WEBVTT 00:00:00.140 --> 00:00:05.780 I'm going to invite Don to come and read for us Genesis chapter 6 verses 1 to 14. 00:00:06.040 --> 00:00:10.160 ! If you have a Bible with you, you can follow along. The words will also be on the screen. 00:00:10.380 --> 00:00:13.599 They'll be in the bulletin that you received. There's also Bibles at the back if you'd like 00:00:13.599 --> 00:00:16.640 to follow along. Thanks, Don. 00:00:22.179 --> 00:00:28.980 Reading at verse 1, when man began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were 00:00:28.980 --> 00:00:34.920 born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive, and they 00:00:34.920 --> 00:00:42.280 took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, My spirit shall not abide in man forever, 00:00:42.780 --> 00:00:50.000 for he is flesh. His days shall be 120 years. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, 00:00:50.200 --> 00:00:56.960 and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of man, and they bore children to 00:00:56.960 --> 00:01:04.140 them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. The Lord saw that the wickedness 00:01:04.140 --> 00:01:10.400 of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only 00:01:10.400 --> 00:01:17.700 evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to 00:01:17.700 --> 00:01:24.140 his heart. So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, 00:01:24.140 --> 00:01:31.280 man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them. 00:01:31.819 --> 00:01:38.620 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous 00:01:38.620 --> 00:01:46.939 man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God, and Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. 00:01:46.939 --> 00:01:53.780 Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, 00:01:54.179 --> 00:02:01.000 and behold, it was corrupt. For all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to 00:02:01.000 --> 00:02:08.180 Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. 00:02:08.460 --> 00:02:11.860 Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. 00:02:11.860 --> 00:02:19.600 We're in a series working our way through Genesis chapters 4 to 11 on Sunday mornings, all the way 00:02:19.600 --> 00:02:27.040 through to November. And each week we've said that while Genesis 3 is the fall story, the story where 00:02:27.040 --> 00:02:32.520 sin entered the world for the first time, that Genesis 4 to 11 is a series of fall stories. 00:02:33.600 --> 00:02:39.380 So each one of these stories in Genesis 4 to 11 is a story about decline, about things getting worse 00:02:39.379 --> 00:02:44.419 and worse and worse, and different ways that sin is spreading into the world. And we've asked the 00:02:44.419 --> 00:02:49.680 same question, or we've said that these chapters answer the same question every week, and that is, 00:02:49.840 --> 00:02:56.199 what is wrong with us? What is wrong with humanity? And the answer of the Bible is sin. And in Genesis 4, 00:02:56.680 --> 00:03:03.699 we get not so much a theological proposition, but a definition of sorts of sin. It says that sin is a 00:03:03.699 --> 00:03:10.139 beast crouching at the door of the heart waiting to destroy you. And you must not let it. You must 00:03:10.139 --> 00:03:17.759 instead rule over it. And every story, there's been new sins and new ways of corrupting the world, 00:03:17.759 --> 00:03:26.019 and yet God has been so, so patient. So we've seen murder and polygamy and vengeance and cycle after 00:03:26.019 --> 00:03:33.299 cycle. And even though in Genesis 2, God said, if you sin, you will die. That's the reality. 00:03:33.300 --> 00:03:38.900 Spiritually and physically, yet God has been so patient. And we see already in the earliest 00:03:38.900 --> 00:03:45.000 moments of the Bible that God, the God that you worship today is a God who is slow to anger, 00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:50.260 abounding in steadfast love, and wants to show mercy to generation after generation. 00:03:51.800 --> 00:03:57.600 But today, we reach the bottom. So in Genesis 4 to 11, there are two cycles, 00:03:57.599 --> 00:04:05.400 two cycles in the narrative that go all the way down. And we're at the first one, and we'll be in 00:04:05.400 --> 00:04:10.259 the first one for a few weeks as we approach the flood story. The second one's the Tower of Babel, 00:04:10.259 --> 00:04:16.159 which we'll come to in November. And here, you've drifted from the Garden of Eden, the Land of Delight, 00:04:16.199 --> 00:04:21.779 all the way down, down, down to the flood of judgment. And it really is a story of ruin, 00:04:21.779 --> 00:04:28.559 that the world right now is in ruins when you open this passage. And that means that we're reading 00:04:28.559 --> 00:04:36.979 the first instance in Genesis 6 of the judgment of God coming into the world in a clear and publicly 00:04:36.979 --> 00:04:44.519 stated way. And you will have heard that in what Don read. He said, I will blot out or destroy the 00:04:44.519 --> 00:04:48.419 people because of their wickedness. Now, as soon as you get to a story like this, 00:04:48.420 --> 00:04:53.660 many of us will have the instinct as modern people, and many people in our city, of course, 00:04:53.699 --> 00:05:00.280 will have the instinct to say, I do not like the idea of a God who judges. You know, I come to the 00:05:00.280 --> 00:05:05.860 Bible, I come to religion to read about a God of love. And for many, that is either where Christianity 00:05:05.860 --> 00:05:12.520 comes to an end or never really starts. As soon as you, you know, you might have read the Gospels and 00:05:12.520 --> 00:05:17.060 really loved the stories about Jesus and His mercy. And then you come and say, now I'm going to start at 00:05:17.060 --> 00:05:21.899 the beginning and read the Bible through, and you get to Genesis, and you get to Genesis 6, and a new 00:05:21.899 --> 00:05:29.819 concept comes, and it's God's judgment. And what I want to say is, it would be today, I think we'll see, 00:05:30.280 --> 00:05:38.340 that it would be such a mistake to dismiss the God of the Bible because of judgment. 00:05:38.339 --> 00:05:45.579 judgment. And instead, we need the God of judgment. It would be an intellectual mistake, 00:05:45.679 --> 00:05:52.739 an existential mistake, a social mistake that would cost so much to not believe in God because 00:05:52.739 --> 00:05:58.239 of a passage like Genesis 6 and the flood narrative. And so I think we'll see that. Let me show you four 00:05:58.239 --> 00:06:02.819 things to get to there, and they come from the different sections of this passage. Number one, 00:06:02.819 --> 00:06:10.759 the potential of sin, and then secondly, the pattern of sin. Third, the direction of sin, and then finally, 00:06:10.759 --> 00:06:18.819 we'll see the judge of all sin. So first, we've got here the potential of sin. Now, in verse 5, 00:06:19.539 --> 00:06:25.300 just to go straight to the verdict that God gives in verse 5, He says in verse 5, 00:06:25.300 --> 00:06:33.240 every intention of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil continually. Now, so here's the verdict 00:06:33.240 --> 00:06:40.439 God gives on the current condition of humanity when you approach Genesis 6, that did you notice every 00:06:40.439 --> 00:06:50.139 single thought, every single intention was only evil continually. Every only continually evil. 00:06:50.139 --> 00:06:58.319 And here we've got the diagnosis and the statement from God Himself of the fact that this is a world 00:06:58.319 --> 00:07:05.339 now in Genesis 6 where the brakes have been cut. And you have to come to this passage and really see 00:07:05.339 --> 00:07:12.919 what it's saying, that the world has declined to such a state at this moment that there is very 00:07:12.919 --> 00:07:19.599 little good left in humanity. And so the theologians will talk about the difference between 00:07:19.600 --> 00:07:25.220 total depravity and utter depravity. And sometimes we can get these confused and think of total 00:07:25.220 --> 00:07:29.680 depravity as utter depravity. So what is total depravity? Total depravity says that from the time 00:07:29.680 --> 00:07:35.879 of Genesis 3, we have been corrupted by sin in every part of who we are. So our intellectual life is 00:07:35.879 --> 00:07:42.500 corrupted by sin. Our heart, we desire the wrong things. Our emotions are corrupted by sin. Our decision 00:07:42.500 --> 00:07:47.540 making is corrupted by sin. That's total depravity. But the Bible does not teach that all of us, 00:07:47.540 --> 00:07:56.420 and we know this, are utterly depraved. And instead, we know that so many people, most humans are morally 00:07:56.420 --> 00:08:02.600 decent, law-abiding citizens that, and many people who don't believe in God are nicer than we are. 00:08:04.480 --> 00:08:08.439 Total depravity means that sin has corrupted all the parts of who we are, but it doesn't mean that 00:08:08.439 --> 00:08:13.480 we're utterly depraved. But here we're reading about a culture that did become utterly depraved, 00:08:13.480 --> 00:08:21.460 that became as wicked as someone could possibly become. And it's interesting here that the word 00:08:21.460 --> 00:08:28.160 in verse 5, the Lord saw every intention of the thoughts of the human heart, that's the same word 00:08:28.160 --> 00:08:35.080 that comes from Genesis chapter 2 verse 7 when God said that He formed humanity with intention. So 00:08:35.080 --> 00:08:39.460 in other words, the writer, there's so many puns in this passage, the writer is saying, 00:08:39.460 --> 00:08:46.060 just as God made you with such intentionality like a potter and clay, like an artist. So in the same way, 00:08:46.240 --> 00:08:51.860 humanity had descended to such a point where they were artists of evil. It was the only thing that 00:08:51.860 --> 00:08:59.360 they could concoct was evil. And so this world is a world where sin has been embraced. Remember Genesis 4? 00:09:00.100 --> 00:09:05.460 It says that sin is a beast waiting at the doorstep to devour you, and you must rule over it. But if you 00:09:05.460 --> 00:09:12.220 don't, it will devour you. You will become it. And that's exactly what's happened here. I love 00:09:12.220 --> 00:09:18.600 post-apocalyptic movies. My wife can attest she does not, but I do. I don't know why. But if you 00:09:18.600 --> 00:09:24.600 like post-apocalyptic films, you know that the movies are not really about the zombies or about the 00:09:24.600 --> 00:09:32.000 asteroids. What are they about? They're about what humanity will do to humans in the condition of a 00:09:32.000 --> 00:09:36.899 world that's broken into chaos. And so here, that's what we have. We have no sense of punishment, 00:09:37.100 --> 00:09:43.000 no fear of guilt, no conscience. And that means we're being told here that all there is is murder, 00:09:43.200 --> 00:09:50.139 murder upon murder upon murder. William Golding was the famous author of The Lord of the Flies, 00:09:50.740 --> 00:09:56.259 and he had fought in war with the Royal Navy. And he came back from war and said, 00:09:56.259 --> 00:10:04.779 when I went to war, I saw that the evil intention was not just in the person across the trenches from me. 00:10:07.059 --> 00:10:10.639 And he came back and wrote a book about well-educated British schoolboys 00:10:10.639 --> 00:10:17.000 who are respectable citizens that go and are stranded on an island, and there's no adults, 00:10:17.100 --> 00:10:20.720 and they try to establish order, but in a land without order, without rules, 00:10:20.720 --> 00:10:28.740 it descends and descends into chaos and murder and savagery ultimately. And Genesis 6 is telling you 00:10:28.740 --> 00:10:35.240 this is the original story of how that happened. This is what Lord of the Flies is all about. 00:10:35.800 --> 00:10:41.920 It's not, in other words, it's not saying that there are good people, decent people, average people, 00:10:42.040 --> 00:10:47.379 most of you average, decent, law-abiding, relatively citizens, and then there are really, 00:10:47.379 --> 00:10:53.279 really bad people. It's saying that sin is within all of us, and it's a beast that wants to utterly 00:10:53.279 --> 00:10:59.899 deprave us and take us all the way down, down, down, but we must not let it. But that's exactly 00:10:59.899 --> 00:11:07.779 what's taking place in this story. So secondly, how did this happen? The pattern of sin. Now, if you go 00:11:07.779 --> 00:11:13.179 back up to the top of the passage, we learn how this happened. Verse 1, it says, when humanity began to 00:11:13.179 --> 00:11:22.000 multiply on the face of the land and daughters are born, this is Genesis 1. This is echoing Genesis 1. 00:11:22.079 --> 00:11:28.000 Remember God said, I made you in my image, now go be fruitful and multiply. And here in Genesis 6, 00:11:28.059 --> 00:11:34.799 we have, and it happened. Humanity multiplied. They were fruitful. They spread, just like Genesis 1. 00:11:34.799 --> 00:11:41.679 But then that Genesis 1 goodness has verse 2 tacked onto it. And in verse 2, it says, 00:11:42.159 --> 00:11:47.740 the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were attractive, and they took as their wives, 00:11:48.039 --> 00:11:56.879 they took any as their wives as they chose. Oh, just look at the verbs. The sons of God saw 00:11:56.879 --> 00:12:07.179 the daughters of man, and they took as their wives as they chose. Those three verbs in that verse are the 00:12:07.179 --> 00:12:14.539 exact same thing as Genesis 3, the same three verbs, when Eve looked at the tree of the knowledge of good 00:12:14.539 --> 00:12:21.340 and evil, and it says, she saw, she saw that it was attractive or good, the word is good, and she took. 00:12:21.340 --> 00:12:27.259 Look, and you see the writer is being so strategic. He's repeating those same three verbs to say, 00:12:27.340 --> 00:12:33.700 what do you have here? You have here a cosmic fall. This is the Garden of Eden story recapitulated, 00:12:33.820 --> 00:12:39.399 happening over and over again. And we learn here the pattern of sin, and it's that humanity, we, 00:12:39.600 --> 00:12:44.940 because of sin, we see something, and then we see it's good. We want it. We lust after it. That's 00:12:44.940 --> 00:12:54.480 really the word. And we reach out, and we take it. When you have a child in your home, 00:12:55.460 --> 00:13:01.820 they come to you routinely before dinner, and they say, can I have a biscuit? And you say, 00:13:02.400 --> 00:13:06.580 no, you cannot have a biscuit. We're about to have dinner. But then you look at their eyes, 00:13:06.580 --> 00:13:15.420 and you see them kind of glance over and latch on to the biscuits. And they see, and it is a delight 00:13:15.420 --> 00:13:20.620 to their eyes, and they want it. And it doesn't matter. Whatever mom and dad have said, they're 00:13:20.620 --> 00:13:24.000 going to find a way. This has never happened at our house, but they're going to find a way 00:13:24.000 --> 00:13:31.200 when the time is right to take. And that's just a little, that's a microcosm, a tiny little thing, 00:13:31.200 --> 00:13:36.800 right? But it's, it is the pattern of sin. And all of you, and here, while it was just Adam and Eve in 00:13:36.800 --> 00:13:42.280 the garden, here we're talking about all the sons and daughters of humanity that are entering into this. 00:13:42.920 --> 00:13:53.120 Now, the question here is, who are these sons of God that see and lust after and take these daughters 00:13:53.120 --> 00:13:59.800 of men? And we could be sidelined for the rest of the sermon very easily trying to answer that 00:13:59.799 --> 00:14:06.479 question. So I'm going to spend one minute on it, and then, and then I would love to talk to you about 00:14:06.479 --> 00:14:12.959 it more if you'd like to talk about it. But the earliest reading of this passage, the most common 00:14:12.959 --> 00:14:19.759 Jewish reading in the time before Jesus was born, and the most common reading in the early church 00:14:19.759 --> 00:14:26.139 from somebody like Justin Martyr in the second century, is that these sons of God are spiritual 00:14:26.139 --> 00:14:34.100 beings, angelic beings who have fallen, and they have come and lusted after the daughters of humanity, 00:14:34.199 --> 00:14:40.179 the daughters of men. And from them comes the line of the Nephilim. And the reason that they thought that 00:14:40.179 --> 00:14:46.819 is because most commonly in the Old Testament, the phrase sons of God references spiritual beings, 00:14:46.819 --> 00:14:54.559 not humans. And so you can go to Job 1 or Psalm 82 or 89 and find that sons of God is normally a 00:14:54.559 --> 00:14:59.659 reference to spiritual beings, not human beings. But then you come over to the New Testament to a place 00:14:59.659 --> 00:15:06.699 like Jude verse 6 and 7 or 1 and 2 Peter, and it talks about the fall of the angels and attaches to 00:15:06.699 --> 00:15:12.159 that fall some sort of sexual immorality. Now that's hard to comprehend. It's hard to understand. We see 00:15:12.159 --> 00:15:17.239 other instances like that in Sodom and Gomorrah, for example, as well, that there are possibilities 00:15:17.240 --> 00:15:23.879 like that being conveyed perhaps in the Bible. And some people take that reading and some don't. 00:15:24.240 --> 00:15:29.820 But what I want to say to you is that when you read the Bible, you realize that we in the modern 00:15:29.820 --> 00:15:35.639 Western world, as people who are post-enlightenment in a scientific age, we are the strange ones. 00:15:36.379 --> 00:15:41.440 So when you come to a passage and you say there is a world of spiritual beings and all sorts of stuff 00:15:41.440 --> 00:15:46.520 that perhaps I don't understand, that almost everybody else in world history has believed in 00:15:46.520 --> 00:15:51.480 things like that. And a plethora of spiritual realities that we can't quite understand. We're 00:15:51.480 --> 00:15:57.200 the strange ones in the modern Western world. We're the odd people out, if that strikes you as so odd. 00:15:57.320 --> 00:16:03.580 But the other reading, and this is Augustine and Calvin and probably the majority within the tradition 00:16:03.580 --> 00:16:10.720 that we would follow here, think that this is Genesis 4's genealogy and Genesis 5 genealogy, 00:16:10.720 --> 00:16:14.540 all mixing together. So if you were with us the past couple of weeks, you might remember 00:16:14.540 --> 00:16:21.379 that in Genesis 4, you have the line of Cain, the family who rejected God and said no to God and 00:16:21.379 --> 00:16:27.139 refused God's mercy and descended and descended into cycle and cycle of murder and vengeance. 00:16:27.600 --> 00:16:35.259 But then from one appointed son, Seth, there was the seed of the woman arising, a people who called 00:16:35.259 --> 00:16:38.820 upon the name of the Lord. We called that last week the beginning of the church. 00:16:38.820 --> 00:16:46.000 But when you flip the page to Genesis 6, what you read is that the beginning of the church, 00:16:46.260 --> 00:16:53.000 the family of Seth that did worship the Lord, they have completely become mixed up with all the evil 00:16:53.000 --> 00:16:58.720 that was going on in the world. And so no matter if you read this as a fall of angels, a cosmic 00:16:58.720 --> 00:17:03.940 rebellion, or you read this as just the line of Seth and the line of Cain getting intertwined, 00:17:03.940 --> 00:17:10.720 the same outcome. And that's that there was once a people in the proto-history here that called upon 00:17:10.720 --> 00:17:15.380 the name of the Lord. And when you get to Genesis 6, there aren't any. Nobody's following the Lord. 00:17:16.259 --> 00:17:21.480 It's descended and descended and descended, and all there is left is wickedness as the text 00:17:21.480 --> 00:17:27.160 uses it. And so no matter how you read it, the outcome ends up being exactly the same. 00:17:27.160 --> 00:17:33.720 The point is this, the people of God are gone, and there's no one left. And you can see how the 00:17:33.720 --> 00:17:41.600 author's pointing us to that because back in 426, it said that in that day, there were a people who 00:17:41.600 --> 00:17:47.600 called upon the name of the Lord. And then you come over to our passage, and when it talks about these 00:17:47.599 --> 00:17:56.899 mighty men that came out of, that were birthed out of this evil marriages, it says literally the men, 00:17:57.059 --> 00:18:04.519 it says the men of renown, but in Hebrew, that's the men of the name. And later on in Genesis chapter 11, 00:18:04.839 --> 00:18:10.559 the climax of this whole section, what did they say? They said, let us build a name for ourselves 00:18:10.559 --> 00:18:16.019 against God. And so you see what it's doing? It's saying in Genesis 4, 26, the line of Seth are people 00:18:16.019 --> 00:18:23.460 who called upon the name of the Lord. But here, the offspring of these marriages produced nothing 00:18:23.460 --> 00:18:30.920 but a people who said, we're men of our name. We won't look to the Lord at all. The people of God 00:18:30.920 --> 00:18:38.259 are gone. There's nothing left. And so by verse 12, we learn all flesh is corrupted. Everybody, 00:18:39.059 --> 00:18:44.740 the serpent, in other words, the beast has fully swallowed the good that was remaining. 00:18:44.740 --> 00:18:51.599 And that is why God says, I'm going to reduce the age of their life to 120 years. What's going on 00:18:51.599 --> 00:18:57.220 there? People were living so long in Genesis 5, but now just 120 years, why? What is he saying? He's 00:18:57.220 --> 00:19:07.000 saying the longer humanity lives, the worse it tends to get. And so the years of my patience, I'm going to 00:19:07.000 --> 00:19:12.440 give them 120 years of patience. A shorter lifespan. You just think about the story of Solomon. 00:19:13.720 --> 00:19:20.839 The longer he went, the worse it got. And in the same way, God reduces their age because he's saying, 00:19:21.420 --> 00:19:27.299 I have exhibited patience after patience after patience, but it keeps getting worse. And so here, 00:19:27.299 --> 00:19:36.919 the judge sees, and he sees that only the intention of every heart is evil and wickedness. And so thirdly, 00:19:37.700 --> 00:19:44.279 this leads us to understand something of the direction of sin, the direction it tends to go. 00:19:44.399 --> 00:19:51.299 So we've seen the potential that there is potential of the beast, the power of sin in us to draw us all 00:19:51.299 --> 00:19:56.919 the way into utter depravity. Think of the world of Hitler or Paul Potts. That's the world we're talking 00:19:56.919 --> 00:20:05.639 about here. And the pattern of sin that we all have that beast within us to see and to lust, to want 00:20:05.639 --> 00:20:11.659 something disordered that we shouldn't want, and to reach out and take it. But here we learn in the 00:20:11.659 --> 00:20:18.539 third point how that tends to go. And that's the direction of sin. So what does this movement look 00:20:18.539 --> 00:20:26.259 like? Look, think about it. Sin moves from the inside out. First, it was the serpent outside of 00:20:26.259 --> 00:20:33.680 us in Genesis 3. Then it became the serpent within us in Genesis 4. And now the beast moves from the 00:20:33.680 --> 00:20:40.240 inside out. It first captures your heart, disorders your desires, and then eventually comes out into the 00:20:40.240 --> 00:20:47.159 hand and you take, right? And in this passage, Genesis 4 to 11 as a whole, we're being told the two 00:20:47.160 --> 00:20:53.560 primary ways that takes place. And we'll see these several more times in this series, so I'm not going 00:20:53.560 --> 00:20:58.680 to touch on the first one. I'm just going to mention that. But that's the two-fold pattern that sin 00:20:58.680 --> 00:21:07.480 develops into in Genesis 4 to 11. It's typically sexual sin and violence. And that happens in cycles 00:21:07.480 --> 00:21:14.940 over and over again in this section. And there's a hint at the sexual sin when the sons of God take the 00:21:14.940 --> 00:21:20.640 daughters of men. And we don't know all that that means, but it's being hinted at, and it's going to 00:21:20.640 --> 00:21:27.080 develop more and more in Genesis 9 and 10. But here, what's really accented in verse 11 and 13, two 00:21:27.080 --> 00:21:32.259 different times in verse 11 and 13, now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was, what do 00:21:32.259 --> 00:21:39.559 you mean? Filled with violence. And then verse 13, he says it again, for the earth is filled with 00:21:39.559 --> 00:21:46.740 violence because of humanity. And so the Bible's telling us that when sin really takes over in our 00:21:46.740 --> 00:21:53.179 lives, the direction tends in that way, eventually in a progression towards violence. And that's exactly 00:21:53.179 --> 00:21:59.599 what's happened here in Genesis chapter 6. And then again, I mentioned earlier that there's so many puns 00:21:59.599 --> 00:22:04.279 in the original language here, but down in verse 11, there's one that's really important. 00:22:04.279 --> 00:22:12.299 It says, now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the world was filled with violence. And God saw 00:22:12.299 --> 00:22:19.379 the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on earth. And the word that 00:22:19.379 --> 00:22:26.139 God uses to pronounce judgment in this passage over the earth is the same word, corrupt. So when he says, 00:22:26.220 --> 00:22:31.039 I will blot them out, it's like saying, I will corrupt them. In other words, you could read it the other way. 00:22:31.039 --> 00:22:38.039 You could say, it's saying, all of humanity has destroyed themselves on the inside. And so they're 00:22:38.039 --> 00:22:44.420 destroying each other on the outside. And so God says, so I will destroy them. And you see that even 00:22:44.420 --> 00:22:49.839 the way the judgment comes through here is God saying, I'm going to give them what they've chosen. 00:22:51.180 --> 00:22:58.279 After so many generations of patience in this post-apocalyptic, I can say it, scene, 00:22:58.279 --> 00:23:04.700 I'm going to give them what they've chosen. They've chosen nothing but murder. And in other words, 00:23:04.700 --> 00:23:10.639 he's saying that humanity, society, creation, it's not possible under these conditions. 00:23:11.480 --> 00:23:17.559 After so many years of patience, this is what humanity has come to. And as soon as that steps in, 00:23:17.599 --> 00:23:23.599 as soon as that reality comes, while you can see the reasonableness of that in the logic of the text, 00:23:23.599 --> 00:23:29.500 at the same time, of course, we still, as modern people, push against it. And we say, I still do not 00:23:30.019 --> 00:23:36.599 like to read about a God of judgment. I want to read stories of the God of love. I want to read 00:23:36.599 --> 00:23:41.459 the stories of Christ's miraculous deeds in the gospels. But when you start your Genesis reading and 00:23:41.459 --> 00:23:46.459 you come to the passages of judgment, it can become quite hard for us as modern people. And 00:23:46.459 --> 00:23:51.240 let me say this to you. It's been said by so many others so much better than I'm going to say it now. 00:23:51.240 --> 00:23:57.539 In lengthy treatises that can be checked or looked at, but I'll just say it like this for now. 00:23:58.539 --> 00:24:04.920 Without a just judge over all the earth, in the end, violence will win. 00:24:07.599 --> 00:24:12.700 And here's why, you know, think about it intellectually. If you don't have a just judge 00:24:12.700 --> 00:24:20.099 that transcends nature, that transcends the natural order, then you look out at the world and you see 00:24:20.099 --> 00:24:27.199 what in nature. Talk to the sociologists, talk to the biologists, talk to the historians. And just 00:24:27.199 --> 00:24:32.579 like nature is oriented towards violence, so humanity is oriented towards violence. 00:24:33.939 --> 00:24:38.299 Annie Dillard, you might have seen, died two weeks ago. The famous author, Pulitzer Prize winner, 00:24:38.399 --> 00:24:47.639 she wrote the famous book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. And she went out into the woods and she wanted to live 00:24:47.640 --> 00:24:53.840 sort of a Henry Thoreau style life of building her own cabin and peace next to the creek and a 00:24:53.840 --> 00:25:00.540 pre-modern sort of life. And in the very first chapter of her chronicle, her journal of this, 00:25:01.000 --> 00:25:07.500 she talks about a frog at the edge of a pond. She said, I crept up upon a frog at the edge of a pond 00:25:07.500 --> 00:25:14.859 and it was perfectly still. And she couldn't believe how still it remained. And she said, but as I got closer, 00:25:16.119 --> 00:25:22.619 I realized that something was happening. And she says that all of a sudden the frog seemed to almost melt. 00:25:23.660 --> 00:25:29.400 It shrunk down like a canvas bag, I believe she puts it, shrunk. And that's because underneath the frog 00:25:29.400 --> 00:25:35.079 there was a poisonous water bug that had injected the frog with a venom, a very rare water bug, 00:25:35.079 --> 00:25:42.980 that basically melts the insides of an animal. And the frog had shrunk down to nothing. And she said, 00:25:43.079 --> 00:25:50.119 I realized in that moment that my role in this book would not just be the witness to nature's beauty, 00:25:50.460 --> 00:25:56.919 but the witness of nature's brutality. And it doesn't take very long to know that nature is red 00:25:56.919 --> 00:26:03.599 and tooth and claw and that humanity tends towards the same direction. When there is no law, there is no 00:26:03.599 --> 00:26:11.959 rule. We tend towards chaos. And as one writer puts it, you cannot draw a straight line. You cannot call 00:26:11.959 --> 00:26:16.539 a line crooked, I should say, without a straight edge. In other words, look, if you look out and you 00:26:16.539 --> 00:26:21.179 study nature, if you use the tools of science, you will see that nature is violent and humans tend to 00:26:21.179 --> 00:26:26.439 be violent. And if there is no God above, there is no judge that transcends the natural order, 00:26:26.440 --> 00:26:31.900 then on what basis can you say that what you observe is actually bad? 00:26:34.240 --> 00:26:40.519 And you see, we need a judge of all the earth. We need a straight line to measure crooked lines by. 00:26:40.620 --> 00:26:47.059 We need a God who transcends everything, or we cannot call violence bad. Miroslav Volf, 00:26:48.420 --> 00:26:53.559 the Yugoslavian theologian who was present for so much of the turmoil in Yugoslavia 00:26:53.559 --> 00:27:00.539 in the 20th century. He grew up under communist Yugoslavia, and he wrote a famous book called 00:27:00.539 --> 00:27:06.059 Exclusion and Embrace. And in it, I'll just paraphrase him here. He says, people who have 00:27:06.059 --> 00:27:12.579 suffered real violence in their lives do not break the cycle by believing in a God who does not judge. 00:27:13.559 --> 00:27:19.500 The only way to break the cycle of violence in a society is by believing that there is a God who 00:27:19.500 --> 00:27:25.680 will judge violence. And this is what he writes. He says, when your home has been burned down and your 00:27:25.680 --> 00:27:33.099 family has been murdered, what stops you from taking revenge? And he writes this, only this, 00:27:33.759 --> 00:27:43.460 that I believe there is a judge who will do right. And you see, the judge here sees and he does what is 00:27:43.460 --> 00:27:50.279 right. And the judge of all the earth means that this world will not be lost to violence. 00:27:51.299 --> 00:27:57.940 No, the Bible tells you, look, the Bible tells you why you know in your heart that violence is so 00:27:57.940 --> 00:28:05.240 existentially wrong, because it is. Because we have been corrupted by sin, and because of the beast 00:28:05.240 --> 00:28:11.620 within us, it moves us in that direction when we let it win. And that means for us today, judgment is 00:28:11.619 --> 00:28:20.019 not the enemy of love. No, no. Judgment is not the enemy of love. A court, a court that does not judge 00:28:20.019 --> 00:28:27.879 is not loving. It is moving society towards chaos. And the reason a court that judges exist is because 00:28:27.879 --> 00:28:33.659 there is a judge of all the earth who does right. And thanks be to God, because we are not impartial 00:28:33.659 --> 00:28:40.519 enough. It can't be us. There has to be a judge of all the earth. And so lastly, let's finish by 00:28:40.519 --> 00:28:45.839 looking at this judge, the judge of sin. What does it say about him? In verse 6, it says, 00:28:46.400 --> 00:28:54.700 the Lord regretted that he had made humanity, and it grieved him to his heart. Now, this looks like 00:28:54.700 --> 00:29:00.440 it's saying God looked up at what had happened and said, you know, I made a big mistake, 00:29:01.200 --> 00:29:05.379 and I shouldn't have ever made people at all, and I'm going to have to go with plan B, 00:29:05.380 --> 00:29:13.240 because plan A did not work. And again, this is an issue like who are the sons of God that could 00:29:13.240 --> 00:29:18.920 take us into a long reflection, and I'll spare you that now, but would love to talk to you about it 00:29:18.920 --> 00:29:26.900 more if you're interested. But what are we reading here? This is how the Bible readers of old talk 00:29:26.900 --> 00:29:33.340 about it. They say, Scripture interprets Scripture. And so you've got to go to other passages in the 00:29:33.339 --> 00:29:38.740 Bible to understand what is meant here. Is it saying God was so sorry and made such a big mistake and 00:29:38.740 --> 00:29:43.220 wished that he would have done it differently? It's not saying that. And we know that because 00:29:43.220 --> 00:29:49.399 in Numbers 23, 19, we read, God is not a man that he should repent. And it's the same verb as this verb. 00:29:49.819 --> 00:29:54.939 It says God repented that he had made humanity. But then Numbers 23 says, God is not a human that he 00:29:54.939 --> 00:29:59.799 should repent or ever change his mind. And instead, the theologians of old say that what we're reading 00:29:59.799 --> 00:30:07.319 here is accommodation language, that God is speaking to us in such a way that we humans can understand 00:30:07.319 --> 00:30:15.859 it, that we can sense something of his emotional life, his affections, that he hates sin but loves 00:30:15.859 --> 00:30:23.139 humanity, that he set his heart against sin but for humanity. That's really what's being said. And 00:30:23.140 --> 00:30:30.460 because life together now in this awful world of Genesis 6 is not possible any longer, he is going 00:30:30.460 --> 00:30:36.440 to judge the world and he's going to send a flood. And we will dig into the flood in detail next week. 00:30:38.160 --> 00:30:47.900 But I'll finish by saying this about it. In Genesis chapter 1, God separated the waters from the waters. 00:30:47.900 --> 00:30:53.519 He separated the water from the land. He made the world by putting water in the right place. 00:30:54.360 --> 00:31:01.259 But when you come to the flood story in Genesis chapter 6, he lets the waters go back to where 00:31:01.259 --> 00:31:09.140 they used to be. And so the commentators will say that the flood story is God taking creation and 00:31:09.140 --> 00:31:16.519 decreating it. He's undoing what he had made beautiful in Genesis chapter 1. But why is he doing it? Why is he 00:31:16.519 --> 00:31:21.759 doing it? He's doing it. Why? Because he loves the world and he loves humanity. And he's saying, 00:31:22.339 --> 00:31:27.960 if I let things go on the way they are, then there will be nothing left, no humans left. And in other 00:31:27.960 --> 00:31:38.680 words, what we see here in the flood story is salvation by judgment, that he's judging in order to save. 00:31:39.180 --> 00:31:45.980 He's decreating so that he can recreate. He's taking things back to Genesis 1 so that he can start over 00:31:45.980 --> 00:31:55.019 again. And that comes through in this one man that gets mentioned, Noah. Notice verse 8. Noah found 00:31:55.019 --> 00:32:02.980 favor in the eyes of the Lord. That's the word grace. And you see, verse 9 says, Noah was a righteous man, 00:32:03.099 --> 00:32:10.819 blameless, and Noah walked with God. But verse 8 comes before verse 9. Noah was also a sinner. 00:32:10.819 --> 00:32:18.460 And it says that Noah received God's grace. And therefore, verse 9, he was a righteous man, 00:32:18.599 --> 00:32:24.339 blameless, who walked with God. And if you think about it for just a second, there's going to be 00:32:24.339 --> 00:32:31.480 no humans left. This is going to be an utter decreation except for one chosen man who was pulled 00:32:31.480 --> 00:32:38.420 out of the chaos. He and his wife. And when the floodwaters come, they're going to be in a bounded 00:32:38.420 --> 00:32:46.360 space, a safe space. And in that safe space, there's going to be animals, right? What is this? 00:32:48.039 --> 00:32:58.120 Noah is a second Adam. This is Adam and Eve. And the ark is a garden. And there are animals all around 00:32:58.119 --> 00:33:04.639 them. And in the midst of the chaos waters, there is one floating little Eden. Why? Because God is 00:33:04.639 --> 00:33:09.479 saying, I'm going to recreate this world. I'm going to save it through judgment. I'm going to bring 00:33:09.479 --> 00:33:16.559 judgment so that I can bring life to you, to this people that are sitting here today. Adam had three 00:33:16.559 --> 00:33:22.839 sons. How many sons does Noah have? Three sons. He is the second Adam. But if you keep reading 00:33:22.839 --> 00:33:31.919 Genesis 4 to 11, and you will, because we will, you will find out that Noah also commits a great fall. 00:33:33.279 --> 00:33:38.879 And you say, it's not him. See the pattern? Salvation by judgment through a second Adam. 00:33:40.099 --> 00:33:47.539 But it's not him. And who's it going to be? Noah's name means rest, but he didn't bring it. 00:33:47.539 --> 00:33:54.779 But Jesus Christ is the one who said, come unto me, all you who are weary, and I will give you rest. 00:33:56.740 --> 00:34:02.839 Jesus Christ, just think about it. Salvation by judgment? Noah got to float in the Garden of Eden 00:34:02.839 --> 00:34:09.420 upon the waters, but Jesus Christ drowned in the water. At the cross, Jesus Christ was decreated. He 00:34:09.420 --> 00:34:15.420 was immersed in the floodwaters. So what we did today in baptism could be pronounced waters of cleansing. 00:34:15.420 --> 00:34:20.980 Jesus Christ is the true second Adam, and the true and better Noah, and the one by which 00:34:20.980 --> 00:34:27.940 salvation would come through judgment. He was judged so that you don't have to drown. He was judged so 00:34:27.940 --> 00:34:37.159 that you don't have to be judged by the judge. And let me say a last word. That means today you can say 00:34:37.159 --> 00:34:42.960 that the gospel of Jesus gives you the freedom to say the flood has already happened. 00:34:42.960 --> 00:34:50.159 God's judgment has already come fully upon him for me. Therefore, you are okay. You are safe. 00:34:50.320 --> 00:34:55.740 When you, look, let me invite you. When you trust in him, when you follow Jesus, there is no condemnation 00:34:55.740 --> 00:35:03.619 for you. The flood already came upon him. The gospel means you can be safe today to say something like, 00:35:04.139 --> 00:35:08.740 there is a beast within me. I do have a sinful inclination. There is a predator. 00:35:08.739 --> 00:35:16.099 There is a serpent coiled up on my doorstep, and I can tell a story where I used to let it win. 00:35:17.139 --> 00:35:23.479 But in the power of Jesus Christ now, I am trying, trying, trying to not let it rule over me anymore. 00:35:24.419 --> 00:35:30.239 So you can say, yeah, I am totally depraved, but by the grace of God, I am fighting every sense to 00:35:30.239 --> 00:35:34.739 become utterly depraved in this way or this way or this way. And that is what the gospel breaks through 00:35:34.739 --> 00:35:38.139 and gives you the freedom to grow in that way. The gospel gives you the power to say, 00:35:38.339 --> 00:35:42.339 when you have been wronged, when you have had violence committed against you, 00:35:43.379 --> 00:35:49.119 that you can say, Isaiah 53, though he did no violence, all violence was done to him. 00:35:50.919 --> 00:35:58.219 Therefore, I can say the Lord is the judge of all the earth. I will not return violence for vengeance. 00:35:58.219 --> 00:36:07.859 I will let God be judged. The gospel gives you the power to do that. And so the same Lord who saw 00:36:07.859 --> 00:36:14.480 Noah with delight and grace, who saw the wickedness upon the earth, he sees you in both, he sees the 00:36:14.480 --> 00:36:20.559 truth about you, yet he sees you the way he saw Noah in Christ with delight and favor. And that gives 00:36:20.559 --> 00:36:27.899 you the freedom to live beyond the bounds of the flood. Let us pray. Father, teach us to live 00:36:27.900 --> 00:36:33.519 as if the flood of judgment has already come. We thank you that Jesus Christ was decreated, 00:36:33.660 --> 00:36:41.500 he was undone, he was drowned, so that we could have the garden of delight. So teach us that. I pray 00:36:41.500 --> 00:36:48.619 that someone today would be moved by the power of your spirit to trust in Jesus and that you would 00:36:48.619 --> 00:36:51.160 renew the faith of many. And I pray that in Christ's name. Amen.