The Depravity of Man • November 2, 2025 • Andrew Spradlin • Genesis 6-1–8

Welcome to the Valley Baptist Church sermon podcast.

We're so glad you're here, and we hope this message inspires you,

builds your faith, and moves you toward a deep relationship with God.

Today, you'll find great insight into the Bible

and learn how you can apply it straight to your life.

So welcome and enjoy the message.

If you have your Bible, please open it with me to Genesis chapter 6.

Genesis 6 · chapter mention

I think it will be helpful for you to keep a copy of God's Word open before you as we're

going to look at several very complex verses today in a message I'm calling The Depravity

of Man.

We've been studying the first 11 chapters of Genesis for the last several months, and

there's really...

four major historical events recorded about ancient mankind in these 11 chapters you've got

creation the fall that is sin the flood and the tower of babel

Well, today we're gonna look at what was happening

in the world just before God destroyed it

with a worldwide flood.

Now, Lord willing, the next couple of weeks,

we will look at that flood account.

Now, to set the context, in Genesis 4 and Genesis 5,

we find the genealogies of wicked Cain

who killed his brother Abel and of godly Seth,

who Eve called God's appointed seed.

I want to read the whole passage together to begin.

Chapter 6, verse number 1.

It says,

Now when it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth,

and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men,

that they were beautiful, and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.

Verse 1.

And the Lord said, My spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh.

Yet his days shall be 120 years.

There were giants, that's the Hebrew word Nephilim, on the earth in those days and also afterwards,

when the sons of God came into the daughters of men and they bore children to them.

Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.

Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent

of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

The Lord was sorry that he made man on the earth, and he was grieved in his heart.

So the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth,

both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I'm sorry that I've made them.

But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

Now, before we jump into the details of these verses, I want to point out that this passage as a whole shows us that the nature of sin causes humanity to get worse, not better.

Now, evolution teaches that man has evolved from nothing and has become something.

That mankind is progressively getting better.

But scripture actually teaches the opposite.

That mankind started out in a state of perfection

that he was created in.

And then we fell from that state of perfection when we sin.

You see, things are not getting better.

They're getting worse.

Because when Adam and Eve had babies,

they had little sinners made in their image.

Now, many people will reject that biblical truth.

They'll say, well, no, human beings are inherently good.

All of our bad behavior isn't a result of nature.

It's a result of nurture.

In other words, bad behavior is learned.

Now, I'm not sure that anyone who's ever had a child actually believes that.

Maybe at first, when you first hold your newborn baby, you think, this baby's perfect.

He's a little angel.

She's a little angel.

No.

maybe a demon angel, you know, you're going to find out.

It's not going to take too many years for you to realize that your baby is not perfect.

The Bible says that they come from the womb speaking lies.

I mean, I've never had to sit down my kid and say, OK, here's how you lie.

No, they just kind of figure that out on their own.

If you go over to our preschool ministry this morning,

in those two-, three-, and four-year-old classes,

I can tell you there's a whole lot of sin happening.

One kid's playing with a toy, and another kid takes it away

from that kid.

And the kid starts crying, and he might even

get a little bit violent in his retaliation.

And then the teacher tried to sit them both down,

find out what happened, and they tell two completely

different stories.

Now in that one instance, you've got violent lying thieves right over in our preschool, right?

And it doesn't take them long to start trying to hide their sin and to conceal it and to even justify it.

Our oldest son Micah, he started talking from at a very young age and very articulate by the time he was about 18 months old.

We thought he was a genius.

We're not sure what happened when he grew up, but, you know, in all honesty and seriousness,

he is often too smart for his own good.

One evening, we were over at our friend's house, and they had these beautiful white wall boards in their house.

And so Micah is just a toddler, and he's pushing around this little toy car around their house,

and he went ramming it into their wall.

And so we were horrified.

I stopped him, and I told him not to do that.

Well, about 30 seconds later, he rams it into the wall again.

And so I go over to discipline him and he says, no, daddy, I didn't run it into the wall.

I ran it into the cabinet.

It's like an entertainment center, a white one right next to the wall.

And so I would I didn't know what to say. I was floored. Right.

So I didn't discipline him thinking somehow he misunderstood.

But now with a lot of parenting experience, I know that he knew exactly what he was doing.

He was just already very good at justifying his sin at a young age.

Verse number one says that it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth.

And then the verses that we read after that, we read about this description of evil becoming more rampant.

Here's what happened. Mankind obeyed God's original first commandment to be fruitful and multiply.

But since they were multiplying sinners, since they were reproducing sinners, all of their multiplying led to a multiplying of sin.

and their society became more and more corrupt.

And that's actually exactly what happens in every society on the earth

who does not serve the Lord, who is not yielded to the Lord.

Now, in this passage, particularly verses two, three and four,

we find some of the most difficult verses in all of the Bible to understand and interpret.

who are these sons of god and who are these giants these nephilim and the way you answer the first

question about the sons of god influences the way you answer the second question about the nephilim

let's read it again verse number two it says the sons of god saw the daughters of men

that they were beautiful,

and they took wise for themselves

of the hall whom they chose."

Now, before we get too deep in the weeds here,

I want you to notice some of the similarities

between Adam and Eve's temptation and sin

and the sons of God temptation and sin in this passage.

In Genesis 3, we read about Eve saw the fruit,

that it was good and then she took.

Saw, good, took.

Well here, the sons of God saw the daughters of men,

that they were good, that they were beautiful,

and then they took.

This is clearly describing the nature of temptation and sin.

But the big question about the verse is who in the world are these sons of God?

Well, there's two main interpretations.

There's a third, but there's two main interpretations with a whole lot of variations.

One interpretation is that the sons of God is a reference to fallen angels.

The other interpretation is that the sons of God is a reference to the godly descendants of Seth that we just read about in chapter 5.

Now, we're not going to solve this debate today that's been going on for millennia.

But I do want to give you just a brief overview of the positions, mainly because I'm asked about these a lot from our people.

OK, first, the fallen angels view.

The book of Job uses this phrase three times.

The sons of God to refer to angels. In fact.

This exact phrase, the sons of God,

is only used elsewhere in the Old Testament

to refer to angels.

So that's a very strong argument.

Now, we also know that the Jews

in the second and third century BC

and the first couple centuries AD

believed that this was a reference to fallen angels.

And that, I believe, was because largely

of the writing of 1 Enoch,

which is apocryphal book

that didn't make it into our Bible.

1 Enoch teaches that the sons of God were fallen angels.

They were demons who had sexual relations with the daughters of men.

And the women gave birth to these giants.

1 Enoch, it doesn't describe big people kind of giants,

but massive giants, 300 cubits tall.

That's about 450 feet tall.

It's a very, very strange book.

Now it contains some bits of truth here and there,

but Christians rejected it as the word of God.

So in this interpretation, the thought is that these fallen angels, the demons,

had sexual relations with the daughters of men, and most who hold that position believe that

the babies that were born to them were the Nephilim, the giants, giants of some kind.

Now, the reason this is theologically appealing to some is that the proponents of this view say that this was Satan's way of trying to destroy the promised seed of the woman that we saw in Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

That Satan believed that if he could somehow try to corrupt human DNA so the Messiah could never be born of the woman, Jesus would never be born, then he would solve that.

And so...

This was God's way of destroying them in the flood to preserve the pure seed line of Noah.

That's the thinking on that view.

Now, the other position is that the sons of God are the sons of Seth's line, lineage,

and that the daughters of men are the sons of Cain's line and lineage.

Now, this is a very difficult passage to understand.

And there's another passage in 1 Peter 3 we don't have time to look at today

that complicates it even further for some.

Pastor Phil, he called me this week and he said,

what are you going to do with the sons of God?

It was early in the week and I said, I don't know yet.

He shared with me how his position has actually even changed since retirement.

This is a challenging passage.

I flip flopped on it several times already.

And because of that, because the interpretation isn't clear.

Let me let me say this.

We all need to approach this with humility.

In fact, anytime you come across a difficult passage to understand, and there's holes in it,

whatever position you land on, as is the case today, we must approach those passages with a

great sense of humility. Here's the truth. I don't know for sure who these sons of God are.

But here's where I lean today.

I tend to believe this is a reference to the sons of Seth

that are listed in Genesis 5.

And I'm gonna give you briefly four reasons why.

First of all, the demon,

we know demons are spirit beings.

They're not physical beings.

Jesus said that the demons, the angels, they don't marry.

They're not given to marriage.

And yet Genesis chapter 6 says the sons of God took daughters of men in marriage.

Genesis 6 · chapter mention

So I have no idea how demons could procreate with human beings since they don't have bodies.

Now, some will say, well, it's that the demons possessed men who slept with the women.

Perhaps.

The second reason, though, that I think this refers to the sons of Seth is that God's people in Scripture are often referred to as the children of God.

In fact, in Hosea chapter one, verse number 10, God calls them the sons of the living God.

He adds the word living, the sons of the living God.

We also know that this wording, sons of God, can rightly be translated as godly sons.

The third reason I think this refers to the sons of Seth is that the context of Genesis 4 and 5 that we looked at the last couple of weeks are the genealogies of the ungodly line of Cain and the godly line of Seth.

To me, contextually, the most natural reading of the text is that the godly marry the ungodly and it caused problems.

Fourth reason.

The reason that God gives us in this passage of scripture

for judging mankind with a flood

is the wickedness of mankind,

not the wickedness of demons.

The devil isn't blamed here.

Mankind alone is blamed in this passage

for the flood of judgment that came upon them.

Now, with all that said, I imagine I've spent more time

on this than many of you wanted me to.

And not as much time as others of you wanted me to.

But that is my very brief overview for those of you who are interested.

The large majority of my time this week, I spent studying that.

Fun, right?

But that's not the main point of this passage.

It's not the main point of the passage.

Here's our principle that we find in this verse.

Who we marry and have kids with is a very big,

Either way that you interpret this verse,

the point is clear.

The wrong people got married to each other

and had kids together.

And that led to increased evil within the world.

You see, if you're a believer,

scripture teaches that you are not to marry

an unbelieving person.

I think it's a good idea not to marry a demon either.

But my point is, regardless of your interpretation,

the godly, we are to marry the godly throughout Israel's history.

Whenever Israel began to marry ungodly pagan worshipers,

they began to drift from God, their spouses.

They drug them into their sin and their pagan worship.

They drug their kids and their grandkids, sometimes for generations,

into paganism.

2 Corinthians 6, verse 14 says,

2 Corinthians 6:14

Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.

That's talking about marriage.

For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness,

and what communion has light with darkness?

So if you're single today and you really love Jesus,

you go find another person who really loves Jesus, you marry them.

And I'm telling you right now, you're going to save yourself, your kids, maybe your grandkids,

a whole lot of heartache by doing it God's way.

Verse number three.

And the Lord said, My spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh.

Yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.

This verse is also greatly disputed.

Some say that God is putting a cap of 120 years for people to live.

Remember, they live much longer than we do today prior to the flood.

But here's what I tend to think God is saying.

I believe God is giving 120 years of patience before he sends the flood.

120 years for people to repent and to believe, or else, death and judgment.

Here's our principle.

While God is just, he's also patient.

Aren't you glad that God is patient?

Now, we know from the New Testament

that Noah is referred to as a preacher of righteousness.

And I believe in 1 Peter 3 that it indicates

that the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit,

preached through Noah during those days,

it says, out of divine longsuffering,

with divine patience.

So I think for 120 years, God was patient

as Noah preached about the Lord,

as he warned the people to come into the ark

so they can be saved from the judgment of God

if

they won't repent.

You know that

God is still incredibly

patient with us.

Since you're still alive right now,

that means God is still being patient with you.

The Bible says that God is patient,

not wishing or willing that any should perish,

but all should come to repentance.

Now, God may not give you or everyone 120 years of patience,

but often he gives a person 60, 70, 80 years

to come to faith in Christ.

Verse number four.

It says,

Now this verse is also disputed.

The word giants is the Hebrew word nephilim.

And I believe giants is an unfortunate translation.

Because this word means to fall or the fallen ones or the falling ones.

Now,

I think the Nephilim became known as giants for a few reasons,

the most prominent of which, I think, was 1 Enoch calls them giants.

But also the Septuagint, that is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible,

translates Nephilim as giants.

That had a lot of influence, certainly.

But I think there's a few other reasons.

I mean, these guys are mighty warriors.

And the best warriors, certainly of ancient times, were often big, strong men.

And so I'd imagine these guys were big, tall, yoked out guys, right, that could really, really fight.

But I also think this word giants,

the understanding of this word

comes from Numbers chapter 13.

Numbers 13 · chapter mention

When the frightened Israelites

that had been sent into the land to spy it out,

the spies, they come back to report to Moses

and the rest of the nation of Israel.

And they say, there's giants in the land.

We can't take it.

We're like little grasshoppers to them.

The word giant that they use there is the word Nephilim.

So in their fear, in their lack of faith, they were saying,

these guys in the land, they're like the Nephilim of old.

They're huge.

Now, among the proponents of the fallen angels view concerning the sons of God,

many of them, if not most of them say that the giant Nephilim were the offspring

of the human demon relations.

But the text, I believe, indicates otherwise.

Verse number four says,

"'The Nephilim were on the earth in those days,''

that is, what are the days?

"'In the days that the sons of God had children

"'with the daughters of men.'

"'In those days they were already on the earth,

"'and then afterwards as well.'"

It's indicating that the Nephilim were already around

when the sons of God had relations

with the daughters of men.

So here's what I think Moses is doing

under the inspiration of the Spirit

as he's writing the book of Genesis.

He's letting all of his readers know

about the timeframe that all of this went down,

that the wickedness on the earth accelerated

when the godly started marrying the ungodly.

And oh yeah, that happened to be also the same time

when the Nephilim were roaming the earth

who were these mighty men of old,

men of renown, famous men.

As we're going to see in the very next verse in just a moment,

these men of remit now were also very wicked and violent.

So here's our principle.

The world often honors those the Lord condemns.

Did you know that?

Through oral tradition.

It had been passed on to the Israelites,

and in Moses' day, the tales of the Nephilim

had been passed on to the point where they were known now

as these men of renown, these famous hero types,

impressive warriors, and yet God was repulsed by them.

God was repulsed by their behavior,

so much so that he destroyed all of them in the flood.

You know, our world makes the same mistake about people like that.

Our world makes the same mistake about who we honor.

So many of the most famous and powerful and influential people in our world that we give honor to,

they're known and they're honored because of their sin.

It's connected to their rebellion against God oftentimes,

but make no mistake about it.

God will not consider how famous or powerful

or influential a person was

when they stand before him someday in judgment.

Verse number five.

"'Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man

"'was great on the earth,

"'and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart

"'was only evil continually.

Here's our principle.

Human beings without Jesus

are completely corrupted by sin.

Verse number five describes the total

and complete depravity of man.

Now, the total depravity of man does not mean

that man is as bad as he can be.

No, no, no.

We all have the ability to go from bad to worse,

and some people do.

Total depravity, rather, means that there is not a part of us that is not corrupted

and tainted by sin.

It's total.

It's complete.

We're completely affected.

All aspects of our lives are affected and tainted by sin.

In verse number 5, we see that God saw their outward actions, that they were wicked.

But then God also saw what only God can see, that their inward motives of their hearts were also wicked.

You see, the deadly virus of sin has corrupted every single part of us.

It's corrupted our mind.

It's corrupted our heart.

It's corrupted our emotions, our motives, our desires.

It's corrupted our actions.

Verse number six.

It says, And the Lord was sorry that he made man on the earth, and he was grieved in his heart.

Here's our principle.

God is deeply grieved by our sin.

Our sins.

Your sin, specifically, it grieves and it wounds and it pains the heart of God.

The Bible says that even as believers that we have the ability to grieve the Holy Spirit of God.

So just like a child has this unique ability to especially grieve his or her parents,

we also have this unique ability to grieve the heart of our Heavenly Father, to grieve the heart of God.

Now, some people get very nervous to think about God having emotions like grief,

but that's what the text indicates.

One day, Jesus was approaching the city of Jerusalem, and the Bible says that he wept over the condition of the city.

He wept over the sin and their lostness from him. He wept over the Israelites.

Now, you only weep and you only grieve over who? People you love.

That's the only people that you grieve over is people that you love.

So why does God weep over your sin?

I'm telling you, he weeps over it.

He grieves over it because he loves you.

He loves you like no one's ever loved you before.

He loves you with an infinite love that knows no bounds.

He loves you.

And because he loves you so much, the pain that you experience, that your sin causes,

the pain and the corruption and the brokenness in your own life, in the life of people around

you, it grieves the heart of God.

Now, when it says in this text and in the next verse that the Lord was sorry that he made man,

some translate sorry as regretted or repented.

But this verse is not putting into question what is called the immutability of God theologically.

That means God doesn't change.

What it's describing instead is the emotional anguish of God.

This is anthropomorphic language.

That means human language that we can get our minds around

to describe the divine.

The word means a change of action, a change of course.

And here's how God's actions were changing in that moment.

God had made man to live,

and yet now God was going to destroy man so they would die.

Verse number seven.

So the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth,

both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I'm sorry that I've made them.

Now, this is describing here the destruction that the great flood would bring that God

would send upon the earth.

Here's our principle.

There's an end to God's patience.

God had been very patient with evil, wicked mankind for years.

He was patient, but his patience came to an end.

And he changed his actions when it came to an end,

from patience to justice.

Did you know that there is always an end to God's patience?

Justice will ultimately prevail.

But did you know that the end of the road of God's patience, that it doesn't have to be justice?

There's another option.

It can instead be mercy and grace.

Look at verse number 8.

It says,

But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

Noah found grace.

Noah found favor.

Now notice Noah didn't earn God's favor.

He found God's favor.

And we know that the favor of God in Noah's life, it would result in his salvation for him and his family.

They would be saved from the floodwaters through the ark.

Here's our last principle.

We are saved by the grace of God, period.

We're saved by God's grace.

We cannot earn our salvation.

We can only receive our salvation.

You see, the flood was a picture.

It was an act, but it was also a picture of God's judgment.

But the ark, it is a picture of Jesus.

God saved Noah, not because Noah deserved to be saved,

but because Noah had placed his faith in the God of grace.

And we know that from Hebrews 11, verse 7.

Hebrews 11:7

It says,

By faith, Noah.

How? By faith, Noah, being divinely warned of things yet not seen,

moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household,

by which he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness,

which is according to what? Faith.

Did you know that's exactly how we're still saved?

By grace alone, through faith alone.

But the question is, faith in whom?

Ah, faith in Jesus.

Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No man comes to the Father except through me.

I'm the way.

I'm the truth.

You might say that you're the truth.

You may say, hey, that's the truth.

No, I'm the truth.

I'm the life.

I'm the source of it.

You must come through me if you want eternal life in a relationship with God the Father.

Now, did you know that there is still a coming judgment that will not be by flood?

The Bible says it will be by fire.

And it's going to come upon the world when Jesus returns for a second time to judge all those who have rejected his salvation.

All those who have rejected his sacrifice for them.

Jesus said, Matthew 24, verse 37,

Matthew 24:37

But as the days of Noah, Jesus said, were,

so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.

That's a reference to Jesus when He comes again.

For as in the days before the flood,

they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage,

until the day that Noah entered the ark.

And they did not know until the flood came and took them all away,

so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.

Jesus is saying here, I'm gonna return to the world.

And when I return to the state of the world,

it will be just like it was in the days of Noah.

And I don't know about you,

but it seems like our world is an awful lot

like the days of Noah, corrupt, corrupt.

And just like it was in the days of Noah,

our world is ignoring the ark,

being built that's been built.

They're ignoring Jesus.

They're living their lives just apathetically,

eating, drinking, getting married, given to marriage,

all of these just random, just living life,

ignoring the coming judgment of God

as if it's not gonna happen.

But make no mistake about it,

one day God's patience is gonna come to an end.

And on that day, the ark of God will be closed.

It will be shut.

And no one else will come in.

Mankind will be left to face the judgment of God alone

with no offer of salvation, no opportunity for salvation

because they will have already rejected it.

So here's what I want to do as we close.

I want to invite you.

To repent, the same message that Noah had is the message that I have.

To repent, the word repent means to change course, change directions.

Maybe you've been living your life for sin, for pleasures of self,

for it's all about you, life's all about you.

Well, the gospel is about how Jesus came for us so that we could live our lives for him.

And so the repentance to turn from that sin of self and to turn instead in faith to Jesus.

That doesn't mean you're going to be perfect. You're not going to be perfect.

But it just means that you've placed your faith in Jesus and you can be saved by his grace.

So I want to invite you to walk onto the ark of God by faith.

To just place your faith in Jesus.

to trust him as your savior because he loves you.

Oh, he loves you so much.

He loves you so much that he went through the waters

of God's judgment, dying a gruesome death upon the cross.

Why? Because he loves us.

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

While we were rejecting him, while we were in wickedness,

while we were rebelling against him,

God loved us so much that he sent his only begotten son

to die on the cross for our sins.

And the Bible says,

whosoever believes in him will not perish,

but will have everlasting life.

Amen?

Let's bow together in an attitude of prayer, if you will.

This is a holy moment in the life of our church.

There's going to be pastors and other leaders

at the front of our worship center here in just a moment.

And we're going to ask you and invite you to respond to God's Word today,

to respond to what the Spirit of God might be tugging on your heart about today.

I know there are aspects of the message that got into just some weeds and some details of things.

It's worded in a way that we don't really fully understand what's being said completely.

Really?

But please don't get so fixated on the weeds that you missed.

Forced in front of you, you missed the main thing.

And the main thing is that we have sinned and our sin is so bad that what it

deserves from the Holy God is it deserves judgment and death eternally.

But God is patient and his patience comes from his love.

And instead of justice,

God provided another way for himself, his son,

for Jesus willingly to receive that justice

so that we could go free,

so that we could enter the arc of salvation

And so I want to invite you to receive Jesus today as your Savior.

In just a moment, I'm going to pray.

And when I pray, we're going to stand to our feet.

We're going to sing together.

And there's going to be leaders all up here at the front.

And we're going to ask you just to come as you are.

To come and walk down one of these aisles, to walk down one of these staircases,

and grab one of these leaders by the hand and say,

I want to get on the ark.

I want to be all in with Jesus.

It's time.

I've tried it my way.

I've tried it other people's way.

It's time I try it God's way.

These leaders will know exactly how to help you.

They're not going to ask you any questions that are going to be embarrassing that you can't answer.

They're here to help you to take the next step of faith.

Maybe say, I want to go public with my faith through baptism like others today have done.

1 Peter 3, I believe, is indicating that the flood and the ark are also a symbol of baptism.

It's a symbol ultimately of Jesus' saving work on the cross and resurrection.

And so maybe you say, it's time that I go public.

It's time that I'm not ashamed anymore of what I know is inside of me, that I've got faith.

I want to let everyone know about it.

See, to love Jesus is to obey Jesus.

To believe in Jesus is to love Jesus.

I want to invite you.

Whatever it is, maybe you say, I want to be a family member here at Valley Baptist.

I've been kind of on the sidelines.

I've been attending.

I've been listening.

Listen, that is great.

You can do that.

As long as you want, you can come and worship with us.

But maybe today God is stirring that, nah, I want to officially, formally belong.

I want to become a family member at Valley where I'm accountable to our church family.

I'm accountable to our pastors.

Our pastors are accountable to me.

That I'm able to serve and jump in the game and get connected in a meaningful, real way.

Amen.

I want to invite you to do that.

Whatever God puts on your heart,

maybe you just want to come to these steps

and pour out your heart to the Lord.

They're open for you.

In just a moment, please come as the Lord leads.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you so much

for your amazing grace.

Thank you, Lord, that as a young child,

that I found favor in your eyes.

not because I deserved it, because you were gracious.

And Lord, for me, you made it easy for me to believe.

And I thank you so much.

I came to a point where it just made sense.

And Lord, that you brought an awareness in my life

as a young child of death,

and the pain that it brings,

you brought an awareness of my sin.

Thank you.

for allowing me to find favor with you.

What I pray for everyone who's listening to this message,

that if they have not yet found favor with you, that that would happen today.

Help them, Lord.

They need your help.

By your spirit, Lord, we're asking you to please touch their soul,

the depths of who they are in a place that only you can touch.

Only you can go there, Lord.

And so we're praying that you would, you would touch them in a deep place,

letting them know about their sin and Lord opening their eyes to your beauty

and your love and your goodness, opening their eyes to the alternative route

of life that ends in judgment.

Please Lord, would you draw people to yourself?

Would you give them the courage that it's going to take to come out,

step out and come and give their life to Christ?

We ask in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thanks for listening today.

We hope you enjoyed this message.

And if you did, we would be so grateful if you left us a review.

Also, go ahead and subscribe to the podcast

if you would like to be notified when a new sermon is released.

If you feel the Lord calling you to take the next step in faith

through salvation, service, or giving, don't wait.

reach out to us by texting podcast to 88988.

That's podcast to 88988 or connect with us

on one of our social media platforms.

You can also visit our website, valleybaptist.org

to find even more great resources.

No matter where you are in your journey,

know that we love you, we're praying for you

and we can't wait to see what God will do in your life.