Noah ... week III
We left the last lesson with a question still unanswered … Why was Noah chosen? Why did He only ‘find favour’ with God?
Here we go again with the church answers- Noah found favour in God’s eyes because he was a righteous man.
Yes, He was… but there’s more… much, much more.
Why do you think that immediately preceeding these verses we were given Noah ancestry, and then rather uncomfortably we dive right into the passage with demons and human women producing this new race of Nephilim? We have to know that God is very meticulous and orderly, often times we miss the big picture because our view has been narrowed by poor teaching.
Why was Noah chosen?
What do we know about Noah lineage?
What do we know about the inter-breeding of demons and humans?
In Noah’s lineage we are given the father and son line right from Adam to Noah.
We are also told that the demons took the form of men- not women. They in masculine formed married human women.
So putting two and two together we can reason that the demon seed was always introduced by the father- the demons took on the bodies of men (Godly angels always appear as males when they appear to humans in the Bible) and married human women, not the other way around.
Noah’s line had kept themselves pure from demonic interbreeding … his line was traceable and pure from Adam right down to himself .It is possible that Noah, as only he found favour with God, was the only living man (and his sons) that at that point in time was free from demonic influence.
Here’s why this seems very likely: look closely at verses 8 & 9 (chapter 6):
8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
9 This is the genealogy of Noah. Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God.
Verse 8 tells us of Noah’s favour …. Verse 9 points us directly back to Noah’s ancestry- a coincidence? No, never.
A little further digging into the original text (if you don’t already, you need to get used to doing some word studies from the original languages – Hebrew or Greek- it will greatly increase your understanding. There are many good Hebrew/greek dictionaries to be found online- inbox me for a list ) will show us something interesting.
The term used is “perfect in his generations”… unfortunately some versions do not have as faithful of a translation for this term, some say he “was blameless among the people of his time” (NIV)- making it sounds like he bordered upon, or had mastered sinless perfectness.
This is not what the original Hebrew intends:
The term in the Hebrew is tamiym dowr for perfect in his generations:
TAMIYM (pronounced Ta- mem) means complete, whole, entire, healthful and innocent. Also translated as being “without blemish” as in the sacrificial lamb.
The word for generations there is: dowr (pronounced dore) it means period, generation, habitation, dwelling, period, age, generation (period of time), generation (those living during a period)
Verse 9 tells us that Noah was complete, whole, entire, healthy, and innocent in his generations (there was nothing out of order). His family line was not blemished or tainted.
Why did Noah find favour with God? He found favour because he was pure in his lineage- unblemished, innocent, entire, whole and completely without demonic influence, the only one in His time. All the world was polluted with demonic seed.
OK, I know if you have never been taught this before, if this is the first time you’ve heard this reasoning, that you are probably just a little overwhelmed at the moment. Take a breath, go make a cup of coffee, but let it sit with you for a bit.
Does it make a little more sense now?
Begin to tie the pieces together.
Are you beginning to see why God took such drastic actions as destroying the Earth with a flood … the people were not just evil – every generation before and since has been evil- there was an extra factor in Noah’s day- Demons.
Why did God have to destroy mankind (and the animals) … why couldn’t he just let them continue on, hoping they would ‘come around’ to see things His way?
Think about what was happening. We often miss the big picture. We see the immediate, the part that involves us, but we miss that big mural of what’s happening on an eternal scheme.
Why did the demons mate with women? (We really need to learn to ask questions each and every time we are taught something, read something, etc!!!)
Go back to Gen 3
The Fall of Man
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" 2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' " 4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." 6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. 8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?" 10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid." 11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?" 12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me--she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." 13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate." 14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, "Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. 15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel
Did you see it? Right from the very beginning Satan was told of God’s plan for the redemption of mankind. God told Satan in verse 15 that the promised Messiah (woman’s offspring) would crush Satan’s head.
You see, Satan knew that God was planning to send a savior for all mankind and the Messiah would bring about Satan’s demise eventually. The Messiah, the Saviour was coming through the seed of the woman. (Did you notice that God said to Satan- ‘your offspring’…?? )
Satan’s goal is for us NOT to be saved. For us to end up in Hell with him and his legions of demons. He desires to thwart God’s plan of salvation. He always has.
I am often guilty of not realizing that this world is not only flesh and blood but also a battle ground for the spiritual beings – demons and angels. Eph 6:12 clearly tells us about this: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
Satan desired to thwart God’s plan of salvation… so he sent his demons to inter-breed with humans.
What did this accomplish?
It polluted the lineage. Satan knew that the Savior of Man, the Son of God could not come through a demon possessed woman. If Satan could pollute all of mankind with his seed, he could ruin God’s plan to send His son, born of a woman, to be the savior for the world.
And God waited as long as He could before sending judgment and wiping man off the face of the Earth. God waited until there was one man left… 8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
9 This is the genealogy of Noah. Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God.
The Bible tells us in 2 Peter 3:9 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.
God waited and waited and waited … and the demons continued to pollute the gene pool, until at last only Noah stood “without blemish” genetically.
We look at the Flood as a terrible punishment, a wrathful judgment from God, cruel and unjust. But, really was it?
When we don’t understand what was truly happening, it would seem unjust and cruel for God to completely destroy the earth just because mankind was sinful. But in light of the Word of God, fully understood, we see that was actually the most loving thing He could do.
If God had not ended this demonic pollution of the human line, the promised Messiah would not have come. In order to provide salvation to man, God in his mercy had to destroy the antediluvian world. And it ‘grieved him at His heart” Gen 6:6 but it made the way for the coming Messiah.
We are not given any clue that these human women were impregnated against their will- they inter-bred willingly- and deliberately, sinning. (Can we even imagine how ‘beautiful’ these fallen angels might have been … the lust of the flesh over the will of God … and sin ran rampant)
Another consideration that is above the scope of this lesson, deals with whether the Nephilim could have been ‘saved’.
Angels cannot be redeemed. They were created sinless. Angels do not repopulate- God made them once, and there are as many today as there was originally and they never increase or decrease in number. Apparently at some time in the distant past the angels were presented with a choice- to continue to worship God or to worship Lucifer. Lucifer (Satan to us) was created by God as the highest and brightest of the celestial hosts, closest to the Throne of God, a little lower than Christ. Lucifer rebelled, wishing to become God he was filled with pride. 'Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness" (Ezekiel 28:17).
When fallen angels bred with human women- the children on that offspring (the Nephilim) would be part angelic (though fallen)… were they redeemable?
Angels cannot be redeemed… remember Noah preached 120 years while he built the ark, and not one single person came to repent and to be saved. Maybe this sheds light on why that was. If this infected race could not be redeemed we see all the more why it was merciful and loving of God to wipe them out. So that we could be redeemed by the blood of the Lamb of God.
Satan attempted many times since to stop God’s plan of salvation, to stop the Messiah’s birth- the killing of all Israelite baby boys in Egypt (Moses); the attempted extermination of all the Jews in Queen Esther’s day, and the killing of all boys under the age of two in Herod’s day (@Jesus’ birth)
We can’t forget that our battle is not with flesh and blood … but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
Next lesson we will look at Jesus’ comment in Matthew 24: 36-39
36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.
What did Jesus mean... We have to understand the "Days of Noah" to understand about the Second Coming of Christ.
Blessings to you!
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