Noah and the Wrath of God

Noah and God’s Wrath, Gen. 5-6

Introduction:
Many people stop reading the Bible when they come to this story.
We can’t stand the idea of God as judge.
We tend to imagine God as we wish him to be, rather the kindly grandfather who winks at our failures and foibles.
With a little forethought, though, it’s not hard to understand why God’s judgment is an essential prerequisite to our happiness. Not because we are grim, dour Victorians, but more directly than that.

Today, I want to make two points;
first, the problem of human violence leads us to question the justice of God; second, God’s response to human violence is both frightening and reassuring.

Let’s look first at the central statement of the problem in the text.

Gen. 6:5 ¶ But the Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind had become great on the earth. Every inclination of the thoughts of their minds was only evil all the time.

Central Point:
I. The problem of human violence leads us to wonder at the justice of God.
a. “Every inclination of the mind”.
i. That seems a little extreme because we are frogs.
ii. Frogs in a kettle, adjusting to warm, then hot, without noticing what’s going on around us.
b. “Only evil, all the time.”
i. Not me! I’m decent.
ii. Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.: “Treating yourself as your own first cause, and God is your accessory”. When things don’t go your way, you get angry, even with God. God lets you down when things do go as you wish.
iii. Even decent people get caught up in evil systems which have to be judged.
1. Christians were caught up in Nazism.
2. Today, we find ourselves as Christians tangled up in all sorts of enterprises that do harm as well as good.
3. Few Christians would ever say, “Yep, I’ll sell my soul for an extra few thousand a year,” or “Of course, I’ll advance up the banking ladder by excluding loans to the marginalized.”
4. Nietsche: if there is no god, then there can be nothing wrong with violence. If you object to violence, then you are a weak person and by objecting to violence you are doing a power play agasint the strong, putting them in their place. Moral outrage is a moral outrage against power plays.

c. God’s response to human violence comes from his wrath.
i. God feels the pain of our violence.

NIDOTTE
Hitpael form—“feel grieved” which is the basis for God’s action in judgment.

EBC, Sailhamer
In v.6—“the LORD was grieved [wayyinnahem ] that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain [wayyith ‘asseb ]“—the author describes the Lord’s response to man’s wickedness by making a curious wordplay on Lamech’s naming Noah: “He will comfort us [yenahamenu ] in ... the painful toil of our hands” (ume‘isse bon 5:29). Thus in both passages Noah is introduced with wordplays associating his name, “Noah” (noah ), with the “comfort” (niham ) from the grief and pain (‘asab ) caused by man’s rebellion (cf. Cassuto).
By making God the subject of the verbs in v.6, the author has shown that the grief and pain of man’s sin was not something that only man felt. God himself was grieved over man’s sin (v.7). In returning in this way to the role of “comforter” invested in the significance of Noah’s name, the author suggests that not only did Noah bring comfort to mankind in his grief, but also he brought comfort to God.

ii. God promises to take the violence on personally, on himself!

Miraslov Volf’s Exclusion and Embrace.
My thesis is that the practice of non-violence requires a belief in divine vengeance…
My thesis will be unpopular with man in the West…But imagine speaking to people (as I have) whose cities and villages have been first plundered, then burned, and leveled to the ground, whose daughters and sisters have been raped, whose fathers and brothers have had their throats slit…
Your point to them–we should not retaliate? Why not?
I say–the only means of prohibiting violence by us is to insist that violence is only legitimate when it comes from God…
Violence thrives today, secretly nourished by the belief that God refuses to take the sword…
It takes the quiet of a suburb for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence is a result of a God who refuses to judge. In a scorched land–soaked in the blood of the innocent, the idea will invariably die, like other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind…
if God were NOT angry at injustice and deception and did NOT make a final end of violence, that God would not be worthy of our worship.

• If you think that you can forgive someone merely by saying, “I forgive” and you’re done with them, then you have NOT experienced true pain, you have not been truly harmed.
Those who have felt wrenching loss are unable to forgive with a mere toss of the head.

• If you believe that human violence comes from the belief in a vengeful God, then you live in a comfortable suburb.
You will pick up the sword unless you believe that God will.

Tin Keller: “Remove the Divine Judge, you then have no way to deal with human violence.”
You have no INTELLECTUAL DEFENSE, against the naturalness of violence.
No emotional defense against the poison of violence.
No means of preventing the cultural expansion of violence.

The justice of God is the only force that can bring an end to human violence. Of course, the prospect of a wrathful God also induces fear in us!

II. God's wrath is frightening, but reassuring.
a. God’s wrath is frightening because…
If He is God, then He is all powerful.
If He is God, then His judgments are beyond appeal.
b. God’s wrath is reassuring because His vengeance is expressed in justice.
i. If there is no justice, then we have much to fear.
1. God’s wrath is simultaneously present with his mercy.
a. We are complex beings: sometimes angry, sometimes nice; we’re complex, in a word: MOODY.
b. God is a simple being: His wrath and justice are inseparable from his mercy and grace. He is even-keeled, always merciful, always just.

2. God’s justice and God’s mercy must coexist, since he both recoils in pain when violence breaks out, and he acts in judgment at just the right time.

Gen. 6:5 ¶ But the Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind had become great on the earth. Every inclination of the thoughts of their minds was only evil all the time.

Gen. 6:6 The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.


IVP Dictionary of Biblical Imagery
Having said this, however, Scripture makes it clear that God does feel sorrow, and it is in this respect that we turn to the second aspect of the use of this image.
The disobedient actions of people are described as making him sad. So the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was so “grievous” to him that he visited those places with his judgment (Gen 18:20).
The sins of his own people had a similar effect (Ps 78:40).
Isaiah describes them as grieving God’s Holy Spirit by their rebellion (Is 63:10),


ii. If there is justice, then we can forgive.
1. We can release our impulse for revenge.
2. We can find forgiveness possible.

If there is a JUDGE, who has the power, the knowledge, the right to give people what they deserve.
Only then, can you FORGIVE.