Being Righteous in a Rotting World

Being Righteous in a Rotting World

Intro:
We are continuing our journey through Genesis, so please turn with me to chapter 6. We come to the familiar story of Noah and the flood. In chapter five the author highlights the godly lineage of Seth through to Noah, but in chapter six we see that Seth's godly line can't stop the flood of wickedness that is overtaking the world, and God determines He is going to destroy the world by flood.

It's a familiar story - some of us sang about it in Sunday school. But we may need to adjust our thinking a little bit about a few things. Verse one tells us that people began to multiply on the earth, but because we're just up to chapter six and we've only read maybe 20 names of people born we can think: it's been a short time and there's only a few people. Actually, when we go through chapter 5's genealogy adding up the ages mathematically we realize that chapter 6 occurs a long time later - depending on how you read the genealogy somewhere between 1600 and 2200 years has passed since Adam and Eve were created. About the same amount of time as between today and when Jesus walked the earth. To put it into perspective, if the Bible continued at that speed, the entire Bible would be less than 20 chapters long.
So it's not a short time, it's a long time, and there aren't a few people, there are a lot of people. Scholars estimate that at least several million people (and some believe billions) were living on the earth at the time of the flood. So we see that the flood wasn't a little flood that took out a few thousand people but a cataclysmic disaster on a scale that the world has never seen since.

I. The corruption of the world (Gen. 6:1-13)

So the world is becoming incredibly wicked, but chapter six opens with a mysterious example of this wickedness. What does it mean that the sons of God find the daughters of men attractive and take them as wives? And who are their offspring, this mysterious race of people known as Nephilim (which means giants)?

ILL: For a lark I googled the term nephilim and found that there is no end of sites speculating on who the nephilim were. One site called The Return of the Nephilim newsletter believes they're coming back one day. As I was reading about different theories and speculations I could see how someone could get sucked deeper and deeper into exploring the meaning of this strange passage. And that's where the danger lies - speculations are interesting and fascinating but ultimately they are time wasters - they capture our attention with questions that we'll never have concrete answers for and they distract us from the main point of God's word. So be aware of the danger of giving a lot of time to what the Bible calls foolish speculations.
The Bible doesn't tell us enough to know for sure, so this morning let's consider the possibilities briefly and then let's move on to what we know is the point of this passage. Some believe that sons of God is a reference to the line of Seth (the godly line) and the daughters of men refers to the line of Cain. So godly Sethite men were intermarrying attractive but ungodly Cainite women and that was a problem to God. Others speculate that it's a reference to kings or judges marrying any women they want - maybe even the beginnings of the habits of kings to take harems. These theories are possible but do seem to miss the strange contrast here.

The oldest and most widely accepted view is a mind-boggling one that raises as many questions as it answers: that the sons of God are fallen angels. When the OT speaks of the sons of God, its normal meaning is angels, such as in Job:

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. Job 1:6 (ESV)

So what you have here would be the demonization of marriage! This explanation helps explain why it was such an abomination to God, because the passage makes clear that the problem isn't normal immorality. Whatever was happening was happening in marriage. In essence you have demonic beings taking female humans as their wives (apparently with the consent of the daughter's fathers - in those days that would be the only way a marriage could be accepted). Again we don't understand all of how this played out, whether these demonic beings took a physical form (as the angels who visited Sodom and Gomorrah did) or possessed willing men - we don't know. We know from the gospels that demons do love to inhabit humans when they can. Ultimately we can't exactly know and your thoughts may differ from mine and that's fine.

Here's what we do know: that abomination, whatever it was, was just one example of a world that has spiraled downward into a cesspool of filth and sin. Verse 5 says that every intention ...was only evil continually. Talking about a total saturation of evil - every thought of every person was pure evil all the time. In the creation account in chapter one it ends by saying that God saw everything He had made and behold, it was very good. Now in verse 12 there is a sad echo of chapter one: God saw the earth and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way. Where once the world had been filled with beauty, it is now filled with violence and immorality. It is the picture of a world gone rotten.

ILL: There is an old prank that people have played on couples getting married. Secretly fill their car's hubcaps with shrimp. Shrimp sit there invisibly but as the sun beats down on the shrimp filled hubcaps something begins to happen. The shrimp begin to rot. An odor begins to fill the car. The newlywed couple begins to wonder about each other's commitment to personal hygiene. Until finally - it may be weeks later - they trace the source of the stench and remove the rotting shrimp.

We have here a picture of a world gone rotten, but how does the entire population become as totally corrupt as it was in Genesis 6? Answer: one soul at a time. Sin in the soul is like sun on the shrimp - it has a rotting effect on the individual soul. It rots the mind and the heart and the soul and like the shrimp in the hubcap it begins inside where no one can see it at first. But then that rot works its way out into lives and families and communities and societies and like a pandemic disease it finally fills the earth with corruption.

II. The pain and plan of God

That's what happened. And it grieves God to the heart. Pains God. Hurts God. The word grieves is an intense word that is used to describe the pain of a wife deserted by her husband. Used to describe the brothers of Dinah when they learned that their sister had been raped. Used to describe David when he learned his son had been killed. God is affected by the wickedness that fills the earth and He is affected to the heart.

God is sovereign - He is all-knowing and all-wise. Nothing takes God by surprise and ultimately nothing stands against His will. But God is not indifferent. When we read of atrocities today in the news - don't ever think that God is far removed and doesn't care. Without it lessening our understanding of His sovereignty we must also know that it pains God's heart. It grieves God to the heart.

So as God looks at the world He has created with all its violence, immorality, and corruption, and there's nothing left to redeem, nothing left to salvage. So He plans to cleanse the world of this evil and start again.

• "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land." Vs. 7

But verse 8 offers hope and grace: But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

III. The righteousness of Noah

Noah is our example in this story - the one whose example we are to learn from and emulate. But like Enoch last week, Noah can be a hard guy to relate to. Especially as he's presented on flannelgraphs in Sunday school. Unfortunately like so many other OT figures, Noah can be presented as this kind of moralistic standard we need to live up to: be like Noah! What does that mean? Well Noah was blameless - are you blameless? Noah walked with God - you? The only other dude that the Bible says that about was Enoch - and we all know what happened to him - God took him! But most of all, Noah was a righteous man.

It's the first time in the Bible that the word righteous is used - and it's a tag that stuck. Ezekiel calls Noah righteous. Peter calls Noah a preacher of righteousness. And no doubt in the middle of this rotting world, Noah must have stood out like a bright light in a dark place.

Well, we are to follow Noah's example and we are to be righteous like Noah. The world we live in may not be as far gone as it was in Noah's day - not even going to speculate on how it compares. But we all agree that while there is much to be grateful for in this great nation we live in, there is a lot of rot too. We see it in the decaying of personal morals, godlessness of our culture, breakdown and destruction of the family, corruption in politics, the glorification of immorality in media and in increase in violent crime. There is a rotting and we are called to be righteous in the midst of it like Noah. But what does that mean?

I'm using the word "righteous" a lot but really it scares me. It scares me to think of what some Christians can look like when they think they're being righteous. It scares me to think of
what Christians can do in the name of righteousness. Because it is so easy for us to fall into self-righteousness and that stinks worse than rotting shrimp. Jesus welcomed prostitutes and thieves and rough and crude fishermen but he had a hard time putting up with the stench of the self-righteous religious leaders.

Here's the problem with self-generated righteousness: we aren't righteous, we are sinners. To the core. Remember that rotting heart and soul I talked about earlier? If our righteousness comes from that rotting soul then it is a rotten righteousness - no righteousness at all. It's that kind of righteousness that Jesus was referring to when he hammered the Pharisees and the scribes with these scathing words:

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. Matthew 23:27

Graphic picture - the rot of a corpse. Outside you look good but inside your soul is rotting like a corpse rots - filthy, putrid, maggot eaten. Your righteousness is rotten.

You say, wait a minute, I'm a Christian - aren't I supposed to be righteous? Doesn't the Bible call me to be righteous? Yes, but not righteous the way the Pharisees were righteous. Not righteous the way some people think of righteous where the only one who can't smell the stench of self-righteousness is them! People are repulsed, not by Christ, but by rotten righteousness. Noah is our example and two things we see about his righteousness:

1. The source of Noah's righteousness was God, not his own sinful heart

Noah was not a perfect man. We will learn that after the flood! He is a wretched sinner just like the rest of us. Noah's righteousness was a righteousness counted to him because of his faith.
By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. Hebrews 11:7 (ESV)
It's the same righteousness that Abraham had - he believed God and the Lord counted it to him as righteousness (Gen. 15). It's the same righteousness that caused Paul to abandon his own accomplishments as a means to righteousness so that he could have the righteousness that comes through faith in Christ (Phil. 3:9). That's how it is with the Christian - our righteousness is the righteousness that comes from God by faith in Jesus Christ. In fact it is the righteousness of Jesus Christ that God credits to our account. We renounce self-righteousness of all kinds so that we can receive the righteousness of Christ.
Noah walked in faith in God and that was accounted to him as if it were righteousness.

2. Noah's faith-based righteousness worked itself out by carefully obeying God's word

While Noah's righteousness was not self-generated but based on his faith in God, nevertheless it expressed itself in obedience to God's commands.
After God commanded him concerning the building of the ark, it says, Noah did this, he did all that God commanded him. (vs 22) and again in 7:5 and Noah did all that the Lord commanded him.

The Lord commanded Noah to build an ark - He gave him exact specifications and he followed them carefully. Faith in God produced obedience to God and it will in us as well.
Only the Lord hasn't called us to build an ark. He hasn't called us to escape the world, to shut ourselves off from the world, and to save ourselves and our families. Actually quite the opposite. That was obedience for Noah but it's not for us.
• Called us to love the lost - the love of Christ compels us.
• Calls us to be witnesses to the world, to preach grace and good news of Jesus Christ.
• Called the church to invade, not avoid, the world.

Conclusion

Sin rots the soul. Grace preserves the soul. Where is the Lord calling you to obey Him? Is there sin the Lord has been speaking to you about amputating from your life? Sin that the Lord calls you to fight? Flee? Obey the Lord. If your faith is in Christ then you have received His righteousness and the power to fight and conquer sin.