God's Wrath Poured Out on Those Who Want to Have It Their Way (Genesis 6:11-18)

“Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, ‘I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So make yourself an ark of cypress wood… I am going to bring floodwater on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark – you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you’”

(Genesis 6:11-14; 17-18, NIV).

I observed that we tend to treat Noah’s flood as a children’s story. The ark floats steadily atop the rising waters, a smiling giraffe poking its head through the window, and Noah smiled as if everything was fun to watch. But the story of the Flood is a story of God’s wrath.

God’s wrath is not an easy or pleasant thing to contemplate. But it expresses itself throughout the Bible in the Old Testament as well as the New. God’s wrath is another aspect of God’s love. To use the lesser example: If you love anyone deeply, you already know how your anger burns against anything that would harm that person. God’s wrath – His righteous-anger (not like ours’) – aims for that which seeks to destroy the people He loves. Sin destroys lives, relationships, and happiness. The anger of God is like the anger of surgeon who cut away cancers rather than seek to harm their victims.

God pours out His wrath by finally giving people what they want. The people of Noah’s time wanted to live without God. So God removed His loving hand from their lives and floodwaters poured out. In the end, the people got exactly what they wanted – and it was the end of them.

What’s hope for us today? Jesus Christ, the Son of God. “[God] demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!” (Romans 5:8-9). Don’t have it your way; wants God’s way - enter the ark of God. 

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.

Christ, the Flood and Noah's Ark

“God looked at the world and saw that it was evil,
for the people were all living evil lives” (Genesis 6:12, GNB)

Generations passed by from the time of Eden. Human wickedness grew and intensified. God saw that human beings had corrupted the world, and that most people spent their time thinking up evil schemes. In His righteous wrath, God said regretfully, “I have decided to put an end to the whole human race. I will destroy them completely, because the world is full of their violent deeds” (6:13). [I can hear God is weeping when I read this]. If God the Creator who creates everything to display His glory said something like this – think of how corrupted and evil human beings were during that time?

Faced with all this sin, what did God do? He punished and He provided. Because God is just, He destroyed all corruption. But because God is merciful, He offered a way out, a new promise and a new start, to those whom He chose.

God selected Noah because “Noah had no faults and was the only good man of his time. He lived in fellowship with God” (6:10) and – like the pair in Eden – Noah had to decide whether or not to accept what God was offering. Noah had the option of not believing God and taking the chance that the threat of punishment was only a joke or – believe God’s word and acted on it. Either one, God will act!

Noah chooses faith. He hears God’s warnings. He obeyed God (see Hebrews 11:7). He believed God. “Noah did everything that God commanded” (Genesis 6:22, GNB). He convinced his family, built the ark, rounded up the animals and went aboard. The flood came. Everything expect the believing chosen few was punished with destruction; and Noah’s family floated on the waters, for months, waiting for God to provide new life. [For the rest of the story, read the Book of Genesis chapters 7 to 10].

Sin. Punishment. Flood. Ark. Saved. Promise. New life. Where is Christ in this story? Noah’s ark is a beautiful type of Christ as the Ark of our salvation. ‘The world’ that Noah had known was gone, perished, being flooded with water. The Flood is a type-of-what-is-to-come of God’s wrath. Without Christ, we are lost, and “will remain under God’s punishment” (John 3:36). Only in Him we are safe from the Flood of Judgment, for the Bible tells us “there is no condemnation now for those who live in union with Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1, GNB). Salvation is for those who went into the Ark – Jesus Christ – by repentance from our sin and by faith in Him.  

Charles H. Spurgeon writes, “[Christ] is the ark of God provided against the Day of Judgment. We by faith believe him to be capable of saving us; we come and trust him, we risk our souls with him, believing that there is no risk; we venture on him confident that it is no venture; giving up every other hope or shadow of a hope, we trust in what Jesus did, is doing, and is in himself, and thus he becomes to us our ark, and we are in him”

In Christ, our punishment is justified

In Christ, we are saved in the Ark of Salvation from the Flood of God’s wrath

In Christ, He promise Eternal life and fellowship with God (as Noah did)

In Christ we place our faith. In Christ we have New Life.

This is the ultimate display of God’s righteousness – love, justice and mercy.

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.