Resolved for More & More - 1 Thessalonians 4:1-3A (Jan 1) Myles Holmes

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Amen.

Wow.

It's kind of hard to follow that up, eh?

I feel like I should just come up here and say, let's just cancel the sermon and just keep singing that chorus over and over again.

Because it's so good to sing God's praise.

And it's so good every once in a while just to hit what I thought was a one-hit wonder.

I didn't know that song was coming back, and yet it comes back, and the Spirit just used it in my life.

I want that.

Man, some of those songs you sing, some of those songs you sing, I just want that in my life to glory to have eyes for no one else other than the Lord.

I was very relevant to the story that we find ourselves in Genesis this morning.

And if you have your Bibles, I hope that you do, you can open them up to Genesis chapter 6, verse 9.

Genesis 6:9

And as you're going there, I'll just introduce myself.

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Miles Holmes.

I'm the lead pastor of this church, incredibly grateful to be able to open up God's word with you this morning.

And we've been walking through the book of Genesis.

I wonder if you ever had this experience in your life of someone who you don't think they should know you, and you definitely don't think they would remember you if they've met you before, but for whatever reason, that person knows your name and remembers who you are.

Happened to me actually just recently, I was sitting in the same room.

There's a number of us sitting in that room, but I was sitting in the room of one of my idols.

I don't know who your idols are.

There are probably people that make sense to have idols like hockey players or you know, celebrities, or maybe just really important people.

My idols are all pastors, most of them.

And so I was sitting in the room with this pastor, this preacher who preaches to thousands of people, and I listen to regularly, and I thought, there's no way this guy knows me.

You know, I'm just a small little, you know, I was doing youth at the time.

And then he turned to me and he's and he knew my name and he greeted me by name, and I never met this person before, and I was shocked.

Like, how does this person know who I am?

It felt to me like the equivalent of being in the same room as Wayne Gretzky, and Wayne Gretzky turning to me and saying, Good morning, Miles, and me being like, wait, wait, wait, how do you know me?

I wonder if you've had that experience before.

I trust that you have, and what I want you to know this morning is that that experience is really just a microcosm of one of the greatest truths of the gospel, one of the greatest truths of Christianity, and that is that as a child of God, if your faith is in Jesus Christ, if you are counted among those who are children of God, you are remembered by God.

Now, listen, some of us have been going to church for a really long time, and so we hear statements like that, and we're this is this is kind of our inner heart's reaction.

If you can maybe put an emoji on our heart right now, we hear statements like that and we're like this.

Cool.

But can you just like wipe the slate clean for a second and just hear those words, okay?

Just two weeks ago, the the count of people on the earth got to eight billion.

Eight billion people.

That's a lot of people.

I don't know about you.

I have trouble remembering like a hundred people's names.

And yet the God of this universe, the God who spoke this universe into existence, the God who has been sovereignly leading the history of humanity, that God, right now, right in this moment, if you are a child of God, remembers you.

He knows your name.

Not only does he remember you and know your name, he knows what you're walking through right now.

He knows the thoughts that maybe kept you up last night.

He knows the darkness that maybe surrounds you at times.

He knows the feelings that you might have that you could never be loved.

He knows the struggles of your life, he knows the difficulties of your life, and in all these things, this God remembers you.

That's an astounding reality, church, and this is this is the truth that I want our hearts to focus on this morning.

You'll remember last week as we read through the story of Genesis, we met Noah's father Lamech.

And Lamech, when he had Noah, he was he brought great comfort.

He found relief in Noah.

And as we read through the story of Noah, the one whose name means rest, I want us to find that same comfort.

The comfort of knowing that God remembers us.

And so, church, let's pray together as we embark on this.

Father, we bow before you.

Lord, we need you.

God, we just saying some astounding truth, Lord, that we want to have eyes for no other person in this world.

We want to have eyes for you alone.

And God, that's so hard.

And God, I know my own heart's tendency, Lord, is to please people.

I can be so prone to forget you or to make you even small and make people large and make their opinions of me large.

And God, I'm I'm so sick of living for the glory of people and building the kingdom of other people's name, or maybe my own kingdom.

God, I want to live for your glory.

I want to live for your kingdom.

And God, I know that there are a range of people in this room this morning, from those who Lord don't really care about that, to those who genuinely, Lord, along with me, desire to do that, but but recognize their sinfulness, the ways that they fall short of your glory.

And God, we just bow together, Lord, to say, we need your help, God help us.

Or as we open your word, you want to reveal yourself to us, and so would you find your hearts, Lord.

Hearts who want to hear from you and be changed by you.

So, God, we submit ourselves to you, God, change us, transform us as we gaze upon the glory of your son that you reveal through your scriptures, God.

So we lift this time up to you and pray that you'd be exalted.

Pray this all in the name of your son.

Amen.

Church, I want you to remember this morning that you're remembered.

Remember that you are remembered.

I don't know about you, but as we talk about comfort and the story of Noah, some of you guys are probably scratching your head, like, where in the story of Noah do you find comfort?

I always kind of thought this was interesting about the way that we maybe uh spin the story of Noah.

I didn't grow up in the church, and so I never got the Sunday school experience.

Like when I came into the church, it was like right after the Sunday school experience.

So I've heard of like the Sunday school experience from secondhand sources, but I've heard of you know this green felt sheet that the Sunday school teacher used to use.

Some of you are smiling and nodding because you haven't thought about this in a while.

And I heard about all the all the little characters that you put up on the green felt sheet, and Noah was like really exciting.

When we got to Noah, like this is awesome.

The kids love Noah, and so you slap up the boat, and you put Noah and his cute little family up there, and there's a giraffe, and he's poking his head out the window, and the monkey's swinging around on the boat.

And it's really like this beautiful picture of like, look, we're going on this nice Sunday afternoon sailing adventure.

And yet, what you have to do, I mean, it really proves that you can spin any story you want to say whatever you really want it to.

What you have to do is just hide all the thousands and thousands and thousands of lives that were lost to the destruction of the flood.

See, when you really think about it at face value, this is probably not the story that you want to be telling your kids.

The story of the flood is really a story of God's judgment on the corruption of humanity.

We really miss the entire context of the story that you'll see if you look at your copy of God's word in Genesis 6, verse 12, that when God saw the earth, behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.

Genesis 6:12

And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh.

Saying at the end of the verse, Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

This is a story of God's judgment because of the corruption of mankind.

It's a story of God looking at the people that He has created that have grown to such a deep level of corruption and sinfulness that the only remedy is for him to send his judgment, his destruction on humanity.

God looks down at the people of earth and he sees not that he's got to protect his children from evil, what he sees now is that his children actually are evil.

The chosen line of Seth that was supposed to be the godly line.

It was supposed to be the seed that would bring destruction to the serpent.

Now the even the godly line of Seth is sinful.

There's only one way forward for God.

It's in the waters of judgment.

And yet I want you to notice something else in the story, that despite the overwhelming worldwide judgment, the reality that you and I are still here this morning, the reality that a family was preserved that would then be fruitful and multiply, is really a reality of God's grace.

Yes, we find judgment in the story of Noah, but really the story of Noah is a story of grace because through the judgment, a people are preserved.

See, often we'll look around our world, and maybe we'll even look at the story of Noah.

We ask the question: how can God be just?

How can God be just to save some and not save others?

How can God be just in saving Noah and his family and then destroying the rest of the world by sending a worldwide flood?

How is it fair that God would save some people and not save other people?

But I want you to recognize that that's really framing the question wrong, isn't it?

If we really want to talk about fairness, if we really want to talk about justice, then the real question should be: how could God save anybody?

How could God pour out grace on anybody?

He looks down on earth and he sees that all flesh is corrupt.

And yes, he saves Noah, but what you know we're gonna see next week is that Noah wasn't that great of a man himself.

And yet God is gracious to his people.

The question is not how can God save some and not others, the question is how can God save any?

And the answer is because God remembers his children.

And so we found at the end of our time last week in verse 8 of Genesis chapter 6, look at these words.

Genesis 6 · chapter mention

Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

And if you are in Christ this morning, this is the way that God views you in a world that is on a hellbound race, and as a person who is on a hellbound race.

You, if you are in Christ, have found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

God has remembered you.

This whole story is really a story about God remembering his children.

And it's really fascinating.

We're gonna work through a lot of chapters this morning, and so I'm not gonna read the whole text for you, although I thought about it, because that's a really easy way to prepare a sermon, isn't it?

Just read the text and say amen and you're all done.

But I want to just walk you really quickly through this story, and it's really something is really interesting that's happening in the story.

The the writer Moses is using an ancient Near Eastern storytelling tool called a chiasm.

I don't know if you've ever heard of a chiasm before.

It's kind of like an ancient highlighter.

If you ever write a note to you know your spouse or your husband, and you and you there's a whole bunch of details, but you really want to detail something.

Well, we have a lot of tools at our disposal, don't we?

If you're writing an email, you might put it in bold, you might highlight it, you might put exclamation marks.

Well, for the ancient Near Eastern writers, what was the highlighter?

Well, the highlighter was to use this tool called a chiasm.

And what a chiasm was was you tell a story with a certain set of details, and as you told the story, it would all be leading up to a very important point, and you would make that point, and then you would tell those details in reverse order.

If you can imagine like an arrow, the point of an arrow, that's how a story that's told in chiasm is told.

First, you tell the details of the story, and then you get to the main point, and that point that's in the middle of the chiasm is the most important thing that I want you to understand, I want you to remember, and then you tell the details again.

And so, really, the whole story of Noah and the flood is a story of chiasm.

In in Genesis 6.10, we see Noah's with all of his sons.

And then in Genesis 6.13, we see that God is condemning all flesh.

And then in Genesis 6.14, we see the family enter the ark.

Or the ark enters into the story, and in verse 17, all the creatures enter the ark.

You know, in verse 21, God has instruction for food, and in chapter 7, verse 2 and 3, he has instructions for the animals that will be coming in.

And in chapter in verse 13 of chapter 7, the people of God enter the ark, and then the waters rise.

Then something really important happens.

In Genesis chapter 8, verse 1.

Genesis 8:1

This is the middle of the chiasm.

And I want you to read it here.

And if Moses could highlight one thing in this story for us, it would be this.

He's pointing all of our attention to this.

But God remembered Noah.

But God remembered Noah.

Then you see the second half of the chiasm.

That just as they entered the ark, they exit the ark.

And then he describes the animals.

He's again doing this in reverse order.

Then he talks about the food once they leave the ark.

He says animals were saved by the ark, so they are blessed leaving the ark.

Just as God announced a flood in the first half of the story, he announces that there will be no future flood in the second half.

Just as he cursed the earth in the first half of the story, he blesses the earth in the second half.

And just as he cursed all flesh in the first half, he'll bless all flesh.

And then, just as the story begins with Noah and his sons in Genesis chapter 9, we find the story ending with Noah and his sons.

Genesis 9 · chapter mention

This whole story is a chiasm, all pointing to this one single verse that God remembered Noah.

God has taken his holy highlighter and he's gone to the story and he's highlighted that verse.

He's saying to us this morning, I want you to remember this.

That in the midst of your greatest difficulties, in the midst of your deepest, darkest moments, I remember my children.

Well, he highlighted that.

Maybe we can imagine that he's highlighted in yellow.

He's also put stars, exclamation marks, highlighted it with every other color he can, because there's not only one chiasm in the book of Genesis, or in the story of Noah, there's two chiasms.

And so let me just share another chiasm with you.

Some of you guys are like, listen, I'm chiasmed out after the first one.

It'll be quick, okay?

And this one's coming up on the screen, so it's going to be a little easier.

There's another chiasm in Noah, again, all pointing to Genesis 8:1.

Genesis 8:1

And it comes, it revolves around the period of times in Noah.

And you'll see it here.

For seven days Noah waits for the flood.

And then again, we're told in verse 10 of another seven days of waiting.

For 40 days the flood comes, and then we're told for 150 days the water triumphs.

And then our most important verse in the whole story of Noah happens.

Noah is remembered.

And at that moment, all these things reverse.

There's 150 days of the water waning.

There's a 40-day wait after that period as the waters continue to decrease.

There's a seven-day wait as Noah sends out the first dove, and there's another seven-day wait as Noah sends out the second dove.

All of this to say the most important thing that God wants you to understand this morning is that you are remembered.

If you are a child of God, you are not forgotten.

That changes our life in three ways.

I want you to see it in the story of Noah.

When I remember I'm remembered by God, the first thing I want you to see, the first point in the outline this morning, is that I can escape the judgment that's coming.

When I remember that I am remembered, I can escape the judgment that is coming.

See, the story of Noah really is a story of the survivor of the flood.

The focus of the attention in the story, it's not on the people that are really being destroyed.

It's really on one man and his family.

And in this way, Noah in the text is kind of set up like a second Adam.

What we have here is a story of new beginnings.

Just as Adam was in the garden and without sin, we read in Genesis chapter 6, verse 9, these are the generations of Noah, and Noah was a righteous man.

Genesis 6:9

Noah was right with God.

It says he was blameless in his generation.

Now that doesn't mean that Noah was without sin.

We're going to discover in just a few short chapters that Noah was very much a sinner.

But it does mean that as God looked at humanity, he saw one that was especially pursuing him.

In a world of people that were filled with distraction, pursuing their own ways, Noah was pursuing God.

And so we read that Noah, says in verse 9, walked with God.

And this has been a theme of Genesis, hasn't it?

We've read so far about two people that have walked with God.

First, it was Enoch.

You remember Enoch?

Enoch walked with God and was so close with God that God chose for Enoch to not experience death.

He just, I don't know if it was some sort of teleporter like in the movies we see today, but he just appeared in heaven.

And so it was in the garden that God would walk with Adam and Eve.

To be walking with God was to be experiencing this close fellowship.

And Noah enjoyed that nearness to God.

Now this couldn't have been easy for Noah because of the world that he was living in.

Notice in verse 11, Moses tells us about this world.

He says the earth was corrupt in God's sight.

And he tells us why it was corrupt.

He says the earth was filled with violence.

And in verse 12, he says, all flesh had become corrupt.

That's really interesting because the mandate that God had given to humanity in Genesis 2 was to be fruitful and multiply.

They were to be fruitful and multiply.

They were to expand the human race to more and more people until eventually image bearers covered the world that all proclaimed the glory and greatness and goodness of God, just like we were doing together this morning in song.

That was the intention.

But instead, what we found so far in Genesis that because of sin, instead of the human race multiplying each other, what we find is most often they're actually doing the opposite.

Remember Cain and Abel?

Like Adam and Eve were to be fruitful and multiply, and so they're fruitful and they multiply Cain and Abel, but then what do Cain and Abel do?

They do the exact opposite of being fruitful and multiplying, they kill each other.

And now we've come generations later, and now the godly chosen line of Seth is even doing this.

They're filled with violence.

They're killing each other.

It's this anti-God mission.

And it was all people that were corrupted in this way.

Noah was alone.

Church, there's so much application in this for us, isn't there?

You ever look around our world and feel like you are alone?

You need to know if you are a follower of Christ.

If you are a Christian and you have said, my life's goal is to follow Christ, you need to know that you are alone in the world.

You have as a banner, a mission statement that the world does not have.

The world and its ways are anti-God.

And as a Christian, you have committed your ways.

You've said, I'm a follower of Christ.

I'm going to do what Christ calls me to do.

And so to live as a Christian is really loss, isn't it?

You lose out on the living the way the world lives, on living according to the world's standards.

So if you're really going to follow Christ, what you often find is that there are times where maybe you might have to say no to a promotion.

Because if I'm going to be the husband and father, if I'm going to be the church member that God wants me to be, then I just can't commit myself to this thing the way that you want me to commit myself to.

And the world will look at you and shake your heads.

How could you not be in pursuit of more money and more glory and more fame?

And you say, Because I have a different mission.

I'm not about that.

I'm about following Christ.

See, to follow Christ is going to be hard.

Because you need to sacrifice your time, your talents, your treasures.

This is why Christ and his evangelism often turned more people away than he called to himself, isn't it?

Because the cost of discipleship was great.

It was too costly to give up your life in order to follow Jesus.

And yet we find that Noah's living in this anti God world that's so deserved.

Of God's judgment, and he's blameless.

So my question is looking at Noah, looking in a world that's, you know, it's more corrupt than this world, because at least we find ourselves in this room, and we know that there are many other godly churches where the saints this morning at this very time are meeting together to say this, to proclaim these songs, and say, I want to follow Christ.

I know I'm not perfect, but I just want to do it.

Noah was alone.

And so, how did he walk in a way that was blameless?

How did he continue to walk with God in the darkness of this world?

Well, the writer of Hebrews tells us exactly how.

This is going to come up on the screen in Hebrews 11, verse 7.

Hebrews 11:7

Writer of Hebrews says, By faith, Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear, constructed an ark for the saving of his household.

By this he condemned the world and became an heir of righteousness that comes by faith.

How did Noah do it?

Oh, it was faith.

It was faith that caused Noah to make the necessary sacrifice.

Hebrews 11 gives us really a helpful definition of faith.

Noah's faith was a faith that could only be described as a reverent fear.

And see, faith, we discover in Noah, is a belief in God's word that drives us to action.

Drives us to action.

And the first action that faith drives Noah to is the action of looking.

You see what Noah did?

He's in a world that is worthy of God's condemnation, and out of reverent fear, he looks for a way of escape.

And so he finds himself standing with God in verse 13 and speaking to God, and God telling him how he's gonna, he's made a deterrent, he's determined to end all flesh.

And God provides for him instructions to build an ark, to build a way to escape the coming judgment.

It's all because Noah is looking to God.

Noah is listening to God.

In a world that is about to experience the judgment of God, Noah's looking for rescue and he finds it in the ark.

This is why faith is required to even begin to make sense of the Christian message.

If you're here and you don't have faith, there is nothing that I can say, there's nothing that anyone can say to make this message make any sense to you.

It would be like if you were in a burning building and I ran in with it and with urgency said, get out, the building's on fire.

And you looked around and you're like, I don't, there's no, there's no signs of any fire here.

There's no smoke, the smoke detectors aren't going off.

I'm just not gonna listen to this message.

There'd be no need to.

Until you have faith to see the judgment that's coming, you're never gonna look for a savior.

And if you don't see the judgment that's coming, you don't really need a savior, do you?

First thing that faith does for us is that it causes us to look.

And if you're here and you don't have faith, then I would urge you in this moment just to take a moment and look.

Because the reality is that there is a day coming where you will stand before the Lord.

And you find yourself in this period, you're in a period of forbearance, where the Lord, by his grace, is giving you time to pause and think about his reality.

Think about the reality of the fact that you were made by him, made to live for him, and you have not lived for him.

And as one who has chosen to live for yourself instead of living for God, as one who has chosen to be an enemy of God rather than to be a child of God, you, because of your sinfulness, because of your corruption, are deserving of the same judgment the people in Noah's day were deserving.

You may look around and feel that you are free, but there is a day coming where you will stand before the Lord.

And so my question to you right now is will you have the faith to do what Noah did, to look for a way of escape?

To look for an ark.

You know what happens the moment that you by faith look for a way of escape?

You realize that God has provided it.

You realize that this story that maybe you've spent your life mocking, or maybe you just never really understood the story of Jesus Christ coming to this world in the form of a baby, living in perfect obedience to God and dying on a cross is your ark.

It is the only way that you can escape the judgment that's coming.

See, the faith, it points us to look to a way of escape, and when we look, we find, just like Noah, that there is a way, there's an ark, there's the cross.

We can be delivered to safety.

The second thing, though, that I want you to recognize is that when I remember I'm remembered, I can delight in the goodness of God.

When I remember I'm remembered, I can delight in the goodness of God.

You see, it's that same faith driven by a holy fear that drove Noah to build the ark.

Noah was commanded in this verse, in verse 14, to make himself an ark.

We're not told about all the details.

This is another area in Genesis where we would love some of the details, wouldn't we?

Like Genesis 1, let's make that a whole book of the Bible itself.

And in the same way, we want that about Genesis 6 as well.

What did it look like for Noah to build this ark that was like a football field and a half long with just him and his few kids?

Have you ever tried to work with your kids before?

They are a splinter in the seat of progress.

It's impossible to get anything done with your kids.

And yet here is Noah with his family of seven building this gigantic, enormous boat.

I want details on that.

But Moses is not interested in that.

Moses is interested in Noah's heart.

And time and time again throughout Genesis 6, 7, and 8, it comes to Noah's heart.

And in verses 13 to 21, God tells Noah exactly what to do about the Ark, the exact specifications to build the Ark, the length, the height, how to make the ark, what to bring into the ark, exactly what to do.

But the important verse comes in verse 22.

Look at it with me, with your eyes on the text in chapter 6, verse 22.

To Noah did this.

He did all that God commanded him.

Again in chapter 7, verse 5, it says, Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.

Throughout the the chapter, throughout chapter 7, we see that Noah is accomplishing all that the Lord has commanded.

And not only is he set out to do what the Lord has commanded him, he actually does it.

He did it all.

The world is busy chasing their own ways, pursuing their own gain by the means of violence, and Noah is busy building this giant ark.

It's a beautiful verse, isn't it?

I hope at the end of my life I can look at verse 22 and replace Noah's name with my name.

That I did this, that I did all that God commanded me, but the reality is that I cannot.

There are many ways that I fall short of God's command.

And so my question is: what moves Noah to live like this?

I want that heart of obedience.

I want that wise obedience that says, this world is passing away, this world is going to be judged, nothing of this world is of eternal value, so I'm gonna build an ark.

I'm gonna live God's way, I'm gonna pursue God's command.

What is it that causes Noah to do that?

Again, we're told in Genesis, I'm sorry, in Hebrews 11, that it's godly fear.

The thing that drives Noah to do this is godly fear.

I mean, we look at the story of Noah and the Ark, and it's kind of easy to side with Noah, isn't it?

Like, of course, if God tells you to build an ark, if God says, God showed up on the stage today and said, hey, I'm gonna send some rain and it's gonna cover the whole entire earth in a flood, destruction's gonna be everywhere, judgment is coming, go build an ark.

I think you and I would think at least that we would say, okay, God, I'm on it.

I should do that.

Okay, if world destruction's coming, I'm gonna start building the ark.

It just makes sense.

We look at the story, we say, of course, Noah is going to follow God's command.

Of course he's gonna build the ark.

Why would Noah not listen to God?

It would be a delight for Noah to do God's will.

He builds the ark and he escapes judgment.

It would be foolish to listen to man, and yet the exact same situation that Noah found himself in, we find ourselves in.

God says to us, There is a day coming where I am going to return.

And all the things of earth are going to pass away.

You'll bring nothing with you into eternity.

Things of earth are not of eternal value.

They rest, they rot.

Even our lives are not eternal.

Each of us will pass away.

Our jobs are not eternal, our relationships are not eternal.

Nothing is of eternal value because there's a day coming where God will return and we will all stand before him.

And the important thing in that day will be your relationship with him, what you've done to live for him.

And so, what is it that causes us, even though we're in the same shoes as Noah, knowing that there is a day coming where we will be judged, to not pursue obedience.

Well, what led Noah to obedience was godly fear, and what often pulls us away from our obedience is the fear of man.

See, instead of fearing God, we are so prone to fear man.

And to fear man instead of fearing God, what it is, is instead of God being big in your eyes, God is small in your eyes.

And then instead of the opinion of other people being small in your eyes, the opinion of other people is big in your eyes.

The reality of the Christian should be that our view of God is big, and our care for the opinion of others is small.

But what happens in the fear of man is that's flipped on the head, on its head, and all of a sudden we don't really care about God, we don't really care about his glory, we don't really care about what God thinks about our life.

What we care about is what other people think about us.

What do they think about the way that we dress?

What do they think about the way that we work?

What do they think about our personality?

Instead of being consumed by a fear of God, a desire to please him, we're consumed with this desire to please other people?

Well, how do I know that I'm walking in the fear of man as opposed to the fear of God?

Ask yourself this question.

Does the opinion of other people at times control your emotions?

Can what someone says about your work or the way that you look or the way that you act, can that have total and complete control over your emotions?

The answer is yes.

And the reality is that you're likely working to impress other people rather than to working to glorify God.

Noah's driven to faith by this godly fear.

Notice that Noah's it's Noah's faith that drives him to obedience, so that in these verses he can say that he did all that God commanded him.

This is a reality of faith.

Faith works.

Faith gets to work.

When you have faith in Christ, it is a faith that works for Christ.

Often what we do in the in kind of our theology, it's kind of a messy theology, we almost pit works against faith.

We care so much to say that we're not saved by works, which is 100% true.

If you think you can earn your salvation by being righteous enough, by obeying the law fully, by being a good person, you need to know that there is no way you could ever do that.

Because the smallest sin makes you worthy of eternal condemnation.

You just can't do it.

You can't be saved by works.

God says that even our righteousness is viewed by God as filthy rags when it comes to salvation.

We know you're saved by faith alone.

It's faith in Jesus Christ, it's faith in his work that saves us.

But then what can happen is we kind of start to think about works as the enemy.

And what happens is we kind of have this fear of talking about obedience.

Well, I don't want to be, I don't want to talk about obedience because then if I'm obeying God, that's works righteousness.

And we're not about works righteousness, you know.

Martin Luther nailed the 95 thesis to the door for a reason.

We pit faith against work.

But you need to know that the Bible doesn't do that.

Because true faith works.

Makes sense, doesn't it?

If we believe what we believe about Jesus Christ, then our faith is going to work.

If Noah believes what God says about the coming flood and judgment, then he's gonna get to work and start building the ark.

It just makes sense.

If you have faith in what God says, you will live our life according to what God says.

And so we look at this story, and let me ask you this question: What saves Noah here?

What is it that saves Noah?

Is it his faith?

Or is it his work?

Well, you look at the story, and really the answer is both, isn't it?

Like, what would happen if Noah just had faith but didn't get to work building the ark?

Well, the rain would come, the floods would come, and Noah would have nothing to float on with all the cute animals in his family.

It's Noah's faith that drives him to work.

This is why Hebrews says he was saved by faith.

Noah's work, it came from a place of trust.

Noah built the ark as an act of faith.

He built it trusting that in God's goodness he would be saved.

This is the reality of our obedience.

Our obedience needs to come from a place of faith, a place of delighting in the goodness of God, a place from trusting that obedience to God's law, doing what God has commanded me, is the best thing that I could possibly do.

It will turn out to my greatest good.

See, when faith is properly placed in God, our works, they flow from a delight in God's goodness.

This is why you never hear the biblical writers, they never begrudge works.

They are never anti-obedience.

Instead, you read of Psalms like Psalm 119, which is essentially a love letter to the law.

God, I love your law.

Why?

Because it shows me how to live.

Shows me what to do with this energy of faith that is in me.

It shows me how to live and walk with you.

And so let me ask you a question this morning.

Is your faith working?

Is your faith working?

As you look at your Christian life, is there a heart of obedience that is being poured out from this delight in the goodness of God?

Let me ask you about this morning.

As you got up this morning and as you prepared your heart to come to this place and to worship God, where was your heart this morning?

Was this a work that you did apart from faith?

Church, I'm so afraid of that.

Isn't it true that we can kind of just get into the routine of Christianity?

We kind of get into this routine where we do all the works, but we don't really have the accompanying faith to support the works.

So we go to church just because it's the right thing to do, we know it's it's what I should do.

But we're not going to church out of this heart of delight.

We're not going to church out of this faith that when I go to church, I'm gonna meet God in a profound and life-changing way.

So let me ask you this question again, as you arrived here this morning, and this just as an example, hopefully, to cause you to contemplate your life as a whole.

But as you arrived here this morning, did you arrive in faith that God had a word for you?

That as we opened up his word, was your heart ready to say, God, here I am, speak to me.

I want to be changed.

I want to be changed, I want to be spoken to.

As you came to worship, did you come with a level of excitement to say, God, I want to sing your praise?

You know why?

Because you're worthy of praise, you're worthy of exaltation.

You know, that's why we're here this morning.

We're here because the God that we worship is worthy of our worship.

And if you're just here because it's the right thing to do, it doesn't bring any glory, it doesn't bring any delight to God.

God is looking for those who are delighting in him, who are placing their faith in him.

We know this to be true in our marriages, don't we?

A husband does not have to be a great husband to know that when if he gets flowers, he brings them to his wife, and his wife says, Oh, why did you get me flowers?

It's not our anniversary, it's not my birthday, why did you get me flowers?

And the husband says, I don't know, it's just my duty.

It's just what I was supposed to do.

It's what good husbands do, isn't it?

I saw, I was watching a movie the other day, and the guy brought move flowers, and it's what good husbands do, so there you go, there's your flowers, enjoy them.

Well, what's the wife gonna do with those flowers?

I'm gonna guarantee you that they're gonna be in the garbage.

It was the right thing.

It had the wrong heart.

And I wonder how many of our works are the right thing with the wrong heart.

How many of the things we do are the things that we should be doing, but they're not accompanied by the faith that is required of the work that is there.

See, Noah builds the ark out of a heart, faith, trusting that the ark will save him, trusting that the ark is the right thing to do.

Last thing I want you to see is that when I remember I'm remembered, I can wait in the chaos of life.

When I remember I'm remembered, I can wait in the chaos of life.

And so we find ourselves in Genesis chapter seven, and Noah has built the ark, and the waters have risen.

And at the end of chapter 7, verse 24, it says, The waters prevailed on the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

And from this moment on, Noah finds himself in a period of waiting.

I don't know why it needed to take this long.

I don't know if you've ever been swimming and you felt like you're like maybe starting to grow tired.

It does not take a year.

God, his judgment on the world could have been accomplished in a day, could have been accomplished in less than that, and yet we find this period of over 300 days of Noah waiting.

And our question is, what's happening in the waiting?

Well, Noah's on the ark.

And we're given this beautiful picture of the ark.

It's really fascinating that the ark almost functions, it's not a temple, but it almost functions like a temple.

The place where God is present.

There's only two places where God gives such extreme detail in Scripture to how the people of God are to build something for him.

It's it's in terms of the tabernacle and the temple and in its construction and the ark.

And it's significant that the only other time that the word ark, this again, isn't speak, it's not the same Hebrew word as ark of the covenant.

This is a Hebrew word specifically for the boat, but the only other time that this word ark is used is for the device that Moses has put on as a baby when he's floated on the river and then brought sovereignly by God to safety.

Moses is very familiar with arcs.

Moses was saved by an ark himself.

Just as Noah and his family were saved by the ark, Moses as a baby was saved by this flotation of device made by reeds called an ark.

Moses was aware that the ark was the place where God was present.

And we get this picture in, as we read through the story, that God is present on the ark.

So look at what happens in chapter 7, verse 18.

It says, the waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters.

Can I ask you a Bible knowledge question?

As we've been walking through Genesis, when was the last thing, when was the last time in Genesis that something was over the face of the waters?

Do you remember?

This is in Genesis chapter 1, verse 2.

Genesis 1:2

We're in the chaos of the unformed and voidless, purposeless world that God had yet to bring order to.

We get this picture in Genesis 7 that just as the Spirit was present hovering over the waters, waiting to accomplish something, so the Spirit is present in the ark as the Ark hovers over the waters, keeping Noah safe.

You know the amazing thing about this story is Noah is hardly talked about at all.

I would love to get like an inside uh uh inside the mind of Noah.

Like, what is he thinking in this moment?

And yet, Noah is it's almost as though he's just cool as cucumber this whole time.

And it makes sense because Noah's name means rest.

And what we find is that Noah is really.

Resting in the sovereign provision of the ark.

He's trusting God in the waiting.

As the waters rise, Noah looks west, he looks north, he looks east, he looks south.

There's no land, there's no life, nothing but endless waters and waves.

And you get the picture of destruction in verse 23.

God blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens.

They were blotted out from the earth, and only Noah was left, and those who were with him.

This was a picture of absolute destruction.

I wonder if you ever look in your life and your life feels very much like verse 23.

You ever look around and you just see no signs of life?

No signs of hope?

God, what are you doing?

I don't understand what you're doing in my life.

I don't understand where this ship is going.

Maybe it's the loss of a loved one.

Maybe it's chaos in a relationship.

Maybe it's chaos at work.

Maybe it's the chaos of just knowing that there's so many things you need to do in life just in order to be a good functioning person, an adult.

And you just feel like you can't do them all.

And what does Noah have to do in this time where he looks around and he sees no life?

All he sees is chaos and destruction.

He sees no signs of hope.

He has no control over the waters.

He can do nothing but wait on the ark that God provided.

Noah has to rest in God's provision.

He rests as the waters of chaos losh beneath him.

He rests on the boat that God provided.

It's really interesting in verse 16 when Noah finishes the boat.

It says, He went in as God commanded him.

You see this in chapter 7, verse 16.

And the Lord shut him in.

Why did the Lord have to do that?

Was this like when someone's working on a puzzle and you hide the last piece and you put the piece in so you can say, I finished that puzzle?

Did God just want to take the credit?

No, the reality is that this boat was what God had provided for Noah so that he could find safety on the waters and he shut them in to say that he was the one who was going to protect Noah as he waited for the flood to end.

All Noah has to do is rest.

All Noah has to do is wait.

There's a sense here where Noah's requirement, once he gets on the boat, is just to trust in what God will do.

Noah has no control over the waters.

All he can do is trust in who God is and who he's revealing himself to be.

God shut the door.

Noah just needs to trust that he's safe.

And so God reveals himself two things about himself that I think are helpful for us as we find ourselves in places when we need to trust God.

The first thing that Noah is that God reveals himself, that God reveals to Noah is that He's powerful.

God is powerful over the chaos.

God is powerful over the waters.

In the same way, you need to know that God is powerful over the details of your life.

God has absolute sovereign control over every single thing that has ever happened in your life.

His will is always accomplished.

But God's showing Noah not only that he's powerful, he's also showing them that he's present.

That just as the Spirit of God hovered over the faces of the face of the water in Genesis 1-2, so the Spirit of God is here in the boat.

See, God is both powerful and present.

Church, you need to take comfort in this reality.

Your God is a God who remembers you, and your God is a God who is both powerful and present.

We need God to be both of these things.

What if God were power were present but not powerful?

This is the way that I feel the kind of care that I provide for my wife at times.

Especially when my wife finds a spider.

When she finds a spider in my wife, I don't know how she hasn't learned this after 10 years, but she'll always call me, Miles, come deal with the spider.

And I come and I look at the spider and I say, that is a spider.

And then I walk away.

Because I feel powerless against spiders.

I hate spiders.

Now listen, the footnote of this is that I eventually deal with it, but it takes me a long time.

I gotta freak out a lot about the spider.

In that situation, I'm present, but I have no power over the spider.

The spider has complete power over me.

And you need to know that when you cry out to God, that is not what you find.

You don't get a wimpy husband running to your aid.

You get the God of this universe, the God who is powerful to accomplish anything.

The God who can answer your prayer, the way that you specifically pray it like that, but in his wisdom and sovereignty, he's choosing not to.

This is who God is.

He's powerful.

But you also need to believe, church, that God is present.

It's not as though God is powerful and forgetting about you.

The reality that we're confronted with this morning is that God is powerful and he remembers his children.

And so we find ourselves in this place that Noah found himself, in this period of waiting.

And Noah needs to continue to wait.

Through Genesis 8.

It takes 150 days for the waters to leave.

In Genesis 8, verse 6.

Genesis 8:6

You almost get this sense that Noah's ready for the flood to be over, and so he sends out a raven, and the raven flies back and forth to see if the water sort were dried up, but returns with nothing.

He sends out a dove, and the dove finds no place to set her foot, and so returns to the ark.

He sends out another dove, and then that dove returns with life, an olive leaf.

And Noah opens up the window, he looks out, and he sees that the ground is drying up.

That God has providentially cared for him.

Church, you need to know that right now we are in the period of waiting.

Life is not the way that it's meant to be.

One day Christ is going to return.

He's going to wipe every tear from every eye.

New heavens and new earth will be our inheritance.

Our living hope will finally be realized.

But until that day we find ourselves in the shoes of Noah on the Ark, we are in a period of waiting.

And here's Noah.

Our example.

All he can do is rest on the boat that God had shut him in.

In a world of chaos, in a world of disorder, in a world of suffering, and a world of sickness, and a world of sinfulness, in a world of discouragement and despair.

This is the call for you.

To rest in the provision that God has given to you.

Just like Noah rested in the provision that God had given to him.

And your question is then where's the provision?

Where's the provision?

And you find the provision in the cross.

You find the provision in the cross where God came to earth and he said, I'm going to take care of your most eternal need so that you know that if I can care for you for an eternity, I can certainly care for you for a lifetime.

If I can care in the most significant way for your eternal need, I can care for you in this lifetime.

And so the question then for us, church, is this will we rest?

As Noah rested on the ark, will we rest in the cross?

Let's pray together.

Father, God help us to rest and find comfort in this world that it really is without comfort, that's full of so much darkness.

And not only darkness that is outside of us, but even inside of us in our sinfulness and in our shame.

God, we thank you that you have provided us hope in the cross.

A place where our sins are forgiven, a place where redemption is found.

A place where you defeat evil finally and forever.

You disarm the rulers and the authorities on the cross, Lord.

Lord, we thank you for that provision.

And I pray, Lord, by faith that we would be a people of faith that look to the cross as the only hope, as the only sure foundation in a world that is so shaky, in a world that is so unsure, that in a world that is so filled with suffering.

God, thank you for this one foundation, this one secure hope, the cross of Jesus Christ, the eternal promise that we are cared for forever and given eternal life.

God, we give you the praise.

And we pray this in the name of your Son.

Amen.