Dale Partridge - Genesis 7_11-16 - The Day the Rain Began in Noah's Flood

00:00:00.000 Amen. Well, it's good to be back in Genesis. We're back in the first book of the Bible.

00:00:10.480 My plan is to teach through the remaining of the flood narrative, really through Genesis chapter

00:00:16.540 9, 17. And from there, I'm going to take a break for four weeks, and I'm going to do a sacrament

00:00:23.480 series where we're going to talk about four sermons, the Lord's Supper, Paedo Communion,

00:00:29.720 Baptism, and then Liturgy, and then we're going to return back to Genesis again. So

00:00:33.520 we've got some great sermons coming forth, and then that series, and then we'll get back into

00:00:37.640 Genesis. Now, if you remember, since we've, it's been a few weeks, we had the Easter weeks and

00:00:42.400 the Holy Week and all the things that were going on there. If you remember where we left off in

00:00:46.700 Genesis chapter 7, we left off with a variety of contexts, right? The corruption on the earth

00:00:53.740 had increased to such an extent that there was only evil continuously. It says that in Genesis

00:00:59.180 6-5, the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of

00:01:06.400 the thought of his heart was only evil continuously. And Noah was found as the only righteous man

00:01:14.620 alive at that particular time. A man who was not righteous because he was perfectly obeying, but a

00:01:21.000 man because he was righteous because he believed in God. He believed and trusted the word of the

00:01:26.820 Lord. Now when Noah was 480 years old, the Lord revealed to Noah that judgment and wrath were

00:01:34.400 going to be coming upon the earth for the corruption and violence that had filled the earth at that

00:01:39.700 time. He said, quote, my spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh. His day shall be

00:01:48.380 120 years. Now that particular verse meant that in 120 years, God is not going to be patient any

00:01:56.080 longer, but that his judgment would come upon the earth. In other words, Noah had 120 years to build

00:02:04.340 the ark. And as you are going to see in this passage of scripture, Noah was 600 years old

00:02:09.920 when he began the ark, or sorry, when he entered in the ark. Now, what makes this whole narrative

00:02:16.640 about Noah's life so remarkable is his faith. He's an extremely faithful man, not just faithful once,

00:02:23.940 not just a period of his life for maybe 20, you know, you know, 20 days or a few months or a few

00:02:30.840 years. No, he is faithful for a century. He is consistently faithful doing what God has commanded.

00:02:40.680 He built the ark without any prior knowledge or experience with rain or floods. So to build

00:02:47.840 something so extreme without having anything visibly to reconcile that degree of belief

00:02:54.740 is truly remarkable. It says in Hebrews 11 7, by faith Noah, being warned by God concerning

00:03:03.540 events as yet unseen, constructed an ark, end quote. And so again, he trusted God's word when

00:03:11.480 it contradicted his own experience. He had no reason to believe that there could be such a

00:03:17.900 degree of catastrophic flooding as a person who has never seen such reality. And so we know that

00:03:28.460 he gathered also the animals two by two into the ark according to God's command. We saw last sermon

00:03:35.900 in chapter 7 verses 1 through 10 that God gave a final warning, seven-day warning, a one-week

00:03:42.300 warning that the waters were about to come and bring judgment upon the earth. Now today, we get

00:03:48.980 into verse 11 through 16, and it's the judgment of God actually comes to bear. The waiting is over,

00:03:56.280 the warning was given, the time for preparation has ended, and the time for judgment has arrived,

00:04:01.940 and that is where we are at in this text. So it says in verse 11, it says, in the 600th year of

00:04:09.380 Noah's life, in the second month, on the 17th day of the month, on that day, all the fountains of the

00:04:17.520 great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. Now, this text has long been

00:04:25.580 a stumbling block for those critics who think that the narrative around the flood is some sort

00:04:31.380 of allegorical or non-historical reality. The reason for its precision, the reason they struggle

00:04:37.720 with it is because the language here is super precise. It's not the kind of language that

00:04:42.740 matches an allegorical narrative. It matches a biographical, a historical narrative, giving very

00:04:49.600 detailed dating. Now, the flood represents the most detailed account of any single event in the Bible.

00:04:58.280 Did you know that? The flood gives the most detailed account of any single event in the entire Bible.

00:05:06.800 And what makes that also fascinating is that the prophets affirmed it, we know that the

00:05:12.920 fathers affirmed it, we know that the apostles affirmed it, and we know that Jesus affirmed

00:05:17.980 it as historical reality.

00:05:21.080 Now the focus of this passage is this, God is patient, God is merciful and patient, but

00:05:30.680 his patience does come to an end, because God is also just.

00:05:35.520 Isaiah 55, verse 6 says,

00:05:38.820 Seek the Lord while he may be found.

00:05:42.080 Call upon him while he is near, end quote.

00:05:45.760 And I think that verse finds its substance in Acts 17, verse 30 to 31.

00:05:50.140 It says,

00:05:52.080 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,

00:05:57.420 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed,

00:06:03.060 and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. So I want you to see

00:06:08.720 the parallels. You have a parallel between the judgment of the old world calling for righteousness.

00:06:18.280 We know that Noah is a preacher of righteousness. He is preaching to this lost and perverse

00:06:23.380 generation and that there is a time in which God said he will be patient but eventually he will 1.00

00:06:29.440 come in judgment and wrath, and all those who did not repent would burn and turn and flood or be

00:06:37.140 drowned by the floodwaters and put into hell. We also have this parallel with today, that now that

00:06:42.860 Christ has come, there is another man who is warning, and that there is another timeline.

00:06:49.000 There's a second judgment to come, and so there's a parallel between this old world and this new

00:06:54.100 world and the final judgment to come. So the same principles of Noah's time essentially apply today

00:07:01.340 and God patiently overlooked the former times but now now he commands all people everywhere to

00:07:08.340 repent because there is a day of judgment in a similar way of the Noah's judgment there's a day

00:07:13.940 of judgment coming ahead. Now when Genesis says this verse this is where we're going to spend most

00:07:21.780 of our time today when genesis says all the fountains of the great deep burst forth and the

00:07:30.160 windows of the heavens were opened it's it's describing something far more extraordinary than

00:07:36.500 rain okay this is i spent a pretty significant amount of time this week studying i wish i could

00:07:43.100 have slides up here so that i could show you all of the graphics the details the scientific

00:07:49.640 geological realities of this particular text. But this is a global catastrophic release of water

00:07:56.920 from both below and from above. The fountains of the great deep burst forth. Now that word

00:08:05.560 burst forth in the Hebrew means something exploding because of tension. That's what the

00:08:13.860 Hebrew meaning of that word means. And this is pointing to what scientists would call today

00:08:19.240 an explosion of subterranean water. So you have water that's below the earth, and it's an explosion

00:08:25.540 of subterranean water. Now what's fascinating is that even secular scientists are coming to find

00:08:31.620 out that what the scriptures say in this text are actually true. And recent studies have shown that

00:08:38.160 there is actually three times as much water under the earth than there is in all of the oceans.

00:08:45.280 three times as much water under the earth than there is in all of the oceans on the face of the earth.

00:08:54.580 And this actually aligns with what is called the primary water theory.

00:09:01.620 And primary water is what's called earth-generated water.

00:09:05.460 It's the process of where water is actually made.

00:09:09.040 And it's a process that's separate from the hydrological process that we all know

00:09:16.320 on how water comes through absorption and evaporation and rain and all of that process.

00:09:21.060 Now, most atheist scientists, I found this out this week,

00:09:23.920 they believe that the majority of water that we have on Earth is here

00:09:28.920 because frozen ice comets hit the Earth and essentially melted here.

00:09:34.340 And that is how we have our water sources today.

00:09:36.640 um but again in genesis 7 it's talking about a completely different structure of where water is

00:09:45.140 made held and where it came from and so as it says here all the fountains of the great deep burst

00:09:52.820 forth now i want you to hold on for a minute we're going to move on to the rain that is coming down

00:09:57.860 so we talked just briefly about the water that's from below and i want to talk about the rain that's

00:10:02.160 coming down and we'll go back to it. And so you have this other phrase that the windows of heaven

00:10:07.340 were opened up. And this is often connected to what is called in the science world, the canopy

00:10:13.560 theory. And the pre-flood world had constant waters in the sky. And it was kind of, they called

00:10:21.680 it a firmament. They had a constant waters in the sky and it created a very stable, lush, vegetated

00:10:27.920 environment, and it's kind of a greenhouse world. That is what the world was like prior to the

00:10:34.540 flood. It was a giant greenhouse, and it actually helps us understand how you had these long

00:10:39.020 lifespans, how you had a complete vegetarian diet, you had a uniform climate. All of these

00:10:45.600 fundamental facts of science make sense when you start thinking about the reality of the

00:10:50.140 scriptures. Now, here's a key point. The text is actually describing, and this is maybe one of the

00:10:57.140 most important points of the sermon, so pay attention. The text is essentially describing

00:11:01.000 a reversal of the creation narrative. And you won't catch this if you're not paying attention.

00:11:06.900 But theologians call this decreation language. Now, if you remember in Genesis chapter 1,

00:11:12.420 it says that God looked at the waters and he split the waters. He split the waters in the

00:11:16.660 firmament. So the waters from above and the waters from below. And so what you're seeing here in

00:11:21.480 Genesis chapter 7 is actually a reversal of that. It's actually having the waters come back together.

00:11:27.140 It's clashing in a catastrophic way that the waters are collapsing back in to one another.

00:11:35.140 And so where they were separated in order in Genesis chapter 1, now they're collapsing back together in a form of chaos.

00:11:44.240 Now, my position is that the world prior to the flood looks radically different than the world today.

00:11:55.340 The world prior to the flood looks very different than the world we have today.

00:12:00.160 Now, my position, which I think is, I would say is held by a fairly large group of theologians,

00:12:05.680 is that there was significantly less oceans, significantly less oceans,

00:12:10.900 and far more land and lush forests before the flood.

00:12:18.400 There was way less oceans, possibly no oceans,

00:12:22.520 and way more land with extremely lush vast forests prior to the flood now why do i hold this position

00:12:33.420 because the scripture all throughout the scriptures it repeatedly connects the original

00:12:40.580 created order with the final redeemed and glorified order of the world and the world

00:12:47.480 before the flood reflects something of the world after redemption. So it's the idea that we're

00:12:52.820 going back to Eden, right? It's the idea that the world was Edenic and then the flood occurred

00:12:58.980 and that in redemption we will be going back to an Edenic-like world. That is a tension that you

00:13:04.220 see in scripture. You want it to be restored to what is called an antediluvian, an anti-deluge,

00:13:09.920 an anti-flood world. And so in Revelation 21, verse 1, we read, quote,

00:13:17.120 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away,

00:13:24.420 and the seas were no more. So there was no more oceans. There was no more seas anymore. And now,

00:13:33.140 I don't think that this is describing a completely different creation, meaning in the same way that

00:13:39.120 God resurrected the body of Christ, it's still his body, it's just made new. In the same way that God

00:13:44.240 is going to resurrect the earth, it's still this earth, it's just made new. So it's not replacing

00:13:49.400 it in the sense that it's an all-new creation, it's this creation restored. Now, if the new world

00:13:56.100 has no seas or no oceans, then it's possible that the old world had only, you know, large bodies of

00:14:03.700 water, maybe not considered oceans. It certainly, we know, had rivers. It certainly had some degree

00:14:08.080 of lakes. There was water sources available in the old world, but it likely had no massive oceans

00:14:17.060 the way that we have them today, and I'll explain why in a second. It also likely didn't have

00:14:22.080 massive mountain ranges at peaks that are ranging up to 25,000, 30,000 feet. It also definitely had

00:14:31.500 broad, fertile, huge plains, vast forests, rolling hills, dense global vegetation.

00:14:44.000 Now, how do we know that? How can you say that with such confidence? Well, this also aligns with

00:14:48.740 a really incredible amount of data around coal, the way coal is made. And so there are massive

00:14:57.100 coal deposits in the world, especially in the United States and especially under the oceans.

00:15:03.580 I'm not talking like 200, 300 square mile situations. I'm talking about tens of thousands

00:15:10.940 of square mile sections of coal. Now, coal is formed by plant matter being rapidly buried

00:15:21.980 under layers of sediment. That's how coal is formed. Coal is formed by plant matter being

00:15:28.920 rapidly buried under layers of sediment. So the sheer volume of coal across the earth that's

00:15:37.180 everywhere is essentially leading to some sort of catastrophic event where a huge amount of

00:15:47.280 vegetation that was covering the earth was now underwater and under layers of sediment through

00:15:54.400 the flood. And this is why most scholars suggest, even Christian scholars suggest, that the pre-flood

00:16:02.460 earth resembled more of a unified landmass. They often call it Pangaea. You might have heard of

00:16:07.720 Pangaea, where it's all the land is kind of put together in one, the continents are put together

00:16:13.320 and one giant landmass. And that the flood essentially divided the continents through

00:16:20.920 tectonic shifts, through sediment replacements, and it was essentially the water started covering

00:16:27.700 any sort of land bridge, and it created the world that we have today. And so the oceans we have

00:16:34.340 today, this is very key, the oceans we have today are basically remaining pools of the floodwaters

00:16:43.300 from the flood. You have to think of the oceans as like they're kind of the remaining

00:16:49.120 remnant of the floodwaters of the pools that were left from that particular time.

00:16:55.880 The continents that we have today, North America and Europe and Asia, you know, Australia, all of

00:17:02.700 these continents we have today, they're actually simply the portions of the land that were elevated

00:17:10.280 up during the tectonic shifts. They may have actually been historically not as elevated as

00:17:18.400 they were. Could they have been underwater in different portions? Potentially yes. And so in

00:17:23.380 that sense, the pre-flood world was likely submerged in some sort of valley, which helps explain why

00:17:32.980 scientists, again, are discovering so much coal under the ocean. There are parts of the ocean

00:17:40.140 that used to be above water and there are parts of that are above water that may have been

00:17:46.140 under water and that huge amount of shift is very agreed upon in fact most of the scientific

00:17:54.480 community would agree with that and so the flood was not just rising over existing land

00:18:01.660 this was the earth itself being kind of torn open and restructured and so when you think about the

00:18:09.560 flood it's not just oh there was a bunch of rain and it covered the existing land that we have now

00:18:14.400 no that's it's not like that it was it was absolutely completely different a rupture a

00:18:20.300 reshaping a tectonic shifting mountains being made valleys being sunk oceans being created

00:18:27.740 it is a massive catastrophic shift on the way that the earth looked um psalm 104 verses 6 through 9

00:18:37.780 says, quote, you covered the earth, speaking of with water, with the deep, as with a garment.

00:18:45.700 The waters stood above the mountains. At your rebuke, they fled. At the sound of your thunder,

00:18:53.020 they took flight. The mountains rose. The valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for

00:19:00.460 them. You set a boundary that they may not pass so that they might not again cover the earth.

00:19:09.140 He's talking about the waters that they might not again cover the earth. And so when Genesis says

00:19:13.960 the waters cover the mountains, it's not necessarily referring to today's peaks. In fact,

00:19:20.180 most scientists believe that the way that these peaks that we have today occurred as the water

00:19:25.380 was receding and the tectonic plates were shifting and it was pushing the mountains up.

00:19:32.260 And this also explains why we find here in Arizona, if you go up to the Grand Canyon,

00:19:37.200 why you're finding fossils of sea life at 10,000 feet. It's because that 10,000 feet at one point

00:19:46.540 was actually lower, much lower, potentially underwater, and that was now shifted up to that

00:19:53.460 elevation. It's not that all of the shells and all of the fish necessarily made it all the way

00:20:00.280 up to the top of 10,000 feet. There are lots of theories on this, but it's fascinating to think

00:20:07.520 about. And so when we're seeing in Genesis 7, it's not just judgment. It is actually a reforming

00:20:14.960 of the world. And so water erupts from beneath. Water pours down from above. Continents are

00:20:20.720 shifting mountains are rising valleys are sinking forests are being buried fossil records are being

00:20:27.000 created it is a massive catastrophic shift in creation and so it goes on here in verse 12 it

00:20:36.740 says and rain fell upon the earth 40 days and 40 nights and on the very same day Noah and his sons

00:20:44.820 Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons, with them entered the ark.

00:20:53.680 They and every beast according to its kind, and all of the livestock according to their kinds, 0.84

00:20:59.760 and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth according to its kind, and every bird

00:21:03.760 according to its kind, and every winged creature. Okay, I want you to notice something.

00:21:10.500 we spent several sermons preparing for this flood narrative and what i noticed about this text is

00:21:19.040 that essentially this what god said would happen happened what god said would happen actually

00:21:27.840 happened every word he spoke came to pass and i'm highlighting that because much of the root

00:21:36.920 of your worry, of your sin, of your anxiety, of your frustration, of your pain is a failure to

00:21:46.960 trust what God has said. If you just look at your own life and you figure, why am I struggling right

00:21:55.020 now? Why am I having pain? It's just because you don't believe what God has said. Because if you

00:22:02.060 believed it you would follow it if you believed it you would obey it but over and over again

00:22:08.720 our sin comes because we don't believe it we don't believe that it's right to follow

00:22:14.460 god's word we don't believe that it's actually the pain is lesser when we obey

00:22:20.840 ask yourself what promise of god do you not trust

00:22:26.460 now you might say at a macro level i trust them all but i'm talking about the day-to-day life

00:22:33.040 what promise of god are you struggling with to believe what promise what what what phrase what

00:22:41.060 sentence what statement has god made that you don't actually believe and it's why you fall short

00:22:47.600 do you doubt that you're rich in christ

00:22:51.300 are you afraid of what comes after death do you not believe what God has said about eternity

00:23:00.220 do you not believe that God will provide for your every need do you worry about your children's

00:23:08.680 faith what what is it I want you to consider some of those areas of weakness where you struggle to

00:23:16.520 believe what God has actually said. Part of obedience is trusting the word of God. That's

00:23:23.580 a big part of obedience, is to trust the word of God. And what we learn here is that God promises,

00:23:30.620 or that God's promises are reliable. They're reliable. Throughout the Bible, you see prophecy

00:23:36.180 and fulfillment. You see God's word and you see fulfillment. And what that should do to you is

00:23:41.580 produce a level of reliability on god's word so eight people board of the ark alexander mclaren

00:23:50.800 said of this scene he said quote for 120 years the wits laughed and the common sense people wondered

00:23:59.140 and the patient saint noah went on hammering and pitching at his ark but one morning it began to

00:24:08.640 ring. And by degrees, somehow, Noah did not seem quite such a fool. The mockers would look rather 0.97

00:24:18.100 different when the water was up to their knees, and their sarcasms would stick in their throats

00:24:24.520 as they drowned. So it is always. So it will be at the last great day. The men who lived for the

00:24:32.360 future by faith in Christ will be found out to have been the wise men when the future has become

00:24:39.300 the present. Many in that day will awake too late to the conviction of Christ that they are outside

00:24:46.640 of the ark of safety of Jesus and that their truest epitaph on their gravestone will read 0.96

00:24:53.560 thou was a fool, end quote. Verse 15 says, they went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all 0.96

00:25:05.420 flesh in which there was the breath of life. And those that entered, male and female, of all the

00:25:11.800 flesh, went in as God had commanded, and the Lord shut them in. Now what I find interesting is that

00:25:21.820 Noah and his family did not know how long they would be in the ark. God never told Noah how long

00:25:29.880 you're going to be in here. Now, it ended up being 371 days, 371 days inside this ark. But at the time,

00:25:39.740 they had no timeline. All they had was faith. They had faith in God's word. And again, I think

00:25:46.720 this shows us that one act of faith, believing that there would be a flood, really leads to and

00:25:51.400 allows for future acts of faith, walking into the ark without really worrying about it.

00:25:59.120 Obedience builds confidence in God's word. I think it's true, is that the more you obey,

00:26:04.900 the more you realize that obedience is good. The more you obey God's word, the more you're

00:26:10.140 likely to obey in the future. You begin to have a pattern in your life where you go, I've trusted

00:26:15.080 the Lord long enough that I know that when I can't see, just trust the Lord and everything will be

00:26:21.580 okay. But that is a consistent reputation of righteousness that you must earn through

00:26:27.700 faithfulness. And Noah had that. And I think that life is full of moments like this, by the way.

00:26:34.540 God brings you into like a season. Maybe it's bringing you into a particular season of

00:26:39.880 frustration or suffering or worry or difficulty or pain. And he's bringing you into the season

00:26:45.040 like Noah's going into the ark, and you don't know how long

00:26:47.040 you're going to be there. You don't know how long

00:26:49.040 you're going to be there.

00:26:52.700 People

00:26:53.020 walking through a cancer diagnosis, you don't know how long you're going

00:26:55.020 to be there.

00:26:58.620 But again,

00:26:59.300 if you have a

00:27:01.100 long-standing reputation of trusting the

00:27:03.020 Lord, it's no big deal.

00:27:05.000 It's no big deal.

00:27:06.860 You know what a blessing it is to grow up being a Christian

00:27:08.880 and to have a long history

00:27:10.900 of faithfulness so that when those

00:27:13.060 trials come,

00:27:13.820 you have example after example after example of god's faithfulness coming through you may have

00:27:23.280 heard about these people that do prayer closets right they have they have answered prayers all

00:27:27.960 over their closet or i have friends that have a journal that have answered prayers they have a

00:27:32.900 long history of seeing prayer god's faithfulness and trusting upon that god will do what he says

00:27:40.640 he will do. And when you have that long record, and then you bump into a difficult season,

00:27:46.560 it's not that complicated. You go, you know what? I've been here before. I've seen the Lord work

00:27:52.500 through hard and more difficult seasons where I don't know what to expect. And it is a great

00:27:57.260 blessing. And so where does this leave us? In Noah's day, there came a moment when the warning

00:28:09.220 ended. The rain began, the floods came out from below, and the door was shut. And notice that

00:28:17.340 Noah didn't shut the door. God shut the door. That means that salvation is God's work and judgment

00:28:24.620 is God's work. I was thinking about the sovereignty of God over salvation and all these people that

00:28:28.880 talk about free will. Do you think Noah had a choice to do this? Like, was there another option

00:28:38.880 for God? No. No, Noah chose God. Noah saved God. And it is evident that God is sovereign over

00:28:48.480 salvation. Now, what we see here is that there was a period of patience. Again, that 120-year

00:28:53.460 warning. But then there was a day when the opportunity to enter the ark was gone.

00:28:59.160 And the door was shut. And I think it confronts our tendency to assume that tomorrow will be

00:29:05.520 there. It's just a, you just believe that tomorrow will be there. But statistically, we know that's

00:29:14.540 not true. Tomorrow might not be there. Tonight might not be there. Time is not in our hands.

00:29:23.500 We don't get to control. It wasn't Noah who said, you know, I'll tell you when the flood's going to

00:29:27.960 come. No. Noah was faithfully, patiently waiting, doing his work, and God said, now's the time.

00:29:39.140 And every one of us is going to have that moment.

00:29:42.700 The Lord's going to, one day, it's going to be a Wednesday, or Tuesday, or a Saturday afternoon.

00:29:48.900 God's going to say, now's the time. You're coming home. You're coming home. And

00:29:56.660 time is not in our hands. Scripture says that God has appointed a day for every man to die,

00:30:04.320 and after that comes the judgment. Now, the ark, as I've said before in previous sermons,

00:30:09.320 is a picture of Christ. If you're in Christ, you're going to escape the judgment.

00:30:15.800 If you're outside of Christ, you will not. You will drown like the mockers and the fools. 1.00

00:30:21.400 Now, the souls of those who perished in the flood thousands of years ago, they're not gone. 0.99

00:30:26.660 In fact, they're still there.

00:30:28.580 They're still in hell under judgment right now.

00:30:32.160 I want you to think about this for a second.

00:30:34.440 They were there in the days of Moses.

00:30:37.940 They were there in the days of David.

00:30:40.520 They were there in the days of Christ in the Roman Empire.

00:30:43.940 They were there through the rise of Europe and the voyage of the Mayflower.

00:30:47.480 And they're there today.

00:30:48.740 They're there right now.

00:30:49.520 The souls of those people in the flood are sitting in eternal judgment today.

00:31:00.620 I think it's just a very weighty reality that a single decision in time carries consequences that never end.

00:31:10.300 A single decision in time carries consequences that never end.

00:31:15.800 I think it should give us a sense of urgency.

00:31:17.640 we should be like Noah preachers of righteousness that we stand out to an onlooking world and we

00:31:23.760 say come to Christ get in the ark repent of your sin don't and by the way this message isn't just

00:31:34.280 for this like lost world it's for the church again we live in a generation who has made it so easy to

00:31:41.320 come into the church that you can't trust that anybody is in this crowd is actually saved the

00:31:47.420 only way you can tell is that you have fruit in your life. But just because you came into church

00:31:53.120 doesn't mean you came to Christ. There are millions of people all across the world who think they're

00:31:58.700 saved and they're not. Jesus says, many will come to me in that day. Lord, Lord, I did so many

00:32:05.540 miracles in your name. I did so many wonders in your name. And he'll say, away from me. I do not

00:32:10.960 know you. Essentially, spiritual activity doesn't mean spiritual security. There are people that

00:32:17.240 pray the prayers and do the things, and they don't actually love Christ. They've never been

00:32:22.120 born again. They've never understood the gospel. And so this message isn't just for the pagan

00:32:31.460 people that are out in the world. It's for your father who calls himself a Christian, but never 0.85

00:32:35.660 really goes to church and never really reads his Bible, the guy's going to hell. There's 0.97

00:32:40.820 no fruit. When you look at someone and you go, oh, you're a Christian. So many times 1.00

00:32:49.860 people at funerals, well, yeah, you know, he said he was a Christian, but you know,

00:32:54.100 what that means is no, no. You either love Christ or you don't. What does Jesus

00:33:05.540 say about lukewarmness. He doesn't want lukewarmness. He wouldn't just be cold or just be

00:33:11.620 hot. If you're lukewarm, I'm going to spit you out. No, the reality is, is that we need to 0.94

00:33:18.520 call the current church to Christ. There are so many people in the congregations that think

00:33:26.180 they're saved and have never really encountered their sin, never really encountered grace,

00:33:31.480 never really encountered the gospel.

00:33:35.580 And so as we go forth this week,

00:33:37.520 let's be like Noah,

00:33:38.820 preachers of righteousness,

00:33:40.220 not just to the external world,

00:33:42.140 but to our own people.

00:33:43.700 Amen?

00:33:44.800 Let's pray.

00:33:45.980 Father, we thank you, Lord, for this truth.

00:33:48.780 For the example of the Old Testament

00:33:50.500 to mirror the new.

00:33:51.360 Lord, we pray that you would give us wisdom

00:33:52.860 to understand and how we could apply this

00:33:54.620 to our own lives.

00:33:56.200 Lord, we pray that we would know

00:33:57.380 and be assured through the Holy Spirit

00:34:00.620 that fruit would come from our lives,

00:34:02.220 that we would show our allegiance to Christ,

00:34:04.800 Lord, that we would be a church,

00:34:05.820 not that's lukewarm,

00:34:06.760 but a church that's hot,

00:34:08.120 that's hot for the gospel.

00:34:09.440 Lord, we ask that you would bless us

00:34:10.720 with that wisdom

00:34:11.920 and how to explain the gospel to the world.

00:34:15.440 In Jesus' name, amen.

Dale Partridge - April 23, 2026

Genesis 7_11-16 - The Day the Rain Began in Noah's Flood

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