Faithful Then, Faithful Now | Rise & Fall of God's People - Genesis 5:1-6:8 (Nov 20) Myles Holmes

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the Spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Let's pray together, Church.

Father, we thank you for this time, Lord, to be reminded through these songs and through singing these truths to each other, God, that there is so much more to our life than this life, God, that we are eternal.

There is a day beyond the grave, and that for those who are in Christ, Lord, that will be the greatest day there is.

To sing with the heroes of old, to sing with the people that we read about at the very beginning of your word this morning, God, to sing with them of how glorious and great you are, that you would provide redemption for us.

And God, yet as I sing those words, I'm just so reminded of how my attention and focus can be so immediate, Lord, on the things of today that I can really lose true perspective, true eternal perspective.

And so, God, we pray that as we gather here this morning, Lord, that you would give us that true perspective that we need.

God, thank you that you are eager to speak to us, Lord, so eager that you would give us a book.

And God, we'd be so foolish to not be people of the book that you have given us, to not center our lives around your word, to not found everything we do and everything we say and every thought that we have.

Lord, to not do everything in us to found it on you.

And so, God, speak to us this morning and find in this room, Lord, even right now, I pray that everyone is praying with me, Lord, that our hearts would be humbled before you, eager to hear your word and be transformed by its power.

God, thank you for the presence of your Holy Spirit with us.

And God, speak to us and change us.

We pray this in the name of your Son.

Amen.

Amen.

You guys can grab a seat.

And as you grab your seat, if you guys have your Bible and your copy of God's Word, and I hope that you do, you can open it up to Genesis chapter 5.

Genesis 5 · chapter mention

We're gonna be going from Genesis chapter 5, verse 1 to Genesis 6.8 this morning.

Genesis 5:1

And as we've been tracking through the story of Genesis and really thinking about God's faithfulness to the people of Genesis and therefore his faithfulness to us now, we've seen in a few short chapters, haven't we, that the people of God really rise and fall.

They experience high highs and they experience low lows.

And really what the story of Genesis is, is a story of uh really tracking God's blessing of his people and the curse that fell upon people because of their sin.

Now, as we think about the rise and fall of God's people, we understand that experientially in our own life, don't we?

Like if you were to track the good times in your life and the low times in your life, if you were to track the success in your life and the failure in your life, if you were to uh track the highs and the lows, our life would really be like a roller coaster, wouldn't it?

I mean, when I golf, I really feel the emotions of highs and lows from hit to hit.

And as human beings, we understand that life has moments of unspeakable joy, moments that you wouldn't trade for the world, that can be followed by moments of deep pain, of deep grief, of deep suffering.

And experientially, we know that this life is tumultuous.

That life is very much like being tossed in an ocean where you rise high with the waves and you go low with the waves.

This is not only the experience of our lives, it's the experience of God's people.

And so, as we've read through Genesis, what we've seen really is that life is about following God, both in the highs of life and in the lows of life.

And you need to know that as a the pastor of this church, I'm very concerned for those that are suffering.

I feel the call of God to care for people who are suffering, who are walking through a difficult season in life, and I'm very encouraged by this church that when that happens, people are eager to jump around and serve people who are walking through difficult seasons.

And so, of course, my heart goes out to them, but but as a pastor, my heart also is concerned for another group of people.

You might even say I'm more concerned for this group of people, and that's for those who are experiencing success in life.

Isn't it true that when you are riding the wave of a high in your life, it can be even harder to follow God, can't it?

I mean, when everything is out of your control, when you feel like there is no option for you but to turn to God, that is when it's easy.

Because there's just no other way.

You're kind of at a dead end, like God, you gotta do something, you gotta show up, because I have no other option here.

But then when things are going well, and you're walking in the highs of life and the successes of life, it can be so easy to forget God.

My concern is that in the danger of the heights of our life, we'll forget that we need God.

That's our natural tendency, isn't it?

And I really do believe that that's why the gospel is so neglected in North America.

Because you preach a gospel of your need for a savior to a people who have everything, and their response is, well, I'm good.

I got everything I need.

I got a house and a car and a job and a family.

I'm satisfied.

There is nothing else that I need.

And the reason why so many reject the gospel I believe is because of our riches in North America, because of the relative success that this nation, Canada and America, have experienced.

And so God has a message for us throughout the book of Genesis, in the highs and the lows, but especially as we read of Genesis chapter 5 and 6, He has a message for us about what we need to do, whether we're in the high of life or in the low of life, the thing that we need to do is the same.

Genesis 5 · chapter mention

The thing that we must do, our greatest need in the highs and the lows of life is this to run to God.

To run to God in the highs and lows of life.

And so in Genesis 5 and 6, we see this cycle, the rise and the fall of God's people, and we hear this from God that our need in the rise and fall of our own lives is to run to Him, no matter where we are.

And so let's read the text together.

I'm going to read the whole text this morning, and I would ask that you follow along with me.

And if you don't have a copy of God's word, that your neighbor that's sitting beside you is really nice, would love to share with you, and it would be good for us to read through this together.

And I can read these names, and you can tell me after how you would read them yourself.

Genesis chapter 5 says, This is the book of the generations of Adam.

Genesis 5 · chapter mention

When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.

Male and female, he created them, and he blessed them and named them man when they were created.

When Adam had lived a hundred and thirty years, he fathered a son in his own likeness after his image, and named him Seth.

The days of Adam, after he fathered Seth, were eight hundred years, and he had other sons and daughters.

Thus all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.

When Seth had lived a hundred and five years, he fathered Enosh.

Seth Seth lived after he fathered Enosh eight hundred and seven years, and had other sons and daughters.

Thus all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years, and he died.

And Enosh had ninety years, had lived ninety years, he fathered Kenan.

Enosh lived after he had fathered Kenan eight hundred and fifteen years, and had other sons and daughters.

Thus all the days of Enosh were nine hundred and five years, and he died.

When Kenan had lived seventy years, he fathered Mahalalel.

And Kenan lived after he fathered Mahalalel eight hundred and forty years, and had other sons and daughters.

Thus all the days of Kenan were nine hundred and ten years, and he died.

When Mahalalel had lived sixty-five years, he fathered Jared.

Mahalalel lived after he fathered Jared eight hundred and thirty years, and had other sons and daughters.

Thus all the days of Mahalalel were eight hundred and ninety-five years, and he died.

When Jared had lived 162 years, he fathered Enoch.

Jared lived after he fathered Enoch eight hundred years, and had other sons and daughters.

Thus all the days of Jared were nine hundred and sixty-two years, and he died.

When Enoch had lived sixty-five years, he fathered Methuselah.

Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah three hundred years and had other sons and daughters, thus all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years.

Enoch Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him.

When Methuselah had lived a hundred and eighty-seven years, he fathered Lamech.

Methuselah lived after he fathered Lamech seven hundred and eighty-two years, and had other sons and daughters, thus all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred and sixty-nine years, and he died.

When Lamech had lived a hundred and eighty-two years, he fathered a son and called his name Noah, saying, Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands.

Lamech lived after he fathered Noah five hundred and ninety-five years, and he had other sons and daughters, thus all the days of Lamech were seven hundred and seventy-seven years, and he died.

And Noah was five hundred years old.

Noah fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

When man began to multiply on the face of the land, and the daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that their daughters of man were attractive, and they took them as their wives, any that they chose.

Then the Lord said, My spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh.

His days shall be a hundred and twenty 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 of 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 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 the birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.

But Noah found favor in the eyes of God.

This text is showing us that in the highs and lows we must run to God, and the first thing I want you to see is that I must run to God because success can be fatal.

Must run to God because success can be fatal.

Now we enter into Genesis five, and we've already seen the highs and lows of God's people, haven't we?

In Genesis 1 and 2, they were in paradise, but then you remember in Genesis 3, the serpent tempted them, and they fell into a low low.

And then at the beginning of Genesis 4, Adam and Eve continue to carry out God's creation mandate to have children and multiply with the birth of Cain and Abel.

But we know the story there that very quickly Cain and Abel fall into a low-low, and Cain murders Abel.

Now we find ourselves in a high again.

At the end of Genesis 4, God provided Seth.

God provided a new Abel.

And at the end of Genesis 4, we see that the people of God are worshiping God.

And what we have in Genesis 5 is really the longest period in all of Scripture that the people of God experience the blessing of God.

And so it's quite phenomenal for us to read.

You see in Genesis chapter 5, verses 1 and 2, that the language there really reiterates the language of Genesis 1, verses 1 and 2.

Genesis 5:1 Genesis 1:1

So that Moses says, this is the book of the generations of Adam.

You remember that Genesis is, that's really its title.

It's a book of genealogies of generations.

And again, it it um reiterates what was said in Genesis 1.

When God created man, he made them in the likeness of God, male and female, he created them, he blessed them, and he named them man when they were created.

What Moses is doing is drawing our attention back to Genesis 1 when he created Adam and Eve in Genesis 1, verses 26 to 28, and reminding us that God said these people would be blessed.

Genesis 1:26–28

What we find then in Genesis 5 is that the people of God are being blessed.

Despite the low lows of falling in Genesis 3, despite the low lows of Cain murdering Abel, the people of God are still being blessed.

Church, this is instructive for us.

Nothing can stop the mission of God.

Don't you find this sometimes that in your life when things stop going well, all of a sudden we start to question God's mission.

God, do you really know what you're doing?

I mean, I know you knew what you were doing when things were going well.

But now that the sickness has entered into my life, now that my son or daughter is living this way, now that this problem has occurred in our marriage, now that I have no work, God, God, do you really know what you're doing?

And God's reminding us in Genesis 5 that his mission is unstoppable because he is powerful over all things.

And so no matter how hopeless your life becomes, God is in control.

No matter how low you experience, no matter how high you are, God's in control.

It's just another day at the office for God.

Nothing has ever happened in your life that made God step back and say, oh man, I don't know what we're gonna do about this one.

God's always in control.

And so because God is so committed to the mission that He gave to Adam and Eve in Genesis 1 and the blessing that he gave to them to be fruitful and multiply, what we see in Genesis 5 is that this blessing is unfolding.

The people of God are truly multiplying.

The people of God are fathering sons and daughters into countless, countless families.

And you notice that not only are they multiplying, the people of God are also experiencing long life.

And so as we read, I'm sure that you took note of the fact that people in these days lived a very long time.

Now, answering the question of why they lived so long can kind of get us down some rabbit holes.

If you were to read commentaries, you would find some people that really, they're kind of math nerds, and so they love to geek out on this.

Well, if you just add Mahalal, which by the way is probably one of the funnest names to say that we've encountered yet, if you add his 830 years to the life of maybe Lamech's 782 years, you divide that by two and you add Jared's life, then you divide that by four, carry the three, then what you find is the number seven and the number seven.

Well, you understand where I'm going with this.

Endless uh debates about the math of these numbers, and what you find is that there's really no convincing argument that ties it all together.

Likely, I think, what's happening is that God is showing us the blessing of following Him.

These people are experiencing long life because they are walking with God.

And so typically these genealogies that we read of in chapter 5 follow the same format.

You would have noticed that as I read.

Really, it becomes repetitive, don't you?

Doesn't it?

So that often what happens when we read Genesis 5 is we just kind of like look for anything that's different.

You ever do that with the genealogies?

You just start skipping all the names because you can't pronounce them anyways.

Just look for the text that shows us some narrative.

We'll read that, and that'll be our reading for the day.

And it's good for us to read the genealogies, but you need to know there's something to that.

Whenever the text breaks away from kind of the standard format, we know there's something significant.

And so one place that it does that is in verse 21.

Look what happens in verse 21 of chapter 5.

When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah.

Enoch walked with God.

After he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters, thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years.

Enoch walked with God and he was not, for God took him.

In the story of Enoch, we kind of have like the highest high of God's people, of Seth's lineage.

Enoch walked with God.

The last time that we heard this phrase was in the garden.

You remember in the garden that God was walking with Adam and Eve in the cool of day and talking to Adam and Eve like a friend would talk to a friend.

And we get this sense with Enoch that he lived so closely to God, and his years were even less than the years of the rest of Seth's line.

And you get this understanding, it's because like he was so close with God that God just chose, instead of for him to experience death, which everyone else experienced, he was spared the painful punishment of death and taken directly to heaven.

Church, this is instructive for us as well.

Enoch finds himself in the middle of thousands of years of blessing for God's people.

And what does he do?

He pushes even harder into God.

He walks even closer to God.

Church, if you find yourself right now in a period of success, if you find yourself in a period where there's maybe there's not really any suffering going on, or the suffering is just manageable, you know, life is hard, but I can do this.

The greatest thing that you need right now is to press harder into God.

There should be this like righteous anxiety that grows in the believer any time that things are going really well.

If things are going well in your life, there should be kind of like this terror in you that you might forget God.

Because again, it's easy when things aren't going well.

You have no other choice.

But when things are going well, how easy it is to neglect a life of prayer.

How easy it is to neglect turning to God God's word for his wisdom and direction.

How easy it is to neglect the counsel of other people in our life because things are going well, and Enoch shows us that our greatest need is to run to Him.

Church, really the question for us is this Is your faith in God, is it life insurance or is it life support?

Is your faith in the Lord insurance for you, or is it life support?

Well, here's the difference between those two things.

If your faith is insurance, then what you do is you kind of take your faith and you tuck it away.

And you live your life.

You go on day after day.

It's always there in case you need it.

If something happens that you can't handle, your faith is always there.

You know, I can always turn back to God.

But for the most part, you live your life in the highs without God.

And what God wants us to understand is that faith is not insurance.

What faith is, is life support.

That when you truly understand your need for God, when you truly understand your sinfulness, you understand that there is no time in life where your need for God is not infinite.

And so let me ask you, is it a faith that summarizes your life?

Is it a faith of insurance or is it a faith of life support?

See, God's answering for us this question, what do we do in times of earthly blessing and success?

Because the reality is that success can be fatal to us.

Success can kill our relationship with God.

So much so that so often I'm uh convinced that the reason that we suffer is because God is just like, I want you back.

And the only time you speak to me, the only time you talk to me is be is when things are going wrong in your life.

And I love you so much, I care for you so much that I'm willing to put you in the furnace, I'm willing for you to endure suffering.

So that might be close to you.

God delights in the nearness that he experiences from his children in their suffering and they're crying out to him.

We need to be reminded of this, and it's interesting through this text, there's kind of like this even though the people of God are experiencing this constant blessing, there's kind of running in the background of this text this constant reminder that they are living in a sinful, cursed world.

And you see it there, it's it's a pretty striking end to the blessing of these people's life that at the end of each of the people's life it says, and he died.

I don't know if you've ever met a like really blunt person.

Have you ever met a person who just says it as it is?

Moses is one of those people.

Because really, in the Hebrew text of this Bible, it's one word.

Like the best way you could probably translate that is just like to read the section at the very end and say, Dead.

That's how quick it is.

And so Moses, he tells us about Adam.

Adam lived a fruitful life.

You know, he lived 930 years, he had many sons and daughters, dead.

Oh, Seth, he was fruitful too.

You know, he lived a good life, long life, 912 years, had some kids, some sons, some daughters.

It was a great life.

Dead.

And the list keeps going.

And you get the understanding that this isn't just the patriarch's reality, this is our reality.

That sometime in our life, the soundtrack.

That's been running through Genesis 5, will come to us.

And it's a soundtrack that's supposed to remind us that this world we live in, especially in times of blessing, this world is still a fallen world.

And we await what we just sang of a hope that is coming in Christ.

If I could illustrate maybe what's happening in this text, I'm going to use this piano.

You guys mind if I play the piano for you for a second?

Can I do that?

Okay, well, I don't really play that well, but I'm going to try my best here.

And this isn't a hard song to play, so I'm going to do it.

This is the soundtrack that every once in a while, maybe a few times a day, this soundtrack should play in our life.

Are you ready?

Okay, here we go.

I didn't practice this, so I hope that it's I hope that I can still play this song.

And things are going well, and the family's all good and healthy.

But then there's that soundtrack.

You guys know what that's from?

Hopefully, Jaws, the movie Jaws.

You know, the shark is coming.

Oh, I've got a promotion at work.

Life's gonna be easy now, there's gonna be room in the budget, but that shark of death is coming.

We live in a fallen world.

And don't you know by experience, just like that, what seems to be together in our life can come crumbling down.

And it's the love of God to remind us that we are this close to falling.

We're this close to experiencing the low of life in a sinful and fallen and cursed world.

This is why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10, verse 12, and this is going to come up on the screen, he says, Let anyone who stands take heed lest he falls.

1 Corinthians 10:12

Let anyone who stands take heed lest he falls.

And it's a reminder that Paul's giving to the church that it is good for us to always be aware that no matter how firm you think your foundation is that you're standing on, it is always possible to fall.

Doesn't that happen so often in our life?

We hear the sin of another person.

Oh, I would never do that.

And I think that's the place that we're most vulnerable.

Paul calls us don't forget God.

Run to him.

In times of blessing, in times of great highs of life, run to him.

See, God is our refuge in times of strength and in times of weakness, which really leads us to our next point.

The second thing that I want you to realize is that we must run to God because evil is threatening me.

We must run to God because evil is threatening me.

At the beginning of chapter six, we see the corruption of God's people.

The corruption of the sinful, cursed world seeps into God's people.

Now, Genesis 6, we just read, and it's very interesting, isn't it?

In fact, when I told people that I'm preaching through Genesis, one of the most frequent comments I got was, Well, what are you gonna do with Genesis 6?

And I said, I don't know, can we just like skip it maybe, or I don't know what to do with Genesis 6?

There are many verses in this little section, in these few short verses, that are difficult for us to interpret.

And my honest answer to that question of what are we gonna do with Genesis 6 was I don't know.

I've read this before, and I've had maybe a you know base level interpretation of it, but until this week I really hadn't studied it in the depth of study that I've come to now.

And so I feel the need to make maybe just this preliminary note.

There are a lot of different ways to interpret what's going on in Genesis chapter 6.

Genesis 6 · chapter mention

There are a lot of good ways to interpret it.

There are a lot of ways that if someone were to really, you know, start to begin to argue with the interpretation of Genesis 6 that we're about to hear that I've come to, I would very quickly stand back and say, I could see that.

I could see that happening.

There's a lot of good, different ways to take a lot of different controversial and uh contentious verses in this section of Scripture.

In fact, in all of Genesis, perhaps in all of Scripture, this is one of the most difficult passages of Scripture to interpret.

And so we're gonna walk through it verse by verse.

In verse 1 of chapter 6, we really see a summary of what's happening in chapter 5.

It says, when man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them.

Well, that's that's just reiterating what happened in chapter 5, the blessing and fruitfulness of God's people, the godly line of Seth that God had blessed was being fruitful in multiplying.

Now it's important to note that in Genesis chapter 5, Moses is very eager to tell us that the multiplication is happening to sons and daughters.

Genesis 5 · chapter mention

That doesn't happen very often in genealogies in the ancient Near East.

Often it just tracks the sons, the father's lineage, the male lineage.

But Moses, there's a reason why he's continually reminding Israel that they bore sons and daughters, because it's the daughters of men that are going to be important in the story of chapter 6, verse 2.

So in verse 2, we see that the sons of God saw the daughters of man were attractive, and they took as their wives any that they chose.

The important question that we need to answer in this text, perhaps the most difficult question to answer, is who are the sons of God?

And there are many different interpretations.

In fact, there's three real possibilities about who the sons of God are.

The first possibility is that these are tyrants, that these are kings of other nations that have come maybe from the line of Seth, you know, as the line of sorry, the line of Cain, as the line of Seth has been fruitful in multiplying, obviously the line of Cain has been fruitful in multiplying as well.

And you remember that Lamech, who was one of the descendants of Cain, was even worse than Cain.

And so it makes sense that as Cain was uh multiplying his family, the line of Cain was growing and growing, nations were coming out of the line of Cain, and these nations were tyrant kings.

Certainly, Scripture at times refers to kings as gods, of course, little g gods, even sons.

But it seems that this interpretation is unlikely based on the fact that it's kind of would be randomly inserted into the text at Genesis 6, verse 1.

Genesis 6:1

See, the context of Genesis, really chapter 2 to chapter 6, is about the lines of Adam, and then out of Adam, Seth and Cain.

Those are the true two families that we're really tracking.

And so if this were talking about tyrant kings, it would be like watching a movie, and some random character comes in that you don't even know anything about, and for a moment they're a really important part of the scene, and then they leave, and you're like, well, who was that even?

I don't even know who that person was.

Another possibility is that the sons of God are the godly line of Seth, and that the daughters of men are just all the daughters of the world.

So that the corruption in this case that led to Noah's ark, the corruption would be that God's line began to intermingle with other lines, and God had chosen for himself a chosen people in the line of Seth, but this just like corruption came into Cain's line, corruption also came into Seth's line, and the sons of Seth began to marry whomever they wanted.

They no longer cared about God's people, they no longer cared about the godly line of Seth.

They married whoever they chose.

It's possible that even polygamy is in reference here, that they married multiple people, which was a clear rebuttal of what was given in marriage in Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

This is certainly possible as well.

In fact, for most of the week, this is the point that I was going to preach as the right way to interpret Genesis chapter 6.

Genesis 6 · chapter mention

I even told people in this room that I'm totally convinced there's nothing you can do to change my mind.

And I'm foreshadowing where we're about to go because my mind was changed as I began to weigh the evidence.

See, the third possibility is that the sons of God are in reference to angels.

This has been the historical interpretation of the text, which isn't everything, but it certainly is important.

It's also that the only other time that the exact phrase sons of God is used in Scripture is in reference to angels.

It's used in Job.

You remember in Job chapter 1 and 2 when Satan came to God and had some questions about Job, you know who came with Satan?

Job 1 · chapter mention

Was the sons of God.

And there it's in clear reference, the exact same phrase we find here in Genesis 6, it's in reference to angels.

At the end of Job, when God is speaking to Job and questioning him, he asked Job, Where were he says, Were you there when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

And so again, there it seems like it's speaking about angels.

Now that doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be referred to angels.

When it uses the phrase son of God in Genesis 5, Genesis 6, it could still be just a different use of that same phrase.

But there are two occurrences to add weight to this argument, two occurrences in the New Testament that really make it seem like what's happening in Genesis 6 is that angels are sleeping with the daughters of men.

Let me show you them.

They're going to come up on the screen here.

The first is in 2 Peter.

In 2 Peter, Peter's, he's trying to encourage the church with this thought.

This comes later in the text, but he says this to the church the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial and keep the ungodly in punishment.

That's a really comforting truth.

If you're walking through suffering, if you're walking through trial, what Peter's saying is just continue to be righteous.

Because God is going to preserve the righteous and he will punish the wicked.

And so, in order to really convince the church that this is true, Peter goes to two different examples.

The first example, or one of the examples he goes to, is of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Because the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were in sexual perversion, God judged them and he turned the wicked men and women of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes.

And Peter's saying, look what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah.

There the wicked were punished.

But you know what happened?

Lot was saved.

The righteous were preserved.

Peter says, Let me give you another example, okay?

And this is what we read of in 2 Peter 2, verses 4 and 5.

2 Peter 2:4

He says, 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 judgment, if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly, then he goes into the example of Sodom and Gomorrah.

See, what you have here is verse 4 is the negative.

Just as we had a negative with Sodom and Gomorrah, the men and women of Sodom and Gomorrah were wicked, so we have a negative with the angels.

When they sinned, God cast them in the hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness.

But then you have the positive example, just like you had the positive example of Lot.

You have Noah, who God spared because of his righteousness.

The second place that it happens in the New Testament is this in Jude 6 and 7.

There we we kind of have instruction on some of the inner details of what happened.

It says the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling place, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day, just as Sodom and Gomorrah, again, same examples paired together, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serving as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal life.

That word likewise in that text is really important.

What Jude is saying is that at some point, angels, just like the men of Sodom and Gomorrah experienced these sexual perversions, angels did that too.

And so they were judged, just like the men and women of Sodom and Gomorrah.

And so it seems very likely that both of these New Testament passages help us understand what's happening in Genesis chapter 6, that this is an occurrence of angels, fallen angels, coming to earth and sleeping and having children with the daughters of men.

Genesis 6 · chapter mention

Now, this interpretation is not without problems.

Some may point to Jesus' words, who says that in heaven angels neither marry nor are in relationship together in that sense.

And I would just point to Jude that says that these angels left their position in heaven and came to earth.

So then they have that in heaven they didn't marry, but on earth they did marry.

We also have to ask the question about how a spiritual celestial being could reproduce children with daughters, with humanity.

And it's a reality in Scripture that angels can take on temporary, the temporary form of humans.

So is you remember in Peter, Peter says that some of you have actually entertained angels and not been aware of it.

I don't know when that's happened in his life in our life, but that's the whole point.

Peter says that there may have been angels in your midst and you didn't even know.

And so it is possible that the angels had physical forms.

Now, this is all kind of conjecture.

I'm just kind of speculating here because the text isn't really about that.

Now, interpreting it as angels also makes sense of the context of Genesis.

Remember, Genesis is a book about genealogies.

It's a book that tracks the line of God's people for Israel as they're in the desert, they're on the other side of the Red Sea, and Israel's saying, like, who am I?

Where did I come from?

And Genesis is a book of genealogies with Moses' intention to show Israel where they came from.

And you'll be reminded that in Genesis 3, verse 15, we're told that the story of Israel is birthed through this cosmic warfare between the seed of the serpent and the seed of God, the seed of the woman, Eve.

Genesis 3:15

And there's this constant conflict.

What happened in Genesis 3 when Satan caused Adam and Eve to fall?

It's this constant conflict that even today still endures, the battle of Satan against God.

And so it makes sense here that as the people of God are experiencing blessing, Satan is beginning to wiggle in his chair.

He's beginning to get frustrated.

And so he plans an attack to make the people of God fall.

This is such a reminder to us.

The reason we need to run to God is because evil is threatening us.

When you follow God, Satan will be sure to make that as difficult as possible for you.

Satan hates your commitment.

He will do everything in his power to make the spiritual pursuit of Jesus Christ more difficult in your life.

Haven't you ever noticed that?

You know, one day you commit, okay, tomorrow I'm gonna wake up early, I'm gonna get in the word.

What do you notice when that alarm clock goes off?

Like it's harder to wake up on that morning than any other morning in your life.

I love what John Piper says.

He says, when I wake up in the morning, I feel like Satan is sitting on my face.

This reminder that like Satan does not want you pursuing things that are good.

One of my greatest conundrums in life is that I love playing sports and that I'm super competitive, and so I always want to beat everybody at whatever sport.

Anything I can make into a competition, I will.

I'm also very bad at sports.

So when these two things are both realities in your life, you spend a lot of time on the bench.

It's something that I experienced growing up, it's something that I still experience playing sports.

Well, when you're on the bench, you're in a pretty safe place, aren't you?

Like if we're using hockey as an example, on the bench, you're not gonna get hit.

The other team doesn't really care about you, they're not thinking about you, they're thinking about the people that are on the ice.

And you know that this is true in your life.

So long as you are on the bench, so long as you are doing nothing great for God, so long as you are not committed to him, you will not experience spiritual warfare.

But the moment you step out onto that ice, Satan has his eyes on you.

He's committed against you.

This isn't any sort of like wacky spiritual warfare.

This is what Paul tells us in Ephesians 6 to put on the armor of God for.

We live in a world where the target is in our on our back if we're Christians, especially Christians who are trying to pursue Christ.

I'm convinced that the reason why so many of us don't experience spiritual warfare is because we spend our lives on the bench.

But when you begin running to God, you begin committing your ways to Him, that's when Satan targets you.

So let me let me just encourage you, don't let that be a sign of discouragement to you.

When following God is hard, that is all the more reason to press harder into following God.

Because you know Satan must not love what's happening here.

Church, I'm convinced of this.

That because of what God is doing in the life of this church, that we as a church are going to experience heightened spiritual warfare.

That the days ahead of us as a church are only harder than the days behind us.

This past Wednesday, we had a prayer meeting here at the church.

We had a quarter of the people show up to that prayer meeting that come on a Sunday morning.

I don't know what that stat sounds like to you, but I think that's pretty astounding compared to maybe what I've heard of other churches and the kind of prayer meeting they experience.

That's a lot of people who are showing up on a Wednesday night after a long day of work in the middle of a tired work week to say, God, we need you to help us do the work that you've called us to do.

And you can trust when a church faithfully gathers to say, God, help us to do what you've called us to do, that God's gonna answer that prayer.

And as Satan sees that prayer being answered, he does not like it.

It's time for warfare, Satan says.

I say that for two reasons.

One is because I want to see that um attendance of that prayer maybe be 100% and see what kind of attack that is on the evil kingdom of Satan.

But two, to encourage you to press on, to press on, to stand firm in the midst of hardship to endure.

Here's one warning I have for you as we interpret this text.

This text is not a piece of sci-fi.

This isn't science fiction.

I think a lot of times as people read this text, they kind of I don't know, they start to read it like maybe with their Star Trek lens on or Star Wars lens on.

As though the the fact that angels slept with women created some sort of superhuman race.

And there's no indication in this text of anything of that sort.

Which leads us really to our next question.

Who are the Nephilim?

The Nephilim are spoken of in verse five.

Sorry, the end of verse four.

They're called mighty men who were of old, those men of renown.

Well, it says in verse 4, we're told that the Nephilim, let me just say this, we don't know much about the Nephilim.

They're only spoken of two times in Scripture, and we really have nothing else from other scripture in the ancient Nerees to tell us who the Nephilim were.

Spoken of here, and then in Joshua, when God's people are scouting out God's land, they see giants, and the giants are called Nephilim.

It says in verse 4 that the Nephilim were in the earth in those days and afterwards.

And as we read that phrase in the rest of Scripture, what we understand is that for Moses to say that the Nephilim were on the earth in those days means that when Genesis 6, verse 2 happened, when the sons of God came and married the daughters of men, the Nephilim were already there.

Genesis 6:2

So this is not as though the Nephilim are some like sort of superhuman race that are giants because angels intermarried with women, and the children that they birthed were like these freaky sci-fi giants.

That would be maybe a cool movie, and a lot of really cool probably fiction books have been read, although I've read none of them and don't desire to.

That's not what's happening here.

There's no indication that this is even a race of people.

What we are told is that the Nephilim are men of renown.

Certainly they were giants.

My best guess that's what's happening here is that this is a group of people, and the reason we're not told about this category of people is because the people of Israel knew about these people.

So if I were to say to you the name Justin Trudeau, that would have a lot of meaning to you.

Some of you guys would stand up and leave, being so frustrated at that name.

But maybe in a thousand years, maybe in two thousand years, that wouldn't have so much meaning to someone who might be reading a transcript of this message.

So they don't know, they're not familiar with who that person is.

And it's likely that the Nephilim were these terror-invoking giants that Israel was kind of always thinking of.

I hope the Nephilim don't get us.

They're around.

Did you hear?

They're coming towards us.

And Moses brings them up here to say this what's about to happen, the judgment, it even happened to the Nephilim.

It's a footnote to say this.

Hey, those people that you're terrified of, those men of renown, they're gonna be judged too.

Which really leads us to our next point.

That we need to run to God because relief is near.

We run to God because relief is near.

In verse 3, we find another difficult verse to interpret.

It says, After the sons of God took the daughters of men, it says, My spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh.

His days shall be 120 years.

What God decided to do was to judge the nation because of their sexual sin.

And for him to say that their years would now be a hundred and their days would be 120 years is to say that within 120 years the flood is going to come, that everybody living now will not see life longer than 120 years.

It's significant that after, one other interpretation of this is that the long life that people experience in Genesis 5 would be shortened down to 120 years, but it's significant that there are people who live after the flood that live longer than 120 years.

And so it's likely that what God is saying is everyone who's alive now will be judged because of the wickedness.

And in verse 5, he speaks about that wickedness.

It says, 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.

God looks at mankind and he sees that their sinfulness is great.

And church, we look into this verse, and what we see in verse 5 is a mirror reflecting to us who we are.

This wickedness is our wickedness unless we run to God.

Unless we're in Christ, this is who we are.

We are wicked people.

And the wickedness of our life only increases and increases.

Notice that it says that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

And outside of Christ, this is who we are.

So that Isaiah says that your righteousness, if you are not in Christ, your righteousness is like filthy rags.

Is it possible to do good things as an as someone who does not know Christ?

Yes, it is possible.

But when it comes to you standing before the Lord, it will count for nothing.

Only the things that are done for Christ will count.

Because if we're not in Christ, if we're not running to God, what we're building is our own kingdom.

We're working for our own glory, for our own righteousness, for some sort of glory and love that is not God, and anything that is less than God falls short.

That's why Paul says that in our sin we have fallen short of the glory of God.

We have glorified other things that are not worthy of the glory that God deserves.

God sees this in verse 5, and in verse 6 he responds with another verse that's hard to interpret.

It says in verse 6, And the Lord regretted that he made man on earth, and it grieved him to his heart.

So the Lord said, I will blot man, blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and the birds of heaven, for I am sorry that I have made them.

God sees the sinfulness of humanity after years and years of blessing, and he regrets here that he's made man and grieves their sin.

Now, what's going on here?

How can God regret that he has done something?

What we have here are two truths in Scripture that if we don't do hard work to understand how they both can be true at the same time, we'll end up in confusion.

Here's the first truth.

The first truth is that God is unchangeable.

We read in places like Isaiah 45, God says, I am God and there's none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times, things not yet done, saying, My can't my counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.

I have spoken and I will bring it to pass.

I have purposed and I will do it.

Here you have a God who says, If I decide to do something, I'm gonna do it.

I've laid out all of the history of humanity before me.

I'm told in Ephesians that our salvation is planned before the foundation of the world.

So of course God would know that things would go sideways.

God knew when he created Adam and Eve that the depth of sinful wickedness that they would experience, and he was sovereign over it all.

So that again, as we walk through Genesis 5 and 6 and the rest of Genesis, you never see God gasp.

Gasping is never a sound that God has made.

He's never been shocked by the depth of depravity of his people and of us.

He's unchangeable.

I love the way that one theologian puts it, Wayne Grudom, he defines unchangeable like this.

He says, God is unchanging in his being, perfections, purposes, and promises.

And yet God does act and feel emotions, and he acts and feels differently in response to different situations.

This is helpful.

God is unchangeable in his beings, in his perfections, in his purposes, and in his promises.

He's unchangeable.

If God has set out to do something, he will do it.

But what Wayne Grudum also reminds us is that God, even though he's unchangeable, can act and feel differently in response to situations that occur.

That's good.

So when God looks at the generations of Seth that have become wicked, he is filled with a regret, not a regret that says, oh man, if I could just go back and change things, it would be totally different for them.

Not a grief that's like, ah, I just can't stand this suffering.

I wish this weren't gonna happen.

God has the power to change the situation.

The regret and the grief that fill God are a response to the sinfulness of man.

Let me illustrate it like this.

If I were to bring one of my daughters into surgery, my heart could be filled with regret for the pain that they are about to experience.

My heart could be filled with grief for what they are about to endure.

And yet I was the one that drove them to that appointment.

I had all the power possible to drive it somewhere else, to drive them somewhere else, to not take them to that appointment.

But it was my heart that was so filled with love for my child that brought them to endure this pain, even though it brings me grief, even though it causes me regret, even though it fills me with sorrow.

That's what we need to see all over this passage.

That the reason that God is filled with regret is because his heart is filled with such love for his people.

He looks at the people that were created to experience closeness with him.

He looks at the people that God had created Adam and Eve.

We talked about this in Genesis 1.

He had created them to invite humanity into the eternal relationship that he had been experiencing for all eternity as the triune God, as God loved the Son more than anything else, and the Spirit was the expression of the Father and the Son's love.

God created Adam and Eve to experience that love that God has for himself, to experience the joy of the greatest love in the world.

He invited Adam and Eve to experience the sweetest pleasure known to man.

The pleasure of being in relationship with God.

But sin had corrupted Adam and Eve so that they no longer love God but love the things of this world.

And so God has to judge the things that oppose his love.

Do you know that that's a reality of love?

You cannot love without judgment.

Let me explain that because that's very opposite to the message that our world is trying to preach.

Love requires judgment.

Well, what do you mean by that?

I mean that love will stand up to the things that opposes that thing that it loves.

If it doesn't, it's actually not love at all.

You can't love without judgment.

So that if, we've used this illustration before, but I think it's so helpful.

If a robber were to come into my house in the middle of the night, they would face the fierce fury of all the karate kid movies that I've watched.

They would face my judgment because they're opposing the thing that I love most.

And so you need to know this about God.

The reason why we ex why we read of deep outpourings of God's wrath on his people, the reason why as a church we must talk about the reality of hell, the reason why we're unwilling to avoid the topic of sin is because if you don't know the depth of God's judgment and wrath against wickedness and all that opposes him, you can never know the tenderness and sweetness of God's love.

God's judgment is the opposition of that very thing that he loves.

And so the reason why God's wrath is so great over the sin of humanity that he would send a worldwide flood that would destroy everybody except for Noah is because his love is so great for himself and for his people.

This is why we lean into these texts.

Church, the more that you understand the judgment of God on sin, the more that you understand the love of God for humanity.

That God would send his only son to bear the wrath of all the sin of those who would believe on his shoulders.

God would pour out his judgment on his own son.

That's how great his love was for humanity.

And if you don't understand the weight of God's judgment, you don't, that's why the cross will never be important to you.

Because who cares that Jesus died on a cross?

If you don't understand what he had to endure, bearing the weight of your sin on his shoulders.

See God's judgment against our sin, it should drive us to him.

This is what God's doing for us in the text.

He's showing us so clearly how powerful his love is that he's willing, he is willing to wipe out the whole world as they oppose what he loves most.

But the amazing reality about his judgment is that he always provides relief, and we see it in verse 8.

It says, But Noah, Noah found favor in the eyes of God.

And that's really significant because the name Noah means rest.

We already met Noah, didn't we?

You see in chapter 5, verse 28, Lamech, who was Noah's father, he had Noah, and he called his name Noah in verse 29, and he said, after he after Noah was born out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief.

Relief.

Why does Adam find, why does Lamech find relief and comfort in Noah?

Because he understood by faith that Noah would be the rest that would deliver him from the curse and fallen world.

God's provided a greater rest for us.

Thousands of years later, on this very earth would be the heard the words heard from the very Son of God Himself, come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

There is a better Noah coming.

We're gonna see in a few short weeks that Noah wasn't really all that great of a man after all.

But there is a man coming who would be a better Noah, a greater Noah, a one who could actually give us rest.

A one who instead of sitting on top of the boat like Noah will do and floating on top of the water, you know what Jesus would do?

He would jump into the waters of judgment for us.

And he would be rest in a way not that if we just go to him, we can escape the judgment that is coming.

Jesus would be a rest that if we go to him, we can have the penalty of our judgment paid because he experienced the waters of God's judging destruction on the cross.

Jesus jumped into the flood himself.

And there he died under the wrath of God, facing the judgment of God for a sin he never committed on his own, but for a people that he loved that were his own.

God was so desirous that we know this work that he's given the church a gift.

And it's a gift that we experienced this morning.

It's a gift of communion.

God is so eager for you to know this rest that he called the church to remember continually what Jesus did by taking the cup and eating the bread.

God says, I'm not this is too important, this rest is too important for you to forget.

I'm not gonna let you forget it.

And so I'm gonna give you this constant reminder through the cup of communion that I am a God who loves you, and that I am a God that you can run to at any point.

It's this amazing reminder of the rest that can be found in Jesus.

And so the worship team is coming up right now, and they're gonna play a song for us, and it's likely a song that as a church we don't know to sing together.

But it's a song that we want to sing over you.

And so I want to encourage you, you can just stay in your seat in this time, and you can either read the words or you can close your eyes and reflect on the words.

But church, be encouraged by these words of truth before we take communion.

Communion is a reminder that Christ has given to the church that we can run again and again and again and again.

Why do we take communion so often?

It's because the blood of Jesus, the flesh of Jesus, is a con is constantly available to you no matter where you are in your life.

In the high highs of your life, in the low lows of your life, we take communion to remember this that Jesus did this for us.

He died on the cross so that we might experience the salvation that he so longed to give us.

And so we take this cup this morning.

There are two reasons why you might let this cup pass and not take it.

The first is if you're not a believer.

If you haven't put your faith in Jesus Christ, if you haven't said, I need that sacrifice to cover me.

If you haven't recognized the judgment that is coming because of our wickedness, and place your faith in Jesus who jumped into the waters of that judgment for your sake, then we just ask that you let this pass because this is what the children of God do to celebrate that that reality has saved them.

Second thing is that if you are harboring sin in your life that you haven't repented of, the Bible says that to drink this cup is to drink judgment on yourself.

And so you can repent in this very moment and experience the joy, freedom that comes and is offered by God in the cup of communion.

Find in this cup there's a top layer that lets you get to the wafer, the bottom layer that gets to the juice.

Before we take this, let's pray.

Father, God, thank you.

Lord, thank you, Lord.

You're you're here and you're not hard to find.

God, you seek us out.

And you brought us here for a very specific purpose, Lord, to call us to run to you again and again and again and again.

God, that when we run to you, you will accept us.

God, we take this cup, we eat this bread because Lord, you want us to be near to you, and you provided a way for us to find relief from the judgment that's coming.

So, God, we praise you for this cup.

Thank you for this bread.

May this be an encouragement as you have planned it for us.

Lord, that our sins are washed away.

God, we pray this in the name of your son.

Amen.

On the night Jesus was with his disciples, he took the bread and he broke it.

He said, This is my body broken for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

Afterward, he took the cup and he reminded them that this cup symbolized his blood that was shed for the forgiveness of their sins and the establishment of a new covenant with them.

Let's celebrate that together, church.

Let's pray one more time.

Father, thank you for this truth that we celebrate.

Lord, that what happened on that cross 2,000 years ago is relevant to us today, because it washes the slate clean.

The wickedness that has corrupted our soul, just like it corrupted the godly line of Seth, Lord, it is taken care of.

The punishment has been paid, the judgment has come, and it has been poured out on Jesus for our sake, and so we thank you and celebrate the freedom now that we have because we can take of this cup.

God, we give you all the praise.

We pray this all in the name of your son.

Amen.

If you're new with us this morning, we would love to meet you back at Guest Center.

I'll be back there.

I would love to meet you myself.

Church, have a great week.

You are loved.