3196. Noah’s Eminence

A Sermon Published On Thursday, May 5, 1910.

And the LORD said to Noah, “Come into the ark you and all your house, because I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation.” {Ge 7:1}

For other sermons on this text:

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 1336, “Family Sermon, A” 1327}

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3196, “Noah’s Eminence” 3197}

   Exposition on Ge 7 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3196, “Noah’s Eminence” 3197 @@ "Exposition"}

1. God keeps his eyes on the sons of men, and he searches among them for certain individuals on whom he delights to fix his gaze. These are not the kings and princes; these are not the men of talent or of fashion; these are not the men who are regarded by their fellows as famous. When God speaks of having seen Noah he speaks of having seen one of the kind of men for whom he was looking, namely, a righteous man. There is not a righteous man on the earth whom God does not see. He may be in a very obscure position, his circumstances may be those of poverty, he may be anything but famous; but as long as he is righteous, God delights to look at him. He looks at him so as to take care of him; so that, if destruction is to come on the face of the earth, an ark is to be prepared for the preservation of righteous Noah and his family. “The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their cry.” Whoever else he does not see, he is sure to see the righteous; but “the face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth.”

2. Now, what God delights to look at, we should delight to look at, so we will fix our mind’s eye on the righteous man mentioned in our text, and notice, first, the eminence of Noah’s character; secondly, try to find out in what that eminence consisted; and, thirdly, consider the gracious reward given to him because of that eminence.

3. I. So, first, we are to notice THE EMINENCE OF NOAH’S CHARACTER. He was a righteous man in the sight of the Lord: “The Lord said to Noah,…‘I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation.’”

4. Noah was a gracious man, one to whom the Lord had shown great favour, for he had put grace in his heart, and had given him faith, for it was by faith that Noah “prepared an ark to the saving of his household; by which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.” The grace of God was within him, and became the source and well-spring from which flowed the righteousness for which he was so remarkable. Grace is the root of every righteous character, so let grace have the honour and glory for it.

5. In the chapter preceding our text, we are told that “Noah was a just man.” It is especially noteworthy that, in an age of violence and oppression, Noah was a just man. He was no oppressor; he dealt justly and fairly with his fellow men. Noah was also “perfect in his generations”; the marginal reading is that he was “upright.” He was not one who leaned this way for advantage, or who leaned that way for gain; he stood upright in conscious integrity before his fellows. Acting in accordance with the grace of God which was in his heart, he had learned to do what was just towards others. He was also a devout man, for we read that “Noah walked with God.” Like his ancestor Enoch, he lived in communion with God, in prayerfulness and pious meditation, and his life before his fellow men was in consistency with that walk before God.

6. It is especially mentioned that Noah was righteous in that generation, and this is all the more remarkable since that generation was so unrighteous and ungodly. The darker the night, the more brightly shine the stars, and good men are never more precious than in evil times. There are plenty to go the way the stream is running. When godliness is in the ascendant, and the Puritans rule the realm, they are Puritans too; but when ungodliness comes to the forefront, and the Cavalier holds the sceptre, they scoff at everything that is good. Like dead fish, they must go with the stream; they do not have the power of the living fish to swim against the current. They go the way their neighbours go; but Noah was a righteous man in an unrighteous generation. It may be that you, dear friend, are seeking to serve the Lord among the most ungodly men. Well, if it is so, be all the firmer for the right because of all the wrong that is around you; remember how much honour it brings to the grace of God when it produces a righteous Noah in the midst of an evil generation. You, working man, are the only one on your street who comes to the house of God; well, be careful that you come boldly, do not be ashamed of being eccentric; and when, in your workshop, you hear the cursing and reviling of the wicked, let them know whose colours you wear, and who is your King. But be careful that your life is so consistent that they cannot pick holes in it, and then you need not mind being a speckled bird among them as Noah was in his generation.

7. What makes the character of Noah all the more remarkable is the fact that he was almost alone as a righteous man. The Lord said to him, “I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation,” as though he was the only righteous one in that generation. When the flood came, his ancestors had all passed away, and the members of his own family were not all that they ought to have been, and he had practically to stand alone, and standing alone is not easy work. You know how we are all helped by the company of godly people, how good it is for us to be where the Word is preached with power, or where we can listen to the gracious talk of Christians who are more advanced in divine things than we are. But to stand quite alone,—to be the one white man in a nation of aborigines, to be the one traveller in a land in which all the inhabitants are your foes, to be in a community where there is no one to help you,—it is only the grace of God that can make a man of this kind, and enable him to say, “If the world itself is to be destroyed, one honest man shall be found on its surface. The grace of God has so settled me in the fear of the Most High that, whatever others may do, as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.”

8. But the special point about Noah’s character is that we are not only told that he was righteous, but that he was righteous before God. The Lord said to him, “I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation.” As I have thought over that expression in my mind, I have thought of the various tribunals before which we all have to stand, and as I try to take you, in imagination, before them one after another, I wonder how many of you will be able to pass them all, and to endure the supreme test so that, like Noah you may be righteous before God.

9. First of all, there is the common tribunal of ordinary society and public repute. I hope that, without any conceit, most of us can say that we believe we are considered as righteous by our fellow men. They trust us in business matters, they do not suspect us of dishonesty; we hope we have not given them occasion to do so. Yet, in so large an assembly as this, there may be some who dare not say that, even in the opinion of their fellow men, they are righteous. But if it is so, my dear hearers, if you are justly condemned by your fellow creatures, how can you expect to stand before the tribunal of God? If you cannot dispute the justice of man’s verdict, you may well tremble at the thought of appearing before the judgment bar of God. You are evidently unrighteous; but, oh! thank God that there is a Saviour for the unrighteous, “for when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” That last word describes you; you know that you could not stand without a degree of shame before those who are acquainted with your character; well then, fall down on your knees before God, tell him that you are sinners, but also quote Paul’s “faithful saying” that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” Do not be afraid to do so. Christ did not come to save sham sinners, but real sinners such as you are. Go to God in all your sinfulness, without attempting to make yourselves better first, and cast yourselves on his infinite mercy in Christ Jesus.

10. There is another tribunal a little further on: a man may have a pretty good character among his fellow men who do not know him intimately, but how does he stand in the opinion of his more immediate friends? Those who know us well, those with whom we constantly do business, those whom we meet in our daily work, our employers, our servants, our fellow workers, what do they think of us? If any of them think badly of you because you try to do what you believe to be right, you need not mind that, but rather rejoice that you are counted worthy to suffer for Christ’s sake. But, on the other hand, if friends, who judge you as favourably as they can, are obliged to regard you as far from upright, how will you stand before the all-seeing eye of God? Let the painful fact that you do not stand well before those who know you drive you to humble yourself before the Lord, and to seek pardon and peace through Jesus Christ, the sinner’s Saviour.

11. Suppose we have been able to pass those two barriers of public repute and our more immediate acquaintance, how do we stand in the inner circle at home? Occasionally, when I have spoken well of some young man or woman, I have been grieved to hear the parent stay, “I wish, sir, your judgment had been correct; my son (or daughter) may behave very well before strangers, but it is very different at home.” Sometimes, I have thought a good deal of certain men whom I have met here, but I have afterwards discovered that they had broken-hearted wives whom they had not treated with the love and kindness they ought to have shown towards them; and I have also known professing Christian women who have not studied the comfort of their husbands, and have not made their home the little paradise it ought to be. If we have a good character in the church, and a reputation for sanctity there, what is the verdict of those who know more about our private life? What is the verdict of the servant concerning his master? What is the judgment of the wife concerning her husband? What does the parent or the brother or sister say? I solemnly fear that there are many professors of religion who cannot pass this test, and I am deeply sorry when this is the case; for if there is any place where Christianity should be best seen, it is in the home circle. Rowland Hill used to say that he would not give a farthing for the religion of the man whose cat and dog were not the better for it, and there was much good sense in that homely remark. I do not know anyone here whom this cap will fit, but if there is such a person, I hope he will put it on, and wear it. This is the sum and substance of the matter,—if our character cannot endure the scrutiny of those who are around us in our home, how can we hope to stand at the judgment bar of God when all that we have done shall be proclaimed before the assembled universe?

12. Supposing that we can satisfactorily pass that ordeal, how do we stand before our enemies? “Before our enemies?” asks someone. Yes, for you remember what was said by the jealous presidents and princes of Babylon concerning Daniel, “We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, unless we find it against him concerning the law of his God.” He was such a godly man that they could not find a flaw in his character however closely they examined him. There he stood fully clad in the armour of righteousness; and before they could lay hold of him, they had to get the king to make a new law ordaining that any man who should pray should be cast into the den of lions. Look too at our Lord Jesus Christ when he was accused by his enemies; they brought various charges against him, but they could not substantiate them; and even when they bribed two witnesses to give evidence against him, even they did not agree with each other concerning what he had said. His life had been so perfect that there was nothing that could be truthfully laid to his charge. “Ah!” one says, “that is a test, to live so that even our enemies cannot truthfully find any fault in us.” It is no dishonour for a man to be wrongfully accused, it is rather a mark of honour to have bad men plotting against him; but it is a subject for gratitude to God when one can run the gauntlet of our enemies, and remain unabashed before the cruel, wolfish eyes that are always on the watch for anything wrong or inconsistent with a Christian profession. “Well,” one says, “that is a test that I could not pass.” If so, dear friend, remember this,—there is no enemy whose eye is so clear and so keen as that of God. Even the great arch-enemy could not detect a thousandth part of the imperfections and infirmities that lie open before the Most High. How important it must be, then, to be found righteous before God!

13. Then, further, I wonder whether all of us, who profess to be Christians, could pass the test of being judged righteous before our own conscience. I do not mean that we should be self-righteous,—God forbid that we should ever be that!—but I mean that we should have so lived that our own conscience would declare that we had not been hypocrites, nor liars, nor deceivers, but that, through the Lord’s upholding and restraining grace, we had been true to our profession, and had done what we sincerely believed to be right. You remember how the apostle John, taught by the Spirit, writes concerning this matter: “If our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, then we have confidence towards God.” {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 1855, “What is the Verdict?” 1856} {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3152, “The Lower Courts” 3153} Can all of us pass this test? Happy and blessed are we if we can; but even then, we must remind ourselves and each other that there is an even sterner test which Noah was able to pass, for he was righteous before the Lord.

14. II. This brings us to the second part of our subject, in which we are to try to find out IN WHAT THE EMINENCE OF NOAH’S CHARACTER CONSISTED. He was distinguished for his righteousness before God, for the Lord expressly said to him, “I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation.”

15. So the eminence of Noah’s character consisted in this, his righteousness must have measured up to the divine standard. God would not have called Noah righteous if he had not been righteous, and we cannot suppose that God’s standard is anything short of perfection. Then did Noah live a perfect life? No, speaking popularly, and as the Scripture often speaks, we may say that Noah’s character was a righteous one. There must have been flaws in it; and, certainly, after this time, there was one great sad flaw, of which it is not necessary now to speak more particularly; still, God regarded him as righteous, and that must settle the question so far as we are concerned.

16. Noah had the righteousness which is by faith, and that faith of his enabled him to look forward to Christ’s atonement. Do you ask how I know this? Well, when he came out of the ark, he “built an altar to the Lord, and took some of every clean animal, and some of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.” Those sacrifices were acceptable to the Lord, for he “smelled a sweet savour”—“a savour of rest”—in them, and they were among the many types of the one great sacrifice that was afterwards to be offered on Calvary’s cross. It was in this way that Noah’s faith enabled him to look forward to Christ as the sin-atoning Lamb of God, and his faith, like that of Abraham, “was accounted to him for righteousness.” God looked on him, in Christ, as a perfectly righteous man; and his righteous life was the exponent and outflow of the inward righteousness which God had imputed to him in answer to his faith. He was righteous before God, and no man ever was that in his own naked character. Job’s friend Bildad said concerning God, “The stars are not pure in his sight. How much less man, who is a worm? and the son of man, who is a worm?”

17. I have presented the character of Noah to you, and commended it to the utmost; yet I know that, in the sight of God, the patriarch’s character was not perfect in itself. There must have been innumerable imperfections, infirmities, and faults which God’s omniscient eye could see in it. How then could he be said to be righteous before God? Why, God looked at him in Christ, he became heir of the righteousness which is by faith, or, as Paul puts it, he was “accepted in the Beloved.” Then, as a result of that acceptance, he was “righteous” in the modified sense in which all the Lord’s people are righteous when the grace of God has taught them to walk uprightly, and so made them, at least in a measure, like their righteous Father who is in heaven.

18. But let me add to this, in order to clear the gospel of anything like legal defilement, that the eminence of Noah’s character appears in the fact that he was righteous before God, that is to say, his righteousness had respect for God. When he dealt with his neighbours, he did not say to himself, “Now I must deal righteously with these men, or I shall lose my reputation as an honest, upright man.” Oh, no: he dealt righteously with men because he desired to be righteous before God. He did not ask himself, “What will my neighbours think or say concerning the building of the ark?” His great concern was to be obedient to the commands that the Lord had given him, and therefore we read again and again, “according to all that God commanded him, so he did.” He moulded his life by the will of God, not by the will of his fellow men, nor by his own will, and, beloved, this is the way for us to be righteous before God, when he brings us, by his grace, to desire to live according to his will, and to his praise and glory. I fear that many professors go blundering on, not stopping to pray, “Lord, show us what you will have us to do.” Noah did not act like this, he was righteous before God, righteous with respect to God, righteous in God’s sight.

19. I would like to have, in this Tabernacle, a band of men and women who will be just and fearless; who will do what is right even though all others are opposed to them, or though no one else shall know anything about it. Are any of you seeking to please men by your religion? If so, such religion is of little or no worth. Do not be the servants of men, but the servants of God; take your orders from him, and only from him. Do not mould your course and character according to the fashion of society. If you are truly born by God, you belong to a noble race which should never stoop to such degradation as that, so be righteous before the Lord. You have already had the righteousness of Christ imputed to you, so may the Spirit of God impart that righteousness to you, so that you may live for God, and before God, fearless and careless of what men may say against you as long as you are right in the sight of the Most High. May the Lord graciously give us such a righteousness as this! And, beloved, we must have it, we must have it, for without holiness no man shall see the Lord. Our own righteousness can never save us, we must have the righteousness of Christ.

20. But remember that we must be purified in heart, and character, and conduct, or else, where God is we cannot go. How searching will be that test which we shall have to endure at the last! When we are judged by our fellow man, they may be deceived; but when we shall be judged by God, he will never be deceived. Men may accept fair words as signs and tokens of grace; but God will not so much regard our words as read our hearts. If men hear us pray, they say, “What good men they must be.” Yet, God knows what hypocrisy may be lurking behind those pretty sentences. Men judge us by our actions, but God can read the motives that prompted us to those actions. You know how righteous men have appeared to be in the eyes of their fellow men, yet they have proved to be false after all. May God grant that none of us may ever be like that, but may we have a character that will bear holding up to the light, a character concerning which, when the eye of God examines it, he will say, “Here is truth in the inward parts; my Spirit has created truth and integrity within this heart and life; this man is weighed in the balances, and is not found wanting.” I am speaking these solemn words to myself, to the deacons and elders around me, and to you who have long professed to be Christians,—not to you outsiders, but to the very best people here. None of us are any better than we ought to be, and I cannot help fearing that some of us are not what we seem to be. Do not let us imagine that what we seem to be in the sight of our fellow creatures will have any weight in the judgment of God. We may be considered righteous by our neighbours and friends, but if we are not washed in the precious blood of Jesus, if we are not robed in the righteousness of Christ, if our lives do not have within them the evidences of the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, our friends’ favourable judgment will avail us nothing when the all-seeing eye of God beholds us as we really are. I pray, with all my heart, that each one of us may be righteous before God even as Noah was in his generation.

21. III. I have no time left for dealing with the third part of my subject, which was to have been THE GRACIOUS REWARD GIVEN TO NOAH BECAUSE OF THE EMINENCE OF HIS CHARACTER.

22. You all know that the Lord will bless the righteous for ever and ever, but the great question that we all have to answer is, are we righteous? Oh, what searching sermons, what tremendous blows hypocrites will endure without showing a sign of feeling anything! I usually notice that, if I preach a sermon that is more than ordinarily searching, there are sure to be some tender-hearted souls crying out at the close that they are hypocrites. Dear creatures, I wish I had no hearers more hypocritical than they are! Those who take such discourses most to heart are often those who have the least reason for doing so, while the real hypocrite is no more moved by it than is the marble in our baptistery. I might almost point him out with my finger, for he would not stir; he would be as bold and brazen as Judas was at the time when he sat with the rest of the disciples just before going out to betray his Lord. Oh, the dreadful presumption, the terrible hardness of heart to which men may come! Lest this should be the case with any of us, let each one of us now pray David’s prayer, “Search me, oh God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Let each one also pray, “Lord, let me know the truth about my case! Let me neither be self-deceived nor a deceiver of others! Let me know the worst of my case; open my eyes even though the sight of my position before you should be horrible to the nth degree! Do not let me go down to hell dreaming that I am going to heaven! Let me know what I really am; and if my heart has never been broken, break it now; if I have never been washed in the precious blood of Jesus, wash me in it now! Jesus, the sinner’s Saviour, I come to you this moment; I throw my arms around your cross, oh do not drive me away with a frown! Look in mercy and love at me, and tell me that my sins, which are many, are all forgiven.” Let the most trembling soul in this whole congregation cling to the cross, crying to him who hung on it,—

   Nothing in my hand I bring;

   Simply to thy cross I cling;

   Naked, come to thee for dress;

   Helpless, look to thee for grace;

   Foul, I to the fountain fly;

   Wash me, Saviour, or I die.

If we cannot cling to Christ’s cross as the sailor clings to the mast, let us cling as the limpet {a} clings to the rock; and the more the devil tries to detach us from it, the more closely let us cling to it. Let us come, either as saints or sinners, whichever we may be, to the foot of the cross, and look up at that dear head crowned with thorns, at those blessed hands and feet and side so rudely pierced, and as, by faith, we see the precious sin-atoning blood flowing from the Saviour’s cruel wounds, let each one of us sing as we have often done before,—

   There is a fountain fill’d with blood,

      Drawn from Emmanuel’s veins;

   And sinners, plunged beneath that flood.

      Lose all their guilty stains.

   The dying thief rejoiced to see

      That fountain in his day;

   Oh may I there, though vile as he,

      Wash all my sins away!

Then, though you have not been righteous so far before God, as Noah was, you shall be so for the future; the blood of Christ and the righteousness of Christ shall make you so; and then a new heart and a right spirit shall be given to you, God’s own Spirit shall be put within you, and God shall be glorified in you even as he was in righteous Noah. May it be so, for his dear Son’s sake! Amen.

{a} Limpet: A mollusc having an open tent-shaped shell and found adhering tightly to the rock which it makes its resting-place. OED.

Exposition By C. H. Spurgeon {Ge 7}

1. And the LORD said to Noah, “Come into the ark, you and all your house,

Notice that the Lord did not say to Noah, “Go into the ark,” but “Come,” plainly implying that God was himself in the ark, waiting to receive Noah and his family into the big ship that was to be their place of refuge while all the other people on the face of the earth were drowned. The distinctive word of the gospel is a drawing word: “Come.” Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”; and he will say to his people at the last, “Come, you blessed by my Father inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” “Depart” is the word of justice and judgment, but “Come” is the word of mercy and grace. “The Lord said to Noah, Come into the ark, you and all your house”;—

1. Because I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation.

Therefore God drew a distinction between him and the unrighteous, for he always has a special regard for godly people.

2, 3. Of every clean beast you shall take with you by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. Of birds also of the air by sevens the male and the female; to keep seed alive on the face of all the earth.

Of the clean creatures which might be offered in sacrifice to God you see that there was a larger proportion than there was of the unclean, that there might be sufficient for sacrifice without the destruction of any species. The unclean beasts were mostly killers and devourers of others, and therefore their number was to be less than that of the clean species. Oh, that the day might soon come when there would be more of clean men and women than of unclean, when there would be fewer sinners than godly people in the world, though even then there would be the ungodly “by two” like the unclean beasts.

4. For after seven days, and I will make it to rain on the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living thing that I have made I will destroy from off the face of the earth.”

It is the prerogative of the king to have the power of life and death, and it is the sole prerogative of the King of kings that—

   “He can create, and he destroy.”

But what destructive power is brought into operation because of human sin! Sin must be a very heinous thing, since God, who does not despise the work of his own hands, will sooner break up the human race, and destroy everything that lives rather than that sin should continue to defile the earth. He has destroyed the earth once by water because of sin, and he will the second time destroy it by fire for the very same reason. Wherever sin is, God will hunt it; with barbed arrows he will shoot at it; he will cut it in pieces with his sharp two-edged sword, for he cannot endure sin. Oh, how foolish are those who harbour it in their own hearts, for it will bring destruction to them if they keep it there!

5. And Noah did according to all that the LORD commanded him.

Here was positive proof of his righteousness, in that he was obedient to the word of the Lord. A man who does not obey God’s commands may talk about righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith, but it is clear that he does not possess it, for faith works by love, and the righteousness which is by faith is proved by obedience to God. “Noah did according to all that the Lord commanded him,” and so proved that he was righteous before God.

6. And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was on the earth.

He was nearly five hundred years old when he began to preach about the flood,—a good old age to take up such a subject. For a hundred and twenty years he pursued his theme,—three times as long as most men are ever able to preach; and now at last God’s time of longsuffering is over, and he proves the truthfulness of the testimony of his servant by sending the flood that Noah had foretold.

7, 8. And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood. Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of everything that creeps on the earth,

This largest and most complete menagerie that was ever gathered together was not collected by human skill; divine power alone could have accomplished such a task as that.

9. There went in two by two to Noah into the ark, the male and female, as God had commanded Noah.

They “went in.” Noah did not have to hunt or search for them, but they came according to God’s plan and purpose, even as, concerning the salvation which is by Christ Jesus, his people shall be willing to come to him in the day of his power; with joyfulness they shall come into the ark of their salvation.

10, 11. And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were on the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

Perhaps the world was in its prime, when the trees were in bloom, and the birds were singing in their branches, and the flowers were blooming on the earth, “the same day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.”

12, 13. And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights. In the very same day Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, entered into the ark:

These eight people are very carefully mentioned. “The Lord knows those who are his”; “‘and they shall be mine,’ says the Lord of hosts, ‘in that day when I make up’”—or, shut up—“‘my jewels,’” as he was about to do in this case. In a similar way, God makes a very careful enumeration of all those who believe in him, precious are they in his sight, and they shall be preserved when all others are destroyed.

14. They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every kind.

“Every bird of every kind,” that is, every kind of bird; they are all mentioned over again. God makes much of salvation; oh, that we also did! We may recount and rehearse the story of our rescue from universal destruction, and we need not be afraid or ashamed of repeating it. As the Holy Spirit repeats the words we have here, you and I may often relate the story of our salvation, and dwell on the minute details of it, for every item of it is full of instruction.

15, 16. And they went in to Noah into the ark, two by two of all flesh, in which is the breath of life. And those that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in. {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3042, “The Parable of the Ark” 3043} {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 1613, “Shut In or Shut Out” 1613}

Now the jewels are all in, and therefore the chest is closed.

17. And the flood was forty days on the earth;

Just as it had been foretold, for God’s providence always tallies with his promises or with his threats. “Has he said, and shall he not do it?”

17. And the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it was lifted up above the earth.

You can see it begin to move until it is afloat. The same effect is often produced on us; when the flood of affliction is deep, then we begin to rise. Oh, how often have we been lifted up above the earth by the very force that threatened to drench and drown us! David said, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted,” and many another saint can say that he never floated until the floods came; but then he left the worldliness with which he had been satisfied before, and he began to rise to a higher level than he had previously attained.

18, 19. And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly on the earth; and the ark went on the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed greatly on the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.

If Moses had meant to describe a partial deluge on only a small part of the earth, he used very misleading language; but if he meant to teach us that the deluge was universal, he used the very word which we might have expected that he would use. I should think that no person, merely by reading this chapter, would arrive at the conclusion that has been reached by some of our very learned men,—too learned to hold the simple truth. It looks as if the deluge must have been universal when we read that not only did the waters prevail greatly on the earth, but that “all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven”; that is, all beneath the canopy of the sky, “were covered.” What could be more plain and clear than that?

20-23. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved on the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man: all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was on the dry land died. And every living thing was destroyed which was on the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and only Noah remained alive, and those who were with him in the ark.

This is the counterpart of what will follow the preaching of the gospel; those who are in Christ shall live, shall rise, and reign with him for ever; but none of those who are outside of Christ shall live. “Only Noah remained alive, and those who were with him in the ark.”

24. And the waters prevailed on the earth a hundred and fifty days.

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Table of Contents, May, 1910.

“Words for God,” By Pastor Thomas Spurgeon