Genesis 6:6-7 – Can You Get God Angry? – Bible study

Genesis 6:6-7 Can You Get God Angry? The book of Genesis is the book of beginnings. It details the creation of all things and the beginning of life: mans, animals, and plants. If you are reading through the Bible with us this year, you have just recently read through this section of Scriptures. That means you had the opportunity to read through the genealogies as well. Good job! It takes some determination to read through a list of names that you probably cannot pronounce. However, God did not put the genealogies in their to challenge us but to inform us. Reading back over the list myself that you may not have caught. Let me share a few interesting facts: 1. There are nine generations from Adam to Noahs birth (Noah being the tenth generation). 2. The time for those nine generations total 1056 years. 3. Adam lived to be 930 years old #Ge 4:5, meaning he had only been dead 126 years when Noah was born. 4. Even so, Adam does not hold the record for being the oldest man to live. Noah lived to be 950 years old #Ge 9:29, but the oldest was Methuselah who lived to be 969 years old #Ge 5:26. 5. Noah was 600 years old when the flood came #Ge 7:6, making the number of years since God created man around 1656. Adam would have been dead 726 years at the time of the flood. 6. Noah would have still been alive when Abraham was born. Abraham would have been 58 when Noah died. 7. Shem, Noahs son, outlived Abraham by 35 years. 8. Shem, Noahs son, could have known Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 9. Although Adam had three sons, every human being on the earth today is a descendent of Seth. Both of the other lines died in the flood. 10. And although many other lines were born prior to Noah, every human being on earth today is a descendent of Noah. All other lines having died in the flood. I do not want to talk to about genealogies this morning but rather about judgment. To date, Genesis 6-8 report the greatest judgment on sin the world has ever known. There are several reasons why I want us to consider this thought and I hope to bring them out during the message. Would you follow me, please? I. Consider the world A. There is a reason why judgment fell on the earth during Noahs day. That reason is sin. B. The Bible mentions four areas where sin had become intolerable. 1. \#Ge 6:1-2\ Sexual sins a. Let me say at the onset that no one knows exactly what the sin of this verse means. b. It is obvious that a sin is being described because of Gods response in the next verse. Ge 6:3 And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. c. There only seems to be two possibilities here: (1) Either godless men were marrying the godly women. (2) Or angelic beings are marrying human beings. d. For some time, I have assumed that angels were sexless beings based on: Matt 22:30 For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. (1) However, the verse does not say they are sexless beings. That is a supposition drawn from the verse. (2) That being the case, it is possible it is a wrong supposition so it is possible that angelic beings could have had physical relations with human beings. (3) In fact, that could have been the reason there is a verse 4. Gen 6:4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. (4) And you thought your family was messed up! e. The bottom line being something was going on sexually. f. Whatever it was, it was: (1) Wrong. (2) It was not in the plan of God and it was having an influence on the human race that God did not like. (a) That is called deviant behavior. (b) It means outside acceptable behavior. (c) Who gets to decide what is acceptable? God does. (3) It was spreading. (a) The longer it was left alone, the more it was going to become ingrained into human behavior and the more it was going to take the human race from Gods intended persona. (b) I think that is one reason why God acted so quickly and absolutely on that generation. (c) I also think the reason He has not acted on this generation yet is because Noah lived at the beginning of human history and we are living at the end. i. For thousands of years, God has worked to keep mankind going in the right direction. ii. If He has stopped now, it is because the final destination is a final destruction and it is coming soon. g. It is obvious by what God did in Noahs day that God cares about what man does sexually. (1) That being the case, it really does not matter what I think about Gods declarations on sex, what you think about it, what our President thinks about it, or what laws are made in reference to it. (2) The only thing that matters is what God thinks and God wrote that in the Bible. (a) God wrote what He thinks about sex before marriage and after marriage with someone you are not married to. (b) He wrote what He thinks about men having sex with other men and women with other men. (c) He wrote what He thinks about members of the same family having sex together or someone else having sex with multiple people in the same family. (d) He wrote what He thinks about rape and even lust. (3) And this historic account tells us that He meant what He said and proves that He will enforce whatever threats he has made. 2. \#6:11\ The world was filled with corruption and violence. Gen 6:11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. a. It was not just that mankinds sex was deviant. The way man treated other men was deviant too. (1) Corrupt-It means ruined, decaying, rotting. (a) We might say man in that day had ruined everything. (b) Their behavior was rotten. (c) I gather that means that they were suffering from the self diseases: selfish, self- centered, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, self-righteousness, and in the state of self-denial. (2) Violent (a) The only thing this can mean is that they were attacking and hurting one another. (b) It does not mean they were stealing, lying, perverting one another. (c) It caught Gods attention that man took delight and felt no remorse over hurting and killing one another. (d) God does care what man does to manthen and now. (e) From 2014 to 2015, the murder rate increased by 11.3%. http://dailysignal.com/2016/01/04/what-rising-murder-rates-in-us- cities-means-for-2016/ i. The FBI reported: "In 2013, an estimated 1,163,146 violent crimes." https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime- in-the-u.s.-2013/violent-crime/violent-crime-topic- page/violentcrimemain_final ii. In an article written on 10/22/2015, Birmingham topped the list of medium- sized cities of violent crime with 1588.29 per 100,000 citizens. iii. It was second on the murder rate list with 24.52 murders per 100,000 people. http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2015/10/22/violent-crime-statistics-for- every-city-in-america/ (f) A lot has been made over the fact that violent crime actually dropped by 50% since 1990; however, what they dont tell you is the way crime is categorized has been updated. i. Many times, heinous crimes of assault have been reduced from aggravated assault to assault. ii. Two examples from New Orleans: A 75-year-old man was savagely beaten in Central City after he tried to stop a drunken motorist from leaving the scene of a wreck. He suffered broken facial bones and had a hugely swollen head, as well as some internal bleeding. And another man was choked unconscious in a fight at a bar, then thrown down a set of concrete stairs. He spent two days in a coma and two weeks in intensive care, and suffered broken facial bones as well as permanent brain damage. The beating was so brutal that it was the subject of a Times story. The NOPD report classifies it as a simple rather than an aggravated assault. http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2013/05/how_crimes_are_ categorized_can.html (g) I dont know who gets to make those calls, but if you think that violent crime in the US has gone down 50% since 1990, think again. b. What happened in Noahs day tells us that God cares about how many treats one another! (1) That is what many of Gods commands are about. (2) Check out the Big 10. The first four deal with our relationship with God but the last six daal with our relationship with one another! 3. \#6:5\ Mans imagination and actions were wicked continuously. Gen 6:5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. a. That covers a lot of territory. b. I take it that the Bible means they did everything evil they could get away with and imagined what they could not. c. Actions they could do: 1. lie, steal, kill, deceive, bully, threaten, and on the list goes. 2. Then whatever they could not do, they would dream about. d. One thing can be said about our generation. 1. We dont imagine doing things we cant do anymore. 2. We make a movie about so we dont have to. 4. A New Testament record of their sin. Matt 28:37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. 38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, 39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. a. This passage is another one that is some what difficult to understand. (1) It definitely seems like a rebuke from Jesus but people must drink (the verse does not say what but we do); eat, and marry. (2) There is nothing "wrong" with these things. (3) So what was God upset about? b. I think it was because they went on with their lives as if nothing was wrong. (1) Here the world was going to hell in a hand basket, Noah was preaching his heart out, and they just kept going about their business like nothing was wrong at all. (2) I cant prove my theory, but makes sense. (3) When things get bad, God does not expect people to ignore it or pretend it doesnt matter. (4) What does He expect? He expects us to repent and pray! Joel 1:13 Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God. 14 Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the LORD your God, and cry unto the LORD, (5) Someone asks, "What difference would that make?" (a) If Gods people would do it, it would make all of the difference in the world. (b) But even if it did not, wickedness ought to bother us. We should not keep going like nothing is wrong. (6) In this case, it is obvious that the people of Noahs day should have repented. (a) Noah was building the ark of salvation. (b) He was preaching that judgment was coming. (c) It was obvious to all that things were not going the way God wanted things to go. (d) You dont go about your life as if nothing is wrong! II. Consider God A. The world offended God. Ge 6:6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 1. We knows something about being offended today, do we not? 2. You name it and somebody is offended by it. 3. It is strange that most of the things that offend people today are not issues of morality or decency. 4. They are issues of too much morality or decency. 5. You can take all of the issues that offend all of the people in the world and stuff them in one big complaint box and it will not matter. 6. Why? Because when it comes to being offended, the things that offend men are irrelevant. 7. But when God gets offended, it matters! B. God determined to do some thing. Ge 6:7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. C. How God did that is the rest of the story. 1. \#Ge 7:4\ God let it rain 40 days and 40 nights. a. \#Ge 7;11, 8:2\ The rain is described as if windows in the heavens were opened so that buckets of continuous water could be poured out. b. \#Ge 8:2\ The rain continued the entire 40 days and 40 nights. No relief. No stopping. So slack. 2. \#Ge 7:11\ tells us that the earth broke up underneath the dwellers of the earth, causing water to gush up from beneath. a. Many feel that this is when the earth was divided into continents. b. It is also possibly when many of earths highest mountains were formed as colossal tectonic plates began to crash together for the first time. 3. \#Ge 7:20\ says that whatever high hills did exist, were covered by water of at least 15 cubits. a. A cubic is 18 inches. b, That means at least 22 to 23 feet of water covered the highest hills. 4. After the rain fell for 40 days, \Ge 8:3\ it was 150 days before God started to let the water go down. 5. \#Ge 8:4\ Two months later, the ark landed. 6. \#Ge 8:5\ Ten months after the rains started, the first mountains were visible. 7. \#Ge 8:13\ says that a few weeks later, the ground was dry so that the people could leave the ark. 8. \#Ge 8:14\ Noah and family left the ark, but there was not one single human being or earth dwelling animal that was not on the ark left alive. D. Does that sound like God got angry? 2Peter 3:5 For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: 6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: 7 But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. E. Someone asked, "Is it even possible that a flood like that happened?" Oh, yes. 1. Did you know that there are sea fossils on the tallest mountains of earth? The mountains of Tibet, some of the highest in the world, have sea fossils on them at 15,000 feet. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080611144021.htm 2. Layers of the same sedimentary rock run thousands of miles, indicating they were all laid at the same time and by the same water forces. 3. There are beds of fish fossils all over the world. The problem is that fish remains dont abide long enough to fossilize. A fish will deteriorate in a week, bones and all. The only way there could be beds of fossils all over the world is if they were killed and buried in mud so deep and so quickly that air couldnt get to it. 4. How about the beds of wash rocks? Wash rocks are rocks that have been sweep along in the waters currents, bouncing along the water bottom, for so long that they are rounded and smooth. There are beds of wash rocks all over the world! There is a bed of wash rocks in Canada that came from the rocks of the Rockies, over 700 miles away. http://www.bibleinfo.com/en/questions/there-evidence-flood-was-global