Faith in a Corrupt World: Genesis 6 and the Grace of Noah

Let me ask you something. Do you like being judged?

I actually asked that on Sunday, out loud, and said if anyone does, raise your hand. One hand went up in the back. One. Maybe she was a bodybuilder, or a beauty pageant contestant. The rest of us just sat there, because here’s the truth about the human heart: we all want mercy when it’s our turn in the chair, and we want justice for everybody else.

I’ll go first. The other day I was in an airport with a buddy, and he starts reviewing his sandwich like a food critic. “Man, this bread is not holding its shape. This turkey has no personality.” Bro. It’s a soggy sandwich in the airport. We’ve got a plane to catch. Quit judging the sandwich.

But I do the same thing. I took the youth group and my family to a restaurant after church, one that rhymes with Mopoli, and I was so annoyed by the service that I pulled out my phone right there in line to leave a one-star review. Only to discover I had already left a one-star review at that same restaurant a year ago.

We love to judge. None of us love to be judged. And that is exactly the nerve Genesis 6 touches.

A hard chapter about a broken world

We’re in our Foundations series, walking through Genesis 1 through 11, and I don’t get to pick the passages. Where the text goes, I go. This week the text goes somewhere hard.

Chapter 1, everything is good and very good. Chapter 3, it all goes wrong. By chapter 6, “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” (Genesis 6:5). Three times in this chapter Scripture says the earth was corrupt. Corrupt. Corrupt. God is really trying to drive the point home.

And when we read a passage like this, we’re left with the question: how does this judgment square with a God of grace? I think by the end you’ll see that God’s judgment is actually a part of His mercy, because the world was so terribly broken.

Here’s something that may surprise you. Verse 6 says God “regretted” that He had made man, and “it grieved him to his heart” (Genesis 6:6). That word “regretted” bothers me a little, because it could make it sound like God got caught off guard. He didn’t. Nowhere in Scripture is God anything less than sovereign. But sometimes the Bible is written in a way that lets us feel the pain. This isn’t surprise. It’s the ache of a Father who made a good world and watched His children wreck it.

But Noah

And then, right in the middle of the darkness, one of the most beautiful words in the Bible shows up. “But.”

“But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD” (Genesis 6:8).

The whole earth has been declared corrupt. The sentence has been handed down. And then one small conjunction holds back the dark. Noah is a shining star in the middle of all that corruption, and here is what you have to see: he did not stand out because he was too good to be judged. He stood out as a man who received grace in the middle of deserving judgment.

Favor is just the Old Testament’s word for grace. Unearned. Undeserved. Verse 9 tells us Noah “was a righteous man, blameless in his generation,” who “walked with God” (Genesis 6:9). And if you keep reading past this chapter, you find out Noah was also a man carrying real trauma. He spent over 300 days in a boat while the whole world was destroyed, and later we find him drunk and broken in his tent. He walked with God. But he walked with a limp.

So here’s my encouragement for you today. Christ died for the ungodly. I qualify. Do you?

In the middle of all your brokenness, all your shortcomings, all the trials you’re facing, you and I are never going to get it all right. Our right standing before God is not something we manufacture. It’s imputed. It’s credited to us. “By faith Noah” built that ark, Hebrews tells us, and “became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith” (Hebrews 11:7). Because of Jesus, Romans 5 says, “we have peace with God” (Romans 5:1).

That’s the one thing Noah got right. Not a perfect record. He believed in God and not in himself. That was the whole story, wasn’t it? Adam and Eve went wrong the moment they trusted themselves instead of God. Cain brought God his best and his self-confidence. Abel understood it only works through a sacrifice. And a thread of faith gets woven through the whole line, not because these people got it right, but because they believed God.

Faithful, not successful

So what did Noah actually do? He built a boat.

And this was no canoe. The ark was about 450 feet long, longer than a football field, 75 feet wide, four stories tall. It probably took him somewhere between 55 and 75 years to build. The biggest object lesson ever preached, built in plain sight over decades, while the neighbors watched and the sky stayed clear.

And when the rain finally came, do you know how many people got on? Eight.

By every worldly metric, that is a failure. A man gives most of his life to a project and saves eight people. But hear me, church: we are not called to be successful. We are called to be faithful.

Faithfulness looks like staying true to your spouse. It looks like teaching your kids the Word of God and doing your best to model it, even though one day they’ll answer for their own lives. It looks like refusing the shortcut at work when the whole culture around you is cutting corners and running from God. It looks like standing your ground and shining as a light in a dark world. That’s what Noah did in his day. That’s what you and I are called to do in ours.

Before there was a flood, there was an ark

Now, here’s where it really gets beautiful. In the middle of building this ark, God makes Noah a promise: “I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark” (Genesis 6:18).

A covenant is a promise from God. And this is the whole point I want you to leave with. The fact that God judges does not make Him any less good or gracious. His judgment, in the middle of all this corruption, is actually a means of His grace. Because before there was a flood, there was an ark.

For decades Noah warned people. God is patient. He does not want anyone to perish. And then the rains fell, and the promise became a reality, and God began to make new what once was. In chapter 1 God separated the sea from the land. In chapter 6 the sea comes back over the land, not to destroy for destruction’s sake, but to purge and purify so the earth could become what it was meant to be. He creates. He redeems. He restores.

So the pattern of the whole Bible is right here. Before judgment, there’s always mercy. Before condemnation, there’s always a means of salvation. And it’s always God who starts it.

I believe in Andy

Let me tell you about a man named Andy Pages.

He’s an outfielder for the Dodgers, and he had a rough season. A lot of people thought he had no business being on the roster, let alone batting in the playoffs. But his manager kept getting asked about it, and finally he just told the press, “You don’t get it. I believe in Andy.”

Game four. Seventh inning. Bases loaded, two outs, Dodgers down. And guess who’s up to bat. You could almost hear the stadium sigh. But the manager looked at him and said, you can do this. Andy stepped up, swung at the first pitch, and drove it into the outfield. Two runners came home. They won the game and advanced.

Afterward there’s a photo of Andy and his manager just hugging. Because somewhere along the way Andy had stopped believing in himself, and nobody else believed in him either. But one man did, and he gave him a chance.

Friend, that could be your story. You might not believe in yourself. Everybody around you might be telling you that you can’t. But God. But Noah. In the middle of all the depravity and brokenness, God says, you have My favor. Not because you’re righteous, not because you’re obedient, but because I love you, and I’m going to do a work in and through you that you could never do on your own.

That’s grace. It’s God saying, I believe in you when you don’t believe in yourself and no one else does. So stop trying to earn a name for yourself. You already have one. You are a son or daughter of God, and you already have His love.

Now, here’s the twist

There was only one door on that ark. One. One way through the flood.

Jesus is our ark. He is the one door, already built and already open before the storm ever reaches you. And the same hands that held back the waters in Noah’s day are the hands that were stretched out on a cross for you.

So when you leave here, you keep stepping up and you keep swinging. You stop trying to earn God’s love, and you simply walk through the door that’s already open. Because that is what it means to walk with God.

Will you pray with me?

Lord, I am quick to judge the world and slow to see the corruption in me. Thank You that Your judgment is not the end of Your mercy, but a part of it. Thank You that before the flood, there was an ark, and that Jesus is mine. I stop trying to earn Your favor and I simply receive it. Do for me what I cannot do for myself. Save me and sustain me. I believe in You, not in myself. In Jesus’ name, amen.

If you prayed that for the first time, we’d love to know. Find us this Sunday.

Next week we’re in Genesis 7, on how to stay strong when the storms get even stronger. Come back.

Frequently asked questions