Speaker 1: A captivating image to me in 2001 was the picture of there was multiple pictures of firefighters and police officers running toward the World Trade Center when it was attacked.
Speaker 1: I was 24 years old on that very day.
Speaker 1: Anyone who was around you probably remember exactly what you were doing on that day.
Speaker 1: It was a frightening day, it was a crazy day, it was a confusing day and there was something about we would see pictures like this all over our televisions and there was something about that that stuck in me at just the right age.
Speaker 1: See, we had superheroes we already had Spider-Man and Batman and that kind of thing but this stuck in my soul as, oh, that's what a real hero is.
Speaker 1: Because they were running toward danger, they were going to sacrifice their lives in the hopes of getting people out of those buildings, and that just stuck with me.
Speaker 1: That showed me this is what real heroes do.
Speaker 1: I know I've got some real heroes in this room.
Speaker 1: We've got some real heroes listening today, and I want to remind you that Proverbs 29, 18 says where there's no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint.
Speaker 1: 29, 18 says where there's no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint.
Speaker 1: Where there's no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint.
Speaker 1: That word prophetic vision it means several things in the Bible, but what it means here is it means a fresh, most important word from God, a timely.
Speaker 1: This is what God is saying right now for you to do.
Speaker 1: Every man needs a prophetic vision.
Speaker 1: A this is it from God.
Speaker 1: When people don't have especially men, when we don't have a compelling yes, we say yes to a lot of the wrong things.
Speaker 1: Or maybe we say yes to nothing and we back up and we pull back.
Speaker 1: Ladies, I know that you might not hear this from everybody, but I just want to let everybody in on some of the inner life of men.
Speaker 1: Men don't talk about it.
Speaker 1: They mostly don't even feel like they need to talk about it, but they are experiencing it, whether anybody knows it or not.
Speaker 1: Men live in a time where they feel like at least a fourth of the culture thinks they're a bad idea, that manhood itself is part of what's poisoning the world, that people have forgotten that God actually invented man and it was a good idea.
Speaker 1: Men are experiencing overwhelming stress that they probably won't speak up much about Men.
Speaker 1: Even though we don't maybe say it like this, we can feel unseen, we can feel unimportant, we can feel like, especially when you get into like church circles and men are supposed to lead, we can be like I don't even know what that is, I don't know what.
Speaker 1: What do you mean lead?
Speaker 1: What am I supposed to do to lead?
Speaker 1: Am I in charge?
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 1: Is my wife in charge?
Speaker 1: What are we doing here?
Speaker 1: I don't know that.
Speaker 1: I get this, men don't.
Speaker 1: When you talk about, like, calling a lot of guys, I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1: God is calling me to something.
Speaker 1: I don't hear anything.
Speaker 1: So what does it mean?
Speaker 1: Now I have this pressure, I'm supposed to be called and yet I feel like I'm doing the same dumb job I was always doing.
Speaker 1: Men feel like failures when they often don't say a thing.
Speaker 1: But they can turn inward and they can get real depressed and they're left to try to deal with that on their own, if they can even figure it out and give voice to it.
Speaker 1: Well, men, I've got some good news.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about a real hero today.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about someone you might not expect.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about Noah.
Speaker 1: Now, I know that many of us, when we hear about Noah, we think of maybe like some plush, like animal dolls with a boat, and that's the wrong image of Noah today.
Speaker 1: Okay, noah really was a man's man, but before Noah was anything else, he was first and foremost.
Speaker 1: You might not think about him like this.
Speaker 1: Noah was a dad.
Speaker 1: Noah was a dad of everybody that came after him.
Speaker 1: He was a dad and he was really.
Speaker 1: He was a rock star dad.
Speaker 1: And so I just want to let you know we're talking about Noah today.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming I've got some assumptions.
Speaker 1: One is you probably already pretty much know the story of Noah, so we're not going to go through a bunch of it.
Speaker 1: Right, he's called by God, there's going to be a judgment.
Speaker 1: He's going to build a boat to survive the flood that's coming.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, he gets out after 150 days and the world kind of starts over with all the animals.
Speaker 1: That's the big picture story.
Speaker 1: What I want to walk through is some of the decisions that Noah made as he was walking through this.
Speaker 1: Now, for Noah, the odds were stacked against him, maybe a little bit like today, only way worse.
Speaker 1: The odds were stacked.
Speaker 1: Wickedness was on the loose man.
Speaker 1: In fact, people were increasingly we're going to see in the passage were increasingly interacting with more demonic elements.
Speaker 1: They were giving themselves to darkness in ways they hadn't before Reminds me a little bit of our day, a little bit sometimes.
Speaker 1: But we're going to find out that Noah, in the midst of that, he pulled back, he resisted and he decided I've got to do some important, special things, not even only for God, but for my family.
Speaker 1: So let's pick it up.
Speaker 1: Here we go, genesis 6, verse 5.
Speaker 1: We're going to drop into the middle of the story.
Speaker 1: The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was constantly, consistently and totally evil.
Speaker 1: So the Lord was listen to this.
Speaker 1: The Lord was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth.
Speaker 1: It broke his heart.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about God's emotions for a second, because actually the reason we can have emotions is because God has given us emotions.
Speaker 1: We are made in his image.
Speaker 1: He's an emotional God, just like we have emotions.
Speaker 1: His emotions are always perfect.
Speaker 1: He never gets out of control, but it's possible, just so we're understanding God, right, god can have emotions about something right in this particular moment on planet Earth.
Speaker 1: Now God also knows that he's God and he knows what he's going to do down the line.
Speaker 1: He already knows, even though he's right here in this really wicked moment.
Speaker 1: He knows that he's going to send a savior.
Speaker 1: He knows that that savior is going to redeem the world.
Speaker 1: He knows there's going to be a brand new kind of in a sense, new race of redeemed people.
Speaker 1: He already knows all that.
Speaker 1: He's very confident in himself.
Speaker 1: But while he's confident of what's going to happen in this moment, because he's imminent, that means he's not only distant, he's right here, he's right with us In this moment.
Speaker 1: He's just sad baby.
Speaker 1: He said, like this whole project ugh, this is not what I wanted.
Speaker 1: This is was sorry that he ever made them and put them on the earth.
Speaker 1: It broke his heart, verse seven and the Lord said I will wipe this human race I've created from the face of the earth.
Speaker 1: Yes, I will destroy every living thing, all the people, the large animals, the small animals that scurry along the ground, and even the birds of the sky.
Speaker 1: I am sorry I ever made them.
Speaker 1: And if you're reading through Genesis at this point, if you're one of the first ones who's coming out of Egypt and you're beginning to review the story that Moses has written down, you're going to remember oh, this is like a repeat.
Speaker 1: This just happened.
Speaker 1: See, the first version was Adam and Eve, and they had this great place, had a lot of blessing, and then they sinned, and then there was judgment, and then they were kicked out of that place, and yet God was still gracious and merciful.
Speaker 1: He was like okay, I'm not going to take myself away from you, you can't be in this paradise, but I'm still going to go with you.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you these coverings and it's still going to be okay.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to make you this promise that someday there's going to come one, a Messiah, who's going to rescue you.
Speaker 1: He's going to crush the head of the serpent.
Speaker 1: He's going to undo all the damage your sin has now done to the human race and to the space around you.
Speaker 1: But it's a pattern that's on repeat.
Speaker 1: Now we're seeing it again with Noah, and I believe one of the reasons God is doing this, or allowing this, or showing us this, or showing those people, this is because we probably all have felt from time to time why don't we just start over man, like look at this, look at this stuff, look around the world, look at your screens, look at what is happening.
Speaker 1: You know what?
Speaker 1: Why don't we just, dude, let's just.
Speaker 1: Can we start again?
Speaker 1: Can we reboot this thing?
Speaker 1: We reboot computers all the time.
Speaker 1: Can we reboot the human race?
Speaker 1: Why don't we try it?
Speaker 1: It's a good theory.
Speaker 1: We're going to see in a little while why it doesn't necessarily work, but I want you to see this Genesis 6.11.
Speaker 1: Now, the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence.
Speaker 1: God looked on the earth and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.
Speaker 1: All flesh had done it.
Speaker 1: That's really important.
Speaker 1: All flesh had corrupted their way.
Speaker 1: See, one of the things that God is trying to prove through this narrative, through what happens with Noah, is guys, whether you know it or not, the problem is not the government.
Speaker 1: The problem is not just the people are greedy.
Speaker 1: The problem is not who's in charge.
Speaker 1: The problem is not just that people don't have enough of the right stuff.
Speaker 1: The problem is within you all.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really matter if we start over Like it's in you all and, guys, we've got to own that.
Speaker 1: We have to take responsibility.
Speaker 1: Hey, I'm not responsible for all the problems, but I do have problems and I've had problems that are really my fault.
Speaker 1: Like I did this.
Speaker 1: I'm a victim in some ways, but I'm also like a perpetrator in other ways, because my sin is impacting the world in some ways.
Speaker 1: But I'm also like a perpetrator in other ways, because my sin is impacting the world.
Speaker 1: Starting over will help, because when there's a lot of sin man, there's a lot of pain.
Speaker 1: If God wipes out all the earth except eight people, well that does help.
Speaker 1: A lot of the evil that is gone, but the curse is not gone.
Speaker 1: So verse eight but Noah found favor with God.
Speaker 1: Here's the scene where the hero enters.
Speaker 1: But Noah found favor with God.
Speaker 1: Here's the scene where the hero enters, but Noah found favor with God.
Speaker 1: Men, let's talk about what it is to be a man of consequence.
Speaker 1: A man of consequence, a man of consequence has a vision of God's favor and rejects passivity.
Speaker 1: A man of confidence has a vision of God's favor and rejects passivity.
Speaker 1: God's favor rejects passivity.
Speaker 1: God's favor.
Speaker 1: What is that?
Speaker 1: That is the kindness and the personal approval that comes from God through Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: That's what God's favor is, and God gives it for life, for forgiveness, for opportunities, for relationships.
Speaker 1: It is just Noah came along.
Speaker 1: He found God's favor.
Speaker 1: He's like yes, I will take God's favor.
Speaker 1: I want God to walk with me and smile upon me and do what only he can do, and it's important that we know it was found.
Speaker 1: It was not earned.
Speaker 1: It was almost like he was walking along in a field and like stumbles into oh here's favor, whoa.
Speaker 1: Has anyone seen this?
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to have this.
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to keep this favor.
Speaker 1: I think I'll take it.
Speaker 1: He found it.
Speaker 1: And what was that favor that favor really was?
Speaker 1: It was God's approval, not because Noah was such a righteous man or because he did so much right.
Speaker 1: It was because God already knew book of Romans tells us because God already knew Jesus Christ would die on the cross.
Speaker 1: He applied the blood not only to people that came after Jesus, but people became before Jesus.
Speaker 1: That's why he doesn't instantly destroy Adam, that's why he doesn't instantly destroy Noah, that's why he doesn't instantly destroy all the Israelites, because there's already been a sacrifice before the foundation of the world and I've placed it on my people.
Speaker 1: And so, therefore, he found favor.
Speaker 1: He didn't earn favor, but he began to walk with God.
Speaker 1: My story's a little bit like that.
Speaker 1: I grew up in a place where there was good truth talked about, but there was so much religious paraphernalia that it's like you missed the core message.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of religious stuff and then I went to a Bible study when I was 18, and I ran into boom, I ran into the Scriptures.
Speaker 1: I was like, well, we didn't really go in the scriptures before, and what I found, hidden in a field, so to speak, was Jesus himself.
Speaker 1: Jesus himself is very different than all the religious stuff about him.
Speaker 1: In fact, he talked about this very thing happening.
Speaker 1: It was a parable in Matthew 13, 44.
Speaker 1: Jesus said this.
Speaker 1: He said the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field which a man found and covered up.
Speaker 1: Then, in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
Speaker 1: See, in Jesus' time you could find treasure in a field.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's no banks, so people might bury their treasure, maybe they die.
Speaker 1: No one even knows it's there.
Speaker 1: The property changes hand and one day you stumble along oh my gosh, there's a treasure here, and this isn't even my land.
Speaker 1: And so what do you say?
Speaker 1: This is way more than I've got.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go sell everything I have to get this land so that I can have this before anybody else snatches it up.
Speaker 1: He's excited because he found something special that no one else knows about.
Speaker 1: And that's what I felt like.
Speaker 1: I felt like that in that little apartment, in that little Bible.
Speaker 1: So I was like, what Do people even know about this?
Speaker 1: I know everybody knows about Jesus, but I don't think they do, because this is a guy who he not just wants to like forgive you, he'll walk with you, he'll be your very best friend, He'll be the one that gives you radical favor, but, most of all, he will love you more than anyone else in the world, even though he knows everything that you've done wrong.
Speaker 1: So, man, the first thing we've got to do, the first most important thing, the vision, the thing that's important right now is God's favor, and it's God's favor through Christ.
Speaker 1: Listen, the most important thing we can do, guys, every day, is walk with Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: That's going to affect not only our lives and the people's lives that we touch.
Speaker 1: It's going to affect the posterity.
Speaker 1: It's going to affect the story that is told long after you and I are gone.
Speaker 1: I really thought there would be more amens by this point in the sermon, but, guys, I'm going to be persistent.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to accept my responsibility and keep on going.
Speaker 1: Here's what men do with the favor of God.
Speaker 1: They reject passivity.
Speaker 1: There is a temptation that comes along, passivity.
Speaker 1: There is a temptation that comes along.
Speaker 1: It's a temptation to be apathetic.
Speaker 1: It's a temptation to respond in fear.
Speaker 1: It's a lazy thing.
Speaker 1: It's like, ah, I know stuff is happening, but I don't want to get involved.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing.
Speaker 1: It's internal, it starts internal, it starts in the heart, and the danger of passivity is it almost feels harmless.
Speaker 1: Because, men, you know this, it's almost like, oh, I'm not doing anything wrong yet.
Speaker 1: But what you really are doing when you're passive is you're slowly retreating, silently, you're pulling back and disengaging and you're saying, hey, how about I just sit this one out?
Speaker 1: How about it's not going to be on me?
Speaker 1: But that's not what Noah did.
Speaker 1: Right, like Noah, he went to work.
Speaker 1: Man, like he accepted it.
Speaker 1: He wasn't concerned about what his neighbors, what the people thought about it.
Speaker 1: He didn't need their validation, he didn't need anyone Like he.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's going to rain.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to get busy building this thing.
Speaker 1: It's going to take a very long time.
Speaker 1: What about us dudes?
Speaker 1: Here's some some practical stuff.
Speaker 1: Guys, there comes a time.
Speaker 1: As a dad, I know you don't want to make anybody feel pressure or anything like that, but sometimes your job is to speak up, it's to say something.
Speaker 1: It's like that's not what we're going to do, at least that's not what I'm going to do.
Speaker 1: It's your job to not be passive, to not sit back, to not slowly retreat.
Speaker 1: It's your job to say hey, how about this After we're finished watching this movie?
Speaker 1: Kids, let's, before we scatter, let's all pray, let's go around.
Speaker 1: What's happening, what's going on in your life?
Speaker 1: What's something a friend needs?
Speaker 1: What do you need?
Speaker 1: I could just sit back and say, well, they'll do that at church.
Speaker 1: No, dad, you do it.
Speaker 1: You do it, you engage it.
Speaker 1: Don't be passive.
Speaker 1: It could be.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're not going to want to do this.
Speaker 1: It may be time, you know what.
Speaker 1: It's time to check their phone, because I don't know what's on there and I don't feel like doing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you ain't going to feel like doing it.
Speaker 1: No, I didn't feel like building the ark, probably, but you got to do it, you got to step in, you got to check and whatever else.
Speaker 1: Those things are where there's a quiet.
Speaker 1: You can hear it almost in your heart.
Speaker 1: I should do something about this.
Speaker 1: Somebody should at least yeah, it might be you, so pay attention to that thing.
Speaker 1: So a man of consequence has a vision for God's favor and rejects passivity.
Speaker 1: Here's what else he does.
Speaker 1: He has a vision of integrity and he accepts responsibility.
Speaker 1: He has a vision of integrity, which means I'm gonna do what I say I'm gonna do, and he accepts responsibility, meaning he owns it.
Speaker 1: This is the account of Noah and his family.
Speaker 1: Noah was a righteous man, the only blameless person living on the earth at the time, and he walked in close fellowship with God.
Speaker 1: This word righteous and blameless.
Speaker 1: What this means is not that he was perfect.
Speaker 1: That means that he walked with a purity in his relationship with God.
Speaker 1: He walked with a general sense of like if I'm aware I'm doing something wrong, I'm gonna turn away from it.
Speaker 1: The Bible calls that sometimes keeping with repentance.
Speaker 1: I know it sounds like a real theological word, but a man of integrity is keeping with repentance.
Speaker 1: When he feels that conviction slightly, he doesn't ignore it.
Speaker 1: He says that's right.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I am doing that thing wrong.
Speaker 1: God, we better do something about it.
Speaker 1: And he doesn't get hung up on it.
Speaker 1: He says God, I thank you for your forgiveness, let's keep going, but he doesn't ignore it, he doesn't slip into compromise.
Speaker 1: He knows that God has called him.
Speaker 1: If you want to walk with God, god says to his sons holiness, holiness.
Speaker 1: That means, dude, there's a lot you can do, but you are also in your heart, you're set apart unto Christ, and if Christ isn't down with that, then you got to polite pass, you got to not engage in that thing, and there's a bunch of other things you should engage in.
Speaker 1: It is a resistance of the culture and that means when I find out, oh, this thing I was doing with my taxes turns out that's illegal, I stopped doing it.
Speaker 1: That's what we have to do, man.
Speaker 1: When I find out that, oh, the way I'm talking to that woman is actually flirtatious I don't know that, I knew that before, but now the Spirit of God is confirming in my heart it's flirtatious.
Speaker 1: Or maybe even this relationship that I've just thought of as a really good friend is close to an emotional affair.
Speaker 1: That means, dude, I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna try to be mean, but I'm going to create the right amount of distance so that I can walk in integrity, because that's what a man of God does when I'm at home.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be the same guy as I am at work Men of integrity.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Why am I getting so many lady amens and not enough male amens?
Speaker 1: What's going on here?
Speaker 1: So end of the story.
Speaker 1: God is revealing his plan.
Speaker 1: He takes Noah through.
Speaker 1: He's showing him essentially the blueprints.
Speaker 1: It's this really complex.
Speaker 1: You got to build this thing.
Speaker 1: We're going to use qubits.
Speaker 1: Noah's going to take a long time.
Speaker 1: There's going to be animals and you know what Noah does Verse 22.
Speaker 1: So Noah did everything exactly as the Lord commanded him, and this speaks, guys, to particulars.
Speaker 1: See, god is a God of grace and he wants to walk with us.
Speaker 1: Like sin really is, yeah, he'll forgive you, but he's also a God of.
Speaker 1: I gave you exact instructions because I wanted you to do exactly that.
Speaker 1: Do you ever notice that?
Speaker 1: Like so, for Noah, that meant I don't have.
Speaker 1: I don't care if I have to do it alone, I don't care if I have ridicule, I don't care what anybody says about it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to do all these things because that's what God has asked me to do.
Speaker 1: Noah obeyed in detail, without delay, because he knew something, guys, we all need to be reminded of Faith really includes action.
Speaker 1: Faith really includes action and we embrace responsibility.
Speaker 1: If we're going to walk in integrity, that means we embrace responsibility.
Speaker 1: So we talked about passivity is the inner voice, but embracing responsibility is the outer call.
Speaker 1: It means I'm going to own this and I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1: I'm not waiting for somebody else, I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1: And this is what Noah did.
Speaker 1: He didn't just not do evil, he gave himself to the exhausting, likely, expensive work of for a couple decades.
Speaker 1: I'm going to build this thing really long term.
Speaker 1: I don't trust God.
Speaker 1: Even though it takes forever, even though it's complex, I'm going to do it and I'm gonna do it for the sake of my family.
Speaker 1: Even though no one's ever seen this before, I'm going to trust God and I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1: Guys, it means that we own it.
Speaker 1: It means we're going to go to the things.
Speaker 1: Even though you don't want to go to the kids, even though you don't want to have family dinner or family meal, you're going to do it and you're even going to promote it.
Speaker 1: You're going to try to wrangle it together.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because you're the man and you reject passivity and you embrace responsibility.
Speaker 1: That's why Because God is looking to you.
Speaker 1: He didn't make you the leader so you could boss people around.
Speaker 1: He gave you a responsibility so you could get things done that he wants done.
Speaker 1: Come on somebody.
Speaker 1: That means sometimes and grandpapas, you're still in this man, because you see a whole bunch of stuff from your angle, from your perspective, and you're like, oh, I don't know what I can do to influence Bro, you got wisdom and you got prayer power now and you can be like, well, who knows how much time I've got left.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can influence the thing.
Speaker 1: No, you've got time left and so you're going to grab Jesus' hand and say, okay, we're going to do this thing, we're going to pray this chick out of this situation.
Speaker 1: That's what we're going to do.
Speaker 1: I'm going to apply all the power of God which you have access to in order to save my family.
Speaker 1: Years ago I was probably 17.
Speaker 1: My brother and I were on our way to a Pearl Jam concert.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 1: So we're going through downtown Chicago heading over to Soldier Field, and a car about probably two in front of us gets in a wreck, like right in front of us and it's medium bad, nobody's dead, but clearly like a lady gets out of the car and she's like woozy and there's blood falling off of her and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And guys, it's not 15 seconds Now my brother was a Marine Not 15 seconds.
Speaker 1: He's out of the car.
Speaker 1: He's like, oh, we gotta help.
Speaker 1: And so he grabs her and he gets her off to the side and he's checking on everybody Everyone else is still in their car, like what just happened?
Speaker 1: And he's taking care of business.
Speaker 1: In that time most people didn't have cell phones, but he's got a cell phone.
Speaker 1: In like 10 seconds he's on the phone with 911.
Speaker 1: Hey, we got this thing happening.
Speaker 1: Here's where we are.
Speaker 1: We need somebody to come right now.
Speaker 1: And then within three or four minutes, he's back in the car.
Speaker 1: He's like all right, let's go to Pearl Jam.
Speaker 1: It was like he didn't think anything about it, but for me I'm like my brother is like a step below Batman.
Speaker 1: That was awesome.
Speaker 1: You just like saved the day for complete strangers right then.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because he was like I'm here and I can do it, so I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1: Men, that's our job.
Speaker 1: You're here and you can do it, so do it.
Speaker 1: Do whatever good on this planet we can do and see what God does with it.
Speaker 1: And this, you know that sounds really heroic.
Speaker 1: There's some very unseen versions that are really hard.
Speaker 1: Okay, so my kids know this.
Speaker 1: There comes a time in every kid's life hopefully not too many where mom and dad say can you come up into the room so we can talk to you?
Speaker 1: Now they know first, like, oh my gosh, what is going to happen, and they know just how dad's going to start.
Speaker 1: They talk about it, they tease me about it.
Speaker 1: They're like dad, here's what you're going to say.
Speaker 1: You, here's what you're going to say.
Speaker 1: You're going to say you do a lot, right, but they know that they're going to have that conversation.
Speaker 1: I got to tell you, men, nobody wants to do that.
Speaker 1: Like I don't want to do that, gosh, can we just leave this alone?
Speaker 1: Do we have to do this right now?
Speaker 1: Won't they probably be fine?
Speaker 1: No, shepherd, your kid, that's what it is.
Speaker 1: And so, kenzie and I, we go in there like, all right, this is going to probably bother us more than you, but let's talk about.
Speaker 1: It's.
Speaker 1: Not necessarily that you're even doing something gravely wrong.
Speaker 1: It's, you're on the verge of something.
Speaker 1: We just want to talk to you about it.
Speaker 1: So you've got some counsel, so we don't look the other way while you potentially do something you might regret for many years.
Speaker 1: I don't want to do that, and it doesn't look as sexy as when my brother jumps out of the car and saves a bleeding woman.
Speaker 1: But, guys, it's still.
Speaker 1: You're the guy God put there.
Speaker 1: You got to do it.
Speaker 1: A man of consequence has a vision for his family and leads courageously.
Speaker 1: He has a vision for his family and he leads courageously.
Speaker 1: Amen, verse 18,.
Speaker 1: But I will confirm my covenant with you, noah, so enter the boat Now.
Speaker 1: They're going in, you and your wife and your sons and their wives.
Speaker 1: God is saying hey, I'm not just making this covenant with you, I'm not just making this for sure deal about how I'm going to treat the rest of the humans.
Speaker 1: For the rest of the time, I'm making it with your family.
Speaker 1: I want your family to come with me.
Speaker 1: Bros, do you have a vision for your family?
Speaker 1: Better yet, do you know that the way you interact with God affects them, and it even affects your line?
Speaker 1: It affects what people are going to say about grandpa.
Speaker 1: There's stuff that you're going to bleed into other generations.
Speaker 1: One of the most important things we can do, dudes, is walk in integrity and demonstrate.
Speaker 1: This is what it's like to imperfectly walk with God.
Speaker 1: That means when you get it wrong, you say you're wrong and you repent.
Speaker 1: To your family you said ah, dad was a bozo for a minute.
Speaker 1: Forgive me, guys, but you do it.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because you fear God and that's what he's asking you to do.
Speaker 1: Guys, you might not know your power.
Speaker 1: I just recently saw this statistic from Barna.
Speaker 1: So this is now If a mother attends church and the father does not, there's a 2% chance their children will become regular church attenders.
Speaker 1: 2% If the mom attends I'm sorry to discourage the ladies If the mom attends and the father doesn't, if only the father attends meaning the mom doesn't even go 44% become church attenders.
Speaker 1: Now it's really dope if they're both going, because it becomes 74%.
Speaker 1: But I say that to show you the power that is in fathers.
Speaker 1: When you lead, dude, there's an anointing on you from heaven that God is going to whip that thing up and be like all right, here we go.
Speaker 1: Here's some power, dad, because you're stepping in and you're stepping up and you're not passively leaning back, you're leading courageously.
Speaker 1: You're saying I'm not going to disappear when I'm needed the most.
Speaker 1: It's going to take risk.
Speaker 1: It's going to take risk it's going to take.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we're going to say, gentlemen, hey, the Holy Ghost is bothering me as we watch this show.
Speaker 1: We're not watching this, or you can't do that in this house, go outside in the garage or something you can't.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to support that thing because I don't feel good about it and you're welcome to be led by your own conscience.
Speaker 1: But, dad, when you're feeling those tremors, god is saying say something, dude, don.
Speaker 1: When you're feeling those tremors, god is saying say something, dude, don't.
Speaker 1: Just don't want to prove it by your silence.
Speaker 1: When the world is on fire, when there's some kind of family crisis, dads, you're going to grab everybody's hands or you're going to make the group text.
Speaker 1: You're going to, you're going to call guys, let's all pray for this thing right now, because, look, we just need God's help and we're not just going to like get through our trial, we're going to get God's help to get through our trial.
Speaker 1: Am I right?
Speaker 1: Dads, you're going to make the hard decision sometimes.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you're going to put up a boundary with even a family member a little bit.
Speaker 1: You're like hey, we'll see you at Christmas and we'll hug you, but right now you're psycho and I don't want that to bleed on my kids.
Speaker 1: All right, like I still love you, but that's just true sometimes.
Speaker 1: And dad, you got to.
Speaker 1: And if your wife is like this is weird, we got to do this, you're like, yep, I'm going to back you up, we're going to do that.
Speaker 1: It's up to us dads to take interest in our kids' stuff.
Speaker 1: It's up to us to get one-on-one time with our kids if they're not in the house, hey, can I initiate with you?
Speaker 1: Because God's fatherhood is not just what you pass down, it's what you take the time to build up.
Speaker 1: It's not just what you pass down, it's what you take the time to build up.
Speaker 1: So we get to kind of the epilogue.
Speaker 1: We're jumping forward to chapter 9.
Speaker 1: The flood's already happened.
Speaker 1: Verse 20,.
Speaker 1: After the flood, noah began to cultivate the ground and he planted a vineyard.
Speaker 1: Man, is Noah perfect?
Speaker 1: What is going on with this guy?
Speaker 1: He just does like everything right.
Speaker 1: Uh-oh, maybe not.
Speaker 1: Verse 21, one day he drank some wine he had made and became drunk and lay naked inside his tent.
Speaker 1: Now that might sound.
Speaker 1: What's wrong with that?
Speaker 1: The Bible is saying, hey, drunkenness is wrong.
Speaker 1: And also there's a shame thing going on that he's naked in front of his kids and there's a whole deal that happens with his son, ham, and Ham is the forerunner of the Canaanites.
Speaker 1: So God is saying, hey, this is kind of like where this came from, but it was still a sin.
Speaker 1: He's still pointing out Did you see that we started all the way over?
Speaker 1: But sin isn't gone.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like for those who might have ever watched horror movies, when they worked the whole movie to try to like kill the bad guy and then at the very last scene like oh no, he's back.
Speaker 1: Like that's what is happening right now.
Speaker 1: Sin is back.
Speaker 1: We thought God flooded it away, but sin is back.
Speaker 1: It's not completely gone.
Speaker 1: And Jesus comes.
Speaker 1: He says you guys have been thinking about this inside out.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you had the demonstration, you had the performance art.
Speaker 1: You know, hey, if you wipe out almost the entire human race, even so sin will remain.
Speaker 1: Your problem is you're trying to take the guilty and you're saying let's get rid of them and we'll take everybody who's holy or holier than me.
Speaker 1: Let's keep us and we'll get rid of everybody else.
Speaker 1: Keep the pseudo innocent.
Speaker 1: But that's backwards, because Jesus says why don't you take the one who's perfectly innocent and kill him on behalf of all the guilty, because then he'll enter in by the spirit of God, having forgiven them all, and he will create a heart that loves the ways of God, so much so that the hell virus is turned back and the Jesus good virus is loose.
Speaker 1: Are we hearing that?
Speaker 1: I think it's also important for us to remember, and I'm gonna invite the worship team back up to help us close this thing out.
Speaker 1: It's also important to remember Noah did make a mistake.
Speaker 1: At the end, we all make mistakes, but Noah is remembered for his faith, not that mistake.
Speaker 1: Hebrews 11, seven says this it was by faith that Noah built a large boat to save his family from the flood.
Speaker 1: He obeyed God.
Speaker 1: Watch, he's gonna put it together.
Speaker 1: He obeyed God, who warned him about the things that had never happened before.
Speaker 1: By his faith, noah condemned the rest of the world and he received the righteousness that comes by faith.
Speaker 1: By faith in what?
Speaker 1: By faith in God and his son Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: He put it together.
Speaker 1: He obeyed and he had faith.
Speaker 1: He had a vision for God's glory and he aimed at heaven.
Speaker 1: When we have a vision for God's, that's the last and maybe most important thing.
Speaker 1: We're aiming at God's glory, meaning we're seeking to say when we fail, but we're seeking to say every day with our lives Jesus is the most important and weightiest thing in my world.
Speaker 1: He's worth everything.
Speaker 1: He's worth everything even if it would cost me.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna grow in generosity rather than just like pile up toys during my time on earth.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask for his direction instead of just do whatever I want.
Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, before I make this move that might affect a lot of lives, what do you say about my job?
Speaker 1: What do you say about this relationship?
Speaker 1: What do you say about moving somewhere?
Speaker 1: It means, gentlemen, we're starting to ask a different question.
Speaker 1: We're starting to ask a different question.
Speaker 1: We're not just asking, hey, what does it take to be successful in this season?
Speaker 1: We're saying what does it look like to be faithful in this season?
Speaker 1: What is God asking me to do here?
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna give myself to that.
Speaker 1: So, dudes, it's up to us.
Speaker 1: We can be the ones who pull back and are passive and we just say I don't want to look at it.
Speaker 1: It's not going to be me.
Speaker 1: Or we can be the guys that rise up like Noah, imperfectly, but we're going to reject passivity.
Speaker 1: We're going to embrace integrity.
Speaker 1: We're going to courageously lead and we're going to aim like heaven is real and it's coming.
Speaker 1: We're going to pleadously lead and we're gonna aim like heaven is real and it's coming.
Speaker 1: We're gonna plead with God, would you use me?
Speaker 1: We're gonna say God, I wanna build something that lasts far beyond me and my family.
Speaker 1: Right now, jesus is the new and better Noah.
Speaker 1: He didn't build an ark, he built a cross and on that cross he died to save you and your family from drowning as a consequence of sin.
Speaker 1: Some of us you've never really asked Jesus to forgive your sin and walk with you in that relationship.
Speaker 1: You've heard that maybe he's in the field today or sometime.
Speaker 1: I wanna invite you today to find him in the field.
Speaker 1: His arms are wide open.
Speaker 1: He says I will forgive you, but you have to trust me.
Speaker 1: You have to trust me with your sin.
Speaker 1: You have to trust me with your life and where it goes from here.
Speaker 1: You've got to trust me even maybe to resolve some things that went wrong with your father.
Speaker 1: Maybe you've never really had a father that you're super proud of, and as you come to Jesus today, you'll embrace your heavenly father and he'll be a father and he'll mentor you and he'll take care of you and he will defend you and he will make sure, as a good dad does, that you get where you're going.
Speaker 1: Gentlemen, we have a charge from God.
Speaker 1: Let's bow our heads and I want to invite every man or woman to open up their heart to this prayer, to ask Jesus.
Speaker 1: Say Jesus, I want to find you in my heart.
Speaker 1: I want God to be my real father.
Speaker 1: I wanna be God's man.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it imperfectly, but I wanna do it courageously and I wanna do it God's way.
Speaker 1: Let's bow our heads right now.
Speaker 1: What a perfect father you are.
Speaker 1: Father, thank you.
Speaker 1: You saw ahead of time.
Speaker 1: You saw it coming, and so you sent your son, jesus Christ, to pay the penalty for the ways that we would jack up the world.
Speaker 1: And you had a vision, and the vision was to create new creatures that were redeemed and reconciled to God and they were health bringers to the world and to the new world.
Speaker 1: God, we want to ask for forgiveness right now for the ways that we have participated in those evil things, for the ways that, god, we just didn't play the man.
Speaker 1: Would you forgive us.
Speaker 1: We ask you forgive us for not being salt and light.
Speaker 1: Forgive us for not living unto you.
Speaker 1: We're going to ask your help now.
Speaker 1: Would you come, forgive our sin and fill us with your Holy Spirit and be our real father and be our real savior and show us all the ways of a man.
Speaker 1: Show us all the things we're supposed to know and supposed to do.
Speaker 1: Train us, jesus, but save us, and save us today In Jesus' name.
Speaker 1: Amen.
Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for tuning in today.
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Speaker 1: We'll see you next time.