Digging Deeper Days
Finding the original intent of Scripture and making good application to our everyday lives as we become equipped to correctly handle the Word of Truth!
Today is 2-for-1 Friday!
Check out Don’t Miss The Boat!
The Questions
1) What caused humanity to become so evil? (verse 5)
2) Did the Lord really regret creating mankind? (verses 6-7)
3) Why did the Lord find favour with Noah? (verse 8)
Genesis 6:5-8
When the Lord saw that human wickedness was widespread on the earth and that every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time, 6 the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and he was deeply grieved. 7 Then the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I created, off the face of the earth, together with the animals, creatures that crawl, and birds of the sky—for I regret that I made them.” 8 Noah, however, found favor with the Lord.
Original Intent
1) What caused humanity to become so evil? (verse 5)
God handcrafted all of creation before a hint of sin had marred its beauty, and God Himself declared it all “very good indeed” (Genesis 1:31), but everything became corrupt when sin entered the world after Adam and Eve’s disobedience. Their sin forever broke the perfection of not only creation, but of every relationship, especially the sacred one between God and mankind. Sin ushered in the consequence of death to everything. All things would physically die because of sin, but people would also experience spiritual death apart from God while on earth and apart from Him for eternity. That specific consequence is the eternal condemnation to Hell after death, where no presence of God’s love, goodness, or mercy exists; only His wrath is experienced for eternity. After the Fall (sin’s ugly entrance into the perfect creation), the sins multiplied and as years passed, these sins led to their natural conclusion, death, exhibited when Cain murdered his brother, Abel. The cancer of sin can never be undone; it destroys everything with the sickness of destructive death. (James 1:14-15) This DNA of sin affected every leaf and animal God had made, resulting in the broken world we experience around us today. Its effects ran through every human being ever born since Adam and Eve, for through one sin, death came to all of us. (Romans 5:12) Centuries after Cain killed Abel, sin continued growing and multiplying, running amuck. The more humanity craved sin and the satisfaction of their own selves, the more they worshipped themselves over the Creator until eventually, “every inclination of the human mind was evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5) during Noah’s lifetime.
2) Did the Lord really regret creating mankind? (verses 6-7)
The wickedness of man deeply hurt the Lord for it ran counter to every desire He had for a deep and intimate relationship with each person. Since God cannot tolerate sin, He needed to act; He could not allow sin and holiness to co-exist as it opposed His righteous character. God was not “sorry” He had created mankind in the same sense we are sorry or regretful for sinning or doing harm to another. Numbers 23:19 states, “God is not a man (…) that He might change His mind.” The action God needed to take as a result of sin caused Him to feel sorrowful regret. The NIV Application Commentary on Genesis states, “God is known as a God who does not allow evil to stand on the books but balances it with either grace and mercy… or with punishment…” This is exactly what God did in this case. He balanced evil with first grace and then punishment. In Genesis 6:3, God said man’s days would be 120 years. This does not mean God reduced the life span of man. (Got Questions) It means God gave the people a 120-year grace period to change their ways. When the 120 years expired, and the people still had not turned from their sin, God followed through on the consequence to destroy everything on earth.
3) Why did the Lord find favour with Noah? (verse 8)
Not everyone on earth at that time was evil, and God, in His grace, was intent on sparing all who would willfully choose to worship Him above themselves. Before raining down the deserved judgment of death, He searched for anyone righteous and he found Noah. This isn’t to say that Noah was “perfect” or had a flawless righteousness like God’s, but that, despite all the evil happening around him, Noah chose to remain faithful to the Lord. Genesis 6:9 says Noah “walked with God.” Noah’s faithfulness in worshiping God alone opened the door for God to use him to start a new civilization.
Everyday Application
1) What caused humanity to become so evil? (verse 5)
God did not make humanity evil (Ecclesiastes 7:29).The Lord told Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but they chose otherwise, and sin entered the world. Sin is anything that opposes God’s standard of holiness. While God did not create sin, for He is wholly good (1 John 3:9-10), He gave free will, which is the freedom to choose Him or choose sin for ourselves. He will not force Himself on anyone, for that would be unloving, nor does He force us to worship Him, for that would be self-exalting. He gave us free will out of His selfless love for us, even though He knew we would choose to love ourselves. Everything we do, whether good or bad, are each our own choices. Evil begins in the heart and mind and is then lived out in our everyday choices. (Jeremiah 17:9-10) The New Living Translation states, “The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and He saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil.” (verse 5, emphasis mine) Do you see that? The people of Noah’s day consistently thought or imagined evil! Matthew 15:19 tells us some evil thoughts, “For from the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immoralities, thefts, false testimonies, slander.” (See also Romans 1:29-31) It is no different today. Although the Lord re-started humanity with Noah, he was still human and carried the disease of sin. Noah’s sin-nature remained unchanged thereby perpetuating evil to our current generation. However, it’s not all bad news! Jesus, as God the Son, took the punishment of death we deserved, allowing a restored relationship with God to be possible. By accepting Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, we receive the Holy Spirit who gives us a new nature, one that desires to worship the Lord, follow His ways, and fight against sin!
2) Did the Lord really regret creating mankind? (verses 6-7)
Do you have a loved one who walked down the wrong road? If yes, then it must have hurt you terribly to see them embark on a journey that could destroy their life. I once knew a young man who became a drug addict. He roamed the streets begging for money to support his habit. His family did everything possible to help him, yet he kept returning to the streets. Eventually, they left him alone. His family tried, but he made his choice. It is the same with the Lord. God saw how humanity perpetually turned toward evil and wickedness instead of toward Him as their loving Creator, and it hurt him terribly. God, because of His holiness, could not allow the wickedness to continue and needed to act with justice. This action entailed eradicating His creation with the exception of Noah’s family and 2 of each kind of animal, but not before giving humanity time to change. I am sure Noah, while building the ark, told the people of the impending flood and implored them to change their ways, but they didn’t. Still, God did not give up and leave His people caught in the trap of their own sinfulness. Through Jesus, we now have an avenue to repent and receive redemption and eternal life!
3) Why did the Lord find favour with Noah? (verse 8)
Noah was a righteous, upright man who walked with God. (Genesis 6:9) Hebrews 11:7 tells us, “By faith Noah, after he was warned about what was not yet seen and motivated by godly fear, built an ark to deliver his family. By faith he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.” Noah’s faithfulness allowed God to use him to build the ark that would save him, his family, and the animals from the flood. What gracious mercy! Ephesians 2:8 says, “For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift.” It was God’s grace, along with Noah’s faith, that saved Noah. If we hop on the boat of faith, like Noah, we too will be saved. This requires an acknowledgement that we are indeed stuck in our sin because we have chosen to worship ourselves instead of the Creator. When we turn from this sin, and trust Christ’s forgiveness, we are choosing to worship the One True God who will rescue us from an eternity apart from Him!
What do YOU think?! Share Here!
Missing the connection to our other Journey Study today?
Catch up with Don’t Miss The Boat!
Digging Deeper is for Everyone!
1) Take this passage (or any other passage).
2) Read it, and the verses around it,
several times
3) Write down your questions
as you think of them.
4) Ask specific culture related questions and be ready to dig around for your answers. Google them, use www.studylight.org, or look them up in a study Bible and read the footnotes (click on the little letters next to a word and it will show you
other related verses!). (www.esvbible.org)
5) Check your applications with other trusted Christians that you are in community with and embrace the fullness of God
in your everyday!
Digging Deeper Community
Share What You’ve Learned!
Pray Together!
Join us in the GT Facebook Community!
Our Current Study Theme!
This is Sacrifice Week One!
Don’t miss out on the discussion!
Sign up to receive every GT Journey Study!
Why Dig Deeper?
Finding the original meaning is a huge deal when we study Scripture and can make all the difference in our understanding as we apply God’s truths to our everyday lives.
In our modern-day relationships, we want people to understand our original intention as we communicate; how much more so between God and humanity?!
Here’s a little bit more on why we take Digging Deeper so seriously.
Study Tools
We love getting help while we study and www.studylight.org is one of many excellent resources, providing the original Hebrew (Old Testament) or Greek (New Testament) with an English translation.
Want to know more about a specific word in a verse? Click on “Strong’s Interlinear Bible” then click the word you’d like to study. Discover “origin”, “definition” and hear the original pronunciation – That Is Awesome!
Want more background? Click “Study Tools”, then pick a few commentaries to read their scholarly approach, keeping in mind that just because a commentary says it, doesn’t mean it’s true. (just like the internet :-))
Memorize It!
Download this week’s verse and make it your phone’s lockscreen!
Tap and hold on your mobile device to save.