Going Deeper
Genesis 6-10 (9-16-17)
Grab your Bibles, and let’s go deeper into the testimony of Noah and study Genesis 6-10.
In Genesis 6, we read about God’s declaration about the hearts of mankind after the fall, and then His righteous judgment to bring His wrath on the wickedness of man.
Genesis 6:5-8 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
Then in Genesis 6:9-22, we see that God saves Noah and his family alone. In obedience to God, Noah built a very large boat, and notice how the chapter ends. Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.
Verse 9 tells us that Noah was a righteous man. Verse 22 gives us the evidence of this fact.
Here is a fun fact that people often get wrong: How many of each kind of animal did Noah take on the ark with him?
Read Genesis 7:1-5.
Noah took seven pairs of the clean animals, one pair of the unclean animals, and seven pairs of the birds.
Isn’t it funny how we believe what we’ve heard over the years, and in the end, it is not actually biblically accurate? Most people believe Noah only took two of each kind of animal. This is a great reminder that much of what many people say or believe about God, His ways, or His word is simply not true. We must resist the temptation to read the Bible through our worldview or traditions. We need to form our worldview through the authority of the holy Bible.
Notice something that is becoming a pattern in verse 5. It reads, “And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.”
When we jump ahead to verse 16, we see the floods start, and on the same day Noah takes himself and his family into the ark, and God shuts him in. Notice Noah did what he was commanded again, and God sealed him safely in the ark and away from the flood.
Read Genesis 7:21-24.
So, God saw the wickedness of man, and He set forward to pour out His wrath. He found favor in Noah and commanded him to build an ark and take in animals and his family. God followed through with His plan to flood the earth and cleanse it from its sin. God blotted out all the living creatures and mankind, except for those in the ark with Noah. The judgment of God is right and good. The wrath of God is right and good. Sometimes we are guilty of thinking that His love and mercy are more important than the attributes of His wrath or justice, but they are not. All of God’s attributes are good and perfect. We must see God’s worldwide extermination as righteous and good, not because the death of many is to be celebrated, but because God did it. William Perkins once wisely said, “We must not think that God does a thing because it’s good and right, but rather the thing is good and right because God does it.”
In Genesis chapter 8, we read that God pulled back the waters and unveiled the land. And the storm was over. Noah built an altar and worshiped the Lord.
The Lord’s response is the key I want us to see today.
Genesis 8:21-22 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 ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”
In the beginning of Chapter 9, God gives Noah instruction similar to one we’ve heard before. God blesses Noah and says, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” Sound familiar?
God then tells Noah that the plants and animals are his to rule over and cultivate. Sound familiar?
God is rebooting this creation with Noah and his family.
Then God makes a covenant with Noah and all who will come after him.
Read Genesis 9:8-17.
God commits to never flood the earth again, even though the intention of a man’s heart is evil from his youth.
This is His promise of common grace. Common grace is the idea that God extends some of His grace over all men, even though they are wicked in sin and deserving immediate judgment and wrath for their rebellion against Him.
Matthew 5:45 “For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”
Common grace is different than saving grace in that common grace is for all mankind, but saving grace is just for God’s elect.
The sobering reality is man is still wicked and deserving of God’s perfect and just wrath. Every man will be judged.
We will stand before the great Judge and either be condemned for our wickedness because we stand on our own merit and pride, or we will be pardoned for our wickedness because Christ stands in our place. He is our perfect advocate and mediator who took on our sin, and as a result, takes on our wrath. He then gives us His righteousness, allowing us to be accepted by God and brought into His holy presence forever. 2 Corinthians 5:21 (NASB) says, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
Oh, how desperate we are for Jesus alone.
Here is the thing: We truly are a wicked people when we take God’s promised symbol (the rainbow) that He has graciously given us as a promise of His common grace to not send His swift judgment on our sin, and we then, in the very sin for which this grace is promised, use His symbol to represent homosexuality, which He has made clear in His word is sin.
Here is the truth: God will righteously judge, and those who rebel against Him will be condemned.
Let me show you an interesting passage in 2 Peter that brings light to God’s judgment:
2 Peter 3:5-7 For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
“For they deliberately overlook this fact.” In other words, “They shut their eyes to the facts.”
The old King James version says, “They are willingly ignorant of …” This is speaking of the false teachers who are not of God’s people and are deserving judgment and wrath.
Heretics and false teachers choose to ignore the truth to form lies that suit their needs. It might be right in front of them, but they don’t want to see the truth!
Why do they do this? They love their evil. They love their sin. They love their lust. They don’t desire truth. They don’t want a judgment, and they don’t want Christ to return, so they develop a system that says He won’t.
Peter speaks of two great, historic, game-changing events here:
The first is creation! He says they willingly shut their eyes to the fact that by the word of God, the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and by water. Peter is saying creation was a cataclysmic act of God.
The false teachers who don’t want a God, who don’t want a God who is going to judge their sin, they teach a big bang theory and a system of evolution that is absent of the need for God.
Peter says they forget willingly. Now look at this detail he adds in 2 Peter 3:5: “For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God.”
You might we saying, “That sounds off.”
So, to jog your memory, let’s read Genesis 1:1-2: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”
In God’s original creative action, the earth was without form. The darkness was over something God has made. What was it? “The face of the deep.” What is “the deep?”
Look next: The Spirit of God was hovering over what? The face of the waters! Ahhhhh…
So, it wasn’t nothing and then light. The darkness hung above a watery, formless mass that God made first.
In Proverbs 8:27, God says He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep.
Read Genesis 1:3-10.
Then God made light, then separation between waters below and waters above, and then separation of the water below to determine ground from rivers or oceans.
And you know what He said about it? God said about it, in verse 10, “It’s gooooood.”
But it isn’t very long before man sins and multiplies, and the multiplication of that sin equals mass judgment.
God looks at the world and Genesis 6:5 says, “The Lord saw that wickedness of man was great on the earth and every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, and He was sorry that He made the whole thing. And He said, ‘I’m going to destroy it.’”
How’s He going to destroy it? With water!
Now, go back to 2 Peter 3:
2 Peter 3:5-6 For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.
Now, let’s go back to Genesis 7:11-12:
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth 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.
Read Genesis 7:19-24 again.
So, you can’t say, “All things continue as they have from the very beginning.” No, they haven’t.
There was devastating, total judgment on the whole world, and there will be in the future.
Look at 2 Peter 3:7: But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist …
This means the world was different after the flood. No one lived 900 years after the flood.
Things were different. A new kind of judgment was at work in the post-flood earth.
God’s symbol of promise (the rainbow) was given as a symbol that He will never destroy the world again by water.
But we know worldwide judgment is coming again. Why? Because God’s word tells us so!
But it won’t be by water, because God promised not to flood the earth again.
So, what will the judgment be by if not water? Fire!
2 Peter 3:7 But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
“Kept for the judgment, the day of judgment, and the destruction of ungodly men.”
God is the Creator, and He is the Destroyer. Only the next time He brings global judgment, He’ll do it by fire. It is reserved for fire. The word “reserved” in the Greek is where we get the word “treasury.” It means “to store up.”
Isaiah 13 says, “When the final Babylon is destroyed it will be destroyed as were Sodom and Gomorrah.”
How were they destroyed? By fire and brimstone.
The promise of God’s judgment coming in fire is all over the word of God:
Malachi 4:1 fire; Micah 1:4 fire; Daniel 7:9 and 10 fire; and in Matthew 3:11 and 12, John the Baptist said He’s coming, and He’s coming with fire.
2 Thessalonians 1 verses 7 and 8 (NASB) is so graphic. it says when Jesus comes He’ll “be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire.”
And in our passage today in 2 Peter 3:12: “waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn!”
Wow… this is a sobering reality. Jesus is coming! And God will judge and execute His wrath.
And the Bible tells us that this is good and right for God to do.
Romans 2:5 because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
This is why we take full advantage of the common grace that God has given to those who are unrepentant and wicked and deserving death. God has sent us into a sea of darkness to testify of the only One who can save condemned guilty people from the fire of God’s wrath: JESUS! This is why we ride, why we testify, and why we serve in Jesus’ name!
Come, Lord Jesus, and in the meantime, help us be bold in our testimony of Your saving grace in this season of patience that You show for all those under Your common grace.
By His grace and for His glory,
-Shepherd
Soldiers for Jesus MC