Following the Trail of God's Promises: The 40-Day ChallengeSample

7. God Who Punishes Sin

When God regretted creating man on earth (Gen. 6:6), it didn’t mean that He had abandoned the idea that He had in the beginning - to create order and the Imago Dei as He did in man. After 6 days of creation (Genesis 1:31) God saw that everything created was very good. Yet now, because of human sin, punishment follows for all of creation. But God saw Noah, “a righteous man, blameless in his generation.” The way in which sin took root in the human heart was so deep, that the whole earth was filled with violence (Gen. 6:11,13), and only by complete annihilation and flood could sin be punished and wiped out. The order of creation has been reversed (Genesis 1:9), and the water has wiped everything off the face of the earth (Genesis 7:23).

In the modern context of life, this type of judgment by God often seems distant and foreign to us. On the other hand, we may sing the old Christian hymn (Heb. 13:8), “Yesterday, today, forever - Jesus is the same,” and remember that He does not change. In relation to Noah's time, if we look at the world around us, human sin is not trivial. It is often difficult for Christians to understand the 'God of the Old Testament' and the God who is so stern toward sin. But we have forgotten the price of our blessed life - this time of grace has a very high price indeed. God's most valuable and most precious, the atoning sacrifice and the cross - it "settles our accounts" and pays the penalty. Jesus Christ takes upon Himself all the pain and suffocation from the flood of today's world, from the sins of you and me.

PRACTICAL CHALLENGE

Day 7. What do you think about the God of the “Old Testament” today? The easiest way to answer this question is to take 30 seconds of your time and write down all the associations that come to your mind when you hear the phrase, ‘The God of the Old Testament’. When you see what you’ve written, allow the Holy Spirit to show you if there is anything you’re not seeing. Are there any lies, or false images?