The story of Noah and the ark is really a story of God and his grace.

By grace, God saved, sustained, and sent Noah.

By grace, God saves, sustains, and sends us, too! 

God's grace precedes righteousness, it provides relationship, and it produces faith and obedience. 

Sometimes when we're reading the Scriptures, we come across things that fall into the theological category of "weird," and we find some of that in Genesis 6. We also find something that's not weird at all - man's big problem of sin and God's big solution to it (grace). 

There are two ways to live: we can live like Cain and his line, fleeing from God's presence and going our own way or we can live like Seth and his line, turning toward God in faith. 

God demonstrates His grace even in the worst of our messes.

Though we are runners and rebels, the God who was and is and is to come is good and He loves us. He will not change his mind. God is tenaciously committed to us, regardless of how we treat Him, and will never stop demonstrating His goodness to us. 

1. In the midst of our rebellion, God pursues us. (3:8-13)
2. In the midst of our rebellion, God provides for us. (3:16-24)
3. In the midst of our rebellion, God promises to redeem us (3:14-15)

If God is good and he created a good world for good people made in his image... what went wrong? How do we make sense of the disconnect between our longings and our experience?

In a word, sin. Sin is rebellion against God - an attack against the Creator by his creation. And the way sin works never changes. Sin attacks God by:

1. Denying God's Goodness (Genesis 3:1-5)
   - Denying God's Command (vs. 1, "Did God actually say...")
   - Denying God's Credibility (vs. 4, "You will not surely die...")
   - Denying God's Character (vs. 5, "He knows you will... be like God...")
2. Deceiving God's People (Genesis 3:6)
3. Distorting God's Gifts (Genesis 3:7-24)

The good Creator of all things loves us, and we see that in the good gifts he gave us at creation...

Human beings have always had big questions on their hearts: how did we get here? Why are we here? What are we supposed to do? Why do we all feel that the only world we've ever known isn't the way it should be? Why do we long for a different world that we've never experienced? Since very early times, right up until today, human beings have tried to construct a narrative, a story that attempts to answer these questions and make sense of the universe, our lives, and our longings as they are. God's Word (the Bible) tells us the one story that makes sense of everything: it's the story of a good God who made a good world for his good people. 

How can we be a part of God's work in and through Back Creek Church?