Genesis 6:9-8:22, “What’s to Be Done?”, Dr. John Carpenter

Genesis chapter 6 starting in verse 9, hear the word of the Lord. These are the generations of Noah.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. 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.

And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.

And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them.

Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch.

This is how you are to make it. The length of it, of the ark, 300 cubits, its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits.

Make a roof for the ark, and finish it with a cubit above, and set the door of the ark on its side.

Make it with lower, second, and third decks. 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 in 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.

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

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. 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. Noah did this. He did all that God commanded him.

Then the Lord said to Noah, Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation.

Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth.

For in seven days I will send rain on the earth, forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made

I will blot out from the face of the ground. And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.

Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth, and Noah and his sons and his wife and his son's wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood, of clean animals and of animals that are not clean, and of birds and of every living thing that creeps on the ground.

Two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah as God had commanded Noah. And after seven days, the waters of the flood came upon the earth and the six hundredth year of Noah's life and the second month on the 17th day of the month.

On that day, all the fountains of the great deep burst forth and the windows of the heavens were opened and rain fell upon the earth.

Forty days and forty nights on the very same day, Noah, his son, Shem, Hammond, Japheth and Noah's wife and their three wives of his sons with them entered the ark.

They and every beast, according to its kind and all the livestock, according to their kinds and every creeping thing that creeps on the ground, according to its kind and every bird, according to its kind, every winged creature.

They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh, in which was the breath of life.

And those that entered male and female of all the flesh went in as God had commanded him.

And the Lord shut him in. The flood continued 40 days on the earth.

The waters increased and bore up the ark and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth and the ark floated on the face of the waters and the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered.

The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them 15 cubits deep and all the flesh died that moved on the earth.

Birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth and all mankind, everything on the dry land and whose nostrils was the breath of life died.

He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals, creeping things and birds of the heavens.

They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left and those who were with him in the ark and the waters prevailed on the earth.

One hundred and fifty days. Now, God remembered Noah and all the beast and all the livestock that were with him in the ark, and God made a wind blow over the earth and the water subsided.

The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed and the rain from the heavens was restrained and the waters receded from the earth continually.

At the end of one hundred and fifty days, the waters had abated and in the seventh month, on the 17th day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat and the waters continued to abate until the 10th month in the 10th month.

On the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen at the end of 40 days.

Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent forth a raven. It went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth.

Then he sent forth a dove from from him to see if the waters have subsided from the face of the ground.

But the dove found no place to set her foot and she returned to him to the ark for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth.

So he put out his hand and took her and brought her in to the ark with him. He waited another seven days and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark and the dove came back to him in the evening.

And behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth.

Then he waited another seven days and sent forth a dove and she did not return to him anymore. And the six hundred and first year in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked and behold, the face of the ground was dry.

And the second month on the 27th day of the month, the earth had dried out.

And then God said to Noah, go out from the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons, wives with you, bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all the flesh, birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may swarm on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.

So Noah went out and his sons and his wife and his sons, wives with him, every beast, every creeping thing and every bird, everything that moves on the earth went out by families from the ark.

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.

Neither will I again strike down every living creatures as I have done while the earth remains, see time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.

May the Lord add his blessings for the reading of his holy word. Well, the story of Noah, we just read in the flood.

It's one of the most well -known stories in the whole Bible. It's a popular children's story. It inspires cute pictures of animals lining up two by two, happily going to the ark like they're going on a cruise,

I guess. So you go on the internet and type in Noah's ark and you'll find lots of kids, toys, pictures like these.

People think it's a sweet story that is a cross between a trip to the zoo and a cruise.

You can imagine that coming together. It's a G movie suitable for all ages. There's even a water park in Wisconsin named after it.

Like it's fun. What else would you want to just go to Noah's ark? And there's even a daycare center in Yanceyville between here and my house.

I pass by almost every day called Noah's educational arc, which I guess if you will, keeping kids safe from the outside world is great, but it means you're also saying everyone outside this place is going to die.

Not sure where to communicate that to the kids, but whatever. This is one of the most popular of all Bible stories and perhaps the most misunderstood.

Did those pictures, did they look anything like what's described in this passage we just read?

Did you notice as we were reading what it's really about? Did you see it? It's not really a heartwarming story, is it?

People overcoming a freak natural disaster and saving animals along the way. It's not a cruise with a zoo on it, is it?

It's the story of an angry, grieve God killing nearly all human beings in the land and even willing to obliterate most other animals, collateral damage, just so we can drown the people he wants to drown.

So giving a child a toy Noah's Ark is about like giving a giving a toy fallout shelter.

Let's let's have fun with the coming nuclear apocalypse. Imagine where everyone else is going to die, but we'll survive.

What fun that'll be, kids. Think about that. What would you think of a child care center called Harry Truman's Educational Atomic Bombing?

Wait, that doesn't sound right. That sounds a little weird. So this is not a sweet story.

It's the story of a mass execution. And the earlier chapters of Genesis, we've seen what sin is.

And now with this story of Noah and the flood, we see what's to be done about it. What is to be done about us?

Every inclination of our hearts is only evil all the time. What can be done about it? Well, from this story, we see three strategies.

First, the punishment, then the purging. And finally, the promise. What's to be done?

First, the punishment. Here, the whole world was happily going about his business, you know, just doing his thing, marrying and giving him marriage, as Jesus says, when

God brought a flood on the whole land, wiping out man and woman and children, letting only Noah and his family survive.

Now, think of it. Animals, livestock, old people, pregnant women, little children, young men all drowned 40 days and 40 nights.

The rain poured from above. The springs gushed from below without a break. And the waters rise and rise.

There's nowhere to go. Imagine the terror. I heard just from the couple of weeks ago when there's that hurricane hit

Florida, some people, the waters rose up so high they went up into the attic of their house. And I thought, man,

I hope they brought some kind of saw to cut through that roof if they needed because the waters could keep rising into the attic. I don't know how that worked out for them.

That was imagine that, though. You have nowhere to go to go into the attic to get away from the waters. And if you do and then you have to cut through your roof.

And what happens if it keeps going? And that was all caused here. This story, not by a freak of nature, not by some uncontrolled perfect storm, but by God himself.

And in this flood story, we see something of who our God is, that though he is patient and gracious, he was very generous in creation.

You know, saying this is good. He is also holy and fiercely passionate to enforce his rule, to preserve his glory, to punish sin.

People today like to avoid thinking about God's wrath. God judging and punishing. Supposedly, a survey was taken several years back by Christians saying they hear too many hellfire and brimstone sermons.

Then ask how many of you ever heard? Well, none. They never heard any, but they heard too much.

They don't want to hear it. They don't want to hear that theme. There's almost no hymns or songs on judgment. Whenever do a passage of judgment, you always try to get songs that fit the theme of the passage.

How do you get a song that fits Noah flood? How do you find a song that does that? How to rewrite one song we already had just to kind of make it fit a little bit.

Think about if what we would do to us if we spent the same amount of time. If I didn't rush to this,

I did read it all at once. Say we took it paragraph by paragraph. What if some like some preachers verse by verse, but even if just chapter by chapter follow my usual pattern of a sermon in one chapter, at least particularly in the

Old Testament, a couple of paragraphs at a time, that would mean at least three consecutive sermons focusing, as Jonathan Edwards put it, on sinners in the hands of an angry

God. You know, I did it verse by verse. This is like episode 100 of sinners in the hands of an angry

God. I don't know if we we as modern people are able to bear that. I don't know if I could bear that to the sheer volume of words here inspired by God.

Keep in mind, used to describe this tells us that here is an attribute of God that we need to focus on as much as we may not want to.

This enormous cataclysmic judgment is something we're supposed to stop. And think about there are three chapters of Genesis consumed with this one story.

There's only one chapter on all of creation. Only one chapter in focusing on the creation of humanity and of marriage.

Chapter five, just before this story, covers thousands of years in just one chapter.

It's like we're fast forwarding every day that fast forward to a video, maybe a football game or something.

And then you come to the part you really want to see closely. And then maybe frame by frame, slow motion.

That's what this does. Three chapters just on the flood. Most of it happening, this whole time transpired in these three chapters is over one year.

Thousands of years in the previous chapter, this is all three chapters over one year. So I'm watching this part of the

Bible frame by frame, slow motion, watching God drown millions of sinners.

Look again, for example, at chapter seven, verses twenty one to twenty three. And look how often the idea is repeated that God has judged and punished sin.

And verse twenty one, every living thing that moves on the earth, the word their earth, these many times can mean the land.

People are living on the land. Every living thing that moved on the land. Perished.

And just in case we need that explained. Birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the land and all mankind, because you think there was a loophole in there, maybe maybe it didn't mean everybody.

No, it means all that all drowned. Well, that should do it, shouldn't it? That makes it clear enough, right?

Well, notice the next verse in chapter seven, verse twenty two. Everything on the dry land that had the breath of life in his nostrils died.

OK, you just said the same thing again. It's the second time I hear God is telling us to slow to pay attention.

The repetition is on purpose, not just being redundant for its own sake. It's it's for emphasis. But surely repeating the idea twice is good enough, right?

I mean, two times gets the message through. Clear enough, right? Notice verse twenty three. He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground.

OK, we're starting to get well, he's you know, this is starting to get kind of obvious, isn't it here?

God just won't let us go until we get the point, get the point.

And still he repeats it. Men and animals and creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth from the land.

That's the fourth repetition of this. And just in case we still don't get the point. There's a last sentence of verse twenty three.

I only know it was left in those who were with him in the ark. Five times in that paragraph, the

Bible here slows down and makes us dwell on that fact. And that's just that one paragraph sprinkled three times in chapter six and once more in chapter seven and chapter six for seven and 13 and 17 and chapter seven, verse four.

God says, I will wipe mankind who have created from the face of the earth.

Or I'm sorry that I made him. I am determined to make an end of all flesh.

I will bring a flood of waters on the earth to destroy all flesh. Every living thing that I have made,

I will blot out from the face of the ground. Get the point yet. And so at least nine times

God repeats the same determination to judge sin. This is not a zoo on a cruise.

This is a furious unleashing of angry punishment. With water being the weapon of mass destruction.

The Lord Jesus and his apostles tell us that a similar kind of judgment is coming won't be with water, but there's just a judgment coming in Matthew chapter twenty four, verse thirty seven, and that the lifestyle of the people then in the future judgment be like kind of like now will be the same as at the flood.

And there are two basic marks of society before judgment. First is a ripening of selfishness and then a flourishing of carelessness.

When people don't really believe that there's a God who will judge them. Maybe they believe in a God that he's an indulgent

God, but whatever kind of God they believe in, maybe they don't believe in God at all. But they quite naturally start living just for themselves selfishly.

One symptom of that is violence. So several times in this passage, society was was violent as in chapter six, verse eleven.

For example, people didn't believe that they would be judged by God, that they would have to stand before him and give an account that he would punish them if they were violent.

So without the fear of God, super soon people began to reason that there's no need to respect others.

If God won't judge me for hurting or taking advantage of some weak person, why should I care? Remember Lamech before you kill anyone got in his way?

I live for today. I'll take what I want. Anyone gets in my way, I'm going to make them suffer. I once heard a family will.

For my own family read out in which the man whom the will was from, my ancestor wrote the will.

He showed no sense that judgment was coming and that judgment would take from him almost all of the property that he was bequeathing.

The will was written in 1860 by my great, great, great grandfather, who was a plantation owner in Georgia for real.

Much of the will had to do with which of his children would inherit which of his slaves. He was going about his business, taking care of his family.

In 1860s, Abraham Lincoln was being elected, which would unleash the judgment, which would sweep away that institution based on violence and oppression.

And he had no idea writing a will. You get this slave, you get that slave. In this country, our culture seemed to make a decision sometime between the 1920s and 1960s.

That we can live well enough without God. No mention of his name in public institutions.

Can't pray, can't do anything in public. We would indulge ourselves of whatever our flesh desired.

So long as it was consenting adults, because that makes everything right. That's the only moral is just consent.

And if we did that, we'd be a happier society. Do we seem like a really happy society now? Do we really? The me generation called it selfishness and then not coincidentally violent crime started to skyrocket beginning in the 1960s.

And that's just the illegal crimes. Abortion is a legal crime. Violence against the most vulnerable.

And so it's a violation of God's law. And it's always defended with a case for preserving my pleasure, my convenience, my rights.

It seems we are becoming more like the society before the flood. There's a ripening of selfishness.

There's also a flourishing of carelessness. People who don't believe that there's punishment coming like a

Noah's Day, like in our day, they get careless. They don't believe there are any consequences.

Jesus said that they will be getting married. They're going about their business. They're making money. They're insisting that they don't have time for God and time for church.

Now, their lifestyle says that God will not judge. That's what they think. They carelessly disregard warnings about coming judge.

But now we kind of think that's just so backward, superstitious. So, I mean, you're you're an uneducated, dumb hick.

You believe judgment. That's the attitude now. The people of Noah's day had Noah's words.

They had the visible sign of the ark and Noah took over 100 years to build his ark, particularly probably not after too long.

You get the frame of that thing up. It becomes a sort of declaration that judgment is coming. It's a physical statement of the coming calamity.

In second, Peter, chapter two, verse five, Noah is called a herald. He's a preacher of righteousness.

Now, whether he actually went around preaching to people or he just gave witness to those people come, hey, no, what do you what is this big thing?

You're building here in your yard. Well, there's judgments coming for your sins. You better repent. Whether he actually went around preaching or just.

Gave witness to those who came to see his art. We really don't know. We just know that his life and his arc told everyone that there is righteousness and that there is a coming judgment.

No one believed him. Instead, they went about their lives business as usual. I'll be mocking

Noah behind his back. That old senile man, crazy guy building that thing in his yard until the very moment when they were swept away by the rising waters.

They were caught off guard, not because they weren't warned. They were warned, but because they didn't believe because they didn't believe they were careless.

Jesus tells us that people be careless about future judgment, too. They'll be living normally, they'll be dating and marrying and running their business and making money when suddenly they'll be swept away.

You know, out of control, water is a great fear of people because it's so powerful when it when it strikes.

There's nowhere to go like in that hurricane. Go up in your attic. What if it keeps going? You're trapped.

Four years ago last week, the rain from the leftovers of Hurricane Michael put much of Riverside Drive in Danville in the river, which

I guess it was River Inside Drive for a little while. We had flooding into this building. That was just a very small taste of uncontrolled water.

On December 26, 2004, an enormous earthquake, the third most powerful ever recorded, struck in the

Indian Ocean, causing a huge seismic wave, which became a tsunami when it hit land.

And it struck especially Indonesia and Thailand and Sri Lanka. And water rushed up suddenly and washed cars and buildings and everything that's loose and people away.

People were going about their business when suddenly disaster came. Appropriately, one of the most striking videos, you can find it on YouTube from Indonesia, was taken by a wedding photographer, a wedding photographer.

Just as the Lord Jesus warned, people were marrying. And then suddenly God unleashed a judgment.

Over 200000 people woke up that Sunday morning thinking it would be just another day. And yet suddenly there was a reckoning tourist in Phuket, Thailand, where Mary and I had our honeymoon.

We're recreating, having fun. Perhaps some of them just married and then they were swept away.

Over 200000. People so often live life consumed by now, people, you know, some of your own families always living for the business, for working, for making money, for studying, for dating, for getting married, for having children, started your career, expanding the business, making more money, maybe eventually retiring or just living for the weekend.

And you say, let's go to church, let's sacrifice some time for God, seek God. They say, no, can't right now.

Got to make money. Maybe later. They're careless. They live like that without a thought for the end, as though there will be no end.

No, I believe the judgment was coming, and so we set to work. He believed in Hebrews chapter 11, verse seven, as it says there.

He believed a punishment not yet seen. He had God word, but he hadn't seen anything like what was coming.

And so he built an ark on dry ground. He believed it so much. He got the animals inside and his family inside and finally stepped inside himself.

And once inside, God closed the door. Do you notice that? In chapter seven, verse 16,

God himself closes the door. The flood wasn't a haphazard, out of control, natural event.

It was directed by God. Noah stepped inside. God himself closed him in and let the waters fall from the sky, gush from the ground, condemning those who wouldn't believe to death.

That's the punishment. What's to be done? Second, purging.

Those first 19 verses of chapter eight, they got a long account of waiting for floodwaters to abate the birds, taking some time to find a place to be able to land that shows that the purge was total.

It wasn't just a little pruning of humanity, taking a select few. This flood, the troublemakers, you know, they live down there in that valley, flood them, but leave the rest.

No, it was a radical purging. We might think it was to start over, that it was a revolution to bring about a new man.

You know, throughout history, there have been hot radicals who believe the problems with humanity can be solved by some drastic action.

Purge cut out the root of the problem. Communists assume that they can only liquidate the capitalists and train up a new generation.

Then a new man would arise free of greed and selfishness. The Nazis thought the problem was with other races, the

Slavs and the Jews, if only they were eliminated. There could be a thousand years of glory.

The Nazis and the communists both leave. We needed a purge. We needed to purge humanity of the bad people.

They're the source of our problems. Those other people are the source of our problems. Purge them out and then we'll have paradise.

The problem with both of them is that they were not nearly radical enough. Here in this story, the flood, we see the most radical revolution imaginable without.

Changing human nature altogether, without changing the heart, corruption and violence are running them up.

So what's to be done? Well, here, a purge, all those in the land, except one righteous man in his family, liquidated using a lot of liquid.

And yet at the end, we are told in chapter eight, verse 21, that the problem is not solved. She noticed that at the end.

Even the most complete purge still doesn't result in a new man. The slate is still not wiped clean at the conclusion of all.

Even with righteous Noah being the new father of humanity, still, it says in chapter eight, verse 21, the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.

Here, sin was punished and purged, but the purge did not solve the problem.

At best, the flood mitigated the problem of sin. Some cutting back its fruit for a time, like taking a sling blade to a weed overgrown garden.

Sure, you cut down the weeds and for a while it looks a little better, but they'll grow back once you do this, delay it a little bit.

Here we see that even though Noah is righteous, he's blameless in his generation, even he walked with God like Enoch in chapter six, verse nine, still at the end,

God says that the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. The earth was purged, but the root was left that root of sin in our hearts.

Imagine it. Imagine it. The most severe measures were taken to correct humanity.

The best man was chosen. He was righteous. He walked with God. He would be the one

God would start over with. And yet at the end, we are once again handed the diagnosis.

Here's the diagnosis. Our heart is evil. It's like a cancer patient receiving the most aggressive chemotherapy and surgery, and at the end being told it was all for nothing.

You still got cancer. Cancer still there. My own father went through that. It's a desperate situation to be in.

If normal chemotherapy doesn't work, they can try radical purging of the cancer, requiring a bone marrow transplant.

First, they take out some of your healthy bone marrow and then they subject you to so much chemotherapy or radiation or both that it is supposed to kill all the cancer cells.

Essentially, it is utterly purging your body to destroy the cancer, but it will also destroy many other healthy cells, especially bone marrow.

So the bone marrow has to be transplanted back in. Or the purging will kill you.

But sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes you're purged and the cancer still survives.

And from a human point of view, that produces utter hopelessness. And that's just the point of this passage.

God is driving us to hopelessness, to hopelessness and superficial cures.

Stop hoping in some political solution, purge these people, some drastic thing that will never solve the problem.

God wants us to abandon any hopes for a cure other than from him. Radical revolutions will not cure us.

The problem is in a few bad apples. If only we can get rid of them. We'll all be better.

Starting all over with just a good seed still won't solve the problem. Purges are not radical enough.

What's to be done? Something must be done about our heart. The purging showed us that our hearts are the source of evil.

So without a change in our nature, a purging of our hearts. We are doomed.

Left to ourselves, to our hearts, where every intention is evil from youth.

We don't even have the power to choose what is good. If salvation were really left up to our free will, our free will would never choose salvation, would never choose

Christ. But the good news is we're not left up to ourselves.

What's to be done? Even after the punishment and the purge, that doesn't work. Right in the midst of it is third.

The promise. In chapter six, verse 18, just before the flood starts, the first instance of a very important word in the

Bible occurs first time. It's it's written. Covenant.

In the middle of the punishment. And the purging God makes a covenant.

Now, covenant is a promise. God promises it in the midst of the punishment and the purge.

To save. No, I believe that promise. He believed that covenant. He heard from God of a judgment not yet seen, as it says in Hebrews, chapter 11 or seven, because he believed he acted.

Hebrews says that he condemned the world because of his faith. In other words, when the ark was finished,

God told Noah to load the animals, get inside because Noah believed he obeyed.

Then God closed the door himself and the world was condemned. Now, once the flood was over, Noah offered sacrifice.

That's why he had the surplus of seven clean, every clean animals. God was pleased with the sacrifice because God smelled faith.

That tells us that God is pleased with some sacrifices because Noah trusted God, he acted living faith always produces action.

And so it says that in holy fear, Noah built an ark to save his family.

His faith produced obedience. Now, twice this passage tells us that Noah did everything that the

Lord commanded in chapter six, verse 22, chapter seven, verse five. God commanded Noah to do something that sounded preposterous and hard.

Build a large covered ship suitable for thousands of animals, apparently on dry ground.

No, it didn't do it because, you know, the weather channel predicted a flood. So we thought this is a good way to get out of it.

He did it because God told him to do it. And he came out of the ark in chapter eight, verse 18, not because he reasoned it was safe after the dove didn't return.

Notice that all that finding out the dove won't return doesn't make it. Well, now

I know it's coast is clear. I can come out. He came out because the Lord commanded him. Noah obeyed because he trusted

God. It's the same today. Now, sure, we are saved by faith alone, but faith that saves is never alone.

It produces obedience. Genesis chapter eight, verse one begins with God remembering

Noah and all the animals with him. Of course, it's not just that somehow God had forgotten him. For a while, but it does seem to suggest that it may have seemed to Noah that God had forgotten that there wasn't a feeling of, you know, constant communion with God during that flood.

Not as those Shem, Ham and Japheth had a little band going and they were singing praise songs and wave the hands there during the whole thing, bobbing up and down in a cramped ship with stinky animals.

It wasn't like a glorious spiritual experience the whole time. But then God revealed himself again.

He made the wind blow, caused the waters to recede. He remembered his promise. Do you have faith that can see you through long times like a whole year on a ship with stinky animals bobbing up and down of not feeling his presence?

They can believe his promise. That promise is buried in one little

Hebrew word. Here in chapter eight, verse 21, it's a common two letter conjunction, and you'll find it in the middle of chapter eight, verse 21.

The Lord says, I will never again curse the ground because of man and then comes the word, a little conjunction in Hebrew.

It usually means for or because the same thing. The SV translated is for meaning it is giving the reason for the previous statement.

Let's settle on because it makes a little more clear. I will not destroy the earth again because what's the reason?

Why won't God destroy the earth again? Well, they're depraved. Wait, that's the promise.

Because the purge didn't work, God says, I'm not going to do it again. Now, does that mean, well,

God now is just going to excuse them, not going to judge anymore. No, we've just seen how disgusting our depravity is and how grieved and angry our holy

God is by sin. And yet this promise is here because. A very strange because.

So because that doesn't seem to follow. Why would you say I will not destroy the earth again because they're still bad?

Wait, seem like you would say, I could keep doing this all day long. I could do it again. I'll keep doing this.

I'll keep flooding this place until you get straight. He doesn't say that, does he? We might expect it to say in chapter eight, verse one,

I will never again curse the ground because of man, because. Well, now after the purge, he's so much better than before, because now after the punishment, well, now he's learned his lesson.

It's turned over a new leaf or maybe because now I got. I'm tired of all this judgment and wrath.

And so now I'm going to mellow out. I'm going to let stuff slide from now on. That we would understand that kind of logical.

But here it says, I would never again curse the ground because of man, because it's the reason the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth, because we're still just as bad as we were before the purge, because even killing all but the most righteous isn't good enough.

It doesn't solve the problem, which is the problem of the heart. What's to be done?

Because. We're totally depraved. God accepted the sacrifice of a son, the only one whose heart was not inclined toward evil.

It was a sacrifice pleasing to the Lord because God is holy and must punish sin.

He will not simply beat back the fruits of sin again. He will deal with the root of the problem because our willful rebellion against God earns us an eternity in hell.

God will build us an ark. Because our evil hearts make it impossible for us to choose true faith.

God will, by his grace, change our hearts and enable us to believe.

Because we cannot save ourselves, God will do what we need in the cross and the resurrection of Christ.

Because you may have turned away from him and disobeyed in the past. Now he can give you the faith.

That produces obedience. That's the promise.