When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive and they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, My spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh. His day shall be 120 years. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth and he grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God abides forever. Amen. You may be seated. Here in these early chapters of Genesis, God is telling us the story of ancient human history. We've seen how it all started, where it all went wrong, and then how man started to form and develop, where technology came from, and how you have sons of Cain and the sons of Seth going in two different directions, one godly and the other ungodly. We've seen how these foundational histories began. But what we've also started to see is that God isn't just telling us about what happened long, long, long ago. He's telling us about ourselves. He's telling us about our own history, too. And that's because the world before the flood is like this little microcosm of all human history. It's like, imagine a snow globe and you have a snow globe and you look at it and you start to notice that, wow, that little miniature city within the snow globe, you make out different features and say, that's my neighborhood. That's my house. This looks just like my world that I live in. That's right. Genesis chapters 1 through 11 is like that. It's like a microcosm, this miniature portrait of the world we live in. It's showing us truly how it all started, but it's also telling you. This is what the world is like today. Jesus said in Luke 17, 26, just as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man. In other words, Jesus is saying you want to know what things are going to be like as you live life right up to the time of my return. Go back, read Genesis 1 through 11. There you'll get a good grasp of history in a nutshell, and you're going to see that what started off in the beginning leading up to the time of the great flood is what we're living in today, leading up to the time of great judgment. And the lesson we learn in Genesis chapter six, one through eight, is that we are worse than we think. All of us. Collectively, individually. The snow globe, when it is shaken, releases this dark black ink that covers everything. Total depravity. But that also means that God's grace is more generous than we ever imagined. We need to see this in Genesis chapter six, one through eight. Now I want us to see, provide you a basic outline for this message, the extent of our wickedness. How bad sin gets. And then I want you to see the extent of God's judgment. And then finally, you need to see the extent of God's grace. Let's look first at the extent of our wickedness as we see it in the first four or five verses here in Genesis chapter six, in order to understand how sin ripens, how it grows and develops and increases and stinks. We need to talk about the difficult part of this passage because what we have here is one of the most controversial and difficult portions of the book of Genesis. Who are the sons of God? Who are the daughters of men? Who are they and what's going on here? Who are these people in verses one through two? And I need to acknowledge right off the bat a popular view of this passage, which is not the view that I'm going to urge you to take. But it's a respectable view. One that I want to acknowledge before I move on. And it's the view that the sons of God in this passage are fallen angels who intermarry with human women and produce some sort of diabolical offspring called the Nephilim. And I don't know if you've heard this before. It sounds strange at first, but let me just say there is a reasonable case to be made for that view. As strange as it sounds, because of the way that the phrase the son of God, sons of God is used throughout the Bible. And if you look at there's several passages I could point you to after the service. It's not surprising that people take that view. But there's another view which I believe makes more sense of what's happening in this passage. And that is that in the context of Genesis 4 through 6, the sons of God are none other than the sons of Seth that we've been talking about and learning about. Who are the sons of Seth? The sons of Seth are that righteous remnant who called upon the name of the Lord in the midst of a crooked generation when the world around them Following the example of Cain, following the example of Lamech, where taking wives and taking lives, these men and their wives were worshiping God. We saw it with Enoch, right? He walked with God. We saw it with Seth. And what we see is that these two different lines of humanity, one which creates and develops, but not into God's glory. That's the sons of Cain. They go one direction and the sons of Seth call upon the name of the Lord. They're going in another direction and they're diverging and diverging and diverging. Well, what's happening with the sons of Seth when we come to Genesis chapter six? Well, we see. That's something troubling is happening. Now they fall. from faithfulness. Why? Their lust for women. It says in the passage, they saw that the daughters of men were attractive, and they took for themselves whichever ones they wanted. And in this picture, we see a picture of men who are driven by their lust, they see, they want, they take. Where have we heard that before? Genesis chapter 3, in the garden, Adam and Eve, they saw the fruit, they wanted it, they saw that it was desirable for the eyes, and they took it. And that's the same picture that we have here in Genesis chapter 6. This time it's the sons of Seth. It's that those men who were supposed to be salt in the midst of a world that was evil. They were supposed to be a lamp in the midst of a dark world. And yet what are they doing? They're acting out the paradigm of a sinful humanity. Taking, marrying whatever women they want without discretion. There's hints here of taking them by force, maybe even taking many wives for themselves. There's hints here even at that. But just like that line of Seth loses its separateness. Just like that. They lose their separateness. They lose their saltiness. Their saltiness in the midst of a world. They lose their lampstand. And they're at that point assimilated into the ungodly world. You see how that works? Happens throughout the Old Testament. when those who are called to be God's righteous people take wives from outside the church, from outside God's people, and their hearts are led astray. Their hearts more devoted to chasing women than walking with God. And God's response to all this is that what they've done is deeply wicked. Now, at this point, I need to say something because I could almost preach an entire sermon on this. I thought about it, but I just, I want to speak to the young people in this church. I want you to notice how the church in its most ancient days was led astray and fell from the place God had it to be. It fell because it did not take seriously the importance of godly Christian marriage. Marriage is meant by God to be a holy union between two believers, one believing man, one believing woman for life. And in 2nd Corinthians 614 says, Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. 1st Corinthians 7 says that we are to marry, but only in the Lord. Of course. The scripture says that if you find yourself in a marriage that is unequally yoked, you do not pursue divorce. But the scripture says you don't missionary date. You don't go after someone in order to try to win them over to the faith. You don't you don't go after someone in that way. The scripture says. That one of the reasons that you don't do this because you don't know your own heart and how liable you are to be led astray. just like the sons of Seth here. And so I need to ask the young men here in the church, are you ready to say not interested even to the prettiest girl in school when you learn she's not a serious Christian? Young women, are you are you willing to say not possible to the young man who tries to woo you? with wonderful words and talking to you, but you realize he's not a Christian, he's not serious about the faith. If you want to know if someone's serious about the faith, talk to your pastor, talk to your elders, talk to your parents. In a world filled with dirty images, are you young people ready to train your eyes to be only for the spouse that God gives you? That's another picture here. In the world of Seth and his sons, his sons look and they saw and they went after whatever attractive things they saw. Are we training a culture that feeds off lust or are we training a culture that says, not for me? A world that becomes more and more increasingly rotten by sin is what we see in this passage because it gives itself over to sexual perversion, which abandons the importance of godly marriage. But there's something else here, and it's the mention of the Nephilim. Who are those guys? Now, if you listen to some commentators, of course, I've just told you. They'll say they're the product of demons and women intermarrying. Note that in our passage, there's nothing that actually signals that the Nephilim are the offspring of the sons of God and the daughters of men. We do know something about the Nephilim though, because they're mentioned again in Numbers 13.33. And these are men of great power and violence. Men like Goliath. Men who use the power and their strength and even their giant stature in certain instances to bring down the power of the serpent upon the sons of God. To bind them. And so what we see with this mention of the Nephilim here is that the world of Genesis 6 has become more and more that snow globe filled with black ink. It is more and more rotten, is filled with sexual perversion, abandoning the godly institution of marriage, and now filled with violence to its core, and known for men of violence. It's not that far, in fact, from the world that we now know, which is ripening in sin day by day. The point of this passage is that sin has spread and it has spread to all. No one is safe from it. The sons of Seth and the sons of Cain have joined together in rebellion against God. No longer is there this large group of people, this church even, that stands out in Genesis 6 as separate. But now they've converged, the godly and the ungodly, conspired together against God in the heaven. No one is righteous, not even one. No one is righteous. Not even us. Do you see it? Total depravity. That's what we call it in theological terms. It simply means that sin has affected every one of us. No one has escaped its touch. No one has escaped the reach of the drop of poison that's been dropped in the water of humanity. and no part of us is escapable from it. None of us can say, well, my mind was wounded by sin, but my heart wasn't, or my heart was touched by the stain of sin, but my mind wasn't. No, all of us is stained by sin. Every one of us and all of us. That's what we mean by total depravity. God puts it this way in verse five. He said, every intention of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually. Wow. So that's where the sin of the sons of God and the daughters of man come from. That's where the Nephilim emerged from. The men of violence come from. It's from the heart, from the wicked heart. Now listen to that again. Every intention of the thought of man's heart was only evil continually. You hear that. If you're anything like me, you say, now come on. That seems a little harsh. Only evil continually? Because I know people who tend to be pretty nice to me, and some who aren't even Christian, and they're very nice people, and they take care of their sons and daughters, and they seek to be a force for good in the world. Only evil continually? Yes, here's why. Even the outwardly good things that people do are mixed with selfish motives. Even the best things, and we can call them good things, we can say that in a sense, What someone will do is good or benefiting to society, but even that falls short of what God intended to be, which is what? An act of worship unto Him. God looks at humanity in Genesis 6 and He says, my assessment of humanity, you want to know really what it is? None of them love me. None of them really worship me. They're stained by evil. They serve themselves. They do good when it's convenient for them. And the things they call good are not actually good. The scales of justice are disrupted. And that's why God reacts, responds to Genesis chapter six with the extent of judgment, which he does. First, let me just ask, friends, do you see your sin like this? Do you see yourselves like this? Or do you pat yourself on the back and say, well, I'm not like him. I'm not like her. I'm pretty good when I think about it. Do you see that when you stand before the holiness of God, that all of us have, according to Romans 3, fallen short of His righteous, perfect standard, and that everything we do on our own strength, apart from His grace, is only evil continually, total depravity? Here's another way that Scripture puts this. You are dead in your sins. Dead in your sins. That's why God responds to our increasing wickedness, starting in the heart, spreading into society, resulting in acts of perversion and wickedness, trying to scrub the church away from humanity. And he responds to it with what? with judgment, with judgment. Judgment is God's response to man's wickedness. God hates sin with a holy revulsion. And you hear that in the scripture, this text, it says that the Lord regretted that he had made man on earth. It grieved him to his heart. Now, think about this. We know that the Lord God does not change. He does not change his mind. He's not reacting like man does. But Moses is grabbing a hold of human language and trying to show us God's deep hatred of sin in such a way that we can understand. So where does he go to? He goes to the picture of someone who regrets deeply what they've done. Someone who's pierced to the heart about something. Think about the last time you grieved something you did. Think about the last time you were deeply hurt by someone or something you saw and it got so deep you hated it. That's the picture here. Of God responding to sin with such revulsion that he hates it to his core. See, sin is rebellion against God. It twists the beautiful world God designed. It turns it upside down. And that's why God can't simply frown or wag his finger in disappointment. Some people will try to tell you that. They go, oh yeah, yeah, we sin, we all make mistakes, but God's a good God. He overlooks that, right? You understand that such a perspective does not nearly take sin seriously enough. If sin grieves God to his heart, if it is rebellion against him, if it takes the beautiful world that he's created and flips it upside down in an attack against the maker, then God cannot simply overlook that sin. By his nature, he must punish sin. He must punish the sinner. And that's what he says he's going to do. He says, look, I will wipe out mankind. That's strong language, isn't it? I will wipe out mankind off the face of the earth. In case you don't take sin seriously enough, there it is. He sets a firm 120-year limit to man's rebellion. Did you notice that? He says, his life shall be 120 years. Some people think that saying he's going to take these long lifespans, 800 years, 900 years, and whittle them down to 120. Now, there's no doubt that that's happened as a result of sin, as a consequence of sin. But that's not what the Lord's talking here about. Because if you actually count 120 years from this point, you get to what? The flood, the biblical cosmic flood that sweeps over all the earth in judgment, wiping out mankind with water. Now there's a lesson here for anyone, and I'm speaking to myself, I want you to know that. I'm speaking to myself and I'm also speaking to you. There is a lesson here for the sinner who thinks he can safely sin. If you think that you can continue in sinful rebellion against God and hope that he somehow overlooks it, you're dreadfully wrong. Because Genesis 6, again, remember, it's a little snow globe. It's a microcosm of the picture of all human history. What God is doing in Genesis chapter 6, responding to sin with a global flood, with global judgment, is what he is going to do on the last day. You say, you know, pastor, I don't like talk about fire and brimstone and hell. But the reality is, that the Lord has warned us over and over and over and over again, that's what is coming to those who persist in sin apart from repentance. I say this with nothing but, I pray, love and concern in my heart. Repent now before it's too late. There's a flood coming, but it's not going to be a flood of water. It's a flood, the scripture tells us, a fire and final judgment. And none of us, not one of us can say, well, I don't deserve that. Maybe them, but not me. Can any of us say that we have stood up to the holiness of God? Can any of us look at the 10 commandments as Jesus unpacks them in the Sermon on the Mount, for instance? Can any of us look at how murder is not just taking someone's life like Cain did, but much more than that. It is hating our brother in our heart, looking at someone and saying, you fool. We do that when we're driving down the street. Yeah, repent now before it's too late. Because we've all fallen short of the glory of God No one is righteous. No, not one. No one is righteous. No, not even us. The extent of our wickedness, it's worse than we think. The extent of God's judgment, it's coming and it's more deserving than we think. But right here at the end of the passage, we're reminded of the extent of God's grace. I was really encouraged to bring this to you after seeing the increasing corruption on the earth. But the Lord serves it to us on a silver platter without me having to even go to another passage right there in verse eight. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Now think about this for a moment. Think about what we've just seen in a world gone wrong, in a world that looks pretty much exactly like ours and counting. And then picture, appreciate how suddenly the Lord turns and puts before you this one man, this Noah. And he says that he's found favor with him. We see this amazing grace of the Lord, this undeserved favor, this undeserved kindness in that favor given to one man. Now, Noah, who preserves God's elect from the flood, who preserves a remnant in the midst of God's deserving judgment. He didn't earn favor. He didn't achieve favor. He finds favor in the Lord. For by grace, we have been saved through faith. This is not of our own doing. It's the gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast. This is what we see in Noah. The Lord showing his kindness unto undeserving sinners. to a church that's all but apostatized. And there he says, but I preserve one man, Noah. Do you know that this is the first time in the whole scriptures that that word grace appears? The word favor, it's the same word for grace in the Bible. And it's brought out here for the first time, served you on a silver platter. Have you found favor in the Lord? You won't find it in your own strength. Do you know what your own strength looks like? Total depravity. Increasing sin, violence, sexual perversion. Abandoning godly marriages. Pursuing our own image driven appetite. But the Lord in his kindness, the Lord in his grace, the Lord in his mercy finds favor with undeserving sinners, not because of anything in us, but because of Jesus Christ. You see, Jesus is the greater Noah. He represents us. He's that one man, like Noah, who has an ark around him, an ark of salvation that preserves us through the flood but not a flood of water, the flood of final judgment. Jesus, we're going to see in following weeks that he preserves us through that deserving flood of judgment. Why? Because he himself took the punishment upon himself. He himself was wiped out from the face of the earth in the judgment that fell upon him on the cross. Are you believing in this greater Noah, this Jesus? In him, safe in him, you will find favor with the Lord. Safe in him, you will be delivered from the coming wrath. Safe in him, your depravity will be overcome and you can, in this wicked generation, live as a light, live as the church, live as a lampstand. We're going to see all of this in the upcoming weeks, but you need to be clear about something. This is God's grace. We're worse than we think, but God's grace is greater than we ever imagined. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you. For the grace of the Lord Jesus, which saves us from our sins, which saves us from the coming flood. Lord, it is disturbing to look at what sin does when it is left to itself, the way it grows like a mushroom in the dark and takes over everything that is good and corrupts that which is noble. Lord, sin pretends that things are good when in reality, to the heart, they are evil. But Lord, We ask that you would save us from this, preserve us, not because of something you found favorable in us, but because of your free grace. We pray that, Lord, we would be spared from the coming wrath, safe in the Lord Jesus Christ, for we know that there is no salvation apart from him. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.