Genesis 8: 15 - 22

15 Then God said to Noah, ¹⁶ ‘Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. ¹⁷ Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you – the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground – so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it.’

¹⁸ So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. ¹⁹ All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds – everything that moves on land – came out of the ark, one kind after another.

²⁰ Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. ²¹ The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: ‘Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

²² ‘As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.’

God’s Never-Ending Love.

Does God change his mind? Does he have regrets? You and I often wish we had done things differently, and ‘regret’ taking a particular course of action. It is hard to imagine God having similar ‘regrets’. In Genesis 6: 6 it says, “The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.” I noted last week that it is likely that the writer of this passage named a human emotion in order to help the readers have an idea of how God felt. God did not ‘regret’ making human beings in the way that you and I might regret some words spoken in haste, or regret a choice. However, the statement that ‘his heart was deeply troubled’ shows that the actions of human beings can greatly grieve him. In Ephesians 4: 30, Paul writes “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God,” – and in the same paragraph talks about unwholesome talk, anger, rage, quarrelling and so on.

In today’s reading it almost looks as if God ‘regrets’ his actions for a second time – this time seeming to regret the flood. God says, “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.” (v.21).

God’s love for human beings is great and unending. Nevertheless, we can hurt God through our actions – by turning from him and going our own way; by ignoring God and by failing to love one another; by sin and selfishness, cruelty and unkindness. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3: 16)

God was saddened and grieved by the rebellion of humanity in the days of Noah, and he brought judgment upon them. And he was saddened and grieved afterwards that it had come to that. Notice, again, in verse 21, that God says, ‘even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood,’ – yet he will never again destroy all living creatures. God forgives all people who come to him in confession and repentance, and he adopts them into his family. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1: 9).

God has promised to always maintain the natural cycles of the world: “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease,” (v. 22), and we can always celebrate his love and goodness!

 

Prayer

Lord, we thank you for your goodness – for you love and mercy and willingness to forgive. We thank you for the promise that you will never again destroy all living things, and for the promise that days, years and seasons will always continue in this beautiful world you have made for us. Amen.