What God Is Doing On The Ark

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You can have a seat.

When you read the Bible, you should look and listen for things that are repeated.

The same thing is true when you worship.

When we sing certain songs, you should listen for what is repeated like what was repeated in that last song, Waymaker, is this simple phrase light in the darkness.

Light in the darkness.

I don't know how you came today, uh, and it doesn't matter.

You're all welcome here.

You may need a little illumination on something in your life.

I want you to know this about God.

Uh, He brings light into your darkness in a way that is wooing and invitational, not that's harsh and intrusive.

Like if you've ever been pulled, pulled over, if you've ever been pulled over at night, uh, well, if you've ever been pulled over, say amen.

Say you're surrounded by lawbreakers.

Uh I've been pulled over at night, and the guy had a flashlight and he kept shining my eyes, and he said, Lost resurrection.

And he said, Why are you squinting?

Have you been drinking?

I said, No, you're shining the sun in my face.

Uh, and it was not good.

I was not in a good mood, and I'm a man of the cloth, and I'm like, Here, could you turn that thing off?

I just want to see what you got in the search for vehicle?

Yeah, you can search my vehicle.

Can you turn the light off?

No, sir.

Okay.

God's not like a cop that pulls you over and shines a light in your eyes.

That's intrusive.

When my kids were little, they uh had a night light, had a tinkerbell nightlight in their room.

It's about maybe a two-watt, four-watt bulb.

It's not very bright.

You can just see kind of right there, but here's what they loved about it.

The darkness was not pervasive.

And so, what God will do today is he'll come for some of you, he'll just kind of plug in a little tinkerbell night light and click it on.

Because the last thing I would do when I walk out, my oldest, and both of them would say, Dad, turn my light on, turn my light on.

Uh and I'm in my mind, I was like, that's not much light, but okay, here you go.

They just didn't want the darkness to be pervasive.

We live in a fallen world, it's easy to feel like the darkness is pervasive.

There's no hope, it doesn't matter, just do whatever you want to do.

That's not true.

So, what's gonna happen is I'm gonna open up this Bible and we're gonna read.

Uh, and then I'm gonna tell you what it says.

And God's gonna bring light into your darkness.

Okay?

So uh if you're visiting today, we believe the Bible.

We're in a series called Return to Design from the first 11 chapters of Genesis, where we're just kind of looking at the way God created the world to be.

It's easy to look around and kind of go, man, if there is a God and He's good, why is the world so screwed up?

One simple reason people have not trusted God for a long time.

And so we just want to go back and just say, hey, this is the way God designed the world to be.

So maybe instead of blame, we take responsibility.

Okay?

Let me voice a prayer and then we'll just jump in.

Let's pray together.

Father, thanks for the truth of your word.

It is illuminating, it is helpful, it is like light in the darkness.

When we're stumbling along, we don't need instruction, we need revelation, we need illumination, we need light in the darkness.

No wonder the Bible says of itself that your word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.

It's a lamp, it's like a little night light.

It shows us how to take the next step, but it's also light to our path.

It gives revelation for the path forward.

And so, Father, I pray, Holy Spirit, that you illuminate scripture today, and then people would be, their way would be lit up and they would see clearly.

Whatever's fuzzy or foggy, may it get clear in the light of the revelation that comes from your word and by your spirit.

Lord, we trust you.

We ask you to do this now.

We ask it as your sons and daughters, and we ask it in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Amen.

If you got a Bible, you can open up to Genesis chapter 6.

Genesis 6 · chapter mention

If you don't have one, that doesn't mean you're screwed up or you're bad.

It'll come up on the screen up here, okay?

I want to talk to you today about what God is doing on the ark.

What God is doing on the ark.

And I just want to get to it, but I get I want to get to it by telling you this.

I had chicken wings for dinner one night this week.

Because a friend of mine called and said, Hey, you mentioned chicken wings in an email.

Can I take you to get chicken wings for dinner?

Absolutely.

And so we go to chicken, and and and I forgot all about it.

So I got here this morning.

I walked by, he was talking to somebody.

He said, Have you ever been to tea chicken wings with Neil?

Because he's all dignified.

He's like picking the meat off and picking the skin off.

I just take the whole thing in my mouth and just pull the bone out and just chunk it down.

And so I'm just going through them like popcorn.

I'm done in like six minutes, and he's on his second wing, wiping his hands off.

I got it up on my ears, I got it everywhere.

Our waitress came up and goes, You want some more?

I said, Don't tempt me, lady.

Uh and then I'm driving home and I got a little emotional on the drive home, got a little weepy.

And you say, Why?

Because when I was growing up, chicken wings wasn't a delicacy.

It was the cheapest thing at the grocery store.

And so we had chicken wings a lot.

And I'm driving home that little, because now chicken wings is kind of it's a cottage industry.

You put buffalo sauce on it, it's now buffalo wings.

Like buffaloes don't have wings.

But anyway, uh, I was driving home, I got a little emotional because that little voice in me said, See, we're eating chicken wings for a different reason this day.

When you were growing up, it's because it was y'all were poor and it was just the cheapest thing at the grocery store.

But now, look at you.

And all of a sudden the road got all blurry, and I was like, Yeah, boy, you've been.

I turned the radio off.

God, you've been good to me for a long time, okay?

Now, why do I tell you that?

Because Genesis 6 is like a pile of chicken wings.

You just got to get after it.

Don't eat, don't eat it like my friend.

I'm gonna peel the skin off and you it might cause cancer.

And then he kept coming back.

Sir, do you want some more to eat?

No, I'm gonna watch this guy just kind of pick at this stuff.

He so picked at it that I just thought, you left meat on the bone.

If I wasn't a Christian, I would eat that what you left on there.

But I didn't, okay?

And so I don't want to leave any meat on the bone.

So I'm just gonna jump in and start reading to Genesis 6.

Look at me.

I'm gonna read the whole chapter because I want you to understand what God is doing on the ark.

Now, the ark is a very familiar story, so familiar that we probably fail to see what God is actually doing.

So let's just dive into this pile of wings.

Genesis 6, verse 1.

Genesis 6:1

When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose.

And then the Lord said, My spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh, his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man, and they bore children to them.

These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

The Lord saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart were only evil continually.

And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.

So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and the birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I've made them.

But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

These are the generations of Noah.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation, and Noah walked with God.

And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence.

And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt.

For all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth, and God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh.

For the earth is filled with violence through them.

Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

Make yourself an ark of gopher wood, make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch.

This is how you are to make it.

Its length of the ark is three hundred cubits, its breadth, fifty cubits, its height, thirty cubits.

Make a roof for the ark, and finish it to a cubit above, and set the door of the ark in its side.

Make it with lower, second, and third decks.

For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh, in which is the breath of life under heaven.

Everything that is on the earth shall die.

But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you.

And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you.

They shall be male and female, of the birds according to its kind, and of all the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive.

Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten and store it up.

It shall serve as food for you and for them.

Now, if you're not careful, your eyes are drawn to the same two or three things in this very familiar story.

But I want us to see the big picture of what God is doing on the ark.

Now, there's five things I want to point out in the text.

Number one, our response to life is determined by the lens through which we you see it.

Your response to life is determined by the lens through which you see it.

What do you mean?

Look at verse two.

It says the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose.

Now, sometimes here's where the Bible kind of winks at is you should recognize this pattern from the Garden of Eden and Eve, because the Bible says that Eve saw that the fruit was good and she took.

And here the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive, they were good, and what did they do?

They took.

Now, our response to life is determined by the lens through which you see it.

The sons of God, they saw that they were good, they were attractive, and so they took.

Now, if you go down to verse five, the same thing happens.

But it's God, and the Bible says this the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart were only evil continually.

And God regretted it.

In other words, God saw and God responded.

See, our response to life is determined by the lens through which we see it.

Two totally different responses based on the lens through which they see the world.

Now, the Bible says the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive.

Now, there's nothing wrong with marrying an attractive person.

Amen.

I've had so many of you come up to me.

My favorite was a 17-year-old kid in our church that said to me, Hey man, your wife's hot.

And I said, That's your first and last freebie.

And he said, What do you mean?

And I said, I appreciate that, but you don't say to a married man, his wife is hot, because what that says to me is that you've been looking, you've been checking my wife out.

Well, I mean, she's hot.

And I said, Okay, that's your second freebie.

Uh and I said, What you're trying to figure out is how a guy like me, the fat bald guy, got the hot wife?

He goes, Pretty much.

And I said, It all depends on the lens that you look through.

Now, now, why is this a big deal?

The Bible says the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive.

Um, next to your relationship with God, who you marry is the most important decision you will ever make.

Uh, for example, last weekend, my oldest daughter, who's 24, has a boyfriend.

They've been hanging out and they came to make a little visit, and he texted me and said, I want to talk to you about our relationship when I'm there.

Can we have breakfast Saturday morning?

I said, Absolutely.

So we'll go to the Waffle House.

I said, I don't have intimate conversations in public settings.

If I think I know what you're coming for and you shouldn't be coming for this, I didn't tell him this.

I just let him walk into the bear trap.

Boom! And so, and the bear trap wasn't me, by the way, it was my wife.

And so Saturday morning we got up, we had coffee, we sat down, and he started talking.

He said, Well, Mr.

McClellan, I want to talk to you about mine and Madison's relationship.

And I said, Let me cut you off here, son.

How many times have you been around me?

He said, uh, three or four.

Yeah.

How many times have we talked about y'all's relationship?

Uh, I said, this would be our second.

We had a two-hour lunch uh uh out here at a restaurant you drove down for.

This is our second.

So please tell me you've not come down here to drink my coffee, eat my wife's breakfast casserole, and ask for my blessing to marry my daughter.

Well, uh, that's kind of what I was hoping.

Absolutely not.

Because I don't know you well enough.

You want my firstborn after two conversations?

You think I'm that cheap?

And he was like, uh, uh, don't ooh and uh.

Let me tell you something.

Men, if you let some man come for your daughter just because some knucklehead's been spending time with her, I said to him, I said, Y'all have only lived in the same city since this summer.

Well, we love each other.

I told girls I love them before I met my wife.

And once I realized what love was, I had to call them back and say, you know what?

I think I really hated you.

Now that I know what love is, I can't use the same word for that.

We're five minutes in.

I thought he was gonna cry.

And he's just like, I said, No, and now by the way, he's a good guy.

He's so good.

Matter of fact, when they were dating, he wrote down a list of things, his standards, and gave them to my daughter.

I said, You're gonna be very bored, honey.

She's like, Shut up, Dad, that's not funny.

Good guy, fine young man, quality young man.

I just don't know him.

I said, You may be looking at my daughter thinking she's attractive, and she is, but you gotta bring more than that to the table.

Now, what am I saying?

I'm saying this to all you unmarried people.

Next to your relationship with God, the relationship that'll bring you the most happiness and the most grief is who you marry.

Can I get an amen?

I'm not saying happiness or grief, just say amen.

Yeah, and so you just can't think a lot of life is just kind of the lens that you look through.

Now, here's the thing uh two totally different responses because based on the lens through which we see the world.

Now, now file this away.

We'll we'll we'll end on this in a minute.

But the lens that God looks through is so much more powerful and far-reaching, okay, that sometimes it's hard to understand what God says to do because he looks through a long lens and we look through a short lens.

Uh and now, by the way, sermons shouldn't be ruled by your curiosity, but by the content of what's actually in the text.

Because what most people get hung up on is the Nephilim, because it says, and they took their wives, any they choose.

Verse 3.

Then the Lord said, My spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh.

His days shall be 120 years.

120 years, I think what God is saying is, hey, I'm gonna give you 120 years of grace before the flood comes, so your people better start listening.

And he says, verse 4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterwards, when the sons of God came into the daughters of man and bore children to them.

These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

So there's a lot of controversy about who are the sons of God and the daughters of men.

And I'll just give you there's three, it's not in the outline, this is bonus rail material.

There's three different takes on who are the sons of man.

The first one is that they the Nephilim are angels, they're fallen angels.

Uh, and now by the way, the more the word, the name Nephilim means fallen ones.

Uh, there were angels that were expelled from heaven.

They're now referred to as demons.

And so that's a very reality.

But I do not think that's what he's referring to here when he talks about the sons of God.

The second perspective, the second answer to the question, a lot of people say, well, they were kings and rulers.

That's where they were the noble, the men of renown.

They were already well thought of in this area.

Uh, I don't think that holds water either.

The third one, and one I think is the biblical one, is that they were the the uh the sons of God are the descendants of Seth.

Now, the daughters of men were the descendants of Cain.

Remember that uh Adam and Eve had two sons, Cain and Abel, and Cain slew Abel.

If you remember that, say yes.

And they had another son, and his name was Seth.

And so, see, remember if you go back to the garden, there's always got to be a line.

Follow this away.

We'll hold on to this as a little scarlet thread all the way through.

There's always going to be a line.

Going back to the garden, he talks about the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.

Remember that?

There's two different, see, two different genealogies, so to speak, two different lines of descent.

There's a seed of the woman, and then there's the seed of the serpent.

And so I think the sons of God are the descendants of Seth.

And the problem was they intermarried, they married women that were attractive but weren't godly.

The Bible says it's better for a man to dwell in a corner of a roof than to live with a contentious woman.

If you're ruled that I married a very attractive woman, the 17-year-old is right.

How did you ha, yeah, yeah.

But what drew me to her was that she was godly.

And so they look and they intermarried, they married women.

And now, now again, God looks through a longer lens, and God's lens is always focused on the right thing.

When the Sethites, they compromised by mingling with the Canaites, they fell from God's blessing.

Why is this a big deal?

Because they endangered the fulfillment of the messianic promise from chapter three, where God says, you know, he will crush your head and you will bruise his heel.

How would God bring a redeemer into the world through an unholy people?

So they're looking at this lens of, oh man, she's hot.

And God's looking and kind of going, hey, how does the line, how does the line of the descendants of promise continue if these knuckleheads are just ruled by what they see?

Again, our response to life is determined by the lens through which you see it.

Secondly, we all want you to see that God is a it is constant in his nature.

God is constant in his nature.

Look at verse five.

God responds.

It says this He says, The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

And the Lord regretted he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.

So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and the birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.

Now just stop right there.

If you're not careful, you you begin to think about God in a very anthropomorphic way.

Anthropomorphic means that you give, you, you, you, you, uh, you, you ascribe to God human qualities.

And pretty soon, if you're not careful, God is no longer God.

He's just like one of us, just with a little bit more power.

And though in the moment that can sound comforting, it's actually tragic, okay?

Now, there's three important attributes of God that I want you to understand, all right?

Now, this is what's happened.

The divine blessing is threatened by sin, and it has to be preserved by divine mercy.

And so God acts in keeping with his nature, which is constant and consistent, and he demonstrates three things about himself: immutability, impassability, and infinite.

Now, if you're visiting today, or if you're like, dude, I have no idea what that means, just relax, okay?

When you talk about immutability, it means God does not change in any way.

The Bible says of God, He's the same yesterday, today, and forever.

This is what that big word means.

The second word, impassibility, God does not experience emotional change in any way, he does not suffer.

Um, like I was preaching in a church a long time ago when I was traveling around the country, and this lady, remember when they did special music in church?

Hello, remember that?

It's usually somebody singing right before the preacher got up.

Well, this lady sang a song and it was entitled, Can He Still Feel the Nails?

And I was sitting over there, and the more she sang, the more I got bothered.

The song said, Can He Still Feel the Nails every time I fail?

Uh and then there's a line that said, I just can't bear the thought of hurting him.

And I was just like, You really?

I'm looking around and people are weeping, and I'm like, You really don't think God's in heaven going, Oh, that hurts my heart.

Ow, ow, ouchie, please stop.

And I was like, and clear as a bell, the Holy Spirit said, Would you speak to this when you get up?

And I was like, I am here on a love offering.

You're sure you want to do that?

And not to be the jerk, not to be the jerk or the hard person, but the impassability of God means, it doesn't mean God doesn't have emotion to use a the only word we can get close to it.

Uh, but but but but God doesn't he doesn't suffer passion.

He doesn't, when we feel God, it's not that he can't identify, but he's not moved to change by what happens here on the earth.

It's not like God looked down in Genesis 6 and saw that it's going bad and he just got ticked off like some alcoholic stepfather.

No, there's a constancy to God's nature.

Here's a third one I think helps uh clarify the first two infinite.

What does that mean?

There's nothing in God waiting to be activated to reach its full potential.

There's nothing in God that's waiting to be activated to reach its full potential.

In other words, when God looks down and sees wickedness, he doesn't say, like, oh, that's it.

I'm not gonna take it anymore.

I'm gonna flood the earth.

No, God has been against sin from the very beginning.

And so there's nothing that you do that makes God love you more when you're good and you behave all week.

God doesn't look down and go, Oh, you've been good this week.

I love you more than I did last week when you were a jerk.

No, no.

When the Bible says that God is infinite, it means that there's nothing in Him that's waiting to be activated to reach its full potential.

God is always as loving as God could ever be.

He's always as compassionate as God could ever be.

Now, uh, why is this important?

Because there's two false views of God that are very popular in our culture.

And the first one is this is that God is a God who suffers, that he's subject to emotional change.

Uh now it sounds comforting in the moment, uh, but on second thought, the more you think about it, uh, if God suffers the way we suffer, how does God rescue us?

How does God comfort us?

And it usually happens around tragedy or crisis.

Um, like I've been in a lot of tragedy and crisis situations, and people mean well, but they say things like this Well, I just want you to know that God is crying right along with you.

And I'm like, Because the question in your mind should pop up, okay, then who comforts God when God cries?

Not to say that God doesn't empathize with us, he's not a God of compassion, not at all.

But this is where you have to understand that God is constant in his nature and he's impassable.

Big word, even bigger reality.

Because it doesn't matter, as you can go as low as you can possibly imagine emotionally.

And God can be present, but he also can be a help, he can be a comfort.

He doesn't have to become like you to comfort you.

He brings perspective and he brings resources beyond and better than what you feel in the moment.

And so let's be careful that when tragedy happens, that we don't so anthropomorphize God that we make God out to be something God is not.

As revealed in the Bible.

So there's this God who suffers.

And then, secondly, there's this stoic God.

He's this stoic, lifeless, indifferent, apathetic, incapable of love or compassion.

That's not the God of the Bible either.

You got these two extremes over here.

But what God really is, is He's constant in His nature.

He's the same yesterday, today, and forever.

His love for you doesn't go up when your behavior's good, it doesn't go down when your behavior's bad.

Matter of fact, this is, I know that we preachers sometimes can say things and you're like, I got immutability, impassability.

What?

What?

Let me say it like this: there's nothing you've ever done that can make God love you less.

And there's nothing you could ever do to make God love you more.

God is infinite in his nature, he loves you as much as he ever has.

I got into a conversation with two prostitutes on the side of the interstate one time.

You should try it sometime.

Had a van full of students in my student ministry.

And one of them says, What about them hookers?

And I'm like, Oh boy.

We came out of a Denny's in Shreveport, Louisiana.

They went with me to speak at something.

And they're like, hey, won't we go share the gospel with them?

And I'm like, one of them had on a black rubber miniskirt and a pink fuzzy tube top and some boots about up to her thighs.

And I'm thinking, what am I gonna say?

God offers a wonderful plan for your life.

Uh and so I said, the only thing I know to say, I said, hey, I know that in y'all's profession you look for love.

I just want to come over and tell you there's a God in this world and He's crazy about you, girls.

He loves you.

And one of them was smoking, and she said, Say that again.

And I said, I just want you to know that God loves you.

And she said, Look at me, mister.

And I said, I'm trying hard not to, ma'am.

Now I look back in the minivan, in the church van, there's ten faces up against the windows.

Bunch of 16-year-old boys.

And I had a conversation, and it was great.

And I just said, I'm not here to judge you, I'm not here to hate on you, I'm just here to tell you that the God of the universe loves you.

And she said, Man, I needed to hear that today.

She didn't put out her cigarette and say, I'm sorry for smoking, I'll do better.

Now I got to church the next Saturday night.

I got to church the next morning.

One of the deacons stopped me in the hall, heard you talk to a couple of hookers last night.

I said, Yeah, and I told him, I told them that God loves them as much as he loves you.

He did not like that.

He said, Matter of fact, I'm gonna talk to a preacher about getting you fired.

I said, if that means I don't have to talk to you anymore, please get me fired.

This is what I mean.

It's not, don't get hung up on big words like immutability, impassability.

God is infinite.

He he's not stoic, he's not indifferent, he he, but he's not like he's not affected in ways that we're affected.

That way, Martin Luther wrote the great hymn, you know, uh uh where he talked about God is a blor, a mighty fortress is our God, a boar never failing.

There's a constant reality that is available to us.

Thirdly, the Bible tells us that God tells a story through people.

He it sounds bad in verses five through seven, but to get to verse eight, it says, But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

It's important that we grasp favor because it's all through the Bible.

Matter of fact, in the next book of the Bible, Exodus, Moses looks us to God and says, Now he's standing between a God who's offended by the faithlessness of the children of Israel, and Moses stands there.

Here's how powerful favor is.

Moses says, If I have found favor in your sight, please I want you to do this.

He didn't say, if we have found favor, God is not looking for we, God is looking for me.

And Moses says, if I have found favor, I'm not here to say these knuckleheads ain't knuckleheads, because you and I both, God, we know you know they are.

They are faithless people.

But if I have found favor, favor is so important to God that when someone finds favor, God says, You know what?

Here's somebody I can tell my story through.

And the Bible says that when Moses appealed to God like that, said, Hey, if I found favor in your sight, then go with us.

And God said, You know what?

You have, and I will.

That's how important favor is.

So when I say God tells a story through people, this is what I mean.

It sounds terrible.

God's gonna wipe out everything because all they can do is think and act wickedly.

But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

Favor means acceptance or this godward disposition towards.

I asked Skippy last Saturday, I said, son, do you have the favor of God on your life?

Well, uh, I don't know what you mean.

Why don't you come back and ask my daughter's my blessing when you understand favor?

Because that girl grew up in a home where the cloud of favor has been over her life.

She wasn't, she didn't hit her triple, she was born on third base.

Oh, oh well, uh, I know that you're intense.

I'm not intense, son.

I'm right.

I do not feel good about letting my daughter go to be with a man to start a family if you don't understand favor and it's not on your life.

I said, Now, if you think I'm intense, her mom's gonna walk out here in a minute and start cooking breakfast.

You better put on a helmet.

Oh, favor.

Yeah, yeah.

Write that down.

Because all this stuff, verse say, but Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

Now, by the way, it's not something we earn or deserve, it's something God bestows upon people when no one is looking because they live and act as if God is the only one looking.

They live their life for an audience of one.

Noah was not looking for favor, God was looking for a man like Noah.

And so, what does the Bible tell us about Noah?

Well, in verse 9, it says three things.

He was a righteous man, he was blameless in his generation, and he walked with God.

He was a righteous man.

This is just standing before God.

His righteousness doesn't come from his good works, his good works come from his righteousness, okay?

Because this righteousness of God is not just comforting.

Oh, I'm forgiven for my sins.

It is causal.

It causes him to be a certain way.

The New Testament says it in Ephesians chapter 2, about verse 10, it says that uh that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good deeds which God has prepared beforehand that we should do.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

So when you're right with God, you do right things.

That's just the way God designed you to.

So when you do right things, you don't get a cookie, you don't, you don't get a trophy, like one of our congressmen called, because during the ice storm, we housed people here at our church that were displaced.

And he said, Hey, we'd like to come and a part of your service give you a certificate of appreciation.

Absolutely not.

And he's like, Well, what we don't we don't worship ourselves, we don't want that.

He said, Well, we'd like to come by.

I said, Come by on Monday, not on Sunday.

Sunday we worship, we do not worship ourselves or accomplishment.

Here's why.

Because that's the what God, that's what righteousness causes us to do.

When people call and say, Hey, people in our group home don't have a place to go.

Come down, we'll find a place for them.

So all these chairs were struck, moved to the back, and people were sleeping in here.

And in the fellowship hall.

He said, Well, we have a certificate of appreciation.

I appreciate that, that's great, but we ain't taking that in our worship service.

He said, Well, we'd like to come out on Monday and have a photo up.

I ain't dressing up.

He's like, Man, this is refreshing.

Here's why righteous people do righteous things.

This is you, that's what we're supposed to do.

He was a righteous man, then he was blameless in his generation.

Righteousness is his standing before God.

Blameless is his conduct before people.

Look at me.

You can't say you're righteous and not live blamelessly.

It just shows up in the way that you act before people.

And Lassant says he walked with God.

This is just a life that's oriented around God.

By the way, his great grandfather was a man named Enoch.

Enoch, E-N-O-C-H.

Enoch, the Bible says, look at me.

Enoch walked with God, and the Bible says, and the Lord took him up.

Translation one day the Lord just hugged him and he just poof, he just disappeared.

It'd be like going to your grandparents today for lunch, and you walk in and you're like, hey, hey, grandma, where's grandpa?

Well, we were watching Wheel of Fortune the other night, and your grandpa was giggling in his reclining, and they said, No, he was gone.

The Lord took him.

Why didn't you tell us?

Well, it wasn't no funeral or anything.

I just finished watching Wheel of Fortune and went to bed.

I figured I'd tell you on Sunday.

You would be like, Well, what?

What?

And yet that the Bible says that's exactly what happened.

That Enoch walked with God and the Lord just took him.

He just said, Come on, Skippy, you don't fit in this world anymore.

Here's what I'm saying.

Noah comes along, Enoch is his great grandfather.

He has a frame of reference.

When the Bible says he walked with God, he has a frame of reference.

You should ask yourself, do I walk with God in such a way that my children have a frame of reference what it looks like?

And I wouldn't be in hard, don't come up to me like somebody like, oh, you're too hard on that young man.

No, I'm not.

I want to know hey, do you have a durability of spirit that can support my daughter?

Do you walk with God?

And that's not the same as going to church.

There's a lot of people, some of the meanest people in the free world go to church every Sunday.

They don't walk with God, they're just mean.

They're just cantankerous.

It's like, man, whoa.

Noah walked with God.

Why?

Because God tells his story through people instead of looking around at your school, your workplace, and asking, hey man, why is this place so messed up and blah, blah, blah?

Why don't you ask this question?

God, what part of your story are you trying to tell these people through me?

Because see, here's the thing we've got to understand.

God, it's not like in the Bible, God told his story through people.

He continues to tell his story through every one of you in this room.

The issue is not is God telling his story.

The issue is how much of God's story can he tell through you and your life, back that up.

He's still telling his story.

He continues to tell his story.

He continues to just tell his story through people that are just willing to say, you know what, God, I want your favor on my life.

I want my life to mean more than just me and mine.

Here's the fourth thing we see in the text.

And now, by the way, get ready to write in your notes if you're taking notes.

Our pastor is a loon.

Here's what I think the Bible's telling us.

Human morality affects the natural world.

Human morality affects the natural world.

Look at verse 11.

After he says that, hey, but Noah found favor, and he talks about he was righteous, blameless, walked with God.

Look at verse 11.

Now, now listen for how many times he uses the word earth and why he's going to punish the earth, why he's going to destroy the earth.

God says, I'm going to destroy the earth because the people sin.

And I'm going to use the earth to do it.

Look at verse 11.

Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence.

And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt.

Why?

For all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.

And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them.

Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

Hello?

It's not always climate change.

God says, I will destroy them with the earth.

And then he goes on to say in verse 14, make for yourself an ark of gopher wood, and we'll get to that part in just a minute.

But I just want to say this human morality affects the natural world.

It's why in Romans 8 in the New Testament, the Bible says that creation is groaning as a woman in the pangs of childbirth, longing to be redeemed.

Because the earth, creation, dirt, trees, skies, all that stuff is not the way God intended it to be.

Why is it groaning?

Because our immorality is has consequence in the natural world.

That sounds crazy.

You ready for something else, even more crazy?

Ask yourself this question.

What if we took all the money we spent on climate change and spend it on changing the morality of our world?

Last week somebody was, I was eating with somebody, and he's like, Oh, did you see our president Biden fell asleep in a climate change meeting in Scotland or somewhere?

And I was like, if I had to go to a climate change meeting, I'd fall asleep.

Now, by the way, stay with me.

I I'm not saying I don't believe we should take care of the earth.

I think we should.

But what I'm saying is way back in Genesis, God makes it very clear, human morality affects the natural world.

And so it's easy to care about the climate and be immoral people.

Very popular.

What if we just said, hey, you know what?

We're gonna stop trying to, we're not even gonna talk about climate change.

We want to change the moral climate in our country.

What does that mean?

That means that if you want to have sex, you get married to one woman and you stay with her.

Now, if you're here and you're like, I've been divorced, I'm not mad at you.

Stay with the person you're with.

But you get married, you don't have kids out of wedlock, you father your children, you don't just provide for them.

You you show up in their lives, you treat your wife, you love your wife the way God, the way Christ loves his bride, the church.

You're an honorable person.

This is morality.

No more professional athletes that have six children from four different women, no more all-star quarterback has 22 charges of sexual abuse against him.

See how crazy the world is?

Now, by the way, look at me.

I'm not mad at any of those people.

I don't think man, they're bad people.

I'm just saying human morality affects the natural world, and this is established right here.

When God says, I regret it, I've made man on the earth, it's grieved him in his heart, and God says, I'm gonna blot these people out.

The earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence.

This is why God floods the earth.

And everyone squawks about climate change, and no one talks about.

Can we just reclaim a biblical view of morality?

You have one woman.

How about this?

One God, one woman, one career.

Who am I gonna worship?

Who am I gonna love?

What am I gonna do?

That's the way God or God set it up.

A lot of life gets answered by that.

Now, there's a couple of things I want to just point to that that are just patterns.

Uh, they're not in the outline, just bonus round material here.

Uh the first one's in verse 14.

Uh, and look at verse 14.

He says, make yourself an ark of gopher wood, make rooms in the ark and cover it inside and out with pitch.

This is how you're to make it.

The length of the ark, 300 cubits, a cubit is 18 inches, 300 cubits, um, uh, its breadth is 50 cubits, its height is 30 cubits, and and and and this is why we get it wrong.

We don't see what God's doing on the ark.

We think, well, is that really true?

Or is that allegorical and blah, blah, blah.

We make things allegorical in the Bible so we can fill them with our preference.

And I would just say this to you: it's the first two words in verse 14.

Make yourself, or the four words, an ark.

Noah's got to be thinking, hey, it's me, my wife, my sons, and they're it's eight people.

I don't need an ark, I just need a lifeboat.

Let's get in a lifeboat, let's get out of here and be done.

But here's the pattern that God establishes God sees people through the lens of his plan for their life.

Now we flip it around and we see God through the lens of our plan for our life.

But the reason God says to Noah, make your make yourself an ark.

And it's 300 cubits and 50 cubits.

Is it Noah's?

If God just wants to save Noah and seven other people, he can say, hey, get in a lifeboat.

We're out of here.

I'm wiping this thing out and starting over.

But God is going to redeem everything he creates.

And so he causes the animals to come get on the ark, they shut it up.

There's 120 years grace period, then the flood comes and God washes the earth clean.

So I just want you to see, here's the pattern that God sees people through the lens of his plans for their life.

Here's the second pattern is after condemnation comes covenant blessing.

You get down verses 11, down to about verse 17, and then he drops this on us in verse 18.

But I will establish my covenant with you.

I will establish my covenant.

There's condemnation, I'm gonna wipe the earth out.

But, and then there's covenant blessing.

I still have a plan, which brings me to the last thing that the text says today is that God created a world he will never give up on.

God created a world he will never give up on.

This verses 18 to 22.

I'll establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you, and of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you.

I get asked all the time, are you really believing?

Noah in the ark.

Absolutely, I do.

Verse 20 of the birds according to their kinds, of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing on the ground according to its kind, two of every sort shall come keep them alive.

Also take with you some sort of food that is eaten, every sort of food that is eaten and store it up, it shall serve as food for you and for them.

And Noah did this, and he did all that God commanded him.

He did this, and he did all that God commanded him.

Because Noah began to pick up on this holy rhythm of, hey, God's looking at me through the lens of his plans for my life.

So every once in a while, God's gonna tell me to do some things I don't quite understand.

Make yourself an ark.

There's one or two worldviews in this room.

There's lifeboat mentality and then there's ark mentality.

And my my concern is that lifeboat theology is prevalent in the American church.

Here's what it sounds like: it views the world as if it were the Titanic.

And this beautiful world that God has created has hit this iceberg of sin and it's going down.

And all we can do is abandon ship.

There's not much left for us to do.

And so let's get as many people as we can in the lifeboat because God's plan of redemption is concerned with only the survival of his people.

And so it's doomed, and you try to do something in this world for good.

And here's how you know you're talking to a lifeboat person.

Their first thought is, well, you're not making any good.

Those people are always going to be that way.

And so doing good in this world to lifeboat people is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

It's going down.

Why are you doing that?

And then there's Ark people who believe that God is deeply concerned with the crown of his fallen creation.

He's initiated a glorious plan of redemption through his son Jesus Christ because he has not abandoned the world.

Rather than annihilating everything and starting completely over, God extends gracious favor to a man named Noah who found favor in God's sight.

And he makes a covenant with Noah and He commissions him to build the ark.

And then Noah and his family and this host of living creatures are rescued and preserved in the ark from the destruction of the flood.

Now you got to ask yourself, what is God doing on the ark?

Here's the problem with the way most of us think about this.

We think that God is saving Noah and a bunch of animals, which he did.

But what God is ultimately doing is he is saving you.

Because on the ark, he preserves a line through which the Messiah will come.

The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were attractive and they took them as their wives, any they chose, because they looked through a little small man-sized lens.

And God says, I gotta redeem this.

I got to keep a line of descendants alive through whom the Messiah, the Redeemer, can come.

So on the ark, God is not saving animals.

And so all your supposed intellectual, well, with a dinosaurs on the ark, and what about species that have evolved since the ark?

Blah, blah, blah.

You don't get it.

God is not saving animals, He's saving humanity.

And people who look through the wrong lens tend to ask the wrong questions.

Or, as we saw earlier, God is always looking through a bigger lens.

So if you're in the lifeboat, you see people, and you almost have disgust for them.

Like, don't they know any better?

But if you're in the ark, you see people like I saw a homeless guy a while back and just walked up, started talking to me.

I was like, hmm, man, you smell like you've been outside for a long time.

And we're just talking, and I said, Hey man, can I do anything?

What can I do to bless you?

And he goes, Excuse me.

I said, What can I do to bless you?

He goes, just talk to me.

No one talks to me.

They really have me money.

I just want to have a conversation.

Oh, absolutely.

I talked to you.

We're talking along there, got done, and he said, Hey, can I can I get 10 bucks?

Nope.

Why not?

I thought we were friends.

We are friends, Kevin.

But I think you're kind of a drug fiend.

I think you're a con man.

I think you're used to talking to people and then putting your hand out.

God did not create you to live palm up but head down.

You could go to start hope and you could do all that, but you don't want to get drug tested.

Am I preaching to you?

Well, you know, man, I mean, what's wrong with enjoying a little bit, you know?

And I said, hey, what you enjoy is your business.

But your you your life on the streets, not My responsibility.

I just wanted to just talk with you, engage you.

I appreciate it.

I'm not in the lifeboat, kind of going, hey God, my kids have all prayed the prayer.

Come on back now.

Come on, God, we need a Republican president.

America's going to hell.

And then Kevin stabbed me in the heart.

He said, Well, bro, can you give me a hug?

Now, not because Kevin's homeless.

I just don't like hugging.

I hug my wife.

I hug a few people in this church.

Don't come up to me and go give me a hug.

Yeah, I'm all hugged up.

And I was just like, and then he stepped to me, and I just reached out and just embraced him, and then he just squeezed and he pressed his coat and his sweater.

I'm like, dude, it's summer.

And he smelled like a squirrel, and he just squeezed at me.

Thank you so much, Neil.

I'm like, I'm thinking in my mind, is my power washer gonna crank when I get home?

And he just said, Oh, thank you for just talking to me.

We got my truck and I'm driving off.

That little boy said, This is what it smells like on the arc.

In the lifeboat.

Everyone's totally white and antiseptically clean.

In the ark?

You have one of those mentalities.

Lifeboat or ark?

Let's pray together.

If you're a guest, we like to teach the Bible and give you some space to think about it until some questions come up on the screen.

You can take a picture with your camera or whatever, but let me voice a prayer and let's just think for a moment.

God, thank you for the Bible.

Thank you that it's not just a bunch of stories, a bunch of little things we tell our kids until they get old enough to get a car and leave us alone.

It is reality.

And you're always doing more than we can see on the surface.

You're not just saving animals.

Jack Hannah can do that.

You're saving humanity.

You're preserving a line of descendants through which the Redeemer is going to come.

That's why in Luke 3 we read the genealogy of Jesus, and there's Noah, and there's Seth.

And so, Holy Spirit, brood over us while we think about what you said today.

God, we're thankful today that you're not like the cop that pulls us over and shines a light in our eyes just to throw us off.

But you're a merciful God and comes and just clicks on the little tinkerbell nightlight and says, You don't have to be afraid.

I'm a God of illumination and revelation.

So, God, prayer today when we began was that you would illuminate and reveal.

And anytime your word is preached faithfully, that happens.

And so, Lord, now the matter is what do we do with it?

Forgive us for being so short-sighted, making truth into a fable or an allegory, and missing what you're doing to redeem humanity.

Thank you that you didn't just save animals, you saved me on the ark by preserving the godly line that Jesus is going to come through.

Thank you that the Bible is comfort and it's causality all at the same time.

That we're grateful.

So we say thank you in Jesus' name.

And all of God's people said, Amen.

Amen.

If you're our guest today, let me say thanks for being here.

You're always welcome.

If you have any questions about anything you saw or heard today, some of our pastors will be available down front.

We would love to help you answer any questions.

Or if you're going through something, you're like, hey, I seem to know someone's praying for me.

We would love to pray for you.

Uh, if you're a guest, hopefully you've had a chance to pull the guest card in the seatback pocket in your row.

If you haven't, would you take that chance now?

Fill it out on your way out and just drop one of those wooden boxes by the doors.

That's also where we'll receive our offering.

So if today's the day you worship God, and when it comes to giving, that's where you take care of that as well.

We have a few things by way of our video announcements, so give your attention to the screens, please.

Here's a look at what's happening at Grand Parkway Baptist Church.

The men's breakfast is this Tuesday at 6 a.m.

in the warehouse.

All men are invited.

Our core values are gospel, community, mission, and blessing.

One of the ways we live these values out is through our mission partnerships.

As a church, you are able to give bicycles to students at Mission West and Oyster Creek Elementary Schools.

Thank you for doing your part.

For more information about each of our mission partnerships, head to Grandparkway.org slash missions.

If you're new or would like someone to pray with you, find one of our pastors at the front of the stage at the conclusion of our service.

Maybe new to our church and not understand what men's breakfast is.

It's just a gathering.

It's free.

We have water water burger taquitos.

It takes place in our warehouse, which is the back of our campus back here.

So if you come down, go to the far driveway around the new sanctuary that's been built, and back in the back back there.

We start at 6 o'clock on Tuesday morning.

We're done promptly at 7 so you can get on to work.

It's free.

There'll be about 20 minutes of teaching and then some discussion around the tables.

You're free to come and just listen, or you can engage to the level you're comfortable engaging, okay?

All men are invited.

It's Tuesday morning at 6 o'clock, and we're done right at 7.

A lot of men linger and just kind of gossip.

I mean, share prayer requests.

Uh, but no, just hang out and just chop it up with other men.

You're more than welcome to come join us, okay?

This Tuesday, 6 o'clock, out in the warehouse.

We'd like to conclude our service with a spoken blessing, so stand to your feet.

Hold your hands out.

Your God is a storytelling God.

And there's nothing you've ever done or could do that is going to change his desire to tell his story through you.

So get yourself tuned up because people around you need to hear the story.

Depart now and tell the old, old story of unseen things above.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you.