Hillside Free Methodist Church

Pastor Mark Adams

Evan Help Us - Building Family Character

#2 - Serve Together

Introduce Sermon command to Noah.

Gen.6.14-16

Gen..6.14 So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. 16 Make a roof for it and finish the ark to within 18 inches of the top. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks.

Let me invite some friends forward to help us live out God’s command to Noah through building an ark. These people will be working together, serving together, to accomplish this task. While they work on the ark, our band is going to lead us in the Noah Ark song. We’ve been singing it in Sunday School, also. It’s kind of fun. Enjoy it, and enjoy the workpeople at their task...

God Told Noah Song...

The work that Noah had to do was a tremendous task. Think about this. First, he had to build an ark. That’s something no one had heard of before. The Hebrew word in the Bible is taybah and it is used in two places. First of course, is this giant boat constructed by Noah and second, it is the word used to describe the little basket that the baby Moses was placed into for safety. The idea of an ark is a place of safety against a mighty storm. Noah had to build a giant boat for the safety of humanity and all living things. That’s a task.

This boat was 450 feet long. That’s four football fields. It’s big. It was nearly a football field wide, 75 feet. It was 45 feet high. That’s a four story building. This was a massive structure. The deck area was large enough to hold 36 tennis courts. It’s volume was large enough that you could fit 522 stock cars inside – or eight freight trains with 55 cars each attached. This was not an overnight project. Some estimate that it took about 100 years to build the ark – that’s based upon the idea that Noah was 500 years when his age is first mentions (5:32) but 600 years old when he and his family enter the ark (7:6). Now, I am not going to talk today about Noah’s age and the ideas that humans were living to about 700 years or so in the days of Noah. Though for what it’s worth, Noah’s generation is the last like it in the Bible, for in the days of Noah, God said the days of humanity will be about 120 years if lucky (6:3). Whether one reads the Bible literally or not, it stands to reason that the job was long-term.

The Taj Mahal in India is a building with about the same cubic capacity as Noah’s Ark. It was designed by a team of eight architects and built by round-the-clock workmen with a 1000 elephants lifting the materials into place about. It took just shy of 20 years to complete. Noah’s architect was God, the plan for the ark being considerably simpler than those for the Taj Mahal, but still, the workers were Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives, and presumably their children as well.

The construction of the ark was hard work, and long-term work. It was also a family project. It was a family project that saved the world, certainly it saved Noah and his family.

We live in a time and culture of entertainment and leisure. Pastor Maiya was telling me about a study she ran across recently indicating that we might be in some trouble as a culture. Our kids are well versed in studying hard, and they know how to play instruments because they take music lessons, and they know some basic sports skills because they’re involved in athletics, and they know how to operate a computer better than most parents, can text messages faster than I can think of them, and certainly they know how to play video games with great skill. But they don’t know how to cook. They don’t know how to clean. They don’t know how to change oil in a car. They don’t know how to do laundry. They don’t know how to work.

I remember in college so many fun stories of different roommates. One, Ted, had a pile of laundry that just began to grow and grow. Finally one day he asked if I could help with the laundry. I said of course. He stuffed his stinky into three pillow cases and followed me to the dorm laundry. Then he asked an unforgettable question. So which one is the washer and which one is the dryer. I wanted to laugh, but it was clear that it would be very embarrassing. He was embarrassed. Another roommate came and reported a fire in the dorm lunch room. We rushed into and discovered not a fire but a charred, stinking, melting mass on the stove. No one could it help that time - the stories became campus legend. He had put a plastic carafe of coffee on the burner to warm it up - he didn’t know you couldn’t heat plastic. NO wonder landlords are hesitant to rent to college students. Just think of the embarrassment these young men could have been saved if mom or dad would have taken time to invest a little time in their lives with service to the family through laundry and cooking or cleaning.

If we are going to build our families into something of an ark, a place of safety against difficulties, then we must as a family learn to work and serve together.

Work is not a bad thing, mom and dad. Work is not a bad thing, kids. In fact, as we see in Noah, it saved the world. In paradise, in the Garden of Eden, when things were hunky and dory and as perfect as possible on planet earth, God instructed Adam and Eve to work in the garden. Work is part of what it means to be human. The Bible tells of Adam and Eve in the garden, and it tells of a time when Adam was alone. Adam was no doubt working hard in the garden, and seeing results – he got to eat. According to Genesis 2:20, Adam had a problem – and I quote scripture, “there was no suitable helper.” The problem is solved through the arrival of Eve, Adam’s wife. In paradise, the model of a healthy marriage and relationship is one of two people who are not just playing together – though play and recreation are important, not just feeling and having warm fuzzies together – though romance is important – but in fact they are working together. They are getting their hands dirty in the earth, pulling weeds, building fences, sowing seeds, removing rocks and doing what it takes to have a healthy crop.

This is the core Biblical model of a healthy relationship. Shared work. Shared production. Shared creativity. I have two favorite Bible verses about Noah. We’ll focus my absolute favorite in a couple of week, Genesis 6:8 – “Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.” But my second favorite is Genesis 5:28 and 29 speaking of Noah’s parents. It’s such an amazingly pragmatic statement, one that every parent gladly grasps and at which every child no doubt shudders.

GE 5:28 When Lamech had lived 182 years, he had a son. 29 He named him Noah and said, "He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the LORD has cursed."

Lamech and his wife were glad to have a son, Noah. Why? Because he will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands. That is, pretty simply, he’ll help us around the farm. We’re going to put this lad to work.

Thank God they did. Had they not, Noah would not have had the work ethic and staying power necessary to build the massive ark. Listen very carefully. Noah may have been willing to build the ark, he may have an idea about how to serve God through building the ark, and his heart would have been in it. But had he never received the training, the hands-on daily grind of actually working, of hammering and pulling weeds, of tending animals, of repairing broken doors then even if he were willing he would not have been ready to do what God needed him to do.

We simply must be in the business of honoring labor, it is necessary, it is godly, it is even a joy, and it must be shared by the whole family.

Marty Rossman, professor of family education at the University of Minnesota, did a long-term study of parenting styles in relation to the success of children as they mature into adults. Her research spans 25 years. Essentially what she did was interview young adults in their twenties, and their parents, and asked questions about what they were doing when 3&4, what they were doing when they were 9&10 and what they were doing when they were 15&16. She determined a successful twenty something as someone who had clear educational goals or were following a clear career path, healthy relationships with peers and family and free from significant addictions.

Here’s what she discovered. The most successful young adults were all people who had been given household chores when they were as young as 3&4. This proved to be one of the most significant factors in success – that is single parents and married families, ethnic and economic backgrounds alike all meant less than whether or not the parents began to include their young children in household duties, in work. After that, there is significant reductions in the level of inner-drive and success for the young adults.

Here’s what Dr. Rossman says, “The key is to start early, if you don't, it backfires. The study showed that when a parent started their children in tasks at ages 9 to 10, or worse, 15 to 16, the children thought that the parent was asking them to do something they didn't want to do. They didn't get the concept of 'we're all in this together.' They were far too self-centered.”

Building family character must, brothers and sisters, include work. Now, with young children of course the tasks are simple and must include encouragement and patience, lots of modeling more than telling. Simple tasks like wiping a table, and taking dishes to the sink, learning to help make a bed, or pick up trash. Helping dad rake leaves, helping mom put dishes into the dishwasher. As kids grow into tweens and into teens, the complexity increases. There is, however, no substitute for work when it comes to building a sense of responsibility, community, self-discipline and an awareness that things don’t just happen by themselves.

Today we have something of a dual focus. We are in the Evan Help Us series, and also today we are looking at global missions. We’ve taken an offering for global missions, and this will benefit greatly those who are on the mission field, particularly the missionary family our church is committed to supporting – Jim and Deb Wilson and their daughter and son. Yeah, this is a missionary family.

Sometimes I think that as parents, as husbands and wives, we believe that asking our family members, our kids and spouses, to participate in working is asking too much. Sometimes, we have no problems with such requests and are overbearing and unrealistic in our expectations. But no matter where we are at, we find that the idea of serving God together rarely comes up. Maybe we go to church together, and then to our separate Sunday school classes or small groups. But there is incredible value in serving God together.

Just as having fun together, as we learned last week, helps build up the strength of a family. So does working together. But nothing, in my opinion, builds a sense of community better than serving God together. It ads particular value to the work, when you see that your joint work together is having a positive impact in some way on the world. God designed us to feel joy when we help others, and to feel joy when we serve God and are in synch with his purposes for our lives. It is not burdensome to serve together, it is joyous. It is effort, it is sacrifice, it is difficult to make the time, but it is worth it. Nothing worthwhile, my dad taught me, is easy.

I’m going to show a video from the movie of Evan Almighty. It shows Evan Baxter, and his family, and a bunch of animals, building the ark. And guess what, they’re having fun! It’s fun to work together in service to God. Not easy, but fun. As the video plays I invite a few families to join me here on the altar, because I want you to see that this is a real possibility for anyone. We can serve God together and enjoy it, and have character built as a result.

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Testimonies from the Albano and Hay families.

            How has your family helped others through your work together?

Is there a memory - a good laugh or a tear shed - you cherish as a family as a result of the work together?

How would you say working together for God as a family has hindered or blessed your family?

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If you are wondering how you might serve together, there are multiple opportunities all the time. Ministry together coming along side a refugee family, working together at a church work day, choosing to adopt a child who may come without an adult and sit with them during church, praying through a short term missionary trip, the youth are planning to organize a mission trip to help a Navajo Bible mission this summer in New Mexico, Evanston soup kitchens, helping together in Sunday School.

You’ll be amazed at how much fun you can have, and how close your family can draw, when you serve together. It’s part of God’s plan for us. Noah and his family served God together. When the flood hit the earth, many were devastated. Noah and his family were saved. When you make a decision to serve together, to work together and in particular to work together in service to God, you will find a cohesion and moral center, a strength of character and shared experience that will enable your family to withstand the storms of culture and time, and even the storms that occasionally arise from within the family itself.