Open—Tim Roach
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
This morning as we remember the Lord and his death.
I looked at the table.
And I saw.
There a loaf.
And the wine.
There is a lot of wine there.
There were six Cups. There were pitchers.
And it reminded me of the blood of the Lord Jesus.
The blood which flowed so freely from the side of the Lord Jesus.
The blood that takes away our sins.
And I was thinking of the value of that blood.
And all the scriptures tell us that their blood does.
For the believer.
It washes our sins away. It sanctifies us. It justifies us. There's propitiation that covers our sins and takes them away. And we're brought near to God. We're brought near so we can come into the presence of the Lord Jesus.
Right within the veil, I want to look at Genesis Chapter 7.
Genesis Chapter 7.
And I think of NOAA.
I've said this before, but sometimes when I was a child.
I would pray each and every night. Lord, if I'm not saved, save me.
And next night I pray the same thing.
And I wasn't always sure whether or not I was saved.
As a young child.
I knew that Jesus loved me.
And I love Jesus.
But it didn't really have. I didn't really have a sense that I was a Sinner and needed to be saved.
Some years later.
At a gospel meeting, I wanted to be sure that I was saved.
Until then, I.
I don't know if I was saved already or not, I believe.
But I needed to make sure.
And then I had to put my trust in the word of God.
In the blood that was shed, I'd put my trust in that.
And I believed what the word of God says, says you shall have eternal life. You believe you have eternal life. It wasn't some special prayer that I said. It was believing on the Lord Jesus.
And it was impossible for God to lie. So when he says I will never perish, when he says you can know that you have eternal life, I was sure that I was saved because I believe God.
I wanna look at NOAA here in Genesis 7. I'll just read a couple of verses verse 7.
And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons wives with him into the ark, because of the waters of the flood.
God looked down from heaven. He saw wickedness and violence and corruption much like the world is today. I just came back from Rwanda and and uh, I went through the genocide museum there and saw the cruelty that man has for one another, killing their neighbors and their relatives just because they were a different class of people. And then I looked at Congo and I was not able to go into Congo this past.
Two weeks ago because of the fighting and the killing that's happening over there.
The corruption, the violence, the wickedness. God looked down from heaven. He saw all this wickedness in the world. He said, I'm sorry I ever made man. I don't know why I ever made him. I'm going to destroy him off the face of the earth. And so he told Noah to build this boat, and Noah went in verse 10.
It came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were upon the earth. There actually was a flood that came and destroyed everything in this world. It it destroyed all mankind. Death came in.
00:05:11
Because of man's sin and wickedness. Verse 16. And they that went in went in male and female, all of all flesh, as God had commanded him. And the Lord shut him in. The Lord shut the door. No. And his family went in. The Lord shut the door. Why? Why did he have to go in there? Well, God warned him that judgment was coming. There's going to be a flood, and you need to make a wave escape. Well, there is judgment for sin. We saw there in Noah's day that there was judgment and sin.
Judgment that came on this world in the form of a flood that destroyed all the wicked mankind.
So for us we're not worried about a flood, but there is a lake of fire. There is a danger of hell because of our sin. The soul that sins, it must die. The wages of sin is death. That death is eternal damnation in the lake of fire. Well, but God is not willing that any should perish and he made a way of escape. And so he told Noah to build this big boat, big enough so anybody who wanted to come on the boat that there was room.
For the for man and all the animals that God was going to preserve on this earth. And so there was a way of escape. And Noah went out, and he was a preacher of righteousness. And so he went out and preached before the flood came. For 120 years he was building the boat. And I'm sure during that time he was telling people why he was building a boat and he was preaching righteousness. But nobody wanted righteousness. They wanted their own way.
They wanted the wickedness of their own hearts. Well, we read those verses in First Corinthians 15 and verse 34. Awake to righteousness. Some have not the knowledge of God awake to righteousness. Noah preached righteousness in that day.
But nobody.
Had knowledge. They didn't want to know God. And today the gospel goes out. The gospel goes out by many people. They don't want to know God. They have no knowledge of God.
I know a young man who grew up in the assembly. He grew up in a Christian home. At one point, he was gathered to the Lord's name.
And he has two children of his own.
And his children don't even know who God is.
He's completely turned his back on God and he doesn't even tell his children about Jesus. When I asked him about it, he says oh, they'll find they can make their own decision. I told them you have to let them know so they can have something to decide so they know. No, he's not going to tell his children about the Lord Jesus, but we need to be preachers of righteousness too, in our in our life, in our day, both with our words and with our works.
For our actions.
Because there is a way of escape from the lake of fire.
We need to get on the boat. Jesus is our boat and we need to get in the boat. We need to get into Jesus because Jesus is the only way to safety. But yet we can't put ourselves in Christ.
We can't get ourselves born again.
We can't get ourselves sealed by the spirit of God.
When we believe on the Lord Jesus.
The Lord Jesus gives us eternal life.
And then the Spirit of God seals us, and we are eternally placed in Christ.
And no one, no one, can ****** us out of the hands.
Of the Lord Jesus. No one can take us out of that place of safety in Christ.
We know that Jesus is the righteous one who has made sin for us so that we, the Sinner could be made righteous and so we are safe in Christ.
With Noah, the Lord shut him in. They went inside. God shut the door.
00:10:00
And I like to look at that closed door as eternal security.
God did not shut that door to keep the wicked people out. In fact, after the Lord shut the door, He waited for seven days, seven days of grace before the rains fell. And I'm thinking that if anybody called upon the name of the Lord in those seven days and wanted to get on the boat before the rains came, I'm sure the Lord would have opened the door to let him come in. You know, judgment is the strange work.
Of God, and he's not willing that any should perish.
The Lord shut Noah's family into the boat.
And he kept all the people on that boat safe. And, you know, not one drop of judgment. Water touched Noah and his family because they were safe inside that boat. But yet the water of judgment, it rained down from above on the boat. And the waters came up from underneath. And out of the world, the earth, the earth split open. The waters came up out of the earth.
Up and underneath.
And roiled up against the boat from beneath.
First Peter chapter 3 and verse 20.
It tells us that there are 8 souls on board that boat.
And that they were saved by water.
And that's a curious thing to say, that they were saved by the water.
Because we thought they were saved by the boat.
But the very waters of judgment that destroyed this wicked world saved those people of faith, because the water lifted up the boat with the people of faith that were in the boat, and lifted them above the death and above the judgment. And he carried those eight persons through the storm of God's wrath.
And it saved them from the destruction with all the sinners.
The door was shut.
And so for us when the door is shut.
That's eternal security.
Because when the door is shut, you can't get out.
Jesus took all the wrath of an holy God against sin. He took all God's judgment at the cross.
And the believer is saved.
Because of the water of God's wrath that fell on the Lord Jesus as he hanged there on the cross.
There are three hours of darkness, and during those three hours, God wouldn't let anybody see what was happening to the Lord Jesus if we had looked, if anybody had looked, on the righteousness of God at that time.
There would have been certain debt, and so God turned the lights out so nobody could see what Jesus had to endure for our sins. And it was so terrible that his face was marred more than any man's.
More than the sons of men. And so the judgment waters fell in the Lord Jesus Christ to save me from the damnation of hell that I deserved because of my sin. And not one drop of God's wrath will touch the believer who puts his trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. I was speaking to a man in Rwanda last week.
And he wanted me to explain to him what we believed. And then he wanted to explain to me what he believed.
And so I told him about the grace of the Lord Jesus, and how we're saved by faith and it's not by works, lest any man should boast. And he agreed that he could get saved by the faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But he had to continue to do good works to get to heaven, because if he had a disagreement with his wife and she and he did not get reconciled, and he died before he, he sorted things out with his wife, he had a heart attack and died. Would he go to heaven or would he not?
No, he couldn't go to heaven because there is one little thing that would keep him out of heaven.
Because he didn't confess that sin. But you know, not one drop of God's wrath will touch the believer who puts his trust in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. That man, he asked me after we had discussed this for 3 1/2 hours. He said, you look like you want to say something, so tell us whatever you want to tell us. And I say, you sure you want me to tell everything? Yes. And so I said, I believe that if Jesus came today to take us to heaven.
00:15:19
You would go to hell because you have not put your trust in the Lord Jesus. You are trusting your own self and the little bit of good that you can do to get yourself to heaven. You need to put your trust in the Lord Jesus.
And he considered that for a while.
And after a few minutes, he said.
I think I'm right and you're wrong. You have to do the work. You gotta keep doing good to get to heaven. Genesis 8.
Verse 15.
And God spake unto Noah, saying, Verse 16 Go forth out of the ark, and uh, thou and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons, wives with thee.
And so NOAA.
He was in the boat, The boat landed, the ark landed on the Mount Ararat and the water subsided. And after some days, God said, OK, Noah, go forth out of the boat. They started a new beginning. There was a new life. And that's how it is with the believer. When we're saved, we begin a new life. And look in Second Corinthians chapter 5. There's a nice verse here, Second Corinthians chapter 5, because we start a new life.
When we're saved, we don't change our old life and try to modify it to make it new and good that we receive eternal life. We receive a life whereby we can please the Lord, we can do those things, we can awake to righteousness, and we can live a life that honors the Lord Jesus. We don't have to depend on our ability to do good works we have.
Anew we are a new creation. We start a new life. Verse 17. Second Corinthians 5, verse 17. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new.
And that's how it was for for NOAA. He came out of the boat. He looked around. All things were new. New vegetation, new grass growing, new new plants of for food. Everything was new, and it was undisturbed by sin.
And so for NOAA, things were new.
When we receive eternal life.
There will be a spiritual change in our lives if there's not a spiritual change.
You probably don't have eternal life. But if you have eternal life, you receive it. And it's something. It's a new create. You're a new creation. There's gonna be a change in your life. And so we are new creatures. We are no longer citizens of this earth. Now we are citizens of heaven. And we need to act like a child of God, and we need to act like a citizen of heaven. And again, that verse we had in in First Corinthians 15.
A week to righteousness.
Live like a Christian. Your actions should look should be righteous and there should not be sin.
That would characterize our life Genesis 8.
Verse 2021.
And NOAA building an altar unto the Lord.
And took of every clean beast and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
And the Lord smelled a sweet savour.
It was a new thing for Noah. He got off the boat, a new beginning. What's the first thing he does? He builds an altar to the Lord. He's going to worship the Lord.
The altar was a witness to remind Noah's family of what God had done to save them from the flood of judgment, and he worshipped and honored the Lord with the burnt offering.
It was a witness.
00:20:01
A witness to God. A witness to Noah? A witness to his family. Well, we should be a witness of what God has done to save us from the fire of God's judgment.
What is a witness?
A witness is one who shows and shares what he knows. And let's look at First Corinthians Chapter 11.
A witness is one who shares what he knows and he and he shows what he knows.
First Corinthians Chapter 11.
This shows what we can do as a witness.
We can remember the Lord in his death. We can show the Lord's death till he come. First Corinthians 11, verse 26.
For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord's death till he come.
Let me ask, do you show what you know?
Do you show the death, the Lord's death by remembering the Lord in his death? Who are we showing this to? Who's looking?
Do we close the windows in the meeting rooms? Nobody can look in?
It's a witness.
As a witness to the Angel, it's a witness to ourselves. It's a witness to God.
And to witness anybody looking in.
It's not for the unbelievers. It's.
For those who know the Lord as their savior, it's for you.
It's not a show that we do to the world, but the world knows what's happening.
We show the Lord's death.
Till he comes.
A witness not only shows what he knows, but a witness also shares what he knows. Let's go to First Peter chapter 2.
We share what we know, and so we share the gospel. We're told to go into all the world and preach the gospel. Now it's impossible for all of us to go everywhere, but every one of us can go somewhere. And so as you go to your somewhere, that's part of fulfilling the word of God into going into all the world to preach the gospel. So we need to show or share what we know with others.
Tell others. Preach the gospel. Show forth His praises. It might be in your actions, but it's not only your actions.
It's your words. People might look at you and say you're a good living person, but so is this guy over here. He's working to get to heaven. What difference is there between you and him? You look the same. The words are necessary to share with others about the Lord Jesus. So it's good to have an understanding of the gospel. It's good to have an understanding of what the Lord has done for us, what He's done for you, and so you can share the news.
Of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and preach Christ crucified, First Peter, chapter 2, verse 9. But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood and holy nation, a peculiar people that you should show forth.
That you should show forth.
The praises of him who have called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Why do we worship Jesus?
We worship Jesus because of who he is.
And who is he? Who is Jesus?
He is Jehovah. He is the Creator. He is the Lamb of God. He is the Savior of sinners. He is Almighty God. He's He's the Alpha and Omega in Isaiah chapter 6 and verse verse 9.
Isaiah I'm sorry. Isaiah 9 verse six. It says for unto us a child is born.
Unto us the Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. And so he worship the Lord Jesus because of who he is, and when we realize the immensity and the power and the person of the Lord Jesus.
00:25:10
There's nothing to say.
We worship, yeah. Just think of Mary when she came to the Lord Jesus and she wiped his feet with her hair.
And what did she say?
Nothing.
What did she sing? Nothing. She was quiet.
And her silence and her quiet her adoration is worship. And that's what we what we can do as we did this morning. We we had some some hymns we sang and verses we read. But we had thoughts. We had thoughts about the Lord Jesus. And the Lord Jesus takes those silent thoughts. The women are told to be silent in the church where you can sing but you can't get up and and express your thoughts.
But.
The Lord knows your thoughts. The Spirit of God takes your thoughts and He takes. And there's 400 people here and maybe 10 people spoke in the meeting this morning. But everybody else had their quiet thoughts and they enjoyed the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and the and the Spirit of God takes the thoughts that you had and puts them all together with the hymns and the prayers and the praises and the songs that went up and puts it all together and all goes up to God.
As a sweet smelling savor. And it's all because of who the Lord Jesus is and for what he has done for us. And so we worship the Lord for who he is, and we praise the Lord and we thank Him for what He has done.
And what has he done for us? Well, who we know that he he. He's created you for his pleasure and he wants to bring you into glory and blessing. And he's washed away my sins and he's justified me. He's removed my guilt and he's reconciled me back to God. So that we, because we had been separated because of our sin, but he took away the sin that separates us and bring us back to God, reconciles us to God.
Through the death of his Son and the Lord, Jesus gives me eternal life.
And he makes me a child of God, and he makes me the bride of Christ. And there's so many things that the Lord has done for us. We can hardly begin to to to list all of those things. But it brings our hearts full of worship and joy and praise. And we don't have to wait until we come on Lord's Day morning to give out our praise and our prayers and our worship and Thanksgiving.
Do you do you have an altar?
Where you can worship the Lord? Do you have an altar where you can praise and give thanks and honor the person of the Lord Jesus for who he is and what he has done? Do you have a personal altar at home by yourself?
Maybe you read in the morning. Maybe you read at night. Maybe you read in the middle of the day. But you have time to to read and meditate and pray, and to consider what the Lord is saying to you.
And do you have a family Bible reading an altar where you can come and bring your family together and to share the words of God and share the person of Christ and share the work of Christ and and instruct one another in the things of God? Do you have that personal altar? And then there's a a group alter. Sometimes we call it a collective altar where we can all come together and and worship and honor and remember the Lord and his death. Do you have an altar like that where you go to?
Maybe the altar is there, but you don't go to it. Oh, you're in the audience. But are you there to remember the Lord and his death in in the Lord's Supper and partaking in fellowship at the Lords table together with other believers?
And as we as we think about, like this morning, as we think about the various themes in the breaking of bread meeting, and we enjoy these themes, it produces worship and praise and Thanksgiving in our hearts. And after, after we go into the Lord's presence for worship, first we go in, then we can go out with the Lord's presence for our service, He he promises.
With you to the ends of the earth, the ends of the age. He will be with you as you go out to serve in the gospel. And so when we think of all the Lord Jesus has done, all the glory and the honor belongs only.
00:30:14
To Jesus Christ.