A S Patterson
“The world,” as Joseph Hall says in his Contemplations, “was so foul with sin that God saw it was time to wash it with a flood.” As men grew in number, wickedness increased. Even those of whom better things might have been expected – men who are called by Moses “the sons of God”, who probably were descendants of Seth – were led, by carnal desire, into unsafe connections by marriage. True religion declined, and gross corruption triumphed. “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen 6:5). He waited long, and at length He interposed to vindicate His honour and denounce His enemies. But Noah, faithful among the faithless, was treated by the avenging Ruler as a friend.
The very name which his father had given him – Noah, meaning rest – spoke of good. Great things are said of him in Scripture. Moses declares, not only that “Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord”, but also that he “was a just man and perfect in his generations”, and that he “walked with God” (Gen 6:8,9). In Ezekiel 14:14, his name is associated, as one of pre-eminent moral distinction, with those of Daniel and Jacob. In 2 Peter 2:5, he is called “a preacher of righteousness”. And in the present verse of the Epistle to the Hebrews (11:7), he is represented as one adorned by an honourable character, devoted to a high calling, and preserved by a great deliverance.
1. He was “warned by God of things not seen as yet”. In the expression, “things not seen as yet”, there is probably a reference to the description of faith given in verse 1. The things meant are the waters of the flood and the devastation of the world. When God instructed Noah to build the ark, these horrors were still unseen. But though as yet invisible, they were sure – though still future, they came within a few fleeting years. The flood of wickedness introduced the flood of waters. Sins reaching up to heaven drew desolating torrents thence. The soil which groaned beneath the corruption and the crimes of men called forth its hidden streams. These mingled with the descending floods, overflowed the loftiest hills and swept the godless multitude away. They were “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage” (Mt 24:38). While the heavens were blue and the air was calm, they did not fear any future ill.
Noah’s sermons and his ominous erection of the ark were the objects of ridicule or neglect. But when men were merry and wickedness was bold, the judgement – the devastating judgement – came. Did they climb the tallest trees, or ascend to the summits of the loftiest hills? The surging waters reached the top of those trees and ascended to these mountain tops along with them. But the ark – did the scoffers not find refuge there? Too late! Alas, too late! The door was shut, and hope was lost, and in vain did anyone flee whom God’s omnipotence pursued. The things which were “not seen”, and therefore by the godless multitude not looked for, now were come – the earth was overflowed, and that guilty multitude was gone.
Noah was “warned of God” of these things, while as yet they were “not seen”. The warning referred to is recorded in Genesis 6:13-16; here two things are included: (1) a declaration of the impending judgement; (2) corresponding directions for the construction of an ark. The warning was given in mercy to Noah, in mercy also to the world. Time was also still given to the world for repentance; throughout another century they were summoned to flee for refuge to the bosom of the angry, but still pitying, God – through what Noah said, but also what he was required to do.
2. Noah, thus “warned . . . of things not seen as yet”, was “moved with fear”. There is a kind of fear which God does not approve in His children – there is a stormy terror worthier of a slave than of a child. It must be a commendable, appropriate fear that is referred to here. A reverential fear of the God who warned him, and the judgements which the pure and righteous Ruler of the world had spoken of – these occupied Noah’s mind and prompted and sustained his active efforts. This godly fear referred, no doubt (1) to God, considered as the sin-hating, sin-avenging Majesty, “clothed with” moral “light as with a garment” and, while infinitely wise to plan, is also infinitely strong to punish; (2) to himself and his family, as summoned to an arduous enterprise and about to witness an awful tragedy; (3) to the world – that guilty, godless world on which such horrors were about to fall. (Similar examples of the fear referred to are presented in Ps 119:120, Hab 3:16, Mal 2:5, and such fear is taught in Heb 12:28,29.)
3. Noah thus “warned of God” and “moved with fear”, “prepared an ark to the saving of his house”. And by the preparation of the ark, his house was saved, his family were preserved, when the devastating deluge came.
He “prepared an ark”. “Make thee an ark”, said God, and in meek submission to His will, Noah went and built one. Jehovah prescribed the dimensions, the materials and the arrangements of the structure; and Moses, the sacred historian, says in reference to these: “Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he” (Gen 6:22). The work was vast, but Noah undertook, continued and completed it. The scoffers who despised his preaching probably also ridiculed his work; but, in spite of all, he persevered – and in the outcome, who proved to have been the fool? Alas, his admonitions were rejected and despised; but still by what he did, as well as by what he said, he obeyed God and also warned the world.
The warning was unavailing, in so far as the scoffers were concerned; but by the preparation of the ark, Noah and his house were saved. There was no refuge in the shadows of the woods or the caves, or on the summits of the hills. But the ark – designed by God – was a refuge for those who entered it. Within its wooden walls, with animals fierce and tame beside them, and with the surging, and still-increasing, waters around them, they were safe. “Come thou, and all thy house”, said the Lord to Noah, “into the ark.” They entered; “the Lord shut them in”; and in the divinely-guarded vessel, they rode the waters in which others found their cold and cheerless grave – until those waters were dried up. Like the dove – though it first returned to the ark with “an olive leaf plucked off” – it then returned no more, so the family preserved by God went forth to tread the soil of the earth.
4. By faith Noah, “moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house”. He built the ark because he believed God. God had told him there was danger, and therefore he believed there was. God had told him that destruction would come, and therefore he believed it would. God had told him that he and his family would be saved through preparing an ark, and therefore he believed they would. Believing these things, he acted in accordance with them; persuaded of them he yielded to their influence; “by faith . . . he prepared an ark to the saving of his house. “Methinks”, Joseph Hall says in his Contemplations, “I see those monstrous sons of Lamech coming to Noah and asking him what he means by that strange work – whether he means to sail upon the dry land. To whom, when he records God’s purposes and his, they go away laughing at his idleness and tell one another in sport that too much piety hath made him mad; yet cannot they all flout Noah out of his faith – he preaches and builds and finishes.”
Yes, he kept sight of the threat, the promise and the commandment of his God, and “Thus saith the Lord” was the ground of his confidence and the warrant for his work. Nature – unconsecrated Reason – might have suggested that surely, under the government of the kind Creator of the world, its inhabitants would not, at least thus early in its history, be destroyed, and that if they should be destroyed, by a universal flood of waters, such a wooden ark as man might build would be unable to protect those inside. But listening to God’s voice, receiving God’s word as true and faithful, Noah “prepared an ark”, in fear and yet in hope. Nor was his work in vain; it was “to the saving of his house”.
5. By his faith, which showed itself in the construction of the ark, Noah “condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith”. He “condemned the world”. In his sermons and by his preparations, he rebuked the wickedness of men and vindicated the threatenings and punishments of God. His character, his words and his works rose up in judgement against that generation and condemned it, in that it was not thereby led to repentance. In the face of what the “preacher of righteousness” had said and done, the inhabitants of the earth had no excuse for saying that they had not been admonished of their sin and danger. And when the judgements actually came, Noah acknowledged that they were true and righteous, and nothing more than the aggravated and accumulated wickedness of the world deserved.
Noah also “became heir of the righteousness which is by faith”. He was justified. His sins were pardoned and his person was accepted, in virtue of the Redeemer and the redemption strikingly illustrated and probably designedly prefigured by the ark of Noah and the deliverance of his house. Noah saw, more or less clearly, that Redeemer and this redemption by the eye of his faith. And by that heaven-born principle, he appropriated the virtue of the one and attained to the experience of the other.
Let us believe in Messiah’s name. Let us stand in awe of God. Let us anticipate the judgement that awaits the world. Let us find refuge in Christ the Ark. Man does not need to build the ark, but standing as it already does in its complete proportions and its finished majesty, man must enter it and, having entered, must abide within its walls. The clouds are lowering; the storm is coming; the deluge is at hand; the trials of life, the agonies of death, the terrors of judgement, the fiery wreck of earth, the fiercer horrors of hell – sinner, sinner, all these are approaching towards you.
But yonder is the ark: the ark of covenanted safety, the ark of everlasting peace. Place yourself within its walls. Flee, sinner, flee while yet you may. “Come thou and all thy house into the ark.” Enter it by faith; and believing, still believing, beckon others to its glorious shelter. Then, though no rainbow tells you that the fiery flood denounced by heaven will never overtake the world – yet the “rainbow round about the throne” will be a token firm and sure that you shall never be destroyed. Then that unchangeable covenant will be yours: “This is as the waters of Noah unto Me: for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but My kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee” (Is 54:9,10).