Genesis | Week 3 | Message Only · Rewind

Genesis | Week 3 | Message Only · Rewind

60 min

Pastor Bill Bush · Jan 27, 2023 · 7 min read · 60 min listen

Quoting the message: When I live from God's grace, I will listen to God's voice, end quote..

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Scripture in this message

Big Idea

Noah's story shows that God rescues us by grace before we do anything to earn it, and that grace, truly received, unlocks the willingness to listen and respond to His voice. Listening to God looks like walking with Him in obedience, waiting on Him with patience even when life feels stuck, and worshiping Him with an all-in trust that holds nothing back.</thesis> <parameter name="key_points">[ {"point": "Noah found favor with God before he did anything to deserve it.", "explanation": "Pastor Bill points out that Genesis 6:8 says Noah found favor with the Lord before any mention of his obedience or righteousness. Grace came first and everything else — Noah being called righteous and blameless — flowed out of that favor, not the other way around.", "supporting_scripture": "Genesis 6:8", "timestamp_seconds": 546}, {"point": "The flood reveals both God's holiness and His grace at once.", "explanation": "Pastor Bill explains that the flood shows sin is deadly serious — God is holy, righteous, and just, and humanity is corrupt, not merely mistaken. But the ark, provided in the middle of that judgment, shows God's grace and His way of salvation for those who trust Him.", "supporting_scripture": null, "timestamp_seconds": 601}, {"point": "Walking with the Lord means doing the work the Lord assigns, even when it makes no sense.", "explanation": "Noah walked in close fellowship with God and was told to build a massive boat for a flood he'd never seen, using the word 'go' that is better translated 'come' — inviting him into God's presence, not just sending him off. Pastor Bill applies this directly to serving in the church, noting the congregation is currently adding services and needs people to volunteer just as Noah built for a hundred years without seeing the payoff.", "supporting_scripture": "Genesis 6:9-22", "timestamp_seconds": 758}, {"point": "Waiting on the Lord requires patience and trust, especially when life feels like Groundhog Day.", "explanation": "Noah and his family floated on the ark for about a year, including two extra months on dry ground before God let them off, because the earth wasn't ready yet. Pastor Bill contrasts this endurance with our tendency to listen to the 'sirens' calling us to jump ship into bad relational, financial, or time decisions when we get impatient with God's timing.", "supporting_scripture": "Genesis 7:1, Genesis 8:13-14", "timestamp_seconds": 1913}, {"point": "Worshiping the Lord means going all in, holding nothing back, rather than merely singing songs.", "explanation": "The first thing Noah did off the boat was release the animals and sacrifice the approved ones as a burnt offering, giving up his own security and supplies. Pastor Bill teaches that true worship is shown by our calendar and our checkbook, not our singing, and it is worship that God responded to with a promise never to flood the earth again.", "supporting_scripture": "Genesis 8:15-21", "timestamp_seconds": 2524}, {"point": "Noah's ark points forward to Jesus, the one true door of salvation.", "explanation": "Pastor Bill draws the line from the ark's one door and the flood waters to baptism and the gospel — going under water pictures death, coming out pictures resurrection life. Just as Noah's boat was built from wood by a carpenter to save his family, another carpenter would later use wood to save far more people.", "supporting_scripture": null, "timestamp_seconds": 2929} ]

Key points

Application

Pastor Bill frames the charge around Noah's three moves: walk with the Lord, wait on the Lord, worship the Lord — and asks what's stopping each of us from doing the same.

Find where you're supposed to serve
If this is your church and you say you walk with the Lord, ask where you're serving — the congregation is adding services and needs people to roll up their sleeves and get involved now.
Deal with what's blocking you, don't excuse it
Identify whether a hurt, habit, or hang-up is keeping you from listening to God's voice, and let God's grace address that root issue instead of just forcing compliance.
Stay faithful in the waiting instead of jumping ship
When life feels stuck in the Groundhog Day cycle, keep waiting on God's timing rather than making impulsive relational, financial, or time decisions out of impatience.
Let your calendar and checkbook show real worship
Go all in with your time and money as an act of trust in God, rather than holding back security for yourself, since worship is proven by what you do with both.
Get baptized as a first step of obedience
If you know God's grace but haven't been baptized, take that first act of obedience and get baptized at the end of the service.

Take it into your week

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Scripture in this message

From the transcript
“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”
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From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“And then if you look down in verse 22, it says, So Noah did everything exactly as God had commanded him”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”
From the transcript
“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”

7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

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Day 1

Before Noah ever picked up a hammer, before he sourced a single plank of gopher wood, before he convinced his family to trust a plan that had never been attempted — God noticed him. 'But Noah found favor with the LORD.' That word 'favor' is the Hebrew word for grace. It is unearned. It is undeserved. It is entirely God's initiative. Pastor Bill made this the foundation of the whole series for a reason: grace comes first. Always. Noah did not obey his way into God's good graces; he was already held in God's grace, and that's what made obedience possible. This matters enormously for how we read our own lives. If you've been trying to earn God's attention through good behavior, or if you've been staying at a distance because you feel too far gone, the opening line of Noah's story is for you. God's favor is the starting point, not the finish line. Obedience, patience, and worship — the themes we'll explore all week — are not the ladder you climb to reach God. They are the natural response of a person who has already been found by Him. Start there. Let the grace come first, and let everything else follow from that.

For reflection

In your honest experience, do you tend to approach God as someone trying to earn His favor, or as someone already held in it? What difference might that distinction make today?

Pray

Pray for a fresh, settled sense of God's grace as the starting point of your relationship with Him — not something you are still working toward.

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

Think about a time you had to follow instructions you didn't fully understand — the Noah story is, in many ways, built around that exact tension between trust and action.

Discussion questions

1
Genesis 6:8 says Noah found favor with God before he built a single plank of the ark. What does it tell us about grace that obedience comes after favor, not before it?
2
Genesis 6:9 describes Noah as someone who 'walked with God,' and Genesis 6:22 says he did everything exactly as God commanded. How do those two descriptions connect — what does the story suggest walking with God actually looks like in practice?
3
Noah and his family were on the ark for months with no sign the water was receding and no way to speed things up. What does the message say about what faithfulness looks like during those long, uneventful waiting seasons — and why is 'jumping ship' such a real temptation?
4
In Genesis 8:15–20, the first thing Noah does when he steps off the ark is sacrifice — offering up animals that were also part of his remaining food supply. What does that sequence tell us about the kind of worship Pastor Bill is describing as 'all-in surrender'?
5
Pastor Bill challenged us to ask an honest question: what is actually stopping us from obeying — and whether a hurt, habit, or hang-up is a reason or an excuse. How might a community like this one help people work through that question without it becoming a shame exercise?
6
Pastor Bill pointed out that the ark has one door, that God Himself closes the people in, and that a carpenter building with wood points forward to Jesus. What does that picture add to the way we read Noah's story — and what does it suggest about where grace ultimately comes from?

Pray together

Ask God to show us where grace has already gone ahead of us — and give us courage to walk, wait, and worship in response to it

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