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We come now to the third and last chapter of the second epistle by Peter. Let us begin the day by reading the chapter together. Second Peter three and verse one: That this is now, beloved, the second epistle that I write unto you, and in both of them I stir up your sincere mind by putting you in remembrance, that you should remember the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets and the commandment of our Lord and Savior through your apostles, knowing this first, that in the last days mockers shall come with mockery, walking after their own lusts and saying, where is the promise of his coming?
For from the day that the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willfully forget, that there were heavens from of old and an earth compacted out of water and amidst water by the word of God, by which means the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished. But the heavens that now are, and the earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
But forget not this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some count slackness, but is long suffering to you, Lord, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a thief, in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
Seeing that these things are thus all to be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in all holy living and godliness, looking for and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God, by reason of which the heavens, being on fire, shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat. But according to his promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that you look for these things, give diligence that you may be found in peace, without spot, and blameless in his sight, and account that the long suffering of our Lord is salvation, even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given to him, wrote unto you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, wherein are some things hard to be understood, which the ignorant and unsteadfast rest, as they do also the other
scriptures, unto their own destruction. You therefore, beloved, knowing these things beforehand, beware lest, being carried away with the error of the wicked, you fall from your own steadfastness, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to him be the glory, both now and forever. When Paul opens his third chapter of this epistle, he recurs to a theme that we have already had occasion to notice several times.
He tells us that this is his second epistle, and in both of them, his declared intention has been to stir up our sincere mind by putting us in remembrance. And following that hint, therefore, this morning, let us once more and again, uh, just go over what we have learned already of this epistle. We saw did we not, that the major theme, or at least one of the major themes of this epistle, is that this present world is temporary.
There is, however, an eternal kingdom, and progress here, all true progress here, will have eternal consequences there. And then we try to follow the thought flow of the first paragraph of his letter, which he begins to exhort us so to live here that when this temporary world for us is done, we may not merely gain entrance into the eternal kingdom, all believers will do that, but that we may gain an abundant entrance into that eternal kingdom.
And therefore, in the first paragraph, he reminded us of what our resources are as we start this path of progress and development of Christian grace and character, we start on the basis of certain resources. God's divine power has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness. With those gifts at hand, therefore, we are, for that very reason, to add all diligence, that we may supply the Christian graces, features of character, and qualities of character that shall build us up and thus give us not merely an entrance into the eternal kingdom, but an abundant entrance and a glorious potential for the enjoyment of eternity.
And Peter argues his case, pointing out that if we add diligence and therefore add all these Christian qualities, certain things will happen. Whereas if we fail to add these qualities, certain other things will be the result. For if, for if not. And having urged that upon us, he reverts to his theme, therefore give thee more diligence to add to your character these Christian qualities, for in so doing, you will make your calling and election sure. You will demonstrate that you are genuinely those that have been called and chosen.
And once more he adds, if you do it, certain things will follow, and again, for so doing it, you shall be granted an abundant entrance into the eternal kingdom. And with that as his main and general, uh, message and thesis, Peter, for the first time, announces his intention constantly to remind us of these things. He must be under the apprehension that, uh, we easily forget. So he announces his intention to remind us, then to stir us up, get us excited and moving and earnest and energetic, to stir you up by reminding you, and so much to remind us that after his decease, he says, we may always be able to recall these things on our own initiative.
And then we found in chapter one, uh, having exhorted us energetically to prepare ourselves for the coming eternal kingdom, he turns to assure us of the validity of the evidence. If we are going to make this our major business in life, to prepare for the eternal kingdom, we shall need to be absolutely sure and settled in our heart that there is an eternal kingdom. The world at large holds that for all practical purposes, this life is all there is, and therefore the worldly man puts all his energies into this life.
And if it should ever happen that our conviction that there is an eternal kingdom should be undermined, we as believers might be tempted to put less energy into preparing for that kingdom, and like the worldly man, spend the major part of our energy on this temporary world. On what ground, therefore, may we be certain that there is an eternal kingdom? The end of his first chapter, Peter turns to this question and gives us two grounds, the apostolic witness and the witness of the prophetic word.
We did not follow cunningly devised myths, he tells us, when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus. We were eyewitnesses of his majesty. And he, in relating the story of the Transfiguration Mount, assures us that that story is not a myth. The Transfiguration was an actual happening in history. Their feet were very much on the mountain. Their eyes were open, and they saw things happening before them. Their ears were open and they heard.
This is an historic event and not just a story made up to convey a theological point. We have then the evidence of the apostles assuring us that there will be a second coming of our Lord in great power and glory. Then, of course, we have the prophetic word, a word of utter certainty. We know that no prophecy is of the prophet's own interpretation. The vision the prophets were given was given them by God, and the explanation of that vision was likewise given them by God.
And therefore, we have in that prophetic word, uh, something that is utterly reliable, and we do well to take heed to it. Then we found last week, he moves on to warn us that addition, in addition to the testimony of the apostles and the testimony of the true prophets, warns us that there will come false teachers. They will not only oppose the gospel, their influence is in part attributable to this, that they rise up within the church.
And Christendom has been the sorry history of how true this warning was, how all too well it has taken place. False prophets arising in the church and preaching doctrines and advising such behavior as altogether destroys both a person's chance of ever getting saved, and secondly, if they are saved, teaching calculated to destroy all their attempts to prepare themselves for an abundant entrance into the eternal kingdom.
We noticed, therefore, last week in chapter two how he talks about these teachers first, briefly describes them, and then announces that their destruction will come swiftly. God will intervene to deal with them. And then he breaks off to explain how God will intervene, so that simultaneously he may put an end to the deception of the false teachers, and at the same time deliver his people once and for all from temptation. God will do that, for he knows how to do it.
He did it at the flood by catastrophically intervening within history to remove the wicked and to deliver Noah and his family from temptation. He did it in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah, intervening catastrophically to bring to an end that luridly permissive society, and at the same time to deliver Lot out of temptation and to save him from judgment. So Peter has told us that the coming of the Lord Jesus will not be forever delayed. There will come this tremendous breaking into history, for the Lord Jesus shall come, and at his coming he will simultaneously do two things.
He will grant to the believer rest from persecution, from temptation. To the ungodly, however, his coming will be one of flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. And then Peter, in his second chapter, we found reverts to a further description of these false teachers and their doctrine, and ends up once more with an announcement of the judgment that shall come upon them. For them the blackness of darkness hath been reserved, a suitable punishment for their crime.
They have preached a lie. They have preached sinfulness, permissiveness, immorality. They have done the work of Satan, and in the place of God's light, they have spread moral and spiritual darkness. And as a poetic justice, God shall eventually confine them to the blackness of darkness forever. And now, at the end of chapter two, Peter turns to explain why that judgment comes. Here in that second paragraph, it was how it will come.
Now it is why it will come. They will be dealt with so severely because of the effect, the disastrous effect of their teachings, particularly on what I have here called the half-converted, shorthand for those that have gone in for some kind of moral reformation, but alas, their moral reformation has stopped short of positive regeneration. They have been Christianized, but not made true Christians. Their moral life has been cleaned up, but they have not really been born again.
And just as they were beginning to escape the corruption that is in the world by lusts, along came these permissive teachers, and in the name of the church taught them that fornication isn't necessarily wrong, and you don't have to listen to those old, strict, old-fashioned morals, such as people used to teach in the Victorian era. This is the modern world. And therefore, these people that were just beginning to escape the corruption that is in the world through the knowledge of the Lord Jesus are once more overtaken and entangled therein, and this time they go into their evil living in the idea that this is perfectly all right.
The Church of God approves of it, at least the modern bit does, and all those who oppose it are fogey bogies, and you don't have to take any notice of them. And now they imagine that they got hold of real Christianity, and their eyes are ten thousand times more blind than ever they were before, and any chance of bringing them to true repentance is the more remote. And because of the disastrous effect of this teaching on other people, God's judgment will come upon them. That then was the state of affairs when we finished our sessions last week, and we turn now to, uh, chapter three.
How, we ask, is chapter three going to continue the story? Well, it is going to be another chapter full of warning. It is to be another chapter about false teachers, or at least about critics of the gospel. In chapter two, Peter was dealing with men who te- taught a false morality, and thus militated against the true gospel by teaching people that their morals needn't be too strict.
Now he turns in his third chapter to talk about men who similarly oppose the gospel, but this time on another ground. They take up the Christian claim that there is an eternal world. They take up the Christian claim that the Lord Jesus is coming again. He will come for his people. He will come in power and great glory. He will put down the man of sin and his false prophet, and he will put an end to their deception of the nations and confine them to the lake of fire. He will reign till all his enemies are put under his feet, and then the end will come, and the great white throne be set up.
From the face of him that sits thereon, the very heaven and earth will flee away, and there shall be no place found for them. And in their place shall come the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. It has been Peter's intention, as we have observed, to convince us of the reality of that eternal world and to urge us to live for it and to prepare for it. These men say, nonsense, there is no such eternal world. There will be no second coming of Christ. And you will immediately see how their ideas would undermine all that Peter is talking about if their ideas should prove to be true.
And so Peter now turns to answering the arguments and the problems put forward by these ki- this kind of person. Let us notice, therefore, first of all, how he, in this chapter four has four major things to s- talk to us about. And in his kindly apostolic heart, he prefaces the each one by calling us beloved. Beloved. Beloved, says he, remember. And then again, beloved, forget not.
And then again, wherefore, beloved, this and that. And finally, therefore, beloved, this and that. That's an easy scheme, isn't it? And, uh, we should easily remember it. Beloved, remember the words of our Lord Jesus and his apostles, knowing this first. And now we come to the central part of this first paragraph. This we are to know, to know in advance, that there will come mockers in their mockery, saying, where is the promise of his coming?
That is, they deny, and not only deny, but they pour scorn on the whole notion that there is to be a second coming of Christ, and an end to the world, and an eternal kingdom. They deny it. Now notice, if you will, the grounds upon which they deny it. Their argument is that since the creation, that since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
That is... that nature runs, and always has run, and always will run, by an unbroken chain of cause and effect. That chain of cause and effect has never been broken. There have never been any interventions by God in the past. There will be no intervention by God in the future. All things have continued since the fathers fell asleep.
History shows that that's how nature runs and always will run. The notion, therefore, that one of these days Christ will come again and intervene in the course of nature is unlikely, if not altogether impossible. We call their argument these days the argument from the principle of the uniformity of nature. It's a kind of a scientific argument. And having stated their argument, Peter gives us the answer to it.
Now that in itself should teach us a very important lesson, and particularly those of us who are older and have responsibility for teaching younger people. Peter may only have been a fisherman. He was aware of the kind of scientific argument that in his day was leveled against the gospel. In the course of his teaching of his fellow believer, therefore, of course he taught them about the coming of the Lord Jesus, the second coming of the Lord Jesus. He didn't leave it at that. He knew that as these young people, his fellow believers, went out into the world, they would be met by the hostile, learned criticism of the scientists of their day and of the half-baked scientists of their day and of the BBC.
Oh, what, no, I don't think it was quite invented then. Well, whatever was invented then. And that, uh, they would urge against these Christians that it is impossible to hold this Christian view of the second coming of Christ, at least if you wanted to be a respectable modern man or a scientist. And Peter warns them in advance. He knows about it. And what is more, he gives them the answers in advance. That's an important thing to do. For my dear senior brethren, of course you won't do it, but if you were tempted to do it, if you simply teach the promise of the second coming and you don't indicate to your Bible class that the world is going to criticize it and they've got some very strong arguments or arguments that appear to be strong when you first meet them.
The members of your Bible class may indeed trust the Lord and believe what you have told them, and then they go out into the world and they come across these arguments and they say, oh, oh, my Bible class leader didn't tell me about that. Perhaps she didn't know, perhaps he didn't know. And their faith in you is undermined a little bit. Whereas if you have inoculated them by warning them in advance, like Peter warns them in advance, that this is the kind of argument you will find in the world outside against the doctrine of the second coming, and here are the answers.
You have forearmed them by forewarning them. But notice now, having dealt with that particular argument against the doctrine of the second coming, Peter turns to another problem. This time the problem is a little bit different. This time the problem says, yes, well, okay, the second coming is possible, but why ever has it been so long delayed? The prophets have been speaking of it for centuries, and we who live in this advanced age feel the strength of that argument, uh, the more strongly, don't we?
Nearly two thousand years have gone by, and still the promise has not been fulfilled, and the Lord has not yet come. Why is that? And if the promise has been so long delayed, can I still go on believing it? Or is the length of the delay in the fulfillment of the promise an argument against its validity? What is the reason for the delay? Two major problems, therefore.
And in each time, Peter will give us the answer to those problems. Not only negatively an answer to the criticisms, but positively. It's not merely that we can answer them if we have to. The reason in each case is an important positive part of our faith. And having dealt, therefore, with the two difficulties, he has two final paragraphs of exhortation. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that you look for these things. Okay, you believe in the second coming.
You believe that eventually the world will be burned up. You are looking, are you, for the new heavens and the new earth, and you can answer all the objections that are brought against it. That marvelous. So you're, you, you believe it? Do you really? You really believe it? What, you? You are looking for a new heaven and a new earth in which dwells righteousness. You? What were you looking for last Tuesday? To make a little money at the expense of the income tax inspector.
That wasn't altogether righteous, was it? But you are looking for a world in which, an earth in which righteousness dwells. You are. Well, you see, if the enemies of the gospel try to refute the gospel by their criticisms, that's bad enough.
But if I profess to believe the gospel, that there's going to be a new earth in which dwells righteousness, and I'm living unrighteously, I am contradicting by my life the very gospel I profess with my lip. Let me not be amongst those who argue against the gospel by the way they live. And finally, therefore, he says, wherefore, beloved, if you do really look for these things, and of course you do, well, that's marvelous.
Well, then give diligence in this and this particular, and consider this and this to be the case. Not content to leave it there, he says, therefore, beloved, finally, therefore, beloved, beware, lest you fall from your own steadfastness. And then an exhortation typical of the whole of the epistle. The only way for a Christian to be safe in a practical sense is to grow.
This world is temporary. There is an eternal kingdom. The glory about this present world is that it provides us with opportunity for change, for growth. Grow. Like the angels upon Jacob's ladder, where there was no standing still, so is the Christian life. The only safe thing to be doing is to be growing. This then is the, uh, uh...
thought flow and content of Peter's last chapter. For our session this morning, our first session, I want now briefly to stand aside from the second epistle of Peter and to investigate a little more deeply one of the themes that he will mention in this third chapter, a theme which, in fact, he has already mentioned. That is the theme of the flood. Last week, we spent some time searching through our New Testaments the various references to Noah and his flood, seeking to learn the lessons which God, through the Holy Spirit, draws from that historic event for our present day and generation.
Now, again this week, we shall be thinking about the flood in chapter three, when the earth that then was perished by the word of God. And so I thought it would be a good thing today if we went back to Genesis for a few moments and looked to see what the story of the flood is saying in Genesis itself. So here, if you will, is a brief table of contents of the story of the flood in, uh, the book of Genesis. Starts in chapter five, Central, as you may expect, to the chapters is the story of the flood itself.
But it is preceded by three paragraphs of information. Starting in chapter five, verses one to thirty two, we have the generations of Adam, and they are taken all the way down to Noah and his sons. Then there is a second paragraph, chapter six, verses one to eight, that relate to us the story of the perversion of man. How man became utterly perverse, a freak, corrupt, to the point where God determined to destroy man that he had made.
Then there is the third short paragraph, chapter six, verses nine to twelve, that tell us about the generations of Noah. These are the generations of Noah, it says, and against the background of God's determination to destroy mankind. We are told of the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man in his generations. He begat sons. And then we're told several times over that all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth. And therefore God brought the flood.
Noah was told to make an ark, to enter into it. The flood came. Eventually the waters ceased, the ark rested. Noah came out and offered a sacrifice. It's quite a long story. But now notice that after the story of the flood, we are given three more paragraphs of information. First of all, there is the story in chapter nine verses one to seven of God's blessing. It has several details.
I have picked out one for certain reasons, which I shall say in a moment. And then there is another paragraph, chapter nine eight to seventeen, that records the making of God's covenant with Noah. And finally, there is a paragraph that is headed, these are the sons of Noah. And it tells us of a unfortunate incident that happened to Noah and his sons after Noah came out of the ark.
Now our time is a little bit reduced this morning, so I must hurry and give you just a skeleton survey of what I had intended to say as best I can. Why am I diverting your attention to the story of the flood in Genesis? Well, because just as in the New Testament, the Holy Spirit takes that story of the flood and from it deduces all sorts of lessons for us, and different lessons in different places. So if we look back to the story of the flood itself in Genesis, we shall pick up certain lessons relevant to us in general and relevant to the message of second Peter in particular.
Now, just let me remind you, therefore, that there are three creation stories in Genesis. Three creation stories. Sometimes in some books you'll, you'll hear it said that there are two, and then you'll hear it added that they contradict each other. That, I beg leave to say, is nonsense. They do not contradict each other. And secondly, there aren't two stories of creation, there are three stories of creation in the book of Genesis. One in chapter one, verse one to verse three of chapter two. m The second one in chapter two, verses four throughout the rest of chapter two, chapter three, and chapter four, taking the story of creation right on past Adam and Eve to Cain and Abel and Cain's successors.
And then again here in chapter five, verse one, um the writer comes back once more right to the very beginning of things, and starts up once more to talk to us about creation, and then follows the story of creation right down through history to the flood. Three creation stories, with creation each time put into its context, so that we should understand its significance. There are three creation stories in the same way as there are four stories of the life of our Lord. Huh?
To recap again, first, second, third, right, briefly, the first one. Oh yes. The three creation stories, the first one, chapter one verse one to chapter two verse three, The creation story that tells us of the creation in six days, a progressive series of increasing complication, arriving at the pinnacle of creation, that is the creation of man. And ending on the seventh day in chapter two verse three. The first creation story, creation from one point of view. The second creation story, chapter two verses four on through two, three, and four, that tells us creation from a different point of view.
And takes the story of creation on through the story of Adam and Eve and the fall, and then the story of Cain and Abel and the curse upon Cain, and the story of Cain's descendants. Creation put into a context that goes a great deal of the way down history. And the third one, beginning in chapter five— do notice that after chapter four with its story of Cain and Abel and Cain's descendants, the writer comes all the way back to creation again in chapter five. Another view of creation, in a different context this time, starting with the creation of man and following it down and to what happened to it, right to the time of Noah and his flood.
Three creation stories, and I was observing that in the New Testament there's not just one life of Christ, there are four stories of the life of Christ. They don't contradict each other. They are stories of the life of Christ, but each one from a special point of view that brings out something about the glory of our Lord that the other three do not. So here, three creation stories, each one looking at creation from a different point of view, and therefore giving us to see some significance of its own, some special significance in the creation. And this is the third one. And it tells us what's it going to be about in the very first paragraph.
This is the generation of Adam. In the beginning, God made them male and female, he made them in the likeness of God, male and female created he them and blessed them and called their name Adam. Now, I'm sure the ladies won't get upset, not even the most progressive of them, if I just point out what that verse is saying. This is the story of Adam. You say of Adam and Eve. No, no, no, no, no, no. Of Adam. We've had Eve before, and a wonderful story it was, but this is the story of Adam. He made them male and female, and he called their name...
Adam and Eve, you say. No, no, no, he didn't. He called their name Adam. Because in this we are thinking not so much of the first man whose name was Adam, like your sir may be William or your sir Theophilus. Ha. Adam was the personal name of the first man, but we're thinking now of Adam in its Hebrew sense of man, mankind. Man as distinct from angel, man as distinct from buffalo, man as distinct from butterfly. This is the story of man.
Man? It must have been an exciting moment when man first appeared, mustn't it? There had been buffaloes before, according to Genesis chapter one, and there had been angels before. So that if the angels in heaven had seen another buffalo, they wouldn't have been all that surprised. But this? What on earth was this? What was the creator up to? It wasn't just animal. It could talk with God. It could have spiritual converse with God. Like Michael could. So it wasn't just animal, it wasn't just angel, it wasn't just flesh, though it was flesh, it was spirit.
It wasn't just spirit, it was flesh. An extraordinary new thing of flesh and spirit. God called this new creature man. It had sex, there was male and female in man. It could reproduce. Oh, there were all sorts of interesting things about this new creature. Chief among them was this, that it was made in the image of God. Get hold of that point, because it's going to be a point that's going to be re-emphasized when we come the other side of the flood.
The other side of the flood, when God blessed Noah and his sons. Among the things that God said was that if anybody killed a man, by whosoever man's blood is shed, by man shall his blood be shed. Murder was to be followed by the death penalty. Why is that? Why, for this reason, says God, that man is made in the image of God. First point to get hold of, it is very important, isn't it?
What is man? In these days of advanced computers, and what fun they are, and what geniuses our infants are, they seem to learn it as easy as they do and more, their ABC. In these days of advanced computers, we shall presently come to the situation where we shall have to ask this question, what is man? Is he anything more than an exceedingly sophisticated computer? What are you? As the technologists more and more develop their machines that can simulate human intelligence, will they be able to create a machine that can genuinely think?
Will they be able to create in a machine consciousness? What is consciousness anyway? What is man? We are told that when the man of sin arrives, his false prophet will, uh, suggest making an image to him, and he will have the power not only to call down fire from heaven, which is a thing Elijah did to demonstrate the true God. The false prophet will not only have power to call down fire from heaven, but he have power to give breath to the image so that it can speak. What is man?
As our se- society moves into its advanced phase before the coming of the Lord Jesus, this question of what is man? May you take him in a test tube and grow a man and perform all sorts of experiments on him as though he were just a machine? What is man? Ha. One of these days you go to Japan and they introduce you to a factory, and here comes stalking down a little bit awkward in his gait, hooka duo. And you say to the m- to the manager, now who is this?
Is this your friend of yours? You shake hands with the thing, or with it, with it, or with, with him, shall I say. Because it can speak to you and answer your questions and do all sorts of things that you can't do and has a far bigger memory than you've got and can solve problems far more quickly than you can. What is it? Suppose in a fit of temper I got a sledgehammer and knocked its brains out. Would you have me up for murder? What is murder, anyway? What is man?
Oh, my dear fellow Christians, I'm not here to amuse you this Saturday morning. I want to urge on you, as you particularly, you young folks, go over and on into the advanced stage of our civilization before the coming of Christ, here is a problem you must face. What is man? Your very gospel depends on it. Bible says that this is distinctive of man, he was made in the image of God. Your class leaders will tell you what that means. The time says I mustn't, I mustn't, uh, spend too much time.
So, um, let's go on to the next thing. Man therefore made part flesh, part spirit, made in the image of God. And the sorry story is that man became perverted. Not just some men, man. He became so perverted that God said, I will destroy man, not just some men, I will destroy man as such. This new creature, going to obliterate it. Man became perverted, first of all, in his thoughts.
The imagination of his heart was only evil continually. That is what our New Testament says. Man is alienated in his mind, alienated from the life of God in his evil thoughts. Man rebelled against God. His mind became darkened. His thoughts became perverse because he was alienated from the life of God. You can be as clever intellectually as you care, but if you are alienated from the life of God, your mind is dark. You have become a freak.
For man was made in the image of God and to hold converse with God. He became morally perverted. And in particular, Genesis calls attention to his Violence. The earth was full of violence. Our world has known some periods of violence, special periods of violence in the course of its history. We're moving into another one, when violence is glorified.
And the entertainment that is served up to the mass millions of earth. Man glories in violence, finds his entertainment in violence, finds it a very interesting and a fascinating thing. And became spiritually corrupt, if I read it right, when the sons of God came into human females, is what the Hebrew means. The daughters of not some men, but the daughters of man, that is human females, and the race became corrupted spiritually. And God said he'd finished with the human race, it was to be destroyed, therefore.
Except here for Noah. How did God pronounce the sentence? And what kind of judgment was meted out to them? Well, a very interesting judgment. God decided to destroy them by a flood. And the result, as you know, if you get a human being and you put him underwater, what happens? You say you kill him. Yes, I know, but how? If you were to put him through fire, you'd burn him up and you'd reduce him to ashes.
If you put him through water, a very funny thing happens. The breath of the spirit of life departs, and you're left with a bit of flesh, aren't you? And curiously enough, the flesh goes rotten. That ain't a pleasant topic or a pleasant sight, but that is what happens. Goes rotten. God said, I will destroy, now listen to the terms, I will destroy all flesh. My spirit shall not always abide in men.
Let's come to our verse. My spirit shall not always abide in men. Why not? You say, because he won't listen to the gospel. No, that's not what it says. My spirit shall not always abide in men because he is flesh. God is commenting upon what man is. Man was compounded of spirit and flesh.
God gave him spirit and flesh. When man went away from God and died spiritually and was alienated from the life of God that was in him, God said, I will destroy man because he is flesh. So the flood did precisely that. All in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life expired. You were left with mountains of dead, corrupt, rotting flesh. That happened at the physical level. It seems to me that it was designed at that physical level to teach us a deeper Lesson.
Man in the early days early saw that there were two big constituents in his life. There was his body, his flesh. There was also his breath, the stuff that you see on a cold November morning if you breathe out, the breath. And when the flood came, the breath was removed, and you were left with flesh, and that spelled death. Ah yes, but as time went on, man became aware and was taught by God's spirit that there are deeper levels to these terms. There is spirit at the deeper level, not just breath, spirit by which a man holds fellowship with God. That spirit was meant to be in charge and control of his flesh.
When man died spiritually, his flesh got out of hand and became a rebel. And hence we are left in the New Testament with the term flesh indicating a state of rebellion against God. A flesh in a state in which rebellious flesh rebels against God and eventually rebels against the man himself so that he can't control it. And man becomes a fleshly man, not having the spirit. So that, in a sense, every unregenerate man is a freak. He is a fleshly man, alienated from the life of God.
We know noticed to the judgment was not to improve the flesh, but to destroy it. There was, however, an ark prepared. And we noticed last week how salvation was provided for Noah and his sons. They weren't saved from the judgment. They were submitted to the judgment. They too went through the flood, but they went through it in the ark, and thus came out the other side into a new and a cleansed world, now to make a new start. Lovely story, this in Genesis, when man became corrupt and God determined to destroy him, then God provided a salvation, and he made a new start for man.
There was the first man, Adam, there was the second man, Noah, and all are descended from Adam, and now all are descended from the second man, Noah. What was life to be like in the new and cleansed world? Now that Noah and his sons were the other side of judgment, what was life to be like? Well, says God, we shan't go back to living like you lived before. The earth was full of violence. Now, says God, you will institute magistracy, judgment.
Whosoever murders must be put to death. Now, Noah, you will have to exercise judgment, and mankind must learn to judge itself and to protect the image of God. Doubtless it refers in the first instance to the social order of justice. It surely has a lesson for us as believers, doesn't it? At our conversion, we accepted God's judgment that all flesh was corrupt. We accepted God's verdict that we had to be executed dead and buried, finished.
We trusted Christ for salvation. We were joined to Christ, and we learned that in God's sight we died and were buried. We expressed that in our baptism, didn't we? As we put ourselves, or got somebody to put us, under the water, finished, buried, the whole lot. The end of all flesh. And as we rose from the waters of baptism, we were saying, and God has in his mercy given us a new life, so that we can walk in newness of life. What has that newness of life got to be like?
Well, it too will have to learn to judge itself. To put on and grow in the image of him that created us, and to put to death all things that would pervert the image of God. Oh, what a wonderful assurance God gave them when he gave the rainbow. As they came out into the new world, having experienced the terror of the flood, whenever again the dark clouds rolled up, you might have thought their knees would begin to quake.
Another flood, perhaps, another judgment. And so God gave them the assurance in the rainbow that he would never again destroy the world with a flood. To us who have trusted Christ, united with him in his death, in his burial, now in his resurrection, we may know that the judgment is past, and upon God's own word and the authority of the Lord Jesus we have it, we shall never come into condemnation. We are passed over from death to life.
What does that mean? Does that mean, therefore, it doesn't matter how we behave? Because the judgment is passed. Oh, look at that last story. I could wish that story wasn't in the Bible. Noah was perfect in his generations. He was a good and a godly man. Came out after the flood into the new world. He began experiments with wine making. Okay. But then he lost his self-control and became drunk and naked.
The way the Bible tells us is very delicate. The Bible is always delicate in the way it talks about things. What Ham did was disgraceful. Making fun, lurid fun, and perhaps worse, of what in life should be utterly sacred. Alas for our modern world, that thinks the whole thing is fit to be paraded as one interminable joke, and has lost the sacredness of life.
And the sacredness of the procreation of life, and debased it on the one side into a joke, and on the other side into an evil perversion with all its attendant disease. And nowadays you mustn't say homosexuality is wrong. It's an alternative lifestyle, if you please. No sirs. Whatever its intricate causes, it is sinful, and they who agree it's all right, says Romans chapter one, will bring upon themselves God's judgment.
Certainly redeemed man, he has promised that there is no judgment to come. It is not meant to lead to this kind of living. As Peter will put it, the time past in our lives ought to have sufficed us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles in evil, immoral living. The rest of our time in the flesh ought to be lived to do the will of God. What is man? You must forgive me that I have gone over these things so hastily this morning. There were sort of certain interruptions.
And we shall have to alter our time scale. So shall we say we go straight to the coffee? No? Uh, yes, if it's ready, I check that. While they're checking about the coffee, whether we go straight to it or whether we have a session question time now or not, uh, uh, we can see. But I have at least tried to point you to Genesis for this reason, that in Genesis, the story of the flood, the story of the flood talks to us about man and what is man. It talks to us about man's corruption and perversion. It talks to us about man's salvation. It reminds us of the behavior that is expected of those who have been saved from judgment through the salvation that is in Christ.
And if we ponder this last incident in particular, we shall, I think, find it is not irrelevant to the kind of thing that Peter is talking about in his second epistle, and particularly in chapter two. And so now to our copy. These are the study questions for the ninth seminar, The Flood in Genesis. Question one: Consider Genesis chapter five verse one and chapter nine verse six.
Consider Genesis chapter five verse 1 and chapter nine verse six. Part A. What does it mean that man was made in the image of God? What does it mean that man was made in the image of God? Part B. Was that image and likeness completely destroyed by the fall? Was that image and likeness completely destroyed by the fall? Part C. What does Colossians chapter three verse ten mean?
What does Colossians chapter three verse ten mean? Question two: What were the chief spiritual, moral, and intellectual sins for which mankind was destroyed at the flood? What were the chief spiritual, moral, and intellectual sins for which mankind was destroyed at the flood? Question three: Consider Genesis chapter six, verses three, twelve, and thirteen, and also chapter seven, verses twenty one and twenty two.
and then answer the following questions. Consider Genesis chapter six, verses 3, 12, and thirteen, and also chapter seven, verses twenty one and twenty two, and then answer the following questions. Part A. In what different senses does the Bible use the word flesh? In what different senses does the Bible use the word flesh? Part B. Why does the perfectly good word flesh come to be used in a bad sense in the New Testament?
Why does the perfectly good word flesh come to be used in a bad sense in the New Testament? Question four: Noah was not saved from the judgment of the flood. In the ark he went through it. Is this statement true? Does it in any way illustrate the principle on which you have been saved? Noah was not saved from the judgment of the flood. In the ark, he went through it. Is this statement true? Does it in any way illustrate the pi- principle on which you have been saved?
Question five: What assurance did God give Noah and his sons that they would never again experience the judgment of a flood? Has the believer today any corresponding assurance that he will never come into judgment? Question six: uh After their deliverance from the flood, what steps were Noah and his sons expected to take in order to guard the image of God?
Genesis chapter nine verses five and six. After their deliverance from the flood, what steps were Noah and his sons expected to take in order to guard the image of God? Genesis chapter nine verses five and six. Question seven: Does our security from the penalty of sin mean that it does not really matter if a believer sins? What does Romans chapter eight verse thirteen mean? And first Corinthians chapter eleven verses twenty seven to thirty two.
Question eight: Consider the sin of Noah and his sons, Genesis chapter nine verses twenty to 25, and then answer the following questions. Part A. Do you see any similarity between their behavior and the behavior advocated by the false teachers in second Peter. Do you see any similarity between their behavior and the behavior advocated by the false teachers in second Peter?
Part B. How does the behavior of Noah and his sons underline the importance of the exhortation given us in first Peter chapter three verses twenty and twenty one and chapter four verses two and three? How does the behavior of Noah and his sons underline the importance of the exhortation given us in First Peter chapter three verses twenty and twenty one and chapter four verses two and three. Question nine: Do you see any connection between Genesis chapter eight verses eight to twelve and Matthew chapter three verse sixteen and chapter four verse one?
Do you see any connection Between Genesis chapter eight verses eight to twelve and Matthew chapter three verse sixteen and chapter four verse one. Question ten: um What, according to the Old Testament, happened to Enoch? Genesis chapter five verse twenty four. Will what happened to him ever happen to anybody else? What, according to the Old Testament, happened to Enoch? Genesis chapter five, verse twenty four. Will what happened to him ever happen to anybody else?
