"Come Into the Ark"

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Genesis 7:1-16

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Well as we continue forward in the book of Genesis, we're looking at chapter 7 verses 1 through 16 together this morning.
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Next week, Lord willing, we'll not only finish chapter 7 but also begin chapter 8.
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Chapter 8 verse 1 is structurally the most important part of Genesis 6 through 9, and I'll try to show that next week, and that's why we'll go even beyond chapter 7.
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But this there's plenty to consider just in the first 16 verses. And as we look at Noah and really the beginning of the flood, we're not going to actually get into the details of the flood and consider the aspect of God's judgment until next week, but we're going to do everything up until that, everything up until the first day, and even the beginning of the flood.
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We want to keep in mind that we're talking about the one that God had promised would be a comfort back in Genesis 5 verse 29.
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That was Lamech's prophecy of Noah. He called his name Noah, saying, this one will comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands because of the ground which the
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Lord has cursed. And so we remember that fancy word synecdoche, the ground curse, is a small part that represents the larger curse, the larger response of God's judgment to human sin.
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In other words, even though we're only several chapters away from chapter 3, Noah is a pivotal figure in relation to God's curse upon human sinfulness.
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So often Noah is disconnected from Genesis 1 through 3, and we cannot make that mistake.
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Noah is a very pivotal bridge between the first Adam and his responsibilities and the last
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Adam, and I hope we can demonstrate that in our time this morning. He draws us back to Genesis 3, back to God's curse upon the soil, back to Adam, and we're going to see just the way he becomes a comfort from the curse and how that comfort comes by salvation through judgment.
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By salvation through judgment. And the judgment, as we'll get into it next week, it's nearly unimaginable.
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It's nearly unimaginable. We all have, you probably have what I have, we have some Melissa and Doug wooden ark with little wooden animal cutouts that you can build on the ark and they're all smiling and the animals are all smiling and nothing against that.
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We teach our children to play these things. We want to reinforce biblical themes, biblical stories, but where are the floating corpses?
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Where is a globe that's been absolutely destroyed? Where's the breath of life that's been snuffed out?
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These are not things that ancient Hebrews would want to decorate into children's cartoons. You wouldn't have a poster of this kind of judgment,
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Noah's Ark, hanging on your wall. It would be grotesque when we understand the details.
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Even with this literal restart of creation, the domineering, debauched, abominable ways of sinful humanity continues through the flood.
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What we'll see, again, this picture of salvation through judgment. We begin chapter 6 with these men of renown increasing in wickedness.
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They're destroyed along with the whole earth, all except Noah and the animals on the ark.
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But then the whole program of human sinfulness begins again, not long after the flood.
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And so we set up our major plot toward the city of Babel. And really that takes us to the next several chapters beyond chapter 9.
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So the drama of sin and the drama of redemption continues through this account of the flood.
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The flood is a major, major event in terms of the biblical storyline.
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In the history of redemption, the flood is paradigmatic. In other words, it's echoed throughout
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Scripture. The paradigm that we've tried to establish, I think I've mentioned this some weeks back, is we begin
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Genesis with creation. That's a through line. Creation, when it's corrupted by sin, is counter to God, counter to God's purposes, and therefore we have counter creation.
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And that counter creation, that human rebellion, human corruption, is met with by God's judgment.
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And his judgment always takes the form of decreation. And we'll see that, for instance, this morning.
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But because God gives salvation through judgment, judgment's not the last note.
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And decreation is not where things settle, but rather out of that decreation, out of that judgment, out of the chaos emerges salvation, emerges recreation, new creation.
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And so those are the major paradigms that we're going to be dealing with for quite some time. Along with humanity, we know that animal life and vegetation emerge on dry land, which itself emerges from the waters.
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And in this way, the days of creation are being echoed. In this way, Noah is a type of Adam.
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And therefore, Noah is a type of Christ. Noah is a type of Christ because he is a type of Adam, first and foremost.
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Noah stands at the head of a new humanity. He's the harbinger of a new creation. He's the promised comfort to the curse.
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In all of these ways, he prefigures Christ in all of these ways. Let's begin with verse one.
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Then the Lord said to Noah, Come into the ark, you and all your household, because I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation.
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The Lord is addressing Noah to us. This seems all very natural in terms of a narrative, as though he got the command to build the ark.
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He spent a weekend hammering that thing together. And then the Lord said, All right, now it's time to get in. But of course, what's hidden within such a rapid transition of verses is 120 years of labor.
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And we drew that out a little bit last week. 120 years of exhausting, often despairing, slogging it out.
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Faithful life in a fallen world, much like unto us, except with sin.
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Two, three, four times as long of a life, a faithful life, a life that had to deal with thorns and trials, hilltops and valleys, hardships, hurdles, hindrances.
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Noah has labored long and hard. He is literally in the building of the ark, run the race as to win.
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He's fought the good fight. And with these words, as he stands on the threshold of cataclysm, as he's on the brink of judgment, the
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Lord says these words to him. Come, come into the ark. It's a very, very beautiful way of inviting
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Noah into the ark. Notice that it's given as a warm welcome, an invitation. Some translations render it as enter, enter the ark.
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There's no command here. It's not imperative. It's it's it's drawing this saint who has walked all his days before the
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Lord and was told, as it were, well done, good and faithful servants enter into the joy of your master.
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That's almost how the Lord is addressing Noah in the ark. You've labored well, you've obeyed that all that I've commanded.
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Enter now into the joy of my salvation. Enter now into the ark. Come. That's an invitation that we find echoed throughout scripture whenever we meet with salvation.
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A. W. Pink, he observes this. The Lord does not say go into the ark, but come go would be an obtuse command.
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Come a gracious invitation. Go would have implied the Lord was bidding Noah depart from him.
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Go, go away from me into the ark. Come implies what I will be with you in the ark.
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Come with me into the ark. In other words, we're already seeing something very significant about the way
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God brings about salvation through judgment. As a result of being in the Lord's covenant,
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God undertakes to be present with his people. He's present with us in salvation through judgment.
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Even when that salvation feels like we're hanging on by our fingernails, as Noah must have felt, even when the trials of that salvation through judgment seem incredibly dark, incredibly deep.
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When we're soaking our pillows with our tears, when our tears are our food day and night, as David would write in the
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Psalms, even when we pass from death into life, we have the promised presence of God.
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All of that is contained within this invitation. Come, come into the ark, not go, but come into the ark.
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Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, thou art with me. See the promised presence of God in the most unexpected places.
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This is the promise Noah himself receives. What does he receive? Lo, I am with you always come into the ark, come into the ark with me.
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He's invited into the ark. We haven't spent much time describing the ark. We read through the description last week in chapter six.
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Most of us have seen illustrations of it. We know the dimensions. We don't exactly know how it was fashioned.
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Some of the details are speculative, but we've seen paintings. We've seen those cartoon depictions. Some of us have even seen accurate replica in Kentucky.
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Totally jealous about that. Here's this incredible timber structure made of gopher wood, and that's very significant.
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So we don't know what gopher wood is. Could be cypress, but it's written as gopher wood, and it's covered over with pitch for waterproofing.
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And the word pitch here is very interesting because it's a unique word choice. It's not the same word that's used in pitch later in the
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Bible, and it's a closely related to or what we would say it's cognate with the verb and even the noun to cover covering, which is always in temple language, tabernacle language, an atonement word to cover covering.
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So this word kafar literally, it's the picture of atonement. And as it were, it's making the ark, this vessel of atonement, this vessel of covering in the midst of God's judgment.
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That's very significant. Theologically, the ultimate presentation of God's salvation is glimmering to us through the ark.
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It's an atonement vessel. It's a covering vessel. It's where sinners go to find refuge from the wrath of God.
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It has a single entrance into which Noah, his wife, his sons and their wives, eight souls total, plus all of the animal life in pairs, as well as additional clean animals pass through this portal.
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And then there's a window in the rooftop cut to a cubit in the span above.
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It's a light in some translations. It's a very odd choice of words, a light or a window placed up.
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And I have to tell you, reading through descriptions of the ark, there's so much, there's probably 13 or 14 observations to make about the ark.
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The problem is theologians and commentators have too much time on their hands, and I think they allegorize too readily.
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So I'm sparing you a lot that I think just stretches a little too far about what the ark is showing us.
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Every element of the ark is allegorized, but I think some things are quite accurate because of course
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God is presenting the ark as a picture ultimately of salvation, ultimately of the cross.
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And here I think that window being cut, you have one entrance and you have one light, one roof opening or portal.
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And I like what Pink has to say here. He says, Noah and his companions were not to be looking down on the scene of destruction beneath and around them, but up to the living
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God. We don't need windows on the side to see what's happening on the earth. We just need to look up.
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When the waves are bashing us around and things are swirling and we're hearing the shrieking slowly be suffocated into silence, we are to look up.
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In the horror and bleakness of the judgment that we're going to see next week, what does Noah and his sons and his son -wives do?
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They're only given a portal, a light to look up. The same lesson taught to Jehovah's people in the wilderness.
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The pillar of cloud guides them by day, the pillar of fire guides them by night. This isn't just for guidance, but it's for instruction.
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Israel must look up, not be occupied to what's to her left or to her right, but she rather must look up.
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And so we're called upon our faith with our eyes to be set heavenward, our attention to be set upon things above, not on things on the earth.
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Colossians 3 .2. Notice further that Noah is invited with his household.
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He's invited with his household. Genesis 7 .1. The Lord said to Noah, come into the ark, you and all your household, because I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation.
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I hope it's not something we glance past that Noah is being singled out for his righteousness.
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And we have to remember what we've rehearsed. And this is very important that we remember why
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Noah is righteous in the first place. It's because God's grace and favor has found him.
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God has established his covenant with him. In other words, Noah's righteousness is a result of God's grace, not the ground of it, not the means of it, right?
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God chooses sovereignly to be gracious to Noah. Therefore, because of that sovereign decision,
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Noah becomes righteous in his generation. We begin with God's grace, and then we see the effects of it.
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Then we see the fruit of it. Come into the ark, you and all your household, because I have seen that you, singular, you, you alone,
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Noah, you are righteous. You are righteous, and therefore you and your household can come into the ark, can be saved from the judgment.
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So notice God's grace is effective in Noah's obedience. Noah is then righteous, but that righteousness is not mustered up from himself or by himself.
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It's it's given by the Lord, and yet it truly is his righteousness. And as he walks in obedience, it truly is his righteousness.
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And the Lord, in light of that righteousness, allows his family to be saved from the judgment to come.
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And this is confirmed by scripture elsewhere. Ezekiel 14, where the
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Lord is pronouncing judgment on his unfaithful people. And we read these words.
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He singles out Noah as an example of singular righteousness. And then he confirms the fact that his sons and his daughter in laws were saved as a result of his singular righteousness.
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And Ezekiel is given this revelation to say, My judgment is such now that that wouldn't be true now.
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I did. I was willing to give Noah that grace and extend it to his family. Such is the height of rebellion in my people.
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Now it wouldn't extend that far. Noah alone would be saved. Listen. The word of the
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Lord came again to me, saying, Son of man, when a land sins against me by persistent unfaithfulness,
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I will stretch out my hand against it. I will cut off its supply of bread and send famine upon it. Cut off man and beast.
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That's significant. Man and beast from it. Even if these three men,
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Noah, Daniel and Job, that's an interesting addition, isn't it?
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Job, Job, the one who contends with God for 30 chapters.
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Job, Noah, Daniel and Job. Even if they were in it, they would deliver only themselves by their righteousness, says the
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Lord God. They would deliver neither sons nor daughters. Only they would be delivered, and the land would be desolate.
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Or if I bring a sword on that land and say, Sword, go through the land, and I cut off man and beast from it, even though these three men were in it, as I live, says the
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Lord God, they would deliver neither sons nor daughters, but only themselves. Even though Noah, Daniel and Job were in it as I live, says the
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Lord God, they would deliver neither son nor daughter. They would deliver only themselves by their righteousness.
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So Noah is being singled out here. And what should pop out to us is the fact that Noah's righteousness somehow enables
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God to show grace in favor to his family. We are not told that his family is righteous.
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We will see the evidence of that in Genesis nine. What we have is this.
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Noah's righteousness was uniquely and singularly effective to save his household from God's judgment.
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Now, our Presbyterian friends would want to point to this as an example of what they believe is the case throughout
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Scripture and throughout church history. That when at least one parent is a believer with the
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Lord, their household is saved. God has saved their household. In some way, their children are in a relationship to God.
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And so they're covenant children. You'll hear our good Presbyterian friends talk about their covenant children. And as good reformed
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Baptists, you should press back on that in grace and charity and say, I'm sorry, children of what covenant of what covenant are these children a part of?
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They're certainly not a part of the new covenant, not based on what we understand about the new covenant, that from the least to the greatest, they shall all know me.
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My spirit shall be put within them. I will cast out their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. They're certainly not children of that covenant.
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Of what indiscriminate, vague, generic covenant are they a part?
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In other words, this is not representing to us a picture of God saving households.
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And this is what he's going to do. He did it for Noah. He'll do it for anyone who becomes a believer in him. If you come to Christ, your children are already in a relationship to God.
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That's salvific. And they just need to walk in that. Yes, it's that rare occasion unfortunately, that some have fallen away.
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But generally speaking, this is God's ordinary way of salvation. Now, as a counterpoint, as a counterpoint, blessed be
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God. Thanks be to God. He often does save. He often does save children in the homes of his people.
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Praise him for it. Praise him for it. But we begin not from a place of presumption. We begin not assuming that God's grace now belongs to our children by way of blood.
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We know that salvation comes by way of spirit, by way of a confession of faith, of repentance of sins, baptism.
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This is the way God ordinarily brings salvation to sinners. And so are our children blessed? Absolutely.
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Are they set apart in some sense? Absolutely. But they're in no covenant relationship that scripture speaks of.
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They're children in Adam. And they'll die in Adam unless they come to Christ. So we have to establish that.
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And then we have to answer the question. So what is being presented to us here? Clearly, Noah's righteousness saves his household.
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If it's not a picture of the Presbyterian family, what is it a picture of? Well, this is vital to understanding, again,
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Noah as a presentation of Christ. We're reminded that Christ has a household of his own.
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Hebrews 3 verse 6, Christ as a son over his own house, whose house we are.
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And it's solely on the basis of his righteousness that he saves his household.
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That's what Noah is presenting to us. His righteousness alone is what covers those of his household.
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And so it is that Christ, on the merit of his righteousness alone, saves his household. We look to the true
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Noah, to Christ, and we confess not by works of righteousness we have done, but by his mercy he has saved us.
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And then also there's a practical realization here. This is also a picture to us of God's favor.
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And as I say, he often shows us his favor. You know, it would have been traumatic enough for Noah to realize that all of the people he ever knew, all of the birds he could ever see fly in the air unless they were paired up and brought into the ark, all of the vegetation, all of the forms and curvature and beauty of the earth, all of that was swallowed up.
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All of that was swallowed up. It was utterly destroyed. There was at least some comfort of knowing that he and his boys and their wives were saved.
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Imagine if Noah was in the ark and his wife was outside and he could hear her cries, her pleas, if only she could come in.
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Imagine if one of the sons was lost. There was a mercy of God here to allow Noah's family, though they were not righteous in his sight, to enter into that ark of refuge.
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Spurgeon picks up on this. He says, notice that Noah's happiness was all the greater because he was shut in the ark with all of his family.
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This is a great joy to have your household brought into the faith of Christ. Some among us have one or two of their family still without Christ, strangers to his salvation.
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And this is a great grief. This is so rarely does
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Spurgeon or 19th century preachers in general get personal with reflecting on someone in the congregation.
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But this is what he does here. Listen, there's a brother among us who joys to dwell in Christ, but his father and mother are still without God and without Christ.
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How often we have heard that dear brother's prayer for his relatives. Perhaps his parents are here.
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And if so, I would tell them how much their son's prayers affect me. He cries as for his life that God would save his father.
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Some among us never pray in the prayer meeting without strong crying and tears for their family members.
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They cannot get through a prayer without mentioning their children or their brothers or others of their house. And I hope they never will.
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I hope God will lay their kindred on their heart as a heavy burden until they're saved and answered a prayer.
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Isn't that a good New Year's resolution for us? God would lay those in our household heavy on our heart until he answers.
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Spurgeon says, I've been blessed to hear those prayers. I hope they never stop praying those prayers. I hope we never stop praying those prayers.
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We have we have brothers and sisters here that pray like that. Our friends, our family, they're not always easy, but but we mourn for them.
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We we yearn for them. We we often don't know what to speak or how to speak it.
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It's awkward with family, and yet we're compelled to do so.
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And I often think we're more frustrated in our efforts when we should be finding the gain in prayer.
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I think there's wisdom here to say we should put our chief efforts in prayer and let that be the guiding light into how we speak to them and opportunities we have with them.
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It's a blessing to see the Lord save a household. But you know what? It's also a blessing to have to walk humbly independently upon him and to have a life of prayer before him in the hope that he might show mercy to some loved one.
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That's a blessing to notice the Lord's further instructions.
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We shall take with you seven each of every clean animal, a male and his female to each of animals that are unclean, a male and his female.
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Also seven each of birds of the air, male and female to keep the species alive on the face of all the earth.
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For after seven more days, I will cause it to rain on the earth 40 days and 40 nights, and I will destroy from the face of the earth all living things that I have made.
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And Noah did according to all that the Lord commanded him. So notice here we have this distinction between clean and unclean animals, and we've never seen this before.
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So far in Genesis, we've never come across clean and unclean animals. That's not something we're going to see until later in the
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Mosaic law given to the Israelites. In other words, this sounds like something that was much later, and it's being brought into Noah here.
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We have no instructions about it. Two of every kind or species of unclean animal that's in order to preserve them from the flood, right?
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Literally, he says to keep the species alive on the face of all the earth, but then seven of every clean animal and we can gather the fact that they're clean animals, and there's more than just a pair that Noah had and will continue to sacrifice as he and his fathers before him in that promised line of set as they had always sacrificed unto the
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Lord. So Noah sacrificed unto the Lord, clean animals and will continue to, as we'll see after the flood.
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This is consistent with what we've seen in Genesis three. God initiates sacrificial covering
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Genesis 3 21. He makes a covering out of animal skins for Adam and Eve. We saw that Abel had a better sacrifice in that it was a sacrifice of his cattle, of his sheep without blemish.
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That was a better sacrifice, a pleasing sacrifice to the Lord. So this clean and unclean instruction we have it in seed form here.
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We don't have the actual revelation given to know or any of his forefathers, but we know that it was given and they understood what was required of them in worship and in sacrifice.
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The clean unclean distinction is all about teaching Israel to view all of life through the lens of holiness.
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So there's common animals, unclean animals, and then there's clean animals, animals that are set apart.
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But it's not just the animals or the sacrifice of the worship for the Israelites. All of life had to be looked at through this lens of what is clean, what is set apart and what is common, what is unclean, what needs to be cleansed.
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Every part of Israel's life, what they wore, what they beheld, what they ate, what they drank, how they labored, what they built, where they lived, how they married, how they raised families.
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Everything was distinguished by what was clean or what was unclean. And God apparently revealed this to the seed of the promised one, one form or another from the very beginning.
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But yet we can take a step back and see another picture here with the animals being brought onto the ark.
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And this was something that earlier preachers never missed. Whitfield, Edwards, they always made this point that sin makes men like brute beasts, that somehow a brute beast with no sense, with no reason will make it onto an ark before a hardened sinner.
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That's what sin does, makes you less rational, more beastlike than even animals of the earth.
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Noah had been preaching about the destruction to come, and yet no people outside of his own immediate family came.
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And yet here are all these animals. Here are pigs and parrots and ducks and goats making it onto the ark when human beings that should know better and were created to know better don't.
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That is what sin does. And this raises another point about animals. According to the narrative of Genesis six,
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God's judgment is a response to human sinfulness, human sinfulness.
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And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth. That was the indictment of Genesis six, right?
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And I will not contend with man forever. I will not strive with man forever. His days are 120 years and then he shall be cut off.
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Notice the earth itself and animals have done no wrong. They have no moral complicity.
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I know some of us, you know, you, you chastise your pet maybe because they have naughty behavior, but there's no moral complicity there, is there?
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It's human sinfulness, human sinfulness. And yet animals and indeed the earth itself must endure the judgment of God.
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God's judgment extends to everything that has the breath of life. And it's not just human beings.
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It's every form of life on the earth. The picture is cosmic.
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The judgment is cataclysmic because God ordained for man to exercise dominion over creation, human sinfulness corrupts creation itself.
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And therefore the whole created order has to face God's judgment. We see here from the very beginning, this larger picture, this meta theme, human sin corrupts the earth, human sin corrupts the whole earth, the whole earth.
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This repeats in the story of Israel. When Israel is making conquest into the land of Canaan, what they're told they're reminded of what they're prosecuted with is the idea that their sin is polluting the land.
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Their sin is polluting the land, corrupting the earth. And so here we have the dawning of what we could call a biblical ecology or a call to Christian stewardship.
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God demonstrates that he has concern for the animal life that he made. He doesn't say, well,
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I made all these animals and Adam named them and they were glorious in their variety and complexity and beauty.
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Each, each little variant was a demonstration of my infinite artistry, but I'm going to wipe them all out and I'll just create something different.
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God demonstrates concern for what he has made. Everything was designed and beautified by his hand.
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He declared it to be good. He doesn't arbitrarily wipe away what has been good, even though it's corrupted and stained and soiled.
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He extends redemption to the broadest levels of what he has made. So we cannot read
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Noah and the story of the flood as though it's only about human beings. It's about all of creation.
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It's about animal life and vegetation. It's about dry land. It's cosmic. And redemption then is cosmic as well.
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The hope for the Christian of the end time is not that we'll become some quasi mystical cloud dwelling angels, something out of the old
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Philadelphia cream cheese commercials. We all have a golden harp and we sit on puffy clouds in a land of puffy clouds.
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Everything is white. There's no earth, no animals. That's not the picture of the end. That was never the
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Christian hope. Most early Christian tombs were decorated with a picture of Noah reestablishing creation after the flood.
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They understood this is my hope that after that final cataclysmic flood of God's judgment,
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I will reemerge in a new heavens in a new earth with new creation, not detached from creation of the earth, but in the fullness of it, in the freedom of it, in the liberation of what has been groaning.
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Now, I cannot say that you'll find your old pet turtle waiting for you in glory. I don't know if crackers or peanut is going to be there wolfing or meowing when you get to the new heavens in the new earth, but you could make a case for continuity one way or another.
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There will be animal life because we have it here pictured in the way that God brings this cataclysmic judgment and calls
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Noah as the Adam that is meant to exercise dominion over all that God has made, and therefore he's bringing salvation to all of creation, animal life included.
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That represents to us a picture of Christ who doesn't just bring salvation to human beings, though human beings are the cause of judgment, but actually becomes the true
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Adam, the true image bearer, and brings redemption to all that God has made, all that he has made.
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The Christian hope, in other words, is a new heavens and earth. And that last word gets dropped off too readily.
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Sometimes our hope, when we talk about the end time, we talk about passing on, going beyond the brink, the great
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Jordan, the verge. Sometimes we only talk about it as our hope is heaven. No, I'm sorry. You're shortchanging the
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Christian hope. The Christian hope is a new heavens and earth. And that's what's redeemed.
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That's very significant theologically. Notice how God often demonstrates salvation in terms of animal life and human harmony.
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Think about this. Isaiah 11. This is a depiction of the glory of what is coming at the end.
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The wolf will dwell with the lamb. The leopard lies down with the young goat, the calf and the young lion and the fattling together, and a little child leads them.
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The cow and the bear shall graze. Their young ones lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like an ox.
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The nursing child will play by the cobra's hole. You better know you're now and not yet eschatology.
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Let's say, I believe that Isaiah, we are living in the days of Isaiah. Let me go lay Abby down by the cobra hole.
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No, no, no, this is not yet. Don't do anything quite like that. The weaned child shall put his hand in the viper's den.
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They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain. The earth will be full with the knowledge of the
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Lord as the waters cover the sea. This is a picture of a new heavens and a new earth.
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If God cares for animals in this way, shouldn't we somehow think of creation in different ways than we're accustomed to?
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Not as something arbitrary, not as something expendable, but as something rooted in the purposes of God's creation and therefore, in the eventuality of God's redemption.
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Christ is a savior of the cosmos. Christ is a savior of all of creation, even though human sinfulness is what judgment is responding to.
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Doesn't this mean at the very least we should be wise and good stewards of all that God had declared good and be active in efforts that appreciate and even bring restoration to what is groaning under the curse of sin?
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Now this, to my mind, doesn't mean you carry a chihuahua in a purse all day and feed it caviar, but it does mean you don't, you know, kick your pet cat with a sneaker.
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Word to my wife. It doesn't mean that blessed is the man who regards the life of his beast because God created that beast and that beast in some way that we can't quite understand is itself laboring and groaning under a corrupted order and therefore that beast in some way that we can't quite grasp will be in some eventuality part of the redemption.
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Maybe not that individual specific beast, but you see there's a continuity to what God has made.
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Noah's preservation of the animals in the ark is a picture to us of Christ's salvation and our hope and we often just don't connect these dots.
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We often don't, but we have to go back to what Paul says in Romans 8. The creation was subjected to futility.
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The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
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For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pains together until now.
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You see, the whole creation, not just men and women, the whole creation, and we have that presented to us in Genesis 6 through 9.
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Well, Genesis 7, 6 through 11, we have the floodwaters.
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We've already seen the seven days in verse 4 and we have seven more days here in verse 10.
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It came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were on the earth. Now, you'll notice the structure and I think we'll see this more next week.
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The structure is repetitive. You'll notice there's several parallel statements and if you're trying to read it in a line, if you're trying to read it as a linear narrative, it gets very confusing.
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Was there seven days or 14 days? When is what happening? It's almost like we keep getting a different angle of the same event and that in Hebrew narrative is what we call a palestrophic structure.
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Very fancy word. Put that next to synecdoche, but a palestrophic structure. This actually stretches from chapter seven all the way to the beginning of chapter eight.
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I'll again demonstrate that next week. There is this repetition of a seven day period waiting for the flood.
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The two mentions of the seven days are not two separate weeks. They're rather one week from two different angles and it's that one week from which the ark is completed and the flood begins.
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So Noah and his family enter the ark and the flood begins within this week. Within this week, ancient commentators point out
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God is patiently waiting to shut from him. It's an amazing picture.
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It's like for 120 years he's built the ark and it's finally done and they've witnessed somehow all of these animals entering to this ark that the miracles are out of proportion.
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Now how could this be? How could this be? And yet the hardness is still there, but God in his mercy will not shut the door.
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He waits a week. He waits a week that's emphasized seven days. He's not willing that they would perish.
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Isn't there one? Isn't there one before he shuts them in? We take up the remainder of chapter seven and we'll see next week that the awful decreation of the flood and then in chapter eight, the recreation, the appearance of the earth, decreation culminates in the world being submerged in water, just like Genesis one, the earth without form and void and darkness over the face of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
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The deep here is very significant. You notice that we have that in, in verses seven, six through 11, look at verse 11 and the 600th year of Noah's life in the second month, the 17th day of the month on that day, all the fountains of the great deep were broken up and the windows of heaven were opened.
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So the deep here is an echoing back to Genesis one, the very beginning where the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the deep.
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This is the abyss. This is the, as it were primeval ocean. And the picture is there are waters below and above.
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There's waters above atmospheric waters, and there's waters deep beneath an abyss beneath.
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When the flood begins, we read the fountains of the great deep broke up and the windows of heaven were opened.
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So the fountains of the great deep are again referenced the deepest parts of the earth, but then also the highest parts of earth's atmosphere, the windows of heaven, these things merged together and they deluge the world with water.
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And this is a picture of, of cataclysmic decreation, but then creation.
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And we'll see this. I'm just bookmarking this for now. Creation recreation emerges as dry land appears in the chaos.
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Waters recede, decreative chaotic abyss recedes dry land emerges.
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What does the Lord say? God called the dry land to earth. This is a new earth as it were.
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And so what you have is a picture of water equals chaos equals judgment. God creates out of that chaos, out of that sense of the abyss or the judgment out of what was void and without form
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God creates. And he does that by separating dry land from the water. This really interestingly echoes
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Exodus chapter two, Exodus chapter two, Moses mother looks upon him and she saw that he was a good child.
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That's deliberately echoing God seeing his creation was good. And then what does she do?
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She places Moses in a arc. That's the only other appearance in the Hebrew Bible with the same word for arc here.
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It's a different word for arc of the covenant. This arc, this basket, it's the same word.
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It's the same vessel. She places Moses in the arc. And what does she do? She puts him in the waters of chaos.
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She puts him in the raging river. This is the water of death. And it literally says she puts him among the reeds by the river, almost like Adam was put among the trees in the garden by the river.
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And what does Moses name mean? It means drawn from water. So Moses picture this.
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Moses is placed into our place into the waters of judgment, the waters of death, and he emerges onto dry land as the eventual deliverer of his people.
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All of that is pointing forward to Christ, Noah to Moses to Christ. So again, we have a paradigm of salvation in the flood narrative.
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It's echoing throughout the biblical story. And this is how we opened the service with Psalm 29.
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The Lord sat enthroned at the flood. There's different words for floods throughout the Bible.
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And there's a very rare, unique form that's used here in Genesis 6 and Genesis 7.
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And that's the word that the Hebrew writer uses in Psalm 29. The Lord sat enthroned at the flood, that flood, this flood.
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And the Lord sits as king forever. The Lord gives strength to his people. The Lord will bless his people with peace.
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So again, there's this picture of judgment and salvation. Lastly, as we move toward a close verses 12 through 16, the rain was on the earth 40 days and 40 nights.
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On the very same day, Noah and Noah's sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and Noah's wife and three wives of his sons with them entered the ark.
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They and every beast after its kind, all cattle after their kind, every creeping thing that creeps on the earth after its kind, and every bird after its kind, every bird of every sort.
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And they went into the ark to Noah two by two of all flesh in which is the breath of life. So those that entered male and female of all flesh went in as God had commanded him.
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And the Lord shut him in. That last phrase is so striking.
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The Lord shut him in. You'd expect it almost just to end, wouldn't you?
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Those that entered male and female of all flesh went in as God had commanded him first off. But here's this addition, and the
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Lord shut him in. It's a very striking addition. Entered was good enough.
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We assume that if he could build an ark, he could build a door that closed. It might have been a little creative how to get pitched on the outside of the door, but there's ways there's ropes.
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You could probably have someone repel down the side of the ark, but no, the Lord shut him in.
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Noah had to build, sweat, pray, bleed, weep for 120 years. And the capstone of his labor was not some anxious act of self -reliance.
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What the Lord shut him in 120 years of toil. And how does it end?
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The Lord shut him in. The Lord seals the door. In other words, the
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Lord takes responsibility, takes ownership of the safety of Noah and his family.
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And it's a picture to us of Christ taking ownership, taking responsibility of all those that have come to him for safety.
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He shuts us in. He, he seals us in of those that the father has given me that I would lose none.
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He says, we are as first Peter one five says, kept by the power of God through faith for our salvation, ready to be revealed at the last time.
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You see, we're kept by God. God shuts us in. God seals us in. God undertakes responsibility for our salvation.
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God was faithful and carried Noah through all the labor over arduous decades. And at the end, as it was at the beginning,
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God's favor was with him. He was going before him. Spurgeon says, this is so clever.
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If Noah had shut himself in, he might've come out again. It's like the refrigerator door.
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You know, maybe you forgot something you ever packed for a long vacation. You're like, I feel like I'm forgetting something. Let's bust open that door again.
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And if any of the world outside had shut him in, he probably would have burst open the door. Oh, you don't shut me in.
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I don't want to be shut in by you. And so the Lord shut him in. How many have ventured to see in the galleys, the dinghies, the canoes, the kayaks of their own resolve and have perished there.
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How many have hoped to shut themselves in with Christ by the mere force of determination, but the leaking of their own depraved heart drowns them.
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But oh, and God has brought us into union with Jesus. He shuts us in and we're saved in the
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Lord with an everlasting salvation. The great door of covenant faithfulness is shut behind the believer and he's surrounded by the power and grace of God.
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Few can say it like Spurgeon. What a mercy to know this. Do you know this brothers and sisters, have you experienced this to some degree that you've been shut in by the
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Lord? That though this life of faith is arduous and it's exhausting, at times it's despairing.
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At times it's full of joy. It's a hard walk, but there's this realization that the
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Lord has gone before me. The Lord is with me. The Lord has shut me in. My salvation is secure in him.
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My heart trusts and trust safely. The Lord shutting in is to be fully secured from judgment.
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No doubts, no worries about a sprained league. This is a picture of utterly assured salvation.
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The Lord shutting in is a picture of apart from me, you can do nothing. That's what Jesus says. The Lord shutting in is a picture of salvation belongs to the
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Lord, not to your last ditch efforts, not to the culmination of your life, but to the Lord.
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The Lord shutting in is of those that the Father gives me. I will not lose one. I know my sheep.
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My sheep know me. God shut Noah in and no violence could break through.
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No rogue wave. There would be no structural failure. And so it is with every believer. We're protracted against everything that would aim to overthrow us.
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As we encounter that final judgment, we have a hope that is secure, a salvation that is sure.
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The Lord has shut us in. Therefore, we can go to the throne of grace boldly, not only today, but on that great day, we stand boldly before him because the
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Lord has shut us in. The Lord shutting in is the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus the
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Lord. And Paul reasons this very way. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
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Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, flood, devastating day of fire.
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What will separate us from the love of Christ? And all these things were more than conquerors through him who loved us.
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I'm persuaded neither death nor life, angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ our
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Lord. It's the Lord shutting his people in. And so the only question that remains as we come to a close, focusing on these words, is how we began in verse one.
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Have you come into the ark? Have you actually come into the ark? I was reading, who was it?
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Maybe Matthew Poole. And he was talking about how, though we don't have the details in the text, such a massive undertaking, this massive ark, all hand built.
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Surely Noah would have employed many people to help him build. Many people, many people would have been employed in building this ark, and yet only
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Noah and his family are saved. And I think it was Poole. And he says, it's a sad thing to realize that many ministers are that way.
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They undertake great efforts to help build an ark that they themselves never get into, and they're utterly lost.
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Don't assure yourself, because you're here this morning, and you're aiding, and as it were, the building of an ark, that somehow you're in it.
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There's a big difference. Have you come into the ark is the question. And notice that God is so gracious,
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God is so gracious to use this inviting word, come into the ark. There's times and ways, words of scripture that are commands, command to sinners to repent and come to Him.
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But here's a word of gracious invitation. If you were afraid to come because you thought God was a cruel, vengeful
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God, and that as soon as you relent and surrender your life to Him, He'll crush you and make you miserable. What better word for your soul is this?
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Come, come. It's a word of gracious invitation. Come, come freely. Come as you are.
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Come into the ark. Have you come into the ark? Have you come into the ark by a righteousness not your own?
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That's how Noah's family had to come. They didn't have a righteousness of their own. They didn't have a standing with God, and found
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God's favor. They weren't in the covenant with God, and yet they make it in the ark.
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How could that be? How could that be? Well, they didn't come in by their own righteousness. They came in by the righteousness of another.
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They came in by another who was obedient to God and was pleasing to God. That's how they got into the ark.
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Have you come into the ark that way? Noah was a preacher of righteousness every day, every plank, every nail was a warning of judgment to come, and this beckon that God would give refuge and safety and deliverance to all who would come into the ark.
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Have you come into that ark? Have you come to Christ? Do you know that you've been shut in?
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Do you have an experience, a realization, in awe of the fact that you're close to God and His favor shines upon you through Christ?
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Do you know that the love of Christ that Paul is describing in Romans 8? Do you know that? Have you tasted of that?
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Is that what makes your heart flutter and makes you weep when you're distant from it? Have you known the ark?
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How many thousands of people over 120 years lived and many died seeing that ark being built?
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Year after year, the scaffolding and the timber piles and year after year thinking, it's not done yet.
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Even if he's true, I'll have time to make a decision later. Maybe when the first raindrops hit, then I'll go on.
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I'll just see if this comes to pass. And that kind of thinking leads to just judgment. Today is the day of salvation.
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Have you come into the ark? It's so easy to think, I'll have time to repent later. I'm young.
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I've got more of my life to live. I know the gospel and I know I'll be ready to commit later. There's so much
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I don't know. I need to make this more about myself. I need to know it's really from me and not just I'm being led on by my family or by my church.
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Is that really true? Is that really what it is? Or is it that you refuse to come?
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There's more to see, more to do, more I want, more I need. There's more time. No, there's not. No, there's not.
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Once you're hardened and you miss that opportunity and you defy with a stone cold face, you defy
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God's invitation to come. You're a foolish virgin. You're a foolish virgin.
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The invitation was there. Come to the feast, come to the joy, come to this greatest celebration there ever was.
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Come, come, that my house must be full. Go out to the hedges, the byways, compel people to come.
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My house must be full. And there you are when that door is closed, when all those people, they come in their guilt and their shame and their wretchedness, they come and yet they're they're received.
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They come, they come naked, they come sinful, they come addicts, and yet they come and they're they're received in with joy and the
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Lord shuts them in. The Lord shuts them in. And the fools are left clawing at the door that will never open again.
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They missed the day of grace. They did not come into the ark. How easy it is to miss the opportunity when
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God's grace is being heralded as it is here this morning in your hearing, God's grace is being heralded rich and free.
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The gospel call goes forth, come into the ark, come into the ark. God was patient for 120 years.
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He's patient today, but he will not strive with man forever. He's been contending with you, contending with some of you, and he won't contend forever.
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The day comes when he shuts the door. He shuts the door. By that point, often people are so hardened that they're oblivious.
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They'll never know that they've been shut out until that awful day of judgment comes. They won't understand why relatives awkwardly try to bring up Christ around them, why everyone, if they visit a church, happens to know their name as though they've been prayed for a lot.
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They don't understand why people around them are more concerned about their life, their soul than they are.
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It's because the door is open and it's not going to be open for long, and you have to come to the ark. There's no other way to pass through the judgment.
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The ark has one door, one door, and when that door is closed, there's no hope for guilty sinners.
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They face the judgment of God as they are. No covering, no favor, no righteousness, just justice, just justice in all of its eternal brutality.
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Have you come into the ark? God forbid you have to stand before a holy
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God without a covering, without a Savior, without a Redeemer. God forbid you don't come into the ark.
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The ark has one door, one entrance, one way, one escape from the judgment of God, one way to be delivered, one
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Savior, the one who says, I am the way. I am the way. I am the ark.
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I am the Noah. I am the covenant. I am salvation. I am the life to come. For me to be spared then,
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He had to be fully plunged into that flood. For me to be shut in to that salvation,
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He had to be fully shut out to experience the wrath of God naked and alone for six hours, wailing on a tree.
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Have you come to Him? His side was torn open to be that entrance for you into His very heart.
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He would be an ark of your salvation if you would just come to Him. Come, come to the ark.
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Come all you who are thirsty. Come to the waters. Come to me, you who are weary. I will give you rest.
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I will give you comfort. The Spirit and the bride say, come, come into the ark.
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Let's pray. Father, we're reminded of your grace, which is so rich and so free, and yet that door will not be open forever.
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Though the invitation is gracious now, it's only gracious in a day of grace, and that day of judgment is fixed.
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The details are given. There is a day when you will appear, and the trumpet will sound, and the door will have been shut forever.
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Won't you awaken the heart and hearts of sinners who are in need of your grace?
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Compel them to come. Compel them to come into the ark. Show them your salvation in this day.
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Let them not be as the fools who plan their time, who, as it were, prepare their own coffin, their own judgment, because they will not yield.
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They will not relent. They will not humble themselves to come to you. They determine resolutions.
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They want to clean themselves up. They want to be more respectful. They have too much pride. They will not come as they are. Lord, won't you show favor to them today?
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Won't you bring them into your ark, Lord? Won't you help us, Lord, your people, to be humbled as we consider so great a salvation that we have been brought into an ark by a righteousness that's not our own,
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Lord, that you've shut us in, though we truly are filthy, and yet your favor has rested upon us through Christ, and the love which you have established with us by covenant,
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Lord, will never be taken from us. There's nothing, no height, no depth, nothing under the created order, no principalities or powers, nothing that can separate us from that love.
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How rich, how incredible a salvation. God, forgive us that we return so paltry a life unto it, a life worthy of it.
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Forgive us that our joy is fickle, and our thanks is short, and our lives are pockmarked with inconsistency and hypocrisy.
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Let us, let us be in the ark, Lord. Let us recognize and worship you, knowing that we are in this seven -day period, as it were.
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We've been brought into the ark, and yet, Lord, we're awaiting that judgment to begin.
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Here we are in this life, Lord, waiting, trusting upon you, looking upward. Help us,
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Lord, to know what manner of people we ought to be considering the end is coming in the manner it is.
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And I pray you'd be with us, Lord, this year. May we walk with you as we learn these deeper things from your word,
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Lord. May it bind us more closely to you. Bring water to the dryness in our hearts and lives,
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Lord. Help us to be yearning with compassion for the lost around us, for those loved ones.
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Let us never lose heart in prayer. Let us do what we can while we can to compel sinners to come into the ark.