WARRIORS: Genesis 6-7 - 06.07.10

Read, pray and discover what God communicated to the people then.

Earth was no longer the perfect paradise that God had intended. It is frightening to see how quickly all of humanity forgot about God. Incredibly, in all the world, only one man and his family still worshiped God. That man was Noah. Because of his faithfulness and obedience, God saved him and his family from a vast flood that destroyed every other human being on earth. This section shows us how God hates sin and judges those who enjoy it. 

Background:
  Setting: Place – Garden of Eden Time – Creation
  Author: Moses (Numbers 11:33 God spoke to Moses face to face)
  Audience: Israel

Narrative Reading Rules:
  Characters: God, Satan, God’s friend: Noah , Satan’s friend: Human Race
  Drama: The Plot – God was devastated with the Human Race and he decided to wipe out everyone except for Noah and his family.
  Dialogue: Conversations between God and Noah

  Discovery: What is the message intended by the author to the original audience?
Answer: Noah was spared from the destruction of the Flood because he obeyed God and built the boat. Just as God protected Noah and his family, he still protects those who are faithful to him today.

Reflect, pray and determine what is God communicating to us now.

GENESIS 6:1 - 12

"The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain... But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord (Genesis 6:6, 8)."

When the account says God was grieved, it is really the word God repented. We know from other Scriptures that it is impossible for God to repent. He does not change His mind like humans do. But this is a powerful figure to express in a vivid way God's anger and determination. When society reaches this stage of dissolution and deterioration, God's anger burns. It appears that He has changed His mind completely, even though He is but acting on principles that are entirely consistent with His own being.

Yet, in the midst of this, we read that it grieved Him, and grief is always the activity of love. What we finite human beings do not understand is that God's love and wrath are exactly the same thing. They are two sides of the same coin. What entrances us and warms us about God and draws us to Him is love. He is the God of love who loves regardless of merit. This is what attracts us. But it is because we respond that He appears to us in that way. To those who reject His love, the same quality in God becomes wrath, and it seems to be a wall of fire, burning and consuming everything.

We can see this also in ourselves. It is our love that causes us to be angry at anything that injures what we love. You injure a mother's child in the mother's presence, and watch her love flame out in anger against you. Thus we have here clearly described a time when humanity, in its rejection of God, passes beyond the place of seeing God as love and begins to experience His love as wrath. But it is exactly the same thing.

But there is always the shining of grace, as in verse 8: But Noah found favor [or, literally, grace] in the eyes of the LORD (Genesis 6:8). God was calling throughout this whole age, just as He is calling in our age today, pleading with people to turn from their ways, to resist the widespread lie of Satan. One man and his family turned and found grace in God's sight. He did not deserve it, and he could equally have turned and gone the other way, but he responded to the wooing and pleading of God and found grace in His sight.

Bring this down to this century and draw the parallel between the days of Noah and the days in which we live. We must remember that if we are delivered from the wrath to come, if we escape the judging hand of God upon society, it is not because of anything we have done; it is the manifestation of God's grace.

God wooed us and won us, sought us out and, through many influences upon us, brought us at last to see that the age in which we live is an age under the bondage of a lie. He has opened our eyes to the truth, till we have turned to the Lord Jesus and rested under the grace of God.

As our age deteriorates, and our civilization nears the point of utter collapse, we can thank God that we have been snatched away as brands from the burning, like Noah and his family, if our hearts are responsive to the appeal of God's grace.

How I thank you, Father, for Your grace, which has snatched me out of the fire and brought me into a relationship with Your dear Son.

Life Application: God's love and wrath are two sides of the same coin. Are we believing Satan's widespread lie, still striving to please God, or are we walking in His grace?

 GENESIS 6:13 - 22

"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 (Genesis 6:18)."

When Noah came into the ark, God said to him, I will make my covenant with you. It was not merely the ark that saved Noah. That was the means by which his salvation was accomplished, but what really saved Noah was God's agreement with him. The word and promise of God—that is what saved him. Therefore, we too must look beyond the means by which we are saved to the great motivation that brought Christ to earth, to the promise of God that underlies everything else and makes covenant with us, a new arrangement for living. Whenever you see this word covenant in Scripture, do not think of it as a contract that God makes with people. It is that, in one sense, but it is primarily a new basis for life, an arrangement for living. This covenant here goes further than simply saving Noah; it is to govern his life and the life of the world after the flood is over. It requires but one attitude on Noah's part, that of obedience.

I am disturbed by the ease with which many seek to use the Lord Jesus as a Savior to save them from going to hell when they die, but they have no intention of allowing Him to govern their lives while they live. But here the story of Noah is very clear. It was not merely the fact that God brought Noah into the ark that saved him; it was that Noah was obedient to a new arrangement for living. Noah obeyed God.

This is what saved Noah, and this is what saves us. It is not the fact that we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, thus agreeing that we belong to Him and will be saved when we die. It is the fact that we have received Him as Lord. We recognize His rights over us, His right to rule, His right to regulate, His right to command us and for us to obey. The heart is to respond immediately in obedience to all that God commands, as Noah did here. That acknowledgment of lordship is the basis of salvation. That is the basis on which we not only will survive the disaster that hangs imminently over our age, threatening to strike at any moment, but also the individual disasters of every life that can cut the ground out from beneath the house of life and demolish it, washing away the sands upon which we build.

We must, rather, establish it upon a rock that cannot be moved, which rests upon the most unshakable thing in all the universe--the Word of God. That is what created the universe. There is nothing more dependable than the Word of God. Ultimately, everything that is present in all the universe around us has come from that source. When we rest, therefore, upon the word of God, the covenant of God, we rest upon the most certain and sure thing the universe knows anything about. Heaven and earth, Jesus said, will pass away, but my words will never pass away (Matthew 24:35).

Lord, thank You for the New Covenant, which is a new arrangement for living, and which grants to me the freedom and power to obey You.

Life Application: God established a covenant whereby through obedience we can be saved and enter into a new Life. How does the story of Noah picture this new way of living?

GENESIS 7:1-24

"Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark (Genesis 7:23)."

What a striking thing, the extent of the judgment of the flood! Many today raise the question, Was the flood universal? It is very difficult to answer that. But one thing is certainly clear: The flood destroyed the civilization of that day. The world of that time, says Peter (2 Peter 3:6), was deluged and destroyed. The civilization of that day came to an abrupt and sudden end. The Scripture warns throughout its whole extent of the suddenness of God's judgment. Every day bears testimony to the suddenness with which death can strike in individual lives.

This was underscored for me once when I had a near-fatal accident. Driving down the highway, I was about ready to enter the freeway when a man in a pickup truck, waiting by the side of the road, suddenly pulled into my path when I was traveling about sixty-five miles an hour. My immediate thought was, Well, this is it. I'll not get through this, for it looked impossible. But, by God's grace, I was able to swerve around him to the front, and he stopped enough so that I was almost able to get by him. None of us were hurt. But it was a very close shave.

That sort of thing can happen to an age as well. That is the whole meaning of this passage. The fabric of our society can grow so rotten it can no longer support itself. Like a sail in a tempest, a tear appears that rapidly rips open, and soon the whole thing is in tatters. A total collapse follows once the process begins.

That is the lesson of the flood. It is clear from this that the great and fateful questions of faith are addressed to us privately and almost inaudibly. Seldom does God confront us with dramatic moments of decision. These people before the flood surely would have wished that the thunder would have rolled a week ahead. That would have tipped them off. But the skies are clear, and Noah is shut into the ark while there is no physical sign of impending judgment. They are shut up to believing or disbelieving the offer God made them through Noah.

A lady handed me a note from her son the other day in which he said, When I see the world burning in obedience to the prophecies, then I'll believe. That is too late. That is also what these people said. When we hear the rain coming and the thunder rolling, we'll believe. But God had shut the door, and it was too late.

Do you take that seriously? You may die tomorrow. The great question of Scripture is that if life is that uncertain, why not live now? Not in the empty death of the world's delirium, but in the full swing of the Spirit's power, knowing that all that is truly vital is kept safe in the ark of Jesus Christ—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time, says the apostle Peter (1 Peter 1:4b-5).

Thank You for this day, Lord. May I live this day knowing that it is a gift and that at any time You could choose to take me home.

Life Application: Many people have heard the story of Noah & the flood. What is the lesson of the flood that everyone should dwell on? Have we fully entered into the ark of Jesus Christ?

Respond and do something. Pray and decide what God wants to do in and through you in the future.

 6:1-4 Some people have thought that the "sons of God" were fallen angels. But the "sons of God" were probably not angels because angels do not marry or reproduce (Matthew 22:30; Mark 12:25). Some scholars believe this phrase refers to the descendants of Seth who intermarried with Cain's evil descendants. This would have weakened the good influence of the faithful and increased moral depravity in the world, resulting in an explosion of evil. 

6:6, 7 Does this mean that God regretted creating humanity? Was he admitting he made a mistake? No, God does not change his mind (1 Samuel 15:29). Instead, he was expressing sorrow for what the people had done to themselves, as a parent might express sorrow over a rebellious child. God was sorry that the people chose sin and death instead of a relationship with him. 

6:9 Say that Noah was "righteous" and "blameless" does not mean that he never sinned (the Bible records one of his sins 9:20). Rather, it means that Noah wholeheartedly loved and obeyed God. For a lifetime he walked step by step in faith as a living example to his generation. Like Noah, we live in a world filled with evil. Are we influencing others or being influenced by them?

6:22 Noah got right to work when God told him to build the huge boat. Other people must have been warned about the coming disaster (1 Peter 3:20), but apparently they did not expect it to happen. Today things haven't changed much. Each day thousands of people are warned of God's inevitable judgment, yet most of them don't really believe it will happen. Don't expect people to welcome or accept your message of God's coming judgment on sin.  Those who don't believe in God will deny his judgment and try to get you deny God as well. But remember God's promise to Noah to keep him safe. This can inspire you to trust God for deliverance in the judgment that is sure to come.