How could God allow this to happen? We can’t have it both ways. We cannot be morally responsible beings and not have to deal with the consequences. God gives us enough rope to hang ourselves. We have a responsibility to listen to Him.
Its not that God is out of control, but He always planned to give us real responsibility on the earth. We are not puppets.
Chapter 6 - we did hang ourselves. And we as people need to take responsibility for the choices we make that lead us into trouble. We don’t want to go back and look at the choices we made - but if we do, that is the beginning of repentance.
It’s more amazing that God didn’t destroy EVERYTHING - that instead He saved a family.
Vs 1 - 2
Some commentators and teachers suggest that the "sons of God" were demons and that the children born were some kind of super beings. I’m not really sure I buy that. Others feel that what’s being compared here are the godly line of Seth (the "sons of God") and the ungodly line of Cain ("children of men").
What’s meant is that godly men would indiscriminately marry ungodly women - taking no thought for how their kids would be raised. There’s a good lesson to learn from that - echoed by the Apostle Paul.
2 Corinthians 6:14 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common?
But there is a third possibility - that the "sons of God" refer to rulers - rulers who used what was called the "right of first night." Did any of you see Braveheart? In the movie Mel Gibson marries a girl but the local tyrant comes and asserts his right to sleep with any woman who is being married on the first night. It was a brutal practice - but fits in well with the narrative - showing how man, society, and its rulers have become so depraved. No wonder God judged man.
Who were the "sons of god?" 3 best guesses:
It doesn’t matter which position you hold - the meaning is clear.
1. Angels - fallen, - demons. They supernaturally take on human form and have sexual relations with beautiful women and have kids. They are offspring- not the nephillim. The Septuagint put "angels of god" in there - wasn’t in the original. Its really "sons of god" Not out of the realm of possibility that there was an interface between the spirit world and our world in that time.
2. These refer to sons of god (line of Seth) and the sons of men (line of Cain). The godly line men were seduced by the ungodly - so there was no longer a distinction between the righteous and the unrighteous. Put a glove in the mud and the mud doesn’t get glovy - the glove gets muddy. Not sure if this works.
3. May have been powerful rulers. Potentates. Great kings of the age. Kings were treated like gods. If that’s true then the race of violent people that came from them is a little difficult to explain.
4. Some believe it is 1 & 3 - demonized humans who gave birth to people who had some sort of violent tendency.
Vs 3
This doesn’t necessarily mean that each man should live 120 years - it could actually mean that 120 years from when these words were spoken, the flood would come. The narrative is holding two lines of thought simultaneously - the godly line of Seth and the ungodly line of Cain - the ungodly will perish in 120 years.
Vs 4
The Nephilym - or "giants" as the King James calls them, were the results of these ungodly unions. The word actually comes from a "feller" - think of Paul Bunyon and you get the idea. It was a time when might made right - violence and strength were renowned.
Of course, that’s not true today. Hmm. I don’t think we need to attach some kind of good quality to these "heros." They were just big strong bullies.
The Hebrew word can mean: "the fallen ones" or "the ones who fall on others and make them fall." Nephilim means "to fall." Later the Israelis called them giants in the land of Canaan - but that’s not what the word means.
We don’t know who they were but we do know that God looked at it and didn’t like what was going on.
The "offspring" are NOT the Nephilim. The mighty men of old are not necessarily the Nephilim.
"Famous guys" same word as for David’s mighty men. Some guys had made quite a name for themselves for being violent.
Vs 5 - 7
God looked down and realized that the disease of sin had metastasized throughout the race. Even after the flood - because our beings are infected with sin at birth - we go towards evil and away from good.
Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? 10 I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings. KJV
Romans tells us that "the wages of sin is death." As man disregarded his relationship with God - his children more and more sought out violence (as Cain did) to lead their lives. This in turn leads to death - as it always does.
I think God probably destroyed man to keep man from destroying himself - and to paint a picture of escape from sin. Another way to look at it is in accounting terms - man’s sin was building up debits that at some point must be balanced in the books - man "earned" in a sense - the judgment he got from God.
The same holds true today - the wages of sin is death - its payment for what are buying. If we buy sin we get death - eventually (that is, eternal separation from God). That’s why Jesus came - to pay our debt to God so we avoid his wrath.
Vs 5 & 6 - What’s more important was that "every thought" was evil. God was "sorry" - NOT repent. It means "to suffer grief" or "to have compassion" Have you ever had real compassion - did it not hurt? Did it not grieve?
Grieve: It does NOT mean simply mean to "change your mind" The main emphasis of the passage is that God was so completely grieved. The hurt in the soul of God was most important thing. When you grieve deep in your soul you are very close to the heart of God. God has feelings. He has no feelings that He doesn’t volunteer for. He doesn’t have to endure grief - not true with us.
This did not catch God by surprise. What does it mean? He volunteered for the grief of the sin of humanity.
Does the judgment grieve God? Not sure. The sin grieves Him more than the judgment and the sin reaches the point where there is nothing else to do but judge. The Bible doesn’t teach that He is sorry to judge. We don’t think sin is as bad as judgment. So we turn it around and think that God is sorry for judgment.
The Bible says He takes no pleasure in judgment. It means He is not cruel. It’s backwards in our culture. The judgment is the result of the sin and God must judge in order to bring about righteousness.
Vs 8 - 10
Noah must have been a pretty special person - so was he totally righteous - so much so that God said - I gotta have this guy on my team?
Romans 3:10 "There is no one righteous, not even one."
Noah wasn’t without the original sin nature - but he was without the effects of sin in his life. Look what is said: righteous, blameless, and he walked with God.
Righteous means loyalty - Noah was God’s man, he belonged to God.
Blameless means there was nothing in his character that was odious to God. He might have had the sin nature, but he hadn’t given in to it.
Walked With God - essentially I think this means he had a relationship with God - very different from those around him.
No, Noah wasn’t pure like God - but look at verse 8 - "Noah found favor." It was God’s grace extended to those who had a relationship with Him and belonged to Him. Isn’t that how it still is today?
Hebrews 11:7 Noah believed God. Righteous people are on the verge of extinction by the time the flood comes. God doesn’t let that happen - He’ll let the others go extinct and save Noah.
So now we get to one of the most famous stories of the Bible - the Flood and the Ark.
Vs 11 - 13
The word "corrupt" means to "decay."
The word "violence" is a Hebrew term that means anything that "disrupts the divine order of things". It connotes a violent wrong doing that has not been righted.
So to really summarize the situation - man had rebelled against God so much that the resulting decay had created an imbalance in the divine books - an imbalance that God had to right.
God has the right to judge sin. In Exodus 18:4 God said "The soul that sins shall die." So did God just do this only here? No - the imbalance of sin continued to build up, but God made a covenant with Noah to rescue him from this judgment. And later He makes a covenant with His Son to rescue us from judgment through His sacrifice.
It’s interesting that God didn’t say that Noah’s sons were anything that special - but because God had an agreement with Noah, his family escaped. Remind you of anything? Lot, perhaps? How about us?
Luke 21:36 Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man."
Vs 14 - 16
The Ark.
The ark was likely made of cypress (KJV "gopher") and would have displaced some 43,000 tons covering one and a half football fields. The ark was not designed to navigate - just stay afloat! Pitch was commonly used to make something waterproof.
Vs 17 - 22
Noah is told to take two of every creature - later we find that he took 7 of clean animals and two of the others. This was most likely so that Noah could sacrifice these animals.
Noah believed God even though he couldn’t see Him or the flood. That’s what separates him from the others - faith - and its what separates the saved from the lost.
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