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I. Notice here, first, THE SOLITARY SAINT. Noah stands alone "in his generations" like some solitary tree green and erect in a forest of blasted and fallen pines. "Among the faithless, faithful only he." His character is described, so to speak, from the outside inwards. He is "righteous," or discharging all the obligations of law and of his various relationships. He is "perfect." His whole nature is developed, and all in due symmetry and proportion; no beauty wanting, no grace cultivated at the expense of others. He is a full man; not a one-sided and therefore a distorted one. We do not take these words to imply sinlessness, of course. They express a relative, not an absolute, completeness. Hence we may learn both a lesson of stimulus and of hope. We are not to rest satisfied with partial goodness, but to seek to attain an all-round perfectness, even in regard to the graces least like our dispositions. And we can rejoice to believe that God is generous in His acceptance and praise. He does not grudge commendation, but takes account of the deepest desires and main tendencies of a life, and sees the germ as a full-blown flower, and the bud as a fruit. Learn, too, that solitary goodness is possible. Noah stood uninfected by the universal contagion; and, as is always the case, the evil around, which he did not share, drove him to a more rigid abstinence from it. Flowers grow on a dunghill, and a very reeking rottenness may make the bloom finer. Learn, too, that the true place for the saint is "in his generations." If the mass is corrupt, so much the more need to rub the salt well in. Notice, again, the companion of the solitary saint. What beauty there is in that description of the isolated man, passing lonely amid his contemporaries, like a stream of pure water flowing through some foul liquid, and untouched by it, and yet not alone in all his loneliness, because "he walked with God"! One man, with God to back him, is always in the majority. Though surrounded by friends, have we found that, after all, we live and suffer and must die alone? Here is the all-sufficient Friend, if we have fellowship with whom our hearts will be lonely no more. Observe that this communion is the foundation of all righteousness in conduct. Because Noah walked with God, he was "just" and "perfect." If we live habitually in the holy of holies, our faces will shine when we come forth.

II. Notice THE UNIVERSAL APOSTASY. Two points are brought out in the sombre description. The first is moral corruption; the second, violence. Bad men are cruel men. When the bonds which knit society to God are relaxed, selfishness soon becomes furious, and forcibly seizes what it lusts after, regardless of others' rights. To walk with God is the true way to make men gentle and pitying. Learn from this dark outline that God gazes in silence on the evil. That is a grand solemn expression, "corrupt before God." All this mad riot of pollution and violence is holding its carnival of lust and blood under the very eye of God, and He says never a word. So is it ever. Then comes a further expression of the same thought. "God looked upon the earth." As a sudden beam of sunshine out of a thundercloud, His eye flashes down, not as if He then began to know, but that His knowledge then began, as it were, to act.

III. WHAT DOES THE STERN SENTENCE TEACH US? A very profound truth, not only of the certain Divine retribution, but of the indissoluble connection of sin with destruction. Sin is death in the making; death is sin finished. The promise of deliverance, which comes side by side with the stern sentence, illustrates the blessed truth that God's darkest threatenings are accompanied with the revelation of the way of escape.

IV. We pass by the details of the construction of the ark to draw the final lesson from the exact obedience of Noah. We have the statement twice over, HE DID "ACCORDING TO ALL THAT GOD COMMANDED HIM." It was no easy thing for him to build the ark, amidst the scoffing of his generations. Smart witticisms fell around him like hail. All the "practical men" thought him a dreamy fool, wasting his time, while they prospered and made something of life. The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us the secret of his obedience: "By faith, Noah," etc. He realized the distant unseen, because he believed Him who warned him of it. The far-off flood was more real to him than the shows of life around him. Therefore he could stand all the gibes, and gave himself to a course of life which was sheer folly unless that future was real. Perhaps a hundred and twenty years passed between the warning and the flood; and for all that time he held on his way, nor faltered in his faith. Does our faith realize that which lies before us with anything like similar clearness? Do we see that future shining through all the trivial, fleeting present? Does it possess weight and solidity enough to shape our lives? Noah's creed was much shorter than ours; but I fear his faith was as much stronger.

V. We may think, finally, of THE VINDICATION OF HIS FAITH. For a hundred and twenty years the wits laughed, and the "common sense" people wondered, and the patient saint went on hammering and pitching at his ark. But one morning it began to rain; and by degrees, somehow, Noah did not seem quite such a fool. The jests would look rather different when the water got up to the knees of the jesters; and their sarcasms would stick in their throats as they drowned. So is it always. So it will be at the last great day.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

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KJV: But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.

WEB: But Noah found favor in Yahweh's eyes.