Noah and seven others were seen as righteous, found worthy, when God looked down and decided He was going to cancel the project, end the experiment. It is interesting that instead of bringing the eight up to live with Him He decided to keep them alive. He keeps them and 14 of each animal and everything else must die. In Hebrew He is ending all existence. It sounds more extreme than destroying the earth.
In my bible this is page 6. It is just three chapters since the fall. Clearly the devastation caused by sin cannot be taken lightly. In genesis 6:5-6 we are told, "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. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on earth and it grieved Him to His heart."
In 6:9 we are told, "Noah was a righteous man, blameless in His generation. Noah walked with God." So Noah is righteous and the rest of the people on earth are evil. This is the situation. We have eight against everything else so God will save the eight and destroy the rest.
In 6:13 God says to Noah, "I have determined to make an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold I will destroy them with the earth." Now this can be read several ways but I think it reads best that God will use the earth to destroy all things. Time for a quick lesson in microeconomics: There are 4 factors of production, land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurs. Now the factor we will focus on is land. You see land is everything on the land and under the land. Land is also water. In Econ water is land. So when God is saying he will use earth He is going to use the water part of earth to destroy the non water part of earth. Econ 101 free of charge.
Verse 17 reads, "For behold I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life under heaven." That right there is kind of a big deal because God is referring back to how all life emanates from His breath. He is killing off little pieces of Him so the depth of pain that this must cause Him can only be imagined.
So God makes it rain and completely covers all the land and even the highest mountains. Nothing is left visible except for the water. Everything dies except the eight and their crew of animals. Everything is dead . . . And then the water subsides and then it begins again.
1 Peter 3:20 says, "because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight persons were brought safely through the water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ." Whoa with your crazy talk Peter. God baptized the earth, killed all the living things save the righteous Noah and crew, (the righteous don't need to die to their old man. He's already dead) and this was no one time event? God keeps doing it over and over again. God actually uses water still in this destructive way to kill off the old man inside of us so we can live in the resurrection of Christ. Baptism is a real event that God used to kill all existence not just a symbolic event in the the life of a Christian?
God kills us with the earth. He uses water to kill off everything that breathes in the days of Noah and He uses water to kill off everything inside of us that has been corrupted and then places in us Himself, again. He kills off all existence in us and then we start to live... Now that makes sense.
