Sermon 2/21/21
Let the words my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen
We’ve heard many stories about Noah and the ark. A lot of them jokes. But here’s something I imagine most of you did not know about the animals. In the 7th chapter of Gen., God directed Noah to take seven pairs of clean animals on board and one pair of every unclean animal. Also, he was to take seven pairs of each type of bird. All of a sudden, the Ark gets a lot more crowded.
Since the creation, the world had gotten wicked, evil grew, sinfulness abounded. It got to the point God regretted that he had made human beings on the earth. (These words are found in the 6th chapter of Gen.) So, he decided he would wipe the human race off the earth along with them the ground animals and birds. He found favor with Noah and his family. God had he him build an ark to be filled with animals to replenish the earth.
After 40 days the waters had receded enough to let the animals loose and for Noah and his family to begin anew. So God established a covenant with the survivors. With whom did God make the covenant? It was not only with Noah and his descendants, but with “every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and eve-ry animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.” That means we have a responsibility; that means we are the caretakers, the stewards of God’s creation. In that covenant God promised to never again destroy the earth by a flood. God repeated that this covenant was between him and Noah and every living creature. There was a bow in the sky; this rainbow is a sign of that covenant.
But we know the human race didn’t stay sinless. Men and women sinned and sinned greatly. They just didn’t have it in them to obey God’s commands. So God sent his Son to live here among us, to teach us, to give us guidance, to show us God’s love, mercy and grace. Here was the Word incarnate; that means in the Word of God was here in the flesh.
We pick up the story at his baptism in the Jordan by his cousin John. At his baptism, the heavens were torn apart and the Spirit descended on him. Then a voice from heaven: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
Mark is the shortest gospel. Everything seems to be immediate. He writes like it’s urgent and it is. We have Jesus coming up out of the water, His Father proud of him, and you can almost hear beautiful and triumphant music coming from somewhere. But, but the Spirit immediately drove him in the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for 40 days, being tempted by Satan, and he was with the wild beasts and the angels waited on him. Wild beasts, even lions were present there in Jesus’ time. But God sent angels to protect him, to be with him. As the angels were with the Israelites in the desert, or wilderness, for 40 years.
And now we can look around. How would you describe the world? From a pessimistic point, one could say it is full of evil, wickedness, greed, and an unquenchable thirst for power. A world in which the most important thing is pleasure and satisfaction of one’s own desires and wishes. In the 6th chapter of Genesis, we read one of the Bible’s most vivid descriptions of total depravity, total immorality: “every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time”. Even after the flood, when Noah offers a sacrifice to God, God repeats his judgement on mankind, but replaces the words “all the time” to “from childhood”. God is saying that mankind is by nature sinful. Is that the way we describe the world today? If so, that’s pretty dismal.
But God sent to us Jesus, God’s word in the flesh. Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” The good news is that Jesus saves us from all this evil. He is the light in a world of darkness.
“Repent” he says, “Repent and believe in the good news!” The season of Lent is a time when we take a good honest look at ourselves. And if we honestly do that, we have to admit we are sinners and are in need of repentance. In our Ash Wednesday service, we confessed, “You mark us as your own, so we can turn from greed to generosity, so we can move from fear to faith, so we can stand with the oppressed and forgotten, to ensure that the justice we take for granted is shared with them. You mark us as your own, so that we might follow Jesus…”
Earlier we confessed that our sin was heavy and that we longed to be free. We asked God, the fountain of living water, to pour out His mercy on us and to make us alive in the Spirit so that we follow the way of Jesus. The good news is that God is full of grace and love and that our sins are forgiven, erased, and God no longer remembers them.
So, the need to repent. We are to realize our sinful nature. we are to turn over a new leaf, to begin anew—to begin anew like Noah and his family; to follow the way of Christ; to live in harmony with our neighbor and the world around us.
That’s hard to do. And we may suffer for it, even be persecuted. We suffer. But Christ suffered—to the point of suffering for the sins of all, for the righteous and unrighteous. We are saved through water—the water of baptism. As a reminder, a sign, every time you was your face, remember your baptism and how God claimed you as His child. God is with us through the good times and the bad. At our side. That you can believe because he loves you!