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[0:00] In Matthew 24, we read the verses 37 and 38, As the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.

[0:12] But as in the days that were before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark. Now this chapter that Jesus is expounding to his disciples, or rather, if we're careful, we can see by comparing Scripture with Scripture, that in fact it's only to about three or four of his disciples that he's actually expounding this.

[0:36] Verse 3, with which we began, says, As he sat upon the Mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, But of course, Mark's account of the Gospel, which is, as far as we can tell, based on Peter's own recollections, in chapter 13, verse 3, this same incident is recounted, As he sat upon the Mount of Olives over against the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, Tell us when shall these things be, and what shall be the sign when all these things shall be fulfilled.

[1:09] So it isn't just all the disciples in general, although Matthew is one of the disciples, clearly he was not able to be part of the inner group that was listening to all of this. He's got his information from those who did, however, whatever that particular source is.

[1:27] But clearly, Peter and Andrew and James and John, that the two sets of brothers, come to Jesus and ask him about this, and he begins to expand to them.

[1:38] Now, it has been, shall we say, something that perplexes people throughout history, is that Jesus is clearly, if you like, he is compounding here, what is clearly descriptions of the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in AD 70, in which some of these details clearly describe, but also what will ultimately be the second coming.

[2:03] Now, we have a slight little difficulty in verse 29, where it says, Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and then the stars shall fall from heaven, and so on.

[2:17] Now, immediately, we think of as meaning instantly, that moment, immediately, right away. In fact, the actual meaning of the word means literally without a mediator.

[2:28] There is nothing coming between. There is nothing left to happen between the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans, and when the Son of Man comes back, there are no major interventions of God in history.

[2:43] Obviously, there's outpourings of the Spirit various times of revival, and declension, and revival, and declension, and so on. But there's no intervention from heaven in the sense of, Jesus is not coming until he comes again.

[2:57] God is not going to appear now through another version of Christ, or another prophet. He says there will arise false Christs, and false prophets, people who claim to be Christ come again, and there have been such, usually cranks, and so on.

[3:14] Sometimes who have tried almost unbelievably, but have said, Oh, now the first time Jesus came, he came sinlessly. And now when Jesus comes the second time, that's me, guys.

[3:26] And now I have to be a sinful Christ, which enables me to indulge this, this, this, and this particular appetite. And I'm like the more human Jesus, because I get to be sinful, whereas the first time he came, he was sinless.

[3:39] And this becomes an excuse for all manner of evil, and fulfillment of all kinds of carnal appetites, you can imagine. And to do so under cover of supposedly being Christ come again, the blasphemy of that, of course, is just breathtaking.

[3:55] But there have been such. Just as there are false prophets, we can think of Muhammad, we can think of any other number of false prophets who claim to speak directly from God, but as Jesus said, by their fruits you shall know them.

[4:10] And what have been the fruits of these false prophets down the years? The final true prophet, of course, accepting our Lord as the prophet, priest, and king. The final true prophet with a capital P in that sense is, of course, John the Baptist.

[4:24] The one who prepares the way of the Lord. After Jesus has appeared on the stage of history, there is nothing left to do but outwork that gospel grace.

[4:38] Throughout the rest of salvation history. And it is in that sense, I believe we should understand, immediately, verse 29, there is no mediator, no additional intervention to come, other than, as we say, various times, works of the Holy Spirit and so on, in reviving and converting souls.

[4:57] There is a harvest to be gathered in. There are stock by stock, ear by ear. The corn is to be gathered into the garner. There is work to do, but there's not going to be any more divine intervention in the sense of God appearing in the flesh.

[5:14] There's not going to be any more appearances of angels like there was to the Virgin Mary and so on, and to the shepherds in the fields. Angels will be at work amongst the Lord's people, but not in the same way as they were before.

[5:27] There won't be the heavens opening and the Spirit descending like a duck. There won't be these things that there were in New Testament times. It is immediately. There is no longer any of this kind of dramatic intervention.

[5:42] It is just the outworking of what has already been done. Now, of course, some people, including professors at universities and so on, and those who claim to teach divinity, would say with incredulous phones, are we really to take that since the last full stop in Revelation, God has said nothing?

[6:05] God hasn't said another word. He hasn't contributed anything to human society. He hasn't had anything to say since that was completed 2,000 years ago, and this they take then as being the excuse for why all man has to be open to new revelations of the Spirit.

[6:22] And we have to have God maybe leading us in new ways, and the Holy Spirit maybe telling us new things that he didn't tell us in the days of the Bible, of the Scriptures. Now, of course, it is entirely possible that the Lord may lead and guide us to fulfill his particular will in our particular generation, but it will always be in accordance with the written Word of God.

[6:46] The Spirit of God and the Word of God will not, cannot contribute to one another any more than the different persons of the Trinity can be at lower heads with one another. So whilst it may be true that God has yet to say more new things, that God's not true perhaps that God has nothing to say since the last full stop in Revelation, it is certainly true that he has nothing different to say from what he has already revealed in writing.

[7:19] Therefore, any way that the Spirit leads us will always be in accordance with the written Word. So we make us the outworking of God's grace without any further mediator than the one that we have.

[7:32] There is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. And he is outworking his gospel purpose, not only through the fall of Jerusalem, but through the Romans and AD 70 as that was, which of course is described in these catastrophic terms in Matthew 24, and of course in the Mark and Luke parallel accounts.

[7:54] And we shouldn't, we can't really put into words just how catastrophic that would have been. It was, you know, if you think of a city of any size, and Jerusalem was an extremely populous city at that time.

[8:07] Yes, it had become a sink of iniquity. But the Romans slaughtered, you know, whole sections of the population. They crucified people in their thousands round about the walls of Jerusalem to try and terrify the defenders.

[8:22] When the city fell, almost everybody in it was slaughtered or taken away into slavery. We can't reimagine that level of slaughter or atrocity.

[8:34] You know, as I think I've mentioned in the past, the one and only time that I've visited the Holy Land, a lady in the group that I was with, as a little cart went past the group we were standing in, and it was a little sort of push cart thing with bicycle wheels, and there was obviously something sharp sticking out of the bicycle wheel, because as it went past, she suddenly shouted, Oh, I'm paying like that, and looked down at her leg, and I saw out of the bottom of her trouser leg what just looked like somebody pouring a bottle of ryan bean out.

[9:10] This was a blood gushing, literally gushing out of her leg, running in the cobbles of the streets. Such was the nature of the wound. She had to go to an accident emergency hospital, get it dealt with and so on.

[9:22] But I was just taken aback who's used to a little cut or a little trickle or whatever. This was just literally pouring blood into the street cobbles. I just thought, you hear descriptions of the streets running with blood.

[9:36] And that was one accidental injury in one person. Not diminishing pain or suffering a bit, but imagine if somebody is deliberately slashing, cutting, slaughtering with their swords, with their cutlasses, whatever, or axes, and people are getting hacked at this, how the streets would be literally running with blood.

[10:00] They say that when the Crusaders sacked Jerusalem, that they were wading ankle deep in blood. That is entirely possible. And when we think about the amount of devastation, the roads had cut down every tree, they had destroyed every decent piece of land.

[10:14] It was just like a lunar landscape that Palestine was reduced to. We cannot really imagine the suffering or devastation that the Romans inflicted on Jerusalem when it finally fell.

[10:27] You can quite see why people thought this was the end of the world. Why they thought there's nothing left to happen. Of course, the Lord still had a lot of souls to gather into glory.

[10:38] That's one reason why it has been going on so long, this period of grace. The trouble is, of course, that now, because we have had so much period of grace, we tend then to think, oh, well, good ages yet.

[10:52] There's nothing left to worry about. But as in the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. But as in the days that were before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the day that Noah entered into the ark.

[11:08] And knew not till the flood came and took them all away. I was just a young teenager when, some of you will remember the Falklands conflict, when that happened. But I remember watching TV, how it unfolded in the news reports each night.

[11:22] And the gentleman who was the foreign secretary at the time was somebody called Lord Carrington. And he resigned his position as foreign secretary after the Argentinians invaded the Falkland Islands because he thought, well, as far as foreign affairs go, I'm the guy who ultimately is responsible for it.

[11:41] This has happened on my watch. So he resigned. And he was being interviewed by someone on the television and said, you know, you're the guy in charge. You must have had a hint that something like this was going down.

[11:53] He said, but there's been negotiations and counter-negotiations and threats of violence and so on, going on between Britain and Argentina over the Falklands for like 20 years. This, of course, was 1982.

[12:04] So going back to the early 60s. And he said, yes, but I mean, this has happened. Surely you need to do something. He says, well, yes, I've resigned. And the interviewer wasn't quite saying, yes, but you must have known something like this was going down.

[12:17] There must have been hints of it. He said, yes, I've been talking about it for 20 years. But nobody actually expected that it would happen there and then when it did. And this is the thing.

[12:28] Like with Noah's Ark, it had been 100 years in the building. Initially, it would just have seemed like somebody's crank idea.

[12:40] Building the Ark on the land. Huge dimensions and all the amounts of trees that were needed to have felled and all the cost of it. You know, it must have cost everything that Noah had.

[12:52] If you think about it. We dealt with this when we looked at it in Genesis some months back or a couple of years back. And we looked at how he must have expended everything that he had to construct this huge, massive boat.

[13:05] And once it was finished, it had been pitched and tarred inside and out. The flags wouldn't come immediately, of course. We needed to get all the straw and proven and all the provisions that we needed for men and women and for beasts too.

[13:19] All into the yard. And gradually, as the animals were brought supernaturally, and the Lord moving them to come with their pairs or their servants or whatever. And, you know, people would have watched this happening.

[13:31] Watched them bringing them into the yard. And thinking, you know, this is really strange. This is really odd, isn't it? Gosh, the guy must be absolutely barking mad. Look at what's going on here. Never mind. Let's get back to work.

[13:43] And they carried on with their business. And they were married. They were given in marriage. They were eating and drinking. That doesn't necessarily mean, verse 38, that they were specially feasting. It just means that they weren't going about their ordinary life.

[13:57] They were eating. They were drinking. They were carrying on with their work. They were marrying and giving in marriage. And when you think about it, probably on the day that the floods came, that the rain came, it was probably somebody's wedding day.

[14:10] And Jesus uses this particular example. There were people for whom that would be their wedding day. They were on the special days of their lives. And, oh, look, it's raining outside. Never mind. But they would carry on with their festivities.

[14:22] And then it's raining a bit harder. And then water begins to come into the tent. And so on. You're just hoping it can stop. And of course it doesn't stop. Why did it happen now? If you knew in advance that this was going to happen, would you not say, oh, Lord, come on, let me just get married first.

[14:37] Let me get my wedding day out of the way before you come back. Now, I don't know if you've ever been in situations like that. I can truthfully say when I was about to get married myself, that thought didn't cross my mind.

[14:49] But there have been occasions when it has. Particularly when I just sat my exams at university and perhaps irreverently prayed that the Lord would not come back until I got my results.

[15:01] So that at least I would know whether I passed or failed or whatever. But no, if he had, then we'd have known anyway because you'll know these things in eternity. But these are the little things that become so important to us.

[15:13] We think, oh, Lord, don't come back just yet because I want this to happen first. Or I want that to happen first. Now, one reason this particular passage has kind of fixated me about today is because earlier on today, during time of prayer and so on, the Lord said, you know, supposing I'm going to come back soon.

[15:32] Because although we know we have no promise of tomorrow, we still have to project in terms of our plans and our work and what we intend to do and what we hope to plan for this and that and the next thing.

[15:43] I said, supposing I was to come back soon in the next couple of days. And my first thought was not, oh, no, Lord, I've got to do this. I've got to do that. I've got to make this visit. I've got to go to this place or whatever.

[15:53] No, it was, but what about Scotland? That was my first thought. What about all the people that are still to be reached? What about all the people that are still to be evangelized? And what about Scotland turning back to you, Lord?

[16:06] And all the other countries in the world too. But that was my first thought. What about Scotland? We haven't reached yet. We haven't been turned back to you yet. And as if the Lord was saying, oh, don't worry, Scotland will be represented at my throne there.

[16:18] There will be people there from Scotland in my kingdom, in glory, in my throne of grace. I said, but what about the ones that haven't come yet? I said, you see, supposing, supposing every last person from Scotland who was going to be saved is already saved.

[16:35] What would that be to you? What difference does that make to you? All you have to do is follow me. And suddenly that was a scary thought. It shouldn't be a scary thought. It should be a wonderful thought. The Lord's coming back.

[16:46] And if that's everything all done. And you think of other little mundane things. But Lord, there's this bill I've got to pay. There's these things I've got to do. I've got to pay so-and-so. I'm going to do this. And as if again he was saying, look, all the stuff you pay.

[16:58] Everybody knows. If you pay your bills, you pay your time and so on. Besides, if so-and-so gets his money, you know, what's he going to do with it? I'm about to bring the world to an end. I'm about to come back. What's he going to do if you pay this tomorrow or whatever?

[17:11] You know you'll pay on time. You know you always pay your bills in the past. What's the difference going to make? It's all going to finish in a minute. It's all going to finish any day now. So what difference is it going to make now?

[17:21] The important thing is make sure you're ready. Now, of course, right up until the last day, everything seems to be going on as normal.

[17:32] Somebody's wedding day. Somebody's sitting there exams. Somebody going shopping. Somebody gathering in their provisions or their supplies. Everything going on as normal.

[17:43] And we said the rain starts to fall. And it just seems like a shower. And then it keeps on going. Then it's getting heavier. People think, my goodness, it's really raining. But they're not really ready for what's coming.

[17:55] Why? Because for a hundred years, no one's been saying, this is going to happen. This is going to happen. This is going to happen. And it hasn't happened. And it hasn't happened for a hundred years while he's been building this huge, big ark.

[18:07] But eventually the whole reason for why it's been built comes into play. And for two thousand years, the Lord has been saying he's going to come back. And he hasn't come back.

[18:19] Not yet. But eventually the whole reason for this great gospel ark is going to come into play. And it may be soon. Or it may not quite yet be soon.

[18:30] And we might think, leaving aside, what about Scotland, Lord? We could say, what about the rest of the world? What about all the peoples and the nations and the countries that maybe haven't heard about you, Lord?

[18:41] And the Lord might reply, well, what countries are you thinking of in particular? What countries can you think of where there aren't any Christians? Where people haven't heard, either through word of mouth or through the internet or through radio broadcast or whatever.

[19:00] Say, what about all these tribesmen in the Amazon jungle that have never heard about Jesus or whatever. Or you could say, well, there's people in the streets of our cities in Scotland or England or whatever that have never heard about Jesus other than there's a swear word.

[19:12] That's quite a deliberate policy from our educationalists and our politicians to make sure people are kept in complete ignorance of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. So they know nothing about it.

[19:24] They are made ignorant by what they are, what is withheld from them in education and teaching and mentoring government and so on. Other religions can be promoted but not the truth as it is in Christ Jesus.

[19:37] These souls, what will happen to them? Some may yet be saved. Many will be lost. That is going to be the truth. Regardless of when the Lord comes back.

[19:50] Some will be saved. Many will be lost. It will be the case in Scotland. It will be the case all over the world. Some will be saved. Many will be lost.

[20:01] More will have been reached in recent years through gospel broadcasting and internet programs and interaction with social media and so on. There's reports come in from missionary bodies all the time saying we're getting all this feedback from people in North Africa and Morocco and Yemen and all these places.

[20:19] People saying tell me more about the gospel. How do I become a Christian? People who are of other faiths or Muslims or whatever in the past turning to Christ. desperate for something to fill the void.

[20:32] The false religion does not fill. The harvest is being gathered in. But we don't know when the last stock will have been gathered. But what we do though is that when the final day comes, it will be a day pretty much like any other.

[20:48] As in the days of Noah were, so also shall the coming of the Son of Man be. But as in the days that were before the flood, they were eating and drinking. They got up in the morning, they had their breakfast, they went out to work, what have you?

[21:02] Marrying and giving in marriage. It was somebody else's wedding that day. In various places until the day that Noah entered into the ark. We see in Mark likewise, chapter 13.

[21:15] Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, know not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son but the Father. We might wonder, why is one person of the Trinity kept as it were out and the other one keeps it to himself?

[21:31] The same as we have in verse 36 in Mark 24 here. Of that day and hour knoweth no man, know not the angels of heaven but my Father only. Is this just in his flesh?

[21:42] That Jesus, if you like, has sort of shut that out? Because ultimately this is something which God, the whole of the Holy Trinity, must ultimately know about. But we will have to take it in so far as Jesus is not lying.

[21:56] In his human capacity, this is a date, a time, which Jesus is not in a position to reveal. We might even say, with reverence, not in a position to know.

[22:08] Because it has been kept reserved, if you like, to one person of the Trinity. I would hesitate to say this, were it not the fact that it is what's written in Scripture.

[22:21] The angels in heaven don't know it. The Son doesn't know it, but my Father. We might say, well, how can the Father possibly keep something from the Son? Well, he could just as easily say, how is it that only one person of the Trinity is able to take on human flesh?

[22:34] Why can't the Father become human flesh? Despite what the Labyrinth saints or whatever might say, you know, there's only one person of the Godhead that has. Only one person of the Godhead is holy man and holy God.

[22:48] The Father isn't, but the Son is. The exact moment and date of his return, of the Lord's return, the Father would appear to have reserved to himself.

[23:01] In Luke's account of the Gospel, again, we have this similar description. And there are one or two other things that are added in, you know, remember Lot's wife. Of course, looked back and hankered for that which she had left behind in Sodom, perhaps for members of her family.

[23:20] Or friends that were there. But ultimately, we are compelled to choose. We either seek to pursue the Lord and his glory, his salvation, and these things.

[23:34] Greater and greater distance opens up between us and them. As Lot and his family, when they began their flight, they began it from within the streets of Sodom. And then gradually they got to the gates.

[23:46] And then gradually a little bit of distance between them and the city. And then more and more distance. And this, I would suggest to you, is how we leave the world behind. It is gradually, step by step.

[23:58] Sometimes you might have people say, oh, well, if you're going to become a Christian, you've got to ditch this, this, this, and this. I've heard, you know, people say, I've used this example in the past, a guy, a missionary of Howland speaking, saying that when he, a younger guy, when he became a Christian, he thought, I've got to throw out all my record collection completely.

[24:15] And he chucked it off. He threw out all his worldly record collection. And he thought, this is what I've got to do to be a Christian. Well, I knew myself. I hadn't done that. I hadn't chucked out my record collection when I became converted.

[24:27] But what I did find, as time went on, is that I listened to it less and less. And that less and less did I have any desire to listen to it. And more and more did I find, how did I ever listen to that?

[24:40] That is so God-disordering. That is blasphemous lyrics. That is so unclean. Why would I even want that in my life, even before I was converted? And less and less do you ever play it.

[24:52] And eventually you get to the stage where you're chucking it. Not when you think, oh, these things are terrible. I must chuck them. But because you simply have no use of it anymore. And gradually, Lot's wife and Lot and the family, as they fled, they'll be putting more and more distance, step by step, between themselves and so on.

[25:09] And this, I would suggest to you, is how we leave the world behind. It is not, oh, suddenly all at once, ditch it. You can do it that way. But perhaps the black to white sudden change might cause some to do exactly what Lot's wife is doing here.

[25:28] To look back and say, oh, I wish I didn't have to do that. I wish I didn't have to leave. So suddenly, gradually, step by step, we open up the distance. Such that we do not need to look back.

[25:41] We don't want to look back. We don't want to be back. We don't want to look back.

[26:13] There will be false prophets. Don't listen to what they say. For as the lightning coming out of the east and shining even out of the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.

[26:26] Now what happens when you have lightning that strikes? You might see it flashing. You might not see it flashing. You might be in your bed with all the lights off and the curtains drawn.

[26:38] But if lightning goes off outside, you will know that it has happened. Because you will see suddenly your whole bedroom will be flooded momentarily for a split second with light.

[26:50] Despite the fact you think you're in total darkness. In other words, when it happens, not only will it be sudden, but everybody will know that it's happened. And when the coming of the Son of Man is, not only will it be sudden and instantaneous, but nobody will be in any doubt.

[27:09] Nobody will say, oh, he's out there in the desert. Oh, is he? I haven't gone to sea yet. No, there will be no question. There will be no doubt. There will be no discussion. When he comes, it will be sudden. It will be instantaneous.

[27:19] But right up until that day, people may have been saying for 20 years, oh, yes, he's going to come. They may have been saying for 2,000 years, Christ is going to come back. And they'll say, yeah, well, why hasn't he yet?

[27:31] It is for mercy he is not. It is for mercy that person by person and soul by soul, all those who are going to be redeemed and saved, from Scotland or from Saudi Arabia or from Colombia or from China or from Kuala Lumpur or wherever it may be.

[27:51] The Lord has held off till each one of these precious children is gathered in. But when the last one is in, just as when the last member of the West family ushered in the last beast and the last of the pairs of animals, we read the Lord himself shut them in.

[28:10] And once that was the case, the rains came because there was no longer any reason to hold off. All his elect were safe inside.

[28:26] Now, when that happens, when the last soul has been gathered in, and we won't know when that is, even if it was somebody in our family, even if it was one of your nearest and dearest, and they finally came to you and said, I want to give my life to Christ, and they ask you to pray with them, and you do, and it just fills your heart with joy or whatever, and that's it, you wouldn't have a go say, yes, if it happens, did you know?

[28:52] You're the very last person in planet Earth that's actually going to be saved, and as a result, the Lord's going to come back. Oh, look, there he is. You're not going to know. You're not going to know whether it's your nearest and dearest, or whether it's somebody on the other side of the world.

[29:05] It could be somebody on one of the Pacific Islands somewhere, who finally hears a missionary sermon on the radio broadcast from somebody who may no longer even be alive, and they give their heart to Christ, and they are converted and saved, and that's the last one.

[29:22] But eventually the last one will be gathered in, and when they are, there is no longer any reason for Earth to continue, and Christ will come and gather his elect from the poor winds.

[29:37] You see, one reason it shows Matthew's account as opposed to Luke is that with Matthew, you know how it says, two shall be in a field, and one shall be taken the other left. Two women shall be going to get the mill, and one shall be taken the other left.

[29:50] And Luke has got that as well. But what the Luke in account doesn't give is what we have here at verse 31. It says, He shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the poor winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

[30:09] Once the last one has actually been saved, he will gather them all to himself. And people who seem to be pretty much identical, two men will be sleeping together, exhausted after the fields or whatever, at the same, in a bed, in a house or whatever, one will be taken the other left.

[30:26] Two women working away, grinding at the mill, one will be taken the other left. They won't be able to say, oh look, the reason she was taken is because she was much prettier, or she was much more godlier.

[30:37] She went to the synagogue, but that one didn't. And that one will only know why she was taken or he was taken. No, he won't. The Lord will know. These two people might seem to be completely brilliant Christians, but one the Lord may know their heart, and their heart may be completely dark against them.

[30:55] All the disciples would have assumed that Judas Iscariot was definitely saved, and one of them. When Judas went out and it was night, they didn't say, oh yeah, there's the traitor, that's him for sure.

[31:07] They assumed he'd gone out to buy something, and they didn't say, oh yeah, there's no need for the feast, or for the Passover. They'd never crossed their mind. When they all said, Lord, is it I? Lord, is it I? The other said, Lord, is it him?

[31:19] They didn't know. But the Lord knows who it is. He gathers his elect from the poor winds, and when he has gathered them all to himself, and they are all within the ark of his protecting grace, there is no longer any reason to hold off the flood, as the days of Noah were.

[31:40] So shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. We always assume there is plenty of time. Certainly there is always enough time.

[31:54] Enough time for those who will turn to Christ and be saved. But for those who will not, it wouldn't matter. Supposing they had a hundred lifetimes, they would still be as stubborn and unbelieving at the end of the hundredth lifetime as they are at the end of the first one.

[32:11] The Lord knows them who are his. I was thinking earlier today of two of my particular friends from when I was younger. I used to go hill walking and so on when we were younger, when we were teenagers, and I met each of them a couple of years apart at holiday times.

[32:30] And in many ways, you know, they hadn't changed at all. Neither of them were believers. One was still completely, totally, arrogantly, shallowly against the Lord and completely cynical.

[32:41] The other one just didn't really care. But the thing that struck me was how much they tended to look back to the gaze of their youth, to look back to, oh, I remember when we used to do the hell walking, remember when we used to do this, remember when we used to do that, and what we did when we were young.

[32:58] And it's always looking back. As for those who are in Christ, there is that which is looking forward. The days, best days of their lives, for them are gone. They're behind them. There's nothing for them to look forward to now.

[33:11] And don't think that I don't care about that because these guys get prayed for every day in life. But to no conceivable outward change that one can see.

[33:24] But still the Lord will be glorified in his people. His people will look forward. Yes, they give thanks for what is behind them.

[33:35] But for the Christian, for the believer, the best days of their lives are the days they have in Christ. They see the blessings that he heaps upon them. They see the blessings that are laid up ahead of them.

[33:46] And Noah and his family, although they knew the flood was coming, they knew they had an ark of defense. And we too, friends, are free in Christ. But not if we are out of free.

[33:59] Have an ark of defense. Right up until the last day, somebody will be planning, somebody will be buying and selling, somebody will be making their breakfast, somebody will be going out to work, somebody will be having their wedding day.

[34:11] How inconvenient that the rain should come that day. How inconvenient the Lord should intervene and stop all these things from happening. But it's going to be somebody's wedding day. It's going to be somebody's exam day.

[34:25] It's going to be somebody who's waiting for news or results or waiting to know whether or not they got that job interview. Whatever happens is going to happen in the midst of ordinary life. You know, when you have a major intervention, like, I was going to say, a funeral or something like that, even if you think, supposing the Queen were to die, or supposing something major were to happen like that, then the rest of the country wouldn't say, oh, well, yeah, we can't have the royal funeral just then because, you know, so-and-so's going to the supermarket that day or somebody's going to interview at the doctor that day, so we'll have to hold off.

[34:58] No, the rest of the country will go on hold. For this big funeral, the state event, whatever, everything else will go on hold. This will take over when the time comes.

[35:10] And whatever may be all the things, the busyness of our little lives, what is it all for? We are created to serve God, to glorify Him, to enjoy Him forever.

[35:22] Ultimately, if our lives are not serving that purpose, all the rest is just noise. When the Lord comes, He will do what will glorify Him and everything else.

[35:33] It won't just be an old. That will be the end of it. As the days of Noah were, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days that were before the flood, they were eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.

[35:58] hitherto the Lord holds off in mercy. But one day, that time of mercy and patience will be ended, and the time of mercy and glory for His children will enter in, and the rest, we don't even want to think about.

[36:17] For now there is grace. For now there is opportunity. Behold, now is the day of grace. Behold, now is the day of salvation. The floods have not yet come.

[36:30] The ark is still open. The gathering is still taking place. The very beasts of the field know where safety is to be found. Let us not be dumber than the dumb beasts.

[36:46] Let us not be more blind than the bats of the night. Let us seek every opportunity, not only for ourselves, but for all those who may know, that there may yet be time, and yet be opportunity, for the days of Noah so far are still with us, and the day of the Lord's grace has not yet expired.

[37:13] Lord, bless this, these few thoughts in this way. Thank you.