The story of Noah and the Flood is one of the most important stories in the Old Testament. It speaks to us about salvation and God’s faithfulness, as well as the faith of one man in the face of a wicked generation. You can look forward to those happy themes in future weeks. Within the story of the Flood, most preachers try to skip over Genesis chapter 6. But that is where we must begin today. Genesis is one of the most unsettling, disturbing and depressing chapters in the whole Bible. Spoiler alert – everybody is going to die! Much as I would love to dodge preaching on this passage, we can’t. So here goes. Before we get to the good news, we have to start with the bad news – possibly the worst news anybody has ever been given.

11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 13 So God said to Noah, ‘I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.
A great big flood is coming! So big it would wipe out all the people and all the animals on the planet. An occurence so destructive that it gives us the truly terrifying English word – a cataclysm. It was what disaster movies love to call an ELE – an extinction level event. And the flood was coming because of all the corruption and violence which had spilled over from human beings to pollute even the earth itself. So the story of the flood begins by confronting us with
THE SERIOUSNESS OF SIN
5 The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.
Things had gone from bad to worse The only way forward would be for God to send a great big flood and wash all the wickedness and evil and corruption and violence away and wash away all the spilled blood which was tainting the land. That is how bad things had got, due to human sin.
Somehow, in our lifetimes, the world has forgotten the seriousness of sin. I was struck by the slogan I saw a few years ago on a T-shirt. It said, “The only rule is that there are no rules.” That is how very many people live their lives today. “There are no rules.” In earlier generations it was different. Even people who “feared no man” would fear God. Even if they weren’t afraid of being caught and punished by human law, moast people were still afraid of being punished by God. They knew they would face a reckoning one day. Today life is different. The vast majority of people live their lives as if there was no God because they think God doesn’t exist. Many people pick and choose which laws they will obey and which they will ignore. Very many people are content to live just by the eleventh Commandment, “Thou shalt not get caught.” People have forgotten the seriousness of sin.
Have you ever heard of Billy Sunday? He was probably the most influential evangelist in America in the first two decades of the 20th Century. One of Billy Sunday’s most memorable quotes is this. “One reason sin flourishes is that it is treated like a cream puff instead of a rattlesnake.” The truth is that sin is not an enticing indulgent cream cake. Sin is a rattlesnake – it kills people.
Ezekiel 18:4 and 18:20 both say “The soul who sins will die.” Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death.” In Noah’s time, the wickedness and corruption and violence of human beings brought death and destruction on them all.
I wonder if you remember, back in the 1970s and 1980s there was a long-running series of television adverts from the National Dairy Council starring many of the popular entertainers of the time: Les Dawson, Barbara Windsor, Cilla Black, Tommy Cooper, Joan Sims, Frankie Howard. I particularly remember one from 1985 which featured Kenneth Williams as Dracula. The simple slogan they used to promote the sales of calorie filled dairy products was created by an up and coming copywriter by the name of Salman Rushdie. “Fresh cream cakes – naughty but nice”. “Naughty but nice”.
A century ago everybody knew what “sin” was. Breaking the Ten Commandments. The seven “deadly sins” of pride, greed, wrath, envy, gluttony, lust and sloth. But over the years the world has softened the meaning of sin. People prefer to talk about selfishness, which points to the effects our sins have on other people and on ourselves. But selfishness completely ignores the truth that sin is most importantly rebellion against the righteous, holy and almighty God. Slowly and subtly, sin has been rebranded as things which may be self-indulgent but are essentially harmless. Just, “naughty, but nice”.
But that is a lie. Genesis 6 shows us that human sin was so serious that God sent a great big flood to wipe out humanity and start all over again. Everybody died. That is the seriousness of sin.
Let’s move on. There are five places in the New Testament which look back to Noah or to the Flood. Only Hebrews 11 verse 7 talks about Noah’s faith. Other passages use the event of the flood to point to a different very important truth –
THE CERTAINTY OF GOD’S JUDGMENT
Genesis 6 5 The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7 So the Lord said, ‘I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.’
Some people think that because God is love, he is too loving to punish human sins. So they think there won’t be any day of judgment. That idea is wrong. The Flood was God’s punishment for sin on Noah’s generation. It stands throughout human history as a dramatic warning of the reality of God’s future judgment on sin which is waiting to come on all people.
2 Peter 2:5 … if (God) he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; … 9 if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment.
The events of the flood are not just a demonstration of God’s ability to save his own people. The Flood also points to the grim reality of God’s judgment on those who are unrighteous. Since God judged the world then, he will certainly do so again. Metaphorically, an even bigger flood is still coming!
J.B. Phillips “… you may be absolutely certain that the Lord knows how to rescue a good man surrounded by temptation, and how to reserve his punishment for the wicked until his day comes.”
The certainty of God’s judgment. You will see why I was struck by a book by Ray Comfort entitled “Hell’s best kept secret”. What is the great truth that all the powers of evil want to keep secret? What is the fact which would change the world if people only accepted it? Simply the truth that God is a Holy and righteous God and every single human being will one day face judgement for all the wrong things they have done! Judgment is coming.
When Jesus pointed to the events of the Flood, he did so as a warning to his generation to be ready to face the judgment of God on the great day when he will return in glory.
Luke 17 26 “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. 27 People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.”
Matthew 24:39 ends the saying, they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away.
Just like in Noah’s time, most people don’t realise that there is another even bigger flood coming our way – God’s certain judgment on a sinful world. So much of Jesus’s teaching was challenging people to get ready to face God’s inescapable judgment. Think of the parables of the sheep and the goats, of the ten virgins, of the wicked tenants in the vineyard, of the ten gold coins, of the wheat and the weeds, of the net, of the rich fool, of the wedding banquet. Get ready!
Hebrews 9:27 tells us: people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.
Romans 1 in particular warns about God’s judgment on human sin.
Romans 1:18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness. … 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. …
Paul goes on to name many shameful examples of human sin and immorality.
29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. 30 … they invent new ways of doing evil;
Just read the newspapers or watch the news. Human wickedness and violence continue to corrupt the earth as much as in Noah’s generation. The historical event of the Flood is the solemn warning through the millennia of the certainty of God’s judgment which is to come. An even bigger flood is coming! Which brings us finally and joyfully to
NOAH’S FAITH
This whole sermon series is looking at the great heroes of faith from the Old Testament listed for our inspiration in Hebrews Chapter 11. But the focus in Genesis 6 is not on Noah’s faith. Did you notice that 2 Peter 2 verse 5 celebrates Noah in a different way.
2 Peter 2:5 (God) did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness,
Noah was “a preacher of righteousness”, “a herald of righteousness”. J.B. Phillips translates this verse as “Noah, the solitary voice that cried out for righteousness”. The New Living Translation says, “Noah warned the world of God’s righteous judgment.”
We don’t read about Noah preaching in words but we certainly do see his faith in his actions. First we read about his character and his lifestyle.

Genesis 6:9 “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God.” (NIV) Like Enoch who we heard about last week. The Good News Translation says, “Noah had no faults and was the only good man of his time. He lived in fellowship with God.” So Noah’s blameless life was already an example and a rebuke to all the people around him. And then on top of that, Noah expressed his faith by obeying God’s instructions and building his ark, however foolish that made him look. Genesis 6 22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.
For decade after decade, for almost a hundred years, Noah kept on building. This ark was, to say the least, very big and very conspicuous. Noah would have faced mocking and ridicule. I am certain people would keep coming up to him and asking what on earth he was doing. “Why are you building a huge boat here in the middle of dry land?” Noah would have told them every time, “A great big flood is coming”. And he would have explained to everybody what God had told him. The flood which is coming is God’s judgment on human beings for all their sin and violence and corruption. So not only by his blameless life, but also by building the ark very publicly, Noah was a preacher and herald of God’s righteousness, warning the world of God’s judgment in the cataclysm which was coming.
And that is the challenge Genesis chapter 6 presents to Christians today. Are we prepared to follow Noah’s example and be preachers and heralds of God’s righteousness, by blameless character and courageous obedience to God? Even if we face mocking and ridicule, or worse. Are we willing to stand up and warn the world of the judgment which is coming? The message of the seriousness of sin and the certainty of God’s judgment is just as unpopular in today’s world as it was in the days of Noah. Are we willing to stand up as preachers of God’s truth in this world of postmodern relativism and post-truth which has abandoned very idea of truth? C. S. Lewis once said, “You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.”
Did you see the newspaper reports this week about Hatun Tash. She is an ex-Muslim originally from Turkey. She’s now a Christian convert and street preacher, particularly at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park. During her preaching she has been attacked by mobs and wounded with a knife. On one occasion when she was attacked in June 2022, when the police arrived they did not challenge her attackers but instead they arrested Ms Tash and put her in a cell overnight. She has just received an out-of-court settlement of £10,000 from the Metropolitan Police for that wrongful arrest. Amazingly, that is the second time they’ve given her that amount of money: the police had already paid out in October 2022 for two earlier wrongful arrests while she was preaching at Speakers’ Corner. Preachers of righteousness.
In last Monday’s (23/9/2024) Spectator Brendan O’Neill wrote an article: “The plight of Hatun Tash shames Britain.”
“That there is a Christian preacher in 21st-century Britain who has been abused and hounded and slashed with a knife, and yet her name is virtually unknown, is profoundly troubling. It suggests liberals’ commitment to liberty, especially the liberty to utter, is thin indeed. In a more normal era, Tash would have become a cause célèbre, even among lovers of liberty who hated her brash style. … What do we value more – the right of an individual to speak freely or the right of certain groups never to feel offended? Right now, it’s the latter we have sacralised. This is confirmed by both the police’s heavyhanded response to Tash’s (preaching against) Islam and the shameful refusal of the intellectual classes to speak out against the violent harrying of this supposed ‘blasphemer’. These people are sending a message, however unwittingly. They’re saying it is better that a woman be prevented from expressing her deeply-held beliefs than for someone to feel offended by those beliefs. It is better to silence (his inverted commas) ‘blasphemy’ than to hurt a person’s feelings. … The failure of liberals, and the state itself, to defend a preacher’s right to preach will have an awful impact.”
Just as it was in the days of Noah, the world is running ever faster away from God. Are Christians willing to be “preachers of righteousness”, whatever it costs?
I want to finish by sharing a dream I had one night which many folk have agreed was an example of prophecy. This is not an illustration I invented – the Holy Spirit revealed it to me in a dream. One Sunday back in Brentwood I was all prepared to preach a sermon on taking risks for the sake of the gospel. On the Saturday night I dreamed that on the wall of our church I saw a painting. The painting I saw very vividly in my dream showed beautiful fields next to a river on a bright sunny day. On the riverbank a large group of people were having a lovely picnic together as rowing boats were drifting past along the river.
Next in my dream, to the right of that painting on the wall I saw a second painting. That was of a scene further along the same river. Just around a bend, where the people having the picnic could not see, there was a Niagara Falls sized waterfall. All the people in all the boats passing by were plunging to their deaths over the waterfall.
Meanwhile all the time the people on the riverbank in the first painting just went on enjoying their picnic. Nobody was throwing out lifelines to the boats passing by. Nobody was shouting out warnings to the boats. Nobody had even put up a sign saying, “Danger, waterfall ahead.” They just went on enjoying their picnic. Those were the paintings which I saw in my dream.

I am happy to say that the story of Noah and the Flood will bring us plenty of hope and encouragement and inspiration in the weeks to come. But for today, Genesis chapter 6 shows us the seriousness of sin and the certainty of God’s judgment. Are we willing to follow Noah’s example and be preachers and heralds of God’s righteousness? To warn people of the certainty of judgment? Because another great big flood is certainly coming!