Today I’m going to start a series on the history of the world according to the bible. We will look at the major stories we all learned in Sunday school and discover the true story behind the story, as it reveals God’s plan through each of them. Let’s start at the beginning with Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Now we won’t spend much time in Genesis 1 and 2, because I’ve spoken at length about why God created earth to be a physical representation of heaven in order to expand His kingdom into the physical realm. God wanted a colony of heaven on earth doing His will. Jesus prayed “your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” Actually, there is going to be much more to each of these stories that we won’t be able to go into detail on during a Sunday morning, because I don’t want to bog down and overwhelm you with all of the details. For instance, we could spend 3 months on the creation story. We won’t do that, but rest assured, all of it is connected, and if you guys are interested I may teach a class on Sunday nights that gets much more into the weeds on everything. The one thing I will say in order to set the stage concerning our teaching over the next several weeks, is that context will be at the forefront of the discussion. We have to understand what Moses understood in order to correctly interpret what he wrote in the first five books of the bible. Likewise, if we don’t understand what Paul understood, how can we properly grasp what God inspired him to write in the new testament? We must think like that thought to read what they wrote.
We cannot interpret the Bible with only a modern world view. Our current understanding of what a word means today, does not mean that understanding is what God was saying back when it was written originally. We can think about it like this. The lyrics to “Have yourself a merry little Christmas” are: Have yourself a merry little Christmas The term yule-tide just means Christmas time. So, back in 1957 when this was recorded do you think Frank Sinatra was asking us to make the Christmas season homosexual? We have to understand what the term “gay”meant when it was used in those lyrics. It just meant “happy” back then. The current day meaning is not relevant to the meaning of the song originally. So again, how can we interpret scripture if we don’t know what was meant by the original writer? Just keep this principal in mind as we work through the next several weeks. You may now be asking yourself: Is there a modern application to scriptures written thousands of years before we were born? Yes, of course. But in order to know what that is, we have to begin with the correct foundational understanding. Let’s jump past the creation story to the next biblical event from Genesis 3 that we all know. It’s the fall of mankind into sin with the disobedience of Adam and Eve. This is where things get complicated for mankind. God sets up the path to redeem the world back to Himself and in His judgment of the serpent, He talks about the seed of Eve defeating his seed. Make the Yuletide gay From now on Our troubles will be miles away
This is God laying the foundation for Jesus, as He would come through a woman and defeat Satan. So here’s the problem Satan has. He knows what God has said, so now he is obsessed with stopping the seed of Eve from going forward. Satan has tried many times to corrupt the messianic line for Jesus to be born through. He started with Cain. We all know what he did to his brother. We see it again when evil was all over the earth and God sent the flood. And again when, Herod killed every baby 2 years old after Jesus was born. Satan knows he is headed for defeat, so he has to try and stop what God has put into motion. In the next chapter of Genesis we see satan begin his attack. Genesis 4:6-7 “6 The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.” So, God warns Cain to not let the enemy rule him, but by the very next verse Cain rises up and kills his brother Abel. OK so, it looks like satan is working his plan to not let Eve have a seed that pleases God. Abel’s offering pleased God, but Cain’s didn’t and so there was conflict and murder. As a replacement of Abel, Adam and Eve have another son and they named him Seth. The fifth chapter of Genesis tells us the names of the people who came in the generations after Adam through Seth. Now when we get to the end of the chapter it stops with Noah and his sons. You remember Noah, right? This is where we will spend the rest of our time today. We all know the story of Noah’s Ark and the flood that we read about in Genesis chapter 6. God tells Noah to build a big boat,
large enough to house the animals. It’s because He’s going to send a flood to cover the whole earth and destroy all life except Noah and his immediate family. On the surface this seems pretty harsh, but do you know the story behind the story? Maybe there is much more than just building a big boat and two of every kind of animal. What is going on spiritually behind the scenes? The things we see played out here in the natural on earth, always have their roots in the super spiritual in the heavens. It was true back then and it’s true today also. This story has its roots all the way back in the sin of Adam and Eve. It’s the second attempt of satan to stop the seed of Eve from defeating him. Who are the characters in the Noah story? Noah, Enoch, Methuselah and Jude 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 and Jude have to do with it? The answer to that is: a lot! If you want to understand the story behind the story of the great flood, you have to look at other parts of scripture. This is really about understanding context, as we have talked about many times. Genesis 6:1-3 “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.” 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. One that we need to answer if we are to understand the context of the flood story. The Nephilim are the giants who were the offspring of fallen sons of God when they married human women. Wait, what? You heard me right. Fallen spirits hooked up with human women and produced giants. They were called Nephilim. 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 are the fallen spiritual beings that are described in the book of Jude. Jude 1:6-7 “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 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. Remember when we started I said we would see how Enoch and Methuselah fit into the story. Now we will need to 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: “when he is dead it shall be sent”. This name was a prophecy 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 man’s continued rebellion.
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 6:5-9 KJV “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. 6 And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 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 sons of God and their relationship with women. 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 angels were attempting to corrupt the bloodline of the messiah. They did not succeed. Who those fallen angels are, who are referred to as the sons of God is a topic for another time. It’s a rabbit hole that will require much more explanation. You know how the old familiar story goes from here. Noah builds the ark, God sends the animals and then the rain to flood the earth. This is not a story of God’s wrath, but a story of God’s patience and calling mankind to repent and turn back to Him.
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