Remembering The Lord

OPEN SERVICE: Devotional reading, desire to be healthy?

If you WANT to be physically healthy, you will make decisions reflecting that

If you WANT to be spiritually healthy, you will make decisions reflecting that

OPENING HYMN - How has He made you glad?

Quick words of testimony

MESSAGE - REMEMBERING THE LORD

ILLUST: Anyone married? Have children? Did you have to think about that?

Remembering: Focus on a beginning of a relationship, with current responsibility, with future promise

Not a Fairy Tale - The Flood Account

1) More questions answered

Where did all the water come from?

40 days/nights (literal days)

(So let’s see, if 6 day creation = 4.5 billion years, then 40 days = 30 billion years)

From below the earth, from above the earth - God’s creation evidence remains

110 more days of water covering the earth, ark rests on day 150

What about the rocks that are dated to MYA?

If you understand radiocarbon dating, if a rock is millions of years old, there would be ZERO Carbon 14. Diamonds are said to be millions of years old, and C14 is detected.

Day 371 - out from the ark, dry land

And Noah sacrifices - sweet aroma lifted

ASIDE - our sacrifice is to be a sweet aroma to God - we should smell great, spiritually!

Lesson for us, shown in Romans 12:2 - a living sacrifice

2) The Rainbow - GOD’s Rainbow

Did you know a rainbow is actually a circle?

Note the promise - READ

Reminder to GOD - “I will see”

Time to take it back - always remember Gen.9:13 when you see one

Always remember Gen. 9:13 when you see it misused, misrepresented

God must cringe when He sees the rainbow linked to something he forbids

(ASIDE: People make choices, and we love people, we are to love people, but that does not EVER mean that we celebrate alongside - to do so is to set God’s Word aside)

3) God “REMEMBERED”

Defined - God kept Noah in the forefront of His mind

Just as He does with any and every follower

(NOT - “Oh, wait, I forgot about Noah…”)

When God “remembers,” He is

Mindful of the past entry into a relationship

Currently focused on maintaining that relationship

Never wavering on the future promise, part of that relationship

Marriage/Children

There was a past entry into a covenant relationship

There is a current focus on maintaining that relationship

Future implications

Marriage - till death do we part

Children - Raise for God’s glory, teach, admonish, and pray (then they leave, cleave, and start their own cov. relationship)

God REMEMBERED:

Noah

Genesis 8:1 NASB95

But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark; and God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the water subsided.

His People

Exodus 2:24 NASB95

So God heard their groaning; and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

COOLNESS ALERT!

When God “remembers” it is always followed by demonstration that he never forgets, or forgot - HE DELIVERS

A great theme woven through Scripture: REDEMPTION, DELIVERANCE

He remembers Noah - and delivers - causes a wind to blow, land dries

He remembers His people in Egypt - and delivers - 10 plagues result, parting of the Red Sea, water from rock, manna, quail

God remembered Noah, His people, and now…YOU

God offers redemption

Sinners in need of salvation

He offered deliverance - by remembering what He said in Gen 3:15

Genesis 3:15 NASB95

And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.”

Then it came time for Jesus to bruise the head of Satan- on the cross

Jesus/God remembered the offer - then He delivered

And darkness fell for three hours, earthquakes, dead rose from grave, temple curtain tore from top to bottom

When God “remembers” it is always followed by demonstration that he never forgets, or forgot - HE DELIVERS

And in these cases, He commands nature (I feel sorry for those people who worship nature/self)

The result? a promise made to the prophet Jeremiah

Jeremiah 31:34 NASB95

“They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

To be saved, to be “in Christ” (in the ark), means that God is no longer focused on your sin, but on your future in glory with Him

CLOSING CHALLENGE:

Do you “remember” the Lord?

Communion today, we do in remembrance of Him - DO YOU?

Did you truly enter that relationship He offered?

Are you actively working on maintaining a great relationship with the Lord?

Is your life focused on this world, or on your citizenship in that place that Jesus is preparing for you?

When you become a believer, and can now “remember” the Lord, God again shows His supernatural aspect, you become a new creation

2 Corinthians 5:17 NASB95

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

God made a promise to Himself - never again destroy the earth by Flood

But He will come again, and this time, fire

2 Peter 3:10 NASB95

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.

God remembered Noah, He remembers His people

Those He “remembers” will be spared His wrath and judgment

We like God remembering us. He’d like us to remember Him (see slide 1 Cor 11:25 for emphasis)

Is that you?