Genesis and Chapter Six.
We considered in our last study something of
the type of world in which Enoch lived.
And now we come to a time which
is a number of years after Enoch has
been raptured.
And we read in Genesis 5.32 that
Noah was 500 years old and Noah became
the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth.
This is the time, this is about nearly
600 years after Enoch has been raptured.
Enoch proclaimed judgment to the ungodly and they
did not listen.
The world became worse and worse.
People turned more and more to sin.
And then God raised up another witness and
that was Noah.
And Noah was 500 years old.
We don't read much about his life during
those first 500 years.
Then we read about that time it came
about when men began to multiply on the
face of the land, that daughters were born
to them.
That the sons of God saw that the
daughters of men were beautiful and they took
wives for themselves, whomever they chose.
Now, this phrase, the sons of God, is
a phrase that is found throughout the Bible
referring to a direct creation of God.
Whatever God creates directly, straight from his hand,
is called a son of God.
For example, I'll just give you one or
two examples of that.
In Luke chapter 3, we read of the
genealogy of Jesus through his mother Mary.
And when you come to the end of
Luke chapter 3, we read about the early
patriarchs.
And finally, in the last verse, it says
the son of Enosh, the son of Seth,
the son of Adam.
And Adam was the son of God, which
means Adam was directly created.
But Seth was not directly created, so he
was the son of Adam.
The only human being who was directly created
by God was Adam.
So Adam alone is called the son of
God.
Now, when we are born again, we read
in John 1, 12, that we also become
children of God and sons of God.
That is because in each person who is
born again, God does a direct personal work.
That's what makes him a son of God,
otherwise it's impossible to be a son of
God.
It's interesting for us to see the usage
of this phrase in the Bible.
The son of God is a direct creation
of God, spiritually also today.
Nobody can be a son of God by
being born in a Christian family or by
being born to spiritual parents.
God has to do a direct personal work,
creating something new, a new heart in that
person.
If that has not taken place, then that
person is not a son of God.
Now here, in Job chapter 38, we read
of the angels also being called sons of
God, because they were directly created.
Job 38, the Lord speaks to Job here
and says, Where were you, verse 4, when
I laid the foundation of the earth?
And when God laid the foundation of the
earth, that means when God first made the
earth.
It says here in verse 7, At that
time the morning stars sang together, and all
the sons of God shouted for joy.
This is God telling Job that long back
when I laid the foundation of the earth,
the sons of God shouted for joy.
Those were the angels.
And in the first chapter of Job also
we read, in verse 6, That there was
a day when the sons of God came
to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan
came among them.
So from these verses we know that the
angels are also called sons of God.
In fact, apart from Adam, who is the
son of God, in the Old Testament nobody
was called the son of God except the
angels.
It's only in the New Testament where God
began to bring people to new birth that
you could say that those who are born
again become children of God and then sons
of God.
But in the Old Testament, that phrase could
only be used of Adam, who was the
only direct creation, and of the angels.
Nobody else was called the son of God
in the Old Testament.
And so, when we see that, we come
to Genesis chapter 6, verse 2.
We read, The sons of God saw the
daughters of men.
This must refer to the angels.
That there were certain angels who did not
fall away when Lucifer fell, or perhaps fell
away along with Lucifer.
But when Lucifer and the angels fell away,
they were not sent to hell.
They were cast out from the third heaven,
and they were sent to the second heaven.
And as we have seen before, one day
they'll be cast down to the earth, and
then finally to the bottomless pit and to
the lake of fire.
But these sons of God came, were in
the second heaven perhaps, among the fallen angels.
And then, they were stirred up by a
lust after beautiful women.
It's a very amazing thing.
And it says here, they took wives for
themselves.
We don't know how exactly they did all
that.
How they could take a human form, and
whether they possessed people, living people, or...
But in some way, they had this terrific
lust, sexual lust.
So, they wanted to satisfy it, and they
went for the beautiful ones.
Here we see the beginning of, we can
apply that spiritually today.
When the sons of God look at the
beautiful daughters of men, and don't consider whether
that beautiful girl is spiritual.
And go ahead and marry her.
It's the same, it began with these fallen
angelic beings, who also saw that the daughters
of men were good looking and beautiful, and
lusted after them.
And went after their beauty, and took wives
for themselves.
And the Lord saw all this.
Now, if you turn to the book of
Jude, you see a New Testament commentary telling
us something of how God judged these angels.
And that is written as a warning for
us in this day.
In the epistle of Jude, and verse 6,
we read about the angels.
He says in verse 5, I want to
remind you about some of these things.
One, how the Lord, after saving a people
out of the land of Egypt, destroyed, that
is, 600,000 people were destroyed in the
wilderness.
And he says, I want to give you
another example.
He gives us three examples.
Two of those examples, most believers are familiar
with.
That's the example of those who perished in
the wilderness, verse 5.
And the example of Sodom and Gomorrah in
Lot's time, verse 7.
But this other third example, many believers are
not familiar with.
That's also given as an example by Jews.
He says, I want you to remember these
three examples.
And the middle one is about the angels
who did not keep their proper habitation.
And that word habitation is used in 2
Corinthians 5 to speak of our body.
Now we will change this for another habitation.
And the angels did not keep to the
limits that God had placed for them.
God has not ordained sex for the angels.
They didn't stay within there.
They couldn't keep a control on their desires.
They abandoned their proper abode, that means the
circle that God had drawn around them.
They left it.
It's just like when a young unmarried person
whom God has not given a facility for
release of his sexual desires yet because he's
not married, yeah, and he can seek for
some release there in ways in which God
has not ordained through various sinful ways.
And then he can think of the angels
who also God had not ordained sex for
them.
And they did not stay within that circle.
But they left it.
And therefore God has kept them in eternal
bonds under darkness for the judgment of the
great day.
These angelic beings, God punished them by sending
them to a pit and binding them in
that darkness.
They are not loose today.
We read of them also in 2 Peter
2.
2 Peter 2 and verse 4 to 6.
Here it's speaking about false prophets in verse
1.
And it says about these false prophets that
they will go along a life of sensuality,
verse 2.
And it says how God will judge them
because verse 4 is God did not spare
the angels when they sinned.
And that's referring to these angels in Noah's
time who sinned sexually but cast them into
hell.
These are not Satan's hosts because Satan's hosts
have not been cast into hell.
They are in the second heaven.
But these are another group of angels who
sinned sexually, who were cast into hell.
And that's not the same hell that the
rich man went to.
It's another word in the Greek called Tartarus
where they were cast and committed them to
pits of darkness reserved for judgment and did
not spare the ancient world but preserved Noah.
So you see it's talking about Noah's time
when the angels sinned.
And Noah is called a preacher of righteousness
with seven others when he brought a flood
upon the world of the ungodly.
So we see from these New Testament passages
that the sons of God referred to in
Genesis 6 are these angels who sinned.
And we read another passage in 1 Peter
chapter 3, verse 19.
It says about Jesus that when he died
he went down and made proclamation, verse 19,
1 Peter 3, 19, to those spirits who
are now in prison who were disobedient when
the patience of God kept them waiting in
the days of Noah.
There again it's referring to these evil spirits
who sinned, who are kept in bondage, the
only angels who have been punished because they
did not stay within their circle.
They went outside their circle and sinned in
a way which was terrible in God's eyes.
And there we see the seriousness of sexual
sin.
And if we can take these warnings, they
are a warning for us because we read
in Luke's Gospel chapter 17, Luke 17, verse
26 to 30, and just as it happened
in the days of Noah, so shall it
be in the days of the Son of
Man.
That means Noah's time is going to be
similar to the last days just before Jesus
comes.
There will be a lot of similarities.
And then it says it will also be
like in the days, verse 28, same as
happened in the days of Lot.
What do we know about the days of
Lot and Sodom and Gomorrah?
We know that they sinned sexually in Sodom.
We even have a word in English called
sodomy, which is unnatural sexual sin.
And it says about Noah's time also that
the last days will be like that.
And in Noah's time also there was, in
the case of the angels, unnatural sexual sin.
And that's exactly what we see in the
world today.
Unnatural sexual sin.
Ordinary sexual sin has always been there, but
unnatural sexual sin has also been there, but
more in secret.
But now, particularly since the Second World War
in the last few years, it's spread like
anything.
Accept it.
There are churches for homosexuals in America now,
so you can see how far things have
gone.
And it was in such a day, this
was how Noah's day was.
These things may shock us, but Noah lived
seeing all these things happening around him.
And those times are being repeated.
And so we know as we look around
at these things that the end must be
very near.
And we return back to Genesis chapter 6
and verse 3.
And we can say that the Lord is
saying the same words even today as he
sees the world.
God looked at that world in those days
and saw these things happening.
Saw these spirit beings trying to move out
of their abode.
And the Lord said in Genesis 6, 3,
My spirit shall not always strive with man,
because he also is flesh.
Nevertheless, his days shall be one hundred and
twenty years.
Or as the margin says, in his going
astray, man is flesh.
There is a description for the first time
in the Bible of the flesh by God
himself.
In his going astray, he has become flesh.
And it is in that flesh that Jesus
came to redeem us.
The first time God uses that and says,
in his going astray, he has become flesh.
That's what the margin says.
Therefore his days shall be one hundred and
twenty years.
That means God is still impatient, waiting, hoping
that man will yet repent.
The patience of God.
We read that in Peter's episode.
The patience of God kept waiting in the
days of Noah.
We just read that in Peter's episode.
There was a patience of God that kept
waiting for one hundred and twenty years.
There was a patience of God that kept
waiting in Sodom and Gomorrah.
And there's a patience of God keeping waiting,
that's waiting still today on the earth.
But the Lord also says, My spirit will
not always strive with man.
For in his going astray, he is flesh.
We see that in the world today.
But his days will be numbered.
We can say his days are numbered.
And then it says in verse four, what
we learn here from this hundred and twenty
year period, is that there is a time
limit.
God is patient, long-suffering.
But there is a time limit after which
the Holy Spirit stops striving.
There is a line drawn in front of
each man.
He keeps on rejecting the call of the
Spirit, rejecting, rejecting, rejecting, rejecting.
One day he crosses that line.
And then the Holy Spirit stops pleading with
him and allows him to go to hell.
And such a man can never repent.
Jesus spoke about such people that they could
never be forgiven because they have sinned against
the Holy Spirit by continuously resisting the voice
of the Spirit.
God is very patient.
Imagine, even with such sinners, he still gave
them a hundred and twenty years to repent.
And he had a witness during those hundred
and twenty years, that was Noah.
And when the word of God says that
the last days will be like Noah's days
and Lot's days, we can say that also
on the earth, just like conditions around, people
will be like the people in Noah's day
and Lot's day.
There will also be witnesses for the Lord,
some like Noah, very few, and many, and
some like Lot, which is a bigger number.
Lot was a compromiser.
He was a sort of a believer, but
he was a compromiser.
But Noah, he was different.
And so in the last days there will
be the Noah type of believer and there
will be the Lot type of believer.
There's a world of difference between the two.
Lot lost his whole family, Noah saved his
whole family.
That's one important thing we learn about the
last days, the importance of preserving our family,
wife and children, for the Lord.
That we don't allow them to be polluted
by the evil influences that there are in
the world today through cinema, television, videotapes, all
types of things.
And putting all these ideas in Noah's day,
these things were not invented, but the things
were out there openly.
Now it has come right into people's homes,
suggestive thoughts and ideas through all these things,
books and novels and all types of ways
in which pollution seeks to come in.
And in the midst of this God wants
people like Noah, who preserve their homes for
God.
And it says here in verse 4 that
giants were there on the earth in those
days.
The Nephilim is a word for giants who
were born as a result of this supernatural
union between these angelic beings and the beautiful
women of those days.
And I think those beautiful women had perhaps
also a lust to have gigantic, massive children.
Because those days intelligence didn't count for much,
it was brute strength.
And that was the big thing in those
days.
And it says, when the sons of God
came into the daughters of men, they bore
children to them, these giants.
And those were the mighty men of old,
men of renown.
You were renowned in those days if you
were in the group, if you were a
giant.
And therefore I can imagine these women opened
themselves up to these evil spirits.
Because they wanted children who were smart according
to the smartness of those days.
Think of that.
They didn't want godly children.
They wanted smart children.
And there are women like that today also,
who want smart children, not godly ones.
And they were there those days.
And therefore they opened themselves up to evil
spirits.
And when we long not for godliness in
our children, but some worldly thing that our
children will be men of renown.
As it says in this verse, men of
renown in the city, in the country, in
the world.
Then what are we doing?
We are opening ourselves to evil spirits in
the same way that those women opened themselves
to evil spirits.
Otherwise it's not possible.
And we see here, the Hebrew word there
nephilim means giant or a bully or a
tyrant.
They are all people who opened themselves to
evil spirits.
These bullies and tyrants.
Now that's man's opinion, verse 4.
Man's opinion is these people were men of
renown.
But see the contrast in verse 5 of
god's opinion of the whole situation.
And the lord, when he looked at all
these men, he saw that their wickedness was
great on the earth.
That every intent of the thoughts of his
heart was only evil continually.
And there in verse 4 and 5 we
have a contrast between man's opinion of these
massive giants who were men of renown.
And god's opinion as he looked down and
he was not impressed by their size and
their fame.
But he looked at their heart and he
thought that their heart was filthy.
He thought that the imaginations of their heart
was only evil continually.
There is a description of Noah's day.
The wickedness of man was great on the
earth.
And all his thought life, god is interested
in the thought life.
We see that right back in Noah's day.
That god is interested in the thought life.
The purity in the thought life is not
just something suddenly we discover in the New
Testament.
It is even before the law.
It's written in the time of Noah.
God looked and he saw that the imagination,
the fantasies.
And you know what fantasies are.
We imagine certain people in our mind and
imagine certain situations and that we are in
certain situations.
That is imagination.
Fantasies in our thought life was only evil.
And particularly in the sexual area, we know
that.
That is Noah's day.
And that is what Jesus said would characterize
the last days.
Can you imagine that Noah's thought life was
also like that?
Then he would have also perished with the
flood.
Even if he claimed to be a believer.
And his children would have seen his hypocrisy
and would have turned away.
Lot's children saw the hypocrisy of their father.
But Noah's children saw that their father was
not a hypocrite.
How is it with us?
We live in a repetition of Noah's day.
The fantasies and the imaginations and the thoughts
that go on in people's mind.
All these decent looking, cultured, civilized people walking.
Men and women walking down the roads and
looking so clean and neat and smelling of
perfume.
If you could only look into their heart,
it would be quite another smell that comes
out from there.
Quite another.
Man smells all these fancy perfumes and God
smells something quite different.
The contrast between the two.
More important to have purity in our heart,
my brothers and sisters.
Purity in our heart.
That's the calling.
That's our calling in these days.
And the Lord was sorry.
Think of that.
Think that it says God was grieved.
One would think God was mightily angry.
And there we see the love of God
for those whom he had created.
When he looked at their filthy thought life,
he looked at them polluting their mind, polluting
their body.
He doesn't get angry.
He feels sorry.
Think of a father who sees his own
son ruining his life in an evil way.
He doesn't get angry.
He feels sorry.
He feels sorry that this son of mine
who can live such a good life is
just messing up his life and ruining it.
That's how God looked at his creation.
The Lord was sorry that he had made
man on the earth.
Think that the grief of God's heart was
so great that he was sorry that he
made man on the earth.
And he was grieved in his heart.
There was a time we read in Genesis
1 when he made man and he looked
at him and he said, Excellent!
Very good!
And now a few years later, a few
hundred years later, he's sorry, he's grieved at
that condition.
But we read here that it was not
only grief in God's heart.
It says here there's something, someone rather, who
brought gladness to God's heart also.
And that's also a contrast we read in
verse 6.
There was grief in God's heart.
And verse 7, sorry, verse 8.
But Noah found favor in the eyes of
the Lord.
Of course, God said, I will blot out
man whom I have created from the face
of the land, from man to animal, to
creeping things and the birds of the sky,
for I'm sorry that I made them.
But Noah found favor in the eyes of
the Lord.
So along with all that grief that God
had as he looked out over this world,
this earth that he had created, and all
the human beings he had created, finally his
eyes lighted on one person who brought delight.
It says here, Noah found grace.
He could not come under grace.
That could not come till Jesus Christ only
brought grace.
But he found it.
He found grace in God's eyes.
He could not receive it and come under
it like we can today.
But he found grace in the eyes of
the Lord means that God was delighted when
he saw one man.
And there we can learn something, my brothers
and sisters.
And I hope that it will grip your
heart like it's challenged my own heart.
That when God looks out at a city
like Bangalore or any other city and sees
all the evil and it grieves his heart,
it brings delight to his heart when he
sees in the midst of all this one
righteous man.
One righteous man among all those millions brought
delight to God's heart.
And there we have an understanding of how
much righteousness and uprightness delight God's heart.
We should never lose sight of the heart
of God that we have a glimpse of
in these verses.
And that's the challenge that should come to
us should be, Lord, as you look out
over the world and it grieves your heart
to see the way man's living, may I
be one who brings delight to your heart.
That there'll be nothing in my life that
grieves you.
It says, Grieve not the Holy Spirit.
One man found favor in the eyes of
the Lord.
Verse 9.
These are the records of the generations of
Noah.
Noah was a righteous man.
Perfect in his time.
Complete, perfect, and walked with God.
Three things that made God delight in him.
One, he was righteous.
He was not like these other people.
Polluted in his mind and imagination, evil, with
evil fantasies.
Trying to sit in that, pretending to be
a spiritual man.
He was not that type of a humbug.
He was pure in his imaginations and thoughts.
And he was a man.
He was not, he didn't have some other
flesh.
He was tempted.
But he fought these things.
He battled these things, we can imagine.
Because he knew it is not righteous.
He feared God.
And he was perfect or blameless.
That means according to the life that he
had, he was perfect.
We can be perfect only according to the
life that we have.
And according to the life that he had,
he was perfect.
And the third thing, it says, he walked
with God.
Noah's grandfather was Methuselah.
And Methuselah lived during all the 600 years
that Noah lived before the flood.
The flood came, you know, when Methuselah died.
And Noah was 600 years old when the
flood came.
So Methuselah and Noah lived together, grandfather and
grandson, for 600 years.
And what do you think Methuselah would have
told Noah?
What do you think Noah would have been
interested to hear from Methuselah?
I think Noah would have loved to hear
about Methuselah's father, Enoch.
I think Noah, even as a young boy,
must have gone up to his grandfather and
said, Tell me about your father, Enoch.
Because Enoch died about 69 years before Noah
was born.
Noah never saw him.
And Methuselah would have told him about his
father, how his father walked with God for
300 years.
And as a young lad, this must have
gripped Noah, Noah's heart.
The testimony of a man he never saw,
but who had walked with God in the
midst of all this evil generation.
And that challenged him.
And it says here in verse 9, Noah
walked with God.
I think it must have been the challenge
of Enoch's life that made Noah say, Lord,
give me also that.
Noah never saw Enoch, but to hear about
them from other people who have seen them.
That's why I always advise young people, particularly
to read biographies of great men of God.
Those who have known them.
To be challenged by how they lived selflessly,
not seeking their own.
Lived for God, walked with Him, walked by
faith.
And that should be a challenge to us.
And then, if we take that challenge seriously,
we can walk in the footsteps of those
men.
And that's how Noah walked with God, too.
Like his great-grandfather, whom he never saw,
Enoch.
And he must have also heard from Methuselah
how Enoch was a preacher.
Methuselah would have told him how his father
Enoch was a preacher, who preached judgment against
the ungodly.
And Noah would have been challenged by that.
He would have realized that it's not enough
just to walk with God.
It's also necessary to testify for God.
If you just live a holy life, you
won't be persecuted.
You won't be unpopular.
Jesus would never have been unpopular if He
had kept His mouth closed.
If He had just lived a holy life,
overcoming all temptation, living in love and goodness
and purity and holiness, He would never have
been crucified.
He could have lived a long life.
He was crucified because He opened His mouth
and testified to the truth.
Nobody is killed for living a holy life.
Nobody in your office will persecute you for
living a holy life.
It's only when you open your mouth and
speak up for God, then you will be
persecuted.
But if you don't believe in opening your
mouth, you just believe in living a holy
life, you cannot follow Enoch or Noah or
Jesus or Paul or Peter.
You've got some other example of a man
who wants to live a holy life and
wants to seek honor, to be popular.
You can be popular with living a holy
life, provided you don't open your mouth.
And Noah didn't want that popularity.
We read in 2 Peter 2 about Noah.
We read that in 2 Peter 2 verse
5.
It says in the middle of that verse
that Noah was a preacher of righteousness.
A preacher of righteousness.
That's what he was, particularly in those last
120 years before the flood came.
The flood is a picture of that final
judgment that's going to come upon the earth
in the battle of Armageddon.
And our calling is to be like Noah.
Preserve our families in these days.
Live before God's face.
Keep our imagination particularly pure, careful in our
thought life.
Live a godly life.
Be righteous, blameless according to the life we
have.
Walk with God.
And proclaim the truth with our mouths.
And of course we'll be unpopular.
But God will be able to say when
He looks at us, among all this evil
that grieves my heart, I find one man
who delights my heart.
Like they sing in the psalm, there was
a man who stood for God.
And like the last verse of that psalm
says, Lord, may I live in such a
way that it can be said about me
that there was a man who stood for
God, who feared Him, and who would not
walk the way sinners walked.
Like Noah.
Noah found favor in the eyes of the
Lord.
He was righteous, he was blameless, and he
walked with God.
And we read here, in verse 10, Noah
became the father of three sons, Shem, Ham,
and Japheth, and the earth was corrupt in
the sight of God.
That's also true today, corrupt in the sight
of God.
And the earth was filled with violence.
What is the other sin that we read
in Noah's time?
Violence.
Sexual sin and violence.
Violence begins with anger.
Anger is the beginning of violence.
Anger grows like a little seed in the
heart, and comes forth in words, finally with
fists, in some cases with knives, then with
pistols, then with missiles, and atomic bombs, it
develops, but it all begins with this little
seed called anger.
Violence.
Sexual sin and violence.
In Lot's time in Sodom also, it was
like that.
It says about those people who banged at
Lot's door, when the angels came, they wanted
to break the door down, till the angels
blinded them.
Violent people.
Sexual sin and violence.
People sometimes ask, why don't you let your
children see the movies?
I say, don't all movies have two themes?
Sex and violence.
Can you produce a movie that will be
a hit, which doesn't have these two?
Impossible.
Sex and violence.
The two sins of Noah's day.
The two sins of Lot's day.
Blessed are those who have light to see
it, so that they stand against these two
sins particularly.
If we have not judged them in our
own lives, we will not be able to
judge them in the lives of our families
or those around us.
We will not be like the salt that
retains its flavor.
Jesus said about the salt that has lost
its flavor.
So what are the two sins that were
preeminent in Noah's day?
Anger and sexual sin.
Brothers and sisters, when Jesus spoke about the
new covenant in the Sermon on the Mount
in Matthew chapter 5, he said these words.
Turn to Matthew chapter 5.
He said in verse 20, this is comparing
the old covenant with the new covenant, I
say that unless your righteousness, that is the
new covenant righteousness that God requires, exceeds, surpasses,
the old covenant righteousness of the scribes and
Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of
heaven.
What's that?
The old covenant righteousness of the scribes and
Pharisees was one on the outside.
He says your righteousness must be more than
that, which means it must be on the
inside.
That's mainly what that verse means.
And then the Lord says, now I will
explain in practical terms what I mean.
Number one, let me speak about anger.
Verse 21.
The old covenant righteousness was, you shall not
commit murder.
Verse 22, but I say to you, you
shall not be angry.
That's new covenant righteousness.
That is where your righteousness must exceed the
righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees.
It begins with being angry, it goes on
to speaking words that come out of our
mouth, calling other people names.
Ratka!
You fool.
It begins with anger in the heart, but
it is not judged in the heart.
It flows out through the mouth, out of
the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
Finally it can flow into your hands, and
then we don't know where it will stop.
Where it will stop.
It can be with children.
Anger towards our children, can find its expression
through words, and then through our hands.
Those poor children are smaller than us, we
can do what we like.
We can be like those Nephilim, giants, bullies,
towards our children.
Because in size wise, we are like the
Nephilim towards those small children.
You know, there can be something of that
attitude.
We have to cleanse ourselves from anger.
And then the Lord says, I'll give you
a second illustration of what I mean.
And that is sexual thing.
Verse 27.
The Old Testament was, you shall not commit
adultery.
I say to you, you shall not even
look on a woman, to lust for her.
To lust for her means what?
To lust for her does not mean that
you want to commit adultery with her.
No.
You may not want to commit adultery with
her, you may just lust to see her
beauty, and admire it.
That's all.
You just want to stop there.
That, Jesus said, that's enough.
You have lusted, it's adultery.
Why did Jesus speak about these two things
first?
Because those are the two preeminent sins in
Noah's day and Lot's day.
Sex and violence.
Why do we speak about these two things
so much in the church?
Because we are living in Noah's day and
Lot's day.
Why do we say so many times, my
brothers and sisters, if you don't get victory
in these two areas, you might as well
pack up and forget about the fact that
you're a Christian.
You're just deceiving yourself.
I'm not saying if you don't get victory,
I'm saying if you're not even making an
attempt to overcome in these areas.
If you can sin with your eyes, sexually,
and you're not disturbed, you sleep peacefully at
night, there's something wrong with your Christianity.
I wonder whether you're really converted.
If you can sleep peacefully after lusting after
a woman with your eyes.
I would seriously question whether you're really born
again.
I would doubt it.
I think you've got some third-rate conversion
experience in some evangelistic crusade where you sign
the decision card and raise your hand.
You're never offended.
Because you can sleep peacefully after lusting after
a woman with your eyes.
How can that be?
Or you're sitting in some church where they
pat you on your back and tell you
to do evangelism and give up tracts and
never tell you what Jesus said about getting
victory in this area.
And the same thing with anger.
Anger.
You can be angry and sleep peacefully at
night.
There's something wrong with your conversion.
I would doubt whether you're born again.
If you can be angry and sleep peacefully
that night.
If you're angry and you disturb at night,
your conscience disturbs you, yeah, you're converted.
But if your conscience doesn't trouble you, my
brother, my sister, don't deceive yourself.
Here is the truth.
If you've never heard it before, here is
today.
You better check up on your conversion.
Be converted properly.
Take it seriously, these two sins.
The preeminent sins of Noah's day.
Genesis chapter 6.
All flesh had corrupted God's way upon the
earth.
Verse 12.
God looked on the earth.
Behold, it was corrupt three times.
That word corrupt, corrupt, corrupt comes in verses
11 and 12.
The earth was corrupt.
God looked on the earth.
It was corrupt.
All flesh had corrupted their way upon the
earth.
And what were the two chief sins with
which all flesh had corrupted God's way?
That is anger and sexual sin.
And I want to tell you, if you
got victory over anger, and you trip up
in the sexual area, don't despise that fellow
who loses his temper.
You're just as bad.
Or maybe you got victory over the sexual
area, and you lose your temper, don't despise
the person who trips up sexually.
You're just as bad.
Your anger in God's eyes corrupts you, just
like that fellow's sexual sin corrupts him.
Same.
Just the same.
No difference.
Corrupt, corrupt, corrupt.
That's God's description of an earth that was
filled with sexual sin and violence, and that's
exactly God's opinion about all the movies and
most of the books and novels written these
days.
Corrupt, corrupt, corrupt.
Better see them from God's viewpoint.
That's why I warn young people, don't read
these filthy novels that are written these days.
Don't read them.
There were novels written in the 18th, 19th
century which had a certain amount of decency
about them, but the novels written these days
are filthy.
Corrupt, corrupt, corrupt.
Something has happened in the world after the
Second World War.
There's a flood of evil spirits.
Remember that?
Things have changed.
We have entered Noah's day, finally.
And then, verse 13, Then God said to
Noah, The end of all flesh has come
before me.
And God has said that to the church
today.
The church is in Noah's place today.
And God has said to us, The end
of all flesh has finally come.
We are reaching the last days.
The end times.
We can say that Noah was living in
the end times of those days.
And now we are living in the end
times of these days.
And the Lord has said to us, The
end times have come.
When we look around, what's happening on the
earth?
Because the earth is filled with all these
angry people who don't bother about their anger.
It was violence those days.
In these days, it's anger and violence.
And I'm about to destroy them with the
earth because of their sexual things and their
anger about which they are not even bothered.
God grants there'll be nobody sitting here about
whom God will have to say that they
sin in any of these two areas and
they're not bothered about it.
Not even a single day.
My brothers and sisters, this is how we
should walk in these days.
Not even a single day should we sin
in these two areas and be able to
sleep comfortably that night.
If we sin, it should disturb us.
Disturb us in our conscience that we have
again sinned, again sinned, again sinned in the
same old area, same old sin.
And it disturbs us, disturbs us, disturbs us.
We weep and we please and we cry
out to God and we confess and we
repent and gradually it gets better and better
and better and better.
And it becomes purer and purer and purer.
Take it seriously.
And the Lord says to him, Now, I'm
going to destroy the world.
And I want to point out a verse
to you in Amos, towards the end of
the Old Testament after Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos.
Amos chapter 3 and verse 7.
Amos 3, 7.
It says, Surely the Lord God does nothing
unless He reveals His secret counsel to His
servants the prophets.
God does nothing without revealing His secret first
to His servants the prophets.
And Noah was a prophet and therefore God
told him, I'm going to do something but
I'll whisper a little secret to you.
I'm going to judge the earth.
All these other ungodly people, I won't give
them any revelation.
The secret of the Lord is that those
who fear Him, Noah feared Him.
So God whispered a secret in his ear.
We read in Genesis chapter 18 and verse
17.
Genesis 18, verse 17.
The Lord says, Shall I hide from Abraham
what I am about to do?
Abraham is a prophet.
I will not hide from him.
What did He tell Abraham then?
You read the rest of the chapter.
I am going to judge Sodom and Gomorrah.
In Noah's day, God told Noah.
In Lot's day, God told, not Lot, but
Abraham.
There was a Noah in Noah's day and
there was an Abraham in Lot's day.
And our calling is to be like Noah
in these Noah type of days and like
Abraham in these Lot type of days.
To whom God can whisper His secrets and
say, The end is near now.
Be faithful only a little more time and
you won't regret it that you were faithful
to me.
Live for the things that are eternal.
Blessed are those who have heard God saying
that.
And therefore the Lord says in verse 14,
Genesis 6, Make for yourself, He says, an
ark of gopher wood.
You shall make the ark with rooms and
cover it inside and out with pitch.
That is something like tar so that it
will be watertight.
And this is how you shall make it.
The length of the ark is 300 cubits.
We don't know exactly what that means.
A cubit, people say, is the length from
an elbow to the tip of the forefinger
to the tip of the middle finger.
About 18 to 20 inches perhaps, which means
that must have been about 500 feet long
or something like that.
And its breadth 50 cubits means about 80
feet wide.
And height 30 cubits means about 50 feet
high.
500 feet by 80 feet and 50 feet
high approximately around that figure.
And it is the biggest ship, I think,
that's ever been made until about the 19th
century.
It's amazing that from Noah's day till about
the last century people could never make a
ship so big.
You can imagine what a man Noah was,
capable.
God made this mass, asked him to make
this massive ship and you shall make a
window for the ark, finish it with a
cubit from the top and set the door
of the ark and the side of it
you shall make it with lower and second
and third decks.
The window speaks of an opening towards heaven
in terms of prayer and worship.
And the door speaks of an opening towards
the earth in terms of witness and evangelism
and inviting people to come in.
Because the ark is a picture of Christ
and therefore also a picture of the body
of Christ which is the church and that
is what Noah was asked to build.
And then we see how relevant it is
for our time.
Build the church in these days and invite
people to come in.
Keep a window open towards heaven and keep
a door open towards the people to come
in.
Build the church, make make it.
And we know that Noah spent the rest
of his life building the church.
Building the ark.
He did other things perhaps to somehow earn
a living but he knew this world's passing
away.
The only thing that will remain when this
earth is destroyed is this ark.
Are you convinced about that?
The only thing that will remain when this
earth is finally destroyed is the church.
The true church.
Not Babylon.
Jerusalem.
Build Jerusalem.
And I thought about something here.
Who's going to pay for it?
That's an interesting question.
There was no America in those days where
you could send reports and photographs to.
Who's going to pay for this ark?
Think that God never said a word about
money.
You read the Acts of the Apostles.
There's no mention about where they got their
money from.
That which is most important today for Christian
work was least important for Noah and for
the early apostles because they served God.
Today's Christians serve mammon.
That's the reason.
Who was going to pay for it?
I'll tell you.
Noah.
Are you challenged by that?
Serving God out of your own pocket?
Think of that my brothers and sisters.
We live in a world where everybody feels
if I serve God somebody else must pay
for it.
Not Noah.
He served God from his own pocket and
think of the cost of that ark.
He said Lord all that I have is
yours.
I spent it all on the ark and
that was the best bank into which he
could have put his money.
Because after the earth was destroyed it was
still there.
All the other banks collapsed.
If he had put all his money somewhere
else it would have all got lost.
But because he invested it all in the
ark it all came through the flood.
And that's a lesson for us my brothers
and sisters.
Think of being a servant of God like
that.
Say Lord I don't want to pay.
Not only I don't want to pay.
I go one step further.
What I have is for your work.
That's the quality of person to whom God
gives revelation.
To build the church.
Your attitude to money is very important in
building the church.
And there was a test for Noah.
I think if Noah was like some of
today's preachers and Christian workers they'd have said
Lord what about the cash?
Where am I going to get that from?
Who's going to pay for it?
Noah didn't ask a question.
He knew I have to pay for it.
There was no question about it.
It was clear.
Of course I've got to pay for it
if you've gone to Noah and say who's
going to pay for all this?
No question.
Me of course.
Who else?
I'm the only one who's got revelation.
I've got to pay for it.
And that attitude can make you and me
a servant of God like Noah.
He worked and he preached for nearly 100
years and he paid for God's work in
all those 100 years out of his own
pocket.
He and his children.
And his children have the same attitude.
Think of that parents to raise up children
like that who will serve God out of
their own pocket.
Use their own money and who will spend
their time.
Noah and his children building the church.
Noah and his wife building the church.
Their children and their wives building the ark.
Blessed are you if you can be like
that.
For many many years of my life I
have longed I have thought when I go
to heaven one of the people I want
to meet first is Noah.
He's been a hero of mine for years
because I say what a man for 120
years he stood like that alone like a
rock.
He wouldn't shift.
He and his family and he gave his
money and his time and everything for building
the ark.
That's an example for us.
And Jesus said in the last days it's
going to be like that and I tell
you it wasn't easy.
It was a lot of hard work to
build it.
A lot of hard work.
And I'm going to bring a flood of
water upon the earth to destroy all flesh
which is the breath of life from under
heaven.
Everything that's in the earth shall perish.
Verse 17 But I will establish my covenant
with you.
Covenant beautiful word.
We've also had that the Lord saying that
to us.
I'll enter into a covenant with you.
And you shall enter the ark you and
your sons your wife and your sons wives
with you and of every living thing all
flesh you shall bring two of every kind
into the ark keep them alive with you
they shall be male and female birds of
their kind animals of their kind every creeping
thing of its kind shall come to you
to keep them alive and you take food
which is edible gather it for yourself and
for you and for all these animals can
you imagine how much food you require for
all these elephants and lions and tigers and
massive hippopotamus and all these things and Noah
had to collect food for all these animals
and build the ark who's going to pay
for it Noah of course and his children
and his sons their life was not cushy
it's not an easy thing to serve the
Lord it costs us everything if we want
to serve God like Noah and his sons
but if we are like him the reward
is very great because God honors those who
honor him let's take that challenge seriously brothers
and sisters to be like Noah thus did
Noah verse 22 according to all that God
commanded him he did