Imagine if you could take your iPhone back to the beginning of time and record only the most significant events. The rules are you can only shoot video in one place, from one angle (or perspective), at any one time. You would film God’s Spirit hovering over the chaotic darkness (Genesis 1:1-2). You would film God separating light and darkness, forming the universe, shaping the heavens and earth, dividing the waters, the land and sea, creating the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the various land animals (Genesis 1). You would zoom into God forming Adam from red clay, breathing life into his body, and making him a living soul. Then God forming Eve from Adam’s side (Genesis 2). You would take notice of the beautiful garden. The prominence of the Tree of Morality (Good/Evil), and Tree of Immortality (Life), and God walking along with Adam and Eve. You would capture God’s warnings to Adam and Eve. You would capture the crafty serpent, his seduction of Eve, the three-pronged curses that fell up Satan, then Eve, then Adam. You would have captured Adam and Eve’s eviction from paradise.
But then you would have put the camera of Eve, not Adam. Why? Because through an offspring of Eve, God promised to crush the head of Satan. Through Eve’s seed would come the Christ, the Messiah. We know from the vantage point of the New Testament that this messiah would be Jesus of Nazareth. When Eve becomes pregnant, the focus shifts to Cain. Perhaps he’d be the Satan-crushing offspring right? But when Cain kills Abel, and falls under a curse, the focus shifts back to Eve. As we saw last week Eve becomes pregnant with a third child named Seth. It's through the lineage of Seth (not the murderous lineage of Cain and Lamech) that God will fulfill his promise to bring life.
From Seth would come Enosh. Genesis 4:26 says, “A son was born to Seth also, and he named him Enosh. At that time people began to call on the name of the Lord.” Then a few generations later comes Enoch. Genesis 5:24 says, “Enoch walked with God; then he was not there because God took him.” And after many other generations comes Noah—all from the lineage of Seth. Genesis 5:29 says, “And he [Noah’s Father Lamech—not to be confused with Cain’s offspring Lamech] named him Noah, saying, “This one will bring us relief from the agonizing labor of our hands, caused by the ground the Lord has cursed.”
Genesis fast-forwards from Seth to Noah. It pauses on Enosh. It pauses on Enoch. But notice the glaring focus of Genesis. Eve thought Cain would be the Promised Satan-crusher, but nope! Maybe Seth. Nope! Maybe Enosh. Maybe Enoch. Nope! Now were here in Genesis 5-6. Maybe Noah? Nope. Genesis 5:32, “Noah was 500 years old, and he fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth.” Which son!!
The promised Christ, Messiah, Satan-crushing offspring of Eve… this is the golden thread of Scripture. It’s interwoven through every book of the Bible Genesis to Revelation. Every chapter, every verse. The whole of Scripture (the whole script, the whole plot) centers on Jesus. If you, (Mr or Mrs Cameraman), keep your eye on the successive offspring of Eve, you eventually come to Jesus of Nazareth!
But in Genesis 6 we take a very dark detour. Genesis 6:1-4 says, “When mankind began to multiply on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of mankind were beautiful, and they took any they chose as wives for themselves. 3 And the Lord said, “My Spirit will not remain with mankind forever, because they are corrupt. Their days will be 120 years.” 4 The Nephilim were on the earth both in those days and afterward, when the sons of God came to the daughters of mankind, who bore children to them. They were the powerful men of old, the famous men.”
Genesis 6 alludes certain “sons of God” (presumable non-humankind, perhaps angelic-kind) intermarrying with humankind, producing powerful male offspring known as Nephilim. Jospehus, the Jewish Historian, seems to connect the Nephilim with Greek mythology. In Greek Mythology we find fascinating tales of notorious, human-like, god-like beings who conducted their affairs with man. As intriguing as the identity of Nephilim might be—notice that the Genesis writer who knew exactly who these Nephilim were—is quite disinterested. WHY? Because there is no golden thread—no salvation hope—running through the Nephilim. Through Greek Mythology. Through whoever or whatever they were.
The reason I mention this is because maybe there can be some “slight” shades of “truthishness” to “some” of the ancient, spiritual, mythological histories we find throughout embedded in cultures around the world. The point true or not, there is no salvation found under any name other than Jesus of Nazareth.
The Genesis cameraman takes us to Genesis 6:5-7, “When the Lord saw that human wickedness was widespread on the earth and that every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time, 6 the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and he was deeply grieved. 7 Then the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I created, off the face of the earth, together with the animals, creatures that crawl, and birds of the sky—for I regret that I made them.”
*No doctrine (in all of Scripture) is more profoundly shocking… repulsive… hideous… vile… disgusting… offensive… than Genesis 6:6-7. Twice it says God regretted making humankind. It says God was, “deeply grieved” that every inclination of man’s mind was only evil all the time. Man’s lifespan shortened to 120 years. The Lord threatens to withdraw his Spirit.
Sometime do this exercise. Grab a notepad and pen. Skim your Bible cover to cover. Make a list of everything that enrages the heart of God. Honestly assess how well you know the heart of God. You will see plainly that what God calls evil, man calls good. What we call good, God calls evil. There is a complete inversion of good and evil… a perversion of good.
In Genesis 3, Satan lies about good and evil, life and death. “Did God really say don’t eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil? You won’t die! If you sin, you’ll be more fully alive than ever! You’ll be like God!” But Satan didn’t stop there. Did God really say multiply and fill the earth? Did God really say “binary, male and female?” Did God really say “God made male and female one… in marriage.” “Why did you feel ashamed of your nakedness? Why did you cover yourself up? Nakedness is true freedom. Free the whatever.” When Jesus died on the cross, he said, “this is my body… sacrificed for the life of the world.” Now “this is my body” is the rallying cry (a kind of sacrament) of those who sacrifice not their own life, but that of their unborn child. And men are right in the center of it all, passively nodding along, like Adam. Satan is the master inverter of good and evil, the perverter of everything good.
The corruption of the earth spills over into all creation, even “creatures” are affected. Genesis 6:11-12, “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with wickedness. God saw how corrupt the earth was, for every creature had corrupted its way on the earth.” It’s interesting as we come to Genesis 6-7 we have the sudden mention of clean and unclean animals. In Genesis 1, God creates animals “good” within distinct categories. There are fish of the sea, birds of the air, domesticated animals, and wild animals. So whenever an animal becomes predatorial, taking the blood of its victim, it becomes unclean! Think of a hawk swooping down to eat a rabbit. Whenever an animal begins operating outside its categorization, it becomes unclean. A goat is clean because it’s a vegetarian, and digestively, chews its own cud. A pig is unclean because though it eats roots, or what not, it will also eat a dead carcass, or consume lifeblood of living creature.
There is an extremely robust explanation that can be given about how something is deemed clean or unclean but the key point is that now even the animal kingdom is become corrupted. By the way, the basis for moral law is simple observation. Is something operating according to the good purpose for which it was created? Men ought to be men. Women women. They ought to have natural relations with one another. The womb ought to nurture life, and not be disturbed. Man should fill the earth with human life, and life in principle, … and not be unclean, or predatorial like Cain, or like Lamech, or like birds of prey.
So here is humankind, here are all the creatures of the earth, become altogether corrupted, unclean. Genesis 6:8 says, “Noah, however, found favor with the Lord.” Genesis 6:9 says, “These are the family records of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among his contemporaries; Noah walked with God. 10 And Noah fathered three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.” Spoiler alert. Noah is not the Messiah, the Christ. The godly line will continue with Shem. Maybe Shem? Genesis 6:13-14a, “Then God said to Noah, ‘I have decided to put an end to every creature, for the earth is filled with wickedness because of them; therefore I am going to destroy them along with the earth. 14 Make yourself an ark of gopher wood.’”
Genesis 6:17-18, “17 Understand that I am bringing a flood—floodwaters on the earth to destroy every creature under heaven with the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. 18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark with your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives.”
Now you can read the account of the flood in Genesis 6-7. Genesis 7:5 says, “Noah did everything that the Lord commanded him.” Genesis 7:9-10 says, “From the animals that are clean, and from the animals that are not clean, and from the birds and every creature that crawls on the ground, 9 two of each, male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, just as God had commanded him. 10 Seven days later the floodwaters came on the earth.”
Genesis 7:18-24 says, “The water surged and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 19 Then the water surged even higher on the earth, and all the high mountains under the whole sky were covered. 20 The mountains were covered as the water surged above them more than twenty feet. 21 Every creature perished—those that crawl on the earth, birds, livestock, wildlife, and those that swarm on the earth, as well as all mankind. 22 Everything with the breath of the spirit of life in its nostrils—everything on dry land died. 23 He wiped out every living thing that was on the face of the earth, from mankind to livestock, to creatures that crawl, to the birds of the sky, and they were wiped off the earth. Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark. 24 And the water surged on the earth 150 days.”
Modern man rejects Genesis 5-7 on several fronts. First, modern man utterly rejects any notion of God. Second, even if you’re granted the assumption of God’s existence, there is no way God could be that angry or wrathful or vengeful. Third, the modern scientific “consensus” (this includes the overwhelming consensus of geologists) utterly rejects a flood of Genesis 7 magnitude happened.
I am not a geologist, nor a scientist. I don’t have the luxury in a sermon of laying out the case for or against a global catastrophic flood. Yet I’ve stumbled across a number of things of great curiosity to me. . .
A few years ago the President of the Coal Mine in Elkhart attended Lakeside. He was a simple, German man. One of the hardest working, no-nonsense straight-shooters I’ve ever met. I asked him what he thought about Genesis 7. The next week he brought me a piece of coal he found, from hundreds of feet beneath the ground in Elkhart. It contained a fossil of a seashell. A tsunami of something washed over central North America, burying ancient greenery, compressing it into coals lines, mixed with seashells, that stretch from here to the Mississippi. Something cataclysmic happened sometime. Something cataclysmic rapidly buried masses of animals and rapidly froze mammoths in perfectly preserved states. I’m for the truth—but something big happened.
And then there is human memory. Ancient cultures on every continent have ancient flood accounts. The North American Indians. The South American tribes. The Ancient Near East, the Ancient Far East. Every culture on every continent believed and passed on accounts of a cataclysmic flood that touched every corner of the earth. But there is only one account that is quite explicit in detail—and it’s the one found in your Bible. We get the name of guy, the name of his family members, an account of the circumstances, the dimensions of the boat, an inventory of contents, the scope of the event, and a theological explanation for why God destroyed every living thing by water!
Josephus, a Jewish historian, contemporary of Jesus, details the precise location of the ark. He describes inhabitants of the land near a mountain in Armenia showing off pieces of the well-preserved timbers of the ark. He enumerates renowned writers, and their accounts of the ark. He mentions how Adam warned Seth that God would one day destroy the world, either by water or fire. So the ancestors of Seth, anticipating God’s judgement, decided to preserve their great wisdom by creating two pillars—one pillar of stone, and one of brick. Surely one of these pillars would survive the flood or fire to inform any survivors about their earliest human history! Josephus says matter of factly, that one of those pillars was still standing “in the land of Siriad” at the time of Jesus!
There is a Grand Canyon of reasons to believe Genesis 5-7, and to not dismiss the flood as pure myth. But here is the clear viewpoint of Genesis. We live into a deeply moral universe created by a profoundly personal and holy God. The arc of human existence spirals ever closer, ever faster toward death. In whom will we find salvation and life? Where is this seed, the offspring of Eve? Where is this supposed Christ, this Messiah, is it Noah? Is it one of his three sons? Will God’s word and promises be vindicated?