Failed Reboot

Summit Church, wow, I mean, just the thankfulness we feel to God for what we've seen Him do over the last year, the anticipation we feel for what He is about to do in the coming days.

What we couldn't put into that video was, we didn't have enough time this past Tuesday, had almost 2000 of you that just showed up here at the Brockree campus to say, Lord, here am I, send me, I'm ready to get engaged in a meaningful way and mission. And we are so overwhelmed with gratefulness. So could you just at all of our campuses, let's just bow together and let's seal this with prayer, thanking God and asking God for even greater things. Father, God, I'm just thankful. God, I'm overwhelmed because you, when I wasn't looking for you, you came looking for me and not only did you save me, you gave me a ministry.

God, you allowed me to be a blessing to other people. And God, I'm so thankful for how that's happening here, but God, we ask for more, not because we're not satisfied with what you've given us and not because we, God, want a greater name for ourselves, but because there are people in our families that need to experience the blessing, God, of your presence and salvation. There's parts of our community that have yet to had good access to the gospel.

There are nations all over the world that have no access. And so for the glory of your name's sake and for their salvation, we ask that you pour out grace and your spirit more here. God, we are not satisfied with what you've done here.

God, not because it's for ourselves, but because we want to see it extend to our neighbors. And so God lets you greatest things that you're going to do be this year and in the years to come, we are thankful. We believe in together, all of God's people said, amen, amen, amen. Put your hands together one more time and thank God for, well, all right, go Panthers. We all on the same page after that. All right.

Very good. I, you know, I don't know if you know this, but we actually have, um, in the last couple of years, we planted a church in Denver, Colorado, and we also planted one last year in Charlotte, North Carolina. And so the two camp, the pastors of those churches have been talking trash to each other all week long. And, uh, they've actually got a little wager going on in the game this evening. And that is that if, um, whichever team wins, the other pastor has to wear the Jersey of the opposing team in the pulpit next Sunday. So if Denver wins, which is not going to happen, then spent Shelton in Charlotte has to wear the Denver uniform. So as an act of faith, I just went ahead and declared who I know is going to be the winner. So this is my statement of faith.

I actually actually got them to increase the wager just a little bit. And that is if, uh, if, um, if Charlotte wins, if the Panthers win, then Brian Barley in Denver, um, after every good sermon point he makes next weekend has to dab. He has to do that. And if Denver, if Denver wins, which is not going to happen, but if Denver wins, then spent the pastor in Charlotte has to do all of his sermon points. Um, like, uh, Jesus is the better job.

He has to do them all in that form. So, uh, that's how we're going to make it. I was going to pray for this a minute ago, but it just felt so serious.

Uh, the vision moment that it just didn't seem right, but Lord, we know they're praying in Denver do not hear their prayers because they do not deserve it. Like we do. Amen. And amen.

All right. If you've got a Bible, uh, if you take it out and if you will turn it on or open it up to Genesis chapter six, which is your first book of the Bible and the sixth chapter. Um, if I, I realized that some of you that are following along with us in the reading plan are either elated or confused as to how far ahead you are of me, um, in my preaching here.

And you're like, okay, don't worry. We will catch up rapidly in the days to come. It's just that these first few stories in Genesis are so foundational in how we get a grasp on the whole story of what's happening in the Bible. And that's the name of the series. So no one spent a little extra time on these, but again, don't worry.

We will catch up with you rapidly. So, um, keep moving through that. Um, Genesis six is the story of Noah and the arc. If you had to list out three Bible stories that everybody in America knows about the story of Noah and the arc 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, income, the animals two by two, the hippopotamus and the kangaroo or something like that. Uh, we painted as a mural over our baby's crib as this cuddly little bedtime image. Um, 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. It would be kind of like dangling the four horsemen of the apocalypse from your baby's mobile. Mom, are those birds? No, they're locusts that God is sending to consume the earth. Um, that's what it's like to put the, the, the, the flood images up everywhere. Noah's arc 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 arc? I saw some guy in the national geographic channel that said he found the art, but he looked like he had those crazy eyes and probably has kind of guy that has the 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. Um, sometimes our questions are more logistical, like how could you even fit all those animals on one boat?

Um, I'll answer that one really quickly based on the arcs dimensions. It seems that it could have held about 35,000 different kinds of animals, um, 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? Did Noah just have some kind of special, you know, whistle that he did and they all lined up and came on? Um, how did Noah figure out which ones were boys and girls? Uh, 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 and why didn't he screen the two cats from getting on?

Because spirit filled people have always had a disposition against cats, but it's because they remind us of Satan. Um, so why? 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. Um, 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. Um, here's the first word, grieved, grieved verse five, chapter six, 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 six, 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've 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 grieve to the heart that's used there in verse six 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 six, 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 you to use to describe God because it makes God sound really vulnerable. It literally means unfulfilled longing or despairing frustration.

You can imagine a young bride so filled with anticipation and excitement as she comes to her wedding day because she's found this guy who makes her feel special and has told her that she's loved and that he's going to spend the rest of his life with her taking care of her when on her wedding day she discovers that he's run off with her best friend or she discovers that he's not at all who he said he was to her. It's more than sadness. It's more than anger.

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, 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. And 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 is 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. That love, that 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, 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 seethe 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 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 wears sweatpants and then one day takes off his sweatpants 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 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 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 nothing really verse 9 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 is gonna 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 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 got a consent you got to lay there you can jump up start pulling tubes out and saying no you're gonna 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 are in with God you see 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 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 um taking driver's ed when I was 15 years old you know the little you're in the car with the instructor I don't know if they do this anymore but in my day you rode around this little instructor and my guy had a little break built into his side of the car did they do that I thought maybe they added it just for me so they added this break on the side of the car because you know like like I remember one time we were coming up to um a stop light he's like now J.D. the light just turned yellow what does that mean and I said it means punch it you know and he says no you know he slams a break and we you know the old 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 you know like 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 the only position 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 7 says this was one of human history's greatest acts of faith I mean think about it how ridiculous must this 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 when his buddies are like hey you're going to build an f-350 with that thing also you know because we don't live anywhere near the beach how you going to get it to a body of water 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 now here's why I say that because there's a lot of people here and all through Raleigh Durham our society 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 and 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 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 it's not the initial yes it's the follow-through no a 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 is this impossible 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 30 more than 45 feet there they remain 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 are 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 on 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 what did the baby obviously didn't do anything that was wrong the answer of course not and well what God tells you to do is is think about eternity when the reunion when the joy that you experience in eternity completely wipes away any thought of the temporary 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 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 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 um 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 neither will I I'm trying to follow the logic there God I don't get it neither will again ever I ever strike down every living creature like I just did never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth chapter 9 verse 1 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 verse 12 and 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 they're not given to you in order of importance but I see both of them in the 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 make 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 well great question chapter 8 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 8 the creation itself waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God creation is 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 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 could 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 i love how sally lloyd jones says it in the jesus story but bible we're reading god wrote i love you where did he write it in the bible that's not the first place he wrote it he wrote it in the sky he wrote it on the earth and he wrote it under the sea he created everything in this world to reflect him like a mirror to show us what he is like to help us know him to make our heart sing right it's like elizabeth elliot says the missionary to ecuador a clam glorifies god more than we do because it was being it is being the clam it 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 world view gives us a vision of the world that urges us to love and care for creation in ways that go totally beyond other world views 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 oh 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 we 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 life blood 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 god is pro-life in every possible way 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 is actually pretty simple it's just two questions the question that christians ask is this is the baby inside the womb of 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 brain waves her own blood type scientifically it is not part of your body people say well what about cases of rape and 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 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 these are 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 how could a sophisticated educated society like germany have participated in the holocaust the answer is actually really really easy it's simple they began to regard the jews as less than human and therefore excused it how could 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 help 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 with mother 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 um joseph stalin who i typically don't quote during sermons but joseph stalin said listen the death of one is a tragedy the depth 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 in church when i tell you that in the last seven days a hundred thousand children around the world died of preventable hunger-related diseases that's not a statistic to god that's a hundred thousand 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 you know she stands at the podium i don't know if you've ever seen a picture of it she was 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 and 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 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 that's the weird verse i told you a minute ago i will never get cursed 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 i'm pretty confident that didn't make it onto your nursery wall mural either mom who's a crunk guy over in the corner that's just noah after he got off the ark that's how it turned out 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 guess said 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 furson 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 prove himself and obedience he's going to provide an arc 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 art 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 arc 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 them 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 old things are going to pass away all things have 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 arc 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 don't delay he uses the story of noah to tell you not to delay repenting and surrendering to god second peter three he reminds you that that everybody thought noah was crazy everybody thought a hundred years you lost your mind noah a hundred 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 old loon peter says we wasn't crazy listen the reason god took a hundred years peter said is because he wanted people to repent he thought i'd 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 and peter said that's what he's doing today the lord is not slow concerning his promises some people count slowness right he's not he's long suffering toward us he's patient he just doesn't want 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 old loon 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 shuts 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 ark and then summit church 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 why don't you bow your heads if you would all of our summit campuses have your heads bow in the question really straightforward isn't it have you ever trusted christ as your savior have you entered into that art you say well how do i do that is that by joining your church no no that's important to come later to enter into jesus paul said means that you confess with your mouth that jesus is lord that's what we call repentance it means right now where you sit in the chair where you sit saying jesus you're the lord not me paul said if you will confess with your mouth that god raised him from the dead what that means is you confess that jesus has done everything necessary to save you the work's done and you receive it as your own if you'll right now see jesus i received that as a gift paul says you'll be saved there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from emmanuel's veins and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stain you can be plunged underneath that flood that cleansing flood of jesus blood by simply receiving him in repentance and faith right now summit church who is there in your life that you have not told who is god bringing to your mind in this very moment telling you to warn them would you pray for them right now father i pray that you would open every heart of believer and unbeliever to see and believe and respond accordingly i pray in christ's name amen everybody look up here at me at all campuses for a minute i often say this but if you prayed that prayer with me just a minute ago to trust in christ chances are you're sitting beside somebody who invited you this morning i want you to tell them before you walk out of this room that you prayed to receive christ you didn't come with anybody at the end of the service there'll be pastors down here we would love to pray with you and talk about it in fact you and the person that brought you both of you come down there let's just pray about this and get you started on these steps of faith our worship teams are going to come and we're just going to rejoice in the glory of what god has done to us us and respond appropriately