A sign on a convent read: “Absolutely no trespassing. Violators will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Signed, The Sisters of Mercy.” That sign reflects a problem Christians wrestle with, namely, confusion about the relationship between God’s grace and judgment.

Some say that God is so gracious that He overlooks our sin. These Christians pride themselves on their tolerance and acceptance of everyone, no matter how terrible their sin. Their theme verse is, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” Others emphasize God’s judgment of all sin. These folks are stern and judgmental, like their God. Their favorite verse is, “Prepare to meet thy God.”

Neither side reflects the full biblical picture of God. The first group stresses God’s love and grace, but loses His holiness. The second group emphasizes His holiness, but loses His grace toward sinners. The biblical picture is that God is both loving and holy, gracious and righteous, merciful and just. Since our view of God affects the way we live and treat others, we need to be careful to reflect the biblical revelation of who God is and how He deals with our sin.

Genesis 3 gives us the proper view of God. When Adam and Eve sinned, God did not strike them dead on the spot, as His holiness alone would have required. Nor did He say, “That’s okay, don’t worry about it,” as His love alone may have allowed. Rather, God dealt with their sin as a serious matter. He imposed the penalty their sin required; but He interposed His grace, so that the fallen couple could be restored to fellowship with Him. There was both the curse and the covering for their sin. These verses teach us that ...

God allows us to suffer consequences for our sin but also He provides salvation from sin’s ultimate consequences.

We need to keep both aspects in tension. In our day of “hang loose” Christianity, we need to remember that we cannot sin without consequences. Grace does not nullify the law of sowing and reaping. But also we need to remember that God is gracious, that He Himself paid the price for our sin, to deliver us from His ultimate judgment.

1. God allows us to suffer consequences for our sin: The curse (3:16-19).

As we saw last week, when Adam and Eve sinned, God graciously sought them, confronted them, and offered the promise of deliverance through the seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent. It was gracious because Adam and Eve deserved judgment, not a promise of deliverance.

But then God deals with the woman and then the man. He does not curse them directly, as He did with the serpent. But He does impose penalties for their disobedience. Even though God forgives the ultimate penalty of their sin, He still allows some of the consequences to continue.

We need to understand that the penalties imposed on Adam and Eve affected not just them, but every person in history after them. All sin is like that. We never sin in isolation. Even sin done in secret affects others. This talk about what goes on behind closed doors between consenting adults not being anyone else’s business is sheer nonsense. Sin always affects others, not only in this generation, but also in the generations to come.

Why did God curse these particular things? I think God cursed the woman’s childbearing process and the ground on behalf of the man because these things represent the chief role of each sex. The woman’s main role (biblically) is that of homemaker and mother; the man is to be the provider. That is not to say that the woman does not provide anything and that the man does not involve himself in the home. But these are the main responsibilities. In Genesis 1:28, the couple was commanded to be fruitful and multiply, and to subdue the earth. That command involved work, but not toil and pain. But now God introduces toil and pain as the necessary price to fulfill these primary roles.

A. The curse as applied to the woman (3:16).

The curse as applied to the woman involved two main areas: She would experience increased pain in childbearing; and she would be in a new relationship with her husband in which he is said to rule over her.

With regard to the first, the curse means that the physical pain of childbirth was magnified. Down through history, many women have died in childbirth. In spite of modern techniques, childbearing involves pain. One reason God may have increased the woman’s pain in childbearing was to give us an object lesson of the pain which God would now endure in order to bring forth spiritual children. His own Son, the second Person of the Trinity, would have to go to the cross and suffer not only the physical pain of the crucifixion, but also the indescribable agony of separation from the Father as our sin-bearer.

God mercifully tempers the pain with the great joy which children give. As Jesus said, “Whenever a woman is in travail, she has sorrow, because her hour has come; but when she gives birth to the child, she remembers the anguish no more, for joy that a child has been born into the world” (John 16:21). The most joyous moments of my life have been the births of our three children. Children who grow up to follow the Lord are a great source of delight to godly parents. But as any parent knows, you open yourself to great risk of pain when you enter into the God-given miracle of bringing a child into this sinful world. Because of the fall, you can’t have the joy without the risk of pain.

The curse as applied to the woman not only affected childbearing, but also her relationship with her husband. The last half of verse 16 is difficult to interpret. Two views are the most likely. The first is that in spite of the woman’s increased pain in childbearing, she would continue to have sexual desire toward her husband. Sex was not cursed by God. The woman has as much right to enjoy sex in marriage as the man. Two things commend this view. The word “desire” is used in Song of Songs 7:10 to refer to the desire of a lover for his beloved. And, the woman’s pleasure in sex serves as a gracious blessing to offset the preceding curse of pain in childbirth. Just as God curses the ground, but graciously allows it to yield sufficient produce; and, He curses work with toil and sweat, and yet work also is a blessing in that it forces us to discipline our unruly fallen nature and it yields the sustenance we need; even so, God ordains pain in childbirth, but graciously allows the woman to enjoy the act that leads to conception.

The second plausible view is that “desire” is used in the same sense as Genesis 4:7 (its only other occurrence in the Old Testament), meaning the desire to dominate. The woman who usurped authority from her husband by eating the fruit is cursed with the inclination to dominate him, but he is ordained to rule over her. The strengths of this view are that it fits in with the last phrase of the verse and it uses “desire” in the same sense it is used a few verses later. If this is the correct view, it alerts us to the inherent tendency of the fallen nature of each sex: of the woman to dominate her husband; of the man to dominate his wife. Both militate against the beautiful “one flesh” relationship that existed before the fall (2:24). Thus as Paul ordains (Eph. 5:22-33) that to recover that intimacy, the wife must submit to her husband, and the husband must tenderly love and lead his wife.

I find it hard to decide between the two views because both have their strengths and both express truths taught elsewhere in Scripture. If the second view is correct, it does not justify the abusive dominance of men over women; nor does it lend support to the egalitarian view, in which it is claimed that there are no gender-based role distinctions because Christ overcame the curse. It means that godly women must now fight the tendency to dominate their husbands, and godly men must fight the tendency to dominate their wives. Both must learn to love one another in the context of the proper roles ordained by God.

B. The curse as applied to the man (3:17-19).

Adam sinned not only by eating the forbidden fruit, but by allowing his wife to have dominion over him. God says, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife” (v. 17). Sometimes listening to the voice of your wife is the wisest thing you can do! But it is wrong to listen to your wife when she contradicts God’s word. Adam abdicated leadership to her, deliberately disobeying God by setting his wife above God. God holds the man accountable for the direction a family goes. Many Christian men are passive with regard to the family. They don’t take responsibility to train the children. They focus on their job and leave the home to the wife. When problems come, they blame her. It is not wrong to delegate things to your wife, but there’s a big difference between delegating and dumping. When you delegate, you retain final responsibility; when you dump, you abdicate responsibility. Scripture clearly holds the man responsible for his wife and children.

The curse on the man covers two areas: the ground is cursed; and physical death is mandated. Just as the curse on the woman also affects the man, so the curse on the man affects the woman. The curse on the ground meant that man would have to toil to bring forth the crops to survive. I understand the curse to be much wider than just the thorns and thistles mentioned here as representative. As Paul explains in Romans 8:20-21, the whole creation was subjected to sinful man. An unfallen creation could not be ruled by a fallen lord. So everything in creation which is now opposed to man--from mosquitoes to viruses to natural disasters--stems from the fall. All suffering and pain ultimately can be traced back to the first sin.

The second part of the curse as it applies to the man is the affirmation of physical death. Our bodies will return to dust. Since the fall, death is the enemy of every person. We can spend our lives working toward certain goals, and yet be struck down any day by the most trivial of accidents. Death is no respecter of persons: young and old, rich and poor--all must face death. But as terrible an enemy as death is, even it has its side of blessing: It forces us to come to terms with God and eternity. Very few of us would do that if we didn’t recognize our mortality. Death shouts at us that we desperately need to be right with God.

So the curse shows us that God allows us to suffer consequences for our sin. Sometimes those consequences are directly related to some sin we have committed; at other times we just suffer the consequences of living in a fallen world. While God graciously tempers the severity of the consequences with glimmers of grace, the consequences are real. They remind us that with the holy God, sin is serious. But God’s grace triumphs in that He doesn’t leave us to suffer the ultimate consequences of sin:

2. God provides salvation from sin’s ultimate consequences: The covering (3:20-24).

At first glance, verses 20 and 21 seem out of context. But they fit in perfectly.

A. Salvation is through faith in God’s promise (3:20).

After the morbid words of verse 19, you would expect something like, “Now Adam called his wife’s name the Grim Reaper, because she was the mother of all the dying.” But instead of the Grim Reaper, Adam calls her “Eve,” which means “life-giver.” And even more strange, she has not yet had any children (see 4:1).

What does this verse mean? It is Adam’s response of faith to God’s promise to send a Savior through the seed of the woman (3:15). Adam heard and submitted to God’s penalty of death (3:19); but he also believed God’s promise that there would come forth from the woman one who would bruise the serpent’s head. And so by faith Adam named her Eve, the mother of all living, before she had conceived.

Salvation is now and always has been by faith in God’s promise. Before Jesus Christ came into the world, a person’s faith looked forward to the promised Savior. Since Christ, faith looks back to the Savior who came. But God always has granted salvation in response to a person’s taking Him at His word. It has never been based on keeping the commandments or on balancing out a person’s good works against his sins. Adam took God at His word. At that instant he was delivered from the ultimate consequence of his sin: eternal separation from God. God responded to Adam’s faith by providing a graphic object lesson of salvation:

B. Salvation is through God’s provision (3:21).

This verse shows how God met the practical need for clothing. But obviously it goes far beyond that. Just as man’s nakedness (3:7) goes beyond the physical and points to the nakedness of soul which resulted from sin, so God’s provision of clothing goes beyond the need for garments. It is a beautiful illustration of what God would do through the Lord Jesus Christ to provide salvation for all who stand before Him, naked due to their sin. This verse shows us four things (I have adapted the following four points from James Boice, Genesis [Zondervan], 1:189-192):

(1) Man needs a covering for his sin. The thought of standing with our sin exposed before the light of God’s presence should be more intolerable than the thought of going stark naked for a job interview at the White House. We all need some sort of covering for our sin.

(2) Man’s attempts at covering himself are inadequate. Adam and Eve’s fig leaves wouldn’t do. Man often tries the fig leaves of good works to make himself presentable to God, but God cannot accept that. All the good works in the world cannot erase our sin, which is the problem.

(3) Only God can provide the covering we need for our sin. He takes the initiative in properly covering man. He strips off the fig leaves and clothes Adam and Eve with animal skins. Adam and Eve did nothing; God did it all. We cannot receive God’s salvation as long as we offer Him our fig leaves. We must let Him provide everything, as He has in fact done in Christ.

(4) The covering God provided required the death of an innocent substitute. If, as I think we can assume, Adam and Eve witnessed the slaughter of these animals, it must have shocked them. This was the first time they had seen death. As they saw the animals (perhaps lambs?) having their throats slit and writhing in the throes of death, they must have gained a new awareness of the seriousness of their sin and of the greatness of God’s grace in providing for their sin. They learned that without the shedding of blood, there is no adequate covering for sin, but that God would accept the death of an acceptable substitute. Of course the blood of animals cannot take away our sin, but only the blood of Christ, to whom the animals pointed.

You are either standing before God clothed in the fig leaves of your own good works, or clothed in the righteousness which God provides in Jesus Christ. The only way you can hope to gain entry to heaven is to accept the covering God offers through the death of the Lamb of God.

C. Salvation is from the ultimate curse (3:22-24).

Having clothed Adam and Eve, God expels them from the garden. Art Linkletter saw a small boy drawing a picture of a car with a man in the front driving, and a man and a woman in the back. When Art asked who was in the car, the boy replied that it was God driving Adam and Eve out of the garden of Eden. That’s not quite how it happened!

First God states the problem: “the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil” (3:22). By eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, man had become like God in the sense that he related good and evil to himself. In the case of God, this is right, because He is the only perfect One who is the measure of all things. But in the case of man, it was sin. Now man knew evil like a cancer patient knows cancer, whereas God knew evil like the cancer surgeon knows cancer. The implication of God’s unfinished sentence (3:22) is that if they had stayed in the garden and eaten from the tree of life, they would have lived forever in their sinful bodies. So God banished them from the garden and Paradise ceased to exist on this earth.

But even this penalty contained a blessing. As Donald Barnhouse observes, “How often it is necessary for God to drive us out of an apparent good to bring us to the place of real good!” (Genesis [Zondervan], p. 28). Once sin had entered, to live forever would have been hell on earth. To set us free from sin and death, the Savior had to come who could rightly claim, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies” (John 11:25).

Conclusion

Barnhouse also tells the story of Sir Edward C. Burne-Jones, a prominent 19th century English artist, who went to his daughter’s home for tea. During the tea, his little granddaughter misbehaved, so her mother made her stand in the corner with her face to the wall. Sir Edward did not interfere in his granddaughter’s discipline. But the next day he arrived at the house with his paints, went to the wall where the little girl had been forced to stand, and proceeded to paint a number of pictures that would delight a child--a kitten chasing its tail; lambs in a field; goldfish swimming; etc. If his granddaughter had to stand in the corner again, at least she would have something to look at (Let Me Illustrate [Revell], pp. 145-146). Judgment was tempered by grace.

Because of the fall, we are all under the curse of sin. But while God allows us to suffer the temporal consequences of sin to warn us and to turn us from sin, He also paints a picture of grace by providing the covering we need to protect us from sin’s ultimate consequence. Today you are either standing before God in the fig leaves of your own good works, in which case you are under sin’s full curse if you should die; or, you have come to Christ, the Lamb of God, and have allowed Him to cover your sin with His shed blood. Along with the curse, God provides the covering. Make sure you’re under God’s merciful covering!

Discussion Questions

1. How can we hold to God’s grace without excusing our sin, and to His holiness without hindering intimacy with Him?
2. Does the curse doom husbands and wives to rivalry for power? Is a husband supposed to exercise his authority to get his wife under his rule?
3. Some argue that the curse of a woman being under her husband’s rule is abolished in Christ (Gal. 3:28). Is this valid?
4. Does God soften the harvest of sowing and reaping (Gal. 6:7-8) for the believer? Base your answer on biblical examples.

Copyright 1996, Steven J. Cole, All Rights Reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, © The Lockman Foundation

There are three great enemies of the believer: The world; the flesh; and the devil. In the early chapters of Genesis, these three enemies are introduced to us in reverse order: The devil (chap. 3; the temptation and fall); the flesh (4:1-15; “sin crouching at the door”); and, the world (4:16-26; where we see the descendants of Cain making progress, but it is progress without God).

We live in a world of dizzying technological progress. In my own lifetime (I’m dating myself!), TV has gone from a novelty owned by a very few Americans, with a narrow selection of shows (almost all wholesome), to a domineering presence in almost all American homes, where it spews forth sensuality, violence, and anti-family programs which we watch for an average of over three hours per day per person. Somehow, I made it through college without the photocopy machine. I was through seminary and several years in the ministry before the personal computer became available. The last few years have brought the fax machine, the computer modem, and the Internet.

If you go back to my grandparent’s childhood years (100 years ago), it was a whole different world. There were no paved roads or cars, no airplanes (let alone space travel--my grandfather died insisting that men on the moon were just a TV fantasy). The telephone and electric light bulb were new inventions. Most modern household appliances did not exist. Even the radio was still future. Medical knowledge was in its infancy compared to today.

As Christians, we are called to live in this world and to use the things of the world, and yet not to be conformed to its man-centered ways. It’s easy to get squeezed into this world’s mold, so that God subtly gets squeezed out. To make progress without God is to be like the man who climbed the ladder of success only to discover that it was leaning against the wrong wall. Someone has said, “Is it progress if you get a cannibal to use a knife and fork?” Progress without God leads no where; true progress comes only through submission to God.

In Genesis 4:16-26 we see, in Cain’s descendants, the world caught up with progress without God. But at the end of the chapter there is a glimmer of hope in the descendants of Seth, a remnant of people who call upon God. These two strands of people--the worldly and the godly--write human history. They teach us that ...

Progress without God is illusory; progress with God is true progress.

1. Progress without God is illusory (4:16-24).

After murdering his brother, Cain refused God’s offer to repent. Instead, he “went out from the presence of the Lord, and settled in the land of Nod [= wandering]” (4:16). To go out from the presence of God means that Cain turned his back on God. He and his wife had children and grandchildren, he built a city, his descendants developed a number of innovations, and life went on. It sounds a lot like our world. There is progress; but it is only apparent progress, because it is progress without God.

Before we go farther, we need to answer the questions you’re all wondering about: Where did Cain get his wife? and, Where did the people come from to populate a city? With regard to Cain’s wife, Genesis 5:4 states that during Adam’s long life, he had many sons and daughters besides those named in these chapters. Someone has conservatively estimated that in his 930 years (which I take literally) Adam could easily have over a million descendants. So Cain (probably before murdering Abel) married one of his sisters (or nieces), who went east with him. God had not yet forbidden incest, which later in human history would cause genetic problems.

With regard to the question of where the people came from to populate Cain’s city, the term “city” need mean nothing more than a walled enclosure with a few houses. Even in David’s time (ca. 1000 B.C.), the capital city of Jerusalem encompassed only about ten acres. So we’re not looking at a Phoenix! The people who lived in Cain’s “city” were probably his descendants.

While Cain himself defied God, his descendants weren’t all angry rebels. The names of several of them contain the root “El,” the Hebrew word for God, which would indicate that they had a form of religion (4:18). But the implication is that they did not know the living God. He was not central to them. They focused on the business of raising families, founding cities, pursuing careers, and developing cultures and inventions.

A. Cultural and technological advances promote the illusion of progress.

These people saw a number of beneficial advances. The population was growing. Families developed. Cities, where people banded together in a common endeavor, were now possible. Others domesticated livestock (4:20). Culture was advancing, as Jubal invented stringed and wind instruments (4:21). Tubal-cain began to make and use various bronze and iron implements. It all had the look of progress.

Sounds like our world, doesn’t it? There were children, cities, culture, and careers. We get married, have children, build “planned communities,” take the kids to music lessons, and pursue our careers. But when you do all these good things apart from the presence of the Lord, they become only the illusion of progress. The world tries to fill the emptiness of life without God with all these good gifts which God has given for the human race.

In fact, each of them can turn into a nightmare without God. Children can become brazen murderers, like Lamech (4:23-24). Cities can become hopeless jungles of poverty and violence. Culture--music, literature, and films--can be used to glorify filth. Careers can be used to further greed in the selfish scramble to the top. Inventions have brought us to the brink of destroying the human race. The problem isn’t in these cultural and technological advances. The problem is when these things are done apart from the presence of God. Progress without God is only illusory.

B. Man’s spiritual and moral failure expose the illusion of progress.

Derek Kidner (Genesis [IVP], p. 78) observes: “Cain’s family is a microcosm: its pattern of technical prowess and moral failure is that of humanity.” The spiritual and moral failure shows itself in four ways:

(1) Defiance of God. God told Cain that he would be a wanderer because of murdering Abel. But Cain went out and built a city to thumb his nose at God. But even if he settled in a city, Cain couldn’t escape the inner restlessness. Perhaps building a city was his attempt to protect himself apart from God’s protection, since he feared that he would receive the same treatment he gave his brother.

By naming the city after his son, it’s likely that Cain was also defying God. God had said that death was the penalty for sin. Cain attempted to thwart the curse by making a lasting name for his family line by naming his city after his son. The psalmist, in talking of the foolishness of those who live without God, says, “Their inner thought is, that their houses are forever, and their dwelling places to all generations; they have called their lands after their own names. But man in his pomp will not endure; he is like the beasts that perish” (Ps. 49:11-12).

Defying God is more stupid than trying to stop a speeding freight train by standing in front of it. You can’t win against God! Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Phil. 2:10-11). You can either do it voluntarily now, or against your will in hell. But you cannot defy God and win. The spiritual and moral failure of the fallen human race is also seen in its ...

(2) Pride. As we saw last week, Cain was proud. He wanted to come to God on his terms, not on God’s terms. He wanted God to accept him on the basis of his best efforts. But no one can come to God on human merit. We can only come through the sacrifice God has provided, which robs us of our pride.

Cain’s pride was like a snowball, picking up mass as it rolls downhill. By the time it got to Lamech, it was an avalanche. Lamech not only sinned, but sinned boastfully. Verses 23 & 24 record the first poem or song in history. It is a “macho” song of the world’s first Rambo boasting in his strength. He calls his wives together and tells them how tough he is. The words may mean that he has already killed someone, or they may be the threat that if anyone messes with him, he will kill them. He is not simply saying that he will defend himself if he is attacked. Rather, he’s saying that if even a boy provokes him slightly, he will kill him.

But there’s more: not only is he boasting of himself over other men, but he is boasting against God. He refers to God’s promise to protect his ancestor, Cain, by punishing sevenfold. He is saying that he can take care of himself far better than God took care of Cain--seventy-sevenfold! This shows that he knew of God, but he chooses to exalt himself above God. What blasphemy and arrogance!

When a society or individuals in that society start boasting about sin, it has hit the bottom. I’m afraid our society is there. We flaunt sin on TV, and even Christians watch the filth until their noses grow accustomed to the stench. But God hates sin. Sin put Jesus through the agony of the cross. While we must show compassion to sinners (because we, too, are sinners needing mercy), we must never boast in the sin. The spiritual and moral failure of this early civilization is seen in their defiance of God and in their pride. Also,

(3) Polygamy and sensuality. Lamech took two wives. This is the introduction of polygamy in the Bible. While God tolerated polygamy, it was never endorsed, and the problems it caused are sufficient reason to conclude that it never brings about God’s purpose for marriage. Even though this was a drastic departure from God’s plan in giving one wife (and not more) to Adam, there is no indication that Lamech sought the Lord about doing it. He just did what he felt like doing.

The names of his wives and daughter reveal the sensual emphasis of this man. The names must be significant, since the Hebrews to whom Genesis was written would not have known these women, and nothing else is said of them. Adah means “the adorned,” or “beautiful one”; Zillah means “the shaded,” perhaps from her hair, or “tinkling,” perhaps from the sound of her voice. The name of the daughter, Naamah, means “lovely. The emphasis was on the lust of the flesh, on outward beauty and sensuality, not on the inner person or character.

Like no culture in history, we are bombarded with sensuality and appeals to the flesh. But as in this early culture, so today, this moral cancer is covered with the veneer of progress: “We’re free from the Victorian ideas of sexual purity. We’re free from the restrictive divorce laws which kept our parents bound in unhappy marriages.” And so we cast off God’s plan for moral purity, for marriage and the family under the banner of progress. The final indicator of the spiritual condition of these people is ...

(4) Perversion of culture into violence and selfish ends. It is not accidental that the development of bronze and iron implements (4:22) is followed by Lamech’s boast about murder (4:23-24). The development of bronze and iron implements was good for society. Many useful tools could help man cultivate the land and perform other tasks. But the same knowledge was used to develop swords and spears to kill. And so Lamech takes the good thing developed by his son and uses it wrongfully to defend his pride. The lyrics of the first song in history promoted violence! “Gangsta Rap” is as old as human civilization!

In our culture, inventions which could benefit man are twisted to promote destruction. The arts and music, which can be a wholesome expression of human creativity, are perverted into pornography and the degradation of people made in the image of God. And it’s all tolerated under the false covering of progress and free speech.

That’s the world system! It’s making great progress in many areas, but it’s progress without God. And so good things, legitimate things, are twisted and used for evil ends. The illusion of progress is promoted by the cultural and technological advances; but that same illusion is exposed by the spiritual and moral failure crouching behind it all. It would be depressing if the chapter ended there. But thankfully it does not. It ends with a glimmer of hope:

2. Progress with God is true progress (4:25-26).

By inciting Cain to murder Abel, Satan tried to thwart God’s promise to bring a deliverer through the seed of the woman. But God raised up another seed in Seth, whose name means “appointed.” Through Seth’s descendants we read, “Then men began to call upon the name of the Lord.”

Compared with building cities, founding cultural enterprises, and launching industries, “calling on the name of the Lord” doesn’t sound much like progress. It is not that those things are to be abandoned by God’s people. All too often Christians have let the world set the pace in the arts and sciences. Christians ought to be leading the way in every wholesome aspect of human enterprise. But the point is that if God is not at the center of such enterprise, it will be morally bankrupt. What looks like progress will not be progress at all. True progress has God at the center. Note three things about progress with God:

A. Progress with God requires believing God’s promises.

When Eve gave birth to Cain she thought he was the promised deliverer. She said, “I have gotten a man, the Lord” (4:1). Even though she was mistaken, it was a statement of faith. God had promised a deliverer through the seed of the woman. Eve believed God’s promise. But she gave birth to a murderer, not to the Savior. She could have grown disillusioned with God and said, “I believed God once and He let me down. Why should I believe Him this time?” But she didn’t. Rather she said, “God has appointed me another offspring [lit., “seed”] in place of Abel; for Cain killed him” (4:25). It’s interesting that Eve recognized Seth as the replacement for Abel, not for Cain. She knew that God could not use Cain to fulfill His promise of the seed. And her faith was rewarded, although not in her lifetime. In the fulness of time the promised Seed was born of a woman whose genealogy is traced through Seth to Adam (Luke 3:38).

You can’t make true progress in life until you take God at His word concerning His promise of the Savior. Jesus Christ, miraculously conceived in the virgin Mary through the Holy Spirit, is the eternal God in human flesh. God told Adam and Eve that they would die if the ate of the forbidden fruit. They ate; they instantly died spiritually, by being separated from God. They began to die physically. But God showed them through the death of the animals whose skins He used to clothe them that He would accept the death of an appropriate substitute. Jesus Christ is that substitute, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. You cannot come to God based on your own merit or works, as Cain tried to do. You can only come to God by trusting in the Substitute He has provided as the penalty for your sin. True progress starts there.

B. Progress with God requires acknowledging man’s frailty.

In biblical times, names were important. Seth named his son Enosh, which means “frail one” or “mortal.” Instead of boasting about his strength, as Lamech did, Seth readily acknowledged his weakness by naming his son, “Frail One.”

You cannot make progress with God until you learn how weak you really are. The problem with most Christians is not that they are weak, but rather that they think they’re strong. Until you know your weakness, you will trust in yourself, which is a sure route to spiritual failure. But as you become aware of the awful depravity of your heart, it drives you to trust completely in the Lord, who alone is your strength. When you are weak, then you are strong. That leads to the final aspect of progress with God:

C. Progress with God requires dependence upon the Lord.

“Then men began to call on the name of the Lord”. This may have been the beginning of public worship. The “name” refers to all that God had revealed about Himself. While the significance of the name “Yahweh” was not revealed to God’s people until Moses (Exod. 3:13-15), God’s character as the personal covenant God was known. Seth’s descendants began to call upon God as the personal, caring God, trusting fully in Him. If you are not growing in dependence on the living God, you’re not making progress in anything that counts for eternity.

Conclusion

Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph, was a man who acknowledged his own weakness and God’s strength, and thus trusted in the Lord. He was a pioneer in human progress. One day a friend said to him, “Professor Morse, when you were making your experiments, did you ever come to a place of not knowing what to do next?”

“More than once,” Morse replied, “and whenever I could not see my way clearly, I knelt down and prayed to God for light and understanding.” Then Morse added, “When flattering honors came to me from America and Europe on account of the invention which bears my name, I never felt I deserved them. I had made a valuable application of electricity, not because I was superior to other men, but solely because God, who meant it for mankind, must reveal it to someone, and was pleased to reveal it to me.”

In May, 1844, the first message to be sent over the telegraph, dispatched by Morse himself between Washington and Baltimore, was, “What hath God wrought!” That was true progress, because God was at the center of Morse’s life.

Someone has said, “I would rather fail in a cause that will someday triumph, than triumph in a cause that will someday fail.” How about you? Where are you putting your energy and time: into progress in the things of this world, or into true progress with God? Progress without God is no progress at all. The only progress that counts is progress with God at the center of our lives.

Discussion Questions

1. Why are Christians often not on the cutting edge of science and the arts? Is it wrong for Christians to devote their lives to excellence in the these areas if it is not directly evangelistic?
2. Some Christians have the notion, “Jesus is coming soon and the world is going to burn, so why work to improve things?” Is this a biblically tenable position? Why/why not?
3. How can we keep God at the center of our lives in the midst of the pressures of our families, careers, etc.?
4. What is “worldliness”? What does it mean to be “in the world” but not of it? See John 17:14-19.

Copyright 1996, Steven J. Cole, All Rights Reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, © The Lockman Foundation

A pastor friend and I used to eat lunch together once a month. After lunch we’d often continue our conversation as we took a walk. On one occasion he seemed fatigued and out of breath by an easy stroll, even though he was no older than I. He told me that he was fighting the flu. But several weeks later, when the symptoms did not subside, doctors discovered a massive lump in his chest. He had lymphoma, a form of cancer. They discovered it too late. After several rounds of chemotherapy, my friend died. To fight cancer, early detection and aggressive treatment are essential.

Sin is like cancer of the human soul. It often starts unnoticed, perhaps with a small compromise. There may be a few bothersome symptoms, but we dismiss them or excuse them as due to some other problem. But the cancer is there and growing, working corruption in the individual and also tainting his relationships. If unchecked, it will contaminate an entire society. The final result is God’s judgment. But, thankfully, throughout the process prior to God’s judgment, His grace gives us repeated offers to repent and be restored. This process is pictured in Genesis 6:1-8, which describes the world just prior to God’s judgment in the flood. It shows us that ...

Sin begins with compromise, goes on to corruption, and ends in condemnation, unless we respond to God’s grace.

We would do well to pay attention to these verses, since Jesus likened the days just prior to His return to the days just prior to the flood. He said, “For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days which were before the flood they were eating and drinking, they were marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so shall the coming of the Son of Man be” (Matt. 24:37-39). Jesus is saying that the people of Noah’s day ignored God’s warnings. They went about the normal things of life, oblivious to the repeated warnings of judgment, until it was too late. The same thing will happen to many in the days just prior to Christ’s return. So the message to us is, “Make sure you listen to God’s warning about your sin. If you ignore the symptoms, it may be too late!” Our text reveals sin’s full course:

1. Sin begins with compromise.

We read that as the population grew, “the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose” (6:1-2). The first interpretive problem (of several) is, Who are the sons of God and the daughters of men?

It’s easy to lose the application of this text in the debate over the right interpretation. The debate is centuries old, with godly men holding differing views. But whichever view is right, the application is the same--that the human race before the flood was corrupted by sin, and that corruption began with compromise.

Three main views have been proposed. The first view is that the sons of God were powerful rulers, probably controlled or indwelled by demons, striving for fame and fertility. In some Ancient Near Eastern cultures, kings were called the sons of one of the gods, and even in the Bible, the Hebrew word “Elohim” is used for men in positions of authority (Exod. 21:6 [NASB margin]; Ps. 82:1, 6). The daughters of men refers to all women. The sin of these rulers was their lust for power and women; they were trying to achieve immortality through immorality. (Allen P. Ross, The Bible Knowledge Commentary [Victor Books] 1:36, defends this view.) The weaknesses of this view are that it seems forced on the text, it stretches the biblical terms, and it would not have occurred to Moses’s audience in reading the context of Genesis.

A second, more widely held, view is that the sons of God refers to fallen angels (demons) who came to earth in human bodies and cohabited with women, resulting in a superhuman race called the Nephilim (6:4). Many respected modern Bible scholars hold this view (A. W. Pink, Donald Barnhouse, Ray Stedman, James Boice, Charles Ryrie [Study Bible]). It goes back as early as the Septuagint in 200 B.C. Justin Martyr and Tertullian held this view in the early Church, but it was opposed vigorously by Augustine and Chrysostom and later by the Reformers. But there are some strong arguments in its favor or so many respected men would not hold it.

The strongest argument for it is that every other time the term “sons of God,” is used in the Bible, it refers to angels (Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7; Dan. 3:25; Pss. 29:1; 89:6). Also, several New Testament passages referring to the flood mention demons who disobeyed by abandoning their proper abode, thus incurring God’s judgment (1 Pet. 3:19, 20; 2 Pet. 2:4, 5; Jude 6). It is argued that these demons left their proper abode of the spirit world and cohabited with women. But, how could angels do this? In Genesis 19, the angels visiting Lot in Sodom were desired by the men of that evil city for homosexual relations. If you object that Jesus said that angels cannot marry, it is answered that Jesus said that in heaven the angels do not marry (Matt. 22:30). But neither will men and women marry in heaven. Thus, there is no inherent problem with angels cohabiting with earthly women.

Proponents also argue that in the context of Genesis, Satan wanted to thwart God’s promise to bring a deliverer by the seed of the woman by corrupting the human race with this superhuman race of giants. It was his insidious plan to bring immortality to the human race illicitly, bypassing God’s curse of death.

In spite of these arguments, I reject this view. I think it creates mind-boggling theological problems which have no biblical warrant. We do not need such a far-fetched view to explain the text adequately in its context. So why adopt it? First, there is the theological problem of how angelic beings can have sex with women. It is one thing to say that demons indwell human men who marry human women. But it is incredible and makes the Bible sound like Greek mythology to say that demons take on bodies and produce offspring with human women!

What were the offspring--half-angel, half-men? There is no such category in the Bible. Do they have some sort of angel--human souls? While the term “sons of God” refers to angels in other Old Testament uses, it refers to righteous angels, not to demons. (In Job 1:6 and 2:1, Satan is distinguished from the sons of God, as if he were not part of their number. In the other references [Job 38:7; Dan. 3:25; Pss. 29:1; 89:7], righteous angels clearly are meant.) “Sons of God” seems like a strange term for fallen angels. And while the exact term is not used of men, God’s people are called His sons in the Old Testament (Deut. 32:5; Ps. 73:15; Hos. 1:10 [in the Hebrew text, “children” = “sons”]). With regard to the New Testament references (1 Pet. 3:19-20; 2 Pet. 2:4-5; Jude 6), there are other adequate interpretations. So why introduce a mythological sounding concept full of incredible theological problems which has no other scriptural warrant when we don’t need to?

The third view, and most normal in light of the context, is that the sons of God refers to the godly descendants of Seth, who called on the Lord (4:26 & 5:1-32); the daughters of men refers to ungodly women, mostly from the line of Cain, who rejected God (4:16-24). The problem described here, which led to the corruption of the human race and the judgment of the flood, was the intermarriage of the godly line of Seth with godless women. Undoubtedly Satan was involved behind the scenes, as he always is when a generation turns away from the Lord (Balaam, Numbers 25). To say that Satan was involved in seducing men from a godly heritage to marry ungodly women is not fantastic; to say that fallen angels actually married human women is.

The biggest problem with this view is why Moses uses this term. It is an unusual designation. If it were not, everybody would agree on the interpretation! The best answer is that Moses used the term to underscore the high standards which the Sethites should have observed (H. C. Leupold, Exposition of Genesis [Baker], p. 252; also, see Calvin). As “sons of God,” they should have known better than to marry godless women. But instead, they married on the basis of sexual attraction only, not on the basis of godly character. They “saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose” (6:2). The result was the compromise of godly standards which led to the corruption and judgment of the human race. Luke 3:38 seems to support this view. Luke traces the line of Christ back through Seth to Adam, but doesn’t stop there; he calls Adam “the son of God.” Thus Adam’s descendants through Seth are the sons of God who became corrupted through wrongful marriage alliances.

As I said earlier, it’s easy to lose the application in the process of working through the interpretation. But let’s not do that. No matter what interpretation you take, the application is the same: Sin begins with compromise. Satan often uses wrongful marriages as the area of compromise to seduce God’s people. It is an effective tool, since the sex drive and the emotions of romantic love are so powerful. I have seen many young people neutralized in their Christian lives by marrying “nice” unbelievers or worldly-minded professing Christians.

It is proper to be physically attracted to the person you marry. But to marry primarily because of physical attraction is a serious mistake. The typical short-lived Hollywood marriage ought to tell us that. But Satan uses this weapon over and over. A couple is physically attracted to each other, they get physically involved, they get married on that basis, and later there is often infidelity and divorce. Their testimony for Christ is polluted.

While the area of wrongful marriage alliances was where the line of Seth compromised, and is a major area where we can compromise, it is not the full extent of the application. When these men from the line of Seth, called “sons of God,” married these ungodly women on the basis of sexual attraction, they compromised their integrity. They had a name to live up to: “sons of God.” But their lives didn’t match their title. So they had to put up a front, to try to maintain the image of sons of God, while living on a natural, sensual plane. It is a short step from there to total spiritual corruption.

Guard your spiritual integrity! Integrity does not mean perfection, but it does mean walking in reality with God, and dealing biblically with your sin. Satan wants to undermine your integrity. He wants you to compromise your testimony on the job, and instead of confessing your sin, to cover it up or deny it. He wants you, as perhaps a church leader, to yell at your kids and verbally abuse them at home, but not to confess your sin and ask their forgiveness. Then you come to church and pretend to be spiritual. You’ve just compromised your integrity. Sin begins with compromise.

2. Sin goes on to corruption.

I will come back to verse 3; but note that in verse 4, Moses mentions the Nephilim. This is another major interpretive problem. Who were the Nephilim? Those who hold to the angel view say that they were a race of giants who resulted from the union of the angels with the daughters of men. But the text doesn’t say that they are the product of that union, but only that they were on the earth at that time and also afterward.

The word occurs only one other time, in Numbers 13:33. There the spies who return to the Israelite camp report that they had seen the Nephilim, and that they felt like grasshoppers in comparison to them. The word comes from a root word meaning “to fall upon,” and thus apparently points to men of violence, who had a reputation of falling upon their enemies. They may or may not all have been giants physically. But the point is, they were vicious men who would just as soon kill you as look at you. Moses’ point is that the generation prior to the flood was notorious for its violence (see 6:13). Their unchecked sin had grown into the worst sort of corruption. They had let themselves go in hardened, open rebellion against God.

This is further affirmed by God’s evaluation of that generation: “Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (6:5). God looked beyond the actual deeds of wickedness and saw the hearts. What He saw was total corruption. Alfred Edersheim says of verse 5: “This means more than the total corruption of our nature, as we should now describe it, and refers to the universal prevalence of open, daring sin, and rebellion against God, brought about when the separation between the Sethites and the Cainites ceased” (Old Testament Bible History [Eerdmans], 1:39). Verse 5 is God’s description of the extreme corruption of that generation.

But it is also a description of the corruption of every human heart. Sin begins in the heart, or thoughts (Mark 7:20-23). It does not always reach the outward manifestation of Noah’s day (although our society is at least as far gone), but the heart of every person is the same as what God saw when He looked on that generation. After the flood, when the righteous Noah offered a sacrifice, God said, “... the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Gen. 8:21). This is God’s revelation of His view of what goes on inside every person, even those, like Noah, whom He has redeemed.

If you want to verify God’s viewpoint, look at the world around you--the violence, greed, sexual immorality, and self-centeredness. But you don’t need to look out there. Look at your own heart. Even though outwardly you may be reasonably respectable, is there anyone who would want their innermost thoughts to be broadcast? Though I have been a Christian for years and experience consistent victory over sin, I often have to fight against degraded, corrupt thoughts! I agree with Martin Luther who wrote, “Without the Holy Spirit and without grace man can do nothing but sin and so goes on endlessly from sin to sin” (Luther’s Works, Vol. 2, p. 40, cited in James Boice, Genesis [Zondervan], 1:250). Sin’s course begins with compromise; it goes on to corruption.

3. Sin ends in condemnation.

God determined to bring judgment on the whole world because of man’s corruption (6:6-7). When the Bible says that God “repented” (KJV), it does not mean that He changed His eternal plan. God is unchangeable in His person, perfections, and purposes. Nothing thwarts the counsel of His will (Eph. 1:11). But from our perspective, sometimes it seems that God has changed His plan. To put it in terms which we can understand, and to reveal God’s heart response to human sin, the Bible says that God repents, or feels sorrow (1 Sam. 15:11, 29).

The point is, God doesn’t get a sadistic kick out of judgment. It grieves Him to see our rebellion and sin, and He only brings judgment after He has repeatedly warned and appealed to us to turn from our sin. When He does judge, His judgments are always just. He has a right to judge man, because He created him (6:7). But, even then, as He said to Ezekiel, “I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezek. 33:11).

Thus sin begins with compromise; goes on to corruption; and ends in condemnation. But the section ends on a brighter note. The cycle can be broken!

4. We can respond to God’s grace.

“But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord” (6:8). The word favor means acceptance or grace. When used of God’s favor toward man it means His undeserved favor. Noah did not earn favor with God, he found it. He was just as much a sinner as his contemporaries (9:21). The difference was, Noah was willing to accept God’s view of his own sin and to turn from that sin to God, seeking His grace. The result was a righteous life.

This is the first time the word grace appears in the Bible. It is not the first time grace appears, since God’s grace is seen in His treatment of Adam and Eve in clothing them with animal skins rather than judging them for their sin. It is seen in His repeated dealings with Cain. It is seen in the long life of Methuselah, whose name means, “when he is dead, it [that is, judgment] will come.” His long life was a testimony to God’s gracious appeal over almost 1,000 years to this godless world to repent.

God’s grace is seen in 6:3, when the Lord says that His Spirit will not strive with men forever. The word “strive” means to judge, in the sense of striving to restrain men from their evil ways. God is saying that the human race had cast off any desire to live in the realm of the spirit, and was living as mere flesh, as totally given over to sin. He was warning that He would not continue to strive to check man’s unbridled sinfulness indefinitely. But, God adds, “his days shall be 120 years.” Some understand this to mean that his lifespan would now be 120 years. But I think God means that there will be another 120 years before the judgment of the flood for man to repent. That’s grace! If they had repented, I believe that God would have relented on His judgment, even as He did with sinful Ninevah in the days of Jonah.

But, when sin was at its peak, we read that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. That’s a great encouragement. It means that in spite of the corruption, the horrible violence, immorality and degradation around us, God’s grace for the individual still shines through. Where sin abounds, grace superabounds (Rom. 5:20). No matter how terrible your sin, you can find grace if you will turn to the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus did not come to save the righteous, but to call sinners to repentance. If you will agree with God’s view of your heart (6:5), and cry out to Him, “Be merciful to me, the sinner,” He will pour out His grace and salvation on you.

Conclusion

But God’s grace does have a limit. In Noah’s day, it was 120 years. The flood came and everyone was lost except Noah and his family. In our day, we do not know when time will run out. We do know that our day, like Noah’s, is a time of unparalleled corruption, with people going on about life without regard for God. And we do know that God “has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:31). We’re all infected with the cancer of sin. Only God can cure it. He is ready and willing, if you will respond to His gracious offer. The only other option is to let sin run its full course, resulting in corruption and final condemnation. God calls out to you, “Now is the acceptable time, behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2).

Discussion Questions

1. What are some ways we are tempted to compromise with sin in our society?
2. What would you say to someone who argued that all people aren’t as bad as verse 5 indicates?
3. Where is the balance between sharing God’s judgment and His love when we witness?
4. Why is intermarriage with unbelievers such a serious sin?

Copyright 1996, Steven J. Cole, All Rights Reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, © The Lockman Foundation

To be faithful as a Christian in an evil day, you must learn to stand alone. You will repeatedly face pressure to violate your Christian standards and go along with the crowd. As a Christian teenager, you’re with some friends who are passing around a joint. What will you do when it comes to you? All the other kids are experimenting with sex and talking about their adventures. Will you go along with the crowd? Everyone has an illegal copy of an upcoming test. Will you join them in cheating?

Christian adults also face constant pressure to compromise their faith. At work, the boss expects you not to be totally honest in dealing with customers. On a business trip, your associates are all going to a porno movie and want you to join them. At family gatherings over the holidays, the rest of the family are gossiping about another family member. They’re telling off-color jokes. What do you do?

No one likes to be ridiculed or rejected. We all want to be liked and included. We don’t want others to think that Christians are a bunch of prudes who can’t enjoy life. So we’re easily tempted to go along with the crowd rather than to stand alone for Jesus Christ. But if we yield, we dishonor God and lose our distinctive witness for our Savior.

There is probably no greater example of a man who stood alone with God in an evil day than Noah. God, who sees the heart of every person, saw fit to save only Noah and his family. All others perished in the flood. Think of what it would be like to be the only godly family on earth! Noah’s life teaches us that ...

To stand alone in an evil day we must walk with God.

“Noah walked with God” (6:9). That phrase is used only of Enoch (5:22, 24), Noah, and the godly priests (Mal. 2:6). It is the secret of standing alone in an evil day. The first thing we learn is that ...

1. Standing alone is necessary because we live in an evil day.

Through repetition, the text underscores several points. Twice (6:11, 12) it mentions that the corruption on earth was in the sight of God. In the sight of men, things weren’t so bad. As we’ve seen, they were making great strides in many areas. They viewed themselves as progressive; but God viewed them as putrid. It is God’s view, not man’s, that matters. We only learn God’s view in His Word. Three times the text repeats that the earth was corrupt (6:11, 12), meaning morally degraded. The Hebrew word “corrupt” means to destroy. Derek Kidner puts it, “... what God decided to ‘destroy’ (13) had been virtually self-destroyed already” (Genesis [IVP], p. 87). Twice it is said that the earth was filled with violence (6:11, 13). Moral degradation and violence go together. When people cast off God’s standards for right and wrong, self becomes the standard. Self grabs whatever it can get, regardless of others. Violence is the gruesome result. Because of the degree of moral degradation and violence, God wiped out everything through the flood.

This text is especially applicable to us, because Jesus said that just as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days prior to His return (Matt. 24:37-39). People were going on about life oblivious to God, “eating and drinking, ... marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away.” They were living without regard to God and His impending judgment. What a description of our time!

The frightening thing is that there were grandchildren of the godly Enoch who were swept away in the flood. They knew about God. Perhaps some of them even claimed to know God. But they had blended in so much with the evil around them that they didn’t listen to God’s repeated warnings of judgment.

When Jesus returns, there are going to be many who claim to know Him, even those who have prophesied and cast out demons and done miracles in His name, who will say to Him, “Lord, Lord,” but He will say to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness” (Matt. 7:21-23). They thought they knew Jesus, but Jesus didn’t know them because they blended in with the wickedness of the end times! It’s not easy, but we must stand alone because we live in an evil day!

2. Standing alone is possible because Noah did it.

“Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time” (6:9). The word righteous is used in two ways in the Bible. It is used of the righteousness of faith, that is, of imputed righteousness (Rom. 3:21-4:25). When a person trusts in Christ as his sin-bearer, God credits the righteousness of Jesus Christ to his account. We know that Noah had been justified by faith because Hebrews 11:7 says that his obedience in building the ark shows that he was “an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.”

But the word righteous is also used of the right conduct which stems from being justified (declared righteous) by faith. It means “conformity to a standard” and points to the observable behavior of those who live by God’s revealed standards of right and wrong. When verse 9 says that Noah was righteous, it is referring to this type of righteousness. It would be wrong to say that Noah found favor with God (6:8) because he was a righteous man. Rather, because he was the object of God’s undeserved favor, he lived a righteous life. His faith showed itself in good works and moral behavior. That’s always God’s order--grace first, then saving faith, then good deeds (Eph. 2:8-10).

Noah was not only righteous, but also blameless, which means “complete” or “whole,” that Noah had integrity. The phrase “in his time [or, generations]” means that Noah’s contemporaries viewed him that way. Many of them probably thought he was crazy, but they couldn’t deny that he lived what he believed. That Noah was righteous and blameless does not mean that he was perfect. He sinned just as we do. But Noah confessed his sin to God and he obeyed God. Noah’s righteousness and blamelessness are summed up in the words, “Noah walked with God.”

The text probably repeats the names of Noah’s three sons in verse 10 (see 5:32) to remind us of the effect that Noah’s godly life had on them. They easily could have been influenced to leave their father in his crazy project of building this ocean liner on dry ground and to blend in with the world. The reason they stayed with Noah and got on board the ark was that they saw in their father a life that rang true.

If we want children who learn to stand alone in our evil day, we’ve got to be parents who live our convictions, as Noah did. Kids are smart; they read our lives much more than our lectures. They can smell phoniness a mile off, and they want no part of it. But if they see reality with God in us, there is a much better chance that they will stand alone against the tide of ungodliness in our times.

Standing alone is hard in any day. But Noah’s example proves that it is possible. But how do we do it? A step at a time.

3. Standing alone is achieved by walking with God.

As we saw with Enoch, walking with God implies faith in God, obedience to God, and fellowship with God. With Noah’s walk with God, three things shine through: faith, obedience, and perseverance. First, faith:

A. Walking with God begins and continues through faith in God’s Word.

Like Enoch, Noah is listed in the faith “Hall of Fame” in Hebrews 11:7: “By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.” Note two aspects of Noah’s faith:

(1) Faith in God’s Word concerns the unseen. Noah was warned about “things not yet seen.” God threatened to destroy the wicked and promised to save Noah and his family through the ark (Gen. 6:13-18). All this was in the future. Noah had no tangible signs to verify that this would happen. All he had was God’s word. But he built his whole life around it. Alexander Maclaren writes, “The far-off flood was more real to him than the shows of life around him. Therefore he could stand all the gibes, and gave himself to a course of life which was sheer folly unless that future was real” (Expositions of Holy Scripture [Baker], p. 54).

Could you say that about your life--that it is sheer folly unless heaven and hell are real? We’ve gotten away from this. We emphasize the present benefits of being a Christian. Christianity is being marketed as a product that can do everything from help you lose weight to make you a successful salesman. But you won’t stand alone in our evil day unless by faith you are staking everything on what God says about future judgment.

(2) Faith assumes that we hear and know God’s Word. Hearing and knowing what God said, Noah acted upon it. We have God’s written Word. But if you don’t know the Word, it won’t have any effect on your daily attitudes, behavior, and relationships. Let’s say you watch one hour of TV each day (the national average is three hours per day!), plus a weekly movie. You spend another hour daily reading the newspaper and various magazines. Plus, you spend time listening to the radio while driving, etc. You read your Bible once or twice a week for 10-15 minutes. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to figure out what is going to influence your life the most! We are so bombarded with the world! You won’t stand alone against the evil of our day unless your intake of the Word is sufficient to offset your intake of the world.

I urge you to saturate yourself with the Bible every way you can. Get it on tape and play it while you drive. Read it daily, asking God to give you His wisdom on how to live in this evil day. Memorize key verses so that God can bring them to mind when you’re tempted to sin.

B. Walking with God requires complete obedience to God’s Word.

Twice we are told that Noah did according to all that the Lord had commanded him (6:22; 7:5). When you think about it, what the Lord commanded him was incredible. Can you imagine Noah telling Mrs. Noah that he was going to build a ship 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high? You hear about guys who build a fishing boat in their back yard, but this was ridiculous! This wasn’t a weekend hobby; it was a full-time job for 120 years! Most of us would have argued with the Lord: “It’s not feasible! It’s not logical! It’s too costly! It will take too long!” But no matter how difficult, illogical, or costly, Noah did “according to all that God had commanded him.” Walking with God requires that kind of complete obedience.

The task God gave Noah was enormous. If you parked the ark on the street out front, it would go from the corner of Benton to the Beaver Street Brewery. The street is 30 feet wide, so it would be two and a half times the width of the street. And it would be three stories high! In fact, as far as we know, it was not until 1858 that a vessel of greater length was built: the “Great Eastern,” which was 692 by 83 by 30 feet (James Boice, Genesis [Zondervan], p. 262]). While the ark was a floating box, not a pleasure craft, studies have shown that its proportions are ideal for a seaworthy vessel. How would Noah or anyone else at that time have known how to build such a large seaworthy vessel apart from revelation from God?

Critics have called Noah’s ark a myth, saying that it would be impossible to fit all the known species of animals in such a vessel. If you’re interested in a detailed treatment, I refer you to The Genesis Flood [Baker], by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris, two scientists who show that it is not incredible. We don’t know exactly what the Bible means by the word “kind” in reference to the animals (6:20). It could refer to families of animals, from which the various species could later develop. The Bible is clear that God created the various kinds of animals distinct from one another, but there could have been change within the kinds. Authorities on taxonomy estimate that there are less than 18,000 species of mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians alive today. Even if that number is doubled to allow for extinct species, the ark would need to hold about 75,000 animals. Given the dimensions of the ark, it easily could hold as many as 125,000 animals the size of a sheep. Since the average size of land animals is less than that of a sheep, no more than 60 percent of the ark would be needed to hold the animals, with the rest being used for food and water storage (Morris, The Genesis Record [Baker], p. 185).

As for the problem of how Noah went about collecting all these species, verse 20 indicates that God caused the animals to come to him. That’s a miracle, but certainly God could do it. As for how Noah could have collected food for all those animals and fed them all on board, it is possible that God caused the animals to go into a type of hibernation so that they didn’t require as much food and water (Whitcomb & Morris, p. 71). Also, it is possible that, as will be the case in the millennium, the carnivorous animals ate grass before the flood. We don’t know, but it is not impossible. (Man was vegetarian before the flood.) At any rate, the story is not incredible or mythological. There are reasonable explanations for the many problems.

We don’t know the meaning of “gopher wood” (6:14; NIV = “cypress”). But the Hebrew word for “gopher” as well as the word “pitch” (tar that Noah covered the wood with) both come from the Hebrew root word for “atonement,” which means “to cover.” So you could say that those who were protected by the “atonement” wood and “atonement” pitch were delivered from God’s judgment.

As such, the ark is a type of the Lord Jesus Christ. Just as everyone who was on the ark was saved and everyone not on the ark was lost, so everyone who, in the obedience of faith, has put himself under the covering of the blood of Jesus Christ will be saved from God’s future judgment; everyone who is outside of Christ will be lost. It doesn’t depend on one person being better or worse than another person. There were probably some nice people who didn’t get on board the ark. There are some wonderful people who have never trusted in Christ for salvation. It all depends on whether you are “on board” or not, covered from God’s judgment by the means He has ordained.

If Noah had said, “I believe what God says about the coming flood,” but he hadn’t followed through in obedience, he would not have been saved. If he had started, but got tired of the whole thing and quit part way through, he would not have been saved. He and his family were saved from the flood because he obeyed God completely. In our day there is a false security being offered to people under the label of eternal security. Somebody prays to receive Christ and we tell them that they are saved and eternally secure. They may be; but they may not be. If there is no subsequent change in terms of obedience to God, there’s reason to doubt the reality of their salvation. We are saved by grace through faith apart from works, but faith that saves works. The proof of your faith is your obedience.

Walking with God begins and continues by faith in God’s Word; it requires complete obedience to God’s Word.

C. Walking with God requires perseverance.

The metaphor of walking suggests the long haul. You may run for short distances, but if you need to go far, walking is more effective. God warned Noah of the impending judgment and told him to start building the ark 120 years before the flood (Gen. 6:3). By faith Noah started working and kept going. When his sons were old enough, they helped him. Noah just kept on until it was done.

The New Testament says that he was a preacher of righteousness (2 Pet. 2:5). He preached righteousness for 120 years and didn’t have a single convert. It is likely that he had many scoffers. It must have been a favorite pastime to go over and watch old Noah working on his ark. It probably had never rained yet on the earth (Gen. 2:6). Everyone must have thought Noah was bonkers to spend his life building an ocean liner on dry ground on an earth that didn’t know rain! The pressure to quit would have been tremendous. Yet he kept plodding on.

It’s easy to make a profession of being a Christian. It’s not too difficult to remain a Christian for a few months or even a few years. But it’s another matter to walk with God through the years in spite of trials, hardships, ridicule, and no visible results. We need what has been called “a long obedience in the same direction.” We need perseverance!

Conclusion

Let me put it plainly: If you don’t consistently spend time alone with God in His Word and in prayer, you don’t have a walk with God! If you don’t have a walk with God, you will not be able to stand alone as Noah did. You will be more conformed to this evil world than you are to Jesus Christ. Peter writes that just as the early world was destroyed by the flood, so “the present heavens and earth by [God’s] word are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men” (2 Pet. 3:7). His conclusion is, “Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness” (3:11).

If you worked for a company that you knew was going to be dissolved by bankruptcy, your attitude toward that company would change. You wouldn’t put your future hopes in it, because it has no future. If you heard that the government was going to shut down a bank because of insolvency, you wouldn’t rush to invest your money in that bank. God has said that this evil world is doomed. He has promised “a new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells” (2 Pet. 3:13). Like Noah, we must redirect everything in our lives--our time, our money, our goals--in light of God’s warning of judgment and His promise of deliverance in Christ. We must stand alone in this evil day by walking with God.

Discussion Questions

1. We’re called to be in the world but not of the world. But are there situations where we must isolate ourselves from the world? When and how?
2. How can a Christian know if it is right to join in a particular activity? How can we gracefully abstain when necessary?
3. How can we help our children to stand alone? Which activities should we forbid them to participate in? When should we let them make up their own minds?
4. How can a person know that he is “on the ark”? In other words, how can we have assurance that Christ is truly our Savior?

Copyright 1996, Steven J. Cole, All Rights Reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture Quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, © The Lockman Foundation