The Flood 1 Series

Genesis 6-7 The Flood (1)

- Read Genesis 6 - 7

Have you ever done something you regretted? I mean, you knew ahead of time what the outcome of your actions would be. You knew ahead of time there would be a price to pay, but you went head and did it anyway?

This past Wednesday, my brother Dusty brought his daughter Melinda down to catch a plane at the Orlando airport. She had to be at the airport at 5 something, so they were leaving his house in Jacksonville at 3 something in the morning.

Do you know what that dummy did the night before? He stayed up and watched a basketball game until around midnight, knowing that he was going to have to get up around 3 the next morning to drive down to Orlando, then come by my house to pick up a trailer and log-splitter before driving back to Jacksonville.

Did he know he had those things to do? Yes. Did he know he was going to pay a price for his actions Tuesday night? Yes! But he watched that game anyway.

Do you think that perhaps he had some regrets about 1/2 way back during his drive to Jacksonville on Wednesday morning when he was struggling to keep his eyes open?

Did he know what was going to happen? Yes. Did he know there would be a price to pay? Yes! But he did it anyway, and that decision brought regrets.

In this passage we find an incredible statement about God. In verse 6 of chapter 6 we read, “ the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and he was deeply grieved.”

God regretted that He made man.

That’s some statement, isn’t it? God regretted that He made man. Did He know what was going to happen? Yes! Did He know it was going to cost Him? Yes! God knows all things. But HIs actions caused Him pain and regrets.

God regretted that He made man. Why did He regret making man? Verse 5 says, “When the Lord saw that human wickedness was widespread on the earth and that every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time, He regretted.”

God regretted because of man’s actions. He regretted because of man’s decisions. He regretted because of man’s choices.

So what did God decide to do about the situation? Look at verse 7.

- Read Genesis 6:7

God said, “I’m going to destroy everything on the earth. I’m going to destroy all mankind, and all of the animals, and everything that has breath in its nostrils. I’m going to destroy all of it.”

My friends, we need to get over the idea that the earth, this planet we live on is some kind of holy sacred, thing and that our highest goal in life is to protect, guard, and worship it.

I don’t want to live on a dirty nasty, polluted planet anymore than I want to live in a dirty and nasty house, but God built this place. He destroyed it in the days of Noah and rebuilt it, and will destroy and rebuild it again in the days of the book of Revelation.

Over the next couple of weeks, we are going to examine this event, and it will take us a couple of weeks because there is so much to cover.

The sermons will be somewhat different than usual, because there is just so much for us to learn from this destruction, and so many questions to be answered. We’re going to talk about things like where all of the water came from, and was the ark big enough to hold all of the animals, and what did the world look like before the Flood and after the Flood. We’re going to look at how the Flood explains many of the things folks now try to explain away by adding billions of years to the age of the earth.

Many things we’re going to cover over the next couple of weeks, and I encourage you to do some outside reading of your own, and there’s some good material out there showing how science actually supports the Bible and the Flood.

I am a creationist. I am a Biblist. I believe the Bible cover to cover. And there is so much to cover here. So we are going to look at a couple of points each week, and then try to pull them together.

As we look at this passage, and we think about theology, about the study of God, there are several things we learn here about God.

I. ITEMS WE LEARN ABOUT GOD

1. God is not primarily an environmentalist.

“This is the great judgment of all judgments in the history of the world, and the lessons which it teaches are potent and dramatic. The passage before us, then, is simple, careful, precise, and repeated. It is the historical record of God’s destruction of the entire earth and all its inhabitants except those in the ark. And there are so many things that can be said about what this flood teaches and we’ll look at some of them this morning.