Noah’s Flood and the Epstein Files - Genesis - May 3rd, 2026 (Sermon Transcript)

All right, if you have a Bible, go ahead and open it to Genesis chapter 7. This morning, we're going to be looking at Genesis chapter 7, and it's the historical record of the great flood in the days of Noah. So this is it.

This is like the chapter describing the flood of Noah in the book of Genesis. So one of the more famous events in the Bible.

As you'll see in a minute, Moses gives us a very simple record of what happened and when it happened, and he gives us a few details of how it happened.

But I'm afraid that based upon this sort of like sparse, just simple historical record, people usually end up with huge misconceptions about the flood.

If you don't read it carefully, if you don't pay close attention to exactly what he's saying, you can end up with really big misconceptions about the flood.

Some people historically have imagined a big flood that affected a small portion of the earth. In other words, they say it wasn't a global flood, it was more of a regional flood.

Like the historical records that we have in the Book of Genesis are from the perspective of Noah and the people who lived in that region of the world at that time.

And so for maybe, maybe for them, they could say our whole world was flooded, but they weren't even aware of the rest of the planet.

So when they say the whole world was flooded, it's just, you have to take into perspective their limited, or take into account their limited perspective. It might have been a big flood.

Maybe a lot of people died, but it wasn't a global cataclysmic extinction level event. That's how some people view it, at least. And other people just see it through the eyes of their Sunday school lessons forever.

As in, they see a few kids' Sunday school books, and that's the picture that they have in mind for the rest of their lives.

Every time the flood is mentioned, they think of a bunch of goofy, cute animals getting on a big boat, and it rains a bit, and it all ends with a nice happy rainbow. And that's like the flood in their minds.

But the reality could not be farther from the truth.

2:46

Floodʼs Cataclysmic Scale

I'm hoping this morning that I can paint a more realistic picture of what actually happened with Noah's Flood. It was truly the most cataclysmic, earth-shattering, deadly event in human history.

I was thinking about how I could convey that, and it brought to mind this video that I saw a while back of the eruption of Mount St. Helens. I think I've mentioned this before because it just really stuck with me.

And every time I watch this video, I find myself astounded. It's old footage from the 80s, and I'm sure there are quite a few different videos out there.

But the one that I've seen, it's, you see the huge mountain, you can tell it's way, way off in the distance, but the camera zoomed all the way in, and apparently the mountain at this point was over 10,000 feet tall.

And on the video, in a matter of seconds, literally half of the mountain just melts away, like a candle wax just melting into a puddle, except it's the side of this giant mountain.

And it's like jaw dropping, it's baffling, it's like, oh my gosh, you can hardly even believe it. And then the explosion happens. The entire side of the mountain explodes outward with the force of almost 2,000 nuclear bombs.

Scientists were able to measure it, and it was roughly equivalent to 1,600 times the power of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in World War II.

When the explosion happened, the rocks and dirt went flying outward at over 400 miles per hour. The temperature of the gas cloud immediately hit over 600 degrees Fahrenheit, and 230 square miles of forest was completely flattened in seconds.

That's a forest five times the size of San Francisco, annihilated in the seconds, like these fir trees that had been standing for centuries were snapped like twigs, and even the bark was stripped off.

Eventually, the gas cloud reached 80,000 feet high and turned day into night across half the state of Washington. That is astounding power. And that's one volcano.

It's just a small fraction of what the flood would have been like. I know the flood was a flood of water, but as we'll see going through this text, it was a violent eruption of water.

So in order to properly comprehend the magnitude and the power and the disruptive force of Noah's Flood, I want you to imagine a series of Mount St. Helens level events happening all over the globe for 40 days and 40 nights.

That was God's response to human sin. That's it. It was, humans had become so sinful, and that's how God responded.

It says a lot about sin, doesn't it? And God's holiness and how he feels about sin. It was his righteous and just and fair punishment of people who had rebelled against God and completely given themselves over to sin.

So when I read this passage in a moment, I want you to keep these things in mind. Think about Mount St. Helens, multiply it by a thousand, think about 1600 nuclear bombs going off all at once and multiply it.

That's what our passage is about today. Please stand for the reading of God's word. Genesis 7 verses 1 through 24.

I'll read the text for us. Then the Lord said to Noah, Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation.

Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens, also male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face

of all the earth. For in seven days, I will send rain on the earth, for forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made, I will blot out from the face of the ground. And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.

Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth, and Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood.

Of clean animals and of animals that are not clean, and of birds and of everything that creeps on the ground, two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah as God had commanded Noah.

And after seven days, the waters of the flood came upon the earth.

In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day, all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.

And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights. On the very same day, Noah and his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah's wife and the three wives of his sons with them, entered the ark.

They and every beast, according to its kind, and all the livestock according to their kinds, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, according to its kind, and every bird according to its kind, every winged creature.

They went into the ark with Noah, two and two of all flesh, in which there was the breath of life. In those that entered, male and female of all flesh went in as God had commanded him, and the Lord shut him in.

The flood continued forty days on the earth. The waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters.

And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep.

And all flesh died that moved on the earth— birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swam, that swarmed on the earth, and all mankind. Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died.

He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground— man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark.

And the waters prevailed on the earth one hundred and fifty days. This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated and join me as I pray for us.

Father, I pray that you'd give us insight into this text to see what it's really saying, to see it and comprehend it and believe it and trust it. God, I pray that you'd help us to apply it to our lives faithfully as you would have us apply it, God.

We know that your word is not simply meant to be heard, it is meant to be acted upon. It is meant to be responded to, it is meant to shape who we are and the things that we do.

So, Lord, I pray that by your spirit, you would just implant your word deep in our hearts, that it might shape us and help us and change us. We need your help, God. We pray in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

11:00

Believing the Bible

So, the first question really is, did it really happen? Did the flood really happen? I just want to emphasize that everybody in this room needs to understand and believe that the Bible is the inspired, infallible Word of God.

Believe it or not, there are a lot of churches that call themselves Christian churches where they don't believe that the Bible is the inspired, infallible Word of God.

Usually, they have like a rainbow flag in front of them, you can tell which ones they are. And if they don't yet have a rainbow flag in front of the church, they're the kind of church that probably will in 10 years or in 20 years.

Because when a church lets go of this fact, that the Bible, every word, is the inspired, infallible Word of God, the church and the people in it inevitably go off course. And it's passages like this that get that sort of thinking started.

It's usually stuff like this. In the Old Testament, some crazy story, like a flood that covers the entire earth, and people say, well, I mean, I don't know if it really happened exactly like that.

Maybe it was kind of metaphorical or something like that, or the Bible has some myths in it. And it's that kind of thinking that erodes people's confidence in the truth of the Bible.

And eventually, they come to the point where it's like, I don't know if the flood really happened, and I'm not sure if the Exodus really happened. And those are all helpful stories to teach important moral lessons.

And when Paul says this in the New Testament, he was really speaking to this culture at this time. And the resurrection, it really was about Jesus, his spirit being carried on.

And eventually, everything in the Bible gets mythologized, and the Bible just tells you what you already believe. And it has no power to change you and shape you and convict you and correct you.

So we must believe that every single word in the Bible is true. And the Bible does, in fact, contain poetry and metaphors, but you can easily tell when it's poetry and when it's metaphor.

We should only take the Bible metaphorically when the Bible makes it clear that it's speaking metaphorically, and the story of Noah is not a metaphor.

This is not mythology, the vocabulary, the syntax, the context, the way that Jesus handles this story, and many other things. They all indicate that this is a straightforward, historical narrative.

So, according to this historical narrative, what happened? Look and get it, verse 1. Noah and his family were the only people who went into the ark.

So, that means that every other person on the planet died. Many scholars estimate that by this time in history, there were one to four billion people on the planet. One to four billion people on the planet at this time.

If you just read the Book of Genesis sort of in an overly simple fashion, and you don't take into account the fact that there were gaps in the genealogies and they didn't record every single person that lived at that time, you might think there were

like 600 people on the planet at this time. But there were, in all likelihood, billions of people, and they all died. How do we know they all died? Well, because the text says that they all died, and also because the water covered the entire earth.

Verses 19 and 20 says that the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth, that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them 15 cubits deep.

To remind you, a cubit is roughly 18 inches. So 15, do the math on that, 23 feet or so. In Genesis 8.4, Moses tells us where the ark ended up after the flood, which also helps us to sort of visualize and comprehend this really was a global flood.

In Genesis 8.4, it says that the ark came to rest in the mountains of Ararat, which is modern day Turkey. You can look it up. Mount Ararat is 17,000 feet high, and it was covered with at least 22.5 feet of water.

17,000 feet high, completely covered with water. If it was covered with water, it makes it very reasonable to believe what verse 19 is telling us. In other words, again, this was not a regional flood.

This was a global flood, and everything that had the breath of life in it on planet Earth died. And Noah really did bring thousands of animals onto the ark with him. We need to take this at face value.

It describes this for us in verses eight and nine. Bring clean animals, unclean animals, two by two, everything that was needed to account for all the animals that exist on the earth today was brought onto the ark.

So the Bible is telling us very clearly what happened. But again, can we believe it? Can we believe it?

A lot of people read passages like this. They think, well, modern science has shown us that this is not actually possible, and therefore we can't believe it.

This biologist said this, and that biologist said that, and this historian says, well, actually, that's not very plausible. And people at the time of the Bible, they didn't understand what we understand today, but the reality is we can believe it.

Just as it says. Let's look at this from a more scientific, rational perspective for a minute. Could the ark really have fit all those animals?

The answer is yes, it absolutely could. Remember, the ark was 450 feet long. 450 feet long, a football field and a half.

It was 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. That means it had the capacity of roughly 522 containers, the kinds of giant containers they put on container ships or on trains.

And if you do the math and actually calculate the volume, you could fit over 100,000 sheep on the ark, comfortably. That's a lot of sheep. Over 100,000 sheep.

But many of the animals, of course, would have been smaller than sheep. And how many animals exactly would Noah have brought on the ark? We can't say for sure, but scholars have calculated that he would need roughly 14,000 or so animals on the ark.

And after the flood, those 14,000 animals could then multiply and develop and realistically explain all the different non-human creatures that we have on planet Earth today. So if the ark can fit over 100,000 sheep, could you fit 14,000 animals?

Of course you could comfortably, as well as people, as well as food, as well as places for waste and all of that. See, the Bible is true. The Bible always proves true.

You can trust it. And I want to make a note about the 14,000. Obviously, there are far more than 14,000 different kinds of like animals and birds and insects and reptiles on the planet today.

Far, far more. But we need to allow for micro evolution without getting into all the science of it. One, because I'm not qualified, and two, because we don't need to.

I'll just say this. As a Christian, my conviction is that the whole neo-Darwinian evolutionary picture of the world is false. And there happen to be a lot of scientists who would agree with that these days.

So we don't believe in macro evolution, the kind of neo-Darwinian single-celled organism evolving into all the species that we have today. But there's a big difference between macro evolution and micro evolution.

Macro evolution says one species can evolve into another species. Micro evolution says that wolves can turn into shih tzus or labradors or things like that. You know, animals can evolve within their species.

That's micro evolution. And we believe in micro evolution. That's okay.

That's scientifically demonstrated. There's nothing about that that conflicts with the Bible.

But there's a big difference between macro evolution, one species changing into another, which I don't buy into, and micro evolution, where we can buy into that.

And micro evolution can then explain how Noah can have that many animals on the ark, and it can turn into the hundreds of thousands or millions of different kinds of things that we have on the earth today. Makes sense, right?

And again, the point is, you can explain what we have here in the Bible realistically, rationally, scientifically. It is not absurd. It is not illogical.

You can trust the Bible. It's not fanciful, absurd, silly mythology. It's the truth.

I mean, did you know that over 270 different cultures have a historical record of the flood? Let me say that again. Over 270 different cultures from all across the world have a historical record of a flood like the one that our passage is describing.

How do you explain that? I think you explain it by postulating that the flood happened and everybody has a historical record of it. Pretty simple, right?

But some people are so biased against the Bible that they will argue that that fact actually proves the Bible wrong. Like every culture has the same mythology, so it doesn't come from real historical events.

It comes from being shared between these cultures. It's sort of a twisted bit of reasoning, but maybe you can follow it, and maybe it would be plausible except for the fact that many of these cultures had no contact with other cultures.

That have these flood records. It reminds me of my favorite quote from GK. Chesterton.

He said that learned men literally say this prehistoric calamity cannot be true because every race of mankind remembers it. If every race remembers the same event, I think we can safely conclude that the event actually happened.

That the Bible actually is true. The Flood really happened and it really was cataclysmic. Looking again at verse 11.

In the 600th year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the 17th day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth. All the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.

So, when it says, oh, it's going to rain next week, and it's supposed to be about a half inch rain, like, that's one kind of thing. That's our experience of rain. But we're not talking about it raining a half inch a day for 40 days and 40 nights.

That would be cataclysmic. But we're talking about something far beyond that, the fountains of the great deep bursting forth.

Many scholars and scientists have looked into this and looked into what it means that the windows of the heavens were opened. But without getting into all the details, what we're talking about is something far more than a normal rainy day.

The fountains of the great deep bursting forth are underwater or underground water sources that erupt from underground to fill the earth with water.

And the windows of the heaven being open, many people speculate that before the flood, our atmosphere, the entire earth, was circled with a sort of canopy of water. And during the flood, that entire canopy circling the entire globe came down.

So it wasn't just rain clouds and steady rain. This was unlike anything that any of us has ever seen or imagined.

24:06

Scientific Flood Evidence

Scientists have been studying the earth for years in light of what the Bible says about the flood. And I want to give you just a few of their findings before we move on.

Scientists have found fossils of sea creatures as high as the top of the Himalaya Mountains. There are fossils of sea creatures everywhere, like North Dakota, the Grand Canyon, the Himalaya Mountains. How is that possible without a worldwide flood?

There are rock formations in the Grand Canyon that continue across from the Grand Canyon, across the oceans, to other continents. The very same rock that was formed at the very same time. That's not possible without a worldwide flood.

There are massive fossil graveyards all over the world.

And many people come out of school these days and they think, well, all the fossil, you know, graveyards, all the fossil records throughout the world, they all start at the bottom with really simple animals.

And then you go up a layer, you know, representing, you know, a thousand years or 10,000 years or whatever. You go up a layer in the fossil record and the animals are slightly more complex and you keep going.

And it just, layer by layer, the animals get more complex. And that's evolution and it's proven in the fossil record. The fossil records look nothing like that.

They show every kind of animal, all mixed together, and all buried at the same time. Creation scientists have also developed sophisticated models of what they call catastrophic plate tectonics.

If you ever looked at a map of the world and it looks like all the continents could fit together, it's probably because they did fit together at one point in time. But they didn't drift apart over millions or billions of years.

According to many scientists, those continents were ripped apart catastrophically during the Flood of Noah. Imagine that, the entire world being ripped apart in a matter of 40 days and 40 nights. That's why I think Mount St.

Helens times a thousand is such a great comparison for us. This was absolutely cataclysmic. That's what the Bible says.

That's what the judgment of God is like. It's pretty sobering, terrifying thought. If you're not afraid of what it's going to be like when God judges the world, then you need to go read your Bible again.

By God's grace, through Christ, we don't have to fear judgment. We don't have to fear being cast into hell for our sins. Thank God for that.

So we can have peace, but also just the thought of how terrifying God's judgment is. Even if we'll be saved through it, it's still just sobering. These things really did happen, and the evidence for it is fantastic.

It's phenomenal.

27:21

Floodʼs Spiritual Significance

So what do we make of it? Granted, the flood did happen. It happened the way that I've been describing this morning.

What is the significance of it for us as Christians today? Well, maybe you remember the Apostle Peter. He was one of the 12 disciples.

He was brash and bold, kind of a dummy, but also kind of awesome at the same time. He was very passionate, and he famously denied Jesus three times, but then Jesus restored him, and he became a pillar of the early church.

So years later, after decades of ministry, Peter, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, composed a couple of letters for Christians to help them in their walk with Jesus.

These are the books in the New Testament that we call First and Second Peter. And when you read those letters, you might notice that Peter seems to have a fascination with Noah's flood.

He brings it up repeatedly over and over again, which is an incredible opportunity for us, because we now, from Peter, can get insight into what the flood of Jesus, or the flood of Noah means for us as followers of Jesus.

And this insight into what it means for us as followers of Jesus, well, it comes from the Apostle Peter himself, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Thankfully, I didn't have to come up with these applications on my own, because they were already in the Bible for us. This is what Peter says. 2 Peter chapter 2, verses 5 and 9.

He wrote, If God, if he or if God did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly, and you skip down a few verses, and he concludes, then based

upon the flood, he concludes, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment. So Peter is telling us that the flood is a demonstration, a proof that God knows how to

rescue the godly from trials, and God knows how to punish the wicked. So if you ever look at the world, listen carefully, if you ever look at the world around us and feel discouraged, if you ever look at the world and feel a deep sense of grief and

frustration, if you ever look at this world and think it is so dark, it is so evil, it is so messed up, when is God going to fix it? Like is he ever going to do anything?

All those people murdering babies and mutilating children, all the pedophiles and the corrupt politicians and all the greed and injustice, when is God going to fix it?

We have countless good, hardworking people who can barely afford to rent an apartment.

All these young families who just want to be able to buy a basic home to raise their family in, but all the homes are owned by BlackRock, and all the politicians refuse to fix it because, well, BlackRock pays for their campaigns.

You have all the qualified, smart, hardworking people who can't find jobs, Christians and conservatives who are blacklisted at universities everywhere, Muslims murdering Christians all over the world. When is God going to fix it?

Genesis 7 is proof that God is both willing and able. God knows how to rescue his people, and God knows how to punish those who reject him. That's what Peter is telling us.

Do not worry. God is willing and able. Justice will be served.

If you're a Christian, then 50,000 years from now, you can look back on this life, this moment in history is just a little blip in history.

Just a tiny little moment in light of all eternity where God, for all eternity, we're going to live with God in perfect paradise, perfect justice, perfect peace.

And it seems like it's taking forever to get there, but 50,000 years from now, it's not going to seem like it took forever. Just a brief moment in time. God will fix the world.

He will make all things right. And it will be perfect for eons and eons and eons. And it seems like it's taking forever to get there.

It's hard to wait.

32:27

Godʼs Patient Judgment

You might wonder, when is God going to do this? Well, with the Lord, one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as one day.

And God's view of things, in his timeline, in light of his eternal existence, for him, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day. That's what Peter wants us to understand in light of this wait for God's judgment.

He tells us that in 2 Peter 3, verses 8 through 10. He writes, with the Lord, one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is one day.

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Talk about cataclysmic.

Talk about terrifying. The heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved. Can you imagine the sun being burned up and dissolved?

Can you imagine the heavenly bodies just melting away? It's those kinds of pictures that we need to have in our minds to understand the judgment of God that is coming. And it is coming.

We may think that God is taking forever, but this passage is telling us that God is not like us. He is eternal. He is infinitely wise.

He is patient, and he's being very patient for a specific reason. What is that reason according to this text? He's waiting for us.

He's waiting for people to repent so that he can save them. And I don't mean to say that, like, we, God can't save us until, you know, we make the decision and we repent, like, he's bound by our wills or something like that.

But just generally speaking, God is patiently waiting for people to repent because repentance is part of salvation. Some of you have become Christians in the past year. Some of you may have become Christians in the past five years.

So in a real sense, we can say that God has been waiting for you. Jesus hasn't come back yet because God has been waiting for you. He didn't want to come back and judge the world because he was waiting for you to come home first.

And the picture you get from that is a very gracious and patient and loving God. That's who God is.

And I know that when it comes to this kind of stuff, when it comes to God making the world right, when it comes to justice being served, it can be hard to wait, especially with the way that the world is today.

I've heard this from so many people, and it feels this way for me too. But the past few years have been really revealing. Like many people have come to see that the world is far more wicked and corrupt than we ever imagined.

That's why I think so many people were so excited about the Epstein Files. Do you remember that whole thing, the Epstein Files? It's already fading into the distance with our news cycle the way it is.

You know, we have another war. We've got another assassination attempt on the president. People are already forgetting about the Epstein Files.

But a few months ago, people were so excited about the Epstein Files being released. And why were they so excited? Because they thought that justice was finally going to be served.

And what happened? Well, we found out that the world is run by satanic pedophiles. And that was that.

Nothing we can do about it. The same people are still running the world today. Some like random banker in Norway went to prison for five years or something.

You know, a couple, a couple little guys have lost their jobs, but that's about it. The world is run by satanic pedophiles and there's nothing we can do about it. They're going to get elected next time too, but there will come a day.

Verse 10, there will come a day. The day of the Lord will come like a thief in that.

And then the heavens will pass away with the roar and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. See, we can't put our hope in the wrong place.

No politician will ever give us the justice that we long for, but God will. The promise of the Bible is that all will be revealed. Everybody will be held accountable.

Not one single sin will go unpunished. If you have any doubt, just remember the flood. If you have any fear, remember the flood.

It's kind of an odd situation because so many millions of people think that they want justice, but in the end, they're going to find out that they are on the wrong side of justice.

Millions of people who want God to come and punish the wicked, but they don't understand that they are on the list of wicked people that God is going to be punishing.

38:33

Jesus Our Ark

Have you ever wondered if you'll survive the judgment of God? Have you ever been afraid of the judgment of God?

If you've never been afraid of the judgment of God, you're probably not being honest with yourself about your sin, and you're probably not reading what the scriptures say about the judgment of God. Here's the truth.

We've all been on God's list of people to be punished. Every single one of us, because we are all wicked. We are all unrighteous.

But God has given us a way out. It's just like the ark. Jesus is the ark.

He's the only way to survive the judgment of God. Peter draws this parallel for us in 1 Peter 3, verses 20 and 21.

He says, Because they formerly did not obey when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared in which a few, that is eight persons, were brought safely through water, baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you,

not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So if your conscience tells you that you deserve to be punished for your sins, then you have one and only one hope.

You need to appeal to God for a good conscience. You need to ask him to forgive you and cleanse you on the basis of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Look at what he says at the end of that passage, verse 21.

Appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We don't appeal to God for a good conscience because we came to church today and we prayed.

We don't appeal to God for a good conscience because, well, we've done more right than wrong. We're pretty nice to people.

We appeal to God for a good conscience, for a cleansed conscience, for a restored and purified heart on the basis of the death and resurrection of Jesus, his finished work. And if you have done that, then you need to get baptized.

Peter tells us, by God's grace, we do not have to experience the waters of the flood. We can experience the waters of baptism instead.