2019.02.25 Hopewell @Home ▫ Genesis 6:1-5

Read Genesis 6:1-5

Questions for Littles: Who began to multiply (Genesis 6:1)? Where? Who were born to them? Who saw the daughters of men in Genesis 6:2? What did they see about them? What did they take? For whom? How were they selected? Who responds to this in Genesis 6:3? What does He say that His Spirit will not do forever? What does He say that man is? How long does He give man? What three things does Genesis 6:4 tell us about the children that came from these marriages? But what does Yahweh see (Genesis 6:5)? How much wickedness? In what parts of their lives? And how many of those intentions? How often?

In the Scripture for this week’s sermon, we encountered a surprising change in the course of mankind. If the first four verses were taken out, the passage would flow well, except for there would be no explanation for how we got to the place that the Lord looks down on the earth and sees almost entirely unregenerate men.

Things seemed to be going so well. There was an entire line of godly men who had begun calling upon the name of the Lord from the time at which Enosh was born. There was an entire line of godly men, who walked with God like Noah (Genesis 6:9)—Enoch doing so to the point that he didn’t even die, and God took him. There was an entire line of godly men who looked forward, like Noah’s father, to the son who would undo the curse.

Where did the line go? Down the drain of poor marriage choices. The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful and took as their wives whomever they chose. Like the children of Israel with the Moabites in Numbers 31, like Solomon with the foreign women who turned his heart away from the Lord (1 Kings 11), like the returned exiles with Nehemiah (Nehemiah 13), so here in Genesis 6, poor marriage choices bring a quick downfall of the godly. And so it has often been throughout history, so that the apostle must solemnly warn the church about it in 1 Corinthians 7.

What kind of person should a believer be? What kind of person should a believer marry? What is the danger if you don’t marry someone who is wholehearted after the Lord? 

Suggested Songs: ARP1 “How Blessed the Man” or TPH128B “Lord, from the Depths to You I Cry!”