Genesis 6-8 - God’s Sovereign Justice

Main Idea: God’s justice will arrive, so we must turn to Him for grace.

EVIL CARRIES CONSEQUENCES (6:1-7)

• Defiance of God’s commands about the family invites justice.

• Defiance of God’s commands in your mind invites justice.

• Justice is not selectively dealt, but definitively.

GOD’S GRACE CARRIES CONSEQUENCES (6:8-8:22)

• Grace invites sinners to become saints.

• Grace invites mankind to find meaning.

• Grace invites the damned to experience deliverance.

• Grace invites the worshipper to enjoy God’s Word.

Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by YouTube)

Today, we have been studying for the past several weeks. We've been in the Book of Genesis, and we've been doing a study sovereign, looking at Genesis 1-11. And today, we are looking at God's sovereign justice.

And this is from Genesis 6-8. It's a story that maybe if you've been around church for a while, you've heard a lot about Noah's flood. There's even been some relatively recent Hollywood movies kind of dramatizing this particular account of scripture.

And there are a lot of questions that people have about it. There's a lot of wondering about this particular circumstance. Why would God find it necessary to send a flood?

And as we've been looking over the past several weeks at mankind's history, after God started them off in the Garden of Eden, that he had given them a world that was very good.

That was his description of it, that he had given them everything they needed for flourishing and life. And he gave them just one instruction. Don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Don't take the definition of good and evil on your own terms instead, except the definitions of the world that I've given you. And as is true for every one of us, the one thing that they weren't supposed to do is exactly what they did.

Now, as we look at this particular event in scripture, it can seem odd to us, especially those of us that have interacted with the New Testament, that have seen the lavish, incredible grace of Jesus Christ that was poured out on us at the cross, that

he made the door swing wide open to welcome in any who would call on the Lord and that there is ultimate forgiveness and reconciliation with God and hope in what God has provided for us. As we interact with this story, we can wonder, okay, has God

changed from the Old Testament to the New? Is the person, the attributes that are true of him in the New Testament, did he like learn those along the way?

And the truth is that God's grace is just as prevalent and just as powerful here in this story and in the Old Testament as it is in the New. But the truth is today that true justice brings everything into correction.

And God, as he encountered with these very early humans, as he worked with the world that they had polluted entirely, justice meant that it had to be given entirely. I need a, say, a volunteer. Tobin, I'm going to have you come up real quick.

I'm going to give people just a little sneak peek of what it looks like to have a prop for next week. All right, come on up here. Everyone give Tobin a hand.

Now, Tobin is too young. He can't actually go to prison for anything.

But let's say that young Tobin, he robbed a bank and the only, if you will, the only parts of Tobin that actually were involved in the bank robbing was he used his hand to hold a gun and he used his mouth to say, stick them up.

Can you say stick them up? Yeah, there you go. Good.

So all that actually committed the crime was his hands and his mouth. But do you think they're just going to throw his hands or his mouth into jail? No.

All of Tobin is going straight to prison. And thank you. You can go back to your seat now.

I'm going to have Tobin ahead. Justice has to be total. It has to be complete.

And here we see something that God himself describes as this is a one time deal in the Old Testament. He promises I'm never going to work in this way again until the end of time.

The Book of Second Peter delves much into that of saying, here is how God has promised even some things that we'll see at the end of chapter 8 and how God interacts with his word. In our passage today, God deals out his justice in a complete way.

He promised you won't do again until the end of this earth. The combined wickedness of mankind and the spiritual realm, the demons, warranted a wholesale reset of this earth.

However, as we look at this story of God's justice, I want you to consider two things today. First, as Hebrews 9 tells us, it is appointed for people to die once and after this judgment.

Whoever you are today, young teen or wise person with a lot of life experience, realize that this life is not the end. There is coming a day when you will stand before your Creator, and you will answer for what you've done with Jesus Christ.

And if you have accepted Jesus as your Lord, you will give an account for what you did with the life that God gave you.

If you die and have rejected Jesus as Lord, then scripture says that you will be separated from God and His goodness forever, and what Revelation 20 and verse 14 says is the second death.

The question is not if we will one day stand before our Creator and our Judge, but when. And because God's justice will arrive, we must turn to Him for the grace that is found only in Christ Jesus.

Let's go to the Lord in prayer, and then we'll look at our passage for today. Dear Jesus, I pray that you would speak to hearts today. God, speak to my heart.

Lord, as we see who you are, what you've done, Lord, what we've done with the world that you've given us, God, may it motivate our hearts to chase after you, that we would not run from you, but run to you.

And God, thank you for the promise that anyone that comes to you, you will by no means cast them out, throw them aside. God, everyone that comes to you finds grace to help in time of need. We love you, Lord, and we pray all of this in your name.

Amen. As we look today at God's sovereign justice, we see first from verses 1-7 in Genesis 6 that evil carries consequences.

The Bible says this, When mankind began to multiply on the earth, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of mankind were beautiful, and they took any they chose as wives for themselves.

I want to stop right here real quick and mention, this is the same type of words and phrasing that we read about in Genesis 3, where Eve saw the fruit, saw that it was good, and took it.

Here the exact same thing is happening with the sons of God, a phrase universally used in the Old Testament for speaking about the angelic beings, or in this case, demonic beings, those spiritual ones that have rejected God and His way.

Verse number 3, And the Lord Yahweh said, My spirit will not remain with mankind forever, because they are corrupt. Their days will be a hundred and twenty years. Verse number 4, the Nephilim, the word is the fallen ones.

Some older translations following a Greek thing phrase this, the giants, these ones that were the descendants of this unholy union.

It says, The Nephilim were on the earth both in those days and afterward, when the sons of God came to the daughters of mankind who bore children to them. They were the powerful men of old, the famous men.

When the Lord saw that human wickedness was widespread on the earth, and that every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time, the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth and he was deeply grieved.

This was not the design. This was not the plan. Then the Lord said, I will wipe mankind whom I created off the face of the earth, together with the animals, creatures that crawl and birds of the sky, for I regret that I made them.

Then I'm going to wait on verse 8 till we get to our next portion. There was a phrase that my parents instilled in me as a little child. Obedience brings blessing, disobedience brings conflict.

And in Genesis 6, we can see the continuation of human evil, this conflict that we observed in Genesis 4, where we saw hatred, bitterness, murder, sexual immorality, disobedience to God's commands, inequitable punishment, and more.

But God is not mocked, and the defiance of his good design would result in total justice being levied out. God would be a terrible judge if he did not judge the evil in our world.

Any of us would know if we bring a just solid case to an earthly judge, and we say, here's all the evidence that Tobin did, in fact, rob the bank. Here's his fingerprints. Here's all the money, pictures of the money at his house.

And also, he wasn't wearing a mask. If the judge refused to bring the criminal to justice, we would all go, what a terrible judge. And God is exactly the same way.

He is the one true, good, and just judge. But I want us to look at some of the particular things that we read about even in these seven verses of the evil of mankind. First, we can see the defiance of God's commands about the family invites justice.

Much has been said about verses 1-4 of Genesis 6, and I don't have time today to delve into every aspect of what's said here, so I'll just summarize it in a few sentences and mention a few resources for you to look at if you'd like to learn more.

First, universally, in these early cultures in the Ancient Near East, there were stories about demigods, half-human, half-spiritual being offspring that were said to be the early kings and that the basis for their rule was their divine status.

So Pharaoh in Egypt was said to be a descendant of Ra, the sun god. The Babylonian kings were said to have come from Marduk or one of the other Babylonian gods.

Here in Genesis, God explains that, yes, there was commingling of earthly and spiritual in the ancient past, but it was not a good thing that should result in rulers. This was one of the big falls of the host of heaven.

2 Peter 2 says about this event, God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them into hell and delivered them in chains of utter darkness to be kept for judgment. And Jude in the New Testament details the nature of what happened in this way.

The angels who did not keep their own position, but abandoned their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains in deep darkness for the judgment on the great day.

Likewise, in the same way as these angels, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns committed sexual immorality and perversions and serve as an example by undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. I want to elaborate further on the topic.

I just want to give you a couple of resources. First, I did four episodes in the Tabernacle Talk Bible Study Podcast on 2nd Peter.

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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tabernacle-talk-a-bible-study-podcast-with-pastor/id1725589302

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And in the episode on 2nd Peter 2, I deal with this event in a little bit more detail. And you can find that on our church website, on our Facebook, on YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Second, the book The Unseen Realm by the late Dr.

Michael Heiser is an incredibly helpful work on this topic. And I'd encourage you to read it if you're looking for more information.

The clear, obvious thing from this passage, from these verses, is that a deviance from God's design for the family, which is one man and one woman for one life, a deviance from that was something soundly condemned by God.

As you read through the rest of Scripture over and over and over, God makes it clear that His design was not man and wife and wife and wife, or man and concubine and concubine and wife, or human and animal, or humans and demons, or man and man, or

woman and woman. The way He designed it was what we read at the very beginning of Genesis, that a man would leave his father and mother, be joined to his wife, and they would be one.

Our world, since Genesis 4, has wanted to find a different design, has sought intimacy outside of the lifetime commitment of marriage, in addition to their marriage or in same-sex marriages.

But when we go outside of God's good design, we invite justice on ourselves, whether in the here and now or in the future.

If you think about it this way, God's goodness, God's design is the umbrella that's over us, and the rain can be coming down, but as long as you're under that umbrella, you'll be dry, but when you step outside of the umbrella, you'll get drenched.

Here, God's justice is reserved for only those that deviate from the good design that He has given to our world. Can I challenge you today? Live a life that says yes to God's design for sexuality and marriage, and that says no to our culture.

Simply being against homosexual relationships is not good enough. Fight your lust, and live in such a way that glorifies God in your body and in your spirit, which both belong to God.

Secondly here, we can see that defiance of God's commands in your mind invites justice. I'm going to read verse number five again.

When the Lord saw that human wickedness was widespread on the earth, and that every inclination, every imagination, every purposing of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time.

Sometimes people excuse away sin in their life because they haven't acted on it yet, or it's just words or just thoughts.

But what this verse shows us is that God actually cares about what happens in your mind, what you choose to think about, the way that you think about people and what you wish that you could do.

We could all bemoan the state of our world or our nation today and all of the ways in which it does not follow God. I think we could echo the statement from the verse that human wickedness is widespread on the earth.

But what's the state of your mind? Jesus said in Matthew 15 that from the heart comes evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies, slander.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ said that it's not just murder and adultery and contract breaking and other things that cause us to be under God's judgment, but inner dislike, hatred, lust, and unforgiveness.

Don't think that just because you do good things on the outside or even worse, simply don't do egregiously bad things on the outside, that you're walking in a right relationship with God. Jesus cares about what goes on in your mind.

How in the world can we win that battle in our mind though?

The scripture says in Romans 12, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

It's a daily process by which we go, Lord, I know the way that my brain is naturally wired. The thoughts it normally thinks are against you, are against your way, against your holiness. And God, I'm gonna be in your word.

I'm gonna try and think what you think about the world. Think what you think about people.

As well, Philippians 4 says, whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, commendable, if there's any excellence and anything praiseworthy, think about these things.

Second Corinthians 10 says, we use God's mighty weapons, that is the word of God, not worldly weapons to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from knowing God.

We capture rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ. How do we change our mind? We change it through the word of God.

Constantly going to the Lord saying, God, I don't want to just think the way I've always thought. I want my mind to be changed by you.

If you'd like to dive into this particular subject more, I'd also encourage you to read the book, Winning the War in Your Mind by Pastor Craig Grichell from Oklahoma. Great book, and I think it would be a great spiritual encouragement to you.

But not only does a defiance of God's good design for the family bring us under justice, and not only does defiance of God's commands in our mind invite justice, but we can see in verses 6 and 7 that justice is not selectively dealt, but

definitively. Read those verses again. The Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and he was deeply grieved.

Then the Lord said, I will wipe mankind, whom I created off the face of the earth, together with the animals, creatures that crawl, and birds of the sky, for I regret that I made them.

God's answer to the wickedness of human hearts and demonic behavior was not to individually strike all of the sinners dead, but to completely cleanse everywhere that sin and wickedness had been.

Namely, because sin was all over the earth, God chose to cleanse all of the earth. The way he describes it is that he's going to start over the days of creation in Genesis 1 again.

The birds from Day 5, the animals and creeping things from Day 6, humanity from Day 6 are going to be gone, and he's going to bring them back.

And from the rest of the passage, he's going to return everything to the state of water again that we would read about in Genesis 1 and verse 2.

And then he's going to separate the waters again, then bring back the dry land, and then bring back the growing vegetation again. He says, I'm going to start over and start new.

For your life today, I promise you, there's not going to be a giant flood that wipes out the world. That's not what you're anticipating.

But for your life, don't assume that God will simply bring His judgment on the US political party or people that you don't like. His justice is total.

And our call is not to wish for the downfall and damnation of others, but to spread the gospel to the unsaved and to pray for God's mercy as long as He will grant it.

When God moves, He doesn't normally do it subtly, but He moves armies and rulers to eradicate human wickedness, even as we'd read about in the book of Habakkuk and Joel and Obadiah, among other locations in Scripture.

Since God's judgment and justice is coming one day for every person, who have you been telling about Jesus? This last week, did you invite anyone to church? Did you share the gospel with anyone?

Did you talk to anyone about the Lord? Let's not gleefully anticipate someday when we don't have to deal with worldly evil. Let's actively fight against the darkness by sharing Christ and following Him.

As we see from those first seven verses, evil carries consequences. I don't know about you. I'm a little down in the dumps.

I don't like this particular part. But then we read in verse number eight of chapter six, Noah, however, found favor with the Lord. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

We can see evil does carry consequences, but God's grace also carries consequences.

God's incredible, lavish grace can change your life, the lives of those around you, those that come after you, and we see this all take place in the life of this person, Noah.

We can see in verses eight through ten that grace invites sinners to become saints. It says Noah, however, found favor with the Lord. These are the family records of Noah.

Noah was a righteous man, one who lived in right relationship with both God and others. He was blameless among his contemporaries. Noah walked with God, and Noah fathered three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

Here we read something about Noah that we've only read about Enoch from last week, so far, that Noah walked with God. He spent time with him. He spoke to him, and as we'll see over the coming chapters, he obeyed him.

But Noah's favor or the grace that he received from God was not due to sinless perfection on Noah's part, but on faithful belief and obedience to God.

As we'll hear about next week with the kids, Noah was not perfect, but he did believe God and follow him. For you today, don't assume that you need to have attained perfection in order for God to notice you or to want to work through you.

Bring your sin, bring your failings, and find out that when you look in the eyes of our Holy God, you will find grace to help in times of need.

The very kind of literal rendering of the phrase, Noah found grace or favor in the eyes, in the sight of the Lord. I've heard it referenced before. It's because Noah was looking at the face of God to be able to see.

I'd encourage you, if you don't know if you have God's grace, dive into his word, see what he thinks about you. Read the gospel accounts of what he thinks of people, those that are down and out, struggling, rejected by others.

Going through incredible hardship and sicknesses and sin. And find out that the same God that gave grace to Noah is the same God that wants to show grace to you. Perhaps you don't know Jesus as your Lord and Savior today.

God wants you to personally know him, to obey his word, the Bible, and to be a part of God's plan to transform the world through his people, the church. Jesus came to earth 2,000 years ago and became a human as we celebrate at Christmas.

He lived a completely perfect, moral, sinless life. He proclaimed that God, though just, wants to forgive and redeem and welcome everyone into his family.

And as proof of that message, Jesus died on the cross for our sins, taking the just penalty of death for our wickedness and offering his perfect account of righteousness and goodness to us. He was buried.

Three days later, he rose from the grave and 40 days later, he ascended into heaven. He calls on everyone everywhere to repent, to turn from their own way and follow, believe and obey him.

Have you ever personally repented of your sin and turned to Jesus as your Lord? Today can be your day to do so. God doesn't reject sinners who come to him.

He welcomes them and turns them into his children, his saints. Then we can see next in the passage that grace invites mankind to find meaning. Verse number 11 says, Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with wickedness.

God saw how corrupt the earth was, for every creature had corrupted its way on the earth. Then God said to Noah, I have decided to put an end to every creature, for the earth is filled with wickedness because of them.

Therefore, I am going to destroy them along with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark and cover it with pitch inside and outside.

This is how you are to make it. The ark will be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. You're to make a roof, finishing the sides of the ark to within 18 inches of the roof.

You're to put a door in the side of the ark. Make it with lower, middle and upper decks. We have here and on the next slide as well, some things that would kind of show what the ark might have looked like.

Many of you might have seen the physical recreation that answers in Genesis, which is a Christian company in Kentucky, the kind of thing that they've done.

Go back just one slide, guys, so you can actually go to Kentucky right now and find Noah's Ark. Not the Noah's Ark, but a Noah's Ark that they've shown what kinds of things would have been involved in this creation.

And here God tells Noah in verse 17, understand that I'm bringing a flood, flood waters on the earth to destroy every creature under heaven with the breath of life in it.

What God gave in the beginning, his breath, his life to every creature, now he is requiring back. He says, but I will establish my covenant with you, that promise that God says I am not going to break.

He says, I've got a promise, and you will enter the Ark with your sons, your wife and your sons' wives, your whole family. You are also to bring into the Ark two of all the living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you.

Two of everything, from the birds according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and from the animals that crawl in the ground according to their kinds, will come to you so that you can keep them alive.

Take with you every kind of food that is eaten. Gather it as food for you and for them. And then verse 22, and Noah did this.

He did everything that God commanded him. Here, Noah, through God's grace, he finds meaning for his life, a specific mission from the Lord.

Some people assume that following Jesus or obeying God means that they have to be in full time vocational Christian ministry, like being a pastor or a missionary. That's just not true.

Noah here works for an incredibly long time on carpentry, animal husbandry, food collection, and boating craftsmanship. And in all of it, the statement Genesis makes is Noah did everything that God had commanded him.

God may not have called you to pastor Tabernacle Baptist or to become a missionary in some foreign country, though he might call you at some point, but he has called you to live out your life in faithful obedience to his word.

That if you're a mechanic, you would be a godly mechanic who does excellent work, who treats his coworkers well, and who rejects crass or foul language.

If you're a teacher, you are a godly teacher who puts in the effort like Jesus is watching over your shoulder, who gives the kids the love that Jesus would and who stands up for what's right when it's needed.

Your occupation doesn't determine if you're following Jesus. Your disposition does. It's not your occupation.

It's your disposition. Do you treat your home, your work, or your friendships as though you are on a holy mission from God?

Noah here viewed his role that way, and Hebrews 11 and 2 describe his faithful obedience in construction as him preaching to those around him that he believed in God, and he believed God's word that judgment was coming.

You today are called to find meaning in knowing and loving Jesus, bringing him into every aspect of your life. How you speak to people should be how he would. How you respond to temptation and sin should be how he did.

And in everything, you're supposed to bring glory to God through your life. You're also called to find meaning in loving and inviting others into your life as you follow God.

Noah here, unlike many of the people in the Old Testament, not only personally followed God, but brought his wife to believe in God, his sons and his sons' wives to follow and believe God. Don't do the Christian life alone.

Spend time with, care about, pray for, talk with, serve alongside others in God's family. It is his goods design, it is his good design in a world where everyone insists on doing their own thing all by themselves.

Not only does grace invite mankind to find meaning, but grace invites the damned to experience deliverance.

Chapter 7 in verse 1 through chapter 8 in verse 19 details the flood that came, that God told Noah and his family to get into the ark, that he was going to bring the rest of the animal kinds in, and that he was going to shut the door.

And in seven days, the flood waters and the rain was going to come. They obeyed. The statement is made again that Noah did everything that God commanded him to do.

They got into the ark seven days later. It says the fountains of the deep, you've got geysers and torrential downpour from above, a God-sized activity that happens and floods the world.

And the Bible says that everything that was not in the ark, it returned to how it had been in Genesis 1 and verse number 2, but Noah and his family and all the animals inside and all the food inside, it was safe. I shouldn't say the food was safe.

People are eating the food. You know what I mean. Today, Romans 3-23 says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

We are under judgment, condemnation, all of us. Romans 6-23 says that the wages for our sin, the penalty, what we've earned through not obeying and following God is death, but that the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Friends, the only way for you today to end up in hell is to step over the payment that Jesus made for you. He offers full and free forgiveness, and there is no one too far gone that Jesus does not want to rescue. Turn to Him today.

There is no salvation, no deliverance outside of Jesus and His righteousness alone. I also want to mention one other aspect that ties this story to the New Testament. Noah and his family entering the ark didn't make them earn God's favor.

They had already received it, but when they went into the ark, they identified with belief in God's promise. They had already previously received God's favor, and now as they entered into the ark, they were enjoying the benefits of it.

They enjoyed the full aspects of the community that God had made with Noah and his wife and sons and sons' wives, and they experienced his blessing and salvation while everything outside was chaos and destruction.

This is what Peter describes for us in 1 Peter 3 where he says, God patiently waited in the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared. In it, in the ark, a few eight people were saved through water.

Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you not as the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge of a good conscience toward God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

If you've never followed Jesus' example in being baptized of publicly identifying yourself with the Lord and with his people, then I'd encourage you to talk to me today right there at the back table.

I'd love to set up a time with you where we can talk about what baptism is, what it isn't, and why God thinks that it's so important for every believer in Jesus. I also want to mention that there is great deliverance in following Jesus.

While doing what Jesus commands us to do, our relationships will be healthier, our families will be stronger, and we can experience the flourishing God designed us for.

Sin ruins everything it touches, but grace can transform our every location into a holy sanctuary. And then lastly today in chapter 8 and verses 20-22, we can see that grace invites the worshipper to enjoy God's Word.

It says, Then Noah, after the ark has finally rested, they have the waters gone down, they're able to exit. It says, Then Noah built an altar to the Lord.

He took some of every kind of clean animal and every kind of clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. This isn't something in the passage that God said, hey, you need to do this, you have to do this. This was Noah expressing gratitude.

God, thank you for telling me about the coming judgment.

Thank you, as we would read about in the New Testament, thank you for keeping me alive through all this time that as I told my neighbors, as I told perhaps the rest of my family members, as I told everyone God says this is coming, and everyone

ignored him except for his immediate family members, Noah expresses gratitude to God for his salvation. Verse number 21, when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, there's a fancy theological term for this where God is a spirit.

He doesn't have a physical nose, and this is when God saw what Noah had done, he said to himself, I will never again curse the ground because of human beings, even though the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth onward, and I will never

again strike down every living thing as I have done. And then he gives verse 22, as long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter and day and night will not cease.

Many of us have probably memorized a version of that through the hymn, Great is Thy Faithfulness, summer and winter, seed time and harvest, sun, moon and stars and their courses above.

Join with all nature and manifold witness to thy great faithfulness, mercy and love. But you didn't know you were singing about Genesis when you sang Great is Thy Faithfulness.

God here gives a promise that he has kept, by the way, and Noah is the beneficiary. This worshiper gets to enjoy the word, the promises of God. God's word brings blessings into our lives if we believe him.

And his grace has given us incredible promises that can work in us to believe that what he says is good and that we can experience that goodness. Follow Jesus.

Follow his instructions for your life and find out that life with Jesus is life the way it's meant to be lived. We're still in a broken world. It will not be a bed of roses.

You don't start following Jesus and your kids start obeying. I wish that was the case. I've got two toddlers right now.

It's not that you'll never have relationship struggles. You will. We're in a broken world.

But Jesus' way is the only way to go. Maybe you'd say, I'm open to that. I just don't know where to start.

Can I offer you three ways to learn what God's plan is for you? These aren't supposed to be three options of like, oh, yeah, pick one. These are supposed to go in tandem for maximum effect.

First, be in God's word personally every single day. Read what he has for you. If you have questions about what to read, like where to read in the book, a good translation to read, how long you should be reading, please talk to me afterwards.

I'd love to help you. Second, be in church whenever you can. I'm serious.

I don't get paid per attendee. This isn't something that benefits me. This is for you and your spiritual health.

God instituted the church for your good, and anytime that we can come and gather, hear God's word read and explained and applied, it is going to benefit our souls.

Third, get involved in a personal mentoring, discipleship relationship with someone that you look up to spiritually. Maybe they're younger than you physically.

Maybe they're not the same as you in some different areas, but there is no greater boost to you experiencing the life God has for you than to be discipled by someone who loves and follows Jesus.

My wife's currently doing this with some ladies in the church right now, going through a little discipleship book called The Purple Book.

And she's been amazed at, even though she's teaching the material, she's experiencing growth and understanding in God's Word like she's never had before.

For me, I got to go through personal discipleship with a couple men in my last church, and the honesty and growth and mutual benefit that it brought to us was absolutely unmatched. It doesn't take a gigantic commitment.

It might be something as simple as one hour a week that you spend with the other person, but having someone that's able to speak directly to you about your walk with God is so helpful. Today, realize that God's justice is coming.

It might not be today, but it will one day come to you. When your time comes to stand before the judge, will you already know him as your Savior and Lord, or will you stand condemned because of your rejection of Jesus?

Are you following him, walking in his grace every day, obeying his word like Noah? Because those sinners, the damned and the aimless, are the ones God invites to know him and enjoy his goodness forever.

If you don't know Christ today, please talk to me at the back table after the service. I would love to set up an appointment with you this week to talk about receiving Jesus as Lord. If you do know Christ today, are you following him?

Have you been baptized? Are you in his word, in his church, or in a discipling relationship with someone else? If you have any questions about those, I'd love to talk with you about those too.

Today, God's justice will arrive, so will we turn to him and find his grace. God is not willing, as 2 Peter 3 says, he's not willing that anyone would perish, but that everyone would come to repentance. God loves you.

He wants a vibrant living relationship with you that blossoms out into all the other areas of your life.