Noah: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly and the Hopeful

Transcript

So, tonight's class is Noah Found Grace in the Eyes of the Lord. We just read that in Genesis chapter 6. I subtitled my class, The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Hopeful. I don't think I've ever seen that movie, a movie from the 60s, I believe, with Clint Eastwood, but I just thought, okay, that's sort of the story of Noah and the future. So that's what I've titled the class tonight. But we're going to do something probably, and not only is having a class coming from Alabama probably something different, but what is about to happen next is probably something I'm guessing, this is what a Rich's multimedia shows, multimedia presentations. So, what I'm going to show you is a music video. The music video helps, I think, helps me just to see the story, hear the story of Noah in musical form. This is also a, the words, the song was something that my brother-in-law used to do, I remember years ago, as a rap song.

1956, Noah Found Grace in the Eyes of the Lord. Some of the most exciting music in the world today is the great rollicking spirituals. Here's one we hope you're going to enjoy. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and he learned it by his cross. The Lord looked down from his window in the sky, said, I created man, but I don't remember why. Nothing but violence since creation day. I'll send a little water and wash him all away. The Lord came down to look around the spell. There was Mr. Noah behaving mighty well. That is the reason the scriptures record. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. The Lord said, Noah, there's going to be a flood. There's going to be some water. There's going to be some mud. So take off your hat, Noah. Take off your coat. Get ham, salmon, jay-pest, and build yourself a boat. Noah said, Lord, I don't believe a good thing. The Lord said, Lord, it's a sturdy gopher wood. Never know what you can do. Take a try. Build it 50 cubits wide and 40 cubits high. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And he learned it by his cross. Noah said, there she is. There she is, Lord. The Lord said, Noah, it's time to get aboard. Take a creature, a he and a she, and of course, Mrs. Noah and your whole family. Noah said, Lord, it's getting mighty dark. The Lord said, Noah, get these creatures from the ark. Noah said, Lord, it's beginning to pour. The Lord said, Noah, hurry up. Shut the door. Shut the door. Shut the door. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

And he learned it by his cross. The ark rose up on the bosom of the deep. After 40 days, Mr. Noah took the peak. Said, we're not moving, Lord. Where are we at? The Lord said, you're sitting right on Mount Herarach. Noah said, Lord, it's getting mighty dry. The Lord said, Noah, see my rainbow in the sky. Take all these creatures and people to earth. Don't be more trouble. Thank you, Lord. Oh, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

And he learned it by his cross. I hope everyone enjoyed that as much as I do. I just enjoy that every time I hear it. But that's the preamble to the class. Now we jump into the class. I told you I was going to… Hold on a second. My mother-in-law's calling. She can't get into the class. She's trying to get into class via Zoom and is having a hard time. So I told you I subtitled the class, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and The Hopeful. I think the good and the hopeful are wonderful bookends to what the mess is in the middle, the bad and the ugly. And that's as it was in the days of Noah. So we're going to look at the good of Noah. We're going to look at that bad and that ugly in the middle of the days of Noah and today's day. And then at the end, we're going to look at the hopefulness that we have as to what's coming with the return of Christ. So let me get back into here. Who was Noah? So let's look and see what scripture tells us about who Noah was. This is the good. This is the good. Genesis 6, we've just read all this. These are the records of the generations of Noah. Noah is a righteous man, blameless in his generation. He walked with God. In Ezekiel 14, and I won't read all this, but it says, even though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job were in its midst by their own righteousness, by their own righteousness, they could only save themselves. So Noah's got good company here with Daniel and Job. Hebrews 11, the faith chapter. By faith, Noah being warned by God about things not yet seen in reverence, prepared an ark for the salvation of his household by which he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness, which is according to faith. And in 2 Peter 2, and did not spare the ancient world, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness with seven others when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly. So this is the scripture, the good that we know about Noah. This is the good that we're talking about tonight and starting with. What I want to look at is, too, is just a little deeper into Noah. The name Noah actually means comfort or rest. When we look at Noah's ancestry and his family life, we know that his father was Lamech. We know his grandfather was Methuselah, man who lived longer than anyone else in recorded history. Noah's great grandfather was Enoch, who is a righteous man, mentioned again, and he was 11. I had to Google this to try and get it straight in my head, and so I wrote this down and just approximate numbers, but Noah was born approximately a thousand years after Adam had his first son. And Adam lived about 800 years after he had his first son. So Noah was born only 200 years approximately after Adam died. Those numbers are a little flexible, but I think we're fairly close. So think about that. For us, 200 years is a long time, but in their time, when they're living five, six, seven, 800 years, it's a little bit different. But at that point of time with Noah and his ancestry and his family life, there were approximately eight generations from Adam to Noah that would have all been still alive at the same time. For the most part, these are the generations that were the wicked and evil generations. These were the ones living upon the earth who were doing right in their own eyes, not said directly about them, but that's what was happening. We know about Noah's family, his three sons, about when and where Noah lived. We know obviously pre-flood. I mean, that's Noah's time. That's the story here that we're talking about. We know, and we're going to look at this in the bad and the ugly section of class, we know that it was just an exceedingly evil and a corrupt time. People, again, like I just said, did what was right in their own eyes. Every once in a while, a righteous person would pop up, whether let's say Enoch, Noah, and others. But for the most part, it was every intent of the thoughts of their hearts were evil continually. There just wasn't a break from sin. This is the environment that Noah lived in and raised his family in, and we can see, I can see how difficult it must have been to live a righteous life in this type of environment. It doesn't tell us in scripture where Noah lived before the flood. We do know Mount Ararat, somewhere modern day Turkey after the flood. So that general area is where we're talking about in terms of location. Events surrounding Noah's birth, we know very little other than his name. His father, maybe his father said, hey, I'm going to name him discomfort and rest. Maybe he will bring rest to these generations of evil people around us. Maybe, maybe not. Don't know why with the reasoning there. When you think about Noah's training and his occupation, so Noah lived 600 years before the flood, 120 years of that. Building the Ark. So for a good portion of his life, I'm not going to try and do the math off top of my head right now, but 20% of his life, you know, he was a ship builder. And, you know, he didn't have the power tools. He didn't have the modern equipment. He didn't have the cranes. He didn't have all that to build the Ark. But men in Noah's time, they weren't cavemen. I mean, they had high intelligence. They knew how to do these things. How to cut the wood, get the wood, move the wood. I don't know if any of you have ever been to the, what's it called? The Ark encounter in Kentucky. They and I have been a couple of times. When you see the size of what they're, the reproduction of the Ark, it's just incredible that anyone could have done this by hand. You know, even over a hundred years. I mean, just, it's just, it's just tremendous to see that. And it really brings it into perspective. But the fact that Noah was able to finish this huge project with only his help from his family, I mean, was just amazing as well. I find it interesting too that Noah, while he was building the Ark, he had to also provide for his family. So, you know, I just, I always try and visualize what it was like. I remember it's been a while since we went to the Ark encounter in Kentucky, but I just remember they have a portion on that and what was going on. And, and, you know, the, the, the food and all that is just really, really an interesting thing to see. Noah's place in history. And I think this is, this is what prompted me to do the class tonight is I thought at some point in the last few months, when I was thinking what I was going to do class about, I thought without Noah, we're not here. We're not here. Every piece of our DNA flows back through Noah. So that makes it a pretty important place in history for Noah. And, you know, he's mentioned as we read about, or I mentioned in Hebrews 11, the chapter of faith, you know, one of our heroes of faith is Noah. And, you know, not only the, the fact that all human DNA comes through him, but, you know, all the animals in the world because of Noah. Thank you, Noah. You know, that's, that's, that's all we can say is thank you, Noah. I started looking at Noah's strengths and weaknesses, and then I took out the weaknesses part because I just want to focus on the good tonight. I mean, there's, was it chapter nine, I believe, when he went out and then he got drunk and so forth. We're not going to talk about that. I want to talk about Noah's strengths. I want to talk about his righteousness. You know, we read he was righteous and blameless before God. He found favor before God. Compare him to the rest of the world. Compare him to the rest of the world. He, he was called out by God, this corrupt and evil generation that was around him. The, even a loving God couldn't, couldn't bear it anymore. And God's justice demanded that he punished those generations, but he called out Noah because he saw that Noah was righteous. And he stood out. He was different. Noah didn't do the same things that other people did. You know, he, no one outside of Noah and his family truly trusted God because they were all destroyed. This is Noah's righteousness. When we think about, when I think, when I look in the mirror and I think, well, what about me? I live in a dark world too. Is it as dark as that time? I don't know. I don't know that answer. But we've got, unlike Noah, Noah had his family. We've got the immense benefit of fellowship one with another. You know, we come on to, to Zoom tonight and Richard say hello to everybody. I mean, what a beautiful thing to have. And people from, you know, all over, from, from Boston, from Plymouth to Canada to here in Alabama tonight, to Illinois, my mother-in -law, you know. So all over we have that huge benefit. That Noah didn't have. He just had his little insular family. Question I ask myself is when we're thinking about righteousness is, do I think that I would find favor in God's sight? If God were to build another ark, would he choose me? If, would I stand out as being righteous or am I basically the same as everybody else? Am I different? So Noah is righteous. He's obedient as well. It says that he walked with God and it's, I find it interesting too that we never hear, never seen Noah talking to God like Abraham did or Moses did. He's always listening. He's always absorbing what God is telling him to do. But he didn't just listen. He obeyed. He obeyed whatever it was God told him to do, no matter how difficult it was. You know, these weren't the, the go clean your room, go to bed, wash the dishes, go to church, do your homework. It wasn't, it wasn't these things. It was, you know, so much bigger than that. It was go make an ark, cover it inside and out with pitch. You know, here's the specific sizes and measurements I want you to use. It says in Genesis six and Genesis seven. So twice it says, Noah did everything. He did all that God had commanded him. God said, enter the ark, you and your household. He obeyed. He said, take with you the animals. He obeyed. He did everything, including up to the end where it said, go out of the ark. And he said, so Noah went out, you know, over and over again and again, God gave commands to Noah and he was obedient. He didn't complain. He didn't question God. He did what God said fully and completely. He didn't cut corners and building the ark. Thank goodness. Ark might not have survived the flood. He didn't get just most animals into the ark. He got all the animals into the ark. You know, hypothetically, what are the results if Noah disobeyed God? Again, hypothetically, no more humans, no more animals. To say it's a different world is the biggest understatement of the evening. This was a really important task that Noah had and he obeyed. And then his faith. What a faithful man Noah was. Why did he obey? He obeyed because of his faith. What's the reaction of most people possibly if they're given these commands from God? Lots of doubt, lots of skepticism, questioning. What? God, I've never seen anything like this before. Where's all the water going to come from? Flood, what are you talking about? How in the world can we keep so many animals alive? How can we catch all the animals and get them all to come into the ark? How are we going to do this? Where are we going to get all the materials? There's not enough gopher wood around. It's just not available. How are we going to support ourselves and build the ark at the same time? What are our friends going to say when we start building this big boat in the middle of nowhere? 60 years into it. We've been here for 60 years, God. You know, we can't even see the end in sight. What are we doing this for? Finally, they're commanded to get on the boat. How are we going to close the door? God says, I'll take care of that for you. And then they start to go in and say, why are we getting into the ark? I don't see anything. You know, there's no storm clouds. There's no pitter-patter rain. Noah's faith took care of all that. Took care of all that. He didn't have those doubts. He didn't have those questions. You know what? Over those 100 years that he's built, 100 plus years that he's building the ark, I would think that it would have been progressively more difficult for his faith to be strong. But I think progressively his faith got stronger.

But again, with friends saying, what are you doing? You know, it's interesting at the Ark encounter in Kentucky, they've got this video they show that they've made up. And it's all the scoffing of other people and the skepticism and people say, what are you doing? You know, really, like I said, it's probably, I don't know if it's been 10 years since we've been there, but it really made an impact on us. Just as you visualize, as I visualize that now, just where Noah had to be with his mindset, his attitude with God. So the next question is, why Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord? This is a fairly easy answer because it tells us exactly. It says he was a righteous man. He was blameless in his time. He walked with God. He did according to all that God commanded him. And he was a preacher of righteousness. This is why Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. You know, the one I wanted to pull out there is that he walked with God, just like his great grandfather Enoch, who walked with God. You know, maybe that example from his grandfather carried right on to him. But this is the why of Noah. You know, he's called a preacher of righteousness in 2 Peter. And, you know, he preached to the people. He warned the people. The judgment was coming. He called them to repentance. That's what I think it means when it says he's a preacher of righteousness, but they didn't take him seriously. They not only didn't take him seriously, they just ignored him. They ignored his prophecies, his prophetic warnings. And things just continued day after day as they were until the flood came. Okay, that's the good part. That's Noah. That's how Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. For the next few minutes, we're going to look at the bad and the ugly. And this is the bad and the ugly. I'm not going to pull any punches about it. I didn't want to spend the entire evening on it because I want to have that goodness and that hopefulness as the book ends to this part. But this part is also reality. This part is also reality because I feel that we are living in the same days as Noah pre-flood, right before the flood came. And it causes us to look up, to keep our face set toward Jerusalem, you know, to keep watching and waiting. So I'm not going to read through all these verses, but I'm just going to sort of pick out the highlights here. In Genesis 6, a couple different places, the Lord saw the wickedness of mankind was great on the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. God was sorry that he made mankind on the earth. He was grieved in his heart. He says, I'm going to wipe out mankind. I'm sorry that I have made them. Verse 11, the earth was corrupt in the sight of God. The earth was filled with violence. God looked on the earth. It was corrupt. Humanity had corrupted its way upon the earth. God said to Noah, the end of humanity has come before me, for the earth is filled with violence because of people. And behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth. I mean, those, what, three, six verses there,

just such a sorry, sorry state of the world, a sad state. We read in Luke 17, just as it happened, and just as it happened in the days of Noah, so will it also be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying, being given a marriage until the day that Noah entered the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all. In 1 Peter 3, the disobedience when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah during the construction of the ark, but only eight were saved through the water. And then we also read this earlier. Noah, the preacher of righteousness was saved.

He brought, when God brought flood upon the world of the ungodly. There is, as far as I can see, there are six lists of sins that Paul writes about. You know them, you've heard them. I'm going to put them up on the screen here in a minute. But these, I'll call them sin lists.

And if they're sin lists, they're obviously bad things.

They are eternally serious things. They're eternally serious and eternally big, because the verdict of those who practice these sins is that they're not going to inherit the kingdom of God. Okay. I'm going to put half, well, two of the verses, the other four fit on the next page, but I'm not going to read through all of it. This is the bad and the ugly. This is the bad and the ugly. But as I was looking at this, it's been a long time, a few years ago since I was looking at this at some point, and realized that the breakdown in those six sin lists,

according to my count, the one that's mentioned the most is sexual immorality, sexual immorality, including fornication, adultery, homosexuality. Sexual immorality, according to my count, is mentioned nine times, nine different times in these six lists. After that, in second place, is slander and gossip. It's mentioned five times. So nine times for sexual immorality, five times for slander and gossip. Drunkenness is mentioned four times. And then last, tied for fourth place, is three times each is greed and idolatry. And you may be able to slice and dice it a little bit differently, but that gives me a good understanding of these sin lists, these bad things. When I look at the world today, when you look at anything today news-wise, you see all this happening, all of it happening. But the sexual immorality is just rampant, is an understatement. There's an article I read recently, some Christadelphian magazine that was talking about sex trafficking and pornography and all this. And again, that's really the bad and the ugly. And I'm not going to get into those details, but I was just sort of astounded, because I hope we don't dwell on that in any way, because it is so wicked and so evil, but it's so prevalent. It's so prevalent. It's at our fingertips. All of it is at our fingertips. God, please help us. Please protect us. Please give us the right, the obedience and the faith to be like Noah and stay away from these things. Noah and his family did,

and we can too by using Noah as our example. Let me get down to the next point I want to make. So I don't know if Bruce is on tonight in class or not, but I really enjoyed his class last week. But there is one part where at the end of his class, it really resonated with me. What Bruce said toward the end of his class last week was, we need to keep God's word. We need to keep God's word. You know, I read a quote just the other day, if you take the Bible out of the pulpit, all you have is a glorified social club. Dana and I met a couple this summer, and the woman basically said, yeah, I go to church all the time, but I've never enjoyed the Bible. I don't like it. It was a social event for her. We have to keep God's word. Again, these are things Bruce said last week. We have to keep it holy. We have to guard it.

Bruce said last week, all the influences of this world, they tend to creep into our houses. They tend to creep into our Ecclesias. They tend to even creep into the Christadelphian body as a whole. And that, brothers and sisters, is what my concern is in this world that we live in right now. It is so easy to fall into this trap. It's not just those in the world. It's those that we associate with, that are our brothers and sisters. It might be you. It might be me. It might be the person we sit next to on a Sunday morning. We've got to pray for one another. We've got to help one another. We've got to encourage one another. But this is where I get out my steel-toed boots. And I set my steel-toed boots here and said, OK, I may step on a few toes here for a few minutes, and I apologize for that. But I believe it's real. There have been brethren who have said, no, I don't want to hear scripture about that. I just want to hear people's opinions. Or, don't bring me your wall of scripture. I don't want to hear your wall of scripture. Without scripture, brother, what do we have? What do we have? You know, we were listening to a book the other day, and the author said, don't let the world lead the church. Don't let the world lead the church. I've heard someone say, or I've been told someone said, I have a hard time calling anything sin. That's rough, brethren, that's rough. This is the influences of the world influencing us.

I've heard someone who grew up Christadelphian say, the Bible is just an ancient book written by ancient people for ancient people.

That's all it is. That's all the scripture Bible is. A number of years ago, youth training teachers said, this is appropriate for tonight's class. The story of Noah is not true. But don't tell your parents I told you that. That's where the steel-toed boots, brethren, come in. We need that because we need to hear it because we can't pretend that what happens in the world doesn't happen with us. It does. Maybe, hopefully, at a slower rate, maybe at a lesser rate, but it's still there. Ben Lincoln, in his class a few weeks ago, he said, society is becoming progressively more godless.

I believe that's very true. Society is becoming progressively more godless. I've sent an article recently, a long story behind the article, but I just want to pick out some of the quotes that are in this article talking about destroying a country from within. This is about communism and Soviets and all this. It's wrapped in a religious article. It's a Christadelphian article that is being quoted from. It's quoting from the Soviet news agency TASS, T-A-S-S.

But this isn't a political statement whatsoever by any stretch of the imagination. But listen to this. It says that the communists believe these things would help destroy a country from within. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography in books, films, and TV. Eliminate laws governing obscenity by calling them a violation of the free press and free speech. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and cinema. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influences of parents. Present homosexuality, degeneracy, and promiscuity as normal, natural, and healthy. Infiltrate the churches and replace divine revelation with social religion. I think that's really, really important to understand that. Infiltrate the churches and replace divine revelation with social religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which doesn't need a religious crutch. Eliminate prayer and any other religious expressions from schools. That ship has sailed a long time ago. It says our standards of morality have been undermined by the sheer volume of obscenity allowed in literature and the media. The social gospel has replaced the true gospel in many churches which are more concerned with pleasing the world than proclaiming the word of God. It says we in the West are constantly being undermined by those in positions of power who hold to its philosophy. So again, brethren, I apologize. This is the bad and the ugly, and it is very, very ugly. Bruce said we need to guard what we know to be true.

Scoffers will come in the last days. There is something out there, which I believe some of these quotes that I just read from,

and it's called progressive Christianity. The definition, the strict definition is moral relativists who lack objective universal truths and accept all beliefs, behavior, and lifestyles regardless of sinfulness. This is everywhere in society right now, in the churches, in Christianity. I believe, like Bruce said, it's creeping into our ecclesias and into the brotherhood. There are those who are scoffing at the inspiration of Scripture, saying all Scripture is not inspired by God. Progressive Christians will pick and choose the verses that they want to use to make their point and disregard all the rest. They will take a section of Scripture and say, well, look, this is all it says. It doesn't say anything about this, this, this, this, and this. And you want to say, read the book. It's all in there. It's all in Scripture. You can't pick and choose. There are authors out there in the progressive Christianity movement who have become very, very popular. And I'm going to quickly share those names with you because a few of those names, because I want you to, because some of the messages coming from them sounds so legitimate, so real, so loving. But when you dig into it, it is not Christian. It's false teaching. Some of those teachers are Richard Rohr, Peter Enns,

Rob Bell, Rachel Held Evans, Brian Zod. If you see quotes from these men and women, raise, raise a red flag immediately. Go back to Scripture and see if Scripture matches what you're hearing from them or what other brethren may be saying, well, here's what Rob Bell says or whatever. So, well, I already mentioned the scoffing at the inspiration of Scripture. I'm scoffing at other Bible truths. I'm going to skipped over that was Noah mocked because it doesn't tell us directly if Noah is mocked, but I think it's just a natural assumption that there were those who were scoffing at him and mocking him. If we look at today's world that we live in, there is a breakdown of justice. There's a breakdown of law and order everywhere, breakdown of moral values, widespread violence. We read this, every intent of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually, and every man did what is right in his own eyes. And then religious persecution and censorship. I believe, brothers and sisters, that this is the world that we live in, but we're not a part of it.

And we need to be aware of it. I wonder sometimes the people in Noah's days, if they just hid their head in the sand and said, oh, this isn't really happening to me or around me or to me, so it'll all be okay. I don't think Noah said that. I don't think Noah and his family said that. So I think we need to be aware. I don't know if you saw last week the violence going on, the anti-Semitism in, is it Amsterdam? I believe it was Amsterdam. And just, I read, actually we were driving, Dana read one article to me. I'm like, oh my goodness, what is this world coming to? What is this world coming to? I mean, it's sort of all those things right there in front of you. That's what the article was saying was happening in Amsterdam with the anti-Semitism, the attacks. Okay, we're done with that. Again, I'm sorry, it's harsh, it's hard, but it's real. It's real. So good, bad, ugly, hopeful. We know that God doesn't want any to perish. In the 120 years that Noah was building the ark, I believe Noah's preaching all that time, and God was waiting patiently for heartfelt reform. People didn't respond, they didn't care, they continued to live their lives the way they pleased. In fact, it says in Romans 1, although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. But we, brothers and sisters, know the end from the beginning, because God has told us. We are looking, trying to find grace in the eyes of the Lord. Why? Not because we're fearful, not because we face the threat of a worldwide flood. That's not the reason why we're wanting, why I'm wanting, to find grace in the eyes of the Lord. It's because we face a promise, a promise of the end of this world as we know it. What I just spent the last 15 minutes on, talking about the world as we know it, in many cases, there's a promise of the end of that. It will be gone. I want to read to you a passage in 2 Peter. We've read, I believe we've read part of this already, but I want to read a little bit longer section in 2 Peter chapter 3, starting at verse 3. Know this, first of all, that in the last days, mockers will come where they're mocking. They will come, following after their own lusts and saying, where's the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation. For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God, the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. But by his word, the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord, one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat. But according to his promise, we are looking for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by him in peace, spotless, and blameless, and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation. What a comforting and hopeful end to that passage about the last days. And it's where we are, brothers and sisters. So I told you the why. I'm now going to tell you the how. It's very simple. It's very repetitive. You've heard this already this evening. We must be righteous in God's sight. We must be blameless in our generation. We must walk with God. We must do all that the Lord has commanded, and we must be preachers of righteousness. Sounds pretty easy. Maybe, maybe not. But we've got the tools. We've got the tools in this book that we have in front of us. All of it, every word in it are our tools. We can't pick and choose what we want. I've heard it said, some brothers and sisters think all the answers are in this book. Brothers and sisters, all the answers are in this book. They are here. If we want to be righteous, blameless, walk with God, do all that the Lord has commanded, and be preachers of righteousness, we have to obey all those words that are in that book. Because we, too, like Noah, we want to find grace in the eyes of the Lord.