20241110 Genesis 6:5-9 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.

A few years ago, a friend working for a university Christian ministry had to leave his job. His boss was very emotionally abusive. The goal of this ministry was to start a house for male university students. These students were to live together, fostering Christian community while having a mentor. The boss became aggressive when students were not signing up to live there. After my friend sent his resignation letter by email, the boss responded, “I decided to fire you 3 hours before receiving your letter. It is happily and joyfully accepted.”

It did not seem like there was anything Christian about this man. Yet, this boss claimed to be. So we should suppose that he read the same Bible as us, goes to church, sings worship songs to God, and listens to sermons. When I first heard of this, I wanted justice. I wondered, what does justice look like here? Will the Holy Spirit convict this man? Will he one day seek forgiveness? So many stories of injustice go unresolved. And now, we turn to the flood story.

Genesis 6:5-9 will be the central text to look at the whole flood narrative from Genesis 5-8. It teaches of wickedness in the world, God’s judgment, and how to escape God’s judgment to find His grace.

First, in Genesis 6:5, we see the Great Wickedness in the World.

Survey of 4-6 In the buildup to the flood, Genesis 4 to 6:5 shows a downward spiral of sin following the first sin in the garden. Cain committed the first murder. His descendant Lamech had two wives and killed a young man who hit him.

Genesis 6:1-4 Genesis 6:1-4 is complicated. It seems like fallen angels (the sons of God) took human women to be their wives. There are other interpretations, but what we cannot miss is Genesis 6:2: “the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were good. And they took.” This phrase is identical to the eating of the forbidden fruit in Genesis 3:6. This mixed union between angels and people is part of the corruption in the world, which is the main point.

Genesis 6:5

Our text stresses the depth of humanity's depravity. Genesis 6:5 reads, “The intention of the thoughts of [man’s] heart are evil continually.” Genesis 6:11-12 reads, “The earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. 12 And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.” We see wicked deeds, continuous evil intentions, and violence.

Now, for Our Day.

Intro Before the flood, Genesis 6:5 tells us man’s thoughts were evil continually. After the flood, Genesis 8:21 reads, “The intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” Humanity was corrupt leading up to the flood and after the flood, and so to this day. Today, there is great wickedness, our thoughts are evil from childhood, and there is great violence on the earth.

In 2020, in France, a security agent caught a man taking inappropriate photos of women in a supermarket. Investigators searched this man’s phone and computer. Following this investigation, a policeman informed Gisèle Pelicot, a 72-year-old grandmother, that her apparently loving husband had been drugging her for a decade and inviting strangers—more than 80 local men—to enter the family home and the couple’s bedroom to rape her while he filmed them.

The trial has begun in France. It highlights the depth of depravity in Western society. The ages of the men on trial range from 26 to 68. They hail from all walks of life—firefighters, pharmacists, laborers, and journalists. Many are fathers and husbands. The shocking factor is that they appear to be “normal” men. They lived nearby, so the husband, Dominique Pelicot, did not even have to look very far to find them.

Another layer to this story is that many knew and did nothing. The husband advertised his invitation on a website with 500,000 visitors per month. What these visitors have in common is that not one made a phone call to stop this abuse.

When we read the Bible and then read the news, we know the world is messed up. When we are honest about our thought life, what we practice in secret, we also recognize that we are messed up.

An implication is that we are so corrupt that if any one of us could ever please God, He would have to do something incredible. The Christian message and good news is that God has, in Jesus Christ. By His Spirit, He allows us, dead sinners, to become alive in Christ. He causes us to die to sin and live in the newness of life marked by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

A second implication is that we are sinners. Even within the church, we are a group of sinners saved by grace. We have received grace, and so we relate to one another by needing to extend grace to each other. When sinners are together, we will fail each other. If there is no grace, we will quickly become a toxic community. We desire to be a community where all sinners are welcome and the gospel of the forgiveness of sins.

Second, in Genesis 6:6-7, we see God’s Response to Evil

Critics of Christianity can offer two opposite critiques. One is the struggle with judgment in the Bible. They say that they could only believe in a God of judgment because they want to believe in a God of love. On the other hand, sometimes the same people will say, I can’t believe in God because there is so much evil in the world. If God existed, He would stop it. The Bible's answer is there is so much evil because human beings are wicked. A God of love judges wickedness.

Gen 6:6-7

According to Genesis 6:5, the Lord saw the wickedness. In Genesis 6:6-7, the Lord “regretted that He had made man….” The word “regret” makes it sound intellectual, as if He made a mistake. The Hebrew word can mean regret, but it speaks of deep emotional pain more like grief. God cares deeply about evil and suffering. He responds in Genesis 6:7 by stating that He will wipe out all living creatures. Humanity's violence was corrupting the earth. God's judgment and destruction use the same word as "corrupting" in Genesis 6:17. God’s judgment is an intensification of what humanity was doing. A wicked humanity destroys each other, so God destroys them.

Application

If evil grieved the Lord in Noah’s day, we must assume that evil grieves Him today. God judged the world with a flood, and the rest of Scripture points to a day of justice where all wrongs will be made right. An example is Malachi 4:1, “For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.”

I do not know anyone who likes the doctrine of judgment. When Christians are persecuted brutally, the doctrine of justice offers comfort. Christians can turn the other cheek because justice does not belong to them. Christians can know that one day all will be made right. The Bible teaches that all are sinners and deserve judgment. These are hard truths to believe. This is not a particular interpretation of the Bible; it is what the Bible teaches from beginning to end. The story of Noah is often treated like a children’s story because of all the animals that go on a big boat. It is a story for children but also for adults. It is the first picture of God’s judgment of sinners. It foreshadows final judgment and God’s wrath that is still to come on all sinners. There is an exception; this is our third point.

Genesis 6:8-9: Noah Found Favor in the Eyes of the Lord

There is hope. There was hope in Genesis 3, then Genesis 4, there is hope in Genesis 5, and now in Genesis 6. In Genesis 4, the Lord accepted the offering of Abel, a sinner. Seth and his descendants were calling on the name of the LORD. The genealogy of Genesis 5 connects Adam to Noah. This genealogy is also a source of hope. While the wage of sin is death, and the genealogy highlights that everyone dies, there is an exception. Enoch walked with God. Genesis 5:24 does not mention his death, only that “he was not because God took him.”

There is hope for those who walk with God. The second person who stands out in the genealogy is Noah. At his birth, his father Lamech called him Noah, saying, “He will relieve us from our work and the painful toil of our hands from the land which the Lord has cursed.” The word Noah means relief, rest, soothing, or tranquilizing. With his statement, Lamech is connecting the present suffering with the past sin of Adam and the cursing of the land. He is also pointing forward to the near future, when his son will bring relief to the people. Noah does bring relief. Following the flood, God accepts Noah's offering and says, “Never again will I curse the ground because of man” (Gen 8:21). Beyond this, it is through Noah’s seed that the Messiah will come.

Genesis 6:8-9

There is hope in Genesis 6. Following the announcement of judgment, we read in Genesis 6:8 that Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. He is called “a righteous man,” “blameless in his generation,” and “he walked with God” (Gen 6:9). Since Enoch did not die and he walked with God, we can expect that Noah will make it through God’s judgment.

Applications

1. Finding God’s Favor

When it says Noah found favor, it means that he experienced grace. From the context, it means that he will escape God’s judgment of the flood. This same protection from coming judgment is true for Christians. Paul writes that Christians are not destined for the wrath that is to come (1 Thes 5:9). The hope that Noah had before the flood is now enjoyed by all Christians. This is seen in Romans 3:23-25:

"23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith."

The reason we have hope in the face of coming judgment is that Jesus took our judgment. This is true for all who hear of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross for the forgiveness of sins and believe and repent. A judgment is coming because God is righteous and does punish evil. The good news of Jesus is that he has already paid for us so we know we will escape judgment and enjoy God’s presence forever!

2. Walking With God

We see that in a godless world both Enoch and Noah walked with God and found favor with God. The Old Testament often gets a bad reputation as if it was all about rule-keeping, while the New Testament is about grace and having a relationship with Jesus.

The phrase “walk with” refers to a “friendly and close contact between people.” It is a “friendly everyday conduct with regard to one’s neighbors.” In the Garden of Eden, God required that Adam and Eve would walk with Him, rely on Him for the knowledge of good and evil, and live by faith. Enoch and Noah both learned in a post-sin world how to live as if they were in Eden. We walk with God when we build our lives on what God says is true in the Scriptures rather than listening to our flesh, the world, and the devil.

The words used of Noah are that he was a “righteous man” and “blameless in his generation.” These words are intimidating. There is an obedience aspect to walking with God. The phrase “Noah did all that God commanded him” is repeated four times building up to the flood (Gen 6:22; 7:5, 9, 16). This obedience and right standing stems from trust in God and a deep relationship with God. Events in Genesis 9 make it clear that Noah is also a sinner, so his blamelessness and righteousness are connected directly to his contrast with the rest of his generation—he walked with God.

Today, the Christian life is to be one of walking with God. This walking can include few or many relational practices. We experience God through His Word, prayer, and weekly corporate worship. When we gather for worship with God’s people, we sing God’s Word, pray God’s Word, hear God’s Word, see God’s Word, and feed on God’s Word. We are walking with God.

Walking with God can include beginning the day with some Bible and prayer. It can include memorizing Scripture or personal Bible study. We listen to sermons or worship music. We can be intentional about finding time to separate ourselves from the craziness of life.

Because God has a people and not individuals, walking with God cannot be separate from involvement with His people in some way. We want to include Christians as part of our walk with God. We can do this by being in a community group or by catching up with a friend and being intentional about talking about spiritual matters. For most of us, if we do not plan on spending time with God, it will not happen.

I’m giving you no rules and no specifics. But we must walk with God. If we do not walk with God, we are not living as Christians, and we are depriving ourselves of the greatest gift God has for us. It is the gift of Himself!

Conclusion

The story of the flood has the basic elements of the Christian message: The world is wicked. God judges wickedness. There is also hope, rest, and relief—Noah—for all those who call on the name of the Lord and walk with Him. We will find refuge in Him.