The Antitype Which Now Saves Us
1 Peter 3:18-22
Introduction.
Peter really likes referencing Noah and the Flood.
At least, it certainly seems to be the case since he makes mention of him in both of his letters.
In this sermon, we will zero in on his first letter.
Some like to treat the story of Noah’s ark as a fairy tale, but Peter certainly didn’t think it was—he treated it as a true, real life event.
He talks about “the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.”
He then talks about the “antitype which now saves us—baptism.”
So there is a strong connection between our salvation and the salvation of Noah and his family.
This morning, we are going to look at that antitype.
That word “antitype” isn’t exactly a word we use in our common, every day speech.
In the lessons we have had on Hebrews on Sunday evenings for the last few weeks, we have been looking at this sort of thing.
The writer mentions copies and shadows that are present in the old covenant, things that are replaced by the genuine article in the new.
We also note that there are types and antitypes; the type corresponds to the copy and shadow of the old, while the antitype corresponds to the true of the new.
In Greek, that word “antitype” is simply ἀντίτυπος, a transliteration.
It is used metaphorically in the NT to mean, “a thing formed after some pattern; a thing resembling another, its counterpart” (Thayer G499).
Thayer goes on to explain that it is “something in the Messianic times which answers to the type prefiguring it in the OT.”
So there are things in the OT that correspond to things in the NT, there are counterparts.
This is made more clear in some other translations
Again, we have been looking at those counterparts in the tabernacle and the Day of Atonement in particular in our evening series on Hebrews.
But this morning we will look at the connection between the events surrounding the Flood and the Christian age today.
Preview.
The World.
The Ark.
The Family.
The Flood.
Body.
The World (Gen. 6:5-7, 11-13).
The world at that time was just awful.
We don’t have a lot of details on what this antedeluvian world was like, but there are some clues in the Scriptures.
As we discussed last week, it was a violent place.
There is no doubt some hyperbolic language used here when it states that “every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”
It’s hard to imagine a world where sin is the only thing people do and think about.
Even the worst people that we know about in history had some good about them, even if it were miniscule.
While it may be hyperbolic, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t bad.
It was so bad, the Lord regretted having made man!
With the murders committed by Cain and Lamech, the state of the world was no doubt even worse the thousand or so years after Lamech’s sin.
We have no clue how populated the world was.
But we know there had to be enough for Noah’s three sons to have found wives.
With how long-lived the people were back then, it seems the world was more populated than we might imagine.
But with a much longer lifespan, no doubt this bred a devaluing of human life—which is not unique to that era.
In any event, it was a sinful, violent world.
And one man was found righteous within it: Noah.
By this point, his sons had not yet been born, so he was it.
We don’t know much about his wife, except that she was married to him and bore three sons later on.
But given what we know of the family of Noah, you know he would have chosen a good woman to marry.
He was the only one in all the world who was righteous.
The Bible says that he “found grace in the eyes of the Lord,” and that he “was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God” (6:8-9).
So the Lord commissioned him to build an ark for judgment was coming!
Our world is bad, too.
It’s hard to compare how bad the world is to what they had back then.
There are certainly many more people on this planet than there were back then.
I daresay there are more than 8 righteous people on this planet today, but there is still much violence and immorality.
And one day there will be a coming judgment—not a Flood, but far more destructive.
Secure your place on the ark God has provided for us!
The Ark (6:14-16).
The ark was the means by which Noah and his family could escape that judgment.
The Lord gave Noah specific instructions for how to build this ark.
It had to be made of gopherwood.
This is a transliteration of the Hebrew word, “gopher.”
We have no idea what kind of wood that is, but I speculate it was a type of wood that is now extinct.
In any event, by implication Noah could not build the ark with whatever type of wood he felt like, not even if it were merely in addition to gopherwood.
He had a specific type of wood he had to built it with.
He was also told the dimensions the ark was to be, yay high, yay long, yay wide.
He had to build it with only one window and one door with three decks.
And Noah did “according to all that God commanded him” (6:22).
This ark is a physical structure that has its counterpart as the Lord’s church.
It has one builder, Noah, just as the church has one builder, Christ (Matt. 16:18).
It is made with one material, gopherwood, while the structure of the church is made of people, which Peter calls “living stones” (1 Pet. 2:5).
It has one window – a window allows light in for all to be able to see. They may have used torches while the ark was underway, but that may have been a fire hazard.
The light that we have is the light of Christ who is the light of the world (John 8:12), and His light is made evident through His Word (Psalm 119:105).
After all it is His word that will judge us on the last day (John 12:48).
That ark had one doorway – a doorway allows people to enter and exit a particular structure.
When the Flood began, it was the Lord who shut the door to the ark, barring anyone else from entering or leaving (7:16).
What is the doorway into His church? Why, that is Jesus Himself who calls Himself the door (John 10:9).
He is the door by which we may be saved. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6).
As we have talked about in our Hebrews classes, Christ can fulfill multiple functions.
In that book, He is both high priest and sacrifice—here He is the builder, the doorway, and even the window.
In conjunction with another figure, the body of Christ is His church (Eph. 1:22-23), so Christ is the ark as well!
It is only if we are in Christ can we be saved, just as the only people saved back then were the eight people who were on the ark: Noah, his wife, his three sons, and their wives.
During this time, Noah had a singular message.
Peter lets us know that Noah was a “preacher of righteousness” (2 Pet. 2:5).
Given what was about to happen, what do you suppose his message was about?
First off, when he wasn’t building the ark, he was urging those around him to repent, steering them toward righteousness.
Who knows? Maybe God would change His mind on the coming judgment, or perhaps he could persuade some to join him on the ark.
He preached this throughout his sons’ lives, so they heard this message frequently in the hundred or so years it took to build the ark.
And these boys were able to find women to listen to this message and marry them to survive the judgment to come.
So in 100 years, Noah was only able to save 8 people, his family.
The Family.
Noah’s family only consisted of 8 people.
These 8 souls were saved, not because of anything they had done, but because of the grace of God.
Wait, but didn’t they just build an ark? Wasn’t that something they had done?
Indeed, it was, but that’s because of his faith (Heb. 11:7).
By faith Noah, being divinely wanred of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, preparedan ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.
We know from Titus 2:11-12 that grace teaches us and from Eph. 2:8-9 that grace is from God. From that verse, we also know that faith is our part, and from Heb. 11:7 we see that faith motivates us to act.
Did Noah earn the grace that he received from God? No.
But because of his righteousness, he was the only one willing to listen to God’s command to build an ark.
This is evidenced by the fact that only he and his family were saved.
Our family (Gal. 3:26-29).
Only one family was saved on the ark, and only one family will be saved today.
That is the family of God, the one that calls Jesus both their Everlasting Father (Isa. 9:6) and their older brother as a joint-heir (Rom. 8:17).
We call Him our prophet, our priest, and our king as well, particularly as we have been discussing in our Hebrews lessons.
We are all “sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:26-29).
For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Who becomes an heir except those in the family of God, and we have been “[adopted] as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself” (Eph. 1:5).
There’s a reason we call each other brother and sister—we are one family!
There won’t be many families that make it, but one. Are you part of that family?
Our salvation.
Our main passage in 1 Pet. 3 does not tell us that Noah was saved by the ark.
No, it tells us that they “were saved through water!”
But the water brought destruction so how can that be?
The Flood.
Saved through water.
The Flood was found to bring destruction upon the whole world.
It was a judgment upon them, and one they didn’t expect.
In fact, Jesus talks about those days and comparing them to how the judgment and the coming of the Son of Man would be (Luke 17:26-27, 30).
“And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. … Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.”
Jesus even says the Flood came and destroyed them all, so how did the waters save Noah and his family?
We find that water is used in every age to save the people of God.
Back then, it was only Noah and his family who were the people of God.
In the crossing of the Red Sea, the Lord used that event to save the people of God at that time, the Israelites (Exo. 14).
Paul later talks about that event with Christian eyes (1 Cor. 10:1-2), saying,
Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.
Water was crucial to the salvation of Moses and the Israelites, having surrounded them as they passed through the Red Sea on dry land.
Water was crucial for Noah and his family, having surrounded them in the rains above and the flood waters beneath.
Water is crucial for us when we are baptized into Christ, having put on Christ.
Those other events are “like figures” they are the “types” and we are living under the “antitype” of baptism, directly called so in our passage today (1 Pet. 3:21).
The antitype which now saves us.
In that passage, Peter draws a direct contrast with a simple bath.
Yes, we are baptized, but it isn’t the water that makes us clean.
The water only has that power insofar as the resurrection of Christ is concerned.
If Christ is not raised, our baptism is pointless.
You see, baptism reenacts what Christ did for us (Rom. 6:3-6).
Before we are baptized, we have put to death the old man of sin, just as Christ sacrificed Himself on the cross for us.
When we are baptized, we are burying that old man of sin in that watery grave of baptism just as Christ was buried in His tomb.
When we come up out of the waters of baptism, the Lord has raised us up as a new creature in Christ, just as He raised up Christ Himself.
But what about this destruction angle?
How can our salvation be brought about by such judgment and destruction?
Judgment, while devastating to the wicked, is vindicating to the righteous.
Through such judgments we receive vindication for everything.
The Lord has promised so much to us, and to have believed it all for so long, how wonderful and glorious will it be to see it come to fruition!
That is the vindication the Lord promises to us—you were right all along, your suffering was not in vain, it all mattered!
Noah had believed this Flood was coming for a century! When the rains started coming, he was vindicated.
His preaching was not in vain; his task of building this ark was not pointless; the ridicule he no doubt faced because of his faith was for something.
While we don’t see this vindication directly in baptism, we will see it when Christ returns and the final judgment comes, and we will be saved from it through our baptism into Christ Jesus.
So in order for us to be saved, what do we have to do?
Do we have to build an ark? No, far less than that.
Do we have to cross a large body of water? Hardly.
So what do we have to do? Obey the gospel.
Noah obeyed the gospel that was sent to him by building the ark and boarding it.
The Israelites who came out of Egypt needed to obey the gospel that was sent to them by going where God told them to go and fighting the wicked nations in Canaan.
We need to obey the gospel sent to us by being baptized into Christ Jesus for the remission of our sins.
That judgment is coming, and there is no other gospel by which we can be saved.
Such judgments are great for the righteous, terrible for the wicked!
Conclusion.
The events surrounding Noah and the ark provide a great illustration for how we can be saved.
Noah lived in a world similar to ours, though perhaps Noah’s was even more wicked.
He built an ark at the Lord’s instruction to save all who wanted to be saved.
There were no other arks, no lifeboats, no other avenue for salvation.
Jesus built a church, one church (singular), not many churches, to save all who want to be saved.
The only salvation we can expect is through Christ and the church that He built.
There was one family who was saved, the family of Noah.
Today there is only one family who can be saved, the family that belongs to Christ!
Noah was saved through the waters of the Flood, and we are saved through the waters of baptism—just like with Noah, there is no other way.
They were saved from the watery destruction that did come, and we, too, will be saved from the fiery destruction that will come (2 Pet. 3:10).
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up.
Would you like to learn more?