The Lord is awe-inspiring, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him in Genesis 6:5-7,
“The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the Lord said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.”
Mankind has been blessed by the Lord to have been created in his own image. A part of that image is the ability to experience a range of emotions. From anger to joy to compassion to desire, there is quite a spectrum of emotions we can feel. As a side note, I think there are some emotions that we have picked up since the fall of mankind that reflects our sin nature, things like fear, anxiety, lust and so forth. Our ability to experience emotions seems to me to be dynamic and ever-changing.
Because I often think of those things that set the Lord apart from us, those transcendent qualities that make him who he is, things like his omniscience, his eternal existence, his immutability and omnipotence I forget very important aspects of what he reveals of himself. In the above passage he tells us through Moses that he was “grieved” he had made mankind. Because of mankind’s evil, it created pain within his heart. Our God has emotions and we affect his emotions.
I am reminded that there was delight and rejoicing when God created man, as the personification of wisdom tells us in Proverbs 8:30-31, and that we can bring delight to God’s heart, Proverbs 11:20. We read that Jesus felt compassion for folks when he was here, Matthew 9:36 and 14:14. We also read of his being “deeply moved in spirit and troubled” as folks wept over the death of Lazarus. We are told he wept. We read of the “fury of the wrath of God Almighty” in Revelation 19:15 and his jealousy, wrath and vengeance in Nahum 1:2. Our God has emotions. Here in Genesis we read of the pain mankind had brought to the heart of God as he grieved over the fact that he had made us.
And in spite of the pain we have caused him, the grief we have caused him, knowing this ahead of time in his foreknowledge he created us anyway. And in spite of the pain we surely bring to him in our sin his great love for us compelled him to send his Son for us in a great act of love. For me to be aware of that pain in his heart somehow makes more poignant the knowledge of his love for us.
Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share your theme of worship with us from your Bible reading today. We’d love to hear from you!
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