Untitled Sermon
Introduction
As we have said, the first eleven chapters of the book of Genesis constitute a prologue to the whole book of Genesis and therefore the prologue to the beginning of the old covenant. These chapters are not intended as a history of the whole race up to the time of Abraham. There is no attempt in them to narrate a consistent sequence of events that describes a coherent history. Rather, they are a sequence of incidents, each telling something about the human race before God began his special work of redemption. This prologue therefore also tells us something about the human race even now. At least it tells us something about the part of the race that has not become part of God’s redemptive work, whether by being part of the old covenant or the new covenant.
This long prologue is written in a different style from what follows it. Each incident has a certain narrative unity that makes a point. One of the features of its style is what we might call “holes” (lacunae) in the account as a whole. Perhaps the paradigm example of such a hole is expressed in the question: “Where did Cain get his wife from, if Cain and Abel were the two children of Adam and Eve?” We can certainly make various guesses, and the history of exegesis of the story of Cain and Abel provides us with many such guesses. However, the text itself provides no help, and a guess is just a guess. That should let us understand that we are mainly to pay attention to what the text tells us, because that is the key to the meaning of the passage, not what the text does not tell us, however interesting the attempt to solve that puzzle might be.
The first chapters of the book of Genesis indicate the stages of God’s plan by the use of genealogies of ten generations each.1 The first of the genealogies occurs in chapter 5:1–32. That genealogy takes us from Adam to Noah. In the chapters 2 to 4, therefore, we have looked at the first stage, the stage of the sons (descendants) of Adam. We learned both of God’s intention for the human race, and of the Fall of humanity that has so far prevented the intention from being fully realized. The key turning point was disobedience to God, and disobedience to God leads to bad consequences. One of the main bad consequences is a recurrent propensity to evil.
We now need to consider the second stage, the stage of the sons (descendants) of Noah, treated in chapter 6 to the end of chapter 11, concluding with the genealogy tracing the descendants of Noah. In this section we see how God deals with the evil in human life and works to bring good out of evil, even in what we would describe as pagan or secular society. This section lays an important foundation for the following history of the old and then new covenant people of God, especially in their relations with those who do not belong to God’s people. It focuses on a special event, the Flood, and a special set of human beings, Noah and his immediate family. It contains an account of God’s response to the fallen state of the human race, and gives us foundational elements of his strategy to overcome the effects of the Fall and bring the human race to the state he intended it to be in from the beginning.
Creation being destroyed. The beginning of Genesis 6 contains a description of the human race having reached rock bottom. Early in the account, we read the following verses:
The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the ground, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. (Gen 6:5–8)
The human race so little expressed the purpose of God in creation, so little expressed the image and likeness of God in the way it lived and acted, that it almost seemed like a mistake to have brought it into existence in the first place.
There was, however, an exception—Noah—and next comes a brief description of the people who will play the key role in what is to follow: Noah and his three sons.
These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God. And Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (Gen 6:9–10)
Then there is a restatement of the problematic situation of the human race, a somewhat similar description to that found in Genesis 6:5.
Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth. (Gen 6:11–12)
What some have termed “the call of Noah” follows.
And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh; for the earth is filled with violence through them; behold, I will destroy them with the earth.” (Gen 6:13)
Here God speaks to Noah about his view of the situation of the human race, “all flesh,” and tells him that he is about to destroy them all, along with the earth—a radical remedy. Noah, however, is to build an ark, and that ark is to contain Noah and his family along with representatives of the animals, so that there will be a future for the human race and the rest of creation.
We find two statements of the human problem in chapter 6, and the different features of both are instructive. The statement in Genesis 6:5 describes the human race as committing great wickedness, and states that the wickedness was rooted in the inclination of their thoughts toward evil. The problem is both in the external actions of the human race but even more significantly in their interior inclinations. This tells us what the root difficulty is.
The second statement in Genesis 6:11 describes the human race as filled with “violence,” as it is translated in the RSV. Others translate this as “outrageous behavior” or something similar. The evil actions of the human race had become flagrantly bad. The evil that was manifested in Cain’s murder of his brother had become characteristic of the human race as a whole.
This second statement of the problem contains another key feature of the problem. It says that the earth was corrupt, and it was corrupt because all flesh, all human beings, had corrupted their way, the way they lived (6:12). God’s response then is that he needed to destroy all flesh (6:13). “To be corrupt,” “to corrupt,” and “to destroy” are translations of different forms of the same Hebrew verb. This probably means that the earth was being destroyed because human beings had already been destroying the moral goodness of their life, and as a result God decided to complete the destruction of the human race. As Revelation 11:18, puts it, he had to “destroy the destroyers of the earth.”
This second statement gives us an important understanding of the nature of God’s judgment. Wickedness, evil, outrageous behavior ruins human life or at least produces a process of ruin. God did not have to do anything for sinful behavior to produce very bad consequences. Rather, God’s judgment in the Flood sped up the process that was already going on. It did so because he decided to remedy the situation. A radical remedy was needed.
To understand God’s approach, we need to see not only the destruction caused by the Flood but also the other feature of what happened. The Flood completed the destruction of what had become an intolerable situation, but most of the account is not about the Flood. It is about God’s remedy. The remedy centers upon one human being.
The Lord had one man of whom he could approve, one who had found favor in [his] eyes. This was a man who was righteous, who was blameless in his generation. That latter phrase may indicate that he was righteous for the stage of God’s plan he was in (the meaning of which will be discussed further on in this chapter). He was a man who had not corrupted his way on earth. He was also a man who walked with God, a man who lived in a good relationship with him. This was a man who could make a new beginning for the human race. He was there when he was needed.
God chose Noah to make that new beginning by telling him to build an ark. He explained to him that he was going to destroy the earth by bringing a flood upon it. He wanted Noah, however, to preserve every kind of living thing in the ark, to bring them through the destruction. He would then make a covenant with Noah and his descendants.
When God finished telling Noah about what he was supposed to do, there is one simple line of Scripture that follows. Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him (Gen 6:22). This line is repeated after the Lord tells Noah that the time had come and he should enter the ark (Gen 7:5). Noah’s response was simply to obey whatever the Lord told him to do, in contrast to Adam. Noah’s obedience enabled him to take the role God was giving to him.
The New Testament in Hebrews 11:7 adds a further perspective to what we are told in Genesis:
By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, took heed and constructed an ark for the saving of his household; by this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness which comes by faith.
Noah heard God speak to him and tell him something that he had no way of knowing about except through faith in God’s word. God gave Noah instructions that only made sense if in fact what God said was true. Noah believed God, and his faith was expressed in obedience.
Hebrews 11:7 adds the important point by this he condemned the world. This probably does not mean that Noah pronounced judgment on the world. Rather, it means that his faith and obedience revealed that it would have been possible for human beings to respond to God the same way Noah did. Obedience to God was not beyond the capacity of the human race, however much Noah, and other human beings who pleased God, needed God’s grace to be obedient. The fact that Noah obeyed God, in contrast to the rest of the human race, who did not, meant that Noah and his obedience made clear the guilt of most of the human race.
In the whole account of Noah and his role in the Flood (Genesis 6:9 to 9:19), Noah does not say anything. Nothing in the account helps us to know what he thought or felt when God spoke to him and gave him such an unusual commission. Noah’s lack of speaking has the effect, however, of centering attention on what Noah did. He obeyed God with regard to building and using the ark because he believed God had spoken to him and told him what needed to be done. And afterwards, as we shall see, when God had delivered him and his family and the animals, he offered sacrifice to thank God.
The account of Noah and the Flood provides a foundational “type” for Christian teaching. It presents a basic pattern for how God deals with the human race, especially its fallenness, the state brought about by the Fall of Adam and Eve that manifests itself not only in immoral behavior, even flagrantly bad behavior, but also in an inner inclination to do evil. And it presents an important background for understanding the work of Christ and the new covenant. The story of Noah is a story of judgment, but even more it is a story of a new creation, and in that it prefigures the redemptive work of Christ.
THE FLOOD