"So the Lord said, 'I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.' But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. This is the genealogy of Noah. Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations; Noah walked with God (Genesis 6:7-9).
"By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith (Hebrews 11:7)."
IDEA: It is not the ark that saves us, it is Christ.
PURPOSE: To help listeners embrace the reality that only Christ can take us through the flood of death.
Are you afraid to die?
Why do people avoid thinking about death? Thinking about death too much is morbid. Not thinking about it at all is foolish.
I. What gives people some hope that as they face that final deluge, they will exist beyond the grave?
There is a presumption that we are immortal. It is a wish.
An entertainer dies and at the funeral someone says, “As our friend looks down at us, he would want us to celebrate and have a good time remembering him.”
Thornton Wilder in “Our Town” put this in dramatic form. The dead are still alive.
Philosophers and religious teachers have asserted and tried to reason that there is a part of us that is eternal.
Our bodies are like the case that is disposable, but our soul is like the jewel that is indestructible. Is that the Christian hope?
Pagans and thoughtful heathens have reasoned this way.
This is not “faith” at all. It is a highly questionable assumption.
Belief in immortality is like trusting the indestructibility and buoyancy of the ark. It is an insane trust in the quality of the ark.
II. Our hope and confidence for immortality lies in the promises of God.
Noah did not have faith in the ark. He had faith in the promise of God to preserve him in the flood.
We live and die in confidence in Jesus Christ and his promises. “He lifts us up while we live and lays his hand beneath our head as we come to die” (Matthias Claudius). We know that nothing shall separate us from Him.
"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, 'For Your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.' Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:31-39)."