Genesis 6

Genesis 6:1-11

Subdivision 3. (Genesis 6:1-22; Genesis 7:1-24; Genesis 8:1-22; Genesis 9:1-29; Genesis 10:1-32; Genesis 11:1-9.) NOAH.The resurrection of a world, and the threefold division of mankind after the flood. Typically, the saint raised up with Christ (the ark). In Noah, we have a plain figure of resurrection, the whole world passing away also in the judgment of the flood, and a new world emerging from the baptismal waters. The apostle Peter teaches us to see in this a type of salvation (1 Peter 3:20-21), and to the man in Christ, risen with Him, old things are passed away, and all things become new. The figure is here very plain, although many a detail may be hidden from us. 1. God’s purpose and provision are the subject of the first section. There are two subsections, in the first of which we find the whole world one in evil, and all the fashion of man’s thoughts but that; on the other hand, God’s election of grace in Noah. In the second, we have the ark as His means of salvation, -plainly Christ, in whom we have already met and passed through the judgment, dead without dying, in His precious death for us. Indeed, the type speaks more fully than this of what atonement is, the gopher-wood not only giving us the tree cut down, but the “copher” also with which the seams are pitched, the very word for “atonement,” probably the resin from the tree, (whether or not the cypress, as the ancients thought,) at least shows the need of more than death for this. 2. In the second section, what seems marked is, the solemn contrast between those within and those outside the ark of salvation. God calls the one to enter, and Jehovah -the covenant God -shuts them in. On the one hand the call of God, on the other the obedience of Noah, are certainly the marked features of the first subsection. The second, shows the death which comes through disobedience, the increase of the flood, the ark going on the face of the waters, until the earth is covered. 3. The third section gives typically the resurrection part, and is naturally much larger and more various. It speaks of the ground of resurrection (the resurrection of Christ) upon which faith now builds, beyond all possible floods -high ground and “holy ground,” which “Ararat” is said to mean. Nothing is so holy and so productive of holiness as the rest of the gospel. And here we find also the sanctification proper to it detailed. There are five subsections: —

1. The new beginning is in rest: the ark grounds upon Ararat, and the new earth begins to be visible.
2. The raven shows us the flesh still in the believer, at home in a scene desolated by judgment, and using the very cross itself only as a means of enjoying the world better. The dove is plainly the figure of the Spirit in a world such as this, -the type, at once, of love and sorrow. The Spirit and flesh are here seen in essential opposition. In a world upon which the waters of judgment rest, the dove can find no rest. The second time, she brings back the olive-leaf -the assurance of fruitfulness, and judgment past. The third time, she leads them in taking possession of the new earth, returning to the ark no more.
3. Liberty for these voyagers to the new land is now accordingly at hand, although Noah waits for the word of God to sanction its enjoyment, and when he goes forth, consecrates it and the earth with his altar (the first time we read of one) and his sacrifice, Christ typically, in person and work, the material of worship. In the sweet savor of this, is the pledge of abiding blessing, spite of what man has been seen to be. As on the third day of the creation-series, the dry ground is to bring forth fruit.
4. But there are still conditions of fruitfulness, and we come now to consider them: the order in which we reach it suggests the conditions under which it is to be attained. (Notice that, as in the last subsection we have “Jehovah,” the covenant-name, it is now “God” blessed and “God” spake.) And first, we need to know that fruitfulness is a gift in grace, and to be received, therefore, as such in faith: He blessed, and said, “Be fruitful.” Then sovereignty is restored; they are to be masters in their new position; even as all things work together for good to those that love God. Death too serves: it becomes now, as not before, the food of life, -a type, thank God, most easy to realize. Thus are we sustained, and energy is given to us. And now the deeds of the flesh are to be judged, the image of God in man is to be maintained and honored. Finally, all hindrances thus removed, the fruit is reached.
5. And now, as the token of God’s covenant between Himself and the earth, the bow is ordained in the heavens. It bands the clouds which might seem to threaten the renewal of a judgment which can return no more. The light (and God is light) is seen and displayed in its glory upon the storm-cloud, as it was in the cross. And so also to the soul exercised thereby, the blessing is sealed to us in the glory of the cloud. Tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope. God is seen and realized in it. The God who brings the cloud is the God with whom we are in covenant; and all things serve Him.

The trial of the new world is next seen, and weakness and failure are soon apparent. Typically, it is the history of the Church, the company gathered on the ground of that resurrection of Christ which is the assurance of the work done for us having been accepted. The division into diverse families of that one family brought through the flood is soon accomplished. Failure begins with the head of newly constituted government -with Noah. Noah’s snare is the abundance of the new-blessed earth; and it is here the earth-side of the heavenly life that we have to do with. But this earth-side is Nazariteship; and the Nazarite must drink no wine: falling by this, the stimulus of nature, the nakedness of nature is discovered to our shame.

Such failure in the Church brings out the character of those who in exposing it reveal their own profanity. Ham is the “black” -the “sun-burnt” -one darkened by the light; and the light, if not received, becomes a source of darkness to the soul. And Ham -it is noted -is the father of Canaan, the “trader,” as his name means. Canaan is, in the professing church, its fruit -the trader in divine things: a sad history sketched in the fewest possible words. Noah’s prophecy, on awaking from his wine, passes over Ham -the indefinite multitude of mere natural men, -to fix upon Canaan its denunciation. Shem and Japheth seem to give us in their various blessing two tendencies which are apt to be sundered and should not be. Shem’s is the recipient contemplative life, whose danger is, to run into the mystical: Japheth’s is the energetic, practical life, which, in its one-sidedness, tends to divorce itself from faith. In the blessing of Shem, it is Shem’s God, Jehovah, who is blessed, as it is indeed the highest blessedness of faith that it has God for its portion and its praise; while Japheth’s blessing is in enlargement and dwelling in the tents of Shem, for the practical life finds its true home in faith alone, and true service is but worship in its outflow among men. 5. That the genealogies come under the number which speaks of God’s governmental ways will hardly be strange to any. We have here the distribution of the nations in their lands. 1. Japheth, the type of energy and independence, gains at present little notice, passing away very much from the central point of sight to the outlying border-lands. 2. In Ham’s family, we have the earliest development of the world-empires, and the most open opposition to God. 3. Shem, (the “name”) to whom Jehovah is revealed, has fittingly the third place: he is marked as the father of all the children of Eber, (“passage,") the pilgrim race. 6. Lastly, here we have the history of Babel, without doubt the picture of Babylon the Great, though not in the full development of the book of Revelation. The account is remarkable for its clearness and simplicity. The process by which the professing church settled down in the world, and then built up for itself a worldly name and power, could scarcely be described in plainer terms. How with one consent they turned their backs upon the sunrise (2 Peter 1:19), and, leaving the rugged and difficult places in which they were first nurtured -too painful for flesh and blood, -descended to the easier if lower level of the world; -how, settling there, ease and abundance wrought in them desire to possess themselves, in security, of the earth, and make themselves a name in it; how Babylon thus was built, a city after Cain’s pattern, whose builder and maker God was not, and a tower of strength, human, and not divine: all this, he who runs may read. Let us notice, further, that this is a carnal imitation and anticipation of God’s thoughts, and that thus the earthly city usurps the titles and prerogatives of the heavenly one. But Babylon cannot be built of the “living stone,” which is the God-made material for building; they have moved from the quarries of the hills, and must be content to manufacture less durable “brick” out of the mere clay which the plain affords: they have brick for stone, and slime (or bitumen) for mortar -i.e., not the cementing of the Spirit, the true Unifier, but the worldly and selfish motives which compact men together, and are but fuel for the fire, in the day that the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. This is just the Catholic church of antiquity, not many generations after the apostolic. The unity whereof it boasted was not God’s, and if God came down to see what man was building, it was not to strengthen, but to destroy -not to compact, but scatter. The many tongues of Protestantism are but His judgment upon the builders of Babel; its multitudinous sects but the alternative of the oppressive tyranny with which when united she laid her yoke upon the minds and consciences of men, and under which the blood of the saints ran like water. They are but a temporary hindrance, moreover, for at last we find her saying, “I sit as a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.” Then, however, her doom shall be at hand: “in one day shall her plagues come upon her.”