Why God Sent The Flood (MP 15)

As people multiplied quickly on earth,
God watched their wickedness grow ever more;
Men had no law save that inborn at birth;
Their hearts were lustful to their inner core!
God grieved for creating the race of Man,
Who defiled God’s own image by their sin;
“I will destroy them according to plan;
My Spirit won’t always with Man contend!
The people of earth had never seen rain;
Their water all came from beneath the ground;
God planned by flood the entire race be slain,
Save for Noah and kin, who’d a new one found!
Men’s sin caused God’s wrath to almost destroy
The race, which ought cause men God’s word employ!

Scripture Quoted (NIV)
Genesis 2:5b-6—“… for the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth … but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground …”

Genesis 6:5-8—“The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth and his heart was filled with pain. So the Lord said, ‘I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth … But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.”

Commentary
Ten generations of human beings were descended from Adam and Eve when God’s Master Plan called for Him to send a great flood on the earth and drown them all, except for Noah and his family. The number of people had greatly increased because of the longevity of all these people; their wickedness had grown geometrically as well, as God had known it would. The people born to Noah’s three sons on a gradual scale would be limited to an average span of 120 years, and perhaps could live with less wickedness also. Some might ask, “How could God expect less evil among the new beings if there were no new commands from Him?” He had not given Adam’s first descendants any new law, like the one He gave Adam about not eating fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; in fact, He had taken the Garden out of reach of men; they could not break that commandment, for the Tree was unavailable. All of them were already condemned by reason of Adam’s sin, and God had not yet revealed to them His plan of redemption coming with the Lord Jesus Christ thousands of years in the future. God's Plan called for Him to develop a particular tribe of people by selecting and revealing Humself to individuals who would be instrumental in forming the new nation, and one by one He gave them knowledge of blessings that He would bestow upon them for obedience.

However, Adam’s son Seth lived with him 800 years, and Seth’s parents had plenty of firsthand knowledge of God’s nature and expectations of good behavior from members of the race He had created. Enosh, son of Seth and grandson of Adam, began to “call on the name of the Lord” (Genesis 4:26); others of his generation did, too. They knew about God’s desires for men to live righteously, because Adam and Eve were alive and must have told them much. The great increase in wickedness (sin) among the first ten generations was caused by man's inherent desires to seek pleasures of this world; they chose sin instead of choosing to live for God. This was known to God before creation, and His plan for the flood to destroy those ten generations was made long ago; yet He gave them freedom to choose. Adam’s sin alone was not the cause of the destructive flood; it was caused by the free choice of men and women to live wickedly,and by the necessity to curb population growth. The purpose of human life on earth was to test every man and woman for his or her choice of good or evil; it did not require a long life-span, such as that enjoyed by the pre-flood generations.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him will not die, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16)

"That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord', and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." (Romans 10:9)