"The Savior" Genesis 8 Sunday Morning Worship Service

You remember, I'm sure, the Where's Waldo books as a child, where Waldo is hidden on different pages of the this uh incredible artwork, and your job is to find him.

Uh this was uh a good illustration, first hour, because somebody was wearing a Waldo sweater in the front row.

Uh such is the task in the Old Testament to search out Jesus wherever he may be.

And in some cases, we have the answer key.

The New Testament refers to Jesus in the Old Testament in many places, and one of those examples would be here in Genesis chapter 8, where our salvation is equated to Christ, as uh Noah was rescued through the flood and through the ark.

Genesis 8 · chapter mention

So baptism now saves us, our life hidden in Christ.

And so we find a picture of our Savior here in Genesis chapter 8.

Genesis 8 · chapter mention

Now, Genesis chapter 8 is a description of the end of the global flood.

Genesis 8 · chapter mention

Certainly there has never been any event in world history as catastrophic and cataclysmic as this is.

The entire wor world, all of the human inhabitants, all the animal inhabitants save those that were on the ark were destroyed.

This is uh the wages of sin is death.

This is a very vivid picture of this as God unleashed his judgment upon the earth.

He in Genesis 6 uh comes to Noah and declares to Noah that every thought of man's heart is only evil continually.

In other words, people are depraved, their hearts are depraved, people love sin, they run after sin.

Before the flood, there was no government in the world, there was no check on immorality in the world save conscience, and so the world was given over to bloodshed and really anarchy.

And so God says he's going to end the reign of terror and evil, the reign of murder and vice on the earth by destroying the earth, but he will rescue those who put their faith in him.

God says, I won't contend with mankind for forever.

His days will be 120 years, and that doesn't mean the oldest person will be 120 years old, but it means from the moment God declares that to Noah, it will be 120 years from that declaration until the flood, until God wraps up that era of human history by destroying the earth.

God causes the rain to fall.

Everybody dies.

As I mentioned, it's the most cataclysmic event in world history.

It doesn't receive as much coverage in the Old Testament as something like the Red Sea Crossing, where the Egyptian army drowns.

That's referred to over and over and over again.

Uh, but certainly this was grander on a global scale.

And yet both, this and the Red Sea Crossing, have uh a similar pattern to them, that God judges those who are opposed to him, God judges his enemies through water, through trials, and they do not emerge on the other side.

They are drowned by God's wrath because of their own sin.

And yet those who have their faith in the Lord are saved through the waters of judgment.

They are saved to use the New Testament language through baptism, where the wages of sin is atoned for through the death of Christ, and we going under the water, die to our sin and resurrect in newness of life.

That's the language of 2 Peter, uh chapter 2, as well as 1 Peter chapter 3, that refers to this chapter as an echo of Christ.

1 Peter 3 · chapter mention

And so as we're studying Advent pictures of Jesus in the Old Testament, of course, my heart settles on Genesis chapter 8, where we see God delivering Noah because of his righteousness through the flood.

Genesis 8 · chapter mention

I want to give you an outline this morning to guide our time in God's Word, how the Ark prepares us for the Savior's resurrection, how the Ark prepares us for the Savior's resurrection.

And there's several ways in Genesis 8.

We see this.

I wrote 12 of them down this week, but my Christmas gift to you is only giving you three of them.

The angels will know the other nine, but not anybody else.

Chapter 8, verse 1.

God remembered Noah.

And all the beasts, all the livestock that were with him in the ark.

God made a wind blow over the earth and the waters subsided.

The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed.

The rain from heavens was restrained.

God remembered Noah, it says in verse 1, not because of anything Noah had done.

This is just a way of describing that this whole thing is under God's purview.

Remember, the world had been very different before the flood than it will be after the flood, very different than the world we know of.

We tend to minimize what life was like before the flood.

We refer to those times as prehistoric.

We imagine the world population small, them being technologically backwards.

I think it's just as likely that the opposite of all that is true.

Who knows how big the global population is?

I don't know why we would assume it's less than ours is now.

Who knows how advanced technologically they were?

I don't know why we would assume they are less than we are now.

It was a very different world, but it was a world where evil reigned.

One thing that was different about the world then is that it hadn't rained before.

And so as Noah builds the ark, he is in a sense stepping out in faith here.

When God causes the rain to fall, he causes it in two ways.

First, he causes the continents of the earth to shift and to open up, and then the fountain of the deep water that was stored under the earth's surface.

You know, until this point, the plants have been watered from below the ground, and God causes the continents to split and water to come up from the earth.

This lets you know, by the way, that God had designed the world for this flood from the beginning.

This was God a part of God's plan.

He had prepared the earth for this kind of judgment.

And so when it happens, the fountains, verse two, of the deep were opens, the windows of heaven were closed.

In other words, when God opens the fountains of the deep, the water comes up from the ground, flooding the earth from below.

That starts the hydrological cycle where water evaporates into the air, starts the rain cycle where it falls.

And so people in Noah's lifetime are getting the one-two punch.

They're getting water from below, water from above.

That lasts for a period of time.

But in verse 2, it closes.

The fountains of the deep were closed back up.

The rain from heaven was restrained.

I'm preaching on the flood this morning, and God helped me out.

I'm not going to preach on the fire of judgment next week, though.

Verse 3, the waters receded from the earth continually.

Continually is a fine translation, or gradually would be another way you could render that.

The waters began to abate.

At the end of 150 days, the waters had abated.

In other words, the waters did recede back to some livable standard.

In verse 4, the seventh month, on the 17th day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Arat.

Some commentators guessed that it could have been up to 17,000 feet there.

The waters continued to abate until the tenth month.

In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen.

And so there's a period of time before between when the ark comes to rest and when you can see other mountains around.

At the end of 40 days, Noah opened up the window of the ark that he had made, and he sent out a raven.

Raven's a good animal to send out first.

You remember Noah doesn't have two of every species of animal on the ark.

I'm sure you know this because I mean they wouldn't fit, firstly, and they didn't have that kind of terminology.

And two of every kind of animal, every type of animal is on the ark.

There's more than enough room for that.

There are different types of birds on the ark.

That doesn't mean he has two of every category of raven, but he has two ravens, and of course, species will come out of the repopulation of the earth as we know of them now.

But he sends one of the ravens out, and a raven is a good bird to send out first because ravens are scavengers.

Those guys will eat anything.

The earth is going to be covered with carcasses and destruction.

And so the ravens will find something.

I saw ravens this morning eating a Big Mac in the parking lot at McDonald's.

And if you lead a Big Mac, you will eat anything.

So the raven goes.

No evidence of the raven coming back.

Verse 9.

The dove is sent out.

I'm sorry, in verse uh eight, he sends forth the dove, probably seven days later.

This is becoming a cycle here every seven days.

It seems like he's marking the time period uh of worship.

He's marking the calendar as the week that God had made it.

Um as Noah sets aside a day for worship.

He sends the dove out to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground.

But the dove found no place to set her foot.

A dove is different than a raven.

Ravens, uh, of course, scavenge doves are ground dwelling birds.

I mean, their nests are in the trees, of course.

But if you see a dove, it's probably not flying.

If you see a dove, it's probably on your roof or on your grass, eating seeds off the ground.

And no one knows us, of course, so he sends a dove out, and the dove doesn't have seeds to eat yet.

The dove doesn't have any food for herself, and so the dove comes back in verse 9.

She returned to him into the ark, for the waters are still on the face of the whole earth.

So he put out his hand and took her in and brought her into the ark with him.

He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark.

The dove came to him in the evening, and behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf.

So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth.

He waited another seven days and sent forth the dove.

She did not return to him anymore.

Clearly, the point of this is that God has brought rescue through judgment.

God has brought rescue through judgment.

And we know how the story ends.

We know, of course, we're alive, and so we know that Noah survived.

Noah and his family repopulated the earth.

So the suspense is kind of lost.

I mean, we're here, so we know that human life was preserved.

But for Noah, the suspense was still there.

A long period of time had gone from the end of the reign, and Noah having confidence that life was returning, but life was indeed returning.

The raven could eat death, but the dove needed to eat life, and the dove brings back the evidence, and Noah now has confidence that life is emerging on the earth.

This will be the pattern of the Bible, by the way, a repeated pattern that rescue comes through judgment.

Rescue doesn't come in spite of judgment, or rescue doesn't come around judgment, rescue doesn't come before judgment or as an alternative to judgment.

Time and time again in the Bible, God rescues people through judgment.

Through judgment.

As I mentioned, this is the main pattern of the Bible.

And the seeds for this were sown back in the Garden of Eden with the fall.

God allowed the devil into the garden to tempt Adam and Eve.

He allowed mankind to fall into sin.

He had already made the world with the waters to judge the earth because of their sin.

I mean, you think, why doesn't God rescue people instead of sending them through judgment?

Because then you wouldn't see the rescuing hand of God.

The rescue of God is most on display through judgment.

As I mentioned, this is a pattern time and time again.

God gave Jacob Rachel, but only after seven years with Leah.

God put Joseph in Pharaoh's court, but only after Pharaoh was in prison.

I mean, Joseph was in prison.

God puts Israel in Egypt only so that he can rescue them out of Egypt.

And if you were trying to condense the narrative of the Bible, you could get rid of a lot of these stories.

Abraham starts off Genesis in the promised land.

He walks around it, he sees the land he's gonna have.

And why does God keep sending him to Egypt?

Why does he keep shopping out his wife to Pharaoh or to the Abimelech?

Why all the rig and roll?

Why all the dividing?

Lot go this way and I go this way, and then he's just ending up in Egypt after all of it anyway, to come back in 400 years.

Could you just make the narrative shorter?

Just leave him there.

It'd be such a shorter book.

You could condense the Bible in a lot of ways.

You could eliminate the fall.

That would make it a very short book.

Adam and Eve were in the garden, there was no sin, everybody was happy, the end.

But the goal of the Bible is not to present a streamlined narrative.

The goal of the Bible is to show you that God redeems people through judgment.

Adam and Eve sin, God rescues them through judgment.

God rescues Noah through the flood.

God rescues Israel through their slavery in Egypt.

I mean, even on an individual scale, God has Moses lead Israel to freedom, but only after spending 40 years in the wilderness himself.

Moses starts in Pharaoh's household.

Why couldn't he just lead Israel to captiv uh to freedom from Pharaoh's household?

No, God sends him 40 years in the desert herding sheep before he can come back and lead the Israelites to rescue.

And even when he does that, Israel now has to spend 40 years in his own wilderness wanderings before they get into Israel.

And this pattern will happen to time and time again.

David is made the king.

He's called from the wilderness, of course, but he's made the king.

And once he becomes king, he's exiled.

He has to go back across the Jordan River, back over to the land of the Amalekites, and spend time there before he's welcomed back into Israel a second time.

Over and over and over again in the Bible, there is this pattern.

Israel is going to produce the Savior.

But before Israel produces a savior, Israel gets exiled.

The ten tribes of the north go off to Nineveh.

And the two tribes of the south, Benjamin and Judah, they're taken into captivity into Babylon.

They fall only to be regathered for the Savior to come.

Esther leads people to freedom, but only through the clutches of death, she rescues the Israelites from their own condemnation.

If God's going to rescue the Israelites, why doesn't He just skip that whole chapter of it?

Just have them prosper in their lands.

No, they're condemned to die so that Esther can rescue them.

This is the normal pattern that God uses in the Bible.

It's preparing you for when the Savior comes.

The Savior will not keep you out of judgment.

The Savior will rescue you through judgment.

And of course, Jesus does that in the same way the Ark rescued Noah.

Jesus rescues us from our sin by taking our sin on himself, suffering the wrath of God, the judgment of God, in our place, so that God's wrath is indeed poured out, so that we can be rescued through the judgment of God that he pours out on Christ.

Rescue comes through judgment, not before judgment, not as an alternative to judgment, but through judgment.

Our sin is given to Jesus personally, so that he suffers and dies in our place in a real way for our sin.

Often we want to skip past the judgment part and get to the rescue part.

Of course we do.

We don't like hard things.

We don't like how God is gonna turn our story for his glory.

We'd rather our story just be happy for our glory initially.

But rescue is only beautiful if you have the backdrop of judgment.

Our sunrise is only beautiful after the nighttime.

That's the pattern of deliverance in the Bible.

God rescues Noah through the waters of judgment, through the waters of death.

Everybody dies.

And Noah is rescued through it.

How is Noah rescued through it?

Noah is rescued through it because of his righteousness.

God knows how to spare his people from his wrath.

Noah is declared to be righteous.

Why is Noah righteous?

Is it because of his works?

Is it because of what he's done?

No, Noah is righteous because he put his faith in God.

God said judgment was coming.

Noah put his faith in God.

That is credited to him as righteousness.

And so God delivers Noah from the floods of judgment.

This is a pattern over and over again.

Lot puts his faith in God and is delivered from the judgment of Sodom.

Lot isn't evacuated from Sodom a month in advance or a year in advance.

I mean, Abraham could have kept Lot out of Sodom on multiple occasions, but allows him to go back there.

The angels come, they don't remove Lot immediately either.

They spend the night there through all of the chaos, all of the judgment.

You remember Abraham really arguing with God and saying, are you really going to destroy Sodom?

How can you destroy a city with a righteous person in it?

And Abraham, by the way, doesn't get the answer to his question.

Abraham doesn't know what happened to Lot.

There's no record he ever saw Lot again.

But the New Testament says that that story is in the Bible so that you would learn that God knows how to rescue the righteous when he judges the world.

I mean, our hearts cry out for judgment all the time.

We look at how depraved our own culture is, how barbaric and murderous our own culture is, how consumeristic our own culture is, how antagonistic towards God our own culture is, how sexually immoral our own culture is.

And we say, God, won't you judge our culture?

And here's the problem.

If God judges the culture, won't he also judge you?

Aren't those same sins in your own heart?

So how can you call for judgment of all of your neighbors, your house and your left and your right and across the street, but not your own house?

How can God judge the nations without judging your nation?

How can he judge your nation without judging you?

You're the goldfish in the in the tank, you know, and God topples over the tank in judgment, you fall out as well.

And the point of this story, of Genesis chapter 8, according to Peter anyway, is that you would learn that God knows how to rescue the righteous through his judgment on the wicked.

Genesis 8 · chapter mention

This is the way it will be when Jesus comes back.

People will be eating and drinking and will be merry, and God will pour out his judgment on them, but he will rescue you through that judgment.

God knows how to rescue people through judgment based upon their righteousness, which is putting their faith in him.

Noah went in the ark, he believed God's word, he went in the ark, that was credited to him as righteousness, and God knew how to rescue him through that.

Secondly, that there's life after death.

The second pattern of our Savior in here is that there's life after death.

You see that in verse 12, as I mentioned earlier, the dove doesn't come back anymore.

The dove is out there.

Verse 13.

In the 601st year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the waters dried up off the earth.

Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, behold, the face of the ground was dry.

I don't know the exact architectural design of the ark.

I don't know what covering means, if it's just a tarp over the one door, or if it's something that had wrapped the ark, but Noah removes it so that he can get out.

He obviously had the ability to send birds out before, but now he removes the covering so that he can get out.

Verse 14 in the second month, on the 27th day of the month, the earth had dried out.

Then God said to Noah, get out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons' wives with you.

He sends them out of the ark.

So Noah went out.

Well, verse 17, bring everything that's with you, all the flesh, all the birds, everything you got stored in the ark, let him out.

Verse 18, Noah went out, his sons and his wife, and his sons' wives with him.

Every beast, every creeping thing, every bird, everything that moves on the earth went out by families from the ark.

They went in as pairs, but they came out as families.

This is a long time.

The dates are repeated in these verses here, but it's hard for us to comprehend because we think in month names.

So let me translate these verses into our own calendar.

Alright, I'm gonna give you dates.

I'm not saying that it actually happened in February, but February's the second month, so I'm calling it February.

Certainly the seasons are somewhat suspended during a global flood anyway, so just work with me.

God calls Noah into the ark when Noah was 600 years old on February 10th, the 10th day of the second month.

So February 10th, Noah's 600, he goes into the Ark.

On February 17th, it'd begin to rain.

That's a week.

So Noah had not experienced rain before, is in the ark for a week without rain.

I know it's a hackneyed expression, but can you imagine what the neighbors thought?

Can you imagine with a doubt in Noah's own heart?

A week went by.

Nothing happened.

But then it began to rain.

And the floods lasted for 150 days until July 7th.

On July 7th, the water began to roll back and recede from the earth.

On July 17th, the ark settled and stopped moving.

On September 1st, so July 17th, the Ark stopped moving.

September 1st, Noah could see the mountains.

July 17th to September 1st, that's a long time.

I mean, when you're at summer break by the pool, it seems to go by fast.

I doubt this went by fast for Noah.

On November 10th, from December 1st to November 10th.

On November 10th, Noah sends out the raven.

On January 1st, the water had dried up.

He's sending out the ravens and the doves in seven-day increments.

And that takes you from November 10th to January 1st.

Then on February 27th, he gets off the ark.

He stayed on the ark from January 1st to February 27th, even though the dove hadn't come back, even though the ground had dried up, he spent almost two more months on the ark.

Why?

He's just waiting for God to command him to move.

Have been.

And Noah comes off the ark and there is life again.

The animals come off the ark and there is life.

Noah's family comes off the ark and there is life.

Life comes after death, and it must have been like death on that ark.

I mean, think of how your minivan smells after driving to Disney Worlds.

Dritos everywhere.

There's life after death.

Water brings life, not through itself giving life, but through the punishment of sin.

Water drowns the earth, then leaving to regeneration.

This is the language of the New Testament.

That we're saved through the washing of the water of the word.

The sprinkling of the water in our heart regenerates our heart, brings us from death to life.

And in fact, I would say this is the main promise of the Bible: that God gives eternal life through death, that death leads to life.

This is counterintuitive.

The mind without faith doesn't understand that.

Without faith, death is finality.

But for the Christian, death is the doorway to eternal life.

Death is the portal to the next world.

And this is a pattern repeatedly in the Bible that God brings life out of death.

This is the promise of a David encounters when his son dies.

He says, I'm not, my son's not going to resurrect to me, but I'm going to go see him next.

There's this constant promise of the resurrection.

Abraham buries Sarah's bones.

Abraham had hope in the resurrection.

It's this repeated hope that God will bring life out of death.

Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac, and we know from the New Testament he did so because he knew God could resurrect the dead.

God floods the earth, destroying everything to bring salvation through death.

This is, by the way, the picture of baptism.

That you go under the water, showing your death to your old life, your death to your previous way of life, your death like Christ.

You're hidden in Christ as you go under and you rise in newness of life.

As you die, you will live.

As Jesus died, so he will live in the resurrection.

This is why Peter can say baptism now saves you.

Not because it gives a bath for your body, because it speaks of your hope in Jesus Christ and your hope in the next life.

That Jesus rises from the grave.

He dies, goes to Sheol, and resurrects from the grave.

You can resurrect as well through your faith in him.

This is why baptism now saves you.

And this is a strong argument for believers' baptism, by the way.

Sprinkling is not a picture of death.

Sprinkling is a picture of a shower.

You go under to die, and you resurrect to live.

That's the picture of the ark.

Noah was not sprinkled.

The world was submerged.

Noah resurrected.

God gives life after death.

Thirdly, that forgiveness comes by covenant.

Forgiveness comes by covenant.

In fact, the very first use of the word covenant in the Bible is in this narrative here.

That God makes a covenant with Noah.

There's gonna be moments, I'm sure, where Noah doubts.

The world dies.

Of course, Noah is going to doubt.

This is the importance of God's covenant with Noah.

He makes a promise to him, an oath that God swears himself.

You're gonna see a picture of that here in verse 20.

Noah gets off of the ark and builds an altar to Yahweh.

He took some of every clean animal, some of every clean bird.

He offered burnt offerings on the altar.

This is right away.

Noah gets off the ark.

Alabama is still playing in football somehow.

I'm sure you've heard of the uh, maybe you've heard of the Nick Saban rule.

Uh Nick Sabin has a rule, he's the coach of Alabama, he has a rule for his players.

They are allowed to celebrate a victory for 24 hours.

On the 25th hour, they need to start preparing for the next game.

He doubles that if they win a national championship, and he's won seven national championships, by the way.

After a national championship, you can celebrate for two days.

On the 49th hour, you start training for next season.

How long does Noah have off the ark before sacrifices resume?

How long can he get off the ark and breathe in the air?

Look at an unpopulated world, a second Eden by some respects.

He's told to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth and all the animals that are with him.

In that sense, the sin has been drowned in the earth.

Noah is standing there.

How long does he have to take that in and appreciate it and just live in Eden?

He has zero seconds.

He gets off the ark and he is supposed to sacrifice animals.

And you think, wait a minute.

Is that what happened to the dinosaurs?

How's it, if he has two of every animal, how is he going to sacrifice and repopulate the earth?

That's why there's no unicorns.

No.

When you go back to Genesis 6, I'm sure unicorns would have been a clean animal.

I don't know about their hooves, but I'm counting them as clean.

If you go back to Genesis 6, Noah was supposed to take pairs of every animal and then in groups of seven, the clean animals, so that he could do sacrifices.

The ark was stocked for sacrifices.

Noah gets off the ark and immediately offers sacrifices for sins.

God requires this.

It's outside of the, well, as soon as Adam and Eve sin inside the garden, God kills an animal to cover them.

Outside of the garden, Cain and Abel were both required to worship God through sacrifice.

And of course, Cain brings grain and God doesn't receive that.

God requires a blood offering, which Abel provides.

Cain murders Abel.

All of these sacrifices are pointing forward to the future sacrifice of Jesus.

You know this from the Old Testament.

I mean, the Passover lamb is sacrificed every single year as a big arrow pointing to the final Passover lamb.

If the Passover lamb actually took away sin, you wouldn't have to offer it every single year.

It's just pointing you forward to the ultimate death of Jesus Christ.

So go backwards now to Genesis chapter 8.

Genesis 8 · chapter mention

The end of it, Noah gets off the ark and is offering sacrifices.

This is letting you know that the final sacrifice is still future.

Jesus didn't come.

The ark is not the ultimate Christ.

The ark is a picture of Jesus.

The ark is a picture of salvation.

It's not the final salvation.

It's not the final savior.

It's not the true seed.

That's still future.

And you know that because sacrifices are offered right away.

Noah goes out, verse 17, starts to be fruitful and multiply.

Verse 20 offers the sacrifices.

Verse 21.

Yahweh smells the aroma.

Yahweh says in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.

You saw this back in Genesis chapter 6.

Genesis 6 · chapter mention

This is what God said before he flooded the earth.

And he says it again.

Is he gonna flood the earth again?

Deidre and I once had a uh a two-year-old stay with us for a few days, not our own two-year-old, a friend's two-year-old as they went on vacation, and we had our little toy room.

This is back when we lived in California.

We had our little toy room and all of our toys neatly organized, in every cubby, Legos sorted by color, everything just so.

And the two-year-old comes, not our two-year-old, mind you, but the two-year-old comes in the room and dumps everything into one massive pile.

We left her alone for like 32 seconds, and we opened the door, and it was another flood in that room.

Chaos in bedlam.

And so we clean it up.

And that afternoon she says, Can I go play again?

I'm like, no.

No.

Do you see the door?

It's padlocked for a reason.

I promise I won't make a mess, she says.

She promised.

Open the door for her.

You cannot trust a two-year-old.

Sometimes you gotta learn the hard way.

Here you have this recurring theme: God looks at the world and says, Every thought of man's heart is evil.

This is what he said before he flooded the world.

Will he flood the world again?

It's the same intro.

But he says in verse 21, I won't do it again.

I won't do it.

Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.

God will not do it again.

Now, every word of this promise is important.

He says, I'll never flood the world again.

He doesn't say I'll never destroy it again.

He will destroy it again next time by fire.

He just won't use water.

This is what John the Baptist means when he, John the Baptist, baptizes with water.

And then says there's one coming after me who won't baptize with water.

He'll baptize with fire.

Now, of course, Jesus does baptize at his first coming with water, but his second coming he will baptize with fire.

That is not a baptism that saves.

That is a baptism that judges and brings his wrath onto the world.

That is coming in the future.

Every human being who has ever been born will die, except those who are alive at the second coming of the Lord.

They'll be transformed, and God will judge the earth, he will melt the earth, but he won't do it in verse 21 as I've done before.

He won't do it with water.

As long as the earth remains, seed time, harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.

God promises that the seasons will continue, the rotation of the earth will continue, the sun won't blow up in wind.

The earth will continue on, not forever, but until God brings final judgment.

Until he brings final judgment.

This will carry on.

How do you believe this?

Isn't this his promise the same as why would you believe this one and not what he did in Genesis 6, that he's gonna flood the earth?

Why believe this and he's not gonna do it again?

Because God promises, and he doesn't promise by a two-year-old, he promises by himself.

He makes a promise to himself not to destroy the world like that again.

This is the language of Titus chapter 1, verse 2.

Titus 1:2

That before time's eternal, God promised to send the Savior.

How does God promise before time's eternal?

And what does that phrase before time's eternal even mean?

I mean, there's eternity before that.

God promises to send the Savior to rescue his elect.

Well, how do who is God promising to?

He's promising to himself.

This is the way the book of Hebrews says it, that God has nobody greater than himself to promise to you.

People will promise to somebody greater than themselves.

They say, I swear by my mother, I swear by what someone has nobody he can swear by except himself.

So God swears by himself that he will rescue his people.

He swears by himself he will provide forgiveness through Jesus Christ.

He swears by himself.

Luke 22, verse 29, Jesus says, As I covenant with you, as the Father covenanted with me a kingdom.

Luke 22:29

Jesus says that he institutes communion, speaking of his death and resurrection, his body, his blood poured out for us.

He says, The Father covenanted me this, and I bring you in on it.

I will rescue you.

Hebrews 13, verse 20 closes out the book of Hebrews, saying, May the great shepherd of the sheep, may God, who brought again our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, by the blood of the eternal covenant sanctify your soul.

Hebrews 13:20

The eternal covenant that God makes with himself.

That covenant is on display all over the Bible.

It's on display in the blood of Christ.

It's on the display of the blood of these seven animals that God will ultimately provide a savior because he promises to do just that.

He has a plan of salvation that he designed before time began.

He didn't see simply store up the water to judge the earth.

He stored up the water to flood the earth and demonstrate that salvation comes through judgment.

At our Christmas concert, the children's choir with three particularly adorable singers in it sang the song Who Would Have Dreamed?

The lyrics of that song are incredible.

In the mouths of children.

Wondrous gift of heaven, the Father sends the Son.

Planned from times eternal, moved by holy love.

Think of that line that the kids sing.

The God planned salvation from before a time eternal.

The Father, the Son, and the Spirit designed salvation.

And they carry it out, and some of the song goes on, he will carry our curse and death he'll reverse so we can be his daughters and sons.

This is the promise of the ark.

That before the creation of the world, God promised to save people through the fires of judgment, through the waters of judgment, by giving our sin to Jesus Christ, who will bear it, die, and resurrect.

When you place your faith in that way to be rescued by God, you die with him to this life, you rise with him in the next.

God shows he knows how to rescue those who believe in him.

That baptism now saves you, not through washing away the dirt on your body, but through the inner appeal to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that your life is hidden with him.

God, we're grateful that you saved us through the washing of the water of the Word, through Jesus Christ, who is our salvation.

Our life is hidden in him.

As Noah hid in the ark, we hide in Christ.

As your wrath was poured out on the world, your wrath towards us was poured out on Christ.

We know as Jesus forgives us through the waters of baptism, he will flood the earth again, but this time with fire.

God, I pray for anyone here today that has never sought refuge in the ark, that has never come to you for salvation.

I pray that today they would have their hearts changed, put their faith in you, and be saved.

I give you thanks for this in Jesus' name.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.