A Friend of God

A Friend of God

By Aaron Budjen

The sin in the world during the time of Noah was very profound.  In Genesis 6 the Lord saw that the wickedness was great.  Evil intent was on people's hearts continually and the Lord recognized His part in the abomination He saw.  He was the one who provided them with the land to walk on and the food to eat.  He created the world and all that was in it for the people.  He was the provider, the one who ensured everything functioned so the people would be able to build quality lives for themselves.  He did his part but they used His generosity and love for them inappropriately, and used the resources He provided to build lives of horrific evil.  It is recorded that the feelings of God were deeply hurt.  He is a God of profound sensitivity and has feelings to a degree we will likely never imagine the depths of.  He was the one who provided the resources by which the people engaged in so much evil, and He repented by taking what he provided away from them.  He flooded the earth.  There was no land for people to put their feet on.  The food and clean water was so difficult to get that if some people were able to find something to float on they still would not survive.  They were adequately warned of what was coming.  They could have built a boat and stocked it with provisions like Noah did.  God did not keep any secrets and Noah was a testimony for many years of what was going to take place.  God took away what was rightfully His and being left on their own, everyone but eight people perished.

The Lord established a covenant in Genesis 9:12-17 that He would never again destroy the earth with a flood as He did.  We see rain from the sky all the time now and it can be easy for us to fear the flood again.  The Lord provided the rainbow for us to see in the sky as a reminder for us that we have nothing to fear from the rain.  He will not destroy the world with a flood like He did before.  It is not a covenant to suggest that what He did was wrong.  Some could assume that He perhaps reacted out of anger inappropriately and seeing the error of His ways He is promising He won't do it again.  The people on this earth have no legitimate claim on His property, His planet or His provisions.  What He gives is a gift and is not something He owes them.  They cannot extort Him through His goodness by proclaiming He better give them what they need or He is not a good God.  If anyone wishes to assert He is evil and reject Him as a person, He will probably be merciful and allow them to continue to live in His creation for a time.  However, just as He said in Genesis 6:3 that man would get 120 years, we will all physically die, and if we live all the way to the end, our lives will end when He does destroy the earth again.  He promised He would not destroy the earth with water a second time.  He gave the people a prophecy that He would destroy the earth with water once, and He has told us clearly that one day He will do it with fire.

After the flood of Noah there was a time of quiet peace.  Where was the Lord?  What was He doing?  Besides the Tower of Babel incident, it was about 300 years before we heard from Him again when we look at the record in the Scriptures.  Consider what had taken place.  It was a very emotional experience for Him to go through what He went through.  He confessed His part in providing the means by which people made such terrible choices.  He genuinely wanted to provide for people so they could build happiness and joy for themselves.  He is such a loving and giving God and yet his love and generosity were used to violate Him and what He created.  Once he made the adjustments and gave the few people remaining a way to start over, He took some time off.

When the Lord rested after the flood, we know that He did watch to see what people would do.  The sons of Noah had a new opportunity to build a new world with the remembrance of who God is and what He had done.  Around a hundred years later the people began to build the Tower of Babel and a city where they could have a name for themselves and effectively declare their independence from the God who created everything.  In Genesis 11:5-6 the Lord recognized that through working together they would be able to accomplish most anything that would come to their minds.  While this can be an opportunity for them to build great goodness, it could also be an opportunity for them to build great evil.  I do not believe the Lord wanted to interfere with their ability to build great goodness.  Instead, He scattered the people by interfering with their ability to communicate with each other.  Miraculously, He intervened through the Holy Spirit so they could not understand what most others were saying.  They understood those who He allowed to have a common language with and they formed new communities accordingly.  This is similar in contrast to what He accomplished through the unification of people with the Gift of Tongues once the New Covenant went into effect.  This did not prevent them from achieving great things.  Instead He established an opportunity for healthy competition between the different groups of people as a system of checks and balances in case some of the groups decided to use their unity for evil.  If one group decided to pursue self destructive behavior there would be other groups who could decide to pursue something different.  When the whole world one day joins together in a new world order, this opportunity for competition will be eliminated.  If the leadership establishes policies that are self destructive for the people of the world there will eventually be no hope for humanity but the direct intervention of God through the return of the king, The Lord Jesus.

In addition to the record of the Tower of Babel incident, we could perhaps include the writing of Job as an example of our God's continual participation in the lives of people after the flood.  Besides these descriptions we don't seem to have any information about God speaking with or interacting with others.  It is as if He was there to respond when needed, but otherwise kept to Himself.  I can't help but wonder what He was doing during this time.  What where the projects He was working on and what were the works He was preparing for people to walk in?  Around 300 years after the flood there was a man, Abram.  Abram was certainly not perfect but God saw something in him that grabbed His attention.  God spoke to Abram and invited Abram to follow Him.  Abram could have easily refused and continued with the successful life he had.  To leave his home and community with so much uncertainty was a substantial risk, and the reward of having more may have easily turned out to be a life of wandering around various lands and living his life in a tent.  He did respond to the invitation and eventually left everything behind to build a new life with a God he barely knew.  I believe it was a special moment for our God that after all of those years from the Garden of Eden until Abram, He finally got to experience someone like Abram who went with Him to start a new life like they did.  It was of course a difficult relationship that was built over time but when reading about it I believe we can see that they shared a special relationship.  The depth and quality of it can easily be overlooked with all of the events and covenants but several hundred years later we were told through Isaiah who Abraham (Genesis 17:5) was to our God.  In Isaiah 41:8 He eventually told us who Abraham was to Him.  Abraham was his friend.  Through all that God had done and experienced, He had and still has a friend, one of many since then.