OCTOBER 25, 2020 SUNDAY MESSAGE
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Transcription Notes:
How's everybody doing this morning? Good. My name is Sam Linette. I am the formation pastor here at Common Ground Northeast. It is really exciting to be up here to share with you.
It's been a while, but I'm glad to be up here. It's good to see see everybody in here. And for those of you tuning in online, good to see you, too. I guess you're seeing me. That's a little creepy, but, hey, glad to have you here, too.
So we are in the middle of our gospel story where we kicked it off with creation. And now we're in a season of rebellion. Does anybody remember what the symbol for creation was? Any kids in here, remember? Show me.
What is it? What was it? A circle? That's right. We're in circle now.
We're in rebellion. What is the symbol for the rebellion? Yeah, the X right here. A couple of weeks ago, we had Dwayne Williams, one of our elders, kick off our rebellion. Now, first of all, this dude has the audacity to get up here and wear a Niners Jersey.
Are you serious? We're in Indianapolis. So I had to redeem that you're welcome. And then last week, we had Eric talk about the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve and where sin entered into the world. This week, I get the privilege to bring to you a flood story.
Who's excited for a flood story this morning? Brutally, I'll be brutally honest. When I saw my name next to the flood story, I kind of responded the same way. I was like, all right, because we've heard the flood story before, right? We know this.
We've been taught it in Sunday school, and part of me is like, I don't know what I'm going to pull out of this story. I don't know what new I can bring, what fresh I can bring. How does this even apply to our life? But y'all after I Dove in, Holy cow, I can't even get to all of it. I'm not to read an article or post it later or something.
There's so much here, so much. Good. And I'm excited to share with you this morning. Now, I mentioned there's kind of two flood stories. Maybe that we hear consistently.
There's kind of the one we hear in Sunday school, right where it's you got this guy building this boat because a lot of waters come in and he gathers the animals two by two. And then when the floods come, they're all safe in there, and they're taking care of one another. And then the flood subsides and they come out and it's brand new. Everything's green and everything. And everything is daisies, roses and, yes, rainbows.
But we also get a whole nother side of this story. And it's kind of a gloomy, grim story of a God of wrath, destruction. I mean, think about it. All of creation was wiped out. Eric shared with me a story of this guy a preacher who actually, when talking about the flood story, had somebody drawing a picture and it was actually depicting people drowning, and it was a little bit like, Whoa, Holy cow.
But it makes you ask the question then, and many people might argue this, what kind of God do we follow that would bring a flood like this and destroy humanity? That really doesn't sound like the God that I know of in the New Testament? Is it really the same God all the way through? Did God change? Is he really a wrathful God?
But I read so much about a loving God in one aspect. So what is it? Why is God so harsh? What is God's real character now? I think we might be asking the wrong question, and I want to change your focus in mind this morning.
Maybe instead of looking at the intensity of God's actions and first asking, who are you God? What if we saw the intensity of God's actions and asked, what warrants a good God to respond this way? What if we gave God the benefit out here? We stopped analyzing God's character with how we responded and actually started analyzing what warranted God's response. What if I told you the story
is not a story of destruction and wrath, but actually a story of Grace and saving that sound a little more like the God that, you know, you might ask saving from what?
What is so bad that flood and destruction is actually Grace and saving simple sin.
This is how much God actually hates sin, but also in the same breath, how much God actually loves his creation. So instead of analyzing God's character in the flood story today, we're actually going to focus more on the destructive characteristics of sin that warrants this type of dramatic event. Now,
who here has told the lie before? Kids, if you don't want to raise your hand, that's okay. I know your parents are here.
So you've told the lie before. Okay, I have two for sure. When I was little, I used to tell sometimes when I really didn't want to go to school, I would act like my stomach really hurt. Kids. You know what I'm talking about?
And you're like, man, I feel really sick and I make it up so I could just stay home and watch cartoons all day. And it worked every once in a while. But I had to play it off, right? I had to keep playing it off. Has anybody ever seen Ferris Bueller's Day off?
Anybody know? Okay, if you've heard of it online, give a shout out. Ferris Bueller's Day off. Listen, this kid came up with how many different just lies and cover ups and everything to stay home from school and do all these crazy things. But what I want you to recognize is how the story.
Maybe you tell one little lie, but in order to cover that up and justify yourself, you might tell another one, and then to cover that one up, you got to say it tell another one. And this story grows. It forms itself and almost creates this whole new alternative understanding. Now, in front of me, I have bottle of water. Okay.
And similar to in the Garden of Eden, where a small little seed of doubt was placed in the mind of Eve, you can see small little seed, but you can actually see it break apart and it's continuing to grow, and it slowly starts to infect anything that it touches. It's not just one little piece. It grows. Now throughout this whole sermon, I guarantee this thing will continue to get more red and more red and more red. And that's kind of what a lie does when you try to cover it up.
Right. So we're going to step into a time where it's called recognize what I want to ask you guys is where was a time that either you have experienced a lie? Okay. Where was the time where you experienced the lie or where you actually told the lie? And you had to tell another one and another one and it grew into something more.
We're going to take some time to talk through that right now. And then I'll bring you back whenever we have a 32nd countdown. So where was the time where you lied? And you had to cover up with more live, more lie or somebody you've experienced an event you experienced where it just grew to something that was way more than you thought. Go give you about 30 seconds here.
30 seconds, and we'll bring it back in.
All right. Well, kids, sorry if I added you there. I didn't mean to do that with your parents. Well, you're welcome parents. It's part of it.
So there might be some light hearted stories. There's a quick story. I won't share all of it. But one time in high school, I was taking AP, British Literature and for College credit. And I showed up to school, and I didn't have all five Journal entries that we had to turn in every week.
Five Journal entries every week, three to five pages long, which, for our high school kids, seems crazy long learned later that that's not too bad. But I came and I wasn't ready. Come to find my friend who was in the class. They weren't ready either. I said, how many you got?
Two or three? Well, I have two or three. Well, what if we swap stories? We change the heading, the title, the name, and maybe the first paragraph or two claim it as our own. We have five.
And our idea was there's no way our teacher reads through every single one of these Journal entries of all the kids in the classroom. So we did it later that week. We got our grades back. Guess what happened? We passed.
We proved it right. So let's do it again next week. But only we thought, oh, we can make this a bigger thing, because now if we get five people, we only have to write one a week. So as you can see what we thought was a good idea grew into five people in a group, writing one Journal entry every week, and us changing all this stuff and turning it in. At the end of the year, we got our portfolio back.
Guess what? We passed. I'm not saying that this is a push for lying by any means. But now getting older, I want you to realize this. One thing we didn't take into consideration was how a simple, innocent idea to try to maybe either fix a problem or cover up a mistake that we had made or a downfall that we had not bringing our homework.
Think of the implications that this could have had if we actually would have got found out. We're talking College credit taken away. We're talking reputation at our school completely marred. We're talking maybe getting into colleges, like not happening. This is a big deal.
We didn't see it that way initially. And I want you to notice that a small idea that was very personal, turned into communal and grew around us to more people and eventually could affected us more. Now some of these might be lighthearted characteristics that we're talking about, of how a life spreads or whatnot this is kind of sort of how sin spreads. Okay, but I want to be very clear here. Sin is more like more like a virus.
It's more like an addiction. It's more like a disease. It's more like cancer. In all of those I've had experience, I've walked with people very close to me. I've walked through my own addiction.
My mom has been battling stage four cancer for the past six years, and it started off as a little spot on the top of her head that her hairdresser found, and it started to grow. So they said, hey, we need to take a look at that. It ended up being cancerous melanoma. So what they did? They cut out a circle on her head, on her scalp, took even some of her skull, plucked it off, sewed it up.
Her hair kind of swoops over it. You can't tell really, if you don't know it's there. And they thought they got it all cancer free. We got the scans back. Guess what?
It grew. They didn't get it all. Another surgery. Another spot. Thought they got it all cancer free scans back.
Guess what? Stage three. It's now in her lymph nodes. They didn't get it all they went in, took the lymph nodes out. Another surgery, sewed her up.
It's all good. Cancerfree scans back. Guess what? Her lungs lit up like Christmas. So many spots in there they could not do surgery.
So she had to go to alternative matters. I share this to share with you. This is how sin grows in our lives. Spiritually it can go very undetected or small. It seems like no big deal.
Those are like seeds. And at one point the doctor literally said, It's hard to know where the cancer has gone once it gets your lymph nodes because they're undetected. They are like seeds and they're waiting to attach somewhere. When it latches on, it grows and it feeds, it can change and adapt. This is why doctors have such a hard time trying to get this cancer thing under control.
It has one goal in mind to attack the body and inhabits until it completely overtakes it. And what does that usually end up in worst case scenario, not for all people, but for a lot of them. This is what's
happening in Genesis. When we're talking through our stories. This is what we're going to learn in the Flood.
Y'all these are the characteristics of sin that can go undetected. It could be a very small thing. It started with a little seed of doubt. Not a big deal, but it latches on. It grows and it feeds.
Then it seeps and spreads into other areas of your life. It can change and adapt and grow and eventually manifest itself in other ways where you're like. I never expected this. Sin has one purpose in mind to steal, kill and destroy the body that it takes and it wants to take over.
Cancer needs a remedy strong enough to stop it and kill it. And that's what we had to do. I'm here to say. Thankfully, my mom has been in remission for the past two to three years. We found a remedy strong enough to attack it and kill it.
And guess what? Sin needs the same thing. A remedy strong enough to attack it and kill it. We read in Matthew. If your hand causes you to sin, what if your eye causes you to stumble?
What? Because it says it is better for you to come into the Kingdom without a hand or an eye rather than to be kicked out of heaven forever. Those are extreme measures. Not that seems a little crazy, but maybe we need to see the intensity by which sin is met because of how dangerous sin is. The Flood story is less about God's wrath and it's more about Sin's destruction and God stopping that destruction.
James One, four. Do we have it perfect says this. But each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin and sin when it is full grown, gives birth to death. Don't be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters.
This is a warning. The little thing that you don't think is a big deal is a very big deal. And today, when we jump into Genesis in the Flood story, we're going to see why it's such a big deal. Let's talk a little bit about the progression of sin in our stories that we see. So we started in Adam and Eve, right.
Started with a little seed of doubt, but notice what it turned into. It grew to action. They actually Eve plucked the fruit and ate of it. It grew from personal to communal. I had an Adam in there.
Adam took part in it as well. It grew to shame. They saw their nakedness. They're like, oh, no, right. They started blaming one another when they got called out by it.
Hey, no, it's her fault. No, it's his fault. And it even turned to God and said, no, God, what did you do? You gave me this woman.
You can see where and how it grows in forms and shapes. And morphs. Cain and Abel is another story we're not going to get too far into, but it's a story of jealousy. It's a story of pride. It's a story of murder.
So we go from a small seed of a doubt, and it spreads to other people, and it ends in what? Murder? Whoa. Guarantees. Sometimes you never would have thought that maybe a small little thing could turn into something so big.
And now it lands us into the flood story. Let's see where sin has gotten us to at this point. Now, in this story there we talked about. We're talking Covenant, and we're talking Kingdom. Right.
And this is woven into all the stories that we share. Now, this story goes back and forth with Covenant and Kingdom a lot. Okay. We're going to talk about God's Kingdom where it is. But we're also going to talk about Covenant with Noah.
Now, I'm not going to dive too much into the Covenant with Noah. Eric is going to share a little bit about Covenant next week. But there's a lot of good stuff there today. We're going to focus more on
the Kingdom and the state of the Kingdom right now. So let's jump into Genesis six.
We'll read this first section real quick when human beings began to increase in number on the Earth and daughters were born to them. The sons of God saw the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them. They chose. Then the Lord said, My spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal. Their days will be 120 years.
The Nephilim were on the Earth in those days. And also after when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them, they were hers of old men of renowned. Now stop there. There's a lot of language here that we don't have time to unpack. Dwayne hit on some of that two weeks ago with the Nephilim and different things like that.
If you read through this, you need to pick one specific thing out of this. If you grasp one thing, it's this. What God is seeing is that there's corruption happening in everything that he's created, whether it's Holy beings or whether it's mortals, he is seeing there's corruption that is being transmitted everywhere and it's growing and it's spreading. And he's seeing this. We read this in the next chapter or the next verse.
The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the Earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the Earth and his heart was deeply troubled. Now there's some troubling things. Maybe in here that we see the wickedness of humans was everywhere all the time. Could you go back to the other side?
Thank you. Think wickedness of human race had become on the Earth. Every inclination, every thought of the human heart was all evil. That's a lot of evil. I thought God created humans to be good, right?
How is it every inclination that is the good gone. And the important part here says all the time. Another translation says continuously, there's no stop to this. It's going to continue. So what God is recognizing as seeing is this is a big deal.
Now this next part is pretty controversial. The Lord regretted that how he had made human beings on the Earth and his heart was deeply troubled. There's a lot of speculation and conflict on this asking, like, did God really regret making humanity in creation? Scholars believe that this isn't necessarily the case. But maybe what the author is trying to depict here is the emotional tie, the relationship that God has and cares deeply for his creation.
He's trying to grasp the depth of what he's seeing here. And essentially it's mirroring the depth of what sin has become and created in what God initially had hoped for. Does that make sense? So try to understand and grasp that part. Let's go to the next one.
So the Lord said, I'll wipe out from the face of the Earth, the human race I have created and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground. For I regret that I have made them. But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord. So recognize this. Sin did not just corrupt personally, did it?
It had actually started to infect all of creation. Your sin is not personal, it's public and it doesn't just affect you or the people around you. It literally affects all of creation. That's a big deal. God said.
We need to restart. And this is what he decided to do. He's going to kill Sin once and for all. At least at this point, he's going to wipe out sin and start anew this part of the show really shows how sinful, the seed of doubt, infected all of creation and set in motion destruction, chaos for all again, sin needs a remedy strong enough to stop it. And God responded with an intensity and a remedy to do just that.
Why? Because he cared about the creation that he made and notice he said, but Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord. We're going to come back to that. So remember that. Now I did mention that
there is a Covenant piece that we talked about with Noah, and we're not going to dive into it.
But what you need to know is whenever they're talking about Covenant here, there's a lot of different flood stories in other cultures. Okay, this isn't the only flood story. However, when you read this story specifically in the Covenant, you recognize a very different God than the other gods that you hear. We'll touch on that a little bit coming. But Eric's going to talk more about Covenant next week.
Now, when we go into chapter seven, I want you to recognize it is actually a decreation story. This is not just destruction. This is decreation language. If you actually catch it and pay attention to it, let's go to 711 in the 600th year of Noah's life. On the 7th day of the second month.
On that day, all of the Springs of the great deep verse fourth and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. If you remember in Creation story, there was imagery and talking about where God separated the waters of the deep and of the sky. And he closed them up. Look what's happening here. He's unleashing them.
It's like he's taking away the barriers. Okay, let's go to the next 17 through 24. For 40 days, the flood kept coming on the Earth. And as the waters increased, they lifted the archive above the Earth. The waters rose and increased greatly on the Earth.
And the Ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the Earth. And all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than 15 cubits. Keep going.
Every living thing that moved on the land perished. Now notice creation story. All the things that God created. Look at the decreation here. Birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the Earth, all mankind, everything on dry land that had the breath of life in his nostrils died.
Every living thing on the face of the Earth was wiped out. People and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the Earth. Only Noah was left. And those with him in the Ark, the water flooded the Earth for 150 days. You can see parallels of all the language from creation and this, but it's literally backtracking.
God is resetting. He is decreating.
We are back to the beginning. Sandra L. Richter, in her book The Epic of Eden, described it this way. What we see in the flood is not merely a natural disaster intending to bring about God's judgment on humanity, but a decreational event. What had been done at creation is undone.
With the flood, the world is brought back to its Precreation state formless and void. Sin needs a remedy strong enough to stop it. God responded with an intensity necessary to wipe this out because he cared enough. He pressed restart reset. Now we're going to go into reflection time now.
I want to ask, where do you find yourself in the midst of this story?
Have you caught yourself minimizing sin in your life? That doesn't seem like a big deal. Maybe it's just a small seat of doubt.
What sin have you been tolerating in your life, knowing the destructive patterns of how it can grow and form and shape and move and end up being something you never thought possible? Why would we continue allowing sin in our life, even to a small degree?
I want us to take time to reflect now and think about. Is there a spot in your life where we are allowing sin that doesn't need to be there, even if we don't think it's a big deal. We know it is because of the intensity God showed. Let's take some time to discuss and reflect.
I'll give you a 32nd countdown here.
Alright, let's bring it back in. So who needs to reset know that sin is not harmless? No matter how small we think it is, who knows what we're tolerating our lives can turn into? Why take that chance now? There's been a lot of gloom and doom today, but I shared with you initially right off the bat.
It's not about wrath and destruction, right? It's about Grace and saving. And I'm going to prove it to you right now. The other flood stories that I mentioned, right? If there's other flood stories in that time in that area, okay.
Other cultures showed a lot of different flood stories in different ways. Historians say, because there's so much evidence of that. Usually if a lot of different cultures are describing the same thing, there's a good chance it actually happened. But here's the thing in other flood stories that you would read, gods are very different. If you were growing up in this time, a flood story is not uncommon to you.
And you'd read of gods that are frustrated with humanity who want to destroy all of it and get rid of them. They want nothing to do with them, wash their hands of them. They want to do away with invoke their power and their wrath. What we read in this story, though, is this God is very different. That's why we have to read it differently.
This God did not throw humanity out. He actually partnered with and wanted to save and at the end of it, whenever a lot of gods would say, hey, don't do this again or else which is a normal Covenant, God said I will never do this again. It's a different God. Excuse me.
So when God looked down on the Earth and he saw violence and he saw corruption, every inclination of the human heart, evil. He also saw what the righteousness of Noah. He also saw the goodness in his creation. He did not wipe out all. What did he do?
We read in Genesis 713 through 16 that he gathered humans? No. And his family. He gathered animals. He gathered vegetation for food.
If you actually recognize this and think through the creation story, he gathered everything that he said was very good. And he preserved it. He saved it. This shows us that we live with a God that so desires community and harmony and loving partnership with us and his creation that he would not destroy it. But he actually tried to save it by destroying sin.
Are you catching me here now? When we jump into Genesis eight, I'm going to run through this because I'm running out of time. I'm not going to be able to get to all this stuff. But listen. Genesis Eight starts a recreation story.
We had a decent story, but now we have a recreation story. Check these parallels. Genesis Eight One God's wind blew over the Earth. Wind Ruach spirit. Genesis One spirit hovered over the waters.
Genesis Eight fountains of the deep rescinded and the windows of heaven were closed. Genesis One separation of waters. We now have that again. Genesis Eight no. Open the window and light came in.
Genesis One, let there be light. Genesis Eight he sent out a Raven and a Dove into the sky. Genesis One God filled the sky with birds. Are you catching me? Are you checking with me here?
Genesis Eight the Dove found an olive leaf. Oh, what does that mean? Genesis One, the Earth was up and filled with vegetation. And then Genesis Eight, Noah and the animals were let out of the Ark. Genesis One God filled the Earth with creatures and man.
And at the end of it, he says, Go forth, you and your wife be fruitful. And what multiply it is a recreation story.
Arthur Glass, in his book Announcing the Kingdom, described it this way. The theme of Genesis One through eleven is that human race in its fallenness tends to destroy God's creation. And yet God
demonstrates that he is the God of Grace as well as the God of judgment. No matter how sinful people become and how severe God's punishment, his Grace never fails to provide a fresh start. God is irrevocably committed to his creation.
Did you hear me there? God is irrevocably committed to his creation. God did not give up on creation or humanity. He fought to preserve it and preserve it because of the righteousness in it and the good that he saw. God will not give up on you, on us.
On his creation. Here he will fight to bring you and all things back to the righteousness that is in him. He provides a new start for things again and again and again. And we can read it all the way through Scripture. The pattern we see is this God destroys sin.
God saves humanity using the righteousness of one man. Well, that sounds familiar, doesn't it? And God recreates and brings new. Does that sound like the God that you know? Does that sound more like the God that you know?
Here's my challenge today, before we pray, is it possible that your breakthrough, your Salvation, your life changing moment? Your recreation story is hindered because you aren't taking sin seriously enough.
What if you responded with the same intensity that a good God did and does and continues to to put to death the very sin that is literally just trying to steal, kill and destroy you. Sin needs a remedy strong enough to take it out and to kill it because we know how it can grow.
Would you all pray with me, Lord? God, we thank you for being a good God. Thank you so much for being present here among us around us all the time. Lord, I pray that by the eyes of your spirit inside of us, that you illuminate the places where we are taking for granted what sin is and what sin can do. I pray, Lord, that you would show us the places that we are allowing to not give us fullness of life in you.
That is hindering us from seeing you more. And I pray, Lord, that we can rejoice and that you are a God that never gives up, that constantly brings new, that constantly gives new starts and that you will never cease working. And I pray, Lord, that we can be with you in that that we would surrender to you.
Thank you, Lord. It's in your name. We pray Amen.
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COMMUNION:
(1 COR. 11:23B-26)
“The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
SAVE THE DATE: The 2020 Marriage Retreat is scheduled to be Saturday and Sunday, November 7 and November 8!
PRAYER REQUESTS:
We are hosting prayer team meetings for both the congregation at large and individuals to sign up for individual prayer.
SUGGESTIONS FOR WORSHIP:
Coty Miller’s own “Praise & Worship” Spotify playlist and “Praise & Worship” YouTube playlist (slightly different from each other), both of diverse music that are being constantly updated!
Bethel Music :
Bethel Music’s hours of live music YouTube Playlist, also being constantly updated
Bethel provides chords to most (if not all) of their songs here (just have to register email, but free!)
Live worship moments from the Upper Room YouTube Playlist
Journal writing! (I’m a writer too, so sometimes creative writing and writing my thoughts to God is my form of worship.)
Declare and worship with truth by singing and praying scriptures.
WORSHIP NIGHT! Dedicate a night to worship with friends and family, your house church or neighbors, those who need prayer, love worship, or just enjoy music through a video chat platform like Zoom. You can have one person leading at a time (switching off to whoever else wants to lead) while others sing along, pray, or prophesy, etc.
Serving your community, both online, in person, or both, is a great way to worship God, from spreading encouragement and God’s Word online to physically serving food to others. If you are able to go out and serve, click here for opportunities.
COMMISSIONING:
As Jesus said in John 20:21,
"Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you."
Go, be the Church!
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.