922 Ministries - The CORE & St. Peter Lutheran

Welcome to week one of Noah unedited. We're going to take a look at the real story of Noah and the ark. So when you hear Noah and the Ark, what does pop into your head? I think maybe it sometimes is that childhood cartoonish picture of the ark. Maybe you've seen it where the boat is way too small and it's got a whole lot of windows for some reason, and there's always some animals sticking their heads out. You always got your elephants, you always got your giraffes. Zebras are always there, too. So usually there's a couple monkeys that are having some fun. And Noah and Mrs. Noah have a great big smile on their face. And there's a clear sky and there's a rainbow in the background. And a lot of nurseries are decorated with Noah Ark themes. Isn't that a little bit odd when you think about it? A story of death and destruction, and that's what we're decorating our child's room with. So this is maybe what pops into our head. It's a focus on the animals, a heavy focus on the happy ending. But today we're starting a series where we're looking at the story, we're looking at Noah unedited. And my hope, my prayer, my desire for you, especially today, is that you will leave today with a clearer, more accurate picture in your mind of the heart of God. Do you know the heart of God? Are you aware of the heart of God? Do you trust the heart of God? I pray that when you leave today that you will leave with a greater understanding than when you came to. And I think it's important that we know God's heart because it's really hard to trust and love somebody whose heart you don't know. Those of you who are married here today, how many of you went on your first date with the person that became your spouse and that night you got engaged on your first date? Anybody? I've heard of whirlwind romances. I've heard of people getting engaged within a week or two or three. Not often, but it happens. I have never heard of a case where somebody gets engaged that night. Well, why is that? Well, because we need to know somebody's heart first. We need to know what they're truly like before we want to commit ourselves to them, before we want to love them and trust them. And if you today are saying, my faith in God is maybe not the strongest right now, my faith has been rattled, my faith is weak, I would suggest to you that the cause for that Very well may be that you do not have this clear idea, this clear picture, this clear understanding of the heart of God. So my hope and my prayer is that by the time you leave today, you will. So with that, let's turn to the beginning of the story of Noah and the ark as it's recorded in Genesis, chapter six. You heard the whole chapter. We're not going to reread the whole chapter, but I do want to highlight parts of it so that we remember what we read earlier. So starting in verse one, it says this. When human beings begin to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the son of gods. The sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful and they married any of them that they chose, which already we have to pause and we. Pastor, I got some questions on this. Who are the sons of God? Who are the daughters of men? And I don't want to go into details on this. Some say these were fallen angels marrying humans. That seems a little bit. Doesn't seem to fit with the rest of Scripture. I think maybe a more likely explanation is that it was believing men started to marry the unbelieving women and this started to lead them astray. And then the Lord said, my spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal. Their days will be 120 years. And what I think God is announcing here is a limit to his patience. The people had become wicked. And God says, 120 more years. And then that's when I'm sending the flood. But over a century of grace yet. And we're told in other parts of Scripture that Noah not only built an ark during this time, but he was using this time to preach the truth of God, the grace of God to the people around him. But to no avail. They would not listen. But God says, there is a time limit to my patience. Then it goes on. And it says the Nephilim were on the earth in those days. And also afterwards, when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them, they were the heroes of old, men of renown. To which you again raise your hand and say, pastor, another question. Nephilim, who are they? Well, that word, Nephilim is actually a Hebrew word. And if you want to learn the Hebrew pronunciation, it would be Nephilim. Yes, Literally in our English Bible, we have this transliteration. Just exact pronunciation is put into English because we're not sure how to translate this word. We don't know exactly what the word means. Does it mean giants or. It could mean fallen ones, people of renown, mighty ones. Perhaps it's a word that's not used in other places in this form. And so it's hard to figure out exactly what the word means. So the translators say, all right, we're not going to risk getting the wrong translation. We'll just put the Hebrew word in there. Okay, so at this point, we could spend literally the rest of our time today. I could present to you all the various theories about who are the Nephilim and where did they come from and what kind of people were they? Were they giants, Were they heroes? What were the Nephilim? Pastor Michael, let's talk about this. You would probably enjoy it, but I don't think you would leave today better knowing the heart of God. So I'm going to frustrate some of you and say we're not going to talk about that today. However, because you are curious about this, I did put together a two page document. I studied this and researched this. There's a two page document about the Nephilim. If you would like to read more about that, go to my 922 community. That is our online community. Some of you already have our Circle app that takes you to that community and go to the resource library and we have posted there that two page explanation of the Nephilim. Please feel free to download that and read it. So what does God want us to understand? Even though the sons of God, daughters of men, Nephilim, we don't know exactly what all these things mean. Here's what we can know. What does God want you to take away from all of this? People were wicked. People were arrogant. It hints that there were sexual sins involved as well. And God isn't happy. Did you get that much out of it? Then we're good. Okay, so let's read on. Starting at verse five. The Lord God saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth and his heart was deeply troubled. Can you underline that in your mind or maybe even write those five words down on your bulletin real quick? God's heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race that I have created, and with them the animals, the birds, and the creatures that move along the ground, for I regret that I have made them. Okay, God's heart being deeply troubled, we understand that part, but you probably have yet another question here. And that is, what does that mean that the Lord regretted making human beings? It kind of sounds like God admits He made a mistake here, that God did something the wrong way and he wished he had done it a different way. Isn't that what we sometimes mean by the word regret? But here it's just a human term that helps us understand the heart of God. God could have done things differently. God knew how things would turn out. But he sure is sad about it. He doesn't regret it in that he thinks he made a mistake. He regrets where humans went with it with the freedoms that he gave. I think we use the term in that same way sometimes even in reference to human beings. Let's say in a family, there's a child that becomes a teenager and the parents decide, okay, we're going to take away the bedtime. It's time for you to have that freedom. You get to decide when you go to bed from here on out. But we're trusting you to be reasonable and to pick a good bedtime. And for the following three nights, that teenager stays up till four in the morning playing video games. I know it's hard to imagine, but just go with me on this. And the parents say, we regret giving you this freedom to make your choice. Now, when they say that, they're not saying we shouldn't have given you that freedom because you have to give that freedom sooner or later. They got to learn that before they go off to college. But what they're saying is, we regret that you have made the choices that you have made, that you used your freedom for such purposes. So it's kind of another way of saying to be deeply saddened, which is what was true of God, that human beings who were not forced to be in relationship with him chose to not be in relationship with him and instead did great, wicked, great evil all across the earth. Every human being on the planet had become corrupt. Except we're going to see an exception in just a second. But before we get there, we are already starting to understand something about the heart of God. Something so important. I don't want to brush right past this, and I want you to write this down. We need to know this about the heart of God. Sin breaks God's heart. Sin breaks God's heart. It grieves him. It makes him sad. And I don't know that we always fully grasp that. I think when we sin and it hurts us that we understand and we're sorry, we regret that we did it, we might apologize or repent to God because of the consequences of our sin to us. We get that almost every time. Sometimes we understand how we hurt other people, that when we sin, we hurt them and we're sorry about that. And we understand that and we see that sometimes. We also probably understand that when we've sinned, we have broken the rules of God. We'll acknowledge, yes, I sinned and it broke God's rule. But I wonder. I wonder how often we sin and we acknowledge and we think about how I broke the heart of God, that God is sad, God is grieved. God is offended by the sins that I have committed. And that is really the most important and the most damaging part of sin. That it is sin. All sin is against God. It is rebellion against him. And it saddens God deeply when we sin against him. And God's broken heart about sin, it doesn't just remain a feeling, it spills out into action. And that's what I also want you to understand and to take away. We see it, though, in verses 13 and 17 where it says, God said to Noah, I am going to put an end to. For the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. I am going to bring flood waters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. Wow. God's reaction to sin and wickedness, I think we would say, is kind of extreme. And this is giving you a glimpse into the heart of God. He's not just sad about sin and, oh, well, that's too bad. No, his grief, his deep grief over sin also carries over into action. Sin breaks God's heart, which demands divine judgment. Because sin breaks God's heart that demands divine judgment. He has to act out on that. A holy and a perfect God cannot just wink at sin, say, oh, that's cute, that's so nice. Look at them. No, he's angry about that. He is offended at that. He is grieved by that. And he must act by. In divine judgment. He must act against sin and wickedness. He must do that because love requires it. I didn't expect that, right? Divine judgment, punishment of sin, a worldwide flood had to come because love required that that happen. How is that loving? Worldwide destruction, judgment against sin, how can that be loving? And here's why. Perfect love protects what is good by destroying what is evil. You get that? Perfect love, if there is perfect love, it will protect what is good and to protect what is Good, it's going to have to destroy evil. Love requires it because God wants to protect what is good. And I think we understand that, right? Imagine there's a husband and a father who gets the news report that there has been a break in and a murder in the neighborhood. And that robber, that murderer, is still at large in the neighborhood. They order a lockdown. He locks his doors, he grabs the gun that he has in his house. And sure enough, that robber breaks into his house, then through a window, gets into the house with his gun. And in order to protect his family, because he wants to protect what is good, that man destroys what is evil and ends that murderer's life. And we would say he did it because of love. Love prompted him to do that, to take that courageous action now apply this to God. Why does God send a worldwide flood? Love prompted it because he needed to protect what was good. Because God is love. So I don't want you to miss this. That God, because of his holiness and because of his love, cannot tolerate sin. Sin is anti love and God is love. Sin breaks relationships. Sin breaks trust. Sin brings pain. Sin ruins lives. Because God loves what is good, he protects what is good. And he cannot allow sin to stand. His love requires it. So this consequence of sin, this worldwide flood that is coming, I often like to say this, that the Old Testament illustrates what the New Testament states. So you can often find a short verse in the New Testament and then you almost always find a full story about it in the Old Testament. And here's the New Testament verse that I think is being illustrated here. Romans 6:23. Just the first half of the verse says this. For the wages of sin is death. It could have been a little footnote, cf the flood. The wages of sin is death. It's the necessary consequence because of wickedness and evil. Now, I know what I'm saying. Sharing with you right now is heavy. And you're saying, but Pastor, I have committed sin. And what I'm encouraging you to do is to not take light of it and to recognize the full weight of it. That this sin is ultimately against God. And God is grieved. God is sad because of our sin and he must act on that. So we dare never minimize sin. It's not that big a deal. Everybody does it. But besides, it wasn't really my fault. It was her. It was them. No, we need to understand the full weight of every sin we commit is treason against the Creator of the universe. And he is sad. And it requires, it demands divine judgment. And I am so Happy? I don't have to say amen right now because the story isn't over. And we learn more about the heart of God. Verse 8 says, But Noah. I love that word. But. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Then it goes on. This is the account of Noah and his family, describes Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time. And he, in contrast to them, he walked faithfully with God. And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. So, yes, the world was wicked, but not all will be destroyed. Noah found favor with God. That word favor. Did you know there's another name for that? Maybe a word we use more often in church circles, and that's the word grace. Grace is simply God's undeserved favorite, God's undeserved loving kindness. Noah found that. Noah received that grace. And here's what I want you to know about the heart of God. That you cannot leave today until you understand this truth. And it's this. That grace defines the heart of God. Yes, sin breaks his heart, but grace is what defines the heart of God, and grace is what Noah received. Now, I want you to be very careful about how that. About how that verse was worded. Pay attention to that. He found favor with God. He found favor with God. Doesn't say that Noah earned favor with God. It doesn't say Noah deserved favor with God. It doesn't say that Noah was owed favor from God. But he found favor because God showed him grace. God decided that he would spare Noah and his family. That's grace language. That's gift language. Yes, it does say Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time. He walked faithfully with the Lord. But does that mean Noah? And the answer is definitely no. Well, how do you know that, Pastor Michael? Because fast forward to number five in this series. Stick around for that one. We're going to see very clearly at the end of chapter nine that Noah was most definitely a sinful man. We'll save it for that time. So what does it mean he was righteous and that he walked with God? It means that Noah was a man who trusted in the Lord, who yielded to God, who humbled himself before the Lord, who walked with God in faith. And God, because of that, forgave the guilt of Noah's sin and considered counted Noah as righteous. Just what God was looking for because of his faith, trust, yielding, humility before the Lord. So just like God's grief over sin moves him to act in justice and judgment, God's grace in his heart also moves him to act. It just isn't a warm feeling in God's heart that he just experiences love for us, a potential to love us. No, his love expresses itself in action. So grace defines God's heart. And Genesis 6, verse 18 shows how he acts on it. But I will establish my covenant with you and you will enter the ark. You and your sons and your wife and your sons wives with you. God makes a covenant with Noah. A covenant by the way, is a one sided agreement. God didn't say, I will spare you if. No, he just says, noah, I'm making my covenant with you and I'm going to spare you. Oh, not just you, by the way, we're only told that Noah was a believer in God, by the way, was his wife, I'm not sure, was his sons and their daughters. But they're connected with Noah. And so God says they're connected to you, so you're connected to me. So I'm going to spare them too. Grace, undeserved loving kindness from the Lord. Grace that wasn't just in his heart, but grace that moved him to action. So grace defines the heart of God, which demands divine deliverance because God has a heart of grace that demands from him that he also act on that grace. And acting on grace means delivering his people, rescuing, forgiving, restoring, saving, protecting. That's what God does for his people. That's what's in his gracious heart. We heard the verse earlier. The first half of the verse, for the wages of sin is death. And the second half of the verse is a lot more beautiful. And the gift of God is eternal life. Through Christ Jesus our Lord. We deserve death and God's gift is life. We deserve his anger and he gives us his love. We deserve condemnation, but he gives us deliverance and salvation. You might think that there's a tension in scripture here. On the one hand, we talked about already the heart of God, that He is absolutely holy, he is absolutely righteous, he is perfect in every way and justice must be served. Or God is not a just God. That means every last sin must be punished. And we heard what seems like a contradiction. God is the God of grace and that defines his heart. He is the God of forgiveness. He forgives the guilt of the sins of people. God loves and he is 100% love. He is 100% holy and just. And he is 100% loving and gracious and merciful and forgiving. And you say, but how can they both be? He must compromise on one or the other. And I'll tell you right now, every world religion, there is a compromise between those two. If you study Allah, if you study Buddha or any other world religion, either justice or grace must be compromised. And usually they both are. But the Christian faith is unique because only at the cross of Christ can those two things be reconciled fully. Because at the cross of Christ we see the justice of God 100% fulfilled. The sins of the world were placed on Jesus. And God doesn't say that any single sin will ever be forgiven or will ever be overlooked. But it will all be forgiven in my son. At the cross. The anger of sin, think flood level, wrath of God that is owed for every sin does come down, just not on you. Comes down on Jesus. The justice of God is satisfied hundred percent because of Jesus. Giving himself is the perfect sacrifice. And at the cross of Christ, the love of God is 100% uncompromised. Complete love of God. God so loved. What's the next word? The world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. He didn't love some in the world because that would not be complete love. He loves all in the world and offers Jesus as the one and only perfect sacrifice for the sins of every last person on the planet. Justice and love remain untainted, completely pure at the cross of Christ. Ephesians 2, verses 8 and 9 tells us this. For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves. It is a gift from God, not by works, so that no one can boast. I'm saved. Well, how did you do that? Well, let me tell you. It's not by me, it's by him. It's by grace that we are saved. That is the heart of God that I want you to know today. But there's one more important thing that you need to know before you go today. What kind of response comes from knowing the heart of God? We see that in Noah too, don't we? So did you notice everything that God told Noah to do? It was a long list and there was an enormous amount of detail, wasn't there? I'm not going to read all those verses to you, but here, here are some of the highlights From Genesis, chapter 6, verses 11 to 21. God tells Noah, make an ark. And he gives him all the details and three stories and the size, 450ft long, 50ft wide, and make rooms and coat it with pitch, inside and out. And this is how you are to do it. And he gives them all the detail and put a roof on it and there's going to be a window 18 inches under and put a door on it. Oh, by the way, I'm going to close that door for you. We're going to read about that later. You are to bring all the animals on board and also make sure you keep them alive because you're going to put food on there too. Just giving them direction after direction after direction in enormous amount of detail. Can you imagine how this sounded to Noah? An enormous job. We don't know exactly how long it took him to build the ark. We're not given the exact number of years. But if God is giving 120 year grace period, would it be reasonable to expect that he used a good chunk of that time to be building the ark? I think that makes sense. 70 years, 100 years. Did it take that long to build? It's quite possible. Can you imagine building something of that size? Can you imagine the work and the resources that were involved? This thing is massive. I know some of our members went to see the Arc Museum in Kentucky recently, and it is an impressive structure. It is huge, built to scale. And it takes quite a long time to go through all three floors of that museum. It is enormous. And Noah did it. And he did it when there had never been a flood like this ever in human history. He did it when the skies were clear and no rain was falling. Why? Because. Here's your third takeaway. Faith trusts the heart of God. Faith trusts the heart of God. And where faith trusts the heart of God, this is important. Listen, faith does. Faith works. Faith acts just like the grief of God doesn't just remain something he hides deep in his heart. Just like the grace of God isn't something he keeps hidden deep in our heart. Our faith in God is something that we can't just hide deep in our heart. Faith has to show itself. What's in our heart needs to come out in our hands. So faith trusts God's heart, which demands dutiful devotion. Faith does. Faith works. It did for Noah, didn't it? Can you imagine if Noah had heard God's anger, his sadness over sin? He heard about God's grace and that he had found favor. And God says, here's what's going to happen and what you need to do. And Noah says, I trust you, Lord. I trust you with all my heart. But I'm not going to do any of that. That sounds hard. I'm going to get made fun of. People are going to laugh at Me, there's so many resources, so much time. I could be doing better things. I trust you, Lord, with all my heart. But no, not going to do anything. That's not faith, is it? That's just lip service. And the Bible is abundantly clear about what such faith looks like in James chapter two, by the way. Maybe you could read all of the letter of James this week. But James chapter 2, verse 17, I think sums it up really well. It says, in the same way, faith by itself, if not accompanied by action, is dead. And a dead faith is not real faith. God wants a living faith which always shows itself in what we do. A faith that shows itself in action. Truth is, God calls us to hard things. His grace to us is absolutely free. It is not based on what you do. You don't earn it, you don't deserve it. He just forgives you through the blood of Jesus. And then he says, now follow me. Yield to me. Humble yourself before me. Trust me, obey me. And here's what I'm asking. And he tells us some very hard things. We're not building an ark. He hasn't asked us to do that, but he's asked us to do other hard things. And what kind of heart of faith do we have? Do we have a faith that obeys? Here's some of the hard things he might ask. We could give a long, long list. But let me just give you three things. Faith, where there's true and a living faith, an alive faith. Faith forgives, Faith gives and faith speaks. Let me quick unpack each one real fast. Faith forgives. So forgiveness is hard. And I've heard so many Christians, they'll come to me for counseling because they struggle with this. The world says, you don't owe them forgiveness. They don't deserve it. Cancel them. Cancel them forever for what they deserve. Yeah, you're right to not forgive. God says, no, I want you to forgive. Who should I forgive? Forgive everyone. God. Do you know what they did to me? I know what they did to you. Do you know what you did to me? And I forgave you through the blood of Jesus. Now you forgive one another. So faith, a living faith in action, is going to forgive. It means letting go of the bitterness, letting go of the debt through faith. You can do that. Second, faith gives. Faith gives generously, even when costly. The world says, no, don't give. What do you mean? You earned this. You are the one who worked for this. Keep it. Enjoy it. Indulge yourself. Enjoy yourself. Do what you want with it. It's Your money. Come on. And God says, no, actually, it's mine. And what I'm calling you to do is to use what I've entrusted to you for a time. I want you to use what I've entrusted to you to live with an open hand, to live with generosity, not with a closed fist for me, but for me, for others. Give. Be generous. That's hard, I know, but that's what a living faith does. And the third thing, faith speaks. Even though it's awkward, the world would say, you don't talk about faith. Don't talk about religion, politics, religion. Stay clear of those things. Keep your faith to yourself. That's a personal matter. If you believe what you want to believe, I'll believe what I want to believe. We don't need to talk about these things. And God says, no, I want you to speak. You are my witnesses. You know my heart. You know my grace. You know my truth. There are people in this world. There are neighbors in your neighborhood. There are family members in your life. There are friends that you know, that do not know the love of Jesus, that do not know his heart, his grace, his forgiveness, the seriousness of sin, the redemption that comes through Christ. They don't know. And you do. And Jesus says, yeah, it's going to be awkward. But speak. Speak God's truth. Speak God's grace, because they desperately need it. So let me ask you, do you trust God's heart? Do you know his heart better now? Do you believe that he grieves over your sin because he loves? Do you believe that his grace has provided salvation through Jesus? And if you do, how is that faith showing itself in devoted obedience? What hard thing has God asked you to do? And would you, like, really give that some serious thought? Maybe quick jot something down? What hard thing does God want you to do this week in obedience and trust? Because you now better know the heart of God. God's heart is revealed in Noah's story. We're going to hear more about this in the coming weeks. The same God who wept over human wickedness is the God who provided an ark for rescue. The same God who demands justice for sin is the same God who gives grace and deliverance from sin through the Lord Jesus Christ. And the same God who called Noah to faithful obedience is calling you to that same faith and obedience today. Know and trust God's heart. It's the only safe place. And it's always a safe place when the floods come. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you. You don't owe it to us to reveal yourself to us. You don't have to show us your heart and yet in this story and in so many other places in the Bible you clearly do so we know exactly who you are. We know why and how sin is so offensive to you and how it grieves you. We see your grace in the sacrifice of your son. There is literally nothing more you could have done to give us your love and to deliver us from sin and we thank you for that and now we ask you to change our hearts and give us a heart full of trust. Not just potential trust but trust that lives out in obedience to you a trust that means a changed life. So help us to do that to give glory to your name to show others in this world your heart so that more and more may come to believe and to know your grace and truth. Bless us to that end and be with us in Jesus name we pray and all God's people said amen.