The Destruction of the World

Well, this morning's sermon is going to be a little different than what we typically do. First of all, we're going to be looking at a larger section. So I hope you brought comfortable shoes. We're going to be looking at the entire Noah story, beginning with the genealogy of chapter five, because I believe God intended this to be one complete story considered and thought about together. The story of Noah fascinates me, primarily because it is one of our favorite stories to tell children. We love to tell the story about Noah and his animals and his boat, and then the great water that came along, that Noah had such great faith. And he did have great faith. But if we really look at the story, if we really think about all the details of the story, this is a difficult story. This is an only age appropriate kind of story. The amount of evil that's presented, the amount of corruption and violence, the amount of judgment and wrath that's poured out. It's interesting how we can latch on to the sweet, fun parts of a story and miss the bigger picture of what God is doing. As we look this morning at a large chunk of text, we will see that God is holy and just and that He punishes all sin. God is holy and just and pours out His wrath on all sin. We will also see that we must repent and believe in His promises in order to receive His grace. As you look this morning, Try to break up this large section, this large text into three main sections. Chapter 5 through chapter 6, verse 8 will be our first section. God's good creation is corrupted by man's evil. Chapter 5 through 6, verse 8. God's good creation is corrupted by man's evil. Chapter 6, verse 9 through 7, at the end of chapter 7, that's where we'll see God's just judgment and His gracious provision for creation. Chapter 6, verse 9 through to the end of chapter 7, God's just judgment and His gracious provision for creation. And then chapter 8, verse 1, which is really the hinge verse of the entire story. God remembers Noah. We'll see that those two chapters, 8 and 9, We'll see God's new creation and man's continual rebellion. God's new creation and man's continual rebellion. Well, let's begin. We've got lots to cover. We aren't going to read all the text. That's another way. This is different. I typically want to read every word of Scripture, but there will be some summary. I'm assuming there's a lot of familiarity with the story. Let's look here in chapter 5. There's a genealogy. And if we look at that genealogy, we can see there's a pattern presented. There's 10 names. And each name has a very familiar pattern. Let's just pick one out. Let's go with Adam to begin with. Or let's go with Seth. Sorry, let's... Verse 6, Seth. Here's the pattern. Seth lived 105 years. Then he fathered Enosh. Seth lived after he fathered Enosh 107 years, and he had many other sons and daughters. Thus, all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died. You see, the pattern is, there's a father. At this age, he fathered this son. Then, after he fathered that son, he lived so many more years, had other sons and daughters. Then he lived that total amount of years, and he died. Now, it's interesting, there's actually three different places where that pattern is broken. All that information is always introduced, but Moses, our author, emphasizes three different characters with a break in that pattern, or an addition to that pattern. The first one is in verse 1, when he's describing Adam. And this takes us back to show that this genealogy is built upon the very beginning of creation. Genesis 1. You see there in verse 1, when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. Male and female, He created them and blessed them and named them man when they were created. Here we see a reminder, man is made in the image of God. He is supposed to be reflecting God. He is supposed to be God's ambassador. And really, what's most interesting is in verse 3, when Adam lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness. What's being emphasized there is that Adam, being made in the image of God, gives that image over to his son, and that son gives the image over to his son, so that everyone created, every human being that has given birth, gets to participate in the image of God, or is an image bearer. Each human life is sanctified. Each human life is a image of God. We are all made in his likeness. That's a very important theological concept that we are all made in God's image. Because that shows that all of life is sanctified. This is why we are not to murder one another. The other place this pattern is broken is the seventh father listed, and it is important and very particular that it's the seventh one. That's in verse 21. Enoch. Enoch may be the second most mysterious character in all scripture, given his brief, bold description and his quick removal. We'll see the most mysterious figure in a few weeks in Melchizedek. But here we see Enoch, verse 22, the patterns broken. He walked with God. We haven't seen this since Adam and Eve in the garden. They were walking with God. This man is special in some way. He's so special it repeats verse 24. He walked with God and he was not. Now, he was not could just be a nice poetic way of saying he died. But the qualification of it makes it clear that it's not just that he died in a different way. No, God took him. This man did not see death. This is a very interesting, bizarre, unique situation here. The third place we see the pattern broken is the very last person listed. Lamech, at 182 years old, he fathered a son and he called his name Noah, saying out of the ground that the Lord has cursed this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands. Now, it's interesting. We could read it this way. He called his name Noah. Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us Noah. Or he could be saying he called his name relief. The word Noah means relief. It means rest. This one, Lamech is saying, is going to give us rest. And this should be reminding us of going back to Genesis 7. God rested. This is the end of creation. This is the end purpose for which God created us. Is Lamed saying that Noah is going to be the fulfillment of Genesis 3.15? That this is the one who's going to reverse the curse and give us rest and relief from the curse that has caused us to work and labor in vain? The curse that causes us to die. Well, then the final difference is the final break is Noah. Well, he's given three sons. As you look at this genealogy, I want to make a few observations. First, the genealogy is supposed to be a celebration of life. This is not a celebration of life. because the end stress after each person makes a very bold statement, and he died. That's supposed to stand out as awkward and difficult. Every single one of these men of faith, every single one of these heroes of our ancestry, they died. They weren't created to die though. They weren't meant to die. They were supposed to live. God created us to have life. And as we look at this genealogy, we should be reminded of the pain and the difficulty that death brings. It's easy for us to ignore death. It's easy for us to ignore the fact that death is all around us, that death is our ultimate end, that death is painful and difficult. Now, we as Christians, we do not mourn as those without hope. We mourn with hope. We mourn because we believe in the resurrected Savior, Jesus Christ. But that doesn't remove the painfulness of death. It's interesting, a lot of the early churches, they'll put the graveyard in the front yard. That way, you're walking into the church thinking about death. You're walking into the church, preparing yourself to think about your meeting with God. You're walking into the church, meditating upon your ultimate end here on this earth. Friends, as we think about death, we should be aware. We cannot hide the fact that it's painful. We need to learn to grieve properly. We need to learn to mourn appropriately, we should not be ashamed of the pain and the difficulty that death brings. The second thing we see, the second observation is what made Enoch and Noah special? What made them righteous? Enoch is described in Judah as a preacher of righteousness. Noah over and over again, God commanded, God commanded, Noah did all that he commanded. What made these two men special so that God regarded them and not other men? Well, we could say that they were more righteous, that their deeds were better, that they never sinned. Well, that doesn't compute for the rest of Scripture. All men are sinners. All men are under the curse. Every single person, not only is given the likeness of God from Adam, but every single human person is under the curse because of Adam. Every single one of us has a corrupt and perverse heart, thanks to Adam. And we all exercise that perverse and corrupt heart. I don't believe Enoch and Noah were without sin. I believe that what makes them stand out is that they're men of faith. They are men who believe in God's promises and live according to them. What makes Noah and Enoch special is the same thing that makes anyone special in the eyes of God. They believed God's promises. They believed that God was going to fulfill His promise, that He was going to send a rescuer. One who would provide true rest. One who would reverse the curse in Genesis 3.15. One that would destroy sin and death. We are all, every human being, in the same battle. Against our greatest enemy, sin and death. And the only hope we have is God. Enoch, Noah, Moses, David. No matter how great the person, the only thing we can do is trust God and his word. And it's not just saying a prayer. It's not just giving a one time commitment of raising your hand to trust Jesus with your sins. No, I believe what Enoch and Noah represent is a life of faith, a life of believing God's word, a life of believing God's promises. You see, we often look at God's word and we like to stand over it. We look at God's Word and we like to analyze it and judge it. What does this say that's true? What does this say that's good? Friends, that's the wrong posture and the wrong disposition to be reading Scripture. Scripture is God's authoritative Word. It is above us. God has given us His Word and we are to believe it. That is our proper role. That is our blessing to have God's Word and trust it. Now, I don't want to pretend that there aren't difficult things in God's Word. Peter says, Paul says difficult things. What do we do with those difficult things? When we come across a doctrine that is hard for us to understand, or we come across a prescription or an instruction in God's Word that's difficult for us to obey, how do you respond? Well, the first thing I don't want you to do is to stop reading that particular truth or that particular instruction. The best thing you can do is saturate yourself with God's Word when you're doubting God's Word. The best thing you can do is read it and read it and meditate upon it and meditate upon it so that you're praying about whatever this difficult doctrine is or this difficult instruction is. I believe, well, as most of you already have picked up, my favorite theologian is Augustine. I believe he's easily one of the smartest men ever born in the Western Hemisphere. I believe he probably is, from the evidence of his writing, the most brilliant man. And this is what he said when he comes across doctrines or instructions in Scripture that he finds difficult. He says he immediately doubts his own ability to reason. He doubts his own faith. He doubts his own sanctification. He always found that the problem was not in God's Word, but it was in him. God's Word is always found faithful and true. Friends, that's the kind of disposition, that's the kind of posture we need. As we're reading God's Word, it is our responsibility to believe God's Word. Not to judge it. Not to try to figure out where the truth is in it. It is the truth. We must humble ourselves. And whenever there is something difficult, we must place ourselves underneath God's word at his foot. The question you have to ask yourself is, is God trustworthy? Is God trustworthy? And I believe that answer is absolutely yes. Let's continue with this section, and it's going to get into some things that are difficult. That was preparation. Chapter 6. Let's look at verses 1 through 4 first. When man began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. and they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, My spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh, his day shall be a hundred and twenty years. Then Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterwards, when the sons of God came unto the daughters of man, and they bore children of them. These were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown." This is the perfect follow-up from not standing over God's Word and judging it. Because the key question is, who are these sons of God? There are really three options, and I'm going to just try to run through these quickly because it needs an answer. The sons of God could be angels. The Old Testament often refers to angels as sons of God. And here you would see that angels saw that the daughters of man were attractive and had relations with them. And then out came giants, men of renown. Well, this one is difficult, mainly because God didn't create angels to know men or to know women in this way. This is spiritual beings interacting with physical beings. This doesn't seem possible in the way God created the hierarchy of beings. It causes lots of theological problems. The second reading is that the sons of God will refer to Seth, the line of Seth. You see here in Genesis 5, we just finished a genealogy that emphasizes Seth as the one child from Adam and Eve through whom the promise of reversing the curse is going to take place. And here we would see that it would be the sons of Seth, the sons of God, the sons that God has chosen. They're seeing the women of pains line as attractive. And the intermarriage of believers and nonbelievers, well, that always causes problems in Scripture, that always causes problems in life. The problem there is that it really doesn't fit perfectly with the genealogy, and it's somewhat forcing Seth In his line, in the Son of God, in contrast to the daughters of man, it could have been written much more explicitly. It could have been the daughters of Cain. The last option, I think, is the best option. And that the sons of God are referring to royalty. David is called a son of God. David's children are called sons of God. Oftentimes, in the ancient Near Eastern world, kings would be called sons of the divine. And I believe here, Lamech, not of the Seth line of verse 28, but of Lamech of Cain's line in chapter 4. He's a royal figure. They built cities. And he took two wives. I believe here you're seeing in verse 2 that the sons of God are mighty men who have rebelled against God and built their own kingdoms. They came and they started intermarrying with the daughters of God's chosen line. And here the problem still is intermarriage, the ungodly with the godly. The other problem here is that it's a forced marriage. It's polygamy. These are things that are opposed to God's original design. What takes place here is that the powerful sin of man manifests itself with the forcing of intermarriage with the ungodly and the godly, and the world goes corrupt. Those are your three options. The last two are very similar in the sense that what takes place is the godly and the ungodly intermarry. And that causes the corruption of all the world. But let's go down to verses five through eight. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. There's a lot of qualifiers in that sentence. When my wife and I argue, I like to argue using words like always and never. Don't do that. You know, one little instance, I act like she's always doing something wrong. You know, it's just a bad way of arguing. But here God is saying every intention of the thought of his heart was only evil continually. This isn't hyperbole like I argue. This is the truth. This is the condition of the world. He saw the wickedness of man. It was great. Every intention of the thoughts of his heart were only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he made man on the earth and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and the creeping things and birds of the heavens. For I am sorry that I have made them." But, three, a wonderful three letter word that changes everything. But, Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Now notice here, there's actually a beautiful structure to this single passage. It begins with God seeing the wickedness. Then it makes another step. God regrets. creating. Then it makes another step. God declares His judgment. And then it restates. God regrets. And then God sees. See, it's an inclusiode passage. God saw the wickedness and it ended with Him regretting and deciding He's going to judge the world. And then it goes all the way back. But instead of now God seeing for judgment, we see God giving grace to Noah. It's beautiful to see the grace of God in the passage. In the midst of all the evil, God saw one man that had faith in His promise. And God showed him grace. Now, I want to tackle this big theological topic. So, tie your shoes up now. Alright? What does it mean that God regress. As we think of all scripture, we have to believe that scripture doesn't contradict itself. So we have to think of other passages, namely 1 Samuel 15, 29. God does not repent as if he's a man. The way I read this passage is it's anthropomorphic. It's using language that really is more unique for man and using it to describe what's happening to God. Well, what does it mean that God does not repent like a man? Well, let's be very concrete. Asher is a man. And as all men, Asher on any given night, he puts his clothes up for the next morning and he wants to make sure he's dressed sharp. So in the evening, he's going to pull out his black pants and his gray sweater when he goes to bed and he wakes up the next morning and he wakes up and he says, you know, It's not a gray sweater day, it's a purple sweater day. See, Asher's changed his mind. He woke up happier than he was maybe the night before. So he wants to wear his purple sweater. See, Asher changes because his emotion changes. We as men and women, we change because our desires, our emotions, our thoughts, they're always changing. God does not change like that. God is constant. God is perfect in who He is and what He does. He doesn't change internally. He doesn't have desires and emotions and thoughts like us that twist and turn Him in every possible direction. He's not tossed to and fro with different desires. No, God is faithful and reliable and steadfast. So how does God change? God's change is brought about because things outside of God change. God created this world good. We can go back to Genesis 1. It was good. It was good. The world as it was then had the imprint and the stamp of God's goodness and His beauty all over it. And so when God looked at that, He loved it. In His holiness and His love, He could look and He could be pleased with that good creation because it had His stamp all over it. It was created by Him. It reflected Him. In His holiness and in His love, He could look at that world and He could say, that is good. I am pleased with that world. So what happened between now and the regret? But nothing changed with God. He's still perfectly holy and He's still perfectly loving. He always acts at all times in every way with perfect holiness and perfect love. What changed because of regret is not God. What changed was us. We, those who God put in charge of this world, we changed. We rebelled. We introduced evil. We introduced chaos. We introduced corruption. We introduced wickedness. And that's when God looks and He's no longer pleased with this world. He looks and He sees our evil and He's not pleased anymore. He doesn't delight in this world anymore because it's a stench to His holiness. What's amazing here, though, friends, is that God is always constant and steady in every action, that He is perfectly holy and perfectly loving. Let's think about the two ways in which God can be perfectly holy and perfectly loving with two different circumstances. Let's look at the unrepentant sinner who does not believe God's promises. God is perfectly holy to exercise His wrath against those who do not believe Him. God the Father is perfectly holy and just and right to exercise his wrath upon anyone who does not believe in him and up against all who rebel against him. That's obvious, he's holy, he has a just and right standard, and when we break it, we are due his punishment. Well, how is God loving at that moment? So that's an important question, but we have to ask another good question. Are we lovely when we rebel against God? God loves those things that are lovely. God loves those things that are good. God loves those things that are pure and right. And when we're rebelling against Him, putting our fist up against Him, fighting against Him, are we lovely? Are we deserving of His love? God is exercising love in punishing sinners. But it's a love for what's lovely, His truth. It's a love for what's lovely, righteousness and justice. God is perfectly loving when He exercises His holiness and wrath. The real hard one is actually how does God love sinners? and forgives them. How does God exercise a perfect holiness and a perfect love perfectly at the same time when He forgives sinners? We see the love. How does He exercise His holiness? Well, the Father, He saw our condition and He saw there's no way we could work enough We could fight enough to remove all of our sin. There's no way that we could be cleansed of our sin. There's no way we could be removed from the holiness of God and from the wrath that's due us. But He desires to exercise His love towards us who are unlovely. So how does God reconcile this? How can He be just and yet forgive? Well, it's when God Himself becomes like us. It's when God adds to Himself a human nature. It's when Jesus Christ is born, the perfect God, the perfect man. He lives an innocent life, not worthy of wrath. He lives an innocent righteous life that's perfectly pleasing to the Father. And so there on the cross, when He dies, God punishes Jesus Christ on the cross for our sin. His holiness is a peace. His wrath is satisfied when He punishes Christ for what we did. So that He could show us the benefits of His great love. He could show us His kingdom. He could bring us back into His family. It's by placing our faith in Jesus Christ that we get to experience the love of God. It's only in Jesus Christ that the holiness of God is satisfied. Friends, our only hope is to believe in Jesus Christ because God will punish our sins. He must. He will either punish them to us or our sins will be found punished in Christ and we will receive eternal life. God is constant. He is reliable. What a great, loving, holy God we have that he should have destroyed all of us. He had the right to destroy all of us. But he chose to save some who would believe in him. This should create in us a spirit of humility. This should create in us a spirit of humility because we see that God is always holy, always loving, and always exercising His will with perfect freedom and sovereignty. God will choose to have mercy on whom He chooses to have mercy, and God will judge those whom He will judge. He is a sovereign God, and we must be humbled that He has allowed us to hear the gospel and to believe it. We also need to be courageous. We need to have the courage to believe His Word and to trust Him. To know that this constant God who showed us great love on the cross, that love never ends. That love is always there for us. That love is perfect. Nothing can remove us from that love. So, when we see God regretting, we can't believe that this God is going to leave us somehow. This God has given us his seal and his promise, the Holy Spirit. Let's move into our second section, chapter eight. I'm sorry, our second section, chapter six, verse nine, you all got really excited there, didn't you? No, no, we were we're going to have to to work through this. We're going to move this fairly, fairly quicker. What is wrong with the world? Here we see God's just judgment and His gracious provision for creation. Here we see His just judgment. And we looked at earlier about how we were sinning continually, always. Look at verses 11 through 17. Here, the description of how bad things were. Now, the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt. For all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh. For the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher food. Make runes in the ark and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it. The length of the ark is 300 cubits. The breadth 50. It's height 30. Make a roof for the ark and finish it to a cubit above and set the door of the ark in its side. Make it with lower and second and third decks. For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on earth shall die. Why does God judge the world? Because We had corrupted the world because we were so completely corrupted. We were so completely corrupt that all we ever did was corrupt God's good creation. The repetition is astounding. It was corrupt in God's sight. Behold, look at it. It's corrupt. God is going to destroy all the world. How did He judge the world? Justly. Well, He brings a flood. And we have to remember, it had not yet rained on the earth. When God created, He created an expanse with the waters. Some waters were up high, some waters were down low. The expanse is what we knew was the sky. When God decides He's going to destroy the world, when God decides He's going to judge the world, He just opens, He pulls a string and opens the floodgates. He pulls it down and lets the water fall down and crash on the earth. He lets the waters burst from inside of the earth. He covers the entire world so that nothing lives. Now, there's some debate as to if this is a universal flood. Okay, there could be an island on the other side of the world that did not get flooded. The point being, everything that had life was no more. The known world that had life. The known world that had living things. It was all destroyed. No matter how universal you want to look at it, everything was destroyed. Nothing was left alive that had the breath of God in it. It was a total destruction. But notice, in the midst of God's judgment, He always gives hope. In the midst of even the worst judgment, God always gives provision and care. He never leaves us alone. First, He takes two of every animal. He takes this family. He protects them in the ark. He's the one who does the protecting. He's the one who shuts them in the ark and seals them and keeps them. He's the one that's given provision of an instruction on how they can live. He has kept enough of life to start a new creation. That's a good provision from God. Secondly, look at verse 18. What a wonderful provision of God. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you and your sons, and your wife and your sons' wives with you. Now, the Hebrew word for beginning a covenant is usually cut a covenant. You usually cut a covenant when you're going to start a covenant. Here, the word isn't cut. It's to continue a covenant. I don't believe Noah's getting a new covenant here. I believe God is saying, I'm going to continue the same covenant that I had with Adam. I'm going to continue it through you. That promise that there's going to be a seed who will give rest to To us, that will give a reverse to the curse that brings life to death, that conquers our greatest enemy, sin and death. That covenant is now with you. Noah gets a great promise. Not only will God provide for him everything, but the covenant of salvation continues. Let's look at chapter 8, verses 1. This is really the hinge of the entire story. But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. God raises up the waters. He destroys all things that are in the ark. And then a sweet declaration of grace. God remembered Noah. God remembered Noah. It's not as if he forgot him, but now God's focus and attention is upon Noah and what he's going to do for him. After all of life has been destroyed, God remembers the one whom he has reserved to keep life. Look at Noah's first response off the ark. Verse 20 through 22. Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. What great grace. What great response to Noah's only proper response. Noah gets up and he praises him. He worships God. He begins sacrificing to God. What else do you do after this? After seeing such a great work of God betrayed before you? Noah does the only thing that one can possibly do, and that is to praise him and worship him. And God responds with a great promise. He will never again destroy the world. He will never again destroy all of life. He even shows that there's going to be consistency and constancy. There's going to be seed time and harvest. There's going to be cold and heat. There's going to be summer and winter. There's going to be this changing of seasons that keep things regular so that we can see the dependability of God's creation and of God Himself. Now, we know also that God gives a rainbow as a sign of this covenant. This is a beautiful promise that God makes. And every time God gives a promise, He always gives a sign. There's circumcision to Abraham. There's baptism to Christians. It's a sign of the covenant. Here the sign is, what's the most universal sign God gives? The rainbow. Now, we know what causes a rainbow in terms of the sun coming out with the rain and how it happens naturally. But this is what God created. This is a sign that God established for us so that when we see it, we can remember God's goodness. We can remember God's provision. We can remember that God has made a promise that He will no longer wipe out every living thing. Let's just pause here and think about how we should consider when there's a tsunami, when there's destruction, the way we just witnessed the last couple of days in Japan. First, this isn't necessarily God's judgment against Japan. We cannot look at New Orleans or Haiti or Japan and start saying God is clearly showing He's judging these people. We can't look and say this is clearly God's act of wrath against these people. God is not going to manifests himself in a way that he destroys all humanity again. And I believe it's dangerous to start pointing fingers and saying, look how sinful these people are. Look how isolated they are spiritually. This is what God is doing against them. As Sean prayed, when we see the sin of others, we shouldn't boast ourselves up and say we would never be deserving of such sin. No, friends, if we're going to start judging someone, we must judge ourselves. with great humility. So, what was God doing? What was God doing when Japan got hit by a tsunami? How do we answer this problem of evil? Well, I don't have the mind of God beyond what Scripture says. What I have to believe is that God sovereignly permitted that to happen. That was not outside of His control. But I also don't necessarily believe we have to say God enacted it perfectly in order to kill and destroy half of that nation. As we look at it, we must realize that God is good, that God is in control. And even though everything outside of our circumstances may make us think, what is God doing? Is he doing is he breaking his promise? Is he bringing wrath? We must trust his word that he is good. that He is loving, that He is sovereign, and that He is in control. And our best response to Japan is not to wonder where was God and what was God doing, but it's to pray that the gospel will penetrate that island. That has been a spiritually isolated place for years. The gospel has never penetrated Japan like it's done other Asian nations. We must pray that this may have been caused by God. We must hope that this was caused by God for the purpose of salvation to many. We must pray to that end. Finally, let's look at Noah. Noah was a man of faith. He obeyed God. His faith wasn't just believing his promises. His faith had action. But one of the most amazing things about Noah is I believe he's supposed to be the beginning of a new creation. Noah is a new Adam. Lamech makes that prediction. He's going to give us rest. When Noah sends out the dove, the word for Noah and the word for dove, they sound the same. What does the dove do? It finds a resting place. A place for Noah. God begins a new creation. Look at chapter 8, verse 13. In the 601st year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the waters dried up. That's a Sunday. The first day of creation, Sunday. There's supposed to be a new beginning on the first day of the first month of the year. It's supposed to be a new Adam. Someone who's going to begin Fulfilling God's purpose for man. Notice that the creation mandate is reissued. In chapter nine, verse one, be fruitful and multiply. He's given dominion. Every beast of the field is yours. He's given a provision. Don't eat meat with blood. He's given a new restraint. You are not to kill. other men because they remain in the image of God. Noah is a new Adam because he is supposed to be killing the earth again. He's supposed to be exercising dominion. He's given every provision by God. You know, the most striking similarity between Noah and Adam is found in verse 20. Noah began to be a man of the soil and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of the father and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it on both their shoulders and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward and they did not see their father's nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his youngest had done, he said to him, Cursed be Canaan, a servant shall be to his brothers. Look at the story. It's strikingly similar to Adam. Adam's sin was taking the fruit of the tree. Adam's sin was realizing that he's uncovered. Adam's sin is rebelling against God and then becoming ashamed in his nakedness. Here Noah's just like him. Here the new creation fails yet again. Here we have a new Adam, but he's not the final new Adam. Romans 5 tells us that Jesus Christ, He is the new Adam. You see, this new creation on the first day of the week, this new creation on Sunday, it fails. Because Noah is still corrupt. Noah is still sinful. Noah is still under the sin and the curse of Adam. But we know there is a new Adam. His name is Jesus Christ. He was not born corrupt in sin. He was born like us in every way, but sin. And He rose from the grave on the first day. That's why we meet today. We meet to remember that this is a reminder that there's a new creation, that Jesus Christ is not going to fail. He did not fail. He died on the cross for our sins. He rose again. Now we have hope. We have a new Adam that's going to bring in a new creation. There's going to be a new heavens and a new earth. There's not going to be any fear. There's not going to be separation from God. There's not going to be wrath from God. He's going to come back. He's going to reestablish the creation that was supposed to be. And all who believe in Him and what He did will have the privilege of being sons and daughters there.