2 weeks ago we began a look at Redemptive History, so that we could get a grand view of what God has been doing all these years in the redemption of His people. We looked at Adam and Eve and their sin. We saw Adam sin against God and bring sin into the world and since Adam man has been born corrupt and evil, and since that time everyone has been able to say just like David did in Psalm 51:5 “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.” Now we will look at the second of the 3 things we will look at in the book of Genesis as we go through this journey together, it is the Flood. We will see many aspects of mankind and of God mentioned in this. We will see man’s sinfulness, God’s vengeance and justice, what it means to be in a covenant with God, Noah’s example of what faith is, and God showing mercy to a small group of people on the earth.
Read Genesis 6:5-22. Since Adam’s fall the sinful nature that he began had been being passed down to every human being born; which is still the case today. When God looked down on the earth, this is what He saw, “Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” God looked down upon the earth and saw nothing but evil in the hearts of the people upon the earth. I have said this before and I am sure that I will say it again, this did not change with the flood. God says the same phrase over again after the flood in 8:21. “The LORD smelled the soothing aroma; and the LORD said to Himself, "I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done.” This did not change the fact that all of mankind was evil and we will talk about what the flood was in a moment, but we know that it was not a cure for the evil of man’s heart. We are born enemies of the Living God. I want you to understand this well, we are born enemies of the Living God. Paul tells us this a few times in the book of Romans. “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled we shall be saved by His life.” – Romans 5:10 “For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” – Romans 8:6-8 Consider this another way. Let’s look at how much we depend on God and then consider just how evil it is for us to have this inclination to hate the God who does all this for us. "Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created." – Revelation 4:11 It is God who created everything around us and because of this work He is worthy to receive “glory and honor and power”, even though this is true we as humans have despised Him and His ways in our hearts to the point that it can be said about us that natural or carnal man is hostile toward God. The word used in the Greek has two meanings hostility and hatred, so the KJV rendering of enmity may be a more accurate way of saying this. Enmity is a feeling of hostility or hatred, and this is what the natural mind is toward God even though He created us and everything around us. Because of God’s creation of the world He claims the right to rule over everything, and He holds onto His throne to this day because of His great and awesome power. There is only one being in the Universe that is actually able to say He does whatever He wants to do and that is our God. “But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases.” – Psalm 115:3 Yet we as humans have the audacity to go against our conscience and disobey the rule of God. Everyone that has ever been born has an innate sense of right and wrong called the conscience. "For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus." – Romans 2:14-15 God who created everything, rules the world, and gave us life and breath for as long as we live. “Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this, in whose hand is the life of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind?” – Job 12:9-10 Which means that every day you live you have reason to thank and praise God, because in His “hand is the life of every living thin, and the breath of all mankind” We don’t seem to understand the enormity of our sin. C.H. Spurgeon when talking about the phrase “the carnal mind is enmity against God” said
“He does not say it is opposed to God merely, but it is positive enmity. It is not black, but blackness; it is not at enmity, but enmity itself; it is not corrupt, but corruption; it is not rebellious, it is rebellion; it is not wicked, it is wickedness itself. The heart, though it be deceitful, is positively deceit; it is evil in the concrete, sin in the essence; it is the distillation, the quintessence of all things that are vile;”
God looked upon the earth and saw this great evil and it says that “He was grieved in His heart”. Our God is Holy and sin angers Him. “For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness; No evil dwells with You. The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all who do iniquity.” – Psalm 5:4-5 God hates evil and does not as the judge of the world stand by and not punish sin. He goes on to say, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, form man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky;” God brings swift and sudden justice to those who disobey Him. God allows us to live and move and breathe upon this earth and sometimes we think that He has waited too long in some instances, but the terror that He will bring upon all of His enemies on the day of judgment will be swift and terrible. To those who hate Him and are His enemies God will bring divine retribution, in this case we see it in the form of a flood. God wiped out an entire generation of people. Do you think that God takes sin seriously?
Lastly we see God’s mercy in the covenant He makes with Noah. Every covenant that God makes with men is what is called a suzerain covenant. A suzerain is a ruler of the particular area and a suzerain covenant is when the suzerain or ruler makes all of the guidelines in the covenant. This is what happens with all the covenants that God is involved in. God makes all of the guidelines. Here we see that God is going to save Noah and Noah’s family. “Behold, I, even I am bringing the flood of water upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life, from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall perish. But I will establish My covenant with you; and you shall enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife, and your sons wives with you.” God goes on to tell him to bring a male and female from every kind of animal to go on the ark with them. God told Noah the dimensions that the ark would be. -450 feet long -75 feet wide -45 feet high It would have had the same volume as 522 railroad cars, and just so you can imagine the size you can fit 200 sheep in each one of these railroad cars. It would have been very easy to have the 3500 species that are thought to have been in existence at that time. The point is that God saved a small group of people out of the world. Noah trusted God and “Thus Noah did; according to all that God had commanded him, so he did.” Noah trusted in God and was saved from the punishment that was brought upon the earth. In the same way that we are saved by faith today and trust in the Savior, Noah trusted God and began building the arc that God had told Him to make so that He would be saved from God’s punishment. Noah had tremendous faith in the words that God had said to him, so he built the arc, and today we have been warned that there will come a day when God will once again judge the world. “when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power,” - II Thessalonians 1:7b-9 Jesus came from heaven to earth, He was fully God and fully human. He lived a perfect life, so that we could be credited with His perfect life. He died in our place on the cross. The punishment, the wrath of God was poured out upon Him rather than us, so that if we turn from our sin and turn to God we would be saved from the judgment of God that will come again one day.
Dwain Minor