Good morning, sir. Turn to Genesis
chapter 8. Genesis chapter 8. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Our Father, bless Your Word this
morning. Bless it to the nourishment of
our souls. Enable us to worship You in spirit
and in truth. Give us good instructions this
morning out of your word. Enable us to set our hearts on
things above where our Lord sits at thy right hand. And to get
our minds off the things of this earth. Help us for a little while
to pay attention and to take heed to the things which we hear
and to listen to the instructions of our Father. In Christ's name
we pray, and amen. Title of the lesson, God never
forgets his own. He never forgets his own. It
says that he remembered Noah. You know, in Luke chapter 23,
the thief on the cross said, Lord, remember me when you come
into your kingdom. And the Lord said, today, today
shalt thou be with me in paradise. Over in Genesis 19, it says,
God remembered Abraham. He never forgot him. And then
in Exodus chapter two, it says, God remembered his covenant.
Aren't you glad of this? Oh, God remembered his covenant
with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And then in Psalm 136, it says,
God remembered Israel. in their lowest state. He said
he remembered us in our lowest state. God never forgets his
own, ever. Now the wrath of God has been
executed upon all flesh. Every living thing has died except
those in the ark. They only, they only remained
alive. In all of God's wrath, in all
that darkness, God remembered mercy. God remember, that's what
it says over in Habakkuk. Let me see if I think I, let
me read this to you if I, yeah, I marked it down. Listen to this,
Habakkuk 3, 2. It says, O Lord, I have heard
thy speech and was afraid. O Lord, revive thy work in the
midst of the years. In the midst of the years, make
known. In wrath, remember mercy. in wrath, remember mercy. God
remembered Noah. And God remembered the covenant
that he made with Noah back in chapter seven. God promised to
save Noah and all that were with him in the ark. And God remembered
that covenant. He remembered and he honored
it. He honored it. God never ever, this is so comforting. God never ever goes back on a
covenant. When God makes a covenant, brethren,
it'll stick. It will never be changed. Never
be changed. Our God is a covenant God. He
will keep his promises. I tell you what, learn the promises
of God and take them to him in prayer. Take them to him in prayer. One of the promises that I have
remembered is that the Lord said, call upon me. Call upon me in
the day of trouble, and I will answer thee, and thou shalt glorify
me. He said, call upon me in the day of trouble. And I've
used that so many times. I've remembered that one promise
so many times. Another promise, he said, he
that cometh unto me, I'll know why is cast out. Oh, that means
so much to me. Lord, I come. Every day. Every
day I come to Christ. Every day. It's not something
I did 40 years ago, it's something I did this morning. Something
I just did in prayer. We come to Him now, don't we?
We come to Him now, and He remembers His covenant. There's a scripture,
I forgot to write it down, but it says this, and here's one
you can take much comfort in. As He said, and shall He not
do it, Has he said, and shall he not do? Come to me, all you
that labor and heavy laden, I'll give you rest. Has he said that?
He'll do it. He says, come to me, I promise
you, I'll give you rest. So rest, so rest. Now in all
that darkness and wrath, Noah was not forgotten. We can take
comfort in this that we are never forgotten, ever, no matter how
dark the hour may seem, we are never forgotten of our Heavenly
Father. He never forgets us. Now it says that God made a wind
to pass over the earth to dry it. The one thing that hit my
mind when I read that is this, all are his servants. Look over
in Job 37, Job chapter 37. I'll tell you the verse when
I get there. Job 37, look in verse 11. 11 through 13. By also by watering
he wearieth the thick cloud, he scattereth his bright cloud.
And it is turned round about by his counsels that they may
do whatsoever he commands them upon the face of the world and
the earth. He causes it to come whether
for correction or for his land or for mercy. Everything serves
God. And he calls the wind here to
just blow upon the earth and to dry it up is what he's doing,
dry up the waters. Judgment has come to an end.
Judgment has come to an end. The old world is dead to Noah
and Noah is dead to this old world. There's no connection
now between them. Paul said this in Galatians 2,
20, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not
I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in
the flesh. I live by the faith of the Son
of God who loved me and gave himself for me, but I'm crucified
with Christ. I'm crucified with Christ, I'm
crucified to this world, and this world is crucified to me.
I have no interest. I know there's a part of me that
still has an interest, but the believer in Christ has no more
interest in this world, and the world has no interest in me.
We don't have a connection no more. Not anymore. And this is also here, let me
show you this before I go on. This is also a good picture of
baptism. We were baptized into Christ's
death, just like Noah was in the ark while the ark was taking
the wrath of God. A great picture of that. And we were baptized into Christ's
death and as Noah was baptized in that ark and that water and
all that wrath, he's right in that ark. And all that wrath
is going on, all that water, just deluge, just slamming that
ark. It's also a good picture of the
resurrection in verse three and four. The water's drained off
the earth, and notice that it says that the ark rested on the
mountains of Ararat. Not in a valley, not in a valley. on the mountains of Ararat. It rested high above the earth.
Here's a good picture of our Lord Jesus Christ. At the end
of God's wrath, where did that ark rest? High on the mountain. Where is our Lord? Seated at
God's right hand in the heavenlies. That's where He is. He's seated
in the heavenlies. He's not in a valley, not in
a grave, not on this earth. He's seated in heaven. It's where
He is. And now Noah sends forth a raven
and a dove in verse 6 through 12. I can't just read all these
verses, we'd never get through it. Just gotta summarize it.
But in 6 through 12, Noah sends out a raven and a dove. At the
end of 40 days, Noah opened the window and he sent out a raven. But that raven never returned
to the ark, did it? It had too much to eat. It had
all that flesh floating around, just exactly what it liked. Its
appetite was being fueled. There was no reason for that
raven to return to the ark because everything it wanted to eat was
floating on the water, dead flesh. It was dead. Now, I have no doubt
it probably returned on the outside of the ark maybe a few times
and rested on it, but never to the inside of that ark did that
raven return, never. at all. And I thought when I
was reading this, this is like false religion. It leaves the
gospel, but it'll still use the name of Christ for its advantage.
It'll use the name of Christ for its advantage. Paul said
they will come preaching another Jesus and another gospel. They won't preach his character.
They won't preach his true identity. They won't preach his true work.
They won't do that. but they'll use his name for advantage, is
what they'll do. As I said, that raven fed itself
on all that dead carcasses floating on the waters, like those false
preachers feed on dead religious professors. False preachers,
like the raven, they'll use the ark for an advantage, but they'll
never go inside of it, never return to it, never in it, never
in it no more, not anymore. Paul said, if they had been of
us, they no doubt would have continued with us. But in verse nine here, it says
that Noah sent a dove out, and it says the dove found no rest
for the sole of her foot. Though she was a fowl, this dove had no appetite. It
had a different appetite than the raven. The world, false religion, has
no appetite for the gospel. They have no appetite for the
true Christ of God that's given to us in the word of God. But
you, you who believe the gospel, you have a different appetite.
You have an appetite for the bread of life. You have an appetite
for the true manna from heaven. You have that appetite. That
raven did not have that appetite. It had an appetite for dead things. Things that was of this world,
but not that dove. Not that dove. The raven loved
those dead things, but the dove couldn't live on such things.
Couldn't do it. She could find no rest. And this dove is just
a good picture of a believer. She could find no rest in those
things the raven enjoyed. That's why she came back to the
ark. And she came back to the ark
for what? Rest. Rest and food. What she fed on
was in the ark. Her rest was in the ark. She
was not gonna, she was not gonna lie on those dead carcasses and
feed on, not at all. She had to fly back to the ark. She flew to and fro, just like
that raven. But that raven found what it liked. Was that dove? No, there was nothing there.
She came back to the ark. The Lord Jesus Christ is our
rest at all times, isn't he? He is our rest at all times. Sometimes the Lord allows his
doves to fly to and fro, only to find that all is vanity. That's
all it is. As I've grown older, and you
hear that are older now, and you believe the gospel, haven't
you found this life to be nothing but vanity? What is it? What
is it? It's just a vapor. It's just
a vapor. A man asked me the other day,
he said, is it older? And I can tell he was really
older, too, because he asked me my age. He said, well, are you
50 years old yet? He said, you're 50, aren't you?
I said, buddy, I'm 62. He was old. I'm glad he didn't
say, are you 90? That would have been a little
more embarrassing. But it goes by so quickly. It
goes by so quickly. And all this. 62 years, I'm telling
you, it's vanity. I found it to be vanity of vanities,
all vanity, said the preacher. That's what Solomon said. And
Solomon had all of his riches. Solomon had everything you could
fleshly, naturally want. Solomon had it. He had it all. And at the end of the day, he
said, it's all vanity. He said, that's all it is. And
one of the things that disturbed him so much, he said, I have
gained all this. I have, you know, look at what
all this that I've built and all this, you know, through the
Lord has blessed him. He knew that. He said, look, he said, but the
thing that troubles me, I may end up leaving this to a fool.
And that rascal would just go right through it. Just spend
it and have a good time. He says, I'm just gonna leave
it. That's what he's saying, I'm just gonna leave it. I'm
just gonna leave it. There's nothing in this world
that will content a child of God but Christ. Christ is my contentment. When
I find real contentment in Jesus Christ, I will find real contentment
in this life. I will find real contentment
with what God has given me and where he's put me, if I have
real contentment in Christ. Now, if I don't, I'll always
be finagling and with no rest, no rest. Everything that dove loved, everything
it loved to feed on was in that ark. I tell you, what a beautiful
picture. Everything that a believer loves
to feed on is in Christ. And that's real. That's real.
This is not just being religious. This is real. Christ is our food. All else
is husk. That's all it is. And I note
the tenderness of God's grace. Here in verse nine, it says,
she flies to the window She knew where that entrance was. She
knew how to get back in that ark. She knew where she came
from. But she flies through the window
and Noel reaches out his hand and he takes her back in so tenderly,
so graciously. And I have no doubt she was weary
from flying to and fro. This life, I tell you what, this
life is wearisome. It's just wearisome. You know,
the scripture says, I'm gonna try to remember this. The scripture
says that man's days, our days in the Psalms is three school
year and 10, 70 years. But if by reason of strength
they're longer than that, they're spent in sorrow. They're spent
in just, and what he's saying, they're spent in weakness and
sorrow and doctor visits and hospital visits and that's how
it's spent. It doesn't get any better. I
told my mom, I said, every day's your best day. It never grows better. You say,
yeah, that's depressing. If you're not in Christ, it's
depressing. But I tell you what, if Christ
is your ark, if he's your rest, we have a good day coming. We
have a good day coming. As I grow older, this old body
gets older, it just says, I'm getting closer to home. This life is wearisome, but no
one, listen, no one is refused who flies to the Lord Jesus Christ. Noah put out his hand. If that
raven had came back, if that raven had came back into that
window, Noah would have, Took it in. It never came back. There was nothing in that ark
it wanted. It had all it wanted outside. All that dead flesh,
all those, that's like the riches of this world. You go after the
riches of the world, that's like all that dead flesh floating
on top of the water. That's what men and women go after. But the
Lord's people go after Christ. They go after Christ. And then verses 10 through 12,
The dove is sent back out again. Noah is looking for good news
from her, from this dove. I'm calling her her. It just
seems to fit it better. But Noah, he's looking for good
news from her, that the waters are gone and that judgment's
over. And she comes back, it says, with an olive leaf plucked
off. You know, an olive leaf is a symbol of peace. It's a
symbol of peace. It's a token of God's, she came
back with it, listen. She came back with a token of
God's favor in her mouth. Boy, what a picture this is.
She came back with a token of God's favor in her mouth. The
gospel message that you hear here every week, the gospel of peace and the gospel
of hope, it's a token that you still have God's favor. You have
God's favor. It's evident that mercy is still
to be had. It's evident. You know, when
you hear the gospel preached, we hear of our sins, we hear
of what we are by nature, but we hear the message of grace
and mercy for the guilty. We hear a message of hope. That's
what we hear. And I thought of this when I
was reading this, that in this sense, I'm that dove this morning,
to come back with a good message, a good message. Judgment's over.
In Christ, judgment's over. Judgment has already been taken
care of. It's past, it's over. There's good news. There is salvation
from sin in Jesus Christ. She brings back evidence, listen.
She brings back evidence of a new world. Of a new world. God flooded this earth above
the highest hill, about 27 feet or something like that. Above
the highest mountain. Not a hill, but a mountain. And
here she comes back with evidence of a new world. The gospel message
declares there is a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwells
righteousness. There is such a place. There's gonna be a new, God's
gonna create a new earth. A new heaven. And there's gonna
be nothing in it but righteousness and peace and love and joy. No one will shed a tear again.
Never be another heartache. Can you imagine being happy every
day? Genuinely happy, not just this
slap happy stuff, but I'm talking about genuinely happy. Genuinely happy. Getting up to worship God. Of course, there you won't even
sleep. You don't even go to sleep. There's no night there. We don't
need to. We don't need it no more. Sin
is what wearies us. Take sin out of it, we wouldn't
need to sleep. Take sin out of it. It is what put weariness
in this life. Let me see where I'm at now.
Now, verse 12. It says, she returned not unto
him anymore. This time, he let her go. She brought back this olive.
She brought back the message. She brought back good news. Then
he sent her out again, and that time, she didn't come back. She didn't come back. She returned
not into him anymore. Someday, I thought this, these
are just gleanings from me out of Genesis 8, but I thought this,
someday we will be taken home. We will not return here anymore. We won't come to this place no
more. the Lord will take us home. We'll
go and we'll be with the Lord. And Noah knew when she didn't
come back, he knew all was well. He knew all was well. He was
not worried about her. He was not worried about that
dove at all. He knew all was well. He knew
she was well taken care of. When believers are taken home, We know and we are confident
that all is well. They're in a better place. There
cannot be, and I thought this this morning, I wrote it down,
I was thinking about maybe putting it in a bulletin article, but
I thought the best day of a believer's life is the day they die and
they go to be with the Lord. Everybody else is sad and it's
understandable. But that believer is not sad.
And that believer would not come back to this life. When a believer is taken away
or taken home, I like to put it that way, taken home, you
know, home is where Christ is. Home is where Christ is. All is well. Now verse 15 through
19, God tells Noah to go forth from the ark, and all those animals,
everyone in the ark, they all go forth from the ark into a
new world. They go into a new world. This
world was flooded. Then when they come out, I was
walking across the parking lot this morning going over there,
and I thought, Noah walked out into a world where It was pristine
again. It was new again. And it wasn't
without sin, like the Garden of Eden was at first, but he
walked out into a new world, and there was no one in it to
mess it up at that time. It was a new world. It was a
new world, because it didn't take long before he messed it
up. He got drunk, which says, you
know, what we are by nature. We'll get to that later. But
he goes out into a new world, That new earth will, listen,
that new earth will be populated with all those in Christ. Can you see coming out? I want
you to get this image in your mind. You see coming out of that
ark, here comes Noah, his wife, his sons, his daughter-in-laws,
and all those animals, and all the creeping things it says,
all those creeping things, they all come flowing out of that
ark. They just flowed out of that
ark onto this earth. It's a new world. And the picture that just
struck me when I read that was this. That new earth is going to be
populated with all those that are in Christ. And as all poured
out of the ark into the new world, all will pour forth out of Christ
into that new world. That new earth, they're all just,
they're all out of him. out of him. And notice the first thing Noah
did here in verse 20. Noah built an ark, you see, an
altar. He built an altar unto the Lord.
The first thing he did when he came out of that ark, he worshipped
God. He worshipped God. This is the
first order of our lives every day. is the worship of God, not
Sunday and not Thursday. It's every day. Worship is an
attitude. And it's something we do every
day, if I'm not worshiping every day, there's something wrong.
Something wrong. And then he offered, it says,
of every clean beast and fowl. Noah knew who saved him, he knew
how he was saved, and he offered unto God that which God required. Remember a cane? No, he wouldn't
do it, he offered the fruit of the ground. But Noah offered
that which God required. And Noah's greatest concern was
the glory of God and not his temporal good. He did not come
out of the ark and start looking for a place to build a house.
It was first, first, oh, let's get this, first it was worship.
It was worship. Whether I live in a house or
a tent, it's worship. And by doing this, and this is
so important, by doing this, Noah set a great example for
his family. They was watching him. And his
family watched him build this altar and he led his family in
worship. What a great example he was to
his family. And then verse 21, it says, and
the Lord smelled a sweet savor. He smelled Christ because that
represented Christ. But the word I wrote down here
when I read this was satisfaction, satisfaction. Pleasing, pleasing. Noah's sacrifice was well pleasing
to the Lord, for it represented the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Lord smelled a sweet
savor, and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse
the ground anymore for man's sake, for the imagination of
man's heart is evil from his youth. There's no need to do this again
because it's not gonna change who you are and who I am. It's not gonna change us. Wrath,
listen, wrath never changes who I am. Mercy and grace will. Mercy and grace will. Wrath doesn't
do it. What is it that leads a man to repentance? What's the
scripture say that leads us to repentance? The goodness of God. These people, these idiots that
want to show these movies on hail and scare people, that just shows you they have
no concept of what salvation is. It's the goodness of God
that leads to repentance. It's not scaring somebody to
death. That leads you to a false profession.
It'll lead you to a false refuge. It will not lead you to Christ.
It won't do it. But God gives this to Noah to
encourage him that this type of judgment won't happen again
because you know that the next time a big thunderstorm came,
you know, and the rain came down, without this promise, Noah would
be afraid this is happening again because of man's sin. You know,
because sin is sin. And as long as man's on this
earth, there will always be sin. There will always be a reason
why God can crush this place in a heartbeat. And God gives
a promise. He said, I will not do this again.
Not again. Not this way. Although next time
it's gonna be by fire, and that'll be the end of it. It'll all be
gone. But without this promise, Noah would always be fearful
of it happening again. Listen, we have a covenant, this
is good, we have a covenant in Jesus Christ that says this will
not happen again. This judgment that fell on our
Lord, the wrath of God against sin, will not ever happen again. and all those who are in Christ
are safe. I don't have to worry about judgment.
I don't have to be concerned about hell and wrath at all. If I'm in Christ, I don't have
to be concerned about it. Not at all. And then let me close in verse
22. God gives this covenant, this
promise here, and he says, while the earth remains, seed time
and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall
not cease. We have His promise on it. We
have His promise. Because of Jesus Christ and the
covenant between the Father, His Son, and with us in His Son,
this earth is blessed. This earth is blessed right now.
The people in this world that live on this earth that are lost,
and the majority of them are lost, they don't understand that
the reason that we have our seasons and the reason we have, that
the reason the ground produces fruit is because of a covenant
made between Jesus Christ and the Father and with His people
in Christ. And when God takes them out of
this world, remember when Noah went into the ark and said, God,
shut the door, it rained. It rained. But I'll tell you
what, as long as the church is in this world, as long as God
has a people in this world, this old earth will be blessed, this
old earth, the sun will shine, and the seasons will rotate.
God is a God of, he's a covenant God, and he never, God never,
never breaks his word. He never breaks his word. God never forgets his own. He never forgets it. Okay.