The Grief of God

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service.

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This is a message from the series Beginning with God, Walking Through the Book of Genesis by Pastor of Teaching and Vision, Don Filcic.

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If you'd like to learn more about Recast or access our sermon archive, please visit us at recastchurch .com.

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Here's Pastor Don. With all that announcement out of the way, I want to turn our focus to the

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Genesis chapter 6. You can find that on page 4 in the Bible that's in the seat back in front of you.

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So if you take that Bible out, you can turn to page 4 and follow along as we read the entirety of Genesis chapter 6.

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And this is the Word of God to us this morning, the first four verses seeming like a strange word from the Lord to us, but let's dig in.

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When man began to multiply on 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. His days shall be one hundred and twenty years.

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The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man, and they bore children to them.

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These were the mighty men of old, the men of renowned. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the heart of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

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And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the

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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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But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation.

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Noah walked with God, and Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence.

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And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their ways on the earth. And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them.

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Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood.

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Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it, the length of the ark, 300 cubits, its breadth, 550 cubits, and its height, 30 cubits.

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Make a roof for the ark and finish it to a cubit above and set the door of the ark in its side. Make it with lower second and third decks.

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For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven.

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Everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you.

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And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you.

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They shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive.

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Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten and store it up. It shall serve as food for you and for them.

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Noah did this. He did all that God commanded him. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the chance that we have to gather together in your name.

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Thank you for what you're doing here in our midst and in our community and making your renowned great, making a name for yourself here in this community.

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Father, I pray that you would continue to do so, not just growing us in numbers, width -wise, but growing us deeper in you.

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Father, I pray that as we encounter you in your word that you would bring comfort to those who need comfort, challenge to those who need challenge.

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Father, I recognize that we have come from a variety of different weeks, many struggling and hurting and suffering this week, and going through hardship and difficulty and bad news.

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And then some have had just a really good week and good news and positive things going on. Father, I pray that you would meet us all right where we are.

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And I praise you for your spirit that dwells in us and is able to convict us and draw us out and bring us to a deeper relationship with you through your word.

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We read a passage this morning that is ancient, that has some difficulties in interpreting. And Father, I pray that you would make it come alive to us in a way that demonstrates your grace and your mercy and your compassion.

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I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks a lot for leading us in worship.

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I really appreciate that. And there's great perspective in that last song about the shift in the way that we think about God and who he actually is.

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Sometimes there's a difference there. I want you to make sure you get comfortable. You can get up, get juice, get coffee, get donuts anytime during the message.

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I know we just took a break, but you might need that before the end of this. So take advantage of it. Bathrooms are back here.

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Genesis chapter 6, be sure that you have your Bibles open to that as well so that you can kind of see the flow of this text as we move through.

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Now I want to point out something just from the get -go. I had a theology professor in college that just could not, would not let this go.

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Every quiz had a question, had the same question on every test that he gave us for the entire semester, had the exact same question on it in some form or some way, and it always ended up being this.

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Context is king when it comes to interpreting Scripture. When it comes to understanding what the text is saying, you always want to take it in its context and figure out what came before and what came after before you ever begin the process of trying to interpret what it is.

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Because how many of you know that when you write something, when an author writes a book, they tie things together.

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They're tied together. Paragraphs, sentences, chapters, they have some kind of a linkage between them.

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There's some intention or some flow to it. And so context is important and it's very, that highlights the way that I'm going to interpret

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Genesis chapter 6, one through four. That principle of context is king in our text this morning is very important because the first four verses of this passage have been highly controversial with a variety of different understandings.

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As a matter of fact, you could go back and hear a sermon that was preached here just a few months ago on this passage and we might not see eye to eye on that.

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If you were to go back and kind of compare the notes from that sermon to the notes from this sermon, there might be some differences as I think you're going to see.

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But I think that when this text is taken in the context of chapter 5, which we just talked about a couple weeks ago, we begin to see better what in the world is going on in this very strange passage.

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How many of you are familiar with this passage? Sons of God coming down and taking wives among the daughters of man and you probably already have some kind of a preconceived notion about what's going on if you are familiar with the passage at all.

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Verse one reminds us of what's been going on. So we know that this ties into context. Some scholars have tried their best to see a very hard and fast difference between chapter 5 and now we're going on to chapter 6 and something different is going on, but that's not the case.

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Verse one ties in with what's going on with this genealogy that we saw in the last chapter.

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When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them. We're seeing context here.

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We're seeing a tying back into the lineages that we saw, the genealogies, one being of Cain, the guy who did not demonstrate faith in God, brought a sacrifice without faith, therefore rejected by God, and his line went down passing on a faithless attitude towards God, a distrust of God on down through generations.

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On the other side we saw a guy named Abel who was killed by his brother and Seth was born to his mom and was a replacement, if you will, for Abel according to the text.

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And so that man Seth, we saw his lineage and one of faith, that is not perfection, that is not that they lived wholly and completely without any sin, but that that line was passing on from generation to generation, a trust in God saying,

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God is actually a good guy. He's actually on your side and he wants to fix things and he's making a plan to fix things.

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So that's really the two lines that we saw, I'm contrasted, two weeks ago.

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So people are multiplying on the earth, daughters are being born to them, and verse two is now where the controversy has been focused because in verse two we encounter two groups of people that are undefined, the sons of God and the daughters of man.

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Who are these people? We find out very little about them. The daughters of man, we know that they're attractive according to the text, and the sons of God took them as their wives, any that they wanted.

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So who are they and what are they doing here in Genesis? And in context it's going to become clear that this is seen as a wicked and detestable thing, that these sons of God would take these daughters of man is detestable.

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It's a bad thing that's going on and it's going to serve at some level as justification for the flood. So this passage verses one through four has a little bit of a hinge point between these genealogies and a flood and we're looking at basically a case study of how wicked things have become.

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And it's going to serve as the reason for judgment on who? Mankind.

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So it makes sense for us to see some type of sin of mankind in this text.

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Would you agree with me on that? Who has sinned that they're going to be judged by a flood? Mankind has done evil and wicked in this.

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Now some are going to interpret here angels, that the sons of God are angels.

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And I have to confess that the viewpoint that I'm going to present to you this morning, my take and my interpretation of this, has some linguistic problems to it.

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Because the phrase sons of God is used two or three times in the book of Job and it refers very clearly to angels.

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So linguistically it would kind of make sense if you see some passage other place in scripture where that phrase sons of God equals angels then it's understandable.

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Would you understand why some people have interpreted this as angels in the text? You guys, does that make sense to you to some degree?

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But where I have linguistic problems with mine, somebody to say that these are angels that are taking wives among the daughters of men is going to have a theological issue.

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There's a theological problem that's significant. So let me share with you some of the problems with interpreting these sons of God as angels.

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By the way we're going to get past this and we're going to get on to some other things but I just think it's important for us to understand some of these things.

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Our biggest problem with this should be that Jesus himself said in the book of Matthew and in the book of Mark, both of them recording the same incident, he said the angels do not marry nor are they given in marriage, definitively.

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So to say that these are angels it's very clear in the Hebrew text that this is marriage that's being talked about.

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They took wives for themselves. In order to call these angels and say these are angels marrying women, you kind of have to disagree with Jesus on this one.

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And so I'm not going to do that in this situation. Jesus says that angels don't get married.

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Another problem with this is that humanity is punished for this. So it's not that the angels have,

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I mean the angels have sinned and they took wives for themselves and then God's going to punish the people for it.

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That's kind of a little bit dicey. Lastly there's a problem with the title that's given to them. Most people who interpret these as angels interpret them as fallen angels.

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Would you agree with me on that? They're doing something evil, they're doing something wicked, they're coming down and marrying these women and there's going to be judgment for it and all that.

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Then why the title sons of God? Does that seem like a pretty lofty title for these beings who are doing evil and wicked in the eyes of God to call them sons of God?

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Anywhere else that we see the phrase sons of God throughout scripture it's a positive title, a good thing.

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I believe that by the context the sons of God refers to men from the lineage of faith that we saw in the last chapter.

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That is that they are male leaders from the line of Seth. Now Seth being the one where father to son, father to son, they're working and striving to pass on faith to their children.

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But the daughters of man refer to the female descendants of Cain. Where do I get that from? I get that from context.

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I assume that Moses as the author of this is not all of a sudden just ripping us out of the context and going, okay by the way there were some angels that married people.

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Do you see how that's kind of an abrupt shift in the text versus telling us there's these two lines and then this one was exiled from the presence of God and lacked faith and this one was exhibiting faith and now down through the lineage they're bringing back these exiled people who are worshiping that which is not

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God and who are opposing God and they're starting to intermarry again. Do you see how that ties into the context?

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How that filters into demonstrating how wicked the world was coming? Even those of faith were falling into depravity by marrying these other people who didn't have faith.

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The sons of God were actually taking for themselves wives and I think that you look at this and you see that they saw them as beautiful, they saw them as pretty and so therefore they took them based on that and not based on faith.

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They found them attractive and they judged by looks rather than faith and then therefore produced unholy offspring.

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The Lord declares in verse 3 that his patience will not last forever. He is patient but his spirit will not put up with.

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A way to translate in verse 3 there, then the Lord said my spirit will not abide in.

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There's another potential translation for that. You'll see that probably in your footnotes. My spirit shall not contend with.

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My spirit will not put up with man forever. He does give a time for repentance.

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God is patient but here he sets out a time limit of 120 years before the judgment is coming.

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Now in context what is the judgment that is coming? The judgment that is coming is the flood and so this is like verse 3 is like the warning of Jonah to the

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Ninevites. 40 more days and then comes judgment. Here he says 120 years and then comes judgment.

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I'm not going to put up with this junk forever. He's patient. He's enduring in the times of the flood but he's saying from the time that this was given to them 120 years and then judgment is coming.

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So it's just like God to give a warning and say judgment is looming. How many of you know that a judgment day is coming?

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How do you know that? Because God has graciously been patient with us and has told us through his word that judgment is coming.

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So he hasn't given us the time frame yet but he said it's on the way. In verse 4 we encounter the

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Nephilim. All kinds of things in this passage that are just like what is going on here? Nephilim.

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This is not an ethnicity but more a category of people. The reason I say that is because it says in the text they were there in these days and afterwards.

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What's going to happen after these times? There's going to be a worldwide flood. So if you have Nephilim mentioned before the flood and Nephilim mentioned after the flood, do you see how it's impossible for that to be an ethnicity?

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Because what's going to happen in the flood? Everybody's going to get wiped out. So the

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Nephilim is more of a category of person. It's really a type of person and I think that that bears itself out in the text.

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Think like pagan or wicked evil warrior king. If a person was a wicked evil warrior king then they were a

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Nephilim. The word literally means fallen ones. It does not mean giants. There's been an unfortunate translation down through the ages that started with a dude named

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Jerome who translated the Old Testament into Latin and he knowingly translated the word gigantes there for Nephilim meaning gigantor.

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Giant is the word that he translated into Latin and therefore down through the ages everybody's assumed and interpreted.

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Now were these some of these guys tall according to the book of Numbers? Yeah some of them were huge but I don't think it was necessary for a person to be huge to be called a

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Nephilim. I don't think it was synonymous with large big boned dude or 10 footer or something like that.

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That's not synonymous with Nephilim. It's fallen one. That's the translation of this word.

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One who has fallen and there's also the we see in the text there's something about them being mighty and powerful probably tribal rulers.

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They were men of renown according to the text. Renown shows that these Nephilim had a main interest in their own name.

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They were making someone famous namely themselves. Ironically I think there's a tendency for all of us if we think about Nephilim as a category of person there's the tendency in all of us and in our culture to kind of morph into Nephilim.

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We are a culture that values power. Would you agree with me on that? Do we? You guys awake?

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We value power. We value renowned. We value fame. We value popularity.

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Look online what people are willing to do for their 15 minutes of fame. It's pretty obnoxious. Would you agree with me on that?

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People will do all kinds of crazy, bizarre, strange, sick, horrible things for their fame.

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Maybe the better word is notoriety but that's the type of culture that we live in.

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We want our children to be strongest, fastest, smartest and in the process of teaching our children to grow up to be big and strong we forget that the path to greatness is humility.

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How do we teach our children humility? How are we passing on to another generation humility when all we're trying to do is get them to be the fastest, to get them to be the smartest, to get them to be the strongest and to give them the greatest opportunity to succeed and become, oh wait, we might fall short of saying become

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Nephilim, right? To be strong, to be self -dependent, to take care of yourself.

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What are we communicating to our families, to our children, to the generation that is coming up?

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Are we teaching and training our kids to be Nephilim? I believe Nephilim are alive and well today.

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Fallen ones, mighty and full of their own renown, living for their own name, their own glory.

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And really verses 5 through 8 are the core text this morning. Verses 1 through 4 have bridged the genealogy to what we see now in verse 5 where we find perhaps the most clear and definitive statement about human sinfulness in the entire

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Old Testament. Very, very clear. Only rivaled by maybe Romans chapter 3 in the entirety of Scripture as far as declaring the complete and utter sinfulness of the human race.

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The Lord, look at how it starts in verse 5. The Lord saw, let's just stop there for just a second.

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The Lord saw. Does the Lord see? Is the Lord watching? Is he observing?

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He was observing then and he is still observing now. He's watching. And the wickedness of mankind was great and every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

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Whoa. It's like the author gets carried away here. Maybe you could add some more extreme descriptive words in here.

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He uses the word great, every, only, continually. And notice that the center point of this indictment is the heart, the heart of mankind.

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It is not merely behavior that is being addressed here. It doesn't say that God looked down and saw people doing bad things and said, bummer, they're all doing bad stuff.

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He looks down and he sees what's going on in our heads. He looks down and he sees what's going on in our hearts.

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Anybody a little nervous at the thought that he sees what's going on in your heads and he sees what's going on in your hearts?

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And God accurately, truthfully, in righteousness diagnoses our problem.

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And it's not just a behavior problem. And in diagnosing the problem that every intention of the heart, the thoughts of our hearts are only evil continually.

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I want you to consider this question. How does religion solve the problem that you and I have a corrupt and broken and sin -filled, sin -cursed heart?

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Start doing good things, right? That's going to solve the heart. Not going to take care of the problem that's in you. Just start doing some good stuff.

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It does not solve the problem of the heart. Replacing the heart is our only hope. We need heart replacement.

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That's it. We need surgery, not behavioral reform. I mean, imagine the scenario, the situation, you've got 90 % blockage in all of your arteries.

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I don't even know if that's possible and still be alive. Maybe one of the doctors could tell me. Could you have 90 % blockage and still be alive in all of your heart arteries?

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But you're sitting there and you're on the table and you're talking with your doctor and you're kind of like, you know, he's ordering up surgery.

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We're going to go in and we're going to open your chest and we're going to get this taken care of because you need some bypasses like yesterday.

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And you, in a feeble voice, say, I promise, just a little bit of diet and exercise.

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I promise, I promise that I will eat right and I will exercise. Just don't open me up.

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I don't want this surgery. I don't need a new heart. All I need is just some reform.

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Is that going to solve the problem? The doctor's already ordering up surgery because behavioral change will not remedy the problem.

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And that's the way it is for our hearts if we're honest with ourselves. Our hearts are sin -cursed.

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Every intention of our thoughts, like the purpose behind our thoughts are corrupt.

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Have any of you ever experienced that level of seeing that in yourself? Like even going, well, my motive here is to do good.

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Well, but maybe it has a little bit of like making myself look better than I am in it. Have you ever gone to that level where it's not just the behavior, but then it's like thinking about the behavior, but then the reason you're thinking about the behavior.

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Like it's multiple levels of corruption inside of us. Are you guys relating to that? Does that make sense to you?

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And so we have a deeper problem here. And then look at the heart of God. We're going to see here in verse six.

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Because many of you, the way you were raised, expect verse six to read something different than it does.

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I confess that if you were raised like I was, then you might anticipate verse six should say something different than it does.

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You would expect it to read something like this if you were raised with me. And the Lord was angry with his people.

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And he set forth a vindictive plan of revenge on his people to wipe them from the face of the planet because they were not worthy of him.

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You understand what I'm saying? The expectation that in his anger, in his grave and severe wrath, he's going to destroy the human race.

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Open your eyes, Recast. Open your eyes to verse six and seven and behold our

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God. The Lord was sorry that he made mankind.

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And it grieved him to his God, the creator, the one who made mankind, the one who placed him in the guard, the one who cherished him, the one who said it was good, good, very good.

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That God is now in our text, grieved. He's broken hearted over us.

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Maybe a little bit different than the motivation you were thinking for the reason that he might blot out the earth and start over again.

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Is there room for your God to be sad? Is there room for your father, your heavenly father to grieve?

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Now, I want to be careful to say that God is never surprised, but surprised does not equal grief.

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You see, our human condition, because we're finite, often surprise compounds grief.

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Would you agree with me on that? Sometimes it's the very nature that we're surprised by the phone call that says, no, you need to come in to hear the test results.

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I'm not going to talk with you about this one over the phone. Do you see how, I mean, surprise compounds that, right? You're expecting a clean bill of health.

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Of course, the test is going to come back fine. No, you need to come in on this one. Or we're surprised when the police show up at our door with horrendous news.

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Or surprise, you're laid off indefinitely. Surprise compounds it, but that's not equal to the grief.

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Knowing someone is dying does not reduce the grief when you love that person, does not reduce the grief when they actually pass on.

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Would you agree with me on that? You might know that the end is near and still kind of go, this is, it still hurts.

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And God's knowledge of how things are going to go, and I believe he's sovereign, I believe he knows how things are going to go, it doesn't change his ability to feel grief and sorrow.

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Our God created us, our God cherished us, our God blessed us, he built the garden for us, he gave us abundance, and we royally messed it all up.

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And look at verse 7, it is out of sorrow that judgment is promised, it is not out of vindictive, stick -it -to -us kind of anger.

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He will erase mankind by washing them away. The word blot is a water word in Hebrew, it foreshadows the way that this is all going to go down, it's of an appropriate term.

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But as dark and deep as this sorrow goes, the sorrow of our God, there's hope found in God's choice of Noah.

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You see that in verse 8, and this is very key, there is hope in that choice. Theologians make much of the word found there, now you see it in chapter 8.

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Even this morning, I took a little bit of time in my office to double check and double check and double check and make sure

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I'm right on this, but Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. The word found there is a theologically loaded word, it's a significant word.

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If you get this verb wrong, you misunderstand the entire book of Noah. As a matter of fact, I would dare say that most children's books,

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I'm going to get there here in a second, most children's books miss the story of Noah because they don't understand this very word found.

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The word allows no room for boasting in Noah. It allows no room for Noah being awesome and super sweet and God going,

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I love him and I'm going to choose him because he is so good, he is so right, he is so awesome.

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The word actually means to stumble upon something, to meet someone by accident.

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It's like Noah is walking out in the field and he stumbled upon the favor of God, he tripped it, just fell, oh there was some favor there.

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Do you get the picture? Do you see the word picture? He found it by God's grace, by God's mercy, a gift.

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Did Noah deserve it? He didn't. Was he more righteous than most in his generation?

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According to the next verse, yes, he was. And it's by comparison, but was he righteous as in a perfect human who deserved

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God's mercy and grace? No. No, not at all. And the word favor in our text is just as easily translated grace.

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Noah stumbled upon the grace of God and Noah by faith and trust finds that gracious relationship with God.

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And again I say at this point the children's stories go awry. And if you get this verb wrong, you misapply the story and by the end it ends up being so skewed.

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So the children's stories usually start with verse 9 and make some assumptions. Verse 9 stating, these are the generations of Noah.

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Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation, it's important for us to remember that, and Noah walked with God.

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So the children's stories go, Noah was righteous and blameless, so God liked him. He saw Noah's awesomeness, picked

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Noah because of his awesomeness, had him build a boat, scrubbed the history hard drive after making Noah a system restore point because he was awesome.

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And therefore the kids book application is, act like Noah.

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That's a heart message for you right there. Just be like Noah and you'll be okay. No, that runs counter to the consistent message from scripture that none deserve the grace of God.

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And that's why I believe it is with significant intention that verse 8 precedes verse 9.

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It is not, he was blameless and righteous and therefore God, he found favor in God's eyes.

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He found favor in God's eyes, therefore he was righteous and blameless. Do you see how that goes different?

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Is there a big difference there? He is declared righteous and blameless because of his faith in God and God loves him and that makes him blameless and righteous.

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It's interesting to note that the kids stories always end at the rainbow, maybe a little bit before, but at least they go through, you know, usually go through the rainbow, but never on to the drunken raunchiness naked

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Noah after the man.

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Don't tell your kids to live like Noah because they might read the rest of the story. Okay. You know what I'm saying?

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He was a sinner. So look, so check out Hebrews 11, seven. If you can throw that one up there for me, it tells us this by faith,

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Noah being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen. He hadn't seen him, but he heard about him from God.

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And he's trusting in it in reverent fear. He constructed an arc for the saving of his household by this.

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He condemned the world and he became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith comes by his blamelessness comes by his righteousness came by his super sweet, awesome obedience, getting

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God's attention because I'm all that in a bag of chips, faith, a righteousness that comes by faith, not by doing good things.

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So what about verse nine? Doesn't verse nine say he was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. But I want to point out that righteousness and blamelessness are two things that are so much more than behavioral.

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Righteousness is never just doing good things. Cain did good things.

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We all agreed on that. When I preached on Cain and Abel, Cain brought a sacrifice to the Lord of the abundance of his crops.

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He did good, but his heart wasn't good. He wasn't trusting

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God. Noah had a heart that longed after God.

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He had a heart that had faith in God. And it's telling that at the end of verse nine, we see that he walked with God just like Enoch.

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He had a relationship with God based on trust, and he has declared blameless and righteous because of his heart change being changed from the inside out.

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And the real wonder to me in this, the real amazing glory in this passage, and the real glory in the application to you or me is that I am righteous and blameless just like Noah.

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And any of you sitting here who are in Christ Jesus are blameless and righteous just like Noah by faith.

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It is not saying that we need to strive to be more like Noah, to act like Noah, to be good enough to get

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God's attention. No, if you are in Christ, you will one day stand before his throne righteously and blameless with no mention of your sin.

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He has cast your sin as far as the east is from the west if you are in Christ. Does that give anybody else chills?

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Anybody else engaged in that and excited and enthusiastic about that? I really need an amen here. Thank you.

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Thank you. I needed that. I hear that you guys are into this here. It's astonishing to me.

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It's mind -blowing. It's senseless in one way. I can't wrap my mind around that God sees me as blameless and righteous, but he does.

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And I take that by faith because of what Jesus Christ has done. And I want to point out that Noah trusting that God was going to provide for his salvation was justified based on that trust that God was going to work things out.

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I don't know how much he understood of the cross, how much he really got of grace. I think maybe more than we even assume.

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I think that God, these guys who walked with God, Enoch who walked with God, I think they had conversations with God.

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I think they might have even had some good handle on what was going to come down in the New Testament. Verses 11 and 12 are going to add two things to the mix of human wickedness.

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We find that things had not just been corrupted by the human race, but that violence was common in these days.

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It's likely that these Nephilim, these warrior leaders, were violent clan leaders.

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Think like the mafia without the tommy guns. And they were violent.

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And God saw the earth and behold it was corrupt. We saw the same sentence structure multiple times through Genesis chapter 1.

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But there God looked on the earth and he saw that it was good, good and very good. But here he looks down upon the earth and he sees that it is corrupt.

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It has been spoiled. And God lets Noah in on his plans that he's going to destroy all flesh.

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God commands Noah to build an ark. The only other context where we see the word ark in Hebrew in that language is for the basket that the baby

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Moses is going to be placed in to protect him in the flood. I mean not in the flood, this is the flood, in the

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Nile. So he's going to be placed in the Nile in an ark. And that's the same Hebrew word. So obviously, would you agree with me that the

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Hebrew word for ark has some stretch to it? A little bit? This is going to be a pretty big basket.

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It's going to be able to handle all the animals, all animal kinds and the humans. There's not enough detail to recreate this ark.

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Now how many of you knew that there's an attempt going on for fundraising at the Creation Museum in Kentucky where they're planning on doing this ark encounter?

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They're going to actually build a life -size replica of the ark. One thing that we know just from the details in Genesis, it won't look exactly like Noah's ark because we don't have enough detail to replicate it in its exactness, but we know that they can probably get pretty close to it.

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The interior was divided into various rooms and right then and there we don't know how the rooms were divided, how big they were, how much space or various sizes or whatever.

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It was made out of gopher wood. We don't even know what gopher wood is. Go look it up and try to find out what gopher wood is.

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Some think it's a way to process wood. Others have speculated that it's cypress wood, but we don't really even know necessarily what kind of wood it was.

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It was covered inside and out with bitumen, which is a naturally occurring tar that would bubble to the surface in the

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Middle East, still does in places. Think like tar pits, so they had access to this readily. This vessel is going to be 440 feet long, 73 feet wide, and 44 feet high.

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Three decks, close to 100 ,000 square feet. If you're like me and you just dig input and you enjoy research and stuff like that, then do a comparison between the

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Titanic and the Ark. If you Google search that, you'll get all kinds of comparisons between the two vessels.

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It's intriguing and interesting, but I decided not to share all that with you, time's sake.

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It's just one of those things that I do. Verse 16 seems to indicate a very subtle slope to the roof with a ventilation gap.

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How many of you would want some ventilation? Anybody ever been in a barn? Okay, you want some ventilation.

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Verse 17, it's clear that God intends for this to be a global and complete judgment on all creatures that breathe air on the earth.

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There's a lot of speculation, there's a lot of people who have gone back and forth about a local flood that happened in the

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Black Sea area during this time, and maybe that's what accounts for this or whatever. But read verse 17 with me, look at the text.

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For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh, in which is the breath of life under heaven, everything that is on the earth shall die.

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So if you're talking about, if there's evidence for, and I think there probably is evidence for a localized flood in the

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Black Sea area in ancient times, cool, that's not this flood. That's okay, there could be other floods.

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But this one is talking about a global catastrophe whereby every single thing that breathes air on the face of planet earth died, save those things that were in the ark.

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That's it. So actually, some of you who are scientific just thought the same thing as me.

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Not every single thing, because there are some things that are, like probably whales made it through, and they breathe air.

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So I don't know. That wasn't in my notes, I don't know, it just kind of came up in my mind. What we see in verse 18, here with Noah, God offers a covenant.

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A lot of people, again, telling the story of Noah missed this in verse 18.

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But I will establish my covenant, God speaking, whose covenant is this going to be?

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God's possessive, His covenant. With you, Noah, speaking directly to Noah, you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you.

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He's making an agreement with Noah and his family are the beneficiaries of that agreement. And God is covenanting, is agreeing to, is pledging to Noah.

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How many of you know that a covenant with God is never quite fair on both sides?

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A covenant with God always looks unilateral. He carries the lion's share of all covenants.

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Do you agree with me on that? And we see that no different in the covenant of grace that we live under now.

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He signed it, sealed it, ratified it, carried it to its completion, and is finishing it.

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That's the way God handles covenants. And He just takes Noah, hey Noah, come here,

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I got an agreement with you. And in verse 19 through 20, God makes provision for saving the animals, of course.

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Anybody who's read a children's story or been in Sunday school knows all about this. Verse 20, God tells

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Noah that the animals will come to Him to go into the ark. Noah didn't have to go around collecting animals. So I want to be clear with this.

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There are going to be a lot of aspects of this text, this really next week, that are going to require faith for us to accept.

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Animals all coming to the ark. Anybody? You have to take that by faith.

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Rains that cover the mountains, animals surviving inside a boat for a year. Even in verse 21,

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Noah is being told to store up food. And that's going to have to be a crazy amount of food to keep all of those animals alive for over a year.

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And check out verse 22. Noah did this. He did all that God commanded him.

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Faith, I want to point out, faith, trusting God, always leads to obedience.

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If you trust God, if you believe Him, if you're really cognitively engaged in your mind and you're thinking,

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I trust you God, then what kind of an impact is that going to have on your day -to -day, moment -by -moment life of sin or not sin, of your war and your battle against it?

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Trusting God as good, just, and holy leads us to obedience, but distrust and a lack of faith in God leads to living for self.

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Let me explain this to you in a different terminology. If I believe that God is going to work things out, that He has my best interest in mind, that He loves me, and then

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He tells me to not do X, whatever X is. So just get in your mind some sin, something that holds you a little bit, but you just kind of go,

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He loves me. Are you here where you see the starting point? Faith, trust, that God is good, that He loves you, that He wants what's best for you.

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And then He says, but don't do this, then are you going to, if you're really trusting

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Him, are you going to do X? Are you getting what I'm saying? Because trust leads to obedience.

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You say, I really think that He really wants what's best for me, and therefore this is not good. This is not healthy, this is not wholesome.

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But distrust leads to disobedience in this way. If you say, God, you don't really have my best interest in mind.

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I don't really trust you. I don't really think that you're working things out. And then He says, don't do this. You go, well, you're just trying to hold me down.

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You don't really believe that this is bad for you. Think about how that impacted Eve in the garden. All it took was the serpent saying,

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God doesn't really know what He's talking about. Do you see how the level of distrust with Eve affected her taking the fruit?

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Are you getting what I'm saying in that? So the starting point for a proper understanding of the battle with sin is a place of faith, of believing that God has your best interest in mind.

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Now, it's not a guarantee. I see some of your faces kind of going, I'm struggling with sin, I'm working through this. It's not like, okay, well, if I just start with faith, then

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I'm going to end up becoming perfect in this life. That's not what I'm saying. But it certainly is the starting point for the battle with sin in your life is a place of faith and trust that God is good and has your best interest in mind, and that He is working all of this out to a good end.

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So what we've seen this week is really the setup for the flood. The case has been made in the text against humanity.

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There's wickedness, there's violence, and every thought flavored by evil continually. All of humanity has a corrupted heart that in turn corrupts others.

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And God looks down with sorrow. And as strange as it sounds, we are meant to see grace in this text.

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A God who is heartbroken over what He sees. And we know what's coming. He's going to wash it all away and refresh the planet.

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And He selected one specific man. He gave 120 years in patience from His revelation that this was going to go down.

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And we see how humanity responds to this warning next week. They have 120 years, I said 120 days, 120 years to repent and to turn.

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And we're going to see, I think you know how the story goes. I don't want to spoil it for anybody. But we'll see. We'll see if they repent next week.

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We now sit at a place thousands of years from the pre -flood wickedness that we see in this text. And we are just like that generation.

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The Nephilim are here in our generation and in our era. And our intentions and our thoughts are desperately wicked.

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Would you agree with me on that? And once again, God is raising up His people to proclaim

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His coming judgment. But also to declare His generous patience. His new covenant and His new hope.

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And now rather than a boat, salvation from this ultimate judgment is found in a man.

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And the new covenant of God is simply this. Anyone who will acknowledge Jesus Christ as King and ask

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Him to save them will have eternal life. We will slide through the judgment like the ark weathering the storms of judgment in that day.

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Because Jesus Christ, in essence, is our ark. Our protection from the cleansing justice of our grieved

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God. And we take communion each week to remember how He has passed over our sins.

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He took judgment, the judgment that we deserved and poured it out on His own Son that we might be set free.

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That we might be declared righteous and blameless. So if you've asked Jesus to save you, then

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I'd encourage you to take the juice and remember the blood of Jesus shed for you. To take the cracker and remember the body of Jesus broken for you.

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God has been grieved by our sin. But those under the protection of His Son will never experience the wind and waves of His fierce righteous judgment.

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Therefore, my final application to all of you, Recast, is to rejoice.

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Rejoice that God has set up a way for you and me to make it through the storm of His judgment.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you. I hear this passage of judgment and I think how worthy

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I am of that. How ultimately it makes sense that I am judged, that the flood waters come over me and that I drowned in your righteous judgment.

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I know my own heart. And because of your word,

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I can say that about everybody in this room, whether they acknowledge it or not. I believe what your word says is true and therefore

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I am speaking and I'm praying in front of a bunch of people who are exactly in the same shoes that I'm in.

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Where our hearts are desperately wicked and we acknowledge our proneness to rebellion against you and yet because of the cross we have been declared blameless and righteous in your sight.

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Rejoice in that and I pray that as we come to communion this morning that our hearts would rejoice and that we would walk with a...

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having heard a text about the setup of judgment that we would walk with a lighter step this week and rejoice because we see how dark the judgment that we deserve really is and we can rejoice all the more because of your great and amazing salvation that is poured out on us.

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I pray that we would not hold that to ourselves but be like Noah who is a preacher of righteousness and as we're going to see next week, called out to his generation to repent.

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Father, that we would not hoard the salvation that we've experienced for ourselves but we would openly declare it in the workplace and in our community in our neighborhood that we would not shy away from the name of Jesus Christ who is the reason we are saved.