While The Earth Remains

Genesis 8: 15-22

Good Morning Church of God! and what a good morning it is to be God’s people. We are blessed beyond measure for service to our Lord. This has been another week of upheaval. The ground was frozen when we woke up on Monday and by Friday we could hang our coats on a fence post and enjoy the sunshine. The world faced all sorts of upheaval this week. The earth groaned as el Nino brought floods to the west coast and the weather became hard to predict. Through it all, though, God did not again curse the ground. He did not flood the entire earth to be rid of man. God did not cause all people to be lost to death because of our evil. And make no mistake, our evil is great and terrible, but just as God promised us in Genesis chapter 7: 21-22, He would not again destroy the earth and all it’s inhabitants because of our evil.

How did we get to that awful and

beautiful place in history where God promised Noah and his children that He would never again curse the earth and give it over to death? That’s where I want to Begin this morning.

Noah and Family In the Ark:

The family was in that Ark for 377 days. Again, the only good thing about this experience was that God was protecting Noah and the descendants of Noah from death in the flood waters. Noah was closed by God in a 500 foot long, 100 food wide, 50 foot tall box covered inside and out with coal tar. It stank. And all around the Ark the world stank of death, rotting people and livestock and that smell permeated the walls of Noah’s Ark. An older Bible teacher, many years ago, told it to me like this. He said that when he read his grandbabies the story of Noah’s Ark it was cute. All the adorable, clean, happy animals, followed kindly old Noah onto the Ark and they went on a ride for forty days and forty nights. It almost sounds pleasant. The old professor got serious with me, however, and reminded me that it wasn’t like that at all. Death was everywhere and no living creature except for those in the Ark survived. The world was a sea of rotting humanity. Now, if you’ve ever been near the body of a person who drowned, it’s absolutely the worst smell you can imagine. I won’t go into the details, but it’s a smell one doesn’t forget. So, imagine every person alive drowns! The Ark, sitting atop mt. Ararat as the waters recede, is looking down on the largest cemetery in human history.

The Ark is Miserable Inside, too...

The inhabitants of the Ark stayed

together in their lifeboat for 377 days. We preach and teach and sing songs about the 40 days and nights of rain, but these people were in the Ark for over a year together. Remember the times you’ve had to ride in a cramped car. You’ve got a headache and feel like you’re going to be sick, because it’s hot and loud. Aunty So and So has terrible funky perfume on and Uncle Buddy has terrible underarms and you can’t open the window and the baby needs changing? Ahhh! Try that for a year straight. You complain about the smell of the pigs and somebody has to remind you that they’re downstairs. What do we know of this story? One, that Noah was faithful. He didn’t crack open the Ark once God shut them in. We know that Noah’s family and the animals survived. God protected the faithful and made a way for salvation, just as He later did through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ.

Walking Out of the Ark

In verse 18, we see Noah, his wife and his son’s Ham, Shem and Japheth, along with their wives depart the Ark. No more would they have to live in that misery. What’s the first thing that old Noah, now 600-years-old did? He didn’t set up a monument to himself. He didn’t look around for a way of making some money. There’s was nobody around who would turn his ordeal on the Ark into a movie. Like every good and righteous servant of God, Noah built and alter to the Lord His God and sacrificed animals that he’d been raising on the Ark. Like we talked about a few weeks back with the story of Abel, Noah sacrificed the best of what He had to honor God and the Lord was pleased with having this one man on earth who stood righteous before Him. The Lord looked upon Noah and his small offering and promised never to curse the ground of the earth or strike down all men. The Lord our God spared humanity in that moment.

God’s Covenant with Man: He Will Spare Mankind From Future Flood-Genesis 9: 14-17

The Lord our God has not erased humanity from this earth since the days of the flood and Noah.

We’ve deserved it. Oh how we’ve deserved to be destroyed! There is no reason God should have spared us for further chances at Righteousness and goodness before Him. Out of God’s great love God has let humanity exist since the flood, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves with the idea that we deserve to inhabit the earth. Men and women continue to do all kinds of evil. I was watching the internet this week and a man walked into a fancy Apple Electronics store and ripped out every thousand and two thousand dollar device, dozens of them. stuffed them in his clothes and in front of security and the police drove away. At Thanksgiving time, a group of young men and women in Chicago destroyed another downtown Apple store by smashing into to it and taking what they wanted. In Detroit, groups of young people drive through malls, loot jewelry stores and drive off. One killed a child in the process. We are a remorseless generation. An evil generation. We have every kind of drug and prostitution on demand and there is no more prosecution. If you’re a politician with enough money and enough followers, you can do whatever you want as long as people listen. Christians and Non-Christians alike, we do evil all day every day. The apostle Paul, in Romans 3, in what is perhaps the most famous passage outside of John 3:16 Quotes the Psalmist in verses 10-18:

Romans 3:10–18 ESV

as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of asps is under their lips.” “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.” “Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

I say that to remind us of the

fact, you and me alike, that God has not and will not flood or destroy the earth again because of our evil and because of man’s refusal to honor and worship God alone. We see floods in California, earthquakes and Tsunami’s in Japan, disaster and death in Chile, but through it all, God has not cleansed the earth of man and his evil. Every time I look at God’s promise of the rainbow, I thank Him who created the earth and sustains that we are still here. I thank Him that the rains do end and that we do find our hope in God alone. We humans have no good in us and we are incapable of doing good apart from God, but He is faithful too us. That doesn’t mean there won’t be floods and famines, but they won’t be the flood of Noah and his time.

IF God doesn’t destroy us by flood, can I do whatever I want?

This is one of the pivotal

questions, especially through this last century. If God isn’t going to wipe out all humans, we should go on about our business as usual, right? No, God clearly is making a covenant in Genesis 9 between Himself and sinful man. A covenant is a solemn oath between two parties, a blood oath to faithfully uphold a two part agreement. God would protect man from flood and destruction. In verse 9, God tells Noah that our human part of the covenant, the holy agreement with Him is a reckoning. The reckoning in verse 9 is that if a man kills another human, he must pay with his own blood. A life for a life. Cain and his blood were spared and evil, murderous humanity continued. Now, God’s covenant with man stood. I will protect you humans, my creation, from destruction by the earth, but I demand that killing be met with justice and that men and women no longer wantonly kill one another in cold blood. Let me clear: If the human justice system doesn’t take the blood of the murderer, God is His righteous judgement will. God demands sacrifice.

The Blood of One for the Sins of All.

We who call Christ Jesus are savior are blessed with knowledge and assurance. We are assured that the blood recompense, the life for a life, was the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ. We are spared by the blood of the one who fulfills Noah’s covenant with God, Christ His Son. I don’t even have words for this. All of the evil man has done, all the killing, violence, disease, war and poverty of mind and body man has caused, was taken upon Christ when He died for us. And all we have to do is believe, repent of all of that sin we’ve been a part of and walk faithfully with Him for all of eternity. Again, it’s hard for humans to comprehend, much less put into words. Again, Paul in Romans 3: 22-26, saying:

Romans 3:22–26 ESV

the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

We again get into troubled

thinking knowing that Jesus died for all of us, and all of our sins, and that the covenant of Noah is fulfilled in His blood. That does not mean that God will not judge man’s evil, both his intentions and his actions. Our job is to believe, live in faith and to continually repent of our sin, knowing that He has saved us and been merciful. That job is difficult though. The highway rest stops are becoming full of homeless people that we as believers, washed in Christ’s blood can’t ignore. The nursing homes are full of people forgotten by their families. The stores and businesses are full of stealing. There is no good born in us, and as Paul and the Psalmist agree, our mouths are an open grave. What do we do to be the Noah’s, the people of God’s continuing grace and mercy, in a world so confused and corrupt? My hope today is to send you out into the world with three ways to impact the world. Three ways to be the new rainbow, the new sign of God’s mercy and overwhelming love for us. Here is the first thing I want you and myself to do when we leave this building.

#1: Be a Light in a Dark World!

When Noah opened the window

of the Ark, he let in the light of God’s creation and let out the foul smell and noise of his home aboard the Ark. Yes, the stench of death was everywhere, but so was the light that God had created to lead men out of the darkness. When my child was born, I was working in a paper towel factory over in Benton Harbor. The power would often go out, because we were in a partially rural area of town. One night the power went out good and proper. We weren’t allowed to go home, and all we could do was sit for hours waiting. Most of us got grumpy, we stirred up rumors about the plant moving which it eventually did. There we sat in 90 degree heat, in a corrugated metal building hour after hour, fighting amongst ourselves. 2:00 a.m. became 4:00 a.m. became 5:30 and the started peeking over the horizon. We could tell the time, because the r&b station in Benton Harbor played the songs on a tape loop every night. But then the sun came up and we walked out into the light. The light cheered everyone. We knew that there was hope of going home and getting to sleep legitimately. The light shone on the sin in our little world and made us want for something new and authentic.

In the same way, Jesus Christ is

that light that gives hope. He is the dawn after the never-ending night. As the apostle John better states it in his gospel account of Christ:

John 1:3–5 ESV

All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Darkness and evil in this world

never overcame Christ, nor can they overcome those who are the lights in this world that Jesus taught them to be. Be the light in this world that cannot be extinguished by the evil and sin of mankind. My friend Jackie who I do a worship service at the nursing home in Three Rivers with will tell me that people who are struggling are encouraged and strengthened by those who reflect the light of Christ’s example. She will tell me, and it’s true that they are drawn to those who Christ dwells in and see that love, or they’re afraid of it. The satan in them is so powerful that he fears the light of Jesus Christ coming from those who believe and practice the Word of God.

What does that mean, though?

What’s it mean to be the light of Christ as He was in this dark world. It means listen when others won’t. Be the Samaritan of Jesus’ parable who crosses the road to tend the need of the stranger, rather than the preacher of self, who can’t get dirty with “those” people. We all have been guilty of not loving and not crossing the road to help “those” people at one time, or another. “That’s them other people, not us” or “That’s somebody else’s kid.” I’m going to make myself sound old here, but as we said as kids, that’s OPP-other people’s problems.

In a dark world that’s gone off the rails, be the light that is reflective of Jesus Christ.

When Noah opened that stuffy porthole, he saw light created by God. Be the light for others as a believer in Christ Jesus. As Martin Luther so ably put it, be Little Christs yourselves.

#2: Run out of that Ark and Build God’s Altar!

I mentioned it earlier in this

message from God’s Word, but what’s the first thing Noah did when he got out of the Ark? He built an altar and sacrificed to the Lord his redeemer and protector. Now, because of the great gift of life we have in Jesus Christ, He is our once and for all sacrifice. We don’t build altar’s and offer burnt offerings. But…we should be in the habit of offering everything we have to the Lord God of heaven. When you wake up, do you thank God that you woke? Do you thank Him that you got to see the light of day on this side of eternity one more time? Do you build God and altar of praise and thanksgiving at every moment of your life. That’s the thing: Your life should look like praise and thanks to the God who sustains and protects you all the time. Football players aren’t the only ones who should thank God. I saw a news story about a well-to-do TV evangelist who is asking for 76 million dollars for his current needs. Now, I don’t make fun of any preacher, because we know folks come to salvation in Jesus Christ through the message of these folks. I just think it’s a terribly mixed up world when football players kneel in the end zone and build an alter of thanksgiving to God for their victories and TV ministers simply ask for money for themselves. Be the football player. When you have even the smallest moment of triumph or even a big set-back in this life, thank and praise God for His good and righteous nature and His continuing providence to you. Be the football player who when he gets interviewed gives glory to God first. We know that Noah didn’t play for any university, but the first thing he did when leaving that awful Ark was to thank God.

I am not saying you should be

Noah, a televangelist or an athlete, but you can worship and thank God in every single moment of life, building altars to Him that crowd out the sinful altars of this world. Has God restored your health after a miserable illness? Run forward and worship the Lord your God! Has He taken you from the darkness of a life of sin to the bright, blessed daylight at the foot of the cross, in repentance and new life with Him? Run forward and thank God for the gift of Salvation in His son Jesus Christ! Have you seen miracles that science and this messed up world can’t explain, but Scripture and the truth of God can? Run forward and embrace the Lord God, sacrificing your old life to Him and being redeemed in your new life as a Christ follower!

#3: Remember Your Own Floods and Look to the Heavens!

This is my final point today for

you to take home and into the world with you: When you look to the rainbow, you as a believer in the power and majesty of Almighty God are reminded that God promised to never flood the earth again and destroy all it’s inhabitants. Men are cruel and stupid and stubborn and untruthful, but God set a sign in the heavens after the rainfall that He will spare us the return of the flood-the rainbow. That’s a powerful reminder that’s stood up to history and has gone with us humans across the earth for 5,000 years. Let me ask you, though: What’s your rainbow? When God called you out of darkness and set you in the light of Jesus Christ, to live in Him forever, what is there that reminds you of that promise? I have a leg that full of scars and that reminds me of God’s saving my life and redeeming me to minister His word. The apostle Paul had his “thorn in the flesh,” in 2 Corinthians 12, his physical disability that reminded him that he was not Christ but the humble servant of the risen savior. It was by God’s grace that Paul was able to preach the gospel of Christ and the affliction reminded him of that daily.

What I would say is this:

Use the scars and afflictions in this life as God’s reminder that you are His.

You belong body and soul to

Christ your savior and when He purchased you with his blood, he gave you all the rainbows you need to know that you belong to Him. Life events that went sour, relationships that weren’t chosen for you by God, illnesses that He healed. Those are all the rainbows you look to and remember that God brought you out of darkness, into life, for the purpose of glorifying Him.

What Became of Noah?

Noah lived 350 more years

after exiting the Ark, Scripture tells us. In his old age, Noah planted a vineyard and enjoyed the fruit of it. He was disrespected by his son Ham, who witnessed his elderly father naked and drunk. Cursed were the generations after Ham, including his son Canaan, father of the despised Canaanite peoples. Shem and his brother Japheth were righteous before God and honored Noah’s dignity. From Shem came the Hebrew people, God’s chosen race of people. From the line of Ham and Canaan came the people of Babel, who we’ll talk from the Scripture about next Sunday. From the line of Ham came the Philistines. So it was at the beginning of Noah’s story that it is now, just as it was in the days of Cain and Abel: The righteous will set themselves apart and God will watch over them and bless them, but they will always be persecuted by the wicked generations and have to fight doubly hard to keep themselves pure of the world’s sin. Those who live for the Lord God, however, have before them the light that is Jesus Christ. That is no pinhole in the Ark letting a tiny speck of light in along with the flood of evil. Jesus is the glorious light that illuminates all good and all bad in this world.

May we strive to be the people of that light, the reflections of Christ Himself. The little Christs bringing light to a dark world.

Let Us Pray: