Genesis 8:18

Genesis 8:4 , Genesis 8:18; Genesis 8:20

On the slopes of Ararat was the second cradle of the race, the first village reared in a world of unseen graves.

I. It was the village of the ark, a building fashioned and fabricated from the forests of a drowned and buried world. To the world's first fathers it must have seemed a hallowed and venerable form.

II. The village of the ark was the village of sacrifice. They built a sacrificial altar in which fear raised the stones, tradition furnished the sacrifice, and faith kindled the flame.

III. The first village was the village of the rainbow. It had been seen before in the old world, but now it was seen as a sign of God's mercy, His covenant in creation.

IV. The village of the ark gives us our first code of laws. As man first steps forth with the shadows of the fall around him, scarce a principle seems to mark the presence of law. Here we advance quite another stage, to a new world; the principles of law are not many, but they have multiplied. As sins grow, laws grow. Around the first village pealed remote mutterings of storms to come.

V. The village of the ark was the village of sin. Even to Noah, the most righteous of men, sin came out of the simple pursuit of husbandry. A great, good man, the survivor of a lost world, the stem and inheritor of a new, he came to the moment in life of dreadful overcoming.

E. Paxton Hood, The Preacher's Lantern,vol. iii., p. 92.

References: Genesis 8:4; Genesis 8:18; Genesis 8:19. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 408. Genesis 8:9. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xi., No. 637. Genesis 8:11. T. Birkett Dover, A Lent Manual,p. 158; H. Macmillan, The Olive Leaf,p. 1.Genesis 8:13. G. Matheson, Moments on the Mount,p. 160.