Last week we covered the story of Cain murdering his brother Abel the prophet, and also discovered the message of God’s plan of salvation, hidden in the genealogy of Genesis 5. If you remember, I also said there was something important in the last verse of Genesis 4. So, let’s begin there today.
Genesis 4:26 “26 And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the Lord.”
The phrase “to call” is what we need to unpack. At first glance it seems like a good thing that men would begin calling on the name of the Lord. But there is much more going on here than our modern translation and interpretation of that phrase. Do you really think that Adam and Eve didn’t call on the name of the Lord? Does it make sense that after their grandson was born, that was the first time people began to call on the name of the Lord?
Translated differently from ancient text, the phrase “to call” can mean to “profane.” Ancient commentary is clear that the days of Enos were when men began to profane the name of the Lord, by calling themselves God. They were not calling on God for help. It makes much more sense that this is when men began to profane the name of the Lord.
This is the time when things start going off the rails for mankind. It’s not just a unique time in history. There will be another time in the future that will be like that as well.
Matthew 24:37 “37 But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”
What was it like in the days of Noah? There was all manner of wickedness and evil.
Genesis 6:5 “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.”
But what happened from Enos to Noah for things to get so bad?
How did mankind go from Adam and Eve...to every thought of man’s heart was evil? Mankind had some help getting there. Just like Eve had an evil spiritual being influencing her to eat the fruit and disobey God, mankind also had some spiritual evil beings influencing them to become wicked.
Genesis 6:1-4 “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. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” 4 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 sons of God (Angelic beings) mated with human women (daughters of men) and giants were the result. That is crazy according to many modern denominations. About 80% of main line denominations deny any sort of spiritual situation going on in this passage.
But here’s the problem, it was not denied originally. It has been taught since ancient times that this supernatural episode is actually what happened. This is what Noah and those who came before him would have been aware of.
It wasn’t until the 400s AD and a guy who was named Julian “the Apostate” decided to attack the church for these traditional beliefs, that the church’s beliefs start to change.
Did you know there are also stories like this from other ancient cultures? These stories are found in Assyria, Egypt, the Incas, the Mayans, Persia, Greece, India, Bolivia, the South Sea Islands and the American Indians. These legends speak of angelic beings mating with women that created giants, and then a great flood destroyed all of it. Now how do you suppose all of those people in different parts of the world have the same idea of what happened in ancient times? That is something we will discover when we get to the story of the tower of Babel.
Here’s an interesting fact about the giants we read about in the Bible.
2 Samuel 21:20 “20 And there was again war at Gath, where there was a man of great stature, who had six fingers on each hand, and six toes on each foot, twenty-four in number, and he also was descended from the giants.”
The giants and their descendants had 6 fingers according to the Old Testament. In New Mexico there are pictograph paintings that show a common tribal greeting of holding up a hand. The oral tradition is that this greeting was to show only 5 fingers on the hand.
Now you can draw two conclusions from that information. Either the Bible is just another ancient legend of made up stories, or perhaps the Bible is giving us the original truth that other cultures handed down as legend, because the enemy always tries to counterfeit God’s truth. Since we know the Bible is the word of God, we should embrace what it says as fact.
Who are the characters in the flood story? Noah, Enoch, Methuselah, Peter, Jude and Jesus Himself are the characters we will unveil today. You may be thinking: I get that Noah is in the story of the flood, but what does Enoch, Methuselah, Peter, Jude and Jesus have to do with it?
The answer to that is...a lot! If you want to understand the story behind the story of what was going in the days of Noah, you have to look at other parts of scripture. This is really about understanding context, as we have talked about many times.
Genesis 6:3 “3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.”
God pronounces a judgment that in 120 years He will be finished waiting for man to repent of their evil. The clock is now ticking and in 120 years the judgment will arrive.
The next verse can leave you with a big question mark if you don’t know the context of the situation.
Genesis 6:4 “4 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.
Who or what are the Nephilim? That’s a good question. The Nephilim are the giants who were the offspring of fallen sons of God when they married human women.
The sons of God in this verse does not refer to men. When have normal human men being with normal human women produced giants? There are supernatural things going on here. These “sons of God” are the fallen spiritual beings that are described in the book of Jude.
Jude1:6-7 “6 And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day— 7 just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.”
This is the backdrop for the story of the flood. As Jude continues, he mentions Enoch.
Enoch was a teacher/preacher during the time of Noah. This was his message as found in the book of Jude:
Jude 1:14-15 “14 It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, 15 to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”
Enoch’s message was quoted by Jude. This is the message he preached about the ungodly things that the sons of God had done with the human women. Enoch is listed as one of the two people who never died. Elijah was the other one.
The place we learn more about what happened with these “sons of God”...the angelic beings known as Watchers, is in the book of Enoch. This ancient book was almost in our modern bible and it actually is in some denominations. But we don’t consider it cannon.
But just because a book is not in the Bible, does not mean we can’t learn something from it. Just like any other christian book
that we use to help us understand the Bible, Enoch does the same. It provides background for why God decided to destroy everything with the flood. But can we trust its content?
The book 1 Enoch was found in a cave in Cumran along side the dead sea scrolls. So we know that ancient Jews of the second temple period studied and valued it. It was quoted by Jude, Peter and Jesus in the New Testament.
Chapter 6 “1 And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto 2 them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men 3 and beget us children.' And Semjaza, who was their leader, said unto them: 'I fear ye will not 4 indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin.' And they all answered him and said: 'Let us all swear an oath, and all bind ourselves by mutual imprecations 5 not to abandon this plan but to do this thing.' Then sware they all together and bound themselves 6 by mutual imprecations upon it. And they were in all two hundred; who descended in the days of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon, and they called it Mount Hermon, because they had sworn 7 and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it.”
Mt Hermon event.
Chapter 7 “1 And all the others together with them took unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go in unto them and to defile themselves with them, and they taught them charms 2 and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants. And they 3 became pregnant, and they bare great giants, whose height was three thousand ells: Who consumed 4 all the acquisitions of men. And when men could no longer sustain
them, the giants turned against 5 them and devoured mankind. And they began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and 6 fish, and to devour one another's flesh, and drink the blood. Then the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones.”
Chapter 8 “1 And Azazel taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates, and made known to them the metals of the earth and the art of working them, and bracelets, and ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the eyelids, and all kinds of costly stones, andall 2 colouring tinctures. And there arose much godlessness, and they committed fornication, and they 3 were led astray, and became corrupt in all their ways. Semjaza taught enchantments, and root-cuttings, 'Armaros the resolving of enchantments, Baraqijal (taught) astrology, Kokabel the constellations, Ezeqeel the knowledge of the clouds, Araqiel the signs of the earth, Shamsiel the signs of the sun, and Sariel the course of the moon. And as men perished, they cried, and their cry went up to heaven.”
Remember when we started I said we would see how Enoch and Methuselah fit into the story. Let’s go back to the genealogy of Adam down to Noah in chapter 5 of Genesis. Guess what we find there? As it turns out Enoch was Noah’s great grandfather and Methuselah was Noah’s grandfather.
Enoch named his son Methuselah, which means: “His death shall bring”. This name was a prophesy about the judgment God was going to send on the earth for the evil that had been spread across the earth by the fallen angels.
This information gives special meaning to why Methuselah was the longest living human ever recorded. He lived 969 years. Here is why that is important. As long as he lived God would delay the judgment. Noah knew that when papaw Methuselah
passed away, the judgment was coming. And that is exactly what happened. In the same year that Methuselah died, the great flood came and covered the entire earth. Wiping out the evil that was across the earth.
The flood wasn’t just a knee jerk reaction to men being mean to each other. God was patient with mankind.
God was warning people through the preaching of Enoch and his son Methuselah for almost a thousand years to repent. We like to talk about how the people who lived back then had Noah preaching to them for 100 years while he built the ark. But that’s only the last 10% of the time God gave them. God is patient when it comes to giving us time to repent. This is the real story of the flood. God’s patience and love for mankind.
Genesis 6:7-9 KJV “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. 8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. 9 These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.”
In verse 8 it says that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. This is the first time grace is mentioned in the bible. We like to talk about grace as Christians. It describes what we have been given by God that was unmerited. We are given a gift that we don’t deserve. We like to think that as new testament believers we live in the age of grace, but Noah received God’s grace thousands of years earlier. Giving grace is part of who God is. It’s a theme we see over and over in the Bible.
Now, it makes perfect sense that Noah was a just man and walked with God, since his father, grandfather and great grandfather were preachers. But did you notice what else it says
in verse 9? Noah was perfect in his generations. Something else is going on here. This is a reference back to the wickedness brought about by the Watchers and their relationship with women.
For their attempt to corrupt the offspring of Eve, God punished the Watchers by casting them into a gloomy prison in chains.
2 Peter 2:4-5 “4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; 5 if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;”
Noah’s family line had not been defiled by the sons of God, the fallen spiritual beings...so he was perfect, generationally.
Remember what we said about satan needing to corrupt the seed of Eve in order to prevent God’s plan of redemption? God used Noah’s family to continue the human race when He flooded the earth. Because He was preserving an undefiled family line for the messiah (Jesus) to be born through.
These fallen Watchers were attempting to corrupt the bloodline of the messiah by introducing the Nephilim into humanity. Their plan was working until God intervened. They did not succeed.
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