Genesis: The Flood

That was like a we might clap, we might not. Yeah,

well you're not cut on behalf of our staff. I

just want to say thank you for all the ways

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serve you, and even just cards and notes of appreciation

make a difference. So thank you for how you bless us.

My name is Dive. If I haven't met you, if

you're joining us in the room or welcome online, I

would like to introduce you to the hardest message I've

ever written in my entire thirty years of writing messages.

And with that being said, we are going to dive

in no pun intended to the story of the flood,

which is found in Genesis chapters six through nine, which

is a lot of chunk Attechs. So I'm going to

do a lot of big picture narrative here, but I

want to set the setting for you. So you're joining

us in our Genesis series. We're not that far into

Genesis Sis, but we've covered a lot of ground, so

that's going to give you recaps so that if you're

here for the first time, you kind of know where

we're at. So creation is the first thing that happens

We're an infinite, all powerful, eternal, divine creator. God creates

the universe, the Sun, the moon, the stars, the earth,

everything on the earth, including humans, who are the pinnacle

of God's creation. God says that creation is good, in fact,

very good. And then humans are given some guidelines by

God for how they should live, a prescription of sorts

for how to live and flourish in the world that

God has created for them. Within those guidelines are some

important relationships for those humans, their relationship with God, their

relationship with Creation, and their relationship with each other. And

then they're given a choice for how they will operate

in those relationships with God, Creation, and each other. They

could choose to walk with God, they can choose to

cultivate and care for creation, and they can choose to

compliment each other. Or they can choose to reject all

of those things and go their own way. Humans sadly

choose their own way. They disobeyed God's only rule. And

we looked at this a couple of weeks ago, and

so sin enters their story. And sin doesn't just enter

their story, but it hinters the entire human story. God

lovingly meets his humans in their shame He does not

destroy them, crumple them up and throw them away. He

doesn't wipe them out. He meets them in their shame.

But there are consequences for the choice that they have made.

And a few weeks ago we wrestled with, well, why

did God give them a choice at all? Why give

them a choice if he's eternal and divine and he

knows how they're going to choose, why let them mess

up their own story? And what we concluded was that

for it to be love, God has to give it choice. See,

God loves his humans and for them to be able

to love him back, there must be a choice to

love him or to reject him. Things then get worse

when the first human children are introduced to the story

Two Brothers. We know that one brother murders his brother,

so things get really worse. They devolve, and that brother

Cain is the one who murders his brother. And Cain

also is not destroyed, not crumpled up and thrown away. Instead,

he too will suffer consequences, But God meets him in

his sin. Sadly, those his descendants, and you're probably gonna

hear me say the word devolve a lot because his

defendants don't just evolve. Actually, these go straight off of

a cliff, and they are known for their violence and murder.

Last week the master piece of a message by Brandon.

If you miss that, who knew that you could get

so much out of a genealogy with Brandon Tackle Chapter

five of Genesis encourage you to go back and listen

to it. I have this just for our reference. This

is the genealogy the ten generations between the first human

Adam and Noah, whose story we will look at today.

A couple of things we learned though that I want

to point out. One is in Enosh's generation, something noteworthy happens.

His generation becomes as the generation of apostasy. Apostasy is

introduced into the human story, and that is just simply

the complete abandonment of God. And instead of spreading God's goodness,

humans are now spreading evil. And if things weren't bad enough,

buckle up for how they will continue to devolve as

we look at the setting for the story of Noah

found in Genesis chapter six. So if you have your Bible,

go ahead and turn to Genesis chapter six. I'm going

to jump into the story at five. I'm already skipping

the first couple verses of that chapter. We will provide

a podcast this week, and on our What's Next page,

we're gonna have information for portions that I jump over

for sake of time. This morning, I'm gonna read from

the new Living Translation Genesis chapter six. The setting for

Noah's story says, the Lord observed the extent of human

wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they

thought or imagine was consistently and totally evil. So the

Lord was sorry he had ever made them. He was

sorry he ever put them on the earth. It broke

his heart, and the Lord said, I will wipe this

human race I have created from the face of the earth. Yes,

I will destroy every living thing, all the people, the

large animals, the small animals that scree along the ground,

and even the birds of the sky. I'm sorry I

ever made them. But Noah found favor in the Lord.

There's there's no easy way to tackle this narrative, this

section of scripture. Trust me, I spent many hours this

week wrestling with this section. Humans have taken their right

to choose, and they have exercised it to complete and

total human depravity. Even if you're new to church. You

have probably heard of or are familiar with, the story

of Noah and his boat full of animals. Walking our

way through this portion of scripture, though, makes me want

to cover my eyes and just hope that what I

already know is about to happen doesn't actually unfold. It's sad.

So with that heavy statement, would you just bow your

heads with me as we pray and ask God to

help us learn from this God? Right now we we

across this room and watching online and listening in the

weeks to come, we say, would you open our eyes,

not just physically but spiritually metaphorically speaking, Will you help

us to see what we're supposed to see? Would you

open our ears to hear what we're supposed to hear.

Would you open our hearts to be sensitive to what

you are trying to speak into them? Today? Be with

us in your name? Amen. Well, we've already read the setting.

The setting is that human wickedness has spread throughout the

entire earth. Everything that humans thought, everything, the word, everything,

everything they thought, everything they imagined, was consistently and totally evil,

or the NIV says, only evil all the time. This

is not meant to be an exaggeration. This is not

purply this is a description of the complete and total

depravity of the entire human race. Verses eleven and twelve

add more description if that wasn't enough, saying that now

God saw that the earth had become corrupt and filled

with violence, for everyone on Earth was corrupt. The New

English translation says it this way, in the sight of God,

the earth was filled with violence, and God saw the earth,

and indeed it was ruined, for all humankind on the

earth were sinful. Commentators have noted that humans have gone

from having a choice to not exercising any choice at

all by any means to curb any kind of urge

or any kind of impulse at all. There is the

lack of choice for anything good. When we studied Caine's

story a couple weeks ago, God told Cain, sin is

crouching at the door, eager to control you. Caine, you

must subdue it and be its master. And now we

have Eve sin and adamsin and Caine sin that have

gone from being individual people's sin to the sin of

the entire human race. Evil is reproducing. Humans are not

controlling their urges, they're not exercising any form of self

control in any way, and they are doing whatever they want,

whenever they want to whoever they want. This means, and

I want you to catch this as we just complete

this setting. This means it is not just a world

full of violence. It is a world full of victims

because every act of violence that is happening, how the

recipient of that violence. The earth is full of victims

of violence. Let's go back to the genealogy, because for

approximately sixteen hundred years from Adam the first man, to Noah,

whose story we're looking at today, God was patient, patient.

We keep quoting two Peter three to nine, which says

God's not slow in keeping his promise. He's patient because

he doesn't want anyone to perish. He wants all to

have the opportunity to repent. God gave the humans the choice,

but in their right to choose, they have used it

to destroy the world. And I mentioned Enosh, and I

said there were two noteworthy things in this timeline. So Enosh,

that's the generation where apostasy has been enter into the

human story. This is the utter rejection of God. But

the other noteworthy person is Enoch. And Enoch's story is noteworthy.

Two if you study Jewish tradition and ancient rabbis, and

you study outside of the Bible in addition to the Bible,

you will find the picture of Enoch is that he

has some kind of an encounter with God, and Brandon

mentioned this last week. The Book of Jude tells us

that Enoch prophesied to the people of his generation, warning

them of judgment to come. Now. He specifically warns them

of Jesus coming again, though he is hundreds and hundreds

of years before Jesus even comes to begin with. But

he's warning them that judgment is coming. Ancient sources also

tell us that Enoch prophesied that when his own son Methuselah,

whose name means his death, shall bring When his own

son Methuselah dies, judgment would come. So his death shall

bring judgment. And in the year that Metthuselah died is

where the setting of this story happens. Genesis chapter six.

Noah's story is the year Methuselah dies. Yes, God is patient,

I mean, I would propose to you wildly patient. But

God is also just. He cannot ignore evil and violence

and injustice forever. His very nature demands that he intervene.

Genesis chapter six, verse six finishes painting the picture for

us by telling us that humanity has devolved so completely

that God was sorry he had ever made them. He's

sorry he ever put them on the earth. It broke

his heart. Other translations say that God was grieved. God

does not take pleasure in the judgment that is to come. Instead,

we can see that the rampant wickedness unleash my sin

causes him sorrow and grief. Remember, God made the earth

as a place where humanity could flourish within the guidelines

that he gave them. But instead humanity has turned it

into what commentators call quote a theater of violence and disaster.

So with what Scripture calls a broken heart, the time

has come for God to intervene. Yet, even in the

midst of this setting of the depravity, of the wickedness

of the violence, Scripture tells us that one man found

favor with God, that Noah found favor with God. Depending

on your tea, Noah is described as the only righteous man,

or the only blameless man, or the only innocent man

in his entire generation. Jewish tradition holds. And I thought

this was amusing that he was actually nothing special. Jewish

tradition holds that he's only he only stands out if

you put him against the backdrop of the rest of

the world. He's nothing special until you put him against

the backdrop of every human with every thought and every

inclination being always violent and always wicked and evil all

the time. Noah's the only one who does not fit

that description. Is he's also married. He's married, he has

three sons, and his three sons are married, So there

besides him are five people and wait, six seven people?

Is he has a wife and six kids, so seven

people math his family, which does not say a lot

for them. If Noah is the only righteous, blameless person,

if he's the only one not committing violence, if he's

the only one that doesn't fit the category of always

wicked and violent all the time, this is not actually

saying a lot about his family, but they are spared

because of Noah's blamelessness. Genesis six goes on to describe

incredibly detailed instructions. God gives Noah to build a boat.

God says he will bring to Noah all the animals

that Noah is to preserve. Noah is then to load

those animals onto the boat. He's to load his wife,

his six kids onto the boat, and all the food

that is needed to keep all of those people alive,

because Genesis six seventeen tells us everything that breathes on

the earth will die. What you may not know is

that it took Noah approximately one hundred to one hundred

and twenty years to build that boat, and throughout that

time one Peter three point twenty tells us that God

waited patiently. Now, I think on the surface level, it's

pretty obvious God had to wait patiently for Noah to

build this monstrosity of a boat. But there's a deeper

implication there that God waited patiently because the implication is

that Noah continued to warn the people he encountered. For

one hundred to one hundred and twenty years, he warned people,

He pled with people that judgment was coming. It might

have been a judgment, a form of judgment that they

didn't even understand, but they would be clear on the

fact that judgment was coming. For one hundred years, Noah warned,

and God was patient. And do you know that not

one person repented. Every heart remained hard, every thought remain

fixated on violence and evil. Not one person turned from

their sin or their wickedness and turned to God. Not one,

and so tragically, Chapters seven and eight describe the violent

end to all living things on Earth. Scripture tells us

that underground waters erupted, that torrential rain fell from the

sky for forty days and forty nights. I watched the

documentary a couple weeks ago. Which documentary it might be

the wrong term because they weren't around when this happened,

but it was a group of scientists who were explaining

evidences of the flood on the earth, and the biblical

view of the flood and what would have happened. You

probably have heard at some point before, but if you haven't,

the biblical worldview actually says that the continents were all

one big continent at one time and that they broke

apart in what would have been a very violent breaking apart,

which would be attributed to this time period. And I

don't that was new for me to kind of think about,

because I think I always just thought of this story

as the continents I don't know, nicely breaking apart, if

there's such a thing, but this is a violent action.

The earth is shattering into pieces as water is erupting

from the deep. Mountain ranges are formed by the breaking

and the bending of the continents. The rain is torrential.

Consider how awful and traumatizing it would be for those

few people on the boat as they hear the screams

of the people outside of the boat, who are no

doubt begging to be let inside the boat to be rescued.

The population of the entire earth, everything that breathes, people

who are at work, people who are getting married, people

who are making breakfast, people who are going to school,

people who are doing chores, just doing daily life, are

swept up in this violent eruption of water, as just

one family floats on the top of it, probably holding

their ears and probably holding each other. And Genesis seven

nineteen tells us that finally the water covered even the

highest mountains on the Earth, twenty two feet above the

highest peaks, and the result was everything, everything, everything, everything

that breathed died. Every living thing was destroyed except Noah,

his family, and the animals on that boat. A few

other things we know from chapters seven to eight are

that the floodwaters covered the earth for one hundred and

fifty days, And after those one hundred and fifty days,

scripture says that God sent a wind to begin to

blow the water's back for one hundred and fifty days

for the water to recede, and all total, Noah and

his family and the animals were in the boat for

just over one year. Wasn't this nice of Brandon to

assign me this passage of scripture? What do we do

with that? Well, first we have to finish, I think

the narrative portion what happened. What happened after everything, everything,

everything died except Noah and his family and the animals

on the boat. Well, eventually all the water subsided, the

boat came to rest on dry ground, and for the

first time in over a year, Noah and his family

and the animals got to walk out onto dry dirt

or mostly dry dirt. And the first thing Noah does

is build an altar to the Lord, which feels appropriate.

He builds an altar to the Lord, and he makes

a sacrifice. And then scripture says that God was pleased

with this, and that he gives a promise and some instructions,

some rules, And because this is such a heavy passage

of scripture, I'm just going to be lighthearted for a second,

because we have to remember the backdrop against all of this,

that this is all in front of. I don't know

about you, but a lot of times when I make rules,

it's because somebody has done something really dumb, and now

we need to make a rule about that dumb thing.

And that's pretty true across society. When Brandon and I

were youth pastors many years ago, we had a rule,

no joke, if you were one of our youth leaders,

you had to sign a contract that said I will

not drive with students in the trunk of my car.

Why do you think we had that rule. Nobody was harmed,

but we made a rule because somebody had done something dumb.

And we've gone from the garden where the rule was

don't eat the fruit from that one tree, to now

we have two specific rules. One that says don't eat

animals with life blood still in them, which means treat

animals humanely. There isn't refrigeration at this point in time,

and so there is a practice that is known in

history where people would remove a limb of an animal

in order to eat it, but leave the animal alive

so that the rest of the animal, the tissue doesn't decay,

and you have food for a later meal, which is

incredibly inhumane. Remember the backdrop. We don't know, We don't

know if that specifically was happening, but it feels like

a pretty specific rule for a pretty specific reason. And

the other one is do not murder. And we know

that is the story of these people, evil wicked, violent behavior.

So God says, all life is precious and all life

belongs to me. So you will treat all life with

the respect I'm asking you to treat it with. And

I will promise. God says not to flood the earth again.

And the symbol of that promise is the rainbow in

the clouds. Did you know that most people when they

think of the story of Noah and his arc, don't

think of the fluffy animals and the rainbow. Most people

when they think of Noah and his arc, they think

that God was really really mad, and because he was

really really mad, he took out his anger or his

wrath on the whole world, destroying every everything. But did

you notice that he is never described as angry in

this story. He's only described as full of grief and

broken hearted. There is definitely judgment. To be clear, this

is a story of judgment. There is a limit. There

is a limit to God's patience. There is a limit

to how long he will tolerate evil. There's a limit

to how long he will tolerate injustice. But I want

to point out what might surprise you here too, and

that is that there is hope in this story as well.

I mean maybe you're thinking, I hope, so how maybe

you're thinking how how is there hope in this story?

The story is terrible? How are you going to end this? Surface?

There was one righteous man, one righteous man, one blameless,

innocent man. And though God's justice require judgment for an

entirely wicked and violent human people, God did not destroy

Noah and his family catch this. Their preservation was the

hope for the future. It is through this family that

God can rebuild, start over, start fresh, and bring order

and human flourishing back to the story. If they'll follow

the guidelines that God has given them. Through Noah and

his family, God could start again. And so today we consider, like, well,

what do we do with that this morning? What do

we learn from this? Because we can see that we

too live in this world. We live in this world.

We're not to the point where every thought of every

person is violent and wicked all the time. But we

can see the trajector to read downward, can't we We

live in this world. We live in the world where

we see violence, where we see sexual violence, where we

see trafficking, where we see exploitation, where we know stories

of torture and sadism and absolute pure evil. And we

can't help but wonder, why, God, Why haven't you acted,

Why don't you do something? Why don't you intervene? Why

don't you stop it? Where's the justice? And I think

embedded in this story of the flood are two messages

for us this morning. Message number one and I already

mentioned it, but it's the surprising one, and that is

that there's a message of hope embedded in this story.

We too are living in this age of wickedness and depravity,

but we also live in the age of God's great patience.

He's waiting for us, just like he was waiting then.

He's waiting for us to turn away from sin and

away from wickedness and away from depravity and turn to him.

There's also hope in the fact that God keeps his

promises he will bring justice, he will right every wrong.

And I just have to insert here if you're a

believer in this place, if you believe that Jesus Christ

is your savior, if you believe that God is the Creator,

that he has a future for you, that you can

be in relationship with him. In there, we must believe

that God is just, because if he's not just, if

he doesn't make all things right in the end, we

will feel compelled to be vigilantes and make it everything

right ourselves, every unjust thing that happens to us or

to someone else we love. We're gonna feel compelled to

go and make right. But we can refrain if we

know it will all be made right in the end

because God is just, so we take hope that we

have the opportunity to turn because God is patient. We

also take hope in the fact that God is just

and all things will be made right at their proper time.

The other message is a message of warning. If we

go back to Enoch's prophecy and Jude, it says, listen,

the Lord is coming with countless thousands of his holy

ones to execute judgment on the people of the world.

He will convict every person, of every ungodly thing they

have done. There's a pleading here, just like Noah pled

with the people to listen and take the opportunity to turn,

there's a pleading. There's also a question that hangs over this.

Will there ever be judgment? And the answer is yes.

It won't be by a flood, because that was God's promise,

but there will be judgment. God's patience does have a

time limit on it, and even while our world's swells

with wickedness, we still have the opportunity to turn. See

the messages of hope that God is being patient, and

there's a warning in here that he won't always be.

And today, right now, this morning, this is our opportunity

to heed the warning and take the hope, which is

if I turn to God, he will forgive, he will

wipe clean. He's already sent Jesus to pay the price.

Spoiler alert that's coming. I'm gonna ask you if you

would bout your heads. We're gonna close in prayer in

a second. But in that message of hope, there's this man.

I really hope that the people in the story in

the next chapter learned and that they're gonna have fully

turned from wickedness and fully turned to the Lord and

be faithful, and morgan to preach the next message where

they don't and we relate. We relate. Maybe God gets

your attention somehow, and then you say some promise like God,

I promise feed me out of this. I'll serve you

and I'll follow you. And we struggle. We may not

be as wicked, but we are certainly not clean. We

have to look inside. It's like Isaiah when he says,

woe to me, I'm so unclean. That's the reality of

what's on the inside of us without the work of Jesus.

And you might be in this room, and I'm just

going to add this before I pray. You might be

in this room and you are the recipient of injustice,

injustice or violence or some kind of thing that you're

waiting for God to make right in some way or other.

And you might have to make the choice this morning

to let that go and let God make it right

in his time. Wherever we're at this morning, the promise

is if we will turn to God, he will forgive.

So all across this room, I'm gonna close us in prayer,

and I'm gonna leave us hanging in this tension where

we pick up the story next week and hope and

cross our fingers that the people will figure it out.

But we have the option to walk it out right now.

So God, right now across this room, we're not just

bowing our heads, were bowing our hearts before you. You

know the heart, the mind, the thoughts, the actions of

every person that can hear my voice. Right now, you

already know. And when we hear that, we might think,

whoe to me, I am so unclean and so God,

all we can do is turn to you in the

hope that you've been patient and that you will forgive.

And so right now across this room, it's just the

simple as saying, God, would you forgive me? I can't

be clean on my own. I can't walk out perfection

and you never expected me to. So I receive the

work of Jesus that he paid the price for my sin,

so I can be right with you. God. We turn.

I turn from wickedness. I turn from all the evil

I choose in my life. We turn from evil. We

turn to you. We say, God, would you make us clean?

And write before you send your name, we pray Amen.