Genesis 6:1-8
2 Peter 2:4-10
The Ark of Grace
One of the hardest parts of my job is conducting funerals for non-believers.
Sometimes the family of the bereaved will make statements like this:
“He didn’t go to church, he sort of had a faith, I think, he was baptised in this church 70 years ago. He didn’t live out his faith- no-one would have known if he had a faith or not, but I reckon, he would be sitting up in heaven now, having a beer and looking down on us”
And so, in those moments of grieve and sorrow and loss, I often bite my tongue, and fail to tell them the truth of the gospel, and perhaps I should not bite my tongue…….but tell them the truth. But then I think, it is often not the right time.
Friends, I am going to tell you the truth today, not to beat you over the head with, but because I love you.
So, let me start with a real shallow question today which perhaps many of you have thought about.
Why does a loving God send people to hell?
Or let me put it another way.
If God was so loving, why would he send people to hell?
It is a fair question to ask, because if we take God at His word, which we do, we know from the book of 1 John, chapter 4, verse 8, that God is Love. In fact, it says that anyone who does not love, does not know God, because God is Love.
God is the definition of Love.
God cannot be anything but loving, that is just who he is.
If you are looking for true love today, you can stop looking- true love is found in God.
The most famous verse in the bible, the one which is shown at most huge sporting events on a placard, is John 3:16, the one which starts “for God so loved the world”. It is a verse which focuses on God’s love.
And so, the fact that God is love, most people can come to grips with- (if they believe there is a God in the first place).
But perhaps what people struggle to come to terms with is that a loving God, sends people to hell.
And for those who don’t believe in the God of the bible, the only one true and living God, they would rather believe lies, than face the truth.
And so, some so- called Christians, would peddle this strange universalism, where in the end, everyone makes it heaven, because they just can’t accept that a loving God would send people to hell. They peddle this weird idea, that there is no hell, even though Jesus talked more about hell than heaven. They would peddle this weird idea, that it really doesn’t matter how you live your life, good, bad, indifferent, because in the end, we all make it anyway.
They would argue, if God is so loving, he wouldn’t send anyone to hell.
Or perhaps, one of the most dangerous ideas that floats around in Christian circles is this: if you are basically a good bloke, a good person, you will make it to heaven. If you pay your taxes, love your family, be good to your neighbour, you will make it to heaven. And so, this is why you may often hear at a funeral that uncle bob is now sitting having a beer in heaven with his mates, looking down on us, because uncle Bob was a decent bloke, “a down to the earth good guy”.
That simply isn’t true.
Friends, I want to lovingly tell you the truth this morning,
The apostle Peter in 2 Peter 2:4 tells us that even the angels, those perfect beings, who sinned, didn’t escape God’s judgement, but where cast into hell.
Look at 2 Peter 2:4 with me:
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment;
Interestingly Peter writes this verse in the context of combating false teaching which was floating around in his day too.
Interestingly, well I think this is interesting anyway, in the apostle Peter’s day, these false teachers were basing their teaching on their sensuality, their feelings, rather than the truth of God’s word. In other words, if it “felt true for them, it must be true, even if it doesn’t feel true for you- truth was whatever you feel”- Sound familiar to today?
If you feel that uncle Bob made it to heaven and is having a beer looking down on us, it must be true, because it just feels true for you.
Whereas Peter tells us the reality of God’s word, he tells us in verse 4, that even the most perfected of beings- the angels who sinned, were not spared God’s judgment but cast into hell.
The apostle Peter here is probably talking about the time before God created man and woman. The time when satan and his angels rebelled against God, and God cast them out of heaven, into chains of darkness where they await the final judgement and are thrown into the fiery lake.
And since God did not even spare judgement on his angels who rebelled against Him, he is not going to spare judgement on anyone, no matter their status in the community, not matter how many good things they have done, no matter their position in the church.
God’s salvation is not universal, but God’s judgement is universal- and Peter uses the example of the days of Noah to make this point.
Look at 2 Peter 2:5
If he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah
We read from Genesis 6 that God’s judgement on this earth was total, it was universal, look at what God said back in Genesis 6:7
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.”
For God to blot out man, he didn’t just mean people in a small area of the earth, but all people, the whole earth was to be judged in the days of Noah, by the waters sent from God, but why?
Look at Genesis 6:5-6 with me:
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. 6 And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.
We can see from these verses that not only was God’s judgement on the earth, universal, but the depravity of man was total. The evil of men was total, every intention, every thought of his heart was only evil, and it was evil all the time. Man’s depravity was not a “woopsie”, his sin wasn’t a mistake, his rebellion against God, was total.
Now, we can never give counsel to God, we can never truly understand why God does what he does, since he is God and we just trust that what he does is always good, and yet here, as mere humans we can gain some understanding of why God sent his universal judgment across the earth.
God had made us humans to worship him, to walk with him, to enjoy Him forever, and yet all that God received in return was people turning their backs on him. People followed the same pattern of the angels before time, who rebelled against God, because they wanted to be god themselves.
No wonder God’s heart was grieved.
He created this beautiful world and everything in it, he had commissioned us humans to rule this world, under his rule and all he got in return were rebellious people, wanting to be gods themselves.
Sadly, we still haven’t learnt today.
What we can glean from this statement about the grieving heart of God, before he sent his judgment of the waters in Noah’s day, is that he never takes his judgement lightly. It is never made in a heartless way, it is never a quick-fire anger response, it is never unfair.
God was grieved that the majority of the people in the whole earth, that he had made to worship Him, had turned their backs on Him, and so he sent the waters of Judgment- and yet praise be to God, even in that deserved judgement, God kept a remnant of faithful believers for himself.
Look at 2 Peter 2:5 with me
5 if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;
Even when the whole world had turned their backs on God, there were 8, yes just 8 people in the whole world, whom God preserved, whom God protected from his judgement, Noah, his wife, his three sons, shem, Ham and Jephath and their wives, they were all saved from the waters of God’s judgement.
But why did God preserve Noah and his family?
Why did Noah find favour in the eyes of the Lord?
Genesis 6:9 gives us the answer.
These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God
Noah was preserved because Noah was righteous, which means he was right with God, which in this particular case means he was walking with God. As the world walked with their backs to God in the other direction, Noah was walking in step with God, just how God created him to walk in the first place. And so, Noah, obeyed God, he trusted God, he didn’t try and be god himself, be he trusted God to be God, and so when God told him to build an ark- He did.
And even though it may have taken Noah 120 years to build the ark, and people may have thought he was crazy to build this boat in expectation that the waters were coming, the apostle Peter makes it clear that during that time, Noah continued to be a herald or a preacher of righteousness. In other words, Noah more than likely during those 120 years of building the ark, urged people to get ready for the flood, urged people to go onto the ark to be saved from the incoming waters of God’s judgement.
And yet sadly, we know, no-one listened, no-one took Noah seriously, No-one took God’s judgement seriously.
Really Noah- a flood?
Really Paul- hell?
The apostle Peter goes onto mention other times in history where God sent his judgement on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. He also reminds us that when he preserved Noah and his family through the flood, he also preserved Lot, through the fire and brimstone. And interestingly as Lot fled the fire judgement of God from the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, his soul was tormented as he witnessed the evil that was going on around him.
Friends, it should grieve us to see our world deliberately walking away from God.
It should grieve us that every year millions of babies are legally killed in the mother’s womb.
It should grieve us that young people at the age of 12 are legally changing their gender from the God given biological sex they were given by God at birth.
It should grieve us that we have turned away from God’s plan for marriage between a man and a woman.
It should grieve us, that we no longer centre our lives around the one who created us, but we try and fit our creator into our schedule.
Lord forgive us,
and Lord strengthen us to be heralds of righteousness.
Lord help us, to continue to live and preach the hope of the gospel, the hope of this world that is found in Jesus and Jesus alone.
Help us to swim against the tide of this world, which continues to ignore God and put man at the centre.
Friends, amongst this grief, amongst this judgement, listen to the surety of God’s promise.
Look at 2 Peter 2:9
The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment
God knows how to rescue the godly from trails…..and God not only knows how to, but God has already saved us from the ultimate trail………God has saved us from his judgment that we rightly deserve.
When Jesus- God’s one and only Son died on that cross, He took the judgement of God’s wrath onto his own body. A judgement that we all deserve, since just like in the days of Noah our hearts are totally depraved.
And because Jesus, the righteous one, the one who never ever sinned or told a lie (unlike Noah) took the punishment, took God’s judgement for us, we can be confident, that when we come before our creator, he will welcome us to eternal life, not because of anything we have done, but because of what Jesus did for us.
And so whatever trails we may face in this life, whether that is ridicule, similar to what Noah faced, “why do you bother? There is no god, there is no judgement, it is pointless going to church, it is pointless reading your bible” or whether it is physical trails, like those Christians who have been beheaded for their faith…… we know that our ultimate trial when we face the judgement of God has been dealt with by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
Friends, when people ask the question
If God was so loving, why would he send people to hell?
Perhaps we are asking the wrong question.
Perhaps we should be asking this.
How deep and great is God’s grace, that he doesn’t send everyone to hell, but offers salvation to all who believe in his one and only son the Lord Jesus Christ?
What kind of loving and merciful and gracious God would do this?
Answer:
The one who so loved the world, that he sent his one and only son, that who so ever believes in him, should not perish but have eternal life.
Let us pray
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