People of the Holy Bible - 2. Noah’s Faith, Fear, Obedience, and Salvation

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People of the Holy Bible
2. Noah’s Faith, Fear, Obedience, and Salvation
C. H. Spurgeon

“By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith” Hebrews 11:7.

The apostle could not avoid mentioning Noah; for in him faith shone forth eminently. He has placed him in due order of time after Abel and Enoch; but he had also another reason for the arrangement. These three ancient believers are declared in Holy Writ to have pleased God. Of Abel, it is said that God testified of his gifts. Enoch, before his translation, had this testimony, that he pleased God: and Noah “found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” Again, it was meet that Noah should follow close upon Enoch, as one of two who are described as having “walked with God.” “Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him;” and we read in the sixth chapter of Genesis, verse eight, that Noah also “walked with God.” These two spent their lives in such constant communion with the Most High that they could be fully described as walking with God. Oh, that we may, through almighty grace, be so pleasing unto the Lord that we may abide in fellowship with him!

We may take pleasure in thinking of Noah as a kind of contrast to Enoch. Enoch was taken away from the evil to come: he saw not the flood, nor heard the wailing of those who were swept away by the waterfloods. His was a delightful deliverance from the harvest of wrath which followed the universal godlessness of the race. It was not his to fight the battle of righteousness to the bitter end; but by a secret rapture he avoided death, and escaped those evil days in which his grandson’s lot was cast. Noah is the picture of one who is the Lord’s witness during evil days, and lives through them faithfully, enduring unto the end. It was his to be delivered from death by death. The ark was, so to speak, a coffin to him: he entered it, and became a dead man to the old world; and within its enclosure he was floated into a new world, to become the founder …