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Audio
of More Sermons by Pastor Marjorie Palmer
Genesis 6,7,8,9
The Diluvian Problem©
I used to think
I am no longer naïve. That’s a mistake! In fact I am probably naïve about a
lot of things. I know there are evildoers in this world. St. Paul even quotes
Hebrew Bible saying, ‘All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
(Rom. 3:23) So we need to keep that in
mind. No one is free from fault. Each one of us has failed before.
There are some
who would say that we are evolving to a greater state, but that cannot be borne
up by the facts in this world. There are as many wicked people today as there
ever have been. In fact, there are more—figuring that there are as many people
living on the earth today as there have been up to this point.
I used to
think that wicked people were pretty stupid and lazy and that they wouldn’t get
out in bad weather. (I didn’t lock my car in the rain, thinking a lazy person
wouldn’t bother trying to steal things from my car in the pouring rain.) I
think I was wrong, and we should always be aware and wise, and take precautions
against thieves. I have come to think of the evil-doers in this world a little
like the ant hills we see all over Huntsville. Those little hills of red dirt
are nice-looking, and they are always empty, but if I step on one of them,
suddenly many little fire ants appear from nowhere. They were there all the
time; I just hadn’t seen them before.
We saw a couple
of examples of evil-doers coming out in the open:
·
when The Army went into Bagdad and
so many people began sacking the museums,
·
and again after Katrina made such
a mess out of New Orleans the looters were rampant all over the place, stealing
right out in the open.
Evil is alive
and well in our lives. I think the greatest example of evil happening these
days is the amount of white-collar thieves and liars we’ve unearthed in the
terrible situation with our economy.
God gave humans
the greatest gifts: a keen mind and the ability to think logically and so much
more, but our human minds desperately need guidance when we are young. It’s hard
to imagine how bad people can become if they are not guided carefully by loving
parents and a good community.
This human
condition is the same as it always has been. In our scripture today it says, ‘The
wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of
the thoughts of their hearts was only evil.
(Gen 6:5) People were acting on every foul thought they ever had.
‘And
the LORD was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him
to his heart.’ (Gen. 6:6)
Everyone of us
has experienced feeling sorry for something we have done. Maybe we hurt someone
or betrayed a trust or failed in some other way. We may even be haunted by that
memory, thinking we may spend our lives feeling sorry for what we did.
But even as we
know about being sorry for having done something wrong or hurtful to others, or
hurting ourselves, we probably haven’t felt sorry for doing something wonderful.
God didn’t sin
by creating this world. God created this world and more than we know, and God
called it good… God called it ‘VERY GOOD’. The plan of creation is overwhelming
in its goodness and grandeur and success. When we begin to really see the
marvelous systems that God created to make all this work, it is truly wonderful.
All creation works together and is dependent on the rest of creation. Systems
are dependent on other systems. Everything works together in harmony.
God was not
sorry because he did something wrong or evil. God was sorry for the actions of
the humans. Creation, in its beauty and organization was working just fine, but
the way humans acted caused God great pain. ‘He
was grieved in his heart.’ (Gen.
6:6)
Many people
today are not quite sure what to think about God, or if there really is a God.
They see the wickedness and evil in this world and wonder, ‘How could a good God
allow this or that to happen?’
I’m sure we’ve
all heard people say that before, and maybe we’ve asked that question ourselves.
That question
is the question of ‘theodicy’, which is the study of God’s justice: ‘How can a
good God allow bad stuff to happen?’
Maybe that’s
close to the question God was asking Himself back then. “How can I allow this
to happen? These people are not acting right. They are seeing only to their
animal urges, and they are far from being the people I created them to be.”
Scripture tells
us that God was grieved in his heart when God saw the foolishness of the
humans. And the Lord said, ‘I will blot
out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals
and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.’
(Gen. 6:7)
Do you suppose
God was looking at the canvas of creation and thinking that he would like to
scrub out that one piece that didn’t please him? He would just like to erase
humans from ever existing.
But it wasn’t
that simple. God’s plan for creation was carefully figured from the start, even
before the beginning. There was a reason that God made humans, a reason that
creation was not complete without us.
God had a
reason for making us in the first place. Although all of creation had been made
before God made humans, and everything worked quite nicely before humans came on
the scene, in God’s mind the final piece of his workmanship would cap all else.
This final creature would be the one who would be the finest of all. In this
last creature God would place God’s image. As scripture tells us, ‘So
God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male
and female He created them.’ (Gen
1:27)
When God made
humans God made something new. God made us in God’s image. We carry God’s
image within us, and we are therefore different from the lower animals.
We have free
will. We can choose how we shall live. We are not enslaved to our hormones or
our instincts. We can take the higher road. We can learn how to live with each
other and to build community and families. We can worship God and learn of Him.
We have free
will. No other creatures have it. Other creatures must live within the range
made for them. Some animals have sharper teeth or bigger muscles or faster legs
than we do, but they are only creatures of their particular world.
Unfortunately
free will allows us to choose to do our own thing. That’s the down side of free
will. But it seems you can’t have the good side of free will and not have the
down side, too. It always remains our choice as to how we will act. [We can’t
even force another to choose the way we want them to go. We might ‘strong arm’
someone into agreeing with us for a short while, but person will likely return
to his or her own way of thinking the minute the pressure is released.]
It is our free
will that causes the sin and evil in this world. Even if there are many
influences in this world that would try to lure us to follow them, it is up to
each of us to follow or not to follow. [We can’t use the excuse, ‘Satan made me
do it.’]
The gift of
free will allows us to choose to love and follow God’s commands or not. God
wants children to love Him of their own volition, not someone who has not choice
in the matter. The fellowship that God desires comes from free will. I
believe that’s a very important part of God’s plan that God will have children
who choose to love God and be in fellowship with Him forever.
God decided to
end the project…He would flood the whole world and scrub it clean of the humans
who had ruined His beautiful plan.
But there was
one man that made God re-think things. Noah was not the horrid creature that
the others were. He had a wife and three married sons. God thought on them
favorably, and God determined to take Noah and his family out of the picture, to
save them from the deluge to come.
God would use
Noah and his family to start fresh afterwards.
We probably
remember the story of Noah and the Ark as a story about
·
how Noah heard God speaking to
him,
·
telling him to build the great
ship
·
and to place all the pairs of
animals on it;
·
How Noah was obedient and followed
the command of God;
·
and through his obedience, a
remnant of each creature was saved from the terrible flood.
And that’s a
good picture to remember: obedience to God’s command is always a good lesson.
At the end of
the story, after the waters abated, the doors of the ark were finally opened,
and all the animals were released to discover new habitats. Noah and his family
built an altar and thanked and worshipped God. That’s another good lesson—being
thankful for God’s saving grace.
But today I
would like us to consider the final picture in the story. When Noah built the
altar and sacrificed many animals on it, the aroma of the sacrifices wafted
heavenward. God smelled the aroma and was pleased. God said in his heart, ‘
“I will never again curse the
ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from
youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. As
long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and
winter, day and night, shall not cease.’ (Gen 8:21-22)
Then God established a covenant between himself and all creation. He set a great
bow in the clouds as the sign of the covenant. God said,
‘When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it
and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of
all flesh that is on the earth.’ (Gen 9:16)
God
would look on the beautiful bow in the sky and remember God’s promise to all
creation that never again would God cause such a calamity that would blot out
all life from the earth.
I
think this story in Genesis comes very close to answering that question about
theodicy—God’s justice: why would God allow terrible things to happen? When
God saw the horrid way the humans were acting, He asked that same question,… and
then God knew the answer.
‘God has chosen not to be God without us.’ I borrowed that from Karl Barth, a
20th Century theologian. ‘God has chosen not to be God without us.’
God’s commitment to us is forever. God’s plan for creation includes us people
being in the picture. God would never again cause such a calamity of nature so
as to rid the world of all life. God is committed to our life and our
well-being.
God chose to carry grief and suffering in his heart for the future of the
world. This old story of Noah and the ark is surely a foretaste of the Christ
who came to secure salvation for us for all eternity.
Copyright © 2009 Marjorie Palmer. All Rights Reserved. No portion of
this writing may be reproduced in any form without specific, written
permission of the author.
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