God's Disinclination to Destruction (Genesis 8)

 God's Disinclination to Destruction

God destroyed earth with a flood. This was not the final judgment when this earth will ‘flee’ as Revelation says.

But God spared a few. He had grace.

After the flood God immediately works on restoring it. 

A common theme we will see is that God is slow to anger and that destruction is a strange work to Him, but that restoration and creating is a much closer His heart.

Humanity is still naturally evil from his youth to the very heart.
Why do we not give Him a favor and repent from our evil ways?

[Gen 8:15-19 NKJV] 15 Then God spoke to Noah, saying, 16 "Go out of the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons' wives with you. 17 "Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that [is] with you: birds and cattle and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, so that they may abound on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth." 18 So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him. 19 Every animal, every creeping thing, every bird, [and] whatever creeps on the earth, according to their families, went out of the ark.


Thus the earth gets repopulated. He works on restoring right after destruction.

But it doesn't end there.

Not only does God restore, but He also shows His disinclination to destroy. He did not like to destroy the world with a flood.

And when Noah made sacrifices to Him with a heart of faith it moved God to make this decision as a response to His sacrifices that seemed to have given Him room to express this. In Genesis 7 He already expressed the will to establish the covenant He made in Genesis 9 which says He would never destroy the world with a flood again. But in Genesis 8 it are the sacrifices that Noah made that made an occasion for this:


[Gen 8:20-22 NKJV] 20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21 And the LORD smelled a soothing aroma. Then the LORD said in His heart, "I will never again curse the ground for man's sake, although the imagination of man's heart [is] evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done. 22 "While the earth remains, Seedtime and harvest, Cold and heat, Winter and summer, And day and night Shall not cease."


God loves order, restoring, creating and persevering. The way He phrases this shows His disinclination to destroy.

The normal cycles of earth would remain and He would not destroy the world in this way again.

Genesis 9 elaborates and specifies:


[Gen 9:11 NKJV] 11 "Thus I establish My covenant with you: Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth."

Never again, the Lord said in His heart, although the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.


Such strong language shows His disinclination to destroy.

It sure did not have to do with a change of heart in humanity.

But God still shows a disinclination towards this kind of destruction anyway.

He is still the same. In these thousands of years the earth has not been destroyed in such a global way as was then the case. No flood had come.

It is in His character to restore, create and preserve.

Why would we think He wants us destroyed? 

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