Sean C. Capparuccia

30 August 2026

Sermon XI in the Genesis series

Genesis 7:17–24; 2 Corinthians 5:17–21; 2 Peter 3:3–10

Last week we left Noah in an unusual situation. God had commanded him to build a boat, and Noah built the boat. God commanded him to bring the animals, and Noah brought the animals. God commanded him to bring his wife, his sons and their wives inside, and Noah did. Then Genesis gives us that simple and yet terrifying sentence: “And the LORD shut him in.” God shut the door of the ark.

I can imagine that the people outside may have begun pounding on the hull. Perhaps they cried out, “Noah! Open the door! We believe you now! Let us in!”  Lara and I were thinking about this after church last Sunday, and we came to the conclusion that Noah and his family probably did not hear very much of that. The reason is that Genesis does not describe a gentle rain falling upon the earth. It says, “The fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened.” This was not merely a heavy thunderstorm. This was a cataclysmic torrential rain. The fountains of the deep burst open, the floodgates of heaven were opened, and judgment came upon the earth.

There is something very important about Noah being inside the ark when this happened. Noah was not trapped inside a boat; he was inside the vessel of salvation. He was in the place God had provided for his safety. Outside the ark was judgment; inside the ark was salvation. While the judgment of God was raging outside, Noah and his family were secure within the provision God had made for them. The ark was a place of peace, so, no, they probably did not hear the terror outside. And they themselves were not there because they had somehow escaped God’s judgment by their own cleverness. They were there because God had provided a means of salvation, and they had entered it.

Genesis 7 tells us that the waters continued to rise. Verse 17 says, “The flood continued forty days on the earth; and the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth.” Verse 18 says, “The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth; and the ark floated on the face of the waters.” Then verse 19 says, “The waters prevailed so mightily upon the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered.” Notice the repetition: the waters prevailed. They increased. They rose. They covered the earth. They prevailed.

There are people who would tell us that the Flood was just a local flood somewhere in the ancient Near East. But the language of Genesis does not read that way. Consider something as simple as the birds. Why did Noah have to take birds onto the ark? Birds fly. If this had merely been a local flood, the birds could simply have flown to higher and drier ground. The only animals specifically named later in the account—the raven and the dove—were precisely the kinds of creatures that could have escaped a localized flood. Yet they were aboard the ark. Genesis says that God would “blot out from the land every living thing,” and later says, “All flesh was blotted out.” The biblical account presents the Flood as a worldwide judgment.

That naturally leads to another question: Genesis tells us that the waters prevailed until the high mountains under heaven were covered, and that the waters stood fifteen cubits above them. That is approximately twenty-two and a half feet. If we assume that the mountains of the pre-Flood world were exactly the same height and shape as the mountains we see today, then we are faced with an enormous amount of water. Water that didn’t exist before the Flood, and water that didn’t exist after it. Mount Everest, for example, rises more than twenty-nine thousand feet above sea level. So where did all that water come from? And perhaps even more importantly, where did it go?

But notice the assumption behind that question. We are assuming that the world looked exactly the same before the Flood as it does today. Why should we make that assumption? If the Flood was the worldwide geological catastrophe described in Genesis, shouldn’t we expect the surface of the earth to have been dramatically changed by it? A worldwide catastrophe involving enormous quantities of water and occurring over a relatively short period of time would surely have had tremendous geological consequences.

Hydroplate Theory

This is where some creation scientists have proposed various models to explain what may have happened. One of these is the hydroplate theory developed by Dr. Walt Brown. In his book, In the Beginning, Dr. Brown attempts to explain some of the geological consequences of the Flood by proposing that enormous quantities of water existed beneath the earth’s crust and that the breaking open of these subterranean waters produced catastrophic geological effects.

Now, we need to be careful here. Was Walt Brown there? No. Could he have reproduced the Flood in a laboratory? No. Therefore, we should call the hydroplate theory what it is: a theory. But it is an interesting and plausible attempt to explain how the geological effects of a worldwide Flood might have occurred.

Genesis 7 says that “all the fountains of the great deep burst forth.” Notice that the biblical account does not describe merely water falling from above. It describes water bursting forth from below. If enormous pressure existed beneath the earth’s crust and that pressure was suddenly released, the force would have been unimaginable. We can debate the mechanics. We can debate the geology. We can debate precisely how the Flood produced the geological formations we see today. But we do not have to abandon the Bible simply because we do not know every physical detail of the event. Whatever conclusions one reaches concerning the precise geological mechanisms involved, Scripture gives us a picture of tremendous geological upheaval. God made the universe, and God gave us His Word.  And ultimately, truth cannot contradict truth.

In fact, Psalm 104 gives us a remarkable description of God’s activity in creation and in the ordering of the waters:

“He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved.

You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains.

At your rebuke they fled; at the sound of your thunder they took to flight.

The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them.

You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth.

You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills. (Psalm 104:5-10).

But listen to this, in Psalm 104:5 it says, “[God] set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved.” The Hebrew here literally translates as “will not totter.”^[1]  Imagine if the entire earth’s crust was floating on a mile thickness of water. What would it do? It would undulate as the moon moved in its orbit and created the tides. The earth would indeed ‘totter’ like a dock at a marina. So, God set the foundations which stabilized it and that created depressions that filled with water which gave us “seas and dry land.”

But at this point we need to put the geology aside, because if all we do with Genesis 7 is talk about the rocks, mountains, water, and geological formations, we have missed the central message of the passage. The Flood is not primarily about water. The Flood is about sin and judgment.

Genesis 7:23 gives us one of the darkest descriptions in Scripture: “The Lord blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the ground, human beings and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark.” That is a horrifying picture, and it should be. It tells us something that our culture desperately wants to avoid: God judges sin.

We are very comfortable talking about God’s love, mercy, kindness, and forgiveness. But we are much less comfortable talking about His judgment. Yet if God is truly righteous, He must judge sin. Imagine a judge who stood before a murderer and said, “I know that you murdered five people, but I am a loving judge, so I am going to let you go.” We would not praise that judge for his love. We would call him as corrupt and possibly even hold him accountable for the crimes that came out of his leniency.  Why? Because justice requires judgment. And God is not corrupt. God is holy. Actually, He is thrice holy: holy, holy holy, which means perfectly holy. In English we say holy, holier, holiest. Thrice holy is holiest. He is perfectly pure and perfectly righteous, therefore, His judgments are righteous.

The Flood reminds us of something that we desperately need to recover: sin is serious because God is holy. And once we understand that, we can begin to understand why the Gospel is such good news.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” Think about that. The Flood tells us that God judges sin. The Cross tells us that God judged our sin in Christ. That is the Gospel.

Jesus Christ never sinned—not once. Satan tempted Him, people mocked Him, people lied about Him, people betrayed Him, people beat Him, and  crucified Him. Yet He remained perfectly righteous. And then Paul says that God “made him to be sin.” This does not mean that Jesus became a sinner or committed sinful acts. Rather, our sin was placed upon Him. Our guilt was imputed to Christ, and His righteousness is imputed to us. He takes our sin, and we receive His righteousness. He bears the judgment, and we receive grace. He goes to the Cross, and we receive life. That is the Gospel.

And if we do not understand the seriousness of sin, we will never understand the glory of grace.

This is also why the doctrine of original sin matters. In our Methodist Articles of Religion, Article IX describes original sin as the corruption of human nature, by which mankind is “very far gone from original righteousness” and naturally inclined toward evil. That is not a particularly popular doctrine today. In fact, in South Africa this week, the GMC is meeting to discuss our beliefs and there are some who are literally trying to remove the language of original sin from our Doctrines and Disciplines. There are many who want to say that humanity is basically good. But Scripture tells us something different.

You do not have to teach a child to be selfish. You do not have to give a toddler a seminar on the word “mine.” You do not have to teach a child how to blame his brother when he gets caught doing something wrong. Somehow, they figure these things out rather quickly. We are sinners by nature as well as by choice. The problem with humanity is not merely that we need a little improvement. The problem is that we need redemption. We do not merely need to become better people. We need a Savior.

Now let’s go back to Noah inside the ark. There is something beautiful here concerning the assurance of salvation. Noah was not saved because he built the ark. He was not saved because he admired the ark. He was not saved because he talked about the ark. He was saved because he entered the ark.

Imagine Noah and his family inside that ark for forty days. The rain is pounding against the roof. The boat is rocking. The earth is shaking. Noah might well have wondered, “Are we going to make it?” But think about it. Would God really command Noah to build an ark, bring his family inside, bring the animals inside, and then allow the ark to capsize? No. God’s own character provided assurance that His promise would stand.

The same is true for the Christian. Romans 8 says, “Those whom he foreknew he also predestined; those whom he predestined he also called; those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.” We see the plain and explicit chain of grace here: His foreknowledge leads to His predestinating grace which leads to His grace of calling which leads to justifying grace which leads to a sanctifying grace^[2] and ultimately to the grace of glorification.  In other words, if you are predestinated (and we don’t need to go into what all that entails) you will be glorified!  You can rest assured, by the witness of the Holy Spirit within you that you are saved. You aren’t probably saved; you aren’t maybe saved; you aren’t potentially saved as long as you do this, that, and the other by the time you die.

The God who begins the work finishes the work. Our assurance of salvation does not ultimately rest upon how tightly we can hold onto Christ. It rests upon how tightly Christ holds onto us.

Now we come to the uncomfortable part of the story. There were people outside the ark, and they were not saved. We should not soften that fact. Scripture does not apologize for it. Peter tells us that in the last days people will mock the promise of Christ’s return. They will ask, “Where is this coming of which he has promised?” They will assume that because judgment has not yet come, judgment never will come; in fact, it seems as though people have for the most part quit asking it. Unless some 9/11 happens or some major tragedy.

And that is precisely the attitude that prevailed in Noah’s day. They heard the preaching. They saw the ark. They watched Noah build. But they continued with their lives as though nothing were going to happen.

Then the rain came.

Peter tells us that another judgment is coming. The first judgment came by water. The next judgment will come by fire. And that means that we are living in the interval between the Flood and the Fire.

Think about that.

We are living in the interval.

For us, the door of salvation is still open. The Gospel is still being preached. Mercy is still being offered. Christ is still being proclaimed. But one day the door will close.

And that brings us directly to Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 5. Paul says, “We are ambassadors for Christ.” What does an ambassador do? An ambassador carries a message from the king. It’s basically the same as what a disciple does. That is what we are. We have been given a message, and Paul says that we have been given “the ministry of reconciliation.”

That is our ministry. That is evangelism. That is discipleship. That is why the church exists. We are ambassadors, and our message is not simply, “Try harder.” It is not, “Become a better person.” It is not, “Clean yourself up and then come to God.” The message is that God has provided salvation. There is an ark. There is a refuge. There is forgiveness. There is reconciliation with God through Jesus Christ.

In other words, our ministry is to point people toward the Savior and say, “Come aboard.”

Again, The ark did not save Noah because he built it, or admired it.  

And the same is true of Christ. You can admire Christianity and still be lost. You can admire Jesus and still be lost. You can admire the church and still be lost. You can enjoy the music, appreciate the preaching, love coming to church, know the hymns, and even know the Bible—and still be standing outside the ark.

There comes a point when every person must answer one question: Have you trusted Christ?

Not merely, “Do you know about Christ?” Not merely, “Do you like Christ?” Not merely, “Do you think Christianity is a good thing?” But Are you in Christ?

Pastor and theologian, Dr. R. C. Sproul, relates a story from his own seminary days when the question was asked by a student, “What if when I get to heaven I look around and find that my mother’s not there but that she’s in hell, how could I possibly be happy in heaven?”  The professor responded, “Young man, don’t you know that when you get to heaven, you’ll be so purified from sin, so sanctified by the Holy Spirit, that you’ll be so much more concerned about the glory of God than you will be about the well-being of your mother, that you will see that your mother is in hell and rejoice to know it!”

In other words, we will rejoice in God’s justice. Not the justice we grew up with, but with true justice. Today our understanding is incomplete. Our emotions are mixed. We struggle to reconcile God’s justice and God’s mercy. But in glory, we will see clearly. We will see God’s holiness. We will see God’s righteousness. We will see God’s justice. We will understand that God’s judgments are righteous.

There is coming a day when every shadow of doubt will disappear. We will see reality as it truly is, and we will be able to say with absolute confidence that the Judge of all the earth has done righteously. We will understand that God is good, that He is holy, that He is righteous, and that His judgments are true.

So where does Genesis 7 leave us?

The waters are rising. The ark is floating. The world outside is under judgment. Noah and his family are safe. And God is faithful.

The question before us is not only whether the Flood is an interesting or even plausible historical event. It is not merely whether we can explain every detail of the science involved with it.

The question is much more personal:

Did you get on the boat?

Judgment is coming. Peter says it. Jesus says it. Genesis shows it. God judges sin. But God also provides salvation. And the salvation God has provided is Jesus Christ.

Jesus is our ark and our refuge. Jesus is our righteousness. Jesus is our peace. Jesus is our salvation.

Noah did not have to invent a way of salvation. God provided the ark. And we do not have to invent a way to heaven. God has provided the way. His name is Jesus.

So, if you are in Christ, rest in Him. Your salvation does not rest upon your performance. It rests upon Christ. When you stumble, Christ is sufficient. When you fail, Christ is sufficient. When you doubt, Christ is sufficient. When you wonder whether you have done enough, Christ is sufficient. The God who called you is faithful. The God who justified you will glorify you.

But if you are not in Christ, then hear the invitation. Come aboard. The Gospel is still being preached. Mercy is still being offered. Christ is still calling. Do not stand outside admiring the ark. Enter it. Trust Jesus. Believe the Gospel. Repent of your sin. Be baptized in the water and the Sprit and rest in His righteousness.

Because the day is coming when the door will close.

And on that day, the only question that will ultimately matter is this:

Were you in Christ?

The waters prevailed over the earth and its evil, but God’s grace prevailed over the waters. Judgment came, but salvation was provided. And today the invitation still stands. The door is open. Christ is calling.

So, Beloved, are you on the boat? Amen

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[1] “bal-timot `olam wa`ed” – “not totter forever and ever.

[2] Surely, if Wesley had written Romans, he would have included ‘sanctified’ in the “golden chain” of salvation.