Sunday, April 11
The divine opinion at the end of God’s creation was that all “was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Then sin entered, and the paradigm shifted. Things weren’t “very good” anymore. God’s orderly creation was marred by sin and all its loathsome results. Rebellion reached terrible proportions by Noah’s day; evil consumed the race. Though the Bible does not give us many details (see Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, pp. 90-92 for more), the transgressions and rebellion were clearly something that even a loving, patient, and forgiving God couldn’t tolerate.
How could things get so bad so quickly? The answer is, perhaps, not that hard to find. How many people, today, looking at their own sins, have not asked the same thing: How did things get so bad so quickly?
Look up the texts listed below. Write down the point they make. Notice the steady progression of sin:
Genesis 6:5 and 11 did not arise in a vacuum. There was a history before them. This terrible result had a cause. Sin progressively got worse. It tends to do that. Sin is not like a cut or a wound, with some automatic, built-in process that brings healing. On the contrary, sin, if left unchecked, multiplies, never satisfied until it leads to ruin and death. One does not have to imagine life before the Flood to see this principle operating. It exists all around us even now.
No wonder God hates sin; no wonder, sooner or later, sin will be eradicated. A just, loving God could do nothing else with it.
The good news, of course, is that though He wants to get rid of sin, He wants to save sinners. That’s what the covenant is all about.
