God's Big Picture: Genesis 5-10

CIT: We must be totally reliant on the grace of God for our salvation and transformation.

4 Themes:

Man is sinful

God is gracious

God is wrathful

Man needs a Savior

Man is sinful Gen. 6:1-5

In the beginning of Noah’s story we see that humanity is hopelessly sinful.

There are two points in which we see this,

First, humanity has become so depraved that even the angels are deceived into coming down to earth to lay with women committing sexual immorality which lead to men being warring tyrants.

Second, God perceives humanity’s heart and says that, “every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

This relentless wickedness of man, “grieved God to his heart.”

What do we learn from this?

First, when we are left to our own devices our natural state is to fall into sin

There’s a reason why the idiom “Idle hands are the Devil’s playground” exists. Because we are prone to give into sin

Second, our sin grieves God, it make God sad when we sin.

Why would God be sad when we sin? Because in our sin we are saying that God does not satisfy us enough and we are going to find that satisfaction elsewhere. The one who has given us all the earth and life itself is not good enough so we look for it somewhere else....how ludicrous does that sound? that’s why it grieves God’s heart.

God is gracious Gen. 6:8, 9:1, 8-11

Even though man is woefully sinful on our own God is still gracious and merciful towards humanity. How so? look at Gen. 6:8, “But Noah found favor in the eyes of God” The Hebrew word for favor can also be translated as “grace” so, “Noah found grace in the eyes of God.

How did Noah find grace in the eyes of God? It wasn’t from something that he did it was simply because God chose to give grace to Noah. God chose Noah.

Not only did God choose Noah he also blessed him in the same way that God blessed Adam when the flood water subsided. Gen. 9:1, “And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.’”

And not only did God bless Noah, he also made a covenant with him to never flood the earth with water ever again.

This is very important for three reasons,

First, when God makes a covenant with someone it is because God has chosen that person to make a covenant with out of love for his people.

Second, God is promising to protect the earth for the sake of his people

Third, God promised to not flood the earth with “water” because one day will come when God does flood the earth again, it’s just not with water.

God is wrathful Gen. 6:7, 7:11-12, 7:17-24

Many times we will hear sermons, lessons, and gospel presentations that proclaim the glories of God’s grace to sinners, which is something that must be and will be proclaimed, but are left without the warning of God’s wrath. But here’s the thing, we cannot understand God’s grace without understanding his wrath as well. Because, God’s grace is found in him withholding his wrath and giving us life instead.

The story of Noah is a perfect picture of this, that God is wrathful and will bring down his wrath upon deserving sinners whenever and however he may choose, but that he is also loving in gracious in that he chose Noah for salvation from his wrath.

God flooded the earth with water because humanity’s sin had become so prevalent that God had to wipe the earth clean from the wretched stain of sin.

Here’s the thing, we often remember Noah’s story about a nice family getting to build a big boat and God putting all of them and all the animals in a nice happy ark, but here’s what we don’t think about what did Noah and his family hear as the rains began to fall… screaming? crying? begging for mercy? cursing? and then a deafening silence that showed that God had truly wiped the face of the earth clean.

How do you think this made Noah feel? He probably heard and thought about all of that death and realized that God had saved him and his family. He realized that God had shown him and his family grace.

In our culture we often hear that if God is so loving how could he flood the earth and kill all of those people? Here’s the thing, when Elias eats yogurt he makes a huge mess. it gets all over his face, hands, and even in his hair. If I left that yogurt there on his face all the time and never wiped it off what would happen? It would spoil. It would stink. It would possibly make him sick. He would suffer because I never wiped his face clean. God wiped the earth clean not just to have fun, but to protect his people, to protect his chosen people from suffering under the horrible weight of sin.

Man needs a Savior Gen. 9:20-24

But here’s the thing, even though God wiped the face of the earth clean there was still a problem. Noah still had a problem. Because even though when he got off of the ark he offered a sacrifice up to God in worship he still had a sin nature that the was dealing with. He ended up getting hammered drunk from his vineyard and passed out naked on his bed where his son saw him laying there.

If you were hearing this story for the first time with no other knowledge of Scripture you would have thought that Noah was the promised son from Gen. 3:15. He was chosen by God, he was considered blameless, he walked with God (Enoch was the only other person that this had been said about and he was taken up to heaven by God), he obeys God in the face of improbable circumstances, he worship God when he gets off the ark, God blesses him and makes a covenant with him, and then he sins. He shows that humanity has been broken to their core and truly needs for that promised Son to come and crush the head of the serpent.

Thankfully God has come in the flesh to save us through Jesus Christ. Jn. 3:16-17, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but has eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world” because they already were condemned, “, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Now why does God choose who he will give his grace to be saved through faith in Jesus Christ? Because he loves his people and he loves his glory. Eph. 1:5-6 says, “In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.”

Conclusion

So , if we are to truly understand God’s grace in choosing Christians to have faith in a wonderful savior we must first realize that man is inherently sinful on their own thanks to the fall, and God’s is justly wrathful for this sin because we have sought satisfaction in something other than the King of all Creation, but God has chosen to give all of humanity grace in allowing us to live and he has also chosen to give grace to save whomever he chooses, just as he chose Noah to save from the flood he has chosen Christians to be saved from his wrath in hell for all eternity. And when we sit back for a moment and truly reflect on this we will truly see that God’s grace is really an Amazing Grace