Come Thou into the Ark

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. GENESIS 7:1

Every chapter of this book has ended with application points, because Moody never let a truth rest in the head. This chapter is about why. Behind the urgency that marked his whole ministry lay one night in Chicago that he never forgot.

The night of the fire

On the eighth of October, 1871, Moody preached to the largest congregation he had yet gathered in Chicago on Pilate’s question: What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? (Matthew 27:22). At the end he did something he had often done. He told the people to take the question home, think it over, and come back the next Sunday to decide. Sankey began to sing, and before he had finished, the fire bells were ringing across the city. By morning much of Chicago was in ashes, Moody’s hall and home among it. He said afterwards that he never saw that congregation together again, and that some of them, he believed, did not live to decide.

He told the story many times in later years, and always with the same resolve. He would never again give an audience a week to think about Christ. He would rather, he said, have his right hand cut off.

Boast not thyself of to morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. PROVERBS 27:1

The door God shut

The sermon on Noah in the Ochorus library is Moody’s fullest treatment of this theme. He describes the hundred and twenty years in which Noah built and preached and was mocked: the scoffers who said there was no God, the clever men who said God was too merciful to judge, the practical men who said they could climb the hills if the water rose, the business men who signed long leases and laughed. Then the animals came in two by two, and still the people went back to their work. And then, Moody says, God Himself shut the door.

And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in. GENESIS 7:16

“God always precedes judgment with grace.” For a hundred and twenty years every stroke of Noah’s hammer was a warning and an invitation. But grace has a day, and the day ends. Twenty-four hours before the rain, Moody says, the ark would not have fetched the price of kindling at auction. Twenty-four hours after, it was worth more than the whole world.

For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation. 2 CORINTHIANS 6:2

Too late

Moody’s sermons are full of people who waited. There was the man he pleaded with for five years, who always said it had not struck him yet, and who died still waiting to be struck. There was the young soldier whose father had begged him to become a Christian, and who always said he would when the war was over. He was wounded and lay dying in hospital when a letter came from his sister asking him to accept her Saviour. A comrade read it to him. He sprang up on his cot, and then fell back saying it was too late.

To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. HEBREWS 3:15

Moody did not tell these stories to frighten people for the sake of it. He told them because he believed the Bible gives no second chance after death, and because he loved the people in front of him too much to let them go home undecided.

All thy house

The text of the Noah sermon has a phrase Moody would not let his hearers miss: thou and all thy house. The call was not only to Noah but to his family. And Moody turned it on the parents in his congregation. Are your children in the ark? He had learned, from years of running a Sunday school for children from godless homes, how little can be done for a child whose parents are against the gospel. “What we want is godly homes.”

But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD. JOSHUA 24:15

He had no patience with the idea that children must grow up before they can be converted, and he warned against letting them drift until they were beyond reach. “Don’t rest day or night until you get your children in.” And he told of two fathers: one who had given his life to making money and could not pray when his dying son asked him to, and another whose little boy died saying he would tell Jesus that his father had prayed for him every day.

Weighing the urgency

Moody was right that the gospel is urgent, and right that delay is one of the devil’s oldest tools. His great contribution was to insist that the invitation of Christ is for now, not for some more convenient season.

But the methods that grew from this conviction need care. Moody’s campaigns pressed for immediate decision, and the enquiry room gathered those who had been stirred. Much lasting fruit came of it. Yet the pressure of a crowded hall, a moving hymn and an earnest preacher can produce decisions that are more about the moment than about Christ, and Moody knew that not all his converts lasted. The urgency of the gospel is not the same as the urgency of a meeting. A person who needs a week to count the cost is not necessarily resisting God, and those who follow Moody’s pattern should take care not to hurry people past real repentance for the sake of a result. The door is God’s to shut, not ours.

With that said, the core of Moody’s urgency stands. God is patient, but His patience is for our salvation, not for our procrastination.

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. 2 PETER 3:9

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Is there anything God has asked of you that you have been taking home to think about for years? Decide it today.

2. If you have never given yourself to Christ, do not wait for next Sunday. Tell Him now, in your own words, that you are coming into the ark.

3. Are your children, grandchildren or others in your care in the ark? Pray for each by name, and speak to one of them this week.

4. Think of someone you have meant to speak to about Christ for a long time. Do it before this week ends.

5. Read Moody’s sermon Come Thou and All Thy House into the Ark, in the Ochorus library.

A PRAYER

Lord, You have been patient with me far longer than a hundred and twenty years deserve. Forgive me for treating Your patience as permission to delay.

Today I hear Your voice, and I will not harden my heart. I come into the ark.

Bring my house in with me: my children and those I love. Give me the courage to speak before it is too late.

Keep me from pressing anyone past what You are doing, and keep me from ever letting another go home without the word they need. Amen.