While they're being seated, would you please take your Bible and turn with me this morning to Genesis 6. It's right in the beginning of your of your Bible. Genesis 6. We're going to read a few verses, and I'll try to direct you because we're not going to read consistently. We're going to read, skip a few verses, then read and skip a few and go again. So I'll try to help you understand where we're going. Genesis 6, beginning with just verses 5 through 8. Passage of scripture we don't read all that often in scripture, but listen carefully to what God has to say to us this morning. 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 regreted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. I want to pause there. Does that surprise you at all?

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'm sorry that I've made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Now, if you will, go with me to verses 13 and 14. And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch. Then drop down with me to verse 16 of chapter seven. And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded, and the Lord shut him in. Would you pray with me for just a moment? Father God, we give you thanks for your word. Lord, it hurts that you looked at us, human beings, and said, I'm sorry I made them. Father, help us to understand you want a love relationship with us. And then Lord, help us to open our hearts and to literally love you with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength the way you want.

Introduction

Some stories stay with us because they say something true about us. This morning, one of the stories comes from an unlikely place. It comes from the movie Groundhog Day. I bet you didn't think I was going to say that this morning. Groundhog Day, for the four of you who haven't seen the movie, is a movie starring Bill Murray. He plays a character named Phil Conners, a man trapped in an endless loop. Every morning, he wakes up. It's the same day over and over again. The same mistakes, the same temptation, the same patterns. Nothing he tries can break the cycle. No indulgence, no escape, no effort. It's funny on the surface, but the reality is it's haunting. It teaches us a haunting truth that we can relive the same day thousands of times and still be the same people. We are all like Phil. We need more than just a new day. We need a new heart. And that's exactly the problem that Genesis 6 shows us. Humanity didn't need another opportunity. It didn't need another reset. It didn't need another try better next time. The world had been given a second chance after Eden. And sin simply went with it.

And that's the big question that this passage asks us this morning.

Big Question

Do we just need a second chance?

Isn't this what we believe in as Americans in the West? Isn't this what we believe in in second chance? Is the power of second chances? We tell each other that people are basically good, that we're shaped mostly by our environment, and that deep down we're capable of becoming our best selves if we just get a fresh start. If we We have a new year, a new habit, a new relationship, a new school, a new career, a new resolution, we tell ourselves, if I could just start over, I can fix myself. And it sounds hopeful. It even sounds compassionate. And we want to believe that this is true. We see this language all over in our culture saying everyone deserves a second chance. We all just need a clean slate. People change. Give them a chance. Give it time. And it feels It feels right because we want this to be the solution. A second chance is simple. A second chance is manageable. A second chance keeps the problem out there in our circumstances, in the environment in which we're in rather than in here in our hearts.

But then real life happens. We get a second chance, a third, a fourth, a fifth, and we keep finding ourselves in the same loop in the same situation. We can resolve to be different people, yet slip back into the same sins. Tim Keller has this quote. It says, If our problem was only our environment, God would have sent a teacher. If our problem was only ignorance, God would have sent a philosopher. But our problem is sin, so God sent a savior. You can change your environment, but temptations still come with you. You can turn the page with the same heart writes the next chapter. Human history had second chance after Eden, and it didn't get better. It got worse. Which brings us to the tension that Genesis 6 confronts head-on. Do we just need a second chance, or do we need something greater?

Fortunately, the Bible has answers for us, so keep your Bibles open to Genesis. We're actually going to cover Genesis 6 through 9. We're not going to read the whole thing, but this is the whole story of Noah. And so we're going to see three movements in this story.

Outline:

We're going to

1. a second chance

2. a second Eden

3. a second fall

Let's remember where we're at in this story so far. In Genesis 3, sin entered the world. In Genesis 4, sin spread to a family. Cain murdered his brother Abel. By Genesis 5, sin had taken root in a genealogy in generations of people. And by Genesis 6, sin has infected the entire world. What began with a whisper now roars across the earth. Instead of the seed of the woman crushing the serpent, the seed of the serpent fills the earth with violence, corruption, and pride. This is no longer a broken couple or a broken family or a broken community. This is a broken world, and God sees it. What we will see in this story is as human wickedness multiplies and creation is corrupted, God grieves and brings judgment through flood, yet he preserves his redemptive promise through Noah, the righteous man who walks with God.

A Second Chance

And that's what we'll see in this first section, a second chance, Judgment and the Ark, chapters 6 and 7. Chapter 5 showed us a genealogy from Cain and a genealogy from Seth leading up into Noah. When we arrived to Noah, the trajectory set by Cain has become full-fold It has fully blossomed and corrupted the world.

Look at Genesis 6:5 with me. Genesis 6:5 says this, The Lord saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thought of his heart was only evil continually. Humanity had become totally evil, totally wicked. They had become tyrants. That's what the word nephilum means. These people were tyrants, ruling over people in an There were men using women to satisfy their lust instead of seeing them as image bearers. The Earth was filled with wickedness, with selfishness, with pridefulness.

That's what we see in Genesis 6:6-7, if you look at that with me. "And the Lord regreted 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've 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."

God's heart is pined by the evil the world has come to love. This is not the fury of an irritated deity. This is the grief of a father whose children chose to love violence than him.

Cornelius Planteca has this quote that says, "Sin is not just the breaking of rules. It is vandalism of Shalom."

This is why advent begins in the shadows, because the savior we wait for comes into the world that God himself judged for its violence. The peace that was once in the Garden of Eden is perverted. And because of this, God declares that he will cleanse the Earth. But notice this, that God is not abandoning his promise that he made in Genesis 3. He is purifying the stage on which that promise will unfold. God does not start over completely. He has every right to, he has every right to wipe everyone off the face of the Earth and start over again. But he doesn't. God had promised to bring salvation into mankind through the seed of the woman. And God is a faithful God. That's actually the first time we see this in scripture. God God's faithfulness coming out in a clear and direct way, at least. God's faithfulness to his promise here because he won't go back on his promise.

Genesis 6:8-9, it says, "But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. 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 Japhoth."

Grace appears before obedience. Favor precedes faithfulness. And that's the pattern that we see in scripture. That's why we see this pattern here. Anytime God commands obedience, he saves first. He shows grace first. You look at the Ten Commandments, that's the way that it happens. God saves He saved Israel from the Red Sea, from the Egyptians. He delivered them and then calls them into obedience. So he chooses a family. God chooses a family here. God looked at all the people of the Earth, and he chose Noah. The word in this passage that says found favor is really a word that means that God's heart was moved. Noah didn't earn this. This wasn't something that he did enough good in order to earn God's favor. This is actually the same word that we use throughout the Old Testament and New Testament for grace. This is the first mention of grace. And it's interesting because it's in the context of judgment. Before God saves through a manger, he saves through an ark. I think some of us still think that God loves us because we're better than most or that we're better than these other people.

I think it's easy for us, and maybe we don't say that confessionally or we don't say that outwardly. But deep down, I think in everyone's heart, we believe that we're better than them. We're better than those people who don't follow God, or we're better than those people who do this thing. At least I don't do that. Noah reminds us that grace is never earned. It is only received. If you're tired this advent season of trying to clean yourself up for God, this passage invites us to rest in God's grace.

This verse doesn't mean that Noah was without sin. When it says that he is righteous or blameless, what that means is that Noah's righteousness was given from God to him because he believed in the promise, that his blamelessness was based on his worship because he walked with God. God had every right to wipe the whole world clean. Sin had pervaded every inch of the world, the perfect world that he had created, and that included Noah. Noah's righteousness is imputed to him. Not a righteousness of his own, but a righteousness of faith, God's righteousness. And so God makes a covenant with Noah.

Look at Genesis 6:18 with me. He says, "But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you."

This is the first time the word covenant appears. And there is a huge sensation for me to stop and do 15 minutes of talking about a covenant right here because covenant is such a huge part of our faith. But we're going to talk about that in 2026 a lot more. So I'm going to limit myself to this brief explanation. A covenant is more than a legal contract.

A covenant is even more It's not even just a promise. It is a promise against your own life. It is a promise marked by blood. It is like a promise, but you have to put a deposit down. And imagine that deposit being your own life. That is what is happening here. God is promising Noah and his family against his life that they will be saved while everyone else dies. What we see here in this story is that the Ark is a type of Christ. It's the only place of safety when judgment comes.

We must be found in Christ just as Noah was found in the Ark. But even after the waters recede, we are left asking, Will Will this cleansed world cleanse the human heart? And that's what we see in this next section. The second Eden, a new world, a new covenant in Genesis 8, the whole chapter of 8, and then Genesis 9:1-17. God brings all the animals to Noah, and the flood begins. Everyone boards, and God shuts the door. When he closed the door to the Ark, he sealed the coffin on humanity.

And this might offend our modern sensibilities, but we have to remember what's happening. This was justice. This wasn't God punitively punishing people. But this was justice. This was creation had gone so arrived, so wrong, that this was justified. In the Bible, judgment and salvation always travel together in the same waters that destroyed the wicked, the same waters lifted the boat, the Ark, to safety. The same act that shut the doors brought Noah and his family in.

That's what we see in Genesis 8:21, Genesis 7:21-23, it says, "And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, bees, and all swarming creatures that sworn on the earth, and all mankind."

Everything on 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 the birds of the heaven. Sin had become so violent, so corrosive, so dehumanizing, that God would no longer allow his creation to rot unchecked. This is why in chapter 6, he says, My spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh. His days shall be 120 years. This word abide, that God's spirit would not abide in man forever, really means to strive or contend. Really, what God is saying is, I will not try to negotiate with mankind anymore to try to follow me. They are a lost cause. It is futile. They are flesh. They only want what they want, and what they want is not a relationship with me. And so the water subsides. Noah and all the animals get off the boat. And for a second time in humanity, there's a chance to obey God, to follow him, to follow what he says, and to live by how he defines right and wrong. Moses wants you to hear.

Moses is the writer of Genesis. Moses wants you to hear the echoes of Genesis 1 in this. Look with me at this. A world covered by water, wind sent by God, dry land appearing, animals multiplying, man standing as the head of humanity. This is a second Eden, a fresh start, a new creation. Many of us, we love this time of year because It's a chance for us to think about something new. New Year's is right around the corner. There's a lot of new things happening. Kids, we're about to get a lot of new toys. It feels like a great way to start over. In fact, this is probably a time where we even think back about our year. If you have Spotify, you get a Spotify wrapped, you get a chance to look back at your year and think about what your year was. And many of us maybe feel like we have things to run from. The story of Noah shows us that a new start is not enough. We can try to run away, but sin and guilt and shame will always follow. What we need is a redeemer. And that's what this advent season is It's not about a fresh start, but salvation coming in the form of an infant.

A washed world is not a new world. Water can cleanse creation, but it cannot cleanse the human hearts.

C. S. Lewis says this, "No clever arrangement of bad eggs ever makes a good omelet."

And I think that's true here. No matter how hard we try, no matter how many fresh starts we have, we cannot change who we are. So God makes a covenant with Noah as he steps off the boat. In chapter 9, verse 11, he says, I establish my covenant with you that never again shall all flesh be cut off by waters of the flood, and never again shall I Why shall there be a flood to destroy the earth? So God gives Noah another covenant. And why a covenant here? Because the second Eden will fail for the same reason the first one did. Unless God binds himself to all humanity with grace, humanity will walk away. The truth is Noah is not holding on to God. This covenant shows us that God is holding on to Noah. God is holding on to all humanity. The rainbow that we see here is not a sign of human progress. It's a symbol of divine restraint.

God's showing that he will no longer judge the world in this way. For a moment, it feels like Eden is restored. A righteous man, a renewed world, a fresh covenant, a new start. If anyone can crush the head of the serpent, if anyone can get it right, Noah surely has to be the one. But unfortunately, that's not what we see in this next section.

A Second Fall

The sin that returns. Genesis 9:18-29. Genesis 9:20 says this, Noah began to be a man 'Man' of the soil. He planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. 'And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. ' This, admittedly, is a confusing passage, and it is not clear what happens. But it is clear that both Noah and Ham sinned. Moses wants us to see the big point, not the details here. The man who walked with God stumbles. The righteous one falls into shame. The new Adam lies naked in a garden-like setting, just as the first Adam did. Noah goes from the righteous one to the drunk and shameful one, allowing something clearly evil to happen.

Just like Adam and Eve, Noah brings sin back into the picture. Do you hear the echoes of the fall? Adam eats the forbidden fruit, Noah abuses the fruit of the vine, Adam's nakedness is exposed. Noah's nakedness is exposed. Adam's son rebels. Noah's son rebels. Martin Luther says this, The sin underneath all our sins is to trust the lie of the serpent, that we cannot trust the love and grace of Christ. This message is unmistakable. You can restart the world, but you cannot restart the human heart. Noah Noah looks like he would be the one to crush the head of the snake, but he isn't the one to do it. A clean world with the same old heart is still a broken world. And that's where advent becomes necessary. If all it was was an environment, God could fix the environment. If all it was was our circumstances, God could fix the circumstances. But the problem is us. It's our hearts. It's what we love deep down. So salvation cannot come from inside the ark. Salvation cannot come from inside of us. It has to come from inside of heaven. And that leads us to our

Main Idea

Judgment can cleanse the Earth, but it cannot change the human heart

Only the one who bears judgment for us can bring lasting salvation. We need more. We need something more than a fresh start, more than a do-over, more than a try better next time. And subconsciously, unfortunately, we believe this, that we just need a do-over, even in our relationship with God, even in our salvation. As a former youth pastor, I can say this without a shadow of a doubt. There is an epidemic of people rededicating their lives to Christ. And I don't want to throw shade on people whose hearts are convicted by sin and that there's a desire to get right with God. I think that there is a lot of good in that. The danger in rededicating our hearts to Christ is it puts people in this spiritual limbo of, are they saved? Aren't they saved? I've seen countless times where people feel the conviction at a conference or during a sermon or at a retreat. People understand that their sin is evil, but they maybe grew up in the church, and they don't want to confess that maybe they weren't a Christian or that they had been walking in this way and feeling like They have to admit that maybe they really had something wrong when it came to their salvation.

Unfortunately, this is a way... The rededication can be a way to ease our conscience about how we've been living, that we can do this and continue to live the life that we've been living and still keep a Bible verse in our Instagram bio. This might last for a couple of years, but nothing changes. We use rededication or dedicating our lives to Christ as a way to have a fresh start, a do-over. This Christmas story, the Christmas story, isn't one to make you feel better about your sin. The reality is that it's here to judge. It's here to judge you. It's here to judge me. We should feel judged by it. We cannot fix ourselves, even with unlimited do-overs, even if we had a Groundhog Day experience, if we relive the same day over and over. If we don't feel the weight of this in this passage, we've missed the point. Jesus came to fix the Earth, to fix what we couldn't fix, to fix our hearts. I think there are churches, there are pastors, there are Christians who would revolt against what we just talked about. They love to say things like people in the Gospels never felt judged around Jesus.

Jesus was so accepting. Jesus was so open to people that he never made people feel judged. And unfortunately, that's just a lack of biblical literacy. That's a lack of seeing what happens in the Gospels. I mean, goodness me, if you were one of the Pharisees, I hope you felt judged by Jesus. If you've read the Gospels, you would have seen that.

A few other places in the Gospels where Jesus makes people feel judged around him is:

• in Peter's confession after the miraculous catch

• the rich young ruler

• the disciples after the storm

• John in Revelation

Dietrich Bonhoffer says this, "The coming Becoming of God is not only glad tidings, but first of all, frightening news for everyone who has a conscience."

We feel judged by God because of his righteousness, because of who he is. He's perfect. Just being around him would make us feel judged. But the good news is for us that we don't have to stand in that judgment. We do not have to be the people who live in that judgment. The one who was born in the manger came to be condemned in our place. All of God's The wrath fell on the head that Mary held.

And because the wrath fell on his head, he could crush the head of the serpent. That leads us into our application.

Application

1. Identify one place where you keep giving yourself second chances and replace it with accountability

The first point of application is this. Identify one place where you keep giving yourself second chances and replace it with accountability. Instead of saying to yourself, I'll do better next time, pick one area in your life and tell someone, I need help with this. Some practical steps would be telling a spouse, Telling a friend where you're failing. Ask them to check in on you this week and choose a specific time when to talk about it. We can't go through life continuing to walk in the same sin over and over. We have to be willing to say we need more than a second chance. Our second point of application is this.

2. Practice one act of generosity that stretches you this week

The world before the flood was filled with people who wanted to exploit it, exploit other people for their own gain. Advent shows us the infinite nature of God's gratitude, of God's generosity, that God himself gave us himself something we needed desperately, but we could have never earned, never deserved. So this week, do this.

• Give someone something or give to someone who can't repay you back.

• Buy groceries for a struggling family,

• leave a gift card anonymously,

• Tip generously.

• Fill a need in the church without being asked.

Generosity loosens the grip that sin strengthens in our heart. Of sin, and it strengthens our heart towards worship.

One thing that we didn't talk about in this story so far is the rainbow. It was a sign that was given to Adam and Eve, is the sign that was given to all of humanity. It points directly towards the manger. When we see a rainbow, we associate it with positive feelings that it's happy, it's a good thing. And yet we forget that the rainbow is a sign of a weapon. That God chose to hang up his bow, to hang up his weapon. The next time that God would judge the world, the judgment wouldn't come down. It wouldn't be facing down. Look at the shape of a rainbow. This time, the next time that God would judge the world, the bow would take aim directly at the heart of heaven. And that's what we see on the cross. God's wrath, God's judgment coming down directly towards his son.

Judgment can cleanse the earth, but it cannot change the human heart. Only the one who bears judgment for us can bring lasting salvation. Would you stand with me as we pray and prepare our hearts to respond in worship? Let's stand and pray. Father God, we thank you for who you are. God, you are so good and good to us. God, I pray that as we prepare our hearts for communion, for worship, God, that you would ready us for more than a way just to remember you, but to commune with you to enter into your presence, to identify you so deeply inside of us that we want to consume you. God, because we know that we can only be saved by entering into you, by entering into the Ark like Christ. It's the only place safe from wrath. God, thank you for sparing us. Thank you for saving us. Help us to respond in worship.

It's in your name we pray.

Amen.