Depravity of man

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. Gen 6:5

Nancy Leigh DeMoss from the Series Noah and the Flood: The Gospel in the Old Testament.

We’ve been talking about the era in which Noah lived, the era in which God sent the flood to judge the world. As I said earlier in this series, if you just listen to these first several days and don’t hang in for the rest of the series, you’re going to leave depressed because we’re focusing a lot on the depravity of man, the extreme wickedness of the earth in those days.

It is depressing, but I think it is important that we dig in and understand how sinful man can be. Because if we don’t understand the utter sinfulness of man, then when God sends His judgments on the earth, we will think God is unfair. We’ll question God, we’ll challenge God.

But if you see how sinful man is, then you don’t challenge God, you realize that God’s judgments are true and righteous. Also, if you’ve never seen how sinful man can be, you will not really appreciate and be able to thoroughly enjoy the salvation that God has provided to us through Jesus Christ.

So as we jumped into Genesis chapter 6, the first paragraph in the last session, we saw that there was this wide-spread, increasing wickedness on the earth in those days. The descendants of Cain, the son of Adam, and his descendants became exceedingly godless and pagan.

In Genesis chapter 6:4 it talks about a powerful race of giants that came into the world in those days and became a dominant force in the land. They’re called in some of your translations the Nephilim. Verse 4: “The Nephilim,” or the giants, depending on your translation, “were on the earth in those days. . . . These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.”

Now the Hebrew word Nephilim means “fallen ones” or “causing to fall.” It has to do with falling. Some of your translations will say “violent.” It’s a word that suggests violence. These were giants, and we’re told two things about them. They were mighty, and they were men of renown.

Mighty, these were powerful men. They were fierce warriors. You see some of these toys that kids play with today and these mighty men who do all kinds of conquering things on the earth. These were real mighty men. Supermen, if you will. They were strong. They overpowered other people, and they were men of renown. They were famous. They were heroes. These are men, as you put this whole passage together, you get the impression they were arrogant. They were anti-God.

They made a name for themselves through acts of violence and lawlessness and corruption. They were probably rulers. If you’re strong and mighty, powerful, you can do all these things, you get to the top of the heap pretty quickly, and they may have been controlled even by demons, depending on how you interpret the passage we looked at last time about the "sons of god" and "the daughters of man."

Now as we look around our world today, we see that there are some people who are giants. Not physical giants, but giants in terms of their personality and their influence. They’re rulers on the earth, so to speak. They are not necessarily literal rulers, but they’re men who exert huge power and influence in our world.

Now some of these modern-day Nephilim, giants, are the obvious ones. Cruel dictators and despots who dispose of millions of human beings as though they had no value—your Adolph Hitlers, Saddam Husseins, your Idi Amins—just wicked men who destroy other human beings.

But then as I began to meditate on this passage, I realized there are other Nephilim in our culture who are mighty men, men of renown, who aren’t so obviously corrupt. They’re embraced by our culture. They’re popular. You think of many of the icons of our pop culture.