That is why we are here, to hear,
to listen, to experience God speaking to us.
And we read from the first book in
the Bible, Genesis chapter 6.
Of course the favorite story and the one
known by everybody, pagan and Christian alike, is
Noah and the Ark.
I am going to rather look at the
conditions that led to this catastrophe.
And I can call it God's striving.
And the main emphasis being in verse 3,
but we are going to read from verse
1 to 8.
Now it came to pass, when men began
to multiply on the face of the earth,
and daughters were born to them, that the
sons of God saw the daughters of men,
that they were beautiful, and they took wise
for themselves of all whom they chose.
The Lord said, My spirit shall not strive
with man forever, for he is indeed flesh,
yet his days shall be one hundred and
twenty years.
They were giants on the earth in those
days, and also afterward, when the sons of
God came into the daughters of men, and
they bore children to them, those were the
mighty men who were of old, men of
renown.
Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of
man was great in the earth, and that
every intent of the thoughts of his heart
was only evil continually.
And the Lord was sorry that he had
made man on the earth, and he was
grieved in his heart.
So the Lord said, I will destroy man
whom I have created from the face of
the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing
and birds of the air, for I am
sorry that I have made them.
But Noah found grace in the eyes of
the Lord.
We'll just read to that point.
Let's bow and pray.
Lord, you present us with your holy inspired
word.
Inspire us now, Lord, as we study it
together.
Save us, Lord.
Save us from the condition of the people
of that day.
Help us, Lord, to be like the very
few, Noah and his family, who found grace
from you.
Lord, you see the many distractions that can
pull us away so that we lose out
completely from your speaking today.
Lord, deliver us from thinking of and being
distracted by the anxieties and worries and the
many things that can pull our heart away
from you.
Lord, grant that every word would be inspired
and full of your Holy Spirit.
In Jesus' name, amen.
The condition of this earth at that time
in particular was so corrupt and so evil
that God began to plan its destruction.
So we note firstly that God takes a
very strong interest in his creation.
He watches it.
He observes it.
He is closely related to everything that happens.
He does not stay far off and he
is not invisible, even though it may seem
this way.
The evidences of God are all around us,
but much more, we are evident to him
and he observes every small action and thought
and inclination of the heart.
That is why God says in verse 5,
Then the Lord saw that the wickedness on
earth was great.
Can you bluff yourself?
Can you possibly think and assume that God
could see all this and not see you?
Do you hope to escape and somehow because
of God's silence and that he is not
immediately reacting regarding your lifestyle, do you think
that therefore he is not there and will
not sometime do something about it?
What was it that grieved God so?
How come God got to this point where
he says in verse 3, I will not
strive with man forever.
Let's look in particular at verse 2.
The sons of God saw that the daughters
of men were beautiful and they took wives
for themselves whom they chose.
Now some of this is a mystery and
we don't really understand.
For it goes on to imply that there
were strange things that happened like in verse
4 and it speaks there about the giants
that resulted.
And I'm not going to try and keep
you amused with interesting theories of what happened
and what it might have meant.
Were these angels?
What did it mean by saying the sons
of God?
Who were these giants?
What happened to them?
I'm going to leave that all aside.
Let's rather just take the plain obvious meaning
here.
That which is applicable to you and me.
Notice here firstly that God's grief, his sorrow
was not just regarding the world's condition as
we read later on in verse 5 but
regarding the condition of the sons of God.
Whoever
it
means.
But perhaps these were the godly ones as
some say.
These were people who knew.
Remember that there were many generations before them.
The population wasn't just a little family.
It was a big population by the time.
And many men of God had lived.
These were, it says, the sons of God.
To me it seems obvious from this that
they began to fall into sexual sin.
They began to look beyond the borders of
what God had put around them.
Marriage had already been ordained by God between
Adam and Eve and the people in this
generation were fully aware of what God had
decreed and of the goodness of marriage.
And it's not that they didn't get married.
It says they did get married.
But it implies here in verse 2 that
they looked beyond what God had set up
as a border for them and they just
chose whom they wanted to and it was
based on the grounds of physical attraction.
It says the sons of God looked to
the daughters of men and they noticed that
they were beautiful.
There was a new awareness that came about
among the godly ones.
Physical appearance began to be the criteria for
marriage.
For it says they noticed that they were
pretty and then they married them.
You see, God was being excluded from marriage
which he had ordained.
Whether this meant proper marriages or just relationships
and just living together, who knows.
It could also mean that they had multiple
wives.
Some men boast that they are not adulterers.
They are just serial monogamists and that they
just take one wife at a time and
they get rid of that one and then
they go to the next one.
But there was a new awareness, a new
atmosphere of the criteria for having a relationship.
It was around physical attraction.
It says the sons of God noticed that
the daughters of men were beautiful.
They began to have a new awareness.
They noticed what they had not noticed before.
It says that the daughters of men were
beautiful.
They began to have a new awareness.
They noticed what they had not noticed before.
They began to have a new awareness.
Isn't our present generation exactly the same?
Physical attraction is really what matters.
And sometimes we are guilty ourselves of giving
too much credit to a person because they
might seem physically attractive.
I don't want to go into detail, just
to spare you.
You know the implications.
Just think of the bondage it brings upon
those who try to meet the criteria of
being beautiful, so that they can be attractive
to the opposite sex.
Where they fall into bondage with their mirror.
They've got to match the styles of beauty
regarding hair, or their face, or their height,
or their slimness, or whatever it might be,
to try and appear beautiful because of the
awareness, because of the conscientization, because of that
new atmosphere of what beauty I
hear
that
it's a new fashion even among men, I
think in other more Western countries, America, where
they have what they call butox parties, it's
a type of, I think, an injection where
they inject you into your face to get
rid of the wrinkles.
They want to keep that freshness of youth,
and they feel agony and pain at the
thought of getting older.
It is said that some have had so
many of these injections that they cannot smile
anymore it's a permanent frozen look on their
face.
Although the wrinkles are gone, they cannot change
their expression because of the many injections.
In one church where we preached, a lady
had come to the Lord, had got converted,
she was a model.
The doctors had taken fat from her behind,
or her thigh, and implanted it into her
lips to give her a parting look.
But when the sons of God, when the
children of the Lord begin to be aware
of these things in the world, and there's
awoken in them a desire to be like
the world, and even to take these things
to themselves in marriage, in other words, in
uniting themselves to this, then we are on
the edge of destruction.
By that, of course, I'm not implying that
you just let go and you lose all
self-respect and dignity for who you are
and what God has made you to be.
Our bodies are the temple of God, and
we ought to look after it.
But here we find that the sons of
God lost those borders which God in his
love puts around his people, and they began
to force their way through the barriers into
the heart of the world.
It was based, their relationships were based on
lust.
They gave attention to those that they felt
physically attracted to.
Is there any of that inclination in your
heart?
You're inclined to fantasize about the one that
you feel physically attracted to, and you don't
have control of your thoughts and feelings.
Secondly, not only were the relationships based on
lust, it was based on the exclusion of
God.
It says, wives whom they chose.
Jesus said, in the last days, when the
Son of Man is about to come, it
will be as it was in the days
of Noah.
They will be getting married, and they'll be
giving in marriage.
What's wrong with that?
Well, this is the source of what Jesus
was referring to.
It meant marriage or relationships without God.
A life without God.
Just imagine, the sons of God began to
live and make decisions based on what they
chose.
And this brought God to the point, and
he says to us today in his word,
he says in verse three, my spirit will
not strive with man forever.
For he is indeed flesh.
And then God said, and his days will
be 120 years.
In other words, I'm going to reduce the
length of their ability to be alive to
just 120 years.
It sounds like a long time, but in
actual fact, compared to the ages of the
people at that time, if you look at
the previous chapter, their lifespans were being reduced
to about a fifth or so of what
was normal.
When this began to happen, Noah, it says
in the last verse of the previous chapter,
was already 500 years old.
But God said, no, I cannot allow them
to live so long with this depravity, with
this increasing corruption.
They're going to die quickly.
But now the lifespan of man is even
shorter, indicating that the corruption has continued.
That's why the Psalmist said three score and
10, just 70 years will be the lifespan
and another 10 years if he's fortunate to
have a little bit more time.
God then began to work in ways that
would cause us not to just live freely
in the sinful way and to keep that
ability to to continue with our perversion and
sin.
But verse
three also tells us that the people who
had the spirit of God were not worthy
of it anymore.
My spirit will not strive with man forever.
But it also shows us and should humble
us that we are just flesh.
We are just breath, and that breath is
given us by the spirit of God.
And we're one breath away from the end.
The rug is pulled out from our feet,
so to say.
We have no reason to pride ourselves.
What are we but just a breath away
from death?
Even if we are giant-like, for it
continues to say in the next verse about
the giants that there were, who were strong,
heroic men.
With reputations, with heroic reputations.
They were famous in their day.
Doesn't matter to God.
He said, I'm going to get rid of
all that.
I will not strive with man forever.
I will be drowned with their fame, with
their heroism.
All the famous will be gone.
Are you busy working towards your reputation?
Maybe just to get the popularity of your
friends?
Even if you're the most popular, the most
famous in your generation, by the next generation,
they have forgotten you.
And certainly by the next generation, you are
just unknown.
What are we?
What are we but flesh?
Our popularity ceases to be.
A famous man died, is it just two
days ago, Johnny Cash, famous from the 50s
and 60s and some of the 70s, known
as the man in black.
He died, I think it was just two
or three days ago.
Johnny Cash.
Most of you younger people will say, who's
he?
Only we who are in the slightly older
generation than you happen to know his name.
Fame perishes.
Suddenly you are gone.
And in the next generation, you get forgotten.
Thankfully for Mr. Cash, he apparently turned to
God through Billy Graham and he became a
Christian and spent the last years of his
life serving the Lord.
What I'm getting at though is, dear friend,
that little bit of popularity which you crave
for, which you lust after, is worth nothing.
We don't even know the names of these
men in verse four where it says, they
were mighty men of great fame.
They were about to get wiped out.
We live in a violent world.
Just two days, three days ago, I got
a phone call and they said, do you
want to ensure your life against violence as
South Africa is such a violent society?
You might get hijacked, you might get killed,
you can get insured against it.
Violence has become like a norm, a normal
thing in our society across the world, but
we know it especially in South Africa.
That's one of the things that angers God,
for we read in verse 11, the earth
also was corrupt before God and the earth
was filled with violence.
In other words, the normal circumstance, the normal
way of things was violence.
Abusing your neighbor.
It's just reading these days about the great
day of the agreement between England and America
during the Second World War on a ship
in the Atlantic, it was called the Atlantic
Charter, and on that ship about a thousand
men, top officers, were gathered.
President Roosevelt of the USA and Winston Churchill
of Great Britain were on the deck of
that ship with the thousand men.
And they sang hymns together, they knew that
the dark cloud of war which was already
upon Britain but was going to come upon
the face of the whole earth, they knew
that violence was coming that day and they
made an agreement, a charter between them.
They sang hymns, they prayed together, and Winston
Churchill writes in his book, it was a
great day to live.
And he said after that, in the next
sentence, half of us, half of us on
that deck in that service were about to
die.
Because of the violence unleashed upon the earth
at that time in the Second World War,
55 million people were going to be dead
in a short time.
Last week on the 11th of September was
the second celebration or commemoration of sorrow about
those who were killed on 9-11, as
they call it now in America, where 3
,000 souls were lost in a single hour
just at the World Trade Center.
Violence has become a norm.
Let's get closer to home though.
What about that violence of abuse in other
ways as well, not just killing but harming
and damaging through other ways?
Look at the curse of rape in our
country.
Last weekend, four students from the University of
Pretoria took a matric girl into their hostel,
into the well-known traditional hostel and raped
her there in front of other students.
Children, babies are being abused.
Such things shouldn't even be mentioned but they
are happening.
God looked upon the earth and behold, it
was filled with violence.
But you know, violence which ends in bloodshed
is not just an act of murder where
you physically remove the life of a person.
It begins in the heart.
And that is why Jesus spoke straight to
the heart.
He says it's not just if you kill
your brother but even if you are angry
with your brother, you hate him, you have
murdered him already.
Are your words about your neighbour, your friend,
maybe somebody in your family filled with violence,
filled with bitterness?
Getting irritable, getting upset with somebody, being touchy,
getting angry, all that is part of this
violence.
If you had
the means to kill and get away with
it, you would do it.
Worse than that, violence is sometimes even glorified
and those who are more violent are considered
to be the main o's, the heroes.
Things that are vile are considered to be
wonderful and praiseworthy.
One of the most vile TV stations, MTV,
had their awards just two or three weeks
ago apparently.
It's an American network and they had their
shows for their greatest heroes and what I
read about one of the main awards was
given to a man who was famous and
is famous for a song about pimping girls
and he came with girls tied, they were
half naked, tied with dog collars and chained
to him.
He walked in with his dogs.
He was a hero.
So there is the hero worship of what
is vile in the sight of God.
Another reason that caused God to be angry
and to make his final decision that he's
going to wipe out mankind except for those
who had grace, those
who would use his means of escape in
the ark was that this was a continual
and total evil.
It was a slide downwards spiraling down that
there was no chance of them coming back
again.
They had got to the point of no
return.
Look at verse five again.
The Lord saw that the wickedness of man
was great in the earth and that every
intent of the thoughts of his heart was
only evil continually.
Are you on a downward way where your
life is coming apart and you sense that
you are being pulled down?
And not just your actions, but as we
read in verse five, even the intent, the
inner motivations and workings, the secret workings inside
you are continually wicked.
The Bible says that the life of the
righteous goes upward.
In Proverbs, the righteous go upwards for they
are headed heavenward.
Or are you in the spiral down?
Depravity is sinking you and you are just
being pulled down.
Instead of thoughts towards God and desires and
inclinations and longings towards the Lord, you have
now longings as we had read about the
sons of God, longings for the world, cravings
for sin, and the intent of your heart
is becoming continually wicked.
Let this be your wake-up call because,
dear friend, you can get to a point
of no return.
We don't know when that is.
We cannot judge.
The Lord knows that he gets to a
point where he says, I will no longer
strive with you.
Striving with the meaning, I will no longer
plead with you.
I will no longer do battle with you.
I will no longer call you.
I will no longer draw you to myself.
I will stop striving with you.
That is the main emphasis.
And just if you can, even if you
forget everything else, although I hope you find
something valuable in the other points, but remember
this, that God says, I will not strive
with you forever.
Are there warning bells going off right now
inside you where you see red lights flashing
and you realize, I am in danger?
The mortal dangers of the world and the
violence and the possibility of my getting killed
in violence, that's not my danger.
But my real danger is that God says
to me, I will not strive with you
forever.
If you continue continually and repeatedly, persistently resist
the spirit of God, then this verse is
for you.
I will not strive with you forever.
You are even in danger of fulfilling what
Jesus said about the blasphemy of the Holy
Spirit.
Jesus said, even if they sin against me,
Jesus Christ, or against the father, but if
they sin against the Holy Spirit, there is
no forgiveness.
Which means if you continually, persistently, repeatedly, intentionally,
purposefully resist the spirit of God, fighting against
him, remaining the rebel, the time will come
where God says, too late.
Does that cause your heart to tremble?
It should.
Does it cause you to pray even now
and say, God have mercy on me?
It should.
And it should also cause you to stop
in your tracks and turn around.
That's what repentance means.
God.
Dear friend, if you feel any longing to
turn around and any desire to want to
give up this lifestyle of sin that you
are following, Thank
God for that.
He hasn't given up on you.
Let me go so far as saying, you
need to even desire to desire God.
Don't give up hope.
If even though it feels like you're sinking
into a pit, call out to him.
Even if you don't feel like it, God
can rescue you.
Keep in mind the theme today.
My spirit will not strive with men forever.
So if God is pulling your heart, tagging
at your heart to come to him to
repent, then respond instantly today.
The last verse of our text today was,
But Noah found grace in the eyes of
God.
Verse eight.
Thank God for grace.
Undeserved mercy from God.
He is able to forgive.
Even now, dear friend, even though you feel
like you're on the way down and the
spiral is becoming so fast, you're slipping down
so quickly that you are even becoming afraid
of yourself.
Jesus died to save the perishing, the dying.
And a word also to the sons of
God.
You children of God, in other words, Be
careful of the devil opening your eyes and
awakening something in you that God doesn't want
you to awaken to.
If that has happened and corruption has come
in, you too, repent.
Seek God's grace.
He's willing to freely give it if you're
willing to come and get it.
He who covers a sin will not prosper.
But he who confesses and forsakes his sin
will obtain mercy.
Let's bow and pray.
Heavenly Father, you've recorded this so many thousands
of years ago, but you've kept it up
to date for us to read today.
Lord, you say that while you speak and
while it is still today, we should not
harden our hearts, but we should respond today.
Lord, the darkness comes where no man can
work.
Thank you that it is day.
Thank you, Lord, for the grace that you
give us to choose you.
Thank you, Lord, that you have the power
to forgive and to save and rescue.
Lord, let there be those today who will
respond today in their hearts and will thoroughly,
completely turn around and repent.
Confessing their sin and turning away from it.
Lord Jesus, thank you that you bled and
died to make it possible.
Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you yourself, you
are that ark of salvation.
And that through you, we can be rescued.
Thank you that we don't have to wait
for the flood, but we can have the
confidence of salvation today.
Lord Jesus, we remember also our brethren out
in many different directions in Europe and those
who are traveling long distances, those who are
at services and funerals right now.
Please be with them and strengthen them, protect
them.
Be with us, Lord, now as we part.
Amen.