Trinity Faith Church
Sunday Worship @ TFC, March 18, 2018
"Growing in Grace" Sermon Series "Our Evil, God's Grace!" Pt. 10
Locations & Times
Trinity Faith Church Adult Sunday School @ 9:30 AM Sunday Worship @ 10:30 AM Sunday Evening Prayer @ 6:00 PM
2264 S Kansas Ave, Liberal, KS 67901, USA
Sunday 10:30 AM
Questions? Comments?
Questions about today's message? Comments you want to share with Pastor Terry or TFC? Use this link. Thanks for your feedback!
https://tinyurl.com/tfcquestionsI. God saw wickedness spreading throughout over the face of the Earth. Mankind is evil! This is a description of our hearts apart from the grace of God!
II. V. 6 teaches us something huge about the personality of God; it says that as God looks out and sees all of this, He is grieved in His heart. Our God feels our God has voluntarily bound up His heart with His creation, with us, His people!
III. When we ask the question about the problem of suffering, and the problem of evil in the world, we're only thinking about our suffering; have you ever wondered about God's suffering?
IV. What can be done to fix human wickedness? And what can be done to fix God's pain, His grieving heart, over the wickedness of the world?
V. What a great way to be known, as someone who walks with God! Noah walked to the beat of a completely different drum; he didn't go the way of his culture, he didn't go the way of his neighbors! Noah feared God, not man!
VI. In Gen. 1, when God looked out over His creation, He was very pleased; now, just five chapters later, God looks out over His creation and sees violence! This is what has happened to His creation, so God takes Noah into His confidence, and He tells Noah His plans: that He will destroy all flesh with a flood of waters! He is destroying the people who have already been destroying themselves! But God will preserve Noah. Why? In v. 18, God establishes a covenant with Noah; why? Because of grace!
VII. God tells Noah something; He tells Noah to build an ark; later, He will tell Noah to enter that ark, and then He will tell him to exit that ark. Noah obeys; Noah did all that God commanded him; this is going to be a repeated refrain throughout this story, that Noah obeys God! Noah lives by faith!
VIII. This is the second time God speaks to Noah, this time telling him to go into the ark before the rains come; notice that Noah doesn't have a single line in this whole story! We never hear his voice—but his actions speak louder than words!
IX. The number, "forty," is a stock biblical word that has hope at its core; whenever the number "forty" is used in Scripture, you know that there's ultimately hope at the center of it. Forty days is a time of testing, that leads to a brand new beginning, when God is going to do a new work among His creation.
X. Earlier in Genesis, we heard that God took man and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living being; now, the floodwaters come and extinguish that breath of life! People die! But the very same waters that come and crush the people left on Earth, push up the ark, and life is preserved inside of it!
XI. Perhaps some of you here today are wondering if God remembers you; you've been going through something, and it's been what seems like forty days, and forty nights! You don't see an end in sight; but if you know God, you have a covenant relationship with Him! He does remember you! You need to know this.
XII. Notice that Noah doesn't just exit the ark! He waited for God to tell him to build the ark; he waited for God to tell him to enter the ark; now, he waits to hear God's voice telling him to exit the ark. God speaks to Noah a third time; He tells him to exit the ark, and Noah does so; in a sense, Noah exits the ark as a second Adam, starting a new beginning on the Earth!
XIII. THERE IS STILL A PROBLEM!! What went into the ark with Noah? Animals went into the ark with Noah; his family went into the ark; but sin also went into the ark! Sin went into the ark with Noah!
XIV.Did the flood solve this dual problem of human wickedness and God's pain over this wickedness that spread on the Earth? No! The flood didn't solve that problem! God was under no illusion that now mankind had turned over a new leaf, and that these eight people had learned from the flood, and they would go on to do better from here on out!
XV. We all deserve the flood! The amazing thing about this story is not God's judgment, it's not the flood; rather, the amazing thing is God's grace—that He would save Noah, and that He would save us! The flood points us to something greater.
XVI. One very big thing that happened after the flood: an offering, and its aroma! This aroma goes up to God; interestingly, the name Noah means rest; God's grieving heart is now put at rest, not by the flood, but by an aroma arising from Noah's offering! This is the first burnt offering, the first sacrificial offering, in all of Scripture, and this is an amazing act of grace on God's part—namely, that He allows himself to be put at rest [appeased] by a sacrificial, burnt offering, which always involves the shedding of blood! The theological term of what I’ve just described is the word, “propitiation”; propitiation is an act where God turns away His wrath from those who deserve it!
XVII. Noah's offering foreshadowed the ultimate sacrificial offering, Jesus offering Himself as the once for all time sacrifice, shedding His sinless, perfect life’s blood, on our behalf, so that we could be for-given of our imperfection—that is, our sin!—so that we could be reconciled to God! God knew that no animal or human offering could fix the pain and sin of the world, so God sent his Son from Heaven to solve that problem!
XVIII. The “forecast” for your life is grace—floods of grace! It's grace at the beginning, and grace at the end, so that when you and I come to lie upon our deathbeds, the one thing that should comfort, and help, and strengthen us at that moment, is the thing that helped us at the beginning!—not what we’ve been, nor what we've done, but the grace of God in Jesus Christ our Lord! The Christian life starts with grace; it must continue with grace, and it ends with grace!
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