Was Noah's flood about more than animals?

In Genesis 6, the world has grown so corrupt that God sends a flood — yet "Noah found grace." Dr. Toby Holt shows that the flood is far more than a children's story. As humanity's wickedness fills the earth, God resolves to judge it with a flood — a picture of His wrath on sin. But Noah finds grace, and God provides the ark as the one means of rescue, pointing forward to Christ, the only refuge from judgment. Jesus said the last days would be "like the days of Noah."

Questions this study answers:

1. What did the flood represent? The wrath of God poured out on a sinful world. It was an act of judgment, not merely a natural disaster.

2. How does the ark point to Jesus? It was the one means of rescue from the coming judgment. Christ is that refuge for sinners today.

3. Why did Jesus compare the last days to "the days of Noah"? To warn that judgment will come suddenly on a world that ignores God. Only those in the refuge are safe.

"But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD." — Genesis 6:8 (NKJV)

Dr. Toby Holt is President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio. Find more verse-by-verse Bible teaching at newgeneva.org; support this ministry at newgeneva.org/give.

In the book of Genesis, not long after God created the world, He destroyed it with a

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flood.

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In chapter 6, we learn the reason why.

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The people had become exceedingly wicked, but despite their wickedness, God would not

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wash them all away, for He preserved one family in a large wooden ark.

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In today's study, we'll consider that ark and the man who built it, a man named Noah.

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I remember in Sunday school, this goes back a little ways,

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but I remember growing up in Sunday school,

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and you come to the week when you study Noah the Ark, and what do you do?

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Well, my Sunday school was not especially theologically rigid for children,

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so what we did is we did macaroni art, and we did animals and such,

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and we came away with pictures of zebras and such that went on the ark, two by two.

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But let me tell you at the outset,

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the story of Noah the Ark is not principally about animals.

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The story of Noah and the ark is not principally about the animals and how they got there and how

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Noah fashioned the ark to fit all of them. I'm as curious about some of that as you are,

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but that's not really the focus here. The focus of this text is on the flood. It is on the flood

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and the singular means by which mankind was spared from the flood, which was the ark,

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which was a type of Christ. God willing, that's what we're going to see by the end of today's

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study, but I want to tell you at the outset what we're doing so you know hopefully how we're going

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to get there. Now, when you think about floods, when you think about a worldwide flood, that's

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pretty extreme. But what I'll tell you at the outset is that the idea of wrath being poured

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out by God against sin, that happens throughout the Bible. Do you remember a little story about

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Pharaoh and the Egyptians? Remember Pharaoh and the Egyptians, and they're this naughty,

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nasty bunch, and they're chasing God's people up against the Red Sea, and what happens next?

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Well, Pharaoh had been rebellious. Pharaoh had turned to other gods. Pharaoh had desire to

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oppress and even kill there at the beachside God's people, and God intervenes. And what does

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God do? Well, God leads his own people. He leads his own people through the waters. The waters part.

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Not a single drop befalls the people of God. What happened to the Egyptians? They're drowned. Every

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last one of them are drowned out. The wrath of God, a torrent, overcomes them. Now, elsewhere you see

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the wrath of God described as something that's poured out. In Ezekiel 7, God's talking to his

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wayward, wayward people in Ezekiel 7. You ever want to find wayward people, read Ezekiel and read

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about Ezekiel's contemporaries. And this is what God says about them. He says, soon I will pour out

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my wrath upon you. I will vent my anger against you. I will judge you according to your ways and

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I'll repay you for all your abominations. God looked at pagans. He looked at idolaters. He

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looked at people in tall pointy hats who thought they were being religious and he said, your

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religion stinks. You pretend to worship me. You pretend to sacrifice to me. You pretend to do all

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this in my temple, and yet you profane it with your idols and your paganism and all that. It

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rises up as a foul stench before me, and I'm coming for you. Ezekiel 7, I'm going to pour out my wrath

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upon you, which to any student of history should have reminded them of the flood, should have

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reminded them of the Red Sea. It didn't, and so they suffered. Now to prove this isn't just a long

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time ago thing. The future holds the same thing. What do you think the lake of fire is all about?

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The lake of fire in the book of Revelation, which is destined for who? For the goats, for Pharaoh,

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for Hitler, but also for every sinner of every stripe who does not bend the knee to King Jesus.

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The lake of fire is being drowned in the wrath of God. Revelation 20, death and Hades were thrown

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into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And if anyone's name, not just Hitler, not just

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Pharaoh. If anyone's name is not found written in the book of life, he is thrown into the lake

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of fire. This idea of God's wrath being poured out in a torrent, a deluge, swamping the wicked,

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it's Old Testament, it's New Testament, it's past, it's future. Now, to prove its future,

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Jesus said this. Jesus says, you know, there's days that are coming, and as the days of Noah were,

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So also, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.

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For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking

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until the day that Noah entered the ark

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and did not know until the flood came and took them all away.

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So also will the coming of the Son of Man be.

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In today's text, we're reading about a flood, a very real flood,

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swamped the whole globe, God's wrath.

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This is a past event, but we also see that just as in the days of Noah,

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there's going to be an age and a generation.

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when people are going to be doing their own things, pursuing their own wants,

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breaking God's laws, loving the things that God hates.

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And just like the days of Noah, the coming of the Son of Man will come unexpectedly,

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and the wicked will be drowned out.

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Today's passage about Noah and the ark, it's past, but it's also future.

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So today we're going to talk about the flood.

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We're going to talk about the danger of the flood and why the flood came

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and who the flood was intended to swamp.

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But we'll also, before the sermon's done, we'll also talk about the ark

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and how the ark preserved Noah and how a greater ark has come to preserve you.

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All right, let's look back at verses 1 through 4 and kind of work our way through the text,

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and we'll do it just a chunk at a time.

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Verse 1,

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Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth,

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and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful.

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And so they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.

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And the Lord said, My spirit shall not strive with man forever,

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for he is indeed flesh. Yet his days shall be 120 years. Now there were giants on the earth in those

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days and also afterwards when the sons of God came into the daughters of men and bore children to

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them. These were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. All right, verses one through four.

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Dear heavens, there has been a lot of bad theology done in verses one through four. And then we're

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going to try to weed our way through that. Now verses one through four, you see these allusions

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to these individuals. There was giants on the earth. There's all this stuff going on. There's

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a lot of theories, a lot of rabbit trails about what verses 1 through 4 mean. Most of those rabbit

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trails are poorly conceived or just flat-out fiction. I'll give you an example. I'm not going

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to go down every rabbit trail, but we'll go down one or two briefly in order to demonstrate that

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some of the things that you read out there that are assigned to Scripture, some of the thinking

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that's assigned to passages of Scripture, some is just sensationalistic and flat-out wrong. One of

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those thoughts is this, that when you read about this interbreeding that's going on here, that

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what's really happening, some believe, is that you have demons having relationships with people.

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And out of the relationships with people, you have children that are born that are especially

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rabid and foaming and wicked and the like. And that's what's going on. Have you ever heard that?

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Have you ever heard that explanation? I hope not here. With that said, is that what's going on here?

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Is this some offspring of the demonic taking place? Dear heavens, no. That's not what's going

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on here. You see, the biblical standard for reproduction, you see in all the chapters

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preceding multiple times, is that reproduction occurred after one's own kind. There was a union

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of two of the same kind who produced one after their own kind. That phrase occurs multiple times

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throughout the first five chapters of this book. Beyond this, the reason why some people think

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these are demons is because you see in verse 2, the sons of God saw the daughters of men that

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they were beautiful, and so they took wives. Okay, so what some people do is they say, okay, the sons

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of God saw the daughters of men. The sons of God must be the demons who saw the daughters of men.

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They saw they were beautiful, and so they took them as wives. Well, A, that's just silly, but B,

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the reason why some people think that that's the case is because they go to the book of Job,

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I think it's Job chapter 1, verse 6, and they see the sons of God phrase, term, is related to angels

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at this time. And so the thinking is that it must apply simultaneously here. If the sons of God

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referred to angels somewhere else in the book, hundreds of years later, in wisdom literature,

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which is an entirely different classification of literature, it's poetic, that it must mean,

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it must mean the exact same thing here. Wrong. Wrong. That's what we call bad hermeneutics.

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It's bad study, but that's not the case here, although some have embraced it. Angels don't

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marry. Jesus told us that much. Angels don't take wives from the people because they're beautiful.

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That's not the way it works. Jesus himself said, angels in heaven neither marry nor are they given

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and marriage. It is highly unlikely, for more reasons than we have time to go into, that this

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is a reference to the demonic taking wives from the people and having children that then turned

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out to be this rabid, foaming at the mouth generation. That's simply not the case. Let me

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just skip past the other rabbit trails and just let's address what this is talking about. Let's

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look at the context of what's going on, which is always a healthy thing to do. If you come to a

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verse or passage that seems confusing, it's like, what's going on here? One helpful way to understand

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what's going on here is to look at all the verses preceding it. Now, if you went right back, you

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flipped the page backward, and you looked at chapter five of Genesis, you looked at chapter

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four of Genesis, what do you see? Well, what you see is that there are two distinct family lines

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discussed. In chapter four, the conclusion in chapter four gives us the lineage of Cain. We

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talked about that earlier. The lineage of Cain, his ancestors, and they were a motley crew. These

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are the offspring, the greatest villain, at least so far, in Scripture. So chapter 4 has the offspring

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of Cain. Chapter 5 has the offspring of Seth. These are two different family lines here, so to speak.

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And there's a different spiritual assignation assigned to each. One is of righteous people,

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one is of the godless. There's the godly and the godless, sheep, goats. These sort of things go on

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throughout the history of the book. Cain, Abel, Jacob, Esau. Well, what you see here is that two

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different spiritual types are being anticipated or discussed in chapters 4 and chapter 5. With that

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said, when it gets to chapter 6, what's going on here is that there's an intermarriage between the

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goats and the sheep. There's an intermarriage between the children of Cain, the offspring of

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Cain, and those of Seth. There's an unequal yoking taking place. And pastor, let me stop everything

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right now and tell you this much. In all the counseling I've ever done in 15 years of pastoral

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ministry. I can tell you the most painful counseling I've ever done time and time and time

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again is where there has been unequal yoking. Marriage, marriage of a believer with an unbeliever.

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These things historically, biblically, scripturally have been frowned upon and they don't turn out

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well. And God routinely says, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. Well here, they did it. These

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family lines, there was this intermarriage that occurred. And so you have these children that are

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born of these decision points, these illicit unions, and they go on to sin egregiously in

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the time yet to come. All right, let's look at verses 5 through 12. Verse 5,

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Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the

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thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he ever made man on

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the earth, and he was grieved in his heart. And so the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have

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created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air,

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for I am sorry that I have made them.

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But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

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Notice it's grace he found, not merit.

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Grace in the eyes of the Lord.

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Now this is the genealogy of Noah.

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Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations.

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Noah walked with God, and Noah begot three sons,

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Shem, Ham, Japheth.

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The earth also was corrupt before God,

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and the earth was filled with violence.

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So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt,

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for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.

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Have you ever read the book Lord of the Flies?

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It's like William Golding.

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I read it because I had to.

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Most of the classics I read because I had to.

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I haven't revisited most of these, so I'm recalling this book.

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But what I recall of Lord of the Flies is the story of these kids.

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I think there was a plane wreck or something like that.

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They end up finding their way to this island.

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And on the island, these children set up a society that, guess what?

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It's sinful, and it's terrifying.

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And there's all sorts of acts of violence that take place.

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I think there's a little boy named Piggy.

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I don't know how he got that name.

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But Piggy doesn't make it to the end of Lord of the Flies.

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In Lord of the Flies, you see the depravity of mankind demonstrated even amongst children.

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You don't have to be an old, grizzled, tattooed individual to be a sinner or to be violent or what have you.

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Even in Lord of the Flies, you have these kids who engage in this way.

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Well, think of Lord of the Flies.

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Think of that culture.

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Magnify it times 10, times 100.

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And you might have a picture here of what's going on in the time of Noah.

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You have this generation, this generation that's stained, that's tainted by sin.

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When God warned Adam, what would happen?

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And it would be bad, and the death would enter in.

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Death not only entered in, but it entered into a magnitude that Adam could never have dreamed of.

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Adam had no idea what was about to happen through one sin.

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You don't have any idea what will happen through one sin you'll pursue this week either, so don't do it.

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One sin, functionally biting a piece of fruit, caused the entire cosmos to fall, not just

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Adam and Eve.

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The entire created realm was thrust into chaos, which is why you have pandemics and viruses

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and celery, right?

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So, that stain, that stain of sin goes down and affects everyone to follow.

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It wasn't just the bad guys that were affected by sin.

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No one was affected by sin, too.

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They're all affected by sin.

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With that said, this particular generation, their sinfulness is rising up before God.

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Rising up before God.

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And so we see in verses 5 through 12 that God says, I will deal with this.

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I am holy and I am just.

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I've been patient long enough and I am going to deal with this sin.

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Now, I want you to notice in verse 6, you see that there's a phrase.

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And the phrase says that God was sorry that he made man.

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Sorry that he made man and grieved him in his heart to do so.

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So what's going on there?

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Does God just regret things?

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Does God sit up there in heaven and go,

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oh my, I think I really botched that one.

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Is that what he does?

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The answer is no, but why?

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And if he doesn't regret anything,

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well, why does it say he regret making man?

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Well, this is a question that's reasonable to come to.

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You come to chapter six and you go, what is going on here?

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He's sorry he made him?

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Didn't he know what was gonna happen?

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Yes, he knew.

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Yes, he knew.

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So why does it say that?

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Well, this is what we call anthropomorphic language.

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That's my $8 word for the day. Anthropomorphic language. Now, anthropomorphic language is when

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we take something of God, like the sovereignty and the decrees of God that we can't possibly

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understand, but we use human terms to assign to it so that we can understand it, right? You and I

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can't pretend to understand God any more than the ant can pretend to understand us. You and I can't

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pretend to understand the decrees of an infinite God that's not bound by time or space. That's all

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very confusing stuff. So what's going on here? Well, what's going on is that anthropomorphic

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language is being used to take something we can't understand, but to frame it in a way that we

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can. I'll give you a different example of this. God is omniscient. What does that mean?

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All-knowing. Yeah, we got that. All-knowing. God is all-knowing. Now, sometimes God's omniscience

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is described in this way, that the eyes of God roam the earth looking to and fro, the eyes of

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God scanning the globe. Now, does that mean literally God's eyes are like staring out there?

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What about when it says the arm of God will not grow short? Is it talking about the literal arm

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of God? No. What about here where it says he was grieved in the heart? Is that talking about the

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pulsing, you know, eight orders and such of God? No. What this is is a way to use human terminology

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and even body parts, eyes and ears and hands and all that,

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and assign them to God in a way that we can sort of understand what's going on with him.

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That's what's going on here.

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God doesn't regret anything as if he's shocked and surprised

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that something went down that he hadn't planned for.

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Not at all.

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He's sovereign.

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Read the rest of the Bible.

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Read the whole of the Bible, and you see he is sovereign.

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He is the Alpha and the Omega.

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He declares the end from the beginning.

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He's not shocked by anything.

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But this terminology, this terminology is utilized to express to us

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using anthropomorphic language, something happens in the decree of God by which, by which God's

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decree will be manifest in two very distinct looking ways. One, tolerating God's sin, and the

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second, judging it. Okay, so that's what's going on there. All right, let's look at the balance of

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verses 13 through 22, and then we'll share some of the key focus of this whole passage. So verse 13,

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so God says to Noah, after he'd watched all the sinfulness rising up before him, God says to Noah,

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the end of all flesh has come before me.

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That's a formidable statement.

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For the earth is filled with violence through them,

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and behold, I will destroy them from the earth.

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So make yourself an ark of gopher wood.

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Make rooms in the ark and cover it inside and outside with pitch.

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And this is how you shall make it.

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The length of the ark shall be 300 cubits,

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its width 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits.

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And you shall make a window for the ark,

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and you shall finish it to a cubit from above

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and set the door of the ark in its side.

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You shall make it with lower and second and third decks.

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And behold, I myself am bringing floodwaters on the earth to destroy from under heaven

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all flesh in which is the breath of life.

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Everything that's on the earth shall die.

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But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall go into the ark,

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you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you.

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And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark

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to keep them alive with you.

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They shall be male and female.

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of the birds after their kind, of the animals after their kind,

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and a very creeping thing on the earth after its kind,

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to a very kind will come to you to keep them alive.

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And you shall take for yourself of all food that's eaten,

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and you shall gather it to yourself, and it shall be food for you and for them.

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Thus Noah did according to all that God has commanded him.

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So he did.

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All right, so you have this pagan, sinful, violent generation.

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Now let me stop here for a second.

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When we picture this, in your mind's eye, we're thinking of this rabid, tattooed, scarred, grizzled guy pounding on the boat or something.

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Not necessarily the case.

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There were grandmas there, too.

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There were children in this generation.

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This isn't all just the Alcatraz, all the people from Rikers Island or something.

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These are little old ladies, little old men, all manner of different folks that are watching what?

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They're watching this guy, Noah, build an ark.

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Why?

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Because God told him to.

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Can you imagine how that went over?

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Noah, what you doing?

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Long time, no see.

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What you got going on?

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Well, I've got a building project.

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Really, what is it?

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Tell me all about it.

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Spare, no details.

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Well, I'm going to build, I'm going to build a boat.

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You're going to build a boat.

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Well, all right then.

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Where's this boat going to be?

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By the beach, right?

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By the water.

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Well, no, just in the middle of the dry land.

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Really?

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Really?

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How big is this boat going to be that you're building in the dry land?

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Well, it's going to be big.

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All the cubits, 15 by 30 by whatever the cubits.

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it's going to be huge, two, three stories, all these different decks. When he started explaining

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it, or more to the point, when people started watching it happen, they thought Noah must have

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been off his rocker. They had to. They had to, right? But God had told Noah what to do. He told

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Noah what to expect, and Noah was faithful, even if it looks silly. That's sometimes what holiness

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is, being set apart from what the rest of the world thinks. Who cares what they think? If Noah

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had cared what the world had thought, there'd be no boat. There'd be no Noah, and there'd be no you

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and I, if Noah had cared what the world around him thought. But in the face of what the world

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thought, he says, I will do what God thinks. I will follow what he has said. You know, it takes a long

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time, and I'm mocked and ridiculed every day of my life. Now, imagine the boat's done, right? The boat's

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done, and people are still. Imagine the stories they're telling about the boat of Noah. Oh, crazy,

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crazy Noah, crazy Noah, you know, they're telling the stories about this guy. And then one day,

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imagine these guys, these guys outside the boat in the civilization. They look and they go, what?

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There's these animals coming two by two. What are they doing? Well, they're going into Noah's boat.

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Can you imagine watching the animals two by two going into the boat? You'd think at that point

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someone would have said, yeah, maybe Noah knows something. Now, in the book of 2 Peter, it says

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Noah preached to people. He preached righteousness. Noah spent all that time telling people what God

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had told him. God didn't tell him to shut up about this. He preached about sin and righteousness,

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and he preached about faithfulness, and he preached about covenant and promises,

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and he explained the boat until he was probably tired of explaining it. And then one day,

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the people watch animals two by two marching into the boat and by all likelihood going where God

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wanted them to go within this boat. You would think that people would stop and say, well,

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maybe Noah is onto something, but there's no hint of that in the text. There's no hint of that.

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There's no hint that people said, no, I think I'm on team Noah now. I believe you. No hint.

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The animals go in, Noah and his family goes in, and the door closes behind them. Who closed the

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door? God. That's what we see in Scripture. The hand of God closed the door and secured Noah and

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his family, and the animals, within the boat. Then the rains came. And you just imagine, as the rains

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came, the rains came, the rains came, at that point, people around probably got anxious. And again, it

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wasn't just a bunch of rabid, foaming Rikers Island convicts. Grandparents, there was children, there

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all manner of different folks, and they were about to suffer the wrath of God, and they had no means

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access to safety. Now, why were they going to suffer? Why were they going to suffer? Why was

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this generation going to suffer? Why? Sin. Now, does that sound old-fashioned? If they were going

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to suffer because of sin, you say, well, well, come on now. Surely God wouldn't just, you know,

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make a grandma suffer because of sin. Surely he wouldn't do anything like that. As tactfully as

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I can answer you. I'll say this. Wrong. God can and does judge sin. He is holy and just,

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so he must judge sin. And the way he judges sin is by pouring out his wrath upon it.

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All mankind is sinners. That's the problem. It's not just one wicked generation centuries ago.

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All of mankind is sinners. You're a sinner. I'm a sinner. The culture around us is sinful.

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But what we do is we degrade two words. We degrade the word holiness to mean nothing.

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So God is holy, and we just think that's semi-righteous, pseudo-righteous, sort of righteous.

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That's what we do with holiness.

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And then we take the word sin, and we gut it, or we make it a euphemism for something desirable,

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like that chocolate is sinful.

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We talked about that a few weeks ago.

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That chocolate is delightfully sinful.

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It's sinfully delicious.

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We have Sin City.

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We make sin something good and desirable, and we take holiness, and we neuter it of any meaning.

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Well, the reason God drowned grandmas is because holiness and sin do mean something.

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Sin.

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One sin.

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Functionally biting the piece of fruit was why the entire universe was thrust into chaos.

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One sin, not two, not ten, not thirty.

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One sin.

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By someone God loved more than Adam, it was made in his own image.

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But Adam sinned, so God needed to judge him.

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Because God is just.

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God can't just sweep sin into the coat closet of heaven.

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If he did that, he would not be just.

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He must deal with sin.

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And this generation, in this text, found out firsthand.

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It is not a small or trite thing to break the laws of a thrice holy God.

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And so they suffered his wrath.

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Now, why did Noah get spared?

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Was it because he was just supremely, he was more righteous than them and God grades on a curve?

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Is that why he was spared? Is that why the ark was given?

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No, Noah was a sinner too.

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You see, there were sinners outside the boat and there were sinners inside the boat.

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So why did Noah make it?

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Why did Noah and his family, why were they spared?

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One word starts with a G. What is it?

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Grace. You could have said God, but grace is the right answer.

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Grace.

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God looked down at Noah.

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He looked down at Noah's family and he says, I will preserve a remnant.

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And he does that throughout the Bible.

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The Bible's filled with God preserving a remnant.

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Meanwhile, allowing his judgment to befall the rest.

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And this is the case here. He preserves the remnant.

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He preserves Noah and his family, not because they'd earned it,

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but because God is good and God made a promise.

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He made a promise specifically to Abraham.

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He said, Abraham, you're going to have more children than the sands of the beach.

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Children are going to share your faith, Abraham, because that's what real children are.

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Not just by progeny, by ancestry, but by faith.

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You're going to have more of those, more faithful descendants than the stars in the sky.

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How would that promise ever be fulfilled if God had wiped all of the people off the map right here?

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Well, it wouldn't be. It couldn't be.

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So God spares a remnant, not for their namesake, but for his namesake.

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He spares this remnant, this family.

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He preserves them in the ark.

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And by being preserved in the ark for the 40 days and the balance of the flood,

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they are then able to fulfill the mannots, to multiply and fill the earth,

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and God's covenant is kept.

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Now, I want to close this morning by explaining what this has to do about Jesus.

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The wrath of God is coming for us as well.

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The wrath of God is coming for this world, for this culture.

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The wrath of God is coming.

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Will it come as a worldwide flood? No, it'll come as something worse. The wrath of God is coming to

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sin because we live in a culture that drinks down sin like it's water. The wrath of God is coming

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to all who have sinned. So what's the hope? Years ago, this is when we had a cancer issue in our

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family, and we were taking regular trips from Wyoming, where we were, down to Denver to go to

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Children's Hospital there, and Children's Hospital had tickets that they gave out to go to a nearby

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aquarium, you know, something we could do to kind of be entertained in the midst of these hardships.

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So we went to the Denver Aquarium, which is just wonderful. If you've never been, it's almost worth

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flying to Denver just to see this aquarium. It's something else. But the aquarium had one feature

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I'd never encountered before. Usually you go to aquariums and there's fish, and you know, that's

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what you see. Well, they had an encounter with what was called a flash flood, an encounter with

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a flash flood. Now, if you've ever been in the Midwest, you've ever been in Colorado, you know

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that when the rain pours through the mountains flash floods can develop very very quickly and

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if you're on their path you will get wiped out so they had this encounter with a flash flood

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there at the denver aquarium so you could see what that was like and so you all stand there's

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like this walkway this walkway with rails on each side and you stand there and there's these you

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know fake rock exhibits and there's this kind of this mouth there's a hole in the rock and this

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mouth and you can see this must be where the water comes from so they crank up the volume they crank

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at the speakers and you can hear the sound of rushing water coming and it's getting closer and

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you're all standing there and everyone's focused on this hole because you know that's where this

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water is going to have to come from you're standing there and you're wondering what's going to happen

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and the sound gets louder and louder and louder and then burst through this hole comes this wall

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wall of water and the thing about the Denver Aquarium is you know aquarium takes water

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seriously the wall of water no joke it's a wall of water and it comes flying out of this hole

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and its trajectory is right towards you.

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You're standing there in this narrow causeway,

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this narrow walkway with the other people

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who got their tickets to go there.

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You're standing there and you're about to get swamped, overwhelmed.

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But just before the water hits you,

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just before it just obliterates you,

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you get drenched from head to toe,

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just before you're covered by this water,

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the water hits something.

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It hits a wall of plexiglass,

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some sort of see-through thing

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that goes the length of the room itself.

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This plexiglass is only about a foot or so away from where you are.

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The water hits it full on.

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You can almost feel the reverberation of this water hitting the plexiglass.

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Boom.

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With all that force, all that force.

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And you stand there and you go, if that had been me, I'd be gone.

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If I was to face a flash flood out in the wilderness in the Rockies, I'd be gone.

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That's the lesson that they're trying to teach you, the dangers of flash floods.

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That it can hit you, it can be on you before you expect it.

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And if it hits you, it will wipe you out.

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Well, at that time, I was in pastoral ministry, and it didn't take long before I saw this through scriptural eyes.

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And what I saw is that this glass, this partition, this plexiglass, is like Jesus.

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The wrath of God is coming for mankind.

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Read Revelation.

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The wrath of God is coming to mankind, so what do we need?

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Can you stand before it any more than you could stand before a flash flood?

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If you can't stand before a flash flood and not get wet, how are you going to stand before the wrath of God poured out on you?

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Well, you can't.

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You won't.

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You don't.

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What has to happen?

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is there has to be some intercession.

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Something has to be between you and that wrath.

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Something has to be between you and the torrential water,

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the deluge, the flood, what have you.

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In Genesis 6, we see that in order for God

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to preserve his own people, the remnant that he had chosen,

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in order to preserve them,

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he sent them something to protect them.

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He sent them the ark through the plans

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that he told Noah to create.

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He says, Noah, create this ark,

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and this will be the means by which you'll be rescued.

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The flood is coming, the wrath is coming, but you will be safe

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because you will be housed within the ark and you'll be preserved

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until the wrath, the waters, the flood has abated and has subsided.

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You know, he did this later too.

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Do you remember the book of Jonah?

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In Jonah chapter 2, what happens?

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Jonah is in the water.

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Remember, Jonah had been running from God, fleeing from God, disobeying God, breaking God's laws.

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A storm, wrath, comes upon the waters.

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The sailors are going, what to do, what to do?

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And ultimately they realize, this guy's got to go in.

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Jonah says, throw me in, boys.

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So he goes into the water.

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The storm stops for the sailors, but he sinks, right?

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He's drowning in the wrath of God.

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But what happens?

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God sends him a traveling air pocket.

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The whale is not judgment.

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We read the book of Jonah and you think the whale is the judgment against Jonah?

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Dear heavens, no.

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The whale is not the judgment against Jonah.

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I mean, it doesn't sound fun to us to be eaten by a whale or a big fish or whatever,

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but that's not the judgment.

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The whale is the Savior.

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The whale was the means of preserving Jonah from the wrath, from the waters,

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from the deluge that would have brought him down to the very moorings of the sea itself.

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Jonah was spared by this traveling air pocket that scooped him up,

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took him, and then plopped him there on the beach.

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Noah was preserved by the ark.

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Noah was preserved by this ark that kept him and his family safe

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until such time as the waters went down.

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When we were staying in the aquarium, we were preserved by this sheet,

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this plexiglass, this glass that was between us and the torrents.

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Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all of these things.

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Jesus Christ, specifically of the ark itself, the whale, what have you.

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Jesus Christ is what these things point forward to.

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Jesus Christ was the means of salvation for Noah, for Moses, for Daniel,

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for David, for Roddy, for Gardner, for you, for me.

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You and I are kept safe from the wrath of God poured out upon mankind.

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The wrath of God that is due to us.

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When we stand in the law place on that day,

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the only way that we're saved is there was an intercessor

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who drank down God's wrath on your behalf.

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Genesis 6, it's not principally about the animals.

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The animals are an interesting part, I grant you.

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But Genesis 6 is principally about the flood of God's wrath

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due to sinful man and the means of intercession

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that ultimately is found in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

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Let's pray.