Our text today is from Genesis 8 and so I'll ask you to stand and I'll read Genesis 8 verses 15 to 22 Then God spoke to Noah saying now to give you the background They've just gone through the flood. And so here they are. They're about to emerge from the ark Then God spoke to Noah, saying, go out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons' wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that is with you, birds and cattle and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, so that they may abound on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth. So Noah went out and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him. Every animal, every creeping thing, every bird, And whatever creeps on the earth, according to their families, went out of the ark. Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled a soothing aroma. Then the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground for man's sake, although the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth. nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done. While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your promise, and we pray that we would trust in your word and in your promises. Be with us now. Draw us close to your heart, we pray in Christ's name. Amen. Noah and his family had been in that ark for a year and 10 days. That's how long they spent in that ark. And so for about 190 days, or roughly half that time, the ark was floating. And so for the first 40 days that they were in the ark, past the seven where God shut them in, but those first 40 days, God opened up the heavens and rain poured down. God opened up the deep and the water filled the earth. And the people of Noah's day had never seen either of these things. There had been no rain on the earth in those days, in that time. And so Noah was telling these people, warning these people of something that was coming that they had themselves never witnessed. And so they didn't believe him, instead they mocked him. And then for seven days, Noah and his family and all the animals are in that ark, waiting for the water to come. And you could imagine that those people were taunting them in the ark. What fools to spend decades building this big ship when it's so far from the water. And yet the water came, flooded the world. In the seventh month, the ark came to rest on Mount Ararat, but still you couldn't see the land. And yet the water continued to recede, and eventually they emerged. And what I've read, they emerged from the ark. All the animals emerged from the ark. All flesh birds cattle and what was their purpose then? Why did they come out of the ark? What does the scripture say? They came out Such that they could Abound on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth so We know that all kinds were represented. God had all kinds come to Noah to be carried on the ark, to safety, to the future. We know that there were two of every unclean. There was a male and a female. And there were seven of every clean. And so then we see why there were seven of every, of the clean. In verse 20, we read this. Noah built an altar to the Lord and took of every clean animal and every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. A few weeks ago, myself, my wife, some of the children that are out in California went to the San Diego Zoo. Now, there is this competition, I guess, that maybe only Nebraskans are aware of between the San Diego Zoo and the Nebraska Zoo, the Omaha Zoo. And I'm, having been to both zoos quite a lot, I would have to tell you that there is no competition. The San Diego Zoo is 10 times better than the Omaha Zoo. I'm sad to break that news to you. So now you're gonna say, well, go back there then. Well, I will, Wednesday. But it's really, really good. But of course, all zoos are corrupted by evolutionary thought. And yet, when you're there and you see all these signs, they really do it well. Pretty much every enclosure has an animal in it, which is actually a plus when you go to a zoo, right? You want to see animals. And the sign has on there its status relative to the Endangered Species Act of 1973. So see, in 1973, our government passed the Endangered Species Act, and it was challenged, and the Supreme Court upheld it and said this, that the purpose of the Endangered Species Act is to halt and reverse the extinction of species without regard to cost. That's how that law is interpreted. And we take that pretty seriously in this country. I mean, we have access to only some of the animals of all the earth, of course, but we take it very seriously. Not all nations do. But what is the first thing Noah did when he got off the ark with some of the seven animals that he had of each kind? He took one. And he burned it. He destroyed it. Now, God had just destroyed all life on earth, except for what was in the ark. And that was a judgment. God had brought judgment upon all the world and destroyed all flesh. Everything that had life in its nostrils, he destroyed all the humans, all the animals. So now we have on this boat two of the unclean and seven of the clean. They all get off. And the first thing God does is accept Noah's offering of one of every one of those clean animals. It must have taken him days to sacrifice those animals. Now, this You're Christians, you're familiar with this story, this does not shock you, but imagine yourself as someone who's never gone to church, never read the Bible, is opposed to these things just because that's what we do nowadays in the West, we oppose Christianity. This flies in the face that everything that they stand for in the West. And yet, you have to think this through. God had just protected every species on earth. And then he took one of each of the seven as a sacrifice of praise and thanks. And you can't look past this. The Lord smelled a soothing aroma. Then the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground for man's sake. We caused it. Although the imagine of man's heart is evil from his youth So God took that one of seven Because of our ongoing sin it was going to continue yet What did he say? While the earth remains seed time and harvest cold and heat winter and summer and day and night shall not cease this brings up a second element that our present culture is obsessed with and If you watch any shows about the future, any movies about the future, you know what I'm talking about. Every show, every movie about the future has to do with the fact that we must escape Earth because we have ruined it. We botched it up. We've killed off all the animals. We've killed off all the vegetation. We are obscuring the sun's light from getting to the earth. We've got to escape to Jupiter or Saturn or Io or Mars or somewhere, because we've really made a mess of the earth. And yet, this verse tells us that is never, ever going to happen. And so see, this points to a fundamental break between Christians who believe God and trust God and the rest of the people that don't. And they are willing to spend all of your money, all of the money on all the earth, in order to save a few endangered species. This is perhaps noble. I mean, it would seem foolish, but let's give them the benefit of the doubt here. They want to do what it is that is noble in their opinion, But they can never do that. That is to attempt to do what only God can do. And so instead, they deny God His right to rule the earth. They shake their fist in His face and say, no, we will do better. And of course, they will not. They will only ruin the earth as they fear that we will. But God promises us, promises us, and he asks us to trust him in this, that nothing that we do or that any idiot on earth can possibly do will ever, ever destroy what he has blessed us with. And we take that to the bank. We have to speak with our Christian friends to let them know this is what God's word says, because Christians are caught up in this. They are acting unwisely in our culture. So now, when we come to this table, I mean, it's a beautiful correlation, really. There is a song that we sing here. It's a beautiful song. It's entitled, Your Praise Will Never Cease. The chorus is this. And when we've sung your praise for a thousand years, we'll have just begun to sing. For your throne will reign through eternity, and your praise will never cease, your praise will never cease. So see, God has made us a promise about life on earth. Seed time and harvest, sunrise, sunset, those will never cease on the earth, as long as the earth exists. And yet he has this promise also for us in the future, that we will continue to praise him. When Noah got off that boat, the first thing he did was praise God through sacrifice, through taking one of each of those six clean animals and killing them and burning them to cover over his sin and yet to also praise God. And God said that it was a soothing aroma. And yet here, he provides for us. And this is a promise not only in this world, in this physical existence, but in our spiritual existences. He says, this Jesus will partake of with us in heaven. When do we get there? And so we look back to what he's done, now to what he's doing in us, and to the future, to what will be perfect one day. So let's praise God and trust him. Father God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for this. It occurs so early in the Bible, it's really easy to read past that, read it as narrative that has no role in our world today. So many Christians regard Genesis 1 through 11 as a fable, and yet Lord, we know that it's not. We know that this is truth. We know that this is a reality that happened some 4,800 years ago or whatever. Lord, we thank you for the confidence that you've given us in your word, and we pray that you would give us courage to go along with that confidence, that we would stand firm with those that oppose your word, and that we would bring you glory and honor, and we thank you for this meal that we're about to partake of that reminds us, Lord, of your presence and of our goal to serve you and to praise you on this earth. In Christ's name we pray, amen.