Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. This is study #11 of Genesis, chapter 6 and we are going to read Genesis 6:7-8:

And JEHOVAH said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of JEHOVAH.

We began to discuss verse 7 in our last study, but we are going to look at it a little closer before we move on. God said in Genesis 6:7:

And JEHOVAH said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air…

He mentioned four groups of living creatures that represent all life He had created on the earth, but especially unsaved mankind. The number “four” points to the entire earth or the four points of the compass. The judgment would impact man in the North, South, East and West. There is nowhere that the sinner can go to hide from the wrath of God because God’s wrath will find them and the flood waters accomplished it. We can see that there is no respect of persons with God: “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” In the Book of Obadiah the Lord speaks of those that attempt to climb up into heaven in order to escape Him and, yet, the Lord says in Obadiah 1:3-4:

The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high; that saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground? Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith JEHOVAH.

It is interesting that when God brought the flood, man’s response would have been to go higher and find the highest ground. We spoke of that cave in Indonesia that was way above sea level (perhaps, 1500’ feet) and a family had fled there, but the flood reached them because the flood waters reached 15 cubits above the highest mountain. There was nowhere for man, beast, creeping thing or fowls to flee. The flood would destroy every creature with the breath of life upon the face of the earth.

The word “destroy” that is used in Genesis 6, verse 7 is not the typical word for “destroy.” This Hebrew word is Strong’s #4229 and it is often translated as “blot out.” For instance, it says in Deuteronomy 29:18-20:

Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from JEHOVAH our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood; And it come to pass, when he heareth the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, I shall have peace, though I walk in the imagination of mine heart, to add drunkenness to thirst: JEHOVAH will not spare him, but then the anger of JEHOVAH and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and JEHOVAH shall blot out his name from under heaven.

The same Hebrew word is translated here as “blot out.” It is a removal of the sinner’s name that had been found there, but is now blotted out from under heaven and it is no longer found.

It says in Psalm 9:5:

Thou hast rebuked the heathen, thou hast destroyed the wicked, thou hast put out their name for ever and ever.

When God does destroy the sinner he is annihilated and he is perished. He is cut off and he ceases to exist. He is “put out” and his name is removed eternally. There is no record of him. There is no remembrance of him. There is nothing left of the sinner and it is total and complete annihilation.

It says in Psalm 69:24-28:

Pour out thine indignation upon them, and let thy wrathful anger take hold of them. Let their habitation be desolate; and let none dwell in their tents. For they persecute him whom thou hast smitten; and they talk to the grief of those whom thou hast wounded. Add iniquity unto their iniquity: and let them not come into thy righteousness. Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous.

Again, the word “blotted out” is our word that was translated as “destroy” in Genesis 6, verse 7. But, here, God is saying that the sinners that have no Saviour shall “be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous.” What book is this? It is the original book of life from a creation standpoint. When God created Adam it was as though all mankind had their names written in the book of life. They had access to the tree of life in the Garden of Eden. If they had not sinned, they would not have died. There was the book of life, but then all men were conceived in sin and born speaking lies from the time of the sin of Adam and Eve and you cannot bring a clean thing out of an unclean thing, so man was contaminated through the fall and became sinners: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” When God comes and sees their sins, He responds in anger and blots their names out of the book of the living from a creation standpoint and they are no longer written in that book. When God looks at that book He does not find the names of those people because of their sins. When it comes to the final judgment, it says in Revelation 20:12:

And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.

Then it says in Revelation 20:15:

And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

If God blotted out their names from the book of the living, would their names be found in the book of life? No, they would have been blotted out. It is like when you make a mistake in writing something, you get some “white-out” and you white out the ink of that word and it becomes the same color as the white paper and you cannot see the word – it has been blotted out. God had the names of the masses of mankind written in the book of the living and He blotted them out because of their sins and He said in Psalm 69 that their names “not be written with the righteous.” They are blotted out of one book in which the names of all mankind were recorded and, yet, for certain individuals that were chosen and elect of God their names are written in the Lamb’s book of life, the book of the righteous.

When God brings judgment, the books are opened and He “searches” because He is a thorough and just God and His Law requires that He seek any place where their names are written. He checks the original book of life, from a creation standpoint, and they are no longer found. Their names have been blotted out and the names of the unsaved sinners are gone.

Then God turns to the Lamb’s book of life and He only finds certain names of those that were predestinated from the foundation of the world, as it says about the time of the Great Tribulation when Satan is loosed, in Revelation 13:8:

And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

Their names were not written in the book of life and their names have been blotted out of the book of a living. There is a difference. Their names were not written in one book, but it was blotted out of another book, the book of the living. Their names were never written in the Lamb’s book of life and, therefore, there was no need to blot them out. They were not found in that registry, as it says in Nehemiah or Ezra where they searched and some that claimed to be of the Levites did not have their names recorded. They were not found in that tribe. So when God searches His books, he cannot find the names of the unsaved anywhere. Again, their names were removed from one book, but their names were never written in the Lamb’s book of life from the foundation of the world. So when God says in Genesis 6:7, “And JEHOVAH said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth,” it is a reference to His blotting out their names from the book of the living from a creation standpoint and that is why He makes reference to creating them. Man was originally created good and without sin and they would live and their names would be written in this book, but then their names would be blotted out.

Let us go on and look at the next verse. We already spoke about God saying at the end of verse 6, “for it repenteth me that I have made them.” In this case, to repent means that God is changing course. He did create man to inhabit the earth and He gave the command to multiply and replenish the earth, but now He is turning about to destroy them and, in that sense, He is repenting or turning from His original course of action, but it is all in the overall sovereign will and plan of God. He has not made an error or mistake. It was not that He intended to go a certain way but things did not work out. It is all in keeping with His perfect plan and God had willed and planned to “repent” of certain courses of actions at particular periods of time and this was just one of them. Again, it has nothing to do with sin. God is not a man that He should lie or repent. He never repents in that manner because He is not guilty of any sin.

Let us go on to Genesis 6, verse 8 where we read of some wonderful news. Everything has been pretty bleak and terrible when it says that God is going to blot out man, but now comes a light shining in darkness, as it says in Genesis 6:8:

But Noah found grace in the eyes of JEHOVAH.

Noah found grace and this is the first time in the Bible that the word “grace” is found. It was not found in connection with Adam and Eve. It was not even found in connection with Abel. Concerning Abel, God had said He had respect unto Abel and his offering. Elsewhere we read that Abel was righteous, but there was no mention of grace. In the case of Enoch we did read that he walked with God and we saw that it was related to walking in faith, but this is the first time that the word “grace” makes an appearance. The word itself is in evidence in the Bible in regard to Noah.

Noah found grace in the eyes of JEHOVAH. What does that mean? The first thing this tells us is that Noah was a sinner like everyone else because “grace” is “unmerited favor.” A person receives grace from God, but the person does not deserve it. The person has not earned it and is not worthy of it. There is no goodness in Noah. There is no righteousness in Noah. There was nothing in the man Noah that would cause God to extend His sceptre of favor toward him. We know that because Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, he would be delivered from the flood. God will mightily use him to construct the ark in order that everyone God intended to be delivered would be delivered. This included Noah, his wife, their three sons and their wives. God specifically tells us that Noah found grace in His eyes and this means that Noah was saved. Noah was a true child of God. He was a sinner like everyone else, but because of God’s salvation program He chose and predestinated Noah to salvation before the world was created. Man of his own volition cannot do right in the eyes of God and he would always come short of the glory of God. Man cannot get himself saved. God must do the saving and God determined to save Noah. We do not know exactly when Noah found grace and was saved. Of course, he was chosen before the foundation of the world, but God applies his salvation at different points in people’s lives – it could be when he was a child, like John the Baptist or at the end of earthly life, like the thief on the cross, or anywhere in between. Given the context here when the Lord is speaking of a 120-year period, it is possible that at the beginning of this period God saved Noah. It would be at the point of God saving him that he would have found grace in the eyes of the Lord. From that point, Noah would have a new heart and a new spirit and he is a new creature. It was exactly the same with Noah as it would be with a child of God in our time, in regard to the work of God taking away the heart of stone and replacing it with a heart of flesh. Noah was “born again” and he had the same new resurrected soul that each child of God has today. God is letting us know that Noah was no different than anyone else, but according to God’s good pleasure He saved him, just like God chose Jacob instead of Esau before they were even born and before they could do “good or evil.” Likewise, there was nothing that Noah did (or would do) that saved him. He was a sinner and a child of wrath, even as others, as it says in Ephesians. That is the nature of the child of God and we are “chief of sinners,” as the Apostle Paul was led to say. There is nothing in us that would lead God to delight in us or to look favorably upon us, except His good pleasure.

Before the world was, God made choice and He elected certain individuals and one of them was Noah. Then as time unfolded and Noah was born into the world, in the precise plan of God He applied that salvation to Noah through the hearing of His Word and he was saved. He became a child of God and a servant of God that desired to do the will of God. He would have been obedient to God as God instructed him to build the ark. Can you imagine if Noah had been an unsaved man when God gave His command that would bring scorn, ridicule and mocking upon him? He would have been considered an outcast and a lunatic among the people of that day. There would be much affliction and tribulation over the course of the next 120 years as the ark was being constructed. An unsaved individual would flee. He would give up and go back to the world. He would do whatever he could to get out from under that kind of scorn and from being despised for the sake of God’s Word. The natural man fears and is terrified of the wrath of his fellow man. It was needful and necessary for Noah to have been a true child of God who would endure throughout the entire period of the construction of the ark until it was completed and to do all that God required to be done. Finally, he would enter into the ark with his family. So, right from the start he found “grace in the eyes of JEHOVAH.”