(Gen. 6-8)
FIRST of all we will look at the forty days connected with Noah and the flood. I am very well aware that there is a large amount of doubt with regard to this story, but there is no doubt in my mind. I share not the unbelief of the moment. I believe the Word of God. God is too good―too wise―to allow anything to appear in His Word that cannot be absolutely relied upon. Further, I think that if you have had difficulties as to God’s story of the flood, you will show yourself to be a sensible person and truly wise, by letting your difficulties drop, and listening to God.
I shall show you, I hope, by God’s help, from His Word, that whether the witnesses be patriarchs, prophets, evangelists, or apostles, and, better than all, the Son of God Himself, testimony as to the truth of what the book of Genesis says in relation to the flood is absolutely to be relied upon. Perhaps I might, ere I go into detail, seek to clear that point.
We will, first of all, hear what a patriarch has to say. I should like to know, how, deeply bedded in the book of Job, came a statement like this: “They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave. Therefore they say unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways” (Job 21:13, 14). Now Job was a Gentile, not a Jew, but one whom God had enlightened, and who lived certainly some eighteen hundred years after the flood. How came he to write after this sort if God had not given him light? Again, note how he describes the fate and the language of the wicked men of Noah’s day. “Hast thou marked the old way which wicked men have trodden?” Now, my friends, if you have never marked this way before, I pray you earnestly to mark it. I do not need to press this upon the Christian. I do not need to press upon the one who loves the Lord Jesus to mark this, but to the careless, heedless man of the world, who lives in pleasure and sin, I think the query Eliphaz puts here is very important. “Hast thou marked the old way which wicked men have trodden? Which were cut down out of time, whose foundation was overflown with the flood: which said unto God, Depart from us: and what can the Almighty do for them?” (chs. 22:15-17). They did not want God. They did not like God, and oven though they heard of God, they would not have His warnings, uttered by Enoch’s and Noah’s lips. We are not told in Genesis that they thus boldly and sinfully spoke. No, but we are told by Job. You rarely get the sole statement of the truth or the whole history of a man or of men and their ways in one book of Scripture. Its unity is manifest in the multiplicity of its writers, all moved by God. We get the motives that moved the men of the world told to us by Job, viz., dislike of God, while Paul tells us that Noah was “moved by fear” of Him (Heb. 11:7). Job indicates God’s dealings with men, as he quotes, “Yet he filled their houses with good things: but the counsel of the wicked is far from me” (22:18). Well now, there is the testimony of a patriarch.
Let us now go and hear what a prophet has to say. Turn to the book of Isaiah, and note the magnificent way that prophet of Israel speaks. He is unfolding the certain and glorious future of Israel―the rejected nation of God at this moment because of their refusal of their Messiah, whose murder was a national sin―and he describes in the most beautiful way, that as a consequence of the God-glorifying pathway of Christ, delineated in his fifty-third chapter, they are going to be brought into wonderful blessing by-and-by. “In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer. For 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” (chs. 54:8-10). That is to say, He, bears witness by this prophet’s pen, that, as” the waters of Noah “had most certainly rolled over” the world of ungodly,” so they might depend upon it, that what He promised Israel should yet surely take place.
Now pass to the evangelists, and you will hear what our Lord Jesus Christ says with regard to the flood, He could make no mistakes. Our learned friends, the geologists of the twentieth century, try hard to prove that the story of the flood was a mistake, and not to be believed. The question is, Am I to believe God’s Word, or man’s inferences? You are wiser to heed God than to pin your faith to a man who has no certain knowledge of what he says, his statements and theories being only deductions from certain given facts, which, after all, he is as likely to misinterpret as his predecessors. We all know how one geological theory after another has arisen, proclaimed loudly its indisputable veracity, and within a century been relegated to the limbo of old wives’ fables. You may depend upon it that when God has spoken all is true.
Now hear our Lord Jesus Christ, and note well that, if you give heed to the infidelity of the hour as regards the flood, you have, according to these unbelieving theories, the Lord Jesus Christ committed to a false testimony about a thing that did not happen. He describes what His coming again will be, in view of the Jew-how He their Messiah will come and restore His people. He says: “But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be” (Matt. 24:37-39). He describes what the effect was of all Noah’s preaching. I think it is wonderful the side-light that Scripture flings upon the scene. “They knew not.” had they not had plenty of testimony? Abundance. For a hundred and twenty years did Noah the “preacher of righteousness” indicate the coming storm, which Enoch too had predicted. They had plenty of testimony, but heeded it not. How dull were their ears! They “knew not until the flood came, and took them all away,” is the Lord’s affirmation regarding the unbelievers of that day. Then He adds, “So shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” And what is that? People were taken unawares in Noah’s day, and so will they be when He Himself returns to judge the earth as Son of man.
Now let us pass to the eleventh chapter of the Hebrews, where I find the beloved apostle Paul giving us, by the Spirit of God, his comment upon the flood. The eleventh of Hebrews is a striking unfolding of the history of faith. It shows what faith does, rather than what it is. Abel shows us how to draw near to God, Enoch how to walk with God, and Noah how to be cleared from coming judgment. “By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith” (Heb. 11:7). Noah was a wise man. God warned him of “things not seen as yet,” and he heeded the warning. The world did not.
Possibly you may say―I cannot understand this. There are many things you do not understand, and yet you believe them―I mean things in daily life. Noah believed what he did not understand at first, and acted on his faith. Soon he got understanding. Faith understands because faith believes God. Where unbelief sees a difficulty faith does not. Noah believed, acted, and then understood. The two things that moved Noah were faith and fear.
If faith and fear do not move your soul, you will not meet Christ as a Saviour, and there will never be written about you, that God saved you. The reason, my friend, that you have never been saved is that you have never had that faith in the testimony of God which produced in your soul this sense—I had better reach the spot of safety.
Now, what is faith? It is the soul’s reception of God’s testimony, no matter what shape that testimony Cake. In Noah’s case it was warning from God. And you are going to get your warning. As a sinner there is before you nothing but judgment, as real and deep and far more terrible than the tale that will pass before us tonight. But you may find a place of safety. You say, Where is it? You have not to prepare an ark, because God has prepared one. Christ is the place of safety now. He bore all the judgment and the wrath, rose from the dead, and is now at God’s right hand. What is the ark for you and me today? It is the knowledge of a risen Christ. It is our souls, moved by faith and fear, getting to know the blessedness of safety in Him. Just as Noah “became heir of the righteousness which is by faith,” so today the man who believes God is counted righteous. “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness” (Rom. 4:3).
But now one more witness. We will hear what the apostle Peter has to say. Just turn to his first epistle for a moment, where we read, “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, time just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit” (ch. 3:18). Now, what could be more blessed than this? If I were to come and only tell you of “judgment to come,” that would be a poor thing, if I could not also tell you of a Saviour. There is now for you a living Saviour, a loving Saviour, One who has died and risen again.
Observe how Peter weaves in the tale of the flood in connection with the death and resurrection of time Lord Jesus Christ. “Christ also hath once suffered for sins.” Whose sins? His own? God forbid, He had none. Well, you say, everybody’s. I tell you what faith says, Mine. Faith is always individual. Each soul has to appropriate the truth for itself. “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10:9). But here is the great and glorious truth, that “Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust.” To what end? “That he might bring us to God,”―there I get the very essence of the gospel, ― “being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit.”
It is not a dead Christ I tell you of tonight. I know that men have usually painted a dead Christ. Nor, again, is it Christ on the crucifix. That is not God’s Christ. There is no such Christ. It is not now Christ on the cross, nor Christ in the grave; it is Christ on the throne―Christ living, Christ triumphant, Christ victorious. The blessed glory-crowned Man, who was once in death, bearing sins, having atoned for them, having annulled death and defeated Satan, rose from the dead, and there, at God’s right hand, faith sees Him, a living Man and a loving Saviour. Can you say by faith, “Jesus is my Saviour”?
But further, the apostle says that Christ was “quickened by the Spirit; by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a-preparing wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water” (3:19, 20). I know there is an idea current that Christ, when dead, went down and preached to the spirits in prison. Such an idea is, in my judgment, erroneous. It was the Spirit of Christ, in Noah, which, ere the flood came, preached to those who are now in prison. And this thought is confirmed by another scripture, “For, for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit” (1 Pet. 4:6).
What was waiting in Noah’s day? Long-suffering. How did Noah preach? By the Spirit of Christ. What brought Christ from heaven? Love. What did He want? Your salvation. The same Christ that speaks in love by the gospel to men now, spoke in Noah’s day; and although judgment was certain, He sent by the lips of His righteous servant a testimony which exactly suited the moment. What was the end of it? Nobody believed. Did Noah get a convert? No, he did not; still he went on with his ark and his preaching. What about the people that heard him? Do you think it will be any comfort for diem in eternity that they might have been saved, but are not? You know better. Why did they miss salvation? Because they “sometime were disobedient” (1 Peter 3:20). Ah! they will not be disobedient by-and-by, because everybody must bow to Christ sooner or later.
How were the eight saved who escaped the flood? By that ark. You will say, It was very few. I admit it; but is not the fact of the fewness an awful testimony to the power of the world, and the unbelief of man’s heart as regards judgment? A man came to Jesus in His day and said, “Are there few that be saved?” Let me ask you this, Are you among the few? Well, you say, are you? Yes, by the grace of God I am, or I could not stand here and tell you of the blessed Lord Jesus Christ and present salvation. Do you know what the Lord said to that man? “Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able” (Luke 13:23, 24). You must get in individually. That is the point, and I say to you, See to it that you personally get Christ.
But the fact of some being saved from the flood is not the only testimony that Peter gives. When I come to time next chapter I find this, “Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead” (1 Peter 4:5). The moment is coming when you must meet the Lord Jesus Christ, and you must give account to Him. “For this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.” Who were they? The antediluvians. They heard a suited gospel in their day. Judgment was coming, and there was a place of safety. Alas! they despised the testimony! What is the testimony today? Judgment is coming, deeper than the judgment of that day; but salvation is preached, and there is a place of safety. It is to be in Christ. Many persons have thought they were all right because they have what they call “joined the church.” But if you have not been borra again, if you have not been brought to know your sins forgiven, if you have not trusted Jesus as your Saviour, take tare lest you repeat antediluvian history. What was God’s object with men in Noah’s day? That they might “live according to God in the spirit” (1 Peter 4:6). Men declined His proffered grace, and perished. Imitate them not.
W. T. P. W.