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(10/9) We are in part two of our series, grace like a flood this morning, as we are reeling in the aftermath of hurricane Ian. I’m so thankful for God’s grace, grace that comes in like a flood with more power than a hurricane. God’s grace is just so amazing, beyond understanding, and as we turn to Genesis chapter 6, Noah is about to literally float out of a time and a culture where everybody did whatever they wanted to do.

Last week, we discovered Noah was standing at the end of an age, he’s about to move into God’s redemptive purpose, but he doesn’t know what that is. And so, he’s going to have to begin building by faith, building something greater than himself, something that had been hidden, but was now being revealed. You see, the Lord had been patient, but his warnings have been ignored by the majority, and the things that God was preparing in secret are about to be revealed.

We know that the Lord confides in those who walk with him and Noah was about to operate on a level that far exceeded the expectations of his time and culture. In the same way, today, you and I are about to understand the context of the times, why such drastic measures were taken, and we can because the Bible promises,

"The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever…" (Deuteronomy 29:29).

In our text today in Genesis chapter 6, God is giving Noah a glimpse of things to come so that he would be ready when it happened. And so, this is the story of Noah, the Bible says in Genesis chapter 6, reading at verse nine,

"Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth." (Genesis 6:9-10).

Noah found favor with God because he broke away from his culture and the trends of his time. He walked with God in faith and with deep conviction and therefore he ended up on the right side of history.

Noah was a preacher of righteousness, he believed God, and he knew that each day was a gift from God. In other words, he lived with such a profound sense of gratitude that he could feel it. And so, he knew he was walking in a favor that he did not deserve because the Bible said,

"Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways" (Genesis 6:11-12).

In other words, despite the surrounding darkness and the wickedness of his culture, Noah walked with God because he cared more about what God said than about what the people said.

"So, God said to Noah, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So, make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out" (Genesis 6:13-14).

God warned Noah because he had the faith to separate himself from the human experience. And Noah refused to bow down to the shrine of man’s opinion because he was more concerned about what God said.

I wonder if there are any of you here today who care more about what God said than you do about what people say?

Noah didn’t care whether his neighbors liked what he said, liked what he preached, liked what he believed, or even liked the way he looked. And so, the Lord warned him that everything was going under, the culture was drowning, and he said, "so, make yourself an ark of cypress wood."

In the same way, just so you don’t think that was then, but this is now, the Bible says to us today,

"While people are saying, "Peace and safety," destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape" (1 Thessalonians 5:3).

And so, I know that many of you read your Bibles, you study the word of God, but I want to make sure that none of you are in darkness so that this day would surprise you like a thief. Because the Bible says,

"We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be alert and self-controlled" (1 Thessalonians 5:5-6).

Why? Because, like Noah, we know that God has declared judgment on the unbelieving population and the destruction of everything. And that is not just hellfire and brimstone, Old Testament preaching, because Jesus said,

"As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man" (Matthew 24:37).

And so, just imagine people screaming, entire families going under, struggling and drowning under the righteous judgment of God.

The Bible says that everything that you see going on around us, all the corruption, the hatred, the proud unbelieving wicked, all of it is evidence that God is just. That God’s judgment is right and that he will pay back trouble to those who trouble you. The Spirit says,

"This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power…" (2 Thessalonians 1:7-10).

And so, since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? Well, like Noah, you ought to live holy and godly lives, because Noah found favor with God. Out of all the people on the planet, God saved Noah and his family because he believed and did not idolize his culture.

I want to emphasize the importance of faith, because genuine faith will demolish your worldly fleshly desire to fit in with your culture, cohabitating with your culture, instead of standing out as a follower of Jesus. You see, our natural tendency is to conform, to be like chameleons, but if Noah had invested all of his energy trying to fit in instead of building an ark, he would have drowned with his culture. If he would have been the type of person who was always trying to keep up with the Joneses, trying to look, act, and be like the latest and the greatest, he would have been caught up in the vortex, the downward spiral of a drowning culture.

And so, today, I want to challenge you not to conform to culture, not to conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but as the Bible says,

"Be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:2).

Living a life of faith, turning to God from idols, so that you and your loved ones are able to escape the downward spiral of our culture; being encouraged and empowered to stand on your deeply rooted convictions.

What I’m hoping to get you to see in this text today is that God is working, he is preparing to deliver us who walk with him, and he has stuff in places that nobody knows. You see, even though God was ready to send a flood on the earth, it wasn’t just the floodgates of heaven that were opened, the Bible says,

"On that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth" (Genesis 7:11).

In other words, God had great springs stored in secret places, ready to burst forth at such a time as this. And so, it wasn’t just what came down that flooded the earth, it was what came up from the secret places that nobody knew where they were.

We’ve been talking about grace like a flood, and I believe that God has riches stored in secret places, that nobody knows where they are but him, and so it could come from any direction. In fact, the Lord said,

"I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name" (Isaiah 45:3).

And so, it could come up from the ground or down from the sky. It could come from the north or the south, from your friends or from your haters, but when God gets ready to show you his favor, he has treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places.

In our text today, the Bible tells us in Genesis chapter 6, verse 12, "All the people on earth had corrupted their ways" (Genesis 6:12). And as it was then, so it is now. Redemptively we live in an era of grace on this side of the cross, but in a very practical sense, we live in an age of self-willed, self-ruled, human enlightenment or consciousness. And that is why we’re not safe to walk through the mall, that’s why we have armed security guards at schools, because the more we rule ourselves the more corrupt we become. And it’s not getting better, it’s only getting worse.

Our culture has lost all sense of feeling, they have no sense of remorse, in fact the Bible says, "their consciences have been seared as with a hot iron" (1 Timothy 4:2). In other words, we’ve become scarred, calloused, and hardened, and the love of most has grown cold. The spiritual condition of mankind grieves the heart of God, causing his heart to be filled with pain. This was the problem in Noah’s day and we are destined to repeat it, because left to our own, left to live according to our own conscience, every inclination of the thoughts of mankind is only evil. As the prophet of God said,

"The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure" (Jeremiah 17:9).

And so, here we are, we don’t know how we got here, we don’t know what’s going to happen, but we do know that Jesus teaches us to work while it is still day. He said,

"As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work" (John 9:4).

Not that God can’t work, but he is saying, we can’t work. Because we know that when God gets ready to work, he can spring up like a root out of dry ground (Isaiah 53:2). He doesn’t need the rain, he doesn’t need help of the environment, because he is God all by himself. He said,

"Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth" (Proverbs 8:23, ESV).

He was God before there was a when, a this, or that. He said,

"I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God. There is none besides me" (Isaiah 45:5).

I am the first and I am the last. There is no other, before the mountains were brought forth and the angels first sang hallelujah, before the sun that first morning, he declared,

"I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places" (Isaiah 45:3).

And so, in order to understand the promise, we need to understand darkness from a biblical context.

You see, we understand darkness from our human experience, because from our childhood we know that the darkness can be intimidating. In other words, we know that everything changes in the dark. Darkness changes what’s under the bed, what’s in the closet, and what’s hanging over in the corner. And as a child, all we really wanted was a little bit of light, because everything was different in the dark.

And so, let’s explore what darkness is from a biblical context. We read that in the beginning,

"The earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep…" (Genesis 1:2).

And so, we understand that there was darkness in an age that was formless and empty. In other words, the darkness was not quantifiable, it couldn’t be felt, it couldn’t be touched, because it was not a thing. You may have thought darkness was a thing, but it is the absence of a thing. And so, it is only the consequence or the result of the absence of light which makes darkness legitimate. In fact, the Bible says,

"The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it" (John 1:5).

Light on the other hand is measurable, it can be described by how many watts it is, how much light there is, because light is a thing, but darkness is not a thing. Darkness it is the absence of a thing, it is a void, an emptiness, a place where we can’t see, it is a place where we can hide. That’s why John said,

"Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed" (John 3:20).

And so, darkness really has no power because it’s the absence of light and therefore its existence is uncertain.

On the other hand, God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. And so, in the beginning, even though the darkness covered the surface of the earth, it didn’t stop God from moving. As the psalmist said,

"Even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you" (Psalms 139:12).

And so, God said, "let there be light" and the darkness fled, because darkness runs from the light. It runs and whimpers like a little girl, much like Saul fell to the ground when a light from heaven flashed around him on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:3).

You see, Saul was walking in darkness, persecuting the church, but darkness doesn’t have any power, it doesn’t have any substance, because it is not a thing, it is the absence of light. And so, when a light from heaven flashed around Saul the darkness fled, he fell to the ground, and God opened his spiritual eyes. He turned from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God, receiving the forgiveness of sins and a place among those who believed.

This morning, there may be some of you who are in a dark place right now, but God is getting ready to pull something out of you that you didn’t even know was there. He’s got riches stored in secret places and you may have been walking in darkness for a season, but the Bible promises,

"Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning" (Psalms 30:5, NKJV).

And so, some of the things that you’ve been going through, some of the problems that you’ve been struggling with, even those things that you don’t understand right now, God is getting ready to reach down into that secret place and pull something out of you. You may be in the dark, but that’s just because God has given you some privacy, and he’s about to bring some things out of you that you didn’t even know that you had in you. You may be in a difficult place, a dark place, but as Job said,

"I will come forth as gold" (Job 23:10).

This is something that only can be accomplished by the mighty power of God because he’s the only one that has the ability to create something from nothing, to turn this into that, and it seems that some of his best work is done in the dark. You know, Saul was blinded on the road to Damascus, Jesus was shut up in a tomb for three days, and the prophet Isaiah declared,

"The people walking in darkness have seen a great light, on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned" (Isaiah 9:2).

Or consider Noah, he was a righteous man living in an age of darkness, a thick darkness was over the people, he was preaching but nobody was listening. Although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God, nor gave thanks to him, and their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened, but God does some of his best work in the dark.

In the same way, when he got ready to create the earth, he started in the dark, but he said, "Let there be light and there was light." And so, let’s go back to verse four and consider how all this darkness came to be. What was all this about, when the lights were out, when they are in the darkness the potter looked at the lump of clay in his hand. What would cause him to take such drastic measures? Well, the Bible says,

"The Nephilim were on the earth in those days — and also afterward — when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown" (Genesis 6:4).

Now, ever since this was first written by the pen of Moses, people have been arguing about who the Nephilim, the sons of God were, and who were the daughters of men. And honestly, it’s not easy to be certain as to the interpretation of this passage, but what we do know is that this was a group of mysterious beings called Nephilim who were of unusually large size and strength. They were the heroes of old, men of renown, without restraint, they had no boundaries, they were promiscuous and in their minds anything goes.

Now, the reference to them as the sons of God gives us a few more hints as to their identity. Many Bible scholars believe that the sons of God is a reference to angels just as it was in the book of Job. And so, it’s the same Hebrew word used in both of these ancient books and Job tells us,

"Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them" (Job 1:6, NKJV).

Now, I wasn’t there, and so I don’t know, but I believe that the sons of God are the evil and rebellious angels who fell with Satan. The Bible says that one third of the angels were cast out of heaven with Satan. And I take that position because of several New Testament passages, like this one in the book of Jude which tells us in verse six, that there were angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home.

"These he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day" (Jude 6).

And so, the Holy Spirit tells us that there were angels that were off task, they did not keep to their original assignment, they did not stay within the prescribed boundaries, and so they were bound until the day of judgment.

Now, the Bible doesn’t give us details about demons or even how they could be involved sexually with the daughters of men. But what we do know is that people can be demon possessed, animals can be demon possessed, and we know that demons are fallen angels. And so, with that thought, continuing in verse seven, the Spirit of God tells us,

"In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire" (Jude 7).

And so, in the same breath, the Spirit of God compares the earlier behavior of these angels in Genesis chapter 6 to the sexually immoral behavior of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. In fact, in Genesis chapter 18, we find that the Lord’s response to their behavior was also similar. He said,

"The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous" (Genesis 18:20).

And so, the Lord was grieved because of their sinful wickedness. And in second Peter, chapter 2, we find the Holy Spirit using the angels in Genesis chapter 6 as an example of the condemnation that would come upon those who would choose to live ungodly and immoral lives. In verse four he says,

"If God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly" (2 Peter 2:4-6).

"If this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment. This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire of the sinful nature and despise authority" (2 Peter 2:9-10).

And so, once again, we find the Holy Spirit making a reference to angels that had sinned and the similarity to the sexually immoral behavior in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Now, like I said, I don’t know, because I wasn’t there, but it seems that the phrase "sons of God" clearly refers to fallen angels. And so, it makes sense that if they had sexual relations with the daughters of men that the result would be some sort of mutated supernatural species of man. Therefore, it’s easy to understand why God would be so grieved when he saw that what he had created had been corrupted by fallen angels and perverted into something that he did not create.

But honestly, it wasn’t just the Nephilim, there were many others, the majority actually, who gave no thought of God, or had any inclination toward the worship of God. In fact, everybody was just seeking to please themselves, satisfying their own fleshly desires. And as it was then, so it is now, which is why the Bible says enough is enough.

"You have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do — living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry" (1 Peter 4:3).

You see, there is nothing that can protect the enemies of God from the fearful expectation of judgment. When God gets ready to send the flood, everything that is outside of the Ark is going down. Everything outside of the saving arms of Jesus Christ is going down. Everything outside of the gracious favor of God is going down. But the good news is that it’s not too late to find your way to the Ark. Jesus said,

"In the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark…" (Matthew 24:37-38).

My prayer today is that you would feel that in your soul, that you would take hold of that like an anchor for your soul, and that you would not shrink back from the promise of his grace.

God told Noah, it’s going to rain, you better move, you better get in, and as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be when the Son of Man is revealed. The only difference is that right now there is grace like a flood flowing through this place.

I want to say this in closing, Genesis chapter 6 thru 8 is not just about what happened, it’s about what always happens. People are eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, having children and grandchildren, because life is predictable, people live and people die. None of us know how many days we have, but there is grace, grace like a flood, and right now you have the opportunity to start over.

Read Part 3

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