Sermon Tone Analysis

This morning we had a look at the parable of the fig tree and we will finish this chapter with some remarks on the next.

Something is coming that this world is unprepared for and that is the Second Advent of Christ.

It will come like a tsunami, which instead of a flood of water as deluged this world a few thousand years ago, will the next time be a flood of God’s wrath in glory, power and fire.

I’ve chosen this imagery because of who this passage is speaking of; Noah.

The way Jesus speaks of this is not only in some symbolic way but historically as a literal event.

It matters not that scientists think that the extinction of the dinosaurs was 65 million years ago we know that it did not happen until after the flood.

We know that the promise given to Noah and his family, and by extension, us, was that of a rainbow which meant that God will no longer flood the whole world again.

Some people have tried to explain away the notion of a world-wide flood as something impossible and tried to localise it to a particular area.

The problem is that God’s promise is broken if he only flooded a portion of the world for, even in our time, we have seen a literal tsunami spread across the ocean and kill nearly a quarter of a million people in a day.

Of course, for us who are familiar with the story of creation we know that the whole world was covered by water until the 3rd day:

So, the world can be completely flooded, even before the devastation of Noah’s day which was like a renewed creation when the waters receded.

37

Here in verse 37 it says that as it was in Noah’s day so shall it be when Jesus comes back.

The story of the flood is from from Genesis 6.

It says of that time:

The pre-flood people gave themselves over to every vile affection of the flesh.

They were so bad that God determined to destroy everyone.

God was grieved for He loved people but they had no desire for Him, just for themselves and their passions.

And yet God does not judge people until their sin is full.

There is a point in time, unknown to us, where God’s patience runs out and then He lets out His fury.

If our God is a lovey-dovey God then we do not truly know Him.

God’s love has nothing to do romantic love but is a choice He has made to love us with an everlasting love.

But God is also a God of justice and wrath.

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

That description of Noah’s day could easily describe things today.

The fullness of sin has not yet been reached for we know that when the Church is raptured then lawlessness on an enormous scale will be let loose.

We are called bigots by those who disagree with us if in relation to homosexuality or transgender or abortion or so on.

The only bigotry allowed today is against a bible-believing Christian.

This is nothing new, of course.

When Lot lived in Sodom he was accused of being judgemental yet we have no evidence that he ever spoke up but he did live a righteous life.

If you are not for them they consider that you are their judge.

They try to repress you with accusations and tolerance for you and I are no longer there.

They do not like being told they’re wrong or that God thinks what they do is wrong, Even so, they have the opportunity to be saved.

What was Noah’s day like?

What is today like?

There are scientists today who advocate that an animal’s life is more important than a humans.

Some are advocating aborting a baby even after they are born into the world especially if they are malformed or disabled or has down syndrome because they simply are not human according to the British Medical Journal’s Journal of Medical Ethics in May 2013 for they are still fetuses.

They have less value than a chimpanzee.

(Peter Singer, Bioethics Tutor)

What was Noah’s day like?

What is today like?

The regular question is: are people born this way?

Well, no, but all are born sinners.

You know that recently they have completely debunked the idea people are gay through genetics, that there is no gay gene, something that we have been told for years exists.

The desires we have come from within, out of the heart which is deceitful above all things:

The city of Sodom is where we get the word sodomy from but we also read other things about Sodom in:

Pride marches are aptly named.

They were lazy too, the kind who are on benefits because they make no effort or who propagate the short working week and didn’t care about anyone except themselves.

But people are warned about this too, in

What about Noah?

I mentioned this morning that he is an example to me.

He preached for 120 years without a convert.

And what was his message?

A flood is coming.

Judgement is coming.

Get on the boat!

How the people laughed at him.

But we read in

A preacher of righteousness.

Until then there had been no rain, no flood, no need for a boat in the desert.

They ignored him, ridiculed him, said don’t be daft, don’t preach hell and damnation for God is not like that.

Your sermons are too dark.

But for 120 years Noah and his family built the boat to salvation according to the dimensions God gave him.

Can you hear the hammer and nails getting it ready?

In their hearing and in their sight Noah was preaching judgement, the kind of Apocalypse I have been telling you about in Revelation, except the judgement of the future will be so much worse.

What were the days of Noah like?

It was pretty normal and ordinary.

They were eating and drinking.

Anyone do that yesterday and today?

Anyone here get married or give away a son or daughter in marriage.

Nothing strange.

Nothing obviously wrong with these things, surely.

Yet it was on such a day that a drop of rain fell on the nose of someone, and water came up from under the ground and soon they were up to their ankles, their knees, and soon they were banging on the ark but just as an unexpected tsunami took away around 240,000 souls in 2004, this one took them all away.

The people today do not want to hear.

Maybe some even here do not want to.

But in the final days there will be over 144,000 preachers of the Gospel, preachers of righteousness and though the world will know God is doing things to judge them they will not, not because they can’t, they will not come to be saved but instead curse and swear and laugh and mock until they are all carried away when He comes again.

Jesus points to Noah as one he saved and shut the door on the world that laughed and derided this family of 8 and God shut them in and protected them along with the animals.

And they were saved and the others were not.

Today our churches are emptying.

No room for God, no room for Jesus, no room for the Church.

It’s not like people are not being warned.

I’m warning you and you should be warning others.

And others are warning people too.

The Tsunami of 2004 did not come without warning.

I heard the story of children on the beach on elephants and long before the wave hit the shore the elephants suddenly took off without warning leaving their handlers and parents running after them and they were not caught until they got to higher ground.

The elephants saved all their lives.

On another beach a 10 year old girl from England called Tilly Smith was in Thailand.

She had a lesson on Tsunamis the previous week in Geography class, and recognised what was happening when the water receded, warned those on the beach and saved many lives.

Over 100, in fact.

It was the only beach to have no deaths or injuries.

They heeded the warning.

Others though were curious and instead went out on the receded beaches and they were too far from the shore when the waves came in.

They just did not see the signs and understand them.

On another beach in Thailand a Czech woman called Petra Nemcova was with her boyfriend when the Tsunami hit.

He was taken, she was left.

This we see in verses 40-41.

Two are out.

One taken, the other left.

This is not the rapture here.

This is about judgement.

One is taken in judgement the other left.