Latest / Pillar Church | Holland, MI | Sermon Podcast / September 13, 2026 | Jon Brown

Transcript

September 13, 2026 | Jon Brown · Pillar Church | Holland, MI | Sermon Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord be with you.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm John, one of the pastors here.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: What a gift to celebrate on this stunningly gorgeous Sunday morning.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Even had to close the blinds.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Let's enjoy it for as long as we possibly can.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: We've been gathering this morning around these words from Colossians.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: In Christ, all things hold together.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: In part because we're celebrating the 15th anniversary of Pillar's re-establishment, but mostly it's we're we're out on the lawn, we're partying, there's New Holland food and beard and the gal and all that sort of goodness conversation.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Mostly it's an embodied prayer.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Please hold us together, Christ.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Hold us together.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's these pushes and pulls driving us apart from each other, even from our own selves, and certainly from God.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't know if you like been paying attention.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think this is news.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's not breaking news.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's we just have this proclivity to pull away.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And and really actually to keep away.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's been that way.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's not new to us.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't make it up.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's not since like social media.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's probably not helping, but you know, it's uh it's been happening for a long time.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: So here here's what I was thinking.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to listen to one of our early stories.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: One of the early stories of of the fracture and the and the and the pushing and the pulling and the it's kind of a hard story.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you get up and go, I'll I'll I get it.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you're able to hang in long enough, just sort of a couple things I want to show you.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And every inclination of their hearts was only evil continually.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And God was sorry that he made humans on the earth.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it grieved him to his heart.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And God said, I will blot out the humans that I made on the earth.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: The people, together with animals and the creeping things of the ground and the birds of the air, and for I'm sorry that I made them.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: These are the descendants of Noah.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Noah walked with God.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the earth was filled with violence.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And God saw that the earth was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways on the earth.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And God said to Noah, I have determined to put an end to all flesh.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: For the earth is filled with violence because of them.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: I will destroy all flesh along with the earth.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Make yourself an ark of cypress wood.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Make rooms in the ark.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Finish it with pitch on the inside and on the out.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is how you are to make the ark.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: The ark will be three hundred cubits in length and fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Make a roof over the ark and finish it to a cubit above.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Put the door of the ark in its side, make a lower, second, and third deck.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: As for my part, I will bring a flood of water on the earth.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: And will destroy everything under heaven, in which is the breath of life.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Everything on the earth shall die.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I will make my covenant with you, and you shall go into the ark.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: You and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: You shall bring with you two of every kind of living thing on the earth.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: They shall go in with you into the ark to keep them alive with you.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: They shall be male and female, the birds according to their kind, and the creeping things of the ground according to their kind, and the animals according to their kind.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: They shall go into the ark with you to keep them alive with you.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: You shall bring every food that is eaten and store it up, and it shall be as food for you and for them.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Noah did this.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Noah did everything the Lord had commanded him.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is the word of the Lord.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks be to God.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's Genesis 6, at least, most of it.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you wanted to find, if you dare, find it.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: The story goes on, you may have heard the rains do fall.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the flood does rise.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the ark does float.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And humanity is restored.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: We don't get any details about the dying.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's left to our imagination, so a bunch of us fill in the blanks.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot to make of Genesis 6, and if you kept going 7, 8, and 9, it just keeps going.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: I would like for our part, because we got a party on the lawn, I'd like just a couple things.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Does that sound okay?
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Something about God and something about Noah.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: How's that for creativity?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start with Noah because he seems like such a likable guy.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what a good guy.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Noah walked with God.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: What a good guy.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Stands out really from the rest of the whole world.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: It seems like corruption and wickedness and violence.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the words used to describe humankind on the face of the earth.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: We ask questions about this story.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: How could God do that?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody ask?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: How could we do that?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: How could we do that?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: How come we do that?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: We keep doing that.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we they're good questions to ask.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Don't get me wrong.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to dismiss them.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just not wanting to let ourselves off the hook.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: How could we do that?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Wickedness, violence, corruption, and it just keeps going.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Violence?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Wars, rage, bombs explode, people die.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: How can we do that?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Wickedness?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Our children are commodities for advertising agencies and social media praise on the longings of their hearts.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: How could we do this?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Corruption?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Find me an organization, an institution that hasn't been thwarted by some version of its own sickness.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: How could we do that?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Noah, his name means rest.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you know that.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Which, you know, like we have to do some translating work then.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: So like Noah found favor with God, but when they heard it, they would have heard rest found favor with God.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Rest was righteous before God.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Rest was blameless in his generation.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Rest walked with God.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's as if, amidst the flurry and the chaos and the pain and the heartache and the hurt and all of it, the corruption, the violence, the wickedness, amidst all of the stories promising, something else is gonna happen, something else is gonna take place.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Rest.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Rest.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you wonder, how did he do it?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how do you do it in a world swirling with chaos?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: How did he do it?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: The only verb with Noah as its subject in Genesis 6 is this verb walked.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Noah walked with God.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Amidst the swirling realities of our world, Noah walked with God.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: But there's so much to do and so much to fix, and I gotta work harder and do better and be more so that somehow it will go better.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Noah rest walked with God.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: What if that's the invitation of Genesis 6?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Amidst the swirling world with all of its chaos, slow down.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Open space.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Be with God.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Christian faith has agreed for centuries, the way to do that, you do have to make space.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: I know you're so busy.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you you have to open your Bible and you pray and you do it with other people.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of the, those are the ingredients.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: However, you want to work that out, that's kind of how it happens.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: You slow down, you make space, you open the Bible, you say prayers, and you do it with other people.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Walk with God.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: I've been, I read this article in the Atlantic, David Brooks.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: He's talking about AI.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: I want to balloon it even larger.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: AI is a moral revaluation.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: It assumes that what matters is the output, not the ordeal, the image, not the seeing, the product, not the person becoming capable of making it.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then he goes on.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: The general pattern that the research points to is that many people don't use the time they save using AI to do less.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: They use the time to take on new tasks.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: AI also seems to shift workers' expectations and their bosses' expectations about how much they should accomplish in a day.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Every hour feels more crowded, but also more frazzled.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: We have this need to fix it, to manage it, to control it, to make it, it's all swirling out there.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's chaotic and corrupt, and we gotta do more and be better all the while.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: What if the invitation is to slow down, walk with God?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Are you with me?
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Noah had some other things to do too.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: He had a family.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Bunch of chaos out there.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: He he needed to.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Walked with God.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe rest is less a description of a circumstance and more a condition of the heart.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Something about God.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: What what do you what do you make of God in this Genesis 6 story?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord said, I will blot out from the earth the humans I have created.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: And God said to know, I'm determined to make an end of all flesh.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: The earth is filled with violence because of what do you what do you make of this?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean maybe we could like kind of skip it.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Get into the other parts of the Old Testament?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: What do you do?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things I learned about preaching a long time ago is you kind of gotta stick with what it says.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know what it says about God?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: He was sorry.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: It grieved his heart.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know what else to do except map onto God some sort of vicious, angry deity.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: It says he was sad.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't the way I want it to be.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't the way I want it to be.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Violence, wickedness, corruption, it's it's not what I made us for.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the way I want it to go.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's not how it's supposed to be.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: It grieved God's heart.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: This whole Genesis 6 story, it leaves you aching for something more, something different.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Promise me the rainbow in the sky is not some sort of antiquated symbol that maybe you won't smite us again.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Promise me the ark.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't just a little protection for a nice little family while the rest of the world suffers.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Promise me the two by two walking into the ark.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't just a little song we can sing to keep our kids from the horrible realities of the story.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't it leaves us wanting more.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: It leaves us begging for surely there's something more.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: It grieved God's heart.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Genesis 6 is a part of the book of Genesis.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm glad I could let you know.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: The book of Genesis is a part of the Old Testament, if you weren't aware.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: The Old Testament, paired with the New Testament, makes up the whole Bible, a revelation of God's heart for the whole world.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the whole the hero of the story, if you aren't aware, is Jesus Christ.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: The thing this story leaves us aching for, looking for, longing for, is the one whose heart was so broken.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: He entered into the world in Jesus Christ to take on the corruption and the violence and the wickedness of the whole human race and all of human history.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: He took it on himself, took it with him to the cross where he died and said, forgive them.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: He went to the grave to defeat sin and death and rose up in resurrection.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: The thing we long for more most is Jesus Christ.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Rest.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Come to me and I'll give you rest, he says.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Kosuke Koyama wrote a book titled Three Mile an Hour God.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: God walks slowly because he is love.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: If he's not love, he would have gone much faster.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Love has its speed.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's an inner speed.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's a spiritual speed.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we're accustomed.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: It goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice or not, at three miles an hour.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's the speed we walk, and therefore the speed the love of God walks.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: God, Noah walked with God.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: The good news is Jesus walks with us.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus walks with us through the realities of our lives and our world until one day all things will be made new.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's the speed of love.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's the speed the love of God walks in Jesus Christ.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: So you're a middle-aged parent and your kid's a long way from home, and I'm not talking about your address.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus walks with you.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: So you got the diagnosis this week and it's not good.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus walks with you.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Teenager, high school student, we ask so much of you.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: We've given you way more than you were ever meant to handle.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus walks with you.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: So whatever else is swirling in the world that may go unnamed this morning, but you're carrying right here.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus walks with you.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's the story of the gospel.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: This thing that leaves us longing for more is Jesus Christ, the speed of love.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: God in the flesh, but God still.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: God walks with us.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.