I apologize for the rude appearance of the sanctuary this morning, as you can no doubt infer from the massive scaffolding behind me. We are in the midst of a significant building project. But I think it is a suitable visual aid for the message this morning. I have this big reminder of a building project standing before us. In fact, I was joined with the idea of trying to set the pulpit somewhere, I don't know, half way up and asked Doug May to fashion me some giraffe heads to kind of stick out of some of the scaffolding, or maybe an elephant trunk, or something, just to give a little greater feeling of the massive building project that is in the background of our text this morning. These verses are the precursor of the account of the flood and very detailed accounts of Noah's construction of this extraordinary vessel. And just to give you a sense of the dimensions, the biblical arc would have been another 13 feet higher than our sanctuary ceiling, the same width approximately. But the length starting from the back of the sanctuary and going forward would continue all the way up Park Street right to Beacon Street. And in case John's Vars is listening, this is not a warrant for further accumulation of property, taking over the buildings adjacent to ours. But that's something of what the arc would have felt like, a three storage structure of that dimension. And of course, it's a building project that took a lot of time, 120 years, was what the Bible implies and the New Testament confirms. And it was a period during which no doubt Noah was often mocked by his neighbors. They may have even called it Noah's Folly. What are you building that for? Here's dry, dusty, arid climates of the Middle East. And anyway, they probably wondered about it. But his very life of construction, investing all his resources and timeliness, constituted a testimony to his age. He, in fact, his faith, according to Hebrews, condemned those because he acted on the basis of what could not be seen. The New Testament also applies these things to ourselves in a poignant way. Our Lord Jesus said just as it was in the days of Noah. So also will it be in the days of the Son of Man? People were eating and drinking, marrying, and being given in marriage up to the day. Noah entered the arc. Then the flood came and destroyed them all. It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed. So there's some powerful lessons to be drawn from our text and the chapters that follow. So very practical, and I do certainly want to get to them, and we will conclude with them. They don't take a lot of time to develop, it's obvious, it's painfully obvious. But to lay a foundation for that concluding point, returning to this warning aspect, and the recognition that our lives are accountable to a holy God. To prepare for that, there are some issues that I think to be honest and fair, to brothers and sisters and the congregation we need to deal with. Now they may not be your cup of tea. And I'm thinking here particularly, scientific issues raised by this text. For some of us, contemplating these kinds of matters, issues of science and so on, it's about as exciting as reading food labels. You'd rather not consider what percentage of carbohydrates, et cetera, all that technical language there, the ingredients. You just want to sink your teeth into the thing and get nourishment. And I just ask for your patience and forbearance, the nourishment will come. Now let's look at the food label, let's look at some of the science, at least in a limited time that we have. I think it's important, right off the bat, to say that in spite of what sometimes comes across as a lot of dogmatic confidence, that the Bible is actually very reticent and limited in terms of answering all the questions that our curiosity can put to it. And one of those areas where I think we need to be a whole lot more humble than is sometimes evident in the Christian community is on the matter of the dating of the flood. There's really only one piece of biblical evidence that you can marshal to address the question. And that's the genealogy that is found at the end of Genesis chapter 11 that runs from Noah to Abraham, a 10 generational genealogy. We know that Abraham lived about 2,000 years before Christ. There's not much debating that matter. And if you add the increments of the genealogy mentioned in Genesis 11, you'll come up with a date apparently for the flood of about 2,400 years before Christ. And certainly, that's a possibility. It's possible that that genealogy is absolutely exhaustive and complete and that's where the flood is to be found. Indeed, earlier in the centuries for Leonard Woolie, who led an archaeological expedition to the city of Orr, southern Mesopotamia, the mouth of Euphrates, really excited the Christian world when digging in that city. He found a silitation layer virtually right at the spot that we were hoping for for the flood of approximately mid-3rd millennium BC, 2,400 BC or so. The problem was with a silitation layer only a very little thin layer. And the other problem was that it didn't correspond to some of the silitation layers found in adjacent cities. In fact, as he dug deeper, he found that 1,000 years before that, there was another layer, another layer of silt, 20 feet thick in the city of Orr. 1,000 years earlier. Well, of course, you can imagine the electrifying effect that news brought. And so, Christians now, excited by that potential confirmation, then looked to the genealogy in Genesis 11, realized, you know, after all, maybe it's not complete. Maybe the flood was not at 2,400 BC, maybe it's more like 3,500 BC, 1,000 years earlier to correspond with this evident dating for the flood at Orr. I think that's all right. That's acceptable for us to acknowledge that genealogy following the standard protocol for genealogies in the Bible is probably highly compressed. We mentioned in another occasion, Matthew 1.1, where it says that Jesus was the son of David, the son of Abraham. Well, there's a genealogy, three names that covers 2,000 years, lots of compression there. We know that in Genesis 11, it talks about how our poxod begot Sheila, a son, at a certain age when he was what, 35 years of age. And that, to you and me, might imply there are no gaps, but it turns out in the Bible that when you have that language of begetting, it sometimes means that's your immediate son, but often in other occasions, and we can show this, it means this is a grandson or a great grandson, a descendant from whoever it was in your family that was born when you were 35 years of age. In other words, you skip generations and compress them. And we may not like that, but that's the way Hebrew works. And we can impose our preferences on the text. We don't want to read into the Bible, what we'd like to find there. We want to read out of it. We want to exegiate it, not isegi. We want to read out what's really there according to the usage of the Bible itself. And so, as I say, if in Genesis 46, we have Zilpop begotting, or she and her husband begotting a number of individuals that include grandchildren and further descendants, then we can't object that word may in fact involve many generations, not just one. Furthermore, the gospel of Luke tells us that actually our foxod, mentioned in this genealogy 11, didn't have Sheila's, the son Sheila's actually a grandson. We know that from the gospel of Luke that tells us that there was a son in between named Pannon, C-A-I-N-A-N. So, there's proof rate within the Bible of compression, a name that was omitted in Genesis 11. Well, I'm not going to go nuts on all of this, all I'm going to say is that in conclusion, all we can safely deduce from the Bible's evidences that the flood, when it took place, could not have been more recent than 2,400 BC, but it may have been much earlier in the history of man time. That 10 generation genealogy may compress vast amounts of time in it. And if I had an opportunity to give you my hunch, I'd say, well, I'd prefer something at the end of the last ice age, or maybe 7,000 BC, maybe something much earlier. Why? Well, in parts because of the evidence elsewhere. After Sir Leonard Woolly dug at Ur, naturally archaeologists went to work and dug at all the adjacent cities in the Mesopotamian area. And it turned out, unfortunately, that no floods in any of the cities corresponded to the floods in any of the other cities. The level, even that 20-meter, that 20-foot thick level, didn't correspond to a flood level at other cities that were dug. And in fact, if you get out of the floodplain, of the Tigris and Eubradi's River, which was as flat as a pancake, as you know, from watching the Persian war on television, you get out of that plain, go to Jericho, and archaeologists, I think in a reliable way, can show us that there was uninterrupted occupation at city going all the way back to 7,000 BC with no evidence of any flood up to that point. So if we're going to at least be informed by what archaeologists have discovered, believing, Bible believing, sincere, careful archaeologists, working shoulder to shoulder with those who are not so Bible believing, nevertheless, if we pay attention to what they have found, we have to say at least back to 7,000, it just doesn't seem to be the evidence. But Genesis 11 allows us to say the flood could have been before then. Maybe in fact that my hunch might be 50,000 BC, how's that? Just to guess, I'm free country, I can make a guess. One advantage of that guess, if you've read the most current edition of Scientific American, is that well then you then the flood would have been at a time before anyone migrated to Australia from Indonesia on boats as they apparently did around 40,000 BC, or before they migrated to the Americas. Because the earliest occupation evidence now apparently in Brazil possibly 30,000 BC, long before the land bridge of the Bering Strait, long before that apparently there's evidence of boat migration. In any case, maybe they got the idea of going on those boats from the ark. That'd be an interesting hypothesis to follow up. We all can say is humbly we don't know when it was. How about how extensive it was? Here again, I think Christians have got to be less dogmatic than their apt to be, and be a little more honest with what the Bible actually says. Now I know one thing's not negotiable if we pay attention to the Bible. Everyone was killed except Noah in his household. All mankind was wiped out. It was a universal judgment for sure. But does that mean that the flood waters also unundated Antarctica? I mean how many sinners were down in Antarctica at that time? Is it necessary to conclude that the flood covered the entire sphere of the earth, every continent if people weren't living there yet? I know that text talks about covering the earth, but as those of you who are aware of Hebrew, the word earth can mean just land or region. So it's an open question. That doesn't settle it. It may be the whole earth. It may not be. Just because it says the whole earth, earth can mean land or region. In fact, later in Genesis, we have the exact same phrases as we have here used to describe a great famine in Genesis 41 when the famine had spread over all the surface of the earth. Joseph opened the storehouses and sold grain to the Egyptians for the famine was severe throughout Egypt. And the whole world came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph because the famine was severe in all the earth. No Bible believer to my knowledge has inferred from that text that folks were coming from Australia, that the Eskimos were showing up at Joseph's door. The language though very encompassing doesn't always, the context sometimes limits the application. So a vast region, I mean the whole known political world, the world that mattered, the kind of world that you think of when you say world war two. Yet you know full well tons of nations weren't involved. Maybe it's possibly like that. Again, just looking at the text we can't yet be sure. Moreover, there are of course some practical problems that we want to honestly acknowledge because we're Christians. We know how we have an enemy who's the deceiver and loves to perpetrate lives. So we're cultivating a critical mind that examines the facts because we know all truth's God's truth and we'll stand up to the examination. We don't just swallow everything, hook line and sinker. So we who look at the evidence in fact have to acknowledge there are some difficulties connected with the flood down God could have done it exactly as many postulate that is the flood could have involved the creation of extra water that wasn't there. Because the water that is there isn't enough, but you read the text and it sounds like God is using the storehouses of water that are available as the text describes it. But if you actually have all the water that is in the atmosphere precipitate out in a vast rainstorm covering the whole earth, it will only increase the surface water by one inch. So I won't do it. I mean just empty out every cloud, every drop of vapor, one inch, not a huge flood. How about then melt the ice caps? Let's melt the ice caps and dump all that water into the seas. Well of course it will cause some huge problems. We're not in the right location here at Park Street Church. The oceans will rise 230 feet would put us at a great disadvantage unless you've got a snorkel that's very long. But if you're in Lexington, you're half of you've got the right property. Half of you will, I mean it's coastline in Lexington. Anyway, that doesn't cover the whole earth. So maybe God invented water, then miraculously he made it disappear. And while he was at it, he also caused all the evidence to disappear too that there was a flood. God can do that. But did he? Is that likely the God that we see elsewhere in Scripture? Who when he, for example, through Jesus heals the leper, the leper can actually go to nonbelievers and see and have proven that he was now cleansed. Where the man born blind sees and you don't have to have faith to see that he sees. He sees. You may not fully Jesus did it, but he sees the objective evidence is there. And so we might wonder also then maybe this might favor a more limited vast blood, one that just covered all the ancient Near East everywhere where people were living, but not necessarily Antarctica. Likewise, it's possible that you might wonder could every animal fit in an ark, even as large as the one I've described. And I think that's a reasonable question plus food for a year. You work out the arithmetic. How about some other problem like marsupials are an interesting one for me. Think of them now. God, you can do this. Of course he's sovereign. But are we likely to, are we supposed to believe that he helped them inspire them to swim the Indian Ocean? My goodness if they could do that, why get on the ark at all? And then at the end of the flood, they all went back just to Australia. None of them, you know, took a wrong direction and ended up in Africa, let's say. It's possible or I had a sixth crater in Gloucester in the church where I was ministering who came up to me after preaching on Noah's ark one day and asked me, you know, pastor Hugenberger, what about the fresh water fish? Now I had never thought about that. By the way, he just got into brown. This is a very strong evidence of a keen mind. Well, you know, 97% of the world's water is salt, you know, is just completely undo that fresh water. Maybe Noah had miraculously God directed him to put a aquarium also in the ark, maybe. But maybe not. Maybe we need to pay more attention to the evidence of the whole Bible. And of course, as you Bible believers know, there is another biblical text which sincere Bible believing Christians have used to argue the exact opposite of the traditional view. It's Psalm 104 where Psalm 104 insists, if you believe the Bible, the flood cannot have been totally global because Psalm 104, unquestionably, is talking about the whole sphere of the earth. In Genesis 6, you're not sure. In the flood story, you're not sure. It could be here, it couldn't be. But in Psalm 104, it's a reflection on creation. God created the earth. And it says at your review, of course, it's poetic, but at your review, the waters fled at the sound of your thunder. Oh, God, they took the flight. They float over the mountains. They went down into the valleys to the place you assigned for them. You set a boundary. They cannot cross. Never again, we're talking about from creation now. Never again will they cover the earth. Psalm 104, verse 9. Now the psalmist, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, surely was aware of the flood account in Genesis 6. But he understood it apparently to not necessarily mean the whole earth, just the whole world of people. That's who are targeted. After all, God is angry at people. He's not angry at the pandas. The damage that happens to the other members of the animal kingdom, that's collateral damage. His cross hairs are on mankind who provoked his wrath. And if it, as I say, we are to date the flood at an earlier date, before human beings have found their way to South Africa or South America. Whatever it will then, then there wouldn't have been this necessity to wipe out pandas as well. In any case, there's the further evidence right within the text in Genesis 8. Noah sent out a dove, the Bible tells us, and it returned because it could not find a place to set its feet because there was water over all the surface of the earth. And that's how then Noah, quote, knew that the water had, when he finally came back, he knew the water had received from, receded from the earth when he came back with the olive branch. In other words, amazingly, the account of the flood is written from an eyewitness report. This is not a story someone made up. This is an account inspired of God preserved accurately that has all the hallmarks of an eyewitness who was really there. In other words, Noah. And how did Noah know where the waters went and when it was they receded? Well, he sent out a dove. Are we to imagine the dove circumnavigated the globe that he checked out Antarctica and any old Himalayas, make sure the Everest is still drenched? I don't think so. It's not likely that the emphasis on this, from this perspective, is a more localized, though vast, unprecedented, monumental, universal, all mankind obliterated, answering for their lives of rebellion, but not necessarily Antarctic and penguins as well. Well, the geological evidence, I say, is inconclusive, except all we know is there's not evidence for a flood any more recently than 7,000 BC. It seems to me, and some of the earlier evidence is quite interesting and provocative. Some of you may be aware of it of the possibility of a vast flood. One couple of scholars from Columbia University recently published about an occasion where the black sea rose 500 feet in a matter of months, and then inundated an area of 60,000 square miles. And then you can have even earlier occasions of that sort of thing. Was there a flood? You bet there was. We can have confidence. Let God be true, though every man be found a liar. Was there a flood? You bet there was. Not only is there the whole congruent testimony of scripture, there's a testimony of mankind. Many of you are aware from college courses that there is no narrative, no legend in quotes. More universally attested than the report of an ancient flood that wiped out all mankind at the beginning of modern human history. It's already a scholars have amassed more than 300 separate accounts, narratives of this violent, all destructive flood with only a few survivors attested among the Persians, the Indians, the Chinese, the Japanese, American Indians, Australians, Polynesians, Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians, Sumerians, and so on. Their literature is vast. And though some of these accounts have the hallmarks of secondary invention, sometimes the anthropologists didn't get to the tribes before the missionaries did, and maybe there's some destructive interference, all the earliest accounts, the ones who were written down in ancient times are remarkably parallel to the biblical account. Just like it happened, think of the Greek flood story, where Dukallian and Pira are the only ones who survive a flood sent by Zeus. And I say, Zeus, not God. Well, okay, of course it's paganized. And this couple who survived, survived by means of a large ship that's floated nine days. You say nine days, that's not a year. Well, okay, they messed it up. And then you find out that it landed on a mountain top, and ultimately to provide the beginnings of a new humanity, or the Egyptian flood story where the God Eton is the one who decides capriciously to destroy all mankind. You know, yeah, there are twists and turns that are all the hallmarks of the pagan mind distorting it in order to support his own viewpoint. Of course, the Indian account, the Indian has Manu, the lone survivor who's favored because he helps a fish, obviously a very fanciful detail. The fish repays the help by telling him of a coming flood. He then builds a boat. He's the only one who survives. At the end of the flood, his boat lands on top of the mountain in the Himalayas. And you say, well, it's Himalayas, it's not Ararat. Okay, fine. And then he offers a sacrifice just like Noah does. And well, the sacrifice turns into a wife because he's got to have someone in order to propagate the race. Well, there are these fanciful distortions. And you can explain this. And I can show you, and likewise the story, the Sumerians from the third millennium BC. They have an account involving eight kings, or ten, according to one version of Barosis, ten kings who ruled the same length of time as the lives of these patriarchs mentioned in Genesis 5, typically 500 years if you work the math properly. That's lengths of time. And then comes the flood, brought by the God and who's apparently disturbed because he can't sleep because human beings annoy him. And then the hero builds an ark, saves mankind. The animals are there. They get out and land on a mountain. This time mountain is there. Send out even birds, which of course was a typical procedure for ancient navigation. In any case, how do you explain this? Maybe it's just some wiring in the human brain that concocts the sort of story around the campfire, like we do love stories all around the world. But I doubt it. I think it happened. That's why you have all these distorted reflections. And notice the most interesting commonality of the distortions. All the other accounts, in spite of all the parallels with the biblical account, all the other accounts blame God. It's God's fault. Either capricious God for no reason explain sends a flood or annoyed because human beings are vermin and they're making too much noise or whatever. Not so the Bible. Well, you say, wait a minute, maybe. Genesis 6 too says, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful and they married as many of them as they chose. Who's the blame for the flood? Some Christians reading that have suggested or some scholars have suggested this sounds awful weird, a little bit like undigested mythology that maybe the gods somehow rather are to blame after all. It sounds to me when I read that the humans are the victims and the culprits are the sons of the gods. Doesn't it sound that way to you? These may be angels. Well, that's one common view. Angels are demons. They're to blame. So it sounds just like the pagan accounts. It's all the God's fault. It's not ours. I know that view and there may even be some in the church here who hold it and I can respect the reasons I know of several reasons behind it. But ultimately I don't think it's one we want to endorse. That the sons of God are the sons of the gods depending upon which Bible you read. I don't think that's a reference to angels or semi gods or whatever. Why? Well, for one thing, the Bible everywhere else makes clear there's no sexuality in this spiritual world. The demons or angels neither of them have gender. They're neither male nor female. Jesus said at the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage. They'll be like the angels in heaven. Even the pagan literature outside the Bible, ancient Ereast and mythology doesn't have the gods having sexual congress with humans. That's Greek, later Greek views. That's not biblical world views. So you're already importing a strange category. Even if you say it is mythology, it's the wrong mythology. Furthermore, the Bible insists that these are not just having relations, they're getting married. The sons of God saw the daughters of men were beautiful and they married as many of them as they chose. So that just again belies that view. And finally, when God in his anger responds, who's the target for his wrath? He isn't saying, oh, I really had it with these angels. I really put them in their place. No, I've had it with men, with flesh. And the anger in that righteous response is all directed against human sin. It's human sin that we have got to better explain what is the provocation of the blood, not something angelic. Other views have been suggested. I won't go through them all. One is the possibility that here we have a reference to the godly line of Seth versus the fallen line of paint. I don't think that's likely. How would that explain these extraordinary offspring, interfaith marriage? It doesn't necessarily engender more thick offspring, or big offspring, or whatever we're to say. Like besides that, in verse one, it says when men began to increase in number on the earth, and daughters were born to them, verse one says the daughters of the men are just any old buddies daughters. So why all of a sudden in verse two is it just painite daughters that Sethites are marrying canites as some people think. I think that's a very unlikely view. What is the correct view? Well, I suggest that an ancient view found in the pardoms back in the days of Jesus, supported by many Bible-believing Christians right through the centuries, is really still the best view. And it's the view that the sons of god here put quotation marks around it. Hebrew has no quotation marks. So you've got to put them where you need them. The sons of the gods are the self-flattering name that ancient kings gave to themselves in order to pretend that they had some direct connection with heaven to this idolatrous arrogance claiming to be directly accountable to no one really but themselves or a god. All throughout the ancient world, those kings were called sons of god. You get it king carrot. King carrot is called son of the gods. This is standard royal propaganda. Moses inspired of God writing this text knew very well what this was about. Pharaoh claimed this. He claimed to be the son of the son god Ray. God on earth, answerable to no one but himself. And don't you see how this then is a continuation of a theme in Genesis, right from the beginning. Satan's temptation to the woman is you will be like God, knowing good and evil. You know, don't count how to the creator of the universe. Be your own god. You know, those who don't believe in God, you've got a big job cut out for you. You've got to be your own god. Make up your own mind. The answerable to your own standards. Be gods. As you go down the fallen line, the sinful line of pain in the seventh generation, Lamex playing the game. He's playing God. God said, I will avenge king seven times. Lamex said, hey, heck with that. I'll avenge myself seven times seven. I'll be my own god. These are men of a name. Men who are lasting after a name. And they then give themselves a name. Genesis 11 called the men who are after a name. Giving themselves this arrogant, idolatrous name, son of the gods, son of the gods or whatever. Of course, then you can hear echoes of the point. This is the theme that continues on then in Genesis. Lamex said, heck with the sanctity of marriage. I make my own rules. And so he invented bigamy, mentioned in Genesis 4. Lamex talks to his two wives and says, someone, you know, God will avenge someone's injury to king. Well, hey, I bumped off someone who bumped into me. I avenge myself seven times seven or whatever. Multiple times. He makes his own rules and he introduces bigamy. Now we pick up the thread of the story, heading further into the cesspool. Now we're in Genesis 6. That which was anticipated and Lamex has now come full flower. Now it's rampant polygamy. Men taking just as many wives as they want. And it anticipates what we find later on in Genesis. Genesis 12, this is what Abraham ran into with Pharaoh. A Pharaoh and his henchmen looked at his wife Sarah and said, boy, she's a knockout. Just like the text says, noticing their beauty and then figuring, well, that is there for the taking then reducing women to objects for my satisfaction. Incorporating them into the royal harem as he does take Sarah for a wife. It happens again in Genesis 20 with a bimolec king of Girard. He sees Sarah that she's beautiful, takes her into his harem threatens the life of Abraham in the midst. Isaac happens to him in Genesis 26 where another king of Girard does the same thing taking Rebecca noticing she's beautiful. Grabbing her saying it's mine. Same thing happens later on in Genesis 34 when Shekham, the local bigwig and son of Heymor, sees beautiful dina and just takes her for himself. This is a theme throughout Genesis. And what's the response of God every time? Judgment. God brings judgment upon Pharaoh and his household with plagues and so on. You think God doesn't notice he does. And what's the result of this procedure? What's the point of it? Why would Pharaoh want so many wives? Anyway, he wants to create a vast aristocracy of little offspring. Pharaoh Ramsey's the second had more than a hundred children bearing his name. Hundred children. He has a 13th son. He turns into a successor of his manepta. The fourth son he installs is the Pope of the God at Memphis. You see, the purpose is to make a family dynasty of loyalists who will rule with you. The book of judges chapter 10 says Jair of Gillied had 30 sons who ruled over 30 pounds of Gillied. These are the big shots of the ancient world, the Nephilim, the mighty men of the ancient world who probably even in physical terms were large because they had better diets and privileged upbringing with a silver spoon in their mouth. And better education. That's the whole strategy of the self-styled gods on earth to surround themselves with this kind of family dynasty. Well, let's summarize. And where are we? Well, when was the flood? No idea. Just no was a long time ago. Where was it? How extensive? No idea. I think the text implies of course all human beings were wiped out. It was vast. It was the biggest foretaste of final judgment this world has ever experienced. What was the provocation of sin? Now we get to the jugular. It's devaluing the sanctity of life and trashing the sanctity of marriage. Two sins that should resonate with us. They should remind us of something Jesus spoke of this same kind of thing just as it was in the days of Noah so will it be in the days of the Son of man. Men think we're not going to be accountable for our lives. We don't answer to anybody but ourselves. And so they're eating and drinking, marrying and being given a marriage up to the day. No way under the ark and then the flood came and destroyed them all. The same as it was in the days of law in Sodom and Gomorrah. And like Sodom and Gomorrah, what are the sins? It's the devaluation of the sanctity of life. Violence. Genesis 6 says the earth was cropped in God's sight and full of violence. That's not just man, that's not just blood violence. That's people imposing their will on one another. It's exploitation of the weak by the strong. Malachi says it's divorcing your wife just because she's inconvenient. It's using other people. That's the sin that provokes God and rampant sexual immorality. That's what offends God grievously. Our text answers those wishful thinkers who think this is all there is. There were many in Noah's days who thought this is it. We might as well grab all the gusto we can get. There will be no day of reckoning. What I sow I don't necessarily have to reap. No final accountability. The only accountability is me. Did I live my life without regrets? How many people talk this way? I have no regrets. Well, that's fine, but it doesn't count because the only reason so many of us have a clear conscience is that we have a lousy memory. We've forgotten all the grievous harm we've done to our fellow men. But most especially we forget that our lives count because they count to God. God is a personal God who takes personally our offences. What an ironic twist in our text. When men become their own gods, it's God who does the repenting. Listen to it. The Lord was grieved, or as it says in the King James, and it repented the Lord that he had made men on the earth. And then it says, and his heart was filled with pain. That's the effect our sin has on a holy God. His heart filled with pain. We are our own gods thinking we don't have to answer to anyone. No judgment coming. And so we live our lives as if we were only accountable to what we might get away with or not. And it grieves God and he repents of the gifts of life that he has granted us. But make no mistake about it. His patience is no evidence of his indifference. We're living in the day in which the ark is being built. The New Testament plays on all of this imagery speaking of baptism. The baptism of Jesus in 1 Peter 3, the waters of baptism, are deliberately an echo of the waters of the original flood. That's what 1 Peter says. The world was baptized in the days of Noah. Jesus was baptized in the days of John the Baptist whose message was judgments coming. He had a little visual aid, a little miniature flood. And when Jesus of Nazareth was baptized, the heavens opened up. And God said, echoing even what he said of Noah, this is my beloved son and whom I'm well pleased. And the Bible tells us the heavens open up and the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus in the form of a dove. You say, well, if judgment coming, is there any escape? And the answer is, yes, there is an ark. Just even as that dove returned to the ark, marking it out as the place of safety through the flood. So also Christ, are you in Christ? He's the place of safety. The ark itself points in this direction because it wasn't a boat. Did you notice that? When you read it, there's no bow, there's no stern, there's no rudder, there are no oars, no sail. It's not a boat, it's an absolute rectangular box. With three tripart structure, it's a temple, it's a floating temple, it's the same shape virtually, the same dimensions. In an ancient neo-Eastern literature, the ark was called the temple. It's a temple, that's why we read about clean and unclean. Jesus' body, as the temple said, destroyed this body in three days. This temple in three days, I'll raise it up. Jesus is the place of safety, the temple, the ark, and he is building patiently throughout the redemptive period in which we live, building a temple which is his body, the ark, which is the church. It looks like a waste of time. It implies that this life is not all there is, and you're right, that's the case. Are you there? Are you taking correction? Are you listening to his word? The Apostle Peter reminds us in close about our situation. He says the time you must understand that in the last days, scoffers are going to come. They're going to say where is this final day of reckoning, this coming he promised. Ever since our fathers died, everything has gone on just the way it was since the beginning of creation, the big bang, all the same. Yesterday, like today, like tomorrow, but they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. God is sovereign. He's the creator of the universe. It's all his. There's not a square inch here that he does not say of it. That is mine. In our lives are part of that structure of accountability, and by these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. God did it once, but it's just a warm up, just a prefigurement by the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But don't forget this one thing, dear friends, with the Lord a day is like a thousand years in a thousand years like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise. He wonder why doesn't he do something about it? They're getting away with murder. And then you look in the mirror and say, wait a minute, I'm getting away with murder too. He's not slow about keeping his promise as some understand slowness. He's patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. May it have that effect on our lives this day.