Please turn now in the Bible to Genesis chapter 6. Our series right now is Bible Stories Everyone Should Know. We come to a Bible story that everyone does know, and yet there's a lot still to learn from it. I'm not going to read all that we have here for the flood, but I am going to read a good chunk of it. So please follow along, beginning in Genesis chapter 6 at verse 5. So Genesis 6, beginning at verse 5. Please listen to the word of God. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. and the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals, and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. These are the generations of Noah Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. 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, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, I am determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it. The length of the ark, 300 cubits. Its breadth, 50 cubits, and its height, 30 cubits. Make a roof for the ark, 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. 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. 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, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. 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. 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." Noah did this. He did all that God commanded him. Then the Lord said to Noah, Go into the ark, you and all your household, 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. 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." And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him. We will now move ahead. You know the flood comes. End of chapter 7. The waters prevailed on the earth 150 days. Chapter 8, verse 1, change, but God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth and the waters subsided. And then moving on to chapter 8 at verse 15. The water has gone down. Then God said to Noah, Go out from the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons' wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may swarm on the earth. and be fruitful and multiply on the earth. So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives within. Every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out by families from the ark. Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird, and offered bird offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma The Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man. For the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. He shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. And for your life-blood I will require a reckoning. From every beast I will require it, and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. For God made man in his own image. And you, be fruitful and multiply, team on the earth and multiply in it. Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, Behold, I establish my covenant with you, and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you. As many as came out of the ark, it is for every beast of the earth. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth." And God said, this is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for all future generations. I have set my bow in the cloud and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth." God said to Noah, this is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth. The sons of Noah, who went forth from the ark, were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed. Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine, and became drunk, and lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward, and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father's nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, Cursed be Canaan! A servant of servants shall he be to his brothers. We'll stop our reading at that point. So here we have a Bible story that everyone does know. The ancient cultures, you can read in their legends and their stories and you find a universal flood. I believe the Chinese version of the flood is eight people on an ark, just as we have eight people here on this ark. I know there are many toys based on Noah and the ark and the animals. I think we have two such toy arks in this house with lots of little wooden or plastic animals to be put on and off. So everyone knows this account, but few really absorb the awesome lessons of it. What we're going to do today, after we go through the event, is we're going to also trace through the Bible and say, what lessons do the scriptures tell us to take? as you go looking on to the prophets, and on to the gospels, and on to the epistles. The first crucial point is this. The story of the flood begins with man's wickedness. Central to any event is the question of why. And if it's a catastrophic event, the question is, well, where does the blame go? Should we blame God? Should we blame man? Should we blame no one? It's just a thing that happened, a result of chance or fate. I believe in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the flood story as remembered in Iraq. The Epic of Gilgamesh blames the gods. The gods made men and then they couldn't take the noise. So they decided to blot out men because of all the noise that people made. As you see here, there was a problem between God and men, but it wasn't noise. Or if it was noise, it was the voice of blood crying from the ground, as we saw with Cain and Abel. Yes, the Bible says, don't go blaming God. What you see is people's wickedness. And the wickedness here is described as having been comprehensive. Nearly everyone, their wickedness began in the mind, their thoughts and intentions were only evil continually. And they didn't keep it inside, it broke out. And there was violence all over the earth. You can pause for a moment. If this doesn't sound like your world, you should be thankful. Be thankful that you have a government that does a pretty good job of reining in violent acts. God ordained government at the end of this passage to do just that. But you don't have to go too far to find places where the government's control is not very firm. and there's violence on the streets. You can go to other countries where the government has no control, and the violent are in control. Or perhaps places where the government is the violence. So this doesn't sound like your world, be thankful. It does sound like the world for many. The question to keep in mind though, is are we any better than they? Again, as I remember the Greek version of Pandora's box, and then the flood, And then people after the flood, according to the Greek version, are better able to resist the mosquitoes and all the things that come out of Pandora's box and cause sins. Is that true of us? Are we better able to resist these temptations? Well, let's go on and see. The flood begins with our wickedness. The Bible blames man and not God. Universal corruption in mind and in action. And so we're told that God determined to blot out humanity. And together with humanity, everything else that depends on the land for life. Now, you notice the language here of God. It might surprise you. God was sorry. It grieved Him. He said, I'm sorry that I made man. This kind of language has a long name. It's called anthropomorphism. That is, you describe God in human terms. This is not something primitive. This is something very vivid. And the point that's being made is not that God lacked knowledge as to what was going to happen, or that He lacked the power to change it or to restrain it. The point is that wickedness offends God. And the ensuing point, obviously, is that God is not weak in His response when He is offended. Bible puts it on, says it later on, is we have here the wrath of God, His determination as the judge to punish what is evil. And so the whole thing stands as a powerful warning that God knows that God is offended and He has infinite ability to respond. So God determined to blot out man, but we find God's favor on Noah. after the overwhelming indictment in chapter 6, verses 5, 6, and 7, it might seem there is no hope at all, but in verse 8, we're given hope. Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Now notice how salvation works here. One person finds favor, and so eight people are saved, and the whole human race is saved then through them. We're not told what kind of person Mrs. Noah was. We're not told till later on anything of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and it doesn't reflect well on all of them. And of course, we hear nothing of their wives. All that we know of the other seven is that they got on the ark. They had that much faith or obedience to the potter Familius. He said, got on the ark, and they did. They followed him that far. But we're not told anything about their relationship with God. So notice how the salvation works. One finds favor with God, and those connected to that one are saved with Him. And why does Noah find favor with God? Well, it's in verse 9. I want to point something out to you. In English, we're stuck with a certain word order. If I say, John punched Robert, I can't turn it around and say, Robert punched John, I've just changed, who's bleeding? By word order, we communicate who's the agent and who's the recipient. But other languages sometimes let you change the words around, and they put endings or markers on it, so that you know who's getting hit and who's doing the hitting. And we have one, it's striking, Hebrew doesn't do it that often, but it does it here in verse 9. When you come to the key point, why does Noah find favor with God? What you read is this. With God walked Noah. Do you see the emphasis there? What is the secret? The secret is this. With God walked Noah. And he walked with God when no one else did. It says the earth is filled with violence. With God walked Noah. Now, who do you walk with? I see many people literally walking around these days. They almost always are walking with the same people. Some of them might be getting tired of who they walk with. Some of them might be. Maybe it's good for some that they're not walking with some others. With God walks Noah. And as we are restricted right now in who we can spend time with, let it be an occasion to you to walk with God. And be careful about self-pity. The self-pity that says, oh, people don't walk with God the way they used to. Really? You have many brothers and sisters who walk with God on this call. Many throughout this country. Noah did it alone. Jesus did it alone. With God walked Noah against the world. And so we see God's favor and Noah's obedience. God says to Noah, make an enormous box. He doesn't say boat. He says an ark. And it basically sounds like a box. He tells him to be so many cubits. The cubit is the distance from the elbow to the fingertip. A non-standard measurement, but one you always have with you. And to say that it is 300 cubits, if you picture the typical track, as in track and field track, This would stretch not from one end zone line to the other end zone line. This stretches from the tip of the track, like up on the turn, all the way across to the other turn. That's how long this arc is. It's not quite as wide as the field, but it's as high as a three-story house. He used to make this without power tools, without steel tools, hopefully with bronze and iron tools. And having made it, he has to paint it inside and out with pitch. He has to put a roof on it, and doors, and three decks. Then he has to fill it up with all kinds of food. And then, in the nick of time, fill it up with animals. Two by two of most animals, seven of the clean ones. And so we're told it took him 100 years, which is a long time to work on a project. And he's working on a project without seeing the Flood. The Flood hasn't started. Everything's continuing as it always has. The only thing different in all the world is that Noah is building an enormous box. Why is he doing that? He's doing that because with God walked Noah. And he has been told by God what is going to happen. He knows that God created by His Word. He knows God can destroy by His Word. And certainly God can communicate and warn by His word. And we see that God also promised Noah His covenant. The first time in the Bible you get the word covenant is here in chapter 6. This essential concept to how we can relate to God and know what God will do. He said, I will make my covenant with you. And so Noah did this. And we have destruction and deliverance. The day comes. Noah loads up the ark. I can't quite tell if the rain starts first or not. But he gets everyone on board, and the Lord shuts the door, and you have the greatest of all floods following. You know, in this era of everybody having an iPhone or some kind of smartphone, and you can instantly take a video. I remember eight or ten years ago, Japan had that extraordinary earthquake and then flood. And you can still watch the videos online. It's the most amazing stuff I've ever seen. The video starts, nothing's wrong. Suddenly there's a little water coming. Oh, that's a little different. And by the end of the video, the town is washed away. Now this was like that, only more so. And so we're told that water covered the earth and everything died. We have here God's determination to be victorious over sin. But on the ark, there's life. On the ark, there's eight people, and two of every kind of animal, except when there's fourteen of every kind of animal, but the clean ones. Outside, there's death, and inside, there's life. Because outside, there's wrath, and inside, there's favor. Because outside, all sin. Inside, one has walked with God. And so we didn't read all of it. But there at the end of chapter 7, it really lays it on thick. That everything has died. And the waters are over all the earth. And everything that God had made is undone. And the turning point is that God remembered Noah. Noah's deliverance comes from God remembering Noah. It says He made a wind go over the earth. Now the word wind in Hebrew is the same as the Hebrew word for spirit, ruach. And so back at the beginning, in creation, it says the spirit of God was hovering over the waters. That's the ruach of God. And here God again sends a ruach, wind or spirit. There is God's presence, God's power. And the water goes down and down. He begins to look dry. Noah initiates investigations. He sends out one bird. It doesn't come back. He sends out a dove. It comes back empty-beaked. He sends it out again. It comes back with a leaf. He sends it out again. It doesn't come back. He initiates investigation, but he doesn't get off. He does not get off the ark until God tells him to. And when God tells him out, sends him out, he doesn't just send him out. He repeats his initial instructions to Adam and Eve. He says, go out, take everything out, and once again be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And Noah then does something a little strange. Having been told to go out and replenish the earth, not just humans, but let everything replenish the earth, he takes some of those clean animals that have survived the flood, and he kills them. He sacrifices them to God. He's right to do so, you can tell by God's response. And so we're being shown here how important it is to come before God by sacrifice, how important it is to worship God in the way that He has ordained, even at a moment when there's very few of everything and they have to replenish the earth. It is still right to take some of every clean animal and offer them to the Lord. So we have humanity delivered Life beginning again. And then God says something very, well, it's comforting part of it, and it's jarring part of it. Look at chapter 8, verse 21. When the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man. That's comforting. For the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Now wait a minute. That's what you said at the beginning. That's what he said before the flood, that the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually. So he flooded the earth. Now he says that man's heart is still evil from his youth, and so he won't flood the earth again. Now keep in mind, who's he talking about at this point? He's not talking about all the people who were gone. He's talking about Noah and the seven with him. They're the only people left. And he says of these good ones who are left over, the evil of man's heart, the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. We have here a powerful statement of original sin. That ever after the fall in the Garden of Eden, that we come off. We come with a desire to go our own way, to make up our own rules, to set our face against God and to do things our own way. Notice that. It's a universal statement. This is what people are like, and he says it when only the eight best are left, when they've all offered a pleasing sacrifice. Yes, God doesn't look with favor on them because they're sinless. Instead, the sacrifice is key, because His evaluation of the heart is that it is still sinful. And so what we see here early on in the Bible is that our problem is our hearts. And if we do not fix our heart, we haven't solved our human problem. And the point here is not that God is foiled. God is the one diagnosing the problem. The point is that God sent the flood so that we would know from the beginning that God is determined to destroy the wicked, and that we are wicked and must seek God's favor. So here's this theological truth to take away. That we come warped, and that we need God's favor. We need a rescue. And we have a political point made as well. All through history, there have been people who have had utopian impulses. People who have said, we're just going to start society over again. Ideally, these are pacifist people, and they go off and form a little commune. When things are worse, their communists decide that they're going to take over society and remake society. There's this ongoing utopian impulse. We can just get it right if we just start over again with only the best people. If we get rid of the worst people, then everything will be better. The communists, the Nazis, various American more peaceful groups going off and doing communes. We have here, at the beginning of Genesis, the most comprehensive project here, you might say, of getting rid of the wicked people. Getting down to the smallest possible unit of family. And God's immediate assessment is, but they're still wicked. So don't fall for utopian language, utopian hopes, utopian schemes. Whatever kind of special camp and commune you want to make, you'll still have people there, and so you'll still have sinners there. Be very wary of all those who want to set out to just get rid of the bad people. You can't. You can't educate the evil out of them. You can't wow people into faith. You have to be changed from within. And so, are we better today? Contrary to the Greek myths, God here is saying, no, not intrinsically you're not. Not without God's help you're not. Now I note the political implications here because in fact here in Genesis chapter 9 God sets out the seed form of government. When he says from his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man, he is saying that no longer will he intervene and speak to a Cain, a murderer, himself. It is for us to restrain the murderers. And given how family vengeance leads to endless blood feuds, far better to have a government do it. That's why in Romans 13 we're told that the king has the sword to restrain evil. So, in these first few chapters of Genesis, we're introduced to three fundamental institutions that are key to our well-being. We've got the family in Genesis 2. We have the church beginning to emerge in Genesis 3 and in the worship here in Genesis 8. We have the state, in Genesis 9. Three key institutions, family, church, and state. When they are functioning well, humans can flourish. Without any one of them, humanity does not do well. So we have here, after the flood, God declaring man's wickedness, and in light of that, how good it is that God gives us His covenant. He says, this is how people are, I will restrain my vengeance as long as the earth remains. Life on earth will continue. There will be seasons as long as the earth remains. And the earth will not be ended by a flood. Second Peter speaks of fire. There will not be an end by a flood. And to assure us, to assure Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, can you imagine the terror when the clouds would gather? He says, the rainbow and the cloud. And you know, God has been faithful. He was faithful to Noah. He promised a covenant before the Flood. He gave him a covenant after the Flood. And He's been faithful to us. There has been no worldwide cataclysm like the Flood. There's wars and pandemics and earthquakes, but there's been nothing to equal the Flood. So I continued reading, as you notice, past the Flood proper, to show you life beginning again. What does it reveal about life? Well, immediately the Scripture wants to point out man's wickedness. Noah made a vineyard, Noah made wine, Noah got drunk, Noah acted like a drunken fool, and one son mocked him, and he cursed his grandson. Here we have God's evaluation confirmed. Here is this man who had been described in glowing terms, a righteous man, unique in the world. He's a sinner like the rest of us. So we have the flood, the familiar story of Noah and the animals. What are the lessons that we're supposed to take from it? For the Bible is not given to entertain children. It's given to educate all of us. It's given to all of us, to teach us about our relationship with God. So what I did this week is I went through the rest of the Bible. I searched for Noah, or for flood, going through the rest of the Bible. And this is what I found in the Bible's lessons about the flood. In Isaiah, that Carl read, we have comfort for the exiles. The exile is compared there to being like a flood. God's wrath swept over them. But just as God had promised Noah never again to destroy the earth, so God promises the exiles, you will be with me forever. In Isaiah, we get comfort. Comfort from that ending covenant. In Ezekiel, chapter 14, we get a warning for sinners. You know, Noah was able to save his family, but no further. And Job was able to save his wife, but no further. And so it says in Ezekiel 14, if Noah and Daniel and Job were all in a city, they could not save the city from my wrath. It's reminiscent of Abraham pleading for Sodom. If there's ten righteous men, will you spare the city? Yes, for the sake of ten righteous men, I will spare the city. God says through Ezekiel, even if a city had Noah, Daniel, and Job in it, they could only deliver themselves, and not the city. And yet, it goes on to say, there will be survivors for Israel. There will be comfort for Israel. God, you will see, did not act without cause. The question left in Ezekiel is, why will there be survivors? We come to Jesus, and Jesus gives a very sharp warning. He says, you know, at the time of Noah, life was proceeding the way it had been. As he gathered the animals, everything else was normal. People were working, eating, drinking, sinning, doing whatever they did. They were doing whatever they did until God shut the door and the flood came. And he says, that's how it's going to be when Jesus returns. Everything will be totally normal until, bam, He returns. People will be eating, drinking, getting married, doing whatever they do, and He will return. So what are we supposed to do about that? Well, Jesus says, so therefore be ready. And the way Jesus wants us to be ready is to be doing our God-given jobs when He returns. He says the wise and faithful servant will be completing the task his Master gave him. Sometimes people think they know when Jesus will return. They don't. And then they furthermore think that what they ought to do is sell everything and sit on a hill waiting for Jesus. Wrong. You don't know when He's coming. And if you did know, you ought to carry on with the work God gave you to do. Blessed is the servant whose master finds him doing his assignments. Now in Peter, we get comfort for the faithful. Second Peter. It says scoffers don't think the world's going to change. They say it never has yet. But they've never looked at it as it has before. It changed at the time of the Flood. You might make the same point about the coronavirus. Nothing changes? No, it just has. At the time of the Flood, God saved Noah and his family and judged the ungodly. And so we're comforted in 2 Peter that God knows how to judge those who need judged while preserving His own. And the crucial question then is, how can you be His own? We're to do the calling God's given us, yes. But given original sin, the first question is, how do we become God's servants and not His enemies? Well, we are told here that we are to have faith in the unseen God, a faith that acts on the basis of God's Word, a faith that knows that God exists and that he rewards those who seek him. I'm quoting from Hebrews chapter 11. And having said this, it goes immediately on to mention Noah. Without faith, you cannot please God. Noah is our next example. He had a word from God and he acted in reverent fear. And so he and his household were saved. And the Bible even draws a lesson for us from the flood and connects it to baptism. You might think that's too symbolic or allegorical, but it's what Hunter read for us there in 1 Peter 3. It says, observe, they're saved through water by means of the instrument that God had ordained, the ark. They're saved by the hand of the mediator, Noah. And so it is for us, it says, in 1 Peter 3.21. Baptism, which corresponds to this, corresponds to the Ark, now saves you. Not the removal of dirt from your flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's kind of saying, as Noah was to the other seven, so Jesus is to all of us. As the Ark was for the other seven, so baptism is for all of us. Jesus is the one who has merited salvation. We are saved by our connection to Him. Baptism serves, you might say, as our ark, to save us through water, as an appeal to God. Because the key issue for us as humans is how our heart deals with God. Does our heart respond to the Word of God? We're not okay by birth. That's a basic lesson of the Flood. We're naturally sinful. And so we need these two things, a mediator and a new heart. And so Jesus says, Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. He reaches out His hands to us and says, I am the mediator. And by the new covenant that He made in His blood, He gives us the new heart. but our hearts are still weak and they waver. And so He's also given us a sign, not a sign of a rainbow, but the sign of baptism, to assure us that indeed, the Mediator's name is on us, and that we are righteous in God's sight. Here we have the lessons of the flood. Comfort, that God keeps His promises. A warning, that God is wrathful against sin. comfort, that God knows how to deliver His people from the ungodly, a reminder that what we must do is believe in God and put our faith in Him. We have to seek His favor. It will not come to us by our own works. It comes to us because of our Mediator, Jesus Christ. Let us join together in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank You that You delivered eight through water, And we thank you for this picture of our salvation, that the seven were not spared because of their righteousness, but because of Noah's. And so, Lord, we confess that we cannot be spared from your wrath by our righteousness, but only because of Christ's. And we thank you that you have prepared a way for us to come to you, not through a ship, but through our Lord Jesus Christ, through His blood, through the forgiveness of our sins, through baptism, which is a sign to us of these things. And so, Lord, we pray that You would build us up in faith. Help us, Lord. Help us to live in accordance with the baptism that we have received. Help us to die to sin and to live to righteousness. And help us to live before You in love and in Hall of reverence and fear. We pray this in Jesus Christ. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.