Chapter 3: The Flood

New World, New Adam, Same Problem

Last week, we examined the Fall into sin and observed how sin impacted every aspect of creation. If you want to catch up you can read that here:

Chapter 2: The Fall

As we discovered, God promptly initiated his rescue plan to address the issue of sin following the Fall. He had pledged that someone would come in the future who would crush the head of the serpent.

However, as we continue the story today, we notice that things have not improved; in reality, they have progressively deteriorated after Adam and Eve depart the Garden of Eden, and the effects of sin persist. Cain, the son of Adam and Eve, murders his brother Abel. We learn about a man named Lamech who boasts about his cruelty and the killing of a man who had wronged him. He takes pride in his vengeance. (Please see Genesis 4 for the complete story.) The world that God had created was descending into greater wickedness and evil, and it seemed that God's promise to end sin was falling apart before our eyes.

It became necessary to take action, and the solution was the Flood. Many of us are familiar with this tale from our Sunday school days. We all know about Noah, the ark, and how the animals entered in "twosies twosies."

However, have you ever taken a closer look at this story? In reality, it spans three chapters in the book of Genesis and consumes a significant amount of space. As a result, it must be essential to the story that God is telling. Let us first consider what the Bible has to say about why God sent the Flood.

Sin abounds

Genesis 6:5–8 CSB

5 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.

Verse 5 provides a good summary of what the world had become after the fall into sin. Widespread human wickedness had taken hold on the earth, and every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil, all the time. This is a sad indictment of the human race, where everything produced by the world was bad, every thought was bad, and every intention was evil. Everyone was out to get ahead by exploiting everyone and everything.

God saw this and regretted making man on the earth. He was deeply grieved and decided to wipe mankind from the earth. God was pained by the sin and evil in the world, having made something incredibly beautiful, and grieving when he saw what it had become. Therefore, he decided to wipe out man from the earth.

However, we must be careful not to see God as capricious, wicked, vengeful, or even evil, because he decided to destroy the entire world. Biblically, we realize that God had every right to do so. Humanity knew God's law: to sin was to die. This was the warning God had given Adam and Eve. When the text says that every inclination of man was evil, it shows us that sin abounded everywhere. Not only did the earth's inhabitants deserve to die for one single sin, but they deserved it for every moment of every day.

We have a category for situations like this too. In places where capital punishment is practiced we believe that there are also some people who are so evil or have committed such vile crimes that they deserve to die. Now imagine a world filled with only such people. That is what the world became after the Fall into sin. God was well within his rights to wipe away that kind of evil from the world. In fact, God could be considered evil if he didn't do that!

Moreover, we need to remember that this is God's world. He made it, and it is his. Just like I have the right to break down my Lego creation, God has the right to do with his creation what he wants. So, he decided to wipe the slate clean, to get rid of the evil in the world and start again.

God was faced with two options: to destroy mankind and start again to get rid of sin, or to blot out sin by working through mankind. This is the key question that hovers over the entire Old Testament. How will God fulfill his promise that one day the serpent's head would be crushed? How will God enact his rescue plan? Will God wipe out sin, or will he wipe out sinners to wipe out sin? Will he destroy the cause or the causer?

It turns out that in the Flood, it is kind of both. God wiped out the evil in the world but saved a remnant. He set apart Noah and his family and decided to rebuild through them. He remained faithful to his promise to Eve that one of her offspring would smash the head of the serpent. Through Noah, the world would be remade, but first, it had to be unmade.

The unmaking of creation

Genesis 7:11–24 CSB

11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the sources of the vast watery depths burst open, the floodgates of the sky were opened, 12 and the rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. 13 On that same day Noah along with his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, entered the ark, along with Noah’s wife and his three sons’ wives. 14 They entered it with all the wildlife according to their kinds, all livestock according to their kinds, all the creatures that crawl on the earth according to their kinds, every flying creature—all the birds and every winged creature—according to their kinds. 15 Two of every creature that has the breath of life in it came to Noah and entered the ark. 16 Those that entered, male and female of every creature, entered just as God had commanded him. Then the Lord shut him in. 17 The flood continued for forty days on the earth; the water increased and lifted up the ark so that it rose above the earth. 18 The water surged and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 19 Then the water surged even higher on the earth, and all the high mountains under the whole sky were covered. 20 The mountains were covered as the water surged above them more than twenty feet. 21 Every creature perished—those that crawl on the earth, birds, livestock, wildlife, and those that swarm on the earth, as well as all mankind. 22 Everything with the breath of the spirit of life in its nostrils—everything on dry land died. 23 He wiped out every living thing that was on the face of the earth, from mankind to livestock, to creatures that crawl, to the birds of the sky, and they were wiped off the earth. Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark. 24 And the water surged on the earth 150 days.

Alert readers will notice something: this is not just a destruction of the world; it is actually an unmaking of the world.

Let's remember how the creation account was structured. God created the light and the dark space, then He separated the water and the sky. After that, He raised the land out of the water and created the vegetation in preparation for the animals. Finally, He filled these prepared spaces: He filled the light and dark with the sun and the moon and stars; He filled the sky with the birds of the air, the sea with fish, and the land with animals that crawl and with livestock. Lastly, He filled the land with humans who could bear God’s image.

In the flood, this process is undone: the animals and everything that has the breath of life in it are blotted out. The birds are destroyed, the animals that crawl are destroyed, the livestock are killed, and eventually, even mankind is blotted out. Day 4-6 in the creation account is unmade.

Then God proceeds to unmake even the spaces He had created. As He floods the earth, even the tallest mountains are covered by more than 20 feet of water. The land disappears again beneath the sea, and the land space is uncreated. He undoes the separation between the water above and the water below.

Genesis 7:11

“…on that day all the sources of the vast watery depths burst open, the floodgates of the sky were opened,”

Once again, we find ourselves in a place of watery chaos, where rainwater connects the sky and the sea, and we are in some way transported back to the state before the world was formed. Days 2-3 of creation have been undone, and aside from Day and Night, the entire creation has been unmade.

But not entirely.

In the midst of this chaos and destruction, God saved for Himself a remnant - a small group of people who He kept to reseed the world. This concept of a faithful remnant, a select group who stand out against the world and point the way back to God, becomes an important theme throughout Scripture. God's rescue plan is worked out through this remnant, this subgroup of chosen ones.

Noah and his family are the remnant whom God saved, even as the world was uncreated by the flood. Rather than simply wiping the slate clean, God chose to deal with the problem of sin by working through humanity.

So the question remains: Did it work? Did the flood, with the remnant of Noah and his family, actually solve the world's sin problem? The answer is no - it didn't.

Same problem

Genesis 9:1–29 CSB

1 God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. 2 The fear and terror of you will be in every living creature on the earth, every bird of the sky, every creature that crawls on the ground, and all the fish of the sea. They are placed under your authority. 3 Every creature that lives and moves will be food for you; as I gave the green plants, I have given you everything. 4 However, you must not eat meat with its lifeblood in it. 5 And I will require a penalty for your lifeblood; I will require it from any animal and from any human; if someone murders a fellow human, I will require that person’s life. 6 Whoever sheds human blood, by humans his blood will be shed, for God made humans in his image. 7 But you, be fruitful and multiply; spread out over the earth and multiply on it.” 8 Then God said to Noah and his sons with him, 9 “Understand that I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, 10 and with every living creature that is with you—birds, livestock, and all wildlife of the earth that are with you—all the animals of the earth that came out of the ark. 11 I establish my covenant with you that never again will every creature be wiped out by floodwaters; there will never again be a flood to destroy the earth.” 12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all future generations: 13 I have placed my bow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I form clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all the living creatures: water will never again become a flood to destroy every creature. 16 The bow will be in the clouds, and I will look at it and remember the permanent covenant between God and all the living creatures on earth.” 17 God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and every creature on earth.” 18 Noah’s sons who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan. 19 These three were Noah’s sons, and from them the whole earth was populated. 20 Noah, as a man of the soil, began by planting a vineyard. 21 He drank some of the wine, became drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent. 22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. 23 Then Shem and Japheth took a cloak and placed it over both their shoulders, and walking backward, they covered their father’s nakedness. Their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father naked. 24 When Noah awoke from his drinking and learned what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said: Canaan is cursed. He will be the lowest of slaves to his brothers. 26 He also said: Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem; Let Canaan be Shem’s slave. 27 Let God extend Japheth; let Japheth dwell in the tents of Shem; let Canaan be Shem’s slave. 28 Now Noah lived 350 years after the flood. 29 So Noah’s life lasted 950 years; then he died.

As you can see, there are clear parallels between this story and the story of Adam and Eve. Now that the separation between the sky and sea exists again, and now that land has emerged from the chaos of the flood, it is time for Earth 2.0. Instead of Adam and Eve, we have Noah and his family. Noah, in a sense, is a new Adam, and God gives him a very similar task to the one he gave Adam. He tells Noah to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth. This task may sound familiar because it is the same task God gave Adam. However, there is an important difference. Noah does not have the same kind of authority over animals that Adam did. Fear and disharmony now exist because humans will eat animals, not just plants as before.

So, while the new Adam has a similar task, there is an acknowledgement that things can never really be the same. They can never go back to the way they were before, even if it is a fresh world.

Right in the middle of this story of new beginnings, just when God gives this beautiful sign and promise, there is a very odd story about the vineyard. Noah becomes drunk, and he ends up naked and shamed. This story seems odd and out of place, except when we realize that it is part of a much bigger story.

Our story started in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth. He formed the land, and the sea receded, and he planted a beautiful garden. He commissioned the first man to multiply and fill the earth. Then the first man sinned in the middle of the garden and ended up naked and ashamed.

Now, in the second beginning, the earth rises from the depths of the sea, and the new first man, Noah, comes forth, and he plants a garden. He is commissioned to multiply and fill the earth. He sins, and he ends up naked and ashamed. We are supposed to see that Noah is the new Adam, but the problem of sin still remains. New Adam, same problem.

But something is different. To mark the new order of things, God gives Noah a sign. He puts his rainbow in the sky and says, “This will be a sign to you that I will never again wipe out the world with a flood.” This is not just a promise to Noah; it is a promise to all living creatures for all generations. This is God’s rubber stamp on his commitment to work out his rescue plan through the faithful remnant.

Unlike Adam, Noah is not cast away from God’s presence. In fact, we read that Noah lived another 350 years and died at the ripe old age of 950. In Genesis 3, we have a man who sins, ends up naked and ashamed, and is kicked out of God’s presence because of his sin, ultimately leading to his death. But now, we have a man who sins, ends up naked and ashamed, but still lives.

What's different?

In Chapter 9:13, God declares, 'I have placed my bow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I form clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all the living creatures: water will never again become a flood to destroy every creature.'

The word for 'bow' in this passage is typically understood to refer to a rainbow, but in almost every instance in the Old Testament, this word actually means an archer's bow – a weapon of war. God is saying that He will hang up His war bow and promise never to point it down to earth and wipe out humanity again through a flood.

However, our sin demands punishment. For God to be fair and just, sin and its effects must be destroyed. Sin must be blotted out, and it results in death and destruction – the unmaking of the world.

So how can this be reconciled? How can God both destroy and not destroy? He does so by turning His war bow around, pointing it up at heaven, and promising to take the judgment arrow for us. The Flood story teaches us that we need a greater Noah – because even a righteous man like Noah still ends up immediately naked and ashamed. The Flood teaches us that our problem is not just sin out there, but sin in our hearts that is the real issue. We need someone to help us – someone who would come and crush the head of the serpent on our behalf and take the arrow of God's judgment in our place.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves…