The Greatest Story - Noah and the Flood

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Evan Almighty, who's seen the film. Evan Almighty remembers the film Evan Almighty. Yes, I think many of you do. It's a film starring Steve Carroll. Carroll Carroll. [00:00:11] Speaker B: I know. [00:00:11] Speaker A: And he's a politician. He's a new congressman in the States. He's moved into a new suburb, this pretend suburb in Virginia outside the capital. And everything seems to be going great with his life until God as the inevitable Morgan Freeman, obviously, that's the best person there is, appears to him and tells him to build an ark. [00:00:46] Speaker B: You're right there, chaps. [00:00:47] Speaker A: Great. [00:00:47] Speaker B: Okay. [00:00:49] Speaker A: It's a comedy. And obviously today is a comedy as well. No, the film is a comedy. And Evan, the character in the film, obviously spends a lot of time resisting. He thinks that Morgan Freeman, that God has appeared to him as, you know, is a figment of his imagination and is wrestling with everything and is resisting. And it's obviously ridiculous, but somehow God is in control. Somehow God is in control. And so that for him, that it seems animals start following him around that land, around this new suburb is purchased in his name. And a whole lot of wood and tools turn up on his doorstep. And obviously the funny bit is that his hair and beards grow uncontrollably because obviously he needs to look like Noah, whatever that looks like, in order to continue the film. And eventually he gives in and he builds this ark and just in time for this dam that's at the end of the suburb has been built very badly. And it breaks. And he builds it just in time for it to break. And a whole lot of animals, including many, and many that are not native to Virginia, all appear and go into this ark and all these people cram in and he saves them. Fantastic, Wonderful. Well done, Noah. And it's one of those feel good films, do you know, it's fun, it's comedy, and it's maybe got a. A slight moral story to it. Unfortunately, it's got nothing to do with. [00:02:36] Speaker B: The biblical story of Noah and the flood. [00:02:39] Speaker A: Absolutely nothing to do. Because unfortunately, while the film is nice, good, feel good story, the story in the Bible about Noah and the floods is not at all for me. It's one of the most troubling in the entire Bible. It's one of the ones that I have the most problems with and the most questions. And there's a popular myth, you know, about Noah being this heroic, cult heroic character, the one who goes against culture. We should all be like Noah. We should build an ark. We should become a savior of people and animals. And the lesson of stories taught about to be like Noah. But in fact, the story of the flood is not really about Noah. It's about God and about who God is. And most troubling, it's a story of evil. It's a story of judgment and a story of the destruction of humanity. So it's one of those stories this morning. Get ready. But hopefully I try and wrestle. We're going to try and wrestle with. [00:03:54] Speaker B: Some of the questions about this really difficult story. [00:03:58] Speaker A: So if you've got your Bibles, Genesis 6, we're going to go very slowly and see some of the questions here. And I'm going to start in Genesis 6, in verse 5. And what starts is the problem of a statement. What starts is the problem, and it's one in itself that is very problematic. It starts, it says, Genesis 6, verse 5. The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all of the time. Now this is a statement, and I have a problem with statement because I question, is it believable? So, I mean, I don't know about you, but I don't have a problem that some people are evil, right? We see it on our news. We see it everywhere, all the time, don't we? Our news is full with bad news, isn't it? They sometimes cobble a good news story at the end to lighten the mood, right at the end. But most of the news, if you watch TV news, it's bad, isn't it? You know, we see it all the way around the world. And perhaps, you know, not only CNN news, perhaps you or someone that you know have experienced evil committed towards you or towards someone that you know in your life. Perhaps you know, someone who's been robbed. [00:05:30] Speaker B: Or been attacked or been mugged or. [00:05:32] Speaker A: Some had some sort of violence to. But mostly of what goes on, mostly. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't describe actions as evil, right? I'd probably describe them as, you know, just morally wrong. That was a wrong action. I wouldn't really describe it as evil. Do you know, someone lied to us or someone had a go at us badly, or someone abused us, or someone said something wrong against us. I wouldn't really describe it as evil, right? Just, you know, it's just a bit bad towards us. But here the Bible uses the word. [00:06:11] Speaker B: Evil for all of everything that's morally wrong. [00:06:15] Speaker A: And our problem for our culture is how do we define what is right and wrong? How do we define it? Because some People will argue, I'm sure you've heard this, that right and wrong is self evident. Do you know, we all agree, don't we? We all agree what is right and wrong. It's obvious that that thing there is wrong and this thing here is right. And so famously the US Declaration of Independence written in the 1770s, includes the line that says near the start that says, we hold these truths to be self evident. Do you know this in the Declaration of Independence we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among those are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They claim that these truths are self evidence that we are free, we are equal as people. But the thing is, across the world, it's not self evident, is it across cultures. And especially if we go back across time, like if you look at Greek history or Roman or Babylonian or Persian, any of the sort of big cultures, none of those believed that all people were equal. None of them believed that. None of them definitely believed that everyone was entitled to freedom. I mean, slavery is sort of, you know, been in existence since the beginning of time. And so right and wrong is not self evident. It is definitely not self evident to all people. We disagree massively over what right is wrong. So the only way to define what is right and wrong for all people across all time is if we have someone, an arbiter, a judge, who would tell us. But who in the world could do that Right? Because you need someone that knows all of human history, that knows every circumstance that humanity can get into and can see across all cultures and to be judged, to judge across every human behavior what is right and wrong. You need someone outside of every situation to be able to make a comment. This person can only be God. [00:08:55] Speaker B: Only God could make this judgment. [00:08:58] Speaker A: Only God could be the arbiter, the judge, to define what is right and wrong. And in a way that doesn't benefit a certain group of people. So much right and wrong in this world is defined around privileged groups, isn't it? But God sits outside of that because he doesn't benefit from any of it. He's not in one of these groups, he sits outside. And so this is how the word evil is defined in the Bible. [00:09:26] Speaker B: What is right and wrong according to God? [00:09:28] Speaker A: If it's wrong, it's defined as evil. [00:09:32] Speaker B: It's morally wrong, it's his command. [00:09:35] Speaker A: And we can certainly believe, I hope you can share with me, we can certainly believe that some people are evil. But can we believe that all people are evil. You know, in this statement it said the Lord saw how wickedness, how the wickedness of the human race had become, and that the inclination of the thoughts. [00:09:57] Speaker B: Of human heart was only evil all of the time. [00:10:02] Speaker A: I find that unbelievable. I find that absolutely unbelievable. But the problem is that we go around defining humanity into two groups, right? We say those are the people that are evil and these are the people that suffer evil. There are the oppressors and the oppressed. There are people who abuse and those people who suffer that abuse. But the problem with this is the biblical story says that's not true. It's the biblical story since Adam and Eve. It talks about the human race being the sons and daughters of Adam, we. [00:10:43] Speaker B: Are the children of Adam. [00:10:45] Speaker A: And it says that in a way that says, just as Adam and Eve chose to rebel against God, chose to do something that was wrong, so we. [00:10:53] Speaker B: All choose, have chosen. [00:10:56] Speaker A: The whole of the human race have chosen to do something wrong. So Psalm 14 says, they have all turned aside, everyone has become corrupt. There is no one who does good. Jeremiah 17, the prophet There says, the heart is deceitful above all things. Romans 12, Paul will say, for all have sins. And the difference between people isn't that whether they do evil, the difference is the measure of which or by which they do evil. We all do evil, but some people do it in a greater sense, in something that we might regard as greater evil. And so when the Bible records that the whole human race was bent towards evil all of the time, it's a description of the moral corruption that people are turned in upon themselves, that their self centeredness, their own self is the center of their universe, that they look after themselves. [00:12:06] Speaker B: To the cause of others. [00:12:09] Speaker A: To the failure of others, to the harm of others. We've all experienced evil committed to us, wrong committed to us. Whether that may be physical wrong, emotional wrong, social wrong, we've all experienced it wrong. And unless you're the extreme end of the narcissism spectrum, we can all admit that we've committed some wrong towards someone else. We've committed some emotional, some social, psychological wrong. Maybe not in the same extent as Hitler and Stalin, you know, we're putting them in a bit different bucket, but. [00:12:48] Speaker B: We'Re still in the bucket, you know, we're still there. [00:12:53] Speaker A: And so this story carries on, this story carries on with judgment. And here we get an insight into how God feels about the human race here. So verse six, it goes on and it says, the Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the Earth. [00:13:14] Speaker B: And his heart was deeply troubled. [00:13:19] Speaker A: On seeing what happened to creation. God was deeply troubled, says the word regret. That doesn't mean that he felt he had made a mistake, but in the way that we would use regret to. [00:13:34] Speaker B: Express sorrow or sadness. [00:13:37] Speaker A: Do you know, I feel sorrow, I feel sorry about a situation. God felt grief, he said in another translation, grieved. And that's a real key thing for us to understand what happens next. [00:13:51] Speaker B: Because God is heartbroken over what happens. [00:13:55] Speaker A: What has happened to humanity. And maybe I don't know about you, but in more recent years I find that when I was growing up to now, that was a long time ago, but now the news has become more graphic. Do you find this, do you find that the news is like more graphic about explaining what's going on around the world and talking about evil? And it seems to be, like I said, just continually filled with it. Do you know? We see it all around, don't we? We see like this this year we're just talking about a divided nation now, aren't we? All of the time we're talking about racism, we're talking about hatred towards asylum seekers, we're talking about the protests and violence that's done on our streets, isn't it? There's been news stories about big organized gangs of abuse and peddling of drugs and guns. There was a group that was broken up and they were given a total of 207 years in prison. Earlier this year we see knife crime. Knife crime is in the news, isn't it? [00:15:11] Speaker B: All the time. [00:15:12] Speaker A: We had a 14 year old boy stabbed on a bus in Woolwich. Just earlier this year there was a new story about a teenager stabbing another teenager on fireworks night. Just the other night wasn't seems to be prevalent. The news is there all of the time. And then when we see the news we see conflicts, don't we, around the world. Whether it's Ukraine, Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Myanmar, Sudan, Afghanistan, the list goes on and on. Somalia, Nigeria, all of the time everywhere. There's not a piece of land around that doesn't seem to be involved in some sort of conflict. And the problem with that, I don't know about you, is that we can just switch off that when it comes on we go, okay, that's another one. It's another thing, it's another war, it's another knife crime. It's another statistic just in the news. [00:16:09] Speaker B: But God's heart, he's broken for humanity. [00:16:16] Speaker A: And I think that he wants us to also be broken. [00:16:21] Speaker B: We should be broken about what's going on around. [00:16:24] Speaker A: We shouldn't be doled into a sense of apathy. We can't, you know, we can't cry anymore for it and we can't do anything towards it. But we should be moved. [00:16:38] Speaker B: We should be moved to take some action, to pray, to get involved in some part. [00:16:43] Speaker A: And you know, for the most part, I think we feel, I feel unable to contribute. But it doesn't mean that we shouldn't. [00:16:51] Speaker B: Feel what God feels in it. [00:16:55] Speaker A: And while we can't get involved in this story, God actually does something about. [00:17:01] Speaker B: The brokenness of humanity. [00:17:03] Speaker A: And it's maybe something that we don't want to hear because Verse seven. So the Lord said, I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created, and with them the animals and birds and creatures that move along the ground, for I regret that I have made them. God's response to the brokenness of humanity for the evil that is going on and on and on is to go. [00:17:30] Speaker B: I'm going to stop it. [00:17:33] Speaker A: And the way he stops it is to stop those who commit evil, which at this point is everyone. He's going to wipe humanity. And we find that troubling because we want a different solution, don't we? We want a God of compassion that's going to do something, hey, God, why don't you just stop people from committing evil? Why doesn't he do that? Why doesn't he just make us unable to commit evil? And this is the biggest problem, this is the biggest question, I think, in religion and Christianity, why doesn't God just stop evil being committed? I've read quite a bit about this and I'd just like to say that. [00:18:26] Speaker B: There is no satisfactory answer. [00:18:30] Speaker A: Some very, very great minds, you know, from 2000, 3000 years ago have wrestled with this and they've come up with some really good ways to think about it, but none of them is satisfactory. None of them really answers what we. [00:18:50] Speaker B: Want in our heart. [00:18:51] Speaker A: You know, people talk about, you know, God not wanting a people of robots that just do that, can't think for themselves, that don't have free will. But you go down that line and you just find it just falls apart. But for the most part, we also as a humanity, we wrestle with this problem of evil. What do we do with evil people in our midst? [00:19:15] Speaker B: We lock them up for the rest of their lives. [00:19:18] Speaker A: We take them out of society and say, you can't interact. And perhaps many countries, this country had the death penalty for many, many years. And probably the main reason why we. [00:19:31] Speaker B: Don'T do it now is because we. [00:19:34] Speaker A: Don'T want to make a mistake. [00:19:36] Speaker B: Do you know what if we uncover something down the line? But if God is truly God, he doesn't make mistakes. He's all knowing, he's all wise and his judgments are right and just every single time. [00:19:52] Speaker A: And here we come to this statement. [00:19:56] Speaker B: God's judged humanity and sits. I'm going to wipe you from the face of the earth. I don't want evil to continue to continue on this cycle. And so I'm going to remove the cause of evil, which is humanity. But most surprisingly, actually God doesn't wipe all of humanity because he finds Noah. [00:20:32] Speaker A: And it says that Noah is a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. Does that mean that Noah was perfect? We know the answer to that because we've read our Bibles and those verses. I said there is no one. There is no one that is perfect. There is no human being that is perfect. Noah is not perfect. He is not the Savior in this story. [00:21:03] Speaker B: He is just someone that can follow a very complicated IKEA flatback instructions. So God gives him a task to do. [00:21:16] Speaker A: And perhaps we want some more. We want to know what does the ark look like and how did all of these things fit in and the rest of it. And I didn't get it. If you go on the Internet, there's some amazing. There's something in the States, Kentucky of all places, that's called the Ark Encounter. And they've built a full size model replica of the ark. And it's huge, absolutely huge. And you think how could one man build that? And there's another story of a guy. [00:21:50] Speaker B: Some people are just amazing, let's just. [00:21:53] Speaker A: Use the word amazing. A Dutch guy who built single handedly mostly, although he had modern tools. I think he tried to use old tools, not mechanical. A half size replica of the Ark, 230ft long, huge, massive. And he built it by himself. He says something like over four years. Noah had a long time. Noah was 500 years before this story starts. And he's 600 years by the end of it. And we just have to take those timelines as writ for the moments we could go into another. There's another preach somewhere talking about those timelines. But Noah had a long time, right? Noah had a long time and he built this ark. He followed God, he built this ark and he is given at the time he finished it. He's given seven days to round up all the animals, batten down the hatches and wait for the rains. And the rains came and the flood came and Noah and his family and his animals were saved on this enormous lifeboat. Pop quiz. How long was the flood? It was just like, oh, why is Ian asking a pop quiz? Because isn't this well known? The rains came for how many days? 40 days. And then Noah stayed on the boat and he was there for 150 days while the waters rose. And then for another 150 days while the water water subsided. And then for 40 days while he sends out the dove and the raven. And then after another seven days, he comes out and actually, if you walk along it, there's a seven, there's a seven, there'S a 40, there'S 150. [00:23:56] Speaker B: And then it comes back down again with those timelines. [00:23:59] Speaker A: So Noah and the animals are on the boats for a whole year. I mean, we did Covid, right? Imagine being shut up with just your family for a whole year. [00:24:09] Speaker B: Let's not go there. [00:24:12] Speaker A: I don't know where all the food came, but God is a God of the miracles. So this ark lands and it goes to Genesis 8, 15. Then God said to Noah, go out from the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons, wives with you. Bring out every living thing that is with you, all of flesh, birds and animals, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may swarm on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth. Where have you heard those words before? [00:24:49] Speaker B: In the creation story, in Genesis 1. [00:24:52] Speaker A: Go out, be fruitful and multiply. And so these words are actually given to Noah again repeated. We've if this is a new beginning, right? If we're cynical, what do we say? Creation failed. God wiped everything out. He's resetting it to zero. And we've got a new creation. Let's go. Let's go. And so God has rid evil from the world. Hooray. And we're going to start again with a new creation. Everything's going to be perfect. [00:25:31] Speaker B: You've read the rest of the Bible, haven't you? [00:25:39] Speaker A: The problem is evil wasn't rid from the world because Noah was in the boat. [00:25:47] Speaker B: And Noah was still evil, morally corrupt. He was still a son of Adam. And what's funny is that if you took this story out of the Bible, what difference would it make? Because nothing really changed, did it? [00:26:10] Speaker A: Nothing changed. [00:26:12] Speaker B: Evil still perpetuates. [00:26:14] Speaker A: And we see straight after this story. [00:26:18] Speaker B: Noah sins and it's recorded for us. So what's the point of this story? Where does it get Us. [00:26:28] Speaker A: I think it gets us to see. [00:26:30] Speaker B: That we can't save ourselves. We are all corrupt in some way. In our hearts, we are the problem. And as much as we want to, we cannot save ourselves. We need a Savior. [00:26:49] Speaker A: And by that I think it's one. [00:26:50] Speaker B: Of the most troubling in the Bible because it says, I can't do it. I can't do it. And humanity can't do it. There is no one within humanity that can save it. It can save humanity. We need someone outside. The real answer to evil is the destruction of humanity. But thank God that doesn't happen. Thank God. This is a story of grace. Because God doesn't wipe out the whole of humanity. He has another plan. And that plan is to come in himself. As we saw, God enters this story as a suffering God. He is grieved and broken over what is happening. [00:27:45] Speaker A: Not to the fact that he is apathetic and decides in vengeance to wipe out the whole of humanity. [00:27:51] Speaker B: But to say, I will bring in the solution. I will be the one to take on the suffering of humanity and to be the Savior. And as. [00:28:08] Speaker A: In the story, the waters rise up and the people sink to the depths of the waters. [00:28:15] Speaker B: We see that in a story of Jesus. [00:28:17] Speaker A: Jesus is the one that sinks to. [00:28:18] Speaker B: Depths on the cross. He brought upon himself the suffering of humanity and he went down to the depths. [00:28:29] Speaker A: But just as God raised up Noah upon the waters, he lifted him up above suffering. [00:28:36] Speaker B: Jesus was also raised up after he conquered. He was raised up because he was righteous. He was the only one that was perfectly righteous. And Jesus is raising up, is raised up with an ark that says, why don't you come and be with me? Here's the Savior that wants us to. [00:29:05] Speaker A: Bring us into not Noah's family, but. [00:29:09] Speaker B: God's family, to become sons and daughters of the living God, to be the obedient ones. [00:29:17] Speaker A: We are the obedient ones. That Jesus fulfills our obedience even when we can't be obedient. Even though we have been lifted up in Christ, in Him, we still, just like Noah, continue to sin. We are still broken people. But that is not the end of the story. Because God, as he took on the suffering of mankind, says that is not the end of the story. There is a plan and a plan in which all of evil is taken out of the human race. The solution that we want will actually come to be when heaven, on the last day, when heaven comes down and comes to earth, that humanity is remade so that we get to live in peace and harmony. We get what we actually want what we truly desire, to live in a time without evil in the entire world. But the only way that we get to be like that, the only way that we get to enjoy all of that, is to put our faith in. [00:30:27] Speaker B: Jesus and get in his boat. If the band would like to come up. [00:30:38] Speaker A: And so our response, because this story is troubling. It is troubling because we have to admit our brokenness. [00:30:51] Speaker B: We have to admit that we need a savior. We have to admit that we need to go to God to repent of the things that we have done wrong and to ask his forgiveness, to put our faith and trust in Him. But it's a story of hope. It's a story of deliverance. [00:31:16] Speaker A: It's a story that says God will give us the things that we really, really, really want. To live without sickness and disease, to live in a world without brokenness, without violence, without evil. That's what we really, really, really want. [00:31:38] Speaker B: And we will get it if we put our trust in Him. Amen. Amen. Why don't we stand. [00:31:50] Speaker A: And why don't we just use this last song to say to him? [00:31:55] Speaker B: We put our trust in you. We put our trust in the Saviour. [00:32:00] Speaker A: The One that is everything to us. [00:32:02] Speaker B: Let's worship Him.