The Wrath Of God Revealed

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

The Flood Narrative in Genesis 6–7

We'll be looking at Genesis chapter 6 and 7. Because we have such a great amount of text before us, we cannot possibly cover every single verse. And so if you allow me, let us read all of the passage beforehand.

And then we'll work our way through some of the topics in it. This is the Word of God. Genesis 6, beginning in verse 9. 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 the ark, 300 cubits. Its breadth, 50 cubits. And its height, 30 cubits. 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. For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breadth of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die.

But I will establish my covenant with you. And you shall come into the ark. Take 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.

There 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 into 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. And 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 600 years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth.

And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' 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 everything that creeps on the ground.

Two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah as God had commanded Noah. After seven days the waters of the flood came upon the earth. In the 600th year of Noah's life, in 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 and his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth and Noah's wife and the 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 kind and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth 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 there was the breath of life. And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him. And the Lord shut him in.

The flood continued forty 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 and the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed above the mountains covering them fifteen cubits deep and all 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 in 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 and 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 150 days. When we think about God, if you were asked to write down a handful of characteristics or attributes of Him, what would you put down on that piece of paper?

Perhaps some of the things on that list would be His mercy and His grace, love, patience, surely His holiness and because we are reformed, we write down His sovereignty over all things. But what about His wrath and His judgment?

Where is that found on your list? Is it on your list? Innumerable books are written about the love, mercy, kindness, goodness and all other sorts of things of God. Try finding a book on the wrath of God at your local Christian bookstore or the Christian bestseller list and you'll likely end up empty-handed.

Some never speak about it, speak about that specific attribute of God. Some never preach it and others preach it exclusively. Many, as one author points out, feel like they have to make an apology for it and wish it wouldn't even exist.

Others greatly underestimate the severity of it and as a consequence, concern themselves little with it. In most cases, we're not as fond of dedicating much serious thought to it and because it's not something that stirs in us as readily a feeling of joy and worship because it comes with this weight, this difficulty of knowing that some people, most people, some of our very own family and friends will one day face the very judgment of God and perish eternally.

But as Christians, brothers and sisters, it is our duty to study and to know and even to worship God truly for all His revealed attributes in the Scriptures including His wrath. We've studied many of His attributes already throughout Genesis.

You remember we spoke about His aseity, His self-existence, His eternality, Him not having a beginning or end. He has always been and will always be His power in creation, His love and provision for man in the garden.

Today, in chapter 6 and 7, as we come to one of the most told, perhaps one of the most well-known stories of all the Bible, a story that those of you who grew up in the church no doubt have heard innumerable times, perhaps only surpassed by the amount of pictures you've seen in Sunday school classrooms.

Endless children's books have been written, printed with a cover of this wooden boat under a rainbow with all sorts of animals and Noah waving. Walls and nurseries and children's bedrooms show animals on this ship.

And those are not bad things to do. We ought to teach the Bible to our children no doubt. But do we tell the full story? Do we actually know the full story? Have we become so familiar with it, turning it into this fun children's story that we tell, that one of the most vivid accounts in all of Scripture of the severity of the wrath of God gets completely lost on us.

All of the wonderful things God no doubt does in this account are rightly to be highlighted and taught. But as one commentator said regarding the flood, it is an account of swift and terrible judgment on sinful rebellion, divine judgment on sinners.

By the grace of God I submit to you only make sense in light of the wrath of God. Apart from that, it's emptied of all its power and all its beauty. And so in chapter 6, ever since really chapter 3 and the fall, we've seen abound more and more with almost every verse.

It stands out so much in the entire narrative and things just don't seem to get better at all. It shows us the depravity of man, that it's real and unescapable. We have to understand the offense and the pervasiveness of sin and evil.

It's after all so easily neglected by all of us, specifically when we're tempted. And so honestly I had some difficulty when I began to prepare. I asked myself, is sin and the depravity of man, is it really so bad that we need another chapter on it?

And the answer is yes, it is.

And so even though it might be difficult for us to continue to study another topic like this, and an uncomfortable one at that, our commitment to submit to the scriptures, to the inspired word of God, we're going to do so and we trust He'll use it.

I trust and pray He'll use it to our benefit and our own sanctification. And so we'll look, we'll see the wrath of God kindled in chapter 6 and verses 9 through 13. And with that as our backdrop, we'll consider God's preservation of His people, of the faithful in verses 14 through to chapter 7 and verse 5.

And lastly we'll try to bring the two of them together and we'll look at a sure judgment and salvation in the rest of chapter 7 from verses 6 to the end of the chapter. And so firstly then in chapter 6 verses 9 through 13, we see the wrath of God kindled.

The narrative begins with an introduction to Noah. The phrase, these are the generations of Noah sets the stage for the account of his life and family. With this phrase we're introduced to the largest textual unit within the first 11 chapters of Genesis, this primeval account of the history of the world before Abraham.

And the generations of Noah span chapter 6 all the way through to chapter 9. They form the very centerpiece of that history. And so we notice that the man Noah is introduced to us with these distinguishing words, Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation.

Noah walked with God. In verse 1 of chapter 7 he said to be righteous before God in this generation once again. His conduct, Noah was just and lawful at a time when everyone else around him was anything but.

The word translated blameless there means perfect or complete. And so when we put this righteous and his blamelessness together, we understand that he was completely just in his conduct. He was not morally corrupt like the rest of his generation.

It doesn't mean he was sinless. We read about him being drunk later in chapter 9. And our brother already showed us last week that Noah became an heir of righteousness by faith as Hebrews 11 tells us.

But his faith, his faith bore fruit in his morally pure conduct. When the people around him were reveling in their own corruption, he stood out and apart among the men of the earth. Similar to Job, we remember, was blameless and upright.

Noah feared God and turned away from evil. His pure conduct was manifested in his walking with God. He followed in the footsteps of his ancestor Enoch. He had communion and intimacy with God. Like his great-grandfather before him, he exemplified the very characteristic of what it means to be a man of God.

And so Noah then, not being righteous in and of himself, but by faith in God and having communion with him in his conduct, did what was right in the sight of the Lord. And it's compared to the rest of humanity in verses 11 and 12.

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. As man multiplied, so did sin.

It began with our first parents and spread to their children, continued on throughout their generations, prominently through the line of Cain, and eventually, as we saw last week, through the line of Seth as well, beginning to take any women they chose as their wives, and have them become mighty men of old, men of renown, instead of men who walked with God.

And so with every man's intention of the heart continually being evil, we now read that the earth had become corrupt and is filled with violence. And it's corrupt in God's sight. Not in man's, but in God's.

The one that actually matters. This is a very familiar phrase to us, isn't it? From the book of Judges and Kings and Chronicles. When the people of Israel and their kings did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, in worshiping false gods.

It's implied here, by the use of this language, that the evil on the earth was not a problem for those living on it. They were content with it. They're happy with it. They did what was right in their own eyes.

And what was right for them was corruption in the eyes of the Lord. The inhabitants of the earth were not conforming to God's will or command. They turned aside from Him, had done evil in the sight of the Lord instead.

Notice corruption here is mentioned three times. I was reminded when I read this of the proclamation that the seraphim make in Isaiah's vision. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. Expressing this comprehensive, absolute holiness.

And here man is seen as corrupt. And corrupt again and as having corrupted their way. This is a complete, deep-seated, deep-running evil. Disobedience and disregard for His commands is running rampant on the earth.

This all-encompassing moral decay has filled the human heart and the earth. And it's manifested in violence. The severely treating of one another. Perhaps if Cain and Lamech were any indication to the point of murder and death.

And so creation, in a way, has been undone by man. Where God saw the earth and saw that it was very good in chapter 1, it has become nothing like that. Instead of being fruitful, multiplying and filling the earth, humanity has filled it with unchecked immorality and violence.

The sense of the vileness that Cain spoke about last week, that we ought to have to a certain degree, had completely vanished. Even the sense of shame that Adam and Eve experienced in the garden seems to have completely evaporated.

And so consequently God decides to destroy all men as well as the earth as they know it. And so He tells Noah in verse 13, I've 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. The wrath of God has been kindled and He pronounces judgment on the earth. Death and destruction are the wages of man's evil. The way it's written is almost so devastating to us.

It reads so quickly. The earth is corrupt, I'll destroy them. End of story. There's no justifying it. It's simply assumed that as the sovereign ruler and creator, God has the right and the power to destroy all those that disobey Him.

Because as the creature they owe imperfect obedience. We don't see Noah arguing with God saying, Whoa, hold on a minute. Are you sure about this? I thought I was really convinced you were a God of love.

No.

We have silence. Instead we see Noah do all that the Lord commands him. I believe in Noah's conduct. He shows us that God is just. And pronouncing judgment on the wicked. The destruction of the wicked.

We see this affirmed all throughout the scriptures. And even within Genesis. Turn to Genesis 18. The Lord had appeared to Abraham by the Oaks of Mamre. And he sees three men standing in front of his tent.

And Abraham invites them to come in and stay with him to get some rest. He brings them food and water. And while these men are with him, he's told that Sarah will bear a child to him. The son that God had previously told him.

And once these men are done taking their rest, they get up and get ready to leave. And as they do so, Abraham is told about the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah. And their deserved punishment. And so in chapter 18 verse 22.

We begin to read of Abraham's intercession for Sodom. So the men turned from there and went towards Sodom. But Abraham still stood before the Lord. Then Abraham drew near and said, Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?

Suppose there are 50 righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the 50 righteous who are in it? Abraham doesn't argue that God's judgment is unjust. That the wicked don't deserve the judgment.

He's simply arguing that the righteous don't deserve it. And then in verse 25, he says, Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked.

Far be that from you. Shall not the judge of all the earth do what is just?

And the Lord said,.

If I finance Sodom 50 righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake. And Abraham continues to intercede a few more times. God is just in punishing the evil. But it wouldn't be just for him to destroy the righteous.

In the New Testament, we read that the wages of sin are death. And so the sentence of destruction is swiftly announced. And God is perfectly just in condemning all to death. He does not let evil slide.

Does not simply turn a blind eye to it. He judges it and vows to destroy all those who walk in it. Everyone has an unavoidable death sentence hanging over their head. There is no getting around it and no avoiding it.

Sin is not a light thing. It is not a small thing that we so often make it out to be. It grieves God. It kindles His wrath. Psalm 7 verse 11 says, God is a righteous judge and a God who feels indignation every day.

Man in sin, doing what is corrupt in the eyes of the Lord, kindles the righteous wrath of God against him. That is the premise. That is the starting point of the flood narrative. Man being so evil that God determines to completely wipe them out.

God's Gracious Preservation of Noah and His Family

And so with that as the foundation, as our backdrop, let's look at God's gracious preservation of the faithful. Chapter 6, 13 and 14 all the way through to 7 and verse 5. By the judgment of God, every living thing, man, woman, and child is condemned to death.

The whole human race wiped out, completely destroyed. That is with exception of eight people. A particular chosen people are preserved from this judgment to come. Noah and by extension his family, the one who we read about in verse 9 and 10, the one who was righteous and blameless, who walked with God, this man of faith, a recipient of God's grace, is to have his life preserved.

And this preservation begins in verses 13 and 14 when God reveals to Noah His hidden plan, telling him of the destruction that was to come, giving him instructions to make an ark and to build it according to these specific directions given to him by God.

God says, I'll make an end of all flesh. I will destroy them, but you, you make yourself an ark. There's a direct and clear distinction made between the righteous Noah and the rest of the earth. And he's told to make this, this quite large structure actually.

And not at all like the picture most of us might have in mind when we first think of the ark, this cartoonish looking wooden boat with a little cabin in the middle, portholes on the side, and lions looking out the window.

It's more like this rectangular, flat, bottom box. And if we were to use the modern cubic, which most scholars do, it'd be around 134 meters long, about half the size of the average cruise ship nowadays, 22 meters wide and 13 meters high, with maybe a slightly raised roof in the center for the water to run off toward the sides.

But what's the deal with these instructions? Why do we have the size, the material, and how to cover it with pitch inside and out? I think verse 17 through 21 give us some of the answer. God will judge the earth by the means of a flood, and he'll establish a covenant with Noah that will keep him, his wife, his sons, and their wives, as well as two of every sort of animal alive, from the birds all the way to the creeping things of the ground.

But the lives of Noah and his family aren't preserved by them magically being removed from the earth for a little while until it's all over. The ark is the means of accomplishing that. God uses means to accomplish his purposes.

It's interesting. I don't know how many different accounts of flood stories throughout the history of the world. It seems every nation, every civilization has their own version and take on it. A brother reminded me yesterday that there's actually even a Canadian version, if you didn't know that, where God claims he was angry with the giants, commanded a man to build a large canoe to survive the flood, and then in one of the most Canadian ways, an otter and a reindeer are sent out to see if the waters have subsided.

And so there are many of these stories from North America to South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and many of them share some similarities from some of the names of the people sounding similar and some of the durations of rain pouring down and men being spared.

The best-kept record that we have is of one called the Epic of Gilgamesh, an epic from ancient Mesopotamia believed to be written about 3 ,000 to 4 ,000 years ago. And in this story, a flood is sent by the gods because they are annoyed by the noise that the humans make, because it disturbs their sleep at night.

And so the hero of this story is charged to build himself a cube to survive this flood, a cube that was about 4 to 5 times as big as Noah's ark and was simply impossible to stay afloat on water. And so these instructions in this biblical and this true account that we have, they ensure that what Noah is building is a seaworthy vessel that can withstand the flood and house all the people and animals that God is keeping alive.

It has enough storage for food and animals. Noah didn't know how severe the flood would be, how long the rain would last, how long they would have to wait for the waters to subside or how many animals exactly there would be.

But God does, and He gives him exactly what he needs to accomplish that purpose. He knows the needs of His people, and He knows how to safely preserve them and provides everything necessary for that. And so in verse 22 we read then, Noah did this.

He did all that God commanded him. He believes the word of God, the promise of deliverance and safe passage through the floodwaters and prepares the God-appointed means to preserve himself from the judgment that is to come.

Noah's faith triumphed over all corrupt reasonings as Matthew Henry put it. The size of the ark, the time it would take one man to build it, the hard labor, all reasons to surrender for Noah to throw his hands in the air and say, God, I can't do it.

But his faith and obedience persevered. He's an example of what it means to have this faith, this assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things truly not seen. He had hope in the promised covenant, the covenant that would preserve his family and his family's life while building this giant vessel on ground, by the way, without having any visual proof of the flood to come or the promise of life.

And so we see that God preserves his people by his grace using means through faith. And their obedience is not meaningless. Noah's obedience is mentioned twice. Again, chapter 7, verse 5. And so after having completed the ark, having taken all the animals, including the clean ones that would be later used for sacrifice and worship to God once they get out of the ark, in Genesis 8, verse 20, Noah again did all that the Lord had commanded him.

God's wrath is to be poured out on the wicked. But he chooses to preserve the life of the righteous who by faith in obedience use the God-appointed means to that end. Now, let's try to put both of these both of these together.

Judgment and Salvation in the Flood

The wrath of God against evil and it's preserving the righteous from judgment. In chapter 7, verse 6, all the way to the end through verse 24. The time for the judgment has come. The time for the judgment of God to be poured out on the earth has arrived.

And Noah, no doubt, after many years of great labor, has completed this ark. He, his wife, their sons, their sons' wives, along with all the animals, clean and unclean, enter the ark. And then we read that in the 600th year of Noah's life in the second month, on the 17th day of the month, on this very real and specific day in the history of humanity, the great deep burst forth and the windows of the heavens were opened.

This kind of language naming the days is sometimes used to mark important historical dates in the Old Testament. When the Israelites leave Egypt after 430 years and are freed from their slavery in Exodus chapter 12, it says the time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years.

At the end of 430 years, on that very day, all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt. See, the prophets use a similar type of wording. Ezekiel, in the opening verse of his prophecy, says, in the 30th year, in the fourth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I was among the exiles by the Kibar Canal, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.

Isaiah, Jeremiah, in the year the king Uzziah or Ahaz died. Things like the word that came to Jeremiah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim. Moses, when he uses this language, what he makes clear is that this is a real, this is a historical fact in the history of humanity.

A day in history in which the Lord poured out His wrath on mankind in a way and on a scale that He had not done before and has not done since. And so creation begins to be undone because of man's evil.

The waters that were separated by the land at creation begin now to unite once again as the deeps burst forth, covering the earth with water. Listen, if you think the Lord makes empty threats, you have to think again.

The real depravity, the tangible corruption of man will be judged by the likewise very real wrath of God. He doesn't condemn men lightly or jokingly. And His judgment will truly destroy all those that are deserving of it.

He had said that He will destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life. That He will blot out every living thing that He had made from the face of the ground. And now, in verses 21 and 23, chapter 7, we read, and all 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 in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, men and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens.

What God says He will do will come to pass, whether it be blessing or cursing, whether it be life or death and the wrath of God because of the intent of the heart of man being so evil continually before and even after the flood abides on all men.

All are deserving of this judgment of God. Christ Himself says that all those whose sin will be thrown into the eternal fire and those that do not believe on Him shall not see life because the wrath of God remains on Him.

All those outside of Christ because of their heart and impenitent heart, some of you here are storing up wrath for yourselves for when you will stand before the Lord, the kindness that He shows now in His patience and during the wicked is meant to lead to repentance.

Peter in 1 Peter 3, 20 comments on the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared. He says God showed Himself to be most patient with the wicked but in the Genesis account we read they did not repent and all but eight people were destroyed.

And though we do not experience a worldwide catastrophe like the flood now in our day, there is a day of judgment still to come. Now some may say this is useless to us. What do we do with this? We are as Christians.

We are not under the wrath of God anymore. This only applies to those outside of Christ. Let me remind you that before you were in Christ, prior to having faith, before you put on the new self, you were of that same corrupt nature and does not your daily struggle against your flesh so clearly tell you that apart from your union with Christ, the depravity of your heart would take over and the full measure of the divine wrath of God would justly still abide on you.

Brothers and sisters, don't forget that the severity and the seriousness of the judgment of God has not been eradicated. You did deserve the wrath of God. But when you came to Christ, it has not just disappeared into nothingness.

It was satisfied by Christ. He really did suffer. He was in real agony. He was forsaken a real curse and bore the real wrath of God. You might not experience it, but He most certainly did for you. Never think lightly of your sin and the wrath it incurred.

Don't think lightly of your present sin either. When you're tempted, let's maybe consider the wrath of God, the terror and severity. Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane earnestly pled with the Father to let the cup pass from Him.

Have you ever considered when being tempted that maybe your sin as a believer could be in some ways more grieving to the heart of God than that of unbelievers? To Puritan Thomas Watson put it this way, the sins we commit are far worse than the sins of the heathen.

We act against more light. Our sins are worse than the sins of the devils. The last angels never sinned against Christ's blood. Christ died not for them. The medicine of His merit was never intended to heal them, but we have affronted and disparaged His blood by unbelief.

Never minimize either past or present sin for another has taken the real judgment for it. Secondly, be encouraged by a sure and guaranteed salvation from the wrath to come. We have to be careful not to walk too far over to one side or the other.

We can completely neglect and ignore the wrath of God, but we can have no assurance that we will be at all spared from it. But verse 16 and chapter 7 at the end of the verse is so comforting. It says, the Lord shut him in.

And then at the end of verse 23 in the same chapter again, only Noah was left and those who were with him in the earth. Christian, don't be crippled by fear or lack of assurance of your facing the wrath of God.

As sure as His wrath is, just as sure as the salvation of those who believe on Christ, who by faith enter into Him like Noah entered the ark and was shut in by the Lord. Judgment and salvation are both of God.

And because Noah, because the Lord shut Noah in, he was preserved and only him and his family lived. If you truly believe on Him, you are secure. No condemnation remains for those in Christ Jesus. Speaking about His sheep, those that the Father, the very same God that shut Noah in the ark and brought him safely through the waters of judgment has given to Him.

He says, I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.

If you are in the saving hand of the Father, you can trust that you'll remain there. The fist of His wrath will no longer come against you. Thirdly, let's consider worshipping God for the attribute of His wrath.

This might sound controversial. I'm not saying that we ought to rejoice in the eternal destruction of men. But His wrath, as A .W. Pink says, is as much part of His divine perfection as His faithfulness, power and mercy.

It is not a distorted anger. It's a perfectly just and righteous anger. God is not emotionally unstable and acts out of haste. Every time His judgment is pronounced and enacted, it is perfectly just. Not a single mistake is ever made.

There is no evil that will go unnoticed, no evil that will escape and no Christian that will suffer unjustly if in Christ. The wrath of God is perfect in its execution. Lastly, let us worship Him for withholding or delaying His wrath when He would be perfectly right in executing us.

Do you understand that this earth in its current state would still deserve to be drowned by a flood every single day? It's only by His grace, His patience, by the covenant that He's going to make with Noah in chapter 9 that the earth is spared.

And when we see and when we hear of these natural disasters, whether they are judgment of God we might not always know for sure. But when they destroy parts of nations, thousands of homes, take endless number of lives, our response should it not be to fall on our knees to thank and praise and worship the Lord for His training, His anger and not pouring out His judgment on all the earth every day at all times so He would be perfectly just to do so.

Yes, we pray for those affected. But we ought to thank Him that He's not giving us what this earth deserves. That He is patient and gives a chance to sinners to repent that they may not perish. The wrath of God is a real and perfect attribute of His.

His judgment is rightly pronounced and executed on the wicked. But those who by faith in Christ who satisfied the wrath, the very wrath that stood against us, we will be preserved and we will surely live.

Let's close in prayer.

God bless you and we hope to see you soon.