A New Day of Small Beginnings (Genesis 8, Jeff Kliewer)

Morning.

Greetings.

Opening Greetings, Announcements, and Prayer

Good morning. All right, can you all hear me?

Microphone, microphone.

Well, we have the monitors muted, so it doesn't matter.

Oh, OK.

You should be coming through now.

All right, good morning, y 'all. So how many of y 'all know one of our deacons whose name is Tom Ward? How many of y 'all know Tom? Come on, Tom. Yeah, he's got the big beard, got big hair, usually sits up in this direction.

No, no?

All right, well, here's the big news. He shaved his beard. He shaved his head, so he looks completely different. But that's not the biggest part of the news. Guys, if you could show the picture up here.

Last week, he flew to the Philippines and got married. Let's give a hand clap. He's not here, right? Maybe he's watching online.

I don't know.

But congratulations to Tom and Ellie. He had been dating this girl, evidently, for a while over the internet, getting to know her on video calls. And so he just jumped in on a plane and flew and got married.

So he totally shocked us. But the word of God says, he who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord. So we are celebrating with Tom, our deacon, who now lives in the Philippines.

So praise God for that. We also have women who are at the women's retreat this weekend. So if there are some people you're looking for and they're not here, they might be at the women's retreat at Mount Pocono.

So we're going to pray for the women. We're going to pray for Tom. And we're going to pray for this worship service. Let's go before the Lord. Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for your good gifts.

You are such a good and gracious Father. We thank you that you have given the gift of marriage to Tom and Ellie in the Philippines. What a surprise this is. And we do thank you and give you all the praise.

And we pray blessing on their marriage, Lord, that they would be able to work through any differences, culture or otherwise, Lord, that you would help them establish their marriage on that sure foundation which they share together, which is the cornerstone, Jesus Christ and upon the word of God.

So help them, Lord, in their marriage. We thank you for this. And we pray blessing on them. Lord, we also pray for the women who are up at Mount Pocono Bible Camp this morning. We pray that they would be meeting with you, encouraged by one another, iron sharpening iron, that you would help them and that your Holy Spirit would fill them so that they come back here on fire, ready to serve and help and to tell others about Christ.

Lord, we pray that you would really bless these women as they're on the retreat. And now, Lord, we pray for this worship service, that you would come and do a mighty work in this place, each of us needing to be encouraged in our most holy faith.

We pray, Lord, that you would come and encourage us.

Through your word.

And now, Lord, as we go to sing songs, let it be more than just singing, Lord. Let it be worship in spirit and in truth. Help us to bring our best because you are worthy. Jesus, you deserve the best that we can bring.

And so help us now to worship you in Jesus' name, amen.

And let's all stand and let's all read together. This is Proverbs 3, 5, and 6. It should be up on the screen. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lead on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths, amen.

And that scripture verse, I had the privilege of going to Russ's celebration of life, his funeral yesterday. And several months ago, he had expounded, he had preached and they recorded a video of him preaching on that verse.

And it was just such an honor, just so awesome to hear him just expound on that and what that verses have meant to his life. And right now we're going to sing Trust and Obey.

When his soul made an offering for guilt,.

He shall see his offspring. He shall prolong his days. The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. And we're going to sing what he's done. We're going to celebrate the great gift of life that Jesus Christ has given us, amen.

Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied. By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many be accounted righteous. And he shall bear their iniquity. Lord Jesus, we just thank you this morning.

Came down for your glorious throne, Lord, that you put on human flesh. Lord, that you bore the cross and wore that crown of thorns for us, Lord. God, that you have made many righteous where we could not on our own have any hope of righteousness, Lord.

But you made us righteous, Lord, as you took our sins upon you, Lord.

Praise God. Let's pray. Father God, we come into this place this morning eager to hear a word from you. We pray that the words of the Bible would be to us like food that nourishes us, like water in a dry place, that it would be like the drippings of a honeycomb, sweet to our taste, Lord.

Awaken our senses that we would be sensitive to your word, that we would hear your word. And Lord, we pray that you would revive us by your word. We pray, Lord, revive us by your truth. Individually, we pray for revival, that we would repent of all known sin and run hard after you.

As a church, Lord, we pray that the wind of your spirit would fill us and send us out preaching the good news from the youngest to the oldest, Lord. Send your Holy Spirit to fill us now in Jesus' name.

Amen.

France, Humanism, and the State of the Gospel

On the screen, we have a picture of Mike and Karen DeGenna. These are our missionaries to Lyon, France. Wonderful, godly couple that we have supported for years. We need to be praying for them and the work they're doing in France.

They did come and visit us a number of years ago, and Mike and I went fishing. And I don't mean that we went out evangelizing, I mean we actually went out on a deep sea all night fishing expedition. You wanna know what the total count was of fish that we caught?

He caught zero, and I caught zero. So it was zero to zero. Complete strikeout all night long. But you know, isn't it a good thing that we are not called to fish for fish, but fish for men? And he's been fishing for men in Lyon, France.

The church has begun to grow. By the power of God, they have outgrown their current building. In Lyon, France, which is a secular and difficult area, they have seen the need to get a new building. So we are going to pray that they're able to find that meeting space that they need, just like we in this church are needing a new meeting space as well, that we'd be able to build here in the field next to us.

God is doing a powerful work. Now I wanna talk this morning, I'm gonna spend the first 10 minutes of my sermon giving an introduction about the state of the gospel in France. It's a bit of a history lesson, because I love history, but also because it helps us to understand our place and what God can do through us in our time and place.

It gives us perspective. Did you know that Martin Luther was not the first to translate the Bible into the native tongue of the people? Actually, centuries before Martin Luther, in the year 1175, Peter Waldo commissioned the translation of a Bible into his French tongue.

He was a merchant in no place other than Lyon, France. The Reformation began in Lyon, France in the year 1175. Now, when Peter Waldo got a copy of that Latin Vulgate now translated into his own tongue, he began to read and he saw that what the Roman Catholic Church was teaching by their tradition was very different from what he was reading in the Bible.

And so he rejected purgatory, he rejected indulgences, he rejected transubstantiation, and he began to believe what the Bible said. He also became very radical because he was not discipled, he didn't have a great understanding of scripture, he was new to the faith in that sense.

And so what he did is he actually left his wife and he put his two kids in a convent, his two little girls, and went out preaching the gospel and gathered thousands of followers. Now, I do not recommend that.

Anybody here? Stay with your wife, raise your kids. But Waldo went out and the gospel began to go forth through his preaching. They were persecuted even from the 1180s by the Roman Catholic Church. They ended up settling in the mountains but continued to preach all the more.

So that in the year 1532, when John Calvin was converted, there were already many who were believing the Bible and had access to the scripture. And so that helped the Reformation take over. So in the 40 years from when John Calvin was converted until 1572, the gospel spread from 0 of the population or just over 0 to more than 15 of France believing in the evangelical religion.

But see, this was a spiritual war. And so as the gospel began to take over cities, John Calvin was leading that movement from Geneva and sending missionaries back up into France. They planted tens of thousands of churches growing close to a million believers.

So in the year 1572, the establishment cracked down in what was called the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. They slaughtered Protestant Christians by the thousands in Paris and all in the major cities all across France.

Those who survived, many of them fled to places like England and the Netherlands. These French Protestants called the Huguenots would end up even in faraway places like the United States of America, fleeing persecution.

But then with the Edict of Nantes, there was religious toleration until that was revoked in the year 1685 with the Edict of Fontainebleau, which was the next wave of persecution against the Protestant Christians.

You wanna know what they did this time? They didn't slaughter them. Instead, what they did is they took soldiers and put those soldiers in the homes of the Protestant believers. And they made a law that anybody who converted to Roman Catholicism would be exempt from housing these soldiers.

This was called the Dragon Aids. The Dragon Aids where the Protestants were forced to have a soldier in their home and these soldiers often would steal and commit atrocities in the home. So this King, Louis XIV, bragged the year after he initiated the Dragon Aids that there were 800 ,000 Protestant Christians in France and the following year, it was down to 1 ,000.

From 800 ,000 to 1 ,000. Now, he was bragging and he was overestimating what he had been able to do. There were still probably half a million. But many, perhaps half, fled France to places like England and the Netherlands and the United States of America.

In fact, in first service, somebody came up to me after the sermon and said, my family came from Huguenots, the French who had come to the United States of America. The next major blow to Christianity in France came in the year 1789 with the French Revolution.

Here, we're all familiar with the American Revolution,.

Right?

And it's really built on the idea of individual rights, that these rights are endued by our creator. So the American Revolution was about freedom and liberty to the common man because we have rights that were given by God.

The French Revolution was the opposite. It was a humanist revolution. Humanism rejected the place of God in society. Everything would be established by reason and no more establishment of religion. So at that time, the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church were called the first estate.

The nobility were called the second estate and the third estate was like 80 of the people, they were peasants. So when they brought this uprising, they threw down the nobility, but they were also trying to get rid of God and church and the influence of any higher power because they were very humanist in their understanding.

So what do you think came of that revolution? Unlike the American Revolution, it was nothing but bloodshed and disaster. Robespierre and the guillotines, the killing, the Jacobins that led this violent revolution that went to nothing until finally, Napoleon Bonaparte took over and made things even worse.

Napoleon began to conquer territories and he did so in the name of the Catholic religion. But in 1800, he said this, it was by making myself a Catholic that I won the war in the Vendee. By making myself a Muslim that I established myself in Egypt.

By making myself an ultra Montane that I turned men's hearts towards me in Italy. If I were to govern a nation of Jews, I would rebuild the temple of Solomon. Napoleon was so cynical, he was just using religion as a tool to conquer.

And I think he would have been the Antichrist, he would have rebuilt the temple and proclaimed himself to be God, but he was restrained by the power of God. However, Christianity declined for that entire century.

Into the 1900s, the 20th century, the historian Paul Wells says in the 20th century, Christianity in Europe experienced no revival, but only continual decline. And here this year, the year 2024 in March, France made it a constitutional right that they would be allowed to kill babies in the womb.

They added the killing of babies in the womb to their constitution. France has become thoroughly humanist. Now, what is humanism? Have you guys seen the riots at the college campuses recently, especially Columbia University?

Columbia University was built on humanism, humanism. In fact, the Humanist Manifesto was signed by about 30 people, one of them was John Dewey from Columbia University. The Humanist Manifesto says this, though we consider the religious forms and ideas of our fathers no longer adequate, the quest for the good of life is still the central task for mankind.

Man is at last becoming aware that he alone is responsible for the realization of the world of his dreams, that he has within himself the power for its achievement. He must set intelligence and will to the task.

The idea of humanism is a rejection of God and the potential and the power within humanity, the goodness of humanity, the reason of humanity. Humanism rejects God and elevates man. Human potential, the goodness of human beings.

Church, France seems to have lost the war to humanism. In New Jersey, it looks like we might be losing that war as well. Humanism in the universities rejects Genesis 1 to 11, rejects the teaching that there is a God who made the world, but I see a cloud the size of a man's hand on the horizon.

In France, in the city of Lyon, our own missionaries are seeing converts like they've never seen before. In Paris, one church planter whose name is Ivan Collier just years ago planted a church and outgrew their building.

They took over one of those old communist meeting houses and from the platform where the most famous communist in France used to preach, they turned it into a pulpit. They outgrew that and now they have a church of over 4 ,000 people meeting in Paris, France.

This pastor says, his name is Ivan Collier, that doesn't fit what people think about France. Something is changing and it's changing right now. A woman named Mary from Paris, France says, I've lived here for 30 years and it really feels like God is doing a new thing.

People are coming to faith in France. And what about here in New Jersey? I've never seen the conservative churches so full with Bible-believing Christians. Is there a new wind blowing, a new day of small beginnings?

My favorite French pastor actually lived in the darkest century in French history, the 1900s. Paul Wells says there was no revival, no sign of light, but Pierre Cordier ministered in Lyon, France for 20 some years.

And then for 20 more years, he started a Bible college in Paris. And when he was in his 80s, he wrote a book called A New Day of Small Beginnings. I stole his title for my sermon today. That's where I got that, A New Day of Small Beginnings.

What he never saw throughout the 1900s, he saw in faith that there would be a new day for France. It would start with small beginnings and then revival could take over with the failure of humanism. Now, humanism is a culture of death.

As they have enshrined the right to kill babies, they're not having enough babies. France is facing a rapidly decreasing birth rate that will impact their workforce and will completely overrun their social welfare system.

It is the failure of humanism. 2023 was the lowest birth rate in France since the year 1946. It's a culture of death. Whereas we preach a culture of life, which one wins in the end? Humanism is destined to fail.

It will be yet another of the defeated foes that the church tramples underneath its feet in the name of God. We will see a new day of small beginnings. Now, there is coming a day of the Lord. Turn with me to Genesis 8.

And last week in Genesis 7, we talked about how there will be a final flood of judgment, not in water, but in fire. The day of the Lord, which is the tribulation, seven years of devastation on earth before God renews things on this earth.

And we have a millennium, a thousand years of peace. There's coming a day of the Lord and it was prefigured in the flood of Noah. That day was a day of wrath and judgment. But this morning we turn to Genesis 8.

And out of the wreckage, the devastation of the entire earth, we have a new day of small beginnings. Noah will come off of that arc and begin to rebuild. And the earth again will be full of life. The humanists mock us because we believe Genesis 1 .11.

You believe that God created the world? You believe there was a flood that completely destroyed everything? And they mock Christianity as outdated and just religious, not rational and reasonable. But the truth is the humanist view of the world is completely irrational and totally unreasonable.

John Blanchard, he's an English theologian, turned the tables on the atheists when he said, and when he wrote a book called, Does God Believe in Atheists? Does God believe in atheists? That's a better question.

Atheists propose that this world evolved by chance over millions of years. But given everything that had to come into place to bring forth life, scientists now calculate the odds of all of these things happening as being one times 10 to something like the 26th power.

Utterly impossible. John Blanchard compares it to this. Fill our entire planetary system, not just planet earth, but the entire planetary system revolving around the sun with blind people. Give each one a Rubik's cube and have them begin randomly moving the Rubik's cube around.

The odds that all of them will solve that Rubik's cube in the same moment by chance is the odds that this world could sustain life by chance. Another theologian named Fred Hoyle said it this way. A world evolving by chance is like a tornado in a junkyard.

The chance that that could spin out a Boeing 747 fully operational. Can you imagine a tornado spinning out a Boeing 747 functioning with all that design? Yet how much more design is there in this world in which we live?

In the complex machinery of every cell of your body? Darwin never saw a cell under a microscope to the level that we do. He just thought it was a blob of nothing. But we have seen now by microscopes how complex the workings are of every cell in your body.

There's no chance it just evolved. Genesis 1 to 11 is not fairy tale. And it's not just religious tradition. It is the very word of God. Let's pick it up again in chapter eight. Genesis eight, but God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark.

And God made a wind blow over the earth and the water subsided. The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed. And the rains from the heavens were restrained and the waters receded from the earth continually at the end of 150 days, the waters had abated.

And in the seventh month, on the 17th day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. And the waters continued to abate until the 10th month. And in the 10th month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen.

In wrath, God remembers mercy. The flood was a day of wrath. It was the day of God's judgment on the earth, but he remembers mercy. Look at verse one, but God remembered Noah. And he made a wind to blow over the earth.

This is a physical wind that's evaporating water, causing it to lift and the waters to recede, which those waters are seeping down into the depths of the earth. I mentioned last week that in the earth today, in the crust of the earth, 400 miles deep, there is three times the amount of water as exists in our oceans, in the crust of the earth.

That's where the waters of the flood went. In the ringwoodite, under the earth's crust, the waters are subsiding. Verse two, because God is restraining the rain. Here the rain was more than you would want.

Normally rain refreshes the earth and brings forth the vegetation, but here God sent so much rain, it was judgment. In verse two, he's now restraining that judgment. In his wrath, he has remembered mercy.

Habakkuk prayed for the judgment of God because he saw the wickedness of his people in Jerusalem. But he prayed in Habakkuk 3, 2, O Lord, I have heard the report of you and your work. O Lord, do I fear.

In the midst of the years, revive it. In the midst of the years, make it known. In wrath, remember mercy, Habakkuk 3, 2. God has wrath against sin, and often he will judge a nation or a place or in the time of Noah, the entire world, but even in his wrath, he remembers mercy.

Habakkuk wouldn't get to see it, and so he ends his book in chapter three, 17 to 19, saying, though the fig doesn't blossom and there's no cattle in the stall, he'll say, yet I will rejoice in God. He will hope in God.

And he foretells in Habakkuk 2, 14 that there's coming a time when the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Habakkuk knew that though judgment had to come for a time, the ultimate state of the world will be displaying the glory of God, and people will know it, the knowledge of the glory of the Lord.

There will be revival. He will revive his work. Listen, the time of judgment fell in Noah's day, but a new day of small beginnings would come from that. He remembers mercy. New Jersey has been under judgment for a period of time, but there is mercy around the corner.

France seems like it's snuffed out the very heart of Christianity, but look, lo and behold, it's taking root again. And the gospel is flourishing in China. They say now 110 million believers in the underground churches.

Sub-Saharan Africa is more Christian probably than the United States of America. South America, same thing. Korea, especially South Korea. And then the gospel will penetrate back to where it began in Jerusalem.

God will remember mercy. This gospel will continue to run. Now listen, verses six to 12. There will be moments of suffering, but even in the worst time of your life, he will give signs of his mercy. At the end of 40 days, Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent forth a raven.

It went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. I think what that means is it was just flying over the earth and it never came back. No sign of him. And you wonder, you've been floating on this water for 150 days in an ark with a lot of animals.

It stunk.

It felt like a prison. It was becoming a place of suffering to Noah and his family and they sent out the raven, no sign. It just looks barren, water, hopeless. Where's the raven? It would evidently float around and fly around until the waters receded enough, but he brought no sign.

However, God does send a sign through the dove. Verse eight, then he sent forth a dove from him to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground, 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. Get that sense that it's been a long time. It's not like in a cartoon where the ark goes up, the waters come down, they come happily off.

This is a time of suffering. The water is still there. So he put out his hand and took her and brought her into the ark with him. He waited another seven days. You ever been through a trial in your life where it felt like seven days was followed by another seven days?

The same trial seems to go on and on and you think this will never end, this will never get better. My grandfather loved the saying, this too shall pass. The truth of the matter is, our light momentary afflictions are achieving for us an eternal weight of glory that far surpasses them all.

The sufferings of this life are temporary, they're light and momentary compared to the weight of glory and the eternity that awaits us. You might be going through something right now and you feel like that struggle is never gonna come to an end.

But even in your moment of suffering, he's giving you signs that he's still here. That a new day is coming, a better day. It's like that dove, look what this dove brings. Verse 10, he waited another seven days and sent forth the dove.

And verse 11, and the dove came back to him in the evening and behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So no one knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. At least somewhere there was an olive tree producing leaves.

He couldn't see it from the boat, but the dove must've found it. Where did he get that olive leaf? And so he brought back the olive leaf and that was a sign. After all those days, half a year floating on the earth, there's a sign of hope.

God gives signs. Verse 12, then he waited another seven days and sent forth the dove. She did not return to him anymore. That meant it found a place to live. It's a good sign. Even in the worst moments of our suffering, God gives signs of future mercy, future mercies.

And we know that that includes heaven where all things will be made right. Every tear will be wiped away. Every suffering that you endure in this earth is only temporary. There's coming a time of great mercy.

And even in this life, we travel through seasons. He'll take you through valleys of the shadow of death, but you're going through that valley, Psalm 23. He will not keep you there forever. He will bring you out to a spacious place.

He will make you lie down in green pastures and lead you besides still waters. Now the main point of the sermon from verses 13 to 19, new days of great mercy grow up from small beginnings. In the 601st year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from off the earth and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked and behold, the face of the ground was dry.

Oh, what great mercy. Imagine what that looked like after floating over the earth on this water for that long. I think of our brother Russ who just passed and went to be with the Lord. For 47 years, enduring the suffering, confined to a chair for decades.

And yet what joy and optimism he carried because he was looking for a day when he would walk and leap and praise the Lord. And as we sit here, we left one chair open right in front of you, Don, just to remember him.

But Christ has prepared a place for him in heaven. And now he is walking and leaping and praising God. He is in the joy of his master. He's come through the suffering and now entered into eternal joy.

Noah looked and behold, the face of the ground was dry. Verse 14, in the second month on the 27th 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.

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.

This is that creation mandate. Be fruitful and fill the earth. Now it's being renewed again. A new day of small beginnings. Now the flood has completely changed the topography of the entire earth. High places have been made low and low places have been made high.

Hawaii has been separated from the continent and is now removed far out into the sea. That Pangaea, that one landmass is now divided into multiple continents. Everything's changed. What do you think has come of every house and everything that they built?

There's nothing left of it. No sign of life. Every corpse has been completely destroyed. There's nothing but ground and it hasn't yet begun to bud. It's just empty wasteland, hopeless. But no, this is a new day of small beginnings.

And he goes out with his wife and his sons and their wives. And like the animals, now the earth will be filled with life again.

A new day.

This is how God works. In Israel, they had become sinful and rejected God. And so God sent Israel into dispersion and then even the Southern kingdom into exile in Babylon. But after fulfilling the 70 years, what did God do?

He brought them back into the land and it looked like there was nothing there. Everything was rubble. In Nehemiah chapter four, verse 17, the people had to rebuild the walls with a sword in one hand and the trowel in the other.

Because their work was opposed by the surrounding peoples. It was hard to build in those conditions. There were enemies everywhere. Sanbalat was a mocker, making fun of the people of God. And he said, what are you Jews trying to build there?

And Tobiah jumps in with his little mockery and says, yeah, whatever they build, if a little fox jumps on it, it will crumble. But by the power of God, as the men set themselves to work, the walls were rebuilt in a matter of months.

And now Sanbalat and Tobiah were enraged and they brought forth an army. And so the people continued to build now with a sword on one side and a trowel in the other. They built and they built. Turn with me to the book of Zechariah.

It's near the end of the Old Testament. And we'll just look at a few verses. Zechariah was a prophet at this time, encouraging the people. And we'll look at Zechariah chapter four. Nehemiah and Ezra have brought them back.

The governor of Israel is named Zerubbabel. The high priest is Joshua. These are the leaders of Israel, the anointed ones that God has put in their place to lead Israel. Now let's read from Zechariah four verse one.

And following.

And the angel who talked with me came again and woke me like a man who is awakened out of his sleep. And he said to me, what do you see? I said, I see and behold a lampstand all of gold with a bowl on the top of it and seven lamps on it with seven lips on each of the lamps that are on the top of it.

And there are two olive trees by it, one on the right of the bowl and the other on the left. And I'm sure Zechariah is thinking, what does this mean? Or if you had this dream, would you think I ate some chili before falling asleep?

I had a strange dream. What on earth am I seeing? But the angel who talked with me, verse five, the angel answered and said, do you know what these are? I said, no, my Lord. Then he said to me, this is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel, not by might nor by power, but by my spirit says the Lord of hosts.

Church, we can build in New Jersey, just like our friends can build in Lyon. There are enemies that will resist us if we try to do it the humanist way, like our own potential, our gifts, our talents in this room, nothing will come of it.

But if we say with Zechariah, not by might nor by power, but by my spirit says the Lord of hosts. If we will humble ourselves before God, confess our sin, repent, turn to God and ask for the filling of his spirit and his spirit fills each of us, we can not only fill this room, but build right there and fill that and continue to plant churches like we planted the rock two years ago.

And over the course of weeks and months and years and decades, the multiplication of what God is doing here can change the place in which we live. And it's not by our might, it's not by our power, it's by the spirit of the living God.

This is the point of the sermon today. Look how the people responded. Those who had seen the old temple were just weeping because the temple that they were building looked like nothing compared to the one that the Babylonians destroyed.

And in verse 10, Zechariah says, for whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice and shall see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel. Many of those who lacked faith were weeping when they should have been cheering.

And what God says essentially is do not despise the day of small beginnings. The kernel of faith that's being planted in South Jersey, it's a small beginning at this point. We are small compared to what's around us.

We are the very small minority in believing Genesis 1 to 11. The humanists in the public schools and in the universities and in majority culture through the media, through the advertisers, everywhere around us, the water in our culture opposes what we believe.

And we really are a fraction compared to what's out there, the enemies, the Sanbalats and Tobias. But not by might, not by power, by his spirit. What we're seeing here is just a small beginning of greater things yet to come.

We can build here. Notice in verse 13 and 14, and then we'll go back and finish in Genesis 8. He said to me, do you not know what these are? I said, no, my Lord. What were these olive trees? Tell me already.