Read Genesis 6, Ezra 6, and Psalms 1-3.
This devotional is about Genesis 6.
Critics of our faith commonly describe God — especially “the God of the Old Testament”– as someone who is angry by nature and who excessively and brutally pours out wrath on humanity through supernatural judgments, natural disasters, and attacks from enemy nations. Our passage for today, Genesis 6, is one example that these critics bring up.
It is true that verses 6 and 7 say, “The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” It is also true that Genesis describes the outpouring of God’s wrath through the flood in the coming chapters of Genesis.
What goes unmentioned by critics, and is sometimes overlooked even by believers, is what Genesis 6 describes about why God was angry and why he determined to kill humanity. Verse 5 says, “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” The fall of humanity into sin, described in Genesis 3, led to unmitigated depravity in the human race. That is why God was angry and determined to destroy humanity. The actions of people were wicked according to verse 5a, but verse 5b says that the thoughts of humanity were relentlessly wicked: “…every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.”
Those are general descriptions of the sinfulness of humanity, but what were the specific sins that God was so angry about? The only one mentioned directly here in Genesis 6 is violence. Verse 11 says, “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence.” Like Cain who killed his brother Abel, then, people on earth were forcefully wounding and killing one another. Our society has redefined and accepted as normal many sins that God’s word condemns, but everyone still agrees that wounding and/or killing another person without any justification is depraved. That’s why God was so unhappy and sent the flood. It wasn’t that he was cosmically and irreparably cranky, bad-tempered, and mean. It was that humanity was globally and unrepentantly cranky, bad-tempered, mean, and brutal to one another.
The flood, then, was an act of judgment. God, our Creator, judged the human race because of its violence and its wicked obsession with violence as an object of human thought. Instead of thinking about how to love others, work productively and profitably with others, and improve themselves and the human race, people thought continuously about how to hurt others, take advantage of others, and end the lives of others.
Despite his determination to destroy humanity for its sins, God was merciful to Noah. Note that Noah “found favor” with God first in verse 8 before God declared him to be “a righteous man” and “blameless” in verse 9. In other words, Noah didn’t earn the salvation God gave him in the ark. God had mercy on him first (v. 8) and, as a result of God’s mercy, Noah became “righteous,” “blameless,” and “walked with God” (v. 9).
This is how God works. He saved us as Titus 3:5 says, “not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.” Just as Noah was saved from the coming flood of God’s wrath in this life, so God will save us eternally from his coming wrath in the future. We–all of us, including Noah–deserve the wrath of God that is coming. It is not our own righteousness or blamelessness that saves us, but only the mercy of God.
Having received that mercy in Christ, let’s follow Noah’s example. Just as he was ” a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time” (v. 9b), so let us be righteous and blameless among our people by the grace of God. Just as Noah “walked with God” (v. 9c) by His grace, so let us walk with him daily as well.