Notes on the Book of GenesisMackintosh, Charles Henry
Religion
Notes on the Book of Genesis
Mackintosh, Charles Henry
Bible. Genesis -- Commentaries
Had Noah any anxiety about the billows of divine judgment? None
whatever. How could he? He knew that "_all_" had been poured forth,
while he himself was raised by those very outpoured billows into a
region of cloudless peace. He floated in peace on that very water by
which "all flesh" was judged. He was put beyond the reach of judgment;
and put there, too, by God himself. He might have said, in the
triumphant language of Romans viii., "If God be for us, who can be
against us?" He had been invited in by Jehovah himself, as we read in
Chapter vii. 1, "Come thou and all thy house into the ark;" and when he
had taken his place there, we read, "_the Lord shut him in_." Here,
assuredly, was full and perfect security for all within. Jehovah kept
the door, and no one could go in or out without him. There was both a
window and a door to the ark. The Lord secured, with his own omnipotent
hand, the door, and left Noah the window, from which he might look
upward to the place from whence all the judgment had emanated, and see
that no judgment remained for him. The saved family could only look
_upward_, because the window was "above." (Chap. vi. 16.) They could
not see the waters of judgment, nor the death and desolation which
those waters had caused. God's salvation--the "gopher wood," stood
between them and all these things. They had only to gaze upward into a
cloudless heaven,--the eternal dwelling-place of the One who had
condemned the world, and saved them.
Nothing can more fully express the believer's perfect security in
Christ than those words, "the Lord shut him in." Who could open what
God had shut? None. The family of Noah were as safe as God could make
them. There was no power, angelic, human or diabolical, which could
possibly burst open the door of the ark, and let the waters in. That
door was shut by the self-same hand that had opened the windows of
heaven, and broken up the fountains of the great deep. Thus Christ is
spoken of as the One "that hath the key of David, he that openeth and
no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth." (Rev. iii. 7.) He
also holds in his hand "the keys of hell and of death." (Rev. i. 18.)
None can enter the portals of the grave, nor go forth therefrom without
him. He has "all power in heaven and on earth." He is "head over all
things to the Church," and in him the believer is perfectly secure.
(Matt. xxviii. 18; Eph. i. 22.) Who could touch Noah? What wave could
penetrate that ark which was "pitched within and without with pitch?"
Just so now, who can touch those who have, by faith, retreated into the
shadow of the cross? Every enemy has been met and silenced,--yes,
silenced for ever. The death of Christ has triumphantly answered every
demur; while, at the same time, his resurrection is the satisfactory
declaration of God's infinite complacency in that work which is, at
once, the basis of his righteousness in receiving us, and of our
confidence in drawing nigh unto him.
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