The prediction business is deeply flawed, because we are deeply flawed, and our wishes easily worm their way into our predictions.  Scientists have long understood that the presence of the observer can affect what is being observed: this is called, logically if rather generically, the Observer Effect.  Some Christians indulge in Armageddon timetables and labels: a sort of sideline, a hobby.  Would that they might use the time, interest, and energy to indulge in evangelism and acts of charity.

          It is not for us to know what the Father knows.  Jesus is very clear about that.  Jesus wants us to be so clear about this that he tells us not even he knows the hour or the day.  Our business is with other matters, closer to home, nearer to our eyes, our hands, our gifts.  God means for our focus to be here, now.  Of course, we wonder!  We read what Jesus says about the coming of the end times.  We may try to read Revelation; I told you not long ago it’s a joyful book meant for our comfort.  You may come away from it confused, even troubled, unsure what any of it is supposed to mean, unsure how to understand.  Dreams, visions, poetry, can be difficult to understand.  At one level, what Jesus tells us isn’t so much to be comprehended as experienced, felt.  The Word is as much for our hearts as our heads.  Above all, the Word is for our soul, and what is the language of the soul?

          The Bible tells us, in the language of the soul, the truth of who we are in God’s sight, in God’s appraisal.  This truth is at once terrible and wonderful: terrible because of our many failures and faults, wonderful because of Jesus Christ.  Terrible because of wrath, wonderful because of salvation.  Salvation is by faith; wrath is the sure outcome of no faith.  Our faith in Christ is God’s gift to us by the Holy Spirit.  Our faith in Christ is God’s Word to us, His special, personal message to each and every one of you, that He has chosen to be wonderful to you.  God has freely chosen long before, without any consideration of your personal merit or lack of merit, freely chosen to be wonderful to you.  God knows why!  We wonder.  We can spend a lifetime wondering; we will spend eternity in wonder.

          By our choices, we can choose for God to be terrible to us.  That sounds insane, because it is, but not from the perspective of the world, the flesh, the wayward heart.  If you reject God, if you regard all that Christian God talk as being so much foolishness—a choice—you are wonderfully sane, in the eyes of the world, though insane from the perspective of faith.  In my college years, I had an acquaintance whose father played a funny game with her when she was a little girl.  He would show her a quarter and tell her he would give it to her: all she had to do to get the quarter was say “God doesn’t exist.”  Isn’t that a funny game?  It paid well.  By our choices, we can choose for God to be terrible to us rather than wonderful.  The truth of who we are in God’s sight is at once wonderful and terrible.

          Jesus tells us of days that will be “just like the days of Noah” (24:37).  Terrible and wonderful.  The offer of mercy and its rejection.  The offer and the rejection of fellowship with God, true knowledge of the one, true God.  In Genesis—so soon in the Bible!—we read, “God saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time” (Gen 6:5).  Jesus has told us that the increase of wickedness results in love growing cold (24:12).  When love of God, the true, living God, grows cold, wickedness warms up, and we warm up to wickedness.  Is wickedness on the increase?  Lostness.  “Surely, God can’t be the answer!”  “Don’t talk to me about God!”

          “Every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time”?  Is that possible?  Could such a time ever have been?  Could such a time ever be?  What is evil, in God’s sight, most evil?  Wanting nothing to do with God.  Rejecting, denying, ignoring.  Being occupied with anything and everything but God.  Living for anything and everything but God.  What are the thoughts of the human heart that never thinks of God?  Scripture tells us the answer is evil.  That’s not usually the way we think of it.  No, no.  The heart that never thinks of God is just busy, preoccupied with other things, seeking a fun, happy life, pursuing the things that matter.  The truth of our situation in God’s sight, in God’s appraisal, is at once wonderful and terrible, as Jesus the Word of God continually, faithfully tells us.

          As Genesis tells us of the days of Noah, one word comes up repeatedly.  Listen for it: “The earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence.  God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways” (Gen 6:11-12).  Did you catch it?  Corrupt.  I guess corrupt is like evil, but it’s different, too.  Corruption is like rottenness: another word for rotting is corruption.  Corruption is like deterioration, loss: we speak of data being corrupted.  The word comes from a root that means broken.  Corruption is brokenness, and how much brokenness, upon this earth!  “[T]he earth is filled with violence because of them” (Gen 6:13): filled with violence as human beings pursue what is not God.  The consequence of that fruitless pursuit is violence: frustration, desperation, rage, lust, envy, hatred.  Violence is the offspring of broken people.  So far from God’s purposes for us!  Yet Jesus is there, too.  When we remember the violence Jesus experienced, we know for a certainty that Jesus is with us as we walk through this broken world; Jesus knows every blow of violence.  We aren’t abandoned.  We aren’t left to endure, to suffer, alone.

          The writer of Hebrews tells us that, “By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family.  By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith” (Heb 11:7).  Though what God has done is visible everywhere, God Himself is unseen, and He works in unseen ways, ways of faith.  Noah’s faithful response is to do as God says, to do things that seemed foolish, insane to people around him.  A big waste of time, money, a wasted life.  What a chore!  What a bore!  No fun.  Noah’s response of faith condemns the world; that is, Noah’s faith in God is a rejection, a condemnation of the ways, the promises of the world, a rejection of the pursuits that seem to matter so much to so many: profitless pursuits from the perspective of eternity, salvation, Christ.  Faith is God’s means of opening our eyes to the truth of the world and its ways, the ways of those enslaved to the world; therefore, to have faith is to reject, to condemn the faithless world.

          To have faith, God’s gift, to keep faith, to labor on the blessed work of faith, a labor of love, a life of faith—this is to pursue righteousness; God is righteous.  Faith expresses itself in righteousness, not wickedness—wickedness is the expression of the absence of faith.  Righteousness is living that honors God, seeks God, that longs to know and see God.  Let this be our focus and our pursuit, in this life, though the world regard us as crazy fools.

          Peter speaks of “those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built” (1 Pet 3:20).  The ark was not built overnight, beloved!  It was the work of a lifetime.  The duration is a period of God’s patient waiting.  Since the crucifixion and resurrection, God has been waiting patiently.  How patient God is!  If I might attain only the smallest measure of the patience of God!  I know I have been a trial to God’s patience!  What Jesus tells us, what we know already, as we know our Bible, is that the time of patience has an end.  God will not forever be patient with corruption and violence.  What to do in the meantime, the time left to us?  The only time you and I really have, ever have, is right now, today.

          Jesus reminds us of how, in Noah’s day, people were eating, drinking, marrying, “up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came [. . . .] That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man” (24:38-39).  Living as if nothing were going to happen, as if everything will continue about the same as it always has, living as if there were no God, as if even if there were some sort of God, it didn’t matter, as if all that really mattered was pursuing a happy, fun life.  Only what does such a life look like, really?

          People have different ideas about what makes for a happy, fun life.  One idea about a happy, fun life refuses to know God.  Such a way doesn’t reject a god outright.  People have all sorts of gods—what they live for, the goal and aim of their life: success, peace, comfort, youth, popularity, wealth, power.  Scripture tells us, Jesus tells us, that a joyful, meaningful life is possible.  He never says it will be a fun, happy life, but it will be joyful, and it will be meaningful.  Jesus shows us the way, leads us along the way.  Not many people enslaved by the world put a happy, fun life and Jesus together in the same thought.  When you know that Jesus is the way to a joyful, meaningful life, you know the Spirit has claimed you.

          Some don’t listen and never will.  Some listen just to dismiss, to scoff, sneer, and feel superior, wiser, better than you.  Some listen and wonder—what if it’s true, but how could it be true?  Saddest of all, in the days of Noah, no one came to join Noah.  Gustave Doré, back in the nineteenth century, made illustrations for the Bible.  His illustrations of the flood are terrifying because he chose to show the people caught up in the flood waters, those who didn’t listen, who dismissed, who wondered but did nothing about that wondering: the last whisper of the Spirit on their deaf ears.

          Two will be together.  One will be taken and the other will be left.  There will be some left who thought they were faithful, who thought they did believe, even if they never did much with it or about it.  Beloved, we know we have faith when we love God, when our lives are fruitful for Christ—Christ accepts all kinds of fruit—me, for instance.  He accepts Jackfruit and he accepts the small, wildly flavorful wild strawberries, humble and hidden in the forest.  Service, prayer, Scripture reading and thinking, and asking, sharing love, inviting—evangelism isn’t really about street corners and bullhorns.  Evangelism really happens when you get up the nerve to do something about brokenness, when you let someone know there is help, real help, life, real life, and the real possibility of a changed life.  We don’t mind supporting charity; let’s mind even less supporting salvation!  We all want to see some changes in our lives, but what changes?  Scripture tells us to want change for Christ, for the Spirit, change for faith, for fruitful living; Scripture assures us that God provides the help we need, because God has chosen, in Jesus Christ, to be wonderful to us.

          By our choices, we can be wonderful to God.  We don’t always make good choices, though they can feel good at the time of the choosing.  Don’t despair!  Persevere.  Pray.  What you do does matter; you matter to God; faithfulness, and disobedience, matter to God.  “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come” (24:42).  Christ tells us this, not to make us anxious about that day but to recall us to our proper focus: what God calls you to be doing, who God calls you to be for Him, in Him, through Him, right here, right now.  Don’t put discipleship off until tomorrow.  Don’t lay discipleship down once you get home and change your clothes and try to get the most out of the remainder of the brief weekend.  Monday comes, oh, we know!  So does the day of Christ.  Therefore, keep rejoicing in the gift God gives you in Jesus Christ, who by faith will see you safely through the day, who by faith will give you the fullness of unending joy.

          And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.