The Faith of Noah (Part 5)

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn to the book of Hebrews.
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We do a verse-by-verse study of the Bible, and that's how we preach.
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We preach verse-by-verse, and I've been in the book of Hebrews now for a few years, and when I got to chapter 11, I said we were going to do chapter 11, looking at all the various people in chapter 11 and engaging their lives.
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Well, we've got through three of them, not quite through three.
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We've gotten through two.
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We looked at the story of a man named Abel, the son of Adam and Eve, and he was one who was called faithful in Hebrews chapter 11.
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We also looked at a man named Enoch, one who the Bible says walked with God.
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And then we came to Noah, and Noah has taken up the better part of the last three weeks.
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Actually, four weeks.
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This is the fifth week we are going to be looking at the character, the individual, the person named Noah.
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It's important that when you hear me use the word character, know that I'm not speaking in the sense of fictional, because I do believe these were real people in real times and real historical events.
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Particularly, I believe Noah was a very true event.
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I believe the Bible leaves very little chance on that.
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It doesn't speak in allegory.
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It speaks in the narrative sense when it's written.
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And the story of Noah is given to us in a very real way.
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And we look at the cultures around the world, and there is a universal understanding in cultures, even in cultures that have never read the Bible, that there was once a global flood.
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They all have this history, this rich history of understanding that there was once a flood and there was only one family that survived.
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And that was the family, of course, of Noah.
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So today, we will be finalizing our study of this person, this man named Noah, looking at the events that surrounded him coming off of the ark.
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The last two Sundays, we have dealt with what happened while the rains came.
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And the two before that, we talked about the preparation of building the ark and what it all went into, the fate that went into building a boat in the middle of a place where there was yet no water and waiting for the water to come.
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One of the things we talked about last week was the immense fright that it must have been to see literally the earth open up underneath people's feet and water burst forth from the earth.
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Everybody thinks that Noah's flood came from the sky.
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And the Bible does say it rained for 40 days.
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But the majority of the water came from underneath as the earth itself split open.
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And water like geysers, which would have been heated water, burst forth and encompassed people and brought very quick and painful demise on the earth.
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So today, again, we will be looking at chapters eight and seven and eight, looking at what happened after the fact.
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But before that, we're going to look at Hebrews 11 and verse seven, because this is the passage which we will begin with.
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And I will invite you all to stand as we read God's word in preparation for the sermon.
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It says, 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.
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By this, he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.
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Father God, as we seek to examine your word this morning, as we seek to examine the Old Testament passages of the aftermath of the flood, I pray first and foremost, O God, that as the mouthpiece that you would keep me from error, as I am a fallible man and capable of preaching error.
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And Lord, I pray against that.
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I pray, Lord, also that you would protect the hearts of the people.
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Put a hedge around them, O God.
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And Lord God, open their hearts to the truth and those things which are true and wholesome and good.
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Meditate their hearts upon them, O God.
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Focus their hearts upon them.
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We pray now as we examine the text together, and as we look at the text together, that you would be glorified in this time.
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That your people would be edified in this time.
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And that all would be done, O Lord, to lift up the name of your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ.
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For it is in his name we pray.
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Amen.
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After the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat, and Noah and his family came safely off of the ark, they were very much strangers to an unknown world.
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This was not the same world that had existed prior to the flood.
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This was not the same place that they knew before.
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Rivers and lakes, which possibly existed before then, were now in different places or moved altogether.
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And new lakes and rivers had formed.
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Mountains would have had their faces marred by the rising and receding waters of the flood.
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Green plants would be much less dense than they remembered.
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It would have been a barren, desolate, deserted land.
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No persons to see.
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No one except themselves had survived.
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There's a condition that psychologists call xenophobia.
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Xenophobia comes from the word xenos, which means strangers or foreign things or foreigners.
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And xenophobia is the fear of strange people.
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And by extension, it can be a fear of strange places.
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Most often, it is used to describe people who have fear of certain different racial groups or ethnic groups.
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But it could be expanded to simply the fear of the unknown.
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And all of us have a touch of xenophobia.
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All of us have somewhat of a touch of the fear of the unknown.
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Whenever we visit a new city or a new town, we might be hesitant to leave our hotel room.
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And immediately, the immediate area around it, because we do not know the area.
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We do not know the people.
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We do not know how things operate in that town.
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And maybe it's a little different than the town we're from.
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Particularly if you're from a small town and you go to a big city like New York.
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Like me, I'm from Callaghan.
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If I go to New York, I'd probably explode.
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It would be so different and so just foreign to everything that I know about the way things are supposed to be.
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And that's what xenophobia is.
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And most of us have had xenophobic experiences.
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We've had that experience that we step into something unknown and we're immediately frightened.
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Well, as I was reading and studying and meditating upon this text of Scripture, and I was thinking about Noah stepping off the ark for the first time and his family probably very close behind him.
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Probably close enough to touch.
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Maybe even, you remember when you were a child and you sort of looked over dad's shoulder or head behind his leg to kind of, because there was a protection behind dad.
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You know, nothing was going to get through dad, you know.
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So I imagine Noah was the first one off the ark, followed probably by the three sons and then the wives behind them as they walked out and had this tremendous xenophobic experience, having walked into a totally foreign, totally unknown place where I had never seen before.
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And human foot had yet to touch, because that which was there before had been washed away and replaced.
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Now, the immediate events leading up to and following the disembarking from the ark are given to us in Genesis chapter 8.
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So let's look there.
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If you haven't got your Bibles turned there already, we'll go to Genesis chapter 8.
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We will look.
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We're going to be going.
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We're going to be.
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I'm not going to do as much verse by verse in this as I have in weeks past, because there's so much information.
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And I do want to finish Noah before this Sunday's over, because Father's Day is next week.
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And then after that, we're going to move on in the text.
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So we're going to finish today, hopefully.
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So that's that's our goal.
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So we're going to just simply look at the relevant passages as to what we're talking about.
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It says in verse four, chapter eight and verse four, it says, and in the seventh month.
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On the 17th day of the month, which, again, and this is something that was pointed out, Lee pointed out last week is it's so specific.
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You know, if this were a myth or if this were something that, you know, is just something made up, why is it so specific? It's very specific.
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It was it was it was on the seventh month, on the 17th day of the month.
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It is like like like Mr.
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Frazier said, it's like the only thing left out is at 1015 in the morning.
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You know, it's almost that specific.
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And it says the Ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.
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This is 150 days after the rains began.
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Now, where is Ararat? Assyrian records may identify such a name in the Armenian Armenian Armenia.
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I get Armenians and Armenians mixed up, I guess Armenia of eastern Turkey.
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However, the precise location of Ararat is yet unknown.
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After it was clear that the Ark was suitable for habitation, the eight people and all the animals left the Ark after the earth was found suitable for habitation.
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That would have been 377 days after they had entered it.
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And the theme of rest comes up over and over.
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We see that in the text.
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It says the Ark rested on the mountain.
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Verse four.
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At first, the dove could find no place to rest its feet.
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Verse nine.
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And then it says when the Ark came to rest on Ararat, this was more of a physical landing on dry ground.
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It was a new beginning.
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The world had before been this this dirty place, this sinful place, this horrid place.
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But now it was at rest.
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It was clean.
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It was new.
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It was fresh.
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It was yet unstained.
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So we see in verse 20 of chapter eight, Noah offering up a sacrifice to God.
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It says in verse 20, the Noah built an altar to the Lord.
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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.
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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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Now, this passage, verses 20 through 22, describes the counter distinction between the events before the flood and the events after the flood, the new earth.
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Prior to the flood, God's anger burned hot against man.
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However, now man's sacrifice is burned before the Lord and the aroma is pleasing.
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Before the Lord, before the flood, the earth was cursed along with man and his sin.
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Now, God promises that the earth will not suffer again on the account of man.
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We see the change before it was like this.
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Now it is like this.
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But there is one thing in that passage that hasn't changed.
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Look back again at the text and you will notice there it says.
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The intention of man's heart.
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Is what from his youth? You know, that was the problem before.
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That was what brought the flood.
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If you go back to chapter six, it says every intention of man's heart was only evil continually.
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That was the problem that brought the flood.
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And notice that didn't change.
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You say now, wait a minute.
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The Bible says Noah was a righteous man.
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The Bible says Noah and his family are the only ones left.
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How then can it say that this evil intention of the heart is still there? The waters of the flood washed and changed the face of the earth.
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But it did not wash and change the heart of man.
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Because the heart of man was still evil.
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Beloved, we are sinful people.
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We are rebellious from our youth, the Bible says.
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Anybody with kids knows I ain't lying.
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Your children from the youngest of ages.
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Learn how to be rebellious.
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They learn how to lie.
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I remember Bill Cosby and his stand up routine.
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He used to talk about how they would say, I love children because children are truthful.
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He said, that's not true.
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Children will lie to you.
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You'll tell them not to eat the cookie.
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They'll go get the cookie and he'll say, I didn't told you not to eat the cookie.
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And they say, hey, I was getting it for you.
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I don't want it.
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Well, can I have it? We rebel.
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We are sinful.
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It is part of the fall.
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When Adam sinned, the Bible says through one man, sin entered the world and death through sin and death spread to all men.
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Because all sin, this is a problem that didn't end with the flood.
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This is a problem that didn't end when Noah came off the ark.
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And it's a problem that is still there today.
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Mankind's nature is still evil.
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The intention of his heart is still evil, even from his youth.
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This will be a problem until the end of the world.
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This will this will this will perpetuate to the end of the world.
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And this will be why there will never be a fully universal revival.
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Because there will always be those who rebel in their hatred of God.
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And turn away from the gospel.
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Now, I hate to jump through all of this text, but I said I wanted to get to chapter nine because there are three things that happen in chapter nine that I want us to look at.
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There are three things that that occur after the flood that are new things.
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They are changes that occur in the world that we need to recognize.
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So I again, if we were doing an exposition of Genesis, we'd look at every verse.
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But because we're because of time and because we're looking at this in a as particularly for Noah in the situation, I want to just look at three things in chapter nine.
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The first thing I want you to realize is that after the flood, there came a dietary change.
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Look at chapter nine in verse two.
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God is talking to Noah and he says the fear of you and by him and not him only, but mankind, the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon the birds or upon every bird of the heavens and upon that everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea.
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And to your hand, they are delivered, every moving things that lives, every moving thing that lives shall be food for you.
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And as I gave to you the green plants, I give you everything.
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But you shall not eat flesh with its life.
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That is its blood.
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Here we see a change in the dietary.
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It is no longer that you will eat only the vegetation.
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It is no longer that you will only eat that which produces from the earth.
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But now you are going to eat that which is alive.
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You're going to take its life and you're going to eat it.
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Everybody who loves steak, thank God for that verse.
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It says here at this point, and I believe that before this, I do believe that there was not that there was not an eating of animals, because it seems that this is the referencing a change or this is something different.
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This is something new.
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You're now going to eat these things, these animals.
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This is why I believe there were seven of certain kinds of animals, the eaten kind.
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Now, when we look at this passage, we see something else, though.
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Says blood is a symbol of life.
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Look at the last part of that verse for there, it says, you shall not eat flesh with its life, comma, that is its blood.
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You have to understand something, blood symbolizes life, blood can also symbolize death.
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If you come upon a scene of an accident and you see blood everywhere that to you in your mind, you see death because blood symbolizes death.
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But blood also symbolizes life.
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You think of somebody who's who's who's bleeding and somebody brings in that bag of of of blood and they stick it in their arm and they begin to pump that blood in their body.
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That's life.
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We know life is in the blood.
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This is something that this is something that for a long time people didn't understand.
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What did they what did they do hundreds of years ago when someone got sick? They would bleed them.
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One of the most foolish acts that has ever been done in the history of medicine was you'll take that which gives life and remove it.
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You'll drill a hole and let it out.
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Certainly, people didn't understand what they were doing was horrible, it was bad, it was taking life because in life is blood.
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But the Bible tells us in the blood is the life and we see it even in this passage.
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And he says you don't eat animals with the blood in them.
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Now, this is important because what is being established here is even though you are going to be carnivorous, you are not to be barbarians or savages.
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You are not to eat the animals like the animals eat each other.
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How does a lion eat a gazelle? Just like he falls.
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He digs in, he finds the part that tastes the best and starts chomping.
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We don't do that.
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We take the animal, we take his hide off of him, we use his hide for one thing, we take his his entrails out and we we dispose of them and we butcher the animal properly and then we cook the animal to where we don't have this this savage thing, but we have a meal.
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And God saying this is the way it's supposed to be, you're not savages, you are not grown up apes.
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You are human beings made in the image of God.
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That's important.
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A lot of people act like grown up apes.
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I don't mean it's the way it's supposed to be.
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Now, the second thing we see here, not only do we see a dietary change and restriction, there's a restriction on that you don't eat animals like like other animals, eat them, you eat them, you butcher them and eat them correctly.
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Now, the second thing we see here, very important, is we see the institution of capital punishment.
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Look with me now at verse six.
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Whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed for God made man in his image.
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Now, some have argued when they read that verse, some have argued that's not really teaching capital punishment.
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What that's teaching is that if you live by the sword, you die by the sword.
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It's just parabolic.
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It's just simply there to tell you that if you do this, this will happen.
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If you shed man's blood, man's going to shed your blood.
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That is not the way that is written in the Hebrew.
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The way that this sentence is written in the Hebrew is what is called the imperative, which means it is a command.
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Whoever sheds the blood of man by man, his blood should be shed.
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You understand how that's an imperative statement? Beloved, it is a command for life to be forfeited for the crime of murder.
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If a person willfully and unjustly takes the life of another, the only rightful punishment, the only fitting punishment is that their life be forfeited as a result.
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This is biblical.
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This is not Keith Fossey standing and making a political speech.
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This is just what the Bible says.
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But why such a high penalty for murder? Because it says right here in verse six, four, that word for means because, because God made man in his image, the life that has been taken is the life of a person who is an image bearer of God.
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When a person willfully takes that life, it is an offense towards God.
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And as such, the only rightful punishment is the forfeiture of their own life.
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Theologians have long noted that what you see in Genesis chapter nine and verse six is the institution of governmental law.
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If you have a note, you want to make a note in your Bible or if you want to make a note off to the side or write in your bulletin, that is something key because Genesis nine and chapter six or chapter nine and verse six, this is the first time wherein we see governmental authority.
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Because who's going to enact this? Is this going to be vengeance or justice? What's the difference between vengeance and justice? Vengeance is totally and fully based on emotional ism.
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And justice is based on righteousness.
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If you want somebody dead just because they harmed you.
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That's vengeance and the Bible says vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.
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But if the government makes a rule that protects you by saying that if someone comes and takes your life, that they have forfeited their life as a result, that is the government levying justice.
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And there's a difference between justice and vengeance.
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This is why we don't believe in vigilante ism.
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We don't put on capes and go out and seek to get killed.
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But if we don't go out and try to rule the world through vigilante or mob violence, we we appreciate the fact that we have a government.
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We appreciate the fact that we have police officers.
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We appreciate the fact that those men go out there and they do that job.
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Because they are there for that purpose of seeing that justice is done.
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The third concept, the third concept that we see, we saw the first one, dietary change and a restriction is given, you're not savages, don't act like them.
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You can eat animals, but you can do it right.
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The second one, you're not savages, don't kill each other.
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And if you do, there's a punishment.
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You see, prior to the flood, people were living like savages.
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So God is giving them restrictions.
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He's giving them a change.
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He says, here's the first change.
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You eat like a human being.
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You treat each other like human beings.
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You don't kill one another unjustly.
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Finally, this one is important because this goes God to man and the relationship is the institution of the covenantal sign.
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Look with me at verse eight, Genesis nine and verse eight.
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Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, behold, I establish my covenant with you.
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What is a covenant? It is a promise.
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Hey, God, I'm making a promise to you.
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It's an agreement.
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It's a contract.
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It cannot be broken.
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I make a covenant with you and your offspring after you.
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Who is that? Well, that's all of us.
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Everyone in here is a son of either Shem, Ham or Japheth.
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We are all sons of Noah because he's the only one that survived the flood.
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And with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock and every beast of the earth that is with you, as many as came out of the ark, it is for every beast of the earth, I establish my covenant with you.
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That never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.
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Doesn't say there'd never be a flood again.
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We see him all the time.
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So there'll never be a flood that encompasses the earth.
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God said this is that this is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for all future generations.
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I have set my bow in the cloud.
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And it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
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When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh and the water shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.
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When the bow is in the water or when the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.
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God said to Noah, this is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.
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Now, this is the first instance in the Bible.
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And again, if you're making notes, this is the first instance in the Bible where God's promise is accompanied by a covenantal sign, but it's not the last.
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Throughout the scripture, we see God making covenants and God giving those covenants accompanying signs.
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What are the signs for? The signs are for remembrance.
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Remember, we talked about it during communion.
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These signs are for our benefit.
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They are to remind us of these things.
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What was the most notable sign of the Old Testament covenant? What was the most notable sign? It began with Abraham.
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We haven't learned about it yet, but I mean, we all should know it was the sign of circumcision.
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The sign of circumcision was given to all the male children of the Israelites.
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Why? It was a symbol that you are my people.
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You are different.
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You are separated from the world.
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You are not like the world.
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You have been brought out of the world and you have been made my covenant people.
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And as such, you will have this mark upon your body that will differentiate you from the world.
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In the New Testament, we have two signs, two symbols of the promise of God.
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The Lord's Supper is the symbol which reminds us of the new covenant.
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Jesus said this is the new covenant in my blood.
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I remember what he meant by that.
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He was saying this symbolizes this is this is the picture of the new covenant in my blood.
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You take the bread, you take the cup, and every time you do, you remember that covenant.
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Likewise, we have baptism.
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Baptism acts as that initiatory sign of entrance into the new covenant.
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Another important concept found here that we see in chapter nine is the dispersion of the world's population.
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Look with me at verse 18.
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We just stopped at verse 17.
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So look just quickly at verse 18.
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It says the sons of Noah went forth from the ark, Shem, Ham and Japheth.
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Ham was the father of Canaan.
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These were these three were the sons of Noah and from these people of the whole excuse me, and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed.
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Now, as I said before, Shem, Ham and Japheth, we are all either Shemites, Hamites or Japhethites, the whole division of all the races.
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And there's such a big deal.
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We make such a big deal about racism and all the people are black, people are Mexican, people are this, people are that, whatever, Latino.
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We all are either a Shemite, Hamite or a Japhethite and we're all Noahites.
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So get over the racism.
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We all came from Adam.
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All right.
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Now, John MacArthur makes this point.
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He says all physical characteristics of the whole race were present in the genetics of Noah, his sons and their wives.
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You look at the world.
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The world is made up of different races.
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Yes, we've got the three major subdivisions of race, Mongoloid, Pakazoid, Negaroid.
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All three of those can be subdivided up and we can put people into those categories.
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But yet at the same time, all of the characteristics of all of those were founded in Adam and in Noah and in the three sons.
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They were there.
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Now, something else I want to mention, and I'm taking a step backwards in my thought process here, but as a pastor, I have the prerogative to do that.
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I want to step back to this sign business and the rainbow being a sign of the promise of God.
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The rainbow has been hijacked.
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We know that the rainbow has been hijacked by a movement that is so ungodly and so sinful that to use the rainbow is the height of hypocrisy because the rainbow is a symbol of the promise of God to his people.
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And my only point in mentioning that is to say, don't ever let the rainbow let you forget what God promised.
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Just because it's been hijacked, it doesn't take away the meaning God ascribed to it.
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Thousands of years ago.
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Now, finally, I want to end.
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Because we have been talking about Noah, this is the fifth week of talking about Noah, I want to talk about Noah as an individual.
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Because every week at the end of every sermon, what I finished with is this.
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I've said Noah was a man of faith who we could emulate.
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Noah heard the voice of God.
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And what was Noah's response? The book of Genesis says in chapter six and all God commanded Noah did that we can emulate.
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And then we see again, it says God commanded him.
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This isn't everything Noah commanded or God commanded Noah did.
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And it says that over and over and over.
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And this is why in Hebrews chapter 11, it says.
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Noah was a man whose faith was worthy of being recognized.
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However, Noah also was a man and Noah was a fallible man.
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At the end of chapter nine, what do we see Noah engage in? We see Noah engage in drink and in failure.
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And it ends, chapter nine sadly ends with the disgrace of his son because he drank himself to a stupor and some people say he didn't know what he was doing.
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And some people even go as far as to say the atmospheric conditions changed after the flood and perhaps before the flood, wine did not ferment because of the atmospheric pressure.
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But after the flood, it did.
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We don't know what caused Noah to do what he did.
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We don't know if he did it totally ignorant of what the drink would have done or not.
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But we know that he ended up in his situation where his son.
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His son.
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Ended up sinning as a result.
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Here's my point, and I want to end with this point.
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No matter how much we exalt men of faith, don't ever forget that they are men and as such capable of error.
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Beloved, I see this all the time.
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We exalt a pastor or we exalt a preacher or we exalt someone and then we learn this person makes a mistake and it destroys us.
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Well, first, I blame the pastor because, yes, we do have a responsibility.
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But I also say to the people, don't put your faith in a person because they can fail you.
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And if that is where your faith lies, move the object of your faith to Christ because it is only he.
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Who will never fail you, Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to again study your word.
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We thank you that we had an opportunity to look at so much in the Old Testament today to see you acting in the world and and bringing about laws and and and specific ways things ought to be done, that we would live as people who are in the image of God, not in the image of the beasts and not like the beast, that we would be people who seek after you in worship, who seek after you in the way that we live our lives and that we seek to be godly people.
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And Lord God, at the same time, we also know that we have a propensity towards failure.
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We fight a battle with the flesh and we pray that we would never trust in our own flesh and that we would never trust in the flesh of someone else, but that we would trust only in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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For only in him is there no failure, only in him is there no turning or shadow of turning or variation.
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Only in him can we place our trust and know that our trust will be vindicated.
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So we thank you for your son, Jesus Christ.
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We thank you for the gospel of him who gives us life.
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And Lord, if there is one here today, anyone here today who has never heard that gospel, that the only way of salvation is in Christ and the only way to know him is by faith.
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To trust in the work that he has done on their behalf, Lord, I pray that you would move on that heart, for we know that salvation comes only when you move on a heart and you change their heart to see the truth.
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We thank you, Lord, for what you've done in our lives.
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We pray for what you're going to do in the lives of others.
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We ask now, God, that you would move us as we leave this place to a continual heart of worship throughout this week and bring us back safely.
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In Jesus name we pray.
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Amen.