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[0:00] The scripture reading is taken from Genesis chapter 6 verse 9 and Genesis chapter 7 verses 1 through 48.

[0:11] ! These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. Then the Lord said to Noah, go into the ark, you and all your household.

[0:28] For I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens, also male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth.

[0:56] For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.

[1:11] And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him. Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth.

[1:22] And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons, wives with him, went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood. Of clean animals and of clean animals and of animals that are not clean and of birds and of everything that creeps on the ground, two and a two, male and a female, went into the ark with Noah as God had commanded Noah.

[1:50] And after seven days, the waters of the flood came upon the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, and on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened, and rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.

[2:21] On the very same day Noah and his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them entered the ark, and every beast according to its kind, and all the livestock according to their kinds, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth according to its kind, and every bird according to its kind, every winged creature.

[2:50] They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh, in which there was the breath of life. And those that entered, male and female, of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him.

[3:07] And the Lord shut him in. The flood continued forty days on the earth. The waters increased and bore up on the ark, and it rose high above the earth.

[3:21] The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered.

[3:37] The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. And all flesh died that moved on the earth.

[3:49] Birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind. Everything on the dry land, in whose nostrils was breath of life, died.

[4:06] He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground. Man and animals and creeping things, and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth.

[4:19] Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed on the earth one hundred and fifty days. Thank you, Rose.

[4:32] If you keep your place there in Genesis. If you'd go back to Genesis chapter 6. I want to read some additional verses. Starting in verse 10.

[4:46] And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The earth was corrupt in God's sight.

[4:58] The earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt. For all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.

[5:09] And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh. For the earth is filled with violence through them.

[5:22] Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make for yourself, make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark and cover it inside and out with pitch.

[5:39] This is how you are to make it. The length of the ark, three hundred cubits. Its breadth, fifty cubits. And its height, thirty cubits. Make a roof for the ark.

[5:52] And finish it to a cubit above. And set the door of the ark in its side. Make it with lower, second, and third decks.

[6:04] For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh, in which is the breath of life under heaven.

[6:16] Everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you. And you shall come into the ark. You, your sons, and your wife, and your sons' wives with you.

[6:31] And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you.

[6:44] They shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds. Of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive.

[7:04] And also take with you every sort of food that is eaten, and store it up. It shall serve as food for you and for them.

[7:16] Nor did this. He did all that God commanded him. Well, this morning we are resuming our sermon series in the book of Genesis, and we took a nine-week break leading into Christmas and into January, and now we're picking up where we left off last time.

[7:42] And some of you may remember the last time we were in Genesis, Brother Linden preached, and he preached Genesis 6, 1 through 8. And as we were thinking about resuming again, well, you know that he preached last Sunday, and he initially said, you know, I'm thinking I'll just continue with the flood account.

[8:07] And I was pretty relieved because this is not an easy passage. It's a long passage, and it has a lot of things going on in it, and so when he shared with me that he was going to preach it, man, I started to pray for him and, you know, just to encourage him in his preparation.

[8:25] And then a couple of days later, he got in touch with me and said, you know what, I'm not going to preach that anymore. He said, I think the Lord made something else on my heart. So I turned my prayers for him to prayers for me.

[8:37] And I told him, I said, man, I'm praying harder for myself than I prayed for you. Not an easy passage at all. But the truth is, whenever we open God's Word, we need God's help.

[8:54] We need God's help, whether the passage seems difficult or easy, and we need God's help both to proclaim it and to hear it. So let's take a moment to look to the Lord.

[9:06] Father, we bow our hearts this morning, and we acknowledge our need for you. Lord, I need you to proclaim your Word faithfully, and we all need you to hear as we should.

[9:18] Would you grant us grace to do that, Lord, for me to preach and for all of us to hear what you would say to us. And God, we pray that you would use the preaching of your Word for the good of this church and for the glory of your great name.

[9:36] In Christ's name we pray. Amen. In this passage that we have read this morning, we have this lengthy account of the flood, a worldwide flood of judgment that destroyed everyone and everything except eight persons and the living creatures that ran into the ark was Noah.

[10:00] Yet the flood is one of the most disputed parts of the Bible. The people who dismiss it as myth and fable. But brothers and sisters, I remind us this morning that this is God's Word.

[10:16] This is God's holy and errant Word. This is as true as John 3.16. And if you believe otherwise, it's not my job to convince you.

[10:28] That's the Spirit's job. He convicts of truth. He alone does that. And so if you doubt the truthfulness of this account this morning, I encourage you to pray and seek the Spirit's help.

[10:45] If you believe this account, but you may have questions about aspects of it, as I've been doing through the series in Genesis, I want to commend again to you answersingenesis.org.

[11:00] It is a wonderful website that is well-resourced with very qualified Bible scholars, and they have taken God's Word seriously, and they have taken the time to answer these questions, common questions, that people have surrounding the flood.

[11:18] There's a trove of wonderful resources there. And so, for example, questions like, was the flood global, or was it just local in one area? Or where did all the floodwaters go?

[11:32] Or how long did it take no other to build the ark? Or what was the pre-flood population like? How many people were there who died in the flood? These are really good questions.

[11:44] They are answered with thoughtfulness, even where you cannot put precise numbers on it. There's a thoughtful approach to how these questions may be answered from the biblical text that we have.

[11:59] So I commend answers in Genesis to you this morning if you have those kinds of questions about the flood. But I must confess that as I approached this task of preaching from this passage, I initially struggled with how to approach it, how best to preach this in a way that's helpful for us.

[12:25] But by the grace of God, I began to be reminded that we should approach every scripture in the same way when we come to preach it.

[12:38] And we approach it by asking a very important question. The most important question that we can ask when we begin to consider a passage is why is this passage in our Bible?

[12:54] Why is this account of the flood in our Bibles? Why did God cause this to be in our Bibles? What did the divine author have in mind when he moved upon Moses, the human author, to pen these words, to take the time, to write out this account of the flood?

[13:16] Why did God do that? And I think in getting to the answer of that question, it's helpful to be reminded again of the purpose of the book of Genesis.

[13:35] And some of you may remember as we worked our way through Genesis in different sermons, this was shared to remind us that Genesis has a purpose in our Bibles. And we want to approach it with that purpose and not other purposes in mind.

[13:50] It's not designed to answer every single question that comes to our mind, but it is designed to function for us in the way that God intended it to function for all of his people. And what we shared, and hopefully some of you at least would remember this, is that the purpose of the book of Genesis is that it gives us a trustworthy account of creation and the world in which we live, and it reveals God the Creator and makes the foundational argument that it is good, right, and logical for those whom he created and placed in his world to love him, obey him, and worship him.

[14:34] That's the whole purpose of the book of Genesis, to give us this argument, to reveal God to us, the one who created everyone and everything that we see, and to show us that it is good, right, and logical to serve him in his world.

[14:54] And the account of the flood keeps with that purpose. And so this is our starting point for how we are to understand the world and learn how we are to live in it and relate to God.

[15:11] The book of Genesis provides that for us. So when we come to the flood, the point of the flood is not simply to teach us about the flood. Instead, the point of the flood is to teach us about God and how he dealt with sin that it so filled and corrupted the earth that it called for his judgment upon the earth and upon those living in it.

[15:36] The flood, brothers and sisters, is about God. It's not about rabbit trails that we could run down through. It is about God.

[15:47] And what we see is that in the flood, God demonstrates his justice and mercy to sinners. And he vindicates his wisdom and goodness in creation.

[16:08] This is the point that we must not allow all the other interesting questions and observations about the flood to cause us to miss. We don't want to miss the truth that in this account, God demonstrates his justice and mercy to sinners.

[16:25] And he vindicates his wisdom and goodness in creation. And so as we consider this lengthy passage this morning, I want us to direct our attention to how the account of the flood reveals these two things.

[16:40] Number one, God's justice and mercy to sinners. And number two, God's wisdom and goodness in creation. Let's consider each of these in turn.

[16:51] First, God's justice and mercy to sinners. I should point out to us this morning that Genesis 6-9 signals to us a new section in the book of Genesis with these words, these are the generations of Noah.

[17:10] This is the third time that we would encounter these similar words. The last time we saw them was in Genesis 5-1, which starts, this is the book of the generations of Adam.

[17:23] And so we come now to the end of this section. It ends, the generation of Adam ends, and it begins with now the generation of Noah.

[17:36] The generation of Adam ends with the creation. creation, that ends the creation segment, and now we come to what we call de-creation.

[17:47] And that's what happens with Noah. In the flood, God de-created the earth that he had created. And so this section with Noah begins, a new section in the book.

[18:00] God destroyed everyone and everything except eight persons and the living creatures and the ark. And so why did the earth move from creation to de-creation?

[18:14] Why did that happen? Well, we're told in Genesis 6, verses 11 and 13. Look at them again. Look at those verses again. Genesis 6, 11 to 13.

[18:27] Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence, and God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt. And for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.

[18:40] And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh. For the earth is filled with violence through them.

[18:51] Behold, I will destroy them through the earth. And we saw the early seeds of this corruption and violence in Genesis 4 when Cain in cold blood murdered his brother and thought nothing of it.

[19:08] We saw it in Lamech and his murder of a man who simply hit him. And he boasted about his murder in a poem that he wrote saying that he was justified in what he did and if God was going to avenge those who retaliated against Cain sevenfold, he said, well, God should avenge anyone who retaliates against me seventy-sevenfold.

[19:36] And we don't have more details about violence like that, but we see the summary repeated again and again in Genesis 6. We saw it when Brother Lyndon preached Genesis 6, 1 through 8, and we're seeing it again.

[19:49] Repeatedly, the Lord talks about the violence, about the corruption that was filling the earth. And the corruption and the violence that filled the earth demonstrated a total disregard for God because this violence and this corruption that was taking place was largely manifested against the image bearers of God.

[20:22] And this is why it was so egregious what was happening. This was not mistreating animals, this was mistreating those who were born, those who were created in the image and in the likeness of God.

[20:35] And so we come to these sobering words in verse 13 that is an assessment on the moral state of the earth. God utters these sober and resolute words.

[20:47] I have determined to make an end of all flesh for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them through the earth.

[21:03] Brothers and sisters, we should not pass over these words lightly and quickly. Some people recall the idea of God deciding to kill the entire mass of humanity except eight people.

[21:19] Some people find that repulsive. Doesn't sit well with them. But let's think about that. The way God created us, all of us this morning, to one degree or another, have a sense of justice.

[21:39] There's something in us that hates to see people get away when they do wrong. and when they get caught, there's something in us that hates to see them just get slapped on the wrist.

[21:53] Oftentimes, we listen to the news and we hear sentences that are given to people who committed heinous crimes and they get slapped on the wrist. There's something in us that revolts against that and say, that's wrong.

[22:07] Now, if we're that way, let's think about God who is perfectly holy and perfectly just in all of his ways and there's no gap in his knowledge.

[22:21] No gap at all. He knows more perfectly than those who actually do particular things. So he's no human judge.

[22:33] He's no judge who just judges by outward appearance. He judges the very intent of the heart. And so, brothers and sisters, if we accept that God is perfectly holy and therefore cannot overlook sin and perfectly just and therefore must punish sin exactly as sin must be punished, nothing more, nothing less, then we must conclude that God's judgment in the flood and the destruction that it brought to the people on the earth are holy and just and right punishment that he meted out.

[23:19] God was not on a rage where he lost his temper and was just fed up one day and then regretted that he did what he did. No, he determined.

[23:29] God was not talking about it this morning because I don't think that's the big part of the text but we see God's patience in all of this. That he would even allow humanity to get to the place where there was such violence and such corruption that pervaded human existence at the time.

[23:50] God took a thoughtful measured just position that he was going to destroy humanity on the earth except for the eight persons that he chose to spare.

[24:13] brothers and sisters the flood demonstrates God's judgment and justice meted out to sinners.

[24:32] We should allow it to really affect our hearts to consider how God sees sin and he must see sin that way because he's perfectly holy.

[24:42] we don't see it that way because we are unholy. There's a big gap between us and God and we'll let things slide because we are not perfect but God cannot let things slide because he is holy and he's also just.

[25:01] Look again at Genesis 7, 11 to 12 and consider the severity of the judgment that came through the flood.

[25:12] we read in the 600th year of Noah's life in the second month on the 17th day of the month on the day all the fountains of the great deep burst on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth and the windows of heaven were open and rain fell upon the earth for 40 days and 40 nights.

[25:39] earth. We had a lot of rain last night. We had a lot of rain yesterday. That was just some rain coming down for a few hours.

[25:50] Imagine this description. The God who controls the windows of heaven. The God who controls the fountains of the deep. They burst forth and they poured out rain on the earth.

[26:06] So it was coming from underneath the earth and it was coming from above the earth, from the heavens, and it persisted for 40 days.

[26:22] Now the earth once again became a watery waste as it was at the beginning of creation in Genesis 1. And through the flood, God brought about a state of decreation as a part of his judgment.

[26:41] Look at Genesis 7, 21 through 23, that gives the summary effect of the flood of judgment that God brought. It says, and all flesh died that moved on the earth.

[26:55] Birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth and all mankind. Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life.

[27:12] He blotted out everything that was on the face of the ground. Man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens.

[27:25] they were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left and those who were with him in the earth.

[27:36] Again, brothers and sisters, the flood demonstrates God's justice to sinners. But it demonstrates not only God's justice to those who died, it demonstrates his justice to us as well.

[27:53] It reminds us that the wages of sin is death. It reminds us that the wages of rebelling against God in his world is death. And anything else would be a slap on the wrist.

[28:05] If God did anything else other than what he did in bringing judgment for sin, he'd be no better than the judge who sits and slaps the person on the wrist for some crime that they committed.

[28:29] Another aspect of God's judgment that the flood teaches about is the coming judgment that many people today scoff at.

[28:43] Listen to the words of the apostle Peter as he reminds us and warns us of the coming judgment which he likens to the flood. In 2 Peter 3 verses 1 to 7, he writes, this is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved.

[29:01] In both of them, I am stirring up your sincere mind, by way of reminder. That you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles.

[29:15] Knowing this, first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing following their own sinful desires. They will say, where is the promise of his coming?

[29:31] Ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things were continuing as they were from the beginning of creation. For they deliberately overlooked the fact that the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.

[29:57] By the same word, the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

[30:11] Brothers and sisters, these are sobering words. The flood reminds us that God is just and that he punishes sin justly.

[30:23] And the flood points forward to a coming day of judgment and destruction of all the ungodly. And how can it be otherwise? Why should it be otherwise?

[30:35] How can it be that God destroyed the ungodly in the flood of Noah's day and that he will not destroy the ungodly on the coming day of judgment?

[30:50] God justly punished it in Noah's day and he will justly punish it on the final day. God is just and therefore he must in justice punish sin.

[31:07] But at the same time that the flood demonstrates God's justice to sinners, it also demonstrates God's grace to sinners. In Genesis 6-8 we are told that Noah found grace or favor in the eyes of the Lord.

[31:29] Noah is commended in Genesis 6-9 with these words, Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation, Noah walked with God.

[31:42] Now it's easy to miss something that is very important about Noah. Noah certainly stood out in his generation, he was a righteous man, he's described as a blameless man.

[31:59] But as noble as these descriptions are, they did not mean that Noah was a perfect man. Noah was not a perfect man without sin before God.

[32:09] As a matter of fact, as the account continues, as the narrative continues, we're going to see in a few weeks in chapter 9 that Noah lacked such self-control that he drank alcohol, got drunk and laid naked in his tent and one of his sons wrongly exposed his nakedness to his two brothers.

[32:36] When Noah found out in a rage, he cursed his son for doing that. Friends, Noah was a noble man in his generation, but Noah was not a perfect man.

[32:47] as a matter of fact, if Noah was a perfect man, he would not need grace. Noah would not need to find grace if he were a perfect man.

[33:02] The reason Noah found grace is Noah needed grace. And we shouldn't think for a moment that Noah was the most innocent person in his generation.

[33:15] Brothers and sisters, babies died in the flood. The Bible tells us that life was going on. Jesus himself said it.

[33:26] He said in the days of Noah, they were marrying and giving in to marriage. They were continuing to live life just as normal. Babies were being born. And it's not far-fetched to think that there were others like Noah, certainly not in a widespread way, grace.

[33:48] But there's nothing in the text that should cause us to think that Noah was the only single person who had any kind of a description where he could be described as blameless.

[33:59] And again, I come back to the fundamental point that even babies died in the flood. God's blood. So it wasn't Noah's noble character that merited him being spared.

[34:14] If that were the case, then what Noah received was not grace. What Noah received was reward. Noah's noble character did not merit that he should be spared from the judgment.

[34:34] In fact, Noah deserved to be judged as well. Noah did not deserve to be spared, but Noah was spared for one reason. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

[34:50] God's decision to spare Noah and his family is a reminder that God has mercy on whom he chooses to have mercy, and that's the only reason that anyone gets mercy.

[35:05] If Noah found merit within himself as to why he was spared, he could boast, and he had a lot to boast about when you consider the destruction of the flood.

[35:17] But Noah was spared for the sheer mercy of God. In the flood, the sovereign God, who is both just and merciful, chose to give justice to some, those who perished, and grace to others, Noah and his family.

[35:40] And, brothers and sisters, it remains the case today. Salvation is all of grace. those of us who have come to Christ, those of us who are trusting in Christ, we should not think for a split second that we are because we are more moral or better or wiser than those who have not yet come to Christ.

[36:05] As a matter of fact, if we move from Noah, we see the picture even clearer. Noah, there's no description about Noah, about Noah's family, his wife, and his sons and their wives.

[36:19] They're not even mentioned. They were saved through Noah. And in Noah, we see this glimpse, we see this picture of Christ, how Christ saves those who belong to him.

[36:37] And Noah, in that same sense, his family that belonged to him, they were saved and they were preserved. But it's all by grace. It's all by undeserved mercy.

[36:54] And we see it in a glaring way in the flood. And it all comes from the hands of a sovereign God who is perfectly holy and perfectly wise and perfectly just and perfectly good in all of his ways.

[37:16] And even where we don't understand, we must accept and say amen. The flood demonstrates both justice and grace.

[37:33] No one who perished in the flood could complain. They deserved the punishment that was meted out to them from a holy and just God.

[37:48] And Noah and his family couldn't boast. They could only be grateful that they were spared when they themselves deserved to die.

[38:09] All those who are saved, who will be saved, will undeservingly be saved.

[38:21] None of us deserve to be saved. none of us. It's only because of a God who chooses to have mercy.

[38:34] And brothers and sisters, when we grasp this, when we understand this, the gospel becomes sweeter, it becomes more precious, and grace becomes amazing because we realize that we don't deserve it.

[38:50] if you think for a moment that it's the prayer that you prayed, friends, even our prayers are not perfect in God's sight. Even our repentance is not perfect in God's sight.

[39:06] Our most sincere and profuse prayer of confession of sin and repentance falls short in sight of a holy God. And so we're left with one thing and one thing alone, and that is to be cast on the mercy of God.

[39:24] And that is the only reason that anyone is spared. It's the reason that Noah and his family were spared the grace of God, and it'll be the reason that all of us who are spared from the coming wrath are spared because of a God who gives both justice and mercy to sinners.

[39:49] And he doesn't disclose his reasons that he gives mercy to sinners. What we know is we know that those who are punished and they're given the justice that their sins deserve, they have no legitimate complaint.

[40:07] And those of us who receive God's mercy and grace, among the many things we don't understand, one thing we should understand is that it's not based on any merit that is in us.

[40:19] We look to him, we look to God alone for the reason. But not only does the flood demonstrate God's justice and mercy towards sinners, second and finally, it also demonstrates God's wisdom and goodness in creation.

[40:42] In assessing the state of affairs that led to God's judgment in the flood, we cannot help but think of God's wisdom and goodness in creation.

[40:58] How he created the world. He created this habitation for man before he even created man. And then on man uniquely he placed his image and he created man in his image and he gave him an abundance of food and placed him in this garden sanctuary and gave him the gift of marriage and appointed them to be rulers over the earth, calling them to have dominion over it.

[41:26] And yet they rebelled. They rebelled against unbridled goodness and kindness and abundance that God gave.

[41:39] God judged initially Adam and Eve. And he gave them a promise that one day he was going to send the seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent of Satan.

[41:57] And sin continued to take its course and in the end God sent the flood in judgment. God decreated his creation.

[42:11] But he didn't obliterate everything and everyone. The infrastructure of the heavens and the earth that God created remained and it demonstrated his wisdom and his goodness in it.

[42:26] There was nothing wrong with that infrastructure that God had built. built. At the end of the flood God created nothing new. He didn't start and form the earth again and form the heavens again.

[42:44] No, the infrastructure remained. God did one thing at the end of the flood and that is that he made a covenant with Noah. And this covenant was part of his overall plan of redemption that would find its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

[42:59] that this was the beginning of it. That God would bring redemption ultimate through Christ and everything begins to point forward to that day.

[43:12] And God cleansed the earth of sin and violence and he started again with another man, Noah and his family. God preserved human life and he preserved all other aspects of life on the earth so that he could start again.

[43:33] And in so doing God demonstrates his wisdom and his goodness in creation. He preserved it.

[43:43] He did not utterly destroy it. And brothers and sisters this truth remains. This truth remains. God's wisdom and goodness in creation is seen in the fact that it will endure forever.

[44:02] Even in the coming judgment. The judgment of fire that will come on the earth and on the ungodly. The heavens and the earth will not be utterly destroyed.

[44:16] There will be a new heaven and there will be a new earth in which righteousness dwells. It will be a perfectly restored earth. And the fire will purge it all. When we read in the book of Revelation we get John's vision of what it is like, what it looks like.

[44:32] John tells us in Revelation 21 verse 1, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and there was no more sea.

[44:44] the language that John is using, he's not saying that somehow that God just got rid of the infrastructure of the heavens and the earth and he built a new one.

[45:02] Now he's speaking about the newness of it, the restoration of it. And then he tells us in Revelation 22 verses 1 to 3, he says, Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city, also on either side of the river, the tree of life with his twelve kinds of fruit.

[45:34] That's the same tree of life that we saw earlier as we worked our way through the book of Genesis. in the tree of life, John tells us, the yield is fruit each month.

[45:49] The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and the Lamb will be in it and his servants will worship him.

[46:05] Brothers and sisters, the decreation of the flood in the book of Genesis points ultimately to the new creation through the fire in the book of Revelation.

[46:17] And on that final day, the Lord will once again demonstrate mercy and grace to sinners. And once again, he will demonstrate his wisdom and goodness in creation.

[46:35] And the flood points us to it all. points us to it all. And when we contemplate these things this morning, I think there are two responses we should have to it.

[46:51] If you have trusted in Jesus Christ, if you know him in the pardon of your sins, you should rejoice this morning because you have been a recipient of grace. And you are promised to live in the new heaven and in the new earth in which righteousness dwells.

[47:14] And we should be reminded this morning that that's our inheritance not by merit. That is our inheritance by sheer mercy and grace.

[47:25] God's forgiveness. And if you hear this morning as an unbeliever, then the response for you is to repent.

[47:37] the flood is a trumpet sound to repent. The flood is a trumpet sound that says that God is holy and just and he will not overlook sin.

[47:53] He will judge sin because he must judge sin. And it's a call to repent. It's a call to turn from sin and to trust God.

[48:03] It is a call to live for God and serve God in his world. And brothers and sisters, every one of us this morning finds ourselves in one of these two categories.

[48:22] And we need to be honest with ourselves. There's no in between. There's no middle wall in between where you're sitting, you're straddling. No, you are either a recipient of grace in this moment or you are under the wrath of God, the judgment of God that will be poured out upon all the ungodly because he must do so because he is just and holy.

[48:47] And so may this account evoke one of these two responses in all of our hearts.

[49:02] And that goes for those who are watching by live stream this morning. May God help us to respond as we should from this account of the flood that reminds us that he is just and merciful and that he is good and wise.

[49:27] Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word this morning and we pray that you would speak to our hearts.

[49:40] Lord, those of us who have trusted in Jesus, Lord, may we rejoice grace because we receive mercy and grace, though we deserve judgment and wrath.

[49:53] And I pray as well, Lord, that those who do not know the Savior, that they would recognize that the flood is a reminder that you do judge sin and you will judge it because you must judge it.

[50:11] God, I pray that they would bow their knees and their hearts to you and repent before it is too late.

[50:29] And God, I pray that we would all marvel at how wise and how good you are in creating the heavens and the earth, allowing us to be residents in it, allowing us to live upon it and to enjoy all that it offers, and to be reminded that one day you will purify it once again.

[50:58] You will purge it by fire. And you will cause righteousness to dwell in it forever. God, work in our hearts in these ways we pray.

[51:13]  In Christ's name, amen. Let's sing together.