Flash Flood Warning | FGW | October 11 2026

This morning we're going to start a new story called Floods, Giants, and Whales.

So you might be able to figure out what it's about, but just to stick with me for a quick second.

We're going to look at a few uh stories that you probably have heard before, even if you're not a regular churchgoer.

You've at least heard of the characters in these stories.

Some Bible studies are so familiar that that even people who haven't been to church know the main characters, right?

Noah has a boat.

David has a slingshot.

Jonah has a very bad travel agent.

And if you grew up in church, right, you might know even a little more than that.

You can remember the pictures from the children's story Bible that you had as a kid.

We give them away to lots of our new families here.

It's a different version, but we had a I had a particular version.

I can still, in my mind's eye, see art from those books.

You can remember the songs.

Come listen to my tale of Jonah and the Will.

Right?

Maybe you can still tell the story without even opening a Bible.

But here's the question I want us to start with this morning.

What have those stories taught us about God?

Because knowing the plot and understanding the point are two different things, right?

When you hear Noah's Ark, let's let's play a little.

When I say Noah's Ark, okay?

What's the first picture you think of?

Be loud.

Animals?

A boat?

Rain?

Right.

Exactly.

Two giraffes, two by two, their heads sticking out the side.

Old man with a beard, right?

Maybe a rainbow, right?

It's it's a story that we often put on nursery walls.

In fact, literally, it was on our nursery wall until we changed it.

Um and and if you think about it, and and I I'm this is not me, I'm not trying to be offensive in any way, shape, or form.

So if you were a part of the crew who decided to put that on the wall, I get it.

But like we do this.

I think in my house, when I was a kid, we had wallpaper that had Noah's Ark on it, right?

But it's actually kind of a strange decision to put that story on the wall of your children's nursery, right?

Because it's a devastating story.

Right?

The world is full of violence, there's a flood, there's enormous loss of life.

And then we put it on the wall next to the crib.

Sleep well, sweetheart.

Right?

There's a difference between the version we remember and the story that's actually there.

And sometimes we never close that distance.

Some of us haven't revisited these stories since we were children.

Right?

We've grown in all kinds of other ways.

We've taken on big responsibilities, learned how complicated life can be.

But our understanding of these passages stayed where it started.

And that's not a criticism of what somebody taught us when we were five years old.

God bless all the people who are teaching children Bible stories when they're five years old.

But you have to start somewhere, right?

Right?

So that's not a bad thing.

What this is, is an invitation to continue to learn.

Right?

And for some people, you know, you hear this story about a boat carrying animals through a flood, and you have questions.

Big questions.

Like, is this even real?

And you wonder whether church is a place where you're allowed to ask them.

And I want you to know that here at Burnett, we are trying to foster the kind of place where you could ask those questions, be taken seriously, and have a genuine conversation about them.

So you don't need to act more certain than you are.

And friends who are certain, you don't need to be more corrective than the moment allows.

So I'm going to create some permission here because I think, I imagine that there are three probably kinds of people in this room today, right?

There's the people with big questions.

Can this even be real?

And if it is, I'm not sure I like the story at all, right?

There's people in here who have no questions.

You heard the story before, you've considered all the facts, and this is real, and that's all there is to it.

Right?

And and and then there's people who have no questions because you've decided that this absolutely cannot be real, so I have no questions about it because this is just a fairy tale.

Right?

And I want you to know that there's room today in this room for all of those perspectives.

Right?

In fact, to make it fair to put us on even ground, I'm just gonna ask everyone to suspend whatever perspective you have.

Okay?

Try and hear these stories again without your personal filters.

And over the next three weeks, we're gonna go look at some other stories that have a very similar proviso to them, you know, ones about giants and bad travel agents.

We're gonna look more closely at what they reveal about God and what that means for us.

And maybe, maybe we'll discover something we've never noticed.

Maybe we'll need to reconsider something that we've always assumed.

I hope so.

Because we may know the story.

The question is, do we know the God it reveals?

So let's start with a really simple way to approach these stories, and then we'll get into Noah, okay?

Usually we talk about the Bible like it's one big book.

But the Bible is actually more like a library than a book.

It's a collection of writings brought together for over thousands of years by dozens of different authors, different settings, different generations.

There's history in the Bible, there's allegory in the Bible, there's poetry in the Bible, there are letters written to particular people in particular places about particular problems, there's wisdom, there are prayers, there are songs, there are people who are celebrating, there are people who are mourning.

We instinctively understand that different kinds of writing need to be read differently, right?

So you're not gonna read poetry the same way you read the instructions about how to fix your dishwasher.

If you do, either the poetry will suck or your dishwasher will leak everywhere.

Right?

Taking the Bible seriously means paying attention to what we are reading, who is speaking, what is happening, what do the words say, and then what's the context behind the words that we read in English, understanding none of these things were written in English the first time.

In fact, most of them were written in ancient languages that we do not speak anymore today.

So, approach everything you read in the Bible with some decent questions.

Here are three that I would encourage you to bring into today's story.

What is happening in the story?

What does it reveal about God?

And how should I respond?

Right?

What is happening in the story?

That matters because we don't get to read the Bible and make it mean whatever we want it to mean.

Right?

We have to listen to what's there.

Not because it's some authority that tells us so, but just because that's like you don't get to read Tolkien and decide what he meant by the words that he wrote.

You don't get to do the same thing to the authors of the Bible either.

The second question, what does it reveal about God, keeps God at the center of the story.

So often, people want to make themselves, this is this is our this is our culture, we want to make ourselves the hero of every story, right?

God is the hero of every story in the Bible.

So let's keep him at the center of it.

Because it's easy, it's easy to turn every Bible character into a motivational speaker.

Right?

Be brave like David.

Work hard like Noah, make better travel plans than Jonah, right?

But these stories, they're there to tell us about how God has been interacting with humanity throughout humanity's history.

How did people interpret that?

How did they respond?

What did he ask of those people?

The third question brings it home: if this is who God is, what needs to happen to me?

What would it look like to trust him, follow him, and help build the world that he wants to build?

So with all that in mind, we can actually turn our attention to Noah.

Right?

There are lots of questions about this story.

How big was the Ark?

How did the animals all fit?

Did they come in and two by two or not?

How extensive was the flood?

Where is the Ark today if it was real?

You know, like I mean, there's all real questions, and they all deserve some thoughtful consideration.

And I'm not going to try to resolve any of those questions for you this morning.

In fact, the historicity of this story is not the point of the story.

Imagine spending an entire conversation about a rescue arguing about the size of the rescue vehicle and never actually asking why anyone needed to be rescued.

It would be missing the point entirely, wouldn't it?

Right?

So, let's make room for our questions, but let's give the story our attention.

Genesis begins by telling us what had gone wrong in the world.

Right?

And it's much more serious than a few people having a bad day.

Here's what it says Genesis 6, verses 5 and 6.

Genesis 6:5

I'm gonna skip around a lot in this story this morning, so you won't really be able to read it through right from the very beginning, but if you want to start at Genesis 6, we're gonna make it probably all the way to Genesis 9 by the time we're done.

Genesis 5 and 6 says this the Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.

The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.

Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and full of violence.

God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways.

Notice how the passage describes the world.

Wickedness has spread throughout human life.

It is a brutal world that we find Noah in.

The earth, and everyone in it, seems to be corrupt.

It is filled with violence.

Right?

Notice God's response.

He is grieved by what's happened to those he loves.

The people he made are destroying one another.

And it breaks his heart.

Sometimes people talk about the God of the Old Testament of Jewish scripture as though he's irritable, flies off a handle, hard to please, waiting for someone to step out of line so we can jolt them with a lightning bolt.

Right?

That description does not do justice to what we just read.

This is a world being consumed by evil, and God is grieved by what it's become.

And if you think about it, it's probably how you feel about violence too.

When someone you know is hurt or abused, something inside of you reacts and says, this should never happen to anyone.

When someone uses power to exploit the vulnerable, we want it to stop.

Like the International Justice Mission as an example, to stop injustice.

I don't think we want an indifferent God.

Especially when somebody we love has been hurt.

We don't want a God who looks at cruelty and says, well, everyone has their own perspective.

Right?

Don't we want a moral being in charge of the universe?

We want him to see the person who suffers.

We want their life to matter to him.

And this passage tells us that the human evil matters to God.

He isn't detached from what we do to one another.

And God who loves people cannot be indifferent to the things that harm them.

And that helps us to understand the seriousness of the story, right?

Unfortunately, it doesn't really make the story easy.

Because God pronounces a judgment here, and there's an enormous loss of life.

And we should be honest about all that.

I cannot tell you it's not in the Bible.

I cannot explain to you everything about it to pick answer every question that you might have.

I know that we shouldn't make it small or cute, and we shouldn't rush through it as though nobody should ever question the story.

I'm not going to pretend that every question I have about this story has been resolved.

And even in the midst of that, I want you and me to understand and to hear what Genesis says about the world in which this story took place.

It is corrupt and evil and full of violence.

God's response is connected to the evil that is destroying what he loves.

I think we also need to resist another mistake.

The story doesn't give us permission to look at every disaster today and announce that we know that God is punishing people in the midst of the disaster.

Right?

If someone's home floods, you don't stand outside diagnosing their spiritual life.

If we were to do that, Abbotsford would be in a lot of trouble.

Right?

What do we do?

We help.

We bring food.

We meet needs.

We care for people who have been hurt and displaced.

Genesis gives us the explanation for this event within the story.

It doesn't give us a formula for explaining every tragedy.

God does not go around putting tragedies on people because they've been naughty.

Okay?

That's not how the world works.

And I think there's an even more personal question for us to consider here, too.

Because it's easy to agree that God should care about evil when we're thinking about somebody else's behavior.

But what about the harm we create?

Most of us can find a reasonable explanation for the things that we do, right?

We're very good.

We're very good at displacing blame.

I'm stressed.

They started it.

That's just how my family talks.

I didn't mean it that way.

And sometimes, there's something true in that explanation.

We are stressed.

We have been hurt.

And that affects how we react.

Right?

We have learned unhealthy ways of managing conflict, but an explanation doesn't make the damage disappear.

So if our words, for instance, are making someone afraid to speak, that matters.

If our anger is making our home feel unsafe, that matters.

If we're using someone to get what we want, that matters.

Learning to love like Jesus, right, which is what we say we're about here, means caring about the effect of our lives on other people.

We can't pray, God make me more loving, and then refuse to look at where we're causing harm.

Right?

So, let me be clear.

This isn't an invitation to sit here and feel vaguely terrible about yourself.

Okay?

What it is, is an invitation to be honest.

Right?

Specifically, honest.

You could ask yourself a question like, is there something I've been excusing that I need to bring honestly before God?

The story tells us that God's grief over evil means it matters to him.

People matter.

What happens to them matters.

God takes evil seriously.

And you know how most of the time he goes about eliminating evil through people like us, deciding that evil is unacceptable, changing ourselves, and doing something about evil in the world.

In this particular story, it says God took matters into his own hands.

Something that's really important to see is that even if God were to do that, God made a way out.

Because there was Noah.

And this is what it says about Noah.

Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

This is the account of Noah and his family.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God.

In verse 18, God decides to establish my covenant with you, Noah.

You're gonna enter the ark, you and your sons, and your wife and your sons' wives with you.

And incidentally, the story tells us that Noah tried to invite everybody else.

And everybody else decided not to come.

They thought he was crazy.

You ever watch the movie Evan Almighty?

Gives us a like a comedic glimpse into what it might have been like to be somebody who's trying to build a boat and encourage everybody in a place where it rarely rains to get in because it's gonna flood.

Right?

In spite of how crazy it must have seemed to Noah and everyone else, Noah did everything just as the Lord commanded him.

God tells Noah what to do, and Noah does it.

His truth, his trust, becomes an action.

His relationship with God shapes the way he chose to live.

Sometimes we try to separate those two things, don't we?

We want to believe in God without asking whether that belief should change anything about us or the culture that we live in.

But going on a journey with someone always requires movement.

You don't go for a walk with someone by agreeing that walking is a wonderful idea and then staying on the couch.

Right?

Noah's response is tangible.

He builds, he prepares, he follows the instructions that he's given.

And through his faithfulness, life is preserved.

A way is made out.

There is going to be life beyond the flood.

God has not abandoned his purpose for creation here.

And that's an important part of the story.

Even though judgment is coming, God is also providing a way forward.

Which we're going to see in a little bit is an echo of a much bigger theme.

But for now, we have to be careful how we apply Noah's experience.

Right?

Because God is not asking all of you to build an ark.

Please don't go home and start.

Right?

This isn't a promise that if you behave well and do the right things, nothing painful will ever happen to you, or God will bless you in some extraordinary way.

I wish I could make you all that promise.

I love you so much.

I wish following God would give you a couple million dollars.

It doesn't work out that way, you know?

At least it hasn't for me yet.

I hold out hope, Luke.

Noah does show us a life in which trusting God makes a difference to what a person does.

So the question for us is where does our trust in God need to become an action?

For some of us, the next step isn't mysterious.

You know, it's something we already know that we need to do.

We need to tell the truth, we need to apologize, we need to stop a conversation that's turning someone into entertainment.

We need to ask for help.

We need to make time for the person we keep saying matters all that much to us.

Sometimes we're waiting for a feeling before we take the step.

I'll do it when I feel ready.

When it feels less awkward.

When I'm certain they'll respond.

None of those things were certain for Noah.

We had to do without any prime.

I'm sure it felt really bizarre when he started cutting the first tree down.

I'm sure it still felt bizarre when he cut the last tree down.

Right?

We don't always get to know the outcome before we act.

But we can we can be faithful, anyhow.

So one of the bottom lines we should take away from this story is that is that walking with God changes the way we live.

Run, buddy.

He blew a tire.

That's why we say on a regular basis, tune back in.

Everyone has a step to take, right?

We don't all begin in the same place.

Following Jesus gives our lives a direction.

So Noah takes a step.

He does what God asks.

But that doesn't mean everything becomes easy.

Doesn't mean everything will become easy for us.

There is still this really annoying thing that Noah has to do.

I hate it.

Waiting.

Right?

Waiting.

Waiting for God to come through.

And it's a long wait for Noah.

He's in the boat for a long time.

The rain comes, the waters rise, Noah family and the animals are inside the ark.

Fortunately, the thing floats, which is great.

And then the story unfolds over months.

Can you even imagine what months on a wooden boat with a bunch of animals would be like?

These are some of the questions I have.

Like, how do they deal with the manure?

Like, you know, it anyway, I told you we weren't going to answer those questions.

It's really easy just to move quickly through what we're reading because the, you know, the writers are concise.

A few paragraphs later, we're already talking about God rescinding the waters and showing the rainbow.

But if you imagine the surroundings, the same people, like not even the animals, just the same people in close quarters, with another day not knowing what was coming next, or when I'd be able to get away from these darn people for a couple of minutes.

Right?

We aren't told everything Noah felt, but he was human.

We know enough, though, about what waiting feels like to recognize that these would have been really long days.

Right?

Genesis gives us our first glimmer of hope in chapter 8 at verse 1.

God remembers Noah and all the animals with him.

And that doesn't mean that God suddenly woke up one morning and went, oh, you know what I forgot?

Noah.

On the boat.

You know?

I knew I forgot something.

In the story, remembering leads God to action.

So God sends a wind and the waters begin to recede.

God has not lost sight of what he preserved, he's acting for its future.

And notice that even then, Noah doesn't immediately step out onto dry land.

Right?

That's just the hope that the waiting was going to produce something.

Because the waters recede over time.

Noah waits.

He sends out birds.

There's a process that he has to go through before he actually gets to leave the ark.

Even the turning point of the story just meant more waiting.

Some of us understand that very well.

We would love our lives to work like an edited story.

I wish every graph was linear.

Up and to the right all the time.

Problem, prayer, answer, closing credits, done with the movie.

Everybody's happy.

But instead, we have another appointment, another conversation.

Another morning where the situation is still not resolved.

And waiting can make us question even more than the circumstances.

Because it makes us question whether God cares.

Really honest questions.

And I would encourage you not to disguise them.

There are prayers in the Bible that ask how long the waiting will last.

Faith.

Faith includes bringing our bewilderment to God.

We don't have to produce a cheerful report before we can come to Him.

But this passage, this passage invites us to be careful about the conclusion we draw from the waiting.

Because you can still be waiting and held by God at the same time.

Noah is still in the ark when God begins the act of bringing out of the ark.

His limited view doesn't tell him everything about God was doing.

I can't promise that your situation will resolve this week or that every painful circumstance that you're encountering will end the way that you hope.

But what we can see here is that God remains attentive and faithful.

The waiting has not erased God's commitment to Noah.

And that might change what we do with this week, even if it doesn't change the circumstances of this week.

Because you can keep praying honestly, you can keep taking the next step, you can let somebody else help and walk with you instead of deciding that you have to endure it alone.

Sometimes the most faithful thing you can do is say, I don't know what comes next, but I know I need help with today.

And as a church, we're called to be a part of that solution for other people.

Right?

To stay present, to check in.

You guys are wonderful at sending meals to people who need them.

Sometimes I've heard people are like, man, I had somebody come to my house for like the last three weeks in a row.

My freezer is full.

Can you tell them to stop?

I mean, that's a better problem than nobody showed up and said anything to me at all.

That's probably how it should be.

Right?

Overwhelming, abundant generosity.

And I want you to know that if you're in this, if you're in a season where you need help right now and nobody has noticed, it's okay to ask.

You don't have to solve all the problems today, and you don't have to go at it alone.

We are here for you.

Either somebody on our staff or somebody in our church that we're connected to, we will get you the help that you need when it's in our power to do so.

Eventually, Noah and his family leave the ark.

But the story's great promise isn't simply that the water goes down.

God makes a pronouncement about the future.

Right?

In chapters 8 and 9, which we're not going to read, we're told that God makes a covenant with Noah.

A covenant is a binding commitment between two parties in the ancient world.

Here, God states what he will not do.

This will not happen again.

I will find a better way to make the world as it should be.

And notice, notice how wide the promise reaches.

Noah, his descendants, all the creatures of the earth, right?

You ever think about this?

Like sometimes people ask, why is the world so broken?

The world's brokenness, the world was made for us, okay?

And the world's brokenness is tied to our brokenness.

So when God made a promise about how he was going to treat humans, he had to make a promise about how the world would be.

Until the world is made whole again, until we are made whole again, the world isn't made whole again.

We live in a world that reflects our inner condition.

God gives a sign, the rainbow.

So we need to understand what that rainbow promises.

Right?

It doesn't mean there's not any more storms.

It doesn't mean that nobody will experience a local flood.

It doesn't mean life will be painless from now on.

We sometimes want to take these beautiful promises that were made in the Bible and made them do more than they were intended to do.

Right?

And then when life becomes painful, we we struggle to understand how that could be.

We think God broke his promise.

We just need to watch that.

The promise is already remarkable.

Human beings remain imperfect, and God commits himself to our future anyway.

Because God knows what we are like.

But he loves us all the same.

And that's where I'd like for us to sit just for a moment.

He isn't surprised by the depth of the problem that we're facing.

He hasn't mistaken humanity for something better than it is.

He makes his commitment with his eyes wide open and brings us back to who he is.

Should bring us back this morning to the picture of God that we carry.

Maybe you've imagined God as somebody whose patience has finally run out with you, somebody who gave you a chance and you wasted it and now he's moved on.

The covenant in this story shows us something we need to see, that God continues his relationship with the world that it still needs him.

The story didn't end with Noah and his family recreating humanity in this perfection.

Right?

And they still had to deal with sin.

So the story doesn't even eliminate that problem.

But it means it means sin and failure and our brokenness don't define the end of God's faithfulness.

God takes evil seriously and he hasn't given up on us.

And if you read more of the Bible, the problem of the human condition continues to appear.

People receive a new beginning and still carry out old patterns.

The change of their surroundings or their condition doesn't automatically change what's happening inside them.

And you probably have experienced that already.

Right?

You know, sometimes we say things like, when things calm down, I'll be more patient.

And then they calm down, and you're not more patient.

When I get this new job, I'll stop being so I'll stop worrying about my money.

That's funny.

When the season is over, I'll become the person I want to be.

And sometimes the changes that happen in our life are really helpful.

But wherever we go, we bring us with us.

We need more than just improve circumstances or a different venue.

We need forgiveness.

We need love that changes our hearts.

We need a restored relationship with God.

The Noah story preserves a future, but it doesn't complete the Bible's account of how God deals with sin.

As that account unfolds, we're introduced to an even better character.

Jesus.

Because in Jesus, we see God coming close to people who need him.

We see him meeting people who have been pushed aside.

We see him calling us to repent.

We see him forgiving and welcoming and teaching us a new way to live.

And then he goes to the cross.

And the Christian message is that Jesus took on all of our sin, died for it, and rose again.

Opening the way for a new life, a life with God.

I'm going to ask the band to come now as we start to close.

Hear what Paul said about Jesus and God's faithfulness to us in Romans chapter 5, verse 8.

Romans 5:8

God demonstrated his own love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Notice when God demonstrates his love.

While we were still sinners.

He doesn't wait for us to become the finished version of ourselves before he comes towards us.

We like to say this here: there are no perfect people in God's plan.

That doesn't mean we stay the same.

Right?

His love calls us into a new life.

But the invitation begins with grace.

So if you've been waiting until you have your life all figured out before approaching God, can I encourage you towards a different starting point?

Jesus.

Come to Jesus with the life that you've actually got, the one that you're actually living.

Come with the harm you need to own and the harm that you have experienced.

Come with the questions that you still have.

Come with the part of you that's weary, that's just been trying to make it through another week.

We think it makes sense to tell people they can come as they are because of Jesus.

We're not asking anyone to perform or pretend to be a better version of themselves, just so that you can come through the doors and be a part of his community.

And we continue to encourage people to take steps because everybody has a step to take.

And that makes sense because following Jesus changes us.

He loves us where we are and leads us into a life shaped by his love.

So I thought it was appropriate.

In light of that, in light of Thanksgiving, that we would take communion together today.

Because communion is an invitation by Jesus for us to join him at his table.

To come and remember all that he's done.

Remember that once there was a man so in tune with God's love for you and for me that he would rather die than see us bound by sin.

It's so easy to forget.

Jesus is a man, and Jesus is God.

He came himself to take care of the problem.

And he calls us to remember.

Because it's good for us.

Not because he needs to be at the forefront of our mind, because it's good for us.

It's good for us to remember that kind of love.

It's good for us to remember that kind of sacrifice.

So it tells us that on the night Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it.

And he gave it to his friends.

And he said, This is my body.

It's broken for you.

Take this and eat it in remembrance of me.

And then he took the cup and he shared it with them and he said, This is my blood of a new covenant, a better covenant.

God made a covenant with Noah.

He makes a better covenant through Jesus.

I will take care of your sin, and we will be together.

Remember me whenever you drink this.

So as our friends just lead us in a song that hopefully gives us a few moments of reflection.

If you haven't been here before, we've got four different stations set up around the room.

And I would just encourage you when you're ready, if you're ready, because it's perfectly fine to watch everybody else.

If it doesn't feel like this is your moment, that's okay.

But if Jesus is inviting you, it's his table.

That's how we approach this.

So, when it feels right, get up from your seat, go to one of the stations, grab a piece of bread, dip it in the cup, and take it in remembrance of him.