Sin's Judgment

[0:00] Open your Bibles to Genesis. We'll read verse 1 of chapter 8 just to kind of begin this morning.

[0:12] But we're going to cover chapter 6 through 9, but basically 8. There'll be a little bit from 9, but we're going to kind of jump all over the place a little bit in these verses.

[0:26] As we're walking through getting a big picture of the storyline of the Bible, the big plot line of the Bible, we've looked at creation and we're looking at sin.

[0:37] And from here, we'll go into the other parts of this series. And all of this puts together, all of this put together comes to help us understand why Christ had to die upon the cross.

[0:50] And what did his death do? I know that oftentimes we feel like that we know these things, we understand these things, but I found over time that we don't understand them as deeply as we need to.

[1:03] And so part of what we're doing is attempting to help us with that. So in Genesis chapter 8, verse 1, we'll read the passage and then I'll pray. And here's what the word of the Lord says.

[1:13] Father, we give you praise because you're worthy of it, because you are the king and the righteous judge, whose voice breaks the cedar, whose voice calms the troubled heart, whose voice destroys mountains, who's set as king over the flood.

[1:44] And more than anything, we need to have a proper, full view and understanding of who you are.

[2:01] Because only then can we truly praise you for all that you're worth. So I pray that you would help us. I pray you would give us insight and understanding in your word.

[2:13] And I pray this in Christ's name. Amen. So what a title for a sermon. Sin. Judgment. I guess if you had known that the title of the sermon this morning would have been judgment, you might not would have come.

[2:27] It's certainly not one that maybe you would have invited friends to. Hey, come to church with me this morning. We're going to talk about judgment. It doesn't seem to be quite the encouraging type of title.

[2:43] But that's just because we've given ground to the world. I mean, you do understand that most of us as Christians, we have a tendency to quote Matthew 7, 1, because the world has quoted it at us.

[2:57] We quote over and over, judge not lest you be judged, judge not lest you be judged. Of course, we haven't read verses 2, 3, 4, and on to really understand what that means. But we've given ground to the world that wants to say to us, hey, you shouldn't judge.

[3:10] You're a Christian. You shouldn't judge. Which, by the way, is judgment in itself. So in our giving ground to the world, trying to be nice and play nice with people and say, well, okay, we will be nice people to you.

[3:22] We've allowed the world to take on the place of judgment and sit over Christians and sit over the word of God and sit over God and say, you shouldn't do that. So we're going to talk about judgment this morning.

[3:37] Because this is something about who God is that we must get a grip on. And my goal, if you would, is to kind of come down to the place of saying this.

[3:52] We as Christians talk about we're saved. This is the old way of talking, right? You walk up to somebody, are you saved? And most people would understand that you're talking about that from a Christian perspective.

[4:04] You go out in the middle of Austin downtown and walk up to somebody and ask them if they're saved, they're going to be like, saved from what? But that's actually a great question. Because I think so often when we say saved, we don't recognize what the true right answer to that question is.

[4:24] And so let me tell you, and then let's walk through our passage together, and it is that we are saved from God. We're saved from God.

[4:40] So we want to look at two things about God that I think should then propel our hearts to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. We're going to look at God's judgment, and we're going to look at God's grace.

[4:51] So under God's judgment, I've broken this down into two parts. Number one is what is the object of God's judgment? That's what this story tells us. And I'm not going to relay everything about the story, so you'll have to go read it to fill in the details.

[5:05] I just want to pick out the things that are important about this. One is the object of God's judgment. In Genesis 6, verse 1, it says this, Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.

[5:26] And then the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man forever, because he also is flesh. Nevertheless, his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.

[5:37] The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.

[5:51] What is the object of God's judgment? The object of God's judgment is the sin of man. And here, in the first four verses, we see the sin of man in its utter disregard for God's plan and purposes that he has.

[6:05] You'll see it talks about the daughters of men and the sons of God. Now, there's a popular understanding of this passage that says that the sons of God are angels, and that angels came down and procreated with human females.

[6:20] The problem is that that's not what it's talking about. First of all, angels are neither married nor given in marriage. That's something that they cannot even do.

[6:31] But secondly, the whole point of the Genesis, going back into Genesis chapter 3, is that God said that he is going to bring hostility between the serpent and the woman, between the serpent's seed and the woman's seed.

[6:47] And so Genesis sets up a war in the cosmos from the beginning that will last until the end of time between the offspring of the serpent and the offspring of the woman.

[6:58] And so the sons of God are the line of the woman, the line of Seth who replaced Abel, and the daughters of men are the line of Cain or the offspring of the serpent.

[7:11] Now, when we say that, we're talking about their spiritual destinies and spiritual connections. We're not talking about that there's something different about them from being just human. But the point is, is that as God had the plan to separate the two, men disregarded God's plan and began to intermingle anyway.

[7:32] They didn't care what God had to say. That's the first part of this. The second part is in verse 5. Genesis chapter 6, verse 5. Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the faults of his heart was only evil continually.

[7:52] Not only is the object of God's judgment man's sin because it is disregard for God's plan, but also because every human's constitution is fully sinful all the time.

[8:06] Every human's constitution, their makeup, and who they are is fully sinful all the time.

[8:22] Notice what verse 5 says. It says, first of all, that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth. That means it was plentiful. There was quite enough. Then it says every intent.

[8:33] The word intent there is this idea of inclination. An inclination is not a full-fledged, thought-out position. It's more of a movement or an impulse.

[8:45] If you were to be walking along and you all of a sudden see a snake, you would have an impulse. You wouldn't have a thought-out, reasoned-out sort of way that you're going to respond to this snake.

[8:57] Some of you would have an impulse, and that impulse would be to go over and pick it up. Some of you would have the impulse to scream and run. Right? Because just of who you are. So what the Bible is telling us is it's saying that the impulse, the intent, right?

[9:13] Every intent, every impulse, every impulse of the thoughts of his heart.

[9:23] That's the next phrase. Of the thoughts of his heart. Now, for the Jew, the heart is the center of the person. It's the decision-making core.

[9:35] It's the driving aspect of the human person. That's what the heart is in Jewish custom. In America, right, we think of the heart as the seat of emotions and affections.

[9:47] So we say to one another things like, I love you with all of my heart. But for the Jew, the seat of emotions and affections were the kidneys. So you would have to say, I love you with both of my kidneys.

[10:01] It's extremely romantic. It's amazing. So for them, the heart then wasn't that emotional, affectional place.

[10:11] But it was where decisions are made, where the will is doing. This is where we think out of our hearts. We live out of our hearts. We worship out of our hearts. We obey out of our hearts.

[10:24] The heart is the driving part of the human personality. So every thought of the heart, every impulse of the thought of the heart is evil and only evil all of the time.

[10:44] It's a lot of words. We just need to rest for just a second and let that settle in. Why is God judging? Who is God judging?

[10:55] What's the object of his judgment? The object of his judgment are men and their sin. Humanity and their sin. Because they disregard him and they're sinful all the time.

[11:12] The actions of God's judgment is the next thing I want to look at. And this is where God begins in verse 7 of chapter 6 to say that I will blot out man whom I've created from the face of the land.

[11:25] He says he's going to blot out man, the animals and the creeping things for the sin of man. This blotting out is to wipe off. It's as if you have a stain in your clothes and you want to get it out.

[11:41] And so you clean off that stain. Or in old ledger books, if you had a ledger and you had debt against you and somebody blotted out your debt, they could erase that debt.

[11:53] It's to blot it out. So God is planning literally to wipe man and animals off the face of the earth. They are a stain upon his creation and he is planning to cleanse his world with water.

[12:08] We see that in verse 13 of chapter 6, that the end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with violence because of them.

[12:21] Behold, I'm about to destroy them from the earth. Verse 17, behold, I, even I am bringing the flood of water upon the earth to destroy all flesh. So he's going to wipe it out and he's going to do it with a flood of water.

[12:34] You move over to chapter 7, verse 4, and this flood of water is coming because he's going to send rain for 40 days and 40 nights. And then we see in Genesis chapter 7, verse 11 and 12, that as this flood starts to happen, it says in verse 11, that the fountains of the great deep burst open and the floodgates of the sky were opened.

[12:59] So the rains fell. So God's action of judgment is that as he goes to blot out mankind, he's going to do it with a flood of water by sending both rain and cracking open the fountains of the deep so that the whole earth is all of a sudden inundated with a mountain of water over all the earth.

[13:21] And no one needs to tell anybody here what it would be like for a mountain of water to come through. Can you just imagine a worldwide flood that would make the 78 flood look like child's play?

[13:41] The destruction. The complete consuming of life. Blotting out all mankind, all the animals.

[13:54] This is what God is doing in his judgment. So listen.

[14:08] Listen to what he says or what happens in Genesis 7, beginning of verse 17. Then the flood came upon the earth for 40 days, and the water increased and lifted up the ark so that it rose above the earth.

[14:23] The water prevailed and increased greatly upon the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. The water prevailed more and more upon the earth so that all the high mountains were everywhere under the heavens were covered.

[14:35] The water prevailed 15 cubits higher, and the mountains were covered. All flesh that moved on the earth perished, birds and cattle and beasts and every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth and all mankind.

[14:47] Of all that was on the dry land, all in whose nostril was the breath of life, died. Thus he blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky.

[15:04] And they were blotted out from the earth, and only Noah was left together with those that were with him in the ark. And the water prevailed upon the earth for 150 days.

[15:18] All, all flesh perished. This is the judgment of God. Why he judged, how he judged. And what we as Christians need to come to do is we need to believe a couple of things.

[15:34] We need to understand and believe something about the doctrine of sin from all of this. And one of the things about the doctrine of sin that we need to believe is that every single human being that has ever lived, every single human being that does live right now, and every single human being that will live in the future, if they are without Christ, if they are not Christians, if they have never been saved, then these words describe them.

[16:01] As a matter of fact, these words describe you before you were a Christian. That every thought, that every intent of the thoughts of your heart were only evil continually.

[16:14] If you can't grasp that about your own self, how will you ever believe it about anyone else?

[16:27] Unless we see something so dark and so dismal and so terrible, how can we even appreciate what it is that Christ has done upon the cross for us to set us free from this judgment? Just as we are air breathers, and cannot tolerate water in our lungs, God is a holy God who cannot tolerate sin.

[16:53] And because of that, He brings His judgment. But every single person, every man, woman, boy, and child, the intent, the impulse of every thought of their mind and their heart, is evil and only evil continually and constantly.

[17:13] Wow. Now somebody's going to say to me, perhaps, maybe this is just my invisible opponent that I think would say something to me.

[17:28] But Brady, I have seen lost people do good things. I've seen people who are atheists. And they've given money away. And they've helped people who are in need.

[17:40] What are you saying? That they're evil and only evil always. Well, let me see if I can illustrate it for you to help you out. Let's just imagine for a second, Michelle and I are newlyweds.

[17:55] And that's not hard, because we haven't been married that very long. I'm still 19. We get married, and we decide we're going to move. There we go.

[18:07] We decide we're going to move to a new place, and we find this apartment, and we love this little apartment building. It's great. We've got some great neighbors. And I go to work every day. She stays home. I don't know why. It's just the illustration. Just work with me here.

[18:18] So I'm going to work. She's at home. And we meet our neighbors, and we find a couple couples and stuff. And there's this single guy living near us.

[18:29] And one of the things we begin to notice is that he's very helpful. As we were moving in, he helps us move our stuff in. But then we begin to notice that he begins to change his work schedule and to be home whenever I'm not home.

[18:42] And then we begin to notice that he begins to watch that when my wife comes up with groceries or some other large load as she's about to try to make it up the stairs with her large load, he comes and he tries to help her.

[18:54] Now, he's doing good deeds. But deep down, what we know, because I'm omniscient in this little illustration, what we know is that he is after trying to seduce and have some sort of an affair with my wife.

[19:14] Now, this didn't happen. This is all hypothetical. I'm just letting you know. He's holding doors open. He's carrying large boxes.

[19:25] He's keeping someone from having to carry their own burden. He's doing good things, but every one of them is repulsive, and I would want to deck him.

[19:38] Why is that? Because he doesn't have the right kind of relationship with us to be able to do kind things for us.

[19:48] So when a lost person, an atheist who doesn't believe that God exists, does something kind to someone else, it's not something that gets them a little bit closer to God, but it's something that heaps up more judgment and more wrath as they try to do something nice and kind apart from any relationship and dependence and glory to God.

[20:10] Do you understand what I'm saying? That even the very good deeds are as filthy rags before the Lord. And so because of this, we have judgment coming.

[20:28] Just as in the days of Noah, Jesus said, so what does this mean that we need to do? First of all, for you as Christians, what this means that you need to do is you need to test yourself to see if you're in the faith.

[20:54] 2 Corinthians 13.5 says, test yourself to see if you're in the faith. Examine yourselves, or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you unless indeed you fail the test?

[21:05] Do not assume that because your name is on the membership roll that you've been baptized or prayed some sort of sinner's prayer that you are a Christian and therefore escaping from this judgment.

[21:16] every single man, every single man, every single boy, and child will face this judgment unless they are in Christ. If you're in Christ, then you will not face this judgment.

[21:26] This is why we must test ourselves to see, do you really have true salvation? salvation. Because a true salvation, it yields in a changed life.

[21:45] It yields in a love for Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact, Jesus told the parable about the pearl of great price, saying that the kingdom of God is like a man who goes through and in a field, not in a field, he goes out and he searches for the pearls and when he finds one of a great price, he sells everything he has so that he can keep that pearl.

[22:09] Or the man who finds the treasure hidden in the field, he buries the treasure and he goes and sells everything and buys the plot of land so he can have that. Do you trust, love, follow Jesus enough?

[22:23] Is he beautiful and glorious enough that you're willing to sell everything to follow after him? For those who are not Christians, I would say to you that you're going to be like those who are clamoring on the outside of the ark.

[22:41] I said this to somebody before service started that Noah's ark is not some sort of pretty cutesy floating animal zoo story that we should put in our nurseries. If you're going to depict the flood properly, then there ought to be bodies floating in the water.

[22:55] Because there were people who were outside of this thing who mocked and who ridiculed and who spat at Noah saying, you know, what in the world are you doing?

[23:08] But when the waters burst forth from the deep and when the rains began to fall and the floods began to come and the torrents began to happen, only those on the ark survived and those outside who had once been the mockers were now destroyed by the wrath of God.

[23:27] And what God makes very, very clear is that you don't have to face that. Just as there was salvation at the flood, there is salvation today.

[23:44] And it's quite simple. He says, whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Our God is not a merciless God. He's a holy God and He's a God that brings judgment.

[23:57] But He is a merciful God who has provided a way of escape. And if you're not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, then I'm not preaching this because I enjoy preaching about judgment.

[24:11] I'm preaching this to beg you to come to Christ. I don't want you to face judgment. I don't want you to go that direction. I want you to trust in Him.

[24:25] Which brings us to the second part. And that is God's grace. Because not only does the story of the flood teach us about God's judgment, but it teaches us about God's grace.

[24:39] And we see three things about God's grace. In verse 8, in Genesis chapter 6, we see that God's grace initiates salvation. God's grace initiates salvation.

[24:52] In verse 8 it says, But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Most of us like to go to verse 9 where it talks about Noah being a righteous man. But you have to understand something. Noah was not a righteous man first.

[25:04] Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord first. To find favor in the eyes of the Lord is a Jewish idiom. It's a cliche. And to find favor in the eyes of the Lord is not, Oh wow, that's a good guy.

[25:16] I think I like him. No, to find favor in the eyes of someone is for them to shower grace upon you. It's another way of saying, Noah received grace from the Lord.

[25:30] So God could have chosen anyone in all of this time, but He chose Noah. Noah is the one who found favor. And it's because of God's grace that He initiated this moment with Noah.

[25:44] He tells him in verse 18, I will establish My covenant with you and you shall enter the ark, you and your sons, your wife and your sons' wives with you. In God's grace, as He initiates salvation, does so by giving a covenant, an oath-bound promise to Noah.

[26:02] That's what a covenant is, is an oath-bound promise. God condescends to Noah and says, by My grace, for the praise of My grace, I'm going to establish this covenant with you so that you and your family are saved from the destruction that's about to come upon the world.

[26:19] His grace initiates that salvation, but His grace also provides the salvation. You can see in Genesis 6, 14 through 16, as He talks about how to make the ark, He gives them instructions on the kind of wood.

[26:34] In verse 15, He gives them instructions on the size of the ark. In verse 16, He gives them instructions for the window and for the door. So what He's doing is He's commanding this representative, Noah, to build the vessel of salvation.

[26:48] You build this vessel of salvation. This is how I'm providing for you. Then in chapter 7, verse 1 through 5, He commands him to bring not only his family, but all creation into this vessel of salvation.

[27:00] That's where we get the whole idea of the animals coming in, two by two. But if they're clean animals, seven of them, right? Which we can't talk about today. We'll just move on. But you have, so grace initiates salvation.

[27:12] Grace provides the salvation, but grace accomplishes the salvation. In chapter 8, verse 1, God remembered Noah. He remembered Noah and all the beasts and the cattle that were with him on the ark.

[27:26] And he caused the wind to pass over the earth and the water subsided. God does not leave Noah and his family to fend for themselves. He finishes what he starts.

[27:39] The book of Hebrews says that God is the author and perfecter of faith. Jonah says that salvation belongs to the Lord. What we're saying is that God's grace is so powerful that it not only initiates, but it provides and it accomplishes and finishes what he starts in salvation.

[27:59] In other words, God never fails. If he seeks to save someone, they will be saved. That's one of the things that I really want to focus in for just a second.

[28:09] Because here's the thing. We are not in charge of salvation. We're not in charge of even our own salvation. It is God who's in charge of salvation. No one can just get saved whenever they willy-nilly feel like getting saved.

[28:21] He is the omnipotent one. He is the powerful one. He will save when he is ready to save. And the reason that you believed in Christ for your salvation is not because there was something good about you, but because you found favor in the eyes of the Lord and He saved you.

[28:37] You did not deserve to be saved. I did not deserve to be saved. But He came and He showed me my sin. He showed me Christ and gave me grace to be able to put my faith in Him.

[28:47] This is exactly what Jesus is talking about right after feeding the 5,000. I want you to think about this story for just a second. What happens after the 5,000?

[28:59] In John's Gospel, what happens? He feeds everybody on one day and the very next day they find Him on the other side of the lake and they come to Jesus and they say, hey, we want some more bread. That was pretty great yesterday.

[29:12] Good revival. We all felt great about it. Let's do it again. As a matter of fact, they put Him to the test and they're going like, listen, if you want us to listen to you, if you think you're greater than Moses, you need to give us some more bread.

[29:26] And Jesus says, I am the bread of life. That's where that statement comes from, right? And what is He doing? He's taking their physical need and showing them their spiritual need. Saying, you don't need me to just produce bread again.

[29:38] You need to get saved. I'm the bread of life. If you come to Me, you will never hunger again. You will have eternal life if you come to Me. That's what He tells them. And as He has this conversation with them, they begin to grumble.

[29:51] They begin to grumble and they go like, we know who this guy is. We know his father, Joseph. We know his mother. We know where he came from. Who is it?

[30:02] He didn't go to rabbi school. I mean, what does He think? Who does He think He is telling us all this sort of stuff? And Jesus responds in John 6, verse 43.

[30:15] Jesus answered and said to them, Do not grumble among yourselves. Verse 44, No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws them, and I will raise them up the last day.

[30:28] No one can come to Jesus Christ for salvation. No one can come to Him to have that bread of life unless the Father draws Him.

[30:40] Beloved, that is the point, that grace initiates salvation. And a person will come to believe for salvation. They will not come, excuse me, that person will not come to believe for salvation unless the Father draws them first.

[30:52] first. He is the one who initiates salvation. He is not some weak-kneed little baby boy standing there going like, Oh, I hope you would like me. I hope you'll like me.

[31:04] He is the omnipotent creator of the world. He set, the psalmist says in Psalm 29, He set as king over the flood. Now Christians, what this means, what this means for you in your life is that your life ought to have an aroma of praise and thanksgiving to God.

[31:31] That as you're peeling potatoes, you're all of a sudden now peeling potatoes as someone who deserved to be wiped out in the flood but who was saved on the ark. That as you're changing oil, you're tightening up a lug nut on a tire, you're now someone who was once deserving of being destroyed in the flood but now you've been rescued upon the ark.

[31:54] And every time you peel that potato, it ought to be, God, I thank you that you saved me. I get to peel this potato as a saved person.

[32:08] The aroma of our life ought to be praise to Him. That's why we sing the way we sing. I don't know if you notice this, but we sing a couple of songs that try to praise God and just put Him straight up and just praise Him for who He is, what He's done and then we sing something of the gospel.

[32:27] We want those two things in what we sing. So when we come to sing, if you know you've been saved, if you know you've been rescued, stop thinking to yourself about how beautiful you sing.

[32:39] Stop thinking to yourself how well you know the song. But if you've been saved, I mean, look, you're about to be drowned in the flood and you were saved by the cross. Then when you come in to sing, you ought to let her rip.

[32:58] But we get too caught up in our own preferences and our own ways of doing things rather than realizing you deserve death and hell, but you have life instead.

[33:08] it also means that we need to share the gospel. We don't have time to chase it out, but you know, Noah was a preacher of the gospel. That's what 1 and 2 Peter tell us.

[33:22] That it took him 120 years to build the ark and the whole time he's preaching about the coming flood. And all of those people who were destroyed, they had the message and they had the warning from the Lord through Noah to them.

[33:39] They had that warning. And that's what we need to do. Here's the thing. Judgment is coming one day. And if you don't believe that, then why are you even a Christian?

[33:52] It's coming again. This time, not with water, but with fire. And so we ought to be people who share the gospel, preach the gospel, spread the gospel, do whatever we can with the gospel so that others might know the truth and we might warn them of the judgment to come and they might be saved.

[34:14] You know, in Genesis 9, God promised that he would never again destroy the earth by water. As a matter of fact, in verse 13, he says, I set my bow in the cloud and it shall be a sign of a covenant between me and the earth.

[34:31] It shall come about when I bring a cloud over the earth that the bow will be seen in the cloud and I will remember my covenant which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh and never again shall the water come become a flood to destroy all life.

[34:46] When you see a rainbow, when you see a rainbow, you shouldn't be thinking what the world tells you to think, but when you see a rainbow, you should be thinking of the kindness of God that's holding back judgment.

[34:59] that he's not going to destroy with water again. But instead, what is he going to do? 2 Peter 3, But the day of the Lord will come like a thief in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat and the earth and its works will be burned up.

[35:23] Beloved, there is judgment but there is grace. I remember I was in Florida in Jacksonville 2001, 2002 and I grew up in the church.

[35:41] I mean, I've been going to church since before I even remember I was going to church. You know what I'm saying? I had learned how to share my faith with people.

[35:54] I went through this training course how to win souls. I had led worship. I mean, I played the bass guitar with my grandmother as she played the piano or my aunt as she played the piano in the church that I grew up in.

[36:14] I preached my first sermon when I was 16. I'm not sure why they let me do that when I was 16. Totally untrained. It lasted all the five minutes and I said everything three times.

[36:33] I had led youth revivals. My senior year of high school I was in 34 different churches around the state of Texas all the way out here to First Baptist Church Kerrville.

[36:45] I've been to First Baptist Church Kerrville. I sang I sang Sunday morning at First Baptist Church Kerrville my senior year a song called Watch the Lamb. Old Ray Bolt song.

[36:56] It's what they would have me come do. I would just go do that. He said, why are you telling us all this? Because it wasn't until 2001. I mean, I didn't get saved until I was 18.

[37:08] but like the reality of what it was that God had done for me just did not hit from 1989 until 2001. And you know why?

[37:22] You know why it didn't hit me? Because I wasn't really letting the word of God speak as I read it and as I was hearing it preached. And frankly, a lot of the preaching that I was hearing wasn't preaching the way I'm preaching to you now.

[37:35] Like I don't like to do public speaking. I've told a few over the last couple of weeks that I get so nervous when I get to get up here because I do not like being in front of people.

[37:49] I do not like public speaking. And if you and I were to have a conversation just the two of us, there's a lot of things that I might waffle on and be like, oh, well, judgment is not that bad. I might because I'm a sinner and I'm a wicked person and I'm such a people pleaser.

[38:05] But when I stand here, I'm going to tell you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And I'm going to tell you right from God's word. But what happened to me in 2001 is I was with a group of pastors and we were in the hotel room and one of the guys was just struggling.

[38:20] We said, well, let's just begin to pray. And we just began to pray and in that moment as one of them prayed, they prayed something that I can't even remember but it struck me because he just, he just began to thank God for his salvation.

[38:33] And I don't remember the exact words but that hit me like a ton of bricks and all of a sudden I realized, why did you save me? Why me?

[38:49] Like I add nothing to the kingdom. Like I must, I am more wretched than you even understand. And yet God gave me grace and saved me.

[39:04] I don't understand why. My prayer is that you would come to a point in your life understanding that you don't deserve his salvation but if he's saved you, glory, hallelujah.

[39:22] Hallelujah. There is great grace. I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene.

[39:37] Wonder how he could love me, a sinner condemned unclean. How marvelous. How wonderful is my Savior's love for me.

[39:54] Let's pray. Well, goodNINGNINGNINGNING