Best of 2020: The World Changer at the End of the World Part 1: True Rebels

The following message from Pastor Greg Laurie is made possible by Harvest Partners, helping people everywhere know God. To find out how to know God personally, go to knowgod.org. K-N-O-W, knowgod.org. Hey, would you do me a favor?

Share this message with someone who needs to hear it. Committed Christians are the true rebels in culture today. Coming up next, Pastor Greg Laurie urges us to resist conforming to anything other than Christ-likeness. Don't tell me it's rebellious to do what everybody else does and say what everybody else says and be a woke person and conform to pre-existing culture that is changing before our eyes. If you want to be a rebel, follow Jesus Christ. You'll be a real rebel today. Scripture warns us that wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction.

Lots of folks going that way. It's the way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. Today on A New Beginning, Pastor Greg Laurie shows us an alternative.

He helps us through the narrow gate. It won't make us popular or politically correct, but better to live in a way that's pleasing to God, even if it displeases people rather than the other way around. I want to talk about a man that really changed his world. He is what we would call a hero of the Bible. And he did it during a very dark time in human history, maybe the darkest it has ever been. I am talking about the time before the great flood when God brought His judgment upon planet earth. Jesus called it the days of Noah. And it is relevant to us because Christ said, as it was in the days of Noah, so also shall it be when the Son of Man returns. So Christ is saying, remember how it was in Noah's day?

It is going to be very similar in the time before my return. Yet against this very dark background lived a man who walked with God, showing you can live a godly life in an ungodly culture. And I like to call him a world changer. What is a world changer? A world changer is someone who does not accept the status quo. Rather a world changer wants to change the culture.

They think for themselves and they do what is right. A world changer is a follower of Jesus Christ and they affect their surroundings more than their surroundings affect them. And a world changer is someone who wants to make a difference. In fact world changers, or let me put it another way, committed Christians are the true rebels in culture today. Don't tell me it is rebellious to do drugs and party. That is the status quo man. Don't tell me it is rebellious to do what everybody else does and say what everybody else says and be a woke person and conform to pre-existing culture that is changing before our eyes. A world changer, a real Christian is someone that believes this book and they live by what this book says. You want to be a rebel?

Follow Jesus Christ. You will be a real rebel today. You don't even need a leather jacket or a motorcycle. Or your wallet attached to a chain. I don't know why bikers always do that you know.

Who is going to take a biker's wallet anyway? But you know. But that is real rebellion in the best sense of the word. World changers are thermostats not thermometers. A thermometer just tells you what the temperature is.

A thermostat changes the temperature. And in the same way a world changer changes the world. Well the guy I want to focus on. Well everyone knows the story. His name was Noah. We think of Noah. We immediately think of Noah's ark.

And that is appropriate. But there is a lot more to his life than then. But Noah is one of a number of people. Men and women that are mentioned in Hebrews chapter 11 which has been described as the hero's hall of faith. Sort of the rock stars of the Christian world.

Of the Bible culture. The people that just stood out and lived as God wanted them to live. They are not in the hero's hall of faith because they were perfect. In fact they were far from it. They are there primarily because they exercised faith.

That is the word that keeps popping up again and again. By faith they did this. By faith they did that. And it just reminds us that you don't have to be a perfect person to be used by God. God is not looking for ability. He is looking for availability. God does not call the qualified.

He qualifies the called. He is just looking for some man. Some woman. Young or old. To just say all right Lord. Here I am.

Send me. I want to make a difference in my world. I want to make a difference in my family.

I want to make a difference in my culture. I mean look at some of the people God used for Pete's sake. I mean there are some people that messed up pretty badly. When we think of Abraham. Abraham the father of faith. He had faith. But he stumbled in his faith at least twice lying. Sarah his wife laughed at the promises of God.

Then she denied that she laughed. Samson he made it into the hall of faith. He was a woman chaser and a pretty immoral guy. Gideon struggled with fear and self-doubt.

Rahab was a prostitute. David had an affair and murdered a man to cover it up. Elijah the prophet struggled with depression and wanted to die.

The Samaritan woman had multiple divorces. The disciples fell asleep when Jesus asked them to pray. Simon Peter denied the Lord three times. Timothy had an ulcer. Lazarus was dead. So what is your excuse? I mean seriously God cannot use you. And Noah the guy we are going to focus on for the next two times is a man who got drunk and put himself in a compromising position.

But God gave him a second chance. But here is what Moa. Moa. Who is Moa?

Ok that is a new character I just invented. Moa was his brother. His lesser known brother Moa. He just built a little rowboat with a hole in it. But Noah you know. Noah built an ark right.

But Noah had great faith and a great God. I think he is a misunderstood character. Even caricature. Of course you see him in cartoons. Steve Carell portrayed him for laughs in Evan Almighty. Then there was that film where Russell Crowe portrayed Noah.

That was one of the weirdest films I have ever seen. I think he was channeling Gladiator more than Noah. Because there is a scene when he is getting the ark ready to go and people are trying to get in and Russell Crowe as Noah is killing people so they don't enter the ark. That is actually not what happened in the Bible. The fact is the door to the ark remained open for a long time so anyone who wanted to come could come. The fact is nobody wanted to go in the ark. So there are all these distortions of the story and it is important to go back to what the Bible says.

So Hebrews 11 tells us this. By faith Noah being divinely warned of things not yet seen moved with godly fear and prepared an ark for the saving of his household by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. So there are several principles in this passage that help us to understand what made Noah tick.

Here is point number one if you are taking notes. God revealed secrets to Noah. God revealed secrets to Noah.

Hebrews 11 says he was divinely warned of things not yet seen. See God spoke to him and his faith was activated and I wonder if God has spoken to you lately. You know sometimes people say I don't think God ever speaks to me. I remember hearing Pastor Chuck Smith tell the story of his grandson who said to his mom, Mom God never speaks to me. She said honey you know when you do something wrong and you feel bad in your heart for doing it?

He says yeah. She says that can be God speaking to you. And he paused for a moment and then said Mom God speaks to me all the time. There is a lot of ways God speaks to us. But he does speak to us and the primary way he speaks to us is through the Word of God. But God revealed a secret to Noah.

The Bible says the secret of the Lord is with those that fear him. When my grandkids were smaller I used to take them to secret places. I would say you know we are going into a restaurant. Do you want to go in the regular way like all the other people? Or do you want to go in the secret way?

Oh. They would get all excited. The secret way would pop up and I would just take them in through a side door. But they thought it was secret. There was this park that is not far from our house. So I said we can go to the regular park or we can go to this other park. I call it the secret park.

And that is where we went. It is not secret. Anyone can find it. But to this day we still call it the secret park.

Kathy would say I am going to walk through the secret park. Well you know. But we like secrets right. So the secret of the Lord is with those that fear him. God reveals things to Christians that people who are not believers don't understand. As an example as a Christian I know that God's Word is true. You see the basic Christian in many ways knows more than some of the great intellects of our world. Because we believe this book. And we know because we believe this book that there are certain things that are true and certain things that are not true. For instance we know man is not basically good. Man that is a hard one to believe isn't it? Oh man is basically good.

Really? Well the Bible doesn't teach man is basically good. The Bible teaches that man is basically sinful.

Now that makes sense. And the world makes more sense when I accept the premise we are not basically good. We are basically sinful. But the Bible also teaches that God is good. The Bible teaches that one day judgment will come to the world.

The Bible teaches that it is going to get worse before it gets better. The Bible teaches that one day Christ will return and he will right every wrong. And Jesus even said to the Father, Father thank you that you have hidden these things and revealed them to your children. So when you believe the Bible you know things other people don't know.

And Noah understood that and God revealed secrets to him. Pastor Greg Laurie will have the second half of his message in just a moment. We send Pastor Greg studies out via the radio, email, satellite and even our Harvest at Home online services.

And it's encouraging when we hear that these messages are impacting lives. Pastor Greg, I have been a true believer for six decades. I've been receiving your daily devotions for a couple of months now. They are my favorite devotionals and I look forward to getting them every day. In addition, about one month ago I started tuning to your live sermons on Harvest at Home.

You inspire me and I get all your jokes. Thank you for your ministry and all it does to bring people to a relationship with God. I'm happy to partner with you in your mission.

I pray God continues to bless you exceedingly, abundantly more than you could ask or think. It's a privilege to bring these studies your way. And we're thankful for our Harvest partners who make them possible.

Would you partner with us? You can make a donation at harvest.org. And you'll find Pastor Greg's Harvest at Home services at the same web address, harvest.org. And now Pastor Greg continues his study called The World Changer at the End of the World, Part 1.

Let's listen. Number two, Noah had a great reverence for God. He had a great reverence for God.

I think that maybe this is lacking in our culture today. Have we become too casual with the Lord? Have we taken Him for granted?

Possibly. When it says He moved with godly fear that does not mean that He cowered in fear before God. A better way to translate that would be He moved with reverence. We need to have reverence for God. And one definition of the fear of the Lord that I like is a wholesome dread of displeasing Him.

A wholesome dread. Not cowering in fear like God's going to smack me. But rather I love God so much and God is so holy I have this respect for Him.

But maybe we have gone too far the other way. You know Jesus is my homeboy man. Hey news flash your homeboy so called created the universe. Have a little respect when you talk to Him. Have a little respect when you worship Him. Have a little respect when you speak His name. I have gotten to know Dr. James Dobson pretty well over the last few years.

And I have been with him in a lot of situations. And he will say to me Greg call me Jim. And I will say OK Dr. Dobson. No no call me Jim. And I don't feel comfortable calling him Jim for some reason. And I think it is because I respect him.

So I will say well Dr. Dobson or if I want to be super casual I will say Doc listen. You know so I call him that out of respect. And so Noah had this reverence and respect for God and he never lost that reverence for the Lord. And so he was a last days believer because he was living in the time before the flood came. Why did the flood come? Why did God send judgment on the earth the first time? The answer is found in Genesis 6.

I want you to turn over there if you would. Genesis 6. If you don't know where that is it is right after Genesis 5. Hang a hard left and go all the way and you will find Genesis 6. First book of the Bible.

Genesis 6.5 gives us a description of the world and the days of Noah. Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intent of his thoughts was only evil continually. You might underline that. Only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry he made man on the earth and he was grieved in his heart.

I would underline that too. I will come back to it. So the Lord said I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth. Man and beast creeping in the birds of the air.

I am sorry I made them. We will stop there. What exactly was going on here on planet earth to bring God's wrath so heavily?

Genesis 6.5 gives the answer. The Lord saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth and every intent of the thought of his heart was only evil continually. I am just amazed at the things I read in the news today.

You know the newsfeed. Just the atrocities. The horrible acts that people do against people. It is just endless.

And you know I don't even have to illustrate this. It is just heartbreaking. It is disturbing. And it just seems like people find new ways to do evil things. And that is what was happening at this time. But you know what this shows us is God is aware of the wickedness of man.

He is paying attention. And their wickedness is full to the brim would be a better translation. Sort of like an overflowing trash can or a septic tank. You know. It is bad. It was stinking to high heaven.

It was so bad. You know it is interesting. The book of Genesis can be divided into three sections. Generation. Degeneration.

Regeneration. So first it was generation. When God created all things and said it was good. Then degeneration. That is when sin entered into the garden. When Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit. Then regeneration.

We are at phase two here. Degeneration. And God said He is grieved. Now it is interesting that the word grieved is used here in verse six. You only grieve for those you love. You don't grieve when those you love. You don't grieve when some random person cuts you off on the road. You get angry maybe.

Upset. But it doesn't grieve you. It grieves you when your child is disrespectful or goes astray. Or someone you love or care about says or does something that hurts you. You are grieved only by the people you love.

Right? So the fact that God uses the word grieve shows us that this is hurting the heart of God. Because He loves humanity. You remember Jesus looked over the city of Jerusalem and He wept over them. Because He knew they were effectively bringing judgment on themselves. And we read in Luke 19 41. He saw the city and wept over it. Said oh Jerusalem. If you had only known this your day the things that made for your peace.

Let me ask you a question. Have you ever shed a tear for someone who is far from God? Have you ever shed a tear over a prodigal son or daughter? Over a prodigal mom or dad?

Over someone you care about that's going the wrong way? God takes no pleasure in bringing judgment on anyone. Pastor Greg Laurie, pointing out God's heart for lost sinners. Good insight today on a new beginning from one of our listeners most requested studies of the past year. And if you have a broken heart for someone who needs the Lord. We can help you share your faith more effectively. And if you have a broken heart for someone who needs the Lord. We can help you share your faith more effectively.

And if you have a broken heart for someone who needs the Lord. We can help you share your faith more effectively. Pastor Greg has a great online personal evangelism course and it's free of charge. It's called Tell Someone. Find out more about it by going to courses.harvest.org.

Again it's called Tell Someone and you'll find it at courses.harvest.org. Well Pastor Greg we know that more than 140,000 people made professions of faith last year through Harvest Ministries. The Lord moved in such a mighty way in the midst of such a tumultuous year. And one of the main outreach platforms was your film called A Rush of Hope.

That's right. Now we're making the DVD available for a short time longer. And we're hoping our listeners will take this film and use it themselves to bring people to the Lord.

Yeah it's really true Dave. You know during these days of the coronavirus it's been hard for a lot of people to go to church. But listen to this, Jesus did not say the whole world should go to church but he did say the church should go to the whole world. We need to go to where people are. And I'll tell you where people are right now. They're looking at screens.

They're looking at phone screens, tablet screens, computer screens and television screens. So we thought instead of saying that people come to us, we thought let's go to them. Let's saturate.

Let's permeate. Let's get the message to them in a way that will be entertaining, visually stimulating, but without compromising the essential gospel message. So the result of that was a rush of hope. A cinematic crusade that I did with my friend John Irwin who is along with his brother Andy Irwin running Kingdom Studios as a part of Lionsgate. These are what the Brits might call proper filmmakers. They have the most successful Christian film of all time I can only imagine. These guys know how to make movies. So when I had this idea to do this film, I went to them. So we worked with director Ben Smallbone under the direction of John Irwin to produce what many have called the greatest evangelistic film they have ever seen.

Those are their words, not mine. But we have some proof that it's reaching people because we've seen thousands of people come to Christ as a result of simply watching this film that we call A Rush of Hope. So think about something. Imagine getting someone you care about in front of a screen to watch this. You say, oh, it's some cheesy religious film. They don't want to watch it.

Trust me. They'll be hooked after the first two minutes, and we will pray that God will impact them with a message of the gospel that is baked into this film. So I want to send you your own copy of A Rush of Hope for the first time ever out on DVD. We also will send you information about how you can stream it exclusively.

This is not information for the general public, but you'll be able to do it because we'll give you the info you need. And we want to encourage you to support our ministry. Listen to this. I can sell this to you, but instead I'm going to give it to you, dot, dot, dot, for your gift of any size. Some can only give a little. Some can give a little bit more.

Some can give a lot. Do what you can to help us get the gospel out to our generation. Our nation needs to hear the gospel. What other hope is there for America right now? Do you really think it's a political hope?

And I don't care what side of the aisle you're on. The need is spiritual, and the answer is spiritual, and the answer is the gospel. Paul said, I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes. The word that Paul used there is from a Greek word that translates out to explosive power.

It's dynamic or dynamite power. There's explosive power in the simple message of the gospel. The story of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. And we want to give this message to people you care about. So order your copy of A Rush of Hope and send what you can. And in advance, let me say thank you. Ever start your day off wrong?

You know, things started badly and just kept going downhill. A lot of it has to do with your focus, where your mind is centered as the day starts. Why not plug into Pastor Greg's daily devotions? They're free of charge. It's good encouragement to keep your eyes fixed on Christ. You can read each day's devotion or listen to the audio version, your choice.

Sign up today free of charge at devo.harvest.org. Hey everybody, Greg Laurie here, personally inviting you to join us for what we call Harvest at Home. It's a Bible study. It's a worship service. It's church in your home. Maybe you're not able to get out to your church right now. If so, join us for Harvest at Home. People are listening in from around the world.

Listen to this. We have seen thousands of people make a commitment to follow Christ. So join us this weekend for Harvest at Home at harvest.org. Well, next time, Pastor Greg brings us more insights from the life of Noah. We'll continue learning from this great hero of our faith next time on A New Beginning.