From the Start - Part 14 | Corruption on Earth (A Genesis Sermon Series Part 15)

Well, turn if you would to Genesis chapter 6.

Genesis 6 · chapter mention

I texted my good friend Paul hubby, many of you know him.

I texted him the other day and I said I'm preaching the message

this week that I've waited my whole life for.

If you are familiar with Genesis 6 or you like to geek out on fun

little scriptural topics, then you are aware of where we are

headed this morning. A while back I was talking with

someone and they said, oh, preaching is like giving a book

report every week. And I was like, yes, this week I

feel like it was a research paper.

This week was a lot of stuff to digest.

I've known a lot of what I'm about to convey to you this

morning, but there's just so much I had to process and sift

through in order to make it palatable for you.

And if you're looking at the note sheet, you will see that

there is a lot of information on the note sheet because

inevitably you will be like, what was this and what was that?

And trying to figure stuff out. So I've tried to make it as easy

for you as possible. So I've put a lot of information

there on the note sheet so you can refer back to that because I

know everybody goes home and you file all your note sheets away

and keep them for safekeeping, right?

I know a few people do. I know a few people do.

But yeah. So this morning's message is

going to be much different than a normal message.

But you know, as we get towards the end of it, I'll kind of

bring it into into scope, into view of what's important for us

to take note of in our passage this morning.

But if you are able, would you stand as we read from Genesis

Genesis 6 · chapter mention

chapter 6 verses one through 7, when man began to multiply on

the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the

sons of God saw that the daughters of man were

attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose.

Then the Lord said, My Spirit shall not abide in man forever,

for he is flesh. His days shall be 120 years.

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also

afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of man,

and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who

were of old, the men of renown. 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 regretted that He had made man on the earth, and

it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, I will blot

out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and

animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am

sorry that I have made them. You may be seated Now before we

examine this text, let's remind ourselves of of where we've been

after the fall and the humans expulsion from the garden.

We we looked at Cain and Abel and in doing so, I concluded

that the problem with Cain's sacrifice was that it wasn't his

best. God didn't accept less than

Cain's best. SO So Cain coaxed his brother

out into the field because his brother's sacrifice was

accepted. And when no one was around, Cain

killed Abel. Oh, God had cautioned Cain to be

careful and not allow sin to rule over him.

But Cain didn't yield to God's ways, so he was cursed to wander

when he began having children. There's one particular

descendant of his who who stands out, and that's the evil Lamech.

He epitomizes the sinful way of Cain, choosing to forge a path

of his own making and not heeding God.

But not all was lost. As an Adam, Eve's next son,

Seth, enters the scene. His line is characterized by the

righteous Enoch, whose character and faith were such that they

they warranted him passing go and advancing straight to heaven

without seeing death. He was the pinnacle of Seth's

line, Seth's descendants. So that brings us up to this

point, Chapter 6. As the text begins, we're made

aware that humanity's growing. Actually, humanity is

multiplying as what Scripture tells us.

They weren't just adding one here or one there, but

multiplying as each generation had hundreds of years to produce

more offspring. Can't help but wonder women how

long they might have, how many years they might have spent

being pregnant, carrying children Could have been a long

time if you live hundreds and hundreds of years.

However, the directive to multiply was first found in

Genesis 122. God bless them.

This is the initial creation. God bless them saying be

fruitful and multiply and feel the waters in the seas and let

birds multiply on the earth. So that was His command to birds

and fish. And then a few verses later in

verse 28, the command was directed to the humans.

God bless them. God said be fruitful and

multiply and fill the earth. In chapter 1, the motif of

multiplying was presented as good and necessary in order to

fulfill God's plans for the earth.

But now with humanity multiplying, it hints out of a

lurking problem as as the world's population grows, and

this leads to increased wickedness on the earth.

Verse 2 says the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were

attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose.

And then we jump down to verse 4.

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward

when the sons of God came into the daughters of man, and they

bore children to them. These were the mighty men who

were of old, the men of renown. SO3 Quick questions come to mind

when you're reading this text. Who are the sons of God?

Who are the daughters of man? And of course, who are the

nepheline? The identity of these three

groups has precipitated thousands of pages of response

and speculation and explanations, both in paper and

digital formats. And here I'll do my best to

present to you the primary options for interpreting the

text this morning. Now before we jump in, I want to

make something clear. First of all, highly qualified

and well trained theologians and and and commentators will fall

on various sides of this issue. Highly respected theologians

will fall on different views. Secondly, this is not a primary

issue. I would say it's not even a

secondary issue. I would actually place it as

more of a tertiary issue, an issue of the third level,

something that is just fun, if you will, to speculate on and

try to understand as much as we humanly can within the realm of

the information that we have given to us in God's Word.

So with that said, there are three main perspectives on the

sons of God. First of all, the first

perspective is that the sons of God are fallen angels.

The sons of God are fallen angels is what this perspective

holds. And I might add that of the

three perspectives, I think if I had to hazard a guess, I would

say that this might be the most common perspective.

How is it though that demons could marry human women and have

children? It just doesn't make sense since

since we tend to think of angels as essentially spiritual beings

who aren't necessarily sexed and and don't have physical bodies.

But there are a couple reasons the sons of God might be fallen

angels. First of all, the phrase the

sons of God is used four other times outside of this passage.

And every time sons of God, that specific phrase sons of God or

son of God, every time that's used, it refers to an angelic

being. We see the sons of God among the

divine counsel and Job there at the beginning, it says the sons

of God came to present themselves before Yahweh and

then Satan tags along, joins the retinue of angelic beings there.

We also see a son of God there in Daniel when when we are told

about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego being thrown into the

furnace, the the explanation or it's described as seeing one

like a son of God, meaning an Angel.

So those uses heavily predispose us to seeing Genesis, six sons

of God as fallen angels. But that's not the only support

for this case. Second, Peter and Jude both

potentially speak to the scenario.

Second Peter 2 verses 4 through 5.

2 Peter 2:4–5

They're on the screen. For if God did not spare angels

when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to

chains of gloomy darkness, to be kept until the judgement, If he

did not spare the ancient world, but preserve Noah, a herald of

righteousness with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the

world of the ungodly, then it goes on to say, will he not also

rescue Peter's audience? Here Peter tells us God didn't

spare the sinful angels from the ancient world, but he preserved

righteous Noah. But it's also possible that the

punishment in view here in Second Peter is actually

referring to the initial rebellion of Lucifer and 1/3 of

the angels before time even begins.

The other passage used to support this stance is Jude 6.

Jude 6 says and the angels who did not stay within their own

position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has

kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the

judgement of the great day. God wasn't happy with these

angels, so he punished them. Are these angels who went

outside of their proper position?

The Are these angels that it refers to the sons of God that

are mentioned in Genesis 6. Again, the text isn't explicit,

so we can only speculate. And then to further complicate

matters, there's the book of Enoch.

It wasn't written during the times of Enoch.

First of all, to be clear, it was written thousands of years

later during the intertestamental period between

the end of the Old Testament and and Jesus coming into the world.

The book of Enoch is also found in the Qumran caves among the

Dead Sea Scrolls. But just because it was found

there doesn't mean that we take it as God's word.

We call these writings the Apocrypha, and if you have a

Catholic background, you you are more likely to be familiar with

the Book of Enoch. The book of Enoch tells us a bit

about angels called watchers is what is what they're called in

the text. Watchers can be both holy and

fallen angels. In the Book of Enoch, which Jude

14 and 15 actually quotes, the book of Enoch writes about both

holy and fallen angels and the book of Enoch tells us the the

watchers in in this case, the fallen angels, they mated with

human women and produced the Nephilim, a race of giants.

You may think, well, this seems like a slam dunk case then, but

like I said, the biblical text isn't isn't specific and we

can't take the book of Enoch as God inspired.

And then Jesus says something potentially contrary to this

position. And in Mark 12, the Sadducees

had asked Jesus about life after the resurrection.

They approach him and say, suppose a woman's husband dies

and then after he dies, the his next brother does his duty and

marries her and he dies and then the next brother and so on, so

forth. When this happens in the

resurrection, whose whose wife will she be?

Jesus proceeds to rebuke them and then he says in verse 25

when they rise from the dead they neither marry nor are given

in marriage but are like angels in heaven.

The point Jesus was making was that angels don't marry and and

people won't marry in heaven either.

Then the logical conclusion is since angels don't marry, the

sons of God aren't angels. Take that.

You see how thoroughly confusing this topic can be.

So I am presenting each of these perspectives to you.

I will say I think I do land on the fallen angels perspective,

but all of them have a point to make and issues you have to deal

with. The next perspective is called

the Sethite view. The Sethite view says that the

sons of God are descended from the line of Seth and the

daughters of men are descended from the line of Cain.

In this framework, the sons are followers of Yahweh descended

through the godly line of Seth. However, the these these

descendants of Seth chose to go outside of their godly lineage

to pursue wives from the ungodly line of Cain.

And these marriages, it's said, produced wicked children,

children who took after their mothers more than they did their

fathers. And the argument here is that

chapters 4 and five place a significant focus on the on the

2 lines of descendants. Indeed, I've actually conveyed

it that way right in the last couple weeks as I've talked

about these descendants. I have communicated it in that

manner. So we don't need to import other

ideas and concepts into our interpretation of the text in

order to hold to this view. It's actually fairly natural, is

the argument. It's fairly natural to arrive at

the conclusion the godly people in the text come from Seth's

line, and the ungodly people in the text come from Cain's line.

Clearly I'm dealing with something.

It has been quite a week. However, the beginning of verse

one refers to men and daughters in a more general, universal

sense. It says when men began to

multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them.

This is just men and women in view here.

This is a general reference to the growth of humanity, not a

specific line. So it doesn't make sense for

verse 2 to to suddenly single out men descended from Seth and

women descended from Cain. Also, if the Sethites, if the

descendants of Seth were so godly, then why did they go

marry these evil women? It's a question you have to

answer if you want to hold to that view.

The next view is the royalty view.

The royalty view it it says that the sons of God are tyrannical

human rulers. The Sons of God are tyrannical

human rulers. Those who hold this position see

the Sons of God as polygamists, nobles, kings, governors, Lords

who who all viewed themselves as gods.

Now, it's no secret that that many ancient Near East rulers

thought of themselves as either the personification of the gods

or as gods themselves. They were in this view they they

held to themselves as being divine prodigy prodigy, not

prodigy progeny. They were divine progeny who who

had lusted for power and and took wives from among the common

people and sometimes forcing these women to join their

harems. There are a couple arguments for

this view. First of all.

Offspring of these unions could easily be called what it says

are men of renown since they were descended from royal

bloodlines so they they could be well known men of renown.

And later in Genesis 10, we'll see that Nimrod, one of the

first kings named in Scripture, is identified as a mighty man,

potentially lining him up as support for this view.

And this is also a practice called exercising the right of

the first night. Now the right of the first night

is a practice that that was sometimes exercised, that the

king could exercise the right to sleep with any woman who is

getting married. So as she got married on her

wedding day, the king, that Lord tyrant, could exercise the

rights of the first night. It was his right to have her on

that first night. And actually in the Epic of

Gilgamesh it is it is the exercising of the rite of the

first night that that leads to Gilgamesh being labeled as a

tyrant early on in his life. So this was something that

existed in their time here. The question in this view, the

question needs to be asked, is it sinful for a king to marry a

common woman? I would think not 2nd, we need

to be cautious in our interpretation to not impose our

culture's meanings for words into the text.

It said that they took wives, right?

Is what it what it says they took wives from among the

daughters, daughters and men. Well, taking a wife is simply a

Hebrew idiom for marriage and it and it doesn't by any means

imply coercion. Later in in Genesis, Abraham,

Nahor, and Isaac, they'll all be said to take wives who who

willingly marry them so they're not coerced into being married.

It's difficult for us to be dogmatic about any of these 3

views. Now, have you seen they can each

be supported in some sense by the text, and they each leave

you with questions and issues to navigate.

What is clear though is that some sort of grievous sexual sin

is in view. So then what about the

nepheline? Well, the word Nephilim is is

plural. It's taken from the word nephal,

and the word nephal simply means fallen.

So strictly speaking, Nephilim are fallen ones.

That is all that the word Nephilim tells us.

They are fallen ones. One perspective of the Nephilim

is that they are offspring of the union between the fallen

angels and women. Their offspring of the union

between the fallen angels and women.

The thought here is that this was a superhuman hybrid race of

giants that were the products of fallen angels mating with human

women. The obvious question here is are

are demons sexually compatible with human women and then are

they able to even produce children?

This view says yes, they took on bodily forms and and they

impregnated women in various spots.

In Scripture we will see that angelic beings take human forms

soul. That is an argument for that

perspective. Next.

The next option is the Nephilim are independent of the sons of

God and daughters of men. The Nephilim are independents of

the sons of God and daughters of men.

Verse four said the Nephilim were on the earth in those days

and also afterward when the sons of God came into the daughters

of man and they bore children to them.

So this view maintains that the Nephilim have nothing to do with

fallen angels marrying human women.

The Nephilim were there before and after the sons of God

cohabitated with the daughters of men.

When you read the text, that's what it looks like.

Further, the sentence does not begin with the word and, which

is very unique in in Hebrew Scripture.

And when a sentence does not begin with the word and then,

then it's doing this for one of two reasons.

Either it's beginning an entirely new section or it is

acting as a footnote. It is, it is a sort of

commentary on the previous sentence.

The argument here is the Nephilim were, were already

there and they'll, they'll continue to be there after this

moment and as well as after the flood, right?

And, and especially when the Israelites are going in to take

the promised land, the land of Canaan, they will see many

giants there. So they were there before,

they're going to continue to be there after.

That's the argument. So that's the fun theoretical

part of the message. Go home, start Googling, start

looking up articles, read everything you can and you will

find yourself even more confused than when you started.

It has been fun for me to take an even deeper dive on this, but

you know, this is just theoretical stuff.

This doesn't change anything about our faith or how we read

Scripture, but there are some things that that we can still

look at in this passage. And if you're paying attention,

you might be left with a couple questions.

Still, verses 6 and seven read. The Lord regretted that he had

made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.

So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from

the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and

birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.

The phrases of notes here are the Lord regretted that he had

made man on the earth, and God saying, I am sorry that I've

made them. Now these phrases might well

trigger the memory of any good students of the word You'll say

God regretted, God was was sorry.

How? How is this possible?

Because Numbers 2319 says God is not man that he should lie or a

son of man that he should change his mind.

Has he said and will he not do it or has he spoken and will he

not fulfill it? And then Malachi 36 God says

that he doesn't change. And plus there are other

passages speaking to God's immutability and and the fact

that he doesn't change. We know that we can count on

God, right? That he is trustworthy in all

his ways. So how how could it possibly be

that God regretted or changed his mind about creating humans?

Well, it's best for us to understand God's sorrow and his

regrets, to understand those two concepts as grief over what man

had become. God was grieved over what man

had become. He was experiencing emotional

anguish over over these humans motives and and their actions.

He'd been wronged by the presumptuous sin of humanity.

He had initially set out what was right and what was wrong,

but humanity said no, I know better and chose to redefine

right and wrong. It's important to clarify God's

grief over the making of humanity isn't remorse in the

sense of sorrow over a mistaken creation.

God didn't make a mistake. However, these verses show that

God's pain has its source in humanity's perversion and

sinfulness. Creation of man was was no

error. It's what man had made of

himself that grieved God so much.

See, God intimately engages with his creation, which effects him

in ways that that we can't comprehend.

He's pained by the sinner's rebellion and acknowledging his

possibility. That is his ability to

experience emotions. Acknowledging his ability to

experience emotions, it doesn't diminish the fact that he is

immutable and he does not change.

When we say God loves, that God gets angry or God grieves.

The point isn't to say that we are the same.

There are, of course, drastic differences between our emotions

and God's version of emotions. God doesn't love the way we do.

He doesn't get angry in the same way US sinful mortals do, He

doesn't grieve in the same manner that we do, But this

doesn't make his emotions any less real.

God was sorry for what his creation had become.

The Imago day, that is, the image of God, had been

tarnished, and what was it that led to God's grieving?

Verse 5 told us 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, humanity had become

wicked. In fact, humanity was so wicked,

God shortened humanity's lifespan from being 8-9 hundred

years, nearly 1000 years to 120. Shorter lifespans serve to limit

the destructive impact of humanity's selfishness, greed,

and rebellion. Individuals bent on violence can

harm or destroy an immense number of people in a 900 year

lifetime. Also, their spiritual malignancy

can spread like a cancer if they live for hundreds and hundreds

of years. The sins of the sons of God and

the daughters of men represent just just part of the picture of

moral disintegration that pervaded Noah's world.

Earth's entire human population had grown irreparably wicked.

It was so bad God declared every intention of the thoughts of his

heart. Human hearts was only evil

continually. Man's every thoughts, man's

every inclination was towards evil.

Sinfulness wasn't just a fleeting moment, a little little

blip on the radar. Oh, there's just that little

dots of sin. No, sinfulness was all consuming

in the hearts of humanity now. God wasn't just dealing with

externals here. We tend to think of sin as an

act. Yes, there are sins of

Commission. There are actions.

But sin is is more than that. And verse verse 6 actually

communicates that to us. Sin begins in the heart and it

makes its way outside into our actions.

It begins in the heart and makes its way into our actions.

Your actions can still be compliant while you have a

sinful heart. Eve's first sin, it wasn't

taking the fruit. Her first sin was was in her

heart. When she desired that fruit more

than anything, she looked upon it.

She saw it was good, and she took it.

When she looked upon the fruit it it created a desire that

she'd never felt before, and that was when she started

heading down the path towards sin.

Now I know none of us here is Cain, but nonetheless, you might

feel like you're descended from an ungodly line.

Maybe there are generational sins in your family that you

face. Sin is crouching at the door.

It's desire is for you and to rule over you, but you must

master it. When it starts to rise up in our

hearts, we need to take note and take action against it. 2nd

Corinthians 10 verses 4 through 5 read For the weapons of our

warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy

strongholds. We destroy arguments in every

lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every

thought captive to obey Christ. Sins.

War against us isn't a fleshly battle, it's a spiritual battle.

Our weapons from God serve to destroy the lies that Satan

throws at us. When we take our thoughts

captive, we're actively, we're filtering, we're evaluating, and

we are aligning our thought life with biblical truth.

And when we align our thought life with biblical truth, this

breaks the toxic, anxiety driven and ungodly thought spirals that

we can fall into as humans. No, it's not a insurmountable

task for us to break away from sin.

It's within our capacities to to change our thoughts.

First Corinthians 10/13 you'll be familiar with this says no

temptation is overtaking you. That is not common to man.

God is faithful and He will not let you be tempted beyond your

ability. Before we go on, I just want to

say something it doesn't say. People will say, oh, God's not

going to give you more than you can handle.

No, God's going to give you more than you can handle.

I want to make that clear. God sometimes gives you more

than you can handle, so it brings you to the end of

yourself and you trust in Him. What the verse is saying, God is

not going to give you give you. He doesn't give you temptation.

He's not going to allow temptation more than you can

handle. That's what the text is saying.

Then it goes on with the temptation He will provide, the

way of escape that you may be able to endure it.

God has given us all the weapons that we need, that temptation

that comes at you day after day after day.

God has provided the way of escape from that, the way to

freedom. When temptation comes, we aren't

facing something that that no one else has faced in the

history of the world, though sometimes it feels like it,

right? No, it's said that which is

common to man, that which humanity has experienced.

What we're facing is completely normal to the human experience.

Others have walked this path before us, and God's promise to

us is that we won't face more temptation than we can handle.

God has provided the way of escaping and we can conquer the

sin that enslaved those early generations, those early

generations whose whose every intent of their hearts was evil.

We can have victory over sin through Jesus Christ and the

power that he provides. So let's bow our heads and close

our eyes. We're going to do something.

I'm going to do something I've not done before just to prep the

worship team. We're going to go back and sing

Living Hope instead. But before we do that, let's

take a moment in our hearts to examine and to yield to say,

God, I give this to you. Would you help me to walk in the

power that you have provided through the Holy Spirit to be

filled with the spirits? God, would you change the

intents of my heart? May my motives be right and pure

before You, as Psalm 139 says. Search me, oh God.

Know my heart, try me and know my thoughts, and see if there is

any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Lead me in your ways, God. Just take just a minute to just

look in our hearts and surrender them to God.

God, we come to you, So God, we offer our hearts to

you and surrender this morning. Search us, know us, see if

there's any wicked way in US and us in your ways, Jesus name,

Amen.