Dale Partridge - April 29, 2026


Genesis 7_17-8_5 - The Unfaithful Never Escapes God's Judgement


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Length

31 minutes

Words per minute

160.78958

Word count

5,034

Sentence count

255

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Hate speech

9

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Summary

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Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Well, praise God. It's good to be back in Genesis 7, and we're going to get through chapter 8
00:00:12.520 today. Not the whole thing, but I'm going to try to move through this. We continue our journey
00:00:17.760 in the flood, Noah's flood, which is just a fascinating section of Scripture. We saw last
00:00:23.900 week that God's patience had come to an end and the judgment had begun. And we saw that this was
00:00:31.820 a real, historical, catastrophic event with waters bursting up from the earth and waters coming down
00:00:42.780 from the heavens. And it was a scene of what I called a decreation. It was the undoing of Genesis
00:00:49.720 chapter 1. Now, if you remember in the beginning, God separated the waters from above from the
00:00:56.420 waters from below. But here in Genesis chapter 7, we saw that he brought those things back together
00:01:03.460 in judgment. So the flood is really the kind of decreation of the Genesis 1 narrative.
00:01:11.240 Now, we also saw that these waters, they reshaped the earth. It wasn't just this kind of regional
00:01:17.300 reality it was something that was transformative it was likely a large pangea like land mass
00:01:24.340 that the world was shaped and uh was rich with vegetation and the flood with the ground waters
00:01:31.220 bursting out created a fracturing of tectonic magnitude of continents shifting around and
00:01:39.300 massive forests going underwater we saw the coal deposits that the earth essentially
00:01:46.420 coal deposits that are all around the world are essentially giant forests that were ripped
00:01:52.900 and layered under different parts of sediment. And that's why we can retrace the flood back to
00:01:59.420 different parts of the world. And then we ended up by watching the first drops of rain that fell
00:02:06.780 down on the ark and Noah and his family entering in the ark and God shutting the door. And that's
00:02:14.320 where we left off last week. Today, my hope is to move through a significant portion to get all the
00:02:21.440 way from Genesis chapter 7 verse 17 all the way through 8 verse 5. And it's going to cover the
00:02:28.020 height of the flood, not just theologically, but also is speaking to the heights of the waters.
00:02:33.760 It's going to talk about the total judgment of the earth and also the beginning of God's mercies
00:02:38.700 to have the floodwaters to start receding and we start to enter into the time of Noah exiting the
00:02:45.600 ark. And so the emphasis of today's text is really twofold. It's one is the severity of God's wrath.
00:02:52.080 You're going to see that. Number two is the faithfulness of his preservation, that Noah
00:02:57.720 actually survives this. And it's an incredible thing to think about. So let's read verse 17 and
00:03:04.360 18 and chapter 7. It says, the flood continued 40 days on the earth. The waters increased and
00:03:14.740 bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the
00:03:23.540 earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters. I want you to imagine just for a moment,
00:03:29.540 you can like, you know, we have this golf course here. Just for a second, imagine out on that golf
00:03:33.240 course, you had like a cruise ship that could hold 300 people and the decks were about 50 feet high.
00:03:41.120 I mean, that's higher than most of those trees out there. And a cruise ship that's about that size
00:03:47.960 is going to weigh somewhere between a million and two million pounds, right? A couple hundred tons.
00:03:54.380 And I want you to imagine how much water would be required to lift that boat up. Just how much
00:04:02.280 water it would take to lift that vessel off of the ground. It's about 30 feet of water to get it
00:04:10.160 up about a few inches off the ground. And so you'd need to have these trees essentially covered.
00:04:17.600 The trees would be covered with water. And that's really just the beginning. You know, Hurricane
00:04:23.000 Katrina a few years ago, it was the highest floodwaters that we had seen in modern history,
00:04:29.320 and it got up to 25 feet in just certain sections of the city. And so, again, as the ark began to
00:04:37.380 be lifted, this was just the beginning of the floodwaters and the depths and the gravity and
00:04:42.760 the magnitude of the flood. It says in verse 19, it says, and the waters prevailed so mightily on
00:04:49.040 the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed
00:04:56.720 above the mountains covering them 15 cubits deep all right um i think i just want to keep pointing
00:05:05.700 out that the the context of the flood narrative continues to project the theory of a regional
00:05:12.840 flood that this wasn't a oh noah's flood there was some sort of a great flood but it was only
00:05:18.000 regional it was only on this continent it wasn't really a global thing it didn't happen everywhere
00:05:22.540 That's a very common theory that's out there even in parts of the church.
00:05:28.660 Now, scientifically, we know that water always finds its level.
00:05:32.580 That's a scientific fact.
00:05:34.280 Water always finds its level.
00:05:37.540 And so if you have water rising up enough to cover the heights of mountains in one area of the world,
00:05:45.320 even if you argue that those mountains were lower than the mountains that are today,
00:05:49.460 you can't keep that kind of depth confined to one region. No, it's going to level itself out.
00:05:58.140 It would naturally spread across the entire earth. Just, again, consider Hurricane Katrina.
00:06:03.060 You have 20 to 25 feet of water, and it overwhelmed an entire city. Just 20 to 25 feet.
00:06:10.120 Now multiply that to the level of mountaintops. And we're talking at least thousands of feet.
00:06:16.100 thousands of feet of water now add to that the language that you see in the scriptures here
00:06:23.980 it says all the high mountains plural all the high mountains plural under the whole heaven
00:06:31.940 so all of the mountains under all of the sky the heavens right so again you start to you see the
00:06:40.440 comprehensive, not regional language that's being used here. Then there's the ark. Again, if this
00:06:47.940 were local or regional, Noah could have just relocated, right? We talked about this with the
00:06:54.020 birds, right? Why are we putting two kinds of birds on the ark? There are several species of birds that
00:06:59.480 can fly 3,000 miles without stopping. And so it wouldn't make any sense if you could have just
00:07:07.080 migrated somewhere else or if Noah could have just moved somewhere else. No, there was only one way
00:07:13.520 of survival of the judgment to come. It's because the entire earth was to be flooded. Now, the
00:07:18.980 duration also matters. These waters prevailed for months and months, and then they receded slowly,
00:07:26.280 which again doesn't match the structure of a regional flood or a regional narrative. And
00:07:31.940 finally, God's promise is never to flood the earth again. We know that in Genesis chapter 9.
00:07:37.080 God says we see the rainbow. The rainbow is a sign of the promise that God will never flood
00:07:41.660 the earth again. Well, if it's a regional flood and he says we're never going to do that again,
00:07:49.060 that wouldn't be true because there's been regional floods all over the world throughout
00:07:53.180 history and God would essentially be a liar. No, the reality is that there will never be a global
00:07:58.020 flood again. There will never be a flood that catastrophically kills everything as there was
00:08:04.340 in this moment. And so when you take all of this together, it's impossible to read logically
00:08:10.240 that the narrative of the flood is anything else but a universal event. Now, notice that the text
00:08:17.040 says that the waters rose 15 cubits above the highest mountains. Now, 15 cubits is about 22
00:08:23.720 and a half feet. I think that's an interesting measurement. Now, the tallest land animal that
00:08:29.020 we have today is the giraffe. It's about 18 feet. Now, if you're a dinosaur person that believes in
00:08:34.680 the dinosaurs, then I know there's some people that don't. But the dinosaurs, they could have
00:08:38.880 had maybe 20 to 30 feet. What I'm seeing here is that there is, again, an element of justice and
00:08:45.200 judgment that you can't migrate, you can't climb. There is no way that you can get around the flood
00:08:50.640 waters. The entire thing is going up under the water. Now, God's judgment, essentially what this
00:08:59.760 is showing is it's thorough. There's a thorough judgment here. It's left nothing to survive,
00:09:05.520 which is exactly why if you look at verse 21, follow along with me, we're moving quick.
00:09:09.240 It says, and all the flesh died that moved on the earth. Birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming
00:09:20.440 creatures that swarm on the earth and all mankind. Everything on the dry land and whose
00:09:27.580 nostrils was the breath of life died. He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of
00:09:35.000 the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out
00:09:41.620 from the earth. Only Noah was left and those who were with him in the ark and the waters prevailed
00:09:49.420 on the earth 150 days. The totality. Again, when you look about the children's narrative of Noah's
00:09:59.840 ark, you don't really think about this. You kind of just see the smiling animals and the fun boat.
00:10:05.600 This is absolute, total judgment. Pay attention to the words that Moses uses here. He says,
00:10:15.780 all flesh everything every living thing what he's doing is he's stacking phrase upon phrase
00:10:23.380 that no category is left out it's a totality language it includes birds it includes beasts
00:10:29.860 it includes swarming things again if it was regional they could have flown they could have
00:10:35.380 migrated no it's showing that none of those things nothing could escape the floodwaters that were so
00:10:41.420 prevailing on the earth and also look at the language it says that they perished they died
00:10:47.020 they were blotted out these are extreme languages it's underscored that this isn't just death it's
00:10:52.780 judgment it's a judgment upon the earth for it's filled with violence and sin and corruption so
00:11:00.380 god is wiping the earth clear he's wiping it away with sin he's cleansing the world and yet in the
00:11:06.780 the middle of all of this total destruction language, we have this great line at the very
00:11:11.700 end. It says, and only Noah was left. And it sounds, you just think about if everything,
00:11:21.740 every human being, we talked about there was probably hundreds of millions of people on the
00:11:26.160 earth on top of millions and millions of creatures. Everything's dying and only Noah
00:11:33.600 and his family were left. Now, over the years, I've heard a few people make the argument. They
00:11:42.280 take this verse and they connect it to the idea that, see, this, you know, salvation will always
00:11:47.400 be small, right? It's only going to be for few people. You know, there will be few that will be
00:11:53.160 saved and most will perish. It's going to kind of mimic the pattern and structure that we saw in
00:11:58.420 the flood. They often tie it to kind of Jesus's statement, you know, wide is the way that leads
00:12:04.420 to destruction and narrow is the way that leads to life, right? They connect those statements
00:12:09.380 together. But I don't think that's a careful use or a systematic use of redemptive history.
00:12:14.900 And I want to explain that just for a second. Before Christ, salvation was confined. Before
00:12:20.820 Christ, salvation was confined to one nation, to one covenant people. And in this case that we're
00:12:27.400 seen here in Noah's narrative, one family. Salvation is literally limited to one family.
00:12:34.740 Now, so in that sense, it is narrow. In this particular circumstance, it is narrow. But after
00:12:40.520 Christ's resurrection, we see that everything changes. We see everything changes. The dominion
00:12:46.840 of Satan, Satan had dominion over the nations. It's why he was able to offer to Christ in the
00:12:54.160 wilderness, I will give you all of the nations if you just bow down and worship me. There was a sense
00:13:00.020 of authority that Satan had over the nations, and it was essentially when Jesus died on the cross
00:13:07.440 and rose again, he took back that dominion and that authority, which is why in Matthew 28 he says
00:13:13.720 that all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. The authority switches from the
00:13:19.540 devil who lost and is now given to Christ the king. And so he sends the disciples to do what?
00:13:28.580 Well, to go get the nations. So again, we have the Old Testament. We have one nation that's,
00:13:35.120 that salvation is limited to one nation, first to the Jew, then to the Greek. But then in, 0.99
00:13:40.480 after the gospel, we now have that Christ has authority over all the nations and now all of
00:13:45.980 them are his and this is a victorious and it's a good thing now it's why in revelation 11 15 it's
00:13:52.360 speaking to the fall of jerusalem in 70 ad and it's it's talking about the fall of the old covenant
00:13:58.200 era the fall of the old covenant era the old way the temple the sacrifices the priesthood all of
00:14:03.880 that is going away and is being replaced with a new covenant era and in revelation 11 15 we say
00:14:10.640 it every week in our benediction it says the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of
00:14:15.160 our Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever. Okay, that's a statement that
00:14:21.340 shows that now as Jerusalem fell, the new covenant era comes in, the power of the gospel, the
00:14:28.880 resurrection, that Jesus is moving into the nations and it says that great statement, the kingdom of
00:14:34.260 the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever
00:14:41.060 and it's a good and glorious truth.
00:14:44.320 Now, so what I want to say about this
00:14:48.280 is in the Old Covenant,
00:14:49.820 in the Old Covenant,
00:14:50.780 this is where I'm getting to my point here.
00:14:52.220 This will all kind of wrap up here in a second.
00:14:54.220 In the Old Covenant,
00:14:55.360 it made sense to have a certain degree of pessimism.
00:14:58.560 It made sense to have a certain degree of,
00:15:00.440 until Christ came,
00:15:02.020 you had a valid reason to be pessimistic.
00:15:04.940 There was no hope.
00:15:06.500 There was no joy to look forward to. 0.91
00:15:09.220 Everything was going to get worse until Christ was born. 0.86
00:15:12.780 Everybody in the Old Covenant understood that.
00:15:15.760 But in the New Covenant, we are called to optimism.
00:15:20.080 We are not called to pessimism.
00:15:22.480 We're not called to think that everything is going to get worse and worse.
00:15:24.860 No, we are called to believe that everything is going to get better and better over the centuries.
00:15:29.740 Over the centuries as the church grows and continues to mold and push through the world
00:15:34.940 through the power of the gospel, by the work of the Holy Spirit, by the strength of the word of God.
00:15:41.720 And we know this because, why? Well, because all authority has been given to Christ in heaven and
00:15:47.160 on earth. Because the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.
00:15:51.160 Because the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. We know because the leaven of the
00:15:56.760 kingdom of God is going to leaven the entire lump of the world. All of these are promises. And here
00:16:00.940 is the ultra point. This is where I'm getting to. This is very important. My point is this.
00:16:07.740 We must not import old covenant limitations into new covenant promises. We must not import
00:16:16.780 old covenant limitations, the pessimism of the old covenant, the way that they used to live,
00:16:22.360 to the new covenant ideal and structure and vision. No, we are not to be a people without
00:16:28.680 hope we are not to be a people that thinks that oh god is only saving a few no that is the exact
00:16:35.160 opposite jesus goes no we're not just one nation we're getting the whole world save the whole
00:16:41.160 world everybody is going to hear from every tribe nation and tongue are going to come and bow the
00:16:46.600 knee to christ and so the trajectory now is not contraction it's expansion right it's no longer 0.60
00:16:54.760 just Jew. It's Jew and Gentile out into the world. It's every tribe, nation, and tongue. And it's 0.96
00:17:01.420 only the devil who benefits from the idea that it's only going to get worse. When we have the
00:17:05.960 perspective that we think that, oh, only a few. And even that church, you know, that church, I know
00:17:12.220 it's 33% of the world, but you know what? A vast majority of them aren't really believers, right?
00:17:19.320 I know that they confess Christ, but they're not really saved. Okay, that's a lot of the perspective.
00:17:24.760 oh yeah you know no be optimistic be optimistic we know that the church has
00:17:31.080 continued has there been a time in history where the church has gotten smaller
00:17:34.280 no no there was 12 guys and then there was a few hundred and then a few thousand
00:17:41.320 and now we're at a few billion of course because how can the guy who has all authority in heaven
00:17:51.080 and on earth and who is god fail in his work he can't fail he is a victorious king he's the king
00:17:59.420 of kings the lord of lords we can have confidence and hope now i want to show you the absolute
00:18:06.540 intensity of the flood as we get back to our focus here it says the waters prevailed for 150 days
00:18:12.760 that's a lot of time to be in water around water water growing water falling this is a lot
00:18:23.340 of intensity for a long period of time the judgment accomplished its task of cleansing
00:18:30.660 we see in chapter 8 verse 1 it says but God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all
00:18:38.460 the livestock that were with him in the ark, and God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters
00:18:46.640 subsided. The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heaven were closed. The rain from the
00:18:54.940 heavens was restrained, and the waters receded from the earth continually. At the end of 150 days,
00:19:03.380 the waters had abated. And in the seven month of the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to
00:19:11.500 rest on the mountains of Ararat. And the waters continued to abate until the tenth month. In the
00:19:19.160 tenth month, on the first day of the month, on the tops of the mountains, on the tops of the mountains
00:19:24.760 were seen. So this passage begins with, again, I think one of the most comforting
00:19:32.280 words that we have in this section of scripture, God remembered Noah. God remembered Noah.
00:19:42.180 I don't know about you, but I often think that God forgets about me. I go, oh Lord, do you not see
00:19:48.040 what's happening in my life right now? I've called out to you. I've reached out to you.
00:19:54.080 I've prayed, are you not hearing me? And so when I hear these phrases that God remembers Noah.
00:20:02.420 Now it's not that God had forgotten Noah, right? It's not that God's, God is omniscient and he
00:20:08.200 doesn't have a struggle with memory. No, it's that he now acts. When the words remember, it's that
00:20:16.620 he's he's moving he's acting in faithfulness to deliver him it's a covenantal language when we
00:20:23.780 see any time that the scriptures say God remembered it doesn't mean that he's forgotten
00:20:29.140 it means um it means that his he's turning his attention to action and he's fulfilling what he
00:20:37.160 has already promised uh let me let me give you an example you see this uh so God remembers Noah
00:20:43.540 he begins to remove the waters. He remembers Abraham and he rescues Lot. He remembers Rachel
00:20:51.180 and then he opens her womb. He remembers his covenant with Israel and takes them out of Egypt. 0.95
00:20:57.660 In every case, it's again, it's not about God coming to memory like I forgot something.
00:21:03.360 It's about movement. It's about God stepping in at the appointed time and fulfilling his covenant
00:21:08.100 promises. And so when the text says that God remembered Noah, what it really means is when
00:21:12.300 god remembers something that's it basically means this it means the season of waiting has now turned
00:21:17.880 into the season of deliverance okay when god remembers you it's like oh the season of waiting
00:21:26.160 of all the prayer of all the frustration of all the suffering of all the time and god has remembered
00:21:33.080 his promise to this particular covenant people it's an end of that season and a season of
00:21:39.720 deliverance is about to come. That's what that means. And this connects directly to the gospel.
00:21:47.600 We actually see this in that God has remembered his people in the sending of his son Christ. We
00:21:53.640 see actually in Luke, John the Baptist's father, Zechariah, and he has this great song of Zechariah
00:21:58.900 that we see after he has been, you know, mute and unable to speak. And he says, he has raised up a
00:22:04.380 horn of salvation for us in the house of the servant of David, as he said through his holy
00:22:09.320 prophets long ago salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us to show mercy to
00:22:14.680 our ancestors and to remember his holy covenant the oath he swore to our forefather abraham and
00:22:23.080 so again it's that he connects the reality of jesus being sent as a remembering i've remembered
00:22:31.240 my people the season of suffering is about to come to an end and the season of deliverance is here
00:22:39.320 and it's here in the birth of Christ, and that is the context. And so in verse 2 of chapter 8,
00:22:47.920 we see the same God who opened the fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens has now
00:22:53.060 closed them. So we see this closing. The waters, the growing waters have begun to stop. And then
00:23:01.300 it says the wind, the wind, which is a very important word. We know that spirit in the Hebrew,
00:23:07.920 ruach it's the idea of wind they're very closely connected the wind god sends in genesis 8 2 it
00:23:15.420 echoes the the spirit sent in genesis 1 2 and the spirit is hovering over the waters in genesis
00:23:23.540 chapter 1 verses 2 which signals that there's a split between the waters below and the waters
00:23:28.600 above and here again in genesis 8 2 we see the wind cutting through in the sense that the waters
00:23:34.620 that were kind of thrown together are now again separated. It's again showing us some degree of
00:23:40.240 peace that's occurring. Now, interestingly, the text tells us that the ark came to rest
00:23:46.260 on the mountains of Ararat on the 17th day of the seventh month. Now, there's a fun fact that I
00:23:53.860 didn't know until I studied this week, that later in Exodus chapter 12, God restructures Israel's
00:24:02.920 calendar. So they have a religious calendar of all their feasts and what they were doing.
00:24:06.260 And in Exodus chapter 12, they're getting ready to actually go through the Exodus. They're
00:24:10.740 actually leaving Egypt. And God restructures their calendar. Now, he takes the seventh month,
00:24:19.760 the seventh month, and makes it the first month. Pay attention with me. He takes the seventh month,
00:24:24.860 which is Nisan, and he makes it the first month. And so Israel's year used to begin in the fall. 0.76
00:24:32.320 And now Israel's year is going to begin in the spring.
00:24:35.660 And so he's shifting the calendar altogether.
00:24:38.220 Now, this change was intentional.
00:24:40.240 God wanted the entire nation of Israel to have their calendar revolve around their exodus. 0.81
00:24:48.500 So the very beginning of the year would be the start of their year to show,
00:24:53.680 remember that you have been saved from Egypt. 0.97
00:24:56.140 so at the start of their year is now going to be when they were taken out of egypt by the mighty
00:25:04.540 hand of god now from that moment forward every new year every season would begin with their mind of
00:25:11.540 redemption it'd be like january 1st remembering the gospel essentially right it's we have been
00:25:17.100 redeemed that's essentially the structure that we see here and now when you look there's been
00:25:24.100 some great scholars that have done some very fun calculations that have to do with the dates
00:25:27.960 that are going on with Noah's flood and with the calendar adjustment in Exodus chapter 12
00:25:34.640 and with the Israeli calendar that was carried all the way out into Jesus's day.
00:25:41.960 And so it says at the end of, in our text today, it says at the end of 150 days, the waters had
00:25:47.720 abated. And in the seventh month, on the 17th day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains
00:25:52.540 of Ararat. Okay, the day that the ark landed on Ararat is the same day that Christ rose from the
00:26:00.560 dead, if you do the calculations. It's a really fascinating study. It took me like two and a half
00:26:05.720 hours to look at this and to understand what they were trying to say. But essentially,
00:26:11.340 Christ passes through the waters of judgment and he rises on the third day. It's three days after
00:26:18.200 Passover. And in the same way, Noah's ark goes through the waters of judgment and rises on the
00:26:24.700 mountain of the third day after Passover, securing salvation for Noah. So there's a very beautiful
00:26:30.400 connection there. I wish I had more time to go deep into it, but I didn't want to make the whole
00:26:34.940 sermon about that. But you can study that, look into that. It's a fascinating thing. And I love
00:26:39.500 when we see things like this because what it does is it shows God's sovereignty, his providence,
00:26:44.300 his structure, his magnificence, his beauty, and you go, oh man, such incredible connections,
00:26:51.900 such a systematic, coherent God that we serve. Now the waters continue to recede
00:26:58.260 over months until the tops of the mountains appear. And at that time, they had been on the
00:27:06.440 ark for about 224 days. And so just imagine, I don't know what 224 days was, but it was
00:27:14.120 probably around November, I'm thinking. Just imagine you've just been, you know, maybe longer,
00:27:19.620 right? Longer than that. You've just been in the ark for a long time. And all of a sudden, you start
00:27:26.960 to see the tips of the mountains start to recede. Now, as I close here, I think we can learn
00:27:34.600 something from the flood. Something a little bit different that we haven't focused on. The flood,
00:27:38.820 the flood for us is over right it's over right the judgment was laid on christ
00:27:45.700 the new covenant we are like noah right we're standing on the deck of the ark and
00:27:54.680 we're watching the mountains of the new world slowly be revealed that's what we have in the
00:28:02.140 gospel we have this great hope it's like we're standing on the ark we're standing on the edge
00:28:08.720 of the new covenant and we're watching the judgment waters, the fallen world, the plague
00:28:16.140 of sin slowly start to disappear. And we know that because why? Because the resurrection of Christ
00:28:25.700 is more powerful than the fall of Adam. The resurrection of Christ is more powerful than
00:28:30.440 the fall of Adam. What is Christ doing? He is coming to reverse the effects of the fall.
00:28:34.700 that is what's happening we are seeing every day that the church is growing that christ is saving
00:28:40.940 more people that he is conquering his enemies through conversion that more and more people
00:28:45.940 in the world are becoming christian and i know it's difficult to see in times of craziness that
00:28:49.920 are happening all around us but if you zoom out and you realize that christ is winning it's winning
00:28:55.560 over the centuries and slowly slowly we are seeing the waters recede and that the new world
00:29:03.800 is being made. The kingdom of God is being created before our eyes. The storm has passed for us. The
00:29:11.740 wrath of God has been satisfied for us. What was once a sea of condemnation in a fallen world that
00:29:17.300 did not have Christ, we know that has become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ.
00:29:24.120 We know that every wave that came that threatened to swallow us fell upon our substitute. It fell
00:29:29.380 upon Jesus. We can think that we were saved in the ark of Christ. And by God remembering the mercy,
00:29:39.440 that God remembered Noah. We know that God remembered you. I don't think God just remembered
00:29:44.260 the church as like a non-individualistic reality. Yes, we are covenant people. We are a covenant
00:29:53.600 church. But God knows the numbers of hairs on your head. He says that Jesus says that he knows
00:30:01.040 his sheep by their names. And so when God remembers Noah, it's an example that he remembers an
00:30:08.420 individual man. And I believe that he could truly say that God remembered you, that God remembered
00:30:16.080 me, that God came and sent a Savior, not just for the church as a whole, but for you and for me.
00:30:25.900 And it's a really beautiful picture that we have a covenant-keeping God, and this world will be
00:30:31.560 made new, and that we're safe, and we can rest in that. Amen? Let's pray. Father, we thank you,
00:30:39.400 Lord, for the blessing of redemption. Lord, that we have seen what you have done in Noah
00:30:45.600 and the redemption. And Lord, that that is a picture and a pattern and a symbol
00:30:49.880 of what we can expect. There will be a day where we will rise from the graves and we will see this
00:30:57.840 new world. And the waters will have all been receded. And the fires will all be done. Lord,
00:31:08.280 and we will rest in a time and a place with no sin and perfect union with you. Lord, we wait and we
00:31:15.240 hope for that day. In Jesus' name, amen.