This transcript has been automatically generated, and therefore may not be 100% accurate.

Here we are then. We're in a sermon series in the first book of the Bible. We're calling it Beginnings. And maybe you found yourself challenged each week as we've looked at these early chapters of Genesis. These chapters have challenged our thinking, some of the ideas and commitments that we've been taught from our earliest days, that we've always thought we've had to be prepared to think about them again, to think through them again.

And I have to say this morning's chapter or chapters are no different. And maybe you had a Noah's ark when you were little in your nursery with the figures, the animals going in two by two. Or maybe you, like me, have read that book. It was 20 or 30 years ago now by Julian Barnes. A history of the world in ten and a half chapters.

Has anybody read that? The first chapter begins with Noah's Ark and it's narrated by a woodworm that gets onto the ark. It's quite comical, it's quite funny, but in the end it's really quite childish. Well, maybe that's our view of these chapters. It was fine for the nursery, but can we really take this seriously today?

Well, I suggest that these chapters raise all kinds of questions and we don't have a lot of time this morning, just 15 minutes or so. So save up those questions for your Connect group leader on Wednesday night, and they will be delighted, I'm sure, to try and discuss them together.

One thing I think we have to say as we begin these chapters, and we're going to begin on page eight in Genesis chapter six, is that the world of Noah's day was polluted. Look, whatever we think about Noah's Ark and the animals going in two by two and so on, we may have questions about all that. And was it a global flood or a local downpour and all that sort of thing? Noah's Flood is spoken of in the New Testament more than almost any other event in the Old Testament and taken as a real event by the Lord Jesus Christ.

So that's where we're going to stand, and we're going to stand today. And as we begin, we see that the world of Noah's Day was polluted. It was polluted with the most toxic and deadly kind of pollution that there is. It's called in the Bible sin. And since Genesis chapter three, which we looked at a week or two ago, we've seen that sin has been bubbling over like a pot left on a stove, and it has been destroying and spoiling God's creation.

And by the time we get to Genesis chapter six. It is clear that sin has got out of control. And in the first four verses of Genesis chapter six, well, it describes an unholy alliance between the sons of God and the daughters of men, producing a race, an offspring, a race of, well, almost superhuman figures called Nephilim. Now, the Bible commentators debate on what these sons of God and daughters of men were. Were they the children of believers and unbelievers?

Were they the offspring of royalty and commoners? Well, I don't think they were. Those kind of alliances don't produce superhero figures, superhuman strength, do they? No. The Bible tells us again and again throughout the Old Testament that these Nephilim were a race of giant figures.

Are we really supposed to believe that today in the 21st century? Well, I suggest that so determined was Satan to prevent the coming of Christ, announced back in Genesis chapter three, that he tries to corrupt the human race. And we see that played out in the chapters that follow. Maybe that's one you want to think about later and chase up some of the references in your concordance. But by the time we get to verse five of chapter six, it says the Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.

In other words, sin couldn't be controlled, it couldn't be put back in the box. The law saw it, the Lord saw it. And how did he react? Verse 6, it says, he regretted that he had made human beings on the earth and his heart was deeply troubled. If you're like me, your sin doesn't always trouble you.

We minimise it, don't we? Or we excuse it, we call it something else. We say, oh, that was a mistake. I shouldn't have done that. It was a moment of weakness.

Or maybe, like me, you try and justify it, that outburst or that wrong attitude. We say, well, if they knew the situation I was in and the pressures I'm under, well, that they would understand why I behaved like that. We justify it. Or we let time pass and we try to feel better about it. And by the end of the day, perhaps we've even forgotten that it happened.

But these verses tell us that what we call weakness or a blip or us acting out of character is not that at all. It's nothing less than what is in our hearts, the inclination of our hearts towards sin as children of Adam. And no matter how at peace we feel about our sin and our sinful behaviour and attitudes, it grieves the Lord. And here in chapter six of Genesis, it hurts his heart and causes him pain, so much so that he regrets ever having made humanity. He says, I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I've created, and with them the animals, the birds, the creatures that move along the ground, for I regret that I have made them.

But look down to verse eight.

But Noah found favour in the eyes of the Lord. This is the account of Noah. Noah was a righteous man. Now, maybe we think we know about Noah and the flood. The animals went in two by two, the elephant and the kangaroo and all that, and Noah and the floating zoo.

But maybe we don't give Noah himself a lot of thought. What was he like?

Well, the Bible says he wasn't perfect. He was a sinner, like every other child of Adam. But it does say in verse nine that he was a righteous man. That doesn't mean he was a perfect man. Righteous means he was justified.

God declared him to be right with him. Noah was a sinner, but God forgave him his sins and declared him right because Noah trusted him. Presumably Noah believed the promise made back in Genesis 3:15 about the promised seed who would crush Satan's head one day. Noah put his trust in him and God declared him righteous. So that when God warned Noah of the flood to come and the judgement and told him about the one place of safety, the ark, Noah didn't scoff.

Instead, he got on with building it. It says Noah did everything just as God commanded him. And he didn't just build a big boat, a big wooden container, a safety capsule for himself and the animals. It says in 2 Peter chapter 2, verse 5, that Noah was a preacher of righteousness. Whether by his words or simply by building that ark, he was preaching the gospel.

He was saying, God's judgement is coming on this world because of our sin. But there is a safe place. The Lord has provided it. And if you will come in, there is room for you and you too can be saved. And it must have been a conversation starter, mustn't it?

I remember when I was growing up on the road I lived on, there was a. And we lived in southeast London. A man built a boat, an enormous boat. It took him years to do it. And it was nicknamed by the neighbours Noah's Ark.

We thought, what's he building a boat in Croydon for? We're miles from the sea. But there he was. And that must have been what people said about Noah building a boat for 100 years under a clear blue sky. What are you doing I'm building an ark.

What's an ark? It's the place of safety because God's judgement is coming. But there's room for you if you'll come in. Nobody believed only eight people went into that ark. Noah and his wife and their three sons and their wives and everybody else the scripture says was destroyed.

Now, look, we haven't got time to go into all the details here. Read through it on your own or with your connect groups. See what the New Testament says about the flood and about Noah, how it helps us to understand these things. But the important thing to take away, I think, this morning is this. That as serious as the flood was, even this was just a visual aid, a multimedia presentation, a signpost that the Lord gave this world and gave us to point to something even greater.

To the Day of Judgement, when Jesus, the Son of man, comes back into this world. And he will cleanse this world from all its sin and renew it and make it new as the home of righteousness, the new heavens and the new earth. And the only way that we can be safe on that day and be sure that we will be brought into that future is to come into the safe place that he has provided, which is the Lord Jesus Christ. So In Matthew chapter 24, Jesus himself reminds us that before the flood, life was going on as normal, everyday life, just like today. People were working and earning and marrying and having families and careers.

But just as those who didn't trust in the promised seed, didn't trust God's word, were swept away by that flood, so Jesus says, when he comes again, if we have not trusted in him for the forgiveness of our sins, sheltered in him, we too will be swept away, will be taken away. But the meek will inherit the earth. They'll be left behind.

Jesus is that safe place on the Day of Judgement and only Him. Why? Because when Jesus came the first time to die on the cross, he took my sin and your sin on himself there and paid for it. Your sin and my sin, if we put our trust in him has already been paid for. It's already been judged.

So when Jesus comes again, it won't be judged a second time. It's been paid for in those three hours of darkness at the cross. So that's why he is the safe place we can shelter in Him. No, the fire has already burnt there and it cannot burn a second time. So his invitation to you and me today is to come to Christ and to depend on him on his death on the cross for our sin, paying for your sin and Mine to rely on that, to trust in him.

Just as the waters of the flood symbolically washed away all that was evil and bad, and those on the ark were brought safely through into a new beginning, a glistening new day, so through the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, we can be brought safely through the day of judgement and of Christ's return and cleansing into a new heaven and a new earth, a new beginning with the Lord Jesus, with one another, beginning that will last forever.

So the Lord saw. That's chapter six and seven. The Lord saw. He saw our sin and he judged. He sees human sin and he won't sweep it under the carpet.

He set a day when Jesus will come again to judge it and to make new. The Lord saw. But chapters eight and nine. We're also told that he remembered. This is chapter eight, verse one.

But God remembered. Noah doesn't mean he'd forgotten. It means that he remembered. He acted. He took action.

He stopped the waters, he dried them up. He called Noah out of the ark. The Lord remembered. Can you imagine what it must have been like for Noah and his family to step out of the ark on that first day, that first morning? Have you ever been on a boat?

Maybe you've been on a cruise for many weeks or. I was on a boat once going from Shanghai to Hong Kong, and it was supposed to take 36 hours. It took us five days because we were hit by a tornado and the boat was pitching and tossing and we were holding onto our stomachs for dear life. But when we got off the boat, well, for several hours, our legs were a bit shaky. Have you ever had that experience?

What was it like for Noah and his family? After about a year on the boat, they step out and the landscape has changed from what it was before. It must have looked so different. And yet no one knew that. In one sense, although everything had changed, nothing had really changed, because something.

They had taken something onto that ark with them, something they couldn't do anything about. A stowaway, if you like. An intruder that would try to destroy them again and destroy this new world. And that thing was their own sinful hearts. You see, as Noah steps out onto dry ground, he doesn't say, as we so often say, well, this is a new opportunity for me to start again.

It's a new year. It's a new week, it's a new day. It's a time for me to live my best life and be the best version of myself. I'll try my hardest this time. I've made mistakes in the past.

But now I'll try again. No, he doesn't do that. Noah knows that no amount of water can deal with the real problem of this world. No amount of water can wash away the sin that had brought the flood in the first place. So the first thing Noah does is in chapter 8, verse 20, he takes one of those animals and offers it as a burnt offering.

And burnt offerings, we're told in the Bible, are to make atonement for our sin. Noah knows with all that he's seen that his only hope is in the sacrifice of another, not actually of this animal that he's just sacrificed, but of who that sacrifice points forward to, announced back in the Garden of Eden, Genesis 3:15, the sacrifice of that promised seed, Jesus the Messiah. So as he steps out onto this new world, oh, everything's changed and yet nothing has changed. God's judgement has come, and yet we still need a Saviour. And Noah makes his sacrifice to show that he's trusting in the Saviour still to come.

So as we end, we've only got a few minutes this morning. Chapter nine. Here are some headlines. And look, if you're a little bit new to church, I must warn you, these things must just sound crazy. Some of these things we're going to be thinking about, we are thinking about and will think about in this chapter will sound ridiculous, but Genesis invites us to step into a strange new world.

And I want to invite you to do that this morning as we look at this chapter, to see the Christian faith from the inside, to consider it. Look, here are some headlines from Genesis, chapter nine. Their diet, what they ate, changes after the flood. Did you notice that? The Lord changes their diet.

It's there in verse three. Now the Lord says, you can eat meat. Well, that seems like a tiny detail we might pass over it. But until this point, the human race were given green plants to eat. Now they can eat meat.

Why is that important? Because whenever we eat meat, we're supposed to be thinking, this creature gave its life so that I can live. It's meant to remind us of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. He gave his life so that I can live. I think in this sort of highly packaged, processed world that we live in, we don't see that, do we?

When we go to the supermarket, it doesn't even look like meat. It's just a lump of frozen something or other. But if you've ever seen an animal killed and then you've eaten it, you'll know it gave its life so that I Can live. The diet changes, blood changes. Verse four, Blood.

Have a look down. But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood, I will surely demand an accounting. The Bible is full of blood. The Bible takes blood very seriously.

It's treated with enormous respect because God explains in Leviticus 17 that the life of a creature is in its blood and that blood is given to make atonement for our sin. The blood of animals points to the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, who takes away the sin of the world. Again, it's the cross.

Jesus says in John 6, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will have no life in you. When we trust that Christ died as a sacrifice for our sins, we share in his life. We are feeding on him in our hearts by faith, as the communion service says, we're feeding on his body and his blood depending on him. So don't confuse it. The Lord says, by taking other blood into your body.

Jesus blood is the blood we need. His life is what we need to rescue us from death. So their diet, their blood, one more. The covenant. God makes a covenant, a promise, and seals it with a sign, a rainbow.

Now, we're used to promises and signs in everyday life. I've stood here on this very spot a number of times since I've been here and conducted marriage services. And husband and wife make promises to each other, and then they give one another a ring as a sign confirming those promises. Or you might think of an agreement in the business world or an international agreement or treaty. All the paperwork is prepared and the leaders and those in charge sign the papers.

And then there's that moment in front of the cameras where they shake hands, the symbolic moment that seals it, the sign. And these covenant signs that we have in the Bible, they're physical, visible, tangible, often signs confirming God's word, his promise. Augustine, the African leader of the church, called the covenant signs God's visible words. God's promises that we can see and hear, taste and touch, like baptism, like the Lord's Supper or Holy Communion. Well, here's the Lord's promise in chapter 9, verse 11.

I will establish my covenant, my promise with you. Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood. Never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth. And as a sign, he puts the rainbow in the clouds.

I guess for Noah and his descendants, when there was a storm cloud in the sky. Again, had there not been a rainbow, they might have been anxious. They might have thought, is it going to happen again? Is the Lord going to do again what he did and destroy us, destroy all earth? But the sign was a reminder to God of his gracious promise that he was preserving the earth, not in its present form forever, but he was going to preserve it until the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And when he sees the rainbow in the clouds, he will remember to be gracious and forgiving and patient until Christ comes again. So God saw. He saw our sin. He sees it today, but he remembers. He remembers.

And the Lord is still being patient with us. It's still, as it were, him saying, come into the ark. There's still room, there's still time. And the time to be prepared for Jesus return is not tomorrow, it's not next week. It's not, I'll wait till the end of my life, it's now.

Because Jesus said, keep watch. You do not know on what day that your Lord will come. The flood didn't come on a particularly special day. People were just getting on with their normal lives. It was an ordinary day.

People got up in the morning, they had their breakfast, they went to work. They were building a life, making a future for their children, preparing for their retirement. It was an ordinary day. And Jesus says, it will be exactly the same when God the Father sends his Son back into this world. So if you haven't already, will you believe God's warning that he is coming back to judge the living and the dead?

Will you believe Jesus when he says that when he returns, there won't be any place of safety except if we shelter in him, the One who's already paid for our sin? Will you call out to Jesus and trust him, him alone, to bring you safely through that day into the new heavens and the new earth, the home of righteousness? He is that safe place, the only safe place where sin has been paid for.

I don't know if you ever have dreams, repeated dreams. Do you ever have those dreams where you are sitting your exams again? I see some nodding heads. I'm glad I'm not the only one. I regularly dream that I'm about to sit my finals at university and I haven't prepared.

It did happen to me once on one occasion, so maybe it's some retribution. But there we are. And you're terrified. You think, but I'm not ready. I haven't done any revision.

And it's all come to this. And then you wake up and you think, it's all right, they have been sad. I did pass just. But that judgement day has happened. It's okay.

In the same way, if we put our trust in Jesus, we don't have anything to fear. We can say it's all right I have passed the judgement did happen. The Lord Jesus paid for my sins for me and I can face that great examination with nothing to fear.

So God saw, but God remembered. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you that though you see all things and you see our sin, things that we have forgotten, things that we don't consider to be important, Lord, you see them and our sins grieve you. But we thank you that you remember the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you that you have forgiven us.

We thank you that he died in our place and he rose again. And as we shelter in him, we are safe and forgiven. We're brought into your family. We thank you. Lord, help us to live as your people this week ahead to live as those who believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

We ask for your name's sake. Amen.