Fully Devoted: The FallSample

Noah and the Flood, Part 1

Sin escalates and infects. What started with Adam and Eve was passed to their children, and then to each following generation. Eventually, sin had grown to the point where the entire world was overrun by hate, violence, and injustice.

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. Genesis 6:5-6 NIV

Imagine a world filled with all the worst villains. This world was filled with slavery, racism, human trafficking, murder, hate, gossip, exploitation, abuse, child sacrifice, and so much more—and it was considered the norm. God’s once good world had become a mess.

God saw how far His world had fallen, and He regretted creating people. But God will never give up on His creation. Like a doctor who steps in to perform an invasive surgery on a patient with malignant cancer destroying their body, God performed surgery on His creation to address the cancer of sin that was destroying the world.

This whole story is meant to illustrate two big ideas:

1. In spite of how much sin had damaged and corroded God’s creation, He still refused to give up on His people.
2. The cancer of sin had spread so far that the only way to save us was to remove it.

So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” Genesis 6:7 NIV

This was not an overreaction; it was an appropriate response to sin.

It’s important to pause here and make sure we take seriously what the Bible says about the state of the world. For a number of people, the story of Noah and the flood is challenging because they can’t imagine how God could be justified in wiping out all of humanity. After all, surely this would include the deaths of countless innocent people! But that’s not what we’re told. We’re told that every inclination of the human heart was only evil all the time.

The flood isn’t a story about God’s cruelty. It’s a story about God’s commitment to bring justice in order to fix what we have broken.

God’s justice is never without mercy. When the rest of the world had given themselves over to the destructive nature of sin, Noah remained faithful. So God tasked Noah with building an ark that he, his family, and the animals could use for shelter from the flood.

Theologians estimate that Noah spent between 50 and 120 years building the ark. In the New Testament, Peter describes Noah as a “preacher of righteousness.” Which means, more than likely, that God delayed the flood for decades—giving people time to repent from their wicked ways and return to Him—while Noah worked on the ark and preached to whoever would listen about how to live rightly in the eyes of God.

This reiterates what we learned from Exodus 34 in Part 1 of our study:

... The Lord—the Lord is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But he will not leave the guilty unpunished, bringing the consequences of the fathers’ iniquity on the children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation.Exodus 34:6-7 CSB

The story of Noah and the flood is inviting us to wrestle with the destructive nature of sin and the redemptive nature of God’s justice and mercy.

Journaling Questions

• Write down one of today’s verses in your journal. What does this story show us about God?
• What misconceptions about this story have you held before?
• How has God been patient with you in your life? Journal a story to share with your group.

Memory Verse

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8 NIV