Today we are going to be considering the story of Noah, that Sunday School favorite, with the cute little animals and pretty little rainbows and the near complete annihilation of every living being on earth.  It’s funny how we package this story to children when it is most definitely not a children’s story.  Today we are going to take three approaches to the account of Noah.  First, I want to look at it from a literary/historical approach to see how this account moves the story of the Bible along in light of God’s plan for humanity.  Second, I will take an apologetic approach. An apologetic approach seeks to find answers to difficult questions that are asked. The story of Noah (and other stories of God’s destructive judgment) raises difficult questions about God’s character that we must take seriously.  Finally, I hope to take a theological/personal approach and ask, so what?  What does this mean for me?

At some point, one of the heavenly beings rebelled against God and was expelled from his service and cast down to earth.  We call him Satan.   In his hatred of God and his creation, he devised a scheme to wrestle away the dominion from humanity for himself.  So he approached Eve and told her that if she violated God’s command, “her eyes would be open and she would be like God”.  Eve fell for it and then she in turn led her husband into sin.  That is the moment we refer to as the fall of man, and what I want you to see it that it was indeed a fall.

Brother and sisters, God has a plan.  It may not seem like it at times, but God has a plan.

It may not seem like it when bills are due, when kids are sick, when your stuck at a a dead end job, but God has a plan.  It may not seem like it when your stuck in a cycle of sin, or when you feel no closer to God than you did last year, but God has a plan.  It may not seem like it when you turn on the news and see war, famine, climate crises, but God has a plan.  To the praise of his glory, God has a plan.

Last we talked a bit about disillusionment with religion.  It is not uncommon to hear tales of people leaving the church behind or walking out on their faith.  Tim Keller, in his book, “The Reason For God” cites the behavior of Christians – as individuals and as the church – as a key reason for this disillusionment.  In this passage, James asks a question that many of us in our more cynical times of disillusionment with religion have probably asked: “What good is it, if a man says he has faith but does not have works?” (2:14) The two law students critiqued Christianity because they saw it failing to live up to what they would consider the marks of true religion.  Notice that these two law students are making an assumption about the relationship between faith (what one believes) and works (how one acts).  They have concluded that Christianity is not worth believing, because they haven’t seen it acting in ways that they expect it to were it the true religion. 

We live in a day and age in which people are very disillusioned with religion.  I am not talking so much about the Christopher Hitchens/Dawkins/Harris down with religion neo-atheist books that seem to be what everyone is reading these days.  No I am talking more so about people in the church.  People who look around at the other others in the pews each Sunday and say. “is this all there is?”, “is this what Jesus died for?”  People like Sarah Cunningham – a pastors kid who wrote “Dear Church”. She cites research done by various organizations which paint a picture of disillusionment among those under forty – particularly young adults – who believe in Jesus and long for a spiritual life, but are fed up or hurt by the church.  This is also the thesis of another recent book whose title says it all, “They Like jesus, but not the church”

After introducing the book last week, today we are going to quickly walk through the book of Song of Solomon.  The title for these two sermons is “How to Love and Be Loved” and as we found last week, the book is really a book of intimacy – most evidently intimacy between a young man and young woman, but also, because we are created in the image of God, and because God instituted marriage to illustrate his desire and love for us as His bride, we can read the book as help in developing our intimacy with God as well.  Today we are going to look at 5 D’s of intimacy from the Song of Solomon.

Mediaeval scholars classified Song of Solomon, with its overt sexuality, as one of two “dangerous books” (Ecclesiastes being the other).  The ancient rabbis held that “no one who has not attained to full maturity [may] be allowed so much as to hold this book in his hands.” Origen, who set the standard for over 1000 years of Christian interpretation of the book, acknowledged that the book must be read as a book about love, though he insists that the reader must “know how to listen to the language of erotic desire with chaste ears and a pure mind” and not as a fleshling.”  The Song of Solomon was the last Old Testament book to be universally received as scripture, which is understandable since there is no mention of topics such as sin, religion, salvation, the Law or even God (there is one possible reference to the Lord in 8:6 but even that is debatable).  So why is this in the Bible?

A first grade teacher collected well-known proverbs. She gave each child in her class the first half of a proverb and asked them to come up with the remainder of the proverb. Their insight may surprise you.

• As you shall make your bed so shall you ... Mess it up
• Better to be safe than … Punch a 5th grader
• Strike while the … Bug is close
• It's always darkest before … Daylight Savings Time
• Don't bite the hand that … looks dirty
• A miss is as good as a … Mr. (mile)
• You can't teach an old dog new ... math
• If you lie down with dogs, you'll ... stink in the morning
• The pen is mightier than the ... pigs
• A penny saved is ... not much
• Don't put off till tomorrow what ... you put on to go to bed
• Children should be seen and not ... spanked or grounded
• If at first you don't succeed ... get new batteries
• When the blind leadeth the blind ... get out of the way

I want to talk to you today about a people:

Þ Who had just made a significant move in for which they had been praying for years

Þ Who had made a march around the city carrying a sign of the Lord’s presence with them, and seen great spiritual victory

Þ Who had moved into a new place as a temporary dwelling and were making preparations into moving onward to where God would settle them permanently.

Þ Who although outwardly looked as though they were receiving God’s blessings, Outwardly they looked like they had everything together, God’s anger burned against them and when they tried to move on together as a community they suffered such defeat that they wished they had never set out in the first place. 

The story of this people should sober us this morning.  Look, I want to celebrate this morning, I really do.  But I cannot be a minister of the Gospel and not bring a warning against us and admonish us to celebrate in the fear of the Lord.

At the end of chapter 6, we find Stephen, one of the apostles’ helpers in Jerusalem (sometimes referred to as the deacons), is being brought before the Jerusalem council of elders.  He had been proclaiming the gospel of Jesus, doing great signs and wonders among the people and countering their arguments by the power of the Spirit.  So those who were arguing with him secretly planted false witnesses against him, bringing the charge of blasphemy against him, saying, "We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God" (6:11).  Reading on in Acts 6:12-14: And they stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council, and they set up false witnesses who said, "This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law, for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us."  He’s going to tear down the Temple!  He was being tried as a terrorist!  This is very political – imagine going downtown and starting to preach that Jesus is going to destroy Parliament Hill.  They’d lock you up.   So there’s a political element here, but there is definitely a spiritual element – the Temple was God’s house.  To blaspheme the Temple was to blaspheme God himself.  Just who do these Jesus followers think they are?