Noah and the flood

Story: Noah and the flood

Passage: Genesis 6:9-7:24

Characters: The Lord, Noah, Noah's family

Summary: Noah was righteous but the earth was corrupt. God decided to destroy all flesh because they filled the earth with violence. He had Noah build an ark and fill it with animals and food. God flooded the earth and Noah and his family survived the flood in the ark. The rain fell for 40 days and water covered the earth for 150 days.

Notes: Noah stood out from his culture. He trusted God and walked with Him even when God did not make human sense. Noah made God his god. The earth was corrupted by humans, yet God wanted to destroy anything with the breath of life in it. I feel like this destruction of His creation would have been difficult and it is significant that God felt that it had come to this. But it had to be done because it was the just thing to do and God is a just God. However, God showed humanity mercy again by allowing Noah and his family to survive. There were only two of a kind of unclean animals on the ark, but there were seven pairs of unclean animals. This would mean there were more clean animals in the new world. Noah was 600 when the flood occurred. The exact day of the flood is given in the passage relative to Noah's birth. God personally was taking care of Noah. All Noah had to do was build the boat. God brought all the animals to him over a period of seven days. Then He closed the ark Himself. There is so much detail in this story compared to the others, the depth of the water, the time it rained, the time it took for the water to recede, the day the flood started, etc. Either there is some imprtance here we don't realize yet or Noah was just really good at writing things down that happened. My top two guesses are either that these are things we will be able to confirm someday, or Noah was the world's first journaler. I bet if he had a blog, it would be crazy detailed and entertaining. "Today I am 599 years old and 374 days. I just added one and a half cubits of height to this thing God told me to build. My wife made an awesome dinner of plantains today. I ate exactly 3." But I digress. The text says that God destroyed all creatures on the face of the earth. By a loophole though, Noah and his family were above the face of the earth. I don't know if that was intentional by God or if it just happened that way, but I found the wording in the end of chapter 7 interesting because of that.

Questions: Why so much detail? Why the exact date the flood started? What made animals clean back then? Was it the same criteria we see in the Mosaic law? How did Noah's friends react to his strange actions? His family? How would I react if God told me to do something outrageous like that? Would I acknowlege that God is my god or would I try to follow my own wisdom?

Lessons: Obedience to God is very important. If Noah did not walk with God and follow his unusual instructions, he would not have survived. If he was worried about his image or his success with his friends, he would have been wiped out. Walking with God means obeying Him even when it makes zero sense, seems to reflect poorly on you, and does not advance your status. We are not meant to follow earthly logic, but Godly logic, which is the logic which created earthly logic.

Increasing Corruption on Earth

Story: Increasing Corruption on Earth

Passage: Genesis 6:1-8

Characters: Man, God, Nephilim, sons of God, daughters of man, Noah

Interaction: Sons of God took wives from the daughters of men. God was not happy and shortened the life of man. The children of these unusual marriages were mighty men, famous and renowned. The Lord saw how evil man was and regretted creating him. God decided to wipe out anything that was alive. But Noah found favor with God.

Notes: Apparently some kind of heavenly creatures came to Earth and married women. This was obviously detestable to God and He began to regret even creating life. Verse 5 says that every intention fo the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. This is very harsh, but if we think about it, is is true today as well. Man was meant to carry the image of God and bring glory to God. But instead, humanity tried to be their own God and glorify themselves. These creatures He created to worship Him and live with Him had rejected Him and worshipped themselves. When man decided to ignore His purpose, God decided to get rid of mankind. This was the just thing to do. However, we see a glimmer of hope when Noah is mentioned as finding favor in the eyes of God. As we have seen so far, even when man turned his back on God, God showed love and mercy to us. Even here, when God is regretting even creating man, there is a glimmer of hope. It is also interesting to note that God was going to destroy animals as well. Animals were not created in the image of God, but they too were cursed by the fall and thus they had been marred from their original intent and were going to be destroyed as well.

Questions: Who were the sons of God mentioned here? Could this interaction between heaven and Earth be the cause of mythology involving marriages between gods and humans? Did the Nephilim survive the coming flood? How did Noah's character differ from those around him and why did it differ? If God is all knowing, wouldn't He have known that humanity would turn away from Him before He created us? Why did He go ahead and create us with that knowlege?

Lessons: The only lessons I can pull away from this is that we are depserately wicked when we do not make God our god. When we rule our own lives, we grieve God who gave us life. We need to strive in our live to find favor in the eyes of the Lord. As we continue to read about Noah, we should try to glean what we can about his character and how he found this favor with God.