Genesis 6 – January 11

Many people come to Genesis 6 and get entirely wrapped up in questions about the Nephilim. Although that is an interesting study, setting our focus on that detracts from the main point of what is taking place in the narrative. The main point being made at the beginning of the chapter is that the world did not get better after Adam or Cain. Instead, it had devolved into a miserable, violent quagmire of hatred and evil. We are told that “every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Their hearts and minds were increasingly, incessantly, persistently, and perpetually set against God.

Things had become so horrific that God “regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” God’s regret and grief is not like ours. Our regret exists because of our ignorance. We think to ourselves, “If I only knew how this would have turned out, I never would have…________” God, on the other hand, always knew that this proliferation of sin was going to occur. God’s regret is not like ours because God would not have changed anything that happened. The point of His “regret” and “grief” is that He was about to display His displeasure with the way things were. 

God’s plan was to make a radical display of judgment unlike anything the earth would ever experience again. He chose to kill nearly 100% of the world’s population with continent-shattering brutality. However, God showed favor to Noah. He is described as a man who “walked with God.” Interestingly, that is exactly what we read yesterday about Enoch. Just like Enoch, Noah was spared from death, but in a very different way.

God mercifully warned Noah that the flood was coming. And the Lord also provided him with blueprints of exactly how to design his escape vehicle. Please don’t overlook the final verse of this chapter. “Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.” This was a project that took Noah 120 years. Literally nothing that most of us will ever do require that length of commitment – not even breathing. This project probably required Noah to leverage all of his earthly wealth in order to build the structure of the ark. It certainly cost him his reputation. 2 Peter 2:5 tells us that Noah was a “herald (or preacher) of righteousness.” Even so, nobody heard his sermons with ears to hear. It was only his immediate family that joined him on the ark.

There is a very interesting parallel that is made regarding this building period when Noah was building the ark. The New Testament compares it to the waiting period before the final judgment of the earth at the conclusion of all things. Consider 1 Peter 3:21, “God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.” Do you see the incredible patience on display as God delayed his judgment for Noah’s building project to be completed so that the righteous might be spared? Similarly, God is presently acting with immense patience until all of His people have been brought to salvation, at which time the final judgment will arrive with a force greater than the great flood. “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.” (Luke 17:26-27)