Had Noah any anxiety about the billows of divine judgment? None whatever. How could he? He knew that "_all_" had been poured forth, while he himself was raised by those very outpoured billows into a region of cloudless peace. He floated in peace on that very water by which "all flesh" was judged. He was put beyond the reach of judgment; and put there, too, by God himself. He might have said, in the triumphant language of Romans viii., "If God be for us, who can be against us?" He had been invited in by Jehovah himself, as we read in Chapter vii. 1, "Come thou and all thy house into the ark;" and when he had taken his place there, we read, "_the Lord shut him in_." Here, assuredly, was full and perfect security for all within. Jehovah kept the door, and no one could go in or out without him. There was both a window and a door to the ark. The Lord secured, with his own omnipotent hand, the door, and left Noah the window, from which he might look upward to the place from whence all the judgment had emanated, and see that no judgment remained for him. The saved family could only look _upward_, because the window was "above." (Chap. vi. 16.) They could not see the waters of judgment, nor the death and desolation which those waters had caused. God's salvation--the "gopher wood," stood between them and all these things. They had only to gaze upward into a cloudless heaven,--the eternal dwelling-place of the One who had condemned the world, and saved them.
Nothing can more fully express the believer's perfect security in Christ than those words, "the Lord shut him in." Who could open what God had shut? None. The family of Noah were as safe as God could make them. There was no power, angelic, human or diabolical, which could possibly burst open the door of the ark, and let the waters in. That door was shut by the self-same hand that had opened the windows of heaven, and broken up the fountains of the great deep. Thus Christ is spoken of as the One "that hath the key of David, he that openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth." (Rev. iii. 7.) He also holds in his hand "the keys of hell and of death." (Rev. i. 18.) None can enter the portals of the grave, nor go forth therefrom without him. He has "all power in heaven and on earth." He is "head over all things to the Church," and in him the believer is perfectly secure. (Matt. xxviii. 18; Eph. i. 22.) Who could touch Noah? What wave could penetrate that ark which was "pitched within and without with pitch?" Just so now, who can touch those who have, by faith, retreated into the shadow of the cross? Every enemy has been met and silenced,--yes, silenced for ever. The death of Christ has triumphantly answered every demur; while, at the same time, his resurrection is the satisfactory declaration of God's infinite complacency in that work which is, at once, the basis of his righteousness in receiving us, and of our confidence in drawing nigh unto him.
Hence, therefore, the door of our ark being secured, by the hand of God himself, nothing remains for us but to enjoy the window; or, in other words, to walk in happy and holy communion with him who has saved us from coming wrath, and made us heirs and expectants of coming glory. Peter speaks of those, who "are blind, and cannot see afar off, and have forgotten that they were purged from their old sins." (2 Peter i. 9.) This is a lamentable condition for any one to be in, and it is the sure result of not cultivating diligent, prayerful communion with him who has eternally shut us in in Christ.