Genesis chapter 6 and verse 5. And God saw that the wickedness
of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of
the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it
repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it
grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy
man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man
and beast, and the creeping thing and the fowls of the air, for
it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in
the eyes of the Lord. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. I began yesterday's little introduction
on the sheet that I sent out, the little introduction to today's
sermon, by remarking that no one ever seeks God's grace until
they discover the need for it. No one ever seeks God's grace
until they discover the need for it. And this is true as far
as unbelievers are concerned. No one will ever seek Christ
until they are convicted of their sin and brought to feel a genuine
spiritual need. But that being recognised, it
is as well also true for believers. We who trust, we who believe
in the Lord Jesus Christ, we will only ever seek more grace
as the Lord reveals our needs to us. The Lord promises to do
his people good and he will be faithful to his word. but the
Lord will also have us ask for his help. The Lord's goodness
to us will not hasten to us while we think we don't need it or
imagine that we're doing fine without it. We shall not feel
his grace. while we delay asking for it,
and without seeking and without knocking. I think we've mentioned
this before, but these verses that are often taken, and I suggest
to you, very often misapplied as evangelistic texts being given
to unbelievers and them being encouraged to ask, and it shall
be given, seek, and ye shall find, knock, and it shall be
opened unto you. These are not essentially evangelistic
texts, these are texts to the Lord's people. He is telling
us to knock and to seek and to ask and this is the Lord's desire
for us that he might thereby give us the grace that we require. And this is in accordance with
God's word. The Lord informs Ezekiel, for
example, concerning his good intentions for his people. And
he says this, I will yet for this be inquired of by the house
of Israel. to do it for them. I think we
mentioned that verse a few weeks ago but it's been on my mind,
it's been on my thoughts and I'm just going to bring it to
you another time. I will yet for this be inquired
of by the house of Israel to do it for them. Why? Why is it
that the Lord will be inquired of by the house of Israel? For
this simple reason, that without a felt need Without a prod, without
a pain, without a push by the Lord, we are slow and reluctant
to engage with the Lord. We must be prompted, even provoked,
to ask for the very help that the Lord delights to give us. and the trials that the Lord
sends serve the purpose both as a stimuli to encourage us
to seek his mercy and occasions for the Lord to demonstrate his
care for us in our troubles. So I say it again, no one ever
seeks God's grace until they discover the need for it. In
this sense, our trials are blessings in disguise and they will culminate
in joy for us. Let us hold on to that little
thought, that little application right at the beginning of our
time together. These trials are blessings in
disguise and they will culminate in our joy and God's glory. Now, as I was mentioning also
before, I have a plan to break from our study in the book of
Isaiah and to take some time over the next few weeks to remind
us of some of the basic building blocks of our faith. with respect
to God's work of salvation. We will be returning to the book
of Isaiah, but a little break will do us all good perhaps,
and perhaps we'll be able to return to the prophecy. It's a big book and there's much
to be considered in it, but we'll return to it on another occasion.
And in the meantime, I want us to think about the revelation
of God's mercy to his people in the gospel. Now, we don't
need, just to give this a little bit of context, we don't need
to have some sort of fancy education to be saved. I'm not suggesting
that for a moment. But neither Will the Lord allow
His people to languish in ignorance when there are so many wonderful
truths concerning the Saviour to be known from the revelation
that God has given us. That is why the Lord has ordained
that we meet together week by week. That is why the Lord has
given gifts to his church. That is why he has provided preachers
to bring the gospel. It is why he has given his people
a hunger and an appetite after righteousness and wisdom. The Lord has revealed wonderful
things about himself and they are to be discovered and they
are to be enjoyed. No matter how young we are or
how old we are, the Lord has a message for the moment, for
our day, for our circumstances. And he builds it all upon this
gospel revelation of Jesus Christ crucified. and believers have
an appetite for gospel truth. And in fact, we may very well
make the case that conversion, the conversion of a sinner into
an evident or a revealed son or daughter of God, the conversion
of a sinner may be described as the first awakening of spiritual
wisdom. Because our conversion to Christ
is God's means to begin our journey of discovery into the infinite
grandeur of God's glory and his love and his beauty and the holiness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not only the Lord's desire
for us to be saved, but it is his desire and his will that
we should be wise unto salvation. And indeed, that is the very
prayer of the Lord Jesus Christ on our behalf. If the Lord Jesus
Christ himself prays for something for us, we ought to give that
prayer some attention. And the Lord says in John chapter
17, verse three, this is life eternal, that they might know
thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. So our experience of the gospel,
our experience of the doctrines of scripture, they're not given
to us in any sense to confuse us or confound us or to cause
us problems or to intimidate us. They are given to us to bless
and encourage and comfort us. And we are not to be frightened
about the idea of doctrine. It is simply the truth about
God. And we should be eager to learn
as much as we can about the Lord Jesus Christ and about God the
Father God, the Holy Spirit. So today, and for the next few
weeks, we'll take a fresh look at the doctrine of free grace,
because that is the gospel. It's the heart of God's revelation
to sinful men and women like us. And it is foundational. It is the foundational pillars
and principles of God's plan to strengthen our faith and to
comfort us in this wilderness journey, which is our time on
earth. So our verses today direct our
minds, these verses in Genesis chapter 6, direct our minds to
man's true state before God as seen by God himself. I don't care what men's opinions
are. about themselves or about one
another. That really doesn't make any
sense or be of any importance to us. Men can think what they
like about themselves and about one another. The real matter
is what does the judge think? What does the Lord declare? What has God said about the state
of men and women in this world? And this little verse is perhaps
one of the finest summaries of God's view of men and women in
this world. And it is perhaps useful for
us to pause and reflect briefly upon the fullness, the comprehensiveness
of the Lord's language here when he says concerning the state
of man that it is wicked. and of the nature of man that
at its very core every imagination of the thoughts of his heart
was only evil continually. I don't know whether you could
get a more emphatic statement of God's view of man's nature
than that little phrase. Now, if we've got any familiarity
with scripture at all, we will know that the heart is seen and
presented in scripture as the centre of man's beings. We use it like that, I suppose,
in so many ways. We represent little heart shapes
everywhere as to say, this is important to us, this is meaningful,
I love you, I have an affection for you. We represent that with
hearts all the time. And that's a continuation of
the way in which the heart is represented in Scripture. It
is seen as the centre of man's being. What's important? It's
the cradle of every thought, the source of all our actions. And the Lord here declares that
the heart of man is evil and wicked. Indeed, it is desperately
wicked. It is wickedness itself. That's what these verses are
telling us. This is a little bit heavy. This is a little bit
dark in some senses because we're dealing with these fundamental
things concerning the relationship with God and man as a result
of disobedience and as a result of Adam's fall. But here the
Lord declares that our thoughts are wicked even before we do
a single thing. Indeed it's almost as if the
Lord is directing Moses as he wrote these words to endeavour
to even peel back the origin of our thoughts because he is
saying that it's not just our actions, it's not even just our
thoughts, it's the imagination of those thoughts. which means
the very essence of our being, the most fundamental elements
of our being, from which our mind, from which our motives,
from which our inspiration, our ingenuity, our creativity, all
arise. All of these things are essentially,
inherently evil and corrupt in every aspect. and continuously
so, without pause, without ceasing, without letting up. Furthermore, it is inherently
dishonest and deceptive to us in ourselves, so that the evil
in our heart disguises itself, it camouflages itself to have
an appearance of good. So that we think we're good in
our own eyes. The deceitfulness of our heart
lays over our thinking a veneer of reasonableness. so that we have this desire to
justify ourselves, to explain our actions and always have a
reason for the things that we do. And by which we are deceived
into thinking, we're not as bad as all that. We're not as bad
as the Bible suggests. We're not as bad as we could
be. And this is what the Bible, this
is what the prophet Jeremiah is talking about when he says
in chapter 17, verse 9, the heart is deceitful above all things
and desperately wicked. Who can know it? So again, he
stated what Moses states in Genesis 6, when he says the heart is
deceitful above all things. There's nothing more deceitful
than the heart. It's the cradle, it's the source, it's the beginning
of wickedness. There's nothing more deceitful
than the heart. It is desperately wicked. But
then he goes on to say, who can know it? except God himself. God sees
and knows all things. It's part of his omniscience,
part of his omnipotence. God's all-seeing, all-knowing,
and all-powerful. There's nothing that is hidden
from him, and that includes the depths of our being and the state
of our heart, the nature of mankind. God, who sees all things, knows
all things, sees our heart, he knows the imagination of our
heart and he knows its deception. And therefore, he alone can make
that judgment. God alone knows perfectly all
the wickedness of an individual's heart and the evil that resides
in it. And the problem that we have
as a result of that wickedness, that sinful nature, has many
sad effects. And I'm going to spend the rest
of the time that I have available just looking at one or two of
the effects of this sinful nature, which is bequeathed to us all
because we are men and women in this world subject to Adam's
fall and guilt. Here's the first thing. This
sinful nature reveals what we truly are towards God. We're wild and we're rebellious
enemies against God. To the extent that God is holy,
we are unholy. To the extent that God is perfect,
we are imperfect. To the extent that God is good,
we are evil. We noted previously how Paul
represents our state as a carnal man with a carnal mind. He says we are by nature opposed
to God, contrary, and the word he uses is enmity. not just at
war with God, but enmity against God, so basically and inherently
opposed to him, so implacably set against God in our fallen
human nature, that that nature, Paul says, cannot be subject
to God. And I want to make that distinction,
I want to make that point with you. This is why I'm talking
about this knowledge thing, this wisdom, this spiritual understanding
that it is important that we possess. I want us to understand
the nature of this distinction that is being made here. It's
not that we will not be subject to God. It is that we cannot
be subject to God. It's an emphatic and an important
distinction. It's not just that our hearts
and minds will not subject themselves to God and his holiness. That
would be bad enough. It cannot. That is the folly
of free willism or free will preaching. That's the folly of
trying to appeal to the will of men and women to trust the
Lord and to do their duty and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
as their saviour. The idea that a man can come
to God by Christ if he wills to do so is foreign to Scripture
revelation. Scripture is clear on this matter. The will itself is fallen and
corrupt as every part of our being is. It's not a mere change
of a balanced mind or the act of a neutral will or a logical
impartial decision for Christ that makes a believer a new creation. Faith is required, a transformation
needs to be imposed upon the will of man. A new heart must
be created. A divine work must be done. God's own handiwork must be evident
for a soul to turn to Christ. And this is why the Bible speaks
of a need for a new heart. for a heart of stone to be removed
and replaced with a heart of flesh. Our wicked heart can't
be repaired, it must be replaced with a new heart. Now we're not
talking about the beating muscle inside our chest, we're talking
about the essence of our motivations, the essence of our being. But
that heart, that core nature, it must be transformed. It must
be replaced with a new heart, which is what David means when
he says in the Psalms, create in me a clean heart, O God. He knew where the initiative
had to lie. He knew where the power had to
come from. Create in me a new heart, O God. The free will preacher would
have to say, creating yourself a new heart by a decision of
your will. Ezekiel quotes the Lord, he says,
a new heart will I give you. I will take away the stony heart
out of your flesh. So that's one point about this
sin nature. It reveals what we truly are
towards God. The other thing is that it motivates
what we do. Our actions, our deeds, our language,
our talk, our thinking, our lifestyle. We cannot help but follow our
nature. and cater to the appetites of
our fallen natural passions. That's why there is so much wickedness
in the world. It's the manifestation of the
fallen nature. And yes, it can be hedged in
by laws, it can be, we can put up guardrails to try and maintain
decorum and law and order and reasonableness, and we can speak
about kindness and caring for one another and endeavour to,
but at the heart of man, in man's deepest nature, there is this
self-righteousness and this contrariness to God. And those who insist
on man's innate freedom in matters of salvation and faith overlook
that if man's will is corrupt, it cannot lead him to Christ. It cannot motivate him to do
anything holy or pleasing to God. Every thought, every word,
every act is corrupt at its source because the source from which
it flows is itself enmity against God. We often make the reference
to the fact that you can't get pure water from a polluted well. Well the Lord, he has his own
way of putting that. He says in Matthew chapter 7
verse 18, A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither
can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. A corrupt tree cannot
bring forth good fruit. Isaiah tells us in chapter 64
verse 6, but we are all as an unclean thing and all our righteousnesses
are as filthy rags. The Old Testament Jews tried
to please God by obedience and it proved to be a vain activity. Oh, it bred pride, it bred self-righteousness
and a false hope because, why? Remember, the heart is deceitful. It said, you're doing great,
you're doing fine, this is enough, God will be satisfied. As long
as we can impress our neighbours, as long as we can impress ourselves,
all will be well. And legalism produces the same
outcomes of self-righteousness and pride and false hope today
as it always ever did. The book of Hebrews tells us,
without faith, it is impossible to please God. And faith is God's
gift. Faith does not come to everyone
naturally. It is given sovereignly by God. There is no act of fallen man,
whether of his hand or his will. There is no act, whether motivated
by compulsion or so-called free will, will ever please God. Only faith pleases the Lord. And faith, being the gift of
God, was never obtained by free will, never secured by good works,
far less the carnal mindedness of the wicked heart. And that makes the next point
pretty obvious, I think, because our sinful nature inhibits or
blocks what we should do. As God's creatures, we ought
to honour our Creator. As spiritual beings, we ought
to worship God spiritually. Man's chief end, says the Shorter
Catechism, is to glorify God. But Adam failed at the first
test, and falling He took all of his children and all of his
posterity and everyone that has come from the loins of Adam,
who were ever in Adam, fell in him and with him. And we can
never glorify God or properly serve God as we should because
of that sin from the beginning, that sinful nature. We are spiritually
dead. until we are made alive and quickened
by God the Holy Spirit. Therefore it is an impossibility
for us to do what we should, to worship God aright. Spiritually dead until we're
quickened. The new creation is a divine
work of grace. This is what is called by Peter,
the secret man of the heart, the new man formed after the
image of Christ. This is what the Lord God predestinates
us to. We are predestinated to be conformed
to the image of Christ. This is the work of grace effected
by God as his workmanship. Never yet has this work been
accomplished by a fallen creature. The old man will never voluntarily
depose himself from the throne of the heart and submit to the
new man. he has to be thrown down, he
has to be cast out. The battle in a believer's own
soul rages hot enough, following the work of grace, for us to
ever imagine that it would succeed without that grace first being
given. regardless of all the hymns that
are sung and regardless of all the prayers that are made, regardless
of all the sacrifice that is given and contributions that
go forth, only spiritual worship is true worship. The Lord Jesus
Christ said, The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers
shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father
seeketh such to worship him. God is a spirit, and they that
worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. Our fallen
nature is spiritually dead in trespasses and sin. Only a transcendent
work of grace can quicken a dead soul and raise the dead to life. Only God has that power. Our sinful nature means that
we can't do anything to remedy our situation. Now this may seem
harsh to many people. It may seem hopeless. Someone might say, tell them
to trust Christ. Show them what they must do. I'll tell you this. If God the
Father has chosen you in eternal election, if the Lord Jesus Christ
died for you and redeemed you by his blood, if the Holy Spirit
quickens your soul, you will trust in Christ alone for your
salvation. You will do it. You will see
your need of a saviour when the Holy Spirit opens your heart
as Lydia's heart was opened. You will trust Christ when the
Holy Spirit shows you your need of grace. You'll feel your guilt as a sinner. You will know your state to be
helpless You will appreciate that without an intervening act
of grace, you're hopeless. But you shall not be left in
that state. It was in desperation that the
publican dropped his head in the temple and cried to God,
be merciful to me, the sinner. It was when he had nowhere else
to run, nowhere else to turn, that the Philippian jailer cried
out to Paul and Silas, what must I do to be saved? And Paul said
to him, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. And Christ says in John chapter
six, verse 37, all that the father giveth me shall come to me and
him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out. Let me finish
what I have to say today with this remark. Noah found grace
in the sight of God. because God showed to this poor
sinner the grace that he needed for no other reason than God's
own divine love and his good pleasure to do Noah good. By nature Noah was as wicked
as every other man and woman on the world at that time. Every
imagination of the thoughts of Noah's heart was only evil continually. God was under no obligation to
show Noah grace. It was God's distinguishing love
alone that stirred up his mercy to forgive Noah's sin on the
basis of Christ's sacrifice. It was an act of pure grace that
God should deliver this man who habitually opposed him. If the Lord showed grace to Noah,
a habitual sinner, then perhaps he will show grace to me and
to you too. Every grace is an undeserved
gift. Grace is God's to give and it
is his to withhold. That's why it's called sovereign
grace. That's what the phrase means. God, be merciful to me, the sinner. And may we all here today find
grace in the sight of the Lord, as did Noah. Amen. May the Lord
bless these thoughts to us.