FIRST of all I would greet you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and welcome you to our campus and to our fellowship together in Him. May our fellowship in the Lord Jesus Christ be increasingly precious to everyone of us as the days go by.
But secondly I wish to welcome you also to a fellowship of labor in the Lord our God. To describe briefly this fellowship of labor I invite you to think with me for just a few moments about that great man of God, Noah, the builder of the ark.
Noah, we read, found favor in the sight of God. He alone of his generation did find favor, and he walked with God. This is said also of Enoch before him, but Enoch was translated suddenly into glory. Not so with Noah, for God had a task for Noah to perform in his generation.
It was a godless generation in which Noah was called to perform his task. It was a generation of men who had openly and in brazen-faced fashion forsaken the living God. They are exemplified in the person of Lamech, who boldly said to his two wives that if a young man met him and he was angry he would cut him in two—and it would not trouble his conscience in the least for while his great-great-grandfather Cain still thought there was a god, he no longer thought so. He knew that the idea that there was a god was a projection of the human imagination.
This was the attitude of the children of Cain. Sad to say, it was also virtually the attitude of the children of Seth. Instead of witnessing against and to these children of Cain, the children of Seth had become fellow-breakers with them of the laws of God. They had all of them in effect taken the same position that Lamech took. All that remained was a test of strength between the living God and the children of men.
It was in this situation that Noah found grace in the sight of God to build the ark. He walked with God, as Enoch had walked with God. To God he presented the needs of this generation. The awful apostasy from the living God burdened his heart. He wept over it. He besought God for relief from the situation.
Then God used this man who walked with Him, this man who had found grace in His sight, to become the builder of the ark. And in the building of the ark he was to save his house, and at the same time he was to judge the world. Just as a wall separates and keeps inside those that are within, and keeps outside those that are without, so the building of the ark accomplished in one act the saving of Noah's house and the condemnation of the world.
Think with me for just a moment on this second aspect of Noah's work. He was a preacher of righteousness. He was a just man in his generation. He witnessed to that generation of the living God, and of His requirements.
So he came to that generation which he served, first of all, with a challenge pertaining to the past. He took the tradition of Adam and Eve in Paradise as being historically true, as indicating to man just what had happened at the beginning of all things in this world. But they laughed him to scorn. They said there were no records of such things as that, no scientific evidence that that was what had taken place.
He also witnessed to them of the same God as at the present time controlling the universe, as bringing rain and sunshine in season, as controlling the laws of nature. But they argued, in effect, that that was not true. They assumed that nature works by itself, that it is not under God's control.
And so when he, having been warned of God concerning things that should come to pass, also brought them a different philosophy of the future than they were accustomed to believe, when he predicted in the name of God that a flood would come and destroy all of them unless they would repent, they again laughed him to scorn. There were no records of such floods. Science knew nothing of such things. "It cannot happen here," they said, in effect. The world just doesn't produce such things. Reality isn't of that nature. We know, they said, because the human race hasn't experienced anything of the sort.
But Noah was not afraid of their ridicule. He believed that God had spoken. When he said to them that God had revealed this to him, they in effect told him that it was natural for primitive man to think that there were such revelations, but that in reality the idea of revelation is also a projection of the mind of man. So they listened not to him. They scorned him. They reviled him. They rejected him. And they did not think that in all seriousness a man would build a ship on the top of a mountain, predicting that water would come above the highest peaks on which safety might be found.
Nevertheless Noah built the ark of God, at God's behest, for the saving of his house when the flood did come, and for the judgment of the world.
So, my friends, as you enter into the work of this year, will you not join with us in our day and generation in building the ark of God.
In the past, some hundred years and more, Princeton Theological Seminary used to join with those that built the ark of God. But in recent times Princeton Seminary has joined those that ridicule the builders of the ark. For that reason Dr. Machen and others, given grace by God and walking with God and being faithful to their generation, witnessing to that generation, raised up this institution, once more in our day to help build the ark of God.
Will you not then with us listen to the revelation of God, to what it tells us about the origins of things, about the present state of things, and about the future judgment of God upon those that believe not? And then will you not with us prepare for the preaching of the salvation of men's souls if they will enter into the ark, if they will believe in Jesus Christ who gave Himself for His own?
May the God of all grace give us wisdom and give us strength and fearlessness in our day, that we may be found faithful, as Noah was faithful in his day.