A famous preacher allegedly said, “If God doesn’t judge the sin of New York City, he will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.” Do you think the world is getting better or worse? How do you come to that conclusion? What will God do about it?
In my seminary class, I taught last week that the “big story” of the Bible can be summarized in four words: good, bad, new, perfect. Following the timeline of history, this is the way God is working out his plan. The book of Genesis has two parts. In chapters 1-11, we see the goodness of creation and the catastrophe of the fall. Then in chapters 12-50, we see God begin to make the world new through the line of one family.
So far, in our reading, things are getting worse and worse. Adam and Eve fell from the Garden. Cain killed Abel. Lamech killed a man and bragged about it. To compound the problem, people were living a long time. Longer lives created greater opportunity to sin. In baseball language, people had more “at bats” and more strikeouts.
At one point God saw the multiplication of the population and decided to limit the lifespans of human beings. What was happening? The sons of God were marrying the daughters of men. What does this mean? One possibility is that Seth’s male descendants were marrying the female descendants of Cain. Another option is that fallen angels were marrying human women. We have no evidence that angels and humans can reproduce. On the other hand, what was wrong with Seth’s and Cain’s offspring getting married? Some of the people born to these unions were Nephilim or giants. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
Whether the problem was human or angelic in origin, God had had enough of humans living for so many years. People were getting worse and worse. How bad was it? Every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. Noah and his family were born into a fallen world. In response, God had reduced the human lifespan to one hundred and twenty years. God will judge the sin of the earth and make a new beginning in the broken, fallen world.
Sin still prevails in our world. Moral standards are in decline. Interest in God appears to have waned. But the same God who created humans and limited lifespans has a plan of redemption. He still does. Evil will not finally prevail. God’s love will win. People will live forever with him in a city that comes down to a new earth. Until that day, we join all creation in groaning waiting for the sons and daughters of God to be revealed(Romans 8:22-24 ). We wait eagerly in the hope of salvation.
