Genesis 6 

9 This is the account of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man, the only blameless person living on earth at the time, and he walked in close fellowship with God. 10 Noah was the father of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. 

11 Now God saw that the earth had become corrupt and was filled with violence. 12 God observed all this corruption in the world, for everyone on earth was corrupt. 13 So God said to Noah, “I have decided to destroy all living creatures, for they have filled the earth with violence. Yes, I will wipe them all out along with the earth! 

14 “Build a large boat from cypress wood and waterproof it with tar, inside and out. Then construct decks and stalls throughout its interior. 15 Make the boat 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high.[e] 16 Leave an 18-inch opening[f] below the roof all the way around the boat. Put the door on the side, and build three decks inside the boat—lower, middle, and upper. 

17 “Look! I am about to cover the earth with a flood that will destroy every living thing that breathes. Everything on earth will die. 18 But I will confirm my covenant with you. So enter the boat—you and your wife and your sons and their wives. 19 Bring a pair of every kind of animal—a male and a female—into the boat with you to keep them alive during the flood. 20 Pairs of every kind of bird, and every kind of animal, and every kind of small animal that scurries along the ground, will come to you to be kept alive. 21 And be sure to take on board enough food for your family and for all the animals.” 

22 So Noah did everything exactly as God had commanded him. 

Imagine a world, that has so distant from God, and so evil, that God regrets ever making man. Imagine evil where men kill men, where children perish due to lack of food, where those who have power take advantage of the powerless, where armies destroy and murder the innocent. Imagine a world where the rich are able to manipulate the judicial system so as to escape the consequences of their actions, a world where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Imagine a world where the sick cannot access health care, where the homeless can have no home, where jails of our world hold men and women who are only guilty of trying to survive from day to day on the streets of their land.  

Imagine. 

Hard to imagine?  

Not really is it? It’s our world, it’s our time. 

And it was Noah’s time. 

And what was God’s response to that world? He decided to bring it to an end…the word says He regretted making man. One might ask the question; did He regret giving us free will?  

We have six grandchildren. We love them deeply and their childish behaviour. They are cute – they laugh, they run, they climb, and they cuddle!! 

There are times when I think – don’t let them grow up LORD! I’m sure that their parents, at times, wish they would grow up faster. I love how they are – fun and innocent. Especially the girls. The idea of them as teens scares me. 

But of course, we wish for them to be fully mature, and successful and to live a life that is joyful and fulfilling. 

I think God had that same intent when he first made man/woman – but they went off on their own following the evil suggestions of The Evil One. And God gave mankind the ability to make their own decisions even though He knew the risk! 

So we bear the consequence of our own actions… and sin brings the consequence of spoiling, spreading, and separating (more on that in a moment) … 

As the sin of Adam and Eve caused their separation from God’s original gift of the Garden! They were forced to leave. That was part of God’s judgement on their willful disobedience. 

Judgement is God’s work – it is His alone. 

Paul goes to great length in Romans 5,6,7….to show how we are at enmity with God. That is our unsaved state. We naturally position ourselves in opposition to God, we act on our will and in doing so we ‘break his heart. 

Sunday we’ll visit Romans 8, but for the moment stay with me in this problem – sin! 

Remember Jesus looking out over Jerusalem, just before his arrest and crucifixion and he wept over that city and those people – and not just the people of His day, but those who had ever been called the Children of God. 

Matthew 23:37 

37 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.   

So let me state the obvious – the problem is sin! Sin is going against God’s will.  

That’s it.  

It isn’t a particular bad action or evil act – it is anything that goes against God’s will. That’s what Adam and Eve did – and that’s what we do. 

You might consider this helpful thought; Sin spoils, spreads, and separates.  

Three S’s. 

It spoils the good that God intended, it spreads like a prairie grass fire, and it separates us from God and from other people.  

Peter spends quite a bit of his writing reminding us that we think about sin before we act upon that thought.  

We chose to sin.  

You might say sin is always an inside job!  

And how will God respond to our sin?  

2 Peter 2:4-9  

4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell,[a] putting them in chains of darkness[b] to be held for judgment; 5 if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; 6 if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; 7 and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless 8 (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— 9 if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment.   

God will hold the sinful accountable and He will rescue those who respond to His seeking! Even when you’re the thief on the cross beside him about to die…Today you will be with me in paradise. 

God gives to Noah his instruction. It is specific work, the size of the ark, the type of wood and waterproofing. He tells Noah what to collect and how many. He gives him direction… and what is the record of Noah’s response? Genesis 6:22 

22 So Noah did everything exactly as God had commanded him. 

Now comes The Flood 

Genesis 7 

6 Noah was 600 years old when the flood covered the earth. 7 He went on board the boat to escape the flood—he and his wife and his sons and their wives. 8 With them were all the various kinds of animals—those approved for eating and for sacrifice and those that were not—along with all the birds and the small animals that scurry along the ground. 9 They entered the boat in pairs, male and female, just as God had commanded Noah. 10 After seven days, the waters of the flood came and covered the earth. 

Let that settle in for a moment… 

Luke 17 

20 One day the Pharisees asked Jesus, “When will the Kingdom of God come?” 

Jesus replied, “The Kingdom of God can’t be detected by visible signs. 21 You won’t be able to say, ‘Here it is!’ or ‘It’s over there!’ For the Kingdom of God is already among you.” 

22 Then he said to his disciples, “The time is coming when you will long to see the day when the Son of Man returns, but you won’t see it. 23 People will tell you, ‘Look, there is the Son of Man,’ or ‘Here he is,’ but don’t go out and follow them. 24 For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other, so it will be on the day when the Son of Man comes. 25 But first the Son of Man must suffer terribly and be rejected by this generation. 

26 “When the Son of Man returns, it will be like it was in Noah’s day. 27 In those days, the people enjoyed banquets and parties and weddings right up to the time Noah entered his boat and the flood came and destroyed them all. 

Jesus does not seem to suggest that the story of Noah is not true or is some fable or myth. He speaks to it as history. 

And he speaks to the coming history of mankind. 

A day is coming… 

It is referred to throughout Scripture as the day of the Lord or “in that day”…but it points to a time when judgment will come, and salvation will come. 

When Paul was visiting Athens and preaching to the Greeks, he tried to reason with them and had some success in getting a hearing…but as he concludes Paul says 

Acts 17 

²⁷ “His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. ²⁸ For in him we live and move and exist. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ ²⁹ And since this is true, we shouldn’t think of God as an idol designed by craftsmen from gold or silver or stone. 

³⁰ “God overlooked people’s ignorance about these things in earlier times, but now he commands everyone everywhere to repent of their sins and turn to him. ³¹ For he has set a day for judging the world with justice by the man he has appointed, and he proved to everyone who this is by raising him from the dead.”