January 3, 2025 - Genesis 6-9

We tend to have proverbs or quaint sayings for all sorts of situations in life.  Here are a couple:  “Beware the calm before the storm” and, when coming out of an economic downturn or recession, our political leaders will often tell us, “Things will get worse before they get better.”  So often, these are indeed truisms.  This morning, I am reading about a situation that fits these proverbs.  In the days of Noah, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (6:5).  Sin was multiplied, and it appeared that things would only “go from bad to worse” (There’s another proverb!).  And, indeed, things did go from back to worse with human sinfulness becoming so bad and so common that God judged the peoples of the earth in a great flood.  Of course, the flood was not the end of the story:  “God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided” (8:1).  Furthermore, God said to Noah, “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth” (9:9-10).  For us, the flood is never the final word from God, is it?  Rather, we know his love and forgiveness in Christ.

O love that will not let me go,

I rest my weary soul in thee;

I give thee back the life I owe,

That in thine ocean depths its flow

May richer, fuller be.   -- George Matheson (1882)