Essentials Of The Faith / Sunday Morning Sermon Series / Genesis

Genesis 8:20-9:17 03/03/02

Intro: David Winter in 'Covenant Magazine' wrote

 'The whole city was in shock. This was not supposed to happen. The church was too successful, and too conservative. He was too sharp, his family too perfect and he was too good of a preacher. Nevertheless, he committed suicide. Tara and I found out during evening worship at our church. I knew the pastor. He preached at Covenant Seminary where I was a student. IN his suicide note he wrote 'God forgive me for not being any stronger than I am...It feels as if I'm sinking farther and farther into a downward spiral of depression. I feel like a drowning man, trying frantically to lift up my head to take just one more breath. But one way or the other, I know I am going down'.

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals reported:

 Eight weeks after learning he had a fatal form of liver cancer, the Reverend Dr. James Montgomery Boice, 61, Senior Minister of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, died in his sleep on Thursday, June 15, 2000. Boice had received his doctor's diagnosis on Good Friday, two hours before stepping into the pulpit to deliver a sermon on the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. On May 7 he informed his congregation of his condition:

'If I were to reflect on what goes on theologically here, there are two things I would stress. One is the sovereignty of God. That's not novel. We have talked about the sovereignty of God here forever. God is in charge. When things like this come into our lives, they are not accidental. It's not as if God somehow forgot what was going on, and something bad slipped by.  God does everything according to his will. But what I've been impressed with mostly is something in addition to that. It's possible, isn't it, to conceive of God as sovereign and yet indifferent? God's in charge, but he doesn't care. But it's not that. God is not only the one who is in charge; God is also good. Everything he does is good. And what Romans 12: 1 and 2 says is that we have the opportunity by the renewal of our minds—that is, how we think about these things  —actually to prove what God's will is. And then it says, "His good, pleasing, and perfect will." Is that good, pleasing, and perfect to God? Yes, of course, but the point of it is that it's good, pleasing, and perfect to us. If God does something in your life, would you change it? If you'd change it, you'd make it worse. It wouldn't be as good. So that's the way we want to accept it and move forward, and who knows what God will do?'

 Two men, two storms and two very different responses.  What made the difference? Perhaps it is that one saw only the storm while the other saw God in the storm.

 Some of you are battling, very real storms in your lives. How do you find God..in the midst of the storm? How does God convince us that no matter what the storm, there is hope? Noah faced the devastation of the great flood and he needed to know that there would be new life, new hope. God gave him the rainbow. I want you to know this morning that God always gives us a sign that He is with us in the midst of the storm. A sign that there is new life ahead, there is new hope for your future.

 I always wonder if these messages in Genesis will be relevant to you on any given Sunday.  God gave me a sign. It was at the checkout line at Shoprite.

 People Mag. (Feb 25, 2002)  'NEW LIFE, NEW HOPE. Their husbands died on Sept. 11. Their babies were born afterward. Meet 31 brave women who are rebuilding their lives.' The lives of these women were devastated. Yet, through the birth of their children, there is new life, new hope for them.

 No matter what the storm, God is a God of new beginnings. You can pick up the pieces of a broken life and with God's direction and help, make a new beginning..a new life, with renewed hope.

Trans: Open your Bibles to Gen. 8:18

Read: Genesis 8:18-20

 I think it is significant that Noah's first act after coming out of the ark was to worship God.

 Certainly Noah's resources had dwindled while in the ark for over a year.
 Certainly Noah was faced with looking for food, water and building a place to live.
 Certainly the pressure to repopulate the earth must have weighed heavy on Noah and his family.
 
 There was so much to do where would they start? If it were many of us today, we would have gotten off the ark, kissed the ground, looked for a place to build some kind of shelter and forage for food and water. We would have done everything to keep us alive...There would have been no time for anything else. Our eyes would have been on ourselves first. But that is not where Noah looked was it? Noah looked to God. Before Noah and his family would begin their new lives, in this new world, they would honor God in worship, first.

 Gen. 8:1 says God remembered Noah. But what is so amazing is not that God remembered Noah but that Noah remembered God, and worshipped Him. It is not in our nature to remember God, especially immediately after we have been delivered by God from some great storm in our life.

 Remember the story of the 10 lepers...how many returned to thank Jesus? Just ONE. Showing our gratitude to God through worship can not be put off. Folks, Christians today take Sunday Morning Worship too lightly and don't attend very regularly, because they think there is always next week. Well, maybe there won't be a next week for you. But there is today. And we must show our gratitude to God by offering to Him our immediate and heartfelt worship.

 Remember God, and the God who remembers you will be your joy, comfort and strength in the midst of lifes storms.

Read: Genesis 8:21-22

 God was pleased with Noah's worship and saying that it smelled good to God meant God accepted Noah's worship. The people of God had once again become a worshipping community first and foremost. And that pleased God. God responded to Noah's worship by making him and all of us a promise.

 It seems that the flood caused the natural order of things...seasons, harvest times, day and night to be disrupted somehow. God knew these things would be necessary to sustain life so He promised they would never be disrupted again.
 
 This promise by God gives us hope in the midst of the storms of life, gives us hope for an uncertain future. Each time we see a sunrise and sunset, the changing of the seasons, we are assured of God's loving care and His wonderful promise to sustain us in the midst of lifes storms. We can trust God's promises!

 1 Kg. 8:56 says 'not one word has failed of all the good promises he gave'

Read: Genesis 9:1-7
 
 First we see the promise of New life, New Hope, New Blessing by God. Those who walk with God in the midst of lifes storms are blessed by Him. They are told to be fruitful. Fruitful here is not just reproductive, but fruitful in all areas of life..in every good work done before God.

 Next we see that the harmony in nature that Adam and Eve enjoyed was gone. God didn't say here that Noah had dominion over the animals. He said that the animals would fear mankind..why, because God approved the taking of animal life for food. If I were an animal, that would frighten me.

 However, notice, that God put a restriction on eating animal meat. He said the meat must be free of blood. I could spend time looking at the health issues of not eating meat with blood but that really wasn't God's purpose. God moves from the shedding of animal blood to the more important topic of shedding human blood. Here he prohibits murder because man is made in the image of God and to attack man is to attack God.

 And again, I could get into the whole capital punishment argument here but I don't think that is God's point either. God's point here is to introduce the connection between life and blood. God is setting the stage for introducing mankind to the basic law of redemption. To teach mankind the value of spiritual life. Sin demands lifeblood as God tells the Israelites in Lev. 17:11-12. This shedding of innocent animal blood brings a covering over of the sins of the people. Later in the NT we will see that it is through the shed blood of one innocent man, the God man, Jesus that brings complete forgiveness for sin to those who believe.
 
Remember I said that all major doctrines of the Christ life find their root in the first 11 chapters of Genesis. Here is the root of what we will celebrate this morning in the Lord's Supper.

Read: Genesis 9:8-11
 
 Here God continues the covenant with Noah. But notice that the covenant, the promise is not just with Noah and his family, it is for all generations..even the animals are included. God will never destroy all living flesh by way of the flood again.

 I like it when in Scripture God says the word never. When you or I say never, what we really mean is probably never, am I right? 'Well, I sure have learned my lesson, I will never do that again.'.  And then what? we do it again, come on admit it. We often promise what is beyond what we can guarantee. But God's never means never. Look up all God's nevers's in Scripture and be comforted by them in the midst of lifes storms.

Read: Genesis 9:12-17

 Remember I started off this morning by saying that God always gives us a sign of His promise to be with us in life's storms? Well, the sign God gave to Noah, to confirm His promise to Him and his family was a rainbow. Perhaps Peter had a rainbow in mid when he wrote 1 Peter 4:10 of  'the manifold grace of God'. The Greek work for manifold means many colored. The rainbow reminds us of the many colored grace of God.

Conclusion
 I don't know where all of you are in you walk with the Lord. But I do know that some of you carry great pains and ugly scars of the past. Sin is ugly, but God is the God of beauty. He gives us signs of his beauty in our lives and they tell us  that God knows that you life is filled with tragedy, but He is able to overcome these things. The rainbow is God's promise of faithfulness...and it is a thing of great beauty.

 What is God's rainbow in your life? What sign has God given to assure you of His abiding presence? Are you looking for one or are you so busy that there is no time to look?

 Remember, with all that Noah and his family had to do when they got out of the ark, the very first thing they did was to look to God, to thank Him for His presence with them and His deliverance from the storm.
 The text this morning is really symbolic of the Christian life. It marks the end of the old, the end of our dependence upon ourselves and the beginning of the new, the beginning of our dependence upon God.

Read: 2 Cor. 5:17 'Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things have passed away, behold, new things have come.'

God wants to do a new work in your life. He has promised that and He is always faithful to His promise.

 Be like Noah and his family, honor God first and God will bless you as you travel through the storms of life. He will give you new life and new hope.