1. "The account of the Flood is found in chapter six and seven of Genesis and it involves the most horrific scene to contemplate in all the Bible, with the exception maybe of the cross and the final judgment."

2. "The so-called problem of evil is a distinctly non-Christian problem. A fault lodged at God from an imaginary human-centered universe. That's not the universe that we live in, that's not reality."

3. "Justice is an obvious expression of goodness. Rights wronged, vindication, restoration, reparations, that which should be restored, that which shouldn't be extinguished or brought to an end, the world being put right, just desserts finally being served, truth winning out, clarity, honesty, lies being revealed, deceptions being ended, quarrels being forever settled right finally having might. There is a bracing cleanness about justice."

4. "God, we read here, saw the earth was corrupt. We read the earth was corrupt in God's sight. Friend, if something is the case in God's sight, then it is the case. Argument ends, no second witness needed. There's no more definitive view in the world than the view of God."

5. "I was on my way to hell, but God interrupted me. Friends, that's our experience. If you're a Christian, God has, through family, through friends, through something you read, interrupted you on your way to hell."

6. "The ark is just a large floating wooden building. It doesn't have a rudder, it doesn't have a sail. It doesn't have any instruments of navigation for humans to guide it. It's just a large barge. It's built to float with no assumption that it would be directed by man, but by God."

7. "Friends, the Lord has you in the situation you're in for a reason. And it's not to be a passive thermometer simply telling what the temperature is. You're supposed to be there as a Christian, as a thermostat, helping to set the temperature for where you are, helping to establish what things are like."

8. "Satan whispers that infernal reasoning in our ears again and again, and the number of times it's true are zero. God is a God who deliberately answers some of our prayers very quickly to encourage us; others, He deliberately stretches out so that we learn to wait over time."

9. "In the other epochs, you have a plurality of gods and they are just annoyed at these pesky humans... Nothing could contrast more with the biblical story of the flood. In the story, the one true God who created the entire world judges His creation, morally condemns them because of their corruption in life."

10. "This greatest of all disasters was provoked ultimately not by geological or meteorological forces, though God may have employed them, but by the spiritual darkness and corruption of the human soul."

Observation Questions

1. Genesis 6:9 - How does the text describe Noah's character, and what three specific qualities are attributed to him?

2. Genesis 6:11-12 - How does Scripture describe the state of the world during Noah's time? What two specific problems does God identify?

3. Genesis 6:22 & 7:5 - What pattern do we see in Noah's response to God's instructions? How might this relate to the description of him "walking with God"?

4. Genesis 7:16 - Who closed the door of the ark? What might this detail reveal about God's role in salvation?

5. Genesis 7:19-20 - How extensive was the flood according to the text? What specific measurement is given regarding the water's depth above the mountains?

6. Genesis 7:23 - Who survived the flood according to this verse? What language does the text use to describe what happened to everything else?

Interpretation Questions

1. The sermon speaks of "the problem of goodness" rather than "the problem of evil." How does the flood narrative demonstrate both God's justice and mercy? How are these qualities not contradictory but complementary?

2. What is the significance of God giving such detailed instructions for the ark? How might this reflect God's character and His relationship with Noah?

3. How does Noah's example of faithful obedience amid a corrupt world serve as a model for believers today? What challenges might he have faced during the decades of building the ark?

4. The pastor described the ark as "a large floating wooden building" without navigational instruments. How does this characteristic of the ark illustrate our dependence on God for salvation?

5. How does the flood narrative foreshadow the final judgment described in 2 Peter 3:5-7? What parallels exist between the two judgments?

Application Questions

1. When was the last time you felt like Noah, standing alone in obedience to God while those around you lived as if no judgment was coming? How did you respond to that pressure?

2. The sermon describes Christians as "thermostats" rather than "thermometers" in a corrupt society. What is one specific way you could set the spiritual temperature in your workplace, neighborhood, or family this week?

3. Noah persevered in obedience for decades while building the ark. What long-term act of obedience is God calling you to right now that requires similar patience and endurance?

4. Is there a specific warning from God's Word that you've been ignoring or minimizing in your life? What step can you take today to heed that warning?

5. The pastor shared a testimony: "I was on my way to hell, but God interrupted me." How has God "interrupted" your life? Who in your life needs to hear about God's interrupting grace this week?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Hebrews 11:7 - "By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith." This passage highlights how Noah's faith expressed itself through obedience and reverent fear.

2. 1 Peter 3:18-22 - Peter draws a parallel between salvation through the ark and salvation through baptism into Christ, showing how the flood narrative points to our ultimate salvation through Jesus.

3. Luke 17:26-30 - Jesus connects the days of Noah with His second coming, emphasizing the suddenness of judgment and the importance of being spiritually prepared rather than caught up in worldly pursuits.

4. Isaiah 54:9-10 - God uses the flood as a reference point for His covenant faithfulness, promising that while mountains may depart, His steadfast love and covenant of peace will never be removed from His people.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Problem of Goodness: Justice vs. Mercy in God’s Character

II. God’s Warning of the Flood (Genesis 6:9–13)

III. God’s Way Through the Flood (Genesis 6:14–7:16)

IV. God’s Just Wrath in the Flood (Genesis 7:17–24)

V. The Urgency of Heeding God’s Warnings and Mercy

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Detailed Sermon Outline

Kirsten Mohler and I had the privilege Friday of being at D. Alan Light's retirement ceremony. And after the ceremony, as we were leaving, Kirsten asked me about my sermon. And I told her, remember what I said? I have a horrible text.

Seemed probably an unusual thing to say about a text in the Bible, but I meant it.

The account of the flood is found in chapters 6 and 7 of Genesis, and it involves the most horrific scene to contemplate in all the Bible, with the exception maybe of the cross and the final judgment.

It is the somberness of our text that demands that we jump right into it, right into the deep end, in a way I normally don't do.

To the non-Christian, the question is, how can God be both good and all-powerful?

The thought is that if He's good, He wouldn't allow us to suffer, so He must not be all-powerful. Or, if you choose to defend that by definition, God must be all-powerful, okay, well then He can't be all good.

But this is, as I say, a conundrum for the non-Christian. It is loaded with assumptions that the Bible would disabuse us of. What if God resists using His power at this moment to display qualities that we've not thought of or don't appreciate? His patience, His wisdom in His plan, His justice?

Or what if God's goodness really would not lead Him to reduce our suffering, but His goodness would really lead Him to to increase our suffering.

The so-called problem of evil is a distinctly non-Christian problem, a fault lodged at God from an imaginary human-centered universe.

That's not the universe that we live in. That's not reality, in fact. As Christians, we know that God has revealed Himself in His Word and the problem that the tension we find more fully laid out there would not be the problem of evil, but it would be the problem of goodness. The challenge we're left with when we come to understand how the Bible presents God and us is better stated like this: Does God's goodness show itself in His justice or in His mercy?

Does God's goodness show itself in His justice or in His mercy? Justice is an obvious expression of goodness, rights wronged, vindication, restoration, reparations, that which should be being restored, that which shouldn't be being extinguished or brought to an end, removed, the world being put right, justice or it's finally being served, truth winning out, clarity, honesty, lies being revealed, deceptions being ended, quarrels being forever settled, Right, finally having might? There is a bracing cleanness about justice. Who can deny this?

But is there not also another aspect of God's goodness revealed in His mercy?

Is there not something about healing the sick, restoring the broken, even forgiving the sinner that seems good, that seems even to highlight, to emphasize, to concentrate our attention on God's goodness. Particularly if the main party offended is not you or me, but God Himself.

Then isn't there something good about God offering forgiveness to the offender, especially if it can somehow be coupled with the earlier, more obvious good of justice?

So what about this problem? Not the problem of evil, but the problem of goodness. Which kind of goodness will God show? Will He let the sinner off, or will He press charges? Will He sue for justice, or set aside justice and grant mercy?

Or will He do something else? Justice, when there is no need for mercy, is beautiful. And yet, when there is a need for mercy, a cry and a call for it, a desire for it, is that simply something that the convicted sinner cries out for, or is there something in God Himself that is displayed in showing mercy?

That would not be displayed even in the most glorious example of His justice.

Who is this God of the Bible? What is He like? What does that mean for us this morning? We're in a study through May in the first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis. God inspired these first five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, when Moses and the children of Israel were standing on the banks of the Promised Land about to go in to take it, the land that had been promised to Abraham.

Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy gives the story of the 40 years leading up to that move into Canaan. Genesis is the book of the prehistory to all that. And let me just break here for a moment and say, if I could encourage you small group leaders, why don't you think about doing some studies particularly in these first five books of the Bible, some summary studies. Take just one or two studies and do per book. Help you and your small group get familiar with Genesis, with Exodus, with Leviticus, with Numbers, with Deuteronomy.

Maybe provide an outline or have them build an outline. Or maybe in your small group time, you build an outline together one night so that you become familiar with what's in Genesis, what's in Exodus, what's in Leviticus. I think you'd find it a profitable study because these books of Moses that begin the scriptures are so fundamental to our understanding of the entire Bible. Anyway, Genesis is the setting of the grand stage upon which Israel's history, indeed all of human history, is to be understood. We see in chapters 1 and 2 that God is the Creator of all.

In chapters 3 and 4 that our first parents mistrusted God and rejected Him and His loving authority. God then acted in justice to pronounce death, the death that we experience in the world that flows from sin.

That's God's judgment. Adam stood in our place before God as a representative for us. And yet even in that first judgment, God had promised that the tempter himself would be crushed by the seed of the woman, an odd phrase that pointed to the one to come. And the question for the rest of the Bible would be, how do we get from Eve to this promised one? In about every part of the Bible between Genesis and the Gospels, you can ask the question, how does this move us along the road from from Eve to Christ, from the Garden of Eden to the Garden of Gethsemane.

God had been explicit with Moses and the people of Israel when He had revealed Himself in Exodus chapter 34. He said, He's the God who is compassionate, gracious, yet does not leave the guilty unpunished. How could that be? God had hinted at this in the first act of judgment in the garden. In our passage this week in Genesis 6 and 7, the hint at Eden becomes the grandest of dramas stretched out over the whole canvas of creation, encompassing every living thing involving great destruction and exquisite and specific and crucial kindnesses.

And what we find indisputably is that the God of the Bible is and the God of the Bible is gracious.

And yet, the man Noah and his family point to God's mercy, even in the midst of this terrible sentence of death from God's justice. Friends, without both these haves, we can't understand who the Bible says God is.

We need to see them both. We need to hear and understand them if we're to understand the message of Jesus Christ, if we're to understand his death on the cross for us. So I pray that for you today, you will hear the bedrock certainty of God's goodness in his justice and also the hauntingly beautiful melody of God's mercy in Christ. The mercy we ache for, the mercy without which all is literally lost.

Genesis has told the story of God's creation of the world, including humans, the entry of sin, its infection of the whole humanity. Now God responds to the situation of corruption and violence. God decides to de-create. Uncreate the world in part. We come to the centerpiece of this recounting of the ancient world, which is the end of it.

This morning we come to the flood, one of the most powerful demonstrations in all the Bible of God's judgment and of His salvation. I fear we've not been served well by our colorful children's books. By plastic bathtub toys, of boats filled with animals. Friends, that leads us to think that this is somehow entertaining or comical, like a zoo on a boat in the water, when that's to completely misunderstand what's going on and what's the point of this story. Let's turn to our passage, Genesis chapter 6 verse 9.

To chapter 7, verse 24. It begins on page 5 in the Bibles provided. We'll go through our text in order. First, chapter 6, verses 9 to 13, God's Warning of the Flood.

Then the longest part of our passage, chapter 6, verse 14 through chapter 7, verse 16, God's Way Through the Flood. And finally, the last part of the chapter, 7, 17 to 24, God's Just Wrath in the Flood. And yes, I'll repeat that now. First, chapter 6, verses 9 to 13, God's Warning of the Flood. Then the long part, 6:14 to 7:16, God's Way Through the Flood.

And finally, the last part of chapter 7, chapter 7:17 to 24, God's Just Wrath in the flood.

And I pray that for those of you here who've not seriously considered God's warnings about His wrath, the wrath that you must face because of your sins, that you will wake up, that you will consider your spiritual poverty before God, the need you have, the danger you're in. And the way God has provided salvation in Christ. And for all of us here who are in Christ, I pray that we'll be encouraged as we see this visual, epic preview of our lives being hidden with Christ in God.

First, let's begin with God's warning of the flood as God warns of judgment. Look there at the beginning of our passage, chapter 6. Verses 9 to 13.

These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence.

And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, really summarizing what he'd said up in verse 7, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. I think for God's purposes, it seems that the warning is about as important as the judgment warned of. Let me say that again.

I think for God's purposes, The warning is about as important as the judgment warned of. Do you understand what I mean? We know from the gospels that the people of Noah's day were heedless of what Noah was doing. We know he built this gigantic ark. We don't know how long it took him.

We can safely estimate decades. And as this ark arose on dry ground, who knows how far he was from any river or body of water? What must people have thought? Noah would have told them about it, about the deadly flood that would be coming and how they could be protected by this boat? Noah was surely all in on this promise of coming destruction as he followed God's instructions to build a protective dwelling to the T. You see God's verdict there in verses 11 and 12, Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, the earth was filled with violence.

Earth and behold it was corrupt for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. Now you realize your best friend may think something. Your professor may tell you something. You may see something said by some YouTube influencer. But friends, none of that makes it true.

God, we read here, saw the earth was corrupt. We read, the earth was corrupt in God's sight. Friend, if something is the case in God's sight, then it is the case. Argument ends. No second witness needed.

There's no more definitive view in the world than the view of God, the view that God takes of something. From this vantage point or that we may not understand, we may sometimes feel if pressed, about this or that, that we even disagree. But as the months and years go by, we, even as limited as we Christians are in this life, we tend to see more and more the truth of what God says. The fact that Noah heard this and cared about God's Word and heeded God's Word and told it to others, even heralding it, Peter says in 2 Peter. Must be much of what is meant in verse 9 where Noah is described as righteous and blameless as being one who walked with God.

Surely to hear and to heed God's Word, to pay attention to it, to order your life according to it, even down to obeying all these specific commands is much of what it means to know God and walk with Him, to go along in life as He says. We're reminded of those severe words we considered last week about the continuous evil of the fallen human heart In such a corrupt world, it would do no good for Noah to try to preach self-help or positive thinking. No amount of positive confession would be warding off the water that's about to come. They can confess it's dry all day long as the rain pours down and begins to pile up around their ankles, then their knees, and then on and on. No, it would take divine guidance.

It would take decades of obedient work to do what God is calling them to do here. Peter calls Noah a preacher of righteousness. God's moral verdict was pronounced through Noah. But Jesus described the days of Noah: In those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away. Noah was preaching, but it says they were unaware.

They paid no mind to him. They didn't pay any attention. They're ignoring of the message that Noah brought doesn't diminish the goodness of God in warning the people about the coming judgment. Teenagers, I think Noah is a figure for you. Can you imagine how alone he was in his generation?

Can you imagine how nobody around him was doing what he was doing, maybe unless he paid some to help him build the boat?

You know, I don't imagine he built such a vast boat by himself, even with Shem, Ham, and Japheth, he needed more help. But there was Noah doing this, recounting to others what God said, and yet how are people responding with mockery? I remember what it was like becoming a Christian as a teenager. And, you know, teenagers, or you new Christians, can have more zeal than wisdom. And I know that one thing I did was carry my very large Bible, and back at the time we all had Bible covers, a little embarrassing to look at now, but it's true.

And I would carry it deliberately around to every class in high school, and I would deliberately leave it on top of all my books. Little symbol of my being bought out by Jesus. You know, I am under Him, and so I had His word on the top of all my books. I carried it around to everything, all my classes. And I remember one time, one of the popular kids, Tim, we'll call him Tim, in case I guess he's listening, leading the class and mocking me.

And that was a pretty common affair. But after this class is over, the teacher was out of the room, he was leading him doing that. About 45 minutes later, teacher comes back, class ends. We go out in the hallway and Tim finds me quickly and tells me, My grandfather is really sick. Would you pray for him?

And I remember when Tim did that thinking, I don't really mind the mockery. If Tim knows he can turn to God like that because of what I've said to him. I'll take the mockery. Well, that's not for a century building a big boat. But you understand that's the kind of thing as those who follow the ways of God in a corrupt world we face all the time.

Noah was a herald of righteousness, I assume, for decades with it looks like no one responding, no one following him other than save his own family. What must Noah have faced? The people were marked, it says, by wickedness, continually evil intentions. By contrast with Noah, they were blameworthy and unrighteous, corrupt, filled with violence. We read verses 11 and 13.

And yet according to the word of Jesus, even when Noah heralded God's righteousness and his consequent call for them to repent and to follow his ways, they ignored him. Even when Noah warned of this terrible judgment to come, they ignored him. Even when he acted to build protection from this terrible trial that was coming, when he gave his effort, his energy, presumably his money, his livelihood into it, they treated it with the disregard people have today for somebody walking around with a sign saying, Repent, the end is near. They just had no time for this Noah guy. I mean, understand, on the one hand, they had solid, pleasurable sins.

They knew what they were like. On the other hand, what? They seemed to hear only these strange words.

God is good to warn people like us, isn't He? My non-Christian friend, if you're here and you're considering this, thank God that he has put Christian parents or Christian friends, even a Christian preacher within earshot of you so that you could hear a warning about what's to come. What would it mean to avoid God's judgment? By turning from your own ways to follow Christ today. If you're not here alone, if you've come with a Christian friend or family member, I would encourage you to spend some time talking to them about that.

One last thing to note here in this part of the passage, there's verse 13. Note the first words, and God said to Noah. And then what follows in the next eight verses is the longest speech of God we've had recorded in Genesis so far.

But what I want you to consider is that none of this is simply some interior sense that everyone on earth had and that even Noah was supposed to know innately. No amount of silence will inform you of what God is or what He says. Only God can do that by revealing Himself and His intentions in His Word. And that's exactly what He does here. That's why we as a church have this pulpit in the middle of our meeting house, this sermon in the middle of our meeting.

This is why we have the Bible at the center of our lives together. Because apart from God speaking to us, none of us would know any of this. We wouldn't know these things to consider. It's like one Christian testified, I was on my way to hell, but God interrupted me. Friends, that's our experience.

If you're a Christian, God has, through family, through friends, through something He read, interrupted you on your way to hell. That brings us from God's warning of the flood to our second point, God's way through the flood. So number two, God's way through the flood. And this is the large middle portion of our passage, chapter 614 to 716. This is where God provides a way of escape.

Let's read it now, chapter 6, beginning verse 14. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it. The length of the ark, 300 cubits, its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits.

Make a roof for the ark and finish it to a cubit above and set the door of the ark in its side. Make it with lower, second and third decks. For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, in which is the breath of life, under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish My covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, your sons' wives with you.

And of every living thing, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark, to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female, of the birds, according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, and of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every sort shall come into you to keep you, to keep them alive. Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten, and store it up; it shall serve as food for you and for them. Noah did this. He did all that God commanded him.

Then the Lord said to Noah, 'Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before Me in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth. For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground. And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him. Noah was 600 years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth.

And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood. Of clean animals and of animals that are not clean and of birds and of everything that creeps on the ground, two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah as God had commanded Noah. And after seven days, the waters of the flood came upon the earth. In the 600th year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the 17th day of the month, on that day, all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened, and rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights. On the very same day, Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and Noah's wife and the three wives of his sons with them entered the ark.

They and every beast according to its kind, and all the livestock according to their kinds, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth according to its kind, and every bird according to its kind, every winged creature. They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh, in which there was the breath of life. And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him. And the Lord shut him in.

The ark was God's way through this coming judgment of His people. For those who called upon His name, There was the ark. The ark is an interesting word itself. It's not a navigable ship. It's just a large floating wooden building.

It doesn't have a rudder. It doesn't have a sail. It doesn't have any instruments of navigation for humans to guide it. It's just a large barge. It's built to float with no assumption that it would be directed by man.

But by God, very much like the smaller ark that Moses was put in as a baby in Exodus chapter 2 where the same word is used. Baby Moses' deliverance through his own ark was a reminder of the way that God had made a way through his judgment of the world by waters back in Noah's day. The ark we see there in verse 15 in chapter 6 verse 15 was huge. It was 450 feet long, seventy-five feet wide, forty-five feet high. That's one and a half football fields long, as tall as a four-story building, six times as long as it is wide.

The very size of the boat, no doubt, aided Noah in his heralding work. I mean, it's not the kind of project you could ignore. I mean, imagine he starts building this thing. No one's ever seen anything like it, particularly not wherever he probably was when he was building it. And He works on it for months and years, and it's huge.

And as I say, I assume He got other people involved in doing it. God would not relent of the deserved judgment, but neither would He surrender His own people to its claims. In verse 17, God reveals specifically to Noah how He was going to do it. You see it, verse 17. It is by a flood of waters.

Verse 17, literally it's a devastation, it's a cataclysm of waters. God gets very specific here about how he will destroy the earth. But here the warning of verse 17 stands in sharp relief to the promise then in verse 18. I will establish my covenant with you. God establishes his covenant.

It's the first covenant explicitly mentioned in Scripture. And it's the statement of what God will unilaterally do. We'll look at it more length when we come to it again in chapter 9 after the period of the flood. But something we find in the Bible is that God's covenants always have a larger group in view than just the one individual that they're initially made with, whether that's Adam or Abraham or supremely, of course, Jesus. So here God had in view the continuing life for all future mankind.

And the ark that Noah would now make would be the symbol of this covenant. It was the ark of this covenant. The Lord sets out all these commands. You see to Noah there in chapter 6, Make this, cover that, bring these. And we see that summary in verse 22, Noah did all that God commanded him.

And that's repeated down in chapter 7 verse 5, Noah did all that God commanded him.

Such obedience to known duty is an important part of what it must mean up in verse 9 when Moses said that Noah walked with God, obedience to known duty. We thought about this a couple of weeks ago when we were considering Enoch. Remember in chapter 5 we thought about what it meant to walk with God. I think it's worth us noticing that the only way through God's judgment is to stick with Him, to stick with His ways, to think that what He says goes. Regular obedience.

God commanded something personally difficult, no doubt socially separating things from Him off from others, but Noah regularly did what God commanded. In that wicked day, Noah's holiness set him apart. Now that holiness was only there, of course, because of God's grace. We see that in chapter 6 verse 8. Noah found favor, that is grace.

In the eyes of the Lord. But like James 2 tells us, it was not a faith without works. It was not a belief that did not affect his actions. No, Noah would have known that it was God's grace that was marking him apart, but Noah would have continued to follow through in obeying. His life was not marked by the typical corruptions of the ancient world.

Not saying Noah was without sin, none of these words seem to suggest that. But I am saying that Noah, because of God's favor, was walking with him. We can assume that Noah was regularly abandoning sin, hating hypocrisy, denying himself, trusting God and his Word when he told him about the coming flood, guarding against the worldly corruption all around him, knowing and enjoying the love of God, looking forward to walking with God continuously. Even ultimately forever. So what does this have to do with us?

You know Paul, when he's writing in 1 Corinthians 10, writes about a little bit later period. He writes about the Israelites who fell in the wilderness and he says that they were recorded as examples for us that we might not desire evil as they did. Well, that's true of this contrast as well, that we're seeing between the corruption of the people and the violence of Noah's day and the way Noah was obeying God's warnings and was even turning to make God's warnings and God's ways known to others. Brothers and sisters, we are to show a contrasting way of life from the corrupt society around us. We are, like Noah did, to encourage others to choose the good way.

To follow the way of the Lord as they see us trying to do imperfectly, but really. We are in a wicked age. I asked one person yesterday if he had heard of the flood and Noah, he said, Yes. I said, Do you believe it really happened? He said, Yes.

He said, and what's more, he said, I think we need another one.

I appreciate the zeal. Don't think you thought about it real carefully.

But you understand what he's saying. We're thinking tonight with Welton's help, Lord willing, about living faithfully in a violent city. That is the calling of so many Christians in our day today. I led us in prayer this morning for hardship. Our brother texted me just this morning, sent me a news story, told me about the way pressures are being put on Christians who are doing legal things But nevertheless, they're being brought to bear to discourage Christians from meeting, how they're having to meet differently than they were in the past, how they're wondering how they'll be able to meet as a church even a week or two from now.

Pray for him. Realize that this is typical of what many followers of Jesus around the world are experiencing today. We are living like Noah was in a world of corruptions. As standards and values weaken and fade, so violence grows. You seeing that in your neighborhood?

Are you seeing that among those that you know or do you hear of it from people at work? Friends, the Lord has you in the situation you're in for a reason. And it's not to be a passive thermometer, simply telling what the temperature is. You're supposed to be there as a Christian, as a thermostat, helping to set the temperature for where you are. Helping to establish what things are like, even as Noah did here.

When Noah was working for that which was good, when Noah was telling the wicked of God's righteousness and calling them, no doubt, to repentance. I pray that we will be those people who show ourselves to be recipients of God's grace, who know and believe God in His words of warning, and who share this truth with others and who call others to obedience. Even while we wait patiently. Friends, if I were doing a whole series on this, there would be a whole sermon to exploit the idea of Noah's long obedience looking absolutely ridiculous to the world around him, and yet him persevering in it. Do you see resources in there for your own discipleship?

For places where you're being pressed right now, where you honestly feel like you've waited for God's promises just about long enough?

Five days is too long for this kind of prayer to be answered. Seven years should have been enough for anybody. Oh, God could have done this in the last 22 years, but he didn't seem to do it, so he must therefore never be going to do it. Friends, Satan whispers that infernal reasoning in our ears again and again, and the number of times it's true are zero. God is a God who deliberately answers some of our prayers very quickly to encourage us.

Others, he deliberately stretches it out so that we learn to wait over time, and he proves his goodness to us again and again, just like he did with Noah over decades of speaking to him. In chapter 7, the ark now being built, you see verse 1, God commands Noah and his family to go into it. He tells them what animals to take with them because that which was left outside And look down at verse 4, we're in chapter 7 now, Every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground. The Lord repeats His warning.

Noah enters the ark just as God had commanded. The way God calls him to approach His coming judgment, He's not trying to avoid His judgment or trying to deny His judgment. That would do nothing. He was just going to have to go through it in the way that God had made possible.

And look at verse 16, sweet verse. If any of you are inveterate Spurgeon readers online, and I know some of you are, Spurgeon does have a most extraordinary sermon on this verse. Chapter 7, verse 16, the Lord shut him in. You can just imagine it, can't you? Well, I read it.

I mean, it's amazing. You should enjoy God's grace, his merciful kindness. What a continuing way to make Noah and his family objects of God's grace. Because you realize this door he shut would have been no ordinary door. It's not like the doors you walked into to come to church this morning, right?

Rhinoceroses came through this door. Elephants and giraffes, I mean, this was a large door. You know, all the animals in the ark came through this door, and this is the door that the Lord shut. So after they had obeyed God's command to go in, we read here in verse 16, the Lord shut him in. Noah and his family are shut in, but no one else.

Presumably they could have been. Presumably had they heard and believed this righteousness of God that's called to repentance, the promise of coming judgment, They, like the Ninevites later from Jonah's preaching, they could have repented and they could have come in. That huge door stood open for days, for weeks, for months, I assume. But why should people leave all of their lives they're so involved with, the marrying and the giving in marriage, the eating, and just because of the warnings of God's judgment which Noah kept calling out. So Noah and his family alone went in and were shut in.

And that means all others would be shut out and left to face God's just wrath on their own. Outside that door death reigned universally.

My non-Christian friend, the flood of God's wrath is coming.

He has told us clearly in His Word. The lives we have, we don't own. They've been granted to us temporarily. And the real owner is going to ask for an accounting from each one of us. You've heard that here.

You've heard that perhaps elsewhere.

God gave His only Son, Jesus Christ, for sinners. Like us, that if we would turn from our sins and trust in Christ, then God would accept Christ's sacrifice of himself on the cross as a sacrifice worthy for us, that we could be forgiven of our sins and walk with God again, like Noah did. Just as Noah was separated from the world outside by the Lord shutting them in, So God today sets apart his people from the world. Christ is our ark of salvation from the threatening wrath of God. Paul uses that image really in Colossians chapter 3 verse 3, you have died and your life is what?

Hidden with Christ in God. You see how Christ is our ark? In the early church they would even use in drawing sometimes Christ would be pictured as an ark and the church would be pictured as an ark. With literally a ship with a cross on top showing that this is on the floods of God's judgment. That's which survives the party which goes through.

Safety comes by being in Him. So the signs of it are baptism and the church. Baptism is the entrance, the reenacting the flood of waters which depict the just deserts of our own sins. And then us rising up out of them by the grace of God as He raises us up spiritually and as He promises to do one day even physically. And so the church today is composed of those in the ark, as it were, separated from the vanishing, perishing world all around us.

This is God's way through the flood in Jesus Christ by faith in Him. Alone.

Third, we must consider God's just wrath in the flood as God judges ungodliness. You know, there are other ancient cultures that have stories of a worldwide flood. Many of you will know that, I've been taught that in school. A couple of notes on that. One, I'm not discouraged by that fact.

I tend to think if something like this happened, I'm not surprised that there's a larger cultural memory of it. That even if it's come down into distorted fashion, is it so surprising that something like that really happened? But the other thing is, I want to point out differences between this and, most famously, the Gilgamesh Epic. In the other epics you have a plurality of gods, And they are just annoyed at these pesky humans. Maybe they're overpopulating and getting to be troublesome, or maybe they're literally making too much noise in one story, and so we just need to curb them or curtail them.

Friends, nothing could contrast more with the biblical story of the flood. In the story, the one true God who created the entire world judges his creation, morally condemns them. Because of their corruption in life. He's making a statement here of what is good and right. God has made the world and He can unmake it, exercising His most basic authority as our author to erase our whole story.

So let's look at this last paragraph in chapter 7 where the flood itself is described. Genesis, chapter 7, verse 17, the flood continued 40 days on the earth. The waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth. And the ark floated on the face of the waters.

And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them 15 cubits deep. That's like 22 feet.

And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth and all mankind, everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, they were blotted out from the earth.

Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days.

There in verse 18 we see the ancient church, as it were, floating on the face of the waters, the ark, that ancient image for the church. A few of you have asked me about the universal nature of the flood.

Not being a geologist, I know little of the physical record, but I can tell you that this account seems transparently to be telling a story which involves the whole world. Look back at the warnings that God gave back in chapter 6, in verses 7 and 13 and 17.

And then here in chapter 7 and verse 4, god is fulfilling all that he threatened. The physical details that are given here would not have been discovered by Moses doing great investigative journalism. How could he have known that the water got to be fifteen cubits above the highest mountains? That would be something that God revealed to him. God would have told Moses about this.

These details about the waters prevailing there in verses 18 and 19 and 20, the way it's recounted seems to be artful echoes of the physical the reality of the engorging ocean, the waters prevailed. Can you see them getting higher? The waters prevailed. The waters prevailed because of the corruption of all flesh. So we read in verse 23, They were blotted out from the earth.

Who is the they? Verse 23, and He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground. Man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, they were blotted out from the earth. These people were the unrighteous, the violent and corrupt. These were those who heard Noah's calls for repentance and heard them for years and decades and refused them, who had heard God's warning and ignored them.

And so we read in this chapter's last verse. The waters prevailed. As the last gasp of life on the surface of the earth, apart from the people and animals in the ark, slipped beneath the rising waters, and the whole human civilization of the ancient world sank and was drowned and lost to us today. We know very little of it, just these few accounts from these early chapters of Genesis.

As I was meditating on this, I thought of Romans 11:22, note the kindness and severity of God. The severity is clear in this passage, even that which many of us are raised to value most, human life. Is seen as expendable before the demands of our Creator to rightly reflect His goodness and righteousness in our own loves and words and ways. Victor Hugo in Les Miserables said at one point, There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky. There is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.

Friends, this greatest of all disasters was provoked ultimately not by geological or meteorological forces, though God may have employed them, but by the spiritual darkness and corruption of the human soul. God in His goodness and holiness decided to undo much of what he had done and to start again through Noah. The corruption of humanity would be ended. People's lives were hurting each other and they were screaming lies about God and what He's like, and He wanted it ended. Man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens were all blotted out from the earth.

The waters prevailed. The ancient world was no more.

And yet it's terrible. As that flood was, it only hinted at what the final judgment would be like. In that rising tide of water expressing divine disapproval and causing distress in the wicked, we get a picture of how the Bible describes the final judgment that is to come. Everyone who perished in the flood still had to face their Creator as their judge.

Earthly despair was only the entrance to everlasting despair in eternity.

You see God's just wrath in the flood.

Friends, don't busy yourself with life's concerns while ignoring this. Accept the invitation that comes from hearing a warning. Accept the example of Noah set out before you today. He was separated from the world. He was shut in by God.

The Lord would have shut the door firmly to protect them. No one else could have shut the door so well, knowing that when it opened, a new world cleansed and refashioned would be there to await Noah and his family. So in His justice and His mercy, God warns of the flood. In His mercy, God provides a way to His own to be ready to follow the Lord where He goes. And then He will send His wrath on all those who are too busy to listen to the warnings, too busy to listen to Noah, let alone follow him.

That which has been threatened will one day come. Do not use the logic that because it hasn't happened already, it never will. That's very bad logic. When you're involved in a human life where real true things never repeat, where today is a unique day different from a week ago, and tomorrow will be yet another one, It's folly to assume that because it hasn't happened yet, it never will. Friends, consider the truth of God's warnings.

We can look back now at this account, be reminded by these warnings. We can see the way that was provided and be solemnly awed at God's justice expressing itself in His wrath and ending their wickedness. As for us today, We should, as the Apostle Peter wrote, remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, 'Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation. '

for they deliberately overlooked this fact, that the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these, the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word, the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promises, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. Friends, that's true for all of us.

Whether we are alive when the Lord returns, or whether He calls you and me to follow the more common path of individually reporting to Him through our deaths. One pastor described his large and varied congregation saying, They are all dying creatures hastening to the grave and to judgment. My friend here this morning, have you considered this? Have you thought about this reality? I bring you no warning of an impending flood this morning, regardless of how gray the skies look.

Now I bring you warning of a returning sun. And perhaps before that, you're being summoned to appear before God. And ignoring this will do no more good than those who were eating and drinking. That day the door of the ark was shut closed, and they were left out of the number who could find a way out. Don't let that be you.

Let's pray together.

Lord God, it is awful to consider what our sins have deserved.

And yet, Lord, we are stunned by the spectacle of the grace that yout have provided for us in Jesus Christ. We pray that we would each one hear and heed youe warnings before it's too late. We ask in Jesus' name, Amen.