Noah suspected not the ark; he did not occupy himself in feeling its timbers, whether indeed they were keeping the waters outside--he had no doubt of that. He had no pump in his ship, if I may be allowed the figure; and I may utter it, since, homely as it is, it glorifies Jesus in the security He gives the sinner; for such is the very style of Scripture itself.
The lesson taught us may be the profoundest in the mind of the Spirit, but the school where it is learnt may be a despised place. Look, for instance, at Genesis xlviii. You are there at the bedside of a dying old man--a common homely spot. But there, some of the deepest and richest secrets of the mind of God are, in a figure, conveyed to us--the great mystery of our adoption, according to divine good pleasure; and then our welcome into the family of God, in the day of our manifestation, or conversion. And what richer counsels of grace are there than those? And yet in what more common or homely school could they have been taught us?
As in still earlier days, in Genesis xvi. There you are introduced to the domestic arrangement of Abraham’s family as to the servant and her mistress, and their disputes; and yet, in all that, you get the profound mystery of the two covenants. Gal. iv. And again, in the act, the ordinary act, of discharging a servant, another feature in the same mystery is presented to us, in chapter xxi. The wisdom of God delights in these scenes and materials; they rebuke the erring thought of man’s heart, that important things must be done or said by imposing methods--that the prophet must come forth and strike his hand over the place. 2 Kings v. 11. But it is with rude and inartificial instruments that both the wisdom of God and the power of God are commonly seen. Rams’ horns blew down Jericho, and fishermen turned the world upside down, as was said of them. But these homely methods of God’s wisdom aid in carrying the instruction home, and lodging it deep in the intimacies and recollections of the heart. I may therefore still say that Noah’s ship had no pump in it. Indeed it could not. Such a thing would have witnessed against it. God’s provisions would have declared their own insufficiency. That could never have been. God’s provisions and God’s works always tell _whose_ they are by being _what_ they are. Simplicity, and yet sufficiency, give them their character. "Let there be light, and there was light." "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved;" and the sinner, believing, rejoiced in God with all his house.