Sermons

Watercourse Church has reached its 20th anniversary. Those who once worshiped on cushions in a single small room have each devoted themselves with the gifts they received and have built the church up firmly.

For 38 years the sick man at the pool of Bethesda waited, having fixed the moment the water stirred as his own time. That is why we pray and still receive no answer: we take no interest in God’s will and ask only for the answer we have already settled on. Until he wrestled with God at the ford of the Jabbok, Jacob too lived a life of running from his fears in his own strength.

The quickest way to obey God is to bring our time into line with God’s time. Just as Jacob’s name was changed and his fear of his brother disappeared when he fought with God and prevailed, we too must seek God’s heart and power with the key of prayer. Just as no one who came to Joseph’s storehouses ever went away empty-handed, no one who comes to Christ goes away empty-handed.

In the world God created, Adam gave way to Satan’s temptation and sinned by judging good and evil with himself at the center, and since then the world has grown ever more corrupt as it races toward judgment. When the whole earth was filled with violence, God called Noah, the one man who walked with him, and told him to build an ark. Though he was mocked for it, Noah poured his whole life into the work and saw the ark completed.

The ark is not a church building or church attendance; it is faith in Jesus Christ itself. Just as Noah believed in the coming judgment and built the ark, those who believe in Christ’s return and the judgment must live now as people who build the ark of Christ and call others into it. As with those who laughed and made merry outside the ark, judgment is no less real for being unseen.

Even inside the ark Noah knew loneliness and a sense of emptiness, and after the flood he fell for a time, yet God did not rebuke him but waited for him. Ham, however, who mocked his fallen father, came under a curse; those who grow weary in the life of faith are to be embraced, not ridiculed. To obey the word as Noah did, building the ark and bringing even one more soul aboard, is the task entrusted to us today.

Abraham is told to take the son he loves up a mountain and offer him there as a sacrifice. The son does not die; in his place lies an offering that has been provided instead. In later years a temple rises on that mountain, and on that same ground Jesus bears the cross.

Isaac was named before he was born, came into the world by a miracle, and alone inherited all that his father had. He carried up the mountain the wood that was his to bear, and he never left his father’s side. Jesus, too, was born in this way, was given all authority in heaven and on earth, and took up his own cross and climbed that mountain. As Isaac dug wells that kept people and livestock alive, so Jesus freely gave the water of life to all who thirst.

The life of God’s people leaves footprints that others are watching. If they stagger along, those who come behind take it that they may go the same way. To a church that has walked together for nineteen years came the word to go straight ahead, loving God and relying on him, with or without a pastor.

Having come out of the ark, Noah becomes drunk with wine and falls asleep uncovered. Ham sees him like this and goes out to tell his brothers, as though mocking him, while Shem and Japheth walk in backwards and cover their father. When Noah wakes, he curses Ham’s son Canaan to be a servant, and Shem and Japheth are blessed.

Ham was able to board the ark because his father was the one God had chosen. Yet as time went on, pride grew in him: he had helped with the ark, he thought, and had come aboard by his own faith. His respect for his father was gone. His sin did not appear suddenly that day. What had already filled him overflowed in that moment.

The same thing happened to Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu. They owed their priesthood to their father, yet they did not fear God, and in the end they lost their lives offering fire he had not commanded. Being on the ark or being made a priest only means that a person has been given good circumstances. Unless a person stands within them with a humble and honest character, grace turns to wrath.