It's very interesting to me that every known culture throughout history, even cultures that are dead, have a flood story, the Mayans have a flood story, the Aztecs have a flood story, the Celts have a flood story, the Aborigines and Australia have a flood story, the Samoans have a flood story, everyone in the world has a flood story. And all I can say is where did they get it if no flood ever happened? Okay, that's about as much apologetic as I'm going to do for the fact that the flood happened. The greatest apologetic perhaps is simply because God said that it happened. Jesus said that it happened. So all of that said, God comes to Noah and he says I'm going to destroy everything. And let's notice first thing here, the righteousness of Noah, in 9 through 12, this is the genealogy of Noah, it says, Noah was a just man perfect in his generations and Noah walked with God and Noah got three sons, Shem, him, and Jacob, the earth on the other hand also was corrupt before God, the earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth and indeed it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. And God said to Noah, the end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them and behold, that will destroy them with the earth. Now when I say let's look at the righteousness of Noah, I have to address here one of my pet peeds. It's simply because I'm a father of small children. Judy and I have three children, ages 4, 3 and 1 and we get books all the time. We buy books, we see garage sales, we buy things all the time in our houses completely filled with children's books. And even we do this, people give them to us but we also will see a children's Bible at a garage sale for 25 cents and we'll just take up the children's Bible and we'll take it home. It's amazing if you go to our house, you'll see many pages ripped out of the children's Bibles. And you say, man these children just don't know how to handle books. Guess what? It's not the children ripping pages out of the Bible, it's mom and dad you see, they're going to pursue some day for censorship, I'm sure. But if you look in the children's Bibles almost invariably under the story of Noah, what does it say, that all of the earth was bad and God was going to flood the earth but because Noah was so good God decided to deliver him. But you see the difference there between what this actually says. You see what the children's Bibles do is they always forget verse 8. What does verse 8 say? But that's what I preached last week, verse 8 says, but Noah found grace with God. You see here's a principle that you ought never forget that grace always precedes righteousness. It's not the other way around. The grace always precedes righteousness. We look last week and we saw that Noah was just as bad as the rest of humanity. In fact, Noah remains to be as bad as humanity. The first thing Noah does when he gets off the ark is he gets off the ark and it says he grows up in your, it says it this quick in one sentence, he grew up in your, made some wine and got drunk. And then his sons came in and there's some weird sexual valiance that happened there that caused cursing. I don't know what it is. But it was really bad right after the flood so Noah was not a good person if you will. And it was it that made Noah good. It was grace. You see, grace is this thing that comes in and it changes your heart and enables you to be good and it enables you to be just. Why God sees Noah as just because Noah would have faith in him. You see, you can never, if you want to recipe for a miserable life, try this. Try and be righteous in order to find grace. Let me say that again, if you want to recipe for a miserable life, try and do this. Try and be righteous in order to find favor with God. Now why do I say you'll be miserable because you don't have what it takes, neither do I. You'll spend your whole life trying to be righteous in order to find favor with God and at the end of time what you'll find out is that the favor was already there just to be embraced and that once you have favor with God, once you understand the gospel, the God has come to you and he has shown you favor, never to let you go, then you can sort of let go and say now, what does it mean to be righteous? What does it mean to be just? What does it mean to have integrity? That's what this means. It says Noah was blameless before his generation. What the word here is actually integrity. You see, before grace, Noah, just like all of us, was disintegrated and what does the gospel do? It integrates you. It begins to take the broken pieces of your life and put it back together where they should be and so all of us being subnormal when we believe the gospel, what it does is make us more and more normal. And what does it mean to be normal? It means to look more and more like Jesus. So we see that Noah was righteous and we see that also that Noah's privy to some information here and what is the information? It's simply this. It's the foolishness of the ark, that's point number two if you're a note taker, that we notice here that Noah's life, God saw Noah as just, God saw him as righteous and Noah's life was defined by walking with God and so now when he sees God initiating with Noah and sort of giving him insider information, if you will, and he tells him this very foolish thing. Noah, I'm going to destroy everyone. Noah could understand that, but the foolish thing was, I want you to build this huge boat in the middle of the desert. Think about the idiocy of that. Think about the foolishness of that. Noah, where God told Noah to build this ark was nowhere near the water and it was huge. The size of this ark would have probably been the size of a small cargo ship, and what did he say to him? He tells him to build this ark in the middle of the desert, but you've got to remember that grace always precedes judgment. So before he sends the flood, what does God do? He reiterates his promise to Noah, if you look down at verses 13 through 21, I'm not going to read it all, actually, I'll read 17 and 18. He says, and behold, I myself am bringing floodwaters on the earth to destroy from under heaven all flesh, which is the breath of life, everything that is on earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall go into the ark, you, your son, your wife, and your son's wives with you. The God comes to Noah, and he says, Noah, I'm going to destroy everything. And that don't let Noah must have felt. He says, I'm going to destroy everything on one hand, but I want you to do this really wise thing of building an ark in the middle of the desert, that's really going to go over big with your friends, it's really going to be an easy thing to do, none of that. So God comes in, and in order for Noah to bolster Noah's faith, if you will, God comes in, and he makes this thing called a covenant. What is a covenant? I've preached on covenants many times before, a covenant is simply this, and the Bible is a covenant. We tend to think of it as a two-way deal in our relationships, a covenant of marriage, but the husband and the wife promise something. Well, in the Bible, when God makes a covenant, God is the only one who does any of the work. Or let me restate that positively, God does 100% of the work in all of his covenants. And all the covenants in the Bible are unilaterally imposed. God comes and says, Noah, I'm going to make a covenant with you. Notice he doesn't ask Noah to do any work here. He just says, Noah, I am making a covenant with you. Now we tend to think of covenants as sort of handshaking, you know, like one party puts a hand out, and then the other party puts a hand out, but that's not what a covenant is in the Bible. What a covenant to the Bible is, if this is Noah, this is God, God says Noah, I'm going to make a covenant with you. And what that means is I'm going to destroy the earth, I'm going to do everything, and no matter what happens, this will not change. So what does it mean for Noah to build the ark? Means this. What does it mean when Noah gets drunk after the ark? It means this. What does it mean when he trusts the God again after he gets drunk and he forgives it, means this. You see Noah's whole life is going to be like this, just like your whole life is going to be like this. But what is the thing that never ever changes? Covenant. God's embracing of you. That's what a covenant means. The God comes unilaterally and he imposes it. And he says, I am embracing you and I'm never going to let you go. That's the thing you want to hear in the face of judgment. In the face of complete and utter destruction of all the world, what you want to hear God say is, Tommy, I'm going to embrace you and I'm never going to let you go. Now guess what? That's what God says to you. That's what he says in the face of judgment. You see Jesus when he talked about what his death and his coming again would be like, you know what he said, it would be like, days of Noah. Matthew 24, Jesus says, just like it, it's going to be when I come again, it's going to be just like it was in the days of Noah. People are going to be marrying and giving in marriage and revelry and getting drunk and the Son of Man is going to appear. And the question is, when he appears, what is it going to be like for you? Do you look at Jesus as your savior or do you look at him as your judge? Because there's a very interesting thing here that the ark itself, either to the people know his contemporaries and to know us, either had to be this really cool thing that totally changed their life and totally gave them hope for the future, or it had to be the most stupid thing they'd ever seen in their life. Think about that. But on one hand, Noah was given insider information, Noah built an ark because I'm going to flood the earth. But guess what? How long do you think he was able to hide the fact that he was building a cargo ship in the middle of the desert? He couldn't do it. And you know, the only thing that is more foolish than an ark in the middle of the desert is probably this. It's a cross in the middle of the garbage heap. There's a thing we read today that the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men. That you look at this cross in the middle of the garbage heap with an out of work carpenter on it and you look up there and you either see your savior. You either feel broken and you say, my God, I need a savior and God has poured out all of his wrath on that man right there on my behalf and through him I am saved. Or you look at the cross and you say, that is the stupidest thing I've ever seen in my life. I don't get it. I don't see what people are making all the big deal about this dead Jewish guy on a cross board. It doesn't make any sense. It's foolish. It's foolish to think that all of my sins could be punished in that person. And at that point, the cross becomes just like the ark, a sign of condemnation to you. But the cross, you see there is black and white here, that the cross to you is either a thing that saves you or it is a thing that condemns you. Why is that? Because it shows you who you are. The cross shows you what sin deserves, just like the ark showed all of Noah's contemporaries what sin deserved. It deserves utter and complete judgment. And just like the ark, the cross is also the thing that shows utter and complete judgment is also the thing by which people are saved. And the question is, what do you do with the cross? What have you done with the cross? What do you believe regarding Jesus? What do you believe regarding the gospel? What does it mean to believe in Jesus? These are all questions I hope you're dealing with. If we continue on, we see that just as Noah escapes through the water, unscathed, that that's what the cross means for us. You remember the book of first Peter? It has this interesting thing. First Peter says, when you were baptized, you go through the same experience as Noah. What does he mean by that? He says, when you were baptized, you go through the water and you come out the back end of the water. Unscathed. You ever notice when people get baptized, they close their eyes? It's almost like you open your eyes, expecting to receive judgment, but you've just instead receive grace. And that's what Peter says that the cross gives you, gives you grace. And finally, let's look at Noah's response in verse 22. Verse 22 says, thus Noah did according to all the God commanded, so he did. And if you look down at the supplemental text, by faith Noah, this is the New Testament interpretation of Noah's doing, all they God commanded and to do. In verse 117 says, by faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of righteousness, which is according to faith. What happened here? Noah was given information, I'm going to flood the earth, and the way you will be saved is to build an ark. Noah acted in faith, but faith always demands action. It's always the man that you embrace something. I've told several of you, several months back, you know, internet stocks are all the rage now. In several months back, I bought five shares of an internet stock because it didn't cost me very much money. And I thought, you know, I'll see what happens. And about two weeks ago, it got a little bit high, not that I made any money, but it got a little bit high, and I think I'm just going to ditch this. I don't know what it is. Well, that day, that day, as soon as I sold these five measly shares of stock, they announced this company announced that they were like quadrupling their business, quadrupling their self, and the stock shut up $80 per share. That day, after it was I sold it, so it shut up $80 per share. The next morning, they announced a three-for-one stock split, another $40. So week after, I sell my measly five shares of stock, it's now worth three times the money, and three times as many shares of stock. Now, here's the worst thing, is I met an employee at that company. I met an employee at that company, and I said, you know, can you believe this? I sold these shares of stock on Monday afternoon. You know what he told me? He said, man, I would have told you all that stuff was going to happen. You should have called me and asked me, I knew all that. Now, I don't know if that's legal or not, but the fact that he told me he knew and could have told me totally made me angry. Why? Because if I would have had insider information, if I would have had that information, do you think I would have gotten rid of that stock? No way. You see, when someone gives you insider information, and you know that it's true beyond the shadow of a doubt, are you stupid for not asking upon it? You see, if you're smart, you must ask upon it. You have to. You're compelled to act upon it, and what happens in the gospel? What you see in the Bible is God coming and He giving you insider information. He says to you, Tommy, here's who you are. I know who you are. You might fool everyone else, but when you're alone in your room, the things that you know about yourself, I know. I know how broken you are. I know how screwed up you are. I know about all your guilt. I know about all your sin. I know everything that makes you totally not even want to show your face in the light of day. I know all that stuff. But insider information, Jesus died on the cross, and if you will embrace Him, I will wipe away all those sins, and I will never hold them against you. Now, if you knew that, if you knew there was a God who was willing to come to you and say that, would you not embrace Him or what would keep you from embracing Him? That's the question you have to ask yourself, that the gospel stands here as insider information if you will, just like Noah had, that God is coming in justice and judgment, and you either put your faith in Christ or you don't. And what are you going to do with that? That's the question. Think about that. Let me pray. Jesus, I pray that you would simply open our eyes, that we might see the truth of the gospel, that you in fact would come to us, and that you would enable our hearts to embrace you, that you would enable our hearts to embrace you while you still may be sound, and your name we pray. Amen.