Well, the message this morning
is mainly going to be taken from Genesis chapter 6. The title is taken from verse
8, Noah found grace. We've been reading over in Hebrews
chapter 11, I'll just read this to you, what we consider to be the hall
of faith, mentioning these Old Testament saints, Believers in
the Lord Jesus Christ, sinners saved by grace. In verse 7 of
Hebrews 11 mentions Noah. By faith Noah, being warmed of
God, of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an
ark to the saving of his house, by the which he condemned the
world and became heir of the righteousness which is my faith.
Noah, About three or four chapters of the book of Genesis is devoted
to this man named Noah. His life, some of his history,
his family, and of course whenever we think of Noah we always think
of the flood, we think of the ark, we think of the animals
two by two and all of that. But what I want us to see, I've
been going back through these passages here, Genesis 6, 7,
8, and 9. There's a whole lot said about
Noah here concerning his life as a testimony of the gospel. And you children, you've heard
the story of Noah and the ark, Noah and the flood, and all of
that. I want you to see that this is more than just a story
of a children's story that applauds Noah, the man, as somebody who
rose above the thought and ideas and actions of his day. That's not the case at all. The
story of Noah and the ark, is a story of Christ and salvation
by the grace of God. Brother Jim read there in Isaiah
54 about the promise in prophecy that Isaiah preached in his day
concerning the coming of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Messiah is coming, he's
going to do a great work he's going to establish righteousness
he's going to bring life from the dead that's the picture there
of the barren woman and then the offspring that that which
is barren and dry and dead is going to be made alive and he's
talking about the church he's talking about the bride of Christ
he's talking about the elect of God the redeemed of the Lord
that through Christ the Messiah coming that life is going to
come to God's people. If you're a believer today, you're
a recipient of that life, spiritual life, that comes from Christ.
You didn't have it naturally. We're born dead in trespasses
and sins. But through Christ we have life.
And his point when he mentioned Noah in that Isaiah 54, was this,
that the promise of the coming Messiah to save his people from
sin is as sure and certain as the promise that God made Noah
that he would never never again destroy this earth with a flood. We think about the rainbow. I've
got an article coming out in one of the coming bulletins about
that, a beautiful reminder. Most people, they look at the
rainbow and they'll think about God's creation or they'll think
about even mercy. And that is a testimony of the
rainbow, but it's not just mercy, it's mercy established with justice. Remember before there was a rainbow,
there was a what? There was a flood. God must punish
sin. Well, The question of questions
always comes up in the story of these men and women of faith
in Hebrews 11. And that's this. As it says,
look back at Genesis chapter 6 and verse 8. It says, but Noah
found grace in the eyes of the Lord. How could Noah, a sinful
man, how could he find grace in the eyes of the Lord? I want us to look at the first
part of this chapter. The first five verses of Genesis
chapter six is a testimony to the absolute, utter sinfulness
and depravity of man fallen in Adam. That's what it's about. Look at verse one of Genesis
six. And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the
face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the
sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair,
and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the Lord
said, My spirit shall not always strive with man." God is long-suffering
now, that's what that's talking about. Understand this is not
talking about God trying to do something, but he just can't
do it because people won't let him He says for that he also
is flesh man Yet his days shall be in hundred and twenty years
Now that's where we come God about to pronounce judgment against
the world a floods coming and it's a hundred and twenty years
from this point on That's going to happen and verse four says
there were giants in the earth in those days and also after
that when the sons of god came in unto the daughters of men
and they bear children to them and the same became mighty men
which were of old men of renown now what he's talking about here
what he says in verse five is is god's judgment look at it
verse five god saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth
and that now listen to this every imagination, every purpose, every
desire of the thoughts of his heart, his mind, his affections,
his will, that's every fiber of his being was only evil continually,
literally every day, every day. And then he says it repented
the Lord that he'd made man. Now I'll get to that in just
a moment. What was the state of the human
race in Noah's day? Well, it's the same state of
the human race in our day. Every imagination of the thoughts
of his heart evil continually. Now here's where people mess
up. Here's where they go wrong when
they think about these days of Noah. Somebody says, well, that's just
talking about some immoral, perverted segment of society that they
all became robbers or thieves, murderers, all of that. And I
don't doubt that a lot of that was going on in this day. A lot
of it's going on in our day, isn't that right? There are thieves,
there are murderers, there are perverted people. We see it all
the time. I've often said that the reason
we think it's more in our day than it was in their day, I don't
think it was. I think it was just as bad then
as it is now. Now look what he says, every
imagination of the thoughts of his heart. What's he talking
about here? He's talking about the state
of a sinner's heart. One who's fallen in Adam, born dead and
trespasses, not even talking about his actions yet. Our actions
are evil in that sense. But here he's talking about sin
as a heart matter. You know, when Christ on the
Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5, When he exposed the
sinfulness of the heart, the thoughts, it's not only wrong
to go out and kill somebody, it's sin to even think of it. You ever wish somebody was dead?
You just murdered them. Isn't that right? Does that offend
you? You say, well, it's just like
the old cowboy movie. Somebody said, well, you've killed
a lot of people. And he said, yeah, but they all deserved it. Well, what if God gave me what
I deserve? What would it be? The wages of
sin is what? So Christ said, it's not only
a sin to lust or to commit adultery, but to lust. That's not new. That wasn't new. They didn't
know it at the time that he was preaching that message because
they just wrapped it. It's not a sin to think it, but
it's a sin to do it. That's the way man thinks. I
heard a fellow in this church stand up and say years ago, he
said, it's not a sin to be tempted. It's just a sin to give in to
it. Oh no. That's not right. Somebody said Christ was tempted.
That's true, but he had a perfect heart, a perfect imagination.
It never entered his mind to deny the Father in order to relieve
his hunger or to save him. Boy, it would
ours, wouldn't it? Every imagination. People go
wrong when they relegate this to the immoral segment of society.
My friend, this is talking about all men and women by nature,
even the religious. Now, how can I make a statement
like that? We'll go back to the precedent.
What's the precedent? What did Adam and Eve do when
they realized they were naked? They didn't run around naked,
did they? They had to cover themselves up. What did Cain do when he had
a desire to approach God? He brought the works of his hands.
There's the precedent. You see, man in his immorality
is evil. But I'm telling you what you
need to understand if you're going to think biblically and
understand these passages, man at his best, man at his most
sincere, man at his most religious is evil too. In fact, if you
really want to think biblically, man at his religious state is
worse off than the fellow in his immoral state. What did Christ
tell the Pharisees in Matthew 23? When you go out and you get these
Gentile proselytes, you go out and you make them, you get them
circumcised, you make them Jews. He says, you make them twofold
more the child of hell than you are. People today trying to get religious
decisions out of everybody, out of children. Under a false gospel. And all it does is just make
them little Pharisees. And I'm not just being critical.
Verse 5, God saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth. That's even the religious. Now,
a lot of people, when they go to these verses, they get sidetracked
off onto all kinds of imaginations. What did it say up here? It said,
the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair,
And they took him as wives. You know, one of the things I've
heard about that verse, that those were angels, fallen angels
who came down and met. First of all, now that my, where do they get this stuff?
An angel is not a son of God in the sense of humanity. They are called sons of God in
certain passages, but the context has to determine the meaning.
Angels are spiritual beings. They can't come down and intermarry
with women or men and do all that. They just can't do that.
That's not their nature, even the fallen angels. What I believe
you have to do is go back to the prior chapter which gives
us a genealogy. And the genealogy is the line
of Cain and also back in Genesis chapter 4, the line of Cain and
the line of Seth. Remember we talked about that.
Look back at Genesis chapter 4 verse 25. Adam knew his wife
again. She bare a son, and called his
name Seth. For God said Eve, hath appointed me another seed
instead of Abel, whom Cain slew. And to Seth, to him also there
was born a son, and he called his name Enos. And then began
men to call upon the name of the Lord." Now, when you see
the line of Seth, that's the spiritual lesson of this genealogy. There's a spiritual lesson here.
What is said here, and this may be hard to grasp, but listen
to me very well, what is said here is not literally applying
to every individual that was born in the line of Seth, as
if to say every descendant of Seth called upon the name of
the Lord. We know that's not true. So, you know, somebody
says, well, I'm gonna try to trace my genealogy or my DNA
back to Seth. You're just fooling yourself.
And even if you do, if you're an unbeliever, the spiritual
lesson here doesn't apply to you. You may be in the line of
Cain. The line of Cain, which is set
forth in Genesis 4, all it's wrapped up in is things of the
earth, what they build. Cain built a city, named it after
his son. Then there were skilled craftsmen
and all of this. Now that doesn't mean in the
line of Seth, there's never been anybody who built a city or built
a house or was a skilled craftsman. What it is, that's not spiritually
significant to the lesson here in the line of Seth. What's spiritually
significant to the line of Seth is right there in verse 26 of
chapter four. Then men began to call upon the
name of the Lord. Now the first spiritual significance
of the line of Seth is this. His is the line through which
Christ would eventually come. Salvation through that line. The second spiritual lesson of
the line of Seth is that men began to call upon the name of
the Lord. Now, what is it to call upon the name of the Lord?
It's to come to God just like Abel came to God, bringing the
blood of the Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's how you call upon
the name of the Lord. You know, the first time in the
Bible that the term called upon the name of the Lord is found
is in Abraham. And you know what it says? Abraham
did what? To call upon, he built an altar.
He had to bring a sacrifice. Justice satisfied. Mercy founded
upon justice. That's what Abel did. The significance
of Cain's line is not saying, well, that it's sinful to build
things or it's sinful to be a skilled craftsman. What it's teaching
is that in the line of Cain, if you're in the spiritual line
of Cain, which is spiritual deadness, you are tied to the things of
this earth. And you have no interest in the
gospel of God's grace in Christ. If this earth is your home, You
see, if we're in Christ, if we're believers, if we're sinners saved
by grace, what's our home? You're in the world, but you're
not of the world. You're a citizen of the heavenly
kingdom. But that means, and that right there tells you, spiritually
speaking, you're in the line of Seth. A sinner saved by grace,
washed in the blood of Christ, clothed in his righteousness.
Now, if you have no interest in the gospel and you're just
tied to the things of this world, what you can build, what you
can do, what's going to leave a name for yourself, you're tied
to the line of Cain. That's the spiritual significance
here. Now, I said all that to say this. The sons of God saw
the daughters of men, that they were fair. These sons of God,
I believe he's talking about those who are in the line of
Seth. And the daughters of men are those who are in the line
of Cain, and he said they intermarried. And God saw. He saw that this
whole thing was a mess. Well, God knew that before, didn't
he? He's making a commentary. Verse 4 says there were giants
in the earth. That's not talking about basketball
players. That's not talking about even
guys like Goliath. The word giant comes from a word
that means to fall. It's talking about fallen people,
fallen men. But giants, look at it, he says
in verse four at the end of it in chapter six, men of renown. What that describes is violent,
oppressive, fallen men And you know it's the same way today.
Who does the world applaud, admire, follow? The celebrities, men
and women of renown. Oh, I want to hear what this actor out in Hollywood,
I want to hear what he has to say about politics. Why do I
care what he says about politics? Men of renown who made a name
for themselves, you see. That's what he's talking about
here, these giants. They're giant people in the sense
that they are held up high and applauded and they're nothing
but sinners fallen dead spiritually. They have absolutely nothing
to tell me concerning a right relationship with God. What are you seeing here? It sounds like our day, doesn't
it? It sure does. People worship
men. They follow men, not God. And then look at verse six. God
pronounced that He was going to send a flood. 120 years, He's
going to send a flood to destroy this earth. It says in verse
six, it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth.
It grieved Him at His heart. Verse seven, the Lord said, I
will destroy man whom I've created from the face of the earth, both
man and beast and the creeping thing and the thousand there,
for it repenteth me that I've made them. Now people go to town
with that, you know that. Speaks of God repenting, God
grieving. Repentance by nature means a
change of mind. Grief refers to a change of emotion. You know there are scriptures
that says that God will not and cannot repent? Numbers 23, 19, 1 Samuel 15,
29, Malachi 3, 6, I'm the Lord, I change not. God is immutable. Change cannot be attributed to
a perfect God. How do you know that? Well, think
about it. If you change, If I change, and
we do, we either change for the better or for the worse. You can't stay on the same plane
and change, can you? It's either for the better or
for the worse. Well, now God can't get any worse,
and he's certainly not going to get any better. He's perfect. So how do we interpret verses
like this in light of other verses that says God is not a man that
he should repent? Do we deny the scriptures or
do we claim the scriptures have some kind of contradiction? Do
we dishonor God by giving him human qualities? You know, the
man loves that. They love to worship a God who's
likened to themselves. A fellow said one time, he said,
you know, I'm glad Christ got angry and went into the temple
and threw out the money changers because that makes me feel good
about my own anger. Is that right? Well, my friend,
your anger is sinful. My anger is sinful. Christ wasn't. Well, you've heard the term,
I know you're all familiar with the term anthropomorphism, aren't
you? That's a figure of speech that
gives human qualities to things that aren't human. And the reason
we do that is sometimes it kind of brings it down on our level.
And that's what God has to do sometimes in describing himself
and his actions. Because we're so limited and
so finite and sometimes so ignorant, God has to come down on our level
and talk to us like we talk to our little children. We want
to tell our little children the truth, but sometimes in relaying
the truth we might use terms and phrases that aren't exactly
physically, scientifically true. God never changes or alters his
purpose. He seems sometimes to alter the
course of his actions in providence, but you know what we always find
out later in the Bible and in our lives? That was God's purpose
all along. God alone decrees and knows the
end from the beginning. And the point here is not that
God changed his mind and his purpose. This is a human term
being used to refer to a perfectly good and necessary divine action. This is the way of God describing
his hatred of sin, his justice against sin, the idea of the
atrocity of sin in his eyes. God hates the workers of iniquity. He's holy, he's just, he must
punish sin. Yet we also know that God is
gracious and merciful. Look at verse eight, here it
is. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. What a great
guy Noah must have been. Is that what this teaches? No. You think Noah, by nature,
was as bad off as the rest of this bunch that God described?
I know he was. How do I know it? He found grace. And that's the only kind of people
grace finds. You see, if Noah was a better
person than the rest of this bunch, he wouldn't need grace. The only ones who need grace
are sinners. Christ Jesus came into the world to save who? Sinners. Of whom I am chief, Paul said.
When Paul said that he was the chief of sinners, you know that
in the eyes of men, Saul of Tarsus was the best of the best. But
Paul said, I was the chief of sinners. God saves sinners. Christ receiveth
sinful men. We sing at Him. And grace, the issue of grace
has already been settled years before this. When Adam and Eve
fell and put on their fig leaf aprons trying to hide their shame,
their lack of righteousness, And God took those fig leaf aprons
off, slew an animal, shed blood, the soul that sinneth must surely
die, and made him coats of skin, imputed righteousness. Right
there. Grace must be established on
justice satisfied. Love, God's love, must be established
on redemption by the blood. Mercy, must be founded upon justice
satisfied. That's the whole idea behind
the mercy seat. That's the whole idea behind
propitiation. Any preaching or any idea of
mercy and love and grace that does not bring to the forefront
justice satisfied through a surety, a substitute, the Messiah is
empty. God reveals himself in justice,
judgment. Noah found grace. And look at
verse 9. I mentioned these things, but these are the generations
of Noah. Noah was a just man. That means
he was a justified person. What is it to be justified? It's
to be not guilty. It's to be righteous in the sight
of God. Look over at Genesis 7 and verse
1. The Lord said unto Noah, this
is right before Noah got on the ark. The Lord said unto Noah,
come thou and all thy house into the ark for thee have I seen
righteous before me in this generation. God looked, God justified Noah. Upon what ground does God justify
a sinner? The ground of the blood, the
righteousness, the imputed righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
that's what Hebrews 11, seven says, by faith Noah. By faith, by the promise of God.
Remember, faith has a foundation, the word of God. Faith has an
object, the Lord Jesus Christ as our righteousness. Faith has
evidence. Noah moved with fear. It says
here in verse nine, he was perfect, or he was upright in his generations. That means he was born again
by the Spirit. He was a believer. Doesn't mean that his actions
were perfect or his thoughts were perfect. Doesn't mean that
he always did right. Listen, how many of us in this
building today are saved if upright means that we always do right? Don't raise your hand. We don't always do right. Noah
didn't always do right. You'll see that later on. Noah means he was a justified
sinner, a man of faith. He believed God's word. He believed
in Christ. Not only did he believe God's
word to send a flood, whereby he built an ark, he knew that
ark was a picture of Christ. I'm going to talk about that
next time. Noah's ark, a picture of Christ. A beautiful picture. And then it says, and Noah walked
with God. Just like Enoch. Just like Abel. Walking with God means what?
It means you're blessed of God by his grace. You're a recipient
of mercy and grace that you did deserve and didn't earn. That's
what it is. To walk with God, to please God,
you must be justified before God. And the only way that a
sinner can be justified before God is by grace, that reigns
through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ the Lord.
It means that peace had been established between God and Noah
based on what? The cross, the blood of Jesus
Christ which had not even took place yet. Christ was coming
in the future to die on a cross having the sins of Noah imputed
to him and God established peace between himself and this man
Noah in his generation based upon the surety and certainty
of the coming Messiah to establish the ground of peace. Reconciliation,
that's what it means. It means fellowship and communion
with God in Christ. Noah had been brought into fellowship
with God and it means walking after and minding the things
of the Spirit of God, seeking to obey him as motivated by grace
and love and gratitude. Look at verse 10. Noah begat
three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. We'll talk about them later.
The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled
with violence. God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was
corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. morally,
religiously. And God said unto Noah, the end
of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with
violence through them, and behold, I will destroy them with the
earth. Now, make then ark of gopher wood. Make an ark. And that's where we'll deal with
next time.