Sin, Destruction, Mercy, Genesis 5,6,7. DAY 5. Jan 5th. | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Genesis 5

This is the written account of Adam’s family line.

When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. ² He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind”^[a] when they were created.

³ When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth. ⁴ After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. ⁵ Altogether, Adam lived a total of 930 years, and then he died.

⁶ When Seth had lived 105 years, he became the father^[b] of Enosh. ⁷ After he became the father of Enosh, Seth lived 807 years and had other sons and daughters.⁸ Altogether, Seth lived a total of 912 years, and then he died.

⁹ When Enosh had lived 90 years, he became the father of Kenan. ¹⁰ After he became the father of Kenan, Enosh lived 815 years and had other sons and daughters. ¹¹ Altogether, Enosh lived a total of 905 years, and then he died.

¹² When Kenan had lived 70 years, he became the father of Mahalalel. ¹³ After he became the father of Mahalalel, Kenan lived 840 years and had other sons and daughters. ¹⁴ Altogether, Kenan lived a total of 910 years, and then he died.

¹⁵ When Mahalalel had lived 65 years, he became the father of Jared. ¹⁶ After he became the father of Jared, Mahalalel lived 830 years and had other sons and daughters. ¹⁷ Altogether, Mahalalel lived a total of 895 years, and then he died.

¹⁸ When Jared had lived 162 years, he became the father of Enoch. ¹⁹ After he became the father of Enoch, Jared lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters. ²⁰ Altogether, Jared lived a total of 962 years, and then he died.

²¹ When Enoch had lived 65 years, he became the father of Methuselah. ²² After he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked faithfully with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters. ²³ Altogether, Enoch lived a total of 365 years. ²⁴ Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.

²⁵ When Methuselah had lived 187 years, he became the father of Lamech. ²⁶ After he became the father of Lamech, Methuselah lived 782 years and had other sons and daughters. ²⁷ Altogether, Methuselah lived a total of 969 years, and then he died.

²⁸ When Lamech had lived 182 years, he had a son. ²⁹ He named him Noah^[c] and said, “He will comfort us in the labour and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the LORD has cursed.” ³⁰ After Noah was born, Lamech lived 595 years and had other sons and daughters. ³¹ Altogether, Lamech lived a total of 777 years, and then he died.

³² After Noah was 500 years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth.

Genesis 6

¹ When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, ² the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. ³ Then the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

⁴ The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

⁵ The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. ⁶ The LORD regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.

I love this anthropomorphic description of God, as full-bodied and full-emotioned as Christ was. He temporarily regrets his loving actions. His heart is troubled by what man is doing.

⁷So the LORD said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”

Does this happen? No. Reading Genesis shows us the point of prayer—the many times God changes his mind about what he is going to do, what is inexorably going to happen, because he finds a good man, and often, because that good man prays (as we see when Abraham intercedes for the wicked cities a little later).

⁸ But Noah found favour in the eyes of the LORD.

⁹ This is the account of Noah and his family.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. ¹⁰ Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.

¹¹ Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. ¹² God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. ¹³ 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.

Amos 3:7 says, “Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets.” Prophets often have the certain foreknowledge of what is going to happen. But there is a cost and burden to the prophetic gift. Read on. Noah is told to build a SHIP. Inland. In a DESERT land. What do you think the neighbours thought?

¹⁴ So make yourself an ark of cypress^[wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. ¹⁵ This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. ¹⁶ Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubithigh all around.Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks.

I like this. This is the methodical, logical, techy God we serve. I was touched by the methodical and systematic way he set about Creation in Genesis 1. First light, then green plants to grow in the light. Then animals to keep the plants in check. Then man, who will soon eat those plants (and then animals).

Bill Johnson in Dreaming with God has numerous examples of God giving similarly detailed directives to young inventors and entrepreneurs. Mark Virkler in Spirit-born Creativity has examples of hearing God’s directives in stock-picking (which have worked for me. Not that we follow Christ for help in shrewd investing. Far from it! But he is our friend, and so it is okay to rely on his wisdom when we need it).

As an entrepreneur myself and a hopelessly impractical person, I have learnt to rely on hearing God’s voice in business, in buying stocks, in housekeeping, in hiring people, in writing. Not all the time, of course (anyone who takes the time to hear God’s voice before he acts would be the smartest and most blessed person on earth, I reckon) but when I remember, and am smart enough to slow down and listen.

So Noah tells the carpenters, “This is the design God gave me.” And they say, “Yeah. Right!!” There is a price to hearing and obeying God’s voice. You might very likely look and sound very foolish. You have to stick to your guns when voices around you say, “Did God really say?”

¹⁷ I am going to bring floodwaters 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.

Again we see, the moving and extraordinary friendship God feels for the righteous. He confides in Noah, as he later will in Abraham, musing, “Then the LORD said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” Genesis 18:17.

¹⁸ 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. ¹⁹ You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. ²⁰ Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. ²¹ You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.”

Blessed words, I will establish my covenant. An unconditional covenant because God was good and because he loved Abraham. Loving our children, whatever, just because, is perhaps our closest experience of this kind of love, and covenant.

²² Noah did everything just as God commanded him.

A little glimpse of both the righteousness of Noah, and why God chose him and could trust him. He was asked to do something costly, time-consuming, exhausting and ostensibly foolish. To build a ship in summer, in a desert. All he had to strengthen him during the ardours of the building was knowing that he definitely had heard the word of God.

I would have found it so hard.

Building that ark was financially costly, costly in lost time and income, costly in loss of face and prestige.

Obeying God has HUGE costs.

And HUGE rewards.

Genesis 7

¹ The LORD then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. ² Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, ³ and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. ⁴ Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.”

Every living creature I have made. Imagine that. Imagine destroying all your children. Or poems. Or paintings. Or your life’s work. God’s judgement of sin is not without personal cost. His wrath is intensified by his love, just as we are far more upset by the betrayal of a friend, than the betrayal of a stranger.

Forty, by the way, is frequently the Biblical number of days for change, purification and spiritual transformation. Moses stayed 40 days on the mountain, twice. And then his face was radiant. Both Elijah and Jesus fasted for 40 days.

⁵ And Noah did all that the LORD commanded him.

Noah was trustworthy in God’s sight. God could tell him his secrets, and trust him with them. He could trust him to do what he told him to do.

Lord, let me be trustworthy in your eyes. Tell me your secrets. Tell me your deep things. Tell me what is on your heart and mind. Teach me how you think.

And when you give me a commission, please help me to faithful in executing it.

⁶ Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth. ⁷ And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. ⁸ Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, ⁹ male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah. ¹⁰ And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth.

¹¹ In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. ¹² And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.

¹³ On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark.

And if Noah had not obeyed God, he could have been killed.

I think again of what Moses said to this people as they were about to enter the Promised Land, “They are not just idle words for you–they are your life. By them you will long in the Land you are about to enter.” Deut 32:47.

¹⁴ They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. ¹⁵ Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. ¹⁶ The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the LORD shut him in.

This is fascinating. Moses is about to embark on a great destiny. He will be a new Adam, a prototype of Jesus.

And what is his preparation for his destiny as the new Father of the human race?

GOD SHUTS HIM IN.

WHAT? Yes.

Many times in my life, despite much manoeuvring, and prayers, and strategy and manipulation, and effort and tears, I have experienced this. A sense of being shut in, set apart to listen, hear, grow in solitude, away from approbation, affirmation, attention, praise, buzz, all these addictive things that are poison to the growth of the spirit. These are classroom experiences, in preparation for the next little task God gives me. And God keeps one in the classroom until one has mastered that lesson.

I know many people who feel shut in. In fact, I myself feel called by God at the moment for a season of silence, much solitude, repentance, spiritual growth, and quiet happiness with God. And I am not going to amputate this season, but will happily go through it, until God reveals the next chapter of my life to me.

You can be shut in for a season, and feel like your life is going nowhere, and that you are a failure. However, if you are a child of God, and submitted to him, this is merely a season of preparation for your destiny.

¹⁷ For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. ¹⁸ The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. ¹⁹ They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered.²⁰ The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits.^{[ 21} Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. ²² Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. ²³ Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.

Being able to hear the word of God, the voice of God, and the directives of God can keep you alive, even thriving through the bleakest, most cataclysmic season.

²⁴ The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.