Guess what else survived the flood

 Read Genesis 8

We are going to talk some more about Noah and the flood, but we are going to have to talk about profanity before it’s all said and done.  Just warning you.

Let’s jump to verse 20.

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.  The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

“As long as the earth endures,

seedtime and harvest,

cold and heat,

summer and winter,

day and night

will never cease.”

What can we learn from this pericope?

Most people say that God promised not to judge the world again by a flood.  That doesn’t mean there won’t be flooding.  We see flooding all over the world, sometimes even in western Oklahoma.

It means that God will not destroy the world again by means of a flood.  There will be a time when this sinful world is consumed and a new heaven and new earth are bestowed upon us, but these things will not be manifest by a flood.

It tells us that the flood was not a natural event.  It was a judgment.  What would be natural?

Seedtime and harvest.

Cold and heat.

Summer and winter. In Oklahoma, those can be on the same day.

Day and night.

God said that as long as the earth endures—however long that may be.  Only God knows.  But as long as this earth endures, we will have the natural order of things as God set them in motion at the creation.

What else did we learn?

Noah made a burnt offering to the Lord.  The Lord was pleased.  Those animals that were considered clean, especially some of the birds, might not have been as excited about this, but Noah’s offering pleased God.

Anything else?

How about our sinful nature surviving the flood.  Noah was found blameless before the Lord, but that does not mean he didn’t have sinful nature.

His sons and their wives still had a sinful nature.

God stated that every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. What the…!

God just pronounced judgment upon the world because evil had become so commonplace.  Sin abounded like never before.  Noah was the only bright spot in a sinful world.

Why did God not purge that righteous remnant of evil and sin?

We are meant to struggle with God’s ways and the ways of the world.  God already chose us for salvation and right standing with him.

He wants us to choose him, his kingdom, and his righteousness over sin and evil.  God gives us the ability to choose him over our sinful nature.

We are meant to struggle.  We are meant to choose God.  We are meant to be overcomers, not for our salvation but to bring glory to God.

God did everything that righteousness required—and God defined righteousness and then abided in his decision—to make us right with him.  The blood of Jesus was the atoning sacrifice. Our profession of faith is the beginning of our salvation.

But every thought, action, lack of action, and everything else that we do while we still have breath is how we live out our salvation.

God judged the earth with a flood.  Only 8 people were preserved because Noah found favor with God, but our sinful nature survived as well.

We are meant to struggle with our nature and our own understanding but we were created to bring glory to God and to enjoy him very much.

What else survived the flood?  Our free will.  We are blessed to choose.  Sometimes we have those hold my beer moments where we wish God would have removed our free will and made us do the right thing, but we still have free will.

We still get to choose.

Sometimes we know what God wants us to do but we don’t want to do it.  The biblical term would be kicking against the goads, but God lets us choose anyway.

We should be singing Have thine Own Way, Lord! Have thine own way! Thou art the Potter, I am the clay.

Instead, we sing I did it my way.

You might think this is a dichotomy, but it doesn’t have to be. When we trust the Lord and his ways become our ways, then our own understanding is in accord with God’s directed steps.

Our sinful nature is an opportunity for us to say, I choose God’s ways as my own, before encountering the circumstances of the world.

What am I saying?  Before the problem or decision or set of circumstances arises, we have chosen God’s way and eliminated the dichotomy between trusting God and our own understanding.

I used this principle to teach others how to overcome profanity. The premise is that every word that we utter is a decision.

The counterargument is that when you hit your thumb with a hammer, there is no decision point between the stimulus and the response.

But there is, though it may be ever so brief.  So how do I or how do you make the decision not to use vulgar language?

We move the decision point. It no longer exists between the stimulus and response.  It comes well before anything requiring an immediate response.  You might call this training or discipleship.

With profanity, we change the lexicon.  We learn and use a new vocabulary.  We don’t use vulgarity. We practice the use of effective words.  We are filled with good words.

When the stimulus comes that might provoke vulgar speech, we don’t have the vulgar words to reach for, but we do have an abundance of other words.

Do you know the definition of vulgar? Usually, this is the first or second definition that we encounter when we go to the dictionary.  It’s characterized by ignorance.

How do you overcome ignorance?  Education and training. This is done before the decision as to what words to use are prompted by some event.

Think of sending soldiers into combat and not training them before they went.  They can just figure out how to shoot, move, and communicate once they get there and the enemy is trying to kill them.

That would be absurd, yet that is what we do so often when it comes to trusting God or leaning on our own understanding.  We have free will.  It survived the flood along with the sinful inclination of our hearts, but our free will lets us choose to choose God and his ways before the circumstances of the world are upon us.

When you take your car in for service, don’t you hope that the mechanics have been properly trained before you turn them loose with power tools on your vehicle?

Why then, do we wait for a moment of crisis to think about what to do when we could decide long before just to do everything God’s way.

Our sinful nature survived the flood.  Our free will survived the flood.  We should use our free will to choose God, his kingdom, and his righteousness if we want to lessen the struggle between trusting God and leaning on our own understanding.

If we want to please God, we need to make that decision now and start learning, understanding, and practicing his ways now.

And you thought we were going to talk about spending a year aboard a ship full of animals.

There’s still a rainbow coming.  Hang in there.

Amen.

Noah found Favor

 Read Genesis 7

How did Adam and Eve know how to make clothes?

How did Cain and Abel know to make offerings to God?

How did Abel know what would please God?  Or was it a lucky guess?

How did Cain know that there were other people in the world?  He was afraid that someone would kill him if he was sent away. How did he know that there was someone out there?

How did Noah know that it was God talking to him?  The Lord walked with Adam and Eve, but a lot of evil had come into the world and we don’t hear about the Lord out for walks.  How did Noah know that it was God calling him to this impossible task?

How did Noah know the difference between clean and unclean animals?  Sure, there is a list in Leviticus 11, but that was hundreds or years down the road.

We talked before that we might just have more questions than answers during this time of study.  That’s just fine.  It’s often the case in adult education.  The inquisitive adult usually completes a course of study with more questions than answers.

The more we know, the more we hunger to learn more, but we do want some answers.

The answers are:

God created.

He created good.

Mankind sinned.

There were consequences.

Mankind sinned profusely.

God judged the world.

A remnant was saved.  Humankind was worth saving.

We don’t know:

Where Cain’s wife came from.

How Abel knew to make a pleasing offering.

How Noah knew clean from unclean animals.

We do know that Will and Ariel Durant did not write Genesis.  Every detail is not put into writing. We do have what we need.

What do we need for what? To follow the story of God’s relationship with his creation with special attention to humankind. 

I like to study history, especially military history and political history.  I like to see the strategy and tactics of historical battles.  I like to see how our constitution and branches of government came to be and evolved into what they are now. 

My mind is not as sharp as it once was, but there are still political, social, and historical things that pique my interest.  The more I study, the more questions I have.  Sometimes I find answers.

As we study Genesis, we get some very clear answers and we get  some things that are not answered.  The world, including Christians, will speculate.  Be careful not to give theories and speculation—sometimes defined as interpretation—the same credibility as scripture.

Explore, but hold fast only to scripture.  Secular history should be secondary to scripture. It’s good to buttress our understanding of scripture, but should never contradict scripture.

Explore, but trust God over your own understanding. We have talked about this wrestling match.

Explore, but be Berean.  Test what someone has to say against the scriptures.

So where does that leave us in this beginning account of Noah and the flood?

Noah did everything that God commanded him.  Noah—to include his family—found favor with God.  Noah had trusted God through this entire process and now God would save him and his family as a righteous remnant.

God judged the wicked but preserved a righteous remnant.  Surely Noah and his family had all sinned, but somehow Noah had a right relationship with God.

The story of God’s relationship with humankind would continue through Noah.  We are all here today because God’s favor fell upon Noah.

If we don’t remember anything else about the flood, remember that Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

Keep reading.  There’s a rainbow coming soon.

Amen.

God Shut the Door

 Read Genesis 7

Grammatically, this chapter is not entirely chronological, but you can see the chronology. The floodwaters are described and then the animals come, but we can see that Noah had the ark loaded with every creature, some more than others, and food for the lot of them.

You have to wonder if there was any disparity in accommodations between the clean and unclean animals. That’s food for concurrent discussions on another day.  For the moment, let’s consider that Noah had done all that he was commanded to do.  The ark was loaded.  The rain was coming.

Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together?  Wait!

The door was open.

The door to the ark was open.  Noah had done everything just as the Lord commanded, but the door was open.  Noah had never been to a flood before, but this open-door business surely wasn’t going to work.  The door was open.

Noah had built the ark.  It had never rained.  Noah probably didn’t know what a flood was, but he did exactly as he was told and built this massive ship.

Noah made sure that he had the right number of animals.  He had seven pairs of clean animals.  He had seven pairs of each sort of bird.  He had two of each of the other animals.  They were paired for mating and furtherance of the species.

Noah didn’t have to organize a safari to round up the animals.  They came to him.  That part falls under the category of cool beans.  The animals came to Noah.

Noah did all that God commanded him to do.  He was 600 years old.  On the seventeenth day of the second month of the year that Noah turned 600, water started emerging from the ground and rain began to fall. This flood thing—this thing never seen before—it was happening.

Some people give CCR credit for the song Have You Ever Seen the Rain, but I think Noah might have written an early version.

And on that same day, Noah and his family entered the ark.  The flood was beginning and the door to the ark was open.

Maybe Noah could rig a quick pulley system and put those elephants to work and pull that door closed.

If they tried to push it closed from the outside.  Someone would be left behind.

Noah had done everything that God commanded, but the door was open.

We don’t know if Noah wondered how to close it or if this whole thing was just a test of his faith before he and his family drowned.  We don’t see any thoughts or conversation about the door being open.

Noah had trusted God this far and completed this seemingly impossible task, but he had been given no instructions on how to shut the door.

Those that entered, male and female of all flesh, entered as God had commanded him; and the Lord closed the door behind him.

The Lord shut him in.

Imagine having done all that Noah had done and wondering if he would be undone by this single detail.  Noah couldn’t shut the door himself.

If God could have held off on the flood for a couple more months, Noah surely could have rigged a pulley system.  Noah could have built a small raft and rounded up some extra elephants and had one of his sons have them push the door closed, and then floated on the raft attached to the ark by a rope, until he floated high enough to climb the rope to openings at the top of the ark.

If Noah had only been given instructions as to how to close the door, he surely would have done it.  He did everything just as God commanded him, but God had not commanded him to find a way to close the door.

We don’t know how big the door was, but it would need to fit giraffes and elephants, rhinos and hippos through it.

If it wasn’t something that could also double as a ramp, it would need a pier built next to the ship for boarders could walk straight across and the door could close in a lateral motion.   We just don’t know, but closing the door would seem to be another monumental task, except this time God did not give Noah instructions on what to build or what to do other than entering the ark.

The Lord closed the door behind him.  The Lord shut him in.

Noah trusted God throughout this entire endeavor.  Noah loaded the ark with the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.  Noah had faith that God had told him exactly what he needed to know and needed to do.

Noah trusted God that God himself knew best.  Father knows best and Noah stayed the course of faith throughout.

Do you know what else was missing from God’s instructions to Noah? There was something else not in the design.  Maybe there was more than one thing.

Let’s start with lifeboats.  There was nothing in the design about lifeboats.  No modern ship would be allowed to leave port without sufficient lifeboats for all aboard.  Modern lifeboats are supposed to be unsinkable.  It makes you wonder why they don’t build the entire ship out of the same stuff that they build lifeboats.

There were no lifeboats.  Once Noah did what he was told to do, his life was aboard that ark.  His salvation was in the ark. God did not give a contingency plan.  There was no Plan B.  There were no just-in-case instructions.

Once Noah had done his part, it was like God said:  “I’ll take it from here.”

Yes, Noah and his family would need to tend to the animals.  They needed to be fed and the stalls needed to be cleaned.  I bet Noah had the best compost pile ever.  Those two worms that came aboard were probably two million worms by the end of the voyage.

What else was missing?  There were no sails.  Noah had no means of trying to keep this huge ship on course, if he could even figure out what course to set it on.  John Masefield’s words would not come for millennia.

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;

And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,

And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

 

There would be none of that.  There were no sails.  There was no rudder.  Any and everything having to do with navigation belonged exclusively to the Lord.

God shut the door to the ark.

God knew that lifeboats would not be needed.

God alone would direct the ship while all were embarked.

Noah did exactly what God had commanded him to do. His part was to trust and obey.  His part was faith.

Noah did what he was told but Noah trusted God to do whatever needed to be done for the salvation of his family. That included shutting the door.

I’ll just bet Noah composed an early version of Trust and Obey.  While we do his good will, he abides with us still, and with all who will trust and obey.

The Psalms would not come until much later, but I’ll venture a guess that Noah’s crew might have had their own version of Psalm 150:6. 

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord.

Having breath surely took on a whole new meaning when all of the lifeforms on the planet that needed air to breathe were drowning. Countless people and animals took their last breaths at this time.

As we consider Noah’s family entering the ark and God shutting the door, I ask us to consider two verses that most of us have memorized.  They are Hebrews 11:1 and Proverbs 3:5-6.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.  Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.

Noah trusted.  Noah had faith, but more than that, he trusted and probably didn’t understand much of what he was instructed to do.  He couldn’t see each and every part of where God was taking him.

Noah surely walked by faith not sight. Let’s consider what we have learned today in the context of the full biblical witness.

As we walk with the Lord, we must live by faith not sight much of the time.  We must trust even when we don’t understand. We must live in the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

OBTW—these things are contrary to the patterns of the world.

We need to obey the Lord and what he has commanded us will not be a burden to us. We are to take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ.

We must know that the Lord delights more in our obedience than in our offerings and sacrifices.

We are studying Noah and the flood.  Let’s through in a vocabulary word for you to use at lunch when you are eating with your other friends who worship elsewhere.  It’s antediluvian.  That means before the flood.

Postdiluvian would be after the flood.

Why did I through those two words in?  So, people will know that you are studying Noah and the flood because today’s message was about trust and obedience.  It was about walking by faith not sight.  It was about living in the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.

It was about trusting God will do what he needs to do even when we don’t understand it.  It’s about stepping out in faith even when God doesn’t give us all the information.

We are studying Noah but singing Trust and Obey. The author of Hebrews tells us:

By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family.

Through Noah’s faith, God pronounced judgment upon the world while preserving a righteous remnant.

Through obedience to God and the fear of the Lord, Noah manifested faith and trust in his actions.  He did what he was commanded to do by God and trusted that God would do whatever else needed to be done.

I am going to speculate that Noah did all of this without anxiety.  Could you imagine building a huge ship year after year, decade after decade with an anxiousness abiding within you?  You would have a heart attack or nervous breakdown before the end of the first decade. You would be toast.

Noah obeyed God and trusted God and had faith in God and did everything God told him to do, even when he didn’t see how all the pieces fit together, and I believe he did it without anxiousness. I think somehow he knew the peace of the Lord.

Are we up for that?  Can we obey and trust?  Does our own understanding have to be satisfied before we will act on God’s instructions to us, or will we simply trust and obey and be at peace because God knows exactly what he is doing and telling us to do?

My prayer is that we answer in the affirmative.

Amen.

Just as God had commanded him

 Read Genesis 6

This story has two themes.  Humankind rebelled against God and all that is Good and a remnant was faithful. There were a faithful few, at least there was Noah and God’s favor extended to Noah’s family.

The human heart sought after its own desires.  It sought self-gratification and relied on its own understanding.  Evil prevailed among the people of the world.

God decided to put an end to this evil that thrived upon the world.  He would bring an end to humankind and all over which he had given humans stewardship.  Both men and the lives of the creatures entrusted to him would be put to an end.

God saw the evil that had manifested itself in every human heart and was saddened at what his creation had become.

Noah was a bright spot in this dark world. 

Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.

God told Noah that he would bring a flood upon the earth.  Noah surely had no idea what  a flood was, but whatever it was it was coming and God told him to build a huge ship and stock it with provisions for all aboard.

All aboard would include animals as well—paired for the furtherance of the species. This would require a huge ship.  Noah couldn’t just hook up the trailer and get something at the Bass Pro Shop.  God told him to build this huge ship.

Most of us don’t use cubits in measuring things these days, so just how large was this cruise ship going to be?

The length was 510 feet.  That’s over one and one-half football fields in length.  Today, we see cruise ships that are 1000 feet long, but the ark was built from wood and without a modern shipyard.

The height was 50 feet.  That’s as tall as a modern 4 story house.  It only had 3 decks so these decks had high ceilings. 

The ship was almost twice as wide as it was tall.  By modern standards, it could have held 450 40-foot containers.  Today we see container ships that haul much more with containers stacked high above deck but imagine the storage capacity of this ancient ship that would be made only by human hands.

I have spent some time aboard ship and know a little more than the average bear about loading and unloading them for amphibious operations, including the supply and logistics behind them.  But I had never thought too much about those container ships.  I found that in 2020 it cost $1500 to ship one container from China to the United States.  It seems like a lot, but considering the time and distance, I guess it was the market price.  Today it cost $20,000 to ship the same container.  It’s no wonder the Dollar Tree is now the Dollar and a Quarter Tree.

We are reading Genesis 6 but the world economy is starting to look like Revelation 6—a pint of wheat for a day’s wage.  Let’s get back to the ark.

Modern estimates put the lumber used for construction at approximately 3.1 million board feet.  A board foot is a 1-foot by 1-foot by 1-inch piece of lumber.  To give you some perspective, 3.1 million board feet would mean you could lay lumber from here to Memphis, make a quick stop at Graceland, and have enough lumber to get out of the city on the east side.

And it had a huge door on it.  Most conceptualize a gangway sort of ramp that acted as a door.  What was not given by God was the mechanism that would be required to shut this huge door.  There was no introduction to hydraulics or mechanics or even pneumatic devices.  We will see how the door was closed in the next chapter.

It was the biggest ship of its time and perhaps still the biggest wooden ship ever built.  This was not only a huge ship. It was a huge undertaking.

God did not put out a ship-building contract among major shipbuilders and wait for the bids to come in. God told Noah what he was to do. This impossible task was all on Noah.

Imagine God telling us to do this today.  OK, the guys would get excited because they had a God-given excuse to buy loads of new tools, but eventually, the magnitude of the task would set in.

God is telling me to do the impossible

So, what was Noah’s response to being told to do what had never been done before and what might take 100 years? 

It had never rained.  Noah had never seen a flood. God told Noah to build this huge ship and fill it with every kind of animal and enough food for all on board.

What did Noah do?

Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

There is a meme going around that reads Noah was a conspiracy theorist until it began to rain. Imagine the ridicule of the general population as Noah pursued what had to be a senseless, if not insane task.

Noah’s God—if there even was such a being—was surely just tormenting Noah.

C’mon man, walk away from the ship-building madness and enjoy life.  Come and gratify every desire of your human heart.  You are crazy to continue this madness.

That would have been the friendly banter, but surely there was something with hate and disdain for actions that went contrary to the narrative of the world. But Noah…

Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

It is good that we see Noah’s faithfulness to God.  It’s good that we have this incredible story of a man who in spite of the many unknowns in what God commanded him to do, just did what God told him to do.

Today, very large undertakings are accompanied by an estimate of supportability.  Can we do what we need to do?  How much will it cost? What are the material and labor requirements?  What are the long lead time items? Will we have public support? What are the consequences of failure? What are the consequences of success?

But Noah…

Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

It’s good to know the story.  We get more details in the chapters ahead, but are there lessons for us now?  Is there any insight for today?

The straightforward message is if God commands you to do something, then do it.  Just do it. You know the verse.  Trust in the Lord with all your heart…

If God commands you to do something of impossible magnitude, consider that you may have found favor with the Lord.  Perhaps we should see God’s favor when he asks the impossible of us.

Most of us won’t be called to ship-building, but we might be called to cook or teach or shepherd a group of believers.  We might be called to evangelism.  Some would rather build a ship from scratch than talk to their neighbors about the love of God.

Some may be called to witness to someone who is lost in the world.  We might be called to encourage other believers by our testimonies. 

You might be called to preach.  You might be called to be on a planning committee.  You might be called by the Spirit that lives within you to do something that is out of your comfort zone.

Your human nature might try to talk you out of it.

You do enough already.

Don’t fall for that.  It’s a trap.  The next thing you know you will be living fully for God.

You don’t have time.

Somebody else could do a better job.

Why me, Lord?

Is that really God speaking to me or is it those jalapenos from last night?

If God is calling you to do something, be Noah, not Moses.  Don’t try to talk God out of it.  Just do it, even if it is more than you think you can handle.

Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

When you feel the Spirit within you calling you to something impossible—you know it is God’s Spirit because his sheep know his voice—then consider that you have found God’s favor in the impossible task set before you.

What does the impossible look like today?  God is calling you to do something that you can’t work into your day, but he has charged you to make it the most important thing in your day.

What will we do?

Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

What will we do?

Are we ready to do everything just as God has commanded us?

Amen.

Hold My Beer

Read Genesis 6

Did you ever do something that you regretted?

Have you ever made a really, really big mistake and wished that you could take it back?

Have you ever been sick to your stomach and even to your inner being over something that you did?

I know some of you regret doing the horns down thing this year. Was this the wrong year for that!

I’m talking about serious stuff.

The first cruise that I went on was about 8 years ago. I was riding the bus back to where I parked my car.  The driver asked a couple young ladies seated near the front of the shuttle how their cruise was.  One of them said, “It was great.  I just can’t tell my boyfriend about parts of it.”

What a great cruise!  There’s some stuff that I regret.  What a contrast of emotions.  What a dichotomy.

Think about and God saw what he had made and called it very good in contrast to God was saddened that he had made humankind.

The creation was good—very good.  Humankind was set atop of this creation.  We were the crown of the creation, but we embraced sin and not God.

God was saddened.  He grieved.  He regretted.  Some translations say he repented of making mankind. 

This whole creation business, especially mankind, sure caught God off-guard. Or did it?

If God is truly all-knowing and all-seeing and beyond this physical universe that we know, he had to see this coming.  Right?

I would surely say, “Yes!”

God could see what was to come.  God could see man embracing sin.  God could see his regret at the same time he saw what he made was very good.

And yet, he created us anyway.

And yet, he created us in his image anyway.

And yet, he breathed life into us anyway.

God saw what he would make, how we would rebel, the consequences of our rebellion, our redemption, and the price required for our redemption, and he made us anyway.

God knew what was ahead of us and he made us anyway.  God knew that our rebellion and our relationship with sin would grieve his heart; yet he made us anyway.

What do we make of this?

Consider that you are so very valuable to God.  You are valuable to God not because your obedience was or will be perfect, but because you are his.  You are made in his image and likeness.  We are to become like him. We are not there yet.

The road that we take to get there is full of struggle and pain and hurt and broken hearts and the list goes on, but it is the road set before us.

It is a road that you can’t find on the map.

It is a road named by faith not sight.

It is a road that goes through the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.

It is a road that God must have thought worthwhile for us to walk for he knew the price he would pay.

God knew ahead of time the cost of creating humankind.  He did it anyway.

Sometimes, we know ahead of time that if we do something, we are going to regret it.  So do we do it anyway?

If we know that we will regret something, we probably shouldn’t do it.  We should consider the cost of our decision for us and for others and for our relationship with God.

Most of the time, if we know we will regret something, we shouldn’t do it.

West of the Mississippi, there is a phrase for I know that I will regret this.  Do you know what it is?

Hold my beer.

So, if those hold my beer thoughts come to mind, you probably shouldn’t do what you are contemplating.

But if you do and if you have those regrets, if you grieve your decision, if you are lost in a world of I knew better and did it anyway; don’t give up.

God already factored in the hold my beer factor into his creation.  He preserved a remnant that would lead to the One who could redeem us all.

The better choice is not to do things that you know you will regret, but God has already factored in your bad decisions.  He still made a way for us to be redeemed and reconciled.  God’s heart has already ached for our sin; yet he made us anyway.

Yes, we will have trials and tribulations and suffering and temptation.  Some of these will come from our own poor decision-making.  We may be persecuted because of our good decisions to follow Jesus as Lord and be known as his disciples by our love.

But whether our decisions are good, bad, or too close to call; God has made a way for us to come home. God knew what we would do before our thoughts and actions were manifest in our lifetimes, and yet he continued with the very part of the creation that grieved him so.

You must really be worth something to God for him to still love you in spite of what you have done, I have done, or humankind has done throughout history.

God will not tolerate wickedness or rebellion, but he loves you.  His love is greater than our rebellion.  Let’s do our best not to do things that we will regret or will grieve God, but never forget that in the height of our rebellion, God still loved us more than we can comprehend.

Know the story of Noah, the flood, the destruction of the evil world that had developed, and that God found favor in Noah.  These are important to understanding our relationship with God.

But know with absolute certainty, that God loves you.  He knew what humankind would do and he knows how many hold my beer moments you have while you are on the earth, and he loves you.

Even though we break God’s heart, he loves us.

God is just.  He is righteous.  He will not tolerate sin.  He has wrath for the wicked, but know this:

God loves you.

Amen.

 

Adam to Noah

  Read Genesis 5

 We begin with the only authoritative genealogy that will continue beyond the flood that would come. Before the genealogy, we get a reminder that God created, and he created mankind to be special.

We are of the earth like the other animals, but we are also of God.  God breathed life into us.

This is the written account of Adam’s family line.

When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind” when they were created.

This is the fourth creation account in Genesis.  It is not as substantial as the first two.  It is more like the third, which is incidental to what followed.

There is a fifth account.  You know it.  Some of you know it by memory.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made

But this fifth chapter of Genesis takes us all the way to Noah.  When we get to Noah, we will see a re-baselining of God’s creation.  But we are not there yet.

It is important that today we can follow the bloodline of Adam to Noah, and then to Abraham, and then to Abraham’s seed that we know as Christ.  From Christ going forward, it is his blood alone that is important to us.  Understanding how God’s plan was fulfilled in the human bloodline to Christ is important, but being washed in the blood of the Lamb is what leads us to right standing with God.

Again, we are in the fifth chapter of Genesis, but our understanding of the New Testament helps us understand the beginning of the story.  It is our finite nature and our earthly mind that thinks we only understand the new by the old.  God is not bound in linear time and his inspired word gives us the full biblical witness.

The bloodline of Adam was first told through Cain, who killed his brother Abel.  We do not see the continuation of this lineage.  It will end with the flood.  What we do see is the continuation of Adam’s bloodline through Seth’s descendants.

Within this lineage is one very interesting exception to death entering the world through Adam and Eve.  Enoch lived 365 years, enjoyed faithful fellowship with the Lord, and had a son named Methuselah—who lived a very long time, but Enoch did not experience death.  God took him from the earth without stopping at death.

So, what should we take from this chapter? 

·       Bloodlines are important, all the way up to Christ. From our full biblical witness, we know that it is the blood of Christ that moves us forward.

·       Biblical authors, inspired by God, preserved the stories of the bloodlines that would endure to the seed that would come through Abraham’s line. Adam and Eve would have other children, but they are not included in the story we have here.

·       Sin was already wreaking havoc on the world, but there were those who were still faithful.  They may only be a small remnant, but there were those who found favor with God on the earth. Enoch was the example in this chapter.  Noah in those to come.

·       People lived a long time.  God would limit that in the next chapter.

From the beginning, God spoke creation into existence, then took what was formless and gave form to it.  God brought order out of chaos.  These first chapters deal with a lot of chaos, but God will bring order.  The line of Adam that goes through Abraham is the thread that will continue to put order in the world.

God will preserve a remnant of his creation. The evil that was prospering will be put away.  God’s relationship with mankind will continue.

The full biblical witness tells us that evil will again tempt God’s people, but God will continue to make a way for his faithful.

So as this chapter prepares for what is to come, let us consider where we have been.

God created.

God created good.

God gave form to the formless.

God created humankind special.  We are of God and like the other creatures—we are of the world.  We are unique among everything in creation.

Sin had manifested itself in disobedience to God. God gave consequences.

Humankind made offerings to God.  God was pleased with one of these offerings.

Man has manifested anger and again given sin a foothold.

Sin continued in Cain killing Abel. God gave consequences for this action but did not disown Cain.

Humankind had language, literature, tools, abodes, and grew crops and raised herds.

These were not mere cavemen who grunted and waved clubs.  From the beginning humankind was special.

Sin continued.

Adam was blessed with a lineage that would continue through Seth and eventually bring us the Christ.

Adam had other children but the story of God’s relationship with humankind will continue through Seth’s line.

Enoch marked the exception to death entering the world through Adam and Even.  All of these people—except Enoch—who lived a long time, eventually died.

It has not yet rained on the earth.

We are introduced to a man named Noah. He had kids when he 500. He was the father of three sons.

After Noah was 500 years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth.

We should realize that we have the Old Testament to better understand the New Testament; however, we who see the full biblical witness know that the converse is also true. We have the New Testament to help us understand the Old Testament and better understand a God who is not confined to linear time as we are.

Our full biblical witness will tell us that the story that gets us to Jesus and salvation and the fulness of life and life eternal, and it comes through a selected line and there will be adversity along the way.  Trials and tribulations will continue into our time.  Sin continues into our time. Some of us may or may not know what we call the Great Tribulation, but all will know some tribulation in our lives.

Many hope to be taken directly to heaven as was Enoch and those who will be living at the time of Christ’s return.  We all hope that the Burns Flat Cumberland Presbyterian Church is like the Church in Philadelphia—that we read about near the end of the age—share much in common, being saved from an hour of trial.

But we also hope to bear witness to the one true God and his Son that we know as Christ Jesus, our Lord and our Savior and our hope.  We hope to live a life full of testimonies of how we have overcome all the obstacles and stumbling blocks set before us without becoming a stumbling block ourselves.

We want to be known as followers of Christ Jesus by our love.  If that means that the world hates us, then so be it.  We know whom we serve, whom we follow, and whom we trust.

The line from Adam to Christ does not walk along the Primrose path, but it is a line that we will follow to our Savior.  Genesis won’t get us all the way there, but we will understand the early part of this story that tells of God’s relationship to the crown of his creation.

A flood is coming, but we will see those who are rescued from the destruction continue the story.

Amen.

Spittin' Image

  

Read Genesis 5

Here is a quick creation story that we find at the beginning of this chapter.

This is the written account of Adam’s family line.

When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind” when they were created.

Humankind was created mankind and there was no feminist argument, because it wasn’t a sexist thing.  Man—Adam—human was created out of the dust of the earth.  As it hadn’t rained yet, God probably had to use a little spittle to hold us together.

Maybe we are the spittin’ image of God.

The girls all went yuck.  That’s why they came from a rib and not the dirt.  OK, let’s be serious.  God created mankind—male and female alike.

We are created in God’s image—in his likeness.  We got that in chapter 1, but it seems relevant enough to the lineage that follows to be repeated here.

And we are reminded that God blessed us.  He gave us dominion and stewardship of this earth.

Only after this executive summary of creation, do we get the lineage. So, we will save much of the lineage for the next service and focus on who we are.

God created and God created good, and we were and are at the top of that creation.

We are of the earth and we are of God.  We often struggle between those two.  Struggle is part of our lives, but we must never forget that we are also made in the image and likeness of God.

For all of our struggles, God wants us to be more like him.  God does not want us to conform to the world and its models and patterns but be transformed into his image.

We don’t get all of that in this chapter of Genesis, but we also don’t read this chapter with blinders on and ignore the full biblical witness.

We have struggle but we are predestined to be conformed to God’s glorious image—to the image of his Son. From the beginning, God wanted us to be like him.

He chose us, but we must receive him as Lord and take his yoke and learn from him.  God chose us!

Let us choose to live his way in spite of and especially in the midst of our struggle. Yes, the chapter you read all week is about the bloodline that began with Abraham and continued through Seth and we see it here go all the way to Noah.

We know that it continues to Christ and that bloodline continues in the shed blood of Christ for our sins.  Let’s follow Adam’s bloodline through Noah, then Abraham and his sons, but let us remember that it is the blood of Christ that sets us free from sin and death.

Amen.