NOAH: A SERMON OUTLINE YOU CAN USE

Image credit: photostockam / 123RF Stock Photo

 

With all the fuss and discussion about the movie Noah, it is timely to preach a message from the Bible about the real story of Noah and the great flood. It is important that pastors provide the biblical view of Noah and the events of the flood rather than for people to develop their view from the movie. As the author of this sermon outline, I have not seen the movie and this is not a critique about it. Those who read or preach this message are free to edit and add their own comments and illustrations. Use this as a sermon starter. I have also included a pdf Bible study that covers additional issues around the Bible passages. 

NOAH– A PDF Bible study (Different from the following sermon outline)

Idea: Consider using a bullhorn for this first section to illustrate how Noah’s audience may have heard him preaching when he was not building the ark. This illustrates how many people inside and outside the church hear preachers today as they warn of the approaching end times and the need for salvation IN CHRIST alone!

• Repent…for the kingdom of God is at hand!
• Repent, turn to God, and do works befitting repentance. Ac 26:20
• Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
• “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Ac 2:38
• Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, Ac 3:19-20
• Repent therefore of this your wickedness, and pray God if perhaps the thought of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are poisoned by bitterness and bound by iniquity.” Ac 8:22-23
• Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place — unless you repent. Rev 2:5
• Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent. Therefore if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you. Rev 3:3

For two to three generations some of you have heard the preaching of evangelists, pastors, revivalists, and preachers to repent and to get your life right with God and to share Christ with others but many come to church each week and their lives are unchanged. The lives of some people in the church are no different from those outside the church.

The pastor says, “Share Jesus with people.” And you roll your eyes and say, “There he goes again!”

The pastor says, “Give offerings to the church.” And you roll your eyes and say, “There he goes again.”

The pastor says, “Repent, Jesus is coming soon!” We do nothing.

How do you think the people in Noah’s day reacted to his message? We think of Noah as the one who built an ark for all of the animals to survive the great flood, and he did. When Noah was not engineering that great ship, he was preaching to people who needed God. They also grew weary of his message to repent. When Noah said, “The rain is coming,” they also likely rolled their eyes and said, “The old windbag, there he goes again.”

2 Peter 2:4-5 ⁴ For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment; ⁵ and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly; NKJV

Here is a hard lesson to Christians today in the 21^st century:

Big Idea: Today many of the people in the church act more like the people outside of Noah’s ark who were destroyed.

What do I mean? Many in the church “repented” but never changed. Many in the church tell others to repent of sin while we have not repented of our own sin. Many in the church don’t love sinners; we often don’t even love other people in the church much less people outside the church.

READ: Genesis 5:32–6:14

We see five things in the introduction:

1. If Noah was 500 years old (Gen 5:32) when God told him to build the Ark and 600 when the Flood came (Gen 7:11), it is reasonable to assume that the construction of the Ark took place during this 100 year period.
2. Satan as usual attempts to hijack God’s plan to save humanity (6:1-2; 4). Many Bible scholars believe that fallen angels procreated with women and the offspring were giants and mighty men. Sort of superhuman.
3. God further limits mankind’s lifespan to 120 years. (Gen 6:3)
4. There was only one reason for the great flood and it was not to reset the balance of the environment because of global warming or man’s abuse of the environment. The one reason was…SIN! (Gen 6:5-7)
5. Noah and his family (wife, 3 sons & their wives) were saved by GRACE! (Gen 6:8)

NOAH WAS SAVED BY GRACE THROUGH HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD.

1)      Noah walked with God. (Gen 6:9)

2)      If you want to hear God’s will for your life and family, walk with God.

3)      If you want to hear God’s will for your life and family, maintain your personal integrity (personal integrity).

NOAH WAS SAVED BY GRACE AND HE APPLIED HIS FAITH BY OBEYING GOD.

1)      The ark is a symbol of Noah’s faith and obedience.

Ge 7:5 And Noah did according to all that the Lord commanded him.

Heb 11:7 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. NKJV

Noah built the ark! He obeyed God. I like what Pastor Charles Stanley teaches on this point: “Obey God and leave the results to him.” Are you obeying God today in your life? Remember, partial obedience is disobedience. What if Noah had built half of the ark?

2)      The ark is a symbol of salvation.

Mt 24:37-44 ³⁷ But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. ³⁸ 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, ³⁹ and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. ⁴⁰ Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left. ⁴¹ Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left. ⁴² Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming. ⁴³ But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. ⁴⁴ Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. NKJV

3)      The ark is a symbol of faith and baptism.

1 Pe 3:18-22 ¹⁸ For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, ¹⁹ by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, ²⁰ who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water. ²¹ There is also an antitype which now saves us — baptism (not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God), through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, ²² who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers having been made subject to Him. NKJV

NOAH WAS SAVED BY GRACE THROUGH SACRIFICES THAT POINTED TO JESUS’SACRIFICE.

As children many of you learned that Noah brought two of each of the animals into the ark. But the Bible teaches us that of some of the animals Noah took seven into the ark. These were for food and for sacrifices in their regular worship to God.

Ge 7:2-3 ² You shall take with you seven each of every clean animal, a male and his female; two each of animals that are unclean, a male and his female; ³ also seven each of birds of the air, male and female, to keep the species alive on the face of all the earth. NKJV

NOAH WAS SAVED BY GRACE THROUGH WORSHIP.

1)      Noah and his family regularly worshipped God during their time in the ark. They had to be grateful for their salvation from the flood.

2)      The first thing Noah did after exiting the ark was to build an altar to praise and worship God.

Ge 8:20-22 ²⁰ Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. ²¹ And the Lord smelled a soothing aroma. Then the Lord said in His heart, “I will never again curse the ground for man’s sake, although the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done. ²² “While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest, Cold and heat, Winter and summer, And day and night Shall not cease.” NKJV

Repent, receive Jesus and be IN CHRIST like Noah and his family were IN the ark!

Where is Noah’s Ark?– A video about the archeological study of the site in Turkey where ancient remains of the ark may be.

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THE PERSONALITIES OF THE GOSPEL WRITERS: A GOSPEL FOR EACH PERSONALITY

Read the four gospels and you will see the distinctive expressions of the personalities of each writer—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. For evangelical Christians, God inspired the words to be written in their respective sections of what became part of the Bible, but God’s inspiration did not diminish the individual personalities of the writers. This article seeks to identify the personality or behavior styles of the four gospel writers using the widely accepted DISC system that is simplified for easy understanding.

A SIMPLIFIED DISC SYSTEM

The DISC is widely accepted in the human resources and professional life, work, and leadership coaching fields. Each letter in the DISC illustrates a personality or behavior style of about a quarter of the population. Respectively the letters stand for D- dominating, I- inspiring, S- steadying, and C- calculating. The words representative of each group illustrate the behavior characteristics of each style. A simplified system (underlined) that is also easier to remember is illustrated in the list and in the article graphic:

• D – Dominating – Assertive – Momentous Mark
• I – Inspiring – Animated – Jubilant John
• S – Steadying – Amiable – Likable Luke
• C – Calculating – Analytical – Methodical Matthew

As the reader may note, the primary behavior type of each gospel writer is included. Note that Analyticals and Amiables are generally slow-paced while Assertives and Animates are generally fast-paced. Also, Amiables and Animateds tend to be people-oriented while Analyticals and Assertives tend to be task oriented. Now let’s formulate this in the lives of the gospel writers.

METHODICAL MATTHEW

The Apostle Matthew’s behavior style is easy to recognize by his precise records and lists. C-Analyticals are list-makers and tend to like systematic thinking. True to his character, Matthew ties the past to his present day where nine times he uses the phrase: “that it might be fulfilled.” Matthew’s gospel consists of 1071 verses and 165 times or in 15% of his verses he uses the phrase formula “when a, then b” which is consistent with how an analytical style person would write. Analyticals tend to define the present and future by past historical events. Matthew was Jewish and throughout his gospel account he connects Old Testament prophecies with the events in Jesus’ life that fulfill the respective prophecies. Matthew wrote his accord as a chronological record of events and fulfilled prophecies based around the life of Jesus to show the Jews and us that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ. Indeed, God used a methodical tax-collector accountant to be the historian who may have written the Q-documents on which the Gospel of Matthew and other gospels may have been based. For the graphic the color blue is used to illustrate the personality of the analytical as they are often moody and sometimes “blue.”

MOMENTOUS MARK

Mark was likely a D-Assertive as his is the shortest of the four gospels with only 678 verses in the KJV and is 37% shorter than Matthew’s gospel. It is as if he wrote an account of Jesus’ life for other assertive readers. Some have called his account “a gospel tract” because of its brevity. As assertive people do, Mark got right to the point. He skipped the birth narrative as well as much of the narrative of Matthew’s account. The pace of Mark’s gospel is rapid as he used the word “immediately” thirty-six times. Assertives tend to focus on tasks or events rather than people and relationships. They don’t like to waste time, resources, or in the case of Mark, ink and papyrus. For the graphic the color green is used to illustrate the personality of the assertive as they are often driven to “go” at full speed and evangelism or transforming the behavior of others is often their modus operandi.

LIKABLE LUKE

The Gospel of Luke seems to be almost conversational as he moves from one section to the next. Thirteen times Luke begins verses with the phrase “so it was,” which sounds like another way of saying “once upon a time.” He began his account by addressing the person to whom he was writing named Theophilus, an indication of Luke’s amiable personality style which is people oriented. By his greeting, it appears that it was important to Luke that Theophilus like him and feel that he respected him, which is also classic behavior for amiables. Luke’s account is the longest of the synoptic gospels with 1151 verses and the chronology differs from that of Matthew. Amiable people tend to focus of relationships rather than things like chronological order and logic. This is not to say that Luke thought chronology or logic to be unimportant but those things were not natural for him to consider paramount. Like Matthew, Luke’s account includes a birth narrative but the genealogy appears in chapter three. For an analytical the genealogy may appear out of place but it is simply reflective of the personality of an amiable person. Luke included many names in his account but it may have been more to show relationships between the characters rather than to simply be historically accurate. The color yellow is used to depict the amiable because it is represents “peace” which is often a high priority for amiables.

JUBILANT JOHN

There are 4146 verses in John’s gospel which is almost three times longer than the accounts of Matthew or Luke. Of course The Gospel of John is not one of the synoptic gospels as he is all over the chronological time-line. In classic I-Animated style, John jumps all the way back to the beginning of time in his introductory prologue. Animated people are more emotionally expressive and John certainly includes more emotive content than the other gospels. The word “love” appears twenty-seven times in John’s account, twelve in Matthew, five in Mark, and thirteen times in Luke, but the focus of the word is also different. John’s focus on the subject of love includes the aspect of love from people to people but also that of God’s love for people while the other gospel writers focused on the love of people for other people. The synoptic gospel writers never seemed to refer to themselves directly but John may have done so. Animated people are natural “selfies” as they generally find a way to include themselves in the story and John stated four times “the disciple whom Jesus loved” which is likely a way he included himself in his gospel account. The color red is used to illustrate the animated style because it is bold, bright, and joyful which are common for animateds.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PREACHERS AND TEACHERS

Why did God tell the story of Jesus through four people representative of the four primary personality styles? Perhaps it was to relate to each of the four primary personality styles of readers of the Bible. Preachers and teachers should pay attention to the preparation and delivery of their messages and lessons. There is the natural style of the one delivering the preaching and teaching and then there are also the varying styles of the people in the audience. It is imperative that the preacher and teacher deliver the message in a way that uses a variety of styles so that nobody is left out of the message. General observations and guidelines include:

• Analyticals want logic and structure in the message which may be boring to an Assertive and especially an Animated.
• Assertives want to know “why this is important” right up front at the beginning.
• Amiables and Animateds love stories and illustrations in the message.
• Analyticals and Assertives are often turned off by jokes while Animates are turned on and excited by jokes.
• Amiables and Animateds are more interested in “what does this mean to me” aspects of the message while Analyticals and Assertives are more interested in “what am I supposed to do” aspects of the message.

The implications of the personality styles as related to discipleship are included in one of my publications: The Disciple-Maker’s Toolkit. 

A CAUTION

The observations about the four personalities or behavior styles are generalities since everybody sometimes acts outside of their usual pattern. Please offer your comments to this article. What do you think were the personality styles of other Bible characters or writers?

——————–

Dr. Tom Cocklereece is CEO of RENOVA Coaching and Consulting, LLC. He has 20 years experience as a  pastor, and is an author, certified professional coach and coach trainer, leadership specialist, and a member Coach/Teacher/Speaker for the John Maxwell Team

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