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The Longest Week

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Longest Week In History

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Transcript

FTGC-03b – The Flood – The Longest Week In History

Whenever you think of Noah, the Ark, the flood, the animals, and all that I want you to think of one word. Think of the grace of our God. Listen to what the songwriter wrote many years ago. Marvelous grace of our loving God, grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt! Yonder on Calvary’s mount outpoured there where the blood of the Lamb was spilt. Marvelous grace, infinite grace, grace that will pardon and cleanse within; marvelous grace, infinite grace, grace that is greater than all our sin!

The grace of God is most evident against the backdrop of the greatest disaster that this planet has ever experienced. It says in the scriptures that the longest week, probably that ever existed started in Genesis 7, in verse 10. I want you to look at verse 10 because it says, “And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood began upon the Earth.” After seven days, after what? Look at verse 1 of chapter 7.  “The LORD said to Noah, ‘Come into the Ark, you and all your household, because I have seen that you are righteous before Me in this generation.’ “

They went into the Ark, and I want to tell you it must have been a long seven days. I’ve thought about this all week long, what it must’ve been like. Noah had been building that building. That’s what people thought it was, a building. It was 450 feet long and 75 feet deep and almost five stories high. A wooden building. Flat bottom. Sitting there in his pasture.

Now old Noah was about 500 years old, 480 to be exact when he started building this. People always thought he was a little strange anyway, but boy they knew he was strange now. When this old man wasn’t dragging boards up building this building, he was preaching to them. When he preached to them, it says in the book of Peter that he was a preacher of righteousness. He was standing out like a bright light in the black darkness and he was lighting up their lives. Telling them that they were living un-righteously. That the God who created all things was going to send a cataclysmic judgment on the planet and kill everybody that hadn’t come for shelter in his Ark.

I’m sure that the crowds grew as the building grew. For 120 years he built that thing and his children helped him build this, his three sons. I think that probably there was quite a gang that would come with their lawn chairs. In fact, I’ve seen him this week as I thought about this. Mr. and Mrs. Scoffer would pull up their chairs on their lawn because they abutted Noah’s property. Out in the pasture behind was that great big thing he was building.  They’d pop those lawn chairs, and they’d sit there. They would laugh at him and say, oh no, what are you going to with this building? It carried on for 120 years, but then something happened.

Verse 1 says that the Lord said, “come in”. All over the planet, God had been preparing two by two for the animals to converge on this spot. Some of them probably had to come a long way. So, God had started them a long time before.

Can you imagine all those animals making noises and excitedly, briskly, trotting along because God had told the animals I’m going to destroy Earth. You all, if you come, you’ll be saved. Those animals came from everywhere. Can you imagine that river of animals coming across from every part of this globe, converging on Noah’s pasture?  Can you imagine the people that lived along the pathway where this river of orderly animals came? They were all just paired up. There were seven pairs of clean animals and just two pairs of the unclean animals as they came and went right up to that ramp, into that building. I’m sure that the crowd grew.

This really happened. Have you thought very much about the flood? Have you thought about that on every corner of the Earth they saw a phenomenon that they could not dispel. That the animals, all of a sudden, began to orderly march toward this building. People started looking and thinking, what is crazy Noah doing now? Starting an indoor zoo? It was the first zoo ever, but they all started coming. Then they all got up that ramp.

Then it says, look at this in verse 16, at the end. “And the LORD shut” the door of the Ark. There’s only one door into the Ark. They didn’t know it was an Ark. They just knew it was a big deal. 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, 45 feet high. They knew it was big. They knew that streaming in from all over came these animals and they watched them go right through the gate of Noah’s yard. Sometimes the elephants, they just barely made it. Some of those little, tiny shrews and stuff just were right there, going along. They just went right up that ramp.

Then last but not least, Noah, his family, his wife, his three sons, each of their wives came walking. in. The people said hey, what are you doing in there with all those animals? They were carrying on laughing, and scoffing, and mocking them. I’m sure that Noah took the last minute, at that moment to stand on the gangway and to look out at them. To say, I warn you that the God who created this planet is going to kill everything that has life’s breath if you don’t come into this Ark. He stood there for a moment; he went inside.

Then I’m sure that there was a murmur in the crowd because all of this. That doorway, that gangway, all by itself, by the hand of God slammed shut. You couldn’t even see a door anymore. God just sealed that thing in. They all sat in their lawn chairs all the rest of the day. That happened at the beginning of the week.

It says in verse 10, “after seven days,” and it must have been one of the longest seven days in history. With that loud thud, when the massive entrance of the Ark slammed shut with no other means to exit, other than jumping off from the 45 foot high deck, it was going to be an interesting time inside with all those animals.

Day one probably passed with the crowds yelling, and cheering, and calling out for the flood that he promised to happen, happen.

Day two went by and pretty soon you could smell animal smells coming out of that Ark and little sounds. They all got their lawn chairs, sat there, and watched. Probably people that along the roads had been following this incredible river of animals walking quickly toward and orderly toward the Ark two by two, crossing Noah’s field up the ramp, they started showing up. They sat down, they watched, and they started looking at the building that Noah had built for 120 years.

Day three, must’ve really been hard because nothing. Talk about a test. Can you imagine Noah in there? Honey, was this the right day? The flood, us, and the animals, and all the people out there. It’s starting to get a little warm inside the Ark. The animals seem to be quieting down though. It must be that God let them have a little hibernation or something. I can’t imagine all of them being too active.

Day four through six passed with the constant heckling drifting up the walls to the family quarters at the top of the Ark.

But then on day seven, by the way, the Bible even tells us day seven was November 17th on our calendar. A loud thud was heard on the roof of the Ark. And then another, as massive drops of rain. For the first time in the history of this planet, water started falling out of the sky. I can imagine Mr. and Mrs. Scoffer who lived next door to Noah, with all the other crowd, were sitting in their lawn chairs. They still had a hangover from last night’s revelry because the world was very wicked at that time. They were sitting there bleary-eyed and that first drop slapped Mr. Scoffer on the head. He looked up and he thought, what was that? About three more big drops hitting his wife, woke her up, knocked her right out of her chair. Pretty soon the people start realizing something was happening. Massive splats of water.

They looked at the farm that was now a construction site. As they looked at that massive 450 foot long building, 75 feet deep and five stories high in the middle of his pasture they said, why old crazy Noah isn’t dragging wood anymore. The scaffolding’s there, but the door is shut. They started talking to themselves. He had always said that water was going to fall out of the sky and cover them all up. He claimed that some deity somewhere was offended by our demon worship, and the drunkenness, and the murder. People started talking about that and splat! Splat. Splat. With those massive drops of water, in fact, most of the hundreds of milling townspeople were still red eyed. It had been exactly seven days since Noah’s family went up the ramp into their wooden building. Some say that the ramp had lifted up by itself and sealed the entrance to this building. All the people out there knew, was that the building had no visible entrance left. All realized, as the sky darkened and as the temple of whatever that was falling out of the sky increased, that something was happening.

All of them were starting to get their mocking banter going when those missiles started arriving from the sky. It was fun at first. The water was cool, it drenched them. Got their seats wet. But the more it fell, the more uncomfortable it got to even stand there. So, they started retreating from old Noah’s yard where they’d set up their mocking gallery. They walked past the scaffolding with the water raining down on them like a thick curtain. They could hardly see to walk. Almost at the same the first blinding white stroke of lightning they’d never seen before, crashed. With ashen faces as the reverberating sound of the thunder, that they had never experienced before, shook them. They began to say to one another, is this the flood that old Noah was talking about?

The deafening booms and the blinding flashes filled their steps with terror as they all decided not to go home, but to run toward the huge building that Noah had built. Climbing up the scaffolding, pounding frantically on the place where the door used to be, they only felt their blows absorbed by the thick hand sawed gopherwood, now daubed with oozing black pitch. They looked at their hands covered with that black and realized that there was no way in. In alternating blackness and blinding flashes and booming explosions they crawled home.

Soon, the ground began to be covered with water and all their deepest fears were confirmed. The flood had arrived, and they were wrong. Crazy old Noah knew what he was talking about.

Then the most disastrous event that has ever happened on Earth began. There’ve been killer quakes over the centuries, recorded in history, that killed thousands. There’ve been plagues like the black death in the Middle Ages in Europe, they killed millions. But never before had God killed every human being on this planet, except for one family.

You say, what does that have to do with God’s grace? Look back at chapter 6 and verse 8. In the study of scriptures, it’s always important to look at the first occurrence of words, of ideas, and of concepts. The first occurrence of salvation is in Genesis 3. We’ve already studied that. It’s called the Protoevangelium. The first time salvation is mentioned in Genesis 3, God promises that our Redeemer is coming. He’s going to crush Satan. He will be miraculously conceived from a woman alone, the seed of a woman with no man involved. The virgin birth.

What’s the first occurrence of the Gospel? The first occurrence, foundation, of the Gospel is in chapter 6 and verse 8. The first time God uses the massive word grace is in chapter 6, verse 8.

You know what the flood is all about? The flood is all about, God looked down on sinful fallen creatures He had created and He looked at them with only evil, continually in their hearts. He looked down and He found one family. It says this, “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.” God mercifully chose him as a portrait of grace. You know what the flood is all about? It’s a flood of grace because God’s holiness and God’s character demands He judge sin. But He has another facet of His character. Another attribute of God is, not only is He just, and not only does He have wrath, but He also has mercy. That mercy is expressed in His grace. So, when God is about to utterly destroy His creation He said, but I’m going to exhibit my mercy and grace. I’m going to pour it out on that one undeserving family.

Now, do you think that Noah was some lily white saint? Did he walk around with a halo? No, he was a drunken man that took his clothes off and laid in his tent. His son was far more violent than that, had a wicked mind. Now, that’s the kind of man he was, but that’s what all of us are apart from God’s grace. We need God’s grace to cleanse and forgive us. Don’t ever think that Noah was some super saint from out of this planet. He was a normal human being that had chosen in his heart to be righteous and follow God, even though he failed.

What happened on the ground in the day of the flood? November 17th, about 1,650 years after the creation was beyond description. It wasn’t only rain that fell. The fountains of the deep, it says in chapter 7, that “the fountains of the deep,” verse 11 “were broken up.” That’s the clearest geological description of volcanic activity. I want to read to you from the insights of the National Geographic’s and tell you what happened when one volcano erupted. I want you to know that the Bible says that “the fountains of the great deep were broke up” all over this planet. What I’m going to read to you must’ve occurred multiplied hundreds of times around this globe, all instantaneously as God just cut loose, and let it go, and destroy this planet. Listen, when one volcano in 1883, the month of August out in the Netherland East Indies, that’s Indonesia, when that exploded. This is what the eyewitnesses said, that the Earth did when a mountain exploded about 113 years ago.

This mountain burst and I quote “with a roar that was heard more than 2,000 miles away.” People 2,000 miles away heard that mountain explode. The resulting aerial vibrations circled the globe several times, volcanic dust blocked out the Sun for a radius of 100 miles. Some of that dust eventually sifted to the Earth a thousand miles from Krakatoa. That’s the name of the mountain. The rest ejected with a force that drove it into the stratosphere, dispersed over the entire planet. Causing spectacular sunsets through the closing months of 1883. Finally, came the culminating horror. Tidal waves over a hundred feet high with the velocity in excess of 50 miles an hour. They ravaged the nearby coast of Java and Sumatra in places they raced inland for a half a mile, 30 feet high. They swept away entire towns and villages. Over 300 villages disappeared from the face of the Earth. This disaster crushed the life out of over 36,000. In August of 1883, when one mountain exploded on this planet.

Multiply these crustal paroxysms with hundreds or thousands of other volcanoes erupting. A mental picture of the early phase of the flood year will begin to emerge, because it says in Genesis 7:11 “on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up.”

Look at verse 23, it says, “So He destroyed all living things which were on the face of the ground: both man and cattle, creeping thing and bird of the air. They were destroyed from the Earth. Only Noah and those who were with him in the Ark remained alive.” God judged the world and every living thing on that world perished, except those with Noah in the Ark.

For just a moment, I want you to think about the scoffing of our modern days. The apostle Paul asks, “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?” 1 Corinthians 1:20. Foolishness in the biblical sense of the term is a willful refusal to accept God’s explanation of reality. Have you ever thought about that? Those people that brought their lawn chairs, and sat there, and made a sport, mocking and scoffing at Noah. By the way, they had mocked and scoffed at his grandfather and his great grandfather. They should know Enoch had come as a preacher and a prophet, and had preached all over about the Lord, who was coming with 10,000 saints. It says that in Jude 14 and 15. They didn’t accept that. Methuselah had come and his name meant when he dies it comes. He was the longest living man on this planet. His long life showed how long God’s grace, mercy, and patience with the planet would be. Almost a thousand years God gave the planet to heed, and they didn’t. What’s amazing is that our world is so willing to receive mere human explanations to our world. The concept of uniformitarianism in geology today, it’s a very dangerous view.

 

Let me just list for you some of the foolishness of our world. Can the global science system absorb the discovery, that the Earth’s magnetic fields, which by the way this week they discovered that the core of our Earth is spinning faster than the Earth is. All of a sudden they’re saying, wow, this is an intricately designed magnetic field builder perhaps, that the core is going faster than the Earth. About a quarter of a turn faster. It’s amazing, but can science absorb the discovery that Earth’s magnetic fields began less than 15,000 years ago because of the present rate of dissipation? Can the modern science community say that the lack of helium in the atmosphere should be much greater because of the rapid accretion through the radioactive decay? In other words, if everything’s been going on for billions of years there should be an awful lot more helium up there than there is. So, what they say is, it’s just going out into space. Oh, that’s a good explanation for why there isn’t more helium.

How come there is a lack of meteorite dust on this planet and the moon, but just this planet. You say, how do you know there’s a lack? Because every meteorite, that comes from outer space is 2.5% nickel. I don’t mean nickels; I mean the element nickel. Did you know, the crust of our planet has 0.008% nickel. So, every time a meteorite falls they can tell us, if they analyze it, that it’s not from this planet. They have tested all over the world looking for meteorite dust. There’s only enough meteorite dust on this planet for it to be a maximum of 900,000 years old. So, what do they say? There just haven’t been meteorites because the Earth has to be billions of years old.

Can the scientific community explain the fact that the oil reserves are of recent origin because of the impossibility of long maintenance of high fluid pressures under observed permeabilities of the reservoir and trap formations. Can they absorb that? Oil had to form over 25 million years ago according to them, but it couldn’t have.

The necessity of a sudden and recent formation of all the Earth’s vast coal deposits or the rapid formation excavation of the Grand Canyon. Why did it have to be rapid and recent? Because when they get to the bottom layer, a mile deep, if you look in what’s called the Cambrian layer, you will find scores of pine trees. Now, what are they doing down there long before pine trees were supposed to have evolved? Because they didn’t evolve. There was a flood and that mile of sediment laid down quickly. While it was still moist, a mighty river of all the water from the flood that was on the coastal plain making a huge lake, all of a sudden found a weak spot and started rushing down. Thousands and thousands of cubic miles of water rushed down and dug a one mile deep, twenty-five thousand mile wide canyon that we call the Grand Canyon. Which is probably the greatest singular picture of the flood, that you can see what was going on, on this planet.

How about the presence, as we talked about last week, of human footprints in the same layers of rock of mighty reptilian monsters?

Let’s go back to Genesis chapter 6 I know you get your clicker and you change channels when I talk about science. So, I’m not going to talk about it anymore. I’m going to talk about Genesis chapter 6, starting in verses 13 and 14, because I want to show you something.  I want you, if you’re of the clan and tribe of Bible markers to get out your marker, because I want to show you what this event portrays about the grace of God and especially about the salvation that God offers the world today.

God says they’re going to be two great bookends, two great dividers of history. The first one is when God stopped all of human history with the flood. The second one is when He stops all of human history in the tribulation time. Those are the two markers I put down. If you learn about the flood, you will know a lot more about how the world is going to end. The first time He flooded it with water, the last time He’s going to flood it with fire. It would be very important to listen, so you’re not caught on your lawn chair when the door is slammed shut, because there’s no way to get it once the doors slam shut.

Genesis chapter 6 and verse 13. True salvation is divine. That’s the first point. You are going to want to write that down. True salvation, salvation that God provides, is a divine salvation. It’s not something humans can cook up. It’s not something that you can do enough stuff. In fact, I meet people all the time and so do you, that are hoping they can do enough stuff to make God happy. I’ll tell you a little secret. You don’t even need to go on an expedition to Nepal and Tibet or talk to some Dalai Lama. I’ll tell you a secret this morning. No one can do enough good to please God, no one. I can’t. You can’t. No matter how much good we do.

 

It’s like trying to jump to Hawaii from Los Angeles. You can get the most Olympic athlete of all, they can run for 50 miles, and take a leap from any one of those beaches of the coast of Southern California. They will just get 35 or 40 feet out in the water. They’re good and they’ll never make it to Hawaii.

God’s holiness infinitely separates Him from humanity and none of us by our good works can propel ourselves close enough to get Him. Salvation is divine. Look what it says in verse 13. “And God said to Noah, ‘The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the Earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the Earth. Make yourself an Ark of gopherwood; make rooms in the Ark, and cover it inside and outside with pitch.” You know what? God divinely made a way of salvation.

The scriptures put it this way. John 15:16, you might want to jot that reference down. Christ said you haven’t chosen me. I have chosen you. Salvation is divine.

Listen to Ephesians 1, verse 4. It says, “As He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.” It’s God’s idea. It’s His plan. It’s divine. He initiated it.

Revelation 13:8 says, “All who dwell on the Earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb…” but here’s what I want you to hear, listen to this. Revelation 13:8, “…the Lamb,” that’s Jesus, “…slain from the foundation of the world.” Salvation is a divine plan. O the love that drew salvation’s plan, O the grace that brought it down to man, O the wondrous gulf that God did span at Calvary.

What did He do? God’s got a plan and it’s portrayed in the Ark; it’s portrayed with Noah. God says, I’m going to save you and I’ve got this plan. If you follow my plan, you will escape the wrath.

Secondly, look at verse 14. Says true salvation not only is divine, but verse 14 of chapter 6 of Genesis. True salvation deals with sin. You say, what do you mean? The first occurrence of the word atonement is in verse 14, only atonement means to cover over. So, look what it says in verse 14 of Genesis 6. “Make yourself an Ark of gopherwood; make rooms in the Ark…” and listen, “…cover it inside and outside with pitch.” Cover it. Kāp̄ar. Atone it. Now you say, what do you mean?

The only way I can talk about this is the New Testament says that Noah and the Ark is a portrait of salvation. You know what salvation is all about? That we get inside and outside atoned for our sins. God takes away all external condemnation and God takes away all internal guilt. He atones for our sins. So, the scriptures tell us that true salvation will always deal with sin. The word for pitch in 6:14 is the same word for atone used later in the Old Testament. This is what the New Testament says about our Savior, Matthew 1:21. “She,” Mary the virgin, “will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus.” Why? Why call Him Jesus? “For He will save His people from their sins.”

If you’ve never been saved from sin, you’ve never been saved from Hell. True salvation deals with sin.

The scriptures go on to say this. John 1:29, “The next day John,” the Baptist, “saw Jesus coming toward him.” He turned and pointed to Him “and said, ‘Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’ ” True salvation deals with sin. If you have never dealt with your sin, then you are not saved. My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! My sin, not in part but the whole, was nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul! If your sins have never been dealt with, if your sins have never been taken… if my sins were never taken by Jesus Christ and nailed to the cross, then I have no hope of life eternal. True salvation deals with sin.

1 John 3:9-10 says, for “Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in Him; he cannot sin, because he’s been born of God. In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother.”

Do you know what the Bible says? contrary to current theological notions, the Bible says that saving faith is life-changing faith and if my life, and if your life has never turned from the habitual practice of sin then it’s never turned in faith to Christ. The Bible does not say in 1 John 3:9-10, that will never sin. It says, sin no longer dominates our life. That Christ has set us free. The shackles are off. Now we might voluntarily give in to sin. We might learn to give into sin by habit. We might be grieved by sin. The Spirit of God might be quenched in our life, but there’s still a struggle against sin. We’re not dominated by sin anymore. The evidence of life eternal is that, the back of sin has been broken in our lives. True salvation deals with sin.

Thirdly, true salvation is personal. Look at chapter 7, in verse 1. This is very interesting. “Then the LORD said to Noah, ‘Come into the Ark, you and all your family.’ “ No matter what God had done with the Ark being built, with the animal stream going by, with Noah and his wife walking up, if Shem, or Ham, or Japheth, or their wives would have said I’m not sure I want to go in there. Thing might be crowded in there. Might be smelly. I might not like the other people in there, whatever. They wouldn’t have been saved. Salvation is personal. They had to go into the Ark made of wood. I’ll tell you a little secret salvation is personal. There’s no group salvation. You individually must come into Christ, or you don’t have salvation. We can’t get you to Heaven. Neither can dad. Neither can your children, or your husband, or your wife, or this church, or any of its leaders. It is a personal reception.

You know what Jesus compared salvation to? Eating.

I remember many times driving along, and I’m starving to death, and I hear those bags of stuff crinkling in the back seat. I hear all those little sounds. Those children can eat all they want. It doesn’t do me any good. I’m happy they’re eating, but I’m still starving. Did you know, unless you personally partake you will not be fed. You know what Jesus said? He says salvation is like drinking water. You can be in a swimming pool with people, just quaffing all their sodas around you, and you can die of thirst if you don’t ever let any in.

If you have never received Christ. This is what the Bible says. Philippians 2:7-8, He “made Himself of no reputation.” He took upon Himself “the form of a bondservant.” He came “in the likeness of men.” “Found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” Why? Because He came down to bring salvation to us and He offers it to us. This morning Christ offers each of us, if we haven’t yet received His gift, with nail pierced hands He offers us a free gift. It’s extended to us. Who so ever will, let him come. Let him drink of the water of life freely. But it must be personally received. “This is life eternal,” John 17:3, “that they may know You.”

The word “know” is the most intimate expression. It’s the word for a husband and a wife. When they intimately know one another, they experienced the greatest degree of experiencing one another. You know what the Bible says salvation is? That very same word. Coming into an intimate relationship with God, when He comes to dwell within us. Now, that doesn’t mean you recognize God, you go to church at Easter, or you heard a lot about Him or know lots of facts. You need to personally experience Him. Christ spent the majority of His ministry shaking up religious people and saying, you’re very religious, you give lots of stuff to the temple, and you’re very fastidious in your observance, but you’ve never experienced me. Therefore, you don’t have eternal life.

Another verse. “His name, through faith in His name, has made this man strong, whom you see.” That man, in Acts 3:16, that was laying and sitting in the gate, he had heard all the bustle about the gospel and everything else. He’d never experienced personally, firsthand the good news of Christ. When he looked at those apostles, when they spoke to him and he had faith, he personally experienced the power of God. Now God healed him, but he also personally received the free gift of eternal life and believed through faith in His name. It says in Acts 26:18, that Jesus Christ is the one who opens our eyes. He turns us from darkness to light. He sets us free from the power of Satan. We personally receive forgiveness of sins. We have an inheritance among those who are sanctified. Has that ever happened? Have your eyes ever been opened spiritually? Or do you still have this book and you say man, I don’t understand that thing. I’ve been reading it for years; I still don’t understand it. Maybe you better go to the Heavenly eye doctor and ask Him to open your eyes. That’s the first thing that happens when we get saved. We’re no longer loving the darkness; we love the light. We’re set free from the shackles of sin. We know our sins are forgiven. That’s what salvation is all about.

Number one, true salvation is divine, Genesis 6:13-14.

Number two, true salvation deals with sin.

Number three, true salvation is perfect. Know it’s an intimate, personal relationship with Christ.

Number four, God saves by invitation.

Look at verse 2. “You shall take with you seven of” everyone. What are they taking them for? Because He says, come. It’s a personal invitation God extends to every one of us, to Noah and his family, and to all those that were coming into the Ark. A personal invitation. Listen to how Jesus put it. This is our personal invitation. John 6:37, Jesus said, “All that the Father gives to Me will come to Me.” That’s the joy of the ministry for each of us, not just me. For you. You can go out into the world, and you can just tell people Jesus said, whoever will… let him come. Those whom the Father has given to Christ, as a love gift, will respond and come. I’ll tell you what, there’s nothing greater than to see someone coming out of their darkness and into the light, coming to Jesus.

John 6:37 continues. “And no one who comes to me, will I cast out.”

John 6:44, “No one can come to me…” Jesus said, “…unless the Father who sent Me draws him.” You say, are you sure about that? Yes, because He ties together the resurrection with salvation. He says those that God draws out of the graveyard of sin to salvation, God will someday raise them from the dead that they might come into the joys of eternal life in Heaven. They will get their resurrection body. The people that fight against God’s initiation of salvation, forget that they’re fighting also against the proof of the resurrection. The same God that takes us dead in our trespasses and sin will take our moldering bodies and clothes them with immortality and celestial life. So, salvation is by invitation. God invited Noah and his family. If you will come to Christ, it’s at God’s invitation.

Fifthly, true salvation is exclusive. Look at verse 13 of chapter 7.  “On the very same day Noah and Noah’s sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons with them, entered the Ark.” There was only one door into that building. Can you imagine Shem, Ham, or Japheth saying; I don’t want to go in that door. We’ll try and climb up the outside. Give me a ladder. No. God said, come on in the Ark. I made one door and I want you to come through that door. Come on. Where the animals went, just come up here. Salvation is exclusive. There was only one way of salvation. There was only one Ark. There weren’t many Arks out there. They weren’t sprinkled all over, All Ark’ s lead out of the flood. No. There’s one Ark. There’s one door.

Salvation is exclusive.

Listen to what the scriptures say. Jesus said in John 14:6. “I am the way the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through Me.” That’s exclusive. Listen to what the apostle said. Acts 4:12, “Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under Heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Salvation is exclusive.

Don’t think that the Moslems are talking to the same God you are, that the Buddhists are talking to the same God you are, that the Hindus are talking to the same God, that the cults are talking to the same God, that those who are practicing a works religion are talking to the same God. They are not. They’re talking to a god of their own making. There’s only salvation in Christ.

Last thing, verse 16… true salvation is divine. True salvation deals with sin. True salvation is personally received, God saves by invitation. True salvation is exclusive… God saves eternally. This is a good one, look at verse 16. “So though those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him; and the LORD shut him in.” When you and I come into the Ark of salvation, when we come to Christ, God shuts the door. You know what Jesus said? He says, all the Father gives to me will come to me and no one can pluck them out of my hand. He said, you don’t have to worry if you’re holding on tight enough.

It’s neat, when children grow up. I remember there’s a period of time when you’re raising your little ones that you hold them, and they just hold on tight. They think they’re holding themselves to you. They don’t realize that the strong loving arms of their parents are around them. What happens? They grow to rest in that security. That’s what happens with a lot of people. They think that they’re holding on to God and they’re hoping that they hold on tight enough, so they don’t lose it before the end. They’re just really thinking about that. Finally, they come to the point where they rest in the arms of the almighty and they realize salvation is eternally secure.

What do the scriptures say? Verse 24 of Jude, “Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to God our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen.” Who is doing the holding? God is. Who is doing the security? The Lord Jesus Christ.

Hebrews 7 says this, “but He…” that’s Christ, “…because He continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. Therefore He is also able to save those to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.”

Are you resting in the one that saves you to the uttermost? Have you responded to His invitation? Have you dealt with, or allowed Him to deal with your sin? Have you personally received salvation? Do you know that your eyes have been opened? Do you know that your whole lifestyle has been turned from darkness to light? Do you know that your sins are forgiven? Do you know that the Spirit of God has come in, to change you from the inside out? Do you know that you have an inheritance? That you’re going to live forever? That you’re eternally secure?

Truly the flood is a flood of grace.

Let’s just rejoice in the flood of grace of God. Bow with me.

O Father, thank you for a personal salvation. Thank you for a divinely, beautifully planned way of us being made right with you, whom we have offended by our sin. Thank you for your grace shown in your personal invitation. Thank you for the incredible security that we have in your marvelous plan. Thank you for your grace. I pray that if any have not yet experienced the grace of God that leads to salvation, that they would today. If any believer has gotten out of touch with the marvelous grace that forgives and forgives and forgives; and cleanses and cleanses and cleanses that they would experience that marvelous, infinite, matchless grace today. For Christ’s sake, Amen.

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