Approaching Destruction & Deliverance

Yeah, great to see all of you here, this morning. Let me invite you to turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 6. Genesis chapter 6, for our time of study in the word this morning. We're doing a verse by verse study through the Book of Genesis, and as we continue in our study of this book, we come this morning to Genesis chapter 6, verse 4, and, my goal this morning is to try to cover verses 4 through 8 after we do just a brief review of verses 1.

2 and, and 3. And if you want to give a title to the message, this morning, it would be Approaching destruction and Deliverance. Approaching destruction and deliverance. let me start off with this.

There's a TV show that I watch, from time to time on the Smithsonian Channel, called Air Disasters. How many of you have ever seen that? OK. I don't know why.

I, I'm riveted by that show. Every time I sit down to watch it, and each episode, they will start off by Telling the story of an airline crash using actual audio and images when that's available along with some degree of, of reenactment. but the most interesting thing that they do on this show that fascinates me is that once they chronicle the disaster itself, they talk about what investigators discovered about what contributed to The disaster and what they learned from that and then sometimes even changes that have been made to the airline industry to prevent such accidents from happening again.

The show, just the times that I have watched it has made me appreciate the airline industry.

When a plane goes down, investigators are never content with just knowing that a plane. went down. They want to know what caused the accident so that such a disaster never happens again. Their mission is to learn from every disaster and to make the airline industry safer for all of us, and we can all be grateful, for that.

The TV show on the Smithsonian Channel showcases their passion for, for this on their website, on the website, they say this, from the cockpit to the cabin, from the control room to the crash scene, we uncover what went wrong and then reveal what's being done to ensure that these atrocities never happen. Again, as a viewer, I find myself riveted by this. I see the disaster and then I find out what caused it and then find out what people are doing to make sure that things change and that such a disaster never happens again.

I start with this, this morning because as a reader of Genesis, especially in this section of the book of Genesis, I'm already feeling much the same way as I do when I'm watching the show air disasters.

In Genesis, we will read about the greatest environmental disaster in the history of the world. This is the story of the Titanic times billions. This is the story of the sinking of the earth itself under a deluge of water, and it is also the story of 8 people who survived the disaster and lived to tell about it. If all we had in our Bibles was Genesis chapter 7, we would be reading the narrative of the flood, and we would be left asking ourselves a number of questions, and that is what caused this disaster.

What were the factors that brought it about? How is it that 8 people were able to survive this worldwide disaster? What was it about these 8 people that made them the ones who survived? When everyone else died.

How did these 8 people know to even prepare themselves for a disaster of this magnitude? Well, Moses in Genesis 6 is answering these questions. He doesn't just jump into chapter 7. And tell us the story of the great global flood once it started.

He starts in chapter 6 by telling us about the developments that contributed to and led up to the greatest disaster and the greatest rescue operation that the world has ever seen. And so what I wanna do this morning is we're, like I said, we're gonna pick up in verse 4, we left off at the end of verse 3 last week. But let me start off by just reading verses 1 through 8, to you, this morning. Beginning in verse 1, says now it came about 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 beautiful.

And they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. Then the Lord said, my spirit shall not strive with man forever because he also is 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 in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them.

Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. 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. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and he was grieved in his heart. And 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. This is the word of God and may God help us to understand His word to us this morning. The way we're gonna break things down, especially as we pick up from where we left off last week, is we're gonna observe in these verses 7 developments, 7 developments which contributed to God's decision.

To destroy mankind through the great global flood and his decision to deliver Noah. And we've already seen the first two of these developments. Let me just review them for you. The first development we see, in verse 1 and 2, and that is that the sons of God take wives for themselves from anywhere that they choose.

Now, the view that I suggested last week, as to how we understand this passage is that the sons of God in Genesis 6:2 are those who are in the line of Seth that has been talked about in the previous chapter, who see that the daughters of men. are beautiful. And so they took wives for themselves, literally from anywhere or from whomever they chose. In other words, they're making indiscriminate choices about where they got their wives from, rather than taking their wives from among those who love God and who were a part of his appointed people.

They indiscriminately just chose wives from wherever they preferred. Some of these wives would have come from the line of Cain and some would have come from other lines, but they did not come from among those who called on the name of the Lord like they should have. I was hoping to have time to do this, this morning, but we don't have time this morning to interact with, there's different views over who the sons of God are. some say that the sons of God were the Sethites, and that's basically what I suggested and presented to you last week.

Some suggest that the sons of God were kings, back in this day who were building harems for themselves. and then probably the view that has the most traction with commentators is the view that the sons of God were angelic beings or demons and We're not gonna have time to interact with that view, this morning, but if you want my interactions with that view, then call or email the church office or email me this week and we'll send you a copy of this sermon manuscript which features an appendix, which interacts with the view that the sons of God, were angelic beings.

in a nutshell, I, I would say that I'm open. To the possibility that something very significant happened with angelic beings in the days leading up to the flood.

What that is, I don't know for sure. Whether Genesis 2 is alluding to that. I'm not sure of that either, but that is possible and, and the document that I'll give you if you want it, I interact with that a little bit and share some things that commend that point of view and also some questions that, that it seems to, seems to raise. And basically what you'll find in that appendix is what I would have said this morning from the pulpit if you had given me 15 minutes extra to preach this morning.

But I do feel confident, guys, that even though there's a lot of debate about this passage, that Genesis 2, at the very least is telling us that the Sethites who should have known better, were taking wives for themselves from wherever they chose, and this was very displeasing to God. And we unpacked all of that, last week. So observe how God responds to this. This leads us to the second development, and that is that God determines that he will not strive with man for much longer.

God determines that he will not strive with men for much longer. It says, then the Lord said, my spirit shall not strive with man forever because he also is flesh. Nevertheless, his day shall be 100. And 20 years.

God responds to the sins of the sons of God and the overall sin of mankind by making the decision that his spirit would no longer be striving with man as An adversary, as it were in a court of law. Man strives against God, rebels against God, resists God's pleadings, disagrees with God's counsel. And his word at every turn, man is flesh, God says he has reduced himself to behaving merely as flesh, nothing better than an animal. So God says, my striving with man will come to an end.

But having said that, ever the patient God, he determines to give man yet another 120 years before judgment comes upon the world through the flood. There's another development that brought the world closer to the looming catastrophe of the flood, and that brings us to our next point, and this is where we left off last week, and that is this, the Nephilim problem. existed and was actually made worse by these compromising marriages that the sons of God were engaging in. In verse 4, it says the Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them, these were the mighty men who were of old men.

Of renown. let's try to unpack what this means. First of all, when you're, when you're reading your Bible and, you come across an obscure sounding word like Nephilim, some of your translations say giants. I think the King James and New King James say giants, but the ESV NIV, New American Standard, and other translations say Nephilim.

When you see a word like Nephilim and you're like, I don't normally use that word. I don't know what it means. none of us really use the word nephilim in our normal day to day discourse. Sometimes my wife and I will use this word in the heat of an argument with each other, but other than that, we don't really use this word.

I'm kidding. but when you see a word like this, you wanna ask the question, what is the Hebrew word behind the word Nephilim? So in this case, you look it up in the Hebrew and you check the Hebrew and you discover that the Hebrew word is, you ready for this? Nephilim.

Nephilim. And what that means? It means that the translators were not sure how to translate the words, so they simply took the Hebrew word and passed it along to you so that you could figure it out on your own. Seriously, this is the translator's way of saying, you're on your own on this one.

But let's think about this word. What is meant by the word nepheline? To understand the meaning of Nepheline, the first thing you want to do is take off thee ending. That's just simply the masculine plural ending.

and that leaves us with the root, na foul, OK? This root has the idea literally of falling. It means to fall, but it often has the idea of falling upon another person in the sense of attacking them. Like and he fell upon his opponent in the sense of attacking him.

We see it used this way in a variety of instances in the Old Testament. for example, in Joshua 11:7, the text says Joshua and all the people of war with him came upon them suddenly and attacked them, not fouled them, and this root word is used, meaning attack. In Job 1:15, someone says the Sabians attacked and took them. And the word that is translated attacked is this very Hebrew root nafel.

So if Nafel, this root means to fall upon someone in the sense of attacking them, then the Nephilim would be those who attack other people. This leads one commentator to take the word Nephilim to speak of attackers, robbers, bandits. Martin Luther translates the word as tyrants, tyrants. Kyle and Delich suggests that these were men who fell upon people and oppressed them.

They were oppressors. We can infer that these men were physically powerful if they had the power to successfully attack people and dominate people in this way. And so we're not surprised. This is interesting that in the Greek Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament that was translated.

Around the 2nd century BC, they use the Greek word gigantis, from which we get the English word gigantic. putting the pieces together, these men were warriors or attackers or oppressors of immense size and of height. We learned more about the Nephilim as the passage unfolds. Moses tells us that they were on the earth in those days, and also afterwards when the sons of God came into the daughters of men and they bore children to them.

And using this language, Moses is telling us, guys, that the Nephilim. These thugs already were on the earth in the natural course of things. But he also tells us that more of them came into existence as a result of the unholy union of the sons of God with the daughters of men. These Nephilim did not come about merely as a byproduct of the compromising marriages between the sons of God and the daughters of men, they existed before these compromising marriages, and they existed after as well.

Also notice that Moses never says here that the daughters of men gave birth to Nephilim. You don't give birth to Nephilim. He tells us they gave birth to children, but it's evident that some of these children grew up to be Nephilim thugs or bandits. We also learned in the text that these Nephilim gangsters were human because they're described as men of renown.

You might want to underline that word men. The word men there is the normal word for man. It's the Hebrew word ish that we've already seen so far in the book of Genesis. So whatever the Nephilim were, we know that they were human.

They were not demigods or hybrid beings, half angelic and half human. They were merely men. And by the way, even some who take the angel view that the sons of God were angels, they would say the same thing. Many of them would say that the Nephilim were just totally human beings, not some hybrid type of creature.

We also learned that these Nephilim were mighty men who were of old. The expression mighty men is the same expression used in the Old Testament to speak of David's mighty men, his generals, his greatest soldiers. Indicating that these Nephilim were ultimate fighters. Moses is saying that these Nephilim were mighty men who were of old.

In other words, mighty men or warriors of remote antiquity. Men who marked the ancient world with their presence, with their ways, and with their exploits. You can tell a lot about a culture by looking at who its celebrities are. And in the days of Noah, the Nephilim were the celebrities.

We're told that these were men of renown or literally men of the name. They had a name, they had fame, they were men of the name, the ultimate reputation. These were the famous men, these were the celebrities of their day, the Jesse James of their day, the crime lords of their era. Think of the modern day mafia, the modern day drug cartels.

These men were the Al Capones or the El Chapo's of their day. These men were mobsters, the godfathers, the kingpins who held power over people's imaginations. The reputation of their strength and their prowess and their brutality traveled the ancient world. We get further indication about the Nephilim in verse 5, where Moses immediately transitions from talking about the Nephilim to telling us that 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 Nephilim gangsters would be included in this description of the wickedness of man found in verse 5. In fact, these Nephilim probably were on the cutting edge of this wickedness, setting a wicked tone for the rest of the world. These were utterly wicked men who because of their power and because of their size, had unusual ability to carry out their wicked will and impose it. On everybody else.

Beyond these descriptions, the irony is that we know nothing else. Of these men today, whatever their reputation. Or fame was back in Noah's day, it is gone now. Whatever their exploits, it is gone.

Whatever their height or strength, they obviously were no match for the flood which wiped them and their reputation out altogether. Moses' primary intent and telling us about the Nephilim here is to let us know that the marriage of the sons of God to the daughters of men made this problem worse. Such gangsters existed before these compromising marriages, but now that these intermarriages are taking place, some of the children born in these very homes grew up to be among the Nephilim crime lords.

Evidently the sons of God did not cause this societal problem.

Of these nephilim to get better, they made the problem worse by their compromise. And in the very next verse, we will see the wickedness of it all, a wickedness that will push God to the point of deciding to destroy mankind from the face of the earth. And that brings us to our next development. And that is that God saw, he sees the wickedness, the greatness of man's wickedness on the earth.

In verse 5, the text says, 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. And other ancient flood accounts and cultures all over the planet. have flood accounts. it's interesting to read those accounts and see how they're similar and different than the Genesis account.

The one thing they all have in common is water, a whole lot of water. After that, there's a ton of variety. but in some of the ancient flood accounts, the gods wanted to destroy man because Man was too loud. Mankind was just too populous and too noisy, and the gods couldn't sleep at night.

And so they tried different things, plague and famine and disease to wipe men out and that failed and so they then resorted to the great flood. And so there were different reasons that the gods wanted to wipe men out, but Genesis stands alone. And the reason that it gives for God ultimately deciding to destroy the world. As one writer says in the Genesis account, man is drowned because he is a rebel and a sinner.

A rebel and a sinner. Notice how verse 5 begins. It says, the Lord saw, the Lord saw, this should strike something in our memory. The last time we saw this language was in Genesis 1:31, after God had created everything.

And it was all so good and before the fall, and we're told in Genesis 1:31 that God looked upon all that he had made, and behold, it was very good. But here after the fall. God is looking upon the world and he sees the opposite. He looks and he sees that the badness, the evil, the wickedness of man was great, both in quality and in quantity.

The statement about what God saw. It is really sad and unsettling to read. It's the most densely packed description of man's sin that we find anywhere in the Bible and it shows up so early in the Bible in Genesis 6. Notice the language that is used here, designed to show the expansiveness and the depth of man's sin.

We see the words every, only, continually, and great. According to this verse, God saw that the wickedness of man was great or abundant on the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Imagine that being true the world over, all the time of everybody on the planet. This tells us that God saw man's actions and that he saw man's heart, and he saw man's motives and even read man's thoughts.

This is the God of the Bible, and he is looking upon mankind and he sees everything, absolutely. Everything. As the writer of Hebrews says, all things are open and laid bare before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. God sees you, he sees what you do when no one else does, and he sees your thoughts, every one of them.

Here God sees man's wickedness. He sees that the wickedness in man's heart is abundant. God doesn't just see that some or most of the intents of man's heart was evil, but that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was evil, only evil, evil continually. This means that you could have at this time in history randomly picked any given moment in any given person's life who was alive at this time and in that moment, you could have extracted any given intention or thought of their heart and then dissected that thought.

Looking for something good and redeeming, and you would have found only evil. This is the depths to which man had sunk. This is like trying to cut a bad fruit. Thinking, hoping that at least some part of the fruit might be edible and finding when you cut all the way to the core, that the fruit is 100% utterly rotten.

With nothing of any value in it whatsoever, only fit to be thrown out. That's what's happening here with God as he looks upon man in the days of Noah. When God looked upon man during this time, he saw only evil continually and saw that almost nothing of his image remained. Nothing but evil in man's actions and in man's thoughts and motives.

The word that is translated intent in this passage is a sadly ironic word. The word is actually lifted from the language of pottery. It's from the word that means to form. And it's the word that is used to speak of a potter forming something from the clay.

This is actually the word that is used in Genesis 2:7, as you see on the screen to speak of God forming man from the dust of the ground. This word implies design or purpose and here in Genesis 6, it speaks of the formation of thoughts, and then the formation of those thoughts into actions. You could translate This passage in this way, God saw that every formation of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually. In Genesis 2, God is the potter fashioning man to his liking.

But now man is his own potter fashioning his own thoughts and then fashioning those thoughts into actions according to his liking. Man has removed God's hand from his heart and life and man has assumed the position at the potter's wheel of his heart, and he has become his own maker, his own potter. Man has become the master of his own fate, the captain of his own soul, the framer of his own thoughts and actions, and what man is producing here. The text says is only evil continually.

As one writer says in Genesis 2, God was the potter, fashioning man, now man himself has become the potter, fashioning his thoughts. What God forms is beautiful, what man forms is repulsive. In the workshop of your heart. Who forms your thoughts?

Who fashions your motives? Who forms your actions? Is it God? Is he at the wheel of your life and your heart and your mind?

Is it his hands that are on the clay of your heart? Or is it your hands? In this day, They were fashioning. Their own thoughts and their own actions according to their own dictates with God's hand off of them altogether.

And as God looks upon man during the days of Noah, this is what he sees, and how does God respond? This brings us to the next development. The Bible actually tells us that at this point in history, God was sorry that he had made man on the earth. It says, and the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and he was grieved in his heart.

The word that is translated as sorry is the Hebrew word for repent. The text is telling us quite literally that God repented that he had made man on the earth. And if you're uncomfortable with the idea of God repenting, understand that this verb repent. I used 48 times in the Old Testament.

Write down that number, 48 times in the Old Testament we see this word repent, and in 34 of those instances, God is the subject. God is the subject. Now normally, in the Old Testament, when we're told that God repented or relented, it means that he's repenting of something that he was intending to do or had threatened to do. For example, in Jonah 3:10, God saw that he had threatened judgment upon the city of Nineveh.

They repented of their sin. And God saw their repentance, and Jonah 3:10 says, God repented concerning the evil or the calamity which he had declared he would bring upon them. He, he relented. What he had threatened, he withheld.

From them. Normally, that's in many occasions how this word is used when it speaks of God repenting. What's really standing out here in this passage is that here in Genesis 6, God is repenting over something that he has already done. This is unusual.

Specifically, God is repenting that He had made man upon The earth. God is saying here, I am sorry that I made them. And he says that again in verse 7, speaking of mankind, at the end of verse 7, he says, I am sorry that I have made them twice we're told. That God was sorry that he had made man.

So let's take this statement at face value and understand that God is genuinely experiencing sorrow in this moment over having made man upon the earth in the first place. He is feeling regret over his creation of man upon the earth. Please understand though that this does not represent the sum total of all that God is and all that he's thinking. and all that he is feeling at this point, we know from scripture that God is sovereign and He is in control, and that he has a wonderful plan of redemption that was established before the foundation of the world.

And so God is thinking many thoughts and feeling many things that we can't even fully imagine. He is utterly sovereign and yet in all honesty, at this particular point in the unfolding of the plan, God is feeling something. He's feeling sorrow and regret that he made man. It is what it is, whatever your theology is, you have to put this in your theology somewhere.

We learn here that God is sovereign, but he is a feeling sovereign, a weeping sovereign. As one writer says, this passage provides a window into the heart of a troubled creator. A window into the heart of a troubled creator. In terms of what God was feeling, Moses tells us that he was grieved in his heart.

Literally, he was pained unto his heart or he was pained into his heart. This speaks of the pain that God felt over man's sin that pierced God all the way to the center of his being. The word that is translated as grieved is, is used to express the most intense form of human emotion in other places in the Old Testament. This is the word that is used to speak of what the sons of Jacob felt when they heard that their sister Dinah had been raped.

Imagine what you would feel upon receiving news that a sibling of yours has been raped. This is the word that is used to speak of how Jonathan felt when he heard that his own dad was intending to kill David, who was Jonathan's best friend. This is the word that is used to speak of how David felt when he heard the news of his son Absalom's death in 2 Samuel 19. This is the word that is used in the Old Testament to speak of how a deserted wife feels when her husband has abandoned her.

It's used this way in Isaiah 54:6. And this is what God is feeling. As one writer says, we're being told here that God's heart. At this moment is a wounded heart filled with pain.

The same writer goes on to say these words, I love this. He says, God is no robot. We know him as a personal living God, not a static principle, who while having transcendent purposes, to be sure, also engages intimately with his creation. Our God is incomparably affected by, even pained by the sinner's rebellion.

God is not a dispassionate accountant overseeing the books. Of human endeavor. May God open our eyes to just get this vision of God that's being presented here, a God who feels so deeply. And take so personally our choices to sin and rebel against him, even as Christians were told in Ephesians 4:30, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.

Even as believers, we can bring grief to the heart of God. This word speaks of personal pain, which in many passages in the Old Testament entails a deep feeling of anger. Anger is not totally unassociated from this word. This leads one commentator to translate the expression as God felt bitterly.

Indignant. Bitterly indignant. Clearly there is grief. And anger In the heart of God at man's sin.

God is a God who grieves, but he does not merely grieve. He shows wrath. God is definitely a God of wrath, but he is not merely wrathful. He mourns over sin.

His wrath is born out of a deep lament and mourning. He demonstrates his wrath when needed, but he weeps while he does so. Interestingly, the word grieve that is used here in Genesis 6 is the same Hebrew word that is used in Genesis 5:29. You might want to write that reference down where Lame, Noah's dad, gives birth, they have Noah and then he looks at Noah, names him Noah.

And says this one is gonna bring us rest and look what he says from the toil of our hands arising from the ground which the Lord is cursed. And that Hebrew word translated toil. is the same word translated grieved in our passage today. So here in Genesis 6:6, we see the same word being used that means toil or grief in the heart of God over the wickedness of man.

In Genesis 5, we learned that man is grieving. As a result of the curse of the ground that came about in response to man's sin, but in Genesis 6, we see that God is grieving and experiencing a toil of heart over man's sin. In Genesis 5, we see man is suffering and toiling as a result of sin. In Genesis 6, we literally learned that God is suffering and toiling in his heart as a result of man's sin as well.

I hope we appreciate Genesis 6:6. This is It gives to us an astoundingly vulnerable picture of God this early. And scripture. Christian philosophers, theologians, suffering saints have gathered at this passage for centuries.

It is here in the Bible that we learned for the first time that it is not man alone who suffers as a result of sin, but that God suffers too. He suffers pain. And grief over the sins of mankind. Looking at the language that Moses is using here in Genesis 6:6, John Calvin writes these words, he says, God is hurt no less by the atrocious sins of men than if they pierced his heart with mortal anguish.

Strong language there. And by the way, that's exactly what happened. At the cross God sent His Son to die on the cross for many, many reasons. One of them is to put his suffering on display for the whole world to see.

Christ's suffering on the cross was not the first moment that God ever experienced any pain or suffering. Over a man's sin. He has always been experiencing a piercing grief over the sin of mankind and the cross is intended in part to put that grief, that pain on display. The cross of Jesus Christ is essentially God giving us a close up view of Genesis 6:6.

Now observe what issues forth from this lamentation and grief that God is feeling in his heart, and this brings us to the sixth development that we'll look at quickly, and that is that God determines to blot out man and animals. Say, and 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 the birds of the sky, for I am sorry that I have made them. I am sorry that I have made man, essentially. is what he is saying.

God is determining here to blot out man. That he created. This word blot out is used to speak of erasing something. Nowadays we have erasers, to erase something on a chalkboard or erasers on a, a pencil.

Back in this day, if you wrote something on a document, the ink didn't really absorb into the document that deeply, so you could basically take a wet sponge and just wipe it over the document and erase what had been written. On that document. And that's the word God uses here. God is determining here to wash man off the face of the earth, like taking a big eraser and erasing man from his earthly existence.

In Psalm 51, David uses this very Hebrew word after he had committed adultery and committed murder. And he said to God, he said, blot out my transgressions and what he's literally asking is for God, as it were to take a wet sponge and to erase his sins of adultery and murder from the record books of heaven. And what, God granted David's request, and he erased David's sins from the record books of heaven. God does that for people who repent of their sins and confess their sins.

He erases their sins. But here in Genesis 6, we learned something very sobering, we learn what God does with sinners who do not repent. And that is he erases sinners. He judges them.

By drowning them. Either our sins will be erased by God in mercy because we've repented and come to Him for salvation, or we will be erased. And judged for our sins. God also determines here in this passage to blot out animals, even though they had done nothing wrong, it's evident animals by the millions are going to suffer as a result of man's sin.

And God at the end of verse seven says it again, I am sorry that I have made them. Guys, just imagine, those are such heavy words. Imagine these words being said about you. Imagine if each person who died in the flood, if they could have heard God speak those words about them, if they could have heard God say, before they died, I am sorry that I have made you.

In fact, I think we can say that the flood itself was God's way of saying, I am sorry That I made you. This is how God is thinking, this is how God is feeling as he looks over the landscape of humanity during the days of Noah. His heart is grieved, his heart is toiling with grief and with sorrow that we cannot even begin to imagine. But the grief of God is diminished to some degree when he lays eyes on a man named Noah.

And this brings us to our final development, which is huge. What happens in verse 8, guys, if, if what verse 8 records did not actually happen, none of us would have ever come into existence in the first place. The 7th and final development this morning is this Noah found grace. In the eyes of God.

Noah found grace in the eyes of God. It says, but Noah found favor or Noah found grace in the eyes of The Lord. The fact that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord implies that he was looking for grace in the eyes of the Lord. And it's interesting to me that of all the things that Noah would have thought to look for and to seek from God, the thing that he was looking for was grace from God.

Evidently Noah was not looking for justice from God. He was looking for grace from God, and the text here tells us that he found. That grace. Just very quickly, guys, throughout the Old Testament, If you look up the expression found, finding grace in someone's eyes, it's always the person of inferior rank, who's in the more vulnerable position, who is experiencing dire need, who is in many cases deserving of judgment.

And who's in a position of indebtedness, it's always that person who is finding grace or hoping to find grace in the eyes of someone who's at the opposite end of the spectrum. Hoping to find grace in the eyes of the one who's of higher rank, who's in the stronger position, who has what is needed by the one in the lesser position, the one who has power to judge and who can call in the debt if he wanted to. It's always the person Of inferior rank, suffering need, deserving of judgment, who is hoping to find grace in the eyes of the one who has the power to judge, power to call in the debt.

For example, you can write down Genesis 32 and 33, Genesis 32:5, 33-8, 33:15.

Jacob had deceived his brother Esau, cheated him out of his birthright. And then he hears that Esau is coming to visit him and Jacob is freaking out and he knows I deserve to be killed by Esau and he knows that he's in trouble, so he's sending servants and animals ahead, sending everyone else and all of his possessions ahead to Esau, hoping to placate Esau. And he admits that the reason that I'm doing this is that I am hoping to find favor in your eyes. That's what he says to Esau.

He knew he was in the more vulnerable position and he deserved Esau's wrath. And he was hoping to find grace in his eyes. So the fact that Noah was looking for grace from God indicates that Noah recognized his position of weakness. He recognized the debt that he owed to God that he could never pay.

He recognized the judgment he deserved from God. And so he looked for grace in the eyes of the Lord. And the text here tells us that he found it. The word grace speaks of undeserved favor.

So if we understand this language properly, it means that the recipient of grace actually deserves judgment too. This is indicating that Noah deserved judgment, just like everyone else, but he found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Notice that the text does not say that Noah earned grace in the eyes of the Lord, but that he found grace. Grace is not something you earn, it's something that you find.

If that you're a sinner and what you need from God, more than anything else is grace. And if God is the one that you want that grace from more than you want it from anyone else. And if you come to God looking for that grace, you will find grace with God, no matter how checkered your past, no matter your past sins. We will learn in later verses that Noah was a righteous and a blameless man.

And so it should tell us a lot that this righteous man was looking for grace from God. Here's a man that anyone would have looked at and thought he is amazingly righteous, and yet if you came to Noah and said, what is it that you need most from God? What are you looking to gain from God more than anything else? Noah, the righteous, would say, I need grace from God.

I am looking to find grace in the eyes of the Lord. In fact, in all likelihood, Noah's righteousness and blamelessness of life, walking with God that we're gonna learn about next week, later in this chapter, that all of that righteousness of life was fueled by the grace that he found. With God There's a handful of things that we learned about Noah in this chapter, but the first thing Moses wants us to know about him. is that he found grace with God.

Later we'll learn that he was righteous in his life, but by the way that Moses sequences this, we learned that grace always. Precedes righteousness. We learned in this section that we've studied this morning that God is a God who sees everything, our actions and our thoughts. He feels deeply and he's grieved in his heart over the sins that we commit, the sinful thoughts that we think.

I'm amazed that God cares so much about you and I that he would open himself up to even letting himself feel this grief over Even the thoughts that we think, that's how engaged God is in his heart, with our lives and how much he loves us and cares about us as his creation. We also learn in this passage that God is a God of wrath who judges people, who stubbornly refuse to repent of their sins. But we also see that God gives grace to those who look for grace from Him. people like this, we may have some in this room this morning.

Some people aren't looking for grace from God because they don't think they need it. Some refuse to believe that they've even sinned and stand in need of grace from God. Some believe that they've sinned, but they try to earn their way into God's favor. They're not trying to find grace in his eyes, they're trying to earn favor from him.

And such people don't want grace from God, they want what they deserve, and they think what they deserve is God's favor. But that's not grace. And if you're here this morning and you're like, I don't need grace from God, I'm a really righteous person, like the former mayor Bloomberg who said basically extolled his righteous deeds and he says, if there is a judgment, day that will come before I get into heaven. I'm not even gonna stop to be interviewed.

It's not even close. I deserve to get in to heaven. There are people with that mentality. But if you think you're so righteous that you don't need grace from God, take it from the most righteous person alive on the planet during this day.

The only one that survived the flood. And Noah would say to us all, I deserve to die in the flood just like everyone else, but I found that there is grace with God and I found grace in his eyes, and that has made all of the difference for me. If the most righteous man on the planet was looking for grace from God, my theory is that you and I should be looking for grace too. And may God give us hearts that are willing.

To seek this grace from God. Let's pray together. If you're here today and you're living in sin, I just call upon you to repent of your sin, confess your sins, cry out to Jesus to be your Lord and Savior. Understand that God loves sinners so much that He sent His Son into the world to die on the cross so that we can escape his judgment and experience his amazing grace.

If you've never tasted of God's grace, a grace that is holy for sinners, I urge you to reach out to the Lord Jesus Christ. And receive this grace from him today. He wants to give you His grace so much that he died. To give you this grace.

that you might find grace as Noah did in the eyes of the Lord. Father, we thank you for Your revelation to us this morning, we have heard from your word. And there is much that is here for our prophet. For our teaching and learning, for our correction, for our training and righteousness, and even for our reproof where that is needed.

Thank you, Lord, for not just agreeing with us all the time but for speaking to us in ways that sometimes confronts us and rebukes us. But then shows us the way of grace. May we receive your correction. The exposure of our sin.

And experience grace that comes from you only through Jesus Christ. Lord, we thank you for this opportunity that we have to give of our offerings to you this morning. Receive these funds that we give today and do much with every Everything that is given, Lord, for the glory of Jesus, for the spread of this message, the good news of your grace through Christ. And while we give to you of our offerings, Lord, we also give ourselves to you in full surrender.

Receive what we give today by your grace. We ask all of these things in the name of Jesus, and all God's people said, Amen.