To avoid a truncated, reduced, watered down, thin, gruel-like faith, Christians must embrace all the teaching of the whole Bible. In our day, particularly amongst evangelicals, the Old Testament is often confined to cupboard, only to be taken out and dusted off when a few simplistic exemplary lessons are required. So, David teaches us the virtue of courage when he faced Goliath--so we should be as courageous as David. Daniel teaches us the martyr's spirit when threatened with the lion's death, so we should be as faithful as Daniel amidst persecution--and so forth.
For many, that is about as much of the Old Testament they will ever know. Because so much of the Bible's teaching has been banished from their lives, human imaginings and speculations fill the gaps. The result is a watery, syncretistic faith--a tasteless admixture of truth and error. Evangelical reductionism remains a serious shortcoming.
One way to deal with it is to be exposed to the significance and meaning of the "meta-narrative" of Scripture, which is the account of God's redemptive purposes being wrought upon the earth. As we pay attention to this, suddenly the significance of all of Scripture is brought into clear sharp relief. For example, when we understand the redemptive significance of Noah and the flood, Noah and his family become our fathers and mothers in faith. We are related to them in the one redemptive line. Suddenly they speak to us and can shape our lives accordingly.
Michael D Williams, in his book Far as the Curse is Found (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 2005) shows us how in the events of Noah and the flood God speaks to us.
Human Sin and Divine Judgment
Genesis tells the story, many commentators have noted, of the pervasive spread of sin in the world. When Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, they took the fruit of their disobedience with them. After sin broke into the Garden (Gen. 3), it broke out into the whole world (Genesis 4—11) Adam's sin leads to a sorry picture. God warns that “sin is crouching at the door” (Genesis 4:7). Only one generation away from the Garden, man engages in fratricide. Cain murders his brother Abel and reaps divine punishment for not being his brother's keeper (Genesis 4: 8—16). By the seventh generation, Lamech can boast of his many murders (Genesis 4: 23—24). The flood (Genesis 6—7) is occasioned by the intermarriage of the “sons of God” with “the daughters of man”. This may refer to the confusion of the two seeds first introduced in Genesis 3:15: the faithful seed (the Sethites) is threatened through accommodation and assimilation by the godless seed (the seed of Cain). After the flood, sin again increases upon the earth until finally at Babel man says, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth” (Genesis 11:4).
Thus the trajectory from the Garden to Babel moves from the illicit promise of moral autonomy in the serpent's lie to a full-blown culture of godlessness in which every human energy is employed in “the ultimate act of rebellion—the total denial of God in the absolute assumption of self-sufficiency. This is sin in totality, with finality.” (B Davie Napier, From Faith to Faith [New York: Harper and Row, 1955], p. 56.)
Lamenting both the extensiveness of sin (it has corrupted all things) and its intensiveness (it had inclined very human thought towards evil), God determines to wipe out the human race, to wash away the stain of sin and cleanse his creation. (Genesis 6: 5—12) . . . .
Sin Affects All Creation
First, the flood graphically demonstrates the scope of sin's spread and power. Man's sin so touches creation that God must address not only us but the world as well when he deals with sin. Sin and judgment, and thus also redemption, can never be limited to some alleged private or personal sector of life. Sin is not a matter of the heart, but from the heart all of life is affected.
When the covenant mediator fails, no relationship works right. Man's failure to function as divinely intended brings debacle upon the entire created order. Called to be a blessing, has instead become a curse. The threat to life that man introduces extends to every creature and every relationship. The animal world lives in fear of man, and the creation that was meant to be man's ally is now his enemy. The conditions of the Edenic peace have been broken, and the whole of creation groans in travail. Because man, the covenant mediator, has fallen, he has rendered himself incapable of fulfilling his calling of walking with God, serving his fellow human beings, and stewarding God's creation.
Sin requires God's Judgment
Second, the historical reality of the flood warns sinful man of the surety of judgment (II Petger 3: 3—6) Later biblical writers employ the flood as the model for God's future judgment (Zephaniah 1:2; Matthew 24: 36—41) . . . . It is not an arbitrary act of divine wrath but rther the righteous judgment of God upon a sinful race. The orderliness and beauty of God's original creation and intention for man in the world have been undone by the disobedience of man. The creation order established by God is everywhere flaunted, for “all the people on earth had corrupted their ways” (Genesis 6:12). The just order and divinely instituted constitution of creation is breached, and violence is upon the face of the earth (Genesis 6:13).
Sin Breeds Corruption
Third, the consequences of sin are not accidental. Sin invariably breeds corruption. In the judgment of the flood God to some extent blots out the human stain of sin and begins anew, giving man a second chance in the world. But this second chance only confirms the effect that sin has upon man and the world. While the ark delivers Noah and his family from the judgment of the flood, the root disease that brought on the flood was also a passenger in the ark. When the boat docks, Noah beholds a world very much different from the one produced by the sin in the Garden. But it is not an utterly different world, for there remains a point of continuity: the fallen human heart. The sin problem has not been done away with. A sinful world comes from fallen people. A sinful culture comes from fallen people, even born again fallen people. (Williams, pp. 85--87)
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