NOAH was a man of great character, and one of his most salient points was, that he lived under the influence of “things not seen as yet.” He was not a materialist; that is, he believed thoroughly in another sphere of interest than the present. To him the present had its claims. Like other antediluvians, he did eat, he drank, he was a married man, and he had given his sons in marriage; but, unlike them, these matters were of a secondary importance to him. The unseen preponderated in the scale of his life; whilst apparently they lived in self-indulgence, and made the unseen subordinate to the seen.
Now it is very remarkable that when the Lord was depicting the ungodly state of “the days of Noe,” He mentioned this eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage, and made no allusion to the gross outward wickedness that doubtless abounded. This is very solemn, and demands consideration. These things, I need hardly say, are not sinful in themselves. That is not the point; but things good may be used for the exclusion of God. And thus, whilst Noah used them naturally, and as God intended, they abused them to their own ruin. “The flood came and destroyed them all.” It is a serious thing to live practically without God; and how little does the worldling of our day expect the interposition of the God of judgment!
The vision of the man of nature is bound by the things that are seen; that of the man of faith by the things that are not seen. The first lives in the circle of the sensuous, the second in that of the spiritual. The one lives by sight, and the other by faith.
Yet faith sees where sight cannot. Noah got on to the hilltop, and saw the clouds gathering, and the terrible storm marshalling its forces. His neighbors in the valley saw only an unclouded sky, and no sign of danger.
Thus today faith sees beyond the lull, and anticipates coming judgment. The poor world, absorbed in its transitory pleasures, dreams not of the rude awakening that is just at hand. “When they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, and they shall not escape.”
J. W. S.