Five Hard Questions

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This passage presents us with (5) hard questions for the interpret to answer. 1. Who are the "Sons of God and the Daughters of Men"? 2. Who are the "Nephilim" and the "Mighty Men/men of renown"? 3. Whose days are being limited to "120 years"? 4. How do we understand "the Lord regretted"in light of His sovereignty and immutability? 5. What made Noah an object of God's grace?

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn to Genesis chapter 6.
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Last week I mentioned that verse-by-verse expositional preaching forces the preacher to sometimes deal with passages he would not otherwise.
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We looked at a genealogy last week and I noted that many folks overlook the genealogies.
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Many folks ignore the repetitive language in those verses.
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But as an expositor, my job is to preach through the text.
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And today we come to a passage which is not just overlooked by many, but is often actively avoided because today's passage is just hard.
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In fact, I almost titled today's message, this is some hard stuff.
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But I thought better of myself and decided to call it five hard questions.
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But still, that is the working title of this sermon.
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This is hard.
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And every Thursday, as you know, I preach at Set Free.
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I go up there and get to see those guys.
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And a lot of those guys come from very eclectic backgrounds and different situations.
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Many of them come with different theological persuasions.
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And one of the jokes between me and the leaders at Set Free is that any time we open the door to questions, there's at least somebody that's going to ask a question about this passage.
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Who are those Nephilim? You know, that's the big joke, right? It's always going to be about the Nephilim.
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It's always going to be about Genesis 6.
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It's always going to be about this passage.
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So, I imagine some of you may share their curiosity.
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And today we're going to examine what I have come up with as five hard questions from this text.
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But before we do that, let's actually read it.
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We're going to read verses 1 to 8.
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We're going to stand as we do so.
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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.
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Then the Lord said, My spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh.
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His days shall be a hundred and twenty years.
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The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of man, and they bore children to them.
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Then these were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.
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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.
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And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.
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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.
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But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
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Father in heaven, as I preach your word, I pray that you would keep me from error.
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I pray that you would keep me from cowardice, Lord, that I would preach with correct speech and with boldness, but most of all, Lord, that I would be filled with your spirit and that your people would be taught by your spirit today.
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And Lord, especially those who do not know you, that today might be a day of reckoning for them.
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In Christ's name, amen.
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One of the principles of the Protestant Reformation when it comes to interpreting the Bible is called the principle of perspicuity.
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And that principle simply is stated, that perspicuity simply means the principle of clarity, that the Bible is essentially clear.
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It is essentially understandable in what it proclaims.
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This means that the central message of the Bible is understandable and that the Bible itself can be properly interpreted in a normal literary sense.
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It doesn't require anything magical, it doesn't require a Holy Ghost Greek or something like that, it just simply can be understood as read.
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But this does not mean that it cannot be misunderstood.
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We know that there are people who misunderstand the Bible.
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Some do it intentionally to misuse the scripture and some people unintentionally simply because they are ignorant of the scriptures.
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Well today we come to a passage which is difficult, as I said before.
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And I want to start by saying this, I think the principle of perspicuity still applies to this passage because even though this passage has some hard questions, the ultimate narrative of the passage is not really that hard to understand.
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It's just the parts where we get bogged down in the minutia.
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So before we get into the minutia of the five hard questions, I just want to kind of give you an outline of what's happening here.
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Because it's really rather simple.
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We see in the first two verses an instance of intermarriage.
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Now who's being intermarried, that's where the big debate is.
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But we see an instance of intermarriage and God declares that He is no longer going to allow His Spirit to abide with man forever.
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So He sets a time limit.
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It also tells us that there were certain extraordinary men in the land during that time who existed in this period and the wickedness of those men was great.
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So God declares that He is no longer going to tolerate it and He chooses to destroy the world by way of a flood.
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And one man finds grace in the eyes of God and therefore the whole world of men is not destroyed.
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One man and his family are saved.
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That's the narrative.
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That's the simple narrative.
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But as I already said, as simple as the narrative is, corruption increases on the earth, God deals with the corruption through the flood.
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That's the narrative.
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But now we go and we say, okay, now let's deal with the hard stuff.
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Because it raises at least five difficult questions and I put them on the board for you.
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I'll bring them up on the screen, if Mo, you can do that for me.
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These are the five questions that I think are the difficult questions.
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And Lord willing, I'm going to do all five today.
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I didn't want to make this a two-parter.
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Number one, who are the sons of God and the daughters of men? Because that's who gets intermarried.
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That's what says the sons of God marry the daughters of men.
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And there's a big debate as to who that's talking about.
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Number two, who are the Nephilim and who are the mighty men of renown? Number three, which days are limited to 120 years? Number four, how do we understand God being sorry or in some translations it says He regretted that He made man? How do we understand that? Especially in light of His sovereignty and His omniscience and His immutability.
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Those are all big theological questions.
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And number five, what made Noah an object of God's grace? I wanted to end on a positive.
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So the fifth question is what made Noah an object of God's grace? Of all the five questions, the answer to that one is relatively simple when we get there.
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It's the electing grace of God is by His choice.
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So that one I can go ahead and answer, but I wanted to end on a positive.
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We know God chooses according to His mercy and grace, not according to Noah's goodness, but according to the goodness of God.
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But let's go back up to number one and let's, as it were, begin to deal with each of these questions as they come.
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Number one, who are the sons of God and the daughters of men? Let's look at the text again.
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It says, 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 men were attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose.
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Now, if you have commentaries on your shelf, like I'm sure some of you do, or study Bibles, and you go to those study Bibles or to those commentaries, you will find several interpretations for this particular text as to who is the identity of the sons of God and who is the identity of the daughters of men.
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I do not have time today, neither the inclination, to give you all of the various interpretations, but I will give you the three that are most common.
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The first interpretation is that the sons of God in this passage refer to angels, fallen angels or demons, who have left their abode and have come to earth to intermarry with human women.
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Therefore, this is an angel-human relationship that would be an abomination and would be a violation of God's order, God's natural order.
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God didn't make angels and humans to be together.
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So that is a very common interpretation, and if you have a MacArthur study Bible, he takes a variation of that.
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He says the sons of God are angels that possess men, and those men marry women, but it's still angels.
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MacArthur takes and still the sons of God refers to angels.
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And there are some passages that are used often to support that.
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The book of Job refers to angels as sons of God.
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That's where the term sons of God is pointed to.
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They say, well, Job calls angels sons of God, so that must be who Moses is referring to here by the sons of God.
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In the book of Jude and in the book of 2 Peter, we have a reference to angels who violated their natural order.
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And so, some people point to Jude and to 2 Peter, and they say there's two passages which is talking about this.
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So this position is held by many.
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And even some rabbis, some prior to Christ were known to have held this position, and some early church fathers were known to have held that position.
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So I'm going to tell you from the outset, that ain't my position.
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But I also want to say this, for the sake of grace today.
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If you leave today disagreeing with me on some of these things, I've already told you this is hard stuff.
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But I don't think that interpretation holds water.
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But that is the interpretation of many, including the illustrious Dr.
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MacArthur, so I have to give it at least its due.
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There are people who hold that position.
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That the sons of God are fallen angels, and the daughters of men are regular human women, and they intermarry.
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The second interpretation is that the sons of God refers to kings.
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The title, sons of God, is a term which is used not only in the Bible, but also outside of the Bible to refer to men who were kings.
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He was a deity, a son of God.
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Especially in Egypt and other places like that, the pharaohs were considered to be divine.
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And so the term sons of God, in that regard, would refer to kings.
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And the daughters of men would refer to, the key is plural, daughters, that they took for themselves multiple wives and created harems.
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And out of those harems created essentially like a sexual slavery situation.
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And therefore the men in power were abusing the women who were in a lower caste system from them and were mistreating them.
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And out of that produced all kinds of wanted debauchery.
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Now that is the position, I believe, that was held by Meredith Klein and other theologians.
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It is not the position I hold, but I wanted to share it with you.
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I think at least it's interesting to consider that the sons of God could be talking about kings and the daughters of men in some form of harem situation.
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Interesting thought.
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Not the position that I take, but still one that is found in several commentaries.
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Now the third position, and tip of my hand, this is the position that I would espouse, is that the sons of God, in this context, refers to the descendants of Seth.
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You see the term, maybe I am wrong, the term sons of God could be referring to the faithful line of Seth and the daughters of men referring to the ungodly descendants of Cain.
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And the sin that is being referenced here is the sin of intermarrying believers and unbelievers.
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Now I admit, that is the least spectacular of the three.
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The first one, angels coming down, intermarrying with women, producing a race of giants, that's sci-fi channel stuff.
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That gets people's attention, right? I'm not making fun of it, I'm just saying that is people appeal to things that are extraordinary.
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And the first one is very extraordinary.
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The second one also is very illicit, kings and harems and sex trade and all that stuff.
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We get to the third one and it's like, well, so what you're saying is the sons of God and the daughters of men is just faithful people and unfaithful people intermarrying.
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That's not that big of a deal.
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But think about how big of a deal it is.
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Walk through the Bible and see how many times the people of God are told not to intermarry with the pagans.
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Not to go outside and union themselves with those who are outside of the faith.
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And walk back with me just a few weeks and follow the reasoning I've been giving you since we started at Genesis 3.15.
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Remember Genesis 3.15, the Proto-Evangelium, there's the descendants of the serpent and the descendants of the woman, right? There's the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, right? And these two seeds have been marked by what? The line of Cain, which is the line of the unrighteous and the line that was begun in Abel but was snuffed out and continued in Seth.
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And so not only do I believe this is a correct interpretation, I believe it follows the context which began two chapters ago, which follows two lines.
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You see, if you accept the angel interpretation, what you have to do is have to say something completely irregular has been introduced into the context.
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Something completely outside of the context is now being introduced.
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Rather than simply following the context, you have two lines.
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The line of Cain is given in chapter 4.
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The line of Seth is given in chapter 5.
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And now you have the sons of God and the daughters of men who intermarry with one another.
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And what happens? The Bible says bad company corrupts good morals, right? It is much more common that if a faithful person marries an unfaithful person that the unfaithful person will be a drag upon them than they are to uplift the other.
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Very common that we see that.
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Now, I want to give a few more very quick arguments.
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Number one, I believe the context demands this interpretation, but I could be wrong.
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I'm just saying I think contextually this follows the narrative.
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Number two, the introduction of angels and demons at this point is violating the context and the term sons of God is never used by Moses to speak of angels.
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The term sons of God is only used in Job.
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Never by Moses.
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So this would not only be an extra, this would be a term that is used in the Bible, but not by the writer that's using this term.
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So to say sons of God always refers to angels, that ain't so.
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Sometimes it refers to kings, sometimes it refers to those who are believers.
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We are called sons of God.
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So, and it's throughout the Bible that way.
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But here's one that really stresses my credulity and that is that Jesus tells us in the New Testament that angels neither marry nor are given in marriage.
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And so the idea that angels came and married women seems to be a violation of what Jesus tells us about angels and therefore I don't think it would pass muster as far as an interpretation.
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Now, the interpretation usually goes, well these men, they indwelt the bodies of men.
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Okay, here's my response to that.
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If they indwelt the bodies of men, then it's still a man having relations with a woman.
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You now know, you no longer have the special miraculous angel seed that's supposed to create this giant Nephilim race, right? See, here's the thing, if you interpret the angels as the sons of God as angels, the next natural thing is that the Nephilim are the byproduct of that.
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They're these giant men who come as a byproduct of this special intermarriage between angels and women.
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But if they're just men who are possessed by angels, then their seed is no different than any other man's seed and therefore they're not going to create any special type of particularly mongrel race.
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I didn't mean to spend all my time on number one, but you understand this one's pretty big because this also affects number two, who are the Nephilim.
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But we'll get there in a moment.
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So my answer, and do you guys know what Occam's Razor is? Occam's Razor is a philosophical perspective and I know philosophy and theology sometimes butt heads, but sometimes it's not wrong to invoke a little philosophy.
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Occam's Razor is simply stated, all things being equal, the simplest explanation is probably the right one.
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All things being equal, the simplest explanation is probably the right one.
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So we go back to the three options, right? Angels and women and they create a mongrel race of hybrids.
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It's pretty spectacular.
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Kings and women creating harems, possibly.
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Following the context, two lines, the lines are represented by the sons of God and the daughters of men, to me is the simplest explanation and following the philosophical principle of the simplest explanation is probably the right one.
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That's the one I tend to hold to.
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Simple enough? And again, if you want to write me a three page dissertation as to why I'm wrong, send it to Brother Mike.
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All right, so again, I'm willing to say this is a difficult thing, but I do hold to this for a reason.
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I think it's the sons of God is the sons of Seth and the daughters of men are the line of Cain.
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Now, number two, okay, well then who are the Nephilim and the mighty men of renown? This comes in verse four.
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Some of your Bibles don't say Nephilim, some of your Bibles say giants.
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If you have a King James Bible or a New King James Bible, it says the giants were in the land at that time, but if you have a ESV, NIV, NET, it says the Nephilim were 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 of old, the men of renown.
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All right, one thing I want to say from the outset, this text does not say that the Nephilim is the byproduct of the intermarriage relationship.
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Read it again.
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The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward when the sons of God came into the daughters of men and bore children.
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What it's giving you here is not the byproduct of the intermarriage, but a time marker of the intermarriage.
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The intermarriage happened when the Nephilim were on the earth.
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Not that the Nephilim were the byproduct of that intermarriage, but the Nephilim were in the earth at the same time as the intermarriage.
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So it does not tell us that the Nephilim were the byproduct, but the men of renown, I'm a little back and forth on that.
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I don't know if when it talks about the men of renown, if that's referring to the Nephilim or if that's referring to the sons, because that could be read as the sons of the intermarriage.
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So for a moment, let's just discuss the Nephilim.
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The word Nephilim, as I said, the King James Bible says giants, and the only other place in the Bible this term is used is in Numbers 13, when the spies went to spy out the land of Canaan and they came back and gave their report, what did they say? They said, they're like the Nephilim, right? They're like these mighty men that we've heard of, and we're like grasshoppers in their sight.
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And the idea behind that is they're these giant beasts of men and we are like little grasshoppers.
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They can destroy us, we can't defeat them in battle.
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But the word Nephilim does not mean giant.
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That's an important point to make.
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The word Nephilim comes from the word which means fallen or to fall.
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Jameson Fawcett Browne commentary says this, says the term in Hebrew implies not so much the idea of great stature as it does of reckless ferocity, impiousness and daring characters who spread devastation and carnage far and wide.
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These are evil dudes, but they're not necessarily giant dudes, because the idea of fallen means that they are men who are, they are aggressively sinful.
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John Gill in his commentary said this, he says the word Nephilim comes from a word which signifies to fall, and these might be so called either because they made fear to fall upon men or they made men fall before them.
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And he says it could have been because of their height or their strength, but it could also simply have been their cruel and tyrannical behavior.
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They were evil men.
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And John Gill goes on to say it could, the term fall could refer to them being apostates.
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You know what it means to fall from the faith, right? To fall from belief means to apostatize.
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And John Gill says it could be that the fallen means that these are, these are the evil ones who have fallen from the true religion and have, have gone after their lusts.
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A lot of people want, when I talk to the guys at Set Free and other places, anytime the term Nephilim comes up, everybody wants to talk about giants, and people talk about the one giant in scripture that's mentioned, which is who? Goliath, you know, he was a big guy.
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He was a giant in the sense of what it means to be large.
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But there's a lot of mysticism around the Nephilim.
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A lot of things, like there's a story, I even, I shudder to even mention it.
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There's a story, if you go Google Nephilim, one of the first stories that come up is some myth about some of our military over in Kandahar who apparently were attacked by a giant with a spear.
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And there's all of these stories and people want to connect this to the Nephilim and say, see, these are the Nephilim from Genesis 6.
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Here's the problem with that.
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All of the Nephilim died in the flood.
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You say, well, how were they in Numbers 13? They weren't in Numbers 13.
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Numbers 13 was the spies looking at the people of the land and saying, these are like the Nephilim.
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This is who they are because they are tied to this by way of their ferocity, by way, maybe their largeness.
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But they weren't descendants because Noah didn't take Nephilim two by two up into the ark.
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Okay? Eight people survived, eight souls survived.
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There was no Nephilim dog paddling outside the ark.
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Everything died in the flood except for what was on the ark and what was in the ocean.
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So the Nephilim didn't make it.
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So whatever those military guys may have run into in Kandahar, and it's probably mythological, but whatever that story is, it ain't a Nephilim.
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It's just not so.
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So who are the Nephilim? Evil men, brutish men, dangerous men.
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And then you say, well, who are the men of renown? Well, I think this is an interesting term because the phrase men of renown, it says mighty men, men of renown.
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What does men of renown mean? Means men who are known.
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To be renowned is to be known.
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What were they known for? They were mighty.
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And I would say, based on the context, they were known for their great evil because it says just a few verses before, every intention of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually.
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And therefore, what were people known by? Their evil.
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So the men of renown are powerful and prideful men.
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And by the way, that idea of knowing your name, that's pretty important throughout Genesis.
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It's something a lot of people miss.
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But the first time we see somebody's name become important is in chapter four, when Cain named his city after his son.
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He wanted to maintain a name for his son.
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Then we get over to chapter six, and these are men of renown, men whose names are known.
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And then we get to chapter 11, and we see the building of the Tower of Babel.
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And why was the Tower of Babel sinful? People think it's because they were trying to reach heaven.
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That's not what is the problem with the Tower of Babel.
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The Tower of Babel was a problem, it says, because they were building it as a monument to their own name.
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It was about pride.
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And if there's nothing else we know about the men of renown, it is this.
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They were prideful men.
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They were men who were concerned about their own name.
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Go back to Genesis five.
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What does it say about the sons of Seth? It says they were about the name of the Lord.
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They called upon the name of the Lord.
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These people were concerned with their own name.
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So, number three.
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We'll go on to number three.
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Whose days are being limited? So we've looked at the sons of God, daughters of men.
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We've looked at the Nephilim.
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Whose days are being limited? Look at verse three.
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It says, Then the Lord God said, My spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh, his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.
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Some believe this is God limiting the lifespan of men to a hundred and twenty years.
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Why would that make sense? Well, because before this, men were living to seven, eight, nine hundred years, right? So some people interpret this as, okay, God is now bringing the lifespan down.
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And in fairness to that interpretation, after the flood, men's lifespans do decrease.
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But there are still some who live way past a hundred and twenty years.
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So I don't think that's the way to interpret it, simply because if you go past the flood, there are still people who live well past a hundred and twenty years.
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You say, well, what do you think it means then? I think that this is referring to a hundred and twenty years from the time that this proclamation is made to the time of the coming of the flood.
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I think this is giving the earth and the people upon the earth a stay of execution.
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This is how long before the flood.
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Again, can I prove that? Not necessarily.
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But I'll give you another example of where we see that.
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When God sent Jonah to Nineveh forty days, and there will be destruction, right? God sets these timetables, right? And so to say a hundred and twenty years, and you say, well, what happens in that hundred and twenty years? Well, one of the things that happens is Noah builds an archy, and I'm pretty sure he didn't do that in a weekend, and it didn't necessarily take a hundred and twenty years, but part of the time is going to be the preparation, the archy, yeah, you know, I'm talking about the song.
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God's going to prepare, through Noah, a salvation for not only his people, but for the animals that he's chosen to save.
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So again, I'm not saying it took a hundred and twenty years to build the archy.
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I don't know how long it took to build the archy, but I think that that is a reasonable answer when he says, my spirit shall not abide with man forever, for he is flesh.
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You say, why does it say he is flesh? I think this is pointing to the fact that he is fallen.
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Oftentimes in scripture, when it refers to our flesh, it's referring to our fallen nature.
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And what do we see? We see a people who are given over to their sin.
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God says, I'm not going to let this happen.
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I'm not going to let this continue forever.
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Now we get to number four, and this was the hardest one.
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The Nephilim, eh, sons of God, daughters of men, that's difficult.
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But number four requires doing theology, and it requires having a theological conversation.
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And I literally said, I said, well, maybe I should just make this another sermon.
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But I don't want to, not for the sake of simplicity, but because I think if we draw it out too much, we'll end up more confused, and I don't want to do that.
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So the question is this, how do we understand when it says the Lord regretted? In the King James, it says it repented him that he made man.
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Repented.
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You say, wait a minute, repent means to change your mind.
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In the Bible, if it says anything about God, it says God does not change his mind.
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Malachi tells us that.
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Numbers tells us that.
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God doesn't change his mind.
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And so we come to this passage, and it says the Lord regretted.
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It says the Lord repented.
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And in the ESV here, it says that the Lord was sorry.
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You say, how does a, how does an ultimate being who knows all things, who has declared the end from the beginning, who has in his perfection predestined all things and decreed all that shall come to pass, feel sorry? And yet that's what it says.
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I think the most important thing that we have to take when we look at this text is we have to take a, take a step back and remember something that is very important.
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God is not like us.
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God does not think like us.
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God does not reason like us.
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And God does not feel like us.
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We are, we are people who think wrongly.
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We are people who reason wrongly.
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We are people who feel wrongly.
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Our emotions are often uncontrolled expressions of our anger or our love or our pity or our desires, right? And so when we say I regret something, it's usually something that we wish we could change or would change if we had the opportunity.
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And so often when we, when we see this say God regretted that he made man on the earth, we see it as God saying he made a mistake.
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And I think that's where we have to be careful moving into that understanding of God, a God who is simply not knowing what each day will bring.
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You see, that's called open theism.
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Open theism is the idea that God doesn't know the future.
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In fact, open theism says this, God has limited his foreknowledge.
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He does not know all things and therefore he is genuinely surprised that you came to church today, Jackie.
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He's very surprised to see.
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He's glad, but he's surprised.
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Not necessarily because you're here all the time, but you know, he's, he doesn't know for certain what's going to happen and therefore he does regret in the same way you would regret because you didn't know what was going to happen.
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Or he does change his mind in the same way I would change my mind because I don't know what's going to happen.
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And if that is the way we see God, we have diminished our understanding of his transcendence.
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We have to understand that we experience God in two ways.
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We experience God first in his transcendence and second in his eminence.
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What does that mean? His transcendence refers to how far away he is.
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And the Bible says he is far above the heavens.
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He is far above us.
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He is, his ways are above our ways, right? And in that sense, he is transcendent, but we can't really fathom that.
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We can't fathom God's eternity.
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We can't fathom God's trinity.
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We can't fathom God's love because it's so much higher than ours.
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And therefore, when we speak of God's transcendence, we speak about something that is impossible to really quantify.
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It's like putting the Atlantic Ocean in a thimble.
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You just can't put that much in our minds.
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It's just too vast.
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But then we speak of the eminence of God.
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The God who is transcendent is also drawn near to us.
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And he relates to us.
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And he expresses himself to us in language that we can't understand.
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And one of the ways that he expresses that to us is he talks to us in the language of man.
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He uses language which we call anthropomorphic or language of when it talks about God's hands and God's eyes and God's ears.
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God doesn't have hands or eyes or ears.
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He's spirit.
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But when he talks to us, he speaks about his hands.
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He speaks about his eyes.
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He speaks about his ears because that allows us to have a way to relate to him.
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When we think of his emotions, he speaks to us in the terms.
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This is a big theological term.
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It's called anthropopathisms.
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God's emotions expressed in man's emotions.
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God's hatred, God's anger, God's love and all these things are expressed to us in terms that we can relate to.
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Can you relate to a God who looks down at the earth and sees all of this evil and says, yes, this makes my heart sorry? Absolutely.
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Because look at what sin is.
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Sin is a grievous thing.
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Now, we have to, for one second, address one thing.
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In theological terms, there's a term called the impassibility of God.
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The impassibility of God is taken from the Westminster Confession of Faith.
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And it basically says that God is without form or body or passions.
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And that term has been misused and misunderstood ever since it was written.
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Because some people come to the idea that God is without any emotions, that he is almost robotic.
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But can I tell you this? God's love is real love.
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God's wrath is real wrath.
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And his anger is real anger.
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And when he relates to us in anthropomorphic and anthropopathic language, he's trying to help us understand that's just too high that we can't understand.
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But to say that God does not feel, because that's the way some take it, that God does not feel, I think is misrepresenting the heart of God.
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We cannot allow even the best confessions of faith to make us say something the Bible doesn't say.
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We have to go with scripture.
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The scripture says sin grieves the heart of God.
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You realize if there was no other reason not to sin, that would be enough.
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If sin didn't send us to hell, if sin didn't have the punishment that it has, if sin wasn't as hard on us as it is, sin grieves the heart of our maker.
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And that's enough to make me, it should be enough to make me hate it.
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And the Bible says God was grieved of the sin of man on the earth.
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And what did he do? He sent a flood.
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You look around at the world today.
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Do you think that the world today grieves the heart of God? Do you think 60 million dead babies grieves the heart of God? Do you think the devolution or the devaluation of marriage, the devaluation of love, the devaluation of life, the devaluation of his word? And what are we commanded in Ephesians? Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.
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Beloved, we are called not to grieve God.
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So how do we understand this carefully? We don't want to say something about God that's not true.
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God doesn't change his mind.
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God does know the future.
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God has declared the end from the beginning.
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But sin grieves his heart.
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And I think we can honestly say how that works out, I don't know for certain.
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But I also don't know how God could have always existed without a beginning or ending.
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But it be true.
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And therefore, I'll say it's true.
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We're going to see this again later.
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We see this throughout the Bible.
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It's not something that only comes up once.
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But we can't give up one truth for another truth.
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We have to say God is transcendent.
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Yes, and he's also eminent.
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He is so far above us, we can't understand him.
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But he draws close to us so that we can relate to him.
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And he did it the most preciously in his son, Jesus.
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That was the greatest act of eminence.
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He came to us as one of us.
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And if you want to know what God's like, look at Jesus.
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Because that's what God's like.
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Finally, and we'll close with this.
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What made God choose Noah? Well, next week, well, probably not next week.
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But in a few weeks, we're going to look where it says Noah was righteous in his generation.
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And some people say, well, that's why God chose Noah, because Noah was righteous.
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But I ask you this, good reformed theologians, you are.
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Is our righteousness what makes God choose us? Or is it a byproduct of his grace? It is a byproduct of his grace.
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And that's why, by the way, this is the first time we see this word in Scripture that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
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Let me tell you today, if you are saved, if you are a believer, if you have been born again, it is because you found grace in the eyes of the Lord, not by anything that you deserved or had done.
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And you can know that you have been declared righteous, not by what you have done, but by what God has done for you in Jesus Christ.
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Our righteousness is a declaration, which is based upon faith.
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And our faith is a gift from God.
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So why did God choose Noah? Because God is good.
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Why did God choose you? Because God is good.
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Why are you here today? Why are you under the preaching of the word of God? Why are you saved and so many are not? Because God is good.
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I was asked a question recently.
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I was at an event where I was being asked questions.
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And a man raised his hand.
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And he was asking a genuine question.
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I don't fault him for asking this question.
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But the question was this.
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Why doesn't God do more to save people? Why doesn't God make sure everybody in the world hears the gospel? Why doesn't God just write something in the sky? Believe in Jesus.
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Beloved, think about what we say when we say this.
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Why hasn't God done more? Because think about all that he has done.
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God sent his son into the world when he didn't have to.
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God chose to save when we weren't worthy of it.
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God chose to express grace when we were from our youth sinful.
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God doesn't have to save us.
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And the fact that he saves any of us is an act of sheer grace.
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To him be the glory.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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And I thank you for your truth.
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And I pray that today we have been faithful to the truth of the word.
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And I pray, Lord, that even now that you would write these truths upon our heart.
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In Jesus name.
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Amen.