that he forgot him? What does it mean he remembered him if it doesn't mean he had abandoned him? Well, I'm glad you asked.
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Because when the Bible uses the term remember, the Bible is speaking of God's intimate concern and activity.
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When the Bible talks about remember, it is always referring to God's intimate concern and activity in the life of his elect.
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I'll read from James Fawcett Brown just for a moment this commentary.
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I didn't used to use this commentary a lot, but the more I read it in Genesis, I like it.
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They really hit some things on the nail.
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Even though it's a one volume commentary, it's an older commentary, but I really like what they say.
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But listen to this.
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It says, God showed by his actions that he minded and cared for Noah and that he pitied him and he supported him.
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God is said to remember his people when after some delay or suspension of his favor, he returns and he shows kindness to them.
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Think for a moment the situation Noah's in.
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Noah is in an ark filled with animals and his wife and his in-laws.
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I mean, his sons and his daughter-in-laws, right? He's in a situation that I cannot imagine was overly comfortable.
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He's not in a situation that I can imagine was overly pleasant to the olfactory senses.
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It stunk.
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So he's in a place that smells.
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He's in a place that's loud.
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He's in a place, unless the animals are asleep, and I talked about that a couple weeks ago, maybe they're hibernating, at least then he'd have some quiet.
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But he's still with his wife and his three daughter-in-laws and his sons for almost a year at this point.
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And so, you have to imagine that Noah's in a situation, even in the mind of Noah, where is God? I thought this was going to take a couple weeks, not months and months and months and months.
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It rained for 40 days.
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And that was just the rain.
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The waters continued for 150 days until they began to recede.
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And then the recession, which we're going to see next week, took time.
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And then even, you've got to imagine how this conversation went.
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When he got ready to go out of the ark and he said, okay everybody, we're going to wait seven more days.
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Nuh-uh.
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Open the door.
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What do you mean we're going to wait seven more days? Well, the raven's still moving back and forth.
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I don't care about the raven.
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I'll take a chance.
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You understand, there's patience here and there's waiting on the Lord.
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And it says God remembered him.
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You think Noah knew God remembered him? I do.
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I think that.
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I think Noah knew.
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That's how he was encouraged to remain patient.
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God hasn't forgotten me.
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God hasn't let me go.
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God hasn't taken his hand off me.
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God is still here.
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He has not abandoned me to this dirty, smelly ark.
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But He's coming to save me.
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It may take longer than I want.
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It may take longer than I expected.
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But His salvation draws nigh.
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Two verses to consider.
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Genesis 19, 29.
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After the situation happened with Lot and Abraham, it says in Genesis 19, 29, so it was when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham.
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Again, God hadn't forgotten him, but He visited him in His grace.
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He visited him in his concern.
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He visited him in that moment of need.
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God remembered Abraham.
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Later in Genesis, it says, in Genesis 30, 22, it says when Rachel couldn't conceive a child, and you remember how much that hurt her heart that she couldn't conceive a child, it says God remembered Rachel and He listened to her and He opened her womb.
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Now, do we get a picture of what it means when God remembers? It means He's acting on their behalf.
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It means He's moving into their life in a very meaningful and real way.
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It means He's showing concern for them.
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Intimate, loving concern.
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Understand this, you Calvinists who have the big God.
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We do have a big God, but He still has hands that reach down to love us.
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We cannot think that our God is so far away that He is not also close to us.
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You see, we focus on the transcendence of God, but we must never miss the eminence of God.
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He loves us with an unending love.
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He remembers us in our distress.
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He remembers us in our failures.
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He remembers us in our difficulties.
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He remembers us.
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One of my favorite scenes in the scripture is when Jesus on the cross is having to deal with the two men on either side.
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And if you read Matthew's narrative and you compare it to Luke's narrative, you'll find that Matthew and Luke tell the story slightly differently.
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Matthew's narrative tells us there were two men who were placed on either side of Jesus and both of them reviled Him.
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And you can imagine, these are evil men.
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These are probably associates of Barabbas, who himself was meant to be on Jesus' cross.
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That cross had been fashioned for Barabbas, not for Jesus.
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And so the two men on either side of Jesus are mocking Him, probably all the way up the mountain as they can carry their cross.
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But Jesus, who had been beaten with a scourge and was now unable to carry His cross, they have to get a passerby to carry.
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Oh, you're so weak, you can't even carry your cross.
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The Bible says they reviled Him.
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The Bible says they mocked Him until the moment that something changed.
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Because we read in Luke's gospel the rest of the story.
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Because in Luke's gospel it says one of them reviled Jesus.
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If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross, save yourself and us too, was the reviler's comment to Jesus.
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But what did the other man say? Do you not fear God? He's not speaking to Jesus at that point, he's speaking to the other man.
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Do you not fear God? For this man has done nothing wrong, and yet he is suffering the same as we? And then that man looked at Jesus, and he looked into the eyes of God himself, and he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.
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Beloved, for a moment consider that he's not just saying to Jesus, don't forget about me.
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But in a sense he's crying out to Jesus to save him.
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Remember me.
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When you come into your kingdom, as God remembered Noah, remember me.
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As God remembered Abram, remember me.
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As God remembered Rachel, remember me.
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And Jesus giving the man the most beautiful response in all of the Bible, I say to you, today thou shalt be with me in paradise.
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Imagine if God looked you in the eyes and said, today thou shalt be with me in paradise.
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Today thou shalt be with me.
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I tell you what, I've heard of many saints who in their hour of death died with comfort.
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I can't imagine a more comfortable death than having the Lord of glory look you in the face and say, today thou shalt be with me in paradise.
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Noah may have felt discouraged, he may have felt trapped in a dark floating barge filled with animals, he may have been haunted by the memory of the screams of those who outside of the ark were being crushed under the water of the flood.
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But as Calvin says, and listen to this quote from Calvin, he said, but as the ark was floating, even to the fifth month upon the waters, the delay by which the Lord suffered his servant to be anxiously and miserably tortured might seem to imply a kind of oblivion.
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And it is not to be questioned that his heart was agitated by various feelings when he found himself so long held in suspense, for he might infer that his life had been prolonged in order that he might be more miserable than any of the rest of mankind.
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For we know that we are accustomed to imagine God being absent of us, except when we have some sensible experience of his presence.
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And that's what it means.
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God remembered Noah.
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He reminded him of his presence.
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You are not alone.
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You are not abandoned.
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You are not by yourself.
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Noah, I am here for you.
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I am here with you.
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Because keep in mind this guys, Noah could not have survived on that ark forever.
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Eventually the food is going to run out.
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Eventually the animals are going to be too big to manage.
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Eventually the boat is going to start coming apart.
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You can't stay on the ark forever.
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But God had no intention of letting him stay on the ark forever.
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And in the midst of that, God remembered him.
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In the moment of his fatigue, in the moment of his despair, in the moment of his anxiety, God remembered him.
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And I want to ask you this.
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Do you realize that if you are in Christ today, there was a time in your life when God remembered you? You were lost in sin.
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You were dead in your trespasses.
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You were in a place where even if you didn't understand it, you were in peril and you were facing an eternity of unbelievable punishment.
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As Jonathan Edwards says in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, you were like a spider on a web over a flame that at any moment could fall into the flame.
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At any moment the fire could lick the web and cause it to snap and you could fall in and you would be crushed under the weight of the fire.
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That is where you were.
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And I don't know if you got saved when you were 12 or if you got saved when you were 18 or like me 19 or you got saved when you were 30 or 40.
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But wherever you were, whenever you were, you were deep in sin.
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You were dead in sin.
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You had no desire for God.
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You had no desire for His Word.
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You had no sensitivity to His Spirit.
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And He remembered you.
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In fact, the most beautiful words in Scripture are the two words that begin verse 8.
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But God, but God remembered Noah.
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That's it.
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Noah is out on the ark.
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Noah is floating on the water.
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Noah has no hope outside of God.
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Noah has no hope outside of that ark.
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Noah has nothing except for the promise of God.
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And he clings to it.
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He trusts it.
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And in the moment of whatever despair he may have been facing, God remembers him.
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And beloved God remembered you.
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He came to you.
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He rescued you.
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He adopted you into His family.
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And you went from being an object of His wrath to an object of His mercy forever.
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I want us to look at Ephesians 2 as we draw to a close.
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So if you'll turn in your Bibles to Ephesians 2.
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Now again, many of you good Calvinists, you know Ephesians 2 by like the back of your hand.
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And you should.
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It's a good passage.
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But I want you to hear it again as if it were with fresh ears.
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Because like Noah on that ark and God remembered him, this is where we were when God remembered us.
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Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1.
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And you were dead.
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Just stop right there.
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You weren't sick.
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You weren't dying.
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You were dead.
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In the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of our body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.
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Don't ever let anyone convince you that they are a good person.
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Because this passage reminds us that like the rest of mankind, we were all dead in our trespasses and sins.
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We were all seeking after the things of this world and the prince of this world who is Satan himself.
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And we were carrying out those desires in our flesh and in our mind and we were by nature children of God's wrath.
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But God, but God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.
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By grace you have been saved.
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When we read Genesis chapter 8 verse 1 and it says, but God remembered Noah.
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May we always remember that if we are in Christ, we can say as well, but God remembered me.
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And beloved, if you are here today and you are Christ's and he is yours, God has remembered you.
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He has set his intimate affection upon you and he has sealed you for the day of redemption.
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You are his and here is yours.
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But if you have come today and you are not his beloved, like the people outside of that arc, there is only one hope.
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There is only one hope and that is that arc.
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It is Jesus himself.
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And my prayer is that God would remember you today.
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And if you are here and you do not know the Lord, I pray that he would give you the heart that would cry out to him with all of the sincerity, Lord remember me and know that he will.
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Believe on him.
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Trust in him.
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Know that you are not good.
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Know that you are dead in your sins.
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Know that you have nothing that you can bring to Christ.
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Know this though, when he remembers you, he supplies all your needs.
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Trust in him today.
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Let us pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you that we have the opportunity to focus in on one word today.
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For Lord it is in these singular words sometimes that there is such an expression of truth.
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And the expression of truth that we see in this word is you did not abandon Noah, you did not forget Noah, but you remembered Noah in showing your affection and concern for him.
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You loved him and Lord for those who are yours, you remembered us.
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And oh what a gracious reality that is.
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And Lord now we turn our time and attention to another act of remembrance.
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In the partaking of your table, Lord let us remember you well.
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In Jesus name.
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Amen.