A Peculiar People That Find God’s Favor 

Genesis 6:1-8

EPS: God’s wrath is kindled against humanity for sin, but one found favor in God’s sight, through whom he would rescue mankind. 

MPS: Will you be one of the peculiar people who find favor in God’s sight? 

Introduction

$186 Billion. What do you think that number represents? Total Prostitution Revenue Worldwide. What about this number? 40 million. Estimated prostitutes worldwide, 90% of which are dependent on a pimp. Or this one: $15 billion. This is the approximate yearly worth of the porn industry, $1 billion coming from the United States. In the United States, pornography generates more revenue than CBS, NBC, and ABC combined and more than all professional football, baseball, and basketball franchises. It gets worse. If you didn’t already pick up on this with the pimp stat, an extremely large percentage of this industry is tied to sex trafficking, that is the enslaving and selling of humans for sex.[1]

If there was time, I could go on and recount grievous stats about violence and genocide in our world. Did you know that there was a whole generation of likely millions of people who lived before the flood, and these people were a lot like us today… 

Today, we’re going to look at a tragic scene in the storyline of the Bible. We’re going to get a glimpse at the deep darkness of man’s heart, but also we’ll see the heart of God and his reaction to mankind’s wickedness.

But we’re also going to see a peculiar people, a remnant that found favor in the eyes of the Lord. 

Context

Last week we saw the genealogy of two lines, the line of Cain and the line of Seth. Already, the hope of an offspring crushing the Serpent as God promised in 3:15 looks slim as more and more people submit to the serpent rather than overcome him. But the promise is still alive. There are a few people mentioned who walked closely with God in contrast to these wicked men. For example, Enoch who was mysteriously raptured by the Lord. And at the end of chapter five’s genealogy, there is a hint of another, Noah. But chapter 6 pauses the story of Noah to share some more details of what the earth was like at the time. Let’s look at verse 1:

When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.

Multiplication of Wickedness

I want to say at the outset that I understand that there are some confusing and debated things in this passage. We will look at these, but first I want to take a broader look at what’s going on.  

The first verse sounds pretty good. After all, God had said “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth”, right? Humans were multiplying and God’s image was filling the earth, right? Sadly, no. 

Verse 2 shows us otherwise. There is a tight connection here between the behavior of “the sons of God” to Eve’s sin in the garden (Gen 3:6). Show slide. Just as Eve “saw” that the fruit was “good” and “took” it for herself, the sons of God, likewise, “saw” that the daughters were “attractive (good)” and “took” any they chose. We shouldn’t make much of the fact that the women are called their “wives”, because from the start, the story is painting this situation with very dark strokes. “Taking any they chose” is not innocent attraction and marriage, but a sick and sinful perversion of God’s design. These first verses provide a picture of powerful men taking whomever they please without restraint.  

So, while multiplication is happening, instead of God’s image filling the earth, the image of the serpent prevails as people’s wickedness is put on display in their sexual perversion. We were made to multiply. The question is, will we multiply for God’s purposes or for self?

God’s First Judgement 

In verse 3, we get our first look into God’s heart in response to the great darkness spreading on earth. His response is clearly negative: “My Spirit shall not abide in (or contend with) man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” God is basically saying, I cannot tolerate this wickedness forever, I will not allow my Spirit to continue giving life to those who only increase evil on earth. 

You may remember the creation scene in Genesis 2:7, where were told that God “formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life”. The word “Spirit” here is the same Hebrew word used for breath in the creation narrative. So God, who is the giver of life, has authority to limit the life he gives to mankind, and he pronounces a first judgment on mankind that shortens the life expectancy of mankind to 120 years. This is a major blow considering what we saw last week, that humans were living nearly 1000 years at that time. Just as God promised Adam and Eve, that they would die if they sinned against God, death was still the penalty for sin. As a general rule of thumb, this is the reality we live under. Most humans have a life expectancy of under 120 years, and even those years are only possible because God is merciful. 

Total Depravity

Verse 5 gives us a second glimpse of what God saw from heaven. I’ll come back to verse 4. 

5 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.

At the beginning of the creation narrative we’re told that God “saw” his creation and humanity and called it “very good”. But now he “sees” only its wickedness and distortion. 

The depravity described here is complete. God saw that “every intention” was evil. Not just every action, but every intention. Every intention “of the thoughts of [mankind’s] heart was only evil continually. This is not a description of a people that are generally good but sometimes make mistakes, as our culture so readily welcomes us to say about ourselves. No, man is described as having “every intention”, every thought of the heart, bent towards evil. The entire heart was motivated and guided by evil continually. In other words, they plot evil as a matter of lifestyle. It’s what they do.[2]These are people defined by sin. They are slaves to it. 

When you read a statement like this, it’s easy to say “man, they must have been really bad…” excusing ourselves as much more dignified and honorable than that. But friends, keeping in mind the stats I read earlier, allow me to submit to you that without Christ, we are the same. 

When left to ourselves to pursue our own freedom, our own passions, our own happiness, we don’t find ourselves seeking God and the good of our brothers and sisters, but spiraling into greater and greater depravity, enslaved to the lust of the flesh and hurting others in our selfishness. Listen to the fuller testimony of Scripture on this reality:

Romans 3:10-12 - For we have already charged that all…are under sin, as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” (c.f. Psalm 14:1-3, 53:1-3)

This is true of all of us without Christ. Further,

Jeremiah 17:9 - “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” 

We are sinful to the core. The heart is described as deceitful and desperately sick. 

Titus 1:15 - to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled.

Do you hear the totality of this statement, to the unbelieving nothing is pure. Their entire mind and conscience are defiled. This shows that even our good works are impure to God! Because ultimately, we are seeking the glory of self rather than the glory of God. Finally,

Ephesians 2:3 - we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

You cannot escape from this truth, that God deems not just pre-flood men to be totally depraved, evil to the core, but even 21st century enlightened Americans. As a result, all of us, Ephesians says, without Christ are by our very nature children of wrath.

PAUSE

Now, we will get to God’s wrath in a moment, but before we do I want to try to answer briefly the mysterious questions of this text. 

Who Are the Sons of God and the Nephilim?

I studied this question a great deal this week, and I could easily take up our entire time unpacking the different arguments, but I’m going to save that for a brief podcast. 

So, for now, I will briefly present the different positions and share with you what I believe is most plausible. 

There have been three prominent views in church history. The sons of God are 1) fallen angels who transgressed their God-given boundaries by sleeping with human women and having giant offspring 2) The sons of God are the godly line of Seth intermarrying with the ungodly daughters from Cain’s line (daughters of man). 3) they are tyrannical rulers or human kings who’s offense was polygamy, promiscuity, and rape against women under their rule. 

Each view has challenges, but I believe that the tyrannical human ruler view is the strongest for several reasons.

First, I believe the sons of God are human, not fallen angels, because of Jesus’s statement in Matthew 22:30 that humans in the resurrection will be like angels who are neither married or given in marriage. Two, as you look at the immediate context of the passage, the judgment God makes in verse 3 for the behavior of the sons of God is against man. “My Spirit will not abide in man forever.” It seems strange that God would judge mankind with such severity on the basis of what angels did. 

Further, while the case for Seth’s line intermarrying is somewhat compelling with the clear contrast between Cain and Seth’s line in chapters 4-5, I believe it is a stretch to assume that Seth’s line was entirely godly (sons of God), while Cain’s was entirely wicked (daughters of man) and it’s also difficult to see a clear separation of God’s elect people in Seth’s line as opposed to Cain’s. 

Could they be human rulers, set apart from the rest? The title “son of God” is a royal theme both in the Bible and outside of it. Within the Bible, in Psalm 82 human rulers or judges are called “gods” and “sons of the Most High” (Psalm 82:1,6-7). Royal sonship is also seen in God’s covenant made with David in 2 Samuel 7:13-16: I will be his father, and he will be my son, referring to his offspring who would rule after him.  

You find similar themes outside of the Bible in tales like the Epic Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh was known for being a very tall warrior and a tyrannical leader claimed the “right to the first night with any woman getting married.” 

So, in this interpretation “the sons of God” are the heroic tyrant kings of old. The daughters of men refer to any female in the kingdom. Therefore, the limitations on life span have the purpose of shortening the long, oppressive reigns of these tyrants.[4]

Lamech, Cain’s great grandson, is the first picture we get of this type of tyrannical leadership, but the evil seems to only grow with time. 

The Nephilim, then, are either examples of these evil rulers, called “the mighty men of old” or they are simply contemporaries of this group of tyrannical leaders in this era. 

A picture is emerging where the most powerful take whatever they want when they want it. The weak around them either submit or die. Man was made to put on display the beautiful and benevolent character of God, but instead have made themselves like gods who demand the worship and submission of all. 

Whichever position you find most compelling, there is still a clear problem that the text is addressing: that mankind has become corrupt and wicked. 

This leads us to God’s response in verse 6.

The Lord’s Regret and Judgment

6 And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 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.”

I’ve wept over these words. What a dark moment in mankind’s history. From God’s delight in his good world in chapter 1 and 2, to a humanity almost unrecognizable because of sin. The most renowned men on earth are utterly despicable, and it seems that everyone has followed suit.  

What does it mean that God had regret? Well, it would be a mistake to read into this word “regret” the idea that Yahweh considered his creation a mistake. This is not a picture of a weak God wringing his hands saying, “Oh no, what have I done?!” Rather, his regret or sorrow is based in his deep grief over humanity’s unbridled sin and the resulting pain it brings to earth.

And it grieved him to his heart. Our passage provides a window into the heart of the troubled Creator.[5] Is there any greater pain suffered than parents who witness the loss of a child, like the prodigal son? Certainly, God was grieved when Adam and Eve first sinned. Certainly, he was grieved when Cain sinned, but here is the first intimate glimpse of God’s grief over fallen humanity, overtaken by sin. 

I want you to see here the nature of our God. On the one hand, he is not a powerless and anxious God who’s purposes are entirely dependent on man, but on the other hand, he is not a robotic figure, unaffected by his creation. He is shown to be deeply affected by our actions and the results of them and yet still very much in control, which we see in verse 7.

 “I will blot out man…and animals.” 

Not only will mankind’s lifespan be shortened, their life will be snuffed out, blotted out, painted over as if it had never been there. All of this would come about in the great flood. 

If you are wondering about why animals are included in this great judgment, come back next week. Sam is going to cover that one. 

But our section ends mysteriously with a ray of hope in verse 8. 

“But Noah found favor” 

8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

At the end of chapter 5 and the genealogy, you may remember, it is prophesied that Noah would bring relief (which can also be translated rest) from their painful toil. Here we get the first glimpse of this relief, but surprisingly, it starts with God. 

This narrative gives you the sense that God is deeply pained by all humanity as he looks at the earth, but Noah offers a sense of relief when God sees him. Amongst all the men on earth, one pleased God.  

The question arises, what about Noah brought about God’s favor or pleasure? 

Well, if you read the next verse, you find this description: “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.”

So, Noah is called righteous, even blameless, one who walked with God. He is hailed for his godliness in other Scriptures (e.g. Ezek 14:14), and is called a “preacher of righteousness” in 2 Peter 2:5. 

Our minds often fall into two ruts when we read verses like these. We either see Noah as some outstanding guy who happened to swim against the tide in his generation, earning the favor of God. Or we quickly dismiss the righteous works of the man in order to say that Noah didn’t earn his salvation but only received it by grace. Favor can also be translated grace. 

But this dichotomy isn’t warranted for several reasons. On the one hand, there is clearly an elective purpose of God for Noah, displayed in the prophecy about him at birth. That’s grace. Secondly, he is said to walk with God. His good works are not portrayed as absent from relationship with God as if they could bring him into a relationship with God, but rather his relationship with God sets him apart from the rest of mankind and precedes his good works. Noah’s saving grace is his relationship with God. On the other hand, the clear interest of verse 8 is to contrast the righteous Noah with the wicked of the earth. Why wouldn’t Noah be destroyed like all the rest? Because he was a righteous man! So, a relationship with God built on his grace precedes works, but Noah’s righteous life is the fruit by which he is ultimately judged by God. 

Application:

This is where we will pause in the story today, and now, I want to bring this home for us by asking you an important question. 

When the Lord looks at your life, does he find relief, delight like he did with Noah? Or does he see you participating in all the same wicked actions of the world, whether pornography or hooking up on dating apps or lusting after the person in the gym. Does he see you picking your pleasure and doing what is right in your own eyes? Pause

2 Chronicles 16:9 shows us that God still watches humanity: “For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless[a] toward him.

God’s heart is still moved by us. He is looking for people who are completely devoted to him. 

When the Lord looks at your life, does he grieve, or is he pleased? 

The answer to this question could not be more important as this narrative unfolds. Friends, Scripture promises that in the same way that God brought judgment on the wicked, he will once again pour out his wrath and burn up all who oppose him (2 Peter 3:6-7). 

What, then, does it take to be devoted to living for God in this twisted generation? 

First, you must have a relationship with God. I can tell you this much. Apart from a relationship with God, nothing we do is pure. If left to ourselves, even our best good works are full of unholy motives and attitudes. When left to ourselves, outside of relationship with God, the Bible shows us in increasing measure that sin only multiplies in us. Age is not enough to cleanse us. Good intentions are not enough. A program is not enough. No, we need relationship with God. 

The problem is, humanity has been separated from God because of our sin. Our sin drives us away from God. So how do we get back into relationship with God? Through Christ, God’s Son. 

Listen to how the Apostle Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 5:

19 …God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them…. How? 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

If you are clinging to Jesus in faith, you don’t have to fear God’s wrath anymore. He became sin for you and took the full blunt of God’s wrath so that Jesus’s righteous record could be counted to you and you could be reconciled to God!

If that’s true of you, you have God’s favor and mercy today in unmeasurable ways. And right now, as the Lord looks upon all the people of earth, he takes delight in you because of Christ.

But there is still more to the story. Relationship with God doesn’t end with a stamped passport to heaven. Being in relationship with God changes you. You can’t get close to God and not be changed. As you see him, you see the ways you are not like him. As you see him, you see him offering incredible grace for growth to become like him. To be in relationship with him is to be adopted into his family as one of his beloved children, and the Bible teaches us that God’s children are led by God’s Spirit, and that in his strength, God’s children put to death the deeds of the flesh which seek to rise up daily. 

Noah’s life was a life built on faith in God, not self. Hebrews 11 says that he was commended for his faith and it goes on to say that without faith it is impossible to please God. What I mean is this, the life of a Christian is not defined by a self-sufficiency or self-righteousness but by faith in a big and powerful God who can not only save us from the flood of God’s wrath, but can also make us pure, can help us overcome our sin. 

And I’m not just talking about clearly unacceptable sins like lust, but even the one’s that are more acceptable in society, like discontentment, gossip,  or lack of self control with food or money. These sins and many more, the Lord wants to free us from as we surrender our lives to him. 

What leads us to act just like our pre-flood ancestors in such ungodliness? Jerry Bridges helpfully identifies the reason in his book “Respectable sins”. The problem with many professing Christians is that we are "living [our] everyday life with little or no thought of God, or of God's will, or of God's glory, or of one's dependence on God."

What set Noah apart? It’s that he lived his every day life as if he was living it before the face of God, recognizing himself as a sinner in need of grace. 

There has been a remnant of humanity that has lived in this way up to the present day. What about us?

What does God see when he looks at our church? Oh that we would be a peculiar people on this earth and please our Father in the way we work, play, and live. Oh that we would give up our evil ways and cling to Jesus and multiply his kingdom over all the earth as we long for his return. 

May it be so for all of us. Let’s pray. 

11 Since everything around us is going to be destroyed like this, what holy and godly lives you should live, 12 looking forward to the day of God and hurrying it along. 13 … we are looking forward to the new heavens and new earth he has promised, a world filled with God’s righteousness. (2 Peter 3:11-12 NLT)

[1] https://fightthenewdrug.org/how-porn-can-fuel-sex-trafficking/

[2] Mathews, K. A. (1996). Genesis 1-11:26 (Vol. 1A, p. 340). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

[3] John H. Walton, Genesis, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), 290–297.

[4] John H. Walton, Genesis, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), 290–297.

[5] Mathews, K. A. (1996). Genesis 1-11:26 (Vol. 1A, p. 339). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.