Genesis 6:5-7 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth… Dismissing at once, as they deserve to be dismissed, these coarser and more repulsive aspects of the language before us, we will claim rather for it this most beautiful characteristic; that it speaks of the sympathy of God Himself with that very view of human life which is taken by the best and purest of His children and servants below. There are times when the contemplation of the misery and sin of the world is almost overwhelming to those who would keep (if it be possible) both their faith and their reason. The words here written of God Himself are exactly descriptive of them — "it repents them that God has made man on the earth; it grieves them at the heart." They can take little comfort in the thought of the one or the two "perfect in their generations," while they see the bulk of mankind suffering without hope, and living without God in the world. They can take little comfort in the thought of a heaven opened to the believing and the holy, if it implies that the very opposite and antithesis of a heaven is crowded with masses and multitudes of rejecters and despisers and neglecters of the gospel. Oh, why did God — they ask themselves, and there is none to answer — why did God make all things worse than for nought? Why did He create upon the earth a race predestined to a choice foreseen to be of evil? Why did He not either bias that inevitable choice for good, or else blot out instantly from existence the creature that had used liberty for self-destruction? With such questions all thoughtful men at times have vexed themselves. It is something, I say this morning, to read here of the sympathy of God Himself with the perplexity; to find the Bible speaking of God repenting Himself that He has created — vexing Himself at the very heart for these terrible consequences of the origination of human life and human free will. And I read in this record much more than a fruitless or hopeless lamentation. I read here, first of all, that which should reconcile heart and conscience to the necessity of a judgment. The verso which says, "It repented Him," is followed by the verse which says, "I will destroy" — "I must bring a flood of waters." Yes, we could not wish that this evil should be immortal. We could not wish that vices and crimes, cruelties and defilements, should go on forever repeating themselves on a suffering earth. If we saw any clear proof that the world, taken as a whole — not in a few of its privileged spots, but all over and everywhere — was improving, was on the way, surely however slowly, towards a millennium of health and welfare, we might leave contentedly the question of the when and the how, and be willing that there should be patience, in heaven as on earth, over a seed growing secretly and a promise gradually developing. But is it thus with us? Is the growth of good, in the world as a whole, and of good as a whole — the higher good as well as the lower, the spiritual good as well as the physical — is this growth discernible? Side by side with the growth of good, is there not an equal, or a more than equal, growth of evil? On what night of this earth's history does not the enemy go forth, while men sleep, to sow his counterfeit grain? Who shall flatter us with the hope that either free trade or cheap literature, either compulsory education or shilling Bibles, have in them the secret of regenerating thoroughly this bad old world, or of rendering superfluous that aboriginal faith of the Church, The day of the Lord will come: "the judgment shall sit, and the books be opened"? For my part, I think that I can leave in God's hands the exercise of that judgment and the settlement of its issues. There is, to me, almost an impertinence in trying to settle for Him, in this twilight of our knowledge, either the exact meaning of His terms, or the precise measurements of His eternity. I only know that saints and righteous men have been reconciled to the expectation of a judgment, not by the thought of the just recompense of the wicked, but by the thought of the putting down of evil, and the introduction of a new heaven and earth — this very heaven and earth it may be — wherein dwelleth righteousness. It would be no kindness to the sinner to let him sin on forever and not die. God sympathizes with us in our sense of this world's evil; and if He had not in His view a glorious future, from which the spectre of misery shall be absent, and in which the demon of sin shall be forgotten and out of mind, He would say literally that it repented Him to have created — He would say indeed, and also do it, that He must annihilate the work of His own hands. But there is an alternative, and He has provided it. (Dean Vaughan.) Parallel Verses KJV: And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. |
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