Turn in your Bibles this morning
to the book of Genesis. I know in most places of religion,
this is a colorful day. They'll have all the colored
eggs. They'll have all the purple cloth
draped on everything. They'll have lots of Colorful
entertainment. But my message this morning,
I've entitled, The Big Black Coffin. The Big Black Coffin. Look with me here in Genesis
chapter 6, and I'll begin reading in verse 11. The earth also was corrupt before
God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked
upon the earth, and behold, it was corrupt. For all flesh had
corrupted His way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end
of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is filled with
violence through them, and behold, I will destroy them with the
earth. Make thee an ark of gopher wood,
rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within
and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which
thou shalt make it of. The length of the ark shall be
three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height
of it thirty cubits. And a window shalt thou make
to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above, and the
door of the ark shall be set in the side thereof. with lower,
second, and third stories shalt thou make it. And behold, I,
even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all
flesh wherein is the breath of life from under heaven, and everything
that is in the earth shall die. But with thee will I establish
my covenant, and thou shalt come into the ark, thou and thy sons,
and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee. And of every living
thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the
ark, to keep them alive with thee, they shall be male and
female. of fowls after their kind, and
of cattle after their kind, and of every creeping thing of the
earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee
to keep them alive. And take thou unto thee all food
that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee, and it shall
be for food for thee and for them. And thus did Noah, according
to all that God commanded him, so did he." Now, who among us
could ever say in truth that God has not warned us? Or even that He has not been
clear in His warnings? or even that they have been without
mercy. We know that that is not the
case. Because if you'll turn over to
the book of Matthew and the 24th chapter, listen to what we read
here in the New Testament, In Matthew chapter 24, beginning
reading in verse 36, speaking of that day of the coming of
the Lord, he says, "...but of that day and hour knoweth no
man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." But now
notice what he says, "'But as the days of Noah were, so shall
also the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days that
were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying,
and giving in marriage until the day that Noah entered into
the ark, and knew not until the flood came and took them all
away, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be." He says, though not giving the
hour or the day, He says that it will be in that day as it
was in the days of Noah. And that was that men and women
lived their lives, carried on their affairs, and it was, as
we say, just business as usual. But if you look over also in
Hebrews, the 11th chapter, We read just of what we have read
in Genesis 6, contained virtually in one verse, and that is the
7th verse, where it says, "...by faith Noah, being warned of God."
In other words, not by natural sight, not by natural feeling,
but simply by God-given faith, Noah believed what God said. By faith, Noah, being warned
of God, of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared
an ark to the saving of his house, by the which he condemned the
world and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith."
In other words, in the midst of that generation, in the midst
of that activity, in the midst of that blindness in his day,
which Christ says is the way it will be when he comes again. God enabled a man to believe
that which he had never seen, and not only he had never seen,
but no one else had ever seen. He warned him of a coming judgment
by a flood. A flood when it had never rained
on the earth. A flood when there were no oceans
or rivers that flowed over the earth. And so, in the face of
that warning of God's coming judgment, God enabled him to
believe Him, and in believing on Him, God saved him and his
family. And as he was building this ark,
this account of Noah being a plain illustration of a warning and
coming judgment, and at the same time, the mercy of God, because
sin had risen up in the nostrils of God as a stench, as it always
does. But he began to build this design
of God, this ark as we now call it. But in the midst of all of
that, the Scripture says, that there was obviously a lot of
preaching going on, a lot of religion going on, and yet here
is Noah, by faith, building this ark that God has given him by
design. And listen to what Peter says. He says, God spared not the old
world, but saved Noah, the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness. Now here's the picture I want
you to see. Here are all these people as
Christ described them. They're working and living, they're
eating, they're drinking, they're marrying, they're giving in marriage. Things go on as always. And there in 2 Peter, Peter tells
about how that these who then were in Peter's day were just
like so many preachers and religionists in Noah's day. But now listen
to what it says. It says, Noah, in the midst of
all this going on around him, for that period of time, maybe
something like 90 to 120 years, he preached in the midst of all
these goings on while he built this ark, the gospel, that gospel
that Paul describes as the gospel wherein the righteousness of
God is revealed. And this is what I'm trying to
say to you this morning. that here is this massive thing
that is being built, that is something like 450 feet long
and 75 feet wide and 45 feet high, made of wood, which by
the way is a type of the humanity of Christ, But here he is, in the midst
of all these people, no doubt just like it is in our day, telling
about all these glorious things of religion, pointing to their
idols, and to their edifices, their buildings, and all that. And here is Noah saying that
there is no salvation in any of these things. If you're going
to be saved from the coming judgment, you're going to have to get into
this ark. But I'm afraid that contrary
to the Bible story books so-called, Contrary to the notions that
we let our children be raised to have, this did not look like
a sailing vessel. As a matter of fact, if you remember
these dimensions, What Noah was building and what God was saying
was the way of salvation and deliverance from judgment, what
he was building turned out to be nothing but something that
resembled a big shoebox. And not really a shoebox, but
a coffin. And when it was through, He took,
at God's instruction now, he took what we would call tar or
pitch, and he smeared or painted, I'm not sure how, he smeared
or tarred that whole big giant square or rectangular box of
wood from one end to the other, top and bottom, inside and out. with that black tar and pitch. And so if you had stood off at
a distance, if someone had said to you, you ought to go down
there and see what Noah is building. You ought to go down and see
what this man who's been preaching and building for 120 years thereabout,
what he's been saying in the midst of this, and what he's
been building, just go by sometime and take a look at it. You cross
a ridge somewhere, and there you see it. And from a distance,
that's all it looks like. It just simply looks like that
somebody has built this giant black coffin out there, maybe
in the midst of a desert place. Why did God do that? Why does
God do what He does in picturing for us the Lord Jesus Christ? And I can just imagine somebody
coming along there with their family and their friends, carrying
on in their traditions and so thrilled about their colorful
religion and all that, and somebody says, Noah says, that's the only
way we're going to be saved from a judgment by a flood, by this
water that we've not ever seen. And they'll say, there's no way,
there's no way that can be. There's no way. And so today,
as it will be in so many places, the Lord Jesus Christ will be
colored up and fixed up and presented in such a way that is palatable
to blind sinners, when in truth, He's like this big black coffin. Let me read how Isaiah was led
by the Spirit to describe him. He says, "...for he shall grow
up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground."
This is the description of the only Savior. He says, "...he
hath no form nor comeliness, And when we shall see Him, there
is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected
of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we
hid, as it were, our faces from Him. He was despised and we esteemed
Him not." Now, we ought to get a hint here. that God's salvation
is not in a way or in a person that is in any way appealing
to us naturally. If you look out at another picture
of Christ, maybe you're traveling through the desert there in the
land of Canaan, And you cross over this rise and there is an
encampment of a lot of people there in a desert wilderness,
and right in the middle of how they have assembled and set up
their camp, right in the middle of it is a tent. And when you look at it, You
say, well, this is not some noble desert chieftain? For sure. Why? Because this tent that they've
all centered around, that they've all made the focal and central
point of their whole assembly of people, is nothing but a tent. It looks like it's covered with
old, dry, dusty, weathered badger skins. What was that? That was
the tabernacle. And on the inside of the tabernacle
were such glorious fixtures and gold, and God said, I will dwell
there in the tabernacle, in the Holy of Holies, between the cherubims
on the Ark of the Covenant. You know what the Ark of the
Covenant was? It was another box. That box was overlaid with
gold. That's where they went, and the
priest once a year went in there and sprinkled that blood of that
God-appointed sacrifice. And what we have here is a picture
or a view of how things appear on the outside to natural men
and women, and yet how they appear to God. So if God doesn't reveal
to us the truth, If He does not open our eyes and enable us to
see and understand the truth in that Christ Jesus Himself,
and is the way, the truth, and the life, and that that way and
truth and life is only by death. You see, those people who lived
in Noah's day, they most likely had glorious celebrations. I really don't have any doubt,
but what they celebrated, something akin to Easter. You say, well,
how could it be that they would ever have celebrated something
akin to what now has become known as Easter? Well, because of this,
because that which Easter came from, all the pagan traditions
and idolatry, it was long, long ago, it's been ever since the
fall. All that Easter is, is a kind
of transliteration of that heathen goddess Astarte, the Queen of
Heaven, and the worship that she symbolized goes back and
back and back, all the way, I'm sure, to Noah's day. And so men
and women, they looked at the beauties of religion. They heard
all these many priests and priestesses of false religion and idolatry. They heard them. They believed
them. That's what Peter is saying in
2 Peter 2. He's saying they, like today,
they believe, they follow, they deceive, and they delude. When
all the time salvation was in a big black coffin. Now let me ask you this. Do you
think when that flood came and those waters began to rise up
to their chests and to their necks, when it began to rise
up to the point that they knew now that they would be destroyed
by that flood and that they would have no access to that one refuge,
do you suppose they took great consolation in their numbers? You suppose that they imagined,
like men and women say so foolishly, that they imagined in our day,
well, if it was good enough for mom, it's good enough for me.
If it was good enough for daddy, it's good enough for me. If it's
good enough for all these people, it must be true. You think they
caught consolation in that? No. As a matter of fact, I'm
quite sure Not only in those last moments, but in every moment
of eternity after that to this day, the very fact of all these
numbers and some of them, their family members and friends and
loved ones, they are even the more greatly tormented by their
presence. But after all, just a big black
coffin. We don't want to talk about death.
We want to talk about maybe how Christ gave us such an example
to follow. We want to talk about how His
influence on us has brought us to love other people and things
like that. But the truth is that salvation
was in one big Black coffin. It was in a picture of death.
And it shows to us, as do every other type, in the plain statements
of the Word of God, that the only way for life, the only way
of life for sinners is by death. By death. The Apostle Paul says,
"...of the natural man." You know who that is? That's every
one of us as we come into this world, as we grow up in this
world. We grow up as sinners amongst
sin. And he said, the natural man
receives not the things of God. Why? Because they're foolishness
to him. He looks out, he sees religion.
He looks inside, he sees this feeling that if he does his best,
everything is going to be alright, he sees the pomp and ceremony
of all religion, he gets involved in it, he gets to feeling good
about himself, and he's willing to do anything and everything,
but he wants no part in that big black coffin over there.
Let me tell you what Paul wrote to the Corinthian church. He
said, the preaching of the cross, which is just exactly what this
big black coffin was all about in Noah's day, this preaching
of a crucified Christ. He said, it's foolishness to
them that are perishing. Foolishness. Well, what's not
foolishness? Well, getting together, singing
a bunch of feel-good hymns. Not about the glory of God. We'll
sing when we all get to heaven, or we'll all get together, we'll
have fellowship. What's that? That's when we all
sit down and eat together. No, that's not what Scripture
says. We like all these things because that's what excites the
flesh, appeals to the flesh, but we don't want this big black
coffee. We don't want this death. We
don't want this message of a crucified Christ. But in order for them
to be saved, Noah and his family, how many... This is an environmentalist
nightmare right here. How many trees do you suppose
they had to cut down, saw up, in order to build something that
was 450 feet long? You say, what a waste. Somebody
ought to have been planting trees. Instead of cutting them down,
instead of killing them, somebody ought to have been out there
conserving them and planting new trees. But this brings back
a truth that you better get a hold of. And that is, in order for
a sinner to live, something's got to die. You ever think about
it? You say, well, no preacher, I've
become a What is it, a vegan? I only eat vegetables. I'm a non-meat eater. Well, my
friend, for you to live, some plant, some seed, something,
doesn't matter what it is, it's got to die for you to live. That's
the only way a sinner can live. We've lived all these years on
this planet, And the only way we've ever been able to survive
is if something died. We're pumping all that oil out
of the ground. You know what it is? It's dead
things. That's right. Dead things. When we sit down and eat that
steak or that barbecue, dead things. When we sit down and
we eat greens, a salad, radish, whatever it is, it's all dead
things. And all around us we've got this
witness. Life is only through a death. But it's not our death. We can't
have life. A sinner whose sins brings forth
death can never have life by their simply dying. Because all
they face is eternal death. But there's this big black coffin. There's a message of salvation.
Look over in that 6th chapter at what it says in verse 8. Here
is all the world fallen now under the threatening of God's judgment. Every one of them, all sinners,
Noah and his family included in that number, all flesh. Isn't
that what they were? But what does it say? But Noah. found grace in the eyes of the
Lord." Now, Noah wasn't looking for grace. You've got to understand
that. When it says that Noah found
grace, it means that he received it as the gift of God. He wasn't
looking for grace. And I can assure you, he wasn't
looking for a big black coffin either. But when it says that
Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, it means that Noah
was graced by God. But the amazing thing is that
here is salvation by grace. We believe in salvation by grace. That's without any merit on our
part, without any just dessert on our part. We believe in salvation
by grace. But we're not too interested
in that big black coffin. We're not too interested in that.
Why? It just doesn't sound right to me. That's why our Lord says,
my ways are not your ways, and my thoughts are not your thoughts.
Not that big black coffin. Not by hearing about somebody
died 2,000 years ago, not just a man who was executed outside
of the city of Jerusalem. All this could do about this
man who died, do you know who died? The God-man. When you hear God giving this
instruction to Noah, He's not saying, Noah, you go out there
and you grab whatever is available, You just take a slab of oak,
and a slab of hickory, and a slab of pine, and a slab of fir, and
whatever you can scrape up, you know. Oh no. This had to be a unique and special
wood. I have a feeling not so easily
to accumulate and stockpile for the building of such a building,
because it had to picture the perfect humanity of Christ. And I can just see old Noah,
he gets through with the final pegs in that arc. He gets it
pegged together, he gets it all put together. Stand back, it's
looking pretty good. What are you gonna do, you gonna
varnish it, Noah? Noah, I'm gonna smear, pitch, tar, all over that
beautiful wood. I don't think the grain will
show through, Noah. No, I don't either. It'll just be like a
big black shoebox. It'll look like somebody really
took one of your finest coffins, took it out there and got a bucket
of tar and went from one end of it to the other, inside and
out. You know we dress up death now,
don't we? Got to be shiny on the outside.
Got to be satin on the inside. But it would be just like taking
that beautiful coffin and just cover it with black. Why? Because
that's what sin is before God. He's of purer eyes than to behold
iniquity. He's the God who must punish
sin. He's going to punish your sin.
He's going to punish my sin. The soul that sinneth. Going
to get a tap on the hands? Going to get a stern lecture?
Going to get a temporary side trip to purgatory? No, the soul
that sinneth shall surely die. So if we're going to have a Savior,
He first of all has got to be a Savior from sin. That's what
the Lord Jesus came to do. Call His name Jesus, for He shall
save His people from their sins. How is the only way that He,
being our Savior, could actually save us from our sins, except
He die and receive in His own person what we would do for our
sins? That's why He says, Thou shalt
not make unto Me any graven image, because every time Men who are
idolaters by nature, who with their natural minds set out to
make an image of God, it'll always be pretty and shiny and bright,
it won't ever be a big black coffin. And Noah did all this
by the design and order and appointment of God. This wood, This dimension,
covered with this stuff. Why? Because God's salvation
is not an afterthought with Him. A lot of people think that when
Christ was taken and hung on the cross, God had to go into
plan B or a contingency plan. No, that is the plan. The big
black coffin is the plan. Appointed of God, ordered of
God, He's the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. He is that God of peace that
brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd
of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant. The everlasting covenant of grace
was ratified by the death of the testator. That didn't appeal
to us. That didn't appeal to the natural
person. Here it is, this big black Coffin-looking
affair. God said, put three levels in
it. Why? Because the triune God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is engaged in the salvation of
His people. The Father chose them in a covenant
of grace before the world began. The Son came into this world
in perfect human flesh and died in their place, and the Spirit
will give them life and faith and effectually bring them to
the ark." Somebody said, what we have in that ark is sin perfectly
judged, the sinner perfectly saved, God perfectly revealed,
and perfectly glorified, all in the cross of Christ. You see, he shows here a very
definite work. Who was that art built for? Now, before you start Saying
you believe everybody has a chance to be saved and all this kind
of stuff. Let me ask you this. Who designed
the ark? And who was it designed for?
The scripture says of this ark, it says, wherein eight souls
were saved. I got to thinking about this
one day. Richard, I got to thinking about eight. Now why eight there? I know that the number of completion
and perfection in the Bible seems to be seven, doesn't it? Here's
eight. I may be way off on this, but
it seems to me that this is that seven, that complete number,
His bride, His church, His people, plus one, the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, after that flood had
rampaged for forty days and nights, and the wind, and the water,
and who can imagine how horrible it must have been just to think
about this when it had never happened before. But all of a
sudden, when all that flood, when all that judgment had come,
there's the ark sitting there on the mount. You mean it didn't
destroy? It didn't tear up, as we say?
No. Why? Couldn't, because it's a
picture of Christ. It didn't end everything in that?
No. As a matter of fact, in that
ark was the new creation. Just like Paul says, if any man
be in Christ, he's a new creation, and old things are passed away,
and behold, all things are become new. You make a mess of your
life, and we all do. In one way or another, we make
a mess of it. We'll say things like this. Boy,
I wish I could just start all over again. I wish it was all
new again, you know. It was here. And only in Christ. And having gone through the judgment
of God in Him. You see, Noah and his family,
they were sinners just like everybody else on the earth. They were
descendants of fallen Adam and Eve. They were there. They were
sinners just like everybody else. And God did not simply say, well,
I'm just going to turn a blind eye to the sins of my people,
Noah and his family here. No, that same judgment for their
sins fell on them, but since they were in the ark. That ark
didn't just float on the water. It was battered, blown, banged
around, twisted, thrown up, cast down, washed over. But the psalmist had said of
the Messiah, all thy waves and all thy billows have washed over
me. Here's all that wrath and all
that judgment that's fallen on the whole race, and it's fallen
on Noah and his family in that ark that they're in, and they're
safe. The ark absorbs every blow. That perfect humanity That perfect
deity in the God-man, He's hanging on the cross, and all the waves,
and all the billows, God's Ark, all they're falling on His head.
That's why it says we died in Christ. That's what resurrection's
about. the resurrection of those who
died in the Lord Jesus Christ when He died on that cross. That's why our hope is in this
big black coffin. God punished their sins in the
ark. That's right. You see, Noah had
been told of God what he says in verse 1 of chapter 7. Says,
and the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into
the ark, for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation."
You know what it is to be justified. There is nobody good in heaven
that has not been justified by God. What does that mean for
God to justify us? It means for Him to count us
as righteous or declare us as righteous in His sight. On the one hand, how could God
ever see a man such as Noah, a sinner, as righteous in His
sight? He saw him in Christ as He's
always seen all His people. but Noah also being a type of
Christ. I don't want to even get started
there. But Noah being a type of Christ, he's seen righteous
by God, and therefore all his families deliver in a big black
coffin. That word in the Hebrew, for
that word pitch, is the word kefir or koffer, whereby we get
the word also, Atonement. That's what that represented.
Atonement. That which brings a sinner to
be at one with God. When you get to the New Testament,
Paul talks about how through Jesus Christ we received the
atonement. Atonement means a covering. And the word actually there is
the reconciliation. God laid on His Son the sins
of His people, and God was in Christ, reconciling us unto Himself. Paul said to the Colossians,
for you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. Now there are a few more things
I just want to point out quickly. Number one, God, when the time
came, God called to Noah from inside the ark. It didn't sound
like that Charlton Heston voice, come into the ark. He spoke to
him from within the ark and said, come into the ark. Come into
the ark. And that means that God, if He
ever speaks to you, speaks to me, speaks to any sinner, In
the message of salvation and grace, it's going to be coming
through the message of Christ and Him crucified. A successful
Savior. A glorious, God-wrought righteousness. Somebody said, what if Noah hadn't
come into the ark? I guarantee you the President
could send you a message this afternoon, you'd be falling over
your feet to get to Washington for something. But I can tell
you this, when the voice of Almighty God speaks to your heart through
this gospel of Christ crucified, and you see in Him the only message
of hope and salvation, you behold that finished work that He's
accomplished and redeemed, you see how it is that God can be
just and yet justify a sinner like you, when He calls you effectually,
you will come. That's why I'm not going to beg
you, plead with you, and reduce God down to nothing. Christ,
when He died, died for you. His very justice says, let that
sinner go. And you know what? When God called
Noah and his family into the ark, it says that God shut the
door. You say, well, Christ is the
door, and you can go in and out if you want to. No. He's the
door, all right. But He said, by me, if somebody
enters in. And He shut that door. No leaks. No escaping divine mercy. Oh, I'm so thankful. No escaping
sovereign grace. He will not let you go. That
boat's twisting and blowing and bouncing and reeling to and fro. You think that Noah will make
it? Will his family really be safe?
If that ark holds up, he will. And my friend, the picture here
is that it did. It did. Well, when it began to
Calm down. Took a while for the waters to
subside on the earth. What did they do? What could
they do? They just wait. They just wait. And they got
one door. Or rather, one window. And that
window is on the top of that ark. So they throw up that window. All they can see is heaven. All
they can do is praise the God of all glory. Thank Him for His
mercy. Thank Him that He looked down
on them. And in His eyes, they found grace. And then one day at appointed
time, that ship, such as it was, that big black coffin came to
rest on the top of Mount Ararat, I believe it was. The Lord opened
the door. Do you know what the first thing
that Noah did was? You have to read this in another
place here in Genesis, but whereas the picture is that there were
only two of every kind of creature that lived on the earth that
went into the ark, of those that God called clean things, there
was more of them. They were like sevens of them.
And the first thing that Noah did When he got off of that ark,
he walked outside, picked him up an armful of them dry stones,
and raised him up in the form of an altar, and he slew one
of those animals there as a sacrifice to God. And somebody said, no,
no. You idiot! Don't you know that
we have not hardly enough now as it is to replenish and repopulate
the earth of these sheep and these cattle and all these things
that you say God calls clean things? Don't you know we can't
afford to waste one? Nothing is wasted that is spent
to the praise and glory of the God of salvation. You say, well,
there's no way. If he kills all them sheep he's
worshipping every day, those sheep, then it's not going to
make it, Art of Billy. Are you forgetting who the Creator
is? He said to those Jews, he said, if you don't praise the
Messiah, God will raise up stones. Well, come into the ark. That's the command of God. You
look all around you today in particular. It's a colorful day. A lot of colorful things going
on. The salvation from sin. The salvation of God is still
in the one and in the way that was pictured by the big black
coffin. I hope God will enable you to
see Him. It would be like walking inside that tabernacle. You see
all that gold and silver and those colorful hand-embroidered
drapes and all the things that picture the excellencies of Christ. And you get down and you see
that that box is a gold-covered box that has the blood of Christ
sprinkled on it. Sins pardoned. Forgiven. and saved in Him from the coming
judgment. Ask the Lord. Lord, help me to
see what Your people, these such as know and the objects of Your
grace have seen for hundreds of years when You reveal it to
them. That this message, this salvation
in a crucified Christ, just like this big black coffin, though
it doesn't appeal to the natural eye, truly is the way of salvation. Father, we thank You this day
for Your Son, for His death, for that life poured out in the
payment of the sins of Your people, for being our ark, for being
bruised and tossed at the hand of Your judgment, in order that
we might be saved. Help us to see Him and trust
in Him alone. And that work of which He cried
out on the cross, it is finished. We thank You and we pray in His
name. Amen.