Genesis 6

v1-4: God’s judgment on human sin by means of the Flood was postponed for 120 years. Though “the time of God’s patience and forbearance toward offending sinners is sometimes long,” it won’t go on forever. There will be a limit to it. “Although God’s toleration lasts a great while, it will not last always.” This was true in the days of Noah, and it is still true in these last days we are living in.

v5-8: If God hates sin, “should we not hate it?” If “our sin grieved him to the heart” should “we not be not be grieved and distressed to heart” because of how we have treated him?

v9-21: Corrupt and violent is God’s description of this world. It is corrupt before God, “that is, in the worship of God, meaning they had other gods before him, they worshipped him using idols, or they were… challenging him and defying him to his face.” It is “filled with violence and injustice toward human beings.”

v22: Why did Noah do everything God had commanded him? Firstly, because he had “faith in the word of God.” God had told him that he would flood the world and “he believed it.” Secondly, “as an act of obedience to the command of God.” He obeyed “willingly and cheerfully, without murmuring or challenging.” Thirdly, “as an instance of wisdom for himself, to provide for his own safety.” Finally, “as a warning to a careless world” of what was soon coming to them.

Genesis 7

v1-10: What a gracious invitation of God to “Noah and his family to come into a place of safety.” This is the same kind of call given by God to sinners in the gospel. “Christ is an ark already prepared,” and it is only in Him alone that “we can be safe when death and judgment come.”

v11-16: “God put Adam into Paradise, but God did not shut him in, and so he threw himself out. But when God put Noah into the ark he shut him in, and so when he brings a soul to Christ he ensures that person’s salvation.” Our hope is not found in our ability to keep ourselves in the ark, but in God who will keep hold of us.

v17-24: “All the men, women, and children who were in the world (except those who were in the ark) died.” When God’s judgment comes, “there is no place on earth so high that people can escape” it, and “those who are not found in Christ, the ark, are certainly ruined, cut off forever.” Let us pause and “consider this awful judgment! … The sin of sinners will, unless they repent, be their ruin, sooner or later.”