"When Bad Things Happen to Bad People!"

How will this world come to an end? What will become of us? Robert Frost wrote in 1920: Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. Frost wrote just after the mayhem of WWI, but he could just as easily have been speaking of a later day when people would invent more creative ways to obliterate their neighbors. Many of us grew up in a time when “the end” didn’t seem so far away. Nuclear annihilation was real enough that schools held “disaster drills” and public buildings were labeled as fallout shelters. Today, real or imagined nuclear threats are enough to scramble the bombers or even send a nation into decades of war.
But nuclear winter isn’t our only problem. The endless summer of self-inflicted global warming is just as likely to wreak havoc in our world. Then there are the threats of global terrorism, plagues, earthquakes and cyclones. Name your poison...fire or ice...we live in dangerous times.
The message of Genesis is that times have always been perilous. Man’s destructive tendencies, coupled with the unbridled power of creation keep us continually hanging over the precipice of annihilation. We are inveterate apocalyptic knob-twisters. God created the building blocks of matter; we figure out how to split them and blow things up in the process. God created genetic coding; we can’t wait to fiddle with eggs and chromosomes. We have sown the biological and environmental and nuclear win...and now we’re praying we don’t reap the whirlwind.
The Bible has always been concerned about the end. This morning we look at a time when the end almost came for us before we even had a chance to really get going. As amazing and upsetting as our own capacity for self-destruction is, it seems even more unsettling that long ago, in the time of a Noah, God chose to wipe out almost all people on earth. Does that strike you as strange?...somehow out of character for God? Does it cause you to scratch your head and wonder, “How could a loving God do that?” Just last week we looked over the shoulder of a joyous Creator as he surveyed all he made and declared it good. Today we are tempted to see God as a petulant kid so upset with his sandbox creation that he kicks the stuffing out of all he painstakingly created. Is this that bad “Old Testament” God again?
Let’s start this morning with the question: Why did God destroy his creation? The simple answer from the Bible is: Sin. God’s creation was hopelessly rebellious, crewed up, off-the-tracks, and full of sin. Genesis records: The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. Man’s evil was so pervasive that there is even a strange reference in Genesis 6 to the breakdown of God’s ordered creation...as the “sons of God” enjoined in relations with the “daughters of man.” Some think that even the angelic beings were somehow involved...or polluted by man’s sin, fathering children and creating some kind of super race. Could man’s sinfulness seep through the fabric of the cosmos, infecting even the heavenly realm? It almost seems that God acted to stave off a universal disaster. An explanation like that doesn’t end our distaste for this part of the story. So we judge God for being too...judgmental.
What do you make of this story? Nearly every people on earth have oral histories of ancient flood accounts. They all give differing reasons for the coming of the great flood. The Babylonians said it happened because people were too numerous and the gods couldn’t keep them thinned out with disease and war. African stories say the flood came because people wouldn’t share water. The Hebrews attributed the flood to one thing: sin. Sin was our undoing.
And that’s exactly what the flood was–an “undoing” of the second day of creation when God separated the waters in the heavens above from the waters below, hollowing out a space where humans could dwell. Genesis says that although man can not see it, beyond the borders of this creation there is a heaving ocean of chaos which God (in his grace) holds back from pouring into this middle ground where humans dwell. God brought order to the world, but there always remains the potential for disaster. “In Christ,” says Paul, “all things hold together.’ But if God’s hand is ever removed from holding the chaos back...if Christ ever let go of the cosmos he holds together, the “dammed up chaos on the margin of the world would break loose and pour in upon us.” [Helmut Thielicke, How the World Began, (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1961) p. 238.] Genesis says that’s what happened. When people became so evil that they began to break down the order of creation, God simply stepped away, and the foundations of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens released their deadly flow.
I wonder if it’s so different for us today? We pray every day for an end to this war, but when we really look at it truthfully, who do we have to blame but ourselves? We’re in our sixth year of a war it seems will go on forever. Even the president’s own press secretary now acknowledges this was an unnecessary war...a war that has killed over 100,000 Iraqis, over 4,000 Americans. A war that has left tens of thousands maimed and crippled and broken. A war that will cost America trillions of dollars. Don’t you get the impression that God simply moved over and let us have our way with a war we wanted so very badly?
And what about our other doomsday scenario...global warming? God told us to shepherd the earth, to care for it. Instead, we strip mined it, and filled it with smoke and sewage and stench so we could live the high life. People broke through that dam of grace that holds back the raging tide. Man degraded the image of God to the point where it was no longer recognizable. We said to God, “Get out of the way, we’ve got business to attend to.” And so he did...You want a life without God? Have it your way. This is what it’s like. And so the chaos and problems and terror that flood upon us are ours to deal with.
Many folks have the notion that when they, by their actions, make themselves enemies of God, he comes looking for them, sword unsheathed, thunderbolt in hand. Instead, the witness of Scripture seems to be that people can reach a point in their sin where God simply “gives them their freedom”...lets them have their own way. He “gives them over” to whatever lifestyle they want to lead...war...environmental suicide...sexual impurity. Sometimes God simply moves out of the way and the chaos and disorder which he has held back floods in with deadly results.
Does that destruction somehow please God? Does God delight in watching people self-destruct? Genesis does not give us the picture of an out-of-control, raging god who enjoyed watching people drown like rats. Genesis says: The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. Vengeance is not the telling characteristic of “the Old Testament God.” Grief is...pain is. Here we see God not as the avenging judge, but as the hopelessly troubled parent. We pervert every gift he’s given us: the resources of creation, the joy of sex, the secrets of the atom, the freedom to choose...then when all hell breaks loose we wonder: Where is God when it hurts? Why doesn’t he save us? All our problems somehow become his fault. Why did God destroy creation? He didn’t...we destroyed ourselves...while in the background God cried tears as deep as the ocean.
As terrible as the story of the flood is, the destruction of the world isn’t really the main point of the Genesis account. It’s not a story about the end of the world. The real point of the story hinges on this little phrase buried deep in the middle of all the mayhem: God remembered Noah. The story is not about all those who turned their backs on God and invited their own destruction. The story is about a faithful family, and a new beginning. God is not the God of the end...he is the God of new beginnings. His mercies are new every morning. This is a story of Noah’s faithfulness to God, and of God’s faithfulness to Noah. This is the account of how one man’s faith changed the course of history. Noah talked to God. Noah listened to God. He did the things God wanted him to do. Noah never wavered in his obedience, even when he was asked to do crazy things like build a boat miles from the nearest body of water.
Each of us is tempted to think that our little story doesn’t matter much when cast against the backdrop of a turbulent, confusing, chaotic, sinful world. Does God know me? Does God care? ...And God remembered Noah. The God who dwells in inexpressible light, who exists beyond the end of the cosmos looked down on this little blue planet awash with water...and he kept his eye on that one tiny point where Noah bobbed on the surface of the deep in his little boat. Whatever may be happening in the world, you are not forgotten. God has his eye on you, and he cares for you.
What is he looking for? He looks for a person like Noah, a person who, even in the worst of circumstances will choose to live for him. He looks for someone who will walk with him, no matter what their friends do...no matter how their neighbors live. Perhaps God will ask you to do something that seems strange to your friends, something that is incomprehensible to your family. Will you do it? A few years ago a young couple with a brand new baby decided to follow God all the way to China. China?! A few years ago a woman decided to leave her job at the country club and go to work with homeless people. Homeless people?! A few years ago a person who was hurt deeply decided to listen to the voice of God and forgive. A few years ago a person discovered a child without a home life, without hope of making it in this world and decided to take hold of that child’s hand.
What will you do for the Lord? Will you walk away from money, security, happiness that the world offers? Will you stay in a difficult relationship? Will you walk away from “what you deserve” to follow the God who says: “Build an ark?” Will you be foolish in the eyes of others to follow Jesus?
God can do amazing things with just one person who is truly devoted to him. All was sin and death and destruction until that turning point... “...and God remembered Noah.” From that point, the waters began to recede, new life appeared on earth, God placed the promise of a new covenant with humans in the sky...all because of one man.
Many, many years later, Jesus told his followers that the story of Noah is still lived out in our lives. God is still in the business of building...and the rains of chaos continue to fall. Jesus said: ...everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.
The storm is coming. The storm of judgment, the storm of sickness, the storm of sin. The storm is coming...the storm of marital trouble, the storm of temptation, the storm of war. Do you hear the words of Jesus? What kind of a house are you building? What kind of an ark are you building? What kind of a life are you building? Is Jesus the foundation, the cornerstone of your life? Or are you tempting God to simply get out of your way and allow the waters of chaos to flood around you, sweeping you away once and for all? Don’t wait for the rain to start. Don’t wait for the creek to rise. Don’t wait for the door of the ark to snap shut for good. Make your life count.