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Always looking for the hero
Hurricane Ian hit Florida and then South Carolina this week.
There was a lot of devastation and heartache and brokenness.
In the middle of it all, came stories of rescue and healing.
You may have seen the videos of a cat being rescued and a dog being rescued in the middle of the storm.
Even more dramatic.. a firefighter in Naples rescuing a man whose car was being carried away by the surge of water into the city, having to break the back windows of the car in order to save the man’s life.
There was a TV reporter who dropped everything and went into the water to save a woman whose car was being overcome by flood waters.
She crawled out her back window and onto his back and he carried her to safety.
A private group rescued a woman on one of the barrier islands who only had six inches of space between the water and the roof.
These people who risked their health and their lives to save others in a flood are being called heroes.
No need for a big Hollywood screen.
We see heroes in real life.
Those videos go viral.
We live in a culture desperate for heroes.
We spend billions telling ourselves stories of heroes, comic book heroes who save the earth from aliens, or pilots who save us from sinister nuclear plots flying airplanes faster than the speed of sound.
Billions of dollars spent, hours of screen time watched because we all want a hero.
We long for Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne to come save us from our own misery.
Who will rescue us from the bills that can’t be paid, the relationship that crash and burned, the job that is pointless.
Where is the TV reporter?
Where is our firefighter?
Where is our coast guard?
It does raise the question: what is a hero?
Just like everything else these days, the definition is disputed.
Some believe a hero is someone who puts themselves in danger and enters risk on behalf of another.
Some go as far to say that a hero is someone who is willing to give up their life for the greater good.
Problems arise when people put themselves in danger or give up their life for what they believe is greater good, when it is fairly obviously evil.
One definition I like is one that Barna came up with in studying the subject a few years ago:
Heroes are ordinary people who rise to the occasion, displaying courage, integrity and humility
This sounds like many of the other definitions, but this definition highlights one unique feature: ordinary people.
Heroes come from the ranks of the ordinary.
People like all of us.
Using that definition, many in Christian circles have taken to finding heroes in the Bible.
People who did the extraordinary.
People who went above and beyond, displaying courage and integrity.
We’re going to spend the next few weeks retelling these stories of Bible heroes.
But we are going to do it with a fundamental difference, one that isn’t a surprise to us here at the Table.
The whole Bible is about Jesus.
And if the whole Bible is about Jesus, then these stories and these heroes should teach us something about Jesus.
And our first is a familiar story to many of us.
The story of Noah.
As we have read this morning, Noah is a guy who spent 120 years building a big boat, and then the rains started and the water in the earth broke loose and the entire earth was covered in water.
The water kills everybody on the planet except 8 people.
Noah and his family.. his wive, his two sons and their wives, eight people were saved.
As well as many animals who found a home on that boat.
That sounds like a sci-fi movie.
Everyone dies except those who were fortunate enough to get on the boat.
That’s the story we know and read in our Christian pop culture.
There are other details, but those are the basics.
We even have a life-sized boat in Kentucky built to the same specs as the boat in the Bible.
If that’s all we can say about the Noah story, then we have missed the point of the Noah story.
We are in chapter 9 this morning because this is all the stuff that happens when Noah finally leaves the boat about a year after the rain started.
When we tell this part of the story, if we tell it at all, we tell it as if it is simply a post-credit scene.
It’s not the main point.
We’re done with that.
We’ve answered the question,
“What was it about Noah that helped him overcome the odds and save himself and his family in the greatest natural disaster the earth has ever known?”
Noah becomes the hero.
Of course he’s the hero.
He had the spiritual fortitude to listen to God when others didn’t, he built the boat, he collected the animals, he saved his family from disaster.
There are numerous clues throughout the entire story about how all of this went down, and it is not quite like that.
Verse 8 here in our text this morning says this:
Genesis 9:8 “Then God said to Noah and his sons with him,”
God speaks
The first three words are all we need to know about where the spotlight should be in this story.
“Then God said”.
God is speaking.
God spoke at the very beginning of this story, telling Noah to build the ark because judgment is coming.
Humanity is wicked and God plans to start over.
Genesis 6:5 “The Lord saw that human wickedness was widespread on the earth and that every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time.”
Things are so bad, I’m going to start over with you, Noah.
God then acted on his speech.
The story tells us that God shut the door of the ark.
This isn’t Noah’s doing.
God shuts the door, God sends the rain, God opens up the earth.
God floods the world.
Now, at the end of it all, God is speaking again.
This hasn’t been Noah’s doing.
This is God’s doing.
And when God speaks now, it’s not with the threat of judgment.
There is none of this when Noah leaves the boat.
In fact, it’s exactly the opposite:
Genesis 9:9 ““Understand that I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you,”
God promises
7 times in the next 10 verses God uses the word “covenant”.
I’m establishing, I’m making a covenant.
I’m making you a promise.
The promise isn’t just for you… it’s for your descendents.
It’s for everything that has breath.
Every living creature.
I promise you.
There are no sweeter words to the ears of Noah and his family.
I promise you.
I promise you I will never destroy like this again.
I promise, I promise, I promise.
The God who spoke judgment, the God who acted, is now speaking grace.
He is speaking mercy and life.
7 times.
I promise.
Just think how this sounds.
Noah and his family have been on a windowless boat for about a year.
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