THE SAINT AMONG SINNERS
by Alexander Maclaren'These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just
man
and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked
with
God. And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and
Japheth.
The earth also was corrupt before God, and the
earth was
filled with violence. And God looked upon the
earth,
and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had
corrupted
His way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The
end
of all flesh is come before Me; for the earth is
filled
with violence through them; and, behold, I will
destroy
them with the earth. Make thee an ark of gopher
wood;
rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch
it
within and without with pitch. And this is the
fashion
which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark
shall
be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty
cubits,
and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt
thou
make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish
it
above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in
the
side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt
thou make it. And, behold, I, even I, do bring a
flood of
waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh,
wherein is
the breath of life, from under heaven; and every
thing
that is in the earth shall die. But with thee will
I
establish My covenant; and thou shalt come into the
ark,
thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons'
wives
with thee. And of every living thing of all flesh,
two
of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to
keep them
alive with thee; they shall be male and female. Of
fowls
after their kind, and of cattle after their kind,
of
every creeping thing of the earth after his kind,
two of
every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them
alive.
And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten,
and
thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for
food
for thee, and for them. Thus did Noah; according to
all
that God commanded him, so did he.'--GENESIS vi.
9-22.
1. Notice here, first, the solitary saint. Noah stands
alone 'in his
generations' like some single tree, green and erect, in
a forest of
blasted and fallen pines. 'Among the faithless,
faithful only he.'
His character is described, so to speak, from the
outside inwards.
He is 'righteous,' or discharging all the obligations
of law and of
his various relationships. He is 'perfect.' His whole
nature is
developed, and all in due symmetry and proportion; no
beauty
wanting, no grace cultivated at the expense of others.
He is a full
man; not a one-sided and therefore a distorted one. Of
course we do
not take these words to imply sinlessness. They express
a relative,
not an absolute, completeness. Hence we may learn both
a lesson of
stimulus and of hope. We are not to rest satisfied with
partial
goodness, but to seek to attain an all-round
perfectness, even in
regard to the graces least natural to our dispositions.
And we can
rejoice to believe that God is generous in His
acceptance and
praise. He does not grudge commendation, but takes
account of the
deepest desires and main tendencies of a life, and sees
the germ as
a full-blown flower, and the bud as a fruit.
Learn, too, that solitary goodness is possible. Noah
stood
uninfected by the universal contagion; and, as is
always the case,
the evil around, which he did not share, drove him to a
more rigid
abstinence from it. A Christian who is alone 'in his
generations,'
like a lily among nettles, has to be, and usually is, a
more earnest
Christian than if he were among like-minded men. The
saints in
'Caesar's household' needed to be very unmistakable
saints, if they
were not to be swept away by the torrent of
godlessness. It is hard,
but it is possible, for a boy at school, or a young man
in an
office, or a soldier in a barrack, to stand alone, and
be
Christlike; but only on condition that he yields to no
temptation to
drop his conduct to the level around him, and is never
guilty of
compromise. Once yield, and all is over. Flowers grow
on a dunghill,
and the very reeking rottenness may make the bloom
finer.
Learn, too, that the true place for the saint is 'in
his
generations.' If the mass is corrupt, so much the more
need to rub
the salt well in. Disgust and cowardice, and the love
of congenial
society, keep Christian people from mixing with the
world, which
they must do if they are to do Christ's work in it.
There is a great
deal too much union with the world, and a great deal
too much
separation from it, nowadays, and both are of the wrong
sort. We
cannot keep too far away from it, by abstinence from
living by its
maxims, and tampering with its pleasures. We cannot mix
too much
with it if we take our Christianity with us, and
remember our
vocation to be its light.
Notice, again, the companion of the solitary saint.
What beauty
there is in that description of the isolated man,
passing lonely
amid his contemporaries, like a stream of pure water
flowing through
some foul liquid, and untouched by it, and yet not
alone in his
loneliness, because 'he walked with God!' The less he
found
congenial companionship on earth, the more he realised
God as by his
side. The remarkable phrase, used only of Enoch and of
Noah, implies
a closer relation than the other expression, 'To walk
before God.'
Communion, the habitual occupation of mind and heart
with God, the
happy sense of His presence making every wilderness and
solitary
place glad because of Him. the child's clasping the
father's hand
with his tiny fingers, and so being held up and lifted
over many a
rough place, are all implied. Are we lonely in outward
reality? Here
is our unfailing companion. Have we to stand single
among
companions, who laugh at us and our religion? One man,
with God to
back him, is always in the majority. Though surrounded
by friends,
have we found that, after all, we live and suffer, and
must die
alone? Here is the all-sufficient Friend, if we have
fellowship with
whom our hearts will be lonely no more.
Observe that this communion is the foundation of all
righteousness
in conduct. Because Noah walked with God, he was 'just'
and
'perfect.' If we live habitually in the holy of holies,
our faces
will shine when we come forth. If we desire to be good
and pure, we
must dwell with God, and His Spirit will pass into our
hearts, and
we shall bear the fragrance of his presence wherever we
go. Learn,
also, that communion with God is not possible unless we
are fighting
against our sin, and have some measure of holiness. We
begin
communion with Him, indeed, not by holiness, but by
faith. But it is
not kept up without the cultivation of purity. Sin
makes fellowship
with God impossible. 'Can two walk together, except
they be agreed?'
'What communion hath light with darkness?' The delicate
bond which
unites us in happy communion with God shrivels up, as
if scorched,
at the touch of sin. 'If we say that we have fellowship
with Him,
and walk in darkness, we lie.'
2. Notice the universal apostasy. Two points are
brought out in the
sombre description. The first is moral corruption; the
second,
violence. Bad men are cruel men. When the bonds which
knit society
to God are relaxed, selfishness soon becomes furious,
and forcibly
seizes what it lusts after, regardless of others'
rights. Sin saps
the very foundations of social life, and makes men into
tigers, more
destructive to each other than wild beasts. All our
grand modern
schemes for the reformation of society will fail unless
they begin
with the reformation of the individual. To walk with
God is the true
way to make men gentle and pitying.
Learn from this dark outline that God gazes in silence
on the evil.
That is a grand, solemn expression, 'Corrupt before
God.' All this
mad riot of pollution and violence is holding its
carnival of lust
and blood under the very eye of God, and He says never
a word. So is
it ever. Like some band of conspirators in a dark
corner, bad men do
deeds of darkness, and fancy they are unseen, and that
God forgets
_them_, because they forget God; and all the while His
eye is
fixed on them, and the darkness is light about them.
Then comes a
further expression of the same thought: 'God looked
upon the earth.'
As a sudden beam of sunshine out of a thunder-cloud,
His eye flashes
down, not as if He then began to know, but that His
knowledge then
began, as it were, to act.
3. What does the stern sentence on the rotten world
teach us? A very
profound truth, not only of the certain divine
retribution, but of
the indissoluble connection of sin with destruction.
The same word
is thrice employed in verses 11 and 12 to express
'corruption' and
in verse 13 to express 'destruction.' A similar usage
is found in 1
Corinthians iii. 17, where the same Greek word is
translated
'defile' and 'destroy.' This teaches us that, in
deepest reality,
corruption is destruction, that sin is death, that
every sinner is a
suicide. God's act in punishment corresponds to, and is
the
inevitable outcome of, our act in transgression. So
fatal is all
evil, that one word serves to describe both the
poison-secreting
root and the poisoned fruit. Sin is death in the
making; death is
sin finished.
The promise of deliverance, which comes side by side
with the stern
sentence, illustrates the blessed truth that God's
darkest
threatenings are accompanied with a revelation of the
way of escape.
The ark is always shown along with the flood. Zoar is
pointed out
when God foretells Sodom's ruin. We are no sooner
warned of the
penalties of sin, than we are bid to hear the message
of mercy in
Christ. The brazen serpent is ever reared where the
venomous snakes
bite and burn.
4. We pass by the details of the construction of the
ark to draw the
final lesson from the exact obedience of Noah. We have
the statement
twice over, He did 'according to all that God commanded
him.' It was
no easy thing for him to build the ark, amidst the
scoffing of his
generations. Smart witticisms fell around him like
hail. All the
'practical men' thought him a dreamy fool, wasting his
time, while
they prospered and made something of life. The Epistle
to the
Hebrews tells us the secret of his obedience: 'By
faith, Noah,' etc.
He realised the distant unseen, because he believed Him
who warned
him of it. The immediate object of his faith was 'the
things not
seen as yet'; but the real, deepest object was God,
whose word
showed him these. So faith is always trust in a divine
Person,
whether it lays hold of the past sacrifice, the present
indwelling
Spirit, or the future heaven.
Noah's example teaches us the practical effects of
faith. 'Moved
with godly fear,' says Hebrews; by which is meant, not
a mere dread
of personal evil, for Noah was assured of safety--but
that godly
reverence and happy fear which dwells with faith, and
secures
precise obedience. Learn that a faith which does not
work on the
feelings is a very poor thing. Some Christian people
have a great
horror of emotional religion. Unemotional religion is a
great deal
worse. The road by which faith gets at the hands is
through the
heart. And he who believes but feels nothing, will do
exactly as
much as he feels, and probably does not really believe
much more.
So after Noah's emotion followed his action. He was bid
to prepare
his ark, we have only to take refuge in the ark which
God has
prepared in Christ; but the principle of Noah's
obedience applies to
us all. He realised so perfectly that future, with its
double
prospect of destruction and deliverance, that his whole
life was
moulded by the conduct which should lead to his escape.
The far-off
flood was more real to him than the shows of life
around him.
Therefore he could stand all the gibes, and gave
himself to a course
of life which was sheer folly unless that future was
real. Perhaps a
hundred and twenty years passed between the warning and
the flood;
and for all that time he held on his way, nor faltered
in his faith.
Does our faith realise that which lies before us with
anything like
similar clearness? Do we see that future shining
through all the
trivial, fleeting present? Does it possess weight and
solidity
enough to shape our lives? Noah's creed was much
shorter than ours;
but I fear his faith was as much stronger.
5. We may think, finally, of the vindication of his
faith. For a
hundred and twenty years the wits laughed, and the
'common-sense'
people wondered, and the patient saint went on
hammering and
pitching at his ark. But one morning it began to rain;
and by
degrees, somehow, Noah did not seem quite such a fool.
The jests
would look rather different when the water was up to
the knees of
the jesters; and their sarcasms would stick in their
throats as they
drowned. So is it always. So it will be at the last
great day. The
men who lived for the future, by faith in Christ, will
be found out
to have been the wise men when the future has become
the present,
and the present has become the past, and is gone for
ever; while
they who had no aims beyond the things of time, which
are now sunk
beneath the dreary horizon, will awake too late to the
conviction
that they are outside the ark of safety, and that their
truest
epitaph is 'Thou fool!'
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