06.3.5. Noah's Failure
V. -- NOAH’S FAILURE Genesis 9:18-29, Genesis 10:1-32, Genesis 11:1-9
IT remains to note the peculiar forms of failure which are manifested in Noah and his sons, that is, in man regenerate. Sad is the contrast between Noah going forth with joy, and Noah drunken and exposing his nakedness; between "the whole earth of one lip and of one speech," and Great Babylon, with "tongues confounded," and its sons separated; between the first full joy of the regenerate soul, and the experience which follows of gifts misused and curses treasured up; or, to trace it without, between the Church as it was, when "the multitude which believed was of one heart and of one soul, neither said any that ought that he possessed was his own, and they had all things common" (Acts 2:42-47; Acts 4:32-34), and the Church as it is now, with "departures from the faith, men giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy, with conscience seared, lovers of themselves, covetous boasters, proud, blasphemers, having withal a form of godliness without power" (1 Timothy 4:1-2; 2 Timothy 3:1-5). But such is the fruit and fall even of regenerate man.
Three chief forms of failure are described; first Noah’s, then Nimrod’s, then Great Babylon. Each differs in form, with a gradual advance in crime. In the first two, good things are misapplied. In Noah, we have blessings external to him misused, to his own hurt. In Nimrod, personal gifts are perverted to injure others. In Babel we have more open apostasy, and a systematic departure from the right position, with untrue and creature things substituted for true, and self-exaltation instead of God’s glory. In each regenerate soul all this may be. First, misuse of privileges leads to spiritual intoxication. The vine -- some precious grace of Christ in us -- tends, if misused, to make us forget ourselves, and to expose our nakedness; the failure of the ruling mind within giving an occasion to the other thoughts in us to shew themselves. Thus do our failings help to discover to us what different minds, after regeneration, yet remain in us, some of which we learn now must be judged, as being only subtle forms of the condemned old man. Shem, the mind which loves contemplation, and Japhet, that which purposes and performs true outward service, are each recognised; but Ham is cursed in his seed; the fruits of knowing and not doing are foreseen and reprobated. Nevertheless out of Ham the evil grows. Nimrod, a form of life the fruit of mere intellect, aspires to rule and be the master-mind; gifts of knowledge claim a place in us, which God cannot approve; the result of which is a "kingdom at Babel," that is, some rule or rules which cannot sanctify. After which Babel itself grows up; some form, which, though great and approved in man’s eyes, in God’s is simply confusion. We build up likenesses of truths within: we strengthen and fortify some opinion or imagination; and we may call it edification; but self is at work, usurping the Lord’s place, and self-love, and thoughts of self-exaltation, "to make us a name," are indeed perverting everything. Thus a tower of pride springs up within, which we may hope will be a means to reach to heaven, (for in building this Babel we are self-deceived, and may be seeking right things in a wrong and self-invented way,) but which will only draw us from the true high ground of light, and leave us inwardly distracted and full of confusion. All this may be, and is, within, after we are through grace truly regenerate; for no evil is without, the seed of which is not within: it may be hid, as the night is hid in the day, if the light of heaven rules us; yet the root of self remains, and in it lies the germ of a Babel, a beast, an Antichrist, ready to make the temple of God his seat, if we depart from the cross of Jesus Christ. But the inward kingdom is not seen by all; the outward manifestation of it, therefore, may be more useful here.
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To trace it then without. Noah’s fall comes first. This is the failure of the true elect through the abuse of good gifts. Noah’s care in the cleansed earth is the vine (Genesis 9:20). In the sphere of old Adam, and before the flood, that is, before regeneration, Noah was no planter. There his work was the ark: there, day and night, instead of planting the vine, he was cutting down the high trees; as the work of the elect in the world is to lay the axe to the root of men’s pride; to lay them low, that by the experience of death they may reach a better life. But in the Church, regenerate man has other work. There the vine is to be trained, and pruned, and cultivated; there its precious juice, which gladdens God and man, is to be drunk with thankfulness and joy to God’s glory. Yet this may be misused. Has the "cup of blessing" never been taken and perverted to men’s own condemnation? Alas! not a few, like Noah, have profaned that wine which was given in love to "make us forget our poverty" (Proverbs 31:6-7). (Note: Augustine, De Civit. l. xvi. c. 2, and Cyprian, Epist. 63, both refer this cup of Noah to Christ’s blood and the Lord’s Supper. But neither Augustine, nor any of the early Fathers, so far as I am aware, speak distinctly of the failure of Noah’s sons, in its bearing upon the failure of the regenerate. The reason is clear; because in their days the evil, of which Nimrod and Babel were the figure, had not developed itself in the Church, as it has since then.) The truth of Christ’s sufferings for us, carnally received, used as a reprieve to the flesh, has come back as a curse to those who have so regarded it; for, "the grace of God being turned into lasciviousness" (Jude 1:4), men have but "eaten and drunk their own damnation:" while even Christ’s sufferings in us may be perverted if they minister to our pride or vain self-satisfaction. If, instead of walking in watchfulness and prayer, men put some gift in the place of meekness and humbleness, if they do not "watch and keep their garments," the result is always this, -- "they have walked naked, and men have seen their shame."
Two things are brought out by this fall; sin in some, and grace in others, of the Church’s children. Ham not only sees, but tells the shame abroad, without an attempt to place so much as a rag on that nakedness, which, as the sin of one so near to him, should have been his own shame. Shem and Japhet will not look upon it, but "walking backward," -- a path not taught by nature, but grace, -- cover their father’s nakedness (Genesis 9:22-23). So is it yet. We see what is akin to us. The evil have an eye for evil, while the good and loving are engaged in acts of charity. Thus He, whose work it is to bring to light the hidden things of darkness, by the failure of one, often reveals another’s heart. The Church’s fall, the misuse of gift in some, is made the occasion for stripping the self-deceiver bare. Men sit in judgment on the evil in the Church, full of impatience and self, laying all iniquity bare, not waiting for the righteous Judge; little thinking that, whilst they are judging evil, God by the evil may be trying and judging them; or that the spirit, which exposes others’ sin, may be far more hateful to Him than some misuse of privileges. For Noah’s fall was a misuse of blessings: Ham’s exposure of it was want of love. God may, indeed, convince of sin, but never without ministering better things. We too, at times, must strip deceivers bare; but to see evil and accuse it, without a helping hand or pitying eye, is devilish. Shem and Japhet cannot do so. With such souls, the Church’s failure only brings to view graces, which, were there no failure, could not be manifested. We mourn because the Church is fallen. But does not the Church’s fall give larger opportunities for love and self-sacrifice? Every trying thing -- every humbling and shameful thing -- is but the occasion of shewing grace, if grace be there. Circumstances do but prove us. And that same trial, which shews the carnality of the carnal, only elicits grace in gracious souls; and that very infirmity, which is an occasion of falling to us, if we walk by nature, is an occasion of victory, if we walk by grace. But a worse form of evil soon appears (Genesis 10:8-10). Noah misused blessings to injure and expose himself: Nimrod exalts himself to lord it over brethren; for of those over whom he ruled all had sprung, and this within a few generations, from one common father. Little is told us of this second form of apostasy; but that little is enough. And indeed the steps by which lordship over brethren is reached are not many. The author of it is Nimrod, the son of Cush. Sprung from that seed, who, having been scorched by the truth, have "seared consciences," his very name, Nimrod or rebel, (Note: Heb. nimrod [H5248], from marad [H4775], to rebel; reminding us of ho anomos, "the lawless one," 2 Thessalonians 2:8.) points out the character of those actings, by which the family and patriarchal government instituted by God was changed into a kingdom ruled by violence. The stages are these: "He began to be a mighty one;" this is the first step in the transition from "ensamples to the flock" to "lords over God’s heritage" (1 Peter 5:3); after which "a mighty hunter" follows, one who can first slay for us the wild beasts which threaten us; but who, having hunted them, will then hunt his brethren, till they too are ensnared and captivated. And all this shall be "before the Lord;" "even as Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord." It was so in Israel, when faith in God and communion failed; a king was sought under whose shadow they might dwell safely, who might "fight their battles and go before them" (1 Samuel 8:20), and do for them what God had covenanted to do. In a word, a gift of God was sought for more than God; and the result, in Saul’s case, as in Nimrod’s, was that the "mighty one" became a "mighty hunter," pursuing those, who, like David, because they walked with God, could not be taken by all this mightiness.
It is well known how that which first was shewn in Nimrod again reappeared on resurrection ground, and was again enacted in that redeemed family, of which the Lord said, "Ye all are brethren." As it was foretold Antichrist should come, so did he come, and the success of the "rebel," or "lawless one," is but too well known. Men arose, with mighty gifts, used first to slay the lion and the bear, but soon to bring the congregation of the Lord into bondage. They stood in the Church for God and His Christ, as though God and His Christ were absent, rather than as witnesses that "the Lord God yet dwelt among them" (Psalms 68:18; Ephesians 4:8). (Note: The connection is most noteworthy between God’s "giving gifts to men," and the aim or end of this, "that the Lord God might dwell among them;" not that they should take His place. Augustine recognises the same truth in the Lord’s words respecting Babel. -- De Civit. l. xvi. c. 5.) Thus did the best gifts become curses. Nimrod’s course became a proverb: -- "Wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord." Is it not a proverb, that spiritual dominion, or rather that which has claimed to be such, is too often a "mighty hunter," a spirit of domination, ever seeking to enslave, and to impose a yoke, not on the bodies only, but upon the minds of brethren? Christ’s true rule aims to make all free: false rule to make all slaves, under the pretence of serving them. The Church of Rome, where "the rebel’s" rule has been most seen, is proof enough; but it is not there alone that the works of the "mighty hunter" may be seen. So Nimrod makes a "kingdom in the land of Shinar, whose beginning was Babel," that is, confusion. This leads to another form of evil: men’s tongues are confounded, and then the one family splits and separates. But ere this is described, a fact is named, shewing the effect of Nimrod’s course on Shem’s purer seed.
We read: -- "Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth and Calah" (Genesis 10:11). Asshur is the son of Shem (Genesis 10:22), and here we have Asshur going forth from Nimrod’s kingdom, to imitate him in building, if not a Babel, at least a Nineveh or a Calah. Nimrod’s invention cannot be confined to Great Babylon. Other cities, "the cities of the nations," soon arise. Cities in type are systems or polities, very unlike those primitive pilgrim dwellings, "the tents of Shem." Here we have foreshewn the rise of those "cities of the nations," those national systems of religion, seen by the Apostle John, whose fate is connected, even as their birth, with Babylon the Great, and who, when she falls, fall with her (Revelation 16:19). Nor does the fact that these cities are the work of Asshur, the son of Shem, save them from the destruction that will one day overtake the works of Nimrod. What avails it for national churches to point to the elect seed who built them? The question is not, What seed were they? -- but, What has been the building? Whence got they their pattern? Out of what land came they? Have they built "cities," or were they content, like Paul, to be "tentmakers"? (Note: Origen, in commenting on the Tabernacle in the wilderness, that movable tent, which, until Canaan was reached, was their place of assembly and worship and sacrifice, connects that tent with Paul’s vocation. -- Hom. xvii. in Num.) Alas, even Asshur finds pilgrimage hard travail: hence Asshur builds cities, and becomes almost as Babel. Asshur it is who carries Israel captive (Ezra 4:2); Asshur it is who joins with Israel’s foes (Psalms 83:8); Asshur upholds the mart of nations (Ezekiel 27:3-27); therefore Asshur and his company go down into the pit (Ezekiel 32:22-23). Wherefore let Israel say, "Asshur shall not save us" (Hosea 14:3), though he is strong and buildeth mighty cities; "for ships shall come from the coast of Chittim, and shall afflict Asshur, and he also shall perish for ever" (Numbers 24:24). The third form of failure among Noah’s seed is the building of Babel, with the consequent scattering and confusion of the hitherto united family (Genesis 11:1-9). This form of evil, though allied to Nimrod’s, is worse; for it is no good gift misapplied, but rather a systematic departure from the original position, with imitations of the true instead of truth, and self-exaltation instead of God’s glory. The course of this apostasy is soon traced; and nothing can be more striking than the contrast here drawn between the primitive state of the redeemed family, and that which their sin brought upon them. Their original state is thus described: -- "And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech." Difference of age we know there was; difference, too, in character; some were Shems, some Hams, some Japhets. But, spite of this, as yet "they all spoke the same thing;" as yet "there were no divisions among them." As in the early Church, where "the multitude of them that believed were of one heart" (Acts 4:32), there was but "one lip and one speech" among them. Love enabled them, though not of one stature, to be of one mind. As yet they could understand one another and walk together. Not long did this continue: soon apostasy begins. The first step is, "They journeyed from the east." The dayspring is in the east. There, to them that love the light, "the Sun of Righteousness ariseth with healing on His wings" (Malachi 4:2; Luke 1:78). But now the company of resurrection pilgrims are seen with their backs toward the east: their faces see not this light; they are turned away from it. (Note: Gloss Ordin. in loco.) Then "they found a plain:" they leave their first high ground. This plain, doubtless, like the plain of Sodom to Lot, had its attractions; so "they dwelt there." And now, their pilgrim character being at an end, their thoughts turn to their own glory and establishment. Great Babel is the result. "And they said one to another, Go to; let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime for mortar. And they said, Go to; let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach to heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth." Thus arose Great Babylon. Let us not pass from this scene till we understand it, for even yet Babylon is "mystery" -- a thing unintelligible to not a few. Its preparatory stages we have noticed. Men journey from the east; then they settle down; then they begin to build. At this stage, the scene presented is man taking counsel of man, and not of God. "They spake one to another;" and the result of the deliberation is an attempt to imitate God; first in His words, then in His works. They said, "Let us make." God once had said "Let us make" (Genesis 1:26). Here man takes upon him to speak as God. Then comes out their work: "They had brick for stone, and slime for mortar." Brick is stone artificially made, -- man’s imitation and substitute for God’s creative work. Babylon is built of brick; so, too, Nineveh is built of brick. The prophet who foretells her downfall notes this, bidding her to "tread the clay, and make strong her brick-kilns; yet shall the fire devour them all" (Nahum 3:14-15). In Egypt, too, brick-making is common. Egyptians like nothing better than to see captive Israelites toil in making brick (Exodus 5:7-8). Great Babel is built of brick, and for cement they have slime, as it is written, "And slime had they for mortar." This slime was that sulphureous compound, of which the region of the Dead Sea, and the plain of Babylon, are even now so full -- a compound formed, as it is supposed, from the corruption of animal and vegetable substances. Well does it represent that dangerous cement -- so ready to burst out into a blaze -- that cement of self-love and lust of power, by which mystic Babylon is now held together. It is a "daubing of untempered mortar." Jerusalem is not so built, nor of her does man say, "Let us make;" but the Lord Himself says, "I will." "Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and I will lay thy foundations with sapphires; and I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates carbuncles, and all thy borders pleasant stones" (Isaiah 54:11-12). So another saith, "Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house" (1 Peter 2:5): and again, "Ye are God’s building" (1 Corinthians 3:9).
Babel is built by other hands, and with other aims. Here man is working to ascend up to heaven. Self-elevation is the aim; self-energy the means: it is but consistent that self-glory, "to make us a name," should be the motive. And withal, (let not this be forgotten,) the reason assigned seemed good; -- they wished for unity: their fear was, "lest they should be scattered;" therefore they built their high tower. We know too well how others also have builded, with the self-same aim, professing and perhaps really seeking catholic unity; and the result has only been greater scattering among those who were to be united. But when man builds for self-glory, and with imitations of the true instead of the true, the end may surely be foretold. When will men learn that catholic unity is not to be so attained? On such ground we may build, "lest we be scattered;" but the labour is in vain, and will only produce more scattering. The present state of Christendom, only more and more divided, the more carnal union is sought, should at last teach us by sight, even if we cannot walk by faith. The one remedy is Pentecostal grace, -- that Spirit which can yet change carnal disciples into spiritual, and give them a message which their carnal brethren, dwellers in Mesopotamia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, Cretes and Arabians, who understand not each other, will yet all understand (Acts 2:7-11); because it is not in the letter which divides, but in the One Spirit of Christ, which melts, and unites, and reconciles. Nothing else will heal the confusion: no outward form, however good, can ever accomplish it. Men at last will learn this in self-despair: till they learn it, each fresh effort can only produce confusion worse confounded.
It would exceed my limits to give examples of the "brick for stone," as it is to be seen this day in Great Babylon; but this I may say, the city is not only built up, but filled also with images of all God’s truths and ordinances; yea, real vessels of the sanctuary may be there; true gold carried away with captive Israelites. On her outside is the likeness of a heavenly church, the likeness of priesthood and ministry, the likeness of the ordinances, duties, and ways of holiness. On her inside is the likeness of good knowledge, the likeness of repentance and conversion, the likeness of faith, the likeness of zeal for God, the likeness of love to God and His saints, the likeness of the Lamb’s meekness and innocency, the likeness of justification, the likeness of sanctification, the likeness of mortification, the likeness of peace, joy, rest, and satisfaction; for as a fallen world is full of shadows of truth, so is the fallen Church rich in forms, which to the opened eye witness of a life which should be there; but the substance, the truth, the virtue of all these is wanting to her, and she herself is found persecuting that very thing, where it is found in truth, the image of which she cries up so boastfully. This is the woman that hath bewitched the whole earth, even as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, by imitating the works of God’s elect. And of what truth shall we not find the likeness in Great Babel? She has priesthood, and altars, and fine linen, and the cross, and incense, and chrism, and rule, and discipline. She has the form of every truth, to meet and seduce those who ask for the reality. Do we "look for a city which hath foundations?" Then Babel will forestall it, and be a city too. As the Father of Lights will have His city, so has the prince of darkness his, to tempt souls to rest short of the city of the mystery of life, in the city of the mystery of deceit and imitation.
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Such are the failures on resurrection ground. Regeneration, so far from ending all man’s wickedness, discovers in man new forms of evil. So in the Revelation which was manifested to the beloved John, he saw that red horses, and earthquakes, and blood, and hail, and fire, and beasts, and Great Babylon, were all part of the "Revelation of Jesus Christ" (Revelation 1:1; Revelation 6:4; Revelation 6:12; Revelation 8:7; Revelation 13:1; Revelation 17:4-5), -- a necessary result of such a seed falling into such a soil. If He is to be revealed in the earth, it must be thus. The revelation cannot, and in love may not, at once be perfected. In my soul, too, I know that red horses, and beasts, and earthquakes, and Babel, with her filthiness, must come in me after regeneration, and after Christ’s first coming to my soul in grace has quickened it, before heaven opens, and He comes the second time to rule all the creature, and to make all things new. Then, when He who has come in grace comes again in great power, the revelation of Jesus Christ shall be perfected; but ere that is done, much will intervene, and the very beasts are stages in the way. The evil destroys and punishes itself throughout. In its very nature it carries the seeds of its own dissolution; while grace, out of every fall, brings forth fresh blessings, proving that, if sin abound through man’s weakness, grace shall yet much more abound. Thus it was with the fall of Noah’s sons. The confusion of tongues issues in the call and life of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; in each of whom the development of man proceeds, with fresh discoveries of the riches of the God of all grace.