She had to do it her way

I think once you become a parent you begin to understand God better. 

When my daughter was growing up I tried to instill in her what was right and what was wrong. She had rules to follow. Rules meant to keep her out of trouble, healthy and successful.

Every time she didn’t follow the rules or disobeyed me she would get herself in a pickle and I would shake my head and think, “She had to do it her way!”

And then I thought, that’s probably what God thinks every time we disobey or don’t listen and do something wrong. 

Why do we have to do things our way when His way is clearly so much better?

His rules and laws really are for our own good. We could save ourselves a lot of problems if we just listened to and obeyed our Father.

Noah's Ark Part 3

(Genesis 7:1-10)

The King James version makes this sound more like an invitation then a command. It says, “Come thou and all thy house into the ark: for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.”

This suggests not only an invitation, but that God was already in the ark inviting Noah to join Him there. God was extending an invitation to Noah to be saved from the coming judgment. If Noah had refused or said, later, he would have lost his chance and his life!

Because judgment did come, and on his own, Noah would have been helpless to survive. We all saw pictures of the tsunami and heard the stories. That was nothing compared to this flood.

So just like we talked about all the warnings we get: to listen, repent, judgment is coming – we also receive an invitation from God to come into the Ark. He has provided a means of salvation from His judgment.

God’s judgment is like the rain, it falls on everything not covered by an umbrella - or an ark’s roof. Our umbrella is the blood of Jesus Christ, shed on the cross. When judgment falls, it falls on Christ and His blood covers all believers and they are saved.

You know, when Noah entered the Ark the sun was still shining, the sky was blue. But, God said, “Come now. Today!” And Noah went in faith.

And wasn’t Noah’s family lucky to have him as their spiritual leader? For 120 years he had probably been talking to them about God, even as he preached to his neighbors. He showed them an amazing example of obedience to God. A tremendous example of faith. And so they entered the Ark too.

(Genesis 7:11-16)

“The Lord shut him in.” God Himself closed the door. God knew how many people were going to repent and believe Him, just as He knows when all the people who are going to, will have accepted His Son. And then “He shut the door.”

And it began to rain.

It was too late for anyone else.

And this wasn’t just rain. “Springs of the great deep burst forth and the flood gates of heaven were opened.”

Remember, when God created the heavens and the earth He separated the waters below from the waters above. We just read that God watered the earth from some kind of underground reservoirs. The water above was some kind of vapor canopy that trapped billions of tons of water, giving the earth a kind of greenhouse effect. When God sent the flood, the earth’s crust ruptured and created something like thousands of geysers. One commentator said there may have been gigantic tidal waves just like the tsunami, but LOTS.

Then the canopy split, dropping all those tons of water onto the earth.

Some astronomers believe our planet used to look like Saturn, with its rings forming the canopy over the earth. Saturn’s rings are composed of ice particles. In fact there is a lot of ice in space. In 1908 an enormous piece of a comet, which was ice, collided with the earth, somewhere near Russia and the impact was felt around the world.

So the collapse of the canopy would have been; ice, water and vapor, which would explain why large numbers of great mammoths and other animals have been found embedded in ice. Animals that are warm weather animals, found in the Artic – why would they be there? Because at one time the whole earth was tropical – like a greenhouse – and it suddenly was plunged into sub-freezing temperature. These animals were frozen still chewing the grass they were eating!

Even after 120 years of warning it still seemed to come out of nowhere didn’t it?

While Noah and his family were in the Ark during the judgment, do you think he wondered if he built the Ark right? If he had followed God’s instructions exactly and it would be strong enough to save him?

If he had been obedient to God, he could depend on God’s power to save him, just as - if we are obedient – if we place our trust in Salvation through Jesus, we can depend on His power to save us.

We can also depend on Him to keep us safe through any storm we may be going through in our lives. There are 2 examples of storms in the New Testament – one time Jesus calmed the storm and one time He calmed His disciples’ fears during the storm.

The flood was worldwide. The entire world was submerged. Even the mountains! Everything that moved on earth, perished.

1st John 5:3-5

1 John 5:3-5 “Here is what it means to love God. It means that we obey his commands. And his commands are not hard to obey. That's because everyone who is a child of God has won the battle over the world. Our faith has won the battle for us. Who is it that has won the battle over the world? Only the person who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”

This is another one of John’s central themes; obedience to God is the proof of our love. He says that His commandments are not burdens. This doesn’t mean they’re not hard! Christian love is not easy!

To love someone who hurts your feeling or insults you, to love someone you don’t even particularly like, is not easy. But, God isn’t going to give us a commandment without giving us the strength to carry it out. With God’s help all things are possible. Love makes all things possible.

Like the song “He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother” – if you do for someone you don’t like, it’s hard, but if you choose to love the person and then you do for him or her, it’s not a burden. God’s commandments are a privilege because to carry them out is an opportunity to show love.

So, difficult? Yes. Burdensome? No.

I read somewhere that there is something in the Christian, which makes him able to conquer the world. And remember when we talk about the “world” like this it’s the world apart from God and even in opposition to God. What this is that enables us to conquer the world is faith. Faith that Jesus is the Son of God.

That means we believe in the incarnation. And the reason that’s so important and so victory giving is that it means God cared enough for men to lay aside His glory and take upon Himself the limitations of humanity in an act of love and sacrifice that passes human understanding. It means God knows our trials, temptations and sorrows. It means He is involved in the human situation. It means that everything that happens to us is fully understood by God.

Once we have the faith that God understands and cares we have a defense to resist the temptation of the world, the pressures of worldly standards and motives; because Christ is now in us.

There are a lot of things in life, which try to take our faith away: sorrow, disappointment, failure…the six o’clock news! But, we know Christ will be victorious over all – because the Bible tells us so!