I. Noah’s Condition in the Ark; The Waters Abate
A. Noah’s Condition in the Ark
1. How Noah and his family anxiously waited for God’s promise, and lived in faith, which is a hard life 1-3.
2. He had a hard time in the ark. What sustained him 2-4.
3. How he suffered in two ways 5.
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Whether God can forget his saints 6.
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Severest temptations are when man thinks he is forsaken by
God 7.
4. Noah’s condition became more miserable because of his family’s distress 8-10.
5. Noah and family with difficulty overcame their temptation 11.
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Christians need steadfastness 12.
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Why God for a time conceals himself from his faithful ones
- Temptations severe when saints imagine God has forsaken them
B. The Waters Abate
1. The time the waters abated 15.
2. How the wind blew upon the earth and dried it. 16-17.
3. The abating of the waters was a sign by which God comforted Noah 18.
- Noah’s Ark.
a. When it began to float, how long it floated and when it rested 19.
b. On what mountain did it rest 20.
c. What to think of Josephus’ testimony 21.
4. When the mountain tops first seen 22.
5. How Noah learned the deluge had ceased.
a. Why Noah sent forth the raven, and how the error arose the raven never returned 23-24.
- The Jews’ unclean thoughts of the raven 24.
b. Noah sent forth a dove, and if at the same time with the raven 25.
c. Noah sent out a second dove, which assured him that the flood had ceased 26.
(1) Dove returned with an olive leaf 26.
(2) Whether it did this of its own impulse, and what God thereby wished to indicate 27-28.
(3) The Jews’ ideas on where the dove got the olive leaf 27.
(4) Why an olive leaf 28.
6. How long Noah and family were in the ark 29.
I. Noah in Ark—Flood Abates
A. Noah’s Condition in the Ark
V. 1a. And God remembered Noah, and all the beasts, and all the cattle that were with him in the ark. 1. When that horrible wrath had exhausted itself, and all flesh with the earth had been destroyed, the promise made by God to Noah and his sons, that they were to be the seed of the human race, began to be realized. No doubt this promise was to them an object of eager expectation. No life is so hedged about with difficulties as that of faith. This was the life lived by Noah and his sons, whom we see absolutely depending upon the heavens for support. The earth was covered with water. Bottom on which to stand there was none. It was the word of promise that upheld them, as they drifted in this welter of waters.
2. When the flesh is free from danger, it holds faith in contempt, as the claims of the Papists show. It loves showy and toilsome tasks; in these it sweats. But behold Noah, on all sides surrounded by waters, yet not overwhelmed! Surely it is not works that sustain him but faith in God’s mercy extended through the word of promise.
3. The difficulty besetting Noah is hinted at in the words: “God remembered.” Moses thus intimates that Noah had been tossed on the water so long that God seemed to have forgotten him altogether. They who pass through such a mental strain, when the rays of divine grace are gone and they sit in darkness or are forgotten by God, find by experience that it is far more difficult to live in the Word or by faith alone than to be a hermit or a Carthusian monk.
4. Hence, it is not a meaningless expression when the Holy Spirit says that “God remembered Noah.” He means that from the day Noah entered the ark, no word was spoken, nothing was revealed to him; that he saw no ray of divine grace shining, but merely clung to the promise which he had accepted, while in the meantime the waters and waves raged as if God had certainly forgotten. The same danger beset his children and also the cattle and all the other animals throughout the one hundred and fifty days they were in the ark. And though the holy seed by the aid of the conquering Spirit overcame those difficulties, the victory was not won without vexation of the flesh, tears and stupendous fear, felt, in my opinion, even by the brutes.