We are in 2 Peter 3 this morning, and we have not read this text yet today, so I would like to read it before we get to the sermon. I'll read verses 1-7. This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, knowing this, first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the father fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation. They deliberately overlook this fact. That the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God. And that by means of these, the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word, the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. Let's get ready to exercise our minds, stretch our faith this morning. In 1785, James Hutton published a book called The Theory of the Earth. In this book, he popularized a new scientific idea. He stated, quote, it is the little causes long continued which are considered as bringing about the greatest changes of the earth. Supposedly millions of separate details operating over, quote, long succession of ages refute, quote, the hypothesis of violent causes that a shorter view of earth history would require. In other words, from another source, the existing processes acting as at present are sufficient to account for all geological changes. No past processes in the earth differed radically from those operating today. Now this view of geological history and especially the forces that brought the modern world about became known as the school of uniformitarianism. Uniformitarianism completely dominates the scientific community of our day. Every one of you in here has heard it and been taught it. All you have to do is go to Museum of Natural History to see it or watch television, any PBS show. A recent docu-movie, I don't know what else to call it, a movie called Expelled and No Intelligence Allowed, pointed out, as it regarded evolution but also more broadly uniformitarianism, that this way of thinking is taking on an ethos of a dogmatic, exclusive, intolerant religion and outsiders are not welcome. Expelled is the name of the movie. Now, catastrophism is the opposite theory. And it holds, as the word sounds, that drastic changes like the splitting apart of continents or the creation of something like the Grand Canyon came about suddenly by physical forces either from within the earth or from outside of the earth. And fingers are almost always pointed at Christians as the usual culprits for holding to this most unscientific method. We are the unenlightened fools that still hold to the mythology of a literal world-changing flood. But there's a growing chorus of unbelievers that increasingly hold to different levels of catastrophism. This is because true science points in this direction. Indeed, the sources that I gave you at the very beginning are non-Christian books arguing for a terrible global-wide cataclysm sometime in the relatively recent past. I have 20 or more of these in my personal library from the unbelievers talking about this catastrophe. A couple of years ago, I was watching PBS, that bastion of all things Darwinian. And they gave into the pressure of catastrophism and recently aired a film called The Mystery of the Megaflood. Now, it wasn't talking about the worldwide flood, but here was what it said. The idea is that a massive flood originating in a glacially dammed reservoir half the size of Lake Michigan suddenly burst in a moment. It took only a few hours for the waters to travel from Missoula, Montana to the Pacific Ocean. About 16,000 square miles of Washington State were devastated by 500 cubic miles of water sometimes reaching as deep as 900 feet, as they carved out towering canyons, waterfalls five times the length of Niagara, massive potholes burrowed into solid rock, and sent megalithic boulders to rest at the bottom of flat valleys, all in less than two days. Now, as the narrator of this says, quote, we have drastically underestimated the powerful forces that shape our planet. You think? Vic Baker of the University of Arizona is forced to conclude, quote, this world can create cataclysms far more powerful than we ever thought. Now it's this last quote that I want to focus on because this is nothing but the modern equivalent of the ancient forgetfulness that Peter says happens by deliberately overlooking the past. In verse 5 of chapter 3 of 2 Peter. Now the Greek word for deliberate here is philanthos, which is often translated as belonging to the will of a person. In other words, it is a willful omission of the facts, a convenient overlooking of reality that self-professed enlightened people deliberately leave out of their presuppositions, their worldviews, their scientific hypothesis, or their heretical teachings about God. Now I want you to notice the arrogance of Dr. Baker's statement because even though it appears humble, a recognition of error, a need to change our position, his presupposition has not fundamentally changed at all. He says, far more powerful than we ever thought. As if no one or at least no one of intelligence has ever thought that the normal everyday world could be interrupted by sudden catastrophic changes. If that is what you think, then even if you change your view from uniformitarian to catastrophism, it's going to remain completely secular and therefore devoid of any true knowledge at all. The narrator said, we have underestimated the powerful forces that shape our planet. What forces is he talking about? Well, certainly not a first cause like God. but only natural forces, forces which themselves always work upon uniformitarian principles. In other words, the catastrophe was just bound to happen. Now, frankly, our scientific age is conceded beyond the point of anything even normally to be credited to human depravity, if you ask me, at least as far as it concerns what C.S. Lewis called chronological snobbery. Our first Western scientists were not chronological snobs. But many today are, so that it is popular, in the view of academia, to think that our ancestors walked around hunched over in loincloths, bearing wooden clubs and grunting to each other with their big lips. And the writing of these ancient people was not much better either. Their view of history was like children's books, meant purely for the entertainment value or for their ability to force weak-minded people to follow their leaders blindly without question or reason. I wrote that on about Tuesday this week and I was reading something last night. Listen to this. A quote from an enlightened Egyptologist. Each story reflects a heathen admixture of fantasy with whatever is being recalled. The Odyssey is basically a piece of children's literature. So in its way is the story of the Exodus. It is the historical myth of an entire people, a focal point for national identity. The actual evidence concerning the Exodus resembles the evidence for the unicorn. He called it a children's book. It's easy to give in to the spirit of our age. It's always easy to give in to the spirit of our age, because there's no temptation that is common to you that has not been common to people in the past. Because we all live in the same age, the age of fallen, sinful people. This is the reason why what Peter says to his audience applies just as much to you. Let me now take you to the text. 2 Peter 3 returns to ideas that are established in Chapter 1. Do you remember what that was in Chapter 1? You don't? That's because you're forgetful. and always in constant need of reminders. That's the main reason why we must not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. Let that be a lesson to you concerning the very things that are before us now. You will remember that Peter wrote in verses 12 and 13 of chapter 1, I intend always to remind you of these qualities. though you know them and are establishing the truth that you have. I think it's right as long as I'm in this body to stir you up by way of reminder." Both of those words are the very same word used in verse 1 of chapter 3. This is now the second letter I'm writing to you, beloved. In both of them I'm stirring you up to a sincere mind by way of reminder. Now just for a second, let me deal with this. said that he's written another letter. And it's difficult, honestly, to know if 1 Peter is the letter or if it's some lost letter that we don't any longer have. Now, the idea that Peter would write other letters to Christians shouldn't come as a surprise, even as Paul refers to at least two other letters that he wrote to the Corinthians and one that he wrote to the Laodiceans, none of which we have today. And all that shows for me is the divine inspiration of the Bible, because it's not the man, but the God behind the man that inspires the writing. Those other letters Paul had were not inspired in the same way as the ones that we have in the canon. And so God let them be lost to history. So whether or not Peter refers to first Peter. Or to some lost letter, it ultimately isn't important. What is important to Peter is that this is the second letter that he's written to stir up people to a sincere mind, or as the NIV says, to wholesome thinking by way of reminder. There's two points here. The first one is that it isn't enough for him to merely repeat himself in this letter. I remind you in verse chapter one. I remind you in chapter three. but that Peter needed to do the same thing in two letters. In fact, God gave us Jude to tell us the very same thing, so that makes three. And indeed, it seems to me that the whole Bible does this in 66 books. Doesn't it show us our weakness in our minds and our ability to internalize and appropriate God's Word? I mean, seriously, how many of you remembered that Peter told you to remember anything in chapter 1? The second thing is that the emphasis is on a sincere mind or wholesome thinking in these letters. Though Peter and Jude are often negative and recall a good deal of judgment and sin, these are sober things to keep before your mind always, even though virtually everyone in the culture around you pushes anything about judgment as far from their mind as is humanly possible. But it never works. We cannot escape the reality of judgment, nor of death. It's funny that we don't talk about death in this culture. And yet, the number one TV shows, CSI, Law & Order, NCIS, and all their spin-offs, and you think about horror movies that keep coming out one after another, what are they all about? They're all about death. So you can either do one of two things. You can either keep it at the forefront of your mind, That you're going to die one day and that God is going to judge the world or you can push it out of your mind where it begins to create all sorts of strange emotions and reactions and addictions and sins in your life because you refuse to deal with it. It's your choice. But I wonder what choice are you habitually making? We live in a culture where it's very easy to not think about these things. What are we to remember? Peter says, the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles. I want to deal with the commandment first. Because the rest of the section today deals really with the prophecies and the very doom that I've been saying that so many people refuse to think about. This is the second time Peter's referred to the commandment. So it's more reminder, isn't it? In chapter 2, verse 21, he said, It would have been better for the false teachers never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. Now, in that verse, you can see that there is a relationship between the way of righteousness and the commandment. And of course, that makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Because laws and holiness go hand in hand. What are the prophets engaging in? I told you last week, they're greedy, lustful, they despise authority. They blaspheme glorious ones. They have eyes full of adultery. They entice unsteady souls. They forsake the right way. The love of money, sex and power lay behind everything that they were doing. That list that really you find in chapter two reminds me of Proverbs chapter six, where it says there are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him. haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among the brothers. Listen to how the teaching ends, though. My son, keep your father's commandment. What are the consequences of this kind of love of the world? James says, Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. So what we have, we have the relationship of the false teachers to God. We have the relationship of anyone who follows terrible lies. The love of the world has an opposite, though, which can be summarized in a positive way. Rather than the love of the world, you are to do what? I think you all know, you're to love God. If you love God, then there is no punishment for sin, because true love is the opposite of sin. Jesus was asked, what is the great commandment? Now that's a singular. Just like Peter says, the commandment, what does Jesus say? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. This is the great and first commandment. Again, the singular. But it doesn't stop here because it says the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. So love is the great commandment, which is why the two are talked about as one, whether it's love of God or expressing the love of God and the love of His image bearers. So Jesus says, this is the commandment that I give, that you love one another. He says, this is my great commandment. Love your brother. Look out for his best interests. Go out of your way to help him. Do to him what you would have someone else do to you. Go to him when you have wronged him. Be proactive, not reactive. These are the things that demonstrate love. Now, here's the thing. Contrary to people that do not know their Bibles, this is not a new commandment. So Jesus says, this is the commandment that I give, oh sorry, Jesus was quoting when he gives that commandment, Deuteronomy 6 and 10 and 11 and 13 and chapter 30. And in the second commandment he's quoting Leviticus 19.18 and Leviticus 19.34. So he concludes when he says, love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets, you see. It's interesting to me that when Jesus was asked this question, he didn't go to the Ten Commandments. And it was wise, wasn't it? Because if you put one of the ten above the rest, you're going to be in big trouble. But the Ten Commandments are summarized in the two commandments that Jesus gave, and so Jesus is right. The entire Old Testament, even the Ten Commandments, are wrapped up in the law to love. This is what God has always taught and always commanded. But the emphasis was very rare in Jesus' day. Some of the rabbis taught it, but not many. So what he did that was so unique was to show that this was the true interpretation of the Old Testament law. And even more than this, what he did that nobody else on earth could ever do, and has ever done, is show the very love of God directly to the disciples because He is God. This is love. that God gave himself for you. Second John says, I ask you, dear lady, not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but that the one that we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. The beginning here could be in the beginning of the world, in the Garden of Eden, where Adam was supposed to love God and guard the sanctuary. Or it could mean the beginning of Jesus's ministry. Peter makes one more point, however, about the commandment. He says it came from the Lord through the apostles. Here he's pointing out the apostolic message and authority, neither of which come from the false prophets. And in fact, the false prophets despise their authority, despised what the apostles had to say, said, I don't have to listen to the apostles. I'll just listen to Jesus or something along those lines. So Peter's pointing out their authority, their message and right to speak for God. These apostles, these false prophets don't like that. And this is the way that it was like in the Old Testament as well. God told Jeremiah, the prophets are prophesying lies in my name. I did not send them. I did not command them or speak to them. They're prophesying you lying visions, worthless divination, the deceit of their own minds. But the whole of the New Testament, even as the Old Testament is about this commandment, John says, anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. And James says, love your neighbor as yourself. Hebrews says, let us consider how to stir one another up towards love and good works. Paul says, faith, hope, and love abide, but the greatest of these is love. And Peter says, love one another earnestly from a pure heart. And Jude says, keep yourself in the love of God. This is the apostolic witness testified earlier by Abel, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Phinehas, Samuel, David, Solomon, Elijah, Isaiah, Zechariah, And it all stems from the gospel of love that comes to us through Jesus Christ. That God is love and has given himself for us. Anyone preaching another gospel be cursed. That's the commandment. Peter says we're also to be concerned with the predictions of the holy prophets. Now, these predictions are tied to the commandments. Because the careless attitude with the one always results in a careless attitude with the other. Because as the next text shows, those who do not care about the predictions are scoffers and mockers, neither loving nor teaching the love of God to others. This scoffing is not new either. The psalmist begins the Psalms, the book of Psalms, this way. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. Neither is the relationship of the coming power of God new. This is very important for you to understand that even for Peter, what these prophets were saying was not new. Peter stands in a line of mighty prophets. I hope that in bringing you the Old Testament and the New Testament together like this, that you see how relevant and applicable the whole Bible is to you. Amos, before the captivity of Israel, said, All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, who say... And remember, Peter says they're scoffing, they're laughing at the return of Christ. Amos says they say, Disaster will not overtake or meet us. Jeremiah before the captivity of Judah. After Israel's gone into captivity and Judah sat there and watched it, the people say, behold, where is the Lord? Let the disaster come. After God sends Israel and Judah into exile, then brings them back. Now Malachi comes along and God says to Malachi, you have wearied the Lord with your words. How have we wearied Him, you ask? By saying, All who do evil are good in the eyes of the Lord. He's pleased with them. Where is the God of justice? It doesn't matter what God does in history, people keep saying the same thing. What's the common thread, whether you're reading Peter or Amos or Jeremiah or Malachi, all of them, all of the false teachers proclaim something to the effect of this. God swore that disaster would come. Where is it? I don't see it. I don't see his justice. I don't see his wrath. Good is evil. Evil is good. I don't see any predictions coming true. Where is this disaster? Let it come. It's unbelievable when you sit and think about how there's nothing new under the sun. This is the Old Testament backdrop. to which Peter is referring when he says, scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will see where is the promise of his coming? Now, listen to this. Where is, Peter says, Psalmist says, where is their God? They were saying to David. Joel says, where is their God? They were saying to Joel. Micah says, where is the Lord your God? They were saying to him. Jeremiah says, where is the word of the Lord? They were saying to him. Malachi, where is the God of justice? Why do they say it? Why do people continually deny the prophecies? It's because their immoral lifestyle will not allow them to believe that God could possibly judge them for their sin. The theology is driven by their disobedience. Men are wicked. That is why they will not believe. They do not want God to return in judgment. And it is wearisome, says the psalmist, to hear this bleeding noise day after day after day. My tears have been my food day and night while they say to me all the day long, where is your God? It's sort of like Chinese water torture to have these professors and scientists and politicians and businessmen and artists and preachers, even people on the street constantly attacking this cardinal doctrine of the church. It becomes difficult to bear. The temptation is to give up, to deny it too, to believe like liberal scholars that this is just the mistaken delusion of the apostles. Anything but the truth. The specific rejection that Peter has in mind is peculiar to the community of faith, the church. It's those who claim to speak for Christ, to know God, to be messengers of his word that say, you know, ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation. The fathers that Peter is talking about here is obviously the fathers of Israel. It's the way Stephen referred to them many times in his sermon. It's the way Paul refers to them and others. The time frame could be said to include even Adam, though, not just Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, because this is the way people say that it's been going on since the beginning of creation. Now, I said earlier that uniformitarianism as a science is new, but the idea is not new. It's been around since Peter's day. Okay, so now they're saying it's all been going on like this since the beginning of creation. Now the key to the passage can be inserted into the lock and can be twisted. Peter says in verse 5, they deliberately overlook this fact. Now we come to the place that I started the message. The deliberate forgetfulness of world history. What are the facts? First, he says, the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God. That's the first part. What's he talking about here? Peter's going back to Genesis 1, isn't he? God speaks the word and everything is. The creation came about by the word. The psalmist says, by the word of the Lord were the heavens made. Hebrews says the universe was formed at God's command. In Genesis 1, water plays a very important role. In fact, we get the impression that the water was not ancillary to the original earth, it was primary. The earth was covered in water, then came the land and not the other way around. What do we hear today? We generally hear that there was this hot molten rock, barren wasteland and comets started hitting it and that's how the water got here. Well, Genesis says the earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate water from water. And God said, let the water under the heavens be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear. And it was so. When it says, let the waters be gathered into place, This is the Hebrew word mikveh, the same word that the Jews to this day refer to ritual baths or baptisms, which is the Greek word. In other words, this was a literal baptism of the earth, God's initiation of the world to prepare his way for his firstborn created son, Adam, the son of God. Now, it's interesting to think of the original creation as a baptism. especially in light of 1 Peter 3, which says that Noah's flood was like a baptism. In both instances, you have the spirit bird hovering over the waters, even as the dove hovered over Jesus at his baptism. Now, the baptismal connection is another way of seeing Peter's next point in the passage today, because Peter says, by means of these, that is, by means of word and water, The world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. In other words, God built into the very fabric of the earth the flooding destruction that was coming. And Peter creates a direct relationship between the original creation and the flood. What's the point? What's the point of all of this? He says men have forgotten both the fact that God created the original world out of water and through water and by his word. And likewise, they forget that he returned the earth to its original watery condition when he wiped out almost every living creature off the face of our planet. So you got two things, you got the original creation, you got the flood. Now, it's true that Hebrews says we accept the original creation by faith. But then again, so did the scientists in their view. Because no one was there when God created the universe, except God. He was the only witness to it. But the flood's a little different. It's not faith alone, but even historical evidence and eyewitness accounts that support the facts of the flood. Those facts can only be recognized, however, when catastrophism is recognized as a legitimate explanation for our past. What are some of the facts? Well, I believe that among the most important are actually the stories. Some have counted over 500 of them from every culture, on every continent, across every ocean, on every island of planet Earth. From Hawaii to Iceland, from Australia to China, from India to the Indian tribes in the North America, the stories of a worldwide flood are woven deeply into the fabric of our collective memories of the past. In these stories, all say that the earth was destroyed by water. Half of them say that God was the divine cause. You can guess why the rest of them don't want to say that. Many remember the warnings that were given in advance. All say that very few humans were spared, almost always in a watercraft which was usually populated with remnants of animals. and it usually landed on a high mountain. But when these stories are ignored, which is usually the case when they're not ignored, we are taught to believe that somehow hundreds of unrelated, non-interacting people groups coincidentally made up the exact same story all over the face of the earth. I've never heard anything so preposterous in all my life. Occam's Razor is the 14th century scientific principle that is almost universally accepted today. It says that all other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best. Scattered all over the earth there are fossils of animals, of upright trees, of sea creatures on top of mountains, salt water lakes in high elevations in the middle of continents, instantly frozen mammoths with food still frozen in their stomachs. Giant erratic rocks nowhere near any rock or water source. Ice layers two miles thick in dry arid deserts. Sedimentary mountains right next to metamorphic mountains. And on and on and on and on and on and on it goes. And I would agree that a hypothesis of uniformitarianism forces working slowly and incrementally over time can explain some of these things. But it can't explain everything without becoming very complicated indeed. The theory of a local flood, while seeming to solve some biblical problems, creates a lot of others. But a worldwide flood explains everything in one simple theory. Therefore, the razor should be allowed to speak. And of course, we have the Bible, and God should be allowed to speak even louder. But in spite of these facts, many choose to disbelieve. They deny these facts. And of course, they do it on the grounds of science. But it's because they're scientific assumptions. And by the way, if you're a scientist and you have an assumption, It's not scientific because you can't prove your assumption with science. These are unscientific presuppositions and they are irrational. That is, it's irrational when a presupposition created out of thin air is used to generate data that then conveniently supports the presupposition. I presuppose uniformitarianism. So everything I see is therefore proving uniformitarianism, which proves that I was right to presuppose uniformitarianism. It's called a circular argument. Much of today's science is wholly circular. When you forget the past, you're doomed to scoff at the present and the future. In other words, you're doomed to mock God at every turn. And this is no more true than in issues of the second coming, because as they do with the past, so they do with the future. Now, go back to those quotes early on. Maybe it's a good thing when finally some secular PBS scientist admits that we've drastically underestimated the powerful forces that shape our planet. At least it opens up the door for men to understand anew that life can be snuffed out in the blink of an eye by some unforeseen force that might be unleashed upon the earth in the future. But even this is not going to help until we admit that God is behind the disasters, is it? Because at best it will merely instill a fear of fate or of natural disasters that have no purpose behind them or complete arrogance like the idea that, you know, we can somehow send up nuclear bombs into space and explode some asteroid before it hits the earth and overcome every possible disaster that could ever wipe us off the face of the earth. It's sort of like building modern towers of Babel, isn't it? Going to the lowest place we can possibly find in order to build up some tower as if to say to God, we dare you to do it again. What's the good of any of that? What's the good of having no hope and fear of disasters that are coming except for maybe you could make a lot of money at a Hollywood box office? But if there is purpose, then there's hope, especially if that purpose comes from a holy and just God, right? So that's the light into which he must view the future doom of planet Earth, because it is the one God of the Bible that has in store a day of judgment that makes perfect sense in light of the past and the things that he's already done. And this judgment comes against sin, even as it did in the past, against the creation that's willfully and deliberately forgotten God's laws and gone chasing after their own. This is nothing short of treason, which in any just society is always viewed as the worst sin that can be committed by a citizen. But we understand that future best, not by looking to God in His glory, but by looking to God's veiled glory through the personal work of Jesus Christ. Nothing can be abstracted from Him, perhaps especially not the wrath of God on Judgment Day, especially when you think about how mamby-pamby that Jesus today usually is. I can't tell you how many discussions I used to have in college with these people who would talk about Jesus the Jesus of the Gospels, which is only a one-sided Jesus of the Gospels, as if he's not also the Jesus of Revelation. Today, the love that we have talked about is manifested most as the God-man gave his life to satisfy the wrath and judgment of God towards you. And at the cross, he bore the penalty of your sin and was forsaken by God and died. But you know, this is merely a temporary state of execution if you will not trust in Christ by faith alone. And then what will happen to you? Well, many duped Christians have a problem because this same Jesus is going to return with the blast of a trumpet and the sound of the archangel with a flaming sword in his mouth. Second Thessalonians says, The Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. And before the carnage is over, his sword will be dripping in crimson, and there will be a river of blood made from those who have refused to believe God at his word. And it need not be your blood that's on that sword, beloved. Because in his mercy and grace, God has provided a way out so that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. For these, God is no longer their enemy, but their friend. He's an ark to shelter us from the flood of God's wrath outside of Christ. Please bow with me in a word of prayer. Lord, your word is powerful and active. You manifested it very powerfully in the past in our history. You created the universe out of nothing, but by the mere power of your word spoke all things into being and by the power of Christ uphold all things. You've demonstrated your wrath against sinners by destroying the world in a flood that killed all but eight people. You demonstrated your wrath by crushing your son underneath your feet, by bruising him because it pleased you to do it. But we stand here as the recipients of your grace, even as Noah and his family were sheltered from the wrath of God and the flood outside by the ark that you provided, microcosm of the temple of heaven itself. We thank you that we are hidden in Christ and that he is your great temple that has tabernacled among men. We thank you that we are able to come here today to think about our own futures, our mortality, the end of the universe even as we know it. that we don't have to be afraid of thinking about such thoughts. Doom and gloom need not consume our minds because we have faith and hope that you have overcome sin and death and that if we trust and believe in Christ and him alone that we will be saved from your wrath to come. Thank you for giving us the opportunity today to worship you and praise you for revealing these truths to us. for doing this with one another as your body on earth. And Lord, we thank you even for the supper to come, which feeds us with the truth of the judgment of God and the death of Christ, and that we are able to internalize through the sign that which is signified if we will do so by faith. We pray, Lord, that you will please seal our hearts with the truth of your word, that you would convict us of our sin, where we do not love one another as we should, where we are forgetful, where we need to remember, where we sin against you and scoff when we should not. Help us to repent. Cause us to turn away. And Lord, help us to trust more in the glorious hope of your people. And it's in Jesus' name I pray. Amen.