R1683 The Never God. Pt.1

We all could use some encouragement, and we'll find it together today in the Bible-based teaching of Dr. Don Wilton on The Encouraging Word. This is The Encouraging Word featuring the Bible-based teaching of Dr. Don Wilton, well-known author, evangelist, seminary professor, and pastor. And today, as he begins a two-part series on the Never God, I know that's curious, isn't it? What is the never about?

Well, we'll discover that as we head to Genesis chapter 8 in just a moment. Dr. Wilton wants me to remind you we're connecting 24 hours a day in a couple of ways, first on our website at www.tewonline.org. That's www.tewonline.org, but also on the phone at 866-899-WORD. Happy to talk and pray with you anytime and connect you with great resources.

That's 866-899-9673. Now today's great message with Dr. Don Wilton. Let's go to the Lord in prayer together. Father, we are stopping our lives for a few minutes relative to our lives today, and we come to this point in our lives with so much going on, all of us. Father, today at this moment in time, we desperately need to hear a word from you. Lord, I pray that as we open the Word of God, that every person within the sound of your voice will hear from you today.

Hide this preacher behind the cross. May we hear a word from you, O God, because you are the miracle maker, you are the God of the impossible. And Father, you are the one who carries us through. You never leave us.

You never forsake us. And, O God, today we're going to cry out to you from the sadness of our hearts, from the questions in our hearts, from the complexity of our lives. We cry out to you, O God.

We desperately need you. We come before you today. We repent of our sin.

We confess our sin to you. We intercede, we pray for one another because of Jesus and in his name. We pray for people in Ukraine suffering so much. We pray for our neighbors and our friends. So, God, speak to us now, we pray, in the wonderful name of Jesus and for his sake alone. Amen.

We thank God for each and every person who today worships the Lord Jesus together. I want you to open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 8. Genesis, of course, is always an easy book for us to find because it's right at the beginning of the Bible.

It's the book of beginnings. We're going to be in Genesis chapter 8, and I want to read to you a few verses that will tell you exactly where we are for the next few moments. Genesis chapter 8, and I'm going to pick up at verse 15. Genesis chapter 8 and verse 15. Then God said to Noah, go out from the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your son's wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

That they may swarm on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth. So Noah went out and his sons and his wife and his son's wives with him. Every beast, every creeping thing, every bird, everything that moves on the earth went out by families from the ark.

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man. For the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. Now may the Lord give us an understanding today and especially about the never God. That's what I want to speak to you about today is the never God.

Never, never. The Bible tells us that God wants us to know something that he will never leave us. He will never forsake us. As somebody once said and I'm sure more than one teacher listening today has said to many a student, what part about what I've just said do you not seem to understand? God tells us that he will never leave us.

What part about that do we struggle with? And so when I share with you today what God's put in my heart about the never God, I think that the Lord is going to challenge you and me in a fresh way. Because God unpacks the neverness of his absoluteness.

He contextualizes it. So I'm going to tell you something up front and I'm speaking to all of us here today. I wonder, I really do, whether you and I do not many times believe that God never leaves us, that he carries us through and he does. But when he does and once he does, we think that's the end of the never. Most of us, when God heals us, off we go. Many of us, if we could be honest with one another, we ask God to bless us and when he does, off we go.

Let's take a hard look at Noah. May I submit to you that all people experience three phases of life. Very simply put, the first phase is where you are right now. Where I am where you are today. That's where you are. To borrow another phrase, it is what it is. That's where you are. This is what you're dealing with. And you and I could begin to unpack a lot of things about where you and I may be right now.

And it could include everything from our marriage to our families to our work situation to our needs, physical issues, provisions, concerns, joys, blessings. Phase number one, all of us, you have a very present now. The second phase is what you're going to do next. So the doctors just told you something. What comes next?

You lost your job. What comes next? Right now, your heart is breaking over your marriage. What comes next?

What do you need to do about your now? And the third phase is if in fact God says that he carries us through and you believe it, don't you? He will never leave you. He's going to carry you through.

You believe that. You're willing to say today, you know, I struggle in my spiritual life, but I do. I really believe God bears me up and he will carry me through.

The third phase of your life is when you arrive at the point at which God carries you through. Remember that day when you said, Lord, if you just bless me? And he did. You've arrived.

Remember when you asked God to heal you? And he did. You've arrived. And when you ask God to reach out to your son, due to circumstances, you cried out to him for your son, your daughter.

And he did. And you arrived. I want us to just take a brief glimpse at Noah. Let's look at Noah together. We're going to ask or make three statements about Noah. God's going to speak to us. He's going to show us something about our amazing never God.

This one who carries us through. Where was Noah? Let's look first of all at where he was. His now.

We're looking in hindsight. But I want you to just put yourself, if you can, according to scriptures, what does the Bible say about Noah's now? Well, there are three things that you have no doubt about. First of all, if you want to know where he was, you have to consider his world. The Bible is very clear about the world in which Noah found himself. And there's so many passages. Chapter 6 and verse 5.

Let me read it to you. God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth. And that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth. And it grieved God. That was Noah's now.

And we can unpack that. This man, and we will remind ourselves of very deeply godly man, spiritual man. A man who had a personal relationship with God.

His present was the world in which he found himself. And his politics, his Disney world violated everything that God said about the family. Everything that was going on, gone, contradicted who God is. He lived in a world in which even the very heart of God was grieved by the actions of people.

And the inclination of the hearts of people. And he was a very godly man. Second thing you have to consider is not just his world, but you have to consider Noah's assignment. Look at chapter 6 and verse 9. The Bible says, these are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. And I love the next statement. Noah walked with God.

So now get this. God evidently wants us to know that his place, where he was, grieved the heart of God. But God wants us to know that he had a very special assignment for Noah because he was a righteous man. This never God, never leave you nor forsake you, wants to use you.

And that's not only good news, it's great truth. God wants to use you. I pray that you realize that we stand alongside you, knowing that we've seen that as we submit to our own lives to Jesus Christ, that the Lord uses us again and again to encourage one another.

Perhaps you need some encouragement as you are moving through your particular day. We'd love to be a part of that either on our website at www.tewonline.org or perhaps with a phone call. If you'd like to call us, our phone number is 866-899-WORD. That's 866-899-9673. Available 24 hours a day to talk and listen and pray with you, but also connect you with resources that will help change your perspective and change your life because of the power of Jesus Christ in his Word, the Bible itself.

Again, 866-899-9673 or online at www.tewonline.org. Now back to today's great message with Dr. Don Wilton. Right throughout the Scriptures, God's people have been vital instruments in the hands of God, in the carrying out of his purpose and in the sharing of his divine will for mankind. The church has never been irrelevant. It's not a sideshow for God.

And you are the church. His world was in a shambles. His assignment was specific to him. But the third thing about where he was was the challenge that accompanied that assignment. And I think in order to be fair to Noah, we do need to just be reminded of the challenge.

God never tells us as believers that when he visits upon us that that's not accompanied by enormous challenge. If you just think about these things and you and I could unpack these today and I won't labor the point, but I've often tried to say to myself, I wonder what Noah must have thought when God told him to build an ark. And as a matter of interest, when you get into the specifics of the design of this ark, it gets more ridiculous with each nail, with each plank of wood. This was an enormous boat made of wood. So I already can feel the challenges.

Where do you get the wood and the expertise and the workers? It didn't stop there. Can you imagine God went on and said to him, now I want you to know, I want you to go out and get animals two by two. I've been around a lot of animals, especially in Africa.

And I know you and I try not to make light of these things, but this was an enormous impossible assignment. He didn't have dart guns. Go around and round up giraffes and elephants. How about snakes?

Because it says every animal. Birds, how do you round up birds? You ever try to round up a bird? You know, two, not one, two birds got into my house last week. And here I am, I've got all the doors open. And I'm running around trying to get them, they just flying from one room to the next.

And my wife is sitting in a corner screeching, not helping me one lick. And you would have thought these were dinosaurs or something flying around. They were little tiny sweet little birds like that. It was one thing to get them out.

Can you imagine trying to get all these in? What about the water? Usually boats float. If you go and do a study of this area in which they live, water was not just a scarcity, it was almost unheard of.

Outside of the mainline rivers. What about the opposition? The mocking? The belittling? The laughing?

The pointing fingers at? At every turn, this man in his now was challenged. You've just been told that the doctors have said to you that they cannot do anything more for you. That's a challenge. You're 57 years of age and you've lost your job.

It's not easy the older you get just to walk out and go and find another job somewhere. One could go on and on, where is your now? Noah's now was punctuated by the most important thing. He was a godly man.

He was a righteous man. The point of reference that you have today through Noah is what does God see when he sees your heart in your now? God's not asking you to work it all out.

He just wants your heart now. God's not saying to you, you know what, I'm going to give you an assignment, this is what I want you to do and I want you to be totally comfortable before you agree to do it. I don't think Noah could have been very comfortable about this assignment. Where he was, was fraught with challenge. Everything lent itself to the purity of faith. What God wanted Noah to do was not to work it out or to know how to do it, he just wanted him to give everything he had to the Lord.

And maybe God has got an incredible plan for you, but he's still waiting for you to accept the assignment. So if that's where Noah was, the second thing we've got to consider is what he did. What did he do? What did Noah do? Well, he did three things if we could summarize it in such a short way. The first thing he did was he boarded the boat. He got on.

The Bible says in chapter 7 and verse 1, the Lord said to Noah, go into the ark, you and all your household, because I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. What are you waiting for? You've been listening to Dr. Don Wilton, and perhaps that question, what are you waiting for, is not from Dr. Don Wilton. But it's the power of God using this broadcast to let you know that God loves you and is pursuing you and is ready for you to make a decision. You've listened attentively, and we appreciate that, as Dr. Don has been teaching from the pulpit. But now as he steps into the studio, open your heart to what he wants to share next. Are you ready to give your heart and life to the Lord Jesus Christ?

I'm so happy to hear that. Why don't you pray this prayer with me today? Dear God, I know that you love me very, very much, and I know that the Lord Jesus Christ came and died on a cross so that I might be forgiven of my sin. Today, I repent of my sin. I confess my sin to you, and I invite you to come into my heart and into my life by faith. In Jesus' name I pray. If you've prayed that prayer, let me be the first one to welcome you to the family of God.

This is wonderful. I hope that you know how much I'm going to be praying for you and how very important this is for me. Call us so that we can talk to you and connect you in the right place so you can begin this wonderful journey. If you just prayed along with Dr. Wilton moments ago, perhaps to give your life to Jesus for the very first time or rededicate your life to Christ, oh, how we want to pray with you.

Oh, how Dr. Don Wilton wants to pray for you. He also wants you to have some free resources that will help you grow. Give us a call at 866-899-WORD and let us send those resources out to you in the next couple of days. Our number again is 866-899-9673. We're also connecting on our website at www.tewonline.org.

That's www.tewonline.org where you'll discover great resources like this. Generations are lost. The desire to be popular and accepted is an attractive lure. It's a huge challenge to live in a way that is pleasing to our Lord.

It's so easy to get off track. But remember, God is in control. There is power in prayer. For your gift of support to the Encouraging Word this month, you will receive Dr. Wilton's message, Train Up a Child, along with the bonus book, The Power of Praying for Your Adult Children. I look forward to receiving your testimony of how God used you to change the precious generations in your family. This broadcast has been made possible by the Encouraging Word Ministries and your prayerful and financial support. Discover more about how you can get involved online at www.tewonline.org.