Brother Owen Howard and Elder James Moseley | 05-24-2026

Brother Owen Howard - Psalm 42; 1Cor 1:30 

Elder James Moseley - Gen 6:8 Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Forty first song. Forty-second song. Sorry, my pastor's wearing off on me. Forty-second song. There is just something that captured me that I wanted to bring to light out of this. This was not something that I had on my mind sitting throughout the entirety of the song service. And so I am absolutely nervous beyond all get out. But I just want to launch from here and go into 1 Corinthians if I can, with the time that I have, and you be ready. I'm not going to spend much time, brother. Man, just listen to this, listen to this. As the heart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God? When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me, for I have gone with the multitude. I went with them to the house of God with a voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept the holy day. Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieteth in me? Hope, thou in God, for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance. Man, that's heavy. When I read that, that is an experience that I think all of us can have or probably do have more often than maybe we even care to admit. You know, whenever we come into church, I understand that we hug and we some kiss, we we we embrace each other. But I think that for all of us, right, this is an experience where we feel this distance, this separation from God. Um I don't know why this is on my mind, but I just want to make a draw something out here that I read and I kind of blew past it. But man, sometimes things just capture my mind and I can't let it go. So if you have a highlighter, if you have a pen, you want to underline, this is a moment to do so. Right? He says, second verse, my soul thirsteth for God. Then he says, for the living God. I just want to pause on that for a moment. Why would he throw that in there? You know, you could read that whole thing, and it wouldn't change really the essence of what he's saying. Why would he clarify the God who he's praying to? It's because we worship the living God. Right? Sometimes in the way in which we feel, right? There's a big difference between reality and how you feel. Would y'all agree with that? Right? Sometimes we can feel separate from God, but he isn't separate from us. Right? We can do things that we might feel like, man, there's no way I can ever have an entry point back into the embracement of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But aren't you thankful that that's the truth, that's not true the other way around, right? It is such a beautiful thing, brothers and sisters, that we don't worship a dead idol. That we worship a living God. He actually is in existence. And that is a powerful thing for me to think about every time I go to prayer because there is, there, I hate to say it this way, but there's something on the other end of that prayer. Right? God may not answer my prayer, but brothers and sisters, I promise you that we serve the living God. I want you to go with me now to 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians, first chapter. I've tried to speak on this before. I'm not gonna rehash some of the things, but I want to go to the very 30th verse, first chapter, 30th verse. Um I'm trying to be mindful of the time I'm up here. I'm gonna call this an espresso verse. Uh, this is very rich. This is very, very rich. Um, every prepositional phrase is worth its own annotation. Um, but he says, but of him are you in Christ Jesus? Read this very slow. Who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. That according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. Again, we're in 1 Corinthians 1 chapter, that was the 30th verse. He's writing this as a conclusion of a broader point that he was making, um, specifically with regards to wisdom. You can't really, you can't really get to this point and not realize that the entire thing that he's talking about here, in essence, is wisdom. And I know I've mentioned this before, um, but just to make sure we're all on the same page, um, what exactly is wisdom? Um, knowledge is just a is just you knowing facts, right? Um, understanding is the thread that connects different knowledge, like different individual um facts together, right? So if you know something, it's because you've connected things together. And then finally, wisdom is putting knowledge to work, right? That's that's that's kind of the way I connect all three of them together. So he says, but of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us. So he's talking about Jesus Christ being made unto us, wisdom. What does that mean? Right? Um, I guess in Owen Howard's just very, very highlighted notes, I would say it this way. What he's saying here is he is the essence of it, right? He's not it literally, he's saying he's the essence of wisdom, right? And that's the driving point. If you go back to, oh goodness, where to even start for this one. If you go back to, let's say, um the 24th verse and read from there, but unto him which are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Jesus Christ is literally the wisdom of God. He said he is simply saying, He is God. Um, how do I say it? He is God's essence of wisdom itself. He says, Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men, for you see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty and base, the things of this world and the things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and the things which are not to bring to lot the things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence. Two things from that that you can gather. One, um this wisdom that he's talking about is not of this world. Right? So if that language was confusing for you, it was for me for a long time. He's just simply saying, This wisdom we're talking about isn't of this world, and if you have this wisdom, it was given to you by another source. You didn't arrive at this wisdom. This was something that because it's not of this world, you are given by the Spirit of God Himself. And that's what he clarifies and goes into in this second chapter. But he says, But of him are ye Christ Jesus, who God has made into us wisdom. Jesus Christ is our wisdom. If you are following after the Lord and you are seeking God, that's a very wise thing to do. I think we can safely say, and through especially life experiences, every single I'm gonna talk about myself for a minute, every time I turn away from God, it's like me putting my finger in an electrical socket. Every time, right? That's not me putting experiences to work. That's not me being wise, right? Every single time I choose to pick up my phone instead of my Bible, which I'll freely confess is more often than I should even admit. Every time I do that, I get stung every time. Why? Because that's not very wise. He is the essence of wisdom and knowledge. He says, and righteousness. Well, I my goodness, time would fail me, but he is our righteousness. Where did you why do we have righteousness? We understand, especially in Romans 3, I won't turn there for time's sake, but how do we know we have been made righteousness? It's by the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. Right? We our righteousness is not of our own flesh. It's not because we ever did anything, it's not because we ever tried anything, it's because the living God imputed. That means he literally took and placed inside of us his own righteousness. So that when he sees us, he sees his righteousness. It is his, Jesus Christ's righteousness. That's why it says we are in him. You might notice the in Christ in that 30th verse. We are in Christ Jesus. If you think of that literally, if we are literally placed inside of him, then when God sees us, he has to look through Christ to be able to do that. And Jesus Christ did that. You're not a part of that. He's our wisdom, and he is our righteousness. Um I'm going to skip to sanctification, but I want to go to redemption. He says that he is our redemption. What does that word redemption mean? It means that you were redeemed. What does that mean? It means that a ransom was paid because you were being held captive. Right? We understand that we were captive under sin. That is, again, something that is absolutely bore out in Scripture, and that was a place that you were being held in. You were not able to get yourself out of. Obviously, you were not even born when so much of this even occurred, but brothers and sisters, you had still sinned nonetheless. And guys, it is such a beautiful thing, that word redemption, because what it means is that a ransom was paid. We understand in Galatians where it says that when he ascended on high, he led captivity. What? Captive. That we were, that he was a ransom that was paid for us. He was that also. He was literally everything. He is our all-in-all. He is our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification, and our redemption. I'm going to stop there. I thank you for your kind attention.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

I've truly been blessed in the wonderful teaching and preaching that we've enjoyed so far. Please continue to be in prayer. That whatever I might bring forward will be in harmony with uh what the Lord has blessed with our owing to speak to us. And uh, I trust that it in many ways does. It I've already, my mind's actually stirred quite a bit. Um kind of where you started was in that 42nd Psalm, in the third verse, it asks a question, where is thy God? That's what the scoffer would say. That's what the enemy of God would say is, Where's your God? This living God that you you so boldly proclaim, where is he? In the 115th Psalm, the same question gets asked uh in the same way as, where is thy God? And we are given a very bold answer to that question of where is thy God? Verse 3 of 115 says, Our God is in the heavens, and he doeth whatsoever he hath pleased. That's where our true and living God is. When we think about the God that we proclaim to follow, and the claim, the the one, the God that is, I'll tell you where our God is. He is in the heavens. And he hath done whatsoever he had pleased. He doeth whatsoever he pleased. And uh one of many, we can go on and on about what the Lord has done. It has been according to his own pleasure, the things that God has done. And one of the things that we know God has done is place us in Christ Jesus. That's one thing that we know and we can rejoice in, is that we, a broken people, we were known of God, loved of God, and placed in the very safest place that ever could be. Brother Lloyd, it's in Jesus Christ, his son. Kept safe in him. That when God sees us, he sees us through the righteousness of Jesus Christ, of his only begotten Son, that perfect one. What a wonderful, wonderful thoughts we we've enjoyed this morning. Look with me here in Genesis in the sixth chapter. I trust that this very much can harmonize with where our minds have been led so far this morning. You know, there's a lot of conversation and logic of the world, of the of man's mind, that would be, that would challenge the believer's understanding and what we stand to be true according to God's word, to think about all the things that are recorded for us and preserved in God's word, of the things we can go back in the Old Testament and read about, and the thoughts that would come by man's mind and man's logic, and I believe assaults of Satan is how could those things have actually been? The things, the the Bible stories, as it were. I tell you, the Bible stories are stories, but they're true stories. They're true accounts, they're not allegories, they're not uh there's they're things that are recorded that actually did happen. I do believe that God created all things and he did so in six days, and on the seventh day he rested. I believe that that's the case. If I can't stand and believe that that's truly what happened, but our God, who is in the heavens and he has done whatsoever he hath pleased, then how can I believe that that same God would send a man to come and live in this world and to live a perfect life and to die on a cross and that that um work would redeem me from a fallen state? How can I believe that that would be the case? How can it be that um here in the sixth chapter of Genesis could there be this global flood that would bring destruction and death upon all things except for those that were placed in an ark? I believe that it happened exactly like this, and this is a true history account of what happened on this earth. I believe it because God's word tells me that that's what happened. I believe by faith that it's a faithful recording of something that we can look back and know what happened to humanity. And that it was God's working, and God was in the preservation of those uh individuals there in that ark. To think about the events that led up to this point. I tell you, God made Adam and He met it, made made him in the Garden of Eden, and he made him good and upright, and um, he was good and very good. There was no sin in Adam until he transgressed God's law. And just as God had rightly told him the consequence of that disobedience, that it happened exactly like we have recorded in his word, is that he died at death in trespasses and sins that very day, and that real consequence would affect him for the rest of his natural life until he perished naturally, and it passed upon all that those that were represented in him. That's everyone. And Eve and their children and their children's children, so on and so forth. And wickedness and sin entered into the world because not of all of them. Sin entered into the world because of what Adam had done, and here we get down the line to some individual. Well, pick up here in the sixth chapter. Starting here in verse 5, it says, And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, and it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy him whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast and creeping things and the fowls of the air, for it repenteth me that I have made them. Verse 8 it says, But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. The Lord would guide my thoughts and guide our the Spirit to look at these things just for a moment. I'd like to look at a few thoughts and try to draw a few things out. I believe in, I believe that God in very much a beautiful literary way here in this verse, in these few verses in this chapter, he is painting a picture. He is painting a picture of I kind of zoom out a little bit and I kind of look at it as a whole, and what I see is before verse eight, before verse eight, he is painting a very bleak and dark and scary picture of just wickedness, of sin that has come into the earth, and it's just everything is broken, everything is vile. It says the imaginations of their heart were only evil continually. That is that's a dark picture. And that was very much the state of man by the fall of Adam. It was not just a slightly declined state, it was a completely broken world because of what Adam uh did there in the garden and that that sin curse that passed upon him and all humanity. There is nothing good in man by our nature. There is no good and no righteousness. There's no merit that we would have by nature because that's where we were in the picture. We were in the dark, scary, stormy, uh awful part of this picture before verse 8 comes. It's just bad. It's broken, it's vile, it's wicked, and God, it says in verse 5, it says, and God saw. That's important for us to understand is that God saw. These things cannot be hid into the eyes of God. He would see these things. And by God's perfect and righteousness, he could not look upon this and just turn a blind eye, as it were. He must address this bad. He must address this wicked and sinful world. And it and there must be a dealing with it, a consequence, this righteous judgment that would pass upon brokenness, darkness, vileness. He saw, God saw. And then it goes on to say, and it repented the Lord that he hath made man. I believe in a couple of these verses here, it's hard. When you start thinking about the theology of what these verses are saying, I'll say this: God did not second guess himself. I believe he's using language so that our the our minds can understand the sense of this. I think about the the potter and the clay. That's how it's described many times is his creation being like clay, and he, the perfect creator, is the one who would be the creator, the the potter. And his hands is the clay, and we know because of the original sin that the clay was marred. The thing broke itself. And he being the one in control, it being his to do with whatsoever he hath pleased, he has the right to bring that judgment upon it. And what we get to is I want you, I want to see this shift, this pivot, as it were, going from this broken scene, but then in verse 8, there's this pivotal moment, this pivotal verse where it shifts. And that helps us to see where we are, where we are in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ and his intervening in our broken state, because all of this paints a picture of our fallen state and our redemption in his son Jesus Christ, our Lord. It says, Oh, verse 8. Let's look at this. It says, but Noah. That great contrast. That's a 180. That is a complete turning from one side all the way to the other. It says, but Noah. There's something different here. There's all of this brokenness, there's all this wickedness and only evil, continually God looking upon those things, knowing every bit of it that's that's wrong with the with the picture. But Noah, different consideration. Noah, there's something different here. And what I would submit to this morning with all boldness, it wasn't because of his righteousness. It's about the grace and the mercy that God had towards Noah. It was the love that God would extend from God to Noah. But Noah, something different here, and it's not Noah's goodness, it's God's goodness towards him. But Noah found grace. I believe he found mercy. He found longsuffering. He found a gentleness towards Noah. A special consideration and favor towards Noah, and it was based not on his merit, but on the love that God had towards Noah. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Remember, we said that God saw, God saw Noah. God's eyes were upon Noah. Maybe I'll just cut to the end. You're like Noah. You're Noah in this picture. You're not Noah because you were great and wonderful. We were part of the broken picture. You're Noah because God has extended grace and favor towards you. The thought that really kind of jumped out to me when I was looking at this, something I found when I was kind of digging in to this couple verses. I hesitate because I'm definitely, I would never claim to be at even in the slightest a Hebrew language scholar, farthest from that. But sometimes, Sister Pam, when you find something and it's really, really beautiful, you're like, I gotta share this, right? So if you allow me to try to share this with you. In the Hebrew, in the Hebrew, if you were to be a Hebrew scholar, knowing the language, knowing the written language, if you were to get to this, these particular verse, verse 8, Noah in the Hebrew looks a certain way, phonetically, right? Um, if it were written down. And you I I encourage you if you want to go look at this later, please do. Noah is written with kind of like two letters, and the first letter is like in or none in the Hebrew alphabet of 22 uh letters. It's kind of looks, we would say it looks like an in, like an up and down. And the second letter of Noah would be kind of what we would say is like an I, like a just straight line, or a I think it's chet, so none in chet. That's how a Hebrew individual who they were reading it, if they were to see it in front of them on the page, it would be kind of an in and then an I. Those two letters. That's interesting. Get to your point. Well, if they were also reading that same uh verse, as it were, when they get to the word grace, it's the chet and then the nun. It's like the I and the N. So Noah would kind of be the, I'm gonna say it this way, kind of like an N and then an I. Those aren't the letters, but kind of the point is, if you were looking at it, they are inverse of one another. They are completely like mirror image of one another. So, this on purpose, this is God's beautiful wordplay right here. If they were reading this and you really knew he, you would catch that. You would see the significance of what is happening in this verse. You would see these two words that if they were kind of looking at each other, they would very much match up and say, whoa, those are different, and they're like inverses of one another. So, trying to draw this point here. Thinking about Noah on this side of the image, of the of the mirror, the reflection. Noah's broken. Noah's the darkness, Noah's the only evil continually before the intervention of Jesus Christ's work on the Calvary for him and for us, before the the coming in and the rescuing and the redeeming. Noah, and then he's looking in that that reflection, and you know what he sees? It's not exactly him, it's the inverse of that. It's grace. Instead of his works, it's the works of Jesus Christ, his redeemer, his Lord. It's it's the opposite, but oh, it's the it's it's him but redeemed. It's him but rescued. Noah and grace, not the same, not the same. Oh, but you see the perfect fit, not just something that would work, but the perfect fit for that situation. You know what the perfect situation for a fallen, broken world? The perfect answer to a broken world, the perfect answer to a fallen people, taking us from a place of eternally separated from God to a place not of just restoration. No, that's not how far God brought us. He didn't just bring us back from a fallen world to a garden of Eden. No, he took us all the way to heaven's pure world. We have received double for all our sins. We have received double by the hand of our Redeemer. His grace is sufficient, it's perfect, it's exactly what is needed. There's such wonderful, beautiful literary wordplay here in this one verse. You think about Noah, you think about grace, you think about a broken world, you see a saved and redeemed people. But there's more in this picture. And then after this verse, it talks about Noah being a just man and a perfect in his generations. I will, with all confidence, say this happens after the grace comes in. The grace enters into this painting, as it were, this scene of this dark, broken world, but Noah found grace. Grace enters, and then all of a sudden the scene changes, and now there's there can be sunshine, there could be purge turbine, there can be this wonderful uh restoring, this wonderful uh rescuing from that state. And it's not that that judgment didn't come, it came to the world. But a saved people. But a select people, and Noah and his wife, and his three sons, and their wives, and these select, elect people that God chose, and again, and this is in the picture. This is for us to look at it and try to get this overarching idea of what we're seeing here in the literary, in this wonderful words that we can see, and then and then we can kind of see in this in this picture ourselves. These people were chosen by God. It wasn't because God looked and said, Well, those are the only good people, so I'm gonna take them and I'm gonna allow them to be in this safe, rescued place. No, God chose them on his purpose. He chose Noah and his wife and their sons. And then it goes on. There's more, there's more things about this. I'll try to hit on some of them. About the ark and this overarching picture. One thing we can understand is that God chose out who he would have in this ark. May I cut to the end. The ark is Jesus Christ. In this picture, like if you're looking at the imagery, what does the ark represent? The ark is Jesus Christ. Placed in Jesus Christ. And then it says that he shut them in. So he would have them, he would get them to be in there, and then God shut the door. From what I understand, that the door of that ark was very large, it was very big, uh, too much for man to lift. That's that fits the picture. For us to shut ourselves into Jesus Christ, if we were to, in our minds, think, let's make ourselves secure and shut the door. We can. We can't lift that. God's the only one who can do the lifting. God can is the only one who could shut them in and he has done just that. He has shut us in to Jesus Christ. He has done all the lifting, he has done all the security, and he has done so before the foundation of the world. He didn't wait for us to get ourselves right and then we get in. Nope, he has shut us in, and he said it we're placed in Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world. We're placed in him. There's another description here in the sixth chapter, maybe sixth or seventh chapter, that describes the ark. One thing that it talks about is that it was pitched within and without. It was pitched within and without. From what I've looked at, pitch is kind of, if I had to describe it, it'd be like a tar, black, tarry kind of substance that they would use to seal and cover and make it be uh seaworthy to keep it afloat without water from getting in, right? Well, things that to help it flow. That's that's a good construction at that time. It would they would pitch it and they would do so without and within. That makes sense. You need to cover it, get it all where it needs to be, so that nothing can penetrate, nothing can get in, nothing can get out, secure it. That word also has a connotation for when covering is appeasement. That same um concept that we were blessed to hear this morning about a covering to um to appease or um to pay the ransom for. It's covered it. Whatever the price for a ransom would be, it was perfectly covered. It was pitched within and without to keep um keep them in a safe place. You haven't been partially covered, you've been completely covered. There is nothing that can separate us from the lover. What about this one weak part of the vessel? No, there are no weak parts of the vessel. The place where you stand, the place that you reside in Jesus Christ, is a perfectly secure place. It's one that there's no penetrating, that anyone can pluck us out of the hand of God. We are secure in him, and nothing can get in to uh to say this, to make us vulnerable. Or Romans chapter 8 makes it very clear that who can separate us from the love of God? Nothing, nothing, nothing. You're perfectly covered in him. Another thing we can think about with this uh picture is we look at Noah's, at the ark that Noah would build and his family that was in it, and the destruction and all that, um, the judgment that came upon the world, and that is that all of the family was included. It was Noah and his wife and all their sons and all of his daughters-in-law. It was it was the whole family. Again, this is a picture, a very small picture that paints a much bigger understanding. What I would submit to you this morning is it was the whole family. That to me is such a beautiful thought. It is that it was the whole family. It wasn't like his three sons and two of the it was the whole family. Who is secure in Jesus Christ? It's his whole family. And this one, this thought would challenge many of the children of God is that there would be some that would be in jeopardy of not making it. No. He says that all that the Father hath given me, I shall lose nothing. Why? How could he say that of all that the Father hath given him, he shall lose nothing? Of all that the family that God would place within his son are safe and secure, and that there's no one that's left out. I'm talking about his whole family are safe and secure in Jesus Christ our Lord. Our ark. I heard a beautiful son about, I think it was Brother Adam Green, who talked about one aspect of the ark, is that there were no side windows. We know if you've been on a cruise or a ship before, usually there's a side window to kind of look out and observe and survey the sea in the ark and the the perfect construction and design of it. There were no side windows according to scripture. There was one window, though. There was at least one window, but it was up. It was looking upward, it was above them. So if you were going to look out of the ark from within the ark, if you're gonna look out at all, it's gonna be upward. And that's exactly where we are. Our looking isn't out towards the destruction and the death and the things of this world. It should be upward looking towards heaven. In Colossians 3 and 1, it says, If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. That's where our eyes should be fixed while we journey through this world, safe and secure in our ark, uh, pitched without and within, perfectly covered, the whole family. Our eyes should be ever looking upward towards heaven, uh, where our help has come and will. We look towards a hill from whence our help cometh. And we're saved as the whole elect family of God, safe and secure in our art Jesus Christ, we're saved from the destruction, the judgment that surely came and will come upon the non-elect, on those that he did not die for. He has saved us from that. And that's a sure destruction, but because of where we are, because of where we stand and where we're kept safe, we're saved from the destruction. In thinking about the ark, not only was it um that they had that window that was looking upward, there was a door, there was a door by which they entered in to the ship, and from what I read, that there's only one door of the ark. There's only one entrance. Now, just like any picture, um, I can't take it too far, but I'll just say this: there is one door, and he has told us, he is, Jesus told us that I am the door. He that that is a picture of when he talks about that, he is that shepherd. He is the shepherd keeping his sheep safe, and he is the door. He is the protector, he is the entrance of that door, and there's none other. He keeps us safe, and and that the only way into that ark was through the door. And he tells us that he is the way, the truth, the life. There's only one way into the family, into um, into him, and that's through Jesus Christ our Lord. He is the only way. And I'm confident that there's more aspects of this picture as we look at it and we appreciate the way that God has described this. I will say, I believe wholeheartedly that this event truly happened. And that we can go and we can see the mighty power and deliverance that these eight souls experienced. And I believe it happened exactly like that, but we also have a much bigger understanding and an additional understanding of how this is a picture of how we truly are from those who we got the same broken nature that every other individual that's ever lived, but because of the love that God had towards us, the everlasting, ever-abiding, redeeming love that God had for you, he took you and he has placed you in the most secure place. Um's eternity passed throughout all eternity, that one day you'll be in heaven because you ride up you ride above the destruction of the things of this world, safe in Jesus Christ our Lord. Does that mean that bad things aren't going to happen in time? Yes, they're gonna happen, but that doesn't take us that that can never take us out of that safe place in Him. And we will, without uh any exception, without any sort of um jeopardy, we will land in heaven's pure, sweet, perfect world one day, again, kept safe in Jesus Christ our Lord, delivered through and by him. We'll turn to Romans chapter 5 real quick and try to draw our thoughts to a close. And I pray that those thoughts of that picture of the ark and how we can see ourselves in it, and how we can, in whatever small way it might be, see ourselves as that, as that Noah, but then look at that inverse of that, and we just see nothing but just grace, redeeming, rescuing, intervening grace. We see Him and His His work. But to further appreciate that in Romans chapter 5. Let's try to keep trying to keep, I'm gonna try to keep in mind that that thought of humanity in that picture before verse 8 where it says, um, but Noah found grace. I'll try to keep this right here as we read through some of these verses. Romans chapter 5. Let's start here in verse um verse 6. It says, For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. This tells us that he did not uh enter into the picture when we were finally getting ourselves to a state of better. When he intervened was when we were at our worst, at our most ungodly. Well, we were always in that state. It was we were enemies against him, we were ungodly, we were haters of him. It was the worst of the picture it could possibly paint. We were ungodly, we were totally against him, we were the dark part of the picture. For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. Yet peradventure for a good man, some would even dare to die. That's kind of a true thought. If you think about one sacrificing himself for another, you think, well, you would think possibly, if they're good enough, then it would be worth the sacrifice. It tells us here this he did so, he sacrificed his only begotten son when we were just at the absolute worst, at the most ungodly, at the most wicked, most vile, most dark sin against an Almighty God. It says, but God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were sinners, while we're yet sinners, Christ died for us. While the imagination and thoughts of man were only evil continually, but Noah. You see that shift, you see that pivotal change? Things weren't bad and getting better, and then God said, Now I'll rescue you. It was when they were, it just was the worst it could possibly be. That's when grace, that's when grace enters into the picture and the whole picture changes for us. That's when the picture becomes bright, sunny, cheerful is the entering in of the grace, the abounding grace of Jesus Christ our Lord. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath through him. That wrath that we see in that picture of Noah, what great wrath and judgment upon sin, and rightfully so. God was just in the destruction of his creation, of his clay, oh but the rescuing of a people, that they would be placed in one that would not see the destruction and the judgment that would come, and that would that us, it's not above the things of water and death. It's in him, by his blood, that we were saved from the wrath through him. For if, look at this, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son. Much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. Saved by his life. When Jesus Christ went to the cross of Calvary for us and he bore our sins in the wrath of God, the right judgment towards that sin, all of that sin, that I can't even begin to imagine the thought of the weightiness and the vastness of the sin of his people. How big that is, how much that is, how dark that is. And then right now I'm just thinking about my own contribution to the picture. Then to expand that upon all his children, all placed upon his son, that wrath that must come upon the sins of sinners against himself. And he took all of that and he placed it upon his son. And all the wrath of God that we see in the destruction in this picture over here, that destruction that truly did happen in this world, the true wrath of God, that was the end of the consequences of sin was poured out upon your Lord. It's poured out upon the perfect one, the right, the just one. It was poured out upon him. And that sin was dealt with in the very body, in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. We find reconcile. We find reconciliation in him because of what he has done. He has made things right. He has changed the picture for us. He has brought us from a state that was separate from him, rather, brought in and reconciled to that great and perfect and righteous God, that holy one, the creator of all things. He has brought us back in a place where the record book look, it's right. It's been righted. The wrongs have been righted by Jesus Christ our Lord. And where we are in the picture is positional. He is all the work that is done in this picture. He is all the movement that's been in this picture. And where we are is just in a place. We're positionally in him. And being in that place is all that is needed for us to be safe from the destruction. All that other stuff was is God's work, God's love, God's moving, God's reconciling. We are reconciled by the death of his son and saved by his life. We read in scripture that because he lives, because he lives, we may live also. We have life. Noah and his family had continuing life. We have continuing life because he lives. We may live also. And he tells us that he came that we might have life and that we might have it more abundantly. We have eternal life because of the intervening, rescuing, positionally placing us. We have life eternal. And he has given us life more abundantly here in this life while we live. That we might know we've been reconciled, we might know we've been rescued and enjoy that sweet peace here while we live. And he's allowed us to know him and have fellowship with him that we might have life and that we might have life more abundantly. We live because he lives. We have a high priest who liveth forever. Our high priest is different than all those other Levitical High Priests who had their term and then it came to an end because they would die a natural death and they would pass it on to the next high priest. That in Hebrews tells us we have a better high priest because we have a priest that it's a continually, forever high priest, intervening, intercessory work. We live right now, and he lives, and we uh he lives for you. He didn't just live. We've heard this morning that we believe a God who is, and he's the one true and living God. That's true. And I praise God that we we we know of a God who is the one true and living God, that there isn't, it's not a God that's made with eye with um, made as an idol out of man's hands. We have a true and living God. Even more so, you have a God who lives for you. Lives for you on your behalf in your stead. He works for you. That's the bad way to say it. He works with you in mind. He works that we would benefit, that we would be blessed, that we would have a place to go in our lives. When he knows we go through the struggles and the trials of this life, then he doesn't leave us to bear those things alone. He bears us up through those things, and he gives us a place to go to and to kneel down and to pour out all our burdens, sorrows, and cares to, to take our supplications and praise to, we have a true and living God. Because he lives, we may live also. Because he lives, we live eternally, and because he lives, we live now here in this life, a more um a life that is a blessed, beautiful life, close fellowship with him. Uh, with our hands as we sing in one of the songs, our hands clasped in his hands. That's such a beautiful thought that we walk hand in hand with our Lord, that we hear the sweet whisper of our Lord, that we feel the very gentle touch of our Lord here when things are scary, when when the storms around, raging around me, he stands right by us. How many songs we we sing of that tells us that we're not alone through a tumultuous world, through a dark, scary world. But why? How? In what ways? Because where you stand is in Jesus Christ our Lord. You're inside the very safe place, even when scariness and darkness is around us. There's a place of light, there's a place of rescue and refuge, and that's in him. Even here while we live, we're in this safe, beautiful place, and it we are homeward, we're homeward bound one day. And nothing can separate us from that sweet, um, blessed place. Um we'll conclude with that thought. Um sometimes I get a little concerned when trying to draw these pictures from an Old Testament uh type or shadow of things that would come because there's parts of it where one might argue, um, well that that's good up until a certain point, but I'll say this. If we're reading an Old Testament and we see in that picture, we see Jesus Christ our Lord in our position and our safety and our deliverance in him, then we're looking at the type in the picture in the right way. If it harmonizes with what God has told us in the rest of the context of what am I, when we see him, when we see us in him, we're on the right track and we're seeing it the way we should. Um I love you very dearly. Continue to pray for me, I continue to pray for this sweet church. I love you very much. There's one or more that desire to join with Grace, Primitive Baptist Church.