GOD DELIVERED NOAH

GOD DELIVERED NOAH       Friday, September 22, 2017

Genesis chapters 5-10; Num.26:33; 27:1; 36:11; Jos.17:3; 1Chron.1:4; Isa.54:9; Eze.14:14, 20; Heb.11:7; 1Pet.3:20; 2Pet.2:5

   Matthew [ESV] 6:9-15 [Jesus taught] Pray then like this: "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

   James 4:1-10 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.  Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, "He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us"? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

   1Peter 5:6-8 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties [distracting solicitudes] on him, because he cares for you. Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

  God can deliver us. The problem for many Christians is the expectation of an unusual skyfall miracle apart from their disagreeable noncompliant resistance. Indeed He does such miracles, but in the record of His Word they are on the very short list. We must never assume that our will and purpose trumps His will in purpose. God’s only begotten Son, Jesus, is our ultimate example of this. (Jn.5:30; 6:38; Act 13:22; Lk.22:39-46)

  Noah is a prime human example to study, learn from, and to definitely imitate.

·         God’s cataclysmic destroying flood was never seen before or since.

·         God gave Noah practical instructions for his and family deliverance.

·         God’s deliverance instructions required 120 years of patient compliant expensive labor. Noah, though he understood little or nothing of it, agreed with God’s overarching plan of saving and restarting civilization.

·         The same waters that drown the many lifted God’s select few.

  Moving forward in time to the New Testament record, let us not think Jesus was only teaching a prayer, how to pray. He was very much teaching how to live, including on the question of deliverance: If we are not compliant in humbling ourselves to forgive others, the Father will not forgive us. James and Peter later make comment that pertains to deliverance.

  God’s deliverance may be at the end of a staff, but it is seldom so. God’s deliverance typically involves Matthew 16:24 compliance with humility, risk (leaving comfort zones for one), labor and investment on our part as individual, family, community, or nation. The local congregation that we claim membership in is not above this requirement.  Tragically they are too often below it.

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