Are You on the Wrong Side of the Door? // Aaron Stephens

You guys can be seated.

The uh the last uh five to six, seven days have been pretty crazy.

I think we've had four seasons in that week.

And um this morning I was out walking the dogs like I always do, and I just I love that time because it is just so incredibly quiet.

And I noticed something this morning, I heard like birds that I hadn't you know heard before, and I'm just like, oh wow, like spring is coming.

And I started to picture like what the what my yard would look like, what the flowers would look like, and I'm I was actually starting to get excited until I looked at the weather in five or six days and it's supposed to snow again.

So um that's Ohio for you, right?

Um dang, all right.

But that's why we live in Ohio, right?

The weather, the beaches, the mountains.

That's why we're here.

Um but anyway, as I was walking, I was reminded of like spring and like the renewal and how things start to look different, the colors, the smells, the sounds.

And we're in the middle of uh a series called Creation to Covenant, and our prayer is that that's what happens as we go through the Old Testament.

That you start to see things differently, that you start to connect the dots, and the the words jump off the page.

And we started in the the first of January, and we started in the garden with creation, and we saw that God spoke light into darkness, order into chaos, and after each day he stepped back and said, It is good.

But then something changed when he said, Let's make one like us.

He breathed his breath into humanity and set them at the center of his paradise.

At this time, he didn't just say good, he said very good.

Humanity was the crescendo of creation, the crown jewel, image bearers of the living God, and out of everything he made, they were the ones he looked at differently.

And he gave them rule to guard the garden.

They had everything they could have ever needed, but it was what they wanted that they couldn't do without.

It all started with the question planting the seed that God's protection was actually restriction, and that God is holding out on them.

They dismissed the consequences, rationalized their truth, fell victim to the lie they told themselves.

One by one moment of thinking they know better than God.

And everything unraveled.

Fear replaced freedom, shame replaced innocence.

First they covered with leaves, shrouding their shame.

Then covering wasn't enough anymore.

Instead of walking with God, they hid from him.

They ate from the tree, they covered with the tree, and then they hid in the trees.

Then blame started.

Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent, Adam blamed God.

Everyone at fault, but no one responsible.

The intimacy of Eden spoiled into suspicion and self-protection.

But it didn't stop there.

It never stops there.

Last week Danny talked about their son Cain, who let jealousy simmer into anger, anger into rage, and rage into the unthinkable.

Murder of his very own brother.

In fact, the very first brother Earth had ever known.

Murdered for being honored with a better sacrifice to God.

For the first time, one image-bearer of God took the life of another.

The ground that once brought life now soaked it up.

The world was accelerating away from its creator.

Eden was a distant memory.

And things were getting worse.

Much, much worse.

The loop of humanity was in full effect, and we came to a place where we see that the greatest judgment God can pass on man is to leave him to himself.

But God didn't just watch it happen, he felt it.

And what he felt changed everything.

And this is where we meet the guy named Noah.

If you want to open up your Bibles, we're gonna be in Genesis 6 and 7.

We're gonna be jumping around a little bit.

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.

So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, manned in animals and creeping things and birds of the heaven.

I am sorry that I have made them.

You see, God regretted making man.

He was actually grieving.

Now this isn't a fit of like human anger, it's a divine grief.

It's pain, it's sadness, it's loss.

He felt that.

A father was witnessing his children destroy themselves and one another.

He's watching the final piece of creation, the crown jewel that he made it very good, rot from the inside out.

This isn't arbitrary punishment.

It's the natural consequences of humanity departing from the true source of life.

You see, judgment can come when people assume they have God's permission, when it's really just God's patience and mercy.

Think of it this way.

In high school, I was on the basketball team, we had just finished the game, so we went Burger King, right?

Burger King, who doesn't, right?

Um even still around?

Actually, I don't even know.

Um, but I lived way out in the country, and my buddy was taking me home.

There's only a few roads to get to where we were going, and we were a few miles from my house, and we came up to a road, and it said, you know, road close sign right in the middle.

And he's like, Oh, I gotta turn around.

Didn't want to turn around.

Just being in the country just takes longer to navigate.

And I'm like, nah, it's fine.

I was just down this road like a day or two.

I'm sure it's fine.

But what I didn't tell him, and neither of us recognized, was that it had rained an absolute ton between the time I was last down there.

So we're driving down this road.

We go, first of all, we go way around the road close sign.

It's not like it was an easy just to get around.

And you know, all of a sudden you start to like see the water like start to rise up against the tires.

And I'm like, bro, you better like slow down.

So he hits the brakes and we just start sliding.

And I'm like, in that moment, I'm like, oof, this was probably a bad move.

And he's sliding, sliding, and before you know it, we're in this huge drainage ditch.

And the car is like starting to tip, water is like starting to like pour in.

Luckily, you know, we got the windows down before everything got like fried and we jumped out.

And then we just watched his car just like float down the ditch.

You could see like the taillights just starting to sink.

It was in that moment the consequences mattered, but it was too late.

That sign that said don't go down there wasn't any good anymore.

You see, when that car floated down that ditch, the sign was of no use.

It was too late.

And that's what we see in the day of Noah.

But despite that wickedness of the day, God has a plan.

He always has a plan.

And in Genesis 6, 8 through 9, it says, But God, but Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation.

Noah walked with God.

It says, Noah walked with God.

Now, this is the same language used for Adam and Eve in the garden.

It describes this Eden-style relationship before the fall.

It means like a life entirely oriented towards pleasing God, in the daily, the ordinary, with intentionality.

Eugene Peterson says it very well.

He says, We are at our best when we are walking with God.

It also says Noah was referred to as blameless, but blameless does not mean sinless.

Romans 3.23 says, For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

We're going to see later in the series, Abraham, who's described very similarly, lied about his wife Sarah to save his own skin.

And then in the next chapter of Genesis, we're going to see Noah himself goes on a bender right after getting off the ark.

Blameless didn't mean sinless.

It never does.

And as we learned with Adam in the garden, hearing from God comes with a responsibility and a cost.

So what does God ask?

Genesis 6, 14 through 16, God 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 were to make it.

The length of the ark, 300 cubits, its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 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.

Now I feel like it's impossible to talk about Noah's Ark without talking about the size.

And so I have two examples.

I have Ohio State fans and I have Titanic fans.

So I have two images up here.

So there you go.

There is the comparison between the Titanic and Noah's Ark, and then you got the shoe.

So you can see it's a it's a big boat.

I mean, it's a tall order to build a ship of that size.

And it took Noah 120 years to build that thing.

It had the capacity of 450 standard semi-truck trailers.

There was one study that found like these specific proportions that God gave Noah are the golden ratio for balancing stability, strength.

It was built to stay upright, even if it was tilted to 90 degrees.

But interesting, it had no rudder and no sail.

There was no way to steer.

This vessel wasn't under man's control, it was under God's.

You see, Noah was saved not because of his ability to navigate a ship, he was saved by the stability of the vessel God provided.

And if as if building something this big wasn't enough, God follows it up in Genesis 6, 19 through 21.

I mean, this is how I hear it.

It's like, oh yeah, by the way, why don't you just go grab every living thing and then put them in the ark?

And by the way, don't forget to fill them with food either.

It's like, okay, I'll build this huge ark and then just fill it with all the animals of the world.

Alright, cool.

But here's the kicker.

In Genesis 2, we find out the Bible suggests that up to this point it had never rained.

Not once.

Alright, so let's just put this together.

So God asked the only man walking with him to take 120 years of his life to build a massive boat for a flood when it's never rained.

Oh yeah, and go grab, you know, two of every living thing and throw it in there, too.

If you have any questions, call me.

Peace.

I mean, like, like, what would cause a man to do this?

Hebrews 11, 7 tells us it is out of reverent fear.

Reverent fear is you're moved with this deep sense of awe and respect.

It's almost like a godly caution.

You're taking hold of what God calls good.

That's why he built the ark.

And honestly, when I read the instructions God gave him, I'm gonna need a little more info than that.

I've got to be honest.

Like, I'm gonna need like the IKEA or the Lego version instructions.

Like, I don't know how Noah took that and turned it into that.

But the question I ask myself, was it harder to build an ark like that?

Or was it harder to face the ridicule of men for over a hundred years?

You see, our lives are so oriented about the thought of other people that we think less about what God thinks of us.

And if we are honest, I think we fear people too much because we fear God so little.

But we see Noah.

We see Noah, and it says, But Noah walks with God, and what does he do?

He does everything that God commanded him.

So now comes the day when the ark is finished.

And in Genesis 7, 25, 7, 2 through 5, God tells him, Take seven pairs of clean animals, one pair of unclean, and seven pairs of birds.

And God says, It's gonna rain in seven days, and it's gonna last for 40 days and forty nights, and every living thing will be blotted out.

So what do we see?

Once again, Noah did all that God commanded.

Now the inevitable day of entering the ark for good is God says he's gonna send rain in seven days.

So what happens?

Genesis 7, 14 through 16.

Noah and his family and the animals entered the ark as God had commanded Noah.

That's the third time that's said.

And the key word in that phrase is all that God commanded.

You see, we've talked here about how delayed obedience is disobedience.

But just like partial obedience is disobedience.

If you think about this scene, this scene is just wild to me.

So imagine you're an onstander watching.

You see these animals walking side by side, one after another, right into the ark.

That's crazy.

Like, I mean, I have two dogs, and I can't get my two dogs to do anything what I wanted to do except run in a mud puddle right now.

But all the animals, two by two, right in the ark.

The onlookers' hearts were so hard that even that did not impress them.

The hardest of hearts have the blindest of eyes.

And it's this moment, if you listen very closely, you can just hear the faint whisper in the garden spoken to Eve.

The faint whisper uh what was spoken to Eve in the garden.

Surely you won't die.

Well, then the door shuts.

And just think of the finality of that moment.

Both people on the inside and the outside.

You know, Noah's like 120 years of building and planning and ridicule, and he finally comes to this day.

The door shuts, and then the silence.

Then after seven days, day eight arrives.

The sky darkens.

You know, those on the outside start to maybe doubt their decision.

The first raindrops fall, the second, the third.

Panic starts, puddles, flash floods, but soon the world looks unrecognizable.

People climb trees, then mountains, but it doesn't matter.

The dark waters and chaos return just as it was prior to creation.

You see, the folly of man is usually realized too late.

And that same lie that deceived Eve deceives the world once again.

You see, for all those years, Noah was crazy.

But when the rain started and the flood waters rose, he became the wisest man alive.

Why?

Because the consequences finally mattered.

They realized they were on the wrong side of the door.

You see, the world is being undone at this point.

God brought order in Genesis 1 by separating the waters.

Now he collapses them to cleanse the earth.

Think of the flood not as like divine violence, but as painful surgery.

You remove a cancer because it leaving it guarantees a worse death.

But what if this was never just a story about a boat?

What if there's something bigger here?

Like what if Noah's entire life?

The wood, the pitch, the door, the flood, was God drawing a picture of something he hadn't done yet?

You see, this story is the prophetic blueprint of Jesus.

Do you remember when we covered the fall the week before conference and we talked about the curse on the serpent, which is also a promise God is going to make things right after Adam and Eve ate from the fruit?

It's this promise that changed the trajectory of the universe.

It's in Genesis 3.15.

It says, I will put entity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

You see, this is the first mention of the gospel.

And then from this point forward, every sacrifice, every prophecy, every tear from here on points to Jesus.

You see, one can survive the bruised heel, but a serpent can't survive a bruised head.

And Satan will bruise Jesus' heel on the cross, but Jesus will bruise Satan's head with the resurrection.

You see, Satan thought he'd won on Friday, but then on Sunday, Jesus had won the war.

In Colossians 2, 13 through 15, I'm just going to summarize, it says, From death to new life and total victory.

That's what happened.

Our sins are forgiven.

Evil's power is broken forever by what Christ did on the cross.

You see, Noah is the preserver of this promise.

He built the boat so the Messiah could fulfill it.

Never estimate the faith of one person.

Then we move on to 1 Peter.

He also talks about Noah and the flood.

And he tells us that the flood water is a picture of baptism.

The very waters that weighed down the world were the same waters that lifted the ark to safety.

You see, this is the beautiful paradox of baptism.

It symbolizes our identification with the death, Jesus' heel, and resurrection, Satan's head.

You see, when you go underwater, your old life is judged and buried.

When you rise, a new life begins.

Just as the floodwaters judged the world and saved Noah, Jesus himself is the intersection.

He's the judge of all sin, but yet the preservation for all who are in him.

You see, the Ark saved Noah, and we are saved through Jesus.

And Peter makes that connection between Jesus and this story, but there is actually so much more to this.

There is always a greater story being told.

See, there was only one door to enter the ark.

And John 10, 9 says, I am the door.

If anyone enters me, he will be saved, and he will go in and out and find pasture.

Jesus is, this is saying, if you entering the ark meant life, refusing meant death.

It's the same with Jesus.

And Noah spent 120 years building a boat for rain that had never fallen.

It made no sense to the wise of the world.

In the same way, just as 1 Corinthians 1.18 says, the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.

See, the world looked for a conqueror.

God sent a carpenter to die on a tree to undo the curse of the tree.

Only three times did God give specific blueprints to build something.

It started in Exodus 25.8.

And he says, Let them make a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.

It started with the tabernacle and the temple.

And these were places where God dwelt with man.

But look at Genesis 6.18.

He says, But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark.

Do you notice that?

He didn't say go into the ark.

He said, come into the ark.

You only say come if you're already there.

See, God was already in the ark.

He was inviting Noah into his presence.

See, the ark wasn't just a boat, it was a floating temple, a place where God dwelt with man.

But then in Matthew 11, 28, Jesus says, Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

You know what Noah means in Hebrew?

Rest.

Jesus is saying, I am the ark, I am the place where the judgment of the world stops, and the rest of God begins in me.

Make rooms in the ark and cover it inside and out with pitch.

To us, pitch is just a minor construction detail.

Right?

It's the sticky tar to keep the water out.

But in Hebrew, the word for pitch is kefor.

This is the first time this word appears in the Bible.

And it's the exact same root word for atonement.

This is where the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur comes from.

So what is atonement?

Simply put, it's a covering.

It's the divine seal that allows a holy God in a broken humanity to meet in a covered space where judgment cannot get in.

See, God told Noah to pitch the boat.

Without the seal, the ark is just a wooden crate that sinks.

The Kafar is the only thing standing between the family and the storm.

We all have leaks in our lives.

Sin, shame, the parts of us we don't want anyone to see.

We try to cover ourselves with our careers, our good person resumes or our social media fulfillers.

But we're just like Adam and Eve.

We're trying to hide behind the fig leaves.

But those covers always leak.

And when the real storm hits, they fail every single time.

Now in the Old Testament, when they sacrificed the lamb, they used the same word, kefar.

They called it atonement.

It was God saying it will provide a covering for your soul, so the judgment doesn't get in.

But the lamb was never the destination.

It was always pointing somewhere.

Hebrews 10:4 tells us that it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

Hebrews 10:4

Every sacrifice, every yom kippur, every lamb was just a promissory note.

God saying something better is coming.

Then Jesus stepped into history and fulfilled every prophecy and every sacrifice.

Hebrews 9 12 says, He entered once from all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing eternal redemption.

You see, the Old Testament for Kafar covered sin temporarily.

But Jesus, Jesus removed it permanently.

And look, look what happens next.

In Ephesians 1.13, it says that when you heard the word of truth and believed, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.

You see, in the ancient world, a seal was a mark of ownership, authenticity, and security.

When a king put his seal on a crate, it meant, this is mine.

This belongs to me.

Do not touch it.

I am responsible for its safe arrival.

You see, the ark was pitched inside and out to keep the family safe.

The cross provided the atonement, the blood, to pay the debt.

The believer is sealed by the Spirit to guarantee the destination.

See, when the great undoing of death comes knocking, the reason you don't sink isn't because you're a good swimmer or because you're holding on to God.

It's because his seal is holding on to you.

You are waterproofed for eternity.

The judgment can't get in because the king has already claimed to.

This is how the promises in Genesis 3.15 played out.

You see, Noah preserved that promise so Jesus could fulfill it.

The ark was the shadow, Jesus is the reality.

One door, one way, one name that saves.

And that door stands open right now.

Jesus is inviting you.

Saying, Come into me, the true ark.

Where judgment fell on the cross, where my blood seals you inside and out.

Where the Spirit marks you is mine forever.

But that door will not stay open forever.

One day soon the Son of Man will shut it again.

No second chances, no last minute, please.

Don't wait for the rain.

Don't climb when the waters rise.

Just step through the door now.

Jesus says, if anyone enters by me, he will be saved.

I'm going to say it again.

You see, Noah preserved the promise so Jesus could fulfill it.

Jesus died and rose so you could live.

So this morning I felt like there's there's there's two specific groups that God is speaking to.

The first is for those who believe you are on the wrong side of the door.

I want to give you an opportunity to step through that door.

And Jesus is calling you to himself.

He will not deny you, no matter what you bring with you.

So if you could close your eyes.

To come to Jesus.

So if that's you, I would just ask you just to slip your hand up and slip it back down.

It doesn't matter with what you you've done or what you're walking in with, he's not gonna deny you.

And maybe you have walked through that door, but you feel like you're on the outside looking in.

Just want to take a few seconds.

Just be real with him.

We think we can cover up and fool him, but we can't.

He knows.

You see, the story of Noah starts where it says, 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 when we read that, it's so easy, right?

It's so easy to say, oh, that's not me.

It's easy to distance ourselves.

I'm not wicked, I'm not evil.

And it's so easy to judge.

You know, I find myself asking, how could anyone be so oblivious to miss that?

But then Jesus goes back into this story in Matthew 24.

And he doesn't describe those people as monsters, he doesn't describe them as murderers.

This is what he says.

When the Son of Man returns, it'll be like it was in Noah's day, in those days before the flood.

The people were enjoying banquets and parties and weddings right up to the time Noah entered his boat.

People didn't realize what was going to happen until the flood came and swept them away.

This is the way it'll be when the Son of Man comes.

They were eating, drinking, getting married, living life, unaware.

Not evil, right?

Just busy.

Just distracted.

Just normal.

And here where it gets a little uncomfortable for me.

And when I say this, I say this because I'm looking in the mirror.

Is will people in the future look back at us in the same way?

Will they look back at us, shaking their heads and asking how we could be so blind to the realities around us?

The poor, the hunger, the trafficked.

These people look back and say, how could they not notice?

Or maybe worse, they noticed and did nothing.

Good people, busy people, oblivious people, unaware.

Like I'm not standing up here questioning where anyone stands with God.

That's not my job or my place.

I'm just asking a different question.

Because the people who missed the ark weren't necessarily the worst people in the room.

They were just the most distracted.

The most comfortable, the most convinced that tomorrow will look just like today.

You see, Jesus isn't using this story to point fingers at anyone's eternity.

He's using it as a wake-up call.

A call to awareness, a call to urgency, a call to look up from your normal life and ask, what is God asking of me right now that I keep walking past?

Noah's neighbors weren't just lost, they were asleep.

So the question isn't, are you going to heaven?

The question is, are you awake?

What door is he holding open that you keep walking past?

You see, Noah didn't negotiate with God.

He didn't redesign the blueprints, he didn't wait for a better moment.

He stepped through the one door God provided and he trusted the seal.

And here's the question I feel like he's asking.

Are you walking with God or are you walking around him?

And this one verse that just keeps bouncing in my head over and over again is in Luke 18, 8, and he says, When the Son of Man returns, how many will he find on earth who have faith?

Well, first of all, a per ministry team can come up, but I just get the sense that there's people, maybe coming out of a conference or just in general, that there's this door that's open and you know God is calling you into it, but you just keep walking past it.

Maybe it's fear, maybe you don't want to let go of what the cost is gonna be.

But I just feel like this is a moment, this is a time that you can walk through that door, that you can drop the things that you're holding on to, you can drop the things that are so precious to you and start living the greatest adventure of your life, walking with God.

So if you're here this morning and you know there's a door, you know there's a door, but you just keep walking past it.

I just want to encourage you that this morning that can that can stop.

That when you stand alongside someone who can pray with you, who can break off the things that are causing you to stumble.

Why don't you stand with me?

And there's also people here who don't know the door.

I don't want to assume everyone has a door.

Like during this time, I just want you to like just sit with the Lord.

Ask him to show you the door.

So, Jesus, I thank you that you are the door.

I thank you that that I thank you for the story of Noah and how Noah's faithfulness paved the way for you, Jesus, to fulfill that promise back in the garden.

Lord, I pray that you would just give us a conviction upon our hearts, Jesus.

A conviction to not live comfortable, to not live distracted, to not get caught up in our own story, George Jesus, that we would get caught up in your story.

That when we when we dig into your word, the word comes alive.

That we read these stories about Noah and just realize like there is so much more going on that there is always a bigger story.

And I pray, Lord, that each one of us, Father, that each one of us would live in that bigger story.

That we would not settle for the small stories of our comfort, of our distraction.

But Jesus, we would enter into your story.