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[0:00] Well, we're on a follow-up mode from our viewing of the DVD, Is Genesis History? and it's kind of the question, why is that important?

[0:10] that question, whether Genesis is history or myth, whether it's just teaching us some general! truths versus actually being true history of God really creating the universe in six days and resting the seventh and of a real first man and first woman named Adam and Eve who were perfect and upright before God but who fell into sin and through sin brought the curse and suffering and death and disease into this world and then that the world had become so violent and wicked that God said, I'm going to destroy the whole earth and he did so with a flood that was global and covered the entire globe and wiped out all humanity and animals with the breath of life in their nostrils but those on the ark.

[1:10] That early history, is it history or is it just stories? And we saw how it's the foundation. Genesis is the beginnings and it is the beginning.

[1:22] It's the foundation of the whole Christian religion. And you know how worthless things are without a good foundation. And so we can't let go of the early chapters of Genesis as being genuine space-time history or the whole house of Christianity.

[1:42] True religion falls to the ground. Well, there's one book above many of really the other books of the Bible that sets forth the gospel in a systematic way and it's the book of Romans.

[1:57] And so we saw how that Paul introduces his topic that the gospel of Jesus Christ saves sinners and that's why I'm not ashamed of it.

[2:08] It really does the job. It saves sinners through the righteousness of Christ. Sinners are saved. But then he immediately launches at verse 18 of chapter 1 all the way through chapter 3 and verse 20 into a discussion of why we need the gospel.

[2:27] Why do we need saving? And we notice that he starts where the Bible starts with creation. And so, again, we're seeing how important these early chapters are.

[2:39] It is so important that those early chapters leave all men without excuse and in need of a Savior. And so he starts out. And let me just read verses 18 through 32 in Romans 1.

[2:54] The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness. Since what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them.

[3:09] For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood from what has been made so that men are without excuse.

[3:23] For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him. But their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

[3:36] Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

[3:48] Therefore, God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served created things rather than the creator who is forever praised.

[4:07] Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way, the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.

[4:23] Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind to do what ought not to be done.

[4:41] They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They're full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice.

[4:52] They're gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They invent ways of doing evil. They disobey their parents.

[5:04] They're senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things, but also approve of those who practice them.

[5:22] Truth number one, Paul says, we need to realize that we are under God's wrath. And the reason is because we have suppressed his revelation to us.

[5:35] We're all truth suppressors. And the truth that's suppressed, that's held down, that's kept from achieving its right end in our lives is the knowledge of God Himself seen in the creation, in the natural world.

[5:50] A revelation that's clearly revealed and clearly known because God has made it clear, He says. And so it's a knowledge that they possess.

[6:01] It's not a potential knowledge that you could have had the knowledge of God if you'd just paid attention. No, you had it. You possessed it. But you didn't think it worth retaining.

[6:14] And so you discarded it. You exchanged it. You traded it. You got rid of it. You suppressed it. It was the knowledge of God. What kind of knowledge?

[6:25] His invisible attributes. His power. His eternality. His Godhead. That's revealed in the creation. And you've clearly seen it.

[6:37] And you have understood it by the things that are made. And in that sense, they knew God as creator. And so that revelation of God, like all God's revelation, comes with responsibility, doesn't it?

[6:52] God never reveals something to us, but that there is a string attached in the sense that because I know this now, I have a responsibility to respond to this God that He has just revealed Himself to be.

[7:06] And what was the responsibility? What's the moral obligation that if I know that I'm not here by chance, but that there is a designer, there is a creator, what's my obligation to Him?

[7:19] Was to thank Him for everything that I have in this world? It's to give Him. It's to give Him the glory that's due His name as being the creator and the God over all.

[7:32] It is to worship Him and Him alone and to serve Him. That is to obey Him. To keep His commandments. Those are the stated obligations for those who have received this knowledge that God has made known in creation.

[7:49] And that is precisely what man in his wickedness refuses to do. Verse 23, they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images.

[8:01] Verse 25, they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served created things rather than the creator. Verse 28, they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God.

[8:13] So the knowledge of God that they possessed, they discarded. And that's what leaves them without excuse on the last day. No one will be able to say, but I didn't know you, God.

[8:27] Did you inhabit my world? You're without excuse. You did know me. The creation made clear that I am the creator.

[8:38] That there is this God to be worshipped. And you didn't bring me what you owed me. Now, Calvin says, Herein is seen man's shameful ingratitude to God as creator.

[8:49] God has been pleased to manifest His perfections in the whole structure of the universe. And daily place Himself in our view. So that we cannot open our eyes without being compelled to behold Him.

[9:03] And instead of bursting forth in His praise, as they are bound to do. On the contrary, they are the more inflated and swelled with pride, suppressing the proofs of the Godhead and robbing God of His rights.

[9:18] His own glory. Claiming that the world, which was made to display the glory of God, is its own creator. Now, that's Calvin. Long time ago.

[9:31] Nearly 500 years ago. Does it not sound as up to date as the science textbooks in our children's hands in the public schools? As if the creation is its own creator.

[9:45] And so he goes on to say, The greater part of mankind, enslaved by error, by lies, walk blindfold in this glorious theater. How few of us are there who in lifting our eyes to the heavens or looking abroad on the various regions of the earth ever think of the creator.

[10:06] Do we not rather overlook Him and sluggishly content ourselves with a view of His works? You see what he's saying? So God has created the world and the world reveals Him, the creator.

[10:22] It's made to do that, to say, Wow, what a creator there must be if this is His creation. And man, instead of giving Him the glory and praise and thanks, just sluggishly looks at the creation and looks no higher.

[10:40] Isn't that what we recently saw on August the 21st? The whole world was looking up, weren't they? And we're saying, Yes, now you're getting warm. But they look no higher than the sun and the moon, the eclipse.

[10:56] They looked at the creation that displays the glory of God, but they did not look at God. And they ascribed to the sun and the moon and Mother Nature what the creator God is worthy of.

[11:12] They were wowed by His creation, but not by Him. The one who put the heavenly bodies in their exact places and keeps them there so faithfully that these things can be predicted down to the hundredths of a second of where this is going to happen and when.

[11:30] What a different perspective God's children, who have now been born from above and have a new mind, a new heart, and new affections, and new will. What a different perspective they have on the creation.

[11:43] We see it in David. And I say if David with his knowledge of science and of the astronomy of his day was wowed, what should we be?

[11:55] As we have satellites out there taking pictures of what God has created. And yet when David says in Psalm 8, When I consider the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have put in place, what is man that you're even mindful of us?

[12:13] Or the Son of Man that you should care for us? How majestic is your name in all the earth? You have such a glory above the heavens. You see what happens with the child of God viewing the creation?

[12:27] It's like a springboard. It's not enough just to look at it, but it's a springboard up to the creator. The majestic maker of the heavens and the earth.

[12:38] So it may be a sunrise. It may be a sunset. It may be a flower. It may be the colors of fall, the wonders of the human body. The creation leads us to the praise of the creator.

[12:50] God's works are meant to lead us to worshiping him. But because of sin, the wonders of creation are met with the dumb stare of a cow that cannot look past creation to its maker.

[13:07] And so man attributes wonders and mighty deeds of God as the work of mother nature itself. As if the creation is autonomous, acting on its own self-producing power.

[13:18] Wonders of creation are not the works of nature, but of our Father in heaven. So verses 21 to 24 say that since they refused to glorify and thank God, their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

[13:40] And here we learn the origin of paganism. Where did paganism get its start? University studies of religion have it backwards. They say that man began with his crude pagan religion.

[13:53] Okay? He emerged from the monkeys and somewhere he got some consciousness about a higher being. And so you have this very crude religion carved out on pictures on the caves that he lived in.

[14:04] And it's very crude. And over time it evolved into a more refined religion. So we work from crude paganism to more refined religion.

[14:16] But paganism is not the oldest religion out of which true religion evolved. Rather, pagan religion is the result of rejecting the true religion.

[14:28] God made the heavens and the earth and set mankind into it and received glory and praise and honor and worship from that man that he made. And then man fell.

[14:41] And man turned his back on God the Creator and would not give him the moral obligations of worshiping and serving him and praising him. And so they're left with their own foolish imaginations.

[14:55] And so you see the order is from the true religion as God established it in the Garden of Eden. And it has fallen away to the pagan religions that we see in our own day.

[15:09] So the result of man's wicked suppression of the truth. We've seen God's response. It's his righteous wrath. He's angry with true suppressors.

[15:19] A wrath that then gives men over to their vile passions and lusts. But it also has a degrading effect upon man themselves and their religion and their morals.

[15:31] Notice what the result of man's rejection of God has done to man's religion. As I said, it's the root cause of paganism. When men walk away from the light that they had, God in judgment leaves them to their own ignorance.

[15:50] Leaves them to their own foolish, futile speculations of God. So man's thinking about God without taking into account of what God has said about himself, either in his word or in creation.

[16:06] If we reject the revelation God has made to us and we set that aside, what do we have? We have our own folly, our own ignorance. The world by its wisdom did not know God.

[16:22] 1 Corinthians 1.21. Professing themselves to be wise, they became what? Fools. And the greatest proof of their folly is their idolatry.

[16:33] Look at what men worship. You see it in the text. They exchange the glorious creator, the living and true God, for lifeless images, made to look like lowly creatures.

[16:46] They bow down and worship worthless things, things that their own hands have made that look like birds and beasts and creeping things, things that can't help themselves, let alone others.

[16:57] I say it proves, you see, the folly of their idolatry. It's seen in what they worship. But rejection of God's revelation not only leaves men in the dark in areas of religious worship, it also leaves them in the dark in regard to morals and ethics for how to live.

[17:17] It leaves them with depravity and ever-increasing moral darkness into which they slide. You see it in verse 24.

[17:28] Therefore God gave them over. Why? Because they rejected His revelation of Himself. He gave them over to what? To the sinful desires of their hearts. To sexual impurity.

[17:40] For the degrading of their bodies with one another. Now we immediately jump to the aspects of homosexual sex. And that's coming, but let's not jump there first.

[17:52] It's just sexual immorality. The whole big category. God has given men over to it. Because they suppressed the truth. They didn't want the truth of God.

[18:02] And it affected their moral sensitivities. They have no sense of what's right and wrong that they should follow in it. And then verse 27, 6 and 7, because of this, God gave them over to their shameful lusts and vile passions.

[18:18] Women with women, men with men, exchanging natural relations for unnatural ones. But at each point, there's this giving over. Why? Because of what they've done. They've given up God's knowledge, so God gives them up to their own knowledge.

[18:33] Their own religion. Their own morality. And we see just how low it sinks them. As they did not think it worthwhile, verse 28, to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind to do what ought not to be done.

[18:47] And the whole list of every kind of wickedness follows. So each time, it's because of man's rejection of God's revelation. I think it helps us to understand motivations.

[19:04] Why is it that men reject the knowledge of God? Rejection of divine revelation is never just an intelligent matter.

[19:15] It's never just what we think. It's rather the... what we want in our heart. There's this moral issue, not just intellectual.

[19:28] Without God, they're left with an ungoverned heart that seeks what it wants. Aldous Huxley was an English humanistic writer and philosopher, and he wrote Brave New World before he died in 1963.

[19:44] He was widely recognized as one of the preeminent scholars of his time. He got into psychedelic drugs and Eastern mysticism and all kinds of weird thought that you would expect when men have rejected God's knowledge and gone to their own way.

[20:01] Later in life, he admitted that there are moral reasons why men reject the knowledge of God. And in a moment of honest self-revelation, he wrote this, Is the universe possessed of value and meaning?

[20:16] I took for granted there was no meaning, but I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning. Most ignorance is invincible ignorance.

[20:28] We don't know because we don't want to know. Isn't that telling from a godless intellect? The world is without meaning.

[20:39] You have to say that if it just kind of arose out of the slime on its own. There's no creator, designer with great purposes. No. There's no meaning in the world. And that was his view.

[20:51] And yet he says, The reason we don't know is because we don't want to know. We set up our own invisible barriers to the truth because we don't want it to be true.

[21:04] Because once I posit that there is a God over me, I no longer can do what I want to do. I'm now here for him. Those are my words now.

[21:14] He didn't say it, put it that way, but that's what he's saying, you see. There's a moral reason behind why we don't see God, we don't embrace what creation is screaming at us every day.

[21:29] And that's precisely what Paul's saying in Romans 1. All sinners are intentional truth suppressors who suppress the truth by their wickedness. You see that? Why do they suppress?

[21:40] Because of their wickedness. They don't want there to be a God over them, so they suppress his truth. There are no objective truth seekers in the universe. Everybody comes to the microscope with their own preconceived views of things even before they look in.

[21:59] I don't want there to be a God, so whatever I see in here, I've got to explain in a way that's just naturalistic. Whenever I look in the heaven, I can't have a God, and that's the truth-suppressing heart of the sinner.

[22:11] And Paul knows it, and he exposes it in Romans 1. It's a moral problem. It's a heart problem. And that's why all men are without excuse. And that's why God in wrath gave them up.

[22:24] They degraded God, so he gives them up to degrading lust. You see the importance, then, of God's revelation of Genesis, of the creation in Genesis.

[22:41] It's the foundation to why man is lost and needs a Savior, because he's rejected this light of God the Creator.

[22:52] Well, any questions? I'm going to go to another example of man's suppression of the truth, that God has revealed something to man and he just keeps pushing it away.

[23:04] We'll see another expression of that. But any questions on Romans 1 and what Paul wants us to understand about the creation and the knowledge it gives to men.

[23:17] All right, turn to 2 Peter, chapter 3. 2 Peter 3. And we're going to have to move more quickly here. 2 Peter 3.

[23:31] Another example of suppression of God's revelation of truth. And as I read verses 3 and 4, see if you can identify what's the specific revelation that man is suppressing here.

[23:46] 2 Peter 3, 3 and 4. First of all, you must understand that in the last days, scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires.

[23:57] They will say, where is this coming, he promised. Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation. All right.

[24:08] Can you see a revelation that God made and it's being suppressed? What's the revelation? What's the truth revealed? Jesus is coming again.

[24:21] What's he coming to do? I mean, a lot of things, but to judge the world.

[24:32] That's right. All right. So Jesus is coming again. And we'll see that as this chapter unfolds. He's coming to judge the ungodly. All right. So that's the truth revealed.

[24:43] Jesus said it over and over. His disciples have repeated it. Here we are 2,000 years later. And right up to the end, there's going to be people scoffing at it.

[24:55] And so that's the truth. That he's going to appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him. And it will be a day of destruction of ungodly men and a day of judgment.

[25:09] Verse 7 of our text. Well, such knowledge of God's judgment comes with a moral obligation. If I know that Jesus Christ is coming back to judge the ungodly, do you feel anything of a pressure of moral obligation from that revelation?

[25:24] What is it? What's my obligation to that truth? To repent of my ungodly ways and to seek the Savior and to walk in His ways, right?

[25:37] That's the whole emphasis of the latter part of this chapter. To repent, verse 9, while there's still time in God's patience. Verse 11, since everything will be destroyed in this way when He comes back, what kind of people ought you to be?

[25:53] There's the word of obligation. Well, you ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to this day of God. Is He coming back to judge? Then my moral obligation is to walk in a holy way so that I'm ready to meet Him as judge.

[26:10] Verse 14, since this is going to happen, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless, and at peace with Him, and so on. But, instead of living holy and godly lives, what are these men doing?

[26:27] They're scoffing. What else are they doing? And?

[26:42] Scoffing and? Following their own sinful desires. This is their response to the revelation of God. They suppress it, they reject it by scoffing.

[26:56] They just laugh it off as untrue, unthinkable, not even worth considering. Where is this coming? You guys are crazy. Refusing the moral obligation owed to God for such a revelation.

[27:11] Instead of repenting of their evil ways and walking in holiness, they are scoffing and following their own evil desires. It's not convenient to accept God's revelation of a coming judgment and to continue following their own evil desires.

[27:32] So something's got to go. If Jesus is coming again to judge the ungodly and I'm living in an ungodly way, those two things don't give me peace at night. So something's got to go.

[27:43] Either I've got to repent of my ungodliness and come to Christ and walk in holiness, or I've got to get rid of the truth that says He is coming back to judge the ungodly.

[27:57] And that's what they chose. They're so committed to following their own evil ways, they're not about to give that up. So they give up the promise of Christ that He's coming back to judge the world.

[28:09] Something that's been promised throughout the whole of Scripture. Something that's written on the very conscience of man that we must give an account to our Maker. Well, if there's no coming judge, then there's no coming judgment.

[28:25] Ah, I can live with that, says the ungodly. So they scoff on. So again, do you see something of the motivations behind men's suppression of the truth coming out in this passage?

[28:37] There's a reason they laugh at Jesus' second coming. Because they're not ready for it. They don't want there to be a day of judgment. And so they scoff. It's a moral issue, not just an intellectual one.

[28:49] Well, so, having understood their motive, we now get to hear them scoffing. They say, where is this coming, He promised. Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.

[29:01] There's a couple errors they're making. The first one is, since it hasn't happened, it's not going to happen. That's pretty foolish, isn't it? I've never seen this happen, so it's never going to happen.

[29:15] Is that a wise conclusion to draw? That's folly. But that's what you have when you reject the truth. You have folly. What's another error that they make?

[29:29] These scoffers. It's always going on in the same way. Okay. Here we are, living in 2017. 2017. And as far back as we can go, all the way back to creation, things have just rolled right along.

[29:46] There's never been any interruption of a worldwide judgment. It's always just gone on. I can't believe that there's going to be a worldwide judgment because there's never been a worldwide judgment in all of human history.

[30:00] I say that's an error. What are they overlooking? The flood. The global flood. What we were watching. The evidence of all over our earth.

[30:12] Verse 5. But since they deliberately forget that long ago, by God's word, the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters.

[30:23] So first, they're deliberately forgetting about creation. And secondly, by these waters also, the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. They're forgetting about the global flood when God did visit the planet and judged all mankind.

[30:41] Now, there's truth, isn't there? There's truth. Not only in our Bibles, Genesis 6 to 8, about a global flood. There's proof all over the creation.

[30:53] The whole universe is scarred with the flood. You go to the Grand Canyon and you've got a choice to make. Do I believe that all of this is the effect of lots of time and a little water that just carved out these canyons?

[31:10] Or do I believe what God says that there was once a deluge that covered the whole earth and the fountains of the deep broke open and waters came gushing up from below and for 40 days and 40 nights He opened up the heavens and it covered the whole earth.

[31:28] If I believe that, then I would expect to see fossils buried and found all over the world. And that's what we find.

[31:38] I would expect to see huge canyons when that water then receded. To see huge canyons that were first laid down by the flood in the sediment and then carved out by this withdrawal.

[31:50] And yes, it's evidence before us. We have it in creation. We have it in the word of God. But they deliberately forget they deliberately forget.

[32:02] And it's no surprise to us, is it, why they want to forget the flood. Well, there was a sudden cataclysmic event of creation.

[32:18] Out of nothing, suddenly, there was something. That's cataclysm. That's an amazing interruption of natural processes as men would like to say the earth has been formed by.

[32:31] And another sudden cataclysmic event that's left its mark on the earth is the global flood that sinful, ungodly man is trying his best to forget.

[32:44] Now, that's the message, the revelation God sent to man in the flood. He's God. We aren't. You owe me your obedience. You're rebelling against me.

[32:54] There's a day of judgment. I will hold you accountable and I will punish you. Those are not the kinds of things that the world likes to hear. Peter uncovers their dirty little secret that their forgetfulness of the global flood is not due to Alzheimer's or a poor memory.

[33:11] It's deliberate. It's on purpose. It's premeditated. It's intentional. It's calculated. So that they can go on following their own evil desires without the fear of a final judgment.

[33:28] Well, the Lord Jesus taught it, didn't he? As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Isn't Noah just a mythical figure?

[33:39] And wasn't the flood just a story? No. Not according to Jesus. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the time and the coming. There it is.

[33:49] The coming. Where is this coming that he promised? The coming of the Son of Man. Everyone was marrying and bearing, going about their business, hustling off to the store, to the market, to their fields.

[34:03] And suddenly, without warning, judgment fell upon the earth. I say without warning, without the, there was the warning, it wasn't there, of Noah himself and the surrounding region.

[34:16] But suddenly, God swept in with the flood and it was too late to repent. So it will be at the coming, the coming judgment of the Son of Man. So, the flood of Noah's day is a harbinger.

[34:28] It's an announcement of another universal judgment to come, at Christ's coming. And it points us to be ready for that judgment that results in heaven or hell forever.

[34:40] We see it in chapter 2, verse 5, this book, 2 Peter, if God did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, preacher of righteousness, and seven others.

[34:54] If this is so, verse 9, then the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and how to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment while continuing their punishment. Heed the lesson I gave in the flood on coming back, Jesus says, and it's going to be just like that.

[35:15] Only instead of the earth being flooded with water, the earth is reserved for fire, verse 7, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

[35:28] You've been warned, whoever you are, you see, the flood speaks all languages, doesn't it? It's not in just one language, it's like the sun. All people, all languages see the same sun and realize God is a great God to make a sun like that.

[35:45] And all languages can understand the flood. It's God's fingerprint of judgment and men are to heed it, but they don't and it's a moral reason for their scoffing.

[36:02] Well, we could point out many other references to the global flood. I think I'll just conclude with this.

[36:15] I mean, you have genealogies in the Old Testament and there's Noah, a real person, as real as any of the others listed in the genealogy. I mean, so if we're going to say that these guys were just stories and mythical figures, then somewhere along the line, are we going to shift from myth to real history?

[36:32] Because the New Testament genealogy of Jesus in Luke 3.36 has Noah in the line of Jesus. So if Noah's mythical, then we're really not sure whether Jesus of Nazareth really lived either.

[36:49] No, it's all one piece, and so we receive the revelation in Genesis as history. Now, I appreciated what the DVD said, that God doesn't tell us everything we might like to know.

[37:06] It doesn't spell out the Ice Age, does it? It doesn't say, you want to know about the Ice Age? We'd like to know about the Ice Age, wouldn't we? What's all that about? Well, he doesn't tell us.

[37:17] There are many things that he doesn't tell us, but he does give us the big picture of the events that happened in his creation that stand as guardrails to keep us grounded in the truth, to lead us to further discoveries of truth as we explore space, as we dig in the earth, as we look through the microscope and observe the world that God created and then destroyed by water and then restored and one day will destroy by fire and bring in a new heaven and a new earth, as new as this present world is from the old world before it was flooded.

[37:57] But God hasn't chosen to explain everything we see or answer all our questions, but he has given us sufficient knowledge of himself and of the world we live in to know how to live a life that's ready when Jesus comes back, a life of knowing Christ as our Savior and our Lord.

[38:23] So, let's embrace the revelation of God. That's one principle we can get from this even as we come this morning to receive more revelation from God, more in the sense that we're going to open God's book and we're going to consider his revelation.

[38:41] Well, let's see what happens when men do not embrace it. we've seen that. Let's rather see the lesson that, oh, then we need to embrace it. This is the truth.

[38:52] This is wisdom. This is the foundation of understanding. The fear of the Lord is the foundation of true wisdom.

[39:05] So, let's embrace the knowledge we have of Christ, of our world, of evil, of the future that we do have in Scripture and in creation and wait for the final analysis of how everything exactly happened in this world.

[39:23] Yes, we'll see more clearly by and by, won't we? Well, do you have any further questions or comments? And, yeah, the rest of that chapter is simply saying, so if this is what is going to happen, as Jesus said, it is, that judgment's coming, what kind of men ought you to be?

[39:43] You ought to live holy and godly lives as you wait for that day. That's also the great application of that truth. Any other questions, comments?

[39:54] Roger? From our perspective, I know, I wonder, why is God holding judgment that the nation has gone so far downhill? You know, and why, why is he waiting, why is the judgment coming into all the wickedness that's all around us?

[40:08] And he, I think Peter answers it in verse 15 where he says, God's patience is for salvation. He's got more men to bring in. Amen. Excellent. His wrath is already being outpoured in that he's giving men over to such wickedness.

[40:25] But you're right, the final outpouring of wrath, the final judgment has been prolonged in order that more men might be saved. Yeah. Gracious master, isn't he?

[40:37] stop or I'll shoot. He's not the policeman that shoots first and kills you and then, no, he warns, stop or I'll shoot. Judgment's coming, but this is the time of grace.

[40:50] Seek me while I may be found. Call on me while I'm near. Let the wicked forsake his way. Let's pray. we thank you, Lord, for the entrance of your word that gives light, that gives understanding of the world we live in, of our own hearts and what we find there, what we find in the hearts of unregenerate men, the lives that they live, the way that they suppress your truth.

[41:22] And again, Lord, that was us. And so we have to bow humbly and just thank you that you have set us free from such a sinful life, lived apart from you, and that you've set us free from that and brought us into your family and into the light, out of the darkness and into the wondrous light of your kingdom.

[41:44] Help us to treasure the light that we receive today and so to go back into this world and to live those holy and godly lives and to bear testimony that we are expecting a savior from heaven who's coming to save his people and to judge the ungodly.

[42:03]  We ask in Jesus' name and for his praise. Amen.