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Well, if you'll take your Bibles and open with me to Genesis chapter 8. We're continuing our trek through the book of Genesis.! We're continuing our trek through the book of Genesis. and come now to chapter 8.
My wife Lacey and I have been married for seven years and change now. So we're getting kind of old, that's what that means. But when we were newly married, we lived in an apartment complex.
It was called the Lynx, and it was at Mustang and 15th Street, right across from the 7-Eleven and the On-Q, if you know where it is. A lot of great benefits of living in an apartment. We did not own it, we were renting it, and so that meant that nothing was ours to fix.
If something broke, we just made a call, the maintenance guy came over and fixed it, it wasn't our responsibility. The downside was it was 500 square feet, so it was a little cramped sometimes. But we got to play free golf and stuff, it was a good time.
But when we first moved in, we had a little closet that a shoebox could almost fit in, and we put our clothes in there, and the AC unit was like above the closet.
And it had a leak, and not like a leak, like drip, drip. It was like a pan that was filling with water, and it got so heavy that it fell down through the ceiling and like soaked our closet.
And so our closet's just squishy now. And I called the maintenance man, his name was Mario, and I was like, Mario, we've got a problem. And he came over and knocked on the door and was like, It's me, Mario. And he came in, and he was prepared to fix the problem.
He had like this industrial vacuum that vacuumed water out of the carpet, and a huge fan that just dried it for like 24 hours. And he restored our closet back to its use.
Thank you, Mario. Don't know what he's up to these days, but he solved our problem for us. So he was able to restore very quickly something that had been ruined by water. And that story didn't drive as much as I thought it would.
But anyway, that's kind of what God does. He uses wind, drives the water away today. So we'll see that in Genesis chapter 8. And we'll see two points. We'll cover this text in two points. Number one is that God remembers.
God remembers. And if you remember from last week, Noah and his family are in the ark, and the flood has come, and the waters prevail on the earth for 150 days.
We're five months past the flood starting. Noah and his family are still in the ark. Chapter 8, verse 1. Several times in the Bible, it says that God remembered something.
And here's the first occurrence of God remembering his people. And when it says that God remembered, it's not as though God forgot something. It was like, oh, man, I forgot about the ark. I've got to fix this.
But when the Bible speaks of God remembering, it always leads to him acting on the promises that he has made. And when it talks about him remembering, it typically indicates that there's a delay from the time the promise was given to the time that it's fulfilled.
And in this case, the delay is about five months or 150 days. This theme continues on throughout Genesis and the rest of the Bible. In Genesis 19, God remembers Lot and saves him from his judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah.
In Exodus 1 and 2, God hears the cries of the people of Israel, and he remembers the promises that he made, and he delivers Israel from slavery. And so when God remembers something in the Bible, it is him acting on the promises he's made to deliver his people from the consequences of judgment.
And in this case, the delay was five months. And think about how long this five months must have felt for Noah. You know, as I get older, the five months seems like less and less time to me, but Noah was in the ark for five months.
Couldn't go outside. This isn't a cruise ship, so he's not like standing on the balcony at night. He's locked in. There's very little daylight coming through. He just has the seven other people he's with to interact with, and their family, so, you know, they probably bickered a little bit.
And the smell would have been horrible. All these animals just pooping everywhere. Like, it would have stank after five months. But for five months, Noah and his family are waiting.
They're waiting on God to finish his judgment and keep his promises. And it's possible that Noah would have been anxious during this delay.
I mean, they likely could have experienced some seasickness, some claustrophobia. Again, the smell would have been horrible. But day after day, as this ark is floating on the waters, what would be going through your mind after five months on the ark?
Will God remember us? Will God keep his word? Does he see where we are? Will he watch over us?
And so, for us tonight, as we read this story, let us learn to trust in God's care for us. Let us learn to remember that God sees us and knows us.
He knows what's on our hearts and minds. And I know that some of you, in walking through trials, some of you walk through very difficult things. Questions you ask are, does God see me?
Does he know what I'm going through? Does he know the thoughts that are running through my head on a daily basis? Or maybe your questions are more broad and referring to the future of, will I be married someday?
What kind of a job am I going to have? And these things can weigh on our hearts, and they can distract us if we don't learn to put our trust in God.
We think if we would just know what the future holds, we'd be less anxious. But let us learn to trust in God's care for his people as we look at Noah and his family on the ark for five months so far.
So we see that God remembers. And what are the results of him remembering? Well, it says God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided. So his remembering Noah and his family and the animals moves him to action, and he causes a wind to blow across the face of the earth.
This is the same method he used to part the Red Sea. There was a wind that arose, and so he's using this wind to drive the waters away. God is sending the water back to its place.
He's restoring the order of creation. He's sending the water back into its boundaries and removing it from the face of the earth. And in verse 2, it says, The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed.
The rain from the heavens was restrained, and the waters receded from the earth continually. At the end of 150 days, the waters had abated, and in the seventh month, on the 17th day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.
And so this is exactly five months later, after the flood started, that the ark comes to rest on the mountains of Ararat. Now, there's actually a mountain called Ararat today in Turkey, next to the border of Armenia.
Homeschoolers, just ask a homeschooler. They'll know exactly where that's at. It's on the border of Armenia. We don't know if that's the exact mountain that's referred to here. There's a range of mountains that's referred to here in verse 4.
That mountain is a super tall mountain, but it kind of stands alone, so we don't know exactly if that's the precise location, but it fits in other ways. So in Turkey or Armenia, kind of in the Middle East.
In verse 5, the waters continued to abate or continued to retreat until the tenth month. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen.
So this is about 224 days after the flood started that the tops of the mountains are now visible. And if you remember from the end of chapter 7, all the mountains were covered by about 22 feet of water.
And so you think about a bathtub draining. It takes a while initially, and so God's just draining these floodwaters off the earth, and the tops of the mountains become visible after 224 days of flooding.
In verse 6, at the end of 40 days, Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made and sent forth a raven. So Noah, I don't know if he came up with this on his own or God told him, but it's a really genius strategy.
He's going to send out some birds. He sends out a raven, and he sends out a dove to try and test what's out there, try to see what kind of life is sustainable outside the ark. So he sends a raven, because ravens just don't care.
They'll eat anything. And you think about the flood, everything died, and so there's like carcasses floating around in the water, strewn upon the mountains. And so anything the raven finds, it can eat. And so he sends this bird out first, because it's going to find something to eat anywhere.
And it says, the raven went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. So it seems like the raven was going to and from the ark until the water was dried up from the earth, and it didn't come back anymore, because it was able to find life-sustaining food outside the ark.
So the raven doesn't come back, and he sends out a dove. And whereas a raven is like super tough and rugged, it's like a manly bird. A dove is kind of like the cat of birds, okay? It's just kind of weak and annoying.
But he sends out the dove, because it's going to come back if there's not continual favorable environments for it.
Doves don't eat meat. They live on vegetation. And so the only way it'll go out and not come back is if there's vegetation growing. And so we read in verse 8, then he sent forth a dove from him to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground.
But the dove found no place to set her foot. And she returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took her and brought her into the ark with him.
He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark. And the dove came back to him in the evening, and behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf.
So he ends up sending out this dove three times. The first time it just comes back with nothing. The second time it comes back with an olive leaf in its mouth. And this is fascinating because olive trees don't really grow on high mountaintops.
They grow in low places. They're not super tall, so it wouldn't have been sticking out of a lot of water. And so this is a sign to Noah that life is returning to the earth. The earth is again producing vegetation that will sustain life.
And so where the raven was kind of a confirmation of the presence of death, things had died out there. The dove is a sign of the presence of life outside the ark.
And so there's at least an environment that's kind of low elevation that is sustainable for life that has dried out. And verse 12, then he waited another seven days and sent forth the dove, and she did not return to him anymore.
So he sends out the dove the third time. It's able to find life and live a happy life out there somewhere. There's no predators, right? Right? Because everything's died, except the raven, so it's not going to get picked off by a hawk or something like that.
It can live a peaceful life out there. And now it's interesting, where's another time in Scripture where a dove is hovering over the face of the waters? Jesus' baptism.
And it's there that we see the Holy Spirit descend to the earth in the form of a dove and hover over Christ, signifying he is the one who will bring life through God's judgment.
And back in chapter 1, verse 2, we see the Holy Spirit, what he was doing after the heavens and the earth were created was he was hovering over the face of the waters, and here we have a literal physical dove going back and forth over the waters, and these two images come together at Jesus' baptism, showing he is the new Adam.
He is the Noah who will deliver us through God's judgment, who brings new life from judgment. But as this water drains off and the dove is able to live out there, this is a massive amount of water that has to disappear from the face of the earth.
There have been a massive amount of runoff and erosion, and so a question we ask is, where did all of the water go? Like, this water was covering the entire earth, where did it go? And I read something this week, so I think this is true, I haven't done the math, but if you were to flatten out the earth, not like flat earth conspiracy theory, but just like smooth out the surface of the earth, the entire globe would be covered by two miles of water.
And so that's how much water is still on our planet today, and so all this water runs off the face of the land and goes into the oceans. Now if that happened, and it's in accordance with the Bible of this global flood, how did this take place?
And what would we expect to find? Well, if you save your spot here in Genesis 8 and go with me to Psalm 104. One of the ways we know that God used to cause this water to abate or recede back into the oceans was the wind, right?
He mentioned that in chapter 8. But in Psalm 104, we get another description of what happens to the floodwaters. So if you're turning to Psalm 104, we'll start in verse 4.
Sorry, we'll start in verse 5. It says, He set the earth on its foundation, so that He is referenced to God setting the earth on its foundations, referring to creation so that it should never be moved.
So God created the heavens and the earth. Verse 6, You covered it with the deep as with the garments. The waters stood above the mountains.
So now we're talking about the flood. The waters were standing over the mountains. Now what happens to all of that water? Verse 7, At your rebuke, they, the waters, fled.
At the sound of your thunder, they took flight. Look at verse 8. The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them. You set a boundary that the waters may not pass so that they might not again cover the earth.
You can go back with me to Genesis chapter 8. But the psalmist says, The mountains rose, the valleys sank down in connection to the waters running off of the earth.
And so the impression we get from Psalm 104 is that many of the mountains we see today as we see them are relatively new from the time of the flood. And so there's this catastrophic geological shifting that would cause the mountains to rise and the valleys to sink that would give the water places to run off to.
So this would be why we find fossils of sea creatures in the Himalayan mountains. There's evidence for this. And what other evidence would there be?
Well, if this flood happened and if all this water rushed off the earth very quickly, we would expect to find massive amounts of erosion where the water kind of carves a path through dirt or rock or whatever.
And we'd also find some catastrophic rock formations. And we actually see plenty of examples of both of these. And I brought some pictures for show and tell for you. Okay, so Jackson's back there.
He's going to give me some pictures up on the screen. So Jackson, put that first one up there, please. Okay, so these are called folded rocks. These things happen throughout our creation. But you see that cave down there.
This is in France. And look at those rocks. They're just bent. If you were to try to do that to rocks today, you'd snap them in half. So how is it that they were able to bend and fold like that?
There's another one in the Grand Canyon. You can go to the next picture, Jack. So these are crazy, crazily warped. Like you can see so much bend in these rocks. That's almost a 90 degree angle towards the right.
So how does this happen? Well, at some point, these rocks weren't rocks. They were kind of sediment or soil or different kinds of materials. And they were very pliable. They were very bendable.
And so they hardened like this after the flood ran off and contorted them in all kinds of different ways. And it'd be kind of like, have you ever come across wet concrete and put your hand in it? Or at least been tempted to?
You're like, yeah, some of you rebels. You just put your hand in it and it leaves a nice print. Now when that concrete hardens a few days later, you know, my two-year-old will walk by and be like, how much force did someone hit that with to just, like leave a handprint?
Well, it was not always like that. At one point, it was soft and impressionable. And that's the same thing with these rocks. There's a massive event of water that took place to do this. Next one.
Okay, so this is called the Dry Falls. This is actually in Washington State. So if you see all the way from the left of the picture to the right, there's kind of a steep cliff. There's actually massive water erosion.
And so this was believed to be a huge waterfall. And it's hard to tell from the picture, but from left to right, this is three and a half miles. And it's 400 feet from the top of that cliff to the bottom.
And so compared to Niagara Falls, that's like three and a half times as wide and two and a half times as tall. And experts say today that this waterfall could drain all of the world's rivers today.
So there's a massive amount of water that went over this and formed this waterfall. And again, that's in Washington State. Then last one. This is really interesting for a lot of reasons. This is called the Rashad Structure.
Anyone know where this is or any guesses? Five, four, three. Oh, Nebraska. No.
All right. Any other guesses? Yes. Africa. Africa. Yes. This is in the middle of the Sahara Desert. So they call this the Eye of the Sahara.
You kind of see that structure. Some people think it might be Atlantis, but I'm not going to get into that. So you look at, this is in the middle of the Sahara Desert. And if you, I don't know if you can see on the screen or not, but like at the bottom and the top, there's kind of these lines going from right to left.
What do you think caused that? Some people say it's wind. There's actually water erosion in the middle of the Sahara Desert. And also if you, people have researched this, so I don't know if you can see on the screen, but there's kind of like some blue and white hues, like if you look at that circle towards the bottom right, you guys see those?
Those are actually salt deposits. There's a massive amount of salt water that caused this erosion in the middle of the Sahara Desert. What can explain that? A global flood. And so thank you, Jack.
You can go back to the regular slide. Give it up for Jackson. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. So as we see things like that and things elsewhere in creation that kind of defy scientific explanations, we can know from the Bible that these things didn't happen over millions of years.
All of that stuff happened in one catastrophic year of God's judgment. All of these things were formed very quickly and rapidly by God pouring out his judgment on the earth.
And maybe your science teachers or science textbooks will reject this. Why would someone reject evidence? Ultimately, what we find is it's a heart issue. And 2 Peter 3 talks about this.
It says they will deny that they'll purposely avoid the fact that the world was flooded with water. And we see that happening in our own day, even now.
So most people reject the idea of a global flood. Why would they reject that? If this story is true, then the Bible is God's word and we are all accountable to God.
And the story is true, but people want to reject that because they don't want to be accountable to the God of the Bible. And so this flood, as it runs off, will leave massive amounts of evidence as where we get fossils from as well, from the flood initially and then getting buried deep in rock layers.
And so as this flood is subsiding, it's leaving evidence of its presence. In verse 13, in the 601st year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from off the earth.
And Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry. So we're at almost a full year now from when the flood started. In verse 14, in the second month, on the 27th day of the month, the earth had dried out.
So now, there's not only no water on the ground, but the ground itself has dried up. And so the entire flood event now is about 370 days from the first raindrop until the earth is being completely dried out.
Verse 15, then God said to Noah, and if we're reading quickly through this, we can pass over that, but when was the last time God spoke to Noah?
It was a full year ago. God told him to go into the ark, and God's been silent since then. What would go through Noah's mind as he waited for this year?
In verse 16, God's word comes to him, and he says, go out from the ark. Go out from the ark, you and your wife, your sons and your sons' wives with you.
Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh, birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may swarm on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.
So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him. Every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth went out by families from the ark.
Up until this point, Noah had not left the ark yet. Can you imagine his patience? Not only for five months of the flood, but now the ark's been resting on top of this mountain.
He knows there's life out there because the raven and the dove haven't come back. He can see the tops of the mountains. He knows the earth is drying out, and yet he will not go beyond God's word.
God told him to go into the ark, and he's going to stay there until God tells him to go out of the ark. And so the last word Noah has from God is chapter 7, verse 1.
It says, Go into the ark. And now, in verse 16, it says, Go out from the ark. He would not go beyond God's word or do anything of his own will.
And in verse 17, I read that these animals would go out and swarm and multiply and be fruitful, which is how God created these animals in the first place in chapter 1.
And so now, all of life is in the ark. And the ark itself is like a seed of life that would be scattered across the face of the earth and repopulate it and continue the life cycle of creation that God had made.
And so Noah emerges from the ark as a new kind of Adam in a rejuvenated and restored creation, but there are some key differences between Noah and Adam. When Adam first existed in the garden, he was innocent.
But Noah comes into this new world a sinner. When Adam was in the garden, there was no sin. There had never been any death or sin. And Noah steps off the ark into a creation that was just destroyed because of sin.
And so there are some key differences between Adam and Noah. This was a new start. God was resetting things, but it wasn't in the beginning like Adam was. And so things will still not be as they were in the Garden of Eden.
So we see that God remembers. Secondly, we see that Noah worships. Noah worships. You ever been on a long road trip before?
If you've been with us on passion trips, you have. What's the first thing you do when you get off a long road trip? You stretch, walk around, eat, keep playing on your phone, unpack.
What is it you do? If you've been with us on passion trips, we also broke down a few times, so you probably got a chance a chance to stretch your legs already. But what is it you do? Noah's been on the ark for over a year, and he worships.
He gets off, and with this freedom he has from the ark, he builds an altar and offers sacrifices to God. And we see this in verse 20. Noah built an altar to Yahweh and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
Now Noah doesn't have a lot to work with here. All of the animals that are alive on earth at this point are with him, besides the raven and the dove. And yet he sacrifices some of them.
All the hope of animal kind continuing is bound up in these creatures that he takes off the ark with him. And yet he takes some of each of them and sacrifices them to God.
It kind of defies logic because you'd want as many chances as possible for these animals to survive, but he is dedicating them to the Lord. And that's really the nature of a sacrifice, isn't it?
God didn't call the Israelites to be like, hey, just sacrifice when you feel like you've got a lot of animals. Like, I've got too many. I'm just going to kill some. Offer them to God. God doesn't just ask us to give our money or our time when we feel like we've got plenty left.
It's a sacrifice. And Noah worships the Lord through sacrificing these animals on the altar. Why did Noah do this?
There's no command written down for Noah to do it. There's not a written sacrificial system yet in the Bible. But what we know about Noah is that he is obedient to God's word.
And so it's likely that God had commanded him to sacrifice. It's not recorded here on the pages of Scripture. Otherwise, I don't know how Noah would have known to do this.
And it's also unclear how he would have known what a clean versus an unclean animal was. That definition isn't given until later in the Bible. But Noah's expressing his faith through what he sacrifices to God.
And this worship, this sacrifice, results in God pouring out a promise to his people and to his creation. Verse 21, And when Yahweh smelled the pleasing aroma.
And so what Noah would have done is he would have killed these animals, he would have offered them up on the altar, and he would have burned them. We would call this a barbecue, probably. And the aroma was pleasing to the Lord.
Now the Lord doesn't have a literal nose, he's a spiritual being. What was pleasing to the Lord here was Noah's faith. And the aroma itself that Noah would have smelled likely would have been pleasant at certain points.
And when I think of pleasing aroma, I think of the gym. You might say that's really weird, but let me explain. The gym I go to is right by a waffle house.
And so I come out of the gym and I'm hungry because I've been working, been trying to get some gains. and I smell bacon and eggs, waffles, coffee.
And after two years, my dad and I have not given into Satan's schemes yet. But the aroma is highly pleasing. I am well pleased. I really want to walk over there.
I haven't yet. Pray for me. But this aroma, this sacrifice that Noah offers to the Lord is pleasing to him. And Yahweh says in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man.
For the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever strike down every living creature as I have done. So while God is pleased with this sacrifice, and while God promises to never destroy the earth with water again, Noah's sacrifice does not undo the curse.
Noah's sacrifice doesn't reverse the damage that's already been done. And so when Noah was born, Lamech, his father, named him Noah, which means rest. And he said, for this one will bring us rest from our painful toil.
And so he was not the ultimate answer to his father's prayers because he was unable to reverse the curse that caused this judgment in the first place. God's logic here doesn't seem to compute at first.
He says, the sacrifice pleases him. He says, I'll never curse the ground again. What's the reason he gives? Because man is sinful. But that's the entire reason that he brought the flood in the first place because the intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
And yet, that's still the case but God promises never to curse the earth again. So what is God saying here? He's saying that there will be no new curses brought regardless of man's sinfulness and he will hold back his judgment for the future.
He will delay the judgment that is rightly deserved even in spite of man's sin and continue to hold out mercy to them. And so this sacrifice was pleasing to the Lord but notice what it says about man.
The intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. This is describing something more than just bad behavior.
This is describing something deeper than just corrupt actions. This is a corrupt heart. A corrupt nature. It's coming from corrupt beings.
Nothing but evil can come from mankind. kind. And this is true of us. We're tempted to view ourselves as good people who sometimes do bad stuff.
We're tempted to view ourselves as basically good people who sometimes think bad thoughts. But God's evaluation of our situation is that all we produce is sin.
All we produce is evil. evil. And so unless something can change us radically from the inside all we produce is evil. Our minds and our hearts which are kind of the fountain of our lives they are corrupt and so our actions will be corrupt.
Our minds and our hearts and what we desire is corrupt and so the stream of our lives will be polluted as well. If the fountain is polluted the stream will be polluted too.
One of my favorite stories from my wife's family is they have my wife's family backstory has some lands in Missouri. I'm not going to say where.
It's an undisclosed location. If things go south we're going to retreat there. So in Missouri somewhere in Missouri there's a natural spring and you can see it just shooting out of the ground and it feeds the spring feeds this stream it's crystal clear it's cold you can drink it just stick your water bottle in there and drink it best water you've ever had.
So when Lacey was a kid they had a family reunion at this undisclosed location in Missouri and her mom's going on and on about how clean this drinking water is. And they're kind of downstream she's like you can just stick your water bottle in scoop it up drink it from your hands it's perfectly pure.
Lacey looks up and upstream her uncle is peeing in the creek. True story. If upstream is polluted what does downstream look like?
It's not better right? It's still polluted. And so her uncle is just having the time of his life not even thinking about poisoning everyone. He eats some bad stuff.
So if upstream is polluted and corrupt nothing downstream is going to be clean. And that's really the picture of our hearts and lives.
Hopefully Lacey's uncle is not peeing on them. But our hearts are corrupt. And so our actions are a reflection of what is in our heart and what's true of our heart. And so we're not good people who sometimes do bad stuff.
Our actions reveal what's truly in our hearts. hearts. And this is true from our youth. We're born as sinners.
As soon as we're old enough to think and to speak we have corrupt thoughts and corrupt speech and corrupt actions. That is our problem. But another part of our problem is we don't recognize this.
We tend to view ourselves in positive lights. we tend to view others in generally positive lights. We think we're good people who sometimes do bad stuff but the Bible's teaching is that we are sinners through and through.
And we can only be delivered from this by someone who has the power to change our nature. By someone who has the ability to give us a new heart and change us from the inside to cleanse the polluted fountain and the stream that is our lives.
We need to be made new. And 2 Corinthians 5.17 says if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold the new has come.
And we see just a brief glimpse of this in God restoring creation. The old has passed away and a new one has come. This is true if you're in Christ. You've been cleansed of your sin.
And maybe you're sitting here tonight and you're like I'm not a Christian. I don't really buy what the Bible teaches. Here's why you need the gospel. Here's why you need the Bible's teaching. It's the only thing that can rightly diagnose you.
Our world will tell you you're this way because of this experience in the past or because of these influences or because of this phase of your life. But the Bible rightly diagnoses us as sinners.
And the first step, the necessary step to a cure is a proper diagnosis. We need to know what's wrong with us before we can figure out how to solve it. And this problem is only solved in Christ who laid down his life for our sins.
And verse 22 says, while the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.
one day the earth will go out of existence. One day Jesus will return and destroy the creation through the fire of judgment. But until then, nothing will end to the world.
No nuclear warfare, no zombie apocalypse, no meteor strikes, no alien invasion, no election results will topple the existence of the earth.
No global warming will bring the earth to an end. God has promised that until Christ returns in judgment, the earth will continue on.
And this brings us great comfort. Whatever is going on in our world, whatever problems we have, we can know that God is not done with us until we see Jesus come back. And that's what good theology does.
It calms our nerves. It steadies our anxieties. We can trust in the Lord's promises. He's been faithful in everything he's promised Noah so far. He's been faithful to everything he's promised in the past.
He will continue to be faithful to his word when Jesus returns in the end. So let us trust God. Let us learn to not be anxious but learn from this story.
God did not forget Noah. God was faithful to every detail of the promises he gave to Noah. And the same is true for us.
He remembers his promises and he is pleased by faith. And this life will continue, this earth will go on until Jesus returns.
And so the question for us isn't how is the world going to end, the ultimate question is are you ready for Jesus to return? Are you ready for that spiritually?
Are you walking in repentance? Have you turned from your sin and placed your trust in Christ? And if you are a believer, you're ready for that spiritually?
Are you ready for that in terms of anticipation? Are you looking forward to that event? This world is not our home. We are pilgrims here.
Our hearts and our lives should be shaped by the promises that God has given us in the gospel. And so let us look to Jesus, let us trust in him, and let us live for him by faith until we see him face to face.
Let me pray for us. our Father, we worship you because you are worthy of all honor and glory and praise.
And you've so graciously revealed yourself to us in your word. You are a God who speaks. You are a God who delights in being found and worshipped by his people.
And so thank you for the privilege of participating in that as we have sung and as we have studied your word. I pray that you would bless us. I pray that you would help us to trust you and that you would give us faith to believe your word, Jesus Christ.
And it's in his name we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.