Sermon Tone Analysis

*Intro*

One of the basic things they tell you in marriage or any relationship-building seminar is “never say never” or “never say always.”

So don’t say things like, “You /always/ steal the blanket!” or “You /never/ want to talk!”

And the flip side is true as well: “You always serve!” or “You are never selfish!”

We can’t say those things about us because we change.

But we can say those things about God because He is unchangeable.

It is one of the attributes of God.

When we say unchangeable we mean as Grudem defines it, “God is unchanging in his being, perfections, purposes, and promises, yet God does act and feel emotions, and he acts and feels differently in response to different situations.”[1]

There is a whole sermon in that statement, but for Noah and his family, God’s unchangeableness or immutability, was both a concern and a comfort.

What questions do you think they had as they walked out of the ark?

How do we live in this world, which is still fallen?

And I’m sure they knew that they also brought sin on the ark when they entered it.

And now they bring sin with them as they enter the new world.

How does God want us to live?

Is He going to flood us again?

How can we survive in a fallen world with fallen hearts?

What does God think of life?

Will He flood the world again?

There must have been a lot of fear and hope mixed together there.

What are the things they could bank on?

God gives us four things (we will look at two today) that we know will never change about God (the main actor in this story).

These are some of the final lessons as we close studying the Flood Narrative.

First of all,

*I.

**  God will never be defeated by sin (Gen.

8:20-22)*

We saw last week that Noah puts God first as he steps off the ark and builds an altar (Gen.

8:20).

Not only can he build arks (do big things), he prioritizes the little things (like build altars of worship).

He is a picture of the holy worshipper that God desires of all his people.

Gen.

8:21 tells us what God thought of his worship.

He was pleased.

Have you ever wondered what God thinks of the way you worship?

Not just sing songs, but every part of our lives?

And we know the only way God is pleased with us is if we offer our worship in Christ, who was God’s perfect pleasing sacrifice for our sin.

So our prayers, our songs, our service, our work, our relationships all go through Christ first.

Have you ever gotten a prescription from the doctor and you look at it and it looks like your 2 year old scribbled something on a piece of paper?

You cannot read it all, but it has always amazed me how at the pharmacy, the pharmacist can take one look at it (do they take classes on doctor’s handwriting?) and know exactly what it says?

Sometimes I feel like that’s what happens in prayer.

We send it up to Heaven, but sometimes we don’t know what we are praying for or we pray for the wrong thing or our prayer time is so full of distractions.

In other words, it is like a bunch of scribbles.

But like the pharmacist, our Lord intercepts those things, seals it in His blood and says, “Father, accept this offering for my sake.”

He understands those groans of our soul that no one else understands.

He makes sense of our cold words and the broken heart that sometimes leaves us with no words at all.

Like the high priest who would have the names of the twelve tribes of Israel engraved on the outside of his robe on the chest region, as though he could keep them close to his heart (Ex.

28:21), our Lord has our names engraved on his heart and on his hands (Is.

49:16) and is ever our mediator.

And if we give our offering to Christ, no matter how it looks like, He will seal it with His blood and offer it to God the Father.

And then we get into a peek of God’s heart in Gen. 8:21.

The word “for” should best be translated as “even though.”[2]

God is not lifting the curse of Gen. 3, but promising not to add to it.[3]

This is amazing and counter to what we should expect here.

It should say something like, “I will daily destroy you with a flood since your heart is continually evil and since you all have seen me do this great judgment, how greater a flood should you face!” No, God responds in mercy and grace.

As Richard Sibbes once said, “there is more mercy in the heart of Christ than sin in ours.”[4]

In Gen. 8:22, God says when you see the cycle of seasons know that it is not Mother Nature, but my divine hand demonstrating my faithfulness and reliability.

As one commentator Victor Hamilton says, “However irregular the human heart may be (8:21b), there will be a regularity in God’s world and its cycles.”[5]

He says, “while the earth remains,” implying one day it will not endure, but as long as this earth endures, God will be faithful.

Notice again, “this promise is dependent upon the goodness of God and not the righteousness of humanity, for humanity will always languish in sin.”[6]

So I will not destroy the world through a global flood, God says.

Not because we don’t deserve it.

We do.

But God in grace says He will not.

We saw that the world had committed the worst kind of evil, even opening up their hearts and lives to demonic invasion.

God’s heart was broken.

Yet God will not be defeated by human sin, even the worst kind of sin.

I hope this encourages you.

There is no pit so deep the love of Christ is not deeper still.

And just when we secretly think we have used up all of God’s grace, we are again amazed that this God who has chosen to knit His heart with ours and though makes Him still offers grace.

If you think you have sinned too much to receive grace, you know too much about your sin and not enough about God.

Look at Isaiah 55:7: “let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him and to our God, who will abundantly pardon.”

There is abundant pardon for abundant sin.

Secondly,

*II.

**God will always value life (Gen.

9:1-7)*

With grace, God then re-commissions Noah.

Coming under God’s grace means coming under obedience.

In Gen. 9:1-7 God tells Noah how he and his sons are to live.

This is the third time “blessed” is used in Genesis.

God has always been a God who blesses His people.

God blesses you to be a blessing and blessing to others means you obey Him.

Obedience is where you find blessing.

And He gives Noah the same command that He gave Adam to be fruitful and multiply (Gen.

1:28).

He will say it again in Gen. 9:7.

Remember again, this is not God simply saying, “Go make babies.

Fill the planet with people.”

There’s more to it.

God is reminding them that they are called with a huge responsibility to fill the earth with God’s glory.

Glory literally means “weight.”

So fill the world with the weight of who God is.

Tell them that God is the most important thing that matters.

Tell them that God is the most real and most important thing about life.

So make children who will be my image-bearers and image-reflectors of the glory of God.

Filling the world with God’s glory has always been God’s desire.

The Great Commission (Matt.

28:18-20) where Jesus says, “Go and make disciples of all nations” is simply the same mandate as we find here to fill the earth with God’s glory.

God wants to use us to win people over to Him and when we do that, He will get maximum glory, because that person will be another true image-bearer of Him.

And we have God’s word of blessing backing us up.

But as we do that, God tells Noah here on Gen. 9:2-6 that we are to make sure our value system is in order.

The order that God has established should go like this: God, humans, animals and plants.

There is one God and we are not called to take His place.

We are to serve God.