This teaching is our 9th session in our verse-by-verse study of the Book of Genesis by pastor Barry – given as part of our family service on 19th March 2017.
In this study, we begin to look at one of the most important chapters in the Bible – Genesis chapter 6.
There is overwhelming evidence for the Flood, that is not the real issue (those who reject it as a historical event do so on ignorance or bias but never on the basis of evidence to the contrary). The big question is why did God send the Flood?
Consider, that in Genesis 18, Abraham speaks to God regarding the pending destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah and, after questioning God as far as he felt able, God told Abraham He would not destroy the city if even just 10 righteous souls were found there. That is, God would have spared the city for the sake of the righteous souls living there. So that then begs the question, if God would have spared Sodom and Gomorrah for the sake of 10 righteous souls, what was so terrible on the pre-Flood earth that God went to the extreme lengths of destroying the world He had declared ‘very good’ at the end of Genesis 1? Something had gone drastically wrong! Something that far eclipsed the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah; something that demanded a far more dramatic response!
Although the critics of the Bible will try to tell us the God of the Old Testament is cruel and vindictive, we can never escape the fact that God is good and does good (Psalm 119:68). God’s very nature is goodness. He cannot do anything that is not good; so even the extreme measure of sending the Flood has to be seen in that light. Unsurprisingly, we find that God sending the Flood was actually an act of mercy and grace, to ensure the survival of the human race and, more importantly, to ensure the Seed of the woman, the promised Messiah, would one day be able to be born to undo the curse, the damage, the sin that had been caused back in the Garden of Eden.
Equally, we discover, Satan was the progenitor of the events that led to the Flood, and just as God had sought to redeem and save mankind, Satan was hell-bent on man’s destruction, going to incredible lengths himself to try and stop the promised Seed being born. He’d tried by getting Cain to murder Abel; he tried again by turning men against the Lord, but men were beginning to multiply on the earth, it was becoming harder to keep track of where the Seed might come from, so he resorted to drastic measures! Such drastic measures that unless it were explicitly stated in Genesis 6, unless it were confirmed on numerous occasions in both the Old and New Testaments, unless is was corroborated by history, we would probably never have believed it today. But confirmed and corroborated it is!
You can listen to the audio on this web page, or save it for listening to later. We have also made available the Powerpoint slides (in PDF format) that outline the key points of this study.
For those wanting to study this further, see the Pastor’s Blog section of this web-site. The Post accompanying this study is entitled “A Gigantic Problem!”.
We hope and pray this teaching will bless you and encourage you to undertake your own personal study and adventure in God’s Word!
