Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the October 5th service from Clifford Baptist Church, 635 Fletcher's Level Road in Amherst. Today's scripture is Genesis, chapter 6, verses 5 through 15 and verse 18. And the sermon is entitled the dangers of the flood over the earth, delivered today by Pastor Jeffrey Campbell.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Grab your Bibles, go to Genesis chapter number six. Genesis chapter number six. Today as we talk about the dangers of sin. We began a little short series last week, and we were in the Garden of Eden last week. And now we are looking at the earth as a whole this week.
We understand that as sin entered the world through deception and distortion of the word of God, we're going to see that sin now spread throughout the world.
And I just want to remind you of maybe one of the most severe plagues in all the world. Amid 14th century, the populations of the continents of Asia and Europe were wiped out. The bubonic plague, or the Black Death had reached the continents. And in Europe, it is estimated 25 to 30 million people died.
One third of the continent was wiped out in just a few years.
What was the root cause of this plague, of this bubonic plague? What caused it? Here's your answer. Bacteria that was transmitted from rodents to humans. If I can make it just crystal clear to you, flea infested rats.
And those flea infested rats would infect people that were on the trade routes and they would infect and they just spread throughout the continent. But when we understand that that was one of the worst pandemics in the world, Genesis chapter number six records a pandemic as well.
In your Bible, you may have a title above that chapter that simply says something like the flood. That's what my Bible says. But we understand that the flood of water happens in Genesis chapter number seven.
But that flood must come to be judgment for sin and to wipe out a plague that has been worldwide.
And we understand that the flood is the measure that God used to wipe out the plague of sin.
In chapter number six, you're not going to see necessarily the flood of water.
But all I want you to look at and look for today as we study together is, is the flood of sin.
The flood of sin, because it is the sin that brought the flood of water.
And so when we understand this together, we understand that God will look down upon his creation. And what started out as good has changed drastically because sin has entered the world. It has more than entered the world. It has entered the people's lives. It has infected their actions, and it has gotten all the way to their heart.
And so God must do something about this.
You know this story all too well. But today, when we look through the eyes of God and we see the heart of God, we understand he just didn't come to this conclusion to wipe everything out. No, it was done in sincere agony and in sincere love. And so today we. We gather around God's word. Genesis, chapter number six.
Look at verse number five is where we're going to start today. Verses five and six is where we're going to begin.
And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
When we understand the flood over the earth and we understand we're talking about sin, first point that I want to give you today is this, that we must realize that sin meets a disapproval of God. You've got to see the disapproval of God.
When we think about sin, certain things come to our mind. And even as believers, when we think about sin, sometimes we say, well, at least mine isn't as bad as what that person did. But here's what we must understand.
Sin is. Sin is sin in the eyes of a holy God.
And it doesn't matter what you do or what it looks like or what name that we call it, guess what it is. Sick. Still, sin.
So in God's eyes, listen to me, church people, I'm guilty here. In God's eyes, overindulgence, gluttony is just as bad as murder.
Now you. There may be some people that just disagree with me there, but that is the truth of God.
When he sees you. And when he sees sin, it is on equal terms.
And so this is not a stone's throw at somebody or a finger pointing. This is reality. Sin meets the disapproval of a holy God. He cannot stand it. So when we look at this together today, we open verses five and six, and we see that God is looking down and he sees the wickedness of man great.
And then from Genesis chapter number three to chapter number six, if you read those, you will see a spiral downhill of God's people. In chapter number three, we see that sin entered the world. Chapter number four, the first murder happens as Cain kills Abel. And now chapter number six, God sees from his vantage point that there is wickedness across the earth. Look at verse number five again.
God saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only Evil continually.
But I want you to understand that when we see this, sin always leaves a mark.
If you get nothing from the sermon today, just take those words home with you. In your mind and your heart. Sin leaves its mark.
It always does.
It doesn't matter if you are forgiven by the grace of God. Sin will still leave a mark. When we understand the power of sin and the power to drive God away from us, we will, as believers shudder when we think of sin because it doesn't meet God's approval.
We see this wickedness is rooted deep in the people. Not only are the actions wicked, but but the thoughts were evil. And the heart of man is evil as well.
From the very beginning of creation, God is looking into the heart of man and into the heart of woman. And I believe today God knows your heart even better than you do.
God still looks at the heart of men and women, boys and girls.
And here in Genesis chapter number six, we see that the actions and the minds and the hearts of the people and the creation of God have turned from him and turned to evil.
How do you grieve the heart of God?
Have you ever thought about that? Growing up as a little boy, I did not ever want to disappoint my mama and my daddy.
Now that doesn't mean I was a perfect boy. I just didn't get called.
That's not the right mindset. Right?
That's not the right mindset. But I didn't want to displease my parents. That's one thing that I grew up. And to this day, as a 43 year old man, I still don't want to make people mad. I don't want to get people displeased with me sometimes. I'm not going to go down that road. I'll leave that for another day. How do you grieve the heart of God? Look at verse number six.
And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth. And it grieved him at his heart.
How does a loving God go from perfecting and creating everything to understanding? As sin entered, now his heart is grieved to the point where he understands he must intervene.
He must intervene in this great plan.
And we understand that it repented and that he had made man and he was sorry that he ever created them. But as creation started out, how did it start out? Church. It started as good and now it's evil.
There's one three letter word sin.
It has flooded the earth. And because of the wickedness of people and their lives, now their lives have been limited in the number of years.
They are desiring sin continually.
God is sorrowful and that he disapproves of what he has done, that he even created man. Here's what we need to realize today. Sin never meets the approval of God.
Never.
You can sugarcoat it. You can call it, you can name it. If it is labeled sin in the Bible, it cannot be approved blessed by God.
Look at verses seven. Let's start. Go back to verse number seven. We're going to go there.
God's word says this. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, Both man and beast, and the creeping thing and the fowls of the air, for it repenteth me that I have made them.
The second thing I want you to see today is the destruction of man.
The destruction of man. We get a glimpse into the thoughts of God.
He has not addressed or appeared to anyone just yet. But in verse number seven, God is just speaking out his thoughts and what he is thinking the plans to to himself. And here's what he says in that verse number seven. I've got to destroy man whom I have created. And I've got to not only destroy them, I've just got to clear the face of the earth.
And as God is talking through this plan, it is in sorrow and in shame and in full regret that he even made man a holy. God must deal with wicked sin.
But here's the truth from the very beginning.
God must deal with the sinner as well.
Listen to me, Church.
It's one thing to say, get that sin away.
It's another thing to realize that we all have a heart that desires what we ought not, and that is sin.
So God must now deal with the sinner.
If you read. Look with me at verses, jump to verse number 11 with me.
The earth was also corrupt before God. And the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth and behold, it was corrupt. For all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, and the end of all flesh is come before me. For the earth is filled with violence through them. And behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
All you read in those verses are these words, corrupt, corrupt, corrupt. And you see the word violence as well in verse number 11. And so that corruption and violence and sinfulness means this, that the end of man has come.
God is forced to do something, not only to deal with the sin, but to deal with the sinner. And that plan is simply this.
I'm going to destroy them with the earth. Noah in verse number 13 hears about this destruction of some sort that is coming.
And God's promise and God's payment for sin is this. Something's got to happen. So something must be done to pay for this sin. And it will cost man his life.
It will cost humans their life.
But in the midst of this sin and corruption and God's plan of destruction, I want you to also understand this.
God's grace is available.
Even in the worst of situations. God's grace is available. Last week we looked at the Garden of Eden as Adam and Eve were banished. They were stripped naked. They realized that. But what did God do when we closed last week? He clothed them with animal skins again showing grace.
Now today, here's God's plan. We're going to wipe out the entire earth. We're going to wipe out the population of man and woman, of animals. We're going to going to wipe it clean. But there's grace that is available and we're going to look at that just in a second. But here's the reality. Man must die.
God is going to do it with a flood. According to verse number 17, over all the earth and destruction is coming.
I want to step away and say this real quickly this morning.
If you're here without Jesus Christ, destruction is coming.
I say that in a very loving way to understand this, that we're all sinners, but God must punish sin.
Even with that news today, that destruction is coming to those that are sin filled, those that do not have Jesus, guess what? God's grace is still available to you today.
Let's look at this grace. Look at verse number 8, verses 8, 9. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
These are the generations of Noah.
Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations. And Noah walked with God.
As we see those two verses, remember God from his vantage point is seeing that the earth is filled with sin and that the earth needs to be destroyed. Sin must be judged. But in all of what God sees, there is one man that stands out. One man that catches God's eye, catches his favor, catches grace from God. And in verse number nine, it tells us that Noah was a just man, perfect in his generation, and he walked with God. When you see that word perfect in your Bible, that doesn't mean that he never sinned. That doesn't mean perfect in that way. It means that he did his best to walk as God commanded him to walk. None of us in this room are perfect. Can I get an amen? Right There.
But we are doing our best to walk with God. I pray that you are.
I know that I am. And I still fall short in all my human ability. I still fall short, fall short of what God's intended purpose is for my life. Every single day, I go before God and I say, God, listen, I need your help. I need you to forgive me of the things that I did wrong today. Here's the things that I know I did wrong today. But there are some things that I don't realize that I done wrong today. God, will you open my eyes and open my heart to those things that I missed that you would have me to do? God, forgive me because I didn't do them, but lead me that I may do them again.
Every single day, believers should bow before a holy God. And believers need to come before God and ask for forgiveness and his leading that you will walk with God.
Our desire as believers is not to walk with the world. Yes, we have to walk in the world, but we're not to walk with the world.
Not that we're better, but we're different.
Because we have Jesus. Because we have Jesus. Because we have Jesus, we should walk with him. That is our desire. And we see in verse number nine that Noah was just and he was perfect and he walked with God.
That's why he found grace from the Lord. That's why he found favor. And that's why God gave him a very important task. You understand that task? That task is simply this. Go build an ark.
You and your family and all the animals. Take two of each and you put them on that ark. The destruction is coming. Noah knows it, but he doesn't know when.
So he begins to work and to build this ark. It's amazing what the Bible says about Noah. According to God's word, eight people will be saved in this ark.
The animals, the food necessary to feed them. But here's what you need to understand.
As Noah is given this opportunity, given God's grace, here's what we understand. He still has a job to do.
He still has to walk with God and be obedient, and he has to build an ark.
Just because you find favor in God. Just because, Let me put it in today's language. Just because you get saved one time, it doesn't mean you're good. It means you need to walk with him every day.
And there are people that have walked an aisle and prayed a prayer that was not genuine because they are not walking with God. And I shudder to think. I shudder to think how many people that think they're okay and they're not.
The mark of a believer is simply this, that that person walks with God.
That person walks with God.
There are people that I meet every week, and I say, what church do you go to? I don't go to church right now.
What church did you used to go to? I met a guy that come to the grocery store yesterday, gave me a big bear hug. I coached him in ball when he was a little kid.
He asked me, pastor, he said, jeffrey, what are you doing now?
I said, I'm a preacher.
His eyes got about that big.
I thought it was the glare off my head for a second. But he was like.
And here's the first thing I said.
I said, where are you going? To church. And he said, I got baptized back when I was a little kid. I'm not going anywhere right now.
I said, listen, come to Clifford.
Come.
But here's what the story is.
I met God, but I'm not walking with him.
Church.
This world is full of people that are not walking with God.
And the only way for the church to be the light is if we are the people that walk with God.
And so the challenge is this. As we look at Noah's life, he has been given a monumental task to build an ark. And basically to save his family, he is saving the world.
But through this ark is a means of God's grace and salvation.
Noah was faithful to God. It doesn't mean that he was perfect, but what it means that he walked with God.
Hebrews chapter number 11 puts Noah in the faithful hall of fame. He built an ark by faith.
Peter writes that Noah was a preacher of righteousness. Here's Geoffrey's thought, not that it has any merit whatsoever. I believe in the middle of this desert, as Noah is given an assignment by the grace of God to build an ark to save the people of God. That every day he swung that hammer and he put that ship together and he put the pitch in there, and he smeared that stuff, I believe, from that ark. He cried out, come aboard, Come aboard. Destruction's coming.
And there's a people that have never heard about rain. They don't know what. This old man's lost his mind. He's off his rocker, talking about it's going to flood in the desert.
And lo and behold, point number three.
God and Noah made a deal.
And that deal was not simply build an ark.
God made a covenant.
God made a covenant with Noah.
If we think about that deal that they made together, look at verse number 18.
Here's what God Tells Noah.
But with thee will I establish my covenant. And thou shalt come into the ark. Thou, thy sons, thy wife and thy sons, wives with thee.
There's the covenant.
If you walk with me, if you listen to me, Noah, you and your family will be saved.
But the flood is coming.
When we understand the faithfulness of Noah, we also must look at the faithfulness of God.
God was faithful to give him a chance, to give Noah an opportunity by his grace. And I believe he extends that opportunity to you and I today.
The second part of that covenant, you can write this down, is found in Genesis, chapter nine. When we understand what the rainbow really means. And that rainbow means that the earth will not be flooded again. That's the second part of the covenant. As we think about the Lord's Supper today, if we think about the seriousness of sin, here's what we must realize.
Sin does not meet the approval of God.
Whatever you want to call it, whatever it looks like it, it is not approved by God. The second thing we must realize is this sin has always meant destruction. From the very end sin, it will always lead to destruction. And so today, when we understand what this covenant God makes with Noah is, here's the promise.
You will live, and through you will the rest of the world be reestablished.
How does sin spread?
I would liken it to a wildfire.
Once it gets going, it's hard to stop.
And I'm looking at people that I love dearly, and I'm just calling the church, just simply this. To be the church, we need to be a light in the world as the world is looking for truth.
If they look at the church and see the world, they'll never come to church.
If they look at you and they see the world, they'll wonder. They'll think they're okay.
But if they look at you and they look at your life and they say, something's different about that man or that woman, there's our opportunity to shine the light for Jesus.
When we think about the flooding of sin, we also must think about the covenant between Noah and God.
And that covenant was to spare his life.
I want to share these words with you. And this is kind of where we're going to go for the Lord's Supper.
But listen to these words from Luke chapter number 22.
Luke, chapter 22, verse number 20. It says this likewise, also the cup after supper, saying the cup is the New Testament or the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you.
These 12 disciples sit down with Jesus.
As we think about the disciples Sitting with Jesus for the Last Supper.
Here's what Jesus says.
There's a new covenant.
And that new covenant is by my blood.
And so today, in a moment of invitation, here's what I want to say. Just sit still just for a second.
When we think about this covenant with Jesus, thank the Lord I don't have to build an ark to save myself.
Thank the Lord. It's not simply going to church that saves me. Because guess what? I missed some time.
Certainly it hadn't been able to quote all the scriptures and all the verses. That saves you. Those are good things. They don't save you.
Here's what Jesus says. What saves you is the new covenant, which is my blood, which I'm getting ready to pour out for you today. If you're here without Jesus Christ, praise God. That destruction is not the answer.
That there's an opportunity through the blood of Jesus that has paid for your sin, that you can have a relationship with him through the resurrection. On the third day today, you don't have to meet that destruction. One day, if you will come to him sincerely and say, lord, I trust that your blood covers my sin. I need a relationship with you. I'm turning from my sin. I'm turning to live for you. God, will you save me?
Here's his answer every time.
Yes, I will.
At 15 years old, that was my cry. Lord, save me.
Believers, can we be challenged in such a way by the life of Noah that when people look at us, they can see they walk with God?
Not that we're any better, but we have what the world needs, this moment of invitation.
I'm just going to let God work.
If you need to, come and pray before we sit at the Lord's table together, you come today. If you need Jesus, that invitation is yours. Don't leave this room without talking to me.
I'll make myself available if you need to talk. Do not leave today. We without talking to me. Praise God for the blood of Jesus. Amen, Father. God, thank you for this day, Lord, as we see how rampant sin was in Genesis chapter number six, God, we look at a world that sin is rampant and celebrated and desired.
God, I pray, Lord, that you will make this church a lighthouse.
That the doors swing open to anyone who needs Jesus.
Lord, that people come not because of a good preacher or good singing or good message or a good church. People come because they know they will meet you here.
God, let us never take that for granted. That you meet us in this place today and God, right now, just as Genesis chapter six, you know every heart.
God, I pray in these moments, Lord, that you search and, Lord, that you lead and that you call people to action.
Lord, that you call Christians to stand up and stand out in the world.
But you also call those that need you to yourself.
God, I pray, Lord, that if there's one in this room today, they hear this invitation.
Not from Jeffrey, from Jesus.
Just come.
We give you this moment in Jesus name.
Amen.
[00:29:37] Speaker A: Clifford Baptist Church invites you to join us for worship every Sunday morning at 11am for more information about our church, please call our church office at 434-946-0555.
