Genesis 6: Part 2 Transcript
Welcome back to Genesis 6.
In Part 1, we looked at who and what the “sons of God,” the “daughters of men,” and the “Nephilim” might be. Now let’s look at the truths we need to learn from them. Why does God even bother to mention them?
I’m Jean Wilund, and this is Genesis 6 (Part 2): Five Truths We Need to Learn from the “sons of God,” the “Daughters of men,” and the “Nephilim” in Genesis 6.
In Genesis 6, God opens with a look into the heart condition of mankind.
Mankind’s Heart Condition
As Jesus taught in Luke 6:45, we can judge people by what they say and do. Our words and actions just flow out of our hearts and our minds.
Jesus said, “The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good; and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil; for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart.”
Let’s see what the Bible says about what is overflowing out of the hearts and minds of those in Genesis 6:1-4.
“Now it came about when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them,”
That’s appropriate. God told mankind to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. But we see from this passage that perhaps they didn’t actually multiply according to God’s original design.
(I presented three interpretations of this passage in the video Part 1 in the Genesis 6 series. If you haven’t watched that one, go watch it now and then come back.)
But no matter what interpretation, all of them point to an unholy union.
Five Important Truths from Genesis 6:1-4
Our first clue [of an unholy union] reminds us of Genesis 3 when it says “the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful.”
If you’ve been following this Genesis series, then you may recognize a word that reminds us of the original sin in the Garden.
I just read “the sons of God saw that the daughters of mankind were beautiful.”
Look at Genesis 3. Eve “saw that the tree was good for food” and it was a “delight to her eyes”—it was “desirable.”
All right, back to Genesis 6. “and they [the sons of God] took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.”
All right back to Genesis 3. “[Eve] took from [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] and ate from it.”
So we see the same two words are used in both places. “Saw” and “took.”
They each saw and took what their eyes and their flesh desired.
This is the first important truth that we want to learn from this passage.
Truth #1: Sin’s allure draws us in through our senses
Our senses fog up our thinking until we no longer even recognize or care about Truth. We suppress the Truth.
Sin can make us want to take whatever it is that we want, even if we know it would destroy us.
Sin will convince us, “You really won’t die!” That’s what Satan said to Eve. “You won’t die!”
Sin convinces us to believe a lie.
And that is the beauty of God’s Word because it’s the Truth, and it never ever changes. So we can trust what this Book says no matter what our senses are telling us.
Whatever our eyes see, if it is opposed to the Bible, we can trust This [the Bible] instead, because sin makes us stupid. (I said the “s” word.)
Sin-stupidity has destroyed countless lives—and many of them eternally—which leads us to Truth #2.
TRUTH #2: Mankind is flesh—sinful flesh
“Then the LORD said,”
Now okay, notice this for a second: The “LORD.” This is the word “Yahweh.”
God is using the word He likes to use when He’s talking about being in covenant relationship with us.
“The God who doesn’t need us but wants us” is saying, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever because he also is flesh.” Sinful flesh.
And unless we turn to Christ, we’re going to die in our flesh and suffer eternally.
We will continue to choose sin all of our lives unless Jesus draws us to Himself and saves us from ourselves.
In our flesh, we don’t even care about Christ. We love our sin.
We love thinking we are our own god. And thinking we can do whatever we want and not have to suffer any consequences.
Sin always brings consequence— the biggest of which is death—eternal death. And that is why I praise God every day for His amazing grace that He extends through Christ.
This whole Bible is about how we can find His grace. Yes, God judges sin, but His grace is amazing.
Back to Genesis 6. “nevertheless his days shall be 120 years.”
Truth #3: There is a very specific day when God will judge sin. He must.
And again, if you’re following the series, you know we have talked about judgment a lot. And that can seem like a downer, especially because we’re going to keep talking about it. We haven’t even gotten to the flood yet. Talk about judgment!
But I pray your ears will never grow dull to it or immune to hearing about it. We need to know there’s a problem so that we’ll turn to the only One who can solve it—Jesus Christ.
God’s continual display of His coming judgment is His merciful and gracious cry for us to listen. He’s making sure we get this warning message so we’ll turn our hearts away from our sins and to our Savior.
Sin will never stop coming after us—even after we’re saved. It wants to cause Christians to stumble and fall on our face and bring shame to God’s name, and to doubt His goodness.
For those who are still far from Christ, judgment is coming on a very specific day that only God knows.
He’s the only one that knows it, but for those in the day of Noah in Genesis 6, we know that the day was 120 years. That’s when they were to face judgment. We don’t know when we will.
Some of us may actually die today, and we’re going to meet the Lord. Some of us have a long road ahead of us. We just, we don’t know, but we can believe today.
All right, let’s look back at Genesis 6.
“The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.”
Genesis 6:4
Truth #4: We do not have to be men or women renowned for evil. We can be men and women who are renowned for worshiping and obeying the Lord
Evil has been renowned every day since the day of the original sin.
There will never be a time when this is not the case, and it’s only going to get worse until Jesus sets up His eternal kingdom and destroys sin and Satan and evil for all time.
Praise God that we who have trusted in Christ by faith whether in Noah’s day by faith in the Savior coming or in our day.
We are made dead to sin’s power. And we are made alive in Christ forever—sealed by His Spirit and empowered by Him.
He is able to hold us and empower us to say “No” to sin every time. We can say “No.”
We can choose to walk in the truth rather than entertain the lie and give in to the lie.
Truth #5: God is HOLY! And He is also patient, merciful, and in Him, there is always hope
God revealed His holiness when He said He wouldn’t contend with man forever. His holiness requires the end to sin at some point.
He’s not going to endure it forever. It will be gone. Yes!
But also, God revealed His patience and His mercy by letting mankind continue to reproduce even though their hearts were evil, unholy, and far from Him.
Despite their continual love for sin, He did not destroy them immediately.
And He revealed His patience and grace and mercy by giving such a long warning time that judgment was going to come.
As long as there is time, there is always hope. We just don’t know how much time is left so we need to act quickly.
Judgment will come and none of us will have any excuses, but we can believe today.
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