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We have said many times in our consideration of these early chapters of Genesis that
the most fundamental perspectives, the most salient facts concerning human life and man's
relationship to God are being laid down in these first chapters of the Bible. This is the
foundation upon which the entire edifice of biblical truth will then be built. This is
what must be understood if we are to understand the rest.
We have been introduced to the living God the creator, a Person of unmeasured Majesty
and goodness, who brought all things into being, and human beings especially, by the mere
utterance of his word. We have learned something of what a human being is, a person
created in the image of God. We have seen how man fell from the pristine state of
happiness in which he had been made by sinning against God and we have now seen the
consequences of that sin: the evil, the ugliness, the heartbreak, and the melancholy that
sin visited upon human life. We have seen how sin gathers strength in the march of the
generations, and we have seen how the life of the world that God made now lies under his
wrath and judgment on account of that sin and something of what God's punishments entail.
But there is another aspect of this truth about human sin and man's rebellion against
God his maker that we have not yet considered and this too is a most important part of the
picture; this too must be known and understood if we are to grasp the true situation of
this world and our place in it.
I am speaking of that extraordinary statement in verse 6: "The Lord was grieved
that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain." We spoke last
time of the ferocity of the divine judgment against man's sin which is revealed so
terribly and unmistakably in the flood with which God judged the sinful world.
But, now, we must speak of the heart of God and of his own response to the sin which
his justice required him to punish so severely. "His heart was filled with
pain." More literally, as in most English translations of the Bible, "he was
grieved to the heart." The word translated grieved, or, here in the NIV, "filled
with pain" is used to express the most intense emotion: sometimes anguish, sometimes
rage mixed with anguish. It is the word used to describe the way Dinah's brothers felt
after they learned she had been raped. It is the word used to express Jonathan's emotion
when he heard that his father planned to kill his friend David; and the same word is used
of David when he learned of his favorite son Absolom's death. It is used of the way a
deserted wife feels in Isa. 54:6.
On only two other occasions in the Bible is this same word used of God's emotion -- Ps.
78:40 and Isa. 63:10 -- both to describe his grief at his people Israel's betrayal of Him.
What we have here, then, here at the headwaters of biblical revelation, is the clearest
conceivable assertion that man's sin is a personal tragedy to God, that it grieves him,
and cuts him to the heart. Once again, I say, we have here one of those essential
ingredients to a true understanding of the true God, of the world, of human life in the
world, and of salvation. Human sin is a matter of the deepest sorrow and anguish to the
living God. Unless one knows that fact, how God feels about sin, he does not and
cannot understand this world or human life in this world.
Now the significance and the implications of that are stupendous! Let me mention this
morning just three conclusions that follow inexorably from the fact that human sin brings
personal anguish to God.
I. The first conclusion to which we come is that the divine judgment of sin
is no pageant, no
disinterested display of divine justice, a mere appearance or semblance of
divine
retribution.
You have heard me often enough say that the truths of Holy Scripture are presented to
us dialectically, the poles of any particular continuum of truth presented, each
separately, unqualified and unmitigated, truths counterpoised to one another and left in
tension with the other.
The classic example of this kind of dialectical instruction is that of the sovereignty
of God and the free will of man. Sometimes the Scripture emphasizes the absolute,
unqualified control that God exercises over the lives, even the thoughts and the will of
human beings. Sometimes the Scripture emphasizes the freedom of the human will and the
importance of a person's choices and decisions to the outcome of his life. Sometimes,
indeed, the Bible puts both poles in the same verse! Divine election and sovereign grace
together with the free decision of the human will, as, for example, in John 6:36:
"All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never
drive away."
We struggle to know how to keep these truths together, though the Bible never seeks to
reconcile them, but merely accepts that both are true: the absolute sovereignty and rule
of God and the true freedom and integrity of the human will. As Ian Tait used to put it,
"you only reconcile enemies, not friends, and the Bible never regards these two facts
-- divine sovereignty and human freedom -- as enemies, but always as friends."
Well, we come to a similar dialectic in the Bible's revelation of God's relationship
and response to human sin. We have a great many texts that state, as unmistakably as
anything can be stated, that human sin is not outside of God's control. He knew of every
sinful act that would ever be committed in the world before he made the world, and
even the sinful acts of men accomplish his purposes in individual lives and in the world.
"You meant it for evil," Joseph will tell his envious and cruel brothers,
"but God meant it for good!" Joseph will speak of God sending him to
Egypt, though it was through the wicked betrayal of his own brothers that he came to that
foreign country. Not only does the Bible say that God "works out everything in
conformity with the purpose of his will" which must, obviously, include human sin,
which is, after all, the thing in the world that must be ruled and must be defeated if
God's purposes are to come to pass, but over and again the Bible represents God as
directly in control of the sinful actions of men -- however freely they commit those
actions and however pure God remains in his rule over them.
I have commonplaced my Bible on this subject at Rom. 9:15 and I have in the margin
there a very large number of texts: from Isa. 63:17
"Why, O Lord, do you make us wander from your ways and harden our hearts so that we
do not revere you?"
To 1 Sam 18:10:
"The next day an evil spirit from God came forcefully upon Saul."
Now, there are great questions here, no doubt, far beyond our knowing and, in any case,
requiring far more time to discuss than we have this morning. But, take the point the
Bible makes: God's sovereign rule embraces even the sins of mankind. God was not caught by
surprise by the sins of mankind in Noah's day. He was not defeated in his purpose by the
rebellion of his creatures. The flood was not some "Plan B" that God had to
think up on the spot in the face of the disappointment of his original plan for the world.
Jesus Christ is the Lamb slain before the foundations of the world -- God knew well enough
before he made the world what would become of it and that mankind would need his Son for a
Redeemer. Indeed, all that happened in the generation of the flood was only the
fulfillment of God's eternal purpose for mankind. Noah's greatest achievement, indeed,
will be to keep alive the seed of the woman that has already been promised in Gen. 3:15!
That is one end, one pole of the continuum of biblical truth regarding the response of
God to human sin. But here, in Gen. 6:6 we have the other pole, the counterpoise: sin
grieves God, it pains him. We may struggle to know how something that is so much under his
control, that cannot occur apart from his will, and that, finally, serves to accomplish
God's own purposes in the world could still so powerfully grieve him, could still cause
him such anguish. But it does. And if we must struggle all our lives to hold these two
truths in tension: God's absolute rule over even sinful human lives and yet his real
anguish over human sin, then so be it. It is the truth that requires that struggle,
for it is the truth that God both rules over and grieves over man's sin.
So, when God comes to judge that sin, as he did so ferociously at the time of the flood
and as he will in the Great Day of which the flood was but a foretaste, it is not simply
God's rule at work, but his anguish; not simply his justice, but his sorrow and grief; not
simply the glorification of his righteousness before mankind, but the sorrowful act of a
grieving spirit. The Lord desires not the death of the wicked... and, sin is something
abominable to him, that he hates!
This is so important to the Scripture's entire revelation of God's way with men. It is
a matter of intense importance and intense emotion to God what human beings make of their
lives, and when he judges the impenitent, as he will, he will judge them not only
with an implacable justice, but as well with a broken heart. We will never understand the
judgments of the Lord until we have that fact firmly fixed in mind and heart.
II. Second, that human sin is a matter of the deepest anguish to God further
teaches us that God saves men to change them.
Now we are Christians here, this morning, or, most of us are or claim to be. And we
know, therefore, that our sins -- our failures to keep God's law in thought, word, and
deed; our transgressions of his will and our failures to fulfill it; every impurity of
attitude and life, every failure of love for God and for man -- are evil and an offense to
God. And we know that, as Christians, we are to care and to strive to die to our sins and
to live to righteousness, for this pleases God our Savior, who, as Paul summarized,
"teaches us to say 'No' to all ungodliness and worldly passions and to live
self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the
blessed hope, the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave
himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that
are his very own, eager to do what is good."
But it is a very easy thing, as every thoughtful and experienced Christian will attest,
to fall into a way of thinking about our sins that diminishes the personal element, that
reduces them to mere individual and isolated instances of transgression, the violation of
a particular rule, over-against which we may put either our forgiveness in Christ or the
fact of some obedience we have practiced or some virtue we are recognized for. In the most
subtle way we begin balancing our sins and our virtues, or what we imagine to be our
virtues, and our sins grow less and less truly evil in our eyes. We should not commit sin,
definitely; but, after all, everyone does it and God forgives it if we trust in Christ
Jesus. And so our battle with sin grows weaker.
But, it is an entirely different matter if we remember that our sins grieve our
heavenly father and make his heart heavy, that they are a personal affront and anguish to
our God. Now we cannot think of sin in the same way; now we cannot so easily accept it as
normal; now we cannot so easily accommodate it in our hearts and lives because that would
be to care nothing of hurting the One who has loved us with an everlasting love.
I remember, I will always remember, for some reason, a time when I was in seminary,
having an animated, even somewhat heated discussion about predestination and divine
sovereignty with my father and my late brother-in-law. As seminarians are sometimes wont
to do --as I certainly was wont to do-- I spoke rashly about what I little understood. I
wanted to make my case for absolute and naked sovereignty, the truth of which I had come
recently to feel the force of in a way I had never before, and the arguments for which I
now knew better than I ever had before, and I wielded texts like a sword, seeking to
skewer all of their protests, what I now know to have been their wise words of balance and
caution. I was much more interested in winning the argument, than I was in carefully
stating and, at the same time, adorning the whole counsel of God.
But, what I can never forget about that scene, that ugly memory I would as soon forget
entirely, is seeing how disappointed my father was in me as he left the room afterwards.
In an instant my sweet victory turned sour. My father was ashamed of me for the way I had
spoken, for the disrespectful and intemperate and juvenile way in which I had treated so
sacred a topic before my elders. And I couldn't stand it...until at last, later that
night, I crept upstairs to his room to apologize and seek his forgiveness.
Well that is the difference it makes to know what our sins do to God himself --
sovereign though he is; in absolute control over every detail of our lives as he no doubt
is; fully aware of all that we would do, sins and all, before we ever existed or
the world in which we live -- our sins shame him and grieve him and dismay him.
He did not save us -- we would say that we never thought this, though we live often as
if we do -- He did not save us so that we could continue to sin without penalty. Our sins
are too grievous, too much an offense to him for that! He saved us to rid us of those
sins, and if we love him at all, we will not rest until we are rid of them, every one.
Rabbi Duncan, that Scottish Presbyterian Professor of Hebrew and man of deep spiritual
insight, once said:
"Christ came to save the contrasts of himself; but not to leave them such. There's
nobody perfect: that's the believer's bed of thorns: that's the hypocrite's couch of
ease."
The fact that we and all Christians continue to sin -- what is that to you? Is it your
excuse and your reason for taking your sins lightly and doing little to put them to death
for Christ's sake? After all, no one's perfect! Or, is the fact that we all continue to
sin for you simply the melancholy proof that we have a great work to do in this world, a
sacred responsibility to show our love to God, who hates these sins and whose heart is
broken by them, to commit as few of them as we possibly can, God helping us!
Well, I tell you. If you remember what your sins are to God, the personal anguish they
are to him, you will not think the multitude of your sins diminishes their importance or
their weight or their evil!
III. Third, that human sin is an anguish to God teaches us that our salvation
--yours and mine-- was a real act of love and sacrifice on God's part.
We say and sing the words so easily
There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's veins and sinners plunged
beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains...
E'er since by faith I saw the stream Thy flowing wounds supply, Redeeming love has been
my theme and shall be till I die...
But we hardly know of what we sing and speak and rarely feel anything like what we
ought to feel in the face of such a stupendous truth.
No one ever paid as much for anything, no one ever came remotely close to paying as
much for anything as God paid for you...His own Son, who was the Eternal Son as well
as the man Christ Jesus. He was the price, and not simply He, but he incarnate, he
humiliated at the hands of his own creatures, he suffering, he abandoned, he dying, he,
who knew no sin and hated sin with a perfect hatred having the entire weight of his
people's sin -- that universe of evil -- laid upon his shoulders, he opening his heart to
have poured into it the whole cup of the wrath of God, the eternal despair of hell, and
he, who lived in unprecedented fellowship with God, he who depended upon that communion
with God as no man ever depended upon it before or since, he suffering now God's holy
wrath alone, abandoned by his God.
And, And all of this he did, all of this God did through him, this greatest
gift, the gift of his Son, God made to us and for us in defiance of the fact that our
lives, yours and mine, repelled him...disgusted him...shamed him...grieved
him...wounded him.
And don't say, "but, he knew what we would become" for, look what we have
become: we have taken his great gift and used it to comfort ourselves in our continued
sinning against him; we have forgotten and ignored the terrible price he paid for us and
have followed again and again after idols and have preferred other gods to him time and
time again.
And, what is more, we don't become anything good that he himself has not made us by his
grace and his power. Besides, he could have made any sinner into a saint by his almighty
power, but he chose you and did not chose others.
No! This is love bald and bare. No reason, no explanation possible, now or ever! He
found us full of what crushes his heart and then he sold the farm to redeem us for
himself. There is no figuring this out -- there is only amazement, and wonder, and eternal
love and astonished gratitude in return.
Here is the fact: man deals in this world with a personal God, who takes his sin
personally! And that fact comes very close to being the most important fact in all the
world and the fact that explains and makes wonderful so many other facts that Holy
Scripture will reveal to us about God and about his bewildering, dumbfounding grace and
wonderful salvation.
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