Pre-Noah: God failed again?!

Hey guys.

I initially thought I was going to read about Noah's flood today, but then I realized there was quite an important passage beforehand so I decided to do a study on that specifically before the 'huge event'.

So today I read from Genesis 6:1-8.

Firstly, I think there's an important thing to distinguish from this passage.
In verses 1-2, "Sons of God" & "men".
I think basically the only difference between them are that they know & walk with God or that they don't at all & indulge in all the pleasures of the world. So in this first little bit, it says men began to increase & had beautiful daughters. This is probably where it started to go wrong, the sons of God started seeking these beautiful woman who were raised by worldly men.. & slowly they grew further from God~

It should remind us to be careful & not indulge or be tempted by what's from this world. Whether it be a really nice girl you've met that's non-Christian or just sinful pleasures in general. It won't be easy, but we'll be able to see how badly it corrupts soon.

Then it goes on in v3 to say how God's Spirit won't be with mortal men forever. I personally think the way mortal is used here is for people that don't seek God & won't have eternal life. So in the same way, people that have eternal life are 'immortal' & God's Spirit will be with them forever. So we can be assured here that once we've accepted Christ as our Saviour we'll have the Holy Spirit forever!

I don't get why God ended up shortening our days to 120 years though. Maybe it was because they were becoming more corrupt? Also, I realized there were people that lived longer than that after the declaration.. It'll be really cool if you could leave a comment if you have any ideas about this.

After this, out of nowhere comes a passage about these "Nephilim".
They seemed really interesting so I did a quick search about them on Google. I got results like giants & product of women + fallen angels. Though there's no concrete proof of what they actually were. What seems interesting is that the name is related to the word naphal in Hebrew which means "to fall". If you know anything about these Nephilim you're more than welcome to share!

But what's funny is that it doesn't say much about them here, only the fact that they're "heroes of hold, men of renown", which probably means they're pretty powerful people. And it only says when they were on earth here...

Now from verse 5...
This is where I started getting confused.
Did God make 'another' mistake now? Once again it seems His creation is going wrong. Men are walking away from Him & disappointing Him~
I would have never gotten anything from this if the Holy Spirit didn't help me understand. But here's my understanding of what it says in this passage.

So the first time this happens is when the serpent tempts Adam & Eve into sinning.. then after God fixes things, guiding them in the right path, allowing the birth of Seth to replace Abel, walking with Enoch, He allows most of men to be completely corrupt again. It may leave us wondering, where's God's sovereignty, has God lost control of His own creation?

It then even goes on in verse 7 to say "The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain." But I think here, the Bible is just trying to show God's feelings in a way that we can perceive it. As God isn't human like us, grief to Him isn't exactly the same as our grief & also the pain He feels. So don't try to think of our own grief & pain. It isn't exactly the same~

GOD IS SOVEREIGN.
It may not seem exactly like it here.. but I assure you, it's actually showing God's sovereignty here.

With our knowledge of how great God is.. it defies God to lose control right?

So think of the events here in this way.
God is letting this happen to show us what we will be like if we walk away from Him.
He wants us to know how He would feel if we turned away from Him & to sin instead.
He shows us what He has to do, through Noah, if we let this happen.
It's all within His control, it's part of His plan, as maybe a warning for us. It's an act of love to guide us away from devastation to life~

Remembering this will also set us up for the rest of the Bible.
It'll help us to see why God allows evil to prevail & cause humans grief alot of the time. It'll help us answer the "why God"s. They're all lessons we can learn from to warn us, & to also show us that He truly is Sovereign, He loves us, & we need Him.

We can really be reassured here in this passage, that God is in complete control at all times, even when it may have seemed He has lost control of us~

And in no matter what situations & doubts we may encounter, we can always have faith in God's sovereignty & love for us~

Godbless~