Witness in the Word · Module 3 — The Wake-Up Call
Class 13 – As It Was in the Days of Noe / As It Was in the Days of Lot
Source: Watchman, What of the Night?, corresponding chapters (Lot excerpted for length)
As It Was in the Days of Noe
But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
— Matthew 24:37-39
— • —
We come now to the center of this book, and to the thing that is hardest of all to see.
The four marks behind us were things a man could, with some honesty, learn to recognize — a cooling love, a hollow form, a mocking voice, a silent hunger. This part of the book is about why he so rarely does recognize them, even when they are all around him and even when he has been told exactly what to look for. It is about the sleep that lies over an age, and about the strangest feature of that sleep, which is that it is not induced by anything dark. It is induced by the ordinary.
And to explain it, our Lord did not reach for the most wicked moment in the record. He reached for the most famous catastrophe in it, and then, when He got there, He pointed not at the wickedness but at the breakfast tables. That is the surprise of this passage, and it is the whole of what makes it the key to everything.
Let me show you what He actually said, and — even more important — what He did not say.
— • —
The Lord Chose This Comparison
We are still on the Mount of Olives. The disciples had asked what would mark the end of the age, and the Lord has been answering, and now He reaches all the way back to the oldest disaster the Scriptures record — the flood, the days of Noah — and He draws a line straight from it to His own return.
But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
I want you to notice, before anything else, whose comparison this is. It is not mine. I did not decide that the flood was the right picture for the end of the age and go looking for a way to make it fit. The Lord Himself selected it. When He wished to tell His disciples what the days before His coming would feel like from the inside, He said: think of Noah's time. Like that. So when we lay our own age beside the days of Noah in this chapter, we are not straining a comparison of my invention. We are following the exact line the Lord Himself drew. He is the one who said the two ages would rhyme.
And having chosen the flood, He now tells us which detail of it He means. And here is the surprise that changes everything.
— • —
What He Did Not Say
If I asked you what the days of Noah were like, you would very likely tell me they were wicked. And you would be right. The book of Genesis says so plainly — it tells us the wickedness of man was great in the earth, that the thoughts of men's hearts were only evil continually, that the earth was filled with violence. That is the record. The world of Noah was a world so far gone that God grieved He had made it.
So when the Lord reaches for the days of Noah to describe His coming, we brace ourselves for a description of wickedness. We expect Him to say: as in the days of Noah they were violent and corrupt and vile, so shall the last days be. That is the sermon we are ready to hear.
Read what He actually says.
For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage.
Stop, and read that again, and see what is not in it.
There is no violence in that sentence. There is no corruption, no blasphemy, no vileness. There is not a single sin named in the entire list. Eating. Drinking. Marrying. Giving in marriage — that is, arranging the weddings of one's sons and daughters. Look at those four things. Every one of them is not merely innocent but good. A family at a meal. A cup shared among friends. A wedding. Parents seeing their children married and beginning families of their own. These are the sweetest and most ordinary things in the whole of human life. They are the things we would list if we were asked to name what makes an ordinary life worth living.
The Lord knew the days of Noah were wicked. He knew Genesis said so. And when He chose the detail that would explain His coming, He passed over the wickedness entirely and laid His finger on the breakfast table and the wedding feast. That is a deliberate choice, and it is the most important choice in this entire book, and if we blur it — if we quietly slip the violence of Genesis 6 back into the picture because it is the detail we expected — we will lose the one thing He was trying to show us.
He was not saying the world will be destroyed because men eat and drink and marry. Those things are not sins and He does not call them sins. He was saying something far more unsettling. He was saying that when the end came, this is what the doomed were doing — not raging, not blaspheming, but living ordinary good days, so absorbed in the sweet normal business of being alive that the flood was upon them before they ever looked up.
— • —
The Thing That Was Wrong Was Not Wickedness
So if the list is innocent, where is the failure? The Lord names it, in the very next breath, and it is not the failure we would have named.
And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away.
Knew not. There it is. That is the thing that was wrong with the men of Noah's day, in the frame the Lord chose to describe them. Not that they were too wicked to be saved — the verse does not say that. That they did not know. They were unaware. The flood came and took them all away, and the reason it took them is written plainly: they knew not until it was upon them.
I need you to feel how strange this is, because it overturns the way we usually think about judgment. We assume that what condemns a generation is its wickedness — that the flood came because men were evil, and if only they had been better they would have been safe. And there is a truth in that. But it is not the truth the Lord selects here. Here, the fatal thing is not the wickedness. It is the not-knowing. The men of Noah's day were destroyed, in this telling, by their unawareness — by the fact that they did not know what day it was, did not know what was coming, did not know that this ordinary morning was the last ordinary morning there would ever be.
And this is why the sleep of an age is so much more dangerous than its wickedness, and why this whole part of the book exists. A man can see wickedness. Wickedness alarms. If the danger of an age were simply that it was growing more evil, every decent person would notice, because evil is visible and it disturbs. But not-knowing is invisible from the inside. A sleeping man does not know he is asleep; that is the very nature of sleep. And a man absorbed in a good and ordinary life feels no alarm at all, because there is nothing alarming in front of him — only the meal, the cup, the wedding, the pleasant and blameless business of the day. The not-knowing does not feel like danger. It feels like peace. That is exactly why it is so deadly.
— • —
The Weight of "Until"
There is one small word in this passage that carries the whole terror of it, and it appears twice, and I do not want you to walk past it.
Until.
They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark. And again: knew not until the flood came.
Feel what that word does. Everything before it is ordinary — the eating, the drinking, the weddings, day after day after day, exactly as it had always been. And then: until. On one side of that word, a normal morning. On the other side, the flood. And there is nothing in between. No ramp, no gradual darkening, no week of gathering clouds that gave the wise a chance to prepare. The ordinary day did not slowly turn into the day of judgment. It was the day of judgment, and no one could tell the difference until the water was at the door.
This is the thing the sleeping age cannot imagine and the watchman is set on the wall to see. We assume that catastrophe announces itself — that before the end there will be some unmistakable sign, some obvious darkening, so that we will have time to sit up and get ready. The days of Noah say otherwise. The ordinariness held at full strength right up to the final dry hour. The last normal breakfast looked exactly like every normal breakfast before it. That is what until means. The sameness is not broken in advance as a warning. The sameness runs all the way to the edge, and then the edge arrives all at once.
Which means a man cannot afford to wait for the ordinariness to break before he takes the warning seriously. By the time it breaks, the "until" has already come, and the time for entering the ark is behind him.
— • —
A Boat on Dry Ground for a Hundred Years
Now I have to add the thing that makes the not-knowing almost unbearable to consider, because it is easy to excuse the men of Noah's day by imagining they had no warning. They had a warning. They had the loudest, strangest, most patient warning any generation was ever given.
For the Scriptures tell us that in those days God gave men a span of a hundred and twenty years. And through those years, Noah was building. He was building an enormous vessel — a ship the like of which no one had seen — and he was building it on dry land, nowhere near any sea, in a world that the Scriptures suggest had not even known rain as we know it. Imagine the strangeness of that sight. A man and his sons, year after year after year, constructing a great ark on dry ground, for a flood no one had ever witnessed, because God had told him one was coming.
That is not a hidden warning. You could not hide a thing like that. For a hundred and twenty years the sign stood in plain view, enormous and public and impossible to miss, and the New Testament tells us Noah was a preacher of righteousness besides — so there were words to go with the wood. The warning was not subtle and it was not brief. It went on for the better part of two lifetimes, in full sight of everyone.
And they knew not.
How? How does a man watch his neighbor build a mountain of a boat on dry ground for a hundred and twenty years and still know not? Here is how, and it is the point of the entire chapter: the ordinariness of every other day swallowed the sign. Each single day, the boat was strange — but the sun still rose, the meals were still eaten, the weddings still happened, the world still ran on exactly as it always had. And set against the vast, unbroken, daily normalcy of everything else, the one strange thing became easy to explain away, easy to laugh at, easy to file under Noah's peculiar project and forget by dinner. The sign was real and public and constant. And the sheer ordinariness of the surrounding days was stronger than the sign, and it put the whole world to sleep with the warning standing right in front of it.
This is the exact answer to the scoffer we met a chapter ago — the man who says all things continue as they were, so nothing is coming. The men of Noah's day believed precisely that, and here is the terrible thing: they were right, every single day, for a hundred and twenty years. All things did continue as they were. Day after day the scoffer's argument held perfectly — until the one day it did not, and on that day being right for a hundred and twenty years counted for exactly nothing. The unbroken sameness was never proof that nothing was coming. It was only the anesthetic that kept them under while the one who warned them kept building.
— • —
There Was an Ark
And now, before we leave this passage, the door — because it is here, standing in the very middle of the catastrophe, and it is the largest and plainest door in the whole account.
Read the passage once more and you will see it, right there in the ordinary list, easy to hurry past. Until the day that Noe entered into the ark. There was an ark. In a chapter about not-knowing and flood and being taken away, the way through is named as plainly as the danger. God did not warn that world and leave it without a refuge. He warned it and provided the refuge in the same breath — a hundred and twenty years to build it, a door standing open in its side, room in it for anyone who would heed the warning and come.
The flood is not the last word of the days of Noah. The ark is. And notice who was in it: not the specially deserving, not the mighty, not a better class of men. Those who heard the warning and entered. That was the whole difference between the saved and the swept-away — not that one group was righteous enough to survive the water, but that one group believed the warning enough to walk through the door while the door was open. Noah entered. His family entered. They knew, because they heeded, and the same water that took away the sleeping world lifted the ark and carried it safely over.
So the days of Noah are not, in the end, only a warning about sleep. They are the record of a provision. There was an ark then, entered by those who took the warning to heart. And the entire reason this book keeps its door open on every page is that there is one now — a refuge from the flood the Lord said is coming, prepared in advance, with the door still standing open, and room in it for anyone who will hear and come in.
— • —
The Days of Noah, Read Rightly
So here is the center of the book, said as plainly as I can say it.
The Lord Himself chose the days of Noah to picture His coming, and when He got there He did not point at the wickedness of that world. He pointed at its breakfast tables. He said the doomed were eating and drinking and marrying — good, ordinary, innocent things — and that the thing which destroyed them was not that they were vile but that they knew not, absorbed in the sweet normal business of living while the one warning of the age stood building in plain sight. And the ordinariness held at full strength, and the scoffers were right every single day, until the day they were not.
This is why the marks of an age are so hard to see, and why a watchman is needed at all. Not because the danger is hidden — Noah's ark was not hidden. Because the ordinariness is an anesthetic, and it works on the wicked and the decent alike, and it feels not like danger but like peace.
But there was a door in the side of that danger, and there is one still. The men who woke were simply the men who believed the warning enough to walk through it. Do not wait for the ordinariness to break before you take the warning to heart. By the time it breaks, the "until" has come. Enter now, while the door stands open, as Noah did — and let the flood, when it comes, find you already carried above it.
Now let me show you the same thing again, in another man and another city, because the Lord did not stop with Noah. He said: and as it was in the days of Lot.
As It Was in the Days of Lot
Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.
— Luke 17:28-30
And Lot went out, and spake unto his sons in law... Up, get you out of this place; for the LORD will destroy this city. But he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons in law.
— Genesis 19:14
— • —
The Lord did not stop with Noah.
Having drawn the line from the flood to His own coming, He drew a second line, from another catastrophe, as if one witness were not enough and He wanted two. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot. Likewise — the same again — as it was with Sodom.
Now, when a teacher makes the same point twice with two different examples, it is worth asking what the second example adds that the first did not. If the days of Lot said exactly what the days of Noah said, the Lord would not have needed both. So we should read this second picture watching for what is new in it — the thing Sodom shows us that the flood did not. And there are two new things, and each one presses closer to home than anything in the chapter before.
[…]
But go back to Genesis and see how he went out, because it is the gentlest picture of mercy in the whole grim account. When the morning came and the angels urged Lot to hurry, the Scripture says he lingered. Even Lot — the man who had the warning, who believed it, who had tried to save his own family with it — even he hesitated at the end, slow to leave the only home he knew. And what did the messengers do with a man too slow to save himself? They did not leave him to his lingering. They laid hold upon his hand — they took him by the hand, and his wife's hand, and his daughters', and they brought them out, the Scripture says, because the Lord was merciful to him.
Do not miss what that shows you. The man who was saved from Sodom was not saved because he was decisive, or worthy, or quick. He was saved because mercy took him by the hand when he was lingering and led him out through the gate. The difference between Lot and the men who mocked was not that Lot was better company or braver or more deserving. It was that Lot, for all his hesitation, let himself be led out — and the mockers stayed and laughed and were still laughing, we may suppose, until the sky changed.
That is the door, and it is open still. There is a way out of the city that is under sentence, and it is not reserved for the decisive or the deserving. It is held open by a mercy willing to take a lingering man by the hand. If you have read this far and found yourself slow, hesitant, half in love with the ordinary city yourself — that is no bar. Mercy led Lot out by the hand. It will do the same for anyone who will let itself be led.
— • —
The Days of Lot, Read Rightly
So the second witness, at its true size, and see how it deepens the first.
The Lord pointed a second time, at Sodom, and again He did not point at the wickedness. He pointed at the marketplace — men buying, selling, planting, building, prospering, investing in a future on the last day a future existed. And He showed us the sharpest margin of all: the same day the righteous man went out, the fire fell, with men breaking ground that morning on buildings that would never be roofed. And He let us see, through Genesis, the thing that presses closest — that a true and loving and perfectly plain warning, brought by family to the people they longed to save, seemed as one that mocked, because the ordinariness of a thriving city made the truth sound like a joke.
Read too softly, this becomes a comfortable tale about wicked Sodom that has nothing to do with us. Read too sharply, it becomes only a threat of fire. Read truly, it is a warning and a preview at once: a warning that catastrophe comes on an ordinary business day into a prospering city, and a preview of what it will feel like when you go to warn the people you love and they think you are joking.
But Lot went out. He lingered, and mercy took him by the hand, and led him through the gate before the sky fell. The door out of the city stands open still, held by that same mercy, for the mockers who will stop mocking and for the lingerers who will let themselves be led.
Now let me draw the two witnesses together, Noah and Lot, and name plainly the thing they were both sent to teach — that the ordinariness itself is the anesthetic.
For Reflection
Read: Matthew 24:37–39; Luke 17:28–30
1. The book says the Lord "did not point at the wickedness of that world. He pointed at its breakfast tables." What ordinary, unremarkable parts of your own daily life could be the same anesthetic?
2. Noah preached for decades before the flood came. What does that teach you about patience with a warning that seems to be taking too long?
3. Lot lingered before he left Sodom, and mercy had to take him by the hand. Where are you lingering right now, waiting to be pulled rather than choosing to walk?
This Week: Name one "ordinary" habit or routine in your life this week and ask God plainly whether it has become an anesthetic.