Total Depravity and Unmerited Grace

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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Brethren, just as I was thinking a few moments ago about this opportunity, what a blessing it is, whether with many or with few, to open

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God's Word and to study it together. As we begin our study in Genesis chapter 6,

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I want to start, as I often do, with an account that I hope will grip your attention.

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Several years ago, a Presbyterian denomination in Britain published a magazine, 50 ,000 copies, in fact, in total, with an article inside that caused a great deal of controversy throughout not just that region, but all of the

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United Kingdom. You see, in this offending article that was written, the author made a statement echoing a phrase that is found in the

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Anglican book of Common Prayer. And in doing so, he referred to a prominent member of the royal family as, and he was speaking in reference to Prince Charles, to be exact, he referred to a prominent member of this royal family as,

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I quote, a miserable sinner. Despite the fact that these words are used to speak of all of humanity in the official prayer book of the royal family, despite the fact that it is a biblical truth, this brought no small amount of scorn upon this particular denomination as a result of this magazine.

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And as the pressure mounted, and we have seen this increase, no doubt, over the last number of years with the increase of cancel culture, as the pressure mounted, this denomination eventually caved in.

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But to what degree did they cave in? They did not merely issue a follow -up statement clarifying their remarks.

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They did not publish a correction or an apology in a subsequent edition of the magazine.

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No, but at great expense to themselves and to their denomination, they pulled all 50 ,000 copies of the magazine off of all of the shelves.

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They placed these copies in hiding to the end, to the effect that these two words, miserable sinner, would never again see the light of day.

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And when they were asked why they took such a dramatic or drastic measure, they issued this statement.

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They said, we do not want to give the impression that the doctrines of the

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Christian faith cause people emotional trauma. Wow.

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What an about -face. And what a denial of the plight of fallen humanity.

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For reasons that really only they can explain, this historically reformed denomination did not want a necessary aspect of the gospel.

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The truth that we are needy sinners, published abroad, lest this fact hurt people's feelings.

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Now, writing about this particular event several years later, the

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Scottish theologian Sinclair Ferguson commented on the need for this kind of emotional trauma, to use their words.

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He said, but sometimes the doctrines of the Christian faith do exactly that, and necessarily so.

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And he added, thinking that I deserve heaven is a sure sign that I have no understanding of the gospel.

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And how many there are who have no such understanding of the gospel.

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Or even more terrifying, how many there are, even in the visible church today, who possess little or no understanding of this offensive gospel.

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If you, or if I, or if Prince Charles for that matter, are to truly understand the saving work of Jesus Christ on our behalf, if we are to grasp the good news, we must first apprehend the bad news.

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From time to time, we need, dear brethren, a faithful friend who will come alongside us and remind us that we are weak, insufficient, and miserable sinners who will always be dependent upon the sovereign and merciful grace of God in Jesus Christ.

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Time and again, we need a friend who will grab us by the shoulders, give us a little shake, and convince us not to read our own press, but to believe what the

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Bible says about us, that we are morally and spiritually bankrupt apart from Christ.

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And friends, we need this far more than we realize. And this is why, whether we realize it or not, whether you realize it or not, you are,

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I am, inclined to a form of sin -minimalizing self -righteousness that makes much of self and little of Christ.

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Though we would never publicly exclaim, or publicly, I should say, deny our need for Christ, we often subtly operate as if our being right with God were somehow contingent upon our performance, or at least in part.

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And taking our eyes off of Christ, we turn them to ourselves. And I'll make a bold claim.

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I know that you are doing this. And you can know with certainty that I am doing this.

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And the reason for this is because we know, if we are honest with ourselves, that we are in a continuous state of flux between being self -righteous

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Pharisees, heading in that direction on the spectrum, or living, and perhaps this describes even more of us, in a guilt -ridden despondence.

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Oh, that we know in our tribe, brethren, that God is holy, and we trust that we are sinners, and yet somehow we have forgotten, or we continue to forget how it is that we reconcile the two, a holy

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God and a sinful humanity. For some of you, you've grown proud of your performance, and you're no longer convinced in your heart of hearts that you need

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Christ. You no longer live with a sense of your own vile sinfulness.

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And for this reason, and this is one of the symptoms that you might see in your heart, Christ's prominence in your life and in your theology has been shrinking.

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It is moving inward, and what you need is a faithful friend who will wound you, that the

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Lord might heal you. And for others among you, you have grown discouraged and despondent because you are not only aware of your sin, but you are crushed by the weight of it.

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And because of this, you are disinclined to draw near to the Lord. You feel altogether unworthy of Him.

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You live with a perpetual sense of low -grade guilt that hinders every aspect of your

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Christian life. And like the proud man, you too have taken your eyes off of Christ and directed them at self.

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And you too need a faithful friend who will wound you, that the

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Lord might heal you. Now, I do not claim to be that faithful friend, but I think we find that faithful friend in the book of Genesis and specifically in chapter 6.

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In a scene that mirrors the macro narrative of our redemption, we find in verses 1 through 8 a graphic picture of the bleakness of human depravity, the helplessness and hopelessness of our fallen condition.

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And it is against that backdrop that we see God's sovereign grace extended to miserable and undeserving sinners.

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I'm convinced, Brother Sam and I, as we were looking at this yesterday and talking about it and all of the exegetical difficulties that we will wade into, in the midst of everything that is here,

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I am convinced that one of the key messages that we are to grasp from this section of narrative on this side of the cross is this, that if we are to be right with God, and if I might add, if we are to know that we are right with God, we must realize that it is by His grace alone.

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If we are to have any hope of deliverance, any confidence before God, any assurance of our salvation, we must abandon the filthy rags of our so -called righteousness and come as debtors of divine grace.

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This text leaves us with no room either for prideful or for despondent navel -gazing, but only for beholding the grace of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

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This text is all about how we are sinners. And though we are great sinners,

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God is more gracious still. And so, if we look at verses 1 through 8 today, what we're going to do is break it up into four different sections, four parts as we examine the sinfulness of man and the grace of God.

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And the first characteristic that we will look at is this. I'm using single words for my first three points.

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The first is this disorder. We find in verses 1 through 4 a total breakdown of society prior to the

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Flood. And as we come upon this scene, we are forced to reckon with the fact that the ultimate outcome of every sinful human society is disorder and chaos.

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If you leave man alone long enough, he will ultimately destroy himself.

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Now let's read this in verses 1 through 4. Genesis 6 verse 1.

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And when man began to multiply in the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose.

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Then the Lord said, My spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh.

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His days shall be one hundred and twenty years. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward when the sons of God came into the daughters of man, and they bore children to them.

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These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. Now as we land here in verse 1, we come to one of the most debated passages in all of Genesis.

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And nearly every verse in this text provides us with some kind of exegetical perplexity.

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We're going to come across things like Nephilim, or giants, of these sons of God who are entering into relationships with the daughters of man, of God somehow regretting or repenting, depending on your translation, of creating man.

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What do we do with all of these things? Well in verses 1 and 2, we first grapple with these sons of God, and these daughters of man.

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And who are they really? And this along with the reference to the

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Nephilim in verse 4, this has been a source of incessant curiosity for millennia.

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Nearly 20 years ago, I was thinking about it this week in my study, I enrolled in my first Bible college class, and it was on the

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Pentateuch, that is the books between Genesis and Deuteronomy. And I can still vividly remember coming to church and speaking with some of my friends about this new class that I was taking and how

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I was studying Genesis. And I recall as their eyes opened wide and said, then you can explain, who are these sons of man, who are these sons of God, excuse me, who are the

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Nephilim? Tell me, tell us, who are they? And because I was early in the class, and it turns out the class never dealt with that, much to their dismay,

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I left them with a sense of mystery. I had no satisfactory answers.

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And so many of them, I believe, thinking about that conversation that took place, went home thinking about cohabitating angels and hybrid angel -human offspring and what these sons of God could be.

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But really, who are these figures in the beginning of chapter 6? There are three popular views that I want to take us through very briefly, and then

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I will point you to what I believe is the sound interpretation. The first interpretation of these sons of God and these daughters of man is this.

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It arose amongst the early Jewish exegetes, and the basic summary of it is that these sons of God were fallen angels who saw the beauty of these human daughters, who took them as wives and procreated with them, producing an angelic human child or angelic human children known, as we see in verse 4, as the

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Nephilim, who were mighty men, men of renown. So that is one option promoted by the earliest

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Jewish interpreters. The second interpretation that we find, that we come across, is this.

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That the sons of God were sons from the line of Seth, who seeing the beauty of the daughters of Cain, intermarried with them.

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And as a result, the godly sons of Seth corrupted themselves and their lineage, as their children became, rather than godly men, became mighty men.

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Now this has been the historic Christian interpretation. And so we've got angels cohabitating early

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Jews, Christians, the Sethites and the Cainites. And then the third view that we often hear is this.

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It arose in the 2nd century AD amongst Jewish rabbis who taught that the sons of God were tyrannical successors from the line of Lamech, who assembled massive harems from the daughters of their people and produced mighty men of war.

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Now which is it? Angels, number one. The sons of Seth, number two.

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Or tyrants from the line of Lamech. Each of these positions has its merit.

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But I believe that if we look at the immediate context of this passage, it makes it perfectly clear.

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Perfectly clear, I would argue, for the historic Christian view as the correct interpretation.

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That the sons of God are the godly offspring of Seth, who intermarried with the daughters of man, the daughters of Cain, from that corrupt lineage.

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And their children, rather than being like Enoch, or rather than being like Noah, godly men, who called upon the name of the

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Lord and you walked with them, become more like Lamech. Infamous men, men of war, violent men, men of the world.

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But how can we be sure of this? In the first place, consider the context, brethren.

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Consider as we have been studying this book, we have watched as these two lines have emerged.

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We heard early in, as the serpent received its curse, that there would be an offspring of the serpent and an offspring of the woman.

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And we have seen that line, those two lines carry on distinctively

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We can actually trace it from Genesis 3 forward. Moreover, there's actually very little evidence to support the other two views.

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The view that these are tyrannical kings from the line of Lamech lacks any support from the immediate context.

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And the fallen angel view, while being, and I grant it, it is the most sensational, it is the most entertaining position, but it too lacks real biblical basis.

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It depends largely on passages like Job 1 and verse 6, or Jude 6, where in Job we read that the angels are referred to as sons of God.

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They read that into Genesis 6 or in Jude 6, where we read that the angels left their positions of authority, their proper dwellings.

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Now, I believe that this position, while it's held by men and women who seek to understand this passage, ignores other important passages.

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We find in Matthew 22 or in Mark 12, the clear teaching that angels cannot be given into marriage as men are.

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You'll remember the Lord Jesus preaching, teaching about marriage and saying that men, when they ascend to be with the

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Lord, are like angels and are neither given or taken in marriage. And the concept of Nephilim as angel -human hybrids is also baseless.

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The word Nephilim from verse 4 does not speak to a particular species of half -breed, half -man, half -angel, but it is simply a translated word that means giant.

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It's like our word baptism. We don't have an English word baptism, but we have a transliterated

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English word baptism. Baptism comes from the Greek word baptizo. Nephilim comes from its own

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Hebrew variant. And so it doesn't speak about a unique breed.

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And at the same time, we see these Nephilim exist after the flood. In Numbers chapter 13 and verses 32 through 33, when the

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Israelites sent spies into the Promised Land to discover what was there, they came across sons of Anak, men who appeared as giants, literally, at least in the

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ESV, it's translated this way, literally Nephilim. Now I admit that it is more fun to hold to the fallen angel view, but it simply cannot be squared with the

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Bible. And moreover, I would suggest that it has led to some very strange theories to explain why it is that we have

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Nephilim before the flood, the flood occurring, and then Nephilim after the flood. There are groups who suggest that the

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Nephilim are capable of space or time travel in order to accomplish this thing.

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And frankly, I think Calvin summarizes it well. He says that ancient figment concerning the intercourse of angels with women is abundantly refuted by its own absurdity.

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And it is surprising that learned men should formally have been fascinated by ravings so gross and prodigious.

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So what this leaves us with then is a position that actually speaks very insightfully to human nature.

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Though the Lord had given this line of Seth a godly heritage, men who called upon his name, who walked with him in a manner reminiscent of our first parents in the garden, their flesh was enticed by something that was off limits to them.

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And in verse 2 we see this, and it begins to make sense that this is in reference to men and not to angels.

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That the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive, and they took them as their wives as they chose.

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Now where else do we see language like that? That they saw, that they saw that it was good, and that they took.

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You might recall that that comes, in fact, that exact language from Genesis 3, in verse 6, where Eve saw that the fruit was good for food, that it was a delight to the eyes.

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She saw, she desired that it would make one wise, and so she took and ate the fruit.

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Now what we see here is that the human inclination since the fall is to replicate that fall again and again and again.

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Men and women see things that are off limits. It is good in its appearance and so we desire it, we take hold of it, and then it ultimately destroys us.

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It is a pattern that is presupposed in books like 1 John 2, in verse 16, where he says, the

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Apostle John, for all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, and the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not from the

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Father, but it is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires.

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The human heart, and dear brethren, this is a description of you also, the human heart, as it turns out, is hell -bent on disorder and destruction.

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And it will keep on this trajectory until it brings its subject to utter ruin.

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And we don't have to look very far to see this. In fact, when we understand this, that sin itself is inclined to disorder and chaos, it begins to allow us to make sense of the world in which we live.

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We look at our own culture and we see the law of spiritual entropy at work.

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And as we look through all the annals of human history, we see that they are filled with accounts of entire civilizations that have destroyed themselves from within by their own immorality.

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The Roman Empire, to use one example, was known far and wide for its gross sexual immorality, and for its ambitions for renown and world domination.

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And what did they do? Caught up in their own immoral living, spreading themselves out too thin, they were conquered by the barbarians, ending their civilization.

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The Mayans cut down vast swaths of forest. They burnt their children to literally nourish the gods, to feed these gods.

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And then living in a land that had been deforested, they themselves starved to death.

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I looked at others. One particular group, I believe they were the Moanites. They lived just off the island of Crete.

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They would often offer food and other gifts to pacify the demons, to protect them from the forces of evil and the forces of nature.

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And preoccupied with offering to the demons, they neglected to see that a volcano was erupting in their midst and the tsunami took out the entire civilization on the island.

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Or the Amorites. In Genesis chapter 15 and verse 6, you might recall the name there of the

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Amorites, that as God promised the land of Canaan to Abraham, he indicated that he would fulfill this promise when?

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Do you remember? He said the sin of the Amorites is not yet complete, implying that once the civilization had reached its breaking point, then he would destroy the nation from before Israel that they might claim their promised inheritance.

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It was not yet complete, but there would be a time in the not so distant future when that nation would bring itself to such an utter state of moral ruin that God would command the nation of Israel to wipe them from the face of the earth.

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Brethren, this self -destructive and disordered sin is still alive and well, and it is even in our redeemed bodies, alive in these mortal bodies also.

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And I don't want you to think that I'm not telling you to mortify this sin.

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Though we ought to mortify this sin, no matter how hard we try, it will still persist and wreak havoc in our lives.

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And if we are honest with ourselves, those of you who are laden by guilt, and those of you who are filled with prideful self -righteousness, or even who have a hint of it, if we are honest with ourselves, we can find this sinful pattern disrupting our lives every single day.

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That we see sin, it looks good to the eyes, we take hold of it, and it destroys us.

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Brethren, have you ever wondered why we all get a little bit shy at bringing people too close to see our lives really up close and personal?

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It is because we know that if people get close enough, they will see the disorder.

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I think of my own home. We enjoy extending invitations to brethren to come stay in our homes.

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And I recall, even as our sister Mayanna came to live with our family this past summer, thinking, oh goodness, she's going to see my kids for real.

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She's going to see some of our challenges. She's going to see me for real. It's the same thing when

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I speak about having some of our invited speakers for the conference to stay in your homes.

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Oh, what will they find when they get there? They will most certainly find, to some degree, whether I come to your home or you come to mine, disorder.

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And why? Because of our own sinfulness. I once heard it said that Christians, sometimes we are like the moon.

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We have one good side to look at, but don't you dare go around to the back side because there is a dark side to that moon.

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Another brother said that we are often saints abroad and devils at home. That in the quiet of our own hearts before God, Brethren, we have a tremendous problem.

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And that problem is our sin. But there is more. The second characteristic of sinful man that we find in this passage, we can find in verse 5, and that is depravity.

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In verse 5 we read, The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continuously or continually.

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Man does not merely commit sins, my friends, but sin permeates his very person.

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It infects every aspect of his being. It is manifest in his affections.

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It corrupts his thought life. We are told in Psalm 51 that even when we were conceived, when we were but in a microscopic embryo form in our mother's womb, even then in our existence we existed in a state of sin.

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Now, not many of us read verse 5 and allow it to affect us, maybe like it did the first time that we read it.

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But we need to appreciate just how significant this statement is in verse 5.

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Verse 5 has been called one of the strongest and clearest statements about man's sin nature in all of the

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Bible. And this is one of those verses that if we just slow down for a moment, we begin to see in a sense not only the arresting nature of the verse, but even the literary beauty that the

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Lord put into this verse. It's fascinating. In verse 5, the

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Lord saw. Just as we looked at in verse 2 where the sons of God saw the women of man and saw that they were attractive, just as Eve saw that the fruit was to be desired, so the

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Lord God saw. We see this repetition built in to contrast the sons of God from God Himself.

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And while the sons of God looked at these daughters of man and saw that they were beautiful, that they were attractive, we see nothing of the sort when

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God Himself sees. But what does God see as He looks?

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That there is nothing lovely. That there is nothing commendable about man.

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But as God looks, He sees this. The wickedness of man was great on the earth.

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Gone are the days of man calling upon the name of the Lord. Apart from Noah, gone are the days of men walking with God.

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But instead, the disordered effects of man's sin has now overcome the planet.

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It is no longer a localized problem, but a global pandemic of total depravity.

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And it has not only affected the whole world as we see, but if we continue to read, the whole person.

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The wickedness of man was great on the earth so that every intention of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continuously.

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Just look at the superlatives and quantifiers of verse 5.

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That the wickedness of man was great on the earth that not just his intentions, but every intention.

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And not just that he was evil, but that it was only evil. And not just that it was every intention that was only evil, but every intention that was only evil continuously.

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The language is emphatic and speaks to a level of sinfulness that calls itself for God's immediate judgment, immediate condemnation, immediate cleansing.

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Now, some have said, looking at this, they say, certainly this doesn't describe men and women today.

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This is only speaking to pre -flood times. These antediluvian times.

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But can this be true? I suppose that if the flood wiped out all of humanity, it would be true.

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But that is not the case. Therefore, I'm inclined to agree, I think of one scholar who says, the flood does not change the essential sinful character of the human heart, but it does exact justice.

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It dishes out exact justice for it. And so that when we look in the text of scripture after the flood, we in fact see the same language describing fallen man.

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Just a few chapters later, if we look together at Genesis chapter 8, and verse 21, we read, and when the

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Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, this is right out of the ark.

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I will never again curse the ground because of man. Why? For the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.

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Or on this theme of the heart, in Jeremiah 17, 9, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick.

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Who can understand it? Or in Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 1, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.

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This passage teaches not just a periodic depravity, but a total depravity across time from the fall to the time when

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Christ returns. This is the doctrine of total depravity and of original sin.

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And it is repugnant to God. I think oftentimes we do not fully appreciate just how sinful sin is.

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Just how abhorrent and offensive to a holy God our willful transgression against him is.

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Our presumptuous sin against a good and merciful creator who sustains us at all moments of time.

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J .C. Ryle speaks about this. He says, the very animals whose smell is most offensive to us.

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Some of you maybe have had a pet. I think of one particular situation at work where a ferret was crawling on me.

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And I thought, surely the owners of this ferret understand its smell. Why would they have this animal in their home?

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The very animals whose smell is most offensive to us have no idea that they are offensive and are not offensive to one another.

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The man, Ryle says, fallen man, has just no idea what a vile thing sin is in the sight of God.

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Because we are steeped in sin. We do not fully appreciate it and yet sin is vile and abhorrent to the greatest degree.

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To quote from Thomas Watson, a Puritan brother, he says, there is, and listen to this description, there is more evil in a drop of sin than in a sea of affliction.

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There is more evil in a drop of sin than in a sea of affliction.

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And yet we come to God not with a drop of sin but with a sea of sin.

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Dear friends, we are miserable sinners. But we see another characteristic in verses 6 and 7 and that is death.

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We have disorder, we have depravity, and we have death. Sin not only wreaks havoc in our lives, it is not only pervasive, but it is destructive and it is deadly.

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And we see this in verses 6 and 7. And the Lord God regretted that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him to his heart.

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So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.

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Now again we find an exegetical perplexity here in verse 6 where it says that the

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Lord God regretted that he had made the man. Or at the end of verse 7 where he said,

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I am sorry that I have made them. Now what can this mean?

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And what does it teach us about God? Does it teach us that God is somehow not knowledgeable, not privy to future events and therefore he can be surprised by things that come along?

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Does it teach some kind of process theology or open theism where God is subject to man's actions, that God is learning and growing as he makes his way through time and eternity?

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This is where we need to look at a text of Scripture, a narrative in particular, and we need to engage the analogia fide, the analogy of faith, to look at all that Scripture teaches and to ask, how does this align with all of the doctrines of Scripture?

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And all we need to do is look at a few passages to learn that God does not change his mind.

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Numbers 23 or 1 Samuel 15 or Psalm 33 or Isaiah 46 and verse 10, that God does not change his mind.

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He is not like a man. He knows the end from the beginning. All of our days are in his book, even before we have lived one of them.

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And we see as well the immutability of God that is the changelessness of God in places like Malachi 3 or James 1.

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So what is happening here then? You've heard me use the term, if you've been in our systematic theology classes, anthropomorphism.

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That is to describe the attributes or the nature of God in a way that gives him human characteristics, anthropos, the characteristics of a man.

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This is not an anthropomorphism, but this is what theologians call an anthropopathism.

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There it is. An anthropopathism that describes human emotions to God in such a way that what is described of God is not true necessarily of his character in the precisest of senses, but it is the best way, it is given to us in the best way that we can understand it.

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Calvin says it this way, the repentance which is here ascribed to God does not properly belong to him, but has reference to our understanding of him.

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For since we cannot comprehend him as he is, it is necessary that for our sake, he should in a certain sense transform himself to accommodate our ability to comprehend.

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It is accommodated language, that God is accommodating our limitations by taking upon himself some of our emotions, some of our attributes to explain it, and this in it of itself should shock us at the nature, the disgusting nature of sin that God would need to in some way transform himself, to use

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Calvin's language, in a way to speak of his disdain for sin.

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That he should regret it. That he should be sorry that he made man. It speaks to his severe disposition towards sin, but that's not all.

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We're told that it grieved him to his heart. What that denotes is not only sadness, but an indignant rage.

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A complete, white -hot hatred for sin. And we see it because in verse 7, he continues that he will blot out, annihilate man.

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And we know that the account that we will read later in Genesis 6 actually points forward to the final judgment.

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Peter says that. He teaches us that in 2 Peter 3. And what we are seeing here is one shadow judgment leading to a greater judgment.

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Every time we sin, we either don't believe this truth, or we presume upon God's kindness and believe that he will overlook this truth.

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But sin is deadly serious. The wages of sin is death.

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It has been said the sinner's death warrant is written on his birth certificate.

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That sin is such that all those who live in sin, apart from God, apart from coming to him on his terms, abide not only under a sentence of death, but abide under the just wrath of a holy

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God. This is the outcome of sin, brethren.

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It is judgment. It is condemnation. It is damnation.

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Sin has no other wages but this. Spurgeon once powerfully,

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I think, demonstrated this. As he was preaching on a text, he made a comment on Mark 16.

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There we read that he who does not believe shall be damned or shall be condemned.

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And speaking on the need to come to Christ, to come to God on his terms, by faith alone, in Christ alone, he said this.

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I have been looking, just a bit of insight. I have been looking for this quote, no exaggeration, for years.

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I heard it once. It was so powerful to me. And then every time

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I have preached on this theme, I have looked for this quote unsuccessfully, except that the

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Lord had it for us today. I found it. He says this. Every threatening of God, as well as every promise, shall be fulfilled.

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Speaking about works of self -righteousness, he says, be as good as you please.

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As moral as you can. Be as honest as you will. Walk as uprightly as you may.

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There stands an unchangeable threatening. He that believes not shall be damned.

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What do you say to that moralist? Oh, you wish you could alter it.

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You must believe or be damned, says the Bible. And mark this, that threat of God is as unchangeable as God himself.

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This is where the image really gets vivid. And when a thousand years of hell's torments shall have passed away, you shall look on high and see written in burning letters of fire, he that believeth not shall be damned.

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And when a million ages have rolled away and you are exhausted and your pains and agonies, by your pains and agonies, you shall turn up your eye and read, shall be damned.

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Unchanged and unaltered. And when you shall have thought that eternity must have spun its last thread, that every particle of that which we call eternity has run out, you shall see written up there, shall be damned.

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Oh, terrible thought, how dare I utter it, but I must. Ye must be warned, sirs, lest ye also come to this place of torment, that the wages of sin is death.

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And those who live in that sin shall be damned.

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Those who do not come to Christ on His terms, believing on Him alone, shall be damned.

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Brethren, this is the greatest gift that I can give you as I stand here before you to cause some measure of emotional trauma in you by calling you what you are.

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You are, without a matter, without a doubt, without anything to blemish this statement at all, you are, apart from Christ, a miserable sinner.

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And you deserve, before a holy God, just as I deserve, to be damned.

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The remaining disorder in our life proves it. The pervasive nature of our sin confirms it.

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Our names are written on the death warrant. And the greatest gift that I can give you is to cause some emotional trauma so that you would abandon all attempts at looking inward for any kind of confidence at all.

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Why am I standing before you calling you miserable sinners? Because if you are to be saved, and if you are to know, this is what

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I want for you to know, that you are saved, that you must abandon all confidence in self.

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You must know what you are. You are a miserable sinner. Now, I don't know how many times we will encounter this in Scripture.

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It would be an interesting study. Someone should do a thesis on it. But if we were to read verses 1 through 7, we would be damned.

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Yet in verse 8, what is that word that we keep seeing in the text?

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But, in verse 8, But Noah found favor in the eyes of the

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Lord. This is one of the most beautiful words in our

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English Bibles. But, yet, nevertheless. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the

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Lord. We've looked at disorder, depravity, death.

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I have alliterated those on purpose. And then we're shifting gears from disorder in ourselves, and death in ourselves, depravity in ourselves, to the last of my points.

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The last characteristic. A characteristic of God. Unmerited grace.

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That word favor can also be translated grace. In fact, some of your

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Bible translations may translate it just that way. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the

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Lord. How can that be? R .C. Sproul writes on this.

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God's grace and favor are always unmerited by human beings. And Noah's integrity cannot earn

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God's acceptance for eternal salvation. God saves Noah as He saves us as a free, unconditional gift that Christ finally purchased with His own blood.

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Now, some might turn us to the next paragraph and say, but it says that Noah was a righteous man who walked in close fellowship with God.

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At which point, I would just take you to the end of the flood where he is found, like Adam and Eve, naked after consuming fruit from the garden, demonstrating that Noah too is worthy of death and condemnation.

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That he too has sin that has brought disorder and depravity and death.

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Noah found grace. But how?

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Hebrews 11, verse 7. If we go there, we see that it was not

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Noah's works that allowed him to find grace. As God saw man,

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He saw that the whole world was corrupt. But what did

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He see in Noah? Hebrews 11, verse 7. By faith.

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By faith, Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen in reverent fear, constructed an ark for the saving of his household.

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By this he condemned the world and became an heir of righteousness. A righteousness of what?

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A righteousness that comes by faith. People have asked me before, many of you

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I'm sure have asked yourself this question. How were the people in the Old Testament saved?

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How was Noah saved? They were saved in the exact same way that we are saved.

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We see this pictured, in fact, in Isaiah 55, and verses 6 and 7, which have been called one of the closest examples of Old Testament salvation.

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Seek the Lord while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near.

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Let the wicked forsake His ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the

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Lord that He may have compassion on him and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.

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As scholars have looked at this passage, they have seen that Noah is, to quote one of them,

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Noah, he says, will prove the consolation of mankind. He's an answer to the prayers of Lamech in Genesis 5 .29

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that he would be a man who would bring rest. And what scholars see here is that Noah, in his name even, there is a double entendre that is at play, that man, as Noah comes, maybe

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I'm going to rephrase this, as Noah comes, Noah gives rest to God, if you can believe that, that he has been burdened by man's sins all through the book since Genesis 3, that he says in verse 3,

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My spirit shall not abide in man forever.

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He is getting tired of these men. Noah here brings him rest, and yet at the same time,

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Noah is a depiction of man's rest from his labors, that he is pointing us to Christ.

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He is pointing us to a righteousness that is outside of our own sinful being.

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He is pointing us to a confidence that is not of the flesh. In Philippians 3, in verse 3,

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For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.

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Paul says, Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh, also if anyone else thinks that he has reason for confidence in the flesh,

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I have more. Circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a

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Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law, a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

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We see Paul's spiritual pedigree here, but he says, But, but whatever gain

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I had, I count it as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing

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Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain

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Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ.

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Our greatest problem is sin. Make no mistake about it.

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And yet our greatest hope is the grace of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

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Brethren, if you have heard about your sinfulness, it is not here, I'm not here to beat you up. I am not here to discourage you.

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As I've mentioned, I am here to exhort you to abandon all confidence in the flesh that you might have a righteousness not of your own doing, not of your own attempting, but that which comes through faith in Christ.

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To trust in His double imputation that as He went to that cross, this sin, oh this grievous sin that we have just heard of was imputed to Him that He took it upon Himself and on that cross taking our sin upon Himself He gives us

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His righteousness by faith. Just as Noah was saved by faith, so brethren, we too are saved by faith and faith alone.

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When we go around with an air of self -righteousness, we are putting confidence in the flesh.

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That should not surprise us. But what might come as more of a surprise to us is that when we walk around and I'm not sure if this is you, but certainly

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I feel this is more my problem than the other. Crushed by the guilt of my own sin.

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Despondent, feeling despondent because of my bad, because of your bad performance.

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When we do this, we too are placing confidence in the flesh.

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And what we must do is we must come to the Lord in repentance and faith and look to Him alone.

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I like what one Puritan says, he says even our tears of repentance need to be washed in the blood of the

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Lamb. Everything about us needs to be washed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

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For those of us who are burdened by our sin, to quote

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John Owen, one more Puritan, he says he is no true believer unto whom sin is not the greatest burden, sorrow and trouble.

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It is good to have sensitive consciences. It is good to despise sin and to grieve it.

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But we must not be crushed by it. Saints, seeing our sin and seeing our need and looking at it just long enough to reckon with it, we turn our eyes to Christ and we find our righteousness, our hope, our confidence in Him so that we can sing as we will sing in a few minutes.

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It is well with my soul. And Lord haste the day when the faith shall be sight and the clouds be rolled back as a scroll and the

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Lord shall descend, sorry, the trump shall resound, the Lord shall descend and even in that moment, not because of me and not because of my inward lookings, but because of my leaning on, my resting in, my trusting in Christ, I can sing,

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I can say, it is well with my soul. Are we miserable sinners?

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Most assuredly we are, more than we will ever know.

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Yet we have a greater Savior who is in the business of saving miserable sinners, who took that misery even upon Himself that He might ransom us.

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I'll close with this little account from John Newton. He was the composer of that hymn,

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Amazing Grace. You know that well. He was once asked his opinion on something, on some point of doctrine, and he replied, when

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I was young, I was sure of many things. There are only two things of which

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I am now sure of. One of them is that I am a miserable sinner, and the other that Jesus Christ is an all -sufficient

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Savior. Let's go to that Jesus now. Thank you for listening to another sermon from Grace Fellowship Church.

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If you would like to keep up with us, you can find us at Facebook at Grace Fellowship Church, or our

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Instagram at Grace Church, all one word. Finally, you can visit us at our website, graceedmonton .ca.