Title: Walk with God (Text: Genesis 6:9)
Contents
British missionary Gladys Ailward was ministering in China before the outbreak of World War II. When Japanese troops invaded northern China, she was forced to flee to Yangchang with about 100 orphans. She took the orphans into the mountains, where there was no hope of safe escape.
Then a 13-year-old girl told the missionary the story of Moses. The miraculous event that parted the Red Sea. Ailward then said: “Son, I am not Moses.” Then the little girl answers. “I know. But Jehovah is still God.”
As we spend our last week today, what we desperately need is to know this. No matter how high and steep the mountain in front of us, no matter how high and difficult the road may seem, God is still God.
When you don't see your goals, when you get lost, when it feels like no circumstances are on my side, we're not all great men in the Bible, no great ancestors of any faith we know, but still God is our God. the fact that he is God.
A brief description of Noah is given in the text.
“The righteous” “The perfect man in his time” However, before these words came out, Genesis 6:1-7 describes the world in which Noah lived. To put it in one word, verses 6-7, “He lamented that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was grieved, and he said, ‘Man I have created I will sweep from the face of the earth, from man to livestock and creeping things and birds of the air, for I will destroy them. They lament that they had made it.”
In other words, the age in which Noah lived was a time when God's righteousness was lost. Seeing that people did not fear God and sinned, it seems that God's work was not seen and it was difficult to find people who served God around us.
This is the message given to us today in a situation where people who believe in God cannot see what it is like to live by believing in God, or in a situation where it seems impossible to believe and trust God. “Show your faith!”
Do you have any purpose in your life? The moment you think you have achieved it, do you feel that you have succeeded?
There are some of you who invest everything and work hard because your children are the purpose of your life now. But you should know that the child will never be the purpose of life. How vain would it be when that child leaves my arms?
One day, a father and his children were having dinner and talking.
When the three-year-old high school kids go to college, will they be staying at home or staying in a boarding house?
The father said to his son:
“Hey man! Now, if you go to college, you have to go to the military, go to study abroad, and if you get married, that’s the end of it, but even when we go to college, we should be together.”
Then the son said:
“No, we lived together for 20 years.”
It's a very sad story. But it seems that this is not their only story.
Then, the purpose of your life is to be together as a couple, not as a child, and live your life hard. No couple here will die together unless they die in an accident. Even if it seems impossible to live without that person, there seems to be no couple who would immediately commit suicide just because they passed away first.
How futile it is to live for a purpose.
In the text, the world in which Noah lived was terribly corrupt and under the curse of God, but Genesis 6:8 says about the righteous Noah of his day. “But Noah found favor with the Lord”
At least for believers, shouldn't life be a life lived by God's grace, not asceticism?
This is a story from a book by a man named Stuart Briscoe.
A doctor asked a man complaining of a headache.
“Do you smoke?”
"Yes."
“Then stop smoking.” The doctor recommended. He quit smoking as instructed, but the headache continued.
I asked the person who came to the doctor again.
“Are you drinking?”
"Yes. I drink a lot.”
“Stop eating.” He stopped drinking. But the headaches continued.
“Are you doing anything that puts a strain on your back?”
"That's right."
“You should quit your job.” So he quit his job and got a job that didn't put a strain on his back, but the headache still didn't go away. Every day, the pain hit my head. Eventually, through several tests, the doctor found the cause of the pain that pressed on this patient. He found out that the patient's neck was 16 inches and he was wearing a 15-inch shirt.
In fact, we have heard many plausible prescriptions for our problems. Ways to overcome weakness, a positive mindset, a change of style, a positive attitude, etc. However, we find the most fundamental problem in us humans. It is the fact that even in their own weakness, they do not try to depend on God.
The Bible tells us. “God is our refuge and a great help in trouble.”
He will be on our side and help us. Our weakness is to believe that He is fully in control of our lives, and the fact that He is always by our side and guides us without any accident or accident.
The moment we confess that our weakness is God's sufficient grace, it is not that God cannot work because of our weakness, but the moment we confess that God uses us through our weakness, we know something. The fact that my weakness becomes a channel through which I can experience the power of God. So we rather know that weakness is no longer a stumbling block in our lives.
According to the Bible, the Apostle Paul rejoices because his weakness has caused him to underestimate the “power of God.” Rather, I rejoice because I was able to trust God faithfully without leaving God because of my weakness.
A pastor with a score of 60 has five advantages.
(1) Acknowledging your own shortcomings makes you humble.
(2) Accepting bad advice and suggestions because they admit their lack of self.
(3) Acknowledging and accepting one's own shortcomings leads to progress.
(4) As it develops, it responds to change, advances, and sublimes.
(5) Because there is no sinking, there is no regret, and there is no regret, so the church is revived day by day.
However, a pastor with 100 points has five flaws.
(1) He is proud of himself as a perfect person.
(2) Being arrogant, it is unacceptable and only stubborn.
(3) There is no development because it is not acceptable.
(4) If there is no power generation, it sinks.
(5) Regret after sinking is like salvaging a sunken ship. To bring the ship back into service, a huge amount of time and sacrifice must be made.
There are mothers around us who do not really understand. Buying expensive toys for children and stealing them. Because if you do it wrong, it will break. If you save it like that, some time will pass and you will be old enough to play with the toy. Even though boys have fun tossing, disassembling and playing with toys. There are women like that too. I haven't used the bowl set I brought with me when I got married for over 10 years. I'm afraid it might break. And when it is time to use it, the fashion will pass, and the health will be poor, so there is no place to use it. In fact, all the circumstances we are given are meant to be enjoyed.
From the moment God made us His children, everything has been given to us as a privilege. Because God has given us all by grace.
As I meditated on the life of Noah, I thought that our life was like a “desert.”
The fact that we need a “compass” to cross a place where we don’t know the direction we are going to, so we don’t cross the desert while walking, but rather a maze-like place where we have no choice but to return to the same place.
When we see the compass of faith as we cross the desert and walk, we will realize that it was the way. As we walk through the desert, when we are weary and we fall, we will meet rivers, we will be refreshed, and we will find joy in the middle of the desert. Right in the middle of the desert of your life.
Sometimes we encounter a mirage in the middle of the desert. that seduces us. Then, if we follow the mirage without looking at the compass, we will not be able to cross the desert of life. You will not meet an oasis following a mirage that looks like water, but you will die of thirst.
How many mirages are around you right now?
False idols and honor, countless greed and many things that tempt us. It cannot be enumerated.
So we have to constantly look at the compass and check it. In order to walk with God in a world where sin is pervasive. Just as Noah found God's favor in his world.
That's right. When we feel so helpless about our experiences and our thoroughly devised plans for life, we are in the desert and it is the moment when we feel that we absolutely need our faith in God.
Let's cross the desert of our life nicely. Let's show our faith in the middle of the desert of our lives today. I hope that Noah will show faith in living as a man of God in the midst of the desert, just as Noah received God's grace in the midst of a world full of sin and was a “righteous man of his day” at the time of the greatest iniquity.