Genesis | Week 3 | Message Only

And so we're gonna look at the story. Has anybody, I don't know if you've never been in church before, has everybody heard of the story of Noah and Noah's Ark?

You've probably heard it. We're gonna look at it today and we're gonna look at it from the perspective of what does it tell us about God? What's going on in this story? And then really in Noah's response to God, what can we learn from that? What does Noah's response to what

God is doing that we can apply to our own lives? And what we're gonna see here as we look at this story is this big idea. And it's simply this. When I live from God's grace, I will listen to God's voice.

And I'm just gonna I love how Daniel last week says, I'm put my cards out on the table. I'm just gonna put out right here. Here comes a little bit of a throat punch or a wake up reality call is what I'm telling you is if you live from We don't live for God's grace, we live from it. We're gonna see it right here at the first verse we're gonna look. When I live from his grace, he calls me, he loved me. He's the one that calls me. I embrace that, I accept that. If I really have accepted the grace of God,

I will listen to God's voice. Which means as we talk a little bit, as we look through Noah's story and we see what does that mean? What does that look like to listen to his voice by living from his grace? If you're hearing the things we're looking at and say, well, that's really not what I'm doing.

But you say, but I'm a follower of Jesus. I show up at church, but I'm not listening to his voice. Then you're not living from his grace. See, when you truly embrace his grace, that unlocks

the willingness, the power and the strength. Doesn't mean we get it perfect, but it does unlock our willingness to do it. So if I won't do it, even though I say I believe in his grace, there is something blocking you from doing it. And the reason I wanna say this before I get into this is I wanna set the stage for what to think about. I don't want you to sit there and go, yeah, I believe in Jesus and I'm not doing it. I gotta force myself to do it.

Should do it, but you should ask yourself a question first. What's making me not? What's making me not want to? Why can I listen to this guy preach God's word and it's accurately saying what God's voice is saying? And I'm gonna sit there and say, I believe in Jesus, but I'm gonna refuse to do that.

You can sit there and be mad at me. You can make up all the excuses. You gotta ask yourself why? Because it is true. If you really have embraced God's grace, you'll listen to his voice. And if you're not, there's something in between either A, you don't even know his grace,

you've got the wrong idea of what it means to know Jesus, or like many of us, we've fallen for, there is some hurt, habit or hang up that is stopping you.

There is a hurt. There's something that's hurting you. For some reason you're like, I can't trust God. I don't know there's been hurt in your life. You need to deal with that hurt. It could be a hang up. Like, well, like even we'll talk about one of the hang ups.

Do I really have to listen to God's word? Did that really happen? You're listening to the original lie that Daniel talked about last week when we looked at chapter three. Did God really say this? And you're getting duped.

Or you've developed some habits in your life. I can't do that with my time. I can't do that because you know what, I'm too busy doing this. And so what you have to do is ask yourself why do I not want to and why am I not? Why am I being stopped? And then let God's grace help you deal with that.

And that should unlock the door, okay? So what does this mean? What does it look like? Well, when we look at the story of Noah, you've heard the story. As we We're gonna jump through, not read all the verses, we're gonna jump through and tell the story. It can be broken down into three parts. It's really complex.

Noah builds a boat.

Noah gets on the boat. Noah gets off the boat. There you go. And in all three of these, he does stuff. God's called him. He's listening to God's voice. Matter of fact, all three of these parts of the story has a moment where he does exactly what God told him to do. Actually says that, he did exactly what God told him to do. And as we look at that, what does that mean? What does it mean how he listened to his voice? What did he do? How did that happen? What happened? And before I read,

first I wanna read verse eight. Just read verse eight, make a few observations, then we're gonna dive into the story. It says, chapter six, the first seven verses kinda unpackage that world's gone bad. God's gonna do something. But in verse eight it says, but Noah found favor with the Lord.

It says, Everyone's evil, everyone's corrupt. We'll see that in the story. But he says, Noah found favor. This is before he did anything. That's why it starts with God's grace. Noah didn't do anything to earn God's grace. God's grace came to Noah and he accepted it. And then that changed everything else.

It's important to remember this because as we go into the story, there's a flood and there's an ark, right? The boat, the ark. A flood and an ark. Before I jump into Noah, that reveals a couple of things about who God is and what's going on.

First of all, what we said last week, the first two chapters of the Bible lay out God created and he says, it is good. Chapter three, it becomes not good. The next eleven eighty six chapters of the Bible is the redemptive story of how God has a plan and a way to make it good again.

That's to summarize the whole Bible for you there. So in this part is where he's starting with this guy, Noah. But why does he send a flood? Why would God That's one of the things people get hung up. Why would God be Why the flood? Why a boat? Well, first of all, the flood shows that sin is serious.

You see, it reveals God is righteous. He is holy and he is just. And you can't play a game with God. People go, why would he wipe everyone off? Because he created everything and he is holy and he's perfect and he is the judge of all. And when we sin, we are not mistakers, we are sinners.

If you think of sin as just something, well, I made some mistakes. Why can't God look past them and say, it is not a mistake. He says we are corrupt, we're evil, we've bought into the lie. The same thing that took out Adam, even now we were born into that. We are born naturally wanting to be selfish. We were born naturally wanting to be God. We are born naturally wanting to go, I don't think I trust God. Even when we come to church, we'd still have an inclination

to not wanna trust God. And that is a serious, serious issue. So you go, why would God do that? If you say, why would God wipe you out? That you are assuming you're not as bad as you are. That's the problem. So yes, sin is serious. You're not a mistaker.

We are sinners, even Noah. But the fact that he said he found favor and then he ends up with this ark, the boat. What does the boat show? It shows God's grace. The Ark shows God's grace.

So what you learn about God is he is holy, righteous and just and he will judge sin and sin is serious and he's gonna do that and we all are sinners. So you stand before a holy righteous God who is judge of all and you stand guilty before him. And you got to know that every one of us do. But God is also love.

So he has a way out, a way to save us. That's what the story shows us about who God is and what's going on. And so here we go. So the three parts, what do we learn then? If I'm going to live from God's grace,

will listen to his voice. What does it look like to listen to his voice? There's a couple things we must do if we're really listening to his voice. And the first one is walk with the Lord.

I will walk with the Lord. Look what it says. Verse nine of chapter six. This is the account of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man. The only blameless person living on earth at the time. And he walked in close fellowship with the Lord. Now you're going, wait, you just said even Noah was a sinner. He says he's righteous and blameless. Wasn't he perfect? Didn't he do it? No. It said he was right. He says he found favor first, now he's called righteous and blameless.

The favor he found accepting the grace of God made him righteous. It put him in right standing with God. Same thing today. When we accept Jesus,

we accept his grace. We are declared righteous on Jesus' behalf what he did for us. He still has a struggle with sin. He still has that battle. If you read if you've been reading through the Bible with this, know, right after he does all this stuff, he immediately gets drunk and does something really stupid.

So it's not like he never did dumb things. Righteous means he's in right standing with God. Blameless, the term there is talking about how he's seen amongst other people. Meaning he gets along with people. He's seen as a good guy. He's not seen There's no one has any cause to to to bring a a accusation

against him. He's a good neighbor. He's a matter of fact, more of us as Christians today, especially the way we act on social media when we're talking about politics, should choose to be blameless

instead of picking fights. It means he get along with people, which is gonna be interesting in a minute when what God told him to do. Because that probably caused a little bit of issue. But it says he walked in close fellowship with God. Said Noah is the father of three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

Now God saw that the earth I wonder what the first Easter was like for them. We're gonna have ham. I wonder if that freaked the middle child out. I knew it, I'm the middle child. No one cares about me. That was my son. I said that just because he was in here and he always says that. Anyways,

now God saw that the earth had become corrupt and was filled with violence. Here's the part where he shows that sin is serious. God observed all this corruption in the world for everyone on earth was corrupt. Are you on earth? You're corrupt.

And he goes, So God said to Noah, I've decided to destroy all living creatures for they have filled the earth with violence. Yes, I will wipe them all out along with the earth. So he comes over and says, hey, I noticed everyone's corrupt. He's walking in fellowship. He's hearing from God. He goes, I'm wiping everything out because everyone's corrupt. And the very next thing he says is he looks at me, he goes, build a large boat.

You ever thought about how awkward that transition is? He's walking and talking with God and God's saying, Listen, everyone's corrupt, you're corrupt, but you know what? And it's all this stuff. I'm gonna wipe everything out. He's that's kinda concerning.

And he goes, And blah, blah, blah, blah. And he goes, build a big boat. That is so random. We don't even know if they knew what boats were where they lived at this time.

And why would you need a boat? Because he says, he goes on to say, I'm gonna send a flood. What's a flood? They've never seen a flood. I mean, I was gonna say, okay, I'll build a large boat. But what does that mean? And what's a flood? And what's rain? And there'd be so many questions.

He asked him to do stuff that he didn't even understand. And I'm gonna tell you, when we walk in close fellowship with God, we will hear his voice. And you know the way you hear God's voice today? It's right here. And God will ask us to do things that upfront seem disconnected and nonsensical.

And they'll look even dumber to the people around us. Yet you got to choose to trust because when he said build a boat, he's actually rescuing him and his family. He's showing them life. He's not trying to ruin his life,

but he's like, and he already said earlier, it's going to be over. I took over a hundred years to build this boat. And so he told him to do it. And then if you look down in verse 22, it says, So Noah did everything exactly as God had commanded him. You see, to listen

to God's voice means you walk with God. And if you walk with God, you will do the work of God. You will.

And if you can say, I walk with God, I come to church, I sing songs, but when it's clear in scripture what I should be doing as a Christian, I refuse to do the work of God. You're not walking with God. You're fooling yourself. You think you are, you're playing a game. And he was willing to do this when it makes no sense.

And it was a pretty big boat. If you go on, I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but it describes the boat. It was a football field and a half long and four stories tall. Matter of fact, they built a replica of it in Kentucky to exact specifications and here's a picture of it.

You can go there, it's a big museum. They can show you how it all worked using And they show how they built this, how it could be built with the technology he had at the time. And yeah, it would have taken them about a hundred years to build this thing. And look at the people, they're small. Look at how huge that thing is. That's a big boat. In Jaws,

you need a bigger boat. That would have been a good sized boat. Probably too big. But it has no more. This was built for flotation, not navigation. And I know that when you say, okay, I walk with God, but to really listen to what he says, sometimes he asks us to do some stuff that makes no sense. And sometimes the

enemy gets and makes you say, did God really say that? Some of us hold up and don't really, really trust God because you don't even trust this story. Because the same lies, did that really happen?

And then all the science says that's impossible. That's not true. I'm not gonna go into all the reasons why it's I'm gonna give us one because we're curious and I just want you to know. But if you wanna know how this story could easily have worked, go to Answers in Genesis and you can look up all the questions about creation and all that. You And can see a lot of people with lots of letters before their names and letters after the names that are just as qualified as any scientist out there that says God's not real can show you that it is not scientific

intellectual suicide to believe that this really happened. It's not.

That is an absolute lie. And sometimes we as Christians grab onto it because if I can say that didn't really happen, I can then say the word of God. Yes, words of God is in there, but it's more of an example. We don't have to listen to all these explicit commands because it's more of this inspirational tale.

So you can take away the authority of the word of God. That's the lie. But this really could have happened easily and it did happen. Because you say that may be a big boat, but is it really a big enough boat? Well, you can see this thing from a mile away in Kentucky.

Matter of fact, I often wonder, says that he was blameless before the people around him.

Know for over a hundred years, people started to He talked in the book of two Peter talks about he witnessed and testified. He was telling people about what was coming. He was a prophet, probably telling them, you better build a boat too.

And you better get ready and you better turn to the Lord. But nobody listened to him. They probably mocked him. They're like, what is he doing? Matter of fact, I think Noah building this boat in his backyard was the big how HOAs got started.

I think his neighbor goes, Man, Noah was a great neighbor but what is he building? He's blocking my views. I go, What on earth does he need that for? What is happening? You know what we need? We need an association of us homeowners

that can put down some rules so you can't do that. Let's have a homeowner say, yeah. And they went, hey Karen, will you be the first president? And she's already cutting her hair. I'm all in. And if we're gonna do this, I got some ideas. That part didn't happen. Or maybe it did, who knows? But the one thing is,

how did this even work? Well, there's a couple things that prove that the Bible is true and it really was God talking. One thing, the dimensions. It's six times as long as it is wide, six to one ratio, length to width. Know what's interesting? You know what we figured out through trial and error

all the way to modern times of the best dimension if you're gonna build a large boat to make it seaworthy and buoyant and be able to handle storms and do stuff the best. You know what the ratio is in modern ships? Six:one. How did this guy know that?

Thousands and thousands of years ago, he knew it. They didn't re figure that out for a long time. I think they probably figured out because some guy that builds ships goes, I wonder what that six to one ratio is like and tried it. He said, this works better. So that's a cool thing. But now about the size of it?

Could really the animals fit? Well, there's a couple of things you gotta understand. First of all, from the Christian point of view, if you've misheard science, adaptability got built in. We evolve within ourselves. Like plants change,

people change. Why do you think we look so different? Why do you think? Because we adapt to our surroundings. That's why I'm better looking than all of you. I have really good adaptability. Just kidding. No, but we don't deny that. And most evidence, when you read a textbook, this is evidence of evolution.

It's all that. That's what it's It circulates proving that. It doesn't prove anything about us becoming different creatures. It's just all of the stuff that got built into us, the adaptability. So you don't need every subspecies of every type of animal. You understand that. You didn't need them all.

And what they do know this is the Ark was big enough to hold five twenty two livestock railcars in storage. That would hold 128,000 animals the size of like a horse to a cow, a cow to a horse sized animal. You could hold 128,000 animals that size. If you narrowed it down with some

scientists that knew all the animal subspecies, they analyzed it and said, how many animals would you need to cover every because you'd leave the fish and all of that out. You don't need any of just land animals. How many would you actually need to put in the ark at a time to cover all the species? 75,000 animals.

About half. Guess what the average size of an animal is on this planet? About the size of a sheep. So you have almost twice the room for animals that are more than twice the size. There was massive amount of room in the Ark.

They would have easily fit that, had all the storage for food. They could have built a racquetball court and Dutch bros in there if they wanted to.

And the line would have still been long even though it's only Noah and his family. You got some monkeys in there hooked on that stuff.

So that's just one thing that said it would work. It could easily have worked and they built this using the technology. They could have easily done that. It would have worked. You could have had all that room and matter. But then one other question that comes up is people, but what about dinosaurs?

We know what happened to the dinosaurs. Here it is.

They were bad at managing their calendars.

Husband and wife didn't talk to each other.

That's a joke. But the truth with dinosaurs is they easily, there's a lot of proof out there, sign them, it says we walked to the earth at the same time. The Bible even talks about some animals that describes dinosaurs. And they find fossilized footprints of like giant dinosaurs right next to human ones from the same era.

They go, well, how did they get on there? They're huge. Once again, use your brain. The average size dinosaur was the size of a horse. There's only a few that were huge. And once again,

how were they related? Like lizards and stuff like that. Like most of them, you didn't even probably need too many of the different styles because they were from the same species basically. And you're not dumb. You're trying to propagate the earth with stuff afterwards.

Guess what? You're going to take smaller, younger ones. They're not going to be fully grown. They're going to be on the boat for over a year, we're going to see in a minute. The other thing is you had plenty of food too, because you know how many different animals go into a hibernation mode?

You know how easy it'd be for a lot of these animals to just hibernate the whole time they're there? And that's taking out the fact that if once you believe there is a God that can do supernatural things, He can just put animals into a deep sleep.

It's not ridiculous. It only becomes ridiculous if you decide I cannot accept that there's a God, so I'm gonna look for reasons to say there's not. Don't check your brain. All right, that's enough of that. Want to get too bad. That's just fun stuff. But anyways,

you walk with the Lord. He walked with the Lord. And like I said, walking with the Lord will result in doing the work of the Lord. How about you? If you say you know the grace of God, I'm a Christian, I'm a believer, this is my church. Well then let me just Can you tilt your chin up right here? Need to

Where are you serving?

It's that simple. If you're walking with the Lord, the New Testament is very clear of what it means, what the work of the Lord, what he's called us to do. We're the body of Christ and everyone that says they're a part of a church has been specifically gifted and called to serve in their church.

So if you say you walk with the Lord, you say you're a Christian, you say this is your church, but you do not serve. You're not walking with the Lord.

And you know what, look at the room, it's packed in here. A lot of you are here over the last few months because about 500 to 700 people chose to leave this service so there'd be more room. And now we're out of room again. We're trying to build another building, but until then we're going to five services

because we're called to still be a modern day Ark. The church is called to point people to Jesus by loving them like Jesus and we need the room. But to go to five services, we need people to serve. So I'm going tell you, if this is your church, I'm going to encourage you and challenge you. If

there was ever a time to roll up your sleeves and jump in, it is now. We don't have a hundred years like Noah did. But here's the thing, if you understood the grace of God and what he wants to do when you choose serve him and serve in the body of Christ, what he'll do with your time invested,

what you'll do when he says build a large boat, which might mean go volunteer in children's ministry. Some of you would rather spend a hundred years building a large boat, I get it. But

there is an eternal impact with what you do at that time. And every Christian that says this is your church, that if you say you don't have time to serve God, then you are spending your time on a lie, on something that you don't need to be putting your time into. You just are.

You need to choose to do it and you should, you should want. If you're not seeing the grace of how it works and what God will do with that sacrifice, you have no idea what that time, holding

a baby, being on guest services, helping clean the place up, doing that. Whatever the team is, you never understand the eternal impact you have. It hit me yesterday. We did the baptisms. I'm And gonna challenge you to get baptized at the end of this service if you haven't been. But I had

a kid that I coached way back when I moved here. I said, you know what? I'm doing the church. I'm serving the church. But one the things that we gotta do is we gotta reach the community. And I had an opportunity to serve in the community.

And I thought of it as part of my calling as a Christian. I became one of the coaches at Higley High School. I was one of the first I was the pitching coach for varsity, the first time they ever had the program. I'm a pastor, I'm doing it. I'm not one of the teachers. So I just shared my faith.

If these kids would have trouble, I'd talk to them about life. I'd share my faith with them. I'd encourage them. And I had this kid on the team, his best baseball player ever coached. He went on, played some professional baseball and all that. And then I lost track of him after all, but I share my foot with him all the time. He just sent me a video last night of him baptizing his wife spontaneously.

Here.

He had moved, he took what I said seriously when I told him about Jesus.

And I ended up, I was the guy that just planted a seed. I didn't see the fruition at the time. He ended up moving away and all that. Turns out he listened to what I said, caught on hard times at one point, accepted Christ at another church. He didn't live here. A couple months ago he moved back to this area and started coming. And now his wife, he's like, what you shared just It was the perfect timing. I was able to like talk to my wife, she says, you're right. I need to get baptized. He got to go out there and baptize her and he loves his family and he's awesome and he said, thank you. And you know what he called me?

Coach. All I did was show him how to pitch and not good enough because that's why he only got as far as he did. Because he was way more talented than my ability to coach. I'll put it there. But this is twenty years later.

This guy's all eternity, his wife, his kids, an entire generation.

God let me do that.

What are you missing out on? Running after all these other things that you're trying to look for meaning and purpose, and you're running right past where real meaning and purpose is found. If you want to walk with the Lord, get a roll up your sleeves and get involved in the work of the Lord. What's holding you back?

Deal with the issue that's holding you back. Don't use the issue as an excuse. Deal with the issue and move forward and see what God does. I mean, the New Testament says the harvest is plentiful. The workers are few. That means not enough of us get involved.

And then we sit there and go, what's going on in our culture? What is going to hell? Churches are bad these days. You know what you're talking about when you say that. You're talking about yourself. It's us. We're the church. We need to get involved. Walk with the Lord, do the work of the Lord.

And you got to come to this point where you care more about what God says and where God's taking you than what anyone else says, including those lies in your head, including those hurts, those habits, those hang ups. Get some help, deal with them. You'll thank me for it later.

Well, now it leads to him getting on the boat. So he has to get on the bus, part two. And what he does is walk with Lord, then he has to wait on the Lord. This is the one where a lot of us bail.

This is where we stop trusting God, is when you're just floating in life. You hear of God's grace, you get on the boat, you're like, yeah, Jesus loves me. And now you're just floating.

Floating through life. Look what it says. It says, When everything was ready, the Lord said to Noah in chapter seven, verse one, Go into the boat with all your family. Now what's interesting, it says go in English, but that's not the best translation of the Hebrew right there. You know what's a better translation? It should say, Come into the boat.

It literally, God says, come into the boat. Now that's important. That's why I wanna point it out because it's kinda cool. Because saying go into says something different than come into, doesn't it? Go into is why we resist trusting God sometimes. When he tells us to go somewhere, he's like, I want you to go into that stinky boat with all those animals and you're to be stuck in there with just your family and the pets.

Some of you experienced COVID was that same way. Go in there and you're stuck with the family and the pets. That's it. That's what you're gonna do. But he doesn't It's like, God's out there going, oh, get in there. But no, what does come into imply? Where's God at? He's in the boat.

So when he calls us to come, he's calling us to not only

walk with him, but walking with him means you're gonna be with him. And walking with him sometimes you're gonna go to a waiting place. Where what it seems like is it seems like this was exciting. God loves me. Now life just seems to be the groundhog day. The same old thing over and over and over again.

You get caught in this this cycle of waiting and waiting. You're like, alright, I love you Lord, but man, it seems like know what? Well, you know what they did while they float around? They float around for about a year.

And what's crazy is the last two months, they actually were on dry ground. You could see the plants. You can see the plant life. When you read the story, it's not like they floated, hit dry ground and jumped off the boat. They stopped moving and God still didn't let them off the boat. They had to sit there and look out the windows and see life and see the trees and see the ground. And they stayed in there for another two months.

You know why? The ground wasn't ready and the plants needed to grow back. Otherwise, are they gonna eat?

And sometimes that's when it's hard. Especially when God said, you wait, wait, but I can see stuff right there. But he goes, but if you go when it's not ready, when you're waiting with the Lord, he's not trying to forget about you. He's right there with you because he's preparing what's next. And when you run ahead of him, you get bogged down in the mud and you'll starve to death.

Spiritually, physically, emotionally. But here's the problem with waiting. Think about it. They got on that boat. What is that like to float around for ten months? I mean that must have been a weird cycle. I mean you're sitting there every day. Family, work, scooping poop at work. Family,

work, dealing with poop at work. Think about it. Does that sound familiar to anyone? Family, some of you have little kids or really old people in your house. So you're dealing with poop at home too. And so it's like family, poop, work, poop. Family, poop, work, poop. You've never heard a pastor chant that, have you?

It's monotonous. What do they do for fun? Play I Spy? How would that work? I spy with my big brown eye something blue. It's the water, isn't it? Yeah, all right, your turn. I spy something with my big round. Something blue. It's the water. I'm so good at this game.

Does God have you in the waiting place? Because when we're in the waiting place, that's when we want to bolt.

It's probably a little bit easier for Noah because when he looked out, all you saw was ocean. And if they tried to jump off ship, mean they could have jumped off ship. They had no steering wheel. You couldn't say Jesus take the wheel or take the wheel back. There was no wheel.

So I guess they could have just said, I've had enough and jump in the water, but then they know they would drown. The problem with us today is we are floating through a sea of death, but that sea of death has lots of stuff that looks alluring,

that promises something. It's like there's sirens in the water. You know, the evil mermaids that sing you the song

that say, Come to me. And you want to jump off the boat because you're sick of waiting around going nowhere. And God, you listen to the lie again, you get impatient and we get impatient. We listen to that siren song. And that's when we make the dumbest decisions relationally.

I'm not waiting anymore. I'm not going to wait for Mr. Right or Mrs. Right. I'm just going to go with Mr. Right there. Or we make horrible financial decisions. We make bad decisions with our time and our relationships because we listen to the song of the siren to jump ship. And that's all death too. It's just a sea of death

And why? See, if walking with the Lord, the keyword there is obedience. Waiting on the Lord, the keyword is endurance or patience. We are very impatient people.

Or maybe I'm just really impatient. Seems like I'm always telling you guys illustrations about being impatient. I'm impatient in the store, I'm impatient in car, I'm impatient when I travel. I just discovered a whole new level of impatience.

I sat there the other day and my wife gets up at the crack of dawn. I mean like how do you even get up this early? So I get up a little bit later. So she always makes coffee right away. So I get up, it's little bit cooler. So I throw it in the microwave.

And I got mad the other day because I realized I pulled it out and went to drink. It's still cold. And I was mad because I kept forgetting the fact that we had our original microwave,

our big one that was really powerful. It broke about a year ago, but we were gonna remodel some stuff. So you get caught like, well, let's not buy another microwave till we figure out what we're doing with the microwave. So I brought my little one from work that's not as powerful. So it doesn't heat things as much. So I forget. I pushed thirty seconds. Old microwave, I'd almost burn my mouth when I drink it. New microwave, I pushed. I wasn't thinking. I'd up, I pushed thirty seconds. I was like, oh, this is the nastiest tasting thing I've ever tasted. And then I'm mad that I had to put it back in for another thirty seconds.

Like I can't believe I'm so inconvenienced by this shoddy microwave that takes an entire minute to heat up my coffee. Oppressed.

Think of how stupid that was. I think back like hundreds of years ago that to have a hot beverage, you needed to have a fire.

And so first you had to go out into the woods and get some wood. And then you came in and you hoped it was dry enough. Then you had to start the fire and you hope those rocks or whatever it was you're rubbing together would get the fire going. Then you got a fire going, you had to get the kettle. Then you're like, Oh no, I ran out of water in our water barrel. I gotta go down to the river to get some more water or the well and drag it up. And then you get all that. By the time you did all that, you're like, What's coffee? We haven't invented it yet.

We're that way with God man. We do not like as Doctor. Seuss said in the Oh the Places You'll Go. We like conquering the mountains. We like the adventures but we hate the waiting places.

But what if God's waiting with you because he knows what's next is not ready.

You know what you need to do when you're waiting? Be faithful. Faithfully walk with him. Do what he's asked you to do through the whole process.

Wait. You need to wait because he says come into the boat.

Says in verse four, seven days from now, I will make the rains pour down on earth and it will rain for forty days and forty nights until I've wiped all the earth, all the living things I've created. And look what it says, So Noah did everything his Lord commanded. He got that. He not only waited, he got on the boat seven days before the storm.

What was that like? Because it says Noah listened to God. We're not sure where his family was at this point. They're following him. That could have been an odd conversation.

We're like, you know what, I started helping you build this thing because mom was sick and tired of you. You're almost 600 years old. You need to get out of the house and have a hobby. And that was one thing. Neighbors started looking at us funny for the last one hundred years, but now you want us to get on the boat? It's sunny and 78 degrees outside.

And then he sat. And then in verse 10, after seven days, the waters of the flood came and covered the earth. And then God had closed the door behind him.

And then you get to chapter eight and it says, and he was now six zero one years old in verse 13. On the first day of the new year, ten and a half months after the flood began, the floodwaters had almost dried up from the earth. Noah lifted back the covering of the boat, saw the surface of the ground was drying. Two more months went by and the last day was dry. The last thing I wanna say about this waiting Lord is, here's what a lot of us do. We want to trust God. We're like, God, rescue me. And we know he saved us, but then we want him to continually save us throughout life. Like we're in something tough. We go to him and we're like, all right, life's not working. I know I've made bad choices. I'm sorry. And we come back and we're like, please get me out of this, get me out of this. But then what we can't wait for is for that boat to get us to the other side, open the door and we want out. The second we're there, we just want out.

But they stayed for two months waiting for God's timing instead of going, All right, God, here we go. Help me through this, help me through this, help me through this. All right,

damn, I got through it. See you later, God. I'm gonna go do what I wanna do. Like your kids do. Help me with this. They're all crying, all Then they run out and do the exact same thing again. Instead, they waited. And then God finally does open the door and call them to come out.

And that's the last thing. They're finally there. And what's the last thing that happens? He

walked with the Lord, which means he obeyed into the work of the Lord. He waited on the Lord, which means he stayed faithful and patient and didn't just run after the easiest thing that got his attention because he was sick of waiting for God. They're like, hey, they floated and they were okay with that.

And the last thing they did is he worshiped the Lord. The last thing we must do if we're gonna listen to God's voice is worship him. Because look what it says after they went out. It says then verse 15 of chapter eight, God said to Noah, leave the boat, all of you.

You and your wife and your sons and their wives, release all the animals, the birds, the livestock and the small animals that scurry along the ground so they can be fruitful and multiply throughout the earth.

So Noah's wife and the sons and their wives left the boat and all the large and small animals and birds came out of the boat

pair by pair. Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and he sacrificed his burnt offerings, the animals and birds that have been approved for that purpose. So think about what he does. The first thing he does after God rescued him, which is great, but now he just float in this waiting period with all the Groundhog

Day existence. The second they get off the boat, the first things he did is he worshiped, but the very absolute first thing he did is before he even did that, he let all the animals go. And then he took the approved animals and sacrificed them. He brought extras of one, if you read the whole story.

I don't know about you, but you've been in a boat for ten months, a year, supplies might be running low, you're in a whole new world. You just dumped the refrigerator. You just let all the hamburgers

and the steaks go and everything left. And you're not sure you had a farm. There's plants, but you don't even know what you're gonna eat. And then you had extras of these ones and you chose to burn them all up on a fire, giving it to God. That's a pretty scary step, isn't it?

The first thing he asked him to do, the first thing he did was worship, but what worship really is. You see, in other words, he worshiped over worry. He was thankful over fear. He wasn't bitter about what he went into. And the other thing about that is he had an all in versus a get out mentality.

Like I said, when we wait, God help me through this, help me through this, help me through this. And then once you're through that point, you just wanna get out. Like, let me get out and get on with life. Let me get out with life. They got out and the first thing he did was go all in. And he thanked God

and he did worship what worship really is. See, worship isn't just singing songs. The truth is if worship was just singing songs, most of y'all wouldn't be worshiping either. Little mini throw punch there. That's a part of worship, declaring back to God who he is. It's a battle cry. It's good for us. Sets our hearts right.

Worship is an all in mentality. Worship says, all right, I'm gonna walk with you. I'll wait with you. I'm all in with you. Whatever you ask, I am in. I will trust you above all else. And the first thing he did in that worship and thankfulness is he gave up all of his own security.

Because you know what that does in return? Two things. One, he now completely trusts God to take care of him, which he does, which then builds your confidence the next time something gets scared. When you always fudge out and don't trust God with what he's asked from you,

that means every time you run into a problem, every time you don't have enough resource, every time you're in a financial pinch and you figure it out yourself and you never trust God with your money, that means every time it happens again, you're still on the hook yourself. You start trusting God with your money and do what he asked you to do with it. Guess what? Even if you're broke, even if you're on my you know, I remember last time I did what he asked anyways. I didn't keep those extra animals. I didn't hold back what was his to spend on myself just in case. And guess what? God took care of me. So now I'm not worried about that moment anymore.

See, giving is a gift for us. Because you know what else God does? He takes that and uses that in a way, he takes the money we give. He takes that worship of sacrifice that we give and he'll use it for something more eternal and more impact than you would ever use it spending it on yourself. And you get to be a part of that

Because look what it goes on to continue to say here. It says, so he did that. He sacrificed all those animals that were approved. We do know scholars believe that the approved animals were cats.

But two of them escaped. So that's our problem today. No. It says, then Noah built the altar, he did that. And look what it says in verse 21.

And the Lord was pleased with the aroma of the sacrifice and said to himself, I will never again curse the ground because of the human race, even though everything they think or imagine is bent towards evil from childhood. See, he's still saying

sin's still the problem. He knows Noah. Noah goes on to do something stupid too. There's still gonna be this problem. But because of his grace and because of what Noah did by taking that grace and embracing it and then worshiping the aroma of that, what God said is what he just did there, I'm pleased with.

Therefore, I will never wipe out the earth this way Because of what Noah did. It's a good thing for us that he was willing to sacrifice then. He goes, I will never again destroy all living things. As long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest cold and heat, summer and winter day and night.

When I choose to honor him and worship him the way, and the worship is all in, I'm gonna trust him with everything. And that's why I say, guys, we say we worship God. But man, if your calendar and your checkbook doesn't join that, you don't really worship God.

I can tell you what's important to you without even talking to you. I don't even know your name. You let me see what you've been spending your money on and what your calendar says, and I will tell you what you love the most. It's that simple. And you know it's true. That's why you get the most upset when

a pastor says you need to serve and you need to give. How dare him tell me to actually do what God wants me to do? The unmitigated gall. Why? Why do you get so mad? You know why? Because what you do with your time and what you do with your money is how you think life is. To you, that's life. To you, that's important.

And if God says, I want you to spend it building a boat when you don't even care, You're like, I'd rather spend my time and money on something else. So it means you don't really trust God. You're not really walking with God. You just like to come and be motivated

and look the part and do the job, but we don't really want, we're not really experiencing it. Because guess what happened? He did save them, but at the cost of their entire world. Everything they knew was now done and they had to get off that boat into a brand new world.

And you realize Noah's story is a visual illustration of the gospel.

It's why the Bible is full of God taking people through water because underwater represented death, above the water, floating, coming out of the water represents life. That's what baptism is. As we've already said, it's the ultimate example of who Jesus is. He came. He went under the water and died, came out of the water life. And if we put our faith in him, we can do the same thing. We can go through the water. So this story is really a story of Jesus. That's why there's only one door on the ark and God had to invite him in and then God closed him in. Jesus is the door.

There is only one way. The only way to be saved is through faith in Christ. He is the art. It's the ongoing story. He wants us to get on the boat. Don't miss the boat. Be a part of what he's doing and do it. But you gotta take it serious. You gotta really believe this.

And if you do and you understand, you're willing to go all in. And you're willing to take all that you are and say, I will worship you with my life, God,

because you're the one that protects me. But where he's taking us is not back to fixing the world the way we want. I mean, love this world. I just want this a little bit better and that little better. And we think that's what God's doing. He's not renovating this fallen world. He's taking us to a whole new world.

And that whole new world still has a battle. He says, he's like, they gotta go on. Pleads, but he says there's still corruption. There's still this. We know in the New Testament,

we've been given a mission. We have been taken on the ark to a new place. But in this new place where we're at right now, until Jesus comes back, we have a mission. The ark we're on is not a cruise ship.

We are heading into a battle. Just like Noah still had battles. He's still on a mission. If you get saved, if you know the grace of God, you have been invited to get on a warship.

One that's sailing into a war zone where we are trying to bring freedom and we're trying to bring the mission that God's given us to do. And we need to be a part of that crew. We need to know that when we get off the boat, we're gonna be in a battle. And if we don't understand that, we get very confused.

We struggle with that. And we try to live this life. And you know what? Noah built this huge boat with a lot of wood. He was a carpenter that took a ton of wood and built a boat that saved his family.

Well, you go fast forward into the story and you realize that's a visual illustration of another carpenter's gonna come along. He's gonna take a couple pieces of wood and save a lot more people. And we need to put our faith and our trust in that.

And we need to go all in and worship and understand where he's gonna take us. As he gets us out of the water, puts us on the boat, but he's gonna take us to a new world. Not just make our old world work the way we want it to. And at that new world where we go, we need to get in the fight. Let me close it with this.

I think of it this way, how we see it wrong and how we try to act out our faith and we miss the point. My dad, he was 17, had his dad sign a waiver and he joined the Navy and went into World War II.

And he wanted to join, he didn't want to get drafted because he saw that this was a good fight. This is a meaningful thing. He also saw how heroic and he wanted to be a part of this heroic cause and he was excited about it. And he went through boot camp, he got the uniform that was the other added bonus. He saw how the ladies loved all the soldiers in their uniform. So he's like, man, I've got the ladies are looking at me. They see me as a hero. This is awesome. So before he left, lots of girls were liking them a lot and all that. And then they're singing all their songs. He learned how to fight. He's like, this is a worthy cause. They're singing the patriotic songs, they're getting on the boat, they're like, yeah, we're gonna go, we're gonna go win this war,

and

all that stuff. They're all excited about it. They get on his ship and his ship had to go take some supplies and then pick up men and then they ended up going to Iwo Jima. On this first cruise, the first few days out, he's on the boat now. And as he's sitting on the boat, they went down and opened up a couple of those cases to see what are they carrying. And they found out that they were carrying Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and Hershey's chocolate bars.

And you realize the chocolate was probably even more enticing than the beer at this moment for them because there had been a sugar rationing and no sugar. My dad was 17 and probably hadn't had candy in three years. None of those soldiers had. So let's just say,

let me just tell you a lot of beer and chocolate didn't ever make it to the destination. And he said those first few days in this war, it was awesome. You're singing the songs, you're like, we're heroes, we're awesome, the ladies love us, we're men, we're gonna go do this. We're gonna be heroes.

We're men, we're the leaders, we're gonna go save the world. And by the way, this is pretty cool because we're drinking beer and eating chocolate.

Whenever they weren't on duty, they'd sneak down there and start doing it. It was awesome. It looked perfect. They were super excited. And then on day four, a Japanese submarine torpedo missed their boat by about four feet and sank the boat right next to him. Blew it up, went into flames, might have watched people go down, people died. He had to go to battle stations. As

a 70 year old in the middle of the night, in the middle of the South Pacific, he said, there is nothing darker than the middle of the ocean at night. It was kind of cloud cover, no stars, pitch black, and he sat at a machine gun. At first thought, he's like, What is this machine gun gonna do against a submarine?

I could blow up, drown or die at any second.

Now realize this is much more than just wearing a uniform so the ladies will like you. This is much more than beating your chest and saying, we get to be heroes. It is much more than declaring that we know we're gonna win this war, That we are victors and we are more than conquerors.

We're all Yeah, it was all those things, but it came with the battle. You had to get in the fight. And he ends up at Iwo Jima in Okinawa. Eventually his ship was in Tokyo Bay at the end of the war. But at first he had it kind of wrong. It was beer and chocolate, girls and victory songs. Here's my point.

How many of us, that's what we think our faith is. We come to church, pray for the beer and chocolate, we sing our victory songs, we like the uniform, and we enjoy the blessing, but we forget that we're in a battle. And then you're shocked when a torpedo comes across the bow and just about sings you.

And you look at what's going on out and you get confused. Man, Daniel last week did a great job when he looked at the real problem of sin. And one thing he pointed out was the fact that men, right from the beginning failed to do what God made men to do. To be a leader, but not a boss, not some misogynistic boss man.

Leader means you go first. Noah shows the story. His whole family was saved because he went first. He showed his family the way. And I think it's hilarious

in a sad way that last week he started about, hey men, we need to step up. Our society has struggled for the last generation because men won't be men. Men need to reclaim their thing as leadership. And a lot of you men were like, yeah, amen. More of the wives are like, woo hoo, yeah. Which should tell you something if you were sitting next to one of those women guys. And and and and everyone was hooting and hollering about, yeah, we're men. We're gonna go be men. Oh, men, men, men, men.

And that's what we're all excited about. But guess what? Daniel's message didn't explain what that looks like. This message is if you're gonna go be the guy that's cheering about I read I saw all the exciting things on the Internet. People posted this was the greatest message ever. She said, listen. Yeah. Men need to be men. You're all excited about being men. But this message is if you're gonna be a man, you know what a man does that reclaims to be men? He walks with the Lord first.

He actually waits on the Lord and he worships the Lord. That's what it means to be a man. Men, if you want your wife to look at you like the campers look at the last Twinkie at fat camp do, be a real man.

And I thought it was hilarious that I start preaching serve give time and half of you men in this room are puckering up, man. You were like, and you're getting mad. And some of you are still mad. You're like, why is he yelling at me? Why is he rattling my cage? Have you ever thought I'm rattling your cage so you realize you're in one?

That's pretty deep. Go think about that. Stick that on your refrigerator. Maybe I need to rattle your cage to get you to realize you're in one. I'm not trying to put you in a cage. Jesus is trying to show you the way out. What happens if we step if one man could change the world by doing this?

What would happen in your family and your life, men, if you would do that? And ladies, we have the same call. The same call. I just see over and over again, guys, you're the anchor in your family's boat.

What would happen if you stopped doing that? And instead of thinking that being a man is just grunting about it and talking manly and all those things, if it was to really roll up your sleeves and be like Jesus, who is the manliest man who ever lived, What would happen if, what would happen

if we all chose to not miss that boat? Amen. Father God, I thank you Lord. I thank you that you do love us. I thank you that it started with your grace, ends with your grace. And I pray that anyone who's in here that maybe feels like their cage was rattled a little bit, that they would understand that

you are showing us the way to freedom. What we should do with that grace you've already given us. Maybe walk with you. Maybe wait with you. Maybe truly worship you. And Lord, I pray for anyone in this room that maybe knows your grace and knows that that hasn't been baptized,

that they would go out there in this first act of obedience and get baptized right now. I pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Hey, guys.

Thanks for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Make sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on the We Are Rock Point app for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.