Dale Partridge - Genesis 6_5-8 ~ Total Depravity Before the Flood

00:00:00.000 well last week we were in Genesis chapter 6 verses 1 through 4 today we are going to get in

00:00:12.120 to verses 5 through 8 this is a transitional section of the passage between it acts really

00:00:20.460 as a bridge between the genealogy of chapter 5 and the flood narrative of chapter 6 and so

00:00:28.980 last week we had an opportunity to look at some of the more interesting sections of chapter six.

00:00:36.480 The purpose of this section was really to give us the immediate moral context leading up to the

00:00:42.580 flood. That's what we're doing here. It's the immediate moral context of what the world looks

00:00:48.420 like prior to the flood. In the first section, we examined three difficult groups last week.

00:00:55.360 We saw the sons of God, the daughters of men, and we saw the strange and mysterious Nephilim.

00:01:02.180 And we concluded that the sons of God were fallen demons that put on the bodies of men, 0.88

00:01:07.880 that slept with the daughters of men, which were the lines of the Sethites and also the Canaanites. 0.73

00:01:14.680 And the Nephilim were the giant offspring that came as a result of these very strange unions. 0.50

00:01:21.340 And so the theological purpose of these unions was to corrupt the biological seed of the woman that was promised in Genesis chapter three. 0.63

00:01:32.720 And so you have this demonic realm coming in and intermixing with the human realm in order that they might create a perversion and extinguish the seed of the woman who was promised to destroy the works of the devil.

00:01:49.800 And so that is what we had last week. 0.79

00:01:53.960 And this was a strategy that was ultimately similar to Pharaoh's slaughter of the Hebrew baby boys.

00:02:01.440 Or as we saw in the birth of Christ, Herod's attempt to murder all the infants of Bethlehem. 0.51

00:02:08.180 It's always been this attack on the seed.

00:02:11.780 It has been a war between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. 0.92

00:02:17.420 And the Nephilim were these violent giants

00:02:20.960 that are not just seen once in the Old Testament,

00:02:25.920 but they're also later seen after the flood.

00:02:28.600 And they're associated with figures like Goliath

00:02:31.260 and his brothers.

00:02:31.900 And many people associate the end of the Nephilim

00:02:36.280 around approximately the time of David,

00:02:39.280 though there are arguments and theories

00:02:41.320 and philosophies otherwise.

00:02:43.860 But today we are gonna be looking

00:02:45.460 at verses five through eight, which reveal God's assessment of the world after this kind of massive

00:02:52.980 escalation of evil. Not only has humanity become morally corrupt, but it has become biologically

00:03:00.720 corrupt. And you have this God looking down upon the world at this evil. And we're also going to

00:03:09.800 look at God's holy grief, and we're going to understand the difference between different

00:03:15.860 theological perspectives like open theism, and as he looks upon his creation, and he's preparing

00:03:21.760 righteous judgment upon the earth with the flood. Now, this passage demonstrates total depravity

00:03:30.540 as a doctrine, but it also should not lead us to total despair. And the reason is, if you look in

00:03:39.240 midst of this global wickedness god preserves one man and he preserves it in the man noah it says

00:03:47.400 noah found favor in the eyes of the lord and so let's look at this passage together and i want

00:03:53.240 you to pay attention in this verse 5 to the emphatic language that we see here it says

00:03:59.960 the lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention

00:04:07.880 of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

00:04:13.640 I don't know if you could write a more emphatic sentence

00:04:18.160 on the escalation of evil than that one there.

00:04:23.220 Now, remember, we're not reading this verse in isolation.

00:04:26.000 We're reading it in context.

00:04:27.880 We're reading it after verse four.

00:04:31.800 The statement is, again, a result of the effects

00:04:35.640 that we were just talking about last week.

00:04:38.900 That is not only were the souls of men fallen,

00:04:41.400 but now the biology of men were fallen in perversion.

00:04:46.320 Now, but the content of this verse

00:04:47.860 is not isolated just to this particular section of scripture.

00:04:52.320 It's not limited just to Noah's days.

00:04:54.820 The truth of this passage of scripture

00:04:56.660 is still available to us today.

00:04:59.500 I want you to notice a few things.

00:05:01.400 First, I want you to notice the omniscience of God,

00:05:04.160 the omniscience of God.

00:05:05.180 God sees not only the whole earth, but every intention of the hearts of every man.

00:05:13.120 God notice and sees every intention of the thought of every man. Second, I want you to notice

00:05:20.000 that God is the arbiter of what is evil and what is wicked. He is the one who determines those

00:05:27.080 things. Now, why is that important? I feel like we, don't we already know this? Well, why are

00:05:31.100 important because man believes one that he has not seen and two that he is not accountable that

00:05:36.940 is a very common theme throughout scripture it is a very common experience if you know anybody

00:05:41.180 outside of christ we believe as fallen humanity that we are not seen in the acts of evil that we

00:05:47.340 commit and we believe that we are not accountable for the acts of evil that we commit

00:05:52.460 it. However, Psalm 94, verse 7 through 9 says, how the fool thinks. It says, the Lord does not 0.98

00:06:05.600 see, or it says of the fool, the fool says, the Lord does not see. Understand, O dullest of the 1.00

00:06:12.600 peoples. Fool, when will you be wise? He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed 1.00

00:06:20.040 the eye, does he not see? He who disciplines the nations, does he not rebuke? He who teaches man

00:06:27.060 knowledge, the Lord knows the thoughts of man. End quote. Psalm 100 or Psalm 10 verse 13 says,

00:06:36.140 Why does the wicked renounce God and say in his heart, you will not call me to account?

00:06:43.140 Think about that phrase. Why does the wicked renounce God and say in his heart,

00:06:50.040 You will not call me to account.

00:06:52.700 So the answer to the psalmist question

00:06:54.360 is that man has fallen.

00:06:55.700 That's why he thinks that way.

00:06:58.160 He doesn't believe that he has seen

00:06:59.920 and he doesn't believe that he is accountable.

00:07:02.100 Sin has corrupted humanity to such a deep level

00:07:05.140 that apart from God's regenerating grace,

00:07:07.360 apart from that mercy given to you,

00:07:09.920 we live as if God is not real,

00:07:12.380 even though the evidence is everywhere.

00:07:15.440 It's amazing when you read Romans 1

00:07:17.980 that even though the evidence is all around us,

00:07:20.460 we will deny God that he cannot see us

00:07:22.980 and we are not accountable for the actions that we perform.

00:07:27.940 I was thinking about it.

00:07:29.680 It's as obnoxious as like a thief

00:07:33.840 or someone committing a crime in broad daylight

00:07:37.900 in front of security surveillance cameras

00:07:41.540 and saying, God does not see,

00:07:45.020 and thinking that the footage is not gonna be reviewed.

00:07:47.840 It's like an amazing sense of blasphemy.

00:07:52.740 I'm going to act and behave in a way that really denies reality.

00:07:59.620 This was the description of the morality in Noah's day.

00:08:03.940 It was people living in a way that they felt that God did not see them

00:08:08.640 and that God was not going to hold them accountable for their actions.

00:08:14.540 But that posture isn't unique to Noah's day.

00:08:16.940 I think we have many people in our own experience, in our own lives. If we scroll across social media

00:08:23.200 for about four minutes, we will tell that this disease of sin still blankets many people in this

00:08:30.860 nation. Our will, the human will, is defined as your highest desire. Outside of Christ, your highest

00:08:40.260 desire is for self, not for Christ. Everything that you do will be done for self. Your will

00:08:47.360 will be served. You're not going to be able to say, not my will, but your will be done.

00:08:54.000 The reality is, is that the fallen man, his highest desire is for self. And it's why Moses

00:08:59.820 uses this emphatic language of great and every and only and continually. He's not describing

00:09:05.720 just a few unusually bad people. He's describing humanity without God's regenerating grace.

00:09:13.100 That's your biography outside of Christ. Just this week, maybe last week, the kids' catechism,

00:09:23.600 which we're doing, the Heidelberg Catechism, it's asking the question.

00:09:28.140 And the answer is, I have a tendency to hate God and to hate my neighbor.

00:09:33.600 It's a reality to realize that outside of Christ,

00:09:36.740 I have a tendency to hate God and to hate my neighbor.

00:09:43.100 This morning, I witnessed another Irena-style video clip.

00:09:47.640 I was scrolling through the internet, 0.55

00:09:50.400 and it was a young white woman, Bethany McGee,

00:09:53.700 similar to Irena of age.

00:09:55.200 She was on a train to Chicago.

00:09:57.300 And Lawrence Reed, 50-year-old black man

00:10:00.120 with 72 prior convictions.

00:10:02.760 came up to her and poured gasoline on her while she was on her phone on the train and as she

00:10:10.060 tried to run away he threw a molotov cocktail at her and lit her on fire and she eventually got

00:10:16.820 off the train and bystanders helped put the fire out on her but 60 percent of her body was on third

00:10:23.360 degree burns she's been in the hospital she got out two days ago she's been in the hospital since

00:10:28.260 November. Outside of Christ, this is what humanity is capable of doing. Evil. Evil.

00:10:40.280 I've thought about hanging that picture of Irena on that train in my office so I can be reminded 0.75

00:10:46.780 of the level of evil that needs to be quenched from this nation. So that we might be reminded,

00:10:53.780 Oh, Lord, we need Christ.

00:10:56.080 Oh, Lord, we need to preach the gospel.

00:10:58.580 Oh, Lord, we need to be praying for mercy upon this land.

00:11:02.080 Oh, Lord, let us not become anything like Noah's age.

00:11:08.320 When Moses says the wickedness of man was great on the earth

00:11:11.280 and every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually,

00:11:15.120 you might be wondering, really?

00:11:17.880 What about the mothers?

00:11:19.720 You know, what about the elderly? 0.65

00:11:21.400 What about the little children? 0.97

00:11:23.060 were they just like murderous thieves 0.99

00:11:25.880 and walking around and rapists and terrible people? 1.00

00:11:31.760 Well, when we think about the women, 0.94

00:11:35.240 I think about today's 73 million abortions 0.62

00:11:37.760 that happen every year worldwide.

00:11:40.680 I had to look that stat up twice

00:11:42.180 because I thought it was 73 million babies.

00:11:44.840 Well, it's 63 million babies in America since 1973,

00:11:49.160 but worldwide it's 73 million babies per year.

00:11:53.060 per year 1.00

00:11:54.260 so yes women can be evil 1.00

00:11:57.620 apart from God 1.00

00:12:01.900 that could be you

00:12:04.480 apart from God

00:12:07.120 and his regenerating grace in your life

00:12:09.820 don't think that you are not

00:12:11.960 capable of doing such evil things

00:12:14.220 you are

00:12:14.840 and maybe

00:12:17.960 that you don't do them physically but you think

00:12:20.020 them

00:12:20.320 and this is what

00:12:23.060 what God is doing.

00:12:30.520 We often think that our outward deeds are what matters,

00:12:36.880 but God looks at the heart

00:12:39.720 and he's looking down at humanity and he's going,

00:12:44.300 it's not just what you do,

00:12:46.080 it's also what you think and how you feel

00:12:48.980 and what you fail to do.

00:12:51.420 and these people in Noah's day

00:12:53.740 were not doing anything from faith

00:12:55.520 and nothing was done for God

00:12:56.940 and nothing was done for his glory.

00:12:58.960 It was all filled with wickedness.

00:13:01.360 Even the good things that we might look at

00:13:03.300 outwardly as moral

00:13:04.460 were actually evil

00:13:06.260 because they were done

00:13:07.740 not to the glory of God

00:13:09.400 but done to the glory of self.

00:13:12.940 That's why God says

00:13:15.240 even your good deeds are like filthy rags to me.

00:13:21.420 The same is true today, right?

00:13:25.520 Many, many pagans look moral on the outside.

00:13:28.380 Christless conservatism, as Pastor Corbin discussed.

00:13:32.620 Many great morally exterior people

00:13:36.100 are burning and dead on the insides.

00:13:39.000 Jesus talks about this with the Pharisees. 0.86

00:13:41.980 Your whitewashed tombs, 0.98

00:13:44.080 your beautiful cups on the outside, 1.00

00:13:45.800 on the inside, you're ugly and gross. 1.00

00:13:48.700 It's not just about what we do externally, but also about the inside. 0.99

00:13:55.680 Verse 6, it says,

00:13:57.300 And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.

00:14:03.540 Now, this verse has confused many people.

00:14:05.980 How can a God who is all-powerful, who is all-knowing, who is all-omnipresent, regret anything?

00:14:13.960 How does that happen?

00:14:15.120 How do we have this God who is regretting something that he sovereignly did?

00:14:23.020 Now, this is one of the key texts that open theists appeal to

00:14:25.960 in order to argue that God changes his mind.

00:14:29.140 God changes his mind, and he doesn't just change it.

00:14:31.880 He changes it based off of new information.

00:14:35.840 They say that God limits his foreknowledge of future events,

00:14:40.020 and he does that because he wants to preserve humans' free will.

00:14:44.280 That's the argument for open theism.

00:14:46.580 But open theism has been rightly condemned as a heresy because it violates the doctrine of God.

00:14:52.060 Not just the omniscience of God, but also the immutability of God.

00:14:57.200 And according to scripture, we do not have a God who learns.

00:15:01.420 We do not have a God who learns and who adjusts, who reacts to human history as it unfolds.

00:15:06.840 That is not the narrative of scripture.

00:15:09.360 So if that's the case, then we have to look at this passage of regret and go,

00:15:12.720 well, then how do I frame up this? Because what we do is we are smart Bible interpreters who

00:15:17.760 interpret scripture by scripture. And when we take a verse like this that is unclear,

00:15:22.420 we interpret it through the scriptures that are clear. And so we look at those passages

00:15:27.420 of scripture and we go, okay, how should we look at this passage of scripture?

00:15:32.780 Now, scripture repeatedly denies the position of open theism. Isaiah 46, 9 through 10 says,

00:15:38.420 For I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me.

00:15:45.680 Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times to things not yet done, saying,

00:15:51.180 My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.

00:15:57.460 Moses later says in Numbers 23.19,

00:16:02.020 God is not man that he should lie, or a son of man that he should change his mind.

00:16:09.380 1 Samuel 15, 29 says,

00:16:11.400 And also the glory of Israel will not lie or have regret.

00:16:15.000 The glory of Israel, capital G, it's talking about God.

00:16:18.800 Okay, and also the glory of Israel will not lie or have regret.

00:16:22.380 For he is not a man that he should have regret.

00:16:25.800 End quote.

00:16:26.820 Malachi 3, 6 says,

00:16:27.920 For I, the Lord, do not change.

00:16:31.320 And we all know that Hebrews 13, 8, right?

00:16:35.520 Around Jesus is the same.

00:16:38.420 Yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

00:16:45.060 The confusion comes because we struggle to reconcile regret with the reality of these other passages.

00:16:54.100 So this passage is not teaching that God changes his mind the way that we do.

00:17:00.680 God does not regret because he discovered new information.

00:17:04.120 Rather, scripture here is speaking in human terms so that we might understand how our actions connect to his responses.

00:17:16.540 Okay, let me say that again.

00:17:19.980 Scripture here is speaking in human terms that we can understand how our actions connect to his responses.

00:17:28.520 I'm going to give you an example.

00:17:29.700 it's like a father who allows a particular circumstance to unfold and then he says

00:17:38.920 I'm so grieved by this and he does that so the child can understand the seriousness of that

00:17:46.420 particular circumstance not because the father didn't expect that outcome he knew that outcome

00:17:51.400 was going to happen or because he learned something new but because he wants to connect

00:17:57.240 his son's actions to his responses. He wants to teach us how this behavior produces this response

00:18:06.140 in God. Now again, now you might be thinking, well, so is this all performative? Is God's grief

00:18:15.420 just performative? Is he really sorrowful or is he just doing this so that he can teach us that

00:18:22.020 We ought to be sorrowful in that action.

00:18:24.660 No, I think that the Lord is sincere.

00:18:29.720 I think that it is genuine.

00:18:32.380 And I think the scriptures support that.

00:18:35.980 Man is sinful and God is sorrowful

00:18:38.840 over the corruption of sin in the earth.

00:18:44.800 But just because God allows these circumstances to happen

00:18:47.880 doesn't mean that they're outside of God's will.

00:18:51.000 That is one of the more difficult realities for Christians to reconcile.

00:18:55.340 How can a good God allow such evil things to come about? 0.92

00:19:01.940 R.C. Sproul once says that God ordains all things whether or not they bring him joy.

00:19:07.680 That's the difference between God and us, right?

00:19:11.800 We want to bring, if we had control over all things,

00:19:14.600 we would probably not bring things about that cause us despair.

00:19:19.680 But we would only bring things about that would cause us joy.

00:19:23.960 So yes, God did bring about the fall of man and the Nephilim and the corruption of the biology of the world. 0.73

00:19:33.920 And he did so to reveal something to humanity about sin and about himself and about his own glory.

00:19:42.680 And in verse 7, it says,

00:19:44.140 So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.

00:20:02.400 So if we follow the grand narrative of this passage, what we're seeing here is the corruption of man through sin, the perversion of the biology of man through the Nephilim.

00:20:13.880 God has seen this kind of full spread of evil

00:20:16.360 and he expresses holy grief over it.

00:20:20.060 And here we are in verses seven.

00:20:23.620 You know, in the previous verses five and six,

00:20:26.140 we see that God's omniscience and holy sorrow.

00:20:29.240 And here we see that he demonstrates his justice

00:20:33.080 and his wrath.

00:20:34.300 So you're seeing a couple dimensions of God's character.

00:20:38.100 So you're seeing God's omniscience.

00:20:40.080 you're seeing God's sorrow, and then all of a sudden now you're about to see his justice

00:20:49.020 and his wrath. For 1,600 years between Adam and the flood, 1,656 years, but 1,600 years or so,

00:21:01.280 people, sinners, lived with extraordinary lifespans, and they confused God's patience

00:21:07.760 with passivity. They thought that God doesn't see what we do and we will not be accountable

00:21:15.700 for the actions that we have performed. However, sin reaches its full height and God expresses

00:21:22.920 his judgment and his wrath is coming. You remember a few weeks ago, I mentioned that

00:21:30.880 God cannot have attributes that do not have functions. God cannot have attributes that do

00:21:36.360 not have functions. And what I meant by that is that God cannot have the attributes of wrath

00:21:42.380 and justice and live in a world in which those attributes do not have functions. In fact,

00:21:48.080 it is one of the reasons that evil must exist so that God might demonstrate and reveal his

00:21:54.300 attributes of wrath and justice upon the world. It shows us his full glory. God is not just a

00:22:03.360 God of love. God is a God of justice. And God is a God of anger in terms of his anger against sin.

00:22:11.480 And we get to see that not just in a world filled with righteousness. In fact, God allows a world

00:22:19.220 to exist that has sin so that he might demonstrate his full character to us.

00:22:25.660 Now I want you to notice

00:22:31.520 The significance of the judgment

00:22:34.940 He plans to blot out 0.57

00:22:37.820 Four categories of creation 0.96

00:22:39.440 Man

00:22:41.620 Animals

00:22:43.560 Creeping things

00:22:45.420 And birds

00:22:46.080 Now a common question

00:22:50.160 That people ask is

00:22:50.840 What about the fish?

00:22:52.340 What about the sea creatures?

00:22:54.100 Why does God

00:22:54.860 left that group out. We'll see in Genesis 6, 17, God gives us a little bit of insight.

00:23:03.020 It says, Behold, I, even I, am bringing the flood of water upon the earth to destroy all flesh

00:23:13.520 in which is the breath of life. From under heaven, everything that is on the earth

00:23:21.260 shall perish.

00:23:23.640 So according to God's will,

00:23:24.960 he limited the judgment

00:23:25.760 to everything that is on the earth.

00:23:27.420 You can argue also

00:23:28.300 that maybe the breath of life

00:23:29.260 isn't given to fish

00:23:30.000 even though they breathe oxygen,

00:23:31.080 but who knows.

00:23:35.240 But it's all,

00:23:37.060 this is the reason why

00:23:38.040 the only creatures

00:23:40.160 that made it onto the ark

00:23:41.220 are the land animals.

00:23:43.000 Land animals,

00:23:43.700 things that were on the earth

00:23:45.100 made it into the ark.

00:23:47.620 And then after this

00:23:48.780 extremely dark passage,

00:23:51.260 You're just going, the world has fallen morally.

00:23:56.380 The world is corrupted biologically.

00:23:59.900 The war of the seeds is raging on.

00:24:03.780 God is looking across the earth and he sees nothing but depravity.

00:24:09.940 The wickedness has reached its peak.

00:24:13.780 That only evil is happening continuously, not just externally, but also in the hearts of man.

00:24:19.600 And God says, not just am I grieved, but my wrath is going to be kindled and I'm going to come and destroy everything.

00:24:30.020 And right at this point, at the darkest part of the Bible, at this point in scripture, we see one of the greatest contrasts in the Old Testament.

00:24:43.520 But Noah.

00:24:45.320 But Noah.

00:24:47.140 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

00:24:51.200 It really is an amazing statement.

00:24:54.120 Because if you just cut that verse out for a second,

00:24:56.920 you're just thinking, wow, it's getting bad.

00:25:00.400 It's getting dark.

00:25:02.260 All of man is only evil continuously.

00:25:08.120 And then when he says, but Noah,

00:25:10.780 but Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

00:25:16.300 Now, had verse 8 not existed, you may have read about God blotting out mankind and wondered,

00:25:27.400 does this threaten God's promise and of his covenant faithfulness?

00:25:32.040 God promised that there would be a seed and that it would be protected

00:25:35.460 and that it would persevere, that there would be a serpent crusher.

00:25:40.000 We saw that when Abel died, we thought, oh, was the seed extinguished?

00:25:48.740 And then God gives Eve Seth.

00:25:54.020 And she praises God.

00:25:55.640 She goes, oh, I got another son from the Lord.

00:26:00.980 And she had hope that he would be that serpent crusher.

00:26:05.940 It was the first time that people called out upon the name of the Lord,

00:26:10.220 hoping that maybe this son was going to be the one that brought us back to Eden.

00:26:17.240 And then again, you're looking at it, you're going, oh, Lord, everything's falling apart.

00:26:22.360 And you think, is God going to take everybody out again?

00:26:28.700 But he saves Noah.

00:26:30.740 He saves Noah.

00:26:31.860 So not only is this verse 8 a sign of mercy, but it's a demonstration of God's covenant faithfulness.

00:26:44.060 God is saving that man because the seed of the Messiah is in him.

00:26:52.540 The Noahic covenant is often called a covenant of preservation.

00:26:57.440 Through Noah, through his son Shem, the promised Christ is eventually going to come to fruition.

00:27:09.860 Now, the word favor, God found favor.

00:27:13.580 The word favor in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament,

00:27:18.500 it's also the translation that the vast majority of the usages in the New Testament

00:27:24.520 that Jesus and the apostles use came from the Septuagint.

00:27:27.440 not from the Old Testament Hebrew.

00:27:31.240 And it's translated, this word favor

00:27:33.260 is translated in Greek to the word charis,

00:27:35.800 which is grace.

00:27:37.160 It's the word for grace.

00:27:38.840 And so Noah found grace with the Lord.

00:27:44.600 Now, what makes this so striking

00:27:46.300 is that in verse five, God's eyes, right?

00:27:52.500 It's called a, what is that called?

00:27:54.420 An anthropomorphous.

00:27:55.260 I think it's where you apply human features to God,

00:28:00.180 even though God doesn't have a body.

00:28:02.480 You know, God's arm is stretching out.

00:28:04.000 Is that right, Corbin?

00:28:04.620 I think it's right.

00:28:06.200 He's got a smirk on me.

00:28:07.200 I'm thinking, I don't know if I'm right or wrong here.

00:28:08.880 There's a theological word for it.

00:28:11.060 God doesn't have an arm.

00:28:12.720 Jesus has an arm.

00:28:14.140 God doesn't have eyes.

00:28:15.940 Jesus has eyes.

00:28:17.440 But God is looking across the earth.

00:28:25.260 and he sees nothing good.

00:28:27.960 But in this verse here,

00:28:30.660 Noah finds grace in the eyes of the Lord.

00:28:35.100 Noah finds grace in the eyes of the Lord.

00:28:43.580 And this is the same grace

00:28:45.280 by which God saves sinners today.

00:28:49.620 Not because he finds goodness in us.

00:28:51.480 He doesn't look on you and go,

00:28:52.660 oh man, that guy is morally perfect.

00:28:58.740 No, he doesn't look at you and say,

00:29:01.800 you know what, I'm going to save you

00:29:04.160 because you perfectly followed the moral law.

00:29:09.080 No, he looks upon us in the same way

00:29:12.160 that he looked upon Noah, who was a sinner,

00:29:15.320 and said, I found grace upon you.

00:29:18.140 Now, this is a great comfort for us as Christians because God has the ability to see evil and also

00:29:28.300 to look at us with grace. Think about that. God's going to look at people that you've passed by in

00:29:35.040 the last 48 hours. And on the day of judgment, he's going to look at them and see evil. And then

00:29:41.060 he's going to look at you in the same way that he looked at Noah and say, I have found, or you have

00:29:45.840 I found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

00:29:51.200 That's an amazing thought.

00:29:56.320 Because when you see the kindled wrath of God,

00:30:02.380 you might wonder,

00:30:05.180 how is that wrath not gonna be poured out on me?

00:30:12.940 And just as Noah was not swept away in judgment,

00:30:15.840 Neither will any believer be swept away in the final judgment.

00:30:21.800 Because God has provided an ark that's greater than Noah.

00:30:26.220 We get the ark of Christ.

00:30:29.080 We're in Christ.

00:30:30.880 When you stand before the Lord,

00:30:33.780 He looks at you and He's not going to see you.

00:30:38.100 He's going to see Christ.

00:30:42.360 I often remind children,

00:30:45.840 that when we stand before God,

00:30:50.820 we could stand there in sin

00:30:53.280 and I'll often wrap little children

00:30:55.460 in a black blanket.

00:30:57.360 And I'll say, this is how God would see you

00:30:59.940 in this sin, this darkness.

00:31:04.080 But when we have Christ,

00:31:07.700 Christ comes and wraps us

00:31:09.500 in the righteous robes of his son

00:31:11.160 and he covers you.

00:31:13.260 and so you stand there knowing that you're a sinner

00:31:17.240 but also knowing at the same time

00:31:19.980 that you're wearing the robes of Christ

00:31:21.420 and God doesn't look at you as a sinner

00:31:23.240 but now looks at you as a saint.

00:31:26.360 That image is all throughout the scriptures

00:31:28.400 and it's certainly here in Noah.

00:31:31.500 Yes, the ark is preserving the seat of the Messiah

00:31:35.860 but also that ark is literally protecting

00:31:38.980 God's people from his wrath.

00:31:41.620 It is an image.

00:31:43.260 what Christ does for us so when you look to Genesis 6 you don't only see wrath

00:31:49.500 you see mercy yes you see the vast majority of humanity falling and

00:31:56.580 drowning in God's wrath but at the same time you see Noah who is your

00:32:01.360 forefather in the faith the flood is a warning but Noah is a promise and if

00:32:10.780 you're in Christ, you can have that real assurance that when the judgment day comes,

00:32:14.260 when the floodwaters come, I don't know if you've seen the movie of A Pilgrim's Progress,

00:32:20.800 the kid's movie. At the very end, he has to jump through this wall of water.

00:32:27.100 It's representing death. And you go, Lord, are you going to keep me? Am I going to sink to the

00:32:34.160 bottom of this ocean and you jump in. And what happens? Just like the ark, he takes you to a

00:32:43.940 new world. And that is the beautiful thing of Christ. We see this in Noah, but you got to see

00:32:52.800 it also in Christ. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank you. We thank you for the mercy

00:33:03.660 of Christ.

00:33:08.860 Lord, we thank you that you have prepared us for

00:33:10.860 and pointed us to Christ all throughout

00:33:12.780 the Old Testament. Lord, that you would connect

00:33:14.820 these narratives,

00:33:16.100 that we might understand the gospel even more.

00:33:19.240 We ask for your blessing on the rest

00:33:20.840 of our worship in Jesus' name.

00:33:22.880 Amen.

Dale Partridge - February 11, 2026

Genesis 6_5-8 ~ Total Depravity Before the Flood

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