If you’ve got a Bible, you can go to Genesis Chapter 7. I’ll do a little work of establishing the text, and then we’ll get into it. If you’re new, we go right through books of the Bible. We believe that every part of Scripture is very important, and so, we try not to skip any of it. I hope you guys appreciate that, and I hope you’re enjoying Genesis with me so far.

Had a good week – 500 pastors in. Had a long week. My kids are pretty sick, and I’m a little tired. It’s been a long day. It’s been a really good day, but let’s just pray for some strength so we can all stay mentally alert. Tonight is gonna be a very, very hard Word for many of you, not because I’m angry but because I’m gravely concerned, and the text demands a certain tone. So, let’s just pray for some strength together and pray that our time is beneficial.

Father God, we give our time to you, Lord God. As we go into the Scriptures, we do so with much fear and trembling. We’re here to meet with you. We’re here to hear from you, the living God. Holy Spirit, we ask that you would come to us to illuminate the Scriptures as you have inspired them to be written. God, it’s my prayer that we would have something of your heart tonight. That we would see you in all of your goodness. That we would see ourselves in all of our depravity. That we would not make light of our sin and we would not make light of your goodness. God, it’s my prayer that, like Noah, we would have a story of how we were saved by grace and that, like Noah, we would become righteous people by that empowering grace. That we would walk with you as he did. That we would worship you as he did. And that one day we would all see you face to face as he now does. God, I pray for myself, just wisdom to get through two tough chapters. I pray for the people that are here tonight, Lord God, that you would give them ears to hear and hearts to receive and minds to embrace your truth. And, Father God, we ask that when all is said and done that you would get your glory, that we would get our joy, and that, God, we wouldn’t shy away from this text because it’s hard but that we would run headlong into it, knowing that the reason we resist is because it’s very dear to our hearts, and it’s trying to do a good work therein. So we give ourselves to you and we come to you in Jesus’ good name. Amen.

Tonight we’re gonna deal with the flood of Noah, a story that, quite frankly, I’m still shocked that we tell kids. It’s not a kid story; it’s a brutal story. Something in us, each of us, just doesn’t want to deal with death. Whether it comes to beheadings on TV that they won’t show us because it makes people uncomfortable, to death or sickness or pain. We don’t like it. We don’t go to hospitals, we don’t go to funerals. The news censors everything that we see, and even when we’re watching films, when it comes to those moments of death and of suffering, of hardship, that’s when the camera pans away. We don’t like to look at it. The Bible is the most honest and the only perfect book ever written, and at those moments of human frailty and depravity and sickness, rather than panning away, it focuses in with a close-up shot, and it forces us to see things as they truly are. And it’s doing so not to mortify us and also not just for some sort of sick pleasure, but it does so to sober us so that we’ll deal rightly with God.

As we come to this text tonight, I’ll establish it for you quickly. So far, where we’ve come is that God made the heavens and the earth. That God made our first parents, Adam and Eve. That Adam and Eve sinned and separated themselves from God and as a result, death came into the human equation as the consequence for sin. Last week we looked at the fact that over the course of 1,656 years in Genesis Chapter 5, one generation after the next sinned and died. The only exception was a Godly man named Enoch whom, we are told, walked with the Lord and then went directly into heaven. That God spared him as an example for us all. That the only way around the sin problem and the death inevitability is to walk with God.

We then picked up the story with a gentleman named Noah and it takes us then from Adam to Noah. I’ll look briefly with you in Chapter 6 of Genesis. We’ll review just a bit of last week for those of you who weren’t here or maybe you’ve forgotten. What it tells us is the condition of human life on the earth and as God had waited 1,600 years, human beings hadn’t straightened out their problems. In fact, as they live long lives, they only became more adept and pernicious at sinning. And the Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart were only evil all the time. God looks down at the human race and he is absolutely broken over the condition of people’s hearts. All they want to do is sin and that’s all they want to do all the time.

So God feels something. I love this verse. It’s one of the most painful verses in all of Scripture. It shows us that God is not just a concept or a force. He’s a person, and just as you and I feel joy and pain and hope and loss, God feels. God is an emotional, a passionate God, and we are made in his image and likeness. So we also are passionate, emotional people, and looking upon human sin, what we see is the emotions of God. Friends, I would simply say this: We live in a day that there is an overly obsessive concern with our own feelings, with our own emotions. I’m not belittling feelings and emotions, but there’s this great narcissism in our day that is just compelling because of psychology and introversion that wants us to get in touch with our feelings and to plumb the depths of our feelings and to understand our feelings and to work through our feelings, which I’m not necessarily opposed to, but very rarely do you hear anyone speak of the feelings of God.

How does God feel? What is God feeling when we sin? Not only what are we feeling when we sin or others sin against us, what does God feel? What is in the heart of God over the human condition that includes us? How does God feel when we sin and disobey? It tells us here in verse 6, one of the most grievous sections of Scripture, and if God could in any way impart this to your heart that you would share the heart of God. That you would weep over our city as Jesus wept over Jerusalem and as God wept over the condition of the earth in his day. It’d be a great blessing for us all to have the heart of God, and it says that “[t]he Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.” I mean God is absolutely broken, isn’t he? God is broken over our sin.

God is saddened, God is grieved. As it were, God sheds tears. That’s how our living God feels looking at our lives. And God knows that he just can’t allow this to continue indefinitely, sin and evil and death and injustice, so God has to deal with it. So the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth – men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and the birds of the air – for I am grieved that I have made them.” God says, “I can’t let sin go forever.” At this point, he was allowing people to live up to 900 years of age. What he realized was that time wasn’t fixing anything. They were just sinning more and more and more, and as they grew older, they became more adept at sinning, not righteousness. So the problem is that the sin is in us, and for God to deal with the sin, God has to deal with us. And if we are committed to sinning, the only way that God can stop us is to take our life. That’s how deep and pernicious and all-consuming the sin problem is, and this is justice. God is certainly right in doing so.

But then we get a word of courage and hope on God’s behalf that breaks in. “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.” Some of you have been told (we reviewed this last week) that God chose Noah because Noah was a righteous man. He wasn’t. He was a wicked man. It tells us in the previous verses that everyone was only wicked all the time. Here we find that Noah was given favor. It’s the first Hebrew occurrence of the word “grace” in your Bible. God looked down at Noah and said, “I’m gonna be nice to you, though you’re not a nice man. I will be good to you, though you are not a good man. I will be patient with you, though you are an impatient man. I will be tender toward you, though you are hardened man. I will be concerned about you, though you are not concerned about me. That I will pay close attention to do you good, though you have done nothing but harm.” And God gives grace to Noah; favor.

Because of that grace from God, that grace by which he and we are saved, the account of Noah is thus, that he was made a righteous man by God’s grace. That he was made a blameless man among the people of his time by God’s grace and that subsequently, he walked with God as a friend of God. God chose this man, Noah, to be the agent through whom work would be done and wisdom would be preached on the earth. From this point forward, then, we looked at last week, God told Noah, “You have 120 years before I flood the earth. At that point, I will kill everyone and everything. The wage for sin is death and the consequence is coming.”

What God told Noah to do in that 120 years was two things. He told him to build an ark, an enormous boat, according to specific designs given by God. This boat is so large; it’s 1.4 million cubic feet. It’s big enough to take 520 modern-day railroad boxcars and to pack them into this boat. This is an enormous boat. It took Noah and his three sons 120 years to build that boat. In addition, during that time, Peter in the New Testament in his epistles tells us that he preached and he preached righteousness. So for 120 years, since he was given the grace of God, Noah built a boat and proclaimed the righteousness of God, telling the people that judgment of sin and death was coming through a flood. And no one listened. And no one cared. And much like our own day, they ignored him altogether.

Chapter 7 picks up, then, the beginning of the flood, and so I won’t deal with all the slides on the overhead, but if you did bring a Bible, you’re certainly welcome to follow along. If you didn’t, you can just listen in and you’ll catch it. Genesis Chapter 7. Here’s where we pick up the story. “Then the Lord said to Noah [God speaks to him], ‘Go into the ark, you and your whole family [that’s his wife and his three sons and their wives; the New Testament tells us that this is eight people – that’s it], because I have found you righteous in this generation. Take with you seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate [that’s for reproduction so that there will be species after the flood], and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. Seven days from now, I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature that I have made.’”

God said 120 years and then God says, “I will send the rain and I will flood the earth for forty days, and the rain will commence in one week.” Do you see the specificity of God? God is giving everyone an opportunity to repent, and he is saying the time is now very, very, very short. There’s a week. There’s a week. Noah, as a preacher of righteousness, I am certain would have been preaching with all of his might that there was a week left for repentance. And now, put yourself in the place of Noah. You’re a regular person living your life, sinning like everyone else. God comes to you. He saves you by grace. He gives you a job to do, to build a large boat for an impending flood. He tells you to build it in the middle of the desert. You build it with your sons, everyone thinking that you were a fool, and in the meantime, you’re preaching righteousness, saying that a flood is on the way. Then God comes to you and he says, “Seven more days, the rain will begin, and it will not end for 40 days until the earth is flooded.” What do you say? What do you do?

What do you do under those circumstances? Do you argue with God? Do you plead with God for more time? Do you curse God because he has no right to take human life that he has made? Do you disrespect God? Do you dishonor God? Throughout the book of Genesis, God speaks to all of the patriarchs directly except for Joseph. Joseph, he speaks to through a dream. Throughout the book as well, when someone is acting in faith, they respond by just doing what God said, and when they react in unbelief, they sit there and talk to God. Usually in Genesis, talking to God is bad. Listening to God is good. Here’s what Noah does. Chapter 7, verse 5: “And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.” Noah didn’t argue with God. He didn’t fight with God. He didn’t dishonor God. He didn’t disobey God. He didn’t partially obey God. He did everything as God instructed him. Friends, that is a believer.

A believer is someone who, when God speaks to them through the Scriptures, through circumstance, through conscience, through the Holy Spirit, through the wise counsel of another believer, when God has spoken for them to do something, there’s an urgency and a thoroughness about their response. They swiftly get to doing those things that God instructed them to do, just as he instructed them to do them. See, you and I, sometimes we have no sense of urgency or we have a partial obedience. We will do some of the things that God has instructed us, but not everything that the Lord has commanded. We need to trust that God is a good God, that God knows our future, and that when God speaks to us to give us work to be done or things to be dealt with, that he does so knowing that there’s an urgent need in the future, and he’s preparing us for that. So when you read the Word of God, when you hear from the God of the Word, please respond with a sense of urgency and thoroughness. Don’t argue with God. Don’t fight with God. Don’t disobey or dishonor God. Don’t disbelieve God and don’t partially obey. Noah did everything just as the Lord commanded him, and he is the pattern of faith for us all.

The story continues then that Noah (verse 6, Chapter 7) “was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth. And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives [eight of ‘em in total] entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, male and female, came to Noah [just as they’d come to Adam to be named] and they entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah. And after seven days the floodwaters came on the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month –” Do you see the specificity there? Some people say that the story of Noah is myth, fable, folklore, legend – but it’s not true it didn’t actually occur. The problem is that it tells us specific times, dates, months, years, names of people, geographic locations. It’s very specific. It’s because it’s true. That’s why the Lord Jesus, in the New Testament, refers to it as an actual event. That’s why men like Peter and the author of Hebrews refer to it as a factual historical event. Tells us exactly how this all occurred and when it so did.

Goes on, verse 11: “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month – on that day all the springs of the great deep [that’s the water beneath the earth] burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened [so it’s raining from overhead and the springs and the waters under the earth are pouring forth to cover the land]. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.” Just as God said. Some speculate that this is perhaps the first rain in the history of the world, and I’m not certain. I’m not certain but it is perhaps true. “On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered into the ark. They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God commanded him.”

What you will see is this: Creation obeys God. The animals obey God. Noah and his family obey God. The only thing in the story that doesn’t obey God is the people. People don’t obey God. That was the problem in the beginning; it’s the problem right up to the bitter end. And here’s what God says: “You’ve waited 120 years. You’ve built the boat. I told you seven days and then the rains would come. Those seven days are concluded. I’ve brought to you all the animals that I intend to be stored on this boat. You and your family, now it’s time to get on the boat.” I want you to stand there with Noah. Noah is standing in the doorway of the boat. He’s there with his wife, his three sons, his three daughter-in-laws. What is he seeing? Seeing the city that he loves. He’s seeing the people that he loves. He’s seeing the neighbors going to work, the children out playing, the women going to the well, the men going out into the field. He’s seeing the smoke from the homes billow into the air as people warm themselves by fire or cook their meal.

He looks out and he sees large dark clouds rolling in. He sees everyone that he had preached to for 120 years. Sees everyone that had mocked him and ignored him. Noah looks up at the sky. It’s starting to get dark. It’s going to rain any moment. Feels the first raindrop on his forehead and knows it’s the beginning of the end. If you’re Noah, what do you do? I have to assume that in Noah, there was a resistance to shut the door to that ark. There was a resistance to finally recognize that the opportunity for people to be spared has come to an end. That God’s patience has come to the end of its tether and all that’s left is instant justice. I want you to stand there with Noah. I want you to look out over the city. I want you to see your mom and dad. I want you to see your brothers and sisters. If you have a spouse, I want you to stand there with ‘em. If you have kids, I want you to stand there with ’em. I want you to see your co-workers. I want you to see the kids riding bikes in your neighborhood. I want you to see all the people that you love who just don’t care about God. If you don’t know God, I want you to see yourself. As God’s heart was broken over the condition of sin, I’m sure at this point, Noah shared his grief.

I wish all of you could stand here and see what I see every Sunday. A lot of Sundays I just feel like Noah, standing here all by myself. I can see the hearts of some of you are softening toward the Lord and some of you, your hearts are hardening. I see that week in and week out, some of you come and you just don’t give a damn. You’re thinking that God will endure forever and that ultimately, there is no justice. Like Noah, there are days that I feel as if I have said everything that I could say. What do you do in that moment? What do you say? I love you guys with all my heart. I started out as a Bible teacher and somewhere in the middle of this, I became a pastor. Noah’s looking out with a pastor’s heart, seeing people just like you that he cares very deeply for. He and his family are on the boat. I don’t think Noah at that moment could bring himself to shut the door. As he’s standing there, here’s what happens next. “The Lord shut him in.” Noah stood there with his wife, sons, his daughter-in-laws. He sees the first rain falling and it’s God who closes the door to the ark. Slowly, meticulously, painfully slow. And then Noah sees nothing; he’s in darkness. There’s no electricity in this boat. You want to be very careful with a lantern in this boat, right?

The door shuts. No one gets to repent of their sin now, be saved from the flood. The story continues: “For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth.” Can you stand there with Noah and his family to hear the thunder, the lightning? Do you feel the rumble? Do you hear the rain start softly? You’ve been in a torrential downpour? And then it gets harder and louder, just beating on the roof. The animals, terrified, crying out. The women weeping. The husbands embracing their wives in utter darkness. And the rain just pours down on the roof. The wind kicks in and it just hammers against the side of the boat. It echoes through this large cavernous ark. “For forty days,” verse 17 states, “the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth.” It comes to a point where the water is so deep that Noah feels the boat, this large weighty boat, floating where previously there had been nothing but barren desert. And he feels that they indeed have become adrift and that the desert is now sea.

“The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the surface, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet.” The water keeps coming for 40 days. The highest mountain peak in that area is probably Mount Ararat. It’s 17,000 feet to its peak. The water went over it, high enough that even that large ark that was sitting a certain depth under the water could pass right over the mountain. Can you imagine the day when Mount Rainier disappears in water? Can you imagine the day when you no longer see the peaks of the Cascades – they are submerged under water? Some people speculate that maybe this was a local flood. Some say it was a universal flood that covered the earth. Either way, it was big enough to kill all the sinners because they had not yet spread over the earth, and they were concentrated in one particular portion of the earth, and they all drowned. For me, reading it, it certainly reads like a universal flood to me.

I want you to see it. Forty days and forty nights, the rain comes. The water rises slowly. The first people to drown would have been the elderly and the sick and the lame. Those who couldn’t climb on top of their roof. Those who could not find a high point in the city. Those who could not flee to the mountains. Those who could not climb a tree. It was the pregnant women. It was the old men and women. It was the lame and the injured. It was the sick and the dying that died first. Those who had some health invariably would have climbed onto the roof of their home or into a tree. They would have fled to a high space, hoping that the water subsided before it consumed them. But the water continued to rise. Can you think of anything worse than drowning in a slow way? It’s speculation on my behalf, but I have to presume that the young, strong men like so many of you young, strong men decided that they would climb the mountains. That they would find the highest point. That they would use their strength to outrun the judgment of God. And with bloodied, raw hands and feet, they climbed the mountains.

But eventually the water covered the mountains. Eventually even the young men, who were holding onto debris and swimming for their life, drowned. Because the rain came for 40 days and 40 nights. The water remained on the earth for an additional 150 days. At some point the birds could no longer fly and they fell into the ocean. At some point the men could no longer swim and they drowned under the sea. At some point their bodies could no longer cling to the debris through thirst and starvation. Through the freezing temperature of the water and hypothermia, they succumbed to the elements and they died. Everyone died. Everything died. Meanwhile, Noah and his family are in the boat. At first they would have heard the shrieks and squeals and screams of terror from their neighbors and family and friends. Over time, those cries would have grown dim and distant until they were no more and there was utter silence. Invariably, some people swam to the ark and started beating on its door, begging Noah to open it. Noah couldn’t lest he fill the boat with water and drown everything and everyone inside. The women are huddled and weeping. The men are trying to comfort their wives. And the only thing worse than the screams of people in terror and the banging on the boat is the silence that invariably comes as no one makes it.

This is the point when you all want me to change the topic. This is the point when you want me to tell you happy things. This is why we don’t show beheadings on television. This is why we don’t like carnage on our nightly news. That’s why in our nation, we live in a fairy tale Disneyland where no one gets sick and no one dies and no one suffers, and nothing bad ever happens. And if we should taste the consequence of sin, if we should suffer a little bit or see it firsthand, we medicate it away as quickly as we can or we self-medicate it away with great expediency because we just don’t want to embrace the reality that the wage for sin is death. Paul in Romans 1 says that we indeed suppress the truth and the unrighteousness of our deeds. We just don’t want to be caught. We just want to keep sinning.

Verse 21 goes on to tell us that “every living thing that moved on the earth perished” –everything – “birds, livestock, animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind.” Every man, every woman, every child. “Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.” Eight people. “The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.” Sixteen hundred and fifty-six years, people sinned. God saved Noah; told him to preach for 120 years. At the end of 120 years, God said there would be one more week and then the rain would start. The rains came for 40 days and 40 nights. After the earth had flooded, the earth remained flooded for 150 days. Noah’s gonna spend about a year on this boat.

Now, some of you are deeply troubled. Some of you are deeply, profoundly disturbed. That simply means that you have understood the text as it is. The point is that we feel offended, but it was God who felt offended first. That we are brokenhearted, but it is God who was brokenhearted first. God is not capricious. God is not bad. God is not like us. And some of you will protest that God has no right to do this. My offer to you would simply be this: Hypothetically, you are God. Hypothetically, you get to determine what happens with the sinners of the earth. What solution do you offer? What hope do you bring? What alternative do you provide? What do you do? Let’s all stand back and stop pointing our finger at God. Let’s sit in his seat for just a moment and let’s inquire of ourselves, what would we do?

See, some of you will protest that, “Couldn’t God just send a good man as an example for others to follow?” He did; his name was Enoch. He walked with God, went straight to heaven. It’s a point to everyone: be like Enoch. No one was. Some will protest, “Well, maybe God could’ve just waited. This seems very sudden.” God waited 1,656 years and it only got worse. God gave 120 years of warning. God told them seven more days. No one heeded. No one. Some of you will protest, “Well, perhaps God could have sternly warned them, scared them.” He said in Genesis early chapters, “The wage for sin is death.” He allowed people to die. He has been warning them all along.

See, friends, the point is this: People die every day. The wage for sin is death. People go to hell every day. People die and stand before God every day. Doesn’t trouble us in the least. Yesterday people were in the obituary; today people are in the obituary; tomorrow people will be in the obituary, but it’s a handful at a time and so it doesn’t trouble us. The only time that it gets our attention is when it happens en masse. When on one day a few years ago, a few thousand people die and it makes the news. We see it. We can no longer turn away. We can no longer ignore it. All of a sudden now we live in a culture that won’t show that event any longer because people don’t want to see it. It troubles them. It reminds them that they’re sinners and they’re frail and they’re mortal, and that they one day, too, will certainly die. See, we don’t want to talk about that. We don’t want to deal with that. You and I will all die. All God did is he set the day of death as the same day, so that we would make note of it. That we wouldn’t pan away at that moment of trauma. That we would see that death is the destiny of every man. That as Hebrews says, “It is appointed once for us each to die.” Occasionally, a group of people will die and we’re mortified.

God is here trying to get our attention. He’s trying to sober us up. He’s trying to profoundly disturb us to show us the dangerous place in which we find ourselves as sinners. Some of you will protest, “Well, perhaps God should have sent a preacher.” He sent Noah, a preacher of righteousness. He was the Billy Graham of his day. He offered an altar call invitation for 120 years, and no one ever came forward. Some of you say, “Well, maybe God could’ve just let them sin.” Friends, if God let injustice go unchecked, you would curse God. You would take the finger that God had made and you would point it up to the sky, and you would take the breath that God has provided, and you would curse him for not dealing with sin and sinners. Some of you will protest that, “Well, God should have spared them.” He did. He sent an enormous boat and anyone who wanted to get on the boat was welcome to get on the boat. And no one did. I want you to see that human beings are sinful, wicked, proud, arrogant, autonomous, independent, self-destructive, self-deceived. And it doesn’t matter who preaches or how long God waits or what vehicle of redemption he provides. We will not take it. We will swim on our own rather than embrace God’s provision.

Genesis 8 picks up the rest of the story. “But God” – this is the only place of hope that the story offers God. God. “God remembered Noah” – not that he had forgotten him but God had made a covenant promise that he would save him and his family and now he’s going to act upon that. Friends, God never leaves us or forsakes us. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing can take us from the hand of God. Even when we are faithless, God is faithful, if – if – if you are a child of God. If you belong to God, God is good and God is faithful. And God is good to Noah. He remembers his promise “and all the wild animals and the livestock were in the ark with him, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded.” At this point the waters will begin to diminish. You see, it took 40 days to flood. It took 150 days of flooding to just exist, and then it will take another 150 days for the flood to subside. The principle is simply this: Destruction comes quickly. Restoration, redemption and renewal takes time. Some of you are experiencing that with your own life. You’ve destroyed it. You’ve recently come to God. It’s being restored, redeemed and renewed but it takes time. You’ve destroyed your marriage, you’ve destroyed your body, you’ve destroyed your finances, you’ve destroyed much. Destruction comes quickly. Restoration, redemption and renewal take time.

It stops raining. Wasn’t that a glorious day for Noah and his family? It got eerily quiet. The rain wasn’t pounding on the boat. There was silence. And the water begins to recede. God is just. He started with mercy, justice comes in the middle, and now mercy is making its way back. “The springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky.” A reprieve. “The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days, the water had gone down, and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.” The mountains of Ararat today are a chain that spreads over Iran, Turkey and Russia. People have been climbing the mountains looking for the ark and it has not yet been found. It may or may not be in our lifetime. I don’t know. The high point of this mountain is a 17,000-foot peak. And it’s interesting ’cause those people who live there in the base of that mountain, those people who were initially in that place that was flooded, today those people are known as an Armenian papal group. They worship the mountain as a sacred god.

Isn’t that curious that people will worship in the creation and not the creator? (as Paul says in Romans 1). And so God floods the earth and kills the sinners. The waters recede and sometime later, the sinners repopulate that area and they go back to worshipping the creation and not the creator. Tells you that there is something deeply and profoundly wrong with the human condition. That mountain is still there today and for some, it is not a remembrance that God is their only hope; it is their god.

“The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.” Finally. It’s like looking out and you could just see the peak of Mount Rainier and maybe a glimpse of a section of the Cascades. The water is that high. “After forty days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark.” This man has been inside for about a year and he opens his little portal and he looks out into the world that he’s about to enter into. He’s investigating what’s out there. Do you see it? There’s not a bird in the sky. There is no land on the horizon. The peaks of the mountains are just jettisoning above the water. The whole earth is still, eerily quiet. There are no human beings. There are no birds. There are no animals. There is no dry land. There is no plant life. There is nothing. Noah looks out of that portal. What he decided to do was to begin to investigate if any dry land had yet become available, so he sends out a raven, “and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth.” See, the raven is a rugged scavenger bird. It’s a bird who does well on its own. It’s strong and able to endure harsh climate and difficult environment, and Noah sends it out looking for land.

You know the rest of the story as well. “Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground.” See, the dove is a more timid bird. It needs a nest, it needs a home, it needs shelter, it needs protection. It’s not as sturdy of a bird as the raven. “But the dove could find no place to set its feet because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark.” And in this loving picture of Noah caring for the dove as God cared for Noah, “he reached out his hand” – through the portal – he “took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark.” He tenderly cares for this animal as God has cared for him. He’s a man who’s learned something of grace. “He waited seven more days” – that’s a long time – patient. Noah’s learning patience as God had been patient for 120 years. “He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there was in its beak a freshly plucked olive leaf!” Somewhere that meant there was land and that plant life was growing again and that this greenery meant that in time, Noah would depart from the ark and return to the land. “Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent out the dove again, but this time it did not return to him.”

If you’ll bear with me, I’m gonna go on a brief excursion. This is the universal symbol for peace, is it not? A dove with an olive branch in its mouth. It just frustrates me – I saw it on the news last night in our own city where stupid and foolish people who know nothing of the story of the Bible borrow an image that is self-condemning. The people who are prone to use this symbol of a dove with an olive branch in its mouth are the same kind of people who died in the flood. They don’t believe that we are sinners, they don’t believe that we are bad, they don’t believe that we need police, jails, capital punishment, national defense. That we’re all good people. That we should just love each other. That we should just take good care of each other. That we should all get along. The Bible says that we’re all sinners. That that was God’s original intent and had sin not entered the world and had sin not been in us, we wouldn’t need locks on our homes. We wouldn’t need locks on our cars. We wouldn’t need handguns and concealed weapons permits. We wouldn’t need 911. We wouldn’t need police. We wouldn’t need a court system. We wouldn’t need a jail system. We wouldn’t need war. We wouldn’t need weaponry. We wouldn’t need to slaughter one another to preserve some sense of justice on the earth.

It’s silly because the picture of the dove is not a picture of peace; it’s a picture of justice. God has just killed everyone save eight people. The dove shows that peace comes after God slaughters his enemies. Make no mistake, dear friends. Genesis is not just about what happened, it’s about what happened and about what always happens. The Bible says that Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace in Isaiah and it tells us in Revelation how he will achieve that great peace. He is coming again as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords with a robe dipped in blood, with a sword protruding from his mouth with which to make war against the nations of the earth and slaughter those who do not trust in him. That peace will come when Jesus annihilates everyone who does not repent of sin and trust in him. And once he has done so, he will usher in an eternal kingdom of peace. But in the meantime, we’re foolish people thinking that more votes and more elections and more time and less war and less judgment and less justice will bring about goodness on the earth.

Some of you resist that because you think you’re good people. You’re not. You’re no better than anyone in the flood. You’re foolish and silly to think that signing a contract between two nations will eradicate the sin problem. That just waiting for more time and peace accords will deal with the sin problem. That more elections and more good will and more humanitarian aid will deal with the sin problem. I’m not saying I love capital punishment. I’m not saying I love the bloodthirsty wars that we engage in. I’m not saying that all executions and all wars are justified. But I am saying that sometimes the only way to stop sin is to kill a sinner. That’s true. And only a fool would parade around with a picture of a dove thinking that somehow peace comes apart from the shedding of blood.

The story continues. “By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth.” Finally the ground is coming back. “Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry.” He looks out and he sees land. “By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry. Then God said to Noah,” – and I love this, right? Noah had not yet left the ark. God told him, “Build the ark.” He built it. God told him, “Go on the ark.” He went on the ark. Noah looked out of the ark to see the land that God had dried with the breeze as he had dried the land at the Red Sea in Exodus when God’s people passed on dry ground. God sent that same kind of breeze to dry the ground in the days of Noah as he does in the days of Moses. But what Noah doesn’t do is leave the boat. God said build the boat, God said go on the boat, God has not yet said get off the boat. And so Noah stays on the boat until God tells him to get off the boat.

This is a man who wants to get off the boat, right? This is a man who has spent a year with his in-laws. This is a man who has the funky stench of animals. They have not taken a decent bath. They have not had a hot meal. It has been a year. This is a guy who wants to get off the boat. But he waits. He waits for God to tell him to proceed. And God does. “‘Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring every kind of living creature that is with you – the birds, the animals, and the creatures that move along the ground – so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon it.’” The animals are gonna reproduce. They’re gonna replenish this destroyed earth. Noah comes out almost like a first Adam, the father of a new humanity, into a new creation that’s been cleansed through the flood. “So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives [eight in all]. And the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds – everything that moves on the earth – came out of the ark, one kind after another.”

I want you to see it. The door to the ark opens. Noah, as the leader of his family, steps out first. What does he see? There’s not a bird in the sky. There’s not an animal on the ground. The plant life is just starting to come back. It’s still a bit barren. Noah is the first man to set foot in this new world that had been forever altered by the flood. He knows there’s not another man on the earth other than his sons. He knows that the fate of human history is now contingent upon him and his wife, his three sons, and their wives. At this moment, if you are Noah, looking out at this world pregnant with possibility, what do you do? What do you do first? This is a very important and significant moment. Do you build shelter? Do you search for food? Do you find a stream and get fresh water? Do you go for a walk to deal with your own sense of loss and emotional grief, to heal? Do you take a nap because finally the work has come to an end and you can rest? See, what we do at this moment indicates our highest priority, our greatest value and our most urgent commitment. What you do at that moment indicates what is most significant to you. What is the highest priority in your life? Is it work? Is it family? Is it friends? Is it leisure? Because that is what you would do at that moment. You would do that which is your highest priority. Here’s what Noah does.

First thing he does, he gets off the boat, he grabs some earth, he stacks it together as a makeshift altar, perhaps with some stones on top. And the first thing he’s going to do is he’s going to worship God. His first priority, his highest value, his most urgent and pressing need is to worship God. Is that what you would have done? Is that your highest priority? Is that your first value? Noah gets off the boat, forms an altar upon which he intends to worship God. And he does so in an amazing way. “Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all of the clean animals” – this is a big job. This is not one animal. This is all of the clean animals – “and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.” Some say that Noah got off the boat and what he did is he gave a thanksgiving offering to God. I’m sure he was thankful but that’s not what this is. You read Leviticus 1, you read Job Chapter 1, this offering is an atonement offering. Atonement offering is only given for what? Sin.

Noah gets off the boat and he looks at the world and he realizes that he is just as wicked a man as everyone who perished. That he too should have certainly died and would have had it not been God’s favoring grace upon him. Noah does not boast. He does not look at his wife and say, “See? You’ve married a godly man.” Doesn’t look at his sons and say, “See? I’m a great guy. I’m a holy man.” Noah takes no credit. In his redemption, he takes no credit in the sparing of his life. What he does do is he repents of his sin. The atonement offering is this: Upon that altar, Noah would have taken a knife out of his pocket and one animal after the other, he would have named his sin and slit the throat of the animal. He would have been there for a good long while, perhaps a whole day. One animal after the other and then the birds. Noah’s family is standing around him, watching. And here’s what Noah’s doing. “I’m an adulterer. I’m a fornicator. I lust. I covet. I’m greedy. I have false gods, particularly the one in the mirror. I have ignored God. I have mocked his grace. I have slandered people. I have lied.” And he slits throat after throat after throat after throat after throat after throat after throat after throat after throat and he spends his first day off the boat confessing his sin, slaughtering animals. Mounds of carcasses surrounding him. Blood flowing off the makeshift altar going into the ground. This beautiful, cleansed, renewed ground covered with blood. That’s the first thing that he did.

Every time you see a sacrifice, the Bible wants you to go to Jesus. At this point, the law had not yet been given. Leviticus had not been written. The priesthood, the sacrificial system, did not yet exist. The question is: Where does this come from? This comes from Noah. Noah here is a priest. He is offering a sacrifice of atonement. He’s being very Biblical even though this part of the Bible had not yet been written. He took his example from God who offered the first sacrifice back in Genesis. When Adam sinned, God slaughtered an animal to cover their nakedness and shame. The bloodshed covers sin. Noah’s following in the pattern of God. See, we don’t like bloodshed. We don’t like gore. We don’t like death. The Bible says that without the shedding of blood, there’s no forgiveness of sin. That the wage for sin is death and when you see blood, it’s indicative of death. And every time you see a sacrifice like this, you are supposed to go to Jesus.

That’s what Hebrews teaches. We’re supposed to go right to Jesus. That Jesus is a priest like Noah and he’s a sacrifice like that animal, and that’s why when he shows up, his cousin who is the prophet John the Baptist cries out, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” That Jesus is gonna die. That he will shed his blood on the earth he made to cover the sin of Noah, the sin of me. That’s how Noah spent his first day off the boat. Confessing his sin in sight of his children, his wife, his daughter-in-laws, pointing forward to the Lord Jesus, God who became a man, who would come as a priest to offer a sacrifice and the Lamb of God who was slain. What we teach you at this church is that we initiate and God responds. What I’m gonna teach you today is that there are occasions in which we initiate and God responds as well. God did not command Noah to offer the sacrifice. God told him to build the boat, go on the boat, stay on the boat, get off the boat. God told him what to do but God didn’t tell him to offer a sacrifice. Noah does that and God responds. I want you to see the response of God.

“The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma.” This is what the theologians call an anthropomorphism. It’s not that God is a man but that God speaks to us as John Calvin says in baby talk so that we would understand him. Here he uses the language of smelling. But God smells this sacrifice from Noah. Noah realizing that he is a sinner saved by grace, grateful to God for the mercy he has received, and it says that God was pleased. See, before God’s heart only had pain and grief and sadness. And now because of worship, God has joy. God is pleased because, finally, someone has confessed their sin and been grateful for grace. And God says something. He says, “Never again will I curse the ground because of man.” God cursed the ground in Genesis 3. It doesn’t mean that the curse is lifted. Romans 8 says that even today, creation is yearning and groaning under the weight of the curse. Revelation tells us that the curse won’t be lifted until the end. But he won’t curse the ground again. He won’t flood the earth again. Why? Because we’re good people? Because now we’re all gonna be like Noah and worship God and be good people?

I tell ya what. Next week you’re gonna find out that Noah was still an alcoholic and his son was a pervert. God doesn’t say, “I’m not gonna do this ever again because you’ve learned your lesson and now you’re good people.” He further states, “. . . even though every inclination of our heart is evil from childhood.” The psalmist says that we’re wicked from our mother’s womb. God doesn’t say that he will not curse the earth again and he will not flood the earth again because we’re good people who’ve learned our lesson but because he’s a good God and because he’s responding to the sacrifice of Noah and Noah is the father of us all, that we all are descendants of Adam and now we’re all descendants of Noah. And God says, “I can’t just kill all the sinners because everyone is a sinner and there would be no one.” “And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.” And here God makes a great promise. “As long as the earth endures,” –and I want you to hear that ominous echo that hangs in the air. “As long as the earth endures.” It’s not a promise that the earth will always endure. In fact, it’s an inference that the earth will not endure. But as long as it does, something is certain.

See, the earth is coming to an end. Some people say, “Oh, how can it be?” Just as in the days of Noah, God is patiently waiting to execute on his promises to bring judgment. The first judgment by water, the second judgment by fire. Peter says that everything will be destroyed by fire. Can you think of a more terrifying way to die than drowning or burning? What God makes is this great promise. “As long as the earth endures [as long as I am still being patient], seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” That the seasons will continue. It doesn’t mean that there will be no famine and there will be no floods on the earth, but there will not be a universal famine or a universal flood. And contrary to what the rabid environmentalists and the earth-worshipping people who believe that the earth is our mother and God is not our father would tell you, there will be people on the earth, there will be food on the earth and there will be seasons on the earth until God says it’s over.

It’s curious because some years later after the days of Noah, the Lord Jesus comes. The point is simply that our hope is not in any man or woman on the earth. That our hope has to be in God who comes down from heaven and becomes a man to identify with us. And he’s tempted as every way as we are yet he never sins, and Jesus lives this perfect life in this imperfect place called Earth. And Jesus picks up the story of Noah in Matthew 24 and what he says is, “Just as in the days of Noah, so it will be when I come again.” In the days of Noah, they were getting married and eating and drinking and laughing and living, and so it will be in the end. In the days of Noah, young men were heading out to buy the ring to put on the finger of their beloved and then the flood came. Women were on their way to their wedding day and the flood came. Women were cooking dinner and the flood came. Men were tending to their garden and the flood came. He says no one knows when it’s coming.

The Bible says that no one knows the hour or the day of his second great coming. Jesus says just as in the days of Noah, people will just live their life and ignore me altogether, thinking that there will be no consequence. That sin will continue indefinitely. He says it will be like that. And as it first was a judgment by water, it will be a judgment by fire. And as they were cast into the sea, they will be cast under the earth into the fiery torments of hell. And as God waited patiently in that day, God waits patiently in our day. As God invited people to turn from sin and trust in him, he invites us all to turn from sin and trust in him. And the only reason today why you didn’t bring a goat, why you didn’t bring a sheep, why you didn’t bring an animal, the only reason why I’m not gonna hand you a knife and I’m not gonna call you forward on a table to slaughter the neck of an animal while on the mike you tell us all that you are, all that you’ve done, all that you’ve thought, all that you’ve said, and all that you’ve failed to do is because the sacrifice has already been made. That the Lord Jesus has died for our sins. That he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. That Ephesians 5:2 says his sacrifice is a “fragrant offering” in the nostrils of the father, just as the sacrifice was in the days of Noah. That in 2 Corinthians we are told that our lives now as God’s people are a sweet fragrance that ascends into the nostrils of God. And lastly, Revelation 5:8 says that our prayers also are a sweet fragrance that ascends into the presence of the father.

Genesis isn’t just about what happened. It’s about what always happens. We’re here today to worship, not to lay down an animal but to do what Romans 12:1 says, to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable unto God, as a spiritual act of worship. We give ourselves. And this is the hard part for me because I love you and this is the last time I’ll see some of you. You will never be back. You didn’t want to hear this. You wanted to hear that you are the solution, not the problem. You wanted to hear that you are a god and God is a god and God is a god who blesses you so that you will be a god who is glorified. You wanted me to tell you that your sin is not that bad and your God’s not that good. You wanted me to tell you that everybody goes to heaven. That the door never shuts and everybody makes it on the boat. You wanted me to tell you that there’s no reason for urgency. You wanted me to tell you that you have plenty of time, there’s nothing to worry about.

Guys, I love ya with all my heart. I absolutely love each and every one of you and if I don’t know you, I mean that in all sincerity. Your sin is this real, awful. God is this holy and this good. That time will not fix it. That declarations of goodness and peace will not fix it. That the advancement of society, yet another election, more taxes, more education, more healthcare, more treaties, more wars, more jails will not fix it. That you are a sinner and you will die. And either Jesus dies for your sin or you will die for your sin.

This is where the church gets smaller. This is where the full room empties up seats. This is where for those of you who haven’t already walked out, you do just like the people did in the days of Noah. You take a chance. Or you say, “To hell with God, I’ll swim it on my own.” That just kills me. It just kills me to stand up here like Noah, look out, and see the faces of many people that I love, knowing that I’m saved by grace, everyone who’s saved is saved by grace, if we all come and give God our sin, he’ll give us his forgiveness. Worship is about giving him our sin, naming it, and him taking it away.

In the first service, I started crying. In the second service, I started crying. I went home; I cried all day. You know? I don’t know if I got any tears left in me. God cares more about you than you do. At this point, some of you have tasted the grace of God and you stand here with me like Noah, saying, “I can’t believe I’m alive. I can’t believe I’m forgiven. I can’t believe that God loves me. I can’t believe that God puts up with me. I can’t believe that Jesus died for me. I can’t believe that we don’t need to call me forward today and have Mark slit my throat so that God’s justice would be satisfied but that Jesus’ blood was already spilled on the earth.” For those of you that are in that place, I praise God. You’re my brothers and sisters. We’re here to worship. For those of you who are like those people in the days of Noah, I’m just begging ya.

What other solution do you have? How are you gonna beat death? How are you gonna conquer sin? What offer do you have as an alternative? Where is your hope? Where is your faith? And do you really believe that God will not take care of you? If he is willing to send his only son, punish him, crush him, kill him; if the father is willing to slaughter the son, he is certainly willing to deal with you. And if he has slaughtered the son for you, he has left you without any excuse but to turn to him in repentance as Noah did. I tell you not because I hate you. Because I love you. I’m not yelling at you because I don’t want to threaten ya. I want to warn ya. I want you to become a Christian today. I want you to give your sin to Jesus. I want his death, his blood, to cover your sin. And I want you to join us today in worship. Your first act can be partaking of communion, which is remembering the shed blood of the Lord Jesus.

Our city is just like the days of Noah. We are just like the people in Noah’s day. And I pray that by God’s grace, we would come to our senses and be saved. That we would obey God. That we would walk with God. That we would worship God together. And today, if you pray to him asking for forgiveness, he responds. He hears. He answers. And he embraces. And his heart goes from grief to joy. I’ll pray for ya. You know I love you, right? These are words of a father. I believe hard words produce soft people. Soft words produce hard people. I want you all to be soft people. Brokenhearted like God and tender. I do love you very, very much. I honestly do.

Response: Amen, Mark.

Thank you, bro.

Father God, it has been a long day with many tears. God, we want to be soft people. We don’t want to be hard and callous. We don’t want to take the finger that you’ve made and shake it at the sky. We don’t want to take the breath that you’ve given and use it to curse you. We don’t want to take the days that you have provided and use them to sin against you. God, we don’t want you to, every time you gaze upon us, to feel nothing but sadness in your heart, grief over who we are and what we do. Lord God, we want you to look at us through Jesus, his death for our sin and his righteousness given to us. We want you to see us as people who have been saved by grace, who have been kept by grace, and who today name our sin and worship you by grace. God, I pray for those that are in the room who know you, that we would have a heart of gladness, wonder and awe and joy. For those who don’t know you, God, I pray for a heart of brokenness and sobriety, earnestness and repentance. God, we repent of causing you grief. We’re so consumed by our own feelings that oftentimes we altogether neglect yours. God, please save us from ourselves. Please embrace us and give us life. Please do for us what you did for Noah. Please make us a family. Please be our Father with Jesus as our brother. In his name we pray. Amen.