However, while God could have done it all very fast, He
had a plan which was far better than what they had in mind. Not only did
God need to erase all of the old world's evil, He wanted to refine them
as well. He wanted to increase their faith, to cause them to draw
closer to Him, perhaps partly because the problems of the old world came
because people had strayed so far from God.
He gives us fruits like in Galatians 5:22-23 and tells us
to let the Spirit in us (those of us who know Jesus Christ as Saviour)
develop them. He gives us things to focus on like in Philippians 4:8
because He knows the spiritual realm and the spiritual warfare ee will
face, and is giving us His perfect plan so we can avoid the many
pitfalls we will fall into if we aren't csreful.
Indeed, Noah fell prey to temptation later. We can't say
with certainty that he didn't use that time to draw close to God, for
all we know he could have really tried hard. However, whichever the
case, we can't always know what God's plan is, nor His timing.
Whatever His purpose was here, then, He was going to
complete it in His perfect timing. And, we can apply this period times
in our lives when it would seem that everything should be ready but God
still has some pieces to put in place. We need to use that time to draw
close to God and let Him speak through His Word and the Spirit and show
us His will more clearly, while growing in our faith, the fruits of the
Spirit, and so on. Because, spiritual warefare will come, and we need to
be ready with those fruits and with our minds focused on things which
please God.
