WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.839 And there's a portion of several short readings from Genesis 6 and 7 we'll do this morning. 00:00:06.640 --> 00:00:11.099 ! And so if you have a Bible, please do turn there. It's also the whole bigger text is printed in the 00:00:11.099 --> 00:00:18.420 ! There's Bibles at the back and upstairs. If you'd like to grab one, feel very free. And I'm going to 00:00:18.420 --> 00:00:33.000 invite David to come and read Scripture for us. So we're reading from Genesis 6 and 7. I'm reading 00:00:33.000 --> 00:00:39.480 from Genesis 6 verse 11 to verse 16 first of all. Let's hear God's Word. 00:00:39.479 --> 00:00:47.140 Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. 00:00:48.019 --> 00:00:55.879 And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt. For all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. 00:00:57.159 --> 00:01:04.780 And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with 00:01:04.780 --> 00:01:14.099 violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. 00:01:14.859 --> 00:01:22.219 Make rooms in the ark and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it. 00:01:22.859 --> 00:01:32.120 The length of the ark, 300 cubits. Its breadth, 50 cubits. And its height, 30 cubits. 00:01:32.120 --> 00:01:41.260 Make a roof for the ark and finish it to a cubit above. And set the door of the ark in its side. 00:01:42.219 --> 00:01:51.020 Make it with lower, second, and third decks. And then in chapter 7 verses 1 through 5, 00:01:51.680 --> 00:01:57.900 then the Lord said to Noah, Go into the ark, you and all your household, 00:01:57.900 --> 00:02:07.280 for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of all 00:02:07.280 --> 00:02:14.259 clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his 00:02:14.259 --> 00:02:21.640 mate, and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive 00:02:21.639 --> 00:02:31.000 on the face of all the earth. For in seven days I will send rain on the earth. Forty days and forty 00:02:31.000 --> 00:02:37.139 nights and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground. 00:02:38.500 --> 00:02:48.079 And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him. And then in verses 11 through 17 of that same chapter, 00:02:48.080 --> 00:02:54.300 may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may may 00:02:54.300 --> 00:02:54.300 00:02:54.300 --> 00:02:59.760 second month on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep 00:02:59.760 --> 00:03:07.420 burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened, and rain fell upon the earth forty days 00:03:07.420 --> 00:03:15.920 and forty nights. On the very same day Noah and his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah's 00:03:15.920 --> 00:03:23.160 wife and the three wives of his sons with them, entered the ark. They, and every beast according 00:03:23.159 --> 00:03:29.759 to its kind, and all the livestock according to their kinds, and every creeping thing that creeps 00:03:29.759 --> 00:03:37.099 on the earth according to its kind, and every bird according to its kind, every winged creature. 00:03:38.460 --> 00:03:46.979 They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh, in which there was the breath of life. 00:03:46.979 --> 00:03:54.739 And those that entered, male and female, of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him, 00:03:55.280 --> 00:04:05.060 and the Lord shut him in. The flood continued forty days on the earth. The waters increased and bore 00:04:05.060 --> 00:04:16.740 up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. This is the Word of God, and to His name be the praise and the glory. 00:04:19.300 --> 00:04:24.259 In our work through Genesis 4 to 11, we've come to the flood story. So, let's ask this morning, 00:04:24.399 --> 00:04:29.500 what does the flood story teach us? What is the writer, what does God want us to know from this story? 00:04:29.500 --> 00:04:38.060 Three things that it teaches us. One, that this is history. Secondly, that there is a cosmic crime. 00:04:39.439 --> 00:04:46.459 And finally, that there's an ark. So, first, from the flood story, the first thing I want you to know 00:04:46.459 --> 00:04:52.480 is that this is history. So, if you look at the text, you have verses like 7-1, go into the ark, 00:04:52.920 --> 00:04:58.699 you and all your household know. I've seen that you're a righteous man. Or 6-19, 00:04:58.699 --> 00:05:04.680 just before that, every living thing of all the flesh, bring two of every kind into the ark alive 00:05:04.680 --> 00:05:10.639 with you. So, here you've got the makeup of the story that everybody knows, the popular story of 00:05:10.639 --> 00:05:16.039 Noah. And you can immediately, I think, probably, I don't know if you do what I do, but I immediately 00:05:16.039 --> 00:05:23.839 think of a cartoon Noah, and a bunch of cartoon animals, and a cartoon boat written, drawn into all 00:05:23.839 --> 00:05:29.519 the children's Bibles and all the TV shows you've ever seen. And so, the danger there is that this 00:05:29.519 --> 00:05:35.379 story, as soon as you read it, you think of it like that. You file it in the cabinet next to fairy tales. 00:05:36.519 --> 00:05:41.539 And it's not really the story the way that we might picture it in a popular imagination. 00:05:42.239 --> 00:05:47.620 And the question that immediately arises for the modern world is, did this happen? Is this a fairy 00:05:47.620 --> 00:05:53.360 tale? And I just want to say one brief thing about that this morning, and that's that the Bible 00:05:53.360 --> 00:06:01.500 is far from the only ancient record of the flood story. And if the Bible was the only one, we would 00:06:01.500 --> 00:06:06.819 believe it regardless, but it's important to know that there are many, many, many accounts of the flood 00:06:06.819 --> 00:06:13.600 story from the ancient Near East, the most famous of which is probably the Epic of Gilgamesh. And so, 00:06:13.600 --> 00:06:22.020 we have multiple copies of this as old as 1800 BC. And in this, it's a Babylonian story of a man 00:06:22.020 --> 00:06:29.720 named Utnapishtim. I knew I would struggle to pronounce that. And he is, in the story, warned of a 00:06:29.720 --> 00:06:37.360 coming flood. And he builds a boat, and he gathers animals in the boat, and his wife, and his family, and 00:06:37.360 --> 00:06:42.140 the flood comes upon the world. And at the end of the story, he goes to the top of a mountain and offers a 00:06:42.139 --> 00:06:50.159 sacrifice to the Babylonian gods. Now, the parallels are undeniable. There's nobody in the evangelical 00:06:50.159 --> 00:06:54.759 world or outside it that tries to deny that there are other flood stories, other flood accounts. And I 00:06:54.759 --> 00:07:01.519 can give you a long list of them from the Akkadian people group, or in Sumerian, or other Babylonian 00:07:01.519 --> 00:07:06.699 accounts that are even different. One of the most famous other ones is the Sumerian king list. And this 00:07:06.699 --> 00:07:14.019 dates as far back as 2000 BC. And it's inscribed in stone. And it's just, it's like an Excel spreadsheet. 00:07:14.279 --> 00:07:20.279 It's a record of kings, a list of kings. And then all of a sudden, it breaks up the list of kings and 00:07:20.279 --> 00:07:29.219 says, and in those days, the great flood encompassed the world. And I'll give you one more. You can get on 00:07:29.220 --> 00:07:36.140 a train today if you want, and you can go down to the British Museum in London and find a tablet called 00:07:36.140 --> 00:07:44.180 the Imago Mundi, which is a Babylonian map, very old. And in it, most scholars believe that on this 00:07:44.180 --> 00:07:48.780 Babylonian, not from Israel, not from the people of God in the Old Testament, no, this Babylonian map, 00:07:49.260 --> 00:07:55.180 there is a marker for the ark that survived the flood on the map. Now, of course, you cannot go find 00:07:55.180 --> 00:07:59.699 that ark today. It was made of wood. But there is a map from the ancient world that says at one time 00:07:59.699 --> 00:08:06.160 you could have. You see, and the point to say is that in the ancient Near East, the flood story 00:08:06.160 --> 00:08:12.160 was a corporate memory. And you can go one of two ways with this. You could say, 00:08:13.060 --> 00:08:17.420 well, did the Bible just participate in all the other mythologies of the ancient world and 00:08:17.420 --> 00:08:24.899 copy some story? But the answer is no. Look, if a catastrophe like the flood really did happen, 00:08:25.939 --> 00:08:30.800 then what you would expect fully is to go into the ancient world and find other people talking about 00:08:30.800 --> 00:08:36.600 it. And that's what we find. And that's because the flood story actually happened. And in the Bible, 00:08:36.600 --> 00:08:42.700 you're reading the accurate account from God's perspective of what truly happened in the flood 00:08:42.700 --> 00:08:48.740 story. And that means that the question we have to come to today is, if this is history, and what 00:08:48.740 --> 00:08:54.519 we're reading about in Genesis 6 and 7 is history, then we have to turn and say, well, if this happened, 00:08:54.519 --> 00:09:00.579 what does it mean for me? What does it mean? What is God saying in the flood? What does it mean for my 00:09:00.579 --> 00:09:08.259 life? And I think the answer to that question is rather surprising. Martin Lloyd-Jones was a well-known 00:09:08.279 --> 00:09:14.960 preacher in London, the Welsh preacher in the 20th century. And he is well-known for this quote that 00:09:14.960 --> 00:09:21.199 you have heard in this pulpit before, to be sure. But I do think this captures the meaning of the flood 00:09:21.200 --> 00:09:27.600 story. He says, I've often had the occasion to ask people, are you a Christian? And I've very often 00:09:27.600 --> 00:09:33.540 been given the answer, well, I'm trying to be. Now, the moment a person says that to me, I know that 00:09:33.540 --> 00:09:39.379 they are not yet a Christian. They are still thinking in terms of themselves. They are thinking of it as 00:09:39.379 --> 00:09:46.940 something that they have to do. But a Christian is a person who has stopped trying and who has started 00:09:46.940 --> 00:09:54.900 trusting. Trusting not in what they must do for God, but in what God has already done for them. 00:09:55.600 --> 00:10:02.020 Now, that is the meaning of the flood story, that God has already done it. And the flood story is 00:10:02.020 --> 00:10:08.660 actually the gospel story. So, let's use the rest of our time to see that. Secondly, this story is about 00:10:08.659 --> 00:10:16.159 a cosmic crime that takes place. There's a tricky translation choice in chapter 6, verse 13. And in 00:10:16.159 --> 00:10:23.019 the ESV Bibles we have in the room, it is footnoted. The alternative translation is footnoted. And in 00:10:23.019 --> 00:10:29.539 verse 13, it says, God says to Noah, I've determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled 00:10:29.539 --> 00:10:35.980 with violence. Now, we ended last week by saying the earth was totally corrupt. It was so full of violence. 00:10:35.980 --> 00:10:41.720 It was a post-apocalyptic setting. That's kind of the best way we can imagine it, that everyone was 00:10:41.720 --> 00:10:46.740 corrupted. The people that had once worshiped God did no more. And so, there was injustice and blood 00:10:46.740 --> 00:10:52.320 all throughout the land. But here, God says, I've determined to make an end of all flesh. And we say, 00:10:52.879 --> 00:10:57.580 well, we see here for the first time in the Bible, really, the God of judgment, the God of just judgment 00:10:57.580 --> 00:11:02.860 coming. But that footnote is very helpful because it says that another way to translate this is, 00:11:02.860 --> 00:11:10.120 the end of all flesh has come up before me. And that's very important. And I think that's the 00:11:10.120 --> 00:11:16.360 proper way to translate this text because what is it saying? The end of all flesh has come up before 00:11:16.360 --> 00:11:21.100 me. He's talking there of a fragrance. And if you know the rest of the Bible, you'll know that when 00:11:21.100 --> 00:11:27.159 offerings were given, they were fragrant. They created a smell. And this language has been used 00:11:27.159 --> 00:11:34.799 already in the Bible. And it was used in Genesis 4 when Cain murdered Abel. And God came down and said, 00:11:35.679 --> 00:11:41.480 something, a smell has come up before me. And what is it? He says, the blood of your brother, Abel, 00:11:42.100 --> 00:11:47.600 has come up to heaven. In other words, what is he saying? He's saying, the flood is coming. Just 00:11:47.600 --> 00:11:55.000 judgment is coming because I have heard the cry of injustice in the world. He's saying, it's come up to 00:11:55.000 --> 00:12:01.200 me. It's been raised up to me. And so, sometimes we can come and think, as soon as I get to a page 00:12:01.200 --> 00:12:08.679 that talks about God's judgment in the Bible, I think, isn't God just hampering human freedom with 00:12:08.679 --> 00:12:15.659 His judgmentalism? And actually, what we see instead is that God gives the flood because the cries of 00:12:15.659 --> 00:12:20.799 injustice has heaped and heaped and heaped and come up before Him like a great mountain, that there is 00:12:20.799 --> 00:12:25.919 blood in the land. And so, we talked about this last time, but there's a way of talking about God's 00:12:25.919 --> 00:12:34.019 judgment that the Bible uses all the time. And it's really this. It's that God is giving us what we 00:12:34.019 --> 00:12:39.319 desire and what we've asked for. We saw last week that it said the world was corrupt and the land was 00:12:39.319 --> 00:12:44.919 corrupt and the people were corrupt. And so, God gave centuries and centuries of patience, but then He 00:12:44.919 --> 00:12:51.579 gave the people the corruption they asked for. And so, we read in the Bible, God desires that none would 00:12:51.579 --> 00:12:56.679 perish. God desires that every person would come and follow Him. And yet, He says at the same time here, 00:12:57.579 --> 00:13:02.699 the cry of injustice is coming up from the land. And that's the reason that we have a chorus line 00:13:02.699 --> 00:13:08.620 of pronouncements of God throughout this passage about bringing just judgment to this land of violence. 00:13:08.620 --> 00:13:15.360 Now, we've got an issue, I think, in the contemporary world where we think about this, how we think about this. 00:13:15.419 --> 00:13:22.480 We spoke about it a little bit last week, but to add slightly more nuance to it, when we think about God's 00:13:22.480 --> 00:13:28.600 judgment, we can often offer a double complaint. And you'll have seen this in media or on the internet or in 00:13:28.600 --> 00:13:34.879 popular spaces. We think of God's judgment and we say something like, when I read the Bible, I just want to say, 00:13:34.879 --> 00:13:40.000 how could God be so judgmental? Or if we think about our own lives and the sins that we struggle with, 00:13:40.320 --> 00:13:45.159 we say, but how could God be so judgmental? I want the God of mercy. But then we look out 00:13:45.159 --> 00:13:53.559 and we read the news of great wicked and injustice in the world, of people having genocide committed 00:13:53.559 --> 00:13:58.439 against them. And we say, how long, O Lord? When are you going to act? When are you going to bring 00:13:58.439 --> 00:14:01.720 justice into the land? And you see, it's a double complaint. It's on the one hand, why are you so 00:14:01.720 --> 00:14:04.860 judgmental? On the other hand, when are you going to actually do something about all the 00:14:04.879 --> 00:14:11.059 problems? And people will attack God from both directions. And what we actually have in the 00:14:11.059 --> 00:14:18.539 Bible is the God of just judgment, a God of justice. Because justice is never against love. 00:14:19.179 --> 00:14:23.939 Without justice, it would only be chaos. And at the same time, a God of radical mercy and radical 00:14:23.939 --> 00:14:29.940 patience that appears before us here in the chorus line of this chapter, Him saying that I'm going to 00:14:29.940 --> 00:14:36.140 blot out, I'm going to corrupt the wickedness that is in the land. Now, in the New Testament, 00:14:36.800 --> 00:14:45.200 there is a pattern that grows and gathers based off this passage. The flood, the flood is the beginning 00:14:45.200 --> 00:14:50.960 of what the Bible calls the day of the Lord, a day of justice that God would bring into the world. 00:14:51.160 --> 00:14:55.520 And what the day of the Lord in different patterns weaving all the way to the end of the Bible means 00:14:55.519 --> 00:15:02.639 is that there is coming a moment where all sin will be exposed, where all justice will be required. 00:15:02.899 --> 00:15:09.039 That's the day of the Lord concept in the Bible. And Jesus, in the New Testament, takes the flood story 00:15:09.039 --> 00:15:13.519 to talk about the day of the Lord. And I want you to listen to what He says about it. 00:15:14.199 --> 00:15:20.899 In Matthew 24, Jesus exegetes. He explains Genesis 6 and 7. And this is what He says, 00:15:20.899 --> 00:15:26.740 As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood, 00:15:26.840 --> 00:15:31.799 people were eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage until the day when Noah entered the ark. 00:15:32.000 --> 00:15:37.000 And they were totally unaware until the flood came and swept them away. Now, okay, if you think about that 00:15:37.000 --> 00:15:44.019 carefully, Jesus says, in the day before the flood came, people were eating and drinking and getting married 00:15:44.019 --> 00:15:50.159 and having relationships. And you say, that sounds fine. That sounds pretty good. Eating, drinking, getting married, 00:15:50.319 --> 00:15:54.639 having relationships. There's nothing wrong with that. What is He saying? What is He talking about? 00:15:54.679 --> 00:16:01.299 He said, and then the flood came. And He says, so it will be when I return. He's likening that to His day of reckoning, 00:16:01.399 --> 00:16:08.379 His day of coming. And what we're seeing is two different faces in this passage of the same refusal of God. 00:16:08.379 --> 00:16:16.679 God, the one face is visible. It's violence in all the land. It's obvious to see. It's a world that 00:16:16.679 --> 00:16:21.539 looks like something, as I mentioned last week, of Paul Potter, Hitler, that's being described here, 00:16:21.620 --> 00:16:26.519 a land of utter violence. But at the same time, Jesus picks up on it and says, there's another face, 00:16:27.759 --> 00:16:33.980 another way of looking at God that brings about the flood. And He's talking here about respectable apathy. 00:16:33.980 --> 00:16:40.000 And He's saying that on the one hand, you can see visible violence that brings in the right, 00:16:40.120 --> 00:16:46.060 just judgment of God. On the other hand, He says, you can also get so caught up in eating and drinking 00:16:46.060 --> 00:16:51.340 and marrying and having relationships that you never think about God one time in your life. 00:16:52.080 --> 00:16:57.019 And you commit what's being reckoned here as the great cosmic crime of respectable apathy. 00:16:57.019 --> 00:17:08.359 I just think about it like this. Imagine a poor single mother who works two jobs. And she's come 00:17:08.359 --> 00:17:15.960 out of a cycle of poverty in her own family. And she just wants to give her son a better life just 00:17:15.960 --> 00:17:20.099 to get out of the situation they're in. And so she works two jobs. She sleeps two hours in between them, 00:17:20.160 --> 00:17:24.160 six days a week. She ages herself 10 years for every year that she works. 00:17:24.160 --> 00:17:30.540 And she's losing her life literally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, in every way to get 00:17:30.540 --> 00:17:37.040 her son out of the cycle of poverty. And it works. And, you know, she saves every penny she can, 00:17:37.120 --> 00:17:42.640 and she sends him to university. And this young man, he gets a great job. He becomes a respectable 00:17:42.640 --> 00:17:49.500 citizen. By all measure of polite society, he is a good guy. And, you know, this guy even, he, 00:17:49.500 --> 00:17:54.740 you know, he takes out his neighbor's rubbish. He cuts their lawn. He gives money away to the poor. 00:17:56.279 --> 00:18:02.880 He's a good person. And he never one time calls his mother in his adult life. 00:18:04.180 --> 00:18:09.920 He never answers her phone calls. He, he, he never, he doesn't go home at Christmas. 00:18:09.920 --> 00:18:17.539 And you say, this is a good person, respectable. And yet you can see how egregious it would be 00:18:17.539 --> 00:18:22.660 that his mother would have done everything for him, and yet he, he won't even pick up the phone 00:18:22.660 --> 00:18:31.700 to call her. And so Jesus is saying, so it is with our relationship to God that we take the gifts and 00:18:31.700 --> 00:18:35.900 have rejected the giver. And in the flood story, what we're reading about is an account where God has 00:18:35.900 --> 00:18:41.780 said, I have, I have pursued this people for thousands of years and been so patient. And they 00:18:41.780 --> 00:18:48.060 have every single time said, we don't want you. We don't want you. And whether it's by this visible 00:18:48.060 --> 00:18:54.420 act of public violence or by simply respectable apathy, the just judge says, I'm actually going to give you 00:18:54.420 --> 00:19:00.080 what you've asked for, separation from me, distance from me. Now that's the bad news, 00:19:00.079 --> 00:19:06.659 that there's a flood, that there's a just judge of all the earth. But then there's also good news here, 00:19:06.859 --> 00:19:13.539 and that's, there's, that there's an ark. And so thirdly, finally, there's an ark. And we learn 00:19:13.539 --> 00:19:19.099 about that. Noah and his sons and his wives and their sons' wives went into the ark to escape the 00:19:19.099 --> 00:19:26.259 waters of the flood. Now it's so striking in this passage that the ark and the instructions about how 00:19:26.259 --> 00:19:31.220 to build it, how many animals to bring, all that kind of stuff takes up three quarters of all the 00:19:31.220 --> 00:19:36.640 text, of all the ink. And the flood itself only gets just a few verses right there at the very end. 00:19:36.720 --> 00:19:43.559 So the writer Moses is clearly trying to get us to put our eyes on the way through the judgment, 00:19:43.720 --> 00:19:48.619 the way through the flood, not on the flood itself. That's where he's trying to draw us into. And so 00:19:48.619 --> 00:19:54.160 let's do that. Just give me a few minutes together. Let's do this together and watch the details, 00:19:54.160 --> 00:20:00.220 watch the details in the text. And the details are so important. So the first one is in chapter 6, 00:20:00.279 --> 00:20:09.380 verse 14. And he says, make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Ark. It should strike you if you'd 00:20:09.380 --> 00:20:14.220 never read the story before, but we all have. If you'd never read the story before, it should strike 00:20:14.220 --> 00:20:20.600 you that it says, make yourself an ark. Why? This is a special word in the Hebrew text. It's not Hebrew 00:20:20.599 --> 00:20:26.419 at all. It's an Egyptian word. And Moses grew up in Egypt. And so here he's borrowing a word from the 00:20:26.419 --> 00:20:35.099 land of Egypt. And in Egypt, this word for ark was a word that described in Egypt a box in temples 00:20:35.099 --> 00:20:43.859 where Egyptian polytheists would go and try to meet with a god. And so it's a shrine box that gets used, 00:20:43.859 --> 00:20:51.479 a place of meeting with the divine. That's the word that Moses picks here to describe the ark. 00:20:52.139 --> 00:20:56.719 And then just after that, you read the rest of the description of the ark and you say, wait a minute, 00:20:57.419 --> 00:21:05.759 what's missing here? There are no sails. There is no command to have oars, and you would have oars in 00:21:05.759 --> 00:21:12.819 an ancient boat. There's no rudder on this boat. And you realize he's chosen the word ark, which is a 00:21:12.819 --> 00:21:19.599 space of a holy meeting place in the ancient person's language. And there's no sails. There's 00:21:19.599 --> 00:21:26.419 no rudder. Noah is no ship captain. This is not even really a boat. It can float, but it's actually 00:21:26.419 --> 00:21:32.980 more of a box floating on the water. And this is not a boat at all. What is this? Noah's not in control 00:21:32.980 --> 00:21:39.419 of this vessel. And then the third detail to notice is right after that, it says, make rooms in the ark, 00:21:39.420 --> 00:21:48.200 and then this word, cover it inside and outside with pitch. And the word, the verb cover it and the 00:21:48.200 --> 00:21:54.480 word pitch are the same word. So it says something more like this, cover it on the outside and inside 00:21:54.480 --> 00:22:00.340 with a covering. And it's so important. I know that that's a simple thing, but the reason it's so 00:22:00.340 --> 00:22:05.940 important is because that word cover is the word atonement in the Old Testament. 00:22:05.940 --> 00:22:13.900 And so he literally says something like, atone, cover it, atone for it with an atonement, 00:22:13.940 --> 00:22:19.660 with an atonement covering. And you might remember that there's not only an ark that floats on the 00:22:19.660 --> 00:22:26.519 waters, there's an ark of the covenant in the temple later in Israel's history. And the covering 00:22:26.519 --> 00:22:32.600 of that ark of the covenant is called by the same thing, and it's the place of atonement. It's the place, 00:22:32.599 --> 00:22:39.599 what is atonement? Atonement is where you become at one with God, atonement. And how do you do it? 00:22:39.619 --> 00:22:44.899 You've got to have a covering. You've got to have something cover over your sin to become one with 00:22:44.899 --> 00:22:50.259 God. And so when he enters this vessel that's not a boat at all, but actually a holy place, a place of 00:22:50.259 --> 00:22:57.500 meeting with God, it says that in it he's covered with an atonement covering. You see, Noah brought his 00:22:57.500 --> 00:23:03.359 sin into the ark, but it was covered. But it was covered. And then just after that, boy, there's so 00:23:03.359 --> 00:23:11.759 many here. Verses 15 to 16, this is how you are to make it. The length, the breadth, the height, 00:23:12.559 --> 00:23:18.279 then the door, and then first, second, and third levels. This is the same order of instructions 00:23:18.279 --> 00:23:24.140 that are given for Solomon's temple later in the Bible. It comes in exactly the same order. The length, 00:23:24.140 --> 00:23:30.860 breadth, height, the door, everything is almost identical. And you can start to get a picture for 00:23:30.860 --> 00:23:37.440 what's happening here. I'll just mention seven pairs of clean animals. Why? Because you need clean 00:23:37.440 --> 00:23:44.560 animals if you're entering into what kind of a space? A temple. And here what we have is the fact that 00:23:44.560 --> 00:23:50.120 Noah's not been given a ship, a boat. He's not a captain of his own destiny. Noah has been brought 00:23:50.119 --> 00:23:58.459 into the refuge of an ark, and the ark is the temple of God. And he's gone in to meet with God 00:23:58.459 --> 00:24:04.000 in the presence of God with seven pairs of clean animals for sacrifice with an atonement covering the 00:24:04.000 --> 00:24:11.039 roof of the ark and saying, Noah, you're a sinner just like everybody else. But when you step into the 00:24:11.039 --> 00:24:19.919 ark, your sins are covered. I have made myself one with you. A couple more examples of the 00:24:19.920 --> 00:24:24.539 intricacies of this passage. Think about this language. Where have you heard this language before? 00:24:25.120 --> 00:24:31.960 Chapter 6, verse 20. Chapter 7, verse 14. Bring the animals two by two according to their kinds. 00:24:33.019 --> 00:24:38.940 And where does that come from? That comes from Genesis 1. And then right after that in chapter 7, 00:24:38.940 --> 00:24:45.900 verse 11 to 17, the fountains from below burst. The fountains from above burst. And in Genesis 1, 00:24:45.900 --> 00:24:50.340 God had taken the waters underneath the earth and put them in their place. And He'd taken the waters 00:24:50.340 --> 00:24:54.880 above the earth and put them in their place. But now the waters above and below are all bursting. 00:24:55.900 --> 00:25:06.280 And He's saying, this is undoing Genesis 1. And yet He's taking every type of animal and a 00:25:06.280 --> 00:25:12.519 representation of humanity, forgiving their sins, and putting them inside this holy place, this temple, 00:25:12.519 --> 00:25:21.980 this little garden of Eden. And it's almost like when you move home and you pack up all your boxes and, 00:25:22.079 --> 00:25:27.400 you know, how much stuff do you lose? We always lose stuff when we move. And God is saying, 00:25:27.680 --> 00:25:33.180 I'm taking a representative of everything that exists in creation and packing it up and putting 00:25:33.180 --> 00:25:39.119 inside this safety net, this box, this refuge. Because the judge waters, decreation is going to happen 00:25:39.119 --> 00:25:46.439 on the land, but I will bring about new creation from it. Salvation by judgment. And He's packing Noah, 00:25:46.559 --> 00:25:51.779 this second Adam, this new priest with his wife, this new Eve, and all the animals, the Garden of Eden 00:25:51.779 --> 00:25:56.279 all over again. And He's saying, we're going to start over. And I'm going to save this world. I'm going to 00:25:56.279 --> 00:26:03.599 bring about justice ultimately in the land and deliver you into a new creation. And so we'll finish with 00:26:03.599 --> 00:26:11.079 this. There is a haunting, beautiful, and tender phrase in this passage. It's in chapter 7, verse 16. 00:26:11.480 --> 00:26:19.599 And it's this. It says, the Lord shut him in. So Noah went into the ark, and it's the Lord that came 00:26:19.599 --> 00:26:23.899 and shut the door, not Noah. What do we learn? 00:26:23.900 --> 00:26:33.240 This story tells us that there is a reality to the idea that we have committed cosmic treason against God, 00:26:33.540 --> 00:26:39.700 both in the things that we've done and in the way we've been apathetic towards the great giver, 00:26:40.400 --> 00:26:47.940 that we've ignored Him. And when the waters of justice that we deserve come into this world in the 00:26:47.940 --> 00:26:53.440 day of the Lord, there is only one way through. There is only one way through, and it's this. And this is the 00:26:53.440 --> 00:26:57.880 shock of the passage. This is the shock of the passage. The God of justice who will deliver 00:26:57.880 --> 00:27:04.920 justice by way of the flood is at the same time the God of love and mercy who provides the way 00:27:04.920 --> 00:27:11.160 through the storm. That the God who brings the flood is the God who says, but I will give you 00:27:11.160 --> 00:27:19.160 the means to be delivered from the flood. And the means is the ark, the temple, the place of hiding 00:27:19.160 --> 00:27:24.180 in the refuge of God's presence. And when you come to the New Testament, Peter in 1 Peter 3, 00:27:24.600 --> 00:27:33.740 he likens Noah's ark in the floodwaters to baptism. And he said that when you, like Lauren did today, 00:27:33.880 --> 00:27:39.900 say, I trust in Jesus Christ, I believe in Jesus, you step inside His refuge, it means that the 00:27:39.900 --> 00:27:44.560 floodwaters have already come upon you, and you are safe in Him. You are protected by Him. What does the 00:27:44.559 --> 00:27:51.759 New Testament tells us? It tells us Jesus Christ is the ark. Jesus Christ came and said, I am the temple. 00:27:51.960 --> 00:27:56.619 The ark is a temple. And Jesus said in John chapter 2, I am the temple, the place to meet with God. And 00:27:56.619 --> 00:28:04.319 there's only one other time where the same word is used for ark in the first five books of the Bible, 00:28:04.319 --> 00:28:11.399 and that's when Moses was fleeing Pharaoh. Pharaoh was killing, murdering all the little boys of Egypt, 00:28:11.400 --> 00:28:18.060 all the Jewish boys. And what does the text tell us? It says that Moses was placed by his mother in an ark, 00:28:20.240 --> 00:28:27.800 a refuge, a safety net. Jesus Christ is the mediator of all safety. And it's Him that took 00:28:27.800 --> 00:28:32.759 Moses through the floodwaters and took Noah through the floodwaters. And in the gospel promises to do the 00:28:32.759 --> 00:28:38.400 same thing for you. Jesus Christ is the ark. He is the refuge. Even more than that, what does Jesus say? 00:28:38.400 --> 00:28:47.040 He says, my blood is the atonement covering for your sins. And in the ark, Moses, Noah found an 00:28:47.040 --> 00:28:51.340 atonement, a covering for his sins. And Jesus Christ is that covering. This was always pointing 00:28:51.340 --> 00:28:57.980 forward to Him. Romans 3.25 calls Jesus the covering, the very word that corresponds to the 00:28:57.980 --> 00:29:05.460 Old Testament word for atonement. And the twist, of course, is this, that Jesus is the ark. He's your 00:29:05.460 --> 00:29:10.279 safety. He's your refuge. You step in Him by faith, and you are protected from all the judgment waters. 00:29:10.920 --> 00:29:16.480 And at the same time, that's because Jesus Christ is the one that drowned. At the cross, 00:29:16.600 --> 00:29:22.740 at the cross, when you come by faith and see Christ upon the cross, you see in Him the one in whom you 00:29:22.740 --> 00:29:31.000 can have safety forever, in whom love has been provided a way through all injustice. And at the same 00:29:31.000 --> 00:29:36.059 time, that's because at the cross, you see His blood being spilled, being poured, that He received the 00:29:36.059 --> 00:29:41.759 due justice of our works. He was flooded. He was drowned. He even calls in the New Testament the cross, 00:29:42.079 --> 00:29:45.779 His baptism, that He's going to be drowned in the waters of the cross. 00:29:47.319 --> 00:29:54.480 Who may enter as we prepare to come to the table? Back to Lloyd-Jones. Lloyd-Jones asked the question, 00:29:54.480 --> 00:30:02.180 are you a Christian? And He said, if somebody, if you say, if you say, if you're saying in your heart 00:30:02.180 --> 00:30:08.640 today, well, I'm trying to be, I want to be, I wish I were better than I am, then you don't yet 00:30:08.640 --> 00:30:15.759 understand the gospel. And the flood story is telling you the gospel. And it's saying this, stop trying and 00:30:15.759 --> 00:30:22.079 start trusting. He has already done it. Jesus Christ entered the floodwaters on your behalf. You're safe 00:30:22.079 --> 00:30:28.599 forever. And so if you come today to this table by faith in Him, you can know that He is your refuge. 00:30:28.599 --> 00:30:35.559 The Lord shut the door. He put Noah in and shut the door. And you come today not on the strength of 00:30:35.559 --> 00:30:44.519 your faith even, but knowing that God has hidden you in Christ, that He has put you inside the ark that 00:30:44.519 --> 00:30:51.759 is Jesus Christ, and He will hold you and protect you forever. I imagine, I think about a small 00:30:51.759 --> 00:30:59.940 child, small child, again, illustrations from my life, a small child in the midst of a thunderstorm 00:30:59.940 --> 00:31:05.940 in the middle of the night with lightning raining down. And that child wakes up in the middle of 00:31:05.940 --> 00:31:12.559 night and they're scared to death. And they run to their parents' bedroom and they jump in their 00:31:12.559 --> 00:31:19.539 parents' bed. And they just want their parents to pull the covers over them and to, you know, wrap 00:31:19.539 --> 00:31:28.500 their arms around them and to say, everything's going to be okay. Noah did not have to be brave. 00:31:28.799 --> 00:31:35.879 He did not have to be strong. He did not have to understand the whole picture. He simply had to 00:31:35.879 --> 00:31:43.200 get inside the covering. And God did it all. God saved him. God brought him through the waters. And Jesus 00:31:43.200 --> 00:31:48.799 Christ does the same for you. He is the only refuge. He is the only way through. He is the door. 00:31:52.000 --> 00:31:58.720 So I invite you today, maybe for the first time or for the thousandth, to come and believe in Him, 00:31:59.180 --> 00:32:06.039 trust in Him. Today is the day to trust in Him. He is your refuge. Let us pray. Father, we pray that 00:32:06.039 --> 00:32:14.019 you would give us faith now as we come to the table of the one who has already experienced the floodwaters, 00:32:14.579 --> 00:32:19.259 Christ, our sure and steady anchor. So we bring these words to worship to you now, 00:32:19.500 --> 00:32:21.339 and we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.