Genesis Chapter 6 Part 1

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

And welcome back to our study in Genesis. Today we're going to be in chapter six. We're going to talk about a lot of things: the sons of God, the daughters of men, the Nephilim. We just finished Genesis chapter 5, the genealogy of mortality. Ten men, 900-year lifespans, one man taken without dying, and one final birth, talking about Noah, who was carrying the hope of the rest of us that would go on for generations and generations. Now we step into Genesis chapter 6, one of the most important and debated chapters of the entire Old Testament. And it opens with four of the most controversial verses in the Bible, four of the most discussed verses in the Bible. Genesis chapter 6, verses 1 through 4, just those four verses. We've talked about the sons of God, the daughters of men, and the Nephilim. And I need to be up front with you as we read through this text. This passage has generated more debate, more varied interpretation, more wild speculation than perhaps any other four verses in all of Genesis. And you've probably heard some of these interpretations: fallen angels coming to earth and producing giant offspring, demonic hybrids, ancient alien theories, secret knowledge that was passed down from divine beings to humanity. And we're going to look at all of that honestly and we're going to show where those ideas came from. And we're going to examine the strongest arguments from all sides. And then my prayer is that we will let the text itself, read in its full context, lead us to the most defensible conclusion in all of this. Because I believe that when you read Genesis chapter 6, verses 1 through 4 very carefully, in the context, in light of everything that Genesis chapter 4 and Genesis chapter 5 have been building upon, the passage loses a lot. Instead, what it is, is it's a logical yet devastating conclusion to the story that Moses has been telling. So let's read the text here. We'll be in Genesis chapter 6. Let's start in verse 1. It says, Now it came about when men began to multiply on the face of the land that the daughters were that and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took wives for themselves whomever they chose. Then the Lord said, My spirit shall not strive with men forever, because he also is flesh, and nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. And then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of their thoughts of the thoughts of their heart, of his heart, was only evil continually. Now, in these four verses, and they've been debated for three thousand plus years. And so I want to start carefully building our case, and so that you can, at the end of this, really make a decision on what you believe based on the context here. So, first, before we look at the text too closely, we need to map out the interpretive landscape. Because there are three main positions that scholars have held on this passage dating back to the early church and actually even before that, in what is called the silent years, the intertestamental period. And the first of those is called the fallen angel interpretation. Now, this view, the fallen angel interpretation, this view holds that the sons of God are supernatural beings, angels who left their proper domain. They took human women as their wives and produced offspring called the Nephilim, that they're giants, that they were powerful, and they were semi-divine beings. And this interpretation was widespread in Second Temple Judaism, which we're going to talk a lot about later. But what that is, the Second Temple Judaism was a period between the Old and the New Testaments, between Malachi and the announcement of the birth of John the Baptist. And then also that interpretation is found extensively in texts like 1 Enoch and Jubilees. Now, some New Testament texts have been read as supporting this view of fallen angels. Those texts are 2 Peter 2, verse 4, Jude verse 6, and 1 Peter 3, verses 19 and 20. So that's the first view, the fallen angel. The second view is what is called the royal dynasty interpretation. Now, this view was held by some, not all, but some ancient Jewish commentators and by very few modern scholars. And this view understands the sons of God as powerful kings or rulers in the ancient Near East. In that culture, kings were sometimes called sons of God or the sons of the gods. And so, under this reading, the passage is describing powerful rulers who were taking women by force, polygamy and tyranny, all at the royal level. So that's the second view. The third view is what's called the Sethite interpretation. Now, this view is important because it was held by the majority of early church fathers and by the majority of evangelical scholars today. And this understands the sons of God as people who were in the line of Seth, the godly line, the line that called upon the name of the Lord, and the daughters of men were the line of Cain. Now, under this reading, Genesis chapter 6, verses 1 through 4, is the story of the collapse of the boundary between the two lines that Genesis has been carefully tracing in chapter 4 and 5. In other words, Genesis chapter 4 through 5 have been developing these two sides. On one side you have Cain and one side you have Seth. And now chapter 6 shows those two lines that were separate now coming back together. The holy line, Seth's line, intermarries with the ungodly line, guided by physical attraction alone. And the result was a spiritual and moral corruption that reached a horrible level that would trigger the judgment, which is the flood. Now, I will tell you, this is the position that I believe the text most strongly supports. And I want to make the case for it very carefully, not by dismissing the other views, but by showing you what the text itself says when it's read in actual context when it's read in its actual context. So let me make the case for you against the fallen angel view. First, and I think this is probably the most important, is there's a theological problem. And the theological problem exists not because of something that I think, but because of what Jesus actually said about angels. And this is the most significant theological objection from the lips of Jesus himself. In Matthew chapter 22, verse 30, Jesus said, For in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. So what Jesus does is he directly states that angels do not marry. Now, proponents of the fallen angel bew will often respond, well, Jesus said angels do not marry in heaven, but these are fallen angels, so they were not in heaven, so the same rules don't apply to them. And look, that's a possible response, but there's another problem with that. Marriage and sexual reproduction require a physical biological body. Angels in every biblical description that we see are spirit beings. They do not have DNA, they do not have chromosomes. When angels appear physically in scripture, they are taking on a temporary physical form, not permanently, uh not a permanently embodied biological being capable of fathering children. The Nephilim being described as mighty men, men of renown, it doesn't require a supernatural uh parent from an angel. It requires nothing more than powerful, celebrated human beings. The fallen angel view requires us to believe that spiritual beings can not only take on a human body permanent enough to in a form to reproduce, but they did so in such a way that produced biological offspring who then had children of their own and continue down that line of passing on these genes. That goes far beyond anything scripture explicitly teaches about the nature of angels. It actually goes against history. And then there's the problem of context. And this is kind of where I land on a lot of my studies. I always want to look at things within their context, not taking verses individually. And you have to remember this in Genesis chapter 4 and Genesis chapter 5, they've been telling us a story, been building the story for us. And so this is a very compelling argument. And it's one that I think a lot of people miss because what happens when we read the Bible, for some reason, we take passages in isolation. You have to remember this: that the Bible was not written with the chapters and the verses, and no particular sentence was designed to be taken out of context, to be pulled out of the text and used individually. I've argued against these things for years. Jeremiah 29, 11, Philippians 4.13, things like that should not be taken out of context. And this is one of those in Genesis chapter 6, verses 1 through 4, that if we take it in isolation, we pull it from the scripture and read it by itself, you know, it means something crazy. But if we read it within the context of chapter 4, chapter 5, and then going on into verses 5 and beyond, then what we can see is what it actually means. So I want you to look at the structure that Moses has put together here, what he's constructed for these last couple of chapters. In Genesis chapter 4, we see the line of Cain, murder, exile, the uh the city, music, metalwork, Lamech's crazy song of vengeance. And then at the end of chapter 4, in verses 25 and 26, we see the development of the line of Seth, appointed, calling on the name of the Lord. And Genesis chapter 5 is then tracing the genealogy of Seth's line, of people who were walking with God, carrying the promise. And so there were two lines of genealogy that were carefully deliberated. They were, they were, they were, they were distinguished throughout two full chapters. And now in Genesis chapter 6, verse 1, it opens with the words when men began to multiply on the face of the land. So we had just have to ask the question, which men? We have to go back to chapter 5 and chapter 4 to really get that. And the context of those two chapters, in Genesis chapter 4 specifically, makes it clear that we were talking about the men of Cain's line, because they have been building and multiplying and spreading. And so the sons of God, these are Seth's lines, saw that the daughters of men, Cain's line, the Canaanite or our Canaan line, were beautiful, and they took wives for themselves, whomever they choose. Now, the key phrase is whomever they choose, because this is the language of self-determination. This is the language of desire without discernment or attraction without a covenant commitment to the things of God. The sons of God, the godly line, Seth's line, began choosing wives based on physical beauty alone, without regard for faith or without regard for the line, without regard for the promise of Genesis chapter 3, verse 15 that was running through their family. This is the collapse of Seth's line, not through violence like Cain, not through warfare, but through marriage, through desire, through the through the oldest of human temptations. And look, there's also the grammatical arguments where we're talking about sons of God in the Old Testament. The fallen angel view leans heavily on that phrase, sons of God. And people who hold this view will point out that in Job chapter 1, verse 6, in Job chapter 2, and verse 1, and then in Job chapter 38, I believe it's verse 7, that this points out that this is talking about the sons of God being angelic beings. And in that interpretation, those verses are correct. Those are talking about angelic beings. The sons of God are angels who are presenting themselves before God. But the phrase sons of God is not a technical term that's exclusively used for angels throughout scripture. Its meaning, when those words are used, has to be determined by the context. For example, in John chapter 1, verse 12, we read to those who received him, he gave the right to become children of God. So if you, according to that verse, if you're a follower of Jesus, you are a son or a daughter of God. In Romans chapter 8, verse 14, it says, Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. In Galatians chapter 3, verse 26, Paul says, For you are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ. And so sons of God in the broader context is a relational term, a covenant term. It describes those who are in a covenant relationship with God. In the context of Genesis, where Seth's line has been established and it's called, and this line calls on the name of the Lord, the the title, Sons of God, is a natural and fitting description of the covenant line who is calling upon the name of the Lord. Deuteronomy chapter 14, verse 1 confirms this usage. When it says there, you are the sons of the Lord your God. And this is addressed to Israel. This isn't addressed to angels. And so God Himself, the scriptures themselves, were saying, you are sons of God. And so here is something that surprises most people when they look into this. The fallen angel interpretation was popular during Second Temple Judaism and in some early Christian circles. But it was the Seth or Sethite interpretation that became dominant among the church fathers. And it was held by some of the greatest theological minds in all of Christian history. It was Julius in the early third century. Julius was one of the first Christian scholars to systematically argue for the Seth view. And he wrote extensively on this, that the sons of God were the descendants of Seth, who had been consecrated to God, and that the daughters of men were the descendants of Cain. And he said that the intermarriage of those two lines produced a moral corruption that would lead to the flood. By the fourth century, Christian scholars argued forcefully against the fallen angel view. One writer even said, how could angels have relations with women? This is impossible, according to the scriptures. The sons of God are clearly the godly descendants of Seth, who degraded themselves by intermarrying with the ungodly line of Cain. Now, Augustine devoted significant sections in his writing called the City of God to this passage. He explicitly rejected the fallen angel interpretation. He argued that the sons of God were citizens of the city of God, the Seth line, and that the daughters of men were citizens of the earthly city, the Cain line. He saw this passage as a tragic, what he called a tragic merger of the two cities that Moses had been tracing through all of human history. By the time the fifth century came around, the primary teaching was that the sons of God were those who had inherited worship of God through Seth's line, and that their intermarriage with the line of Cain caused the godly line to be absorbed into corruption. Now, I'll share this with you. These are not minor figures. These were the views of some of the most influential theologians in all of church history, and they all rejected the fallen angel view. The fallen angel view gained significant traction in some early traditions through writings like 1st Enoch and during the Second Temple Judaism. But it was never the unanimous or even majority position of any of the Orthodox Church fathers for the most part. There were a few who varied based on the timing, and I'll share those in just a few minutes. Now, let's look at the actual word Nephilim. This is an important word because it's almost always misrepresented. I have sat in churches for 20 years and heard people teach, Sunday school teachers, pastors, I've heard evangelists, I've heard people talk about this, and it's always, always misrepresented. And the Hebrew word for Nephilim has been translated in several ways. And I think it's important to track those. Number one, it was the Septuagint or the Septuagint, depending on how you pronounce that, which was the ancient Greek Old Testament that translated the word giants. Now it's important you understand that it was ancient Greek in the time in which that was translated. Another word that was translated meant fallen ones. Nephilim translated to fallen ones from the Hebrew word or the root that meant to fall. And then there was a third that just meant the mighty, which reflected on their description in the text. Now, the most common assumption, especially in pop culture, is that Nephilim means giants. And the reason for that is the one I mentioned earlier, is because of the Septuagint translation. The Greek translators rendered Nephilim as a word in Greek, which means earthborn or from the earth, not necessarily meaning physically enormous. But over time, the Greek word came to be associated. I want you to catch this. Remember Greek Septuagint. The Greek word came to be associated with giant figures in Greek mythology. And the assumption of a physical size somewhere along the line got attached to the word Nephilim and has stayed there. But look at what the text itself says about the Nephilim. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. Those were mighty men of old, men of renown. Mighty men, men of renown. That's important. The Hebrew word for mighty men here means warriors or champions, men of great power or valor, and men of renown, literally men of the name. That's what it means. It means famous men, celebrated men, men whose names were known to other people. The text does not say that the Nephilim were physically enormous. It says they were powerful, celebrated warriors. Now, that description fits perfectly with what we would expect from the offspring of the merged lines, men of the Seth line, with their longevity and God-given capacity, when they intermarried with Cain's line, with their cultural prowess, with their drive for earthly glory, producing celebrated, powerful men who became legendary in a pre-flood world. Now, proponents of the giant theory will almost always point out Numbers chapter 13, verse 33, where the Israelite spies reported seeing the Nephilim in the land of Canaan. Again, context is so important. This is what the verse says. It says, There also we saw Nephilim, the sons of Enoch, are part of the Nephilim, and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight. It was how they felt, is what they're saying. You have to read that very carefully, because this is a report by ten frightened spies who were overwhelmed by the fortified cities and powerful people of Canaan. The same spies who were clearly prone to exaggeration, with the exception of Caleb and Joshua, who completely disagreed with the other spies' assessment. And then there is a significant textual question here that has to come up. The Nephilim were on the earth before the flood, and the flood was a global judgment intended to wipe out the corruption of that generation. So here's my question. How would the Nephilim, however they're understood, survive a global flood? The only answer to that question is that either God failed at what he was going to do and didn't wipe out all of the population, and it wasn't just Noah and his family that survived, or whoever these Nephilim were, all died, and the spies in Numbers chapter 13 were exaggerating. And this is actually, in my opinion, possibly the strongest argument against the fallen angel view, because I believe that God accomplishes what he sets out to accomplish. If the Nephilim were angelic human hybrids to store In the flood, then how are they appearing again 400 years later in Canaan? And the most straightforward answer is that the word Nephilim in Numbers chapter 13 is being used by the spies loosely to describe not giants, but powerful, imposing warriors who reminded them of the legendary figures they had heard about from the past. The same way that we might call a powerful or big athlete a giant, not meaning he is literally 12 feet tall. We might meet Shack and say, wow, that guy's a giant. At least I think he's 7'2. He's not a literal giant. He's just really big compared to us. Or we might see a really, really big army and say, wow, that's a huge, enormous army. It doesn't mean that they're giants out there, it just means a lot of them. The sons of Enoch were tall people, and that's really clear from the narratives that we read. But the connection to the pre-flood Nephilim is a literary and cultural issue. It's not genetic. Verse 4 back in Genesis chapter 6 says, the Nephilim were on the earth in those days. Catch this. It says, and also afterward. And this is another phrase that they use to defend the fallen angel view. The phrase and also afterward is suggesting to, according to the fallen angel view, that Nephilim existed before and after the flood. And therefore they must have survived or been recreated somehow. But the most natural reading of that phrase within its context is that it's referring to the time period of the events being described, not a statement that Nephilim continued after the flood. Many Hebrew scholars understand these words also afterward as a what's called a clarifying note, saying that this kind of intermarriage and the resulting powerful offspring happened repeatedly during the flood era, not just one time. It was a phrase describing the duration of the problem, not prophesying that the Nephilim would survive the judgment that God is about to pronounce. Now, let's step back just for a second because from the debate for a moment and ask an important question. What is this passage doing in the flow of Genesis? Remember, we've been watching these two lines run through chapter four and chapter five. The line of Cain building, inventing, glorifying self, culminating with Lemech's crazy song of vengeance. And then the line of Seth, appointed, calling to God, walking with God, and carrying the promise. The eventual seed would come through from Genesis chapter 3, verse 15. These two lines have been kept distinct. Moses has been at pains to show us the contrast. And now in Genesis chapter 6, verses 1 through 4, that contrast collapses. The sons of God, Seth's line, saw the daughters of men, Cain's line, and that they were beautiful, and they took them, whoever they choose or chose. And so you're again you're talking about physical attraction. That's how they chose, without spiritual discernment, personal desire, without even considering the covenant, the eyes leaning the heart, without any consultation with God. And this is the same pattern from Genesis chapter 3, verse 6, when it says that the woman saw that it was good and a delight to the eyes. Same eyes, the same self-directed choosing, the same bypassing of God's word in favor of personal desire. And so what you're seeing is the fall repeats itself on a global or civilizational scale. You have the godly line, the line that carried the promise of Genesis chapter 3, verse 15, who didn't, they didn't need an external supernatural enemy to come and corrupt them. They corrupted themselves from within through undiscerning marriage choices. And what was the result? It was a powerful, celebrated, famous men who had no fear of God. And then you had the Seth line's capacity and Cain's line's ambition all merged together without God at the center of them. And that produced exactly the kind of civilization that verse 5 will describe as utterly and irredeemably corrupt. Now I want to linger on this phrase because I think it's doing an enormous theological work when it says they took wives from themselves, whoever they choose or whoever they chose. The Hebrew verb here is the same word used throughout the Old Testament for wise selection or a deliberate choice. But in the context, it indicates a choice made without a reference to God. It echoes what we'll read later in Genesis chapter 13 when Lot chose the well-watered plain of Jordan for himself before the Lord, and that led to Sodom. It echoes Judges chapter 21, verse 25, which says, everyone did what was right in his own eyes. And in fact, the idea of people choosing whoever they want is the moral description of the entire pre-flood world in miniature. Um it's a self-directed, self-determining choosing without consideration of God and the covenant. Now, this is the logical end of the trajectory that began with Eve seeing and desiring and taking back in Genesis chapter 3. Adam and Eve chose for themselves in the garden. Cain chose his own terms of worship. Lamech chose for himself two wives. And now the sons of God are choosing whomever they please. And this is the last remaining boundary, and then everything collapses. The lines collapse. And verse 3 gives us God's response to this collapse when he says, My spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh. Nevertheless, his days shall be 120 years. Now I want you to consider what he's saying there, because this is a declaration of both limit and patience. The Spirit of God has been striving with, contending with, restraining humanity. And the Hebrew wording here is difficult because it can mean to strive and contend or to remain or abide, to plead or to call out. And so the sense is that God's Spirit has been at work inside of the human heart, in the human conscience, holding back the full tide of corruption, and that that restraint is now being withdrawn because he also in this moment sees that flesh, that humanity is consistently choosing flesh over spirit. Now, this is also important. When we read the words the 120 years, this is most naturally read as a period of warning before the flood. I want to be clear here. This is not saying that life is limited to 120 years. This is not a reduction of the human lifespan since people continue to live long lives after the flood, even all the way to Genesis chapter 11. But this is a grace period. This is grace. It's a window, a final season of mercy that God is showing before judgment is fall. God is saying that in 120 years I will flood the earth. The God who is patient is being patient. He gives 120 years. And during those years, he has Noah who will build, who will preach, and who will warn. That's important. Now, let's take a step back and let's answer a question that I get all the time. Where does the fallen angel view come from? And I want to be fair to the fallen angel interpretation by tracing where it actually comes from. We mentioned a little bit of this already. Because it did not, this view did not emerge from careless reading. It emerged from a very specific interpretive tradition with some historical weight. It mainly comes from the book of 1 Enoch, a Jewish text written roughly between 300 and 100 BC. Now I want you to catch that. Enoch was before the flood, and 1st Enoch was written between 30 to 100 BC and contains an extensive retelling of Genesis chapter 6, verses 1 through 4. And this is what it does. In 1 Enoch, there are 200 angels that are called watchers that descend to the earth and they take human wives and they produce a giant offspring called the Nephilim. These watchers also teach humanities, uh a forbidden knowledge, metalworking and warfare and sorcery and astrology and other corrupted arts. Now, first Enoch was enormously popular in Second Temple Judaism in a Greek culture. Now, first Enoch was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. And so there were some Jewish, early Jewish readers who accepted its framework for understanding Genesis chapter 6. And when early Christians came to Genesis chapter 6, many of them had been shaped by this Jewish tradition that was being taught. There were a few writers like Justin Martyr and Tertullian who were influenced by this. In the New Testament, there were passages that seemed to support that view, just a few that I mentioned earlier. 2 Peter chapter 2, verse 4, Jude verse 6, 1 Peter chapter 3, verse 19. And it said that they could possibly, possibly be engaging with the with the traditions of 1 Enoch rather than confirming them as historical, just simply engaging with them, with these certain beliefs. Peter and Jude are using imagery for their readers that their readers would recognize. But just using imagery is not necessarily endorsing every detail of the 1 Enoch tradition as a literal history. The same principles apply when Jude quoted 1 Enoch's prophecy about Enoch. He engaged the tradition, but he's not saying we should canonize every detail of 1 Enoch. The fallen angel view is not careless, but it does build on extra biblical material like 1 Enoch rather than the text itself of Genesis. And when we read Genesis chapter 6 in its own context, in light of Genesis chapter 4 and 5, we really don't need 1 Enoch to explain it. Now, here's something worth understanding about where the fallen angel reading finds a little bit of cultural traction. In the ancient Near East, there was full of stories of divine beings mating with humans and producing heroes of extraordinary power. You had Gilgamesh himself was said to be two-thirds divine. You had heroes of legendary power who are often described as offspring of divine humans. In Greek mythology, which is where first Enoch would have been written, there were heroes, Hercules, Achilles, Theseus, who were products of divine humans. They're titans and giants and they're powerful beings who would challenge the gods themselves. And so the fallen angel view of Genesis chapter 6 fits very naturally into that ancient Greek mythological framework, which is precisely why we should be very cautious about it. Because Moses, throughout Genesis, has been systematically dismantling the mythology of the surrounding world, of writings like the Enuma Elish and the Gilgamesh Epic. Again and again, Genesis tells the same story of ancient that the ancient world tells, but it strips them of their pagan mythology and then replaces them with truth. Now, here's a question. Is it more likely that Moses was borrowing the divine human hybrid mythology of the surrounding nations, or that he was doing what he always does, which was telling a story to the ancient world, recognizing its cultural form, but filling it with entirely different and deeply human theological content. When we read Genesis chapter 6, as the Seth Kane boundary collapse, we get a story that fits perfectly with everything that the Genesis chapter 4 and Genesis chapter 5 have been building upon. And when we do that, we don't need fallen angels. We don't need giant hybrids or borrowed mythology from the Greeks to explain it. And so the immediate application that we have in Genesis chapter 6 and verses 1 through 4 under the Sethite interpretation is actually one of the most relevant passages then in all of Genesis. The sons of God, the people were God, were not corrupted by a demonic invasion. They were corrupted by undiscerning marriages. They saw, they desire, and they took. And they never asked the question, hey, does this person share my faith? Without asking, will this union carry the promise of God or will it dilute it? Without asking, am I choosing based on God's word? Or am I choosing based on what looks good to my eyes? The application to God's people today is direct and unavoidable. It was the Apostle Paul who wrote in 2 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 14, do not be bound together with unbelievers, for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness. And this is not a rule invented by Paul. This is the lesson that was learned from Genesis chapter 6. When God's people consistently choose their most intimate human relationship, which is marriage, based on appearance or attraction rather than a shared covenant faith, the result will always be the dilution of the godly line into the culture around it. And so the pre-flood world, it didn't need fallen angels to become corrupt. They just needed to marry people without discernment, generation after generation after generation. And this warning has not expired. And I think this is something worth sitting on as we move toward the flood narrative. The flood was not God's original design for humanity. Genesis chapter 1 declared creation to be good. That's really important. God did not make the world intending to only wash it away. But here, what we see is that God's Spirit is withdrawing from them. 120 years of warning. The last remaining boundary between the holy and the profane is collapsing. And the flood is not evidence of a capricious or a cruel God. The flood is evidence of a God who was patient for an extraordinarily long time. And who, when the corruption became total, he acted with surgical precision to preserve the line that the seed through which redemption would eventually come. And that, of course, is Noah. And through Noah, we would get to Abraham, and from Abraham we would get to David, and from David we would get to Jesus. Now, I think it's important also to note that Jesus references the days of Noah. And I've heard this taught incorrectly for years. And quite honestly, it's hard for me to sit there and listen to this sometimes. This is what Jesus said. It's in Matthew chapter 24, verse 37 through 39. It says, For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. Now listen to this, just like the days of Noah. This is what Jesus said was happening in the days of Noah. For as in those days before the flood, they were eating, drinking, marrying, and given in marriage until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Notice what Jesus says characterized the days of Noah. He didn't say in the days of Noah there were demonic giant armies. He didn't say there was a supernatural invasion. So they were eating, drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage. And that is the point. They were living ordinary lives without reference to God. They were in the mundane rhythms of existence, food, drink, relationships, all pursued with total indifference to the coming judgment. And so Jesus' description of the days of Noah fits perfectly with the Sethite interpretation. The problem was not a supernatural evil breaking in from the outside. The problem was ordinary human life proceeding without God, choosing, eating, marrying, just living, as if God did not exist and judgment was not coming. Now, the warning of Jesus is never beware of fallen angels. The warning is do not be caught living as if there is no tomorrow to answer for. The entire dynamic of Genesis chapter 6 is that the godly line was absorbed into the surrounding culture. And this finds its New Testament parallel in several of Jesus' most significant teachings. In Matthew chapter 7, when Jesus talks about entering through the narrow gate in verse 13, the Seth line was always the narrow gate, calling upon the name of the Lord, walking with God, carrying the promise. And Cain's line was always the broadway, building, achieving, celebrating self, many things, and very impressive. And when the narrow way began to merge with the broadway, choosing by sight, marrying for appearance, abandoning discernment, the result was a world that was so corrupt that God could not look at it without grief. Which leads us to Genesis chapter 6, verse 5, which we'll talk about in our next lesson. And here's a word I want to leave you with as we close out this lesson. The pre-flood world was not destroyed because some supernatural, evil giants invaded it from the outside. It was destroyed because the people who were supposed to carry the light decided to choose whomever they pleased without consulting God, who had called them. And that's a warning dressed in ancient clothes, but it fits perfectly with us today. God's people are always in danger, not from demonic giant armies, but from the slow, seductive, beautiful pull of a world that has forgotten God. So I'll tell you this: choose carefully, not just in who you marry, but in your daily life. Choose with discernment. Choose not by what your eyes see, but what God but by what God has said. In our next lesson, we're going to be in Genesis chapter 6, verses 5 through 12. And this is one of the most theologically stunning passages that we're going to discuss in all of Genesis so far. Where we read that the Lord saw the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and God grieved in his heart. So we're going to discuss extensively what does it mean for God to grieve? And what does it mean that in the middle of that grief, one man found grace? I hope you enjoy this lesson. Until next time, I hope you have a blessed day.