Speaker 1: We are in the middle of our series.
Speaker 1: We're calling it how Did we Get here?
Speaker 1: I want to.
Speaker 1: We've got this nice, awesome banner so we've got to pull it out so you can see it and be impressed.
Speaker 1: So, like the primary story I've said this before in the Hebrew Bible is the story of the Exodus.
Speaker 1: The people of the Hebrew people, the people of God, find themselves enslaved in Egypt for hundreds of years in the book of Exodus it's actually one of my favorite books and then they cry out to God like God, rescue us.
Speaker 1: And so God hears the cries of the people and he goes and rescues them.
Speaker 1: This is the story of the Bible.
Speaker 1: In fact, this becomes a paradigm or like a framing story for lots of other stories in the Bible.
Speaker 1: So frequently they would describe the Hebrew people God is the God who liberates, who sets us free from our enslavement, the things that enslave us.
Speaker 1: And so that's how this story is kind of framed, as God's liberator.
Speaker 1: But it raises the question how did they get in Egypt?
Speaker 1: How did they end up in Egypt as slaves, and why were they slaves for several hundreds of years?
Speaker 1: What happened?
Speaker 1: How'd they get there?
Speaker 1: And so to understand, they have to rewind one entire book back to Genesis 1 and read Genesis, and Genesis goes from the beginning all the way through to the last chapter and kind of ends with them ending up in slavery in Egypt.
Speaker 1: So here we are in our story.
Speaker 1: How did we get here?
Speaker 1: And last week we unpacked a bit of the Cain and Abel story.
Speaker 1: Remember, cain and Abel were the two brothers, the two sons of Adam and Eve, and they bring their offerings to God and God prefers Abel's offering over Cain's.
Speaker 1: We don't really know why.
Speaker 1: It's just one of the sad I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's sad, I guess it's sad Tragic use of the Bible.
Speaker 1: But Cain doesn't handle it well.
Speaker 1: He becomes upset and he doesn't manage his emotions well.
Speaker 1: And so he, his brother, and then God asks him hey, where's your brother, cain?
Speaker 1: And then Cain says am I my brother's keeper?
Speaker 1: And God's like yeah, you are your brother's keeper, where's your brother?
Speaker 1: And then his blood cries out to God from the ground and God hears the cries of his people and those who are being oppressed, and and uh, and he, you know, and he does something about it.
Speaker 1: So then then Cain, because of what happens, he's left to wander the earth, we're told in the text and he's afraid.
Speaker 1: He says, god, don't let me wander out there.
Speaker 1: There's people out there and they're going to kill me.
Speaker 1: And so God, with an act of grace, he marks him on his head with I did a cross.
Speaker 1: It probably wasn't a cross, but he marks him with something and he protects him while he's out there wandering but, and he protects him while he's out there wandering around.
Speaker 1: But it raises the question and I raised this in my email this week so, if you got that, who are these people?
Speaker 1: Who's out there?
Speaker 1: It seems like there's people that are out there that are not Adam and Eve, not even Adam and Eve's sons or daughters.
Speaker 1: We know about Cain and Abel.
Speaker 1: They actually have a third son named Seth, who replaces Abel.
Speaker 1: And then there's these other people that live out there outside the garden east of Eden.
Speaker 1: And who are they and how do we make sense of that?
Speaker 1: Well, just quickly, let this marinate or simmer for a minute if you haven't heard this before.
Speaker 1: But I would say this this Bible is probably not an explicit explanation of the scientific origins of humanity, so it's okay that there's other people out there that just don't get mentioned in the story, because this story, really, we would do better to read it as like a paradigmatic story of humanity and our estrangement from each other, our estrangement from God and even our the fissure of relationship between us and the creation.
Speaker 1: So these stories are deeply and profoundly true in that way, but they're probably not to be read like some kind of deep scientific or historic document on the origins of the human species.
Speaker 1: And so if you're in the room and you're a scientist or like you, like science and you're trying to reconcile how do I reconcile science and theology it can be done.
Speaker 1: We have to just read the text properly and how it's supposed to be read.
Speaker 1: And so Cain then goes out there and God protects him from this, from all these people, and he marks him with this mark of grace.
Speaker 1: And then things begin to get a bit out of hand.
Speaker 1: So today we do the Noah story, and the Noah story opens by and you heard Betty read it this way it said that God looks at all of the creation.
Speaker 1: This is just a couple chapters later in the story.
Speaker 1: So you have Adam and Eve, have Cain and Abel, and then you have a whole bunch of things.
Speaker 1: And then chapter six, god looks at the creation and sees it's all corrupt.
Speaker 1: Everybody's wicked.
Speaker 1: Their hearts are evil, everyone's bent towards doing the wrong things and injustice and corruption, and like you're, like what in the world happened between chapter four and chapter six, like Like everything you know?
Speaker 1: Just kind of like started on fire.
Speaker 1: It's wild.
Speaker 1: And so then God sends this flood and Noah on the ark.
Speaker 1: You probably know the story and here's the thing too the more familiar we are with a story like, the more we've heard it, the harder it is for us to really see what it's really about.
Speaker 1: So this morning I want to unpack this story briefly and offer a different way of thinking about Noah and the ark story.
Speaker 1: Is that fair, okay?
Speaker 1: So I got to let you know.
Speaker 1: I drew my own slides again today.
Speaker 1: Are you ready for this?
Speaker 1: Just remember, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I didn't go to artist school, artistry school, I went to the school for theology.
Speaker 1: So bear with me.
Speaker 1: But here's my title slide.
Speaker 1: I've titled my sermon.
Speaker 1: Why Would God Do that?
Speaker 1: Save the whales, thank you.
Speaker 1: That was my wife's idea.
Speaker 1: I go hey, we should put a flag on Noah's ark.
Speaker 1: And what could it say?
Speaker 1: That would be funny.
Speaker 1: She goes save the whales.
Speaker 1: Yes, thank you, katie.
Speaker 1: Why would God do that?
Speaker 1: Because here's the thing about this story.
Speaker 1: If we're honest, this story's messed up, it's crazy.
Speaker 1: Now, when I was younger, I always sort of inherited or caught this interpretation that goes like this, and you might have heard this interpretation hey kids, because we love telling this story to kids for some reason.
Speaker 1: Hey kids, you better obey God, if not you might get drowned.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, since these kids are furiously trying to obey you know, and in fact we like paint these stories in this mural on kids' nursery room walls.
Speaker 1: I'm like, why do we do that?
Speaker 1: If you've done that, just forgive me, I'm not trying to pick on you, but like this story is horrific.
Speaker 1: A ton of people die and it's like this violent.
Speaker 1: You know a crazy story and I was at a church down in lakeville big church and they have this paint on their kids, like in their kids learning area.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh no, they've done it.
Speaker 1: But I've always been told this is like a measure of punishment up by god on humans because they're just being idiots or whatever.
Speaker 1: In fact, I was in seminary years ago at bethel and I was like I love, love the Old Testament.
Speaker 1: Like if I could go back, I would just want to like be a Hebrew scholar or something like that, but it's too late for me now.
Speaker 1: I got to keep doing this, but so he so, so I'm in this class, it's like Old Testament one, and we're going through this story and he goes okay, any, and like he just read it like it was no big deal.
Speaker 1: And he's like any questions?
Speaker 1: And I got, I got lots of questions.
Speaker 1: So I go I look around, nobody says a thing.
Speaker 1: It's like crickets.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, I got a few questions.
Speaker 1: You guys are sadists.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1: So I raise my hand and I'm like, hey, this story seems about how we can read this story.
Speaker 1: And the prophet was like I said, oh, is there any other way to read it other than like punishment?
Speaker 1: He goes nope, get my things, then I'll just be on my way.
Speaker 1: I was like, seriously, like you're a professor of old testament.
Speaker 1: Nope, this is it and it's.
Speaker 1: This is god's punishment on humanity.
Speaker 1: It's no more evident now than it is in the cross a couple thousand years from now.
Speaker 1: So, oh, so he views the cross like just god's angry, you know, being poured out on jesus and in our stead.
Speaker 1: I'm like there's no other way to think about the cross.
Speaker 1: Nope, okay, fine, but I'm so frustrated so I go to the bathroom.
Speaker 1: Like an hour later, you know, I'm in there doing my thing and this guy walks in and one of my classmates is like dude, thanks for asking that question.
Speaker 1: I have those same questions.
Speaker 1: Where the heck were you 20 minutes ago when I was asking the professor you let me out there.
Speaker 1: I'm just out there drowning.
Speaker 1: So here's my question Is there another way to read this story?
Speaker 1: Don't say nope, because there is.
Speaker 1: I did a deep dive on this many years ago and I've done it many years since.
Speaker 1: There's lots of great, wonderful Jewish scholarship on this story and another way to read it.
Speaker 1: Here's how I want to propose.
Speaker 1: I'm going to begin with the end, so you know where I'm going.
Speaker 1: I think, rather than God just getting upset and just destroying everything and be like, well, no, okay, fine, here's a rainbow, I feel bad.
Speaker 1: Rather than that, I think it's actually a story of cleansing and rebirth and one of new creation.
Speaker 1: This story actually now gives me incredible hope that we can have new life, we can be made clean, we can be washed by the waters of God and brought to new life.
Speaker 1: That's what God is doing.
Speaker 1: So if you ask who is this God?
Speaker 1: This is the God who makes a way through the waters of chaos and provides a cleansing bath for all of us and for a little Uriah, and we can be made new and be made whole again.
Speaker 1: There can be a better tomorrow than there was today.
Speaker 1: So now I'm going to prove it to you.
Speaker 1: How did we get here?
Speaker 1: Everything is corrupt, god says.
Speaker 1: He looks at everything.
Speaker 1: It's all corrupt.
Speaker 1: Everyone's wicked, everyone's broken.
Speaker 1: They're all doing dumb things that's the original Hebrew dumb things.
Speaker 1: And God's like okay, what you know what?
Speaker 1: But he looks at everything.
Speaker 1: It's all corrupt.
Speaker 1: Well, again, in Genesis 1, 2, and 3, with the land, with the animals, there's plenty of food for everyone.
Speaker 1: I'll walk with you and I'll be with you.
Speaker 1: I'll be your God, you'll be my people this is later language, I'm using it and just trust in me.
Speaker 1: And things go wrong.
Speaker 1: They eat of the fruit, they hide, they're shamed and they're sowing fig leaves together, I assume, just frantically, trying to cover their shame and their guilt.
Speaker 1: And God comes to them and says where did you go?
Speaker 1: Where are you, where are you hiding?
Speaker 1: And he calls them out of hiding.
Speaker 1: He gives them real skin, you know.
Speaker 1: But there's this fissure.
Speaker 1: There's this, you know, this struggle of desire and domination between Adam and Eve.
Speaker 1: The land is going to have to be worked and it's going to be a struggle now and they're removed from the garden.
Speaker 1: There there's, there's this breaking between god and them, like this, relationally, there's all kinds of fissures and like sin seems like just a fracturing of relationships is what it kind of does.
Speaker 1: So they have their first boys, cain and abel.
Speaker 1: We have a farmer, we have a shepherd, and again cain becomes angry with god's displeasure of his own offering, so he kills his brother.
Speaker 1: He can't handle it, so he kills his brother and tries to hide it.
Speaker 1: And there's this breaking at the first murder and then just a couple of chapter.
Speaker 1: Actually, in the same chapter we read about a guy called lamech.
Speaker 1: Have you heard of lamech?
Speaker 1: He's in the bible.
Speaker 1: Here's the verse.
Speaker 1: So it says lamech is like bragging about killing a guy for hurting him or injuring him.
Speaker 1: So he says I've killed a man for a young man, for inj injuring me, and if Cain is avenged seven times, then I'll be avenged 77 times.
Speaker 1: Cain's got nothing on me, king Kong ain't got Okay, never mind Judgment day, Okay, anyway.
Speaker 1: So Lamech is out of his mind Whatever he's done, his murderous acts.
Speaker 1: This wanton, violent, murderous act is 77 times worse than what happened with Cain.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, things are starting to get out of control a little bit now and getting a little wild.
Speaker 1: Then you have this bizarre story about the sons of God like marrying and like relating, if you know what I'm saying, with women.
Speaker 1: Have you heard this story?
Speaker 1: So one chapter later, go ahead for me, Jesse.
Speaker 1: In actually the opening of 6, it says when the people began to multiply, so there's more people going around, there's lots of other folks that are having kids and the daughters were born to them.
Speaker 1: The sons of God, these divine beings.
Speaker 1: They're actually called Elohim also.
Speaker 1: They're called Elohim this is the name for, like you know, divine gods or angelic beings, something like that.
Speaker 1: These sons of God saw that these women were fair or delightful, the text says, and they took them.
Speaker 1: They took them as wives and they began to procreate with these women.
Speaker 1: Now, in the ancient world this was totally normal.
Speaker 1: You read all kinds of Greek and you know Roman mythology or other kinds of mythology and the divine beings.
Speaker 1: You know intermingling or having relations with humans, not a big deal.
Speaker 1: But in the Hebrew story this was forbidden.
Speaker 1: This was out of bounds for the Hebrew people.
Speaker 1: They were not supposed to have this kind of you know, sort of weird crisscross over between the divine and the humans.
Speaker 1: But this is what happens.
Speaker 1: By the way, notice what it says in the text the sons of God saw that they were delightful and they took them.
Speaker 1: Does that remind anybody of any other passages we just read a couple weeks ago?
Speaker 1: And they took them.
Speaker 1: Does that remind anybody of any other passages we just read a couple weeks ago?
Speaker 1: It says Eve saw the fruit was good or delightful and she took it.
Speaker 1: So we have a similar kind of thing here.
Speaker 1: And so they took it.
Speaker 1: And so now things are going to spiral out of control and they're going down the drain fast.
Speaker 1: And God sees the whole thing and it says it's corrupt, it's broken.
Speaker 1: By the way, in Genesis 1, god sees that the creation, what he's made, and he calls it very good.
Speaker 1: And now, just a couple of chapters later, this whole thing is like the house is on fire and people are.
Speaker 1: God sees it and he calls it corrupt.
Speaker 1: Now it's broken.
Speaker 1: So what is God to do?
Speaker 1: What's God god to do?
Speaker 1: What's god gonna do?
Speaker 1: This whole thing is spiraling out of control.
Speaker 1: In the text in genesis 6, verse 6, is that god is deeply troubled in his heart.
Speaker 1: He's sad.
Speaker 1: You know that god gets sad.
Speaker 1: God is deeply troubled in his heart, it tells us so.
Speaker 1: His response right away is not anger or it's like wanton violence.
Speaker 1: No, he's sad, he's deeply troubled.
Speaker 1: And if you're a parent, if you're a good parent, you know this.
Speaker 1: When your kids act like knuckleheads, sometimes it grieves your heart and God sees he's deeply troubled.
Speaker 1: What's he to do when the whole thing has already become destroyed?
Speaker 1: See, I would argue, it's not that God comes along and destroys it.
Speaker 1: Rather, it's that the whole thing has already been destroyed.
Speaker 1: It's actively being destroyed and God's like okay, what can we do to save this?
Speaker 1: How can I help push this thing forward?
Speaker 1: So it's like a potter Thanks to my friend Jack and Wendy who were sharing this analogy with me but a potter who's making a vase and he gets to the end and it's like it's got some holes in it and some air bubbles.
Speaker 1: Any potters in the house or any workers with clay, what do you call?
Speaker 1: What do you call those?
Speaker 1: A worker with clay?
Speaker 1: Whatever?
Speaker 1: Anyway, anybody make clay stuff.
Speaker 1: Potter, yeah, potter, okay, what do they do?
Speaker 1: What do you?
Speaker 1: You know it's got holes in it and there's air bubbles.
Speaker 1: You can't, you can't put it in the kiln, it'll, it'll, it'll ruin it.
Speaker 1: So you have to start over.
Speaker 1: You kind of, you kind of take it back down to its base form.
Speaker 1: This is what God does.
Speaker 1: See, god takes the creation and he sort of undoes it and makes it go backwards, almost in reverse, and he brings it back to its original shape, its formlessness, in order to start again.
Speaker 1: Here I'll show you.
Speaker 1: So the beginning.
Speaker 1: We have the primordial waters.
Speaker 1: Remember this in Genesis 1?
Speaker 1: Go ahead for me, jesse, I think I gotta.
Speaker 1: There's these.
Speaker 1: In the beginning, the God was in the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth, and there was, the earth was formless and void.
Speaker 1: Tohu vavo, remember that word?
Speaker 1: And the Spirit of God hovered over these primordial waters.
Speaker 1: This is called the Tehom.
Speaker 1: It's this abysmal, this abyss, this deep, dark waters of chaos, and it's sort of like this bizarre picture of this water.
Speaker 1: And in the Noah story, god brings the creation back to its original form of formlessness.
Speaker 1: He decreates or he uncreates the creation.
Speaker 1: By the way, this is a result of sin.
Speaker 1: You could say then that sin is an undoing of creation.
Speaker 1: When we engage in sin, or sin as like a larger cosmic force, sin is that which undoes the creation.
Speaker 1: Are you with me?
Speaker 1: It undoes our creative acts.
Speaker 1: It's the opposite of creativity.
Speaker 1: It degenerates things, it destroys things, takes them apart.
Speaker 1: So this is how Genesis 1 begins.
Speaker 1: And so Noah's there.
Speaker 1: Everyone's corrupt, actually, everyone's corrupted except for Noah and his family.
Speaker 1: The word Noah in the Hebrew is what you might think it is.
Speaker 1: It's the word noach, and noach means literally, means rest.
Speaker 1: So this man, his name's Noah.
Speaker 1: God comes along, sees Noah, he's like, hey, I'm going to return the world back to the way it was in the beginning, just to a primordial mess of water and chaos.
Speaker 1: I've got to start over kind of thing and cleanse all of the earth.
Speaker 1: And so he finds one guy in his family who's righteous, and it says that this guy, noah, he walks with God.
Speaker 1: Where have we heard that before Genesis 1 and 2.
Speaker 1: This guy might be something like a new Adam and God might be recreating or renewing or restarting this whole thing over.
Speaker 1: And so God allows the waters to come back and kind of have their way with the world.
Speaker 1: But he saves Noah, who walks with God.
Speaker 1: So he tells Noah hey, build an ark.
Speaker 1: I drew a picture.
Speaker 1: You want to see it?
Speaker 1: I think I have a picture there.
Speaker 1: It is, yeah, not bad, huh?
Speaker 1: Let's let that wash over you for a moment.
Speaker 1: That is a bear.
Speaker 1: It's a grizzly bear.
Speaker 1: Be careful, I know what you're thinking.
Speaker 1: That ark isn't big enough to house all those animals, but it is.
Speaker 1: It's like Mary Poppins' purse, so just trust the process.
Speaker 1: But it's called the Teva.
Speaker 1: Anyone know where else?
Speaker 1: There's only one other place that this word is used in the Hebrew Bible for Teva, which we call ark.
Speaker 1: It's in the Moses story.
Speaker 1: What's the Moses story about?
Speaker 1: Well, his mom, in order to save his life, puts him in a teva and sends him in the waters, and the teva saves his life.
Speaker 1: So this is maybe a story about being saved out of the waters of chaos, or something like this.
Speaker 1: By the way, it's made out of gopher wood, we're told, or cypress wood.
Speaker 1: I think gopher was a better interpretation.
Speaker 1: It's gopher wood, not badger wood wood.
Speaker 1: I think gopher wood is a better interpretation.
Speaker 1: It's gopher wood, not badger wood, not hawkeye wood, gopher wood, I'm just saying and so God has Noah and his family build this big boat, this ark, this thing made of wood.
Speaker 1: And where do you get wood?
Speaker 1: But from trees.
Speaker 1: So you got trees, you got water.
Speaker 1: The primordial water is coming back.
Speaker 1: You also have animals on board.
Speaker 1: They take two of some, seven of others on board and they live in harmony with the animals.
Speaker 1: So there's trees, there's harmony with animals.
Speaker 1: Noah's a guy who walks with god.
Speaker 1: There's enough food for everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is.
Speaker 1: This is eden're back in Eden.
Speaker 1: It's a floating Eden, and they're floating on top of the waters of chaos as the whole thing begins to go backwards.
Speaker 1: So here's the world as they saw.
Speaker 1: I want to show you.
Speaker 1: I drew this in a picture as well, so check this out.
Speaker 1: I think I have a picture of a Jesse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So remember the story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let that, let's just.
Speaker 1: But the story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let that, let's just.
Speaker 1: Tree grass.
Speaker 1: Can you see the apples on the tree?
Speaker 1: I was very proud of the apples.
Speaker 1: Okay, just see water, not water.
Speaker 1: So when God makes the world, he separates the waters above and the waters below.
Speaker 1: They thought the people in the ancient world that there was water above this dome that kept them.
Speaker 1: That kept the water at bay, if you will.
Speaker 1: And so there's water up there.
Speaker 1: That's why the sky was blue.
Speaker 1: And so God makes the world by separating waters and he makes a way for dry land.
Speaker 1: And then there's water up here, water below, and it's being kept away by this dome.
Speaker 1: In the Genesis story, when the rains begin, it says the floodgates or the windows of heaven open up and the water needs to pour back in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's creation going backwards, it's returning back to its primordial state, and this is the waters from the ground begin to rise up.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been in a rainstorm where the waters from the ground begin to rise up?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So there's this water, so it's all coming back together and it begins to return back to this original state where there's just water everywhere.
Speaker 1: And there's this floating ark, this teva.
Speaker 1: What is god doing?
Speaker 1: He's returning it all back and he's getting rid of all the things that are, that are contrary to the will of god, or or the the flourishing of life, those things which are destroying life.
Speaker 1: He's getting rid of and he's washing this whole thing clean.
Speaker 1: It's like a great bath for the whole earth in order to restart again.
Speaker 1: And the text tells us that God remembers Noah.
Speaker 1: After it rains for many days, god remembers Noah, he remembers his promise to Noah and he sends the ruach of God, the spirit of God, the wind of God, the breath of God, to blow and separate again the waters.
Speaker 1: So God now again separates the waters and dry land appears.
Speaker 1: They send a bird out and the bird finds an olive branch and brings it back.
Speaker 1: There's vegetation again.
Speaker 1: They, finally the art, comes to rest on this mountain and they release the animals, and the animals, the creatures, are back in the land again.
Speaker 1: And then God tells the humans, noah and his family, hey, be fruitful and multiply.
Speaker 1: Where have we heard that before?
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is how babies happen, right?
Speaker 1: Genesis 1.
Speaker 1: Now it's like a recreation of the creation.
Speaker 1: So you have Genesis 1, creation, genesis 6, an undoing of the creation.
Speaker 1: It goes backwards, back to how things were in Genesis 1.
Speaker 1: And then God starts again with a new Adam and a new Eve, a new family, new animals, new vegetation, new dry land.
Speaker 1: The spirit is still at work, doing things.
Speaker 1: He says hey, be fruitful and multiply.
Speaker 1: We're starting over.
Speaker 1: And, by the way, the ark comes to rest on this mountain in the seventh day Sorry, it's the seventh month, it's the 17th day of the seventh month, there's lots of sevens in this story and the ark comes to rest on this seventh, on the seven.
Speaker 1: Well, this ark is doing what God did in the creation narrative it's resting right there and the guy driving the boat, his name, is Noah, which means rest Noah.
Speaker 1: So God cleanses the earth.
Speaker 1: Jesus made water a sign of cleansing and of rebirth and the kingdom, baptism, is this purifying bath and cleansing and washing of all the things that are incompatible with the will of God and the love of God and the creation of God.
Speaker 1: There are things in us that are incompatible with the presence of God.
Speaker 1: I love what Thomas Merton says I don't know much about heaven, but I do know that not much of me will be there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1: There's some things to get out of us before we get there.
Speaker 1: But here's the story.
Speaker 1: There is hope.
Speaker 1: This story about water and cleansing and rebirth and Noah and his family and starting over.
Speaker 1: It's a new creation.
Speaker 1: And first Peter.
Speaker 1: So many years later, one of the apostles looks back on this story of Noah and he's like oh, yeah, yeah, that's a baptism, it's a washing away of all the sin and junk in our lives in order we can have new life.
Speaker 1: Peter calls this a baptism, the story of Noah's Ark.
Speaker 1: Yes, there is a better way to read that story than God's ticked off and he's going to kill everybody.
Speaker 1: No, god returns this thing back to its primordial state in order to start over and give new life.
Speaker 1: Back to its primordial state, in order to start over and give new life.
Speaker 1: Here's what I want you to leave with.
Speaker 1: You can have a better tomorrow.
Speaker 1: There is a way forward.
Speaker 1: And baptism, cleansing, rebirth, new life this is all part of it.
Speaker 1: Many years ago, me and Katie moved to Minnesota and from Colorado.
Speaker 1: I lived my whole life in Colorado and we started over and we wondered can we do this?
Speaker 1: Is it possible?
Speaker 1: Can we move across the country and kind of begin our lives again?
Speaker 1: It wasn't like anything terrible would happen.
Speaker 1: Those first 20-something years we were like we want to start over and we did it and I could not be more grateful.
Speaker 1: It was one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life and we moved here and now here we are with you people and we had two of our four kids here in Minnesota.
Speaker 1: We love it.
Speaker 1: We started over, started new, fresh and clean.
Speaker 1: I have a dear friend I've told the story before, but I love the story who, him and his wife, were married for many years and after many years of being married they were happily married, had two kids.
Speaker 1: It was discovered that one of them was being unfaithful in the marriage, like devastatingly unfaithful, and I remember me and Katie would talk with them and try to figure out what to say, how to counsel them, like there's no way they can survive this.
Speaker 1: Their marriage is might as well just blow it up and find somebody new.
Speaker 1: This is not going to work.
Speaker 1: But the husband's like no, no, I want to try and I'm like I'm a pastor, I should be saying yes, I don't know if this is possible, man, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I did say I go.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's the right thing to do, but I will be with you.
Speaker 1: And if I know nothing other than this, I know this about God God makes beautiful things out of our messes.
Speaker 1: So I know it is possible.
Speaker 1: And a year later, through tons of prayer and work and counseling and graphic honesty, we got invited to their house to renew their vows with them and they did it.
Speaker 1: They made it work.
Speaker 1: And it's been many years since then, but they've done it.
Speaker 1: They started anew and they washed the past away.
Speaker 1: Obviously there's consequences, no doubt, but there was new life on their side.
Speaker 1: I have another friend who was an alcoholic for over a decade, Couldn't get out of his own way.
Speaker 1: His wife begged him to stop, threatened to leave him if he didn't stop.
Speaker 1: And he didn't stop.
Speaker 1: He was invited to meeting after meeting, after meeting with AA and others, and comment and he wouldn't go.
Speaker 1: And then finally his wife said I'm leaving, I'm out.
Speaker 1: He said, fine, I'll go to a meeting.
Speaker 1: And after over a decade of struggling with alcoholism, he goes to a meeting and he goes to another meeting and he goes to another meeting, another one, another one, and he's been sober now for over 10 years on this side of that thing, just one day at a time.
Speaker 1: This morning we're going to invite you forward as we pray and sing and do some other stuff.
Speaker 1: I want to anoint you with water to remind you of this story, this story of cleansing and rebirth and new life and a man who walked with God, who was faithful, and the regeneration of the whole thing and God's deep grief over the way things have become, but his promise, his covenant, this rainbow, this whole thing to make life keep going and to make life flourish.
Speaker 1: And so we're going to be coming.
Speaker 1: If you want to, you don't have to, but you can come forward and after the offering, globe goes by just for sake of traffic, and we're going to anoint you with water and we're going to just I'm going to declare over you it'll be me, sonia, ben, I think, kirsten will have four stations I'm going to declare over you what I think is the deepest truth of the whole of the cosmos.
Speaker 1: I do, I'm convinced of it and I'm convinced, if you really were to absorb this, let it sink deep into your soul, it could change the way you live.
Speaker 1: It really could change it.
Speaker 1: So, as you come forward, I think, come forward with your hands open.
Speaker 1: You don't have to literally, but like, just come forward with an open heart and allow these words I think are that are true to sink deep into you and allow them to take root.
Speaker 1: And be reminded, too, of your baptism.
Speaker 1: If you're in the room, you've been baptized.
Speaker 1: Great, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: Remember it.
Speaker 1: So, uriah, in 10 years we'll be telling him dude, remember when you got baptized, you know, it's good to Remember it.
Speaker 1: So, uriah, in 10 years we'll be telling him dude, remember when you got baptized, it's good to remember it and be cleansed again.
Speaker 1: So, as we anoint you, remember the Noah story, remember your own baptism, hear these deep truths, or the deep truth that I think can change your life, and also be cleansed and be baptized.
Speaker 1: Live baptized this day and remember that you can start again, that the mercies of God are new every morning, and so may this be a story of your own new creation.
Speaker 1: Let's sing.