#TheGreatIntervener

The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.

Genesis 6:5–6

I have this image in my mind of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit hanging out prior to creation. One of them says (I don’t know which One says it), “I’m thinking about creating a man to be in relationship with Me.” He goes on, “Yup, let’s do it.”

Genesis 1:2 says the earth was formless and void. It was out of order. God spent the next five days getting it in order, prepped, and ready for man. After each day’s creative work, God said that it was good.  On day six, He did it. He created and breathed life into man. Not long after, He created woman from one of man’s ribs. On the day He created human beings, God said it was, “very good.” In reality, it was perfect. Adam, Eve, and God were in perfect relationship, walking together in harmony.

Adam and Eve’s sin wrecked that harmony. God put an “out of order” world “in order,” and we humans ruined it. Ten generations later, it had only gotten worse. Man’s wickedness was at pandemic proportions.

This is the setting, the paradigm, of Genesis 6. Humanity’s nature, having cataclysmically changed when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, was no different in Genesis 6, but the outworking of his broken nature had clearly and horribly devolved.

For the first 35 years of my life, I believed that people were basically good—that “bad” was a learned trait. I can still hear my mother’s voice in my mind, “Edward, just remember that most people are good people. So, treat them like they are. If they ever do bad things, their environment or circumstances are to blame.” As a child, and then as a teenager, it made sense to me.

Even after reading Genesis 3, I was still clinging to some hope . . . some hope that, although sin and death entered the world, I was still basically a good guy. And along comes this statement that man’s wickedness infected the planet, that the human mind was focused on evil, and that God even regretted creating man and woman. Genesis 6:5-6 was screaming the exact opposite of my beliefs.

This passage served as another puzzle piece in my journey to understanding how we are wired as humans. Left to our own devices, over time and without Divine intervention, sin, depravity, and misery increase. Sin is our fundamental sickness, and there is nothing we, alone, can do about it. We can run from our circumstances. We can move to a new neighborhood. We can leave an unhealthy work environment. However, we cannot escape who we are. As much as we may try, we cannot rescue ourselves from the bondage of sin.

Thank God His story doesn’t end here. The Lord’s reaction in Verse 6 was not anger. He was not mad at His creation. In fact, His love for us is so relentless that our condition broke His heart, and grace was born. Grace came to its fullness as Jesus hung on a Cross just outside Jerusalem several thousand years later and paved the way for reconciliation.

I praise Him today for being the great #intervener and stopping my 35-year freefall. My prayer for you, if you think that you are basically good, is that you would allow the Lord to reveal to you the truth about your nature . . . the truth that your heart is depraved and in need of a transplant . . . the truth that your mind is consumed with evil and needs renewing (Romans 12:2). Praise God, that He’s been in the heart and mind changing business for a long time. If you don’t know Him, He longs to give you a new heart. He spoke through the prophet Jeremiah nearly 3,000 years ago,

I will give them a heart to know that I am the LORD, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.

Jeremiah 24:7

Lord, thank You for loving us enough to save a remnant from the flood when You could have just washed Your hands of all of us and called it a day. But You chose in Your sovereignty to display mercy. In Your name, Amen.