The Days Of Noah

[Posted by permission. Bethel Strict Baptist Chapel.]

Sermon preached at Bethel Chapel, Luton, by Mr. B. A. Ramsbottom, on Lord’s day morning, 1st September, 2013

Text: “But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be” (Matthew 24. 37).

I suppose that most of us are deeply concerned about the very evil, wicked days in which we live. Perilous times have come. Evil men have begun to wax worse and worse. We see the immorality on every hand. We see wickedness, deceit in high places; with our rulers God is not in all their thoughts – the dreadful legislation there has been in Parliament and our Prime Minister [David Cameron, Prime Minister 2010-2016] glorying in it, seeking to impress other countries with it, even the Archbishop of Canterbury leaning towards it, and sport idolised and all the abominations connected with it, that we wonder whatever will be next. People say, Was there ever such a day as this? Well, we think of the days before the Flood, and we read this morning of them. What a similarity between those days then and our days now!

But the Lord promised His judgment and His judgment came. It is very clearly revealed that the Lord will never drown the world again. We see His mercy, His faithfulness to His ancient promise to Noah over the years, but the day hastens on when the Lord will destroy the earth a second time, and this time with fire, and these are the things that the Lord Jesus here is solemnly speaking about, solemnly warning of: His second coming. The time, we know not when; the certainty we are told of, that the Lord will appear in great power and glory, “and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him.” It is your mercy and mine if through grace we can say, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”

But whenever the Lord Jesus spoke of His second coming, He emphasised the certainty of it, the glory of it, the majesty of it, the purpose of it, to judge the world in righteousness, but never to satisfy people’s vain imagination; also, always on this very point: the need to be ready, the need to be prepared. So we have it here in this solemn sermon the Lord Jesus was preaching: “Watch therefore.” Do not be like the foolish virgins, or even the wise when they slumbered and slept. “Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.” “Be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.”

Now beloved friends, let us linger here. These are truths, and they are not to be tampered with, not to be hastened over. If the Lord were to come, would you and I say with joy, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus”? Or if it should not be the second coming, if that day should be the hand of death and that should come suddenly, would we say, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus”? Now may the Lord deliver us as a congregation from a take-it-for-granted religion or thinking there is plenty of time, or from that dreadful spirit of fatalism. O be it our chief, our great concern to be prepared, to be made ready, to be made right:

“An interest in the Saviour’s blood,

Our pardon sealed, and peace with God.”

“Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.” “Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.”

“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” So it is not surprising that we hear of all this wickedness, this evil on every hand, that you and I are called to live our little lives in this wicked day, this evil day, this day which reminds us of the Flood. And then this great point arises: how can a believer live in this evil world? What of our little ones born in our midst, our children growing up with all this evil before them? How can they manage? How can they get through? How can they continue? And what if things get worse, and what if there is even dreadful persecution? The wonderful thing is the way in which Noah in that evil day was able to hold fast, and the reason was that he was held up and he was held on by his God. This is the point which seems to have laid hold on me specially concerning this text and concerning the evil day in which we live.

“As the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” It was an evil day, but you notice when we read through the chapter, the strong language the Holy Spirit uses, and He never exaggerates.

“The wickedness of man was great … every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth.” And then we have two words: “But Noah.” One man amidst that wicked generation. What did the Lord say? “Thee have I seen righteous before Me in this generation.” And the great point is this, beloved friends: that Noah’s God is our God. The God who was with Noah is with His people now. He was almighty then; He is almighty now. And blessed be His name, the church today knows more of the glory of His love and righteousness and great salvation than ever Noah did, revealed in the gospel in the Person and finished work of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

But think of that one man Noah, and we are told he was a faithful preacher of righteousness and he preached a hundred years and he did not have a single convert. He must have been despised; he must have been reviled; but through grace he held on his way, and this is our hope in this evil day in which our lot is cast. And as we think of our little children growing up in it, and as we think of the future, the unknown way, this is the gracious, almighty, merciful God who upheld him and helped him and answered his prayers and brought him safely through. “This God is our God for ever and ever,” and this is the One who is able to keep you from falling, to present you faultless at last before His throne with exceeding joy.

It is really the spirit of the hymn we have sung just now, though this is a different analogy. There, the Christian life, the life of Noah, and our lives today compared to a little ship on a tumultuous ocean, but the ship comes safely through. O do you ever have to pray the prayer of that hymn? I think it is one prayer I have had to pray continually in recent years:

“Hold me fast and keep me near Thee, 

For Thou know’st I’m but a worm;

What concerns me,

By Thy power and love perform.”

“Hold me fast and keep me near Thee.” That was the only way that Noah came safely through and he honoured and glorified God in it, and that is the only way you and I can come safely through.

“He that endureth to the end shall be saved.” How can we endure to the end? I know you look at the doctrine, the everlasting security of the people of God, “once in Him, in Him for ever,” but it is living it; it is walking it out. How can you and I endure to the end? “Hold me fast and keep me near Thee.”

There is a very interesting point, but it is a very sad point and a very solemn point. What I am speaking of is this. In all those dreadful, evil days before the flood, Noah walked worthy of his high calling, and he did not dishonour his Lord and God before that evil generation. Now what happened after the flood? A new life, a new world – there is not all the outside opposition; there is not the wickedness; there is not the temptation; and what happens to Noah? He falls; he dishonours his Lord; he is drunk. It is a solemn point and there is a solemn lesson that a man cannot keep himself. We perhaps think if we had better days, more glorious days, the days of the Reformation, the days of the Evangelical Revival, it would have been a lot easier. When Noah had the easiest days of his life, he fell dreadfully in his drunkenness and dishonoured his Lord and God, but when he had that evil world opposing him and he stood alone, the Lord enabled him to stand and He brought him safely through. We have to learn that lesson, that we are only kept as the Lord keeps us.

“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” I wonder if these things are a concern to you, with evil men and evil things becoming worse and worse day by day, and wondering what the future will hold, not for ourselves, but for our children, and the little ones as they are growing up. Do you think of these points? “How shall I stand the trying day?” What are we if left to ourselves? And then to see this, and really it is one of the great miracles of the Old Testament. You ask somebody about the miracles of the Old Testament and they will think a moment and say, Israel at the Red Sea, and how the Lord divided it, and then they might think of some of those miracles in the days of Elijah. But there never was a greater miracle in the Old Testament than this: how Noah before that evil generation, opposed and reviled on every hand and despised, and yet the Lord maintained his lot and brought him honourably through, brought him safely through.

I once heard that well-known minister A.W. Light. Remember he was a well-known man and wonderful lecturer and writer of many books and Chairman of the Companion Tune Book Trust when the tune book was first published. But he said somewhere there is a beautiful crystal stream and it flows through a filthy lake, but it comes out the other side crystal clear. Noah’s life was something like that. He was found faithful in his generation, and it was a wicked generation, an evil generation.

“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” Now the vital point is what is the secret of it? Well, we are not left in any doubt about it. Noah was a man of like passions as we are. Left to himself, he fell badly. “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” That is it, and that will do it. It is a power. It is a greater power than sin. It is a greater power than Satan. It will stand in the evil day. It will overcome sin. It will overcome iniquity. It will overcome a gainsaying world. That is what you and I need, and we know where it is to be found. That beautiful scripture concerning a once-crucified, now risen and exalted Saviour: “It pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell.” That all-sufficiency of grace to save a sinner and to keep him and to uphold him and to bring him safely through, and that was Noah’s secret. What do we sing?

“His grace sufficèd saints of old;

It made them strong and made them bold,

And it suffices still.”

All-sufficient grace in the Person of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Now that is the answer. It was the answer for Noah and it is the answer for you and me, and it does not matter how wicked the day, how evil the world, and how evil our own hearts. “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.”

“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” And what else? We read, “And Noah walked with God.” That is the secret. He depended on his Lord and God. He looked to Him for help. He received his strength from Him. “Noah walked with God.” And that is the secret, being brought through, standing. You think of that dark, shadowy day when Noah lived when there was no written Word of God, and we have the wonderful revelation of the New Testament and the gospel and the fulness of the Holy Spirit. May we seek this, whatever there is at present in the world or in the coming days. May we seek like Noah to walk with God, in dependence, in hope, in prayer, looking to Him, in humble confession, conscious of our own weakness. O for that closer walk with God, even in this evil generation, as Noah found it.

“O for a closer walk with God, 

A calm and heavenly frame, 

A light to shine upon the road 

That leads me to the Lamb.”

“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” So we leave that point, that vital point, that important point, a wicked and evil generation. How can a believer stand?

But we pass on to this: Noah was right, and the world was wrong, and the flood did come, and Noah was prepared for it and the people were not prepared for it, and they perished. And the secret: “By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet.” They could not see it. He was building a great boat, an ark on dry ground. It must have seemed ludicrous, ridiculous to that sinful generation. But Noah was right and the rest were all wrong. Now you girls and boys at school, sometimes you will be the odd one out; often you will be the odd one out. You believe in Noah and the Flood – you are the odd one out. You believe in creation, not evolution – you are the odd one out. Perhaps people laugh at you and say you are the only one, and perhaps people say, Everybody believes these other things, and don’t believe what you believe. Noah was the only one, but he was right and the world was wrong.

We read that by his faith “he condemned the world.” He did, and he “became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.” He warned others of the flood. They did not take any notice of it. There he was preparing the ark, and the great point there is that the Lord is going to judge the world in righteousness again as He did in the days of Noah, and we need to be right, we need to be prepared, we need to be made ready. But the Lord Jesus as He speaks so solemnly here in this sermon, He is not only emphasising the wickedness of the world in the last days as they were before the Flood, but He is speaking strongly on this point: that the world was not ready, the world was not prepared, the world did not heed Noah, the world did not see its danger, the world did not seek a refuge, and so it is going to be like that in the last time.

And don’t you see it on every hand? Bring it closer: don’t you find it in Strict Baptist chapels? Bring it closer still: don’t you find it in your own heart, as if everything is going on the same day after day? Perhaps some of them wondered if Noah was right, but it did not have any effect. But beloved friends, you know these things, you have been told of them, you have been warned of them, that you and I are lost, ruined, sinful, guilty, rebels against God, and there is a judgment day and we shall meet our Maker, and we are condemned by the Lord, and we have to give an account, and we are guilty, and unless saved by free and sovereign grace through the finished work of Jesus, we must perish and perish eternally.

“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” The congregation can hear these things and put them off and think there is plenty of time, or fail to believe them. There is one thing that has always struck me very forcibly and very solemnly in these words of the Lord Jesus. Listen to what follows. “As in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” The point is this: it was a most evil day. The Lord Jesus could have said they were murdering one another. There was the immorality. He could have specified all the sins, but He did not. He said they were eating and drinking. What is wrong with that? You have been doing that, all of you, this morning before you came to chapel. What is wrong with eating and drinking? They were marrying and giving in marriage. In that sense they were better than a lot of people today who are despising God’s ordinance of marriage or even perverting it from what God ordained between one man and one woman. They were better than we are. What the Lord Jesus is saying is this: they were completely taken up, swallowed up with everyday things. Now in our congregations I am sure we do not find many guilty of these dreadful, appalling sins that there were before the flood – at least, we hope not. But they are eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. In another places it says, “buying and selling.”

“Until the day that Noe entered into the ark.” They were completely swallowed up with everyday things. You know, beloved friends, you can perish as surely with being swallowed up with lawful, everyday things as with being swallowed up with sin and iniquity. We need to be prepared. We need a Saviour. I take it that this is surely where the Holy Spirit begins His work in a sinner’s heart: to teach you your need of a Saviour, to teach you your danger – those two great things. There are a couple of lines of Dr. Watts which have often struck me on the work of the Holy Spirit:

“His inward teachings make us know 

Our danger and our refuge too.”

Those are the two vital things you need to know, that I need to know, that all of us need to know. May the blessed Spirit teach us as a congregation, teach you, teach me, your danger through sin, your danger because of the wrath of God, your danger concerning the judgment, the danger of a lost eternity, and then may He teach you your refuge. O that blessed refuge!

“A refuge for sinners the gospel makes known; 

’Tis found in the merits of Jesus alone.”

And what does John Kent go on to say?

“And if God the Spirit reveal this to you,

Take refuge in Jesus, though hell should pursue.”

“As the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” “For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” “Be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.” So the solemn and yet wonderful truth of the Flood: the solemnity of it – the world’s destruction; the blessedness of it – the refuge, the ark. There was only one refuge, and it was divinely provided and there was safety in the ark and there was no safety anywhere else; there was nothing but destruction everywhere else.

One of Satan’s masterpieces seems to be this. There used to be some lovely children’s books, books for little children, stories from the Old Testament, but nowadays books all seem to be sort of cartoons. If you have a little children’s book now, the story of the Flood, there is a kind of mockery made of it. There is a smiling Mr. Noah and perhaps a giraffe with its neck sticking out of the ark. There is something to amuse, something to smile about. There is nothing to smile about with the story of Noah and the ark. The Lord Jesus spoke about it – the warning. But O the blessedness of the refuge! Bless God for Jesus Christ. Bless God that He provided a refuge, a refuge for lost, ruined, guilty sinners, and,

“The vilest sinner out of hell, 

Who lives to feel his need,

Is welcome” – to enter into the ark of grace – 

“Welcome to a throne of grace,

The Saviour’s blood to plead.”

“As the days of Noe were” – these solemn warnings. “As the days of Noe were.” As we look back, there was an ark provided in love and mercy and there was safety in the ark, and it points forward to the glorious gospel of the grace of God and the wonderful provision of that refuge. And do not forget, beloved friends, that living faith is beautifully described like this in Hebrews chapter 6: fleeing for refuge to the hope set before us. Now fleeing – that speaks of urgency; fleeing – that speaks of danger. “Flee from the wrath to come.” But this is the urgency of living faith, fleeing for refuge to the hope set before us, Christ the Ark of grace. And,

“The weary, the tempted, and burdened by sin 

Were never exempted from entering therein.”

“As the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” But thinking of this blessed refuge, the ark, this has rested on my spirit. There was that literal entering into the ark when the flood came, the end of that hundred years of preaching and warning, but I am thinking of before the flood came, and before there was literally that ark, and Noah living in that evil generation, and hated and mocked and reviled and despised. But he had a refuge then. Not just the ark when the flood came; he had a refuge then, amidst all his difficulties and trials and troubles. I have been trying to speak to you this morning about the vital refuge in the Person and finished work of Christ for eternity, but there are many of you here this morning with your problems and difficulties, your crooked things, your sadnesses, the things before you, the unknown way, your illnesses, your concern for those you love, and the heart knows its own bitterness. Many of you have these things. “Dear Refuge of my weary soul.” O there is a refuge, not just for your sins, but also for your sorrows.

“Dear Refuge of my weary soul, 

On Thee, when sorrows rise,

On Thee, when waves of trouble roll, 

My fainting hope relies.

“And can the ear of sovereign grace 

Be deaf when I complain?”

“As the days of Noe were,” but Noah entered this refuge, and so may you hear that voice saying, “Come, My people, enter thou into thy chambers,” just as Noah entered into the ark, at a later date. “Come, My people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast.” And you know what the indignation is, and perhaps your reply is this:

“Hide me, O my Saviour, hide, 

Till the storm of life is past; 

Safe into the haven guide;

O receive my soul at last!”

“As the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”

A refuge for sinners the gospel makes known; 

’Tis found in the merits of Jesus alone;

The weary, the tempted, and burdened by sin, 

Were never exempted from entering therein.

This refuge for sinners His love did ordain,

In Jesus the Lamb, from eternity slain;

And if God the Spirit reveal this to you,

Take refuge in Jesus, though hell should pursue.

The soul that shall enter in safety shall dwell; 

There’s no peradventure of sinking to hell;

The oath of Jehovah secures him from fear, 

Nor shall the avenger of blood enter there.

Here’s refuge for sinners, whose guilt shall appear 

As black as the confines of endless despair;

Who, stripped of all merit whereon to rely,

Are taught by the Spirit to Jesus to fly.

Should conscience accuse us, as oft-times it may, 

Here’s blood that can take its defilement away. 

In Jesus the Saviour, the sinner shall view

A city of refuge and righteousness too.

J. Kent