Our God Of Promise And Practice

This podcast is a ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people know, enjoy, and glorify God.

For more information about Grand Parkway, visit Grandparkway.org.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Father, thank you that one of the reasons that you're God is that you bless and sanctify things that overwhelm us, our troubles and our deepest distress, because you don't waste anything.

You're sovereign and you're good, and you're always working out your redemptive purposes in our lives, in our culture, in our city, and in our world.

So bless and sanctify what feels overwhelming right now.

Let people know that don't even go to our church, but people that have water in their house right now out in Cady, they're men and women headed to their house in the next couple of hours.

They're going to show up and be Jesus with hands and feet and rubber boots and tools.

And we're going to do something about this.

We're going to sanctify this in Jesus' name.

We're not just here as a testament to the indomitable human spirit.

We're here as a testimony to the reality of the gospel and Christians that love the truth and the right thing more than we love our comfort.

And so, Lord, we bless you.

We're honored and humbled that we get to do what you've called us to do and be a part of something bigger than ourselves.

Now, Lord, we want to feast on the sufficiency of Jesus and what he's done.

So, Holy Spirit, brood over us in this time and love on and lead in and through your people.

We ask in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Let me ask you to do me a favor before you sit down.

If there's room in the middle of your row, would you scoot in?

We got folks that are arriving.

And so, Lee Baron, you got to get out of your seat with your nameplate on it and scoot over a little bit.

There we go.

So once you've scooted in, just go ahead and have a seat.

And if you've got a Bible, I invite you to take it and open it up to Genesis chapter 9.

Genesis 9 · chapter mention

That way it makes it easier for people that slide in late to kind of sit down.

Genesis chapter 9.

Genesis 9 · chapter mention

I want to talk to you this morning briefly about our God of promise and practice.

Our God of promise and practice.

And you say, what do you mean by that?

One of the things this past week has done is it's given us a context for the reality of what the Bible teaches about in relation to the flood.

I know people that are Christians.

I know people that are not Christians.

I don't believe parts of the Bible.

Like I think it's allegorical.

I think that's just like a figure of speech or whatever.

I think it rained here for four or five days and it flooded like it did.

Can you imagine if it rained all over the world for 40 days and 40 nights?

And not only rain was coming down from above, but the earth opened up and water came out of the ground during the flood.

And so I had a new context and appreciation for it.

It's Saturday afternoon.

I'm standing on the back deck of our warehouse, our student ministry building.

It's got three steps on it.

I'm standing on the third step.

The water's covering the second step, and I look down, there's about an 18-inch bass just floating above the first step.

And I thought, this is not a good sign right here.

And this little thought went through my mind, hey, when people question the flood, you ain't got to question this.

This is, it gave me a new appreciation and a new context for that.

But I want to give you a context for some other realities this morning as we prepare to receive communion.

This is Genesis chapter 9, verse 1.

Genesis 9:1

And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea.

Into your hand they are delivered.

Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you.

And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything, but you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.

For your and for your life blood I will require a reckoning.

From every beast I will require it, and from man, from this for from his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.

Whoever sheds the blood of a man, by man's sh by man shall his blood be shed.

For God made man in his own image.

And you be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth, and multiply in it.

And then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you.

As many as came out of the ark, it is for every beast of the earth.

I establish my covenant with you, 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.

And God said, 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.

I have set my bow in the cloud, and yet shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

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.

All the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.

And when the bow is in the cloud, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.

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.

Now, when I said, like I said earlier, one of the things this past week has done is given me a context for the reality of what the Bible describes when it talks about the flood.

But I also hope it's given you a context for some other realities as well.

Let me point to three of them from this passage and let's let this ready our heart to receive communion this morning.

The first reality is this is that God always has a plan after a disaster.

God always has a plan after disaster.

One of the things that we've noticed when we show up in these people's houses and they have water three, four feet in their house, and it finally drains out, and things are floating around or just laying on on the ground covered in silty mud.

You walk in, and a lot of people, the homeowners, are just lost.

They don't know what to do.

They're just kind of like, where do we start?

What do we do?

But here's the reality: God has a plan even after after disaster.

You say, What do you mean?

Right here in Genesis chapter 9.

Genesis 9 · chapter mention

Notice the first thing that God says to Noah after the flood.

I mean, think about it.

40 days and 40 nights of what at the hardest rain that you experience in Hurricane Harvey.

Imagine that.

That moment times 40, day and night, and you survive, you and seven other people, and you get off the ark.

It's a it's the tendency is to be a little bit overwhelmed and not know what to do.

But God knows what to do.

God looks at Noah and says, Hey, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

You like, I don't get it.

What is he saying?

God's kind of saying, by the way, it's the same thing he said to Adam and Eve in the garden.

Sound familiar?

He says, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

That's why after a natural tragedy like this, ten months from now, they'll do a story on the news about how many babies were born out of Hurricane Harvey.

Happens all the time.

You force people to be around each other.

You can only play so much monopoly.

Yes.

It just happens.

Now, why do I say that?

When God has a plan after disaster, it's easy to go, hey, be fruitful, multiply.

But I want to focus on the third part where he says fill the earth.

When we show up like we have for the past four days, we've shown up in houses of our members, people that aren't members, people that live next door to our church members.

We show up with tools and wheelbarrows and rubber boots.

And by the way, some of you men got way too many tools, okay?

I mean, one of our men, I didn't, I'm sure this existed for a long time.

I didn't know it.

They have a battery-powered skill saw.

You don't need to plug it in.

And I'm just like, that is awesome.

One of our men has a John, uh, like a baby John Deere tractor with a front end loader on it.

I told my wife, I want that for Christmas.

She's like, What are you gonna do with it?

Just drive it around the neighborhood.

I'm gonna put my mother-in-law in the bucket and kind of go, if you get mouth, I'm gonna dump you, woman.

Yes.

He pulls up in the parking lot yesterday morning.

Or I think it was yesterday, I've forgotten now.

By the way, on Wednesday, I looked at my wife and said, Is it Monday?

And she said, Go lay down, take a nap.

But that morning we met up here, my friend pulled up this trailer in a John Deere tractor.

I was like, What in the world?

What are we doing?

So we left it here because we're just gonna go cut out sheetrock and remove carpet.

Then later that day we got a call, went to a house, and they have a driveway around the back where we're dumping out all the stuff.

The driveway was about up to our knees covered in water.

My friend gets on his John Deere tractor, drives around there, uh uh, put, tilts that bucket forward and says, load all the debris in here.

We're able to haul out to the curve.

And I was like, Thank the Lord for John Deere.

Oh man.

See, God has a plan.

God has a plan.

See, when he says, be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth.

When we show up and we meet needs in Jesus' name, look at me, beloved.

We are filling the earth with the sound and the savor of the gospel.

It happened over and over.

People, neighbors will come down and go, Who are these people?

Who are these people?

We were in the home of an African-American couple uh in our church, and their neighbor came over and said, Who are all these white people?

And I said, You don't know what to do now.

The honkies are here, right?

And she's like, You just said that.

Did your pastor know you said that?

No, but I'll tell him, okay.

This is not about race, it's not even about religion.

This is about relationship.

We have a relationship with God, and these are our brothers and sisters, so we're gonna be here and cut all the sheetrock out.

I'm gonna visit your church.

I said, You'd be welcome.

Who's the pastor?

He's running around here somewhere.

I don't know, I don't know where he is right now.

He's like, What?

What are we doing?

We're filling the earth, we're giving people the fragrant aroma of Christ to those who are perishing.

So the first reality we get a context for after a week like this is that God always has a plan after a disaster.

Secondly, think about the way you treat each other.

Think about the way you treat each other.

You say, What do you mean?

Look at verse 6.

He says, Whoever sheds the blood of a man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.

This is the uh this is the foundation for capital punishment.

This is why in natural law, what they what they base it on.

Now, this is not a sermon about the the the legality or the ethics of capital punishment.

I'm not getting into that.

But God says, hey, if you shed it, if you shed the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.

And so when I say think about the way you treat each other, you have to understand, you don't understand the flood until you see what God was responding to.

It's not like God just had a bad day and got ticked off and took it out on the world.

No, God all along began to say to people, from the very fall in Genesis chapter 3, you don't get six chapters in, and man is so off the rails and got this thing so in the ditch that God says, Man, I regret that I even created these people.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

The Bible says it like this in Genesis chapter six, verse five.

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

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

And 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 birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.

But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

See, that's a little flickering light of redemption in the midst of this, all this darkness.

The Bible says, Hear this again.

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

What do you mean?

Without a deterrent to the sinfulness of human nature, a culture tends to erode due to the ungodly tolerance of ungodly actions.

And over time, godless godlessness becomes the law.

Let me say that again.

Uh, without a deterrent to the sinfulness of human nature, the deterrent, God says, hey, because people were just killing each other.

It was just like ransacking, it was just chaos, and God's like, this is not the way I created a civil society to be.

Without a deterrent to the sinfulness of human nature, okay?

Well what happens is that a culture begins to decay because of this ungodly tolerance of ungodly actions.

And eventually what happens is that godlessness becomes the law.

People that are criminals and thugs, they have more rights than honest law-abiding citizens.

Now, I don't know if you saw this or not, but remember this come election time.

Our sheriff, Troy Nails, was being interviewed, and he said, What do you think about looters?

And he said, Well, let me tell you something.

If you want to loot in Fort Bend County, we believe in the Second Amendment and we have a concealed handgun license, we'll send you home in a body bag.

I looked at my wife, yes, that happened.

I looked at my wife and I said, That's why I vote.

That's why I get the little sticker on my shirt.

I voted.

Now, by the way, I'm not perpetuating violence.

Don't send me emails and say, oh, Pastor, you shouldn't endorse violence.

I'm not endorsing violence.

I'm endorsing justice.

There's a difference in the two.

See, we live in a culture that godlessness has almost become law.

And you gotta you gotta think, beloved.

And so one thing we have a new context for is think about the way you treat each other.

That's why, I mean, twice I've gotten in the, you know, I go to the red light and I forgot to get in the turn lane.

And I rolled down my window and just said, Can I get in there?

Now, if I had done that two weeks ago, people would have been like, Too bad, man, get out of the way.

But there's this kind of civility is set in on our city.

People are gracious.

My wife went to Kroger and she said, I said, What took so long?

She goes, I was just chatting people up.

I'm like, What?

Yeah, we were just kind of commiserate.

Oh, girl, get you some bread.

You gotta have some bread.

I'm like, who is that?

Was that somebody from our church?

No, it's a total stranger.

My wife came back after an hour and a half at the grocery store and told me about ten conversations with ten total strangers.

Why?

Because in a sense of crisis, everybody, you don't have to think about it.

You rethink the way you treat each other.

That's a reality that comes out of something like this.

That's a reality that comes out of something like Genesis 9, where God says, Hey, you we we can't stand for lawlessness to become the norm or the standard.

Thirdly and finally, I want to just give you a context for this reality that God keeps his promise.

God keeps his promise.

It's the first time that God, it's the first covenant God establishes with anybody in the Bible.

He established five covenants, one with Noah, one with Abraham, one with Moses, one with David, and then with Christ.

And a covenant is basically it's more than a handshake deal.

It's more than I'm gonna keep my word.

They would take animals and they would sacrifice the animals.

They would cut them in half and they'd place the two halves on each side.

And the two people making the covenant would walk in between the halves.

If you've ever gotten married, especially if you got married in a church, I know getting married in a church is not sexy anymore.

Because you can't get good pictures and put on Instagram.

You gotta go to the venue somewhere.

I get it.

I'm not making fun of you being at a venue.

I've done weddings at venues, but the reason people got married in a church with a center aisle is because what they were acknowledging and pointing to is the fact that, hey, we got these two families here.

You got your family, because if you go to a traditional wedding, when you come to the door back there, they say bride or groom.

And they walk in, they set you down.

Instead of separating this animals in a wedding, you're bringing two separate entities together.

But it's symbolic of a covenant.

You walk down the middle aisle.

When people made a covenant, when they separated the animals and they walked in between them, what they were saying was, may what happen to these animals happen to me if I break this covenant I'm about to make.

One of the things we have to do is reinstill a little sobriety to the way we think about marriage.

Because it is sobering, beloved.

It's hard.

I looked at my wife last night and I said, just not talk for two hours.

Just I just want to watch Alabama play football.

That's all.

I've been doing hurricane relief all week.

I can't help anybody when it's dark.

Can I just watch this?

So her and my 14-year-old sit at the table and try to play clue together by reading the directions out loud to each other.

I about lost my Jesus last night at about 9 o'clock.

I was just like, I gotta go somewhere.

Because I told them I didn't want to play, but they just kept informing me about the game.

I'm like, hmm.

What I mean when I say God keeps his promises.

God makes these five covenants with five different people.

And by the way, every one of these other four covenants points to this covenant that Christ makes.

You say, What do you mean?

It's what we refer to as communion or the Lord's Supper.

In the Old Testament, it was called Passover.

Back in Exodus 14, God told them, You take a lamb and you sacrifice this lamb and you apply the blood of the lamb to the doorpost of your life, uh uh of your house.

And when I send the death angel to kill the firstborn of man and beast in all of Egypt, I if I see the blood, I'll pass over your house.

And so for years they've been observing Passover.

New Testament comes.

Jesus walks on the scene, John the Baptist looks up and says, Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.

See, the Bible's not a bunch of one-off stories that are disconnected.

It's one story that finds its ultimate fulfillment in the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

And so this covenant that we're here to celebrate today, that God keeps his promise, this covenant of communion or Lord's Supper, this this is uh this covenant did what the old covenants couldn't do.

This is the covenant which God sacrifices himself.

And by doing that, he makes possible the forgiveness of sin and the cleansing of the conscience.

And this becomes the fulfillment of all these other things.

Let me just tell you this.

How many in this room have been married more than 20 years?

Okay, see your hand?

You you know this.

Put your hand down.

There comes a point, see, when you when you become a Christian, listen carefully I do not want you to misunderstand this.

When you become a Christian, your sin is not just covered or forgiven, your sin is taken away.

And so God no longer relates to you on the basis of your sin.

God relates to you on the basis of relationship.

And what he wants you to do is just get to the point where you can learn to enjoy him as much as he enjoys you.

Sometimes when I send out emails and I joke about my wife or I joke about my wife from the platform, some of you women come up and you're like, man, I'll tell you what, if I was married to you and blah, blah, blah, and I think if I was married to you, I'd blah, blah, blah too, but I digress.

Anyway.

Oh, y'all can say it, but I can't.

But here's the thing.

I've been married almost 25 years.

We we we know how to relate to each other in such a way.

When I said to my wife, I just want to watch football, I don't want to talk.

She's thought in her mind, she thought, oh, two hours of not having to deal with you.

Thank the Lord.

Watch another game when that one's over.

Here's the deal.

We know how to relate to each other.

We don't relate to each other on the basis of sin.

I don't keep record of wrongdoing because I love her.

The Bible, marriage is a great picture.

It's a covenant that's a picture of the way God relates to his bride, the church.

And so when we say these five covenants, and the ultimate one is in Jesus because it's the fulfillment that all the other covenants in the Bible point to and anticipate.

Which is why in Matthew 26, verse 26, Jesus says this, as they were eating Passover.

Matthew 26:26

Jesus took bread and after blessing, and he broke it, and he gave it to his disciples and said, Take, eat, this is my body.

And he took a cup, and when he'd given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

I tell you, I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until the day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.

Jesus takes what has been a ritual for thousands of years and makes it a reality.

And the disciples, they know what's going on.

They don't understand that, by the way, they're celebrating a covenant meal, and Jesus is fixing to go lay his life down for them.

But they understood Passover.

And Jesus gives them a context.

He feels full what's been this religious ritual for all this time that their grandparents told them about, their parents taught them about, and now they're teaching and raising their families in.

So when we come to the communion table today as believers, we come, and what by our coming, what we're saying is this is that I trust in the sacrifice of Jesus for the payment for my sins.

I don't trust in I'm gonna do more good deeds than bad deeds.

I don't trust in I'm gonna go out and do hurricane relief and make myself feel better about my life.

No, no, no, no, no.

That can't get you to heaven.

You know that, right?

Because if if good deeds could get you to heaven, then Christ died in vain.

And the Bible's very clear, Christ didn't die in vain.

He died with a purpose and a people in mind.

And so by observing communion, what we're saying is that I'm coming and I'm confessing that my faith is in Christ and in Christ alone.

I forsake everything and everybody else.

And what you're saying is that his death was enough for me.

Your sin has been taken away.

And no longer, that's why the Bible says that sin no longer has power over you.

It doesn't have the capacity, if you're a Christian, to make you do things you don't want to do.

You do that because of these old desires that we have, but that's a whole nother sermon.

But today let's just celebrate the efficacy, the sufficiency, and the power in what Christ has accomplished in our behalf and gives to us as a gift.

Now the Bible's very clear about how we approach this time.

The Bible says that we should examine ourselves, think about ourselves against the backdrop of our belonging to the body of Christ, the church.

So therefore, it matters how we live, it matters how we talk, it matters how we spend our money, it matters how how we exhibit morality in our culture.

All that matters.

Why?

Because we're Christians, not because we're better than anybody else, because we bear the responsibility of the gospel.

And so Paul says, hey, when you when you come to the table, you need to examine yourself.

So what we'll do now is that uh Clyde and Lindsay will come and they're just gonna kind of sing a song over us.

The words will be on the screen.

You can use this to kind of reflect and meditate and prepare your heart to receive communion today.

This is not a time for self-hatred.

This is not a time of, yeah, man, I haven't been in church in a long time.

Ah, and I bet God's pretty disappointed.

No.

God wants you to learn to enjoy Him the way He enjoys you.

Let me give you a little indication of what that's like.

One of the early creeds of the church said this the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

What if it's this simple, beloved?

David, look at me.

What if it's this simple?

Christ does what he does.

So you no longer live in fear of your sin, but you live in the pleasure of just enjoying God.

And that's your chief end.

That's the reason you're breathing right now is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

Because the reality is that the deeper question beneath that is how do you get into a relationship with God without a heart that wants to glorify God, that wants to enjoy Him forever.

That's what you were made for.

And that's what Christ's death makes possible.

Let's prepare our hearts to receive communion this morning by just meditating and reflecting.

Father, we are humbled by the reality that we who were born your enemies have been reconciled to you.

And we've been brought into a relationship that's characterized by peace.

And so because of that, we can be reconciled with people that feel like our enemies.

We can forgive and be forgiven by those that we've sinned against.

And so, Lord, now that we've been reminded of the peace that is ours in Christ, may we take that peace to our fellow man, to our husbands, to our wives, to our children, to our co-workers.

We take that peace in the name of God to a city that so needs it.

Thank you that you set all this in motion.

We are grateful people.

So we say thank you in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Let me make you aware of just three things briefly before we get you out of here.

Number one, we have rescheduled our New York mission trip interest meeting was postponed last week.

It is rescheduled for this Wednesday at 6:30 in the Fellowship Hall, which is the big room right behind me.

If you come in this side door over here, go down the hall, hang a left.

If you're curious or interested, we have partnered with a church in Brooklyn, Park Slope, actually, is the neighborhood.

And we're going to be taking a trip this fall to go up there and help them work at their church and do some stuff there to get traction there in their city.

If you're on any level interested in that, the interest meeting is 6.30 this Wednesday night in the fellowship hall.

We'll be sending out an email, but I want to tell you why I got you all gathered here.

Secondly, uh there's kids not a kid's day out, excuse me, this Tuesday from 9.30 to 1.30 because your kids were out of school last week.

They're out of school again this week, and the kids are like, yay! And the parents are like, oh boy.

Uh so uh Janet and Krista are your preschool and children people put together a kids' day out.

It's free.

It's uh uh Tuesday from 9.30 to 1.30.

But you need to register so we can plan accordingly, okay?

So if you just go on the website or find the email that Janet sent out, we'll send out another one today as a reminder.

Uh, but we just do that to as an opportunity to give you a break, Mom, if you want to run to the grocery store, just catch your breath.

It's a great opportunity.

We'd love to take care of your kids and just bless them in you in Jesus' name.

Finally, uh we have more projects that have come in last night.

The houses have water in them.

So we have teams that are going out this afternoon.

And there's information starting at at 1230 in Katy.

Uh, we have a house that is there.

But if you email Don at Grand Parkway, Don is coordinating today's outreach.

We have two houses uh that we're removing sheetrock from, and one of them we're taking cabinets out of because they've got some mold damage in there.

We have masks and gloves and all that stuff we'll provide, so don't worry about that.

If you'd like to help, just email Don, he'll coordinate you, get you on a team, and get you sent out the door, okay?

Uh stand to your feet and let me speak a blessing over you.

If you're our guest, when you came in, you were given a worship folder.

It has for some information on the far right side.

If you got that filled out, tear it off and drop it in these wooden boxes by the door, which where we receive our offering.

So if today's a day you you you worship through obedience or generosity, that's where you do that as well.

Hold your hands out.

May the Lord bless you and keep you and cause his face to shine upon you.

May the Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace.

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

Amen.

Bless you.

You're dismissed.