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These are the sermons preached by Austin Darrow, a church planter in training to grow in his ability to preach and share the message of Christ with all who hear. I hope and pray that these sermons encourage you in your walk with the Lord.
Welcome to the Sermons by Austin Darrow podcast, podcast where you listen to sermons by myself, Austin. Now these sermons are sermons that I am doing as I am training to be a church planting pastor in the city of Sanford. For now, though, I am in training at a preaching lab at my home church, and I am learning and growing and developing in my preaching. And so these are some of my early sermons. And as we progress to this podcast, I will be posting other sermons that I speak over the next few months years.
Austin:So be gracious with me, but I hope that this encourages you. And I hope that you are learned something, but also that the gospel is evident in these sermons as my only goal is that in the preaching of God's word that the people who hear it will grow in their understanding, but also that ultimately the spirit will work in their lives and that those who are far from Christ would come near because of the message of the gospel. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast and enjoy the message. Today, you'll be listening to a message that I preached on Genesis 6. I'll start out by reading the passage for you today.
Austin:Genesis chapter 6 starting in verse 1. When man begins to multiply on the face of the land, daughters were born to them. The sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive, and they took as their wives many, any they chose. Then the Lord said, my spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh. His day shall be a 120 years.
Austin:The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward when the sons of god came in to the daughters of man, and they bore children to them. These are the almighty men who were of old, the men of renown. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart were 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.
Austin: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 3 sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Austin:Now the Earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the Earth was filled with violence. And God saw that the Earth saw the Earth, and behold, it was corrupt for all flesh had corrupted their way on the Earth. 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.
Austin:Make rooms in the ark and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it the length of the ark 300 cubits, its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits. Make a roof for the ark and finish it to a cubit above and set the door of the ark in its side. Make it with lower, 2nd, and 3rd decks. For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven.
Austin:Everything that is on the earth shall die, 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. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring 2 of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. Of the birds, according to their kinds, and of the animals, according to their kinds, and of every creeping thing on the ground, according to its kind. 2 of every sort shall come into you to keep them alive and also take with you every sort of flood of food that is eaten and store it up it shall serve as food for you and for them no one did this he did all that God commanded him.
Austin:This is the word of the lord. Enjoy the sermon. Well, if you see that I have a lot of Apple devices up here, don't be alarmed. This is not an Apple commercial. The Lord has impressed on me to say a few other things in the midst of my sermon, so I have all of my devices in front of me.
Austin:So thank the Lord for technology. This past week, we got hit with a pretty major hurricane, at least at least from in comparison to what we've had the last few years. If you've been here for a long time, this is standard business. But regardless, there was a lot of destruction and flooding across the state, tornadoes all over the place. I mean, I think there was, like, 11 tornadoes in the state of Florida, which is crazy in its own.
Austin:Right? But even with all of the destruction, even with all of the chaos and the flooding and people having to leave their homes, and even though these tragedies were great, none of them were even close to wiping out an entire state or wiping out the US or wiping out the entire world. But there was a flood, one mighty enough to wipe out all of the world and its inhabitants. And although we didn't do anything necessarily to deserve or to even bring on Helene and Milton, the flood I'm speaking of was truly a fault of mankind. The title of my message today is if you're taking notes is new beginnings.
Austin:New beginnings. This morning we are blessed to be able to travel back, way back to the old testament. And not only that, but to the orig the first book of the bible, which is Genesis. Most would agree that this book was written by Moses as well as the rest of the first five books of the bible, and they walk through the story of God's dealing with humanity and giving them the law to follow. Throughout these books, we see god's grace in creation, man's constant failure to do as god has commanded, and redemption despite their failures their failures.
Austin:This brings us to our text today. Today, my purpose is to reveal a story of profound evil at its deepest root yet show how the hope of redemption shines through the righteousness of 1. Before we dive too far into our story though, there's a little bit more context I wanna give and a quick recap as to just specifically where we are in chapter 6 of Genesis, and what has happened so far. So in the beginning, we see that the Lord has created all things. He's created the world that we live in, and he also created Adam and Eve, and he said that it was good.
Austin:But then we see, just 2 short little chapters later, man has fallen in a sin by temptation of the servant. Humanity was cursed and exiled from the Garden of Eden. The world continued to be populated and with greater multiplication came more and more sin. Chapter 5 gives us a clear picture of the generations of man coming from the line of Adam all the way to Noah who is the subject of our text today. I introed a moment ago the story of profound evil and the hope of redemption.
Austin:And the first reality we must wrestle with is that sin's depth has no end. Sin's depth has no end. We transition now in chapter 6 out of the specifics of some crucial people that we talked about in chapter 5 into, into a more broader term speaking of people. Verse 1 starts, when man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose. First things first, I have to deal with the controversy.
Austin:There's a lot of controversy around this text, specifically in terms of, the sons of God and the daughters of men. If you are interested, you are welcome to go read into that. I don't recommend it. It is a lot. But either way, it's there and we gotta deal with it a little bit.
Austin:On one hand, some believe that the sons of God are angels or, or even demons, fallen angels. On the other hand, it is believed that it speaks of an intermarriage between Seth of between Sethites, which would be the, you know, the holy people as you see throughout scripture, and then the Canaanites who Cain was the one who, committed the first murder of his own brother. There's a good defense on both sides as for the angels' interpretation, they point to the heavenly council in the book of Job, which speaks of them as sons of God, even Satan as such. On the side of the Sethites and the Canaanites or the Canaanites, Contextually, that's a bit easier to deal with since up until this point and beyond. We don't really have much reference to not only angels, but specifically intermingling between angels and humans in this way.
Austin:And to top that, Matthew speaks of, the fact or Jesus speaks in Matthew, the fact of these types of marriages between men or but specifically with angels is not something that happens. He says that when we are in eternity, we will not be given to marriage but be as the angels. Now as much fun as it can be and time consuming to deal with these controversies, it is safe to say that the text does not give us clarity as to who these people really were. But we know that this reality of man that is spoken about in the beginning of this text was displeasing to god as we will see here soon. One thing that's interesting about verse 2 is that we have some similar language about the sons of God and their attraction to the daughters of man as we also see in the description of the fruit in the beginning of Genesis with Eve.
Austin:And another relevant point about this is that the self is the selfish nature of what's happening here. In the beginning of the book of Genesis, God provided a wife for Adam. He was the one who brought this about an ordained marriage of sorts. But now we see the sons of God are taking wives based on their own choices that seem apart from God's provision. Whatever the reality of both of these parties and who they are, we know that the world has been filled with man and sin and sin has abounded even more, which leads us to verse 3.
Austin:Then the Lord said, my spirit shall abide in man forever, shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh. His days shall be a 120 years. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward when the sons of god came into the daughters of man, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. The interesting thing here is, this insert of verse 3.
Austin:It seems a bit random being that we just talked about marriage between the sons of God and the daughters of man, and then after that, we talk about their children. So why are we throwing in a, you know, 120 years? What does that have to do with? Again, heavily contested as a lot of things are in the old testament. Scholars like to argue back and forth on these things.
Austin:There's two sides of the coin, though. Either the 120 years is a new limitation on life itself, meaning that man will not live past a 120 years. On the other side, it could be a grace period from the time that from now at that point until the time that the flood comes as we see later in the passage. Either one, again, are possible regardless of the specifics. We know that the lord is displeased with man, and we will see that in a moment in verse 4 or in verse 5.
Austin:Verse 4 introduces us to the Nephilim, which were on the earth in those days and also afterward. Nephilim could also be a few things. I will not be getting into the specifics, but either they're angel human hybrids, but the word also just translates to giants, which could also help to explain why we see them later in the book of numbers. Because this tells us that there were giants on the earth in those days and afterwards speaking to the strength and size of humanity, potentially in that time being that we were in our prime as a species. With this, as with all the all these other issues we've talked about, remaining dogmatic or open on these issues is important because the scripture gives no reason to stand strongly one way or another on the issue.
Austin:If you desire to understand more of these things, there are plenty of scholarly text out there that do it closely. But, again, it is important that we understand that this speaks to the great multiplication of man in the world as well as sin. Now we get to, god's response to the reality that we just have spoken about. The law it says in verse 5, 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.
Austin:So the lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the earth or 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. Remember when I pointed to the fact that God created the world and after all that he created, he said it was good. We see a parallel here. Not one that we should be excited about or one that but one that should bring us terror.
Austin:The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great and the earth and that, in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart were only evil continually. What a sentence. It's not simply that we do evil evil things, but that to the depths of our inner being, man is evil continually. We are no different than these men. On our own without Christ, we are evil to our core.
Austin:Sins depth has no end in our hearts. We are unable to do anything that pleases the lord, and we will see how this makes the lord feel. As it says, he regretted that he had made man on the earth and engrieved him to his heart. This word in the original language for grief is used to describe the most intense human emotion, one of bitter anger and anguish, and the Lord felt this deep into his very being, into his heart. When we sin, when we disobey God, we grieve him.
Austin:The God who loves us who because of the love he sent his son to die feels grief when the sin we sin against him. God is not some unfeeling spirit that robotically commands us to do and to not do, but as a God that's not only just known for love, but scripture teaches us is love. In what way have you sinned this week when when getting a little extra angry with your kids for doing something you didn't like, when you aren't loving your wife because this next sermon was too important to prepare? When on your way to work, someone cuts you off and you stew a little bit in your anger, when you're at work and you think that you are better than those that you work with and you are deserving of more than them, Did you stop and think about how your sin affects the creator of all things? That pit in your stomach you may feel right now, it doesn't have to bring us to hide in shame.
Austin:God's love provided a way for sinners like you and me to find redemption through his son, Jesus Christ. Verses 5 to 7 mimic the language of creation that in the beginning, God created man and animals and creeping things and the birds of the heavens and saw that it was good, but now he sees the wickedness it has become. And he is ready to blot them out, erase them from existence, hit the reset button on everything he has made so far. But, verse 8, but Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. At the be at the end of this disdain for all that God has created preparing to wipe out all that exists, there is a glimmer of hope that we can see.
Austin:Out of all of the creation of man, all but all of them are wrong, all of them are corrupt, but there is one man who finds favor in the eyes of the lord, and that is Noah. When we hear first of Noah in chapter 5, Lamech, his father, named him Noah, saying, out of the ground that the lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands. The author in a way points to the reality that out of the anguish of God and man, one man brings grace from God favor and relief. Noah is the representation of obedience of faith and that he alone will be saved through the destruction of all creation. Hebrews 11:7 says, by faith, Noah being warned by gods concerning events as yet unseen in reverent fear, constructed an ark for the saving of his household.
Austin:By this, he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. We have seen the deepest roots of profound evil and the sin's depth that has no end, but now we get to transition our story into a hope of redemption, which is that God's love knows no end. God's love knows no end. We have here a transition into a new section of scripture, which will continue for a few chapters. Whenever Moses transitions a text, specifically in Genesis, he does so by speaking of the descendants in the line of that particular crucial character of the story.
Austin:51 was the descendants of Adam and breaks down all the way to the point of where humanity is now corrupt to its core and God is going to wipe them out. And now we transition. Verse 9. These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation.
Austin:Noah walked with God. He continues, and Noah had 3 sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now the Earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the Earth was filled with violence. And God saw the Earth, and behold, it was corrupt for all flesh had corrupted their way on the Earth. And God said, Noah, said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh for the earth is filled with violence through them.
Austin:Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. When I was growing up in my house, we just knew that when you went into the fridge that you checked the date on the thing that you were grabbing. And even if you checked the date, it might have been a day or 2 late, then you opened it and you smelled it. Really check is it really bad or are you sure it's bad? Because I'm a little hungrier right now.
Austin:And if you don't know what I'm talking about, it's okay. You weren't broke. You didn't grow up in a in a broke household, and you had nice food that wasn't expired, and that's all dandy. I'm happy for you. That was not my reality.
Austin:But honestly, there's some things that you see in the fridge sometimes where just looking at it, just opening the fridge, you can tell that something's wrong. There's some kind of food in here that does does not belong, and honestly, it probably doesn't take you very long to figure out what it is because it might be some moldy cheese. It might be some some old milk because those plastic containers only have have their limits. And we wonder for a second, why is this thing still in here? God is repeating what we see earlier in the verses.
Austin:God is done with creation. Man is corrupt to its core. Like the nasty food in the fridge that doesn't that shouldn't be there anymore, and there's nothing left to do but to destroy, same here with God. There's nothing left to do to destroy them. And not simply just destroy them, but do it with the very earth that they reside in.
Austin:Let creation be used to destroy creation. What is interesting, although we'll see later, that some of the animals are spared, this all flesh in our text seems to point to the fact that the corruption was so deep that even the animal suffered the consequence of sin's death. Everything that is on the earth will die, verse 17 will tell us. At this point, we still have not been told in the story how he will destroy the creation and block them out from existence. We had he has hinted at the fact that he's gonna use the earth to do it.
Austin:But verse 14 continues, make yourself an arc of gopher wood, make rooms in the arc, and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it. The length of the arc, 300 cubits, the breadth of the the breadth, 50 cubits. And its height, 30 cubits. Make a roof of the ark and finish it to a cubit above.
Austin:Set the door of the ark in its side. Make it with lower second and third decks for behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which the breath of life is under in which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die. Now we see the source of how he'll blot out creation, a flood of waters. And what's interesting about this term flood is that it's not really used to many places, and in fact, the only time it's ever used is specifically in reference to this very flood.
Austin:What's special about this flood is the size of this flood. This isn't the floods that we had from Helene or the floods we had from Milton. This is a flood that covered the entirety of the Earth, and some say up to 10,000 feet deep. We have seen floods and some we may have been affected by by these recent hurricanes, but imagine your our whole country, our whole world being underwater and quick at that. But before he announces the flood, he gives specific instructions to Noah on how he needs to build this ark.
Austin:The numbers used and the material used are debated as far as what exactly they mean because they're, you know, they're a little generic in some ways, and some of the materials we don't quite understand. But I but what I believe in the is the reason we see these descriptions is that, one, it shows that God is a God of order. He likes things to be done a certain way, and they need to be done the way that he commands, and we are commanded to just obey in faith and follow. This in the description of the tabernacle are two instances we see of specific measurements to be carried out by man. When God speaks, he commands an action, and that action is carried out according to God's command.
Austin:This is the parallel between the creation story, the ark, and the future tabernacle. This also speaks to the meticulousness that the men of God and specifically Noah here carried out the very, excuse me, the very will of the Lord. Verse 18 continues, but I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you and your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring 2 of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds.
Austin:Of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, 2 of every sort shall come into you to keep them alive. Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten and store it up. It shall serve as food for you and for them. Noah did this. He did all that God commanded him.
Austin:We see the introduction of the covenant that God is going to establish with Noah and fulfill the end of the story of Noah, which we're not gonna talk about today. But here, he is make already making the promise that he will make a commitment to Noah and his family and, in turn, the entire human race. God has a plan in the midst of this disaster. He is starting new restarting humanity through 1 righteous man and his family. And we see this final verse of of our passage, Noah did this.
Austin:He did all that god command him or commanded him. Noah is the picture of simple obedience and trust in the lord for all provision. Not once did Noah complain about the task that was at hand, and frankly, as far as knows Moses is concerned, Noah didn't say a thing. We haven't heard a single word from Moe from Noah at this point. The reality of the story is that it was initially intended for the people of Israel in the wilderness, I believe, for 2 things.
Austin:1 is a warning against corruption of the world through sin, and another is a reminder that God saves those who are obedient to him. But today, as believers in the 21st century, we have more that we can understand from this. We have more text to help us with this. This text foreshadows the future salvation we have in Christ in many ways. 1st, just as in the time of Noah, just as in the time of Jesus, and even still today, man is corrupt to its core.
Austin:Sins and death has no end. The Lord later promises to Noah that he will never flood the earth again, but he promised us that there will come a day where he will destroy the world and by fire. But as we see here, the redemption and renewal of all mankind came through 1 righteous man who found favor with God, and so have we found redemption and salvation for mankind by 1 righteous perfect man, Jesus Christ. The day Noah left the ark, he sinned against God. The new world when would then was only a shadow of what was to come because Christ is the better and more perfect Noah.
Austin:And through him, sin will be no more. When we are brought into the new heavens and the new earth, we are going to be made without sin. We are gonna be made perfect. There will be no pain, and we'll be perfected. In Noah's time, none were welcomed except him and his family, but we are invited into the new kingdom through the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ Jesus who knew no sin but took on sin of the world so that we may have redemption through him.
Austin:We are not righteous. And to enter the new kingdom, the new creation, we cannot be as we are. But through Christ, we are made righteous not by anything we do, but he has given us his righteousness. God is faithful to the righteous. He made a way for Jesus to be born through the line of faithful men of God so that he may be the redemption and become the righteousness that we need to forego disaster and live eternally.
Austin:There is a song that I love, by Citizens, and I was listening to it this morning, so it's it's actually perfect. It felt like I need to read some of these lyrics to us today. The kingdoms of man have all decayed. The ruins of progress turned to waste. The gods of greed lay in their graves.
Austin:Darkness is everywhere, but there's a path in the dark that has emerged. I can see a great light beyond this curse, a brilliant blaze that is your word, a beacon of hope that burns. And I focus my captivated gaze on the radiant light from Jesus' faith face. The water of life is all I crave. Only your word remains.
Austin:So much more than precious gold is the beauty I behold. Give me the glorious reward of knowing you, my king, my lord. Believers, we have found favor with God through Christ. No longer are you condemned, but you are redeemed because of 1 righteous man. So how should you live because of this?
Austin:Well, we must be like Noah and obey. Not simply obey when it's convenient. Not simply obey some of God's commands, but obey all of God's commands. On our own, this is an impossible task. But we weren't just saved by Christ, we were also given a helper, the holy spirit, whom we have been filled with and are now able to walk out the walk out the commands of God.
Austin:So believers, stop trying to figure it out on your own. Every day we have to rely on the spirit to guide our steps. How do we do this? This is done simply by opening the Bible, reading and praying. And by faith that even when we fail at this, even when we fail to do what God has commanded, even when we fail to not be angry at the person driving by us, when we fail to not be angry at our kids, when we fail to to love our wives in the midst of preparing our sermons, that even when we fail, God will continue to strengthen us to do what he had what the Bible tells us to do.
Austin:The Bible is our guide to what God wants of us. His commands are written down. We are called to know them and to do them through the power of the Holy Spirit working them out in our day to day lives. This still takes work. We still must strive to do what God commands, but we are not alone.
Austin:We have the spirit. We have the community of believers around us. Those in this church in this room. An unbeliever here today, there is a hope for the sin that's depth has no end. It is God's love that knows no end.
Austin:Romans 10:9 says, because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is lord and believe in your heart that god raised him from the dead, you will be saved. It is not too late for you. Repent, which means make a 180 degree turn from your sin. Stop trusting in your ability to make it out of this life unscathed, and put your trust in the lord. Let us pray.
Austin:God, thank you for this word and for the gospel that brews deeply in us. God, would this word go out from my mouth as it has, but then penetrate the hearts of even the people in this room, I thank you for your love. I thank you that you sent your son. I thank you that you used Noah to help represent the coming Jesus that we now know about. May you work in our lives.
Austin:May you work in this text, and let it penetrate our hearts even as we leave here today. In your name, Jesus, we pray.