Moral Causes of the Flood (Part 1)

Now, when we get into chapter 6, we are on our way, or really the Bible is setting us up for why God destroyed this world, His creation, why He destroyed it with the flood.

! And so, chapter 6 is going to bring us up to the brink of that and help us to understand that 6 and 7. And basically, we could say, as we just kind of analyze these passages, and this is what we're going to do the next couple of times together, maybe three, maybe take us three before we get actually to the flood.

But it's going to help us to understand it. When we analyze this, we're going to find that there are three moral causes for the flood.

There's three of them. And we'll look at one of those tonight, and it involves kind of a controversial issue. But before we get to that, when you think about the flood, you need to consider that the flood demonstrates at least two things.

It demonstrates, first and foremost, or at least this is the first thing that we think of, it demonstrates the judgment of God on sin. I mean, if it is anything, it is that.

We know that. The God sent the flood as a judgment on sin. But it also demonstrates something else, because not everyone died in the flood.

And Noah and his family were saved, and I think saved by grace. And so, then the flood also demonstrates the grace of God in salvation.

So, it demonstrates those two things. And by the way, really, God's judgment always demonstrates these two things. It demonstrates His judgment on sin.

And it demonstrates His grace in salvation. All right? So, then, in addition to that, we ought to consider, just here on the front end, and we'll talk more about this when we actually get to the flood, the account of the flood.

But the flood also explains a couple of things in a physical realm. It explains the geographic landscape of planet Earth today.

Doesn't it? Doesn't it? That is, if you believe in flood. Otherwise, you opt for the more popular explanation, you know, for the way our planet looks today.

And the popular explanation is that it took millions and millions of years to get the way it is today. But the flood is what explains the geographic landscape of our Earth today.

It also explains the geologic wonders of planet Earth today. And I know we're really jumping way ahead.

We're not going to deal with some of these issues for some time. But just kind of as a setup to things here, the flood demonstrates the judgment of God on sin and the grace of God and salvation.

It explains why the planet looks the way it looks today and some of the wonders of it today. And then, and this is where we're going to be spending most of our time in the next several sessions, the moral causes of the flood.

And this is what I've introduced my study tonight with. And now we'll get back to it. The moral causes of the flood. And this will serve as our outline for the chapter.

And there are three of them. Number one, unrighteous marriages. Unrighteous marriages. And we'll look at that tonight. Number two, wicked practices of man.

And then third, and I would add this as the cause of the flood, the end of God's patience. The end of His patience and His long-suffering.

And we'll get into that when we get further on into the chapter. So those three things are going to help us understand why the flood came, why God sent the flood.

It begins with an account of unrighteous marriages. It continues with, obviously, the wicked practices of man. And really, what we have here is kind of a snowballing effect that really started there when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden.

But now it's accelerating very quickly, very rapidly. Well, I guess you could say rapidly. It was 1,656 years from Adam to the flood.

So over that time period, the wickedness of man grew and grew exponentially. And some of the reasons are given to us right here in Genesis chapter 6.

All right. So let's look then at the unrighteous marriages. And this might get just a little technical tonight. And you might find yourself thinking along the way, well, this is really not important to me.

I hope you don't feel that way because I spent a lot of time preparing it. So hopefully it will be more than just a little interesting.

It may answer some questions. I hope that it does. Verses 1 and 2 are somewhat controversial. I don't know about controversial.

That might be too strong a term. There are differences of opinion about what is going on here in verses 1 and 2 or what actually happened there. And so, and I might even say among conservatives, conservative Bible scholars and preachers and teachers, there's not any one consensus on what these two verses are referring to.

Now, you're hopefully looking ahead or thinking ahead and you know what I'm talking about maybe by now. But let me read verses 1 and 2 of chapter 6. 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 I guess I could add what is said in verse 4 as well, and even though this will be a part of our study next time.

But it says, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. And then it describes them, those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.

All right, so you have then what? You have marriages going on here between two people, well, men and women. So it calls them sons of God and daughters of men.

And they are marrying because it uses the word marriage and uses the word wife and so forth. So we're not just talking about, you know, cohabitations or anything like that.

It's marriage. And they're having children. All right, so that's what the Bible is telling us here right at the beginning of chapter 6. The question is, what kind of marriages were these?

And maybe more importantly, what was the identity of the two sides of the marriage?

For example, who were the daughters of men? And I start with that one because I think that's the easiest one to answer. The daughters of men were pretty easy to identify.

Of course, female offspring of mankind. Right? I mean, daughters of men. I mean, there isn't anything complicated about that. Though, if we were to add any complication to it, and eventually we have to deal with this issue, what are we talking about?

Daughters born to any and all men who were living in that day? Or are we talking about daughters born to a certain group or a line of descendants out of Adam?

And that's the real question. But before we get into the daughters of men, which still I'm going to say is easy to answer. These are human people. Human daughters are women.

The second side of the marriage is a little more difficult to understand. And that is who were the sons of God. And why does the Bible present them in this way with this kind of terminology?

Sons of God, daughters of men. It begs us to wonder just who are these sons of God. Sons of God.

And why aren't they just sons of men? We have sons of men, daughters of men. That would make perfect sense to us. Men marry women, and they have marriages, and they have children, and so forth.

Nothing out of the ordinary there. But the Bible doesn't say it that way. It says sons of God and daughters of men. Or so who were these sons of God? And there's differences of opinion about that.

I'll give you four. Four possibilities, or at least four views. I wouldn't say possibilities. I think there's just one answer here.

But there are four views on this. And a couple of these, well, at least one of these you're going to say, well, it's not bad, for sure. You might not say it exactly like that.

But the first one is that these were pre-Adamites. What would that be? Pre-Adamites.

That is a race of people God created before He created Adam. Now, you say, well, that's ridiculous. Well, there are some scholars who believe that.

The Bible just has given us an account of them. But they were created. There are some who hold to the, quote, gap theory, that God created everything perfectly, even man.

And then it was all destroyed. And then He recreated everything again. We talked about that way back when we looked at Genesis 1, 1 and 2. And there are a lot of scholars who hold to this, quote, gap theory.

And so the idea is that maybe there was a race of mankind created prior to Adam. And some of them survived whatever the cataclysm might have been, the late creation waste.

And so that's who these people are. Well, it's not that. That can't be the right answer. Well, for one, there's absolutely no biblical basis for any such a view.

All right? So if you're going to hold to that view, you're going to have even a leg to stand on. The second possibility, and you might not, this is a little bit difficult to understand, but they would call these people, well, they'd be kind of like king-like people, or nobles sometimes is the word used, or some dynastic rulers that lived in that day.

They were very influential, very powerful, very wealthy people. They weren't gods, but they were godlike in that way. And so they were called sons of God.

But they were wicked, maybe a wicked group of people, men, tyrannical rulers. Some scholars use that terminology to describe them.

And so there's one view, the second view. And there's really very, there's just scant scripture. In fact, there's really not any clear scripture that would support a notion like that.

And even if you say, well, that might be it, it doesn't help you understand what's going on here. All right? All right, so then we have two views left.

And these are the two most popular views. So number three, the view that the sons of God are fallen angels. And this is a very popular view.

And I could name, well, at least once one theologian that you would all recognize who holds to this view.

And as soon as I mention his name, and ultimately when I say that I don't agree with him, you're going to say, Brother Don, you're a heretic. Because it's John MacArthur.

He believes that the sons of God are fallen angels. Or demons. We can use the term demons. And so we have demons or angels that have fallen from heaven.

And some of them placed their eyes on some of the beautiful daughters of men. And they married them and had offspring and so forth.

And we'll talk about this view here in just a minute. But let me give you a couple of variations to this view. There is a variation where some would say that, No, these sons of God are not angels or demons, but they are human men that have been possessed by angels.

That's an alternate view or another variation of the view. And then an even different variation. This one's quite different.

That these are not angels per se, but they are actually gods. That they are superhuman beings. Gods that were superhuman to humans.

And those who hold this view interpret the passage, or they translate the passage, not sons of God, but sons of God. All right. So just throw that out there just for your information.

Then we have the fourth view. And it is that these sons of God are Sethites, or descendants of Seth.

Remember, we ended, you know, chapter 5 ends with, or 4 rather, ends with Seth, and, you know, the son of Adam.

And so this view holds that the sons of God are just descendants of Seth, and they make up the godly line.

The godly line that will eventually come out of, eventually, Jesus, the Messiah. All right? All right. So those are the four views.

And the last two are the more popular views, and so we'll deal with those. Okay? I would suggest to you that there are a number of problems that we have to deal with if we're going to embrace the angel view.

The first one is the obvious distinct natures of angelic beings and human beings. Their natures are completely different.

Completely different. Wouldn't you agree? One is spiritual. One is flesh, physical. They both, you know, operate, live, and operate and function in their own domains, own kind of places of existence that do not mix.

They don't come together. They are totally separate. They are absolutely different in every single way. Angelic beings and human beings. And there is no indication from Scripture that angelic beings and human beings could interact in a physical way.

No indication in Scripture that they would even want to. That is, that angels would want to interact with humans in a physical way. Nothing in Scripture to suggest that.

Nothing clear. Clear at all. Other than the assumption that that's what's going on here. But in order to hold to this, you have to assume it. There's no way to prove that.

This view would assume something that Scripture does not support. That it assumes that fallen angels were able to take on physical form in order to cohabit with women on earth.

Now, we do know from Scripture that angels did take on human form in a visible way, but there's no indication in Scripture that that physical form was actually flesh and blood physical.

but it was an appearance of being physical so that they could communicate to man and communicate a message that God had given them to take to man.

And that's what angels were primarily in Scripture. They were God's holy messengers. And so there's nothing in Scripture to suggest that. In fact, 1 Corinthians 15, verses 39 to 40, and then a little further, verse 48, I think clearly contradicts the assumption that an angel could have a physical form, a form that would be able to interact in a physical way with human beings.

The Bible says there in 1 Corinthians 15, 39, that all flesh is not the same flesh. So at first, Paul deals with just the differences in the physical world.

Not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, another of birds, and there are also, and he goes beyond that, goes to celestial bodies.

He says there are celestial bodies. That means heavenly bodies. That is things that exist in heaven. And then he says there are terrestrial bodies, or earthly bodies, things that exist here on this earth.

But he says, but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. That is, each body is suited for its intended environment.

That's the point he's making there in 1 Corinthians 15. Everything is created for its certain environment. And so he makes this very, very strong distinction, even in the physical world.

You know, there's a big difference between a man and a horse. And, you know, well, I don't want to take us there, but there cannot be that kind of cohabitation between a horse and a man because one flesh is one kind, another flesh is another kind, and there cannot be any intermingling in that way.

And so if Paul's going to make such a strong point about that, and then he moves to the difference between the heavenly realm and the earthly realm, then how could there be a cohabiting of people or beings in those two different worlds?

Then you go on to verse 48, and he says, As was the man of dust, the earthly, so also are those who are made of dust. We're earthly, made of earth, and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are heavenly.

He's making a clear distinction here that heaven and earth are two completely different realms.

Not just one's here and one's there, and if you want to go there, you've got to get in a ship and go there. You can't go there from here. They're totally separate realms.

And the only time in Scripture, again, where you find the physical interaction between these two realms is when God sends His angels, His messengers, to reveal His plan and purposes, and He does so.

He gives them bodies, give them human form, in order to communicate to man. But that's where Scripture stops. You don't have any other kind of interaction in a physical way other than the visual and the verbal, the communication.

So that's one issue, first issue, or problem that exists with the angel view. The second one is the issue of marriage itself or the marriage among angels, for one.

The Scripture here, and we read it a moment ago, reveals that actual marriage took place. So we're not talking about just physical unions.

We're not talking about, you know, like you might see in the movies, some of these crazy movies out there, you know, some spiritual being having eyes for a physical woman, and, you know, and then they, you know, they get together physically.

We're not just talking about that. The Bible's talking about marriage, the use of the word marriage. They took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.

So this is marriage. Alright? That's the issue here. But, folks, from the beginning, God designed marriage and procreation as a human institution.

Not an angelic institution or a heavenly. It's a human institution. And also, do you remember what Jesus said in Matthew 22? Let me just read it to you and you'll know the passage or the context here as soon as I start reading it.

But in verse 22, verse 30 rather, He says, For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels of God in heaven.

That doesn't mean that when we're resurrected and we go to heaven we're going to be like angels and sprout wings. Some have come to that interpretation. What it means is there's no marriage in heaven because we'll be like the angels.

That is, angels don't marry. Marriage was not given to the angels, not given to them. It was a human institution and so I think it's very clear.

Third, the nature of the, the problem with the nature of the offspring produced in this physical union. You've got to answer that question.

And it poses a big, big problem if you hold to sons of God being angels. What was the nature of the offspring? What would they be?

Angel? Would they be spirit? Angel? Or would they be man? Flesh. Or would they be some combination?

Part, part angel, part man. Some superhuman being of some kind. You've got to answer that question and you have a real problem there.

The clear statement from the passage is that the offspring were flesh, not spirit. Verse 1 says, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth.

And then also, I would throw in there to you, you don't need to look it up but you can jot it down, Nehemiah 9.6 I think is pretty explicit that the number of the angels is fixed.

It means there aren't any more. They don't procreate. God's not creating more of them. They're fixed. And so, you cannot then have a union of angels and the daughters of men and have produce angels or angel men.

Those that were produced from these marriages were flesh. Were flesh. Alright, so then, well, you say, well, that's just how it happened then. Angels, you know, cohabitated with women and their offspring were flesh.

Well, it's hard to answer. Hard to use that as the proof that these sons of God were angels. disciples. Number four, the issue of righteous judgment.

Just put it down that way if you're jotting these down. There's the issue of righteous judgment. What's missing in the following quotes from chapter 6?

Let me read them to you. Verse 3, it says, And the Lord said, My spirit shall not strive with man forever. And verse 5, Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth.

Verse 6 says, And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth. Verse 7 says, So the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created. Then we can go on into chapter 7, verse 21, And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds and cattle and beasts and every man.

Verse 23, So he destroyed all living things, both man and cattle, creeping thing, and bird of the air. Then we can go on to chapter 8, in verse 21, Then the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground for man's sake.

Now I've emphasized some key words in those passages, but at the same time I've asked you what's missing in these verses. What's present is pretty clear. Man's there, flesh is there.

What's missing? Angels. Any mention or any reference to angels. You say, Well, is that significant? Well, if the sons of God are angels, then why is there no mention of them in connection with God's anger and His judgment?

After all, according to this view and those who hold to this view, and they would refer to Jude 6, and we'll look at that passage here in a minute, but according to this view, it was angels, not men, but angels who left their natural abode, their estate, and came to the daughters of man and married them.

It was angels who did this. And yet, when it comes to judgment, it was man that was judged. Why then is man singled out for the judgment of the sins of angels?

That's just something to think about. It's a problem that you have. It's not the only solution to the question here, but as you start adding these up, you've got some real problems if you want to hold to the view that sons of God is a reference to angels.

Let me give you a fifth one. The absence of the regular word for angel in the Hebrew Bible, in the text. The Hebrew word for angel is malek.

Malek, I think, is how it's pronounced. And more than 30 times in Genesis, in Exodus, in Numbers, and I list those three because they were all written by the same author, Moses, 30 times the word Moses, who wrote, used the word malek in reference to angels when he referred to angels.

Now, if angel is meant here in chapter 6, then why not use the word rather than sons of God? Sons of God. Then finally, here's the last reason or last problem with the view.

The view that sons of God refers to fallen angels requires several assumptions that cannot be proved from Scripture. And this is kind of a catch-all.

In fact, one of these I've already mentioned. But here are some of the assumptions of those who hold this view. First of all, they assume that, and I mentioned this already, they assume that fallen angels were able to take on physical form.

and there's nothing in Scripture to support that. And when I say physical form, I mean physical form in the sense that they could actually interact and all of the physical parts of the body were functioning.

Okay? That's it. No indication in Scripture that that is the case. And yet, it assumes that they can do that and that they would even want to.

Second, they assume that fallen angels were attracted to the beauty of the daughters of men. I mean, listen, if the Bible says what the Bible does say about angels, and, you know, some have done quite a study on angelology, they were beautiful, are beautiful, bright, shining beings.

and the daughters of men, part of a fallen world, corrupted by sin, in comparison, there would be no beauty that would be attracted to a holy angel, a supernatural angel.

And yet, this view assumes that they would be because the Bible says very clearly they saw their beauty and they married them and had offspring. And yet, there's nothing in Scripture that would support that.

Third, they also assume that the term sons of God always refers to angels in the Old Testament. That's an assumption, that it's always a reference to angel and it cannot be proved.

Fourth, they assume that two New Testament passages must refer to these marriages in Genesis 6. And here's the lion's share of the argument for this view.

And that is two passages that appear in the New Testament. The first one is 2 Peter chapter 2 verses 4 and 5. And I read it to you.

For if God, this is a familiar passage, for if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved for judgment.

And then it goes on, and did not spare the ancient world that saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly. And you can go on in chapter 6 and he mentions Sodom and Gomorrah and so forth.

Alright, so here's one text in the New Testament that's used as a proof text that what's going on here in Genesis 6 is angels leaving heaven, leaving their proper abode, and looking down on the daughters of men, and some of them were really attracted and they were drawn to them, and so these angels married them and had an offspring.

They would refer to this passage as proof of that. The problem is the context of 2 Peter 2. Peter in this passage is talking about God's judgment judgment upon those who are apostate teachers.

That is, those that are teaching damnable heresies. That's his context. He's talking about the God who's going to judge them. Surely he will. There will be no escape for the apostate.

None whatsoever. And to prove it he gives three examples of God's judgment. The first one is the angelic rebellion that is not a reference to Genesis 6, but the angelic rebellion that took place before Adam and Eve, before they fell in the garden.

It was a rebellion led by Lucifer. And, you know, they fell from heaven. So that's a reference to that.

And then the second one, in verse 5, is a reference to the flood that destroyed the world of the ungodly. That's coming up here in Genesis. And the third example he uses is Sodom and Gomorrah.

And he uses those three examples to say that God will judge. He will. It's sure. And here's three examples here of God's judgment. So that's what he's doing there.

And, by the way, Peter, though he talks about angels who had sinned, but he doesn't say what kind of sin it was. And so to say then that this, the sin was that they married these daughters of men, that assumes something that's not in the scripture.

The other passage is Jude 6. Jude verse 6. You say what chapter? That reveals your ignorance of Jude.

Sorry. Just one chapter. And it's verse 6. And it says, And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, he has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day.

You say, well, there it is. That proves it. It was angels. They left their proper abode, and they came down, and they saw these daughters, or these women, and so forth.

But it doesn't prove that at all. In fact, Jude's subject is the same as Peter's. He had with the exact same issue. It's the warning against apostates, and apostasy, those who crept in, Jude says.

And he gives similar examples, just like Peter did. The angelic rebellion that I just mentioned, led by Lucifer, and Sodom and Gomorrah. He mentioned Sodom and Gomorrah.

All right, now, neither Peter nor Jude gives any details concerning the nature of the angel's sin. sin. It's an assumption. You have to assume that this angel's sin is a reference to Genesis chapter 6.

But we can't base a belief on assumptions. We need to base them on Scripture. And so, to use these passages as support for angelic marriages requires a pretty shaky foundation.

salvation. All right, so, if the sons of God are not angels, and I think you probably already know that I don't believe they were, if that view is incorrect, then who are they?

Well, that leaves the fourth possibility, fourth view, and that is that they were Sethites, Sethites, or descendants of Seth.

that the sons of God is a distinction, is used to make a distinction between a group of people, a descendant of people, to distinguish them from an ungodly, unbelieving line of people.

It's Sethites, these are the sons of God, and that then would make the daughters of men Cainites, Cainites, or the descendants of Cain.

You know, this is pretty straightforward, because, you know, chapter 4, remember, places side by side two lines of man coming out of Adam.

You have Cain, deals with Cain first, the ungodly line, in chapter 4, verses 16 through 24, describe the godless descendants of Cain.

And then the chapter closes with Seth, the godly line from which one day the Redeemer would come, and you can see that clearly in Luke 3, 38, in the genealogy given in Luke chapter 3, and it ends by saying, Enosh, Seth, Adam.

Takes it all the way back to Enosh, then Seth, then Adam. And so you know then, Jesus comes out of the line of Seth, or what I'm calling the godly line.

Chapter 4, verses 25 and 26 describe the godly descendants of Seth. And it concludes, if you might remember, with the statement, then men began to call on the name of the Lord, making a clear distinction between the two groups of people, those coming out of Cain and those coming out of Seth.

And so the sons of Seth were the ones attracted by the physical beauty, the allurement of the daughters of Cain. That's not a new scenario, is it?

Being attracted by the ungodly women out there, you know. And they were attracted to them, and they married. And chapter 6 is a record, then, of the intermarriage of believers and non-believers.

Something that has been an issue since the beginning of time. And so this unrighteous practice continued for 1600 plus years, and the result was the corruption of the godly line of Seth.

The corruption of it. Almost complete corruption of the godly line. down to one family. Only one righteous family left.

And who were they? That would be Noah. Noah. And he was the only one left. And so this corruption took place for 1600 and some odd years, and it led to the destruction of all living creatures, including man.

Yet God, by His grace, and through the faith of one man and his family, he preserved the line of Seth. And aren't you glad he did?

Because that, well, it would have been the end of man if God did not favor Noah. That would have been the end of it.

God. But it continued past the judgment of God and that line continued until one day there was a son born to a descendant of Seth by the name of Joseph.

And that person was Jesus. Thank you.