When Creation Unravels: The Flood as Uncreation
by Jeremy Painter
Abundant Hope Fellowship, Bremerton, Washington
Kind: Bible study
Scripture: Genesis 1:9, Genesis 1, James 1:17, Genesis 7:1-5, Genesis 7:6-7

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/jeremy-painter--when-creation-unravels
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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So where we've been, the beginning of the era of the Flood, according to the book of Genesis, there has been a kind of supernatural invasion, and human beings have welcomed the invitation of the temptations, and the earth is covered with human beings who are multiplying but multiplying evil. They were supposed to simply multiply themselves, but they're multiplying evil too, and God decides that he's going to destroy the world with a flood, but thankfully there was one man who found favor in God's eyes, and he becomes essentially the new Adam. All right, so that's chapter 6. And now we're on chapter 7, which is the beginning of the Flood itself, and there's a lot of repetition in chapter 7. I won't go over the repetitions, but I just want to take note again of something I've already talked about a little bit. What happens in Genesis 6 and Genesis 7, the story of the Flood, it's a reversal of creation. A reversal of creation.

So it's the uncreated. It's an act of uncreation. And in fact, it's so specifically an act of uncreation of the rolling back of creation that the events of the first three days of creation are undone in backward sequence in the story of the Flood in chapter 7. Days 1 through 3 of creation are reversed. It's the uncreation of Adam's world. Day 3 of creation, if you remember, we'll start there. Genesis 1.9 says that the waters on the earth were gathered into one place and dry land appeared, which means that the waters that once covered the whole earth at the beginning of creation have now been gathered into distinct bodies of water separated by mountains and continents of land. All right, so the seas and land are created on day 3 of creation. But the first thing that happened when the Flood came, six chapters, seven chapters later, was the waters that were once contained under the earth burst forth so that there was

no longer any dry land. So God uncreates the dry land on the day, has his first act of the Flood. So day 3's work of creation, dry land, it's undone. On day 2 of creation, if you recall, God created a canopy of water above the earth to hold water and suspension, which is really difficult for us to visualize. We're supposed to imagine something like a sea of water above the earth held back by a canopy of some kind, some invisible barrier that allows there to be an atmosphere. So the sun seems to shine through this sea of water and we have this whole canopy of water. We don't, of course, have that anymore. We have the clouds above us, but no longer this canopy that was envisioned here. This allowed there to be such a thing as an atmosphere or a sky on the second day of creation. So God creates on day 3 the dry land on the previous day he created

sky. But the next thing that happened in the Flood seven chapters later, the windows of heaven are opened, that canopy is opened, and water pours down from the sky, which means that day 2 of creation's work, the creation of the atmosphere or sky, that's undone as the second act of the Flood. On day 1 of creation, go back to Genesis 1, God's spirit hovered over the formless waters, meaning that water covered the whole earth at the beginning of God's creation. Of course, this is before the spirit of God moves upon the waters. All right. So what we get with the Flood is a return back to the state of original creation of formlessness. It's just water everywhere. So sin and trespass of God's boundaries led first to the fall in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve. And then the trespass of boundaries between angels and mankind leads to the Flood. So you got the trespass leading to the fall and then trespass

leading to the Flood. All right. So the reason why I went through all of that is the Flood is being uncreation or rolling back of creation is for this reason. It's an important point that's stressed throughout the Bible. Sin is uncreation. It's lifelessness. One scripture puts it very succinctly. The wages of sin is death. So out of his goodness, God creates and gives life. He gives of himself and he pours his goodness into creation. God didn't need to create anything. He wasn't discontent without creation. He wasn't missing something in his nature that he needed to fill. Avoid he needed to fill with creation. Why did he create then? Just simply out of the joy of creating because God by his nature takes joy in making and creating. And so out of this overflow, he creates the world and he gives life. He gives of himself and pours his goodness into creation. He gives mankind freedom to choose life or to choose death, to

choose him or to choose to reject him by choosing obedience to God. Man chooses God. He chooses the source of life and creation. But in order to ensure that man's choice is a real choice, he has to provide man with an alternative to himself, an alternative to life, an alternative to creation. If his choice for goodness and life and creation is to be real, he has to be able to freely choose, mankind has to be able to freely choose the alternative to life, an alternative to God. Man can choose disobedience and therefore uncreation and death. You can ask and we're kind of wandering into the realm of Christian apologetics. That is a defense of the faith. And typically the questions that Christians have to speak in defense of are questions regarding the presence of suffering and evil in the world. Why is there such a thing as suffering and evil? How is it that a man living a good life for God can

suffer so much wrong? How can something like what happened to this church a month ago? How can it happen? What's the answer to this? And the traditional Christian answer has been very simply that evil and suffering are the result of human free choice. We chose it. But why did God give us this choice? Why did He give us this choice between suffering and evil on the one hand or goodness and life on the other hand? And the traditional, again, Christian answer is God was giving us an opportunity to freely choose. You can ask, why didn't, why can't God just allow His creation to freely choose disobedience without punishing Him with death and suffering? Why does He give life but only on condition that we obey? Why can't we just live our lives the way we want to live them without having to be threatened with hell for disobedience? In other words, we're only given two options. Why? Option one, choose obedience to God

and receive goodness in life and creation. Or two, choose disobedience to God and receive evil and death and uncreation. Why can't there be a third option? Why does God only give two choices? Why can't there be a third option? Namely, choose disobedience to God and receive goodness and life and creation. The question sounds pretty reasonable at first glance, but it's framed in such a way that makes God seem like a tyrant. It leaves out just enough information to allow God to seem like a power hungry narcissistic dictator. In this way, it exactly mirrors this third option idea. It mirrors the words of the serpent to Eve. Choose the third option. Choose disobedience, and you won't get death. You'll get life, eternal and reward, and God's holding you back from that. What this idea of a third option leaves out is something completely obvious the moment though you think about it. If you really want life, why would you reject the source of life?

What life would God have to give you except the life that comes from Himself? To choose disobedience to God is to reject the giver of life. So to choose disobedience is to reject life itself. It's a rejection not just of God, but the one who gives life. All goodness, Scripture says, comes from God. So what goodness can God give you other than the goodness that comes from Himself? Is there some goodness that He could give you outside of Himself that existed apart from Him? No. What you're proposing and trying to be disobedient to God while at the same time enjoying the benefits of God's goodness is for God to find some other goodness outside of Himself to give you. But there is no goodness outside of Himself. James chapter 1 verse 17 says, Every good gift and perfect gift is from above. Okay? Every good gift. Every good gift. Any blessing in your life, any goodness that has ever come to you has

come from God directly. It was not a coincidence. It was a chance. God gave it to you. All right. Even if God were then to create some other source of goodness and life for you to be able to reject Him and yet enjoy life and goodness, God would still be the source of that life and that goodness. You see? You can't escape. He's the fundamental fact of the universe. We live in a universe that's entirely dependent on God. He was before all things. He was all that exists eternally, before the beginning, before all time. He is the uncreated Creator, the unmoved mover. He's the first of all causes. He has no other goodness to give you. You reject Him. You reject all that could possibly be good. So to choose disobedience to God is to reject life. Okay? This is not only a scriptural declaration. It's a philosophical principle. It's inescapable. Another objection along the same lines would then be, well, okay, there's

no alternative to God. But couldn't God have created the world in such a way that we didn't have to worry about right and wrong, but just live the life He gave us without all the fuss? Yes. Yes. First of all, there was a time when human beings didn't have to fuss about right and wrong. That time was before the fall. Remember God said, leave the tree of knowledge of good and evil alone. That is, I don't want you fussing and worrying about the difference between right and wrong. Human beings were allowed to live in the garden completely innocent and ignorant of the idea, the very concept of right from wrong. It wasn't God who forced the fuss over right and wrong upon us. It was we who insisted on living this way. We wanted to make a contract with God. It was we who insisted in living this way we've rejected God's one and only commandment and freely chose to live in a

world where there's not one law, but thousands of laws. Ordinance is everywhere we turn. This commandment, that commandment. Legal, illegal. Codes, clauses, rules, unwritten rules, bylaws, directives, rulings, decrees, regulations, ethics, boundaries, violation, trespass, infringement, usurpation, encroachment, interlopement, invasion, intrusion. We chose that world freely. And then we complain about God and religion and rules. In the beginning, there was only one rule. Have all you want from anywhere except this one tree, which I hold back from you as an opportunity for you to express your regard for me. See, I want your, I want you to be able to choose me. So I'm going to have to put something that's against my wishes in the garden. I don't want you to say you love me when you have no alternative to loving me. We're not machines. We're being human beings made in the image of God. When we love, he wants that love to be real. Not the, not the love of an android. Something

it's programmed to do and can only do and can't help but doing. So there was one exception, one small slight exception. Don't touch this. See that, that the one rule that existed was a rule meant nearly to be an expression of mankind's regard for God. Keeping that one commandment was man's way of saying to the God of so many blessings, I love you too. But we break the rule. So now then God says, all right, here are 10 rules to remember and live by. Call them the 10 commandments. We break those two. So now God says, all right, here are 623 rules of Torah to remember and live by. You see what's happening? One to 10 to 623. I don't know what, what the multiplicative is on that. But it's pretty bad. We break those 623 rules of Torah. So now what do we do? Laws everywhere. Laws every page. This book right here has 420 pages. It's in eight point font, eight

point font. You need to have young eyes to read this, which means I can't really read it all that well anymore. That's basically 800 pages of normal font. It's all laws. This is called the Talmud, the Babylonian Talmud. This is Jewish law, 823 pages. Each page contains about 50 laws. Oh, I'm not done. Same thing. Oh, there's another one. Same thing. Am I annoying you yet? This is like Mary Poppins or something. But I need to demonstrate this. I want to go all the way through this. Look at this. I'm doing two at a time now. Three at a time. All right, we're done with the letter A. I'm not kidding you. This is just Aleph A. in the Hebrew alphabet. I have what would amount to six bookcases worth of these. Law. This is the world we chose to live in. I was in the courthouse two weeks ago, Port Orchard. I went over to the public defense or the public attorney's

public defender's office. I needed to have a word with the public defender about a case he's representing. And I was told to meet him in the Kitsap County civil code library. I went in there, a room about half the size of the sanctuary wall to wall. And it's covered with nothing but the ordinances for the city or for the Kitsap County for the public defender to go look A through Z. Tiny, tiny font. Rules, rules, rules, rules. It's not God who wants all the rules. It's we who do. It's the world we choose. Think about this for a second. Think about your world. Password protected everything. Multi-factor, authentication, notary public's, PIN numbers, TSA, strip searches, metal detectors, fine print, firewalls, contracts. That's the world we're living in. And it's a world we chose. You can imagine just some gracious, benevolent situation where you've got, let's say something about maybe use the welfare system for a second. Out of the goodness and the kindness

of people's heart, the government wants there to be welfare benefits for people who fall through the traditional safety nets of life and they're out in the cold and they have nothing left beneath them. Let there be a government hand to help in time of need. Okay. It's a great and charitable and wonderful thing. We live in a society that has welfare benefits. There are people who actually really desperately need them and they can't, they don't have any other recourse. They're real and they're important. But then, but then you get some people who abuse the thing. They are able and they're available, but they're lazy. And then you get a layer of authentication that's now necessary. We need to make sure that you're actually in the kind of need that these benefits were designed for. So then you've got to fill out paperwork now. You've got to go into an office every couple of weeks because they don't necessarily trust you that you're doing

what you're supposed to be doing and that you're taking these benefits rightfully. But then you find out that there are people who are very good at scamming the government. There are people right now. They're living hundreds of thousands of dollars a year of annual income because they're siphoning off the welfare benefits of needy people who are being used as fronts to receive these benefits and then they're having to kick them up to this other person. There's all kinds of fraud and abuse in every good thing we try to do because of the sins, because we choose destruction and uncreation and so the charity has to have all of these laws to safeguard it. And next thing you know, we're living in this world where we don't trust each other at all. No trust. If you've ever read, if you've ever heard the book 1984, George Orwell wrote about this oppressive, futuristic society that watches everything you do with Big Brother. Okay, but he

wrote another book, which was a better book, but less famous. It's called The Animal Farm. And it's a lot of the same concept. This farm, the animals rise up against the human beings because the human beings are just making slaves out of these animals and the animals all collectively get together. The sheep, the dogs, the pigs, the chickens, every kind of farm animal rises up and revolt against the human beings and gets rid of the human beings. And it was the pigs who led the revolt. And so the pigs have eliminated the enemy and now we're going to live in an equal society. And they wrote, they wrote in white letters on a red barn, on the side of a red barn, the seven rules to live by. They're just going to rule this equitable and just society of animals. Rule number one, whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes on four legs, number two, or has wings is a

friend. Rule number three, no animal shall wear clothes. Number four, no animal shall sleep in a bed. No animal, number five shall drink alcohol. Number six, no animal shall kill any other animal. And number seven, all animals are equal. Great. So they go on living this way. But pretty soon, but pretty soon the pigs, they move out of the barnyard and into the house and they start trying on the human clothes and they stop, they stop walking on four legs because they want to walk like the humans. So they start walking on two legs. They start sleeping in beds. They start drinking alcohol. And then they have, they have, they have to justify this and they have to act like the rest of the animals never read right the words on the barn. They were getting it all wrong. So in the middle of the night, one night they changed it all. Here's what the seven rules are now. Four legs are good,

but going on two legs is better. Number two, no animal except pigs shall wear clothes. No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets. Look at that little clause right there with sheets. No animal shall drink alcohol to excess. They added the words to excess. And no animal shall kill any other animal. And then they wrote beneath that without cause. And then rule number seven, the most famous rule of all, all animals are equal, but then one more clause, but some animals are more equal than others. There you go. You had seven laws in the beginning. Now you've got seven laws with seven clauses in the laws. That's just a good story of what's going on here. It wasn't God who chose the world we live in, a world of multiplied regulations and codes and laws. We choose this over-regulated world of ours on our own. It's the abuse of goodness that creates the need for more and more laws. Now we need

laws to... Laws aren't the problem. Now we need laws to protect ourselves from each other. Laws themselves aren't wrong. They're good and righteous and protective of whatever good remains, but they just multiply because of the fall. Okay, so sin is an uncreative act that destroys what was meant for good. The flood is rolling back the creation of Adam's world and, by the way, that's what's happening with baptism. Your old creation is being rolled away. Noah, though, he's the new Adam, he has the grace of God upon him, and like Adam, he also has three sons. And like Adam also, who named the animals, Noah brings them in the ark with him to ensure their survival. All right, so Genesis 7 and 1 says, then the Lord said to Noah, go into the ark, you and all your household, I have seen that you're righteous before me and this generation. Take with you seven pairs of all-clean animals, the male and his mate, and

a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate. Seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive in the face of all the earth. For in seven days, I will send rain on the earth 40 days and 40 nights, and every living thing that I've made I'll blot out from the face of the ground. And Noah did all that was commanded to him. All right, there's the number seven. Seven's the number of creation. Wait seven days, and then 40 days. The flood's going to begin. The number 40 is an important number throughout scripture. I'll just give you a couple of instances of this. 40 is the number of flood days. 40 is the age of Isaac and Esau when they got married. Moses spent 40 years in Egypt as a prince, and then he spent 40 years in the desert before meeting God at the burning bush, and then Moses

spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness with Israel. Moses also spent 40 days on the mountain when receiving the law, which meant also that Israel was left without Moses' leadership for 40 days. Moses fasted 40 days to atone for Israel's rebellion in some way, and in the New Testament, Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness fasting and praying. Okay, 40 days is generally in scripture indicative of a period of testing and trial. A month plus 10 days, you can really, really start a good habit or a bad habit in 40 days. All right, it's a period of testing. Okay, but on to Genesis seven and six. 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. All right, why the seven-day waiting period? Okay, in seven days go on the ark, and then it's

gonna start raining. Some have said, well, they were inside the ark for seven days waiting for it to rain. God would close up the door, but that's not what's being said here. Seven days to wait, and then on the seventh day, they're gonna enter into the ark, and it's gonna start raining that day. All right, but why the seven-day waiting period? Why not just say, it's gonna rain today, get in the ark. All right, one ancient Jewish commentator said that it was a seven-day period of mourning for the death of Methuselah. You all know, you know what Methuselah means when anybody mentions it, right? You don't even have to know the Bible to know what that means. It means you're really old. That's, let me explain it. I don't know that there can be any kind of certainty on whether or not this was to mourn the death of Methuselah before the flood, but the genealogy listed in chapter five of Genesis suggests

that Methuselah died in the year of the flood. Okay, that's important. We're not told if he died in the flood or just before the flood, but there's really good reason to believe that he didn't die in the flood, but just before it, and here's why. Methuselah's life seems to have been intended as a prophecy of the flood and an indication of God's long-suffering mercy. His name, the name Methuselah, loosely means the man of the javelin or dart. But more technically, his name means in Hebrew his death shall send the javelin. You hear the thread in that? His death shall send the javelin or the dart. His name is a warning of the flood. When he dies, the flood is going to come. His death will signal the sending of a deadly weapon, the flood. And this is why it's important that he's the oldest, longest living man in recorded scripture. He lived 969 years according to the genealogy. If there's going to be

a man whose death is going to signal the coming of God's judgment, how long would that man live? If God were short on patience, Methuselah would have lived a short life. If God were patient, Methuselah would live a long life like Enoch 365 years. If he were very merciful, if God were very merciful, Methuselah would live to be about 800 years like Lamech. But if he were, if God were extraordinarily patient and long-suffering, not willing that any should perish, he'd stretch that time of that man's life to the furthest limits possible. And that's just what he did. His name means when he dies, the flood will come. And so God kept waiting, kept this old decrepit body breathing. You could almost imagine him on being in an incubator of some kind, a ventilator, God pumping breath into him, keeping him alive just if we could see one man repent. I'll keep him alive. There's always the question of God's mercy. How many chances

will God give? How many chances will God give us before bringing us to judgment? You ever wondered? You have, haven't you? When your days come, and will I be ready? How many chances will God give me before bringing me to judgment? Will he let death snatch me away just as I was on my way to reforming? You think God would do that? Rhetorical question. I don't think so. God knows exactly when to take us. He doesn't toy with us and say, ah, I see you were about to repent, but I'm not going to put up with that. I'm calling an end right now just before you get right. If you can imagine your God doing that, he's not the God of the Bible, who is extraordinarily patient. God judges us according to the nature we possess. If we are identified by our old creation, by our unredeemed nature, by our flesh, we can expect damnation. The old nature, the old man, it's under

a curse that curse was pronounced at the end of the Garden of Eden. The old man is under a curse. It must die. Your body in its current state is the body of the old creation of Adam's world. It will die. It's under a curse. Your body is. Even if you're saved, it's your new nature that's saved, not your old nature. Even the saved person's body will die. But the new nature, the new creation in Christ, it's a new humanity. It's a new human race. When you're born again, born from above, that new humanity is not under the curse of Adam. It will never die. Jesus said, if you believe on me, you will never die. And when you face judgment, if you're in Christ and you have His nature, you will hear 100% guaranteed. Well done, Thou good and faithful servant. Enter into my rest. God judges us according to our identifying nature. Are we in the flesh? Or are we led

by the Spirit? Are we under the old nature? Are we mastered by sin? If so, we die. But if we are led by the Spirit, that is, if our lives are evidenced by the fact that we're not mastered by sin, we're not under its dominion. Then we are led by the Spirit. We're a part of that new nature. And when Jesus Christ comes back, we're going to hear, well done, good and faithful servant. The Apostle Paul said, there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus who walked not after the flesh. That's the old creation, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ, Jesus have made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law couldn't do and that it was weaved through the flesh. God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh. In other words, the

one who's in Christ has an affection for God and for the things of God. If you have this new nature, you have a hatred of sin that steers you away and repulses you. And if you happen to fall into temptation and if you commit a sin, you're absolutely miserable and you go through a season of repentance and mourning for that sin. If that's you, it's impossible for the old creation, the old flesh, the self that's under the curse of Adam to be the deciding factor. That's not your nature. But if you can sin and you're comfortable with it, if you can sin and lay your head down on your pillow and you can go to sleep, if you can sin and you can stand to just let it simmer. Something's wrong. All right, the child of God is disturbed by sin. If you hurt somebody else, that disturbs you. That hurts you. You've got to make it right. I've got to make it

right now. I'm not going to wait till next week. I'm not going to wait till I feel better. I'm not going to wait till I feel bad. Bad enough about it. I'm going to do this right now. I'm going to take care of this if it's two o'clock in the morning. I'm going to take care of the problem. I can't live like this. That's the child of God. That's the new nature. It hates sin. The old Adam, it's not bothered by sin. He only cares about consequences. He never shed a tear for the cost of sin that God took upon himself in Jesus Christ. All right, so God judges according to the nature you possess and this is either your condemnation or your blessing. The old nature, it can't be reformed. It can never love the things of God. No matter how many times he gets cleaned out. No matter how many times he gets cleaned up. He can never love the things

of God. All right, hear me carefully. I'm drawing too close. This is the most important part. The old creation is like, pigs are coming up again. The old creation is like a pig. It doesn't matter how many times you bring the pig inside and wash him up and make him look nice. As soon as he's free, what does he do? He shakes himself off and runs outside to find the first puddle of mud to roll in. You could wash that pig 10,000 times and he'll do the same thing over and over and over again. You can clean him for a moment but that kind of cleaning doesn't change his nature. It's his nature to want to be dirty. This is what the old nature, the old human nature is like for us. You can feel sorry and sorrow for a minute over getting caught and having to be punished but as soon as the old nature is free again it'll go right back

to sinning. He or she might change their sins, exchange a very disreputable sin like prostitution or cocaine for a more respectable form of sin like pride or envy or revenge but back to sin he or she will go. As surely as the night follows today, it's his nature. All right, if 10,000 chances were enough for a man to change, God would give it to him but there comes a point and God knows what point this is when the die has been cast. When what a man is is what he'll always be no matter how many eons he were to live. He'll just keep on running out to the mud. God knows exactly when to take us and he's never going to abort something good that was happening in your life. He's patient. All right, it's time. It's time for me to end. The summary of this all is the floods comes, the rains come, Methuselah has died. God is patient. He's patient and

he'll give you as many chances as you need. But he knows when our time is our time. There was a man one time recorded in scriptures. The only instance where I can find where God changed his mind about somebody and giving them extra time to live. It was the King Hezekiah. You remember him, King Hezekiah? The prophet was told, Isaiah go in there and tell him, get your house in order, get all your fares in order. You're going to die now. All right. And so the prophet went in and told him and Hezekiah the scripture says when he heard what the prophet said, he turned towards the wall and began to wail. And the prophet, having delivered his message, turned and walked out. And once he's outside the door, God tells the prophet, go back in there. He's asked for more time. I'm going to give him more time. Tell him he has 15 more years to live. So the prophet went in

and told him, the king wiped his tears, put on a happy face and went about his life. He might think, that's what I'm going to do. 15 more years. It was a good plan. God will feel sorry for me. Something like that. Maybe. But here's the problem with that story. You have to read between the lines, but here's what ended up happening. Hezekiah? Hezekiah, he was a fairly decent king. But in the 15 years extra that he had to live, here's what happened. The next king of Israel, his name was Manasseh. Manasseh was the most wicked king of all the kings that ever lived. In fact, he brought in an idol to the God Moloch, which has this kind of thirst and craving for the bodies of children. You sacrifice children to Moloch. He brought that God, that foreign God, as an idol into Jerusalem to be worshiped. And he had children sacrificed to this God. He was the most wicked king. He

ended up killing so many people, the scripture says, that the streets of Jerusalem ran with blood. He was absolutely bloodthirsty and horrible. The worst thing that ever happened to Israel. And you know, you know how he lived? He was born seven years into Hezekiah's extra 15 years. He never would have been born. It has a guy had died when God first intended. God knows what he's doing. God knows what he's doing. As long as you're drawing breath, it's because God is patient. God is patient. God is waiting for you. God is working with you. He has a mission for you. He's given you time, breathe, live, follow me. All things are going to be well. You don't have to go to bed at night worrying about whether or not, whether or not am I saved or not saved? You shouldn't have to worry about that at all. You ask yourself a question. Have I been trying to be close to the Lord today?

Have I wanted to live for the Lord today? Have I repented of my sins? The worst thing in the world for me when I was a boy, I was always afraid. I always had this idea that God was going to blow the trumpet one day and the rapture was going to take place and I was going to miss the rapture because of some last thing that I did. Some mistake I have made. And so I got into this habit where I was going to short-circuit the system. God couldn't, I couldn't miss the rapture because of the last thing I did because after everything I did I was going to ask God to forgive me. God forgive me, God forgive me, God forgive me. I can just say this. I know this is a child's way of thinking, of course, but still it can be ingrained in us that somehow it's tedious as all of that. No, sir, no, ma'am. I am persuaded, Paul

said, that neither height nor depth things present nor things to come. Angels, demons, nothing can separate us from the love of God that's in Christ. Now, does that mean I go out and say, well, I'm in Christ, I can live however I want to live? That's the old nature. Is that who you are? If the answer is no, there's a new nature. The goodness of God leads you to repentance. It doesn't lead you into sin. All right, praise God. Let's stand. Well, I didn't have time to go over the story of the door shutting on the ark. I'll get to that next week. Jesus draws a parallel to it in his teaching on the second coming. And I definitely want to address that. But why don't we just pray? Thank you, Jesus, for this evening. Thank you for your precious word. I pray, Lord, that it puts us in front of a mirror and that we examine our lives sincerely. Am I ready

to meet you? Am I ready? Life is uncertain. We don't know, certainly don't know the day or hour of your return. And we don't know the day or hour of our end. I pray that we would live close to you. God, if there's anyone in here who has been comfortable living in sin and excuses and justifies it and sleeps soundly, I pray that they would have a spirit of repentance. God, that they would have sincerity and genuine repentance before you. In Jesus' name, we pray. Thank you for your goodness. Thank you for your long suffering, your patience with us. Go with us this week. Amen. Amen.