The Flood — Lawrence Chambers

The Judgment of the Flood and the Corruption of Humanity

I know these are familiar portions of Scripture to all of you, but I do believe that there might be something in it all that will help both the saints as well as those who may not know the Lord Jesus yet.

And so we go back to first things, foundation things in the history of this world and God's dealings with man. And in this sixth chapter we'll read at the first verse, It came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose.

And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh, yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, they bared children to them.

The same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man, whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, and the creeping thing and fowls of the air, for it repented me that I have made them.

But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a just man and perfect in his generation, and Noah walked with God. And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And the Lord and God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.

And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them. And I am the whole, I will destroy them with the earth. Make thee an ark of gopher wood, rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.

Now turn to the seventh chapter, and the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark, for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. Verse 10,. And it came to pass, after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.

And in the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day, were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark.

They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort.

And they went in unto Noah, into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life. And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him. And the Lord shut him in, and the flood was forty days upon the earth, and the waters increased and bare up the ark, and it was lifted up above the earth.

And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth, and the ark went up, went upon the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered, fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail, and the mountains were covered, and all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl and of cattle and of beasts, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

And every man, all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died, and every living substance was upon the face of the ground, both man and cattle and the creeping things and the fowl of the heaven.

And they were destroyed from the earth, and nor only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed upon the earth, and hundred and fifty days. Well may God bless this portion to our hearts tonight.

You see, here we have a very dark picture of failure, and what God must do with it. He's going, he blotted it out. And dear friends, it's an awfully solemn thing when you think of it, that that's exactly what God is going to do again.

And he's not going to go on with the situation as it is today, forever. He's not forgetting to rule amongst the sons of men, but his plans and purposes allow for conditions to grow worse and worse. It's not his fault he hasn't started it this way, it's man's own choice, all the way down through man's history, from the very beginning, man has chosen the exact opposite path to which God would have chosen for him.

Garden of Eden experience is a picture, but it's only an isolated case, illustrated and repeated millions of times, all the way down. And so we find that the dispensations of the, of earth's history, begin with a bright morning and close with a dark evening.

And this is the end of the first day. Shall we say the first day, or earth period, scriptures allow us to call a day, although it's extended for about 2 ,000 years in length of time, between creation and the flood.

And that was the time when man was put under the auspices of his own conscience, without even one law. Nothing to say you must not do this, or must not do that, or thou shalt do something else. No laws were given to Adam after he was driven out of the Garden of Eden.

In Eden he had one law, but after he was driven out of that garden gate, and the cherubim with their flaming sword guarded the way to the tree of life, to keep man from getting back into it, then there was no law, but the conscience.

Conscience, Sin, and the Need for Divine Guidance

The conscience, well people say today, go according to your conscience. Well you can tell them, well conscience led men to the flood. And what we've described, described here in these two chapters, is just exactly where anyone's conscience will lead you to.

Now that may sound strange, because so much has been made of people's consciences, as though they had a little deity within. And that that deity was always pure, always right, and would direct you always in a correct manner.

But, I say again, if you go according to your conscience, you'll land in hell. And it's well to realize that. And you might say, well why? I thought the conscience was the only thing that was of any good in a man today.

Well you thought wrong, my friend. There isn't even that much left that is right after the sin of man in the garden of Eden. Man doesn't have a good conscience. The only one who has a good conscience is a child of God, and he only, when he is going according to the word of God, maintains a sensitive conscience, and is seeking to please God with his whole heart, soul, mind, and body.

Even a Christian, the Bible says, can have a conscience seared as with a hot iron. But it is possible for a child of God to have a conscience, as the scripture also describes, void of offense before God and man.

But if a conscience can be so elastic, that it can be seared as with a hot iron, and also to the other extreme, under the power of the word of God, to be void of offense, it shows that it is not reliable as a guide for anybody.

And only as a Christian goes on, from day to day, walking in the fear of the Lord, any safety in going according to his conscience, because then that conscience is educated by the scripture. It breathes the atmosphere of the mind of God in strict, it's really going according to the word of God, period.

It's not a question of conscience at all. It's a question now as to our heart relationship with Christ. But, enough of that, and so you see, man has been put on trial, after man was put out of the Garden of Eden, he was put on probation to see if there was any way, not that God needed to know, but that man might learn whether the conscience would help in the next dispensation after the floodwaters subsided and Noah opened the new dispensation with the burnt offering and claimed the earth for God, then it was human government that was the vogue under God.

The policy of rule was under man's kingship, and the sword was placed in Noah's hand. He was the supreme judge of the whole earth, and he was to rule man with a sword, under God of course, capital punishment, execute all who shed man's blood.

It is not one of the Ten Commandments given to the Jews, it has not been abrogated today. It is still the means that God would have justice carried out today, where there is premeditated murder on the part of man to man.

And so we find that the principle, learn it, I'm going beyond it now a little bit, beyond the picture, a little bit of our subject tonight, but it won't hurt. The principle upon which man rules his fellow is that he is able to rule himself.

If a man can't rule himself, he proves his inadequacy to rule his fellow man. And so early in history, produced or begun by Noah, coming out of the floodwaters, at that time there was not one single individual human being that was out of touch with God.

And that everything was purged again, and that this burnt offering that Noah offered was as it were claiming the earth, through the smoke of the sacrifice, claiming the earth for God. And Moses was God's representative.

Babel, Human Government, and the Failure of Self-Rule

And so there was a new morning, but all the night of that day fell. How soon the sun set, to speak metaphorically. And how soon did it set? Very, very quickly, really speaking, although it took a few, about 256 years to reach the next night time.

And that night time was at the Tower of Babel, when God divided the languages of men and brought one of the greatest curses upon the human race that has ever been pronounced. That men would have divided languages, for therein lay the basis for most of the wars, most of the irritations between a human being and another.

If a person, you hear a person talking a foreign language, you'll hear others beginning to get riled up. If they, in a few minutes they'll speak out, uncontrollably, in protest against them talking any other language but the language of America, or something of that type.

It is an irritating effect, and it's caused the greatest wars, and I know because of being a European, I know that the main hatred between the nations of Europe is the different languages. Well anyway, Noah couldn't control himself.

How could he control his fellow? Because he built a vineyard, raised grapes, drank, and got drunken, and was exposed intolerably to himself and his family. And the curse fell upon the human race, was the one guilty and had to suffer.

Canaan and all his progeny were the ones who were suffering and are to this very day as servants of Japheth and Shem. And so we have today the evidences of this lifelong, world-long, global curse. The history-long curse of man as made a slave to his fellow because of his behavior towards his father.

But his father was at fault. It was his own father that couldn't control himself. And so there we see the very heart of all human government. You want to know why human people, human beings, can't rule others, rule themselves, rule the country?

Why there's so much corruption in politics? You get it in the very heart of the thing. Because men cannot control themselves. They have a chance to make their bed heavy with down and gold, really, and gold finances coming in easy.

They feather their nests, as I wanted to say at the beginning, they feather their nests and they're comfortable and happy with everybody else's money. And that's a good opportunity. They can't control themselves and yet they're often the ones who make the laws that will legislate the thing to be wrong if somebody else did the same thing.

And so that's what makes such disapproval and misery amongst men. So how we see these things brought out at the very beginning in our book of Genesis. But nevertheless, in the midst of all man's sin, thank God, grace works.

Grace, Noah, and Christ as the True Ark of Salvation

God's grace begins to work. And so man is utterly lost and helpless in his own encumbersome, sinful state of soul, in his rebellion against God, in the conditions of his disobedience and his own chosen path of independency of God.

Well, man is going to feel the test, feel the result of it, he's going to put the thing to the test. And so he says, in effect, I'm going to go according to my conscience. I won't have any law telling me I can't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

I'll choose my own path. And so God allows him to act according to his conscience. And oh, what a miserable mess man has made of his behavior under conscience. Look at the people today who say, well, go, let your conscience be your guide, and there's no limit to what they will do when their conscience is their guide.

And so that is what God is allowing, my friend. He's allowing man to prove himself to himself. He's allowing you and I to witness it in ourselves and in the history of the world. You don't have to read very far back into Earth's history among the various nations of the Earth, and you'll see just what I'm talking about.

And it's getting worse and worse and worse all around us. I don't mean to go into the sordid stories that comes to one's ears, both through the newspaper as well as through conversation with one another, and the terrible things that are being done between men and women, between children and infants.

Our jails are getting full of juveniles, and it's a shame. And it's just because of this very thing. Parents are guilty, and children take on the same guilt and the same behavior, and the result is the mess, the chaos that has come about today and will continue to deteriorate until it gets done and touches bottom.

And only the cross of Christ, standing in, shall we say, at the crossroads of life, is going to make any difference to any one of us. Thank God we're not left without a remedy. But will people heed it?

Will people believe it? Will people trust it? No indeed. So few, comparatively speaking. However, God's grace shines out, and so he picked Noah. He says, But Noah and his family, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and then he speaks of his generation, and then his sons Shem, Ham, Japheth, and their wives, eight in number, and they are told to prepare an ark.

So we see that the Lord Jesus is being foreshadowed by God finding a resource in this one man who only was righteous. And the benefits that the children of that family and the wives of that family enjoyed were because they were relatives of Noah.

They each and every one were related to Noah. And so in the antitype, which of course we are so well aware of, and the Lord Jesus himself in the New Testament, only those who are related to Christ will ever reach the place of safety.

Only the Lord Jesus Christ is the true place of rest, which the word Noah means rest or repose. In other words, then, if we want to know what real rest is, we must know Christ, who is the instigator of rest, the initiator of rest, the one who has purchased and made rest, made it possible to obtain, and he's the only one that can give it.

And therefore we find that there's a divine verdict given in the 13th verse. And what is that verdict? It says, the end of all flesh is come before me. We turn to the New Testament in John 3, 6, and 7, and he says that which is born of the flesh is the long before then, in the 6th of Genesis, he has said that the end of all flesh is come before me.

Over there, then, in John, he just corroborates what he said in Genesis. That which is of the flesh is flesh. Whatever is born of the flesh can't be anything better than the flesh. It can't lift itself above its own level.

Therefore, if only we could get that across, not only to the unsaved, but to the Christian. The flesh is always the flesh, and it can't be improved upon. God has said as much through the Scripture. And so we find that the only remedy is in the next verse, 7th verse of the 3rd of John, Marvel not that I said unto thee ye must be born again.

That's why I want to take up these early chapters, so that you can see that what we know so familiarly in the New Testament is really not new. It's something that has been prepared for and established through the histories of man from the very beginning, and that there is no remedy for the flesh.

May I say this? A Christian is not an improved man or woman. There's no improvement by Christianity, strictly speaking. That person who is born again is a new person, and that's the idea of birth. That there is no past.

And a newly born person, newly born again, he is beginning as a babe in the Lord Jesus Christ. A babe in the Word of God. And begins absolutely new. August Ben Lyon had one of his little infant babies in his arms one time.

I expect he's mentioned it to you though. But anyway, he had one of these newborn babies in his arms one day, and of his own. And somebody came to him and said, well, how old is the child? And in his own cute way, he said, how old?

Why, well, bless you, it's brand new. How old? It is no old about it. And so it's brand new. New birth, my friend, is not a patched up thing or an improved thing. That the man who's now newly born is going to be a better man.

He's going to be a new man in Christ. He's going to live a new life. He's going to live after a new pattern. He's going to have a new standard. He's going to have a new textbook. He's going to have a new guide, a new path, a new position.

A new destiny. He's going to seek to please not himself. The flesh can't do anything else but try to please itself. But now, when we are born again, we are, we forget to try to please ourselves. We want to please him who has saved us and won us for himself.

And when a Christian continues to try to please the flesh, well, you've got a mixed medley now. And I'm telling you, he's the one who's going to cause himself and a lot of others a lot more trouble. Because he's going to have a muddled up life.

He's got new standards to live for, but he goes back to his old habits. And so he's going to be a bad testimony, to say the least. David is an example of that. When, as it says, when it was the time when kings should have gone to war, he was looking around at the people in his neighborhood.

And became envious of a man because of his beautiful wife. And then brought in sadness and sorrow for the rest of his days and all other people's days. The whole Bible is a testimony against his conduct.

And yet today, people always bring up David's character. But my friends, it was because David was then acting in the energy of the flesh. Seeking to gratify the flesh. Seeking to respond to the old nature.

But David, on the other hand, like every child of God, had another nature altogether different. And that other nature he was neglecting. But may God keep us from failing, from failing to see the lesson.

Otherwise we'll fall too. It just isn't likely for a Christian to fall just like David today, as he did then. And so it's well to realize that the end of all flesh has been brought up before the highest tribunal in the universe.

God says, I'm through with it. Now, our best policy is to be through with it too. That's what this pool's for. In the picture of baptism, you are burying that which is corrupt. And when a thing becomes corrupt, then it becomes violent.

Corruption, Violence, and the Human Condition

Corruption always precedes violence. People say, well, most of these people that are committing crimes, the way they try to get away from the guilt of it. Violence is preceded by corruption of the mind.

Corruption of the heart, and of the thoughts, and of the life. And corruption becomes, comes as a result of disobedience to God. And a turning away from his rule for life. There's a step, these are steps downwards.

They're not all arrived at in the moment of time, and suddenly and uncontrollably possessed with a desire to kill. Oh no, it's a process. And so we find the scriptures here bring that before us in very, very clear style.

Look in the 12th verse, and God looked upon, this is the 6th of Genesis, looked upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt. Same in the 11th verse, the earth also was corrupt before God. And, as a result, the earth was filled with violence.

They murdered them. Why? Well, let's turn to what scripture says. Let's go to Job. Job is the oldest book in the Bible, you probably know chronologically. And it describes the conditions of men's minds before the flood, at the time that we are reading about.

So that we go to Job for information concerning the conditions existing in the minds of men. And God has not left us without a witness about it. He says, 5th verse, pardon me, thank you, the 21st chapter of Job.

Thank you very much. Anytime I miss that, please, please call out. My wife isn't here, but she always gets after me after the meeting. That's too late. So call out, please. I'm getting too old. I guess some of these days I'll never be able to give my name and address at all anymore.

But the 21st chapter of Job, beginning at verse 5, Mark me, and be astonished, and lay your hand upon your mouth. Even when I remember, I am afraid, and trembling take hold of my flesh. Wherefore do the wicked live?

Wherefore do the wicked live? Become old, yea, are mighty in power. Their seed is established in their sight with them. And their offspring before their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear. This is before the flood, mind you.

Neither is the rod of God upon them. Their bull gendereth, and faileth not. Their cow calveth, and casteth not her calf. They send forth their little ones like a flock, and their children dance. They seem to be so happy.

They take the timbrel and the harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ. They spend their days in wealth. And in a moment the floods go down to the grave. Therefore they say unto God, depart from us.

For we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. What is the Almighty that we should serve him? And what profit should we have if we pray unto him? Now that's the attitude of their mind. That's what they thought of God.

They were atheistic, rebellious. Consequently being corrupt. Which that is why they became violent. Murder and every other kind of shameful sin was perpetrated in that day. And so we thank God that there is a remedy, don't you, don't we?

The New Birth and the Inability of the Flesh to Please God

He says it being born again. Not of corruptible seed. 1 Peter 1 verse 23. But not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God which liveth and abideth forever. For all flesh is as grass, the glory of man as the flower of grass.

Flesh. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. The end of all flesh has come before me. Put all these scriptures together in your thinking and you get a bible-wide principle of truth that will sweep from one book to another.

And then the testimony of the scriptures becomes a corroboration of the teachings of the gospel. Then you can stand on firm foundation and declare the truth. That man, according to the flesh, is like grass.

It grows up, it looks pretty, but before long the sun comes and withers it up. And the beauty of its flower is going to perish. There's nothing lasting, nothing of true value about it. The grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth away.

Then in the 8th of Romans, so then they that are of the flesh cannot please God. Cannot please God in the flesh. But in, and in Isaiah 64 6, we find this statement, we are all as an unclean thing and our righteousnesses are as filthy rags and we all do faith as a leaf and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away.

And so, unsaved man or woman, this puts an end to all so-called good life, being good, as we call it. How can an unsaved man be good when it says the man in the flesh cannot please God? So it isn't on the basis of merit, this whole grand question, it's a question of God's plan of remedy.

If I am in my dilemma, if I realize it, if you'll realize it, I have, thank God, in a measure, but if you'll realize it, unsaved friend here tonight, I hope there's some here unsaved because I'm anxious to be a help to you to see the basis of the reasons that we state that you need a savior for.

You need Christ as your personal savior because you are hopelessly involved in a condition from which there is no escape, humanly speaking. You are born of a natural birth, you'll agree, and that natural birth of yours gives you no hope in yourself of attaining to heaven.

You are already unfit for the presence of God. Flesh is what brand you so. You are born that way, and therefore it needs the remedy God gives. Now we see that after the divine verdict, the end of all flesh has come before me, now he gives us a divine plan in verse 14.

The Ark as a Picture of Christ's Salvation

Make thee an ark of gopher wood. Rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. There's the remedy. God is gracious, he tempers his grace and mercy with his judgment.

He tells that sin has brought man to absolute violence. He's not going to do with flesh anymore. He's not going to deal with flesh. He doesn't deal with you as a man in the flesh. He wants to deal with you in the person of Jesus Christ.

He wants you to come to him and find in him that new life by a new birth that will begin to live for him and serve and glorify and honor him. And thus we see that this wonderful plan of salvation is so beautifully presented in the New Testament.

The antitype of this ark. Look at it this way. If God doesn't provide himself, if God himself doesn't provide a remedy for the situation, then even Noah will have to perish. Do we get the importance of that thought?

Because if God doesn't provide a remedy for our condition today, then all of us are lost. For there is not two remedies, there's only one. And that one is through the person of Jesus Christ and his provision made by his death and vicarious sufferings and shed blood on Calvary's cross.

Apart from that, we'd all be hopelessly lost. There is no other way. Not by being good or being a member of the church or turning over a new leaf, as we often say, nor be keeping the Sermon on the Mount or the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule and what have you.

Put it all together and it won't give you one ounce of satisfaction, not one moment's peace, not a moment's rest of heart before God. You're guilty, sinful, unfit for the presence of God, and it's good to know it.

It's like going to a diagnotician, a doctor who can diagnose your situation, your physical condition, and he gives you the answer. Like I heard a friend, in fact it's my own son-in-law, said in a letter that he was going this evening to hear the verdict.

He'd had several x-rays and the searching of the doctor and his physical condition and various analyses of his body, and now tonight I'm going to hear the verdict. And so he's going to hear what he expects to be the truth.

Though it may be painful, it may be unpleasant, it may be something he's dreaded, but nevertheless he's going to hear the verdict. But nevertheless, my friend, that's a friend. He, if he can possibly be successful in discovering what's wrong, and faithfully and honestly tells you what it is and doesn't deceive you, there is a slight hope of recovery, so that you'll recover your strength and health again because he told you the truth and applied the remedy.

And so God has been faithful in giving the verdict. I've got no use for the flesh. I won't deal with the flesh. There's no hope in the flesh. I'll have to introduce something altogether new, and so make me an ark of wood and pitch it within and without with pitch.

And so he did. God gave them 120 years to build the ark, and while he was building the ark to preach, preach righteousness and declare the gospel of the grace of God at that day, that there was going to be a structure here that was going to rise above the waters.

Now, of course, doubtless, people appealed to the best minds of the day and said, well, what do you think of Noah's project down there? Don't you think, well, what do you think? I'd like to know your opinion.

You're a skilled man, a scientist, or whatever it might have been. Do you know what he's doing? Yes, I know what he's doing, all right, but I think he's playing crazy. Why, there's never been a drop of water fall from heaven, and the idea of enough water to raise that thing up on the top of the water seems out of all proportion to sense and sane thinking.

Ah, but then God had spoken, and that makes all the difference. Though there had never been a drop of rain up till this time from heaven, and no flooding, but just the atmosphere rises like it does in Florida with a heavy dew in the morning, saturates everything, and I'm not saying we don't have rain, but I mean that that's the way oftentimes we get our moisture for months on end, because in the morning there's that moisture rising out of the ground, covering the whole area like a thick fog, and then leaves beads of water on things within reach for half a day.

And so we see then that God has given a remedy here, and it's a remedy that is practical. You take your hammer and saw and build an ark, and then when it was finished it says, and the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark.

Christ's Invitation to Refuge and Rest

Now we get the divine invitation. Come. He wants us to know that that's the invitation that stands upon his lips all through this dispensation since the death of Christ. Since God has a foundation upon which he can build hope for you, for salvation, in the person of his Son he says now, Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

So it's pictured for us here. Come thou, and notice, all thy house, for God saves in families. That's his desire. He wants to save the whole family, and so that's the picture here, as it was in the is in the 12th of Exodus.

A land for a house, in Exodus for Israel. So here, Come thou and all thy house into the ark, for thee ownest it for me in this generation. And so it came to pass after seven days the waters of the flood were upon the earth.

Never mind what scientists said about it being ridiculous. It never has happened. All through the 2 ,000 years that man has been on earth it's never happened before. But that's no proof it's not going to happen.

God said that he's going to burn this earth up with a fervent heat, and people have been saying, Well, that's impossible. You can't burn the earth up. That's ridiculous. Now they find they can. Even man can.

They tell us that the hole that last hydrogen bomb created where the island was, the hole in the bottom of the sea is something beyond description as to its size. They've been over it in a helicopter, as you probably know.