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[0:00] Good morning, everybody. My name is Jordan. I've been going here since we started.! And I've got the privilege to talk to you today. I've got the privilege and the kind of! kind of fearful responsibility to talk about a difficult text. A text that, I don't know, just kind of sits heavy on my soul. So what I hope to get across today is that sin is destructive.

[0:31] And God's judgment is due. But we can stake ourselves on the grace of God. So today we're going to be in Genesis 6-8. We're going through a survey of Genesis. So 6-8, if you guys don't know, is about the flood. In the story of the flood, God destroys all but eight people off the face of this earth. So today's text is blatantly and forcefully talking about judgment. There's no way to dodge it. In judgment, God destroys all mankind except for Noah and his family. So I think we, as a culture, get a little squeamish about this concept of judgment. But I got one kind of silly illustration from Hollywood that I think we all kind of understand at least and agree with some of these ideas of judgment. So I don't know if any of you have seen the movie Taken. If you haven't, I'll try to explain it to you. I don't remember it being particularly good, but I, for whatever reason, remember. So Liam Nelson, right? He's a, I don't know, one of those action guys that goes and beats a lot of people up.

[1:40] Kind of character, right? So he was an ex-CIA operative. His, his daughter goes on a trip to Europe. While she's in Europe, she gets kidnapped by a group of human traffickers. So then Liam takes things into his own hands as a trained CIA operative. He starts to track these men down. He tortures, he kills, and he eventually finds the kingpin of this trafficking ring. And that the conclusion is he gets his daughter back from this man and kills him, right? So he kills a lot of people, but we as a culture love it, right? Because these guys are human traffickers. Nobody at the end of that movie was like, wait, I feel bad. Those guys died, right? So in some case, we all understand and our culture affirms that justice and judgment is right, right? We know that there's things that ought to have justice. I think what our problem is, is we have a problem giving that right to God, right? We want to be the people who choose what gets judged and what doesn't. And this makes sense. This is the trouble that Adam and Eve had, right? They, they want to decide for themselves what was right and what wasn't. So I use a silly illustration. It's, it really is nothing in comparison to what we're going to talk about with the flood. Um, and, uh, we can explain this idea of justice. We can explain this idea of judgment and how we truly understand it and desire it as a culture. We can talk about that. Uh, but I think is really, what really impacted me with this text is the text doesn't really do that. The text just kind of says people were sinful and God judged. Um, so whether or not you believe judgment is a good thing, whether or not you think it's God's right, uh, this text doesn't really give you any space.

[3:32] It basically says judgment is coming. Judgment came independent of what these people thought. Um, and so we get to dive into that more today. So, uh, I'm going to go ahead and pray before we start.

[3:47] Uh, and we'll go from there. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we come before you. Um, Lord, just weighted down. Um, Lord, I'm weighted down. Uh, Lord, I can't even understand the concept, uh, that every person on this earth was judged instantly at once, uh, for their sin, all except for eight.

[4:10] Lord, I don't know what that looks like. I don't know what that feels like. Um, Lord, it overwhelms me, uh, but Lord, it is in your word and it's here for our good, uh, to teach us lessons, uh, to teach us about who you are, uh, to teach us that you are the one who rules this world and we don't. Independent of what we'd like to think, uh, whatever clever, uh, arguments we make, uh, Lord, your word is blatant. You are the judge of this world.

[4:32] Lord, you hold that right and you exercise it at your will for your glory. I pray that you'd be with us as we, uh, attack this, this text. Uh, Lord, give us wisdom.

[4:43] Give us clarity. Help us to see truth, uh, Lord, and, uh, weight our hearts down for the right things and give us passions for the truth, um, that you desire for us to have. Lord, we love you. We trust you. We ask for your help as we, uh, dive into this, uh, um, this topic.

[5:00] Amen. So we are currently working through a survey in Genesis. So one of our aims at a survey is to, um, we're not going to hit every chapter. So I had a lot of people ask me, okay, so we're going to be in Genesis four today. Uh, no, we're, we're kind of, we're kind of hitting through Genesis. We're going, we're trying to get themes, but what we want to do is we want to actually preach the text, but we wanted to draw into, draw into the text, some of the larger things of themes of scripture, scripture. So what we believe in this church is we believe that the Bible, though it's all 66 different books, um, it's all one comprehensive story, right? Um, it is telling about God's redemptive plan for this world. Uh, that's kind of a large picture of it. We think that each little piece builds to this larger, uh, storyline. And, uh, so our aim is both to teach the texts that we're in, but to also highlight some of these larger, larger themes. Uh, so that's what our aim is today. Uh, so like I mentioned today, we'll be covering chapter six and nine and Genesis is the story of the flood. Um, in this, we're going to look at, uh, the problem. We're going to look at

[6:04] God's response to the problem, and then we're going to look at the results. I'm going to break this up into two different readings. So I'm going to read, uh, a portion from, uh, Genesis six through eight.

[6:14] Uh, we'll talk about it for a bit, and then we'll read another portion through Genesis, um, uh, in Genesis eight and nine. So if you have your Bibles, uh, can turn with me to Genesis six. I'm going to be reading, uh, verses five through 22.

[6:40] And 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. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him to his heart. So the word said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heaven, for I am sorry that I have made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. And these are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God and Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth and behold, it was corrupt for all flesh had corrupted their ways.

[7:31] And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an ark of gopher word.

[7:45] Make rooms in the ark and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you are to make it. The length of the ark, 300 cubits. Its breadth, 50 cubits. Its height, 30 cubits. Make a roof for the ark and finish it to a cubit above and set the door of the ark in its side. Make it with lower, second, and third decks. For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh, and which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die, but I will establish my covenant with you. And you shall come into the ark, you and your sons, your wife and your sons' wives with you. And every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark and keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. Of the birds, according to their kinds, and of the animals, according to their kinds. Of every creeping thing on the ground, according to its kind. And two of every sort shall come to you to keep them alive.

[8:48] Also take with you every sort of food that is eaten and store it up. It shall serve as food for you and for them. Noah did this. He did all that God commanded him. So we want to look first at what the problem is, right? So last week we talked about Genesis 3, and I think that it's quite obvious what the problem is here, right? The sin that is corrupting God's good world. It's corrupting God's good creation. Now we see this in two verses. I'll read verse 5 and verse 11 again. The Lord saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold, it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their ways on the earth. So we all see that the problem is sin. That's kind of the story of the garden, right? God made a good world. A man rebelled against it, chose to follow their own way. And we've kind of been reaping the consequences of that decision ever since.

[9:48] But I want to highlight a few things that I think stick out in this passage, and I think are relevant for us to kind of consider today. So the first thing I want to do is just first beware of sin's corrupting influence. It's interesting, right? We're only in chapter 6, right? Chapter 3 was the fall.

[10:08] We've had nine generations of people from Adam to Noah, right? And by the time of Noah, nine generations later, their claim to have every thought and intention of their heart is only evil continually.

[10:23] So we've had a pretty steep slope. Sin has a very profound corrupting influence. And I guess we can see this a little ways in our own lives, right? Sin kind of breeds more sin. Like, doesn't selfishness often lead to more selfishness. One lie typically leads to more lies. Greed typically leads to more greed. I think what this text, one thing, I mean, among many things that this text wants us to know is sin is powerfully corruptive. And it is dangerous for us to walk in, right? But it's interesting, too.

[11:08] So it goes on to say, but man also chose, they corrupted themselves. You can see that in verse 11. For all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. So we see ourselves, right? Adam and Eve, they sin. We inherited their nature, their sinful nature. So therefore, we also are sinners. But this says, but we have also corrupted ourselves. So we not only have a sin nature, but we also are actively choosing to live in this corruption. And so I think that's powerful for us, right? Because we like to pretend that we're the victim a lot of times. We like to not take ownership for the stuff we do.

[11:48] It's like, yeah, I lashed out in anger at that person, but I'm only human, right? And they had it coming to them, right? I think what this text wants us to realize is that's a slippery trajectory, and we need to be aware of the corrupting influence of sin in our lives.

[12:08] Secondly, sin is no joke, right? I mean, we see this in the judgment, right? God brings judgment because of sin. So I don't know. I don't know if you today, I know I have this typical tendency to minimize my sin, to minimize its effect in my life, to minimize its power. Oh, that's just a little sin. It's not a big deal. It's not going to hurt anybody. Or maybe you simply say, I don't really care what happens. The sin just looks too good right now to pass up. If this is your attitude towards sin, if your attitude towards sin is one of indifference, I'd say stick around for a little bit because this story is going to get a little bit heavier for you and for me. So the final thing we see is that sin grieves God. Sinfulness was so pervasive and destructive that it grieved the heart of God, and he regretted that he had made man. And it says, and this, the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. I guess the weight of the statement gains its effect when we think of the creation story, right? God made man as the pinnacle of his creation.

[13:17] He made us with his image. He made us to fellowship with him. But instead of living in that love and joy and perfect relationship with others, we've chosen to sin and rebel, and we've corrupted the good thing that he made. And so I was thinking of it. I'm an engineer. I'm not a very good one, but this isn't really just me. But okay, so think of yourself. You're an engineer, right? So you're awkward, right?

[13:46] You, and you don't really care, because you'd rather, right? You'd rather be solving a problem or building something than actually talking to people. But anyways, your life goal, your career pursuit is to create a way to make fresh water using a hydrogen fuel cell and oxygen in the air so that people in third world countries can have clean water. So you spend your entire life, you focus it, you focus solely on this, and after you toil for 30 years, you create this product, right? You create this product that can efficiently and effectively and inexpensively provide clean water to millions of people. And so you, your soul rests content. You have made a product that is helping this world. So you sit in that for a few years, right? 10 years, maybe? Only find out that they have been evil people, evil men that have taken your invention and weaponized it. And they're currently using it to kill millions of people. I think you would feel that regret, right? You would feel the regret of what you made for good to help humanity, to help people prosper and thrive, has been turned to into something that creates destruction and kills people and hurts people.

[15:09] So it's just kind of a silly illustration, but I think this is a little bit of the dynamic of the text, right? God created a good world. He created it for us, for his glory, for us to enjoy him. Instead of that, we have taken the good thing that God's given us and we've used him. We've perverted them. We have lashed out in violence rather than love and we've broken his world. And so we see kind of a pinnacle of this here in Genesis 6 because it says that every intention of the thoughts of their hearts were only evil continually. That's a pretty desperate state. And it makes sense that that would sit heavy on the God who created this world to be good and created man to enjoy it. But unlike our hypothetical engineer, right, God actually has the ability and the right to act and to correct what is broken.

[15:58] So let's look at two distinct ways that God responds to man's world destroying wickedness. God's first response is judgment. I mean, we see it pretty blatantly. God determines to destroy all men. So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them. I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth. For behold, I bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh, and which is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is in the earth shall die.

[16:38] So here's where things get heavy, right? God determines that the proper response to the sin of the world is to destroy all living creatures. And this is what God does. This is the story that we're reading. This is the story of the flood. I don't know. It's heavy, right? It's...

[16:58] Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. That's hit me pretty hard this week. I don't know. So I'm not quite sure what to do with it. But I hope I can communicate that this is a pretty intense action that God takes. So I think we could sit here and we could go into like more detail on judgment. We could talk about how some of the softer aspects of judgment, right? We could talk about how love requires judgment, how love requires justice, how if you're going to love somebody, you have to hate and oppose the things that are destroying them. We could talk about how God's holiness requires judgment.

[17:38] But I don't know. I'm not really... I don't know. This text doesn't really go into those things. It stays a little... It stays quiet in some of these nuances. It simply says that man's way... That man's sin was great, that this grieved God, and that God decided to destroy all living creatures.

[17:55] So if you'd like to talk more about some of these softer points of judgment and why it's relevant in our world, why we actually need it, why we actually desire it, I'd love to talk about that. But I think this text kind of leaves us like God chose to judge. It was his right. And I think that's what I think we need to wrestle with, and that's what we need to understand. But there are some bright spots in this story. I haven't probably communicated very well right yet. But in contrast to the solemn, God's solemn determination to destroy all men, we see that it says, but God, or but Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. This is in verse 8. So from the masses of depraved humans, God chose to show grace to one man and his family. This idea of finding favor is simply the biblical concept of grace. Grace depicts a merciful attitude towards an undeserving sinner. Now it's interesting, and this is actually, it was kind of exciting for me, this discovery. So then it goes directly on. So verse 8, it says, but Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. In verse 9, it says, these are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. So I think it could be easy to confuse, well, maybe God chose Noah because he was righteous. But this little phrase that's packed in the middle there, the structure of it, and the structure of how Genesis uses, the rest of Genesis is built, kind of keeps us from making that conclusion. So this idea that, or this phrase, these are generations of blank, right? That's always, it's used 10 times in Genesis, and each time it's always starting a new thought, a new idea. And so based on the structure, we know that it's basically saying God found favor, God showed grace to Noah, and Noah was also a righteous man, right? So it's not linking those two ideas, for it's a big segue. And if you read the rest of Genesis and look where those are used, you'll see that come. So the phrase decisively separates the statement that Noah found grace from the affirmation that Noah was a righteous man. God's grace did not appear before Noah's righteousness, but because of the particular plan of God's redemptive program.

[20:25] We do, however, see that God's grace had a profound effect on Noah. At the end of this section that I read, verse 22, it says, and Noah did this, he did all that God commanded him. So God told him to build an ark, people thought he was crazy, he built it anyways, right? That's quite the obedience. So we see that God's grace had an effect on him that led him to action, to lead him to believe God's word.

[20:52] Hebrews 11, 7 says, By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning the events, as yet unseen, and reverent Fio constructed the ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir to the righteousness that comes by faith. So I think we'll get a little bit more into the bright spot in the story here in a little bit, but I don't want to focus on it just quite yet. Let's turn back and let's hear the rest of the story. So we see that the problem, right, the problem is sin, it's destructive power, and it got out of hand, and God responded in both judgment and grace.

[21:31] He judged the wicked, and he showed his grace in particular to Noah and his family. So let's look at Genesis 8, 20 through 9, 1, and Genesis 9, 5 through 11.

[21:47] And as we lead to be listening for some of the results of God's world judging work, then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intentions of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I again strike down every living creature as I have done.

[22:13] While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And your lifeblood, this is starting in verse 5, so a little break. And your lifeblood, I will require a reckoning. For every beast I require from man. For his fellow man, I require a reckoning from the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed. And God made man in his own image and you, um, and you be fruitful and multiply and increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it. Then God said to Noah, to his sons, behold, I am established my covenant with you and your offspring after you. And with every living creature that is with you, birds and livestock and every beast that is with you, as many as come to the ark, it is for every beast of the earth. I establish my covenant with you that never again shall all flesh be cut off from the waters by a flood and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. Um, so a little narrative that happens in between these two texts, right? The flood actually happened. So what I read before was God saying it was going to happen. It actually happens.

[23:25] The flood clums and, uh, um, it, it's destructive. And also God saves Noah and his family and a type of every animal. Uh, so he preserves the life that he created, but he also kind of decreates, uh, as he, uh, destroys the, uh, the world. Um, and so now we sit on the other end of it and, uh, Noah, uh, does a sacrifice to the Lord. Um, we see this, um, and, uh, and, and then the Lord responds. So, and when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man for the intentions of man's heart is evil from his youth. And this was interesting to me, right? At least in my concept of how I was looking at stuff. So the problem is sin, right? So God responds in judgment and in grace, right? And so we'd expect like the sin to be taken away, right? But what we see here is right from the very beginning, God is saying, no, the sin was not taken away. Um, uh, it says the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Um, so we see this, this, this sin problem still survived, right? And why is that, right? Um, you know, God cleansed the earth, but Noah and his family, sons of Adam, with sin nature stayed in the ark. So when they came out, this sin problem is still, still alive, um, alive and well in the world. Um, and, uh, so, and we see this more, we see this, uh, in chapter nine and we read that Noah, uh, planted a vineyard.

[25:01] Uh, he made some wine, got drunk, lay uncovered in his tent and one of his sons, um, ham, uh, kind of dishonored him, uh, before his brothers humiliated him. And, uh, so then he goes and curses, um, ham's son came. Um, and I don't want to get into all that, but what you see is, Hey, like we see God say that sin's still there. And then we see, Hey, there's already a breakdown in relationships here, right? This is fresh out of the ark. This is supposed to be the, you know, the righteous Noah and his family. And we still see sin here. And so it kind of leaves me like, you know, uh, we, we want a solution, right? We want a solution to this sin that we feel is destroying our world.

[25:43] Uh, but we don't see it here, right? Noah, Noah is not the guy that we might've hoped. Um, Noah's father thought he was going to be the one to bring rest to, uh, their toils in the ground. Uh, turns out, uh, not so much, but what I think this does give us is this gives us a longing, a longing for a true representative of mankind, uh, that will actually solve this problem of sin.

[26:07] Um, so if the flood didn't solve the problem, didn't solve the sin problem, why then the flood?

[26:21] So I think in, in one sense, uh, we can see that in the text, right? God, uh, does some preserving work. Uh, he restores this creation mandate. He gave Adam and Eve the command to be fruitful and multiply.

[26:35] Uh, their generations after them didn't necessarily do that. They, they tended towards violence and self-destruction. Um, and so we see this again, God's reaffirming, uh, the goodness of his creation and the goodness of our role to be fruitful and multiply, um, and fill the earth. Um, we see that God is preserving the world. He's, he's promising not to do this destruction again, even though he knows that man is still sinful and man is still gonna corrupt his world. Um, he's promising, uh, to preserve it. And, uh, as we get farther into the storyline of the Bible, we see why he's preserving it, right?

[27:10] He's preserving it for his particular work through his son who actually solves this sin problem. Um, and so we, we get to the end of the flood and we're kind of unsatisfied, like, ah, like all this, all this judgment, but this problem still persists. And so we get this longing in our heart. And I think that was a longing that the, the, the people in the old Testament felt they were all looking for this person who was going to fix the curse, right? Um, the, the seed of Eve that was going to defeat the work of the serpent. Uh, but it turns out Noah's not, not the guy. Uh, we still have this sin problem and God preserves the world and his grace so that he can farther work out his plan of redemption, which ultimately solved in his son. And so in his son, in his son, Jesus, right? So, so I think what's interesting here is, right? So we see that God is grieved with the world, right? God, God created this world. He runs it. We see that in Genesis, like people really, we're not that we're not the motive force, right? God creates everything. Um, he rules this world and he shows us that he has the right to, to run this world. Um, we might be uncomfortable with that, but that's, that's kind of the stance of this text. Um, but we also see that God grieves with us over our broken world.

[28:21] Um, and, and, and instead of like, like he had every right just to judge and be done with it, right? We were about against his rule. We turned our back on him. He has every right to, to pronounce justice and judgment on that right then. But instead he decided to persevere with us at his own cost, at his own grief. And then we see this farther. So, so when God decided to save Noah and his family, he knew sin was still going to be with them, but he was committing to the cross, right? He was committing to the cross because he knew that the only solution for that sin was going to be through his son, right? Through the death of his perfect son on our behalf to solve that actual problem.

[28:58] Because in his son, um, his righteous requirements are met in his son, his, his demands for justice are met because his son lived a perfect life on our behalf as the perfect representative, as the person Adam never was, as the person Noah never was, as our representative, he took on the full weight of God's judgment, the powerful judgment that we see in the flood, right?

[29:19] Wiping out the whole world. This is the judgment that Christ took for us. And God preserved this world in his grace to lead us to this path of repentance, to lead us to this path of restoration through his son. And, uh, it really is kind of amazing. He, he stuck with us a broken humanity that keeps rebelling against him, that keeps demeaning his role. Um, but he stuck with us in perseverance to, to bring his son at the perfect time for our salvation, for our redemption. Um, it's pretty unbelievable, right? The weight that we feel over the judgment, that's the whole world, God, you know, he wants us to feel that because he saw that he saved that for us. He took that on us that we might have life, but the story is not over, right? The new Testament talks about the flood six times and five of the six times, five of the six times are having us look forward to a new judgment, the next judgment, right? It's a sombering thing. He used the flood. I'll read some texts.

[30:24] I don't even know where I'm at anymore. All right. So in Luke 17 verse 25, um, uh, so this is Jesus, this is Jesus talking and he's talking about how he, the son of man, he says, but he must first suffer many things and be rejected by this generation just as it was in the days of Noah. So that, so it will be in the days of the son of man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage until the day when Noah entered the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise, just as it was in the days of lot, they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But on the day when lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed all of them. So will it be on the day when the son of man is revealed.

[31:13] I'll go ahead and read second Peter three. Uh, it's a little bit longer text, but, uh, it's, it's really powerful. So, um, this is now the second letter that I am writing to you beloved and both of them, I am stirring up your sincere mind by a way of reminder that you should remember the predictions of the Holy prophets and the commandments of the Lord and savior through your apostles, knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, where is the promise of his coming?

[31:45] For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation. For they deliberately overlook the fact that the heavens existed long ago and that the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God. And that by means of these, the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished by the same word, the heavens and the earth that now exists stored up are stored up for fire being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient towards you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief and then the heavens will pass away like a war and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

[32:46] So the New Testament's final aim for our understanding of the flood is it is gaining validation and credibility to the ultimate judgment day. So if you're here and you don't know the Lord, you don't know when he's going to come. You don't know when that judgment day is going to come. Just as the people in Noah's day were eating and drinking, buying and selling, and then the flood came.

[33:15] Right? We don't know. And that is the, that is the warning of this text. That is the warning of our savior. He's a made a way for us to receive forgiveness and life. Let's take him up on that. Right? If you don't know him, take him up on that.

[33:33] Because judgment is coming, whether you like it or not, whether you intellectually assent to it or not, judgment is coming. It's God's right. He's promised it. And it says, though we may not see it, right? We haven't seen it.

[33:47] God is not slow in fulfilling his promises. He will fulfill them. But he is patient towards you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

[33:58] We, in our arrogance, we see God not coming through on these promises of judgment. And we say, ah, it's never going to happen. No, he's saying, I'm doing this slowly so that you can repent. So if you don't know the Lord, consider. Because you don't know when he's coming again.

[34:11] And if you're a Christian, you know the Lord, right? This is our call. The world around us doesn't. Right? This is our call. We need to go out. This is an urgent message that we have. God weighted me down with this text.

[34:21] Like, he destroyed the whole world. And he did that so that we could see and know his power, because he's going to do it again. And he is just and right to do that. So take this message urgently to our world, to people who don't know him.

[34:35] And share with them life. Right? We don't know. We assume he's not coming back. You know, we assume that judgment isn't coming because we haven't seen it. But that's particularly what this text is saying.

[34:48] He is patient. He is forbearing so that we might come in repentance. Don't presume on his patience. Take this message urgently to the world around us so they might have life.

[34:58] That's loving, right? It's not loving for us to sit back and to be shy about our faith, to be shy about this salvation that God offers. It's not loving. It is loving for us to go and be awkward if it's awkward.

[35:09] It's loving for us to go and proclaim this truth, because this truth is what saves people from judgment. This truth is what sets people free. This truth is what brings life. And so that's my encouragement for us today, to consider this heavy judgment of the Lord and the proper application.

[35:28] Praise the Lord that he took it for us in Christ. And let's take this gift and share it with the world around us. And if you don't know the Lord, please talk to somebody here. If you have questions, if you have concerns about judgment, anything, I'd love to talk about it.

[35:40] Anybody here would love to talk about it. This is the most important thing you can consider. So let me pray. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, Lord, sometimes your word is hard. It's hard for us to wrestle with.

[35:52] But Lord, it's good and it's true. Lord, and we submit to your perspective on this world. We submit to, I don't know, just your right rule.

[36:08] In our arrogance, sometimes we can think we know better. We can think we know wiser. But Lord, when judgment comes, all hearts will be exposed. Lord, help us to live in light of that.

[36:19]  Help us to reckon with this truth. And help us to be motivated to share your love to the world around us. Amen.