you. I come. many a man fightings and fears
within just I know. I wanted Stevie and Mikey to
know that They live on farms down in Bega
and they deal with lots of animals. In fact, Stevie, there's a great
picture of Stevie taken last week, a couple of weeks ago.
I don't know how he did it, Stevie, but he was actually holding an echidna
in his hand. He was. And it wasn't a tiny
echidna, was it, Stevie? It was a big echidna. So when
Stevie comes up here or goes anywhere, and when I go down
to see Stevie, we go on bush walks and we go on bug hunting
expeditions and we go looking for things. But one of the reasons
I wanted to deal with this story is that I love it so much because
it's such an amazing picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. But
also I want for my children, I want for all of us to know
that every time we see something that has breath in it, in this
world, the only reason we can see it and the only reason Stevie
can play with them and Mikey can study them and know all about
them, they know more about a whole bunch of this, the animal and
birds and the fish of this world than I have a clue about, the
only reason you know about them And it's because of this event,
isn't it? And this event is all about... It's not an event about animals
so much. It's an event about the Lord
Jesus Christ. It's a story about Him. It's a picture of Him. And the
Lord Jesus reminds us of Noah's Ark because he says that just
as in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the day when the Lord
Jesus Christ comes back. There will be there will be a
destruction similar. People were eating and drinking
and marrying and giving in marriage and had given no thought to all
the warnings that Noah had given for 120 years. Every time, every
hammer blow on that ark was a signal that God is going to judge this
earth. And yet, and yet the warnings
fell on deaf ears. And so shall it be in the days
of Noah. And I want for my grandchildren
and I want for my children and I want for everyone I know to
hear the warnings of God about these things. The reality is
that people in Noah's day were not innocent and nor were they
ignorant. The people in this day are not
innocent and they are not ignorant and the justice of God in bringing
judgment upon this world is a righteous judgment. Everything God does
is right and just in every way possible. As we read earlier,
Noah was a man who found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Noah
was a man who received these covenant promises from God. He says, with thee I will establish
my covenant and thou shalt come into the ark. I will establish
my covenant. That's a picture of the eternal
covenant in the Lord Jesus Christ. He'll establish a covenant and
thou shalt, every single one that God put in that covenant
before the foundation of the world, will be saved and they
must be saved and they'll be saved in ways that are so beautifully
pictured in Noah's Ark. Noah's Ark is a is a vessel that
could absorb the wrath of God. Absorb the wrath of God that
fell on the ark. See, all of the rain, all of
the judgment of God fell on the ark as much as it fell on the
rest of the world. But what saved the people in
the ark? What saved them? I was saved
because in the ark the wrath fell. And that's exactly what
happened in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. The wrath
of God fell on the Lord Jesus Christ. And he absorbed that
wrath of God until God's holy justice said, it is finished,
I am satisfied. God has no pleasure, He finds
no satisfaction in the death of the wicked, because nothing
the wicked ever do, all of their sufferings for all eternity,
none of that can ever satisfy the justice of God. But the infinite
God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ, could bear all of that wrath
of God, bear it all, and everyone inside Him, everyone in Him,
is as safe as Noah and the others were in the ark. And so this
plan, this design of God's salvation is a unique design. No one had
ever built a boat before. We were talking about that last
time. No one had ever seen a boat before. No one had ever seen
rain before. How did Noah manage to build
an ark? God taught him how to build an ark. God showed him
how to build an ark. And the design is unique. The pattern of salvation, the
design of salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ is unique. And it's
not something that man would come up with. Not another single
person in all the world thought of building a boat. Even when
Noah's boat was nearly finished, no one was thinking of building
a boat. They thought what Noah was doing was irrelevant and
silly. But the building of the ark,
as we read earlier, is directed exactly by what God said in every
detail. And who gets all the glory? God
gets all the glory. When the Lord Jesus Christ finished
building his church, who gets all the glory? He gets all the
glory. That's what the shoutings of
in Zechariah 4 are. The shoutings of it, when that
capstone is there and it's all finished and sealed, the shoutings
of it are grace, grace to it. The Lord Jesus Christ builds
his church. The Lord Jesus Christ saves his
people. But I wanted us to spend a little
bit of time with my grandsons on looking at what the Ark pictures. See, it was a vessel designed
by God to withstand all of the righteous wrath of God and survive. And that's what the Lord Jesus
Christ said, didn't he? He said, a body hast thou prepared
me. And I want us to look at this
pitch. The pitch was on the outside of the boat and the pitch is
on the inside of the boat. So all the timbers of the boat
were covered in this pitch on the outside, on the inside. And that word pitch, which is
like a tarry substance probably, it means, the word means to cover,
to purge, which is to take something black and make it white again
and clean it. It means to make an atonement. It means to make
reconciliation. The big word is propitiation. That's what this word means.
It's that which absorbs and turns away wrath. The blood. The atonement blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ not only has to be shared, but the
atonement blood of the Lord Jesus Christ is applied to the hearts
of people. It's on the outside to absorb
the wrath of God, and it's on the inside to cleanse our consciences
and to wash us clean. And every time they looked around
that ark on the inside, what did they see? They saw the atonement.
When you look from the outside, what did you see? You saw atonement
again and again and again. And that kept the water out,
didn't it, Mikey, Stevie? It kept the water out. The reason
the ark floated was because of that pitch. So God designed this. God designed salvation in the
most remarkable ways. No one else had ever think of
it. God designs it. God commissions it. God gives
no other skills to complete it. God gives no other trees to build
it. If you go down the paddock there and have a look at how
big the trees must have been, they were enormous trees. These ones here were far too
tiny to build anything much in the ark. They might have done
some other internals. They were far too tiny. God designs it. God commissions it. God gave
Noah the skills. God gave Noah the materials.
There was just one door. There is only one door in the
ark. There is only one door into eternal life. Christ is the door. He's the door. He's the entrance
into this ark. There's just one window in the
ark. And it's high up. You're inside
the ark. You look up to light. You look
up to see God's hand. The thing that the Lord Jesus
Christ warned the people of his day about was that the means
of destruction and judgment were close at hand. They weren't far
away. They were unseen and unknown
to the inhabitants of the earth. But the judgment of people lies
close to them, lies close by them. And when Noah is put in the ark
and his family and all the animals, if you're on the outside of the
ark, what could you see? You can't see them in there.
They're hidden. Our lives are hidden with Christ
in God. Everything they need for their
preservation through that long journey in the ark was inside
the ark. They didn't have to go out and do fishing. They didn't
have to do anything else. Everything they had and everything
they needed is in the ark. Everything that we have and everything
we need is in the Lord Jesus Christ. And those who are in
the ark entered into the ark before one drop of rain. You
see, there's no judgment can fall on the children of God because
they're in the Lord Jesus Christ. He, the Ark, bears it all. To enter in the Ark, you had
to leave. You had to leave this world,
didn't you? You had to leave your family,
you had to leave your friends, you had to leave everything behind.
And for many people, it would have been an extraordinary difficult
time. And yet, no matter how difficult
the times are, if you're in the Lord Jesus Christ, nothing, nothing
in this world will ever do you any harm. No harm shall befall
the righteous. It shall be well with the righteous.
All those in the ark are well. And when the ark had done its
journey, you've got to remember it had no sails, The ark had
no rudder, there was no steering wheel in it. In fact, they didn't
know where they were and where they were going. All they could
see for that journey, for most of that journey, if they ever
looked out, all they ever saw was water. And so, with all of
the children of God, our journey in Christ Jesus in this world
is a journey where we follow what he says in his scriptures
and we just trust him We trust Him. If we can be made to be
found faithful in the little things that are before us, the
Ark will take us where He determines to take us, which is exactly
what's going to happen with all these people. They are safe and
secure and they float above what brings judgment to everyone else
in this world. And when the ark settled, it
settled on dry land and it settled on high ground, which is exactly
what happens to the children of God when we leave this creation
which is destined for destruction and enter a new one. We enter
there in the ark. We enter there on high ground,
and we enter there with a journey which is exactly where God has
determined that we'll go. I love Proverbs 16 verse 9. It
says that in our minds we plan our paths. And we spend a whole
bunch of time planning our paths, and what's going to happen today,
and what's going to happen tomorrow, and where we're going down the
road. Proverbs 16 verse 9 says, we're
planning all the time, aren't we? And our plans are frustrated
nearly 100% of the time, aren't they? God says, in our minds
we plan our paths and God determines our footsteps. I love that. I love to think about that. That
my plans have been messed up. In fact, in most of my life I've
failed. And I look around at all the people that have been
successful and things of this world around me, and I'm a very serious
failure. Far bigger serious failure than
you can possibly imagine. And yet God has determined my
footsteps. just like He's determined all of ours. And He'll determine
them in such a way that He will keep them in His Son, safe and
secure, floating above this world that's under the judgment of
wrath of God. And He'll bring us to high ground,
and He'll bring us to dry ground. And when we get out of the ark,
what do we find? It brings us to a fruitful land, doesn't it?
And everything that we've ever needed through all this journey,
through this world, is safe and secure in Him. So every echidna
you find, Stevie, it's alive because? Good. Good. The pitch on the ark, it is the
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's the reason for all of them
living. It's the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ which will
be the cause for all of his people to go through this world. And
as I said at the beginning, Stevie and Mikey know far more about
this world and its animals than David Attenborough ever will. Because we know who made them.
We know why they're here. And when we get pleasure from
seeing them and looking at them, we should, I trust, turn our
eyes and our gaze to our Lord Jesus Christ. Everything that
has breath in it. What a glorious picture of a
great and successful Saviour. What a glorious picture of Him
bearing all the wrath of And that we're here, we're here today
because of shed blood. We're here to lift him up, to
see him high and lifted up just like his arc was. When all those
blood waters are gone, there's that arc and all the provisions
for it are there. And the very first thing that
Noah does when he gets out of the arc, as he sacrifices those
animals. It's a reminder, isn't it, that
all of that journey and all of their future is wrapped up in
who the Lord Jesus Christ is and his blood sacrifice. Amen. We might sing again. Normie? Is it number 14? It's good. And then we'll have a break. I will
sing the wondrous story of the Christ who died for me, how he
left his home in glory for the cross of Calvary. Let's sing. of Calvary. This my secret wondrous
story of the Christ who died for me. Sing it with the saints
in glory and divine ecstasy I'll sing it. but his love has fallen Sing it with the saints in glory,
Gathered by the crystal sea. Days of darkness still may lead
me, Sorrows pass, but hope may fade. Love is present, still
is real, me. The river crosses waters at my
feet. Then you led me safely over where
the love of Zion shall lead. Yes, I'll sing upon the stone Sing it with the saints in voice