God Keeps His Promises

Amen. Well, good to see everyone. As I said earlier, it's been a couple of weeks since we've been together, so it's good to be back together for Elevate to study the Bible together.

I mentioned Halloween is tomorrow, in case you forgot. Anyone in here dressing up? What are you dressing up as? I'm in a hip-hop track. My mom called me to LL Cool J.

LL Cool J. Nice. Nice. A couple other costume ideas back here. Yep. All right. You're being anxiety from inside out too. Okay. Nice. Nice. Yes. At the back.

You're being what? Okay. Sully from Monsters Eek. Yes. Uncle Fester? Who's that? Okay. Haven't seen it. Sorry. My bad. All right. We'll do one more. We'll go Ellie.

I'm the Holy Bible. You're going as the Bible. Nice. Nice. My kids are dressing up as well. Charlie's going as Buzz Lightyear. We got them little buzz wings the other day.

Ryle is going as Woody from Toy Story as well. And then Amelia just decided today she wants to dress up as a bride, which is not okay. Not okay. We should have a good time. I'm not dressing up this year. I'm too old.

So if you would open with me to Genesis chapter 7, we'll be there tonight. And just a kind of brief reminder of our series called In the Beginning. We've seen the creation of the world in Genesis 1 and 2.

We saw the fall into sin in chapter 3. The effects of that are immediately on display in chapter 4 when Cain murders his brother Abel. In Genesis 5, we get a genealogy of Adam's descendants until Noah.

Noah, last time we met together two weeks ago, or three weeks ago, we saw the description of sin infesting mankind and being in both the angelic and human realms across the face of the earth.

At the end of chapter 6, God made a promise to Noah that because if Noah would stay faithful to him, he would be delivered from the flood, that God was going to destroy the earth through the flood.

So we come tonight to chapter 7. And at some point, as believers, if you're a believer, we will either ask or be asked the question, Is God's word true?

Is God's word true? Does God keep his promises? And I hope if you're a believer that you have asked that question.

That is a good question to ask. And I hope that as believers, you have found answers to that question. But if you are a believer and you've answered that question, you will certainly at some point be asked that by someone in your life.

Is the Bible true? Can we trust his promises? And then how do we know? Obviously, the answer is yes. God's word is true. Yes, God does keep his promises.

But how do we know? There are so many promises he's made to us that haven't yet come true. How do we know that those things will happen? How do we know that Jesus is going to return?

How do we know that Jesus is going to establish his kingdom on earth? Well, part of the way we know and can have confidence in the promises that God makes is because he's always been faithful to his word.

He has always fulfilled his promises. One of the ways we know Jesus will return is because he sent Jesus in the first place to die on the cross for our sins.

And even in the book of Genesis, we see some promises already being fulfilled. He promised Adam and Eve in the garden in Genesis 3 that there would be a redeemer coming from their line.

Adam and Eve would never see that redeemer on earth. But how did they believe his promises? Something else he promised them was there would be pain in childbearing and there would be pain in work.

They experienced both of those things firsthand. And God was faithful on what we can call the dark side of that promise, the difficulties that he promised. And so they had hope that he would keep the promise of sending a redeemer as well.

God keeps his promises, both the positive ones and the negative ones, the threats, we would say. And in Genesis chapter 7, we see that God promised salvation to Noah.

We see that God also promised a devastating flood to destroy the earth. And in chapter 7, we see that God keeps his word.

God keeps his word both in salvation and in the judgment that he brings. God keeps his promises. And so we'll break up chapter 7 into two sections tonight.

The first one is that God saves through judgment. And the second one is that God kills with judgment. He saves through judgment and kills with judgment.

And so in chapter 7, the first 16 verses, we see that God saves through judgment. And this is the start of a pattern that continues throughout the rest of Scripture.

God pours out his wrath, pours out his judgment, and saves his people through that wrath that he pours out. We see that in the case of Noah. We see that in the case of Lot as he survives from Sodom and Gomorrah.

We see that with Elijah. That he saves a remnant through judgment. Elijah and just 7,000 people in all Israel were saved, even though God was judging Israel.

So this is an important passage that sets up a lot of patterns for us in the rest of Scripture. But chapter 7, verse 1, it says, Then Yahweh said to Noah, Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation.

It says, go into the ark. And at this point, there was still no physical, logical reason for Noah to believe God's word. There was no indication that this flood was going to come.

It's not like everyone on earth was like, man, look at those clouds. Like, we've got to figure out a plan right now. The only thing Noah had to go on was God's word. And Noah has constructed an ark based on God's word and been obedient in everything he's commanded.

And now God tells Noah, before the flood even comes, go into the ark. Go into the ark. And at this point, Jesus says in Luke 17 that life was going on as normal.

In Luke 17, Jesus describes these people were marrying and being given in marriage. They were partying. They were feasting. They were drinking. They were living life as they normally would, completely ignorant of God and his word.

And yet, in this state, God tells Noah, go into the ark. And he says, you are righteous before me in this generation.

Why was Noah righteous? And I think on the surface level, we'd be tempted to say, because he obeyed God. God called him righteous because he obeyed. And certainly, his obedience is part of that righteousness.

But how did he find favor in God's eyes to begin with? How was it that God called Noah in the first place? It was simply by his grace. He chose Noah and gave favor to him.

And Noah believed his word. And out of that faith, it produced obedience. It produced a lived out kind of righteousness. And so, this righteousness was by faith.

It was from faith that Noah believed his word. This isn't a works-based salvation. It's a result of God's gift to him. And the only way any of us are righteous before God is by faith.

None of us can earn God's favor. None of us can do enough good stuff for God to be pleased with us. Because we are sinners, both by nature, by who we are, and by choice. How we spend our time.

How we use our minds. The only way we can possibly hope for being righteous is by God's grace through faith. And this is what Noah himself experienced.

And it wasn't just Noah that was saved. It was his family or his household, as it's described here. And also, there's a lot of animals. Verse 2, Now, why does God save Noah and his family and this zoo of animals?

Why does he do this? God is not done with creation. God is planning through Noah and the animals on this ark to restart. To reset the creation.

Noah is going to be a new kind of Adam in a creation that isn't filled with sin like this current one is. We'll see that Noah and his family are still sinners.

But God is wiping the earth clean. He's destroying everything except for what is on the ark. But he's not done with creation. There's a plan for after this.

And that's why he says to take them male and females. The end of verse 3 to keep their offspring alive on the face of the earth. They are going to repopulate the earth.

Now, what's mentioned here are animals and birds. Obviously, fish aren't mentioned. Fish would have been perfectly happy in the flood. There's more water. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming.

They would have enjoyed it. So they would have been able to survive through it. So they don't need to go on the ark. But the animals and the birds would have needed refuge during this flood. And God was planning to restore after the flood.

And this would have been encouraging to Noah. He has God's promise that through the ark he would survive. But even God speaking, take these animals with you to keep them alive. So they can repopulate the earth.

This would have been encouraging to Noah because he knows he is going to live through the flood. This catastrophic judgment won't reach him because he will be inside the ark.

This would have been encouraging to him in this dark moment. So Noah really is the main character like in a movie, okay? So something I do when I get a little anxious watching movies is I'm like, this is the main character.

They've got to survive. So I like military movies. One of them is lone survivor. And there's a picture on the cover of Mark Wahlberg. It's like, I know Marky is going to make it through this, okay?

So like tense situation. I can calm myself down because I know he's the main character. And so this would have brought comfort and calm to Noah, knowing that he would survive through the flood long enough to see the earth repopulated.

And why do they need to get on the ark? Verse 4. He's sending flood.

But it will rain for 40 days and 40 nights straight. And you think about sometimes we have strong rain. Sometimes we've got rain for two or three or four days in a row. And we enjoy it.

But 40 straight days would be terrible. It would be depressing, first of all. And then it would flood the earth like we see here. But if you remember, rain is the stuff that falls from the sky.

It's water. It's been a while since we've had it. But we had one on August like 5th or something. It was a Sunday. We got like four inches of rain on one day. And we're like, man, this is great. But if it keeps raining, like the ground's going to get saturated.

We'll have flash flooding, all this stuff. Now multiply that by 10. Multiply that by 100. Like the flood was catastrophic. And God says, I will blot out every living thing I've made from the face of the ground.

God, he's going to completely erase their existence from the earth. He's going to completely erase the memory of them from the face of the earth. After my senior year of high school, I had a manual labor job doing some property management stuff.

And one day, I had to go out into the heat and try to get some graffiti off of a sidewalk. Anyone ever tried to un-graffiti something before? Yeah, it's tough stuff. So I'm out there with like all these chemicals that I probably wasn't legally allowed to have, let alone mixed together.

And I had a power washer. I was out there for hours just sweating, trying to get this off. And it was that job that made me realize I need to get good grades in college. Like I cannot do this long term.

So I was trying to blot out that graffiti from the sidewalk. That's what God here is promising to do to creation. I will completely get rid of it. I will completely wipe away every living thing from the face of the ground.

And this is maybe ironic. Here the Creator is saying that He will be the destroyer. The one who gave life in the beginning is now threatening to take it away altogether.

But this is His right. He is the giver of life. He is the giver of your life. And so we are accountable to Him for how we spend it.

He is free to give life. He is free to take it away. It's unexpected here in this passage. So soon after He delighted in His creation in Genesis 1 and 2. But this is well within His rights as the Creator.

Verse 5. And Noah did all that Yahweh had commanded him. And this isn't just a strict repeat of chapter 6 verse 22 where it says Noah did this.

He did all that God commanded him. If you remember the Hummer that said did that. And it's actually in the MC's neighborhood. Like right? Thaddeus was telling me he saw it. So I'm not lying. There really is a Hummer out here.

But so Noah did all of that. And it's not just a strict repeat of that verse. But every time God is giving commands to Noah, Noah is obedient.

Everything God tells Noah to do, Noah obeys along the way. And so Noah does all that Yahweh had commanded him here again in verse 5.

In verse 6 it says, Noah was 600 years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth. And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood.

Of clean animals and of animals that are not clean and of birds and of everything that creeps on the ground, two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah as God had commanded Noah.

And after seven days the waters of the flood came upon the earth. Just as God promised, the flood came. And it mentions Noah was 600 years old in verse 6.

It mentions it again in verse 11. In the 600th year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the 17th day of the month, on the day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth and the windows of the heavens were opened.

This is important to the storyline of Genesis because we're told, we're introduced to Noah in chapter 5 when it says that Noah was 500 years old. He had fathered Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

And this is important to the dating of Genesis because the purpose of chapter 5 is getting us from Adam to Noah directly. And we're told how old Adam and his descendants were when they gave birth to sons and how old they were when they died.

And I was talking to Colby a couple of weeks ago, and if you add up these dates, Noah just missed out on knowing Adam firsthand. So Adam likely died when Noah's grandpa was still alive based on these dates.

And so if we put these together, the purpose of the genealogy is to show us a timeline. It also serves as a fast-forward button to kind of speed us forward in the narrative and show us what's important.

But if we add this together, there are no gaps here. We know that the flood happened about 1,600 years after Adam was created. And so about 1,000 and a half years, 1,600 years after Adam was created, the flood came to the earth.

And so based on these genealogies we find in the Bible, I think it's right that we assume the earth is roughly 6,000 years old. Now your science teachers won't tell you that.

Your science textbooks won't tell you that. But it's important to remember they're coming at this from a worldview that does not include God and his word. And so we should expect disagreement on some points.

That's one of them, the age of the earth. But based on these genealogies, I think we have good confidence in saying the earth is relatively young. Now when God created the heavens and the earth in the beginning, it was covered by water.

I don't know if you remember that at the very beginning, but the earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God is threatening to send the world he's created back to that state.

Back to that state where there is nothing alive on it. There is just water covering it in its entirety. God threatens to send the earth back to its original state when he created it.

And verse 12 says, rain fell upon the earth 40 days and 40 nights. And this rain would have been coming down from the windows of heaven, as it's mentioned in verse 11.

The earth itself would have shot water into the sky. The fountains of the deep were burst open and shooting water up into the air. And for 40 days and 40 nights, this rain fell.

And this rain may have been welcomed at first. It may have been a relief to the people. We enjoy rain even today. And so this might have been welcomed initially. But day after day of rain, the earth would become saturated.

Water levels would rise. It would become increasingly more fearful and more anxious. People would have tried to move to higher and higher ground until there was just nowhere else to go.

They would have seen their own death coming. They would have recognized they could not survive this. Think of all of the lives lost. All of the men, women, children, babies that were drowned in this flood.

Who lost their lives in God's judgment. There were perhaps millions of people on earth at this point. Perhaps the ones who heard from Noah were pounding on the ark.

It was too late. But regardless of what happened, they would have recognized that God's word through Noah was not an empty threat.

God's word through Noah wasn't just noise. It was a real threat. God keeps his promises. And from this point forward in the Bible, water kind of becomes a symbol of death.

You think about the Israelites leaving Egypt. They cross through the Red Sea on dry ground. The Egyptian armies come after them and are flooded with the Red Sea and die there in the Red Sea.

And you can think about something in the church today like baptism. I've had the privilege of meeting with several of you guys about baptism. What is baptism a symbol of?

Our death and resurrection in Christ. Our death to our old way of life and our new life in Christ. And if I've met with you about baptism, I've probably said something like, if I ever were to baptize someone and just hold them underwater, that would not be good, right?

We cannot live underwater. And so it's a fitting picture of death that comes ultimately from the flood, a sign of God's judgment and wrath. In verse 14, well, let's get verse 13.

Verse 13, on the very same day, Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them entered the ark. So eight people in all survived the flood because they were on the ark.

Verse 14, they and every beast according to its kind, and all the livestock according to their kinds, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth according to its kind, and every bird according to its kind, every winged creature.

They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh, in which there was the breath of life. And those that entered, male and female, of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him, and Yahweh shut him in.

Now if you notice it repeated according to its kind, or according to their kinds several times, the animals mentioned here are beasts, livestock, creeping things, birds, winged creatures.

This is like Genesis 1 all over, when God is creating these things from nothing. God is signifying that he is starting over. He's starting from scratch with a new creation.

In verse 16 says, those that entered, male and female, of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him. Noah was perfectly obedient, and Yahweh shut him in.

Yahweh shut him in. Now you think about the door of this ark. The ark is massive, right? It's almost like a cruise ship in the ancient world. This door was big enough to allow elephants to walk through.

It was big enough for all these creatures to come onto the ark. Noah could not possibly have closed the door and sealed it. He was using kind of tar type stuff to seal some of the cracks and to waterproof the ship.

But it was the Lord that shut him in. God not only called Noah, but also here showed that he would preserve Noah.

He not only called Noah, but he would keep Noah through his wrath. He would save Noah and his family and these animals through judgment. So we see that God saves through judgment.

Secondly, we see that God kills with judgment. God kills with judgment. And we see a dire situation in verses 17 through 24.

Water, which now is a symbol of death in the Bible, was the instrument of death. It was the instrument of God's judgment in the flood. And we see that this water was everywhere and it killed everything.

It was everywhere and it killed everything. Verse 17, The flood continued 40 days on the earth. The waters increased and bore up the ark and it rose high above the earth.

The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth and the ark floated on the face of the waters. When God created in Genesis 1, He commanded everything to be fruitful and multiply, to increase and to fill the earth.

He gave the same commands to man and woman. And yet when they fall into sin, what ends up increasing, what ends up spreading and multiplying, is sin. Sin through the people He created to bear His image.

And so He says, Because sin has increased, I'm going to make water increase on the earth. I'm going to continue to flood the earth until it wipes away everything that I have made.

And Noah would have been mocked by a lot of people. Noah was proclaiming that a worldwide flood was coming. People would have mocked him. People would have made fun of him.

But Noah is one example showing us that we are safer obeying God than going the way of the world.

Even if following God leads to persecution, it is a safer place to be than following the pattern of this world. Noah stood alone with his family and he alone was saved because he trusted in God's word.

And there's a story of a guy named John Knox. He led the Reformation in Scotland. Snodgrass is actually a Scottish name, so he's like my brother, I think.

Maybe cousin, second cousin, something, I don't know. We're related though, for sure. And he was this guy that rebelled against the Catholic Church and was like, no, it's faith alone that's saving.

We can't contribute anything to our salvation. So he was persecuted and attacked by the Catholic Church. He was actually made a slave and so he was rowing on ships, just underneath ships being treated horribly.

He was beaten, he was whipped, he was mocked incessantly. And one thing the Catholics believe is they pray to saints and they pray to Mary, the mother of Jesus, a lot. And so on this ship, they actually had a statue of Mary.

And they were mocking John Knox and said, you need to bow down and kiss this statue of Mary. And John Knox was kind of a fiery guy and he actually picked it up and threw it overboard.

And he said, let my lady learn to swim. And his point was, if she can't help herself, why are you praying to her?

If she can't even survive getting tossed overboard, why are you expecting her to answer your prayers? And he obviously got in more trouble for that. But he also said later in his life, one man standing with God is in the majority.

One man who's following God's word is always in the right, even if he has to oppose the entire world. And Noah is an excellent example of that for us.

People would have mocked him. People would have thought he was crazy constructing this ark for roughly a period of 100 years. We're introduced at 500. The flood comes when he's 600. And yet it's always safer to obey God than to go the way of the world.

And Moses repeats himself a lot in this section. Verse 17, the flood continued 40 days on the earth. The waters increased. Verse 18, the waters prevailed and increased greatly.

Verse 19, the waters prevailed so mightily. Moses' point is that God's judgment was complete. This is a worldwide flood that covered every spot of dry ground.

The ark floated on the face of the waters. The end of verse 18, the end of verse 19, all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. There was nothing left visible of the earth.

Everything was covered by water. Verse 20, the waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them 15 cubits deep. And so even the highest mountain in the world was covered by about 22 and a half feet of water.

Now, when I say highest mountain in the world, don't think our Everest today, the earth would have looked different geographically back then. But the highest mountain was at least 22 and a half feet under water, which is a lot of water.

I've gone snorkeling before in roughly this depth of water, and you feel really out of control. Like I was snorkeling one time, and I looked up, and there was a sea lion just looking at me.

I was terrified. I don't know if sea lions like people or not, but I was terrified. And then he just went underwater, never saw him again. And I haven't been snorkeling since. But this is a lot of water, and there was no possibility of surviving this from a human level.

And so 22 and a half feet, okay, I have to confess something to you guys. I was dead wrong about something a few weeks ago. When I was talking about the ark, it was 30 cubits tall, which is 45 feet.

And I was like, I think these ceilings are like 45 feet. Now, granted, I did say, I have no idea how tall these ceilings are. But I was challenged by some students here who shall remain nameless.

We measured and estimated, because we couldn't reach, and they're like 30 feet or something.

But I was only off by 33%, so it's a small mistake. But anyway, these ceilings are like 22 and a half feet tall, something like that. So this is how much the water was covering even the highest mountains.

And every living thing died. And Moses also emphasizes this a lot in verse 21. All flesh died that moved on the earth.

Birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind, everything on the dry land and whose nostrils was the breath of life.

He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth.

We see that the water was everywhere, but the water killed everything. Nothing survived. Nothing that breathed air lived through this flood.

Can you imagine the devastation that was brought? If you've seen pictures of a tornado ripping through a town in Oklahoma, the devastation is horrible to look at.

Now imagine if it was like that across the rest of the earth and there were no survivors. If you've seen pictures or videos of the hurricane that hit along the east coast, the flooding is devastating.

It's life-altering for people. And yet that's just a small picture of what this flood would have been like. No one survived this flood.

And it says that they were blotted out a couple of times and really these people have been wiped off the pages of history even. We have very little knowledge about the world before the flood.

God kept his word that he would remove the memory of them from us. So we assume Noah brought some documents with him onto the ark to document his lineage and the people he came from, like the genealogy we have in chapter 5.

But other than that, we don't have much knowledge about the world before the flood. God kept his promise that he would blot out everything and everyone. But verse 23, only Noah was left and those who were with him in the ark.

These are the only survivors. Verse 24, and the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days. So, how long did it rain? It was 40 days and 40 nights.

But even after those 40 days and 40 nights, the waters still prevailed for 150 days on the earth. 150 days, that's roughly five months, which is longer than some of y'all's relationships.

Am I right? Oh, the middle schoolers hate me now. But this is a long time. There was no possibility of life surviving in this situation.

And you might think, like, maybe someone built a raft and they had some food stored up and they were able to just kind of float along. There's a story I like, it's called Unbroken. There's a book and a movie, both are excellent.

But these guys were flying in a plane in World War II, they were stationed in California, they would go on training runs over the Pacific Ocean, and one day their plane went down and no one could find them.

They were floating on a life raft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, hoping the currents would take them and land them on the beach in Hawaii, which you've ever seen a map of Hawaii is like super tiny in the Pacific Ocean.

They missed Hawaii and they were just floating in the Pacific Ocean. They had a little bit of food, they had some very meager provisions, they had fish they could catch in the ocean, but other than that they were all alone just baking in the sun during the day, freezing in the cold at night, barely able to survive.

Somehow they survived 47 days in the ocean and they drifted to Japanese territory. They were taken to prisoner of war camps, but they survived 47 days, which is like almost miraculous.

That's less than a third of the time the waters prevailed on the earth during the flood. There's no chance anyone could have survived this. And just like God says, all mankind was killed, every creature that breathed air was killed.

And we think about this mass devastation. Is God right to do this? Is it okay for God to act this way?

That's a tough question to answer. This passage can be difficult in thinking about God is the one who did this. We need to wrestle with these questions and passages like this or others in the Old Testament or even in the New Testament where God takes the life of individuals or groups of people.

Is God right to do this? But asking the question that way ultimately reveals that we don't have an accurate understanding of how holy our God is or how corrupt our sin is.

We don't understand how holy He is and we don't understand how offensive our sin is to Him. Do you realize that this is what we deserve?

This is how our sin should be treated. This is how we deserve God to act towards us. God is so right to do this.

Do you believe that? And if we struggle to believe that it's because we don't have a right understanding of God or we don't have a right understanding of our sin.

If we understood who God was and if we understood how corrupt and vile our sin was, we would see God's justice very clearly here.

And so the question is not why did God do this? The question is not is God right to do this? The question is why haven't there been more floods? Why hasn't God wiped out humanity multiple times over at this point?

How is God so patient while His name and His holiness are constantly defiled and slandered every single day? how can God restrain His righteous anger against sin on a daily basis?

And although God is patient, He's incredibly patient with us, when His judgment comes, it is complete. No one escapes.

God was patiently waiting in these days but when the time came, He did not hold back. He poured out the full fury of His wrath on this pre-flood world, only sparing Noah and his family.

Now why was the ark able to save them? The ark was able to endure God's wrath and come out alive on the other side.

The ark was able to endure God's wrath and cause the survival of anyone connected to it. And right now, God is waiting again.

God is waiting again to pour out His wrath on sin. He's appointed a day when He will again destroy every living thing in His wrath and He will not hold back in that day or for all eternity.

The flood is just a small taste of what awaits sinners in the future but right now, He is waiting. And one guy I've heard say, I can't remember who said it, but they said God is holding up His two hands.

With one hand, He's holding back His wrath and with the other hand, He's extending mercy. He's inviting sinners to come to Him and find that mercy and forgiveness.

But one day He'll drop both hands. And the full fury of His wrath will flood the earth again, not with water, but with His wrath and anger against sin.

And it will be too late for those outside to repent. Just as when God shut the door of the ark, His mercy was ended, His mercy was done, and it was time for judgment.

Another day like that is coming in the future, and the only way to escape is through Christ. Why? Because He was able to endure the Father's wrath and come out alive on the other side.

He was able to experience death and not only survive it, but conquer it. He bore our sins. He absorbed the full wrath of God, and the only way to be saved from His wrath is to be in Christ.

To believe in Christ and to love Him. Do not wait until it's too late. Eternity is a long time to be wrong.

God has promised once again both salvation and judgment. Both of them eternal, and again, God will keep His word.

Do you believe Him? Are you in Christ? If you believe in Christ, you are safe in God's means of salvation for His people.

You will live through the judgment. You will survive through judgment as God brings salvation to us from His wrath. If you're outside of Christ, you should have a fearful expectation of His judgment.

There's a day coming when He will pour it out and not hold it back. I encourage you to repent and come to Jesus and be saved.

Let me pray for us. Our Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You for the glimpse of the truth this evening that You keep Your promises.

You keep Your promises of life and salvation. You also keep Your promises of judgment and condemnation. Father, I pray that we would take You at Your Word, that we would trust You and depend on You.

I pray for these students here, that You would make them holy, that You would make them righteous and help them to follow You. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.