God's Terrible Judgment

 Genesis 6:9-8:22

            When our oldest son was a baby, he had a little stuffed Noah’s ark. I remember this because he loved the giraffe. There was a time when, if he didn’t have it, we had to find it. I tell the story because it reflects what we have reduced Genesis 6-8 to: a children’s story famous for its animals.

            But read today’s reading, and you get a whole different picture. God’s action in the flood is driven by human sinfulness. We read yesterday that every inclination of the human heart was only evil all the time. Today we read that the earth was corrupt and full of violence. (Violence is actually mentioned twice. What Cain started and Lamech continued, the rest of the fallen race carried on.) Finally, God had had enough and decided a new start was in order, and that new start entailed wiping the corruption from the face of the earth. We don’t know how many people lived on the earth at that moment but the Lord saw fit to save only 8. This is no cute story about animals; it is a demonstration of God’s revulsion over sin and of how terrible His judgment can be.

            I have a friend who calls Noah’s flood “the second greatest outpouring of God’s wrath in human history.” The greatest outpouring was Jesus’ death on the cross, when, as the hymn puts it, “Many hands were raised to wound Him, / None would intervene to save; / But the deepest stroke that pierced Him / Was the stroke that justice gave” (Lutheran Service Book, 451, v. 2). Between Noah and Jesus is nothing less than God’s forbearance, not punishing human sin until by His death Jesus would make atonement (Rom 3:25).

            Therefore, Noah’s flood is, at its core, a story about judgment and mercy, God’s fierce wrath over human sin—all human sin, don’t kid yourself that your sins aren’t so bad—and God’s grace, preserving a remnant because He will not give up on our fallen, beloved race, and foreshadowing the moment when His Son would bear the full weight of our sin in our place.

            So, please, forget the stuffed animals. It’s not that kind of story.