Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.

Script:

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.

Genesis, Chapter 6, verse 5, New International Version

VK: Hello! Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. I’m Victoria K. If this is your first visit with Anchored by Truth we want you to know that Anchored by Truth has a single focus – to restore a widespread understanding that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word of God. For thousands of years God has guided His people with His special revelation. Those cultures and communities that have embraced His guidance have been blessed. Those who have rejected it have suffered. And while many in our culture think that they may safely dismiss the Bible’s transcendent truth they are wrong and our society is paying the price. That’s why we’re so happy that you are able to join us today on Anchored by Truth. We’re in the midst of a series we call “The Seriousness of Sin.” Thus far in this series we have talked about both the current and eternal consequences of sin, the reality and nature of hell and, most recently, the enormous consequences of the first sin in the Garden of Eden. As he has been throughout this series, to help us continue to think through hard truths that accompany sin’s existence, we have RD Fierro. RD is an author and the founder of Crystal Sea Books. RD, in our last two episodes of Anchored by Truth we talked about the consequences that arose because of that first sin in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. And today you want to point to another Biblical illustration of how seriously God treats sin. Where are we going today?

RD: We are going to move forward in the book of Genesis and look at possibly the second most serious consequence of sin described in the Bible – the flood in Noah’s time.

VK: Why do you say the 2nd most serious consequence of sin? Seems like a flood that wiped out all the people, birds, and land animals except for those on the ark is about as bad as it gets.

RD: Because without a doubt the most serious consequence of sin in all of history – the most serious consequence possible – was the death of God’s only Son on the cross. The flood of Noah was about as serious as it gets on this earth, but the implications of Jesus’ death on the cross transcended space and time.

VK: Well, the Gospel of Mark, chapter 15, verse 33 does say, “Then at three o’clock Jesus called out with a loud voice, … ‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’” That is a fascinating verse of scripture. Jesus was God incarnate. How could God incarnate be abandoned by anyone much less someone He would address as “my God?” As you said the implications of the transaction that took place on the cross boggle the mind.

RD: Right. As many Bible commentators have noted at that moment on the cross heaven and earth were once again connected by the Divine Being that had created both. Every sin committed by every human being was committed on earth. Yet every sin has heavenly implications because all sin is rebellion against a God who presides over heaven and earth. Jesus was both fully divine as well as fully human. He had to be fully divine for his death to be of infinite value. When a human sins against God they sin against an infinite Being incurring an infinite debt. A finite person can never pay an infinite debt.

VK: Which is why finite people when they are consigned to hell must remain there eternally. Their punishment lasts eternally because they are there to pay an infinite debt. But they can’t. Only a being of infinite value can pay an infinite death. Because Jesus was fully divine as well as fully human His sacrifice was fully sufficient to satisfy our sin debt to God. When we place our trust in Jesus God applies Jesus’ righteousness to our account. It’s similar to an accounting transaction on earth. You or I may owe a debt that we cannot pay. Then our father walks into the office, takes out his wallet, and says “how much do my children owe?” It doesn’t matter how much we owe because when we accept Jesus as our Savior our Heavenly Father looks at Jesus’ account instead of ours. Jesus’ sacrifice is credited to our account. That’s why it is so important for us to engage in that transaction while there is still time.

RD: Correct. Jesus paid the infinite sin debt that we owed when He died on the cross for all those who place their trust in Him. So, in terms of value, nothing can exceed the value of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. But, to get back to the topic of our series, the seriousness of sin, Jesus’ sacrifice would have been unnecessary if man had not sinned. That’s why we have to take note that the most serious consequence of sin was that it necessitated that God sacrifice His only Son to atone for sin’s consequences. If sin were not so serious, Jesus would not have had to die. But sin is serious. And one way we can see how serious sin is by looking at what happened when God surveyed the earth and could only find one righteous man on it.

VK: We heard part of that portion of the Bible in our opening scripture. In verse 5 of the 6th chapter of Genesis we hear that “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” Verses 6 through 8 go on to say, “The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.” I don’t suppose there can be anything much more serious than when human beings do something that causes the Lord to “regret” that He had made them. Wow. The human beings of Noah’s age were so wicked they gave the Almighty and Perfect King regret.

RD: Well, a couple of notes are necessary here. When the Bible says that the Lord “regretted” that He had made people, that is what is called anthropopathism.

VK: It’s a what?

RD: Saying that God regretted making man is anthropopathism. The term “anthro” just refers to something pertaining to human beings. Anthropology is the study of human beings. The Bible in this case is depicting God in terms of human emotion and experience. God is omniscient. God knew that after Adam and Eve’s first sin the world would continue to descend into more and more wickedness. God was not surprised by the descent but He was saddened by the descent. God is a Personal Being and He experiences emotions and the Bible records these emotions from time to time. But, God continued to give warnings to people just as He had warned Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

VK: The fall in the Garden of Eden is described in chapter 3 of Genesis. In chapter 4 we have the famous incident of Cain and Abel. Even before Cain killed his brother Abel God said to Cain “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” You might have thought that Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden would have been a severe enough punishment to make sure that they and their descendants avoided sin for decades or centuries. After all, they had just experienced, in a very real way, the consequences of sin. You might have thought the consequences of the very first sin would have been enough of a warning. But a gracious God continued to give explicit warnings to His children.

RD: You might have thought that Adam and Eve losing paradise would have been enough of a warning, but, no. Sin begets sin. It did then. It does now. The very next chapter in Genesis we hear the Lord warning another human being, Cain, of the consequences of sin. But, of course, Cain didn’t listen. Cain killed his brother, Abel. And as a consequence Cain was also cast out from his homeland.

VK: Verse 16 of chapter 4 says, “So Cain went out from the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.” Adam and Eve sinned and were cast out of the Garden of Eden. Cain killed his brother and was even sent away from the region of Eden. Our first parents weren’t deterred by the seriousness of sin nor was their oldest son.

RD: And things didn’t improve in succeeding generations. While Biblical scholars aren’t unified in their opinions on when the flood of Noah actually occurred, Dr. Jonathan Sarfati, the Lead Scientist for Creation Ministries International, places the date of the flood 1656 years after creation. Dr. Sarfati provides a detailed discussion of his calculations in his commentary on the first 11 chapters of Genesis, The Genesis Account. I would highly recommend serious Bible students have a copy in their personal library. So, taking Dr. Sarfati’s date, we know that for the next 1,600 years following Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden and Cain’s murder of Abel things just continued to get worse. They got so bad that the Bible uses the human emotion of regret to express what God felt about people continuing to engage in ever more sinful behaviors.

VK: And just as with the first sin, consequences were going to follow this steady progression of sin. The first sin in the Garden of Eden brought death into the created order and caused mankind to lose paradise. Cain’s sin resulted in him being sent away from his family and home. But in Noah’s day sin had proliferated so much that expulsion was no longer appropriate. Mankind had pushed God from expulsion to extermination.

RD: Yes. The flood of Noah which resulted of the death of all the people, animals, and birds except for those on the ark is, to say the least, a very graphic illustration of how seriously God treats sin. But God always precedes the consequences with a plain warning of the consequences. God warned Adam and Eve that if they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they would die. They didn’t listen and death entered creation. God warned Cain that “sin was crouching at this door” and he needed to “rule over it.” But Cain didn’t listen. He didn’t get a handle on his anger and it cost him his home and family. By Noah’s day this pattern of not listening had been going on for 1,600 years. We are not given the all the details of the progress of sin but its progression was so bad that there came a time when “every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.”

VK: We know that sin has multiplied in our culture in recent decades. Behavior that would never have been tolerated in previous times is now routinely featured on TV, in movies, on the internet, and sadly on our streets. We can see sin’s progression in our time and we know that things are bad now. I’m not sure we can envision how bad they must have been in Noah’s time for God to record in His word that “every inclination of human hearts was only evil all the time.” Yikes.

RD: Exactly. The people of Noah’s day knew or should have known how serious sin was. Noah’s life span overlapped Adam’s great-grandson Cain’s life by as much as 300 years or so. It’s entirely possible that Noah was alive when Adam’s grandson, Enoch, was alive. Noah’s father, Lamech, and grandfather, Methuselah, were alive while Adam was still living. The knowledge of Eden and what happened in Eden was readily available. We have to get our knowledge of the first sin and its consequences from the Bible (and thank God we have it) – but there were a great many alive in Noah’s day who could have gotten it from Adam himself.

VK: You know that’s something we never think about. In our world 1,600 years spans a lot of generations. But in the pre-flood world it wasn’t that way. Noah was only in the 10th generation down from Adam. As you said it was possible that Noah’s own father could have spoken to Adam face-to-face. And yet the availability of that personal knowledge did not stop sin from steadily escalating.

RD: And that’s how dangerous sin is. That’s how serious sin is. Noah’s father and grandfather could have spoken personally with the very first sinner and obtained first-hand knowledge of how serious was. But for whatever reason they didn’t and they died in the flood along with everyone else. If they had been as righteous as their son or grandson they could have had a place on the ark. But they weren’t and they didn’t. They paid the price for their wickedness alongside everyone else of their generations.

VK: That’s something we rarely contemplate. We see the names in the Bible, especially the ones in Genesis, and we think that all of those people must have been godly people. I mean they are in the Bible. But Noah’s own father and grandfather died in the flood that God sent into the world to punish the wickedness of that time. Most commentators think that it took Noah 50 to 75 years to build the ark. Now, we don’t know whether Noah built the ark near his father or grandfather but he might have. It’s an amazing thought that Noah’s father could have witnessed his son building this huge boat for 50 to 75 years and yet been so complacent about sin that he ultimately died even when salvation might have been right over the next ridge.

RD: And of course that same observation could be made of everyone else alive on the earth at that time except for Noah and his family. They were so insensitive to the seriousness of the steadily increasing evil that they just kept partying right up to the point that God made it clear He won’t put up with sin forever.

VK: Jesus observed in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 17, verses 26 and 27, “When the Son of Man comes, things will be just as they were when Noah lived. People were eating, drinking, and getting married right up to the day when Noah went into the big boat. Then the flood came and drowned everyone on earth.” That’s from the Contemporary English Version.

RD: The phrase “when the Son of Man comes” is a euphemism for Jesus’ return. What Jesus said was that just as in Noah’s day there will be a time just before His return when sin will be so pervasive people a great many people will be indifferent to it even though destruction is right around the corner for them.

VK: Why is that?

RD: Jesus’ return will usher in the beginning of eternal bliss for His children but it will usher in eternal destruction for those who have rejected Him. Just as the people of Noah’s day could see Noah preparing a means to be saved from the judgment of the flood and rejected the means, people today are rejecting the only means of being saved from a coming worldwide flood of judgment. Let’s take a quick look at how God has always dealt with the human race. God initially created everything and then shaped it to be a perfect world for man to occupy.

VK: Man was not created until day 6. By this time the sun was in the sky providing light and warmth, the oceans had been restrained so he was able to walk about, and their plants in place bearing edible fruits and vegetables. Moreover, the land animals had been created so Adam had the opportunity to be productive and creative right from the start. And Adam and Eve had each other so they had companionship. We hear all that in Genesis, chapter 1, verses 27 through 29 say, “God created humans to be like himself; ... God gave them his blessing and said: Have a lot of children! Fill the earth with people and bring it under your control. Rule over the fish in the ocean, the birds in the sky, and every animal on the earth. I have provided all kinds of fruit and grain for you to eat. … And so it was.” That’s the Contemporary English Version.

RD: And let’s not forget that God had put them in the midst of a garden designed for them. They had everything they needed to live peaceful, joyful lives including the ability to add to their family. God created the world and shaped it for man to fulfill the purpose for which man was created. But man chose to ignore God’s warning and creation was blighted. God then immediately began a plan of redemption. Fast forward 1600 years. Man has, in fact, multiplied but not in a good way. Man’s increase has been accompanied by an even greater increase in sin.

VK: So, God again issues a warning. The warning was given to Noah but all of Noah’s neighbors would have heard about the warning. Building a big boat for 50 to 75 years would surely have occasioned some neighborhood gossip. But no one but Noah and his family heeded the warning. The consequence about which Noah had been warned then occurs. The flood arrives and God reshapes the world by it. We don’t have time today to go into all of the reshaping that took place but even secular scientists agree that at one time in the past a super-continent was broken up into the configuration of the continents we see today.

RD: The dispersion of the land masses around the world then helps promote the worldwide dispersion of animals and people. This is consistent with God’s initial instruction to “fill the earth.” We see, then, three major themes repeated through the flood that we saw when we looked at the very first sin in the Garden of Eden. First, God warns people about the consequences of sin. Then man sins and the consequences of the sin arrive just as God warned. But, second, God continues His plan of redemption just as He had purposed before the foundation of the world. And, third, God continues to bring about the original mission He gave to Adam.

VK: Said slightly differently, man’s disobedience does not derail God’s sovereign ordination. This is a truly amazing thought. Man’s sin does not and cannot affect God’s sovereignty over the created order. Again, it boggles the mind how God can keep His plans on track regardless of whether man chooses to be obedient.

RD: Yes. God never enacts consequences for sin without giving a warning first. We see that pattern repeated throughout scripture. When the Israelites were coming out of Egypt God promised them blessings if they were obedient once they arrived in the Promised Land and warned them they would fall into exile and captivity if they began worshipping idols. They did exactly what God warned them not to do and they were eventually conquered by the Assyrians and the Babylonians.

VK: But through the Persians God kept His plan of redemption on track and the Jesus, the Messiah, was eventually born in the Promised Land just as God had ordained. The disobedience of the Israelites caused them to suffer but it did not derail God’s plan to bring a Messiah out of the nation descended from Abraham or His grand plan of redemption. God warned the people of Noah’s generation of the consequences of their continued wickedness. But, as Jesus observed, they ignored the warning completely – until they were destroyed. And one of the reasons we are taking the time to go through this history is to point out what happens when people don’t learn the lessons that God is trying to teach. We are all confronted with that same choice today. Obey God, accept Jesus, and be blessed for all eternity or disobey God, reject Jesus, and reap an eternity of condemnation. It’s a stark choice.

RD: It is a stark choice. That’s how serious sin is. Unconfessed sin and sin for which we do not repent has consequences. It has consequences in the here and now and it has even graver consequences after this life is over. God gave us the example of the flood of Noah as part of the warning to our world and our generation. The wise among us will learn from the lessons that are contained in the Bible.

VK: And just to be sure that those lessons were clear Jesus restated them during his earthly ministry. Most Christians, and even a lot of non-believers, know John, chapter 3, verse 16. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.”

RD: But most people do not know John 3:18, just two verses later. “Whoever believes in [Jesus] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” Sin is serious. I don’t know how the Bible could convey that more clearly. In example after example in the Bible we see that we ignore God’s warnings at our peril. And, as this verse says, the biggest warning that the Bible conveys is the danger of ignoring Jesus. The people in Noah’s world ignored the warning that God was going to punish the widespread wickedness of the day. I’m sad to say that it appears that many in our generation are making the same mistake.

VK: So, the big idea that we wanted to introduce today is that once sin began in the Garden of Eden it did not stop. Cain continued the sin by killing Abel. And as succeeding generations were added they continued adding to the warehouse of accumulating sin. Eventually, God saw only one righteous person left and so God reshaped the world by a flood to continue the progress of His plans. We cannot derail God’s plans but we can create suffering for ourselves and others by trying. Sin is serious in part because sin causes misery and suffering. We should imitate Noah and heed God’s warning to us by being obedient. Our obedience does not save us. That is accomplished by the blood of Jesus. But our obedience can keep us safe through the storms of life while those about us are perishing. This sounds like a great time to pray. Today let’s listen to a prayer for persecuted Christians – our faithful brothers and sisters who holding on to Christ’s promises despite the storms they are facing.

---- PRAYER FOR PERSECUTED CHRISTIANS (TREY)

VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.”

If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!”

(Opening Bible Quote from the New International Version)

Genesis, Chapter 6, verse 5, New International Version