Failed Reboot

Today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. Greer talks about Noah's Ark. Thanks for joining us today on Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer.

As always, I'm your host, Molly Bitovitch. If you went out on the street and asked people to name their favorite aspect of God's character, you'd likely hear answers like His love or His grace. But what about His wrath?

That probably wouldn't make the top of anyone's list, right? It's scary and it's something we'd love to avoid talking too much about. Well, today Pastor J.D. explains why God's wrath is not something to ignore or minimize.

It's actually a vital and beautiful part of who He is. We'll see this truth come to life as we unpack one of the most well-known stories in the Bible, the story of Noah's Ark. So let's get started.

Here's Pastor J.D. with today's message that he creatively titled, Failed Reboot. If you had to list out three Bible stories that everybody in America knows about, the story of Noah and the Ark would always make the list. But probably the biggest irony about this story is that we have turned it into a cute little bedtime story in which, you know, in come the animals two by two, the hippopotamus and the kangaroo or something like that. We paint it as a mural over our baby's crib as this cuddly little bedtime image. The irony is that this is not really a kid-friendly story at all.

It is an incredible story, but I think by the end of this message, I might have convinced you that this story may not be the best one to soothe your toddler to sleep each night. It is a story about a catastrophic global flood that God sends to kill every living thing. Noah's Ark is going to bring up a lot of questions for people. Questions like, how could a good God do something like this? Or maybe they are historical questions like, you know, when it says the whole world was flooded, does that mean literally the whole world?

Or was that just a figure of speech for the known world at the time? Or maybe it's just curiosity questions like, have they found Noah's Ark? I saw some guy in the National Geographic channel that said he found the Ark, but he looked like he had those crazy eyes and probably has kind of guy that has the, you know, bumper sticker in case of the rapture, this car will be unmanned.

And so I didn't know if I should trust him or not. Sometimes our questions are more logistical, like how could you even fit all those animals on one boat? I'll answer that one really quickly. Based on the Ark's dimensions, it seems that they could have held about 35,000 different kinds of animals, which raises even more questions like, how much poop would 35,000 animals produce every day? And whose job was it to clean all that up? Or how did they get all the animals on there in the first place?

How do you tell the difference in a boy dove and a girl dove? It seems like that would have been a problem if I were Noah. I mean, all these questions, and those are all great questions, but they're not the main focus of the Noah account.

So they're not going to be the main focus of this message either. The story of the flood is about God's rebooting of creation after it had gone terribly wrong. I have one solution for every computer problem that I encounter. One, and that is to reboot it. If that doesn't work, then I reboot it again.

The worst moment for me is when I've rebooted my computer for like the fourth time and the problem has not gone away, because then I know it's going to be a long and painful evening on the phone with somebody in India that ends up with me buying another computer. Well, the flood was God's rebooting of creation. But this reboot is going to fail, not because God failed, of course, but because God was trying through that failure to demonstrate something to us about the human race and what it was going to require if he were going to fix or repair the human race. 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.

You know, sometimes when people hear stories of judgment like this one, it bothers them, but not as much as it bothers God. God says he is literally heartbroken over this. The word for grieved to the heart that's used there in verse 6 in Hebrew is a very specific word that is used to describe what an abandoned wife feels if her husband leaves her. Another Bible writer uses the same word, Isaiah 54, 6. Isaiah says that God is like a wife who married young, only to be deserted, and then her spirit filled with pain. Frankly, some theologians say it's an odd word to use to describe God because it makes God sound really vulnerable. It literally means unfulfilled longing or despairing frustration.

It's this hollow, sick, despairing feeling. That's what God says he feels about our sin. You see, sin, like a disease, had consumed the human race.

Their thoughts, he said, were only evil continually. That meant, we know, that meant they were very violent. Verse 12 shows us that the strong used their positions of strength to extort and exploit and oppress the weak. It included sexual perversion. The reason I know that is because there's a really strange reference at the beginning of chapter 6 that says the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were attractive, and they had sex with them. Now, to be honest, scholars aren't totally sure what that phrase means. The sons of God saw the daughters of men and had sex with them. There are some theologians who say that it refers to some kind of demon-human sexual encounter, since sons of God in Scripture can refer to angels.

That's way too Twilight or Buffy the Vampire Slayer of an interpretation for me. I'm pretty sure it just means that godly people got mixed up into ungodliness, families dissolved, and sex became whenever and with whomever and whatever. So God sees this wickedness on multiple levels and he determines to stop it, and he's going to do so by sending a flood to literally cleanse the earth. You say, well, that doesn't sound very loving. What's like if someone you love is being eaten up with cancer?

You take radical measures like chemotherapy, which is a very violent process, to cleanse that person you love from their cancer. That's what God is doing with his creation. There's an interesting wordplay in Hebrew down in verse 12, the word that God uses to describe human violence. In verse 12, mashit is the Hebrew word. Literally, they are destroyers. It's the exact same word that God uses to describe what he's about to do to the human race. He mashits the mashiters.

He destroys the destroyers. There are a lot of people in American society who feel like God should never judge. God is love. He's a sentimental old deity that just kind of turns his head away from wrong things and just says whatever.

They'll figure it out and they'll fix themselves one day. Miroslav Volf, who's kind of a personal hero of mine, he lived through the oppression and the genocides of Croatia. He is a Croatian. He said the only one that anyone could ever make a statement like that, that God is love and just turns his head away from injustice. The only way they can say that is if they've lived in the suburbs of the United States all their life and never really experienced true injustice. He said, when you watch your family and friends murdered, when you see your mom and dad have their throat slit like I did, the only way you can keep it from driving you insane is by knowing that there is a God who will one day bring justice. He said, upon coming to America, I discovered that one of the deepest held American myths is this idea that a belief in a God of judgment leads you to be violent. He said the only people who say that are those who've never really experienced true injustice.

In actuality, he said, it's exactly the opposite. If you believe in a God who is all love and no justice, you will see and rage with vengeance and you'll end up taking matters into your own hands. It is only when you believe that God will one day execute perfect justice that you can lay the sword down out of your hand and be free from hatred and bitterness and the deriving desire to avenge the wrong because you know that vengeance belongs to God. You see, I would say that our culture has a very lopsided view of God. Every culture gets it wrong in some way. Our culture is a very lopsided view of God. God is a sentimental, loving deity and we have no space for things like justice and His glory.

And that leads us to just confusion when you come to a story like this one in the Bible, but it's lopsided. It's kind of like, I mean, if you go to the gym and you see some guy that works out what we call the beach muscles all the time, you know, his shoulders and his arms and he's just, you know, ripped and everything. And then, you know, but he always wear sweat pants. And then one day take off his sweat pants, he's got shorts on and you're like, whoa.

Last time I saw legs like that, they were hanging out of a nest. You know, he's lopsided. He's got part developed, not the other part. Well, there's a lot of people that have this lopsided view of God and it keeps them from not understanding a lot of stuff in the Bible. And it honestly keeps them confused about a lot of things that are going on in life.

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. The sin of man grieves God because of what it did to His creation and because of what it did to His glory because of the devastation it was causing in the human race.

And so God decides to do something about it. Here's your second word, favor. Favor, chapter six, verse eight. 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?

Nothing really. Verse nine tells you he was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Is that because Noah had no sin, no blame in his heart? Oh no, he had plenty of evil in his heart. You're gonna see that at the end of this story.

He's part of the same evil human race. Hebrews 11, seven says very clearly that he was righteous because he responded to God's offer of salvation. Hebrews 11, seven. By faith Noah being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen.

In reverent fear, Noah constructs an art 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. The righteousness that comes not from being perfect, but from believing what God says and receiving it with surrender and God gifts to you a righteousness you do not possess in yourself. In other words, God did not save Noah because he was righteous. 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.

You see, all God ever asked of you, of anybody in any generation is that we give an unqualified, unconditional yes to him. You say, well, that sounds like a lot. I've described it before like just waking up in an ambulance. You wake up in an ambulance, you don't know how you got there, but a doctor standing above you and a bunch of EMTs are doing things to your body and the doctor says, you were in a terrible accident and you almost died.

But you know what? These EMTs, they got there just in time and they saved your life and I'm saving your life. That doctor is not asking you to jump up and help save yourself. In fact, you wouldn't do anything except mess it up. That doctor is telling you we're gonna do everything, but you gotta consent, you gotta lay there.

You can jump up, start pulling tubes out and saying, no, you're gonna mess everything up. Basically what God does in salvation is he says, you messed it up, I'm going to save you, but you have to give him your consent where you're gonna say, God, it all belongs to you and you're in charge of everything. Is that the posture that you were in with God? You're listening to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. To learn more about this ministry, including how to partner with us financially, visit jdgreer.com. Did you know that Summit Life is featured on radio stations all over the country and even overseas?

We love hearing from people all over the world. We recently heard this from Ted, one of our gospel partners. One of Pastor J.D. 's sermons was part of my journey to Christ and what got me to apply to seminary. I graduated with a master's in pastoral ministry studies last month and I intend to continue my education and pastoral ministry. And that's just one of the examples of the impact of the gospel message that we try to steward here at Summit Life. If Summit Life has been a trusted source of life-changing biblical teaching for you, would you please consider helping someone else hear this teaching by giving a generous gift to the ministry right now? We can't fulfill this mission alone. It takes a team and we'd love to have you join with us.

Give us a call at 866-335-5220 or visit jdgrier.com today. Thanks for your faithfulness. Now let's return for the conclusion of today's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor J.D. A lot of people I talk to are like, well, I don't know, I'm mostly surrendered to God. I'm doing a pretty good job. I say there's no such thing as mostly surrendered.

There's no such thing as mostly surrendered. It kind of reminds me when I was taking driver's ed when I was 15 years old. You rode around with this little instructor and my guy had a little brake built into his side of the car.

I remember one time we were coming up to a stoplight. He's like, now, J.D., the light just turned yellow. What does that mean?

And I said, it means punch it. And he says, no. He slams the brake and the whole car comes to a screeching halt. I'm kind of in charge of the car, but he's really in charge of the car, right? Because he's letting me kind of go through the motions but he's got ultimate veto power to say, nope, not there. We're not going there.

You better slow down. That's the position a lot of us try to be in with God. We're like, God, I'm going to let you influence.

I'm going to follow your directions here. But I keep ultimate responsibility about when I say no and what I'm going to do. I'm not going to give that. I'm not going to go there.

I'm not going to say that. Ultimately, that's no surrender at all. The only terms God accepts are terms of absolute and total surrender.

It's like C.S. Lewis says, we're not good people trying to become bad people trying to become better people. We're rebels to God who must lay down our arms and surrender. That's what Noah does. He sets out in faith and obedience and surrender to build. As Hebrews 11, seven says, this was one of human history's greatest acts of faith.

I mean, think about it. How ridiculous must this have seemed to everyone? Noah lives in the mountains and it took over a hundred years to build this big 500 foot long boat. I mean, can you imagine the ridicule, but Noah endured even when nobody else came along to join him. And even though everybody else made fun of him, because see, that's what faith does.

And I want you to hear this. Faith is not shown in the initial yes that you say to God. Faith is shown in the follow through of obedience.

And here's why I say that. Because there's a lot of people that think that their great act of faith was when they prayed a prayer to receive Jesus as their savior and then got in a baptismal tank and said, Jesus is Lord. And they're like, okay, I'm good. It's not the initial yes. It is the follow through that counts as faith. So the question is not, have you ever stood in a baptismal tank at some point and declared that Jesus is Lord? The question is, does your life today declare that Jesus is Lord? It's not what your mouth says that determines whether you have faith. It's what your actions and your life says that determines whether or not you really have faith. Noah follow through and finally the day comes where God said, okay, Noah, now's the time.

Take the animals and go in. And y'all, I am sure there was supernatural direction involved in that. You're like, well, how does that seem possible? It's a miracle. If you can believe that God created the world with a word, then you can give him a pass on this one.

And I think he could pull this off. After the last one was in, after the last animal, however that happened, Noah walks on, verse 16, and the Lord shut him in. And then it says the fountains above and below the earth were opened up, which means torrential rains from above and some kind of underground flooding or a tsunami or a continental shift, or I don't know. However it happened, by the time it was over, the flood waters covered the highest known mountain at the time, by more than 45 feet. And there they remained.

The flood waters remained on earth for another five months. And every living thing, every man, every woman, every boy, every girl, and all living animals who were outside of the ark drowned. Did you put that in your baby's mural?

Is that depicted somewhere? People say, well, what about the kids? I mean, even if the adults were bad, weren't the kids innocent? Scripture always urges us to think about questions like that one or situations like this one in light of eternity. God is perfectly just, much more so than we are. And that means that God will not hold them accountable for sins they did not commit. And so when a situation like this happens where the innocent get caught up in the destruction of justice, what Scripture urges us to think about is that the joys of heaven are going to vastly outweigh any temporary suffering that any of us go through on earth. And what you think about in situations like this one where the innocent get caught up in the destruction of justice, you think of that as basically God collecting them early into that eternal happiness, a happiness that more than makes up for any temporary suffering that you go through in your time on earth. It's the same thing I say to a woman, for example, when she goes through a miscarriage. Well, what did I do that was wrong?

The baby obviously didn't do anything that was wrong. The answer, of course not. And what God tells you to do is think about eternity when the reunion, when the joy that you experience in eternity completely wipes away any thought of the temporary suffering you had on earth. It's like Mother Teresa said, the worst suffering on earth is like one bad night in a cheap hotel that you quickly forget about. Well, 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, Hermione Granger and a couple of B-list actresses that I can't remember their names. And of course, Noah's wife, Joan of ark, verse 20. 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.

He'd taken seven of all the sacrificial animals, so he had a few to spare. 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. That's an odd statement. I'm trying to follow the logic there, God.

I don't get it. Neither will I ever strike down every living creature like I just did. Never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. Chapter nine, verse one. And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

Start a new generation of humans. 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. I mean, I'm not gonna give them to you in order of importance, but I see both of them in the text there.

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? Look at it again, verse 12. The covenant that I made between me and you and every living creature, the covenant's with them too, all the animals, it's for all future generations. God certainly loves humans the most in his creation. He makes that very clear, but God cares for all of it. 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?

Oh, great question. Chapter eight, verse 20 tells you, human sin. Never again will I curse the earth because of human sin, right? The earth is cursed.

They didn't do anything to deserve that. We did something and they got cursed in our place, or they got cursed along with us. God is going to deliver the whole earth from human sin. The apostle Paul says it this way.

He rephrases it in Romans chapter eight. The creation itself waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. The creation is just yearning, he says. It wants to be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

In other words, nature is chomping at the bit to be restored to its ultimate purpose. 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, the heavens declare the glory of God.

That's more than just poetic language. It means that if you listen to creation, creation has a voice. 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. If you've ever read the Jesus storybook Bible, I think it says it best. God wrote, I love you in the sky and on the earth and under the sea.

He created everything in his world to reflect him like a mirror, to show us what he is like, to help us know him and to make our hearts sing. You're listening to Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer. Pastor J.D., I have a question I don't think I ever asked you. What makes giving to Summit Life different from other organizations?

You know, Molly, I appreciate you asking that question. When you give through Summit Life, you're not just supporting a single program. You're fueling a movement to take the gospel deeper into people's lives and wider into the world. We love to say you're not giving to Summit Life, but you're giving through Summit Life to see the gospel go out in these ways. By God's grace, we hear stories like this all the time teaching people in their homes, their cars, even on the go through nationwide radio, through regional TV broadcasts and podcasts that are really answering, I think, genuine real questions people have about faith. Together, we're able to advance the gospel. Yeah, my role is to be here as the teacher.

Molly, you're a part of presenting that, but it's our generous Summit Life supporters that enable us to do what we do. You can learn more about our ministry as well as access a lot of free resources just go to jdgrier.com. If you've been growing through the teaching on this program, diving deeper into the gospel with us, please give us a call. Our number is 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220, or you can visit us online at jdgrier.com.

I'm Molly Vitovich. Tomorrow, Pastor JD continues explaining how God's love and His wrath both worked together in the story of Noah's Ark. Listen Friday to Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.