The Need

In this year’s advent series, I will be borrowing ideas from a series developed by Paul David Tripp several years ago. Today, we’ll be looking at the Need, then in the weeks ahead the Promise, the Announcement, and then the Plan.

If you start the Christmas season with the baby in Bethlehem, you're not starting at the beginning of the story; you're actually starting in the middle of the story, and there'll be things that don't make any sense. Why the songs of celebration from the angels? Why the fear, followed by excitement of the shepherds? Why the lengthy journey of the wise men? Why the political panic of Herod?

You really have to begin in the roots of the story, and that’s what I want to do with you over the next few Sundays. You see, that story of the baby in the manger is actually founded in sorrow in the heart of God.

This morning, I want us to grasp the following truth: The God of glory and power and sovereignty is a God of glorious grace.

Genesis 6:5–8 (NASB95)

Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The Lord 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 am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

God’s Sorrow

Think about the deeply personal nature of these words: The Lord was grieved; the Lord was sorry. What would cause such grief to the heart of God? Those words suggest some kind of personal offense, personal betrayal, What could be that significant that it would literally bring tears to the heart of God?

Look at the words of verse 5, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” God saw that the wickedness of man was great. Now, all over the inhabited earth were people, who were constantly doing evil things in the sight of God Every intention of the heart of people was evil.

This passage is describing something that’s deeply personal. This helps us understand the glory of the sending of that baby to Bethlehem.

Human beings were created to love God. That love of God was to be the thing that would shape every thought and every motive, every choice, every decision, every word, and every action so fundamentally, that you could ask me in any situation why I’m doing what I'm doing, and I could give the answer – I love God.

That's what we were created to do. We were made for God. We were made to love God! This is the calling of all humanity. Love God!

Obedience is rooted in the love of God, and because I love God the lawgiver, I find joy in staying inside His boundaries. I find joy in what He calls me to do. I find joy in serving Him. I find joy in pointing to His glory because I love Him. When you love someone, you want to serve them; you desire to please them; you find joy in their joy. That's how every human being who was ever given life and breath was meant to live – that was the plan!

And now, it's very clear in Genesis 6:5, that something has happened, because there must be some other love that has claimed the heart of human beings. Sadly, they no longer delight in serving God; no longer do they find joy in His joy; no longer do they want to stay inside of His boundaries. Instead, they willingly and intentionally do what is evil in His eyes. This would bring distress to His heart.

The Substitution

Think of Christ’s summary of the law when Jesus is asked, “What's the greatest command?” He summarized the law with this response: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and your neighbor as yourself.” What's the greatest command? What's the command of all commands? The root command is to . . . love God! If love for God is the ultimate command, then the greatest evil of evils is failure to love God. When I don't love God, I will not stay inside of His boundaries; I will not live for His glory.

When human beings no longer love God as they should, it doesn't mean that they don't love, because you always love. So, if you're not loving God, then you will give that love to somebody else.

When you're reading here about this evil and wickedness that brought grief to the heart of God, you should ask the question, “What love is so seductive and so powerful and so deceptive that it has the possibility in sin to replace the love that I was meant to have for God?

Paul makes a brief comment on the reason for the birth of Jesus Christ in 2 Corinthians 5:15, “and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.” Here is a clue as to why this baby we celebrate came into this world.

The thing that always replaces love for God, the thing that leads to this endless catalog of evil is love of self. Somehow we all insert ourselves into the center of our world. Somehow, all of us ascend to His throne. We don't find delight in serving Him. We’re obsessed with our will and our way. We want to be sovereign over our own lives. We want to set our own rules. We’re obsessed with our own comfort and our own pleasure and our own happiness.

And when you live for yourself, you will step over God's boundaries again and again and again, because your heart isn’t motivated by love of Him.

What is it that makes a marriage so hard? It's selfishness; it’s self-love. And why is it that I find it so hard to serve, so hard to let a discussion go without it becoming an argument, so hard not to say, “I told you so.” Is it not this love of self that so quickly replaces love for God?

What is it that makes parenting so hard? You've given birth to mini-kings and mini-queens. They want to write their own law. They want to set their own rules.

Every act of murder and violence is rooted in self- love; every moment of greed is rooted in self-love; every kind of gossip is rooted in self- love; every bit of disobedience to parents is rooted in self-love; every moment of adultery is rooted in self-love. The evil of the world has happened because we no longer love God as we should.

We were designed to have at our center, love of God and when that's not there, things that should work, don't work . Just watching the news we can see that evil and chaos are the topics of the day. .

It seems obvious that God loves humanity by the fact that His heart was grieved. God proves Himself, not just to be the sovereign Creator, not just to be Almighty God, but to be a God of marvelous love as He grieves at humanity’s betrayal.

The Solution

How will God respond to this ultimate betrayal? Because you see, God understands this...that every sin is vertical – you have never, ever sinned a purely horizontal sin in your life. Every sin is forgetting Him; refusing to love Him; a rejection of His presence and His glory and His authority–every sin is vertical.

That's why David, in confessing his sin of murder and adultery, is saying, “Against You, You only, I have sinned And done what is evil in Your sight . . .” In essence, what David was saying, was, “My failure wasn’t first that I didn't love Bathsheba and Uriah as I should, God, my failure was...I didn't love You as I should. And when I didn't love You as I should, I was able to do these horrendous things. This is against You!”

Well, look at verses seven and eight. So the Lord God said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.”

Verse seven sounds like a sad and horrible end to the story. God, in holy, righteous justice says, “Enough! I made you. I owned you. I provided every good thing you could ever want, a life of beauty that you could've never ever made for yourself, and this is what you do, you turn your back on me. I will wipe you out! I will wipe the earth clean.” God has every right to do that. And it’s not unrighteous anger; it is holy and righteous justice that sends the waters of the flood to wipe the earth clean.

It would seem like this is the end of the story. Well, it’s not, because Genesis 6 has a verse 8, and it says this, “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.” By an act of sovereign Grace, God placed His favor on Noah and his family. You know the story; they were chosen by God's grace to survive the waters of the flood with some animals there in the ark.

And it’s very important to note what happens after the waters of the flood recede and the earth dries. God makes a covenant with Noah, and God says, “Noah, I'm going to bless you and not only bless you, but I'm going to bless your descendants.” If you read through the genealogy that follows, you’ll read a lot of names you probably never read much before, but you’ll come to a very familiar name –the name Abram. Because Abram was one of those descendants, and God made a covenant with Abram, and He said to him, “Not only will your descendants be blessed, but through your seed, all the nations of earth will be blessed.” The apostle Paul alerts us to the fact that the seed of Abraham is Jesus Christ. You see, the only way this horrible brokenness of relationship could be rectified is for God to send His Son.

Now, look at Genesis 6 again. “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth.” Now listen to what it says, “...and every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Listen, our big problem is not first a behavior problem. If all our problem was that occasionally we behave in wrong ways, you could probably reform yourself and get better.

But our problem is deeper than that. Our problem is a heart problem. In the Bible, the heart is the control center of the human being. Whatever controls my heart will then control my words and behavior. The one thing I am not able to do is escape my heart.

And so, I need to be rescued. Someone needs to do for me what I can't do for myself. And so, God sends His Son, the Lord Jesus, to be exposed to all the harsh realities of life in a fallen world, and yet to live in the midst of all of that brokenness and all of that temptation a completely perfect life.

And in every thought, in every desire, in every word and in every action, Jesus perfectly obeyed. He did what we are unable to do. He died a satisfactory death. He took our sin upon Himself and paid the penalty for our sin with His death so that there would be hope for us; that finally love of self would be defeated, and it would be replaced by the love of God. In order that one day, we would stand before Him, and our hearts would fully love Him, so that every word, thought and action would be pleasing in his sight. That's the hope of redemption.

By His work on the cross, the power of sin has been broken. He's made a public spectacle of the enemy, triumphing over him by the cross. And so, I do not have to live under the slavery of sin any longer. However, the presence of sin still remains and is being progressively eradicated by His sanctifying grace.

Listen, there are times when your thoughts and my thoughts are shaped by love for God, but not always; there are times when the things we desire flow out of love for God, but not always. There are times when the words you speak are formed, by love for God, but not always. There are times when you act in ways that you wouldn’t act if you didn't first love God, but not always. You gave observable evidence this week that there is still a war that still goes on in your heart. And that brought evil and chaos into the place where you live. Maybe that struggle was even this morning; even as you're preparing to go to a service of worship, outbreaks of self-love create anger and division and conflict.

So, everyone in this room still needs to recognize the sad reality of this betrayal and the glorious celebration of the hope that is ours, represented by that baby in a manger who had come on this mission of rescue and deliverance. And because He came, there will be a day when there'll be a company of people whose hearts will be controlled by love of God, and they will live inside of God's boundaries and live for His glory forever and ever and ever.

The Summary

Maybe this is a story that is very familiar to you. Maybe you've placed your trust in this Jesus, but you would say this morning, “Pastor, you're right. I still see that war, and I still need the resources of grace that can only be found in the Lord Jesus.” Maybe you're here this morning, and for the first time, you have insight to say, “I don't think I've ever lived for anybody but me.”

I would plead with you, confess that to the Lord Jesus, this morning; seek His forgiveness; seek His grace. We see that moment of judgment of the flood wasn't the end of the story because: The God of glory and power and sovereignty is a God of glorious grace. And He sent the Son of His love, by grace, to enable us the ability to love Him in the way that we were designed to love.