Covenant of Hope
Covenant • Sermon • Submitted
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· 116 viewsGod's covenant of Hope. Wickedness will be judged, but God is patient desiring to offer redemption
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Covenant of Hope
Covenant of Hope
I’ve had to travel quite a bit the past few weeks. This past week of course I traveled to KY for my cousins celebration of life services. Let me thank each of you for your prayers and your well wishes. My wife and I were greatly moved when we found out that a 12 hour prayer vigil was placed on Facebook and many of you signed up during a time slot to pray for our family.
As I was traveling, I went up Western KY Parkway. That’s how I’ve always known it. But a few years ago they started putting up signs…the future I-69 Corridor. The highway dept knew the future plans for that stretch of highway.
In fact, the highway department doesn’t just build roads without first knowing what their destination will be. Likewise, when you come to the events in the Bible, these events just didn’t happen. The Bible was not written to be a history book or a science book. If you approach the Bible as either, you will find yourself scratching your head at times. The Bible is God’s message to us, painting a grand picture, with historical and scientific truths in it, but conveying a much larger truth about life, eternity and God.
We are in a series called Covenants.
A covenant is a partnership. The word also means “testament” or “testimony.” The Bible is made up in two sections - Old Testament and New Testament. You could also say, Old Covenant and New Covenant.
Covenant is different than a contract. In a contract, both agreeing parties are equal partners. IN a covenant mankind is not an equal to God. In a contract, if one party doesn’t fulfill their obligations, the contract is voided. IN a Covenant, when mankind doesn’t fulfill their obligations, God steps in and fulfills its.
God on one side - Mankind on the other - Jesus came to cover and fulfill man’s failure and empower us to live in covenant relationship with God.
God is a covenant keeping God.
When you look back at the events of Noah’s life and the covenant God made with Him and every living creature, you see God using the life and events of a man and his family to build a bridge that would lead to the Cross of Jesus Christ, His empty Tomb and arrives at the final destination of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
There is so much here and I’m only going to be able to scratch the service today.
When you come to Genesis 6. Mankind has failed in the first partnership God made with mankind. We talked about that last week. Mankind was created in God’s image and given Free Will. In this first partnership God offered relationship with Himself, peace, to supply all our needs and give eternal life in the Garden. Man was simply to Care for Creation and choose to LOVE, HONOR and RESPECT God by not eating of the fruit of one single tree in all the Garden.
Man failed on all accounts!
That failure brought sin and the curse of sin upon mankind and we did not run to God, as a people, we have continually ran away from God.
Look at
When 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, the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and he was deeply grieved. Then the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I created, off the face of the earth, together with the animals, creatures that crawl, and birds of the sky—for I regret that I made them.” Noah, however, found favor with the Lord.
These are the family records of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among his contemporaries; Noah walked with God.
Wickedness = “Philosophies”
Judgement pronounced
God has grace on the righteous who trust Him.
No matter how wicked society becomes, God has always had a remnant of people who turn to Him. Through Noah, God...
God has given us a Covenant of Hope...
Wickedness will be judged, but God is Patient desiring to Redeem.
The Lord does not delay his promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.
And just as it is appointed for people to die once—and after this, judgment—so also Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
2. God has prepared a way to Escape the coming Judgment for those who Trust Him.
“Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it with pitch inside and outside.
“Understand that I am bringing a flood—floodwaters on the earth to destroy every creature under heaven with the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark with your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives.
And Noah did this. He did everything that God had commanded him.
Notice, that God told Noah to build the ark and exactly how to build it. Then God told him, “Noah, I’m going to make a covenant with you, an agreement, if you will partner with me and do what I have said and build this ark exactly the way I said to, I’m going to secure you and your family in that ark and when the judgment comes, it won’t be able to touch you.
Then, when the time was right, God said...
Then the Lord said to Noah, “Enter the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you alone are righteous before me in this generation.
Friend, God had Noah to put one window in the top and one door on the side.
Picture of the Ark built at the Creation Museum....
Why?
Noah was in charge of the window; God was in charge of the door.We can look daily to God, but we have been shut into the Lord Jesus Christ.The ark was sealed on the inside and outside with pitch.“Pitch” is the same word that’s translated “atonement” in the Old Testament.Not one drop of water could come through this pitch.The ark is a picture of what happens when we become Christians, when we come into the Lord Jesus.When we come into Jesus, God shuts the door. We’re sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.Not one drop of judgment can come to the child of God who is saved by Jesus.
a. God has provided an ARK of Safety, His Name is JESUS.
3. Lessons from Noah while we Wait in Hope.
PREPARE.
By faith Noah, after he was warned about what was not yet seen and motivated by godly fear, built an ark to deliver his family. By faith he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.
Dr. Adrian Rogers once said, ‘When Noah believed God, he feared God. Fear and faith are inseparably linked together. Fear sees God’s power, holiness and justice. Faith sees God’s lovingkindness, grace and mercy. The fear of God is not a cringing dread of God; it is love on its knees.”
I’ve told you before, you don’t want to hurt the one you love. Fearing God is love, honor and respect.
b. PREACH.
and if he didn’t spare the ancient world, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others, when he brought the flood on the world of the ungodly;
What was Noah doing while he was building the ark? He was preaching the news to anyone who would listen. You may feel like Noah wasn’t successful because in the end the only ones who entered the ark were his family. But I’d say to you, he was successful. If we can get our families to God we have done well, but even more importantly, because Noah’s family believed, the bloodline was established that eventually led to Bethlehem and the birth of Jesus!
c. PATIENCE.
“Just as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man: People went on eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage until the day Noah boarded the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. It will be the same as it was in the days of Lot: People went on eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building. But on the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be like that on the day the Son of Man is revealed. On that day, a man on the housetop, whose belongings are in the house, must not come down to get them. Likewise the man who is in the field must not turn back. Remember Lot’s wife! Whoever tries to make his life secure will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. I tell you, on that night two will be in one bed; one will be taken and the other will be left. Two women will be grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other left.”
Did you notice the call for patience? No one knows the hour. Did you see the reference to the Rapture? Without warning, the righteous will be taken. One of the reasons I hold to a Premillenial rapture is because if the Church is to go through the time of tribulations that are coming before the second return of Jesus, then we can set a date on the calendar. As soon as we see the rise of the antichrist we can start the clock for 7 years and know at the end of the 7 years Jesus will return.
Friend, there is some distinctions in Scripture between the Second Coming of Jesus and the Return of Jesus.
We see here Jesus coming for His saints and catching them into Heaven with Him. I shared that promise from 1 Thessalonians 4: this week at my cousins graveside. When you read Revelation 19, Jesus returns to the earth with His saints.
What will we do when that day comes? We will do exactly what Noah did when the Flood waters resided.
PRAISE.
Musicians comes in and softly play...
Then God spoke to Noah, “Come out of the ark, you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you.
Then Noah built an altar to the Lord. He took some of every kind of clean animal and every kind of clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
The Big Take-Away:
What began with an ARK will end with an ALTAR of Praise!
Let’s stand together and Lift our voices in praise for our Living Hope!
Song...
Pastor Chris to come back and lead into Salvation Response.