SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning, Grace Church, and good morning to all of you who are watching online.
SPEAKER_00: I am so grateful to be back here giving you the word this morning that God has laid on my heart.
SPEAKER_00: Before I proceed, I'd just like to say a public word of thanksgiving to God our Father, who has supplied us with faithful men who can teach the Word of God.
SPEAKER_00: Pastor Tim, Pastor Mike, Pastor David, Pastor Rob, the last.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, seriously.
SPEAKER_00: If you are not aware, it's unusual to be in a church with such gifted leaders who can carry the word faithfully.
SPEAKER_00: And I just praise God for them.
SPEAKER_00: They did an amazing job walking us through Nehemiah.
SPEAKER_00: This morning we're going to begin a new teaching series called Obedient Faith.
SPEAKER_00: And it had a pretty dramatic intro video, wouldn't you think?
SPEAKER_00: You know, obedient faith is far less dramatic than sometimes the reels that we're going to watch or the stories that we're going to hear.
SPEAKER_00: It's more about a daily walk with Jesus, where we're faithful not just in these big dramatic moments, but we're faithful in the smaller moments of life.
SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the day, in the next couple of weeks, what I really want you to grasp and hold a part of your heart is that because God is faithful, okay, that's the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: Because God is faithful, not because we're faithful, but because God is faithful, we can obey him with confidence.
SPEAKER_00: That's really what we're talking about.
SPEAKER_00: Obedient faith is having confidence in God's faithful ability to do more than you can ask or imagine.
SPEAKER_00: And that when he does ask something of you, because of who he is, because of how he has displayed himself as faithful to you throughout his life and throughout your life, you can say yes to whatever God asks.
SPEAKER_00: Confidently.
SPEAKER_00: Now, confidence is a unique attribute.
SPEAKER_00: Despite what some people think, nobody is really born confident.
SPEAKER_00: Confidence is something you have to grow into.
SPEAKER_00: It's a learned attribute as an individual.
SPEAKER_00: And if you want to do some research on this, psychologists have discovered there's about four steps that have to happen in order for somebody to grow in confidence.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing that has to happen is you have to have a little bit of courage.
SPEAKER_00: Because if you're going to have a new experience, you have to have the courage to try something new.
SPEAKER_00: And so it doesn't matter if you're trying a new menu item at a restaurant or if you're going to go on a new vacation to a destination you've never been, it takes a small degree of courage to say, I'm going to try to do something I've never done before.
SPEAKER_00: Once you have the experience, whether you are successful or whether or not you fail at the experience is irrelevant, you've learned something in the process.
SPEAKER_00: And so you have the courage to try something new, you have a learned experience, and the more you put your hand to that new experience, the more competent you become.
SPEAKER_00: And you grow in your skill sets.
SPEAKER_00: And as your competence grows, your confidence grows.
SPEAKER_00: And so here's what confidence is.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to put it on the screen, although it might have been on there a little bit earlier.
SPEAKER_00: Confidence is trust that you or someone else can do something built through repeated evidence of success.
SPEAKER_00: All right, it's a repeated evidence of success that gives you the confidence that something can happen.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this past weekend, I drove 2,800 miles in six days from Pennsylvania to the Northwoods of Minnesota to celebrate my in-laws' 50th wedding anniversary, and it was a really special experience for our family.
SPEAKER_00: But it was a lot of driving.
SPEAKER_00: All the way there, all the way back, and as we were on the road with a lot of time on the road, I had uh oh man, hours to observe other drivers.
SPEAKER_00: And my confidence in our ability as a society to navigate the highway shrank a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: But what is unique is my son was sitting in the passenger seat, and as we were driving down the highway after about 40 hours of being in the car together, he says, Dad, I think I can drive on the highway.
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00: Those are big words for somebody who's never done this before.
SPEAKER_00: What exactly gives you the confidence to make you think you can do highway driving?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I began to think about it, right?
SPEAKER_00: He was getting a lot of observable experience.
SPEAKER_00: When you sit 40 hours in the front seat of a car, mostly on the highway, you see how traffic patterns work, you see how people get on and off, you understand how trucks move, how cars move, you have a lot of observable experience.
SPEAKER_00: But he has other experience.
SPEAKER_00: He's been riding a bike for the better part of 10 years of his life.
SPEAKER_00: He's ridden four-wheelers and dirt bikes, and he's been out on those kinds of vehicles.
SPEAKER_00: And so between his limited automotive experience and his bicycle experience, and now his highway experience, he has enough confidence to believe that he could drive on the highway.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's great.
SPEAKER_00: But that's how that works.
SPEAKER_00: Repeated experience with enough success begins to build confidence, trust that you can do something, or someone else can do it.
SPEAKER_00: Now, do you remember the first time you drove on the highway?
SPEAKER_00: If you're a driver, remember that first time?
SPEAKER_00: First time I got out on the highway, I had a manual transmission vehicle, and all I could think to myself was don't stall, don't stall, don't stall.
SPEAKER_00: It was a little bit of a nerve-wracking experience, but as I was successful in my experience, I began to drive again and again and again and again, and as I've now put on hundreds of thousands of miles, my confidence in my own driving ability is great.
SPEAKER_00: My confidence in your driving ability, I mean, remains to be seen.
SPEAKER_00: But my confidence has grown through my repeated experience, and the same thing has happened for you.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the danger of the road is still the same.
SPEAKER_00: None of that changed.
SPEAKER_00: The dangers are the same, the laws are still the same, but the experience and the success has grown our confidence.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, this is how obedient faith works with God.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same exact process.
SPEAKER_00: It takes a little bit of courage to have a new experience with God.
SPEAKER_00: It takes a little bit of courage to say yes when he's asking you to be obedient.
SPEAKER_00: But when you have the courage to say yes and you have an experience with God and you see his faithfulness, your confidence in God's ability to be at work in your life and in this world grows.
SPEAKER_00: And the more you're obedient, the more competent you become in obedience to God.
SPEAKER_00: It's a strange thing to think that we can become competent in our obedience, but you can be.
SPEAKER_00: There are certain things right now in your life where maybe you're disobedient or you know you're not fully obedient.
SPEAKER_00: But the more obedient you become, the more disciplined you become in your obedience, the more competent you become in that process, and the more trust you will have in God's ability to be at work in your life through your obedience.
SPEAKER_00: There are so many promises of God, commands of God, decrees of God, all throughout his written word that he invites you to say yes to.
SPEAKER_00: And there are experiences then where the Holy Spirit Himself will lead you, aside from just what's in Scripture, but personal matters in your life, where he will lead you to also be obedient into areas that are maybe a little uncomfortable or unknown or foreign, but as you say yes, you'll have the experience of God's faithfulness and your trust in his ability to be at work in your life and in the world continues to grow.
SPEAKER_00: It's so important that we become people of obedient faith.
SPEAKER_00: That when God says go, you say yes.
SPEAKER_00: As our experience with God continues to increase, and we understand the depth of his faithfulness, that is what will give us the ability as individuals and as a church to actually do world-changing, incredibly faith-driven tasks unlike the world has ever seen.
SPEAKER_00: Similar to Noah being asked to build an ark.
SPEAKER_00: You see, Noah was a man of incredible faith.
SPEAKER_00: He walked faithfully with God for the first 500 years of his life.
SPEAKER_00: And what you're gonna see in the story of Noah is a story of one man's faithful obedience.
SPEAKER_00: And Noah's story is so similar to our story in many, many ways.
SPEAKER_00: Because God's people, you, me, Noah, we have always lived surrounded by scoffers and mockers and disbelievers, who, when they see you being obedient to the commands of God, they scratch their head and wonder, why would you do this?
SPEAKER_00: Why would you ever choose to follow after God when He's gonna limit you from doing all the things you really, really want to do?
SPEAKER_00: Why would you do that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's because we understand something that the lost world doesn't, is that our experience with God proves that his plan is always better than our own individual plan.
SPEAKER_00: Now we live in a world filled with people who want to have no experience with God.
SPEAKER_00: They try to ignore him, they try to put him away, but we also live in a world with filled with people seeking deep experiences with God.
SPEAKER_00: And so, no matter who you are, if you don't want anything to do with God or you're somebody who's desperately seeking after God, everybody, and I promise everybody in the world is gonna have at least one of two experiences with God.
SPEAKER_00: The first experience you're gonna have, if you're somebody who pushes God away and wants nothing to do with him, is you will experience God one day in the form of God's great judgment upon your life.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the way you want to experience God, but it is absolutely an experience that every single person will have that pushes God away.
SPEAKER_00: But for those who pursue God closely, chase after him, and come under the blood of Jesus Christ, you'll have a very different experience with God.
SPEAKER_00: On that day, you'll have the experience of salvation from God's oncoming judgment.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we see in the story of Noah.
SPEAKER_00: It's God using Noah to be obedient and faithful, to proclaim a way of salvation to a lost and corrupt world, that if they just got on the boat, they could be spared God's great judgment.
SPEAKER_00: And yet what we see is many people, in fact, most people, ignore the boat because they don't want to submit their life over to God.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what you need to uh I want you to kind of grasp about judgment, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Judgment is a terrible thing for those who are under it.
SPEAKER_00: Judgment is a terrible, terrible thing for those who are under it.
SPEAKER_00: And the the pity of it all is that they have no idea that they are under the judgment of God.
SPEAKER_00: They're oblivious to it.
SPEAKER_00: They live ignorantly as if their own little world is exactly what they want it to be, and all the outcomes of life are what they are able to make it.
SPEAKER_00: But the entire time, there's an impending reality in their future that is coming, which is the terrible judgment of God.
SPEAKER_00: We see an example of this judgment in Genesis chapter 6, verses 5 through 7.
SPEAKER_00: It says, The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.
SPEAKER_00: So the Lord said, I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race that I have created, for I regret that I have made them.
SPEAKER_00: The first significant response that you see is that God regretted making human beings.
SPEAKER_00: Regret's an emotion that many of us are familiar with.
SPEAKER_00: We do something, and that thing has a consequence.
SPEAKER_00: And as a result, there's regret that fills our life because of our choice or the choices that were made for us.
SPEAKER_00: As a result, God's heart takes on a different facet.
SPEAKER_00: In his regret, he's deeply troubled.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is language of grief, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: When you read Genesis 6, 5 through 7, this is not the language of a cruel God and passively looking at his creation saying, I made a mistake, I'm just gonna wipe him out.
SPEAKER_00: This is the language of a loving God who's deeply troubled by the decisions of the people that he created.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to remember when God created Adam and Eve, just go back a couple chapters, he walked with them in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: He had interpersonal relationship with them.
SPEAKER_00: He, when Adam was created, God said, This is very good.
SPEAKER_00: So at a period of a couple of chapters and a few thousand years, you go from God saying mankind is very good, the pinnacle of his creation, to God saying, I regret that I ever made this species.
SPEAKER_00: I am troubled.
SPEAKER_00: My heart is troubled that this pinnacle of my creation could veer so far off course.
SPEAKER_00: And in his grief, competing with the need for justice, he declares there's going to be judgment.
SPEAKER_00: What I learn about God in this passage is a unique thing.
SPEAKER_00: Judgment is not God's first response to sin.
SPEAKER_00: He could have judged humans right away.
SPEAKER_00: The first time they sinned, he could have destroyed Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_00: He could have started over from scratch.
SPEAKER_00: Judgment is never God's first response to sin, but it is his grief-driven, justice-required last resort.
SPEAKER_00: The judgment of God is the last resort that God goes to.
SPEAKER_00: It is necessary, it is coming, it is a reality of life, but it is not something God purposely chooses first.
SPEAKER_00: He chooses grace, mercy, and compassion first.
SPEAKER_00: But the lie of the world in which you live is that God is some grumpy old guy sitting on a mountain looking down, judging the individuals for all their bad decisions.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, judgment and justice are a reality of life, but that's not God's first response.
SPEAKER_00: If God's first response was judgment and justice, we wouldn't be here.
SPEAKER_00: The fact that you're breathing this morning, that you're sitting in this room, is simply a reality that God has mercy and compassion not just on the unbeliever or on the believer, but also on the unbeliever.
SPEAKER_00: We are allowed to continue living and breathing by God's mercy and mercy alone.
SPEAKER_00: He always gets to it last, never first.
SPEAKER_00: But here's a tension of life.
SPEAKER_00: Because we understand judgment.
SPEAKER_00: And many people who are unbelievers will look at God and say, God's a judge of God, God hates people.
SPEAKER_00: Why would I ever want to submit my life over to God?
SPEAKER_00: And yet they're very hypocritical in their understanding of judgment.
SPEAKER_00: Because there's a tension about judgment, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Every single person in this room, you want judgment for others, but you want mercy for yourselves.
SPEAKER_00: This is the reality of judgment.
SPEAKER_00: Every single person in this room and watching online in the world, you want judgment for others, but you want mercy for yourselves.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give you a scenario.
SPEAKER_00: You're driving down the highway.
SPEAKER_00: This is maybe not a real scenario, maybe it is a real scenario, but you're driving down the highway.
SPEAKER_00: And as you're driving down the highway, some bozo cuts you off.
SPEAKER_00: And as that guy cuts you off, all you can think of inside your heart is where is the police officer?
SPEAKER_00: I wish I could materialize a cop or a state trooper right out of thin air.
SPEAKER_00: That guy needs to be arrested for reckless endangerment.
SPEAKER_00: Does he not know that I got five kids in the back of my car?
SPEAKER_00: This is ridiculous.
SPEAKER_00: But there's no police officer around, so you settle for calling him an idiot in other various words.
SPEAKER_00: And just maybe, as you're calling down judgment on this man about 10 minutes later, you look in your rearview mirror and there's some red and blue lights, and you realize you're being pulled over for going 78 and a 65, and all you can think to yourself is this please have mercy on me, police officer.
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't, I was just distracted.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't, I wasn't trying to break the law.
SPEAKER_00: I was just going a little.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Why are you pulling me over right now?
SPEAKER_00: Just please have mercy on me.
SPEAKER_00: And then what really happens after that, if you want to dig down deep, is it's unjust that I'm getting the ticket.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't deserve this.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a law-abiding citizen 99.999% of the time.
SPEAKER_00: It was just a mistake.
SPEAKER_00: The cops are wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: The human heart is so quick, and I mean so quick, to call down judgment on others.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because we understand the need for judgment, because judgment restores or brings about consequence that restores righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: We understand that judgment's necessary, but when it comes to us, we don't believe it's necessary at all.
SPEAKER_00: We need mercy.
SPEAKER_00: God is so good because God gives you exactly what you want first.
SPEAKER_00: God gives you mercy.
SPEAKER_00: That's his disposition.
SPEAKER_00: He gives you mercy at the beginning, and he gives you so much time to find restoration and repentance, but eventually judgment is coming.
SPEAKER_00: Because sin and justice cannot eternally exist in the same world where you have a God who is a God of love and a God of righteousness and justice.
SPEAKER_00: God is holy, and in his holiness, he is compassionate and merciful and loving and kind, and he invites everybody in to experience his compassion and his mercy.
SPEAKER_00: But he is holy, and his holiness demands righteousness, and righteousness is only brought about through judgment.
SPEAKER_00: And so if we live in a world that says God is judgy first, the world is wrong.
SPEAKER_00: God is not judgy first.
SPEAKER_00: He is compassionate, he is loving, he is merciful, he cares about his creation, but yet he also cares about his holiness and he cares about righteousness, and he's going to set right that which is wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Now in Genesis chapter 6, the world was very, very, very wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Now it says this in Genesis 6, 11.
SPEAKER_00: Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and it was full of violence.
SPEAKER_00: Man.
SPEAKER_00: The earth was corrupt in God's sight and it was full of violence.
SPEAKER_00: God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways.
SPEAKER_00: And so God said to Noah, I'm going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's interesting about this word, the word violence.
SPEAKER_00: The earth is filled with violence.
SPEAKER_00: The Hebrew word violence is the word Hamas.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you, if you were paying attention to what's happening in the world, you know that the word Hamas is also the name of a terrorist organization over in the Middle East.
SPEAKER_00: And Hamas has been in the news quite a bit for their recent terror attacks against the nation of Israel about two years ago, on citing a long-going war now.
SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of violence that God is talking about that filled the earth at this time.
SPEAKER_00: It was a perpetuating place of fear and violence and corruption, and it was ruthless.
SPEAKER_00: The geopolitical states of the world were all condoning and pursuing violence against one another at the highest levels.
SPEAKER_00: And as the violence exceeded God's patience, he declared that he was now going to bring about justice.
SPEAKER_00: Now, judgment is coming.
SPEAKER_00: But here's where we see God's mercy and compassion come into full view.
SPEAKER_00: Judgment is postponed as faithful people are obedient to their faithful tasks.
SPEAKER_00: As you get down to Genesis chapter 6, verses 8 and 9, it begins this way.
SPEAKER_00: But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: One man in a corrupt world found favor in the eyes of God.
SPEAKER_00: Noah was a righteous man.
SPEAKER_00: He was blameless among the people of his time and he walked faithfully with God.
SPEAKER_00: Man, I love those two words.
SPEAKER_00: But Noah.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, you all need to give some thanksgiving to God that he found favor in Noah.
SPEAKER_00: Because if he did not, if Noah was not a faithful man, again, we wouldn't be here.
SPEAKER_00: But Noah was a faithful man, righteous and blameless.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean he was sinless.
SPEAKER_00: Noah wasn't sinless.
SPEAKER_00: He was simply a man who was faithful to obey and walk with God regularly.
SPEAKER_00: He was aware of what God's desire was for humanity, and he sought to orient his life in obedience with God's revealed will at the time.
SPEAKER_00: And as a result, God chose Noah to become the instrument through which God postponed his judgment on earth.
SPEAKER_00: You know, when God showed up and said, Noah, I want you to build an ark, if Noah had even one moment of faithlessness and said, God, no, I don't think so, judgment would have happened that day.
SPEAKER_00: The earth would have broken open, the waters would have come up, the rain would have poured down, all of humanity, including Noah, would have been wiped from the face of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: But because Noah was faithful to God, and Noah was obedient to God, God postponed his judgment on humanity for a hundred and twenty years.
SPEAKER_00: The amount of time that it took Noah to complete the ark, and if you look at 2 Peter chapter 2, verse 5, it confirms that those 120 years, Noah was a preacher of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, he was building the ark as a symbol to the lost world that if they simply repented and turned their life back to following God, God would delay his judgment perpetually.
SPEAKER_00: He was a preacher of righteousness, and the ark was a symbol of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: If you just were to repent and follow God again.
SPEAKER_00: But the world did not.
SPEAKER_00: And so every day that Noah went to work on building his ark, every time he picked up a hammer, every time he got some more gopher wood, every time he used pack animals to draw stuff over to the construction site, and he began putting it together, all of those were tiny acts of faithfulness that postponed God's judgment in the world as he was giving people a chance to see what was happening and to repent.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this theme is all throughout Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: All throughout Scripture, you see that God delays final judgment while his people are obediently at work.
SPEAKER_00: That's what God Does.
SPEAKER_00: God delays final judgment while its people are obediently at work.
SPEAKER_00: And this is not like some small aside in theological realities.
SPEAKER_00: This is the statement of the gospel mission that we've been given.
SPEAKER_00: As long as the church is at work being obedient to what God has commanded, he will postpone final judgment.
SPEAKER_00: And he postpones final judgment not because the Lord does not want to make all things right, but because the Lord is patient.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to 2 Peter chapter 3, verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
SPEAKER_00: And so God's patience is this incredible open window.
SPEAKER_00: It's this extended season of grace that while his people are obedient here on earth to expand the kingdom of God, just like Noah was obedient to build the ark, he'll postpone judgment so that the world can hear the message of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have heard that before, maybe some of you haven't, but the age in which we live, the day after Christ ascended into heaven and before he returns, is a season of time called the church age.
SPEAKER_00: It is the time in history where the church is to be faithfully obedient as a testimony to the unbelieving world so that some might be saved.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we're here.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we exist, to be faithfully obedient as a testimony to an unbelieving world.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said this to his disciples.
SPEAKER_00: He said, As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be before the Son of Man returns.
SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: Is the world going to be so corrupt and so full of evil?
SPEAKER_00: That's part of that.
SPEAKER_00: But another part of that is that is Jesus is referring to our time being similar to Noah.
SPEAKER_00: The day that God spoke to Noah and said, Build an ark, to the day that the ark was finished, that 120 years was a season of grace.
SPEAKER_00: And so so shall it be when the Son of Man returns, that we are in a season of grace, where God has pronounced that judgment is coming, but that his church has responsibility to be obediently faithful to expanding the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: See, friends, just as Noah lived in the interval of when God said build the ark and when the flood actually came, we live in the interval of time where Christ died on the cross and commanded us to go reach the whole world with the gospel before his final return.
SPEAKER_00: It is our purpose, it is our mission, our obedient faith.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes people get all this mixed up inside their head that God wants us to do something big and huge and crazy, like God's calling us to build an ark.
SPEAKER_00: God is calling you to do something so much simpler than that.
SPEAKER_00: He is calling you to share the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: That is our act of obedient faith.
SPEAKER_00: And when we are obedient to share the gospel, it does extend this season of grace here on earth for more people to hear the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: This is Matthew 24, 14.
SPEAKER_00: This gospel of the kingdom will be preached to the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then and only then the end will come.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, Noah's generation had one righteous preacher for 120 years.
SPEAKER_00: Our generation has billions of people made right with God through Jesus Christ for one reason to preach faithfulness and righteousness and redemption and compassion and mercy to this world.
SPEAKER_00: And despite the way many Christians live, the church is not a waiting room just singing songs, waiting for Christ to return.
SPEAKER_00: The church is a construction site.
SPEAKER_00: We are like Noah.
SPEAKER_00: We are out there building the Ark of Jesus Christ, putting the gospel in full picture for an unbelieving world to see.
SPEAKER_00: This is our time to build, not our time to wait.
SPEAKER_00: Who likes waiting rooms anyway?
SPEAKER_00: You ever been in the hospital waiting room?
SPEAKER_00: It's the worst.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody wants to be there.
SPEAKER_00: You want to be out doing the work of God, and that's what we are called to do, to expand the kingdom, to reach the nations.
SPEAKER_00: And here's this fun little tug of war.
SPEAKER_00: As we are active in advancing the kingdom of God and preaching the gospel, not only are we extending the season of grace for the gospel to be heard, but we're also ushering in the second coming of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: How does that work?
SPEAKER_00: It's a strange paradox.
SPEAKER_00: The more we preach, the more faithful we are, the more God is patient so that more can be saved.
SPEAKER_00: But as we reach the whole world, eventually the end will come.
SPEAKER_00: So the ministry of sharing the gospel both extends the season of grace and ushers in the second coming of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Wild.
SPEAKER_00: Eventually the whole world will hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: There is a day and a time.
SPEAKER_00: It took Noah 120 years to build the ark, and then the end came, flood came.
SPEAKER_00: If it takes the church 3,000 years to reach the whole world, then the end will come.
SPEAKER_00: We are partners with God in the second coming and the judgment appearing.
SPEAKER_00: We're also partners with God in extending the season of grace to those who need to hear.
SPEAKER_00: So here's what we learn from this passage.
SPEAKER_00: Christ is the ark, and our job is to point people to him.
SPEAKER_00: Christ is the ark.
SPEAKER_00: There was one ark when Noah built it, with one door.
SPEAKER_00: And that ark had limited capacity.
SPEAKER_00: It can hold a certain number of animals and a certain number of people.
SPEAKER_00: And there was only one door through which all people can be saved today, and that's Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to what Jesus says in John 10, 9.
SPEAKER_00: I am the door.
SPEAKER_00: If anyone enters through me, he will be saved.
SPEAKER_00: The ark saved eight, but Jesus can save everyone.
SPEAKER_00: There is unlimited capacity in the kingdom of heaven for all who would believe.
SPEAKER_00: I know that it's hard, and I'm not going to say it's not hard, to go share the gospel with all the world.
SPEAKER_00: It is hard.
SPEAKER_00: Because you know what's a lot easier than sharing the gospel with people and inviting them into the ark?
SPEAKER_00: It's a lot easier to stand in judgment over them.
SPEAKER_00: And honestly, it sometimes feels better to stand in judgment over an unbelieving world.
SPEAKER_00: Christians have been good at this for a very long time.
SPEAKER_00: Looking at the way the world lives, looking at the things that they produce and the results of the fruit of their lifestyles, and pointing fingers and saying, Look, see?
SPEAKER_00: Look at these people, look at their decisions, look at the sin they brought about in their life or in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the consequences of the way that they live.
SPEAKER_00: I can't believe that they can't get their act together and just follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, judgment is a little bit easier than preaching the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what judgment looked like, and here's what judgment's supposed to look like for the Christian.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to Hebrews 11:7.
SPEAKER_00: By faith, when Noah warned about things not yet seen, and holy fear built an ark to save his family, and by his faith, he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.
SPEAKER_00: By faith, Noah condemned the world.
SPEAKER_00: Not by verbal prosecution or not by verbal judgment, but simply by being obedient to the will of God.
SPEAKER_00: His obedience was the very condemnation that put the world in wrong standing with God Almighty.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes Christians think that their job is to condemn the world around us, condemn the culture around us.
SPEAKER_00: It's not your job.
SPEAKER_00: Your job is to be obedient to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Because your obedient faith will be justified the day that Christ returns.
SPEAKER_00: And the day that Christ returns, and you are resurrected from the dead, if you have deceased at that point in time, or you're transformed in the blink of an eye, your faith will be proven with the return of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And in that moment, the whole world will experience the full weight of all of their guilty decisions instantaneously.
SPEAKER_00: Their condemnation will be immediate.
SPEAKER_00: They don't need it before that moment.
SPEAKER_00: Before that moment, they need a gracious, loving hand extending them to get on the ark of Jesus before the flood comes.
SPEAKER_00: Church, I love what we're doing as a body of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I love the sacrifice and the energy and the effort that this church community puts into reaching lost people with the gospel of Jesus so that they can become found people, rescued people.
SPEAKER_00: It's a privilege to pastor a church like that.
SPEAKER_00: And this last couple of weeks, we've seen some God do some pretty incredible things.
SPEAKER_00: We saw hundreds of people give hundreds of hours to serve hundreds of kids so that 77 young people would give their life to Jesus and be saved from the coming judgment of God Almighty.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you did.
SPEAKER_00: You didn't just get them into heaven, you didn't just make them a part of the church, you saved them from the coming judgment of God that everyone has rightfully earned by their own transgression against a holy God.
SPEAKER_00: We participate, we engage, and we win people and save them from what is coming.
SPEAKER_00: Now we've earned what is coming.
SPEAKER_00: Every single one of us has earned the judgment.
SPEAKER_00: But only by God's mercy, compassion, and grace are we saved through the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you are faithful to say yes to Jesus, if you're in this room or watch online, you've never said yes to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: If you are faithful to say yes to Jesus, God is faithful to save you.
SPEAKER_00: If anybody else would have wanted to get on that ark in Noah's day, God would have made room on the ark for that individual.
SPEAKER_00: God today has made room for every person in the kingdom of heaven who wants to enter through the person of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: If you are willing and wanting and you are ready to call on the name of Jesus, God is faithful to save you from the coming judgment of this world.
SPEAKER_00: That is good news.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So once we say yes to Jesus and we experience the salvation that we have not earned, but that we gain through his work on the cross, God's gonna ask for a little bit more.
SPEAKER_00: He's now gonna reveal to you in his word, reveal to you by his spirit, other acts of faithfulness, other acts of obedience that he's gonna call you to.
SPEAKER_00: Someone's gotta clean up after the animals.
SPEAKER_00: So are you obedient to say yes to Jesus today, even if it's simply a small task?
SPEAKER_00: Friends, I understand that it can be hard to follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It can be a challenge to follow Jesus, it can be scary to follow Jesus because it's going to require something of you.
SPEAKER_00: But if we just have a little bit of courage to say yes to where God is asking us to be obedient, you're going to experience God's level of faithfulness in a way that you probably have not before.
SPEAKER_00: And when you experience that measure of faithfulness, your confidence in Him will grow.
SPEAKER_00: And God will ask you to be obedient in something else.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe something a little more harder, a little more challenging.
SPEAKER_00: But all of those individual acts of obedience are leading to one thing.
SPEAKER_00: They're the testimony that Jesus Christ is a living king to an unbelieving world.
SPEAKER_00: And when people watch your life of obedience, whether you're walking through a difficult season of suffering, a difficult season of challenging, or just a season of blessing, when God, when people see your faithfulness, they see Jesus and they see why He's worthy of following.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, we come before you grateful that by your mercy and by your compassion we have entered the kingdom of heaven, that we are saved from the coming judgment of God Almighty, that we have rightfully earned.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, you are far more merciful, far more compassionate, far more loving than any of us can even really comprehend.
SPEAKER_00: And we are the benefactors of your mercy and your compassion.
SPEAKER_00: But Lord, we understand justice.
SPEAKER_00: So, Lord, thank you first and foremost for being God of mercy, compassion, and love.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, would you empower us by your Spirit to go forward to reach many people that they might be saved from the oncoming judgment that this world will face?
SPEAKER_00: We ask that in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.