If you'd open your Bibles now
to Genesis chapter 8. Genesis chapter 8. And once you found that, we're
going to back up one verse. Chapter 7, verse 24, the waters
flooded the earth for 150 days. But God remembered Noah. I've been reading through the
different translation of the Bible. and it's called the English
Standard Version. It's a good translation, at least
so far. Exactly the same message we find
in ours, same message you'll find in the King James and all
that. I was reading through this portion and just came on that
God remembered Noah. Now that was last Tuesday or
Wednesday and I've been doing a slow roast or whatever you
want to call it on that scripture ever since. Now, I've got a kind
of lengthy introduction about the scriptures, but I will skip
that so that we get out of here on time and I get the important
part of the message finished. But I will repeat this one part
of that introduction. It is remarkable to me how long
you can study the scriptures, maybe even one of your favorite
parts of it. And this, Noah's flood, probably
since I was a kid, was one of my favorite parts of scripture.
So much taught there. But all these years of knowing
those scriptures, looking at them, I've preached from it quite
a few times. And yet, see something in them
you hadn't noticed before. Now, not something new. Not a
new doctrine, but just seeing doctrines that we know laid out
in this story, and I just hadn't seen them that way before. I told Bonnie, and she was setting
up the live stream, titled this message, God Remembered Noah. But as you'll see when we get
to the end of this message, we could have called it Christ alone. Christ alone. Now we normally
look at this scripture and see the ark as a picture of the Lord
Jesus Christ. His body and blood and it Noah
and his family and all those animals went in there and they
were preserved from the flood. They went through the judgment
but they went through it unscathed because they went through the
judgment in the ark and that pictures Christ. He went through
the judgment and when he went through it we were in him and
we went through it but we came out the other side unscathed.
But this morning I want to look at this story and not so much
think about the ark as Noah, because Noah is a picture of
Christ also. In fact, you might say that it
takes the ark and Noah to fill out the entire picture of Christ
in this story, because our Lord is not just so much dead wood.
He's a living person. But as we look at some of the
details of this story this morning, we're going to see how Christ
is pictured in it. Now, it says, God remembered
Noah. Who did God remember? One person, Noah. Now, it says he remembered the
animals, too. We'll get to that. But it didn't say, and God remembered
Noah, his wife and his sons and his and their wives, it says
God remembered Noah. One man. You'll look, as we go
through this story, you're gonna find out that God's dealings
with people in this story was all with one person. No, Noah. We hear about other people, but
God never says anything to them. We don't hear much about what
they do. We just hear that they exist.
That's all there is to them. God remembered Noah. And that's the only person named
that God remembered. He's the one man whose name means
rest and comfort. If you look in chapter five,
verse 28, When Lamech had lived 182 years,
he had a son. He named him Noah and said, he
will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands
caused by the ground the Lord has cursed. When Adam and Eve,
actually, it's just Adam, it's Adam's sin that brought the curse,
not Eve's, when Adam sinned, The answer of the Lord was to
curse the ground. He said, cursed will be the ground from which
you were taken, and it will not yield its increase to you. Now,
I know that farmers around here, they plant, and of course, just
like the rest of us, they want to make a lot of money. And they
think it's a whole lot of work, you know, They don't get what
now is probably 150 bushels an acre. If they don't get that,
they feel like they got gypped somehow. You know, when I came
here, anybody got 100 bushels an acre figured they were doing
pretty good. But as I understand it, it's gone up somewhat. Nonetheless,
they want a pretty high yield out of the ground before they'll
figure that they got what is only to be expected. And if you
just go back 50 years or more than that, you know, back to,
say, go, when this area was first being
settled, and they were just busting up the sod. And it was hard work,
really hard work, to grow a crop, growing up enough to feed yourselves
and some left over to sell so you could have money to buy the
other stuff you needed. But understand this, and people
say, oh, it's because of the curse. After the flood, God said,
no longer will the ground be cursed for man's sake. So you
think it's tough to grow food now. You should have been around
before the flood. It probably took everything a
person could do to scratch out an existence. And this Noah,
I guess Lamech was a believer in God, and God had spoken to
him like he spoke to the prophets. And he said, you name this boy
Noah. because through him there's going
to be comfort and rest from this curse that you labor under. There was only one man righteous
among all the earth, among all the men of the earth in that
day. It says in verse nine of chapter
six, this is the account of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless
among the people of his time, and he walked with God. Now, you know that Noah, just looking
at him as a person, that he was born dead in trespasses and sins,
just like you and I. And even after God had saved
him, enlightened him to the truth, given him faith and he had believed,
he was still a sinner. But among the people of his time,
he stood out as a decent and righteous man. And therefore, he stands as an
illustration of our Lord Jesus Christ and his righteousness.
But you know, in the day that Noah lived, men who claimed to
be followers of the Lord chose their wives from the ungodly,
it says, putting fleshly considerations before spiritual ones, as they
chose the one with whom they will pursue the most intimate
relationship of their lives. It says the sons of God, chose
wise for themselves from the sons of men. Now people have
tried to make a fantastic story out of that saying the sons of
God were angels and they came down and mated with human beings
and the result was these giants. That's pure nonsense. One thing
that can happen, angels don't have bodies. They can take on
a form, but they don't ever become human. Therefore, they cannot
enter human society and sire human children. Not only that,
had there been children born from these so-called angelic
beings, that means that there would have been a line of humanity
other than Adam's line. There's one father for the whole
human race, Adam. But the people who called themselves
if it had been our day, they'd have been calling themselves
Christians. And you know, in our day we see
that with Christians. We live in a day when those who
profess the name of Christ are more interested in fleshly things
than they are spiritual things. They're not interested in the
gospel. They heard that once, They believed it, they signed
on the dotted line, now tell me how to live. Show me how to
have a successful life. Show me how I can run a godly
business, because you know a godly business is going to make more
profit than an ungodly business. Tell me who I should vote for.
Tell me that, you know, have a sermon every July 4th how the
United States is God's people in the world today, and if my
people which are called by my name shall humble, that's what
they want to listen to. They want stuff about the here
and now. They don't want to set their
hearts and minds on things above. They want religion, but they
want fleshly religion, just like those sons of God. They wanted wives from among
the daughters of women. Godless men, in Noah's day, godless
men slaughtered their way through communities and cities and built
empires to make their names great. and exercise power and influence.
And violence was the rule of the day. Man thinks that he is
advancing beyond his violent past. He thinks that it's simply
a lack of civilization, a lack of a civilizing influence of
modern society that allows people to act so savagely. We look to
the past and we say how savage people were then. Do you realize
the most savage people at any given time have generally speaking
been the most civilized people. Who was it slaughtered? The Babylonians,
the Assyrians, the Medo-Persians, the Greeks, the Romans. It's humanity at the top that
is so merciless. When you think of our nation,
and we like to think we're so good, and I'm not up here to
pounce on the United States. I'm so glad I'm a citizen of
this country and not another. But we need to realize that we
ain't so great. The ideals we strive for, the
Lord has been pleased to give us ideals in our founding documents,
as good as any ideals that men have written down. But 160 years
ago, we thought it was perfectly fine for one man to own another,
to treat him like cattle, to breed him like cattle, to sell
his children to other people as though they were cattle. And
they were willing to kill 600,000 people to hang on to that. And then you go a little more
forward in time. Another nation over in Europe
gets too big for its britches and goes slaughtering its way
across Europe. And eventually we get involved,
and they call it the Great War. And I don't know the numbers,
but it's in the millions of people that got killed. The war to end
all wars. Well, for 22 years. Actually,
just 20. It took us 23 to get involved
in another war, but over in Europe, they'd already been involved
with that same country. Rose up and thought it was perfectly
acceptable to gun down helpless human beings, men, women, and
children. And that was the top of human
civilization in the 1930s and 40s. And by the grace of God, he finally
put an end to that. And we watch specials about it,
and we stand there aghast. How could that happen? But civilization
was at its peak in the 20th century, and yet do you realize that that's
the most violent century on record? Hundreds of millions of people
were killed. And then we get into the new
millennium. And I remember when the new millennium was coming.
You know, we think it's so big. We got a new year coming. Everything's
going to be different. And it just goes on like it always has.
Well, it's a new decade, new century, new millennium. This
is the dawning of the age of Aquarius. I remember that from
when I was a kid. We weren't but two thirds done
with the first year of the new millennium. than 19 men killed
thousands out of religious hatred and ignited wars that aren't
over yet. We are like the days of Noah. And in the days of Noah, there
was found one righteous man. And in all reality, in our day,
There's only one righteous man, even our Lord Jesus Christ. I want to act decent. I'd like
to be looking at Noah as just a human being. If I got to be
a sinner, I want to be the kind he was. That in his day, at least,
it kind of stood out. I won't go into how well I'm
accomplishing that. And we who are believers in our
Lord Jesus Christ, we ought to strive to live decently and honorably
as a human being can. But let's face it, there has
only been one and only ever shall be one born of woman who is righteous,
and that's our Lord Jesus Christ. Also, Noah is the only one who
found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Verse eight of Genesis chapter
six, but Noah found favor, same words translated grace, in the
eyes of the Lord. Now, in our adult Bible class,
we've been going through a series called The Fundamentals of the
Grace of God, and we define grace, and it's really rather surprising
when you look at how the Greek language defines grace. We always
say it's unmerited favor, but that's really not what it is.
It's favor, that's for sure, but grace is always earned. It's always earned. Now that
runs contrary to our custom definition of it. We say grace is unmerited
favor, and I understand what we mean by that. We realize we
have received grace and we certainly didn't earn it. but that doesn't
mean it wasn't earned. Every bit of grace we receive
was earned by someone. It is written that grace was
upon our Lord Jesus Christ, that he grew in grace with God, that
he was full of grace, and from the fullness of his grace, we
have received grace upon grace. And Noah found grace in the eyes
of the Lord, which is the only place that it ought to concern
us, whether we have grace or not. He found grace in the eyes
of the Lord, and the grace, the favor that was upon him went
through him to others. It does not say that Shem or
Ham, or Japheth, or any of the wives found favor in the eyes
of the Lord. Only Noah is mentioned in regard
to the grace of God. I don't want to, I'm not trying
to confuse this here, I'm just trying to show us how grace came
to us. We didn't earn it, but somebody
did. Jesus Christ was found righteous
by God, and as a righteous one, he had the favor of God. And
the longer he lived, the more of the favor of God he had until
God said, this is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. And God never said that about
anybody else. And God's infinite favor was
upon him and it's like it's poured into him and overflows and we're
just, the overflow lands on us. In this story, Noah is the only
man to whom God spoke. He never said a word to anybody
else. Now, and we can say this, the Lord
Jesus Christ is the only one to whom the Lord, as the absolute
God, ever spoke. Every time we read in the scriptures
that the word of the Lord came to someone or the Lord spoke
to someone, it was God speaking through God the Son who has been
the eternal word of God. He's always been the one that
spoke. Later, he was born in Bethlehem, but in the beginning
was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God,
and it's always been the word that does the speaking. But God, as Henry used to say,
God, absolutely considered, he's only spoken to one man, the Lord
Jesus Christ. And then he told us what God
said. He said, I only tell you things
which I have been shown by my father. God spoke to Noah. Noah's called a preacher of righteousness. And all that Noah did was go
out and tell people what God told him. Only Noah knew what
was coming, and only Noah knew the way through it. Noah is the
only one with whom God entered into covenant. Chapter 6, verse 18. But I will establish my covenant
with you, and you will enter the ark. you, your sons, your
wife, and your son's wives with you. He didn't say, Noah, go get your
family. Now, Noahic family, I'm entering into covenant with you.
He didn't enter into covenant with Noah's wife or his sons
or his son's wives. He entered into covenant with
Noah and only Noah. And the covenant of which you
and I are partakers or beneficiaries, be the better word, it's not
a covenant God made with us. It's a covenant he made with
his son. And I tell you, that's a wonderful thing to consider.
You know why? If he'd have made a covenant
with us, there'd have been some responsibilities for us to fulfill. But the covenant was made with
the Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, I know, it says, and I will
make a new covenant with them, and it'll be like this, and it
ends with their sins and iniquities I will remember no more. But what he's doing when he prophesied
that, he was saying essentially this covenant, this new covenant,
it's really just a promise, because there's nothing in there for
them to do. Because there is a surety for the covenant. There
is one on whom all the responsibilities of the covenant fell. The covenant
was made with Him and He fulfilled it. And when He fulfilled it,
it was ratified, it was put in place. And all the benefits of
that covenant flow to all the beneficiaries of that covenant. Noah's sons and their wives are
standing around, huh? What? I don't know who actually labored
to build the ark. I don't know if his sons did.
I would imagine they did. Or maybe it was all hired out. I don't know. But the responsibility
of building the ark was given to Noah. He told Noah, build
an ark. He told Noah, do it this way,
make it this big, put this in it. The covenant was made with
Noah and not with anybody else. And the covenant of the gospel
was made with the Lord Jesus Christ and not with anybody else. He fulfilled it. And in his fulfillment,
you and I gained the benefit. Chapter seven, verse one. The Lord said to Noah, go in
the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous
in this generation. Now you see how closely detailed,
when you start looking at Noah as illustrating Christ, how these
things fall in place? He said to Noah, get in the ark. Now, if the ark represents Christ
and Him crucified, telling Noah, get the ark, would be as the
Father said, do that work. Build the ark. You're joined
with it. You and the ark, one and the
same. But notice this. Once again,
the Lord spoke only to Noah. He only commanded Noah
to get in the ark. Everybody else heard the word
from Noah. He said to Noah, go in. And Noah
gathered his family and he said, we're going in. And God said this only to Noah
because I have found you. righteous in this generation,
only you. Shem wasn't righteous, Dreyfus
wasn't righteous, Ham wasn't righteous, Noah was. Noah's the only man that believed
God. At least that's the only one we
find a record of his faith, for it says in Hebrews 11, Noah believed God. He was a preacher
of righteousness, and in fear, moved with fear, he built the
ark. Only he was moved with the fear of the Lord, and he acted
on what he was told. And in faith, he built the ark
to the saving of himself and his family. And only our Lord
fears the Lord. That is, only our Lord Jesus,
among all men, only he has feared the Lord the way the Lord deserves
to be feared. Now, I know we think, well, we
shouldn't use the word fear with regard to the Lord. Well, if
you ever saw him, you'd understand. Nobody's ever seen the Lord and
not been knocked to the ground. And that was when they saw the
Lord even manifested in the Lord Jesus Christ. You and I as his children don't
have to be afraid of him with the slavish fear, but we still
fear the Lord. Just like my father, I never
went around shaking in my boots. I never hesitated to be close
to my father or anything like that. And yet I had a fear of
my dad. I knew what would happen if I
crossed him. I knew he had the authority and
the ability to make my life rough. And he did a few times. We fear
the Lord, but not like the Lord Jesus Christ did. Again, the book of Hebrews 6
says that our Lord in fear prayed and was heard in that he feared. Only our Lord built an ark made
of his righteousness, blood, sweat, and tears. I didn't build
that ark, neither did you. When I was a little kid, I cut
out shapes and pasted them in a book for vacation Bible school,
but I never built an ark. I couldn't build an ark to save
the eight humans and all the animals in the world, and I certainly
couldn't build an ark to save the souls of God's people. Jesus
Christ, by himself, built the ark of our salvation. his person, his glorious righteous
person, his precious blood, his prayers, the sweat. The Bible mentions in the garden,
he sweat as it were great drops of blood. And out of these, he
built an ark. And in that ark, we went safely
through the judgment of God. Only our Lord believed God and
trusted his soul completely to him. It is written, I will put
my trust in him. Isaiah wrote it, Hebrews puts
those words in the mouth of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we heard
that faith expressed in some of our Lord's final words on
the cross, into your hands, I commit my spirit. You say, well, We're
called believers, that means we believe. Let me ask you a
question. Do you want to get to heaven on your faith? You want to build a bridge from
here to heaven out of your faith and step on it? My faith won't
sustain me. I've heard people say, let your
faith sustain you. I'm sorry, it won't. Faith is not how I get from here
to heaven. Here, faith is not how I get
from here to the Father's house. Christ is how I get from here
to the Father's house. Do you feel your faith inadequate?
Do you say, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief? Are you shocked
by the level of doubt and unbelief that resides in you? You who
call yourself a believer and have held yourself forward all
these years as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, and yet
inside you know my faith couldn't get me one inch off the ground,
much less all the way to heaven. Well, fear not. God is no more
looking to your faith than he is looking to your righteousness. He's not saving you because of
your faith, he's saving you because of Christ's faith. Now, you never
would have been saved did you not have faith. But believe me,
you are not hanging by that slim thread of faith that you possess.
You are hanging, so to speak, by a steel cord of the unflinching,
unwavering faith of the Son of God in his Father. Without faith it's impossible
to please God, but who of us is satisfied with our faith?
Who of us would be willing to say to God, as I have believed
you, so be gracious to me, save me in the measure of my faith?
No. Boy, I don't want that. But I will say, oh God, Look
at your son who in the midst of all his horrible suffering
believed you and committed the care of his soul to you. Behold
his faith and save me for his sake, I cling to him. Peter said through him do we
believe in God. I picture us being in Christ
and trusting him, and we cling with ever so weak a hand of faith,
but we don't have to cling much. We're like a person in the basket
of a hot air balloon. You know, you hang on to the
side, but that's not what, it's the bottom of the basket holding
you up. But what's holding you to the
balloon? Strong, strong ropes. that never grow weary, that never
wear out. I'm shocked by how little I believe,
but thank God when my faith is at its worst, my Lord's faith
is unwavering. He believes God, even when I
don't. It was only to Noah that God
gave the command to get in the ark. And it was only Noah that did all that the Lord
commanded him. In verse 5, Noah did all that
the Lord commanded him. Do you know why it was only Noah
that did all that the Lord commanded him? Well, the first reason is
that Noah is the only one to whom the Lord ever gave any commands.
Remember? He only talked to Noah. If you get nothing, nothing else
from this morning's message, get this, this whole business
of the work of salvation is about Jesus Christ. It's a transaction
between him and God, not a transaction between you and God. Every requirement
for the salvation of God's elect has been accomplished by Christ. Don't try to build a bridge to
heaven out of your works. It won't hold your weight. Don't
try to build a bridge to heaven out of your faith. It won't hold
your weight. Don't try to build a bridge out
of heaven or bridge from here to heaven out of your perseverance. It won't last. Look to the only
one to whom God speaks in the covenant of the gospel and behold
him fulfilling everything the Lord told him to do. Cross that bridge. It'll hold
you. It'll hold you. And that brings
us back to where we started, chapter 8, verse 1, that God
remembered Noah. God is the only human being mentioned
that God remembered once the judgment was all done. It says nothing about God remembering
Shem, Ham, and Japheth and Noah's wife and the wives of his sons. It said, God remembered Noah. And you know something, brethren?
We're in Christ. And when Judgment Day comes,
God will remember Christ. And we'll be in Him. We'll be in Him as those who
have already passed through the flood of judgment. What about Noah's family? Well,
in one sense, they're included with the animals. Because it
says in chapter 8 verse 1, God remembered Noah and all the wild
animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark. You
say, well, didn't he remember the other humans? Well, here's
an interesting point. I'm not going to push it too
far, but I think it's rather interesting. Eight people went
in the ark. Noah, that's one. And then, Three
sons and four wives. Now the Bible, God told Noah,
you take into the ark two of every kind of animal, but seven
of the clean ones. These are the ones acceptable
to God. And so Noah and seven clean humans went in the ark. They're among the animals. But
they're among those who have been made clean. And they went in with Noah as
animals, and they came out as animals. And you know, we're
humans, and our Lord's human. That's true. But compared to
him, we're animals. But we're clean. We're among
the clean ones. And when he told Noah to come
out, we went out with him. You can see that ark kind of
illustrated there in our Lord's tomb. And he told the Lord, come
on out. And when he came out, the Bible
says we were raised with him. We came out with him. God commanded only Noah to come
out of the ark. And Noah was the only one worthy
to come out. And he's the only one who did come out in response
to the Lord's command. It says in verse 18, so Noah
came out together with his sons and his wife and his son's wives.
See, it's always Noah and this band of people behind him. And
that's the gospel, brethren. It's always Christ and this bunch
of people behind him. To Him are all the words spoken.
By Him is all the obedience rendered. And to Him is everything given."
Now, look at chapter 9, verse 1. So far, the only one that
God has spoken to is Noah. Chapter 9, verse 1, blessed Noah
and his sons, saying to them, plural, the first time God spoke
to Shem, Ham, and Japheth was after Noah more or less said,
it is finished. When Noah was doing all done
or finished with everything God gave him to do, and the ark had passed safely
through the flood, And the door had been open, and Noah, and
the animals came out. Then, and only then, did God
speak to somebody other than Noah. But he spoke to them as
he spoke to Noah. He blessed Noah and his sons. Now you think about that. Our
Lord Jesus Christ, he came out of the tomb, and God blessed
him. and his sons. You say, Lord Jesus has sons?
Well, in the book of Hebrews, again, I and the children you've
given me. Now, he comes out of the tomb
and we expect that God should say, I bless you, my son. And
he does. And yet, as he does that, he
includes all of us and he speaks to us. as he speaks to his son
and he says to us the same things he says to his son. Ponder on
that a minute. He blessed them. He blessed them for what Noah
did. He blessed them because Noah
was a righteous man, because Noah had the grace of God, because
Noah did all those things which God commanded him to do. Because
Noah, in conjunction with the ark, the two of them make a picture
together, braved the flood. Because God remembered Noah. And because God called Noah out. And when Noah came out, so did
his family. And so God said, Noah, Shem,
Ham, Japheth. You are blessed. You're blessed. And he says to the Lord Jesus
Christ and all his children, all his sons, you are blessed,
blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ. Well, I didn't do anything. Dad was over there building the
ark and really I was kind of hard to get along with and I
didn't help him out. I only got New York because I
was kind of afraid, and the rest of the family was going along. It
don't matter. You were in. God remembered Noah. And about 2,500 years later,
a dying criminal turned to his
left, and there was this God in human flesh, and he looked
at him, and he said, remember me. Oh, God, remember Christ, and
Christ, remember me. Heavenly Father, bless your word. In the name of Christ, we pray
it. Amen.