Day Two: Gen.
6:11-14, 17-18 Now the earth was corrupt in
God’s sight and the earth was filled with wickedness. God saw how corrupt the
earth was, for every creature had corrupted its way on the earth. Then God said
to Noah, “I have decided to put an end to every creature, for the earth is
filled with wickedness because of them; therefore I am going to destroy them
along with the earth. “Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the
ark, and cover it with pitch inside and outside. ... Understand that I am
bringing a flood – floodwaters on the earth to destroy every creature under
heaven with the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will die. But I will
establish My covenant with you, and you will enter the ark with your sons, your
wife, and your sons’ wives.
ONE DAY I WAS EATING BREAKFAST with a couple that was
interested in being on our core team of our church plant. I was excited to sit
down with them because I thought they had a lot to offer the team. As we talked
over breakfast at Cracker Barrel I got to hear the husband’s story. I knew he
had a jail stint in his past, but I didn’t know any of the details. I expected
to hear about some petty crime, and in my head I even thought about how cool it
would be to have someone who served time is on our team!
As he continued to talk, I learned that
he had spent more than 25 years locked up in a high security facility. I was
shocked. And worse than that, I even lost my appetite, which almost impossible
to do at Cracker Barrel. In my head I began thinking about the various crimes
one could commit to receive such a severe sentence. I knew that the act had to
have been very serious to get such a long sentence. As it turned out, the crime
was severe. But God completely redeemed this man and uses him to this day to be
a solid leader on mission for Jesus!
I knew this man’s crime had to be bad
based on the extreme sentence he received. In Genesis 6 we read about God
sentencing the people on earth for a crime. Judging from the sentence, which
consisted of a worldwide flood, it is safe to assume that the offenses were
severe.
What was the crime? The crime was
filling the earth with wickedness and sin instead of filling the earth with the
image of God. The Flood story ought to heighten our understanding of how bad
sin is and remind us of the extreme penalty that we deserve.
PAUSE AND REFLECT
▷▷Why did God send the flood?
▷▷What happened to earth as a result of the flood?
▷▷What does the flood teach us about sin?
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