Some stories are just not children's stories. Romeo and Juliet, for example—a story of star-crossed lovers with elements of vengeance, murder, and suicide in it. Not a kid's story. So I'd love to know who was the lunatic who thought we could recast Romeo and Juliet as garden gnomes in the movie Nomeo and Juliet. Just no. Sorry. Fifteen yards penalty, flag on the play.

In the same way, Noah and the Ark has often been thought of as a kid's story. If you asked the American public to list three characters in the Bible, most people would come up with Noah as one of them. We've sort of domesticated this story and made it very sweet in ways that don't fit what we're about to read. We've made this the stuff of murals for kids' bedrooms. You can get a Fisher-Price Noah's Ark set. You know the song: "In came the animals two by two, the hippopotamus and the kangaroo." We've sort of made that into a sweet kid's story when this is actually a really challenging passage and a narrative that's about destruction and vengeance and above all, God's rescue.

So let's have the people of God read the word of God together.

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. Then the Lord said, "My spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh. His days shall be one hundred twenty years." The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. 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 was sorry that he 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. 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 breath 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, 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 and 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. — Genesis 6

Father, I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. You are our rock and our fortress and our Redeemer. Amen.

Why This Passage is True

I know what happens when we read a passage like this. There's sort of a question in the room: How do I understand this? What do I make of this? Is this true? In what way? I want to speak to that briefly. We're going to go into the depth on that over the next couple of weeks. But I want to tell you personally why I believe this is true and how I read this.

Why do I personally believe in the flood? Because Jesus did. Jesus spoke of the flood and of Noah as a historic person, and it actually formed the cornerstone for some of his teaching. Because of that, that's one of the reasons I accept this flood story.

You also can go and read through lots of ancient literature, particularly ancient Near Eastern literature. There are over two hundred seventy-five flood accounts in civilizations from all over the world with regard to a flood.

The Uniqueness of the Biblical Account

You could choose to think what you want about that. You could say the flood idea is just part of a collective human psyche. Or you can say something happened—I don't know exactly what or how, but something happened.

The ancient Near Eastern context shows the Bible says some of the same things about the flood as other accounts. But it's not the what that's unique to the Bible. It's the why. The Bible has a spicy take on the why of the flood, and it stands out for us.

There's a problem though when we read this stuff. We come to it and don't want to know why—we want to know what. And it's hard because the Bible is not interested in answering twenty-first century lab report questions about the flood. Calculate how much food the animals would need, how much volume that would take, whether it fits in cubits. Or figure out where all those waters came from and where they receded to. The Bible is just not interested in the things we're interested in.

Instead, it's telling us another story. The people who first received this were the Israelite people coming out of slavery in Egypt, and they were very familiar with the other flood accounts—from the Babylonians, Sumerians, Mesopotamians, and Egyptians. Those stories were in common circulation, and they knew them. All those stories tell a colossal destruction story.

But here's what's unique about this story: It tells the same destruction story, but it also tells a rescue. There's no rescue without destruction.

Main Point and Structure

This morning, here's my main point. Maybe you've heard people say, "God don't make junk." Well, my main idea for this sermon is God don't junk what he made.

Today is a diet sermon. You only get two points. Today we're going to talk about two things: the progress of sin and the psychology of God.

The Progress of Sin

Sin follows a progression. It begins with a compromise, goes to corruption, and ends in condemnation. We see this in our own lives and in this text.

Sin begins with compromise. Let me rewind a little and remind you of the story. Adam and Eve had two sons after they were expelled from the garden: Cain and Abel. They both offered sacrifices to God, and God approved of Abel's sacrifice, not Cain's. Cain, in a fit of jealous rage, kills his brother.

After that, Cain's line becomes a group of people who follow in Cain's footsteps—murderers, people whose lives are turned away from the Lord, a line of disobedience. The other line that comes is through Seth. It says Adam and Eve had another child named Seth. Seth's name means appointed. Eve was thinking, "God has appointed this new child to replace Abel." It's kind of like today naming a child "Replacement." Can you imagine? It's not a very nice name, but that's what Eve is thinking. This one is going to be the line of faithfulness, and that actually came to be in Seth's life.

At the end of chapter four, we read:

During Seth's lifetime, people began to call on the name of the Lord.

They started to turn toward the Lord. We see the genealogy of Seth with a pattern of faithfulness. That's where this story picks up today.

In verse one, even Seth's line goes the wrong direction. Seth's family are called the sons of God in this passage. Cain's family are called the children of men. Here's why: Luke three thirty-eight calls Adam a son of God. Chapter five starts over with the creation story, and we get Adam made in God's image, and Seth produces a son that's in his image. These are the sons of God—that line of Seth.

We read here:

The sons of God saw that the daughters of men from the line of Cain were good and they took them as wives.

Here's the problem. The line of faith is intermarrying with the line of disobedience, the line of wickedness that's turned away. This is a major theme in the Old Testament over and over. It plagues the people of God repeatedly. They're not supposed to intermarry with the unbelieving peoples around them. God says this to them over and over, and it's a source of regular temptation for them. It's a compromise on what God has said.

It seems harmless at the time, but it results in idolatry. It results in heartache and disobedience among God's people. And can I pause and just say that's still a problem for the church? The Bible is clear that it's not God's will for Christians to marry people who are not believers. That's in Second Corinthians 6, and that is not because God is mean and not because God doesn't like unbelievers. We see the heart of God toward unbelievers. It's filled with kindness, but that is not what's in view in that prohibition against being unequally yoked—believer and unbeliever.

Here's why. Because marriage is the most intimate and permanent of human institutions. And if you're a Christian and you call Jesus your Savior and Lord, you have already said, "Jesus, you are first in my life. You're my number one priority. You are my Lord." And so in a sense, you've given the first place slot in your heart to another person—to the Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore for you to be married with an unbeliever, where that other person gets to put you in the first place in their life, it's radically unfair.

There's a difference. It looks from the outside like not a big deal, but for one person to have the Holy Spirit resident in your life and Jesus is your first priority, and for the other person not, means that there are things you will never be able to share with an unbeliever. There's a part of yourself you will never be able to truly share. They will never really understand. You can describe it to them, they can watch you worship, but it's not the same. And it's radically unfair to an unbeliever to do that to them.

This happens over and over in the church, and this is one of the reasons why I politely decline to do weddings that are mixed believer and unbeliever, because it results in so much heartache when there are children.

The Pattern of Sin

In addition, I want you to zero in on the language of verse 2. Listen to this:

The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were attractive, good, and they took as their wives any they chose. — Genesis 6:2

Now these are the three words in Hebrew: saw, good, took. Saw, good, took. Where have we seen that so far? Have we seen that somewhere else in the Genesis story?

Eve. Eve, right? Eve saw that the fruit was good and for attaining wisdom and she took it and ate it and gave it to her husband. This is a pattern of those three words clustered together that you see over and over in Scripture: saw, good, took.

Unless you think I'm just picking on women, the other really famous account of this where we see this pattern is Second Samuel 11, where King David saw that Bathsheba was attractive, good, and took her.

This is the progress of sin. This is how it works in us—the pattern in the human heart. Anybody watch Stranger Things season two? You remember Dusty? He's the one without the teeth. He finds this little creature in the trash can and he brings it in and he nurtures it and he nicknames it Dart, and soon it's eating the cat. This is the pattern for how sin works in the human heart. Saw, good, took.

It starts off as a compromise that grows. James preached a couple weeks ago on the Cain and Abel story, and you remember in that story, God warns Cain:

Be careful, sin is crouching at your door. You must master it.

This is before the murder. It's crouching at your door, and that word in Hebrew is the same word that's used for an animal, a predator that's crouching like a lion or tiger crouched down. It's a position that looks small, but it's ready to pounce. And it looks small so that you are not as afraid.

Your biggest sins look smaller to you than to anyone else. Every lust is adultery in a little shrunken-down version. Every envy is murder in tiny form. And we tend to look at the little things in our lives and rationalize them. They don't look that big. They don't look that bad. We look at other people whose lives are ruined by things, and we think, not us. We're able to rationalize things because they look small. Sin is dangerous in that form: saw, good, took. Sin goes on to corruption.

The Multiplying Effect of Sin

Did you notice the language of corruption or infection in this passage? Listen to this, and count with me how many times you hear the word "corrupt." This is verses 11 and 12:

Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. God saw the earth and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its way on the earth. — Genesis 6:11-12

Three times. There's a multiplying effect to sin. Two years ago, if I preached this sermon, I would have had to do a lot of work to explain how something infects and is passed on, that looks small. It's small, but now we have a congregation full of veritable Doctor Faucis here this morning.

You're all specialists now in how infection works. And this is what we see in all kinds of areas, right? Like COVID-19, like kudzu, like cancer, like fidget spinners—like bad little things that infect and corrupt over time. What began as a sin in the garden then becomes dominates Cain's life, dominates Cain's entire family line, now has corrupted the other family line, the line of Seth. And now we read here, it's even corrupted the earth. God looks at the earth and says, even that is tainted now. Even that is infected.

Remember humans were tasked with being fruitful and multiplying, but what do we read they're multiplying in this passage? Violence. The earth is becoming more and more infected, corrupted.

The Nephilim

And this is where I think it's helpful to talk about the Nephilim. What in the world are the Nephilim? Well, let me say this. First off, the Bible translators are lazy with this section because it's really complicated. And so they transliterate the word in Hebrew, Nephilim, into English. It's just a Hebrew word. It's actually not a name. It's a description. The word Nephilim means "fall upon"—as in somebody fell upon another person, a warrior with great violence. That's what's being described with the Nephilim.

And we see here, they're mighty men of old, men of renown. They may or may not have been giants physically. The name Nephilim—"fall upon"—tells you though, these are ferocious warriors that people not only began to fear, but also revere. These became the people of renown, the celebrities, the people who are celebrated in that time.

I want you to think about that. You can measure a lot about a culture by who it idolizes. Who are our celebrities? Are they people of character? Are they people renowned for their compassion? Their forgiveness? The human spirit? Their incredible generosity to other people? I think we all know the answer to that. And what a culture celebrates is not accidental. It's a mirror that shows you what's in our own hearts. You know, in a sense, we are what we celebrate. That's a reflection of us.

And incidentally, the Nephilim show up again in the Bible. In Numbers chapter 13, the people of God who've been led out of Egypt, they're led right up to the brink of the promised land. And Moses and all the people are there on the Jordan River waiting to go in the promised land, and they send out spies to go check it out. And Moses records this for us. They sent out these spies and the spies come back and say, "Oh, there are Nephilim in the land. These mighty warriors, men of renown," and they're terrified.

Now I think it's fascinating. Why would Moses make sure that in his description of just the multiplication of evil on the earth and corruption, he specifically names that the Nephilim are being celebrated and are part of this ongoing corruption? Why would he do that in Genesis chapter six? And I think it's this: he's making a point. In just a few chapters, we're gonna see this. Does God know how to handle Nephilim? Yeah. Does God know how to handle Nephilim? Yes. Yes. How does He handle them? With a flood. And do Nephilim float or sink? They sink. Right? God knows what to do with Nephilim.

He's saying to the people also on the edge of the promised land, does God still know how to handle Nephilim? You bet He does. You do not need to be afraid. You do not need to be afraid.

Fear in Our Time

Now let me apply that for a second because I think I can say this. In all my years being a pastor, I have never seen a time when fear is at an absolute threshold the way it is right now. I mean, is this overstating it to say all of our news right now is alarmist? I mean, is that what you experience? I experience this: all of our news is like heightened alarm state, four alarm fire all the time. And we need to hear, just like these people back then, does God know how to handle Nephilim?

Okay, let's talk through some of these. A pandemic. A pandemic has been very disruptive, fear inducing, and yet it's a collection of cases of a particular virus. And I wonder though if we've made it into a pandemic Nephilim. Does God know how to handle a pandemic Nephilim? Yes.

What about this? The decline of the power of the evangelical church. "Oh, we're going to lose our rights." Like the church has never been through anything before. Does God know how to handle the kind of evangelical power Nephilim? Yes. Yes. Yes, he does.

Alright, let me step on toes now. Let's talk about the leftist agenda. You know, critical race theorists and, you know, taking over and brainwashing all of us. Does God know how to handle leftist agenda Nephilim? Yes. He does.

What about this? What about rightest agenda, Trump 2024? Oh, I'm preaching now, right? What about that one? Do we need to be afraid of rightest agenda Trump 2024? No. That's a Nephilim. Do we need to be afraid, people of God? No.

No. God knows what to do with Nephilim. We can trust Him. Okay. That was a sermon within a sermon. Name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Kidding. Sorry. That's just a side note.

Back to our text, like look, sin goes like Dusty, like his little pet dart. It goes from compromise to corruption and then becomes condemnation. Listen to verse five.

Then the Lord saw the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

God looks beyond the outside to the inside. He goes beyond the deeds to what's motivating and what's the heart and what are the attitudes that are behind that. And he saw what we call total depravity, not ultimate depravity. Now, people were as bad as they could possibly be, but this infection had hit all the faculties of every person. It's infected all of who we are.

And so God responds. But see the progression here. There's a downward spiral, the progression of the human heart. It starts as compromise. It's ruled by desire—saw, good, took. It starts small. It crouches. It's nurtured. It multiplies. It shapes what you celebrate. It infects and finally leads to condemnation where God says, enough.

The tragedy of this story is that this is the line of Seth. We need to think about that for a second. Sometimes I hear Christians talk about the world being bad, and it's against us, and certainly there are echoes of that in scripture. But a lot of times, that kind of language, and if that's all the kind of language a church uses, it makes it sound like all the bad is out there, all the good is in here. No. This is the godly line of Seth that's been corrupted, that's hearts are turned away from the Lord. This is God's people. This is the church. Like this is the home team. This is us.

And it's a warning to us about the deceitfulness of sin. We can't be always looking out there for that. One of the things I see going on right now is I feel like if you get on the social medias, any of them, we have like a PhD in pointing out other people's problems. That is a well-honed dissertation we have worked on—the ability to point out all the wrong in other people. But God holds this passage up to us as a mirror and says, have a look inside.

Remember several years ago, there was a Capital One commercial with all these versions of it, but it was always the same catchphrase: "What's in your wallet?" Very memorable, great line, whoever came up with that ad campaign. But this passage is asking us the same thing. What's in your heart? What is it that you are nurturing? What is it that seems small for you and insignificant, and not that destructive, and yet you are not dealing with it? That is sinful. That's going to destroy you.

Think of the people who first received this book of Genesis written down—the people coming through the Exodus. What were their temptations? We see in Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy being tempted by intermarrying, by violence, by idolatry, divided hearts, wanting a celebrity king like everybody else. Just like us.

This is a call for us this morning. I'm going to press this with you. There is something in each of us, in every person here, which if allowed to continue to grow will destroy your life. And we're foolish and blind if we think that's not us.

God's Response

One of the things that is so hopeful and helpful about this passage for me is even as God shows us our hearts—that the inclination of our hearts like these people is only all this wickedness all the time—God also shows us his heart. His heart, the psychology of God, God's response to all of this. What is that response?

In the nineteen nineties, there was a football player for the Atlanta Falcons named Andre Rison. Okay, Rison was his name. And Andre Rison had a girlfriend he was dating at the time named Lisa Left Eye Lopez from the band TLC. Some of y'all are old like me, right? You know that, right?

So they had a highly charged, highly combustible relationship, let's just say it that way. One day, Andre goes out clubbing with his friends, comes home late at night and he brings home all these shoes, these new sneakers he had got that night. And Left Eye is mad at him, not because he went out without her, but because he didn't bring her any shoes herself. They get into a big altercation and he storms off and leaves out with his friends again. She takes the shoes to their bathroom and she puts them in the tub. She sets them on fire and goes outside. And the shoes catch on fire, the bathroom catches on fire, the house catches on fire and she stands outside just watching the whole thing burn to the ground. True story.

Is that what God is like in this passage? Is God just like burn it to the ground?

If you read the other accounts of other flood stories from the ancient Near East, that's how they all read. They are all burn it to the ground destruction stories. The gods are unhappy with people, and they're done, burn it to the ground. But God is telling a different story here in Genesis six, and it's not a vengeance story. It's not a burn it to the ground story, it's a rescue story. I love this passage. I can't tell you how excited I was to preach on this passage this morning because it's the first time in the Bible that we get the curtain pulled back on the psychology of God. And I'm choosing that phrase very carefully this morning. The psychology of God—the inner workings of what's going on internally with God and what's happening here.

So the first time we get to see it, and it's not a burn it to the ground motivation. Yes, God is angry at sin. Yes, God is grieved by the corruption. But let's look at what we learn about the psychology of God in this passage.

God Takes Sin Personally

First is this: God takes sin personally. God takes all sin personally. Why is that? Because all sin is a destruction, a defilement, a defacing of what God has made. You know, you could go into a fine art museum, and you go up to the paintings, and what do you see in the bottom corner of the painting? The name of the artist. The artist signs the work. But why? Because there's a part of that artist in that creation. That artist has made that, and it's valuable, especially with their signature on it. And you can learn that if you go in with a knife or try to destroy the painting, you will be arrested, right? Because it's valuable. It's connected also to that artist.

The same thing is true of your children, of little children. Now let's just say hypothetically, a kid makes a masterpiece at school in their art class, and hypothetically, they bring it home and show it to the parents, and maybe hypothetically, the dad may have put it in the recycling bin, hypothetically. That's happened maybe. Is the child happy? Why? Because they've put themselves into the work. It's their masterpiece. And that is how God relates to you and me and every person on this planet. You are made in his image, his fingerprints on your soul. You are his masterwork. That's why God takes sin so seriously. It's a defacing of what he has made.

God's Anger Mixed with Sadness

Second thing we see here is that God is not just angry. God isn't just angry. It's an anger that's mixed with sadness, with sorrow. Listen to this:

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've created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds in the heavens, for I'm sorry that I've made them. — Genesis 6:6-8

Do you hear the sadness in that statement? The grief? I mean, it's interesting because just a few chapters back, God has said of his creation, it's good. And now it's corrupt. God's words here about the character of God don't sound like a judge. That's what a parent sounds like. That's what a father sounds like. This is how parents talk.

And I'll just be transparent with you this morning. Some of the hardest moments for me as a dad, as a parent, have been times where I'm so angry at my child for what they've done. And yet it's an anger that's deeply mixed with grief. Some of the hardest moments for me as a pastor have been being so angry with people in our church for what they've done, the destructive behavior, the devastation, and yet it's an anger that's mixed with grief. And if I can feel that, I mean, how much more is our heavenly father like this? This anger mixed with grief.

Was God shocked at the sin of the people here? You can read it that way. It sounds like God came down one day and was like, oh no, look what happened. I can't believe it. But look, I don't think God is shocked at all. Again, this is like a parent. This is like a parent who can see the pathway that their kid is walking down and knows that this is not going to end well. It doesn't take away at all from the grief that comes when the shoe actually drops, does it? Some of you older parents? No, it doesn't.

You know, if you want complex character development in ancient Near Eastern literature, this is incredible. I challenge you, if you're like, I don't know what I think about this, go read the other creation, the other flood stories. You're gonna find nothing like this from any of the other gods. This depth of character, this depth of heart for what he's made, this is our God. Sometimes when we hear stories of judgment, it really bothers people. But you know, it doesn't bother us as much as it bothers God. He's literally heartbroken over it.

I mean, listen to this. The word there in verse six in Hebrew for "grieved to the heart" is the same phrase used in Isaiah 50:4–6, where God describes himself this way: like a wife who married young only to be deserted, her heart filled with pain. Now, I've heard theologians balk at that. They're like, that's a really weird word to use—"grieve to the heart"—because it makes God sound so vulnerable. Like his heart is on full display for us. And yet even here, God is patient.

Look at verse three: "Then the Lord said, my spirit shall not abide in man forever, for his flesh, his days will be a hundred and twenty years." — Genesis 6:3

That is not a statement about lifespan or life expectancy. That word for "abide in" can also be translated "contend with." And God is saying, I'm now setting my flood watch. One hundred and twenty years and I'm going to bring destruction. And yet one hundred and twenty years—God is patient, giving people time to repent. God is saying, it's coming, but I'm still being patient with humanity. And so God purposes to rescue. God purposes to rescue his world and his image bearers.

Some of you may be familiar with the Liam Neeson movies Taken. It's kind of like a genre of movies where somebody, one person against the world, is going to right the wrongs and rescue the estranged daughter or estranged son from the bad guys. Well, God is the Liam Neeson in this story, where he's going at great lengths to rescue. Like Liam Neeson, God takes matters into his own hands to stop the cycle of destruction of sin in his world.

You may say, "This doesn't sound very loving to me. God bringing judgment." But it's like this: if someone you know is being eaten alive with cancer, you're like, we're gonna do whatever it takes—extreme measures. This is God's extreme measures. And believe it or not, there is something that God loves even more than his masterpieces, his master paintings. And that is that God loves his own justice. Psalm 89 tells us that justice is the foundation of his throne. So he loves his creation too much to let it persist in wickedness. He loves his justice too much to allow wickedness to go unpunished.

There's an interesting wordplay here in Hebrew. You look at verses twelve and thirteen. The word that's used to describe human wickedness that had just grown to this fever pitch is the word mashit. Now I love Hebrew, so you're gonna learn Hebrew with me this morning: mashit. Isn't that fun to say? I love Hebrew. What's fascinating is that word for human wickedness is also the word that's used for how God deals with the wickedness. God masheets the masheters. He destroys the destruction. That's what's going on here. God doesn't junk what he's made. He washes it. He cleanses it. This is why a flood. This is you taking a bowl to the sink after lunch and washing it out. God's like, I'm not done. I'm cleansing. I'm bringing cleansing to my people and this planet.

And so God sends a life raft: Noah and his ark. I told you last week that Noah in Hebrew means rest or relief. And that's what's being shown here. God is using Noah to bring noah to this world through this life raft—a rescue.

We read in verse eight: "But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord." — Genesis 6:8

That word for "favor" there is also the word used throughout the Old Testament for grace. It's the first time the word "favor," "grace" appears in the Old Testament. Now, of course, we've seen God's favor and his grace—his unmerited favor—over and over already in this book. In chapter three, where God says, even after the devastation, the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. We've seen God's grace and favor at work when even when Cain is like, "I want nothing to do with you," God's like, "I'm gonna preserve for you and your line." We've seen God's favor and grace when he blesses the line of Seth, and we hear about it finally here.

This is what the Bible does over and over: show and tell. Over and over, we've seen God's grace. Now God says this: unmerited favor. And you know, it's instructive for us now that the word appears here because it doesn't say Noah merited favor in the eyes of the Lord, or Noah earned favor in the eyes of the Lord. What does it say? Noah—what? Come on—found it. This is how sinners are redeemed. We find favor. We are given favor.

We're gonna see in a couple chapters—I get to preach on this one too—Genesis 9, kind of disaster story. Noah and his family after the flood: he is clearly a sinner. He is clearly not a great guy. And yet God gives favor. He gives grace. And this whole story points us forward to a greater Noah.

You know, grace and pain are always connected in the Bible. They're always connected.

God takes personally the sin of his people, and it does cause him pain because we are made in his image, we breathe his air, we live on his planet, our souls are made by him and for him. But grace and pain always go together. The story points through time to a descendant of Noah, Jesus, in the line of Noah, who would come take on flesh, and we see him die a painful death. We see him suffer incredible pain. Why? Because grace and pain go together.

On the cross, we see the most stark picture of God Himself suffering pain so that He can bring relief. He can give grace. He can bring real and lasting relief for us. He has taken the penalty of our sin so that we are given grace. And this doesn't mean we don't deal with sin anymore. We still have battles with ongoing sin, indwelling sin, but the cross shows us the penalty of sin has been paid for, the guilt has been paid for, the price has been satisfied. And those who come to Him find in Jesus relief, rest.

One day God will also bring this kind of cleansing where He will wash everything away. He's gonna wash away all of the effects of sin in this whole world and in us. That's what's to come. He endured this pain to show us grace. This greater Noah comes to us, people whose every inclination of the heart is wicked all the time, and you too. And God says, you. I'm doing a masterwork in your life. I want to do a masterwork in your life.

The only way we find grace and relief is to recognize we need it. One of the deceptions of living in this culture is that we think we can do anything we want to. We think we've got all this potential and you are smart people and gifted people and you do have lots of potential. But we can look around the world and be like, I got this. I'm okay. If I have a God for any reason, what I want is some sunscreen and a fruity drink with an umbrella and a deck chair.

But the Bible tells us, no, you're not on the deck of an ocean liner on a cruise. You're drowning in your sin. You have no hope except for the life raft. You have no hope except for Jesus Christ. To come to Him, to recognize Jesus as a life raft is actually to despair of self. To say, I can't be a good person, and I don't got this, and I'm not okay. In my heart is more than I care to even see myself or let other people see. And yet God looks at you and says, rescue. That's what I'm about. I want to do a masterwork in your life.

Two Invitations

It is a cross that makes a Christian. It's not being good. It's not being nice. It's not going to church. It's not reading your Bible. Those are wonderful things. It is a cross that makes a Christian.

If you are not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, God is stepping out toward you with a lifesaver ring and a rope throwing it to you. Will you put your trust in him and get on the raft? There's one way to salvation. This story is unique because there's one way. God offers it to us through Jesus Christ.

And if you claim to be a Christian, this is how you know. Your life is marked by a cross. It's marked by regularly going to the lifeboat. It's regularly realizing, I need to repent again today and again today and again today and again today. It's why we do confession of sin every week in our church. I know it's a downer. Some Sundays you think, can we just skip this part? Kind of sad. Don't want to be sad in church.

But this is how we know that we are His, that we continue to go to the fountain and drink of what never runs dry for sinners. Such a great salvation, such limitless grace, such relief. Lay hold of him today.

In the name of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, amen.

Father, we thank you that your Bible is not filled with self-help stories. It's not filled with advice on how to be a better person or how to tweak our life. It's filled with hope of a God who is this good, who's this loving and this gracious. We pray for every man and woman and child within the sound of this voice this morning. Father, we pray that we would all reach out and lay hold of grace again this morning and forgiveness and your love for us, and that it would bring relief to us. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.