The World Changer at the End of the World: Pleasing God

You're listening to A New Beginning with Greg Laurie, a podcast made possible by Harvest Partners, helping people everywhere know God.

Visit our website and learn more about Harvest Partners at harvest.org. 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's 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's rebellious to do drugs and party. That's status quo man. 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. 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.

Who is going to take a biker's wallet anyway? But you know. But that's 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's appropriate but there's 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're not in the hero's hall of faith because they were perfect. In fact they were far from it. They're there primarily because they exercised faith.

That's 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's looking for availability. God does not call the qualified. He qualifies the called.

He's 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's 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's your excuse? I mean seriously God cannot use you and Noah the guy we're 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's what Moa. Moa. Who's Moa? Okay that's 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 he you know Noah built an ark right.

But Noah had great faith and a great God. I think he's a misunderstood character. Even caricature.

Of course Seaman 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've ever seen. I think he was channeling Gladiator more than Noah because there's a scene when he's 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's 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. But so there's all these distortions of the story and it's important to go back to what the Bible says. So Hebrews 11 tells us this. 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's several principles in this passage that help us to understand what made Noah tick.

Here's point number one if you're taking notes. God revealed secrets to Noah. God revealed secrets to Noah.

Hebrews 11, 7 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's 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're 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'd get all excited. The secret way would pop up and I'd just take them in through a side door. But they thought it was secret. There was this park that's not far from our house. And 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's where we went. It's not secret. Anyone can find it. But to this day we still call it the secret park. God said I'm 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's 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're not basically good. We're 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's 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've 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. You know sometimes we can't always make it to church. But here's the good news. Church is coming to you.

It's coming to you on your TV screen or on your tablet or your computer or even your phone. We do it every weekend and it's called Harvest at Home. We have worship. We have a message from the Word of God. If you want to find out more just go to harvest.org and join us this weekend for Harvest at Home. And now Pastor Greg continues his study, one of the most requested of the year, 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 is 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 you slash 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 okay Dr. Dobson. And he will say 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 in 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 news feeds. 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. 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 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 is 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. 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 harvest.org. Well we're so pleased to have Pastor Levi Lusko with us today. As you may know Levi is lead pastor of Fresh Life Church with campuses in Montana, Utah, Oregon and Wyoming. And he's author of the new children's devotional book we're making available called Roar Like a Lion. Levi it's such an engaging book.

The art design is just wonderful and it's interactive with so many extra features. But explain the anchors in the book. What are those about? Oh Dave I'm glad you brought that up. You know my family loves to go to Disneyland. We love to go with the Laurie family when we have the chance. And one of the fun things to do at Disneyland is to look for the hidden Mickeys. There's these hidden Mickeys built into the rides all around the park.

You can Google it and find them and it makes the fun. Just one more fun thing to do when you're there. And so we decided to put hidden anchors all throughout the book. Like on page 22 there's one in the sushi tray. And so as you're reading the kids, my kids love to squeal out hidden anchor, hidden anchor. It's built into the trestle of the roller coaster or the you know whatever.

And the science experiment of the Rude Goldberg machine. And then at the back of course there's a whole entry on the anchor. Because Hebrews says if you have hope it's like having an anchor in a storm.

And a boat that's anchored can be moved but it won't be totally lost because it has something holding on to it. And that's really just one of the things that we want this book to be. Because you know it's hard to teach kids about death. It's hard to talk about some of these things. But we have a whole entry on page 6 called Not the End where we talk about death. And so my hope is that families would be launched and propelled into having difficult but important conversations.

Through you know this simple tool that will make them you know facilitate such a thing. You know Levi I know that the anchor is personal to you and your daughter Lenya. As I remember as we said goodbye to her and had her little funeral service.

Which was such a powerful poignant sad and yet hopeful day because of the hope of the resurrection. But I know the anchor was something that was important to you. Tell us why you personally use that symbol when you think of your daughter Lenya. Yeah well in addition to Hebrews 6 19 which gives gives us such a beautiful picture of having an anchor. And I'm even just filled with gratitude and choked up a little bit thinking about that. Because I'm so grateful for your family coming out for the service. You preached Lenya's funeral were there with us in the snow that day.

You know we love that symbol of the picture of hope. And when the week we were trying to get ready for the funeral we couldn't find Lenya's anchor necklace. We had given each of the girls a little necklace with an anchor on it.

We couldn't find Lenya's anchor necklace. And Livy said well I want her to be buried with mine. So Livy gave her anchor necklace and we you know put that on Lenya in the casket. Of course we know she's with Jesus.

She's not wearing that she's you know with Christ. But in the casket she's wearing this anchor. And we had an artist come in because the casket that we could get in time was not the one we wanted. We looked at the catalog and picked one out. But because it was Christmas week when she died they couldn't get it in time.

And so we picked a very simple casket. But we had this artist paint a beautiful anchor on the lid of it. And so that's on there.

Then my wife and I both had that anchor symbol tattooed on us as just a reminder of hope. And I know there's some people maybe who object to tattoos. That's not really the point of this message. The point is it's for us a very important symbol of a truth. And that is the death is not the end.

That's right. So Levi and I have something in common. We both have children that went to be with the Lord. Our son Christopher was unexpectedly called home to heaven through an automobile accident in 2008. And little Lenya went to be with the Lord in 2012. And so we share this pain.

But here's what I love about what Levi and his wife Jenny have done and their family is. Is they've taken this pain and they've put it into purpose. They don't live hopelessly. They live hopefully.

And but they also live realistically. See you know sometimes Christians you know we don't want to talk about the hard issues. But we shouldn't be afraid because the Bible addresses the afterlife. It tells us there's the hope of heaven. It tells us how to live in this life. And so I appreciate the fact that Levi's pressed on.

You know not everybody does that. Some people have their marriages fall apart when a child dies. Or they have all kinds of other issues that develop later on. But Levi and his wife Jenny and his children have all pressed forward. The Lord's blessed them with a little son now as well.

And they're all pressing forward serving God. And one of those efforts the fruit of that is this brand new book by Levi Lusko called Roar Like a Lion. It's sort of themed around the idea of a lion.

He called his little daughter Lenya Lenya Lion. And he wrote another book through the eyes of a lion that talks about all that they went through with saying goodbye to Lenya. But this is a book that will inspire you. And it's a devotional to read with your family especially your kids.

So we hope you'll order your own copy of Roar Like a Lion by Levi Lusko. 90 devotions to a courageous faith. Yeah that's right and we'll be glad to send this resource your way. To thank you for your partnership in bringing the hope of Christ to so many each day. We recently read a social media comment that said, I wanted to let you know you're a great inspiration to me. You've helped me through the toughest times this past year.

Just being able to listen to you and watch you online. You have made a difference in my life and many others. Well you know that kind of encouragement could never happen without the partnership of listeners who help make these daily studies possible.

If you've partnered with us, thank you. And if you can make a generous donation right now, we'd like to send you this wonderful new children's devotional book Roar Like a Lion. You can donate online at harvest.org. Or call us anytime at 1-800-821-3300.

That's 1-800-821-3300. Well next time Pastor Greg brings more insights from the life of Noah. We'll continue learning from this great hero of our faith. Join us here on A New Beginning with Pastor and Bible Teacher, Greg Laurie.