Genesis 6

Genesis 6

The beginning of this chapter is very confusing for the text is not clear on who these “sons” of God are. My thoughts want to lean to the idea that they are just human beings, and that this passage is just illustrating how the world was becoming more and more evil. But this passage has received lots of criticism with many applying a more spiritual nature to the sons mentioned here. I do not wish to offer an opinion on this test for I have not done adequate research to offer an educational guess. But I do feel that one of the purposes of these first few verses is to show how the world was continuing to get worse due to the effects of sin. This is further clarified in v5-6 when God states that He is sorry that He ever created man.

I know that we tend to think that our culture today in the 21st century is far from the ways of God, and we are completely right in thinking that. But isn’t it interesting that humankind was so bad in Genesis 6 that God’s desire was to wash them off the face of the earth? I dare say that He probably should have that same feeling today with the way the world is going, but it does not appear as if that is the case. This is mainly due to the fact that God promised never to destroy mankind as He was about to do in Genesis 6. But still this passage should be a reminder to us that God has His limits as well, and although He may not wipe us all off the face of the earth in one catastrophic event, He can still take us out of this world if we drift too far from His ways.

Instead of even getting close to that danger, we should really learn something from the life of Noah, the man that chapter 5 predicted would bring relief. What kind of relief was Noah to bring through his birth? It appears as if v8 gives us that answer. Noah found favor in God’s eyes, something that no one else on the planet had done. Maybe the relief that Noah was to bring was for God. Noah was a man that God could depend on, a man who had decided that despite what the crowd told him, he was going to follow the ways of God.

Because of Noah’s obedience, God knew that He could depend on Noah for one enormous task. To preserve all that He had created, God chose to use Noah to store every kind of animal and food on an ark that would survive the coming storm. After a very specific set of instructions, v22 states that Noah did all that God had commanded. Despite the almost absurd claims that God made about rain and floods (two things that the earth had never experienced) and the almost impossible task of collecting all of these animals and foods (which would take weeks or months to complete), Noah defied all odds and got busy. He knew that God was trustworthy, and because of his trust in God, Noah completed the task.

Once more we are not given all of the details of Noah’s life. We do not know whether Noah argued with God. We do not know if he accepted this task right away or not. We do not know if he ever had doubts as to whether the storm would actually come or if what he was doing was worth it. I dare say that some of these thoughts crossed his mind at times for he is human. But the point is that despite anything else that might have crossed his mind, Noah did not falter from the commands of God. That is an example that we should follow. We may not always understand why we are being called to certain tasks in life. We may not understand why some of the hardest storms come at us in life. But if we handle them like Noah did, then we will learn that when we follow God’s commands, we will always be kept safe. That safety might not be physical safety, but with God as our shield, what else do we need?

Matt