"Unfiltered The Bible We Don't Talk About" Week 2

Week 2 of Unfiltered: The Bible We Don’t Talk About takes us into the story of Noah—one of Scripture’s most familiar yet most misunderstood narratives. Guillaume Bignon unpacks the flood, God’s justice, His mercy, and what this ancient story reveals about the heart of God today. Dive in and explore the parts of the Bible we often skip but deeply need.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Manateur's Effort Podcast, where we're all about equipping God's people to change their world. We're thankful you're here, and we're praying that this message encourages you to love God, love others, and love the world more fervently than before. Now, let's get to it.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Good morning, man at church. Uh, as Drew wonderfully pronounced, my name is Guillaume. For those who have not uh yet met me. Um I'm Guillaume, I'm in the teaching team, and the reason I'm preaching this morning is because the team felt it would be a good idea on July 4th weekend to send you a French preacher to celebrate the fact, I guess, that we did come and save you with Lafayette in the Revolutionary War before you guys before you guys could return the favor and save us in World War II. So we appreciate that one too. Thank you. In both cases, a lot of people died, and so we're on topic for our sermon today because we're in this series called Unfiltered, um, in which we've been looking at those uh stories in the Bible that are so shocking that we tend to read them and put filters on them, or even ignore them altogether. And um the story that we are tackling this morning is the story of Noah and the flood, uh Noah's Ark. And um, so that's not a story that we avoid, but it's definitely one that we put filters on, and so we're gonna be looking at it together. Um you know the story, we'll look at the text, but basically, God decides to judge humanity by sending a flood, and then he tells Noah to build an ark and get on board uh so that he could repopulate the earth after the flood comes and wipes everyone out. Um, and Noah goes with the animals two by two on the ark uh to repopulate the planet after the flood. So um I don't know if you've noticed because we tend to focus the story on Noah and the animals, but if you've read what happens outside of the ark, everyone dies. That's the part that we tend to filter out and not focus on so much. Um so this morning we'll look at a few things together. Uh we'll look at three things. We're gonna look at the filter that we've placed on that story and do our best to remove the filter. Um, then we'll look at the destruction that happens outside of the arc, and we'll try to see how we make sense of that destruction. And then we'll look at the rainbow after the storm. Right? Um, so first let's start and look at the filter that we've put in that story. Um, so there you have it. Guillaume is bringing props for a sermon. This might be surprising because I'm usually the grump theologian on the teaching team who can't stand the props and who thinks that props are generally a bad idea for a preacher. All I can see when a preacher has props on stage is those guys from whose line is it anyway with the props. I don't know if you've seen those, you know. That's all I can see, so it's not a good look. But this one should do the job nicely. Um, this is a nursery toy for Noah's Ark, and this is kind of the big idea that sometimes we've reduced the story to this. Um it's is it a toy for children? Well, technically it's a story of tremendous destruction where many, many lives are lost, and we've tended to transform it into a story for children uh with animals, and we do play sets and coloring sheets. Uh, we have good examples here. The one here is even more cute than the one we have here. They're they maxed it out with the round shapes and the happy animals on the arc. Um, and this is fine, right? We can uh have our children enjoy that aspect of the story, but it is a story that involves tremendous amounts of destruction and death, and we've turned it into a nursery uh story with animals. So I want to first ask like why do we do this? Uh I think Jeremy did a really good job last week explaining why we put some filters to protect our children, right? This is appropriate. I loved his stories of listening to MM with the filters, all the bad words filtered out, and uh watching Veggie tail to learn of some of the terrible Bible stories that are not quite the way that they were told to him as a child. Um, so it's appropriate, but obviously when we learn that there are unfiltered versions, we can be surprised a little bit at what was filtered out. Um but it's also appropriate to protect our children, right? Uh there are stories in a Bible that are quite inappropriate for children, and uh, we need to protect children from some of the more graphic uh stories that are in there. Children learn to read at the age of what, five, six? Um, and so if you give them a Bible at that age, I would recommend that you don't point them to the book of judges. All right, if you know, you know. Um there are some words in there that they wouldn't understand anyway, but I don't think you want to be discussing with a toddler stories of gang rape and dismemberment. All right, that's that's in there. But the point to take away is that you need to remember, not everything that is described in the Bible is prescribed by the Bible, right? Just because it's telling you this is what happened doesn't mean that God was saying yes, it's great. So there's plenty of stories of horrem horrendous evil in the scriptures, and they're not endorsed by God. So for those more disturbing stories, then it's appropriate for us to put filters on them. Um and there's something to be said about the need to protect children, right? So on the internet, sometimes you have lots of ex-evangelicals uh making TikTok videos, sometimes criticizing the horrible, horrible stories that they were exposed to at ch as children. Now, these are almost always silly and trivial because I frankly don't think that their Sunday school teacher was doing graphic expositions of those uh uh violent stories in the Bible. But there is some truth to the complaint, um, and it is that there are some difficult stories and that we should have wisdom about when and how we talk about them. Um so those graphic sections in the book of Judges simply shouldn't be told to children. Now, Noah's story um isn't really like that because the even the death are not all that graphic in the story, so we can simply present it as a story of many people dying and then explain those to children. Um, I would argue we don't so we don't skip altogether that story, but perhaps also we shouldn't crop half of the story and then put the other half on the walls in a nursery, right? But that's another story. Uh but because of those filters that we appropriately put on the on the story, maybe even we as adults uh can approach the story with kind of a wrong view of what that should look like. Um when you approach the text and you read that story, what kind of image do you have in your mind in terms of like maybe Hollywood posters? Um, would you envision the story more like Russell Crowe's version of Noah or Steve Carell's version of Noah? Um sometimes you read the story, and because of those filters we've put, we tend to see it more like Steve Carell's than uh Russell Crowe's. Now, I've seen neither of those two movies, um, so I can't tell you whether they're more biblically faithful, uh one or the other, but I would imagine that at least the visual of the Russell Crowe version is a bit closer to what happens in the story of Noah. So we need a bit of an adjustment. So uh we're going to remove that filter and kind of look at what actually takes place. Um let's look at the destructions uh that's in the text. On that day, all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened, and Ren fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights. On the very same day, Noah and his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah's wife and the three wives of his sons with them entered the ark. The flood continued forty days on the earth, the waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. So, one way in which some people try to avoid the difficulty of a text like this, sometimes can simply say, Well, it dunno it didn't really happen. Maybe it's just a metaphor, the text didn't really intend to tell you that this is an actual story. So that's one way to avoid the problems. Uh I don't think that's the one we want to take because the story gives us no indication that is to be taken metaphorically. Um the author really seems to tell you this is the way it happened. Um there's also it's in the continuation of the stories of the patriarch of Israel, and all of those are historical, so it's a good reason to think this is in the continuity of that. Um and there's also lots of specific numbers and details in the text of the dimensions of the ark, that's how it should be. So this seems contrived if it's just a nice story for a metaphorical use. So I think we should just take the text at face value, unless we had a very strong reason to think that it was metaphorical. Uh plus the New Testament authors, a couple of them refer to that story of Noah, seemingly assuming that this is a historical uh story. So that's probably not the path we want to take to avoid the uh the difficulties. Um let's look at the actual destruction. Um, all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swam on the earth, and all mankind. Everything on the dry land and in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark and the waters prevailed on the earth a hundred and fifty days. So, how do we make sense of the staggering destruction uh of life that took place in those events? It is a tough apologetic question, right? If you look at some of the ones that are sometimes risked that are difficult, like um Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son, or the stories of the conquest of the Promised Land, where there's a lot of people who uh need to be killed as well. Um, if you think those are difficult, I mean how much more should this one be when everyone else dies outside of the ark? How many people are we looking at here? Well, it's difficult to estimate how many people would have been affected by that flood. It kind of depends on your view of the chronology of humanity and the population at that time. Reasonable estimates would bring it to the order of maybe a couple million people, uh maybe uh uh a few dozen million people uh affected in there, just all wiped out. So that's a little bit below, but we're in the ballpark of like the Black Death or World War II, right? Black Death was five 50 million people roughly, and World War II with between 70 and 85 million uh casualties, uh death. So we're facing squarely the so-called problem of evil. For us believers, we think that God exists and that God is all good and righteous. How can this kind of evil take place? Um, this many people dying like this. The general Christian answer, and the one that we want to apply to all of those questions, is that God has good reasons, that He has morally sufficient reasons for allowing evil and suffering. Um, and so it's the so-called greater good defense that we say things are evil, but God is after a greater good that this evil is serving. So there God is not evil, he's after a greater good in allowing this evil because that greater good is connected to the evil, and so he's allowing the evil for a greater good. That's the general answer from Christians. And you might have uh heard me uh describe the situation in those terms in the past. The difficulty is that rarely we know what that greater good is, right? When we see some suffering around us, we wonder like why would God allow this? We don't always know. Sometimes we know and we see the greater good and it's great, but sometimes we don't know, and we wonder, well, if I don't see that greater good, does that mean that the greater good isn't there? All right, and it's a good question. And the way that I want to put it in perspective for you is that it's a little bit like if I'm uh looking inside of my camping tent and I'm wondering, is there a mosquito in there? Right? I look inside my tent, I don't see a mosquito. Is that a good reason to think that there is no mosquito inside my tent? No, because even if it was there, it doesn't guarantee that I would see it. Right? I'm not in a good position to see it. But now if I look inside my tent and I don't see an elephant in there, is that a good reason to think there is no elephant? Yes, right? So that's a good reason to think just because I don't see it, because I would expect to see an elephant in my tent if it were there. But now if I ask, well, I don't see an elephant in the savannah, is that a good reason to s to think that there is no elephant in the savannah? No, because it could be there, right? So then the big question is gonna be is the greater good that we um believe is there in the presence of tremendous suffering? Is it more like the mosquito or more like the elephant in the tent? Right? And the elephants were there in the savannah, there. So we approach those kinds of questions wondering God has good reasons, he has a greater good that he's serving, but in the story of Noah, there's an extra difficulty. It's not just that he allowed all this suffering, it's that he did it. Right? God sent the flood, he killed all those people. So let's read again without the filter on. I know it's a little bit you know, take your take a deep breath, but that is what the text says. 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 that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, I will blot out man, whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them, but Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. So God did it, and lots of people died. So, how do we process this? Well, my first point is not necessarily going to remove all of the tension for you, but it should put it in perspective by comparing it to other things that you probably accept without as much difficulty. Um, and it's by asking you how many people do you think died yesterday? Estimates are about 170,000 people died globally yesterday because the role the general estimates are between like 60 to 65 million uh people death per year. So all those people who died yesterday, 170,000 people, or even all those that died last year, 60 million, so now we're passing the numbers for Noah's flood. Do you know that God killed them too? God did it too in an important sense. What is that sense is the fact that God is in control of the good and the bad. Well, it's tough to swallow, and I'll exp unpack how we make sense of that in light of a good God, but understand that God controls everything that happens in such a way that he is in charge of who lives and who dies. Right? The scriptures tell us plainly, it tells, I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal. That's in Deuteronomy. In 1 Samuel, again, the Lord kills and brings to life, he brings down to Sheol, so that's the realm of the dead, and he raises up. In Isaiah, he says, I am the Lord and there is no other. Besides me, there is no God, so don't go looking for another one. That's the one you have. I form light and I create darkness, I make well-being and I create calamity. I am the Lord who does all these things. Rhetorical question in Amos chapter 3. Does disaster come to a city unless the Lord has done it? And then who has spoken and it came to pass unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the most high that good and bad come? So it's not just the good, it's also the bad, and it's not just the floods, it's all the death, all the disasters, all the murders, all the natural causes. God is in control. Now we're not saying God is bad or evil. Once again, as I explained, when death and destruction happen, God is after some greater good, and he's after the good with good intentions, right? So when we bring about evil with bad intentions, God intends those with good intentions for the greater good. So this is how we rescue that God is righteous and just and good, even though the bad that happens is clearly under his control. Another thing that kind of throws us off when we consider that pretty sobering truth is that maybe it's not the way that we would do it, right? It's like if I were to bring those things about, that would make me a poor human being, right? And so we need to understand that um God can do things that we shouldn't do, and that it's perfectly appropriate. And it's a truth that sometimes we miss, that there's an asymmetry between men and God in that respect. Um, and it's one that even comes out with uh one of the verses here that maybe strikes us as a little bit ironic, where we say that God destroys the world because men are too violent. Right? Is that a little bit ironic? Like, okay, so you guys are too violent, so I'll kill you all. It it can strike us as a little bit ironic, and it's like that in the text. It says, And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gother wood, make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. So this asymmetry can be a bit unsettling, but it's perfectly proper between God and man, and you can see it even in human relationships. This is something that comes up sometimes when I argue with my daughter, who is very smart, too smart for my own good. And when we disagree and argue, she's going to see any sort of perceived inconsistency in what I'm saying to use it against me, right? That's what you do when you're a good debater. But sometimes she's gonna point out that I expect her to do things that it would be wildly inappropriate for her to expect me to do. Right? And so she's gonna point out, like, okay, you're telling me to not raise my voice, but you did raise your voice. Okay, yes, I'm in a position of authority and I need to enforce various sense like important things in authority, that if she responds in the same way, that's inappropriate in virtue of her being under my authority. Same thing with a teacher at school, right? A teacher should be speaking to children again with respect and kindness, but in a directive, authoritative way, that if the child responds with that sense of authority over the teacher, that's inappropriate. Um, same thing with a police officer, right? Uh we don't speak, or maybe a referee in the World Cup, right? Uh to bring it more closer to home. There's a sense of asymmetry where we don't there are things that the authority can do that we cannot do, and it's very much the case with God. If I take your life today, that's a murder. If God decides to end my life today, he has the prerogative as the author of life to give and take away. Right? So, and even if we try to do something like this with good intentions, right? Let's say if I if I'm gonna kill you because I think a lot of good will come out of that, that's still wrong for me. And how and what do we call that? We call that playing God. Isn't that interesting? So we need to recognize that God can do some things that we could shouldn't do, and that he can do things that we wouldn't expect him to do. That's one of the takeaways of this story. Still, can we make sense of God destroying all these lives? Um, shouldn't we expect a loving God uh to not do that? Uh what's the greater good again in that story? Um well, if you notice the text that we have read, it's explaining that it's happening in response to man's evil, right? So there's there's a notion of justice that's involved in there where we can reason and say, well, there's sin, there's judgment, condemnation, and it's not unrighteous to condemn sin. So does that resolve the full difficulty? Well, in some sense, uh we could reason exactly like this, right? Sin, judgment, condemnation, there's that's fine. The reason we struggle with that as being a full story is that we say, Well, okay, God is just. But that's not the only thing that God is. He's also loving and good and kind and merciful. So, how does that play in the same picture? And we try to reconcile those two attributes of God and kind of figure it out. So, how does that work out when we think of God doing anything in this world, when we know some things about God that would tell us, hey, this is how I think that God would respond to that? Well, there's a number of things that we can infer and suppose, okay, the way that I know God, I think He would do that. But when there's a difficulty like this, where two attributes of God would lead you to think two different things, then we can't just assume which one is going to prevail in a given situation, and we need to be told with specific revelation. So this is what we do when we approach a text like this, where we realize, yeah, God is telling us something here. This is maybe not the way that I would have guessed that he would act in this situation, but then I need to adjust my belief to increase my knowledge of God. So we have this story of condemnation. Is that the full story for why he allowed that destruction to take place? I don't fully know, right? I don't really know how to reconcile this with whether there's maybe infants in the story that are involved. I don't know if God is also saying, well, everyone is guilty. Certainly not everyone is equally guilty, I wouldn't think. So I don't have all the answers for what good reasons for every single case, but at least in general terms, the Bible tells us it was in response to sin. So once again, when we face a story like this where God does something that maybe we wouldn't have expected, right? God does the unexpected. Um at least here we maybe we so we need to adjust our beliefs of God and maybe recapture a bit of a sense of awe at the fact that God is destroying sin. Um awe is kind of this this strange word. The word aweful has changed meaning throughout history. It used to be to mean simply full of awe, inspiring awe. Now, today, if we say something is awful, it's negative, right? It's very it's terrible. But people used to speak of the awful mercy of God, right? The the awful grace of God, which is not negative, it's the grace that inspires awe. And if nothing else, this story of the flood can inspire awe in the face of the creator who is fully within his right to destroy sin. You know, if you remember the uh worship series that we did recently with uh with Jake, um, we had a theme and a verse that we could came back to a lot where we offer God acceptable worship with reverence and awe, right? For our God is a consuming fire. That was in Hebrews chapter 12. Uh similarly, when uh in the book of Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah has a vision of God, right? So the holiness of God with the angels worshiping, and he has that vision, and immediately, what does he do? He gets humbled by his sense of inadequacy, his sense of insecurity. I am in the presence of holiness and I am undone. He says, Who is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts. So there's a sense that we are humbled and our sinful condition should humble us in the face of a holy God, and a story like this. So, is that it? That's the end, like we should be terrified of God and just dread in his presence? Not quite, because it's not the end of the story. Um, let's go back to Noah and what happens after the flood? Well, this is when the waters recede, and this is where we're going to look at the rainbow. Then God said to Noah, Go out from the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons' wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, birds and animals, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may swarm on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth. So they get out of the ark, and we get this picture of a rebirth, right? With Noah, humanity gets a second chance. Clouds are cleared, the sun reappears, and we get a chance to start again on the right foot. It's a great picture of the hope that we have received in Jesus. That you can be born again, Jesus said, right? And he said, unless you're born again, you won't see the kingdom of God, but you can turn from your sins, come to Christ, and be born again, have that second chance. Paul says, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation, right? That's really the visual we have of Noah coming out of the ark. This is new creation. Let's start over. And you even have Peter in the New Testament who is using Noah's story as an image of salvation that we have. He says that the waters are a picture of baptism. He says, God's patience waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him. So when Peter is saying baptism saves you, he's not saying like there's something magical about the water that when you touch it, that's it, you're saved. He's talking about baptism as a general description of the full conversion experience. Repent, believe, and be baptized is kind of the slogan in the book of Acts, right? Repent, believe in Jesus and be baptized, and you will be saved. So there's this imagery of the waters of the flood being the waters of baptism, out of which we come out with a new life. In church history, by the way, the uh the image of the Ark of Noah has been used a number of times uh very early on as an imagery for salvation in Christ. And there's this strange formula that has been used by early Christians. They were saying extra ecclesiam nulla salus. That's Latin, and it means outside of the church there is no salvation. And they said the church is the ark, so you need to get on the ark to be saved. Now, outside of the church there's no salvation can get you into trouble if you say that the church is just your organization, right? Um that's actually a difficulty that the Orthodox and the Catholics face because they each claim that only them are the true church. So then all of a sudden that slogan means like if unless you're a Catholic or unless you're unorthodox, then there's no salvation, which is kind of thorny. But if you take the church like the Bible takes the church as the body of Christ, then that slogan becomes true. Outside of the church, which is the body of Christ, outside of Christ, there is no salvation. So the church as the Ark of Noah is a great imagery to think of. You outside of the Ark, there is destruction. You get in the church by believing in Jesus, and you are saved. So we see the rainbow then that God is bringing in that story, uh, and he uses it as a sign of the new covenant that he gives to human beings. Uh the text goes like this: I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off from the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. And 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 generation. I have 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 is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you, and every living creature and of all flesh. And the waters shall never again come of uh become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth. God said to Noah, This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth. Note the good news here. Um God says, I pledge to not destroy all flesh again. He doesn't say you won't ever be sinful again. He just pledges to give mercy in the face of sin. Right? And we're all sinners, and it's God who decides to extend mercy anyway in Christ to us. Do you think that Noah deserved to be saved in that story? It's a trick question, and I failed. I remember this is a core memory in the conversation with my wife. Um, many years ago, we were discussing that story, and I was you know, fresh out of seminary, full of my Bible uh knowledge and theological points to make, and I was trying to drive the point that we are saved by grace, right? That we're all sinners and that God decides to save us by grace in the face of our sin. And so I told my wife, you know, like frankly, Noah was chosen because God is great, uh God is merciful, uh, you know, he's no Noah was unrighteous, right? And my wife goes, Noah was righteous. I was like, No, Noah was a sinner too, and we're all sinners, and this is the good news that we're saved by grace. And she goes, Noah was righteous. And she reads, These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God, and Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. So that was humbling. Um and Noah was righteous in some sense, right? If we miss that part of the story, I think we're missing an element here that's important. Um, he did obey, right, uh, the commands of God to build a boat. Um, Josh in our teaching team was uh suggesting that we unpack this story in the style of uh newspaper headlines, right? What's your headline takeaway from the story of Noah? And he said, you know, newspapers could put their spin on the story and give you different headlines. So one could be mass catastrophe kills all. Another news headline could be Family Narrowly Escapes Climate Crisis. Uh yet another one, man steals animals for petting zoo. Um, but then one headline is quite true as well, and it's man who listens to God is saved. So God gave instructions, and if Noah didn't listen, then he will suffer the same destruction. He did well. Now, in my defense, and since my wife isn't yet on the stage to debate me, um let me offer a couple of pushbacks on the story here against Noah. Um I should hurry because she'll be back to play the keyboard in just a moment. For now, uh she's not defending herself. So I'll say two things. One, even our righteousness is of grace, right? I mean, Noah walked with God, it says, and we who believe in Christ are walking with God as well. But is that because we're better? Is that because we're more righteous? Whatever your view of free will and election is, and that can be debated another day, all Christians at least must agree that we walk with God, we chose God because he first chose us, and we love him because he first loved us. All right, so that's our view of righteousness, and we should not lose that of sight. And then I have one question for righteous Noah. What's the first thing he did when he came out of the boat? Let's read. Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japhet took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father's nakedness. So, yes, first thing he gets out, makes a vineyard, and gets drunk. But we get another great visual of what God does to us in Christ, with those that story of, yes, there's one son who points out the nakedness and tells others, but then you have the two other sons who walk backwards to not look at the nakedness, take a blanket and just cover him. So this is a wonderful visual of Christ covering our sins, that he is not saving us because we're sinless, he's saving us by covering all of our sins. Um and the way he did that is on the cross where he took himself the penalty. Right? This is a bit of a it's a bit of a cute uh visual that was given to me by a preacher alike, but he did say, like, look at the bow that uh God put in the sky. If it's an actual bow, where is it pointing at? He's saying it's pointing at himself, right? Um so Christ took the penalty, he took the death for himself that we might be saved, and that's a nice visual with the rainbow that God is taking on the penalty for himself. He took our punishment in the person of Jesus Christ. So, what do we make of the uh unfiltered story? See, I told you my wife would come to correct me, so um I think the first thing that we need to take from this story of destruction is that we see God doing something radical that we may not have expected, and we need to adjust our view of God based upon what he does. Make room for that in your view of God. Sometimes the the English phrase that I love is put that in your pipe and smoke it. So that's what we do with those tough stories. Um, we do have to adjust our model of God. And then, second, we look at the destruction of the sinful humanity, and we get a strong sense of the destruction that comes with sin. Our sin today is covered by Christ, but sin has consequences, and we should develop a God-inspired horror at the consequences of sin. And because of the holiness of God, we approach Him with uh reverence and awe, and we turn from our sin. And then finally, with all of that destruction, I think we should see that the darkness of the suffering that takes place here magnifies the light of God's grace, that we are being spared from the consequences of sin, and that we are forgiven for we who believe in Christ. We see the terrible condemnation that we could have received for our sin, and directly we know the magnitude of the grace that we have received in Christ instead. So, if you're not on the ark today, the directive is very straightforward. Get on board, get on the ark, repent of your sins, believe in Jesus, and you will be saved. And if you're already on the ark, uh then just know that it's not the end of the story. Uh, if you are in Christ and you know that the flood is coming and that uh you will be saved, um, that's not also the end of the story either, because after 150 days there will be a new creation. Right? So we are waiting for Christ to save us fully, and that we need to be prepared to be with him in this new creation that we shall rejoice in. He's making something new and you'll be part of it. Amen. Alright, let's pray. Father, I give you thanks that uh we get to be told who you are and what you do when we would expect you to be exactly how you are and when we wouldn't expect it. That we get to make place for you being awesome, full of awe, in ways that we don't anticipate, that you change our minds and that you change our hearts, Lord. That we are confronted with the consequences of sin and the joy it is to be forgiven in Christ. I pray that you join our hearts by your Holy Spirit to constantly repent and trust in you and find joy in our salvation.

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In Jesus' name. Amen.

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Thank you for listening to the Mana Church Stafford Podcast. If you would like to connect with us, you can find us on the web at manastafford.church or download the Mana Church app to listen to our new episodes as they become available. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast. We would also love to meet you in person. If you are local, our services take place each Sunday at 10 a.m. We pray you have an amazing week, and we'll see you next time.