God is the world’s creator. God is also the one who sustains the world and provides for our needs. We especially celebrate that today in our harvest festival. But what a lot of trouble God has with his world. Some people look at the cruelty and evil that goes on in the world, and ask how can there be a God, when there is so much suffering?

The place where we have to go for an answer to that question of course is the bible. God has not left us in ignorance about himself; he has revealed answers regarding the worlds suffering as we have already seen in the story of Adam and Eve’s temptation and fall. As the story of Genesis continues, we see something of the way that a loving, holy God perseveres with fallen humanity; the fallen humanity that he created in his own image.

God deals with humanity in generosity and love, but also in discipline and judgement. That is not a contradiction, it is the way that any decent parent deals with their children; Children need love, but they also need restraint and discipline; they need to learn in some things to accept the answer no. When a child has never been refused anything they wanted, then what you have is a spoilt child.

God uses both love and anger, generosity and discipline to deal with mankind, in fact you see those factors working in tension virtually right through the scripture. We see it here in the story of the flood. We start off our story with things in a pretty bad state. Man had been given a beautiful world, but he had chosen to go his own way. Things go from bad to worse. From Adam and Eve who simply disobey God, Cain succumbs to the temptations of pride and hatred and becomes the first murderer.

We come to the point in chapter 6 of Genesis where the world is described as corrupt in God’s sight and full of violence. You may ask why God allowed the world to become so evil. The answer is perhaps to do with the fact that God is love, and he created mankind with the ability to love. But to truly love means that we have to be free, so that we can choose to love. Freedom also means that we can choose to hate rather than love. In a way, God in his love took a risk when he created humans. But in his wisdom that is what he did.

Yet God sets a limit on the amount of evil he will permit. And here in Genesis 6 God steps in, he steps in in judgement. Although mankind is free, mankind is also accountable to God. God decides that he will destroy the human race, a flood will come on the earth to destroy human civilization. We are, of course dealing here with pre-history. To try to put a date to the flood, or explain how it could physically happen would be sheer speculation. We know that there are other stories in Babylonian mythology that tell of a devastating flood that wipes out the human race, except for one man who is warned by one of the god’s and builds a boat.

But the biblical story of the flood is there to tell us about the true God, both as judge, and as faithful friend to the human race. There is one man, who is faithful to God of all the earth’s inhabitants.
He was blameless; he walked with God. God tells Noah to build an ark. 2 Peter 2 v 5 in the New Testament tells us Noah was a preacher of righteousness. But the people would not listen to Noah. So the time comes for God to close the door. Noah and his family and the animals are safe inside, but God puts an end to the violence and corruption.

There is a clear principle in scripture that God punishes sin. In particular God punishes violence, which is given as the reason for God’s judgement here. We also see in the story of the flood that God ordains that mankind should enforce his judgement for murder. In Genesis 9 v 6 God says, ‘whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.’ From the time of Noah, God appoints mankind to impose justice, for murder.

In a violent world it can be a necessity. In the New Testament the writers understood the civil and military authorities were appointed by God to maintain order and punish those who did wrong. Jesus warned his followers that all who draw the sword would die by the sword. God calls people to account for their sins. He will not allow hatred and violence to ultimately prevail, and he entrusts and requires of governments that they maintain order justly.

But as well as God’s judgement, in the story of Noah we see God’s love and faithfulness. Just as God has guided and protected Noah and his family in the ark through the terrible judgement, so he blesses him as he makes a new beginning for mankind. He tells him and his family to be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. Noah builds an altar to the Lord and makes burnt offerings. Noah approaches God in worship.

God makes a covenant with Noah. Never again will he curse the ground because of man. Never again will God flood the earth in judgement. As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease. There is food for thought there. There is always a harvest. There is always enough for the peoples of the world to eat.

Yes, maybe parts of the world can be affected by drought; but there is always enough in other places to provide for those whose crops fail. God expects us to use our skills and compassion to find ways of making sure that happens, in fact there are examples in the scripture of how such things can be done. There is the story of Joseph and his experience of ruler in Egypt. It tells how God warned Pharaoh through dreams of the coming famine, and through and of how Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams and was appointed to store grain in preparation for that famine. In the New Testament there is the example of Agabus at Antioch prophesying a famine in Jerusalem, and the Christians sending aid to Jerusalem for the believers there. It’s a reminder that calls us to play our part by supporting the BMS harvest appeal or other appropriate ways of showing God’s love to those who need help to get their daily bread.

God is faithful; we have no need to fear. God is still at work in his power and love sustaining our world and providing us with our daily bread. Yet the amazing thing about it all, is that God does this in spite of the fact that that we are sinful people.
God made his covenant promises to Noah in the full knowledge of what us human beings are like. In Genesis 8 verse 21 God promises to be faithful to Noah’s descendants ‘even though every inclination of man’s heart is evil from childhood.’ God still loves sinful mankind, he is faithful to us in spite of our inclinations to sin and folly. Yet we know that God in his love does not leave mankind there. From the story of Noah, history goes on its way, and there are other instances both of God’s judgement and of God’s mercy.

Ultimately though, we know that in his love, God sent Jesus into the world to express both God’s love and his judgement. Jesus in his teaching reminded people that just as God had judged humanity in the days of Noah, so there would be another occasion of judgement for mankind. It will be when Christ returns to our violent sinful world. This is what he says about that occasion: ‘just as it was in the days of Noah, so also it will be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating; drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the Ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.’

When God in his love and mercy sent his son into the world, it was still a world where human sin and violence permeated life. In fact Jesus suffered and died at the hands of sinful violent men. Yet Jesus came to offer to men and women a way to find safety and security and hope in this fractured violent world. Just as Noah offered a sacrifice that God would look in mercy and love upon him, so Jesus himself became the sacrifice, that you and I might be acceptable to God.

But he does call us to repentance. He calls us to turn from all sin and folly and to follow him. To live not by aggression and selfishness, or survival of the fittest, but to live by love, to follow in the steps of Jesus.

Our world is still a violent world today. Although we wish it were otherwise, police forces and armies still have a task to do to maintain peace and order and justice; and it’s important that those in authority remember that they have to answer to God for the way they do that.

But Jesus has shown us that there is a better way. He calls men and women to take the message of Gods reconciling grace to wherever men and women will listen, that they might turn from their fear, their violence and hatred and their sin and find peace and hope in him.

The God who made his covenant with mankind in spite of his sinful ways, in Jesus offers a new and better covenant. May we have the faith to live and walk with Christ in his covenant love.
 

Amen.

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