The World Gone Wicked
Noah's Ark • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 8 viewsNotes
Transcript
NOAH'S ARK | Week 1
NOAH'S ARK | Week 1
Theme verse: Matthew 24:37
Text: Genesis 6:1–13; Matthew 24:36–39; Ephesians 4:17–19
Big idea: God sees what we've stopped seeing.
IN LIGHT OF CURRENT EVENTS REGARDING THE NEW DISCOVERIES OF NOAHS ARK
NEW TECHNOLOGY
NEW RADARS
I AM HOPEFUL OF WHAT WILL COME TO LIGHT AS TRUTH
36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.
Matthew 24 tells us that....
Jesus is sitting on the Mount of Olives with His disciples,
looking across at the temple.
They've just asked Him a direct question: Matthew 24:3
"What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?"
(don’t read)
3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”
That's a question about the future.
And Jesus answers it with a history lesson.
He doesn't describe
skylines or technology or anything we would recognize as "the future."
He goes back almost to the beginning of the Bible and says,
"You want to know what it will look like when I come back?
Go read about Noah."
So for the next six weeks,
that's what we're going to do.
We're going to take that one sentence.....
"As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man,"
and I WANT TO walk THROUGH IT TOGETHER.
Today LET’S LOOK AT THE first three words:
"As it was."
LISTEN TO ME....
if Jesus says the days of Noah are....
a preview of the days before His return,
then we need to know what those days were really like.
I’M NOT TALKING ABOUT the Sunday school version with smiling giraffes.
I’M TALKING ABOUT The real one.
Turn to Genesis 6.
Genesis 6 Is Built Around God's Eyes
Genesis 6 Is Built Around God's Eyes
Before we read it,
I want to point out something about how this chapter is written.
I WANT YOU TO Watch the verbs that describe what God does.
Verse 5: "The LORD saw." GEN 6:5
Verse 6: "The LORD regretted... His heart was deeply troubled." GEN 6:6
Verse 8: "Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD." GEN 6:8
Verse 12: "God saw."GEN 6:12
This whole chapter is told from God's point of view.
Over and over, Moses tells us....
what God saw,
what God felt,
and who God found.
That's HOW I WANT TO WALK THROUGH THIS today.
What God Saw
What God Saw
5 Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
DID YOU CATCH THAT....
it's built like a staircase going down.
Watch each step.
The wickedness was great.
Not just in actions, but in the intent.
Not just the intent of their plans, but of their thoughts.
Not just their thoughts, but the heart those thoughts came from.
And it wasn't mixed......It was only evil.
And it wasn't JUST a bad season.
It was continually.
Notice what God is looking at.
He doesn't start with what people did.
He starts with what was going on inside them.
OH MY LORD....
Long before there was a flood on the earth,
there was something filling the human heart.
Now look down at verses 11 and 12:
11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways.
Three times in two verses, the word corrupt.
The Hebrew word means....
ruined, spoiled, destroyed.
It's actually the same word God uses in verse 13 when He says,
"I am surely going to destroy them."
Here's the point Moses is making:
God didn't destroy a healthy world.
He judged a world that had already destroyed itself.
VERSE 11 SAID IT WAS....
"full of violence."
The Hebrew word is chamas.
It's violence, but it's also cruelty and injustice.
IT’S THE ......The strong using the weak.
People treating other people as if they weren't made in the image of God.
What starts on the inside doesn't stay there.
Read Genesis 3 through 6 in one sitting this week and you'll see it happen.
Sin enters in a garden.
In the next chapter, a brother kills a brother.
A few generations later, a man named Lamech is bragging to his wives...
that he killed a young man just for hurting him (Genesis 4:23–24).
By chapter 6, the whole earth is full of it.
SIN AND EVIL INTENT HAS ENTERED THE HEART OF MAN
AND COMPLETLY CORRUPTS ALL OF MANKIND
HERE’S MY QUESTION....
HOW COME NOBODY SEEMED TO NOTICE?
I MEAN SURELY SOMEBODY CAUGHT ON TO THE EVIL
Here's what I find unsettling about this story..............Go back to Matthew 24.
When Jesus describes Noah's generation, He doesn't say...........
"They were murdering and stealing and rebelling right up until the flood."
He says they were....
"eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage."
None of those things are sins....
That's ordinary life.
Dinner. Weddings. Business as usual.
NORMAL LIFE
OH MY LORD...HELP US
Jesus is NOT saying the world wasn't wicked.
BUT Genesis 6 tells us it was.
WHAT JESUS IS SAYING IS something more uncomfortable:
THAT......it felt normal to them.
IT WAS LIFE AS USUAL
God looked at the earth and saw...
corruption and violence filling everything.
BUT The people living in it looked around and saw...
a regular Tuesday.
How does that happen?
If you've ever walked into a movie theater after the film has started, you know.
You step in from the bright afternoon,
and you can't see a thing.
You're feeling for the rail, hoping you don't sit on somebody.
But give it ten or fifteen minutes....
and you can see the rows, the faces, the popcorn on the floor.
The room didn't get any brighter.
Your eyes adjusted to the dark.
That's what Paul describes in Ephesians 4:
18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. 19 Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.
"Having lost all sensitivity."
That was Noah's world.
And CHURCH.......
Jesus said it would be our world too.
I don't have to give you a long list of what's wrong with our culture.
You already know.
What used to shock us..... now gets a shrug.
What we used to hide........we now post.
What God calls sin.......
we've renamed, rebranded, and sometimes celebrate IT.
But I want to be careful here,
because it's easy to preach this point at "them," .......
at the culture...... at the people who aren't in the room.
The real question isn't...
whether the world has adjusted to the dark.
BECAUSE It has.
The question is whether..... WE have.
the scary part of that theater is that....
you don't feel your eyes adjusting.
It just happens.
And then one day you realize.....
you're comfortable with something that would have bothered you five years ago.
That's why we need what Genesis 6 keeps showing us:
we need God's eyes.
Because God never adjusts to the dark.
LET’S LOOK AT......
What God Felt
What God Felt
we have to go back to verse 6.
If we skip it, we'll misunderstand this whole story.
6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.
Before God says one word about a flood,
before there is a single instruction about an ark,
SCRIPTURE tells us...... what was going on in the heart of God.
His heart was deeply troubled.
The New King James says,
"He was grieved in His heart."
Look at the contrast.
In verse 5,
the human heart is full of evil.
In verse 6,
God's heart is full of pain.
The Hebrew word here...
is connected to the same word God used back in Genesis 3 when....
He told Adam and Eve that sin would bring pain and painful toil.
The pain sin brought into the world is now pain God carries in His own heart.
A lot of people read the flood and decide....
God must be harsh.
"That's the angry God of the Old Testament."
But that's not what the text says.
The first emotion in this story isn't anger.........It's grief.
think about what that means.
A God who never judged evil wouldn't be kind.
He'd be indifferent.
He'd be a God who watched the violence of verse 11
and NOT care what happened to the people being crushed by it.
The same heart that grieves over sin...
is the SAME heart that will not let it go on forever.
So when we talk about judgment in this series.....and we will
I want us to remember where it starts.
It starts with a God whose heart was broken.
I WANT TO LOOK REAL QUICK AT......
Who God Found
Who God Found
Verse 7 is the darkest verse in the chapter.
7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”
And then verse 8. Just two words to turn the whole story:
8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
The God who saw everything,
THE GOD who saw every intent of every heart,
also saw one man.
We're going to spend all of next week on Noah,
so I'll leave most of his story for then.
But I want you to notice one thing today.
Look at the order.
Verse 8 says Noah found grace.
Verse 9 says Noah was righteous.
Grace comes first.
Noah didn't impress God into saving him.
In a world where God's eyes saw corruption everywhere,
those same eyes rested on Noah with grace.
AND that grace shaped the way Noah lived.
FIRST OF ALL....That's good news for every person in this room.
You don't have to clean yourself up to be seen by God.
He already sees you.
The only question is whether you'll respond to the grace He's offering.
AND SECOND,
THE PROPER RESPONSE TO THE GRACE OF GOD
IS TO SURRENDER YOUR LIFE
AND OUT OF THAT SURRENDER FLOWS A LIFE OF HUNGER FOR MORE OF HIM
A DESIRE TO BE MORE LIKE HIM
A DESIRE TO PLEASE HIM WITH MY LIFE
SO WHEN WE READ MATTHEW 24:37....
What Does "As It Was" Mean for Us?
What Does "As It Was" Mean for Us?
Jesus said,
"As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be."
So I WANT TO bring it home FOR A MINUTE
Don't be shocked by the darkness.
When the world acts like the world,
it isn't a sign that God has lost control.
Jesus told us it would look like this.
The darkness doesn't mean His Word failed.
It means His Word IS true.
Don't adjust to it.
The danger isn't just that the world is dark.
It's that we slowly get comfortable in it.
That we laugh at what grieves God.
That we stop noticing OR CARING WHEN SIN IS ON FULL DISPLAY
.........WORSHIP TEAM COME.......
this is where it gets personal.
Maybe for you it's not something dramatic.
Maybe it's:
A grudge you've carried so long THAT...
it feels like part of your personality.
MAYBE IT’S Something you watch that you would turn off if Jesus walked into the room.
MAYBE IT’S A way you talk to your spouse or your kids
AND YOU’VE JUST decided .... "THAT’S how you are."
MAYBE IT’S A prayer life that slowly went quiet,
and you're not EVEN sure when.
None of that feels like a flood.
That's exactly the problem.
LISTEN TO ME FRIEND....
WE HAVE GOT TO Ask God for His eyes.
We can't trust our own eyes to tell us how dark things are....
because our eyes adjust........But God's don't.
AMEN???
.....STAND TO YOUR FEET....
ALTAR
THERE IS A PRAYER....David wrote it in Psalm 139, and it's exactly what we need TO BE PRAYING IN THESE LAST DAYS
I’M GOING TO read it, AND IF YOU WOULD LIKE, READ IT WITH ME....
23 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
EVERY HEAD BOWED AND EYE CLOSED.....
SOME OF YOU ARE HERE AND YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE...YOU NEED TO BE ASKING...
"Lord, what have my eyes adjusted to?
What have I stopped seeing that You still see?"
I ENCOURAGE YOU TO ASK HIM TODAY...
If He brings something to mind, don't defend it.
Just agree with Him.
That's what repentance is:
seeing it the way God sees it and turning back toward Him.
I ALSO WANT TO SAY.....
if you're here today and you've never trusted Jesus AS YOUR LORD AND SAVIOR
I NEED YOU TO KNOW....
the same God who found Noah in the darkest generation in history
is looking at you with grace right now.
You can respond to Him today.
YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE...
DON’T RESIST......JUST COME
THESE ALTARS ARE OPEN
LET US PRAY WITH YOU
Closing
Closing
Next week we'll focus on the next phrase in Jesus' sentence: "in the days of Noah."
Jesus could have just called them "the days before the flood."
Instead, He named a whole generation after one man.
We'll find out why, and what it means to be that kind of person today.
CHALLENGE
This week, read Genesis 6 through 9 and Matthew 24.
And as you read, keep praying that prayer:
"Search me, God."
HELP ME TO SEE.... THE WAY YOU SEE
CLOSE IN PRAYER
