As we continue our journey through the early parts of
Genesis, we come to the passage where God lays out the fundamental problem with
man after the Fall. It is from this text that we find out what must be fixed in
man if he is going to truly enter back into communion with the living God. In
these words, we not only discover the disease that confronts man, but also the
cure that is needed to make him again.
Genesis 6:5-8 “The LORD
saw that the wickedness of man was
great in the earth, and that every imagination
of the thoughts of his heart was
only evil continually. 6 And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved
him to his heart. 7 So the LORD
said, “I will blot out man whom I
have created from the face of the
ground, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.”
The very first thing we should notice is the evil and
wickedness that has entered or taken control of man since the Fall is in his
heart. When we read and study the Bible we must remember that the heart and mind
are connected. They both operate together when we function in life. So, if our
heart is corrupted by evil, then the thoughts of our mind, and the decisions or
actions we make, will be as well. God sees this chief problem as we are
reminded in the text that “every” thought of man was wicked. Not just one or
two of them, but all thoughts are wicked. Then we are told that God is “grieved”
and made “sorry” by his decision to create man. But that does this really mean?
I think we should understand this by saying that God is disappointed because
the humans he made are not fulfilling his desires or the vocation he created us
for. Man is falling short of his part in the plan that God had created him to
play, as Saint Paul reminds us in Romans, “all have sinned and fall short of
the glory of God.” (3:23) This “glory” is partly man’s intended function and dominion
as priest, prophet, and king, in God’s very good world.
Psalm 51 is a great illustration that God will have to
remake or refashion the heart of man, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and
put a new and right spirit within me.” The Psalmist is praying that God take
out his old wicked heart and give him a new heart. One that is filled with God’s
own spirit and will lead him along the right path, chiefly by making right decision
over wrong ones. The great promise from the Book of Ezekiel makes the same
point, as the Lord says:
Ezekiel 36:26-28 “A new heart
I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of
your flesh the heart of stone and give
you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to
walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. You shall dwell in
the land which I gave to your fathers; and you shall be my people, and I will be
your God.”
He is not saying, “I will give you this new heart, so you
call follow all my rules.” No, the Lord is telling us, “Through this new sprit
filled heart, you at last will be the people I made you to be, I will be your
God and we will have communion together again!”
Jesus himself, in one of my favorite passages from the New
Testament, also gives us an early peek behind the curtain in Mark’s Gospel, to
not only the problem with man, but also the needed cure. At the beginning of
the 3rd Chapter, the Pharisees are trying to find a reason to attack
Jesus because they do not like what he has been doing or the message he has
been preaching. Jesus goes into a synagogue on a Sabbath, then all hell breaks
loose as we read:
Mark 3:1-6 “A man was there who had a withered hand. And
they (the Pharisees) watched him (Jesus), to see whether he would heal him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse
him. And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come here.” And he
said to them, “Is it lawful on the sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save
life or to kill?” But they were silent.
And he looked around at them with anger,
grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man,
“Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out, and
immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.”
Jesus displays the same emotions that we find God also
showing in Genesis 6. Is this just a mere coincidence? I think not. Jesus as
the “GodMan” knows all about the wicked heart that man has within him. He knows
that the Pharisees have been misusing the Sabbath and its regulations, and it grieves
him deeply. He in angered because humanity does not know or seem to know in the
least, its foundational role in God’s world. Here Jesus restores the man’s hand,
but also from this passage we learn it is by the hand of Jesus that the heart
of man is going to be recreated and the image of God rightly restored in man. There
is much more going on in this scene from Mark, but we shall leave that for
another time.
I think we can all understand the main point of the passages
that we have looked at, and the problems they make clear. For this reason, the
heart of man and the required cure becomes a large part of the story of
salvation contained within the Bible. Just as with life and the conversion
process, at times it is a long and painful route. But let us take notice that
there is a gleam of hope found at the end of this text, where we read that
Noah, “found favor in the eyes of the Lord”. It is to the man Noah and his “favor”
that we will turn next time.
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