Provoking God wrath
Genesis 6:8-24
The most remarkable thing concerning the old world is the destroying of it by the flood. We are told of the successful iniquity of that wicked world: God’s just wrath, and his holy resolution to punish it. In all ages there has been a peculiar curse of God upon marriages between professors of true religion and its acknowledged enemies. The evil example of the ungodly party corrupts or greatly hurts the other.
1) Family religion is brought to an end,
2) The children are trained up according to the worldly maxims (sayings) of that parent who is without the fear of God.
If we profess to be the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty, We must not marry without his consent. He will never give his blessing,
If we prefer
1) Beauty
2) Wit
3) Wealth
4) Worldly honors to faith and holiness.
The Spirit of God made every effort to be with man, by sending Enoch, Noah, and perhaps others, to preach to them; by waiting to be gracious, notwithstanding their rebellions; and by exciting alarm and convictions in their consciences.
But the Lord declared that his Spirit should not thus strive with men always; he would leave them to be hardened in sin, and matured for destruction. This he determined, because man himself is flesh: not only frail and feeble, but carnal and wicked; having misused the noble powers of his soul to gratify his corrupt inclinations. God sees all the wickedness that is among the children of men; it cannot be hid from him now; and if it be not repented of, it shall be made known by him shortly.
The wickedness of a people is great, when noted sinners are men renowned among them. Very much sin was committed in all places, hardly anyone was exempted from sinning. Any one might see that the wickedness of man was great: but God saw that every imagination, or purpose, of the thoughts of man’s heart, was only evil continually. This was the bitter root, the corrupt spring. The heart was deceitful and desperately wicked; the principles were corrupt; the habits and dispositions evil.
They sinned deliberately, contriving how to do mischief. There was no good among them. God saw man’s wickedness as:
1) one injured and wronged by it.
2) He saw it as a tender father sees the stupidity and persistence of a rebellious and disobedient child
The final analysis is it makes him wish he had been childless. The words here used are remarkable; they are used after the manner of men, and do not mean that God can change, or be unhappy. Does God thus hate our sin? And shall not we be grieved to the heart for it? Oh that we may look on Him whom we have grieved, and mourn!
God repented that he had made man; but we never find him repent that he redeemed man. God resolves to destroy man: the original word is very striking, to I will wipe off man from the earth, to as dirt or filth is wiped off from a place which should be clean, and is thrown to the dunghill, the proper place for it. God speaks of man as his own creature, when he determines his punishment for man.
Conclusion
Those who forfeit their lives who do not answer the end of their living. God speaks of resolution concerning men, after his Spirit had been long striving with them in vain. None are punished by the justice of God, but those who hate to be reformed by the grace of God.
