Lord Jesus, I pray now that You have simply come and You have forgiven sins for the sins for their many. If You would open the eyes of the blind, if You would open the ears of the deaf, that You might hear Your God. If You would open the eyes of the blind, if You would open the ears of the deaf, that You might hear Your God. If You look at your text, that You have been here, I am the midst of a series on the book of Genesis. And if You have been here for the series, you will notice that I skipped chapter five, basically. And I'll explain to you why I did that. First, I have to, as usual, I feel like I have to do this recap of Genesis. And basically, I'm preaching through the book of Genesis. I'm probably on my 14th sermon or so. And in order to understand what's going on in the sermon, you've got to understand the big, overarching purpose of the book of Genesis. And the overarching purpose of the book of Genesis is simply to remind Israel of the gospel. And it's to remind you of the gospel. Okay? What do I mean by that? Well, Israel, if you remember, the story was in bondage and oppression in Egypt. And while they were bondage and oppression in Egypt, God came to them and He said, I promise you, I will deliver you from your bondage and your oppression. That was one part of the promise. The other part of the promise was that I promise you I'll finish the job. That was the gospel to Israel. That God was going to deliver them from their oppression and he, in fact, was going to finish the job. Now, what is the gospel for you and me? It's the same thing. That God comes to you in the person of Jesus and He says, I will deliver you from your bondage and oppression to sin. And I promise you that I will finish the job. So as I talk about this book of Genesis, you're going to hear me use the word gospel a lot, my guess is, and what I mean by that is simply this promise of God that He will deliver you from your oppression and finish the job by delivering you unto perfection, unto Himself, if you will. What have we seen so far in the book of Genesis? We saw God create everything with the word of His power. We saw Him intervene into chaos. We saw Him order the days and then we came to Adam and Eve. The sort of earth was perfect until humanity got on the scene. Remember, humanity comes and God placed Adam and Eve in the garden and He says, you can eat of any tree if you want. You can do anything you want, but just don't touch. He didn't say that. He said, don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the one in the middle of the garden. And they did. Remember, they ate of it. And God said, in the day you eat of it, you will surely die. And what we saw there was that God didn't come immediately, punish them, but God in fact was patient. And instead He gave them a promise. And what was the promise? He said that someday I will have a redeemer who will save you. Remember the promise in Genesis 3.15? He said that someday before He needed out any punishment, before He gave anything else out, the first thing that God said was that someday the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. That there will be one who comes eventually who will completely undo all of this bad stuff that has been done through the work of the serpent. And we saw then there was sort of instituted historically two lines of people, people who are ungodly and people who are godly. And what separates the ungodly from the godly? Is it the things that the godly do? No. The only difference between the ungodly person and the godly person is that the godly person has believed this promise. The god will deliver him from his ungodliness, if you will, and finish the job. And so last week we saw the sort of first outworking of the godly versus the ungodly, with Cain and Abel. Remember they both brought sacrifices and Abel brought his by faith. There was no difference in the two sacrifices really. Abel brought his by faith. Abel said, God, I know I'm screwed up, but I'm going to give you everything I have anyway. I believe that when you said you would accept me by faith, I'm going to believe that. And it's like God accepted Abel. And remember what was Cain's reaction. Cain brought his sacrifice and it was sort of a transaction. God, I'm going to give you all this stuff. I'm going to do all these good things. And in return, I want you to accept me. And God said to Cain, it doesn't work that way. That Cain, you're completely screwed up. The only way you get in here is by grace through faith. And I'm offering that to you. All you have to do is accept it. And what Cain do, he rejected it. And in fact, he protested against it. And he protested against God's justice. And so what God did was God basically said, I'm going to be patient. And Cain, I'm going to ban you from your community. I'm going to ban you. But there's patience because you see Cain still could have turned back to God. And that's what we find ourselves today. Sort of what is the post Cain world look like? What ended up with Cain's people? And what ended up with the godly people? So that's where we are. And it's very interesting. If you look in your text, I didn't read it. Well, I'm not going to read it. Now part of the thing with the Old Testament is the texts can be so long that I'm not going to read them all. But if you look in chapter 4, what you see is that Cain leaves the presence of God. And Cain goes out and he found the city. And in this city there are lots of arts. There are lots of culture. Sort of music and harpistry, I guess, is invented. Metalworking is invented. All of these sort of ancient Near Eastern technological feats come about. And the only thing that is conspicuously missing in Cain's line in an explanation of what happened with Cain is simply God. He does all these cool things. He's very technologically savvy. But God is not there. In fact, Cain, there's sort of a quasi-geniology. And at the end of the genealogy, there's a man born by the name of Lamac. And it's very interesting because what does Lamac do? Lamac is just like Cain. Lamac himself is a murderer. Except Lamac Cain sort of murdered his brother and then hid from it. And he tried to avoid being persecuted. Lamac murders someone in chapter 4 and he brags about it. Lamac brags about the fact that he has killed someone and he gets away with it. So we see this genealogy of Cain that ends with this murderer named Lamac who brags about the fact that he's a murderer and that he gets away with it. Well then, verse chapter 5 comes and it says that Eve gave birth to another son named Seth. And she says that this son will replace Abel. Well, Abel was the godly line, remember. And then all of a sudden out of nowhere, you've got chapter 5, there's nothing but genealogy. If you've ever wondered that, if you've ever had the Old Testament, why is it narrative narrative narrative? And then all of a sudden you have a genealogy. Well, the genealogy is Seth's genealogy. The godly genealogy. Remember Cain's genealogy ended with a man named Lamac. Seth's genealogy ends with a man named Lamac. Okay? It's very symmetrical. Now, the difference between Lamac, the murderous braggart and the Lamac that we see in Seth's line, that's simply this. If you look in verses 27 and 28, chapter 5, you may not have Abel. You have this genealogy of men and it says Lamac lived 182 years and had a son and he called his name Noah, saying this one will comfort us concerning our work and all the toil of our hands because of the ground which the Lord has cursed. You see Cain begeth this line that ultimately ends up worse and worse and worse and worse. Seth begeth the line. This line of people, this godly people, who guess what? They get worse and worse and worse and worse because there's no difference between them. Their souls are still broken. What is the difference? Lamac begeth this man Noah. He begeth the son and he named some Noah because he sort of prophecies. He said this one will give us rest. The perhaps in the midst of all this cursing and the midst of all of this brokenness, there will be one who will deliver us. And then it ends and all of a sudden you pick up with narrative again. And that's where we are now. We're going to start in chapter 6 with the narrative after these genealogies and if you look at verses 1 through 8, now it came to pass when men began to multiply in the face of the earth and daughters were born to them, that the sons of god saw the daughters of men and that they were beautiful and they took wives for themselves of all they chose. And the Lord said, my spirit shall not strive with men forever for he is indeed flesh. Yet his days shall be 120 years. There were giants on the earth in those days and afterwards when the sons of god came into the daughters of men, they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were old, men of renown. Then the earth saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he made man on the earth and he was grieved in his heart. So the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping things in birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them in in verse 8. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. So what you have here is you have these genealogies that sort of lay out the ungodly line versus the godly line. And then if you look at the beginning, you have one of the funkiest passages in the whole Bible. If you are a notetaker, the first thing you need to notice in verses 1-4 is that humanity and therefore sin multiplies. Humanity and therefore sin, brokenness, whatever words you want to put in there multiplies. And so you have here this incredibly in verses 1-4. Now it came to pass when men began to multiply in the face of the earth that daughters were born to them. But the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were beautiful and they took wives for themselves of all of them. They choose this is an incredibly people have made careers out of writing about this passage and debating the finer points of this passage. Let me say one thing, I am going to talk a little bit about the finer points of this passage. But the bottom line is that the point of this passage is very clear, especially the beginning, verses 1-4. Because there are several controversial things there. And the biggest thing is that the sons of God came into the daughters of men and took whomever they wanted his wives. Now you have to ask the question, who are the sons of God? Well there are basically three options. You know, historically some commentators say that it's the Sethites. It's the godly line. That the godly men, for some reason, just became ungodly, I guess, in their practice and began to take wives from Cain's side of the family. And they would say it's a principle in the Bible that people who believe in God should not marry people who don't believe in God. Because you are setting up conflicts. So the conflict began when godly people began to marry and intermarry with ungodly people. I don't think that's what that means. The sons of God also could be translated as angels, fallen angels. No, that really gets funky, doesn't it? All of a sudden fallen angels are coming in and having sex with the sons, with the daughters of men. So there's a problem here, if you think it's fallen angels, because fallen angels are coming and taking wives. I don't think that's it either. The third sort of acceptable view of who the sons of God are, simply this, is sons of God can also be translated as princes or tyrants. Sort of these kings, these nomadic kings who would ride around in their caravans. It's almost like all the shows on television that are very popular now. Hercules, Zina, Cone in the Barbarian, all these very funky prints like tyrants who go around and they just oppress the poor or people, the women. That's what I think is probably going on here. Or some commentators think that it's these princes under the influence of fallen angels. That they're possessed, demon possessed, which in some sense is acceptable. And so the bottom line is, whoever the sons of God are, you've got the sons of God coming in and they're taking. What was the standard for relationships when God created man and woman? It was this sort of radical equality, this radical egalitarianism. And what is happening now, whoever the sons of God are, they're coming and they're going among women and they're just taking whoever they want. There's a factor, an injustice factor here. And you know what, it really doesn't matter who they are. What matters is the point. And what is the point? God doesn't like it. God is becoming increasingly frustrated with the behavior of humanity. Look at what his verse three said. He says, my spirit shall not strive with man forever for he is indeed flesh, yet his base shall be 120 years. The God is becoming increasingly and increasingly frustrated. He's sort of losing patience, if you will, with humanity. Because remember when we left Cane, when we left Cane, God gave him justice. He sent him out of his presence but he still had patience with him. He sort of said, I'm not going to show you ultimate justice. I'm not going to destroy you. I'm going to be patient. What we see here is that God is losing patience. He says, I'm not strive or I'm not a bide with man forever. I'm sort of getting tired of it and it even gets worse because if you look at verse four, what happens? Is all of these humans who are increasing, who are ungodly, who are becoming frustrating to God? What do they do? They breed. They begin to have children. That's what verse four says. It says, yet there were giants on the earth in those days and afterwards, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men, they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men of old, the men of renown. Now again, the word giants there is the word in Hebrew. It's called Nephilim, which means fallen ones. And it could mean a men of renown or giants or princes. It really doesn't matter. What matters is that humanity is multiplying and God is becoming frustrated. And God's patience is running short. And in fact, within the scope of this passage, God's patience ends. That's the next point, fear and no-taker. It's that the patience of God eventually ends. That's the nature of patience as it comes to an end. Look at verses five to seven. Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and he was grieved in his heart. So the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping things in birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them. God looks at humanity now, and he sort of gives this diagnosis as the perfect doctor. And what does he say about humanity? That all every intention of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. Yeah, I told Jim was over at my house this morning, and I said, this whole week, I've just sort of been down. Because I sort of like when I preach, I like preaching, hey, everything's great, you're going to be fine. Jesus is never going to let you go. And all week, I've been very like melancholy because all week, this verse has been staring me in the face. What does it mean that every intention of my heart is only evil continually? If you watch Bucket of Vampires Slayer about a month ago, you guys know that I do. You remember there was a demon that all the vampires got together, and they summoned this demon from the pit of hell, and this demon was so evil that he killed anything that was good, and he would walk around to people, and he would put their hand on their chest. And if there was any goodness in them, they would just sort of begin to smoke, and all of a sudden they would have spontaneous combustion, and they would just die. And remember he walked up to a vampire, and he put his hand on a vampire's chest, and the vampire just went, let's get a little itchy. But nothing happened, why? Because the vampire was evil. You say according to this text, if that demon would have walked around the earth at that time, he would have walked around, and he would have been utterly frustrated, why? Because he would have been putting his hands on every human being's chest, and nothing would have happened, because there's no goodness in them whatsoever. Now here's the frightening thing. It's that nothing has changed. Nothing has changed. That's the frightening thing. That's the hard thing. You know, this week I was reading the Advocate, which has sort of been an investigative magazine for the gay community, and it's a great magazine. But the whole issue was on the death of Matthew Shepard. You know who Matthew Shepard is? He's a young man, gay man, and Wyoming, who is beaten to death, left out hanging out offenses, the most unbelievably horrible thing that's happened in a long time in this country. No one deserves that. And the thing that bothered me, although I'm not fond of the rhetoric of the religious right, is that one of the articles basically claimed and blamed the death of Matthew Shepard on the rhetoric of the religious right. On the words of the religious right, Matthew is dead now because of the things that they said. Now the other bothersome thing is the reaction of the religious right. The religious right certainly was not happy that Matthew Shepard was killed, but what is the religious right's answer to the problem? You see, if Matthew Shepard was not out cruising bars that night, if he had been moral, if he had not been lascivious, this wouldn't have happened to him. And you see the answers are very easy on both sides, but both sides miss the point and what is the point? That Matthew Shepard's death, the responsibility for Matthew Shepard's death does not lie in the words of the religious right, or simply in Matthew Shepard's lasciviousness. If in fact that's what was going on, what the death of Matthew Shepard, the responsibility lies in the wickedness and the brokenness of the human heart. It's interesting to me that both sides, neither very few of them ever talk about the three men that actually killed him. What was going on in their heads? What would ever possess someone to do such a thing? And we need better. You see, when you begin to look at the fact, if you begin to even consider the humanity at its core is not good, but at our core is broken. At our core, we are in some sense bad. It begins to make sense of your world. Think about that. How does this issue of sin and the utter brokenness of humanity begin to make sense of your world? Look around you. Why won't socialism ever work? Why would socialism? Why didn't it work? Why would it ever work? Because socialism presumes that there is goodness inherent in every human being. In every human being, because out of the goodness of their heart, they will necessarily just give over to their fellow human beings. That I'm only to give up my things for you. Socialism won't work, why? Because you and I know that deep in our hearts we don't want to give our stuff to other people. We don't want to give up much for anybody. That's why capitalism, on the other hand, almost always works. Why? Because capitalism presumes that you and I are greedy and that we're afraid of losing our stuff and that we're fearful. And since we're greedy and afraid of losing our stuff, that's why under capitalism, don't hear me saying that capitalism is perfect because that's why under capitalism, the poor always suffer. Because the poor suffer because I have so much stuff and yet I'm afraid to give some of it away because if I lose something, I won't be taking care of. What about your families? Every one of you here, every single one of you comes from a family that is more or less dysfunctional and screwed up. Am I wrong? You know, I had a counseling professor at the seminar I went to and he had the most beautiful poster I've ever seen. It was a poster and it was an empty auditorium with one person sitting in the auditorium and there was a big banner over it that said the national convention of functional families. There was no one there. Why? It's because of the inherent brokenness in your heart. And if you don't walk around, I'm not saying that you should walk around sort of beating yourself, but you've got to also look within yourself and see who you are. And if you don't feel broken yourself, many of us walk around angry and cynical and disgusted why? Because of the brokenness of other people around us. Because of what goes on around us. Remember the quote by W. H. Oden, the poet, he said that we're put on this earth to help people. He said what other people are put here for, I don't know. You see, we have trouble. So if you don't struggle with your own sinfulness, my guess is you ought to be struggling with the sinfulness around you or else your eyes are not open. Now that sort of goes that that leads to what is God's role in all of this. What does it say God's reaction was to seeing that his creation, that every intention of their heart was only evil all the time? I think it's verse 6, what does it say? He says in the Lord was sorry that he made man on the earth and he was grieved in his heart. It's very interesting, you know, I'm a pastor and so I, in spite of the fact that I'm not a good counselor and I'm not particularly fond of counseling, I end up doing a lot of counseling. And one of the things that often comes out of people's mouth is this, I'm angry at God because of X. I'm angry at God because of my situation. I'm angry at God because of the way I was raised. I'm angry at God because of what is going on. And it never hit me till this week. Very few of us ever ask the question, I wonder how God feels. I wonder how God feels about what I do. You see, we tend to look at God as if he's sort of some cosmic scorekeeper that the universe is black and white and God is very unfeeling. And I'm going to go through the end of time and I'm either going to have a sufficient amount of merit to get into heaven or a sufficient amount of de-merit, not to get into heaven. And it's a very black and white existence, but you know what? It's not like that. Why isn't it like that? It's because God is like me. And what do I mean by that? You see, I'm a father, I have three children. And very often, I will come to my daughters and I will say to one of them, Abby, do not pick on your sister. Don't hit her, don't fight her, don't scratch her, don't spit, don't do anything. Just be nice and play nice. And I'll walk out of the room and before I can get downstairs, I'll hear a blood-curdling scream come from the room. Flannery. Walk in the room, Flannery is a big nod on her head. Well, who did it? You know, it's of course, since I am completely unemotional, I am completely stable, I have nothing, no heart whatsoever, I say, okay? Abby, this is an issue of justice. I gave you a law, you transgress the law, and now you'll be disciplined for the law. Just the facts. Go sit on your bed for a half hour. Is that how it works? If you're a parent, you know that's not how it works. I come running up the stairs. And I'm angry at Abby. I'm angry at Flannery for enticing her sister to hit her. And I'm sad and I feel disrespected and I feel unloved, I feel all of these things why? Because I'm a person. How do you think God feels about our simplest? Now multiply my example by 5 billion. Who makes you the most angry? Is the people you hate? It's the people you love. The people you love, you look at them and you say why do you insist on doing this? And it totally utterly frustrates you. Now consider 5 billion people with a creator who says I've created you and I love you and you are made to work a certain way and yet you always insist on going your own way. You insist on doing your own thing. You insist on being defined by everything else but me and I am the only thing that can make you happy. You see, it's not black and white. It's not black and white at all. Justice is black and white, but the way God feels is not black and white. You've got to consider this whole thing. If there really is a God, how does he feel about my brokenness? How does he feel about my transgression? You see most people, we talked about in my community here last week, many people believe in God. Very few people believe God. There's a huge difference because if you believe in God, it's easy to say why I believe he's out there somewhere but he's sort of disconnected with what's going on. If you believe God, you say, man, he is right here and everything I do is before his face and what does it mean for my life right now? So what does God say he's going to do? This is one of the most interesting passages in all the Bible. He's sorry, he has grieved and he says, okay, I'm going to give justice. I declare from the beginning of time that if people sin, you die and so now I'm going to do is I'm going to give perfect justice and everyone's going to die.
And then God does the most unfair thing that he has done thus far in the Bible. It's utterly unfair in verse 8 says, but Noah found grace in the eyes of God. What do I mean by saying that's unfair? You see Noah was no better than anyone else. You'll see in verse 9, talk about dysfunctional families, Noah's sons sort of walk in on him and make it a terrible situation. Now the fair thing would be for God to just destroy everybody and start over. He could have done that. That was completely unfair that he would look upon Noah and give Noah grace. You see, many of us think it's unfair how God acts as unfair. You know, I've got ever shows mercy. It's unfair because God was always fair. You would get nothing but justice. I would get nothing but justice. But in fact God is not always fair. He gives you mercy. He gives grace. You see, things since Noah have not changed. God says that we're going to see in chapter 9. It's very interesting. People think that Noah started with a clean slate. Chapter 9, God says to Noah, you know, even though you're still as screwed up as you were before the flood, I promise I'll never flood the earth again. Why? You see, because after the time of Noah, the same thing happened that happened before the time of Noah. And after the time of Noah, God began to feel the same way. And God at some point said, you know what? I've had enough. I'm not going to bear with the wickedness of man anymore. He said, you know what? In fact, I'm going to pour out my wrath and I'm going to do it in such a way that is once and for all and it's going to be the most hideous thing that ever happened. And this time, it's not going to be a flood. This time, it's going to be a long, drawn out, bloody, disgusting process before the whole world that they all have to see and they all have to look at. And that is how I'm going to deal for sin once and for all. And you all know what happened. It was the cross. The same thing that happened in the days of Noah where judgment was brought happened at the cross. Remember when Jesus was at the cross and his arms were spread? Everyone knows the story. Whether you're a Christian or not and he said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It wasn't because God left him alone. It wasn't because God just sort of deserted him. It wasn't because God turned his back upon him. It was because God in the fullness of his wrath and the fullness of his justice and the fullness of his power didn't turn away from his son but turned onto his son and gave him all those things. All of the judgment, all the destruction, everything that who deserved you and me, that Jesus bore all of the judgment of God on your behalf and my behalf. And if you know that Jesus bore all the justice of God on your behalf, now you look at these passages that say every intention of the thoughts of his heart were evil only continually. Or you look at Jeremiah 179, I told you that's what I used in weddings. The heart of man is desperately wicked and beyond cure. Who can understand it? You look at those passages if you've trusted Jesus and you know what those passages become? This is really weird but they become a source of your comfort. You say, Tommy, how can it be comfortable that you're telling me that every intention of my heart is only evil all the time? It becomes a source of comfort if you've trusted in Jesus because now when you go before God you don't have to pretend anymore. You don't have to lie anymore. You don't have to put on sort of all of your fancy clothes because God knows what's underneath. And if you understand that Jesus has taken all of your sin and God's never going to hold it against you, now you can walk up to God and say, God, here's exactly who I am. There's no pretending anymore. There's no messing around. Here's who I am. Please make me better. You see, that's the gospel. What it means to become a Christian is simply to look at yourself and say, who am I? Do I really have what it takes to just quote to save myself? Do I have what it takes to live what God expects me to live? And when you've come to the point of knowing that you don't have what it takes, you look to Jesus and say, he did. That he has born all the wrath and he lived the life I should have lived and he died the death I should have died and because of that God is never going to hold my sins against me. Think about that. Let me pray. Dear Jesus, we thank you that you have come and that you have born the judgment of God on our behalf and because of that we can find grace with you. Your name, amen.