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CHAPTER 1
LOVE IS NOT LONELY, BUT THE LOVE OF GOD
MAY REQUIRE YOU TO BE ALONE
FOR A TIME, BUT NOT FOR ETERNITY
Noah found grace in the sight of the Lord. Jeremiah was known before his embryo was in the womb. "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you" - Jeremiah1:5. Christians are people who were "chosen in Christ" before the entire creation of the visible universe so much as occurred (Ephesians 1:4). The choice was so that they, we who are His, might be "holy and without blame before Him in love."
You find just the same in Peter, Indeed, before we proceed further, let us consider the exposition of I Peter 1:2, the first part of our sermon for yesterday morning.
I PETER 1:2
SAVED THROUGH WHAT, IN WHAT, FOR WHAT ? I Peter 1:2
In I Peter 1:2, we read that the Church is composed, in its convinced and convicted members, of pilgrims, sojourners, people who so far from wishing to inhabit this world, if possible forever, that they do not even inhabit it NOW for its own sake or theirs.
On the contrary their status, place in pilgrimage, meaning in life is this: that according to the foreknowledge of God, the Father, they are elect, that is chosen, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling with the blood of Jesus Christ.
KNOWLEDGE in truth precedes, God's own knowledge who would have all to be saved, reconciled, come to a knowledge of the truth, but whose love is neither possessive nor obsessive, but hearty, true and genuine. That established, so that the souls who may be saved in terms of God's own purity of love and grace of desire, all others being themselves wholly responsible for the omission, are saved, what do we find ? It is this. They are saved IN SANCTIFICATION of the Spirit. That is their function. Status ? Chosen by the Father. Operational specifications ? It is "in sanctification of the Spirit." That is their medium, their functional reality. Here, if one may have a comparison, is the water in the radiator, the oil in the engine, the oversight of the action.
They are not chosen in flight for the fight. They are chosen in sanctification of the Spirit. HE may indeed raise up a standard when it is the enemy who comes in like a flood (as in Isaiah 59:16-19), where this is in the area, the arena of ultimate conflict; but it is THE SPIRIT who raises up a standard against him. We fight; it is He however who inspires, enables, enacts, stirs as in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah through the prophets Zechariah and Haggai. It is not a lumpy, bumpy, grumpy army that HE leads, for these walk in the Spirit (Romans 5, Galatians 5). They are far from perfect, but this is their dynamic, here is their directive, their containing housing, housekeeping dynamic and illumination. Paul accordingly wants people who are Christ's to ensure that they are sanctified WHOLLY, in mind, soul and spirit (I Thessalonians 5:23). Christians are not made so that they operate on one engine. There is a totality of power, cohesion. As David puts it, Unite my heart to fear Your name! (Psalm 86:11).
FALLS are followed at once by REPENTANCE (as in Psalm 51, Luke 22:61-62).
But then ? Not only are they chosen by the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit (just as fish are chosen to move in the waters they inhabit, their medium), but as to this choice, in this ample and liberal, and endowing grace, the Spirit of God, it has a purpose. This follows in I Peter 1:2.
What is this purpose ? It is for OBEDIENCE and SPRINKLING of the blood of Jesus Christ.
I once had a horse, a lovely fellow even if a little cranky at times; for he had a good heart, a willing and even eager foot, liked as I did, to sail like the wind. He would (usually) obey me, and together we had I think, quite a great time. When he galloped it was so even that you hardly felt the movement, except of the air in your face and the trees and surrounds as they leapt backwards. Great as our times were, he DID (again, usually) obey me. With this, riding had meaning and his gifts and mine could work in a glorious symphony.
WE who are Christians are chosen by God in sanctification of the Spirit for OBEDIENCE TO the Lord, which is not an imposition, but an exposition. In this, you learn, like a student or laboratory assistant, what great things He does, and find the fellowship of agreement, the companionship of concurrence. Not we, but He will specify WHERE we will live or work, or at what, or our morals or methods. His Spirit leads, His word directs. While there is vast room in mankind for creative intelligence, it is not a matter of intelligence to find what God wants you to do, but of obedience as faith, by which you know Him, works in you and He through faith directs you. But IF, and indeed alas, when, we slip here either in impatience, or pride, or folly of some kind (it can never become a practice as in I John 3:9, we learn, but it CAN be an event, attitude or failure of many kinds), then there is room for sprinkling with the blood of Jesus Christ, our barrister.
To be sure, it is once shed (Hebrews 9), once only, but this blood reference MEANS that we are enhanced, advanced, acquitted by our lawyer, because HE has paid the price of sin already, and it is an ETERNAL REDEMPTION, hence one covering all "expenses" en route. Indeed, this cover is instituted at birth (in this setting, that means rebirth), in its character is complete cover; and with it is the discipline, if need be the chastising, not to regain pardon, but to ensure purity.
Consider Noah. There is no slightest reason to believe that a superlative spirituality, an athletic perfection, a sanctification to erupt upon this earth like a flood, found in Noah, was the criterion. The emphasis of the text in Genesis 6 is not in the slightest on what Noah was, but on what God did, first to the man and then to the world that then was.
Nor on the other hand must we allow ourselves to consider that the man was not holy, dedicated to the Lord, intent on doing His will, willing to believe faithfully in His counsel for years upon years, and over such an extended period, to expend of his substance, and presumably to be mocked as he was faithful, sweating whilst his name was attacked. Special grace was given to him to build the ark which was the alternative God made instead of allowing the entire human race to be disposed of, as its conduct, pollution, lust and folly made such a thing both apt and appropriate.
Appropriate without, that is, a mercy so profound, that the seas seem but teaspoons in depth by comparison, so intense, that the greatest human concentration of active pity as one seeks to save houses and people in bushfires or floods, becomes like a faint perfume, distant, and just discernible. It is, first of all, as we examine the lonely lordliness of divine choice of His own people, a matter of mercy above all, goodness throughout it like bees throughout an abundantly flowering garden, except that in this case, what is available for selection is more like a pit of industrial slag. The perspective is clear, as in Romans 5: 6-8:
"For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
"For
scarcely for a righteous man will one die:
yet perhaps for a good man some would even dare to die.
But God commends His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us".
It is apparent that it is not out of admiration that God chooses His people, not because they are amazing exhibits of moral integrity, unabashed spiritual superiority or grand exemplars of godliness. It is for some other reason. I Corinthians 1, in its last verses, makes this superabundantly clear. God, it indicates, has brought to nothing the things that are 'something', that the things that are nothing might abound to His glory. It is He who gives, man who receives, whether creation or salvation, whether in being constituted at all, or re-created in a holy and godly framework.
Noah therefore was not chosen for merit, outstanding performance (cf. Romans 9:11ff.), though certainly remarkable was the RESULT of His being so chosen. Humanity was not ditched, for a seed of it remained to regenerate on the earth, when the flood was past! For this, that needed to be kept alive, and Noah's group was that seed.
Take another selected by God. Paul was no remarkable product of his times, when, intent on destroying Christians by the use of force and torture (whippings, seizures); he was trying to eliminate the seed of Christ (Isaiah 53:10, Psalm 22:30-31) from the earth; yet his works following salvation, as in Acts 9 at the first, were remarkable at the last.
Noah, to revert to our first person, "found grace in the eyes of the Lord." In other words, grace was available, impartative, but it was a question of to what party it would be sent. There are a lot of lost souls roaming about the surface of the earth. None deserves anything less than death, because of the initial separation of the race from God, for which the death penalty was the fore-stated result (Genesis 3). Fiddle life and you face death: be knowledgeable and mighty in your own eyes, dispensing with your Creator or denying your sin, and you face the result of that lot of life: a species of death apt for spiritual beings in ample, ludicrous and consistent rebellion (John 3:36).
In Noah's day, mankind was abounding in sin, as a king-tide abounds in water and invades. The whole coastline of mankind was indented by his follies, his whole psyche was deformed, his ways were impure, his imagination misled, his life set in deadly dynamic, on fire, so that a flood might indeed put out those firesl But that ? It would only at the expense of the loss of the most wonderful design ever invented in the entire universe, the staggeringly accomplished thing called man: that combination of body, still beyond full human comprehension, as shown by the fact that continually more of its chemical and electronic marvels are being discovered, of mind, with its analytical powers so amazing that it can penetrate into something of the sophistication of the material and mental universes, and of spirit, by which he can gain this or that perspective and act on it, test it, invent another, or else simply take the truth that God so freely gives.
In this human milieu of Noah's day, so like that of the 21st century, which likewise faces judgment after prolonged warning (cf. Genesis 6:1-5, II Peter 2:4ff., 3:3ff., Matthew 24:37ff.), here was one man found grace in the sight of the Lord. In other words, the ONLY way he could find the knowledge of God in that diseased, and spiritually deceased environment was by grace, favour undeserved, kindness in compassion, a divinely provided connection to restore, by pardon in purvey and a grant of mission and permission. He found it. It found him.
Build an ark ? was this the task in the midst of judgment ? Why an ark for maritime work ? In this landlocked site ? Why ? The waters lifted up the ark ONLY WHEN the floods came (Genesis 7:17). In other words, it was not already afloat, and what on earth WOULD float a thing of such QE II size or more, would do such a thing for them; and in that case, WHY then build it there ? and for WHAT ? and WHY spend all that money which could have adorned his estates and made him a builder of empires and foundations to come, to the glory of his own name ? WHY!
Noah had to receive the divine perspective, be ready to act on it, to trust in God and not in his own thoughts, not as though it were unthinkable, just memorable, most difficult and a giant test of faith. Even now, it can be a giant test of faith to build a new major aircraft, when it might fail to deliver what is intended; but the need is there. In the case of Noah, while the perspective of divine judgment could be verified and understood no doubt, the chosen method of deliverance for the human race had to be taken by faith. If of course, one know God, then His ways and works are already a thing of custom, and one trust in Him and believes Him.
Instead, Noah could have engaged, indeed have indulged in every kind of protest, equivocation, every testimony of disbelief; but then it is not so hard for God to find a man, whose heart is ready to be taken to the Maker of it, and to follow HIM, in total disregard of every temptation to mock, scorn, and enjoy indulgence in every kind of wicked contrivance, in order to enable himself to disjoin from those of whom the word of God says this of mankind at that stage: "every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."
That, that characterisation of man in Noah's day, what of this? Truly, it is quite an accomplishment for this ardent and imaginative race to secure such a ... rating. It resembles the plight of many of the young today. First there is the inbred sin in their hearts; then there is the increasingly ludicrous commission not to physically punish, thereby helping to make the children the plaything of invention and the targets of manipulation, instruments in bargaining, with relative if any morals, and well-equipped with self-indulgence. Then, to their oppressed lot, there is added the myth of organic evolution, by which madness, man seeks to invent himself from a lawless morass of nothingness, bred by nothing for no purpose, that he might find the truth in the midst of its mindless causelessness, and become himself by allowing nothing to take its time, or presumptions to follow their imaginations.
Some even try to wed the nothing source with something inadequate. They thus take the implicit god of horror, created in the mindless myth of organic evolution, and set him up; but this is merely to assault God as well as mythicise the human race. What needs horror to create, IS horror; is ready for extermination, is a mere object of man's creation, a god of forces, a disturbance and harrower of creation, lacking power, will or both to create without wiles and evil and pretence and pretension, a god corruptive and corrosive, instituting penalty with power, in a morass without end (cf. SMR pp. 179ff., Barbs ... 6 -7, Sparkling Life ... Ch. 4). Here is no salvation, for the very god of this world is made itself a sinner, damned and damning (John 14:30). He pains his productions and worse, creates by pang and pain, like a lordly lunatic, at odds with himself and making a creation of a similar kind. This cannot be God, who has nothing to be at odds with, supreme without limit or delimitation, but it is the god of organic evolution, when it tries to marry itself to any god!
In Noah's day, in their own way, worshipping idols, thingummies not the Creator, they bear much resemblance to the race in this its last trial, of our own day, where once more, the norm increasingly in ludicrous lassitude becomes this: "every imagination of thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."
The imagination of the heart of man is not substantially changed. It has some veneers, some options, some examples, a testimony of truth opened up and set down in the Bible for it, and the testament of Truth, Jesus Christ, His saving work complete, His open door available; but the race overall is not altered. It has merely consolidated its silliness and increased its sampling of the irrational for the government of his life.
In nation after nation, it is so. And then these diseased nations conflict and bluster and blockade and crush and disjoin justice from truth, and honesty from both, as peace evaporates and devilish cunning praises itself for its devilry.
Man still wars in order to gain the priority which he imagines is the base of his advance, and retrogressive, moves backwards to make the very beasts ashamed of his ferocities, midget morals and ludicrous lordliness, that he might be king of creation without a ground for it. Thus largely disposed, he seeks by groundless theft, the control for his idiotic agencies, mocking the basis of rationality and of design alike, and doubting that it is design that makes truth available, the material world manipulable and thought valid. Invalidating truth itself by his imagination, he becomes a clown even to declare it, wanting all and giving nothing till acrimony and antinomy make of his philosophy a Nineveh, a Babylon, one more testimony to his folly; but he will not listen.
Only a small remnant, now as then, comes into the Ark that delivers, and the pardon that is paid for.
He imparts the thing to his children, whom he thus slays with his Program of Mental Molestation of Minors (cf. TMR Ch. 8, Secular Myths and Sacred Truth, Scientific Method ....), though he does not call his educational pogroms by that name. Forbidding reason to act in this field of religion, he insists on myth, that is, the attribution of results to inadequate causes, and so proceeds in chewing up the inheritance in the next generation of the race, that even the exemplars of survival, Hitler and Stalin and Mao, mean little but more of the same, perhaps sought in other ways. They worship at this sickening and sickly shrine; and there mill more millions for this and that idol, whether a false christ or a false race or their own thoughts or whatever other groundless invention replaces the solid truth under their feet, on which they were supposed to stand.
The paths cross one another, that then, and that now, in the plains of flatness.
So Noah was chosen, and Noah found grace in the sight of the Lord.
There is a certain measure of loneliness. There is the milling race, going through its evil practices, intents, imaginations, like the bursting engines of the super-heated stoking rooms of the Titanic before its icy crash, as to modern type, and there is Noah by contrast, carefully prepared, patiently sailing and divinely led.
What of those about this new ark, Jesus Christ ? They rarely heed nor care (as foretold in Matthew 7:15ff.), nor ask to enter. How could the waters rise ? they now say, as no doubt then. If the rising of waters on this earth now is relatively slight, though intensely threatening (some refusing to allow houses any more to be built near the sea level), since rising flames are the eventual outage for this universe, yet there is portent of change that must come. It is to be different this time. There is, when the time comes, an intense heat and dispersion of form; and though the fires of the hydrogen bomb and its allied gear are furious enough, these will be terminal.
Even for man, certain destructive means become more available; and for God, the removal of this earth more thoroughly is a coming event (cf. II Peter 3, Matthew 24:35, Isaiah 51:6), of no real difficulty. The difficulty is the aversion from the God of creation, now as in the days of Noah, so that sin may abound.
It is the magnificence of the munificence of the Lord that He saves any, that any find grace in His sight, the more so since it is statedly not because of appeal that they are chosen, mysterious or otherwise, since we are chosen WHEN YET SINNERS, as Paul reminds us, in Romans 5.
Anything good is to be by prescription, divine restoration and rebirth, restitution and institution of holiness. As we are, now as then, without Christ, we simply will not do (Ephesians 4:17ff.). Though man may pride himself on his good works, neighbourliness and advanced ethics, where they may seem applicable, yet WHY is he thus, and for WHOM does he so act, and by WHAT is it done ? Is it by his own merit and perception and prescription and self-remediation ? Then he is building in explicit rebellion against the God of creation, like all the rest, and his self-made kingdom of self-righteousness, however humbly affirmed, is his lie in the place of the truth. But does he worship some god of his own creation ? That, it is merely an extension of himself, and no better, merely adding explicit idolatry to his sins.
Noah found grace in the sight of the Lord, and acted for many years in building at enormous expense, total opportunity cost, something based elsewhere, in the very mind of God who made him, for the purpose of rescue. And who applied to enter it, before it was too late ? Few came, eight in all at that time.
In the end, this testimony given while Noah was having the ark built, one that must have rocked witnesses over a vast generation of time, did not secure many to follow it. Indeed, it was not crowded. 8 persons entered it. ONCE they entered, it was sealed, since it was like a current space-craft, to be sent on a mission of highly specific and defined kind. It took life with it. It was not as recently, an orbiting set of information concerning our race, in case it were to be wiped out; it was a biological assemblage, to restart, with what would be left after the flood.
This, it was a maritime mission. Its purpose was to save the race from destruction, and enable a new start, an option not to last forever as II Peter 3 shows. The ark design, like that of man himself (cf. Deity and Design ...), was a gift from God (Genesis 6:13ff.), specific, specialised, fitting for the purpose. It worked. Thus is likewise the design of our salvation now, likened to an ark in I Peter 3.
Each entrant into that ark, as likewise now into the 'ark' of Christ, is in one sense lonely. The ark, in the second case, that of Christ, is still possessed of a door. It has been made easy to enter. He who for the purpose Himself became a member of the human race, which now has a population increased over times into millions in two millenia of building, since Calvary, provides still a salvation; and this still has its door. This is inclusive in the ark, an operative wonder now as then. Its vast cavernous bulk seems huge, the door small, the entry a real transition from the land and its peoples with their attachment of majestic rule over this earth, when moving into a new frame of reference.
In coming, they leave the spoliation of something meant for another action and another purpose, oppressed with pride and imaginative fevers that work only ruin, without reason, righteousness or reality. Hence war, like friction in an ill-made or ill-managed car, inflames. The prince of this world, said Jesus Christ, has NOTHING IN ME! It is not supplemental, this salvation by Christ, it is alternative. It is not additive; as far as being one of this earth's pretenders, it is subtractive. Enter THIS ark and you leave your terrestrial place!
Noah found grace in the sight of the Lord, and THEREFORE was separated in HIS WORK from what it was doing. His entire life and vitality was POURED into this construction, and his focus was on two things: the GOD of creation and HIS WILL for his work. It was a work of grace that he knew either; but having found grace, this was its result. He built (as in Ephesians 2, we see the Church built, that of Jesus Christ), and he gave attention to this thing. In our case, the ark is already there, so we are concerned with those who are to be found and who may enter into it, and their relationships in the interim and knowledge of Him in whom they voyage.
The Great Commission of Matthew 28, to go forth into all the world and do two things, preach the Gospel and teach the commandments, is the mandate; while the ark, this our new ark, is the point of reference, even Jesus Christ, who was first submerged in the depths of sin vicariously borne, and then raised to eternal transcendence over death, which His ark, His plan of salvation enables man to depart. It was wrought once (as the original ark was built but once), prepared once, at Calvary as in the resurrection of His body, and its mission does not change.
But what of its inhabitants ?
How was Noah chosen ? What it was NOT, we have considered. What then was it ? It is clear that GOD would have all to come to repentance and so enter the ark of salvation (I Timothy 2, Colossians 1, T Timothy 4:10, Ezekiel 33:11), to be reconciled to Himself. HIS selection is not by inspection of who is the nearest. There is a great gulf set between those who find the Lord and those who refuse Him (Luke 16:21,27ff.), and what He finds has no intrinsic appeal (as in I Cor. 1), in itself. It is not as if He were strangely attracted and decided on the best of mankind He could lay His hands on. It is often the worst who are to be found. The stated ground is clear: it is those to whom, in His foreknowledge and understanding, His love comes, without rejection; and this, not by their historic actions, as the basis, but by HIS OWN KNOWLEDGE of them, all their works and futures apart! (Romans 3:23ff.). He KNOWS, foreknows, His own.
How strange, it may seem to meritorious-minded man, that this in one sense lonely selection by the Lord should be so disengaged from production as its basis! Salvation is not a prize for saving yourself, or deigning to be co-operative about the whole thing! Yet far from the milling multitude of thoughts and works and society and philosophies and follies and mismatches and human madness, and the dust of rush, in the quiet eternity of divine thought and knowledge, indeed "foreknowledge" as in I Peter 1:2, there is that choice, that finding of grace, that notation for place, that assignment of salvation to each one to be saved. Gifts are often despised or rejected in pride or folly; but the rejection of this one, duly attested by many when it does at length come to their lives, a fateful terminus for such, is fatal. Ignore death-threats when one way out is there, and why complain when you inherit what they offer. It is not different in the case of life.
In each generation, it does not depend on the psychological manipulations and foundations of man, his wisdom, vision or knowledge, sunk in the shallows; it depends on the infinite knowledge, foreknowledge of God, who chooses His own, not to fulfil Himself, already replete with all things, but to implement His love, a matter of giving. Indeed, does not Paul declare clearly that it is more blessed to give than to receive! That is because God is like that and every good and perfect gift comes from above, from Him! (James 1:17, Acts 20:35). God loves and SO loved that He gave. He did not give to get more for a depleted larder; He gave to save from perishing (John 3:15-18). Christ did not come to judge this world, but to save it. Judgment is like the scum on the waters, where purification has failed, for whatever reason it may be so.
God was not disposed to save for His companionship; for in the trinity, companionship is infinite already (cf. Isaiah 48:16, II Corinthians 13:14, John 5:19ff., 15:26-27, 10:30ff., Matthew 12:28 with Luke 11:20, John 16:8ff.). It is for OUR good that He chooses to seek; and IN CHOOSING, He neither arbitrarily selects for His own comfort, since love does not seek its own (I Corinthians 13), as if for a personal hedonism of some kind, nor does He select the heights of His creation, as if in self-congratulation or mere pleasure. His is a GOOD pleasure (Ephesians 1). Seeking the best, He grants grace where it is received as foreknown by Him.
He neither rewards works nor attainments, nor dismisses the dismal reality of the state of our race, all of it who prefer to walk without Christ, thus declining the God who made them. He has given where the gift is sure beyond the fidgets of the flesh, not to historic man, as the criterion, but to man foreknown as he is, before sin blighted and differentiation occurred at the moral level, where love relates and where truth is to be received. Yet those who reject Him now are certainly exhibits of the truth, evidencing it fatally, and knowing what they are doing.
What are they doing in such cases ? You see it in Eve, how readily she allowed herself to be seduced spiritually by the creepy-crawly insinuations of the devil, that God had a personal gain idea in store, and an exclusivist pattern for His desire. There are many ways out; there is only one way in, and God never misses in leading His own into that way.
It is His will that finds them, and it is His Gospel which provides the way home. Nor does this mean for one second, that He takes no interest in those who WILL not seek and find Him, since in Ezekiel 20 with Nehemiah 9, we find the attentive intensity of His seeking, exhorting, dying to find them, eliciting, enlisting, breathing mercy on them, over and over again, as for example in Ezekiel 20:4, 9, 22, as we see no less in the immensely poignant pleas to the rampant race seen in Jeremiah 1-9, for example. Indeed, it is found, this grief at loss, for Moab, and one hears His cries as in Jeremiah 48. It is His grace that bothers at all with us, and confers a merit that is not our own, but His own (II Corinthians 5:17ff.), so that as His children we become those who are freely accepted into His household (Romans 5:15), each one with his abiding place (John 14, Ephesians 1:6), now in fellowship with Him (Ephesians 2:6), forever His, with Him and delighting in Him.
Where God IS love (I John 4:7ff.), obviously nothing unloving is to be kept, and what is not built on love, is not built at all. The plans are prepared in wholesome integrity in advance, God knowing as He seeks all, who are His. Yet, in a moment, on this earth, as if on the vast tract of some extending beach, in historic time, one is in historic time. The finger of the Lord has pointed, and His will has appointed, and His Spirit moves on the face of the human waters (John 16:8ff.); and there is a still, with turbulence being quieted, and an appeal, and a longing and a finding, and a being found, and a grace which comes and an understanding that this is the way. This is not set in concrete, but concrete in itself for all that, and it is this that is to be followed. So the Lord finds one and it is between God and His creation, an individual action, faith and fruit for love, the love of God.
So He moves upon His own ? Of each one, the question may arise: Will this one come ? but one has come already, and the illumination is neither dazzling nor fitful, but insistent and drawing, directing like an expert sheep dog with its fold. One finds one's desire, though one had not known it, merely sought it; but now one finds grace and it is done. It is as lonely as a bird lost in the vast heavens as one looks up, but as sure as the perfume that surrounds many of the magnolia trees, coming from a sure source, not difficult to ascertain, as one finds, and is found by Him.
Is it then so lonely, when a Noah finds grace in the sight of the Lord ? Not really, for then he becomes one of the eternal household of God; and though in this world, as presumably with Noah, he may suffer ostracism or mockery or loss of wealth or friends or whatever, yet this is a work of character in the grace of God, a supreme if not indeed sublime opportunity to SHOW the faith which without works is dead, in a lively manner, and to exhibit the new foundation in Christ, where works do not count, but proceed by the impulse of love and the divine gift of wisdom. Trees have fruits because they have roots; the fruits never make the tree, but the tree the fruits, a natural result when the seed is right (Matthew 15:13); and our seed is the word of God (I Peter 1:22ff.), what is written of Him to be smitten, the testimony of God's other and greater ark, and all His teachings and ways, from the Old Testament to the New, and in just accord with the same, in fulfilment within.
God calls singularly, and between man, woman, child and God there is an avenue, a pathway, such that on entry it is very much alone that one is; but one is never alone in the company of the Maker, who overcomes all floods and by grace, establishes His people, where no sinking can come, nor any flood overtake.
Enter then, Noahs, one by one, into the ark, and being sealed, sail in your contemporary seas, tested, but kept, admitted never to be let go (John 1:9, 27-29), sailing through storm and calm alike, secure in the journey, with much to do till the land of love is sighted, already sited in the power and provision of God Almighty. It is God or man, false God or the God of creation and salvation. Everything else is like trying too late to step onto a departing vessel, and falling for all the false hope that goes with it, into that often sludgy slipperiness which rocks in the ripples near the wharves, ready to be enveloped by its muck, and the marine creatures which may find it attractive (as in Jude, II Peter, Matthew 24:24).