Sermon Tone Analysis

*Moses, Noah, the Ark, and Jesus (Genesis 6:13-22)*

/Preached by Pastor Phil Layton at Gold Country Baptist Church on March 22, 2009/

www.goldcountrybaptist.org 

 

We’re going to look at verses 13-22 this evening, what’s traditionally been called the story of Noah and the Ark.

But I want you to know this is really a story about God.

It’s about God’s judgment on man’s sin, and God’s grace, His special sovereign grace that saves from His wrath to come those whom He has made righteous by grace through faith.

We don’t have any words of Noah recorded in this chapter or chapter 7, 8, even most of 9 – it’s all God’s words, God’s actions and God’s power.

For nearly 4 chapters we hear of Noah but don’t hear any words from Noah.

God is doing all the talking, detailed commands for detailed obedience.

This story is much more about God than it is about Noah.

God’s favor ~/ grace is what preceded ~/ produced Noah’s righteousness in the word order of v. 8-9.

We never hear Noah speak to God, in contrast to others in Genesis who when God spoke to them, talked back or objected in some way (ex: Adam, Eve, Cain, Abraham, Sarah, Lot, Lot’s wife, Jacob, etc.).

But Noah by grace just obeys; a righteous man who lives by faith.

Noah obeys without complaining, arguing, deliberating, hesitating.

Genesis 6:8-22 (NASB95) 8 But Noah found favor [grace] in the eyes of the Lord.

9 These are /the records of /the generations of Noah.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God. 10 Noah became the father of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

11 Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence.

12 God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.

13 Then God said to Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence because of them; and behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth.

14 “Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood; you shall make the ark with rooms, and shall cover it inside and out with pitch.

15 “This is how you shall make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits.

16 “You shall make a window for the ark, and finish it to a cubit from the top; and set the door of the ark in the side of it; you shall make it with lower, second, and third decks.

17 “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.

18 “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.

19 “And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every /kind /into the ark, to keep /them /alive with you; they shall be male and female.

20 “Of the birds after their kind, and of the animals after their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, two of every /kind /will come to you to keep /them /alive.

21 “As for you, take for yourself some of all food which is edible, and gather /it /to yourself; and it shall be for food for you and for them.”

22 Thus Noah did; according to all that God had commanded him, so he did.

The first thing we learn about God in this passage is how serious sin is to Him.

If you’ve ever had the thought that sin is not really a big deal to God, this passage destroys that notion once and for all.

Genesis 6:5-7 (NASB95) 5 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.

6 The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.

7 The Lord said, “*I will blot out man* whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.”

Sin is bad.

God is holy.

God never winks at sin or sweeps it under the rug or excuses it or shrugs it off.

This is our unchanging God’s attitude toward sin, including sorrow, grief, godly righteous anger, and indignation.

/When you understand God’s holy just hatred for sin, we should not be surprised that He judges so many but should be surprised that He saves any!/

The fact that God does not destroy and drown us all again like this is not because we are less sinful, it is only because God made a covenant as we’ll see in Genesis, a commitment to never again destroy the world by water.

The wages of sin is death, and in many cases God is patient and long-suffering (in the early days before the flood even allowing them to live hundreds of years) but death does still come to all.

And for those who die apart from a /salvation-/covenant relationship to the Lord there is eternal separation and wrath in fire.

God will still destroy the lost world in the coming day of the Lord, but by fire that time.

 

2 Peter 3:2-11 (NASB95) *you should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets* *[the OT, including Genesis 6 esp. in this context]* and the commandment of the Lord and Savior /spoken /by your apostles.

3 Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with /their /mocking, following after their own lusts, 4 and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming?

For /ever /since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was *from the beginning of creation [Genesis].*”

5 For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God /the /heavens existed long ago and /the /earth was formed out of water and by water, *6 **through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water.**

**7 **But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.* 8 But do not let this one /fact /escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.

*9 **The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.* 10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with *intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.* 11 Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness,

 

Right end-times theology should produce holy godly living in you.

Right theology of God must include both His love /and/ wrath, both His patience /and/ anger.

He doesn’t choose to save all, and yet we also read that He doesn’t take pleasure in the death of the wicked.

There is His revealed will which is for all to come to repentance, and yet we know in His sovereign will, most will not.

As we saw in our last message, Scripture seems to teach a genuine compassion God has on those He never saves - a common grace, a general love - and yet there is also His special love, sovereign saving covenant love we see in this passage that was only on Noah and His family.

How does God destroying the world of humanity here except for 8 people fit with “for God so loved the world?”

Well, John 3:16 is not the last word or only verse in John 3 ... Jesus kept talking: 

 

18 “…he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

19 “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.

20 “For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed …

 

36 “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”

So we learn that sin is very serious to God and deserves His wrath which is always just toward man who is always responsible, and who loves his sin and is doing exactly what he wants in rebelling against God.

Sinners are totally depraved, radically corrupt, and in fact “corrupt” is the very word we see repeated in Genesis 6:11-13.

In the Hebrew, the repeated root word is used for “corrupt” in v. 11, then again in v. 12, and then as a verb “corrupted,” and then another form of this verb at the end of v. 13 “I am about to /destroy/ them.”

The word can have the idea of corrupted in the sense of /ruined/ – if we wanted to re-translate the text to capture the consistency of word choice it would read:

v. 11 “Now the earth had /gone to ruin /…

v. 12 “God looked upon the earth, and behold, it had /gone to ruin, /for all flesh had /ruined /their way …

v. 13b “I am about to /ruin /them”

 

In other words, God’s decision is to destroy what is virtually self-destroyed or self-destroying already.

Sin is self-destructive.

Not only was the earth corrupt(ed~/ing), but v. 11 adds that it was full of “violence,” the Hebrew word /hamas /(that word sound familiar?).

There’s a terrorist group today called /hamas, /and they don’t speak Hebrew but they sure have some involvement with the Hebrews, namely violent acts of terror against the Jews as part of a long-term feud that has roots later in Genesis.

/Hamas /according to one source I read is an Arabic word that can be translated as “zeal ~/ fighting spirit” – God will judge such violence as well as heart sin.

Allen Ross writes: ‘The obvious theme of this narrative unit is divine judgment on sinners.

The account shows God to be the judge of the whole earth, judging the wicked and the world in which they did wickedness.

In this judgment God made distinctions between the righteous and the wicked (cf.

also Gen. 19 [Sodom]) and also between the clean and the unclean (vividly portrayed in the animals chosen for the ark).

The clean animals may have been for sacrificial purposes, showing that that which is clean belongs to God, just as the righteous belonged to God.

A related theme is the deliverance from judgment by divine grace.

God preserved his remnant from the flood by prior announcement and special provision.

One teaching would be that those who claim to be recipients of grace should walk with God in righteousness.

Other Scriptures (e.g., Ps. 1) show that an untarnished, separated believer [saved by grace] in this life can look forward to being separated from sinners in the judgment.

These two motifs of judgment on sinners and deliverance from the judgment had a special significance for Israel.

On a smaller scale but in a similar way, the Lord judged the wicked Egyptians with water and brought Israel through the flood of the sea to worship him on the other side with sacrifices (Exod.

14–15).

It is not surprising that many expressions used in Noah’s account—the judgment on sinners, the deliverance of the righteous, the walking in righteousness, and the sacrifice of clean animals—are also used in the instruction of the nation in the law [and its separation theme]

… the great flood would be a most effective way of purging the world—certainly the most graphic.

It would wash the earth clean, so that not a trace of the wicked or their wickedness would be found.

God thus purified the earth of all but the remnant.

Later the law used the terminology of washing with water as a symbol for purging before worship (e.g., Lev.

8:6, 21).

The New Testament also drew on these motifs (e.g., Titus 3:5).’[1]

There are many connections with biblical truth and themes in Gen. 6.

Like all of Scripture, the ultimate story line is God, and God is the big idea and overarching end of the theme, history is His story.

But I want you to notice how the great God who reveals Himself here (in holiness, anger, wrath, justice, and judgment) also reveals the gospel here.

This is not only a true historical account of a flood and an ark and a man named Noah, I want you to see some clear connections with Moses and the Law, and beyond him the One who fulfilled the law, and whom all the types point to, Jesus Christ

 

Last time we saw several comparisons between Noah and Adam:

-         Vs.

10 mentions Noah’s 3 sons.

Adam also fathered 3 sons and Genesis traces their lines as well (Adam’s son Seth was where Noah’s family came from, and Noah’s son Shem was where the Messiah would come from).

-         End of v. 9 says “Noah walked with God.”

So did Adam.

-         Both /blameless/ before him (Adam even originally perfect).