NOAH & THE ARK: Genesis 6:5-8:22

DAY 3: NOAH & THE ARK

LINK: Genesis 6:5-8:22 
(Remember to use an age-appropriate Bible since this is a long passage for young children) 
Here is an audio of me telling the story in a summary form: FLOOD (you can download it by right-clicking and clicking on "save link as")

Symbol: Boat/Ark

Play a game called "Name the Animal." One person imitates an animal and the rest of the family tries to guess what animal it is.  

For deeper discussion: Talk about the character of Noah, a blameless man who "walked with God" (Genesis 6:9) even when everyone around Him was corrupt. He obeyed God by doing all that God commanded (Genesis 6:22) even when others did not understand why he was building an ark. 

For older kids, you might want to consider the movie Evan Almighty. Screen it first before you let your kids watch it though. 

BBC BACKGROUND from Genesis 5 & 6

Genesis 5 is all about the genealogy of Adam's son, Seth. Seth means "compensation" in Hebrew. He was certainly compensation for Adam and Eve after their murderous first son, Cain, was banished as a vagrant wanderer to Nod (Nod means "wandering" in Hebrew, by the way).

What is striking in this genealogy is the contrast down the line between the line of Cain and the line of Seth. Seth is the line that is referred to as those who "call on the name of the Lord" going down the line to the seventh son of Adam, Enoch, who "walked with God" and "the Lord took Him up." His cousin of the same seventh generation in Cain's line was Lamech (4:19-24) who killed a man and a boy. What a contrast between the godly and the ungodly.

Just as Abel is lauded in Hebrews 11, so is Enoch in verse 5: 

By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death, AND HE WAS NOT FOUND BECAUSE GOD TOOK HIM UP, for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God.

(Note that capital letters in the New American Standard Bible mean that it is an Old Testament quote.)

This line follows all the way to Noah who we meet up close in Genesis 6 where he is, like Enoch, one who "walked with God."

Mankind had become so corrupt to the point where "every inclination of the heart was evil." They were so wicked that God was "grieved in His heart." 

YET, in the midst of all of this, there is Noah, who found favor in the eyes of the Lord. He was a righteous man, blameless among all those corrupt and wicked people. He walked with God! (Somehow that phrase in the midst of this passage just makes me stop in the midst of the grief and say, "Ahhhhhhhhh, there is hope.") When God told Noah that He was going to destroy the earth and he needed to build an ark, Noah did everything just as God had commanded him. He believed. He had faith. So much faith that God wanted to make a covenant with him.

Noah is also in the Hebrews 11 "Hall of Faith" behind Abel and Enoch, "By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith."

Thank God for Noah.

The Scarlet Thread of Redemption

Who says that genealogies in the Bible have to be boring? Luke 3 traces Jesus' genealogy all the way back to Adam, and Noah is right on the way!

REFLECTION

In the midst of the darkness, there is light in a man named Noah who found favor in the eyes of the LORD by walking with Him. I want to be like Noah. I want to walk with God in everything I do and say! I want to walk by faith and, in reverence, pour out my life and do everything He says. It means going a different path than the ungodly ones of the world though. Hebrews even says, "he condemned the world," and I need to reflect more on that.

APPLICATION

Noah walked with God with his whole heart. He did everything the Lord commanded him to do even when it probably seemed ridiculous to the people around him. Are you willing to walk with God like that? 

My "I WILL" statement for that week was to do all that He told me to do (even if it sounded ridiculous), and what a week it was! 

One example, God told me to forward an email about family relational harmony to a friend. I did not know why. She wrote back to tell me that she was having a big conflict with her teenage son. 

Then God told me, "Tell her to call you if she needs to talk more." I do not usually push myself on people like that. It was enough for me to forward the email. (I do not like to come across as preachy.) But my commitment was to do "all the Lord commanded me to do" that week. So, I forwarded it.

A few minutes later, she called me. After I listened to her pour out her heart for about 30 minutes, God said, "Do listening prayer with her. I have some things to say to her." So, I launched right into it. An hour later, God had healed her of a deep emotional wound from the past. It was not easy, and even in the midst of the listening, I wanted to stop because her pain was so great as God did spiritual surgery on her soul, but I continued to do "all that He commanded" me to do.

I am so glad that I did "all that the Lord commanded" me!

Please join me in making this new year one in which you walk like Noah who did "all that the Lord commanded"!

PRAYER

Lord, we know that Your eyes move to and fro throughout the whole earth that You may strongly support those whose heart is completely Yours. (2 Chronicles 16:9). Lord, make us people of faith like Noah! I want to do everything as You have commanded, even if it means being alone in building something like an ark. Thank You for this example of a person of faith, Lord. Amen.

BBC BACKGROUND from Genesis 7 & 8

Noah's  Rainbow Chagall Museum, originally uploaded by baabuzz.

The artist, Marc Chagall, was commissioned to illustrate the whole Old Testament. If you ever get an opportunity to go to the Art Institute of Chicago, his American Windows are beautiful.

Noah was a man who walked with God. Genesis 6 concluded with the Scripture saying that "Noah did everything just as God commanded him" in the construction of the ark. We learned he was a man commended for his faith in the Hebrews 11 "Hall of Faith."

This is the first time clean and unclean animals are mentioned. These terms will become very common throughout the Old Testament, especially in Leviticus. Note there is a calling for more clean pairs of animals than unclean ones, apparently for sacrifice at a later time.

This is the first mention of forty days and forty nights; a period of time that will become quite significant throughout Scripture (e.g., Moses on the mountain, the temptation of Christ).

Here is a question you may have been asked or are asking yourself:

Did the flood really happen and was it really worldwide?

In a nutshell, I will give four supports:

1) Genesis said that it happened and that it was worldwide

Verse 7:20 says that "all high mountains under the entire heavens were covered . . . to a depth of more than twenty feet." This indicates that it was a worldwide flood.

The Hebrew word mabbul and the Greek word kataklusmos are used solely in connection with the Noahic flood. The ordinary Hebrew and Greek words for a local flood are not used here.

Scripture certainly supports a worldwide flood. Words like "mankind," "all the people of the earth," "every living creature," "all the high mountains," "everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils," "every living thing on the face of the earth," and "all life" found in Genesis 6-9 surely indicates that it happened worldwide and it wiped out everybody.

2) Other Scriptures Support

Isaiah 54:9 says, "To me this is like the days of Noah, when I swore that the waters of Noah would never again cover the earth." Jesus supported it in Matt. 24:36-39. Peter indicates it in 2 Peter 3:3-7, "the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water."

3) Science Admits It (sort of)

Scientists do admit a historical flood based on geological evidence (sea fossils on top of mountain tops). They do not acknowledge it was at Noah's time.

4) Anthropology Implies It

There are flood sagas found almost universally in various cultures. None is more widespread than the story about a flood and a boat. There are over 270 flood stories. The Babylonians have one in the story of Gilgamesh where the man comparable to Noah is named Utnapishtim, ". . . the Sumerians had Ziusudra, the Greeks had Deucalion, the Hinus had Manu, the Chinese had Fah-he (Fuhi), the Hawaiians had Nu-u . . . etc." (Holman Old Testament Commentary). That is pretty amazing and would indicate that it was the same flood as the one in Genesis.

There is so much more we could talk about: the size of a cubit, how fossils form (the abundance of fossils in the fossil record seems to indicate rapid depositing of the earth's sediment), the capacity of the boat, dinosaurs in an ark, etc. I have several articles written by Dr. Kurt Wise that are really mind-blowing if that is your thing, and I encourage you to check out Answers in Genesis, and do your own study.

All that aside, how do these chapters speak to you personally?

REFLECTION (written in 2008)

We had a deluge of rain last night; it was so loud that I could not sleep. At about 3 a.m., I started giggling, and I said to God, "Are You trying to help me understand what it must have been like for Noah. YOU CREATIVE CREATOR, YOU!!!!!" 

I quickly got up and said, "Well, if you are going to keep me up by the endless rain racket, I might as well get up and pray and meditate on that passage again!" (God is so great!) 

I just imagined myself in the ark with all the animals with their noises and smells, the constant "splatter, splatter, splatter," the confined space with close relatives (OH, NOT THAT!). I came to have more and more of an appreciation of Noah's faith in the midst of the uncertainty and waiting in that ark. I don't know if I could have handled it. Yet, Noah believed God in faith:

"And without faith it impossible to please Him, 
for He who comes to God must believe that He is, 
and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him." 
(Hebrews 11:6)

We will see time and time again throughout Genesis, faith, front and center, in the Patriarchs who are yet to come. It is SO exciting!

One more thing: I got to thinking about that camp song that I used to sing right after I became a believer:

God said to Noah 
There's gonna'  be a floody, floody 
God said to Noah 
There's gonna' be a floody, floody 
Get those children out of the muddy, muddy 
Children of the Lord!

What they did not tell me back then is that God did not tell Noah to get those children out of the "muddy, muddy." Only eight people: Noah, Shem, Ham, Jepheth and their wives were saved from this worldwide deluge. This is heartbreaking. All the rest of humanity was wiped out. I have to believe in the sovereignty of God on that one, but I do not look at this story and sing the "happy" camp song anymore. I consider those around me who are sinking today without the Lord.

APPLICATION

Your application might take many different forms from my own: risking being different from the people around you in order to obey God, relying on God's promise when the "rain" of your life is making you consider "jumping ship," or maybe opening your eyes to see those sinking all around you and throwing out a "life ring" by sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ.

As I was meditating last night, I spied a prayer bulletin for a part of the world that we used to live in. I wept as I read through it, and I was renewed in my determination to pray in faith for these people and to take steps toward going on a journey there this summer. (Update: We did go!)

PRAYER

Lord, give us faith and belief in the goodness of Your plan and promises. We know that it is impossible to please You without faith. Thank You that Your Word and the stories of people like Noah help us to believe You are (We will get to God being I am a little later in the Old Testament.) and that You are a rewarder of those who seek You (Hebrews 11:6). Help us to seek You!

Also, please give us eyes to see the world through Your eyes, to see the end of man apart from You, and give us hearts that break as Your heart breaks for them. Give us the courage to act in faith on that account too. Amen