The Evil that Broke God's Heart - Genesis - April 19th, 2026 (Sermon Transcript)

All right, if you have a Bible, you can open it to Genesis chapter 6, or you can follow along with the sermon handout that you got on the way in the passage is there as well.

It's really one of the more interesting and controversial passages in the Bible, because it talks about this mysterious group of people called the Nephilim.

According to some scholars, the Nephilim were half-demon, half-human creatures that roamed the earth before the flood of Noah. And it's really fascinating. We'll get into all the details about it this morning.

It's the kind of thing where if you Google the Nephilim, you will certainly have many rabbit holes to go down. The kind of thing where I'm sure there are a whole bunch of strange YouTube videos about it.

In some ways, it reminds me of the lost city of Atlantis or the great pyramids in Egypt, because it's the kind of thing that generates a lot of speculation and a lot of wild theories.

For example, some people argue that the pyramids in Egypt must have been built by aliens. Other people speculate that they might have been built by some kind of acoustic levitation.

I learned this week that certain acoustic frequencies are able to cause objects to levitate, to create sort of like a gravitational field where very, very small objects can levitate and sort of defy the laws of gravity.

And so some people speculate that the ancient Egyptians might have had like giant tuning forks or some kind of devices or some kind of chance.

And they were able to use sound waves to create anti-gravity fields to then move the stones into place on the pyramids.

And if you don't buy into that, other people say that the pyramids were built by the Nephilim, the very same Nephilim mentioned in our passage today.

Because there's another passage in the Bible, Numbers 13, that indicates that the Nephilim were giants, like Goliath and the story of David and Goliath. He seems to have been a giant.

And in Numbers chapter 13, there's also another reference to gigantic people. And so maybe these giants, these Nephilim had the strength to move the stones into place to build the pyramids. Today, my hope is that we can get to the truth.

When it comes to conspiracy theories and ancient mysteries, I think, I hope that's what people long for the most. We want to know what's actually true. Well, the good news is God's word is true.

It is completely and fallibly, authoritatively true. So please stand for the reading of God's word. I'll read the text for us.

Genesis 6 verses one through eight. When man began to multiply in 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 into 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 the birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

Please be seated and join me as I pray for us.

Father, I pray that you'd help us to understand your word this morning, to believe it, to find, to find the true meaning of it, God, and to accept it, Lord, to let it teach us, to let it shape the way that we think, to let it challenge us, to let it

inform us and feed us. You say that your word is our food, that the truth of your word feeds our souls. So I pray, God, that you would feed our souls this morning. Pray in the powerful name of Jesus.

Amen.

5:23

Genesis 6 Purpose

Now, I promised to tell you about the Nephilim, so I want to get pretty much straight into it, but before we talk more about the Nephilim, I want you to understand what God wants you to understand this morning.

God did not inspire Moses to write this passage in order to satisfy our curiosity about half-demon, half-man giant creatures who may or may not have built the pyramids. That's not what this passage is for. So what is this passage for?

Why did God inspire Moses to write these words? He did it to teach us about evil and sin and the wickedness of mankind.

He did it, the general purpose of this passage is to teach us about human sinfulness, human evil and wickedness, and how God responds to it, and how God feels about it.

So that's the main focus, this wickedness of humanity, and the Nephilim are just one example of that. In verse two, it says that the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose.

So who are these sons of God? In the Bible, sons of God is often used in reference to angels.

So that's the primary reason that people have come to this theory that Nephilim were half-man, half-angels, because sons of God typically refers to angels throughout the Old Testament. But there are really two major views here among scholars.

The first view is the one I've been describing. The Nephilim are half-angels, half-human, and probably giants. The Nephilim, the only other time that the word Nephilim is found in the Old Testament, or in the Bible at all, is in Numbers 13, verse 33.

And there, they are described as being giants, these scary, powerful, absolutely massive people. And then, in addition, you have a really cryptic verse, Jude 6, in the New Testament.

And according to Jude 6, it refers to angels who did not stay, this is the direct quote, the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling.

The angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling.

So all these pieces of the puzzle are starting to come together, and people are coming up with this theory about the sons of God, and the daughters of men, and the Nephilim, and all of that.

And finally, the Nephilim are described in great detail in the book of 1st Enoch. According to 1st Enoch, they were indeed half human, half angel. They were evil, destructive giants who terrorized the world until the flood wiped them out.

So is that the correct views? Is that what this passage is talking about? Is it true?

Is it real? It's kind of like the stuff about the Egyptian pyramids. Maybe they were built by aliens.

Maybe they were built using acoustically generated anti-gravitational fields, or maybe they just used a ramp. Kind of boring, but maybe they just used a ramp.

They got the stones really wet so they slid more easily on the sand, tied a bunch of ropes to them and big groups of people pulled these stones up long ramps.

The ramps would have to be apparently up to a mile long in order to reach the top of the pyramids in such a way that they weren't too steep. So maybe they were really long ramps. It's not a very exotic theory.

It's not a very exciting theory, but it's usually the simple theories that are most likely to be true. And so it is here with the Nephilim. The simplest explanation is the most likely to be true.

9:43

Nephilim Theory Debunked

Let's go through that evidence again. I gave you the theory. I gave you the evidence that is cited in favor of it.

And we can kind of go through it again in reverse order and see some of the holes in this theory. First, we need to recognize that the book of 1 Enoch is not in the Bible.

A lot of people are very curious about this and they get tripped up by these kinds of things. But there are a number of books that some so-called Christians put in the Bible that we as Protestants don't put in the Bible. It's called the Apocrypha.

And then of course, there's the Pseudepigrapha. The book of Enoch is a pseudepigraphal book, meaning that it was not actually written by Enoch. It was written by somebody pretending to be Enoch a good 2,000 years after the time of Enoch.

And it was filled with all kinds of Jewish legends and speculations. It was filled with theology that does not fit with the Bible. So whatever it says about the Nephilim has to be taken with a huge grain of salt.

We can't come up with this idea about the Nephilim being these half-demon, half-angel, or half-demon, half-man creatures, and then say, oh, well, the book of 1 Enoch confirms it. Because the book of 1 Enoch might not be true.

In fact, we have good reason to believe that a lot of it isn't true. And the same, in a different way, in a different way, we can say similar things about Numbers 13, verse 33. That is in the Bible.

But you have to read it in context. In Numbers 13, 33, the people who use the term Nephilim and talk about giants are clearly exaggerating. They're using hyperbole.

It's the part of the book of Numbers where they send these Israeli spies into the land of Canaan before the people of Israel go into the land. And some of the spies come back with reports saying there are these giants there, these Nephilim.

We can't go in there. We're gonna get slaughtered if we try to defeat these people. But they gave those reports because they were scared.

They were too scared to try to enter the promised land so that they exaggerated. And so, again, we have to take it with a huge grain of salt. And finally, Jude 6 is a very cryptic reference.

Nobody knows exactly what it means, and you shouldn't make big theological conclusions based on unclear passages.

And here, I feel like there's so much to talk about with this subject, but hopefully, I'm satisfying your curiosity, and eventually, we'll get to the really important stuff, the good stuff.

But I wanted to mention that here in Genesis 6, the Hebrew that is translated Sons of God could also be translated Godly Sons. For some people, that's proof positive that we're talking about half angelic creatures. It says Sons of God.

And in the Old Testament, Sons of God means angels. Well, the Hebrew translated Sons of God could have just as easily been translated Godly Sons. So it doesn't necessarily refer to angels.

In fact, I think it refers to the Sons of Seth. To the Sons of Seth. And I think that gets to the heart of what this passage is really saying.

We'll get into that in just a moment. But a couple more things on the Nephilim. Notice verse four.

It says that the Nephilim were on the earth before the Sons of God took wives from the daughters of men. So the Nephilim could not have been their offspring, and that is a massive problem for the theory.

A Nephilim comes from the Hebrew meaning fallen, so it could just mean fallen ones. When you put it all together, when you consider all of this evidence, it seems like the Nephilim were probably powerful warriors or rulers or both.

Probably did a lot of mighty and terrible things, but I don't think that there's good reason, enough reason to conclude that they were gigantic, mythical, half-demon, half-human creatures. So what do we make of all this?

If we don't conclude that, what do we conclude?

14:15

Sethite Line Corruption

Well, let me give you the view held by some of the great scholars of church history. People like Augustine, Calvin, and Luther. This view again says that the sons of God are the godly sons of Seth.

The Nephilim might have been mighty and big and evil, but they were just men. Notice in verse 4 how it calls them men, twice. That's not an accident.

And this view makes a lot of sense when you consider what Moses is writing about at this point in Genesis. Since chapter 4, Moses has been writing about Adam and Eve's descendants. I want you to really focus in here.

This is the point of this passage. This is what God is trying to say to us this morning. This is the lesson that we need to walk away with this morning.

Since chapter 4, Moses has been writing about Adam and Eve's descendants. It starts with Cain and Abel, and Cain becomes famous for murdering his brother Abel.

And then we learn a little bit more about Cain, and we see how his descendants spiral into darkness.

In the book of Genesis, it records how the descendants of Cain, they develop technologies, they build cities, but the violence and wickedness just gets worse and worse, and that's one line in the genealogy.

You have Adam and Eve, and then you have Cain, and then Cain goes off that way, spirals into wickedness. And after Abel dies, Adam and Eve have another son named Seth, and Seth goes in a different direction. That's another line in the genealogy.

While the line of Cain is practicing polygamy and committing murder and filled with pride, the line of Seth is producing men like Enoch. Enoch, who became famous for walking so closely with God that God just took him straight to heaven.

It's producing people who are calling upon the name of the Lord, who are worshiping the Lord. So at the very beginning of human history, what you see is that humanity divides into two groups, two very different groups of people.

Pretend for a minute that you don't know how the rest of the story goes. Like imagine that you're reading the Book of Genesis for the first time. Imagine if you're an alien.

We were talking about aliens earlier. We could use that analogy.

Imagine if you're an alien and you get deposited here on earth and you're learning about the history of humanity and you're reading the Book of Genesis and you're learning how God created human beings and you wonder, how's it gonna go?

Like are humans gonna be good? Or are they gonna be bad? Are they gonna do what God is calling them to do?

What's gonna happen with these two lines? You have this group of humans that is doing really bad stuff. You have this group of humans.

Seems like there's some hope there. They're calling upon the name of the Lord. You have Enoch.

Which one is gonna win out? Are humans gonna be good or bad? Here's the answer.

Genesis 6. These two lines mix together and everybody becomes bad. That's what it says, verse two.

The godly sons of Seth start to notice that these daughters of Cain are quite attractive. So they go on some dates maybe. One thing leads to another.

They get married. They have kids. And what happens when you take godly kids and they marry ungodly kids?

Well, usually the godly kids get corrupted. This is why the Bible tells us that you shouldn't marry non-Christians. If you're a Christian, you shouldn't marry a non-Christian, because usually the non-Christian corrupts the Christian.

This is what happens. We see the corruption happening here. The godly line of Seth was essentially, at this point, the hope of humanity.

They still did good. They still worship God. If they continued worshiping God, humanity might be okay, but they don't.

Instead, they marry the ungodly daughters of Cain, and whatever goodness that they had going was overwhelmed by a flood of wickedness, to the point that you get verse 5.

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. Evil wins. Let me read that again.

Every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, except for Noah, verse 8. There was one man, one family, who had listened to God. And we'll find out later in the Bible that they are far from perfect.

But God, they'll listen to God enough that God decides to wipe out everybody else, everything else, and start over with this one family. But I want to go back to verse 5 for a moment.

19:42

Restraining Human Evil

People, at this point in human history, were completely evil through and through. Why aren't people like that anymore? The Bible teaches that everybody is born with a sin nature.

And this is one of those points where a lot of people don't buy into it. A lot of people don't buy into this. They think humans are basically good, or somewhat decent.

Or a blank slate. I've talked about this a bunch of times. I'll keep talking about it, because we all have a tendency to really doubt it.

We come to the Bible, and we pick and choose what we like and what we don't like, what we're willing to accept and not accept.

And this is one of those things where some people who read the Bible and like a lot of what it says, they get to this point, and they're like, I don't really agree with that. But let me warn you about that sort of approach to the Bible.

If that's how you approach the Bible, then the Bible is not the authority you are.

The Bible cannot teach you, the Bible cannot correct you because anytime you get to a part that you don't like, you just say, ah, I don't really agree with that part, and I move on.

So God has no authority in your life, no power in your life, no ability to correct you or teach you or change you. You just go to the Bible to affirm what you already believe.

But if we approach the Bible how we ought to approach the Bible, willing to be corrected and changed and challenged and transformed, then we'll get to these parts, and we will adjust our view of human beings.

The Bible teaches that all humans are born with a sinful nature. The Bible says that even if we are physically alive, we are spiritually dead until God makes us alive through Christ. And that's the good news.

The bad news is that we're all born dead in our sins and trespasses, as the Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 2. But God, being rich in mercy by His grace through faith, makes people alive.

Just like Jesus rose from the dead on Easter morning, if we put our trust in Jesus, God will raise us spiritually from the dead. He'll make us spiritually alive. But until then, we're spiritually dead.

You ever heard people say that they feel dead inside? I heard a preacher talking about this just yesterday, and it's such a good point. People use that phrase, they say, I feel dead inside.

And usually, it's because they are. That's true. Without Christ, we are all dead inside.

And we can cover it over and we can ignore it, and we can do this and that to distract ourselves from it or to try to make ourselves feel alive or convince ourselves that everything's okay and life is good and so on.

But the reality is, apart from Christ, we are dead, we are slaves to sin, we are lost in darkness. We are like the people in this passage. And yet, the people in this passage are even worse than people are now.

I want you to think about your non-Christian friends and family and coworkers. They are spiritually dead, according to the Bible, and that is true. But they're not verse 5 dead.

They're not all evil all the time. Not everybody is Hitler, not everybody is Charles Manson. Not all their intentions are all evil all the time.

I have known many non-Christians who are very nice. They do generous things, they practice forgiveness on occasion, they exhibit things like patience and kindness. So how do we explain that?

Why aren't they like the people in our passage? The grace of God is why. Deep down, I would argue that people today aren't any better than the people in verse five.

People today, all of us included apart from Christ, aren't any better than Cain and Lamech and all of his evil descendants, but people today, even non-Christians, learn to do good because of the culture around them.

And I know we can say a lot of bad things about our culture, but generally speaking, people in our culture know not to murder. People in our culture know not to steal, right?

And whatever goodness exists in the culture around us ultimately comes from God because Western civilization was built on principles and truths that came from the Bible. Why aren't people that wicked all the time?

Well, because they live in a society that was built on principles and truths and moral values that come from the Bible. Our laws were shaped by God's law in Scripture, and God gave his law to restrain the wickedness of humanity.

And all the cultures around the world that weren't based on the Bible, well, many of them incorporate principles that come from a human conscience.

Everybody is born with a conscience that tells them that murder is bad, that theft is bad, and we do a lot to sear our consciences. We do a lot to suppress the truth in our unrighteousness.

But if you look at cultures around the world that weren't influenced by the Bible, if those cultures outlaw murder and outlaw theft and things like that, which many of them do, well, that's because God gives the truth in the human heart.

Everybody is born with a conscience that tells them what's right and what's wrong. So ultimately, the cultures, the good things in those cultures that shape people and guide people, ultimately those too come from God.

One way to see this is to notice the difference between the people in the Old Testament before the flood and the people in the Old Testament after the flood.

What's the difference between these people, Genesis 6, and then the people in, say, Genesis chapter 20, not long after the flood? Well, not long after the flood, not Genesis 20, but Exodus 20, not long after the flood, God gave the 10 commandments.

That's the difference. God gave people moral guidance, and he gave punishments for those who disobeyed. Therefore, as a result, people weren't completely wicked all the time, things get even better after Jesus comes on the scene.

Ever since the time of Jesus, Christians have been going out into the world, doing good, and living righteously. Christians have been shaping culture.

Let me remind you that in the Roman world, before Christians came on the scene, the Roman world did not have orphanages. If kids were without a family, too bad, they died. The Roman world did not have hospitals.

If you got sick, too bad, you died. The Roman world did not have schools. Christians invented these things, because we are lights in the darkness.

We can show the world the beauty of love and generosity and forgiveness, and we as Christians are part of restraining human wickedness. So God gives his law to keep people in check.

A lot of people don't murder simply because they might get caught and go to prison. People don't steal because they might get caught and go to prison.

God gives his law, and sometimes our laws reflect his law, and that restrains the wickedness of humanity. But you know what else restrains the wickedness of humanity? Christians following Jesus and obeying Jesus and loving like Jesus loved.

You see, our light has the power to keep the darkness at bay. But we must always remember that we are moons, not suns. Our light has the power to keep darkness at bay, but we don't create the light, we simply reflect the light.

It's like Noah in verse 8. Notice the words there regarding Noah. It's like one righteous man that is the hope of humanity.

It says that Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. He didn't earn favor, he found it. It was grace from God, and any light that is in you is also grace from God.

If you are a light in the world, it is because you are reflecting God who is light. I think one of the worst things in the world is a self-righteous Christian.

I think it's so important to talk about this stuff and how we're supposed to be lights in the world, and we're supposed to show the world what it really means to love and forgive and be patient and kind and truthful and all of that stuff.

We are called to do that by God's grace. We are doing that.

But the worst thing in the world is when we start thinking that we're doing it out of our own power, when we start patting ourselves on the back, we start giving ourselves the credit for being good people.

If we have any light at all to shine into a dark world, it's because we are reflecting the light of God. 1 John 1, 5 says that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. We are not light, God is.

There is darkness in us. As a Christian, by God's grace, as you continue to follow Jesus throughout your life, as you pursue God, a relationship with God, as you spend time in the Word and in prayer, by his grace, the darkness diminishes.

It grows smaller and smaller and smaller. The light increases, grows brighter and brighter and brighter.

1 John 1 continues and says, if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin.

If we walk in the light, our light shines throughout the world and keeps the darkness at bay. Genesis 6 paints a picture of what the world would be without God, without God's law, and without God's people making it a better place.

31:16

Godʼs Response to Sin

So I want to encourage you this morning to walk in the light. Walk in the light. And I want to encourage you to think about how God feels when you don't.

How does God respond to human wickedness in this passage? How does God feel about our wickedness, our sin? Well, we have to understand that God always punishes sin.

In verse 3, it says that he gives humanity 120 years. And that could mean, it's a little unclear, it might mean that God is giving them 120 years until he wipes them out, until the flood of Noah.

Or it could mean that God is shortening their lifespans, so that from then on, generally speaking, human life will max out at 120 years, which holds true.

Whenever you hear about the oldest people in the world, they're always 117 or 115 or things like that. Generally speaking, human lifespan maxes out at 120 years. Maybe that's what happened in verse three.

We're not quite sure, but either way, the point is that God responds with serious consequences for sin. Very serious consequences. It says later that he's gonna send a flood to wipe out everything on earth.

That's how God responds, with just and righteous punishment. And if God didn't respond to sin with punishment, then he wouldn't be a just God. If people like Hitler never got punished, then he wouldn't be a just God.

Everybody recognizes that justice requires punishment. They just think that they're not bad enough to deserve punishment themselves. They just want to exempt themselves.

Well, the reality is we are not exempt. We all are bad enough to deserve the punishment of God, the just and righteous wrath of God against us for our sins. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus is punished in our place.

It's also important to remember that beyond punishing sin, God has other responses to sin. In our passage, it highlights how God also responds with grief. With regret.

In other words, our sin breaks his heart. Looking again at verse 6, it says the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. That's how God feels about our sin.

When we turn our backs on him, when we hurt other people, it grieves him to his heart. And if you love God, which Jesus said is the first and greatest commandment, loving God, if you love God, you won't want him to feel that way.

The passage even goes so far as to say that God regretted making man. We have to be very careful here because God doesn't regret the way that we regret. Sometimes we regret things because we made a foolish decision.

Well, God never makes foolish decisions. We regret things because, well, we did that, but we didn't know that that was going to happen, and then that happened, and now it's a mess.

And we regret what we did, but God is never surprised by what happens. The Bible teaches very clearly that God knows all things. God knows the future.

When Cain murdered Abel, it wasn't a surprise to him. When humans fell into complete depravity, he wasn't shocked. That's not what this passage is saying.

This passage is using anthropomorphism. It's using human emotions and applying them to God, but really the message of the passage is this. The wickedness of man deeply grieves God.

Our wickedness breaks God's heart. Wait, there are two things we can conclude here.

One, we could conclude that God made a mistake in creating humans, and he was really surprised when things went really bad, and he really regretted it and wished he hadn't done it.

But there are other statements throughout the Bible that make it clear that that is simply not possible. This part of Genesis is not meant to be like a precise theological textbook about the nature of God. That's not what this is.

There are other parts of Scripture that are precise statements about the nature of God, and those parts of Scripture make it clear that God knows all things. That God can't be surprised by our wickedness. He knew it was coming.

And so we must take this part of Genesis to mean something else, namely, that God was not surprised by our wickedness, but it still broke his heart. It still made him sad. That's who God is.

That's what God is like. He is grieved by our sin. Now, imagine for a moment if you were God.

Imagine if people treated you how humans treat God. Imagine if people rejected you. Imagine if they scoffed at you and turned their backs on you and hurt the ones that you love.

Imagine if you made something beautiful and you gave it to somebody as a gift and they trashed it. Would you send your son to die in order to save them? Of course not.

I know I wouldn't, because there's darkness in me. I may reflect the light, but God is light. I may feel love, but God is love.

It is so important for us to understand the depth of human sin, so that we can see the goodness of God in response. This passage is not merely showing us how wicked people were and are, and would be without God's restraining power.

This passage is also showing us the incredible goodness of God. Humans really are that bad. But when you read the rest of the story, you can see that God really is that good.

And that's why we worship Him.