How was the flood in the time of Noah just?

If the antediluvians had a doom more awful than others before them, we have the divine assurance on the one hand of a special testimony to them, and on the other of their excessive corruption and violence. Most justly therefore did the Judge of all the earth send the flood which took them all away, save the man of faith who, divinely warned of things not seen as yet and moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, through which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. Granted that worse remains for all unbelievers than the flood; but not worse for antediluvians as such than for others, and for none so sad as for those who slight GOD'S call to repent and believe since redemption, especially for such as bear, and bear falsely or with indifference, the name of the Lord. Who that beholds the Lamb of GOD who takes away the sin of the world can say that the doom of unbelievers is out of proportion to their guilt? He who can deliberately think so seems to me to have no real sense of man's evil or of GOD'S infinite grace.

The Spirit of God has been pleased to state two grounds upon which God brought the judgment of the flood upon man. First, because of what he had done - "The wickedness of man was great in the earth;" and further on we read that this had assumed the twofold form of corruption and violence, those parent sins of Genesis 3 and 4, which will find their full consummation in the day of the Lord, the former in Jerusalem and the antichrist, and the latter in Babylon and the beast. Second, because of what he was - "Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually;" or, as the margin reads, "The purposes and desires of his heart" were such.

On account of these two things, then, "it repented the Lord that He made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart." How little are we impressed with the degree to which the heart of God is affected by the sin of His creatures! Now, after the flood, when man was about to get a new start on the earth, after having been sheltered for a hundred and fifty days from judgment, from Satan, and from the world, what does God say? (Gen. 8:21.) Has His estimate of man risen? Has His judgment become modified? Not in the least. He utters not a word about man's conduct, for as yet no space had been given for it to be manifested under His new conditions. But as to the deeper question we read, "The imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth." He who "searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts" (1 Chron. 28:9), needs no waiting for their doings; for He knoweth what is in man, and that He cannot commit Himself to him.

God having for fifteen hundred years manifested His patience towards the guilty antediluvian world, He, after warning the people by the preaching of Noah, bore witness to His righteousness and His power by the deluge, and at the same time manifested His grace in saving Noah and his family in the ark.

Here however we need to distinguish: else we shall surely and seriously stray. Jehovah is here said to repent of mankind that He had made on the earth. His work is a thing quite different from His purpose. And when corruption pervaded it, He was in no way bound to perpetuate what existed only to His dishonour. On the other hand, when a prophet was sent to cry against a great city because of its wickedness before Him, and its inhabitants, from the greatest to the least, repented at the preaching, God saw their works that they turned from their evil ways, and God repented of the evil which He said He would do unto them, and He did it not, to the disgust of the prophet too self-occupied to appreciate the compassion of God, even for the babes and the cattle. But here we are not told of the slightest effect. The preacher of righteousness testified many a long year, and, as far as we know, in vain. Oracularly warned concerning things not yet seen, and moved with fear himself, he prepared an ark for saving his house, with no recorded result save condemning the world of that day and the imprisonment of their spirits, disobedient as they were then, till eternal judgment come. It was a singularly hard generation in the days of Noah; and the Lord declared that so it will be also in the days of the Son of man. They were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were given in marriage until the day, that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Alas! Christendom is rapidly becoming as unbelieving as the Jews were when divine judgments befell them all; and both will be surprised when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with angels of His power, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those that know not God and those that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Is not this same care for His people seen in the long respite vouchsafed to the antediluvians? Not only is the long-suffering of God seen, who bore long with the sinners before the flood, and gave them space for repentance, when even every day that Noah worked at the ark, and every plank, and every nail, and every stroke of his hammer, was a warning, and a threatening of the impending judgement; but God could do nothing till Noah was safe in the ark, after He Himself had shut him in: even then there was a respite of seven days (perfect forbearance). But if Noah had been as long again, until he was shut up safe in the ark, so long would judgement have been delayed.

Towards the close of his remarks, it was the speaker's joy to turn from the note of warning (necessary though it was to arouse his hearers to a sense of their danger) to the sweet notes of the Gospel. God is holy, He is righteous, He cannot look upon sin, yet He is a God of wondrous love with infinite compassion for His creatures. It is not His will that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. He provided a shelter for the people in the days of Noah, and such was His long-suffering that He pleaded with that wicked generation for one hundred and twenty years. But all His pleadings were in vain, and His plan for their salvation was rejected. Only Noah and his family, eight souls in all, were saved. Man's only hope of salvation from the flood of judgment was the ark. Man's only hope of Salvation from the future judgment is Christ. Those outside the ark perished when judgment fell, and, just as surely, those outside of Christ, will have no shelter, to which they can flee from the coming storm. Blessed are those who can sing: — "Death and judgment are behind us, Grace and glory on before, All the billows rolled o'er Jesus, There they spent their utmost power."

God has not been pleased to give a complete revelation of this sinister event. That it means this episode is learned that Peter at once speaks of the old world, which was not spared by God, "but saved Noah, the eighth person (with seven others), a preacher of righteousness, having brought in the flood upon the world of the ungodly." This testimony is closely linked with what Peter had written in the first Epistle (1 Peter 3:19-20). And here we are told that Noah was a preacher of righteousness. He and his house had found grace in the sight of the Lord, while the mass of the ungodly world who rejected His truth and His Spirit, who strove with them, were not spared but dealt with in judgment. It is so now. Another day is coming in which the Lord will judge the ungodly and unbelieving, while His people will be saved.

Although there was so much in Cain's city for man's pride and pleasure, there was nothing to gratify the heart of God, for when God looked down, He saw that the earth was corrupt, and filled with violence, "and it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart" (Gen. 6:5, 11). Man's prosperity, music, art and science had not in the least degree improved his state of moral depravity. So great was the evil in God's sight that He swept the earth with a deluge, removing man and all his works from the face of the earth, only sparing Noah and his sons, and their wives, for "Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord," being "a just man and perfect in his generations."

Again, there is the Flood; it was sent as a divine protest against universal corruption, and as a terrible witness to God’s hatred of sin. Mercy did not interfere with the desolation of the forty days’ rain, nor the extinction of everything that had life, till the very mountains was submerged and the entire race (save eight) absolutely obliterated. Sin and judgment followed as cause and effect. Moral consequence was necessary in the maintenance of divine holiness.

Now this is the position of every individual of the human race, until called out of the general mass by divine grace He is sprung from Adam, associated with him in his sin, as to its guilt and condemnation, belongs to that world which has the guilt not only of leaving God but of positively rejecting Him. That is the world he loves, belongs to, and forms a part of; and whether his transgressions are few or great, he is doomed to destruction, if he continue so to the end. Just as in the case of the flood: doubtless there was a wide difference in the amount of actual transgressions among the sinful inhabitants of the world at that time; but none were saved but Noah. Many might even have bid fair to be saved, so as to be near the ark, but none were saved except such as were in the ark. So in Sodom: many had not so openly exhibited their enmity to God as others, and yet, in the general conflagration, Lot alone escaped; and why? Just because all the others, without distinction, were opposed to God - were quite opposite to Him in every principle, and consequently had come to that state of exclusion from God's presence.