November 3, 2024 • 28 mins
In this episode, from a chapel service held on Friday 18 October 2024, Mark Thompson, Principal of Moore Theological College, continues his series on Genesis, looking at Genesis chapter 6 and 7, and the account of the flood.
He reminds us of God’s determination to deal with sin, along with his determination to rescue his righteous ones, and the warning that we should not remain unprepared for the judgement that is still to come.
For more audio resources, visit the Moore College website. There, you can also make a donation to support the work of the College.
Contact us and find us on socials.
Please note: The episode transcript provided is AI-generated and has not been checked for accuracy. If quoting, please check against the audio.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to the Moore College podcast, a podcast of biblically sound, thought-provoking and
(00:14):
challenging talks from Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia. In this episode, from
a chapel service held on Friday, 18th October 2024, Mark Thompson, Principal of Moore Theological
College, continues his series on Genesis, looking at Genesis chapters 6 and 7 in the
account of the flood. He reminds us of God's determination to deal with sin, along with
(00:38):
his determination to rescue his righteous ones, and the warning that we should not remain
unprepared for the judgement that is still to come. We hope you find the episode helpful.
The Apostle Paul tells us that the delay in Jesus' return as Judge of all the earth
(00:59):
is meant to provide a further opportunity to repent, because ultimately God does not
desire the death of a sinner, but that he or she should repent of their wickedness and
live. And then of course, we know that when his judgement comes, it will include us all.
We must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ. And even for those of us who know
(01:21):
that we're forgiven, that's not an entirely comfortable prospect, is it? So we pay lip
service to the Bible's teaching about judgement, and we push it off into the distant future.
Yes, but not yet. But what if this morning you were walking in the streets of Jerusalem,
(01:42):
or Gaza, or Beirut? What if you were on the battlefield in East Ukraine? What if you were
one of those who were the first to walk into the Nazi death camps in Poland after World
War II, or the killing fields of Cambodia at the end of the 1970s? Would you be more
(02:04):
inclined to long for God's judgement to come right now, if that's where you were? It
was Miroslav Volf, wasn't it, who wrote that the dream of a God who does not judge will
invariably die in a land soaked with the blood of the innocent. I think one of the reasons
why the idea of God's judgement is so distasteful to many is because here in the comfort of
(02:30):
our houses and gardens, or apartments, air conditioning, and security doors, we are more
blind and perhaps more hardened to the terrifying reality and scale of sin in the world than
we realize. But friends, when I sit in a room with a victim of abuse, or watch the horror
(02:52):
of war in my newsfeed, or am reminded of the martyrdom of the 21, those 21 Coptic Christians
who were beheaded on a Libyan beach in February 2015, it's hard to be sanguine. At those
moments I know God's judgement, alarming though it no doubt is, is also right and just and
(03:17):
flows out of his love for the creatures he has made. And I long for it to come now. And
that dark picture of sin crying out for judgement is what it was like in the time of Noah. We've
already heard last time that what God saw when he looked upon the earth at that time,
he saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every inclination of the
(03:43):
thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And a little further on we hear just what
was going on, what that wickedness was like. 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, I have determined
(04:08):
to make an end of all flesh for the earth is filled with violence through them. Violence
on an epic scale, the earth was filled with it. It's not just a matter of a few isolated
cases or sporadic outbursts. The earth is filled with violence through all flesh, God
says. That's what he saw and that's why intervention on a catastrophic scale is necessary.
(04:36):
God will not look away and let it work its way out. Each act of violence has a victim
and each act of violence is an affront to God and the value he places on every human
life. No, God will act. In fact, he must act because of who he is. He must act with ferocity
(04:57):
because what has been done is so terrifyingly awful. It won't be enough to just pick off
a perpetrator here and a perpetrator there. I have determined to make an end of all flesh,
God told Noah, for the earth is filled with violence through them. What God has given
us here in Genesis 6 and 7 is the record of that first catastrophic judgement. It provides
(05:25):
a principled pattern for other acts of God's judgement throughout the Bible. Judgment on
a monumental scale, but judgement that includes at its heart a demonstration of God's mercy.
Mercy which stands immovable in the midst of the flood. Mercy which is most vividly
seen in the cross of Jesus millennia later. Now the story of the flood has fascinated
(05:51):
men and women for centuries. All sorts of questions surround it. How extensive was it?
Global? Regional? Well, there are echoes of an incident like this in the early literature
of many cultures all over the world. Does that mean that the writer of Genesis was just
co-opting traditions from elsewhere? Or is this account with all its specificity in the
(06:15):
600th year, in the second month, on the 17th day of the month, is this the more original,
more accurate version that's echoed in the others? How did the ark float? How were so
many different animals collected and how were they able to survive in the ark with Noah
and his family for almost a year? Well, there are answers to each of those questions, but
(06:39):
the questions themselves are really beside the point. The more important question is
why our heavenly father wants us to know about this. I'm convinced these events are genuine
history, but we are told about them for a reason. The Bible is given to us not just
to satisfy our curiosity about the past, but to point us to God and his great purposes,
(07:06):
to point us to his son and how we should respond to him and what he's done. And so, the story
of the flood is about the horror of human sin. It is about the judgement that sin provokes,
and it is about Noah, that righteous man, as he's described in verse 9, who is blameless
in his generation, which is something truly astonishing, who walked with God and we're
(07:30):
told on more than one occasion, did all that the Lord commanded him. Yes, it is about Noah
and the ark and the preservation of animal life as well as human life, but more than
any of those things, the story of the flood is about God. God, the creator, who does not
abandon his creation, but neither will he let it go on in corruption and violence and
(07:57):
the dehumanizing idolatry of the self above everyone else. God, the redeemer, who even
in the midst of the most cataclysmic judgement in the entire Old Testament, has mercy and
compassion and protects for his son a people, a family that is his own. Well, it would be
(08:19):
easy to go through the outline of the story, and it is a great story, the disaster that
the world has become, which provokes God's judgement, the promise to Noah of deliverance
and the covenant, the faith of Noah, who builds and loads and then enters the ark, that wonderful
moment when we're told in verse 16 of chapter 7, the Lord shut him in, the judgement delivered,
(08:45):
and that terrifying moment when we hear, all flesh, all flesh, everything that moved on
the earth died, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth
and all mankind. And those words of hope at the very end of chapter 7, only Noah was left
and those who were with him in the ark. Epic sin receives epic judgement and in the midst
(09:12):
of it, epic deliverance. But this morning, I want to think a little differently about
these chapters and I want to ask, what are we being told about God? And there are at
least three things, three simple things, things I'm sure you've heard before, but nonetheless
things we cannot afford to miss. And the first of them is this, God is determined to deal
(09:38):
with sin. It's one of the little things that runs through the book of Genesis that God
sees. He sees what's out in the open and he sees what's hidden. He sees the actions and
he sees the heart. He sees when no one else sees. He sees when there's so much else going
(09:59):
on that what is happening here to me could be easily missed. He's never blinded, never
distracted, never the victim of a sleight of hand. He sees. Several chapters on from
this, Hagar, Sarai's servant, names God, you are a God who sees. As we began to notice
(10:23):
last time in this chapter, God sees. He saw that the wickedness of man was great in the
earth. He saw that the earth was corrupt and the earth was filled with violence. But God's
seeing is not just a matter of casually observing what was taking place. God is never just a
spectator and he's not a spectator when it comes to human sin and the damage that it
(10:46):
does. He sees corruption for the ugly thing that it is and he sees violence and the terror,
pain and suffering that it causes. And he is determined to act. I wonder whether you
noticed how God's seeing translates into determined action throughout Genesis 6 and Genesis 7.
(11:10):
And it works in both directions, doesn't it? In verses 12 and 13, God saw the earth and
behold it was corrupt and then I have determined to make an end of all flesh. He doesn't just
see and then move on and look elsewhere. He sees and acts. And from the other direction,
take a look at the first verse of chapter 7. The ark which Noah builds is ultimately
(11:34):
God's provision, but why? For I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation.
We'll come back to that in a moment. But first, God's seeing and acting against sin. God is
determined to deal with sin and the cumulative impact of the sayings, the I sayings, makes
(11:56):
that clear. I have determined, verse 13, I will destroy them, verse 13, I will bring
a flood of waters upon the earth, verse 17, I will establish my covenant with you, verse
18, I will send rain, chapter 7, verse 4, I will blot out, verse 4 again. Everything
(12:16):
that happens in these chapters happens because God is determined to do it. Because he will
not let what he sees go on forever. Friends, the fact that God is determined to deal with
sin through real judgement as well as through salvation in the midst of judgement ought to
(12:38):
be understood as a remarkable comfort for his people. In this chapter of Genesis, the
sin is on a large scale. It's genocidal in scope. It is ugly and violent and it changed
the whole character of God's creation and God just won't let it go on. He answers it
(13:02):
and he deals with it in a sense by uncreating the world he had created. By allowing the
watery chaos of Genesis 1 to return again, the devastating nature of God's answer, a
flood which wipes out all life except those that are in the ark, corresponds to the devastating
nature of the impact of human sin. Life had been put repeatedly under threat through the
(13:29):
violence in Genesis 6. One life after another suffering so that there was a cacophony of
pain and distortion and God is determined to act. Now of course, we know that the flood
is not the final answer. Sin will still be corrupting the earth. Violence will still
(13:50):
be perpetrated. God will still be despised or ignored on the other side of the flood.
Each of these things is recognisable in our world and in our lives. It's still there.
But the flood does provide a pattern for the answer. Real judgement and real salvation,
(14:13):
the righteous deliverer who gathers his people to himself, shields them from the tempest,
binds their wounds and brings them to the place he has prepared for them. When the real
deliverer comes who affects a last and lasting and real deliverance, when he himself bears
the brunt of the judgement we and the whole world deserves, we know that he will deal
(14:38):
with sin finally and forever. The cross and the empty tomb are more powerful than the
flood and as Paul says of the Thessalonians, we wait for God's son from heaven whom he
raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. God is determined
to deal with sin effectively and forever. That is what the cross is all about and the
(15:05):
day is coming when it will be visible for all to see. Which brings us to the second
thing this passage teaches about God. God is determined to deal with sin and God is
determined to rescue his righteous ones. Hebrews 11 reminds us that it was by faith that Noah
(15:28):
constructed the ark and that by doing so he condemned the world and became an heir of
the righteousness that comes by faith. Noah did not earn his way into the ark by his obedience.
The righteousness attributed to him in these chapters is a gift of God as Hebrews makes
clear. It is God who favored Noah, God who reached out to him, God who directed him at
(15:52):
each stage of this adventure. It's all about God. God warned him of the judgement about
to fall. God gave him instruction on how to escape that judgement and as Hebrews also tells
us Noah constructed the ark in reverent fear. As we've noted a couple of times already,
(16:13):
it was the Lord who shut him in and in the next chapter it was God who remembered Noah
and brought him through the other side of judgement. God could have simply wiped out
all flesh including Noah and his family. There is after all a certain solidarity of the human
race in sin but he had set his heart on Noah. He had declared him one of his righteous ones
(16:42):
and he went to extraordinary lengths to show mercy to him in the midst of a world which
had called this terrifying judgement upon themselves. Noah could not have built the ark without
God's instruction. Instruction to the minutest detail, a length of 300 cubits, a breadth
of 50 cubits, a height of 30 cubits, three decks, a door on the side made of gopher wood
(17:07):
sealed with pitch and Noah could not have gathered all his commander to take into the
ark with him. Two of every sort of living thing, male and female, birds, animals, reptiles,
not to mention the food necessary for each of them, without God making that possible.
We're not told the details of how that was done but such is the size of the task that
(17:31):
one man, three sons and their wives could not have done it by themselves. This too is
God's work and as Noah did all that God commanded him, he stood amidst the world as a man God
has chosen and set apart, just as Enoch, his great-great-grandfather had been chosen by
(17:52):
God and set apart. He demonstrated as Enoch had that he walked with God and as the writer
to the Hebrews said again, by doing that he condemned the world and became an heir of
the righteousness that comes by faith and when the time came, God shut him in. The reality
(18:15):
that God is determined to deal with sin in shadow and anticipation by the flood fully
and finally and forever on the cross is a remarkable comfort to those who suffer because
of it but more so is the reality that God is determined to rescue his righteous ones,
his judgement is for them. Speaking of Jesus who did far more than Noah was ever able to
(18:40):
do, the writer of the Hebrews reminds us he is able to save to the uttermost those who
draw near to God through him. So the flood points us to the God who is determined to
deal with sin, he will not overlook it or the damage it's done, he sees and he acts
and it also points us to the God who is determined to rescue his righteous ones, the ones he
(19:05):
set his favour upon, those who walk with him. But there's a third thing, God does not want
us to be unprepared for the judgement to come. There were elaborate preparations that Noah
was instructed to undertake before the flood came, doing all that God commanded him because
(19:28):
he trusted the God he knew and with whom he had walked now for nearly 600 years was not
an easy thing. The account in Genesis does not major on that just as it does not major
on what everybody else was doing while Noah was gathering the wood, constructing this
strange thing in the middle of nowhere and filling it with wildlife. He simply did all
(19:51):
that God commanded him, listening to God and living in the light of God's word of warning
and instruction, that was to be his preparation for the judgement to come. But on the one
occasion in the gospels when Jesus refers to Noah, recorded for us in Matthew 24 and
in Luke 17, Jesus points to what happened then as a lesson for us now. Tell us, his
(20:20):
disciples asked, tell us when the judgement you've been talking about will be and what
will be the sign of your coming in the close of the age? And after speaking of the tribulation
to come, the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom throughout the whole world, the abomination
of desolation and the playing out in the open conspicuous coming of the Son of Man, Jesus
(20:43):
answered their question. But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels
of heaven nor the Son but the Father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the
coming of the Son of Man. For as 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
(21:07):
they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so it will be, so will
be the coming of the Son of Man. And now we know something that the account in Genesis
6 and 7 doesn't tell us. We know that while the earth was filled with violence, in one
sense life was just going on as it always had. The violence was horrific and widespread,
(21:33):
there was pain and suffering and it was also very frightening, Genesis is clear about that,
but it all took place in a world that seemed to have accommodated itself to it and just
got on with ordinary life without any awareness of the judgement that must come. Of course
they could do that only because they'd cut God out of their world. No God, so no judgement,
(22:00):
so this will go on forever without interruption. It is Jesus who shows us why we have been
given the account of Noah and the flood. It is a reminder that you can go on in the world
thinking all will just continue as it always has. You can be oblivious to the accounting
you must give before him, but it does not change for a moment the certainty of the judgement
(22:26):
that is to come. Because God is determined to deal with sin. In Noah's day they went
on eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, all the ordinary things of life,
and they kept on doing that until the flood came and swept them all away. And Jesus himself
(22:48):
made the point of application absolutely clear just two verses later in Matthew 24, therefore
stay awake for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. Don't be seduced into
thinking that everything will just go on as it always has. Don't get used to a corrupt
(23:09):
and violent world. Don't accommodate it. Don't forget that judgement is coming and be
ready. Don't be caught off guard, unprepared for the day when we must all give account
before the judgement seat of Christ. And yet remember that the Christ who is coming, determined
(23:32):
to wipe away every last vestige of sin forever, is also the one who determined long ago that
he would rescue his righteous ones from that day of reckoning. So stay awake. Follow the
example of Noah who did all that God commanded him. Trust in the God you know. Remember there
(23:55):
is a judgement to come and remember who is the judge. What did Jesus say? You do not
know on what day your Lord is coming. The flood shows us a God who is determined to
deal with sin. It shows us a God who is determined to rescue his righteous ones. But as Jesus
(24:19):
made clear, the flood also shows us a God who wants us to be prepared for his coming
and to take the reality of judgement seriously. Our world cries out for judgement just like
the world of Noah. And he will do it. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that we might
(24:44):
learn the lessons of your word. We pray that you might write your word on our hearts. And
we pray that we might be alert, staying awake, being prepared for that day when we with every
human being who has ever lived must stand before the judgement seat of Christ. We pray
that that judgement might come, that your people might be vindicated, that every wrong might
(25:08):
be righted and every tear wiped away. We look for that day and we are so confident of it
coming because of Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.
Thank you for listening to the Moore College podcast. Our vision as a College is to see
(25:31):
God glorified by men and women living for and proclaiming Jesus Christ, growing healthy
churches and reaching the lost. We invite you to attend any of our upcoming events,
including this one from the Priscilla & Aquila Centre. Every year, the Priscilla &
Aquila Centre holds a conference to encourage women in ministry and to assist ministry teams
to think more creatively about how men and women can work better together in ministry.
(25:57):
Next year's annual conference will be held on Monday, the 3rd of February, 2025. Paul
Grimmond, Dean of Students at Moore Theological College, will be speaking on the topic of
“Is godliness Complementarianism?” and Titus 2. And author Claire Smith will be speaking
about her new book, “Appearing of God Our Savior, a Theology of 1 and 2 Timothy and
(26:17):
Titus”, which will be published by Crossway in 2025. In addition, the following day on
Tuesday, 4th of February, the Priscilla & Aquila Centre will be holding its biennial research
conference for women. Nicole Starling, Lecturer in Christianity and History at Morling College,
will be speaking on the topic of women, 19th century and today. And other talks will also
(26:41):
be presented by Claire Smith, Jocelyne Loane and Kate Snell. Find out more about both conferences
by visiting the Priscilla & Aquila website and clicking on Conferences. That's paa.moore.edu.au.
You can find out more about our events and register by going to the Moore College website.
(27:04):
That's moore.edu.au. If you have not already done so, we encourage you to subscribe to
our podcast through your favourite podcast platform so that you'll never miss an episode.
For past episodes, further resources and to make a tax-deductible donation to support
the work of the College and its mission, please visit our website at moore.edu.au. If you
(27:30):
found this episode helpful, please share it with a friend and leave a review on your platform
of choice. We always benefit from feedback from our listeners, so if you'd like to get
in touch, you can email us at comms@moore.edu.au. The Moore College podcast was
edited and produced by me, Karen Beilharz, and the Communications team at Moore Theological
(27:54):
College. The music for our podcast was provided by MarkJuly from Pixabay. Until next time!
Welcome to the Moore College podcast, a podcast of biblically sound, thought-provoking and
(00:14):
challenging talks from Moore Theological College in Sydney, Australia. In this episode, from
a chapel service held on Friday, 18th October 2024, Mark Thompson, Principal of Moore Theological
College, continues his series on Genesis, looking at Genesis chapters 6 and 7 in the
account of the flood. He reminds us of God's determination to deal with sin, along with
(00:38):
his determination to rescue his righteous ones, and the warning that we should not remain
unprepared for the judgement that is still to come. We hope you find the episode helpful.
The Apostle Paul tells us that the delay in Jesus' return as Judge of all the earth
(00:59):
is meant to provide a further opportunity to repent, because ultimately God does not
desire the death of a sinner, but that he or she should repent of their wickedness and
live. And then of course, we know that when his judgement comes, it will include us all.
We must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ. And even for those of us who know
(01:21):
that we're forgiven, that's not an entirely comfortable prospect, is it? So we pay lip
service to the Bible's teaching about judgement, and we push it off into the distant future.
Yes, but not yet. But what if this morning you were walking in the streets of Jerusalem,
(01:42):
or Gaza, or Beirut? What if you were on the battlefield in East Ukraine? What if you were
one of those who were the first to walk into the Nazi death camps in Poland after World
War II, or the killing fields of Cambodia at the end of the 1970s? Would you be more
(02:04):
inclined to long for God's judgement to come right now, if that's where you were? It
was Miroslav Volf, wasn't it, who wrote that the dream of a God who does not judge will
invariably die in a land soaked with the blood of the innocent. I think one of the reasons
why the idea of God's judgement is so distasteful to many is because here in the comfort of
(02:30):
our houses and gardens, or apartments, air conditioning, and security doors, we are more
blind and perhaps more hardened to the terrifying reality and scale of sin in the world than
we realize. But friends, when I sit in a room with a victim of abuse, or watch the horror
(02:52):
of war in my newsfeed, or am reminded of the martyrdom of the 21, those 21 Coptic Christians
who were beheaded on a Libyan beach in February 2015, it's hard to be sanguine. At those
moments I know God's judgement, alarming though it no doubt is, is also right and just and
(03:17):
flows out of his love for the creatures he has made. And I long for it to come now. And
that dark picture of sin crying out for judgement is what it was like in the time of Noah. We've
already heard last time that what God saw when he looked upon the earth at that time,
he saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every inclination of the
(03:43):
thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And a little further on we hear just what
was going on, what that wickedness was like. 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, I have determined
(04:08):
to make an end of all flesh for the earth is filled with violence through them. Violence
on an epic scale, the earth was filled with it. It's not just a matter of a few isolated
cases or sporadic outbursts. The earth is filled with violence through all flesh, God
says. That's what he saw and that's why intervention on a catastrophic scale is necessary.
(04:36):
God will not look away and let it work its way out. Each act of violence has a victim
and each act of violence is an affront to God and the value he places on every human
life. No, God will act. In fact, he must act because of who he is. He must act with ferocity
(04:57):
because what has been done is so terrifyingly awful. It won't be enough to just pick off
a perpetrator here and a perpetrator there. I have determined to make an end of all flesh,
God told Noah, for the earth is filled with violence through them. What God has given
us here in Genesis 6 and 7 is the record of that first catastrophic judgement. It provides
(05:25):
a principled pattern for other acts of God's judgement throughout the Bible. Judgment on
a monumental scale, but judgement that includes at its heart a demonstration of God's mercy.
Mercy which stands immovable in the midst of the flood. Mercy which is most vividly
seen in the cross of Jesus millennia later. Now the story of the flood has fascinated
(05:51):
men and women for centuries. All sorts of questions surround it. How extensive was it?
Global? Regional? Well, there are echoes of an incident like this in the early literature
of many cultures all over the world. Does that mean that the writer of Genesis was just
co-opting traditions from elsewhere? Or is this account with all its specificity in the
(06:15):
600th year, in the second month, on the 17th day of the month, is this the more original,
more accurate version that's echoed in the others? How did the ark float? How were so
many different animals collected and how were they able to survive in the ark with Noah
and his family for almost a year? Well, there are answers to each of those questions, but
(06:39):
the questions themselves are really beside the point. The more important question is
why our heavenly father wants us to know about this. I'm convinced these events are genuine
history, but we are told about them for a reason. The Bible is given to us not just
to satisfy our curiosity about the past, but to point us to God and his great purposes,
(07:06):
to point us to his son and how we should respond to him and what he's done. And so, the story
of the flood is about the horror of human sin. It is about the judgement that sin provokes,
and it is about Noah, that righteous man, as he's described in verse 9, who is blameless
in his generation, which is something truly astonishing, who walked with God and we're
(07:30):
told on more than one occasion, did all that the Lord commanded him. Yes, it is about Noah
and the ark and the preservation of animal life as well as human life, but more than
any of those things, the story of the flood is about God. God, the creator, who does not
abandon his creation, but neither will he let it go on in corruption and violence and
(07:57):
the dehumanizing idolatry of the self above everyone else. God, the redeemer, who even
in the midst of the most cataclysmic judgement in the entire Old Testament, has mercy and
compassion and protects for his son a people, a family that is his own. Well, it would be
(08:19):
easy to go through the outline of the story, and it is a great story, the disaster that
the world has become, which provokes God's judgement, the promise to Noah of deliverance
and the covenant, the faith of Noah, who builds and loads and then enters the ark, that wonderful
moment when we're told in verse 16 of chapter 7, the Lord shut him in, the judgement delivered,
(08:45):
and that terrifying moment when we hear, all flesh, all flesh, everything that moved on
the earth died, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth
and all mankind. And those words of hope at the very end of chapter 7, only Noah was left
and those who were with him in the ark. Epic sin receives epic judgement and in the midst
(09:12):
of it, epic deliverance. But this morning, I want to think a little differently about
these chapters and I want to ask, what are we being told about God? And there are at
least three things, three simple things, things I'm sure you've heard before, but nonetheless
things we cannot afford to miss. And the first of them is this, God is determined to deal
(09:38):
with sin. It's one of the little things that runs through the book of Genesis that God
sees. He sees what's out in the open and he sees what's hidden. He sees the actions and
he sees the heart. He sees when no one else sees. He sees when there's so much else going
(09:59):
on that what is happening here to me could be easily missed. He's never blinded, never
distracted, never the victim of a sleight of hand. He sees. Several chapters on from
this, Hagar, Sarai's servant, names God, you are a God who sees. As we began to notice
(10:23):
last time in this chapter, God sees. He saw that the wickedness of man was great in the
earth. He saw that the earth was corrupt and the earth was filled with violence. But God's
seeing is not just a matter of casually observing what was taking place. God is never just a
spectator and he's not a spectator when it comes to human sin and the damage that it
(10:46):
does. He sees corruption for the ugly thing that it is and he sees violence and the terror,
pain and suffering that it causes. And he is determined to act. I wonder whether you
noticed how God's seeing translates into determined action throughout Genesis 6 and Genesis 7.
(11:10):
And it works in both directions, doesn't it? In verses 12 and 13, God saw the earth and
behold it was corrupt and then I have determined to make an end of all flesh. He doesn't just
see and then move on and look elsewhere. He sees and acts. And from the other direction,
take a look at the first verse of chapter 7. The ark which Noah builds is ultimately
(11:34):
God's provision, but why? For I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation.
We'll come back to that in a moment. But first, God's seeing and acting against sin. God is
determined to deal with sin and the cumulative impact of the sayings, the I sayings, makes
(11:56):
that clear. I have determined, verse 13, I will destroy them, verse 13, I will bring
a flood of waters upon the earth, verse 17, I will establish my covenant with you, verse
18, I will send rain, chapter 7, verse 4, I will blot out, verse 4 again. Everything
(12:16):
that happens in these chapters happens because God is determined to do it. Because he will
not let what he sees go on forever. Friends, the fact that God is determined to deal with
sin through real judgement as well as through salvation in the midst of judgement ought to
(12:38):
be understood as a remarkable comfort for his people. In this chapter of Genesis, the
sin is on a large scale. It's genocidal in scope. It is ugly and violent and it changed
the whole character of God's creation and God just won't let it go on. He answers it
(13:02):
and he deals with it in a sense by uncreating the world he had created. By allowing the
watery chaos of Genesis 1 to return again, the devastating nature of God's answer, a
flood which wipes out all life except those that are in the ark, corresponds to the devastating
nature of the impact of human sin. Life had been put repeatedly under threat through the
(13:29):
violence in Genesis 6. One life after another suffering so that there was a cacophony of
pain and distortion and God is determined to act. Now of course, we know that the flood
is not the final answer. Sin will still be corrupting the earth. Violence will still
(13:50):
be perpetrated. God will still be despised or ignored on the other side of the flood.
Each of these things is recognisable in our world and in our lives. It's still there.
But the flood does provide a pattern for the answer. Real judgement and real salvation,
(14:13):
the righteous deliverer who gathers his people to himself, shields them from the tempest,
binds their wounds and brings them to the place he has prepared for them. When the real
deliverer comes who affects a last and lasting and real deliverance, when he himself bears
the brunt of the judgement we and the whole world deserves, we know that he will deal
(14:38):
with sin finally and forever. The cross and the empty tomb are more powerful than the
flood and as Paul says of the Thessalonians, we wait for God's son from heaven whom he
raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. God is determined
to deal with sin effectively and forever. That is what the cross is all about and the
(15:05):
day is coming when it will be visible for all to see. Which brings us to the second
thing this passage teaches about God. God is determined to deal with sin and God is
determined to rescue his righteous ones. Hebrews 11 reminds us that it was by faith that Noah
(15:28):
constructed the ark and that by doing so he condemned the world and became an heir of
the righteousness that comes by faith. Noah did not earn his way into the ark by his obedience.
The righteousness attributed to him in these chapters is a gift of God as Hebrews makes
clear. It is God who favored Noah, God who reached out to him, God who directed him at
(15:52):
each stage of this adventure. It's all about God. God warned him of the judgement about
to fall. God gave him instruction on how to escape that judgement and as Hebrews also tells
us Noah constructed the ark in reverent fear. As we've noted a couple of times already,
(16:13):
it was the Lord who shut him in and in the next chapter it was God who remembered Noah
and brought him through the other side of judgement. God could have simply wiped out
all flesh including Noah and his family. There is after all a certain solidarity of the human
race in sin but he had set his heart on Noah. He had declared him one of his righteous ones
(16:42):
and he went to extraordinary lengths to show mercy to him in the midst of a world which
had called this terrifying judgement upon themselves. Noah could not have built the ark without
God's instruction. Instruction to the minutest detail, a length of 300 cubits, a breadth
of 50 cubits, a height of 30 cubits, three decks, a door on the side made of gopher wood
(17:07):
sealed with pitch and Noah could not have gathered all his commander to take into the
ark with him. Two of every sort of living thing, male and female, birds, animals, reptiles,
not to mention the food necessary for each of them, without God making that possible.
We're not told the details of how that was done but such is the size of the task that
(17:31):
one man, three sons and their wives could not have done it by themselves. This too is
God's work and as Noah did all that God commanded him, he stood amidst the world as a man God
has chosen and set apart, just as Enoch, his great-great-grandfather had been chosen by
(17:52):
God and set apart. He demonstrated as Enoch had that he walked with God and as the writer
to the Hebrews said again, by doing that he condemned the world and became an heir of
the righteousness that comes by faith and when the time came, God shut him in. The reality
(18:15):
that God is determined to deal with sin in shadow and anticipation by the flood fully
and finally and forever on the cross is a remarkable comfort to those who suffer because
of it but more so is the reality that God is determined to rescue his righteous ones,
his judgement is for them. Speaking of Jesus who did far more than Noah was ever able to
(18:40):
do, the writer of the Hebrews reminds us he is able to save to the uttermost those who
draw near to God through him. So the flood points us to the God who is determined to
deal with sin, he will not overlook it or the damage it's done, he sees and he acts
and it also points us to the God who is determined to rescue his righteous ones, the ones he
(19:05):
set his favour upon, those who walk with him. But there's a third thing, God does not want
us to be unprepared for the judgement to come. There were elaborate preparations that Noah
was instructed to undertake before the flood came, doing all that God commanded him because
(19:28):
he trusted the God he knew and with whom he had walked now for nearly 600 years was not
an easy thing. The account in Genesis does not major on that just as it does not major
on what everybody else was doing while Noah was gathering the wood, constructing this
strange thing in the middle of nowhere and filling it with wildlife. He simply did all
(19:51):
that God commanded him, listening to God and living in the light of God's word of warning
and instruction, that was to be his preparation for the judgement to come. But on the one
occasion in the gospels when Jesus refers to Noah, recorded for us in Matthew 24 and
in Luke 17, Jesus points to what happened then as a lesson for us now. Tell us, his
(20:20):
disciples asked, tell us when the judgement you've been talking about will be and what
will be the sign of your coming in the close of the age? And after speaking of the tribulation
to come, the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom throughout the whole world, the abomination
of desolation and the playing out in the open conspicuous coming of the Son of Man, Jesus
(20:43):
answered their question. But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels
of heaven nor the Son but the Father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the
coming of the Son of Man. For as 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
(21:07):
they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so it will be, so will
be the coming of the Son of Man. And now we know something that the account in Genesis
6 and 7 doesn't tell us. We know that while the earth was filled with violence, in one
sense life was just going on as it always had. The violence was horrific and widespread,
(21:33):
there was pain and suffering and it was also very frightening, Genesis is clear about that,
but it all took place in a world that seemed to have accommodated itself to it and just
got on with ordinary life without any awareness of the judgement that must come. Of course
they could do that only because they'd cut God out of their world. No God, so no judgement,
(22:00):
so this will go on forever without interruption. It is Jesus who shows us why we have been
given the account of Noah and the flood. It is a reminder that you can go on in the world
thinking all will just continue as it always has. You can be oblivious to the accounting
you must give before him, but it does not change for a moment the certainty of the judgement
(22:26):
that is to come. Because God is determined to deal with sin. In Noah's day they went
on eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, all the ordinary things of life,
and they kept on doing that until the flood came and swept them all away. And Jesus himself
(22:48):
made the point of application absolutely clear just two verses later in Matthew 24, therefore
stay awake for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. Don't be seduced into
thinking that everything will just go on as it always has. Don't get used to a corrupt
(23:09):
and violent world. Don't accommodate it. Don't forget that judgement is coming and be
ready. Don't be caught off guard, unprepared for the day when we must all give account
before the judgement seat of Christ. And yet remember that the Christ who is coming, determined
(23:32):
to wipe away every last vestige of sin forever, is also the one who determined long ago that
he would rescue his righteous ones from that day of reckoning. So stay awake. Follow the
example of Noah who did all that God commanded him. Trust in the God you know. Remember there
(23:55):
is a judgement to come and remember who is the judge. What did Jesus say? You do not
know on what day your Lord is coming. The flood shows us a God who is determined to
deal with sin. It shows us a God who is determined to rescue his righteous ones. But as Jesus
(24:19):
made clear, the flood also shows us a God who wants us to be prepared for his coming
and to take the reality of judgement seriously. Our world cries out for judgement just like
the world of Noah. And he will do it. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that we might
(24:44):
learn the lessons of your word. We pray that you might write your word on our hearts. And
we pray that we might be alert, staying awake, being prepared for that day when we with every
human being who has ever lived must stand before the judgement seat of Christ. We pray
that that judgement might come, that your people might be vindicated, that every wrong might
(25:08):
be righted and every tear wiped away. We look for that day and we are so confident of it
coming because of Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.
Thank you for listening to the Moore College podcast. Our vision as a College is to see
(25:31):
God glorified by men and women living for and proclaiming Jesus Christ, growing healthy
churches and reaching the lost. We invite you to attend any of our upcoming events,
including this one from the Priscilla & Aquila Centre. Every year, the Priscilla &
Aquila Centre holds a conference to encourage women in ministry and to assist ministry teams
to think more creatively about how men and women can work better together in ministry.
(25:57):
Next year's annual conference will be held on Monday, the 3rd of February, 2025. Paul
Grimmond, Dean of Students at Moore Theological College, will be speaking on the topic of
“Is godliness Complementarianism?” and Titus 2. And author Claire Smith will be speaking
about her new book, “Appearing of God Our Savior, a Theology of 1 and 2 Timothy and
(26:17):
Titus”, which will be published by Crossway in 2025. In addition, the following day on
Tuesday, 4th of February, the Priscilla & Aquila Centre will be holding its biennial research
conference for women. Nicole Starling, Lecturer in Christianity and History at Morling College,
will be speaking on the topic of women, 19th century and today. And other talks will also
(26:41):
be presented by Claire Smith, Jocelyne Loane and Kate Snell. Find out more about both conferences
by visiting the Priscilla & Aquila website and clicking on Conferences. That's paa.moore.edu.au.
You can find out more about our events and register by going to the Moore College website.
(27:04):
That's moore.edu.au. If you have not already done so, we encourage you to subscribe to
our podcast through your favourite podcast platform so that you'll never miss an episode.
For past episodes, further resources and to make a tax-deductible donation to support
the work of the College and its mission, please visit our website at moore.edu.au. If you
(27:30):
found this episode helpful, please share it with a friend and leave a review on your platform
of choice. We always benefit from feedback from our listeners, so if you'd like to get
in touch, you can email us at comms@moore.edu.au. The Moore College podcast was
edited and produced by me, Karen Beilharz, and the Communications team at Moore Theological
(27:54):
College. The music for our podcast was provided by MarkJuly from Pixabay. Until next time!
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.