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  WHERE'S THE NOAHS OF TODAY
  by Sandeep Poonen
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Summary: This sermon emphasizes the importance of knowing God as a
father, recognizing the iceberg of sin in our lives, and actively
building up the body of Christ through encouragement. It highlights the
distinction between Noah, who knew God, and the world, which did not
know God. The call is to seek a deeper relationship with God, address
hidden sin, and be zealous in encouraging others to build the ark of
safety in the body of Christ.

Duration: 43:50 Topics: "Knowing God as Father", "Building Up the Body of Christ"
Scripture References: Matthew 24:37, 1 John 3:1, Hebrews 11:7, Romans 7:24, 2 Peter 2:4, Acts 2:17, 1 Corinthians 14:31, Philippians 3:13

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon emphasizes the importance of knowing God as a father,
recognizing the iceberg of sin in our lives, and actively building up
the body of Christ through encouragement. It highlights the distinction
between Noah, who knew God, and the world, which did not know God. The
call is to seek a deeper relationship with God, address hidden sin, and
be zealous in encouraging others to build the ark of safety in the body
of Christ.

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CONTENT
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All right, let's begin with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you,
Lord, that all of our words can be submitted to you. Thank you, Lord,
that you are the ones that make words into life.

Lord, you have to infuse whatever is said by us created beings, Lord,
with your Holy Spirit. That's what brings it to life, Lord Jesus. None
of our ideas, none of our words, none of our speaking to the mind can
make any difference, Lord, to us.

We need supernatural word that can bring light into darkness. I pray,
Lord, that you may anoint the words that I speak, Lord. I pray that you
may break it as the words are broken, break it down so that it is simple
to understand and nourishing for the people that life can come out of
this.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen. So I wanted to share a few thoughts that I
had from the story of Noah. I'm sure this is not the first time you've
heard about the story of Noah, and also especially at this time.

I hope that I will be able to, what I say will either compliment or
underline what has already been said. So I would like to start from
Matthew 24, verse 37 through 39, where Jesus compares the coming of the
Son of Man to the days of Noah. And it says in Matthew chapter 24, 37
through 39, for the coming of the Son of Man shall be just like the days
of Noah.

For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage until the day that Noah entered the ark.
And they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away.
So will the coming of the Son of Man be.

Now what I thought was interesting for me as I was reading this passage
was the way Jesus described the people and what they were doing compared
to the Noah. Now, if you've read the story of Noah in Genesis, even the
children know this, that the flood came. And the reason why the flood
came was because it was God's great judgment on people.

And so it says in Genesis chapter six that the world is very corrupt and
there was all kinds of violence. But interestingly over here, Jesus uses
a different description of what was going on in the world. They were
eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage.

Now we know even in the way they were doing marriage back then in Noah
was an evil way of doing marriage. They had completely distorted the way
a union has to be between man and a woman back in Genesis chapter six.
You can read about that.

But what that told me was, it wasn't like if we were living in the days
of Noah that we would go and we'd see complete, utter corruption all
over the world any different than it is today. That's what I got out of
this. That there is corruption like never before.

There is violence, there is murder, the amount of ways in which babies
are being aborted, the ways in which the institution of marriage and the
sacredness of marriage has been distorted. You see a lot of corruption
in the world. But if anybody were to come and live at a time such as
this, we'll see a lot of genuine, general happiness.

I mean, forget the current pandemic, which is restricting our lives in
many ways, but look around you. I mean, I'm looking at your background.
You look at my background and you see comfort.

And if you look at our lives, except for this time, it was eating and
drinking, not sinful things, doing good things, doing wonderfully normal
things like all of us eat and drink. We're also marrying quite like the
world. Not that they were sinful, but this was what Jesus was separating
was, it was a very normal kind of life that was going on.

There was a lot of violence and corruption going on, just like all of us
would say that in the world today, we recognize that there's violence,
but there's also a sense in which it was just normal. Then now I can
relate it to the days of Noah. It's not that foreign for me to think,
maybe I'm not unlike the days of Noah.

There's a lot of eating and drinking and going to nice restaurants and
marriages and all kinds of things, even the good kind of marriages. But
here's the thing, what I underlined in that verse was in verse 39. They
did not understand or they did not know, that's that word, they did not
know.

That's what my margin says, said what they did not know until the flood
came. What did they not know? Very simple, they did not know God. That
was the difference between Noah and the rest of the world.

It says about two people in the beginning before the flood that they
knew God. One was Enoch and the second one was Noah. They are the two
people who walked with God, they knew God.

Here's the difference between the two kinds of people in Noah's time. It
wasn't that one group was all committing murder and adultery and
stealing and taking the Lord's name in vain and breaking all the 10
commandments, which they didn't even have at that time. And here was
Noah who was doing it.

It wasn't those two camps. There were two camps, which was the one man
who knew the Lord, the one man who walked with God and the rest. And so
to me, the reason why that distinction is important is because we can
easily get so caught up with the evil world out there and all the
horrible ways in which the world is acting and comfort ourselves into
thinking, oh, we're not like that.

And we can fool ourselves into the separation between the two groups in
the wrong way. And I think you've been talking about the two kinds of
groups, between Jerusalem and Babylon and the two kinds of ways in which
we separate. And the way I need to separate myself is into the category
of know God, getting to know God and the opposite of that or the
alternative to that.

And so I need to be laser focused on the one question before me today,
not did I sin today or did I not sin today? Did I shout at my wife? Did
I not shout at my wife? Did I shout at my children? Did I not shout at
my children? Those are all good questions to ask, but those should all
be side questions to answer the real big question. Am I getting to know
God better? That should be the question that I'm answering for myself
every day, every week, every month. Lord, am I getting to know you? Am I
walking with you? And there's a knowledge of friendship that I have with
God that I didn't have a year ago, five years ago.

Now, in the Old Testament, Noah could know God in a particular way and
in a very restricted way. Yet he feared God, he was blameless and
righteous. But I want to underline that word, know.

See, it says here about the people here that they did not know. They did
not know what? They did not know God. Now, please turn with me to 1 John
chapter three.

Because here is the distinction, the very first distinction that we must
make between ourselves and the world. Dear brothers and sisters,
consider these days like the days of Noah, we should. Peter thought that
in the first century.

In both his episodes, he referenced Noah. It's clear in my mind that
Peter had Noah very in front of him, thinking those are the last days
for him. John said, this is the last hour in 1 John.

How much more than us should we embrace, not just in this season of
pandemic, but for the rest of our lives that we are living in the days
of Noah. And if we are living in the days of Noah, we must separate Noah
from the rest. And we should say, Lord, we want to be of the company of
Noah.

And the company of Noah is not first that they're doing something else.
The first thing is that they know. They know what the other group
doesn't know.

That's what I get from Matthew 224. They did not know. Noah knew, Noah
knew God.

And 1 John chapter three tells me in the new covenant, what it is that I
know that the world doesn't know. 1 John chapter three, verse one. See
how great a love the Father has bestowed on us that we would be called
children of God and such we are.

For this reason, the world doesn't know. Here's that word again, know.
The world doesn't know us.

The world doesn't know how to understand what we are, what we're doing,
what we're about, why we make the decisions. The world doesn't know us.
Why? Because the world doesn't know him.

That's the difference between us and the world. The world doesn't know
him. This is the fundamental problem with the world.

They're not such evil people and we are such good people. No, the
difference between the world and us is that the world doesn't know God
as a father. We know God as a father.

That is why I do not fear. I'm living at a time when the educated
leaders and intellectual people in this world are telling me, you know
how to get over fear? Meditate every morning for 10 minutes. The art of
mindfulness is what I'm getting in my emails.

I just got an email today saying, we're gonna have special sessions
every day for leaders and people who wanna be in the workplace, just
specially for you, a devoted time so that we can practice mindfulness.
They're all trying to deal with fear. How do we get over fear? It's not
even through the memorization of scripture.

It is by knowing God as a father. This is what John is very clearly
telling me through the Holy Spirit. This is what the world doesn't know,
but we know.

So we need to live our lives with a real sense that God is my father. I
must ask the Lord to open my eyes that I actually have a father in
heaven. It's not my bank account.

It's not the job that I still have today but might be gone tomorrow.
It's not my health where I might think I don't have coronavirus today
but I'll find out I have it tomorrow. Fear is such a dangerous thing
that we may think we're living without fear today because everybody's
healthy.

All of a sudden, the situation can change. My boss can say, we're laying
off 30% and you're one of the 30%. Suddenly, I can't pay my mortgage.

Suddenly, I find out that my child is having fever and a cough. And all
of a sudden, fear where it feels very serene now can all of a sudden
come in like a thief. What are you gonna go to then? That is when we
have to really say, Lord, in the times of peace, in the times when we
have given our situation to this, I really want to know without a shadow
of doubt that my confidence and my freedom from fear is because I know
God as a father.

This has got nothing to do with what Noah did by building the ark. It
has nothing to do with what Noah did by being with his family. This is a
personal thing that I cannot help.

My wife can't help me get there. My husband can't help me get there. My
children can't help me get there.

I need to have this individually. I must say, Lord, this is the
fundamental difference between me and other people, those who know God
and those who don't know God, and those who know God as a father, not
know God in any other way. For the Christian, I must know that God is my
personal father.

For those of you who have had fathers, for those of you who have had
good fathers, just consider your relationship with your good father.
This must at least be how comfortable and how friendly you can be with
the heavenly father. And what we find is oftentimes the people who don't
have a father like that end up finding God as a father easier because
they don't have anybody.

They go and see God and they find him. But this is the antidote to fear.
Dear brothers and sisters, let us not think that the antidote to fear is
any other thing, not our Christian disciplines, not our Christian
lifestyle.

It is really saying, Lord, I don't want to miss the objective of this
trial, which is to know you as a father. I work where I have to find out
metrics. How well are we doing? How secure are we? How, you have a
thermometer that checks your temperature.

We have a, you have a thermostat that tells you how cold or hot it is.
We should figure out how to build a gauge in our lives. Lord, how much
do I know you? Am I free from fear right now because I know you as a
father or is it just because my circumstances are okay? And I must
constantly say, Lord, I want to grow to know you as a father.

Let that be the difference between me and the world so that when people
come and ask me, what's the difference? I won't talk to them about
theology. I won't go and listen to this preacher who preaches and gives
a great reason on why Christianity makes sense. It'll be personal.

I have a father. That is what the difference was between Noah and the
people of the world. The people of the world didn't know God.

Noah knew God. Here's the difference between those who really know God
and the rest. Those are the people who are the Christians.

Those who know their God will take action and do exploits. It says in
Daniel chapter 11 at the end times. They're going to know God.

This underlining of the emphasis of knowing God. In the last days, the
love of many will grow cold. The love is that devotion and the knowing
of God will grow cold.

What we should correlate with the end times is, Lord, do I know you? And
do I know you first of all as a father? That is my foundation on which I
build my life. If I don't have that foundation, then I'm going to be in
trouble. The next one is that God judges.

That God is a judge. So you see, turn to 2 Peter chapter two, verse
four. 2 Peter chapter two, verse four.

It says, for God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them
into hell and committed them into pits of darkness reserved for judgment
and did not spare the ancient world. But there's Noah, a preacher of
righteousness and he was saved along with seven others when God brought
a flood against the ungodly. Noah's unrighteousness stands out against
man's ungodliness.

So Noah's righteousness stood out against the world's ungodliness. And
today we have to stand out against the world's sinfulness. I love that
word preacher.

What does preacher mean? Preacher means messenger or that word was
actually a herald. Hark the herald, the angels sing, you know that
chorus, that song. A herald was somebody who in the olden days would
come in and say, hey, I've got news from the king.

I've got news from the king. Everybody listen up. And the herald was
somebody who would tell you the message from the king.

Today, everybody is going, I don't know where, to get messages from the
king. And in this case, the king of this world is, what's going on with
COVID-19? I'm sure all of you have a place that you go to to find out
what's the latest. Is the curve flattening? Are there more deaths? Is it
getting closer to Melbourne? Is it getting closer to Australia? How's it
going? You've got a herald in your life every day that you got.

You bookmarked it. You've got some graphs that are showing you all the
things that you wanna see. And that is what the world is listening to,
the herald that's shouting from the top, some newspaper or some website
saying, this is how the world is going.

And Noah's was a herald that stood out in contrast to that, which was
saying, I'm not interested in the going ins of this world about the
latest food and the latest drink and the latest this or that. I'm a
herald on ungodliness. I'm a preacher against ungodliness.

We have to be so gripped with ungodliness and saying, Lord, I wanna get
rid of all ungodliness in my life. I'm gonna try and see if I can
present something on my screen. This is what being gripped with
righteousness is about.

And I got this picture as I was listening to one of my dad's messages
recently. And he was talking about how sin is like this iceberg. And
what God asks us to do is to see what is above the water.

That is conscious sin. And God says, attack all of this conscious sin.
Seek to be holy, just as I'm holy.

And all God shows me is what's above the water. And what God asks me to
do is to be ruthless to fight every bit of this iceberg that I see above
the surface. There is no reason, dear brothers and sisters, there is no
reason, zero, no reason for us to excuse anything above the surface of
the water that God says is a sin.

That is called conscious sin. And God says, I have given you grace so
that you can rule over sin. And when God says you can rule over sin,
he's talking about that sin that is above the water.

And God is saying, I want you to rule over this. There should be no
excuse. God has given us grace.

He's given us mercy and his blood that justifies us that says, I'm not
gonna look at all of your past sins, but now I'm gonna start showing you
the iceberg above the water, and I've given you grace as you humble
yourself and you can live just as Jesus lived with all of the things
that is above the water. And I hope that as we grow in Christ, we will
not give ourselves any excuse to fight this sin, the sins that are above
the water. But here is the realization that we must also have as we seek
to chop off every bit of ice above the water is that there's a huge,
endless rock of ice that's below the surface that we don't see.

There's this massive body of sin, this nature of sin that is underneath
the surface that I cannot see. And I must realize that this is my true
condition, that I will chop off everything above the water, but the Lord
in his so marvelous mercy ignores and covers it with his righteousness
and says, I will see you as Jesus, but what I will do is I'll keep
decreasing the water level a little at a time so that you can chop off
the level of grace. And for us to be a herald of righteousness is for us
to be obsessed with this iceberg that is our sinful nature.

And we must seek the Lord to say, Lord, I don't have any time and energy
to be focused on so many other pursuits when this is the iceberg that
will sink the Titanic, which is my life. It's a beautiful ship, it has
been built well, this has been created in the image of God, you've given
me a new self too, but Lord, there's this iceberg and all you asked me
to do is to chop off the things above the water, but I will not be so
proud as to think just because I chop off the top of this ice that
there's nothing underneath the water, there's a whole body of sin
underneath, so I will be humble and I will be so gripped with judging
myself. This is so important, dear brothers, in what it means to be a
herald of righteousness, that we don't start trying to say, oh, what's
wrong with that group and this group and that other group and this
political party and that political party, always looking around.

That's another thing I picked up from my dad recently. Animals, they're
always looking left and right and that's a very appropriate word for
even this political world we live in. You got the left side and you got
the right side, you got the leftist and you got the rightist and
everything in between, but it's always horizontal and we as Christians
have to be preachers of up and down.

Lord, I look up at you and I look down and I see this iceberg and I will
be faithful to chop off the top of the iceberg, but Lord, let me not
fool myself into thinking just because there's no ice on top of the
water that everything is great. Lord, in your mercy, lower the water so
that I can see the next level. That's what it means, I've seen, that's
what my dad means when he says, seek to repent every day.

How come you're not got nothing to repent of over and over again? Well,
because the Lord's not being able to lower the water. Maybe because the
iceberg above the water is not being dealt with. Let us take a sword,
let us be violent against the water that's above the water, let's be
violent with the ice that's above the water and when that goes to zero,
God be like, okay, this man is doing a good job, this woman is doing a
good job to take care of this, I can lower the water a little bit.

We see a new sin, where it used to be lust, now we see love of money,
where we see love of money, now we see envy, where we see envy, now we
see greed and we see unforgiveness, layers that we never knew existed.
And the Lord says, don't get discouraged, be a preacher, be a herald of
righteousness that when people see you, you see a man, they see a man
whose eyes have been gripped with this iceberg in their own lives and
they see that this iceberg is a great idol that stands up against God.
That is the idol that stands up against God and says, God, you're not on
the throne, this iceberg is this horrible monument and I as a Christian,
I'm saying, God, I hit that iceberg and I'm gonna do war, all the other
icebergs don't look that big because Lord, you've allowed me to go
inside underneath the water and see a little bit of how deep this
iceberg that is my own life is.

So I don't have time to focus on this political issue or that political
issue or that church group or that church, this other church group,
Lord, help me to focus on that iceberg which is me because when you go
to heaven, I feel like when Paul went to heaven, he said he finished the
course. I think God, Paul must have felt like, look, Lord, you kept
dropping the water. Every day, Philippians 3 lifestyle, Lord, not as if
I have attained, but every day, Lord, I seek to have a righteousness
that is not my own, forgetting what lies behind, I press on saying,
Lord, lower the water, lower the water, show me more of the iceberg and
the end of his life, he says, Lord, I've been poured out.

I think it's about as close as getting to the bottom of this iceberg
that you can get. It seems like it's time for me to come home. But Lord,
my whole life, I spent attacking that iceberg and I dropped that iceberg
which is the greatest offense, dear brothers and sisters, that iceberg,
which is that body of sin is the greatest offense to God in the whole
planet.

I have to see that, that iceberg, which is all my own body of sin, much
worse than my wife's body of sin, much worse than my children and my
prime ministers or the presidents or whoever it is that bothers you. It
is my iceberg, Lord, and my goal is to be a preacher of righteousness.
This is not what the world is heralding.

You will stand out like Noah stood out. Those of us who can see that
iceberg and be gripped with living that iceberg, grabbing ahold of that
iceberg for the rest of our lives. That was the second thing that I
wanted to point out to you.

My response is, Lord, I am clothed in the righteousness of Christ. I'm
clothed in the righteousness of Christ, but I also recognize my deep
wretchedness. I'm not condemned.

Dear brothers and sisters, when you look at the iceberg, don't be
condemned. There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. I
put that verse, Romans 7.24. Oh, wretched man that I am, who will
deliver me from this body of Christ? Don't stop there.

Keep reading Romans 7.25, where it says, thanks be to God through Christ
Jesus. Therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ
Jesus. Those who are in Christ Jesus are clothed with the righteousness
of Christ, but are convinced that their one task on earth is to destroy
that iceberg.

And it goes on. And you say, Lord, please, in your mercy, lower the
water. Help me to be faithful with the grace you've given me to chop off
that iceberg.

And let me show you that I deserve that you lower the water a little bit
more. I don't need more money. I don't need better health.

I don't need a bigger house. Lord, the only thing blessing I want is
that you lower the water so that I can see this ugly iceberg that is
causing shipwreck to my own life, to my family around me, to my
coworkers around me. It's this iceberg, which is my body of sin.

That's the problem. Like Noah, we can stand out. I have a father in
heaven.

I know God. That is the foundation. Second, I'm clothed in the
righteousness of Christ, and I also recognize my deep wretchedness.

The third is he built the ark, as we all know. That's Hebrews 11, verse
seven. We can turn there just so that you know Hebrews 11, verse seven.

I've given you a verse for each of the points that I made. All about
Noah, Hebrews 11, verse seven. And it talks also about the faith of
Noah.

By faith, Noah being warned by God about things not yet seen. Look, this
is what separates us from the world. The world doesn't know God.

It doesn't see the things that are gonna happen. We read scriptures and
we see what's gonna happen. In the fear of God, knowing that that
iceberg is there in their lives, they prepare an ark.

They prepare that vessel. And that's how we condemn the world. We do not
condemn the world by going out and telling the world that they are evil,
by making Facebook posts or blog messages or tweets that condemn the
world.

That's not the way we condemn the world. We condemn the world by
building, by preparing an ark. That's how we become an heir of the
righteousness, which is according to faith.

We prepare an ark. The only way to safety is in the body of Christ. The
only way to safety is in the body of Christ, which means that I must be
gripped with building up the body of Christ.

Dear brothers and sisters, we have been meeting for months. We have been
meeting for years in a local church with this as our emphasis, which is
seek for the gift of prophecy. We have, this is nothing new.

I have been speaking that for 10 years. That's how long I not only knew
it, but that's how long I've been speaking it to the brothers and
sisters around me. Maybe some of you, it's not been 10 years.

That's okay. But you've been hearing it as long as you've probably been
part of this group, as long as you've been connected or listening to the
messages of brother Zach, you know that that's the truth. That we've
been trying to fellowship around, practice the gift of prophecy,
practice the gift of encouraging others.

This is why we were preaching that all those years was because that is
how we build the body of Christ. It's the gift of prophecy. It's the
gift of encouragement.

It's not a fancy gift. It is the simple gift of encouraging and men and
women, young men and women can prophesy. That's what Acts chapter two
said.

That's what 1 Corinthians 14 says, all can prophesy. This is not
something that only the men can do. It's not something only the elders
can do.

Every single member in the family can build the ark and very clearly to
build the ark is to be able to encourage others. If you build the ark,
you think of it like carrying a plank of wood or having a hammer and
hitting a nail, whatever it was, carrying the tar that stuck the wood
pieces together. What is that? Dear brother and dear sister, dear young
brother, dear young sister, you can build the ark.

We must every day seek to encourage one another as it says in Hebrews
chapter 11, especially as the day draws near for the Lord's coming. We
must seek to encourage one another more and more, encourage one another
daily. This is what we can do to build the ark.

So I hope it's very clear in my mind what I can do to build the ark and
condemn the world and save my family. Dear brother, head of the home, my
job, our jobs is to encourage our wives and encourage our children, not
just encourage them saying, you're great, you're beautiful, you're
lovely. Don't you know I love you? That's ridiculous.

That's even the world can do. What is the gift of prophecy? It's a
spiritual gift that God says, I want you to speak this word of
conviction or comfort or something to build up your wife. But because
it's coming from the Holy Spirit, it'll bring life.

Just like the word of God that's spoken to a dead world, brought the
world to life. That's what we need to seek for. Not just feedback, not
constructive encouragement or constructive feedback that the people in
the world can do, but we must seek the Lord.

Lord, touch my mouth today. Touch my lip. Give me prophetically a word
that I will know came from you because you needed me to encourage
somebody today.

Every time I'm asked to speak, I ask the Lord, Lord, what do you want to
put on my mouth to encourage them? I don't have prepared sermons. I
don't have prepared things. I'm like, okay, let me just dig up.

I seek the Lord. Lord, what do you want me to say? But it should be no
different for my family. And this is not a special gift that some of us
can only have to encourage our own families.

All of us can have the gift, the supernatural gift of encouragement. And
we must seek that. And our wives, it's no different for you.

Young people, it's no different for you. If you've given your life to
Jesus, ask the Lord to give you the Holy Spirit. That's what I did when
I was 17 years old.

I said, Lord, I wasn't even baptized in water. And I said, Lord, I want
the Holy Spirit. I didn't know I needed it for gifts, but I wanted the
Holy Spirit to overcome sin.

But the moment we're born again, young people, if you've given your
heart to Jesus, ask the Lord to fill you with the Holy Spirit so that
you can encourage. You can encourage your younger brother and sister.
You can encourage even your parents with a kind word, with a kind
action, by helping your mother with the dishes, by helping your mother
clean up.

It's an encouragement. When the Holy Spirit can give you an
encouragement, a word of encouragement is, go and help your mom in the
kitchen. Go and help your wife in the kitchen.

There's so many beautiful ways in which that little act can really be
Spirit-filled. And just like the hands of Jesus was full of the Spirit
of God, so much so that even the hem of Jesus' garment had power in it.
And I love what it says about it in the Acts, that even the hem of the
disciples' garments had power in it too.

So it wasn't just Jesus. Even the disciples had it. I'm not trying to do
physical miracles, but I want even small, what I take from that is the
smallest little action, picking up a toy can have a prophetic influence
to encourage those who are hurting.

It can be a smile. It can be a look. It can be a hug to my family.

It can be allowing a child to listen to one of my children as they talk.
It can be so many ways in which we can encourage. This is very different
from what the world says in this, that it is prompted by the Holy
Spirit.

The source is very different. And that's what tells us at this time, go
and do this. Peter and John, when Jesus were going every day to the
temple, but one day the Holy Spirit told Peter, now's the day to heal
that man.

And he came right up to that man and grabbed that man up and he was
healed. Peter and John could have gone on some other day and grabbed
that man and he would not have gotten up. He would not have been healed.

We need the spirit to prompt us to say, today's the day, grab that man,
give that word to your husband, give that word to your wife. And as we
seek to live with the Lord humbly, that can happen. Dear brothers and
sisters, the only way to safety is in the body of Christ.

If we believe that, we build the ark, which means we'll be zealous to
seek to encourage. Not to encourage everybody, but to encourage
somebody. Lord, the work I wanna do is to encourage somebody.

I'm not here to build a whole ark by myself. I'm here to just put a
couple of planks in and the other brothers will put the other planks in
and the other sisters may put the tar and the other people may do
something else. But together we'll build the overall ark.

But Lord, I wanna do my part. Help me to seek to encourage somebody. And
almost always we start in the home.

So that's what I wanted to share to you today. Three simple points. The
difference between Noah and the world.

Noah knew God. The world did not know God. We know God as a father.

Let us not reduce our life to Christian mindfulness. Let us not reduce
our life of rest to Christian grabbing a hold of a promise of God. All
of the promises of God are supposed to take us to God himself so that we
can know God and we know God as a father.

That should be our anchor. That we take the promises of God to the
source of the one who gave those promises, which is God himself and say,
God, I wanna know you. God, I wanna know you.

Show me who you are. Next point was, Lord, show me the iceberg of sin.
Lord, I wanna be a preacher.

I wanna be a herald that shouts out to the world about righteousness.
Lord, your righteousness that covers me and is my robe, my royal festive
robe so I will never be condemned, but it's also a real passion to root
out all that hidden unrighteousness that's under the service that I know
exists. Lord, lower that water.

I know you're coming to judge sin, Lord. You did not spare even the
angels. You didn't spare the time in Noah's time.

You're not gonna spare anybody else in this world and you're not gonna
spare any of that iceberg. So Lord, help me to be ruthless to get rid of
that horrible idol that insults God, which is this iceberg of sin within
me. I'm clothed in the righteousness of God, but I am disgusted by deep
wretchedness that I don't see.

So Lord, open my eyes. I am offending you in so many ways and I don't
even see it every day. I don't know what to do about it.

If you show it to me, I'm being faithful in the conscious areas of my
life, but that's only 10% of the iceberg. Lord, what are you gonna do
about the remaining 90% that is offensive to you and your name? Lord,
show it to me. I'm gonna take no comfort in my victory over sins.

I'm gonna take no satisfaction in it because I know there's a massive
iceberg underneath. Third, Lord, I don't want to just think about
myself. You came to die for the sins of the whole world.

You're putting together a body of believers. You put me around now. You
forced me to be with my wife and my children and some of you with your
parents or loved ones, the people you love the most, and they're gonna
sometimes annoy us and aggravate us.

Lord Jesus, I want to be a ark builder. I want to have words of
encouragement. Where words came out of my mouth of anger and anxiety and
worry and frustration and insults, now comes rivers of living water.

My wife, my husband, my children, grandchildren, notice a difference in
my tongue. Words of rivers of living water starting to come. The water
tastes better that comes out of my mouth.

God's changing me. Let the Lord do that work in this time and let me
build up other people that way. And God will show us when we get to
heaven this wonderful ark that we built in our own lives, in our
family's lives, and through the power of things like WhatsApp and Zoom
and chat, text messaging, you can encourage others too.

Ask the Lord, Lord, who needs to be encouraged today? And what should I
give them to encourage them? Let me not just text them some random verse
of the day. Lord, give me a word specifically for somebody. I'm not
gonna try to build this whole ark for the whole kingdom of God or for
the whole church or for this whole everybody.

Lord, give me one person. Maybe one person once a week. Start somewhere
and say, Lord, give it to me.

It's my inheritance. I want that as a blessing from you. Let other
people be blessed in other ways.

Lord, my inheritance is that you show me the iceberg. You show me that
God is a father and you show me how I can encourage other people until
the day that I die. And maybe this pandemic will come and go sooner than
we thought or whatever it is.

I hope we don't lose the sense that we are living in the days of Noah.
Peter felt that in the first century. John felt that in the first
century.

How much more now? God bless you.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/CP84R6U_7FU.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/sandeep-poonen/wheres-the-noahs-of-today/
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