you picked up copies of the outline of the Sunday School Hour. And we'll be following that outline. The first part of it we have already covered. But what I'm going to be doing is covering some material that is going to require a little bit of digging. And that's why I thought it would be more suitable for us to give this material during this Sunday School Hour. And it's going to be more of a sermon-type presentation. So we're not going to have interaction as we sometimes do during the adult class hour. Well, let me just remind you of what we said when we preached from Genesis chapter 6. And that's where I invite you to turn, by the way, Genesis chapter 6. We looked at the first two verses of this chapter. And we need to remember, as we re-enter this part of the book of Genesis, that it's with the backdrop of the history of chapters 4 and 5. And that history, it contained as a microcosm, I think, of the history of the whole human race. And we have two peoples that are described. Two seeds that are predicted, as were predicted to the woman in the garden. Chapters four and five, we witness the way in which the human race is split in two. Chapter four displays the line of the ungodly descendants of Cain, proudly reveling in their worldly achievements while the children of Seth began to call upon the name of the Lord. And then in the millennia and a half, it's covered in chapter five, there are bursts of spiritual light in the history of the line of Seth. But in the opening verses of chapter six, we are sadly informed that even after those years, the godly line of Seth had been corrupted. And it was so drastic that God had decided that he was going to cleanse the earth with a massive flood. Now these verses that are here before us have three main points, and they're in your outlines. But before we look at those three points, let's read verses 1 through 4. Now, it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful. And they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose. And the Lord said, my spirit shall not strive with man forever, for indeed he is flesh. Yet his days shall be 120 years. There were giants, or there were Nephilim on the earth in those days. And also afterwards, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men and they bore children to them, those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. Well, in this section, we have an account of how marriage was corrupted, violence was idolized, and restraint was removed. Those are the three main points that are in the outline that you have. And we looked at the first, in our last study, we saw how marriage was corrupted in verses 1 and 2. And we wrestled with the issue of how were to understand that phrase, the sons of God. Are they fallen angels? Are they just simply men in general? Are they princes that married a harem? And we argued for the position that the sons of God are the godly line of Seth, and the daughters of men are the ungodly Canaanites. And so the sin was a forbidden marriage union, corruption of the believers by marrying unbelievers. And we believe this fits the context in the book of Genesis the best. And we also emphasize that Genesis chapter 6 implies that a grievous wrong has been perpetrated in the marriages, and if it was demons, if it was fallen angels that had done this, why is it that nothing is said about them being judged? The flood is upon those that perpetrated this ungodly union along with the rest of the ungodly people of that age. Well, I want to move on now from that first point of marriage being corrupted to violence idolized. And this is set forth, we're going to be going out of order here. We've looked at verses 1 and 2. Instead of looking at verse 3 next, I want to look at verse 4. There were giants, for there were Nephilim on the earth in those days. And also afterwards, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men, and they bore children to them, those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. Now as the stats came in for 2024, one news outlet after another heralded a decline in violent crime rates. But these stats are always manipulable. You can put them together almost to say anything you want to. So you have to be careful about reading statistics. And especially those that want to justify letting dangerous criminals right back out onto the streets, even before the trial has taken place. They want to make it look like, well, their policies are really working. Everything's wonderful. We're not having very much crime. Well, the supposedly encouraging crime stats being reported by the news outlets, they simply represent a return to the normal rates of murder and the like before the George Floyd rights. It was a great peak at that point. And so if you come back, if you come from that, it looks like everything declined. But these supposedly normal rates of violent crime, they should be alarming rather than reassuring. In an article in the March issue of World Magazine, Timothy Lamer notes that the rates of violent crime that garner positive headlines today would have been shocking in the 1950s. He says, the numbers are stark. The rate of violent crime in the United States has more than quadrupled over 30 years. It went from 160.9 per 1,000 people in 1960 to 713.8 in 1990. And then it started to fall as there was some reform and they began. There was this mass incarceration of people. And there was this broken windows policy and so forth. And the aging population perhaps helped also. But even if you account for all of that, it is still an awful situation in our country. And various explanations have been given, such as the sexual revolution, which has resulted in the decline of the two-parent family. And you have children, boys especially, that are being raised that don't know how to settle disputes. They don't have a father to teach them. You don't always have to start beating somebody up to be able to settle a dispute. This is something that Juanita observed very much in working in more of a downtownish area of Albany. Everybody gets in a fight over everything. And I saw that personally and going into that area for various reasons. And the root cause, though, is not just that there is a lack of a two-parent family, but there has been a rejection of biblical Christianity in our country. And with the rejection of the doctrine of creation and accountability to God that we have to God because of what we do, There is, therefore, the result, one of them being violent crime breaking out more and more. Now, as we look at this passage, there is this reference to the Nephilim. Now, the Nephilim are translated giants in the New King James Version. Nephilim is just a transliteration of the Hebrew. It's just taking over just exactly what it says in Hebrew. And if we look back down The Nephilim are referred to there. There were the giants on the earth, verse 4. There were the Nephilim on earth. But now look down at verse 11. The earth also was corrupt before God and the earth was filled with violence. So the backdrop of this assertion is what we read in verse four, this violent situation. The backdrop is set before us here in verse four. And this is another obscure verse. Mention is made of the New American Standard and the ESV. They transliterate the word, as I mentioned, Nephilim, or giants, as it's in the New King James Version. Well, how did these men arise? Were they the offspring of the sons of God marrying the daughters of men? Is that how they came about? Or did they rise independently and not as a result of the godly line of Seth intermarrying with the ungodly Cainite line? Well, if this verse immediately followed verse two, a solid argument could be made that these were the product of this unholy union between the Sethites and the Cainites. But it doesn't follow immediately on verse 2. The order of verses 2 to 4 suggests that while some of them were born perhaps as a result of these ungodly marriages, the Nephilim were the fruit of other marriages as well. It was just a general situation that there were some giants, and the Nephilim basically means giants. There were giants that arose in those days. Now, the only other reference to the Nephilim is in Numbers chapter 13, verses 31 to 33. It's a case where the unbelieving spies bring back a negative report. And this is what they said, "'We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we. The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants. And all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature.'" So these are giants that are being described. And then with reference to those giants, the next verse, verse 33, there we saw the Nephilim, the giants. And then it's mentioned that they are the descendants of Anak. And these ones came from the giants. And we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, so we were in their sight. So clearly, the Nephilim were men of imposing stature. In Numbers 33, a genetic connection is cited. They were the descendants of Anak. But we don't have a genetic root mentioned here in Genesis chapter 6. It's possible that there's a correlation between their unusual physical size, perhaps, and the fact that people lived longer back then. Just like we had dinosaurs, huge other creatures that could survive in a different atmosphere and for different reasons they were able to sustain themselves in a large size. Perhaps they had better nutrition back then. They didn't have poison so much that they ate, or diseases perhaps. We don't know exactly. But whatever the case, even after God had cursed the ground, it may have been more productive than it is now. And whatever the case, we can safely say that before the flood, people lived for an extraordinary length of time, and some of them grew to extraordinary proportions. Now, perhaps there's also a connection between the size of these men and the size of some of the pre-flood dinosaurs, as we mentioned just a moment ago. A literal translation of Nephilim is fallen ones. And the sense of the original in the Hebrew, it's in the passive. And there's a difference between those who were made to fall, that's the passive idea, and those who were cast down. You know, those that are made to fall are those that are cast down. In this passive sense, it contrasts with the active form of the word, which occurs in Deuteronomy 22 and verse 4, which refers to those who fell down of their own accord. In other words, those who died in a natural way. They fell and they just died. They just died of old age, whatever the case is. And there are others, though, that were forced down. It's a picture of those that fell in battle. And that's the association that comes with the passive construction, which we have here. So it's possible that these were giants that some of them, they fell in battle. And it was such an amazing thing that some of them got beaten, actually, that they fell down, that they got this nickname, the Nephilim. That's just my theory. But we don't know exactly how it is that they were called Nephilim or how it was that this idea of the fallen ones is associated with their size. But then, close on the heels of this mention of the Nephilim is the mention of mighty men in verse 4. We read again in this verse, there were giants of the earth in those days and also afterwards when the sons of God came into the daughters of men and they bore children to them, those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. I think that Victor Hamilton's translation I think is very helpful at this point. Now in distinction from the Nephilim, These men were the offspring of the unholy union between the Sethites and the Canites. That's specifically mentioned here. The sons of God, the sons of the daughters of men, and so forth. And many of these ones were mighty men. Now the Hebrew word that's translated mighty men is normally used in the Old Testament to describe soldiers. In 2 Samuel 10.7, when David heard that the Ammonite and Syrian armies, along with the soldiers from Ishtab and the men of King Meaca, when he heard that they had invaded this combined army, we read, quote, he sent Joab and all the army of the mighty men to engage the combined forces that were arrayed against him. In other words, what he did is he engaged these mighty men, these crack soldiers, we might speak of them in our day as being the special forces that were sent on this special military mission. And especially it's used in this way, not just of general soldiers, in 2 Samuel 20, in verse 7, where we read of the Cherethites, the Pelethites, and all the mighty men. These were the ones that surrounded David when he left Jerusalem, this kind of bodyguard of the mighty men. And then in chapter 23, 2 Samuel 23, there's a whole catalog of David's 30 mighty men and a description of each one of them one by one. These were especially powerful soldiers, one of them taking down 800 people in one battle, one after another. This was the kind of prowess that those special forces exerted in those days. And so in this place, in Genesis chapter 6 and verse 4, these mighty men, they must have been men that were known for their prowess in battle. And these soldiers, these mighty men, are also described here as men of renown. In other words, these were famous men. And men become famous in different ways. And here in Genesis 6, we're not explicitly told how these men became famous, but the mention of their fame, right after we are told that these were mighty men, this implies that they became famous as fierce soldiers. And there are places in the Bible in which God says He will make certain people famous or well-known. For instance, in Genesis 12, 2, God says to Abram, I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. So God makes him famous, the one that Abraham tries to make himself famous. And this is very different, though, from making a name for yourself, doing something to get everybody to say, look at me, and to brag about what you did, and get attention to what you did, and so forth. And so we read, for instance, of the builders of the Tower of Babel, who wished to, and here I quote, to make a name for themselves. Genesis chapter 11 and verse 4. Well, here in Genesis 6, where the wickedness of mankind is being described as a rationale for the judgment of the flood, God is apparently pointing out that the ancient world was being led by people that were driven by self-aggrandizing a desire to make a name for themselves. And in particular, it was the mighty men, these men that were wielding the sword, the powerful people. These are the ones that got a name for themselves. And this is exactly the kind of man that we read of back in chapter 4 when we read of wicked Lamech bragging. You remember how he brags over killing a young boy just because that young boy injured him. And this is the kind of thing that was being celebrated back in the ancient world. This is what made you famous. Now in chapter 6 and verse 11, we read, the earth was also corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And so we have two things here. The earth was corrupt, and the earth was filled with violence. And in these words, we have a summary of the first 10 verses of this chapter. The earth was corrupt. It was so corrupt that even the godly line was corrupted. This intermarriage corrupted the mankind by these ungodly marriages, all of which was driven by fleshly carnal impulses. But in addition to being corrupt, it's described as being filled with violence. Men got famous for killing people. Violence was being glorified. Do you want to become famous? You need to go out and murder somebody. And might as well do two or three. That'll make you even more famous. And you could be like Lamech, and you can boast about it, and people would admire you because you're powerful. You power over other people by killing them and the like. So the most famous men in those days were the people that wielded their power over others by means of violence and bloodshed and robbery and oppression. And if some of these bloodthirsty men were also giants, they must have been exceedingly fearsome." Now, even the way that their relations with women is described as hints of their violence, even in this area. In chapter 4 and verse 1, we have a beautiful description of Adam's intimate relationship with Eve. It says, he knew her. And this same expression is used of the Lord for His spiritual bride. You only have I known of all the people of the face of the earth. He knows His people. But here in Genesis 6-4, we don't read of this kind of tender, beautiful familiarity. Instead, we read simply of a crass, animalistic act. The men of that age simply, the words are used in the English, came in to the daughters of men. And in the violent context of that age, we could be sure that, therefore, sexual violence was very common. Well, before we go on to the third major point of this study here, I want to just say a few things by way of application. The first thing I want to say is that one mark of a degenerate society is the prevalence and the glorification of violence. Now, I don't think I need to go into detail for you to know what I'm talking about. Television programming is full of shows that glorify violence. And I recognize that there is some value in learning the history of the Civil War, the history of World War II, and other wars. But there's a great difference between a Ken Burns documentary of the Civil War and a show that week after week glorifies a mafia family or glorifies a cult that thrives on violence. You watch one of those Civil War documentaries, it leaves you with a lump in your throat. It leaves you grieving. You read the letters of soldiers that died, and this is what they wrote to their wife. You see the pictures, the photos taken back then of the battlefields after the battle, and it's an awful scene. It doesn't glorify violence whatsoever. in the way that many of the Hollywood shows do in our day. And these presentations, they show that, as Sherman puts it, that war is hell. They fill your heart with deep sorrow. But shows like Breaking Bad, and I don't know what the latest one is, they draw your heart out in a way to almost identify with the criminals and the violent people. And that's what we are talking about when we speak about the glorification of violence. And one of the ways that this culture of violence is reversed is to return to a culture where you have children being raised in two-parent homes. And especially we have in our day, so many people, they were raised in single-parent families. And they're not taught how to handle conflict. And as Christians, we should vote, I think, for politicians that incentivize two-parent homes, incentivize marriage, incentivize that arrangement rather than the other. And in our homes, we must diligently seek to teach our children how to settle their differences without resorting to violent words and violent actions. And we need to be models of that very thing. So, and especially with this violent age, it's easy for us to slip into the ways of talking and acting that is all around us. But then I want to say also by way of application before we move on, we mustn't imagine that as a society or as individuals, we can choose some sins without having others take place. Genesis 6, it gives us a vivid display of the connection between these violent Nephilim and unholy marriages. Corruption and violence, these two things are together. And the degeneration that resulted from these unholy marriage alliances in verses 1 and 2, it provided the unholy soil from which this violence took place. As John Murray puts it in his wonderful essay on this, difficult passage in his book, Principles of Conduct. He says, And this is abundantly demonstrated in 21st century Western culture. We decided decades ago, it doesn't matter what you do in the privacy of your bedroom. We decided that you can do whatever, it's all okay. And you don't need to be married to your person you live with. That's old fashioned. And so what's the result of that brilliant idea? The violence of over 65 billion dead babies. That's what the result is of that. You have all this unholy conduct, and you've got to get rid of the inconvenient babies that will be born. And it doesn't stop there. You can't have a society that solves the inconvenient byproduct of promiscuity with the violence of abortion without also having those children growing up in single-family homes. And they grow up in single-family homes, and this leads them to grow up thinking that the way you settle your arguments is with violence. And so rising murder statistics and George Floyd and Tesla riots are sure to follow. Well, this principle, it also applies, I think, to our individual battles with sin. Don't imagine that you can tolerate the violation of the seventh commandment in secret by what you watch or by what you do without sin breaking out in some other way in your life. We can't contain sin in one form, saying, well, that's my besetting sin. I'll keep it secret. Sin is related. Sin's to one another. And whatever sin you're tolerating in secret, it erodes your relationship with God. It leaves you open because you are distant from God. It leaves you wide open for other temptations. We can't compartmentalize sin. And that's why in his mortification, his great work on mortification of sin, John Owen stresses this, that if we want to mortify sin, we don't just try to mortify that one thing that's bothering us. We need to mortify all of our sin and be concerned about all of it. It's related one to another. Well, so far we've looked at marriage corrupted, verses 1 and 2, and violence idolized in verse 4. And now in the third place, and we'll be briefer here, we want to back up to verse 3 in which we see restraint removed. And here I want to read that verse again. And the Lord said, My spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh. Yet his days shall be 120 years. Now the Hebrew word that's translated strive in the New King James and the New American, it's translated abide in the ESV. And the translation abide, instead of saying my spirit will not strive, my spirit will not abide. That's the way it's translated. And this is largely, this translation is largely based upon working backward from the Greek and Latin translations. And it's working backwards from those translations to what they suppose was the Hebrew word behind those translations. But with Kyle, I prefer to stick with the word, the Hebrew word, as it's in the Kittle text, which uses the word that means rule or judge. And this fits the context best. God is saying, I'm not going to judge. I'm not going to contend in judgment anymore. As one commentator puts it, it's as if God should say, my spirit shall not perpetually keep up the process of judgment, rebuke, conviction, and condemnation. He's saying, in effect, that his spirit, speaking through preachers like Enoch, speaking through preachers like Noah, as well as by the inward operations of the conscience, his spirit is not gonna always be pressing upon the consciences of men that they need to repent. He's not gonna strive with them. He's not gonna press them in this internal judgment of their hearts. He's gonna withdraw. It's an awful picture. And in Nehemiah 9, verse 30, the same idea is expressed by way of confession to God regarding how he was patient with Israel. And Nehemiah and others, they pray, for many years you had patience with them and testified against them by your spirit in your prophets, and yet they would not listen. So I believe that this is referring this passage to the fact that God testified in the prophets, in Noah and Enoch, preaching to them, testifying to them of their wickedness. And God says, I'm going to take that out. Their voices are going to be silenced. And they're going to be left alone in their wickedness to their own judgment. Now, in Genesis chapter 6 and verse 3, Yahweh then gives the reason for withdrawing the influence of His Spirit. He says, for He is indeed flesh. The reason God gives is not what man has done, but what man is. He's flesh. His nature is carnal. It's fleshly. And God is underscoring man's total depravity. He's saying men have proven themselves to be totally given over to the flesh, totally incapable of being influenced by spiritual principles that would lead them in the direction of life. He's flesh. He's carnal. And then at the end of the verse, we read this phrase, and yet his days shall be 120 years. So this brings us to the question, is God saying from now on men will only live 120 years old? Well, obviously this can't be the meaning because if you read the book of Genesis, almost everybody lived past 120. So the meaning of these words is that God was going to give men 120 years to repent before he would send the flood. And this statement is parallel to Jonah chapter 4 and verse 5. He had 45 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. So God was going to stay His hand of judgment for 120 years and then it would come. And here's where I want to have you turn with me to 1 Peter chapter 3. It's a very difficult passage. We're not going to be able to go into all the details. This is a passage often quoted in connection with Genesis chapter 6. And as I thought about Pastor Hill having preached about this passage, I thought, boy, I didn't have to preach this passage. It's one of those places where a lot of trees were cut down to make all the paper and the ink that goes into all the details about this passage. But I want to read it, and I think you'll understand why it's a difficult passage. Chapter 3, beginning with verse 18. by whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is eight souls, were saved through water. Now here let me just say at the outset that I believe that it's a mistake to suppose that Peter is saying that Christ went to preach to people that were in hell between the time in which he died and the time he rose from the dead. That in that interim period that he went down into hell and he preached to spirits in prison, that is, spirits that are currently in hell during that time between his resurrection and death. And I think this interpretation, it immediately raises the question, well, who were those spirits and what prison were they? Were they fallen angels? As some people suppose, they want to use this passage for the sons of God, that they were the demons that were then thrown in hell. And Jesus went down later after he died and he preached to them. Were they the souls of damn people in hell? Were they the souls of Old Testament saints in Hades waiting until Christ would come for them? What is being referred to here? These spirits that are in prison. Well, I don't believe that it's referring to Jesus going to hell and preaching to spirits that are in the condition of being damned. And let me give you the reason why I don't think that that's the case. Let me give you actually more than one reason. One basic reason for rejecting this interpretation is found in Jesus' words to the thief on the cross. Today you will be with me in paradise. It's a very simple argument. Jesus says, I'm going to be in paradise. He didn't say, I'm going to be in hell. You can go to paradise and wait a little while. I got to go down there first and then I'll meet you up in paradise. And these words, they inform us that between his death and resurrection, Christ's soul was in the place of the blessed dead who die in the Lord and nowhere else. He was not in hell. He wasn't as some people are in some kind of a waiting room or purgatory, or as Peter's words, in prison for Old Testament saints or for the damned. So that's one argument. And then a second consideration, I think it should make us reluctant to adopt this idea that he went and preached to fallen angels or damned sinners, is that preaching is reserved for this present life. All the way through the Bible, it's always preaching to sinners in this life. And in an article that's on this whole subject in the Banner of Truth, and I remembered this from years ago, I thought it was so helpful, Morris Roberts, he writes this. The Bible knows no preaching to the dead, either to the blessed dead or to the wicked. Singing is certainly heard in heaven, but not preaching. Still less is there preaching in hell. It is inconsistent with all that we are told about heaven or hell to suppose that preaching is ever heard in either place. Preaching is a means of grace to men while they are still in a state of probation in this present life. Once our spiritual condition is sealed by death, we are beyond all possibility of change. If so, then preaching would be of no value at all, for preaching aims to change men." Now one key to unlock the meaning of Peter's words is provided just a few verses later in chapter 4 and verse 6. And let me read those verses. Peter says, for this reason the gospel was preached also to those who were dead. that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit." Now you notice, if you notice carefully, it says the gospel was preached, past tense, to those who are dead presently. The persons referred to are now dead, but the gospel was preached to them while they were still alive. And applied to chapter 3 and verse 19, this tells us that the spirits in prison, they're referred to in that verse, are the ones that are now in a disembodied state of death. But there was a time when they were alive and they were preached at. And the spirits of the wicked, they're said to be now in prison, yes, because they're in hell. But these particular spirits, chapter 3 and verse 19, tells us they were once alive, and they were alive back in the days of Noah. So when did these people hear preaching? The answer, verse 20, is that they heard this preaching while the ark was being built. The preaching of Peter that he's referring to is not the preaching of Christ during his earthly ministry. It wasn't the preaching that took place between the death and resurrection of Christ. It was the preaching of Noah in the years in which he was building the ark. Noah was the inspired mouthpiece of Christ who was sent by Christ to warn the pleasure-loving sinners of that day to flee the wrath that's about to inundate them and all mankind apart from the ones that were saved in the ark. Christ mightily empowered Noah with boldness and earnestness to preach to stubborn sinners for 120 years. I don't think I want Noah's calling. I wouldn't want to have to preach back then. 2 Peter 2.5, that verse, Peter calls Noah a preacher of righteousness. And all of this indicates that Noah's preaching was no ordinary preaching. It was Christ-given preaching. It was Spirit-anointed preaching. It was powerful preaching. Let's pray for such preaching in our day. We live in desperate times. We live during days in which there's widespread apostasy from the truth, days of compromise, in which the sons of God are marrying the daughters of men, in which even professing Christians are marrying unbelievers, and the families are being corrupted because of it, and they marry because of a beautiful face and attractive form and no more. We live in an era that's soaked with the sewage of what the Bible calls the sins of uncleanness. We live in an age of rising violence, But there's something different here. We have a better message than Noah did. We have a message about a completed salvation, a message not in shadowy forms about what might happen or what will happen down the road. We have a message not conveyed in shadowy forms, but a message that's as clear as the noonday sun, a message about Christ Jesus and Him crucified, a message about Jesus who raised from the dead. We live in the age of the gospel, the age of the book of Acts, the age in which we can go with great boldness and spirit-empowered preaching even in the midst of great opposition. We live in an age in which, though there is great wickedness that's rising as it was back in the days of Noah, we live in days of hope. We live in days in which Christ is saving multitudes. We live in days in which there's going to be a multitude that no man can number that will be gathered around the throne as a result of preaching in our day. So let's preach this way and pray for such preaching and pray for success of such preaching. And let's also preach this message with great patience. Noah preached for 120 years. God patiently gave sinners 120 years to repent. And how patient he is, even to this day. But our text also warns us against abusing God's patience. Those people back then, they abused that patience. We mustn't allow our hearts to be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. We mustn't say, well, I got plenty of time. Don't put God to the test, lest he say to you, like you said to those people and of those people, leave this one alone. He's flesh. I'm not going to deal with him anymore. He's flesh. Don't preserve, don't presume that the spirit of God is going to strive with you forever. If he were to leave you to your flesh, if he just leave you, if his restraint, if his preaching, if his gospel, if his spirit would just depart from you, you'd be lost. And so if you're thinking, well, I can get saved anytime I want to. I can just believe and I can repent and I've got a time to figure this all out. Don't do that, my friend. If he leaves you to your sins, if he leaves you to your flesh, you'll be lost forever. You'll be like those people that perished and died in a watery grave. If God were to say, I've had enough, leave that one to the flesh, there would be no hope for you. Don't presume upon God's grace. He's patient, but His patience has its limits, His divinely appointed limits. His patience up until a time in which He casts people off because of their wickedness. And let's be careful lest we harden our hearts with the deceitfulness of sin. Well, I appreciate your allowing me to preach this rather dense material during this hour, as opposed to a regular sermon. And I appreciate your patience in listening to me. Let's pray. Father, we thank you and bless you that you've given to us the record of this wonderful man. We look forward to meeting Noah someday. We're amazed at what kind of a man he must have been to preach for 120 years, to boldly preach, to spiritually anointed preach. And we pray, O Lord, that you would help us to preach this way. Help us even, not only as preachers, but also as your people, to speak with boldness the gospel of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We have so much more reason to preach than Noah did. And we pray, Lord, that you would be pleased to bless our preaching. Pray that You would help us to not presume on Your patience, not to presume upon our own hearts, thinking that we'll be able to go back to the right way whenever we please. Help us to remember that the deceitfulness of sin would harden us, and help us that none of us would come to the place where You say of us, well, He's just flesh, I'm going to leave Him alone. Have mercy upon us, we do pray in this day. We pray in Christ's name, amen.