In terms of Lawrence's reception, I think my children actually said that he seemed like he was already a member, not that they thought he was. But the point still remains true, that he's been warmly welcomed into our midst and has integrated wonderfully. So we're thankful you could join with us, brother. We now come to the reading and the proclamation of God's word. Let us stand for the reading of Holy Scripture. Taking first our New Testament lesson from the exhortation to the Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 11, verses 1 to 7. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. whereby the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. By faith, Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts, and through it, he being dead, still speaks. By faith, Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death and was not found because God had taken him. For before he was taken, he had this testimony that he pleased God. But without faith, it is impossible to please him. For he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. By faith, Noah. being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteous niche, which is according to faith. This is the word of the Lord. We'll turn now in our Old Testament scriptures to our sermon text, which is Genesis chapter six. And we'll read verses nine to 22, although we'll focus primarily on verses 14 to 22. Genesis six, verse nine. This is the genealogy of Noah. Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God. And Noah begot three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. And God said to Noah, the end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make yourself an arc of gopher wood. Make rooms in the arc and cover it inside and outside with pitch. And this is how you shall make it. The length of the arc shall be 300 cubits. Its width, 50 cubits, and its height, 30 cubits. You shall make a window for the arc and you shall finish it to a cubit from above and set the door of the arc in its side. You shall make it with lower, second, and third decks. And behold, I myself am bringing floodwaters on the earth to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life. Everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall go into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you, and of every Living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. Of the birds after their kind, of animals after their kind, and of every creeping thing of the earth after its kind, two of every kind will come to you to keep them alive. and you shall take for yourself of all the food that is eaten, and you shall gather it to yourself, and it shall be food for you and for them. Thus Noah did according to all that God commanded him, so he did. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of God stands forever. Amen. You may be seated. Speaking to the fathers for a moment, imagine if you gather your family together in the living room and you told them, I have a really big announcement to make. Your children might wonder, is dad going to take a new job? Is he going to sell the house? Is he going to invest his life savings in cryptocurrency? Is he going to become a missionary to Mongolia? Is he having a midlife crisis? And you say, no, no. It's much crazier and wilder than that. God told me it's going to rain. God told me it's gonna rain, not just a mist from the ground, or even a little drizzle from the sky, but a raging downpour of water. So much water is gonna fill the earth that it's going to flood the entire world up to and then beyond the highest mountain peak. Just about everything you see around you, every living thing, is going to die. Everyone you know, all of your friends, all of your neighbors are going to die. And they might say, that sounds like bad news. But you tell them. God told me something else. He wants us to build an ark, and they say, what's an ark? Well, it's not exactly a boat, it's more of a floating house with three stories, a window and a door, and it needs to be big, 510 feet long, 85 feet wide, and 50 feet high, because we're going to bring two of every kind of animal along with us, plus food and drink for a year. And we're going to build it right here on dry ground because it's going to rain. It's going to rain a lot. Your wife might reasonably ask, how long is this project going to take? Well, it's going to take 120 years. As a family, a household of eight people, we're going to spend the next 120 years, that's three biblical generations, building a floating houseboat half the length of the Titanic. And when we're not busy with this building project, we're going to proclaim a message of judgment to people who are going to mock us. None of your friends will understand what we're doing. Everyone will make fun of us. No one will take us seriously. With perhaps the exception of Lamech and Methuselah for 120 years. But you know what? God told me this is what we need to do. Now that would take faith. It would take faith to set forth that plan and it would take faith to receive it. Because how do you know it's going to rain? Even if it had rained before Noah's time, we're not exactly sure. How do you know it's going to rain so hard and so long that it's going to flood the whole world? And if God does flood the whole world, how do you know you're going to survive if and when the flood comes? What guarantee do you have? to pledge your life and to stake all that you have on what God's told you to do. Although none of us has ever faced a situation quite like this, I'm sure of that, most of you know what it's like to struggle to believe God's word, to perhaps doubt the goodness of God and of his promises. And if that's you this morning, I want to introduce you to a beautiful and breathtaking reality. The only guarantee Noah had and the only guarantee that you need, and it's found in verse 18. But I will establish my covenant with you. and you shall go into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. Congregation of the Lord Jesus, the only guarantee that Noah needed was God's covenant with him. On the basis of the covenant, Noah trusted and obeyed the Lord, or as our New Testament-inspired commentary says, by faith, Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. A faith, you might say, that could move mountains, but a faith that was based squarely on the covenant of God. We're gonna look at this passage under two headings. First, we'll look at God's covenant with Noah in verses 14 to 21, and then Noah's response to God's covenant in verse 22. First, God's covenant with Noah. Although the concept of covenant appeared earlier in the garden with Adam, this is the very first explicit mention of the word covenant in the entire Bible. After God's initial promise to Adam that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent, as he comes to Noah, this is the second administration of his covenant of grace. What Opalma Robertson calls the covenant of preservation in which God is going to save a remnant of the human race and he's promising to preserve the present world as a stage for redemption. The only guarantee that no one needed was God's covenant with him. Now you might reasonably ask, what is a covenant? What is he talking about? Well, Ryan McGraw defines a covenant as an agreement that binds two or more parties together by promises, conditions, and sanctions. you're actually surrounded by covenants. For example, a wedding ceremony involves a covenants between the man and the wife. We also speak more informally of various contracts that we might have with business partners. But to get to the heart of the matter, the biblical definition of covenant is an agreement that binds two or more parties together by promises, conditions, and sanctions. Promises. I will do this. Conditions. You must do this. And sanctions, solemn warnings of what will happen to you if you break the terms of the agreement. Although we're gonna look at them in a little different order, let's consider this story using those three elements of a covenant. Promises, conditions, and sanctions. First, the covenant. that God made with Noah had conditions, or we could say commands. God told Noah to do certain things. Look at verse 14. He said, make yourself an ark of gopher wood, make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and outside with pitch. In the context of a coming judgment, God tells Noah to build an ark. And here Noah is a kind of sub-creator. Only God can create out of nothing, but he tells Noah to take the materials around him and to build an ark. This would have been an arduous process. Cut down and transport trees, fit and join planks together using Interestingly, gopher wood, which if you wonder what is gopher wood, I have absolutely no idea. None of the commentators seem to know what it is. The NIV translators speculate that it might be cypress wood, but in reality, no one really knows. But no one knew what kind of wood it was, and God told him to use it. He wanted this boat to be seaworthy, pitch inside and outside, protection from within, protection from without. How big is this ark that Noah is to build? Well, look at verse 15. And this is how you shall make it. The length of the ark shall be 300 cubits, its width 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits. That's roughly 510 feet high, or rather, 510 feet long. That's 85 feet wide, and then 50 feet high. So if you do the dimensions, you do the math, 510 feet long, 85 feet wide, and then 50 feet high. Again, about half the size of the Titanic, or well over an entire football field in length. Now, it doesn't say anything about shape, and you might wonder, is God telling Noah to build a boat? Well, in one sense, of course he is. It's a seaworthy vessel. But it's interesting that God does not describe it as having the shape of a boat, per se. The only other place this word is used in the Bible is the ark that contained baby Moses in the Nile River. The ark of the covenant is actually a different Hebrew word. So what does it look like? What are we supposed to think about this ark? Look at verse 16. You shall make a window for the ark and you shall finish it to a cubit from above, and set the door of the ark in its side. You shall make it with lower, second, and third decks. As you read verse 16, it almost sounds more like a house than a boat. I've already mentioned that it has rooms. In my father's house are many rooms. Here, you get the language of three decks, or we could say three stories. Three compartments, plus a window and a door or a gate. Later, Moses is gonna use this same language to describe the tabernacle and the temple. Next week, we'll see that Noah's Ark, like God's house, is a kind of floating 3D model of the worlds, with upper deck of heaven and middle deck of earth and lower deck of sea. Now, why is this ark so big? Again, 510 feet long. Well, look at verses 19 to 20, where we find something of the reason for the size. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark. to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female, of the birds after their kind, of animals after their kind, and of every creeping thing of the earth after its kind. Two of every kind will come to you to keep them alive. It needs to be big because you are going to transport two of every kind of creature. of birds, of animals, and of creeping things. Two of every kind. Later we learn that Noah also is going to take seven of every clean animal for sacrifices. Now just note in passing that the Bible affirms the natural binary of male and female. that whatever Supreme Court justices think they cannot say, this is simply basic biology. It takes two. And not only that, but they are said to come two by two. Each creature has only one mate. This was likewise true of Noah and his sons. Each had only one wife. This reflects the biblical ideal of one man and one woman for life, even against the later descriptions of polygamy in the Bible. It was not so from the beginning. Now, miraculously, as these animals line up, the Bible says that they are going to come to Noah. They will come to him. I take that to mean that he does not need to go and hunt or capture them necessarily, but supernaturally, miraculously, God is going to lead them to Noah. If you build it, They will come. If you build the ark, the animals will come to you. Now that's a lot of animals, depending on how you categorize the various kinds. So what about food? We could be stranded for over a year. What are we gonna do about provisions or supplies? Well, God thinks of everything. Look at verse 21. And you shall take for yourself of all food that is eaten, and shall gather it to yourself, and it shall be food for you and for them. Now some people have speculated how in the world could they have kept food good for that long of a time? It's possible that many of the animals were supernaturally sustained or that God put them into a state of hibernation, of deep sleep. We're not exactly sure, but God told him to bring the animals, bring food and drink, and prepare for the long haul. God gave Noah a series of commands, a series of conditions, things he needed to do according to the covenant agreements. Those are the conditions of the covenant. And the big idea underneath all of this is that Noah was being asked to exercise faith. Without being able to see the outcome, without being able to put all of his ducks in a row, without being able to connect all of the dots, God is saying simply trust me and obey my words. Now Noah, we are told, was a righteous man by the grace of God. Not in himself, but because of God's transforming work of the Holy Spirit in his life. But he is a pointer, he is a reminder, he is a foreshadowing of a greater than Noah to come. He points us ahead to Jesus Christ, the God-man who fulfilled all the conditions of the covenant of works that Adam broke in the garden. A Messiah who was perfectly righteous, blameless, and who walked with God in a way that Noah could never do. In the covenant of grace, the Lord Jesus, who has kept all the conditions of the covenant of works, looks at us and simply asks of us what he asked of Noah, trust me, believe the promise of the gospel. Well, that's the first element. This covenant has conditions or commands. Second, this covenant has sanctions or warnings, threats of what will happen to those outside of God's will. Look at verse 17. And behold, I myself am bringing floodwaters on the earth to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life. Everything that is on the earth shall die. Here's what to do. Repent and believe. And if you do not do it, this is what will happen to you. This is a solemn warning. It's a threat and congregation. This is part of the gospel message. We tell people to flee from the wrath to come. And here in Noah's day, God was threatening the world with worldwide judgment, worldwide flood. And again, this is a signpost pointing beyond to a greater threat of judgment to come when Jesus Christ, who was obedient to his father, was obedient even to the point of death, even the death of the cross. And on the cross, what did Jesus do? He became a curse for us. He absorbed God's wrath. He took it on our behalf. He called down the self-maladictory oath upon his own head and was hanged upon a tree for his people. But going back to this covenant, it's got conditions. Here's what you need to do. It's got sanctions. Here's what's going to happen to those who are outside of my will and my people. And then third and finally, this covenant has promises. He has promises. Look at verse 18. But I will establish my covenant with you. Here he does not say that he will cut a covenant, as he does later on, but rather he says, I will establish this covenant with you, and you shall go into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. Here in the covenant, God is saying there is a promise of salvation. There is a pledge of deliverance extended not simply to Noah, the man of faith, the man who trusted God, but also to Noah's households, to his wife, to his sons, and to his sons' wives. Here we get principles of the importance of natural generation of those who belong in your household, but also of representation, that Noah represented his household, just as Lydia did her household, or the Philippian jailer did his household. As we're gonna see in a couple weeks, this has remarkable implications for infant or household baptism, that the promise is to you and to your children. Well, congregation, this is clearly a covenant. We know that not merely because God tells us it's a covenant, but also because it involves promises, conditions, and sanctions. This agreement that binds God and Noah and Noah's household together through promises, conditions, and sanctions. That's the covenant. That's the guarantee. This is God, as it were, taking up his right hand and swearing an oath. This will come to pass, not only the floodwaters of judgments, but also the promise of salvation, if you believe my word. That's the covenant. How did Noah respond? How would you respond if God told you that it's going to rain? which you may never have experienced before. We're not sure what the conditions before the flood were like. But regardless of that question, it's going to rain to such a degree that the entire world will be cloaked in water. Every living thing is going to die except for what is aboard this ark. Indeed, this is reflected even in the cultural memory of the mythology of the Greeks, of the Akkadians, of the Sumerians, of the Chinese, that there's going to be a worldwide flood. and that you were being called to labor without being able to see it in advance for 120 years, to spend these years of your life, precious hours of your time, laboring alongside your sons to build an ark in anticipation of what God is going to do. How does Noah respond? Well, look at verse 22. Thus Noah did. according to all that God commanded him, so he did. Very similar language what we find in the following chapter in verse 5, and Noah did according to all that the Lord commanded him. that Noah, as a man who walked with God, and had walked with Him for 600 years, 500 years, we don't know exactly when he came to know the Lord, but for centuries, he'd been walking with God. He had been enjoying God's presence. fellowship, he had been living in God's communion, he had been living under God's eye, he factored God into everything he did, and he knew, not just by the doctrine, but by experience, this God was trustworthy, that this God was utterly reliable, that this God had never let him down and could never let him down, and with the covenant promise before him, Noah said, this is the only guarantee I need. It's God's own covenant word. And so I'm going to believe him. And I'm going to obey him by faith, Noah being warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an arc for the saving of his household. A key question for us who live thousands of years later. is how should we then live? How should we then live? I wanna leave you with four closing applications first. This is the primary one. Trust the Lord to save you and your family. As Paul told the Philippian jailer, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your households. Congregation, we live on the other side of the flood, but there is another judgment day coming. God has promised there is coming a day when Jesus Christ will return. He will come a second time on the clouds of heaven to judge the living and the dead. He will come to find faith upon the earth. And my question for you this morning is, are you prepared to meet the Lord? when he arrives. You need to prepare for rain. You need to prepare to meet your God, even if you do not live To see the second coming of Christ, it is appointed as a man once to die, and after that, the judgments. Each of us will become face-to-face with God. Whether we die today, or Jesus Christ comes tomorrow, whatever it is, we must be prepared to meet the Lord. Because, I tell you, it is going to rain. It is going to rain down fire from heaven on that day. And this earth that now is will be utterly purified and resurrected. And those who are ungodly will perish. It's going to rain. If you're not in the ark of Christ, you're going to get wet. You're going to drown. You're going to perish. Thanks be to God. There is an ark of salvation in Jesus. And if you're here today and you don't know the Lord, And you don't trust in Jesus Christ alone for your salvation. There is a way of escape. I call upon you to flee from the wrath to come and put your faith in Christ alone. Climb aboard His ark and you will be saved in the last day. Trust the Lord to save you and also trust the Lord for the salvation of your Children. Plead with the Lord for the salvation of your entire household. Pray for household salvation that not one person in your house is not aboard the arc. Second application. Trust the Lord, even especially when you cannot see the final outcome. Trust the Lord, even especially when you cannot see the final outcome. Congregation, there is a future orientation to faith. Faith is, according to Hebrews, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. Now sometimes things are unseen because they're spiritual. We cannot see God, but he always sees us. We cannot see angels because they are spiritual beings. We cannot see heaven at present. Heaven is invisible to our eyes except by faith. Other things, however, are invisible. They are unseen because they are future. They haven't happened yet. They haven't yet arrived. This was the case with Noah. He hadn't seen one drop of this flood yet. He hadn't yet seen what he was preparing the ark to endure. And this took faith, remarkable faith. I think we could apply this, for instance, to farming, where you labor for a harvest of fruit that you haven't yet seen. You can talk to Kyle about what that's like, where you're planting and you're sowing and you're watering, but you haven't yet seen the harvest. You could apply this to parenting, where you're laboring night and day for a harvest of children. but you haven't yet seen the end of their lives. Perhaps you're sacrificing certain conveniences to give them a Christian education. You're staying up late rocking newborns into the wee hours of the nights, staying up with children who are sick. And you're doing all of that without seeing the outcome. You don't know the full trajectory of your children's lives, but you're praying with them, and you're catechizing them, and you're loving them, and you're disciplining them, and you're chasing them, and you're encouraging them, and you're pouring out your souls for them. And sometimes you look at your children and you think, it seems like it's not getting through. It seems like they're not picking up what I'm putting down at all. It's like I'm talking to a brick wall and you think, is it all in vain? Well, that takes faith because you're laboring for a harvest of children whose final outcome you cannot see. We could apply this to gospel ministry as elders and ministers in our churches labor for a harvest of souls. But we can't always see the final outcome. We plant churches not knowing whether they will take off. We give hard counsel not knowing how it will be received. We reach out not knowing whether people will receive the message. And it has to take faith because you're laboring for something which by definition you cannot see. And yet God says, trust me. even especially when you cannot, you could not see the final outcome. And the answer, congregation, is to keep going back to the promises of God's word. Promises for this life, promises for the life which is to come. I'll give just a personal anecdote. My father moved our family from the city to a cattle farm, which was quite a transition from my mother, who grew up in Buffalo, New York, and in Indiana, and had never lived in those kind of conditions in rural West Virginia before. Now, he didn't do this because he thought every family should relocate to a rural cattle farm in West Virginia. But he was convinced it would be a good plan for our family. He wanted us to have a certain environment. He didn't want us to have TV reception. He wanted us to touch the grass as children. And eventually we moved and came back to the town, to a more urban area. But as I look back, that was one of the best decisions my father ever made. A huge shape and influence in my life. And he did it Because he thought it was best for our family, but it took faith. It took faith to realize he was going to have an hour commute. every day to work, and then an hour coming back. It took sacrifice. There were things he couldn't have anticipated beforehand in remodeling a house that was built in 1864. Lots of unknowns, and yet he, in faith, sought to do what he thought was best for our family, and I'm thankful for it. Sometimes, we have to leave something that feels very safe to go somewhere better. but where you couldn't know what it's like until you get there. Life is full of these kinds of forks in the road. For instance, when you marry someone, you marry them hopefully on the basis of demonstrated potential, and you're surrounded by a cloud of witnesses who think this is a good idea, and you've received counsel, but at the end of the day, you don't know certain things about somebody until you wake up the next morning after your wedding. It's just so many unknowns until you say, I do. It takes faith. And God, though he wants us to do our due diligence, and he wants us to receive counsel, and he wants us to look for demonstrated potential, he also calls us in the adventure of the Christian life to sometimes leave somewhere safe for something better, and he asks us to simply trust him, especially when we don't see the final outcome. Third application. And this more gets to the outworking of faith, and that is obey the Lord, even especially when it's hard. The condition of the covenant of grace, our confession of faith says, is simply trusting the Lord, and that's true. But faith without works is dead. James says, I will show you my faith by my works. Our obedience from the heart is the evidence, the demonstration that we have a genuine faith. What did the evidence of Noah's faith look like? It looked like 120 years of building an ark that no one understood, of preaching a message that almost everyone rejected, and doing it because he wanted to be found faithful, not in the eyes of men, but in the eyes of the Lord. This was a long obedience in the same direction. a long obedience, 120-year obedience in one direction. And congregation, that really is a summary of the Christian life. Yes, life's complicated, and yes, sometimes we don't know how to navigate the waters in front of us, but at its root, what is it all about? It's about trusting God, and it's about a long obedience in the same direction. And God is calling us to obey him, even especially when it's hard. Or maybe there's a hard conversation that you need to have with someone, and you don't know how that conversation is going to go. In fact, you anticipate it's going to go very badly. You anticipate there's gonna be serious nuclear fallout. But you also know that obedience to the Lord means having that hard conversation. And you need to obey God, even especially when it's hard. You have to do the right thing. Fill in the blank for what it might be for you. Is it ending an ungodly relationship that doesn't please the Lord? Is it taking a serious look at your friend group and assessing, do these friends actually encourage me toward Christlikeness, or are they pulling me down? You might have to make certain changes in your life. Perhaps there's certain things that have crept in that you know aren't good for you, and it's going to be hard to cut them off, but God is calling us by faith to obey Him, even especially when it's hard. Fourth application. Fourth application is to bear witness to Christ in a crooked and perverse generation. bear witness to Christ, trust God, obey Him, and part of that obedience is to bear witness. According to 2 Peter 2.5, Noah was a preacher of righteousness, and I believe this included and must include verbal testimony. It involved Noah standing up, perhaps, and declaring to his generation, judgment's going to fall, you need to repent and believe in the gospel. But I also am convinced that it included more It was not less than verbal testimony, but it was more than verbal testimony. It involved word and deed, because Noah had at his disposal a 510 foot long, 85 foot wide, 50 foot high visual aid. During his entire preaching ministry, there was, right beside his pulpit, a giant ark. Screaming to his generation, repent and believe in the gospel. Crying out, shouting to his generation, flee from the wrath to come. The water's coming. The flood is going to pour. And if you're not inside the ark, you're going to perish. You need to trust God. He was preaching and he was ark building. It was witness and it was presence. This was the ultimate show and tell. As Noah, with his sons, built this ark day by day, hour by hour, year by year, even in the face of insults and scorns, where someone might come up to them and say, what are you doing? What are you doing building this gigantic vessel on dry ground? Well, I'm glad you asked. Let me tell you what we're doing. We're getting ready for a worldwide flood. Well, it might not be like that, congregation, but as you bear witness for Christ and as you simply remain faithful, you might have people come up to you and say, what are you reading? on the plane, getting ready to take off. What are you reading? Well, I'm reading the Gospel of John. What's that about? Well, let me tell you about John and his Gospel. It's actually all about Jesus. Or maybe someone will come to you and say, why do you go to church twice on Sunday? Why do you care more about worship than about the idolatry of sports? Why? Why are your choices different than the choices of other people in our community? Why do you catechize your children? Why did you give them the gift of Christian education? And you can say, you know what, I'm so glad you asked. As you're building that ark, you're gonna have an opportunity to bear witness for Christ and say, let me tell you why I'm living the way I'm living. Let me tell you why we're different. And it's not because we're special, it's because God is worth it and God is faithful and God is trustworthy. Now there's sometimes you're gonna get the reaction that Noah did. They're going to mock you. They're going to ridicule you. Other times, they're going to see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. I don't know. The Lord knows. But this much is true. You need to sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and always be ready to give a defense for everyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. as you show and you tell, with witness and with presence, as you tell them the good news, and you can point them to this ark at your side. You say, I don't know. I don't know about this. I don't know if it's worth spending my entire life, I don't even have 120 years, I might have 70 years, I might have 80 years, I might only have till next week, I don't know if I wanna spend my days living for the glory of God. I think I'd rather spend it for myself. I think I'd rather lean on my own understanding. I'm not sure if it's worth it to have this long obedience in the same direction. Well, congregation, the only guarantee no one needed. And the only guarantee you need is God's covenant with you. On the basis of the covenant, not on the basis of my opinions, but on the basis of God's word, trust Jesus. Obey Jesus until you see him coming on the clouds for his own.