Turn again in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 6. Continue to work through our series on the book of Genesis. Last week we were looking at, really, God's judgment. The world has now come to a place where God has made a decision to destroy the earth, or rather to destroy all life on earth. And we'll begin this morning with reading verse 8. Genesis 6 at verse 8. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. This is the genealogy of Noah. Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God. And Noah begot three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, the end of all flesh has come before me. For the earth is filled with violence through them, and 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 outside with pitch. And this is how you shall make it. The length of the ark shall be 300 cubits, and its width 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits. You shall make a window for the ark, and you shall finish it to a cubit from above, and set the door of the ark in its side. You shall make it with lower, second, and third decks. And behold, I myself am bringing floodwaters on the earth to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life. Everything that is on the earth shall die. but I will establish my covenant with you. And you shall go into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives, with you. And of every living creature of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you, and they should be male and female. of the birds after their kind, of animals after their kind, and of every creeping thing of the earth after its kind. Two of every kind will come to you to keep them alive, and you shall take for yourself of all food that is eaten, and you shall gather it to yourself, and it shall be food for you and for them. Thus Noah did according to all God commanded him, so he did. Thus ends our reading. Let's ask God's blessing on his word. Father, again, having read your holy, infallible, and inspired word, but again, a word that We are incapable of fully understanding what's going on, except that you, by your Holy Spirit, open our eyes and give us wisdom. Father, you know how much I need your wisdom and your spirit right now, and we pray, Father, that you'd be with me. For your name's sake, that you would that you be with my mouth, that you bring together my thoughts, and that you bring forth a faithful word, a good word. And Father, for everyone here present, we pray that, Lord, that they would be given exactly the measure it is that they need to strengthen, to encourage, to lift up, even to rebuke or to turn. Father, we pray for those that do not yet know you as Lord and Savior. Father, have mercy on them. and open their hearts and turn them to look upon and to believe in Jesus Christ as the one salvation of this world. All these things, Father, we ask in Jesus' name alone, amen. I wonder if you were a, if you lived before the flood, and you were a theologian, What would that look like for you? What would be your theology of God? How would you understand God? How would you see God in the free flood world? And I think that's a very important question to ask when we get to this text. Because we assume a lot. We have a Bible. And we've grown up with this Word of God. We have an Old Testament. We have a New Testament We have hundreds and hundreds of years of theologians and and and people that have studied the Word of God And we've studied from them and what they've discovered about the Word of God, but if you Live before the flood. We don't read anything about that. There was a written Word of God revealing him What would you know about God? Right? If you were of that line of the sons of God, you would know men and would have been passed down from you the understanding of God's almighty power, His creative power. You would see His goodness, you would see His mercy, you'd see all these things all around you. Right? You'd see it in all of creation. And there would even be some of the sons of God that would talk about the wrath of God that's against sin. And you would have people that said that the world, you know, with the difficulty to bring forth food, et cetera, there would be some people, some faint voices that would speak to that. But for most humans, would you see that? For most humans, would you have any sense of the wrath of God? And especially near the time of Noah, when God is coming to him and revealing to him what he's going to do, I don't think you would. I think most humans would say, well, yeah, I mean, it used to be hard to bring forth food, but now, you know, the mighty ones are on the earth, and they've taught us how to work together, and whatever curse is against the earth, we've conquered it. So if God's up there, he's a pretty easy-going God. Right? Because pretty much people can do what they want. Cain killed his brother, and God actually protected him. And we know why. Because of the grace and the mercy of God. Because God desired Cain to actually feel the sentence and turn to Him and repent. But then you have Lamech, a few generations later, coming from Cain. Cain kills a man, and possibly two men, and the only reason was, was because they offended him. And he's proud of it. And he brags about it. And he says if God would have vengeance against anybody that touched Cain seven times, if God would repay anything that was done to Cain seven times, Lamech, if anybody touches me, you're going to get paid back 77 times. So in the world before the flood, the whole idea about the wrath of God, the anger of God, the punishment of God, would actually be kind of a dim thing. And I think that's important to understand. Because in our text, God has made a decision, I am going to pour out my wrath. And what we see in the first part of this text here, and what we were looking at last week, is that it seems like the final straw that brought God to the point of judgment is that man crossed the final boundary. Right? Man and sin was breaking all kinds of boundaries, but there was one boundary that was keeping the world together, and that was the boundary between the sons of God and the daughters of men. And once that boundary was broken, God's looking at the earth and saying, these people have no respect for boundaries. And remember, and if you weren't here, brothers and sisters, what we said is that God, to even create the world, He begins His creation with creating boundaries. He creates the boundaries between light and dark. He creates the boundaries between the upper waters and the lower waters, the atmosphere. And He creates the boundary between the dry land and between the seas. And without an atmosphere, without light, without dark, without a place where we can breathe, humans can't live in the water. We're not going to live in the seas, right? So God creates. He begins His creation. He brings order out of chaos by making boundaries. But man in sin observes and honors no boundaries. And the final boundary that he broke was the boundary between the sons of God. There was a testimony on earth, there was a line of people that cared about God and called upon the name of the Lord and worshipped God. But when the sons of God looked upon the daughters of men and saw that they were good, and took them, of all of them, wives of all of whom they chose. That final boundary in God's mind was broken. Now the whole earth is filled with corruption and violence. And so now God has said, I am going to destroy the earth. And one of the things that we should see is that in verse 7, It says that the Lord was sorry that he had made man on earth. He was grieved in his heart. So the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them. This is God's decree of judgment. And notice the words, I will destroy man whom I have created, for I am sorry that I have made them. And one of the things that I saw in this text is that the writer seems to be justifying God's actions. In verses 1 through 7, we have a two-fold justification. The first justification is on a moral level. On a moral level. Right? The people, the wickedness of the earth, right? The wickedness of man was great in the earth. Every intent, every shape of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. That's the moral judgment. But he also throws in a judgment or a Justification that's a moral justification for judgment, but there's also a justification by way of being the owner or the creator God also is justified in destroying the earth because he owns the earth and right I made man I made this earth and they have corrupted it and they have filled it with violence they have turned it from the thing that was that it was it was very good it is now not very good and as creator I make the decision and so the writer is giving us two justifications for for God's decision to destroy and I wanted to note that why does he do that does God need to be justified to man Right? We don't really think of that, do we? Does God need to justify himself to man? And I believe the answer is no. God is God. And as God, he does not need to justify himself to us. But why does he? And I believe it's because we are called to be the image bearers of God. and God is teaching us something about ourselves by looking at Him. God is just and righteous in all that He does and the justification is put in there so that we might see that. And this is important, brothers and sisters, and you may not realize it, but if you study religions outside of Christianity, you're going to find that there are religions, plenty of them, and the Muslim religion is probably one of the principal religions, that God says, do what I say, not what I do. For most of the pagan world, and most of the world that doesn't believe in the God of the Word, the God of the Bible, they have all these different gods and goddesses, and those gods and goddesses, they do whatever they want, and they don't care whether you like it or not, because they're God. They can do what they want. But the God of the Word does not. The God of the Word says, I am just and I am righteous. And He shows us how He's just and righteous so that we might learn from Him. So, brothers and sisters, He is a God unlike any of the other gods of the imaginations of men. But blessed be the Lord, His decree of total destruction is softened by what we read in verse eight. In verse eight we read, but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. In verses eight through 22, we will see that God is going to bring a just judgment on the earth, but by grace alone, he will accomplish deliverance for humanity. We will look at this text in terms of, first of all, God's grace, and second of all, the righteousness of Noah. It says here, but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And I find that to be, I'll be honest with you, I studied a lot this week on all kinds of parts of this text and it wasn't until yesterday as I really started to hammer down that all of a sudden I figured out I don't even understand what this whole thing's about. And so you get the benefit of that. So anyway, sorry about that. But that's just the way it goes sometimes. Sometimes you're just overwhelmed by how much is actually there. Because I started to think about this phrase here, but Noah found grace in the eyes of God. This is the first time that grace has actually been mentioned. I believe with all my heart that the grace of God, the mercy of God, the goodness of God was actually something that was very well known by the people of God before the flood. But this is the first time grace is mentioned. So what is grace? Grace, brothers and sisters, is undeserved favor, unmerited favor of God. In other words, Noah's a man that God looks at, and according to God being God, looking down upon man, his creation, that all men have sinned and all men have come short of the glory of God and all men are worthy of condemnation. And so God has every right to destroy all of mankind, all of humanity, but Noah found grace in his eyes. The Lord looked down upon him and he said, No, I'm gonna soften. I'm not gonna destroy everybody. I'm not gonna destroy everything because of Noah. I'm gonna have grace on Noah. And brothers and sisters, the divine writer here is giving us a sliver of hope. There's one man out of all sinful humanity that deserves to be destroyed. There's one man who has found grace in the eyes of God. And I thought about doing more about grace, because grace is super important. It's critically important to the Word of God. All salvation is by grace. But the strange thing about our text is that there's something weird about the next thing that we read. And I want to deal with that because we don't have a lot of time. This is the genealogy of Noah. Noah was a just man. Perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God. Now I want you to put those two verses together. And what is your first thought when you really put those two texts together? It's very strange, isn't it? Because if you think about it, grace is something that when we think about God's salvation, God's love and mercy to man, we think about grace. We don't deserve it. No one deserves the grace of God. That's what grace is. It's undeserved. And so when we talk about God's grace, we don't sit there and talk about man's righteousness, right? Because the righteousness of man, the goodness of man, and the grace of God, no, the grace of God is emphasizing that it's all of God. But in verse 9, the writer has taken pains, I tell you, he has taken pains to emphasize the righteousness and the goodness of Noah. And that brings us to kind of a weird place. Right? Because in the Hebrew, what you can't see is that the first, there's an introduction, right? This is the genealogy of Noah. And then in the Hebrew, there are three sentences comprising 10 words. And it starts with Noah, and it ends with Noah, which takes a little bit of arm-twisting, right, from a grammar standpoint. If you look at that last sentence in verse 9, it says, Noah walked with God. Well, let me tell you something. In Hebrew, Hebrew's word order is a little bit different than English. In English, it's usually subject, verb, direct object. Noah walked with God. That's how it's described. Well, in Hebrew, usually it's verb. He walked Noah with God. That's how the usual order would be. But not in the Hebrew in this sentence. In the Hebrew in this sentence, they put the object first. God. And then it says, was walked with Noah. It's a very odd thing, and you can see that, what the writer's doing is he's purposely, he's like having to really work hard to make a sentence that ends with Noah. And there's a point to that. It begins with Noah, it ends with Noah, all the emphasis is on Noah. which is really odd because it says, but Noah found grace. So how does the grace that God gives to Noah interact with this righteousness, this focus on Noah and his righteousness? right? because the first thing it says is Noah was a just man and with that word just it means righteous he is a righteous man what that means is he's righteous you know and all that God desires all that is pleasing to God that's what this man does he was perfect in his generations the word perfect is the word temim in the Hebrew just to explain it probably the best way, it's a word that we speak about purified, right? It's a word used to describe something being super clean. So it's a kind of word that if it was in the English or if you're describing like if you go buy gold for example, if you want to buy gold as a savings or something, Generally the gold that you buy is going to be advertised as 99.99% pure. That's this word. He was pure. He was perfect in his generation. So what it means in his generations is that this man stands out of all the people that were on earth at that time. that they're all sinners. They're all flawed to different degrees. Some way bad. Some medium bad. Some not so bad. But this man stands above them all. He is pure. He is 99.999999 percent, right? He is pure. It speaks of integrity. Right? We talk about integrity. Well, what is integrity? In a man like Noah, it means what he thinks, what he says, and what he does are all so tightly together. He's not like a lot of humans, right? They think one thing, they say another thing, and they do something else, yeah. Right? That's what a lot of humans do, because we're not pure. We don't have integrity. We say we want to be good people, but we're thinking to ourselves, yeah, but I still want to gain advantage. Whatever, right? So, humans and sin are a broken lot. We are not pure. But that's the word that's being used to describe this man. He is a just man. He's righteous. He's pure. He's got integrity. He says what he thinks and says and does all the things come tight together. He's one human being that's righteous before God. And then it says that he walked with God, which is the absolute highest approbation. of a child of God, of a man of God, a created image bearer, that's the highest level that you can attain to. This is what man was created to be. He was created to be righteous, he was created to be pure, he was created to walk with God. So why does it say, talk about God's grace, and then emphasize the absolutely stunning righteousness of Noah? because a lot of us might think well maybe grace is associated with his righteousness but I don't think that's the point I believe what's happening in our text brothers and sisters is that Noah has been chosen by God and by God's grace to stand as an accusation against the entire world. Noah represents the righteousness, the purity of God. And what we see in the text is that God has chosen him specifically. In verse 18 it says, but I will establish my covenant with you, listen to this, with you you shall go into the ark you and your sons your wife and your sons wives and then it's then it ends with you and There's a reason why it begins with you and ends with you Because God's covenant is with Noah. It's not with Noah and his family. It's not with Noah and his sons. It's with Noah one man the only reason that his wife and his children and their wives are being allowed is because of God's grace to Noah and It's not because God's making a covenant with Noah plus these. No, he's making this covenant with Noah. Why? Look at the last verse. Thus Noah did. According to all God commanded him, that's the center, thus Noah did. According to all that God commanded him, so he did. Seems to say the same things over and over again. It's not. What it's doing is it's emphasizing something. Noah stands as the one man on earth, by God's grace, that is doing exactly what God created him to do. And as that, he stands as a condemnation against the whole rest of the world. Because the whole rest of the world doesn't do what God commands. They don't obey Him. Right from the very beginning, He gave them one command, they didn't obey. and now we have a whole world filled with people that don't obey but you got one man that stands here and the world has to look at him for a hundred years and they're all, and you know what they're doing? They're doing just like the world today. They're out there partying. They're out there living their best life now. They're celebrating. They're getting married, given in marriage, etc. Having children and you know, having feast days and celebrating the great things of this world. That's what they were doing in Noah's day. But what was Noah doing? Noah wasn't out there partying. He wasn't out there celebrating his best life now. No, he's building a boat. He's building an ark because he knows what's coming. And he knows why it's coming. Because all of us out there are just partying and loving life and living our best life now. We don't give praise to God, we don't give thanks to God, we don't glorify Him in everything that we do. God has told them the judgment's coming. So this man building this boat while everybody else is having a great time is actually an accusation and a condemnation against the whole world. This is what it says in Hebrews chapter 11. In Hebrews chapter 11 it says, by faith know of being divinely warned of things not yet seen. moved with godly fear prepared in art for the saving of his household by which he condemned the world Noah and his obedience and his righteousness to do God's will when no one else was is a condemnation to the whole world he stands as a condemnation to the whole world Noah's kind of a strange figure I'll be honest with you And I've been trying to, and that's what's hitting me about this whole text, is coming into this text, I'm seeing things I never saw before, but it's starting to make some sense out of some things that I saw later on in the Word of God that I didn't fully understand. Right? Noah has, there's at least three or four conversations that God has with Noah, and I call them conversations, they're really speeches. God comes to Noah and speaks to Noah. Guess how many times Noah speaks back? Zero. We don't read one word of Noah speaking back to God. Whatever God told him to do, he just did it. Boom. End of the world is coming. I'm going to destroy all flesh. Noah, you got anything to say? Nope. I'm on it. I'll go build the boat. Noah, I'm going to kill everybody. Got anything to say? Nope. I'll keep building the boat. The only word that Noah says in Genesis 6,7,8,9 the only thing he ever does speaks he speaks a curse he speaks a curse on his son Ham's son Canaan because of what Ham did the only word that Noah ever says is a curse And that should tell you something. It should tell you something about the job that he was chosen to do, that he is basically the man who's condemning the world. Because God created the heavens and the earth by himself, but when God destroys the world, he's actually bringing Noah in as a partner. And Noah is part of the condemnation of the world. And it made me think about the prophet Elijah, right? Because the prophet Elijah served during a very bad time in Israel in the northern 10 tribes and he was a prophet to them and one day he had this huge contest at Mount Carmel and God was with him to destroy the priests of Baal, all 400 priests of Baal, just an amazing, amazing testimony of the power of God and he's filled with power and strength, he loves it, he races back to Samaria, runs 40 miles, gets there before the king and his chariots do and he's running. and then he finds out word that Jezebel has heard and Jezebel in her wrath and fury says, I will destroy you, right? He hears this word and he just flees. He flees and he goes into the wilderness and he doesn't eat. Well, actually an angel feeds him, but then he goes to the Mount of Sinai, it's called the Mount Horeb or the Mountain of God, and God says to him, he says, why are you here, Elijah? Why are you here? And he says, I have been very zealous for the Lord of hosts. For the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant, torn down your altars, killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they seek to take my life. And you know what Elijah's actually doing? Elijah's like Noah now. He's the one that's standing there, and the whole condemnation, he's ready for the whole world to just fall. He's ready for all of Israel. You know what? I'm the only one left, God. Well, years before, Moses had the same situation. Moses is on the mountain, and God says, and you gotta get down there, because your people are sinning bad, right? They've made a golden idol now, and so he goes down there, and the whole thing goes sideways, and next thing you know, he's in all these conversations, and Moses says, you know what? Just leave me alone. Let me destroy them. Moses says no. He jumps in between God's wrath and his people. But Noah doesn't. Is it shame on Noah? I believe not. I believe that the world had to know about the wrath of God. We didn't know. We didn't know how bad it was because all they saw before the flood, really? If you study carefully, all they really saw was the goodness of God. The first world was created very good. It wasn't created for people to fall. So it didn't have all these things about law and order and different levels of justice. It didn't have all that stuff set up. Because it was created by God as a very good world, without sin. But man in sin has so twisted and corrupted, now the wrath of God, after 1500 years, now the wrath of God is ready. God's like, that's it, I have had enough. He's a long-suffering God. And it was His desire that people would turn from sin, but they didn't. But they don't know the wrath of God. And Noah represents that. But brothers and sisters, think about our Lord Jesus Christ. You see what's beautiful about Jesus, and Moses represents that so well too. Jesus represents both. He represents the wrath and the fury of God against sin. Because when he's on that cross, that's what he's taking down on himself. So he fully represents the wrath and the fury of God, that that is real. That's why he's on the cross and that's what he's suffering, is the wrath and the fury of God. But we also see the amazing love and mercy and goodness and grace of God. because the Son of Man said that Jesus said the Son of Man must be lifted up before the whole world so that all would look upon Him and know God's love Noah is the man that God has grace on and God is actually going to save the human seed and the seed of the woman through Noah and his family But for the rest of the planet, he represents that rightful wrath and condemnation and fury against sin. And it's something that the world needed to know. Because I'll tell you something, you know, we have a friend, more of my wife's friend than mine, and The other day, there was a huge thunderstorm in the middle of the night. Maybe some of you heard it. I didn't hear most of it. I woke up at 2.09 in the morning, and I heard the rumbling of the thunder, and it sounded like the end of the world, and all of a sudden, crack! Right? And it was just like, bam! You know, I mean, it was like, woof! And I thought, thank the Lord. There was a time In my life, a good part of my life, I would have woke up and heard that, and I would have been thinking about the wrath of God. And it was funny, because this friend said to my wife the next day, she goes, did you hear that thunderstorm last night? My wife slept right through it. It was awesome. She doesn't usually do that. And she says, no. She goes, oh, it sounded like the end of the world. And brothers and sisters, that is an important thing. That is an actual something from God with love. That understanding that there is an end coming, that there is a wrath coming, and Jesus says that. On the cross, he represents, he takes the wrath, he takes the fury of God against sin, But the love of God shows through him because God says, anybody who believes in my son, who trusts in him, who follows him, will have everlasting life. But those who reject him, the wrath of God is already upon them. And Jesus says, I'm coming again. And the next time I come, I'm coming with the angels of God. I'm coming with the fury, right? I'm coming with flaming sword. I'm coming for judgment. In Noah's day, God had been gracious and merciful and long-suffering, but they did not know about the wrath. Now we do. Now we do, because Noah did what he was called to do. Noah had to be that man of wrath. He had to be the man that represents God's fury. And in this way, he represents part of Christ, that he represents the righteousness and the goodness, the righteousness, the purity of Christ. But he doesn't represent that awesome love that we have in Jesus Christ. Well, brothers and sisters, I hope and pray that as we read and study through this book, too, that we'll see, we'll see God's mercy again and again in the goodness of sending his only begotten son who says believe in me follow me because he did what Moses did but he did it in a much bigger way he stepped in between the wrath of God against sin and sinners he stepped in between and he said no Lord put it on me for those who trust and believe in that The wrath of God against your sin has already been taken care of. But for those who do not know Jesus Christ, we're not following Him. Brothers and sisters, I pray that you would turn while there is yet time. Amen. Our Father, who art in heaven, once again, we come before you this morning hour and thank you again for all your many, many blessings. And most of all, Lord, we thank you for our Lord Jesus Christ. We do thank you for the knowledge of your wrath. For Lord, we know that in your mercy, in your compassion, in your goodness, that you were so patient in that first world. And they never knew exactly how furious your wrath could be. You gave them warnings. They had warnings. They had men that preached. They had Enoch who walked with God and who preached. They had Noah himself, who was the man of judgment, for a hundred years building that boat. And telling all who would listen, all who would hear, God is going to send a flood that will destroy all the earth. And they did not listen, because they did not believe. But Lord, we pray that by the grace of God in Christ Jesus that we would believe. that we would follow you and that we would be busy doing your work so that when you come again that you will find us faithful servants in your house doing your will. Lord, may your name be praised and exalted above all other names. All these things we ask in Jesus' name alone. Amen.