How Did “Sons of God” Marry “Daughters of Men”?

Genesis 6:1-8

Dr. Jim Denison

Mark Twain was a man of sage and incisive wisdom.

For instance, he counseled parents of teenagers, “When your child reaches thirteen, put him in a barrel and feed him through the hole. When he turns sixteen, plug the hole.”

He advised us, “Do good when you can, and charge when you think they will stand it.”

He was right to observe: “Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

And his take on Scripture was equally wry: “It’s not the parts of the Bible I don’t understand which bother me—it’s the parts I do understand.”

Today I want to build a bridge from the former to the latter—from a part of the Bible which is very confusing to a part which is very clear. We’ll tackle one of the most perplexing texts in Scripture, and see that it is actually one of the most urgent, practical, and relevant passages in God’s word.

Our text applies to every human being on the planet, and in this worship service. My job today is simply to show you how it’s so.

From confusion . . .

Our Scripture today begins with one of the most confusing sentences in all the Bible: “When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose” (vs. 1-2).

I have never heard a sermon on this text—have you? I’ve never preached one, either. In fact, I’ve never studied this passage in any detail before this week. So I started as you do, wondering what on earth is going on here.

I’ve discovered several options as suggested by scholars.

Some say that these “sons of God” are angels, since Job 1:6 and Psalm 29:1 uses this title for them. But Jesus tells us that angels “neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Mark 12:25).

Some say these are kings, as people in the ancient Near East often associated their royal figures with divinity. But the Bible never does.

An interesting approach suggests that the “sons of God” are descendants of Seth, the godly child of Adam and Eve, and the “daughters of men” are descendants of the evil Cain. In this view, what is happening here is intermarriage across tribal and spiritual lines. But the author of Genesis could easily have made this clear, and didn’t.

I think the clues we need are found in the text immediately surrounding our passage. Scripture intends to be clear, and was very clear to its original audience. So we must ask ourselves, what did they understand these words to mean?

Genesis 2:7 says, “the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

Later God made woman from man’s rib, and he says of her, “She shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man” (2:23).

So calling men the “sons of God” and women the “daughters of men” was simply repeating what the readers of Genesis already knew, and what the rest of the Bible teaches as well. I found nine places where the Bible refers to men as “sons of God” (cf. Deuteronomy 14:1, 32:5, Psalm 73:15, Isaiah 43:6-7, Hosea 1:10, 11:1, Luke 3:38, 1 John 3:1-2, 10). The text here seems simply to refer to men and women.

And nothing in these verses ties these “sons of God and daughters of men” specifically to the flood which follows. They are simply populating the earth as God had commanded them to (1:28).

Now we come to another confusing reference: “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown” (v. 4).

Their name means “to fall.” Some see them as evil figures and interpret their name as “fallen ones.” Others see them as heroic warriors and see their name as “falling on” others in strength and victory.

They are among the children produced by the “sons of God and daughters of men,” but nothing in the text ties them specifically to the coming Flood, either.

They are simply figures in history, of importance to the readers of Genesis but only interesting to us.

So we have “sons of God and daughters of men,” probably men and women who are marrying and having children. Among them are mighty warriors and heroes in the ancient Near East. And you’re wondering how any of this could be as urgent, practical, and relevant as I promised this passage would be, how it could apply to every human being on the planet and in this service.

Let’s read on.

… to clarity …

As our text proceeds, we move quickly from confusion to clarity, from ancient history to life experience today. Verse 5 comes home: “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.”

God reads our minds and knows our thoughts. He knows how sinful they can be. He knows that we don’t put our thoughts into action because of legal restraints and fear of being caught. But he knows what we would do if we could.

Think about your thoughts for a moment, and you’ll see what God sees every moment of every day.

Such sin “grieves” the Lord and fills his heart with pain (v. 6).

He is holy and cannot countenance or condone our sin. He must bring it to judgment, as he did with the Flood.

We’ll explore his justice and judgment much more fully in the message two weeks from today. For this morning, see how God sees our sins and is grieved by them.

But now the good news dawns on the black horizon: “Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord” (v. 8).

He “found” it—he didn’t earn it. He found “favor”—the Hebrew word means “to bend or stoop,” and describes the condescending and unmerited favor of a superior for an inferior. This is the Old Testament’s primary word for grace, and it is first found here in all of the Scriptures.

I remember the story of a cave-in in New Mexico. As the story goes, a group was exploring a series of underground caves when the roof collapsed, trapping them. All but one began digging at the walls, pulling at the rocks, doing all they could to escape. That one happened to notice a pin-prick of light in the distance, and climbed to it. He found it to be an opening, a way out. He returned to the others with his news, but they wouldn’t listen to him. They kept digging at the walls, and died. He went to the opening and was saved. He wasn’t any better than the others—he simply “found” the grace available to them all.

Through Noah, God extended this favor to the rest of mankind.

He warned this sinful humanity that their days “will be a hundred and twenty years” (v. 3). Then would come his judgment and justice.

He called Noah to build the Ark which would preserve life on earth. 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, 45 feet high, with a displacement of 14,000 tons and a carrying capacity of 522 standard railroad cars. Room for 45,000 animals from 17,600 species.

Noah spent 100 years building this Ark. What was he doing during this time? 2 Peter 5:2 tells us: he was a “preacher of righteousness.” For one hundred years Noah preached to the people, warning them of the judgment to come, imploring them to repent and turn to God, inviting them to join him on the Ark and in salvation.

Finally, God had to send his Flood, after mankind refused his grace and salvation. Only after he had given them every chance to be saved.

Now, why does this passage and event apply so completely to us? Because what God did through Noah and the Flood, he is doing today through his word and Jesus’ return to our planet.

2 Peter 3 is the New Testament’s commentary on this Old Testament text. Here Peter reminds his readers of the Flood, how “the world of that time was deluged and destroyed” (v. 6).

Then he warns us: “By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men” (v. 7).

Why hasn’t that day of judgment come already? Peter has our answer: “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (v. 9).

But one day in the future, “the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare” (v. 10). Everything, including you and me.

Conclusion

Now you and I are in this story. We are the “sons of God and daughters of men.” Our hearts are inclined to evil, just as theirs were. Now we must respond to God. How? Know these facts.

One: God’s grace can transform your life.

Lee Atwater was the most notorious political figure of the 1980’s. As chairman of the Republican National Committee, he did and would do anything in his power to elect his candidates to office. He was feared by his side and hated by his opponents. But when he came to faith in Christ, everything changed. Shortly after his conversion he discovered he had terminal brain cancer. He spent his last months apologizing to his opponents, mending relationships with his friends, and witnessing to his faith. God’s grace transformed his life.

Manuel Noriega was “public enemy number one” during the time leading up to the U.S. invasion of Panama in December of 1989. Jailed on drug and money laundering charges, he was visited in his Miami prison cell by evangelists Clift Brannon and Rudy Hernandez. On January 16, 1990, at 11 o’clock in the morning, he made Christ his Lord. He has since written to former political and criminal associates, inviting them to receive Jesus as well. God’s grace transformed his life.

In the early 1970s, Charles W. Colson was known as the White House “hatchet man.” This aide to President Nixon was “incapable of humanitarian thought,” according to the media of the day. When he came to Christ in 1973, the Boston Globe reported, “If Mr. Colson can repent of his sins, there just has to be hope for everybody.” He later founded Prison Fellowship Ministries, the world’s largest outreach to prisoners, ex-prisoners, crime victims, and their families. God’s grace transformed his life.

It can yours and mine as well.

Two: You must receive this gift. Every gift must be opened.

Ask Jesus to forgive your sins and mistakes, and ask him to take charge of your life.

If you have, spend time in spiritual inventory. Ask the Spirit to show you anything in your heart which is wrong toward God. Write it down. Confess it specifically to God. Ask his forgiveness and cleansing.

Make yourself ready to stand before God.

Last: you are guaranteed only this day. God has given you one more day.

John F. Kennedy didn’t know when he left his airplane in Dallas on November 22, 1963 to travel to a lunch meeting at Market Hall on Stemmons, that this would be his last day. If a president doesn’t know, do we?

Payne Stewart didn’t know as he boarded a Learjet bound for Dallas from Orlando on October 25, 1999, that this would be his last day. If a millionaire sports hero doesn’t know, do we?

God has given you one more day. This day.

What will you do with yours?

Where Did Cain Get His Wife?

Genesis 4:17-18

Dr. Jim Denison

Today we begin our summer preaching series, titled “Hard Questions in the Bible.” We’ll begin at Genesis and go through God’s word, asking such questions as What does God think of the Jews?, Did Jesus go to Hell?, and What is the unpardonable sin? We begin today with the issue of creation and evolution and the question, Where did Cain get his wife?

What do we know about God’s creation? And how does that knowledge apply to our lives, and to the country whose birthday we celebrate this week?

Thank God for you

The Bible starts at the start: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). So we learn that God existed before existence came to be. He made everything else that is. This is the bold and consistent claim of his word.

How did he do it?

Let’s get before us immediately the fact that Genesis does not intend to be a science book. In fact, science as a discipline is a recent invention; 90% of all the scientists who have ever lived are alive right now. Genesis is not speculative but practical. It does not tell us all we want to know about the world, but all we need to know about our place in it.

So Genesis says that God made the universe in six “days.” The word “day” translates “yom,” a Hebrew term for a defined period of time, not necessary a 24-hour day marked by sunrise and sunset. In fact, God didn’t create the sun and the moon until the fourth “day.” Some of the ancient rabbis thought Genesis meant that God did this in six days, others in six creative acts of undetermined time in between, still others in six “eons” or “ages.” We don’t know, because we don’t need to know.

When did he do it? Genesis doesn’t say, because the answer has no practical consequence in our lives. Some add up the biblical genealogies and say that God made the world in the year 4004 B.C., regardless of the evidence of geology and astrophysics. Others say the universe is billions of years old. Would it change your life to know? That’s why Genesis doesn’t say.

Did he use evolution to do it? Let’s define some terms.

Charles Darwin’s principles of evolution are really very simple: creatures procreate more offspring than can survive; the offspring possess enormous variety; there is a struggle for existence due to overpopulation; because of their variety, some of the offspring are more fit for survival than others; these capacities for survival become naturally selected and inherited.

As an example, a hundred years ago there were small-winged moths and large-winged moths in England. The small-winged moths couldn’t fly above the pollution generated by the factories of the day, and so died out. The large-winged moths could, and survived. Today there are only large-winged moths in England.

This is an example of what’s known as “microevolution”—adaptation within a biological set, genus, or species. People are taller and less hairy than they used to be. Horses are larger; most dogs are smaller. Nothing in the Bible teaches that God didn’t make the world so that it would adapt to its changing environment.

The difficulty arises when Darwin’s principles are applied across biblical categories—from apes to men, from fish to birds, and so on. This is called “macroevolution.” And it leads to problems, both with evidence and with Scripture.

The fossil record indicates no so-called “missing links” from one biblical category to another. The old Neanderthal Man, Piltdown Man, and so on are no longer representative of the best theories. Darwin said the fossil record would have to demonstrate increasingly simple organisms as we move backward in time, but it does not.

The paleontological record shows us adaptation within biblical categories, but not across them. Advocates for macroevolution now posit “spontaneous mutatory jumps” across the biblical categories, but without empirical evidence for their assumptions.

Such a theory is, of course, contrary to the clear record of Genesis. These chapters are not written as myths or legends or symbols, but as straight-forward narrative.

So it is clear that both macroevolution and biblical creationism are built on faith principles. I believe that both God’s revealed word and the best empirical research confirm the fact that God created us. And I rejoice in this fact.

Know this: you are here on purpose. You are not an accident, or the coincidence of random chaos. God made you, intentionally, for a reason.

Your body consists of 206 bones, wrapped with 650 muscles and seven miles of nerve fibers. Your eyes possess 100 million receptors, and your ears 24,000 fibers. Your heart beats 36,000,000 times every year and sends blood pumping through more than 60,000 miles of veins, arteries, and tubing.

Your brain contains 13,000,000,000 nerve cells. Picture the possible number of interconnections in your brain this way: the number of atoms in the universe is 1 followed by 100 zeroes. The number of different patterns possible in your brain is 1 followed by over 800 zeros. And your unconscious brain database, that which your unconscious brain knows and stores, outweighs your conscious brain on an order exceeding 10 million to one.

I liked what one brain and mind expert said: “If the human brain were simple enough to understand, we would be too simple to understand it.” But God does. And he made yours.

Thank God for your country

So rejoice today that God made you. And that he made everything else as well.

The first law of thermodynamics states that matter and energy can be neither created nor destroyed. Except by God, we add.

So glance at the matter and energy God has made. The Wall Street Journal recently carried an article describing the complexity of this universe. Picture a wall with hundreds of dials, it said. Each must be at exactly the right setting for carbon-based life to emerge in a suburb of the Milky Way. If the cosmic expansion of the universe had first been a fraction less, for instance, it would have imploded billions of years ago; a fraction more intense, and galaxies would not have formed. The odds of our universe’s existence and design occurring by random chance would not be accepted by any gambler, anywhere on earth.

And what an amazing world God has made. Picture a comet for a moment. Its vapor trail can be more than 10,000 miles long. But capture and bottle that “tail,” and you discover that the amount of vapor actually present in your bottle is less than one cubic inch of space.

Yet many see such phenomenal design without looking for its Designer.

Robert Ingersoll was a famous atheist. He once visited the great preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, who took him into his study. There Mr. Ingersoll noticed a magnificent contour globe of the world, with mountains and valleys painted with remarkable detail and beauty. He said, “Pastor Beecher, that is a beautiful work of art. Who made it for you?”

Knowing Ingersoll’s denial of God’s creation, Dr. Beecher replied, “Oh, nobody, it just happened.”

No, it didn’t. Your world didn’t just happen. You didn’t just happen. And your nation didn’t just happen.

Our nation’s birth is the result of the greatest sacrifices, the highest courage, the most passionate commitment to freedom and liberty. Thomas Paine captured the spirit best. This soldier in Washington’s army wrote a pamphlet to tell Americans what they needed to know about their army and their times.

Here are some of his words: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his Country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.”

On December 25, 1776, as General Washington was preparing for one of the most decisive attacks of the entire war, he had Mr. Paine’s article read to all his troops. Most of his troops were half clothed and barefooted, charging in the worst possible weather, but they won. Over the next few months more than 100,000 copies of Mr. Paine’s words were printed and distributed across the infant nation. God used them to inspire our forefathers to greatness.

And miraculous events accompanied their courage. The unexpected and dense fog in August of 1776 which covered Washington’s retreat from annihilation on Long Island; the sudden freeze on January 3, 1777 which allowed Washington’s troops to travel to safety across otherwise muddy and impassable roads; the British riflemen who had Washington in their sights on September 10, 1777, but didn’t know who he was and didn’t fire; the storm of October 16, 1781 which prevented Cornwallis from retreating at Yorktown and effectively ended the War.

So we thank God this week for the courage he gave to men and women willing to fight vastly superior forces and sacrifice their lives for our nation. We thank him for the victory he gave to their armies. We thank him for the wisdom and insight he gave to their leaders.

And we pray for our country to worship its creator.

Only 36% of Americans say they have accepted Christ as their personal Savior. Some 173 million Americans are spiritually lost, 100,000 of whom live within three miles of this Sanctuary.

And so we pray for our country to come to Christ. The greatest way we can serve America is to pray for Americans.

Conclusion

Our title asks, Where did Cain get his wife? The author of Genesis would answer, what difference does it make? Let Genesis be what it is intended to be: not a scientific textbook but God’s revelation of his creative power and design in our world and our lives.

Perhaps God made other people, and Cain married one of them. Perhaps Cain married his sister, a necessity if no other women existed. How exactly did it happen? How long ago did God make the world? In how many “days?” By what method?

Here’s the answer: God made you. God made your world. God made your nation. And God wants us, and our country, to trust in him and to worship him today.

Will you trust God today with your greatest problem, whatever it might be? Will you give that issue in your life to your Creator?

Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse was right: God is as big as your faith. He is as big as your faith will allow him to be. How big will you let your Creator be in your life today? Will you give to him the specific problem for which you need his help the most?

And will you worship your Creator with every day you live?

President Theodore Roosevelt and his good friend, the naturalist William Beebe, would on occasion stay at Roosevelt’s family home. They would go out on its lawn at night. They would search the skies until they found the faint spot of light behind the lower left-hand corner of the Great Square of Pegasus. Then they would remember together the words:

That is the Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda.It is as large as our Milky Way.It is one of a hundred million galaxies.It consists of one hundred billion suns,Each larger than our sun.

Then President Roosevelt would grin at Mr. Beebe and say, “Now I think we are small enough. Let’s go to bed.”

Are we small enough to go to God?