All right, welcome across all of our campuses today. We're going to be in Genesis Chapter 6. So if you have a copy of scripture, you can turn with me to Genesis Chapter 6.
If you are new with us, let me just tell you kind of what we're doing. Guys, we understand the month of June comes around every year. Now, culturally, what that means is that we're going to see a symbol that God actually gave to the world thousands of years ago. Thousands of years ago, the divine warrior, after making war on the rebellion of the world and vanquishing evil, he hung his bow in the sky. And that's what the rainbow is. The rainbow is a symbol that God has given to humanity for us to remember His grace. Now, we understand that we're going to see a lot of rainbows and flags and those kind of things, and for many people, and listen, I'm all about freedom.
People can do whatever they want in terms of what they want to display and all that. Generally speaking, though, our culture has kind of co-opted that symbol, and it means something else right now. And what I felt like for the next few weeks, what we need to do is just kind of, you know, with all the church, with all the campuses, from kids all the way up, we need to remember what is so important about seeing this symbol, because it's not something that we can simply surrender. You know, it's one of those things that God has given us. We're going to see it from cereal boxes to different levels of government to sports teams and all that kind of stuff, and I want us in the church to remember this is not given for our pride. It's given because God is gracious even over our pride.
He's gracious to us if we would run to Him. And so every time we see it, we have an opportunity to be reminded of what God has done in our life and what God wants to do in the world for the sake of His great name. So that's what we're going to be. Genesis 6. I do want to step aside for just a minute, though, and I want to say, guys, we have one of the best opportunities in the whole year coming up here in a couple of weeks with Kids Week for massive impact, all right?
And, you know, the church is about what God is doing in your life, in you, through you, but sometimes it is about our collective impact, and we got to band together. This is one of those times, y'all. Satan hates kids. He hates them. The world is mostly annoyed by them. If you listen to kind of the messaging that you get around children from the world, that's what it is. It's annoyance. Jesus loves them, and God loves them, and we have an opportunity to step into mission with our God, jump in with Him, and serve in Kids Week and serve in Kids Week and get our kids at Kids Week and invite other kids at Kids Week.
You know what the craziest thing is? The people who are impacted most sometimes aren't even the kids. It's the people who serve.
That's what happens. We jump in the mission with God, and our hearts are warmed, and God does stuff in us as He's doing stuff through us. And so, man, I just want to throw it out there and say, guys, we need to be mobilizing in prayer. We need to be inviting like crazy. Last year, over a hundred kids came to Kids Week that we had no record of ever coming to anything else that we had done.
All right, so it is a big Inviter event. Man, we want the kids to come in. Every single child that is here will have the gospel plainly proclaimed to them.
Man, this is just an opportunity. How many of them may not get that opportunity any other time during the year? And so let's invite kids in. Let's get our kids there. Listen, how many little Mercy Hill family, you know, little kids, Mercy Hill kids that are born to awesome Mercy Hill families here, Kids Week is a huge part of their discipleship. Man, we have baptisms that come out of Kids Week.
We have a lot of decisions that get made there. So I'm asking you to, hey, think about your own kids, your own discipleship and all that. And then finally, of course, what we need to say is, you know, hey, can you help?
Can you just jump all the way in? Can you take some vacation and help? All right. And so I want to ask you to do that and jump in. We have a lot of people already serving, but guys, if we're going to serve over a thousand kids, we need well over 700 adults.
We have this thing at Mercy Hill where we're like, man, we want the ratios to be like really, really good with adults and kids stuff, especially in the world that we live in with safety and just all this kind of stuff. And so let's, let's get those numbers up and you can do that by, hey, everybody's got one of these. Give it to somebody as an Inviter Card after you did it yourself with the little, whatever this is, QR thing here, and then you can sign up. Okay. Right there.
It's fancy on your, on your phone. Okay. So let's do it. Genesis chapter six. All right, here we go. Let's jump back into the story of Noah. All right. Noah is not, I mean, I want you to tell your kids stories at night. Okay. And I, and I did that when our kids were little and all, and I want us to do that, but it's not exactly the bedtime nursery rhyme that we've sort of thought about it to be right.
You have no, you know, God told Noah to build an archy archy and where, you know, the arc and the little, you know, the, the, the animals and, and all the stuff. And then everybody dies. That's the story. All right. So it's actually very dark. It's very heavy. It's very, it's very weighty.
Okay. And this is what the Bible presents. That God is coming in judgment for a world that deserves it.
And the hammer is going to fall. Now here's the part that nobody wants to say out loud anymore. And I mean, I say that I shouldn't say that. We have a lot of churches proclaiming this, but a lot of churches want to move away from this.
Okay. Here's the part that we've got to just say as plainly as we can. Every single one of us have participated in the corruption of the world that deserves the wrath of God.
We all have. That's the message that culture don't want. This is why pastors get canceled and all this other kind of stuff.
Why? It's because the message is every single one of us have participated in the corruption of the world. And for that corruption, the hammer one day will fall. See the shocking thing about the story of Noah is not that everybody dies. The shocking thing for Christians is that anyone lived.
That's what's shocking because what should happen is yes, you're right. Humans participate in the corruption of the world with our own sin. What we think is, oh man, it's just yelling at my kids. It's just cheating in business. It's just looking at pornography. It's just harboring evil thoughts.
It's just engaging in gossip. And the Bible calls that sin and the wages of sin is eternal damnation. So we all deserve to be at the bottom of the flood of God's wrath. But this story isn't about destruction.
Actually, it's about salvation. Because while everybody deserved to die, God graced and was favorable to Noah and his family. And Noah responded to that grace and favor. God drew him. He came running.
He didn't rebel. And there was an ark that saved him. Here's what I want to show you today. Our sin deserves the flood of God's wrath. And if we don't understand that, and I know we talked about some of this very similarly last week, that's fine. Two sermons probably still are not enough. If we don't understand the weight of our sin, we will not understand the significance of the rainbow. If we can't remember what we deserved, then we absolutely will not light up with joy when we understand, and I'm talking about a real rainbow now, when we see what God has done in the sky, that the divine warrior has hung up his bow because he has graced and been favorable. And we can find the greater Noah.
We can find the greater ark in Jesus Christ and his gospel. We're going to get into some of that today. Now, this is a little different. Some of you are brand new, so it's no different for you.
But if you've been around Mercy Hill for a while, this is going to be a little bit different. I have thought long and hard, how do you bite off two full chapters of the Bible to tell this story? So here's what I've decided to do. We are going to read the whole story. In chapter seven, I'm going to skip a few places that are a little bit redundant, but we're going to pretty much read the whole thing. And then after that, today's sermon is a little different. I'm going to do a running commentary. We're going to organize this into three things about the story of Noah and then a charge at the end, and that'll be our time together. So I'm not going to do a whole lot of stop and go, stop and go. We're pretty much, we're hitting the whole story now.
So really try to hold it in your mind, the details and things like that. And then we're going to move through these three points that I have in a conclusion about Noah's story and that's it. Here we go. Now, verse 11, now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and the earth was filled with violence. God saw the earth and behold, it was corrupt for all flesh had, third time he's going to say this, corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh for the earth is filled with violence through them.
Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an arc of go for wood, make rooms in the arc and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it. The length of the arc is 300 cubits.
Its breath is 50 cubits and its height is 30 cubits. Make a roof for the arc and finish it to a cubit above and set the door of the arc on the inside. Make it with lower and second and third decks. For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh and which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die, but I will establish my covenant with you. And you shall come into the arc, you, your sons, your wife, and your son's wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sword into the arc and keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female of the birds according to their kinds and of the animals according to their kinds of every creeping thing to the ground according to its kind. Two of every sword shall come in to you into you to keep them alive. Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten and stored up.
It shall serve as food for you and for them. And Noah did this. He did all that God commanded him.
Chapter 7. Then the Lord said to Noah, go into the arc, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. And Noah, and skip down to verse 5.
I'm gonna skip a little bit here. And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him. Skip down to verse 11. In the 600th year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the 17th day of the month, on that day, all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of heaven were opened.
They went into the arc with Noah, two and two of all flesh, in which there was the breath of life. And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him. And the Lord shut him in.
That is very important. If you have a physical Bible, which I still read and love, okay, if you have that, maybe you want to circle that or underline that. The Lord shut him in. The flood continued for 40 days on the earth. The waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth, and the waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters, and the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth, that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them 15 cubits deep, and all flesh died that moved on the earth.
Birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind. Everything on the dry land, and whose nostrils there was breath of life, died. He blotted out everything that was on the face of the ground, man and animals, and creeping things, and birds of the heaven. They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those that were with him, and the waters prevailed on the earth for 150 days.
Now, can we just take a breath? Okay, that's a heavy story. It's a long story. All right, I hope you kind of understand the story, and I don't want to presume that everybody knows the story of Noah.
So, honestly, there it is. All right, that's the story. It's one of the most famous stories in a very famous book. It's one of the most famous stories in all the Bible. All right, now here's what I want to do. I want to tell you three things this weekend about Noah's flood, about this story, and I'm not, you know, a lot of times we really break things and parse verse by verse by verse like this. I think sometimes in these narratives you've got to zoom out and try to catch a big chunk of the narrative, and that way you can kind of see some of the bigger ideas that the Bible's trying to get across, I think, and so that's what I'm going to do this weekend, okay? So, in light of this awesome story, the first thing that I want to tell you this weekend is this. Noah's story is a miracle, all right?
This is very important. You're like, well, you know, Sherlock, I got that, okay? I mean, that's like, I see that, you know? It's like, well, okay, do we really?
All right, do we really? It's a miracle. What is a miracle? A miracle is when God interrupts the flow of the creation that he has made in a certain way to move things around. Some people don't believe in miracles. Some people believe in miracles at this church, obviously, being a church that is following scripture, and we look at what, you know, Jesus looked back on stories about Noah and Jonah, and he totally believed them. This, we believe, happened, and it is absolutely a miracle. Now, it's also sort of a retelling of Genesis 1, and some of Genesis 2, I think, we're even going to see later.
Now, you say, what is that? Well, actually, table that until we get a little bit into the new sermon, but can't you see some of the imagery about, you can eat this, and you can eat that, and can't you see some of the imagery of like, hey, the water bursted forth from above and below the firmament, and all these kind of mirrored images. There is a theological thing going. There's a historical thing going. It's all a miraculous thing.
Now, here's why I think this is incredibly important, because people, listen, inside the church and outside the church, many times, here's what they do. They make a mistake. They try to explain supernatural events using natural phenomena, and I would tell you today, don't. Don't try to explain a supernatural event only in natural terms.
This is what happens in science and in other places, and I think sometimes the church just buys right into this, so we try to jump in, and here, okay, let me give you one skeptic's thoughts on this, all right? This is so funny, because me and this individual would totally disagree, like, on everything, all right? But here's the deal. I actually agree with him on this. I wouldn't be as pejorative as he's going to be in this statement, but I do kind of agree with this, all right?
Here's what he says, ready? When nonsensical suggestions fall, the biblical apologist, which is what I'm doing right now, the biblical preachers, biblical arguers, if you want to say it like that, have no qualms resorting to their interpretive wastebasket of explanation, and that wastebasket is miracles. We are told that the supernatural is an essential element for explaining the divine character of the catastrophe.
It's miraculous. Now, here's what he's saying. What he's saying is, when science doesn't square or when science doesn't have the answer, what Christians do is they run and hide in their corner and they say, miracle.
Well, I wouldn't call it a wastebasket. I certainly wouldn't tell you that I'm hiding in a corner, but what I am saying is, I don't understand the logic of a skeptic who wants to disprove a supernatural claim by pointing to a natural world. You know, I tell my kids, just think about this, okay? Because I'm like, man, okay, you know, there's very smart people, but what I just said don't make no sense. No sense.
It don't. Like I tell my kids, okay, like we do the farm thing and the hobby farm thing and all this, and I tell them, I'm like, hey, there's a difference in smart and like farm smart, okay? Farm smart is like, you didn't need a degree to figure that out.
You didn't need a manual to figure that out. Like being farm smart is a little bit like, man, I can look at it for a minute and be like, that either makes sense or it don't make sense, right? And what I'm going to tell you right now is this, am I the simple one for saying it's a miracle? Or is someone else kind of being a little simple by saying, well, it can't have been a miracle because look, the historical record says X, Y, Z. You understand what I'm getting at? When you're thinking about a natural phenomenon and you're saying that's where the answer has to be, just because that's the only thing you can test and the only thing you can see doesn't mean that that's where the answer is. What the Bible is saying is that this on the front end is a miraculous encounter.
It is a miracle. You're talking about a boat that was 450 feet long, 75 feet high, and 45 feet wide. The deck space is 95,000 square feet. Just to put that in perspective, okay? The building over there that's being built for the new ridge campus for regional to move, that's 80,000 square feet.
So just the deck space, okay? If you want to just get your mind sort of around this. You know, there's an ark that is in Kentucky, okay? Some of us maybe have seen this. It's not the original, okay? It did not land in Kentucky, all right?
But you know what? That ark, you know, the ark's a replica. I can't wait to go see it one day. I would love to see it. I mean, I just can't imagine the magnitude of it.
It took 1,000 people, 18 months to build. And we're talking about this boat being built by Noah. I'm trying to get us to see today.
Every single aspect of this story is a miracle. You know, like, let me, I'm going somewhere with this, right? So just try to keep following me, all right? So here's what we do sometimes. And maybe some of you guys have done this. And maybe even think this. People are like, well, you know, the Bible says that the flood was worldwide, but certainly it couldn't have been worldwide.
And maybe it doesn't even have to be worldwide. Have you heard this before? Maybe you guys have heard some of this. And you know what I would say to that? I would say, well, actually, there's some pretty interesting arguments about that when you think about the Bible. Because if you simply say, well, the Bible says it covered the whole earth, what do you do when the Bible says that the whole earth came to buy grain from Joseph and Egypt? Because we know that was after the story of the Tower of Babel. It was like, it wasn't like every single human on the earth, right? What about another thing?
How about this? You know, in Colossians 1, the Bible says that the, Paul says that the gospel has been proclaimed in all the earth. Has it?
I mean, has it or not? I mean, do we not try to get the Bible? Are we not trying to get the gospel to the unreached? Is that not what we're trying to do?
Here's my point. Like, if someone wants to say, hey, I don't, I think this flood was a regional flood or I think something like that. I want to get a bigger picture here and I want to try to get you to see, you know, have that discussion.
Maybe, you know, not believing the flood, you know, covered the whole earth doesn't mean you're not a Christian or something like that. Okay. You can, you can, you want to go regional with it, go.
That's fine. My question is, why do you want to do that? Like, what is the impulse in your heart that's getting you to want to start dumbing down the miracle of the Bible? Does that make sense? Because that's the question that's more dangerous. You know, I think about this. Why do we want to use natural phenomena to explain supernatural events? This comes up with creation stuff all the time.
All the time. And what someone wants to say is like, well, you know, can this creation have to be six literal days or is it young earth, old earth, or could these be ages and could theistic evolution and all this kind of stuff. Listen, there's Christians of a lot of stripes that believe a lot of different things about some of that stuff. Okay. My question is deeper than that.
My question is, why do you want it to reconcile so bad? It's either a miracle or it's not a miracle, right? I can either understand it in miraculous terms or we don't understand it in miraculous terms.
I told someone this week, I thought it was an interesting conversation. I'm like, man, you know, the classic theological liberal, and I know we hear a lot of politics in that, but that is not. It's the actual term. Okay. A classic theological liberal, you know, you think about 80 or 100 years ago, it was a little bit of a 80 or 100 years ago, it was a little more straightforward. It was a little bit like, I'm not trying to pick and choose. We don't believe in the miraculous.
It is substitutionary atonement, all this stuff of Jesus. No. Flood.
No. We just don't. We just wholesale reject, which is actually a position I certainly don't hold, obviously, but I can respect that because it's a wholesale rejection rather than sort of this tacit little, well, maybe it was kind of a miracle, but maybe it kind of reconciles in this way or in that way. My question is, man, is it a miracle or is it not? And what the Bible is saying is that it is a miracle. And so we start from that epistemic position.
God is saying He did something here. And one thing I'll say, and then I'll move on, because I understand this is getting philosophical and I don't do this a ton, but I felt like we need to do it this week. Okay.
Let me say one more thing about this. Man, if you're struggling with some of that stuff, like really struggling with it, I want to tell you, man, come, let's talk about that. It may not be me, but a pastoral staff, we need to talk about some of those things because I think people begin to dabble with some questions like that, not realizing where those questions can take you.
I'm not at all saying don't ask questions, but what I am saying is, man, you need to get with somebody you trust and work some of that stuff out because here's the deal. Listen, I have a degree in apologetics. I understand the whole slippery slope thing is a logical fallacy.
You don't have to keep sliding down the slope. I understand that, but can I tell you the amount of times that I've seen someone deconstruct their faith and you know how it started? It started by trying to jam a miracle into a natural explanation. It started by saying, well, you know, did it have to be six days or did it have to be, you know, that's, and I'm not, listen, I'm not saying that's where you're going to go, but I am saying I've seen it, and so we got to kind of watch out for that, all right? You got to ask yourself, why am I trying to reconcile some of this stuff as much as I am? The second thing I want you to see, all right, is that Noah's story is a warning.
Here's the warning. God will not abide man's sin forever. There will come a reckoning, and when it does, the greatest picture that we have, maybe of that, in the scripture is the torrential rain and the bursting forth of the depths and all of the chaos and darkness that comes with a flood. I don't know if you guys remember this. Certainly it is one of the most tragic days in human history in terms of natural disasters, but in 2004, the day after Christmas, an earthquake ripped through the bottom of the Indian Ocean.
Some of you guys will remember this. 31 miles deep in the Indian Ocean, the equivalent energy level of 23,000 atom bombs went off, and in an instant, it sent a wave 100 feet high traveling 500 miles an hour, primarily toward Banda Aceh off the island of Sumatra in Indonesia, not only there. And the impact obviously was just devastating.
230,000 people died, y'all, in 14 different countries. Now, I've thought about that story, and many of us have, you know, I mean, what is more chaotic and dark than a flood? And there's more, there's a theological reason for flood. You remember in Genesis 1, the chaos and stuff with the waters and the depths and all that kind of stuff.
I mean, there's a lot going on in this passage, but my point is this. Floods are devastating events. They are dark. They are chaotic. They are heavy. They are often the picture, the water.
It's the picture of death itself. Why do we, because the Scripture calls us to, go underneath the water when we're baptized? You know, we celebrate a lot, the baptisms at Mercy Hill, right? We cheer and we shout. We don't really shout when they go down in the water, right?
We shout when they come out of the water, right? Because the water is chaos and death. The water is what Jesus took on our behalf.
The water is the tomb, and we shout when people come out of the water. God's wrath floods the world because of people's corruption. Look what it said in chapter 6 verse 11. Now the earth was corrupt, number one, in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence, and God saw the earth and behold it was corrupt, second time, for all the flesh had third time, corrupted their way on the earth, and God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them.
Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Y'all, I mentioned in the intro something that I think I could get pushback on, especially if you've not heard this story much or haven't been around the church as much. Y'all, the shocking thing for a Christian is not that everybody died, and the reason is because we understand that that is what sin brings. That's what sin deserves. In small ways, sin brings destruction into our lives. Man, sin will bring hiding from friends and isolation in relationships. Sin will bring physical problems in our health and anxiety. Sin will break apart marriages like sin. When we say God has designed it this way, and we choose to do this, destruction will follow us, but that's just in our everyday life.
There's sort of a cosmic nature to that. What is the overarching idea? The overarching idea is in Romans 6 23, for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. What the Bible is saying is like this. God is laying out terms with the world, and the terms are if you don't sin and you follow me and you love me, then what comes is human flourishing. What happens in your life is the blessing that I have created you for. This is what you are supposed to do, but in sin, death follows. In sin, your corruption, you're partaking in the corruption of this world, and there is coming a judgment one day that will make the flood look like nothing. And this is us. It's not somebody else. Our pride, our lust, our idolatry, our angry words, this is what we deserve. This is what nobody else wants to say. It is our sin that deserves the flood of God's wrath. He has laid out the terms.
We have done something that we can't come back from. In 2012, there's a show called Ink Masters, where people get tattooed on the show. Now, I have no interest in tattoos in my personal life, but Ink Masters, this TV show, and these people are crazy. They let themselves be tattooed, apparently, unless the whole thing's fake, which maybe, maybe. But they get tattooed on the show in a timed fashion, and they're like, okay. And the people get judged. Many times, they've never done a tattoo like the one they're doing, and these people that allow them to do this are just crazy, in my opinion.
But one of the contestants named CJ stepped out of the show on her first ever appearance on the show. She actually caught a tattoo that she was really excited about because it had a biblical reference, and this is the biblical reference. Some of you guys will see it. I want you to look at this real close. It's starting to dawn on about 35% of us, okay.
Now, okay, are we 100% there? Cortenithians is not a word, okay. So, she misspelled Corinthians on this person's body forever, okay.
And yeah, I mean, there wasn't some massive deliberation among the judges that week. Apparently, if you misspell a word, you just get kicked off immediately, right. My point is this. You go down, you do this, and there's a consequence for it. You do this, and there's no coming back. You can stand on your head all day long and say, well, look at all the other tattoos I can do. It's like, well, if you misspell the word on somebody, you're out.
And in some sense, it's a little bit that way. It's like, what we want to think is like, well, I can make it up. I can do something better. I can do this. I can do that.
I can. And the reality is, no, you're kind of going home. You cross the line. The line is in our sin. That's what the Bible said. The God who created this world and sets its terms, we are not God. I didn't create the world. Did you create the world?
It's not ours. And he sets the terms, and his terms are, if we sin, there is a day coming that is much like the day of Noah. Actually, in Jesus' ministry, in Matthew chapter 24, here's what it says.
I'm just going to read it to you. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Matthew 24 7. For as in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying, giving in marriage until the day when Noah entered the ark.
They were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away. So will be the coming of the Son of Man. There is a warning in this passage, and the warning is, what does your sin deserve?
Have you wrestled with that? But that's not the only news in this passage, praise God, because the third and final thing that I want you to see about Noah's story is this. Noah's story, y'all, is about salvation. This story is not just about God's wrath in the world. It is about his heart and his mercy for the world. Y'all, when we see a rainbow, we should think to ourselves, our sins they were many, his mercy is more. His mercy is more even than all our sin. For those of us who will respond to him, look what it says in verse 16, and those that entered male and female of all flesh went in as God had commanded them, this is so important, and the Lord shut him in. Have you been saved by God? Have you been saved from the wrath that is to come? If you are, it's because you've been shut in.
You have been sealed. This story is billed as everybody being shut out. Y'all, the miraculous thing is that anybody was shut in. So far, I mean, how many of us, how many dads here and at our campuses as well, how many dads tuck their kids in when they're little, right?
You kind of tuck them in, or now when they get a little bit older, the last thing you do every night before you lay down is make sure the doors are locked, make sure whatever's on, make sure, right? Like you're kind of shutting up, you're kind of sealing up. Much like a father who is protecting his kids, what you have is God Almighty, who miraculously, every single bit of this story is miraculous, that God shuts the arc of the door and he shuts them in and he seals the salvation that is coming in their life. Y'all, people have a lot of questions about this story.
I've raised questions today philosophically even about some of the things that we try to reconcile with historic history and science and miracles and all that kind of stuff. There's some complicated stuff in this story. Let me tell you something that is not complicated at all. There is no salvation without God shutting you in.
That ain't complicated. There's no salvation outside of the Lord shutting you in. Will you respond to that today? Don't you understand that there has been a warning that is laid down, but there is salvation that is offered and that salvation is for anyone who will respond today, for any one of us at our campuses that will respond to this warning. There is no salvation apart from God sealing you in and you know what we see in this story? Y'all, thousands of years after this story, although it was thousands of years ago for us, there was a greater Noah and there sure was a greater ark and there was a door that was laid wide open for you to walk in and float above the wrath of God, float above what is coming to this world. There was a salvation that was bought and paid for and opened for you. Jesus Christ came into this world and never sinned one time so that he could become the sacrificial lamb for you. You guys have heard the story of Noah a thousand times in your life and the animals come two by two, two by two. Actually that's only true of the unclean animals. The clean animals came in pairs of seven.
Why? Because there was going to be sacrifices made after the ark landed and the waters receded. Noah was going to look forward to something that you and I look back on and that is that there would be a greater ark and there would be a greater Noah and there would be a greater doorway that was open to you and that's what Jesus Christ has done. Jesus laid down on a cross to open the doorway for you.
The veil was torn. There is room for the spirit and you to interact with one another now because of the blood of Christ and it is only because of his blood. The sinless savior died so that we could be set free and my prayer for you is that you and I would accept that today. I want you to see that God's wrath flooded Jesus so it wouldn't flood you. You couldn't do it but God did and what is left for you, what is left is this question. Will you trust him today?
It's your only hope. Will you trust him? You know the book of Hebrews tells us it's so plain. What did Noah do while he was building the ark? He was trying to warn everybody. He was preaching.
The brother is 600 years old. Don't complain about our age, okay? I mean, dude, I got a bunch of fourth quarter people here. You guys know the little saying at Mercy Hill, the only thing more important than the fourth quarter is overtime. So if you're 60, that's right. That's right. Oh, I don't know if our campus has heard that.
Overtime, okay? Hey, but if you're in that 60 plus, man, listen, we don't coast during that time. Noah's 600 years old and he's warning everybody he can.
Man, you think he's inviting some people to Kids Week. You understand what I'm getting at? Like he's getting after it because he understands what is coming. Do we understand what's coming? Do we understand what the wrath of God for the sin of this world?
What did the Bible say? Violence had filled the world. There are 20,000 murders in this country every year. I mean, just think about the violence even in our own hearts towards others.
Every one of us have participated in some way in things that corrupt the world. What is coming? Are you safe from what is coming? There ain't but one way. There was only there was only one way in Noah's day. You better get on that arc and allow Jesus and allow the Lord to shut you in.
There's only one way now. Man, come through the way that God has given us. So by way of conclusion, y'all, accept God's grace to cover your sin. Man, accept his grace to cover your sin today. Guys, the only thing, listen, if you're not a believer, if you're not a Christian, you can never say that someone did not passionately warn you about what is coming.
The flood represents the wrath of God and it is dark and it is chaotic and it brings death eternally and that's what's coming and we all deserve it. Man, would you today place faith in Christ? Would you walk into the arc, the greater arc, the cross? Would you walk into the life that he has for you? Be saved from what is coming? I pray that you will. Admit your sin, believe in what he has done, and confess him as the Lord of your life.
Hey, but for the rest of us here, you're a believer. Hey, man, what are we going to do? Noah's getting after 600 years old. What are we going to do? Man, are we going to invite some people to Kids Week? Are we going to fill up our cars and come? Are we going to serve? Man, are we going to pour out here in a couple of weeks for the one of the greatest mission opportunities we have all summer?
Man, let's get after it. Let's warn some people over the next couple of weeks of what's coming and the great savior that we trust. Let's pray. Father, we come before you right now, and God, at our campuses, as we head into Communion, Lord, I just pray that we would be so motivated for mission as we consider what it is that you have saved us from. Lord, I pray this time of Communion would be a very sweet, a very deep time in our life. In Christ's name. Amen.
