said to him, "I will give thee this land to inherit it." This was a
promise, the promise too of One that could not lie. It was an immutable
thing. And Abraham rightly listened to this. As a sinner, who knew full
well and full justly, that promises to such an one must have foundations
and warranty, he listened to it; therefore he at once says, "Whereby
shall I know that I shall inherit it?" Is this a challenge of the
promise? Is this a question of the divine truthfulness? No, indeed. It
is only faith letting God know, that it was a conscious sinner who was
listening to His promise, which needed therefore some warranty, or
consideration, to carry it with certainty to the heart. And the Lord was
well pleased with this. Faith always pleases Him, as without it nothing
does. And at once He prepares to let Abraham know that _sacrifice
sustained the promise_.
Our patriarch, before Abraham, was in the like faith. And walking in the
steps of the same faith he takes an advanced character. He attains
righteousness. "Thee have I seen righteous before me in this
generation," is now the word of God to him. "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_."
Love, and faith, and the patience of hope were, however, each to animate
his soul, and form his life, for that solemn interval of 120 years.
While the ark was preparing, the Spirit, in Noah's preaching, was
striving with that generation. Nothing can be more beautifully replete
with meaning than all this. Noah was in the work of faith, the labour of
love, and the patience of hope--a true Thessalonian saint. He was
preparing the ark in that faith which had received the divine
warning--in love he was telling his generation of righteousness. 2 Peter
ii. 5. Just like a saint of this day. His own safety is settled and
sure--_that_ he knows; but he is careful that his neighbours should
share it with him. The Spirit then strove in the testimony as now He
strives; but every stroke of Noah's hammer day by day told that He would
not _always_ strive.
At the close of this predestinated but undisclosed period, Noah enters
the ark. This was the great salvation in a mystery. It was as the night
of Egypt's doom and Israel's rescue. Nothing less than safety and
deliverance under the fullest securities and dearest title in an hour of
most solemn judgment, was now the story of Noah. And this is the
salvation of the gospel. In Egypt afterwards, the very hand which
carried the sword of destruction along the land had appointed the
sheltering blood. Could the sword strike? Impossible! And now it was He,
who took counsel with Himself about the judgment of the world, who had
also counselled His elect about the way of escape. It was the hand which
was about to let the waters out which was now shutting Noah in. Could
they then prevail against him! Just, in like manner, impossible!
"The voice that speaks in thunder
Says, 'Sinner, I am thine.'"
The One to whom vengeance belongs has settled all the plan of safety. He
that is bearing the sword into the land has appointed the scarlet line
in the window. But a solemn scene of judgment accompanies all this. The
sun was risen on the earth, as, after this, Lot entered into Zoar. And
yet that sunny hour was the very time for the rain of brimstone and fire
to fall. Nothing could be done till Lot entered the city, but then
nothing remained to be done ere the fire came down.
How deeply was the moment of visitation hid! They might well have said,
"Peace and safety," when they saw that morning sun, as he was wont,
gilding the bright and happy surface of the scene around them. But even
then the "sudden destruction" fell.
Noah's generation was eating, and drinking, and marrying, just as the
water began to rise. There was no harbinger, save, like Lot's escape to
Zoar, Noah's entrance into the ark. But that was folly. To imprison
himself and all that he had in the sides of a ship aground, that _was_
folly. But the flood came in the moment of fancied security, and took
them all away. They were "willingly ignorant" of the word of God, the
testimony of the "preacher of righteousness;" one who addressed them in
the power and on the principle of a resurrection hope. 1 Peter iii.
Sudden and sure destruction on all outside, but divine, infallible
security on all within. The city of refuge was _appointed of God_, and
its walls must be salvation. Impossible to be less. The same
righteousness which has pronounced a curse on every one that continueth
not in all things written in the book of the law to do them, has
likewise pronounced a curse on every one that hangeth on a tree. Gal.
iii. Can He then deny His own remedy to the sinner, cursed under the
law, when he pleads, by faith, the Saviour cursed on the tree? Alike,
impossible.
"The Lord shut him in." The hand of the Lord imparted its own strength
and security to Noah's condition. It is not too bold to say, that all
within the door of the ark were as safe as the Lord Himself. The Lord
returned, we may say, to His own heavens, or to His throne, which is
established for ever, and Noah was left on the earth, in the place and
day of judgment. But Noah was as safe as the Lord. "We may have boldness
in the day of judgment: because as He is, so are we in this world."
Jesus has gone back to heaven, and we are still in this world, the
judgment of which is marked before God; but we have the boldness which
is proper to Jesus. Wonderful to utter it! And yet is all that
mysterious, glorious security figured in that little action, "The Lord
shut him in." God's own hand imparted its strength to Noah's condition
ere He returned to the heavens.
Some of every sort are borne with Noah from the place of death into the
ark of salvation. The "eight souls," as Peter speaks, but with them,
remnants of the beasts of the earth, small and great, winged fowl and
creeping things, all are housed and redeemed together with Noah.
So was it afterwards in Egypt. Not a hoof was left behind. The great
redemption of that day, in like manner, provided for all--Moses and the
600,000, with their wives and little ones, and also all their cattle;
all again knew and manifested the saving strength of God. As in the day
of Nineveh, long after, "the much cattle" are the Lord's thought, as the
six-score thousand persons that could not discern between their right
hand and their left.
And in the coming day of the inheritance of Christ, His dominions will
measure all the works of God's hand, "All sheep and oxen, yea, and the
beasts of the field; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea;" and
the fields and the floods, and the hills and trees of the wood, shall be
joyful before Him. Psalm xcviii.
Welcome mystery! Are they not all His creatures? Did not His hand of old
form them, and His eyes and His heart rest and delight in them? And is
this lost to Him? May Jonah grieve for his withered gourd, and the Lord
not spare the works of His own hand for His abiding joy? He will renew
the face of the earth, as it is written--The glory of the Lord shall
endure for ever, the Lord shall rejoice in His works. Psalm civ. 31.
"The earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation
of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not
willingly, but by reason of Him who hath subjected the same in hope,
because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of
corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God."
But it is here that I may pause for a moment, to notice the
dispensational character of these days of Noah.
The earth, as the scene of God's delight, and of His people's
citizenship, had been lost by the apostasy of Adam; and the hopes and
inheritance of the saints, all through the days before the flood, were
heavenly--the Lord thereby disclosing, though faintly, certain portions
of the great secrets of His own bosom--the secrets of the good pleasure
purposed in Himself ere worlds were, that heaven, as well as earth,
should be connected with the destinies of man. The heavens were opened
to man, when Adam, the man of the earth, failed. Gen. v. 24.
That was so. But earth was not shut because heaven was thus opened. The
divine counsel ran otherwise. It was this--that God would "gather
together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and
which are on earth." And the heavenly calling having been already
revealed in the story of the saints before the flood, the due season had
now come for the revelation of God's great purpose concerning the earth,
and to make it known that He had not given it up, because, in His
dispensational ways, He had taken up the heavens.
As in Rev. iv. When the heavenly saints, "the fulness of the Gentiles,"
the mystic elders and living creatures, are seated in their heavenly
places, the thoughts of Him who sat on the throne there return to the
earth. The rainbow is _at once_ seen around the throne--the witness of
this, that the covenant which gives security _to the earth_ was about to
be the spring of action in heaven. And so now in these days of Noah.
When the heavenly family had ended their course, and Enoch was
translated, the Lord's thoughts returned to the earth, and that, I may
say, _at once_; for the next thing of character in the progress of the
hand, or the Spirit of God, is the prophecy of Lamech, pledging God and
His mercies to the earth again, and introducing Noah--"This same [Noah]
shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of
the ground which the Lord hath cursed."
This is all simple--scarcely capable of being misunderstood. The
prophecy of Lamech, which introduces it, tells us what we are to expect
and find in the mystery of Noah. "The key of the parable lies at the
door." The recovery of the earth, the return of God's rest and delight
in it, all this will be made good in the coming times of the true Noah,
in whom, and in whom alone, all the promises of God are yea and amen.
A great action, however, must usher in those times. The call of the
heavenly people is quite otherwise, as in the call of the antediluvian
saints. There was in those days no interference with the scene around.
Cain's family was left in possession--quiet, undisputed possession--of
their cities and their wealth. The visitation of God then, as always
under such a call, only separated a people without affecting either to
regulate or judge the world. It left it as it found it. But God's claim
to the earth, and His purpose to take it up again, is necessarily
otherwise. There He is as _thoroughly interfering with every thing_, as
in the other way of His "manifold wisdom" He was _utterly leaving all
alone_. For by judgment He must purge the earth, and get it fit to be
His footstool.
All this is the dispensational truth we learn here, in this parable, or
in these times of Noah. The earth has been remembered, and is now
resumed, but through purifying judgments. All takes the sentence of
death into itself, that it may stand as a new thing, in the strength and
grace of Him who quickens the dead. The earth itself was in the water,
or under the water, and the elect remnant were saved--as in the
appointed city of refuge--from the hand of the avenger; and all
therefore appears again, as in resurrection.
Beasts, and fowl, and creeping things, some of every sort, go into the
ark; and there, within that refuge, which kept its charge in peace from
fear of evil, the ransomed passed the days of their patience.
But they were more than safe. They were _remembered_--"God remembered
Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in
the ark." So did Joshua, in other days, remember Rahab. The scene of
death and judgment lay all around our patriarch. It was one vast, and
deep, and mighty ruin--an extended Jericho the accursed--another and a
wider land of Pharaoh, with the doom of the Lord resting darkly and
heavily upon it. But He who had already shut His remnant in, now
remembers them; and in that remembrance there was present life, and, in
prospect, a goodly inheritance.
It will be so with another elect remnant, in coming days. Before the
same covenant God, who was now keeping Noah in mind, a book of
remembrance will be written for them that fear the Lord and think upon
His name. Mal. iii. And of them the Lord says, "They shall be mine in
that day when I make up my jewels;" as now, in virtue of this
covenant-remembrance, the Lord causes a wind to pass over the earth, the
waters abate, and the ark rests on the mountains of Ararat.
This remembrance of God was most precious. But Noah, in his city of
refuge, had other consolations. The divine remembrance was the hidden
comfort of faith; but he had also blessed, conscious exercises of
spirit.
The ark had a window in it. The door was in the keeping of the Lord, but
the window was for Noah's use. He who had shut him in, alone could let
him out--the times and the seasons were in _His_ hand. But while the
time of his pilgrimage, as a prisoner of hope, cannot be shortened, yet
may the hopes of such a prisoner be very preciously nourished, and his
spirit within him blessedly exercised. Noah may open the window, remove
the covering, look out, and send forth his messengers, his Caleb and
Joshua and their companions, to spy out the land, and report to him what
it is, whether it be fat or lean, good or bad, and to bring him the
fruit of it.
What beauty and what wisdom strike the eye and the heart in all this!
This window in the ark, and its uses, are so significant! The divine
_methods_ are so worthy of the divine _communications_! "Apples of gold
in pictures of silver" are the Spirit's words.
Typical, symbolic, parabolic teaching is very acceptable to the heart,
and makes ready entrance there. We all prove this, just as children like
pictures and stories. Not only, I would here observe, are doctrines thus
taught--not only the great mysteries of the glory, but experiences of
the soul, the personal inworkings of the Spirit, are illustrated by
these same methods. Conviction of sin, for instance, was expressed in
Adam retreating from the voice of the Lord God, amongst the trees of the
garden. The longings and inquiries of a soul awakened to a sense of its
condition, if haply it might find its path, are given to us in the
Israelite standing at his tent door stripped of his ornaments, and
looking after the Mediator as he entered the Tabernacle. Ex. xxxiii. And
Moses, with his veiled and unveiled face, might have spoken of exercises
and experiences of heart to us, even had not the Spirit, by His light in
the Apostle, helped our understandings. 2 Cor. iii.
We might go through a thousand such instances. And by this method the
great things of God are pressed home upon the heart. By these figures
the Lord is standing very near the heart, and knocking there. It is not
His grace displaying itself in the distance, or shining from afar, but
it is the Lord Himself, and His blessing, coming very near for our full
acceptance. We may _admire_, but if we do not also _enjoy_, the purpose
of the revelation is not answered.
Now this method is beautifully preserved in these days of Noah. Indeed
the whole of Genesis is full of it. It is a book of "allegories," as St.
Paul speaks--divine stories written for the school of God.
The ark, as I have already noticed, had its door and its window, and
Noah had his spies to send into the promised land--and the mission of
these spies, the raven and the dove, express the experience of the saint
in the contrary workings of the flesh and spirit, which contend in him.
The raven never returns. The earth may be still unpurged, but the
unclean nature can take up with it. The "present evil world" will do
well enough for fallen, degraded man. Indeed, the ark was rather a place
of captivity than security, to the unclean raven. She never returns to
it when once escaped. But Noah will not trust her. Beautiful saintly
intelligence! The raven may remain outside; but that is no proof to Noah
that the earth is clean, or fit for the sole of his foot. Noah will not
trust her, but sends out a clean creature after her. And different
indeed are the tidings which she bears. It is, in principle, the contest
of Caleb and Joshua with their companion spies. The dove returns
instinctively. There was no rest for her in a place still under judgment
of God, and unpurged. And Noah, conscious that he can trust her and
commit the question to her settlement, sends her out a second and a
third time. And well indeed he may trust her. Her only sympathy is with
the pledges of peace and of a new creation. On her second return she
bears an olive-leaf in her mouth, and after her third mission she never
comes back.
Beautiful mystery! The earth was redeemed from the curse now, and in its
new-creation state the dove can delight. All is native air to her. It is
now the land of the turtle and the olive, and Noah understands the
absence of this clean creature. He at once removes the covering from the
ark, and looks out; and the God of glory shortly lets him out, as the
God of all grace had before shut him in.
Surely the ways of a saint, the ways of the mind of Christ, are here! I
know not that any action can be more pregnant with meaning. There was
the ark, and its window, and its door. The ark itself was for safety,
the window for a prospect, and the door for an exodus, in due season.
All this was faith and hope ending their pilgrimage in the place of
promised glory.
Noah suspected not the ark; he did not occupy himself in feeling its
timbers, whether indeed they were keeping the waters outside--he had no
doubt of that. He had no pump in his ship, if I may be allowed the
figure; and I may utter it, since, homely as it is, it glorifies Jesus
in the security He gives the sinner; for such is the very style of
Scripture itself.
The lesson taught us may be the profoundest in the mind of the Spirit,
but the school where it is learnt may be a despised place. Look, for
instance, at Genesis xlviii. You are there at the bedside of a dying old
man--a common homely spot. But there, some of the deepest and richest
secrets of the mind of God are, in a figure, conveyed to us--the great
mystery of our adoption, according to divine good pleasure; and then our
welcome into the family of God, in the day of our manifestation, or
conversion. And what richer counsels of grace are there than those? And
yet in what more common or homely school could they have been taught us?
As in still earlier days, in Genesis xvi. There you are introduced to
the domestic arrangement of Abraham's family as to the servant and her
mistress, and their disputes; and yet, in all that, you get the profound
mystery of the two covenants. Gal. iv. And again, in the act, the
ordinary act, of discharging a servant, another feature in the same
mystery is presented to us, in chapter xxi. The wisdom of God delights
in these scenes and materials; they rebuke the erring thought of man's
heart, that important things must be done or said by imposing
methods--that the prophet must come forth and strike his hand over the
place. 2 Kings v. 11. But it is with rude and inartificial instruments
that both the wisdom of God and the power of God are commonly seen.
Rams' horns blew down Jericho, and fishermen turned the world upside
down, as was said of them. But these homely methods of God's wisdom aid
in carrying the instruction home, and lodging it deep in the intimacies
and recollections of the heart. I may therefore still say that Noah's
ship had no pump in it. Indeed it could not. Such a thing would have
witnessed against it. God's provisions would have declared their own
insufficiency. That could never have been. God's provisions and God's
works always tell _whose_ they are by being _what_ they are. Simplicity,
and yet sufficiency, give them their character. "Let there be light, and
there was light." "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be
saved;" and the sinner, believing, rejoiced in God with all his house.
So, in like simplicity, in these earlier days. The heart of Noah was not
soiled by a suspicion. He rested in the sea-worthiness of his vessel,
because of God's appointment and approval of it--nay, I may say, because
of God's building of it. Faith keeping his heart quiet and assured as to
the judgment, hope fills it as to the coming glory.
Such is the beautiful way of this "prisoner of hope." _A prisoner of
hope_ is one of the Spirit's titles, I may say, for all the saints of
God. Jeremiah was such an one in his day. Jeremiah was shut up in "the
court of the prison, which was in the king of Judah's house," and this,
too, for Christ's sake. He was God's prisoner, and such an one is always
hope's prisoner. Jeremiah is told to purchase Hananiah's field, and that
was food for hope, like the olive-leaf in the mouth of the dove. It told
the prophet of good days to come, though at that moment he was in a
prison, the Chaldean army at the city gates, and all the land deserted.
The waters were again all around and abroad; but the ark of the prophet,
like that of the patriarch, had a window in it.
So was Israel a prisoner of hope in the night of the passover. With shoe
on foot, staff in hand, and girded loins, Israel waited in the very
midst of the judgments of the Lord; but, like our patriarch, they waited
there only to pass out to the inheritance of the Lord. And having the
pre-eminence in all things, Jesus again and again shows us the perfect
way of a prisoner of hope, looking for a resurrection portion. As when
He entered Jerusalem, in John xii., the Jewish multitudes and the
Gentile strangers being drawn thither to inquire after Him, and all the
dignities and joys of the Son of David seeming to wait on Him, His heart
waits on the resurrection hope still, "the joy set before him," and
forth from that attitude of soul, or place of expectation, He speaks of
the corn of wheat falling into the ground and dying. Steadily and
desirously did His eye rest on the glory which lay, not _in_ that hour,
but _beyond_ it. In a spirit of entire consecration and sacrifice, He
surrenders _that_ hour (bright to Him in the world as it was, and big
with the promise of all its kingdoms and the glory thereof) to the
Father: and the voice from heaven then visits this perfect, blessed
"prisoner of hope," with assurances that, in due season, even
resurrection times, His name and victory and honour should all be
provided for and secured.
Matchless Jesus!--This voice from heaven was again the food of hope's
prisoner. And what was the transfiguration on the holy hill but the
same? Jesus had been speaking to the disciples of His death, and
encouraging them (as He would us, beloved) not to love their lives in
this world, when, soon after, six or eight days, as we read, the holy
hill shines suddenly with the light of resurrection or millennial
regions. And what was all that visitation of glory, but the grapes of
Eshcol brought from Canaan to the camp of God in the desert; or as the
return of the dove to Noah, with the olive-leaf in her mouth?
The time, however, for "rendering double" to this "prisoner of hope"
(Zech. ix. 12), comes in due course. "And God spake unto Noah, saying,
Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons'
wives with thee! bring forth with thee every living thing that is with
thee, of all flesh, both of fowl and of cattle, and of every creeping
thing that creepeth upon the earth." And Noah went forth. He landed on
the renewed earth, where, at that mystic moment, all was, in a great
sense, according to God's mind again; no longer corrupt, as when he had
last trod it in its old estate, but clean, under the refining of the
judgment.