Image by Nile
Doesn’t it seem like the world is falling apart? There are many times in history in which one could say this. Just in the last century we have seen two world wars, the development of the atom bomb, worldwide terrorism, and most subtly, the terrifying falling population rates that will cause some countries to disappear nearly entirely in the next century (China is looking like its population will be halved in the next thirty years). If you are watching the news nightly, or heaven help you if you are getting your news constantly on your phone, you will find many reasons to think that this is a hopeless situation. If you were alive at the time of Genesis 6, though, these days would seem tame! In Genesis 6 we are seeing the beginning of the first end. We are going to find out why a world-wide flood was the proper response to this world. But there are a number of confusing things in this text! Is this text talking about fallen angels having super-babies with humanity? Is God giving the world 120 years to repent, or is he setting the new human age limit? What is this saying that God regrets making humanity? Did God not see this coming and thus doesn’t hold our future? AHHHH! Indeed, these are important questions, and it is right here, in some of the scariest parts of Scripture and our lives where God’s promises shine the brightest. Some of the above questions are matters of debate and mystery, and some are going to be left unsolved, but what we are going to walk away from our time together with is a new confidence in God’s ability to both know and control the future. Our two points today are Evil has dominated in the world before yet God knows how to save His people Evil has dominated in the world before After a look at the faithful line of Seth, we turn our eyes to the story of his great-great-(x many) Grandson, Noah. Things are not getting better in the world. In fact, we are going to see that humanity had descended to the point that “every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (v.5). That’s a pretty bleak view of humanity at this point. Later on, we will find out that there is literally one family on the entire globe who bucks this trend next week. For now, the world is in a terrible place. Of course, verse 5 is the summary of the verses that came before it, so let’s take a look at some details into why this situation was just so bad. It is here where we come to our first controversy and question, “Who are the ‘sons of God’?” There are a number of viewpoints on this question, but typically, people will prefer one of two possible answers. Either “the sons of God” refer to angels, or it refers to the people of Seth’s line. In the second instance, the daughters of men would be of the line of Cain, the line of the serpent. The first possibility would have angels copulating with human beings, something that would be beyond their place to do, and the second possibility has the faithful line intermarrying with the unfaithful line of Cain, also beyond their place to do. The hard part about deciding between these views is that there are good, Scriptural reasons for either conclusion, and this has been a debate going back to the Jewish Rabbi’s! Many Jews took the angel position, but there was a time in which Rabbi’s invoked a curse on those who held that view (Ross, 178)! On the “sons of God are angels” side of things, there are a few New Testament passages, specifically in 1 Peter 3:19-20, 2 Peter 2:4ff (which we read) as well as Jude 6-7, that seem to read quite clearly in favor of them being angels. It would appear in each of these passages that the NT writer is marching through Genesis which would seem to place fallen angels right there in Genesis 6. However, as R.C. Sproul points out in his commentary on 2 Peter, it could just as easily refer to the original fall of the angels where the angels overstepped their bounds, and that is actually the sin the NT writers are pointing to (248-9). Indeed, a careful reading does show that these passages don’t have to be referring to Genesis 6 sin. Really the decision that you make about the New Testament passages has to do with what you do here in Genesis 6. If you decide that they are angels, then the NT passages make perfect sense. If you decide that the sons of God are of the line of Seth, you can harmonize the New Testament passages with that approach. One commentator makes a strong argument for it being the line of Seth. Basically, he sees this passage as telling Seth’s family story, as the genealogy doesn’t end until Noah’s death in chapter 9 (Matthews, 330). Further, looking back at Genesis 3, when the snake and humanity sin both are punished for it, whereas here it would appear that the fallen angels suffer no consequences (334). Verses 3, 5-7 make clear that the flood is God’s judgment on man, and it would seem that the angels aren’t held liable for their obvious part in all of that (327). However, if the sons of God and daughters of man are both human, then the flood against humanity makes perfect sense, as now the human race which once was two separate lineages is now forming into one that has become very corrupt. The passages in the New Testament, then, would simply be referring to the original rebellion of the angels in heaven without their needing to sexually sin. As an aside, whatever direction you take here will have some impact on who you think the Nephilim are, but not too much. There is some evidence in our passage that they existed at that time and after, which makes it look like that these guys existed prior to humanity’s sin, whether with demons or each other. Whoever they were, it appears that they were drowned with the rest of the world (the reference to them in Numbers 13 was probably an exaggeration [Mattehews, 337]). While I lean towards the sons of God being of the line of Seth, there is a strong case to make for angels, but I think the true point of the passage isn’t how humanity sinned per se but rather the fact that humanity is just so sinful as to be completely “beyond self-help” (Kinder). Whether heaven itself is turning out sinners or humanity has become so sinful that there is just one righteous family left in the whole place, we are left with a very scary picture of evil’s rule on the earth. The point for us to take away from this whole thing is that man is extremely sinful to the point that there is no way they figure this out on their own. They are nothing but evil here. One commentator put it like this, "So monstrous becomes the sin of Noah's generation that the gravest of measures is the only proper response from heaven" (Matthews, 340). So why is this important for us to know? It is important for us to know that God has lines that He draws that we cross at our peril. We cannot treat sin lightly. God knows how to save His people The response is going to be a world-wide flood, and the limitation of the years of man’s life to 120 years. While there will be one hundred years before the flood waters come, it is not 120 (Calvin, 243), and this would nicely explain why everyone suddenly doesn’t live for a super long time anymore. The few exceptions that are yet to come, like Abraham who lived 175 years (Genesis 25:7) can be explained with the same mercy that was given to Adam and Eve: The punishment wasn’t set out immediately (Matthews, 335). All these issues that we’ve looked at so far one can come to different conclusions on and not much is really going to change about how you look at the Bible. However, I think what we have to look at closely is this idea of God regretting something. Usually, when we say that we regret something, it means that they didn’t know how something was going to turn out and now that they see it, they would do it differently. This can be something as frivolous as a haircut that we thought looked great in high school and now want to bury all evidence of it, or something as serious as a life-altering accident. Now that we are on the other side of the decision, we wish we could go back and change it. Is this how God works? To answer that question, we turn to the only place for information about God, the Bible. Specifically, we are going to turn to 1 Samuel 15:11 and 29. God is talking about Saul’s kingship, that while it started well, Saul began to go down the path of disobedience. In verse 11, we get the same word that we have in Genesis 6. It would seem that we have a theme here of God’s regretting making Saul king in the same way that he regrets making mankind. However! The key to understanding all of this is in verse 29, where we find that God does not regret like a human being does. John Piper explains it this way: "The difference would most naturally be that God's regret happens in spite of perfect foreknowledge, while most human repentance because we lack foreknowledge...Even in our own experience, there are times when we look back on difficult decisions we made and feel both sorrow at making them and yet approve making them" (Providence, 361-2 n5). He explained what this might look like. Let’s say that you had to discipline a child for something that they clearly did wrong and needed correction for it. Yet, because of that discipline, they ran away from home or became otherwise estranged. While you would look back on that discipline with sorrow, you wouldn’t change what you had to do, as it was the right thing to do. Piper concludes by reasoning that if he can have complex emotions like that, then surely God is capable of such things as well (you can read the whole article here). The difference, as we’ve already stated is that God is doing this with total foreknowledge that they are happening, yet can be grieved that they happened. This is something that is important for us to understand. God doesn’t second-guess Himself. Because if He did, no one and nothing would be safe. If He could second guess creation, then why couldn’t He second guess your salvation? But we find that God doesn’t need a second plan. Numbers 23:19 tells us "God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?". Or look at Psalm 33:8-11, “Let all the earth fear the LORD; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him! For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm. The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations.” God isn’t thrown off by what people do because he didn’t see it coming. If that were true, then we would have every reason to fear. If God doesn’t know the end from the beginning (which he does, according to Isaiah 46:10), then we could never be sure that God’s promises would stand (Piper article). But God doesn’t repent like a man does. So why use this language? I think Matthews is on to something when he says, "God's response of grief over the making of humanity, however, is not remorse in the sense of sorrow over a mistaken creation; our verse shows that God's pain has its source in the perversion of human sin. The making of man is no error; it is what man has made of himself.… But his regret is not over destroying humanity; paradoxically, so foul has become mankind that it is the necessary step to salvage him." (343) In other words, God knows that humankind is going to go in this direction, and knows that the wisest way to deal with it is with the flood. But this doesn’t mean that God is unfeeling. Matthews continues: “In Christ we see God is so moved by grief and love that he chooses to take upon himself the very suffering of our sins. Do we not appeal to the incarnational role of Christ is our vision of the nature of his Father (cf. Matt 23:37)? God is not a dispassionate accountant overseeing the books of human endeavor; rather he makes a personal decision out of a sorrowful loss to judge Noah's wicked generation" (344). In other words, we see in Jesus that God is capable of emotion, even emotion over things directly in his control. Jesus wept over Lazarus even though he was going to raise him from the dead five minutes later. Lazarus’ death was totally in Jesus’ control (God said in Deu. 32:39 “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.”), Jesus still wept. While it looks like the world is spinning out of control, God is still in charge, still going to judge that sin, and yet still feels it. In fact, God feels it enough to do something permanent about it, which is why He sent His Son to Earth to take the penalty for sin. You don’t serve a robot God, but neither do you serve a sniveling, emotional wreck. You serve the God who introduces Himself in Ex. 34:6-7 by saying, “The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.” That’s complex, but that’s our God. God genuinely loves you. And He is really working to bring you right along in his plan. It won’t always be easy or pleasant, but in the end and along the way it will be good. So what is our takeaway? God can work through some seemingly impossible circumstances and deliver his people. That won’t always happen in pleasant ways, but evil will be defeated. No matter what happens on the nightly news, judgment will come on those who sin, and forgiveness will be given to those who are united to Jesus. God is very patient, and for that, I am personally very grateful, but God’s patience doesn’t last forever. At some point, God will come in judgment, and the only way to be safe in that is to put your trust in Christ, turning from your sin and to Him. Psalm 2:10-12 “Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. .
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorThis is where our Pastor posts weekly sermon manuscripts and other writings. Archives
January 2025
Categories |