Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 615
Delivered on Sunday Morning, February 19, 1865, by C. H. Spurgeon, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
Genesis 8:21.
PETER tells us that Noah’s ark and Baptism are figures of salvation. He puts the two together as pictures of the way by which we are saved. Noah was not saved by the world’s being gradually reformed and restored to its primitive innocence, but a sentence of condemnation was pronounced and death, burial and resurrection ensued. Noah must go into the ark and become dead to the world. The floods must descend from Heaven and rise upward from their secret fountains beneath the earth. The ark must be submerged with many waters—here was burial. And then after a time Noah and his family must come out into a totally new world of resurrection life.
It is the same in the figure of Baptism. The person baptized, if he is already dead with Christ, is buried—not purified and improved—but buried beneath the waves. And when he rises he professes that he enjoys newness of life. Baptism is setting forth just what Noah’s ark set forth—that salvation is by death and burial. You must be dead to the world. The flesh must be dead with Christ, buried with Christ—not improved, not made better, but utterly put aside as unimprovable, as worthless, dead—a thing to be buried and to be forgotten.
And we must come forth in resurrection life, feeling that above us there is a new Heaven and beneath us a new earth where righteousness dwells, seeing that we are new creatures in Christ Jesus. It would be very instructive to dwell upon each point of the resemblance between Noah’s deliverance and the salvation of every elect soul. Noah enters into the ark—there is a time when we distinctly enter into Christ and become one with Him. Noah was shut in the ark so that he could never come out again till God should open the door. There is a time when every child of God is shut in—when faith and full assurance give him an evidence that he is indissolubly one with Christ Jesus. He is grasped in Christ’s hand so that none can pluck him out. He is hidden in Christ’s loins so that none can separate him from the love of God.
Then comes the flood—there is a season in the Christian’s experience when he discovers his own depravity. He is saved. He is in the ark. He is, however, still a sinner, still the subject of inbred lusts. Suddenly all these corruptions break up! They beat upon his ark, they assail his faith, they endeavor, if possible, to drown his soul in sin. But he is not destroyed by them—for, by the grace of God, he is where other men are not—he is where he cannot be drowned by sin. He is in Christ Jesus! He mounts as the floods deepen. The more he feels the depth of his depravity, the more he admires the fullness of the atoning sacrifice! The more terrible the temptation, the more joyous is his consolation in Christ Jesus.
And so he rises in holy communion towards his God. Then comes the wind—typical of the breath of the sacred Spirit by which the floods of corruption are calmed and peace reigns within and the soul sings, “Therefore being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Then the tops of the mountains appear—sanctification takes place upon a part of the man. There are some bright graces which glisten out of the general flood of corruption. There are some points of his new-born nature which delight him with their beauty. His ark has grounded and settled— he no longer floats, so to speak, tossed about with a struggling faith and contending unbelief—he feels that as Christ Jesus is forever seated firmly at the right hand of God, so he, in Christ Jesus, has entered into rest.
The ark grounded on the top of Ararat—so does the Believer’s experience come to a settled condition. He is no more moved about with fears and questions, but rejoices in hope of the Glory of God. He sends forth his thoughts in search after evidence of his complete salvation, and probably he sends out some of his own ignorant carnal expectations, just as Noah sent out the raven. These ignorant imaginations of what the work of the Spirit is go forth and they never return because no unclean child of the old Adam can be a discerner of the new world. Then he sends out the dove—holy desires, earnest prayers go to and fro. By and by they come back with a token for good, some choice mercy from the hand of God—an olive branch of assured peace—and the Believer surely knows not only that he is in Christ, not only that he is grounded in Christ, but that all the waters are calmed, all sin is gone, all danger removed, all death destroyed!
Then occurs a period where God opens the door. Christ had been as a sort of prison to the Christian up till then. The Cross had been a burden. He did not rejoice in liberty. But God the Father now comes with the blessed Spirit and opens the door and the Believer is fully at liberty in the new world. The saved soul’s first act is, like Noah, to build an altar unto God and, as a priest, to offer sacrifice, which, as it rises to Heaven, is accepted because it is a memorial of Christ. The Lord smells a sweat savor and though the believing man is still full of sin and from his youth up has an evil imagination, yet he hears the Covenant voice which says, “I will no more curse, I will no more destroy.”