Had a good night’s sleep last night? If you did, that means you probably spent the night down at the Days Inn, you know?
You know, I don’t think there are two Christian men that snore alike. That’s like a fingerprint, you know? It’s just another example of the variety that the Lord has made in the body of Christ. We all snore differently.
Have you ever had the opportunity to bunk with Ed Miller and hear how he snores? The first time Matt Stamper’s parents invited us down to the fellowship in North Carolina to speak, Matt’s father, Tim, had built this elder-care kind of home. It had, what, eight bedrooms or something? It was this huge house that he built.
Well, the boys were not there that weekend, I don’t think. I think you had moved out and were gone with the cows or something. So Ed and I came down, and they put us in the same room. They had eight rooms, and they put us in the same room.
About an hour into the night, I heard this noise. You know how the Three Stooges snore: “Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop.” I thought he was teasing me. I said his name, and he was sound asleep.
Anyway, that was a treat. Variety in the body of Christ.
Now, before we bow in a word of prayer this morning, let me direct your heart to this verse: Psalm 119:125.
I am Thy servant;
Give me understanding, that I may know Thy testimonies.
I love the fact that the verse calls understanding a gift from the Lord. He prays, “Give me understanding.” Understanding is not something the Lord expects you and me to come up with. He does not expect me to try hard to understand. No, He will give me the gift of understanding.
Understanding is a gift. Unless God gives us the gift of understanding, we do not understand His Word. We may read the Bible, outline the Bible, and study the Bible, but understanding the Bible is a gift that God must give.
Now, in life we are told not to be takers but to be givers. My mother and father told me to go through life being a giver, not a taker. In our relationship with others, that is true. Jesus taught us to be a servant of all, a giver.
But in our relationship with the Lord, it is the opposite. In our relationship to Him, Jesus wants us to be takers, not givers. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. God gave His Son, and now He wants you to take Him.
“Come unto Me,” Jesus said, “all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” When Jesus gives you rest, you take it. You receive it. It is a gift. You say, “Thank You.”
As we come before the Word this morning, Jesus wants us to take from Him the gift of understanding—not try to understand. We do not have that in us, but He will give us the gift of understanding. How freeing is that?
The burden is lifted when you come to the Lord knowing that He will give you all the understanding you need to know Him and have relationship with Him. So, would you bow with me, please, in a word of prayer?
Heavenly Father, how thankful we are for the Lord Jesus. How thankful we are that He is everything to us. All that we need, we have in Him.
And this morning, Father, as we come before Your Word, we are thankful that, in reality, no man can teach Your Word. No woman can teach Your Word. Only Thy Holy Spirit can teach the Word.
Father, we are thankful that You use human instruments, but we are also thankful that You do not need human instruments. Father, we are thankful that You are willing to meet with us and, by Thy Holy Spirit, open up our hearts, open up Your Word, and show us more of Yourself.
We are thankful, Father, because we know that this is life. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
This weekend, we are looking together at our Lord Jesus through the story of Noah and the great flood. Before I pick up where Ed left off last night, let me take some time to review how we are approaching the record this weekend.
And not just review. There is something Ed did not share last night in his introduction that we agreed I should share this morning, just to add to our introduction of these wonderful chapters in the book of Genesis. Then I will review and pick up where he left off.
I want to begin by reading Genesis 6:1-7. If you have your Word with you this morning, turn to Genesis 6:1-7.
Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.
Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men of old, men of renown.
Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.
The Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.”
Then we read in Genesis 6:8: “But Noah found favor—grace—in the eyes of the Lord.”
In this passage, we learn that the story of Noah really does not begin with Noah. It actually begins earlier, with Cain and Abel. In the story of Cain and Abel, as you know, we see that the human race divided itself into two groups.
Those two groups were prophesied by the Lord in Genesis 3:15. Remember when the Lord created enmity, division, between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent?
The seed of the woman were those who followed the Lord, beginning from the line of Abel and then Seth, when Abel was murdered. The seed of the serpent were those who rejected the Lord, beginning with the line of Cain.
This was the start of a sharp division in the human race: the division between the godly line of Seth, the seed of the woman, and the ungodly line of Cain, the seed of the serpent.
In the book of Genesis, up until Genesis 6, we see that there was no intermarriage between the godly line of Seth and the ungodly line of Cain. They remained two separate family trees.
That is one of the things the Lord is revealing with those two genealogies—one in Genesis 4 and one in Genesis 5. Those genealogies cover a period of about 1,600 years.
That means that for the first 1,600 years of human history, those who trusted in the Lord grew up to marry only those who trusted in the Lord, and those who rejected the Lord grew up to marry only those who rejected the Lord.
In these early chapters of Genesis, chapters 1-5, the Holy Spirit clearly sets forth this contrast between Cain and his family tree and Seth and his family tree.
For example, look at Genesis 4:19. In the sixth generation of Cain’s family line, we see a man named Lamech, and we learn that Lamech was a very wicked man.
But in Genesis 5:21, in the sixth generation of Seth’s family line, we see a man named Enoch. As you know, Enoch loved the Lord. Enoch walked with God. What a contrast.
In the record, the Holy Spirit deliberately does this. He wants us to be fully aware that for the first 1,600 years of human history, there were two different kinds of people living on planet Earth: a godly seed and an ungodly seed.
There was a group that followed the Lord and a group that rejected the Lord; a group like Abel, who came to God through faith in the blood of the Lamb, and a group like Cain, who tried to come to God through the works of their own hands.
Now, in Genesis 6:6, from the passage we just read, it says that God was sorry that He had made man on the earth and that He was grieved in His heart. One translation says God repented for having made man.
Why, after 1,600 years of human history, was God grieving? Why was He sorry that He had made man? Is God saying here that He made a mistake in making man? Is He saying that He did not think things through, that He did not know man was going to sin, and that when man did sin, it brought great sorrow to His heart?
What should we make of this? In the book of Ezekiel, God says, “I have been hurt by their adulteries.” Can God get hurt? What is this?
Very simply, this is a Creator communicating His heart to us. It reveals the Lord’s great desire to unveil Himself to us. God longs with an infinite longing that we know Him.
He uses these human words—regret, grief, and hurt—to reveal Himself here. The story of Noah begins with God’s heart grieving. It begins with a vision of the Lord where His heart is broken.
In using the words grief and regret, God is seeking to bring us, as far as He can with human language, into the reality of His heart at this time.
When the story of Noah’s ark opens, there is suffering going on in the heart of God. God uses these human words to describe that suffering. He says, “What is going on in My heart is like regret. It is like grief.”
That helps us a little bit to understand the Lord, because we have all known what it feels like to regret. We all know what it means to grieve, to be hurt, and to experience sorrow.
At this point in man’s early history, something has happened on the earth that has caused God great sorrow. The closest human words to describe that sorrow are the words regret and grief.
Some think that in the Lord’s use of these words, we see weakness in God. But we know that God uses these words to describe Himself so that we might see a little more of Who He is.
God is not man, that He should experience human emotions as we experience them. We know these human words are inadequate in describing God’s heart. Like all human words, they are inadequate to describe the Lord.
Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit uses these words because they help us understand. They point us in the right direction. But really, that is all they can do, because they fall short in describing what was really going on in God’s heart.
We read that God was grieving. Well, multiply that times a zillion, and then you may be closer in describing the inner turmoil God was facing here. But still, that falls short of communicating the reality.
That brings us to the question: Why? Why was God grieving in Genesis 6? What was causing His heart such great pain? Because whatever it is, I think we can conclude that it is what always brings great pain to His heart.
According to Genesis 6:1-7, God’s heart began to grieve when the sons of God came into the daughters of men and bore children by them. The Holy Spirit tells us it was this intermarrying that broke the Lord’s heart.
Most of us may be aware of the great debate over these verses in the body of Christ. Much has been written concerning this question: Who are the sons of God? Who was marrying the daughters of men in these verses?
As Ed shared last night, we really do not want to get into the controversy. We want to see the Lord here. But, for informational purposes only, there are three prominent views.
Some say, based on the fact that the Bible sometimes uses the expression “sons of God” when referring to angels, that the sons of God were fallen angels. They came down to earth, took on human form, impregnated human women, and started a whole new race of mankind that were big—they were giants. The word Nephilim in Genesis 6:4 can be translated “giants.”
Others say, “No, no, no.” They say the sons of God were the leaders, the nobility, from the ungodly line of Cain. They came and intermarried with the godly line of Seth, took over the earth by force, and started a government opposed to God. The word Nephilim can also be translated “mighty men,” or “men of renown,” as it is at the end of Genesis 6:4.
Others say that the expression “sons of God” simply refers to the godly line of Seth, God’s people, who went and intermarried with the godless line of Cain. This caused the earth’s population as a whole to turn from the Lord.
Whatever idea you want to embrace, I think it is possible to hold to any of these ideas and still miss the heart of God in this passage.
Whether you think these were fallen angels having babies with mankind, mighty men from Cain’s line having babies with the godly line of Seth, or the godly line having babies with the ungodly line, the common denominator—the thing that brought God’s heart grief—was mixture.
That is the spiritual principle. There was no pure devotion to the Lord left upon the earth. Devotion to the Lord had been diluted.
It is not surprising that God uses marriage, because marriage, as you know, is His greatest illustration in the Bible of our union with Him. It is easy to center upon the illustration and miss the principle.
Something terrible happened on the earth. The illustration of marriage was shattered because the spiritual reality behind marriage was shattered. The marriage union, as God intended it to be, was smashed to bits because it revealed that the people’s union with the Lord had been smashed to bits.
God’s people took their eyes off the Lord, and they began to mingle their hearts with the world. That is the spiritual reality of what happened. When it happened, it broke God’s heart. When it happened, His heart grieved.
According to Genesis 6:3, God patiently showed grace for 120 years. He gave the people 120 years to turn back to Him. But the people did not turn back to Him. They went down into all kinds of evil.
But before they went down into all kinds of evil, at the very beginning of their departure from the Lord, there was this mixture. That is when God’s heart started to break.
Let me illustrate it from the New Testament. In Luke 17:26-27, our Lord Jesus said:
And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man:
They were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.
We learn from the Bible that the days of Noah were wicked days and that people were involved in all kinds of acts of disobedience to God. But here in Luke, it is interesting that Jesus does not mention any of that.
We know the people were wicked before the flood. The Bible tells us that. There is no doubt about it. That wickedness brought grief to God’s heart, no doubt about that. But when Jesus speaks of those days in Luke, He does not mention wickedness. He speaks of eating, drinking, and marrying.
What is wrong with those things? What is wrong with eating? You have to eat. Drinking—we have to drink. He does not say drunkenness; He says drinking. There is nothing wrong with drinking. And He mentions marriage. There is nothing inherently evil about getting married.
In the next verse, Jesus goes on to mention the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. Listen to what He says:
It was the same as happened in the days of Lot:
They were eating, they were drinking, they were buying, they were selling, they were planting, they were building.
Here Jesus mentions buying and selling, planting and building. Notice that He does not mention wickedness. He does not even mention the sin that Sodom is famous for.
Jesus said, “You know what the world is going to be like just before I come back? Let Me tell you. People are going to be eating. People are going to be marrying. People are going to be planting. People are going to be building.”
He does not mention any sins. What does He mention? He mentions an occupation with the things of this world—things that are not evil in themselves, just everyday things of the world.
In its incipient stage, brethren, this is worldliness. Generally, when we think of worldliness, we think of hoarding the world’s riches, or we think of immorality. But the sin of worldliness, in its essence, is a life occupied with everything else but Jesus.
When God is left out of our lives and we fill our lives with everything but Him, that is worldliness. When we are so wrapped up and occupied with the things, duties, and activities of this world that we forget God, that is worldliness.
Yes, that will eventually lead to all kinds of immorality and all kinds of greed, but that is not where the sin of worldliness begins. It begins with our hearts sharing our love for Jesus with the things of this world—a mixture.
That mixture eventually leads us to a complete turning in our hearts from Jesus. This is what we see in Genesis 6. We see the sin of worldliness at its beginning: with mixture. Not with outwardly evil things—it will get to that—but it begins with mixture.
It begins with a heart that is half attached to the world and half attached to Jesus. This is how our conscience lets us get away with it, because we rationalize it. We say, “Well, I am not into sin.” Yes, but I am not into Jesus either. I am into the world. The world has half my heart, and devotion to the Lord is diluted.
This, God says, is what broke His heart in the days of Noah. This is why, when describing His heart, He said, “I feel pain. I feel grief. I have that feeling that I wish it had never happened. I am sorry that I made man.”
God’s heart was wounded because His people started to turn in their hearts from Him and started to mix with the world. God knew where that beginning of mixture would end up: with Him being completely out of their hearts. That is what crushed Him.
In the very beginning, God’s people were united with Him in wedded bliss. They walked with Him. Then, in their hearts, it was God plus everything else. Eventually, God was crowded out, and it was just the world filling their hearts.
Grief comes to the heart of our God when we forget Him. It does not happen all at once. It happens with mixture, and then, after a while, the world becomes our all in all.
Ed and I believe this is what the Lord wants us to see in the history of Noah and the great flood. In God’s writing of His Bible, it takes Him only five chapters to cover the first 1,600 years of human history because He flies right over that history.
There are genealogies. God does not discuss each person’s story. He flies right over their names. But when He gets to Genesis 6, He stops His flyover.
He dedicates the next four chapters—Genesis 6-9, ninety-one verses—to cover just over one year: the flood. As if to say, “Stop. Here is something I really want you to see.” Five chapters to cover 1,600 years; four chapters to cover just over one year.
The story of the flood is very big on the heart of God, and the story begins with God’s heart grieving. God wants us to see this. There is no way we would have known His grief unless He told us, and He has told us.
He has stooped down to our level with this human vocabulary to reveal what it is in the lives of His people that will cause His heart to break.
Through God’s grief, through a wounded heart, God tells us the story of Noah and the flood. With it, He creates an illustration that will disclose His heart.
God’s people, the godly line of Seth, departed in their hearts from the Lord. Because they departed from the Lord, they went down with the world in the flood.
We are not saying they lost their salvation. We are just saying that it was not only Cain’s family tree that went down in the flood. It was also Seth’s family tree. They too went down with the world in the flood.
As Ed and I look at this history, we do not want to go down with the world. We do not want to bring grief to the heart of God. We want our lives devoted to Jesus.
We know that heaven is secure for us through the blood of Christ, but we also know there is a strong possibility that we can be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Jesus. We do not want to do that and bring grief to His heart, and we know you do not want to do that either.
In the story of the flood, God gives us principles whereby we can rise above all this world, whereby we can avoid the mixture and live in pure, unbridled affection and devotion to the Lord Jesus.
In the illustration, that is what happened to Noah and his family. God, by His grace, put them in Christ, pictured by the ark. Noah and his family rose above the world. They rose above all that brought sorrow to the heart of God.
Ed and I believe that in this story we can learn principles about how God will take an individual and deliver him from worldliness, deliver him from a divided heart, that he might ascend far above the world in union with Jesus Christ.
Generally, when Christians study this story, they study it in terms of past-tense salvation. That is a wonderful way to look at the story. The ark becomes a picture of Christ on the cross, taking the judgment of God for us.
When we receive the Lord as our Savior, we enter the ark and are safe from God’s judgment on sin. This weekend, Ed and I certainly will bring in our salvation in Christ, pictured in the ark.
But salvation is bigger than forgiveness from sin. It is that, but it is more than that. Salvation also includes, as Ed shared, rising above worldliness and becoming more like the Lord Jesus in this present day.
That is what we are going to center on in our study of the flood. How does God put me in Christ, in the ark, and then, in Christ, raise me above the world?
Also, as Ed shared last night, if God ever came to you and said what He said to Noah in Genesis 6:13, I think, as a Christian, it would thrill your heart to know it. If God said, “The end of all flesh has come before Me,” you would say, “I am so sick of the flesh. I cannot wait until the end of all flesh has come.”
You know how the New Testament uses the word flesh: “In my flesh dwells no good thing.” We long for the day when the end of our flesh will come.
When you study the flood, you are studying how not to lose your focus on Jesus, how not to crowd Him out of your life with the things of the world. That is what the story is about: the end of the flesh, fleshly desires.
We are going to see Noah get into the ark and rise above all that God has condemned. By faith, it is our prayer that spiritually we will rise with him, come to rest in the ark as Noah did, and then by faith come out of the ark as Noah did, to live in a new creation under the rainbow covenant.
This is the approach we are following this weekend: the story of Noah as an illustration of victorious Christian living—rising above all that God condemns.
In Genesis 6, God warned Noah 120 years before the flood came. We know that Noah spent those 120 years building the ark. For 120 years, Noah’s life was consumed with one thing: ark building.
As Ed shared last night, Noah received the revelation about the ark from God, and it became his life. It consumed his every thought, his every action. For 120 years, every waking moment, all he did was build the ark.
Now, do not get lost in the illustration. The reality is Jesus. A Christian who is rising above the world is a Christian who has seen, by revelation from God, Jesus as an ark, as an all-sufficient Savior, as his all in all.
All he wants to do is know Jesus. This becomes his only goal in the Christian life. The Christian life is very uncomplicated. We often complicate it, but it has a single objective, and that is to know Christ.
We just sang it: “For me to live is Christ.” Everything else that is Christian in our life flows from this one root: to know Christ.
Every day, for 120 years, dear Noah built that ark. That is a wonderful picture of a Christian living with one goal: to know the Lord intimately and progressively.
It all begins with the revelation of Christ, and it continues with going after more of the revelation of Christ, consumed with the passion to know Him.
That leads us this morning to the truth of abiding in Christ. Once we see by revelation that Christ is everything, once the Lord opens up our heart to see that, then we are to abide and live in the union that we see we have with Christ.
In the record, when God called Noah and his family into the ark, they were called to abide in the ark. If we see what it meant for Noah to abide in the ark, then in that picture we can see the spiritual reality of what it means for us today to abide in the Lord Jesus, our ark.
Jesus said:
I am the vine, ye are the branches:
He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit.
There is a strong connection between abiding and fruit-bearing. That is what we are going to look at this morning.
Abiding in Christ is illustrated in Noah’s story by the two commands God gave Noah after the ark was finished. Genesis 6:19-20 says:
Of every living thing of all flesh, thou shalt bring two of every sort into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.
Of the birds after their kind, and of the cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.
Then, in Genesis 7:2-3, God repeated the command with some minor additions:
Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of the beasts that are not clean two, the male and his female.
Of the birds also of the heavens by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.
The command seemed clear enough: “Noah, bring the animals into the ark.” But think about it. Exactly how were Noah and his family going to obey that command and bring the animals into the ark?
Were they going to have to set traps to catch the animals? Would they have to set out bait to lure the insects into clay pots? How were they going to do this?
I have never tried to trap a bird, but I can imagine that is pretty difficult. The command was not to gather just a few birds. It says every species of birds. How long was that going to take—to catch every bird?
Can you imagine Noah and his family trying to find every creeping thing of the ground after its kind? That is a lot of rocks to look under.
After they found the insects, how in the world were they going to discern between male and female? You can look at worms all day, and I do not think you could tell male and female. How would they check the gender of ladybugs, toads, snakes, and spiders?
This was not an easy command. In fact, it was a humanly impossible command. But that was the first command God gave Noah: “Take all the animals with you into the ark.”
The second command God gave Noah is in Genesis 7:1 and Genesis 7:4.
Then the Lord said unto Noah, “Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before Me in this generation.”
“For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living thing that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the ground.”
The first command was to gather the animals and put them into the ark. The second command was for Noah and his family to enter the ark.
It is important to point out that when this second command to enter the ark was given, Noah had not begun to obey the first command to gather the animals.
When God told Noah to enter the ark, Noah had not gathered one insect, not one blue jay, not one lion, not one ladybug. Before God told him to go into the ark, he had not started gathering the animals.
What was Noah to do? He now had one week—seven days before the flood. He had not started to obey the first command, to gather the animals, and now he was told to go into the ark.
What would you do? What command would you choose to obey? You could not do both at the same time—or could you?
Here is what Noah decided to do. He and his family decided to enter into the ark. When Noah and his family entered into the ark, something amazing happened.
Look at Genesis 7:13-16:
In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark;
They, and every beast after its kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after its kind, and every bird after its kind, every bird of every wing.
And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life.
And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God commanded him: and the Lord shut him in.
This was an amazing miracle. When Noah obeyed the Lord and entered into the ark, God then brought the animals into the ark.
Genesis 7:15 says the animals went into the ark to Noah. Noah did not have to gather up the animals. God brought the animals into the ark to Noah.
Imagine Noah and his family, from inside the ark, watching this tremendous supernatural migration. That is what it was.
Imagine them seeing not a whole flock of sheep walking up the ramp—if there was a ramp—not a whole flock, just seven. You say, “Well, what happened to all the others in the flock?” God did not bring them.
Imagine Noah and his family watching two pigs, two vultures—unclean animals—and then seeing seven cows and seven rabbits, clean animals, and insects.
Imagine them standing inside the ark and watching ants, spiders, beetles, and worms walking, crawling, flying, and hopping into the ark—all brought about by a miracle of God.
This has to be one of the greatest miracles in our Bibles. It illustrates for us the spiritual principle of how, as Christians, we can obey the commandments of God and bear fruit unto Him.
Genesis 7:16 gives us the key when it says, “Those that entered, male and female of all flesh, entered as God had commanded him.” It does not say, “As God had commanded them,” as though God had commanded the animals. It says, “As God had commanded him”—Noah.
God commanded Noah to take all the animals into the ark. How did he obey that command? He obeyed by abiding in the ark. He obeyed by entering into the ark.
All he did was go into the ark, and just by standing in the ark, God says Noah obeyed the command to take the animals in. This becomes a picture, brothers, of how you and I can obey God.
We can bear fruit—full fruit—simply by abiding in Jesus. Abide in Jesus. Enjoy union with Jesus, and as we do, by a miracle of God, we will live in obedience.
There is no other way to obey the Lord than to abide in Him. If you abide in Him, you cannot help but obey the Lord.
Let me bring a well-known passage from the book of Acts into this. Remember, in Acts 10, Peter received that vision from God concerning animals.
He saw a sheet—some call it a tablecloth—coming out of the sky. On the sheet were unclean animals, animals that the Jews were never allowed to eat. In the vision, God told Peter, “Rise up, kill the animals, and eat them.”
Peter said, “Lord, no way. I cannot eat what You have called unholy.” Then God said to Peter, “No, for what I have cleansed is no longer unholy.”
Peter did not know exactly what the vision meant until a few days later, when the Gentile named Cornelius sent for him. When Peter met with him, he discovered there was a Gentile hungry to know the Lord. When Peter shared the gospel with him, the Lord saved that man.
Thinking back on the vision, Peter said in Acts 10:
Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:
But in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to Him.
Peter’s vision had animals in it, but it was not about animals. It was about people. The animals on the sheet represented people. That was Peter’s conclusion.
He said in Acts 10:28, “God hath showed me that I should not call any man unclean.” With the animals on Peter’s sheet representing people in the blazing light of the New Testament, Ed and I do not think it is far-fetched in any way that the clean and unclean animals coming into the ark represent people.
The animals in Peter’s vision picture the Lord’s church, made up of Jew and Gentile alike. You know this about the church. You do not need anyone to convince you of this. You heard the snoring last night. You know the church is a zoo.
This has caused Ed and me to think about some of these parts in Noah’s story. I used to think that in the story Christians were pictured by Noah. Maybe we are not pictured by Noah. Maybe, as a church, we are pictured by the animals.
Since most of us here, I think, are Gentiles by birth, maybe we are represented by the unclean animals in Noah’s story. Who do you want to be here? Do you want to be a pig? A vulture? Some of those disgusting crawling things? They represent us.
All that is to say that if the animals of Noah’s ark represent people, and we think they do, then in this story God is giving us a specific picture in terms of obedience—obedience in terms of the Great Commission.
God commands us to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. How do we obey that command?
We obey just as Noah obeyed God’s command to take the animals with him into the ark. Noah did not have to go and round up all those critters. God brought them to him as he occupied his life with the Lord Jesus, his ark.
The open secret to obeying the Great Commission—the open secret to obeying anything God commands—is abiding in God. By occupying your heart and life with Christ, doing nothing but going after Christ, abiding in the Lord, trusting in the Lord, and getting to know the Lord, what happens? A miracle.
You end up obeying Him. You end up fulfilling the Great Commission.
As Brother Ed mentioned last night, when the Lord first told Noah to build the ark, God gave him all the dimensions. He told him what materials to use. Noah had a picture of the ark in his mind. He could see it, but it was private to him.
The ark was in his heart. No one else could see it. Only Noah could see it in his mind. It was not until he started building the ark that this invisible thing in his heart became visible to others.
Only by Noah building the ark could others begin to see the revelation God had given him concerning the ark. The ark is Jesus.
The more Noah built that ark during those 120 years, in the picture, the more Christ became public so that others could see Him. All Noah did was build the ark.
The more he was consumed with ark building, the more Jesus manifested Himself to the world. Brothers, this is true evangelism. This is soul winning at its heart and core.
Noah, in the picture, became a soul winner, bringing all those animals in—all those who represent people. He became a picture of a soul winner not by working hard at being a soul winner. He simply built the ark. He simply occupied himself with Jesus.
By being united to Jesus, he became a picture of one of the greatest evangelists to have ever lived.
How are we to obey God’s commands—not just bring people to His salvation, but all of God’s commands? All the commands of God in the Bible are just as humanly impossible as it was for Noah to gather all the animals by himself into the ark.
Every believer who has seriously tried to live a life of obedience to God knows that firsthand. Many times, we learn that with tears.
God requires that we love Him, that we love Him with all of our heart, mind, soul, and body. God requires that we give thanks to Him in and for all things. He requires that we be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.
Why would God command us to do that which we cannot do? Here is the reason: God does not give us commands so that we will go out and try to obey them.
He gives us commands so that we will learn that we cannot obey Him and trust Him to live His life in us in order to obey them.
In other words, we obey God just as Noah obeyed God: by abiding in the Lord Jesus, our ark.
Jesus said, “I am the vine, and you are the branches.” Sometimes we think He said, “I am the vine; now you try to be branches.” He did not say, “Try to be branches.” He said, “You are branches.”
Being branches is not something that will become true in our life if we pray more, surrender more, or have more faith. It is something that is true in our lives.
It is not a statement of what could be. It is not a statement of what should be. It is a statement of what is: “I am the vine. You are the branches.”
In fact, it is true of every believer because of what Jesus did at the cross. Being branches is not a goal to be attained. It is a starting point. We all start the Christian life as a branch. Every believer starts as a branch.
The truth that the Lord is teaching in the vine and branches, as you know, is a truth of union. He is declaring that we are connected to Him through a union of life. The life of the vine is the life of the branch—His life in me, His life in you.
It is true whether we believe it or not. Our belief does not make it truer, and unbelief will not make it untrue. You say, “Well, I do not believe that.” So what? It is true whether you believe it or not.
But when you believe it, when you count upon it, that is when you come to enjoy it. That is when you come to enjoy it.
Jesus calls us to abide, to remain in Him. That is, draw all we need in this Christian life from Him and count upon His life to be our life.
It is already true. He is the vine. We are the branches. Let us believe. Let us say, “Thank You.” Let us receive.
The principle is obedience through abiding. It is only when we abide in the Lord Jesus and trust in Him that we obey, because to truly obey, we need a power that is not our own. We need a life that is not our own.
We have it in our vine. We have it in the life of Christ within us.
Jesus said:
He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said,
from within him shall flow rivers of living water.
This is obedience through abiding. You never have to push a river. It will just flow of its own power. Just get out of the way. As we abide in Christ, the river flows.
This is God’s progression, as we see it in the Christian life according to the picture God has given us in the story of Noah and the flood.
First, God reveals Himself to us as all-sufficient. As we receive the Lord Jesus as all-sufficient, that leads to a single-hearted focus in the Christian life: the Lord.
That leads to abiding in the Lord, looking to Him, Who is all-sufficient, to be all-sufficient in us. What comes next?
Next comes rising to rest. What comes after rising to rest? The rainbow covenant. We will pick it up there after lunch.
Heavenly Father, how thankful we are for our dear Lord Jesus. We are so thankful that He is the vine, and we do not have to go out of here and try to become branches.
We have the life of Jesus in us through the blood He shed for us. He did it for us as our substitute. He died that we might have life, that we might have life now.
We are thankful, Father, that our eternal life does not begin when our heart stops. It begins now. It begins knowing You now, abiding in You now, standing in our ark.
As we stand in You and abide in You, we watch as we begin to obey, as we begin to rise—not by a power of us, but by Your life in us.
In Jesus’ name, we pray that You would incorporate these wonderful things into our hearts. In Jesus’ name. Amen.