The Sons of God & The Daughters of Men (Genesis Chapter Six - Part 1)

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One of the basic teachings of Christianity is that we are not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.

That could be applied in several different ways, but one of the most obvious meanings of that is that a believer should not get married to an unbeliever.

So with that in mind, let's turn to Genesis chapter 6. Of course, we know that it happens, obviously, and if it did happen, you can't go back in time.

You have to make the best of it. There's positive reasons why you want to do that. You want to be on the same page.

You want to have the same worldview. You want to have the same opinion on how to raise your children.

So there's definitely reasons to do that. But that statement about not being unequally yoked, it comes from 2

Corinthians 6 14, but it's not just a New Testament concept. It's in the

Old Testament as well. The Lord did not want the children of Israel to intermarry with the heathen because he knew if they did, they would begin to adopt their practices.

They would become like them. God's people are supposed to live a set apart life.

So if God's people join together with those who are of the world, it's going to rub off.

And if the believer makes the choice initially to disobey God by marrying an unbeliever, they've already set the tone that they're the ones who are going to bend.

So that is what is happening, I believe, here in Genesis chapter 6, godly people intermarrying with ungodly people.

So Genesis 6 context is key. Remember the past couple weeks in chapter 4, we saw the line of Cain and how his descendants were ungodly.

Then chapter 5, we saw the godly line of Abraham through the other son,

Seth. So this is what sets the stage for chapter 6. Let's begin reading in verse 1.

We'll read through verse 8. It says, now it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful, and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.

And the Lord said, My spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh, yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.

That's quite a reduction from what we've been seeing, isn't it? There were giants.

Now this is where it gets into the confusing part. It says there were giants on the earth in those days.

And also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men and they bore children to them, these were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.

Then the Lord 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.

So based on the context of the previous chapters, I believe the sons of God are the godly line of Seth.

That's the thing that I changed on. And again, I'll talk more about that later on. So the godly line of Seth, what did they do?

They were getting married to the women from the line of Cain. Or there's just this mixture between the two.

And the results were disastrous. The children and the generations that followed were corrupt.

They were cruel. They were violent. The word that's translated giant can also mean fierce or violent.

So God looks down upon the world and instead of seeing, OK, there's some bad people over here, but at least there's some good people over here.

Now God looks at the earth and basically everybody's bad. The entire human race has been corrupted.

But of course, there are always exceptions, aren't there? And who's the exception? Mainly Noah. Noah, because Noah, it says, found grace in the eyes of God.

Let's keep reading verse six. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man, 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 thing and birds of the air.

For I am sorry that I have made them. And of course, that raises another question.

God is regretting something that he did. Didn't he know ahead of time this would happen?

So there's a lot of questions here in this chapter, but we're kind of seeing the negative side so far.

Look at the positive side of it. Look at verse eight, which says, but Noah found grace in the eyes of the

Lord. Remember last week we talked about Enoch. Enoch was a man. He was a spiritual giant.

It says that Enoch walked with God. The only other man the Bible says that walked with God, at least in the

Old Testament, is this man, Noah. So Enoch, and now Noah, Noah is also a spiritual giant.

Look at verse nine. This is the genealogy of Noah. Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations.

That doesn't mean he never sinned, but he's, he's head and shoulders spiritually above the rest.

It says Noah did what? Noah walked with God, and Noah begot three sons,

Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.

So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.

And God said to Noah, the end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them.

And behold, I will destroy them with the earth. So make yourself an ark of gopher wood.

And of course, the rest from here on out talks about the Lord giving instructions on how to build the ark.

And we'll talk about Noah's ark in the flood and in coming weeks, Lord willing. Verse 17, and behold,

Lord speaking, still I myself am bringing floodwaters on the earth to destroy from under heaven, all flesh in which is the breath, breath of life.

Everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you and you shall go into the ark.

You, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you.

So this is what I believe to be the situation here in Genesis chapter 6.

The godly line of Seth intermarrying with the ungodly line of Cain.

But there are some questions about this. Christians will disagree. If you talk to some fellow believers about what's happening in Genesis chapter 6, you're going to get some different viewpoints.

Mainly over the identity of the sons of God. And of course, who exactly or what exactly are the

Nephilim or these giants? So that's the Hebrew term Nephilim. Who's heard of the

Nephilim or the Nephilim? Right. The New King James Version, which is what

I read from, it calls them giants. These, it says there were giants on the earth in those days.

Some of you may have the NIV. This is probably one of the most popular versions out there.

The NIV says the Nephilim were on the earth in those days. So you see those two words, either giant or giants and Nephilim.

And it's plural. Okay. The IM at the end, this is something we should be aware of.

The IM, we put an S on the end to make something plural. In Hebrew, it's the

IM or that's how it's translated. So think of it this way. A cherub is what?

What's a cherub? An angel. An individual angel. But cherubim or cherubim is plural.

It's many angels. So Nephil is one giant. Nephilim or Nephilim are giants, plural.

Now, when you hear giant or if you read that in your Bible, there were giants on the earth in those days.

Don't get too skeptical. It could be somebody who's thinking like this. We're not talking about Jack and the

Beanstalk here. We're not talking about the Jolly Green Giant. Some monster who's 100 feet tall or 200 feet tall.

That is not what's in view. Of course, the most famous giant in the Bible is who? Right, Goliath.

And people believe that Goliath was around nine feet tall, maybe 10 feet tall. In the 20th century, the tallest man who ever lived, according to the

Guinness Book of World Records, I think he was about nine feet tall. And that was in our lifetime. I think there's some

NDA players that you can legitimately call giants, especially if you stood them next to some of us.

So don't get too worried about that word giant. There are some people on earth today who could probably be considered giants.

However big they were, however, you can also translate this word Nephilim, again, as fierce.

In other words, they were bullies. They were violent. It's possible they were not even actually giants at all.

Again, some people would debate that. Do you remember in the book of Numbers, Numbers also talks about the giants.

Remember the 10 spies? There's 12 spies. Joshua and Caleb were the ones who came back with a good report.

But the 10 spies had what? A bad report. And they said, we can't take the land.

We can't enter into the promised land. Why? Because there's giants in the land.

And I think, my personal opinion, I think they were probably just making that up because they were part of this rebellion against Moses to try to lead the people back to Egypt.

So I personally don't even think that was the case. Either way, in Genesis 6, the

Nephilim or the giants, whoever they were, they became the rulers in that day and age.

You know, the most aggressive people tend to make it to the top, right? The strongest people, the most aggressive, end up becoming the rulers.

That's what happened. So hopefully you can see how things are going because in chapter 1,

God created all things and they were perfect, right? He created man in his image.

But starting with Cain in Genesis chapter 4, his descent, Cain did evil. Of course,

Adam and Eve did wrong in chapter 3. Cain did a wicked thing in chapter 4, murdered his brother.

Then his descendants, they just got worse and worse. However, then we see the godly line of Seth.

Seth and his descendants were upright. They were moral. They worshiped

God. So the world was sort of like what you have right now. In the world today, there are good people, right?

And there are also bad people. Now the bad people generally end up being the ones in power.

That's just the nature of it. But once the good people and the bad people start to come together and intermarry, that's what's happening here.

Eventually, everybody, everything becomes corrupt. And when God sees the people cross a certain line, wherever that line is, and I think that's going to happen today, and maybe we've already crossed that line, when

God sees that mankind crosses a line, that's when he decides to step in and do something about it.

Look at verse 3 again. It says, And the Lord said, My spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh, yet his days shall be 120 years.

This is one of the punishments that life expectancy radically drops.

When God pours out his judgment on the world with the flood, what happens?

Remember we talked about the waters above? The waters in the atmosphere, they're broken up.

The fountains of the deep are broken up. The entire earth is flooded. From that time forward, the earth's environment is now hostile.

Hurricanes, earthquakes, flooding, disease, and genetic defects begin to form.

So God is punishing mankind for becoming so wicked, and instead of living 700 years, 800 years, 900 years, now man, if he's lucky, gets to live what?

120. We covered the question back in chapter 3. Remember, why do people suffer?

And you know how it goes. People often ask the question, why does

God allow the things that he's allowing? Why doesn't God do something about it? Be careful what you ask for.

God did something about it, and he judged the entire earth with a flood.

So just keep that in mind before you say, God, why don't you step in and do something? Well, be prepared for what he might do.

And by the way, God's not the problem. Oh, why is God doing? God's not the problem.

We are. Mankind is the problem. You might say, well, no, it's the devil's fault.

The devil is the one who tricked Eve into eating. It's the devil's fault. The serpent is to blame.

Adam and Eve didn't have to listen to the devil. Newsflash, they didn't have to go along with it.

And here's the thing, neither do you. If you're tempted to do something, yeah, maybe it's the devil tempting you.

Maybe it's your own flesh. You don't have to go along with it. So it's not

God's fault. The point is, here in Genesis 6, over time, with the exception of Noah, basically all humanity has been corrupted.