Order and Life

When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” 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 Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

Gen. 6:1-8, ESV

In the March 28^th issue of the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Newnan wrote an opinion piece regarding her predictions of how Americans would respond to the release of the Mueller report. In the article, she points out how little the truth matters anymore. What really matters now is how our side interprets the truth, how we spin it. She points out at the beginning of the article:

People are proud of their bitterness now. Old America used to accept our splits as part of the price of being us—numerous, varied, ornery. Current America, with its moderating institutions (churches) going down and its dividing institutions (the internet) rising, sees our polarization not as something to be healed but a reason for being, something to get up for. There’s a finality to it, a war-to-the-death quality.

Ms. Newnan is driving at something that everyone knows is there. It seems that, increasingly, our society feeds on disorder, chaos, and bitterness. You can clearly see it at the national level in the way we have completely lost our civility and our decency. When you go home this afternoon and turn on the 24-hour news, pay attention to the number of “News Reports” that actually have anything to do with meaningful news. Most of the news today is nothing more than base gossip and character assassination. We also see it in our public interactions. Protests are met with counter-protests. Lawsuits are met with counter-suits. Rage is met with even more and more righteous rage. We even see it on a personal level. You can see this most clearly in our use of social media. One of the main driving forces behind social media is our need to have our opinions confirmed by others who are like us. But we also enjoy cutting down or shaming people who are not like us. It is easy to hide behind our keyboards and computer screens and say what we want without any thought to how it affects a real, live person.

This disorder that is raging in our society is not harmless, either. It ultimately leads to a devaluing of human life. People, hiding behind their ideology and their social tribe, feel totally justified to lash out and do violence to those who are not like them. So, when Jack Phillips refused to bake a cake for a gay couple, not only did the state of Colorado try to shut him down, but he received death threats for standing by his personal convictions. But, even good, conservative Christians can be tempted by this culture of rage, as when abortion clinics and doctors receive bomb threats or are even murdered for their practices.

When we look at our society, our temptation might be to opine, like Ms. Newnan, for better days when people were pure and loving and decent. And while it is true that these issues have certainly gotten worse in our day, the truth is that social media and 24-hour news have only brought to the fore a characteristic of the human heart that has always been there. The Bible says that humans, by our very nature, seek this disorder. Jeremiah 17:9 says: “The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, who can know it?” Since the very start of Genesis, we’ve seen this pattern develop. We saw in Genesis 1 and 2 that God created an orderly world out of nothing. He spoke order into being, declaring day from night, earth from water, different kinds of animals, and even the order of the man-woman relationship. And, in all of that, he brought order in what is right and what is wrong by declaring his creation to be “good”.

But, from the very first mention of Satan’s temptation in Genesis 3, we see a war raging against God’s order. Satan distorts the natural order by possessing a serpent. He distorts the order of the family by approaching Eve instead of Adam. He distorts the order of God’s law by questioning what God really said. And, ultimately, he distorts the order of God’s authority by suggesting that Adam and Eve can obtain wisdom apart from God. This distortion of God’s order brought violence to the world. To cover the shame of their sin, God does violence to an animal so that he might make a covering for Adam and Eve.

We’ve seen the disorder and violence of sin spiral further and further with each chapter. In Chapter 4, Cain assumes a guiltless offering, becomes jealous of his brother’s faithfulness and does violence to Abel by killing him. In 4 and 5 we see that Cain’s seed expand this disorder, as with Lamech, who distorted God’s order for the family by marrying two women. Lamech also distorted God’s protection by doing violence to a young man and bragging about it.

Now, we come to Chapter 6 and we find the ultimate distortion of God’s order which precipitates the judgment of God on all of humanity. We find in 6:1 that at some point after the fall, this group of beings named “the Sons of God” noticed the “daughters of men” and took of them as they chose. Outside of Genesis 6, there is nothing else said about them in Genesis. In fact, the only other place where this phrase, “Sons of God”, appears in this same way is in Job, and there it refers to divine beings who were before the throne of God. We learn from various places (Daniel 8, Revelation 12) that when Satan fell from heaven, he brought other angels with him. These fallen angels “roamed the earth” with Satan, and like Satan, they set out to deceive men. So now, they look at these women and they take them to be their wives and have children by them. The ancient Canaanite cultures that surrounded Israel admired these fallen angels as gods who gave their people wisdom and technology. Just like Satan, these fallen angels distort everything about God’s order. They distort the line between angel and human in what they do. They distort the family relationship. They distort God’s wisdom.

The result of this distortion of God’s order leads to a humanity that is wicked, corrupt and violent. In chapter 6:5, God passes judgment on humanity by declaring it to be “wicked” and notice how far this wickedness goes: “every intention and thought of his heart is only evil continually.” Understand, the wickedness of the human heart is not just an issue of behavior or environment. It is something that goes all the way to the core of who we are. God also says in v. 11 that mankind was corrupt, and that violence filled the earth. The result of the corrupting influence of sin is the devaluing of human life.

As a result of this terminal wickedness and corruption, God declares judgment, starting in v. 3, and then again in v. 7. First, he promises that his Spirit will not strive with man forever. Remember two things from the garden scenes of chapters 2 and 3. First, remember that God brought Adam to life by breathing into his nostrils the breath of life. We find throughout Scripture that God’s Spirit animates all of life. This is why, from a Christian perspective, it is a nonsensical question to ask what life would be like without God. There would be no life! We do not sustain our own lives! If you are breathing today, it is because with every breath you take God is actively choosing to animate your life. Your breath is a direct and active result of God’s Breath.

And, remember that the curse for eating the fruit of knowledge was that “on the day you eat of it you shall surely die.” Yet, Adam and Eve didn’t die on the day that they ate. God postponed the penalty. In fact, he postponed it for all of Adam’s descendants. Those long ages given for men in Chapters 4 and 5 are meant to show God’s mercy in postponing his penalty for sin. But now God looks at the corruption of man and declares that he will remove his Spirit from them. He will no longer give men long life, but instead he will limit their lives to 120 years.

God’s judgment is also universal, as he decides to wipe out all of humanity with a flood. But, lest we lose all hope for humanity, lest we think there is no way that we can escape the wicked, corrupting nature within us, Moses ends this passage with a very, very small ray of hope. In verse 8 he says, “Noah found favor in the eyes of God.” Oh, for all of the heaviness of the next few chapters, for all of the weightiness of the corruption of man and the judgment of God, hold on to this! God finds favor!

Now, an important question would be, “How does God find favor?” And, our first reaction might be to say that he finds favor with those who are righteous. We might think that he finds favor with those who are righteous crusaders who seek to restore order and life to the world. That’s not a bad guess, but we already have that story. The nation of Israel was commanded by God to do those very things. God gave them his laws (over 600 of them), which dealt with order in the most stringent of ways. And yet, we know how that turned out. In spite of the abiding presence of God with the people of Israel, in spite of his Law, in spite of his prophets and his kings, the people still distorted the order of God and did violence to those made in his image. They broke every last one of his laws, worshipped other gods, followed after lunatics, sacrificed their own children, and killed the prophets of God.

Then, in the midst of this disordered and violent world, a promised Son is born. John says in John 1:8-9 that this son came to his own people, but even his own people didn’t know him. He came to a people who were ruled by the Roman Empire and fractured into four violently disordered political movements. Even with his birth the world reacted violently against him. King Herod sent soldiers to kill every newborn son in Bethlehem in order to prevent him from coming of age. When he did come of age, these four political parties sought to kill him at every turn. And yet, when he preached, a new order came to be. People who were violently oppressed by demons were restored to sanity. Disease-ravaged men and women were given back their health. Tax collectors and Zealots sat around the same table and fellowshipped with him. He took the Law of God, which those political parties had misused and abused, and explained what it really meant at the heart of it. He turned the order of the world on its head, saying things like “the first shall be last and the last shall be first”, and “love your enemy and do good to the one who despises you.” And, even when the world would do its worst violence to him, he would offer no argument back. When his disciples would do violence in his defense, he would say, “those who live by the sword will die by it”. As violent humanity ravaged his body he would cry out “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Yet, in his death and his resurrection he did what we could not do. Col. 2:13-15 says “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.”

Brothers and sisters, Jesus is the true Son of God! He did not look at God’s corrupted creation and lust after it like the fallen angels of Genesis 6. Rather, he looked at our corruption with compassion and with an unconditional love. He bore with us in our corruption, identifying with us by taking on flesh. He bore our wrath against his righteousness and absorbed both the wrath of man and the wrath of God in one loving, gracious act. Therefore, Jesus, in his death and resurrection, restores order and life to us. Now, God does not limit his Spirit to us, but he pours it out liberally on us through his Son. And, Jesus will one day rule over a perfect creation that he has restored. Paul says in Phil. 2:10-11: “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Friend, all that this world has to offer apart from Jesus is disorder, rage, chaos and death. And, judgment is coming. You know it is… the world knows it is. Repent and believe the Gospel.

Brothers and sisters, the way that we bring God’s order and life to the world is through our witness in the world. God has given us his Spirit and he has called us sons and daughters of God. We bring order by being salt and light in the world, by loving the loveless, caring for the fatherless and widow, doing good to our neighbor. And, we bring life to the world by telling others of the hope that is only found in Jesus Christ.