This message was given at Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. At the end, we will give information about how to contact us to receive a copy of this or other messages. Let's take our Bibles and turn to Genesis chapter 6. Genesis chapter 6. Start reading at verse 5. This is God's holy and inspired word. And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Lord was sorry that he made man on the earth and he was grieved in his heart. The Lord said, I'll blot out man whom I've created from the face of the land, from man to animals, to creeping things and to birds of the sky, for I'm sorry that I've made them. But Noah, found favor or grace in the eyes of the Lord. This is the word of God. The passage that we read this morning is a stunning text, stunning. It is full of theological controversy. There's no doubt about it. In fact, the passage itself is a huge battleground. And we will discuss the controversial parts of the passage next week. This passage is far more than a theological battleground for theologians. This passage is actually one of the saddest, truly one of the most profoundly saddest passages and portraits regarding human wickedness and God's grief. I mean, even if you just, I mean, you just think about those two words coming together, God's grief. If Genesis chapter three was the most tragic chapter in all the Bible, this section is not far behind. And the reason I say that is, although what happens in Genesis chapter three will have immediate and profound implications for Adam and Eve, and then all of their posterity, history shaking event happens in Genesis chapter three. But as we come to this passage, it's a little different. Because in Genesis chapter three, we saw a glimpse, a very brief look at the creator's heart in light of Adam and Eve's sin. In this passage, we not only get a glimpse, we get a full view of the creator's heart. When commentators puts it like this, our passage, provides a window into the heart of the troubled creator. This passage, as one has pointed out, revolves around three opening statements. And Yahweh saw, and Yahweh regretted, and Yahweh said. The Hebrew text is emphatic. Each sentence begins with these expressions in an emphatic way, and so that's how we're going to divide up this passage, and we begin with verse five, Yahweh saw. Yahweh saw, God saw, the Lord saw, the wickedness of man was great on the earth. Now, if you're a careful reader, you begin to see that there's actually a striking contrast between 6-2, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful or good, and then verse 5, and the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth. And so God sees something, God observes something, and that is the wickedness of man. This no doubt, the wickedness, is no doubt in connection with chapter six and verse four, and the result of the mixed marriages between the godly line of Seth and the godless line of Cain, and the way in which that ends up corrupting the godly line, and in a sense, corrupting the whole earth, and intensifying and escalating the sin and the violence upon the earth. And so this passage begins with God seeing the wickedness of man was great on the earth. And of course, when we talk about wickedness, we're talking about evil, that is moral evil. And so what God sees in verse five is, first of all, fundamentally a human problem. In light of last week, not an angelic problem, right? A human problem. And it is also a global problem. It's not as if it was just a matter of, you know, those rotten Nevadans, they can't get anything right, I'll wipe them out. No, this is the whole face of the earth. Now we have a more vivid description of the wickedness. It goes like this, every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. This description is stunning also because you can translate it in different ways. So for instance, the new English translation says, every inclination of the thoughts of their minds, or the Tanakh, which is the English translation of the Hebrew scriptures, every plan devised by his mind was nothing but evil. If I was to literally translate the second clause in verse five, it would go like this, every purpose of the thoughts of their heart was altogether evil. And when Moses uses the word heart, you have to understand that what Moses is talking about is he's talking about the whole inner self. He's not just talking about part of the inner self or the inner man, he's talking about the whole of it. That is mind and will and emotions. And the indictment is frightening. Every single purpose and intent of the thought of man's heart was evil. How often? Once a week? Fridays proved to be a really bad day for those that lived before the flood. It wasn't one day a week. It wasn't one hour a week. It wasn't Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. It was continually, all the day, literally, which means all the time. Of course, later after the flood in Genesis chapter eight and verse 21, Moses is going to say basically the same thing, except he's going to describe it as the thoughts of his heart were evil continually from his youth up. The New Living Translation captures the sense of this verse, the Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. John Frame comments, he says, this is an extraordinary passage. the every and only and the continually are extreme expressions and leave no room for mitigation. It is an extraordinary passage. You're not gonna find this text printed on the bottom of your In-N-Out cup. You're not gonna find this text printed on the sleeve of your Starbucks cup. You're not gonna find this text anywhere. because it is so damning. It is so indicting. This text says something about human nature. The text describes what we would call total depravity. Notice the way that sin is described. Notice the way that wickedness is described. It's pervasive. It permeates the whole man. There's not a single part of man that's left untouched by sin. The whole man, the whole heart, the whole day. This sounds rather pessimistic. When I was a kid, we had a record album. Kids, they were these really cool things. They were like this big. They were made of vinyl. And you put them in a stereo that was like as big as your car, okay? You put a little needle on it from the end of an arm and it would play. And this record album was called Free To Be You and me. Yeah, I have that record album cover emblazoned on my mind. Some of you will remember, this dates me, Jason would never, ever, ever, ever be able to use this as an illustration because he wasn't even born yet, okay? Rosie Greer sang one of the songs, okay? Okay? Now, yeah, I know, you don't even know who Rosie Greer is. For those of us, those of us who've been on the planet long enough and the song was, here's Rosie Greer, right? Big lineman for the Rams and big gigantic guy. And he sings this song, it's all right to cry. Crying makes you feel better, right? And the whole thing is, is it's okay to cry. Well, the whole gist of every single song on the album, there was one by Marlo Thomas, okay? All of them were basically designed to help you just feel good about yourself, okay? Right? This is the warp and woof of our culture, right? It's who you are, what you do, it's okay. You're okay, right? You know what's coming, right? I'm okay and you're okay. And Genesis chapter six and verse five says, you're not okay. And it is not okay. And if you think you're okay, that's not okay. There is something that is profoundly wrong with us. There is something that's deeply broken about us. And to try to just have some sort of Stuart Smalley moment with yourself in front of the mirror, trying to tell yourself you're okay, does not change reality. This passage says that we are, in fact, bad. Really bad. Now, That sounds pessimistic. For those of you that think that sounds pessimistic, let me just tell you, you're worse than you think, all right? So for those of you that think it sounds pessimistic, you have to understand, I've not even begun to scratch the surface with how bad you are and I am. All right? So, as we think about this, you have to understand that the Bible presents reality to us. The Bible presents truth to us. And the Bible begins by telling us that the fall of Adam introduced sin and death into this world. And that Adam passes down to all of his posterity, both the line of Cain and the line of Seth, a fallen human nature. That's what we get. That's what we were born with. We weren't born as a tabula rasa, a blank slate. We were born with a fallen human nature. And what this text says is that the extent of sin in Adam's fallen race touches and corrupts every dimension of our being. There's not one fundamental element of your humanity that's been untouched and uncorrupted by sin. And so you say, well, my heart's pretty good. No, it's not. It's not. Aunt Polly was wrong when she told Tom, Tom, just Tom Sawyer, Tom, just trust your heart. No, no. Why? Because Jeremiah 17, nine says that the heart is deceitful above everything else. Guess what? I have a live-in liar within me. The heart is deceitful above everything else. It is desperately wicked. And here's the next question, who can know it? Of course, it's a rhetorical question. And the answer is, not me. And so when I say that we're worse than we think we are, that's just simple reality. That's just simple truth. Our hearts are more deceitful than we realize. Our hearts are more desperately wicked than we realize. But there is one who knows the extent of our sinfulness. It's the Lord who tests the heart. Of course, the mind, there we go, we have pure minds. Okay, well, maybe I have a dirty heart, but a pure mind. You know, the funny thing is, is that I don't think that there'd be anybody here that would wanna make that argument. If I were to just say, you know what, let's just do this empirically. How many of you have only thought good, happy, wholesome, pure thoughts your whole life? Well, here's the thing is that you know what's inside of that head of yours, right? You know what's in there. I wanna know if anybody would be willing to volunteer for what's gone through their head in the last two hours to have it put on that projector and projected on the screen for everybody to see. We would all die of absolute, utter embarrassment and humiliation. The thought that you had about that person that walked in, that was gonna come and sit by you, that you didn't want them to sit by you. Okay? Touched a nerve. Some of you are sitting in different places today because you didn't wanna sit by the person that was sitting in your seat. And you had ill thoughts of them. Some of you had wandering thoughts while we were singing. While we're singing God's praise, you had wandering thoughts. And maybe you thought about things that are absolutely too indecent to even begin to illustrate with. Okay? The desires of our heart, absolutely fallen. Jeremiah stands, in Jeremiah two and verse 13, he says, be appalled, O heavens, and be appalled, O earth, for my people have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have hewn out for themselves broken cisterns, which hold no water, which is simply Jeremiah's way of saying what John would say later in John chapter three and verse 19, and that is, we love darkness and hate the light. That's how we come into this world. You don't come into this world with this hunger for light and truth and righteousness. We come into this world with the desire to suppress anything that's actually going to make me feel less than the one who's in control and the master of my own fate and the captain of my own ship. I'm willing to go to war in my heart over anything that would threaten or challenge my own lordship over my own life. And so my desires are corrupt. My heart is corrupt. My mind is corrupt and my will is corrupt. My will is enslaved to my desires. What do I choose to do? The things that I desire to do. What do I desire to do? That which is opposed to God. Every single faculty of our being has been affected and corrupted by sin. The picture is ugly. You may be stunningly beautiful on the outside, but unless you've been washed and cleansed through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the inside is as ugly as ugly can be. Thomas Boston, one of my favorite old Scottish dead guys, says, the natural man's affections are wretchedly misplaced. He is a spiritual monster. His heart is where his feet should be fixed on the earth. His heels are lifted up against heaven, which his heart should be set on. His face is toward hell, his back toward heaven, and therefore God calls him to turn. He loves what he should hate, hates what he should love, joys in what he ought to mourn for, mourns for what he should rejoice in, glories in his shame and is ashamed of his glory. He abhors what he should desire and desires what he should abhor. When we get to Genesis chapter six and verse five, the Bible is telling us that mankind, which includes you and me, we are as bad off as we can be. We don't see nor do we understand how sinful sin really is. I can absolutely 100% guarantee there's not a single person in this room under the sound of my voice that actually understands how sinful sin really is, which means you don't understand how sinful your sin really is. But God does. The holy God, the perfect God, the God who is light and in him there is no darkness whatsoever. He is the God who sees how utterly sinful sin really is. He sees the evil of evils and the sinfulness of sin and he knows it because of his own perfect holiness and justice. So Genesis chapter six and verse five is a portrait of the human heart and it is anything but pleasant and anything but appealing. It is utterly and completely repulsive. Verse six, and Yahweh regretted. Wow. Yahweh was sorry. that he had made man on the earth. This expression, which we'll dig into later, is translated in various ways. The NIV followed by the New English Translation, Christian Standard Bible, the Lord regretted that he had made human beings. The old ASV following the King James, it repented Jehovah that he made man. I don't think repent is the best word to use because repent often implies what? Well, sin, okay? There is no sin in God. The expression... that we have at the beginning of verse six, the Lord was sorry, is Hebrew word that in its particular stem means to not only to be sorry, but the idea is actually more descriptive than that. It is to suffer grief or deep regret. And then the text tells us, and he was grieved in his heart. We're talking about the perfect, holy, transcendent, eternal, infinite, majestic God. And the text tells us that God actually regretted making man and was grieved, pained in his heart that he had made them. You have to understand, this is jarring. Isn't it? This is jarring. And the reason it's jarring is because God knows everything and God has all power and God is the sovereign. And here we have God regretting that he made man and actually pained in his heart that he had placed him on planet earth. This is actually so rattling that the net Bible tries to wiggle around it. It says something interesting. He was highly offended. No, the word, the second word that's used is to be hurt or to be pained or to be deeply grieved. And so here's the picture that's being painted for us. The wickedness of man's heart was so extensive and permeated all of his being so that he only thought every inclination and thought of his heart was only evil continually all the day long and what this does is it actually causes God to feel regret and deep pain in his heart over what had become of his creation namely what had become of humanity now we're going to consider how this can be next week But what you need to notice is how earnest and how gripping and how feeling the language is. Now this brings up actually two very, very big issues that are hugely controversial. If you do something and you deeply regret what you have done If you could turn the clock back, would you do it differently? Yes. That's the idea of regret really, isn't it? Regret. I'm sorry that I did this. Wow. Grieved. First question then is, don't say anything out loud, please. Can God change his mind? The text brings this up. Can God change his mind? This issue, can God change his mind, is an issue regarding the omniscience of God. He knows everything real and possible and The immutability of God, that is God does not change. This debate as to whether God can change his mind is a debate, if I may put it this way, between the orthodox and the unorthodox. We'll talk about that next week. The other question that it brings up is this, does God really have emotions? I mean, does God actually have the capacity as a perfect holy being who's infinite and knows absolutely everything and is unchangeable? Wow, but I don't know about you, but when I experience emotion, I think there's a lot of changing going on, right? So the question is, does God have emotion? Does God actually have the capacity to hurt and to feel pain or to feel grief? Whereas the first question, can God change his mind, is between the theologically orthodox versus the theologically unorthodox. This question, does God have emotion, is an intramural debate among evangelical and reformed people, and it touches on the doctrine of divine impassibility. This week, I was reading an article on depression. And I read these words. I wish more pastors would recognize the body-soul dynamic, both for themselves and for those they counsel. Take for example, the recent book, Feelings and Faith by Brian Borgman, that's me, okay? Although, listen to this, although the book starts and finishes with a defense of an ancient error, egads, that God the Father suffers pain and sorrow. He does go on to say, this is one of the best Christian treatments of the emotions that I've ever read. I could read more about that, but I'll pass on. So, understand, your pastor's been accused of propagating ancient error, all right? But I'm gonna ask next week, is that actually an ancient error? I've set you up for next week, okay? Now you're all ready. Back to the text at hand. However we understand the language, we need to note that God is expressing how human sin and rebellion had caused Him anguish of heart. That which he created good was now so completely antithetical to that which he created that he grieved over it and regretted it. That leads us to the third point, and that is, and Yahweh said, There's really sort of an amazing transgression. God saw, God regretted, and now God says, and what does God say? Well, he actually says something that's in direct response to what he has seen and how he, in a sense, feels about it now, and that is this. I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the earth. That's what he says. He looks at the landscape. He sees human sin. He sees human wickedness run amuck. He sees it weave in itself throughout the entirety of man's heart all the day long. And he says, I'm going to blot out. I'm going to wipe out. I'm going to wipe off the face of the earth. You know, what's interesting about this word, it's used in 2 Kings 21, 13. Let me just read this, God speaking of judgment again there. He says, I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. So when we say, wipe out, wipe off, we're talking about, we're talking about in a sense, a total destruction. And then God actually goes on and he says, man and animals and creeping things and the birds of heaven. In other words, what he is going to do is he's going to bring a judgment that is a comprehensive judgment, a complete judgment, a thorough destruction for the very simple reason. You go, well, what did the birds do? What did the creepy crawly things do? Man's sin. that so affected and corrupted this planet that God says nothing other than a thorough wiping out will do. And notice that last phrase in verse seven, for I'm sorry that I made them. I'm sorry that I made them. You have bookends. God says it twice. I'm sorry that I made them. I regret that I made them. God, by the way, is not sorry for the destruction that he's about to bring, but he is sorry for the sin that is going to bring about the destruction. He's grieved not because he's going to destroy, he's grieved because of the sin which is compelling him to destroy. God's determination to judge the human race is a holy and just and a measured response to human sin. Do you understand that the... The gods of the ancient world and the gods of the Greeks and the gods of the Romans, they were capricious beings. They'd fly off the handle. They'd get mad and have no restraint whatsoever. The God of the Bible is absolutely unique in that his anger is always a holy anger. It's always a just anger. And it's always a perfectly measured anger. Nobody could ever say you judged too harshly. Nobody could ever say you responded with too much of a reactionary, knee-jerk response. Perfect, holy, just, and measured. Genesis 6, 5, 6, and 7 is really, really bad news. Really bad news. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. I have no idea what the human population was at this time. No doubt millions and millions of people all over the globe by this time And what you have is you have God saying, the entire world, the entire globe, all of the planet and all of its population, it is so bad, it is so sinful, it is so wicked that I have determined to wipe it absolutely clean. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. One commentator puts it like this, he says, no one escapes divine judgment apart from grace. Oh, we're gonna talk about Noah so much in the weeks to come, but notice this, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. It's a stunning contrast, isn't it? God is determined to bring absolute extinction to humanity. He's determined to bring absolute extinction to the offspring of the sons of Seth and the sons of Cain. He's determined to bring absolute extinction to those who had raised their hand and want to make a name for themselves instead of honoring God. He was determined to bring to extinction those who had rebelled in such a way as to propagate and promulgate sin throughout the earth. But there's Noah. There's Noah. And Noah may well, very well have been the very first person to ever sing grace, grace, God's grace, grace that will pardon and cleanse within, grace, grace, God's grace, grace that is greater than all my sin. Well, Noah was not a perfect man, was he? Oh, just wait till we, Get a little later in the story, you'll see how big of a sinner Noah really was, but he found grace. He found grace. And so God is committed to a global judgment and there's an exception, an exception. And that exception would be more remarkable than if God decided this morning to wipe out everybody in this building except one person. The exception is more remarkable than that. The exception would be more remarkable than if God decided to destroy all of the Carson Valley and save just one. The exception is even greater than if he had decided to destroy the whole state of Nevada. The exception is greater than if he would have said, okay, everybody in the whole state is gonna die except one person. That's how stunning this is, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And so what do we see in this text? Well, we see this, the sin of humanity, which by the way is the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, knows no bounds. Every one of us here can look at our lives and say, there was something that I had swore to myself I would never do. And lo and behold, I've done it. The seeds of every kind of sin dwell inside of these hearts. If you think you're above committing a certain sin, you don't know yourself as you ought. The sin of humanity knows no bounds. The only thing, listen carefully, the only thing that curbs and holds in check man's sin is God's common grace. That's all, that's all. If God were actually to say, you know what, You nice people, common grace is gone. We would become everything that our heart has the inclination to become. Now, make no mistake about it, as Matthew says, the flood does not change the essential sinful character of the human heart. Okay, it's not as if God floods the whole earth. No one in his family were the only like nice people. He says, but it does exact justice and rescue the lone remnant of a blessed lineage. We can actually never know the depth of our own sin, let alone the depth of the sin of this world. And in fact, I would submit to you that it's often easier for us to see the wickedness and depravity in others than it ever is for us to see it in ourselves. The minute that you think, oh, those icky people, You're ickier than the ickiest. Jesus' standard makes you ickier than the ickiest. It's called being a hypocrite. So the question is, have we actually come to grips with our own sinfulness? I'm not just asking you if you've come to grips with your sins. I'm asking if you've come to grips with your own sinfulness. In other words, have you come to grips with your own condition? The condition, that's the root of all of the stuff that grows out, and the condition, by the way, is always far worse than the stuff it produces. There's always, there's always something else worse. Have you come to grips with the condition? I'm not asking you, have you plumbed the depths of your own depravity? I'm not asking you if you have come to know that which only God can know. I'm asking you, have you just simply come to grips with the fact that I am utterly sinful through and through? I've got a corrupt mind, a corrupt heart, a corrupt will. My life is filled with rebellion against God. What I am in and of myself is not good. My condition also means that I am actually unable to help myself. As long as you think you can help yourself, you don't understand your condition. Part of the condition is being unable to do anything about it. John Bunyan, boy did Bunyan have a lot to say about this kind of stuff. He says, better sinless in hell. Oh, listen to this, better sinless in hell. than to be where heaven is and to be found a sinner there. Did you hear that? Better sinless in hell than to be where heaven is and to be found a sinner there. Sin grieves God. Sin grieves the heart of God. My sin grieves the heart of God. Your sin grieves the heart of God. It is vandalism and destruction against all which God has declared to be good. And just as sure as God determined to wipe out the problem and to blot man off the face of the earth and to terminate the rebels in the flood, so he will do that again, Peter tells us, but not with the waters of the flood, but with a certain fiery judgment. He's going to do that in the coming day. And so here, the reality is, is just as sure as God judged the world, the ancient world with the flood, so he will judge the world one of these days through his son. That day is fixed, that day is coming, that day is going to be here just as sure as today is here. And then the question then becomes this, what hope do sinners really have? What hope is there for people who are sinful to the core, who sin against God in thought, word, deed, and action, and yet cannot do anything about it themselves? What hope is there? The only hope, the only hope is the same grace that Noah found. Grace is our only hope. It wasn't that Noah was somehow a righteous man or he wasn't perfect. He was a sinner, but God showed him grace. And as we stand here today in 2015, who knows how many millennia after the flood today, the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ expounds the grace of God for us. And it tells us that because of the grace of God, Jesus Christ has paid the penalty for sin. Jesus Christ has paid the penalty for all that we have He who knew no sin became sin on our behalf that we could become the righteousness of God in Him. Jesus Christ has died for that which we have done. He's died for our crimes. But He also is absolutely capable of not only wiping out your crimes against Almighty God, He's also capable of remedying that bad heart Through the cross, he takes care of the bad record, and through the empowerment of his grace in his Holy Spirit, he takes care of the bad heart. He can blot out our sin. That word wipe out, by the way, is also used in another passage. According to the greatness of your compassion, cries King David, blot out my transgression. What you need today, What you'll need tomorrow, what you'll need the rest of your life, what you'll need on the judgment day is the all sufficient grace of God in Jesus Christ. That's what you need, okay? That's what you need. That's your only hope, period. Your only hope. Sometimes we sing these words, they were brought to my attention this week as I listened to somebody's testimony, Hail sovereign love that first began the scheme to rescue fallen man. Hail matchless free eternal grace that gave my soul a hiding place. Against the God who rules the sky, I fought with hand uplifted high, despised the mention of his grace, too proud to seek a hiding place. Enwrapped in thick Egyptian night, And fond of darkness more than light, Madly I ran the sinful race, Secure without a hiding place. But thus the eternal counsel ran, Almighty love, arrest that I felt the arrows of distress and found I had no hiding place. Indignant justice stood in view, to Sinai's fiery mount I flew, but justice cried with frowning face, this mountain is no hiding place. Ere long a heavenly voice I heard, and mercy's angel form appeared. who led me on with gentle pace to Jesus Christ, my hiding place. On him, almighty justice fell that must have sunk a world to hell. He bore it for a chosen race and thus became their hiding place. Should storms of sevenfold vengeance roll and shake the earth from pole to pole, no flaming bolt could daunt my face, for Jesus is my hiding place. Jesus Christ is your only hope. You can go to AA, you can go to NA, You can watch Dr. Phil, you can spend time at the self-improvement section in Barnes & Noble, and I will tell you what, you may learn how to exchange one sin for another, but you will never extricate yourself from the damning indictment that says that every inclination of your heart is evil all the time. Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone can forgive you of your sins and give you a new heart and bring you peace with God and be a hiding place both now and in the age to come. Trust Him, believe in Him, run to Him, embrace Him. Why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you? It's free. It's absolutely completely free. Turn from your sin and turn to Him, and He will do your soul better than anything you could ever imagine. Let's pray. Father, we need grace to believe what your word tells us about ourselves is true. Lord, how highly we think of ourselves. How much we need your help to see how helpless we really are. Father, I pray for those who are here today who don't know Jesus as their hiding place. I pray for those who think that by trying just a little bit harder and doing just a little bit better that they're okay. Pray that your spirit would bring the full force of your word upon their hearts and convict them today and through that conviction bring them to the sweet, liberating freedom of your grace in Jesus Christ. Father, be mighty to save today. In Jesus' name, amen. We hope you've enjoyed this message from Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. To receive a copy of this or other messages, call us at area code 775-782-6516 or visit our website gracenevada.com.