Failed Reboot, Part 2

Today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. Greer gives us a different view of Noah and the Ark. Last scene we have of Noah is him getting stone cold drunk and wandering around the village naked.

Here's the question you're supposed to ask yourself though as you read that. This crazy drunk Noah, this is the father of the new creation, this is the reboot, the virus is still there. So God in this story points to the need for a completely new kind of salvation. Hey, thanks for joining us here on Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer of the Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.

I'm your host, Molly Bidevich. If you asked anyone on the street to name a Bible story, chances are a high percentage of them would say the story of Noah's Ark. And it's an especially big hit with kids.

In fact, you've probably seen the cute little picture books and nursery decor with the animals going up two by two into the boat. When you look at the actual story as it's told in the Bible, it's definitely not G-rated. Today, Pastor J.D. explains what Noah's story reveals about our sin, God's wrath and his plan of redemption. He titled this message Failed Reboot. Genesis 6 is the story of Noah and the Ark. There are four words that I think summarize what happens in this story, and I hope that you'll remember these.

Here's the first word, grieved, grieved. Verse 5, chapter 6, the Lord 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, verse 6, that he had made man on earth and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them. Y'all, believe it or not, listen to this, believe it or not, there is something on earth that God loves more than individuals in the human race and their comfort. And that thing that he loves more is his glory in the universe and the justice that undergirds his throne and that is the foundation of the universe. God loves his creation too much to let it persist in wickedness and he loves glory and justice too much to let the wicked go unpunished. Here's your second word, favor, favor. Chapter 6, verse 8, but Noah found favor or grace is how some of the English translations will translate that, grace in the eyes of the Lord.

Now you say, why? What was special about Noah? Hebrews 11 is going to give us the answer to that question. Hebrews 11, 7 says very clearly that he was righteous because he responded to God's offer of salvation. Hebrews 11, 7, by faith Noah being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear Noah constructs an ark for the saving of his household. By this he, watch, became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. Noah's righteousness was the righteousness that comes by faith, gift righteousness. Noah became righteous because he received God's offer of salvation. That's always the way that people become righteous whether in that day or this one.

God grants righteousness as a gift to all who believe and respond to his offer of salvation in faith and surrender. That's what Noah does. He sets out in faith and obedience and surrender to build. Finally the day comes where God said, okay, Noah, now's the time.

Take the animals and go in. Then it says the fountains above and below the earth were opened up and by the time it was over, the flood waters covered the highest new mountain at the time by more than 30, more than 45 feet. We'll see eventually the flood waters recede and the ark comes to rest on Mount Ararat.

Noah emerges out of the ark with his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth and their wives. 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. Verse 12, then God said, this is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for all future generations. I've set my bow in the cloud and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow was seen in those clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. Here's your third word, reboot. Reboot with these eight people, Noah, his wife, their sons, and their wives. God starts over. Two agendas seem to define this reboot.

Here's the first agenda in the reboot. Number one, God's care for the whole creation. Did you notice that the covenant is not just made with Noah and his sons, it's made with all of creation?

Did you catch that? Furthermore, as one theologian that I was reading points out, God never calls anyone into a covenant relationship in Scripture unless it is a saving relationship. So that begs the question, what is God saving the animals and the earth from?

Well, great question. Chapter 8, verse 20 tells you, human sin. Never again will I curse the earth because of human sin. Psalm 19 tells us that God gave the creation a purpose. Its purpose was to declare and display his glory.

The way Psalm 19 says it is this, it's not a sin. The way Psalm 19 says it is this, the heavens declare the glory of God. If you listen to a waterfall or to music or to the sea or look at a mountain or the sunset, if you gaze up at the stars, they will speak to you and they will say, a God of beauty and infinite power and boundless creativity stands behind all of this. And you are created in the image of that God and that God loves you and you can know him and you can sense that in the heavens above, you can sense that at the ocean, you can pick it up in the forest when you walk through it. It's like Elizabeth Elliott says, the missionary to Ecuador, a clam glorifies God more than we do because it was being the clam that was created to be.

Ladies and gentlemen, the clams are irritated with you and me because they're like, would you please cut out the sinning so we can get back to being what God made us to be. Human sin, Mars, all of that. What that means for us now, believer, listen, is that one of our jobs as stewards of creation is to help creation keep speaking clearly, to make the creation reflect the glory of God. You see the Christian worldview gives us a vision of the world that urges us to love and care for creation in ways that go totally beyond other worldviews and other faiths. It doesn't teach us that the world is trash to be discarded one day when we go to heaven and God's going to burn the earth up.

That's what Islam teaches. It doesn't teach us that this world is unimportant or evil, a source of our trouble, nothing but temptation and ought to be shunned like Hinduism or Buddhism teaches. It teaches us that creation is an expression of God's goodness and creation can't wait until we quit sinning until Jesus returns so we can be what it was created to be. And our job as stewards is to develop the creation for the glory of God and the benefit of other humans, which leads me to number two.

The second agenda is the extraordinary value that God's going to put on human life. Notice this in verse five, chapter nine, for your, that is man's lifeblood, I will require a reckoning. From every beast I will require it and from man, from his fellow man, I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Verse six, whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. For God made man in his own image.

I've always heard that the value you place on something is shown by the price that you pay for it. And God here tells us that human life is so valuable that there is literally nothing else on earth that can equal it. The only thing equal to human life on earth is other human life. I am not attempting to get into all the questions about the death penalty.

Clearly some form of it is advocated here, but I'm not attempting here to get into the practice of the death penalty as we pursue it today to determine if it is just or not. All I want you to see here is the extreme value above all of the things on earth that God puts on human life. Which means that those who know him and love him and follow him protect innocent life at every possible level. Because every human being of whatever race, of whatever color, whatever age, whatever economic status, whatever level of intelligence or level of development, all of them bear his image and thus are precious in his sight. And that means that when there is someone we see being mistreated or abused or being deprived of due processes of law, we know that it grieves God and therefore it grieves us.

That means if we see someone being treated unequally in the eyes of the law because of their race or because of their economic status, it should grieve us as if it were happening to us because they are made in the image of God just like we are and it should move us to action on their behalf. It is why Christians care about and advocate for the unborn. Unborn babies bear the image of God and ought therefore to be treated as such. You see the question that we have to consider in a question like abortion is actually pretty simple.

It's just two questions. The question that Christians ask is this, is the baby inside the womb a human life made in the image of God? And if so, is it ever right to willfully take innocent human life? Somebody says, well, my rights, my body. The unborn child is not part of your body. The baby has her own DNA, her own brainwaves, her own blood type.

Scientifically, it is not part of your body. People say, well, what about cases of rape and incest? And listen, those are horrendously tragic situations, heart-rending situations. Is it the baby's fault how he or she got there? Is it an innocent human being though?

That's the real question. What people, when they bring that up, what they usually mean is this baby came to me through one of the most painful and tragic events of my life. Why should I be forced to bear the burden of something that only reminds me of that pain? And again, it's a heart-rending situation, but here's what we have to ask. How does a civil and just society treat innocent human beings that remind us of painful events? By killing them?

Should we do that with a two-year-old that reminds us of a painful event? Again, the question is whether this is a human being made in the image of God. You say, well, what about cases of babies we know that will be mentally disabled or have some kind of significant deformity? Are they not still made in the image of God? And if so, do they not deserve our love and protection? Should they not be welcomed into a world of safety that declares that God loves them?

The elderly, the invalid, the immigrant, all people we believe are made in the image of God who deserve our love and our protection. Y'all, the greatest atrocities in history have always come when some group has been regarded as less than human. You go and you say, how could a sophisticated educated society like Germany have participated in the Holocaust? And the answers are actually really, really easy.

It's simple. They began to regard the Jews as less than human and therefore excused it. How could the founding fathers of the United States who spoke such incredible principles of beauty and justice and all people being created equal, how could they turn around and be the same people who helped propagate the slave trade? The answer is they regarded those that they enslaved to be less than human. And it makes us ought to ask this question, who is there in our society today that we don't regard as fully human?

To the unborn, is it the refugee? That's why, by the way, we get involved at this church with things like compassion, or we devote energies to ministries, to the homeless, the orphan, the prisoner, the young women, the high school dropout. It's not because these people that we minister to somehow become a part of our church and start contributing the offering, and that's how we grow.

It's because we believe they are individuals just like you and me, each made in the image of God just like you and me, which means they have the same emotions, they feel the same fear, they go through the same kinds of pain, they have the same yearnings for love that we experience. And we can never forget that ever. That world poverty and world evangelism, it's not a statistic. And we want to just treat it like, you know, I think I've quoted this before, Joseph Stalin, who I typically don't quote during sermons. But Joseph Stalin said, listen, the death of one is a tragedy. The death of a million is just a statistic.

That's a chilling statement coming from him, right? But what he meant was this. When you look into the eyes of one, you see a reflection of yourself. He didn't say image of God, but that's what he meant. You see the image of God that's in you and them, and then you reduce it to a number and you can just excuse it because it's nothing but a statistic. So I'm at church, when I tell you that in the last seven days, 100,000 children around the world died of preventable hunger related diseases. That's not a statistic to God. That's 100,000 individual children who are precious to God, who is as precious as your children are to you, who God felt every pain as they went into starvation and as they died. When I say there are 2.2 billion people in the world who have little to no access to the gospel, that's not a statistic.

That is a number of individuals created in the image of God that Jesus loves and that he cares for, and that if we know him and follow him, we will extend our lives to see them brought into the love and the protection of the heavenly father. It's kind of like Mother Teresa, 1994, and she was speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast. National Prayer Breakfast this year was just last week. So 1994, several years ago, she stands at the podium. I don't know if you've ever seen a picture of her. I mean, she's tiny. She was only five foot something. She could barely see over the podium and the microphone completely covers up her face. You can't see her face. She turns around to then President Bill Clinton, and she's talking about abortion. And she looks at Bill Clinton and she says, don't kill unwanted children.

You send them to me. That should be the posture of every church and every Christian about every supposedly unwanted human, whether it's the unpopular kid in the lunchroom, or whether it is an unborn baby, or whether it is the refugee. Y'all, I realize that the state has its own questions it needs to wrestle with on the best policy toward immigration and the refugees. I get that. They're important questions.

They need to wrestle through that. And I want to pray for them as they do that. They have responsibilities to keep us safe.

I understand that. But I know that as the people of God, I've got another set of questions I have to answer also. And that set of questions is, what is a God centered gospel rich view of people who show up in my neighborhood regardless of how they got there? What are my responsibilities to them? And I understand that regardless of how they got there, the state's got to deal with that, but regardless of how they got there, they're made the image of God like I am.

And that means that I want to treat them the way that somebody would treat me if I were in a situation where I needed love and protection. These are the agendas that God has given us in this reboot to care for and develop the creation to His glory and to put extreme value on human life. That was several thousand years ago since this reboot. Let me ask you guys a question. How are we doing? How's the human race doing with those two things?

Right? Not real good. Which leads to the fourth word, failure. Failure. God already knows this is not going to work. You want to know how you know He knows it's not going to work?

Look at verse 21. I will never again curse the ground because of man, because the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. That's not what I'm expecting him to say. I'd be expecting him to say, I'm not going to destroy the earth again because I know that man's going to do much better next time around.

He learned his lesson. He don't want another flood. No, what he says is, I know man is still evil, so I won't destroy the earth again.

I'm going to have to pursue a different solution. Plus, I can't just destroy the wicked because that's going to be everybody. If you read to the end, you're going to see that Noah, the father of the new creation, right?

It's going to end really, really badly. Have you ever read to the end of the Noah story? Last scene we have of Noah is him getting stone cold drunk and wandering around the village naked. Here's the question you're supposed to ask yourself, though, as you read that, it's in there on purpose, not just to humiliate Noah. It's in there to make you ask this question. This crazy drunk Noah, this is the father of the new creation? This is the reboot?

The virus is still there. So God in this story points to the need for a completely new kind of salvation, a new answer to human wickedness. He gives us a clue in verse 13. I've set my bow in the cloud.

It will be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. The word bow there obviously refers to a rainbow, but here's what's interesting. In Hebrew, they don't use the word for rainbow. The word for bow is not the word for rainbow.

The word bow is gesed, which means a war bow, a battle bow, like a bow and arrow. A rainbow, of course, is shaped like a war bow. What God says is that the rainbow shows us that God has laid down his war bow in the heavens. In other words, God won't accomplish ultimate salvation by shooting the arrows of his wrath into men. In fact, Charles Ferguson pointed out if you think of the rainbow like a bow, you'll see that it is pointed back, the firing end of it is pointing back toward heaven. In other words, God will one day wipe out evil from the earth by firing the arrows of his own wrath, not at the earth.

He will fire them back into himself. And that's where you start to see hints about Jesus all through this story. And you start to see that Jesus will come one day like Noah, just a lot better. Like Noah, Jesus is going to obey God even though nobody understands him and nobody believes him. And through Jesus's obedience, he's going to provide an ark of salvation.

But unlike Noah, you see, he's going to succeed all the way to the end. Jesus's life is not going to end in a drunken stupor. In fact, on the cross, Jesus is going to turn down an intoxicant and say, no, not my will, Father, but yours be done. Like Noah's ark, Jesus is going to shield us from the storm of God's wrath, and he's going to lift us up above the waters of judgment. But unlike Noah, the ark that shields us from the wrath of God is not going to be made out of gopher wood, it's going to be made out of his own torn flesh. We are going to be lifted up above the waters of judgment because Jesus is going to be submerged underneath him. Like Noah, Jesus is going to emerge from the storms of God's judgment in a resurrection. And in that resurrection, he's going to begin a new creation.

But unlike Noah, this new race will not have hearts of people whose thoughts are only evil continually. He's going to make us new creations. He's going to put his spirit into us. He's going to say, if any man is in Christ, he's going to be a new creation. All things are going to pass away, all things are going to become new. I'm going to remake you in my image. I'm going to restore you in my likeness.

You're going to begin to reflect my glorious love. So the question that the Noah story presents to you is this, have you entered into the real ark? Because it was all there to point you to Jesus. There's only one door. That's what Peter picks up on. There's only one door, and God shuts it.

And Peter says, don't delay. He uses the story of Noah to tell you not to delay repenting and surrendering to God. 2 Peter 3, he reminds you that everybody thought Noah was crazy. Everybody thought 100 years, you've lost your mind, Noah. 100 years. I mean, again, I told you, what's that like?

You're one, you're five, you're 50, you're 99. They think Noah is just a crazy allune. Peter says, we wasn't crazy. Listen, the reason God took 100 years, Peter said, it's because he wanted people to repent. He said, I'll just wait one more day, one more day, one more day, and then maybe they'll repent. And he just kept waiting and kept waiting and kept waiting until finally he said, that's it.

And he shut the door. Peter said, that's what he's doing today. The Lord is not slow concerning his promises.

Some people count slowness. He's not. He's long suffering toward us. He's patient. He just doesn't want people to perish. He just wants people to perish. He wants you to come to repentance. So he left you alive to this day. He could have killed you a long time ago. He could have come back a long time ago. But when you got up this morning, he thought maybe, maybe today, maybe today. Maybe I can get him to the summit church. And he did.

He got you here. And maybe when they come in, maybe this time they'll finally pay attention. And maybe they'll know that this is not some crazy allune and it's not a bunch of Jesus freaks who've lost their minds.

This is true. I know you think it's been 2,000 years. He ain't never coming back.

I know you think it's what crazy people believe. That's what they thought about Noah. He's coming back.

He's coming back. I don't know when that's going to be when the last person enters into that arc and God shut the door and then that opportunity will be over. Do not confuse what God intends to be a space for you to repent with his absence. It's all about you and you finally coming in and you're here. And today is the day that you have got to respond. Have you ever responded to Jesus and receive?

Have you entered into the arc? Are you and I in the position of Noah where we're doing what Noah did, telling everybody that we know about, even though they think we're crazy and we've lost our mind, are we telling them there's an arc of safety and you got to get into it. Join me in here and flee the wrath to come. They will think you're crazy.

They will think you're crazy, but we know something they don't know. And we got to speak. We got to endure like Noah because this is our mission.

So speaking truth, even when it sounds crazy. That's the challenge today from Pastor J.D. Greer on Summit Life. If you like this teaching and want to hear it and others like it in their entirety, find us online at jdgreer.com or find us in your favorite podcasting app. We have an announcement to make. Pastor J.D.

's newest book is hot off the presses and we want to get you a copy today. Have you ever heard the notion that if God is sovereign over all things, do I really have to pray? The mystery of God's sovereignty boggles the mind. Sovereignty helps us understand why events have happened the way that they have, and it gives us confidence that God's purposes will win out in the end. But interestingly, never in scripture do we see God's sovereignty moving people away from prayer. If anything, God's sovereignty is a motivation for prayer because we know what God wants to do and we know that prayer is the way that God acts.

John Wesley said it best. God does nothing on Earth except in response to believing prayer. Pastor J.D. 's new book is called Just Ask. And the goal of this book is to give us specific practical tips for growing in prayer in everyday life. We hope it leaves you wanting to pray rather than just feeling that you ought to. Request Just Ask by Pastor J.D. when you give a donation today of $25 or more. You can also ask for the book when you join our team of monthly gospel partners.

It's quick and easy to sign up. Just call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220. Or you can give and request the book online at JDGrier.com. If you'd rather mail your donation, our address is JD Greer Ministries, P.O.

Box 122 93, Durham, North Carolina, 27709. And make sure you include a note requesting the book. And if you're new to Summit Life and you'd like to get to know us a little bit better, sign up for our email list. You'll receive Pastor J.D. 's devotional blog posts, as well as the popular Wisdom for Your Weekend posts. Subscribe right now when you go to JDGrier.com. I'm Molly Vidovich inviting you to join us again next time as we unpack the story of the Tower of Babel. Pastor J.D.

explains why our hopes and dreams don't usually satisfy us like we thought they would. Be sure to listen Wednesday to Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.