Genesis 6 - 9 - Deep & Wide
- Chad Werkhoven
- 2 hours ago
- 5 min read
The flood account demonstrates God's just wrath and faithful mercy.
CONTEXT: Last week, we left off Genesis at a time where man had become "exceedingly wicked." Today, we pick up with God's just response.
Genesis 6 - 9 (NIV)
11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 13 So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. 14 So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out.
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18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. 19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you.
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22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.
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7... 12 And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.
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17 For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth.
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21 Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind.
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8 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded.
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13 By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry.
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9... 8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: 9 “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you 10 and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. 11 I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: 13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
Q&A 11
Q. But isn’t God also merciful?
A. God is certainly merciful,
but he is also just.
His justice demands
that sin, committed against his supreme majesty,
be punished with the supreme penalty—
eternal punishment of body and soul.
Summary
It seems odd that it's gained the traction it has... using this tragic story of the flood as a decorating motif for children's nurseries, that is. It does make for a cute theme, for sure! Cartoonish but cuddly lions and sheep and cattle line the decks of a wooden ark, gracefully bobbing on the calm blue sea. Don't forget the couple of giraffes sticking their long necks through a skylight from within the ark!
The reality of the situation was anything but cartoonish. The earth had become corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. Notice the very first thing that God says to Noah: I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.
And, as always, God does exactly what He said He'd do. For forty days and nights the flood kept coming. There was no relief, nowhere to hide. Imagine how man and beast battled against one another for high ground! But no ground was high enough, for the ark was lifted high above the earth. Nothing that was not on the ark survived. Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind.
We live in a society today that always sees those who suffer misfortune as victims of oppression of one sort or the other. And it's so easy in this account to think of those swept away by the flood as victims, helplessly perishing under the wrath of their Divine oppressor. But they weren't. What God did was perfectly just. They got just a fraction of what our sins, committed against God's supreme majesty, deserve.
Dig Deeper
Of course there's really good reasons to decorate with cheery renderings of Noah and the Ark. We do need reminders of the carnage that precipitated it - even to the extent that descriptions of it elicit gasps and horror - but this story is not just about the manifestation of God's just wrath. Quite the opposite.
This story is arranged in Genesis using a literary technique that we'll see employed often by ancient Hebrew writers called the chiasm. Rather than put the story or poem's primary emphasis at the end, which is what we tend to do, they would place the primary point right smack in the middle.
So all of the details about mankind's wickedness, the lists of dimensions and materials from which Noah constructed the Ark, the animals reporting two by two, the doves disembarking to find dry ground, and all of the other elements we read of are interesting and important, but they're not the primary point.
Rather, the primary point - the sentence that finds itself exactly in the middle of this three chapter long narrative - is not just the main thesis of the flood narrative, it's the big idea that is central to the entire Bible:
8:1 But God remembered Noah...
Despite the fact that you and I deserve what the sinful drowning pagans got, God remembers us, His covenant people. He provides salvation for the coming judgment. Whereas believing Noah and his family were lifted high above the carnage in a ark, you and I are lifted up in the cross of our Savior, Jesus Christ.
ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, who is perfectly just and merciful;
ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray that you will have faith like Noah did (Hebrews 11:7);
ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED:
