The Voice of the Lord is the important element in Bible stories. We discover this very early in our reading of the Word. See Genesis 1:3 “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”
After falling into sin, Adam and Eve heard the Voice walking in the Garden to find them. Voices generally don’t have feet. This phrasing points to the first chapter of John’s gospel. There, Jesus is referenced as the Word made alive. “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
The Bible teaches us about the God who is Here, with us, as Immanuel. The primary problem for us as people is one of hearing Him.
The Lord came to Adam and Eve. They were fearful, but the sound of the Voice drew them out of hiding.
The Scriptures show us just how devoted God is to those He created in His image. Note that God met Cain after he slain his brother Abel. The sad part of that story is that Cain departed from the presence of the Lord, rather than seeking to find forgiveness and rest in His Maker.
Once Cain got east of Eden, we see that he and his family members became busy people. They made tools and instruments. They formed communities and developed cities.
I think this over-activity was stimulated by the fact that they needed to do something to fill in the empty spaces in their lives. Those gaps in their existence were put there by the Lord – eternity set in them according to Ecclesiastes 3:11. And the spaces within were to be filled with time and communication in a relationship to the Lord.
In other words, we were made to listen for God, for the Voice that seeks us and saves us. Without this connection to Him, things go wrong – tremendously wrong as we see when we reach Genesis 6.
Evil Imaginations, Violent Atmosphere
The world God had made “good” and “very good” degenerated into chaos. What was the source of this turbulence? The imaginations of men’s hearts became only evil continually (see Genesis 6:5-6).
Fallen angels furthered the corruption at work through their relations involving the daughters of men. Many have debated over how these diabolic interactions were executed, but the activity did seemingly result in a category of giant humans (see Genesis 6:4).
Violence dominated the society. One of the first lyrical expressions in Genesis came from Lamech, a man who sang a boast to his wives about how he killed men who insulted him (see Genesis 4:23-24).
The corruptions upon earth were not limited to the human population either. All flesh had grown tainted and poisoned through the practices of the people. “And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth” (Genesis 6:12).
All of this served to bring grief to the heart of the Lord. He lamented at what had brought this atmosphere to earth. He pondered over how to deal with this situation. We get a real taste of how much we are really made in His image from this account. God was heartbroken over how men used their freedom of choice to foster wreck and ruin.
The weight of sorrow over the devastation God oversaw prompted Him to consider a total obliteration. However, there was one man who found favor; one upon whom the Lord chose set His heart upon – Noah.
This man was graced by the Lord. He was there living with integrity amid the confusion and the catastrophe.
Noah’s ears were open. He listened to the Voice. He got a project, a world-saving mission. It came to him in great detail. And it took him 100 years to complete. Through building the Ark at the command of God, Noah served as an heir and preacher of righteousness (see Hebrews 11:7; 2 Peter 2:5).
The ‘Foolishness’ of God
The report of Noah and the great Flood is one of those Bible stories that stimulate reactions of scorn from the educated and sophisticated, those supposedly in the know. How could any Supreme Being unleash such waves of judgment upon His created ones? They say.
The real issue is a lack of comprehension about the nature of sin. There is a profound failure to see the decay and death that sin brings to us in our physique, our psyche, and our psychology. Our bodies, our souls, and our minds have been afflicted to various degrees because of the ways of transgression. All of this gets transmitted into the corporate elements through culture and atmosphere.
Paul wrote that the wisdom of the world sees the things of God as foolishness. Those who gather to themselves facts and data in a natural pursuit of understanding find the concept of divine wrath as abhorrent. You have, I am sure, heard people say that they cannot believe in the God of the Bible because they want a God of love, and no God of love would judge the world so harshly. They want a deity who lets us live and let live.
Love that has no anger at the wrong that can come about is not love at all. Love produces in us something that the psalmist celebrates as “perfect hatred” (see Psalm 139:22).
In His holiness and righteousness, God washed away the generation that had befouled the earth. It was an operation of healing to keep in motion the process of redemption and salvation.
Men refuse to listen to His Voice regarding the matter, it’s just that simple. They also turn to demanding explanations that they could never understand if they were told them. “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25).
Jesus confirmed the reality of the Flood and Noah. The reason I believe the Noah account is because Jesus said it was true.
The story also figured large in Jesus’ teaching about the Last Days and indicators of His return to earth. “For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the Ark” (Matthew 24:37-38).
This begs a question for us: How bad could things really get here on earth? As bad as they got in the time of Noah.
Dwell on those words and it is easy to become discouraged.
Think on this instead: God found a man and His family and that’s all He needed to keep mankind alive and ready to flourish.
The Lord remains the God who so loves, the God who gave His very life. He took upon Himself the judgment of righteousness as the Son.
One Lamb — one spotless Lamb — offered upon one Cross won the victory. In spilling His innocent Blood, Christ accomplished what was accounted as the ransom paid for the sins of the whole world.
Yes, men’s hearts and imaginations are desperately wicked to this day. But the heart of God for our salvation remains ever true. Reconciliation, restoration, recreation – these define the purpose of the Almighty.
It is a purpose that shall not fail.