10. The God who saves through Judgement (2007)

[0:00] The God who saves through judgment. I want first just to say a few words by way of introduction to this part of Scripture, because like all chapters of the early part of Genesis, questions inevitably arise, don't they, about all sorts of things.

[0:21] The extent of the flood, the date of the flood, the details of the ark, and so on and so forth. I can't possibly this morning go into all of those details.

[0:32] If you're the kind of person who wants to do that, let me recommend to you some of the commentaries that we have on our bookstall, particularly Derek Kidner in the IVP series. I found that very helpful. It's a short one.

[0:43] There's another one by Bruce Waltke. I don't think we've got it on the stall there, but it's a very thick commentary. If you want another one, then I recommend those to you. But let me say a few brief comments, all the same.

[0:56] First of all, about the historicity of the flood. Two things to say about that, and the first is this. The narrative, as we've read it, clearly presents this event not as a myth, but as a definite historical reality.

[1:14] That's obvious, particularly in the emphasis that's given to precise days and dating in the story. I'm sure you saw that if you've read through. Of course, we're not told the absolute dates of the flood, nor do we need to know it.

[1:28] Obviously, otherwise God would have told us that. But we are given precise dating of the events according to Noah's age. So if you look at chapter 7, verse 11, for example, it tells us the exact day in the life of Noah when the flood began.

[1:43] And chapter 8, verse 14, tells us the exact day that it ended. In the second month, on the 27th day of the month, the earth had dried out.

[1:55] That was the 601st year of Noah. So if you add all that up together, you'll see that the flood lasted, not for 40 days and 40 nights, as people commonly assume, but for exactly a year and 10 days.

[2:07] So the narrative itself presents this as a clearly datable event. Second, I think we shouldn't be terribly surprised at that, because all over the ancient Near East, the ancient Middle East, is evidence of a memory of just such a cataclysmic event.

[2:28] You find that in all kinds of other flood stories that come from these ancient cultures. You might have heard of some of them. The Gilgamesh epic, the Atrahasis epic, the Sumerian flood story.

[2:40] Now, many liberal scholars have therefore claimed, well, the Bible story is simply copying some of these ancient myths, these ancient stories. Many of these scholars have to assume that, because they presuppose, of course, that you can't have such a thing as a god who can actually speak in words to human beings and tell us something that's happened.

[3:04] But I would suggest to you that a far more convincing explanation is that the reality is that the biblical writer Moses wasn't copying ancient myths, but was in fact correcting them. He was revealing the truth of God to his people and through his people to the world.

[3:22] And so the flood wasn't just some myth that was invented by pagans and copied by Israel. Or rather, it was a real happening long, long ago. But just like so many events in world history, if you refute the truth of the revelation of God, the one true God, then inevitably, well, you'll have to make up your own myths to explain how things happen.

[3:44] And that's why we have all these pagan stories. But Moses stands over against all of that and he says, no, this is what really happened. This is the real truth and this is why.

[3:58] And that brings me to the second point, and it's the polemic thrust of the flood account. Moses is knocking down and countering these other stories quite deliberately.

[4:10] Of course there are similarities, for sure, between Genesis and the other accounts of a great flood. But the differences in these stories are absolutely vast and very, very significant.

[4:22] And they're deliberately so, to strike a blow against all these pagan notions. That's what the Bible's always doing from beginning to end. It's knocking down other ways of looking at the world that are simply not true.

[4:35] And in the Bible's account of the flood, as is plain, it's morality that is right at the heart of it. Whereas in the pagan accounts, it's mumbo-jumbo that's at the heart of it.

[4:49] So, for example, in some of the pagan accounts, the gods up in heaven send floods on earth. Why? Well, because these pesky human beings are making too much noise and they can't get to sleep at night. So they think it's a good idea to send a flood and wipe them all out.

[5:02] But then having sent the flood, they panic and they don't know how they're going to be able to get the flood away again because it's so big even for the gods. You see, that's the mark of all human made-up religion.

[5:15] Gods are simply magnified and made in our own image. So this story becomes about the capricious immorality of the gods and the rather helpless innocence of man.

[5:28] That's the root of all pagan religion, isn't it? That's why people live in fear of the gods. They have to try and placate the gods, lest they do evil to them. But they can never really be sure that they have placated them.

[5:41] They can never know. And so they live in fear, constantly needing more offerings. That's certainly the religion that I witnessed just recently in India. And as you'll find all over the Far East, as our missionaries would tell you.

[5:54] But you see, the Bible's account is so different. It's about righteous judgment, not about religious juju. And it's about one sovereign God in control of all these things.

[6:06] Not a host of gods that get themselves into total chaos once they've set off the flood and are helpless to stop it. And to figure the survivor of the flood, Noah, isn't just somebody who comes through the flood by luck and good chance, getting a tip off by one of the renegade gods.

[6:22] No. He's rescued by the goodness and the grace of the one true God, who alone is in control, and who saves him at his express command.

[6:35] So historical, yes indeed. But more than that, it's history with a purpose. And the purpose is primarily theological. It's to refute the errors of pagan thinking about God and man.

[6:48] And it's to teach the truth to God's people. And through God's people to the whole world. And that's no doubt why some of the forms of this story are told, well, in similar terms to these other ancient stories.

[7:03] They're deliberately pointing out, no doubt, to the first readers the differences that God's truth has from these pagan ways. And the difference about God's purpose for the world from that held in all these pagan notions.

[7:19] So you see, the point is, if you forget who the scripture is really about, and if you forget what scripture is really for, then you will be in danger of missing the wood for the trees in a story like this.

[7:31] You'll miss the whole point of Moses' account. In other words, for example, if what you really want to know is whether the dinosaurs were inside the ark or were wiped out outside the ark, then you've lost the plot.

[7:46] You've missed what this story is all about. Moses wasn't interested in teaching you about dinosaurs, I can assure you of that. But Moses was very, very interested in teaching us about God, about the one God of heaven, about the God who judges the world to save it.

[8:06] That brings me to the third introductory point, and that's the structure of the account. I've printed it all out here for you on this paper so you can see, once again, the artistry of this writer of Genesis and how he uses this symmetrical pattern to give us the main point so we can't miss it.

[8:23] I hope you will take it home and study it. There's a lot more that can be seen in it that I can bring our attention to this morning. But let me just tell you two things of importance that this structure tells us.

[8:34] First of all, it tells us that this is one single carefully constructed account. It's written with skill, with consummate care. And that's very important because anybody who's studied these things will know that for years, sceptical scholars have said, well, these stories in Genesis are just made up of fragments of three or four different writers all shoved together in a kind of hodgepodge that contradicts each other.

[9:00] Well, any scholar that can't see the clarity of this structure simply needs a poke in the eye. And it's P45 too, I would suggest. The second thing is, though, it shows us very clearly, this is really important for us, it shows us what Moses focuses.

[9:18] That God and God's promise and God's sovereign action is right at the very heart of this story. Chapter 8, verse 1 is right at the centre, isn't it?

[9:28] But God remembered Noah. That's the big idea. That's the big point of this whole story. And if you missed that, friends, you've missed absolutely everything. God remembers his covenant promise of grace, even in the midst of the heart of a cataclysm of judgment.

[9:48] Even in the midst of disaster, when all seems to be lost, even, no doubt, for those who were inside the ark and had been for all of that time. It's God, Moses shows us, who brings the flood.

[10:02] It's God who causes the flood to abate. All because God made a promise. And when God makes a promise, not even the collapse of the entire universe can make that promise fail.

[10:20] Maybe it's just that little half verse in chapter 8, verse 1, that you need to hear this morning. Maybe the dark clouds have been surrounding your life for a long, long time.

[10:32] Maybe it's the threat of illness. Maybe it is the dark gathering waters of impending death. Or maybe it's darkness and weight on your conscience.

[10:46] Maybe the sense of the guilt that's stacked up against you is weighing you down. Well, friends, never mind the size or the shape of the ark or the extent of the flood or the flood's geography.

[10:58] Get a hold on that verse. Chapter 8, verse 1. And realize that the covenant God of Noah is still the same God today. And he still remembers just the same all of those who take refuge in his wonderful covenant promises of grace to save through the judgment.

[11:17] And all of those who, like Noah, hear and heed his word of warning. You see what an important message this story has for us when we see what it's really about?

[11:31] In that sense, if that's all that you take away from this time this morning, you'll have enough, won't you, to think about all week. You could almost stop my sermon right here. I'm not going to, though.

[11:41] You know me better than that. In fact, having said those things by way of introduction, I'm just about ready to start my sermon. So all that was a pre-run.

[11:51] The watch starts now. But I do hope that you can see why after racing through centuries of history as we saw in chapter 5 of Genesis and the early part of chapter 6, now the writer slows right down to give so much space to this one critical account.

[12:10] It's because, above all, he wants us to learn about God. He wants us to learn about the God who saves through judgment. Not apart from judgment.

[12:23] Because he's just. And he must show himself to be just after what we've read in the early part of chapter 6. But a saving God, nonetheless, even for a world that is self-condemned in utter corruption and sin.

[12:39] In fact, to use other terminology, we might say that the flood was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

[12:50] It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and also the justifier of the one who has faith in the Savior.

[13:00] So I want to focus for a little while on this story and to focus on the heart of the message in the brief time that we have together. And I want to be guided by the New Testament's focus.

[13:13] Because in Hebrews chapter 11, one verse alone summarizes the significance of this story. Don't look it up, but just listen. By faith, Noah, being warned by God concerning events yet unseen, in reverent fear, constructed an ark for the saving of his household.

[13:32] By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. You see the three big things there that really matter to the writer to the Hebrews about these three chapters in the flood?

[13:48] First, he says, Noah received a warning about judgment. Second, he says, Noah embraced God's way through judgment. And third, he tells us, Noah inherited God's world beyond judgment.

[14:04] So let's try and clarify that message ourselves under those three headings. First, Noah received God's warning of judgment. And the point here is this, God's purpose for his world is revealed to Noah in the flood.

[14:19] And it's a purpose, a preservation, through purging. God preserves his world through the purging of total judgment, but not without it.

[14:32] See, the account opens, doesn't it, in chapter 6, verse 9, with Noah and his family and the society that they lived in prior to the flood. And verses 11 and 12 make it pretty plain, don't they? It's corrupt.

[14:43] It's corrupt. It's corrupted, says God. It's so completely corrupt and full of violence that it seems that Noah alone is a man of righteousness and blameless.

[14:55] Not perfect and sinless, of course, but right with God and wholeheartedly so. That's what blameless means in the Bible. Noah walked with God, we're told.

[15:07] And it seems he was a very lonely figure in his walk. We're not surprised, verses 1 to 8, that we looked at previously, prepared us for this and they told us why. Chapter 6, verse 5, tells us that society was totally depraved as a result of the demonization of the human society that had raised human defiance against God outrageously and sunk human depravity so appallingly.

[15:34] So the Lord says, I will blot out man and every living thing with him. So sorry am I that I made him. And yet that second book of Genesis, that account of Adam that ended in chapter 6, verse 8, ended with a note of hope, didn't it?

[15:55] For grace was found by Noah in the eyes of the Lord, gratuitously and wonderfully. And that tenacious refrain of grace had been there ever since the beginning of man's sin because God's purpose for his creation will not be thwarted.

[16:12] There's nothing that man can do, there's nothing that the devil himself can do through man that will thwart the purpose of God for his world. And so right from the moment of rebellion, there was a reinforcement of that purpose.

[16:27] Genesis 3, 15, the promised seed would continue until one at last would destroy utterly the serpent. And meantime, there would always be a promised line of the seed, the seed of promise, the seed of the woman, the people of faith.

[16:42] They would always be there in God's world. And that was seen, wasn't it, in the hope displayed in Enoch who walked with God and did not die.

[16:53] And in Lamech, Noah's father who looked to the future seed of promise and even named his son Noah because he would bring Nacham, peace, comfort from the curse.

[17:07] But how can both of those things be true? How can God's painful need to purge his world of wickedness and God's promised purpose to preserve the world, how can they both coexist?

[17:22] Well, you see, the answer is revealed to us in the flood. That God's purpose will come to pass to preserve the earth but not without the thorough purging of punishment.

[17:37] And the narrative clearly shows us that purpose of preservation begins, doesn't it, with a world full of corruption as we've read of in verses 9 to 12 of chapter 6. But it ends, doesn't it, at the beginning of chapter 9.

[17:49] Look right down at the bottom of the sheet with a new world to cleanse world. Chapter 9, verse 1, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

[18:00] Chapter 9, verse 7, team and fill the earth and multiply on it. It's Genesis chapter 1 all over again, isn't it? It's a new world. And God's world has not been destroyed, it's been preserved.

[18:14] God's purpose is that his world shall go on and be blessed. but it's been preserved only through a dreadful purging of judgment that swept away the corruption of man and all his terrible fruit in society and even in the environment in a flood of judgment.

[18:35] Preservation only through purging. And it is a total purging. The language of chapter 7, verses 17 to 24, deliberately echo the language of the opening chapters of Genesis, the opening verses.

[18:51] And yet it's in reverse. This is an undoing of God's creation. The world is plunged back into the watery chaos from which it emerged. Now we even get distracted about the extent of the flood's geography, whether it really was worldwide in the way that we use that term.

[19:09] Or in fact, the way the Bible more commonly uses that term in a relative way, in a rhetorical way, to mean everywhere that you can see. In Genesis 41, verse 56, the same term is used to mean the whole land of Egypt.

[19:24] In Acts, we often read that the gospel goes to the ends of the earth, but of course it meant the world at that time, the Mediterranean. But anyway, the point is, regardless of the geography, that this is a total judgment on the whole world that Genesis 5 and 6 has been speaking about.

[19:46] But if God is to preserve the chief purpose of his world, which is that man should be fruitful and multiply and be blessed and live on a preserved earth that's cleansed by purging, and yet man is to be wiped out because of his judgment and sin, how can that be?

[20:06] Well, the answer is that God warned Noah concerning events yet unseen, as the Hebrews writer tells us. He gives a warning of the judgment that's to come, through which his ultimate purpose for creation would be fulfilled.

[20:22] The only way it could be fulfilled by a purging and a punishment for sin. But he used Paul's way of speaking, God preached the gospel in advance to Noah, just as he did later on to Abraham.

[20:37] God revealed to Noah the deeply personal reality of his gracious covenant of salvation, just at the same time as he revealed to him the awfully pervasive reality of his curse upon sin in the world.

[20:51] Look at verses 17 and 18 of chapter 6. For behold, he says, I will send flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh. Everything on the earth will die, but I will establish my covenant with you.

[21:07] That's one of those great buts that we read about in the Bible that changes everything. And Noah, you see, heard a gracious warning from God.

[21:21] But he not only heard the gospel word, he obeyed. In reverent fear, says the writer to the Hebrews, he constructed an ark for the saving of his household.

[21:32] In other words, Noah had faith. And that's the second thing. Noah embraced God's way through judgment.

[21:45] See, the writer to the Hebrews is wanting to make this point, that God's provision for his world is also revealed in the flood and its deliverance through the destruction.

[21:58] God delivers his precious people through the destruction of the world for sin, not out of it. And that means that they must trust God's provision. They must embrace the only way through that destruction which is the ark of God's salvation.

[22:13] And that's exactly what Noah did. Noah didn't just assume, well, it'll all be alright on the night. He didn't say, well, thank goodness, my father Lamech gave me a Christian name and sent me to Sunday school to learn about all the saints of the past, about Adam and Enoch and so on.

[22:29] That's really what matters. He certainly didn't say, well, that kind of talk about a God who judges the world, well, that was fine when I was a young enthusiastic undergraduate at the age of, oh, only about 350.

[22:44] But now that I've gone on in my journey of faith, I've journeyed on to more mature things and I can't believe in a God of judgment anymore. No. In reverent fear he built an ark of salvation.

[23:00] He heard God's warning and he embraced God's way. He acted in obedience to God's command. And that's, by the way, what Hebrews 11 defines for us as the meaning of faith in the Bible.

[23:15] Some people are very, very confused. You often hear people saying faith. Well, faith is a rational belief in something for which there is no proof. But that's not faith, that's fantasy.

[23:27] No, in the Bible, faith is hearing and heeding the revelation of God. That's what faith is and that's what Noah did. He received from God clear revelation about God's purpose for the world and about God's provision for deliverance through the destruction of judgment.

[23:46] And Noah acted upon that word. He exhibited what the Bible calls the obedience of faith. You see, the writer to the Hebrews obviously knows how to read the Old Testament, how to read it carefully and properly.

[24:01] And he's pointing us to that refrain that we also can see if we look at it clearly. Look at the end of each of those paragraphs that I've labeled B, C, and D. Chapter 6, verse 22.

[24:12] Noah did this. He did all that God commanded him. Chapter 7, verse 5. And Noah did all that God commanded him. In chapter 7, verse 16, they all went in as God had commanded him.

[24:31] And because of that, the Lord shut him in. And to be shut in, you see, by the covenant God and his ark of salvation is to be in the only place of absolute security and safety when the blood of judgment comes.

[24:50] So Noah received God's covenant promise as a personal word of his salvation in the middle of a perishing world heading for judgment. And he embraced it with all his heart and soul and mind and strength.

[25:05] And although God didn't remove him from the earth, he kept him safe through the cataclysm of the judgment that was to come and that did come. He embraced God's way through the judgment.

[25:19] He didn't scorn it or mock it. He didn't demand that God made a way of deliverance that would have suited Noah a lot better, no doubt, than decades of ridicule preparing for an event that his society dismissed as just religious fanaticism.

[25:36] A society that just went on eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage right up until the day when Noah entered the ark, as Jesus tells us in Matthew 24. No, by his grace, God granted Noah not just an ark of salvation, but an attitude of submission.

[25:57] And gladly and obediently and in reverent fear, he embraced God's provision, the only way through the judgment to come. That's what the Bible means by faith.

[26:11] And in case you're wondering, yes it is, still exactly the same today. God's purpose hasn't changed, to preserve his world through purging. And he warns of that judgment to come and he urges people to embrace the one and only way through that judgment.

[26:26] That's what it means to be called to faith. We mustn't jump ahead. Let's keep our eye on Noah because there's more to learn from him. Hebrews 11 tells us finally that because Noah thus obeyed and embraced the way of salvation in response to the warning of judgment, he thus condemned the world, that is the old world, and became an heir of the righteousness that comes through faith.

[26:55] That's a third point. Noah inherited God's world beyond judgment. A new world, a world of blessing and a promise and a future, a new home, we might say the home of righteousness.

[27:08] And the point here is, you see, that God revealed his pattern for the world through the flood. And it's always the same. It's a recreation through redemption.

[27:20] God recreates his world of righteousness only through redemption, not apart from it. See, the story is not just about survival and deliverance out of God's judgment and his purging.

[27:35] It's about a great deliverance into a glorious world of new creation. And Noah's not just a survivor of the flood of judgment. Noah, as Derek Kidner puts it, he goes into the ark not as a mere survivor, but as the bearer of God's promise for the new age.

[27:53] And he emerges from the ark, he says, almost as a second Adam into a virgin world washed clean by judgment. And the spectacular deliverance in the ark is seen as merely preliminary to what he calls salvation proper, which is a new creation.

[28:12] And that is exactly the language of the beginning of chapter nine, isn't it? The language of new creation. It repeats Genesis chapter one. And that, of course, is exactly why both Jesus and his apostles pick up the story of Noah and the flood and use its language precisely to describe the ultimate recreation of the whole universe that at last is accomplished in the redemption that is in Jesus Christ.

[28:38] It's redemption that ushers in a whole new creation. Of course, because, well, we're dealing with the unchanging God and his pattern for the world is revealed over and over and over again, all the way through the scriptures.

[28:54] All the way through his dealings with mankind in general and particularly with his people Israel. Right through their history from the beginning, you can see his pattern at work. You can smell it a mile off.

[29:06] And in this account of Noah, who becomes the inheritor of God's world beyond judgment, we see his characteristic pattern just so clearly, don't we?

[29:16] It's recreation, it's new creation, if you like, through redemption. God's redeeming covenant grace is mediated to the world through his obedient servant Noah.

[29:29] Don't you think God is very, very daring in this story? In those days, just think of this, the whole future of the universe hung upon the obedience of that one man Noah.

[29:46] One man's obedience saved not only his whole family of faith, but it saved the whole future for the world. Does that sound a bit familiar? And did you notice that the parallel here in our text between Noah's obedient building of the ark, through which his family is saved, and then chapter 8, verse 20, at the end, Noah builds an altar.

[30:08] And through the sweet savour of the offering that rises up to God, the Lord promises not only preservation for Noah, but preservation for the whole of the earth and the heavens, even though the heart of man is still evil right from his youth.

[30:23] Never again, says God in verse 21, never again will I curse the ground because of man. And God's personal covenant promise to his obedient redeemer, Noah, bears fruit through his obedience and through his sacrifice in a pervasive and permanent covenant of blessing for the whole world.

[30:46] It ushers in, it guarantees a future for a whole new creation. Do you begin to get a sense of the pattern about this God?

[30:59] Of where his purpose and his provision for the world is heading in ultimate terms? You see how God was dropping hints along the way for his people in their stories so that they'll get the hang of the way he works.

[31:15] So that they'll begin to recognize his signature, his handiwork. So that in the future they might recognize that too. Because if you see that, you begin to see an awful lot of what Jesus meant when he said that Moses wrote about him and his work.

[31:33] And when he said that if you understand Moses and understand what Moses is writing about God and his purpose for the world and his provision for the world and his deliverance through judgment and his pattern for redemption into a new creation, then of course you would understand immediately what Jesus was all about and who he was and what he came to do and why.

[32:00] And above all, how to respond to Jesus as he came to fulfill everything that the law and the prophets pointed to and look forward to with hope and with longing.

[32:10] See, it's when we begin to see the patterns of God's working here in this story, the pattern of a God who saves only through judgment, that we can see why this is preserved in the Bible for us.

[32:28] Because even when Moses first wrote this for his people Israel on their way through the desert to the land of promise, he wasn't just writing past history. Well, of course it was that. He was writing a present word and a permanent gospel word to his people, a word of challenge and comfort about an unchanging God, the God who must judge sin and evil, but the God who judges in order to save his world and his people, and who saves his people through judgment.

[32:59] Moses was applying God's revelation, his gospel, to his people, the events of past history, yes of course, but God's own explanation of those events' significance.

[33:11] And he was doing it in order to call his people to the same obedience of faith that saved Noah, that delivered Noah out of a world of curse and into a world of blessing, into a future with a covenant keeping God.

[33:27] When you think for a moment of the past experience of the Israelites under Moses, it's as plain as a pike staff, isn't it? They too were a people who had been delivered out of a world of violence and corruption in Egypt.

[33:40] They'd been delivered through the waters of judgment in the Red Sea that came and purged all the Egyptians and their enemies. And how had that come about? Well, go home this afternoon and read Exodus chapter 6.

[33:54] And God spoke to Moses and said, I am the Lord and I have remembered my covenant and I will deliver you and I will redeem you and I will bring you into the land, the land of promise, a place of blessing and fruitfulness and a glorious future with God.

[34:14] Then afterwards, remember how God made a new covenant with all Israel, mediated through Moses, the obedient servant of God. And by the way, Moses, remember, was also saved through an ark of salvation, wasn't he?

[34:26] In Exodus chapter 1 and 2, you read about Moses being put in a basket. The word isn't basket, it's an ark. It's the only other place in the Bible where you see it. And just like Noah, he emerged as a deliverer to mediate God's covenant promise of a wonderful future in a land of blessing and fruitfulness.

[34:47] You see Moses' message? He's the same God. He's the covenant-keeping God. He remembered Noah, he'll remember you too. And he'll go before you into this new world, into a land of blessing and promise that God has given by his covenant oath and therefore never, ever cannot deliver on.

[35:09] He's telling his people to take God's covenant seriously, to rejoice in it. Of course, he's also telling them, isn't he, that God's covenant must be embraced.

[35:22] That his saving word is given, but it must also be heeded. Because he's also the God who preserves righteousness only through judgment.

[35:33] Noah obeyed. He cast everything on God's way of covenant blessing. And so must you, says Moses. That's what Moses was always saying to his people. Deuteronomy 30, he gives the same warning of judgment as well.

[35:46] But if you turn your hearts away and you will not hear and you will draw away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you, you will surely perish, says the Lord. I've set before you this day life and death.

[35:58] Now choose life. Embrace God's provision for salvation through judgment. Noah did all that God commanded him.

[36:10] And the Lord shut him in. And that's your only hope, your only assurance, says Moses, from God's judgment. Don't be on outside of the door when that door closes.

[36:23] That was Moses' gospel. That was Jesus' gospel too, wasn't it? Let's go home and read Matthew chapter 25 and the parable of the wedding, the wise and the foolish virgins, and those who were inside and those who were outside.

[36:39] And that is and always has been the Christian gospel, the New Testament gospel, the only gospel, the eternal gospel that we began our service with. Fear God and give him glory because the hour of his judgment has come.

[36:54] Worship him who made heaven and earth and sea and all the springs of water. He's the God who saves through judgment. But he's a God who proclaims a gospel, an eternal covenant word of promise, a personal word that warns about a coming judgment.

[37:16] And he calls men and women to embrace a way through that certain judgment into the inheritance of a world that lies beyond judgment, a new creation, the home of righteousness.

[37:30] You see, that means that the question for Moses' hearers and for us today is just the same, isn't it? If you embrace that way and find that absolute assurance of God's one place of salvation through the judgment.

[37:46] For Noah, it meant reverent fear and constructing an ark of salvation for his family. For Moses' people, it meant submission to God's covenant with Moses at Sinai and obediently following Joshua into the land of rest.

[38:00] And of course we know, don't we, that many rebelled and would not go. And their bones lay strewn in the desert. But you see, the New Testament tells us that one far greater than Moses, far greater than Noah, has come.

[38:15] And that he himself is the promised ark of salvation forever. And that the whole of the world's future, its eternal future, hung on the deliberate obedience of that one man to God's world.

[38:30] And he also obeyed as Noah obeyed. And as Romans 5.19 tells us, by the obedience of one man will many be made righteous. Because at the same time as he sheltered his chosen ones from the terrible judgment of God, he bore that judgment himself in his body on the cross forever.

[38:50] As Ephesians 5 tells us, as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God, just like Noah's. Hebrews 10 tells us that, just like Noah's offering on his altar built a future for the world in that day, in a far, far greater and more wonderful way, by a single offering Jesus has perfected for all time, those who are being made holy.

[39:20] For those who, like Noah, inherit a world beyond judgment. You see, God's still saying today, come into the ark. Come into the presence of the Savior himself.

[39:32] He it was who was the saving presence in the first ark. And his presence and his person is salvation. The only salvation through judgment that there ever has been or ever was or ever will be.

[39:46] God's still saying the same thing as he said in Noah's day and in Moses' day. So don't be deaf to the unchanging eternal gospel of God.

[39:57] That's the message of these chapters. Fear God and give him glory for the hour of his judgment has come. By faith, Noah, being warned by God concerning events yet unseen, in reverent fear, constructed an ark for the saving of his household.

[40:17] By this, he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. I hope you're sure this morning that you've received God's warning of judgment.

[40:33] And that you've embraced God's way through judgment in Jesus Christ. So that you know that you will inherit God's world beyond judgment. I hope you're sure of that this morning.

[40:47] If you're not sure of it, don't let this day pass before you make yourself sure of it. That's the message that Noah has for the year 2001 in the city of Glasgow.

[41:01] Let's pray. Lord, we bow before you the one and the only God.

[41:17] The God of the eternal gospel. The God who saves through judgment and only through judgment. We thank you above all for the promised covenant grace in the gospel of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

[41:36] The promise that is personal to everyone who will embrace that way. The promise that leads and will lead without fail to the world beyond your judgment.

[41:50] The home of righteousness. May we, like Noah, embrace it. And take it in. And live it. And rejoice in it.

[42:01] Now and forever. Amen.