There are three characteristics that describe the God of the flood story; holy, powerful, and merciful. Although these may seem to be contradictory at first, you will see that they actually complement each other. 1. Holy
A holy and righteous God could not let sin abound on the earth as it was before the flood. The Bible says “And God saw that the wickedness of men was great on the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” This is the same attribute of holiness prevents God from letting sin into heaven.
2. Powerful
The magnitude of the flood showed how powerful God is. “The same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.” Never had the whole earth been flooded before, and a worldwide flood has never happened since. The Bible says in Psalms 147:5 “Great is our Lord, and of great power.”
3. Merciful
In Psalm 136, the psalmist repeatedly reiterates the phrase “his mercy endureth for ever”, and there are a couple of ways that God manifests his mercy in this story,
a) God spared Noah, his wife, Noah’s three sons, and their wives. “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” God could have just destroyed the whole entire earth and started over, but instead he saved Noah and his family, and gave humanity a second chance.
b) God promised never to flood the whole earth again. “And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations. I do set my bow in the cloud and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.”
We can experience the same mercy that Noah felt today. The Bible says “But God commended his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” The mercy of God extends to all who will trust in him to save them.
As one can see these three attributes of holiness, power and mercy are clearly manifested by God in the flood story and in everyday life as we know it.
I like how your quotes really drove home your key points. Also it was a nice touch using other quotes from the bible, but i do not think that was what Scott was asking for.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the your insight on the three aspects of the god in this flood story. The God in this storyseems to be indeed merciful, vengeful, and merciful at the same time as well as at different points throughout the story.
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting that towards the end of the story god came to the realization that man was evil or maybe just sinful from the day he was born and that he understood now. I found it confusing on whether he does this on purpose becausehe's truly is unknowing but chooses not to be to keep our actions a secreat so he won'tknow what we'll do next. That is unless he wants to.
Another very good post, Jake. (And by the way, good comments above from David and Matt.)
ReplyDeleteI think you did a good job of isolating the three qualities you found in the story and using evidence to back them up. You also highlighted an interesting quote:
“But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.”
This idea of grace is unique to the story, it seems to me. Grace is something that Noah didn't necessarily earn; it comes from God. So why is it the Noah is the recipient of this grace? And what does the fact that grace is used in this sense seem to say about humanity as a whole in this story?
David brought up an interesting question in his comment. I really like it when you're able to bring in related texts to enlighten the text at hand, as you did with the passage from Psalms. I encourage everyone to do that.