Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Can Love Exist Without Justice? | Torah | Genesis 7

Episode Date: January 19, 2022

Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here to grow in your faith this year. Where do love and justice meet? If God is loving, how can he bring destruction and punishment? In today's episode, Jensen looks at the flood in Genesis 7 to explain how God can use punishment as a display of goodness and grace. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Passages: Genesis 7 Related episodes: Do You Have to Pick Between Justice and Mercy? Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. I'm Keith Simon. I'm Jensen Holmickner. And I'm Patrick Miller. We are exploring the first books of the Bible. Right now, we're in Genesis. Over the years, I've signed up for my fair share of email newsletters.

Some, better than others, but most of them don't bring me closer to God. Can you relate? Well, this year, I think it's time we change that. sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talks email newsletter. Once a week, you'll get a blessedly short email with guides on spiritual disciplines, inspiring challenges to grow, interesting cultural backgrounds on today's passage, and even quick studies of Hebrew and Greek words. Each week is going to be a little different, and so we're hoping that you're going to love

the variety. So stop what you're doing, click the link in the show notes, and sign up. Now, let's hop into today's episode. A couple weeks ago, I was finishing up a variety. Christmas list for my son. He's a baby, so really he doesn't need anything, but as I was looking, I came across this very cute Noah's Ark set. It was wooden, and the roof of the arc was painted a nice calming blue pastel color. It came with cute little animals, two of a kind, male and female. The set isn't even one of a kind. There's actually hundreds of options, wooden, plastic,

plush toy, you name it. If you grew up in the church like I did, you probably heard the heartwarming story of Noah's Ark hundreds of times. There was a flood. God saved Noah and the animals, and at some point there's a rainbow. But when's the last time you read Genesis 7? Like, really read it. When we recount this story for kids, we tend to overlook the really hard parts of this chapter. God calls Noah to take animals clean and unclean, male and female, and bring them onto the ark because a flood is coming and he wants to save them. But we don't always like to focus on the hard. But we don't always like to focus on the harsh reality of the flood. If we look a little deeper, we find some things that are a little unsettling. Verse four, for in seven days, I will send rain on the earth. 40 days and 40 nights. And every living

thing that I have made, I will blot out from the face of the ground. And God does just that, starting in verse 21. And all flesh died that moved on the earth. Birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth and all mankind. Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground. Man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, they were blotted out from the earth. We let our kids play with toy sets that depict a flood

that wiped out every living thing that was on the face of the ground. The only way that we can be okay with this is if we sugarcoat the flood, and overlook huge pieces of the story. And while sugar-coating the flood can allow us to have cute little toys and happy little children's books, it isn't biblically accurate, and it cheapens the goodness and grace of God that's on display in the story. Now, you might be wondering, how can that be true? How can coming face-to-face with the dark, difficult, uncomfortable things in the Bible show us the goodness of God?

Most of the time it feels better to put on our rose-colored glasses and take out our wooden toy versions of God. But when we look at Scripture, that isn't what we see the authors of the Bible doing. They don't sugarcoat God. They lay out a story of a flood that was sent by a God that resulted in lives lost. All lives, but those of Noah, his family, and the animals they were instructed to bring aboard. See, ignoring the hard parts of the Bible can be so tempting. Have you ever heard someone say, the God of the Old Testament is angry and raffle? I'd rather focus on Jesus.

I'd rather follow a God who loves. See, we want a God who's loving and happy and good. So we create one in our minds. We spin paper-thin stories of scripture that make us feel good, but grossly undermine who God really is. See, remember, God is sending the flood as judgment. Noah is living in a world surrounded by evil and rebellion from the way things ought to be. Think about the world that we live in today.

Can you relate? What kind of evil do you see happening? When I think about it, I think about people being driven from their homes because of war and terrorism, forced to be refugees. I think about women and children sold into slavery. I think about deeply seated racism, people in power taking advantage of those beneath them, unnecessary violence against the weak and vulnerable, the list can go on. We live in a world where we're familiar with darkness and brokenness. And if you're paying attention, you know that people want justice.

We want the people responsible for evil to be held accountable. Political candidates promise to bring justice to create a society where everyone's safe, cared for, protected. Where evil is gone and those who bring it about are behind bars. They make these promises because it's what we want. No one actually wants a president who lets wrongdoing continue and evil run rampant. So why do we try to pretend like we want a God who will do the same? See, when it comes down to it, it's not actually loving to let sin and evil run rampant.

It's not loving to let the people who hurt others go free. The easy to swallow God of love we've created in our minds can't actually be loving at all. Love without justice can't exist. Grace can't exist without judgment. We need stories like this. We need stories like the flood. We need to face the reality of who God is because when we do, we can clearly see the truth of the gospel.

Our God is a God who must punish injustice because he is good. But he's not a malicious God with a hammer in the sky squashing people. No, he's a benevolent, good judge, one who enacts justice and brings about judgment. Noah and his family were spared from judgment because Noah had faith. He trusted in the Lord and he gave God his allegiance. But he wasn't perfect. He made mistakes. He failed.

But God still poured out his grace on Noah because of his faith. And we face the same situation. Sin runs rampant in our world, but it all. also runs rampant in our hearts. If I'm honest with myself in this story, I feel like I should be one of the nameless people washed away in the flood. God is a good judge and my sin deserves punishment. But God is also a judge who took the place of the guilty.

He came as a man, Jesus, and he took on the full wrath of God. Isaiah 536, We all like sheep have gone astray. each of us has turned to our own way, and the Lord has lain on him the iniquity of us all. Our God is a good God who will not let evil go unpunished, and yet, in his great love for us, he made a way for us to stand before him righteous. He took on our punishment. The judge ruled and we were guilty, but Jesus stepped in and took on the death sentence.

While we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. That's the God of the flood. One who brings judgment on evil because he's good and loving. And yet one who makes a way for redemption. The grace he gives to Noah shines so much brighter in light of the judgment that was deserved. Yes, there's huge tragedy in the flood. Real lives were lost, lots of them.

Only a faithful few were saved, but in the midst of the brokenest and just punishment is a God offering hope. The flood, it's not a simple Sunday school story, but it is full of beauty. Our God is not a toy god with a pastel arc and a heart for animals. Our God is not the one we make up in our heads so we can feel comfortable and safe with the idea of him. Are you guilty of following a God of your own making? Do you shy away from stories in the Bible that make you uncomfortable? Do you shy away from stories in the Bible that make you uncomfortable? That make you face the reality of who God is?

If you're following a God who mostly agrees with you and feels pretty safe, then you aren't following the God of the Bible. You're following a cookie-cutter version of an all-powerful God and you're missing out on the bigger story. You're missing out on grace that cuts through the darkness. You're missing out on the God willing to give up his throne to come and take the judgment that you deserve so that you could be part of his bigger story forever.

Will you follow this God? The true God? The good and loving God who is bringing about a kingdom of love, justice, and mercy. It won't be easy. We'll have to face the darkness, but we face it knowing that God has already made a way through the flood. Before you forget, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talks newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes, and you'll get an email every Wednesday that will help encourage you in the middle of the work week

and bring you deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.