Genesis: Part 7

Genesis chapter 6.

Genesis 6 · chapter mention

So if you're new here, uh generally speaking, we tend to go through book by book through the Bible.

How many know we're called to preach the whole counsel of God?

And uh so that's how we tend to do it here.

It's our conviction.

And today um I'm gonna try to cover, and don't worry, I'm not gonna preach every single verse, but I'm gonna try to cover the rest of chapter six, chapter seven, and chapter eight.

How many of you brought a snack?

Come on.

Somebody said, Wow.

If you haven't say amen.

Y'all look marvelous, by the way.

Thank you.

All right, Genesis chapter six.

We'll we'll give another min minute here.

You have it?

Smile at me if you do.

Dean, I wish you were up here so you could do the duh again.

You can hum it.

All right, Genesis chapter six through chapter eight.

Well, how many of you were ever asked by a parent if so-and-so jumped off a bridge?

Would you jump to?

Come on.

Here's the thing, we all know what it feels like to be pressured by the crowd, and we know how uncomfortable it can be from childhood into our adult years to stand against the majority.

Yes, how many of you have been following or a little bit obsessed with uh Lindsay Clancy trial?

After 38 hours of deliberation spanned across seven days, it's reported that the jury stood at a 11 to 1 verdict.

Single jurors refusing, one single juror refused to join the other 11 in their not guilty by reason of insanity verdict.

And I just want to say, I'm not here to say if he was right or wrong in his assessment, but how many of you know that it must have been really difficult for him to stand by his convictions?

Well, I want you to magnify that from the courtroom, one against 11 to one against the world.

And that's what we find in the story of Noah.

Let me point you to two verses to begin with in our text.

Verse 9 and chapter 6 says this.

And then I want you to go to chapter 7 and verse 1.

Then the Lord said to Noah, Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation.

Now you may remember a couple of weeks ago that God has decided to flood the earth because even the intentions of man's heart, all of humanity, their intentions are nothing but evil.

There is demonic influence that everybody has given into except for one: Noah and his family.

You know, multitudes of people in our culture today have no regard for God.

As a matter of fact, there are many who aren't even indifferent towards him, but they are violently opposed towards him and anybody who follows Jesus.

But how many know that we are called, like Noah, to stand out against the multitudes and to walk the straight and narrow path of be, as we like to say around here, real followers of Jesus.

And by the way, that's not an option, it's not a suggestion, it's a command that we walk with the Lord.

And so I want to encourage us today to stand strong and to walk in this generation, though we may walk with the minority.

Let's stand strong and walk in faith.

As a matter of fact, do you know that the book of Revelation is all about Christians standing firm in the last days?

In just FYI, the last days are not just some final seven-year tribulation.

The Bible teaches that from the resurrection of Christ through the return of Christ, these are the last days.

I hear people say all the time, yeah, what brother, look around, we're in the last days.

It's like, yeah, we have been for 2,000 years.

And here's what the Bible, uh, the book of Revelation teaches and other places in the New Testament that there is going to be great temptation to try to live comfortable lives by giving in to the secular narratives of our culture, to live like everybody else.

Because how many know?

I mean, it is really tough.

It's getting tougher by the day to walk with Christ in a world that is so opposed to him.

Now, Genesis calls Noah a righteous, blameless man who walks with God.

That's what we're called to be.

Righteous, righteous, excuse me, blameless men and women of God who walk with him.

And it's like, what does that mean?

Let me clarify it.

Righteous here means, well, it does not mean that Noah is sinless, and we're going to see this in a couple of weeks.

I mean, this righteous, blameless man, he gets off the boat, and just a little bit later, what's he do?

He gets skunk drunk.

He's not sinless.

Here's what righteous means: it means Noah lived in a right relationship with God.

This is drawn out even more in Hebrews 11, verse 7.

Hebrews 11:7

Let me just read it for you.

By faith, Noah, being warned by God concerning events 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's righteousness come to him?

By faith.

And Genesis 6, 8, this is really important.

Says that if you go up one verse, it says, Noah found favor, and we talked about two weeks ago.

That word can be uh interpreted as uh translated as grace.

Noah found grace with the Lord, then he walks blameless, then he's righteous.

So let me summarize this.

Here's what the text teaches us.

Taken with Hebrews 11.

Noah is saved, not because he's just a perfect person, but he has faith in the Lord.

In other words, he is saved by grace through faith.

Well, how are we saved?

If you want to come to Jesus today, you may think, well, I'm not the best person in the world.

Pastor, you don't know what I did yesterday or this past week or even this morning.

We call the hour before church the unholy hour.

Because it's crazy in the house, right?

You say things you don't mean.

Well, I've got good news for you, friends.

I don't deserve salvation either.

I can't earn it.

I'm saved here today by grace through faith in Christ.

Noah is righteous, but then he's blameless, which means in the Greek, it means a whole, there's a wholeness about him.

In other words, he has integrity.

Here's what that means.

Let me put it like this: Noah doesn't just possess an outward religion, his heart aligns with his actions, with his religion.

Does that make sense?

It's not just, Noah just doesn't have religion.

You've heard people say, Well, I found religion.

Noah didn't find religion, he found God.

He's blameless.

And then this is what I want some want to spend some time talking about today.

Noah walked with God.

If I had to summarize this, I would put it like this that this this idea of walking with God tells us about the trajectory or the aim of Noah's life.

His aim, though he was not perfect, his aim was to by faith please the Lord, walk with God.

He aimed upwards.

And beloved, this is something we need to think about because you're not just going to accidentally walk with God.

You've got to aim every day to walk with God.

That's why we pray in the Lord's Prayer.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

God, I want to do your will.

We've got to pray that at the beginning of every day.

Set our aim on following the Lord and living for Him.

This is what it means, as uh my uncle preached a couple of months ago, and I've adopted this saying, I love it.

We are to live the Christ life.

Paul said, I've been crucified with Christ.

It's no longer I who live, but what?

Christ who lives in me.

And he put it like this, and I'll never forget it.

He said, When you walk into church, how many know there's some people, not here, but in a lot of churches, it's like, that's my seat.

Do you know that my uncle literally was a guest speaker at a church and he went to sit down, and this little old lady comes up and says, You're sitting in my seat.

But here's what he said.

He said, When you walk into church, you walk in the church, here's what you ought to ask.

Jesus, where do you want to sit?

Jesus, who do you want me to encourage?

Jesus, who do you want me to pray for?

We're to aim at pleasing God.

Listen, we we we know the big things like where do I work, who do I marry?

We seek God's God on those things, but how many know the Bible says the steps of a good man or ordered of the Lord?

Every detail of our lives, we ought to seek the Lord.

The Bible says, in the most base things in life, Paul says, remember, in your eating and drinking, the two most base things in life, do it to the glory of God.

We need to aim at walking with God.

And I want to unpack what that means through the story of Noah and the flood.

Number one, if you're taking notes, walking with God means listening to him.

Here's what we see in three, these three chapters.

God speaks, Noah listens, and Noah obeys.

Let me just point out uh uh a couple of verses here, a few verses.

Look at chapter six, verse 13.

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

Behold, I will destroy the earth.

And if you have a problem with that, if it as a lot of Christians do, say, why would God do this?

Go back and listen online, Spotify, YouTube, wherever.

Uh two weeks ago, you'll find that message where I addressed that question and that issue.

All right, so it says, God said, and so then verses 14 through 21, God commands Noah to build this ark and he gives him the exact blueprint specifications to do so.

Then I want you to go to chapter 7 and look at verse 1.

Then the Lord said to Noah, go, excuse me, go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation.

Then in the next three verses, God commands Noah and his household to board the ark with the animals and the food.

Then let's go to chapter 8.

Look at verses 15 through 17.

Then God said to Noah, Do you see a pattern?

Go out from the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons' wives with you.

Bring out with you every living thing that is with you, all of fle all of the flesh, birds and animals, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may swarm on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.

God speaks, every chapter, God speaks to Noah.

And Noah responds, but watch this.

Do you know that in each of these chapters God talks?

But Moses, if he is in fact the writer of Genesis, never records one word in these chapters that Noah speaks.

Here's how Noah responds.

He responds by doing what God says.

That's the response.

Let me just read you a few verses.

Let's go back to chapter six again.

God instructs Noah how to build the ark.

We just read that.

Now, verse 22, Noah did this.

He did all that God commanded him.

You might just underline that word all.

Then, after God instructs Noah to board the ship, we read those verses in chapter 7.

Turn over a page, verse 5.

And Noah did.

So Noah went out with his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him.

He did exactly what the Lord commanded.

And two times here, you know, we I I pointed out, stress that Noah did all that the Lord commanded, not 75% of what he commanded.

How many of you have ever put together a piece of furniture?

Men, come on.

And you've viewed the instructions, Mike, have you done this?

As mere suggestions.

And you think, you know, you get done building this piece of furniture, putting it together, and at the end there's a couple of like screws left over.

And you think it's all right.

I know what I'm doing.

You know, I'm a man, right?

I know how to build things.

I don't need those instructions.

And then everything looks good until you sit down and the whole thing collapses.

And then if your wife's the one to sit down first, you're in trouble.

You know, the ark, Noah builds it according to all that God commanded.

He didn't follow 95% of God's commands, even 99.5% of God's commands, because the ark built according to 99% of God's command would have been a sinking ship.

And let me ask you, how often do we cherry pick which of God's commands we listen to?

Can I tell you that the Bible, Pastor Jerry, back me up on this?

It's not a buffet.

Like we love buffets, but the Bible's not one we get to choose from.

Come on.

We we don't pick and choose God's commands.

Let me just draw this out.

Some of us, is all right if I just preach and step on your toes a little bit?

Like we love.

We're fine with the verses that talk about working diligently and providing for our families.

But we ignore the commands about giving to the church and to the poor and the marginalized.

We listen to the the text and the commands to love our family.

But we tend to skip over where Jesus says we're to love our enemies.

To forgive 70 times seven when people betray us.

We're fine with the, I hope you are, with the commands about murdering and stealing.

Do I need to spend some time there?

But we ignore the ones sometimes about sexual purity.

Here's let me say it like this: we tend to champion the commands that validate who we already are.

But we resist those commands that require us to go against our own desires.

Can we just sit there for a minute?

There are commands right now that you're fine with and you're obeying because they they they match up with your own values and what's in your heart.

But but is it possible that there's a command in the Bible right now that Christ gives you that you're ignoring or refusing because your heart wants something else?

Noah walked with God, meaning he was striving all the time to follow God's instructions, his commands 100% of the time.

So it should be for you and I.

You could picture a child walking hand in hand with his father.

As a matter of fact, I just found out this morning today's grandparents' day.

How many of our grandparents in here?

I I am, yay, it's the best, isn't it?

Matter of fact, this is my little granddaughter.

This was taken just a couple of months ago.

This is the wallpaper.

It was always my wife on my wallpaper.

When I got this picture, she's been replaced.

Um here's the thing.

Um, isn't this not precious?

Is it not precious?

Listen, we were at the children's museum and we were walking um from the children's museum to a uh a pizza restaurant.

And here's the thing Ivy, with not a care in the world, held my hand as we walked along.

Here's why.

Ivy has had no idea where we were going.

She had no idea the dangers that might be around the corner.

Here's all she did.

She took my hand.

And she trusted pop pop.

And she got to her destination safely.

That's what it means.

That's the picture we get when the Bible tells us to walk with God.

We take his hand and we say, God, I don't know what lies ahead you do.

I trust you.

And I'm going to walk with you.

God communicated with Noah, providing him with warnings of what's to come.

Could you imagine?

God comes to you and says, By the way, I'm going to wipe out the earth.

I'm going to flood it.

Noah hasn't seen a drop of rain.

And here's the way I'm going to save you, Noah.

I want you to build an ark.

I mean, this thing was massive.

It's as long as a football field and a half.

Every floor was over 33,000 square feet.

And then he says, I want you to board all the animals.

Like, have you ever just tried to chase a cat?

Think about this.

And Noah's going, God, you're really gonna flood the earth.

But here's the thing: this may have seemed outrageous to Noah, and he thinks, you know, God's not gonna do that.

No, that's not.

Noah takes the warnings of God seriously.

I want you to look at verse 13 in chapter 6.

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

All flesh.

Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

Look at verse 17.

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

Everything on the earth shall die.

Everyone ignores what's coming except Noah.

Noah trusts God's warnings.

You know, some of the nursery rhymes that we use to soothe our young children with are kind of dark and twisted.

Rockabite baby, a baby's placed in a cradle, that's put on top of a tree, the branches break, and the cradle and all, the baby falls to the ground.

And that's what we sing to get our children to sleep.

There was an old woman who lives in a shoe.

The mom's overwhelmed.

She essentially starves her kids.

She gives them broth but no bread.

Jerk.

And she quote unquote whips them soundly.

And we're rocking our babies to sleep, telling them this.

This one's twisted.

Three blind mice.

A farmer's wife cuts off the tails of disabled mice.

Oh my goodness.

Isn't it strange that we've decided to use these dark nursery rhymes as soothing bedtime stories?

Well, perhaps it's even more alarming when what we've done with Noah's Ark.

Because we paint, we we paint this as a mural on our kids' walls, like in Sunday school rooms.

And it's this cute little, you know, peaceful ark.

Noah's walking out smiling.

Are you kidding me?

There's so much poop in that ark.

He's gross.

There's no showers.

Could you?

I mean, really.

In all seriousness, if we can get serious now, I want you to think about this.

Can you imagine when Noah closed the doors on that ark?

People are still mocking him.

What are you doing, Noah?

Come on, this isn't really gonna happen.

But then the rains start seven days later.

And they continue.

And houses are being washed away.

Can you imagine Noah and his family listening to the blood curdling screams of mothers crying out for their children?

I just picture people trying to climb up the ark, scratching us.

Let us on, let us on, let us on.

After the flood is over, can you imagine Noah and his family walking out the Ark?

It smells inside the Ark, but can you imagine walking out?

Not to the beautiful, pristine earth.

Can you imagine the carnage and the wreckage and the smell, the stench of death?

This judgment that God warns him about may seem extreme, but Noah believes.

And by the way, he doesn't doubt God's goodness in it either.

He trusts in God's just his wise and good judgment.

Well, friends, there's coming another judgment.

Let me read you Matthew 24, 37 through 39.

For as were the days of Noah, so it will be in the coming of the Son of Man.

For as in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, burying and giving in marriage.

In other words, nobody's paying attention to the warnings of impending judgment until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them away.

So it will be with the coming of the Son of Man.

So we know these verses, right?

We know there's coming a judgment.

We we know what the Bible says, but here's what I fear.

I fear that what we've done with Noah's Ark and made it this cute little story we've done with the end of the age.

I I think in the Western church, so many people have so domesticated God that they know the verses, but they think, oh, it's not really gonna be that bad.

And you may not say this, but some of you deep down, you really feel like this isn't gonna happen.

To walk with God is to fear him and to take his warnings seriously.

But Noah doesn't just trust God's warning, he trusts God's plan of redemption.

I love this.

Look at verses 17 and 18, if you would, in chapter 6.

For behold, I will bring flood waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh, and with the breath of life under heaven, everything on the earth shall die, but I will establish my covenant with you.

And you shall come into the ark, you and your sons, your wife and your son's life with you.

God says, Noah, I'm flooding the earth, but I'm gonna save you.

That might have been hard to believe.

Especially because Noah knows he's not perfect.

We talked two weeks ago that Noah knows that he deserves judgment too.

No one says, God, I trust you to save me.

And watch this, he trusts in God's plan, the exact plan.

Noah doesn't try to say, well, man, this ark, this is ridiculous.

Like, I don't want to build this thing.

How about this?

I'm gonna build a tower like a tree house on the highest mountain.

He doesn't try to save himself, he trusts in God's plan as ridiculous as it may have sounded to him.

Let me read you 1 Peter 224.

Christ himself bore our sins and his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

By his wounds, you have been healed.

Noah was saved by going into a wooden ark.

We are saved by going to the wooden cross.

And that message is folly to the world.

In a world that the ones who believe in God, the majority of them, every other religion says, you want God, here's how you get to Him.

You've got to do X, Y, and Z.

It's on you.

And there are even Christians who are still trying to climb the ladder of good works, trying to earn favor with God.

But the only way to salvation is by grace through faith in Christ.

It's to come to Jesus and say, I cannot save myself.

I give myself to you.

Walking with God means trusting both his warnings and his plan of redemption.

Number three, walking with God means, how did I word it here?

Proclaiming God's name.

And Noah does this in two ways.

Number one, he proclaims his name with his words and also with his actions.

In 2 Peter 2, 5, Peter calls Noah a herald of righteousness.

It is really clear when you look at this text and some others in the New Testament that Noah preached for a century.

Can you imagine as he's building this massive boat?

He and his family?

Can you imagine the questions that he must have gotten?

And Noah didn't just say, oh, you know what, this is just the project.

He preached of the impending judgment.

And he preached of God's plan of redemption.

And do you know that he preached for the better part of a century and never had a single convert, not one?

Do you know the fundamental job of we Christians is to, we talked about this throughout the book of Acts, is to make Jesus' name known across the earth.

In our job, this reminds us, it's not to save people.

A hundred years, not a single convert, but Noah is commended for being a herald.

See, I I can't, I can't talk you in to receiving Christ today.

The saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

And I can lead you to living water, lead you to living water today, but I cannot make you drink the living water.

And so I can preach for 50 years in this church.

This church may not grow beyond what it is, but my faithfulness is not going to be judged by how many people came to Jesus, but how faithful I was to clearly preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And the same is true for you as well.

Do you know that according to one Barnett study, only about 52%, which I think is 52%, I think this is generous, of practicing Christians strongly believe that they have a responsibility to tell others about their faith.

There's some of you in here today, you think it's the preacher's job.

It is my job, but it's your job as well, because I'm not going to get to talk to many of your family members and co-workers and loved ones who do not know the Lord.

One life way study showed, again, I think this is generous that only 45% of Christians has shared the gospel with someone in the past six months.

I just from my experience and talking to people in this culture, I think that's very generous.

I would say in my conversations, about 10% of the people that I talk to, most of the pastors I know don't even go out and share the gospel with people.

Let me ask you this.

I I, you know, let me make a statement first.

I think one of the reasons that we do not share the gospel with Jesus goes back to my last point.

I don't think we take the judgment of God seriously.

So let me ask you if you saw on the news this morning that there was coming a flood that was going to wipe out Richmond, it was a sure thing.

What would you do?

You would call, I don't care how introverted you are, you would tell every person you could.

You would call every family member, every co-worker that you cared about.

You would tell them where to go for safety.

You would warn everyone, you'd post on Facebook, you do everything you could to get the word out that a flood is coming.

Well, beloved, there is coming a flood.

God will never again destroy the world by water, but it is going to be destroyed by fire.

New creation is coming, but before it comes, fire of God's judgment is coming.

And if you really believe that, why are we, if we really believe that, I'll put myself in there as well.

Why are we not telling people?

Because the flood of God's wrath is coming.

The good news is that Jesus bore the flood of God's wrath at Calvary.

He drank of the cup of God's wrath so that all who come to him shall not have perished but have everlasting life.

And just by the way, let me say this salvation is not just fire insurance.

My message in sharing the gospel, though this is maybe part of it, is not you better turn or burn, scaring the quote unquote hell out of people.

Here's the thing: you who are broken and weary today, it's not just about not going to hell, like you don't want to go there, to be sure.

But life of Jesus is wonderful.

It's difficult, but it's wonderfully difficult.

I'm gonna get make this really simple for you, application point here.

We have, you'll hear a little bit more about this at the end of service, but we have this, I'm gonna call it a class, a group coming up called Alpha.

It's a no pressure roundtable discussion.

We have a meet, we share a meal, and it just is an introduction to Jesus.

It's it's it's a safe place to ask questions, really geared towards unbelievers, though it's helpful for believers as well.

Last year, I think I counted Ron five people who got saved through that.

Here's what I want to challenge you to do.

You're gonna get some prayer cards at the end of service and some invite cards.

Invite one person.

It starts September 20th, Ron.

Pastor Ron.

And it's seven weeks from five to seven on Sunday nights.

Here's what I'm gonna ask you.

Invite somebody and come with them because they're not gonna come more than likely if you don't come with them.

There's somebody in your life right now that needs Jesus and they need to come to this class.

And the gospel would be shared with them, and we're believing for more to come to Christ.

Okay.

Can you give 14 hours of your time over seven weeks so that somebody might know Jesus?

Walking with God requires proclaiming his word, but it Noah didn't just proclaim God's name with his words.

He he proclaimed his name with his actions.

In other words, let's just say it like this.

I don't need to spend time here, a lot of time here.

But Noah didn't just talk to talk, he walked the walk to use a cliche.

Do you know that statistically, I mean, there's so many studies that have shown this, the number one reason, number one hindrance, let's say, for people coming to Christ is because the great hypocrisy of so many so-called Christians.

Now, none of us walk the Christian life perfectly, but I but you know the type.

You might be the type, and I'm not joking when I say that.

You come to church, you know the Christianese language, you take communion, you sing the songs, you listen to the words, you take notes, you might even teach somewhere or help in some capacity.

But when you walk out of these doors, you live no differently than anybody else.

And then you tell people, oh, I'm a Christian.

You know, it's always funny to me when um, you know, I've worked, I had many jobs in the secular world, and uh I'll I'll work somewhere for six months and uh I'll find out somebody's a Christian, and I'm I go, oh, you're a Christian?

And then I think about I've worked with you from six months, and there was no indication in the way you conduct yourself that you were a believer.

There are some people who proclaim Christ by their actions but never speak his word, which won't save anybody.

But then on the other hand, there are many people who are willing to talk about Jesus, talk about the gospel, but who live completely double lives.

But if to walk with God means we proclaim him with our words and our actions, finally, walking with God means worshiping him.

Walking with God means worshiping him.

I love this.

Uh go to chapter 8, verses 18 through 22.

So Noah and his wife, and his son and their wives are exiting the ark.

So Noah went out and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him.

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

Verse 20, and then first thing, what's he do?

Noah built an altar to the Lord.

Noah built an altar to the Lord.

And he took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird, and he offered bird offerings on the altar.

And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, he said 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, neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.

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

The first thing Noah does in exiting the Ark is he builds an altar.

He doesn't look at the wreckage that we talked about and question God's judgment or his decision to flood the earth.

He worships.

You know, he doesn't act pridefully, watch this, and say, God, good thing you had me.

You know, now the human race is preserved.

No.

Doesn't say that.

He worships, and you know why?

Because Noah, when he walks out and he sees the carnage, here's what Noah knows.

He knows that he deserves to have the stench of death on him as well.

I said two weeks ago, and don't miss this.

The shocking part, when you understand the horrors of sin and the offense that our sin is to God, the shocking part of the flood story is not that God wiped out multitudes of people.

The shocking part of the flood story is that God saved anyone.

And no one knows it.

So when he gets out and he sees the wreckage, he says, God, thank you for your grace.

I worship you.

And just the thought here as well, who's leading the family in worship?

It's the patriarch.

You know, in our generation today, and women thank God for you.

You're the ones leading the home.

You're the ones saying, let's go to church, let's have family devotions, let's pray together.

Men?

It is our job to lead our families in worship.

It's our job on Sunday morning to get up and say, I'm not going to the golf course, not even going to play pickleball.

Come on, somebody.

We're going to church.

I got a text while I was up there from a group chat about pickleball.

And I wanted to write back, but I was singing.

Get to church, folks.

We need to lead our families, men in worship.

This is our only response to salvation.

When we believe in the judgment to come, see, only when you understand the flood narrative and how horrible it was, can you appreciate the grace that we have given us?

And to know that God, that Jesus Christ took that type of wrath to an even greater extent.

He bore the wrath of God, crying out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

So that we could be saved from that kind of judgment.

How do we worship God quickly?

How do we worship God?

Because we're not going to go sacrifice fluffy this morning, right?

We don't sacrifice animals, though that sacrificial system was fulfilled.

Hallelujah in Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who came to give Himself as a ransom for many, to take away the sins of the world.

We worship God.

Here's what Romans 12:1 tells us.

Romans 12:1

We worship God through holy living.

Romans 12.1.

I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies, not just your spirit, your bodies, as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable, which is your spiritual worship.

And this comes, by the way, did you see it by the mercy of God?

You can't do it apart from mercy.

In Christ, we are made holy, and by the power of the Spirit, we can walk in holiness.

Not legalism, but holiness.

Life set apart for his glory.

Then we worship God through gratitude to God, good works, and generosity.

Let me show it to you.

Hebrews 13, 15 through 16.

Through him, Christ, then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God.

That is the fruit of the lips that acknowledge him.

So when we're Bob's going to lead us in some singing in just a moment, and we're going to sing.

And we're going to talk about the goodness of God as I'm doing this morning.

That is a sacrifice of praise.

To recognize that everything you have this morning, you didn't get it.

You didn't earn your salvation.

You didn't earn the money that's in your pocket.

That's not why you had it.

On the just and the unjust.

Every good and perfect gift comes from above.

And so when we sing, we are praising Him with our lips.

Then He says, So the fruit of the lips that acknowledge your name, do not neglect to do good when you serve other people, both in the church and outside of the church.

Those of you who serve in our homeless ministry every Tuesday or Thursday night, that's a sacrifice.

That's building an altar for the Lord when you do it for his glory.

Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have when you give in the offering.

When you give to a single mother or a poor person, you give food to a neighbor who is down on their luck, you are offering a sacrifice of praise to our great God.

You are building an offer when you do it for his glory.

Then he says, For such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

And finally, we worship God through prayer.

Psalm 141, 12, let my prayer be counted as incense.

Remember, Noah's offering was a sweet aroma to heaven.

Our prayers in Revelation talks about like this.

They're going up as bowls of incense before the Lord.

They're a sweet aroma to him.

Communion with God is a way in which we offer sacrifices.

And let me just say this one more time: it's only in Christ that our worship is acceptable.

2 Corinthians 2, 14 and 15.

But thanks be to God who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of Him everywhere.

For we are the aroma of Christ.

This is the pleasing aroma to God, the aroma of Christ that comes through us.

With the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.

Beloved, the Bible compels us in this world to walk with God as difficult as it is, which means we listen to Him, we obey Him, we trust Him, we proclaim His name, and we worship Him night and day.

In 1938, Nazi Germany was annexed Austria.

And while the sil all the citizens were celebrating this, a man by the name of Franz Jaggerstadter, a farmer and faithful Catholic, was horrified to be connected to the Nazi Party in any way.

A few years later, Franz was ordered to serve on the front lines of Hitler's army.

He said, I'll be a medic because I'm about helping people, but I'm not fighting in this war.

But they insisted.

But his Christian conscience would not let him do so.

Do you know that Franz's bishop and his priest said, just go fight with them, if nothing else, for the sake of your family?

And he was appalled by this, and he said, never, because to align with the Nazi party and their pure demonic wickedness would be to turn my back on the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so he refused.

And after his refusal to comply, comply, Franz was arrested, taken from his wife and three beautiful daughters.

And we've moved from prison to prison where he wrote, like Bonhoeffer, many faith-filled letters.

He was on death row, and here's just one example of what he wrote.

He said, I'm writing with my hands in chains, but this is still much better than if my will was in chains.

On August 9th, 1943, Franz was led to the guillotine where he was executed.

Here's the thing.

Franz will heard and will hear when Christ returns.

Well done, good and faithful servant.

Because like Noah, Franz walked with God.