Am I Being Punished?

I'll start off with a story. When I was 24 years old, I remember getting pulled over in Riesel, Texas. The reason I remember getting pulled over in Riesel, Texas, of all places… It's funny to say that and watch some of you look at each other like, "Him too?" Because many of us have found ourselves pulled over in Riesel, Texas.

The reason I remember it, even though it was so long ago, is at that time, I was living in College Station, yet I was driving here to Dallas to see Brooke, who was then just my girlfriend and is now my wife. Motivated by love, I might have been speeding a little bit. I was driving quickly down the highway, and as I came through Riesel, I passed over a hill. There, lo and behold, was an officer waiting for someone the likes of me.

So, he pulled me over. As we went through the normal shindig, I knew the standard operating procedure. I went ahead and grabbed my license and registration, and I prepared to confess to him all of my sins and take my ticket and move on with my merry day. Yet what I realized is this was no normal pullover, because he was not just going to send me on after giving me a ticket. Instead, he handed me a pamphlet entitled "Alive at 25."

The reason this pamphlet was so interesting is because it was different than the normal way of processing a ticket in the state of Texas. You see, for most counties in the state of Texas, when you get a speeding ticket, you merely pay the ticket, hop online, work through a defensive driving course, and you're done. You've atoned for your sins.

Riesel was one of the only counties in the great state of Texas that required a little bit more. You see, they required that you actually show up to an in-person, interactive, daylong national safety and driver education course, which just felt crazy to me because, first, I was just going eight miles per hour over the speed limit. It's not like I was risking anybody's life. Also, I was 24. I was so close to being alive at 25. Like, couldn't he cut me a break?

Yet in this moment, I knew my destiny was set. I had to spend an entire day at the local police station, and I had to watch poorly edited safety videos and eat stale bags of Chex Mix, all while grieving my state of affairs. You know what it's like to be in this situation, not because you went through Alive at 25 (though it looks like many of you are alive at 25) but because you know what it's like to have a punishment that doesn't fit the crime.

You know, maybe it's a small thing. Maybe you just decided to have that iced coffee after dinner with some people who were going to go have some, and now you're awake at 3:49 in the morning, reliving every major decision you've made since 2015. Maybe it's not that. Maybe, for you, you just wanted to make a good relationship with a coworker.

You know humor is the way into everyone's heart, so you decide to test out the waters of sarcasm with this individual. Yet, what you find is without any emoji support, they totally misunderstood you, and you now find yourself writing out a three-paragraph-long explanation and apology, trying to make sure they don't hate you.

Maybe someone looked at you and asked you to come out, and you politely disregarded and told them you had something else to do instead, yet you're now worried that everyone there never wants to spend any time with you ever again. You see, it could be something as small as that, but oftentimes it's not so small. For many of us, we've found ourselves in moments that have really mattered.

You were a good person. You only ever did right by people, but now you're the one who's dealing with chronic illness. You're the one who's riddled with mental health disorder while everyone else in your life is achieving the things you wanted to achieve later on. Maybe you went to school, studied hard, and didn't go out and party. Instead, you made a great effort for the kind of future you wanted.

You walked that stage, having graduated summa cum laude, yet you entered into a horrible job market. You found yourself as an overqualified barista, and every single evening, you're constantly slipping in applications on LinkedIn, because you're trying to make your way out and take care of that mountain of school debt that you know you are racked with.

Maybe that's not the case for you. Maybe, instead, you got the kind of job you wanted. You're actually embarking upon a great career. You have spent a considerable amount of time establishing yourself in your industry, ensuring that you reach financial sustainability. Yet, though you have given all of your time to that, you've looked up, ready to begin a family, and what you realize is time has passed you by, the dating pool has emptied, and you're single longer than you ever thought you would be.

What do you do when that's the case? When nothing goes right; when everything goes wrong; when you did everything you could, but nothing has gone like it should; when you look up and it feels like everything everyone says about God is, in fact, not true… When they say he is good, all you can think is he's holding a grudge. What do you do when that's the case? What do you do when it feels like God is punishing you? That's the question we're going to try to answer tonight, because that's the question that is asked in the passage we're looking at together, which is in Genesis, chapter 6.

We've been in a series where we've been looking at the 10 most iconic moments over the course of the book of Genesis. The reason we've been doing that is because, at the beginning of the year, we thought there was no better place to begin than with the book of beginnings. So, we hopped into Genesis, but knowing we can't read all 50 chapters, we thought we could look at these little vignettes, these pictures that are significant in the overall storyline of Genesis, so we could learn a little bit about who God is.

You see, the book of Genesis is important because it outlines for us many of the foundational answers to many of life's philosophical questions: Who is God? What has gone wrong? Who are you? Do you have a purpose? Is there life after death? What do we do in relationship to one another? Genesis is answering all of these deeply existential and philosophical questions.

As we've made our way through it, looking at many of the iconic stories, we find ourselves here tonight looking at what is widely considered the most iconic story in the book of Genesis. Any guesses? You cheated because you're in Genesis 6 and have already seen it for yourself. We are, in fact, looking at Noah and the flood. The reason it's so popular, so iconic, is because many of us grew up reading about this. Our minds go in so many different directions.

For some of you, it takes you back to Sunday school, sitting in class, looking at that flannelgraph, observing all of the beautiful photos of this big wooden boat with a zoo full of animals aboard. For others of you, it's not Sunday school you hearken back to. Instead, you just think of how maniacal the whole story actually feels. You think of the whole world being covered in water, and you know that people are running for their life, and you think of this lunatic God who is laughing at humanity's demise. "Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

For others of you, that's not the case. You think what Hollywood thinks. You think of Russell Crowe and an army of rock monsters uniting together to fight against the treachery of men. (Still not sure how they landed on that one for that movie.) The truth of the matter is we all go different directions whenever this story comes to mind.

It's not just those of us here in this room. If you look across the globe, if you consider the halls of history, you'll find that this story is actually known in something like 10 to 20 major cultures. Whether it was the Epic of Gilgamesh from ancient Mesopotamia or the Sumerian flood story or Deucalion and Pyrrha from Greek mythology or Manu and the great flood from Hinduism, what we know is there are different cultures all throughout history that have their own rendition of this flood motif.

So, it raises, not just in the minds of the people here but in the minds of people everywhere, a very common question that all of these stories have varying differences, which is simply, "Why is God so angry?" Have you ever wondered that? If you have, maybe you've thought to yourself, "Is he angry with me?" We're going to unpack that idea as we work through this story.

Now, this story is four chapters long. It spans 6, 7, 8, and 9, which means we don't have time to read all of it all the way through. We're going to look at certain moments that are particularly helpful for us as we try to evaluate, "Is God punishing us?" We're just going to dive in and get after it. Look at Genesis 6, starting in verse 5, with me.

"The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, 'I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.' But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord."

Now, this is really just the setup to the rest of the flood narrative that is going to follow, but it takes virtually no time in reading this to feel all of the melodramatic tendencies, the flair of this story from the very beginning, because from the punch, God declares that he will blot out man whom he created from the face of the land, which as we read that can feel a little bit like an overreaction.

There's no talk about God putting mankind into some kind of rehabilitation program. He doesn't give us "10 steps to becoming a better you." He doesn't send them to therapy for all of their issues. Instead, for all intents and purposes, he just looks at them and says, "Hey, time has run out. You're out of second chances, and I'm going to move on and do something different." If that's all we see, if we just treat this story like God is angry…he's just going to push this massive reset button…then we're not reading very carefully.

One of the reasons we often believe God is punishing us is because we fail to realize that God is slower to anger than we are to blame. The evidence of this is actually all over the Bible, and it does not waste any time describing this truth beginning in Genesis. We see the very first evidence of it in this passage specifically. It says that God is slow to anger right here, because although this is the first story in which we see God express emotion, the emotion he expresses is not anger; it's sorrow. That's the very first emotional expression we get from God.

It says he was grieved in his heart, which is important, because it tells us that God is not bloodthirsty over humanity because of their sin; God is brokenhearted over humanity because of their sin. That's the first evidence we get to this truth that God is slow to anger, not quick, as many people assume him to be.

But it's not just that. The second evidence is not in this chapter. It's in the chapter previously, and it's hard to pick up. It's a very subtle detail. You probably would not know it if someone did not tell it to you, because I didn't know it until someone told it to me. Yet, though we don't understand it because we speak English, to the ancient Israelite audience to whom this was originally written and read, they would have picked it up like that.

In Genesis, chapter 5, what you find is all of Noah's ancestral heritage. It's a long genealogy. It's one of those things you typically skim through, if not skip all the way over. Yet, when we do that, we put ourselves in a position where we can miss something important. There are several things that get unpacked in that genealogy that are significant. There's a story of Noah's great-grandfather, a guy by the name of Enoch. What you see is that he walked with God, and then God took him before he ever knew death.

Do you want to know what's fascinating about Enoch? He was a third of the life of everybody else who lived during his day. He was the ancient equivalent of a 30-year-old in our modern moment. He was only 300, not 900. So, what we see in Enoch is that it does not take long. Even in your young life, you can walk with God in such a way that he looks at it and says, "You know what? It's getting bad out here, isn't it? Let's get out of here." That's possible. It's crazy to think that that's true.

Just one leg down from Enoch, we meet a guy by the name of Methuselah. What's interesting about Methuselah is his name means "When I die, judgment." Which is massive when we consider that God is, in fact, slow to anger, because when you look at Methuselah, what you see is when he did die, judgment actually did come. That's when the flood began.

So, how old is our guy Methuselah? He is 969 years old. He is the longest living human in history, which is meaningful, because it tells us God is looking at this guy and saying, "I am declaring to the world through your life that when you go, everyone goes as well. So, I'm going to stretch your life out as long as possible, because I want people to repent and believe." Isn't that amazing? God is slow to anger.

We see in 2 Peter 3:9, "The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance." That's the second evidence. The third evidence we get for God being slow to anger isn't even found in the book of Genesis. It's fascinating. There are 50 chapters in the book of Genesis, yet God's anger, though alluded to, is never spoken explicitly about, which is crazy when you consider the events of Genesis. We've already read some of them.

Like, Adam and Eve betray God, take of the fruit of good and evil, and rebel, yet God is not angry with them explicitly. You move from that and go to Cain and Abel. Cain murders his brother, yet we don't see God respond angrily toward Cain. You go from there and find yourself here. You go from here to the next story, and you see yourself looking at the Tower of Babel, yet God has no anger in that story either.

You move out of that and go to Sodom and Gomorrah. What you find is though the people are doing some really crazy things, God's anger doesn't appear quite clearly there either. You move out of that and go to Abraham, and you see that he trades his wife in to Pharaoh so he can get favor while in Egypt, yet we don't see anger there. You move out of that, keep going, and find yourself looking at the life of Jacob. What happens in Jacob's life is he betrays his brother and robs him of his inheritance, yet there's not necessarily anger for him there either.

You go past that, and you have Joseph. Joseph is sold by his brothers into slavery, yet there's no anger there either. All throughout Genesis, these crazy, heinous acts from mankind, God is not explicitly… Again, implicitly you can see this (save your email), but explicitly, you don't see that he is angry. Again and again and again, you see he's merciful. The first time we see his anger explicitly articulated isn't until the book of Exodus.

Then three times it's spoken of, each of which we see the evidence of his patient endurance with us in the midst of our frustrating behavior. We see it with Moses, that very first demonstration of God's anger, when he comes and calls Moses to go and free Israel out of Egyptian bondage. Moses objects to God's call on his life, not once, not twice. It takes five objections before God is finally like, "Enough!" That's finally when he reaches his boiling point.

If you move from there to the second time in Exodus, you see it's when Pharaoh refused to let God's people go. Yet, God didn't get mad after the first plague, the second plague, or the third plague. It took 10 before God finally felt anger toward Pharaoh. Then the last one is at Mount Sinai, when God has led Israel out, and it is in their moment of betrothal. They're making a covenant to one another. Yet as God is working out the details with Moses, Israel, in their darkest moment, betrays him by worshiping a golden calf.

You see, it takes a lot to evoke God's anger. God's wrath is rarely in a rush, which is important for us, because though he is angry, he is slow to anger, as Exodus 34 tells us. It tells us, "The Lord passed before him [Moses] and proclaimed, 'The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness…'"

Here's the crazy thing about it. God is so slow to anger with you and me, yet we're so quick to anger with him. We are so quick to become frustrated. It's taking you longer to get the job you want or to get the relationship you want or to get better when you've been bad or to move on from that situation, and because it is taking you longer than you expected, you grow frustrated with him and accuse him of acting too slow.

Maybe it's not that. Maybe you're annoyed that your actual life doesn't look as good as all of the edited versions of other people's lives on social media, so you feel like God is being unjust. He's being unfair to you. He has been good to them, but he hasn't been good to you, so you accuse him of being unjust.

Maybe it's not that. Maybe you're irritated that your friend or family member or even you yourself are constantly gripped by some sort of health issue, so you look at God and accuse him of being unkind, unloving, and uncaring. Here's the crazy thing. Though we often perceive God as angry with us, in reality, we are angry with him instead. He hasn't given us what we want, who we want, where we want, how we wanted it, so like little, entitled, spoiled children, we accuse him of being indifferent to our life and insensitive to our needs, which is insane.

When you think about it, there isn't an ounce of God that has proven to be insensitive to your need. The reason we know it is you can look at Christ. You can see in Jesus the ultimate sensitivity to your need, that you cannot save yourself, so he would enter into a rebellious world and live a faithful life for the sake of a people who were unfaithful to him.

God does not demonstrate in any kind of way an indifference to us, but instead, we see his intentionality in that he moves close to us and actually lives the life you can't, dies the death you deserve, and rises forth in victory, beating death by death itself. We see in Jesus the personification of everything we often accuse God of not being consistent with. We have to understand God is slow to anger, but we too often are quick to blame. So, if you feel like God is punishing you, it's worth considering… Does he deserve your accusation?

That's the first thing. Let's keep going. Look at chapter 6, verses 9-10. "These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth." As you keep reading through that chapter, it gives you all of the details on the ark's construction. Verse 22 tells us, "Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him." Then you go to chapter 7, and it says this, starting in verse 1:

"Then the Lord said to Noah, 'Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth. For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.' And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him."

I can't help but read this and put myself in Noah's shoes, which is worth doing whenever you find yourself reading and working your way through a narrative portion of Scripture. You see, it's crazy. When you consider what God has actually asked Noah to do, it's unfathomable. God has looked at Noah and told him to build an ark on dry land nowhere remotely close to water, yet Noah chooses to go for it.

It's not just that he chooses to build this ark; it's also a Herculean effort that is of epic proportion. This ark, if we were to bring it into our modern measurement, would be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet tall. Because it's a triple decker, it has somewhere close to 95,000 square feet of total space to stand on. It's a big sun deck. Yet Noah chooses to go for it, even though it takes him, at the very least 50, but more than likely anywhere from 100 to 120 years in total to complete the whole project.

So, if you're in Noah's shoes, if you're considering his way in the world, how do you think people are engaging with this guy? It has never even rained on the earth, and he's building a boat? "There's not a ramp around. I don't see a trailer for it. That was smart." You see, Noah is not just controversial to the people around him; he's crazy to the people around him.

The craziest part of it all is it's all God's fault. God is the one who asked Noah to do this. He's the one who asked Noah to commit social suicide. He's the one who told him to risk his reputation. He's the one who has made him a local laughingstock to everybody in his hometown. How could God do that? That feels so unkind.

Here's how: because walking with God can be costly at times. Noah lost every Instagram follower he ever had because he would not stop posting about that ark, yet he never wavered. He never questioned if he was supposed to do it. Why? What would grip someone like this to do that? It sounds so simple, yet it is still so true. He loved God.

I remember when Brooke and I started dating, it made absolutely no sense. Not because she isn't amazing. She is all-out amazing. It made no sense because I was a senior in college, she was a freshman in college, and I had my whole life already mapped out ahead of me. I knew I was graduating and moving to take a new job in a new city, and it was everything the likes of which I wanted to do. Yet, I couldn't get by the fact that I just had this loving feeling. I needed to be near this girl.

So, what I chose to do was incalculable to all of my peers. It felt crazy to the world around me. I chose to forego a higher paying job in a better city more full of opportunity so I could take a lesser paying job in a city that had virtually no opportunity because I wanted to be near to her. You see, I knew things could be better in my life, but she could not be any better. I wanted her.

Noah feels the same way about God. He's looking at his circumstances like, "You know what? Yeah, people could be nicer and life could be easier, but God can't be any better. He's everything I want. He's as good as it gets, and I'm going with him no matter what the cost is." He knows walking with God can be costly. That's why it says of Noah three specific things: he was righteous, blameless, and walked with God.

It says he was righteous. Meaning, he knew how to relate rightly to God. In life, you relate differently to different types of people. The way you relate to your boss is different than the way you relate to your boyfriend, which is different than the way you relate to your parents, which is different than the way you relate to the mailman, which is different than the way you relate to your neighbors. To be righteous is to relate rightly to God. Noah knew how to do that.

It says he was blameless. That idea is that his character was not flawed. His inner man had integrity. It's interesting. The Hebrew for that word blameless is the word tamiym. When you read Solomon's construction of the temple, he was to use tamiym stones, stones that had no crack or blemish. They were to be blameless. Your life is meant to be a blameless life.

Then it says he walked with God. When everyone was walking away from God, Noah chose to walk with God. He didn't pursue popularity. He didn't need the approval of man. He just wanted God. That's all he wanted. He wanted proximity. Because of it, what we know is that as the world grieved the heart of God, Noah pleased the heart of God.

That raises a big question in my mind. How did he do it? How did Noah do what no one else could? Well, it tells us. Hebrews 11:7 recounts to us a couple of things about Noah, but one thing very specifically that's important around how he was able to do this. It tells us, "By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household."

You see, Noah was able to do it because he had a reverent, holy fear. He didn't act out of a fear of man. He didn't worry what everybody was going to say or what everybody was going to think. He did not act out of a fear of the future, even though he had things he wanted to achieve. He was not concerned with those; he was concerned with God.

He did not act out of a fear of failure. "Well, what if I'm not able to achieve what God is asking me? You know what? Let me instead just try to preserve what I already have." And he did not act out of a fear of discomfort. He didn't just stay home, remain uncommitted, and binge-watch the last three seasons of Survivor in prep for the fiftieth. That's not what Noah did.

Noah feared God. That's where his fear was found. It was found in God. The reason we know that is because twice in this story it tells us he did all that God commanded him, which is impressive, because God asks a lot, and God expects a lot, yet Noah delivered on all of it. That's not only why it's impressive. Do you want to know why it's even more impressive? It is even more impressive because Noah did not know the specifics of how God intended to judge the world.

He knew God was going to bring judgment, but he had no idea what it was going to look like. All he knew was God was asking him to build a big wooden boat. That's it. He didn't have any clarity from God of what was to come. He just knew God had asked, which is so important, because Noah reveals to us that we don't need a great reason to go; we just need God's word. When God asks, we respond.

Noah didn't need to be convinced that it was worth doing, he didn't need to be persuaded that it was going to yield some kind of blessing in his life, and he did not need to worry about God preserving his reputation. Instead, he just needed God to ask him. That was reason enough. So, I need you to listen to me on this.

I am so convinced, for every single person in the room, that God has asked us to do something. I don't know where you're at in relationship to him. I don't know if you've walked with him your whole life. I don't know if you don't care about him at all, but the truth of the matter is to every single person here, God has asked something of you. There are no exceptions. Yet some of you are waiting for God to give you all of the details before you do anything about it.

God has asked you to be honest, but you're waiting to see what's going to happen because your boss might fire you from your job if you come clean. You know God has asked you to go into ministry, but you're waiting for him to tell you how he's going to preserve your lifestyle because you don't want to give up the things you have. You know God has asked you to quit drinking, but you're worried about being quietly excluded from your friend group, so you're hoping God will prove to you that you're not going to have to give up what you have in order to be faithful.

You know God has asked you to pursue purity, but "God, what's that going to mean for my relationship? I really like him" or "I really like her. Are we going to be able to keep this thing together? We've bent some rules. We've compromised in the past, and I don't know that they're going to like whatever parameters I have to offer." Some of you know God has asked you to come to re:gen, yet you're not sure what it's going to feel like to be 100 percent known and totally outed in front of a group of strangers, so you're waiting for him to reveal it.

Others of you know that God has looked at you and told you to keep the baby, yet you don't know what that will mean for your future plans. Others of you know God is asking you to admit where and when you lied to those people, but you're not sure what they're going to think when you do come clean, get honest, and tell the truth.

This one is so important because it is so prevalent. Often, instead of wanting for clarity of what God is going to give, we are wanting for certainty of what it's going to take. You don't want clarity of what he's asking; you want certainty of what that's going to require. Yet here's the thing we learn from this story and you need to know for your life: God does not want you to move on facts; he wants you to move on faith.

He does not want you to trust in your understanding of the circumstance; he wants you to trust in your understanding of him and his character. He doesn't want you to move forward without looking back and remembering what we've learned about his character, that God is gracious and merciful and kind and just and compassionate to people.

If you don't remember those things from the past, what's going to happen is you're going to find yourself in a situation in the future where everything about your present circumstance is telling you God must not like you, God must have a grudge against you, and God must hate you, when none of that is true, because everything he has done before would disprove that that is reality.

The reason we know it for Noah and for ourselves is we can look to Jesus most of all, and in Christ we can see someone who walked with us at great cost to himself before we ever thought of walking with him at great cost of our own. You see, Jesus moved into your neighborhood. He walked amongst you when you did not want him, and he did so that he might lay down his life and bring you into right relationship with himself and God forever.

If he's willing to do that, to walk with you even at great cost, we should equally be willing to walk with him at great cost to ourselves. Last point. Look at chapter 7, verse 11. "In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights." Jump down to verse 17.

"The flood continued forty days on the earth. The waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep.

And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind. Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark. And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days."

Now, when most people think of the flood narrative, this is the section they think about. They think about waters rising high and mountains sinking low and creatures drowning in the deep. It's a really bleak image, and it's really bad for God's PR. You know, how can he be good and lose it like this? Like, is this a total overreaction, an unnecessary outrage, an irrational response to mankind's sin? No. God doesn't overreact to sin; we underreact to it.

Typically, when we read this story, we question God's decision to flood the earth, yet we do that without ever asking how God arrived at that decision himself, which is completely unfair. It's not right to take issue with God in the decision he has made if you're not willing to consider why he would have made that decision. Thankfully, this story tells us. We can find ourselves, in verse 12 of chapter 6, reading God's own explanation for why he chose to do what he did.

You see, it says this, and I'm going to read it to you from the NASB, because I think it helps us to understand much more clearly what's happening in the Hebrew. Verse 12: "And God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt [ruined]; for humanity had corrupted [ruined] its way upon the earth. Then God said to Noah, 'The end of humanity has come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence because of people; and behold, I am about to destroy [ruin] them with the earth.'"

Do you see what's happening here? It says humans have ruined their way on the earth and have ruined the land of the earth alongside it. Humanity's corruption is already leading to destruction. So, knowing how this is going to inevitably play out, God hands humans over to the very things they've already begun. God is not the monster in this story; we are. I love the way Daniel Hawk, a commentator, describes it. He says it like this:

"The [verse] suggests that God has seen where the ruination of creation is headed and has decided to accelerate the process to its completion… We are left with the sense that God is not so much sending the flood to punish the world as much as facilitating, through the flood, the inevitable descent into chaos caused by human destructiveness and violence. God ruins and already ruined creation, and in so doing creates conditions for a reordering and a renewal to take place."

That raises a really important question for us here at the end of our time: Where in your life are you rebelling from God? I know it's easy to ask that from stage and to even receive that from the seat and just kind of think to yourself some of the things you know you should not be doing yet find yourself doing. Yet here's the thing I really want to lean into. I could give you a ton of mail as to what it looks like to rebel against God.

For some of you, it's your sexual ethic. You treat porn like it's some sort of normal self-expression. You're cohabiting with someone and have no kind of commitment. You're redefining sex as purely recreational because your desires define what's right in your eyes. I could tell you it's your radical individualism. No one gets to tell you who you are or what you do or how you get to be, which is a really dangerous place to live, because it means there is no authority in your life, and when there's no authority, there's no accountability. You are your own god.

I could tell you it's your egotism and pride. You cut off people when they challenge you. You grow defensive when someone tries to correct you. You think you know better than others. I could tell you it's your goal-oriented idolatry, because here's the thing, and this is particularly true for Christians. Rebellion sometimes looks impressive, yet what you find is that your focus is on the money you make, the appearance you have, and the influence you hold, and it even bleeds into your religious reputation.

I could tell you it's your personal passivity. This is such a prevalent issue in our day. It's such a prevalent issue in our generation. We will use our personality type as some sort of exemption from godliness and obedience. Let me just be real with you. Holiness is not a personality type; it's an expectation. Who God is is who you should be. You don't do that on your own power. You do that by yielding to his Spirit, by submitting to his work. Often, that begins by yielding to his work of conviction. You respond whenever he comes a-calling.

Here's why it matters that you identify where you're rebelling: your rebellion will lead to ruin. Take a lesson from the dead. That's what happens to them. One man and his family make it out. Everyone else, because they rebelled when the days grew dark, found themselves drowning in the deep, not of God's fury but his passive wrath, giving them over to the very things they wanted for themselves. You see, sometimes the very thing you want for yourself is not the best thing for yourself, but everything God wants for you is, in fact, the best thing for you. You just need to receive it and respond.

Here's the fear I have. My greatest fear is I could lay all this out to you, but some of you are going to wait until it starts raining to repent. You're going to hear the call of God on your life, you're going to feel the conviction of his Spirit, yet you're going to turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to what he's showing and speaking. It's going to take those first drops for you to, at last, repent. In that moment, it'll be too late.

Yet, what we know from this story is it's not God's fury that brings the flood; it is his mercy. He takes an already ruined situation and redeems out of it a brighter future by finding Noah. Friend, he wants to do that with you, but here's the thing with that. Just as he was merciful then, he can be merciful today, but he will do for you what he did for them. He will bring you to your end before he leads you to his beginning, and that end always looks like repentance.

Last story. I was in college when I learned the story of Joni Eareckson Tada. If you're not familiar, Joni was just 17 when she suffered a diving accident that left her paralyzed from the shoulders down. In the almost 60 years since that accident, Joni has used her story to teach not of God's fury against her but his mercy toward her. Here's what she says in her booklet Hope…the Best of Things.

"I sure hope I can bring this wheelchair to heaven. Now, I know that's not theologically correct. But I hope to bring it and put it in a little corner of heaven, and then in my new, perfect, glorified body, standing on grateful glorified legs, I'll stand next to my Savior, holding his nail-pierced hands. I'll say, 'Thank you, Jesus,' and he will know that I mean it, because he knows me.

He'll recognize me from the fellowship we're now sharing in his sufferings. And I will say, 'Jesus, do you see that wheelchair? You were right when you said that in this world we would have trouble, because that thing was a lot of trouble. But the weaker I was in that thing, the harder I leaned on you. And the harder I leaned on you, the stronger I discovered you to be. It never would have happened had you not given me the bruising of the blessing of that wheelchair.'"

Friends, listen. What may feel like punishment from God may actually be an invitation to you instead. What we see from this story and what you need to know from your life is that God is not punitive in nature; he is redemptive in nature. The reason we know he is not wanting for your punishment is because he has laid that punishment on himself. He has put it on his Son.

Jesus has done all that we could not, for when we were quick to blame God for not caring, Christ, who was blameless, proved how much he cared for us by pursuing us in life. Though walking with God is costly at times, Christ walked with us at greatest cost to himself, at even the cost of his own life. Though we may underreact to sin, Christ has reacted rightly in that he came to do what we could not do. He came to die where we deserve, and he rose forth in victory.

So, friend, if you feel like you're being punished by God, I would dare tell you you're being called by God. The first step is a step of repentance. Let me pray that you would take that step tonight.

God, I love you, and I'm thankful for these people. I'm thankful that though I and though we can be better, you, God, cannot be. You are so good, you are so faithful, you are so kind, and, God, you are so very slow to anger. You want all to come to the knowledge of your mercy. You want all to bend the knee in repentance. So, God, I'm asking that you would do that tonight.

I'm praying, God, that here in this moment, as we turn back to worship, you'd save us from stealing out of the room and racing into our evening; you would save us from making excuses about why we're not going to respond when we know it is you that is asking, that is calling, that is seeking. I pray, God, you'd save us from ourselves.

For some of us, God, that means tonight we reach the end of ourselves and we find the beginning of you. God, meet with us now. Move amongst us, please. Won't we know you are so very patient and, God, we're meant to be so very repentant. We love you. It's in Christ's name we pray, amen.