Sin snowballs! And so we see that just a couple of chapters on from Adam and Eve's rebellion, evil has entrenched itself into the hearts of humankind.
"...And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart."
All that God created was good, yet now it has become corrupted and damaged. Here we get an amazing insight into the effect that this corruption has on God: God mourns over evil; he mourns over the devastating effects that it has on people's lives; he grieves that what he intended to be so good has become so rotten and damaged. But what can he do about it?
"So the Lord said, "I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created...together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry I have made them."
God's grief over sin leads him to act. We've already seen in 3:22 that God has banned access to the tree of life which, as Jay B pointed out, is an act of grace as well as judgement (imagine living forever in a fallen world!). Now God is determined to wipe out the scourge of sin which, due to humanity's privileged status as God's stewards, has implication for the whole of creation - not just humans.
"But Noah...!"
Back in 5:29 Noah's dad, Lamech, had prophesied that Noah would bring relief from God's curses; now the favour he has with God sees the continuity of creation beyond the devastating flood. On this it's important to note:
1. Noah is called "righteous" and "blameless" even though we know from what ensues that he is not morally perfect! In the OT, just as in the New, righteousness is defined by faith - not moral perfection.
2. The role of a mediator arises again and again throughout Scripture. God is always looking for people with the faith to partner with him.
Then the flood comes, it stays around for quite some time, then finally it subsides. (NB. If you remember from the creation account a bit about Hebrew cosmology - watery chaos separated! - then you'll note that God sending a flood is significant for through it the world returns once more to the watery chaos from which order was brought. Thus the flood account acts as a kind-of anti-creation, a clearing of the Etch A Sketch (Rich H.!!!) so that things can start over again.)
Following the flood, God's instructions to Noah remain the same as they were at creation - be fruitful and be good stewards of the earth!
The Lord God then commits in his heart (8:21), and then to Noah (9:11), that he won't ever destroy all life again. So has the problem been solved? Has getting rid of the 99.999% of the worst sinners fixed the problem of sin?!
"...And Ham, the father of Canaan saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers...Now the whole earth had one language...they said, "Come, let us build a tower with its top in the heavens..."...the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth...Then the Lord said, "How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin! I must go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me; and if not, I will know."..."
It appears not! Following the flood sin snowballs again. How will God deal with sin now? Well, we don't find out for a bit; but we do know that, in order to keep his promise, he'll need to find a way to destroy the sin without destroying the sinner!!!
One of the questions that came up this week was something like 'If Noah was the last God-fearing man around, why didn't God use him to talk more people round to following Him again?' We already discussed the fact that many people were directly working against God, making poor Noah's job a bit tricky, but there's some more information about him.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't as simple as Noah suddenly popping up with an awesome faith in God, ready to convert the nations. Noah came from a line of people who had lived their lives with God (You know Cain and Abel? Well Noah is Cain's great-great-great grandson.) Noah's father, Lamech, trusted God, even though he lived in a fallen world filled with struggle and violence - Lamech told his wives he had "killed a man who attacked me. If someone who kills Cain would be punished seven times, then the one who kills me will be punished seventy-seven times" (4:24). Not a man who believed in peaceful negotiation! However, God used Lamech too and when baby Noah was born he spoke over his son "May he bring us relief from our work and the painful labour of farming this ground that the Lord has cursed" (Gen 5:29) This is really significant when you think that Noah and his boat were Step 1 in God's Massive Plan to redeem humanity and literally reverse the effects of the fall that Adam and Eve had brought about.
So Noah grew up with a God-fearing Dad and would have learned about God from him... but it's interesting that while God calls Noah "righteous" he doesn't mention his wife or sons being righteous. For some reason they don't share his belief. If Lamech's family were the last God-fearing family on the planet then it's a safe bet that when the time came for Noah to choose a wife, she would have come from a neighbouring family that didn't believe in God. She and her sons apparently didn't take up her husband's beliefs and he failed to convert her. We aren't told how long Noah and his wife were married before the flood but if Noah couldn't even convince his own wife to take up his faith I wonder if he was beginning to run out of steam. God was with both Lamech and Noah for their entire lives, speaking to them and working through them (you don't learn to hear specific boat building instructions from God without good practise!), but whether it was the situation or their own hopelessness they weren't making much of a difference.
The other thing that is interesting are the ages we are given for Lamech and Noah. In those days, before God shortened the lifespan of humans, (Gen 6:3) Lamech was 182 years old when Noah was born, and he lived another 595 years (Gen 5:30). We are told that Noah was 600 years old when the flood happened (Gen 7:11) and it takes a few years for one man to get a boat that size built. Basically, what this means is that God didn't commit to flooding the earth until Noah's dad died. As long as these two men were together and able to support each other God held off his decision, but once Noah was the only one left, probably grieving his father, alone in his faith, and at a pretty low point, God knew that it was the Eleventh Hour and stepped in.
We think of Noah as a great 'Hero of the Faith' but really he was just another guy like the rest of us, not particularly special. It was God's actions through him that made his story remarkable. Finding this out really highlights for me what we were discussing God being both powerful and loving. On the one hand yes, He flooded the earth, making a decision that, while drastic, was well within His rights as Creator. But on the other hand He didn't take that decision lightly or carelessly, waiting until mankind had used up every single one of it's options, giving them every possible chance to start turning things around, and taking the faithfulness of Lamech and Noah into consideration.