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Genesis 6:1-9:17
 
! Introduction
            The Floods Interpretive Center has recently opened in St. Agathe.
I have not had an opportunity to visit it, but I understand that they have a series of story boards with pictures and write ups about the various floods which have been in the Red River valley.
Although I have to admit that I personally have not experienced a flood, I know that most of you know all about floods.
You have told me the stories about the floods, I have seen pictures.
I know that if I say 1950, 1979, 1997, you will associate these years with floods.
If local floods are burned in our memory like this, you would think that a universal flood would be in the memory of the people of the earth and in fact it is.
One writer says, “Stories of a great flood are known from cultures around the world…”
            In a web article on the flood, produced by National Geographic, I found the following articles of flood stories which come from different cultures.
The Hindu’s tell about how “Manu, the first human, who saved a small fish from the jaws of a larger fish.
After hearing the smaller one beg for protection, Manu kept the fish safe, transferring it to larger and larger containers as it grew, finally returning it to the ocean.
Because of this kindness, the fish returned to warn Manu about an imminent flood and told him to build a boat, stocking it with samples of every species.
After the flood waters rose, Manu tied a rope to the fish's horn.
The fish led him to a mountain and told Manu to fasten the ship's rope to a tree so that it would not drift.
He stayed on the mountain while the flood swept away all living creatures.
Manu alone survived.”
Greco-Roman writing tells how “Zeus decided to punish humanity for its evil ways.
Other gods grieved at the destruction because there would be no beings to worship them.
Zeus promised a new stock, a race of miraculous origin.
He was going to use thunderbolts when he remembered one of Fate's decrees: that a time would come when sea and earth and dome of the sky would blaze up, and the massive structure of the universe would collapse in ruins.
With Poseidon's help, he caused storm and earthquake to flood every part of the land except the summit of Mount Parnassus.”
One of the best known flood stories outside of the Bible is the Sumerian.
“In the eleventh tablet of the Semitic Babylonian epic of Gilagamesh is a flood story.
The gods resolved to cleanse the earth of an overpopulated humanity, but Utnapishtim was warned by the god Ea in a dream.
He and some craftsmen built a huge ark.
Utnapishtim then loaded it with his family, the craftsmen, and "the seed of all living creatures."
The waters rose up, and a storm continued for six days and six nights.
The gods repented and wept upon seeing the global destruction of living beings and stilled the flood on the seventh day.
The waters covered everything but the top of the mountain Nisur, where the boat landed.
A dove was loosed, but it returned, having found no place to rest.
A swallow was sent, but it too returned.
Seven days later, after having loosed a raven that did not return to the ark, the people began to emerge.
Utnapishtim made a sacrifice to the gods.
He and his wife were given immortality and lived at the end of the earth.”
“The ancient Mayan civilization also had a flood story.
“God sent the flood because the people made from wood (an early version of humans) had no souls, minds or hearts and had forgotten how they were made.
They wanted to escape, but the animals that they had starved and beaten, the pots they had burnt, and the trees they'd stripped refused to help them.
Only a few escaped the flood, and it is said that their descendants are monkeys.”
The Navajo, a North American aboriginal people also have such a story.
“For their sins, the gods expelled the Insect People from the first world by sending a wall of water from all directions.
The Insect People flew up into the second world.
Later, in the fourth world, descendants of these people were likewise punished.
They escaped the floodwaters by climbing into a fast-growing reed.
Cicada dug an entrance into the fifth world, where people live today.
As a civilization we have this collective memory of a flood.
It seems to me that since nearly every society has such a memory that it reinforces our belief that it actually did happen.
There are many similarities in these stories, including mention of a boat and a mountain.
It is interesting that in a number of them the reason for the flood is mentioned as sins or wicked deeds.
These are interesting things, but more important is the question, “why did the flood happen and what does it have to do with us today?”
!
I.
The Earth Was Corrupt In God’s Sight 6:11
!! A. The Corruption Of The World
            When God had completed creation, he stepped back and looked at what He had made and said, “it is very good.”
There was a brand new earth.
Everything was wonderful.
It worked just the way it was supposed to work and it looked so good.
Have you ever had something new that you liked and it got spoiled soon after you got it.
I once got a jacket.
It was a good jacket.
It was warm, had lots of nice pockets and it looked great.
We had made a fire and I was wearing my new jacket and during the course of the evening, a spark got on the jacket and melted a little hole in the front.
My new jacket was ruined and I was very disappointed.
When my niece got married a few months ago, my sister had made herself a new dress.
When the couple came out of the church, instead of using rice or confetti, they had given each of us a bottle of soap and a bubble maker and we were to blow bubbles at them.
My sister got a whole bunch of soap on her new dress and I was disappointed for her because it looked to me like she had ruined her new dress.
The situation at creation quickly changed from “it is very good.”
Adam and Eve disobeyed God and that began to spoil everything.
Cain ruined it when he killed Abel.
Lamech ruined the good creation when he avenged a wound by killing the man who inflicted it and whatever the sons of God were doing with the daughters of men in Genesis 6, it was not a good thing and they further ruined it.
It got so badly ruined that God says repeatedly in Genesis 6 that the beautiful world he created is a mess.
In verse 5 he indicated the comprehensive nature of the evil of people when he said, “every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.”
Notice all the terms which indicate this comprehensive evil - every thought - of his heart - only evil - all the time.
In verse 6 we notice that God was sorry that he had made man.
Although God does not change his mind, we see His great sorrow at the terrible choice people have made.
His heart was broken, just as our heart would be broken at having something precious to us spoiled.
In verse 11, it says that the earth was corrupt or ruined.
This is where we get the imagery I mentioned before of a garment that is ruined.
What God had made as good was totally spoiled.
It was very disappointing to Him.
In verse 12 the phrase “God saw” echoes the same words in 1:31.
There God saw that it was good, now God saw that the earth was corrupt and evil.
In verse 13, the specific mention of the violence on the earth reminds us of the violence which had begun with Cain and escalated with Lamech and had not stopped there.
Sin had destroyed the good thing God had made.
It was ruined.
!! B. The Corruption Of The World Today
As we think about this reality, and look around us, we know that things are not much different.
Today we read of the horror of terrorist attacks, the evil of drug pushers, the violence of gang wars and the immoral destructiveness of child pornography.
We still live in a spoiled world.
!
II.
I Am Surely Going To Destroy 6:13
!! A. The Story Of The Flood
            As a consequence of this awful condition, God determined to wash the evil away.
He promised to destroy all that he had made.
This promise is given in 6:7 where he says, “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 birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.”
The promise is repeated in 6:13, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them.
I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.”
Then the destruction begins.
How does it happen?
The Bible tells us that there were two sources of water.
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