Well, thank you so much. It surely is a privilege. Having just joined the church not long ago, it's especially an honor to have this opportunity to speak. And I am so delighted when Pastor Horn asked me to preach, he told me he was going to be involved in his son's ordination. And I was so happy to hear that. I mean, any preacher That's a highlight of life. I mean, that's one of the biggest moments he and Beth will have. So what a great privilege for them. I'm so happy that they can be part of that. You had read in your hearing this morning, Genesis chapter six. I'm kind of glad that Ben skipped those first few verses about giants in the earth and the sons of men and the daughters of God. or vice versa, and I was hoping maybe we wouldn't have to go there, and we were not going there. That's a great passage for the pastor to touch on, not for the visiting preacher, right? I know what I think that verse means, but there's all kinds of ideas. So we'll start with the verses that come after. And as you think of the story of Noah and the Ark. I suppose of all the stories in the Bible, that's one of the ones that everybody seems to know. I mean, they could be basically biblically illiterate, but they've heard the story of Noah and the Ark. They may not believe it, they may not think it's literal, but people know that story. And when we read about the wickedness of the earth and God regretting having made man in the first place, I suppose there's a lot of directions we can go with that. Our world is very distressed and it seems that it gets constantly a little bit worse, but that's not where I'm going this morning. I just want to look at some really simple lessons about how God's work gets done. Nothing profound, nothing you perhaps have not thought of before, But just reviewing the story of Noah and thinking practically, what implications does that have for us? As we read this morning, God made this decision that he was going to use a flood to destroy the world. And yet he came to one man and chose that man to be the savior, to be the one person and with him one family that would survive. That means that every single one of us in this room, actually every single person on the planet, is a descendant of Noah. We all have something in common. We all descended not only from Adam, but we also all descended from Noah. And when you think about what God was doing, how God was working, You recognize that Noah, Noah became a different person, or he had to take on a role that he had never anticipated, do things he had never imagined, and somehow God used him and his sons to build a boat that boggles the imagination. I suppose now we can go up to the Ark exhibit up in Kentucky and see it for ourselves, see the dimensions, see the magnitude. but it really is a massive boat. And then he had the mandate to make the boat and then to bring in all the animals. And with that, God saved life on the planet. So let's just think about some practical lessons of how God's work gets done, and we notice these from the life of Noah. The first thing I want you to see is God uses human diligence. See, we know that God can do all things. We know that God has the ability to simply step in at any moment and do whatever he wants. God could so easily, we're talking about the creator of the universe. We're talking about the God who, with simply a word, was able to create all things. And that God, he could have said to Noah, look, you need an art. And there it is, right? I mean, how simple. If God can create galaxies and the universe, if God can do all things with no limitations, then God could simply and easily have just created a giant boat and even put all the animals inside there in one simple thought. But God didn't do that. a family, more particularly a man, to do something that for that man involved a great deal of work. So with that human diligence, God gives Noah, first of all, instructions. I mean, we read some of those instructions. Surely what we read in chapter 6 is probably a summary. not every word of what God said to Noah. I suppose Noah was out there taking notes, wanted to get everything correct, wanted to make sure he had those details right. Imagine if somehow he got the dimensions wrong and the whole thing tilted to one side, or maybe it wasn't quite seaworthy. Is this on? It's on, there we go. So, Noah has instructions, and here's the reality, you and I have instructions. I mean, we have a whole book of instructions, right? We have the word of God, we have his divine revelation, his communication to us, and he intends for us to study it. intends for us to read it, he intends for us to know it. How do we do church? How do we do life? How do we parent? How do we serve as a good employee or as a good employer? How do we know these things? Well, we go to the instructions. And just like Noah, we have to study those instructions. We have to take our time and use our labor and we have to get in and diligently search and know. So God, in his kindness, in his graciousness, gives us tasks to do, and he doesn't give us all the details for every component of life like he gave to Noah with the ark, but he gives us his divine communication so that we can go to that, study that, know that, hear that, act on that, and then we can get to work. But not only does God give Noah instructions, here's what I think is really interesting, he gives Noah time. Have you thought about that? How much time did God give Noah? Well, oftentimes, we say he gave Noah 120 years. That comes from verse three of chapter six. The Lord said, my spirit shall not abide in man forever, free as flesh, for his days shall be 120 years. And somehow, it seems like everybody has this idea that Noah was building the ark for 120 years. That's actually not what the Bible says. First of all, that phrase, I will not strive with man, I'll give man 120 years, probably has to do with lifespan. After the ark, the lifespan begins to go down so that eventually, by the time you get to Abraham and others, Moses and so forth, you have the lifespan coming down to around 120 years. Of course, our lifespan is even shorter than that today. But God did give Noah time. How much time? Well, if you look at the end of chapter five, if you have your Bible open, in verse 32, it says, after Noah was 500 years old, Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth. So Noah begins having children when he's 500 years old. That's pretty old, right? And if you look further in the story, if you look in chapter seven, In verse six, it says Noah was 600 years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth. So you've got a span there of 100 years, between the time Noah starts having children and the time that the flood comes upon the earth. When God comes to Noah in chapter six and tells him, you're the man, I'm going to do this, I'm gonna bring this flood, you're the one that's going to be the savior, in verse 18 he says, I will establish my covenant with you, this is chapter six, verse 18, I will establish my covenant with you and you shall come into the ark, you and your sons, your wife and your sons' wives with you. So by the time God spoke to Noah, his sons were old enough to have wives. So figure 40, 50, 30 at the least in that generation. So Noah had 60 years, 50 years, maybe 40, somewhere in that time frame. So forget the 120, but either way, 50, 60 years is a long time to do anything for 50, 60 years is a long time. So just think practically what this might have looked like for Noah. Right? God comes to Noah. He's doing his thing, whatever that was. God comes to Noah. Noah's whole life is turned around. He goes home. He's kind of maybe stunned. I mean, this is monumental. He comes home, and he says, wife, we've got to talk. God came to me today, and he's going to destroy everything. But wait. He's going to save life through me. And his wife is like, OK, tell me more. Yeah, me and the boys, we're going to build a giant ark. And she's probably like, what's an ark? And he tells her about the instructions and the dimensions. And she says, Noah, this is awesome. I mean, what a great privilege. You're the one man on the entire planet that God came to with this salvation. So I'm just imagining maybe Noah gets up the next morning. So maybe Noah normally gets up at seven to go to work, but the next morning he's up at 5.30. Because this is monumental, this is exciting. And he gets up, and he's eager to get started. And he tells his wife, make me a big breakfast, because I'm going to work hard today. And so she does bacon and eggs and grits and the whole works. And he goes out with his sons, and he chops down trees. And he comes home at the end of the day, and his hands are all calloused or maybe blistered, right? Blisters come before the callouses. And Mrs. Noah says, well, dear, how was it? You have no idea. I mean, with my own hands, I started working to save humanity. I cut down trees. And then a week later, he comes home with, those trees, we planed them into boards. And we have wood now, gopher wood, to make the ark. And we're getting started. The fast forward a year, Noah's still getting up pretty early, maybe not quite 5.30, but still pretty early. He's excited. I mean, this is the most important work any human being's ever had to do. And so he's out there, he and the boys, they're working hard, he comes home, and Mrs. Noah has a cake. It's the one year anniversary. Ooh, Noah, let's celebrate one year of your new ministry of saving the planet, saving life on Earth. And Noah gets all nostalgic, and he talks about, you know, what they're doing. And he has the boys and their wives sitting there. And Mrs. Noah says, tell us, Noah, tell us what you're doing. And he says, we go out, and we fell trees, and we plane them into boards, and then And then we fabricate nails, and we hammer it together, and then we cover it with tar, with pitch, so that it'll be waterproof. And it's coming. It's just getting started, but it's happening. And they're so excited. Fast forward 20 years. Now it's getting up at seven again. And he's going out, and he's not working until until the sun goes down. He's working a few hours less, but he's working, right? And he knows this is the most important thing. And he's doing the work. Fast forward 50 years. And Noah's step is not quite as lively. Noah comes in and Mrs. Noah says, well, dear, what did you do today? He says, come on, woman. What do you mean, what did I do today? I have done the same thing every day for 50 years. I cut down trees. I plane the trees into boards. I hammer the boards together. What do you mean? I do the same thing every day. Right? That's how God works, people. See, God could have said, It would have been an arc. But God chooses to make us work. God chooses to make us go through the labor. And sometimes, no matter how wonderful the labor, here's a new ministry, you're taking over a new ministry in the congregation. This is so good, I'm so eager, I'm so ready. But sooner or later, the doldrums come. And it's just work. And it's the same thing you did last time, and the time before, and the time before. And that's how God accomplishes his task, through basic human diligence, often over a very long period of time. So we hear that our pastor has cancer. How many of you believe that God could just say, no cancer? and it disappears. How many of you believe that could happen? Of course we believe that. We believe that God can do anything he chooses to do. But in most cases, that's not how God works. Sometimes he can if he wants, but most of the time it involves surgery, chemotherapy, weakness. physical loss, hardship. That's how God works. And in God's wisdom, he uses the long, hard periods of just hard work to accomplish his purposes. William Carey, sometimes thought of as the father of modern missions, did extraordinary things. He is credited with saying, expect great things from God, attempt great things for God. I think I got that reversed. But William Carey, who translated the Bible into something like 40 Indian dialects, was a publisher, was a educator, was an amazing missionary. Sometime near the end of his life, a visiting missionary came to see Father Carey and said, oh, Father Carey, tell me the secret of your great success. And old Mr. Carey leaned back in his seat and he said, well, son, I can plod. This, I owe everything. I just don't stop. And isn't that true for all of us? I mean, remember the day your first child was born? And it was like, we are going to change the world. Me and you, we're going to do this, right? And then diapers. And then feeding the baby while the baby spits it all over you. And then toddlerhood. And all the rest. And bills. Always bills. Another bill, yeah, that's how God works. God works over long periods of time, oftentimes, and he uses hard work. I mean, you see this throughout the Bible. We gotta look at a lot of examples, but think with me, just one today. I love this story. The new church, the early church, starts the day of Pentecost, things explode, and the gospel, a few chapters later in Acts chapter eight, has moved down to Samaria. The Jewish people didn't think Samaritans were worthy, they wouldn't come to faith, but they were, and Philip, who was one of the early deacons, he's down there preaching the gospel, and something monumental is happening down there in Samaria, and the church up in Jerusalem takes note, they send some of the apostles down to check it out, And in the middle of all this great accomplishment and great movement of God, the Spirit of God says to Philip, look, I want you to go down to Gaza, and I want you to speak to someone there. And so Philip, being a man of God, he obeys. Depending on where he was in Samaria and where he went in Gaza, that's 30 miles, maybe as many as 60 miles. So how does Philip get there? He hoofs it, right? He walks. And he meets the Ethiopian eunuch. It's all providential. God had prepared all of this. The Ethiopian eunuch comes along. The spirit of God says, join yourself to the charity. He does. He says, do you understand what you're reading? He's reading from Isaiah 53. How can I understand it unless somebody guide me? And Philip gives him the gospel, and the man believes, and then he's baptized. And you know what happens next? It says that the Spirit of God caught up Philip and carried him to Azotus. You know how far Azotus is? Between five and 10 miles. Okay, so maybe it's just me, but I read that and I think, okay, look, you know, just between us, God, if you can do like the divine beam me up and drop me down, why did I have to walk 60 miles? And the answer is, I don't know, and Philip didn't know. And maybe Philip's a good man, he didn't have that thought, but I would have had that thought, right? Why does God work, why does God do that? I don't know. What I do know from the scripture, as well as from life, is that it's oftentimes in those times of diligent labor, when you feel like you can't go another step, you don't want another day, you've had enough, that's what God really begins to teach you. what he's like, who you really are, and grow you into the person he wants you to become. So first lesson, God uses diligence, God uses time, God uses labor, and he does it as we follow his instructions. Second lesson, God gives us help. Now I mentioned before that in chapter five it says at the end of the chapter, that Noah had three sons, three children, three boys. But he didn't have those until he was 500 years old. In chapter five, it gives you sort of the lineage of people after Adam and Eve, and it gives you their lifespan and who they fathered and so forth. And it's very easy to go through there and average things out, because the ages are put there. You know what the average age for having your first child was? The time before the flood, 117 years. Now, I don't suspect anybody around here is gonna have a child when they're 117 years old. But in the time before the flood, that was normal. So Noah, he's married, and that means he has a mother-in-law. Now, by God's grace, I had the most phenomenal mother-in-law. Nieves Valdez. Everybody called her Mima. Mima was the best cook I've ever known. Didn't know recipes, didn't read, but she could make the best food. In fact, my background in Spanish, my mother-in-law looked at me, we'd been married a short while, and she says, Marcos, I can't speak Spanish. You have to speak Spanish. I guess Mima will work on that. No, you have to speak Spanish. And she said, hasta que tu hagas espanol, no te voy a dar de comer. Yeah, some of you know what I just said. Until you speak Spanish, I'm not feeding you anymore. Well, look what happened. And I learned. And she was a great cook. So Noah's mother-in-law, I assume, like every mother-in-law on the planet, was delighted with her son-in-law, of course. What a great guy. But, you know, if the average person around you is having their first child when they're 117 years old, you have to imagine that about the year 200, Mrs. Noah, or Noah's wife's mother, his mother-in-law, is like, because nobody ever blames their child, right? Like, hey, Noah, what's the deal? Where are the grandchildren? And probably on a regular basis for the next several hundred years, she reminds him, hey, you see those children over there? Noah, aren't they great? Wouldn't you like to have some of those yourself? Right? But God didn't give him any children until he was 500 years old. I don't know why God made him wait that long. I mean, maybe with the world as decadent as it had become, If Noah had children around the time as everyone else, and then later when God did come to Noah and tell him, here's the plan, maybe those three sons would have been lost to the world. Maybe they would have never been salvageable by human understanding. But when he really needed help, at the time when it was the time when God had decided, you're gonna do something monumental, you're going to build a great boat, you're gonna spend decades doing it, God gives him three sons. And those three sons undoubtedly were amazingly helpful. They were sufficient help. He gave Noah the help he needed so that he could do what needed to be done. And as I've already said, he gave him timely help. gave him help in ways that brought to Noah just what he needed, just when he needed it. Now, you and I, whenever we're serving God or whenever we're doing anything, we like to think that the help should come quicker, right? We have our own idea about how things should work. Like, I like doing this, I like serving God here, but what about those people over there? Why don't they help? Or, you know, I'm serving God as a missionary on this field, and I just don't understand why nobody else will come out and help me. This is such an important work. And so God instructs us to pray. Pray that God will send laborers. Pray that he'll give us what we need. He gives help in his time, in his way, help that is sufficient, but it's also timely. It's by his divine plan. And help can be money. Help can be extra labor. Help can be freeing up time over here so I have more time somewhere else. Help can be a new pastor for evangelism and discipleship. God's time at the right point of God's providence. So God sovereignly gives us the support. He doesn't dangle us out. He doesn't leave us helpless. We may feel that way at times. We may feel that, God, you should have sent help a long time ago. But God gives what we need because he's a good God. He's a loving God. But I want you to know there's one further thing, and that is God also does at times simply step in and bring divine intervention. So think back what God instructs Noah to do. You're going to build an ark. And God tells him the kind of wood. He tells him the dimensions. He tells him cover it with pitch. And Noah's taking all these notes. And he's got it all in his mind. And you can kind of visualize this. And then God says, OK, now you're going to take two of every kind of animal on the planet, and you're going to bring them in. Don't you imagine Noah said, wait, what? Do you know every kind of animal on planet Earth? Anybody here? I can name every animal on planet Earth. No, I didn't think so. I suppose it's very likely, I'm not a scientist, but I suppose it's very likely that there were fewer varieties of animals, maybe certain same species, but less variety. And Noah probably didn't bring in every single variation but the basic species, I'm guessing. Heard that said. But either way, how am I supposed to do that? You know, if I know I'm thinking penguins, koala bears, that's cool. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Right? Like, how am I gonna do that? But notice with me what the scripture actually says. Look back in chapter six again. Look in verse 19. Here's the command. Of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. Verse 22, it says, Noah did this. He did all that God commanded him. But when you look into chapter 7, when things are happening. In verse seven, Noah and his sons and his wife and his son's wives went with him into the ark to escape the waters of the flood of clean animals, of animals that are not clean, and of birds and of everything that creeps in the ground. Two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah. Apparently, that wasn't something Noah orchestrated. It's something that God did. So God is able in his time, in his way, in his purpose to step in and to simply make things happen as he sees fit. He gives the command. Noah gets credit for having obeyed. But actually, God did that. You know, there are times when we start with the instructions and we have time and we work hard and God gives help. that God steps in and does what we never can. We always want that before God is ready to give that. We always think this should be so easy. Years ago, I was working with a mission agency and I was tasked with visiting different churches in the area that supported missionaries with that organization. So we just drop in. and meet the pastor and say, thank you so much, give him some merch from the agency, make him feel important, thank him. I mean, it was all good. But what happens is you get into a lot of different kinds of churches. And I remember we get into some of the sort of the wind-sucking churches. And if you don't know what that means, just ignore that. And where the message was always just off the top of the preacher's head, And I remember we're driving home from that, and my son, who's very young at the time, says, Dad, what did you think of that sermon? And you want to be nice, right? You don't want to plant in your kid's mind the idea that that's not good preaching. But it wasn't good preaching. It wasn't preaching at all, actually. And I kind of hesitated. And he said, yeah, but what did you think about the content? And I said, well, son. If dad preached like that, I would never have to study again. I mean, we want things to be simple. We want things to be easy. I think that's one of the big draws of the Pentecostal movement, the charismatic movement. Pentecostalism or charismatism has spread throughout the earth. The massive numbers of Christians we hear of coming to Christ in Asia and in the Middle East and in Africa, a lot of that, the majority of that is charismatic. And I'm not saying it's all bad. Far be it from me to condemn all of that. But a lot of the draw of that is that it appears that you can suddenly become mature as a Christian by being slain in the spirit, or by somehow having some secondary baptism of the spirit. And something happens to you, some phenomenon, God touches you in some way, and now you're suddenly mature as a Christian. And in reality, that maturity comes from prayer, Bible study, and fellowship, and church participation. It takes time. We all have our ideas about what things could be or should be. And again, the question is not, can God do that? Could God step in and simply make it happen? Should we pray that God will heal Pastor Horn without having to go through surgery, without having to go through chemotherapy, and all that goes with that, should we pray that way? I think we should. I will be. I just assume, you know, I'm gonna ask God if he decides not to do that, that's his prerogative, but I'm gonna ask. And sometimes God will do that. It's like he stepped in and brought all those animals into the yard. But most often it's a combination, right? We do what God has laid on us to do. And then when it seems like it's absolutely impossible to go a step further, God steps in and does what we could never imagine. When Carrie and I first moved to Greenville, that's getting close to 30 years ago. As I said, we came here to work with a mission agency originally. And we had raised support. I won't tell you that whole story now. We were supposed to go to Cuba as missionaries. It all fell apart just literally days before we were supposed to move there. And very confusing point in time, we ended up coming up to Greenville. Thought that would be for a year or so. Here I am all these years later. But when we came here, at the time when we raised our support, we had 140% of our support. Like when I got to 100, I called church and said, OK, no more meetings. We've got 100%. But it kept coming. Support kept coming. And we had 140% of our support. By the time we settled in Greenville, that had fallen to about 70%. And I understand that. Church is like, we supported you to do this, not that. And OK. So now we had some need. And my wife, um, um, heard of an opportunity to work for a lady in her home, and she went and started working for this lady. First day she went was on a Friday. Meanwhile, I had, we have two children, and shortly after coming to Greenville, we knew we had some dental issues in the family, right, life, so we went to a dentist, calculated everything that was needed for Carrie and I and our two children. It was close to $2,000, $1,500 to $2,000. And we just all needed dental work. So here I am. I was a man of faith. I'd been a pastor. I had raised support to be a missionary. I was ready to give my life to go to the field. And I thought, this is easy for you, God. And I just said, OK, God, you know what to do. Just give me $2,000. No big deal. And it didn't happen. It didn't happen. It didn't happen. And now I'm thinking, you know, Lord, I don't mean to, you know, maybe, maybe I'm being presumptuous, but you know, my kid's teeth are like rotting in their mouth. Don't you care? I mean, it's $2,000 Lord. I mean, just say the word. And every time I went to the mail, I just assumed, and months passed, and I got frustrated. Where's the divine intervention? I was working, my wife was willing to work, we're doing what we can, it's not like we weren't trying. And so I remember one morning, I was crossing Wade Hampton Boulevard, crossing between the mission office, and Bob Jones. And I was standing in the middle, I was jaywalking, I wasn't crossing at the crosswalk. And I'm standing in the middle of six lanes in that median, and I'm looking at, I'm praying, God, still waiting for the $2,000. Lord, I believe, I know you can do it. And I've got my eyes open, and I'm looking at the ground, and I'm waiting for $2,000 to blow by. In the middle of Whitehamton Boulevard, And I don't know that God gives dope slaps, but I felt like it was a dope slap. It's like, what are you doing? Really, like, what are you doing? Do you really think I'm gonna have $2,000 in $100 bills just come floating down in the middle of Wade Hampton Boulevard? And I got such a great, overwhelming sense of conviction. Mark, stop telling God what to do. Just believe. Don't put God in your box. Don't tell God how he has to answer your prayer. Just believe. At that very hour, literally within minutes of that very moment, Carrie had her first day working for this lady on a Friday morning. And they're talking. And the woman says, so what do you do? Why are you in Greenville? She tells her, we're working with a mission agency. We thought we were going as missionaries to Cuba. It didn't happen. Here we are. And the lady says, well, random question, who's your dentist? Well, we really haven't established a dentist yet. We're looking. We didn't tell her. We'd been to a dentist and we're waiting for $2,000. The woman says, you know, my husband's a dentist. And he loves people and ministry. You bring your family, he'll take care of you, no charge. Turns out he was a dentist for the Greenville Growl. Remember the Greenville Growl, the hockey team, the local hockey team? And I figure, if you're the dentist for a hockey team, you've got to be pretty good, right? So we went. It's almost 30 years later. You know that to this day. We have never paid for dentists. I was praying for $2,000. Come on, Gahad, where's the $2,000? You know what God wanted to do? Way more than that. I have no idea how much it's been over the years, but it's been a whole lot more than $2,000. See, God is able to do everything he wants to do, everything he intends to do, He'll do it in His way, in His time. He'll give us command, I want you to do this, and then when it's impossible, He steps in and He intervenes in ways that are beyond even our imagination. So what does that mean for us? Three simple lessons. God uses our diligence, God uses help, and sometimes God steps in, He intervenes divinely, miraculously. Well, I think what that means for us, we're new here, I mean, we're still learning, we're adjusting, we're enjoying the hospitality and the kindness of so many good folks. But I know there's a building program in the works. I know there's plenty of things to do, especially in this setting with set up and tear down and lots of different ministry movement. And it's gonna take work, it's always gonna take work. Oftentimes unrecognized, seemingly unrewarded work, and it's gonna take time, and it's gonna be difficult, and at times seem tedious. But just remember Noah. This is what it looks like. And just remember that God will give the help he knows you really need, and he will give his divine intervention in the ways that he sees best. I'm thinking that for Pastor Horn, for this cancer journey. I'm thinking that for the building program. I'm thinking that for the new pastor coming in. I'm thinking that for my role in the congregation, as we shoulder to shoulder, labor together, not to build an ark, but to build his church for the glory of God. Let's pray together. Father, thank you today for the simple story of Noah. Thank you that you are a God who uses very ordinary people. You didn't use Noah because he was a great architect or because he was a navigator or a sailor. You used him because the word tells us he walked with you. He found grace in your eyes. And in our ministry, in our service for you, in our families, in our neighborhoods, in our church, you're not looking for people who are the greatest experts or people that are demonstrating or possessing the greatest credentials. You're looking for people who love you and who believe that serving you is worth our investment. So help us as we follow the example of Noah and work together for your glory. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.