Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap.

Today we read about the first children Cain and Abel. Speaking of children, if you have any nearby, you may want to preview this episode before sharing it with them. So just a heads up on that. Cain and Abel carried out the sin nature of their parents. The thing about being not God is that we're by nature less than perfect. Yesterday, when God finished creating, he declared it very good and he blessed man. But being very good and being blessed are entirely different than being perfect and complete. There is zero chance that imperfect man would live up to God's standard of perfection. And we saw that played out today when Cain murdered his brother Abel. What's interesting to me in this passage is that this murder happened about 2,500 years before God gave Moses the Ten Commandments. But Cain still knew murder was wrong, even though it hadn't been written out on the tablets. Those stone tablets weren't necessary for mankind to know right from wrong. Cain even knew what justice required. He knew there would be a natural consequence for his actions because in 4:14, he feared other people killing him in response to him killing his brother.

One of the things people often ask when they read this story is, where did Cain's wife come from? Because we see in 4:17 that he got married. Scripture points to all humanity being descended from Adam and Eve. So it doesn't seem like God created a bunch of people independent of them. However, scripture does tell us that Adam and Eve had lots of children after Cain and Abel. So it seems likely that Cain could have married one of his sisters or nieces. You're probably like, hold up, Tarly. I know that's weird. This is one of the least weird things we're going to cover in scripture. It's not even the weirdest thing we're going to cover today. But here's something interesting I found when I dug into this. The scientific reason incest is problematic and dangerous is because of the genetic load, which didn't exist back then. I don't think it's a stretch to assume that Adam and Eve didn't have any genetic mutations, but that those developed over generations. So it wouldn't necessarily have been dangerous at that point. It wasn't until much later that God banned incest. And up until that point, it seems like it could have been the tool he used to populate the Earth.

By the way, this doesn't suggest that God has changed. It just shows us that he has an orderly plan. Here's another example of that. Yesterday, we saw that mankind started out as vegetarians, possibly even vegan. But tomorrow, we'll see where he tells people to eat meat. Eat. God is intentional about all these things. Only He would know at what point genetic mutations would be a problem for mankind. So only He would know when incest has served its purpose and crossed into dangerous territory. Okay, I'm going to go into something a little weirder here, but hang in there. Genesis 6 has a lot going on, and I'm going to try to break down some heavy stuff in short, simple explanations. In 6:4, we see the term sons of God used. This is one way scripture refers to angelic beings. This is an interesting section and there are a lot of theories on it. But the prevailing understanding among historic Jewish text was that the term sons of God referred to fallen angels, which means that the sons of God, the fallen angels, took human wives and had children with them, creating this cross breed of angels and humans.

In this section of scripture, they are referred to as the Nephilim. In Matthew 22 and Mark 12, we see that the angels in heaven don't procreate, but that could potentially be for two reasons. First, the angels in heaven are referred to as elect angels who live within the bounds of God's rules and don't rebel against him. But second, scripture seems to indicate that all angels are male. We never see a female angel in scripture. So if they're all male, they can't procreate among themselves. But if they were to procreate with human females, then theoretically this cross breeding would be possible. If that's the case, then there's a strong chance that the fallen angels procreating with women corresponds to the increasing wickedness on the Earth. Now, why would fallen angels want to do this? Here's a popular theory. If you are an angel who resided in heaven with God the Father and God the Son and God the Spirit, and you knew that the plan from before the creation of the Earth was that someday God the Father was going to send God the Son to Earth, born as a human named Jesus who was conceived by God the Spirit to redeem and restore everything, and then you rebelled against God and His Kingdom, wouldn't you want to thwart that plan?

Wouldn't you want to counterfeit it in an attempt to deceive people and defeat him? So it could be that the enemy was trying to corrupt the human bloodline to prevent the birth of the Messiah by counterfeiting the supernatural and natural union. It's possible. It's important that we hold all this with an open hand because we don't have enough info here. We don't want to scream where scripture whispers. But if this did happen the way the ancient Jews understood it, then God wiping out all this cross-breed population via the flood, which is about to happen, totally makes sense. He's wiping out the enemy's attempt to wipe out the Messiah's bloodline. In this scenario, the only family whose bloodline hadn't been infiltrated by fallen angels was Noah's family, so God preserved them. Are you still with me? If all that is really confusing, check out the show notes for a link to more info on this. And if you don't know how to find the show notes on your particular podcast app, try Googling the name of the app you're using along with the words show notes.

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Now, regardless of what happened, we know that God has set apart this family, these particular descendants of Adam and Eve, as the family he is in relationship with. More on that in a second. Okay, a few tidbits about the Ark that might help you picture the scale of this monstrosity. According to 6:15, it was one and a half football fields long, the width of a six lane interstate and as tall as a four story building. Noah was a pretty smart man, so he probably took the tiniest version of all the animals. And we have way more breeds of animals these days, so I'm sure God knew that was the perfect size to hold whatever he needed to hold. Probably didn't smell great, though. In 6:18, God makes a covenant with Noah. God is continuing to work through this one family of people. Before the floodwaters come, he lets Noah know that this is only the beginning of their relationship. Noah is not going to die. Then, in 7:6, the flood occurs. If the timeline is aiming to be precise, the flood would have happened 1,656 years after Adam and Eve were created. We've covered a lot of ground in just six chapters.

You can see that Genesis is not really heavy on the details. That's an average of 276 years per chapter. That's like trying to summarize the history of America in one chapter. God leaves out lots of information, and that's okay because our aim isn't to know everything. Our aim is to know God. Speaking of which, where did you see your God shot today? Where did you see God's character displayed? What picture of him was presented to you? Here's my God shot. In all we read today, I saw God's sovereignty on display. Nothing can thwart his will. Nothing can keep him from his plan to rescue the people he has entered into relationship with. The enemy's attempts to thwart the bloodline of Christ did not prevail. And even if you don't subscribe to that particular interpretation of Genesis 6, we see his sovereignty over weather and creation. He is at work in all things to restore fallen humanity in relationship with himself. And that's good news for all of us because he's where the joy is.

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My friends at Hope Nation have another fun song battle for all the Christian music lovers out there. Whether you're 2023 included music by Brandon Lake, Lauren Daigle or for King and Country, this game recaps all the best music from the year. Watch with your family or share it with your church small group. Click the link in the show notes to check it out.