Sons of God

 DEVOTION

Sons of God

Gen 6:1-4

6:1 When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. 3 Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years." 4 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.

NIV

Some confusion and misunderstanding accompany these verses, and we hope we see the truth here. Our scholars of old give us some clues, but they are not all in agreement and so we must seek the guidance of the Spirit to gain some clarity. This phrase, “the sons of God” is at the core of one issue that we need to understand. We find there were two general people groups, those who were the descendants of Cain, and those who were the descendants of Seth. We know the Canaanites, as the latter were called were not of moral character as evil was growing in the land. However, the descendants of Seth may still have called on the name of the Lord, being of a more moral character. However, they intermarried with women of the descendants of Cain because they could. We also find as we look into the Hebrew that the Nephilim were simply great warriors, men of strength, the Hebrew does not refer in any sense as men of God, as angels, but more as sons of God, in the sense they were men who still called upon the name of the Lord, these warrior class of men fathered heroes, mighty men of renown. However, the real issue is when God said his "Spirit will not contend with man forever for, he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years”. This is not how many years we might expect to live now, but if our counting is accurate, this is the number of years from the time he told Noah to start the ark to the time of the flood. We also know that all that time Noah warned the people, but to no avail. We wonder how many times people have been warned to include up to and including our lifetime with no success. The question that now is before us, because we are sons of God, men or people of renown, who call upon the name of the Lord, is whether we have warned anyone regarding the next coming doom to this world. We wonder if we have become stuck within the walls of our church and are not reaching out into the world with our warning. Are we simply building our own ark from the wood of the cross, so to speak, making sure we are saved from our sins, and not voicing any warning to those outside the cross. Just a thought, not a condemnation. Yet, we cannot escape that feeling we are missing something. We wonder if we should not be more like those heroes of old, and go forth and conquer the land, warning the people of their pending doom. On the other hand, although God said his Spirit would not contend with man, and the flood came, we now live in a period of grace, with the Spirit of God not only contending with us but dwelling within us. Let us see what is coming, and maybe, just maybe we might warn a few people, after all, we are sons of God.