And song's a fitting reminder that we cannot accomplish anything of spiritual benefit or profit apart from God intervening graciously and mercifully on our behalf. And it's good for us to remind ourselves of that and confess that and even request the Lord to do what it is that we need done so desperately. I invite you to take your Bibles this morning, turn with me to Genesis chapter 15, Genesis chapter 15, and I entitled this morning's message, The Promise Prevails Over Unbelief.

And I've heard from so many of you just the benefit of working through the life of Abram thus far, because we see in this man so much of ourselves and we see the way the Lord deals with him, the way that he comes alongside him and strengthens him and corrects him and nurtures his faith. And it's a reminder of our desperate need and all this, as well as the sufficiency that the Lord provides for us. And as we come to Genesis 15, this chapter is one that is personally very significant to me.

And I'll get into that next week. This morning, we're just going to cover the first six verses. Verses 7 through 21 are a bit enigmatic.

They're kind of one of those sections of Scripture where you read it at the end and you think, huh, that's interesting. You don't really know what to do with it. And then you move on.

But it is so rich and so profound for our understanding of our relationship with God. This week, we're going to see the Lord come alongside Abram and begin to strengthen him when his faith is yet again wavering. And so we've already seen kind of this this yo-yo, this back and forth that the Father of our faith goes through where he has moments and expressions of great courage and faith.

And I mean, last week, he takes the hill for his nephew and then very suddenly finds himself back in kind of the same spot, struggling to trust the Lord and the basics again. And so our outline for this morning's passage is three familiar storylines as Abram goes from questioning to confident. Three familiar storylines as Abram goes from questioning to confident.

And so these are kind of familiar because it's the same kinds of things that we've been seeing week after week as Abram wrestles in his heart before the Lord. And then the Lord comes alongside him and so graciously shepherds him and nurtures his faith and strengthens him unto the result that he ultimately prevails in faith. Genesis 15, beginning in verse 1, after these things, the word of Yahweh came to Abram in a vision, saying, Do not fear, Abram.

I am a shield to you. Your reward shall be very great. And Abram said, O Lord Yahweh, what will you give me as I go on being childless? Near of my house is Eleazar of Damascus.

And Abram said, Since you've given no seed to me, behold, one born in my house is my heir. And behold, the word of Yahweh came to him saying, This one will not be your heir, but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir. And he brought him outside and said, Now, look toward the heavens and number the stars, if you are able to number them.

And he said to him, So shall your seed be. Then he believed in Yahweh and he counted it to him as righteousness. And he said to him, I am Yahweh who brought you out of her, of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it.

And he said, O Lord Yahweh, how may I know that I will possess it? So he said to him, Bring me a three-year-old heifer and a three-year-old female goat and three-year-old ram and a turtle dove and a young pigeon. Then he brought all these things to him and split them into parts down the middle and laid each part opposite the other. But he did not split apart the birds.

Then the birds of prey came down upon the carcasses and Abram drove them away. Now it happened that when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram. And behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him.

And God said to Abram, Know for certain that your seed will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and they will be enslaved and mistreated for 400 years. But I will also judge the nation to whom they are enslaved, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. As for you, you will go to your fathers in peace.

You will be buried at a good old age. Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete. Now it happened that the sun had set and it was very dark.

And behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces. On that day Yahweh cut a covenant with Abram, saying, To your seed I have given this land from the river of Egypt, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, the Kenite, and the Kenizzite, and the Kadmonite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Rephaim, and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Girgashite, and the Jebusite. Three familiar storylines as Abram goes from questioning to confident.

This whole section happens in one kind of setting, but we're going to take it piece by piece. And this morning we're going to get through the first six verses, unless we're providentially hindered in some way that I'm not expecting between here and 1130. But our first point this morning as our familiar storylines unfold is, Abram understandably wrestles with misgivings.

Abram understandably wrestles with misgivings. Abram is starting to question the plan. Have you ever been in that spot? Lord, as I'm seeing this plan, I'm not convinced that it's a good plan or that it's working out.

And to say understandably is not condoning or affirming the validity of Abram's response. It is not a morally upright response. But when we say understandable, we say it's relatable.

Or to say it another way, if you and I were in the same situation, given the same exact circumstances, I trust we would be responding quite likely in the same way. Why? Because doubts are natural. With the remnant of the old man, our fallen human condition, it's just natural for us to distrust God.

Do you understand that? That's the default posture of our heart. It's not that we're in a default position of lovingly entrusting ourselves to God, and then sometimes we get off track. We tend to struggle, do we not, in our exercise of faith.

And so Abram understandably is wrestling here. He's grappling with these misgivings. He has questions.

There's one says, after these things. What are these things? Well, after Abram has just throttled a bunch of surrounding kings. You think, why would that be a temptation to any kind of doubts and fears? It was fight or flight, and we saw that Abram rose to the occasion.

He saw his nephew was in need. And apparently, quickly rose to action in faith. He came to his nephew's defense.

He put their differences aside. He put even the fact that Lot had been selfish aside. Even as he could have maybe reasoned in his heart, Lot kind of had what was coming to him because he chose to live by Sodom, and this was a likely foreseeable outcome, aka, I told you so.

Abram sets that aside, and in faith he goes to rescue his nephew. But there was a catch to that, much like my story last week. If you were here, I was able to chase a guy down and tackle him, and then as he was getting up off the ground, I realized I don't know what to do next.

I didn't really think through plan B. So here, Abram has gone to rescue his nephew. He's throttled these kings, and now suddenly his position in the land has changed. It's not that he was completely flying under the radar before, but he wasn't really a perceived threat in the way that he is now.

You've ever been on the playground, and you played king of the hill, right? You have all these alliances, and you're working together to try to get in that position, and then when you get to the top, what happens? Well, suddenly now it's everyone against you. It's the world is turned, because you're now the top dog. And so for Abram, he's experienced success at the hands of the Lord.

It was clear that the Lord delivered the army. The Lord delivered the victory. Now, Kisadet comes and says that, but now Abram's sitting there on the backside of success, and he's realizing, you know, I kind of have a bit of a target on my back here.

I've just leveled the kings, and now I would be the one to take down. And so in this moment, the Lord comes to him in a vision, and the first thing he says is, do not fear, Abram. Don't be afraid.

We're kind of used to messengers coming and scaring people, angels in the scriptures, and the first words out of their mouth are, do not be afraid. This vision is not an angelic being coming and startling Abram and needing to reassure him by saying, don't be afraid that I'm here right now. This is the Lord understanding.

Abram is fearing when he's not supposed to, and rather than coming down with a big stick to whack him and correct him forcefully for his unbelief, the Lord comes with a word of comfort and just says, Abram, Abram. In a minute, he's going to say, the one who called you out of Ur of the Chaldees, remember our relationship. Have you so quickly forgotten? Have you forgotten who delivered you? And so Abram gets a direct vision from the Lord.

It could have been a dream, and it's not the exact same, but usually there's some combination of visual and auditory experience that takes place. The writer of Hebrews would say that God spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways. So here Abram is getting a personal vision from the Lord, and the Lord comes and says, do not fear.

One pastor writes, yet the first verse shows us that even such a believer as Abram needed comfort. Even such a believer as Abram needed comfort. He had fought boldly and conquered gloriously, and now he fears.

Cowards tremble before the fight and brave men after the victory. And so here's Abram. He's just a man.

He can one day go and essentially risk his life and his possessions and entrust it all to the Lord, and then very quickly after the victory find himself scared to death. The Lord gives this word of comfort, do not fear Abram. Why? Because I am a shield to you.

I'm a shield to you. Now some of you children in the room, if you like superheroes and things like that, I don't track with a lot of those, but I think there's some that have shields, right? They have different kinds of protection that they would have. This is an invisible shield.

So the Lord says, I'm your shield Abram, but you can't see the shield. You just have to believe that it's there. And here's what's tricky about believing in the shield is this shield is not designed to protect you from all difficulty or any suffering or perhaps even physical danger.

So it says I'm your shield, but it's a shield that you're going to take on by faith and it's to protect you from anything that I want to protect you from. Psalmist would say in Psalm 3, 3, you oh Yahweh are a shield about me, my glory and the one who lifts my head. Psalm 84, 11 Yahweh God is a son and a shield.

And so the Lord is coming to Abram and he's saying, Abram, I want to remind you right now that while you're feeling shaky as you're thinking through, okay, I've got how many guys that are trained? How many other people groups were not involved in that battle that are still living around us? They were here first. What are they thinking about the perceived threat? Okay. If maybe we could take these guys and these guys, and if those three got together, how do we be able to handle it? Whatever the reasoning was, the Lord's coming to him and he's saying, hold on.

It's a fleshly carnal way of thinking. I want to remind you, I'm the shield. And really the scriptures would teach it's vain for the watchman to stay awake unless the Lord guards the city.

So Abram, if I didn't want to protect you, guess what? It doesn't matter if you have 318 trained men in your household, or if you had 318,000 trained men in your household. I'm to be your shield. I'm to be your protection.

I know what we would like. We would like something that has a little bit more guarantees alongside it. Would we not? Like, Lord, could my shield be like a bubble wrap shield? Just protects me.

All the hard stuff, all the painful stuff, all the scary stuff, any kinds of threats. Just put like a triple thick hedge of protection around me so I don't have to face anything hard. No, this is a shield that protects you from what the Lord wants to protect you from.

And the idea is that Abram has begun to start to imagine tomorrow and what tomorrow might bring. And he started to wade into extrapolating what the circumstances could bring about. And what does the scriptures teach about whether or not it's okay to worry about tomorrow? It's not, right? We're to trust that the Lord alone is our shield.

And then he gives this encouraging, comforting word, your reward shall be very great. Remember what I said, Abram? You're a great nation. You're going to have a great name.

You're going to have a great reward. And Abram has a classic response. It is not a great response by Abram.

It says in verse 2, O Lord Yahweh, what will you give me as I go on being childless in the air of my house as Eleazar of Damascus? This is kind of, I hear him speaking. I don't know what his exact tone was, but in an Eeyore voice. Well, what does the great reward matter anyway? I guess it'll just go to Eleazar.

I mean, Abram here has been caught in his own way of thinking for too long. And so suddenly the promise of God isn't even a comfort to him. Have you ever been in that spot? You read a promise of God that's supposed to bring comfort and you find it's just falling off.

Here he's saying, I don't really care what you give me because I don't really have anyone to give it to. Okay? He's already thinking through his will. You haven't created a will yet.

It's super fun. You need to think about what happens when you die and who gets your stuff and who's going to be in charge of distributing it. I'm being sarcastic.

It's not very fun. Abram's thinking through, okay, so I get a reward. I get the land.

I get an inheritance. And right now I don't have anybody to give it to. Not in my bloodline.

So what he's describing here is an ancient near Eastern custom of inheritance by servant. One commentator writes, in those instances where the head of a household had no male heir, it was possible for a servant to be legally adopted as the heir. This would most likely be a course of last resort since it would mean transference of property to a person and his line who was originally a servant or bondsman and not a blood relative.

He goes on and says it signals then the frustration of the childless Abram that he tells God that he has designated Eleazar of Damascus as his heir. In other words, Abram is starting to wade into that territory for us as believers that's so dangerous. We start to speculate and muse a little bit on our circumstances apart from faith and we try to start reasoning in our own corrupt fallen way of thinking and trying to figure out what God is doing and how we need to control a situation.

And so Abram's doubts now have caused him to disregard the blessing of God because he doesn't see it applying to him anymore. And so the logic in Abram's really faithless thinking at the moment is even if I get a reward who cares because I don't have anyone to give it to anyway. The best I could do is give it to my servant.

And then Abram lets out what's really going on in his heart. Verse 3, and Abram said, since you, he's talking to the Lord right now, since you have given no seed to me behold one born in my house is my heir. Now, Abram is half right.

Okay, if you get partial credit here give him 50 percent still enough but he gets some partial credit. Who controls the womb? I mean undoubtedly it is the Lord. Genesis 29 31, when Yahweh saw that Leah was unloved he opened her womb.

Hannah would pray in 1 Samuel 5 6, or excuse me in the discussion of Hannah before her prayer, we read Yahweh closed her womb. And then it's repeated again that she struggled each day because Yahweh had closed her womb. So part of this is good theology for everyone to say, hey it's your fault that we don't have a kid right now.

True in the ultimate sense. And ostensibly you could say we like we've been doing our part you haven't showed up yet. But the problem is that he doesn't say since you've given no seed to me I'm continually waiting upon your promise.

He says because you haven't given me a seed behold I came up with plan B. In other words, because it hasn't happened yet that you've fulfilled your promise I've concluded it's not going to happen at all. And so I came up with a little scheme that I concocted to make the situation work. And so he takes probably a slave who had been born in the home and grown up around the family perhaps.

Maybe Abram had kind of taken him in and he was a bit of a surrogate grandfather figure. We don't know. But probably a meaningful relationship in some fashion.

And he said this is the best that we can do. And so Abram has begun to find a way to try to crack the code to live life apart from faith. You ever tried to do that? Man we are pretty committed at times in our striving to crack the code on how to live life apart from faith.

How do I get this to change here and this in place here and make this happen over here? And if I just I kind of get all the pieces just right then I'll have the relief of no longer having to walk trusting the Lord. Can you relate to that? Of course you can. It's exactly what Abram's doing.

I came up with a plan. And in that we struggle to take the promise of God and entrust ourselves to it personally. I love what Charles Spurgeon said about faith.

It's just so relatable. He says this, I can believe all the promises in regard to other people. Okay so I can hand them out.

Here you go. Here you go. Believe it.

Believe it. Believe it. Believe it.

It's good for you. Here's the promise. The promise.

The promise. I can believe all the promises in regard to other people. I find faith in regard to my dear friend to be a very easy matter.

But oh when it comes to close grips and to laying hold for yourself, here is the difficulty. I could see my friend in 10 troubles and believe that the Lord would not forsake him. I could read a saintly biography and finding that the Lord never failed his servant when he went through fire and through water.

I do not wonder at it. But when it comes to one's own self, the wonder begins. Is that not so true? My parents in the room, how much easier is it to tell your kids to trust the Lord in something or your spouse than to actually take that prescription yourself? There's a gap here.

And the gap that Spurgeon is acknowledging and what Abram is wrestling with right now is the wrestling art of a believer which says, I affirm that the Lord is true and faithful. And from a technical standpoint, I don't doubt that. I do affirm it.

And yet when it comes to my personal situation right now, my personal situation is different. I can't trust the Lord in my situation. You don't understand the special application that I have right now.

The particular nuances. The things that put me in a slightly different category from everyone else. I mean, this is entrustment here.

It's really the call to say, I now entrust myself. I hand over my own reasoning, my own thoughts of what is best, my desire for control, and I leave it in the Lord's hands. That's what Abram needed to do.

God said it. I'm just going to take him at his word and believe it. What's happened? Well, Abram and Sarai aren't getting any younger, and they've had to go to baby shower after baby shower after baby shower after baby shower after baby shower.

And so Abram starts to waver a bit. It's a familiar storyline. It's not going to be the last time that the Father of our faith grapples with misgivings.

And yet our next storyline is so precious because the Lord comes to minister to Abram. And so our second storyline is this. Abram, unsurprisingly, gets gracious confirmation.

Unsurprisingly. Why is it unsurprising? Because the Lord knows how to nurture our faith. He knows how to strengthen our faith.

He ministers to us. And so he comes to Abram in his wrestling, in his grappling, and he fortifies him, as I said, not with a sharp rebuke, but rather by reiterating and reminding him of his promise. It's true.

Sometimes unbelief needs to be confronted with a stern rebuke. For sure. A strong admonition.

But other times, our unbelief is dealt with not by confrontation, but by comfort. Isn't that amazing of the Lord here? He deals with unbelief, not with confrontation, but with comfort. Abram gets no rebuke, no stiff correction.

Rather, the Lord sees Abram struggling right now. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. I don't doubt that you're going to give me the reward.

I just don't think you're going to make good on all of the promise. And so the Lord comes to strengthen him. And I say unsurprising because this is how God treats us.

This is His character to His children. And so Abram's weak faith is not going to disqualify him. It's not going to cause God to give up on him or to remove his promises from him.

Rather, the Lord is going to come alongside him and bolster him. Verse 4, then behold, translation, listen up, pay attention to this church. Look, the word of Yahweh came to him saying, this one will not be your heir.

How do you like that? I'm not even going to name him. It's just the Lord's way of saying, this is a bad plan, Abram. We're not doing that plan.

It's a dumb plan. It's not the plan. It's cute that you came up with a plan.

That guy's not going to get the inheritance. And I'm thinking, I wonder if Abram had already like talked about it and done the paperwork. Does the Eleazar know that he just got cut out of the will? He's expecting this great inheritance.

Maybe Abram was just kind of threatening the Lord and sharing with him what he'd been cooking up. But the Lord says, this man who I'm not even going to name, he will not be your heir, but instead one will come forth from your own body. He shall be your heir.

Abram already said, from you, your seed, your offspring. This isn't a new plan. I'm just going to say it again.

Why? Because it's the promise of God that produces faith in the heart. And so the Lord knows it's not merely that Abram needs to, to strengthen his own faith and conjure it up and kind of work harder to believe and suppress his doubts. He needs to be reminded of the promise of God.

And as he's reminded of the promise of God, faith rises. And so he hears, guess what? We're sticking to the plan. It will be one who comes forth from your own body.

He shall be your heir. And then verse five, he takes him outside for an object lesson. I mean, the word of God is sufficient, obviously, as it stands.

We don't need illustrations, but sometimes they're helpful, are they not? And so the Lord wants to take something from creation right now and burn it on Abram's mind. And so He says, either go out of the tent or look up, wherever it is at that point. It's nighttime.

And I want you to look toward the heavens and number the stars if you're able to number them. Now just think about this for a minute if you're Abram. Where did he hail from? Ur of the Chaldees.

And they were known for what? Astrology, worshiping the moon. This guy's very, very, very familiar with the constellations. He probably knows the Big Dipper and they had some name for it.

He understands the Milky Way. He's watched it intently. He grew up looking at the sky at night.

He was a stargazer. Not only that, but you imagine how brilliant that sky was. I mean, you have a few lantern lights here and there, but there's no light pollution.

And so he looks up and he just sees the grandeur of the God who made the stars and the God who's named everyone. And what happens when you see the stars like that? You just feel instantly small. I mean, you look at the stars and you just think, well, that kind of puts things in perspective.

Those are like giant flaming planets. And here I am in this little like half a square foot with breath of life in my nostrils. And they know He who created the stars and knows them each by name.

He hung them in the heavens. And so Abram on the one hand is immediately feeling small. And it's interesting the way the Lord unfolds the instruction.

The first instruction is, God and count the stars if you're able. It sounds like a project that some of you moms give to little boys when you need to get them out of the house. Here, go do an impossible project.

And so he's gazing up at the stars. He's taking it all in. And then it's as if the Lord says is He's recognizing the impossibility of counting them all out.

So shall your seed be. Those are going to be your descendants, your blood relatives. I understand that you're pushing a hundred right now.

I understand that your wife is pushing 90. I understand that you've been barren. I understand that I've closed her womb.

I understand you've concocted some plan B of how you're going to make it all work. See, the Lord is being so kind to Abram because for the rest of Abram's days, every night that he looks up, he can be reminded of the promise of God. It's a word picture.

It's displayed in the heavens for him. Don't believe what your eyes see. And so the Lord is telling the father of our faith who currently has no kids, you're going to have so many offspring, you're not even going to be able to count them.

Understand that the father of our faith, who's an example for us in his faith, also shows us how God strengthens the faith of his people. Do you relish in that? Do you trust that it's the Lord that causes your faith to stand? Do you remember what the apostle Paul said in 2nd Timothy 4.17? It was Jesus who stood with me and strengthened me. Timothy, I'm not at the end of my life telling you what a faithful guy I am because I was faithful.

The Lord Jesus came and he strengthened my faith every time I needed it. What did our Lord say at the end of the Great Commission? Lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age. The Lord comes and he strengthens the faith of his people.

And so every time in the Christian life you've been fearful or discouraged or disobedient or rebellious or despairing or you felt like giving up or throwing in the towel or you're resisting the Lord and your heart is inclined back to the Lord in faith, know that the Lord is the one shepherding you. Be reminded of that work he's doing and he is so gracious here to Abram to come and meet him where he's at and to strengthen him with a reminder. Three familiar storylines as Abram goes from questioning to confident.

First, we saw that he understandably grapples with misgivings because he's waiting on a promise that hasn't come about. Then unsurprisingly, we saw that he gets gracious confirmation. The Lord comes and ministers to him.

Now finally, we see Abram utterly gains righteousness as a gift. To say that he utterly gains it or unequivocally gains it is to say it is absolute, it is complete, there's no question about it. And this relates directly to faith.

Verse 6, Moses writes, then he believed in Yahweh and he counted it to him as righteousness. So Abram is standing there looking at all the stars as an old man who doesn't have a single kid. And when the Lord says, so shall your descendants be, Abram says, I believe it.

And like that, he's galvanized in his faith. I mean, is that not a sweet thing when the Lord does that? When you find that wrestling in your heart with unbelief and then suddenly there's conviction? And suddenly you go from wavering to confident? I mean, and obviously we don't stay there permanently. Abram's going to back off of this again.

But in that moment, he hears the promise and he believes. As one writer said, it was not then for the first time and not then only. I mean, don't you love that? He believed God when he left her of the Chaldees originally.

And he's believed God over and over and over and over again since then. But here's that promise on that night as he's looking out at the stars, he believes it. And then what's going to happen? He's going to doubt it again and then have to believe it again in the continual cycle.

But something significant is happening here. In fact, when you read that Abram believes and the Lord is the one who counts it to him as righteousness, you're finding a refrain that is going to be a favorite of the apostles. Romans 4 is going to pick up this theme.

Galatians 3 is going to quote this and pick up this theme. James 2 is going to pick up this theme. Why is this so important for God's people to understand? It's because of this.

Abram has a pretty good track record actually so far of good works if we were just to look at the big things he's done for God. Is it a small thing that he got up from her and packed up all of his belongings and left his kin and left all the resources he had there and his family heritage and his future from that location? Is that a small thing? No. Huge act of faith to get up and go and follow the Lord.

Then he went into the land of Canaan. Was that an act of faith? Absolutely. And what about when he built altars to Yahweh? And what about when he separated from Lot in a gracious and benevolent way? And what about when he went and rescued Lot from war? And what about when he refused to take spoils from the king of Sodom? And what about when he paid homage and honor to Melchizedek? I mean, Abram has a pretty good growing pile here of big acts of faith and of good works.

Yet none of these, none of these form the basis or the grounds of Abram's favor with God. None of these are mentioned in the text. So when pastor writes, nor is there a hint given of any other sacred duties as the ground or cause or part cause of his justification before God.

Nothing that Abram did. No, it is said he believed in the Lord and he counted it to him for righteousness. And so the logic then in the new covenant, in the new testament is if Abram with all of his good works is accepted by God on nothing other than the basis of his faith, then so to you and I as ungodly sinners can only hope to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thereby be saved.

Unless Abram could do 10 times as many good works and it wouldn't change God's favor. He could do a hundred times as many works and it wouldn't change God's favor toward him. He could do a hundred thousand more good works and it would not change God's settled disposition of favor to him by which he says you're declared righteous.

Because it doesn't say then he believed in Yahweh and he was righteous. It says at that moment God counted him righteous. He reckoned him righteous.

He declared him to be righteous. And I want you to understand that when Abram believed God, and this is what's so helpful about the way the scripture unfolds for us in passages like this, was not a perfect faith. As in Abram is declared righteous on the basis of imperfect faith.

Faith that would be here today and gone tomorrow. Faith that would falter many times. And yet faith that genuinely and sincerely relies upon the promise of God.

I don't believe that Abram is justified here at this moment. I think that as Moses is telling the story, he's mentioning that the moment and the mechanism, the instrumentality of Abram's righteousness was his expression of faith. I think that his conversion would have happened all the way back when he was called out of Ur of the Chaldees.

But Moses is describing it here that it was on the basis of faith. I want you to think about this then for just a minute in your own Christian life. Okay, sometimes as believers we struggle with a phrase that I just came up with and coined.

It's called spiritual identity dysphoria. Spiritual identity dysphoria. It's how you reconcile your thoughts and emotions and what you see in your life with what the scripture says is true of you.

You ever experienced this? And the Bible says I'm righteous, but I certainly feel very unrighteous, and I find that distressing. And how do we try to relieve that dysphoria? Well, ways of feeling righteous. We still yearn for it intrinsically, achieving it in some fashion.

How is that to be resolved? God declared me righteous. That's it. It's not imputed to me.

I'm not now being made righteous, and that's the basis of my standing. Rather, I've been declared it. See, when Abram looks inward to assess his spiritual condition, what is he going to keep finding? Well, it depends on the day.

Sometimes he's going to look and say, man, that was some serious courage. I mean, praise the Lord, but wow, that's serious faith. And other days, what's he going to say? Man, you coward.

You compromiser. You fool. And so Abram is learning here.

The Lord is shepherding and training the Father of our faith in how to navigate thinking about and assessing his own spiritual condition, which is to say, Abram, do not look inward, but learn to rely upon my promise. Abram is learning progressively here to depend upon God in deeper ways. And Abram is going to be the Father of our faith because he's justified before he does any works.

Circumcision is coming later, and that is chronologically significant, Genesis 17, because there's no sense in which the sign of the covenant promise relates to his declaration of being righteous. So I think this is very important for us. You know, as I was thinking about this, beloved, we rightly, we rightly have a concern with what's known as easy believism.

It's kind of the reduction of the gospel that gets so reduced that you lose the required content for the saving gospel that becomes something like accept Jesus into your heart and decide to follow him. And that's the gospel. And so we reject easy believism.

We reject antinomianism and this idea that you can just live your life as a carnal Christian and never bear fruit and still claim the name of Christ and have comfort in him. We rightly test, attest that faith without works is dead. And so we're going to continue to clarify that the gospel is not easy believism and that faith without works is dead.

And we also need to make sure to come back to this center point often and not make things more than what they are. Abram believed God in what it was credited to him as righteous. I want to finish by reading the apostolic testimony in Acts chapter 2. Peter there is preaching.

He's declaring that Jesus is, in fact, the Christ. He was, of course, Abraham's seed. Over and over as we go through Abraham, we're going to find this theme in the New Testament.

It's going to make passages of the New Testament more come alive in ways that hope and trust benefit your soul. It says in verse 36, Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ. He's the sovereign king.

This is lordship salvation. He is Savior and Lord at the same time. It's what it means to come to him, this Jesus whom you crucified.

And when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, men, brothers, what should we do? And Peter said to them, repent. Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Now catch this, verse 39, for the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to himself.

Said another way, believe the promise of the gospel and be saved. Believe the promise of the gospel and be justified. So what is Abram believing in? Well, it's that same promise that the Lord will grant him salvation and forgiveness.

It's the same promise you and I believe. What a great reminder that man is justified on simple faith alone. Will you pray with me? God, you correct us and you shepherd us in such beautiful and profound ways through the scriptures.

Lord, on the one hand, you expose how incredibly pathetic our faith is. And then you remind us that even pathetic faith is enough, because our salvation doesn't depend on the quality of our faith, but the object of it. And so we trust in a very sure promise and a sure Savior and a sure offer of forgiveness in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Lord, thank you for providing justification for us and a foreign righteousness. And thank you for doing it on the basis of faith. And thank you for nourishing and protecting our faith day by day.

We love you so much. Amen.

Well, it is good to be with you, church, this morning. My name is Jake. I'm one of the pastors here.

And if you're visiting, I just want to say a warm welcome to you. Each week we gather on the Lord's Day, and it's pretty simple. We gather to worship because we're called to worship.

And even as we sing, there's a progression to that. We start out with the greatness of God, and then we confess sin, and then we claim the promises that we have through Jesus Christ and through his cross. And that is our only hope truly in life and in death.

I invite you to take your Bibles with me this morning. Turn to Genesis chapter 12, Genesis chapter 12. And I entitled this morning's message, Compromise Cowardice and Yahweh's Cleanup.

Compromise Cowardice and Yahweh's Cleanup. I've been following the life of Abram here for some time. And it is this week here in the providence of God that the Lord is going to intervene in the circumstances of Abram and Sarai's life.

And he's going to do it in such a way as to expose Abram's frailty. Two weeks ago, we saw Abram, the father of our faith. He was a shining example of what it looks like to trust God.

And he went on this unbelievable mission as he left his home and he journeyed out. And he had nothing in his heart but the promise of God. And if that was all we had of Abram, I'd be tempted to kind of wonder, well, what do I do when I find my faith is not victorious but it's failing? What do I do when I falter? What do I do when I trip and stumble? And so this week, we find Abram encountering a scary situation.

And when he does, rather than face it with faith, he acts in cowardice and self-preservation rather than humbly trusting God. And it leads him to treachery and he's reckless and he's foolish and he's dishonest. And yet in this, the Lord is refining Abram's faith.

He's refining Abram's faith. There's weaknesses that still need to be shored up, thank you, brother, in his life. And this blunder is not going to be insignificant.

In fact, it's going to have lasting ramifications. And so here's I want you to profit from the word this morning, okay? How do you profit from this message? Okay, first of all, be sufficiently warned, okay? There's a lesson here to look at Abram and be warned. Avoid doing what Abram did.

Be warned of the strength of temptation. Be sobered by the weakness of your own flesh. Believe what the Bible says.

So don't let what happened to Abram happen to you. And even challenge any areas of compromise or cowardice that you find in your heart, lest you falter in the way he did. And then in the same breath, without using Abram's example as an opportunity for your own flesh to find an excuse for sin, in other words, to say, well, if good people like Abram sin, I can too.

And find an excuse for sin. Be comforted by the unrelenting faithfulness of God. Be comforted by the unrelenting faithfulness of God.

So you profit from the word by being warned by Abram's example this morning. And then by being comforted that human failure is not the end of the story. Because God's grace triumphs even over our failures.

And none of our sin, if we belong to Christ, could ever threaten God's good plan for us. If you're keeping an outline, it's this this morning. Four scenes as Yahweh cleans up Abram's crisis.

Four scenes as Yahweh cleans up Abram's crisis. And this was a self-made crisis. Okay, guys, this is not a crisis that he falls into.

But this is a crisis that he made for himself. This was as a result of his own foolish decision making. And so the Lord would have been just to say, all right, just you made the mess, you clean it up.

But the Lord, of course, in his grace and mercy comes and he cleans up what Abram is unable to clean up on his own. Let's read our passage this morning. We'll begin in chapter 12, verse 10.

Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there. For the famine was severe in the land.

And it happened as he drew near to entering Egypt that he said to Sarai, his wife, now behold, I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance. And it will be when the Egyptians see you that they will say, this is his wife and they will kill me, but they will let you live. Please, please say that you are my sister so that it may go well with me because of you and that I may live on account of you.

Now it happened when Abram came into Egypt that the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful and Pharaoh's officials saw her and praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. Therefore he treated Abram well because of her.

And sheep and oxen and donkeys and male and female servants and female donkeys and camels came into his possession. But Yahweh struck Pharaoh and his house with plagues because of Sarai, Abram's wife. Then Pharaoh called Abram and said, what is this you've done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say she is my sister so that I took her for myself as a wife? So now here's your wife, take her and go.

So Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him and they sent him away with his wife and all that belonged to him. So Abram went up from Egypt to the Negev, he and his wife and all that belonged to him and lot with him. Four scenes as Yahweh cleans up Abram's crisis.

Point number one, the first scene, this is the setup. This is the setup. Abram abandons the promise of God in unbelief.

Okay, this is really the compromise. It's the first step of compromise in Abram's heart. When we read verse 10 and we kind of pass over and it seems like just a run of the mill narrative, kind of typical setting detail.

Okay, there's a famine in the land, yada, yada. Abram went down to Egypt. Okay, okay, the famine was severe.

We get it. Now we move on to the story. You got to understand the context.

Abram is experiencing a famine and the text says it was severe. So that's a severe food crisis. Okay, severe food shortage.

There's a lack of rain, which means a lack of crops and lack of crops means the animals aren't eating, the people aren't eating. I mean, I've never experienced a famine. The closest thing, which is not very close, but the closest thing I've ever experienced to this would be first major hurricane that I went through 20 years ago in South Florida.

And I remember the feeling of insecurity, felt like I was in another world of going to the grocery store and all of the shelves that contained edible food were empty. So you could buy like toothpaste or something, but you can't really eat that, right? There was nothing available to buy for food. Now, granted, it was like 48 hours before power was restored and trucks were able to come, but it was a recognition of if all I have is the food in the cupboard, I'm going to be in big trouble if this thing lasts.

So Abram would have been experiencing that. We have food supplies, they're running short. There's probably people that are on the verge of starvation or even starving.

A severe famine, people start dying. The weak die first, the elderly die first, the children die first. It's kind of survival of the fittest on who gets food, but there's a problem.

Verse 10, so Abram went down to Egypt. This is not a step of faith on Abram's part. This is a step of self-reliance.

I mean, do you just remember what Abram had been told? Genesis 12, one, go forth from your land to what? To the land, which I will show you. Genesis 12, seven, to your seed, I will give this land. Abram, whether it is rain or shine, regardless of circumstances, come what may, this land is your land.

I'm giving it to you. Go possess it. And so for Abram to leave the land is an act of unbelief.

It's unsanctioned departure. It's an unauthorized trip. And so he was faced with the dilemma, which was this, will God provide for me in the land of promise in the midst of this drought? Or do I need to modify the plan? And I use the word compromise very specifically here.

I want you to look at the details of the text because it gives us a little clue into how Abram worked this out in his heart. It says, so Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there. Okay, so number one, he's not going down just to buy food and come back.

He's planning to stay a while. And yet he's also not planning to go become a permanent resident. So he's not changing his citizenship to become an Egyptian.

Rather, he's told himself, I'm going to go down there and do it just for a while. Why is that significant? Well, he's not utterly rejecting the promise of God. He's not saying, Lord, have your land.

I don't want it. Rather, he's saying, not really going to trust you, Lord, but I have a kind of a little carve out here. I'm going to go do something else, but it's temporary in nature.

That was the rationalization. Let me tell you, when the word of God stands in the way of our desires, we either turn away from those desires or we try to find loopholes in God's instructions. Do we not do that sometimes? Try to kind of find a little way to just soften the blunt edge a little bit.

Maybe a little escape clause that kind of allows us a workaround. It's not full disobedience. It's not full rejection.

It's just a little compromise for Abram to go to Egypt and just sojourn temporarily was one such compromise. And I see this morning when you hear that word, just as you hear me say it, compromise with respect to the law of God. Is there anything that stirs up in your heart right now? Maybe an area in your conscience where you know you're not right before the Lord.

I think the word compromise is helpful because it speaks to our subtler and softer ways of being unfaithful. It's not areas of full blown rebellion or rejection, but it's just something is wrong, but we've kind of worked it out to feel okay with it. For Abram, he's able to say, well, I know I'm going down to Egypt and I know I'm not supposed to, but it's just temporary.

I know I'm supposed to meditate on God's word day and night, but I'm in a busy season right now. I just ask, are you too busy for screen time? It's interesting. Sometimes we tend to find a way to be devoted to our screens and yet at the same time, not have time for putting truth in our hearts and minds.

Or maybe I know I'm not supposed to be anxious about tomorrow, but it's really hard right now. I'm going through a very difficult season. Or I know I'm supposed to forgive, but you don't know this person like I do.

You don't know what they did. Or I know I'm supposed to confess my sin, but it's going to be embarrassing and I have it under control and I'm promising that whatever I just did, it's the last time I'll ever do it. I know I'm not supposed to look at that or watch that, but I know other Christians who do.

For Abram, it's, I know I'm not supposed to leave the promised land, but I'm going to go and just for a little while. Beloved, compromise leads to greater compromise. It's going to happen to Abram here.

That initial step of compromise, he can't keep it under control. Starts out small and it picks up speed. And so as believers, we can be remarkably gullible and naive when it comes to moral issues.

Our hearts are deceptive. And so we think, oh, let's have a little compromise and then I'll get it back under control. Abram is about to discover that compromise inevitably leads to greater compromise if we persist in it and we don't repent.

What should Abram have done when there was a famine in the land? Man, it's a scary situation. He should have called upon his God. He should have said, Lord, I don't know how this is going to work.

There's not a lot of food left in the pantry. There's nothing in the grocery stores. I don't know how this is going to work out, but I trust you.

And Lord, I'm scared and I need your help. My faith is weak. I need you to come to my aid and strengthen my faith.

This is the setup. It's the first compromise. Brings us to our second scene as Yahweh cleans up Abram's crisis.

And this is the scheme. The scheme. Abram concocts a plan to preserve himself.

Point number one, the setup. Abram abandons the land of promise and unbelief. Now we come to the scheme where Abram concocts a plan to preserve himself.

This is where the compromise takes him. Verse two, and it happened as he drew near to entering Egypt that he said to Sarai, his wife. Now, I just, I bet you always picture these scenarios.

They're too relatable. I mean, the narratives of scripture are so relatable for us. But I'm thinking, was this on Abram's heart for a long time? And he's just, I just want to bring it up.

Just want to bring it up. Just want to bring it up. And finally, the last possible second.

I mean, it says, as they drew near to entering Egypt. Or is this something where he wasn't even thinking about the danger? And then right as they're about to get into the city, he's like, oh man, I did not plan this out very well. It's kind of popped right into my head.

It goes into my head and out of my mouth, whatever the cause, he brings it up. And he has a specific instruction that he gives to his wife. Here's the plan.

Now behold, he says, I know that you are a woman beautiful in appearance. Maybe he was just looking over at his wife and he was admiring her beauty. And then as he was admiring her beauty, he started to think, you know what? This is, this is going to be a problem.

And so this initial compromise of going to Egypt is now compounding in his life. It's starting to get out of control. It's creating more difficulty.

And in this, he's starting to think about what's going to happen. The text says that she's beautiful in appearance. That is, you look good.

You're pleasant aesthetically. You have a pleasant appearance. And his concern is when the Egyptians see you, they're going to think the same thing.

Verse 12, it will be when the Egyptians see you that they will say this is his wife and they will kill me, but they will let you live. Now, what's interesting about this is Abram is not entirely wrong. And he's not entirely irrational.

I mean, pagan Kings would take beautiful women into their harem. It's not, it's not, I mean, it's going to happen in this text. So in one sense, he's kind of able to predict in a sense, this is a likely foreseeable outcome.

And his concern is the Egyptians will gladly go through him to get to her. Now it's interesting though, look at his concern. His concern is not for them, but for him.

They will kill me, but they will let you live. And so he's already concocted the plan. Here's what's going to happen.

They're going to kill me. Then you're going to be taken into the harem. I already know that's going to happen.

I mean, it's interesting at that point, right? Why not turn around and go back to the promised land, right? Not repent at that moment. But here he has a perspective where he's become pessimistic and faithless. He's not thinking anymore about what the Lord might do.

Rather, there's this subtle pride where he's begun to think that he can predict what is going to happen. James 4 has not been written yet, but it would be a good message for Abram to take to heart. Come now, you who say today or tomorrow, we will go to such and such a city and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.

Yeah, you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will do this or do that.

James ends that section by saying this, but as it is, you boast in your arrogance and all such boasting is evil. I put that in the category of respectable sins, thinking that you know what's going to happen and having a high degree of certainty as to how things are going to work out. Isn't that amazing? Sometimes we get so caught in our own perspectives.

We think we know here's what's going to happen. Here's how life's going to go. I can already see it coming.

It doesn't matter that we get it wrong. We still remain assured. So Abram is predicting the future with a measure of certainty.

He has a faithless perspective. He's pessimistic. He's not thinking about how the Lord might care for them.

He's not leading his wife to think in that way. Rather, he's afraid and now he's stoking her fears as well. What would faith have looked like here? Even if he didn't turn away from the compromise of going down to Egypt.

You know what, sir? I've been thinking about this. I think we've got some potential danger on the horizon as we go into a foreign land. They do not fear God.

You're a beautiful woman. Either number one, we could go back to the land we ought to have never left. Or two, we can entrust ourselves to Yahweh to protect us.

Let's devote this matter to prayer. But instead, he's predicting the future. He's high on his own perspective.

And he begins to worry, obviously, and scheme about the future. He's sinning. Matthew 6, 27.

And which of you by worrying can add a single cubit to his lifespan? In other words, if the plan in the sovereignty of God was Abram go to Egypt and die, then it's going to happen anyway. But does not Abram have a promise from God that says he's going to have a seed? I mean, he already knows he's not going to die. God told him, you're going to have an offspring.

And yet, what does he think? Oh man, I'm going to get killed in Egypt. Abram needed to take the words of Jesus to heart. Matthew 6, 33.

Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. His mind was not set on righteousness. Right now, we're doing righteously.

And so Abram begins to resort to scheming. And this is what we do when we're anxious. We're trying to predict the future.

When we're freaked out about what's going to happen, when we become self-reliant, we start to scheme. Do we not? Verse 13. Please say that you are my sister so that it may go well with me because of you.

And that I may live on account of you. I mean, here's the scheme. Abram lets the cat out of the bag.

Sarai, I need to rehearse the plan with you. And I don't think it's likely that the entourage of the king would have come and met them and talked first to Sarai. So really, it would seem Abram is putting her on notice.

Hey, sweetheart, here's the plan. When we get there, I'm going to say, this is my sister. And then I want you to play along too.

I'll lead, you follow. Abram right now is afraid of what man can do to him. And fear of man leads to all kinds of sin in our lives.

Proverbs 29, 25. Trembling before man brings a snare. But he who trusts in Yahweh will be set securely on high.

See, Abram's about to find out the hard way that the fear of man brings a snare. He's about to understand that when fear of man gets wrapped up in your ankles, you get entangled and you're going to trip and fall into new areas of sin that you weren't even preparing for. Rather, what he ought to have been saying was the fear of God, because those are exclusive.

There's fear of man, fear of God. They're opposed to one another. You can't fear both at the same time.

The preacher in Hebrews, Hebrews 13, 6 says, we ought to say the Lord is my helper. I will not be afraid. What can man do to me? It's not that man can't do anything to hurt you, but man can only hurt your body, Jesus would say.

And so you're not to fear those who kill the body, Matthew 10, 28. But rather, fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul in hell. Psalmist in Psalm 118 says, it is better to take refuge in Yahweh than to trust in man.

See, Abraham's forsaking the blessed life right now. He's forsaking the protection of trusting in the Lord and the confidence that comes from trusting in the Lord. He started to fear man.

Man has become big. God has become small. And he resorts now in his scheme and manipulation.

I mean, look at this, please, sweetheart. Verse 13, please say that you're my sister so that it may go well with me because of you and that I may live on account of you. And this is a tactic to leverage a response from Sarai.

And we do this. I mean, husbands manipulate wives, wives manipulate husbands, people manipulate each other outside of the marriage context. Children try to manipulate parents, parents manipulate children.

What is manipulation? Well, it's playing on someone else's desires to get them to do what you want them to do. And so Abraham here puts his wellbeing, namely his very life on Sarah's shoulders as though she's the one responsible. And so now he pressures her to join him in sin rather than leading her in faith and righteousness.

Honey, we're gonna go to Egypt. And if I don't live, it's gonna be all your fault. You see the manipulation in that? I mean, he is here the father of our faith stooping to some incredible lows.

And so what he concocts here in his scheme is a plan that involves telling a half-truth and representing it as the full truth, which as you know, is by definition an untruth. A half-truth masquerading as a whole truth is a lie. And it's true that Sarai is his half-sister, but as we will see, he's leaving out the part that really matters.

He had a friend who was a serial half-truth teller and he had seared his conscience. He'd retrained it to think that that if I have a shred of truth, even if I'm entirely misdirecting someone, I can still appease my conscience that I have integrity. Could have been a gymnast with all the moves he pulled to try to get himself to believe that he was forthright and to get other people to believe it.

And yet his conscience was defiled. See the heart of the issue here is misdirection. To gain an advantage, we might call it shading the truth.

It's dishonest. And I would say in my own life, I've had to repent of a longstanding pattern of this. We want to try to represent things either in the best light possible, the worst light possible, whatever gains an advantage.

So why does he say sister? And why don't you say, meet Sarai, my friend, my cousin, my acquaintance. Why say sister? There's two reasons. Number one, by saying that she is his sister, he's able to pacify his nagging conscience.

He's able to convince himself there's enough truth in what he's saying that he's not really being dishonest. And secondly, he can gain an advantage by her being his sister. And we'll see that in a minute.

Can I just encourage you to walk in integrity, to not be concerned about what the cost of the truth is in your life. I mean, that's really all that it is. Here, Abram thinks that the truth is going to cost him too much.

And so he'd rather live cloaked in deception. Proverbs 12, 22 says, lying lips are an abomination to Yahweh, but doers of faithfulness are his delight. Do you want the favor of God in your life? Put off half truths and shading the truth and deception.

And I remind you that there is a blessing associated with integrity, and it far surpasses whatever you hope to gain through deception, far surpasses. Children in the room, if I could encourage you, tell your parents the truth. Tell them the whole truth, be honest.

Confess and walk in the light. Wives and husbands and church members and employees and employers that we'd be people of the truth. In fact, Psalm 15, David writes, commend it to you, can jot it down as a side note that the Lord dwells with those who walk blamelessly and speak truth in their hearts, who honor the Lord.

Well, Abram concocts a plan to preserve himself. And it brings us to our third scene, the sellout, the sellout. First, we've seen the setup in the scheme.

Now we see the sellout. And here Abram profits while jeopardizing his wife and his promise. Abram profits while jeopardizing his wife and his promise.

Abram's already demonstrated compromise by going to Egypt. He's already demonstrated cowardice. He's concocting this entire plan.

He's manipulating his wife to make sure that he gets the outcome that he wants. But now that moves to another position of callousness. See, it's one thing to kind of have the evil thought and the idea and to start to work the plan, but to carry it out is a whole nother deal.

And so Abram goes through with what he's already purposed in his heart. I mean, it's just a vivid way of thinking about it. What Abram is about to do is something that he'd already purposed in his heart.

I remember years ago when I was just in the early stages of sanctification and battling with sin and some of those battles that were so difficult. And there was a man who was mentoring me and in particular was in the area of purity. And I remember him saying, you already know in your heart what you're gonna do.

Just be honest with yourself. And I was so appalled that he would say such a thing. And I realized, no, he's right.

There's something already purposed in the heart. Abram already had failed before he got to that moment with Pharaoh. He'd already planned it out.

He purposed, he knew what he wanted and what he wanted to do. And so verse 14 comes this test of faith. Now it happened when Abram came into Egypt that the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful.

As expected, Sarai gets immediately noticed. We say things like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There's truth to that.

Certainly Bible talks about women paying attention to the inner beauty, the inner person of the heart. So we understand that the beauty is more than just that which is external. But there was obviously an objective component to this as well that Sarai and her features and her form and figure was universally recognized as beautiful.

And the text says she was very beautiful. And just remember, Sarai was 65 when she left Haran. It's been at least a couple of years.

Probably she's around 70 at this point. Verse 15, Pharaoh's officials saw her. She's a bit of an eye catch.

And they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. What a dark moment.

I mean, what a dark moment. You know, godless cultures use and abuse and dishonor women. Pharaoh here is an example of the fleshly impulses without restraint.

And kings can have whatever they want. And so oftentimes they multiply women. If you remember Solomon did the same thing.

And so Sarai is an eye catcher. She catches Pharaoh's eye. He wants to add her essentially to the collection, which does two things.

It displays his power and prominence. And it fulfills his cravings. The text is light on the details here.

Just states it. But why don't you just pause for a minute here? There had to have been some moment here of decision for Abram. I mean, think about that.

Some point of no return. Some moment in that interaction when he decided he was actually gonna go through with it, where he had the opportunity to say, you know what? This is so wrong. And I'm not willing to sit against the Lord or my wife.

I'm the husband. Take me. You know, whatever he needed to say.

But he doesn't. And I can't imagine what that goodbye looked like. What would you do? Like kind of this, like a side hug, a little kiss on the cheek.

See you later, sis. I mean, was it a tearful goodbye? Was he just looking at the ground? I cannot imagine. And what I want you to understand that Abram's exemplifying here is that the longer you and I persist in a deception, the harder it is to get out.

So you could have avoided it in the first place. Abram is thinking only of himself. And what's amazing here is how deep his self-interest goes.

According to verse 16, Abram gets rich off the whole deal. Therefore he treated Abram well. That's Pharaoh because of her.

And sheep and oxen and donkeys and male and female servants and female donkeys and camels came into his possession. See that whole brother thing now versus just my friend or my acquaintance. By being the brother, it meant that there'd be a dowry involved.

So now you take my sister and I get back from you, Pharaoh, the bride price. I profit off the whole deal. This is not an accident.

It's not an accident that he says, this is not merely my friend. He's able to appease his conscience with half truth. Plus he's able to profit from it.

And so Abram here supposedly gives away his sister in marriage to Pharaoh. This is today what we would call human trafficking. He trades his wife for a bunch of stuff and he gets a lot of stuff.

Look at this sheep, oxen, donkeys, donkeys, servants, male servants and female servants and camels. I heard one commentator say the camels are like, like the high-end sports cars. It's like Ferraris in the ancient Near East.

They were hardly even domesticated. So he is profiting right now big time at his wife's expense. You think, well, maybe he didn't know what was happening.

I just don't think that was the case. If you look back up at the initial plan that he concocted, do you remember what he said? Verse 13, please say that you are my sister so that it may go well with me because of you and that I may live on your account. Benefit number one, I'm not gonna die.

Okay, that's a good benefit in Abram's mind. Benefit number two, it will go well with me. And you say, well, maybe he didn't have that in his heart.

Maybe that's reading a little bit too much into the text. I would just ask you this. What about when they came to take Sarai away and said, here's what we're gonna give you in exchange? You're saying, you know what? I'm good, keep your stuff.

So he's either motivated by greed or he's motivated by a concern to not appear like something's up, something's shifty. And I just tell you that if we were to go all the way back to this scheme and how it started, Abram thought about this sin longer than he should have. Okay, that was how he got here.

See, the first moment that the thought entered into his mind, he should have fled from it. I mean, sometimes, beloved, sometimes, you know this. There is a wicked thought, a faithless thought, an unbelieving evil thought that comes into your mind.

And sometimes even you're thinking, where did that come from? I don't feel like I was doing anything to stir it up. It's just there. For all we know, Abram could have just been enjoying a trip to Egypt, not really thinking of much.

He's enjoying his beautiful wife. And then he's starting to think someone else will think the same thing. And then at some point, the first time thought entered his head, what if when we go, I say that she's my sister.

And then they take her without killing me. And maybe even we could work out a dowry. Because then this is post-conversion Abram here.

This is Abram, the father of faith. This is Abram, the believer, had that thought. And then when he had that thought, rather than flee from it and plead with the Lord, God, help me.

Help me trust you. Help me run away from that. He kept imagining.

He let the thought linger. It's like James would say in James 1, 13, let no one say when he is tempted, I'm being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself cannot tempt anyone. But each one is tempted, what? When he is carried away and enticed by his own lust.

Then when lust is conceived, it gives birth to sin. And when sin is fully matured, it brings forth death. See the Abram of a few years ago who left Haran.

If you'd said, hey, give me your wife or I'll kill you. I think he probably would have said, go for it, kill me. I'm gonna lay down my wife, my life for my wife.

But when fear enters the picture and that faithless thought, and then it's not dealt with, it continues to grow and next thing you know, you have Abram acting reckless and foolishly. I'm gonna just sit back as I was pondering this and I thought for a little bit, what was the end of the plan here? And you're like, how far did you really think this thing through? Okay, the famine ends. Famines end at some point.

And now Sarai is in the harem. What do we do next? Are you going back to Canaan without her? You're gonna have the promised seed without her? Or is the plan to wait out in Egypt until she ages out of the harem? Like how is this thing gonna work? And so Abram in the midst of this folly has a complete disregard for God's promise and God's plan. It is like out of sight, out of mind.

Earlier it was in his heart. It was at the forefront. He's relying upon it.

Now it's way back somewhere. And you realize that Abram puts the whole plan of God from a human standpoint in jeopardy. I mean, God said that you will have this promised seed that's gonna be a blessing to the earth.

And Abram ends up dropping his wife off in a foreign monarch's harem. You're saying Abram has made a total mess of his life at this point. I mean, the text doesn't tell us, but I'm sure he felt like garbage.

I'm sure that all those new camels and maidservants and manservants weren't all that fulfilling. He has a guilty conscience and he's gotten himself into a pickle for which there's no foreseeable solution. He's made a mess and he can't get out of it.

He can't just clean it up. And so he not only blew the plan, but he's incapable of fixing it. He's helpless.

And so it's right here in the midst of human failure, in midst of helplessness, that Abram is gonna learn a profound lesson, not only about the frailty of his own heart, but in this training program, he's gonna learn about God's grace and mercy and power. See, beloved, God does not accomplish salvation for those who deserve it. For those who even demonstrate that they'll be good stewards of the manifold grace of God.

He doesn't enlist your power and require that of you that he's kind of gonna meet you in the middle to resolve the sin problems that you face. He contributes something, you contribute something, you cooperate together and you solve the problem. Rather, God's salvation always comes to helpless people.

It's always sovereign grace. And this brings us to our fourth scene the salvation, the salvation. Abram experiences God's protection and deliverance.

Abram experiences this. He doesn't accomplish it on his own. This is sovereign grace.

And this is how salvation always works. Verse 17, but Yahweh, Sarah is in the harem Abram has no answers, but Yahweh, but God, but the Lord. Praise God for his interventions.

Praise God for his merciful intervention into our darkness. Sometimes whether we're looking for it or not. I mean, I don't know, maybe Abram was praying for a solution.

Maybe he was praying for deliverance. That's what he ought to have been done, but we don't even know that. Moses doesn't share Abram's spiritual state because the focus is not anymore on Abram, but it's on the divine action.

And the Lord acts here apart from human involvement and human merit. You're saying that this divine action is apart from human involvement and human merit. See the Lord acts here because it's consistent with his character.

He acts in mercy because he has a promise to keep. And he's allowed Abram to walk down a path of his own sinfulness for a period of time to show him both the depth of his sin and his need for God's mercy. So that then he can also show him his mercy and Abram will appreciate it.

So he doesn't leave Abram there, but Yahweh verse 17, struck Pharaoh in his house with great plagues because of Sarah Abram's wife. We don't know the exact nature of the plagues, but they were unpleasant. They impacted the whole royal household.

I mean, this is God delivering Sarai unharmed. And the Egyptians were superstitious people. So any plague would have been ominous to them.

We don't know exactly how it is that Pharaoh came to this knowledge, but somehow the Lord revealed to him, hey, the reason why y'all are getting throttled right now is because you have someone else's wife as part of your harem. And so verse 18, we see a royal rebuke. Then Pharaoh called Abram and said, what is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me she was your wife? Why did you say she is my sister so that I took her for myself as a wife? I mean, you just, I cringe whenever I read that.

I mean, you have an unbeliever rebuking the God fearing father of our faith for being a scoundrel. You can't exactly read the tonal inflections, but I think you could imagine anger, incredulity, exasperation. It starts to show you the depth of our self-orientation when we sin.

See, when Abram back in the beginning was thinking, here's what's gonna happen. We're gonna get there. They're gonna see you're beautiful.

Then they're gonna kill me. Then they're gonna take you. He's not thinking at all about how to protect and love and serve and care for his wife.

He's not thinking about the impact on other people like maybe Pharaoh's household. I mean, all of that is outside of his thoughts because he's concerned about numero uno, protecting himself. And so Pharaoh says, the end of verse 19.

So now here is your wife. It's your wife, Abram. I don't know if those words stung.

I think they would. The reminder of his treachery of forsaking the covenant relationship and his responsibility to protect and provide and serve. And so he gets sent away.

He gets evicted from Egypt. And this is the mercy of God that Abram gets to now go back home to the land of promise and do so with his wife. And I read this.

It seems somewhat polite. Here is your wife, take her and go. I think if I were Pharaoh, I'd be like, take your sister.

Just take your sister and go back with you. He was saying, this is divine protection. And it's incredible that now a pagan monarch tells Abram the very same thing that the Lord has told him.

Genesis 12, one, the Lord said, Abram, go forth from your land to the land of tribe, we'll show you. He's not able to stay there. He leaves in a lack of faith.

And now he has a pagan king saying, go, go back to the land. And in this, we're seeing parallels, of course, between what God is doing with Abram and what he will one day do with Egypt. I mean, the motifs are remarkably similar.

There's gonna be a famine later in the land of Israel. And Jacob and his sons will travel down. There will be a descent to Egypt to sojourn in an attempt to kill the males, but leave the females alive and plagues on Egypt and then deliverance.

And so what God is doing here is giving Israel something that they'll be able to look back on to see his deliverance out of situations that are otherwise hopeless from a human standpoint. Shows of God's grace in delivering people who don't deserve it. Well, there's tremendous encouragement here to understand that even our sinfulness, even our rebellion at times as believers, even post conversion, cannot ultimately stop the plan of God.

I mean, if it was left up to Abram, Abram, solve the problem on your own, get yourself out of this mess. There's no Messiah. The wife that's supposed to bring forth the seed is no longer a part of the marriage.

And yet God's plan will not be stopped. And so Abram here is learning about God's sovereign grace. He's learning about God's salvation.

He's learning that God does not choose people because they are a man or a woman who is above failure. And so Abram is gonna leave Egypt learning a lesson. And it's gonna be on repeat as we often are.

He's gonna do the same thing here in a few years. But next week what we're gonna see is that Abram leaves changed. He goes back to the promised land and there is a work of repentance that God does in his heart.

And he will have learned the lessons of his own sinfulness and his own grace. And yet it's also true that right here in the text, there's some lasting consequences of sin that Abram is gonna have sticking with him a long time. On the one hand, God's plan is not thwarted by human failure.

On the one hand, God is merciful to pardon and forgive from sin. And yet there are some consequences that will last. I mean, first of all, just imagine, do you think this brother and sister had anything to work out on the trip back from Egypt to Canaan? I don't know whether she let him have it.

I don't know whether she was restrained and just let the spirit do the work. But I'd imagine even if it was hot outside, it was a little cold in the caravan on the way back to Canaan. And then we read in verse 20, so Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him and sent him away with his wife and all that belonged to him.

So Abram went up from Egypt to the Negev, he and his wife and all that belonged to him and a lot with him. Did you notice what was repeated in those two verses? Twice, Moses says, all that belong to him. There's an emphasis.

Why is he emphasizing him? Why is he emphasizing that? Well, all those belongings that he acquired in Egypt would include, according to the text, female servants as noted in verse 16. And although they're not explicit, this was the trip to Egypt. It's assumed that most likely among those female servants is a maiden by the name of Hagar, an Egyptian maid servant who will one day be a source of temptation for Abram and Sarah.

They're going to try in their battle for belief and the results of that act of disobedience will be felt around the world for all of history even today. Understand the shrapnel from Abram's sin here is going to cut deep. It's going to leave a lasting impact.

And yet there is mercy and grace in the midst of this as well. When you and I look at the life of this patriarch, it is so helpful in navigating our own Christian experience. Abram should be a warning to you, a warning against compromise and cowardice and fear of man and deception and self-preservation and all of the sins that can accompany those sins.

It's a reminder of the lasting consequences of sin that sometimes we seek forgiveness. We're certainly forgiven by God, even forgiven by others. And yet it doesn't mean that God just immediately undoes or erases all of the impact of our sinful decisions.

It's part of the warning and the urging to avoid and ultimately to see the mercy of God. And in spite of all of the reckless abandon of Abram, God's still merciful. He's still gracious.

He's still accomplishing his plan in his life. And even in this, he's training Abram for greater usefulness. Well, next week, we're going to see Abram on a restorative journey and then I'll go down and up and down.

It's kind of giving me the same thing for a little while. Let's pray. Lord in heaven, what a riveting testimony of sins that we are all too familiar with in our own lives.

Lord, I thank you that you give us instructions to help us, Lord, not only avoid sin, but to know how to repent when we do. And thank you, Lord, that you are a God who loves to show compassion to sinners like us, that you get glory, that it makes you renowned and impressive to show mercy to people like us. Thank you so much that Abram's sin did not jeopardize the promise, but that Jesus came and he did exactly what you intended him to do.

We love you and we praise you. Amen.

This morning I invite you to take your Bibles, turn with me to Genesis chapter 12. Genesis chapter 12, entitled this morning's message, Abram Sets Out in Faith. He's embarking on a journey here in our text today.

This is not really his odyssey, it's an adventure in faith that he is beginning. And here we see God intervening in creation. As we've watched God intervene, really from Genesis three, he's been dealing with man's sin problem.

We've been utterly convinced through the recent chapters that man is incapable of fixing his moral problems. He can't fix what's broken inside and he can't fix the consequences of the sin he's committed. And so here the grace of God is coming to humanity to intervene.

Praise God that he intervenes in history. And in this intervention, he calls a pagan idolater from Ur of the Chaldeans and says, I'm gonna begin to progress the next stage of my promise plan of salvation through you and your line. And so as we study Abraham, as we said, he's really arguably, certainly one of the most significant, if not the most significant figures in all of the Old Testimony, he's the father of our faith.

And what you can expect as we journey along, looking at the man, Abraham, is we understand a great deal about ourselves and the character of God. Both of those things are gonna be on display week by week by week. And so what you can prepare for is for your faith to be strengthened.

It was a number of years ago, Susie and I were sitting under an exposition through the book of Genesis on Sunday nights. And I remember week after week after week, just thinking, man, my soul needed that message again. My soul needed to be reminded.

My faith needed to be strengthened. I needed to be pointed back to the grace of God in Jesus Christ, needed to be corrected where there was unbelief in my heart, reminded of the faithfulness of God. And so God has given us such a wonderful gift in his revelation here.

That he didn't merely say in one paragraph, hey, I called this man out of the year of Chaldeas. I promised a Messiah through him. Let's fast forward to the end of his life.

But rather to show us the victories and the failures of faith. And understand how his plan is being accomplished behind it all. I mean, he could have just said, here's the terms of the covenant arrangement.

It's in one page, signed and sealed, delivered. It's all done. It's dated and ready to go.

But instead he shows us through the life of this man as it's intimated here in Genesis chapter 12. And then it's reviewed and expanded and God's plan continues to unfold. And so we're gonna get really a clear perspective, a realistic perspective, I would say, of the Christian life that shows both the faithfulness that we long for and the failures that we're too familiar with.

And so that being said, I wanna read the text before us this morning and then we'll begin to walk through it together. Genesis chapter 12, we're gonna look this morning at verses four through nine, but we'll begin reading back up in verse one. Yahweh said to Abram, go forth from your land and from your kin and from your father's house to the land which I will show you.

And I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great. And so you shall be a blessing and I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you I will curse and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. So Abram went forth as Yahweh had spoken to him and Lot went with him.

Now Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran. So Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother's son and all their possessions, which they had accumulated and the persons which they had acquired in Haran and they departed to go forth to the land of Canaan. Thus they came to the land of Canaan.

And Abram passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem to the Oak of Moreh. Now the Canaanite was then in the land. Then Yahweh appeared to Abram and said to your seed I will give this land.

So he built an altar there to Yahweh who had appeared to him. Then he proceeded from there to the mountain on the east of Bethel and he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east and there he built an altar to Yahweh and called upon the name of Yahweh. And Abram journeyed on continuing toward the Negev.

This morning if you're keeping an outline you could capture it in this way. Two displays of faith and worship in Abram's pilgrimage. As we're gonna see Abram is left home at this point.

He's left what is familiar, what is known, what is comfortable. He's been separated from all of the earthly attachments that he had in his upbringing. And yet what he finds replacing that is a new life of newfound faith and worship in the one true God.

And we're gonna watch here today as the Lord strengthens and shepherds Abram as he's beginning to deepen and cultivate his faith. Do you remember we began really looking last week at how this relationship got started and it began with God's call, his effectual call. God spoke to Abram.

We know that he chose Abram, he called him to himself. And he said in verse one, I want you to go forth from your land, from your kin, from your father's house to the land which I will show you. Moses has already made it clear that Abram is from the line of Shem.

This is the line of blessing. And God calls this man out and when he does, he doesn't tell him where he's going, but Abram is going to respond and it's to leave behind all that he knows. And in that God not only gives him a command to obey, but a promise to be comforted by.

And the promise of course was that Abram would be a great nation, he would have a great name and he would be a great blessing. In fact, that he would be eternally blessed and then a source of eternal blessing to all of the nations. And so the text picks up in verse four, coming on the heels of this instruction.

And we read, so Abram went forth as Yahweh had spoken to him. And so this is our first display this morning of faith and worship in Abram's pilgrimage. Untitled is the radical takeoff.

Okay, the radical takeoff. This is this decisive act of faith and obedience on Abram's part and it was significant. The text just reads, so Abram went forth.

It's paired with verse one, Yahweh said to Abram, go forth from your land. As we looked at last time, this was an intensive command. Get up and go right now, leave.

And the scripture is clear that Abram did exactly as he was told. He went forth as Yahweh had spoken to him. So how did Abram obey? Right away, all the way, with a happy heart.

He obeyed immediately and completely and cheerfully. And the perspective here is that this was a decisive act of faith, he got up and he left. Abram did what he was told.

Let me say, this is biblical obedience. Biblical obedience is uncomfortable because it's full obedience. It's genuine and genuine faith results in genuine obedience.

Said another way, partial, delayed or begrudging obedience is always rooted in unbelief. And it's a lack of submission to God. And Abram is not alone in this as a man of faith.

We've already seen Noah and when we were introduced to Noah as a man of faith, how did Noah obey? Genesis 6, 22, then Noah did according to all that God had commanded him, so he did. What we're learning here from the father of our faith, what does it look like to respond to the voice of God? You obey, you obey in faith. And this is a beautiful thing.

And it was sight unseen, it was the bare command, as we said, no specifics or guarantees or details about what it would look like or what it would cost him. As one commentator said, it is better with closed eyes to follow God as our guide than by relying on our own prudence to wander through those circuitous paths which it devises for us. And this is true proof of our obedience when we are not wise in our own eyes, but commit ourselves entirely unto the Lord.

You understand for Abram here, this is laying down his own wisdom, his own will, his own desires, and preferring rather the word of the Lord. You could say this way, believers are obeyers. Believers are obeyers.

If you remember, Jesus himself said in John 12, 49, that he did what? He did what the father commanded him to. He said what the father told him to say, John 12, 49. And then Jesus had the audacity to tell his disciples that if they loved him, they were to obey him.

John 14, 21. You think, well, how does that work? That sounds a bit burdensome. No, actually, 1 John says that by this we know that we are God's children because his commands are not burdensome.

No, what he's not saying is that obedience is always easier, that you always get there right away, or that you always in the flesh want to do it. But the point is that you affirm that these are not instructions coming to you from an impersonal being. Brother, you love God and you love his law, and so your heart is inclined to affirm and desire what he says is best.

Can I just encourage you this morning, if you're walking in disobedience that you're aware of, to repent. Repent, trust, and obey. Abram here hears the voice of God.

He responds in faith and he is blessed. And Abram here is exemplary. He's gonna be unlike some other people in his family relations.

Soon we're gonna get to Lot's wife and what happens when she's told to go and leave. She turns around. Her husband did a little better.

He didn't turn around, but he was a bit sluggish. According to Genesis 19, 16, Lot hesitates when he's commanded. We call him loitering or lingering Lot.

See, Abram heard the voice of God, and the picture is it's so clear in the language as the Lord spoke, he just got up and he left. Can you just think about what that meant for a minute? Put your house up for sale. Hold an estate sale because you're gonna be on the move and you're not gonna be able to take all your stuff with you.

Say goodbye to relationships, and when you say goodbye, this isn't like, goodbye, I'll see you next summer. It's like, nice knowing you. Abram never makes it back to her again.

And so he doesn't hesitate. He doesn't loiter. He doesn't turn around.

He just obeys. Can I just tell you, this is the heart of worship. This is the heart of worship.

Now, if I can just encourage you for a minute, because we struggle as believers in our obedience, and as we're gonna see, Abram struggles in his obedience later in other arenas. If your obedience is lackluster right now, if in the Christian life you find I'm just unmotivated to obey, how do you troubleshoot? They need to recognize it's always a relationship and a worship problem. Okay, loveless submission to the commands of God is not biblical obedience.

Fearful submission is not biblical obedience, but true obedience is an inclination of the will. And so Abram is going forth exactly as God said right now, not because he studied the analytics. It's not out of emotionalism.

It's not self-righteousness or mere discipline. He's not motivated by the opinions of others and what they're gonna think of him and his reputation. He's not even afraid of consequences from God.

Rather, he heard the voice of the Lord and he became a worshiper. See, what is to drive obedience, what's to fuel the tank is love and adoration for God. And so in your obedience, my obedience is lacking.

We need to be invigorated by the glory and the goodness of the God who calls us. And it's not a matter of just trying to struggle through doing things that we don't want to do, but to realize I've forgotten the God behind the instructions. And to receive the word implanted that changes our wills.

And so Abram hears this call of God. He does exactly as said. He gets up, he goes exactly as Yahweh had said to him.

And we read, and Lot went with him. And Abraham was 75 years old, according to verse four, when he departed from Haran. So Abram took Sarai his wife and Lot his brother's son and all their possessions, which they had accumulated and the persons which they had acquired in Haran.

And they departed to go forth to the land of Canaan. Thus they came to the land of Canaan. Now there's a little bit of a question here regarding kind of the timing and sequence.

Who went where, why, when? The issue is, or the confusion, because in Genesis chapter 11, we read that Terah took his family and he left Ur and he went to Haran. And then after that, we read chapter 12, where we hear God call Abram. And then we have Abram departing in verse four from Haran.

And so the question is kind of like, when did God speak to Abram? Is it possible that maybe his father Terah took them from Ur of the Chaldeans to Haran, and then Haran was where Abram first heard the voice of God? I don't think that's actually what's happening for a couple of reasons. Let me just jot down some cross references. Genesis 15, seven, Yahweh says, I am Yahweh who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess it.

It's God speaking to Abram. I was the one who called you out of Ur. Nehemiah 9, seven, in the prayer of Israel, you are Yahweh God who chose Abram and brought him out from Ur of the Chaldeans.

And you say, well, it's still a little bit ambiguous there. Maybe God called him out of Ur by just following his father Terah. Well, Stephen in Acts chapter seven, verse two says this, the God of glory appeared to our father Abram when he was in Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran.

So what Moses is doing is this, he's starting the story there. He's connecting us to Terah in chapter 11, that Abram and Terah and Lot all left from Ur of the Chaldeans to go up to Haran. And then he's giving us exactly what Yahweh came and said to Abram when he was in Ur.

So when you read in verses one through three of chapter 12, that's what Abram heard while he was still living in Ur of the Chaldeans. Then he goes up and he goes with his father and he goes with his nephew. Now, some have said, well, hold on, how is it that he's obeying if he's going from his father's house and from his kin in verse one? Well, just think about your own extended family relationships.

And in particular, maybe when you were a child, if you still had great aunts and great uncles alive, great grandparents alive, I mean, people are living a long time in Abram's day. So in Ur of the Chaldeans, Abram would have had his dad's relatives, his grandparents' relatives, there would have been cousins upon cousins, there would have been an entire brood. The perspective here is that he leaves his family there in Ur, all of those connections, all of those relationships, and the only people that go with him are his dad and his nephew.

That's it. He leaves behind the rest of the family. How long were they in Haran? Well, we don't know.

We know that they were long enough to accumulate some things. Something about that we moved three and a half years ago. We just went through a closet the other day.

You can accumulate stuff pretty quick sometimes. So we don't know how long they were in Haran, but they were long enough to accumulate some things. And as we're gonna find Abram and Abraham, he was a very wealthy man.

He had lots of livestock and servants and people. So while he was there, some form of commerce, the Lord's blessing in his hand, he's accumulating while he's there. But he's been through a lot so far.

If you just stop and think, Abram so far has buried a brother. Okay, he left a brother back in Ur. He left all of his extended family.

He's now buried his father. And he's leaving Haran and all he has is Lot. And I was thinking, man, I like my nephews.

I like my nephews a lot. But if I was moving, I don't know that my nephew's the first guy on the list to take with me. I'm thinking I want a savvy uncle or something.

Somebody that's gonna provide some help. I'm digging a nephew. So Abram leaves.

He has his wife, Sarai. He has his brother's son, Lot. The idea there is probably that Abram is leaving Ur of the Chaldees and he's leaving his family and he's leaving all of the false gods.

Lot is saying, I'm ready to follow Yahweh with you. And that's what we're gonna see. So Abram and Lot leave behind Ur.

Now they're leaving Haran. With it, it's interesting. There's a little detail in the text.

You read the persons which they had acquired. Normally we think, okay, so they bought some slaves while they were there. They acquired some servants.

But Cassido draws out that there's a different word in the Hebrew language for the acquisition of slaves. This would seem that actually what happened was while Abram was in Haran, he was proselytizing. He was making converts.

There were some people that heard about Yahweh and decided we'd like to come too. And so he was there in Haran. We don't know what the conversation would have looked like.

And say, hey, why are you here? Well, you ever heard of Yahweh? About 400-ish years ago, he destroyed the whole earth with a flood. Well, he came, he spoke to me. He actually called me out of my background.

I now worship him. I mean, in somehow in that conversation of life, there were people who were acquired with them. And so this entourage has grown.

The blessing of God is already starting to seep out. Now that Abram has buried his father, we don't know whether he was waiting for his dad to die, whether it was health reasons, whether maybe Terah was not quite ready to go to Canaan, whatever the issue might be, Terah's passed on. And so now they depart and they go forth to the land of Canaan.

And thus they came, Moses writes, to the land of Canaan. This is the first evidence of Abram's faith. He's had a decisive act of obedience.

It's faith in action. This is the first display of his faith and his worship. The second now that we come to is the refining travel.

The refining travel. Point number one, the radical takeoff. Point number two, the refining travel.

So now what we move from is this decisive act where God calls him to do this big obedience. It's challenging in the flesh, but he trusts God and he does the thing. Well, now what we begin to see is faith lived out really against opposition.

This is the growing faith, the preserving faith, the faith that overcomes obstacles. And what I want you to see as we work through this is this is the Lord caring for and preserving and strengthening Abram's faith. He's training him.

Verse six, and Abram passed through the land as far as the site of Shechem to the Oak of Moreh. Now, Shechem will become a point of decision later throughout Genesis. It's gonna have great significance through the future generations and then even into the monarchy of Israel.

So it doesn't really mean a whole lot now, but Moses is highlighting it. It will later, and he knows that. When you read the reference to the Oak of Moreh, it might be a single tree, but quite possibly it's a grove.

And the title relates to some kind of teaching. And so most likely what's being conveyed here in your mind's eye would be to picture a region there in the land of Canaan that is dedicated to false worship. It's a grove, some form of altar or temple worship to the false gods of the Canaanites.

Judges 9, verse 37, it was called the Soothsayers Oak. And Moses just slips in what seems to us like a very small detail and yet is very significant when he says, now the Canaanite was then in the land. Now the Canaanite was then in the land.

This is the cursed descendants of Noah. This is an immoral people. This is a godless people, pagan.

And so just to kind of get our minds around this for a moment, okay, of what Abram is experiencing and what it means for him. Imagine I say to you, hey, listen, here's the deal. I've got this phenomenal property for you, okay? It's yours, here's the deal.

What you need to do is first sell your house and downsize into an RV, okay? And I want you to say goodbye to everyone forever and get in the RV, and then I'll give you the address once you're on the road. Sound like a good deal? Get on the road, I give you the address. I'm not trying to play God here, just the analogy, hang with me.

You're in the RV, you show up at the property and it's filled with people, beautiful property. And it's not like, I mean, we've had this happen before where you know you're supposed to close on the 1st, they're supposed to be out on the 30th, you think we'll just kind of drive by and take a look and the 30th, they're like getting all the boxes still and they're just behind in their planning. And this is like, people are just vegging on the property.

They don't look like they're going anywhere. And then what you hear is, by the way, we're just gonna hang out in the RV indefinitely. This is your new home.

See, Abram comes into this land and what he's finding there is people hostile to the worship of Yahweh. Embedded cultures of people. The land that he is supposed to possess right now, I can't see it, it's filled with people.

People who hate God, I don't see how this is going to work. And you think, why would the Lord do this to Abram? I mean, he said, I'm gonna make you a nation, I'm gonna make your name great, I'm gonna bless the earth throughout you or throughout the earth through your line. And now you're gonna spend the rest of your life centrally living out of an ancient Near Eastern RV.

You're gonna be in tents. What is the Lord doing? This is the Lord caring for Abram's faith. So one commentator writes, it was profitable for him to be accustomed by such discipline to cherish a better hope.

For if he had been kindly and courteously received in the land of Canaan, he would have hoped for nothing better than to spend his life there as a guest. I mean, these are not Abram's people. And so he's in the land and he's immediately finding as it's occupied by other people that he is to simply hang out and wait.

So the Lord is teaching Abram a very valuable lesson. He's living in a tent and a tent is not a permanent dwelling structure. Abram is sojourning.

And so although Abram can't see it yet, this is not getting in the way of the plan, this is the plan. The plan to shepherd him and to strengthen his faith. And so those tents are actually working something in his heart that he needs.

Being in a land that he's uncomfortable around all these idolaters is working something that he needs. The writer of Hebrews says that Abram sojourned by faith in the land of promise as though it was a foreign land dwelling in tents. That's the plan.

What is that doing? Well, it is working and forming character as his faith is tested. So when pastor writes, he is admonished by the continual want of repose to look upward towards heaven. So he gets to this promised land that God is gonna show him and he realizes, man, maybe this isn't right here right now, but I'm looking to something beyond this land.

Isn't that what happens when the Lord puts you in a situation where you have to wait upon him in faith? That he's accomplishing a good purpose for your spiritual benefit? I mean, you know the verse as well. Well, James one, consider it all joy, my brothers. Consider it all joy, my brothers, and you encounter various trials knowing what? Knowing that the testing of your faith brings about perseverance.

And you're saying, if Abram said, all right, I'm gonna have this decisive act of obedience. I'm gonna step out in faith. I'm gonna trust God that he's gonna provide me the land that he shows me.

And two days into the journey, there it is, paradise. And it says Abraham's future land, and there's no one occupying it. That his faith would not have had a chance to persevere and mature and strengthen and hope against hope, as the scriptures would say, brings about perseverance.

And Paul would say in Romans five, perseverance brings about proven character and proven character hope. And so too often we're scheming to pin our hopes or achieving something right here and now, a little slice of heaven on earth. And yet what Abram is learning is to depend upon God and to look for something beyond his immediate circumstances.

Ultimately, he was looking to a heavenly city. And the Lord, the Lord is so gracious. The Lord is so kind to us the way that he tends our faith.

He knows, he knows exactly what your faith needs. So he, he tailor makes the circumstances, he tailor makes the tests, and he's not gonna allow your faith to fail. Okay, he's always gonna be there to provide.

And that's exactly what he does to Abram. So Abram sitting there looking at the Canaanites, probably tempted, the text doesn't say, to at least just doubt a little bit, right? He's a man, he's gonna fail right here in these next verses. So he's looking out, he's seeing the Canaanites.

In verse seven, what happens? Then Yahweh appeared to Abram and said, to your seed, I will give this land. God appears. This is a theophany, and it's an appearance of God in the Old Testament.

This would be the pre-incarnate son of God, the angel of the Lord. Why is this so important? Well, just put yourself in Abram's sandals right now. It's pretty tough to see how it's all gonna work out.

And so the Lord does what? He comes and personally appears to Abram to strengthen his faith. How many times has the Lord done that for you? He gives him a word, a word from the Lord to strengthen and bolster his faith, to remind him of the promise. And so Abram may not be able to see how it all comes together.

I mean, right here, the promise to his seed, Abram is barren right now, remember? Him and Sarai, no kids, past the point of childbirth. And yet he's saying, I don't see how it's all gonna come together, but in faith, I believe. How do you know he believed? Into verse seven, so he built an altar there to Yahweh who had appeared to him.

So Abram gets up, he goes, he shows up in Canaan. He realizes the land is filled with Canaanites. He realizes he's probably gonna need to settle into tent life for a while.

And the Lord graciously comes and says, I'm gonna affirm the promise, and I'm gonna promise that your seed gets this land. You understand, even that was not an accident that the Lord was setting this whole thing up. Why was Sarai barren? What's the ultimate purpose in that? As one commentator stated, a natural obstacle existed in the genealogical sources of the promised seed so that fulfillment of the promise would demand the Lord's supernatural intervention.

Why is Sarai barren? So that there's no earthly hope. So that there's no earthly hope for a seed or an offspring. So that they must rely simply upon the faithfulness of God.

I mean, you just picture it. You have no kid, you have no place to live. There are squatters living in the land that you're supposed to get.

I mean, if I'm Abram, I'm saying, I don't really see how this whole thing is gonna come together. And God in his grace comes and he assures Abram. Listen, you understand that the author of your faith, the author of your faith does not merely start that work in your life, but he nurtures it and cultivates it and protects it.

And if you've been in Christ any length of time, you know when there's the doubts that assail your soul and you know how many times the Lord has come to your rescue. He's come to your aid. He's brought a truth to your heart.

Or you've opened up the word and it's come alive to you. Or a friend has brought an encouraging word from scripture. That is God's grace to you.

That even when you're faint hearted or weary or discouraged or despondent or unbelieving, the Lord will come to your aid and strengthen you with his mighty word. How is it that Abram's faith is strengthened? It's by focusing on the object of faith, God himself. You know, our faith gets weak is when we look outside of the character of God for strength.

And so Abram here is not looking for immediate payoff, but he trusts that the promise will be fulfilled and he builds an altar to Yahweh who'd appeared to him. Now, a couple of things I just want you to think about here for a minute. Building an altar is gonna make you stand out a little bit.

Is it not? I mean, this is the public worship of God. Couldn't Abram just bow in his knee right there? He just bowed in the sand. No one would know who he was worshiping.

He could worship the Lord privately. But here he is in the midst of a pluralistic, polytheistic society building an altar to Yahweh. He's beginning to mark out the land and lay claim to it.

See the inward worship of the heart came out in an external profession. Started in the heart and yet he begins to publicly worship God. Visible worship, external worship.

Abram sure had no doubt opportunities to explain himself. People asked him what he was doing. But there is a testing out of a heart of worship that he's finding his ultimate love and trust and significance and security and safety in the Lord himself.

I don't know what the conversations were, that Abram had while he was in the land, but I think it probably took him a couple times to figure out like how's the best way to get into this conversation. Can you imagine someone saying, so what brings you to town? Well, okay, let's see here. So basically, I don't know how to say this, but basically I'm gonna get your land someday, I guess.

Well, not me, my kids. I mean, I don't have kids. Now, yes, I understand we're old enough to be on Medicaid.

Okay, like this just, it's not an easy situation to explain to other people, but here he is. He's building testaments to worship. He's making his way throughout the land.

Although he's there in that place at the site of Shechem to the Oaks of Moray, that's not a stopping point. He has to keep going. Verse eight, then he proceeded from there to the mountain on the east of Bethel and he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east, and there he built an altar to Yahweh and called upon the name of Yahweh.

Here he is worshiping again. And I get to the next spot, I stop, and what's in my heart? I wanna set up a little worship center to the Lord. You're saying this is him expressing love and dependence upon his God.

And Bethel doesn't have this name yet. It doesn't exist named as such, but this will be where Jacob, Abraham's grandson, wrestles with God and it will be named at that point. And yet just look at the irony here that Abram will spend the rest of his existence living in tents.

I mean, can you imagine that? The rest of your life in an RV, but here's the deal. You can't just park it. You're gonna be on the move the rest of your life.

You're not gonna have a place to put down roots, to call home. Just reminding him that he's a sojourner and a traveler. And yet Abram is building altars to the Lord.

So when he is moving throughout the land, all that's left are buildings and structures that he's made to attest to Yahweh and holes in the ground from his tent pegs, nothing of his own remains. So I don't know about you, but I start thinking about Abram and I'm thinking, man, this guy has been through a lot already. Like this is just kind of the front end of the journey.

All of those decisions and the conversations and the acts of faith already just to get into where he's gone. Seems like a good time for a little bit of relief. Maybe a time to shift into cruise control for a bit.

And we read in verse nine, and Abram journeyed on continuing toward the Negev. And this is like the song that doesn't ever end. This is another removal in a short period of time.

And so the new lot in life, the new norm for Abram is to not become overly attached to a geographical location or a friend group or a community or a family heritage. He's not able to stay in one spot long enough to amass those luxuries or comforts. Why? So that he learns to be a sojourner.

Here's I read the commentary from the New Testament on Abram. Hebrews 11, eight, by faith, Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance. And he went out not knowing where he was going.

By faith, he sojourned in the land of promise as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise. Why? For he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. And later that same author would say in verse 13, all these died in faith without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on earth.

He said, this is not a purposeless wilderness wandering in Abram's life. And in case you're wondering what the Negev looks like, it's like a barren desert, okay? That's where he's ending up next. This is all part of God graciously disentangling Abram's heart from attachment and over attachment to this earth.

They teach him to fix his eyes on that which is coming. And of course this happens then with eyes of faith, meaning Abram doesn't get the full picture all at once. He doesn't get to see the full story.

Rather, he simply has to look to faith and trust and rely in the promise of God. So I was thinking about this. I just summarized it in this way.

What is injurious to his comfortable existence on earth is advantageous to the strengthening of his faith. And Abram is learning to rely upon the Lord to provide for everything that he needs in life. When you look at Abram, it's easy to see him here as the example for our faith.

Is it not? Let me see how he's trusting the Lord. It's refreshing even the way that he obeys. Doesn't have a lot of excuses or resistance.

There's a boldness associated with that. He's not afraid to be public with his worship there, even in the midst of idolaters. He sees past his circumstances.

But right after this high point in the providence of God, God's going to intervene in the circumstances of Abram and Sarai's life, and it's gonna expose Abram's frailty. And so here today, we're looking at a man with sincere, genuine, authentic faith, saving faith, the real deal. Starting in verse 10, he's gonna be in a scary situation.

Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. See, Abram is gonna keep getting tested over and over and over.

If you ever feel like the Christian life is a series of repeated and enduring tests, it is. And sometimes we rejoice in our faithful response, and other times it happens. We deal with the fallout of failure.

And so as we're gonna see next time, the father of our faith doesn't always weather temptation faithfully, but sometimes he falters and fails. And yet in all of this, God's providential plan is accomplishing exactly what he wants. Will you pray with me? Father in heaven, thank you for Abram.

Thank you for the example that he is to us. Thank you that you did not give us examples of perfect individuals other than the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet at the same time, Lord, you show us examples of real faith so that we're spurred on and yet not overly discouraged.

Lord, we confess that so often our hearts are filled with unbelief. I cannot imagine all of the temptations that the father of our faith experienced when he couldn't see the bigger picture of what you were doing in his life, what you would do through him, why all of the lessons and all of the trials and all the deprivation, yet Lord, you were making him a worshiper through all of it. So thank you for your providence in our lives.

Thank you, Lord, for the things that you've given us spiritually. And thank you for the things that you've not given us physically and materially, or the areas of our lives that we have to wait upon you, knowing that it is in that waiting and deprivation that very often we find you. Lord, forgive us for so often turning to other resources and looking to other promises.

Father, I pray that you'd refine and deepen our love and our trust in you. Thank you so much that even our sin, even our failure cannot stop you accomplishing your plan to bring all things ultimately to fulfillment under the headship of the Lord Jesus Christ. We love you, we praise you, amen.

All right. Well, Jesus on my cross have taken is one that's on the playlist for my memorial service. So, probably be a long memorial service.

I think there's several songs listed for that. And if you guys don't do it, it's okay. I'm not going to care anyway at that point.

But it's just such a great reminder because you can't help but sing that song and just recognize, all right, I struggle to stay here, but this is what I confess and what I believe to be true. And just always such a joy to have our hearts aligned in those things. I want you to take your Bibles this morning and turn with me to Genesis chapter 12.

And here we are now embarking upon this tremendous section of scripture together entitled this morning's message, The Promised Plan of God Progresses. Okay. The promised plan of God progresses.

And I decided this week I'm just going to call Abraham, Abraham, because that's what he ends up being later. So, I know it's Abram. I'll kind of be in and out of that, but expect me to just call him Abraham.

Today, we get introduced to what will really be the framework for the Abrahamic covenant. Okay. And this covenant looks back 2,000 years to the Garden of Eden, and it looks ahead 2,000 years from Abraham to the cross.

And of course, it has implications for us today. And so, this is really a key linchpin theological understanding from the Old Testament. And unequivocally, this covenant that God makes with Abraham demonstrates that salvation is of the Lord, and it is by grace alone, through faith alone, ultimately in Christ alone.

And so, here we have 4,000 years ago, God bringing about the next phase of his program of redemption, really his promised plan as it unfolds in history. And so, even years, millennia before Jesus is on the earth, God is calling pagans out of idolatry. He's bringing them into right relationship with himself.

He's forgiving their sins. And behind all of that is God's unchanging character and his unchanging promise. Okay.

What stands behind our confidence in salvation is that we do not trust in ourselves, but we trust in the character of God. We trust his revelation. We trust his promise.

And so, here we see the promised plan of God progressing. And Genesis 12 really just begins to introduce this to us. It's going to be reviewed and expanded as God comes again to Abraham, and chapter 15 is recorded, and chapter 17, chapter 18, chapter 22.

So, we're just starting to get the first taste of it today. But I want to begin by diving in this morning. Let's just read the text before us today.

Genesis 12, beginning in verse 1. And Yahweh said to Abram, go forth from your land, and from your kin, and from your father's house, to the land which I will show you. And I will make you a great nation. And I will bless you, and I will make your name great.

And so you shall be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you. And the one who curses you, I will curse.

And in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. So, Abraham, excuse me, went forth as Yahweh had spoken to him. And Lot went with him.

Now, Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran. So, Abram took Sarai, his wife, and Lot, his brother's son, and all their possessions which they had accumulated, and the persons which they had acquired in Haran. And they departed to go forth to the land of Canaan.

Thus, they came to the land of Canaan. And Abram passed through the land, as far as the site of Shechem, to the yoke of Moreh. Now, the Canaanite was then in the land.

Then Yahweh appeared to Abram and said, to your seed, I will give this land. So, he built an altar there to Yahweh who had appeared to him. Then he proceeded from there to the mountain on the east side of Bethel.

And he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west side of Ai on the east. And there he built an altar to Yahweh and called upon the name of Yahweh. And Abram journeyed on, continuing toward the Negev.

Last week in chapter 11, we were introduced to Abram. We got to meet the father of our faith. We got to be introduced to who Paul would say is our spiritual father.

We're sons of Abraham if we are in Christ. We found that Moses is intent on providing quite a bit of background material for us because understanding Abram's roots are significant in understanding how God works in salvation. Not just to know, okay, here's the father, the spiritual father of the faith, but to understand where he came from.

We saw those roots that were significant and we had somewhat of a long lead in there in chapter 11. First, we saw, of course, Abram's bloodlines. We saw his bloodlines that Moses really slows down and parks it on the generations of Shem beginning in verse 10.

He focuses on that one line, that one lineage. We said that's not without consequence. And what's happening there is Moses is connecting Abram to fulfillment of a previous promise.

That's why we're saying the promised plan of God is progressing right now. So you remember back in the garden, Genesis chapter 3, Adam and Eve have just sinned and they're reeling from their decision to rebel. All right, we know what that feels like.

You know what it feels like when you really blow it and you have a sin issue that is just painful and you know the consequences are going to be painful and you're feeling ashamed and discouraged by it, perhaps even hopeless and despairing. I mean, Adam and Eve rebelled against the law of God. They instantly lost intimate fellowship with God.

They lost fellowship with one another. They experienced for the very first time the feelings of guilt. I mean, can you imagine to have never known guilt and then suddenly get hit with it for the first time? It's about enough when you're used to it.

And then they're ashamed. They cover themselves with leaves. They would have been filled at that time with wicked desires.

So they would have suddenly been reeling from the noetic effects of sin and their minds have been filled with sinful thoughts and corrupt desires, not to mention the fear of death that instantly would have come into their hearts. So they're reeling and right there in that bitterness, God comes to them. You remember what he promised in chapter 3 verse 15? He promised that there would be a seed of the woman who would crush the serpent's head.

He said, of course, there would be enmity. There would be a challenge now between Satan and the offspring of the woman to try to attempt to snuff out the Messiah's line. And in fact, the Messiah would be bruised on the heel.

That would be Jesus on the cross. But he would ultimately crush the serpent's head. And so for Adam and Eve, this was a moment of hope.

God is going to fix the problem that we now find ourselves in that we cannot undo or fix ourselves. And so that Proto-Evangelion, that first mention of the gospel, is not merely something to be discussed in ivory towers. This was their reliance.

Adam and Eve believed God. They were in the garden, hopeless and ashamed and guilty, believing that there would one day be a child that would come who would fix what they had messed up. It was a lifeline of hope.

And so then for the last 2,000 years, God has been providentially bringing about that seed of the woman in the progress of his promise plan. And we've seen throughout this plan various righteous lines. Adam, to Seth, and eventually to Noah, and to Shem, and to Peleg, and to Abram.

And so when you read about those bloodlines of Abram, we're to see that this is part of God's promise plan. And get this, it cannot be stopped. It can't be stopped by human sin.

And God flooded the entire earth except for one family. And what happens? His promise plan is still just marching along as he intended. So a wicked man comes together to create a one-world alliance to make a name for himself and reject God.

And what happens? It doesn't stop the plan. God just disperses everyone into their places with separate languages. He does that easily with great ease.

And yet he comes here to Abram, and he calls this man from a very dark background. And so we see that this bloodline of the line of the Messiah attests to God's faithfulness, his goodness, his trustworthiness. And it is not without consequence that Abram came from a very messed-up home life.

We saw his background, and we looked at that. He grew up in Ur, a city that worshipped false gods. His own wife, his brother's wife, they both had names associated with idolatry.

According to Joshua 24, the family served other gods. So Abram grew up just as a little guy learning the practice of idolatry. Isn't that helpful? And sometimes you might meet someone, and you think, man, there's no hope for that person.

I mean, they've been discipled in godless ways of thinking from their earliest breath. Well, that was Abram. He grew up bowing down to the moon and doing whatever else the family did in their idolatrous worship.

And that was his practice, and it was what he knew, and it was what was familiar, and all of his lifestyle was built around that. And so God's grace comes then not to a bright, shining family, but into the darkness. And of course, Abraham eventually will be an example of God's grace to Gentiles, because Abraham is declared righteous before he's circumcised, he's not Jewish.

And so we're to see a bit of ourselves in Abraham to learn that God's salvation is offered freely to all. God's salvation is offered freely to all, and God glorifies Himself by graciously saving, graciously setting His love and mercy upon people who don't deserve it. And Abraham stands as an example of how God's Word works, because as we'll see, God comes and He speaks to Abraham in that moment of his idolatry, and he responds.

It's effectual. Didn't need a bunch of pre-evangelism before he came. He didn't need to be convinced of all the rational reasons to believe in God.

God came and He spoke, and it was effectual in his heart. And then we saw the break that Abraham made. He was still Abram, but he left his homeland at that time.

He received the call of God, and he departed. And so this morning, we come now to God's initiation of His relationship with Abram. And so if you're keeping an outline this morning, it's the outline for our text today.

Verse 1 begins with His call to Abram. So God initiates a relationship with Abram, and first we see His call to Abram. Verse 1, And Yahweh said to Abram, Go forth from your land, and from your kin, and from your father's house.

All right, this is the message. This is what Abram hears from the Lord. Now, we have a family member, and this family member does not withhold information, doesn't necessarily withhold truth in like a deceptive way, but they're also not known for presenting like a logical, cohesive, comprehensive story at the get-go.

So information kind of leaks out. You get a little bit here, and then you get a little bit there, and you get a little bit there, and then you get the joy of like piecing it all together and trying to get a complete picture, okay? Well, it's kind of what God is doing with Abram here. He's not giving him the whole enchilada right up front, okay? He's giving him some instructions, but this is really just the very beginning.

We could say broad brush strokes, 30,000-foot view, just a few details, kind of the rough outline and framework, and then He's going to fill it in later as we go. And so, if you were Abram, and you're the kind of person that has a lot of questions about things, you like to know the details, you read labels, you like to know what to expect, or you prefer to be in control of your circumstances or the outcome, this would be a very challenging message to receive because it is bare bones indeed. Abram's not given the full picture up front.

He's given minimal information, and surely his questions would not have been answered to human satisfaction. He did not have a complete understanding or a visible guarantee of what is to come. Rather, we just read, Yahweh said to Abraham, go, go forth from your land and from your kin and from your father's house.

Now, go is an action word, is it not? It's an imperative. If you want to know the Hebrew here, the nuance is this, go. God is issuing a command, okay? It's a divine order.

It's forefronted in the words. I mean, that is the first word it would seem when God came to Abram. He says, go.

Reflecting on this a little bit, it's interesting in the gospel, primarily we hear or think of come, do we not? That's what the prophet Isaiah would say, Isaiah 55, one, ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. And you who have no money, buy and eat, come buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Jesus in John 7, 37 says, if anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.

Matthew 11, 28, come to me, Jesus says, all you who are weary and heavy laden, it's an invitation, it's a beckoning. And Abram right here, rather than get immediately an invitation, he gets an eviction, does he not? The first offer of the gospel to Abram is to get up and go, to leave it all behind. Look at the separation, go forth from your land and from your kin and from your father's house.

Separation language. Abram, I want you to separate right now, make a clean break from that which is near and dear to you. And salvation is, of course, not conditioned upon human performance, this idea that I kind of gather up my stuff and I offer it to Jesus and that's how I gain salvation.

But that gate is, in fact, narrow and the allegiance is a full requirement. It's very similar then to what Jesus said, and we read it in our Scripture reading this morning to the rich young ruler. Jesus looking at him, according to Mark 10, verse 21, loved him.

Side note, that's fascinating. Here's a man that maybe doesn't even believe ultimately in Jesus, but he still looks upon him and he loves him, he has compassion for him. And he says, one thing you lack, what? Go, go and sell all you possess.

And then he ends it with, come, follow me. So, it's not two distinct separate activities that we merely go, we merely come. It's the same action here in repentance that we're turning from something to something.

But it's also true the emphasis here is a little bit different, and Abram is called first and foremost to leave what he knows and trusts in, what he finds comfort in, what is familiar to him, what makes sense, and he's called out of it. It's interesting to note here that God is breaking up a family, and that's not really the primary purpose. Okay? That's not the mission of God to destroy families.

But it's also true that he makes himself the dividing line and the dividing issue. And so, sometimes God separates families. And that's what happens to Abram.

He has to leave his pagan roots. And so, although he starts out on the journey with his father and he starts out on the journey with his nephew, his father dies, what does that mean? It means he left a brother back in Ur. We'll find out later that Laban is back in Ur, and Rebecca, and Leah, and Rachel, and there's a whole clan, a whole kin that he is leaving behind.

And part of that separation was even necessary in God's design because Abram is going to be a new nation, and a new race, and a new people who break from idolatry, or at least theoretically that's the point. Israel, of course, will struggle with that. And so, sometimes faith in God separates families.

Jesus himself said in Matthew 10, verse 34, do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.

And Jesus goes on to say that he's the thing, he's the deal. He says, he who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. And he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

And he who does not take his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for my sake will find it. And so, Abraham is a pioneer in the faith.

And he's called out as a pioneer from his family. And part of that separation, even from his brother, no doubt, was a religious separation. Yet, of course, Abraham, as we will find, loses nothing.

It's the same way if you're in Christ. If you've lost a family relationship, not due to your own sin and your own folly and you've created separation in a relationship due to dishonoring the Lord and the relational dynamics. But if you've lost a relationship simply over the gospel of Jesus Christ, you need to be comforted by Jesus when he says that no one who's lost anything for his sake won't get it back.

Matthew 19.29, everyone who's left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or farms for my sake will receive 100 times as much and will inherit eternal life. For Abraham, this is what was near and dear to his heart, and it's what the Lord asked him for. It's not the last time that Abraham is going to be asked for something near and dear to him.

He's going to be asked for Isaac later to see if he really trusts the Lord. And so, when we look at Abraham, the father of our faith, it immediately puts the question right in front of us. Am I attempting to straddle two worlds? I mean, Abraham does not continue to cling to those relationships, the wealth that he had amassed there.

He's going to take his animals with him. He's a wealthy guy. But think about it, him and his wife are barren at this point.

They don't even have offspring. And so, the thought is we're going to leave all the family roots and whatever is established here in the name and reputation for we don't even know yet. That's the call.

See, Abraham, as the father of our faith, demonstrates saying goodbye and parting with anything that Jesus would ask of you to part with. You know, sometimes you'll hear a preacher get going on the cost of discipleship and they're waxing eloquent about all the things that you must have given up for Christ. And I hear that and I think, well, here's the deal.

Maybe Jesus hasn't asked that of you yet, you know? Like, you don't feel bad that you haven't given up your life yet and been a martyr for the sake of the gospel. Like, it'd be pretty tough to do that right now in the U.S. But I do think this, it would be that I've given up anything in the path of discipleship that Jesus has asked me to give up. That I can say there's nothing that I'm hanging on to as though this is protected.

Like, if you were to get into a lawsuit, right, your 401k employer sponsored is theoretically protected. You know, your primary dwelling is protected so they can take everything else, but not those. There's no protected assets in your discipleship with the Lord.

It's all to be His. And if you want to follow your father in the faith, Abraham, understand that when he left Ur, he never went back. He left and he never went back.

And that's the willingness of the heart of a disciple, is it not? Lord, I give it to you and if you require it of me, it's yours. And Abraham, of course, receives back so much more. He gets a relationship with the living God who he now loves and trusts.

And so, I'm sure if you visited Abraham at some point, years down the road, and said, hey, if you could do it all over again, take me back to the call of the Lord in Ur, would you do it all over again? And he would say, I wouldn't even think twice. I'd give it all up again gladly. And so, the cost of discipleship for Abraham is to leave his extended family.

He leaves his brother, he leaves his nephew, all of his kin, and he goes out into verse 1 to the land, the Lord says, which I will show you. I mean, can you? You have no coordinates, you have no GPS, you don't have like one of those little things they have at AAA that you get to fold out and kind of see where you're going and start to imagine what it's going to look like. No website to check out.

All he has is the naked promise of God. And that is hard when you have nothing in the flesh to assure you of the outcome before taking the step of faith, other than the naked command of God. And all you have is a principle or a promise or a truth that you're clinging to.

And you can't yet see how it's all going to map out. Abraham didn't know where he was going. That's amazing.

He was a wealthy guy. We'll find out later. I mean, he had hundreds of sheep and goats, perhaps even thousands.

He had herdsmen that he was traveling with. So, you just picture, I mean, these entourages, they move pretty slow. They'd move along the river and could have some animals that are pregnant or some that are babies.

You're just kind of trucking along. You're doing the thing. You're going pretty slow.

You're working your way out. You imagine, you know, Lot, the nephew at some point saying, Abram, can you just, like, can you tell me where are we going? Abram says, well, I'll tell you when you get there. Well, it sounds kind of like a smart aleck.

No, I don't know. Like, if I knew I would tell you, but I know as much as you do right now. We are departing and the Lord will show us, look at that, to the land which I will show you.

So, just start making your way north. When you get there, I'll show you where you want to be. And do you understand the benefit it is to us to see this faith on display? I mean, I just love the way the Scripture works, as a side note.

We have all these instructions in the New Testament regarding faith. And they're so important in defining faith, helping us understand what it looks like in the principles. And then we have these examples in the Old Testament.

What do they do? They bring a living color. Same principle. It's just a kind of a way to enter in and see it.

And so, for Abram here, he has to believe God and hope in that which is unseen. Means he doesn't have to experience it first in order to believe God. He doesn't need additional guarantees in order to believe God.

And so, faith is somewhat uncomfortable for us because there's no assurance beyond the promise of God. That's it. It's like all of the eggs are in that basket.

And yet to say, for Abram, God has a land that he's going to show me. And guess what? That's all I need. That's all I need.

Oswald Chambers said, faith never knows where it is being led. I think that's true. Faith never knows where it's being led.

I don't know where the Lord is going to take me this afternoon. Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the one who is leading. And that is so good.

Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the one who is leading. And so, Abram is trusting the Lord. His faith is in action.

And if you want the kind of simple breakdown of faith, we talk about this a lot. It's really three things. First of all, you have to have the contents.

You have to actually know what it is that God has promised. Okay, number two, you have to believe it. So far, so good, but we're only to where the demons are at, right? They know the truth and they believe it.

The third is very critical, and that is entrustment. It's relying upon it. And so, when you see in your life an area where you would say, I know what the Bible says, I think I believe what the Bible says, I affirm it, but I'm not able to act on it.

The issue is that area of entrustment. You're not relying upon it. There's still a leaning on your own understanding.

And so, Abram here relies on God. His faith then is going to manifest itself in action. It manifests itself in action.

And of course, he finds something better. So, this is God's call to Abraham. It's first point is God initiates a relationship with him.

Our second point is his promise to Abraham. His promise to Abraham. God issues not only a command for Abram to obey and to obey by faith and to obey out of love for him, but in addition to that, he gives him a promise to believe that God is good to us.

The Bible certainly is filled with many commands, but those commands are nestled between promises. Promises about God's grace to us, promises that empower our obedience, promises of the rewards of obedience. And so, God is so good and so gracious that not only does he call Abram out of idolatry and give him an instruction, but then he gives him the comfort and the confidence of promises.

These promises are reiterated all over the New Testament, and you and I are benefiting from these promises even right here, right now. The Lord says in verse 2, and I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great. And so, you shall be a blessing and I will bless those who bless you.

And the one who curses you, I will curse. And in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. Do you see the work of God here? This is how God works in the lives of his people.

Yes, Abram received very specific promises as the father of our faith, but he's also considered in Scripture to be an example of God's salvation. And look with me at the sovereign grace and the power of God. Look at the grammar.

Notice the subject, which is the one doing the action, the verbs, and the object, which is the one being acted upon. What is God's role and what is Abraham's role? Verse 1, I will show you. That's the Lord doing the action upon the object, which is Abram.

Verse 2, I will make you. I will bless you. For simplicity, the text doesn't say, I will make your name great, but it's there too.

I will make your name great. Verse 3, I will bless and I will curse. You're seeing the sovereign grace of God dripping all over this.

I mean, this is the same in our salvation. God is the one that is the actor acting in mercy to us. And so we'll fill this in in the coming weeks, but just briefly to look at kind of the broad framework of this promise that God makes to Abram.

He tells him that he will be a great nation. There's really three parts to this. I don't really like sub outlines, but I'm doing it.

So here it is under point number two, there's three little sub points. And these are the framework for this promise. First, it is you will be a great nation.

Verse 2, I will make you a great nation, a people group, a defined group of people by geography and language and government. And of course, this will happen through his line through Isaac and then through Jacob, who becomes father Israel, and then the 12 tribes. Not only that, but he will make Abram's name great.

So he gets a nation and he gets a name. God says, I will bless you. Verse 2, and I will make your name great.

That night over dinner, I don't know what it was like. I would think, you know, Abram and Sarai are enjoying a meal and he's like, baby, we're going to be famous. I mean, the Lord said, we're going to get a great name.

God is going to make his reputation honorable. This is an expansive blessing, an expansive supply that will be good for all people. And that blessing is going to spill out really on to others.

And so the third part of this blessing is that Abram himself will become a great blessing to others. Here's an Abram's blessing is not a zero sum game. It's not as if God had a set limited amount of blessing.

And he said, okay, I gave the portion to Abram and now there's a little bit left. Rather, the picture is he's giving blessing to Abraham and he will now be a conduit of blessing ultimately to the families of the nations. In fact, God is going to offer divine protection.

It's the same for us in our salvation. Verse three, I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you, I will curse. This is going to be very important as he gets to Canaan, the very specific parameters there that God has given for divine protection.

And you and I are not protected from physical harm. In God's design, sometimes we are physically harmed. Christians are even persecuted and put to death.

So this idea is not that you're protected from all difficulty. Rather, your faith is protected and preserved. And then your Testament even teaches that God's stores up wrath and vengeance for those who harm his people.

So God comes and he gives this promise to Abram. I'm not sure if it conjured up in your mind, but think of the contrast with what we just read about in chapter 11. Chapter 12, we read, I will.

I will do this. I will do this. I will do this.

Great name, a great nation. Back in chapter 11, verse 2, and it happened as they journeyed east that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. Then he said to one another, come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.

And they had brick for stone and they had tar for mortar. And they said, come, let us build for ourselves a city and a tower whose top will reach into heaven and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered over the face of the whole earth. I mean, right here you have man trying to do it on his own for his glory and the futility of that.

God's rejection of that. God being unwilling to share his glory, unwilling for allowing man to make a name for himself and to trust in himself, to glory in himself, desire reputation and honor for his own sake and to control his own destiny. Now he comes to Abram and there on the shores of Euphrates, he grabs this pagan idolater and says, guess what? Jackpot.

I mean, you're going to get the name and the nation and I'm going to do it all for you because that's how I work. I do all things to exalt my name and for my glory and for my purposes and for my counsel. And right here, that very idea of blessing stirs this up in our minds.

I will bless you, the Lord says. And whenever you read that, it just should jump off the page two things. Now we're like sub points under sub points.

We're getting really crazy this morning. When you read blessing in the scriptures, understand it has a divine origin. It has a divine origin.

It comes from God. He is the source. I mean, the true source of all blessing comes from God.

It's the only blessing that truly matters. Not only that, but blessings are always undeserved. They say God bestows blessings as a gift.

That's part of what makes them so glorious. I mean, yes, in one sense, there's a blessing and a reward with exercising faith that comes. It's often connected by God's design to obedience.

If you want the path of greatest blessing on this life and greatest joy and fulfillment and favor, certainly give yourself to submission to God. But the blessing of God, categorically speaking, is never earned. It's always bestowed as a gift.

Or we could say it this way. The blessed life is not something you achieve, but something you receive. See, Abram receives this blessing because God decided he wanted to give it to him.

And then he says so wonderfully at the end of verse three, and in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. It's not because Abram is so great, but God will bring a great one forth from his family descendants. Abraham then is blessed to be a blessing.

Do you understand that? God was gracious to Abraham so that he might be gracious to you and me. And the picture here is the blessing then spreads. The promised plan of God is progressing.

It's kind of been in what appears to be neutral for a couple thousand years. I mean, God saved Noah. There's a little bit of deliverance.

We haven't seen a whole lot of progress, it would seem. Now in Genesis chapter 12, on the banks of the Euphrates, we take a leap forward in the promised plan of God in redemptive history. And we're still benefiting from that today.

I want you to turn with me to Galatians chapter three as we finish out this morning. Galatians chapter three, Paul here picks up this very theme. He wants the churches to understand their connection to Abraham.

He wants them to understand Abraham's salvation so that they better understand their own salvation in Christ. They want to understand that God makes good on his promises and he saves apart from works. Galatians chapter three, verse five.

So then does he who provides you with the spirit and works miracles among you do it by the works of the law or by hearing with faith. Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. So you know that those who are of faith, those are sons of Abraham.

And the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith. That's you and me. Proclaim the gospel, proclaim the good news beforehand to Abraham saying, all the nations will be blessed in you.

It was last time someone asked you what the gospel is and you thought, you know, I'm going to open and turn to Genesis chapter 12, verse three, to explain to them the gospel. God proclaimed the gospel beforehand to Abraham when he said, all the nations will be blessed in you. So then those who are of faith, verse nine, are blessed with Abraham, the believer.

We share in his blessing. So here we see this undeserving pagan blessed by God. He says, I'm going to bless you so you can be a blessing to others.

And guess what? Here we are. Is that not magnificent to you? I was just thinking about it. You know, today you kind of hear the talking point.

Someone will talk about, you know, white evangelicals and it kind of sounds like we have this recent faith that we just came up with and it's very Western in nature and it's United States related. I'm thinking like, man, the father of my faith is 4,000 years ago from the Middle East, like right here in Genesis chapter 12. I mean, this is the promise of faith that we are connected to.

All of this, of course, would come to the promised seed, which was the Messiah. Verse 10, for as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written, cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to do them. Now that no one is justified by the law before God is evident for the righteous shall live by faith.

Now that no one is justified by the law before God is evident for the righteous shall live by faith. However, the law is not of faith. Rather, he who does them shall live by them.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. Now get this, in order, verse 14, that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. I was reflecting on this this week.

I was thinking, man, Abram was presented with that call of God to go forth from Ur. And all he would have been able to see in that moment would have been the family relationships, the logistics, the wealth. Here we are 4,000 years later in a congregation experiencing the blessing of Abraham.

He would have had no concept. I don't think he would have had any concept of all that God was going to do, even the details of Jesus of Nazareth crucified at the hands of the Romans. But when he heard in you all the nations, all the families of the earth are going to be blessed, he said, all right, I trust you.

And he believed God. Isn't that an encouragement? Makes you instantly feel humbled at all the times you ask God for more than what he's revealed, does it not? I invite you to pray with me. God in heaven, thank you so much for the father Abraham who trusted you and followed you, Lord, and ultimately became the father of our faith.

Thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ, his promised seed in whom all the nations of the earth find blessing. Lord, we thank you that we get to share in what you gave to him. Lord, knowing that the ultimate fulfillment of that promise was in things that Abraham did not see in his own lifetime, but things that he would receive later.

And so in many ways, we are in the same place today, recognizing that we have a foretaste of what you've promised, and yet we're still waiting to receive an inheritance that is laid up for us. We love you so much. We praise you.

Amen.

All right, well it is good to be with you. I invite you to take your Bibles this morning and turn to Genesis chapter 11. Genesis 11, and we are going to see a testament to God's grace on display in our passage this morning.

We're used to that week by week. It's been such a thrill to be in Genesis and see in particular the character of God and His intervention, frankly, in the darkness of humanity. There's a theme over and over that we keep seeing.

It's our desperate need and our moral corruption and our hopeless state and then God's righteousness and also His grace and His mercy. As we get into Genesis 11 this morning, I want you to think of the Arabian Peninsula, okay, the Persian Gulf region. It is a long time ago.

It's about 4,000 years ago. It's a somewhat desolate place and when you think of that region, what I want you to imagine is a very dark spiritual place, a region that is post-Babel but humanity really hasn't learned its lesson yet. And so there's been a theme that we've seen over and over is post-Garden what happens.

Man turns inward and he worships himself and the wickedness of man multiplies on the earth and so God judges the earth with a cataclysmic flood. You think, okay, great, we get to start over now. We have a righteous family.

Noah was righteous and blameless and what happens? Noah's blowing it not long after he gets off the boat and one of his sons is a complete rebel at heart. Ham and his line and Canaan. Then man continues and in the shadow of the flood judgment and God's mercy that you think would be a kind of a timeless lesson, man decides to reject God and create a one-world order and create a name for himself and seeks to build the Tower of Babel so that he can prevent being dispersed on the face of the earth and he can make a great name for himself and he can control his own destiny.

And so God confuses the languages and he disperses mankind and mankind disperses and yet again that does not solve the corruption problem. It just just spreads it out. It just puts it in new places.

It's like the cat in a hat when the stain just keeps multiplying further and further and further. Man's solution to his sin problem does nothing to remedy the situation. So we find this family dispersed now throughout this region and it is here that God is going to come and bring his grace to bear to a man that we know as Abram entitled this morning's message from the roots of idolatry from the roots of idolatry.

According to Galatians chapter 3 all of those who are expressing faith in Christ are sons of Abraham. Okay so if you are in Christ you are a spiritual child a spiritual son certainly could be a daughter but the idea there is the family resemblance the family likeness of Abraham. In other words in the way God saved him it's how God saved you.

Your faith looks like Abram's faith. I apologize in advance I'm going to say Abram and Abraham. I'm going to call Abram Abraham when it's the wrong name.

Just happens name change partway through life. It's very challenging to keep up with. Bear with me you can be patient.

But this morning we're going to be introduced to our spiritual father and arguably one of the greatest figures in the book of Genesis. If you're to think about it just in this way we're 11 chapters in and we've covered 2,000 years of history more or less in 11 chapters. Now we're going to get to Abraham and park it.

I think 14 chapters on the life of Abraham. He's that significant as understanding our salvation and how God has brought it about in our lives. If you're to look at the key verse for this morning it comes to us in chapter 11 verse 31 where we read, And Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran his grandson and Sarai his daughter-in-law his son Abram's wife and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans in order to go to the land of Canaan and they came as far as Haran and settled there.

This is God calling a pagan an idolater to himself and it is a remarkable account. So as usual let's read the passage we're going to look at this morning chapter 11 beginning in verse 10 and we're going to see how Moses frames this up to help us understand Abram's background. Verse 10 begins, These are the generations of Shem.

Shem was 100 years old became the father of Arpachshad two years after the flood. Shem lived 500 years after he became the father of Arpachshad and he became the father of other sons and daughters and Arpachshad lived 35 years and became the father of Shelah and Arpachshad lived 403 years after he became the father of Shelah and he became the father of other sons and daughters and Shelah lived 30 years and became the father of Eber and Shelah lived 403 years after he became the father of Eber and he became the father of other sons and daughters. Eber lived 34 years and became the father of Peleg and Eber lived 430 years after he became the father of Peleg and he became the father of other sons and daughters and Peleg lived 30 years and became the father of Reu and Peleg lived 209 years after he became the father of Reu and became the father of other sons and daughters and Reu lived 32 years and became the father of Sereg and Reu lived 207 years after he became the father of Sereg and he became the father of other sons and daughters.

Sereg lived 30 years and became the father of Nahor and Sereg lived 200 years after he became the father of Nahor and he became the father of other and daughters Nahor then lived 29 years and became the father of Terah and Nahor lived 119 years after he became the father of Terah and he became the father of other sons and daughters and Terah lived 70 years and became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran Now these are the generations of Terah. Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran and Haran became the father of Lot, and Haran died in the presence of Terah, his father in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans. Abram and Nahor took wives for themselves.

The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor's wife was Milcah. The daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah. Sarai was barren.

She had no child. And Terah took Abram, his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai, his daughter-in-law, his son, Abram's wife, and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans in order to go to the land of Canaan, and they came as far as Haran and settled there. The days of Terah were 205 years, and Terah died in Haran.

This morning Moses is going to give us three insights that reveal Abram's roots. It's very important sometimes to know where somebody hails from. I love that process of getting to know people.

You might have someone that you met, maybe even as part of a congregation here. You kind of get to know them a little bit. You hear a little bit about their story, and then you get a chance to sit down and talk at length, and you hear about their background.

You hear about their upbringing and their roots, and suddenly you feel like you understand the person in a whole new way. Because it's not only significant, their newness of life in Christ, but also where the Lord has brought them from, what He's brought them out of. So this is very important for us in understanding our own spiritual heritage to understand Abram.

And Moses is going to begin first by showing us this morning his bloodlines. We're going to look at really Abram's family of origin, if you will. Where is it that he originated in terms of the family tree? And Moses, once again, is into genealogies.

So that's this whole section from verse 10 through 26 is a genealogy. We're not going to get into it in great detail, but I want to give you really maybe the primary two takeaways here that I think we ought to draw out of it. And if you have questions, further questions on the technical side, just send me an email, and I'd be happy to dive deeper with you.

But this morning, we're not going to get overly technical. First, understand that part of the purpose of this genealogy is it helps us orient where the flood took place in human history. So if you're kind of tracking this through Genesis so far, Moses gave us a genealogy in chapter 5 from Adam to Noah.

And then it's as if he takes a little break and addresses the flood, addresses Babel, and now he picks things back up with the genealogy. And as we said, this genealogy is very interesting. It's unlike other genealogies in Scripture in that it's pegging dates.

How old the dad was when the child was born. We said the reason why that's significant is because it's constructed in such a way as to not only allow you to add up the numbers, but really to require it. That's not superfluous information.

Most genealogies, if you read the genealogies in Matthew chapter 1, if you read the genealogies in Luke, they just give the names. They're showing the family relations. So-and-so begat so-and-so who begat so-and-so.

We want you to know who's in the family. The only reason for all of these numbers is to help us understand when the flood took place. And so, as we recognize that the Bible demonstrates a young earth, it is from passages like this that you can construct with reasonable certainty the general idea of how many years all these generations came together.

That's the first purpose. The second purpose is to show how God's sovereign grace came to a particular family of promise. How God's sovereign grace came to a particular family of promise.

If you look at how Moses begins, he says, these are the generations of Shem, and Shem was 100 years old and became the father of Arpachshad two years after the flood. So, we learn from back in Genesis chapter 5, verse 32, that Noah had three sons. They were listed out.

Shem, followed by Ham, followed by Japheth. And Noah, according to Genesis 5, verse 32, was 500 years old when he began having children. Okay, got a little bit of a late start, we could say.

That's a long time to be on earth. I mean, that's a wise dad. You know, most fathers feel like they had kids and they didn't really know what they were doing yet.

Noah had been on the earth 500 years before he started having sons. You know, according to Genesis chapter 7, verse 6, that Noah was 600 years old when the floodwaters came. So, his boys were grown up at that point.

They were 100-year-olds when they were on the boat. Now, when you read that at first, you read in Genesis 5, verse 32, that he became the father of those three boys at age 500. It almost reads like he had triplets.

It's not the case. It's just recognizing that at 500, essentially, Noah became a father, and then it lists out the sons that he had. So, these sons would have come in separate births over the years.

And yet, what's interesting is that the birth order is messed up in that account. Genesis 5, verse 32 says that Noah became the father of Shem and Ham and Japheth. So, we would think firstborn, secondborn, thirdborn.

That's kind of the way we normally do things. For example, if you send out a Christmas card, what do you do? You list the firstborn kid first, and sometimes their age, and then the second kid, and the third kid. It's just normal that we go in chronology.

Well, if Moses was sending out the Christmas card here, he starts mixing up the order on us, because according to Genesis chapter 9, Ham is the son who sees Noah's nakedness. And the text says in Genesis 9, 24, when Noah awoke from his wine, he knew what his youngest son had done to him. So, isn't that interesting? Ham is listed almost like the middle child by Moses in the chronology, but then later, Moses clarifies, Ham is actually not number two, he's number three.

And when we go to put the rest of the dates together, we find that Japheth was the firstborn because Japheth was 100 when the flood started. Japheth was 100 when the flood started, and so this means that Shem would have been the second son, and he would have been 98 years old when the flood began. Why does that matter? Well, I don't know that the birth order is terribly significant, but it would be to understand this.

When Moses picks up his writing instrument in Genesis 11, verse 10, he's not talking about the firstborn son. He's highlighting Shem the second because there's a particular spiritual focus here, a particular emphasis. What is his purpose? It's not devoid of purpose.

Well, Shem is the line of blessing. Look in your Bibles at Genesis chapter 9, verse 26, when Noah knew what his youngest son had done to him, he curses Canaan, he saw the family traits of rebellion there, and then he said in verse 26, blessed be Yahweh the God of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant, and so God, Noah recognizes in this kind of prophetic blessing where the family traits are lining up, that Shem loves God, God loves Shem.

He incurs a blessing upon him, and it's quite possible in verse 27, that pronoun for him refers not to Japheth dwelling in the tents of Shem, but rather Yahweh himself dwelling in the tents of Shem. Since then, a divine blessing. And so here we see Shem's line and the significance of it.

What is significant about it? Well, the priority is assigned, because it is from Shem's line that eventually the Messiah will come. Eventually, from Shem's line, the Messiah will come. And so this begins to show the faithfulness of God is set apart upon Abram even before his birth.

I'd like to ask you, how much choice did you have regarding which family you were born into, right? For better or for worse? At some point, you kind of become cognizant, this is the family that I'm a part of. It wasn't as if I had a menu of options to choose from. I just found myself here.

So too, Abram is going to find himself in Shem's line, in the blessed line, the line of promise out of which God will redeem him. So skipping down to the end of this chronogeneology where we add together the dates and the names and we can piece together a set number of years, we're introduced to Abram's father whose name is Terah in verse 26. We read that Terah was 70 years and he became a father.

Similar thing that Moses does yet again here. So Abram is not the oldest brother, rather he's just the most significant brother. That's why he's listed first.

And we find that Terah, his father, was actually 130 years old when he had Abram born into the family. Genesis 11.26 says it was 70 years. You jump down to verse 32, we read that Terah lived for 205 years total.

We go back and see how old Abram was when he was called. Genesis 12.4 says that Abram was 75 years old when he departed from Haran. So what does that mean? Well, it means that Terah would have been 130 years old when Abram was born.

So again, Moses likes to switch the order. I would not encourage you to do that this next year on your Christmas card to take your most significant child and list them first on the Christmas card. But Moses here is highlighting and drawing attention to this particular individual because he will in fact become the most significant, the father of our faith.

And so if you're to just look then at kind of this macro genealogy, we have Moses connecting Adam to Noah and now Noah to Abram through the line of Shem. Okay, that's what we have. And so this is the family of origin.

And as I said, a picture of the earth is a dark place right now. There's wickedness multiplying on the earth. And yet God has a promise that he's going to keep to mankind and he's going to do it through this particular family, through this bloodline.

That's the first insight that reveals Abram's roots, God's providence, his plan, his promise to the family. Secondly, we're going to see Abram's background. We're going to see his background.

First, we saw his family of origin. Now we're really going to see his frame of reference. What did life look like for Abram? What was his upbringing? We don't have a lot of information, but we do have a few clues and we want to take a moment to highlight those.

Moses does this very thing. In verse 27, he says, now these are the generations of Terah. And we've been introduced to generations before.

Remember back in chapter 2 verse 4, we came to the generations of the heavens and the earth. Chapter 5 verse 1, the generations of Adam. Chapter 6 verse 9, the generations of Noah.

Chapter 10 verse 1, the sons of Noah. Chapter 11 verse 10, the generations of Shem. Now we come to the generations of Terah.

This is going to be regarding Abram's family, where Abram came from. And the next time that we read the generations won't be until chapter 25 when we meet Abram's sons. They'll then be Abraham, Isaac, and Ishmael.

And so Terah here is introduced to us. He becomes the father of three boys that are listed in non-chronological order. Abram, Nahor, and Haran.

Haran being the oldest, dies in the land of Ur, the Chaldeans, according to verse 28. And here it is, we begin to understand a little bit of Abram's background. Now when you think of the Chaldeans, probably what comes to mind is Daniel, and Babylon, and the Persian empires in that region.

You're not wrong in thinking that. This is kind of maybe the proto of some of those civilizations. We're kind of on the front end of those.

And Ur would have been a town in the region that later would have become Babylon. We found ruins of those areas. It's near the Euphrates River.

It was along an important trade route. So it was kind of at that time a flourishing region. It was also a place that had a ziggurat that was built to the moon god Sin.

And so moon worship was common in that region. And so that's the region. And we think, well, maybe Abram's family was a little bit different.

Well, according to verse 29, these two sons of Terah took wives for themselves. The name of Abram's wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor's wife was Milcah. Sarai, of course, Sarai is Abram's half-sister in Genesis 20 verse 12.

He'll mention, okay, I called her my sister. Technically, she's really my half-sister and my wife. And so he said that she was the daughter of Abram's father.

So one of Terah's daughters, but they had different moms. So Abram marries his half-sister, Sarai. And the name Sarai means princess, likely taken from Shiratu, which was the female consort of the moon god.

Nahor marries his niece, this is his older brother's daughter, Milcah. Her name meant queen, which comes from Malkatu, which is the title for Ishtar, the moon god's daughter. And so you start to understand the names that the family's choosing for their children relate to false deities.

And you just imagine you're out in public this week, meet someone, they have some daughters, and you say, well, tell me about your daughters. What are their names? They say, well, we named this one Dabacheri. We named this one Maleficent.

We named this one Humanista. I mean, you start to get a little bit of a sense here that the family is portraying certain family values. And so you're right here in the text is we're understanding Abram's background.

He lives among an idolatrous people who worship the moon. And within that very own family, you have idolaters who are worshiping the moon god. One commentator says, given this picture, we must not approach the story of Abraham thinking that here is a commendable exception to the corruption of the human race, as seen at the Tower of Babel.

The evidence does not suggest that Abraham was looking to the god of Noah and Shem, trusting in his promise and looking to his word and hope. Instead, we should picture Terah's sons as standing on the ziggurat of Ur, gazing into the stars and bowing to the moon. Okay, well, that sounds to me just a little conjecture-y.

Joshua chapter 24, verse 2. Joshua says to all the people this. Listen as I read it. This says, Yahweh, the God of Israel, from ancient times your fathers lived beyond the river, namely Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, and they, plural pronouns, served other gods.

Abraham grew up as an idolater. He was steeped in idolatry. He worshipped the moon.

You met Abraham, the father of our faith, and he said, Abraham, tell me about your background. He'd say, well, as Richard Phillips puts it, I came from an inbred family of idolaters. That's what you should picture when you think of father Abraham.

He did not hail from a good family. And there was the knowledge of Yahweh already on the earth. He came from a godly line.

Good night, Shem is still on the earth. You understand that? A man who lived through the flood and survived to tell about it. And so the knowledge of God is still on the earth.

Recent memory of the flood. People who are living who lived through it. The Tower of Babel, the whole nine yards.

Abraham is a false worshipper. He was an idolater. Ephesians 2 that was just referenced this morning describes that kind of life.

Ephesians 2, 12. Remember that you were at that time without Christ alienated. Strangers having no hope and without God in the world.

That is Abram's upbringing. He is an idolater. And we know what idolatry brings.

Spiritual darkness, bondage, slavery to sin, destructive lifestyle, destructive habits. It's debased. Idolatry is commonly found in the scriptures side by side with sexual sin and bondage to it.

And so this is what Abram grows up in. This is the father of our faith. This is his background.

And sometimes in the church, we get discouraged by our background. We get discouraged by how much, how many miles we've gone in sin. Sometimes the hearts of God's people were filled with regrets of things that we've done that are shameful or undoable, lost opportunities.

The text says that Abram was 75 years old when the call of God came to him. 75 years in idolatry. 75 years of being unregenerate.

75 years of indulging the flesh apart from the spirit. And so Abram serves as a testimony for all of us of God's redemptive work and plan. And part of how God is glorifying himself in Abram is not by grabbing the squeaky clean kid, rather a 75-year-old pagan, 75-year-old rebel and calling him to himself.

There's in that God glorifies himself by saving people who are far off, who are lost in spiritual darkness. It testifies to the greatness of his salvation. And when he saves idolaters, he makes them new and praise God for that reality.

1 Corinthians 6, it's one of the most precious sections in Scripture when Paul tells the church that idolaters will never inherit the kingdom of God. And then he says, but such were some of you. And then what does he say? You were washed.

You were sanctified. You were justified. In the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ and the spirit of our God.

So Abram, who will be justified by faith, started out in a very dark spiritual place. And God glorified himself through this background. Do you not so appreciate that? That the father of our faith didn't start out with a good background, but a bad background.

Started out demonstrating the power of God to rescue sinners. The fact that who you are and where you've been and what you've done has no bearing, if you repent and believe, no bearing on your spiritual standing. Three insights reveal Abram's roots.

First, we see his bloodlines that he is in the line of promised blessing. Secondly, we saw his background and his frame of reference that he was an idolater. And third, we're going to see his break.

We're going to see him depart from that past. We're going to see his faith in action. And for some of you, because you grew up, maybe not hearing the gospel, maybe not knowing it, it's a clear break.

You saw that transformation. For others, perhaps you grew up in the church, you heard the gospel your whole life. And you say, I can't really remember a day that I didn't believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Well, either way, this is the spiritual transformation in the heart that's true of you. Whether you have a clear moment in time that you can see that, or whether just now you say, I know I love Jesus and I trust him. Either way, this is true of you.

The same kind of break with the old life that took place in the life of Abram. Now we read in verse 31 that Terah took Abram, his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, his grandson. So he takes Abram and Lot, and Sarai, his daughter-in-law, his son, Abram's wife.

Now at this point, Sarai is barren. Her and Abram had been married long enough to know that that situation is not going to change. And so without saying it, Moses is saying it, that this was a hard situation, okay? They've already suffered a bit.

Started out, got married, assumed like most married couples do, we'll just have kids. Weeks become months, the months become years, the years turn into decades. Abram's in his 70s, she's probably not too far behind.

I think about a decade, and they realize we're not having children. There's a suffering associated with that in this particular day and age. Not only the heartache of an unfulfilled longing and expectation, but even the cultural kind of societal thought that there might be something wrong with you, that you've done in your life, or the gods are somehow opposed to you.

There's an additional reproach, but they leave. And the way Moses writes it in verse 31, it almost sounds like Terah is the one who has the idea, Terah is the leader. He's, of course, the patriarch, the fatherhead.

Terah takes them and leaves. I think that Moses here is, he's honoring Terah. And I think Terah decided he would go along with it.

But the call came not to Terah, but to Abram. Look at chapter 12, verse 1. And Yahweh said to Abram, go forth from your land and from your kin and from your father's house to the land which I will show you. So Abram shows up one day.

I can't even imagine this. Here's this idolater who's been worshiping the moon. And the Lord comes to him.

And he speaks into that darkness. He says, Abram, I want you to get up and go. I want you to leave behind all that you've known.

When Abram hears it, he believes he just heard the voice of God. And he responds in faith. And he starts to talk to his family.

And it would be that some of them would go. Lot would go with him. Haran did not.

And so he takes his father. And we read this kind of interesting note. They leave the land from Ur of the Chaldeans.

They leave this pagan land to go to the land of Canaan. And according to the end of verse 31, they came as far as Haran and settled there. Later, we'll find out that from Stephen's testimony in Acts chapter 7, that Abram's father died in Haran.

Now, if you look at a map, I'm going to do this so poorly. Um, it's not a straight shot to get from Ur to Canaan through Haran. They made a little detour, a pit stop.

And the interesting thing about Haran is that it was, was a flourishing town at that time, a prosperous town. And so it seemed that Terah, in some sense, was interested in going along to the land of Canaan. But he didn't want to go all the way.

And so they stopped in Haran and the text says they settled there. They settled there. It's interesting, commentators are a bit divided here, but quite possibly this is kind of the half-hearted, non-committal, start to put your hand to the plow to trust Jesus, but pull back kind of person.

Terah leaves Ur, unlike his other son who stayed back, but he falls short of Canaan, gets distracted along the way. They stay in the land of Haran. Then, of course, when Terah dies, which is what we read in verse 32, he dies in Haran, he never makes it to Canaan.

Abram will continue to the land of promise. And because Abram is the father of our faith, I want you to see for a moment Abram's faith and his faith in action. And this is going to be a theme that we look at over and over and over from different vantage points.

Abram's faith and his faith in action. What took place in this conversion experience? Because it's Abram responding to the call of God that demonstrates his faith. And the New Testament is clear that Abram believed God, and God did what? He credited it to him as righteousness.

And so sometimes people come to this and they say, well, this is how it works. You simply choose at some point to turn your life around. You choose God.

You choose to make it a decisive moment in time. You choose now a new path and a new way. Sometimes people will say things even like this.

God is a gentleman and he never imposes his will on anyone. Rather, he lets you choose. And so that's a false understanding of how God operates.

And I would encourage you to examine the scriptures because the scriptures don't teach that with respect to salvation. In fact, if you want to know what happens when God leaves man with the ultimate choice, the Bible is clear that man always chooses against God. He always chooses idolatry.

I mean, it's not been demonstrated yet through Genesis so far. What happens when God removes his restraining grace and lets man choose? We have the fall in the garden. We have the rebellion before the flood.

We have the tower of Babel. And so the idea of a free will, so to speak, is not a biblical doctrine. I would encourage you to examine the scriptures.

You will not find the concept there. Nowhere is the idea of exercising free choice described in the Bible with how it is that man would come to God in salvation. And his track record is always choosing opposed to God.

The Bible says there is none who seeks God. Rather, there's something else in operation here. Yes, Abraham exercises faith.

Yes, he chooses God. Yes, he believes in one sense. But what took place first? First, Nehemiah 9, 7, in a corporate prayer there in Israel, the scripture says this, You are Yahweh God who chose Abram, who chose Abram and brought him out from Ur of the Chaldees.

You understand, Abraham expresses faith, but he expresses faith because of the electing love of God that effectually called him to himself. How is it that that works? Well, the Westminster Confession of Faith is clear. All those whom God hath predestined unto life and those only he is pleased in his appointed and accepted time effectually to call.

Effectually to call by his word and spirit out of that state of sin and death in which they are by nature to grace and salvation, enlightening their minds spiritually and savingly to understand the things of God, taking away their heart of stone and giving them a heart of flesh, renewing their wills by his almighty power, determining them to that which is good and effectually drawing them to Jesus Christ. Get this, yet so as they come, not against their will, listen to this, yet so as they come most freely being made willing by his grace. See, when Abram heard that call, Abram, go forth from your land and from your kin and from your father's house.

That's God's sovereign choice. You see, there's thousands of people on the globe at that point. And God chooses, I'm going to come to Abram.

That's the one I want. It's of his own free will, God's own free will. He comes to Abram and he speaks to Abram and he calls Abram.

And when he does, he calls him in such a way that Abram of his own will and volition and finds himself willing by God's grace to respond. New Testament is the same way in its description. Jesus said it this way in John 6, 44, no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him.

Doesn't push him, but does effectually draw him. Philippians, Paul would say it this way to that church, for it is God who is at work in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Philippians 2, 13.

The apostle Peter then would say that you are to be diligent in 2 Peter 1, 10 to make your calling and choosing sure. So why is Abraham in the faith? Abraham's in the faith because it pleased God to go find an idolater worshiping the moon on the shore of the Euphrates, content in his settled pleasure and sin, and to effectually call him to himself. Brothers and sisters, this is the father of our salvation.

It depicts your own salvation. If you're in Christ, Galatians 3, then Abraham is your father according to the faith. This is your story too.

And so Abraham, here's that call. And here's a message that frankly, no one really wants to hear. Verse 1 of chapter 12, go forth from your land and from your kin and from your father's house to the land of which I will show you.

Abraham, leave everything that you've known. Leave it behind. Leave your gods.

Leave your flourishing city. Leave the plans you've had, whatever you've established over 75 years. The plans that you and Sarai had set about.

All of your kin that you enjoy and follow me to a place that's sight unseen. And what does Abraham do? Well, God, I believe you, but I'm not really going to act yet. No, this is faith in action.

Abraham, excuse me, believes God and immediately springs into action. Hebrews 11, 10 says that Abraham was looking for the city which has foundations whose architect and builder is God. He believed God and looked to that which was unseen.

And so Abraham here leaves prosperity. He leaves comfort. He leaves all that he has known and held dear based upon simple trust in the promise of God.

And Abraham is an example to us of living faith. It's very similar to what Jesus would say in Luke chapter 9. When he said to the crowds, if anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it.

But whoever loses it for my sake, he is the one who will save it. See, when you look at Father Abraham, we're going to be exploring in the next weeks together. We start out here at his roots and we see some very important things.

We see that God saves very bad people by his sovereign grace. And they have a new beginning in him. And we see that that is his work to effectually call his chosen people to himself.

It means that if you're in Christ, you're one of God's elect. That's a tremendous comfort. This week, as I am repenting of sin in my heart, I'm comforted to know by God's grace, I'm one of his elect.

It's his power. It's his work. It's his sovereign will.

And at the same time, reminded by Abraham that a faith that is alive is a faith that works. It is a faith that springs into action. It is a faith that responds.

And so when you look at Abraham, you're to immediately be, if you're in Christ, encouraged and reminded. God's providential orchestration of events in your own life to bring you to himself. And just be comforted.

My salvation does not ultimately depend upon me, but upon his faithfulness. And then secondly, to just ask, is there anywhere that my faith is not springing into action here the way Abraham's was? And I just so appreciate that. He doesn't appear to delay or excuse or put off or avoid.

God says, go forth. And what would seem is he starts packing up that night. We got to go.

I'm going to follow God. I believe God. And it was credited to him as righteousness.

Well, it is going to be such a blessing to go through this because we're going to see Abraham's struggle. He's got a whole lot of human in him still. And so he's going to make mistakes along the way.

We're also going to see God's faithfulness in ways that are absolutely marvelous for understanding our own salvation and God's covenant promise to Abraham. Will you pray with me? It is so good to be reminded, Lord, of how you bring yourself glory. It fills our hearts with strength and confidence to be reminded of simply the way that you operate and to understand by way of analogy and be reminded of your sovereign grace that came to us.

Thank you so much for your faithfulness. Thank you that your salvation is not based upon the one who runs or the one who works or the one who wills, but that it depends upon you and your mercy. And Father, I pray that as we study this patriarch and this father of our faith, would you encourage and strengthen us in our faith, Lord, and wherever it is that you're calling us to trust you right now.

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Thank you so much, musicians. All right, well, I invite you this morning to take your Bibles and turn with me to Genesis chapter 11. That is good to say that, to turn in Genesis.

It's been a nice break in some ways over the past few weeks being in other parts of the Bible, but it is truly good to be back this morning with you in Genesis. And today we're in the familiar count of the Tower of Babel. If you grew up in the church, you grew up learning about this story.

It's kind of one of those epic Old Testament tales. But in these events, we're going to have some phenomenal lessons that we learn about the nature of the human heart, and in particular, the character of God. And what I want you to be prepared for as we work through this this morning is to recognize that the spiritual issues that plagued this generation are the same fundamental base idolatries, the same fundamental spiritual issues that plague the human race today.

In particular, the pride of life that manifests itself in self-exaltation and in the desire to control one's own destiny. Okay, so if you've ever had this struggle, if you've ever felt the struggle at any point in your life with self-exaltation or the desire to control the outcome of your life, then you are in good company with the rest of humanity. And really, there's only on this earth those who are walking in a state of unrepentance and bondage to those idols.

Those who've been set free from the tyranny of idolatry, they're new in Christ, and now they spend the rest of their life doing what? Battling the flesh by the power of the Spirit. So, that being said, let's read our passage this morning. Genesis chapter 11 beginning in verse 1. Now the whole earth had the same language and the same words.

What happened is they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. Then they said to one another, come let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone and they had tar for mortar.

And they said, come let us build for ourselves a city and a tower whose top will reach into heaven. Let us make for ourselves a name, lest we be scattered over the face of the whole earth. Then Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.

And Yahweh said, behold, they are one people and they all have the same language. And this is what they have begun to do. So now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them.

Come, let us go down and there confuse their language so that they will not understand one another's language. So Yahweh scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth and they stopped building the city. Therefore, its name was called Babel because there Yahweh confused the language of the whole earth and from there Yahweh scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

I titled this morning's message, One Nation Over God. One Nation Over God. It's really what is taking place here at Babel is humanity uniting themselves against God, above God.

If you're keeping an outline this morning, the title for the outline is this, God disperses mankind like it or not. God disperses mankind like it or not. And the first point in the passage this morning that we see in the opening verses is the rebellion.

Okay, the rebellion. This takes place in verses one through four. And what we find here is that innate human desire for self-preservation, the desire to secure the destiny that I believe I need and to prevent anything that would possibly threaten my future joy, the outcome as I would like it.

It's really selfish ambition at the heart. So we're going to see man scheming to protect and to preserve exactly what he wants and really to throw off then the yoke of being a creature who is constrained to being dependent and wants to throw off that yoke. He doesn't want to be dependent.

He doesn't want to be constrained by weakness. And in particular, as we see here, he doesn't want to submit himself to a creator. And so this rebellion, of course, is the classic exchange of the truth of God for a lie, where the true worship and submission that God is due is thrown off in the name of independence and autonomy and self-will.

And so Moses begins in verse one, and he says, now the whole earth had the same language in the same words. Now you might be reading that and you think, well, hold on, last week, actually it wasn't last week, a couple months ago, whenever we were in chapter 10, we saw the nations being dispersed by their tongues. Okay, Moses knows exactly what he's doing here.

This isn't anachronistic. He's taking these two accounts and putting them side by side. He's telling us in verse 10, here's where everybody went.

Now in chapter 12, here's why everyone dispersed. So he's explaining now in chapter 11, how it is that all the nations came into being. And so it all started with everyone of the same lip using the same words.

And this of course makes sense because we don't know the exact timing, but we know it was probably somewhere between 150 and maybe at most 350 years or so after the flood. So Noah gets off the ark with his three sons and their wives. They're all speaking the same language.

Even if it was 300 years later, it makes sense. There's one lip, one vocabulary. Everybody's speaking the same language.

Everyone understands each other. We don't know the exact time, but we do have a little clue that comes to us back in chapter 10. If you look back in chapter 10, we read in verse 21 of Shem, who of course was Noah's son, then has a bear that becomes his next son.

Excuse me, the sons of Shem, verse 22, were Elam and Asher and Arpachshod and Lud and Aram. And from Arpachshod, according to verse 24, he's the father of Shelah. Shelah, the father of a bear.

Verse 25, a bear, the father of Peleg. And it is in Peleg's days, according to verse 25, that the earth was divided. So at some point in Peleg's lifetime, Babel took place.

And whether Peleg was just a toddler at the time or whether he was an old man, we don't know exactly, but it kind of gives us the general boundary that this happened somewhere within five-ish generations post-flood. We cannot estimate with a high degree of certainty, but some estimates would say there could be 30,000 people on the earth at this time. So you've got to multiply the children and the birth dates and the birth rates and what it would have looked like to procreate.

So somewhere in the low tens of thousands are on the earth at this time and the earth had one language and the same words. It's interesting today there's an estimated 7,000 languages on the planet. And people who study languages would classify those language families into groups and depends on your exact criteria for the classification.

But depending on your classification, there's roughly 150 to 200 language families on earth. Just as a side note for the biblical account, evolutionists can't explain how it is that there's different language families. It doesn't make sense.

If man just kind of evolved along and slowly began to spread out from one language, really the only way that we can explain those diverse language families throughout the world is exactly what we will read about here today. So right now the whole earth, some kinds of tens of thousands of people are together. And we do find that there is at least one named leader among the people at this time.

If you go back to chapter 10, verse 9, you read about Cush who is the father of Nimrod. And this is coming down out of Ham's line, which as you remember, Ham's line is rebellious. Right? So the flood wiped out the great wickedness on the earth, but what was the problem? You still had corruption on the boat, didn't you? And so that family gets off the boat and they bring their corruption with them.

Now, Ham's corrupt line is on the earth. Cush gives birth to Nimrod and Nimrod, according to verse 8 and chapter 10, becomes a mighty one on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before Yahweh.

Therefore, it is said that like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before Yahweh. Verse 10, the beginning of his kingdom was Babel. Eric, the cod, and Kelna in the land of Shinar.

So Nimrod is a key figure here in the tower of Babel. This is a very powerful ruler. If you're to think kind of throughout human history, there's names that come to mind of despots and tyrants and powerful wicked rulers.

Nimrod needs to be on that list. So Nimrod is building there in the land of Shinar an empire. And the center of this empire will have a tower.

Verse 2 says, it happened as they journeyed east that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. So already a couple of times in Genesis, we've kind of seen this clue of heading east. Remember Adam and Eve sin and what happens? They go east of Eden.

Cain sins. He goes east. And this region is what would one day become Babylon.

So maybe some of you school-aged children, you're learning world geography, if you've ever heard of Mesopotamia or the Crescent Valley or the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, this is the area that we're talking about. So under Nimrod's leadership, people begin to settle down in a plain in an area that would one day become Babylon. Just by starters, we say, well, is that what's so bad about that? Can we not go start a city? Can we not go build things? I mean, God said to rule over the creation, to Adam, it's part of his vice regency, the delegated responsibility, demand to go forth and conquer and to produce and to rule.

Well, the problem is because God gave a particular instruction to Noah when he got off the boat. It's being violated right now. Turn back to chapter 9, verse 1. When Noah and his family got off the boat, God blessed Noah and his sons, according to verse 1, and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and huddle up in one place.

No, fill the earth. He gave Noah's family a task. You're responsible to go fill the earth.

Certainly being fruitful and multiplying, procreate, have kids. But then send those kids out. The earth was designed to be inhabited and brought in submission and harnessed and utilized.

And so this group journeys east, they find a plain and they decide, you know what? Rather than spread out, we have a better plan. According to verse 3, they said to one another, come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone and they had tar for mortar.

And they said, come, let us build for ourselves a city and a tower whose top will reach into heaven. And let us make for ourselves a name, lest we be scattered over the face of the whole earth. Begin to see the motivation here.

Verse 4, let us make it for ourselves a name, lest we be scattered over the face, over the whole earth. This building project had a very clear intent. It was designed to both exalt man and protect what he deemed most important.

And it's fascinating the amount of energy that was required to accomplish this. Verse 3, come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone and they had tar for mortar.

So typically in that region, bricks would be made by just taking the clay. I have some of this clay in my yard, unfortunately. You put it together while it's wet, you let it dry, and then what happens? You cannot get it off your boots, get it off your tires, sticks to everything, becomes very hard.

Well, that wasn't going to be enough for this building project. Rather, they decided to produce a kiln so that they could bake the bricks. They wanted extra strong bricks.

You want to be able to build a very significant structure. And when you read about the tar, just think kind of crude oil here. This would have been that viscous kind of sticky black liquid.

It's actually what's used in asphalt today. It's kind of a binder, if you will. So when they undertook this project, they didn't really do it the easy way of just making sun-baked bricks.

They said, we're going to create a very stout building material, and then we're going to cement it together here with asphalt. You begin to realize how much effort is being expended on the part of man when he's motivated by his lusts. You see, idolatry is a very powerful motivation in the human heart.

There was an ancient poet that said, man rashly daring, full of pride, most covets what is most denied. And then he went on to say, he counts nothing arduous and tries insanely to possess the skies. In other words, there's no mountain too high to climb if you have the proper motivation.

And part of the motivation to sin, frankly, is the desire for that which is forbidden. Part of the human inclination towards sin is, I want to do it because I've been told not to do it. Wait, I can't have it? Okay, well now I want it.

Let me just think about this. If God had said, I mean, it's in my little imagination here. If God had said to Nimrod and the rest, hey guys, here's what I want you to do.

I want you to make some bricks, but rather than the sun-baked kind, I want you to make a kiln so that you can fire the bricks. And by the way, I want you to get tar and put it together. I want you to build a very tall building.

What do you think the response would have been? Oh, oh my goodness, this is going to be such a pain. Why do I have to go through all these steps? Why can't we just use the cheap bricks? And is that not so true? I mean, any of you parents know this? This happens with my kids, right? They're running around like crazy people. And they say, hey, by the way, I have a way I want to take that energy.

I've got a chore over here. Oh, my legs are so tired, Dad. Oh, you don't even understand.

Man is a great deal of energy when he's motivated by self-interest. And the human will does not like to be imposed upon. Understand that the natural man resists the will of God.

And so God says, hey, go fill the earth. Man says, no, we have a different idea now. We want to plant our feet right here and do the opposite.

And so they wanted to build a city. And in the middle of the city, they wanted to build a tower that would have had the best of the best engineers. And we're not far after the fall here.

The mind has not had all the effects of sin yet to deteriorate. So you'd have had brilliant engineers working together to design this building. It was probably a ziggurat or similar.

We don't know for sure where you can add that stair step as it was built up. All of it under the leadership in the direction of Nimrod. So how did he motivate these people? Well, he motivated them by, I mean, certainly probably some of them by violence.

He was known as a mighty warrior. But it would have been the promise of their own glory and their own renown. The idea that we're going to build a legacy that future generations will look to.

And they will be impressed with our prowess and what we've accomplished. It will attest to our greatness, to our achievements. This is the way of rebellion.

It's interesting. The Lord would describe rebellion in Isaiah 65 too. And he said that when people are rebelling, they're following their own thoughts.

They're following their own thoughts. I mean, that's a truth to take to heart. That's a dangerous place to be to be following our own thoughts.

My thoughts need to be crushed and replaced. I need to be led by truth. I need to be led by new thoughts.

And so natural man led by his own thoughts rebels. That's what the flesh does. If you remember, God had said in Genesis 8 21, the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth.

From the earliest days, rebellion is in the human heart. And if you look at how self-focused this is, just read the verses. They're in chapter 11.

They said to one another, come let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly. Verse four, they said, come let us build for ourselves a city. And a tower's top will reach in heaven and let us make for ourselves a name, lest we be scattered over the face of the whole earth.

You understand how different this is than if they came together and said, hey guys, God has blessed us with an opportunity. We're going to build a city. We think it'd be prudent to have a building here.

We want to construct it for God's glory. We want to be a testament to his honor and his reputation. Let's dedicate it to prayer.

We can't do it in our own strength. We need his help. It's vain if we try to build it apart from him.

This is the pride of self-reliance. There's a haughtiness. And so professing to be wise, they became fools.

They exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the likeness of corruptible man. That's what's happening. Just think about this.

Pride, man, it is like a drug. I mean, really and truly the things that fuel our pride. I was thinking back and just reflecting.

I haven't accomplished a whole lot, so it's not like I could compare myself to some great achievement. But I was thinking back to my career early in those days in trying to grow a business and just the thrill of landing a big contract, getting a project over the finish line, of seeing that target and that goal reached. I mean, it is at times euphoric.

The things that that cause us to feel exalted. And it's not always when we achieve it, of course. Sometimes we're not achieving it, but we're watching someone else achieve it.

And in our hearts, it's a struggle. Why? Because we want glory. Vain glory.

And so here they are and they're building this building. When you read the text, it sounds almost like they're trying to get into heaven. And that's certainly, I remember learning it as a kid.

The philanthrographs always had the clouds and then the tower like going way up into the like where there's no more oxygen kind of thing. That's not what was happening, okay, for several reasons. Number one, I think that they would have understood it's impossible to build a building that would allow us access into another realm.

I just, I don't think that's a very tenable concept. Secondly, the grammar and the preposition doesn't necessarily mean they're reaching to heaven, but just reaching into the heavens. And so I think that that's just a better idea, is understanding they're going up into the sky.

And then the third reason, I don't think they were even conceiving of reaching heaven with a tower, is look at their starting point. The text says in verse two that it was a plane in the land of Shinar. If you're going to try to reach heaven, at least start on a mountain.

You have a several thousand foot head start here. Just doesn't make sense they're trying to get into heaven starting out on a plane. Rather the point was that this would be a sign of man's exaltation.

This was the pride of life. This was the pride of life. What is our heart? What is the proper disposition of a creature to be in light of our creator? Psalm 115.

Not unto us, O Lord. Not unto us, but unto your name be the glory. This is the heart of a believer.

As the apostle Paul would tell the church in 2 Corinthians 10.17, he who boasts is to boast in the Lord. See Nimrod is a fool right now. And all he can think about building projects going well.

We have the engineers on the brick making. We've got that dialed in. We've built the kiln.

We're getting the tar set up. The kingdom is in order. We're conquering the enemies.

We're coalescing. We've got the plan. And he's not aware that every morning when he wakes up and takes a breath, it's only by the sovereign grace of God.

He's forgetting that the only reason why he's a mighty hunter is because God has given him that ability and that strength and he could take it away in a moment. Desire for glory can affect any and every calling. Let me just cause us to stop and even ask, what is my motivation in life? And I gotta be honest with you.

I get concerned sometimes when I just reflect on what the apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians about our work being tested by fire. And what he says there is that all of our work gets tested by fire and anything that's not done on the foundation of Christ for his glory gets what? Gets incinerated. You reflect on that.

You understand that. I mean, what does that look like in real time? I'm just reflecting. There are names and faces on my heart this week.

What about a pastor that has a seemingly significant ministry for decades and then gets exposed that it was all for his own glory? It's meaningless. Or a mother who is pouring into her children because she was primarily concerned about what other people would think of her parenting and her reputation. I mean, we can take the lust for vain glory and a plight in any arena of life and what it does is it destroys the work itself.

And so here man wants to make a name for himself and he's at direct odds with God. So you to make a name for yourself is to be concerned about your own reputation. It's called vain glory to be concerned about what you think about yourself and what you think other people think about you.

That's all it is. And the reason why this is such a problem is because God is the one who makes a great name for himself. Remember when God delivered Israel out of Egypt? It was certainly for their benefit.

It was for their well-being. It was so that they might enjoy the freedom from having Egypt off their back. But there was another purpose as well.

Isaiah 63 says that it was to make a glorious name for himself. God was showcasing his own glory, his own renown. And so you and I are to be concerned about the name of Christ, the name of God being exalted.

Even the Apostle Paul, talking about his own salvation in Romans chapter one, said that we received grace. What? For the sake of his name. We received grace to make much of him.

So these people are committing great evil. What are they doing? Well, I think Jeremiah 2 summarizes it well. The first evil is that they're forsaking God, and the second is that they're pursuing self-exaltation.

And so we have to understand that the absence of trusting and worshiping God is not merely neglecting to trust and worship, but rather replacing that with trusting and worshiping something else. And so Nimrod is deeply religious. Deeply religious.

But he's trusting in himself, and he's worshiping himself. One theologian writes this, this is the perpetual infatuation of the world to neglect heaven and to seek immortality on earth, where everything is fading and transient. And so we don't know exactly what they were going to do with this building, with this tower.

I think it's reasonable to conclude that there was probably some kind of worship or promise of worship that was taking place. Man is inherently religious by nature. The Babylonians who had come after were dedicated to astrology, so there may have been a lookout on top of this tower by which they could look into the heavens and stargaze and imagine all their deities.

But in all of this, there was a lie that these people were believing. I just want you to reflect on this for a moment. The lie was that we know better than God what will bring us blessing and satisfaction.

See, when God told Noah, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, it wasn't a curse, it was a blessing. It was a good command, it was a good instruction. It was for the benefit of the earth and the benefit of the families.

God was wise in his instruction and then man hears it and thinks, hold on, we got to make a name for ourselves and we got to make sure to what? Not be scattered. I mean, that's the end of verse four, lest we be scattered over the face of the whole earth. They're afraid of obedience.

And I say, I get it. I mean, I'm an amazing individual. Okay, here's what's amazing about me.

Don't take that the wrong way. Here's what's amazing about me. I believe that obedience is best, but guess what? Sometimes I don't.

I know that God's commands are not to harm me, but sometimes I think maybe there's just a better way. And so these people are not yet free in the spirit. They don't understand that obedience brings blessing.

They're trusting in their own hearts. And I would just encourage you, if you're in Christ, to learn lessons by faith and not through failure. Learn lessons by faith and not through failure.

Do you understand? These people are about to learn a lesson. But rather than understanding that obedience brings blessing by the experience of faith, they're going to do it their own way and they're going to learn the lesson the hard way. So it brings us to our second point, the reckoning.

God disperses mankind, like it or not. First, we saw the rebellion and now we see the reckoning. Verse 5, then Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.

And so we come to our anthropomorphisms. All right, the big word that just means that we're attributing human-like characteristics to God's behavior and actions, it's not to be understood literally, but analogically, okay? This is to help us grasp something about God by way of analogy. So, do not picture the Father sitting on a throne in heaven, Jesus at His right hand, saying to the other, rock, paper, scissors, like who's going to be the one to go down this time? God doesn't leave heaven to come to earth.

He doesn't need to go down to earth in order to see what is taking place. Psalm 94.11 says that Yahweh knows the thoughts of men. Proverbs 5.21, the ways of man are before the eyes of Yahweh and He watches all His tracks.

Job 34.21, His eyes are upon the ways of man and He sees all His steps. There is no darkness, or shadow of death, where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves. So God has watched the whole thing go down.

He knew what was going to happen before it happened. He knew exactly what was in the heart. And so here you have Nimrod scheming with everyone else around him, thinking that they're so wise and so powerful.

And meanwhile, the Lord's watching the whole thing. The idea here that He saw is to say this, at this moment God determined, now it's time to intervene. He was seeing it the whole time, but now He's choosing to act.

So He was kind of letting this thing play out for a little bit, if you will. Let Him build the kiln. Let Him consolidate the power.

Let Him harness the crude oil. Let Him start the building construction project. Let Him get the buildings going in the different communities around that area.

We saw them listed out in chapter 10. There were multiple that Nimrod was over. Let Him consolidate the kingdom.

And then what's conjured up in our imagination is He stoops down to see the little city and the little tower which the sons of men had built. We just think about the perspective for a moment, right? When I'm in my driveway, and it's a time of year where the gutters have stuff in them, and I'm always trying to figure out like, how did stuff get in the second story gutters? Like, it just seems like we only be on the first floor, but it's in the second story. And I'm looking up at it, and what's happening? I'm getting like a feeling in my stomach just looking at it, before I even get on a ladder, right? It feels very high.

And then what happens? Well, you get in an airplane, you look out an airplane window, and suddenly a second story doesn't really seem that high anymore. And so you have humanity coming together, they're building this tower, they're thinking that it's this impressive structure that's going to attest to how brilliant their ingenuity is, and their prowess. And the Lord comes down, and it's like a little mud pile.

It's like a little sandcastle. And so the Lord decides that He is going to rise to action. The irony, of course, is they're building a building up into the heavens, and God comes down.

And here's what I want to just take away from this moment, this intervention, is to recognize this. Did these people want God to come and intervene at that moment when He came down? Absolutely not. And did He does anyway? And certainly He's going to judge, but I also want you to see this.

There is mercy in God coming to them. I would just say this, praise God for His intervention. If you remember, Adam and Eve did not want intervention after they sinned.

Cain did not want intervention after he sinned. Look, as humans, we don't want divine intervention when we're in our rebellion, but guess what? That doesn't stop God from intervening. And so God comes graciously into their darkness.

He doesn't let them have their own way. He doesn't let them have their own way. He's going to disperse them, like it or not, because that's His sovereign will.

And I was just kind of thinking about this. It's kind of a timeless takeaway. When I was growing up, I can hear my dad saying to me, Jacob, we can do this one of two ways.

You know where I'm going. We can do it the easy way, or we can do it the hard way. It's your choice.

And I remember thinking, that doesn't really feel like a choice, because like either way, it's kind of your way. It's just like, how much do I comply? But do you understand if God wants to see man spread out on earth, then man will spread out on earth. God is not deterred by human opposition.

He's not weakened by it. All that He wills comes to pass. And frankly, the path of maximum blessing in this life and the life to come is always obedience.

It's always God's design. And so even in the midst of what will be judgment here, God is still blessing humanity, even in the dispersion. And so Yahweh says to Himself, so this is kind of us overhearing the mind of God, if you will.

Verse 6, Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they've begun to do. So now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them.

Now again, I get I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but as a kid, I'm always thinking like, man, God had to get to the building project early to stop it, because if He didn't, they would have actually somehow reached heaven with this building. It's the wrong conclusion. That's not at all what is being stated here.

It's not that man would reach heaven with the building, and if God just kind of lets them go, they would be unstoppable. You need to understand this from a moral component. Allow me to read what one commentator wrote.

I can't improve upon this. If we think it sounds as though God were actually impressed by the puny tower of Babel, we are mistaken. God was not threatened by the baked mud that man piled into a mound.

Rather, the Lord notes the significance of the unity of the human race in pursuit of rebellion and false religion. When God said nothing that they purpose to do will be impossible for them, He was not admiring the greatness of their works, but rather noting the perversity of their unbelief. Far from admiring their advanced technology, God was lamenting their depraved spirituality.

But this was how the human race acted after the mercy of God had shown through Noah's Ark, and their hardness of heart would know no limit. God understood that the tower of Babel was only the beginning of what they would do, and His concern was not what man would achieve against God, but what man would do to himself in blind folly and unbelief. You see, this is a gracious intervention for God to come and say, I'm going to come and restrain the evil that's taking place right now.

This is the mercy of God to come and restrain evil. Listen, you and I sometimes get overwhelmed by the evil in the world and how dark the world is. Do you understand how much darker it could be, save the restraining grace of God? And so in this marvelous imagery, Moses takes this very expression that man had in verse 3 and 4 that they had boasted, come let us do this, come let us build a city, come let us make bricks.

We read in the divine counsel verse 7, come let us go down, and they're confused their language so that they will not understand one another's language. There's a mirrored reflection here, and the heart of this passage is verse 5 where Yahweh sees and begins to intervene, and now we start to see the undoing, the unraveling, the opposite happen in verses 6 through 9 of what man intended in the previous verses. So according to verse 8, or excuse me, so God now comes and he intervenes, and this in fact is the reckoning.

God will have his counsel and his will will prevail, and I'm postulating as we'll see this is ultimately even for man's benefit. It brings us to our third and final point. God disperses mankind like it or not.

First we saw the rebellion, then we saw the reckoning, and now we see the result. Verses 8 and 9, the result. So Yahweh scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth, and they stopped building the city.

Therefore its name was called Babel because there Yahweh confused the language of the whole earth, and from there Yahweh scattered them. This is a great reset. This is the great reset 2.0. The first reset was to wipe out humanity and reduce the population down to one family, and now God rather than destroying the whole earth except for one family says, I'm going to let them live, but now I'm going to disperse them.

So as Richard Phillips writes, thus what they would not do in obedience, i.e. scatter over the earth, he did for them in judgment. Thus what they would not do in obedience, he did for them in judgment. And this is rich.

The one thing that they didn't want to have happen was to be scattered over the earth, and next thing you know that's what happens. It's called Babel. It's just a transliteration.

It's Babel in Hebrew. It's where we get our word for babbling like a baby, gibberish. We can't really discern the sounds.

They're unintelligible to us. And so this is the very picture. God miraculously intervenes such that suddenly the tongue uttered different utterances, and the brains of other people were unable to comprehend what was being heard, and there was confusion instantly.

Confusion instantly. I mean, the Lord always has his way, and in a sense he always has the last laugh. There's a tremendous irony here.

It's a biblical principle. Proverbs 10.24, what the wicked dreads will come upon him. Man, please learn that lesson by faith and not by failure.

It's so often what idolatry promises, and not only doesn't provide, but it gives you the very opposite. And I have no idea how it all went down. There's no indication that God came to them and said, okay guys, listen, it's about to get really freaky.

I just want to give you a heads up. Here's where I want you to find each other in groups, and then we're kind of going to spread out. Pictures he just went down, and he confused their language.

I mean, and everybody came here from one family just a few generations ago. So suddenly, can you imagine? Friends, family members, you have zero ability to communicate, and you can't overcome the language barrier because God has closed off your mind to it. I don't know if you've traveled internationally.

I haven't done it much, but my favorite is always when there's an American talking to someone who doesn't speak English, and they think if I say it louder or slower, I can maybe get my point across. And what happens? Nothing, obviously. It's unintelligible.

Everyone's suddenly confused. They can only understand one language, and they're divided up into language families, and they are scattered across the earth. I'm going to spend a long time unpacking the emotional distress that this must have caused, but this would have been alienating.

It would have caused separation and pain, even grief. I mean, imagine your very best friend now speaks a different language, and whatever the last conversation you had was it. You're never going to see him again.

It would be like a death. And so the entire earth is dispersed, and for the Lord, this was not a challenge at all. One commendator writes, with astounding ease, God has wrought the confusion of his enemies and made them desist from their purpose.

Not only that, they must even obey his command, though they certainly never intended to do so. The irony, of course, is that Nimrod and his group imagined that they would build a tower that would attest to their own greatness and stand the test of time. And what does it stand as a monument? Human folly.

In one sense, he got what he wanted, but not in the way that he wanted it. Rather, forever, he has no honor, and he's a monument of the folly of human effort. God here, of course, is being merciful and restraining evil.

He did not destroy the earth again with a flood. He did not destroy the earth with fire. But at the same time, we come to the end of verse nine, and it doesn't end on a high note.

Therefore, its name was called Babel, because there Yahweh confused the language of the whole earth. And from there, Yahweh scattered them over the face of the whole earth. This doesn't end happily ever after.

It doesn't end with a bright, cheery note. In fact, there's not even anything hopeful in verse nine, and that's strategic. It's preparedness for what's about to come when God calls a man to make into a nation, namely, Abram, which he's going to bring about redemption and hope.

But right now, this is a reminder of the lasting consequences of sin. The languages play a very important role in the Bible and in life. This, of course, is the origin of how languages came about on earth.

On the one hand, it's a very dark and sad circumstance by which languages were produced. It wasn't people creatively thinking about how to invent new ways to communicate for the glory of God. It was, in a sense, a judgment.

And yet, in that, there was a purpose that couldn't be fully understood or appreciated in the moment. That, of course, is the ultimate redemptive work of God. Two passages I'm just going to reference.

I'm not going to read. The first is in Acts chapter two. Acts chapter two at Pentecost, the Spirit comes and what happens? The Spirit is poured out.

The message of good news is proclaimed among the nations. Right there, an epicenter of nations gathered together, and they all hear, was the undoing reversal of Babel. And then, ultimately, one day when we stand before the throne, there will be a great multitude which no one can count, according to Revelation 7. And there will be those there from every nation and all tribes and peoples, tongues, every language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes and palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, all in unison, saying, salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.

Will you pray with me? God, thank you for not leaving us in our sin. Thank you for intervening and invading even rebellious lives. Lord, any of us who've repented and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ can attest to you seeking us out when we were in our rebellion, and we praise you for that grace and mercy.

Father, I pray that the lessons that we're seeing here would be etched on our hearts. Lord, we confess, excuse me, as your people, that we are often, often tempted by sin and find unbelief in our hearts. Lord, we fear man.

We want to exalt ourselves. We want to control the future. We get anxious and concerned.

Father, I pray that this would be a testament in our hearts that helps strengthen our convictions to trust you and to humble ourselves before you. Lord, I thank you that you draw near to those who draw near to you, that you are near to those who are in humble and heart, that you look to those who tremble at your word. Lord God, may that be true us.

I pray that we would delight in you being glorified. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Well, thank you to the praise team. Normally, I have some input on what song we'll sing in the set, what Scripture we'll read. I'm so thankful this week I didn't have any input.

That was a wonderful way to set our hearts for today's message and an encouraging way for us to sing before the Lord. This morning, by way of introduction, I want to welcome you into 2026. It's a privilege to preach to you.

The privilege is yours as well. This will be the best sermon you've heard from this pulpit all year. It'll be the best sermon that I've preached all year, and together we'll get to enjoy this moment until next week when Jake is back, and I'll have the dubious distinction of being the second best.

Ushering in a new year brings in all sorts of reflection. It's a natural breaking point. We look back at what occurred in the last year, and you may be looking back at 2025 and maybe looking at your goals.

Maybe you wrote them down. Maybe you didn't. At least you considered them.

And maybe you accomplished all that you wanted to accomplish. You lost the weight you wanted to lose. You made a career move you wanted to make.

You made the fantasy football playoff for the second year in a row. You built a barn and filled it with 40,000 chickens. You remained completely defeated in an indoor soccer league, not winning a single game or really coming close to doing so.

Whatever it is you aim to do, as you look at the year in review, you would look back and see some success. You would enjoy the sensation of what you've accomplished through your labor. Yet for others, last year was marked with difficulty.

You look back and see what could be an utter failure. You didn't lose the weight, but you gained the weight. You didn't make a job move, but you struggled job issues.

You had relational problems. You had health problems. You had financial troubles.

Your car broke down. You look back at 2025, and if you're being honest, you wouldn't give it a five-star review. Maybe no one ushered in the new year more eagerly than you did.

It was a struggle. But the new year is a two-sided coin, isn't it? We look back at the year past, and then we look forward to the year in the future, and we set new goals. Some of you, it's refreshing last year's goals that you didn't fulfill.

I've had the same goals for multiple years. It's easy to remember them, but you at least think about it. And there's nothing wrong with reviewing what's happened or look forward to what we can accomplish.

Those things can be good. And yet, so often we lose sight of what is happening in our life and the circumstances of both the last year and the year to come. No matter where your heart is today, whether joyful from last year's experience or feeling beat down and dreading the year to come, I hope that Psalm 23 will be an encouragement to you.

Whether experiencing a time of plenty or time of want, so often our tendency can be to look inward to ourselves. To give ourselves a pat on the back for the things that we've accomplished or to turn within for some sort of inner strength that we could face the task at hand. We would withdraw from the outside world.

We would turn away from the Scriptures, from prayer, from fellowship, even from God Himself to find answers in another place. When things get going tough, we can trust ourselves. Whatever circumstance you find yourself in, I hope that today's passage will help realign our thinking from a biblical perspective as we start this year to set our compass to true north, as you will.

There are many passages we could look at, but I wanted to pick something that we could get through this morning, and I want you to turn with me to Psalm 23. If turning to the Psalms is causing some restlessness in your heart, it means you were here last week for the speed run through Psalm 119. You have a little PTSD.

I'm hoping this week I could help you. I didn't take on the longest chapter in the Bible. This is the 10th shortest.

It's going to be an easy work through for us today. It's just six verses. I can tell you I approached Psalm 23 in my study expecting that I had a good grasp of this Psalm, and you might feel the same way today.

It's a very familiar Psalm. You probably know, if not all of it, at least some of it. And from time to time, it's good that we pick up these diamonds and give them a good polish, that we can see their luster again.

I can tell you that the depth of my study revealed my lack of understanding of what Psalm 23 is teaching us. There are truths in here that are essential to our living rightly, and this passage is brilliant in its theology and application of wisdom. As Spurgeon referred to this as the pearl of the Psalms, I also have come to appreciate it more dearly from my study.

I pray that today you would leave here with the richness of its understanding, with the benefit of its truth. Let's begin by reading Psalm 23 together. It's titled, Yahweh is my shepherd, a Psalm of David.

Yahweh is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters.

He restores my soul. He guides me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil for you are with me.

Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. Prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You have anointed my head with oil.

My cup overflows. Surely goodness and loving kindness will pursue me all the days of my life. I will dwell in the house of Yahweh forever.

The psalm starts introducing David as the author. It's not really debated, although I did google if it's debated. There are some people that debate it, but I would propose to you, being as it's written here, we're going to accept this is written by David.

Many of you are aware of David's life. We studied 1 Samuel a few years ago. We went through that study and that was a fruitful study.

We saw much of the life of David, but to refresh our memories, I just want to remind you of some of David's life. If you remember, as a young man, he was a shepherd and he tended to his father's sheep. David defeated Goliath and won many battles for Israel.

In his success, Saul would pursue his life, wanting to take it from him. David had a remarkable testimony of waiting on God's timing. He doesn't seek Saul's life, but he waits on the Lord's timing to make him king.

He would suffer hardship for many of those years, even after becoming king. When he had it all, David has a life of difficulty. Some of it's of his own doing.

He commits adultery. He murders an innocent man. He loses a child.

He sees a child rebel against him. He sees the opportunity to build the temple of the Lord, move on, and be passed on to his son Solomon. But David's life wasn't one of ease and comfort.

He experienced great difficulty, often with his life endangered for most of his days. And when you read the Psalms of David, they're rife with emotion and with just the sentiment of a man who's leaning towards God and relying on the Lord. He desired to know God intimately, so much so that he's named a man after God's own heart.

The timing of the writing of Psalm 23 is one of debate. I can't tell you whether he wrote that early in his life, and it became an anthem which he would hold to, to secure him in his faith throughout difficulty. But I do believe David likely wrote this later in life.

It's to the praise of a God that as he looks back on his life, he sees the Lord's gentle hand. He's seeing the faithfulness of the Lord through his highs and through his lows. And in all of that, he pens this pearl of wisdom for us.

It's an intimate psalm from a humble man to his God. It is an encouragement to us. This isn't with everyone that we read of.

It's a stark contrast to Nebuchadnezzar and Israel, who at times both failed to see the Lord's goodness and kindness to them. But let us look now at the reflection of David, and in our hearts, align ourselves with Psalm 23 as we enter the new year. I have three simple points today.

I'll try and remind you of what they are. The first point is the shepherd. The second point is the pasture.

And the third point is the care. The shepherd, the pasture, and the care. Let's start with the shepherd.

David introduces Yahweh. This is important to start here. It's God's covenantal name, and it's where he will begin and end.

If you're in the LSB, it'll say Yahweh. In other translations, it'll likely say Lord. It's a word that's used 7,000 times about in the Old Testament to refer to God.

And it refers to God's eternal and unchanging nature. David's recognizing right out of the gate the divine nature of God as the foundation for his psalm, and it's critical that we understand who the psalm hinges upon, and it's Yahweh. The psalm isn't actually focused on us.

It's not primarily focused on David. It's meant to teach us about Yahweh. From this psalm, we're to learn more about God.

If you remember in Exodus 3, the Lord introduced Himself to Moses in this way. When Moses asked what He shall say the Lord's name is, and God says, I am who I am, and tell them I am sent to you. He's the Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you.

This is my name forever, and this is my memorial name from generation to generation. We begin with Yahweh God the Creator, the Holy One of Israel, who has rescued Israel by great miracles, who brought them into the promised land, who defeated their enemies before them, and Yahweh is the focus of this psalm. Look at David's claim though.

Yahweh is my shepherd. His personal use of language. He doesn't say Yahweh is the shepherd of Israel.

Yahweh is my shepherd. Yahweh is our shepherd. Yahweh can be your shepherd.

This is a personal psalm. Yahweh is my shepherd. He holds to a personal intimate relationship with Yahweh as the one who would guide and lead him, and David was familiar with what shepherding entailed.

Remember as a young boy he was a shepherd of his father's flock. He knew that he must care for the sheep and lead them. He must take them to food.

If you remember, sheep is a humbling analogy for us. They need great care. They're not very ambitious animals.

I was even driving in today, and I noticed they're just kind of standing in the same spot all the time. I know they move, but I don't even know why. There's food where they're at.

I think one just wanders a little bit, and the other ones are like, well, we'll follow that one. He probably knows where he's going. No one knows where they're going.

They just meander about the field. This is the comparison for us. We need care.

We're unable to care for ourselves, and therefore a shepherd is necessary. I've learned though that it could be worse. God could have compared us to chickens, who I think might be the dumbest animal on the planet.

I can't confirm that. It's not biblical, but it's just one man's opinion after experiencing a lot of chickens recently. But the shepherd's job was to protect the sheep, and the shepherd's job was to ensure the sheep received appropriate care and provision to survive.

What's remarkable is David is saying this. I dare claim none of us in here were more capable than David was, or are more capable. He was an ambitious young man.

He was a king. He fought giants. He overthrew kingdoms for God.

He was a very valiant warrior. He was very intelligent, and he led Israel through many difficulties. We look at all that he accomplished.

The last person I would think needs to come under the care of a shepherd is David, and yet David is saying, I need God. I need Yahweh to shepherd me. David humbly claims Yahweh is his personal shepherd.

The question for you today is, God your shepherd, are you living in a circumstance where you've become self-sufficient? Are you haughty in your own success, or wallowing in self-pity? If so, the psalm begins by calling us to repent of our pride. To make David's confession that Yahweh is his personal shepherd your own confession. That Yahweh would be your personal shepherd.

If we think differently, we're destined to fail in whatever we set out to do. We must begin with this humble confession, and then live our lives in submission to it. David makes the confession that Yahweh is his shepherd, and now he's going to lead us into the benefits.

The next several verses in second part of verse 1 are going to talk about the pasture that the shepherd leads his sheep to. David's going to lead us through the benefits if you're unconvinced or struggling with God as your personal shepherd and caretaker. I pray this would be a benefit to us as we walk through it.

His next proclamation is, Yahweh is my shepherd, I shall not want. I think a better understanding is, I lack nothing. Under the tender care of the good shepherd, David lacked nothing in his life.

His personal confession of the shepherd is followed by a personal confession of the sufficiency of the provision the shepherd provides. Lord, because you are my shepherd, I lack nothing. There's nothing that you have left out for me.

There's nothing that's been unfulfilled in my life. You haven't been stingy. And I think sometimes we think God's being stingy with us.

We think we're missing some good thing. And David puts that thought to rest here. John Calvin says it this way, the heavenly shepherd had omitted nothing which might contribute to make him live happily under his care.

The heavenly shepherd had omitted nothing which might contribute to make him live happily under his care. David's confessing in all circumstances in his life, he was never lacking. There was never something that God had failed to provide him.

The shepherd had been faithful to fulfill his duties. My question for you is in whatever circumstances you are in now, have been in or will be in, do you see that the good shepherd is providing all that you need? He's caring for you in ways that you may not see or even imagine or sometimes confess. Do you yearn for more provision or different circumstances? And I know I do.

I know that I can look at my circumstances in life with a sense of pessimism, like really Lord, this is all you're providing right now. I can treat life like I've opened a model and as I'm building it, there's a missing piece that would have been critical to completing the model or the puzzle. And there's nothing more frustrating than building a puzzle only to find in the end it's missing a piece.

And I think sometimes we live our lives treating the Lord as if that's what he's done to us. Some critical detail would be missed. And yet this isn't the case.

So you remember in Matthew 6, he tells us that we are not to be concerned about tomorrow or what we'll wear, what we'll eat. He knows we need those things and he provides them to us, but that we're to seek him first. The good shepherd knows your needs and he graciously supplies all that you need.

The problem isn't the Lord's provision. The problem then becomes our expectations of him. I recently heard somebody say that joy is your current circumstances minus your expectations.

As I was thinking of this passage, I was thinking how often the Lord graciously provides to me and yet my expectations robs me of seeing him provide for me in grand ways. This may blind you to see how God is shepherding you and because you begin to follow your own desires and presume of God and then lose sight of what he's doing in your life. Paul had learned this lesson.

If you remember, he wrote to Timothy that he ought to be content with food and covering. And then he warns him in verse 9, why should he be content with those things? Because those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. We must root out these foolish and harmful desires in our life that we wouldn't fall into their snare.

Paul had learned this well in his own life. He wrote again to the Philippians that he'd learned the secret of being content in whatever circumstances to get along in humble means and to live in abundance and that he could do all things through the Lord who was strengthening him in those moments. Not only did David learn to trust in Lauren's provision, Paul did as well and I submit to you that you can too.

David's confession here is not out of our reach. We believe the Lord provides all your needs this very day, in the years past, in the year to come. Do you trust that he will provide for your needs tomorrow? David moves on from telling us how of his personal declaration that he has all that he needs to now proclaiming to us what that looks like.

So what does the Lord's provision look like in our life? He says, he makes me lie down in green pastures. And I want you to look at the beginning of the next four lines here. It's he makes, he leads, he restores, he guides.

The Lord is doing all of this for David. He's led at first to makes me lie down in green pastures. The idea here was that as the shepherd would move the sheep from place to place, he would need to take them someplace where they could feed.

And the idea of the green pasture here is that as the sheep would arrive there, they wouldn't have to hunt for food or they wouldn't have to bite closely to the ground because the grass was short and withered. But this is a lush pasture that is green that the sheep can go and lie and rest and find comfort in and feed as they see fit. They're not led to an area where they then must go find their own food.

They're not led to an area where there would be a limitation, but the provision is bountiful and provided for him. He's not finding this green pasture on his own, but the Lord is leading him here. This is the destination that the Lord has in mind as he leads his sheep.

Additionally, he leads me beside quiet waters. And if you remember, sheep aren't smart animals and they're not very capable, so therefore rushing water presents a problem. If they end up in the water, bye-bye sheep.

No more sheep. He's going downriver. His sheep friends can't rescue him.

They're a round, plump, unathletic animal. The idea of the quiet waters was that this would be a slowly flowing or still water that they could easily go and partake of it. That it would quench their thirst.

It's not brackish. It's not your broken well. It's not your filtered city water.

This is pure water that the sheep can easily come to without peril and take from its bountiful supply. He continues that these green pastures, these quiet waters have a result. He restores my soul.

This provision strengthens the sheep. The food and the water in the lush field is an area where the sheep is able to thrive. They're well-rested.

They're well-cared for. I think we're familiar with this. We call it hangery in our house.

And well into my 20s, maybe 30s, I don't know that it's happened since I've been in my 40s, but maybe, my mom would randomly bring me a sandwich. And for years I didn't know why. And one day I asked her, mom why do you just bring me a sandwich? And she would say, well you're just really unsettled.

And I know that if you just eat something, you'll be happier. Hence the phrase that we have fat and happy. I know that food in my belly restores my strength.

Something cool to drink restores my physical strength. Here he says it's restoring his soul. The provision would be a revival of strength for the sheep.

Maybe after a difficult journey. Maybe after moving from place to place. But the provision, the bountiful supply, results in a refreshing of strength.

This is where the shepherd is taking them. Now how do they get there? Well your scriptures say, he guides me in the paths of righteousness. And while a moral implication may be present here, I think the better understanding is that he leads me down right paths.

Why do I think that? Well the shepherd takes the sheep from place to place. His goal is to get them to green pastures with quiet waters that their soul may be restored. How does he do that? He knows the path to get there.

He knows the way. Sometimes I think we question how the Lord is taking us here, don't we? We kind of look at him like he's MapQuest. Or Google Maps that can lead you astray.

Or maybe you're not Google Maps, you're Apple Maps. Or I don't know what Android has, but it probably has some sort of map that's not as good as the other maps. David's confessing that not only is the Lord leading and providing for him to comfort and strengthen him, but that ultimately the Lord knows the right path to lead him to that destination.

He's not going to follow his own path to get there. He's not going to find his own path to find comfort and lush and fertile ground, but that the Lord is leading him to that destination by his own hand. Yahweh is leading him there to that place.

The circumstances in his life are divinely directed though, so that David will be led to a green pasture by still waters and be strengthened. Who takes him there? The Lord's own hand. You remember we sing of this, all things must work together good for me.

That's from Romans 8.28. We know that for all those who love God, all things work together for what good according to his purpose. Do you understand that in your life, the path that you are on, God has divinely chosen to provide for you and maybe provide for you in ways that you don't yet understand and maybe won't understand this side of glory. But the destination is sure.

You can be absolutely certain, as David was, that as God was working for his good and choosing his path, so he is doing the same for you. But why does God do these things? How can we be sure that this path, this destination is so sure? He ends verse 3 saying that he does this for his name's sake. If you remember, God is consumed with his glory.

His glory would not be profaned among the nations. In this case, the shepherd is leading the sheep down these paths. It must result in coming to a bountiful supply in the appropriate destination.

Why? Because the reputation of the shepherd was staked upon this. You weren't a good shepherd if that didn't happen. Think, if you had your own sheep and the shepherd kept taking them out to dirt fields by rushing water, you're going to find what? A new shepherd.

That's not a good shepherd. The shepherd here, David is confessing that his name is staked upon his ability to do what he says he can do. God won't fail in providing for you.

He won't fail in leading you to these pastures by these waters. He won't fail in refreshing your strength. He won't fail in taking you down the right path.

Why? Because God is your shepherd and he cannot fail in doing that. Otherwise, he wouldn't be Yahweh. He wouldn't be God.

He wouldn't be the Lord that the Scriptures declare to us. Or some of the ways he does this for us now. Well, he sends Christ to be our Savior.

He sends the Spirit to dwell within you. He gives you his word that you might better know him and understand his direction for your life. He gives us the church that we would have fellowship with one another.

He gives us prayer that we could bring our petitions before him. In so many ways, God is making provision for you in your life here and now. Beyond that, has Christ not ascended into heaven to prepare a place for us? This is the first three verses of this Psalm and David has graciously declared who his shepherd is and what this provision looks like.

And that would be enough. But I think the second half of this Psalm is where David gets real with us. The second half of the Psalm begins a transition and I want you to understand as we enter verse 4 that the same loving God, the same gracious God who he's referring to in verses 1 through 3 is the same God in verses 4, 5, and 6. A God who knows the needs of the sheep, who leads them to lush pastures and still waters, who always picks the correct path and stakes his very reputation on his ability to do so.

He's the same God who's going to be leading in verse 4. Look with me there. The shepherd leads us down right paths. David talks about that path, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

The word here I think better describes darkness than death, although it could refer to death. Often it just refers to the absence of light. I don't think the idea here is necessarily facing imminent death, but walking through a dark valley.

It's a place of peril and danger for the sheep. It's filled with predators. It's filled with dark places that would cause fear in the heart of the sheep.

In fact, the sheep would not choose to enter these valleys on their own, being such a timid animal. And maybe you've been walking through one of these valleys. Maybe you've been struggling difficulty in your life, and it's easy for us to lose focus in the struggle of who's leading us through this valley.

Yet David's able to make a remarkable claim in the second half of this verse that I fear no evil. And there's a transition here. There's a transition in verses 1-3.

He's talking about God in the third person. He, He, He. Look at verse 4. Why doesn't David fear? For you are with me.

He's gone from talking about God now to speaking directly with Him. Why doesn't David fear? David's reminded of who is guiding him. He knows this is the right path.

Even though it leads through darkness, it's been chosen by the Good Shepherd for him to walk through. He's not here by chance. He didn't take a wrong turn.

God's not taking a shortcut to save time or taking the sheep somewhere recklessly. Yahweh Himself led him here, and I want you to notice it's not the place for Him to lie down. It's the place for Him to pass through, to walk.

The darkness, the dark valley is transitory in nature. He's being shepherded by Yahweh as He walks down this path, but isn't going to stay there. I don't know how long this section or path will be in your life.

I don't know how many valleys the Lord has planned for your life. None of us do. What we need to know is that it's God Himself who is guiding us through that valley.

God Himself is shepherding you in those difficult moments. He's leading you through the darkness, and you need to know that He has your best interest in mind. He has the best outcome for you in mind.

In fact, He chose this path because it was the only way to get to the destination. It was the only way to take you to a lush pasture, to take you by quiet waters, and yes, to strengthen your soul. And in moments, we begin to feel alone.

And while David says he fears no evil because God is with him, look at the end of verse 4. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. David proclaims, I believe, that he ought not fear. Yet in the Lord's kindness, he knows our weakness.

And David acknowledges that he had difficulty in these times, and yet in those moments of darkness, he felt the guiding presence of the Lord. He found those little touches of the rod and the staff to be a comfort to him. It was the way that a shepherd could physically contact the sheep to guide them.

It was a reminder of God's presence. I know for some of you who may be the more frantic sheep, the rod and the staff can feel more like a correction. For those who walk more closely with the Lord, it may feel like a guiding comfort.

Some of you may feel like the UPS man being shepherded back to his truck by an angry dog. But that's not the imagery here of the shepherd. The imagery here is the guiding presence of the Lord through the valley.

And it's not mystical, but it's faith that these are ordained circumstances in your life, leading you somewhere for your benefit. This promise is renewed that the Lord is with us in Matthew 28. If you remember, the Lord promises he's with us even to the end of the age.

I think this passage can be understood that in your darkest hour, when all seems lost, when you see no way out, and there's no clear path ahead, that God himself will reach out in the darkness to help guide you and comfort you and strengthen you. God himself will lead you out of the valley that you see no exit sign. And these things are for a purpose.

Remember in 1 Peter, it tells us that even for a short time, these afflictions may be necessary. They're necessary to draw you into the shepherd. That in those moments of weakness, as Paul says, his weakness would be found in the strength of the Lord, that he would be strengthened, that he would be able to do all things.

The passage through this valley is intended to culminate in arriving at the green pasture. But do we struggle with these dark paths that the Lord has lead us down? Do we have difficulty in those moments? I think that we do. I think that we can lose sight of what the Lord is doing in our life.

John Calvin again writes it this way, and certainly the reason we are so terrified when it pleases God to exercise us with the cross is because every man that he may sleep soundly and undisturbed wraps himself up in carnal security. This is a good observation that Calvin makes here, and I'd submit that we need to consider this. If we're honest, we would choose the easy paths.

We wouldn't take the dark valleys. And my fear for us is that we would choose to break fellowship with the shepherd if it means going into the dark valley that we could hold on to some carnal security. We would actually leave the comfort and care of the shepherd to seek our own way.

David tells us he fixes his eyes on the staff of the shepherd, and that's the remedy for the fear that grips him. He would gladly enter this area. He could be in the comfort and care of the shepherd knowing where he's leading him.

The last point here is the care of the shepherd in verses 5 and 6. David transitions a little bit from his metaphor of the sheep and shepherd and moves on to the imagery of a banquet, but I want us to follow this because we've seen the provision of the lust pasture we're meant to lie in beside the still waters, and that's starkly contrasted to the valley of the shadow of death. But he wants you to know that the Lord is still providing in those difficult moments. Look at what he says, you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

You have anointed my head with oil. My cup overflows. What's David teaching us? He's confessing that even in difficult times, the Lord has continued to provide all that he needs, and he does so lavishly.

Look at the language here. Before the presence of my enemy, the Lord provides him a meal, and in that meal, he anoints his head with oil. This would be something you would do for a guest to provide them refreshment as they came in from the road, kind of helping them clean up.

That's coupled with both the refreshment of the meal and the oil, but also the cup. David's saying he has been provided for as an honored guest, and it's not based upon something he's done. He's saying this is the Lord's provision for him.

This is the best service ever. His cup never empties. His plate is never empty.

It just continues to be refreshed as he enjoys the provision. The question is, do you know how much the Lord loves you? How much he provides for you and cares for you, even in your difficulty? And I think we lose sight of that. I think we do.

David's reminder here is that the Lord continues to pour his grace upon him. And when we lose sight of this, I think that our hearts grow dim in seeing the Lord's shepherding care for us. Our hearts grow dim in the moments when they're meant to shine the brightest.

God loves to pour his grace out upon you. He pours it out here like a fire hose. He backs it up with a dump truck.

He leaves nothing unturned that in every moment of your life you would have more than an abundance. Do we recognize that? How so? Well, closing in verse 6, David says this, Surely goodness and loving kindness will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of Yahweh forever. That idea for pursue is one of someone hunting down their prey.

It normally has a negative connotation to it. But it's a rigorous pursuit. Except in the end of this pursuit, the Lord's aim is to lavish his goodness and loving kindness upon David.

David's not going to outrun the Lord's goodness or loving kindness, and neither can you. David's confessing this as a certainty. He says, Surely the Lord's goodness and loving kindness will pursue me all the days of my life.

No matter what may come in my life, no matter what holds what is held for me in the future, no matter what path the Lord has, as much as he's shepherding me down that path, his goodness and loving kindness are pursuing me like a vandal. He will not fall short. David closes this psalm by reiterating, I think where he started, and I will dwell in the house of Yahweh forever.

And there can be near and far references here. I think this is better understood that he will commune in the house of God. He will stay near God in his fellowship as God being his shepherd all the days of his life.

David will look no other place. Why? Because he's recognizing that he's lacked nothing in any moment of his life. Is this true of you? As I was reading this, I realized how easily my own heart can become unsettled.

That I can look from year to year and begin to kind of gauge God's performance and his provision in my life. And it's something I just needed to repent of. God is unchanging.

His provision and love and care for me is unchanging. As David says, it pursues me. His unchanging nature does not ebb and flow with your circumstances.

And yet so often that's how we can think. I just spilled my communion. That'll be interesting here in a few minutes.

Now it's like I'm bleeding on my notes. You can't see this, but because it's red grape juice and I've touched it. If anyone has a napkin or a hanky.

David's psalm is a reminder of the faithfulness of God to bring his promises to pass. As Ian referenced earlier in Revelation 21, it says that he'll wipe every tear away from their eyes. There'll no longer be death or mourning or crying or pain.

The first things have passed away. Peter says that for a little while we'll be distressed that we're to receive an incorruptible inheritance. An incorruptible inheritance.

These truths are a sweet reminder for us, are they not? My prayer for you today is I don't know all the circumstances of your life. And I don't know how difficult the journey has been. I don't know how beat down your soul may be today.

And I don't know how high you may be flying in your own work. What I want you to draw from Psalm 23 today is that I know the shepherd who's leading you. I know his faithfulness and his desire for goodness and loving kindness in your life.

That where he is leading you is to take you places that you absolutely need to go. Through valleys you absolutely need to be in. And as difficult as they are, God's promise is sure that on the other side of whatever you're experiencing are green pastures and quiet waters.

And if not in this life for you, certainly in the life to come. That is true for all of us. Would you pray with me? God in heaven, we thank you for this day.

Lord, we confess that too easily we become skittish. We begin to lose focus. We begin to doubt you and question your goodness in our lives.

We begin to look at our lives and wonder if we just could have more like Israel who you provided for in the wilderness. Lord, you kept them safe and fed and well nourished day by day. Each day renewing their provision and yet they grumbled.

Let us see the heart of David, Lord. Let us be thankful for your provision in our life. Let us seek to follow you as our shepherd, to claim you as our shepherd, and that wherever you would take us by whatever means you would do so and whatever provision you provide, Lord, we could look to you with thankfulness knowing.

Knowing with absolute certainty as David says that you're pursuing us with your loving kindness, that you are lavishing your grace upon us, and that you are faithful to keep us and protect us because your name, your reputation as our shepherd is based upon your ability to do so. We know that you do not fail. We know, Lord, that you have closed the mouths of lions.

You have quenched the sting of fire. You have conquered death and overcome our sin. By many mighty works and great miracles, you've done impossible things for us.

Let us praise your name as our shepherd and our God. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Well, Merry Christmas, and it is good to be with you here as we're heading into Christmas week. And this morning, I invite you to take your Bibles and turn with me to Matthew chapter 2, where we just were in our Scripture reading together. Christmas time is so filled with Scripture.

It's filled with familiar themes, familiar songs, things that we hear often, and words and expressions we hear. And so there's so many places where we could dive into meaningful themes about the coming of Christ and so much language that we have from Scripture. It was the prophet Isaiah that said in Isaiah chapter 9, for a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us, and the government will rest on his shoulders.

His name shall be called a wonderful counselor, mighty God, eternal father, prince of peace. Prince of peace. So here is a child that's foretold that will be born, and yet a son is given.

It testified to his eternal pre-existence as God. And interestingly enough, right there in Isaiah 9, we have language that he will, in fact, be a political ruler of some kind. The government will rest upon his shoulders, and he will be a prince of peace.

There's royalty here in his coming child. Nearly 300 years ago, Charles Wesley penned the words we just sang, come thou long-expected Jesus. Born as a ruler to do what? To set thy people free.

From our fears and sins release us, let us find our rest in thee. Truly he was Israel's hope and consolation, hope of all the earth. And then he would go on to say, dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart, born thy people to deliver, born a child, and yet a king.

So from day one on earth, Jesus was king. Understand that? That little infant child was king because the very son of God was ever and always the king. It was his identity.

It's who he was. And so from day one on earth, he was a king. His first coming introduced that kingdom.

His second coming will bring the full consummation of his kingdom program. And yet the basic question raised by the hymn writer is this, is the coming of the king your dear desire? Wesley says the dear desire of every nation, the precious desire. Is that really the joy of your longing heart? Said very simply this way, do you want Jesus to come back ASAP and establish his kingdom? So your truest expression of your attitude toward Jesus defines your relationship to him.

In Matthew chapter 2, we encounter the majesty of Jesus. We get to see King Jesus on display. And anytime we see King Jesus on display, what happens? We see how he's reacted to.

What kind of response is stirred in the human heart to the proclamation of Jesus the king? There are those who encounter Jesus the king and their hearts are filled with adoration. They adore the king. And then there's the polarizing reaction on the other end, which would be those who abhor the king, those who hate the king.

And then there's a third response, which is still not a good one, but it's kind of the non-committed middle, if you will. The lukewarm, the ambivalent. It's not that Jesus displeases them.

There's not really any hostility, but at the same time, he's not really compelling to them. It's kind of just another message, just another sermon. It's just another religious experience.

It's just another guy. This morning in Matthew chapter 2, we see King Jesus on display. I'm titled this morning's message, Oh, Worship the King.

Oh, Worship the King. And every one of the gospel writers had a particular focus that he was driving at in revealing the person of Christ. Matthew's agenda is to demonstrate that Jesus is in fact the promised king of the Jews.

He's David's son, who will reign forever. And so, in chapter 1, Matthew spends 17 verses tracing the lineage very carefully from Abraham to King David, and then from King David to Joseph, and Joseph to Jesus to demonstrate that Jesus is in fact David's true son, king from his birth. This morning, if you're keeping an outline, you're going to see three responses to the arrival of King Jesus.

Three responses to the arrival of King Jesus. And what I want you to think of as we walk through this narrative this morning is just to even understand, okay, if I was in first century Palestine 2,000 years ago, and I was encountering the revelation of the king, which camp am I in? What is my response to the arrival of King Jesus? Matthew begins in verse 1. Now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, Magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star in the east and have come to worship him. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.

And gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he was inquiring of them where the Christ was to be born. He said to him in Bethlehem of Judea, For this is what has been written by the prophet. You, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the leaders of Judah.

For out of you shall come forth a leader who will shepherd my people Israel. Then Herod secretly called the Magi, carefully determined from them the time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, Go and search carefully for the child.

And when you have found him, report to me so that I too may come and worship him. After hearing the king, they went their way and behold, the star, which they had seen in the east, was going on before them until it came and stood over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.

After coming into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell to the ground and worshiped him. Then opening their treasures, they presented him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, the Magi departed for their own country by another way.

And this is a very familiar story. Most of you have probably heard it. You've read it.

You've had it read to you many times. You've probably heard sermons on it. I'm just going to walk through it again this morning, and we're going to encounter King Jesus face to face, and we're going to see three responses to the news of his arrival.

The first response is that King Jesus is adored by the Magi. Response number one, King Jesus is adored by the Magi. Now, Matthew does not give us an exact year, but he says that this took place in the days of King Herod in verse one, the days of King Herod.

And so we're going to get a bit of a timestamp here. King Herod was ruling over the Jews, but he was not Jewish. A Roman ruler.

So maybe think of it kind of by way of analogy, if the U.S. were to conquer Mexico and then put a U.S. ruler over the nation, that's kind of how Herod is functioning. So he's over Israel, but he's not Jewish. And this was the first Herod called Herod the Great.

Okay, Herod the Great. I mean, can you imagine if I said, hey guys, from now on, why don't you just refer to me as Jacob the Great? I'm like, no, I'm not kidding. I'm serious.

Like, that's my new name. This was Herod the Great, and he received that title for good reason. He did a lot of things during his reign.

He consolidated power. He lowered taxes during famine, which is, of course, very popular when a ruler does that. He established and fortified key cities.

He brought relative peace in Palestine. He began reigning in about 37 B.C. It's probably six or so B.C. right now, so 30 years of political power, and Herod is about 70 years old right now. Okay, so imagine when you read about King Herod, picture a savvy politician.

Okay, probably white hair or no hair. He's at that season of life, and he's obsessed with power. Herod was obsessed with power.

Herod was an insecure leader, and if you were part of Herod's family, it was kind of a dangerous place to be. This was the Herod who had his brother-in-law murdered, had his wife murdered, his mother-in-law, and eventually his three sons. So this brings new meaning, of course, to the phrase a dysfunctional family.

Caesar Augustus, Herod's contemporary, the Roman emperor at that time, stated that he would rather be Herod's pig than Herod's son, so he'd be safer to be a pig than a family member. So this maniacal evil ruler, who's filled with suspicion and has a lust for power, is in the backdrop here when Matthew writes, it's this Herod who's in Jerusalem when behold, when look, pay attention, magi from the east arrive in Jerusalem, and so these magi are wise men. There's not three of them.

They're not kings, so this is no we three kings of orient are. They came most likely from Persia, possibly Babylon, or somewhere in the Arabian Peninsula, but a magi was a counselor. It's kind of even where we get our word for magic in English, so they were sorcerers of some kind.

They were powerful and wealthy, kind of high society, and these were the most educated people in those eastern cultures. One writer says because of their combined knowledge of science, agriculture, mathematics, history, and the occult, their religious and political influence continued to grow until they became the most prominent and powerful group of advisors in the Medo-Persian and subsequently the Babylonian empire. So these men show up, and interestingly enough, although they're not Jewish, they have some interest in Jewish religious practices.

This is really staggering to think about. They have some interest in what was for them a western religion. For us, it's eastern, but for them it was western.

They've heard something of the one true God of Israel. They've heard something of Yahweh, and what they've heard has intrigued them enough to make a journey. Most likely, if we're piecing together biblical history, they would have heard about Yahweh via Daniel.

If you remember, Daniel ended up in Babylon. It was there that he foretold of a one day coming super king who would reign forever, a Jewish king, a king of kings. And so these magi then would be classified, so to speak, as God-fearers.

That's the language in Acts. People who had some sense of a knowledge of Yahweh, the one true God of Israel, some assent to that, some belief in it, even though they're not Jewish and they're not practicing the Mosaic law. Can I just tell you up front that what we're going to see this morning is that the magi do better than the Jews living around Jesus, because although they have very little knowledge, what little they know they believe.

And this is a very appropriate message to people who have access to the truth, that the quantity of data alone does not produce spiritual benefit. I mean, you could grow up in the church, you could grow up going to Adventure Club, you could know all the verses, you could answer all the questions correctly when you're asked theological questions, you'd have phenomenal church attendance. The question is, do you believe it? Is there evidence that you believe it? Is your life clearly dominated and transformed by truth? Do you love the Savior? See, the magi are in a far better spot having very little revelation than the people surrounding Jesus who are filled with knowledge, because the magi believe what little truth they know.

Understand growing up and learning the scriptures from an early age only benefits you if you entrust yourself to it. And so these magi show up, they want to know verse two, where is he who has been born king of the Jews? They are searching for King Jesus. They've traveled far to encounter King Jesus.

When this entourage shows up in town to find out where the new king is born, it would have been these men traveling alone, but the servants and whoever else was with them, there would have been kind of a gaggle coming into town. The verbal idea is that they were going around asking people, where's the king? Do you know where the king is? Do you know where the king of the Jews has been born? I don't know what you picture about when you picture Jerusalem, but even though this is the capital city, geographically speaking, it's relatively small, okay? It's about one square mile. It's about one square mile, okay? Roughly the size of downtown Albany and the immediate surrounding area.

So if you were to kind of draw a box around Albany, start at Samaritan General Hospital and go to Ponoble, and they go from like the carousel to Better Beef, that's like Jerusalem right there, okay? So as they're asking around, this entourage from the east, it's not going unnoticed, okay? They're not really just slipping in. I would imagine for them it was somewhat surprising as they're asking around and no one else seems to really know or care about what's going on. They'd seen a star.

It traveled a long way. Where's the baby? They said that they saw his star in the east. Kind of sounds confusing because they were in the east, but it's just the construction in English.

The idea is that we were in the east and we saw the star. When you think about this just for a minute, a royal birth is to be met with some kind of excitement. Just think about what took place across the pond a few years ago.

On July 22, 2013, Kate Middleton and Prince William, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, welcomed a baby boy into the world. As one news outlet reported, cheers erupted at St. Mary's Hospital where the baby was born and at Buckingham Palace when the announcement was released. Throngs of people gathered outside of the palace to wait for the formal signed birth announcement that would be driven from the hospital to the palace.

Following tradition, the document was taken into the palace to be shown to the Queen before it was placed on an easel in the palace court. There's all kinds of interest around the world in the birth of this baby. And in fact, the interest took place even before the baby was born.

One commentator who follows the royal family said this, you have this gorgeous young couple. He's a prince and she's a commoner and they get married and this is their first baby. So it's like the completion of a fairy tale.

I think people find that really fascinating. There's a lot of fascination internationally in the British royal family because it's such an established institution. People find it quite quaint.

Reportedly, every moment leading up to the delivery had been closely scrutinized, including the royal bump, Kate's pregnancy fashion, and every baby store shopping trip. I don't know what I was doing in 2013, but I had no idea all this was taking place or of interest. Robert Lacey, a British historian and biographer, said the following, it's the fascination and joy everybody feels when a baby is born.

And then for British people, certainly the renewal of the monarchy. We know that this new baby is our sovereign who will be our figurehead by the end of this century, maybe even into the next century. Excitement, fascination, interest uniting around a figurehead.

And it's kind of ridiculous considering that the British king and the British monarch isn't really much more than a figurehead. It's not actually a ruling sovereign. And so these magi show up in town in Jerusalem, in the royal city, the place that royal babies are to be born, to ask and inquire about where the baby who's been born king of Jews is residing.

And they find there's not a whole lot of excitement. There's no throng of people that's been rejoicing. According to the text, this is what they're saying as they go around asking, we saw a star in the east and we have come to worship Him.

We have come to worship Him. We've come all this way so that we can fall down on our faces before the God king. You're seeing how astounding this is? I mean, I just immediately started thinking of of Pauline language that those who are far off have been called and are now brought near.

One commentator writes, these were true seekers after God because when he spoke to them in whatever way it was, even through a star or Daniel's writings, they heard and responded. Despite their paganism, quasi-science and superstition, they recognized God's voice when He spoke. And though having had limited spiritual light, they immediately recognized God's light when it shone on them.

There's in the Magi or Testament, it doesn't matter where you come from, doesn't matter what you've done. These are not likely candidates for salvation. And yet when they encountered the revelation of God, they believed it.

And here is true faith. So these men come. And this is what God is seeking.

Jesus say of Himself in His ministry in John chapter 4, that the Father is seeking worshipers. Worshipers who will worship Him in spirit and in truth. I just ask you this morning, are you like the Magi? Do you prize Jesus? Do you trust Him? Do you submit to Him? And we don't have to imagine what it means to worship Jesus.

The Bible is clear. It uses language like this, although you do not see Him, you love Him and you rejoice over Him with joy inexpressible. And you trust in Him and you glory in Him and you obey Him.

And you love His commandments and they're not burdensome to you. And you could even say, He's my life. That's what it means to love and adore and worship the Messiah King.

The Magi say, hey, we've come all this way because although we were far off, we've heard the revelation, we believe that He's the King and we've come to worship Him. It's the first response to the arrival of King Jesus. Second response is the opposite.

King Jesus is aboard by Herod. King Jesus is aboard by Herod. Verse 3, when Herod the King heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him.

Very troubled. The idea here is that he's having almost a panic attack, if you will. He's having a meltdown.

The Bible gives language to the human experience of trusting in an idol and then suddenly seeing that what you're trusting in is vain. Terror, panic, freak out because the object that you've been relying on has suddenly been ripped out of your grasp and you see that what you've been trusting in is a nothing. That's what idolatry is.

It's a vanity. It has the appearance of substance, but it's not there. And so here's a 70-year-old man and the news that people are looking for a newborn baby is distressing.

Does that seem to make sense? You're nearing retirement. In fact, in God's providence, this guy has three years left, okay? He doesn't even live to see the day that Jesus would be a kindergartner, yet he's distressed. It says that all Jerusalem, verse 3, was troubled with him.

Why is that? Well, kind of gotten to watch how Herod operates for a while. You're assuming that it's not going to end well, the fact that he's distressed right now. Kind of learned how to read the signals, if you will.

In fact, Herod's going to kill a bunch of babies as a result of this. It was not an irrational concern. So that one square mile city is in turmoil because the entourage shows up.

They're asking about the birth of the king of the Jews. Herod is starting to level up here in his intensity, and now all Jerusalem is distressed. So Herod doesn't know the answer of where the Messiah would be, but he knows how to phone a friend.

And we do this all the time. I did this a lot in my business career. My first thought was, I don't know, and rather than go learn it myself, it'd be faster to call someone who's already learned it.

Rather than go to the library and study the ancient scrolls, verse 4, Herod gathers together all the chief priests and the scribes of the people so that he can ask them. He was inquiring of them where the Christ was to be born. So these are the chief priests there in the temple.

They're kind of a quasi religious politician. The scribes would have been the experts in the scriptures. And here's what you need to understand.

These men knew the Bible very, very, very well. They knew the scriptures well in terms of the content. In fact, they know the prophecies concerning the Messiah.

They know the passages. They know where the Messiah will be born. I mean, they have all of the evidence right in front of them, the revelation.

They even say that they believe it. They're part of the religious experience. Yet we see in them the third response to the arrival of King Jesus, and this is that King Jesus is ignored by the religious.

King Jesus is going to be ignored by the religious. Point number one, King Jesus is adored by the Magi. Point number two, King Jesus is abhorred by Herod, which we're going to see more of in a minute.

And thirdly, King Jesus is ignored by the religious. So all these religious leaders know the texts. They know the passages.

They know what to expect. Verse five, they said to Him in Bethlehem of Judea, for this is what has been written by the prophet. And so it would seem almost off the top of their heads, they can answer the question.

Oh, you don't know where the Messiah is going to be born? Got it. We know the text. We know the Bible super well.

They know the verses. They know the answers. I mean, think about this, good grief, they even know the prophet Micah.

I mean, how well do you know Micah? It's a minor prophet. It's a little one. It often gets neglected in our study.

Right now, they know that God had promised to Micah that a rinky-dink village called Bethlehem would be the Messiah's birthplace. This is significant. There is royalty associated with Bethlehem, although it's an inconsequential village.

It's just a few miles outside of Jerusalem. Bethlehem is where King David grew up, tending sheep. His family settled there because his great-grandparents Boaz and Ruth had settled down in that location.

And so on the one hand, it's a royal city, but it's also obscure. It has some significance, and then it's also of no reputation. We understand this.

Hailing from a small town oftentimes is beneficial in a rise to power. Here's an interesting stat. Of the 18 U.S. presidents in the 20th century, only four of them came from big cities, and all the rest were small towns.

Like Jimmy Carter, for example, came from Plains, Georgia, that had a whopping population of 550 people. Yet even his town rose to international notoriety due to who was born there. And so on hand, Bethlehem is insignificant.

Think small village outside of what was a relatively small city, Jerusalem. On its own, it wasn't noteworthy or significant, and yet this is where the royal family hailed from. First David, and then centuries later, David's son, Jesus.

And this town was always associated then with shepherds and kings. The shepherd king. And this is the perspective you and I are to understand when we understand Jesus, the ruler.

It was 2 Samuel 5, verse 2, where the promise came to David, you will shepherd my people Israel, and you will be a ruler over them. Interesting. So this monarch will have absolute authority.

There's only one throne. He rules over his people, and yet he rules in such a way that he loves and cares and tends for and provides for them. And so on the one hand, there's this strong arm of military might and authority and splendor and glory as a king, and at the same time, tender watch care over his people.

And so the chief priests and the scribes know exactly where the Messiah was to be born, and there's zero indication in the text that that news brought them any joy, that there was any follow-up in their hearts. They're able to have this interaction and then just move on as if nothing happened. You've heard that experience spiritually.

You hear the very voice of God. You hear the word of God. You read something from the scriptures.

You encounter the gospel message, and then just kind of move on with life. It was insignificant. I'm in the conversation that night at home.

Chief priest gets home from work. His wife says, hey honey, how was your day? Well, it's kind of random. He heard God is together.

He's tripping again. He's all freaking out about Messiah coming. One asks us all these questions about the prophecies, and we're kind of reviewing it and the timing and the location.

And anyway, what's for dinner? There's no interest to follow up. And so on the one hand, they have all this association with the Messiah and knowledge about him, but it never goes beyond association. And in fact, this indifference eventually will become hatred.

I just say, if you're associated with Jesus, but you do not adore Jesus, you don't worship Jesus, do not feel comfortable being in that position. The Bible describes people who are associated with Jesus, but don't actually worship him. People who are associated but don't adore him.

He uses languages like this, branches that will be broken off. Wedding guests that are invited, but don't make it to the celebration. In fact, the scriptures teach there will be many people on the day of judgment who say to Jesus, Lord, Lord, Master, Master, King, King.

That's the language idea there. Sovereign, sovereign. King, King.

And he'll say what? Depart from me, why? Depart from me, you workers of iniquity, for I never knew you. And so being near Jesus in terms of proximity and being near his word in terms of proximity profits you nothing if it's not united by faith. Your relationship with God is not established on the basis of your church attendance or Christmas being your favorite season or some religious experience you've had or rituals that you undertake.

The question is, do you receive and believe Jesus as Lord and Christ? These chief priests and scribes had all the privilege in the world, all of the opportunity to exercise faith in Christ, and they're just indifferent. Well, Herod, Herod has an agenda, unsurprising. So according to verse seven, he secretly calls the magi.

I was in public relations for a little while, short stint, and that's all about curating and controlling your public image. So Herod here is distressed, but he doesn't want to look distressed. He's desperate, but he doesn't want to look desperate.

So he secretly calls the magi, and he has a little interrogation. He carefully determines from them the time the star appeared. So he gets the date from the magi.

He already has the location, so he pairs those together. Now he's sending them on their way in verse eight to Bethlehem, and he said, go and search carefully for the child, and when you have found him, report to me under the pretense, so that I too may come and worship him. Herod wants to save face, and so he talks a good game regarding worship.

I would imagine the magi probably saw through it. These are wise men. They have a measure of discernment and insight.

I don't think it would have appeared obvious that Herod was in fact just a sincere worshiper with all the hullabaloo and the reaction that he had. Herod, of course, should have been a worshiper, but he would not be. We learn later from Matthew that Herod slaughters all the babies in the village two years old and under.

And there's a lot more going on here, of course, than ignoring or offending a cute little baby. Herod right now is desiring to snuff out the Christ child, and we're only three years away from Herod's death. If Herod did not repent prior to the moment of his death, then he died in his sin.

He died in his guilt. He died unreconciled to God. He died still with the sin and the shame, and he died with a debt to pay.

And so right now, when Herod is aware of the Christ child, and he's still alive, and he still has breath, he has the opportunity to go and worship. He has the opportunity to repent, and upon death then comes judgment, and the opportunity to repent is gone. That's why Jesus would warn people.

He's such a gracious king in his parables. Make sure you don't get shut out of the kingdom. Make sure that you don't delay reconciling with the king until it's too late.

Or Psalm 2 would say, kiss the son lest he become angry. To be shut out of the kingdom is to be in eternal torment, a place of eternal weeping and gnashing of teeth. And so the irony for Herod is that Herod is a man who in one sense has gained the whole world, and yet is forfeiting his soul.

And Jesus says, what's the point of that? So Herod right now has prominence. He has power. He has influence.

He has wealth. He was successful in terms of his accomplishments, except for his life, which was kind of a disaster. Can I urge you, if you've not yet done business with the king, that you do not procrastinate? You don't delay saying, after I've had my fill of sin, or after I've lived a little bit longer, or once I'm ready, or after I finished indulging my flesh, I still have time.

Jesus would say to one, you fool, you don't understand that this very night your soul will be required of you. So the revelation of the king is to respond immediately in humble faith. The magi get a message from the king, verse 9, they hear him.

So they go on their way. Behold, the star which they had seen in the east was going on before them until it came and stood over the place where the child was. Bethlehem was about an hour and a half to walk over to.

There's some supernatural phenomenon of the star. It would seem that what had happened was the star appeared originally to kind of signify the king is born. They knew we need to head west to Jerusalem, the royal city.

And then the star was gone. So now they're in Jerusalem trying to figure out where to go next, how to locate the child. Herod actually helps them out by finding out from the chief priests the location, namely the village of Bethlehem.

And Herod tells them, you guys go to Bethlehem now, and now that star reappears over the house. We don't know exactly what it would have looked like, obviously an entire star couldn't descend on a house, it would incinerate it, but there was some supernatural light. The magi show up, excuse me, the magi see the star, verse 10, and they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.

You know what this sounds like? There was hooting and hollering, whatever would have been appropriate in that cultural context. Jumping and shouting for joy, fist bumps, high fives, hugs, tears, shouts of acclamation, dancing. See these magi hear the news and unlike Herod who freaks out about it, or the chief priests and the scribes who could not care less, these men are overjoyed.

That the king has come. They did know about this coming king through Daniel's prophecy, and they would have heard what this king was going to do, and what was going to take place under his royal kingdom. Daniel 9 24 says, 70 weeks have been determined for your people and for your holy city to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness.

You understand when these men came to Israel, they weren't thinking, we want to go become Jewish citizens and now sit under his monarchy in Palestine in the first century. There's this ruler, there's more going on than just a really good king. This king is going to finish transgression and make an end of sin, and make atonement for iniquity, and bring in everlasting righteousness.

My friends, this is what it looks like to see Jesus for who he is, and to embrace him. See, when you worship the king, you know what you find? You find pardon from sin. You find pardon from sin.

This king came to deliver his people from their sins. He brought the promise of freedom, and peace, and rest, and life, and joy. And this king conquers sin.

He came to deal with your sin problem for you, so he could be a part of his kingdom where all things will be made new, including you. And so they show up with some measure of expectation, exceedingly with great joy, the text says. Verse 11, after coming into the house, they saw the child with Mary's mother.

They fell to the ground, and they worshiped him. Can you imagine that moment? I mean, for Mary, you have some highly educated, wealthy, high society, wise men, international visitors showing up at the house, and they're prostrating themselves on the ground, face down in front of that gurgling little baby boy. And this Jesus here is no longer tucked away in a manger.

The silent night is long gone. He's still an infant, but he's no longer a newborn. And so here are these magi who were previously pagans, unlikely worshipers, worshipers of false gods.

Now they're on their faces before the Christ child, and they bring adoration to the king, opening their treasures, the text says. They presented him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. There's some that see in this the idea that gold represents royalty, and frankincense divinity, and myrrh represents death.

It's possible, but mainly these gifts are gifts that would be fitting of a king. Solomon received similar gifts of spices and precious stones in 1 Kings 10.10. And so gold was precious due to its value and beauty, and frankincense was harvested from trees. It was very valuable, a fragrant perfume, and myrrh, a spice from a tree in Arabia, often used in the embalming process.

So Jesus didn't become a king when he grew up. He was born a king, and these gifts are affirmation of his identity as such. And so all the chief priests and the scribes are ignoring what's taking place back in Jerusalem, and Herod is scheming how he's going to try to kill the Christ child.

The Magi are in the house worshiping. The text says, and having been warned in a dream, verse 12, not to return to Herod, the Magi departed for their own country by another way. Probably not a small detour for that.

I know about you, I always get disappointed when I see a sign that's going to require a detour, because it means the trip is going to take longer. Imagine how we're getting a detour, probably away from the main routes in Jerusalem that would have taken longer. Yet even here the Magi are obeying God.

They receive a word from the Lord in a dream. Their desire is to protect the Christ child. They understand that if they were to go back to Herod and get questioned about it, could jeopardize the Messiah.

But this is the beginning of the revelation of Jesus the King. What's fascinating about Jesus' ministry as King, is three decades from now we're going to find Jesus in a very similar location. He's going to grow up in a different place.

He grows up in Galilee and Nazareth, that region. Much of his ministry takes place up there. We find him back here in the city of David in 30 years.

And there he's going to be tried in part for statements concerning his kingdom and his relationship to his father's kingdom. It's there that he's going to be mocked and abused with what? A crown of thorns and a false robe, mocking him as King. And then he's going to be condemned as a criminal and hung on a cross.

And on the cross over his head will be written the words, this is Jesus, King of the Jews. See this ruler king is promised an everlasting kingdom, a kingdom that has no end. But the pathway to get there was through a cross where this King would lay down his life for his people.

Last week I read Revelation chapter 1 verse 5 and I want to read it again. From Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth, to him who loves us and released us from our sins by his blood. And he has made us to be a kingdom, priests to his God and father.

To him be the glory and the might forever and ever. Listen, I pray that as you hear the revelation of King Jesus, your heart is filled with adoration and praise. And you can rejoice the same way the Magi did, with joy exceedingly, to be in a right relationship with this King.

I invite you to pray with me. God, what a marvelous plan you orchestrated for salvation, to rescue sinners. Lord, my heart was filled with such joy to reflect on your salvation to the Magi, because they were people like us.

People who do not deserve to be saved and people who had ignorance in their hearts, who had a multitude of sins, and yet what they heard of the coming Christ child, what they saw in him, salvation. And so we thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for his ministry.

We thank you for his incarnation. We thank you for his substitutionary death on the cross. Lord, we thank you that we can look forward to your reign and rule one day, because we're promised that if we're in Christ, we get to share in his glory.

What a marvelous reality that is. We love you and praise you. Amen.

Well, I'm thankful to be here this morning. I hope you've had a wonderful Thanksgiving week with your family and friends. I hope it's been encouraging to you.

Last week, if you were here, you know I kind of abruptly stopped and it was actually good. If you can't tell this morning, I lost my voice, but I lost it right at the end of service. Literally when I went down, I couldn't speak anymore.

So the Lord cut me off, but I'm glad you're back and I'm here to finish. Pray that my voice holds out through this service. Please grab your Bibles and turn back to Philippians 2. That'll be our text this morning.

Again, we're gonna be in Philippians 2, covering verses one through eight. Follow along as I read. Therefore, if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, fulfill my joy.

That you think the same way by maintaining the same love, being united in spirit, thinking on one purpose, doing nothing from selfish ambition or vain glory, but with humility of mind, regarding one another as more important than yourselves. Not merely looking out for your own personal interest, but also for the interest of others. And have this way of thinking in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who although existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.

But he emptied himself by taking the form of a slave. By being made in the likeness of men, being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. If you were here last time, you remember that we were looking at the strength of the church.

The strength of the church, this is the part two, this is the concluding part, which I know a few of you were joking, am I gonna turn my two-part series into a three-part series? I'm not planning on it, but I might do that. What we have here in the strength of the church is two mandates from our Savior through the Apostle Paul, as he's speaking to this Philippian church, two mandates being part of a biblically sound church, a biblically healthy church. This is what you should look for in the distinction of any church you would ever want to be a part of.

It should be the distinctions of what you want to see here at our church. It's a distinction you want to be a part of because this is what our Savior calls you to. It's a call to unity in verses one through four, and it's a call to humility in verses five through eight.

These are the two mandates that we're going to be seeing and setting before us, and by way of reminder, let me just refresh us of where we've been at. Right at the start of chapter two, we are able to identify this therefore that's bringing us from something from before. It's these prerequisites.

It's what must take place in order for the rest of it to be true, right? This letter was written to a context. It's a context of a church of believers from the leadership down to the saints. It's basically saying everybody's included.

You're all getting this command here, no exceptions, and the focal point for everyone comes out of chapter one, verse 27. Only live yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Hey, this is the call that we place upon ourselves as believers in Christ, that you are to live in a manner worthy of which you've been called.

Your life is not your own. You don't get to go and do what you want to do. You are now part of something because God has called you, and Paul gave us these four statements coming out of verse one of chapter two, and he does it to kind of prime the pump for us, to kind of set the scene, to help us remember about what that calling looked like in Christ Jesus, and as we walk through those, we would say it like this.

Have you been lifted up in your spirit based on what Christ has done for you? Do you dwell on the overwhelming solace of being the recipient of God's merciful love? Do you realize that you've been made inseparably connected by the Holy Spirit with the other believers in the body of Christ? You're part of one body, and have you known and experienced that you're taken care of by God himself? Right, and these, we would expect the answer of yes, yes, yes, and yes. I expect all those to be true of us for those who call upon the name of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and Paul's expecting those to be true, so he's priming the pump, saying, okay, therefore, because of all this that has been done for you and to you, here's what I want you to do. Here's something that I'm placing upon your shoulders.

Not as obligation by force, Paul could command it by force, but he's basing it on the reality of what God has done for you. Because of that, here's what I want you to do. Fulfill my joy.

Now, Paul's not being selfish, saying, hey, just make me happy. He's just saying, I know what would actually take away from my joy, complete joy, fulfilled joy, but what would that be? Paul says he wants us to live in unity with one another. Live in unity with those around you in the body of Christ.

Live with the brothers and sisters who God has placed alongside you. You didn't get to choose them, you didn't get to pick them, but they are there, right there with you, alongside you. Live in unity with them.

And Paul, as we saw last time, gave us four indicators to make sure that we're actually pursuing this accordingly. It's not pursuing unity according to your own way, your own standards, your own mindset. And he gave us four of them.

He says that joy is fulfilled when we think the same way. Right, this means that the church here is to strive in everything that they do to agree with one another in doctrines, in morals, in the values of life, in the judgments of life, in the opinions of life. You're not an isolator, a rogue Christian.

This is directed at how one thinks about life, what you dwell upon, how you ponder it, that you think the same way as those around you. We also looked at, he says that joy is fulfilled when we maintain the same love, right? Maintain it, which means that we actually don't produce it, we just get a good opportunity not to mess it up, because we would mess it up. We would do that by pursuing something sinfully.

We're reminded of passages like 1 John 4, 19, we love because he first loved us. Right, we go out and we love others, we maintain that same love because we recognize what God has done for us in Christ Jesus. Next, joy is fulfilled by being united in spirit.

This is a desire to be one souled with those around you, to live in harmony with your brothers and sisters in Christ and other believers. It's not to be connected in this emotional, like evisceral way, but it's to say, I'm striving to make sure I do nothing that would disrupt the harmony of those around me. And we look through the eight deeds of the flesh that actually would be practicing living like the world, all of which would disrupt unity in the church.

There's eight of them that come out of that list, so over half of them would cause a problem with unity. There's enmities, there's hatred towards somebody, there's strife that's struggling with others. There's jealousy, fearing to lose what you have.

There's outbursts of anger that's fighting to control. There's selfish ambition, which is just pride on display. There's dissensions causing quarrels, there's factions, which is causing separations.

And then there's envying, that's ill will towards others who have something. All these things, if you are pursuing any of those, you're not being one soul with those around you, you're not living in harmony with those around you, you're not loving those around you. See, to be united in spirit means we long to put off the practices of the deeds of the flesh, and we long to put on the fruits of the spirit.

And then there was one more, joy is fulfilled when we think on one purpose, one singular purpose. The purpose here is to have that opinion with careful consideration. I'm not just running around doing what I want, however I want, in the manner I want.

But again, placing the mind at the forefront of unity, it's saying, I'm thinking carefully about what I'm dwelling upon, and I'm thinking carefully about how I'm even using that amongst the body of Christ. This is a call to deliberate and intentional striving to be in agreeance with your brothers and sisters in Christ. And what does this take of us? It takes time, patience, enduring with others, enduring with their opinions that are different than ours, practicing those things, but also being careful about what I dwell upon, what I'm thinking about.

And all this was motivated upon the common connection that we have in Jesus Christ, right? The same way, the same love, one way with one purpose, all united, right? This is what Paul is priming us for, this is what he's saying, this is the call, is that you're to be unified with those that God has placed around you, that you're striving to do these things together. And we saw those four indicators kind of as a warning light on a dashboard. If you're not living to them, it kind of goes off and you go, uh-oh, I might have a problem under the hood, I might have a disunity problem.

Now, this brings us up to speed where we left off last time, right? The call to unity is bound to our connection in Christ, the call to unity is indicated by our singular identity with others in the body of Christ, and then the call unity is demonstrated in our preferential treatment towards others in Christ. This is the means to unity, this is practically how we flesh it out. If the others were about the motivations and the desires that kind of keep us on the right path, this is actually doing the work, this is how it looks in your life, in my life.

And Paul gives five of them for us. Means number one in verse three, doing nothing from selfish ambition. Do nothing from selfish ambition.

And it's kind of self-explanatory, right? Do nothing from selfish ambition, you can't be unified in the body of Christ if all you think about is yourself. And yet, what do we have? We have Paul here writing it, so we do need to highlight it a little bit more. Doing nothing here is actually a strong prohibition.

It's a, do not even think about it. Kids, you know this sound, when you have your parents around and they just stop you and they say, what you just did, I don't want you to ever think about doing that again. They're not just giving you a suggestion, they're saying, knock it off, period.

Here's what we have from the Lord, don't even think about it. Don't even entertain the idea that you can go and be selfish and be unified in the body of Christ, it's an impossibility. See, selfishness is this ugly sin and we so often concede in other people pretty easily, and yet we so struggle to cede in ourselves.

We dismiss it, we justify. This is why it's good for us to trust those around us to shape us. And I would say this against popular belief, selfish ambition is not just for teachers.

Oftentimes we look at this and say, oh, selfish ambition, that's just for people striving to be up on stage, people be teachers, people aspiring to positions of leadership. It's not what Paul's saying, he's saying for the entire church, all of you do not be selfishly ambitious. This would be anybody who would try to gain an advantage over another by placing themselves over another.

See, believers are not to see themselves as in a higher authority over another and thus looking down upon them. This would include what you do, how you treat people, and how you think about people. This would be being careful on just how you even view and speak about that person based on your perspective.

Some of you might be thinking, well, I might just be sharing a thought, but a careful mind will consider that how you talk about people, how you think about people, how you even set yourself above people actually shapes other people's opinions of that person that you're speaking of. God doesn't want us to be selfishly ambitious. He doesn't want us to put ourselves in a position where we're putting ourselves over somebody else.

He doesn't want us to put ourselves in a position where we're speaking down of somebody else as if we are in a higher authority. MacArthur would say it like this. Selfish ambition is often clothed in pious rhetoric.

And it's accomplished by those who are convinced of their own superior abilities in promoting the cause of Christ. James would call this behavior selfish ambition. He would call it earthly, natural, and even demonic.

See that unity is threatened in the way that we think and treat others in the body of Christ. Unity is threatened when we seek our own way. I gotta have it my way.

My perceptions, my desires, my opinions, they rule, my comforts, they're master. We're just disrupting unity in the body of Christ. Well, Paul gives us another one in verse three.

He says, do nothing from selfish ambition or vain glory. This vain glory, it carries over that same emphatic idea of don't even think about it. If selfish ambition is the pursuit of exalting self, it's the pursuit of making yourself above somebody else, then vain glory is actually the prize for having obtained it.

It's what you get when you get there. It's this empty glory. It's literally what it means.

It means emptiness, empty glory. Now, there is true glory. There is a glory that is, we would call gravitas.

It's weighty. It's true glory that comes from the Father. It even comes later in this chapter, chapter two here, verse 11.

But that's not the glory that Paul is talking about here. This empty glory, this vain glory, what he's talking about is glory that is produced for men, by men, for the praises of men. It'd be like receiving an award and you walked up and you looked at this award and it says, loves himself the most, cares about himself the most.

It's a worthless trophy. You just would have inscribed that on there by your own hand. See, we live in a culture that loves self-exaltation.

It loves promoting self. It loves to put self on display. It says, go and seek your own desires, that's okay.

Yet, at the end of that worldliness, at the end of that road, that's just this empty glory. It's vain glory. See, Christ saved you not to go live your own way, to live what you want to do, but to go and live for his purposes, his causes.

He would tell us in Galatians 6.3, for if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. See, later in this letter, chapter three, verse 19, Paul's gonna talk about this vain glory. He's gonna say, those who reap it, those who actually benefit and gather, it is to their own shame.

God doesn't want us pursuing this empty glory, pursuing this fleeting thing of this world. Solomon would call it in Ecclesiastes, vanity of vanities. It's like the steam off the top of a coffee cup.

It's empty, it's worthless, it's vain. So at the get-go, the two means, he says, well, we're not to pursue selfish ambition, we're not to pursue vain glory, or those things that would harm unity. Well, then what should we pursue? What would produce unity? Well, that's our third means that he gives us.

He says, with humility of mind, regard one another as more important than yourself. With humility of mind, regarding one another as more important than yourself. See, humility, this is the staple of the Christian character.

This is actually the virtue and the heart of every Christian virtue. It's what's behind us, what you should be striving for. It's the only mechanism that actually would cause us to be unified with one another, is forsaking pride and living humbly.

Matthew 5.3, Jesus calls humility blessed, or those who pursue humility blessed, for they possess the kingdom of heaven. 1 Peter 5, 5 and 6 affirms that God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. So we have to say, well, what is this humility? What is it that God wants us to be producing? What is it that is unique about this that would help us even strive after it? Well, in his wonderful book, it's really more of a pamphlet.

It's a convicting book. It says, From Pride to Humility. Stuart Scott writes on this very subject.

He defines humility this way. When someone is humble, they are focused on God and others and not self. Even their focus on others is out of a desire to love and glorify God.

He continues with that quote. He says, Humility is seeing yourself as no better than others. A humble person understands the sinfulness of his own heart, and he would never see himself as better than anyone else, no matter who the person is.

I would just say this, the longer you're a Christian, the harder this is to do. The more that God actually causes you to grow and mature and be Christ-like, the harder it is to be humble. Not because you're not understanding what humility looks like, it's because you're recognizing just how sinful you are.

Lord, keep me from myself. When you're considering other people, you often speak critically and condemning of them, while at the same time saying of yourself, I'm just being cautious, I'm being concerned for them. This is not humility of mind.

This is what we said earlier, it's a self-righteous pride in hiding. See, what Paul is saying is when you go after tearing people down, you're destroying the body as of being humble and saying, you know what, I'm actually the cause of the problem here. Maybe I don't understand, maybe my perception's wrong, maybe I'm not seeing all the factors here.

When you talk ill of others, when you think ill of others, when you speak ill of others, when you only see them in a bad way, this destroys unity. William Barclay would say it this way, Christian love is that unconquered benevolence and goodwill which will never know bitterness and will never seek anything but the good of others. A man lives in disunity with his fellow man, he has thereby given proof that the spirit is not his.

Some pretty strong words from a theologian. When you're pursuing tearing down brothers and sisters in Christ, we're not living humbly. He's saying, I don't even know if the spirit of God is alive in you and at work in you.

See, to make others more important means that you seek their best, not your own. It means you filter your mind through passages of Scripture like 1 Corinthians 13, right? All the effects of love, I want to put those on, I want to put on every characteristic of love as I interact with people. And the fight of the flesh here in this very passage where it says, put on humility, it's a continual, ongoing fight.

It's not a one-time thing. Oh, I put on humility back then. Remember Christmas last year? I was so humble.

This is an ongoing, continuous battle. You don't get to look back and say, I used to do this or I've been striving for it before. It's a daily thing.

Each and every moment we strive to be humble. And it's not that you personally are not important, but to pursue others in biblical unity is to say that I want to consider you as more important. God's not calling you just to be a dad.

He's not calling you to be a martyr. He's saying, I want you to consider others as more important than yourself. It's highlighted in the commandment, right? When they were speaking to Jesus in Luke 22, it says that, what is the greatest commandment? He says, love the Lord God with all your heart, mind, and soul.

And the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. John 13, 35, Jesus says, the world will know that you are my disciples by your love for one another. When you consider others as more important than yourself, the world, the watching world, the unbelieving world will know that you're different than them.

Parents in the room, you're unbelieving children. They will know you are gods by your biblical love for one another. Your demonstration of humility, saying I don't need to have it my way.

I don't need to go about promoting my own path, my own ways, my own standards. It's got to be done this way. I always like to ask people, how do you empty a dishwasher? How do you load a dishwasher? Everybody's got their own way.

Here's where we say, you know what? It doesn't have to be my way. Frankly, it's better that it's not my way. You demonstrate humility by living biblically and loving one another in unity.

To live in unity means we prioritize and prefer people no matter how much they disrupt your life or day. Oh, that one's hard. You kids in the room, it's hard for parents when you disrupt our day.

You will know one day. But here's what humility looks like. You know what? It's okay.

God has allowed this to be for my good. Former pastor of mine, Brian Arnold out in Florida, he said it this way, love is a selfless and sacrificial commitment to seek the highest good of another regardless of their merits. What does that mean? It means you don't have to go and get your life better before I actually start loving you and pursuing your best and considering you as more important than me.

It means I can demonstrate it right now even when you're a completely messed up sinner still trying to figure it out. This is what Paul is calling us to do. And due to the fallenness of man, the world has no problem seeing or identifying self-seekers and self-promoters.

I mean, that's all they care about. But for us to live set apart, for us to be living for God, to be chosen by God, when they walk through those doors, when they go into your homes, when they interact with you, the world should see that these people are different. They live in a way that says they love others around them even when those people don't even warrant it.

What means number four, Paul gives us, verse four, he says, not merely looking out for your own personal interests. To look out is to be on guard for, to be watchful, to be deliberate, to be paying attention. We usually don't have to convince anyone to care for ourselves, right? You don't have to convince me to care for myself, I naturally do that.

But what's being expressed here is this constant vigilance, this daily repetition of saying, I want to make sure I'm caring for you over me. I'm not gonna look out for my own interests. It's to give an emphatic, careful, close attention to what I am doing to make sure I don't mess it up.

Not spending my time figuring out how all the ways you guys are doing things wrong, but say, Lord, what am I doing that's causing harm? Again, Paul's not calling people to fatalism, he's not calling us to be martyrs. He's just helping us understand it is easy to realize how quickly it is to disrupt unity in the body. All we did is go around and focus on what we want.

Instead, here's what he's saying, we're gonna protect unity by taking all those things, our personal interests, our opinions, our judgments, and we're just gonna hold them loosely. As anybody comes along and they say, you know what, that's actually not helpful, we quickly let go of them. You know what, I don't need them.

We strive to hold on to what the Scripture says, we fight for what the Scriptures say, we hold dogmatically to what the Word says, but our own personal opinions, let it go. It's okay, I don't have to have them, I don't need to look out for my own personal interests. I can give them up if necessary.

1 Corinthians 13, five plainly says it this way, love does not seek its own. Look, if you need me to give that up, not a problem. It's okay.

Well, Paul gives us one more means here, he gives us a final contrasting means, right? In verse four, he says, not merely looking out for your own personal interests, but also the interests of others. Right, if we're gonna be connected in ministry, and we are being part of this church, we're gonna strive to be intent on one purpose, which I hope we are, we must be on the lookout for that which blesses the body of Christ, and not just ourselves. I need to be intentional, thinking about what would bless you in the body of Christ.

What would care for you in the body of Christ? What would meet your needs in the body of Christ? James Montgomery Boyce said it this way, the unbeliever naturally puts himself first, others second, and God last. He thinks he merits the order. The Bible teaches that we should reverse the series.

God is to be first. Others must be second. We must come last.

See, to help the weak, we must be strong for them. We must recognize, you know what? It's gonna take me to be strong for you when I see that you're weak. To bear one another's burdens, we actually have to know them.

We actually have to say, will you let me take that from you? We actually need to place them upon our own shoulders and carry them. To not be a stumbling block means we need to set aside that which we have a right to in our freedom as Christian liberties. Say, it's okay, I can set that aside for you.

To love others means we need to be patient, enduring, believing the best in them, and hoping the best for them. See, when we get to the end of these means here, when we are not focused on bestowing the outpouring of love that God has outpoured on us, that he has granted us, when we don't look at life and what God has done for us, we are dangerously flirting with disunity in the body of Christ. And not just being caught up into it and being part of it, but being the driving force behind it, you cause the disunity by the way you were thinking about yourself and not others, by the promotion of what you wanted and not giving it up.

Now, what Paul has just called every believer to do is no small thing. And I don't want you to think I think it's a small thing. It's a mighty thing to do what he's calling us to do.

And in fact, he's about to anchor it to our Savior to help us understand just how we are able to pursue this. It's to keep us from turning inward or even on each other. Verse five, have this way of thinking in yourself, which was also in Christ Jesus.

The strength of a biblically healthy church, the strength of what cornerstone Bible church should be, should be found right here in this verse. It's the full call to humility. This is a command here.

I want you to place this thinking in your mind that was in Christ Jesus. This is not just casual. This is actually deliberate.

You must think the way he thinks. You must process it the way he processes. The reason we often struggle to be unified with us around us and to think of them as more important than ourselves is because we are not looking at life through the lens of Jesus Christ.

We're looking at it through our own lens. You remember those bracelets? What would Jesus do? People would walk around with them. I think they'd be a little bit more accurate.

What would Jesus think, right? Because it says have this way of thinking in yourselves. But I do get it. The way you think is the way you make your decisions.

But this is the command here, right here. Verse five, have this way of thinking in you. And the reason it's a command here is because it's not natural to ourselves.

God wants us to match our thinking to Christ Jesus, to really mimic it in every way. And God is not asking you to walk a road that is impossible. He's not asking you to do something that's so extreme that nobody else can walk it.

He understands your circumstances and the trials of your circumstances. And frankly, he's about to give us the example of the greater to the lesser. He's gonna say, I want you to look to Christ.

I want you to look to the Savior who walked the greater thing, the suffering, even to the point of death, death on a cross. I want you to look to him to help you understand your situation, the lesser, the one that's not as great as what Christ took on. I want you to do that so then you can live humbly in a manner worthy of the gospel.

So what is this kind of thinking that Paul wants us to put on by looking at Christ? First, Jesus did not use his position to get what he wanted. Verse six. Have this way of thinking yourself, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.

Now, what does it mean to exist in the form of God? This is where you get a little bit of the Greek behind you. And just to help us in our English, there are two words for form in the Greek. There's the word morphe, right? The word morphe, and then the word schema.

Now, William Barclay describes the difference between these two. Morphe is the essential form of something. It never alters, it never changes.

Schema is the outward form which changes from time to time, from circumstance to circumstance. A baby, a child, a boy, a youth, a man of middle age, an old man, all have the morphe of mankind. They're the same, they are always man, and yet they have the schema that changes over time as they grow old.

See, the morphe never alters, the schema continually alters. So what is being described about Christ is that he is the morphe of God. He is the unalterable thing of God.

He is the unchanging thing of God. He is the exact and essence of the divine always. I believe the NIV actually captures this translation the best.

It says, who being in very nature God. They don't diminish who Jesus Christ is in this passage. See, Jesus is always equal to God and exactly God, and his status is above all things and over all things and sustainer of all things, and it never diminishes, and it's never cast aside.

But it says here in this passage, who although existing in the form of God, the exactness of God, he did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped. He did not regard it, he did not count it, he did not consider it. He did not take it into factor as he was thinking about this.

Thinking about what? His equality with God. He did not say, hey, let me remind you of who I am over all things to use that over you. This term here, something to be grasped, it is like claiming a title or seizing property.

It's really like snatching at it. It's grasping at it pretty intently. And while Christ had every right to as the supreme one, he chose not to.

He chose not to, and he chose not to engage with something greater for something that had a greater purpose. He was not making much of his position here, but he was setting it aside. One systematic theologian, he explains it this way.

He is telling us and what he is and who he is and these things he did for us that we may appreciate the great things that he did for us. John Kitchen quoting another man says, the point is this, that Christ did not use his equality with God in order to snatch or gain power or dominion. He wasn't trying to climb up the social ladder.

He wasn't trying to climb up the religious ladder. He wasn't trying to be the most. He already is the most.

Lewis Choffer would say this way, Christ emptied himself of self-interest, not clutching his exalted state, however rightfully his own, as a prize too dear to release on behalf of others. So if Christ did not use his position to protect himself or put himself over others, then what did he do? Right, this is what God is calling us to do is not to use our position, not to use our status to put ourselves over others. But secondly, he would say this, Jesus set aside his position and willingly took on another's.

Verse seven, but he emptied himself by taking on the form of a slave, by being made in the likeness of men, being found in appearance as man. Emptying himself here, this is where Econeo, it's where we actually get this theology called kenosis theory, came out of the late 1800s by this German theologian, and he basically is saying this word means like a glass, if you put a bunch of water in it and you pour it out, the glass is now empty, he emptied himself. It's actually not true.

Jesus Christ is in the form of God, he's in the morphe of God, he never changes, he doesn't pour out his attributes, he doesn't diminish his attributes, he doesn't cause them to be less than what they are. And actually something else is going on here, he's not becoming less than what he is, he actually is doing something different, who although existing in the form of God, he emptied himself by taking on the form of slave. This is where mathematicians really don't like it, it's because it's subtraction by addition.

What's he doing? He's emptying himself, he's making himself nothing, he's making himself of no regard by what he's taking on. And he's taking on something very rich here, he's taking on the morphe of man, the completeness of man. That's why we say in our theology, Jesus is fully God and fully man, he's never less than either one of them.

Here we have in this amazing verse, God Almighty, the creator, the sustainer, the upholder of all things, he's stooping low and becoming a man who is made in his own image. It takes emptying of yourself to do such a thing. In a very picturesque way, Jesus did this in John 13 when he washed the disciples feet and he laid aside his position to be the servant.

Here in Philippians 2 is the most magnanimous way it's described. God himself took on this role, the king who is unalterably the king, he's always the king, but yet he took on the form of a slave, a servant, part of his own creation. Isaiah 53 verse two would say this way, for he grew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of the parched ground, he had no stately former majesty that we should look upon him, nor appearance that we should desire him.

Louis Chafer again says he being Jesus is the God man, mysterious indeed to finite minds, but nonetheless, actually according to the testimonies of the scriptures, if he is to serve as the mediator between God and man, it is to be expected that he will be complex beyond human comprehension. Here's what's on display here, the most glorious thing, God Almighty, who's ruler of all things, he's literally taking on the lowest that he can to serve another. And he's being found in the appearance of man in the beginning of verse eight.

This is not the word morphe, this is the word schema. Yes, he is God Almighty, he's in human form, exactly both of those, and yet here's what we have, the schema, that which looks different. This is how the disciples could be around him and not completely consumed.

This is how they can look upon the face of Jesus Christ and not be immediately put out of existence. He made his schema different. Here God is making himself like his creation so that he could be the ultimate servant and sacrifice himself for the sins of all those who would believe in him.

And it says that he did this willingly. He did this willingly, he did this voluntarily, he did this on his own accord, nobody's forcing him to do it. He emptied himself, he took on the form of a slave, he came in the likeness of man.

He was found in the appearance of man. MacArthur would say, he left the worship of saints and angels to be despised and rejected by men, submitting himself to misunderstandings, denials, unbelief, false accusations, and every sort of reviling and persecution. John Frame would say, this is an ethical point, not a metaphysical one.

Paul is not telling them to behave differently, he's not saying, set aside those things that make you uniquely you. He's saying, I want you to live in the way Jesus Christ lived. Grudem would say it this way, he's not asking them to give up their intelligence or strength or skill to become a diminished version of what they are.

Rather, he's asking them to put on the interests of others first. This is why Paul is bringing us here, not to say, did God set aside some attributes or other attributes, that's an impossibility. He's saying, I want you to recognize the greatest one ever took on the lowest position ever to serve another.

You go and do the same. You think like you're the greatest one, like your savior. Why did he do this? Why did Jesus do that? Well, he tells us at the end of verse eight, Jesus stayed in this lowly position because this is what was God's plan for him.

He humbled himself by becoming obedient, obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Jesus humbled himself. That is, he cared more about others than he cared about himself.

He became obedient to the point of death. Jesus in Luke 22 would say, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me, but not my will, yours be done. This is the kind of thinking Jesus wants us to put on as he tells the apostle Paul to write these things.

You go and say, not my will, but God, yours be done here. I need to have my way, or what is it you want me to do here? Jesus' life is serving others. It was a call to give of himself, and it took him all the way, as it says, to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Now, the cross is not just a symbol of death. I mean, it was, but it's the ultimate in torture and humiliation, and you're gonna go through physical suffering like none other. It was excruciating, but for the believer, we recognize the cross is something more than that.

The cross is where the payment and penalty of our sins, my sins, he bore. He didn't just die. He died to pay for my sins.

He died to pay for your sins, if you would believe in him as Lord and Savior. Colossians 2.14 says, "'Having canceled out the certificate of debt "'consisting of decrees against us, "'which was hostile towards us, "'he's taken it out of the way, "'having nailed it to the cross.'" The cross is where Jesus humbly went to pay a penalty to cover all the sins of all who would believe, and he did it willingly to be obedient to God the Father. Someone would say, why? Why would you do that? Why would you do all this for the sinner, the enemy, the undeserving, the person who hurt me? He says, why would you do that? Why would you call me to go do that? Well, in Jesus' case, it tells us, "'Therefore God also highly exalted him "'and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, "'so that at the name of Jesus, "'every knee will bow at those who are in heaven "'and on earth and under the earth, "'and that every tongue will confess "'that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.'" This is what God's glory looks like.

I don't have to trust in my own way. I trust in God's way, why? Because he's got a better plan for me than me fighting and clamoring to get my little opinion, my little preference in my way in this world. Lord, if you want me to go and suffer for you, let it be.

Why? Because you know what's best for me and you know what's better for me, not just in this life, but in eternity. See, God's ways are not only not our ways, but they are better than our ways. For us to be humble, it says I don't need to have it my way.

Lord, I trust in you to lead me no matter where I have to go. See, to be unified in this body, to be humble in this body, it means that we have to put on the mind of Jesus Christ. Not my will, but yours be done, Father.

I have to actively think, Lord, I cannot be clamoring for my way or what would serve you. We need to have the mind of Paul, which he said in this very letter, for me to live is Christ. I want to walk in a manner worthy of which I've been called and to die is gain.

We need to remember that our lives are not our own. I don't need to fight to have what I want. God has called me.

He's literally placed me in his body so that I might live for him. That I might be able to seek to serve and love those around me, others around me. No matter what it's going to cost me and no matter the merit in them.

You know what? There was no merit in me when Jesus died for my sins. There was no merit in you when Jesus died for your sins and yet he voluntarily, willingly gave it all. With the testimony of the Lord himself and with the testimony of his gracious gift of putting us in the body of Christ, would it say that you are a me first person or a Christ first person? Ask yourself this, what is being modeled by you as a member of Cornerstone Bible Church for all the world to see? Your spouse, your kids, your coworkers, your neighbors and everyone you run into.

Do they see you trusting in God no matter how hard life gets? Or do they see you trying to get others to conform to your world? Would you just stop just being a little bit like that and just be what I want you to be? Are you willing to spend your life for the blessing and benefit of others no matter what the cost might be? See the scriptures, they repeatedly point us to the cross as our hope, our example and our access to spiritual blessings. Do you see your sufferings as a hindrance in your life? Or do you see them as access to grace that comes from the Savior? Or this is a wonderful opportunity for me to receive grace from you. Are you willing to give and never receive? See this world, it tells you that you are wronged if you are hurt.

But our Savior, He models for us something different. It's okay for you to be hurt if it's according to God's will. It's okay for you to suffer if God wants you to walk through this path.

Do you trust in yourself and in the world or do you trust in Christ? Has your heart been sensitive to spot any way you're bringing disunity into the body of Christ? Are you sensitive of your thoughts, your attitudes, your actions towards others in the body of Christ? Do you use your position to get what you want? Dads, parents, leaders? Or do you desire to willingly set aside your rights to bestow blessings upon others? Willing to take on the lowliest of servants positions. It's okay if I get walked upon. Are you willing to be made low for Christ's sake even if the cost is every comfort and every desire you will ever have? That's why Christ modeled the greater to the lesser.

He gave His life all the way to the cross. We struggle sometimes to just give up just a little bit. Paul says, have this way of thinking in yourself which is in Christ Jesus.

Put this on, follow Him. When we consider this calling, we say no wonder it takes humility because at the end of the day, in order to accomplish that, in order to be unified with others around me, in order to trust in God's sovereign plan, I must first and foremost die to self. And that is not an easy task.

Lord, give us the grace to be able to accomplish what you've called us to and Philippians 2. Let's pray. Father in heaven, I thank you, Lord, for one, holding my voice long enough to get through this service. Lord, and more importantly, I thank you for Philippians 2. If we but learn to live what verse five says, that we would just learn to think like you, to live like you, to be fully trusting in the Father as you are, to not fight for what we want in this world, to not use our position, to not regard it in some high esteem, to not clamor to get more.

Set all that aside, to willingly give it up, to run after laying it aside, because Lord, there's a greater thing for us to do, and that's to live in you and trust in you and follow in the model you've laid before us. Lord, may we not be proud here at Cornerstone Bible Church. May we not be causing disunity in the body with fighting with others, but Lord, may we truly learn to trust you and trust your word and love those around us and seek to serve them regardless of their merit.

Lord, we know they're sinners, we're sinners. There's nothing that would ever make them deserving other than the fact that you died to show us what it means to truly sacrifice for the undeserving, the sinner. May we, as we've proclaimed that in our lives, may we turn around and show that and extend that to those in the body of Christ, for your name and your glory, amen.

Amen.

This morning and Genesis chapter 10, if you haven't peeked ahead to see what was coming, is a genealogy. So we're in genealogies again. I can kind of hear the silent groans of someone saying, you know, man, I hope my friends don't ask me this week, like, what did you learn at church on Sunday? And I'm going to tell them, hey, we're looking at genealogies again.

That's kind of thinking of Paul's words to Timothy, where he said, remain on in Ephesus and do what? Instruct certain men not to teach endless genealogies. Kind of feels like we might be bordering on that. I know we've spent some time in genealogies so far, but here we are again.

And as has been what we have seen in the past, there is profit for us, even in something like a bunch of names on a page. I want to ask you this morning, when you think about the nations of the earth, how it is that we got here, how it could be that there are so many nations? In fact, it's estimated tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of nations have existed over the course of human history. No one actually even knows how many nations there are.

You start to kind of think about the nations and you think, well, who are they? Where are they? How did they get there? Why do they exist? And this morning, we're going to at least see some of why the nations exist, why they are in the first place. If we were to start with what a nation is, it's defined in various ways, but biblically, we see the basic components of a nation. I mean, things that would define a group of people, such as common language and culture, typically religion and geography.

And so we see generations come forth through the nations and we see entire nations that reject God and entire nations that would turn themselves to the Lord throughout history. And so where we are in Genesis is we're coming to the end of this first section that is sometimes known as primeval history, okay? This is kind of the ancient history that begins with creation in Genesis chapters one and two, the fall accounted in Genesis three, four, and five, the flood in Genesis six through nine. Now kind of the establishment of nations in 10 and 11, and then starting in chapter 12, we're onto the patriarchs and that's the rest of Genesis.

So we're kind of nearing the end of this first portion of Genesis, and we're coming here this morning to the beginning of the nations. And so entitled this morning's message, and so the nations, and so the nations. We've seen a lot of beginnings this morning.

We're going to see the beginning of the nations. And so if you're keeping an outline this morning, the first point, which is pretty much the main point, and the primary point that we're going to cover this morning is the Genesis of nations, okay? The Genesis of nations. This is the beginning of nations.

This is where it all started. It's where it all came from. And I'm not going to read through it all ahead of time.

I'm going to save myself and yourself the pain of hearing me pronounce all those names. We will read it as we go. But we start here with kind of the setup for this so-called table of nations in verse one.

Moses writes, now these are the generations of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and sons were born to them after the flood. And when you read that word generations and you hear it, it should kind of trigger a little sense of, okay, I think I know something about that because we've already seen that in Genesis. In Genesis chapter 2 verse 4, we saw the generations of the heavens and the earth, the Toledot in Hebrew.

And in Genesis chapter 5 verse 1, the generations of Adam, his lineage. The generations of Noah in Genesis chapter 6 verse 9. And now the generations of Noah in chapter 10 verse 1. This is a key feature in Genesis. It's teaching us the origins, okay? People who preceded or were preceded by other people.

And so we come to this text and just maybe by way of kind of setting this up in our mind's eye, we're reading here the generations of the sons of Noah. This was being written down by Moses. And if you kind of think of the time stamp, Israel is coming out of Egypt.

So Israel's just come out of Egypt, and Moses is recording here the generations. Essentially, where Israel came from and where the nations around them came from. It's kind of the backstory.

And so people are often interested in knowing where they came from, kind of knowing a little bit about their origins. It's kind of universal amongst humans. We enjoy learning things about our origins.

And so for Israel, they're learning right now the backstory of their own nation, as well as the nations around them. And as we work through this list, some of these names you're going to read, and they're very familiar to you. They're ones that you find elsewhere in the Old Testament.

And some of them, you really just don't know a whole lot about them. Now, when we're in Genesis chapter 5, if you remember the genealogy we looked at there, was a very specific kind of genealogy. I'm really hoping that someone somewhere remembers this.

We called it a vertical genealogy, okay? A vertical genealogy. And if you remember, the purpose of a vertical genealogy was to connect one individual to another individual. So what was our genealogy in Genesis chapter 5? It was to trace the lines from Adam to Noah.

How do we get from Adam to Noah? So people are left out along the way, but there's a purpose in a vertical genealogy, one individual to another individual. Well, if you look at chapter 10, this is completely different. It's not one individual to one individual.

It'll be like that when we get to the next genealogy that we encounter in Genesis. But this one here is a family record, but it serves a different purpose, okay? This is known as a horizontal genealogy. What is the purpose of this genealogy? Well, it is to display who the predominant tribes are in and around Israel, okay? So we're going to learn about the founders of various tribes and clans and cities and territories.

It's kind of showing the who's who around the ancient Near East. And this is not comprehensive. It is merely a sampling.

This is representative of known tribes on earth. There's going to be 70 descendants of Noah recorded here in this chapter. 14 from Japheth, 30 from Ham, and 26 from Shem.

And so really, this is not showing us ancestry from one individual to another, but rather the political and the geographical and the ethnic affiliations as Noah's sons spread out. Because if you think of Noah just for a minute, what we know about his sons, he had three of them. Two thirds of his sons were blast, and one third of his sons were cursed.

This is starting to show how those sons multiplied and began to spread out. So this morning, we're going to begin to talk a little bit more about how it is that these nations spread out. And I just want to highlight for a moment what the purpose of this table of nations is, okay? Why is this here? And we're not going to spend weeks and weeks and weeks tracing out every name and every location and every detail.

We need to get the grasp, really the sense of why this is here. What is the purpose? So here it is. First of all, it's functional and practical, okay? This is just functional and practical.

It helps Israel understand all the other nations around them, their relationships with them, and maybe if we could put it this way, who their enemies are and why they're enemies. And if you were to understand even now what's going on in the Middle East, you got to go back a little ways. And you got to go back more than just a decade or a couple of decades.

We're talking centuries to understand the conflicts that are taking place in the Middle East. Well, so it is with Israel here. They're understanding the origin and the source of their enemies and the nations around them.

Furthermore, this is the record of how mankind began to spread out on earth. If you remember, that was God's design. His instruction back in chapter 9 verse 1 was not only to be fruitful and multiply, but to do what? Remain in one tight little huddle in one location? No.

Genesis 9 when he said, spread out. Go fill the earth. And so this is the record of how that happened.

Now, we're going to understand that it did not happen in obedience. And in fact, if you want to know kind of sequentially what I think is happening here in Genesis is not that we read of the nation spreading out in Genesis 10, and then chronologically, we get to Genesis 11, and everyone's huddled at Babel. And then they spread out at Babel.

But rather similar to how Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 both look at the creation week, but from different vantage points. Genesis 10 is describing really the who and the where of the spreading out of nations. Genesis 11, Babel is describing why that happened, what happened.

So what we're reading about here in Genesis 10, and I'll show you as we go through this, I believe is describing where everybody went on what we're going to read next in Genesis 11 at Babel. So this has a functional and practical benefit. It shows Israel's relationship with other nations.

It also shows how mankind spread out on the earth by God's original design, although not really in obedience, but kind of because they were required to. And then it shows that we're all from one people. We're all from one race.

You know, sometimes people use the nomenclature about races and different races. There's actually just one race. In Adam, recapitulated here in Noah, there's an interrelatedness.

And so humanity always struggles with partiality, different groups asserting dominance over other groups, or exalting themselves in some way, having a disdain for other ethnicities. If you were to look just around the world in the last decade, the number of lives that have been lost to genocide, people assert dominance over other people groups. And here we're to understand that we're all from one people and one race, one origin, even as these nations spread out.

So there's a functional and a practical purpose, but there's also a theological purpose. And these genealogies show us blessing and cursing. Blessing and cursing.

This is a key attribute in Genesis. That there are those who God in His sovereignty has poured blessings out upon. Those who He's graciously shown favor to.

Those who are the faithful. Those who express faith in God. And then there are those who are cursed.

Those who are cut off. Those who are separated from God. If you remember here, when Noah was speaking of his sons, and really pronouncing an oracle because he was looking at their character and seeing who they would be, he said in verse 25 of chapter 9, And so this table in Genesis 10 is beginning to show the outworking, the fulfillment, the faithfulness of God in blessing the line of Shem in particular, as well as the line of Japheth.

And then Israel's great enemy, Canaan, who experiences cursing. And so as we go through, we're going to read the son of, the son of, the son of, the son of, the son of. That's kind of the most typical form here.

There's also a word called beget, Yalad in the original. And when you read that, it's going to say the father of, the father of, the father of. And this is used primarily to highlight Canaan, because that was the line that was cursed.

That will be Israel's enemies. And then also the line of Shem, the line of promise. And so embedded in all of this, then, is the awareness of really how generations are brought up in the faith.

How generations are brought up in the faith. I want you to think as a parent, or if God is giving you grandparents, I mean, grandchildren, or if you have some kind of influence over young people in the church, to understand that God has invested influence in those who are older, to pour out upon those who are younger, the knowledge of God. Psalm 78 reads this way, I will open my mouth in a parable, I will pour forth dark sayings of old, which we have heard and known, and our fathers have recounted to us.

He's being the psalmist, and he, the psalm, and he's saying, I've, I've learned about the knowledge of God from my parents. My parents poured this into me. It said, which we have heard and known, and our fathers have recounted to us, we will not conceal them from their children, but recount to the generation to come the praises of Yahweh and His strength and His wondrous deeds that He has done.

He goes on and says, He commanded our fathers that they should teach them to their children, that one generation might know, even the children yet to be born, that they might arise and recount to their children. See, the picture in Scripture is that one generation influences the next generation. And so this begins to play out in Genesis chapter 10.

What was Ham's issue? Ham had a wicked heart. He didn't like his dad, he didn't like his dad's God, and then he trained up his sons in the same way. And Canaan followed his dad in the same degradation, and guess what? He taught it to his children.

And Canaan ended up being a dark and wicked nation, trained in it, trained in iniquity, enslaved, in bondage to sin. And then on the other side, God's design in a godly lineage would be that one generation is telling of the faithfulness of the Lord to the next generation. They're recounting the deeds of the Lord, Psalm 78.

So there's multiple purposes here. We see in the theological perspective here, blessing and cursing. We see generational obedience and generational disobedience.

And then finally, we see the messianic line. We see the messianic line. So you remember there's this great battle, and this explains even the conflict between Canaan and Israel, between the seed of the woman, which would ultimately be Christ, his lineage, and Satan's opposition.

Well, that battle's taking place and playing out throughout the nation of Israel's history, as Israel has many enemies that are seeking to wipe them off the face of the planet. So those are the purposes. So that being said, we'll just begin to dive into this, and we'll walk through it, and we're going to make some comments briefly as we go.

So in the Genesis of Nations here, we kind of see this set up in verse 1, and now we look at the sons of Japheth in verses 2 through 5. Okay, the sons of Japheth. Verse 2 reads, the sons of Japheth were Gomer, and Magog, and Midiah, and Javon, and Tubal, and Meshach, and Tyrus. The sons of Gomer were Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Tagramot.

The sons of Javan were Elisha, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. And from these, the coastlands of the nations were separated into their lands, everyone according to his tongue, according to their families, into their nations. The sons of Japheth.

Hey, this is the origins, they're just thinking big picture here, of the Indo-Europeans. Okay, so Japheth is those who went north, north of the ancient Near East. Now Moses tells us very little about Japheth's descendants.

In fact, he's going to get the least amount of air time here. There's discussion as to why that is. Some suggest that Moses wants to get the least significant out of the way first.

So Japheth here is the middle child, it's kind of like adding to that complex a little bit. The thought being maybe, in reality, that God blessed the land of Shem from which the Messiah would come, and then Canaan was cursed. So those two kind of need the most attention.

We're going to talk about Japheth first. It's also quite possible that it's because these were the descendants that were the furthest away geographically from Israel. Okay, so when you think of Japheth, those kind of Indo-European nations, they were the northern most from Israel, and Israel doesn't have a tremendous amount of interaction with these people groups.

We do read about them in various prophetic writings, like Ezekiel 27, Ezekiel 37, 38, and 39 speak of these nations. We read about them because they traded a bit with Israel. And so if we were just to read through this list, we could mention generally the locations by which we know them today.

Gomer would be modern-day Russia. Okay, that's kind of the direction that they went. Magog was the land of Gog between Armenia and Cappadocia.

That's not Armenian, but Armenian. Okay, those are two very different things. This would be Asia Minor or modern-day Turkey.

Okay, the Midi would represent the the Medes east of Assyria, kind of southwest of the Caspian Sea. So think modern-day Iraq or Iran, those areas. Javan was a word for the Hellenistic region.

So Greeks and kind of that influential western people would have come from Javan. Tubal and Meshech were northern military states north of Turkey. Tyrus was kind of a people group that was a predecessor to the Greeks.

And then those remaining groups they're spoken of, their future descendants were all kind of around the Aegean Peninsula, Asia Minor, and even the island of Cyprus. So these were the coastland nations. And if you look at verse 5, it says that they were separated.

Okay, so nations are individual here. They're separated from one another. They're according to their families, each into their nations, and it says everyone according to his tongue.

Everyone according to his tongue. So we don't know how many languages Noah's family spoke. Could have been bilingual or trilingual or known many languages, but we know at least they spoke the same language.

They would have come off of the ark. And according to Genesis chapter 11 verse 1, if you flip over there it says, now the whole earth had the same language and the same words. They had the same language and the same vocabulary.

Everybody understood everybody. So that's why I think that here in chapter 10 what we're reading about is what took place after God broke up the languages by the families and the tribes and dispersed them around the earth. Because here in verse 5 of chapter 10, we read about these people grouping naturally by those who could interact with one another, speaking the same vocabulary, and having the same words.

So Genesis chapter 10 is telling us who went where. Genesis chapter 11 is telling us why and how. So Moses tells us about the sons of Japheth, those Indo-European northern nations.

And then he comes to the sons of Ham in verse 6. This is the cursed son. Verse 6, the sons of Ham were Cush and Mizraim and Put and Canaan. And so I want you to think here of family resemblance.

Okay, family idolatry, family rebellion, family rejection of God. It's being trained, it's being rowed into the next generation. It's being modeled in antiquity.

And the nations that come forth from Ham are wicked nations opposed to God and opposed to Israel. It always works that way, the way God has designed influence to take place in cultures. It's interesting, Paul would write to the church in first Corinthians chapter 7 and he would talk about the situation that sometimes believers would find themselves in, where they got married as an unbeliever, perhaps two unbelievers.

One spouse gets saved. Now they're trying to figure out what to do. And what does Paul say? Well, if you can't stay in the marriage, why? Because the unbelieving spouse is going to be sanctified by the believing spouse.

The unbelieving spouse is going to be influenced. It's going to be a redemptive influence in the home. And the children are going to be sanctified.

The children are going to be influenced and benefited by the fear of the Lord and the passing on of the faith. What we see from Ham's descendants is the exact opposite. The children who were raised, raised to reject the knowledge of God.

And so you can look at any nation. That's why it's appropriate to be alarmed about things that are taking place in our nation. It's appropriate to be alarmed when you see a nation that is training its children in ungodliness.

Our nation today trains children in iniquity. We teach kids that pornography is harmless. Could even be a good outlet, actually, because no one gets hurt.

And therapists teach them that their feelings ought to be trusted and correction is harmful. And anything but full affirmation of and support regarding homosexuality or free love or transgenderism is unloving and bigoted. Listen, that's not an accident that children are taught to think in certain ways.

It has an impact for generations to come. Nations, entire nations can become in bondage and enslaved to sin by the transfer of godlessness. And so Ham's descendants here are going to be characterized by opposition to God, enmity to God and his people.

And so we read about Ham's descendants, his progeny, Cush, Mitzrayim, Put, and Canaan. And so as we go through this, these are various groups that come forth. We read the sons of Cush in verse 7 were Seba, and Havilah, and Sabta, and Ramah, and Sebteca.

The sons of Ramah were Sheba and Dedan. Now Cush was the father of Nimrod, and he began to be a mighty one on the earth. He began to be a mighty one on the earth.

So now we have kind of this first individual that's highlighted in this way. I was just thinking about this was a man who was singled out as a mighty man. Even a mighty man before the Lord, he had a proverb stated about him.

I think, boy, if you did not struggle with pride before, how hard would it be to be humble if there was a proverb about how mighty and great you were? And that was just the statement. It would be compared to who you were. Be like Mike when I was growing up, you know, Michael Jordan.

That was kind of what we would hear. Here the idea is Nimrod is a mighty hunter before the Lord. He's mighty on earth.

It was said in verse 9, like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before Yahweh. Now that does not mean that he feared the Lord. Rather, as we're going to see, he actually settled cities, and he was a wicked man.

His name itself is apparently connected with the verb to rebel. So he was a man that would have had tyrannical power. He founded imperial world powers such as Babylon and Assyria.

This idea of his manhood was that he was a really a macho man, okay? A macho man, a dominant figure. And so the recognition here is that he had a sense of power, perhaps violence. He was a hunter.

He had great power. And in that, he was not giving glory to God. He was out of the line of Ham, and he was a wicked man.

Not only that, but we read about the kingdoms that he began, verse 10, Babel, which we'll come to in the next chapter, Erech, and Achad, and Chalna, and the land of Shinar. From that land, he went out to Assyria and built Nineveh, and Rehoboth, and Chalna, and resined between Nineveh and Chalna. That is a great city.

So this man was filled with political prowess. He was a dominant figure. He was very successful in founding what would become very wicked cities.

It was the transfer of his character in these places. And so God wanted Israel to know Nimrod, that macho man, who was opposed to God, was the one who originated all of these godless cities that would eventually become Israel's great enemies. And as we said, there's always an opposition between God's people and those who hate God.

If you're to think of it this way, Jesus the Redeemer, Jesus the Messiah, wasn't dropped out of thin air by a messianic stork delivery service. He came through specific bloodlines. He was born of a woman, and that woman was out of the nation of Israel, from a real family.

And so it explains here this opposition to God through the line of hand that resulted in people that hated Israel. Entire cities and nations that would come up against them. To continue to trace down the list, we come to Mitsrayim verse 13, and that would be Egypt.

That's the plural there of the word from which we'd get Egypt, that nation. He's the father of Ledim and Annamim and Labim and Naphtahim and Paruthasim and Chalcohem, from whom came the Philistines and Kapturim. Okay, so now what you have is the nation of Egypt, and those that would settle in and around the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula, and the various coastal shores of what is today Africa, all throughout that region.

And the Philistines here may or may not be the Philistines that we're going to read of later, that were opposed to David. It's possible that these were different people, but these end up taking nations that will be superpowers around the nation of Israel. Verse 15, we read Canaan was the father of Sidon, his firstborn, and Hath, and the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgashite, and the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite, and the Arvidite, and the Zemurite, and the Hamathite, and afterward the families of the Canaanite were scattered.

So these are the names that we're going to begin to see. The Jebusites were in Jerusalem that would become the city of David. You're recognizing names that you'd read about in the battles that take place throughout the Old Testament regarding Israel with the opposing people groups.

And in fact, we start to see the the national boundaries that will one day be the nation of Israel. In verse 19, a geography lesson, we read the border of the Canaanite extended from Sidon, that was up on the coast, that was still in the place at the time of Jesus north of Galilee, as you go toward Gerar, as far as Gaza, as you go toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and Adna and Zeboam, as far as Lasha. These are the sons of Ham, according to their families, according to their tongues, by their lands, by their nations.

Canaan was a family that spread out a wicked influence among a people who were idolatrous, they worshiped other gods, they were filled with sexual immorality, they were filled with violence. These made up the neighboring communities around God's people Israel. Then after the sons of Ham, we come to the sons of Shem in verse 21, the sons of Shem.

Now Shem, interestingly here, is called the father of, there's kind of that beginning word that we were talking about, we saw that back up in verse 15, Canaan was the father of Sidon, it's kind of that editorializing, the grammatical marker that Moses is making to indicate there's something specific to pay attention to here. Shem was the father of all the children of Heber, and the older brother of Japheth, children were born. The sons of Shem were Elam and Asher, and Arpachad and Lod and Aram, and the sons of Aram were Uz and Hol and Gether and Mash.

Archipchad was the father of Shelah, and Shelah was the father of Heber. Now two sons were born to Heber, the name of the one Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided, and his brother's name was Joktan. I remember when I was in seminary, we were hosting families and admissions conference, and so we had a young man who came to stay with us from Spain, and his name was Heber, and he said, yeah my name is in the Bible, and I was like, I'm not sure that it is, and so he opened up to Genesis chapter 10, and I realized I don't know my Bible as well as I thought I do.

His name is Heber, but interestingly enough, this name has great significance because Heber is related to the word Hebrew, okay, Hebreet, and so when you read Heber, we're beginning right here in Genesis 10 to start to see that bright glimmer of hope in the midst of dark and crooked and perverse generations, that among Noah's sons there would be a blessed line, and there would be those who loved and feared the Lord. Heber is related to Hebrew, and of course this is the line from which Abram will come, a great, great, great, great, great, great, I think two more great, grandson of Noah, and so we see here is that the earth was divided, verse 25. This is probably that time stamp then that's referring to what took place at Babel, and many people have different ideas as to how the migrations took place.

We don't actually know whether after the flood there was a bit of an ice age, and some of the water levels were lower, and people could cross land bridges as they were migrating, or whether they traveled on boats to places like the Americas and Australia, but it's here that it is clear that Peleg was alive. His days were when the earth was divided. I believe that is when Babel took place, and then we read about Joktan, verse 26, the father of Almadad, and Shaleph, and Hazarmath, and Jerah, and Hadaram, and Uzzal, and Dikla, and Obel, and Abimele, and Sheba, and Ophir, and Havilah, and Jokab.

All these were the sons of Joktan. Now their settlement extended from Misha as you go toward Sephar, the hill country of the east. These are the sons of Shem, according to their families, according to their tongues, by their lands, according to their nations.

And so when you hear Shem, that's the Semites, the Semitic peoples, the people that really settled there in the Arabian Peninsula. And so we have Japheth's tribes and nations going north. We have Ham's tribes and nations going predominantly south, and then throughout part of that Arabian Peninsula.

And then we have Shem's line, the line from which the Messiah will come, settling there in the Arabian Peninsula. So here we have this chronology. As we said, there's a purpose behind it.

It's functional and practical. It helps Israel understand their relationships to other nations, helps them understand kind of who's who, and where they are, and why they're there. Shows the nature of mankind spreading out on earth, which was God's original design.

How they did it unwillingly, how they kind of had to be coerced into it through the breaking up of languages. Shows our solidarity that in the human race we're all one people. Starts to give sense for the cursing and blessing as we read about how these nations throughout the Old Testament would be blessed by God and also experience His cursing.

We understand many relationships rooted in the text here. But I think there's one question that a text like this raises, that isn't answered immediately here, and that's this. This is the genesis of nations.

But what is the goal of nations? This is the genesis of nations. What is the goal? Why do nations exist in the first place? If you notice, it's highlighted in our passage. Verse 1, these are the generations.

So there's this generational line. And then in verse 5, we read from these, the coastlands of the nations were separated into their lands. Everyone according to his tongue, according to their families, into their nations.

Go down to verse 20, these are the sons of Ham, according to their families, according to their tongues, by their lands, by their nations. Verse 31, these are the sons of Shem, according to their families, according to their tongues, by their lands, according to their nations. And then as Moses wraps up the entire genealogy in verse 32, these are the families of the sons of Noah, according to their generations, by their nations.

And out of these, the nations were separated on the earth after the flood. What's the point? Why so much attention on nations? National sovereignty, individual languages, individual customs, individual geography, individual people groups. And we certainly understand nations, we belong to a nation.

Now we use the nomenclature, but what is the goal of the nations? And I tell you that the goal of the nations, God's plan for the nations, is to magnify himself over them and through them. God's plan for the nations is to magnify himself over the nations and through the nations. What do I mean by over the nations? Psalm 2, but as for me, I've installed my king upon Zion, my holy mountain, I will surely tell of the decree of Yahweh.

He said to me, you are my son today, I've begotten you. It's the father speaking to Christ. He says, ask of me and I will surely give the nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession.

You shall break them with a rod of iron, you shall shatter them like a potter's vessel. To all these nations, warring against one another, seeking power and prominence, warring over territory, battling for control, taking pride in their identity, all of that is going to serve under the glory and the majesty of Christ who rules them all. And God's plan for the nations is to rule over them, certainly to judge and conquer them, but also to redeem them, also to redeem them.

When you read throughout the Old Testament, you find this vision, which was amazing, a vision that God gave to Israel, that one day their coming king would be reigning and that when their coming king reigned, nations would come to their king. Isaiah chapter 2 says that the mountain of the house of the Lord will be lifted up above the hills and all the nations will stream to it. Daniel was viewing the son of man coming as king.

He said in Daniel chapter 7, verse 14, and him was given dominion, glory, and a kingdom that all the peoples and all the nations and men of every tongue, that's every language, might serve him. Zechariah 8, 22 through 23, it will be men from every tongue of the nations. Isaiah 60 would say that the nations would come to a light.

Jesus came and said that he was a light to the Gentiles. He was a light to the nations, the other countries, the other peoples. And very soon, Abraham is going to receive a promise, what? That in his seed, all of the nations of the earth will be blessed.

He's saying God's plan is to save not merely individuals, and we think oftentimes about our own salvation. God saved me personally, and that's good and right. Rejoice in your own personal salvation, you should.

We give testimonies of our personal salvation, but do you understand that your personal salvation is part of a much bigger story about the majesty and glory of Jesus Christ having a people that he reigns and rules over, made up of every tribe and tongue. Isaiah 49, Christ was given as a light of the nation so that God's salvation might reach to the very end of the earth. How's that going to happen? Well, God gathers people to himself.

Isaiah 66, he's going to gather the nations, he's going to gather the tongues. And the prophet says that when that happens, they shall come and they will see his glory. They will see his glory.

And what will happen? Well, according to Psalm 22, the families of the nations will come and they will worship. The families of the nations will come and they will worship. You understand the magnitude of that? I mean, what a remarkable reality.

The plan is not to erase or dismantle national identities, but to redeem nations all united under the banner of King Jesus. I mean, I was just thinking about this week, October 24th, is United Nations Day. Okay, I would like to hear how you celebrated that day.

I hope you didn't miss it. So to celebrate the forming of the United Nations 80 years ago on October 24th. 80 years ago, United Nations was formed to bring about peace and justice and prosperity on the earth and among the nations of the earth.

And they're celebrating themselves. You know, I don't see a problem with that, but it's been unsuccessful, wildly unsuccessful. You look around and you see of the nations of the earth, warring, persecution, genocide, terrorism, corruption.

The biblical depiction of United Nations is nations united under the lordship of Jesus Christ. Nations united under his majesty, brought together in the praise and worship of King Jesus. A new people, a new nation that's new in Christ.

So we're all one people in Adam, divided up into nations throughout the earth. Those nations now come together in Christ under his majesty. And so the refrain of scripture is, that the nations are to praise the coming King.

Paul writes in Romans 15, 11, praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, all you nations, all you peoples, and let all the peoples praise him. Let all the peoples praise him. I mean, I think John Piper gets it right, that the goal of missions, the ultimate goal of missions is worship.

It's worshipers. And writing on John, on Romans 15, 11, John Piper says this, that's when Paul says, praise the Lord, all you nations, and let all the peoples extol him. He is saying that there is something about God that is so universally praiseworthy, and so profoundly beautiful, and so comprehensively worthy, and so deeply satisfying, that God will find passionate admirers in every diverse people group in the world.

His true greatness will be manifested in the breadth of the diversity of those who perceive and cherish his beauty. His excellence will be shown to be higher and deeper than the parochial differences that make us happy most of the time. His appeal will be to the deepest, highest, largest capacities of the human soul.

Thus, the diversity of the source of admiration will testify to his incomparable glory. You understand what he's saying there, that what will unite the nations is something much greater than even their personal national identity, rather to look out and wonder and say, well, people from every tribe, and every tongue, and every nation, with all their cultural backgrounds, and all of their preferences, and all the things that used to unite them, are now united with one voice, praising and worshiping Jesus. This is the testimony of Scripture, that God was sending out messages to the end of the earth through the proclamation of the gospel.

Acts 17 26 says, and he made from one man every nation of mankind to inhabit all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times at the boundaries of their habitation. What nation were you born a part of? How much control did you have over that? God determined that. He determined where you were born, what nation you were a part of.

And he had a purpose in it, verse 27, that they would seek God if perhaps they might grope for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. And so you and I are part of the fulfillment of the gospel going forth in God's redemptive program to the ends of the earth. You understand how far away we are from all of these nations, the table of nations.

We're across the pond. We're thousands of years later. God is getting glory through people gathered here, speaking a different language, a different tongue, a different culture for his namesake.

As you read this table of nations, you're to think to what is coming, and God's grand plan for saving people, the most unlikely people at times, and understand the grace that we've received even through generational faithfulness of generations who've gone before us. I invite you to pray with me. Father in heaven, thank you for calling us by your name.

Thank you for choosing to set your name upon us. Lord, we recognize that there's entire people groups that don't even hear the message of the gospel. Lord, that have had ancestors that have gone before them in rebellion, that have shut out the light and silenced the light.

Lord, through no doing of our own, you brought us light. You showed us Jesus, the light to the Gentiles, the light to the nations. And so, Lord, we thank you for your grace and bringing salvation to us.

Lord, we recognize that left to ourselves, we would happily stay and remain in darkness, content with our sin. And Lord, we thank you for the hope that one day, all of the national unrest and all of the evil will be set aside. We'll be together, bowing our knees and raising our voices, setting our eyes on you and on your majesty.

Lord, we long for your kingdom to come. That's to be our prayer often, bring your kingdom to come, Lord. That will be truly the greatest nation that the earth has ever conceived of.

So we love you, we pray and ask you to come quickly, Lord Jesus, and establish your kingdom in Jesus' name. Amen. We'll stand and sing together.

I'm singing How Great Thou Art as we're working through Genesis, just a reminder as we go out in creation and we see the glory of God, that that's what it's designed to do, is to incite worship in our hearts. It was a number of years ago, early on in my not very long career in business, that me and another man had talked about joining in business together. As a young man, I was just surrounded by people who had been doing it a lot longer than I was, people who had wisdom that were far beyond my years and experience.

As we'd begin to seek wisdom, we were encouraged, well, you need to really think through the agreement. You need to write it up. You need to be careful.

You need to think through the business arrangement ahead of time. In the course of time, we met another guy. When you're starting out, you don't have a whole lot to lose.

So you're getting together with your collective resources, and I'm like, I don't really contribute brains or brawn, but I'm going to work really hard and I can sell stuff. So that was my contribution. Then this person had a knowledge base, and then one guy had the money and the idea.

So we came together, and I remember the discomfort of sitting down with brothers in Christ, who are all friends, with an attorney. The attorney began to talk about, well, we should talk about what you're going to do in the event that things don't work out as planned. I remember actually distinctly feeling somewhat offended by that, a little bit dirty.

It seemed like unnecessary because we were all friends. We're all friends in the Lord. We had the same goal, the same ambition.

We'd spelled out our general ideas of what we were going to do. But plugging my nose, worked through all of the details of the agreement, and sent it back and forth to the attorney, and eventually we signed the agreement. It's probably only about two years in before one of the business partners had been cheating, had been taking money, had been competing against the other two partners.

Lo and behold, we had to dust out the agreement. What exactly are we to do in this situation? Yet when we sat down to make the agreement, everyone was happy. We were all in good faith.

I trust making it. Yet that attests to an experience that you're familiar with, and all different shapes and sizes at some level, and that is the issue of broken promises. A broken promises.

There's not a person in the room that's not been on the painful receiving end of broken promises. Unless we think too high of ourselves in the 90s, there was a conference that took the evangelical movement by storm promise keepers. I remember hearing a pastor say, you know, we ought to called it was promise breakers, because that's a lot closer to reality.

I mean, what married couple sitting down together in honesty could say, I have been faithful to the vows I've made. Not in their entirety, not perfectly. And so you and I live in a world where what we experience is broken promises, and sometimes even with the very best intentions.

Someone intends to keep a promise, and yet they're unable to get over the finish line. And so the testimony of scripture is to tell us that there is one ultimate promise keeper for who you can trust. That God is always faithful.

He always keeps his promises. There's never a promise that he has broken or that he could break. He cannot lie.

He cannot deny himself. He will always be faithful. And so even this morning as we begin to move into Genesis 9, I just want you to think about the promises of God that are yours in Christ Jesus, and to take confidence, to take comfort that God always fulfills his commitments.

Last week, we saw God's plan for filling the earth in Genesis chapter 9 verses 1 through 7. And now in verses 8 through 17, they're all connected. We're going to see not only God's plan for filling the earth, but his promise for preserving the earth. And title this morning's message, Grace with a Bow on Top.

Grace with a Bow on Top. I had a boss who used to say, all right, I want you to do this project, and when you bring it back to me, I want you to bring it with a bow on top. What did he mean? Well, I want you to make it really, really nice.

I want it to be all wrapped up. I want it to be complete. And so here God makes a promise to creation, and that play on words, he puts a bow on top of it.

Genesis chapter 9, beginning in verse 8, Then God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying, As for me, behold, I will establish my covenant with you and with your seed after you. And with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, of all that comes out of the ark, even every beast of the earth. Indeed, I establish my covenant with you, and all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood, and there shall never again be a flood to destroy the earth.

Then God said, This is the sign of the covenant, which I am giving to be between me and you and every living creature that is with you for all successive generations. I will put my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between me and the earth. And it will be, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud, and I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh.

So, the bow shall be in the cloud, and I will look upon it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth. And God said to Noah, This is the sign of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is on earth. If you remember last time, we saw that God is deeply concerned with His creatures.

He loves His creation. God cares for His creation. He loves the world.

He cares for the world. He provides for the world. We saw that God values life on earth.

He values this terrestrial globe, and He wanted to see the earth repopulated after the flood. And so, He gave everything necessary in His blessing that we saw in verses 1 through 7 of chapter 9 for the earth to be repopulated, okay, for the earth to be preserved. We saw that God was doing things like protecting and preserving and caring for the creation.

He was giving them the gift of procreation. And we saw that all of this was coming off of God's pledge that He made to Himself in chapter 8 verse 21, where God said to Himself, I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth, and I will never again strike down every living thing as I have done. So, God has a plan that He is enacting to graciously provide for mankind.

And so, He tells man to fill the earth. This is really a recapitulation of God's instruction to Adam when He said, be fruitful, multiply, and rule over the earth and subdue it. God is giving Adam dominion.

It's kind of that dominion mandate, that idea of going forth and conquering and subduing creation. God told Adam to do it. We'd have a start over with the flood.

Now, Noah is being given that same charge. And yet, if you are Noah at this point, you're thinking, okay, you've promised that we'll have procreation so we can make more people to replace the ones that got wiped off the earth. And you're promising provision.

You're giving us animals to eat, animals to use. The animals aren't going to be primarily predators. We're going to rule over them.

They're going to fear us. We're going to be able to eat plants. We have provision.

You're going to give us protection, the death penalty, the ability to establish government. So, you're doing all of those things. And yet, if I'm Noah, at some point, I'm thinking to myself, here's my only concern.

The reason why there's only eight of us on the earth right now isn't because we had a procreation problem. It's not because we lack provision. It's not because we didn't have protection from all the murderers.

It was because God saw that the wickedness of man on the earth was great and He wiped us out. See, the greatest threat to man's existence right now is that man is unrighteous and God is righteous. It's the holiness of God that is the greatest threat to mankind being sustained on the earth.

And so, God comes to Noah and just in initial observations, look at what He says. Verse 9, behold, I will establish my covenant with you. Verse 11, I establish my covenant with you.

Verse 12, this is the sign of the covenant which I'm giving to be between me and you. Verse 13, this shall be a sign for the covenant between me and the earth. Verse 15, I will remember my covenant.

Verse 16, to remember the everlasting covenant. Verse 17, the sign of the covenant. And so, to have in our minds, I hear right now, you have Noah disembarking from the ark and God telling him, hey, we're going to repopulate the earth.

Here's the plan to do it. I'm going to provide for that. And then I'm going to also provide what you need relationally from me in spite of your unfaithfulness so that your life will be preserved on earth.

The covenant is a formal relationship, a formal relational agreement between two parties. And what we're going to see this morning is that this covenant and its fulfillment, this promise is dependent not upon man's faithfulness, but upon God's character. Do you understand how good that news is for us? We're going to see that this morning as we walk through the text.

This promise being fulfilled is not something that is ever threatened by your failures. Said it another way, we could not mess up enough to cause God to not fulfill this promise because it's a promise that He's making by Himself. And so, for our outline this morning, we're going to see that God covenants to preserve creation, and point number one is this, He specifies the beneficiaries.

He specifies the beneficiaries. I understand that outline's a little awkward, but covenant is being used there as a verb. So, God covenants, God is making a covenant to preserve creation.

And our first point this morning as we see the beneficiaries, the participants, who is going to benefit from this covenant? And He specifies it right here, verse 8, And so, the relationship begins here with Noah. Noah's forefronted, God is speaking directly to Noah. Noah's the man whom God delivered through the floodwaters of judgment.

And yet, the benefits of this covenant are going to extend far beyond Noah. This is very typical when God is making a covenant. He makes a covenant with an individual, and then there's other beneficiaries.

And so, in this case, this covenant is sweeping and broad and comprehensive. One writer says, There's no doubt that it was the design of God to provide for all His posterity. It was not, therefore, a private covenant confirmed with one family only, but one which is common to all people, in which shall flourish in all ages to the end of the world.

No one gets left out as a beneficiary of this promise. Even the animals are included, even the beasts, God says. God cares about His creation.

His concern there extends to mankind. It goes beyond that to every living creature. It's not exclusively a concern for mankind.

It's His entire created order. And so, when you think of God's redemptive plan for the earth, it's not just only spiritual, it's in real time, space, and history. And in fact, God is making a covenant here that is going to preserve mankind and the beasts, and then we're going to see even the earth itself.

And this is all part of God's redemptive story. And this is part of what we see right now. I think Paul alludes to this in Romans chapter 8, when he says in verse 21 that the creation is groaning, and it will be set free from its slavery.

This is the picture that kind of everybody is in this together. Man, beast, and the earth. And so, this promise extends to all of them.

Or said another way, God's redemptive activity is far beyond one people, one nation, but rather His redemptive program involves ultimately a new heaven and a new earth. He's going to redeem all of humanity. He's going to redeem the animal kingdom.

He's going to redeem the earth itself. And so, this covenant then provides some grace to everyone. Okay? This is a gracious covenant.

It provides some grace to everyone. And so, God moves from specifying the beneficiaries in verses 8 through 10 to the benefits in verse 11. The benefits in verse 11.

Point number two this morning, as God covenants to preserve creation, is that He not only specifies the beneficiaries, but He outlines the benefits. This is the benefits package, if you will. What are the details of this covenant? Well, imagine Noah hearing God say to him, Indeed, I establish my covenant with you and all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood, and there shall not ever again be a flood to destroy the earth.

Can you imagine what an immediate comfort that would have been to Noah? I'm picturing one of Noah's sons being maybe a bit of a prankster or a jokester and thinking it's, you know, funny when he gets off the boat to say, Hey, dad, there's a thunderstorm coming. And Noah just saying, too soon. Like that joke isn't funny to me yet.

I mean, you've just lost all of your extended family, all of your acquaintances. The earth is empty and dark and quiet. It's been destroyed by a flood.

And God says, Hey, I want to give you a word of comfort. I'm not ever going to do that again. Don't be scared.

Don't be worried. Next time you hear the dark thunder or you hear the thunder coming or you see the dark clouds rolling in, there might be a localized flood. It might be a rainy season.

There might be a monsoon, but I'm not going to do what I did again. I'm going to preserve the earth until I destroy it ultimately, which we know later in Scripture by fire. One theologian writes that the memory of the deluge might not inspire them with new terrors.

As often as the sky were covered with clouds, lest the earth should again be drowned, this source of anxiety is taken away. And certainly, if we consider the great propensity of the human mind to distrust, we shall not deem this testimony to have been unnecessary, even for Noah. What's he saying? He's saying that Noah needs to be reassured.

Let me see if he gets a sign in just a minute. He needs to be reassured. Noah was a man of great faith.

If I said Moses, I meant Noah. Noah was a man of great faith. Okay.

He believed God. He trusted God. And yet Noah was a man like us.

He would doubt God at times. And so God is graciously providing an assurance. Trust me.

You can trust me. You can trust my promises. You can bank on them.

And so I'm sure this was meaningful to Noah. I'm sure it was meaningful to his family. I'm sure that it was personally an encouragement as they heard this.

Yet, we also need to be honest to recognize that this covenant that God makes with Noah is kind of the least appreciated covenant in the Bible. It's the least appreciated covenant in the Bible. I think there's a few reasons for that.

If you can imagine being at a wedding ceremony. And this is one of those weddings where the couple decided that they were going to write their own vows. That they were going to improve upon traditional vows.

They're going to write their own. And so they kind of go through, you know, and it's kind of interesting the things they're saying. They're maybe a bit silly.

You know, I promise that if you have, you know, bad breath, that I won't, you know, tell you about it. Or, you know, if you're snoring, I'll be the one to sleep on the couch. Things that are really meaningful and substantive.

If you've been to a wedding like that before. But in this creative expression, they keep talking. And then one of them says, and I vow to never kill you.

I mean, on the one hand, I guess, like, that's a good thing. Like, we don't really want spouses not committing to kill one another. I mean, that's important on the one hand.

But you're kind of thinking like, do we really need to say that? So, I think part of why the Noahic covenant doesn't get a lot of appreciation is, if we're just honest, right? Okay. So, this is the covenant. This is the good news.

You're not going to kill everyone with a flood. And you're going to put a rainbow in the sky to look at. I mean, when you start to compare that to the other covenants of Scripture, the benefits don't quite seem as beneficial.

And when God comes in covenants to Abraham, we'll see that in a few chapters. God's going to promise to make a nation out of him. And to bring about the Messiah through Abraham's line.

And to accomplish salvation. And all the nations of the earth are going to be blessed through Abraham. Well, I mean, that's an exciting, beneficial covenant with obvious, obvious benefits.

The Mosaic covenant, given in Exodus. God says that He'll remember His people. And He says, I'm the Lord your God who brought you up out of Egypt.

This is a relationship that I have with you. You're going to be my people. I'm going to be your God.

Benefits, benefits, benefits. And the Davidic covenant, God's promise that of David's line, there's one day going to be a king who's going to rule and his throne will endure forever. And he's going to be a good king.

And he's going to establish an absolute monarchy. It's going to be glorious and wonderful. Okay, well, that's exciting.

And then the new covenant, Jesus inaugurates in the final Passover meal, the new covenant, which will supersede the previous covenant. I mean, that's the whole point of Hebrews. The old passes away and the new comes.

And so, you have all of these mighty, salvific covenants in Scripture that inspire adoration in our hearts. They're incredible to contemplate. And then you come to the Noahic covenant that promises, I'm not going to kill everyone.

And if you've ever thought that, you're in good company. In fact, theologians will write books on covenants and covenant theology from the Bible, and sometimes not even mention the Noahic covenant at all. Or if they do, just a few pages in the middle of a huge book dealing with covenants in Scripture.

I think what happens is that the theological significance of what is taking place here is missed. I want you to understand that the way God's redemptive plan unfolds in history is successively and progressively, bit by bit. And so, where we're at right now in the fulfillment of God's plan is this, God had creation, and He created it, and it was very good.

And mankind sinned, and creation was fallen, and it was cursed, and now man is born in original sin. And so, God promises a Messiah, but He's righteous. And so, as He judges the earth and the floodwaters, He destroys mankind.

And now, to bring about the plan of ultimate salvation through the Messianic ruler, God says, I'm going to put a foundational covenant over the earth. It's going to provide the circumstances necessary to accomplish redemption. You know what I'm going to do? We're going to enter into a season of patience, where I'm going to be gracious to the whole world, I'm going to be gracious to all of humanity, all of creation.

And it will be on the basis of this covenant now that I will bring about the covenants that I'll make with Abraham, and Moses, and David, and the new covenant in Jesus Christ. One writer says, the purpose of this covenant is to reestablish under common grace, a livable world in which God's program for the salvation of an elect people can proceed. So, the subsequent covenants are going to relate to a very small group of people, Abraham and his descendants.

Moses would be the people of Israel. The new covenant will be God's people in Christ. And so, this is the essential framework needed for understanding the rest of redemptive history and all of the other biblical covenants.

That the Noahic covenant is not of marginal significance, but rather decisive importance. And so, if you're to give an appropriate weight to the Noahic covenant, you're to understand that this is a gracious covenant that God is making with everyone. This is God's common grace to preserve the earth while He accomplishes His redemptive plan, while He saves His people, while He unfolds history.

And so, this is absolutely incredible. And so, God here is promising that He will preserve mankind. There will still be death on the earth.

There will still be disaster on the earth. People will still even die in floodwaters. And yet, nothing will threaten His plan to bring the Messiah to earth and accomplish redemption for His people.

And so, God has given Noah the beneficiaries and the benefits of His covenant. And now, to our third point, He designates the bow. He designates the bow.

First, He shared who's involved, verses 8 through 10. Then He outlined the specific benefits, His preserving work that will allow Him, allow for the bringing about of redemption. And now, point number three, He designates the bow.

This will be the sign or the seal of the covenant promise. The sign or the seal of the covenant promise, a sign would attest to a covenant. It'd be the attestation.

And so here, according to verse 12, God says, this is the sign of the covenant, which I am giving to be between Me and you and every living creature that is with you for all successive generations. I will put My bow in the cloud. I will put My bow in the cloud.

Now, some people try to speculate that maybe some conditions on the earth changed where prior to this, no one had ever seen a rainbow. This is the first rainbow ever. It's possible.

It's also possible that God is taking something that was already occurring in nature. And He's saying, this now has a new designation. And when you see it, here is what it means.

And so God says that what the sign and seal of this covenant promise will be is a rainbow. It's a rainbow. Now, we love rainbows.

And do we not? It's like universal. You'll see a big, beautiful rainbow across the horizon. Sometimes it's particularly bright or a double rainbow.

You'll see people pulling over on the side of the road to get out of their car to take pictures. I mean, we are stunned by the beauty of the bow. It's amazing how the Lord brought it about and the refraction of light and water vapor.

And it's fascinating how the eye sees the arc and the exact number of degrees and then the different degrees that there's a double rainbow and how all of that works from a scientific perspective. But the rainbow is always associated with sunlight breaking into the clouds. In fact, just last week, I was in a coffee shop, very surprising, I know.

And someone said to me as they were looking out, I bet there's a rainbow out there somewhere. Why? Well, they could tell it's bright and cloudy at the same time. And that means somewhere someone is witnessing a rainbow.

This is given by God as a seal of His covenant, a sign of His promise. And it's designed to be seen. That when God brings a cloud over the earth, verse 14, that there will be a bow seen.

And the promise is that never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh. So, we see all kinds of catastrophes on earth due to water. And yet we always know that they will be limited in their scope and limited in their depth.

And the Lord says that this bow, verse 16, shall be in the cloud. And I will look upon it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth. As you read that, you think, well, wait a minute, who is the bow for? I mean, normally the sign of the covenant, like we'll see soon with Abraham, that circumcision is the sign of the covenant.

Sign is really for you, reminds you of the covenant that you're graciously a part of. And yet here the Lord says, verse 15, I will remember my covenant. I will look upon it, verse 16, to remember the everlasting covenant.

So, who is the sign for? Is it for God or is it for us? When you think of it this way, when you understand remembering, the language of remembering or memory in Hebrew is not merely recalling an event, but rather action, action associated with it. And so, when God says that He remembers something, it means that He intervenes. Remember when He remembered Noah and the animals on the ark? What did He do? He started to cause the floodwaters to abate.

And so, the perspective here is that the covenant is an indication. God is essentially an anthropomorphic language saying, this bow will be a testament to me intervening, to me graciously withholding wrath upon the earth. One author says the sign of the covenant effectively guarantees God's faithfulness and willingness to act on His covenantal promises.

And it is a feature that points to God's ongoing commitment to the world He has created. So, how does that work? Well, obviously, when you see the sign, it encourages your heart because you're reminded that God sees that sign. And as He sees it, He's remembering His covenant and acting in accordance with it.

And so, that banner, even by design, going from horizon to horizon, is proclaiming peace on earth. I know the ultimate peace on earth would come, the angels would say when Jesus was a little baby, peace on earth and goodwill toward men with whom those God is pleased. And yet, there's a temporary peace that God has given to creation where He's saying, I'm not going to be continually pouring out wrath upon you like your sins deserve.

And yet, at the same time, seeing this covenant always has just, or the sign of the covenant has a little bit of an asterisk by it, does it not? It's not the kind of asterisk that means maybe there's a qualification, or maybe there's some fine print, or maybe it's not really going to come about. But it's just the recognition that forever, for how hopeful that bow is, there's also the recognition of all of the death that came before it, all of the destruction that came before it, that there were dark clouds of judgment that preceded that bow. And so, when you and I look at the rainbow, you're to immediately think of God's absolute gracious commitment to His creation, His gracious commitment to His creation.

And as you look at that, you're also to be reminded that God also hates sin and He judges it. That's why we have to have the rainbow in the first place, because there was a flood. And as you think about God's gracious provision then to all of humanity, you're to recognize the unconditional nature of this covenant.

Unconditional meaning, there is nothing that man could do to break God's promised faithfulness to the earth. I want to read to you a couple of statements that are helpful in understanding the way we need to think about covenants in Scripture, and it has bearing even for this morning as we move toward partaking of the Lord's Supper and reflecting on the new covenant. The Noahic covenant is unconditional.

And although God places certain expectations on humanity, there is no sense in which humanity must keep these obligations in order for the promises and the covenant to remain intact. In other words, even if humanity fails to fulfill these expectations, a reality which the text clearly sees, chapter 8 verse 21, God will not renege on His guarantees. At the end of the day, the permanence of the covenant and its accompanying promises is based on the unconditional commitment of God to the human and non-human creation.

He goes on and writes, underlying the history of nature and the history of mankind is an unconditional divine yes, a divine yes to all life. They cannot be shattered by any catastrophe in the course of history, by the mistakes, corruption, or rebellion of man. God's promise remains rock certain as long as the earth exists.

And this is for better or for worse. See, when you see the rainbow, you are to understand God's unconditional promises. And I tell you, if you've not studied the concept of covenant in Scripture, it is a glorious study.

I was just reflecting this week, actually, I can still remember where I was about 20 years ago. It's before Susie and I had kids early on in marriage. I remember the exact, no surprise, coffee shop that I was sitting in in Portland.

I remember the book that I was reading. I remember the table that I was at as I was reading about God's covenant program in Scripture and beginning to have light bulbs go off to understand the stability in the Christian life that comes from understanding that when God makes a promise, He always keeps it. And it is conditioned upon His character and not mine.

And so if you're in Christ, if you're part of the new covenant, God has promised to save you because of what Jesus has done. And it is not dependent or threatened or contingent upon your performance. So God is always faithful.

He always keeps His promises. We see that here in the Noahic covenant. And then by extension, we can transfer that to the salvific covenant that we have in Christ.

And if you want a testimony to how faithful God is to keep His covenant, even when the humans on the other side are not, you just have to look no further than the rainbow. You realize each day more than eight billion people wake up somewhere on the face of this earth and they're beneficiaries of this covenant of grace. And the vast majority of them take it for granted, and it's in operation whether they acknowledge it or not.

And I don't think we can talk about the rainbow, frankly, without recognizing that in the 1970s, the rainbow was appropriated. It was misappropriated, taken as a sign of God's covenant faithfulness to be a moniker for sexual perversion, for sodomy, for that which is unnatural and all kinds of sin that are against nature and disordered. And they would unify and lump themselves together under a shared identity, a collective identity of rebellion against their creator.

And they would take as their unifying symbol, God's sign of covenant faithfulness. It's a deep irony, of course, that this would be referred to as the pride flag because it is that very thing. They took what represents God's promise and in pride, took it for themselves.

It's an act of rebellion. There's an irony to that, that it's called a pride flag. That's exactly what it is.

And yet every time that that's displayed, whether it's a bumper sticker, whether it's a flag, whether it's a t-shirt or a bag, they can't help but to attest to God's gracious promise that He will be patient with His enemies and He's not going to destroy the earth in judgment until the appointed day. And so, even in their rebellion, they wave around the reminder of God's gracious covenant. It's the ultimate folly.

Because every time someone lifts that flag in pride, they're being sustained by the very God who created them and the God who preserves them by His covenant promise to them. As one theologian described it, for the unbeliever to slap God in the face, he has to climb up on his lap to do it. And so, you and I get a bit offended, and I would say rightly so, but understand that the desecration of the sign of God's covenant faithfulness does not negate what it means.

Rather, it demonstrates it. And so, when you read Genesis chapter 9 and you look around you at the wickedness of the earth and you say, how can God stand by when things are so messed up? The answer is because He's gracious. He's gracious and He's accomplishing His plan of redemption.

In a few minutes, we're going to celebrate the Lord's Supper. And Jesus, of course, says that it is a new covenant in His blood. It's a new promise.

It's the same character as the God who made this covenant promise to Noah. But the difference is there are many people who experience the benefits of the Noahic covenant to go on to perish eternally separated from God. Those who are with Christ in the new covenant are going to be His people forever.

They're going to be part of the new heavens and the new earth. In a few minutes, I'm going to invite you to come forward and to partake of the elements. But let me pray, and then we'll begin communion together.

God, you are so gracious to us. And Lord, we confess that we take that grace for granted, the grace that sustains us, the grace that is patient with sinners. And Lord, I thank you for even the language of this passage of Scripture that reminds us of your work on our behalf or in the faithfulness of your promises.

God, we know that were there any part of remaining in the faith that was ultimately dependent upon our performance, then we ought to still be afraid. But rather, this covenant is based upon your character, and we thank you for that. We praise you, Lord.

We love you. Amen.

I was thinking as we were singing that lyric, man, the new mercies are there every morning. I just don't always see them because I'm not really looking for them. So, it's an aptly stated hymn lyric there, new mercies I see.

For those of you who have never been, I know it's already mentioned, to a reformation party before you're missing out. But just so you know what that is, you're welcome to come now. You can have your very first time.

What we're going to do is we're going to have a lot of food here tonight, soups and chilies. If you haven't prepared something, that's all right. Just show up.

We eat together, which is just enjoyable to get time to fellowship and kind of engage. Sometimes you get to sit by somebody new and get to know them. That's fun.

Or maybe a longtime friend that you haven't caught up with for a while. Then we have a biography from church history. And we want to be learning as God's people, our heritage, where we came from, and what happened 500 years ago in the church at this time of year.

So, we're going to spend some time on a biography. And then there's games. We're going to be playing games in church tonight.

And it's just a grand time together. So, if you've never been, you're welcome to come. If you've been before, of course, you know what it's all about.

And I invite you back this evening. That being said, take your Bibles and turn with me to Genesis chapter 9 this morning. Genesis chapter 9. We've seen the goodness of God as he provides for his creation.

And this week is going to be no different. In fact, God is the good giver of all life on earth. He is the sustainer of all life.

And yet, God oftentimes gets blamed for all of the problems. Right? People complain against God. They complain about the issues with society.

They describe human suffering as the evidence that God is a bad God, where he's impotent, or he's somehow uncaring. Maybe ask the question this way. If God is so good, why does life hurt so much? And I would say that what tends to happen is that the tale of blame for the source of evil gets pinned on the wrong donkey.

Okay? Mankind fails to realize our contribution here to the problems on the earth, and wrongly assigns the moral responsibility away from things like man and Satan, and assigns that to God while neglecting to give him credit for his goodness. Okay? The goodness of God is to be preeminent in the minds of God's creatures. And when you picture God, when you think of God, when you imagine God, when you dwell in the person of God, you're to think of God as good, and generous, and benevolent to his creatures.

And this is not merely that as believers we have a different perspective on earth, and we just say, well, the glass is half empty and half full. Unbelievers tend to focus on the half that's unfull. We tend to look at the glass half empty.

Rather, what we're talking about here is a worship and an orientation issue where we view God as the good and generous benefactor of all creation and all life. And in fact, God graciously provides not only for his elect, but he provides even for his enemies. It's in the goodness of God extends beyond the church.

It extends to all creatures. All creatures great and small. And theologians refer to this as common grace.

Common grace. Okay? If you're not familiar with that word, you jotted down this morning. This doesn't mean common as in ordinary grace, but rather common in that it is universally experienced.

I want to read to you a couple of descriptions of common grace to kind get it in our minds as we make our way into our text this morning. Common grace, quote, is distinguished not so much from what we might call uncommon grace, but rather from what we call special grace. Common grace refers to several concepts or experiences that we observe.

On the one hand, we realize that in God's divine providence, he pours out benefits that are enjoyed, not simply or exclusively by believers, but by believers and non-believers alike. Another theologian put it this way. Common grace is the grace of God by which he gives people innumerable blessings that are not part of salvation.

The word common here means something that is common to all people. It is not restricted to believers or to the elect only. One more common grace as an expression of the goodness of God is every favor falling short of salvation.

Every favor falling short of salvation, which this undeserving and sin-cursed world enjoys at the hand of God. This includes the delay of wrath, the mitigation of our sin natures, natural events that lead to prosperity, and all the gifts that humans use and enjoy naturally. See, it is right to understand that God blesses his creation.

God blesses the earth. And he blesses the earth with earthly blessings. He blesses the earth with temporary blessings, temporal blessings.

And then upon his people, he graciously bestows eternal blessings. And so we come to Genesis 9, and we are utterly convinced at this point that the people on the earth deserve no goodness from God. Humanity made a mess of things.

In fact, we said if it were not for God's grace, then pretty soon the next flood is going to come because mankind's intent is evil even from his youth. And so we come to Noah here, and you see him in Genesis chapter 9 coming face to face with the goodness of God, the generosity of God, and the blessing of God to the earth, not just exclusively to his people. Let's read our text before us this morning.

Genesis chapter 9, beginning in verse 1, and God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And the fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky with everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea into your hand, they are given. Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you.

As with the green plant, I give all to you. However, flesh with its life, that is its blood, you shall not eat. Surely, I will require your lifeblood.

From every living thing, I will require it. And from every man, from each man's brother, I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds man's blood by man, his blood shall be shed.

For in the image of God, he made man. As for you, be fruitful and multiply, swarm on the earth and multiply in it. Entitled this morning's message, God's game plan for filling the earth.

Hey, this is God's game plan for filling the earth. And throughout these verses, what we're going to see is blessing, blessing, blessing. And guess what? You get the blessing, whether you are one of God's redeemed people or not, he bestows this gift of life upon the earth.

This is God's commitment to mankind in spite of his sinful condition. I can say this way, really, this is the sustainer's program, the sustainer's plan for sustaining life and blessing life on earth. We saw last week that God gave kind of a first pledge, if you will, a first pledge relating to how he's going to treat humanity.

Chapter eight, just reviewing in verse 21, as he smells the soothing aroma of Noah's sacrifice, says, I will never again curse the ground because of man. For the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth. And I will never again strike down every living thing as I have done.

While all the days of the earth remain, seed time and harvest and cold and heat and summer and winter and day and night shall not cease. So this here is God's grace, kind of a first pledge, if you will. I think that's a good way of putting it.

It was a first pledge. Now, today begins the new era of God starting to explain to Noah how his program for sustaining life is going to come about on the earth. And so if you're keeping an outline this morning, our first point of God's game plan for filling the earth, it's very simple.

It is this, it is to make babies. Okay, point number one, make babies. So Noah, if you want to imagine this for a moment, is stepping off the ark into an eerie, desolate, quiet earth.

I don't know if you've ever felt lonely, but I mean, this feels pretty, pretty desolate. If you've ever felt like you enjoy maybe getting out of the house, a little breather from your family, you don't have to admit it. We're not going to raise hands.

If you ever thought, man, I see a little breather from my family for a minute. There's like no one else to go talk to. Okay, this is it.

Eight of you. And so Noah gets off the boat and no doubt, I would imagine felt a little bit daunted at the idea of starting over civilization. And so God begins by reviewing the strategy that's needed for propagating life.

And the first part of this plan is very simple. As God speaks to Noah and his three sons and their wives, you guys need to move out. You get your own place.

You need to have babies and then teach them to do the same thing. Okay. That's the idea here of verse one.

It's time to repopulate. It's gonna be time to spread out, to go make stuff and do stuff and fill the earth. And so Noah's getting basically the same instruction that Adam received in the garden.

It's just Adam and Eve, just two people. So we kind of understand the reason for the instruction. The difference is Adam received that and the creation was sinless.

Noah's receiving it with the recollection of just what just happened. And there had to be this little bit of Noah thinking like, man, are we going to do this all over again? We're going to bring those little sinners onto the planet. And then they grow up and they become big sinners and we have problems in society.

But this is given here as a blessing. Look at the verse, and God blessed Noah and his sons. Phillips notes how much this blessing would have meant to Noah as he looked on a world that was marred by God's judgment in the flood.

To say despite God's anger over sin, his intention is still for the good of mankind. And even to say God has given us a second chance. God has given us a second chance.

Do you understand God is a God of second chances? God is a God of grace and mercy. And so Noah here, right as he's getting off the boat, is getting right in the front of his face a reminder that God is a God of second chances. He's a God of grace.

This is a blessing, a benediction. It's for man's benefit. It's not a punishment.

It is divine favor. And so any productivity, any fruitfulness, any benefit that you have in life always comes to you from the hand of God. And so God gets this instruction of blessing from God.

And this was a gift. One commentator put it this way, it's as if Noah would have heard God say to him, you see that I'm intent upon cherishing and preserving mankind. Do you therefore also attend to it? In other words, my plan is I'm going to take care of mankind.

We're going to repopulate the earth. And here's your responsibility to get that done. So it would have been an encouragement and not just the command to be fruitful, but the promised blessing.

Okay. So understand verse one here is an instruction. You go be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, but it's also a blessing.

The Lord is blessing. Now we need to understand this. This is a general principle in scripture.

Okay. This command is a little different than the command to will say, love the Lord, your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. You have to do that one.

And there's no qualifications. This one has a few qualifications, right? The qualifier, of course, is the providence of God. So in order to be fruitful and multiply, marriage is required.

And the only purpose of marriage is not procreation, but it is a primary purpose of marriage. And yet God calls some to singleness and that is a gift. And God calls some to have marriage, but not children.

And so this is not a universal binding command because it's contingent upon the opportunity to carry it out. And yet as believers, we recognize that this is God's good design. So here's the simple plan to recognize that it is a blessing and a gift and even a responsibility for those who have opportunity to be fruitful and multiply.

You got here saying that in spite of how sinful man is, and this is believer and unbeliever alike, family is a good thing. It's a blessing. Marriage is a blessing.

Children are a blessing. And it contributes to the strength of societies on earth to have strong families. It's amazing.

We live in a society that hates the family. I was just listening to some people banter this week. Now, they're part of a group that help people recover from their religious traumas.

Basically, people who were raised in an evangelical church and now hate God. And over and over and over, they were talking about how toxic the view of a traditional family is to their well-being. How toxic it is to think about sex in the confines of marriage.

How toxic it is to think about it being a woman's glory to bear and raise children. They view that as toxic. Here, this is part of God's blessing to mankind right off the boat.

He says, here's the benefit to mankind. I'm giving you this gift and this responsibility. And so society, to the degree that it neglects this, struggles.

Broken families, babies without dads, babies to unmarried parents, homosexual unions. And so here is this instruction that requires a male and female in marriage in order to fulfill the instruction. And I'll just say, if you're married, there's no prescription here on the number of children.

Sometimes you'll misunderstand this passage and they think, I'm required to have as many children as I can possibly have. Text doesn't say that, actually. It doesn't say be as fruitful as you possibly can.

Noah had three sons. He waited until he was 500. So, I mean, I don't know that you want to wait that long, but there's a biblical precedent here for some other options.

Family life is to be honored. It's the design of God. And so you are not to think through children in a carnal way.

How do people tend to think about children? Well, we're going to have kids when we want to have kids. We're going to have kids once we've enjoyed our freedoms. We're going to have kids so it's not an impingent upon what we'd really like to do.

Even in the church, this mindset creeps in. Listen, you don't have children for your enjoyment or not have children because you don't enjoy them. That's not really the point.

You have children because the Lord gives you opportunity. You believe that they're a blessing and a gift and it's part of his design. And so you're not to compare yourself.

So-and-so had this many kids and so-and-so had this many kids and I only had this many kids. I mean, my mom had eight kids. And if we're just being honest between you and me, I think she had three too many.

So, I'm sorry, Michael. I'm sorry, Luke. I'm sorry, Hannah.

It's just the truth, okay? But the perspective here is to view children as a blessing and a gift from God and to recognize that our culture rails against this. Feminism has sold the lie to young women that a career is far more beneficial than being relegated to the home and to bringing up children. I tell you, this is God's glorious design.

It's a gift. It's a gift that a woman would have the privilege of bringing up the next generation. And so we are to promote this view.

We're to be embracing God's design. And I would just say to single men, if you're not gifted with singleness, then get yourself ready for marriage and do not delay it unnecessarily. You ought to pursue marriage.

It's not virtuous to delay unless you have a reason to delay. You could say this, pursue it and don't delay any longer than necessary. How do you do that? Well, pursue spiritual maturity.

Be ready to lead a woman spiritually. Grow in your relationship with God. Live by convictions.

Put off life-dominating sins. Be teachable and have a work ethic. You don't necessarily have to have a career, but at least a direction where you're working diligently so you could support a wife and children and provide for their physical needs.

And you're to make yourself attractive to a godly woman by being godly yourself. By being the kind of man that if God were to give you a daughter someday, you'd be happy to hand her to in marriage. And then pursue a wife.

Too often men are inhibited by feelings of adequacy or fears of rejection. Once you're prepared and prayed up, then move toward a woman with no unnecessary delays. If you're a single woman who desires marriage, young woman, prepare yourself now for marriage.

Godly femininity. Faithfulness in the little. Cultivating a heart of self-control and self-sacrifice as you love God.

And focus not on outward beauty, but the hidden person of the heart as you use your time for God's glory. See, we come to this passage and we see this is God's good design and it is a blessing. And we are to desire or to pray for it or to recognize it is not the only calling in life, but it is the normative design and God has offered a great gift to mankind in the family.

So Noah and his sons have this instruction. You're to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And that must have been a joy.

All right, we know the story that they start reproducing and more kids and cousins start marrying each other. Population begins to increase. God's game plan for filling the earth starts with number one, make babies.

Number two, the animals will fear you for the most part, use them. Okay, point number two on our sermon this morning, animals will fear you for the most part, use them. I had to get some help on the grammar there to make sure that that's expressed correctly.

Part two of the plan is this, use animals, they are yours. Verse two, and the fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky, with everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea into your hand they are given. It would seem in the flow of the narrative that most likely something has changed in the dynamic between how the humans and animals are relating, both since the fall and then perhaps even since the flood.

Okay, so I don't know what you picture, but when I picture the garden, I kind of picture like Snow White with the animals in the forest, everybody's friends, right, they're all getting along, they love to just help out and serve and talk. And maybe there's a little hint in scripture, if you take it literally, the idea that there will be children one day in the kingdom playing right there with a cobra, and it's just cool, like they enjoy each other. We see some little taste of this, dolphins are friendly with people, right, dolphins actually like people.

Penguins happen to not really know what to think about humans because they've never seen us, they're not scared, they're just like okay with humans being around. But for the most part, by and large, animals in the wild are what? They're afraid of us. We have a few outliers, the predators, but generally speaking, even many of those are going to be skittish, except for a few outliers when they encounter humans.

God says that they are given into your hand, it is given into your hand. What does this mean? Well, it means that animals are to be used by man to accomplish the purpose that God has given them. You have authority over animals.

We say it this way, people over pets. And of course, you're to respect the animal life, you're not to misuse it or abuse it, but it is yours. And God has given us many, many, many, many wonderful benefits from the animal kingdom.

You know, it's interesting, our culture just loves to pervert stuff. And so we're just going to pick on PETA for a minute this morning. PETA would like to encourage you to replace outdated phrases that are harmful to animals with these fun alternatives.

So if you have more than one way to complete a task, rather than saying there's more than one way to skin a cat, it'd be much kinder if you said there's more than one way to peel a potato. So we could just kind of begin to adopt that. Or if you're trying to accomplish two things with one action, instead of saying kill two birds with one stone, you could say feed two birds with one scone.

Isn't that a lot kinder? Instead of bring home the bacon, you could say bring home the bagels. I kind of get the skin the cat one, but a few of these are just astounding. Instead of saying put all your eggs in one basket, say put all your berries in one bowl.

You would like those PDFs that you could print them out and put the posters up as a public service announcement. They're for free on PETA's website, okay? So maybe someone could send out a link to everyone after the service today. What's the problem with that? There's a misunderstanding of God's design for animals.

That they are certainly a stewardship that we're to use, but you think of all the multiple ways that mankind has been benefited from research, experimentation, the development of drugs, animal byproducts. Just this week, I was reading a list of animal byproducts that are used for everyday things that we enjoy, and it's impossible to even list. It's too many.

I mean, we have the obvious ones like wool clothing and leather chairs. And did you know fireworks use gelatin from animal bones? And there's fabric softeners that use animal fat. And fish bladders are used as a clarifying agent to make beverages delicious.

And we use heart valves from pigs in human organ repair. And so in all of this, we're to understand that animals are to be given to man for our enjoyment and for our usefulness, okay? It's obvious you've never gone to a people zoo where the animals have captured some humans and set them up to come and observe and enjoy looking at. It's obvious in the natural order that man is over the animals.

And I want you to see here that this is a great gift from a loving and generous God who provides for mankind, okay? When you think, why are animals on the earth? It's God's gracious provision for mankind's well-being, for mankind's enjoyment. God feeds the animals. We just read about that in Psalm 104.

And then the animals help man. They serve his purposes. And today, we don't need animals like we once did.

We still use them in many contexts, but transportation and construction and war and building over many generations is hardly possible apart from animals. God's game plan for filling the earth. He gives man the blessing and the command to make babies.

He gives them all of the animals and says they'll fear you for the most part. Use them. Number three, eat them along with your vegetables.

Number three, eat them along with your vegetables. Verse three, every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you. As with the green plant, I give all to you.

So, the instruction is very simple. Move out, get your own place, right? Make babies, use the animals, and if you want, put them on the menu, okay? Now, we get to eat meat. People get into all kinds of notions about foods that the human body ought to eat and ought not to eat.

There's all kinds of different ideas out there. And I would just say, like, whatever you and your dietician and your research figure out, that's fine. I just want to speak to it this way.

There are those. I've had interactions with pastors before that would talk about how the God didn't really design the body to enjoy meat. You need to just eat plants.

I'm thinking, like, just read the Bible. Like, what does the text say? The Bible teaches us very simply that all foods are clean, Acts chapter 10, okay? Well, how are they sanctified? Well, through prayer and gratitude, 1 Timothy chapter 4 verse 5. So, as a pastor, my instruction to you regarding food would be, eat spiritually. Well, how do you do that? How do you eat spiritually? 1 Corinthians 9, you eat with self-control.

1 Corinthians 6, you eat what's beneficial and profitable, okay? You eat what you can eat with a clean conscience, Romans 14. You eat in such ways to not harm your brother, 1 Corinthians chapter 8. So, that is a biblical diet, okay? Self-control, beneficial, with gratitude unto the Lord, and a clean conscience in a way that's not unloving toward other people. There you go.

Is that helpful? Here God gives meat to mankind. Notice it's not a command that you have to eat meat, but if you want to now, you can. It's yours.

And really, with the exception of a little blip in history of Israel's time and of the Mosaic law, where there was rules about which meats you could and could not eat, other than that, we have really the full offer here of anything that you want to eat, you can. And then that's affirmed by Jesus when he says, all foods are clean. And then, of course, by Peter in Acts chapter 10.

There's only one restriction. Verse 4, however, flesh with its life, that is its blood, you shall not eat. Now, at first pass, you might be tempted to feel sorry for Noah that he's not allowed to eat rare meat.

You're kind of thinking like, what's the point of all these different varieties of meat to enjoy if they all have to be so well done that they all taste the same? Pink meat is not the issue here, okay? Rather, he's not to eat meat that has actual blood in it. Now, when you slaughter an animal, you drain the blood out, okay? So, when you're eating a juicy steak and there's that red liquid on your plate at the end, that's not blood, okay? That's water and myoglobin. Myoglobin is a protein.

It's red because there's iron in it, but it's not actually blood. So, you're going to enjoy juicy steak. Noah could have enjoyed a juicy steak.

The idea is that the blood itself needs to be drained out, okay? Blood's very different. I think, personally, it's not very enjoyable to eat. One of my best buddies is Puerto Rican.

So, one time, about 20 years ago, we went to Puerto Rico. We're driving around. We had all these little like stands, food stands that we were going to eat at that he remembers.

We're in the jungle and we're twisting around in the mountains. We show up at this little stand and what did we eat? We got served blood sausage, okay? Now, that's blood, okay? They pack the intestine with blood and rice. They cook it and then you eat it.

That's eating blood, okay? The juicy steak is not blood. The blood is drained out. Why is it that Noah cannot eat blood in the meat? It's not health-related.

It's symbolic, okay? It's theological. The point is that life is signified by blood and so Noah is to eat the meat in such a way as to honor the life by not eating it with the blood. In that sense, in a sense, blood is sacred.

It's to be viewed as sacred and so God is giving here Noah provision, okay? I want you to understand this that when you read that every moving thing, verse 3, that is alive is food for man as with the green plant. So, whatever it is, it's growing. All of the grains and the fruit and the produce, it is all a grace gift from God to sustain life.

You begin to think about all the language in scripture of the kinds of food that God gives to his people. What is Canaan called? A land flowing with milk and honey. You mean dairy and sugar are on the menu? Yes! And oil and grains and fruits and vegetables and nuts and berries.

See, God is a generous God and it shows up even in the kind of food that he would give to his people, that he's bountiful. One commendator says that man ought to eat then whatever food he's pleased to eat before God with a tranquil mind, knowing that it has been delivered into his hand by the right of donation. God is donating food to his people.

So, this is all a sign of God's goodness and his generosity and his kindness. You understand, God could have said that mankind will be sustained by crayons. I'm like, that's all you get to eat.

Different colors, but all in flavor, okay? Or Play-Doh or tree bark. Instead, God has given us a rich variety. And so, today at lunch, when you eat, I want you to give an extra heartfelt prayer of thanksgiving to God for his grace gift to you and whatever you get to eat.

That it's been provided for your enjoyment and it's a sign of God's grace and get this to all of his creatures. Understand that? This afternoon, believers and unbelievers all get to eat. They all get to shop at the grocery store.

God feeds even his enemies and it is a sign of his bountiful gift to creation. So, God is all about sustaining life on earth. His game plan is make babies, use animals, eat them.

Verse four, I'm sorry, point number four, verses five and six, execute murderers. Execute murderers, okay? So, now God is not only sustaining life, but he is securing life through this penalty. Essentially, the power to protect life, the idea that evildoers and criminals are to be punished.

So, this is part four now of the plan. Why is this given? Well, God understands it. There is evil intent in man's heart.

And so, if life is going to be protected on earth and preserved on earth, not only do you need reproduction and the use of animal life and food, but you need some way of protecting life from the bad guys. This is God's provision. He knows that the intent of man's heart is evil, even from his youth.

And so, although this is rudimentary, although this is seed form, when you come to Genesis 9, theologically what's happening is this is God authorizing the power of the sword for government. Okay, he's instituting government here. It's a key text to understand.

It's a gracious provision, okay? Everyone, say it with me. Government is a grace. Okay, government is a grace.

It's a gift from God. It restrains evil. Listen, anarchy is chaos.

Anarchy doesn't really exist because man will always revert to some form of government, even if informal. But here God is sanctioning, even authorizing people to put to death other people based upon certain conditions. This is a grace.

It says it this way in verse 5, surely I will require your lifeblood from every living thing I will require it. And from every man, from each man's brother, I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God he made man.

This is the Genesis of government, okay? The Genesis of government, the civil magistrate. And we live among the people today that are tremendously confused about how to derive ethics, how to come up with the rules that ought to govern, how to think about society and what's right and what's wrong. I was just reflecting this week as I was encountering various ways that people come up with ethics.

I just started jotting down a list. There's ethics by feelings, ethics by pragmatism, what works, ethics by human empathy, ethics by reason, ethics by logic, ethics by consensus. And I'll just say that there really are no meaningful ways to derive ethics apart from divine revelation.

Even natural law, although we learn some things, is subject to interpretation. And mankind always comes up to the wrong conclusion. And so the perspective here that God is giving is that if man kills man, then he is to be killed by man.

In other words, you can forfeit your right to live. So everyone has a right to life, we could say. And if you violate someone else's right to life, then you violate your own right to live.

Secularists can't answer this question. Why is it wrong to kill people? It's a basic question. They'll try to come up with answers, but they don't hold up because ultimately it has something to do with like man's contribution, kind of man's uniqueness, fact that man's specials were kind of starting to get the biblical ideal right.

But if we don't kill people just because man is special, then what about the people who just weaken society? What about the bottom feeders? What about the non-contributors? What about the lazy? What about the unintelligent? What about the sick and the weak? If we're hungry and we want to be efficient, why not just eat people? There's no way to answer those questions apart from special revelation, even by observation from the natural world. And so man's intrinsic value is based upon this theological reality that man is created in the image of God. Verse 6, that's the reason.

Why capital punishment for murder? For in the image of God, he made man. So I want you to understand this, that your value is not based upon who you are, what you look like, what you contribute on the earth. You have value because you're one of God's creatures and you're created in his image.

The Bible would say that you're fearfully and wonderfully made, even uniquely designed by God, knit together while you were in your mother's womb. And I want you to understand that even on your worst day, you're still a creature creating the image of God. He said, even the darkest criminal, even the darkest criminal still receives a measure of dignity and respect and honor.

Why? Because they're a creature created in the image of God. I just tried that on for size. Next time you want to mock someone, right? This is why we treat one another nicely or with kindness or with love and care because we're created in the image of God.

And so you're that idea of lifeblood being required in verse 5. It's not that you're going to have to give a quart of blood or plasma donation, but blood is a euphemism for life. And God says what? I will require it. I will require it.

It's prior to the Mosaic covenant. This is a requirement by God. If you remember when Cain killed Abel, what happened? God graciously preserved his life.

He let him continue to live. Now, if Cain were to kill Abel, they do an investigation. They find out based upon the evidence that Cain in fact killed his brother.

Then Cain forfeits his life and needs to be put to death. And I'll tell you this, when this instruction is followed, it is a grace to mankind in two ways. Number one, it is a deterrent.

It is a deterrent. They just say public execution of violent criminals has a deterring effect on other people. Cause you to really question is doing the crime really worth not doing the time, but worth potentially forfeiting my life? It has a way of creating a safer society.

It's not impossible to solve the problem on crime. The issue with crime is not taking an appropriate approach toward it. And so the idea here for violent crime is that those criminals are to be executed.

It's a deterrent to others. Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 8.11, if you have this long sentence for an evil work that's not carried out, then people's hearts just run riot. So punishment is a deterrent.

And then secondly, it actually removes evildoers. Okay, it removes evildoers. Rather than being in and out of incarceration or rehab centers, violent people are removed from society.

And my brothers and sisters, it's a benefit to mankind. It is a grace. It's a grace to mankind.

God's design is wise here. And it is not inappropriate. It's always equitative.

In fact, the legal standard known as lex talionis, an eye for an eye, comes later in the Levitical standard it's elaborated upon, is the way that God deals with punishment. It came into law like this, Leviticus 24, if a man injures his neighbor, just as he has done, so it shall be done to him. Fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, just as he has injured a man, so it shall be inflicted on him.

Exodus 21, there's an injury, shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, bruise for bruise, wound for wound. Now, children, quick clarification, okay? If your sibling harms you in some way, principle of lex talionis is not personal retribution. So, you get punched in the face by a sibling, you're not allowed to punch in the face.

That's not what an eye for an eye is. In fact, Jesus would clarify that. Rather, even in the law, it would say, you shall not hate your brother in your heart, and you shall not take vengeance.

So, this principle is designed by God for government, not for personal vengeance, for enacting equitable punishment to serve as a deterrent and to also serve as a purge. How should we think about it? Well, think of it this way. John Calvin writes, God so highly estimates our life that he will not suffer murder to go unavenged, and it is no common proof of God's love toward us that he undertakes the defense of our lives and declares that he will be the avenger of our death.

When you read Genesis chapter 9, people get wound up all the time about how we need to be compassionate toward evildoers. You're misunderstanding compassion. God is compassionate.

He loves his children. In Genesis 9, he's saying, I love humanity so much that I want to protect them, and here's my plan. This is how I value human life.

This is God's demonstration of his care for his creatures. He's restraining evil on the earth. Noah, I'm sure, heard that and thought, all right, well, we're probably going to need that.

I mean, he'd seen the vigilante justice. He'd seen the wickedness of man, the violence of man being great on the earth. He said, all right, now we have a game plan.

This is the deterrent. This is the purge. This is how we're going to approach violence now on the earth.

This was a grace gift from God. It was his game plan for filling the earth. That brings us to our fifth and final point.

Point number one, make babies. Point number two, animals will fear you for the most part. Use them.

Point number three, eat them along with your vegetables. Point number four, execute murderers. And number five, make babies.

Verse seven, as for you, be fruitful, multiply, swarm on the earth, and multiply in it. So, part five of the plan is, repeat step one, okay? I mean, these are the bookends of this section. Swarm there, team, become innumerable.

I just want you to stop and think for a minute. Did the plan work? Did the people to eight billion on the earth? I would say that plan worked. As a side note, it's ludicrous to consider various evolutionary perspectives that man has been on earth for 200,000 years.

Even if you take into account disease and war and famine, man just reproduces at too fast of a rate. Man's been on the earth 200,000 years. There are far more people on earth than right now.

4,500 years, we have eight billion from eight. And so, when you look at the earth and its population of eight billion people, it testifies that God created the earth and made it suitable for life, that God has blessed humanity with fruitfulness and fecundity. Estimates from the Population Reference Bureau, which yes, that's apparently a real thing.

The Population Reference Bureau estimates that there have been 110 billion people who've lived on the earth. Obviously, there's no way to really estimate that. It's a guess.

It's an educated guess. But I want you to see that Noah's family did exactly what God blessed them to do, and they did so with his provision, and they did so with his protection. God provided.

He gave him the instruction, he blessed them, and then he gave them all that they needed. Even in the midst of evil and opposition, humanity continues to persevere and remain. When you look around and you see the fruitfulness of the earth, it testifies, it testifies to the generosity of God.

And it ought to silence every grumbling and complaining heart. John Murray asked this, just listen as a point of application. He asked this question, how is it that men who still lie under the wrath and curse of God and are heirs of hell, enjoy so many good gifts at the hand of God? How is it that men who are not savingly renewed by the Spirit of God, nevertheless exhibit so many qualities, gifts, and accomplishments that promote the preservation, temporal happiness, cultural progress, social and economic improvement of themselves and others? To put the question most comprehensively, how is it that this sin-cursed world enjoys so much favor and kindness at the hand of its holy and ever-blessed creator? I mean, that gets right to the heart of the issue.

It is astounding that God is so generous and gracious and good to creatures who, professing to be wise, exchange the glory of God and the glory of the creator for an incorruptible or for a corruptible image, for the likeness of corruptible man and creatures. And rather than glorifying God, they do not give him thanks, but he continues to endure with patience. Well, for those of us who are in Christ, we know God's not only common grace, but we know his saving grace, do we not? That brought us into the family.

For by grace you've been saved through faith. This is not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

Will you pray with me? God, you are so good, and you remind us of that. Thank you for attesting to it. Forgive us for complaining and grumbling against you, Lord, for being experts at taking your good gifts, assuming we deserve them, and then complaining about the things that we don't have.

We're just arrogant people who are entitled in our attitude and disposition to you. Thank you, Lord, for the reminders of your generosity. Thank you for your patience and your endurance.

And Lord, I just pray that we'd be those who enjoy and testify and give thanks and praise you for all of your goodness to your creation. And Lord, as we have opportunity to speak to those who are outside of Christ, pray that this would even be part of our evangelism to show them from the scriptures the wonderful God who's been so gracious to them, and yet they're still sinning against and taking for granted. We love you and praise you for all these things.

In Jesus' name, Amen.

Well, this morning we're going to be in Genesis chapter 8, so I invite you to take your Bibles and turn to Genesis chapter 8. Last week I heard there were a few surprises that we made it through a whole chapter, and I kind of took that as a challenge. So we're gonna go through an entire chapter again this week. Genesis chapter 8 verses 1 through 22, and entitled this morning's message, God's Grace Preserves.

God's Grace Preserves. I want you to think this morning, before we get into the text, about how you view God's care for you. How do you view your relationship to God, and in particular how God treats you, how he regards you? Maybe we could say it this way, in the particular, specific circumstances of your life, do you see God being faithful to you? Do you see God providing for you? Doing so in such a way that that you're comforted, and he gets the glory.

I'm convinced, being in the church for many years, that many believers live in a state of perpetual hopelessness or discouragement, because they don't view God's perfections and their relationship to God in light of his perfections rightly. They kind of know generally these truths, but they don't they don't bring those home into the everyday circumstances of life. The truth of the matter is we can't see God.

We pray to him, but he doesn't speak audibly to us. He speaks to us through his word, but it's not like he can just go sit on the couch together, and he can put his arm around you. There's an element of faith in the Christian life that that must lay hold of promises that that are yet unrealized.

Believing at times in the midst of circumstances that appear to be contrary. And so Genesis 8 brings us to a passage that it is absolutely striking concerning the faithfulness of God and his forbearance. And so we throw that statement around a lot.

We'll say, well, God is faithful, and I think we mean it insofar as it goes. It's kind of just a statement like God is faithful. What does it actually mean that God is faithful? I think Genesis 8 puts really this gracious faithfulness of God on display.

So let's read our passage this morning, Genesis chapter 8. We're gonna see how God deals with Noah as Noah and the family and the animals get off of the ark. Genesis 8, 1. Then God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the ark. God caused a wind to pass over the earth and the waters subsided.

Also the fountains of the deep and the floodgates of the sky were closed and the rain from the sky was restrained. And the water receded from the earth going forth and returning and at the end of 150 days the water decreased. In the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, Eric rested upon the mountains of Ararat.

Now the water decreased steadily until the tenth month. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains appeared. Then it happened at the end of 40 days that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made and he sent out a raven.

It went out flying back and forth until the water was dried up from the earth. Then he sent out a dove from him to see if the water was abated from the face of the land. But the dove found no resting place for the sole of its foot.

So it returned it to him into the ark for the water was on the surface of all the earth. Then he stretched out his hand and took it in and brought it into the ark to himself. Then he waited another seven days and again, he sent out the dove from the ark.

The dove came to him toward evening and behold, in its beak was a freshly picked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the water was abated from the earth and he waited yet another seven days and sent out the dove but it did not return him again. Now it happened in the 601st year.

In the first month, on the first day of the month, the water was dried up from the earth. And Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked and behold, the surface of the ground was dried up. In the second month, on the 27th day of the month, the earth was dry.

Then God spoke to Noah saying, go out of the ark you and your wife and your sons and your son's wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that is with you, birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may swarm on the earth and that they may be fruitful and multiply on the earth. So Noah went out and his sons and his wife and his son's wives with him.

Every beast, every creeping thing and every bird, everything that moves on the earth went out by their families from the ark. And Noah built an altar to Yahweh and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. Yahweh smelled the soothing aroma and Yahweh said to himself, I will never again curse the ground because of man.

For the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth. And I will never again strike down every living thing as I have done, while all the days of the earth remain. Seed time and harvest and cold and heat and summer and winter and day and night shall not cease.

God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Keeping an outline this morning, it would be this grace on display as the waters recede. Grace on display as the waters recede.

This is an account of God's graciousness to Noah and ultimately to humanity. And so our first point comes to us in verses 1 through 14, and it's this God considers Noah on the boat. Okay, God considers Noah on the boat.

Verse 1 says, then God remembered Noah. Don't skip over that personal language. And think of the hundred different ways that Moses could have described this moment.

Things like, when the flooding reached the appointed number of days. Or when the water had gotten high enough, long enough to drown everyone. Or when God had decided that his point had been unequivocally made.

And we read in the text, then God remembered Noah. This is to be seen as personal. God's personal involvement in caring for his own, as the Bible would depict God as a compassionate father.

Or times a protective eagle. And when you read that God remembered, it's not like when we remember. Right? We have memory problems.

And this is just part of what it means to be human. In fact, for those of you who are into multitasking, it's not a real thing. Okay? Your brain can really truly focus on one thing, and then at most, you can maybe have three to four other categories kind of running in the background.

Really can't have two things at the foreground, and you really can't have more than about three or four kind of rolling around at the same time. This happens, right? Sometimes you'll be in a conversation, and you're thinking, all right, and then I need to say this, and you follow up here, and I want to go back, and oops, something else came in, and it bumped something out the back. Like, we just struggle to remember.

When you read God remembers, it doesn't mean that he ever forgot. It's not as if God doesn't have enough computing power, and he must concentrate on one thing at a time. First John 3 20, God knows all things.

And he knows all things at all times. And he sees all things. Psalm 33, he sees all the sons of men.

He gazes on all the inhabitants of the earth. He understands all of their works. So when the Bible says God remembers, it's to highlight, not that he's going from forgetting to recognizing, but rather, God is about to act in accordance with his character and his promises.

God's about to act in accordance with his character and his promises. Psalm 98 3 puts it this way. He's remembered his loving-kindness and his faithfulness to the house of Israel.

And so when you read that God remembered Noah, it's not that that Noah is just such an unforgettable guy. When you meet Noah, it's never gonna forget that guy. You know, this is God recalling the fact that he made a promise to Noah.

If you remember back in chapter 6 18, he said, I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall enter the ark. I'm gonna save you, Noah. I'm gonna preserve you in a flood of judgment.

I'm gonna provide salvation for you. And so when you think of God remembering, you're to understand it as the all-seeing, all-knowing God now coming to his creatures and acting in fulfillment of his promises. So God remembering Noah is a way of expressing God's faithfulness to this man on the ark.

And in fact, God coming to the aid of his people uses remembrance language to have the Old Testament. It's gonna happen soon to Israel when they're stuck in Egypt as slaves. And God is going to to look upon their plight, and we read in Exodus 2 24 that God heard their groaning, and he did what? He remembered his covenant.

And so you might be sitting here this morning, and you say, you know what? I feel a little bit forgotten about by God. I have some difficult things in my life. I have some hard things that have been going on.

I have circumstances that haven't pound out the way that I would intend them to. I'm bearing certain griefs and sorrows. Or maybe I have a circumstance in my life that doesn't immediately and obviously line up with the character of God, and I feel frankly a little bit forgotten or uncared for.

Your emotions ever told you that God is distant from you? I would say this, it's possible that God is distant from you. But if you're not in Christ, if you've not repented and believed on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, if you've not found salvation, then your feelings are reality. But if you're in Christ, then God always remembers his covenant people, and yet sometimes we feel differently.

It was Isaiah that was speaking in Isaiah 49 of Jerusalem, and what was Jerusalem saying in Isaiah 49? Yahweh has forgotten me. The Lord has forgotten me. And what did God say to that? Here was his response.

Can a woman forget her infant and have no compassion on the son of her womb? You think, well, no, I mean like moms with infants, I mean, they're pretty attentive. But then he says this, even these may forget. There might even be a mom that would forget about her infant.

But he says, I will not forget you. Behold, I've inscribed you on the palms of my hands, and your walls are continually before me. If you are in Christ, and you are part of God's covenant people, then God will always remember you.

He will remember his covenant to you. He's gonna bring your salvation to completion. He knows your circumstance.

I have no idea what Noah's mental state was as he was cooped up inside of an ark for the better part of a year, but I would imagine at some point he had to think, Lord, are we ever gonna get off this boat? God remembered Noah. He remembers Noah. He remembers his promise.

He remembers his covenant. And he made the promise not just to Noah, but to the beasts, and the cattle that were with him in the ark. And so what does God do? He acts in accordance with his character and his promises.

And God caused, second part of verse 1, a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters subsided. Okay, tremendous amount of water. There's a tremendous amount of water on the earth.

It's incalculable, the amount of water, the sheer volume of it. And at this point, we're starting to get kind of some timelines here. We're reading in verse 2 that the fountains of the deep and the floodgates of the sky were closed, and the rain of the sky was restrained.

Okay, so sometimes people read the floodgates of the sky, and they conjure up all kinds of ideas. There was an idea popularized in the 60s by a couple of men who wrote a book that there was a water canopy. That would be the firmament from Genesis 1.6, and this kind of vapor barrier protected the atmosphere.

It explains why dinosaurs lived, and now they don't. It explains why men lived long lives before, and now they don't. The text doesn't indicate that there was any kind of a water canopy.

There's a lot of scientific challenges even with that view. Here, rather, it's just poetic imagery. The floodgates of the sky were closed.

So the picture is, wherever the water came from, God flooded the earth with water from above. It doesn't state how he did it. Clouds or canopy, how he injected water into the atmosphere, but it states that he did it.

And then also there was water that was coming up out of the deep. Depicted as from below. Underground water, likely seismic disruptions, tectonic plates shifting, volcanic activity.

Possibly some of the crevices that are open in the ocean now were water coming from within the earth. The text says that God, remembering Noah, caused a wind to pass over the earth. Whether that wind kept the water in the earth's atmosphere or took it away, the point is that God is drying out the earth, and he's drying out the earth in faithfulness to Noah.

For this guy and his family. For those of you who are trying to get the time sequence together and are interested in this, we do have a clear time stamp on the bookends of the time that Noah is on the ark. The first bookend is back in chapter 7 verse 11.

Where we read in the 600th year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the 17th day of the month. On this day all the fountains of the great deep split open and the floodgates of the sky were opened. So the flooding starts there.

According to the verses before, Noah was on the ark for the week leading up to that. So we have the date, the exact date that the flood began in chapter 7 verse 11. He was on the boat a week early getting prepared.

Then we read that they got off the boat in chapter 8 verses 13 and 14, that this happened in the 600th first year. Verse 14, in the second month on the 27th day of the month. So those are the bookends.

So we know when the floodwaters began. We know Noah got on the boat a week before that. We have the exact date that Noah got off of the vessel.

So as we walk through this, I'll just kind of make mention as to where we're at along the way. In the course of what was a little more than a year. We read in verse 4, in the 7th month, on the 7th day of the month, the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat.

Okay, so this is our time stamp here. We know the water's been prevailing on the earth for 150 days according to Genesis 7 verse 24. So this is the 150 day marker on the 7th month on the 17th day of the month.

And it is at this point that the ark now comes to rest. If you remember, the highest mountains, the text said, were covered by 15 cubits of water. And that makes sense because the ark itself was 30 cubits.

And naval architects would calculate that the draft, that's the part of the ark's hull that would be under water, that would be submerged, would be about half its height. So if you have a 30 cubit tall ark floating in the water, 15 cubits are below, 15 are above. That's why the water was 15 cubits above the highest mountain.

It meant that the ark was floating. It wouldn't scrape the mountaintops as it floated around. And as the waters begin to settle down and begin to recede, the ark rests in the mountains of Ararat.

So this puts us, for our time stamp, five months from when it first started raining. Okay, five months from when the flood waters began. The first 40 days and nights were torrential downpour according to Genesis 7 verse 12.

And during those 40 days, the water was prevailing, the water was multiplying, it was coming from above and from below. Picture there is a God opened up the storehouses of water full throttle. Then over the next 110 days, the water remained, it prevailed.

And at the end of 150 days, which is where we're at here, the water receded just to the point where that ark that had been floating came to rest in the mountains of Ararat. I think we kind of always picture the ark like landing on the very peak of a mountain. Almost like you need to wait carefully as you get off.

Probably not exactly how it happened. Maybe picture a nice plateau so everyone could safely get off and not have like a 30,000 foot descent. But somewhere in the mountains of Ararat, the vessel comes to rest.

If you want to kind of get in your mind's eye, it's anachronistic, their months were different. But I thought I would just translate this into our calendar months to kind of give you an idea of what the timeline was like. Okay, so just hang with me.

These are the wrong months, but we're going to use them. They got on the ark conceptually on the second month on the 10th day. So we could say they got onto the ark on February 10th.

The waters came then a week later, which would be February 17th. And that would be Noah's date there in Genesis 7, 11. The floodwaters then rise for 40 days to bring you to the equivalent of March 27th.

Then the waters prevailing, meaning it's really remaining on the earth, but the active storehouses of water are not continuing to multiply. The water got up to the point it needed to. Now we're at July 17th of that same year.

The waters have begun decreasing such that the earth rests. Now when we come to verse 5, the water decreased steadily until the 10th month. In the 10th month on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains appeared.

This would bring us three months later to October 10th. So the water got on the earth a lot faster than it came off. You understand that? 40 days to fill up.

Five months later, we're still sitting on the ark. We're 110 days later. The ark comes to rest.

Now we're slowly waiting for the waters to recede. And the ark here is said to be somewhere in the mountains, upon the mountains of Ararat. Over the years, there have been many claims to have discovered the ark.

I think it was duped a couple times growing up, and then you kind of just get used to it that every few years, someone is going to announce that they found some piece of the ark or some piece of wood, some photograph that they caught it, and then something happened, you know, to the photograph. Usually it's speculation or you find out it's fabricated. I'll just say two things, maybe to kind of shepherd us in how we think about this.

First of all, just don't be vulnerable to myths and speculations. God's people are to deal in the truth. So don't follow all of the vain speculations of people that are always trying to promote new ideas of things that they've found.

There's people who have devoted their entire lives to archaeological expeditions to finding the ark. And so as believers, we're to be steadfast, not easily taken for a ride. So just be sober as you assess those things.

Second, I'll just say on the face of it, it seems extremely unlikely that any part of the ark would ever be discovered. Just in my drive to church, I pass multiple wooden buildings that are less than 100 years old, and they're falling apart. They're falling down.

And so sunlight every time destroys wood, let alone rain, humidity, temperature changes, bugs. All the people would potentially want to repurpose the wood. So I don't think there's probably an ark to be found.

Maybe you had an ancient preservation society dedicated to the restoration and preservation of the ark. I mean, it just gets a little absurd, right? You picture, like, one of Noah's grandsons strapping himself to the ark, you know, to preserve it and not let anyone take the wood away. It's just much more logical that that wood probably was taken and used, utilitarian.

But whatever the case, the ark comes to rest. The waters are slowly, slowly receding, verse 5. The tops of other mountains begin to appear, entire mountain ranges. And in verse 6, Noah starts to check the water tables.

We read, then it happened at the end of 40 days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made. So this is 40 days into the 150 days of the receding waters. It's the second major time division.

It began in the seventh month. And now for our little exercise, this would put us at November 11th. So happy Veterans Day.

Noah gets to open the window of the ark. It's like the text there is stating that he had made. So this is the window that he built.

He finally gets the chance to open it up and to send out a bird. And so verse 7, he sends out a raven. It went out flying back and forth until the water was dried up from the earth.

And so it's interesting here in God's commitment to means that Noah's not opening the door to the ark prematurely. I mean, can you imagine what that would have been like? We have problems in our vehicle if someone gets unbuckled prematurely, right? I've been on many planes where we're still on the tarmac and the ding hasn't happened, people start to take off their seatbelts. It becomes challenging to get everyone kind of back in order.

So all of the ark is still sealed up. The door is closed. Noah has extra birds on board.

And so he starts using them as scouts. We see animals already proving useful to man. Sends out the raven.

It flies back and forth until the water was dried up from the earth. Ravens would eat carry-ons. So if there was any kind of dead meat lying around, the raven would have been able to be sustained on that.

Verse 8. Then Noah takes a dove and sends it out from him to see if the water was abated from the face of the land. The dove goes out. It finds no resting place in verse 9. So it comes back because there's still water on the surface of the earth.

So Noah brings the bird back in. He decides to give it another week. Verse 10.

He waits another 10 days. He sends another dove out from the ark. This dove comes back.

And this time the dove has in its beak an olive leaf. Okay. Things are growing.

And if you've seen in the Christian bookstore, the little doves with the leaf in its mouth, this is obviously the text that it is taken from. And yet when Noah sees that bird come back with that little sapling, that fresh leaf, he knew, the text says, verse 11, he knew that the water was abated from the earth. I mean, he knows things are starting to be produced.

It's amazing. Just a couple of weeks ago, as part of our science curriculum at home, the kids are learning about seeds. And one of the joys of parenthood is relearning things that you've forgotten.

So if you asked me like two weeks ago, how a seed works, I'd say, I don't know. And now I know. So I just got a chance to relearn that.

But seeds are designed by God to open up, to germinate when the conditions are right for the plant to grow. And so Noah's getting his first indication that the earth will indeed sustain life again. Verse 12, he waited yet another seven days and sent out a dove, but it did not return to him again.

And I was just thinking, man, I can only imagine the anticipation that he was experiencing in that moment. You know, I already think it's coming back. I don't know how to give it another hour.

Let's not get our hopes up too high just yet. The picture is, would the bird find an environment suitable and sustainable for life outside of the ark, where it could gather food and build a nest and begin to live? And so this time the bird never comes back. Verse 13, it happened in the 601st year in the first month, on the first day of the month, that the water was dried up from the earth.

Then Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and behold, the surface of the ground was dried up. First day, first day of the month, happy new year. Again, anachronistic.

He peels back the covering, whatever exactly that looked like. He looks out, he sees dry land. Now, probably things are still soggy.

There's still lots of puddles. Things are progressing nicely, but it's not for another 70 more days that the earth is said to be dry. We read in verse 14, in the second month on the 27th day of the month, the earth was dry.

The idea is now it was legitimately ready for habitation. There'd be enough grass, there'd be enough plant life to sustain the animals and the creatures as they would come off the ark. There'd be enough propagation of the foodstuffs that Noah and his family could begin to start life outside of the ark and eat from the produce of the ground.

And so all of this is depicted very personally as God showed care for Noah. He promised Noah he would bring salvation. He's doing it.

He's now prepared the earth for life. And so God now commands Noah to leave the boat. This is the second evidence of God's grace on display as the waters recede.

God not only considers Noah and remembers him and has promised him, but now God commands Noah to leave the boat. Verse 15, then God spoke to Noah saying, go out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons' wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that is with you, birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth that they may swarm on the earth and that they may be fruitful and multiply on the earth.

That would have been a wonderful message to receive from the Lord. There's no, it's time to get off the boat and get to work. It's time to go fill the earth.

Go do stuff. This echoes, of course, Genesis chapter one, where God commands man to be fruitful and multiply, to rule over the earth, to subdue the creation. So this is that original first creation mandate reiterated to Noah.

Noah, go do what Adam and Eve were supposed to do in the first place. Verse 18, So Noah went out and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him. And every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth went out by their families from the ark.

So you have an exodus leaving the ark. You'd have had animals going out and pairing off and doing what animals do. They go, pop a bear and mama bear.

They're going to make a bunch of baby bears. And the process will continue. And soon creation will be teeming with animate life again, life multiplying.

I was not quite alive when Mount St. Helens erupted. But when that volcano erupted, it destroyed 86,000 acres of timber. It just obliterated wildlife.

And scientists were amazed because they did not expect life to return to the mountain as quickly as it did. In fact, it was just a matter of weeks. The vegetation was already growing out of the ash, out of all of the desolation.

Plants designed by God to pioneer the soil and break it up and add nitrogen so that new plants could come in and more easily grow. And as a kid, I have etched in my mind being up to watch whatever the science museum is up there, the videos. And you see all the decimation and you see all the destruction and everything obliterated.

And then the happy music starts and you start to see the wildflowers and you see the trees growing and everything teeming with life. And it's fresh and vibrant. Today, you just look around the earth and what do you see? We're not even able to count the kinds of organisms on the earth, let alone number them.

And so when you look on the earth, it testifies to the effectiveness of God's plan. That it was a good plan, that it was completely successful. That God originally created the earth, as we said, for man, he filled the earth with animate life.

He gave man a charge because of man's great wickedness. He destroyed the earth with a flood. And yet here we see backing up to the original intent and then God successfully bringing it about.

I don't know what Noah did when he first got off the ark. I was reflecting on that about this week and I thought, I'm pretty sure I know what I would do. I think I'd be hooping and hollering.

I'd probably kiss the ground. I think I would. I think I just, I know myself well enough.

I would be kissing the ground. But I imagine there was a somber note as well to step off the ark and have an earth that's quiet and desolate and empty. When you just imagine the silence, even from the created animals, there's not many of them on the earth.

And the reflections on all that's been lost on the one hand, recognizing, okay, God started over and that was a grace and a mercy and he dealt with wickedness. But at the same time, some of those are my friends and family members. I grieve over creatures made in the image of God who are gone.

And so I'm sure it was quite an experience for Noah coming off of the ark. Anticipation of what the future is going to bring as well as a somber note of all that has just happened. Not only that, but surely there would have been a lot of work to do.

Because I think if you're Noah, you get off the ark, what do you do first? And do you start a fire? Do you dig a latrine? Do you build a tent so you can get the tools off the ark and get them all organized? Because you're going to have a lot of work and construction to do and you need to get everything organized and set up or maybe build a shelter. Noah's first recorded activity is worship. Noah's first recorded activity is worship.

Look at verse 20. Then Noah built an altar to Yahweh and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And Yahweh smelled the soothing aroma.

The very first thing Noah does when he gets off the ark is worship. This brings us to our third point. Certainly it's going to highlight Noah, but it highlights God as well because God commends Noah's worship of him.

God looks favorably upon Noah's worship. And so I'm sure as the animals came off, there were those animals that weren't going to be penned or attended to, right? You kind of let the platypuses go and kind of do their thing. You let the crocodiles go and they can do their thing and the dinosaurs.

But when it came to the clean animals, the sheep and the goats and the cows, I mean, all right, we need to get some pens built here. Those animals are going to be domesticated. Now they're going to be used by man to accomplish work and for eating and for sacrificing.

And so Noah begins this process of slaughtering animals and offering them to the Lord. I think being a boy at one time and then raising boys, I just have this picture of, you know, they're separating animals and they have the clean animals that they have seven of. So there's enough to sacrifice.

And Noah telling his boys, they get to work, start getting the animals together to sacrifice. And he looks over and one of the boys zealously slaughtered one that came out on the twos and the pair saying, whoops, we just made a certain species go extinct because he got a little zealous there and didn't really think it through. These are clean animals, okay? So there's enough here.

There was enough brought on the ark that they can slaughter the animals and not go into extinction. And so the picture that you should see in your mind's eye coming off the ark is that Noah starts out by gathering the rocks, putting them together with his family to build an altar, to get it constructed. And he takes those animals that he's penned and a knife and he begins to get to work slaughtering.

I mean, this would have been a blood bath outside of the ark. And this is an expression of Noah's love for God. And it would have been a reminder to Noah's sacrifice always was that the cost of sin is death.

These animals weren't being sacrificed necessarily for atonement per se, but that's the very nature of the death of animals. It's a reminder of sin and a reminder of the need for atonement. And so Noah gets off the ark and what is in his heart to do first and foremost is to worship the Lord.

And I was gripped by this. I don't know about you, but sometimes I get so greed over my distracted, hurried, duplicitous heart. And I don't know what I would have done if I was Noah coming off the ark.

I trust that in my love and adoration for God, offering animal sacrifices would have been on my action list. But looking at my track record, I wonder would building an altar and worshiping God have been number one on the list. I could see there being a few other things I would attend to first.

Maybe get the flocks reproducing for a while before we start taking of those clean animals, kind of reserve some security for the future. Kind of an analyzer, maybe spend a lot of time analyzing the best location for an altar so it doesn't get in the way of other things. Getting home-based established the way I wanted it.

So, you know, it gets off the ark and his first love is the Lord. It's his first desire to give thanks, to recognize that it was God that brought him through those waters of judgment safely. And we'll learn later in the sacrificial system, the parameters that God would give to Israel regarding their sacrifice.

It was very specific. What was it to be? You take of the best of your flock, you take of your first fruits and you offer to God your very best. So Noah's there.

These are all the animals on the earth. You're taking a goat. These are all the goats that exist on the planet.

And you pick the strongest and the most beautiful and the best and the healthiest of the bunch. And you say that one is the Lord's. It's a good question.

Ask ourselves, do you give God your first and your best? When you're thinking of your own worship, your own private devotion to the Lord, the way that you would commune with him, the attention that you give him, do you give your first and best to work and to entertainment and to leisure and pleasure? And then God gets your leftovers or does he get your first and your best? Noah gives the very best of his animals. And we know that he's giving of the best and giving of a right heart because we read in verse 21, and Yahweh smelled the soothing aroma. And this is not like Cain's sacrifice.

Cain's going through the motions. Cain's bringing the offering. The Lord is seeing right through it that your heart's not really in it.

So the picture here is not of a bloodthirsty and vindictive God who just loves seeing animals slaughtered as if that is the point. And now his anger has been abated because some animals died. God is pleased because he delights in the praises of his people.

God delights in the worship of his people. He loves that Noah loves him. And so Noah's doing not out of compulsion something, but he's doing what he wants to do when he gets off the ark.

If you think of it this way, there's all kinds of motives that mix us up in serving the Lord. Noah doesn't exactly have a lot of people to impress when he gets off the ark. He's already been with his wife and his three sons and his daughter-in-law for a year.

His three daughters-in-law for a year, okay? There's not a whole lot of secrets anymore in the family. Everybody's kind of knows where everyone's at. And so God is pleased with the arona.

We get to this and it's such a beautiful moment in the text of God remembering Noah. Noah coming off of the ark. Noah's very first act being worship, God being pleased with the worship.

And I don't know about you, but I happen to not watch movies a whole lot. I don't watch them very often. And it's kind of funny because Susie and I, when we do watch something, we don't have much of an appetite for drama and tension.

I think there's like enough drama and tension in real life that if we're gonna be entertained, it's like, and this just be really mellow, like really mellow. I mean, even watching like a kid's movie with the kids, it's like, that's about as much tension as we can handle. The store waiting for the story to get resolved, let alone some kind of action thriller.

But movies tell a story and we want to see the story. What we want to see it resolved, right? Do you like the movies where they leave it unresolved? There's a couple of threads hanging. No, we like no more cliffhangers, no foreboding future.

Everything wrapped up, everything tidy. And it doesn't always work that way. And this story is much the same.

You have the defilement and the corruption of the earth being wiped away. It's all clean now, praise God. The memories of mankind's wickedness has been washed away.

All of the altars, all of the temples, all of the things that man had built for his own namesake is gone. All of the places of immorality, not all of the money, all of the cities, all of the idols, it's all gone. It's been washed away.

It's all new, it's clean, it's fresh. There's one family on earth. It's led by a man who loves God.

He's righteous, he's blameless. His first act coming off the ark is worship. And in the moment of that, we think, oh, it's all resolved.

God is pleased, everything is as it should be. And then we read this foreboding cliffhanger thread that's now unresolved that comes and disrupts that beautiful moment. And Yahweh said to himself, second part of verse 21, I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth.

And I will never again strike down every living thing as I have done. This is grace on display as the waters recede. It's our final point, God commits to preserve humanity.

God commits to preserve humanity. I mean, right in the midst of this beautiful moment, as the Lord is smiling upon Noah, as it were, and his offering, the Lord is saying to himself, I'm already making provision for next time. What's interesting here is it would appear that this moment wasn't stated to Noah.

God's speaking to Noah in verse 15, but here in verse 21, Yahweh is saying to himself, okay, inter-Trinitarian counsel here. And what does this show us? Well, this is God's compassion toward his creatures, God's disposition toward sinners, God's heart, we could say toward humanity. And this is the disposition that's going to sit behind God's covenant in Genesis chapter nine that we'll see throughout the rest of Genesis.

What does he vow? I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth. And I will never again strike down every living thing as I have done. What's the gist of this glorious promise? Mankind is going to blow it again.

Mankind is going to blow it again. And here in the text, it's clear that it's even young people that have evil hearts and evil intentions. And you say, man, I don't really believe that.

I don't have kids. I'd invite you to come and volunteer, be a part of our Adventure Club Children's Ministry. You'll see the darkened hearts.

I mean, I love kids, but by nature, by nature, self-willed, self-focused, self-deceived, self-exalting. And so Genesis 8, 21 shows us that God is gracious to sinners in saying, I'm going to be patient. I'm going to endure.

And if you see the logic, it goes like this. This is God's commitment. If God were to operate in the fashion such that he destroys the earth every time it's filled with wickedness, then you might as well start construction on the next arc right now.

The best indicator of future performance is past performance. Why is it that God is not going to destroy the earth with the flood again? It's not because we learned our lesson so well. It's not because now we're starting with a righteous family or we can build upon what we learned in the past for the future.

It's not that technology is somehow going to advance man's understanding so he does a better job. No, the earth is not destroyed simply because God promises to be patient toward mankind, even when man deserves punishment. And this will be what sits behind God's entire redemptive program.

And so God promises not to destroy the earth again for a time. Look at verse 22. God's not going to destroy the earth again while all the days of the earth remain.

Seed time and harvest and cold and heat and summer and winter and day and night shall not cease. What is the Lord saying to himself? As long as the earth is here, I'm going to sustain it. As long as it's here, I'm going to keep it going.

You'll get seasons. You'll get days and night. You're even going to have a climate that will sustain life.

All of it's going to continue until it's time for this earth to be done away with. That's what God is saying here. He's promising to preserve humanity as he accomplishes his redemptive plan.

See, this redemptive plan is going to take time to unfold. God's going to call Abraham and then Isaac and then Jacob. And then he's going to redeem his people out of Egypt.

And then he'll have the monarchy and King David in the exile and Jesus the Messiah and the apostles. And then the global mission of the gospel going forward to the ends of the earth. And so in order to accomplish that program, God's saying, you know what? Here's the promise I'm going to make.

When the wickedness of man gets great on the earth, this time I'm not going to destroy it. Next time I'm not going to destroy it. You're saying that that's the mercy of God.

People ask, why is the earth so wicked right now? Because God is being patient. Because he's accomplishing his redemptive plan. Because he promised to not do it until all of his elect are saved.

And so while all the days of the earth remain is an important clause to understand that at some point this earth will pass away. Jesus would say it over and over and over. Peter described it in this way.

The day of the Lord will come like a thief in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat and the earth and its works will be found out. He would go on and describe then the destruction of the earth. Revelation 6 14 says that the sky will be split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up and every mountain and island will be moved out of their places.

The earth will wear out like a garment, Isaiah 51 6. As a leaf withers from the vine or one withers from the fig tree. So God is going to, of course, bring about the destruction of his enemies and the punishment of sin. But in Genesis 8, he's promising, I'm going to be patient.

I'm going to delay that day while I continue to accomplish redemption. So when you read Genesis 8, the message is to be loudly screaming at you as God's preserving grace. His preserving grace to Noah, his elect that ensures his salvation.

His very particular grace. And then his common grace to humanity that he's not destroying the earth at this time. Well, next week we'll pick up with Lord willing chapter 9 and we're going to begin to see how this covenant promise of God works throughout history and how we relate to it today.

Let's pray. Lord in heaven, thank you for your mercy and your grace. Thank you, God, for being long-suffering.

We know as humans, we can hardly bear even minor infractions of injustice without responding to correct them as we see fit. It's hard for us to be forbearing and patient and endure. And yet you display it so marvelously here.

Because you have a heart to save. Thank you, Lord, for these reminders. I pray that you would bless us as we meditate upon them in Jesus name.

Amen.

Thank you so much, musicians, week by week, your service and preparation and practice and rehearsal and song selections, just to bless us as God's people. And it is good to be together on the Lord's day. I was just thinking as I was hearing a baby gurgling, and I think a baby burping, that we're okay with baby sounds here, we like them.

So just an encouragement to parents, I know sometimes when your baby's making the sound, I've been there and done that. Most of my kids now don't make sounds during the service, but it can be a little uncomfortable in the moment and you feel like, oh my goodness, what's going on? So obviously if they're screaming, you can take them out. That's a good idea, but just know we're happy to have them here.

And they're part of your family and a part of the church family as well. So glad to have them here as a part of the service each week. Well, it was James Otto Richardson who served as an admiral, admiral, not an admirable, an admiral of the United States Navy from 1902 to 1947.

And he was a very accomplished military commander. He dedicated his life among other things to the study of Japanese warfare. And by 1940, he was the commander in chief of the United States fleet.

And he advised President Roosevelt and the secretary of state who wanted to move naval forces to Pearl Harbor that it was a bad idea. He said, I don't think you understand what you're doing and we're gonna isolate our forces right now. We're not in a position as a Navy to deploy so many resources to Pearl Harbor.

Furthermore, it's too remote and exposed. It's gonna be a logistical nightmare to support that region and what you're hoping to have as a show of force to really cause Japan to stand down, it's probably gonna have the opposite effect. When you've heard of Richardson's name or not, he made multiple trips to Washington to warn President Roosevelt and he was rewarded with being fired.

He was dismissed. And of course, as we look back on what took place that fateful day, there were even many warning signs that were dismissed. But certainly here one where you had someone speaking to the issue that really if anyone had a right to it would have been Richardson.

He dedicated his life to the military. He understood naval forces. He understood Japanese warfare.

And yet the story of Pearl Harbor is very similar to most surprise military defeats in that there's usually similar ingredients. There's an underestimation of the severity of the threat at hand. And somewhere along the way, looking back in hindsight, we can identify, okay, there were warning signs and we just kind of failed to take them seriously.

And then in addition to that, an overconfidence and a general assumption that things will just work out okay in the end. See, what that indicates for us is the natural human response to the distant threat of danger. Happens over and over throughout history.

And mankind evidences these very same traits in evaluating the future as it pertains to future judgment, ultimate judgment. Tend to be underestimating the severity of the threat or ignoring the warning signs or just kind of an overconfidence that assumes things will work out in the end. And so this morning we come to Genesis 7. I invite you to turn there now.

And we begin to see the account of the flood. In fact, entitled this morning's message, God buries the world in water. God buries the world in water.

This is an account of judgment. And oftentimes when we come to Genesis 7, the focus gets on all these other interesting things that are happening. There's all kinds of details that are quite interesting from a scientific perspective to try to understand what exactly is happening here.

We have books and movies and models and museums that emphasize the physical details of the flood. But the primary focal point of Genesis 7 is going to be that God washes away all of the living creatures on earth. And everything that lives on land and breathes gets destroyed.

I mean, that is to be the main emphasis, the main focal point of Genesis 7. And in this, we see God's immeasurable power, we see His righteousness, and we see His mercy. And so I just want to tell you as we embark on Genesis 7 this morning that it is good for us to contemplate judgment. It's good for us to contemplate judgment.

In fact, Genesis 7 is parabolic, it's typological. It was a real event, don't get me wrong, this isn't fairytale, it's a real event, but it points to an even greater event of judgment. It means the significance goes beyond what we read about here in Genesis 7. And I mean, it's no surprise to you, judgment is just not a popular topic.

It's not a popular topic. As I was a little kid, I used to read the paper. And for those of you kids in the room who don't know what a paper is, someone would come to your house in the dark and they would throw this document on your front porch every day, every morning.

And so I would read the comics, of course, was okay with the A section, I'd read the sports section, I really liked the classifieds, so I'd read about vehicles that were for sale and homes that were for sale, and occasionally I would even peruse the personals, not that I was interested, but just curious. And you would read in those personals, people's self descriptors, right? Like moonlit walks on the beach. I enjoy cozy books by the fire, fun loving, outdoorsy.

I've yet to remember, could have just been my memory, but anybody in there classified saying, and I love contemplating future judgment, it's a hobby of mine. It's a real source of interest. Rather than natural man, even as believers, I think, it's not the most pleasant thought to meditate upon.

And yet the Bible is clear about coming judgment because God is gracious and merciful. And he wants to tell us ahead of time what's coming so that we can be prepared, so that we can avoid disaster. And the natural man typically responds to the thought of judgment in one of three ways.

Either open hostility, that's really the first one, open hostility. So Peter would write about in 2 Peter 3, mockers who come with their mocking. And they look at creation and they say, I don't see a God, I'm not concerned about a judgment.

And some people are so bold even to say things like, we're gonna have a party in hell. It was 1926 that Sinclair Lewis stood in a pulpit with a watch and challenged God if he was real to strike him dead in 10 minutes. And that is the mockers who mock.

There is a scoffer who scoffs at the notion of coming judgment. And then there are those in the natural man who aren't openly hostile, but they're afraid. They're fearful of judgment.

It's not an irrational fear, it's the fear that comes from a guilty conscience. Solomon would say in Proverbs 28, one, the wicked flee when no one pursues. And Jesus would say that you actually ought to fear not the ones who can destroy the body, but what? The one who can destroy both body and soul in hell.

First John looking at the opposite would say it's perfect love that casts out fear. First John 4, 18, perfect love casts out fear because fear involves punishment. So there are those on the earth that are afraid to die.

They're fearful of impending judgment. They're afraid of punishment. They know that there's some kind of an account and they're unprepared.

Their conscience has not yet been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ. And so there are those who are hostile. There are those who are fearful.

And then probably the most common scenario would be those who are not hostile and they're not fearful. They're just indifferent. Those who are indifferent.

Those who essentially pretend it isn't coming. Proverbs 16, 25, there is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. Or maybe thinking about Jesus' approach that he described in Matthew 7 as the gate that is wide and the way that is broad that leads to destruction.

I mean, I was floored the first time I studied that passage because growing up, I always thought the narrow path was like the good kids and the broad path was the bad kids. And then you realize the context of the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus is talking about pathways to be right with God. And he's saying that Jesus is the narrow gate and the narrow path and all the other religions that promise access to God are the broad path.

The idea is there, it's an easy path. It's open, it's spacious, it's not restricted. And so the indifferent heart just says, you know, I look at my life, I feel pretty good about it.

I'm not too concerned one way or the other. I'm not afraid of it. I'm not saying let's have a party in hell.

I just don't frankly really care. Millions of people who aren't that concerned. They just think that things will probably work out in the end.

And so you come to Genesis chapter seven and this is to sober us. I just want to say that as you hear the message today, the first thing that ought to be going through your own mind is am I prepared for judgment? Am I ready for judgment? Am I ready to meet the judge? Am I in Christ? Have I looked to God for deliverance? I mean, you can live free from fear and judgment. That is the message of the gospel.

Free from the fear of spending eternity separated from God in hell. You could even look forward to the return of Jesus the judge. Secondly, I think this always ought to stir in our heart a concern for the spiritual condition of others.

See, contemplating judgment brings it to the forefront that even in our evangelism, we're not merely recruiting followers so that we have more votes each time at the ballot box or more people on our side, but rather there's two deaths and the first one ends this life and then there is a second death and we're concerned about the spiritual condition of those around us. We have a lot going on. We have a lot of distractions.

We have a lot of burdens. We have a lot of personal concerns. We have a lot of self-absorption and so contemplating judgment, first of all, we're saying, man, am I in Christ? And then secondly, do I have a heart for those around me who are perishing? And then third and finally, contemplating Genesis 7 ought to result in worship.

Just a profound awe of a God who judges and a God who saves. That it's his right to do so. It's his will and his intent.

If you're keeping an outline this morning, the outline is this. God covers the earth in judgment. That's our outline this morning.

God covers the earth in judgment. It's what we're gonna see in Genesis 7 this morning. I wanna read the passage.

We're gonna read all 24 verses and then we're gonna cruise our way through it together. Then he always said to Noah, enter the ark, you and all your household. For you alone I've seen to be righteous before me in this generation.

You shall take with you of every clean animal by sevens, a male and his female. And of the animals that are not clean, two, a male and his female. Also of the birds of the sky by sevens, male and female to keep their seed alive on the face of all the earth.

For after seven more days, I will send rain on the earth 40 days and 40 nights. And I will blot out from the face of the land every living thing that I have made. And Noah did according to all that Yahweh had commanded him.

Now Noah was 600 years old when the flood of water came upon the earth. And Noah and his sons and his wife and his son's wives with him entered the ark because of the water of the flood. Of clean animals and animals that are not clean and birds and everything that creeps on the ground by twos, they came to Noah into the ark, male and female as God had commanded Noah.

Now it happened after the seven days that the water of the flood came upon the earth in the 600th year of Noah's life in the second month on the 17th day of the month. On this day, all the fountains of the great deep split open and the flood gates of the sky were opened. Then the rain came upon the earth for 40 days and 40 nights.

On this very day, Noah and Shem and Ham and Japheth, the sons of Noah and Noah's wife and the three wives of his sons with them entered the ark. They and every beast after its kind and all the cattle after their kind and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth after its kind and every bird after its kind, every fowl, every winged creature. So they came to Noah into the ark by twos of all flesh in which was the breath of life.

Those that entered male and female of all flesh entered as God had commanded him and Yahweh closed it behind him. Then the flood came upon the earth 40 days and the water multiplied and lifted up the ark so that it rose above the earth and the water prevailed and multiplied greatly upon the earth. The ark went on the surface of the water and the water prevailed more and more upon the earth so that all the high mountains under all the heavens were covered.

Water prevailed 15 cubits higher and the mountains were covered and all flesh that moved on earth breathed its last. That is birds and cattle in peace and every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth as well as all mankind. All in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, all that was on the dry land died.

Thus he blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky. They were blotted out from the earth. And only Noah remained and those that were with him in the ark.

The water prevailed upon the earth 150 days. God here covers the earth in judgment. And our first point this morning is that God delivers his elect through the ark.

God delivers his elect through the ark. He preserves his own people. Moses makes it clear that in the midst of judgment, God is showing mercy.

And we know that God has specifically chosen Noah for this purpose. He came to Noah and he said, I will establish my covenant with you. Verse one, God tells Noah, enter the ark.

You and all your household, for you alone I've seen to be righteous before me in this generation. So what we're gonna see here is that this is kind of the boarding process, if you will. That's instruction to get on the boat.

God orchestrates all of it. Shows his personal care for his elect, his individual care for his people. Now what we're gonna see as we read through this account is very common in Hebrew narrative.

Moses is gonna keep saying the same thing kind of over and over and over. Why? To help it stick, to bring out the emphasis of certain points. And so we're gonna draw those out as we go.

And so Noah here is seen to be righteous in this generation. Verse one, we know that no man is righteous before God. Job said that there's no one that can make clean out of unclean.

We know that man is sinned in Adam. And so for Noah to be seen before God as righteous is that legal standing. Before God is judged, before his face, Noah is seen as righteous.

This is what David would speak of in Psalm 32 when he said, how blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. How blessed is the man whose iniquity Yahweh will not take into account. So here's Noah the sinner saved by grace.

We know he's gonna get off the boat and he's gonna demonstrate again that he still has corruption. That he's still inclined at times to evil. And yet here he's seen as righteous by God's mercy and God's grace.

He simply believed the promise of God. And I love how consistent the scripture is. Before we get to everything else here, right up front we just have God's gracious work reminding us.

We're reminded of God's gracious work. That God chose Noah to be righteous. He declared him righteous.

He chose to save him out of a vast sea of humanity. And Noah was an anomaly. I mean, just when you think about the character of God here, who's merciful and generous.

I mean, how many people would God need to save in order to be viewed as merciful? Start thinking about the numbers, like one in 10. Does that sound generous and merciful? One in a hundred, one in a hundred thousand, one in a million. I mean, statistically, that's probably more the realm of what we're talking about here.

And yet God is merciful to this man to preserve him and his family. And he's merciful in wiping out the rest of wicked humanity. God doesn't work in percentages.

He's showing mercy to this one man, his family and the animal kingdom. There's a verse two, God cares that it's not just Noah and his family, but for Noah's benefit, he preserves the rest of creation. And so he tells Noah, this ark that you're building is gonna have to house a lot of animals.

You're gonna need to bring them with you. Two distinctions of kinds of animals on the ark, the clean and the unclean, that'll become clearer in Leviticus chapter 11, where we learn about kind of the birds that eat dead stuff aren't clean, and the animals that have split hooves need to chew the cud or else they lack one of those, they're not clean. So this is before Leviticus 11.

Apparently there was some distinction that Noah already understood about clean and unclean. And there's different numbers of animals that are gonna come on the ark, some by sevens and some by twos. And there's discussion on the sevens, was this two pairs of sevens, so 14 animals, or was it seven, which would be three pairs of male and female and then one extra for sacrifice? We don't know exactly, it could go either way.

Seems to me most likely that it's probably not speaking of 14, I think there'd be a clear way of saying that, but it certainly could be 14 or it could be seven. It either the males and females would reproduce and then you had one extra leftover for sacrifice. And so God says that you're to enter the ark, Noah, verse one, your wife, your sons, and their wives are to enter as well, all the household.

We're gonna have the animals enter in as well. And it's a lot of animals. Verse two, it's every clean animal and of all the birds of the sky.

Why? Because verse four, in seven more days, I will send rain on the earth, 40 days and 40 nights. I will blot out from the face of the land, every living thing that I've made. I mean, can you imagine that message? It's the end of the world as we know it.

I don't think Noah was saying, I feel fine. He had a week to get on the ark and the rainstorm of all rainstorms will come and the purpose of God, and it'll wipe away the living from the earth that he has made. God is the creator and now he's the destroyer.

And so Noah, unsurprisingly, verse five, does all that Yahweh had commanded him. It's consistent. And so we see kind of this idea of the boarding process of what's going to need to take place.

And now we have confirmation of that as we continue to work down through the narrative. We read in verse six that Noah was 600 years old when the flood of water came upon the earth. And then he and his sons and his wife and his son's wives with him entered the ark because of the water of the flood.

So Moses is making it very abundantly extra clear to everyone here that undoubtedly the family got on board. And so you just imagine right now for Noah, what this would have been like. He spent many years constructing this ark at great personal expense, great labor of time, opposition while he's faithfully serving the Lord and trusting God.

Then he has to stock the boat with supplies, certainly all of the food that was required. I'm sure there were other things that he took with him as well. This isn't like you're packing up for a trip where you're gonna be gone for a year and then you're gonna come back to your house.

There's not gonna be anything to come back to. And so any kind of tools, any kinds of supplies, any kinds of provisions, any family heirlooms, anything that wanted to be preserved had to make its way onto the boat. Certainly there needed to be all kinds of technology for storing and supplying food and water and dealing with animal waste.

We don't know exactly what these details are. I just was thinking when I read that Noah was 600 years old when the flood of water came on the earth, I see things right now like I'm getting too old for this. I'm too old to be dealing with a four-year-old.

This is wearing me out. Too tired to get woken up in the middle of the night. I'm too old for this.

And here's Noah, obviously pre-flood, things are a little different. He's pushing 600 and he's building an ark and he's getting together all the supplies and all the logistics and all the animals to witness something that no one has ever seen before. And texture states it so simply, when the flood of water came upon the earth.

I mean, if you've lived to be 50 years old, you're not getting surprised by a whole lot. You've seen a lot of things. You've seen natural disasters.

Noah's 12 times that old. He's two thirds of a millennium. And yet in all he's seen, he's never seen a flood like this.

And so everybody's on board according to verse seven. The animals come on as well, verse eight. We read of clean animals and animals that are not clean and birds and everything that creeps on the ground by cues.

They came to Noah into the ark, male and female, as God had commanded Noah. And the text here would seem to indicate that the animals came to Noah. It's kind of a big question.

Like how did they all get there? You know, is Noah just riding around on a horse with a lasso, like bringing together all the pairs? Because the text says that Noah obeyed and God instructed Noah to bring the animals on. But it would seem that Noah was preparing. He's getting everything ready.

And then God is sending the animals that he wanted. He's sending the pairs to Noah. I think the best way to understand that kind of back and forth of Noah obeying and Noah doing as he had commanded.

And then the animals coming would be that Noah was responsible. He built the rooms, he made provisions. He got everything ready for the animals to enter.

And then at the proper time, God sent the animals as he chose. That's that language of they came. Verse nine, they came to Noah.

So how many animals came? I have no idea. There's all kinds of conjecture and speculation. What we know is that this salvation was in a way comprehensive.

It was to be of all the living creatures, every clean animal that would come on according to verse two. And the size of the ark could carry a lot. If you were to compare it to maybe a train, which is a little bit helpful, because I think we know trains better than we know barges.

The size of the ark could carry 522 train cars essentially, a railway train car. So kiddos, if you've ever been sitting at the railroad tracks and you count the train cars going by, it's kind of a fun exercise while you're waiting. That'd be eight trains of 65 cars each.

And if each one of those cars was a double decker, you could fit about 240 sheep sized animals into each car. So you picture each car, 240 sheep sized animals. Obviously some animals are bigger, some animals are smaller, but tens of thousands of small animals could fit in 522 train cars.

So this ark could hold a lot of animals. We don't know for sure, but it would seem to make the most sense that the animals that God sent would have been the strongest that have had the best genetics for reproduction. They probably would have been young.

So they'd have had lots of reproducing years also that would have made them smaller so they could all fit. According to verse 11, after everybody's on the ark in the 600th year of Noah's life, in the second month on the 17th day of the month, on this day, all the fountains of the great deep split open and the floodgates of the sky were opened. Then the rain came on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights.

I mean, look at the details that are given here. In the 600th year of Noah's life, in the second month on the 17th day of the month. I mean, you can say, I don't believe the Bible.

You're welcome to do that. It's unwise, foolish and wrong, but you could do that. You could say you don't believe the Bible, but you can't say I believe the Bible and I just don't think the flood was real because the way that this is written, it doesn't say long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away.

It doesn't say once upon a time. No, it's written like this, July 4th, 1776, or June 6th, 1944, September 11th, 2001. I mean, there is a date here that this event took place and Moses is recording it because it was an actual historical real event that took place.

And so although the flood is parabolic and that we learn lessons from it that are more significant than the judgment that's happening here, it was an actual event. The text says that it was on this day, on Noah's 600th year, in the second month, on the 17th day of the month, on this very day, verse 13, that everybody enters into the ark and on that day, the rains come. And it's just depicted here that everybody gets into the ark.

It would have been a long day, everybody coming on, every beast after its kind, verse 14, the cattle after its kind, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth after its kind, every bird after its kind, every fowl, every winged creature. And so they came to Noah into the ark by twos of all flesh in which was the breath of life. And those that entered male and female of all flesh entered as God had commanded him and Yahweh closed it behind him.

And I just, I mean, Moses states it and it just sounds like such an orderly procession. I mean, I was thinking of, like, have you ever taught a class with little kids in the class and you try to keep like an orderly procession? What happens? Well, you have to start rearranging the line, like, hey, actually, you're not allowed to stand by so-and-so. You need to go over here.

Can you know what you guys said? Talk too much, you gotta go over here. Like, I mean, I still have childhood trauma from all the times I was separated from my friends unjustly in lines. So I don't know, like, okay, here's the chickens, now the foxes, no, we gotta put an elephant between them.

Like, I don't know how it went, but somehow without eating each other and getting in fights, like all the animals get on the ark together, young, healthy, and safe. And the question inevitably that comes up is, what about the dinosaurs? I think we would assume that the dinosaurs were on the ark as well. They would have been included in the beasts in verse 14.

It would have been included in that after their kind. It says, all of the animals on earth that had the breath of life. But when you read verse 16 at the very end, we see this remarkable little note.

It says, in those that entered, male and female of all flesh entered as God had commanded him and Yahweh closed it, that is the door behind him. I was just thinking, was that like, you know, an oversight? Noah didn't really think through, oh yeah, I need a strap to close the door at the end or some mechanism. I think this depicts that God gave Noah a job to do.

He assigned him all of the work, he warned him, he told him what was coming, he provided the resources. Noah does all of the work and then what happens? God says, I'm the one who's now gonna close you in and protect you. I mean, this is God's meticulous personal care.

It doesn't even read that the door is closed by itself, but rather the Lord comes and he closes the door. God's personal care for Noah and his family and the animals. And this just demonstrates that his protection and provision will bring them safely through the floodwaters as God promised.

When you understand if you put your faith in Jesus Christ, God will bring your salvation to completion. There's a personal care element. He will ensure that there is no one who will snatch you out of the father's hand.

It's a promise. And so I don't know what Noah was thinking about on the ark. We're not told, Moses doesn't elaborate.

Noah's psychological state is not a very important detail for us to learn, but I can certainly tell you at least a couple of things that would come to mind. I mean, while he's in the ark being preserved, people that he hired up and built the ark are dying and perishing. Cousins, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents.

I'm just thinking about how it impacts your heart when one person that you know dies. I hope that moves you in some way. And then how much more tragic when it's like an entire family that would die that you might know and love.

And so Noah, no doubt is dealing with that. And then at the same time, I believe that there would have been, and the scripture testifies of this elsewhere, that heart that was thankful. Psalm 32, David says in verse seven, you Lord are my hiding place.

You guard me from trouble and you surround me with songs of deliverance. Therefore let every holy one pray to you at a time when you may be found surely in a flood of great waters, they will not reach him. And so Noah's just saying, man, Lord, thank you.

Thank you for being my hiding place. Thank you for guarding me from trouble. Thank you for surrounding me with songs of deliverance.

Thank you that although I deserve to be outside of the ark right now, I'm inside the ark. And I know that it was you who initiated my salvation and you came and made a covenant with me. So God really and truly saves.

You need to understand this. This lesson for us right here is to come and break upon our hearts to realize God's personal meticulous care for those people who are his own, that he ensures their salvation. He protects them in the midst of judgment.

And secondly, the backside of this point is that God destroys his enemies outside the ark. See, as God covers the earth in judgment, on the one hand he delivers his elect through the ark, but the backside of that is that he destroys his enemies outside of the ark. So he's preserving his elect and he's punishing his enemies.

Preserving and punishing at the same time. And so we see God's sure punishment of the wicked. Verse 17, then the flood came upon the earth for 40 days and the water multiplied and lifted up the ark so that it rose above the earth.

And the water prevailed and multiplied greatly upon the earth and the ark went on the surface of the water. And the water prevailed, verse 19, more and more upon the earth so that all the high mountains under all the heavens were covered. And the water prevailed 15 cubits higher and the mountains were covered.

So this is a lot of water. Okay, this is an incomprehensible, unfathomable amount of water. Highest mountain on earth right now is 30,000 feet in altitude.

So there will be those who say, scientists, hydrologists, like, look, it's just, it's physically impossible for the earth to sustain that much water over the highest mountain. It just doesn't work. The math doesn't work.

It doesn't pencil out. There's not enough water on the earth right now, first of all. Secondly, the sheer physiology of having that weight of water on the earth, it's impossible.

So I think there's a couple of things that are helpful for us in how we think about these kinds of situations, even the number of animals that came on the ark. There are those that enter into this and they're concerned with providing a natural explanation for everything that happened. In other words, to say God is a God of order.

He established the universe. He had certain laws in the universe, certain laws of science that he put in place. And so now we're gonna figure out exactly how all of this worked without violating any of the laws of science, any of the laws of nature that God established.

Those are interesting conversations. I mean, I think they are. They're fascinating.

Few of them go over my head, but they're interesting nevertheless. But here's the thing. Like there's a lot of things in the Bible, I believe, that break the laws of nature.

I mean, how does a virgin conceive? I don't have a biological answer for that because it was supernatural. God intervened in creation to accomplish his will and purpose. What about when Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fishes? What about when he gave up his own spirit? What about when he raised the dead? What about when he vanished, when they were about to lay hands on him? See, we read over and over throughout scripture of God intervening in creation supernaturally.

It means that it defies the normal natural laws that exist. So is it possible that all of this took place in accordance with all the natural laws that God established? Certainly. Is it also possible that God put more water on the earth to flood it, and then he took the water away? He certainly could have done that.

And so God used natural means, a giant ark, used natural means, animals who are gonna reproduce with one another. And it's also possible that he intervened and acted in supernatural ways. The other challenge with the very scientific models is we don't actually know what the earth was like at that time.

And so there's this huge assumption that what we see today is what the earth was like prior to the flood. We don't know where the animals lived on the earth. We don't know what the topography looked like.

We don't know what the ocean levels were, the ocean depths. We don't know exactly how the continents were together or pieced together or what the mountain ranges looked like. We don't know about what the glaciers and ice caps were prior to this.

So enjoy reading about the science. It's fascinating, it's fun, it's interesting, but don't be overly concerned with an answer that could somehow satisfy all of our scientific curiosities because that's not the point of the text and there's a lot of information that we simply don't have. What do we know? According to verse 20, all of the earth, even the mountains, even the highest points of the earth were covered with water.

That's to be the big resounding takeaway. Not how it happened, but the fact that it did happen. There wasn't a dry spot left on earth.

When David speaks in Psalm 32 of his sins being covered, it's that same word for atonement. The idea is the entire earth right now has been covered, enveloped in water. And artists who depict the flood often render terrified people doing what? Climbing to the highest point in an effort to survive.

I mean, that's what happens. The instinct is to preserve your life and as the floodwaters come, you would try to make for the high ground. It's what always happens.

And even today what happens when you see floods, you see videos and helicopters, people going to their roofs, people going for higher ground and yet there's nowhere to escape the judgment. They're saying that's what you need to think of when you read verse 20. There's nowhere to go.

There's not a way to get away from the water. There's no high point. I mean, this is how the Bible depicts God's judgment.

Isaiah chapter two, when the Lord comes in his judgment, grown men who were previously looking very strong do what? They look for caves to hide in. They're trying to escape. And so when you read Genesis seven, you're to understand that when the judgment of God comes, there's no safe space.

There's nowhere on earth that you could somehow dodge judgment except for if you're in the ark of salvation. God alone is a refuge and the water takes away everyone else. Verse 21, all flesh that moved on the earth breed its last.

That is birds and cattle and beasts and every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth as well as all mankind. All, verse 22, in whose nostril was the breath of the spirit of life, of all that was on the dry land died. Thus he blotted out, verse 23, every living thing that was upon the face of the land.

Into verse 23, and only Noah remained and those that were with him in the ark. You understand there was not a single living creature at the end of the flood, except those in the ark. Everything outside of the ark was destroyed.

Marine life survived. Obviously there was provision for plant life and insects, probably in decaying logs and who knows what else. I mean, there was seeds that would come about.

Noah wasn't commanded to bring those onto the ark, but every living creature on earth is destroyed. So one commentator says, sin had affected every aspect of life and nothing short of a new beginning would suffice. So when you read the flood account, this is to testify that when God judges, he judges comprehensively and inescapably.

There was an offer for salvation while the door of the ark was open. And then once the door is closed, everyone who's outside will be destroyed. How did I say that this is parabolic? Well, Revelation chapter 20 speaks of a coming judgment.

I want you to turn there with me and look at how similar, how instructive the flood narrative and the flood account of judgment is to a future coming judgment. John says in Revelation chapter 20 verse 11, and I saw a great white throne and him who sits upon it. It's a glorious throne and it's a throne of judgment.

Okay, this is the judge's seat, reigning and ruling in justice and righteousness. And it's inescapable. Look at the second part of verse 11, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away and no place was found for them.

Can't get away from the gaze of this judge who's on the white throne. There's no hiding places. There's no high mountains to run to, to get away from the floodwaters of judgment.

Verse 12, then I saw the dead, the great and the small. So those who were and those who weren't on earth, standing before the throne and the books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the book of life.

And the dead were judged from the things that were written in the books according to their deeds. So no one was able to get away in heaven and on earth. Everyone is before the throne.

They're standing there. While they're standing there, books about their deeds are being opened. Verse 13, the sea gave up the dead, which were in it.

And death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them. And they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. So whether you were alive when this happened or whether you were dead, it doesn't matter.

Again, it's universal. This is the same kind of lesson that all of us ought to be understanding and taking away. Verse 14, then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.

This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. Remember what Moses recorded in Genesis chapter seven, and all flesh that moved on the earth breathes its last.

And all mankind and all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, and all that was on the dry land died. And out of every living thing, he blotted out from the earth. See, God cares that the people on earth would have a revelation to know that judgment is coming.

Noah was a preacher of righteousness, second Peter says. And so men often think that because judgment isn't right in front of us, I don't need to really take it that seriously. Matthew 24, we learned that in the days of Noah, people were eating and drinking, they were marrying and giving in marriage until the day Noah entered the ark.

What were they doing? Well, we might as well just make plans for the future because nothing is going to stop us. Rather, we're to heed the words of our Lord in Luke chapter 12, when he said to the man building bigger barns, you fool, this very night your soul is required of you. So when you read the flood account, you're to see on the one hand, the wrath of the righteous judgment of God being poured out.

Romans 2, 5, this is a sign of his righteous judgment. And at the same time, the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, it leads you to repentance, Romans chapter two, verse four. They're juxtaposed beautifully and perfectly.

And so when you read Genesis chapter seven, here's what I'd ask you first and foremost, are you sure right now where you're at with your judge? Are you confident where you're at with your judge? I mean, do you know that you are in Christ and that your sins have been paid for by the blood of the lamb? Are you able to sit here today and say with confidence, there is no condemnation for me. It doesn't remain, no wrath remains because it was poured out on Christ. Can I tell you that God wants you to respond to his call of salvation today, find salvation in Christ, find that assurance or just say, you know what? Right now, if the flood came, I'd be outside the ark looking in.

I'd be looking for high ground on my own. Next, I would just ask, how's your heart right now toward those who are outside? What's your heart disposition toward those who are outside? I mean, we're not called to save unbelievers. It's not a work that we can do.

The Bible doesn't present that we're to have some kind of a quota and a specific program by which we approach evangelism and we need to think about it in this very specific mechanistic way. But I would just say, if you find in your heart, man, I'm indifferent and I'm really never even thinking about those who are facing judgment. I'm not really praying for anyone who's lost.

I have opportunities the Lord gives me, but then I shrink back in sinful fear. It's a part of loving God and loving people is a concern to warn them of coming judgment. And then in all of it, we come to the end of Genesis 7 and we just marvel at a God who pours out judgment and shows mercy.

I mean, it is truly amazing to think that he cleansed the entire earth with a flood and he was perfect and good in doing so. And that Noah, for whatever he was thinking on that ark, would have been basking in God's grace, not thinking that he was unjust, but being thankful for God's magnificent character in punishing the wicked and preserving the righteous. Let's pray.

Now, there's so many things that we wonder that you don't answer for us in Genesis 7. Where all the water came from, how all the animals fit, what it was like being on the ark. And that you included exactly what we need to hear, which you repeated over and over and over and over to tell us that you judge comprehensively and then you save completely. And so, Lord, I thank you for that complete salvation.

I pray that we would glory in it. Pray that we would take judgment seriously, Lord, wherever that needs to be applied in our lives, that we would do so. And that the result of that is that we'd be people who live in a sober-minded joy awaiting your return.

We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Amen.

O-B-E-D, I-E-N-C-E, obedience is the very best way to show that you believe. Doing exactly what the Lord commands, doing it joyfully. Action is the key, do it immediately, and joy you will receive.

Yeah, thank you. As, and you can tell why I'm preaching and not singing here. But as a child, my maternal grandmother was widowed relatively early in life.

She dedicated the next decades of her life serving overseas as a missionary for many years in Africa. And so, I didn't get a lot of time with grandma growing up, but when I did, it was very intensive. And so, she would come back on furlough periodically.

I remember one time in particular, my mom was having some complications due to a pregnancy, so she was in the hospital for several weeks. And that meant that grandma was in charge while dad was at work. And so, we had a lot of opportunity to have our hearts exposed in those close quarters.

I was about 10 years old, and so you just imagine me 32 years ago, right? And it kind of gives you a little idea of what she was dealing with. And she decided on that trip, I'm going to teach you the obedience song. And what was on her heart was she was desperate that I understood as a child the priority of obedience, and the significance of obedience, and the importance of it for our spiritual life.

And so, obedience really is doing what the Lord commands. And it's doing it joyfully, and action is the key, doing it immediately. I would say the only exception I would take, and it's small, but with the lyrics of that song, would be that obedience is not merely the way that we kind of prove what we believe, but rather it is the outflow, the demonstration of what we believe.

And Noah was a great obeyer. He was a man of great faith, and faith and obedience are always linked together in the Scriptures. To believe God is to obey God.

And likewise, to disobey is a reflection of unbelief in the heart. And so our passage this morning unfolds this wonderfully for us. If you're keeping an outline, this morning's sermon is entitled, Noah's Big Obedience, Part 2. So it's not surprising if you were here last week.

I'm going to go ahead and read our passage this morning, beginning in verse 9, and then we'll look at how this unfolds today. These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among those in his generations, and Noah walked with God.

Noah became the father of three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now the earth was corrupt before God, 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.

Then God said to Noah, The end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. And behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth. Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood.

You shall make the ark with rooms, and you shall cover it inside and out with pitch. Now this is how you shall make it. The length of the ark, 300 cubits.

It's spread 50 cubits, and its height, 30 cubits. You shall make a window for the ark and complete it one cubit from the top, and set the door of the ark inside of it, and you shall make it with the lower, second, and third decks. As for me, behold, I am bringing the flood of water upon the earth to destroy all flesh, in which is the breath of life from under heaven.

Everything that is on the earth shall breathe its last. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall enter the ark, you and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark to keep them alive with you.

They shall be male and female. Of the birds after their kind, and of the animals after their kind, of every creeping thing of the ground after its kind, two of every kind will come to you to keep them alive. As for you, take for yourself some of all food which is edible, and gather it to yourself, and it shall be for food for you and for them.

Thus Noah did, according to all that God had commanded him, so he did. The outline for this morning's passage is Unpacking Noah's Big Obedience. Unpacking Noah's Big Obedience, and our first point is Noah's character.

We got through three of five points last week, and just by way of review, Noah was one of the most exceptional individuals to ever walk on the face of the planet. Moses says that he was a righteous man in verse 9, blameless among those in his generation, and he walked with God. Noah lived rightly.

It's what the righteous do. Who are the righteous? They're the people that do what's right. Their lives are ordered as a pattern consistently with what God says is right.

And furthermore, Noah was blameless, which we said meant that he addressed sin in his life in such a way that there was a consistency between what he professed to believe and what he actually lived out. So paper and practice lined up. And Moses makes it clear that Noah was not the member of an upstanding society.

As you picture Noah, he didn't have a healthy local church that he was a part of with accountability and encouragement. Rather, he was among those in his generations. He was among the wicked.

Genesis 7-1 says that Noah alone was seen to be righteous before God in that generation. So he was really rubbing shoulders with the wicked. He was not having his good morals corrupted by bad company.

Rather, he lived righteously among the unrighteous. And so how was it that Noah did not get sucked into the norms, and dulled, and tempted, and saturated with worldly thinking? We see this strength does not come from Noah, but from God. Noah walked with God, the end of verse 8. And so this is important to always understand that the impetus behind Noah's strong convictions was that he spent time with God.

The source of his strength came from God alone. And so when we see the big ask that comes here in a little bit, we're understanding that this was out of the overflow in the soil of Noah's heart that was daily obedience, daily walking with God. We know little of what religious practice looked like in this time.

We know what it'll look like very clearly with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the patriarchs. But we know at this time at least, man would have seen creation, God's invisible attributes. The law of God would have been written on the heart.

We know that Seth's line began calling on the name of Yahweh. We saw from Cain and Abel that they were offering sacrifices. So Noah had some revelation from God and what it meant to walk with God.

And obviously God spoke directly to Noah. And so Noah is said then to be a man who is righteous, blameless, and walked with God. I just want to ask you a personal question before we move on to think about for a moment here this morning.

I'm not going to ask you to say it into a microphone. I'm not going to ask you to write it on a piece of paper and hold it up for everyone to see. But if you were to honestly describe your relationship with God this morning, right now today, and use two to five descriptive adjectives, what would those adjectives be? And I hope as you think about that, it's an encouraging answer.

When you think of describing your relationship with God. I've been at the Christian life long enough and among all of you long enough to know that it's not always the adjectives that we want. It's not always encouraging.

Sometimes we describe our walk with God in less than desirable ways. We use words like this. I've been coasting lately.

Or perhaps I've been complacent. Or inconsistent. My walk with God has kind of been a struggle lately if I'm honest.

Things have felt a bit dry. Kind of been going through the motions. I've been prayerless.

I've been neglecting the word. I've been distracted. And sometimes we answer that question about our walk with God and we're saying, Man, the Lord is teaching me things right now.

I'm sensitive to the Spirit. I'm battling sin. I'm thankful for the cross.

It's vibrant and dedicated. I'm not asking you to gauge your walk with God based upon merely emotional indicators and how you would feel about your relationship with God. But rather how meaningful is your engagement right now with truth? With God? Is it meager? Is it leftovers? Is it relying on yesterday's bread or last week's bread? You find you're relating kind of like someone who's regularly missing spiritual meals and you just keep promising, Okay, tomorrow I'll get to it.

Tomorrow I'll get to it. Tomorrow I'll get to it. And your life is filled with other things.

Do you know how to vibrant walk with God? And it's an encouragement to us to understand that obedience is going to flow out of a vibrant relationship with God. Sometimes as Christians when we're weak and we lack conviction and our obedience is half-hearted, we need to be reminded of the source of obedience. That the Christian life is lived by Christ in you.

That His truth must dwell richly within you. That He must be actively working within you. And so Noah here, not inconsequentially, walked with God and that's going to be the impetus for which his obedience flows.

We saw not only Noah's character but his context, his cultural surroundings. Point number two, the earth was corrupt. Verse 11, before God and the earth was filled with violence.

And so we saw that mankind left his own devices, ruins everything. And this is a testament to original sin. This is man's hopeless, fallen, futile condition apart from the intervening grace of God.

And so from the greatest to the least. From the greatest to the least on earth. From the rich to the poor.

From the young to the old. From the rural to the urban. All of creation here is spoiled and ruined and tainted by sin.

It was darkened. The collective moral conscience was darkened as the knowledge of God was suppressed in unrighteousness. And so in the midst of all of that corruption, God grabs a hold of Noah.

And Noah finds favor in the eyes of God. He finds approval. God grabs a hold of Noah and he pulls him out of that darkness.

He pulls him out of that muck and mire. And he tells him his plan in verse 13. He says, the end of all flesh has come before me and I'm going to destroy.

And so we saw in verse 13 that the Creator intends to be the destroyer. He's going to destroy people and planet. Notice the language.

I'm about to destroy them with the earth. And this is not God letting loose in a blind rage. He's not like a human.

Sometimes as humans we get upset and we do things that we wish we could take back. Because we lack self-control in the moment with what we say. We let our anger, our emotions get the best of us.

God here is measured and perfect. He's not caught off guard by the iniquity of man. So his purpose here is reasoned and principled out of an overflow of his holiness.

And I would say even his mercy to limit corruption on the earth. The Creator intends to be the destroyer. So this was Noah's context.

This is an encouragement to you. If you are in a workplace that's perverse. If you're in an educational environment that's perverse.

If you're in a neighborhood that's perverse. If you're on an online environment that's perverse. You could live set apart.

Noah did too. This was his context. A wicked and perverse culture and yet he's shining blameless in the midst of it.

And so we saw the holiness of God to come and judge sin. It is good and right. It is the very best thing that God could do to judge sinners on earth.

And out of that then we see Noah's commission. This is our third point as we unpack his obedience. Noah's commission.

He's given a charge. Essentially basic construction plans to build a giant floating triple-decker chest. That's what an ark is.

It's a chest. It's a big wooden box. God said make it out of gopher wood.

We don't know what gopher wood was. Probably some type of pine. Maybe cypress.

Maybe fir. No one knows what gopher wood is exactly. But this is a massive project even by today's standards.

We said last time Noah likely possessed some knowledge of shipbuilding. I was talking with a tradesman this past week who was talking about the difference between someone who's new to a trade and someone who's been out of trade for a decade. It's significant.

It's significant. That difference. Just 10 years at a trade.

And then the difference between 10 years and 30 years of doing the same thing is significant. Okay, so you imagine Noah here. People have long lives.

He's living for hundreds of years prior to construction of the ark. So whatever you picture in your mind here, Noah would have been a very capable human being. Okay? A very capable human being.

We often picture this time as very primitive. I think it's kind of the wrong mind's eye conclusion. Long lives would have meant you could grow in knowledge and you weren't starting over each year, each generation, having to learn it.

You had long lifespans. Why is he building the giant barge? Verse 17, because God is bringing a flood. We focused on this.

The Lord draws attention to this. Behold, I'm bringing. This is my flood.

I don't want there to be any question about it. I have a purpose. I have an intent.

And everything that breathes, everything under heaven, every living creature on earth will be destroyed. God chose to do this using a flood. He chose water.

He said there were several reasons for this. Likely, when a flood is severe and it wipes away all of mankind and all of his accomplishments, all of the memory of man off the face of the earth. Fire, of course, could do the same thing, but a plague or a disease or merely the angel of the Lord killing people would leave memories of mankind and his accomplishments.

And so the flood wipes it away, the complete removal of all corruption from the face of the earth. Not only that, but the flood points to future destruction. It came suddenly.

It was unavoidable. It really reminds us of coming judgment. If you remember Jesus and speaking about the kingdom said, it's going to be like this parable of a wedding where there's 10 virgins that are locked out.

Why? Because the bridegroom came back and they were unprepared. Elsewhere, he talks about the suddenness of judgment coming unannounced, unexpectedly, cataclysmically. And so ultimately, the flood then will point beautifully to God's salvation, the preservation of his chosen people through judgment.

And David expressed this in Psalm 32 where he said, let everyone who is holy pray to you at a time when he may be found. Surely in a flood of great waters, they will not reach him. David's talking there about the flood of judgment.

When God comes to judge, depicted as a flood, his own possession, his own people will be protected. I mean, they'll be insulated. I don't know if that just thrills your heart.

There is no fear of condemnation. There's no fear of judgment. That when the judge comes to recompense evil and his enemies, we're standing with him watching, protected from that flood of judgment.

What's the stipulation? Well, as David would say, call upon the Lord. Call upon the Lord while he may be found. And so God preserves his elect when judgment comes.

He preserves through the flood of judgment. And in fact, this is exactly what we see in our next point as we unpack Noah's big obedience. Point number four, Noah's covenant.

Noah's covenant. We've seen his character that was godly and set apart amidst his crooked generation. We saw his context, the wickedness of the world.

We saw the commission, the specific instruction he's given. Now in verse 18, we come across the verse that we can just read over very quickly and it is substantial in understanding Noah's obedience. Verse 18, but I, but I will establish my covenant with you.

What's the but in contrast to? Well, I'm going to wipe out the whole earth, wipe out all of creation, every breathing thing, but with you, I will establish my covenant. This is a refrain over and over in Scripture. What separates the wicked and the righteous? It's always the personal intervention of God.

Ephesians chapter two, but God being rich in mercy. And so no, I'm going to destroy everyone, but guess what? I'm going to intervene here and I'm not only going to act to destroy, but I'm going to act to save and I have a plan to save you. Notice the pronouns, my covenant.

So this is God's promise to Noah, his formal relationship with Noah, his formal agreement with Noah. It's a promise made to Noah and God is the one who enacts it. It's not that Noah called upon the Lord and said, Hey Lord, here's the deal.

I need some things and I would really like you to make me an offer. Okay? No, Noah's going about life doing whatever he was doing and the Lord, that great hound of heaven comes and seeks him out and says, I'm going to make a promise to you. You're saying God is the one who initiates salvation.

He loves to make promises to his people and God doesn't love to just make promises. He loves to keep promises and even our own salvation, Jesus will say, this is a new covenant in my blood. I mean, this is a formal relationship that man can have with God, not on the basis of who he is, but on the basis of God's own character, his own oath.

And so mankind is always saved through covenant. And so Noah here represents this covenantal family that on earth will be God's special people. Over and over throughout the Old Testament, God's people will be referred to in shorthand as his covenant people.

God here is confirming a covenant with Noah that is going to preserve his life. And this is going to be the basis for Noah's obedience. Okay? And I want you to just want to pause here for a second and get this really clear in our minds.

I mean, it's interesting. If you interact with people and you talk about the doctrine of salvation, talk about soteriology, that's a doctrine of salvation. You talk about a big view of God's grace, his sovereign grace and salvation.

And you say that here's how salvation works. God has a certain people who he's chosen to be his own. And he causes those people to be born again to a living hope, and then he not only starts the work of salvation, but he brings it to completion.

It's his work, ultimately. One of the objections that you'll hear is, well, if you teach a message like that, people are going to live however they want. The implication being that the pathway to right living is to teach people that their salvation is somehow dependent upon their performance.

And so you misunderstand the Scriptures. You're saying that God comes to Noah and he looks upon him with favor. He justifies him.

And then he makes a promise to Noah, I will save you. I'm going to establish my covenant with you. You're going to make it through the floodwaters.

And then on that basis, Noah obeys. Not out of fear, not out of desire to perform so that God will be pleased with him, but rather out of the understanding of God's gracious covenant that he has made with him. John Calvin writes, let us know that the promises of God are what quicken us and inspire each of our members with vigor to yield obedience to God.

That without these promises, we would lie in torpid indolence, almost lifeless, so that neither hands nor feet can do their duty. Saying you have it all wrong if you think that foolish way that man will not be motivated to obey if he understands God's grace. Rather Noah can build the ark saying I trust the promise of God that he will in fact deliver me.

And so the obedience that he renders is an expression of faith and love, not merit. And so God in this covenant promise to save Noah says you are going to enter the ark. This is the plan of salvation.

There's going to be one way through the waters. It's my appointed way. And we said that this already begins to point ultimately to the crosswork of Jesus Christ.

This ark will have one door in it. It's the very same language Jesus used to describe himself, that he is the door. And there's no other access point.

If you try to climb up over the walls, you don't get in. Rather he's the way, the truth, and the life. And no one gets to the father except through him.

And the door of salvation is available. It can be opened to anyone who knocks on it, everyone who asks receives. But it is an exclusive entrance point.

And so God's covenant here to Noah is to save him, to preserve his life, through his appointed means of salvation. And as commonly the case with God and his covenants, he makes the covenant with Noah, and then there's other beneficiaries. It's like when the insurance bill gets sent to our house or now to my inbox, whatever it is, a notification on my app.

Anyway, when it comes, it's my name on it. And guess what? I get to pay for it. But there's additional beneficiaries, are there not? Everybody in my family is covered with the policy.

So God here makes this covenant with Noah that is going to be not just for Noah, but it will benefit his entire family and ultimately benefit the human race. We see God cares about life. He even cares about the animals.

Look at the purpose of every living thing. Verse 19, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female.

So God here is making a covenant promise to Noah for his benefit, for the benefit of his family. And even creation, the animals are going to benefit. He cares even about the animals to preserve them, okay? So all of you that have pets, I mean, this is part of God's plan.

That he'd preserve animals, certainly for our enjoyment, not just for pets but for our benefit, so we could eat them, so we could accomplish work with them and farm and transportation. We'd gain supply from products like milk and eggs. We'd use them for clothing.

People even go on trips and they spend big money to bird watch and things like that. God preserves the animals as well. He says two of every kind is what you need to take on.

Why two of every kind in male and female? Well, reproduction, of course. It's the only kind of pair that makes sense. Two males could not do that, nor two females.

When he says two of every kind, he's likely speaking of species, not species but the family level. So two canines. It's rather than taking a wolf and a fox and a dog, take two canines.

And in that gene pool, it will begin to spread out into various species, contains the genetic material required. Or two of the bear family. And from that bear kind would come black bears and grizzlies and polar bears and such.

It would certainly reduce the number of animals required to bring on the ark. We can't be exactly sure, but it would seem when God's talking about kinds here, he's talking about two animals that could reproduce because they're of the same ability. And so God here is just pouring out grace.

I want you to think about this. He came to Noah and Noah found favor in the eyes of God. That was God's initiating work.

Then he warns Noah of the flood that is coming. And then he gives Noah instructions for how he's going to be preserved. And then he provides the resources.

So God here has Noah building an ark. We said last week that he could have dropped this thing out of the sky prefab, but he didn't. He included Noah in the process.

He gave him this massive assignment. He was to not only build the ark, but he was to take for himself verse 21 food, which is edible and gather it to be food for him and food for them. And so Noah had to gain access to all kinds of food supplies, grains, cereals, corn, barley, wheat, et cetera, dried fruits, ability to store and preserve all of this food.

And this just demonstrates that this was an actual event. It would have been a tremendous quantity of food that was needed. It's interesting to me.

God could have worked a miracle. I mean, he has unlimited power. We read in the Bible of him sustaining people supernaturally.

If you remember, Moses went 40 days without food or water. Same thing with Jesus and his temptation in Matthew chapter four. It's impossible.

And you go a week without water and you're a goner. And so God could have provided for all of the animals and Noah in some kind of supernatural miraculous way apart from these means, but he didn't. He chose to work his provision through the instrumentality of Noah's cooperation and Noah's effort and Noah's faithfulness and Noah's work.

He said, Noah, if you want to eat, you need to get all the provisions together for you and for the animals. So it doesn't preclude the possibility of the animals just kind of on the scientific front of going into some kind of hibernation. It's possible they went into various states in that darkness and the confined spaces where they kind of become inactive and they require, as their heart rate slows, less food, there's less waste, they use less energy.

I mean, something like that is quite possible. But Noah had to bring provisions and this project would have been an astounding undertaking. And the scripture is clear to record.

Verse 22, thus Noah did according to all that God had commanded him, so he did. This brings us to our final point in unpacking Noah's big obedience. Point number five, Noah's compliance.

Noah's compliance. When you think of Noah, you need to think of a man of great faith and a man who is an obeyer, okay? A man who is an obeyer. This is going to show up again in chapter seven, the reminders that he did all that God had commanded him.

He built an ark. That's a big obedience. We don't know how long it took him.

The timeline is not recorded, so we can't be certain. Some assume 120 years. They kind of take the timeline out of verses one through four.

There's no indication that the ark was started or construction was started at that point. Certainly possible, but the text doesn't say. There's other assumptions that it was 100 years, a 100-year-long project, because the text says that Noah was 500 when his sons were born and 600 when the floodwaters came, but even that just tells us really roughly how old the boys were when the floodwaters came.

I think the most natural way to understand the text is that God comes to Noah, and he instructs him to build the ark. There in verse 14, make for yourself an ark of gopher wood. And in that instruction, he refers to Noah's sons and daughters, daughter-in-laws, excuse me, in verse 18, he says, you and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives with you.

That certainly could be different conversations. On the face of it, the way it's written, it would seem that the instruction came to Noah when he already had sons who already had wives. If that was the case, then this project is shortened to probably at most 75 years and maybe even less.

And so this project was a massive undertaking. And Noah could have been a man of great resources. Obviously, he had to get all of these materials and get access to them.

It's not impossible that he would have hired people to help do the work. It could have been just him and his family members. But just the sheer metrics of harvesting the timber and milling the wood and assembling the vessel was a significant project.

And there's two points that I want to draw your attention to relating to the obedience and why God would require Noah to construct an ark. I mean, why not just provide the vessel? Why make him build it? Well, there's a couple of reasons. The first one is this.

The construction of the ark demonstrates God's perfect patience. It demonstrates God's patience. You say, I think it also demonstrates Noah's patience.

That's true. You have a project that could not be quickly completed. And according to 1 Peter 3.20, it was the patience of God that kept waiting in the days of Noah during the construction of the ark.

Why did God give Noah such a long project? Well, it was to demonstrate his patience. That rather than just decree that the earth would be destroyed and immediately flood it and destroy everyone, he was giving them warning, plank by plank by plank, tree that's felled by tree that's felled. That there's judgment coming and the only way of escape would be to get on the boat.

Time for people to walk by and see Noah making the ark and ask questions and hear about the project and perhaps repent. Don't you see this project? You need to understand that this is an inscrutable mind of God, a demonstration of his patience. And I was just thinking this week as I was meditating on that, man, this humbles me a lot.

I mean, we're so pathetic. We're trying to figure out what God is doing all the time. Oh, I think he's doing this and this and this.

I've kind of figured it out. I just highly doubt that Noah's thinking, hey, the reason why I got this massive project in part is so that God can demonstrate his patience to a watching world. He didn't know why God had asked him to do that.

And yet 1 Peter's clear. 1 Peter 3.20, God gave him this long project to demonstrate his patience so that he could be patient with mankind. And secondly, this demonstrates that Noah's obedience was by faith.

I mean, I can't even fathom the number of obstacles that he would have encountered in that project. You've ever felt overwhelmed by a task that you didn't wanna start? Can you imagine building an entire ark? It says that Noah did all that God commanded him. You understand for Noah, he believed God.

He actually believed that what God said was going to happen, even though with his physical eyes, he had no evidence to corroborate it. He knew God is true. God won't lie to me.

God won't change on me. Get this, God is not keeping something better from me. Rather, his very best for me is to obey.

Believing that there's a promised reward for obedience. Just even thinking of the instructions. I mean, imagine as you're getting 50% of the way done, 60% of the way done, 70%.

At some point, you had to think, I mean, could we like shave off a few cubits? Do we really need it to be that big? I mean, do we really need all those animals? It says that he did all that God commanded him. And we tell our kids a lot, if you pick and choose what part of an instruction you want to do, if you pick and choose what you affirm and what you agree with or what you enjoy or what you think is wise and you discard the rest of the instruction, whatever it is that you just did, it's not obedience. So obedience is not modifying the plan.

You can think of all the excuses that Noah could have offered. It's too big, it's too hard, I need a shortcut. But no, he built the ark and he did all that God commanded him.

Gopher wood, the rooms inside, three levels, one door, a window at the top, covered in pitch inside and out, precisely 30 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, 30 cubits high. Noah was an obeyer and he had a long and costly obedience. And I just tell you, the word obedience in scripture is the idea of hearing and submitting.

Okay, that's it. You hear it, you hear the instruction and then you submit yourself to it. And the Bible teaches it's the proper response to God's instruction.

It's the yielding of our will to God's. And Noah here is given as an example, it's stated twice in the text. Thus Noah did, according to all that God commanded him, so he did.

He was a doer of the word. He was a doer of the word. This would be the refrain in scripture over and over.

When God gave the law to Israel through Moses and Deuteronomy, said in chapter 12, verse 28, be careful to listen to all these words which I command you. So we learn about obedience. Well, you gotta be careful in obedience.

There's precision required. You're to listen to comprehensively all the words. So we don't get to pick and choose the ones we like and the ones we don't or the ones that are convenient or easy.

And then there's authority, which I command you. It's right here in Genesis 9, or 622 as well. God commanded him.

Okay, these aren't suggestions. They're obligations. A few verses later in Deuteronomy 12, 32, he'd say, whatever I'm commanding you, you shall be careful to do, and don't add and don't take away from it.

Didn't I just tell you that it is good for us to be reminded of this simplicity and the priority of obedience? Is it not? It is so straightforward. It's so clarifying. I mean, just recognizing God commanded it.

I mean, oftentimes, we don't like to call things that we're doing obedience and disobedience. I mean, certainly if you're parenting little ones, you use the word obedience in your house, I'm sure. But then we get older, and what do we start to call disobedience? I had another slip up.

What? I have an area that I need to work on. I have something I've been trying to improve. A bad habit that I need to address.

It's far less common to hear even a believer who loves Christ say, I'm being disobedient. I'm disobeying. And frankly, at the moment, I don't want to obey.

I'm struggling with even the willingness. And obedience brings obligation to us. Sometimes people get offended by that.

Over the years in ministry, I've had people that get offended by obligation language. They think that preaching the commands of Scripture is somehow legalism. And over the years, helping people understand that we're talking about salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.

And then when God saves you, it's unto what? So you can be a disobeyer? No. Rather, we're created in Christ Jesus, His workmanship for good works, which He prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. So even though you're in Christ, and all of your sins have been paid for, it does not remove you from the obligation to obey.

See, obedience is good language. Noah's a good example for us because it automatically removes excuses that we would like to hang onto for our disobedience. I mean, this one comes up a lot.

In your home, it probably comes up. You can use other people's sin as an excuse for your lack of obedience. My spouse's disobedience justifies my disobedience.

My parents' disobedience justifies my disobedience. But see, when we talk about obedience, there's nothing that relieves you from the obligation to obey. Not your personality.

Not your past. And you can see so clearly the opposite of how obedience is described in the Bible. Words that bring vivid clarity to our hearts.

Words like stiff-necked. Stubborn. Unbending.

Unyielding. Line-crossing. Boundary-pushing.

Self-willed. Obstinate. Rebellious.

Strained. Defiant. Complacent.

Calloused. And when you and I disobey, you need to be reminded that our disobedience is always rooted in unbelief. The writer of Hebrews is clear that Noah believed God.

Hebrews 11, seven. He trusted God. What it means is that Noah believed that what God said would be the very best for him and that God had the authority to command him and that God would never do him wrong that in the path of obedience, he would somehow miss out on something better.

Do you think he wasn't tested in that? Hey, Noah, we're going fishing this weekend. What are you doing? Still building the boat. Hey, Noah, look at the cool thing I just bought.

You keep using your money to build a giant boat. I mean, whatever it was, I'm sure that he had temptations over those years to be thinking, surely, surely there's a better way here. And yet he continually trusted in the Lord.

You know what part of our problem is with obedience? It's people today live too much by what they feel. They do what feels right to them. They do what they feel like doing and they don't do what they don't feel like doing.

And the only descriptions I can find in scripture about following your own feelings would be warnings not to do so. These believers were to be people of faith, were to live by faith. And so when you and I think of obedience, it doesn't really matter whether you feel like it or not.

Do you believe God? That's not to say that your attitude doesn't matter, but rather by faith, then you and I learn to actually feel like obeying. How does that happen? Well, you begin to delight in God's character and you delight in his path forward and you see it as good. If you use the biblical words, your heart becomes inclined to God's instructions.

And so maturity in the Christian life looks like not just I have to obey, but increasingly it's what I want to do. I want to obey. And I know that there's a blessing associated with obedience.

And I'm not just dragging my feet as I fulfill my necessary and required obligation to God, but it's what I find I want to do. And in case you need help making the connection, what were the words of the Lord Jesus Christ? If you love me, obey my commandments. If you love me, obey my commandments.

So you and I are to view obedience in the same way Noah did. I love the Lord. I love God.

And so I love his commandments. And out of an expression of love to him, I want to obey. I trust him.

As the hymn writer would say, how I proved him or and or. So Noah learned not to look to his own wisdom, not to walk by sight, but rather to believe God more than he trusted in his own heart. What I want to ask you is, you're hearing this message this morning.

I want to ask you how your obedience is going. What enters your mind this morning? Any areas of disobedience? Any areas that you haven't been wanting to face? Any areas that you've been slow to address that the Spirit of God has put on your heart and you just find, I just do not really want to go there? Maybe something that you need to let go of. Maybe something that you're fearful of because obedience is going to cost you in a way that you're concerned you don't want to pay.

Is there anything that God has commanded you to do that you're not doing? Or anything that God has commanded you not to do that you are doing? Just simple ways to begin to think about obedience. Can I encourage you to, to this week, take those areas and begin to ask yourself, where is this exposing unbelief in my heart? Because Noah was not thinking, I'm going to build the ark and miss out on all the fun with my friends and in the end it's going to amount to nothing. I believe God's going to come destroy the earth.

But he's promised to save me and he's going to save me through this boat. So I'm going to obey and I'm going to build it. As I was thinking about our ministry, I thought what a great thing to be said about the people of God at Cornerstone.

Would to God that this would be our reputation. Not that they're legalists, not that they're libertines, not that they're traditionalists, not that they follow men, but rather that church is obedient to Christ. They obey the word of Christ.

They're obeyers, they're submitters. So Genesis chapter six is such an encouragement to our hearts. I hope it's been a good reminder for you.

There's something so simple and clarifying about obedience language. And to recognize that Noah first and foremost, here is a picture of God's salvation. That's the resounding takeaway of the ark.

God's salvation, God's grace, his favor to undeserving sinners. We see that God rescues Noah through a covenant and the ark becomes his gracious provision for Noah. It ultimately typifies the salvation that we receive at the cross.

We understand that there is no other salvation. And also in chapter six, that there's a clear emphasis on the role of obedience in the lives of God's people. Not as the cause, but as the consequence of Noah's relationship with God.

He obeys. On all of this, I'm sure that you're thinking, or I hope you're thinking of the Lord Jesus Christ because he was the perfect obeyer. According to Hebrews chapter five, he learned obedience through the things that he suffered.

And so Jesus, children, this will be an encouragement to you. He had to learn how to obey. And guess what? He had imperfect parents, just like you have imperfect parents.

And if he learned to submit himself through suffering to God's plan, such that he could say at the end of his life in John 17, Father, I glorified you on earth, having finished the work, what you've given me to do. He obeyed perfectly in every way. And it's through that one man's obedience, namely the obedience of Jesus Christ, that many will be appointed righteous.

That God will judge all those who have faith in Christ, not upon our obedience, but upon his. Isn't that remarkable? That message never gets old. Let's pray.

God, thank you for the way that your word presses in and provides insight that cannot be understood by the natural man or through natural ways of thinking. But because you made us, because you knit us together, because we're created in your image, and you know everything about us, you've divinely intended your word to be that surgical work on our souls that shows us things that we need to see. And so Lord, no doubt, as we reflect on your gracious salvation and our obedience, it has exposed things in our hearts.

And Lord, I pray that we would respond to that in two ways. That first of all, we would be willing to say that Christ is worth more to us than anything else we would hang on to. And that we would gladly part with sin for his name's sake.

And that secondly, we would find great comfort in knowing that all of our disobedience has been forgiven through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, and you and your grace gave us his obedience. Lord, we thank you for that message of the gospel. We thank you for that work on the cross.

Amen.

There we go. Well, we were trying that this week to see if we could see the musicians a little bit better as we changed the furniture, realizing there's certain spots you can sit and really can't see some of the things that are going on. But it is, man, such a joy, honestly, every week to open the scriptures with you.

And it is not contrived. I feel like every week my anticipation is just full on what we're going to discover. Somebody asked me this morning how it was going and I just was saying, man, I feel like there is so much every week and every one of these passages that is so necessary for edification.

And this morning is no different. Somebody should take your Bibles and turn with me to Genesis chapter 6. And we're going to continue to make our way through this narrative. Last week, we looked at really what we termed as the lead-in to the flood judgment.

We saw the favor and the fury of Yahweh, that the Lord punishes sin and yet He also is gracious to Noah. And He is moved to action as He looks at sin and He is grieved by it. And yet He also shows favor, particularly to this one family in the midst of the flood judgment.

And so, this is most assuredly God's plan. It is His provision. He orchestrates it.

He communicates it. And we're going to see today that He is behind Noah's deliverance. And yet, as our Lord often is, He's committed to means in the process.

And so, He actually requires certain things of Noah and His involvement in the text before us this morning. Entitled this morning's message, Noah's Big Obedience. Noah's Big Obedience.

And I want to read our text before us this morning, and then we'll make our way through it. We'll begin reading in verse 9 this morning. I'm reading out of the LSB.

These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among those in his generation. Noah walked with God.

Noah became the father of three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.

Then God said to Noah, the end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. And behold, I'm about to destroy them with the earth. Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood.

You shall make the ark with rooms, and you shall cover it inside and out with pitch. Now this is how you shall make it. The length of the ark, 300 cubits.

Its breadth, 50 cubits, and its height, 30 cubits. You should make a window for the ark and complete it to one cubit from the top and set the door of the ark inside of it. You shall make it with lower, second, and third decks.

As for me, behold, I am bringing the flood of water upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life. From under heaven, everything that is on the earth shall breathe its last. But I will establish my covenant with you.

You shall enter the ark, you and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female.

Of the birds after their kind and of the animals after their kind, and of every creeping thing on the ground after its kind, two of every kind will come to you to keep them alive. As for you, take for yourself some of all food which is edible and gather it to yourself, and it shall be for food for you and for them. Thus Noah did according to all that God had commanded him, so he did." If you're keeping an outline this morning, we're going to be unpacking Noah's big obedience.

There's a lot that's happening in this chapter. We're going to see a number of pieces as we work through it, and yet I believe that one of the primary lessons in the midst of God's grace and deliverance is focusing on the man Noah himself. Our first point this morning is going to be Noah's character.

Noah's character, and this is really what predicates his obedience. The text says in verse 9, these are the generations of Noah. Okay, so that kind of brings us back to Genesis, these genealogies that we've been seeing.

Back in Genesis chapter 5 verse 1, we had Adam's genealogy, and that kind of extended through, so Moses here is picking up with Noah's genealogy, his family line. It's going to be very important soon, but then he takes and gives an editorial note and begins to describe Noah. He says that Noah was in fact a righteous man, blameless among those in his generations, and Noah walked with God.

I want you to think about this for a minute. If you were to be asked to kind of rank the greatest people in the history of the world and the godliest people in the history of the world, where would you put Noah? I don't know exactly. I mean, it's a bit subjective of a question.

Surely top 100. Would he make the top 40? I don't know, maybe top 10. What we're going to find this morning is that he is an exceptional and outstanding and exemplary individual, and he's given a place of prominence in the Scripture.

If you think of Adam, Adam was the natural father of all the living. Noah now again is going to be the natural father of all the living. Everything is going to start over with this man.

And so we read it, the description of him, that he was a righteous man and he was blameless among those in his generations. Noah was a good man. He was a godly guy.

We read those words righteous and blameless, and automatically our minds go to how righteousness is typically used in the Scriptures. And we think of Jesus was the righteous one, or maybe he was the spotless lamb. He was blameless.

That's not exactly what's being talked about here. I mean, it is true that there is none who are righteous and that Noah's righteousness is based on God showing him favor. We already saw that in verse 8, that God looks upon Noah with favor, and on the basis of his faith, He justifies him.

We know that that righteousness is a foreign righteousness that Noah has. We know that he's ultimately saved by the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. The Scripture here uses the word righteous, not in the ultimate sense of being perfectly righteous or perfectly blameless, but categorically so, categorically so.

Noah genuinely was a righteous man. What it means is that his life was ordered by that which is right. So, if you engaged with Noah, you'd find he's an honest man.

He plays by the rules, and he fears God, and he has integrity because he is a righteous man. When you read that he was blameless, it has this idea that there was a wholeness to his life where what he professed to believe with his lips was demonstrated in his conduct. Those matched up.

You could say that the hypocrisy gap in Noah's life was not significant. And that doesn't mean, of course, that Noah did not sin, but rather he dealt with sin in his life. So, if you want to think what it means to be blameless, you're not someone who lives with undealt with sin, unconfessed sin, sin that you're not fleeing from or battling, sin that you're unwilling to repent of.

And so, Noah when he would sin would do what? He would make amends. He would seek forgiveness. He would turn away from it.

He would battle it. And so, Noah could be said then to be a man who was righteous and a man who was blameless. Now, it's all the more impacting when you read about the very next descriptor, among those in his generations.

So, Noah was not a hermit. He didn't live on a holy hill all by himself. Rather, he was associated with the people around him, likely a contemporary of Lamech who we already saw.

He was a violent polygamist. So, Noah is living among a crooked and perverse generation, yet he is unblemished and unstained. He's a non-conformist, if you will.

About chapter 7 verse 1, we read, he always said to Noah, enter the ark, you and all your household, for you alone I have seen to be righteous before me in this generation. So, Noah is in and among a perverse culture, and yet the testimony of Scripture is that he's a man who is righteous, a man who is blameless. And that strength for living righteously, that strength for living blamelessly, is the very same for Noah as it is for you and me.

It does not originate from us. It doesn't come from within. So, we read, unsurprisingly, that Noah walked with God.

Noah walked with God. So, how did Noah develop all of these rock-solid convictions to live righteously in a perverse culture? He spent time with God, very simply. He loved God.

He knew Him intimately. We could say his life was quorum Deo. He lived in the conscious presence, the conscious awareness of God day by day.

And so, before we even get to Noah's big obedience that is coming, we need to understand the soil of his heart, that before that big ask was the daily giving of himself as an offering to God. See, his big obedience doesn't come in the context of Noah suddenly seeing that there's a lot at stake, and so he kind of rallies and he pulls it together. No, rather, this is out of the moment that he's been training for for years before it happened.

It was a long pattern of obedience that precedes this big act of obedience that we see today. What would that have meant? Well, day by day, learning to trust God. Day by day, learning to walk with God.

Day by day, developing his convictions. Day by day, courage. Day by day, learning to be the odd man out.

Day by day, learning to take a stand when it was costly. Learning to not follow the crowd. Learning to restrain his fleshly desires.

Learning to walk by the Spirit. And so, Noah's daily conduct, the warping move of his life, was that he walked with God. He was winning the little battles.

Let me tell you this, you will not live righteously, and you will not live blamelessly if you are not battling in the little areas, the unseen areas. Noah cared about the integrity of his heart before his God. He walked with God.

You know, and sometimes we're just so foolish, are we not? We think, I'll definitely have what I need to withstand big moments of temptation while giving into little areas. It doesn't work like that. One of my kids will often tell me, in effect, dad, here's the issue.

You need to trust me with the big things, and then what you'll see is I'll rally. That's not how it works. The Scripture is very clear that faithfulness in the little is the starting point.

And so, Noah was a man, before we get to this big act of obedience, who was faithful in the little. He didn't excuse the little stuff. As John Owen would say, there's to be that rising up against the first inclination toward sin.

That was where he drew the battle lines. And so, Noah, as we'll see, is a man who was vigilant. He had a sense of urgency about his spiritual condition to be said, to be righteous and blameless.

And he had been allotted a portion of faith by God with which he was able to take on the world. I mean, it's just a marvel. It's a wonder to understand Noah's faith.

And I think a great implication, just as I was thinking about this, is would those people who are closest to you, if asked, say, oh yeah, I would totally describe him or her as righteous, blameless, and someone who walks with God. It's not the people who know you best would say. The people in your own home, the people that work with you, that's a righteous, blameless person who walks with God.

Noah's friends would have been able to attest to that. And Moses goes on and he writes in verse 10, Noah became the father, then, this great man of character, of three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. We'll tuck that away for later.

We're going to circle back to it in chapter 10. But there's this like little detour that Moses needs to deal with first, and there's some flooding, okay, that's going to take place. So, he kind of parks it in genealogy here.

He just introduces the sons. He's going to come back to that later. But verse 11 brings us to our next point in unpacking Noah's big obedience.

Not only do we see Noah's character, but we see Noah's context. We see Noah's context for his obedience. And I think this is very important in understanding both Noah's integrity as well as God's purpose in the flood, the cultural surroundings that Noah found himself, the wickedness that he found around himself.

Verse 11, we read, Now the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt. For all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.

Here in verses 11 and 12, there's a reiteration and an expansion upon what we read in 6-7. And Yahweh said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals, to creeping things, to the birds of the sky, for I regret that I have made them. And if you notice, there's words that are repeated here in verses 11 through 13.

Corrupt, filled with violence, all flesh. Four times we read the earth. And the point here that's being made is that things are really, really bad right now.

Okay? It's universal. It's all flesh. It's unimaginably bad.

And what this begins to demonstrate for us is the human heart, apart from the restraining grace of God, this is where it ends up. Man turns inward, and it always results in destruction. Man destroys himself.

Man destroys others. He destroys creation. And the word here is corrupt.

It has been ruined. I say this a lot. Corruption always makes me think of the fridge.

Right? Once food has become spoiled and contaminated, it needs to go in the garbage. Right? I mean, that's why it's an exercise in God's grace to not freak out when there's not a date to put on something that's been opened. I need to know if the salsa is seven days old, or 10 days old, or 14 days old, because it's going to impact my decisions.

The picture here is that the earth is contaminated. It's polluted. It's corrupt.

It's spoiled. Sin has sullied it. And that is the result.

That is the effect of an earth that has been filled with violence. And you probably know this word for violence, hamas, should ring a bell. It's a day of physical violence, harsh treatment, injurious language, ruthlessness, and a hatred toward others.

The picture of the earth being filled, if you think back to the wonderful, hopeful command given in Genesis 128 was for man to be fruitful and to fill the earth. And so now we see man is reproducing. Man is filling the earth.

And what's he filling the earth with? Violence. Okay? That's what man fills the earth with. It is there's no place that you could go to get relief from the violence.

I mean, this is humanity apart from the restraining grace of God. Adam's race has polluted the earth. And the righteous remnant now is then down to one single family.

I mean, oh my word, just think about this for a second. Right now, Oregon, we have about 4.3 million people living in the state. Easily, the math works out, pencils out that there could have been 4.3 million people on the earth with no, we have no idea exactly how many, but it's not far-fetched to think it could be that many.

Could have been more, could have been less. But it took me for a moment in our example. Imagine that you live here in the state of Oregon and your family is the only family who loves and fears God.

I mean, instantly, I think that's terrifying, that's lonely, that's grievous. And so when you picture Noah, you need to have in your mind's eye that it is Noah versus the world. Noah cannot find fellowship outside of his family right now with those who love and fear the Lord.

And so God says to Noah in verse 13, now speaking directly to him, Noah, the end of all flesh has come before me for the earth is filled with violence because of them and behold, I'm about to destroy them with the earth. Can you imagine hearing that message from God that had to have been arresting? I mean, just God speaking to you audibly obviously would be arresting. But the message is it's the end of all the living.

It's the end of flesh. If you look carefully at the detail of the text, it says, I'm about to destroy them with the earth, the end of verse 13. And God is telling Noah, I'm going to undo creation in effect.

I don't know what Noah felt when he heard this. The text doesn't say, but I can imagine just a little bit. Surely grief would have filled his heart at some measure.

I mean, these are his kin. He has family members that are going to be destroyed. And so there would be one side of certainly compassion, I think would be a natural response of a godly person.

At the same time, probably a measure of relief to some degree, because as he's looking out on the wickedness of the earth, righteous people are grieved by unrighteousness, grieved by all the suffering that is caused. So God here does something that is so typical of him. He comes and he speaks not to all of humanity, but he comes and he speaks to one man.

He speaks to Noah. He gives special revelation to Noah. Noah's going to serve as then a prophet, a mouthpiece, a preacher who receives a divine message from God and then is responsible for it.

Who's able to convey it to others around him. And Moses doesn't elaborate. The Lord just simply states that the earth is filled with violence because of them, because of all flesh.

And I think it'd be helpful to just pause for a moment and just remind ourselves of the Bible's description of mankind apart from God's grace. What did all flesh look like at that time? So once you take this in, these are just from familiar passages. What would have all flesh have looked like on the earth as the earth was corrupted? Here it is.

That time people would have been lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, without gentleness, without love for good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. They would have given themselves over to sexual immorality, to impurity, to sensuality, even practicing every form of impurity with greediness, always wanting more, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition from which would flow disorder and every evil practice. They would have been affected by demonic influences and characterized by dissensions and factions, envying, carousing.

They would have been foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending life in malice and envy, despicable, hating one another, crooked, perverse, unrighteousness. And there would have been many adulterers and effeminate and homosexuals and thieves and greedy and drunkards and revilers and swindlers walking in the futility of their mind, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them. Hard-hearted, ungodly, untrustworthy, without understanding, suppressing the truth and unrighteousness filled with wickedness and evil, slanders who hate God, violent, and inventors of evil.

It would have been unprincipled, lawless, unmerciful, self-willed and daring, despising of authority, creatures of instinct, reveling in the daytime in their deceptions, having loved the wages of unrighteousness, being slaves of corruption. And not only would they do those things, but they give hearty approval to those who practice them. I ask you, what goes on in your heart and mind? Just hearing God's diagnostic of the human heart.

I don't know how you read that list and not be impacted emotionally, not be saddened and grieved, not hate sin in your own life. And if there was any of you that were thinking, well, you know what? I heard that list and I can't really relate to it. And the scripture indicts you too and says that you're without excuse.

Oh man, everyone who passes judgment, for that which you judge another, you condemn yourself because you who judge practice the very same things. Paul would ask, are we better? Not at all. We've charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin as it is written.

Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are in the law so that every mouth may be shut and all the world may become accountable to God. I mean, the evil on the earth at that time is imaginable to us because it's not all that different from the evil on the earth today. I mean, it's atrocious.

It's not just atrocities that happened generations ago at wartime. It happens in our country today. It happens all around the world of the most violent and dark kinds of sins.

And so in the midst of that appetite for increasing iniquity, the refrain of scripture is to tell the church you were by nature the same. Such were some of you for we are two selves, ourselves once were. Your former manner of life.

So when you and I read that list, we're on the one hand to recognize this explains all that's wrong with the world. And this is man's natural condition apart from grace. And then the Bible tells me to often be reminded that that is me too.

But God, but God being great in mercy with the great love with which he loved us. Apart from that kind of mercy and grace, you and I are dead in our trespasses and sins and we look just like this list. And so God here is doing the very best, very good thing that he could do, which is to restore creation.

I mean, ultimately that's coming in Christ, but to do a mini version of that right now through Noah and to say, the earth has been spoiled. Creation has been spoiled. Mankind has gone too far.

I'm going to start over now. I'm going to do this with a single family. I'm sure that Noah wanted to see God work in this way.

It's no different from us in the church today who would cry out, come Lord Jesus. We want you to come and rescue us. We want you to come and save us from destruction.

And so we've seen Noah's character and we've seen his context, this dark world that he's living righteously as a part of. And now in verse 14, we come to Noah's commission. Noah's commission.

This is our third point as we unpack Noah's big obedience. God comes to Noah, this man whom he has chosen to set his favor upon, who's in the midst of a dark and crooked world that God is about to wipe out, and he gives Noah a project. He commissions a ship to be built.

He gives him a charge, if you will, a construction project. So he says in verse 14, make for yourself an ark of gopher wood. You shall make the ark with rooms and you shall cover it inside and out with pitch.

When I put myself in Noah's footwear, who knows what they were wearing back then. I would just say, man, I didn't, Lord, I didn't see that one coming. Told me you're going to destroy the earth.

And then you assign me a construction project and you want me to build an ark. What is an ark? Well, an ark is basically a chest, okay? It's a vessel. Here's one other time in scripture, Moses was put in a basket and the word is used there as well.

So it's going to be in scripture then, an object that rescues and deluge of water. For those of us who like aesthetics, this is not a very pretty vessel, okay? That is not the point. This is function over form.

It's not a yacht. It's not going to be finished in that way. You could think barge.

And I wonder what was going through Noah's mind when he got these instructions. I've assembled a number of things over my life. You start out as a little kid and you build like Lego sets and you build model cars and you get all these different, you know, things given to you at Christmas that you build and you put together.

And all of those instruction manuals make sense. And then you grow up and you buy something from Ikea and someone decided that it would be clear if we put no words in the instruction manual. We just drew pictures that don't really help very much.

I read Noah's instructions here and I wonder how he felt getting these plans. I wonder if there's more that God said outside of divine revelation. Because the instructions here are pretty basic.

Here it is, the outer dimensions, the wood type. By the way, I want a window and a door, put some pitch on it and make it three levels. It would seem not outlandish to think that Noah probably had a knowledge of shipbuilding.

He probably understood things like engineering, possibly understood animals pretty well, like a zoology background. We don't know. He'd lived a long life.

He'd been on the earth for hundreds of years. It's possible the concept of an ark had already been understood based upon what technology had already existed in ancient shipbuilding. But this was a massive project.

It's a big boat even by today's standards. It's absolutely enormous. Here in the text, it's measured by a cubit.

Verse 15, 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high. Cubits measurement we're given, you're probably very familiar, it's from the elbow to the fingertip. It varied based on where you went, how long the cubit was.

There was a Babylonian cubit, Egyptian cubit, Hebrew cubit. There were long ones and short ones. So we don't know the exact dimensions of the ark, but more or less, it was probably around 450 feet long and about 75 feet wide and about 50 feet high.

So just for reference, this room is about 100 feet long. So you just picture this room multiplied by about four and a half, maybe five. You're getting about the length of the ark.

And then I don't know the other part. I think that you double about the width here, and then this height maybe is 20 some odd feet, I think 22 feet. So you a little more than double the peak of this.

And believe it or not, we actually worship in an ark-shaped building. So it would have looked pretty similar to this, kind of a large boxy structure, very similar to the shape of a barge. And there's all kinds of questions, of course, that immediately pop into our head.

Like, what about ventilation? And what about fresh water? And where did the food get stored? And where did all the solid and liquid waste go? It's a long time to hold it. Like, how did all of this work? And there are many ideas that have been put forward to kind of recreate and answer how these things could have come about. They're very fascinating.

I want to give you just two words of caution as you explore the curiosities regarding the ark. First and foremost, what is to be the convincing proof in the heart of the believer is the testimony of Scripture. Okay? So whether we can answer exactly how all of these things happened in a way that satisfies all of our questions is really not to be the basis of our faith.

That's not to increase or reduce your faith. And secondly, I'll just say as you dive into these, you're going to find many speculations. And I don't have a problem with speculations per se, but you need to make sure that your Bible is open and you're aware kind of what's speculation and then what's actually from the Lord in Scripture.

And that way you keep clear in your heart and speculations don't get muddled into your beliefs. So here the text is pretty limited on what we know about this giant floating chest, but God gives the dimensions. He gives a couple of key features, namely the window and the door.

And he says in verse 17, as for me, behold, I am bringing the flood of water upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life from under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall breathe its last. I mean, look at the language in verse 17.

Behold, Noah, I want to draw very pointed attention to this statement. I want you to highlight this in your thinking. I am bringing, I am bringing the flood of water upon the earth.

This is my flood. I'm responsible for it. And in one sense, we know that God is responsible for any flooding that takes place at any time.

And we know that he's designed the hydrological cycle and he's designed the climate and the moon and the oceans, and he's put it all together to make it work. Noah would have known that. And yet the Lord here is drawing particular attention to his intention that he is the one that is bringing about the floodwaters upon the earth and the purpose is to kill everyone, to destroy, to annihilate all the flesh in which is the breath of life.

You say, is it really all flesh? This double marker here from under heaven and everything that is on the earth shall breathe its last. So, he is piling on the specific language here to make it clear. Why is this important? Well, sometimes people are like, well, maybe we'll concede that there was at some point a pretty bad flood, but it wasn't cataclysmic.

It wasn't worldwide. That's too extreme. Doesn't even make sense.

And yet the Lord here is saying, I'm going to bring it about. And my expressed purpose and intent is everything that has breath is going to breathe its last. And that is poetic.

And it's very sobering. Drowning is formally defined as the process of experiencing respiratory impairment from submersion or immersion in liquid. Creatures that breathe air can't live without air.

And so, God says, I'm going to take away the breath of life. I'm going to remove it. And I don't know about you, but as I ponder that, I think, well, why a flood? Like, why not a plague? God wipes people out with plagues in the Bible.

Israel would get hit with them and fail to learn a lesson and then get hit again. Why not some kind of disease? Certainly have the angel of the Lord coming and wiping out the entire Assyrian army in one night. Why not just wipe everybody out with the angel of the Lord? Seems a little bit simpler.

Seems a little bit less expensive for Noah than building an entire ship. The earth swallowed up Korah. That could have worked.

Why not just swallow people up? Well, the text doesn't tell us. But I think there's a clue back in verse 7, where Yahweh says, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the earth. From man to animals, to creeping things, and to birds of the sky, for I regret that I have made them.

What am I going to do? I'm going to wipe them away. See, what does the flood do that a plague doesn't? It not only kills the people, but it wipes away all of their achievements. It wipes away all of their memories.

The cities get destroyed, the landmarkers get destroyed, the accomplishments, the institutions, any temples. It is a fresh start. You can't go find the remnants that were left behind and then just pick up where things were left off.

I remember they used to worship under that tree over there. Tree got wiped out. Not only that, but the flood testifies to future destruction.

See, the flood would come upon the earth suddenly. And it was unavoidable. It was worldwide.

That was by design. And there are passages that urge us to make the connection to the flood judgment with the future judgment that God will bring upon the earth. Not that He's going to flood the earth again, but that it's going to come upon the earth suddenly.

In fact, our Lord would say in just as the days of Noah were, so the coming of the Son of Man will be. What do you mean, Jesus? How's it going to be the same when you come as it was in the days of Noah? It goes on and explains, for as in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. So they're living life, not expecting judgment.

And then Jesus says, until the day that Noah entered the ark and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away. So will the coming of the Son of Man be. See, this was a picture of a testimony to future destruction.

The flood shows the severity of God. It's going to wipe away any memory of man from the earth and all of his achievements. It testifies to coming future destruction.

And the flood then beautifully also pictures God's salvation. Go back to the construction of the ark. A lot of these things mean very little to us in terms of the actual specific dimensions and how many cubic feet there would be and all of these calculations that we can do.

But if you notice in the middle of verse 16, Noah is to put a door in the side of the ark. A door in the side of the ark. And that door is going to serve as the entrance point into God's ark of salvation.

I mean, very simply, if you enter through that door, when the flood judgment comes, you live. And if you don't enter through that door, the flood judgment comes and you perish. You understand there's one access point.

And this is a timeless lesson that we learn here in this narrative and how God designed the flood and the ark of salvation. In fact, Jesus, centuries later, would say in John chapter 10 verse 7, that He is the door of the sheep. What did He mean by that? John 14 6, I am the way, the truth and the life.

No one comes to the Father, but through me. He would say in the Sermon on the Mount, enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction. And there are many who enter through it.

For the gate is narrow and the way is constricted that leads to life. And there are few who find it. So God here is testifying to Noah and to the earth, that He's the one that provides the salvation.

Yes, Noah's going to have to build the ark. I mean, it would have been nice if the Lord just dropped it prefab out of heaven for him. Or it was a modular, maybe he could just go get the pieces and kind of clamp them together.

So Noah's participating in this work, but God is the one who has selected Noah and said His favor upon him, verse 8. God is the one who has sought out Noah and He's speaking to him. He's the one that is warning him of what is coming. He's instructing him in how to build the ark.

And Noah will be saved simply by entering through the door. It is a reminder that God provides salvation and that He provides access through His prescribed means. And so for us in the new covenant, we understand the only way to God is through Jesus Christ.

It's through believing in the death, burial, and resurrection of the Son. It's relying fully upon His finished work. And so the flood testifies to God's salvation amidst imminent judgment.

There are certainly many people who are scoffing. We don't read about that here in Genesis chapter 6, but we get a little bit of a taste for what Noah was experiencing on earth in a couple of other passages. I want to draw your attention to one of them.

Turn with me to 1 Peter chapter 3, excuse me, 2 Peter chapter 3. It's like, man, that does not look like where we're supposed to be right now. Moses doesn't tell us what was happening around Noah, but Peter provides additional insight. It says in verse 1, this is now, beloved, the second letter I'm writing to you in which I'm stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder.

You should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles, knowing this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts and saying, where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation. When they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God, the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water through which the world at that time was destroyed, being deluged with water. But by his word, the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise as some consider slowness, but is patient toward you, not willing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat and the earth and its works will be found out.

Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of the Lord, because of which the heavens burning will be destroyed and the elements will melt with intense heat. But according to his promise, we are looking for new heavens and new earth in which righteousness dwells. Peter is writing to hearers who are experiencing those who are mocking, saying that judgment isn't really going to come.

How long has it been since Christ was on the earth? We're not being punished right now. And so you guys are foolish for even believing that. Peter says, this is the same old story.

This is the kind of thing that they were saying in Noah's day as well. And what happens is they misread the signs of the times. That the delay was not meaning judgment isn't coming, but rather it was just a sign of God's patience, the sign of his mercy and his grace.

He's leaving opportunity for men to repent. And so in that regard, Noah is a preacher of righteousness amidst a crooked generation. In fact, Noah is said to have condemned the world in Hebrews 11.

Hebrews 11 says, and without faith it is impossible to please him, for he who draws near to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him. By faith, Noah being warned about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. Noah's big obedience is really an astounding act of faith.

I mean, the amount of time the cost that this would have taken, the implications for what it meant for him in society, the fact that he was banking on a promise of God and a word of revelation, that there was nothing with his eyes that would have told him we can corroborate all of this work that we're doing. And yet he entrusted himself to his faithful creator. He believed God.

And the ark is, of course, for the Lord. And now salvation is exclusively through the person and work of Jesus Christ. So next week, we're going to see further about God's specific promise to Noah, the covenant that he makes with him.

And then we're going to see in greater detail how Noah approached this project and the testimony of his faithful obedience, which is going to be a challenge to all of our hearts. Let's pray. Lord, for any of us who have read the Bible a number of times, certainly for those of us who have grown up in church, we've heard the story of Noah and the ark so many times.

Certainly there's even flood accounts and arcs that have been depicted all around the world, even in places that the scriptures have not gone. It is so good for us to pause and reflect upon these details, Lord, and the significance of them for our lives. I thank you that you care enough about your creation, that you do not allow sin to go unpunished.

And Lord, I thank you that you care enough about your creation to orchestrate a plan of redemption. Thank you for saving Noah. Thank you for preserving us today through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Father, I pray that we would not take that for granted, Lord, even today to be clinging to Christ and Christ alone for our salvation. We praise you and we love you. Amen.

All right, take your Bibles this morning, turn with me to Genesis chapter 6. We are back in Genesis chapter 6. And when we embarked on our study in Genesis, it was about one year ago. And I said one year ago that Genesis is all about worldview. It's going to establish really a lot of our grounding as Christians regarding the world around us.

And in fact, if you understand and believe Genesis, you're going to understand things that many people don't have access to. And in fact, the smartest and brightest minds on earth who might understand science and math and technology and history and chemistry and medicine and physics can't access the most important questions that life offers apart from divine revelation. And in fact, here in Genesis, we get a worldview.

We understand God's grand plan for the universe, we understand the big picture, and then you're actually going to understand how you personally and individually fit within that grand, big cosmic plan. And so there are all kinds of truths that we find in Genesis that establish our worldview, teaches us reality about really ultimate reality. And all of those beliefs we kind of looked at initially are those words that end inology.

Things like epistemology, how it is that we come to have any knowledge whatsoever or sources of knowledge in the nature of it. And we learn about cosmology. It's different than cosmetology.

Cosmology is where we learn about the origins of the universe and man. And teleology, the meaning and purpose of life. Theology, the existence and nature of God.

Anthropology, man's existence and his purpose and why he's here. And then, of course, axiology, morality and value, what is good and bad and right and wrong. And so all of these truths are taught in Genesis.

As we learn them, they begin to paint a picture for us of reality. It's very defined. It's very clear.

And Genesis 6 reveals, frankly, some of the most lofty and astonishing truths about the perfections of God and also man's true and hopeless condition. Okay? So Genesis 6 fits into and informs our worldview how it teaches us theology about the perfections of God, lofty truths about God, and it teaches us anthropology, the nature of man. Entitled this morning's message, Divine Fury and Favor.

Divine Fury and Favor. Could say it perhaps another way, grief and grace. Grief and grace.

Genesis 6, 1 begins, and I'm reading out of the LSB this morning. Now, it happened when men began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were good in appearance. They took wise for themselves whomever they chose.

Then Yahweh said, my spirit shall not strive with man forever because he is indeed flesh. Nevertheless, his days shall be 120 years. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward when the sons of God came into the daughters of men and they bore children to them.

Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. Then Yahweh saw that the evil of man was great on the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Yahweh regretted that he had made man on earth and he was grieved in his heart.

And Yahweh said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky for I regret that I have made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of Yahweh. I looked at this passage a couple of weeks ago and saw it really as the lead-in to the flood judgment.

And the first point that we saw two weeks ago is that this text begins with a strange union that incurs divine sanction. There are some weird and perplexing things happening in the first four verses of Genesis chapter 6. And I stated then that I think the best way to understand this text is also the weirdest way to understand this text. That angels, referred here to as sons of God, cohabitated with human women.

The text says that these sons of God found the daughters of man attractive and so they crossed boundaries and they took them as wives. And as we put together really how we came to this conclusion, we looked at the Old Testament usages of the expression sons of God. We saw that it appears in Job, it appears in Daniel there, and it would speak and indicate of not a human but rather an angelic creature.

And then we saw the New Testament witness really corroborated those details that Jude and Peter in 2 Peter speak of angels who sinned and they were punished for deviant and corrupt behavior in the same context as the immorality of Sodom. And we said that's no accident that those are put side by side in the Scripture. And so that correspondence is very strong of boundary-crossing angels juxtaposed alongside Noah in the flood and Jude in 2 Peter, and then the aberrant and deviant sexual sin of Sodom and Gomorrah right alongside that same text about Noah and the flood.

And so I mentioned it, or I didn't mention it two weeks ago, but another interesting point of correspondence regarding this view is that in Genesis 19, if you remember, two angels show up and they're interacting with Lot. And Lot interacts with them there in Sodom and he immediately calls them lords. He recognizes that they're not merely mortal men, and then the men of the city seek out those two angels so that they can do what? So they can have relations with them.

And so the men of the city call these angels men. They refer to them as men. It's a very disturbing scene, both what those men want to do and then Lot's response.

The entire story is quite vile, and yet it would seem to indicate that this notion of human and angel relations is at least probable. Angels are also said to be the same size as men in Revelation 21, where we read about an angel's cubit, that's the elbow to the fingertip, measures about the same as a man's cubit. And if you remember Hebrews chapter 13, there are some who have hosted visiting angels unawares.

Can you imagine that? They had what they thought were human visitors, only to find out in fact, honey, that couple that you were rude to last night, those were actually angels. Bible depicts then angels, although being spirit beings, often appearing in human form. Okay? So in Genesis 19, the angels show up and the men of Sodom think they're men.

Revelation 21, angels and humans are about the same size. Hebrews 13, you might even have an angel in your house and mistake it for being a human. And so whether it was actual procreation between angel and human or fallen angels that were inhabiting human bodies and empowering them, the text doesn't state.

The text does not state. We simply don't have answers to those questions. And yet we come to verse 4 and we find that the Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward.

Oftentimes the Nephilim are thought of to be the offspring of this union between the sons of God and the daughters of man. I'd say that's probably the most common view that's taught. And as I said, I don't believe that's what a careful reading of the text indicates.

Rather, the text is indicating that the Nephilim were people that were on the earth before and after these offspring from the sons of God and the daughters of men. They're not the offspring themselves. And if you look closely at what the text does not say, it does not say, verse 2, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were good in appearance.

They took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. They had offspring and they were called Nephilim. That's what we would expect or they became the Nephilim or they were the Nephilim.

Instead, Moses says the Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward when this event took place, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men. So, I believe the Nephilim were a distinct people group from this offspring, which the offspring of the sons of God and the daughters of men became the men of renown. We see that at the end of verse 4, they were the mighty men, the men of renown.

And so, why does Moses distinguish this? I think it's two reasons. One, it's to provide a timestamp as to when that unholy union took place. And furthermore, there was some kind of folklore regarding the Nephilim because in Numbers chapter 13, the spies are saying there's giants in the land and those giants are Nephilim.

Okay, so a couple things just to think about that. Moses is physically present in Numbers 13. When those spies come back, Moses is also writing Genesis.

So, those people, that people group was already known and being referred to. And so, I think it's quite likely that people believe that the giants were some kind of superhuman offspring that resulted from the procreation of angels with people. That's actually a common view throughout cultures of human history.

Various tales of gods coming into humans and procreating with them and producing demigods or part god, part man, kind of superhuman hybrid offsprings. And yet, there's nothing in the text that indicates that there was a superhuman offspring that was produced. And in fact, the reference to Nephilim in Numbers 13 doesn't make a lot of sense.

If there was a corrupted bloodline that was kind of part angel, part man, and God's design in the flood was to wash away those people. It's a common view that is held, but I think the challenge with that is the fact that the text states that the reason for the flood is because the Lord saw that the evil of man, verse 5, was great on the earth. And so, there's nowhere in Scripture that would at least be explicit to indicate that God's purpose in the flood was to kind of flush the human race from some kind of a superhuman hybrid people group.

Is it possible? Maybe, but there's certainly not an indication in the text. Rather, it would seem that the motive for these fallen angels was much baser than that. In fact, the stated reason in the text is, according to verse 2, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were good in appearance and they took wise for themselves whomever they chose.

So, it's just a baser desire there. They saw and they took, right? It sounds a lot like what Eve did in the garden. She saw the fruit that was pleasing to the eye, and so she took it and ate it.

And so, here it would seem we had angels designed by God, created in holiness, saw the daughters of men, saw that they were attractive, wanted to take them as wives. I think the most likely scenario there is that they were in a similar fashion to demonic possession. They were taking over natural men.

What was produced there is they were kind of looking at the gene pool and seeking to create strong humans. They were reproducing and producing men of renown, mighty men, just through normal biological procreation. That's speculation.

We really don't know. The text did not answer that question. Rather, what we do see is that as a result of this unholy union, the Lord begins to shorten the time span on earth.

And so, verse 3, Yahweh said, My spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he is indeed flesh. Nevertheless, his days shall be 120 years. And so, this is the divine sanction.

And that could be that lifespans will be shortened. They certainly will after the flood. There will kind of be that curve that begins to shorten lifespans.

And people don't live to be older than 120 today. That's certainly possible. It's also possible that this is referring to the length of time between this pronouncement and the cataclysmic flood judgment, that there's 120 years left.

And so, from that, we come to our second point in this passage, which is really where we begin to see God's displeasure toward humanity. And we see there a sinful race, speaking of a race of people that arouse divine displeasure. And in verse 5, we read, Then Yahweh saw that the evil of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

I just want you to pause and take this in again for a moment. Then Yahweh saw. The picture here is that the Lord, who doesn't have actual eyes but is omnipresent, sees all wickedness.

Jeremiah 16, 17, the Lord says, My eyes are on all their ways. They are not hidden from me, nor is there iniquity concealed from my eyes. David would recognize, excuse me, Moses in Psalm 90, you've said our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence.

So Genesis 6, 5 reminds us that God sees everything. He sees it all. He sees what man sees on the outside, and then he also sees what takes place inside of you, things that no other human knows about.

He's seen every deed you've done in secrecy. He knows your thoughts from afar. He knows every area of unbelief, every lofty opinion, every lustful craving, every bitter resentment, every angry and hateful intention, every act of hypocrisy he's seen right through to the heart.

And depending upon your relationship with God, this is either a source of great comfort or a source of great fear. See, if you're not in Christ, it means that God has seen every immorality that exists within you, and he's keeping track. And what we're going to see here is that he is displeased with it.

He is displeased by it. If you're in Christ, it's a strange comfort because you can say, God knows me and yet he still loves me. In fact, God chose me knowing not only all the sin that I'd committed prior to my conversion, but all the sin I would commit after my conversion.

He knew that too. He sees it all. There's nothing that God is going to discover about you later and say, oops, had I known that I wouldn't have chosen you.

And yet this verse is one of the strongest statements in the Bible about the sin of mankind, this original sin from Adam. God saw that the wickedness was great, it says. It reached epic proportions corporately.

So the idea is that the earth is filled with violence. We're going to see that soon. It is hard to get our minds around what this would have looked like.

I mean, I can tell you that for all of the sin that's paraded around in our nation today, and there's churches in just about every town. There's a historic Judeo-Christian heritage. There's people who know the Bible.

There's Christians all over the place. Not in Genesis 6. The Lord is looking upon the earth and the wickedness is great. You don't have a bunch of believers with salt and light in the Scriptures and churches.

And it's not only a corporate issue that God is concerned about. In other words, the wickedness of the earth being great, but it's individuals. That every intent of the thoughts of His heart was only evil continually.

It's a key verse in understanding what we call the depravity of man, that is to say the comprehensive and debilitating effects of original sin. Okay, what is total depravity? It is the comprehensive, meaning all of you is affected, and the debilitating effects of sin. It's what renders you spiritually incapable of pleasing God.

The London Baptist Confession describes man as being wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body. It means your thought life is broken. It means your emotions are broken.

Your body is corrupted. You're in a body of flesh, all of it, through and through. And so, you don't merely become a sinner because you sin, rather you sin because you're a sinner and you're born with this condition, spiritually broken.

And so, we would say, naturally speaking, there's not good people and bad people, there's only bad people. And there's no such thing as a good person who just does bad things, rather bad people do bad things. And Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 7.20, surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.

And so, guys, we are all in this together, okay? I say often to individuals in our body, we sinners stick together. I mean, we are all in this together. Now, in my younger years, I had both believed and promoted the idea that surely we can't all get in trouble.

I'll tell you, first of all, you can actually, and certainly from a divine perspective. See, the fact that we're all guilty doesn't somehow afford us safety in numbers. It doesn't somehow limit the accountability.

And what we see is God piercingly sees all the wickedness on the earth, and He doesn't just see it, but He cares about it. Verse 6, and Yahweh regretted that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. And so not only does God see our sin, but He cares about our sin.

He cares about it far more than you and I can even understand. He cares not just about what happens on the outside, but on the inside. And here we read that He grieves over it.

God grieves over man's sin. It's just good to remind ourselves of that. I was thinking about it this week.

God grieves over my sinful anger. God grieves over my impatience. God grieves over my self-worship, and when I'm discontent, and when I'm grumbling, and when I'm bitter.

And so Yahweh here is regretting, and yet He's not regretting as we said as a human does, which is, man, now I found out something that I didn't know previously, and so now I feel bad about it, and I wish I would have done something different. That's a dangerous and false teaching that arises from Scripture. God is not regretting here that He ever made man in the first place, and kind of wishing that He hadn't done it because things didn't go as planned.

John Piper writes, in the mid-1990s, I was embroiled in disputes over what is called open theism. Open theism, which argues that God is open to the future in the sense that He does not have an exhaustive knowledge of what is coming in the future. One of the arguments used by open theists is that there are passages in the Bible where God regrets or repents what He has done, and therefore must not have been able to foresee what would come of His decisions.

Otherwise, He would not have done them if He really regrets them. He goes on to give an illustration to help elucidate what is taking place here when we read that Yahweh regrets. Piper goes on and says, quote, If I spank my son for blatant disobedience, and he runs away from home because I spanked him, I may feel some remorse over the spanking.

Not in the sense that I disapprove of what I did, but in the sense that I feel some sorrow that the spanking was necessary and part of a wise way of dealing with my son in this situation, and great sorrow that he ran away. He goes on to say, If I had it to do over again, I would still spank him. It was the right thing to do, even knowing that one consequence would be alienation for a season.

I approve of the spanking from one angle, and at the same time, I regret the spanking from another angle. He goes on and says, If such a combination of emotions is possible for me and my finite decisions, it is not hard for me to imagine that God's infinite mind, the infinite complexity of God's emotional life would be capable of something similar or even more complex. He concludes with this statement, God is able to feel sorrow for an act in view of foreknown evil, and yet go ahead and do it for wise reasons.

And I would add for good reasons. God is able to feel sorrow for an act in view of foreknown evil, and yet go ahead and do it for wise reasons. You understand that God has an ultimate purpose for evil in conquering it through Jesus Christ.

Jesus will be the victor who does two things. One, He rescues His people, and He pours out retribution on His enemies, and in both ways, He is exalted. And so when you come and you read Genesis 6, 6, you're not in a moment to think of God being emotional like a human.

Human emotions are fickle. I mean, sometimes, and some of us in particular can be all over the map. We change.

Sometimes we don't even know why we feel the way that we feel. Now, for a minute, read that back into understanding God. God's emotions don't function that way.

They're always principled. They're a direct outflow of His perfections. And so when we read that God is displeased, this is speaking of His displeasure towards sin that is going to arouse Him to action.

And in so doing, it violates none of His other perfections. They are all in concert. And so the Lord grieves.

He deeply cares about the wickedness on the earth. But just as a side note, think about the tremendous comfort that that is. And some of you in the room have been sinned against in profound ways.

Don't think for a minute that God doesn't care just because He didn't intervene in that moment. Don't think that He didn't see the sin and that He doesn't care about it. He sees the wickedness.

He's grieved by the wickedness. It grieves Him into action. And what is that action? Verse 7, Yahweh said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land.

From man to animals, to creeping things, and to birds of the sky, for I regret that I have made them. I mean, this is an indication of where God's displeasure towards sin terminates. Or we could say what it produces, it produces action.

You know, sometimes we hear the cliche, God hates the sin, but He loves the sinner. There is a piece of truth in that statement. But I ask you this question, what does God punish in hell? Is it merely sin or is it sinners? God is displeased here, not merely with the corruption and the pollution on earth, generally speaking, He's displeased with the very people who are carrying out the wickedness.

He's concerned with the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And so assuredly, God shows love and mercy to sinners. We want that message central in our thinking.

We want it central in our proclamation. But that's not all that God says about His attitude toward sinners. The prophet Nahum begins his oracle in this way.

Nahum 1.2, the Lord is a jealous and avenging God. The Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries and He keeps wrath for His enemies.

The Lord is slow to anger and great in power. And the Lord will by no means clear the guilty. His ways in whirlwind and storm and the clouds are the dust of His feet.

I mean, He's being depicted there through the prophets as a mighty warrior who comes to seek personal retribution on His enemies. And so we struggle with this. I mean, D.A. Carson writes, the challenge for us is we think of humans as like the revenge-seeking, wrathful people, and then the merciful, loving people.

And those are like the two kinds. Then Jesus makes it pretty clear. If you seek personal retribution, what's happened? You're forgetting to have compassion towards your enemies.

And so from a human standpoint, we recognize it would be totally inappropriate for you and I to go exact personal vengeance. God is not like a man. And so He's uncompromising in His wrath and at the same time loving.

Could say it this way. When you read God's statement, I will blot out man whom I've created from the face of the land. When I wipe man off the earth, it is good and right that God would do this.

It's good and right that God would do this. Said another way, it is the very best thing that could be done. It is the most right response to what the Lord sees.

It's the most righteous. It's the perfect response to wickedness. And if we're honest, what happens? We read that and the humanist in us just winces a little bit.

It's tempted to recoil perhaps. When you consider God wiping away all of humanity, old people, middle-aged, young people, babies, men and women from the lofty and the great to the poor and lowly. And He's going to wipe out tens of thousands, likely millions and millions.

And all He's going to do is save eight people. The magnitude is overwhelming. And there's something in our hearts oftentimes that thinks, I just, I kind of want to soften it a little bit.

Maybe I want to pull back from that truth. And no doubt there are those outside the Christian faith that struggle with the flood. They'll say things like, wait a minute.

So God so loved the world that He destroyed it with a flood? That's what you teach? Or sometimes ask this, what kind of monster creates a bunch of people only to obliterate them for not worshiping Him? Does that not sound like a megalomaniac? That's the God you worship? I mean, we have major problems with human parents who would conceive of a child and then abort the pregnancy or bring a child into the world and then neglect it. And there's moral and there's legal implications of doing such a thing. And so it's not entirely inappropriate that we would ask ourselves when it comes to God, how is it that God makes people and then later destroys them? And in doing so is just.

In fact, one person online phrased it this way, you worship a God who creates imperfect people and then drowns them because they are imperfect. So how are we supposed to think about what's happening in Genesis 6 verse 7? Or more pointedly, how are we to feel about it? Are we to be ashamed of it? Are we to reject it? Are we to rejoice in it? One author writes, it is a sad thing to find so many professing Christians who appear to regard the wrath of God as something for which they need to make an apology. Or at least they wish there was no such thing.

While some would not go so far as to openly admit that they consider it a blemish on the divine character, yet they are far from regarding it with delight. They like not to think about it. And they rarely hear it mentioned without a secret resentment rising up in their hearts against it.

Even with those who are more sober in their judgment, not a few seem to imagine that there's a severity about the divine wrath, which is too terrifying to form a theme for profitable contemplation. In other words, it's not beneficial to think about. It concludes by saying, others harbor the delusion that God's wrath is not consistent with His goodness, and so seek to banish it from their thoughts.

So we misunderstand the character of God, and then who's responsible for the guilt. If you are a worshiper of God, then you are to respond to God's wrath with worship. David in Psalm 51 says, the righteous will be glad when he beholds the vengeance.

David says he will wash his feet in the blood of the wicked. And then what will happen? Well, men will say, surely there is a God who judges on earth. I think what happens is we tend to think merely of the human element, and we get sentimental.

And I understand it. It's heavy. It's heavy to think about divine judgment.

And I don't think you're being honest with yourself if you don't struggle with it. If you don't actually think about real souls, and people that you know, and people in your family who are outside of Christ, and you're not moved to some type of grief or sorrow or concern. And yet what's the alternative? The alternative is a God who doesn't judge sin.

A God who doesn't care about sin. A God who's not grieved about sin. And so the Bible teaches us that we have a God who loves salvation, and he also punishes wickedness.

Why? Because he is holy and righteous. So you don't ever misunderstand God as being a bloodthirsty, power-hungry tyrant, who delights in torturing people who don't worship him. The prophet Ezekiel said in 1832, I have no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies, declares the Lord Yahweh, therefore turn back and live.

The Lord offers the gospel. He offers reconciliation. And yet he's not willing to accept anyone who doesn't come to him on his own terms.

God is impartial. He's just. And so though he grieves over sin, that grief does not compromise his righteousness.

And I was thinking about this as parents, we struggle to not be compromisers at times because we're sympathetic. Do we not? Occasionally, I'll have one of my children actually admit to this. And we all do it.

I did it with my parents. There's certain things that you know, kind of mom's soft spots, you know, dad's soft spots, you know, their respective buttons. And so as you're kind of elaborating, I have a request that I want fulfilled, or maybe something I need to confess, kind of like size up, okay? Who's going to give me the best response? Why? Because they're not trying to be impartial, but they're just, you know, kind of inconsistent at times.

And yet God is completely unlike that. He's always acting in accordance with his righteous perfections. And so he grieves over sin that's taking place, and then he either punishes it or he pardons it, but he's going to deal with it.

And so you and I are to read Genesis chapter six, verse seven, and we're to worship and praise the God who blots sinners off the face of the earth. Because we say that's what a righteous God would do. He would punish sin.

And then praise be to God. He not only punishes it, but he pardons it. Verse eight, but Noah found favor in the eyes of Yahweh.

But Noah found favor in the eyes of Yahweh. This is to be read for the remarkable contrast that it is. That Noah is in those previous verses, the thoughts and intentions of his heart are only evil continually.

And yet this man finds pardon. He finds favor. What does this mean? Well, Moses doesn't elaborate on it here.

He doesn't talk about Noah's salvation experience. He doesn't elaborate on what it meant that Noah found favor. He simply states it.

The rest of the Bible is going to explain the spiritual realities that took place in Noah's life at this moment. But soon we're going to read about what an amazing guy Noah was. And then sometimes when he was not an amazing guy.

But he is truly an example, an example of righteousness, an example of faith, an example of courage. And yet before all of that, we find that Noah finds God's grace. Noah finds God's grace.

So I ask you, what does it mean when you read Noah found favor in the eyes of Yahweh? And we use the term grace all the time. It gets thrown around. It's used not only inside the church, but outside the church.

And nearly every form of Christian teaching has some understanding or some concept of grace. I remember the first time attempting to engage actual Roman Catholics, and I remember stating very upfront, well, you know, I believe that salvation is by grace, and you believe that salvation is by works. And then I found I'm uneducated about what Catholic doctrine teaches.

In fact, if you read the Catholic catechisms, you find that they have paragraphs and paragraphs devoted to grace. In fact, they have categories such as sanctifying grace, and actual grace, and habitual grace, and sacramental grace, and special graces, and prevenient grace. What is prevenient grace? Well, prevenient grace is that which comes before.

So what does a Catholic believe? Well, if you and I were left in our state, that natural state that we read about, we're not saved unless God comes and acts first by His grace. Same thing that an Arminian believes. It's the same thing that a Calvinist believes.

There's some grace that has to come and first act on the human heart. What's the difference? Well, what exactly does that grace do? What does that grace accomplish? What is the role of God and the role of man? When you read, when Noah found favor in the eyes of Yahweh, what does it mean that God was gracious to Noah? That idea of favor is God looked upon Noah and he smiled. He approved of him.

He approved of a sinner. How did he do it? Well, of course, God had justified Noah, and it was ultimately through faith. But if you want to boil down all of the different views of grace, I would say there's one place you can go that becomes the dividing line, and it becomes on the matter of regeneration.

That is the new birth. And here's the question. Is regeneration monergistic or is regeneration synergistic? Synergistic.

How is it that the new birth takes place? Okay. Jistic means working. Mono alone, sin with.

Okay. So very simply, when a human heart is born again, is God operating monergistically? God alone? Or is it a synergistic work? That is to say it is man cooperating with God who acts first by grace. So any form of prevenient grace acknowledges that man needs God to make him able, and yet doesn't ultimately have God doing all of the work of regeneration on his own.

In fact, synergism could be easily identified that God has made salvation possible. He's provided some kind of assistance to man, but then he leaves the final decision really up to man and whether or not he chooses to accept or reject God's offer of salvation. As one author puts it, the synergistic view is highlighting the scriptural testimony that man in salvation confesses, and he repents, and he expresses faith, and monergism teaches those same truths.

And it says, ultimately, all of those actions are predicated upon the Spirit's work, the gracious work of God, and causing a dead heart to become alive. Monergism affirms that God is ultimately the one who determines. God is ultimately the one who acts savingly upon his creatures, and he saves those whom he wishes to save.

Monergism affirms the sovereignty of God over all things, including individual salvation. And so this is our testimony. If you were to ask Noah, go back into an interview, Noah, tell me how you came to saving faith.

What would he have shared? What would his testimony have been? I can tell you what it wouldn't have been. It wouldn't have been I came to the point where I realized I needed to make a big change in my life. It wouldn't have been I was tired of being enslaved to my sin, so I dedicated myself to God, or I decided to make Yahweh Lord of my life.

And Noah's testimony would be not of how he ultimately sought out God, but how God sought him out first. Just read the text. Noah found himself in God's favor.

He found himself in God's grace, and that grace brought him savingly and powerfully into a relationship with his maker. It's described in Ezekiel 36, 26 as a heart transplant, whereby God took Noah's hard, stony heart and replaced it with a heart of flesh. Peter would describe this in 1 Peter 1, verse 3, where he said, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again.

See, every Christian, even many views outside of evangelicalism, are going to affirm the necessity of grace against the backdrop of human sinfulness. But the crux of the issue is, what does that mean? Does grace merely initiate a process? Does it merely soften our hearts? Does it merely woo us? Or does that grace cause us to be born again? Verse 8, Noah, unlike all of those who will be punished by God in the flood judgment, he is pardoned. Jesus said a similar expression when he was speaking about his ministry in John chapter 8. He said, truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.

The slave does not remain in the house forever. The son remains forever. So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

How is it that the soul finds freedom? Well, the son comes and sets that soul free, free from bondage, free from the depravity that we read about in Genesis chapter 6. In the coming weeks, we're going to see Noah as a great example of faith and obedience. We're going to see his character on display. He has resolve.

He has faithfulness. He has courage and righteousness. And before all of that, it's a reminder of God's particular special saving grace to Noah.

Isn't that amazing? If you're in Christ, it is by God's doing, Peter says, 1 Peter 1.3. We're going to hear testimonies in a few minutes through the waters of baptism. And that's exactly what we're going to hear. I invite you to pray with me.

God, thank you so much for rescuing sinners. Thank you for not merely coming part of the way to meet us and then leaving the rest up to us. Father, for making a way that you could still be just and still be the judge and then also be the justifier.

Thank you so much for the cross of Jesus Christ. Thank you that in the cross of Jesus Christ, we can see that perfect love and justice meet. And there we can find pardon and forgiveness from our sins.

Lord, I pray that you'd humble us in these truths. Humble us to not think more of ourselves than we ought to think, to see how corrupt we really are in Adam. Lord, and then at the same time to glory in sovereign grace.

Thank you for this wonderful plan. Thank you for your specific work in our lives. We love you and we praise you.

Amen.

If you're keeping an outline this morning. It is the lead-in to the flood judgment. That is the outline for this morning, the lead-in to the flood judgment.

It's really the kind of preface. It is what is going to set up what we are going to see shortly in the coming weeks as God destroys the earth with a cataclysmic flood. And the first point in this lead-in is we find a strange union incurs divine sanctions.

And a strange union incurs divine sanctions. This comes to us in verses one through four. And really the beginning here is beautiful poetic language.

The ESV reads, when man began to multiply. Really the original is, and it happened, that when man began to be numerous, it came about in the course of time. So we've said before, it's difficult to estimate exactly how many humans are on the earth at this time.

You should be thinking millions, not thousands. Perhaps even 10 millions, tens of millions at this time. And so we come and we read, very simply, that at this time, as the earth begins to team with humanity and the blessing that God gave in the garden and the command to be fruitful and multiplies to work itself out into the generations, people have had extremely long lifespans.

With that, the ability of women to have children for many years. So there's a great teaming of population. And then we read something somewhat unexpected.

We read in verse two that the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attracted. And immediately we have this interesting situation. There's clearly a contrast that Moses has in mind.

If he was referring to all humanity, he could have just said the sons of God and the daughters of God. If he was referring simply to kind of normal humanity, what we would expect is the sons of man and the daughters of man. And yet, confusingly in some ways, we see a contrast between those named here the sons of God and the daughters of man.

So the first interpretive question here, of course, is who are the sons of God? Who are the sons of God? It's a very unusual expression. Really, there's three main possibilities, okay? Here they are. Number one, it's possible that sons of God here refers to the lineage of Seth.

So if you remember, Seth's lineage called upon the name of the Lord. We saw that. That was how we ended chapter four in verse 26.

Seth has a son. His name is Anosh. At that time, people began to call upon the name of Yahweh.

They began to call upon the name of the Lord. So many faithful Bible teachers would say that what is happening here in Genesis 6 is you have Seth's godly lineage kind of getting hoodwinked by some bad girls. They're looking over at Cain's line.

That's the daughters of man. They're attracted to their outer beauty, right? They're attracted to the wrong thing. Rather than staying to the virtuous family members in the line of Seth, they're marrying bad girls, and what's happening? Well, the godly line is being corrupted, okay? Kind of becomes a lesson.

Actually, I heard one pastor, young men, pay attention to this. Be aware. Maybe, okay, maybe.

I'll give it that as a possibility. I don't think that's actually what's happening here, primarily because it's just a weird way to express that. I think if Moses wanted to convey Seth's line is intermarried with Cain's line, there's like 50 better ways to say it than the sons of God marrying the daughters of men.

So that's kind of why I would say I don't think that's what is being taught here, although it is certainly possible, and if that's your view, guess what? It's okay, that's okay. Only one of us can be right. It's possible both of us are wrong, okay? But we both can't be right.

So that's view number one. View number two is that these are heroes from ancient history, okay? That the sons of God are heroes from ancient history. So where does that view come from? Well, in Psalm chapter two, David is referred to as the son of God.

He says, today you are my son, I have begotten you. David was a king, and in fact, in the ancient Near East, kings were often referred to as sons of God. And so in this view, what you have is you have tyrannical kings that are domineering, they're evil, they're very powerful.

They're marrying these women, and essentially they're just common women. So that's why they're called the daughters of men. Again, is it possible? Yes, I would say maybe even less possible.

I think it's not a very clear way of representing the text because then the daughters of man, it's really speaking of all of the females on earth, and the distinction then would kind of be powerful kings with common women, and it just doesn't really seem to do justice with the text. I think the key to understanding the passage, although this position is not without difficulty, is what one pastor termed the weirdest. Said, in fact, I think the best solution for understanding this passage also happens to be the weirdest, okay? The sons of God is utilized several times in the Old Testament, and in each time, it refers to angelic beings, okay? That expression is really kind of used somewhat technically in the Old Testament, sons of God, and it appears as describing angels.

I wanna run these through with you very quickly. If you remember, we get a little window into what was taking place when Satan came to assault Job. If you're writing down cross-references in Job chapter one, verse six, we read there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them, okay? So Job chapter one, verse six, would be indicating that the sons of God there was used as a term to describe or relate to angelic creatures.

It's reiterated again in Job chapter two, verse one, where we read again, there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord. So Satan is, of course, called an angel of light by Paul in 2 Corinthians. He, of course, is a fallen angel.

He is among the sons of God at that time. So this would be recognizing that first two occurrences here of sons of God that we find outside of Genesis refer to Satan and those whom he is among, these sons of God. It occurs again, one more time, in the book of Job, and this one is maybe even a bit more explicit that sons of God, in fact, is being used in relation to angels.

In Job chapter 38, where God is challenging Job on whether or not Job was there at creation, he refers to created beings who were watching the creation of man, created beings who were created prior to day six. He asked Job in Job 38, verse four, were you there when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. So were you there when I built the earth? And he asked him, who determined its measurements? Surely you know, or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone? So he's describing there, Job, I just want to remind you that when I brought the earth into existence, you were nowhere to be found.

But there was someone there, and in verse seven, he says, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. So there were people there, not people in correct terminology, there were angels there. There were sons of God watching creation, sons of God rejoicing when God created the earth.

They're called the morning stars and the sons of God. This occurs one more time in a very familiar text for us. Daniel chapter three, when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are walking around in the fiery furnace.

You remember King Nebuchadnezzar says when he looks, saying, we threw three guys into the furnace, but what? I now see four men unbound walking in the midst of the fire and they are not hurt. And the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods, like a son of the gods, that same expression. Well, what was Nebuchadnezzar saying? Well, Nebuchadnezzar was a pagan king.

It's not like he has a specialty in identification, but he's looking and he's saying, three of these look like men and then one of them looks like a man, but that guy is probably what? Shining. Interestingly enough, Nebuchadnezzar says, I see four men, I'm identifying four men, three are normal, one of them is shining, one of them is bright, like a son of God. So son of God is used technically in the old Testament to refer to very often angelic beings.

Now, what probably comes to your mind immediately, and this is what would come to my mind, what in the world is happening? The Bible is not a book of fairy tales. We don't find secret potions and unicorns, but there are also a lot of unbelievable things that we believe if we believe the Bible. We just read about a donkey who spoke, read about that in 2 Peter this morning.

All right, and an ax head that floats, and a little jar of oil and flour that just keep replenishing themselves day after day. And fire coming down from heaven, and massive seas being parted, and plagues coming at the voice of the Lord, and sick people being healed instantaneously, and dead people coming to life. I mean, the Bible is full of unbelievable stories from the natural man.

There are things that are supernatural that take place in scripture all the time. And so the question is really, what does the Bible reveal to us, and then do we take that as revealed truth? And so, although it seems far-fetched, I believe that if we just take the grammar itself to understand the sons of God, seeing the daughters of men were attractive, the best way to understand that would be that these are angels who are fallen. They're angels who are sinning, and they're sinning by cohabitating with humanity.

Now, was that actually angel and human, or was that human inhabited by really a demonic force like what we'd see in the New Testament? I don't know. If I had to guess, I'd probably say, I'd lean toward the idea that these are angels inhabiting humans. I mean, biologically, that one seems to make more sense to me.

But the scripture's not explaining that for us in detail. And so what we do know here is that the sons of God is used in that reference, seeing the daughters of men are attractive, and they took as wives any they chose. Now, if that was the only point that we had, I still think that it would be clear that that's most likely what's being stated, but there's also passages in the New Testament that I believe refer back to this instance and shed additional light for us, and even corroborate the view that these are, in fact, angels.

Turn with me first to Jude. New Testament, right before you get to Revelation. It's a little guy, so you can easily turn over it.

Jude's context here is talking about judgment. He's talking about error. He's talking about false teaching.

He's talking about things that have happened in history. And he says right here, beginning in verse four, for certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I want to remind you.

So he's writing to them things that they already know ostensibly from the Old Testament. Okay, and this is important. I want to remind you, I want to give you some new information that you've never heard of before.

I want to remind you that although you once fully knew it that Jesus who saved a people out of the land of Egypt afterward destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, crossed the boundary. He has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.

So why do I think that this is most likely speaking of Genesis chapter six? Well, a couple of reasons. Number one, Jude is reminding them of something that is already known. Most likely in the Old Testament, an account that they're familiar with.

Furthermore, angels coming down to cohabitate with humans would certainly be off limits. Okay, that's crossing a boundary. That's the description here.

They did not stay within their position of authority, but they left their proper dwelling. Additionally, some people would say, well, we think that maybe Jude six, I almost called it Jude chapter six, Jude verse six refers to the angels falling initially. So this is kind of their initial fall where the angels rebel, they fall with Satan.

But the challenge with that is that we understand that at this time, you and I find ourselves in spiritual warfare, right? Ephesians six makes it clear that there are principalities and powers that are now at work. There's spiritual warfare taking place. We have the record of the gospels where demonic activity is flourishing.

Fallen angels are not locked away, but they are active. And yet we read here of these angelic beings who fell and what do we read? In verse six, they've been kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day. They're in the abyss, they're locked away right now.

These are angels who are not out roaming around as fallen angels. They're not demonic forces, they've been locked away. And in fact, if you remember when Jesus is dealing with demonic activity in Luke chapter eight, the demons are concerned and what do they shout? They say, don't send us away into the abyss.

Why? Because right now we have free reign and we don't want what happened to those angels to happen to us. So I believe that it's clear Jude is talking about a situation that has taken place in history that the readers would have been aware of. Furthermore, he's talking about fallen angels that now as a punishment end up locked up, which by definition then is not merely the angels who have fallen, but still have for this season free reign on earth.

If you notice the next verse, verse seven, then switches to Sodom and Gomorrah, which is speaking of sexual immorality and unnatural desire. And so tuck that away in your pocket for just a minute. Right here we have whatever these angels did in the same idea, the same paragraph relating to not only sexual immorality, but strange or defiling behavior.

Really what took place in Sodom, homosexuality was not merely immorality, which immorality is wrong. Male and female immorality is wrong. But homosexuality has the additional characteristic that it's against nature.

It's unnatural. It's a further degradation. And so here in Jude, we're seeing whatever these angels did was crossing a boundary.

And now it's also situated side by side with the degrading sin that was against nature that took place in Sodom and Gomorrah. I want you to keep that in your mind as we turn now to 2 Peter. So turn back a few pages to 2 Peter chapter two.

Peter, of course, is writing to people who are surrounded, not difficult for us to relate here to, people who are surrounded, surrounding the church saying that judgment is not coming. Okay, people who are comfortable, comfortable in their sin and denying that judgment is coming. And so he says in verse three, in their greed, these false teachers will exploit you with false words.

Their condemnation from long ago is not idle and their destruction is not asleep. What's he saying? The day is coming. The destruction is coming for these false teachers.

Peter, what is the logic now that you're going to reason from? And so now he uses case law from the Old Testament to demonstrate his point that destruction is in fact coming from the false teachers. Verse four, four, four, if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment. So does that sound like what Jude is talking about? Absolutely.

It's lining up. It's the same idea here. God locking away certain angels until judgment.

If God did not spare them when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment. Verse five, interesting. What is connected to this? If he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly.

And so now we're seeing that God is not sparing angels. And then connected to that idea is, but he does spare Noah. He doesn't spare the angels.

He doesn't spare the ungodly, but he does spare Noah. I believe those go together as a unit of thought. And then somewhat unsurprisingly, now if you're tracking the logic, we find Sodom and Gomorrah again, connected.

Verse six, if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly. And if he rescued righteous lot, greatly distressed by the central conduct of the wicked. For as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard.

Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment. And especially those who, interesting, indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority. Let's think very clearly now, you have God talking about, through Peter, judging the angels, locking them away, yet preserving Noah.

Pouring out judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah, yet preserving Lot. What connects these two? Well, the idea that there is a strange defilement taking place in Sodom and Gomorrah, it was homosexuality. In the case of what was taking place in Genesis six, it was angels that were not keeping their proper abode, but crossing the boundary, crossing the boundary to cohabitate with humanity.

So, turn back to Genesis chapter six. If you're totally weirded out, I get it. It's very weird, but I think it's what's happening here.

The question is why? Why? I mean, here it's interesting, it says that they took as their wives any they chose. So they see that they are attractive, that's the stated reason in the text. In other words, they desired to cross that line and then take for themselves wives.

When you read took wives as they chose, it doesn't necessarily indicate like a forced marriage, that was just the language. I mean, even on the altar, we say things like, I take you to be, they took wives. This was their choice.

What their choice was based on was, they found them to be attractive. Now in that it's then postulated many different ideas, some of which are probably true, we just don't know. Certainly possible that these fallen angels wanted to bring greater corruption to humanity.

I think that that's a fair assumption, understanding how demonic forces work. And so how they were looking at humanity there was the desire to bring greater evil on the earth through this procreative act. There's some that would postulate that they actually wanted to corrupt humanity by mixing humanity with the supernatural thereby corrupting the messianic line.

A little bit of a harder time supporting that view, mainly because as we read about God's judgment, he doesn't really speak about the need to purge the human lines that are now mixed with spiritual lines. And furthermore, you'd have now a hybrid creature that's part angel, part man. And the Bible really doesn't ever speak of that.

And so I think that those are views that are conjectures. I don't think those are good views to necessarily promote or teach others. If you wanna hold that view, I guess that's fine.

It's just not really derived from the text. But what we see here is that the only stated reason was that these sons of God saw the daughters of man and they desired them, wanted to cross the boundary. And as they did that, the Lord then says in verse three, my spirit shall not abide in man forever for he is flesh.

His days shall be 120 years. So we're assuming the angels are dealt with by being relegated to outer punishment and they're being chained up until the day of judgment. But as God is looking on the earth now, he says, I'm gonna sanction humanity.

Why? Well, because wickedness is multiplying on the earth. He's saying no longer am I going to continue to essentially put up with man, I'm going to now put a cap. And the language could go one of two ways here.

Either I'm not gonna let him live individually beyond 120 years, or I'm gonna wipe humanity out with a flood in 120 years. I think that's probably what is being spoken of here, that judgment is coming, that mankind as a whole, the human race is gonna be wiped out except for one family in 120 years. Part of why I think that is when you get off the boat, people aren't immediately dying under 120.

They're living beyond that. But it is possible that this is merely the indication that lifespans are gonna be shortened. And much like when God said, when you eat of the fruit in that day, you will surely die, death didn't come immediately to Adam, it just entered into his life.

That God here is saying mankind's lifespan will be shortened. I'm not gonna make that immediate, but that's kind of what we're working towards. He's gonna get off the boat, things are gonna begin to get shorter and shorter and shorter and eventually no one's gonna live beyond 120.

It really could go either way in the language, either way in the timetable. So what do we have so far? Well, we have this very bizarre situation where the sons of God that I believe are most likely angels see that the daughters of man are attractive, they take them as their wives, they begin to cohabitate. The Lord looks upon the earth and he says, enough is enough, I'm done.

I'm not going to abide this forever. And so either I'm going to destroy the earth in 120 years or I'm gonna shorten lifespan, no one's gonna live beyond 120 years. Both of those essentially are true.

And then Moses writes in verse four, just to muddy the waters a little bit more for us. 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.

Now, most of you probably have been taught or learned or conceived that the Nephilim are in fact, the offspring of whatever union took place here between the sons of God and the daughters of man. I too typically would hold that position or held it before studying this closely. And this passage comes up often as what's known as a problem passage.

It's not because we have a problem with it per se, but it's because it's a problem to interpret. I'm in seminary, I took a class on hermeneutics, science of Bible interpretation. One of the assignments was to take a problem passage and interpret it.

And guess what? Genesis six, four was one of those problem passages. Who are the Nephilim? Well, here's the ultimate problem. Moses' audience knew who the Nephilim were.

And so we don't. Because he decided not to write a whole lot of additional information about them. And if you're writing to someone and they know who you're talking about, and you know who you're talking about, you don't provide a lot of explanation, you just provide the name.

So we have a people here called the Nephilim. And most of us tend to think the Nephilim are the offspring. I would say grammatically, I don't think that's the best way to understand this.

Look at the language very carefully. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, that's a timestamp. And also afterward, timestamp, when, timestamp, the sons of God came into the daughters of man and they bore children to them.

So why are the Nephilim here? Well, Moses is giving us an idea of the time range. Like we could say when the Goths were on the earth. Well, when were the Goths on the earth? Well, first century AD to about the eighth century, the Goths were on the earth.

So Moses is saying, hey, the Nephilim were here when this activity took place. And also they were here afterwards when this situation happened. So the Nephilim then would be in distinction to this procreative act where new offspring come as a result of angels not keeping their boundaries.

The Nephilim are referred to one other time in scripture. It's when you have the unfaithful spies in Numbers chapter 13. So they spy out the land of Canaan.

And then what happens? They say, we were there and we looked out upon the inhabitants. They're great in height. There we saw the Nephilim and we seemed like grasshoppers.

So here's always the challenge when the Bible records the testimony of someone who's unfaithful is it's an accurate record of what was actually said, but you kind of have to consider the source a little bit. So what was the source here? Well, they're saying we're grasshoppers. It's doing the math.

It's actually fascinating. A grasshopper is 100 times tall. I'm sorry, humans are 100 times taller than grasshoppers.

Okay, by weight, we weigh the average human about 150,000 grasshoppers. That's our weight. Okay, so are the spies exaggerating? They're just a bit, right? They're exaggerating just a bit to say that compared to these giants, they're like grasshoppers.

But what does it indicate? Well, it indicates that there's some kind of folklore relating to the Nephilim, that there are known people and they're very large because the spies are stating this and the implication is that those who hear it are thinking, oh yeah, the Nephilim, they're giants. We know about the giants. We know about the Nephilim.

Even if they were exaggerating, they're using a reference that the children of Israel would have understood. They would have been familiar with that name, with that people group. So that's how we relate that the Nephilim were tall people, that they were giants.

Certainly read of giants in scripture, the sons of Anak. We read of Goliath, of course, the most famous. But I think the view then that comes really to view the Nephilim as gigantic offspring coming from angels and humans procreating is not coming from the scripture itself, but from extra biblical writings that kind of make their way into Christian tradition.

Look at the text itself. There's nothing that would indicate kind of a superhuman race being produced by the cohabitation of angels and humans that's resulting in super giants or race of super giants. Rather, they bear children, somewhat normal children, and these are, Moses says, the mighty men who are of old the men of renown.

The best conjecture here then, which I say conjecture because that's what it is, is that these demons were likely trying to create a strong breed of people. You can think about it almost like someone would do with animal husbandry. We'll read about Jacob later in Genesis, taking the flocks to breed them together to make strong flocks.

But these men were known as the mighty men, the men of renown. So what happens? Well, there's a sanction here. Life is shortened on the earth or the flood is coming as a judgment.

There are sanctions that are issued as a judgment of what is taking place. And we begin to get to the heart of the passage in verse five and this brings us to our second point on our lead in to the flood judgment. The first point, of course, is that a strange union incurs divine sanctions.

Our second lead in is a sinful race arouses divine displeasure. A sinful race arouses divine displeasure. Then the Lord saw, verse five, that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

If you don't know this verse in your Bible, I would encourage you to mark it. This is a key verse. It's a key anthropological verse.

It's a key verse to understand the human condition. Very often people talk about what is wrong with society and all kinds of factors are postulated to attempt to identify the problems that we see in society and a corresponding solution to deal with it. I don't know about you, but I can't even count all of the times I've heard that someone had a good heart and then they just got in with the wrong crowd.

Or maybe their heart was in the right place. They just keep making bad choices. Or maybe they just needed more time to kind of heal or reform themselves or be educated.

What we get in Genesis 6, 5 is the human heart given time on earth apart from divine intervention. See, man does not fix himself. I mean, these long lifespans that we've seen in genealogies, if there was any opportunity to reform yourself, to make yourself better, to get rid of your bad habits, to kind of morally clean things up, surely having hundreds of years to do it would be enough time.

What do we read? Time apart from divine intervention doesn't fix anything. It only gets worse. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth.

And we're gonna be talking about this as we look at the flood judgment. It is unimaginable what the evil looked like on the earth in that time. And the corruption comes from within.

Look at the words. Every intention of the thoughts of his heart were only evil continually. Surely.

I mean, if a mere human wrote this, we would say you have an exaggeration problem. We don't use words like every and only and continually. Surely it's not every intention.

Surely it's not only evil. Surely it's not continually. That sounds very dramatic.

It's exactly the nature of the human heart apart from divine intervention. It's hard to even imagine what this would have looked like. Every imaginable aberration that you can think of.

The earth was a violent place. It was a corrupt and dark place. You imagine the unrestrained human flesh, generation upon generation sinning against one another.

And the result in verse six we read is that the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth. Yahweh regretted that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him to his heart. This is an anthropomorphism.

It's where we use human language or in this case, Moses uses human language to describe God. It's very helpful in understanding what we need to understand about God. And yet it's possible to have a misunderstanding.

Let me tell you what this does not mean. It does not regret in the way that you and I regret. We might say things like, I really regret not taking those last two classes spring term of my senior year and never finishing my degree.

I regret that. What do we mean? Well, as I look back now with better information, I would do it differently. Or perhaps saying something like, I really regret not starting my retirement plan 10 years earlier because it would have been really beneficial in the way that I would have done it.

It would have been beneficial in compounding interest. The idea that now I have a new realization that I did not have then. And God does not discover anything.

He's not discovering now how bad mankind is and then regretting his decision to create man. God is not impotent, he's not learning. He's not lacking in wisdom.

He doesn't ever change. Rather, what's being conveyed is God's emotion, if you will, His disposition toward sin. One commentator writes, God's regret means that action must be taken, not that a great cosmic mistake has been made.

Whereas another commentator said, God is not a dispassionate accountant. He's not merely saying, man is messed up and I need to go judge him and kind of execute the judgment, but I'm not personally bothered by it. God is grieved and He is offended by sin.

There's passion here. It is an expression of God's holiness and His glory to punish iniquity. God hates what is bad because He loves what is good.

He hates what is false because He loves what is true. He hates unrighteousness because He loves righteousness. And so the Lord is grieved because He's looking at humanity and He's saying, I hate what is happening right now.

I'm opposed to it. So in verse 7, the Lord rises up to take action. He says, 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've made them.

I'm grieved that I made them. Picture here is God is the one who created. He created all of creation for a purpose.

It was to attest to His glory. In one sense, creation is not fulfilling the purpose for which He created it. But in the ultimate sense, yes, of course.

There's nothing that could ever get in the way of or stop the ultimate purpose of God from coming about. But in terms of His revealed purpose for creation, it was to bring Him glory by worshiping Him and that is not taking place. And so He says, I am going to blot out.

I'm going to blot out. The same language that's used in 2 Kings chapter 1, 21 verse 13, to wipe off a dish. Picturing it a whiteboard with dry erase markers.

I don't know if your family is anything like mine, but occasionally I've made the mistake of writing something that I didn't want erased on the dry erase board. I went to find someone else wanted to use it before I could take a picture of it. My very important information got erased.

It got wiped away. That's the idea here. God says, I'm going to wipe man off the earth.

I'm going to erase humanity, millions of people. I'm going to erase them off the face of the earth. I'm going to wipe them away.

Is that not staggering? I was just thinking about how significant it's been in our little congregation. We've seen death. It's tragic.

Every time someone has died here, we felt it. We felt the loss. Can you imagine if all the names of all the people in the room right now are up on the TV screen? We've said, all right, tomorrow they're all getting wiped away.

That'd be astounding amount of grief in our hearts. Yet the Lord, who is not man-centered but God-centered, is grieved by humanity's sin. And he says, that's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to wipe away and we're going to start over. Verse 8. Come to our third and final lead-in in the flood judgment. Solitary man finds divine favor.

Solitary man finds divine favor. But in contrast, the exception, Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Noah's not going to be the only one preserved.

There will be seven others. But the point here is that the patriarch, the head of this household, Noah, is singled out. And look at the precision of the language.

It's not that Noah curried favor in the eyes of the Lord. It's not that Noah purchased favor from God or he earned favor in the eyes of God. He found it.

This past weekend at family camp, we talked about the grammar of the gospel. It's very consistent and specific. That we do not save ourselves, but God saves us.

You understand grace is found or it is received, but it is never merited or earned. That's the point. And so when you and I read verse eight, Noah deserved to be wiped off the face of the earth just as much as everyone else.

He said, Noah did not deserve. Noah did not deserve to be preserved. He did not deserve favor, rather he found it.

Noah's a testimony to God's grace to sinful humanity. Ultimately, this of course comes to us through Jesus Christ. Paul would say in Ephesians 2, for by grace you have been saved through faith.

It is a gift of God. It's not your own doing. It's not the result of works.

Why? So that no man can boast. And so the story of the flood on the one hand testifies to God's justice in punishing the wicked. And it also attests to his grace and his mercy in preserving Noah.

Listen, if you're in Christ, the only reason why you will not be swept away in the flood of God's judgment when Jesus returns is because he was gracious to you. Because you're getting what you don't deserve to magnify his own glory and to magnify his own grace. We're going to have a phenomenal time as we continue through Genesis 6 and we see Noah's faith and his obedience.

It's pretty remarkable the kind of trust he exercised against all odds in believing God, being severely outnumbered. If you've got questions about the Nephilim, if you've got questions about the sons of God or the daughters of men, you can ask Joshua about all of those and he'll be happy to meet with you this week. Seriously, you can email me or call me.

I don't mind. I'm happy to talk to you about those positions. But I would just encourage you this morning to just leave this passage by marveling at the grace of God against the backdrop of his perfect justice.

Let me pray as we prepare for communion. Father in heaven, it is a scary thing to recognize how much you hate sin because we see it in ourselves day by day by day. And so we confess this morning as we confess ever and always that were it not for the righteousness of Jesus Christ, we would be at odds with you and you would be just to send us into eternal condemnation.

Lord, I thank you for Genesis chapter 6 verse 8, Lord, for you showing favor to a man who did not deserve it, but who you were pleased to rescue. Lord, we thank you for your rescue operation. We thank you for the Lord Jesus and his sacrifice on our behalf.

We thank you that you saw fit to call us, to call us to be your people, Lord, and to forgive the debt that we could have never paid. I pray that you would exalt yourself among us as we partake of the Lord's supper now in Jesus' name, amen.

Man, those words are truly such a comfort to the soul, and if you did not grow up as part of a Reformed Christian tradition, then you don't have a clear understanding of God's role and your role in the work of salvation, and yet it is critical. It's critical for our assurance, it's critical for our joy and comfort. God is certainly exalted in that, and to understand that God finishes the work that He begins when He causes us to be born again to a living hope, when He makes us a new creature.

And I can distinctly remember even some of those truths that we were singing about really being etched on my heart as a young man thinking, but could it really be true that God delights in me? I just cannot fathom that because I know how undelightful I am. And then coming to understand, no, because of my union with Christ, this is true of me. So great anthem, great opportunity to sing that, even reflecting on MacArthur's service yesterday.

It's the longest service I've ever witnessed. I didn't watch the whole thing, but a good part of three hours, and just a magnificent testimony to the Lord's grace. Well, this morning, as we turn our attention to the Scriptures again, I mean, we have been all morning, but I invite you to take your Bible and turn with me to Genesis chapter 5. And once something goes drastically wrong, we will get, we will finish chapter 5 today.

We will be done with chapter 5 and move on. As I was preparing for this message, I was thinking about my upbringing a bit, and I was homeschooled for a number of years and then made the transition into public school. And as you can imagine, it's not necessarily the easiest transition, and then that was compounded by doing that as a junior hire.

And that's not already awkward and challenging enough. So I came into a public school context, and somewhat unsurprisingly, probably to all of you, I did not fit in. So being the oldest child, I was a bit naive.

So basically, I had no idea what anyone was talking about. I'd come home every day and say, here's a bunch of words I learned today. What do they mean? I think my haircut gave me away.

I think that my interests betrayed me a bit. And so, I didn't have a lot of immediate connections going into junior high, felt like a little bit of odd man out. I remember dreading the lunch hour because it was a full hour, and it doesn't take an hour to eat your lunch, right? Your lunch is pretty small as a junior hire, so I'd eat my lunch and then just kind of roam the halls by myself for a number of minutes.

But in addition to the peculiarities that I brought that were just the normal social dynamics of life and things that were causing me to feel out of place was the added dimension of being a Christian. And so, I distinctly remember being in a science class, and I knew we were going to be getting to the topic of the origins of the earth. I was well-equipped, I'd actually attended an Answers in Genesis seminar in Salem, Oregon.

I met Ken Hammer, I heard him speak. And so, I remember kind of praying and thinking about, how am I going to handle this? And we get to this section in the course curriculum, and so sure enough, we come to the origins of the universe. And my teacher, I'm sure he's not alive anywhere, I won't name his name, but he stated as fact the origin of the universe being the Big Bang and evolution.

It was absolutely unequivocally proven, and there was no other possible reasonable scenario. And I remember raising my hand and saying, with all due respect, I don't believe you're representing all of the situations accurately. And I don't remember exactly what I said, but I remember I was prepared and I'd thought through some things.

And to his credit, I think he probably had one like me every year, so he was gracious in his response. But I remember a sense of exhilaration in that moment of fellowship with Christ. It was a unique kind of fellowship.

It was the sense of, I'm convinced of this truth, and I really don't care if anyone else is, and I'm going to speak. Now, for every story I could tell you of times that I've actually done that, I have many that I've not done it faithfully, so I'm not preaching myself this morning. Ironically, this morning's titled message is, The World Is Not Worthy, and it's going to be about men of whom the world is not worthy.

I'm not saying that I'm one of those men, but I'm telling that story because to really get a sense for Enoch, who we're going to look at this morning, and Noah, it's appropriate to think of what it's like to feel like vastly outnumbered in your perspective, vastly outnumbered in what you believe, to be a minority, to feel like perhaps a bit of an outsider. And I know many of you in this room, there are some of you who are the only believer in your family. God snatched you out, and you're not just a minority maybe in society at large, you're a minority in your family.

There's something very vulnerable about that. There's something that's challenging about that. There's also something that is precious and exhilarating to entrust ourselves to the Lord, even as a minority, and to simply speak what is true.

I was reading this week a list of the hundred most influential people in history. Obviously, no one could do that definitively, but someone had written to Time magazine and tried to put in order. And honestly, I was, I'll say this, I was pleasantly surprised.

It was better than I expected. And that particular list, and they vary on who created them, but Jesus Christ was number one. I think they thought Christ was probably his last name, so you could be trained a little bit there.

Jesus of Nazareth probably would have been better, but Jesus was number one. It included many U.S. presidents, so it's kind of written from a Western perspective. And then, I mean, quite to my delight, it included Calvin, and Luther, and Augustine, and the Apostle Paul, and the Apostle Peter, and the hundred most influential people in the history of the world.

And I thought, you know, if I were creating a list of the hundred greatest saints, I'd put Enoch and Noah on that list. And I don't think these guys always get a lot of our attention, but they're called heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11. And this morning in Genesis chapter 5, we're going to begin to give our attention to Enoch and next time, Lord willing, Noah.

And these are men of whom the world was not worthy. That's the language of the author of Hebrews. In Hebrews chapter 11 verse 38, the world was not worthy of these men.

What does that mean? It means that the world could not really appreciate them. The world could not appreciate them. And in a sense, the world did not deserve men like this.

Genesis chapter 5 begins. This is the book of the generations of Adam, when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. Male and female, He created them and He blessed them and named them man when they were created.

God is the owner of all things. He designed and created humanity. He put man on the earth.

And this now is the official record book of one of Adam's lines. As we said last week, we only know the names of three of Adam's sons, although he had many sons and daughters. We know of Cain, Abel, and Seth, who in effect replaced Abel.

This is the faithful line. And we've recognized, I think, quite exhaustively, I will just briefly mention it, the unique pattern of this genealogy, that there's a formula to it. When dad had lived X years, he fathered a son and the father lived so many additional years, Y number of years, he had other sons and daughters, thus all the years of dad were Z years and he died.

And so the scripture could have easily just said things like, Adam lived to be 930 years, Seth lived to be 912 years, Anosh lived to be 905 years, and we'd have no idea what the chronology was. The way this is written is really an ironclad chronology. It's designed to be totaled.

It's not just so that we would reflect upon ages. And so the years here, which follows the Masoretic text, puts the years from Adam to Noah about 1,656 years. So that would then put the age of the earth at roughly 6,000 years old or just over 4,000 BC.

And so as we begin to get into this text, we're just stunned by the sheer numbers. Verse 3, when Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth, and the days of Adam after he fathered Seth, after he became the father of Seth, were 800 years. And he had other sons and daughters, thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years and he died.

I mean, this is just absolutely mind-boggling. I've been thinking about it for weeks and I still can't really get my mind around what it actually would have looked like. I mean, I have an uncle who's a day younger than me, and people think that's super weird.

I've had a lot of comments over the years, right? Grandma and my mom are pregnant at the same time, they have babies at the same time, right? We can celebrate our birthdays at the same time, it's really cute. We're talking about a day, a day apart, occasionally, occasionally, in an interesting scenario. You might have an aunt or an uncle that's somewhat younger than you.

But because of the way fertility was working here, you could have an aunt or an uncle that's hundreds of years younger than you. It's just absolutely remarkable. Today, a woman's fertility under normal circumstances is about 35 years, give or take.

Here we're talking about centuries, potentially, of fertility. I mean, it's just mind-boggling, it's absolutely remarkable. The fruitfulness and the strength of these generations to be fruitful and multiplying God's designs.

And so, as you can imagine, the family trees, the family reunions, I mean, it's super complicated when you're living for that long and you're that fertile. And so just to put this in context for a moment, Adam living to 930 years means that he lived all the way to see Lamech. He lived to see all those generations down, six generations down.

It's just something that we can't even relate to in our day and age. And in fact, he only missed Noah by 126 years. So Noah was born just after that first millennium had been completed.

Adam dies just short of it. And to give you a little bit of a framework of what these lives would have looked like, that's about a sixth of world history. I mean, a little bit less than that.

But it's just astounding to think of being on the earth for a thousand years. My wife's grandmother turns 100 this year, and I was just looking up what she's witnessed in her life, the invention of penicillin or the discovery of penicillin, the creation of the TV and the jet engine and the atom bomb and the Frisbee and Velcro and scotch tape and the rocket. And she's seen presidential offices all the way back to Calvin Coolidge, lived through the Great Depression, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hitler's Third Reich, Apollo 11 landing on the moon, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, the baby boom, the invention of the personal computer and the CD and the cell phone and smartphone.

This is just beginning to get an idea of how much the world changes in 100 years. Adam, he's living essentially almost an entire millennium. And so I think we kind of picture running around in like village hot wind cloths.

I think from what we see even in Kane's line of the development and progress of humanity, it's a very wrong way of thinking. It gives us a bit of the wrong perspective. And so Adam here lives to be nearly a thousand years.

We don't have any explanation as to why the child birthing seems to be somewhat delayed. But we read in verse 8, when Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh. That's certainly later than elsewhere that we would see in scripture of fathers begetting children.

We'll talk about that more here in a bit. But the pattern that we noticed last week is very consistent in terms of the relationship to the fathers and the sons and the years that are included. And not only that, but last week we saw that very consistently there is the refrain, and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died, and it's not necessary.

If you say Adam lived for 930 years, it implies, and then at some point he died. Why does Moses keep saying, and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died? I believe it's driving on the point that we are living under the curse. This is our new reality.

And furthermore, so that he could establish a pattern so that it would be very obvious to us when he broke the pattern. When does the pattern break? Verse 21, when Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters.

Thus, all the days of Enoch were 365 years, and then instead of reading, and he died, we read, Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. What an unusual situation. What an unusual little verse.

It just kind of pops out here. As one author says, this is one of the Bible's greatest examples of living and saving faith, namely Enoch. There's not a lot of explanation given about him.

And yet this verse appears really like a shining gem in the midst of the genealogies. And in fact, we kind of talked about a couple of weeks ago that when you read a genealogy, almost contend to feel like it's time to fall asleep because it's just a genealogy. Maybe you think the person writing it was kind of feeling like they were going to fall asleep.

Here, it's very clear that there is a purpose and an intent behind this because all of a sudden the pattern breaks and we're displayed with a man who did not die, okay? A man who did not die. Now, it's worth mentioning just because we've talked about kind of how skeptics approach the scriptures that there is some views that kind of start to panic because if you'll notice, there's an Enoch here in Seth's line in chapter 5. There's also an Enoch back in Cain's line. If you remember in verse 18 of chapter 4, Cain names the city after his son Enoch.

Then if you look down in verse 28 of chapter 5, we read about Lamech. And as you remember, there was a Lamech who was a scoundrel back in Cain's line in chapter 4. And so what liberal commentators do, what they always do is state that, you know, the fact that we're seeing the same name in both lists indicates that whoever put this together is totally incompetent or they're working from different lists. They've somehow gotten the names confused.

Like kind of we need to discredit the whole entire thing because clearly they don't know what they're talking about because there's two names appearing in both lists and they appear in different places. I'll just tell you, I think that maybe the best way to go with Bible study is just, is there a simple explanation? Like is there just a really obvious simple explanation? Usually that's the best. So is it hard to believe that in two family lines you might have the same names? Well, I'll ask you just here in our congregation, which I'd say is relatively small, this small sample size, we have multiple Matthews, Talebs, Hannahs, Morgans, Susans, and Nathans.

And we even have multiple families that have the same last name and they're not related. I think it's possible that Enoch and Lamech were just popular baby names in the first millennium. So two different lists, two different guys.

It's actually recorded. It's what it was. It's what their names are.

It's not a sign of a discrepancy or an incompetency on Moses's part or anyone else's. And this Enoch is different from Cain's Enoch. And this Lamech is different from Cain's Lamech.

So we don't have a lot here in the Old Testament to tell us about Enoch. But Moses writes in verse 22, Enoch walked with God. And then he says again in verse 24, Enoch walked with God.

What a marvelous descriptor. Like there was one way to describe your life for people to say of you that they would say, so-and-so walked with God. It's just an incredible expression.

Noah in Genesis 6-9 will be said to walk with God. Okay, so both of these guys are unique in their exceptional relationship with God. It's highlighted here.

It's a dark age. It's a perverse generation. It's a crooked generation.

It's a very morally degenerate time. And yet these men walk with God. And we've been over this over and over and over.

I will not belabor the point this morning. But walking speaks of a lifestyle. And furthermore, to walk with someone is indicative of enjoying fellowship at their side.

So Abraham is going to be said later to be walking before God. What does that mean? I'm blameless. I fear you.

Face to face. I'm before you. I lifted my hands before you.

Search me. It's that kind of being before God, walking before him circumspectly. Deuteronomy in the law, God's people are going to be told to walk after him.

They're going to be told to walk after him. Deuteronomy 13, for you to walk after the Lord. You're to be a follower.

You're to be a disciple. Talk about walking in the way of our Lord or following Jesus. It's appropriate.

So we walk before God. We walk after him. We follow him.

But to walk with him, to walk with him signifies not just the lifestyle of following his commandments. That's certainly a part of it. But there's an emphasis here on relationship.

There's an emphasis here on relationship. I mean, this is a precious thing. Growing up in the 90s, that was kind of the big deal that you'd hear these statements made.

When you're thinking about interacting with God, it's about relationship, not rules. It's like kind of true. There are rules, actually.

It's part of the relationship. But I understand what you're saying. You're going to emphasize the relationship.

Or they're saying, you need to have your own personal relationship with Jesus. I mean, yes. There's a personal element to this.

Perhaps there's a corporate dynamic to it. Here, the emphasis is on the relationship. And the idea that Enoch walked with God here in the original is this durative force.

It means it was continuous. Okay. And what the text is saying is certainly after he fathered Methuselah.

So certainly after he was 65. But it doesn't actually necessitate that it didn't happen from an earlier age. So it could have been that he walked with God 365 years.

It could have been 300 years. It's indicating certainly after he fathered Methuselah. But the text does not require that it was not happening prior to that.

But let's just take 300 years. I mean, hello? He walked with God for 300 years. I mean, it's just on my heart this week.

There's people that I know that have started out with fireworks in their relationship with Christ. And then what happens? They fizzle and fade. They walk for a while and then they stumble and they don't get back up.

They walk and then they walk away. Enoch walked with God. Close relational fellowship for 300 years.

300 years. This is a man who loved God. This is a man who loved fellowshipping with God.

We know that God desires fellowship with his people astoundingly. Genesis 3, he comes walking in the garden in the cool of the day in Genesis 3.8. Why? Because he's looking for fellowship with Adam and Eve. What's Jesus' high priestly prayer in John 17? Father, I want them to be with us so that they can know the fellowship that we had from before the world was began.

I want them to enter into that. I want to be with them. And so Enoch here, fascinatingly, has a close relationship with God where he's drawing near to the Lord.

He's looking to him. He's communing with him. He's obeying him.

He's trusting him. He's loving him. And in that love for God, in that walking with God, it is causing him to now be at odds with the world around him.

I mean, John 1 could not be more clear. Jesus came to his own and what? They rejected him. They rejected him.

Why? Because the darkness hates the light. And they preferred rather their deeds because they liked the darkness where they could do them. And so Enoch here is finding that he would be able to call God his friend.

And in calling God his friend meant there's a lot of other people who now are no longer his friend. It's just the way the world works. And so he would stand somewhat in a minority.

I'm sure at times it felt like he was standing alone. I'll develop that in a minute. Even as I think back to my experience in junior high, did I feel alone that day in the classroom? I did.

But guess what? God in his kindness. I had a Christian coach. I had a Christian teacher.

I had a Christian friend from church. There were other believers, but we weren't in the majority position. We weren't in the majority accepted position.

We didn't have the predominant influence. And so I'm sure Enoch in a very similar fashion here, I mean, severely outnumbered on the face of the earth. God's going to judge the earth with a flood coming right on the heels in this next millennium, this next few hundred years.

Yet there I'm sure was, were other believers. And so Enoch here understood that living for us, what we would call the Christian life, life in Christ is not only about principles and practices, but it is about a person, an unseen God with whom you fellowship, that you're living out of that, that it's influencing all the way that you think about life. And so what that did in Enoch's heart, that relationship, that close walk he had with God was it made him a bold preacher, a bold preacher.

I want you to turn back to Jude. We'll come back to Genesis in a minute, but you can turn to Jude. We looked at this earlier in our scripture reading.

Enoch walks with God. And in addition to that, he's a preacher. Jude 14, it was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam prophesied.

So just real quick, there you go. Seventh from Adam. We have the New Testament confirming the testimony of the Old Testament, but the numbers line up.

It's the same Enoch, and it is actually seven generations. This man, this Enoch prophesied. What are prophets? Prophets are mouthpieces for God.

So he's on the earth. The earth is growing morally dark, darker and darker and darker around him. And he is one who now will speak forth revelation from God to the people.

And what is his message? God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Hey, guys, the best days are yet to come. Look at the message.

Behold, he starts with, look, listen up, pay attention. Behold, the Lord comes. The master is coming.

The one who made you is coming back. And what is his arrival going to look like? He comes with ten thousands of his holy ones. And this is where that expression, holy host, comes from.

Means that when the Lord comes in this coming that Enoch is talking about, he's going to be flanked. He's going to be flanked with myriads of angelic warriors. Point is, it's innumerable.

Elsewhere in scripture, it's called myriads and myriads. So this message that Enoch is preaching, this man who walks with God, he knows God, he loves God. Now out of the overflow of that, he's speaking on behalf of God.

He has a message for the people. He's starting soberly. I would say, pre-incarnate Christ centeredly.

He's coming and he's preaching to a dark culture powerfully to tell them that their maker is going to come back as a warrior king. And what is he going to do? Verse 15, to execute judgment on all. And to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.

He's telling them the warrior king is coming back and he's coming back to execute judgment. This is legal compensatory language. He will bring a recompense.

He will punish. He will mete out punishment. He's going to measure it out and then he's going to dole it out and he's going to execute it.

That's the plan. And what is he going to specifically convict over? Well, deeds. We could say defamation.

Verse 15, to execute judgment on all, to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness, all the things that they've committed and done. And the things that what they've spoken, the end of verse 15 against him, he's going to punish blasphemers. I mean, I just was gripped thinking about this.

I mean, I, I hope at times I hope that you're not, you're not self-righteous about the darkness in the world around you, but I hope it provokes within you something at times that offends you, that you're offended by that which offends God. I mean, at the very least, I hope that blasphemy offends you. I mean, I get offended when someone takes my Lord's name in vain, the King of Kings, and they use it as a cuss word.

It offends me. Or when you take the rainbow, the sign of God's covenant promise, and you desecrate it, I find that offensive. Or when atheists mock Christians, that offends me.

And not primarily because it offends me personally, although it does, but because you're speaking about the God that I love. And if you look at the heart of Enoch's message, I mean, this is a quote. It's a little snippet from one of his sermons.

And if he was in, in primary aged grammar school, we would correct his paper and say, you need to find more adjectives. You're overusing one word. What word is he overusing? Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.

So, Enoch comes and his message is, you people are ungodly. You're an ungodly people. And God is going to come back and punish ungodliness.

And the message is ideally then a message of, so turn to Him and be saved. Avoid punishment while there's still time. Enoch would have been a preacher of the gospel.

He would have been a preacher who was coming and proclaiming that judgment was coming. It's not hard to figure out what kind of judgment he was proclaiming. Whether it was the specifics of the coming flood judgment, or it was revelation that God had given him to prepare the next generation for that day.

God is graciously, graciously bringing a preacher to tell people to repent while there's still time. Writer of Hebrews says that these are men of whom the world was not worthy. Men of whom the world was not worthy.

I read about Enoch and I think, man, I want courage like that. I mean, to be severely outnumbered in a crooked and perverse generation, and your lead-in in the message is, behold, the Lord is coming to execute judgment on your ungodliness. That is a level of boldness that I freely admit.

I just, I don't know that I possess that in the way that he did. Where did that come from? Well, Hebrews 11 makes it clear that it is by faith. Enoch simply believed that it was going to happen.

He believed God. So when we shrink back from proclaiming what we say we believe to be true, it's rooted in unbelief. Paul would say, I believed, therefore I spoke.

Enoch's ministry here is so instructive for us. I mean, I remember growing up in youth group and I'm trying to be equipped to go into the public school, right? And what's the equipping? I mean, you just live your life and it just shines so much that all the other kids say we want what he has. Occasionally, occasionally in God's kindness that happens.

Someone says, hey, I've noticed that like something about you. Can we talk about it? That's not usually how it goes. It doesn't say that Enoch just had his life together and he was just so happy and so joyful that everyone wanted what he had.

Rather, he came and he preached against ungodliness. Judgment was on his heart. It was on his mind.

And the result of that, I'm sure, was a measure of loneliness. It's interesting that even Jude is writing about those who would go the way of Cain. That seems to be the clear contrast in Genesis 5. And so part of living the Christian life is feeling lonely.

Now, you're probably not as lonely as you feel like you are, but there is a bit of loneliness, is there not? If you remember the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat in 1 Kings 22 verse 8, we need to inquire of the Lord on if we should go to battle. And so they get 400 prophets and 400 prophets come. They say, hey, yeah, we're good to go.

What does he say? You know what? There's actually one more guy. One more guy that we need to hear from. Micaiah.

The only problem is I hate him. I hate that guy. I'm good hearing from 400 prophets and there's one prophet that I hate.

I just hate that guy. Why do you hate him? He says, for he never prophesies good concerning me, but evil. You understand how dangerous the thinking is? Well, most Americans believe or most college graduates agree or most evangelicals or most, it doesn't really matter.

The goal is not to side with the majority or the popular group or what seems to be the influential thought of the day. Enoch would have felt in many ways on the earth lonely. One author writes, if we please God, we'll not be in a position of pleasing most men.

And women, at least not the ungodly. By the time Enoch died by the sheer mathematics of birth or reproduction, there were probably several million of Adam's descendants on earth. These were Enoch's relatives, mostly cousins.

It was these whom Enoch called ungodly. And we can be sure that he was not popular with them. You say, well, how do we know that? Well, just a few generations later, God's destroying the earth with a cataclysmic flood.

And so even if there were some who heard the message and repented, it certainly wasn't widespread revival. And so God takes this man, turned back to Genesis 5, who walked with him, who fellowshiped with him, who preached to sinners to repent. He preached confrontationally this message of gospel hope.

And then Moses, somewhat frustratingly so, without explanation or elaboration, just says he was not, for God took him. I mean, ponder that for a minute. Did he get to write a goodbye letter? Was he just like, he's suddenly gone, his face is on the milk carton, we don't know what happened to him.

I mean, I think it's likely that there was some probably scenario where it was apparent how Enoch departed. Writer of Hebrews says that he was taken so that he would not have to face death. Is that not incredible? I mean, the Bible says over and over that long life is a gift from God.

Length of days is a blessing from the Lord. The Lord prolongs life. There's something even better than the Lord giving you a long life on earth, you know, that is taking you early without death.

And so Enoch is taken away. And the language there is so wonderful because it has to be that God just came and snatched him away and brought him to himself. So God didn't take him out, but he took him to himself.

It's happened, of course, only one other time in history. Happened with Elijah. There were witnesses to that.

It was seen by others. And so why did God take Enoch? And like, I live a holy life. Could I get on that too? I mean, you kind of think there's that song by William Cooper, Oh, for a closer walk with God.

And you're thinking, man, if I get close enough to God, like, is that the deal? We get to avoid death? Obviously, this was incredibly exceptional. I think it was certainly a blessing in Enoch's life. Enoch would have been tormented.

I mean, righteous lot was tormented living near Sodom and Gomorrah. Enoch was in a crooked and perverse generation. He would have been somewhat tormented as a righteous man, surely.

So there was a grace in that. It was a gift to Enoch. He was 11-5, as I said, he was taken up so that he should not see death.

So there was a blessing to him personally. But I think there was something else that was happening there. I think this was an early indication to the people of the world that death is not the final story.

That death is not the ultimate end. This is, of course, not the full revelation of Jesus and the empty tomb. That will come later in the progress of revelation.

But this is a precursor toward the idea that the grave is not ultimately final. It's a ray of hope, if you will, that death is not the final answer. Death is not ultimate.

That Enoch lived and he did not die. In fact, this would be the hope of the psalmist and even Job. Job was likely somewhere in this time frame as a contemporary.

Job would say in Job 19 verse 25, For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God. I believe in resurrection.

So Job believed in resurrection. We don't know exactly what revelation was given to those people. Yet it would seem here that Enoch is a living testament to God's resurrection power.

And yet I do want to remind you that for all of Enoch's wonderful attributes, he was born with original sin just like you and me. He was born with corruption. There were times that he wasn't faithful as a saint.

Times at some point in his life he had to be regenerated by the power of the Spirit and born again. And so Enoch is certainly an example of great godliness, and yet it's also an example of what Peter would say in 2 Peter chapter 2, that God knows how to preserve His godly ones under trial. That God is the one who ultimately preserved Enoch amidst a crooked and perverse generation.

And so Enoch continues the family line. He gives birth to Methuselah. Well, he doesn't.

You know what I mean. His wife gives birth to Methuselah. He's 65 when that happens according to verse 21.

Methuselah then lives 187 years and fathers Lamech. Methuselah lives after he fathers Lamech 782 years and has other sons and daughters. Verse 27, that's all the days of Methuselah were 969 years and he died.

It's like my favorite guy in the Bible. He's a little kid. Longest living human that we have on record.

It's a good Bible trivia nugget. You can just kind of put that one in your pocket. The Bible's silent as to the reasons for long life.

So we can speculate, but we just don't know. Many people speculate that the atmosphere and the environment of the earth changed post-flood. Certainly could be possible.

Some postulate that it related to the natural genetic breakdown as the human population began to kind of degrade and the effects of sin. To what degree it was supernatural intervention or how God had designed the natural laws of the universe, we understand that it ultimately is related to God's sovereign plan and ordination to shorten human lifespans. But Methuselah makes it 969 years.

And if you're keeping track, that's going to be the year that Noah turns 600, which is also the year of the flood. So Methuselah dies according to verse 27 at 969 years old. And that is the very same year that the earth is flooded.

By all these calculations, 1656, not 1656 AD or 1656 BC, but just 1656. And on the heels of that, we read Lamech, father's a son. In verse 29, he calls his name Noah, saying, out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, out of the ground that Yahweh is cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.

Lamech right now is describing in poetic language, recognition that Adam is fashioned from dust. Eve was fashioned from Adam's rib. And every successive human being comes into existence through a fertilized egg that grows through the embryonic stages.

So it doesn't actually come from dust in one sense. You know, that's the ultimate origin of man and it's what we all return to. And so he's saying, out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, now this one has been brought who will bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.

And so you just get this idea of what he's saying there is we're cut from the same cloth. He's out of the ground, made from the same stuff. And Lamech is clearly somewhat hopeless.

He's feeling the effects of the curse and the difficulty. And so now he's hoping that this son will come and bring relief. And we're going to look at next time when we open up, whether Lamech is right in what he's saying, kind of how he's conceiving of what Noah is going to do.

I'll just say this as a little kind of foretaste of what's to come. Noah is going to be involved, obviously, in representing salvation. But Noah is not the deliverer.

He's not the type. Rather, Noah is the one who's delivered by the ark of God's salvation. And so Lamech here is clearly reeling from the effects of the fall, the difficulty under the curse.

He's hoping that his son now will come and bring relief. And in some ways, Noah will. And in some ways, Noah is actually going to bring great difficulty upon the earth.

Or that God is through Noah. Well, this morning, as you reflect on Enoch, the themes that you're encouraged by is that God has a faithful remnant. And it's generally not the majority.

It's usually the minority. And yet, even when you feel alone, there's people that span all of history, far more believers on the face of the planet than we could ever count, myriads and myriads. And that the Lord uses those who have a vital relationship with him, who walk with God.

He uses them in significant ways. And then finally, God's power to rescue and preserve the godly. That even if you look around and you say, I see what seems like the world on a downward spiral or decline, you have no need to fret or fear.

Because even a man like Enoch could be preserved in a dark generation by God's sustaining power. So we'll pick this up again after family camp. We'll be somewhere else next week, just so we don't miss a week in Genesis.

And then we'll pick this up in two weeks. Let's pray together. Lord, I am so desiring of what Enoch had with you.

I was just telling Susie last week, I think we could take this year and just as the moniker in our lives, think about growing in our walk with God. Walking with God, a relationship with you, Lord. Just being reminded even of the personal element of fellowship and drawing near to you as a person, where that's just refreshing to us.

And I pray that you would help our faith to not be reduced down to merely principles and practices, but that that would be centered on the person who's given us those principles and those practices. Lord, you gave yourself for us. There's no way we could ever pay you back.

But we do say thank you. We do say that although we do not see you, we love you. And we look forward to that day when you come with thousands of angels.

Lord Jesus, we praise you. We ask these things in your name. Amen.

I invite you to take your Bibles and turn with me this morning to Genesis chapter 5. Genesis chapter 5. It's probably disappointing for a couple of you who are hoping to get out of the genealogies and into the Nephilim. We will get there, but not this Sunday. So, the Lord had other plans for you.

Entitled this morning's message, Adam's Faithful Lineage. Adam's Faithful Lineage. And I think that's really a good way to understand kind of the why of Genesis 5 being here.

If you remember in chapter 4, we saw that the emphasis there is really on Cain's line. Adam's son, Cain, his firstborn, his oldest. We saw that Cain was given particular attention in Genesis chapter 4. He kind of steals the show.

He's the central figure. He gets the most prominence, the most attention. And we saw there this first family come to worship and Cain worshiped in pretense.

So, he showed up to the worship service with the family, but his heart wasn't there. It was false. It was pretend.

There were other motives that were causing him to not want to forsake worship altogether, but at the same time not want to do it as unto the Lord. He didn't love God. And so, then we saw his anger.

We saw that he was angry. We saw his self-pity and his frustration. Eventually, that anger toward God, that discontent spilled out on his brother.

His physical brother resulted in murder. And then after his murder, he covered it up. So, he murdered his brother Abel, and then he covered it up.

And so, Cain received a punishment. He received a punishment from God, and we saw the ominous description of Cain's rebellion in chapter 4 verse 16, where we read, then, Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod east of Eden. Cain went away from the presence of the Lord.

He fled from God's presence. It's one way of just even describing humanity. There are those who run to the Lord and those who run away from the Lord, those who long to be before the face of God and those who want to be away from the face of God.

In the Old Testament, when you read the presence of God, usually that meant, in the original, the face of God. It was to be near his presence. And obviously, God doesn't have a face, but it was an anthropomorphism to demonstrate the idea of God's watchful gaze, his near presence.

And so, the line of Cain, then, is really indicative of what we read there in verse 16. They fled from the presence of God. Cain wanted to be away from Yahweh, and that Cain was demonstrably wicked.

We saw that, as Enid mentioned, they were a fruitful family. They were full of inventiveness and ingenuity and creativity, and God had blessed them in many ways in his common grace. All kinds of gifting and ability.

And yet, it's true that the line was demonstrably wicked. We know that for two reasons. Number one, when the flood comes, there's not other righteous families.

And so, we know that Cain's offspring here was wicked. I believe also that Lamech here is given in chapter 4 as an example of what the family was like. An example of what the family was like with Lamech, of course, was a man who was violent and vengeful, and he was a polygamist, and he was self-exalting and self-trusting, self-sufficient.

And all of that is held by Moses in chapter 4 in sharp relief to Seth. Okay, so Cain and his line take the primary focus in chapter 4 to demonstrate really humanity's rebellion against God, what Adam's offspring looked like, what life was like on the earth. We're getting a little flavor of that in Cain's line.

And then the contrast comes at the end of chapter 4. We read in verse 25, Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth. For she said, God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him, another offspring. To Seth also, verse 26, a son was born, and he called his name Enosh.

At that time, people began to call upon the name of the Lord. And so, Seth comes and introduces this ray of hope into the darkness. Really, this is the indication here, the origins of confessional Yahwehism, as one author puts it.

This is now the formal establishment of God's people calling upon His name. It's a thrill really to see this, that in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, there are those who begin to call upon the name of the Lord. There is a faithful remnant.

There is a faithful line. One author says that this highlights that the significant contribution of Seth's line was not culture and industry like Lamech, but rather it was theological, it was faith. And so, chapter 4 leaves us with this depiction of the rebellious and the redeemed, of the godless and the godly, the faithless and the faithful.

And so, then we come to chapter 5, and Moses wants to take Adam's faithful line and begin to line out how we get from Adam to Noah. And so, I don't know about you, but that was pretty painful last week, hearing me read through some of those names, especially Mahalalel, that extra L, I just could not get through my head. I worked on it during the week.

I'm not going to put myself through that this week. I'm not going to put you through that. So, we read the text last week.

You can read it silently. Right now, I'm going to make mention as we go. But this week, we're going to be tracing Adam's faithful line.

We're going to be tracing Adam's faithful line. And the first point that we come to this morning is really the prologue, and that's in verses 1 and 2. So, if you're keeping an outline this morning, we're going to be tracing Adam's faithful line. We're going to look first at the prologue, verses 1 and 2. Moses writes, this is the book of the generations of Adam.

When God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. Male and female, He created them, and He blessed them and named them man when they were created. And this is the introductory superscription.

This is the prolegomena. It's that man is created by God, he's blessed by God, and now here's the blessed line. And these are the generations of Adam.

And as we said, the language is very important here. When you read the book of the generations of Adam, saying this is the written history, this is the written record book. Now, back then, it was a scroll.

So, this is the written scroll of Adam's lineage. He said that phraseology is used one other time in Scripture. Matthew chapter 1 verse 1. This is the book of the genealogy of Jesus.

And so, there's a connection here between the first Adam and the second Adam. It's made clear for us in Scripture. Furthermore, we understand that this is a linear or a vertical genealogy.

And so, we mentioned last week, the point of a linear or vertical genealogy is to get from point A to point Z. In this case, Adam to Noah. Okay? So, that is the type of genealogy that we're looking at. So, this is the written record, the scroll book, the record book of how we get from Adam to Noah.

The fact that it's called the book of the generations indicates that Christotelic purpose. Telic is the end, that there's a Christological end here, Christological focus. Focus.

That is to say that the ultimate culmination here is going to be on Jesus, the Messiah, and this is connecting us there. This is connecting the bloodline. It is the clear purpose of this genealogy.

Not only that, but this genealogy is chronicling how we get through these epic moments in history. So, creation, it's pretty epic. The flood, it's pretty epic.

Essentially, the beginning of all things and then the beginning of all things 2.0 with Noah. And so, this is connecting those. And this functions as a distinct unit.

If you notice, Moses is ending really with a genealogy at the end of chapter 4 where he's saying that Adam knew his wife, they had a son named Seth, to Seth is born Enosh. He could have just continued right into chapter 5 with that same genealogy. And yet, it is significant here that he steps back in verse 1 and he starts over and he says, I'm going to begin again now.

I'm going to start again. This is a formal genealogy with Adam and work my way to Noah. As I said last week, that this chapter is under attack.

And it's not just under attack from skeptics outside of the faith of Christianity, but it's under attack from within even the evangelical community. One commentator laments this. He says, quote, the only reliable chronology which we have, which actually purports to be an adequate chronology dating back to creation, this is the only reliable chronology that exists, is continually being questioned, corrected, amended, and even condemned in favor of fallible documents, which are historically but poorly attested to and marked by many gaps.

So, a literal reading of Genesis 5 is not in vogue. It's not really the best way to win friends and influence people to take a literal interpretation of Genesis chapter 5. And this is very similar to what we found in Genesis 1 and 2. And what I want to pause it for you this morning and remind you of is this. A casual reading of Genesis 5 indicates that it is to be understood as a chronology.

A casual reading of Genesis 5 indicates that it is to be read and understood as a chronology. A careful reading of Genesis 5 yields that it is to be understood as a chronology. So, whether it is a casual reading or a careful reading, you're going to come to the same conclusion.

In fact, I don't believe that the data itself is in question with regard to what it intends to communicate. I believe the issue is a matter of acceptance on our part. Okay? It's a matter of acceptance on our part.

And what I want you to understand when we come to a study like this, as we looked at it last week and we will continue to study it this week, is just even the way that I approach a text like this in my own study. I know the theologically conservative background that I come from. I know generally that I believe young earth.

It's what I was taught. It's what I believe about the Bible. And yet there's a sense in which in approaching a text, we say this, well, what if when I come to Genesis 5, it leads me to a different conclusion? Would I be willing to amend my view if the text takes me there? And I hope that that is your approach in Bible study, to let the text speak, and if need be, to amend your view.

So, I believe last week, quite definitively, we demonstrated that this passage was intended to be understood as a chronology. And one of the common arguments that's posited against understanding Genesis 5 as a chronology is that when you and I come to this passage, we're reading it with post-enlightenment, western lenses, and we fail to understand the Hebrew mind. I'd like to tell you that I think it is possible to come to Genesis 5 and read it with those kinds of lenses.

That's not actually the conclusion that you reach. In fact, if you were to look at the overwhelming history of the church through the ages, most theologians have understood Genesis 5 to be teaching an actual chronology. You begin to talk about the modern lenses that misunderstand Genesis 5. It's those that have begun to weight the evidence of things like apparent archaeology and geology more heavily, and now try to reread Genesis 5 to make it reconcile with the apparent discoveries of geology, archaeology, and history.

Here's what I want you to understand. We're not opposed to history, or geology, or archaeology. But when it comes to a matter of authority, we must be clear that if we cannot reconcile the two, which one are we going to go with? And so right now, if there's an apparent contradiction, which I don't believe there would ever be an ultimate contradiction, we're to land with the authority of Scripture.

And in fact, if you were to look at what has remained constant through the ages, the Scripture here remains unchanged, whereas geology and archaeology has continued to have new discoveries and even amend previous findings. So the point here is clearly sequential. It is chronological.

If you're curious, when this idea was entered, that this is not a chronological computation, it really came in the late 1800s by a man named W. H. Green, and he wrote a treatise called Primeval Chronology, and that was where he began to posit that we need to abandon a literal view of Genesis 5. So it's a relatively recent view. And that being said, in this genealogy, as we come to it, there is a question as to how much time is really passing. Can we go back and actually account for the exact year that the earth was created? And that has happened in church history.

There are various theologians over the years that have attempted to reconstruct that. I think there is a little bit of a challenge. I want to demonstrate that for you this morning.

So the prologue in Genesis 5.1, I'm positing here, is indicating that this is to be understood as a lineage, as a record, as a scroll. That was in the Hebrew mind. It was in every mind since then that that group of words means something, that we're to understand that the Hebrews were not Neanderthals.

They understood ages and years. When they put them together, it yielded the same conclusions you and I reach. But then we come to understand the pattern, the pattern of this genealogy.

And it starts off right there in verse 3. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth. The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years, and he had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.

And so here is the pattern, and this pattern continues throughout the genealogy. When Dad had lived X years, he fathered a son. Dad lived after he fathered this son another Y years, and then had other sons and daughters.

Thus, all the days of Dad were Z years, and he died. It is a mathematical formula. It's a pattern through this genealogy.

I want you just to stop and consider all the things that are not a part of it. We don't know where these men of old lived. We don't know what their vocations were, what they did for work.

We don't know the identity of their wives. We can infer that they existed because they were having children. We don't know how many children and grandchildren they may have had.

The only clue that we have in the pattern is that each of them had at least five children, because we read the one son that's included in the genealogy, and then we read other sons, plural, and other daughters, plural, which at a minimum would have been two each, two more sons and two more daughters. So at least we know each one of these had a minimum of five children, and other than that, we know nothing about them. Okay, we know nothing about them.

Why? Because the emphasis is on the chronology. Now, why do we not then work our way backwards and come up with the exact date, exact year that God created the earth? You find even among Bible scholars that take the Scriptures to be the authoritative inerrancy of God, those who have a high view of the inerrancy of Scripture, they're cautious in putting a time stamp on the exact age of the earth. Why is that? Well, there's two reasons.

One we mentioned last week, which is to say there's some type of rounding taking place here. So we don't know whether Adam was 929 years and 180 days or something like that, and they just rounded up to 930, or it was a few months past 930 years. So there's close approximations here, but there's not specific details designed to give us that type of yield.

Furthermore, there is actually a question relating to the years themselves. So, if you were to total up all of these years, you come up with 1,656, and that follows a certain traditional text of Scripture. What do I mean by that? Well, I'm going to get technical for just a moment here, but I want to equip you so that as questions come up, you've got a framework for understanding where they're coming from and how to respond.

So, what you have before you is the very Word of God. Okay? You have the Word of God. So when you quote it, we say you're quoting Scripture, you're quoting the Word of God.

Interestingly enough, we can't go back in time and find the original Bible, the original manuscript. Like, we don't have that actual original scroll that Moses wrote on. It doesn't exist anymore.

If it did, it would probably be being worshipped. We don't have Moses' scroll. Rather, what we have are many, many hundreds and thousands of copies that were made off of those original documents.

And in the course of reconstructing the Scriptures, what we do is we compare various documents from various places and locations. We put them together. We allow them to correct one another so that we can essentially reconstruct what the text actually originally said.

Now, there are some verses in Scripture where we're not 100% certain what was originally written. Okay? There are places in the Scripture where we're not 100% certain was this copy what was originally written or was this copy what was originally written. Now, whenever that happens, thankfully, there's never a core doctrine at stake.

There's never an issue that would impact your salvation or really even theology proper. It would be things commonly like when Paul wrote, did he say, Jesus, or did he originally say, Lord Jesus, or did he say, Lord Jesus Christ? So, we don't know always for certain, but generally the kinds of things that we have questions about are insignificant from the ultimate theological sense. Well, interestingly enough, in Genesis chapter 5, you have three manuscript families that are used to construct this part of the Old Testament.

Three different locations that they come from, the Septuagint, which was the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Masoretic Text, which was the Hebrew that was preserved through the Hebrew tradition, generally the most reliable, generally what most of your Old Testament is informed by, and then you have the Samaritan Pentateuch. Okay? So, three text families. The Masoretic Text is the one that's being used here.

Okay? So, that date, that chronology that you have, that total comes from that family of documents. The Masoretic Text, the one that is most commonly the most reliable of all of the Old Testament manuscripts. Interestingly enough, the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament has some different numbers in it, and then the Samaritan Pentateuch has some different numbers in it.

So, when you begin to look at those, it would seem that the types of differences were made intentionally. So, it wasn't just, oops, I forgot a detail, but rather someone inserted a discrepancy to try to maybe smooth things out. And really, it seems like they tried to take the extreme differences in the ages and kind of level all of them out.

Okay? So, one text, for example, would have that Adam, when he lived not 130 years, but 230 years, fathered a son in his likeness after his image. It's possible that that's actually what was in the original document. We're not 100% certain on a few of those ages.

So, what is the span between all of these discrepancies? Between the highest list, if you were to take all of the longest ages, and then the list that has the shortest, you're looking at the discrepancy of about a thousand years. It's actually less than a thousand years between the two. So, what I could say then is this, and I think that this is actually marvelous and beautiful.

Some of you are saying right now, we define beautiful a little differently, bud. Here's what I think is so beautiful. God preserved for us in Genesis 5 a chronological genealogy so that we don't have to guess essentially how old the earth is.

We have a pretty close idea. And that he didn't reconstruct it, he didn't preserve it for us in such a way as just be able to go back and have an exact date. So, I can tell you exactly when the earth was created.

God did not write it down for us in that way or preserve the scriptures in such a way for us as to be able to calculate an exact date. And that he clearly conveyed here in this genealogy an understanding for us to take away that this is representing an earth that maybe this took place, creation, 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 years prior to the flood. That's what we're talking about, or before Christ, excuse me, before Christ.

So, that is what it yields for us. We know then that the earth is certainly less than 10,000 years old without being given a specific age of the earth. If you remember when we came to the text last week, we said that there were some unique attributes of this genealogy that lead us to that conclusion.

A good way of describing it is a that is a Latin term that means this is of its own kind. There's not another chronology in scripture that looks exactly like the one found here and then in Genesis 11. Why does it not fit those other categories? Well, it's because of the uniqueness of how the numbers relate to one another and form that intricate interlocking pattern such that we can construct all of the together.

Nevertheless, as one commentator writes, the overwhelming consensus of evangelical scholarship holds that Genesis 5 provides only a loose genealogy of the line of Seth and not a complete chronology. The effect of this is to say that the number of years cited in Genesis 5 must cover a considerably longer period of time. I would say, in fact, that this is incorrect, that the scripture is designed to convey this for us.

I'm going to go back over and just review a few of these facts so that you're aware. There is the recognition that when you read in verse 4 that Adam fathered Seth, that's a clear indication not merely of a distant son as in a grandson or great-grandson, but rather a parent-child connection. Furthermore, we read of Adam and Eve naming Seth in the end of chapter 4. We read of Lamech naming his sons at the end of chapter 5. This would indicate, again, a parent-child relationship.

So, when you come to Genesis 5, you can be convinced that this is written for you to understand as a chronological genealogy. What I was amazed of as I was studying this, before we move on to the next point, I just want to highlight this for you yet again, was reading over and over and over evangelicals who would see Genesis 5 as non-literal. And to read the reasons, here was one that I think summed up what was the common expression.

If the earth is old and Christians insist it is young, we risk becoming a tragic obstacle to faith for those both outside and inside the church. This was written after a prominent faithful reformed denomination at their annual conference. It was an appeal made that we're going to lose our children.

We're going to lose our children if we say that the Bible teaches young earth. And we're going to lose opportunities with the world if we say that the Bible teaches a young earth. It's going to be a stumbling block.

It's going to be an obstacle to people. Let's say that that was quite indicative of what was really going on, that it was never a concern that that was what the Bible taught, but rather that what the Bible teaches is not going to be convenient or palatable for the agenda that we're trying to accomplish. And those are very different things.

And so when you come to the text of Scripture, you're to recognize that the question is not how well received is this going to be by our children or our neighbors, but rather what does God intend for us to understand. Over and over and over, what I found was not textual arguments to take Genesis 5 as something other than a literal chronology, but rather appeals to not lose really influence and respect by adopting a position that would be lowly regarded in the eyes of men. So why do I believe that the earth is less than 10,000 years old? I believe the Scripture is without error.

I believe Genesis 5 teaches us a chronology. We're going to see it again in Genesis 11. It was intended by God to convey for us not just from where we came, but from whence we came.

So if you have questions about that, email me. I'd love to talk with you about it. I'd love to send you information.

You got questions about some things I've referenced. I'd be happy to engage with you on that. But as we head back to our genealogy here, what we find here is there's more going on than merely a chronology.

And so I do believe the chronology is an emphasis, and yet there's more going on here as well. As we read the text, there's a certain refrain, and perhaps you caught it last week. I want to bring it out for you again this week.

What's going on in the pattern here? Listen as I read Genesis 5, 5. Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died. Genesis 5, 8. Thus all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died. Verse 11.

Thus all the days of Anosh were 905 years, and he died. Verse 14. Thus all the days of Kenan were 910 years, and he died.

Verse 17. Everyone's favorite. Thus all the days of Mahalalel were 895 years, and he died.

Verse 20. Thus all the days of Jared were 962 years, and he died. Verse 27.

Thus all the days of Methuselah were 969 years, and he died. Verse 31. Thus all the days of Lamech were 777 years, and he died.

This is to be a memento mori. That is a reminder of death. You know, professors many years ago would have a skull on their desk.

Why? It was a memento, a reminder of death. In Genesis 5 here, Moses is making it very apparent that there is a reminder of death. It sure didn't take long.

Death was promised at the beginning of creation as a possible consequence. If you remember, it was not a part of the original creation. Rather, in Genesis 2, verse 17, after God commands Adam to eat of every tree, he says, but of the tree of knowledge, and verse 17, of good and of evil, you shall not eat of it.

For in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die. And so death came into creation. You remember what Satan said to Eve? Genesis 3, 4. You will not surely die.

See, Satan was a liar and a murderer from the beginning. Satan was a liar and a murderer from the beginning. He knew that death was promised.

He knew that death would be the consequence. He knew that it would come as a result of sin, and yet he was trying to convince Eve, Eve, you can sin, you can rebel against the very Word of God, and do it consequence-free. And yet what came from Adam's sin? Remember how Paul describes it in Romans chapter 5, verse 12? Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

Romans 5, 14 says, death reigned from Adam to Moses, for death reigned from Adam to Moses. And so these offspring of Adam are living incredibly, remarkably long lives, hundreds and hundreds of years. I mean, some of them are right on the brink of an entire millennium, which is unfathomable.

It's unfathomable. And when you meet someone who's lived on this earth 80 years, 90 years, 100 years, and you begin to talk to them about what things were like in their childhood, whatever of it they can still remember, it's amazing what takes place in a century. I mean, it is astounding.

And these patriarchs lived not just one lifetime, but multiple lifetimes. I mean, our average life expectancy right now is mid-70s. Methuselah's like 13 lifetimes or something like that.

It's just, it's staggering. And yet, every single one of these patriarchs died. Every single one of them died.

There's something about the human heart that does not like to contemplate death. There's something good for us about contemplating death. It was Solomon who would say in Ecclesiastes, it's better to enter into a house of mourning than a house of parting because it's the end of every man.

And he takes it to heart. And to be reminded of the consequences of sin, to be reminded that our life is passing. Charles Spurgeon, in preaching on the matter of death, said, there may be some of you who stand today like a man upon the shore when the tide is swelling towards his feet.

There came one wave and it took away the grandmother. Another came and a mother was swept away. Another came and the wife was taken.

And now it dashes at your feet. How long shall it be ere it breaks over you and you too be carried away by the yawning wave into the bosom of the deep death. Children, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, prepare to meet your God.

There was a sense of urgency there in his proclamation. Just reading this week of Puritan minister Richard Greenham, who was ministering in England and he was ministering at a time that the plague would come and it would just wipe people out. It was in the 1500s and there were many people who had died of the plague that he was in association with.

And so he would often, it was said, preach to his congregation about the brevity of life. Preach often about the reality that death was coming. Causes people to be sober-minded, not because he was dark and morbid, but because he wanted to prepare them for that day and he wanted them to have the comfort and assurance of finding new life in Christ.

See, all of this death comes through the first Adam and it points toward our need to find ourselves in the second Adam. Horatius Bonar, one of Scotland's great ministers and a father of the Scottish Free Church, wrote about this connection. He said, the first Adam dies and we die in him, but the second Adam dies and we live in him.

The first Adam's grave proclaims only death. The second Adam's grave announces life. I am the resurrection and the life.

We look into the grave of the one and we see only darkness, corruption, and death. We look into the grave of the other and we find there only light and incorruption and life. I love this last part.

We look into the grave of the one and find he is still there, his dust still mingling with the fellow dust about it. Then we look into the grave of the other and find he is not there. He is risen.

Risen as our forerunner into the heavenly paradise, the home of the risen and redeemed. You understand what he's saying there? Adam's body decayed somewhere. It mixed in with all the other dust of the earth.

Guess what? It's still here somewhere. And you realize on the face of the planet every day, give or take, there's about 150,000 people that depart from this life. 150,000 goodbyes.

150,000 bodies that need to be buried in the ground that are going to go back to dust. I mean, it's sheer staggering to think about. And yet you come out of the world and into the church and the message is not avoid death at all costs or death is the worst thing that could happen to you or death is the end or you need to be afraid of death.

You come into the church and hear the gospel of Jesus Christ and you're united to him and the message changes to what? I like how one author summarized Paul's words in Philippians 1 when he said, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. It's I'm better off dead than alive. And you're saying that is the message of the Christian gospel.

You don't have to fear death. That you're to read Genesis 5 and you're to recognize that the bell is tolling here. Why did the bell toll? The bell would toll at a funeral to announce to the living that someone has departed.

Death is at the doorstep. Death is coming. That's why the bell would toll.

And so Genesis 5 is like the bell tolling. It's reminding us of death. And yet death for the believer is not something that we fear for in the second Adam.

I love how the church takes that message and just flips it on its head. You know, I hope that in evangelism, that's a starting point for you often. When you talk to someone, you just ask them point blank.

I mean, usually they're unnerved. Hey, are you ready to die? I want to talk to you about something. It's probably my most common lead-in verse in sharing the gospel with someone.

It is appointed to man once to die. And then comes judgment. Are you ready to die? I love the story of Dwight Moody on his deathbed.

James Boyce records it. Said Moody had been declining for some time and his family had taken turns being with him. On the morning of his death, his son, who was standing by the bedside, heard him exclaim, earth is receding, heaven is opening, God is calling.

And like a good son, his son said, you're dreaming father. Moody answered, no, well, this is no dream. I have been within the gates.

I've seen the children's faces. And for a while, it seemed Moody were reviving, but he began to slip away again. And he said, is this death? This is not bad.

There is no valley. This is bliss. This is glorious.

By this time, his daughter was present and she began to pray for his recovery. And he said, no, no, Emma, don't pray for that. God is calling.

This is my coronation day. I have been looking forward to it. Shortly after this, Moody was received into heaven.

At the funeral, the family and friends joined in a joyful service. They spoke, they sang hymns, they heard the words proclaimed, where, oh death, is your victory? Where, oh death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God, he gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Sin and death is unavoidable.

It is the unavoidable reality of being in the first Adam. And yet the second Adam came so you don't have to fear death. That is a primary takeaway from Genesis chapter 5. Next week, Lord willing, we're going to look at Enoch.

Enoch is like the one exception along with Elijah, who lived under the first Adam and somehow dodged and avoided death altogether. He was simply taken up. So we're going to look at Enoch.

We're going to look at Noah. Those of you that were hoping to get to the Nephilim this Sunday, you're going to have to wait a couple more weeks, but we will get there. And I hope that this is something that you're able to take with you.

Even just the tremendous encouragement that the more and more we talk as believers about not fearing death and encouraging one another to not fear death, the more we actually don't. This is good for us to talk and think in these ways. Let's pray.

I thank you so much, Lord, that it is not death to die. Paul makes that very clear in 1 Thessalonians, that we do grieve when we lose loved ones, and yet we grieve simply because we miss out on their fellowship. We miss out on the enjoyment of knowing them.

There's a missing ache in our hearts when they're gone, and yet we don't grieve for them because we know that for those who are in Christ, no one who's died would ever want to come back here because they've now departed and they're with the Lord. I thank you so much, Jesus, for coming and rising again, for allowing us to partake in your resurrection. I pray, Lord, that if there's any right now who are fearing death, that are not confident they're in Christ, are not confident of the promise of resurrection life, or that that would all change for them today, and that they would find the comfort of knowing that death is not something that we're to fear if we're in you.

Thank you, Lord, so much for your grace to us. We love you. We praise you.

Amen.

Well, thank you so much, musicians, for leading us in praise today. And we just considered how the body has many members. They each play a role.

Joshua, Pastor Joshua, had let me know that we've missed a couple of baby announcements. So, brother, thank you for playing the baby announcement, gifting role in the body. You know, what's so ironic is we had trivia night, Friday night, and I'd been tasked with coming up with some certain trivia questions, and I thought, boy, it'd be interesting to tally up all the babies that have been born at Cornerstone over the years, and we came up with 46.

So I was thinking about 46 baby names, including these recent ones, and then didn't even dawn on me this morning that we've not announced those. So on official announcements, Elena Joy Angelo was born 8-6 at 6.30 in the morning, and Desmond Ryan Clark on the second. And so I just wanna be rejoicing in God's gift to both of those families, and, man, children are truly, surely a blessing from the Lord.

I want you to take your Bibles this morning and turn with me to Genesis chapter five. Genesis chapter five. If you've ever gone on a cruise before, perhaps, you've taken an excursion.

Okay, I don't know that I'm a cruise guy. I tend to get motion sick pretty easy, so I've never been on a cruise, but as I understand it, you arrive at your destination, and then you can sign up for excursions. So an excursion might be like parasailing or a snorkeling adventure or a jungle zipline, and they're very exotic.

And so this morning, we're coming to Genesis chapter five, and I wanna introduce this chapter to you as a genealogical excursus, okay? An excursus, that sounds very exotic. It sounds like an excursion. An excursus, excuse me, is where you diverge a bit from the main point to focus on something that's related, but it's not exactly the main point.

Genesis five is a very important chapter, and we're gonna look at it this week and, Lord willing, next week as well. When we do that next week, we will dive into a lot of the theological significance of this chapter and glean lessons and implications. But this chapter is actually very debated, would be a good word for it.

There's a bit of an inquest to change what I believe is the simple meaning of the text. And so this morning, I wanted to take an excursus where we really lay out the principles for the study of Scripture and help understand how do we even approach interpreting a text like Genesis five. So for the kids in the room, today we're gonna talk about genealogy.

There's a couple kinds of genes, okay? There's genes that you wear, like the pants that you put on, and that's one kind of genes. There's another kind of genes, and those relate to your family history, okay? So what color of hair you have, what color your skin is, how tall you're gonna be, really part of your personality, it's your genetics, it's your genes, it's what you get from your mom and dad, comes down through family lines. The Bible talks a lot about families, family tree, family heritage, ancestry, bloodlines.

Genetics in this case would be seen from that word genealogy. It's really the study of a generation of how families grow and how families expand. And so for most of us, we come to the genealogies in Scripture and what happens? I mean, if we're honest, okay? How many of you have ever been in your Bible reading plan and contemplated maybe, just maybe, skipping over or skim reading the genealogies, right? Okay, we've all done it.

Thank you for the few honest folks in the room. Come to a genealogy, and frankly, you just kind of feel like skipping over it. And if you've ever felt that way, you're certainly not alone.

And yet we have to recognize that the Bible does say, all Scripture is inspired by God. And that would mean, yes, even the genealogies have been breathed out by God and wait a minute, they're profitable. Are you serious? Genealogies are profitable, okay? So two weeks guys on Genesis five on a genealogy here, because genealogies, even genealogies are spiritually profitable.

So this morning we're gonna do an exotic excursus to look at a genealogy in Scripture. I think the reason why we struggle with genealogies is because the practical benefit of them is a little harder to see. I don't know that I can think of someone who said to me, and you know what, this morning, I was in a genealogy for my quiet time.

And I just felt so close to Jesus. And I just got so many things that I've been carrying with me this week from reading that genealogy. There's a purpose, but it's a little bit less obvious perhaps in terms of the practical benefit than other passages of Scripture.

Sometimes they can even get ignored. One commentator writes, when Christians read the book of Genesis, they tend to focus on the narratives, that would be the stories. But skip over the genealogies.

After all, who wants to read a boring long list of baguettes? We much prefer to read the majestic opening of the creation account in Genesis 1, and the interesting, often tension-filled stories of the Garden of Eden, of Cain and Abel, and Noah and the flood, and the Tower of Babel. Then we move on to the longer, more complicated narratives of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob, Leah, and Rachel, and Joseph and his brothers, who are the ancestors of the 12 tribes of Israel. He goes on and says, if we stop to think about the genealogies in Genesis or elsewhere, we wonder what purpose they serve.

What is the purpose that they serve? And so this morning, we want to look at this genealogy. And this genealogy is greatly debated because it begins to address questions like how old is humanity? How long have we been here? Who's the authority to speak to such a matter? So this morning, I want to read this passage. And then I want you to get your thinking cap on, be ready to turn a few pages, and we're going to establish really why God put Genesis 5 in your Bible.

The text begins in verse 1. This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God, male and female, he created them. He blessed them and named them man when they were created.

When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered his son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth. In the days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years, and he had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.

When Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh. Seth lived after he fathered Enosh, 807 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died.

When Enosh had lived 90 years, he fathered Kenan. Enosh lived after he fathered Kenan, 815 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Enosh were 905 years, and he died.

When Kenan had lived 70 years, he fathered Mahalel. I always mess that one up. I've been practicing it all week.

Mahalel. Kenan lived after he fathered Mahalel, 840 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Kenan were 910 years, and he died.

When Mahalel had lived 65 years, he fathered Jared. Mahalel lived after he fathered Jared, 830 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Mahalel were 895 years, and he died.

Glad we're through that one. When Jared had lived 162 years, he fathered Enoch. Jared lived after he fathered Enoch, 800 years, and had other sons and daughters.

Thus, all the days of Jared were 962 years, and he died. When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah, 300 years, and had other sons and daughters.

Thus, all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him. When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he fathered Lamech.

Methuselah lived after he fathered Lamech, 782 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Methuselah were 969 years, and he died. When Lamech had lived 182 years, he fathered a son, and called his name Noah, saying, out of the ground the Lord has cursed.

This one shall bring us relief from our work, and from the painful toil of our hands. Lamech lived after he fathered Noah, 595 years, and had other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Lamech were 777 years, and he died.

After Noah was 500 years old, Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth. This reads the genealogy from Adam to Noah. It's a divine record.

It is inspired by God. It is all scripture. It's been breathed out by God.

And as we're gonna see, Lord willing, next week, there's some tremendous themes here. The echo of death is reigning through this entire genealogy. We're gonna see the remarkable gem of Enoch, and what his life looked like, how it stood like this bright, dazzling diamond in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.

We're gonna see the expectation of Noah, and the redemption that God would bring through Noah's life. And so, there's some wonderful themes that we're gonna see as we go through that. But as we come to this text, there's a question as to how are we to understand Genesis 5? There are those that would say that when you read this with modern, post-enlightenment goggles, you begin to get the wrong impression.

That this was not intended for us to understand as an actual genealogical history, but rather that it's either selective, meaning there's many generations that have been skipped over, and this is just kind of a smattering of a few key individuals, or else this is really just to be taken symbolically. It's to be understood really as something that is not designed to be taken literally, but rather symbolically. There's kind of a deeper lesson and a deeper meaning.

And so, what I wanna do with you this morning is begin to walk through this text and understand what I believe is driving the conclusion to see this as symbolic rather than literal, and also to help you understand not only what you believe, but why you believe it. And so, this morning's message would be a success if you leave not thinking merely, I think that this genealogy was recorded literally because my pastor said it, but rather because after studying the scripture and seeing it in its plain sense, that's your own conclusion. And so, we're gonna begin where we always do.

Verse one, this is the book of the generations of Adam. So, let's just start here and let's look at the text. And here's what lens I want you to be thinking of.

I want you to be thinking of kind of the prima facie, okay? Prima facie means on the face of, at first glance. What I mean is this, oftentimes, and we looked at this in Genesis one and two, someone with a PhD and many, many, many years of studying the Bible comes and on their YouTube channel says, you can't really trust what your eyes are telling you with the basic reliability of scripture. There's all this other information that you're not privy to outside of the Bible that really obscures the plain sense.

What we're arguing for here is that God designed revelation not to conceal, but to reveal. He designed it to be understood. His expectation is that the common folks of the earth, as long as they had the scripture in their own language, as long as they had access, they'd be able to read it, comprehend it, and benefit from it, okay? So never be intimidated by those fancy arguments.

Rather, at first sight, prima facie, what does the text itself yield? Genesis 5.1, this is the book of the generations of Adam. Perhaps your translation says this is the account. Generations means the history of the family, okay? This is the lineage of Adam, very simply.

His descendants. I could say it's the order of the births. It's the origin of the family.

That's the word here for generation. So on the face of it, why is this in the Bible? Well, it is, there's no tricks here. It is to explain to us the lineage of Adam.

Not only that, but you read that God wants to preserve this record and it's in a book. This is the book of the generations of Adam. And this is interesting because generations is gonna come up over and over and over in Genesis.

Now, we've already mentioned that briefly before, but this entire book is very much about generations. So we're gonna see him in the next coming weeks. We're gonna see him throughout the various chapters as we see generations and generations.

But it's unique here to be called the book or literally the scroll of the generations. And so what's depicted there is that this is a written record, a written history. We even use that expression in our day when we're talking about something that is concrete.

It's not just oral tradition, but we say, go to the record books. You could go research that in the record books. The Bible speaks of God having record books, a record book of all the deeds that you've committed in the body in this life.

He speaks of another record book, the Lamb's book of life where names are recorded. So the idea here is that this was a scroll written down. It's possible that this was written by Noah or patriarchs before him and preserved in the flood, but this is some kind of a written record of the family line, the generations of Adam.

It's an actual lineage. I was thinking about that. You certainly would have had, with how long these people lived, plenty of time to write down your lineage.

I tend to lose interest in that project, so I've tried to research my family history. And as soon as I hit a minor roadblock, I'm out. It's just too much concentration.

But even for a major procrastinator, I mean, imagine if you're living on the earth for 900 years, like, I'm gonna write my lineage in 500 years, and you'd be able to do that. You could procrastinate that long. So somehow, some way, there was a scroll written of the lineage.

Whether God gave that to Moses and he just wrote it down inspired by the spirit, or the God through means preserved the written record, this is the record, the bloodlines, the genealogy after Adam. So these are actual people. It's a family tree.

And of course, God is very concerned, as we will read throughout Genesis and even the rest of the Old Testament on things like bloodlines, that the ancient people were because there'd be a right family heritage and property and succession and perhaps a power over a region or an area. And so bloodlines are very important in the ancient times. But in the Bible, they're important because ultimately they point to what? To a Messiah.

There's a Christotelic ending here. And in fact, if you wanna jot a cross-reference, if you look up in Matthew's gospel, which we'll look there later, Matthew chapter one, verse one, begins with this same language. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

So there's only two places in scripture that you're gonna read, the book of the generations, the book of the genealogies. It's right here in Genesis chapter five, regarding the first Adam. And it's gonna appear again in Matthew chapter one, speaking of the second Adam.

So here's the family history. We're not relying just upon memory. And so just immediately, prima facie, what does this begin to tell you? This begins to tell you the very purpose of why this was written.

It was written to record and convey, to memorialize for all time, the family record concerning Adam. This is an official record keeping. That is what the text claims.

Okay? And so we begin to look at this and we understand that these are the very accounts that God has given for us. And when we come to it, it's a little challenging because certainly we can't be definitive about all of the populations from this line. We know that Adam, back in chapter four, was said to have many sons and many daughters.

Estimates at even a very conservative, a very conservative growth rate would indicate that Adam most likely lived to see millions of descendants. I mean, well, that sounds bogus. I mean, do you realize how old our nation is? We have 300 million people living right now in the United States.

Certainly we've had people immigrate, but a lot of that's been population growth through reproduction. Adam lived to be 930 years old. So even at a very moderate growth rate, he likely saw certainly even in the short millions, if not tens of millions of people.

And so this is not recording all of Adam's descendants. It's not designed to do that. Rather, it's one particular line and it is the line of Seth.

And this is going to be then in contrast to the line of Cain. And so Cain is really representative of all the reprobate, all the unbelieving on the earth. Seth is going to be the faithful line, the remnant, if you will, the believing line.

What about all of Adam and Eve's other children? Well, we know by Genesis 6, that essentially everyone on the face of the earth is wicked. So as you conceive of what's happening in Genesis chapter 5, you need to view Seth's line as the vast minority on earth. Okay, this is the minority.

This is the believing line. The earth is teeming with populations. One line is given.

Why this one line? Well, ultimately this is going to be the line that goes to Noah. That line is going to then go from Noah to Abraham and then from Abraham, what, to David, and then from David to Jesus. Right here you have the faithful line being preserved, okay? Faithful line being preserved.

And so certainly we don't know the exact populations because it's impossible to know the exact mix of a male to female, how many children Adam and Eve had. We don't know the death rate. We don't know what kind of infant mortality they had.

We don't know what age they began reproducing. We don't know how close children were born together. We don't know what kind of wars and famines and disease and how that modeling would impact the population growth.

But we do recognize here that one line is being highlighted specifically for our instruction. And this is because it has messianic implications. So what have we gleaned so far from these opening verses? On the face of it, prima facie and our approach, plain sense meaning.

We see this is a formal record of Adam's lineage to Noah. It's designed as a link to connect Adam to the flood. And it is not a complete record of Adam's descendants.

This is rather tracing one line down the family tree. And this genealogy then, if you are interested in such things, is known as a linear or a vertical genealogy. And that's because its focus is getting from A to Z, from one person to another person.

That is the point here. And so all of this so far is relatively undisputed. And yet there are those who then would come and say, the point is getting from Adam to Noah and everything that's in the middle really doesn't matter that much.

The point is just that we need to get from Adam to Noah. That is what is being established. Everything else relating to chronology, which chronology would be the sequence or the timing by which things take place, that's irrelevant.

It's not about chronology. One person says this, the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 present an unbroken line of individuals from Adam to Abraham with numerical data that allows the construction of an approximate chronology for that period. So what are we asserting? Well, the fact that there's all these numbers in here mean that we can construct some type of at least an approximate chronology.

Now this author goes on to state the problem with that. The resulting chronology, however, is greatly at odds with that which widely accepted geological, archeological and non-biblical historical records affirm. See what happens? If we begin to take this and say that these numbers essentially on the face of them mean what they say, that that would lead us to construct a chronology and the conclusion of that chronology is greatly at odds with that which widely accepted geological, archeological and non-biblical historical records affirm.

He goes on to say the philosophical problem that this presents the biblical scholar who wishes to respect the truthfulness of scripture is significant. He goes on and says a seeming majority, a seeming majority, not of unbelievers, listen to this, a seeming majority of evangelical scholars has elected to reevaluate the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies in order to harmonize them with these other sources. I was shocked.

I mean, we're talking about generally conservative theologians, we're talking about reformed theologians that would come to Genesis 5 and walk away with a non-chronological interpretation. And what I wanna demonstrate for you is that whatever is driving that conclusion is certainly not from the text itself because the text is very plainly intended to be a chronology. And so the question really primarily, because I don't think that the symbolic view is worth much.

I mean, we'll briefly mention it, but essentially here's what the view is. If you were to take this as being non-chronological, you'd come to the text and you would say, here's the problem. There's 10 generations lined out, 10 is an even number.

We're gonna see 10 in the next generation. We're gonna see 10 in Ruth's line. So seems like what's happening here is the desire for symmetry.

Therefore, there's some missing names along the way. And so what's here is true in so far as it goes, but there's a bunch of gaps. There's a bunch of names missing.

So it's actually not really a chronology. It's just listing out various names. So that's the argument.

Now, this is not ridiculous on the face of it because the Bible does at times leave names out of genealogies. And a lot of times what happens is, and I see this a lot in like maybe a YouTube clip, we're kind of picking on YouTube right now, but someone will make a statement, kind of assert it, come to their conclusion and they don't demonstrate it. So here's what you'll hear.

The Bible leaves names out of genealogies in other places. And so we're just gonna assume that the Bible's leaving names out of genealogies here. And what I wanna demonstrate for you is I think that's invalid, okay? So a couple of places that we would see this would be in Matthew chapter one.

That'd be kind of the most, one of the most notable. So turn with me to Matthew chapter one. And what we're gonna try to do is just examine these claims and see if it's a valid claim to state that there are gaps in the Genesis account.

Matthew chapter one, verse one, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. So here we have, again, the same concept, the same moniker over it. So, right? First kind of method of Bible interpretation is comparing scripture to scripture.

And so you're immediately saying, okay, I see some key words here. We have the book of the genealogy in Genesis five, book of genealogy in Matthew one, they match. Begin to go down and work your way through this genealogy.

What happens is you come to Matthew chapter one, verse eight and you read, and Asaph, the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat, the father of Joram, and Joram, the father of Uzziah. It's okay, what's wrong with that? Well, if you haven't memorized the genealogies in first Chronicles 22 through 25, you might have missed that there are three names missing there. So we're not gonna turn that once you jot down, it's a long section.

I'm gonna demonstrate for you in a moment, but there's three other names in the genealogy in first Chronicles 22 through 25. So Matthew cuts them out. He goes straight from Jehoram to Uzziah and he cuts out Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah.

He cuts three names out of the list. Then he does it again. Verse 11, when you read, and Josiah, the father of Jeconiah and his brothers at the time of the deportation to Babylon, Matthew again cuts out three names.

If you're gonna jot down the cross-reference there, second Chronicles 36, one through nine, we find out that in fact, Josiah was the father of Jehoahaz, Jehoahaz, the father of Jehoiakim, and then Jehoiakim, the father of Jeconiah. So Matthew pulls three names out of the genealogy and look, there's no footnote. He doesn't even say he's doing it.

He just pulls the names right out. So there is then a biblical example of a genealogy that is missing some names and we're not actually told about it. There's no footnote made.

In fact, Matthew has a purpose here. He has 14 generations, 14 generations, 14 generations. He pulls it out, he doesn't footnote it.

I'm gonna show you one other place that this occurs and then we're gonna circle back. So turn with me to first Chronicles, first and second Kings, first and second Chronicles. It's in the Old Testament, first Chronicles chapter six, and then you can put your finger in Ezra seven.

So we're gonna test your books of the Bible knowledge and your finger dexterity. Okay, so you got first Chronicles six and Ezra chapter seven. We'll actually start in Ezra chapter seven, beginning in verse one.

And after this, in the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, Ezra the son of Saria, son of Azariah, son of Hilkiah, son of Shalem, son of Zadok, son of Ahitab, son of Amoriah, son of Azariah, son of Marath, son of Zarahiah, son of Uzzi, son of Buki, son of Abishu, son of Phinehas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron, the chief priest. This Ezra went up from Babylonia. Okay, so Ezra here is describing himself in the third person.

He's talking about his lineage. Now we turn back to first Chronicles chapter six, and we're seeing the same family line. And yet this one occurs in more detail and there's an inconsistency.

Look at verse eight of first Chronicles chapter six. Ahitab fathered Zadok, Zadok fathered Ahimaaz. Sorry, I'm butchering these.

I honestly, I did practice them and it's just, it's a struggle. Ahimaaz fathered Azariah, Azariah fathered Johanan, and Johanan fathered Azariah. It was he who served as priest in the house that Solomon built in Jerusalem.

Azariah fathered Amoriah, Amoriah fathered Ahitab, and Ahitab fathered Zadok. Now, what is a little bit additionally confusing is Azariah was a popular name in that family, so they keep adding it in. But I want you to notice here that Ezra is pulling out six generations, six names of the family members are missing.

In Ezra chapter seven, he just says, son of Shalom, son of Zadok. But when you look at those relationships in verses eight through 12, you see that there's actually six people that are missing, that Ezra just yanks right out and he says nothing about it. So is it true? Could we make the claim that genealogy sometimes contain gaps in the Bible? Absolutely.

Are they footnoted? They're not. Okay, so we've established that. But now here's what I want you to see, couple of things as we observe these as Bible students.

What is the point that is being made in 1 Chronicles six? To show the exact lineage of parent child, that's the point. You read that whole section, that's what's happening contextually. It's easy to understand.

When you come to Ezra chapter seven, what is the point? I believe it's in verse five, where Ezra says ultimately that he's a descendant of Aaron, the chief priest. Ezra's point in Ezra chapter seven is not to document the father son relationships in detail. His point is, guess what? I belong in the Aaronic line and I'm gonna save some space.

So I'm gonna skip a few generations. What is Matthew's point? Well, listen, Matthew one, one. This is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ.

What the son of David, the son of Abraham. What's Matthew's point? Matthew's point is not to document all of the father son relationships. His point is to document that Jesus is the son of David and the son of Abraham.

And interestingly enough, that language even is very clear, that idea of sonship. That's exactly what's taking place in Matthew's gospel. He keeps talking about so-and-so is the father of so-and-so, the father of so-and-so.

And so in the scriptures, if you were a grandson or great-grandson or great-great-grandson, you could be called the son of. You could be called the son of. And so Jesus rightly then is called the son of David and son of Abraham.

Did Jesus have two dads and one was named Abraham and one was named David? Absolutely not. He was descended in that line and he was known as the son of David and the son of Abraham. So what we see so far, just to pause and get our bearings, what we see is that there are genealogies in scripture that pull names out without telling you they're doing it, when they have the agenda of really just showing the connection between A to Z. What's Ezra's main point? I'm connected in the Aaronic line.

I'm connected to Aaron. I'm not giving you all the fathers and sons. What's Matthew's point in his genealogy? Jesus is the King of the Jews.

He's the rightful descendant of Abraham, the rightful descendant of David. I'm not really interested right now in all the details of the father-son relationships we're getting to the point. So now we come to Genesis chapter five, turn back to Genesis chapter five.

And the point is made that Moses intention here is not to give us details about father-son relationships, rather Moses point is simply to say Adam to Noah, there's a direct link, there's a direct line. So that is certainly a possible Bible position, but let's look at the details of the text. Verse three, when Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth.

Okay, well, that's pretty clear there. The father-son connection. In fact, the verb that's being used there is in the hip pile form, which probably makes no sense to you.

It barely makes sense to me. But every time that verb for fathered is used in the hip pile, it always relates to an actual father to an actual son. The text is explicit.

And we come to Seth, look at the language it appears again in verse six, when Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh. Do you see how it sounds different than merely saying the son of? It doesn't say Enosh was the son of Seth and maybe there's a bunch of generations in between. Rather, it's very clear the fathering relationship.

Furthermore, this is absolutely concrete in the case of Lamech. Not only does Lamech in verse 28 father a son, in verse 29, he called his name Noah. Now you might really love your parents.

Generally, you don't let grandma and grandpa name the baby. Lamech is naming his own son. It was his right.

Lamech is the one naming Noah. So ironclad in the case of Adam naming and fathering Seth, we see that Adam named Seth back up in verse 25. It was Adam and Eve who gave birth to Seth and named him.

We see Lamech naming Noah in verse 28. And then in verse 32, when we read that Noah fathered Shem, Ham and Japheth, we're gonna read later that those were in fact, Noah's biological descendants. So right here in the record, you have example after example, after example, concrete of fathers bringing sons into the world.

And naming them. Not only that, but what is the cumulative effect of reading all of these numbers? Cumulative effect is that this is actually a high priority for Moses. He's intending to convey and communicate something by the numbers.

They're not merely an accident and they're not inconsequential. In fact, you'll find that there's a formula, really like a mathematical formula that goes all the way through this genealogy. It goes like this.

A lived for X years and then fathered B. A lived Y years after he'd fathered B. A's whole life lasted X plus Y years. Say, well, of course, I mean, that's just kind of how genealogies work. That sounds normal.

It's not how genealogies usually work. Turn over to Genesis 36. And I wanna show you, this certainly Genesis five doesn't look like Matthew's genealogy.

It doesn't look like what we read in first Chronicles. I wanna show you, it doesn't even match later genealogies here in the book of Genesis. Genesis chapter 36, we're reading here about Esau's descendants.

And this is kind of more the type of genealogy that we're used to finding in the Bible. These are the generations of Esau, that is Edom. This is that generations, genealogies.

This is Esau's line. This is recorded by the spirit. It's intended for our benefit.

How does it read? Verse two, Esau took his wives from the Canaanites, aided the daughter of Elon the Hittite, Oholibama. I thought that would be a cool name to have. Oholibama, the daughter of Anna, the daughter of Zibion the Hivite, and Basemath, Ishmael's daughter, the sister of Nebaoth.

And Adah bore to Esau Eliphaz, Basemath bore Ruel, and Oholibama bore Jeush, Jelum, and Korah. These are the sons of Esau who were born to him in the land of Canaan. Then Esau took his wives, his sons, his daughters, and all the members of his household, his livestock, all his beasts, and all his property that he had acquired in the land of Canaan.

He went into a land away from his brother Jacob for their possessions were too great for them to dwell together. The land of their sojournings could not support them because of their livestock. So Esau settled in the hill country of Seir.

Now, I'm not gonna keep reading this entire one. We'll get there at some point. But did you notice how different that was? Remarkably different from what we read in Genesis chapter five.

I mean, this is concerned with kind of how the family's spreading out, the locations that they're ending up in. I'm not thinking of it this way. Like if you were to do Christmas letter stereotypes, yeah, that'd be fun.

Right, there's the Christmas letter that you get, and it's written in, it's just kind of, it's a flowing thought. It's been a great year. Bob retired.

We welcomed two new grandkids. We went to these three different places. I mean, I'm not reading that and thinking, okay, I just got the exact chronology.

I know there's other Christmas letters we get. So in January, we did this. And then in February, we did this.

And then in March, we did this. And I'm, okay, that's a chronology. It's ordered, it's sequential, there's dates, it's specific.

And I would dare say these are obvious differences. So when you come to Genesis chapter five, and you read things like verse three, when Adam had lived 130 years, a number and a measurement. Then he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth.

And the days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years. And he had other sons and daughters. That's all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.

I don't know how you could possibly understand that, apart from understanding it to convey chronology. I was astounded reading. I was astounded reading how many conservative theologians would even tip their hand to say, well, there are numbers here, but God didn't design for these to be added up and viewed sequentially.

I'd say, what do you think we're supposed to do with them? I mean, you have more numbers than you do names. It's like plainly obvious, so at least have an explanation. So some would say, well, the numbers are symbolic.

That one is quite interesting. There are people who take this, that the numbers are symbolic. You know what I was unable to find was anyone who could tell you what the symbols meant.

A few will take a stab, 777 years. There's some explanations on him. But other than that, I mean, what does it mean that Adam lived 930 years? If it's a symbol, then it must mean something.

Like we need to be able to take the symbol and then say, here's what the symbol means. It's symbolic of this reality. So Genesis chapter five, as I would posit, it is designed by God to convey to us the family line of Adam to Noah.

There's incredible theological lessons that we're gonna look at and explore next week, but it is in fact also a chronology. So yes, I believe it is Christotelic. It is showing the line that the Messiah will come from.

That is an ultimate purpose, and yet it did not need to be chronological, and yet it is. One more thing, and I think that this is fascinating when it comes to the discussions on chronology. Let's just say, let's just say that there were generations missing.

Two problems with that. Number one, even those that would assume generations are missing have a hard time closing the gap from what you see here, which is less than 2,000 years, to reconciling that with the idea that people have been on the planet for millions of years. And you understand how many gaps we would need in the genealogies? Matthew one, we're talking about Matthew dropped three here, Matthew dropped three here, Ezra dropped six over here.

I mean, we're talking about hundreds of generations that would be missing if that were the case. And then not only that, but I believe prima facie, on the face of it, the way you read it mathematically, it wouldn't matter anyway, it's impossible. Look again, verse three, when Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image and named him Seth.

Let's say that then there's a bunch of generations that are missing, that are not recorded here. Well, the days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years. Thus all the days Adam lived were 930 and he died.

Verse six, when Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered an Osh. Seth lived after he fathered an Osh 807 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Seth were 912 years and he died.

Do you understand the chain link there? Even if you were to try to insert gaps of missing generations, the way that the math is constructed is unbroken. It's unbreakable because you have the exact date of how old Adam was when he gave birth to his son, how long he lived after that son, how old that son was when he had his son, how long he lived after that, the way it's constructed requires chronology. Now it's true that there's probably some rounding that goes on there.

I doubt that Adam lived 130 years to the day and then he died on his birthday. So certainly these are rounded up and down. I mean, I don't know the exact details, but it gives us at least the sense of an approximate chronology, an approximate chronology.

So what I wanna leave us for this morning. Well, whenever I dive into a text of scripture like this, I gotta tell you these studies always absolutely thrill my heart. And the reason is because I like you can get unnerved sometimes when I hear arguments against the clarity of scripture, or I kind of start to think that there's some things that maybe I don't know that I need to know or some things that I'm missing.

My soul is so refreshed to go back to the basics or myself, what do I know to be true? Well, I know that all scripture has been breathed out by God and that it's profitable for instruction, for a proof and for training in righteousness. And then I believe in the perspective of scripture that God speaks in such ways to be understood. He designed it not to conceal, but to reveal.

And then when I come back and I just humbly sit before the text, sometimes it doesn't come right away. It takes some elbow grease, if you will, you gotta kind of roll up your sleeves and get after it. But then when that clarity comes, you know what it does? It just produces a conviction.

It produces a confidence. We're not just making this up saying, you know what, the earth is young and I read a magazine that promoted that idea and I kind of latched onto it. And that's what I've always believed and that's what I articulate.

I know I believe it because it's exactly the way God recorded it here for me. And I believe that's actually what he intended me to take away from it. I hope that you find great relief and encouragement from coming back to the simple study of scripture and letting the text speak for itself.

So I hope that excursus was beneficial. I think there's probably some things that I left out. I had about 50 pages of notes coming into this, which is about 40 pages too many.

So I was trying to cut a bunch of things out and cut it down. But next week, we're gonna come back and we're gonna explore, assuming now that this is a chronology, the rich theological realities that God intended to convey for us through, of all things, a genealogy. Will you pray with me? Father, I thank you for the marvelous distinctions that we get in your word.

And I'm such a boring guy. If I were to write a Bible, it would be nowhere near as fascinating and as glorious that you chose to convey truth to us, not merely in a spiritual encyclopedia, but rather you taught us in a variety of ways. As a writer of Hebrews would say, in many portions and in many ways.

And so Lord, I thank you for even this record that we have. I thank you for your desire to reveal to us where we began. And I would say, even to some degree, how long ago you created Adam.

Lord, what a gift this is to us. I pray that you'd thrill our hearts, that you'd refresh us in our study of the scriptures this week with these realities in mind. Lord, thank you for the confidence that we can have in your trustworthiness.

We love you and praise you in Jesus' name, amen.

You may be seated. Thank you musicians. I was just thinking this morning.

I'm so thankful For this body of believers. I love this church My family loves this church The leaders of this church love the congregation. I know how much love takes place between One another during the week and it is just a joy to be among God's people.

In fact, the early church had a reputation For loving one another and the world thought it was weird Because of the kind of love and care that they had for one another and it's appropriate It's fitting on the body of Christ that we would be known in that way Let me pray for us and then we'll give our attention to the scriptures Holy Spirit. We pray that you would come and Build your church as you have for centuries Or we're doing the same thing that the Apostles did Certainly it looks different. We're on a different side of the world All different kinds of technology and many things that have changed and yet we devote ourselves To the ministry of the word To singing the word to prayer to giving to fellowship by those simple means You do wonderful things.

That's how you accomplish your work among your people. So we pray that you would do that now for Jesus sake Then Invite you to take your Bibles this morning and open them to Genesis chapter 4. We are in Genesis again today We're gonna finish chapter 4 Lord willing and I entitled this morning's message humanity needs more than itself Okay, humanity needs more than itself And as we get into verse 17 and start to work our way down through the rest of the chapter We're kind of gonna expand our focus so we've really been looking at the first family and In chapter 4 the emphasis has been on Cain the person Now today we begin to expand beyond Cain as an individual to really look at what came after Cain and as people begin to multiply on the face of the earth rapidly as you can imagine Things do not get better. Actually, they go the other direction they go from bad to worse And what we're gonna see this morning is that the proliferation of humanity no matter how gifted No matter how committed even to the betterment of the human race Will not find improvement apart from God's saving intervention and it's interesting because in our culture today in the United States, we're watching the increasing Secularization of the culture that is to say it is well documented even in and in particular in the younger generation That they're really in the history of our country There have not been the percentages of people who would say I do not identify with any type of religion whatsoever We call them the nuns and oh and II and they're on the rise And as you're hearing Sentiments expressed regarding religious views sometimes you'll hear a thought that is is somewhat well documented and repeated and it goes kind of along these lines that that religion in general and perhaps Christianity in particular Doesn't help society rather It harms Society back to was the late Christopher Hitchens author and journalist who expressed a view that that I would Say is extreme and yet it's certainly not unheard of and he said this quote organized religion is the main source of hatred in the world Organized religion is the main source of hatred in the world He goes on to say violent irrational intolerant Allied to racism tribalism and bigotry invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry contemptuous of women and coercive toward children that's a world view their statement that the the greatest blight on the face of humanity is religion itself And there's lots of Of identification of man's problem and man's need and corresponding solutions And I would say that the best humanism can offer is always inadequate unrealistic Sometimes downright silly There's a think-tank in New York City that is well funded by endowments I've got a number of PhDs on that board and they are writing about the various problems facing New York City and so they spend all of their time putting their heads together as PhDs to come up with solutions to solve the problems that the city faces They're inadequate.

They're unrealistic and frankly silly. Here's some of their amazing ideas Let's make crime less appealing Okay scientific supports for law enforcement Tackling the causes and consequences of poverty. I think you're gonna be able to do that Fix long-standing problems Shorten the reach of the criminal justice system Help those with substance abuse disorders Education, housing Policy and law like raising taxes on guns and alcohol You go through this list and their solutions although well-intentioned and not all of them are bad ideas.

They are inadequate They're unrealistic frankly and a few of them are a bit silly Well, it's not on the list, of course would be many common-sense ideas like teaching people to take moral responsibility for their own actions Maybe from a policy standpoint things like restitution or the death penalty Promoting abstinence and marriage and encouraging the nuclear family to do its job But even all of that at its best would still be nothing more than common grace That is to say the good principles from Scripture, but it's still not going to solve humanity's deepest problems and for all of that research It's fascinating is that no one in the room said, you know what we've been trying this for generations And it just hasn't been working see what I would have loved to have read on that list would be as We've done our research. What we discovered is that Ultimately, we can't really fix our problems and we can't help ourselves and what we really need is a hero We need someone else who can come and help us we need a Savior We need an answer that is divine because human solutions to human identified problems are always inadequate Psalmist said in Psalm 118. It is better to take refuge in the Lord Than to trust in man.

It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man and this morning's message Is going to display for us Really humanism's approach to solving its problems and how futile that is and then the reality of turning to God in Desperation really seeing our need and seeing God as the only solution for our problems mankind Frankly is hopeless apart from divine intervention So I'm gonna read our text. They'll be gonna walk through it together this morning Genesis chapter 4 beginning in verse 17 Cain knew his wife and she conceived and born Enoch When he built a city he called the name of the city after the name of his son Enoch Enoch was born Irad and Irad fathered Mahujel and Mahujel fathered Methuselah Methuselah, excuse me and Methuselah fathered Lamech and Lamech took two wives The name of the one was Adah the name of the other Zillah Adah bore Jabal for he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock His brother's name was Jubal and he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe Zillah also bore Tubal Cain He was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron the sister of Tubal Cain was Nema Lamech said to his wives Ada and Zillah hear my voice you wives of Lamech. Listen to what I say I've killed a man for wounding me a young man for striking me if Cain's revenge is sevenfold then Lamech's is 77 fold And Adam knew his wife again and she bore a son and called his name Seth for she said God has appointed for me Another offspring instead of Abel for Cain killed him To Seth also a son was born and he called his name Enoch and That time at that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord This morning's outline is very simple man's need for God Demonstrated man's need for God Demonstrated and we're really gonna see two points this morning We're gonna see Cain's family Forsaking God and then we're going to see Adam and Eve through Seth's line turning to God And so we see things go from bad to worse here in our first point, which is man forsakes his maker man forsakes his maker this is verses 17 through 24 and what this begins to display for us is the futility the futility of humanity Apart from God now certainly man can't ultimately live apart from God God is the sustainer of all things all things are upheld by Christ every molecule Your ability to breathe is upheld by God, but we're talking about man living as if God did not exist That's what we mean when we say man living apart from God.

This is life without God What we're going to see here is that in God's common grace He allows many wonderful things and yet they are impotent for solving man's greatest need And so starting here in verse 17 we begin to see the multifaceted grace of God in Humanity's design if you remember God had told humanity you are to to rule over all creation You're to exercise dominion on the earth and then God because he's good gifts man to do that very thing And so right here We see in God's common grace That he allows Cain to reproduce for 17 Cain knew his wife and she conceived and bore Enoch now We don't know anything about details concerning Cain's wife We know that it had to be either one of his younger sisters or perhaps a niece That's it. That would have been the only option so Cain finds a wife Would seem most likely we could reasonably assume that she would have shared Cain's values unless the marriages were coercive and arranged if you were able to enter into that commitment voluntarily So it would have been a woman that would have found Cain and his wicked ways Desirable Godly woman would not have been attracted to Cain and so God grants this couple that is Likely devoted kind of in cahoots to wickedness a Baby, it's God's grace. He allows unbelievers to reproduce.

He allows them to have children and so Cain and his wife bear a son named Enoch this means dedicated means consecrated and We read that when he that's Cain verse 17 built the city He called the name of the city after the name of his son Enoch now naming a city after Someone is is super difficult. We're not surprised by that. Have you ever heard of Redmond, Oregon? How did it get its name? Well Frank T Redmond settled in the area in 1905 and the place got called Redmond About Kaiser, Oregon goes back a little bit further named after a pioneer named Thomas Dove Kaiser and his family They arrived on wagon train in 1843 Adams, Oregon same Astoria, Oregon same Jervis, Oregon same Eugene, Oregon I mean you get on the list and Many of the places in our day and age the cities are named by kind of the first pioneer the first settler who came and and built the first house or staked out that plot of land And so here Cain goes and he begins to set up an outpost and he names it after his son we think okay Well, what's the big deal with that? Well, there's a couple of issues here There's great significance First of all, what was Cain's curse by God? To remember verse 12 you shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.

So this is direct rebellion This is Cain again Continuing God said that I'm going to be a wanderer on earth guess what I'm gonna do I'm gonna go and I'm gonna create a city. I'm gonna go protect myself I'm gonna go try to find a place to stake my claim and put my name on it So this is Cain who's still gonna have in his heart, of course unrest. He's gonna have a guilty conscience He's gonna be afraid the wicked flee when no one is pursuing the scriptures keep so Cain's always gonna have that sense in his heart at least of instability and not feeling settled, but He's trying his best in rejection to God's curse here to to undo the effects of that by establishing a city And interestingly enough he doesn't name it the Lord's City or dedicated to Yahweh or by God's grace Says I'm putting the name of my kid on this city.

It's dedicated Enoch this is a testament to me to my prowess. I want my family name Remembered and so Cain here in an act of rebellion Builds a city he names it after his son. It's dedicated not to the Lord, but to himself and God and his grace allows Enoch to multiply and we don't have of course all of the children that are born here, but you can expect that there's becoming Large numbers of people Starting to reproduce on the earth And so we read that Enoch was born Irad and Irad fathered Mahujael and Mahujael fathered Methuselah and Methuselah fathered Lamech probably these are the firstborn in each Family, so it's not the totality if you remember we read of only three of Adams named sons and yet the text says that he had many sons and Many daughters, so this is not the entirety of the family tree, of course and Lamech then brings us to the seventh Generation.

All right, Adam was the first Cain was the second And Enoch and Irad and Mahujael Then Methuselah and now Lamech the seventh generation and so Lamech Comes on the scene and the text says in verse 19 that he took two wives He took two wives This is a problem That's not like merely going back for a second helping of dessert when you know, you've kind of had enough this is significant I mean this is defying the created order Genesis 2 24 one man and one woman come together in a one-flesh union. That is marriage. It's defined by God It's the only sanctioned place for sexual union to take place and so here now this is in contempt of God This is in contempt of the created order contempt of marriage Lamech takes two Wives and so this is really a perversion.

It's a perversion of God's design and this is what humanity always does when left to himself Humanity takes God's good gift and then does what corrupts it perverts it Twists it for our own agenda Uses it to further our own desires and so we don't know the exact motive here Generally speaking polygamy is motivated by some kind of lust of the eyes and lust of the flesh Rather than being dedicated to one woman. I would like to have an additional woman Not only that but but having more children would result in kind of increasing the estate So there's probably or potentially an element there as well But this is a man who? Who is rebelling? He's he's independent. He's unrestrained.

He's self-willed. He's stepping out of bounds He's a Violator and we read that he had two wives the name of the first one is Ada and the name of the other Zilla Okay, and these women both have names that indicate very little but a clue about them Ada is the adorned and Zilla would either mean shady or the tinkling and and Probably both of these then refer to some sense of beauty It's posited that possibly Zilla's idea of shadiness would be her hair a reference to her hair Out of the adorned the one with adorned with outer beauty, but both of these then seem to be focused on the externals It's what those people clearly esteemed Interestingly enough one of their daughters will read at the universe 22 The sister of two Balkan was name. Ah, her name means lovely.

And so the women here are named names that would indicate Really an earthiness to the way of thinking These are humanists They're primarily focused on the outward appearance. That's how they tend to think it's a sensual family and earthly family and Yet God continues in his kindness to allow them to procreate and so verse 20. They're having kids Out of or J ball he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock He has a brother's name Jubal.

He's the father of all those who played the lyre in the harp Zilla the other wife also bore two ball cane He was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron and so what we begin to see here now in this evil unregenerate family God's common grace is abounding gifted children gifted children When it was politically correct when I was in middle school, I'm sorry Before political correctness when I was in middle school, they had talented and gifted children and they would be labeled tag I don't think you can do that anymore But actually identify this particular one is talented and gifted and we're gonna call it out These are tag children J-ball, he's a he's intense and has livestock. He was really a rancher. This was a man who was cultivating beasts of burden to Abel was Shepherd if you remember it means he tended sheep, but this idea here has the idea of Territory and supply really a cattle trader.

There's commerce here. There's trade. I mean this guy's taking it to the next level Jew ball is musical he produces a family of musicians.

So they were writing and making music These are the the artists, okay God, of course is the ultimate author of music but man discovers it and enjoys it And so now they're they're innovating they're writing songs. They're developing instruments I mean someone had to come up with the first liar the first pipe About how to make the notes and then how to put them in sequence and what a scale was and and here they are for The very first time there. They're proliferating music on earth And to ball Kane is a metal worker.

He would hammer out instruments for work He was a craftsman Harvesting the metals and then fashioning them to create various implements That could be utilized for work and so this is kind of if you will maybe the the first tech sector, okay they're developing technology and instruments to use And so all of this God's common grace is incredible diversity Okay, incredible usefulness And yet All of this is being done without respect To God it's being done without respect to God one of the rights. There's nothing inherently wrong with any of these occupations All of them may be carried out admirably and with integrity However, there is a problem here That is worldly things are the only things that carnal wicked people set their hearts upon They're the things that carnal people are most ingenious and most industrious about And so it was with the impious race of cursed Kane here was a father of shepherds and a father of musicians, but not a father of the faithful He was here was one to teach in brass and iron, but none to teach the good knowledge of the Lord Here were devices how to be rich and how to be mighty and how to be merry, but nothing of God And so this family devoted themselves to their pursuits and they were skilled in them They were diligent in them And yet as the Old Testament testifies It's possible to be diligent and very successful in your work and do what worship the work of your hands Let it attest to your own greatness Let it bring you self satisfaction done for your own namesake for your own prominence And so we begin to see here is that All of the diversity and the wonder that humanity can provide is still ultimately futile in Addressing man's deepest need I mean think about it and J-ball the dweller intends and have livestock. I mean, it's amazing You talk to some people and they're like, you know what if we just had more Boy Scouts Like if everybody did 4-h things would just be so much better Really? When you got it right here Yeah, Jubal with the harp and the lyre, you know, the problem is kids are not exposed enough to the arts We need more music.

We need more art. We just kind of open their heart open their minds Or maybe they they need to learn skills I mean with the forgers here with with two-ball cane you had trades and technology And so really the issue is not education or skill or exposure to opportunity and God's come and grace here There's industry and creativity and production and commerce His family's improving things on earth they're in fact ruling over the creation They're subduing it and there's innovation and there's beauty And it all of that common grace is going to be limited in its effectiveness for this reason Because for all of that gifting all of that giftedness Artists can be perverts All right, and the innovators can be narcissists See great gifting and common grace cannot address the spiritual problem that faces Humanity and good story that illustrates. This would be the invention of the airplane Orville and Wilbur Wright the Wright brothers set out to create a flying machine Of course, they were successful and in the first decade of the 1900s.

They were showing off their flying machine Yeah, just a few years later Planes were being used to shoot people in World War one Couple decades later they advanced to bombs that that caused hundreds of thousands of casualties and Orville Wright actually lived to see World War two and Witness airplanes being used for such things and you know what? He said he lamented this quote We dared to hope we had invented something that would bring lasting peace to the earth But we were wrong part of that aspiration. I mean they're imagining they're gonna invent this thing think of all the wonderful things that man could use an airplane for and we could transport sick people to get care and we could bring supplies to people who are hungry and think of all the Wonderful humanitarian outcomes and and the way it could open commerce and trade in human flourishing And even usher in peace on earth and what happens well technology does not address humanity's need And so even the best variety in God's common grace Could never address spiritual problems. Not only that but but there's incredible violence that takes place on the earth We see this in these next verses that that the corruption that's in the heart begins to leak out and it damages People it plagues natural man.

It limits our ability to reform And so God starts to show us just a little taste of what Keane's family is like. I Think of it this way Lamech is the poster boy Lamech was put by God in the scripture for us to understand family dynamics in Keane's family and dynamics in this city of Enoch Verse 23, what is Lamech like? I Think it's five greats. What's the great great great great great grandson of Adam like here it is Lamech said to his wives Okay first problem It's supposed to be a singular Says Ada and Zilla.

I know I keep pronouncing that differently every time Ada and Zilla Hear my voice you wives of Lamech. Listen to what I say I'm not much you but I won't even talk to one woman that way let alone two This is domineering and arrogant Even in this day when I hear someone refer to themselves in the third person Generally, generally not a good sign of a humble heart Lamech here is addressing his wives in the third person. Hey, you listen to what I have to say to you Listen to what Lamech has to say to you And what does he boast I've killed a man for wounding me and a young man for striking me so here's a husband Insisting that his wives recognize that he is a cold-blooded killer It's shocking.

One of them was a man The young man is is the word for a youth We don't know if it was a boy a young man, but certainly a youth perhaps again family relations here a nephew a little little brother a grandson Whatever it was this is a violent man. Who's who's showing a display of abusive violence. That's unwarranted This is not self-defense It's a brawler who exerts dominance of others.

I Was kind of undersized in middle school and so I'd get picked on I remember those guys were like, you know If you accidentally bumped into them in the hall like you were gonna get crushed into a locker you know, they always always had a kind of show of force like Quadruple whatever it was that was done to them. That's what lameck is saying here Look a guy wounded me. I killed him There was a little guy who struck me.

I killed him Sounds very much like ray of boom ray of boom ask you remember Solomon's son whose friends encouraged him Hey, you know what? You go tell the people my little finger is thicker than my father's thighs He came at you with whips I'm gonna bring scorpions See this is humanity boasting of power and prominence and violence And evil men are boasters and they're shameless Peter would say in 2nd Peter 2 13 that they count a pleasure to revel in the daytime means that they love to do and Parade things that ought to be hidden things that are shameful. They flaunt it. They publicize it They're swollen with conceit Paul would say in 2nd Timothy 3 1 through 5 Over and over in the scripture the mouth is associated with great claims of boasting of human pride and hubris Jude refers to loud mouth boasters in Jude 16 Asaph and Psalm 73 talks about those who set their mouths against the heavens and their tongues strut throughout the earth How's that for poetic imagery? In a back it gets to really the heart of the issue in a back at 111 when he says their own Might is their God Their own might is their God so Lamech worshipped himself They make worship myself he had a high view of himself And it degenerated into boasting even boasting of violence.

I remember this so distinctly my first introduction to this was When I was working in a job in high school and in the department I was at most everyone was you know, five or six years older than me, which isn't a lot But when you're 16, it's kind of a lot And the men in that place were boasters of evil They paraded their exploits. It was a badge of honor not hiding but flaunting And Paul would describe this as those who glory in their shame Philippians 3. That's what Lamech is doing He ought to be ashamed of this, but he's glorying in it Now look at what he says in verse 24, this is how brazen it is if Cain's revenge is sevenfold then Lamech's is 77 fold And that is not a mere coincidence Rather Lamech heard Cain Grandpa Cain He was protected by God and God promised to avenge Cain He had to be protected by God and God said he'll avenge him seven times Guess what? I don't need God I'll avenge myself not seven times but 77 times This is a man who thinks he's a self-made man I he's thinking he can do better at protecting and avenging himself than God would do at protecting Cain And so here you have humanity making empty boasts boasting and evil Competing in violence self-exaltation in vain glory Francis Schaefer says here is a humanistic culture without God It is egotism and pride centered in man This culture has lost the concept not only of God but of man as the one who loves his brother And what God wants us to understand and take away from this text is this is the Lord letting go. This is humanity on its own Apart from divine intervention and restraining grace humanity cannot rescue repair or redeem itself This is why as Christians we understand that no matter how much is invested in programs to educate and to feed and to create opportunities to fix homelessness and reduce crime And to address substance abuse and to promote fathers to stay faithful in the home and to expose children to the arts and sciences no matter how much technology or Innovation or economic development we can never fix spiritual problems With human efforts Benefits are always temporary and limited so often we look to human solutions.

We get very excited We get over concerned about who's going to be in the Supreme Court or who's going to be in the White House or who's going to? serve as governor You understand that that that as much as in God's common grace we might enjoy temporary blessings and benefits They cannot address what's wrong within and so we're gonna see here that as a People group whatever size whether it's a nation or a state or a city or a family As a nation or a people or a family rejects their maker the strength of that society always weakens I want you to think about this These people these are a hopeless People that's the language that Paul used in Ephesians chapter 2 verse 12 when he described the state of Gentiles Prior to the gospel coming. What did he say? He said that they are having no hope and without God in the world There's in that humanity apart from God is a hopeless place to be And what I want you to understand what I'm saying here carefully if you're involved in social work If you're a teacher if you're seeking to help people in God's common grace continue to do that that is human compassion That is pleasing to the Lord. It is a good thing to be about But it's also right to understand the limitations the eternal limitations of that work We live amongst the people much like here in Cain's day who have no hope and are without God in the world man forsaking his maker Demonstrates man's need for God it brings us to our second point this morning man finds his maker Man finds his maker here.

Now we turn the corner We get a little bright spot thankfully to end chapter 4 It's gonna take a dark turn again very soon. So so don't get used to this, but there is a little bright spot here This is really what life looks like with God verse 25 Adam knew his wife again and she bore a son next week We're gonna look at the generations and Adam's line in more detail But here we meet Seth. I Want to draw attention to his namesake She bore a son verse 25 and called his name Seth for she said God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel for Cain killed him Seth likely means granted And so here you have Eve just like a little breath of fresh air giving birth to a child and who is on her mind It's the Lord She's recognizing.

The only reason why I was able to bring a child into the world was God's grace to me Look at that language. God has appointed for me this is not a testament to her own greatness and There's a hopefulness here a note of hopefulness that God is rebuilding in restoring Abel was the son who who loved God? He brought his offering in faith and now the Lord is gonna replace Abel. I trust him with a son Who's gonna be godly a son who's gonna walk by faith? Verse 26 to Seth also a son was born and he called his name Enosh Enosh It's an interesting word.

It's used often to speak of man in the Old Testament Etymology is is a difficult way to to be certain about the meaning of a word The etymology of this word kind of the original usage the history of it Would have the idea of being weak or sick It's possible. That's what Enosh means We can't be conclusive but what is clear in the biblical usage is that Enosh is always used get this to represent man as Mortal Emphasizes man's mortality. I want to read some verses that you're familiar with That use this word Enosh Job 717.

What is Enosh? what is man that you make so much of him and That you set your heart on him Job 15 14. What is man? What is Enosh that he can be pure or he was born of a woman that he can be righteous Psalm 8 for what is man? What is Enosh that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? Psalm 144 verse 3. Oh Lord. What is man? What is Enosh that you regard him or the son of man that you think of him? What is? mortal man See for Seth Naming his son Enosh is an indicator of mortality Perhaps even thinking of human weakness You'd say this Seth has a big view of God and a right view of man a low view of man See Seth understands man is not to be praised man is not to be trusted in man is not to be exalted Man is not the source of Life These are true worshipers are always humbled by God's greatness and his love and care for them Look, if you're in Christ, this is your heart.

You just worship God because you see him is great You see God is great You see that his love is great and his care for you is great and you see yourself as undeserving and utterly dependent And so those who identify with Enosh those who affirm it recognize that man is mortal He's like grass that withers and fades away. He's like a mist and a vapor that appears and then vanishes God is immortal man is mortal. And so Job and David those are the verses that we read are astounded.

What is Man, what is Enosh? What is what is a mortal man that the Almighty God would be willing to enter into our affairs and She'll care for us Should be those who glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh I hope that the truth that you're insignificant thrills your heart. I Mean is that not so ironic when I'm reminded That I am nothing. I am so encouraged When I'm reminded how insignificant I am my art just fills with praise to God It's so helpful It puts me back in my lane I don't know about you, but my soul desperately needs to be brought low and Reflecting upon the glory of God is the only thing strong enough to get me unimpressed with myself So man will always be impressed with man or he will be impressed with God.

It's like a seesaw You will either be impressed with God or you will be impressed with man You cannot maintain a high view of man and a high view of God And so here's this tremendous contrast between Seth I'm gonna name my son Enosh and Lamech I am the source Gets worth noting here just for a moment in terms of our nomenclature that that we talked about a low view of man here I'll use that expression sometimes. I don't want it to be misconstrued And we talk about the Christian view that is a low view of man. What we mean to say is that man is a creature Man is dependent Man is morally corrupt in a need of a dent redemption man is not the source It's God's universe He is the moral authority.

That's what we mean to talk about when we say a low view of man, but the Christian understanding of humanity The biblical view of humanity is it's really the worldview that that treasures humanity in the way that we ought Soon it comes to things like the sanctity of human life human dignity Human value man being created in an image of God It's it's believers who have the right or the high view of man Lamech had a high view of self So that since he had a high view of man, but he had a low view of others He's taking multiple wives He's killing people for offending him So in one sense he had a high view of self, but really it was a low view of man So when we talk about a low view of man, we're talking about a right view of self but also elevating human dignity and worth and so what we see here is a Time on the earth when things were very dark McCain's line is proliferating on the earth. I Cannot even imagine how miserable it would have been to be in that city. That would not have been a pleasant place to live You have a lameck given as an example of the kinds of things that humanity was engaging in and that drove a certain sense of hopelessness certain sense of longing a certain desperation in the heart of humanity And it comes out of the universe Verse 26 at that time People began to call upon the name of the Lord.

They began to seek God They began to turn to God. They did calling on the name of the Lord It wasn't just they said his name, but it's it's all that he represents all that Yahweh Represented his name would be his reputation his character his perfections who he has revealed himself to be And So this is what the Bible teaches very plainly the promise that started back in Joel chapter 2 verse 32 That everyone who calls on the name of the Lord what shall be saved? And so in the midst of that darkness you have a line Alongside the ungodly that says we need the Lord and they begin to turn to the Lord See to call upon the name of the Lord is to recognize that there is salvation in another Isaiah 45 22 turn to me and be Saved all the ends of the earth for I am the Lord and there is no other Isaiah 43 11. I am the Lord and besides me.

There is no Savior the apostolic testimony Acts 4 12 there is salvation in none else for there is no other name under heaven given among men By which we must be saved there was no human solution here for these families There's never a human solution for our moral problems And it is isn't it amazing here that that these families are coming from the same ultimate Genesis here in Adam and Eve's family We're seeing one son could be reprobate and the other could be elect that one is Disregarding the Lord and the other is seeking the Lord All this is by God's design that mankind might call upon the name of the Lord I want to finish this morning by looking briefly at Acts chapter 17 turns me to Acts 17 We have a wonderful little summary here Paul's evangelizing In the midst of the Areopagus in verse 22, and here's what he says men of Athens I Perceive that in every way you are very religious For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship. I found also an altar with this inscription to the unknown God What therefore you worship is unknown this I proclaim to you and we talked about how Cain was a religious man He was a religious hypocrite. We don't know how much of his family was practicing religion or idolatry at this time But it's it's common very likely.

They were still worshippers Verse 24 the God who made the world and everything in it Being Lord of heaven and earth does not live in temples made by man nor is he served by human hands as though he needed anything Since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything This is an exalted view of God the Creator and the Sustainer and the source of all things Verse 26 he made from one man Every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth Having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place Where Cain's line would be where Seth would be where Lamech would be? Verse 27 that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him It is actually not far from each one of us for in him. We live and move and have our being as Even some of your own boats have said for we indeed We are indeed his offspring Being then God's offspring We ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone an image formed by the art and imagination of man The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent Because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he is appointed And of this he is given assurance to all By raising him from the dead This very reality is on Paul's heart there at the Areopagus You guys in your philosophy are so Exalted in your thought that you're the source of all things you're wise in your own understanding I want you to understand that God is appointed a man to judge the world namely Jesus Christ What humanity needs? It's divine intervention humanity needs a savior. And so right here in Genesis 4 God is already Setting that stage for us.

This is the lesson as we see those two lines go forth And things are gonna continue to get worse actually so Genesis 5 and 6 humanity continues on this path on its own Struggling in resistance to God, let's pray Lord. I thank you for the clarity that your word provides in helping us to discern What's going on in our own lives and then also make sense of the world around us words, we're so easily captivated by Really getting caught up in Common grace solutions for saving grace problems. That's what I pray that you would help us to Not just affirm generally the need for divine intervention, but that we would call upon you each day calling upon the name of the Lord Recognizing our dependence upon you And Lord that we would see that that is also humanity's need around us Thank you Lord that you are willing to be found by those who call upon you.

Thank you that you are Willing to listen to those who seek you Thank you God that you're one who restores and forgives And that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. We praise you and we love you Amen

I invite you to take your Bibles and turn me to Genesis chapter 4 this morning. No surprise there as we continue to make our way through this tremendous section of Scripture. It's a big book that we're undertaking, but we're making our way through it here bit by bit.

Entitled this morning's message, Overcome by Evil. Overcome by Evil. Ever since we left the garden, really even prior to that, ever since Eve took the bite of that forbidden fruit and gave it to her husband and he also ate, things have taken a dark turn.

Have they not? I mean, these messages have looked different than prior to that first moment. And there's an inescapable reality now that we have to deal with in Scripture. Namely, that every human heart is, from the beginning, plagued by default with the issue of sinfulness.

Man is born guilty. Okay? It means that we are born under the rightful judgment of God. Not only that, but we are born corrupt.

So the faculties within us are defunct now. They don't operate morally as they ought. And man is under condemnation.

And so this is our default position for all of humanity apart from divine intervention. This is really important. What is man's default position before God? It is not moral neutrality.

The default position of humanity is to be on the broad path to destruction. You're to think of it in terms of an illustration. Humanity is drifting down a river that is going to end in a waterfall.

And that waterfall is God's eternal judgment and wrath. And everyone is in the boat together, on the river, headed toward the waterfall. And the only people that get off the boat are those who turn to Christ for salvation.

Those whom God graciously snatches out of the boat along the way. And so, over and over in Scripture, we find that you must be born again. That you must be united with Christ by faith.

That you must be adopted into a new family. That the only way to get into that family is through the one mediator, Jesus Christ. And so this morning, what we see in our narrative about Cain is really the power of sin.

The power of sin and its influence on the human heart. Furthermore, we're going to see our need for salvation and the consequences of neglecting such a great salvation. Paul would write to the church in Romans 1221, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

And so this morning, what we're going to see is Cain is overcome by evil. He's absolutely dominated by it. And I don't know about you, but just as I've continually reflected on why this text, why this vignette, why this story.

We're talking about dozens of years, hundreds of individuals, all kinds of people in the family, even all kinds of interactions that Cain and Abel would have had that could have been recorded for us, and yet this is the one that the Spirit chose. Really, out of all those years, this is really the only story that's emphasized in this way. An entire chapter of the Bible dedicated to understanding Cain.

Why is that? Well, because it's so significant to set in the minds of God's people that everyone is on a path to destruction, and this is now your end. This is your demise apart from turning to God for mercy. And so let's read our text this morning.

Beginning in chapter 4, verse 1, Now, Adam knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, I've gotten a man with the help of the Lord. And again, she bore his brother Abel. Now, Abel was the keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground.

And in the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel in his offering, but for Cain in his offering, he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell.

And the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry, and why is your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it. Cain spoke to Abel his brother, and when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.

And the Lord said to Cain, where is Abel your brother? And he said, I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper? And the Lord said, what have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground, and now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength.

You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth. Cain said to the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear. Bold, you've driven me today away from the ground, and from your face I shall be hidden.

I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me. And the Lord said to him, not so. If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.

And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him. And Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod east of Eden. This morning we're gonna pick back up where we left off last week and hopefully get down through verse 16 this morning.

Do you remember two weeks ago we saw in the first section of this narrative really how the first family related to God? That was the the introduction for this story. Adam and Eve produced an offspring and we met the brothers in verses 1 and 2, Cain and Abel. It was God's grace to these first parents to still allow them to procreate in spite of their fallen condition.

They have children, it's a blessing from God. We learn very little about these men other than their respective vocations. One is a rancher and one is a farmer.

Then the emphasis begins to focus on their worship. And so we watch them worship in verses 3 and into verse 5, and right off the bat God begins to teach us about the difference between true worship and false worship. Cain is rejected and Abel is accepted.

And immediately this sets off the trajectory for the whole storyline of Scripture of true worshippers and false worshipers. Those who come to God on his terms and those who come to God on their own terms. So we see Cain was self-styled.

Cain wanted to do things his way. Cain had an agenda in his mind that he desired to see God conform to, and that was what he was insisting upon. He doesn't submit to God's revelation.

He doesn't submit to the prescribed sacrifice. And yet, somewhat surprisingly, rather than just stay home, Cain still attends worship. He still goes to worship, but he goes in pretense.

And so we don't know his exact motivation, of course, but there was something that was pleasing to him about the religious experience. His flesh was gratified in some way by either a sense of feeling good or to gain approval from man or pacify his conscience or gain the favor of God. We can't be sure, but we know he didn't really want to worship God, and yet he also didn't want to stay home.

He wanted to go and engage in false worship. And so we saw there that all men are worshippers by nature of being human. There's no such thing as a truly secular person.

Even those who deny the existence of God still have an allegiance to some standard of morality and core beliefs and values and a sense of purpose for the human life. And so Cain here is rejected by God, and we wouldn't really know what's going on, but then we enter into a dialogue, and we begin to overhear the debrief as we looked at in verses 5 through 7. And any time you're in a narrative of Scripture, the dialogue is very important because you can kind of follow the storyline of the facts as they happen, but then the dialogue really gives you a sense of the significance of what is happening. Why does this matter so much? And so in this debrief, God comes to Cain and begins to draw out what's really going on.

In verse 6, he says, Now this is confrontational. Interestingly enough, it's the same way that our Lord approached our first parents. He's giving Cain an opportunity to reflect, so he starts with that question, why? As we said, usually our first answer, our first several answers to why we did something, why we're feeling the way that we feel, is not generally getting at the heart of what's really going on.

It takes a little time. And so Cain probably would have answered, at least in his heart, something like, I'm angry because you accepted him and you rejected me. Or perhaps you rejected me in front of everyone, and that was embarrassing.

And yet the anger ultimately was, in Cain's mind, circumstantial, and yet the Lord is causing him to evaluate the true source of his frustration. Frankly, Cain is angry because he wants things to go his own way, and they're not. He's not God, and it irks him.

There's something irks him about not being the authority. And then we saw our Lord be merciful, even to this this sinner Cain. He says in verse 7, If you do well, will you not be accepted? And I still just marvel at God's grace in this verse.

I mean, this is the heart of God toward a sinner. Cain, come back. Cain, turn around.

Now to do that, you're gonna have to not blame me for why you got rejected. You're gonna have to own that your rejection is your fault. You're gonna need to believe that it's right for me to require worship, but then believe that I'll take you back.

This is a promise of acceptance. You understand? This is the gospel here in Genesis chapter 4. And he's not offering to Cain a performance improvement plan. He's not saying, I could put you on some kind of probation or work crew to kind of work off what you did and offering me a bad offering.

The offer is simply, do well and you'll be accepted. Come back and try again and I'll show you divine favor. I'll smile upon you.

And this promise that was made to Cain is not offered just to Cain, it's offered to all men. You remember the the wonderful words of our Lord in John chapter 6 verse 37 where Jesus said, Whoever comes to me, whoever, there's no restriction on that, whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. There's no sin that you could have committed that would disqualify you from that promise.

And yet it does require coming to Jesus. And so God offers Cain right here reconciliation. He offers him the gospel.

And yet as we have said so many times here before, the offer of the gospel is not simply an invitation. You get invited to a birthday party and you're busy. Or maybe you're not busy, but you just don't want to go.

You can decline that invitation. There's no real consequence to it. That is not the invitation or the offer of the gospel.

The offer of the gospel is a summons. You're called to embrace it. You're called to believe it.

And if you disregard it, there's consequences. And so this gospel to Cain is a summons and God says to Cain, hey, if you do well you'll be accepted. Here's the gospel.

By the way, here's the warning if you reject it. And if you do not do well, the text says, sin is crouching at the door and its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it. See, the Lord is being gracious to Cain right now.

What he's telling him is this, Cain, you have not experienced yet the full fruit of the seed of the sin that's in your heart. Right now it's rather containable. And kind of keep it managed.

I'm sure Cain got angry. He was probably known for that because he's angry here in the text, but he'd been able to kind of keep it under wraps to some degree. And yet God is saying, if you don't address these sinful cravings, you will be dominated by them.

This seed will be watered and then it'll grow into a tree and then that tree will bear fruit. And we've said before that you cannot manage sin, you cannot contain it on your own. And so very often what happens is we start out with a little desire for sin that isn't dealt with.

The next thing we know it grows into a full blossom and we're in bondage to sin. And sin is a harsh master. I mean, I don't know anyone, I've said this many times before, who as a youth has on their list of goals, I want to grow up someday and be enslaved to pornography.

Well, you know what I really hope? I hope to grow up and be enslaved to fear of man, such that I'm crippled by it. Or lust, or food, or entertainment. You know what I want to do? I want to grow up and lose my job.

I want to grow up and have broken relationships in my life. And what I'm hoping is to invite unnecessary heartache. See, what happens is we want to enjoy sin, but we don't want to be mastered by it.

That's how the natural flesh works. I don't really want to give up my sin, but I also don't want to really experience being mastered by it. And so God is graciously warning Cain here.

If you do well, you'll be accepted. By the way, if you do not do well, sin is crouching right out the door. Its desire is for you, and it will overtake you.

You must rule over it. And so Cain, of course, is going to disregard this offer of the gospel and this warning. I think there's a lesson here that we're going to see in this passage to not disregard the voice of God.

To not have that experience where God's revelation is made clear, and you receive it. It comes into your mind, it hits your heart, and then you, in either complacency or outright rejection, just let it go. Just respond in indifference.

Cain is an example to not do that. Since we don't know how long the timeline was between verse 7 and verse 8, it doesn't say how long Cain wrestled with these desires in his heart. There are a few things that we could say, certainly, from the testimony of Scripture.

We know that that he's going to murder his brother, and that in the heart is going to be hatred. That's the motive. And you can trace the line of resentment and bitterness.

You want to look at any human relationship that sours, that's what bitterness simply means. It's where a relationship that was previously sweet is now soured, colored, everything kind of feels negative. There's a negative tone to it, a negative perspective, a hard-heartedness, you might say.

At the root of that is always an offense. It could be a real offense or a perceived offense that is not dealt with biblically. So how do relationships break down? What is the the root behind a bitterness and an offense? Excuse me, a bitterness and resentment? It is always an offense, either perceived or real, that is not dealt with biblically.

And so Cain is souring on his relationship with Abel. Cain disregards the counsel of the Lord. If you were to think about it just categorically, the issue is that he does not want to humble himself.

I think what it would have taken for Cain here to actually humble himself and do well, what would he have to do? Well, he'd have to stop being angry. Anger is very satisfying. It feels good to be angry.

When you feel justified in our anger. So you'd have to let go of that. He would have to let go of that.

Not only that, he would have to humble himself and he would have to admit, I was the one who was wrong. God, you were right. Abel, you were right.

And I was...we have a hard time saying that. I was wrong. I was the one who was wrong.

I had no right to be angry. See, the admission of a sinner to acknowledge guilt before God and throw himself wholly on God's mercy is the very essence of saving faith. That's how we know that Cain did not come to salvation because this is the moment now to respond, to humble yourself and to cast yourself on the mercy of God.

And so Cain's heart gets exposed. And we saw this last week when we witnessed the homicide in verse 8. It's our first point this morning. Cain's heart gets exposed.

This really happens as we witness the homicide. Verse 8, Cain spoke to Abel, his brother, and when they are in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. Now, I want you to notice just for a minute how brazen this is.

And Moses keeps highlighting this. Cain spoke to Abel, his brother. Second part of the verse, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.

And this is to be felt and understood, the significance of a brother laying hands on and killing another brother. Dex says Cain spoke to Abel, his brother. So probably something like, hey bro, can we go have a chat? Just you and me, man to man? There's some things that I wanted to catch up with you on.

We don't know exactly the impetus, but Cain invites Abel and he takes him to a field. And this indicates that there was planning and intent. In other words, this is premeditated.

So to say that Cain merely killed his brother Abel is too soft. It's murder. It's homicide.

It's not merely manslaughter. It's not self-defense. They got into an unexpected heat of argument and things went further than either of them anticipated.

That was the plan. In fact, to be in the field takes on a technical meaning later in the law. Deuteronomy 22, we read that in identifying a crime, if someone took another person into the field, it was specifically so that you could not hear their cry for help.

And so Cain, interestingly enough, has some measure of control over his desires because he doesn't kill his brother in front of the family at family dinner that weekend. He's still self-preserving. So he wants to get rid of his brother, but he doesn't want all of the fallout and consequences.

So he goes and hides. He goes out into the field, and that is where Cain rises up against his brother Abel and kills him. And interestingly enough, that idea of rising up, again, would indicate intent.

We don't know whether it was a relatively quick and painless death, if there was a struggle. We don't know whether Cain used a farming implement or whether he strangled his brother with his bare hands. The text does not say.

But the point, of course, is that Abel did not deserve to die. Abel did not do something to his brother to warrant being murdered. Rather, the issue is envy.

And if you think about how incredibly dark and ironic this is, what is Cain's primary beef? God showed you favor and not me. But God offered Cain favor. He said, if you do well, you'll be accepted.

So Cain doesn't even really want God's favor in the true sense. It's offered to him. Rather, he just knows, I don't want Abel to get it and me not to.

That's what irked him. He doesn't care about God's favors if you really wants to be in right relationship with him because he loves God. James 4 is clear what causes fights and quarrels among you.

Is it not this, the passions that are at war within you? You desire and you do not have, so you murder. Cain's got that jealousy that's turned to envy, that's turned to hatred. He wants the benefits of being favored, but he doesn't really actually care about God's favor.

I would just say before we move on, it is helpful here to just kind of help grow our own discernment when it comes to human relationships and understanding what broke down here in Cain and Abel. This was not primarily a human relationship problem, okay? Do you understand that? And can you imagine Adam and Eve trying to sit down with Cain afterward and just asking, okay, now help us understand, son, what exactly did Abel do that caused you to kill him? What exactly provoked you? What was so deserving of death? Help us understand. We're struggling to connect the dots here to the logic.

What's the issue? Well, there's a vertical line that must be traced, and so oftentimes in a human relationship when there's a breakdown and we're kind of befuddled, that is to the logic. It doesn't seem logical. We need to lift our eyes from the human relationship and figure out what's the vertical problem.

What do I mean by that? Well, this comes up a lot actually in marriage counseling. You sit down with two spouses and they are only able to see primarily the problems that each of them have with one another, and then what do we do? We spend time helping to trace the vertical issues that each of them have with Christ. That is the ultimate source of the problem and the ultimate solution.

So when you counsel yourself, when you counsel others, if you're to counsel Cain, the issue is not going to be found in trying to resolve only the sibling dynamics to what exactly Abel did that resulted logically in your desire to kill him. Now they're figuring out what is wrong right now in your relationship with God. And so every human relational issue, trace it back.

Unforgiveness, guess what? It's a vertical problem. It's a problem between someone and God. Rudeness, it's a vertical problem.

Lying, it's a vertical problem. Jealousy and envy, it's a vertical problem. Selfishness and entitlement, it's a vertical problem.

And gratitude and complaining, it's a vertical problem. And here, yes, anger is a vertical problem. And so Abel from a human standpoint just so happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He didn't do anything that necessarily asked for this. Rather, his brother had spiritual issues, and his brother's spiritual issues spilled out on him. And this outcome is somewhat unusual.

Most families don't have, thankfully, members killing one another. But I'll say this, the destructive nature of anger is real in its destruction in families. I mean, I've seen families completely destroyed by anger.

And no one has been physically killed, but the relationships are dead. Impacted nearly every family that I can think of at some measure. And so this homicide surely had to have been devastating for Adam and Eve.

Producing children, they know the effects of their own sin and their own guilty conscience. They would have been hoping for some kind of redemption that things could have looked better in future generations, and now they have their firstborn son. I mean, can you imagine the disappointment that that would have been? The heartbreak? I don't know exactly what they hoped he would be, but surely it was not a murderer.

And so we see here, of course, all of Satan's scheme coming to roost. I mean, as we looked at in John chapter 8 verse 44, Jesus said that Satan was a murderer from the beginning. This is all part of his plan.

Adam and Eve fell into transgression. Death came to man. Now you have children, you have sons, brothers murdering one another.

So Cain's heart gets exposed. We witnessed the homicide. And now in verses 9 through 16, our second point this morning, we see the response.

Okay, we see the response. And this is really the sad ending to the sad story. This is conversation 2.0. So God comes to Cain earlier.

He has this interaction with him, this conversation. He gives Cain the offer of the gospel with a warning. Cain disregards it, kills his brother, and now God comes to him a second time, and we see a sad ending to a sad story.

Verse 9, then the Lord said to Cain, where is Abel your brother? I mean, how would you like to have the voice of God come and ask you about a secret sin you committed? I mean, that's terrifying. And I've been caught in sin before. I know that feeling.

I mean, it's a familiar feeling that the saliva glands start to produce like crazy. I instantly start to gulp. I'm gonna gulp down the saliva.

I feel my heart rate increase immediately. What is that? Well, that's fear. It's fear of guilt, fear of judgment, fear of consequences.

Mind starts to race and think through how to respond. What is the truth? What do I say? What do I want to say? What would preserve my reputation? I mean, all of the natural instincts that immediately happen when you're caught sinning. And it seems that Cain would have known that God knows all things.

I think it's reasonable to assume this because his parents would have recounted their experience in the garden of hiding and God knowing exactly where they were. He would have understood that God was a spirit because when they came and brought their offerings, his brothers, they're not going to a man. They're not going to a shrine.

They're not going to a statute. They're offering to an unseen, invisible God, a spirit. So the question itself here highlights again the severity of the issue.

He does not just ask, where is Abel? But the Lord says, where is Abel your brother? A treachery. And Cain responds disrespectfully. He said, I do not know.

And am I my brother's keeper? Now, biblical counseling 101 is if you enter into the messiness of someone's life inevitably, that sin is going to spill out, splash out on you while you're involved. If you're trying to help a suspicious person, generally at some point they will become suspicious of you. If you're counseling somebody who struggles with lying, most likely at some point they're going to be lying to you.

And guess what? Press in on an angry fool and inevitably they're gonna get angry with you and they will respond foolishly. And so the Lord is pressing in on Cain, who is categorically speaking an angry fool. He responds exactly how we would expect.

First, he lies. Cain says, I do not know. He does know.

And then he attempts misdirection through exaggeration. When he says, am I my brother's keeper? Really, I mean, you want to get the sense of it. He's saying something to this effect.

Oh, I'm sorry. Am I my little brother's babysitter? Was I supposed to be keeping an eye on him? I mean, that's the idea of a keeper. Was he under my watch care? Was I not supposed to let him out of my sight? Are you coming to me like I'm his babysitter? Cain actually begins to attack the very question that God is asking.

I mean, this is utter folly. At this point, there was still an opportunity to repent. I mean, Cain could have just confessed his sin and been restored.

Angry people hate having their sin called out. They hate being exposed. They hate being backed into a corner.

I mean, imagine if when the Lord had come and said to him, where is Abel your brother? He just said, you know what? His body's out in the field. I disregarded your warning. I killed my brother in cold blood.

I meant to do it. I took him out there. I was wrong.

God, would you still have mercy on me? I know you said earlier, if I did well, I'd be accepted. Would you have mercy on me? Surely the Lord would have forgiven his sin. God forgives angry people.

Jesus died for angry people, even for murderers. And yet, Cain is unwilling to soften. He does not budge an inch.

Children, I want you to think about this for just a minute, okay? Kids in the room, I want you to think about this. Right now, while I'm speaking, Cain is experiencing eternal punishment. Okay? Cain is separated from God.

As we're gonna see in a minute, that's what he really wanted. He ends up getting judged for his sin. But Cain is not in hell just because he murdered his brother.

Okay? He is in hell because he would not come to God for mercy. God alone has power to forgive sin. God would have forgiven Cain, but he is hardened right now.

And so the Lord says to Cain in verse 10, what have you done? And you think, man, I feel like I've heard this somewhere before. Genesis chapter 3 verse 13, the Lord said to the woman, what is this that you have done? He says, the voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. Blood here is personified, crying out.

This is strangely a comfort for all of us. Even when there are no human witnesses to the crime, even when it seems like the bad guy is going to get away, God sees. He is God of justice.

And although this crime will not go punished by a human court, although there were no witnesses, God sees and he will bring about justice. So God begins to enact justice upon Cain. He says, and now you are cursed from the ground.

Verse 10, and now you are cursed from the ground. Do you remember in Genesis 3, we made a big point to highlight that Adam was not cursed and Eve was not cursed. Rather, the circumstances that they found themselves in were cursed.

Their domain was cursed, not them personally. You'd hear God says, cursed are you. This means divine opposition against Cain's life.

So now he is, in a sense, for all intents and purposes, past a point of no return. He's now under the judgment of God. And the Lord brings, as he usually does, the punishment that fits the crime.

Cain is a farmer. He farms the land. That's his vocation.

He kills his brother in the field. His brother's blood goes down into the ground. And so now the Lord really calls, in a sense, the ground to be the minister of his punishment.

Verse 11, now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. I mean, this is doubly cursed now.

Way back in Genesis 3, we already had one curse, right? Thorns and thistles and the sweat of your brow. It just got doubled down. Things are going from bad to worse.

Really, the idea is that there will be a frustrating crop year after year after year. It's like it will always be summer and never be harvest. And the worst part of this punishment is not merely that Cain is gonna have a difficult existence.

He's gonna have a hard time producing the food that he needs to sustain himself and his family. Look what the Lord also tells him. He says, you shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.

The end of verse 12, you shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth. Translation, you're gonna be a homeless drifter. That's the idea.

What are the implications? Well, you're not gonna enjoy the relational closeness with your family like you once knew. You're not gonna enjoy all the rich heritage of family life, the estate, and closeness with God. And man, you're gonna be on the outside here.

You're a drifter. And really, the idea is you're no longer gonna have peace. You're no longer gonna have stability.

Your life is gonna be characterized by perpetual unrest. Doesn't mean necessarily that it will always be in a tent, as we'll see. It's gonna be connected with the city shortly.

But you're gonna feel unsettled. You're gonna experience relational separation. You're gonna be sent away.

And you're never gonna have the sense of peace and security in this life. I'm stripping that away from you. And so if you're Cain, I mean, this is hard news to get.

There's no way around it. And think even now what Cain could have said. And you know what, Lord? As bad as that is, my heart breaks for mom and dad.

Because they had to watch one of their sons devour another son. And I know that they have a grief that they can't actually replace the one I took, the life I took. You know what, I'm grieved by the impact to my siblings, all of our other brothers and sisters that were impacted by the loss of Abel.

I mean, Cain is already married right now. I think that's clear according to verse 17. It's possible Abel is already married.

So it'd be a sister and a wife that was grieving. But nonetheless, Cain could have been very, at this point, sobered by his consequences into a soft heart. And yet look at what he does.

Verse 13, my punishment is greater than I can bear. Cain's first priority has been himself. And even now in the consequences, it remains unchanged.

Heath Lambert writes, an immediate and critical test, whether your sorrow is godly or worldly, is whether you are willing to accept the consequences of your sin. When you're primarily concerned about what your sin has cost you, and the biggest grief to you is still the consequences, you are still in worldly sorrow over sin. I've seen this so many times, so many times.

Someone claims to be sincerely repentant, and then meanwhile they're complaining about the consequences. That is not a fruit of worldly sorrow. Children in the room, when you're given consequences, how do you think about those? It's hard to think rightly about consequences.

I get that. If your parents love Jesus and they love you, then they will give you consequences. Proverbs 13.24 says, whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.

So if your parents love Christ and they discipline you in love, they're being faithful to the Scriptures. It's training, but maybe when you get a consequence, you're primarily mad at mom and dad. You feel like they're the problem.

You know, I've said before, when I was a kid, I would regularly tell my parents, hey, by the way, when I'm a grown-up, I am not gonna be doing the things that you're doing right now. What am I saying? I'm putting you on notice that I think that your consequences are bad. I tell you how we ought to think about consequences.

The design of God, the mind of God and consequences is that we would learn from lesser pain to prevent us from greater sin and greater pain. That's the whole point. To help us learn, to help us wake up and see our sin, to see our need for God, and ultimately to turn to Him for forgiveness and for encouragement.

We tell our kids a lot, you want less consequences? Change your conduct. See, this demonstrates here that Cain is reprobate. He's not one of God's children.

And when he's faced with his punishment, he's filled with terror and torment about the punishment itself, but it's still just self-pity. He's not softened by it. And I think this is instructed to us.

Sometimes we kind of naively assume that when someone experiences the consequences of their sin, that then they will want to turn to God in that moment. Yet oftentimes, as the Scripture teaches, people just become miserable in their consequences. Consequences alone do not change an impenitent heart.

See, Cain is dismayed, but he's not corrected. He's not sorry. He's complaining about his consequences.

He says in verse 14, And he's just recognizing, I'm gonna leave the farm, I'm gonna leave the family, I'm gonna leave your protective influence. At least this is how Cain is thinking. And he's recognizing, I'm gonna be exposed to martial law.

I grew up, there was five boys in my house, and there was this little code known as the Brotherhood. And if one brother started to kind of get out of line in the way that he was treating another brother, we would call on the Brotherhood to enact vigilante justice, which usually turned into some kind of dogpile and then, you know, pink belly or other things I'm not going to describe right now. You can talk to me after if you want to hear about them.

But the idea was, we need to take matters into our own hands. We need to enact justice. And so Cain is afraid that he's gonna go out, and then he's gonna run into a nephew or a little brother.

He says, It's time to avenge Abel's blood. Excuse me, I'm going to take your life. The Lord said in verse 15, Not so.

That's not gonna happen. If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. I'm gonna protect you, Cain.

And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him. We don't know what the mark was. Some said it was a physical malady or perhaps a brand or a tattoo.

We don't know exactly. But it would seem that there was a visible indicator to other people that Cain was not to be touched. My dear brothers and sisters, this is yet another evidence of the grace of God.

It's not saving grace, it's not redeeming grace, but in God's common grace, he's saying, I'm gonna protect the life of this rebel. It's God's care even for a sinner. Still gracious.

Verse 16, we come to really the end of this sad story, at least this section. And Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Cain went away from the presence of the Lord.

You see, that's the main takeaway from this story. What do we learn from Cain? Well, Cain rejected the presence of God and then found, as a consequence, he was rejected from the presence of the Lord. You understand that this was devastating for his earthly life, and yet what was more devastating were the eternal consequences.

As we've said before, hell is for people who want to be distanced from the presence of God. They do not want the presence of God in this life, and then in hell they essentially get what they've asked for. How do we respond to a story like this? Well, I would just say this morning, if you are not in a right relationship with God, if you do well, you will be accepted.

Turn to the Lord. Leave behind whatever you're hanging on to and find forgiveness through Jesus Christ. And then secondly, I think to recognize if you're in Christ that you're to look beyond your sin and experience the joy of forgiveness.

See, Cain was not repentant, but if you're in Christ, then you have repented of your sin. Thomas Watson writes this regarding worldly sorrow, which is what Cain experienced in godly sorrow. He says, If there are not some donnings of faith in the soul, it is not the sorrow of humiliation, but of despair.

So when you feel bad about your sin, do you stay in that spot of angry resistance before the Lord? Or do you turn to him and find relief with the pulley of faith? David, King David, after his sin would say many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord. See, the blood of Abel cried out from the ground, and Abel's blood cried out, Cain is guilty. That was what it was testifying to you.

That's the imagery that the Lord used. There's other blood that cries out. According to Hebrews 12 24, Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, has a sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

What's the writer of Hebrews saying there? Well, he's personifying blood. Abel's blood was personified as speaking. What it spoke was judgment upon Cain.

Now the blood of Jesus comes and it speaks as well. What does it speak? Well, it speaks not of guilt, but of grace. It speaks of forgiveness, and it testifies to a new covenant.

And so I want to end this morning with the words of David from Psalm 51. He said, Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love. According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgression.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. Father, thank you for accepting sinners. Lord, you don't accept us apart from the merits of your beloved Son who was punished for sin.

Lord, I thank you that in the cross we can see love and justice meet. We can see both your grace and your mercy as well as your hatred for sin. Father, I pray that we would have the sobriety that I believe this text is intended to produce in our souls.

Or that there are any who are taking sin casually that they would be shaken out of that stupor to see it for what it is. Or there are those in hardened resistance that they would see the folly and cast themselves upon your mercy. And then, Lord, for those of us who are in Christ, that we would glory that you've seen fit to pull us out of that wrath that was headed toward destruction and surround us with your loving-kindness.

Lord, thank you for the forgiveness that you've provided and the cleansing for sinners such as us. We love you and we praise you. Amen.

I'm thinking about Psalm...

Thank you, Ian. Well, it's a joy to be together this morning. I invite you to take your Bibles and turn to Genesis chapter four.

Genesis chapter four, entitled this morning's message, have it your way. And some of you may remember the Burger King ad campaign years ago about your ability to customize your own burger, which works okay, I guess, if that's what we're talking about. But when it comes to life on your own terms and worship, that's another story, as we're gonna see from our passage this morning.

Last week, we stepped outside of the garden and we began to see what life is gonna look like outside of the Garden of Eden. And we noted, interestingly enough, that out of all of the events that would take place in the ensuing decades, all of the many conversations, all of the many situations, there's one primary situation that's recorded for us. This situation with Cain and Abel.

And that's just fascinating to me. When you really know little of Adam and Eve's life post time in the garden, very little of their other children, other than that they had many of them, and yet the Spirit of God intended to memorialize this situation for us. It really gives us a glimpse into what's in the mind of God and what's significant to convey.

Namely, what worship looked like in the first family. And so we introduced this topic last week, that God starts by showing what life is gonna look like after Eden, and He really focuses on how men are gonna relate to God. What will worship look like moving forward? We see even in this first generation then after Adam, that there's already the indelible marks of original sin.

Okay, the doctrine of original sin. The idea that in Adam, the human race fell, and now there's no way to avoid corruption within. Sometimes we refer to it as a sin nature.

What we're trying to communicate there is man's fallen condition, that our minds are affected. Our wills are affected. Our desires, even our bodies, all are really reeling with the after effects from the fall.

And so here we see that there's no neutrality, rather immediately upon birth. Man is not tabula rosa. He's not a blank slate that needs to be shaped and conditioned by his environment.

And we're only bad because we learn bad behavior from others but rather we are born this way, original sin. And if you remember back in chapter three, verse 15, there were two lines that God promised. Two seeds that would go forth, two offspring.

One would be characterized as being of the serpent. And we already talked about that. We said that angels don't get married.

Angels don't have kids. Spirit beings are not brought into existence through procreation. So around Valentine's, we get those cards.

Actually, I don't get them, but some of you might get them. They have the little baby cherubs. I get Valentine's cards.

Just not with the little baby angels on them. Those exist on Valentine's day cards. They're not real, okay? There's not little baby angels.

So the idea that Satan would have an offspring or Satan would have a seed was not the idea that Satan, this angel creature, is now gonna procreate little spawns. Rather, there'd be those who were born in Adam who'd be under Satan's tyranny. And then competing alongside that, there would be those who'd been graciously rescued out of that tyranny and brought into the line of the Messiah.

Two heads, two leaders, two Adams. And in fact, if you wanna leave your finger there in Genesis 4 and just look by way of introduction at 1 John, go back toward nearly the end of your Bible, 1 John 3, and John writes about Cain, and he indicates this very reality, this idea that there are two lines. He describes Cain in 1 John 3, verse 12 in this way.

"'We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one.'" Okay, he belonged to the prince of the power of this age. He was under Satan's dominion. That's the natural position of all humanity upon birth.

Goes on and says, of course, he murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. And so back to Genesis 4, this conflict that we're seeing then between Cain and Abel certainly involves brothers, certainly involves sibling rivalry, certainly involves jealousy, but more fundamentally than that, you actually have the opposition here of two lines, really the righteous and the unrighteous.

And as we're gonna see today, Cain's issues with his brother Abel are ultimately rooted in his issues with God. Have it your way. This morning, we're gonna see Cain's heart exposed.

I wanna read our text together. Genesis 4, beginning in verse 1. Now, Adam knew his wife, Eve, his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, I've gotten a man with the help of the Lord. And again, she bore his brother Abel.

Now, Abel was a keeper of sheep and Cain, a worker of the ground. And in the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground. And Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions.

And the Lord had regard for Abel in his offering, but for Cain in his offering, he had no regard. So Cain was very angry and his face fell. And the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? Why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door.

Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it. Cain spoke to Abel, his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.

Then the Lord said to Cain, where is Abel, your brother? And he said, I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper? And the Lord said, what have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. And now you were cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.

When you work your ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth. And Cain said to the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear.

Behold, you have driven me today away from the ground and from your face, I shall be hidden. I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth. And whoever finds me will kill me.

Then the Lord said to him, not so. If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord put a mark on Cain, lest any who found him should attack him.

Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Last week, we saw God introduced to us here the idea of the first family and how they related to God. And the first thing that happened was we met these two brothers in verses one and two, and we really saw the wonder of procreation.

We saw the gift of procreation and recognized what a wonder it must have been. It's always a miracle. It's always a gift, but this very first child would have been a moment like no other.

And Eve, as we saw, recognizes that she gives birth to a boy. She calls him a man. She conceived in more Cain saying, I've gotten a man, a little man with the help of the Lord.

And we said that whether she thought that this was the Messiah, the promised one, or whether she was just saying the fact that this baby got here blows my mind and the Lord is in this. We know that the Lord was on her heart. Then according to verse two, again, she bore his brother Abel.

She has another boy, another son. And this one is named Fleeting, which of course is fitting considering the premature death that he will suffer at the hands of his brother. And then the text goes on as we're introduced to these brothers, as we meet them in our story, and we see that they have differences.

Second part of verse two, now Abel is the keeper of the sheep and Cain, a worker of the ground. So rather than working together side by side, in the same role, going together like a little group through the farm work, they went their separate ways. It really indicates their uniqueness, that God designs and gifts uniquely.

He creates personalities, Abel likes animals, Cain likes working with the ground. And so then we saw that at some point, in some way, God had prescribed the brothers bring forth an offering. And so we watched them worship last week.

That began in verse three. We saw them worship. And we see here that man, this is the very early lesson, will always worship either God as God requires, or he will worship in his own way.

Those are the only two options. It's mutually exclusive. And so in verse three, we read that in the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and their fat portions.

We recognize it in our mind's eye. We often think of them as somewhat youthful, maybe a small amount of time passing between verses two and three. And yet we realized that most likely these men have been on the earth for decades by now.

Most likely they've been married. And yes, they married their sisters. Thankfully for all the little kids in the room, it's not okay to marry your brother or your sister anymore.

But back then that was all they had and it was okay. So these boys married their sisters. They probably had at the time of verse three, younger siblings.

Those younger siblings had probably gotten married. There was likely nieces and nephews at that time. The population of the earth was beginning.

We recognize that although we aren't given the explicit details, we did see that Ab and Eve were commanded to be fruitful and multiply. They had fertility, they had time and opportunity. Not only that, but there's the indicator in verse 14 that Cain is concerned that whoever finds him will kill him after he kills his brother.

And so the only other people on the earth at that time are Adam and Eve. That's kind of a strange expression. And then we saw in verse 17 that he left with his wife after committing this homicide.

So it would seem then that the best explanation when we read that Seth was born and he was a replacement for Abel, according to chapter four, verse 25, that Seth was not the third born child, but rather the most recent birth after Abel's death. And so many children between Cain, Abel, and Seth, Seth coming right after the murder of Abel, therefore called his replacement. And so we looked at this offering a bit and we tried to understand why does one brother get regarded and the other brother get rejected? And what is this offering? We saw that this offering was most likely not an offering for sin, most likely was not substitutionary, it was most likely not related to atonement.

It's just the general idea for an offering that would be given. So it'd be an expression of God's worthiness. And although we know is that there was a designated time that both brothers came, it would seem most likely probably the whole family was there.

This was probably the kind of designated time that the family would all come, whether it was harvest time, whether it was a weekly time, but they come and they present their offerings. And the Lord only tells us about two of them. Each of them come and they bring what they have.

Cain brings to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, verse three, and Abel brings of the firstborn of his flock. So Abel has animals, he brings those, Cain has fruit, he brings that. We don't know the exact nature of God's response, whether it was visible, but both brothers knew and ostensibly anyone else who was there, that one is regarded and the other is disregarded.

Okay, I want you to just think about this for a minute. One is smiled upon and the other is not. One finds favor, the other is rejected.

This is contrary to a message that is popular today, which is that God accepts everyone. I mean, our culture speaks a great deal of inclusivity, the idea that everyone is to be approved of and however they choose to live. You're seeing that message contradicts scripture.

God does not accept everyone. God does not accept everyone. He's not inclusive.

We're not universalists. We're not all God's children. Not everyone goes to a better place when they die.

The Lord has regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering, he has no regard. He rejects Cain. Cain is unacceptable to God.

God is displeased with Cain. We said that the issue was not the type of the offering per se is that the issue was Abel brought animals and Cain didn't and that was the problem. That's a suggestion that's put forth sometimes to explain God's different response to both of these men.

We'll see in Leviticus later that grain offerings were acceptable to the Lord. You can also bring things like oil and flour. And so the issue is not the one brought produce and the other meat.

Perhaps there is a clue in the text that we read Abel brought a first born and Cain brought fruit but not a first fruit. But as we saw, ultimately the Lord's regard or disregard is predicated upon the man himself. It's right there in the text.

And the Lord had regard, second part of verse four, for Abel and his offering but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. It's about the men. It's about the worshiper first and foremost.

Hebrews 11, four as we saw last week said that Abel's gift was acceptable because he offered it in faith. So I just want you to think about this for a minute with me. What would that have looked like then for Abel to come to God worshiping in faith? It meant that when he got together that animal and he selected which one he was going to slaughter out of his flock, he looked out over all of his animals and he found the very best one.

And he said, that's the one that I want to give to the Lord. I want to give of my very best because God is the provider of all of my flock anyway. It's all from him, it's his anyway.

And I love him and I trust him. And so I want to demonstrate my love for him and my treasuring of him that I think he's valuable and worthy by finding the very best animal in my flock and taking that one to him. That's my offering.

Wasn't to earn God's favor, but he thought that it was good and right and proper and it was in his heart to do it. He loved the Lord. He trusted the Lord.

Cain on the other hand would have gone to get together his offering and been thinking to himself, all right, it's time to go do the thing. I mean, we don't know a whole lot about what he was thinking. I don't want to wade into a lot of speculation, but at the very least, there's a couple of observations we could make.

Cain could have just chosen to stay home. And isn't that interesting? He could have played hooky. What's hooky? I mean, it's a very technical term actually.

Hooky is when you skip out on an obligation without permission, okay? It's an unexcused absence. And typically if you're playing hooky, what do you do? You pretend to be sick. So you can have an excused absence.

Cain could have feigned illness that day and avoided going to family worship. Or he could have just said, you know what guys? I don't really buy into all this anyway. I don't think we should have to do it.

I'm not going to go. And yet astoundingly, it's not astounding. He goes to worship.

And this is the very first example. It's inscriptorated for us for our edification. The very first example of false worship.

That there are those who maintain a form of worship, but they're not actually worshiping the Lord. Cain could have blown it off. That would have been an obvious possibility.

There's hypocrisy in his heart. There's some kind of pretense. He wants to be seen as a worshiper.

He just doesn't actually want to be one. Something within him did not want to let go of the form. And at the same time in his heart, there was no love for God.

You know, people sometimes ask the question like, how could there be millions of people, millions of people across the globe trapped in false religion, believing Roman Catholic doctrine, believing Mormonism, believing Islam, believing secularism. I mean, just the dedication to false religions. You understand that right here in the human heart is the reflex to be religious, to practice worship, to value and treasure something or someone.

And so Cain can't help but be religious. That's what he wants to do. He wants to be at the worship service at the family.

He just doesn't want to worship God. Many people offer worship in vain. That vain means that that worship is pointless.

It's useless worship. It has no value whatsoever. It's like a mirage.

And in fact, that's the word for idolatry. And idolatry is a vanity. It's a nothing.

It doesn't really exist. And so false religion is attracted to the human heart because we're designed to glory in something that makes us unique from animals. And yet worship is in vain if it's not worshiping in spirit and in truth.

See, Cain comes and he thinks he's gonna offer a sacrifice. And in the outward expression of worship, somehow he's gonna accomplish something. God is very, very clear that if you practice worship and in your heart, you don't actually glory in the worthiness of God, it is vain.

Psalm 50 verse eight. The Lord says, not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you. Your burnt offerings are continually before me.

What's the point? The rebuke is not that we had a worship service and an opportunity to come sacrifice and you were missing in action that day. You didn't show up. You have an unexcused absence.

No, you were here, but I'm still rebuking you. David understood this when he said in Psalm 51 verse six, for you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it. You will not be pleased with a burnt offering.

What's the point? Look at my heart is not right. And I come and bring the sacrifice. It's not gonna do the deal.

Some of those pointed words the Lord had was through the prophet Amos in Amos chapter five. Here's what he said. I hate, I hate, I despise your feasts.

I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. I will not accept them.

And the peace offerings and your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. Rather take away from me the noise of your songs to the melody of your harps, I will not listen. See King comes and he offers his offering to the Lord as if he could somehow incur God's favor through the offering itself.

What does the Lord say? You think I need your offering? You really think that I'm sitting here, I'm in need of your offering. Rather what I'm interested in is your heart. I want your worship.

Hosea 6, 6, he makes it clear. For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice. The knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice. The knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. So you just think of it this way.

Most simply, if we're trying to understand what happened here with Cain, God does not accept loveless worship. Worship that is lacking in love and faith and obedience displeases God. And so what is the biblical prescription? It's not to stop offering worship, but rather to stop offering it in vain.

Remember what Jesus said to the Pharisees? No, no, no, hold on. Keep tithing the mint and the dill and the cumin, but guess what? Don't neglect the weightier matters of the law, like justice and mercy. See, our worship adds nothing to God's essential glory.

He's not improved by our worship. He's not intrinsically benefited by our worship. Nothing is added to him by our worship.

We don't actually give back in a way that he somehow incurs more through our worship because everything has already been given to us by him. He's provided all things. It's much like when a toddler goes to the dollar store.

It's now the dollar 25 store and like the $5 store. It's kind of weird. But the toddler goes to the dollar store and wants to buy a present for mommy or daddy and uses mommy or daddy's money to buy the present.

I mean, it's nice. I appreciate it, but it didn't really add anything, right? Yeah, I have all these kids that are like, what? No, it's so meaningful, guys. Keep giving the gifts.

But it was my money to begin with. I don't need it. What I want is the expression of love.

And so God comes to us as his creatures, get this, and he just tells us, here I am, worship me. Is that not remarkable? It is absolutely astounding. I mean, if you've been around someone who's high-maintenance, okay, no elbowing, all right? Not trying to call anyone out here.

If you've been around somebody who's high-maintenance, takes various forms, but there's usually some consistent patterns, okay, with individuals who we would label high-maintenance. It's things like this. They have very specific preferences, okay? There is a way that things must be done their way.

And furthermore, furthermore, they insist upon them. And what do we generally say about people like that? You know, it's a little bit inappropriate, actually, to insist that everyone else does things your way. We're good friends, and we help them see what's going on in their heart.

Or maybe if it's you, the things that you've had to wrestle with would be like, am I a bit self-serving? Am I a bit proud? Am I a bit self-willed? But what if it is God saying how he wants things to be done? And then insisting upon them. That's good. That's glorious and wonderful.

Isaiah 46.9, for I am God, and there is no other. There is none like me. Isaiah 44.6, I am the first, and I am the last.

And besides me, there is no God. Question, does God have the right to set the rules for what is acceptable worship, and then require it, and then choose what he will accept, and what he will reject, or whom he will accept and whom he will reject? Of course he does, because he is above all things, and he is before all things, and there is no one like him. Do you understand how glorious and wonderful this is? And yet, the human heart tends to want to worship what? A God of our own making.

A God that suits us, and this is part of Cain's problem. Cain comes to God, and he thinks he will come to God on his own terms. A God who meets his own personal expectations, his own desires, his own sensibilities.

You and I experience this all the time. We want a God who fits our parameters. Who relates to us the way we would like to see him relate to us.

I mean, this is just part of who we are. I can imagine being on the way home from a get-together, and we met some people. It wasn't a party, right? It was just a fellowship gathering or something.

And I say to my wife, and you know what, I really liked so-and-so, that guy I just met tonight. She says, yeah, of course you did, he's just like you. He fits my parameters, my value system, the way I think of things.

You see, when it comes to God, God simply says who he is, and then you are required to glory in that revelation. To embrace the revelation of God. And very often, you've probably had a conversation with someone, you've perhaps even had these thoughts yourself, I know I have.

Hey, there's something that I've learned about God that I don't actually really like. Probably most commonly would be the thought that I don't like a God who would condemn humans to eternal conscious punishment. I mean, I want a God who wants everybody to have unending happiness and fulfillment and joy.

I can buy into that. But a God who exacts precise judgment upon sinners for eternity, I don't like it. And the scriptures call you to not only like it and tolerate it, but to embrace it and to love that God.

To worship that God, to exult in him and to praise him because he's holy and he's righteous and he's just and he's good. So he is the God who abounds in loving kindness and he's slow to anger, but guess what? He also doesn't leave the guilty unpunished and we're to worship. Christians, we often wrestle with the sovereignty of God and salvation or the doctrine of reprobation or the doctrine of hell.

The resistance is not primarily textual arguments, but it's something that is resistant inside of us. And so Cain here has this challenge that God is not doing things the way that he wants them done. So this morning, Cain's heart gets exposed and we pick up this conversation in the second part of verse five.

Point number one is Cain's heart gets exposed this morning. That was a long introduction. We hear the debrief.

Okay, we hear the debrief. We've already met these brothers, we've already watched the worship. Now we hear the debrief, really the conversation where God comes to Cain and he begins to address what's going on inside.

So Cain comes, he presents his offering. As we're gonna see, Cain believes God ought to smile upon me too. You gotta smile on me and Abel.

We ought to both be accepted. And when God does not smile upon Cain, Cain responds in this way. So Cain, verse five, was very angry and his face fell.

He's very angry. Cain believes that God does not have the right to be his judge. Who made you the boss of me? Who made you sovereign? Who gave you the prerogative? You're gonna assess me, I'm going to assess you.

That's the heart response. R.C. Sproul says, holiness provokes hatred. Holiness provokes hatred.

The greater the holiness, the greater the human hostility toward it. What did Jesus say? They hated me, they're gonna hate you. Why did they hate Jesus? Well, he was the most holy man to ever walk the earth.

The natural heart, the natural human heart hates holiness. And so Cain is very angry, the text says, and his face fell. The idea is it's burning exceedingly.

He is getting hot. He is very angry. I mean, you know what it is like when you get ticked off.

That is how he feels right now. I'm sure that his inner dialogue, he began fuming. This isn't right, this isn't fair.

I bring God an offering and then this is how he treats me. And what's amazing in this is anger is so blinding. Cain is not seeing this as something that he's responsible for, but rather something that's been done to him by God.

God's the one who did wrong. Cain, it seems is not yelling at anyone. He's not throwing things, it's all inside.

Yet his face falls. So you could have looked on his countenance and seen that underneath the surface, he's brooding inside, he's stewing. And sometimes we define anger very narrowly as just the outward exploding variety.

You may be angry and not explode, can you not? Just because you maintain your outward composure doesn't mean you're not angry. This text reminds us of that. I mean, we just, we love to excuse anger.

Occasionally my wife will say to me, Jacob, you seem angry right now. Of course you guys are not there to hear the conversations, but you already can imagine what my response is. My dearly beloved, I praise Jesus that you have come to me right now to reprove me in love.

Tell me, see my sin rightly that I might flee from it and put on newness of life. I thank the Lord for you. Now, what's my most common reaction? By God's grace, I'm starting, I hope to put this to death.

What's my most common reaction? The same as yours. I'm not angry. Cain is angry here.

Yet he's not yet seen himself as the problem. His face is fallen. When you read in the scripture about anger, it has the idea of heat, okay? Anger is emotion.

That's all it is, is passion. It rises up when I think a line has been crossed. God gets angry.

He gets angry when his rules are broken. And that language for hot that we use, so-and-so has a short fuse, or they had a heated discussion, or so-and-so seems hot under the collar. It originates in the scriptures.

God's wrath is to be what? Kindled, heated up. He would say that his anger burned against Israel. So it's this indication of passion that rises up against a perceived injustice.

Typically, our anger is sinful in that it is self-directed. You broke the rules of my kingdom, okay? I have a righteous standard and you violated it. And so now I'm angry.

And so anger, if it's gonna be used to our advantage, would be to take that God-given energy, that passion, and to use it to solve the problem. What Cain ought to have done right now was to have taken that anger and all that was happening, I mean, the proven metabolic and chemical changes in the bodies you get angry, to take that energy and to go figure out what just went wrong. And I'm sitting here and I'm looking, and I brought my sacrifice, Abel's got accepted and mine didn't get accepted.

Mom, dad, what happened? You guys know a lot about the Lord. You guys know a lot about sin and failure. Help me understand what happened.

Or, right, this would require a lot of humility, Abel, little brother whose sacrifice just got accepted, could you help me? Could you shepherd me right now? What just happened? Or maybe to turn and seek the Lord. Instead of using that anger, that energy, to solve his worship problem. Cain's brooding, man, he's just rehearsing the facts, he's rehearsing the injustice, he's telling himself how unfair this is, his countenance has fallen.

We know his thoughts then are futile because his face is showing it, his face is falling. He's becoming marred in his countenance, the anger is settling in. And time is not allowing it to get better, it's getting worse.

And in the midst of that angry response, so first it's false worship, feigned worship, then he gets angry, and now in the midst of his anger, look at how our Lord treats Cain, okay? And we get to hear the debrief here. Spirit of God preserved it so we can overhear it. The Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? And why has your face fallen? Is that not breathtaking? The consistency here and the kindness of our Lord? Why did Adam and Eve have a conversation with the Lord? Because they came and they brought their sin to him to deal with? No, because he went and he found them in the bushes, and he pulled them out to talk to him.

And so Jesus comes like he always does to the lost. And he didn't just come to say, but he came to seek. He comes and he seeks out Cain.

And he asks him, Cain, why are you angry? And why is your face fallen? Why are you upset and why are you depressed? And so Cain now should self-reflect, right? If he has not yet, God's asking him the question, it's an opportunity to reflect. And the text doesn't say exactly what's in Cain's mind, but we know at least this, we know what pronoun he would have used to answer the question about why he was angry and why he was depressed. Because you.

See, Cain thinks the source of his problems right now is God. What should it have been? Because I, because I. Cain is angry at God. Most angry people don't see their anger is directed at God, but because he is the sovereign over all things, all anger, even if it's human anger in its expression is ultimately rebellion against God.

It is directed at God. Psalm 115 verse three, our God is in the heavens and he does whatever he pleases. So if you're displeased with how things are going at a human level, just remember the Lord above is doing whatever he pleases.

So ultimately your beef is elevated. It goes higher than just merely anger against a human. And so Cain here is in his heart, accusing God of wrongdoing.

I just tell you that if you're struggling with your circumstances in life, if you're hurting, if you're grieving, if you're in the midst of a difficult struggle, you're to bring your burdens to God. You're to express your concerns. You're to share with him where you're at.

You don't need fancy words. You don't need fancy clothes. You come and you unburden your soul.

And yet you are not allowed to accuse God of wrongdoing. It's very important. Some people will say, you know what? You just go express your anger to God.

He's got broad enough shoulders to handle it. They just tell you it's blasphemy to accuse God. It's blasphemy to speak against God.

And you are to keep your mouth shut. We're not even to accuse God in our hearts. Nor the scripture say about Job when he was grieving and sorrowful and he would express to the Lord, he would make known his difficult circumstance and even his wrestling with the injustice of it.

But according to Job 1.22 and all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrong. You and I are not ever allowed to step outside of our creature design and accuse God. And so the Lord comes to Cain.

He asked him this question to draw him out and then look marvelously at what God says to him in verse seven, if you do well, will you not be accepted? I mean, this is amazing. You're saying Cain is not such a terrible sinner that he is beyond God's willingness or ability to save. There's still an opportunity for a fresh start.

A turnaround could still be possible. He's not past the point of return. I mean, when you're in despair over your sin or you're trying to help someone who's in despair over their sin, you wanna remember this message that so long as you're still breathing, you can turn to the Lord.

I mean, the idea here is if you do well, will you not be accepted? Cain, look, go home right now. Confess your sin, forsake it, bring the prescribed offering. You think I'm gonna reject you if you come back and you offer me a new offering from a heart of worship, from faith? You bring that cereal to me and guess what? I'm gonna smile upon it the same way I just smiled upon your brother.

We see here God is a God of second chances. He's a God who accepts repentance. Cain blew it, but God says, come back the right way and I promise you I'll smile.

God's clarifying here that he wasn't just playing favorites. It's not that he simply just liked Abel better than Cain. Rather, it's identifying that Cain had rejected the Lord and now it's a call to repentance.

Look at the pronouns. If you do well, will you not be accepted? Cain's stubborn right now, so he doesn't gain insight. If you'd asked Cain, Cain, why did your offering not get accepted? He would not have had clarity on the situation.

He wouldn't have said because my heart was the problem. He would have been confused. He would not have been able to give you a clear definitive answer on that question.

He would have been spiritually blind. And so God is offering Cain mercy and grace right now. God gives grace to the humble and yet it is conditioned.

Is it not? If you do well, will you not be accepted? If you repent, R.C. Sproul says of God's grace, God's grace is not infinite. God's grace is not infinite. God is infinite and God is gracious.

We experienced the grace of an infinite God, but grace is not infinite. God sets limits to his patience and forbearance. And he warns us over and over again that someday the ax will fall and his judgment will be poured out.

See, the first part is if you do well, will you not be accepted? Here's the gracious offer to come to me. It's the same one that Jesus makes to all sinners. Come to me and I will give you rest.

If you confess your sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins. But that's the first part of the dialogue. Next he says, and if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door.

It's right there. It's right on the threshold. You've not been overtaken yet, but sin wants in and it wants to consume you.

See, undealt with anger is a gateway to all other sins and the Lord is urging Cain, listen, sin is more powerful than you can handle. You need to turn from it now before it's too late. Don't play around with it.

Don't mess around with it. It's at the door. It's at the entrance.

It's not inside yet. Slam the door because if you let it in, you're gonna get dominated by it. It's desire is contrary to you.

Contrary is an interpretive decision. The original just says the desire is for you. I think that's the clearest.

God is commanding Cain to do that. That means that he's able to do it, not by his own power or by might, but by faith he could turn and repent. God is offering him right now acceptance.

It's offering him here forgiveness and he's giving him a warning to not delay. And some of you might need to hear this message right now because you have sin crouching at the door right now and you're thinking, I don't need to slam the door. I don't need to urgently repent and turn from it.

I don't need to be concerned about doing well right now. Why does the Lord say it's desire is contrary to you or it's desire is for you, but you must rule over it because if you don't rule over it, it's going to rule over you. And so Cain here gets his heart exposed.

We hear the debrief with him and God, God is exploring what's really going on in Cain's false worship, his personal sense of injustice, his thought that God is wronging him. Next we see the homicide. And we're just going to introduce this for a moment.

Cain's heart gets exposed in verse eight and we witnessed the homicide. This happens after the debrief. Cain does not respond to the warning.

Cain leaves that conversation with the Lord and he doesn't go home and confess and forsake his sin. He doesn't humble himself. He doesn't go get encouragement from his family members to help shepherd and guide him and understand what just happened at that worship service.

Rather, he remains entrenched in his own thinking that God has wronged him. God is unjust. And so that anger becomes settled and it needs an outlet.

Verse eight, Cain spoke to Abel, his brother. He draws him out. This is premeditated.

And when they're in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. I don't believe that Cain thought that first moment when he saw his worship not be accepted by God, I'm going to kill my brother. But it's where sin led him.

And sin takes us so much further than we anticipate where we could go. It is good to have a proper assessment of yourself that your flesh is capable of sinning in ways far beyond what you've already sinned. And Cain here was unwilling to back down.

He had the resentment in his heart. And rather than come to God for mercy and for help in time of need, he tried to manage it on his own. And ultimately his lusts would only be satisfied with the death of his brother.

Cain was unable to restrain his anger. And he ends up taking the first human life, killing an image bearer of God. You need to say killed is too soft.

This is murder, it's homicide. It's not manslaughter. There was intent, there was planning, there was motive.

He called his brother to come out to the field. He did it not in front of witnesses, it would seem, because the Lord is the one who comes and confronts Cain. All this resulted from resistance in Cain's heart to simply bow the knee.

So listen, as you are here today, I want you to understand that what God requires of creatures is that they worship him in spirit and in truth. Jesus had that conversation with a woman who was confused about worship. And there he was demonstrating that God is the one who ultimately makes all of our worship acceptable.

In fact, Jesus Christ is the one who provides the merits by which God would ever find us to be pleasing. And that you do have to bow the knee, do you not? Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Next week, we're gonna see the Lord come to Cain and really the continued self-pitying mindset that Cain has. Even after he kills his brother, there still would have been opportunity for repentance and forgiveness. Yet Cain is gonna continue in that stubborn resistance and self-pity, not turning to the Lord, but really continuing his self-focus that got him into this in the first place.

Let's pray. Lord God, we confess that so often we don't regard you as holy, and yet we thank you that Jesus paid even for those sins on our behalf. Lord, we come trusting in his sacrifice.

Lord, in rejoicing that you see fit to make your own name great through taking rebels and bringing us into the family. Lord, I pray that you'd help us to take this message to heart in whatever way we need to apply it. Lord, where there's resistance toward truth about who you are, maybe an area of your character that we're wrestling with, or a circumstance that we find distasteful, or perhaps even if there are those who attend church and call themselves Christians, but they know that while their words are near you, their hearts are far from you.

Lord, I pray that even today they would call upon your name and be saved. Thank you for all of these things in Jesus' name, amen.