I do hope that someone believes
the gospel today. I really do. If you're here without Christ,
if you're here without faith, I'm aiming for you. Now, I know
that all those who already believed are going to enjoy the gospel
being preached, If to this point you have not
believed the gospel, if you have not called upon the name of the
Lord and found his salvation, then today I'm aiming for you.
If you've not called because you think you're too young, because
you think church and the things of Christ are for folks that
are already grown up, well, then I'm aiming for you. If you think you're too old,
If you think you have lived past the day of God's mercy and grace, and you're simply hoping against
hope that in the end somehow you'll squeak into heaven, then
I'm aiming for you. I pray that this message will pierce
your heart and cause you to cry out to the Lord for His salvation. If you've lived a pretty good
life, done what most respectable thing people think ought to be
done. And all your life, you've been happy and thought everything
was OK between you and God, because after all. You haven't done anything
terrible. Well, then today I'm aiming for
you. And I pray that the gospel will pierce your heart and reveal
the thoughts and intents of your heart and show you that, like
everyone else, you are a sinner under the judgment of God. and
need his salvation desperately. If you've turned your life around,
and I hear that phrase used as a synonym for salvation, and
it makes me sick. I'm glad when people turn their
lives around. I'm glad when they quit doing
the things that are destroying them and start doing things that
make them happier. But friends, that's not salvation. But some
people mistake that for salvation. And if you've turned your life
around, if you've made things better and quit your bad habits
and started some good ones, and think that everything is okay,
I'm aiming for you. And I will also say to the sheep
of God, that if you are confident in Christ this day, and if you
are at rest in Him, that I'm also aiming for you, because
you'll enjoy this, as God's sheep always enjoy the Gospel. Now,
the text or the sermon title kept alive with Christ. In verse
18, the Lord says to Noah, But I will establish my covenant
with you, and you will enter the ark, you and your sons and
your wife and your sons' wives with you. You are to bring into
the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them
alive with you. Now, we understand that the Old
Testament is not written simply to satisfy our curiosity about
what went on in days gone by. It tells us about creation, but
not so that we can argue about it and just find out what happened. It's for spiritual reasons. And
this story of the flood is not told to us just so that we'll
know what happened to the dinosaurs. is told to us to reveal Christ. We all like boat stories. I remember,
you know, I've preached several of them since I came here 20
years ago. This is the ultimate boat story,
boat illustration of God's salvation. And to understand this story,
you've got to realize that both Noah and his Ark stand as illustrations
of our Lord Jesus Christ. There's no ark without Noah,
and quite frankly, there'd be no Noah without the ark. But
these things, two things together, combined, show us a picture of
Jesus Christ and how it is that God saves His people by the Lord
Jesus Christ. God said to Noah, you will get
in the ark, your family will get in the ark with you, and
you are to take into the ark two of every kind of creature
in whose nostrils is the breath of life, and here is the reason
you are to take them in there, to keep them alive." Now, the
phrase, these two phrases, with Christ or in Christ, and in the
Bible they mean essentially the same thing. These are two of
the most important words you'll find in Scripture, most important
phrases. And it gives us the general rule
and the tone of all the gospel, and it's very simply this, that
whoever is saved is saved in Christ. That all of salvation
is in Christ, or as one old writer says, everything that God has
for sinners is in Jesus Christ. It's not to be found anywhere
else. And all the blessings we receive
from God were first deposited in Christ, and from Him then
we receive them. And everything that's done to
us and for us in the gospel is done with Christ. Let me show you. We are chosen
in Him before the foundation of the world. We are predestined
in Him to be like Him. We're predestined to the adoptions
of sons by Him. We are loved in Christ Jesus,
we are redeemed in Christ Jesus, forgiven in Christ Jesus, we
are dead with Christ Jesus, we have been raised with Christ
Jesus, and we are seated in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus. Everything about this, this business
of salvation, from our being dead in trespasses and sins until
we are glorified in the presence of God, enjoying Him forever,
It's in, by, and with the Lord Jesus Christ. You take the Lord
Jesus Christ out of the picture at any point in salvation, you
utterly destroy salvation. It's just that way. That's why
there's no reason to preach a message without Christ in it. There's
no reason to try to witness to people without telling them about
the Lord Jesus Christ, because He is the hitch pin of everything. Now, the Lord's words to Noah
picture for us the responsibility that was laid on the Lord Jesus
Christ. This business of salvation is
not free. You say, well, I thought we believed
in free salvation. Well, it's freed us. But it cost
the Lord Jesus tremendously. It's not as though our debt has
not been paid. It's simply we didn't pay it.
Someone else did. But our Lord Jesus Christ, on
Him was laid great responsibility. Look over here at Matthew chapter
11. Matthew 11. Verse 27, Matthew
11, 27. Our Lord says this, all things
have been committed unto me by my father. No one knows the son
except the father. And no one knows the father except
the son and those to whom the son chooses to reveal him. Come
to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give
you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn
of me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest
for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Our Lord stands before all these people and he says, everything
has been committed to me. God has a purpose, a divine purpose,
for all the ages. And shining in that purpose is
His gracious purpose of salvation for His chosen people. And all
of God's eternal purpose has been put into the hands of the
Lord Jesus Christ to bring it to pass. You talk about responsibility. I don't like to be responsible
for much. I feel like what I do here is much more responsibility
than I can bear to stand up and preach the gospel. I don't like to be responsible
because responsibility wears us down. But our Lord Jesus Christ,
on his shoulders was laid the responsibility of bringing to
pass God's eternal purpose. He says, in the volume of the
book it is written of me, I have come to do your will, O God. In John chapter 17, look over
there, John 17, and this is just before he goes to the cross,
John 17, verse 2. The Lord says this as he's praying
to his father, for you granted him authority. That is, and when
he's talking of himself in the third person here, he says, you
granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal
life to all those you have given him. And then down here in verse
six, he says, I have revealed you to those whom you gave me
out of the world. They were yours. You gave them
to me and they have obeyed your word. Now notice there, our Lord
first says, everything's been committed to me. But here as
he nears the cross, he gets to that most precious thing which
God has committed to him. That which is precious in God's
sight and which in some respects is the main thing that this whole
creation and history is about. God's people. He says, they were
yours. And then you gave them to me.
Gave him as a gift, but also gave him as a responsibility.
I remember when Mary was married here, you know, and I walked
her down the aisle. What did I do? I gave her to Brian. Now, not just as
a gift, but as a responsibility. At that time, I discharged to
him the responsibilities I had been fulfilling for the first
20 or so years. Now, his job to take care of
her. And God the Father gave to the Lord Jesus Christ this
precious people, a people precious to him, and laid upon the Lord
Jesus Christ the responsibility of their care and their salvation. Now, notice the character of
the one on whom this responsibility has been laid, as it's illustrated
here in Noah. Look up here, verse 8. We're
back in Genesis chapter 6, verse 8. Noah found favor in the eyes
of the Lord. Our Lord Jesus Christ is here
illustrated by Noah as one who had the favor or the grace of
God. Now, it may seem strange to us
to think of the Lord Jesus Christ having the grace of God, but
he did. The reason it seems strange to
us is we always think of grace in terms of God's unearned favor. That is, that His goodness is
given to us without us earning it. And you know, most of the
time that the Scriptures use the word grace, that's what it's
talking about. It's talking about God's unearned
favor. But this word grace, or this,
and here it's translated favor. In some places in the New Testament
also, it's translated favor. That's all it really means is
the favor of God. It says nothing about why a person
has that favor. That's why sometimes Paul would
add the word free to it, free grace. We have been justified
freely by his grace. Well, here we see Noah found
favor in the eyes of the Lord, and we know Noah well enough
to realize that whatever favor Noah got from the Lord, He got
it freely. Yet of our Lord Jesus Christ,
we may say this, He positively earned the favor of God. God saw in Christ everything
that would delight Him. In Isaiah 42, it says, Behold
my servant, mine elect, in whom my soul delights. Have you ever tried to delight
God? And you know, we all have that
principle in us, don't we, that we're trying to be the kind of
person God wants us to be because we want God to be delighted with
us. Well, let's give up because for all our years of trying,
we haven't accomplished it yet. And let's give up because we
have found someone who does delight God. not simply please Him, not
simply satisfy Him, delights Him. God, everything good, God
sees it in Christ. Everything God could desire,
He sees it in Christ in full. He finds no fault in the Lord
Jesus Christ. God is delighted with Christ. And in this, God and every believer
agrees. You think about that. Do you
agree with God about the Lord Jesus Christ? God says, Behold
mine elect, my chosen one. Have you chosen him? Have you set your affections
on the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you choose him like God chooses
him? My servant in whom my soul delights. Are you delighted with the Lord
Jesus Christ? I think that as we preached here
last Sunday morning, Every believer loves the Lord Jesus Christ and
loves everything about Him. God finds no fault in Christ
and neither does a believer. Tell me, can you tell me something
wrong with Him? I'll tell you this, if you find
a fault in Christ, it's because the Holy Spirit has never shown
you Jesus Christ. You've seen some human made-up
Christ. The Christ of your own imagination.
Oh, He is in every point delightful and beautiful and good and desirable. And to the believer, there's
absolutely nothing he would change about Jesus Christ. The believer
says this, I would not change Christ, but I hope that Christ
changes me to be like Him. Oh, God delights in it. The Lord
Jesus was a righteous man. In verse nine, it says this is
the account of Noah. Noah was a righteous man. Now,
we understand that Noah was righteous in this way, just like Abraham,
he believed God and it was imputed to him for righteousness. God
called him righteous. God assigned him the status of
a righteous man. Our Lord Jesus Christ didn't
merely have that adjective assigned to Him. He
truly was and is a righteous man. The Lord Jesus performed
all that the law required. It teaches us in Galatians chapter
4 that Jesus Christ came into this world born of a woman, made
under the law. Why so? Why did God have Himself
come into this world as a man subject to the law? So that he
might be shown righteous. Where there is no law, there
is neither sin nor righteousness. Therefore, Christ was born under
the law that it might be shown or that He might establish a
righteousness. that he was righteous not only
in his actions, doing always those things that pleased his
father, but he was righteous in his heart. It says of him,
you have loved righteousness and hated iniquity. You know,
there are people in this world who do righteousness. They do
it. They're like Saul of Tarsus who
could say concerning that righteousness which is of the law, I'm blameless.
They do. Outwardly, that which the law
requires, but they don't love righteousness, they love iniquity.
They're just denying themselves what they love. Friend, that's
not righteousness. Of the Lord Jesus, it can be
said, not only did he do that which was righteous, he loved
that which was righteous, and that's why he did it. His righteousness
was not merely some outward conformity to an external law, but righteousness
was the very essence of his being. And what he did was simply the
outworking of what he was, a righteous man. Our Lord Jesus Christ, when we
say he's righteous, we mean far more than we would mean if we
ever said another man was righteous. He was a blameless man. This
is the negative side of saying he was a righteous man. No one
could justly indict him of any sin. He stood before those Pharisees,
those keepers of the law. And that's how they fancied themselves.
They kept the law so far as walking according to it, at least they
thought they did. And then also they considered themselves the
guardians of the law, the experts of the law, and he stood before
them and said, who of you? Who of you? can charge me with
a sin. I might stand before you and
make some boasts from time to time about myself, but I think
I'm smarter than to stand before you and say, who here can convince
me or convict me of any sin? Everybody is saying, well, I
could. I can remember some. He stood before those experts
of the law and said, all right, come on, one of you, any one
of you, come up with one thing, I've done wrong. And for all their hatred of Him,
not one of them could make a real accusation against Him. And then it says, Noah walked
with God and our Lord Jesus Christ walked with God. In the Bible
we read that God came into the garden of Eden in the cool of
the evening to walk with Adam, the man. But there came a time
when Adam no longer walked with God. The first Adam ceased his walk
with God. The last Adam walked with God
all the days of his life. What does it mean to walk with
God? I cannot Describe it all together. Noah walked with God.
There is a way that even folks like you and me can walk with
God. But concerning our Lord Jesus
Christ, we can say this, that his life from beginning to end
was one continual act of worship. He loved God. He adored God. He pleased God. He communed with
God. He trusted God. He enjoyed God. His life was all about God. There was never a time when the
Father had to come into this world and say, Jesus, where art
thou? As He said in the Garden of Eden,
Adam, where art thou? God never had to look for Christ
because Christ was always right there walking with Him. You say, well, Christ is God.
I know, but we're talking about Him in His humanity as the mediator. He walked with God. never was
there an ungodly thought in his mind, not once. Well, it says here then in verse
18 of Genesis 6, but I will establish my covenant with you. I hear about people making promises
to God. Don't do that. Don't enter into
covenant with God. Just don't. Why? Because every
covenant you enter into, you're going to break. And all it's
going to do is increase your judgment. And I'll tell you another
reason that you should never enter into covenant with God.
God has already entered into covenant with someone in behalf
of his people. You know, when God made a covenant
on Mount Sinai with the Israelites, that covenant was made with them
as a nation and made with every one of those Israelites individually. And each man would enter into
covenant with God. And here's the thing, each man
individually and the whole nation as a corporate entity broke that
covenant. Therefore, when God makes a new
covenant, He doesn't enter into a new covenant individually with
each one of His people. Rather, He entered into covenant
with one, the Lord Jesus Christ. And he says to the Lord Jesus
Christ, so to speak, says, I will establish my covenant with you. And all the responsibilities
of that covenant fell upon the Lord Jesus Christ. For what the
law could not do, what that old covenant could not do, in that
it was weak through the flesh, that covenant was made with every
one of us, and it depended upon our flesh, but our flesh was
weak, and our flesh failed under the responsibilities of the covenant,
and it was broken. What the law could not do because
of the weakness of our flesh, God did in sending His Son. For he laid upon him all the
responsibilities of the covenant. He laid upon him the responsibility
of bringing in an everlasting righteousness. My righteousness
doesn't last any more than the frost of the morning. Does yours? It doesn't take much
heat of God's discerning eye to make any claim of my righteousness
just to melt away into nothing. But the Lord Jesus Christ came
in and he brought in an everlasting righteousness, which not even
the eye of God can find a fault with it. And he bore in himself the responsibility
of this covenant to put away the sin of God's people. All through his life, he bore
about upon his back the responsibility of the law and establishing a
righteousness. And at the end of his life, he
took upon even the greater burden of the weight of judgment. And God established his covenant
with the Lord Jesus Christ. And when Jesus Christ fulfilled
all righteousness, and then Jesus Christ fulfilled all judgment,
The covenant was signed, sealed and delivered. And there's not
a thing left for sinners to do to obtain all the promises of
that covenant. I'm so glad that the Lord, that
the God of heaven never spoke to me in the night and said,
Joe, I will establish my covenant with you. Oh, if he says that. If the only covenant of hope
that you have is one that God established with you, then you
are of all men most miserable. And you are without hope and
without Christ and without God in this world. I'm so glad that
God did not establish his covenant with me, but he established it
for me in Christ. Did God go to the animals and
say, I'll establish my covenant with you? Did He go to Noah's wife and
Noah's sons and their wives and say, I'll establish my covenant
with you? No. He came to Noah, one man. And our God came to the Lord
Jesus Christ, one man. And all of the covenant of God's
eternal salvation was established with Him. It was a covenant indeed of salvation
in verse 17. God says to know everything on
earth will perish. And that is an illustration of
the universal judgment that has fallen on everyone. It's fallen
on you. I kind of made a list at the
beginning of my message of who I was aiming at. Do you realize
one reason I'm aiming at all of them is because the judgment
of God is on all of them. When God pronounced judgment
on man, there wasn't anybody left out. We all come into this
world by nature, the children of wrath. And if something doesn't change
between our birth and our death, that wrath that was pronounced
on us will fall on us. But there was a covenant of salvation
made with our Noah. Our Lord Jesus Christ. And this covenant brings us salvation. The responsibility was laid on
Christ, on Noah to build an ark, and on Christ by His body and
blood to bring in everlasting righteousness and put away everlasting
judgment. There was a responsibility laid
upon Christ to take Himself into the ark All who are to be saved. And then the responsibility was
laid on Noah to go into the ark and the Lord Jesus, the responsibility
was laid upon him to join himself to all those who have been chosen
and endure judgment with them. I remember I said to get a proper
picture of Christ from this story, you must include Noah and the
Ark as though they were one and the same thing. And Noah being
in that Ark, those things together show us
that in Christ and by his work, we have endured the wrath of
God. Do you realize that there is
no wrath for all those who were in Christ Jesus when he endured
the wrath? Outside that ark, everything perished. Now, he
said here, God pronounced this judgment, everything on earth
will perish. You say, but not everything on
earth did perish because two went inside. Two of everything
went inside and there's Noah in there and there's Noah's family
in there. They didn't perish. Yes, they did. They perished
in that ark, because the judgment that would have come upon them,
had they been outside the ark, came upon the ark. And when we
were in Christ, in Christ there going through judgment, we were
in Him, and the judgment that would have fallen on us fell
on Him. And when He died, we died. So far as the law is concerned,
friends, that's the only concern I care about. I want the law
to think I'm dead, because when a man's dead, he's free from
the law. The law says I have no more to
do with this man. He's dead. Christ endured that
punishment, and we were in Him, and therefore that punishment
is visited upon us so far as God's justice is concerned. Well,
how does this work itself out? All the chosen animals, come
to Noah. I want you to notice something.
Noah was never told to build that ark and stand there on the
ramp of that ark and say, all right, any of you animals want
to come on in? Just, you know, here it is. In verse 20, the Lord says this
to Noah, he says, two of every kind of bird And every kind of
creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be
kept alive. Now, here is what it looks like
from our viewpoint. We go out and preach the gospel,
and there is a plea within the gospel. And people respond to
that plea, and they come to the Lord Jesus Christ to be kept
alive. And that's why we come to Him,
to be kept alive. But here's why. Look over here in chapter 7. Verse 6, Noah was 600 years old
when the floodwaters came on the earth, and Noah and his sons
and his wife And his son's wives entered the ark to escape the
waters of the flood. Pairs of clean and unclean animals,
of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, male
and female, came to Noah and entered the ark as God had commanded
Noah. These come of all sorts and of
all kinds. not because there is any natural
inclination in them to come, not because they fully understand
what lies ahead. But as our Lord said in John
6, verse 37, all that the Father gives to me will come to me,
and he that comes to me I will in no wise cast out. Now these
animals came to Noah because God worked in them, to go to
Noah, it was not natural for them to do so, but they came. Noah stood there
on the ramp of that ark, and here they came. Our Lord Jesus
Christ says this, and I, if I be lifted up, and he means by that
his crucifixion, if I be lifted up, I'll draw all men to me.
And that all men signifies all kinds of people. Not just Jew,
but Gentile. Not just male, but female. Not
just old, but young. Not just intelligent, but uneducated. Not just the civilized, but the
barbarian. I'll draw all men to me. And
Noah, standing as a picture of Christ, there before that ark,
representing the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, he
stood there. And animals of every kind came to him. Why, there
were birds. of all sorts, birds of prey,
birds that ate seeds. There were animals of all kinds.
There were giraffes. There were elephants and rhinoceroses,
or however you pluralize rhinoceros. Maybe it's rhinoceri. I don't
know. There were dogs, cats, sheep. And they came to Him. They came
willingly. Because God had put it in whatever
you might call an animal heart, had put it in them to do contrary
to their nature and come to Noah and get in the ark. He didn't
have to go out there and corral him. He didn't have to beat him
in with a whip. He didn't have to scare him in.
They came to him because God worked in them to come. And as
he stood there and those animals came in, He did not say to all
one of them, not you. All that the Father gives to
me will come to me, and he that comes to me I will in no wise
cast out. Verse 22 of Genesis 6, Noah did
everything just as God commanded him. And our Lord Jesus Christ
has done everything. just as His Father commanded
Him. Now, what was the result of Noah
doing everything God commanded him? That Noah and all that were
with him in the ark survived the flood and came out on the
other side alive. And the result of Jesus Christ
doing all that the Father has told Him to do is this. that
He and everyone in Him have survived the overwhelming flood of God's
judgment, and they have come out the other side alive. When our Lord Jesus came out
of that grave 2,000 years ago, everyone in Him came out with
Him, unscathed, untouched. And that was but the beginning.
In time to come, do you know one of these days God's wrath
is going to fall on this earth? We see tokens of it. Our Lord
spoke of how even the earth, you know, with its earthquakes
and all the disasters that come, He said this is just the beginning,
the birth pangs. Just tokens of things to come.
I don't know what the last day is going to be like, but it's
going to be a bad day for the earth. It's going to be a bad
day for the people of this world. But the Lord shall come in that
day, and He shall deliver from that day of God's judgment everybody
in Him. And they shall go through that
day untouched, unharmed. And they shall come out the other
side into the new day of God's everlasting blessedness in His
presence. The Lord said to Noah, all these
animals of every kind, shall come." And one point I forgot
to make, but I've got to get it in here. It said, the unclean
and the clean. They all came to Him. You say,
well, I'm pretty unclean. Well, there's room for you. There's
a place for you in Noah's Ark because there's a place made
for the unclean animals. And if you see yourselves as
unclean, that's a problem. Too many people think they're
clean. If you feel you're unclean, There's a place for you in Christ.
And then notice this. He said, the unclean and the
clean. You think you're clean? You still
better get in the ark. You still better get in. Because
a lot of clean animals died on that day. The only place of safety
for the clean and the unclean is in the ark. And the only place
of safety is for you in the ark. Say, I'm young. Well, get in
the ark. Because a young died on that
day, too. I'm too old. Methuselah was 969. He died in
the day of the flood. So you need to get in the ark,
too, if you're old. You're middle aged, get in the ark. Say, well, I'm an odd kind of
bird. Well, we need all kinds of birds. Yeah, but I'm just a donkey.
I'm just a brain-ass. Needed them in the ark too. They
had to get in. Whatever you are, get in the
ark, lest the day of the flood come upon you and you're on the
wrong side of the door. Albert?