Remained standing for the reading of the scripture this morning. We're going to be not musing the thoughts of men today as Chad thought he was privy to Reading my thoughts moments ago. I Said that's not that hard to do. There's not a whole lot going on in there brother. Will you? Yeah It was like two crickets playing racquetball or something and I don't know what's going on But I'm about to say to you you need to listen to. Because it's not from my mind, it is from the mind of God. In fact, it is the eyewitness testimony of the only witness to the creation of everything that is. After I'm done reading, you don't have to wonder where you came from. You don't have to wonder how you got here. You don't have to wonder how things maintain their existence after we're done. There is one actor here. Everything else is receiving what comes from him. And you'll notice that there were no questions asked. You'll know why that's important in a little while. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. Then God said, let there be light, and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening, and there was morning one day. Then God said, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters from the waters. So God made the expanse and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. Then God said, let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear. And it was so. And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them. And it was so. And the earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with their seed in them after their kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning, a third day. Then God said, let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years. And let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth. And so it was. So God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night and also the stars. And God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth and to rule the day and the night and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good and there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day. Then God said, let the water swarm with swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the expanse of the heavens. And God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind. And God saw that it was good. Then God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth. And there was evening, and there was morning, a fifth day. Then God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind. And it was so. God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, and God saw that it was good. Then God said, let us make man in our image, according to our likeness, so that they will have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. And God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him. Male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it. And have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that creeps on the earth. Then God said, behold, I have given to you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has the fruit of the tree yielding seed, it shall be food for you. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the sky, and to everything that creeps on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food. And it was so. And God saw all that he had made. And behold, it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day. Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, we are blessed to be here this day. Blessed just to hear the singing of your praise as we contemplate the hope that is ours in Christ. Not merely a hope for this life, but a hope for eternity that is ours in every circumstance of life. And Lord, to have the opportunity to hear your Word opened and read with clarity, with authority, to express the very heart and mind of God to us this day. I pray, Father, that as your word is opened in this house of worship, as your praise is lifted in song, that you will be honored and that your people will be benefited, that this Lord's Day will be one to remember that our Savior will receive the exalted place that He deserves in every heart. We have so longed to see Him face to face. We desire to be rid of this body of sin and to be eternally united with our Savior. Until that day arrives, may we be found faithful to Him not to our own musings and our own ideas, but faithful to Him. May He be exalted here this day. We have confidence to come before you in prayer because of what He has done, because of who He is, because of what He is doing. So we pray these things in the matchless name of this soon-coming Savior, the only begotten of God. It is in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ that we pray. Amen. If you have your copy of the scripture open to Genesis chapter one, to the portion of scripture that we read this morning for our scripture reading, that is where we will begin. Although with a time constraint, it may be where we end as well, but it'll be well worth your time to be here today. It's been several weeks since we have been, the last few weeks, I don't know if it's been several, at least three weeks. We've had Christmas and New Year's and then Brother Jonathan last week here. So it's been a few weeks since I have been here to continue our study of the doctrines that we began to study back in November. We are resuming and returning to our treatment of the tulip today. Some of you say, I didn't come here for gardening tips. Well, I'm glad because it won't be gardening tips for you necessarily. Tulip is an acronym, T-U-L-I-P, Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and the Perseverance or Preservation of the Saints. They have come out of the Council of Dort when the church met in in the Netherlands to make some church decisions on what the Bible actually taught. There was some upheaval in the church, there was a group of professing believers with a particular Doctrine of salvation that had begun to infect the church and the church met to find out whether Whether they had been on the right track or whether they needed to get on a new track So they called a council together and and the followers of Jacobus Arminius the Roman Strauss gave their their complaints and gave their their description of what they thought the scripture taught and it was given to those that came out of the Calvinistic tradition and the five Refutations, the five main refutations, the five rebuttals of Arminianism came out as what we call Calvinism, although neither of those men were alive at the time. And we have these five particular points that have been collated for us in this term tulip. We've looked at the T, we've looked at total depravity, radical corruption for several weeks and tried to lay the foundation for the rest of this discussion because once you understand where man truly is and where man truly stands before God, where you are in your natural-born state as an enemy of God, as one who is uninterested in the things of God, outside of God being your your gift giver and need meter, having him on a string to use the power that he probably has to do good things for you. Outside of wanting that idea of God involved in your life, you want nothing to do with God. And we've made the case unmistakable. Today we're going to move to the U in TULIP, and it is an expression that is a hated expression. It is a dishonored doctrine. It is a largely denied doctrine, even in the church today, and has been now for quite some time. And it is the idea of unconditional election. You begin to throw around that E word, and you can see people's blood pressure raise, their faces turn red, it turns into an argument. because people think that this doctrine is turning God into a tyrant, turning men into robots, it makes God a monster, you hear terms like that. The problem is resolved by one thing. If you believe the Bible, if you believe the Bible, then you believe in election. Now, if you believe the Bible, you may still be uncomfortable with election, and that's okay. There should be some wrestling in your mind when you're dealing with some of the tensions in the scripture. But along with the idea of election and unconditional election, are some words that produce more heat and argument, words that are contained in this idea, subsumed under the idea of unconditional election, are the words for knowledge, and that despised word, predestination. And I'll tell you again, if you believe the Bible, You believe in the foreknowledge of God and the predestination of believers, if you believe the Bible. Now, I don't mean to disparage anyone who disagrees with this by telling them that, well, you just don't believe the Bible. I'm not going to go there. We're going to go to the Bible. And we're going to see what it says unmistakably. And we're going to stand in awe of the God that can make sense of things that we can never make sense of. And we're going to rest in the fact that this holy God holds all of these tensions together in the holiness that is his. And the fact that it does not make perfect sense to you and I has no bearing on the truthfulness of the teaching. I don't stand here and tell you that I'm smarter than you, or that I'm more learned than you, or that I'm more whatever than you. I stand here and tell you that the God, who is the savior of men, who is the creator and sustainer of all things, gave us his book, and his book says this, I'm okay with it. I can wrestle with it, but if he said it, there is no arguing and disputing over what he had to say. We're going to look very clearly at what he has had to say. And I'll give you this in the beginning, because the next three terms in the acronym TULIP, well, the next two, beginning with U, you have U, L, and I. or as we will probably use D instead of L, the unconditional election, the definitive atonement, definite atonement, and irresistible grace all fit together. And friends, the unity of the Godhead is dependent upon those three realities. Scripture says that the Father has chosen a people for His namesake. He has chosen a bride for His Son. The Scripture says that Christ has come to die and to purchase a people. And it says that the Spirit of God goes out and pursues and saves a people. That means that there is either one group of people that the Father has chosen, that the Son came to this earth to die for and to purchase for the Father, and that the Spirit of God goes out to pursue and to birth again from above and to save them and bring them into the kingdom. One group. The Father chose, the Son purchased, and the Spirit saves. Or it's three different groups. There's a group that the father chose because he looked down the tunnel of time and the corridors of the future and said, I see that there are people that will choose me and they're the ones that I'm going to choose. And then Christ came in and just died a potentially saving death that's just open to everyone if anyone would come. And that the spirit of God goes out and just finds anybody that he can that's willing. There is a dysfunction and a disunity in the Godhead, in the Trinity itself, if there are three different groups of people involved here. But friends, if there is a group that the Father chose, that the Son purchased, and that the Spirit saves, that is in line with the unity of the Godhead. It is not three groups. It is one group. To believe that God put this creation together and just spun it out there as an experiment to see what would happen? That's a foolish idea. Let's define some terms here. The word election just means a choice made. A choice made. We have elections here in our country. We go into the voting booth and you pick one on there and Hit the button or write it on the paper. However, I don't know how people vote all over everywhere else, but here you go in and you've got a list of names. You hit the button, the light comes on next to the name that you want, and then this one and this one, and everybody gets to choose. They don't let you go in there with someone else most of the time. You can take your child with you maybe, or if you need some assistance, but you go in the voting booth and they close the curtain behind because this is your choice. The candidates can't be within so many hundreds of feet from the polling place so that they don't have opportunity to put too much pressure upon you to make a choice that you're not comfortable with. The choice is up to you. And you want your vote to count because it's your choice to make. It's my choice. I want to make this choice. We understand what election means. It's someone making a choice. So I'm going to refer to unconditional election with the expression unconditional choosing because it is a choice made by the Father. And we're going to see that God not only has the authority, he has the capacity to make any choice that he wants at any time. And we're gonna start at the beginning where he made this absolutely undeniable from the very outset of creation. I was hoping to break this into three sermons. I'm still hoping to be able to do that. The time constraint this morning may change that a little bit, but we're going to look at the reality of unconditional choosing. We're going to look at the reasons for, or the necessity of, the reasons for unconditional choosing. And then we're going to look at the results of. Unconditional choosing, or the ramifications. What should come out of this? What should be the expression of you and I? What is the expression toward God about His choosing and then not being based on a condition? Another point we want to make at the beginning is this choosing of God. We're going to establish that without mistake. And I'm going to show you places that you are fully aware of and that you are in full support of God making a choice in these situations. But I'm going to pull you out of your normal comfort zone and make you look at this from the reality of who was doing the choosing and who had an option in responding or not. And if it was okay then, why is it not okay now? Charles Spurgeon said that if God would have looked down the tunnel of time and just with this paganized idea of a fortune teller with a crystal ball, that God looks at his crystal ball and he looks into the future and I see that these people will choose. If God had looked down the corridors of time, according to what the scripture says about the heart of man, what would God have seen? He would have seen spiritually dead people with no desire nor capacity to ever choose him on his terms. So that idea of foreknowledge that he looked into the future is dead on arrival. Therefore, any choice that he makes is unconditional, because there is no condition that you can meet before God except one. There's one condition that you can meet before God, and that is that you are a sinner. That's it. And as far as meeting his standard for acceptance, being a sinner is the last thing that you want to be. We're going to look at the reality, the undeniable reality of the unconditional choice, the unconditional choosing of God the Father. We're going to look at it in the realm of creation, we're going to look at it in relation to the covenants, and in relation to the callings. We'll put them in the plural, the callings, and you'll see why. All of these, all of these choices that are made, all of these determinations made by God the Father himself, are at the same time unsolicited It means no one went and asked for it, no one petitioned him for it, unsolicited and undeserved. There is no one that is worthy of a response from God like this. Let us begin looking at the reality of unconditional choosing in the creation. In Genesis chapter one, we see the material universe being created. as an unconditional choice of God in the first 19 verses. You don't even have to go to the 19th verse, you go to the fourth word in English. In the beginning, God. In the beginning, there was before the beginning, there began the beginning, if there ever was a beginning, the only one there was God. That's why I told you we read this this morning as the only eyewitness account of creation. Fickle minds of scientists today are looking at what is left after the flood and assuming that they can figure out what happened in the beginning. There is no explanation for what happened in the beginning, except that God, by himself, of himself, for himself, spoke it into existence. In full maturity. As we're going to see, he did it in six literal days. Even though he could have done it all in one nanosecond. Let's look at the creation of the material universe. In the beginning, God created the heavens. There was nothing there but God, and he creates the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the earth, over the surface of the deep. The Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. Then God said, let there be light. Why do we have light? Why do we have light? Because God chose to make light. Told you when we read this earlier that there are no questions asked in here. This is God just acting out of his own desire, his own choice, unsolicited, undeserved, this is what I'm doing. Nebuchadnezzar would come to understand that God is in the heavens and he does as he pleases and there's no one who can interfere with what he does. No one can stay his hand or ask him, what have you done? Because you couldn't understand the answer if he did answer said question. Why did you do this? What are you talking about? You can't handle that. I did it because I did it. Oh yeah, but you can't just give that kind of authority to someone. That's half true. You cannot give that type of autonomous authority to a human. Because humans are fallen. Humans are sinful. But you have to have someone somewhere who has this type of authority and this type of power in the heavens as a holy being who always does what is right. In fact, what is right is determined by what he does rather than him doing what he determines to be right. To say that he is holy and separated from us, friends, falls far short of explaining the clear, distinct holiness of God. He is far more than what we can grasp or imagine. And in that condition and in that position, he makes choices that are holy and just. Can you say the same about you? Do you make choices that are holy and just? So give me a minute, let me go down the list. You're not gonna get far down that list. We make choices that are anything but holy or just. Let there be light. And there was light. Of course there was. Who can argue with him? And God saw that the light was good and he separated the light from the darkness. Here we go, verse five. And he called the light day, and the darkness he called night. You understand the authority there? It's mine, and I'm going to name it. We have day, and we have night, because God called it that. He made choices of himself, by himself, and for himself. And there was evening, and there was morning one day. Then God said, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters. So God made the expanse and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse, and it was so. I like that expression. God said it, and it was so. That's the same today. If God says it, it is so. You don't have to wonder. You don't have to go and, well, nothing. If God said it, it is so. God called the expanse heaven. Here we have him naming things again. And there was evening and there was morning a second day. Then God said, let the waters below the heavens be gathered together in one place. Job had some questions for God. You familiar with Job? You may call him Job, it's the same guy. he had some problems get some stuff happened in his life he even understand and his his buddies come around and they're full of everything but wisdom they're they're full of man man's wisdom and they come in as a well if this is true and that is true and this is true by by but with our powers of deduction god would let this happen to a good person then you're supposed to be all that the bag a crackling he would let you know that happened to me joe you know how do you you had some more joe finally started This is logical, but this is happening to me. And he starts asking God questions. He said, oh, oh, oh, you got questions for me, Job? Real quick, answer this one first. I've really been wanting to know this one. Where were you? Oh, why does the water stop at the edge of Grand Isle? He didn't know about Grand Isle, but you know. Why do water stops at the beach like that? You know why? Because that's where God told it to stop. God separated the waters from the waters. He did it. Why? Because he wanted to. Because he knew it was best for what his plans are. Some people look at this and say, well, you know, God was lonesome, so he created everything so that he could have some company. Wrong. That's a man-made idea. God in and of himself was perfectly and completely and eternally satisfied in the Godhead. He did not need measly old you and me to fill a void in his life. In fact, in human terms, his life was far simpler before he made this thing. And then had to start dealing with you and me? No, he wasn't lonesome. did it for his glory, for his honor, did it for his purpose. Then God said, verse 12, verse 11, let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind. You understand that that doesn't mean that a little, a little bit of sprout popped out that day. Oh, it germinated that day, and a few days later, it started growing, and it had a tree one time. No, no. He created it in full maturity, bearing fruit. And it had to be that way because of the plans that he had made, because of the expression of his glory that is coming as he creates man and places him there with everything that he needs immediately. Adam didn't have to cultivate anything. He didn't have to go off and figure out how to grow stuff that would be able to be eaten. He said, I've given everything to you. Every green herb is yours to eat. Take it. Not only for you, but for all of the birds and for all of the animals. Everything has every green thing to eat. And I created it in full maturity to sustain my creation. One day. Then verse 12, the earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, trees bearing fruit with seed in them after their kind. And God saw that it was good. You better believe it was good. It's what God made. It was God made, it was good. It was good. Somebody's gonna come to Jesus and say, good teacher, what do you think about this issue? And he says, why do you call me good? There's one that is good. And for God to declare his creation good, friends, it was perfect. It was beyond anything you've ever seen. You go out to your corn patch when it's getting time for the corn to start making, and the silk comes out, and you're looking for worms. You look at it, oh, it's good, it's good. It's good, it ain't got no worms in it. And maybe it is good, but it's not good like this is good. This was perfect. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day. Then God said, let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years. He's already establishing the calendar. He's already establishing the seasons. Let them be for lights in the expanse of the heaven to give light on the earth. Why did he make these lights in the sky? To give light on the earth. Why light on the earth? Because this is the planet that he populated. All this idea of aliens off somewhere, that's a demonic idea. God created one inhabitable planet and put everything else out there for it. And he placed all of those galaxies just where they are so that when we look up and we see constellations, that's not some God in the sky representing himself to you and I. Those are galaxies so far away that you can't tell the difference between one planet and the next. They look like one individual spot. And he put all of them perfectly there so that seafarers can sail on the seas and look at their charts at night and know exactly where they are at all times because they never move. Why don't they move, brother, will you? Because God put them there. Verse 16, so God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, the lesser light to rule the night, and also the stars. Ken Ham makes much out of that statement. I think my wife has a shirt that says, and also the stars. What do you mean, and also the, we got the sun and the moon, and also the stars. I'll tell you this, the stars that Abraham saw when God called him out of the tent and said, look up here, if you can count these. What Abraham thought were stars were actually, for the most part, galaxies so far away that they looked like stars. So the longer we go and the farther out we send spacecraft like the Voyager shuttle out looking at the outer limits of the Milky Way galaxy, the more that we come to understand about what is actually out there, the more this verse actually means, and also the stars. God did it. Verse 17, and God placed him in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth. to rule the day and night, to separate the light from the darkness, and God saw that it was good. Material universe was was created. It's One man said he he created the heavens and the earth and then Then he began to decorate it it's what you see is he as he as he brings the the separation of the waters and then that he brings the the the earth out of the water and then that he separates the the Sun and the moon and the light for for the day and for the night and and he's decorating the universe with the stars and Tremendous idea. Friends, if there is a God somewhere that can do this, then we need to stop arguing over what he has right to do. In fact, that is Paul's message when someone comes and says, well, it's not fair. And he says, shut your mouth and sit down. Does the clay ask the potter what he's doing? How are you, a creature, going to ask the creator about what he has done? Be quiet. You don't even get to talk anymore. Fool, shut your mouth. That is kind of how we start to feel when we really understand what these first verses are saying to us. God is relating the history of how mankind got here to the Israeli people at Mount Sinai, and Moses is writing this down. No one's ever heard any of this. They have some. They've got some legends, and there's some stories that the old people tell to the children, and maybe like these islanders come up with this idea that the great boat is gonna pass by at some point and take everybody with it, or an iceberg. Because men are trying to wrestle with what they've heard in relation to what they see and what they experience now, but there's only one that was ever there to tell us what actually happened. And friends, he didn't stop there. He tells us about everything else, too. You say, okay, so we have the planets are there, the vegetation is there. So now the process begins for man to evolve, right? No, not right. We move from the material universe to man and animals. Beginning in verse 20. Then God said, again, no questions, no requests, God moving of himself, by himself, for himself. God said, let the water swarm with swarms of living creatures. And let birds fly above the earth across the face of the expanse of the heavens. And God created great sea monsters and every living creature that moves. Four words, five words, every living creature that moves. God created. Right now, right here, in this moment, on this day. Every living creature that moves with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind, and God saw that it was good, then God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, fill the water in the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth. And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. Then God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind. And it was so. God made the beast of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, and God saw that it was good. Then God said, he's created every land animal, everything that is on the, every insect and every animal that is on the land. Then he said, let us make man in our image. according to our likeness. Why? Why would he create man in his image? So that they will have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. There are people today that tell us that we are a part of the planet and we need to love the planet and treat the planet like we're part of the planet. Some of them are dense enough I think they might really believe that they're part of the planet. Maybe they are. But this says that man has dominion. Man has an authority on this planet that is a God-given authority. Although it is marred by sin, we still have the responsibility and the dominion mandate to subdue the earth. Cut down a tree, bring it to the sawmill, make something out of it. Mine for iron ore to make things out of it. Subdue the earth. raise cattle, go hunting, kill a deer, kill two of them so you can give me one and keep one for yourself. God made these choices. When there was yet anyone else around to argue with him or have a discussion with him, Any discussion had already been done. Ephesians chapter 1 tells us that in the councils of heaven, before there was a beginning, that the Trinity met and came to decisions that were made and moved out to fulfill those decisions and to bring to fruition the plan of God. He's not done. And God created man in His image. In the image of God, He created him. Well, we've forgotten this next clause. Male and female, he created them. I don't want to sound like an old Baptist, brother, but he didn't create Adam and Steve. He created Adam and Eve. Not that old, you understand? The Baptist is strong, I'm sorry. He created them male and female. Well, I think I'm a boy trapped in a girl's body. Well, you're wrong. And sweetheart, somebody needs to tell you that God made you. You're the only you that the world has. You're the only one and he made you like that. Yeah, but I wish I was like that. Yeah, I know. I wish I was like some other people sometimes. This is how he made me and he could have made me like that, but he chose to do it like this. I want to serve him with what I have. He didn't ask. There was no committee that exchanged ideas. There was no think tank that got together and said, well, you know, if we let them choose their own gender, well, that's going to work well. Look how well it's working now. Making the pharmaceutical companies a lot of money. And God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. About the time we had our fourth and fifth child, people started asking me, they said, man, we need to have a little talk. Do you know what's causing this? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I do. God is. Man, you don't want to have too many kids. You're right. I don't know how many that would be, but I don't want to have too many. Obviously, eight's not too many. Some days it feels like it is, I'll be honest, but that's not really relevant. be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion, exercise dominion over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the sky, and every living thing." So he creates man, he puts him there, and says, have dominion, and turns him loose. That's actually not what he did. He didn't turn him loose. He continues to give instruction. He continues to give expectation to these, this is how you're going to do it. I'm going to give you in detail what you are to do. I am in control. I have made the decisions and I will tell you what is best. Behold, look around, have a look at everything, behold. I have given you every plant-yielding seed that is on the surface of the earth, and every tree which has the fruit of the tree-yielding seed. It shall be food for you, and to every beast of the earth, and every bird of the sky, and everything that creeps on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food. And it was so. And God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning the sixth day The material universe has been created according to his purpose and plan according to his decree by his design Man and animals have been created the same way when he tells Noah to bring the animals on the ark He tells them you're going to bring pears male and female. I He's made these distinctions. He's going to have Adam name the animals later in chapter two, and he names male and female, and he realizes there's not one for me. There's just me. And God said, now you're ready. He took a rib, fashioned a woman. I'm not sure how long it took before he wanted that rib back. I'm sorry, I had to. In the beginning of chapter 2 in Genesis, we see the mandated pattern. A mandated pattern. Today is Sunday, January the 11th, 2026. Weren't we supposed to be flying around on hovercraft by 2020? Wasn't the Jetsons in 2026? Why is it January the 11th, 2026? Well you see there's this rotation of the earth around the sun and it takes 365 and a quarter days to make it around there and we've kind of broken it up with the with how the stars and the seasons of the earth align. We've broken it up into 12 distinct units that we call months. Some have 30 days, some have 31. One has either 28 or 29, but they're all around this cosmological clock. Okay. Well, why is today Sunday? You've got 365 days, you can kind of break up the the months a little wonky, but that's because you're not maybe completely familiar with all of the intricacies that go into making the months. But we understand what an hour is because we understand what a day is. We've broken that into 24 equal periods and we've broken those down into 60 equal periods and broken those down into 60 equal periods. We understand how all of that works so that we can grasp time and make the most use of the time that we have. But why are there Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday? Why are there seven days? That doesn't fit anywhere. I mean, you've broken the year into 12. We can make that fit, but why are there seven days? Why aren't there 10 days? Why not 42 days? The days on the calendar we number, today's the 11th of January, but it's Sunday, January the 11th. Genesis chapter two. The unsolicited, undeserved, sovereign act and decree of God, for himself, of himself, by himself. Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts." By the way, this is after the sixth day. Everything was completed. And on the seventh day, God completed his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his works which he had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on it he rested from all his work which he had done, which he had created and making it. Made the earth in six days, he rested the seventh day, and he set a seven-day pattern. And nobody argues with it! When's the last time you had a discussion about why we only have seven, why couldn't we have ten days in a week? The communists and the Nazis have tried it in the past, we're gonna, we're gonna, they figured out, we've got a seven-day week because it's in that Bible, and we want to deny the Bible We want to deny God. We want the government to be God. We want to push God out because we don't need any other entity or being that is more powerful than we are as the government. That's how communism works. It runs on fear. So we're going to get rid of the seven-day pattern, and they tried it. Germany tried it during World War II, and it was disastrous. They went to a 10-day week, and men couldn't do it, couldn't handle a 10-day week. because God has built in, of himself, by himself, and for himself, a seven-day week as a mandated pattern. God's making choices before anybody has any input to put into anything, and we look back and say, okay, it was okay then, but now I'm here, and I better have, we better have a convocation here before you make any more decisions about me. Does that sound like that's a possible argument? We got a few minutes here. That's the unqualified, undeserved, unsolicited, unconditional choice of God in creation. Let's look at the unsolicited, undeserved choice of God in the covenants. Now, so you know, I preach from this book. I like preaching from this book, because this book has authority. And what this book says, I don't ever have to question. What this book says, I don't ever have to try to read into or try to manipulate. I don't have to come to this book and say, well, you know, if I tell them that, they're not going to like it. You might not like it. But if it's what this book says, there's a comfort in this for me, because you're not hearing from me. I don't want to argue with you. I don't care. What this book says is important. And in this book, we get the word covenant. And in this book, there are five overt God-declared covenants, and only five. There are five covenants that are His idea, His doing, and established by His choosing. We know of them as the Noahic Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant, the Mosaic or Sinaitic Covenant, the Davidic Covenant, and the New Covenant. We do not have time left in this day to cover all of them. But I want to begin with at least the Noahic covenant, to begin to give you some grasp of the authority that God has in the world. And let me tell you, you are glad that he has that authority, or there would be no you and me. Because if God did not have authority to do what he did with Noah, if he did not have authority to intervene in Noah's life unsolicited, undesired, undeserved, if he had just stepped into Noah's life, there would be no This, there'd be nothing left. He would have destroyed everyone and started over. Turn to the right if you're still in Genesis, which you should be, to Genesis chapter six. You go through, Adam and Eve had Cain and Abel, doesn't end real well. Cain is outcast, Eve has Seth and some other sons and Things go from bad to worse. Cain murdered his brother and one of his grandsons becomes the first polygamist and flaunts it before God. Chapter 6 says, Yahweh saw that the evil of man was great on the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. That's some pretty heavy language. Every thought of his heart was only evil continually. Does that sound familiar? If not, you need to just pay attention on your ride home today. He sees that Yahweh regretted that he had made man on the earth, and he was grieved in his heart. And Yahweh said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to the birds of the sky, for I regret that I have made them. God looks at what it has become. He says, I regret I've made any of it. You ever done that? You ever remember an Etch-A-Sketch? Y'all remember those? Work on that thing. About four twists in, I got something I don't recognize. What I do, throw it away? What do you do with Etch-A-Sketch? Start over. God looks at that and says, you know what? I regret what I've made. And if God were like you and me, he would have shaken it like an etch-a-sketch and turned it all loose and caused the disintegration of all things and begun again or not done it again, if he was like you and I, but he's not like you and I. Verse eight says, but, ooh, good word, but Noah found favor in the eyes of Yahweh. What does it say Noah earned? What does it say Noah earned? says he found favor. He didn't earn it. Favor, this word is translated in the Septuagint with the word charis. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Some of your translations use that expression, and it's very accurate. He didn't go out and do something, and God said, you know what? This guy's got an award. I'm going to give him a reward. It doesn't say that. God chose Noah. Verse 17. He's decided what he's going to do. He said, I'm going to flood the earth. He tells him how big to build the ark. Verse 17, as for me, this is God speaking, behold, I am bringing the flood of water upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life from under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall breathe its last, but I will establish my covenant with you and you shall enter the ark. You and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives, and of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female." Noah didn't ask for this. Noah didn't deserve this. This is God looking down, I'm going to start over and I'm going to do it with this guy. And God invaded his life unsolicited. I mean, look at this and say, I'm glad he did that. We just read the description of what every man on the planet was doing and God chose Noah. Noah found favor, he found grace, he found some undeserved provision in his life. Move to chapter nine, he told Noah, all Noah did was build a boat. Then he gets on it and God shut the door. You know why God shut the door? Because Noah's like you and me, and he would open it for his neighbors when they came around after it started raining. And God said, when the door is closed, it is too late. Chapter 9, Genesis, verse 8. They're getting off of the ark. God has smelled the soothing aroma of the sacrifices that Noah made when he gets off the ark. Must have been a tremendous undertaking. He sacrificed one of every clean bird and every clean animal. Must have been a tremendous undertaking. I don't know if he did it in a day. God said, I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth. So Noah comes out, not as one who had not been infected with that sin, to be one whose mind was only chasing evil continually, but Noah brought that same thing with him, and it goes immediately into his descendants, and within about three or four generations, you come to the Tower of Babel and Nimrod, shaking their fist at God and said, we'll have it our way. You're not gonna flood it again? Good, stay out of the way. Chapter nine. Verse 8, and God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying, As for me, behold, I establish my covenant with you and your seed after you. How many actors is in that? There's an action verb in there. Is it a singular or a plural? He says, I will. You're going to see that come up over and over and over. And when you get into him calling the prophets, and you get into the new covenant, and he starts calling him over and over and over, he says, I will, I will, I will. He's going to move into Abraham's life and tell him what I will do. I am doing this. I am establishing my covenant with you and with all flesh, never again to be cut off by the water of the flood. And there shall never again be a flood to destroy the earth. Then God said, this is the sign of the covenant which I am going which I am giving to be between me and you and every living creature that is with you for all successive generations, I put my bow in the cloud and it shall be a sign of a covenant between me and the earth. When you see a rainbow and your little girl say, oh, look a rainbow, it's a rainbow. Sweetheart, do you know why that rainbow is there? That's God's promise. That's the sign of the Noahic covenant that he will never destroy it again with water. So the next time they tell you the earth is getting so warm that we're all going to be flooded out, tell them to go kick rocks. Go play with the chickens. God said he's not doing it again. I'll tell you what he is going to bring the next time. It's going to be fire. It's going to be the great disintegration as he spoke it into existence. He will cease to hold it together and it will all implode. It'll be a universe wide atomic implosion is what Peter describes. But God has made a promise that it will never flood again. Who asked for that? You think Noah asked for that? I think Noah was very relieved to find that out because before they got on the ark, they had never seen rain. When is it that you see a rainbow? When it's raining. You know, the first rain cloud Noah saw, you know what he thought? Here we go again. God said, no, son, it's never going to happen again like that. When you see the bow, you know that I've made this covenant with you. It was great relief to Noah, it's great relief to you and I, because we could look at this and say, you know, it was bad then, it looks like it's worse now than it was, and he might do it again. No, he's not going to do that again. All of these are the choices that he made unsolicited, by himself, of himself, for himself. And it will be when I bring a cloud over the earth that the bow will be seen in the cloud and I will remember my covenant which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh and never again shall water become a flood to destroy all flesh. So the bow shall be in the cloud and I will look upon it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is in the earth. God said to Noah, this is the sign of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth. It is God making a unilateral, undeserved, unexpected, unsolicited promise. Because he can. And no one said, well, wait a minute, can we discuss the terms of this? No. You don't want to discuss the terms of the decrees that the righteous God makes. Because all you can do is ruin it. And I'll end it with this. We'll get to the Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, the New Covenant, and the callings of the prophets, the apostles, and the church next time. Ooh, some good stuff coming. And I'll leave you with this, because all of you are like me, and you like smoked meat. And if you're not, you need to repent, if you're not like me in that. told you that we've read that he's given every green herb everything when he tells Noah to fill the ark he says get everything that you can eat and it'll be feed for all of you and for all of the animals go and get all of the What's still here, this is antediluvian time, this is before the deluge, this is before the flood. They're still pulling things that are still what is left over from Eden that are there in abundance that we can't even imagine. And he said, fill the ark with it and all of you eat it. Then they come off the ark in chapter nine, things are different. Verse three. Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you. As with the green plant, I give it all to you. It is here that God gave us the right to eat meat. Boy, we're glad about that, aren't we? I think most of you are going to leave here today and go eat some meat and some sweets after this is over. Friends, we serve a sovereign God who does what he pleases, and we see it throughout the Scripture. And as we come to the reality that that radically depraved men who are completely alienated from God by practice and on purpose, how can they get from there to the kingdom of God? The same way that God has always sustained his people, through the undeserved, unsolicited, unmerited, unconditional choosing of God. Let him be praised for who he is. Father, thank you for this Lord's Day that we've had to preach your word and to sing your praise. I pray that you will bring the harvest of righteousness that you desire from this, Lord, as we develop a greater confidence in you and a greater confidence in your word as we look at what you have done. May you be magnified here, Father. May your righteousness be seen in its truest glory in every heart. It's in our Savior Jesus' name that I pray. Amen.