Grace Greater Than Sin

Introduction

Read Genesis 6:1-8

Genesis 6:1–9 (ESV)

When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

Our Hearts Are Inclined to Sin

Genesis 6:1–5 (ESV)

When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Human Degeneration

As humanity grows, what do we see? We see a degradation of human morality.

Where we once saw Enoch walking with God and others calling out to the Lord, now we see God ceasing to dwell with man. What once was declared to be very good is now declared to be unworthy to abide with.

Sons of God and Daughters of Men

Three possible views

Fallen angels intermarrying with human women

Pagan cult practices leading to demon possessed men intermarrying with women

The descendants of godly Seth leaving the faith to intermarry the descendants of ungodly Cain.

The main point

Satan is working to destroy the line of the Seed of Woman

Either through physically contaminating the human line, or eliminating the presence of any person living by faith and obedience to God

We have these sons of God who are viewing the daughters, the women, as objects to be used for their own personal pleasure rather than as co-image bearers who are deserving of respect and value. In fact, the idea is these sons of God are going beyond what even Lamech did back in chapter four by taking two wives, and now we have multiple wives for each man. This might be the beginnings of what will come to be known as harems.

How?

How did we get from Enoch who walked with God to living in a society where the idea of God has been mocked and forgotten?

Compromising Faithfulness to God

We compromise our faithfulness to God by beginning to give into the lies of the world.

It doesn’t have to be big things. Compromise is the art of slowly fading away.

We can compromise by saying things like,

“I can sleep in today rather than going to gather with God’s people in worship.”

“I can worship God wherever I am so it doesn’t matter if I’m there or not.”

“I can take a look at this picture or website, I’m not really hurting anyone.”

“I don’t want to go into work so I’ll just call in sick and take a day off for myself.” Those little white lies don’t really hurt anyone.

We begin by viewing following and obeying God as important, to seeing God as one of many options, to seeing God as unimportant, to failing to see God at all.

Attacking the Family

Changing the purpose of marriage

We have seen that marriage was given by God to man as a way for man and woman to work together to accomplish their God-given task of subduing and taking dominion over the earth.

But now we see that marriage is being used for selfish gains and purposes. Those who were the descendants of godly Seth are joining themselves to those who have no interest in the things of God, but are solely interested in their own personal pleasure and happiness. Women are being given as property in these unions. And these men (or whatever they are) are using these women, multiple women for their own personal use.

This is not a polemic against sexual intimacy. As we have seen, intimacy was created by God as a good gift for those who are in God-glorifying marriages.

But now, marriage has been redefined from bringing glory to God and showing the glory of Christ in our relationship to now using other people for our own personal happiness.

Of course, we are dealing with the redefining of marriage in our culture today by redefining it from one man and woman to now two men or two women or whatever we think might make people happy. But this redefining of marriage was taking place long before the Supreme Court ruled on this in 2015.

We were redefining marriage when we began to embrace a no-fault divorce and said marriage should make us happy rather than bring glory to God. And so if I’m not happy, I can get out whenever I want.

And of course, this is why it is so important for a man and woman to be equally yoked in Christ. Marriage cannot be what God intended it to be unless both partners are first commited to Christ. This is not to say it is impossible for one spouse to bring another spouse to Christ. But it is really difficult to do so. Because of the inclination of our hearts we are more inclined to follow the unbelieving spouse than for the unbelieving spouse to follow the believer.

I believe this is also what is happening here. There are marriages that are drawing God’s people away from Him. Remember who is writing this. Moses is showing the destructive nature of entering into marriage lightly with people who are not commited to God. The Israelites are going into a land where they will be tempted to join with the pagan idolators and will be drawn away from their fidelity to Yahweh and he is showing them through this account how deadly and dangerous it is to focus solely on the outward appearance and attractiveness of a person rather than on the spiritual character of who you are marrying.

Satan has been abusing the gift of marriage to accomplish his means of trying to stop the seed of the woman since the beginning and he is still using it to draw people away from God.

Failing to pass on the faith to our children

What starts with the degrading of God’s gift of marriage then goes on to affect how children are being raised and taught to love and follow God.

If marriage breaks down, so will the discipleship of the next generation.

What we see from these unions are the offspring called “The Nephilim.” the word literally means “The fallen ones.”

This word also refers to the giants and powerful men of old. Goliath would have been one of the Nephilim. The land of Canaan that the Israelites were going to were filled with the Nephilim, the giants, the powerful ones.

Now, as to why there was a physical difference in this offspring is one of the reasons for the demonic explanation of the Sons of God. But regardless of whatever view we take, what we see is that the children of these unions were fallen because there is no discipleship taking place. They are “fallen” because they are not being taught to love and follow God.

This is why the church and why families must recover the importance and necessity of teaching and training the next Generation.

Again Moses will later go on to command the people:

Deuteronomy 6:4–7 (ESV)

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

If children are going to love and follow the Lord, they must be taught and led to do so. We’ve bought into the lie that we need to just passively allow our kids to believe whatever sounds good to them.

But, outside of God’s special intervention, they will never believe and trust in Christ if they are not taught and showed what it means to love Him.

It is easy and tempting to blame our current culture and society on the godlessness of this current generation. But the question we have to ask is what role have we played in the current state of things?

Human Depravity

We should not be surprised to see this kind of degeneration in our culture because this is the state of the human heart.

Our hearts are inclined towards sin. We are all prone to leave the God who created us and loves us.

And this is what happens when we treat our relationship with God passively.

Wake Up

1 Thessalonians 5:6–8 (ESV)

So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.

We must be sober in our relationship with God

We must be diligent to glorify Christ in our marriages

We must be intentionally teach our children and grandchildren what it means to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.

We Have an Infinitely Holy God

Genesis 6:6–7 ESV

And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.”

God’s Holy Grief

In the other flood accounts, the gods got annoyed with humanity. They saw the growing population of humanity and it was like a nuisance to them so they wanted to wipe out humanity. And they would have done so had there not been one of the gods who subverted the other gods plans and let one man know of the gods’ plan to wipe them out.

This is not the issue with God. God is grieved over the sinfulness of man. He is saddened. When it says that God regretted making man, it is not suggesting that God is surprised by how things turned out as if He didn’t know that man would sin. Rather, it is trying to give us in a way that we would understand that God is deeply saddened and grieved by the utter sinfulness and wickedness of humanity.

We see that God is still grieved by sin. We, as believers, are told not to grieve the Holy Spirit by our own sin and rebellion. We grieve the Spirit when we rebel against Him. But this grief is not contempt. It is a loving sadness that we are living opposed to the way we were created.

God’s Holy Judgment

Because God is Holy and is grieved by sin, He must judge and punish sin.

We so focus on the love of God we have created a false god in our image that only speaks nice things to us allowing us to do whatever it is we want.

But true love does not rejoice in evil, but rejoices in the truth. Holiness cannot allow sin to remain unpunished. God’s perfect love for us flows from the fact that God is perfectly holy and must punish sin.

God’s Holy Love

God’s judgment is a demonstration of His love. He loves us too much to leave us where we are. He loves us too much to allow us to destroy ourselves.

Yes, His judgment took out all of humanity with the exception of 8 people. But God saved humanity through those 8 people. If God had not intervened, humanity would have destroyed itself and there would be no salvation for anyone. God’s judgment is an act of His love towards us to keep us from doing more harm.

God cannot be loving if He is also not holy.

Our God is Merciful and Gracious

Genesis 6:8 ESV

But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

God’s Grace Upon Noah

Noah did not earn favor… He found favor with God.

Noah was a sinner like everyone else, but God demonstrated His grace to Noah which was received by faith alone.

This grace led to a change of lifestyle as we will see in verse 9, but he was not saved by his lifestyle, but by God’s grace.

God’s Grace Upon Humanity

God’s grace upon Noah was really a demonstration of His grace upon all of humanity.

While humanity deserved to be utterly wiped out, God was not willing to destroy all of humanity.

Rather, through Noah, God was preserving a remnant of His people who lived and walked by faith so He could preserve and save the human race.

Noah was saved so humanity as a whole could be saved.

Instead of cruelty, we actually see God’s infinite love and mercy towards a human race that did not deserve His compassion.

God’s Grace in Christ