Summary 

Noah and the flood. 3 whole chapters of the first 9 chapters of the Bible. What we've been seeing is that these first chapters of Genesis are laying foundations for how we understand God, others, the world about us and our place in it all. But three chapters about a Christian truth that people find offensive - God as judge. Yet, at the beginning of this story we have three key ideas that we have to keep in mind: 1. Sin is worse than we think, (2) God is the only truly just judge and (3) Grace is on the table.

Transcript

Ok. We come to the story of Noah. And let me say that I’ve got more than one sermon for the story of Noah, so bear with me if I don’t get to the questions that you might have about Noah today. And come back next week, because I might get to them then. Noah is a long story. I’ve said that these beginning stories of the Bible are setting us up, they are orienting us, to understand ourselves and God and creation and all of it. How we are to think of these things and how we are to act in the world. And the Noah story gets three chapters. In fact, Noah is the last thing mentioned at the end of chapter 5 and the first mentioned at the beginning of chapter 10. So, this is an important story. And maybe that’s why the story of Noah has always had such a prominent role in Children’s Ministries and in church nurseries. Some of you are old enough to remember Sunday School felt boards and how many of those felt cut-outs were dedicated to the Noah story. And so many of you thankfully serve here in Children and Worship and you know how we have the wooden ark and the wooden camels and giraffes and all. And probably many of you remember songs from y our childhood about Noah. “Who built the ark? Noah, Noah. Who built the ark? Brother Noah built the ark!” There are all kinds of kids songs and kids stories about Noah.

But here’s the thing, as soon as we start to sit in the story, we quickly move (and I mean immediately) we move away from a cute story with a bunch of fluffy animals to one of the great reasons why so many people - maybe you’re included in that - don’t believe the Bible and the Christian message. God as judge. God as judge. It’s something that we confess week in and week out. “He will come to judge the living and the dead”, that’s what we confess. But if this story doesn’t sit just a little uneasy with you, let me tell you that it nearly certainly does with your neighbor or with the person that is making your flat white or that person putting together the Chipotle build your own kids taco meal for your kids. 

So, what do we do? What do we do with this story and the judging God here? What do we do with it? 

Well, I think this story presents us with three ideas that we have to keep in mind when we come to the judging God. 

We have to keep in mind just how horrendous sin is. 

We have to keep in mind that God is the only just judge.

We have to keep in mind the grace of God for sinners. 

1. How Horrendous sin is. 

The first reason why God as judge doesn’t sit too well for so many is that we don’t really think things are so bad.

Here’s what I mean, I think that if we had a sense that things were really bad off than judgement wouldn’t be so unpalatable to us. I say this because we all know that the person with the “visualize peace” bumpersticker also gets furious at injustice and rightly so. Social justice is at the very least saying that something is not right and some kind of justice needs to come to bear in the situation. Are we going to let energy companies just run rough shod over the earth without any consequences for the human and ecological communities that are being destroyed? Will there be any justice? Will there be any justice for the known red-lining that happened in so many communities throughout our country that intentionally did not allow primarilyy African American’s but also other racial minorities from home ownership. I mean, it’s not debated that the Federal Housing Authorities underwriting manual stated that "incompatible racial groups should not be permitted to live in the same communities” and that that helped to contribute to massive wealth disparity. Do we desire justice, a judgement? Do we think that those who practice human trafficking should be brought to justice? Should be judged? 

We don’t think anything much of a lion killing it’s prey, but we think a whole lot of Russia invading Ukraine or of a teacher molesting a student.

You know, maybe you done’t think much of my initial example of ecological justice. Maybe you think that that is just part of living in our modern world with our constant desire for the latest iPhone or gaming system and it is the price we pay for the life we live. But surely you think that those final examples are bad enough that people should be judged. Surely. And that is my point, one of the reasons God’s judgement is so hard for us is that we don’t see how bad sin is.

But part of what we have after Genesis 3 and the entrance of sin, part of what the Bible is setting us up for here in the beginning is to see just how bad things are. Adam and Eve may clothe themselves and live in hiding and in distance from God and from each other and we may know that that is not the life we were made for or the life that we desire. Hiding. But we think, it’s a little apple. That’s all. What’s so bad? We minimize a life that rejects God and lives for ourselves and our desires. It’s not so bad. But then the next story is a brother killing a brother and we take note that rejecting God has made things worse and has major consequences. And then we see that Cain’s vengeance is nothing compared to Lamech’s. “Cain’s is sevenfold, Lamech’s is seventy-seven fold.” And we take note, maybe this whole rejection of God thing isn’t such a great idea. Maybe sin really does have horrendous affects in the world that should be judged. 

Now we come to our passage this morning. And it begins with some of the hardest to understand verses in Genesis. 

When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, ² the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.

Who are these “sons of God”? Well, you might know that this is another little verse that has a lot of debate around it. To summarize what I think are the best options: One option says that these are angelic or rather demonic beings that took on some incarnation and the other that this is the intermarrying of the line of Seth (the righteous line) with the line of Cain. Truthfully, I don’t know the answer to this. The rebellious angelic being argument does seem to have some support in the NT in 1 Peter and in Jude, but also in the context the Seth and Cain argument also makes sense. You know what though, either argument supports the idea sin is heinous and destructive and it is painting a picture for us that things are getting bad. 

Here’s another strange verse for us:

⁴ The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. 

What do we make of that?  Well is wisely just left as Nephalim because we don’t exactly know what it means, but it probably referred to large men. It was like a group of John Fetterman’s walking around. But not just that, one way of understanding “mighty men” is the idea of tyrant and again that makes sense of the context. 

Sin is heinous. 

And verse 5 just says it like this: 

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.

Every intention, only evil. 

And here’s the truth. We long for intimacy. We were made for it. We’ve heard that in this serious hopefully loud and clear. And in our best moments we desire to see into the hearts of those we love and to be full known. But we also shun the idea. If you are honest you don’t want a video screen above you reflecting to the world the thoughts of your heart. You don’t want some recorder hanging about your neck recording all of the thoughts of your heart. Your petty grudges, the ways you stew in the shower just thinking how you could have eviscerated that guy in that conversation if only your would have said such and such. 

What I’m saying is that Genesis isn’t just telling us that Cain is a sinner and that it’s worse than we think or that Lamech is a sinner and it’s worse than we think or that the “sons of God” and “daughters of man” marrying is bad or that the tyrants are running the earth is bad, but that our hearts are way worse that we dare to admit. I’m saying that part of our difficultly with the judging God is that we think that we aren’t really so bad. Sure, maybe I explode at my kids sometimes. Who doesn’t? Sure, maybe that argument with my wife escalated more than I wanted it to, doesn’t everyone’s from time-to-time? But you know, and the Bible calls us out of this, that things really are worse in our hearts that we care to admit and that evil really does manifest itself in ways that we demand for justice and it isn’t just in the extremes of trafficking and lynching and Russia’s invasion and all the rest. 

“Every intention the thought of his heart was only evil continually.” And verse 11 “the earth was filled with violence” and again in verse 13 “the earth is filled with violence.”

We don’t really bock at the idea of justice and judgement coming to bear on the filing of the world with violence.

But who should bring the judgment? 

2 God is the only just judge.

You know, one of the most popular verses in our day in the Bible is the beginning of Matthew 7. It reads like this: “Judge not, that you be not judged.” And those are the words of our Lord and we all need to heed them. Listen to our Lord in that. It doesn’t mean “don’t make any judgements” we all have to weigh things out all of the time and seek wisdom and understanding and make decisions. But you and I make for bad judges. 

One of the reasons for that is because we are sinners. Jesus goes on to say: ² For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.

But because we are sinners, we don’t see well. So, the next thing Jesus says is: ³ Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

But God sees perfectly. 

Verse 5 “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”. 

We’ve already heard Genesis tell us that God sees. But before we heard it tells us again and again that God saw that it was good. He looked upon his creation again and again and saw that it was good. 

God is the only perfectly seeing judge and so he is also the only one that can truly bring about a just judgement. 

But here’s the other thing, we think of a judge as rather cold and sterile and removed. He’s up there on the dais and he’s got his dark black robe on and he’s impartial. Or we think of the juror who must recuse themselves if the case involved their kids or something. And why do we desire that, well, we desire it because we know it clouds their judgement. 

We want justice to be done by someone who can see clearly, but you know what we also want justice by someone who can love deeply. Who has compassion on the victims and who also does desire the well-being of all. 

So you come to the Bible and what you find in God is one who has made all things good and given his creation to be cared for and tended to and loved by humankind, but then they rebel. And how does God respond. He seeks them out, “where are you?” And Cain kills Abel and God seeks out Cain and says “Where is your brother” and “be careful with sin for it’s desire is for you but you must master it” and what we see is that even in their sin and their rebellion and God’s judging those thing he is acting in love. 

He both sees perfectly and can bring full truth to bear, but he also loves intimately. He’s not passive and sterile and standoffish. 

And this again is right here in our text for this morning. 

Right after verse 5 tells us that every intention of the thoughts of their hearts were only evil continually it says, verse 6 “And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” Now, I will just say that I think the best way to understand “the Lord regretted” is as an anthropomorphism, which means a way of speaking of God as though he were a man. You know “God reached out his arm towards us”. Because we also know elsewhere passages like  1 Sam 15:29 And also the Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for he is not a man, that he should have regret.”

But I want you to hear that second part of verse 6, “it grieved him to his heart.” 

God has bound up his heart in his creation. God has bound up his heart in humanity.  

Any judgment that God brings is not a sterile, passive judgement.

2 Peter 3 tells us “¹⁰ But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.”

But immediately before that it says “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”

God is the only just judge because he sees perfectly, because he loves intimately, and because he is patient. 

You and I want that kind of judge. We all do whether you are a Christian or not. That’s the kind of judge you want. You want justice? Well, then you want someone who can see perfectly to bring true justice. You want justice? Well, you want someone who will love with knowledge and care. You want justice? Well, quite honestly, you want a judge who really will say “enough is enough.” 

Ok, My final think that we need to keep in mind when we come to the unsettling truth of God as judge:

3. The grace of God for sinner.

You know, the real hard thing in this passage is how encompassing God’s judgment is. In the Bible judgement and grace go together. We learn them together.

We see this here in this passage

1. 7 ⁷ 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.”

Right after this verse is this small word that has so much meaning in the Bible. “But.” ⁸ But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

That word for “favor” could be translated “grace”. BUT Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

And you might say, “yeah, but look at the next verse”!  “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.” But it is the next verse and that order is all over the Bible. Grace for sinners first. Justification before sanctification. Faith, then works. But Noah found grace. 

So judgement and grace. We also see this in Jesus

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:23

When they had carried out all that was written about him, they took him down from the cross and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead . . .Acts 13:29-30

You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. Acts 3:15

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:6-8 

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,  even when we were dead in our trespasses. Ephesians 2:4-7

But God.

We see it in Noah and we see it in Jesus.

The fact is, brother and sister, the fact is I don’t have the answers to all of the questions that you may have regarding the judgement of God. Why not give grace to everyone here? Why allow such violence? Why wait so long to return, Jesus and be the just Judge that you are? It would be wrong of me to pretend to know the answers to those questions. 

But I know that your longing for justice is good and right. I know that sin is why worse that we care to admit and our sin is way worse than we care to admit. And I know that God is the only one who can truly be the just judge. And I know that that God’s judgement is also bound up with his grace and his commitment to the world and we see that most fully and most beautifully in the cross of Christ where God did not remain distant to sin or to violence of the world but entered into it for our sake, taking God’s judgment that is justly on us that we would receive God’s grace. 

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