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Well, beloved congregation, it
is the Christmas season, which of course is all about the birth
of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is, we know, told to us in passages
like Matthew 1, Luke 2, and more. Getting into the Christmas story
by jumping into Matthew 1 or Luke 2 is a bit like joining
an airplane flight to the Netherlands by jumping in halfway across
the ocean. It's already mid-flight. It's mid-story. So I want to
bring us back to the beginning this morning. Not the beginning
beginning, but a beginning. Close to the beginning. So, in
Luke 2, if you were to have spied upon the shepherds as they were
watching their sheep in the fields by night, you would have seen
joy. Lots of joy. Joy, joy, joy. Or if you would have spied on
the house of Zachariah and Elizabeth. The same thing. Expectant mothers
are joyful. Shepherds are joyful. Angels
are rejoicing. There's light. There's happiness.
There's lots of joy at the beginning of the Gospels. But you don't
really understand why, unless you go back to the beginning.
Back to a time, boys and girls, back to a time when there wasn't
much joy at all in the world. In fact, there was a lot of sadness
in the world. Boys and girls, back to a time
in the beginning when even God was sad. So I want to take you
back to the time of Noah this morning. Now boys and girls,
why do we know Noah? Why do we know the name of Noah?
Why is Noah famous? Because of the great flood, right?
Noah is the man who built the ark. This big, giant boat. And by building the ark and then
moving his family into the ark, he and his family were the only
ones that survived the worldwide flood. Everything in the world was covered
with water at the time of the flood. All the trees, the tallest
trees were covered in water. The tallest mountains were covered
in water. Everything was covered in water.
But Noah survives, right, with his family, with all the animals
too, of course, that they brought with them onto the ark. So that's
why Noah is famous. Is it hard for me, someone, to
turn the fan a little bit? It keeps blowing my Bible pages.
Sorry. It might be harder than... Well,
perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you. So that's why Noah is famous. But we're not going to begin
with the flood this morning either. We're actually going to go to
a time before the flood. Just before the flood. The verses
we read in Genesis chapter 6 Happened right before the flood. The flood
is told in Genesis 7 and 8. So chapter 6 is right before
it happens. So, Genesis chapter 6. This is
after the Garden of Eden. Right? That's chapter 1, 2, and
3 of Genesis. But before the flood. So, what
was it like to live in the world before the flood? Have you ever thought of that?
Have you ever wondered what it was like to live back then in the
days of Noah? Well, we don't have to wonder
too much because here it is described for us. What does verse 5 say
in Genesis 6? It says, And God saw that the
wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination
of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." So
how was it to live in the days of Noah before the flood? Wasn't
good at all, was it? No, it was terrible. Now this
is not, I realize, the most exciting verse in the Bible. It's not
like the days of Christmas, the shepherds. It doesn't make you
want to clap your hands with joy. But it is, I think, the
most important verse in the entire Old Testament. This verse, Genesis
6 verse 5, definitely a verse that you need to memorize. And
God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and
that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only
evil continually." Everything that flows out of Scripture after
that is from that verse. What's better than a scoop of
ice cream? What's better than one scoop
of ice cream? Two scoops of ice cream, right? What's better than
two scoops of ice cream? Three scoops of ice cream. Now, I'm
sure you've never done this, but maybe you've seen a picture
of a cartoon-looking character who's holding an ice cream cone,
and it's not just one or two scoops of ice cream, but it has
like six or seven scoops, right? A really big ice cream cone. Scoop upon scoop upon scoop upon
scoop. Well, that's a lot, kind of like,
I should say, it's kind of like Genesis 6 verse 5, this verse
here. Except here, unfortunately, it's
not ice cream. It's words. It's words that God
uses to describe human wickedness. But words that are heaped like
scoops on top of one another. One on the other, on the other,
on the other. So look at this in verse 5. The main part of
the verse is this. And God saw the wickedness of
man. And God saw the wickedness of
man. That's the main part of this
verse. So, try and imagine this. Try and picture this scene. God is in heaven. He sits above
the earth. From his vantage point in heaven,
He sees all things that happen on earth. But with His power,
He not only sees all things, He also hears all things. And
He not only hears all things, but He hears the thoughts in
our mind even. He can see inside of our mind
and inside of our heart with His power. And so even if you're
sitting still like you are this morning, and you say, I'm not
doing anything, I'm not even really thinking anything, I'm
not saying anything, even now, as you sit there still, God can
read your thoughts and your heart's desires. Right now. Right now,
God knows what you're thinking. Right now, God knows what your
heart is desiring. Right? He knows it all. We are
an open book before God. There is nothing hidden about
us from Him. He knows everything for every
person. He sees it all from His vantage point. So what does He see? What does
He see when He looks and listens? Well, what's described here in
this verse? Wickedness. Right? He sees wickedness. Now that's an important word,
we need to know what that means. Wickedness, this is what wickedness
means. Wickedness is the quality of
being evil or morally wrong. Wickedness is the quality of
being evil or morally wrong. And those are synonyms, evil
and morally wrong, they're saying the same thing. So anything against
the Ten Commandments is evil. Because the Ten Commandments
are a standard of what is morally right. So anything against them
is morally wrong, and morally wrong is the synonym of evil.
Right now, sin, the New Testament tells us, is when we break the
law. When we actively break the law, sin is the transgression
of the law, is the definition of sin in the New Testament. And sin is doing evil, therefore.
But notice this. It's important. There's a distinction.
Wickedness is different. Right? Wickedness is not doing
the evil. Wickedness is the quality of being evil. Right? So it's not just that
we do sin. It's not just that we do evil. But the human race
is evil. And God knows that, right? Because
this is His description of what He sees when He looks on this
earth. He sees everything about us. And God saw the wickedness of
man. He saw the evil of the human
race. And that's just what we do. but
what we are. You know, sometimes we like,
we can make the excuse if someone does something wrong, we say,
oh, but they messed up, but they're really a good person, right?
We like, we can do that. Well, this verse takes that away,
doesn't it? It's not just that God sees us do sin, he sees that
we are evil, right? That's what he's looking at Noah's
world. So that's the main part of the
verse. Therefore, that's our, Not so pleasant ice cream cone. That's the beginning of the cone.
That's the cone. And then, in this verse, come the scoops.
God heaps word upon word upon word upon this evil ice cream
cone, if you will. So the Lord, so count the scoops
with me. God saw that the wickedness of
man, that's the cone, was, here's the first scoop, great. That's
number one. So it's not just that he saw
wickedness, but it's great wickedness, right? And then the scoops come
really fast. And that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart
was only evil continually. Right? That's seven. Seven scoops
of wickedness. It's not just, therefore, that
our heart is wicked. But God says the thoughts of
our hearts are wicked. It's not just that the thoughts
of our heart alone are wicked, it's that the imagination of
our thoughts of our heart are wicked. How do you read the imagination
of someone's thoughts of their hearts? We don't even know. That
is power that God has that is far beyond us. We can't even
read the hearts. God reads the thoughts of the
hearts. No, God reads the imaginations of the thoughts of the heart. and it's still wicked. But still,
it's not just the imagination of the thoughts of the heart,
but it's every imagination of the thoughts of the heart. They
are wicked. They are evil. And still, this
is not done yet. God is still describing it. They're not just evil, but what
does it say? Every imagination of the thoughts
of his heart was only evil. And he's still not done. Not
just only evil, but only evil what? What's the last word in
this verse? Continually. Only evil continually. Boy, this is Noah's world. Do you have a desire to time
travel now into this world? I sure don't. This was the world
that God saw before the flood. This is the human race then,
before the flood, without God, right? Very specifically, chapter
6 is the human race without God. Because Genesis chapter 3, we
turned our back on God, we were removed from Eden, and this is
the result of that. When you and I walk away from
God, this is the result. This is what God sees. It is the most important verse
in the entire Old Testament. But I think it is the saddest
verse in the entire Bible. That verse and the next one right
after. Not only should it make us sad,
but it should make us sad for what it is, but because of this
especially, because it makes God sad. It makes God sad. Think of that. What could make
God sad? He has no beginning and no end. He is the mighty creator of everything. Life is in His hands. He speaks
a word and life is created. He speaks a word and life is
taken away. He is perfect harmony, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Perfect unity. What could make God sad? This. This makes God. What He saw and
heard everywhere and in every person. Because listen to verse
6. And it repented the Lord that
He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart. Right? So our heart was wicked.
God's heart was sad, was grieved. Now, are God's emotions exactly
like our emotions? Well, no. Our emotions are often
unpredictable, unreliable, even incorrect. We can respond wrongly
to a situation emotionally, and that leads to doing something
wrong or sinful. That's not God. God doesn't have
emotions or respond to emotions in the same way. But God does
have emotions. very clearly tells us this right
here. He does feel. And here, he hurts deeply. He hurts deeply, and we know
that because of this word, grieved. The word grieve, we translate
grieve, we translate it as grieve, but the word in the original
Hebrew means this. Important word to know. It means to be
hurt by someone. So it's not just that God is
generally sad, just a little bit sad one day. No, He's been
hurt by someone. The word also means to feel pain
because of someone. This word could also be translated
as tortured. Right? And torture, we know,
is extreme pain because of someone causing that pain to you. So the title I gave, I don't
know, is the title in the bulletin? Maybe, yes it is, When God Was
Sad. The title I put in the bulletin is this, When God Was Sad. But
that is, you know, maybe an understatement, isn't it? Surely. When God was
deeply, deeply hurt by us. That's probably more accurate,
right? From this verse, if we take our understanding straight
from Scripture, that's what this word means. God was deeply hurt
by us. You know, sometimes we like to
point out other people's sins, don't we? We like it when they
fail or fall, and we kind of gloat over it, and it's a little
bit of a ha-ha, and we think I'm better than you and you're
not. We enjoy it. Wrongly, of course, wrongly.
But we can enjoy it. That is not what God is doing
here. That is not this verse. This is not God laughing at us
when He says, describes the wickedness of our heart. No, this is God
in pain. This is God deeply hurt. Every
word of this seven scoop ice cream cone is painful for Him
to say. Every word that comes out is
in pain. He hurts. Why does God hurt? Because we are His creation. We are His creation. He made
us. You are not just people whom He has no relation to whatsoever. People that He's just indifferent
to. You know that we have that in this world. We don't know
everyone in this world. We don't have a close connection
to everyone. And so we can hear of suffering happening, you know,
even great suffering happening somewhere else in the world to
other people and it doesn't really affect us much. You know, you
might think for a second and then you move on with your life
because we're indifferent to a lot of people in this world,
but that is not God at all. God's not indifferent when he
looks down and sees the wickedness of this world. No, he knows Each
one of us. He made each one of us. He formed,
Psalm 139 says, He formed us. He knit us and weaved us together
in our mother's wombs. Those are not just extra words
or descriptive words. Those are truth. That's intimate. That's personal. Maybe some of the ladies here
knit. if someone took what you knitted and just ripped it all
apart. I mean, it's not even a person,
it's just wool. You'd be a little offended, right?
You'd be a little hurt by that person. We are people whom God has made
and knit together. You know, parents, we grieve
over children who turn their back on us, right? We do. It
can hurt a lot. or when they embrace something
wicked, turn away from God. This is even more personal and
intimate for God than just parents and children. In a way, the world
are His children. They're His creation. And we
were created not to do evil. We were created to love, to love
God perfectly, to love one another perfectly. And God is up in heaven,
and He looks from His vantage point over the earth, people
whom He created to love. And what does He see? Not love.
Not love. He sees wickedness. He sees evil. Only evil. Continually. And you can sense in these verses
that God is looking. That he is trying to look. This
is not just a casual glance that God makes and says, Oh, I don't
like them anymore. They're evil. This is not just
a rash conclusion that God comes to and arrives at here. No, this
is a painful search that he is making. He's trying to find love,
and he sees wickedness. So he's trying to find love.
So he searches. He sees wicked deeds done. But he doesn't just
stop there. No, he says, I'm going to search
their heart. He searches our heart. He searches
for love. Maybe I'll find love there. And
he sees wickedness. And so still no love, only wickedness.
So he goes deeper. He searches more yet. He goes
to the thoughts of our heart. Right? And what does he see?
Wickedness. Still no love. Only wickedness.
So he goes deeper, deeper still. He digs into the imagination
of the thoughts of our heart. And still, still with great pain,
he finds only wickedness. So he concludes, what I have
found is only evil continually. His own creation. His own children,
ruined. And God, who is a God of marvelous
love, sees this world, and He is deeply hurt. And He's sorry that He made the
human race. That's what the word repent means.
He's sorry or He regrets making the human race. Now, how do we
understand that? I don't fully know. How does
God who knows all things become regretful or sorry that He did
what He did when He knew it was going to happen? I don't know. But yet it says it here. It's
one thing perhaps to know it's going to happen. It's another
thing in the the act of going through it with the deep hurt
you feel and experience going through it, it's another thing
to say at that time, I am sorry I did what I did. So God is sorry, He repents.
But how is He going to respond then to all this wickedness? Well, look now at verse 7. And the Lord said, I will destroy
man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man
and beast and the creeping thing and the fowls of the air. And
here he says it again, for it repenteth me that I have made
them. Twice we're told. So it must
be true. Now this again is not God just
in a rash emotional decision. No, this is God in holy, righteous,
patient justice. After searching and searching
through the deep recesses of our imaginations. Saying, enough! Enough evil! Enough evil! I've had enough! I will remove people from this
earth. And guess what? What does God
do? He removes people, right? He sends the flood. which is
obviously, in the context, a worldwide flood, because the problem is
worldwide. God is deeply hurt. God has had enough, and he sends
a flood, a worldwide flood, to destroy the entire world. Enough,
he says. Enough. So it sounds like the end, the
sad end of a sad story, doesn't it? If only there was one. If only there was one who could
have saved the world. If only there was one. Well, look at verse 8, because
we're not done. Verse 8 brings hope. Verse 8, but Noah found grace
in the eyes of the Lord. There's the hope. We need hope
after reading these verses. Noah found grace in the eyes
of the Lord. He didn't earn grace, by the
way. He didn't earn this. He didn't make it for himself.
He didn't take it from God. He found it. It was given to
him. Grace is God's undeserved love
and favor, even though we are sinners. And he chose to bestow
that love and favor on Noah. Not that Noah earned it, but
God chose freely to give it to him and his family, and they
were saved. And God gave them a blueprint
for the ark, told them what to do, told them how to do it, told
them when to do it. And through Noah, the world was
saved from complete destruction, through Noah. But the story doesn't end there,
right? The Bible doesn't end at the
end of verse 8 of chapter 6. And we all lived happily ever
after. No, because after the flood, guess what happens? Wickedness
returns to the earth. Noah shows wickedness in his
heart. Noah's sons show wickedness in
their hearts. And then they multiply on this
earth. Because the problem was not with
certain people. The problem was with any people. Because the problem is our heart.
We have a heart problem that we cannot fix. When we turn our
back on God and walk away, our heart is broken. Our morals are
ruined. Wickedness grows and festers. So did Noah save the world? Did
Noah save the world? No, Noah did not save the world.
But here's the story. Here's how we come to Christmas.
God said to Noah after the flood, I will bless you and your descendants,
Noah. And one of Noah's descendants
was Abraham. And God said to Abraham, Abraham, through your
seed, I will bless all the nations of this world. And then when
the story of Christmas begins, finally, at the beginning of
the Gospels, in Matthew chapter 1, before we read anything about
shepherds, and sheep, and angels, and singing glory to God, and
mangers, before any of that happens, God wants us to know, Matthew
chapter 1, Jesus Christ is the seed of Abraham. And Jesus didn't come just to
build an ark to rescue the animals. No, He came to build a cross
to rescue us. He came to change, to fix our
evil hearts. And He did that first by giving
His life on the cross to pay for our sin, but also on that
cross to break the power of sin in us, so that, forgiven and
willing, we would now receive the Holy Spirit. And the Holy
Spirit, given to us, would come and begin the process of changing
our wicked hearts. You see, that's the problem with
the world. That's the problem with us. That's the problem. That's what we need to be rescued
from. You know, and perhaps you've
never thought of it before, or you've heard it, but you've never
cared before, and you've thought, you know what, that's just me.
I am who I am. You know, you can like it or
lump it. You know, I'm not changing my life for anything. Well then, Genesis 7 and 8 that
follow after chapter 6 are a warning, they're a preview for you. This
is how God responds to an unfixed heart. You might say, that's just who
I am. But, okay, this is your end then. God will destroy wickedness
from the face of this earth. You need to be rescued. from
a sinful wicked heart, an evil heart. Maybe though, maybe you
have been rescued already by grace. Maybe you've already placed
your faith in Jesus Christ. And while you still struggle
against sin, maybe there was even something this morning on
your way to church. Maybe you said something you shouldn't
have said, or there was some anger you shouldn't have shown. Maybe
that's still present in your life, and it surely is. But by
God's grace, you do see your heart changing. Because that
is what Christ came to do through His Spirit. But maybe you're here this morning,
and for the first time, you've thought about your heart like
this. That your heart is broken in
this way. And you've seen it now, maybe
even just partly, how God sees it here. You know, this great
scoop of ice cream. Only evil continually. Every imagination of the thoughts
of your heart. And you see that even in part,
and you think with sadness this morning, that's me. That is me. I need a new heart. My heart is broken." Well, you
know what? God can change your heart. God
can change your heart. This is why He did not destroy
the world completely in the days of Noah. Why He saved Noah. So
that through Noah, Jesus could come from the seed of Abraham
to change sinful, wicked hearts. And not just me, but the Bible,
Scripture calls you. Come to the Savior. Bring your
broken heart to the Savior. Don't fix your heart before you
come. You can't fix it. Bring your
heart to the Savior. Scripture calls. That's the Christmas
message. That's the Gospel message. It's
the only reason Christ came. It's to call sinners like you
and me. It was because God was deeply hurt and in His sadness,
He said, I will save Noah so that I can send my Son. And through
Him, God is saving this world through Christ. Through every
person who in faith comes to Jesus. Do you see now why there
was such joy at the announcement of the birth of Jesus? because
of the sadness that comes before it, and then the hope, the hope
of life, the hope of being fixed, the hope of being saved. Jesus
came because God was deeply sad. Jesus came because God so loved
the world that He would not destroy it completely. Jesus, the Son
of God, came as a baby born in Bethlehem so that as a man, God
could die for our sin and break its power in our life and in
our hearts. Do you need its power broken
in your life? Do you need sin's power broken in your heart? Come to Jesus. Come. God invites you through Scripture. Noah's ark was joy to his family,
for sure. But Jesus' cross really was joy
to the world. Let's
When God Was Sad
| Sermon ID | 1215223877417 |
| Duration | 35:21 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | Genesis 6:5-8 |
| Language | English |
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