A New Beginning in a New World

We have been on Sunday mornings in a series on beginnings and we're looking at the first eleven chapters of the book of Genesis, fighting out the beginnings of everything we believe, of everything the Bible teaches, found in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. In recent weeks we have looked at the beginning of the universe and the earth in chapter one, we've looked at the beginning of mankind and marriage in chapter two, we've looked at the beginning of sin and death in chapter three, the beginning of human civilization in chapter four, the beginning of God's judgment and wrath because of pervasive sin in chapters six and seven, the judgment through the flood. And today we come to chapter eight and a new beginning, a new beginning in a new world. What we find in chapter eight is that Noah comes off the ark into a new world, a new beginning after God has cleansed the earth through the flood and judged mankind. Noah now has a new beginning and we've left him on the ark for three weeks. Been three weeks since we've been in Genesis. Actually, he was on the ark a lot longer than that, but we've left him there for three weeks. We're going to find him this morning getting off the ark and entering an entirely new world with a new beginning in life. And what I find here in chapter eight is really a wonderful example of our salvation, of the new life that we have in Christ. The new beginnings that he gives us when we come to know him. In fact, the Bible speaks of our life in Christ, of our salvation as a new beginning, actually a new creation, much like what we see in Genesis chapter eight. Paul says it this way in 2 Corinthians chapter five and verse 17, therefore if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone. The new is here. We are new in Christ. We are actually new creatures, new creations in Christ. We have a new beginning in a new world, just like Noah. You can have a new beginning this morning as a new creature, a whole new creation in Christ. You can be delivered from judgment. You can be delivered from God's wrath. You can be forgiven by him. You can be given a whole new life, a whole new beginning. All that can happen to you this morning, much in the same way it happened to Noah. So what we're going to do this morning is we're going to look at Noah's very real new beginning in a new world and draw parallels, use it as an example or an illustration of the new life, the new beginning in a new creation that we can have in Christ. Let's look at how Noah's story illustrates our life in Christ, the new beginning as a new creation in Christ. First of all, there's the entrance into the new creation. In the first four verses we are reminded of the flood, of what God had done and how Noah comes off of the ark into a new world. So let's look at those four verses. But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he said a wind over the earth and the waters receded. Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the 150 days the water had gone down, and on the 17th day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. God remembered Noah, and as we have seen before, that doesn't simply mean that he recalled Noah or that he called him back to mind, does not indicate in any way that he had forgotten about Noah. The word remember means to intervene. It emphasizes love and protective care. And so God was intervening to take care of Noah and his family and the animals on the ark. And as the ark, as the waters recede from the flood, the ark comes to rest on the mountains of Ararat. Notice it does not say Mount Ararat. Much misguided attempts to try to find the ark today, center on one mountain in Turkey called Mount Ararat. Actually these are the mountains of Urarat, which was a land north of Mesopotamia, probably not even Turkey. It was a different scenario altogether. So attempts to try to find the ark on Mount Ararat today are misguided. That's not the point. And that's not what we should focus on in chapter 8. What we should focus on is that God now delivers Noah through his judgment to a new beginning in a new world. And the entrance of Noah to that new creation is a beautiful example of what it means for us to come into a new relationship as a new creation with Christ. There are four elements of Noah's entering into this new creation. Some of it will be a review, but all of this put together helps us to understand how Noah got to where he is in chapter 8. The first element of entrance into this new creation is the judgment of God. That's where it all began. It began with the flood. Now remember God judged the world through the flood because God is righteous, because God is holy, and because there is no stain, no spot, no sin at all in God. He is perfectly holy. He cannot tolerate sin. And when a society in a culture grows as wicked as it was in Noah's day, where it is described in chapter 6 that every inclination of their hearts was always evil all the time. It's pretty bad. When it gets that bad, God sometimes says nothing is left but judgment. And so God judges because of sin. God's wrath falls on people because of sin. But never without warning. God in His grace gave plenty of warning. 120 years. He gave warning of His judgment. And my friend, the same thing is true of us today. God's wrath is on us because of sin. But God gives us warning about that. He warns us what is to come. And by the way, the Bible does not speak of God's wrath as something that is future. The Bible doesn't say God's wrath and judgment for our sin is something we're going to face some day way out there in eternity, although there will be a specific time in the future when we stand before God. But the Bible says that God's wrath is a present reality existing right now on everyone who does not know Jesus as Savior. Look at these verses from the New Testament. John chapter 3 verse 18, we're on the screen for you, whoever believes in Him Christ is not condemned. The word condemnation, kata kremah, the ultimate judgment, harsh judgment, the judgment of God in hell. This is talking about final judgment. Whoever believes in Christ will not be judged in that way. He will not see hell. But whoever does not believe stands condemned, notice already because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only son. Already, not the future. It doesn't require a future judgment for you to be condemned. The wrath of God is already on you. It already exists if you don't know Jesus as your Savior. Later in that chapter in John 3 verse 36, Jesus would say whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life. Why? For God's wrath, notice remains on them. It's not like God's wrath comes at some time in the future. God's wrath continues, remains on those who do not trust Jesus as Savior. Here's the reality of God's judgment. You are born under God's wrath. You are born a sinner and thus deserving of God's judgment from the moment you are conceived actually. You are conceived in your mother's womb with a sin nature. David said in Psalm 51, incendi my mother conceived me. He was a sinner from his mother's womb, he says. And so from that moment we are guilty and deserving of God's judgment because we have a sin nature. Friend, the judgment of God is a reality and it is true for all of us at the time we are brought into this world because of our sin. So the judgment of God is a reality that we must come to grips with. But then in Noah's case, there was not only the judgment of God, the flood which was warned about and God warns us in his word about his judgment, there was also the arc of safety. How did Noah get to this new creation in a new world? He came through the flood on an arc of safety. The arc was God's way of escape from his judgment and the offer was given to Noah's generation. The warning was given, God will judge but there is a way of escape and that way of escape is through this boat, through this arc. That is the only way of escape. Notice there were not many ways of escape. God did not say, you are like an airplane? I will fix an airplane. You know that would have been just as fantastic nobody had seen an arc either. So he could have said you want an airplane, I will give you that choice. You want a hot air balloon? I will give you that choice. You want a boat? I will give you that choice. You want to try to swim? God said there is only one way and he gave Noah instructions as to one way, one arc of safety and that was this boat, this arc. God allows us the privilege of an escape from his judgment that he warns us about but that escape is only one way. The arc of safety in our case is through Christ, Christ alone, Christ only is the escape from God's judgment and the reason for that is because he took that judgment for you. Nobody else did that, nothing else can do that. Only Christ stepped out into human history, became a man, died on the cross and took your punishment. God's wrath, God's judgment on you, he took that and he took it when he died on the cross, he took it for you. The Bible is clear about that. Look at these verses to reinforce from the New Testament this truth, 2 Corinthians chapter 5. God made him Christ who had no sin to be sin for us, in other words to take our sin on him so that in him, if you trust him as your Savior, we might become the righteousness of God. Peter said in 1 Peter 2 24, he himself bore our sins in his body on the cross so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness by his wounds you've been healed, speaking their spiritual healing, the forgiveness of all of our sins. Later in Peter's epistle in chapter 3 and verse 18, he would say for Christ also suffered once, notice 4 sins, the righteous 4 or instead of in place of the unrighteous, he was dying in your place, he was taking your place as a substitute on the cross to bring you to God. And so my friend, the only arc of safety for you and me is Jesus Christ and his death on the cross. It's the only way to be saved because it's the only way, the only provision God has made to escape his judgment. So how did Noah get to a new creation? Through the judgment of God, away from the judgment of God through an arc. And we escaped the wrath and judgment of God through Christ, God's Son and his death for us. But there was a third element in Noah getting to this new creation, entering this new creation and it's the offer by grace. God offered him and all others for that matter. His grace, his grace was offered in the presence of Noah preaching the righteousness of God and the coming judgment of God and giving them an opportunity to repent. But the Bible says in chapter 6 verse 8 that only Noah found favor or grace in the eyes of the Lord. That does not mean that Noah earned what God gave him. He found favor. He discovered that the only way to be right with God and to escape his judgment was through the gracious gift God was offering of deliverance through trusting in him. It was a free gift. Noah didn't earn it. Noah didn't work for it. It was not a reward for him being faithful to build the arc. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord and my friend if you get to heaven, if your sins are going to be forgiven so that you can be right with God it will not be through anything you do. It would not be through anything I would do. It's solely by the grace of God which means God freely offers it as a gift. It's not of works. Paul said it this way. So clearly in Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 8, for it is by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God not by works so that no one can boast. Aren't you glad? I mean, if you got to heaven by your works, you'd spend eternity boasting about how you got there. And somebody else would come up and say, well, I taught Sunday school for more years and you did. That was a deacon for longer than you were. I did did did did. It would be a miserable place. When we get to heaven the only way we are there is through the grace of God, through the free gift of salvation, not by anything we've done. We will not be able to boast a bit of anything we've done. And then he goes on to say that once we're saved, God's created us to do good works. We're to do those. We're to live that out. But that's not the way we get to heaven. We get to heaven by a gift. The gift of salvation by the grace of God. Then there's one other element of Noah getting to this new creation and that is the reception by faith. Noah had to trust what God was telling him about the way of escape. He had to believe that what God was telling him was true and place all of his confidence in that message. We saw it in Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 7. By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen in Holy Fear built in ark to save his family, by his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith. So Noah trusted the message that God gave him of the only way of escape. Now my friend let's put all of that together. Noah was delivered into a new creation from the judgment of God through an ark of safety by the grace of God through faith in what God had told him. And you will get to heaven. The only way you and I will get to heaven is exactly the same way. The only way we can escape the judgment of God, the wrath of God because of our sin is through the one who took our place and bore that wrath and judgment for us, Christ when he died on the cross. God offers Christ and that gift of salvation to you freely by his grace. All that you need to do is trust him. All that you need to do is believe that message and place your faith and confidence for getting to heaven in what Christ did for you on the cross. Your faith is totally in Christ, not in yourself, not in anything you've done. You're not handing God your good life or your good works or your church membership or baptism certificate or anything else. You're simply resting wholly upon what Christ did for you and receiving by faith God's gracious gift of forgiveness and a home in heaven. G. Campbell Morgan was a great preacher in England back in the early part of the 1900s. For 16 years he pastored Westminster Chapel in London. One day a minor came to him and said, you know, Mr. Morgan, I would be glad to get saved. I would love to get saved. I would love to receive that message. You're preaching about salvation but it just seems too easy. It just seems so cheap. I don't have to do anything. I just, it's just a free gift and I just accept it. G. Campbell Morgan looked him in the eye and said, did you work today? The minor said, well yeah, I did. I was down in the mind today. G. Campbell Morgan said, how did you get up out of that mind? I climbed into what they called an England and they, the cage. G. Campbell Morgan said you didn't pay anything to get on that cage. Well, of course not. Don't you think you could really trust in that cage to get you if you didn't pay something to get on that cage? The minor laughed and said, Mr. Morgan, you're crazy. I didn't have to pay to get on that cage. The company provided that and it cost them a lot of money. They sent that money to sink that shaft and to provide that way for us to get, and a lot of the sudden you realize what he was saying. And at the end of him, the truth of salvation is that yes, it's free to us. Yes, we don't have to pay anything. It seems cheap to us because we don't pay anything. But the one who provided that for us paid everything. What gave his son and his son freely gave his life for you to have that precious gift of salvation? So it's not cheap to God. It cost him everything. It costs you nothing. You simply receive the wonderful gift of salvation by faith in what Christ did for you on the cross. What a beautiful picture of our salvation is this picture of Noah being delivered to a new creation, a new world, a new beginning. Friend you can have a new beginning today. As a new creation, a new creature in Christ, you can have a new beginning. If you will realize that you just leave deserve God's judgment because of your sin. But that Jesus took that judgment for you when he died on the cross. If you realize that salvation is offered to you freely as a gift based on what Jesus did and you receive Christ by faith as your Savior, then you can begin a new in life. You see, getting right with God, getting to heaven is not about reformation. It's not about you reforming or turning over your life and trying to do better. It's not about you doing anything. Jesus has already done it all. And what you need to do is receive it by faith as a free gift from God. And you too can enter with a new beginning, a new creation of God, a whole new world. But you know what? It doesn't stop there. The chapter doesn't stop there. And Noah's experience doesn't stop there because what the rest of the chapter tells us is about the experience of this new creation. Noah yes was delivered to a new world, a new beginning, in a new world. He experienced it and there are several things that happen in chapter 8 to show us his experience of this new creation. What his new beginning was like in this new world. And again, it beautifully pictures what our new life in Christ should be. First of all, for Noah, there was the excitement of exploration. The excitement of exploration took place in verses 5 through 13. Let's read it and then we'll see exactly how Noah scientifically explored his new world. Look at verse 5. The waters continued to recede until the 10th month and on the first day of the 10th month, the tops of the mountains became visible. After 40 days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven. And it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. In other words, it never returned to the ark. Verse 8. When he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground, but the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand, took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf. And Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him. By the first day of the first month of Noah's 600 and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. This is an amazing experience of Noah. This really is an exploration. This is a scientific experiment. Using the resources that Noah had, he's going to find out the condition of the earth. Remember, the ark only had an 18-inch window at the top, depending on how you conceive of the ark. It may have even been a roof overhang over that to keep water from coming in that window that went all the way around the ark. And so it's quite possible that Noah, from his perch, did not have the right angle to be able to see what was happening out there on planet earth. And so what he does is he conducts a scientific experiment. Long before Ivan Pavlov experimented with dogs, long before B.F. Skinner experimented with pigeons, Noah was experimenting with ravens and doves. Long before the ancient sailors who used to send out birds to gauge how far away from land they were, long before that, Noah was doing a scientific experiment. It's interesting that he first sends out a raven. A raven is a flesh-eating bird. The raven doesn't return. That tells Noah only one thing. There is still carrion. There are carcasses on the surface of the water. At least I know that much. Now whether or not there is any dry land, I need to move to step two of my experiment. Step two is to send a dove. Because a dove is not going to land on a dead animal. The dove is going to look for earth. So the dove is released, and this is more than just a little children's tale of all how neat. He sends out birds. He sends them a little vacation from their time in the ark. How cute. No, no, he's conducting a scientific experiment. He's going to find out is there any land yet visible or dry enough for a dove. We're going to see if it's different from just what I found out about the raven. The dove returns to the ark. So obviously there's no place for the dove to land. A raven can live even if there is no land. Some of their dead animals floating on the water, but a dove cannot. So this gives you a second bit of information. There is no land yet appearing. So he waits. Sins out a dove. A second time. This time it comes back with an olive leaf in its beak. Olive trees are known for taking root quickly and growing quickly. So he knows there is at least enough earth to grow one of the fastest, quickly and hardiest trees known to man. He knows that much. But the dove comes back. So there's not enough ground for the dove to stay and build a nest. So he waits a little longer. See, all this time he's finding out what it's like out there. Finally, the third time he sends the dove, the dove does not come back and Noah surmises. It's okay. I know the condition of the earth, even though I haven't seen it by the experiment I've conducted. But what he's doing was really exciting exploration. This is exciting science, if that's possible, to put those two words together. And I think it is. This is exciting stuff. He's exploring his world. Now, the interesting thing to me is that Noah could have settled down in the ark. After a year he's gotten kind of used to it. It's not that bad. Once I get rid of the animals, clean up a little bit. It'll be great. It's a good place to live. It's sturdy. It's going to last a long time. I could just stay right here in my little ark, my big ark of safety. I would never have to leave the comfort of this ark. I could stay right here. But Noah wanted more. He wanted to know what the world was like and to live out in that new creation that God had made for him. And that's what God wants for you and for me. He does not want us to be content with just resting in our salvation. Oh, I'm delivered from God's wrath. I'm not going to go to hell now. I'm going to go to heaven. Thank God for that. And we never move an inch further. God doesn't want us to be content with that. He wants us to fully explore this new world, this new beginning, this new creation that he's given to us. He wants us to explore all the riches that we have in this new life. What he wants us to do is to start digging into the Word. And to start growing, to getting with other believers where we can hear God's Word and learn how to apply it to our lives and to get into a Bible fellowship or a small group or some study group where we can understand better how God's Word applies to us and how we can grow and change and learn from it. He wants us to start digging into the riches of the Word and explore this new world, a new life that he's given us. And he wants us to learn what it means to develop a personal relationship with him through prayer, talking with him, commuting with him, drawing strength from him, learning to unburden our souls to him, relating to him as a heavenly father to whom we can pour out our souls, to whom we can tell everything and we can release the burdens of our heart and we can grow and get close to him. He wants us to explore this new world, fully. And then there's a big world of service just awaiting us. And so God doesn't want us to sit around, not even just learning His Word and praying and developing a personal relationship with God. There's a whole world full of people that don't have this new world, this new beginning, this new experience in Christ. And God wants to use us to reach out to them with the gospel. And so God wants us to find a place to plug in and serve Him in some way so that we can further His work in this world to get this glorious message of a new life, a new beginning to other people. That's fully exploring what God's given us in this life in Christ. He wants us to learn how to trust Him with everything in our lives day by day and believe me, that is a lifelong process of success and failure in trusting Him day by day. But God wants you to keep pushing forward and exploring new territory. He doesn't ever want you to be content with where you are. Never. Never feel like you've grown to the point that you don't need to grow anymore. Where you've reached out to enough people that you don't need to do that anymore. We should never be content. We should continually explore this new creation that God's given us. That's what Noah started with. And that's what we should do as believers. But there was not only the exploration, the excitement of exploration, there was also on Noah's part, incredibly enough, the discipline of delay. Notice if you will, verse 14, by the 27th day of the second month, the earth was completely dry. If you go back to chapter 7, verse 11, do the math, you'll find that they've been on the ark for over a year. Now, it's difficult to know exactly how the Hebrews calculated their calendar. I just believe it was a 360 day lunar year. And so it wasn't quite the same as us. But even with that, do the math and it was at least 371 days they were on the ark. About half of that was after the boat quit floating. And they're just sitting there and waiting for the right conditions to get off. And Noah is continuing to do what he's supposed to do under the direction of the Lord. Really evidently, conducting these experiments, doing what God wants him to do, caring for the animals on the ark, all the while, waiting for God's timing. This is a very important lesson that we need to learn as believers, the discipline of delay. You see, good discipline for us to learn is God doesn't work on our timetable. We are so used to everything being instant. We really are. We live in a day of instant replays and cured coffee. We live in a day of instant information, touch of a mouse, touch of a keypad. We've got information unlike what our ancestors ever conceived could be out there. We have instant communication. You can email someone and you know emails demand a reply right now. It's not like the old days. When you sent a letter, took three, four days to get there. You waited a week, answered, took three, four days to get back. I can remember reading some history like the, when John Adams was president and there was the danger of going to war with the French. They were trying to do a treaty and they didn't get the word back on the treaty for six months because it had to come by ship from France. We can't even fathom that these days. We live in instant communication and an email is way too slow for you and it is for most of you. You can always text. You can instant message. If that's too long, you only want 140 characters then use Twitter. If a picture is worth a thousand words or 140 characters, you snapchat or you could send an amazingly fast grandparent. What you haven't heard of Instagram? My point is this. We live in an instant world. We want everything to be done now. God doesn't work that way. Spiritual maturity does not come that way. Our expectations have all been skewed by our instant means of doing everything today so that we want instant spirituality. We want a prayer and maturity zapped on us and it doesn't work that way. It simply does not work that way. Difficult for me to get used to all the instant communication stuff in our day. Thursday night, like many of you, we were celebrating Thanksgiving at our home and all six of our grandkids were in and it was a wonderful time. Our grandson Daniel was there back from college and what I decided to do was to read some 145 with our family around the table. When we finished with dinner, we decided to read some 145. That had spoken to my heart at our Thanksgiving service. It's just so wonderful. All my Bibles are here at the church in my office. I was looking for a Bible on the shelf we had there at home for a Bible that I could use. I thought I wanted to read it out of the NIV so we had two NIVs on that shelf and I picked one out. I also suddenly realized it was a Thompson chain reference Bible. It was my dad's Bible. I remember looking through that Bible shortly after he died and I opened it back up and started looking through it. My dad had read through that Bible, including all the introductory stuff and all the stuff at the end, the archaeology notes, the theology notes, the concordance, the maps, everything. It took him five years to do it. Every day he would mark with a date where he was reading. I opened up to Psalm 145. Amazingly, the date of my dad's reading of that passage was November 26th, 2000. The same day that I was going to read it to our family. It just washed over me as such a gift. So I shared that story with the family and immediately afterwards Daniel said, I want to see the Bible. And so I said, sure, here it is. And so he opened it up to Psalm 145. Got his camera out. Took a picture. I don't know what he did next. I don't know whether he snapped chatted or Instagrammed or posted on Facebook. But instantly a hundred people knew what we had just done. I'm not fully accustomed to that world. But I do know that our expectations are molded by this world. And by that expectation of instant growth and maturity or to see God do something for me now. My friend spiritual maturity and spiritual growth often includes the discipline of delay. God often works and typically works in our lives over a period of time to produce Christ like this. Indeed, the Bible sees that as a lifelong process that will not be completed till we get to heaven. And so in a day of instant everything we need to learn the discipline of delay in God's timetable and that God is producing ever so slowly. The Bible calls it from glory to glory. We're changed into the likeness of Christ. It is by increments. It doesn't happen all at once. You're not going to grow instantly. You're not going to be spiritually. You're not going to overcome all your battles, all your sins. It's not going to happen instantly. It will be a lifelong battle of growth, of struggle, of looking to Him, of trusting Him, and growing more in that trust. The discipline of delay is something we need to learn. God is more concerned about what you will be like at the end of the road than what you're going to be like in the next 30 seconds. That may sound foreign to some of us, but God is much more concerned about what you'll be at the end of the process. And He's working a little by little to get you there. It's not going to happen in 30 seconds or 30 minutes or 30 days or maybe even 30 years. The discipline of delay took no hold of how to get off the ark. God was working all the time. But there's another element to know as experience of this new world, and it was the willingness of worship. Notice what He does when He gets off the ark. Verse 15, Then God said to Noah, come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. He tells them to bring all the animals and to come out, down through verse 19, and look at verse 20, Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds. He sacrificed burnt offerings on it. I've tried to put myself in Noah's shoes. I've tried to think what would I be thinking coming off the ark. By the way, it's a great way to experience the Bible. I hope you do that. I'm sure many of you do. Try to put myself in these shoes and what would I be thinking coming off the ark? I've got to find a place to live. We're going to have to build a house. I kind of know how to do that. I built an ark, but we're going to have to find materials. I don't know what's out there. I don't know what this new place looks like. We've got to build a place. We've got to find a place to live. We've got to build a place. We've got to start telling up some ground because we're going to need, we've got to run out of stuff on the ark. We've got to need some food. So we need a garden. We need to get a garden. We need to gather some animals, fix some pins for meat. I'd be thinking of all these things that need to be done. In fact, I probably would have been working on a list in the year I was on the ark. And it would be a really cool list. It would be thorough. It would be exact. It would be numbered. It might even be an alphabetical order. I'm not sure. But it would be a list. That's how I would be approaching this. And in the expectation of doing all that I needed to get done, the demands of getting why started in this new world, I might be very tempted to, in fact, I'm almost certain I would. But I do not remember that the most important thing comes first. And that is to worship God. So the first thing Noah does when he gets off the ark is we'll take care of all that of the stuff later, but we're going to worship God first. You know, it's amazing how the demands of life can be covered in God's priorities if we put him first. Now we need to hear that today. I know life is demanding and life is extremely busy, but quite often we're responsible for making it that way. And quite often it happens because all of the other things demands of life come before the Lord. And so worship of God, it's important. And we want to be important in our lives, but other things will quickly take its place. It's not really a priority. The real priorities are other demands of life, whether it's work or sports or activities. Those are the real important things. And those things go on the schedule first. If there's time left over on Sunday for God, we'll be there, but that's not our priority. I know for many of you that's not the case. I know for many of you the Lord is a priority, the priority in your life. I trust that is the case. But I know my own heart and I know my own heart well enough to know how deceitful it is. How easily other things can you serve the place in my life that only God deserves? So there is a focus on God in this willingness of worship. And there's grateful giving. The Bible says that he gives of all the animals, the clean animals, took some of all the clean animals and clean birds, sacrificed. It was a pretty lavish offering. And most folks would look at and say, what a waste. And when we see lavish gifts to God or lavish giving of our lives to the Lord, sacrificial giving of ourselves to the Lord as a waste or maybe too far or maybe a little fanatical, it's because we have scribbled hearts and clenched hands. And we want to hang on to our own lives. I love what Noah did here. He worshipped God first and it was lavish worship. It took some time. The other stuff can wait. This is going to be the focus of my life. My friend, the way to experience what God has for you is to put him first and to give him sacrificial even of your life. I know so little, so little of that. But then there's also the sense of security. Notice quickly, last two verses, verse 21, the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in His heart, never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. It's a very interesting statement. Never again will I curse the ground. What he's probably talking about there is he will not add anything more to the curse of chapter 3. And there will be no more destruction of the earth through water. Even though man hasn't changed, even though what brought the punishment of the flood is still there in the hearts of human beings, every inclination is still evil. Even from childhood. But he makes this promise. Never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done as long as the earth endures. Seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease. There's so much to be learned from that promise about planted earth and God's intention for this planet. That's not the direction of the message this morning. This is not a message on ecology or their environment. I do want us to see that God makes promises about the future. The promise to Noah was this is not going to happen again. And I'm sure that calm Noah's heart. I know I'd be thinking when I got off the ark, whoo, what an experience, what a year! Is this ever going to happen again? And God says no, it won't. I make you promises about your future that you can rest secure in. And friend, you know the amazing thing about our experience in Christ is that God makes us promises that we can rest in and we can be secure in. Is his judgment ever going to happen again now that you've trusted Jesus to Savior? What's going to happen to you? If you sin, will you face His wrath and condemnation, will you be cast into hell? And God makes you promises that that will never happen. There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ. Again, the strongest word for judgment, condemnation, being judged in hell forever. There's none of that for the believer. That's been taken off the table. That will never happen to a believer in Christ, the one who truly knows Jesus. And in that same chapter where Paul begins that with that statement, Romans 8, he ends with nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing you can imagine or think of in this world or in eternity can separate you from the love of God. Nothing can rip you out of his hands. And so God makes some promises of eternal security for you and me that if we simply rest in, we trust in, can provide us great assurance in our souls that we are saved and we are saved eternally. And we can trust Him, we can trust Him with all of our lives and with eternity. What promises? That sense of security, that assurance in the heart will only come as you trust God's promises. Do you know this? Every person who is saved is eternally secure because God promises that. But every Christian has that assurance in their own hearts, that deep settled peace that they know they are eternally saved. Why? Because of a lack of believing God's promises. You see, God's promise that your future is secure. Your sin has forever been taken care of and you will be in heaven with Him. Why don't you just trust His promise? When you trust His promise, then you will have the assurance in your heart that you are eternally secure. That's the way to experience the new world, the new creation, being a new creation in Christ. Just like Noah, thank God we've been delivered from God's wrath. I hope you know that. I hope you've been delivered from judgment, God's judgment on your sin through faith in Christ and Him alone. I hope that you understand that. If you don't, today could be the day of a new beginning for you as a new creation in Christ. But if you do know Christ, then there's a whole world for you to explore of growth in Christ and serving Him in enriching and fulfilling and purposeful meaningful ways. We also must learn as we walk in this new world that it's a lifelong discipline of God delaying perfection until we get to heaven. There's a lifelong process of growth as we journey along this life. Let's give Him our first priority with lavish worship and giving of our lives to Him and rest in the security of His promises about our future. That's the way to experience new life in Christ. Are you experiencing all He has for you? All these graciously given you in Christ? Are you still just kind of on the ark looking out the window afraid? I encourage you today as a believer to plunge into all God has for you and experience fully the new life that He has for you in Christ. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for life in Christ. New beginnings. Thank you, Father, that we can know that our past is forgiven and our future is secure, that we are in your hands presently. Thank you, Father, that we can know through Christ that we are eternally saved and forgiven no matter what our past has been like. Thank you, Father, for salvation, forgiveness and freedom in Christ. But Father, help us not to rest with that alone. Help us to throw ourselves fully into the life you've given us to live, exploring all the opportunities for growth and service, living day by day, expecting you to grow us in Christ, putting you first, resting in the security of our salvation. Thank you, Father, in Jesus' name.