Genesis 7.mp3

You know, I'm continually amazed as we commit ourselves to reading systematically through the scriptures. I'm continually amazed as we see God putting things together as our systematic reading and our systematic preaching sort of overlap from time to time. We just happen to be in Exodus right now, and we just happen to be in Revelation right now, and we just happen to be talking about the justice of God as we read through Exodus and we see the justice and judgment of God in the Law. And then we just happen to be in Revelation right now talking about the wrath of God being poured out. And oh, by the way, we have arrived today at Genesis chapter seven, Amen, where we see the wrath of God poured out. And I want you to understand something. Never in the history of the world before Genesis seven or after Genesis seven, has anyone ever seen anything like the event we're about to read about today. Grasp that for one moment, if you would, Never before the days of Noah and the flood had anyone seen anything of this magnitude ever ever, or even imagined anything of this magnitude. Never, and never since Genesis seven, have we seen anything of this magnitude. And I am afraid that it's quite possible that for most of us, we don't think about this event appropriately, because most of us think about Noah and the Arc in terms of a nice little diddy that our children sing. No, no, who built the arc? No, no, brother, Noah built the arc. It's wonderful, nice little wonderful diddy. This is the deadliest event in the history of mankind. It was ugly. There was nothing pretty about what happened in Genesis chapter seven. Nothing. We think about Noah and we think about the little children's toys with the arc and the animals inside. That's the image that we have. Now. I'm not saying that the little song that children sing is bad. I'm not saying that the little toys that children play with are bad. That's not my point. My point is, if that is the only point of reference that we have for Genesis chapter seven, we miss the mark. The arc was no more beautiful than the cross. And if you find the cross beautiful, it's only because you find the work that was accomplished on the cross beautiful. I guarantee you the suffering and the shame that took place on that day on Calvary's cross was not pretty. It was not esthetically pleasing. The arc was not a luxury liner that was beautiful to look at. It was an earlier piece of wood meant for the deliverance of God's elect that was just a foreshadowing of a later piece of wood that would be for the deliverance of God's elect And both of those deliverances took place at the price of carnage and death and suffering and shame, both of them. So as we look at Genesis chapter seven, understand that because I know, as we read, as we read through Revelation and you read about the wrath of God, and as we read through Exodus and we read about this righteousness of God, it's uncomfortable sometimes, you know, we read through Exodus, sometimes you just kind of go, that's just not very worshipful. Amen. We're worshiping God and it feels all good, and then we read Exodus and stoning people and stuff. That just doesn't you know what, The God who lands on you when we sing for every sin on him was laid here in the death of Christ I live, is the same God who lands on you and makes you uncomfortable when you read take them outside the city gates and stone them. It's the same God. And here's the thing. Without the take them outside the city gates and stone them, you have no concept and no appreciation. For for every sin on him was laid? Do you follow that? For every sin on him was laid here in the death of prist I live. That does not make sense unless you have an inkling of what sin is supposed to cost. Only then, only then do you understand redemption. Only then do you comprehend deliverance. That's what we see in Genesis chapter seven. And so with that in mind, join me as we read here. And I want us to look at three movements here in Genesis chapter seven. This first movement is what I like to call the righteousness and its rewards movement. And then the second movement is sin and its persistence. And the third movement is God and his wrath. That's what we see here as we read through Genesis chapter seven. And let's look at these and read these in turn. First, righteousness and its rewards. Look at verse one chapter seven. 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, not necessarily seven pairs there some translation translations render it just seven of each. In the Hebrew, it's sort of difficult seven sevens. But anyway, it's either seven three pairs and then one more or its seven pair. We'll talk about the significance of that here in a moment. 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. Please just don't let that roll over you like water off a duck's back. Listen to that again. 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 righteousness and its reward. Noah is righteous. And what is the evidence of that righteousness. Noah did what God commanded. That's what we see one hundred years in building this arc. Noah did what God commanded. For one hundred years he was obedient. And then we get down to the last week. God says seven days, it's all over, and Noah follows through. And Noah and his wife and his sons and their wives gather these animals that God has brought to them, and they began to get onto this art, which was probably a seven day undertaking, can you imagine. And they go and they get on this arc in obedience to God. But here's something that I want you to grasp for a moment, because oftentimes we think about righteousness and the rewards of righteousness something like this, God says for me to do so, and I do it, and God gives me good stuff. That's how we think about righteousness and its rewards. And so if God tells me to do something and I do it to a greater degree than you do, then I'm going to get a greater reward than you get. Now I define that reward as stuff that pleases me. Okay, can't say a man you ought to say? Ouch, all right, I'm just telling on myself right now. I know none of you have ever experienced any of this before in your life. But for me, for the most part, what I have to wrestle with is this tendency to see the reward of righteousness as me getting an abundance of the things that I like. So I like X. Therefore X is the most important blessing in the world, and I am blessed only when or only because I have X. And if you have less of X, you just must not be as righteous as me. There's a flip side to it as well. And here's the flip side. The flip side is the person who comes to the pastor or the disciple or whoever in their life, or the parent in their life or whatever, and this person says something like this, I just don't get it. Well, what do you mean. I've been praying, I've been giving, I've been doing all the right things, and God has not given me what I've been expecting. And I look around me and they're all these other people and they seem to have what I want in abundance. It's just not fair. It's not right. I'm being obedient. That's the way we think about righteousness, folks. It's just not fair. It's just not right. I have more righteousness, but they have more money. It's not fair. It's not right. I have more righteousness, but they have more health. It's not fair. It's not right, folks. There's a whole movement with you know that calls itself a Christian movement that is based on this very concept, the health and wealth and prosperity gospel. The blessing of God is about wealth and health and prosperity in your life. So if you are righteous, you will be more wealthy. If you are righteous, you will be healthy. And if there is a lack of health or a lack of wealth or a lack of prosperity in your life, then it must be because of a lack of righteousness. Well, here's what's interesting. Noah is righteous, He's declared righteous in the text, and so you would think righteousness has its rewards. Well, what would have been considered the reward in this day? Well, a couple of things. You know. One thing we look at is maybe maybe his righteousness would have been rewarded with wealth. And there's no doubt that Noah was wealthy. And you go on, wait a minute, now, text doesn't necessarily say that Noah was wealthy. Okay, Here's what I want you to do. I want you to go build a boat the size of the ark with the money you got right now? Yeah, yeah, just go ahead. Matter of fact, you just you could ask for money from every person in the church and you take the money that all of us have collectively and go build something that looks like the arc. You just go do that. Just go ahead, just just go ahead. You think you can do that right now? If you think that we collectively have enough money to build what Noah built, you got another thing coming. Amen. There's church down the road that you know they're building what with a forty million dollars add on to their facility, forty million dollars. They couldn't take that money and build this arc. And there's you know, a kapillion of them that just I don't know how many of us there are. How are we gonna do that. Noah did it with his own money. So I say again, Noah was filthy, stank, nasty, rich, Okay, but all of his wealth was consumed in the flood. So was his wealth the reward of his righteousness. No, his wealth is consumed in the flood. Well, what about children be fruitful and multiply. That's the command, be fruitful and multiply. Our children are blessing there and an inheritance from the Lord. And it's interesting. You know, I look out here, and most of you guys out here, we have larger you know, you look at the average size of families in the average church, and you look at the average size of families in this church, and we got them whipped, all right, just easily, hands down. We just got them whipped. We got people who walk in here with three, four or five kids going hen, we got a little family. Okay, So that's you know, we've got them whipped. And we do. When you sort of get this idea of children being a blessing, you begin to think, got more children, and therefore I'm more blessed. Here's what's interesting. You look at these ten generations from Adam to Noah, and you see the same phrase. There's the son of record, and so and so had so and so when he was this many years old, and then there's this phrase after every one of them, he lived many more years, and he had more sons and daughters, which means if they only had the son of record plus more sons, got to be two for it to be plural, and more daughters got to be two for it to be plural. They had a minimum of five Noah's righteous he only got three, So was he not as blessed as other people. Families could have had dozens, if not hundreds, of children and the lifespans that they had during this day. Noah got three, so was he less blessed. God says he was righteous, And if righteousness means you get an abundance of the stuff that people want, no I should have had more kids than anybody else because he was more righteous. Probably everybody no one knew had a bigger family than him. Probably everybody he knew was blessed with more children than him. He's the only one who got on the ark. Are you one of those families who feel slighted because people around you have a larger family, or a larger house, or more of this or more of that? And as a result, do you sometimes get on your face at night before God asking him why he likes them better than he likes you. The reward for Noah's righteousness was he got to get on the ark. Amen. God, there's people out there who are more wealthy than I am. Not getting on the ark. Noah, God, there's people out there, they got more kids than me. Not getting on the ark. Noah, God, there's people out there. They're taller than me, they're stronger than me, they're more powerful than me. They have more clout than I do. They're not getting on the ark. Noah. You are, your children are. Have you come to that place in your life where you go understand that the reward for your righteousness is God stuff? It's God. How do we feel when our children are like that? You know? I love it. I love it when I you know, I'll go away for a trip and I'll come back home and you'll just hear Daddy's home, that wonderful age, you know, And I think because little last year, you know, now last year can he can walk and he can make his noise. We call him our Celtic Barbarian because he runs around. He's a wow man. I love it. And so I come home and he just goes. It's wonderful and there's hugs and kisses all over the place. Here's what I would not enjoy Daddy's home. Did he bring me something? Yeah? Don't you want to go say it's your it's your daddy. Don't you want to go hey, Daddy's Now, did he bring me something? Because if he didn't bring me something, I really see no need to jump in his lap to go hug him, to go whatever. That's how we treat God people, It's the God of the universe. Yeah, but did he bring me something? The reward of Noah's righteousness was god deliverance by God. Not only do we see righteousness and its reward, but in this next movement we see a picture of sin and its persistence. Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came upon the earth. It's over a hundred year now, he's building this art now, he's six hundred years old. The floodwaters 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 the clean animals and the animals that are not cleaning, the birds, of everything creeping 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. Well, does that have to do with sin? And its persistence. Here's what it has to do. There are people who watched Noah for decade after decade after decade, and heard Noah for decade after decade after decade, and nobody, but nobody made it on the ark Noah wife, shim ham j fifth wife, wife wife. What about the neighbor? What about what about the closest neighbor who got to see Noah and hear Noah more than anybody else. Surely there was a change of heart there. Surely there was. Surely during those seven days when everyone and everything is piling on the arc, they're looking and they're going, you know what, Animals don't act like this on their own. Maybe there's something to what Noah's been saying. Surely, surely not by that point. No Sin is persistent. You can't reason the sinner into saving himself, because sinners don't save themselves, They merely serve themselves. Sin is persistent. You can't scare sin out of people. You can't. You can't, you know, I imagine that on Day twelve, thirteen fourteen, when it's raining and these these people have never seen anything like this before, the great firmament above opens up the springs from the deep are opening up. They've never seen anything like this before. I bet there were people on Day ten, eleven, and twelve saying I still think Noah's crazy sin is persistent. You got a child that you desperately want to see come to faith. I'm sure there hadn't been any parental manipulation your part. People ask me all the time, I got one that I want to see come to faith. I've tried everything. Is there something you can give me for them to read? Oh? Yeah, that's the answer, the right Book. You've been sharing the gospel with that child in your house. You've been living the gospel with that child in your house. But all you needed was to call pastor vote so that he could recommend the right book. Because anyone who reads this book, they're gonna get on New York. Help you. If you believe that the only thing that will save that child is the hand of Almighty God, that's it. That's it. You cannot manipulate your child into the kingdom. You cannot manipulate your mother or your father into the kingdom. You cannot manipulate your siblings into the Kingdom. You cannot do it. Share the gospel, absolutely, build the arc. Absolutely, But Noah wasn't dragging anybody. Amen, What are you doing with that club in that rope? Noah, you're coming on the ark one way or the other. We're getting you on the boat. Baby. No, No, that's not how it happens. That's not how it done. How it's done. And here's the thing. There are some of you who have manipulated your friends or manipulated your children and pressed them for some kind of decision. And now you're miserable. Here's why, because when you finally got them to say uncle and pray the prayer, you finally got them dunked in the water. Now five years later you look at them and there's absolutely no fruit whatsoever. They're as lost as they ever were. And you don't want to admit it because you dragged them onto the ark and you did not solve your problem. You did not solve their problem because you cannot solve their problem. Folks, I got lost relatives too. What's worse. I have some relatives that I saw come to faith just miraculously. My Buddhist mother was born again six months after I got saved. Damn. She was in got an uncle who's a Muslim saw him come to faith all kinds of stuff. It was incredible. And then I get people who come up to me and they go, well, you know, can you just you know, what did you say to your Buddhist mother? What did you say to your Muslim uncle? As though somehow there's a spiritual judo move that I discovered that I can just give to them that will work on whomever it is that they're trying to win to faith in Christ. No, because there's for every person in my family that I've seen come to Christ, five more who are as lost as the day is long. I can't fix them. I didn't fix any of the others. Sin is persistent. God told Noah, you don't build an art. You and your kids are gonna make it on the arc, don't you know. Noah had to think at some point, surely, when I tell these people that God has told me that He's gonna kill them all, surely they'll get right. Surely, Surely there will be more than just me, sham Ham, Jfeth and our wives. Surely there will be when I tell these people, and when they see this art going up and they watch these animals fulfilling the prophecies that had been coming from my mouth. Surely they will say, Oh, Noah, how could we have doubted you? Yes, we will come with you onto the ark. You gotta know that passed through Noah's mind. But when the day came, who gets on? Eight is enough? That's it, That's all. Noah in his righteousness, Noah in his eloquence, could not get anyone else on the ark. No one else, no one else. And finally we see the manifestation of the wrath of God. Don't miss this. In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month. It's interesting we get the month and the day. Why because neither Noah, sham Ham nor Jayfaith would ever have forgotten this day. And when they told the story again and again and again, they would never have forgotten this day. You got one of those days. On that day, all the fountains of the Great Deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. Now I love that picture. The fountains burst forth, the windows of the heavens were opened. This was not a drizzle, Amen, And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights on the very same day, Noah and his sons Shim and Ham and Jayfath, 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, and every winged creature. They went into the Ark with Noah. Two and two of all the flesh in which there was the breath of life. Those that entered, male and female of all the flesh went in, as God had commanded him, and the Lord shut him in. The flood continued forty 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 n the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed above the mountains and covered them fifteen cubits deep, and all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beast, 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 one hundred and fifty days. Our God is a god of wrath. We look at this, and again we look at this, and immediately the first question that arises for people is how could a loving God do something like this? But there's another question that must be asked, how can a righteous god not? How can a righteous God not do this? And who in this room thinks about himself or herself and your own life and says, based on the way that I have lived my life, I'd have been on the boat with Noah. Who who among you has not offended a holy God, has not offended a righteous God? Who in this room thinks you deserve the ark and not the flood? Who among you? Because I bet not even Noah believed that he was worthy of the ark, not Shim, not him, not Jff, not one of them. They're on the ark and the earth is being flooded and people are dying all around them. They hear the whales and the screams of people as they die outside. Not one of them was sitting on the arc saying, that's what you get. You should have lived like me. I believe every one of them on the ark, hearing the screams of people outside, the screams of the last of them who had finally found high ground as the water finally overcame them as well, everyone on that arc would have thought, why me, Why me? Of us? You better believe Noah thought why me? Why my sons? Everything that he had ever done in his entire life for which he deserved. The waters of the flood would have poured through his mind because they understood the wrath of God. You see, I'm afraid that when we don't view this event properly, and when it is not significantly horrific for us, we are in danger of not understanding the wrath of God and therefore not appreciating the grace of God. Listen to this from Jeremiah Burroughs. Burros talks about repentance in his book Gospel Remission This book was written in sixteen seven, and he talks about the attitude of the believer towards his own sin and the wrath of God. He says, what do I see, Oh, I see the angry countenance of an infinite God against me, whose eyes are flaming fire, looking with indignation upon me. I see a black, dismal cloud of the displeasure of the Almighty hanging over me. I see a most hideous and dreadful sentence of wrath ready to fall upon me. I see woe, misery, and destruction pursuing me. I see blackness of darkness and desolation even surrounding me. I both see and feel the woeful accusations of a guilty conscience within me, condemning me, continually grating upon my soul and terrifying me with dreadful visions of eternal miseries to betide me. I see the chain of black lines, guilt and horror of my soul that I carry with me wherever I go. I see the bottomless gulf of eternal horror and despair, with the mouth of it wide open to swallow me up. We don't write like that anymore. That's because Noah for us is a children's toy. It's a sanitized, quaint little story instead of a reminder of how God deals with sin. There are things that you thought and said and did on last night for which you deserve the waters of the flot today, for which you deserve the wrath of God today. But here's the good news. The good news is God prepared that art for the sake of preservation, preserving his elect even preserving the world that is around us. Here's the interesting thing. I was watching on Friday, this movie Expelled, and I know there were a couple of groups that went to the movie. And you watch this movie Expelled, and you watch these people who believe in Darwinian evolution, and one of them at one point particularly speaks to this issue of the Noaic flood, and he talks about this idea that you know, oh, that Noah built an arc and all these animals went in on the ark with Noah. It's terrible stories that shouldn't be told the children. The idea that somehow God would put these animals on the arc and these people on the ark, and from that preserve all these animals, and from that preserve humankind and the human race. And so I'm sitting there in the movie and I'm going, wait, tom out, bro, you just said that the idea that eight people going onto an arc and perhaps thousands of animals going onto the arc, all the different species going onto the ark and then producing what we see, now, that's ludicrous. But the idea that a single cell produced all the variations of species that you're okay with. And later on in the movie you find out that they're even okay with the possibility that aliens seated the planets with that first material that turned into us Noah Arc, thousands of different species on the arc, then producing all that we now see, no but a little cell that contained all we needed for life being ignited by lightning in the primordial ooze? Where did lightning come from? Sir? I mean, just help me on that one. Not to mention where'd that cell come from? You got something splaining to do. Why are you here today? Why am I here today? And again I'm not talking about in the in the spiritual sense. I understand. Okay, I understand. We're a catechising group. So don't all at once, you know, to glorify God and enjoy him forever, Okay, that's out. We're here today because God preserved Noah and Shim and Him and Jayfath on the Ark, all the various peoples and people groups of the world we get from Shim and Ham and Jayfath that incredible God did that. So in a very real sense, you and I are here. We had the opportunity to live today because God didn't blot out everything. When you go to the zoo and you see these amazing creatures and you look at them and you go, what's that for some animals, We're gonna have to get to heaven and have God explain specifically why that one, you know, But there's a reason because God preserved that one. Whatever it is, it's because of this event and God preserving the So in a very real, very practical sense, that's what the arc means. But here's the other thing. It goes back to what we've been talking about for three weeks now, the preservation of the seed and the Promise and the Covenant. You understand the arc, you understand the cross. But here's what came just sort of collapsing in on me this week. I think about the suffering, and I thought about that a lot this week. That went on outside the ark, and how Noah is preserved in the art. And again there's some suffering going on as well. You spend two hundred days and it wouldn't ark with thousands of animals praise the Lord. Okay, that's yeah. But I think about all that that went on outside, and then I come to the cross, and the wrath of God that was poured out on Jesus Christ was of as much significance and magnitude as all of the suffering that went on outside the arc, because he took upon himself my sin, your sin, the sins of all of those whom he would redeem, and in taking upon him those sins, he took upon him the wrath for which those sins were worthy. And that's what he endured, and that's what he suffered in order that you and I might be rescued from the wrath of God the great irony and beauty, and that is this God has saved us from God. Do I believe that God is a God of love? I most assuredly do. And I believe that because I know that God is God of wrath, and in his great love for us, he demonstrated it towards us in that Christ. While were we at sinners, Christ died for us. God made him who knew no sin, to become sin for us in order that we might become the righteousness of God in him. You better believe God loves us. You better know it. You better know it. The great mystery is not why do we have tragedies. The great mystery is why do we get anything else? A couple of issues here. Number one, there are those who argue that this flood was a localized flood, the flood of Noah's day, that was just a local life flood in that part of the world. There's a couple of problems with that. Number One, the Bible says the whole earth, it wasn't a localized flood. Secondly, God makes a promise, and his promise is that he won't do that again. If Noah's flood was a localized flood, God's a liar. Because there have been other localized floods. It's not a localized flood. Here's the other thing. If that flood was a localized flood, then we have a huge problem because from Shim and Ham and Jafith we get all of the peoples of the earth that are listed after this. If it was just another localized flood, if that's all it was, then there's a whole other part of the earth where there are people groups who came from somewhere other than sham Ham and Japheth, and you go messing with that one. And if it was just a localized flood, then we believe in localized redemption. I don't believe in localized redemption. I believe there's going to come a day or we will stand before the throne and people from every tribe and nation and tongue and kindred will be gathered together around the throne of Almighty God. I believe that with every fiber of my being, because that's what the Bible teaches me. Our God is a god of wrath, but he's also a merciful God who rescues from his wrath. And so Christ takes on this sin so that God can do two things simultaneously. Number one courting Romans three, be just because he pours out his wrath, and number two, be the justifier of those who place their faith in Jesus Christ. Because once we've placed our faith in Jesus Christ, if God's wrath has been poured out on him, and we are found in Christ, then that penalty has been paid. That's why we talk about penal substitutionary atonement. Genesis chapter seven is a tale of horrifying judgment and of glorifying redemption, and your life will be characterized by one or the other. My prayer for you is that by God's grace and his mercy, to a place of repentance and faith. My prayer for you is that you would look upon the wrath of God as no small thing, and that God would use that to cause you to cry out to Him for deliverance. My prayer for you is that you would never ever ever be able to rest until God has saved you and has rescued you from his wrath, because I know that only God can do that. In your life, you wrestle with God, you do business with God, and you grab a hold of God, and don't you let go until He saves you, Until He saves you, until He redeems you from the waters of the flood and from the terror that is most assuredly to com