GENESIS: Starting Over With Noah
A few weeks ago I went to a class with a friend to make a pottery plate, mug and bowl. It was great and my wet clay product looked great! I was so excited about getting the end result back from the kiln (it needs to be fired in a super hot oven to go hard). But when I got them back the plate was missing. It had broken in the kiln. It wasn’t even worth fixing - the company had just chucked it in the bin!
Have you ever made something that didn’t turn out how you wanted it to? Maybe it was made out of lego, or maybe you used playdoh. My kids have done special pottery classes on school excursions to the local art gallery and some have been happy with theirs but others were not such great work. Theirs wasn’t chucked out like mine was though! Do you chuck out your creation? Do you start again? Or do you fix it up?
God created us, and because we sin, we didn’t turn out the way God wanted us to. The sin means that we his created creatures, are faulty. Does he throw us out? Does he give us a chance to try better?
In today’s episode we are looking at the story of Noah and the ark, and how the evil of all the people meant that God chose to wipe them away and start society again with Noah.
We will find out a little about how devastating sin is to God. He doesn’t want that roadblock there. He wants to have a relationship with us!
What do you think?
Some things that have been created weren’t actually that good - would you agree?
I am going to list a few things that people have created and see whether you think they should have been binned or not:
The Baby Shark song
Fortnight
Monopoly
Shoes
A Maths app
Some things should never have been created right?
You may feel like this story is familiar to you because you have read all of the children’s bibles available and they always include this story, but this episode will have all the details! It is coming straight from God’s word and I expect that you will learn even more details that you didn’t know!
Story Time/Bible Passage: Genesis 6-9
More and more people were born, until finally they spread all over the earth. The Lord saw how bad the people on earth were and that everything they thought and planned was evil. 6 He was sorry that he had made them, 7 and he said, “I'm going to destroy every person on earth! I'll even wipe out animals, birds, and reptiles. I'm sorry I ever made them.”
8 But the Lord was pleased with Noah, 9 and this is the story about him. Noah was the only person who lived right and obeyed God. 10 He had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
11-12 God knew that everyone was terribly cruel and violent. 13 So he told Noah:
Cruelty and violence have spread everywhere. Now I'm going to destroy the whole earth and all its people. 14 Get some good lumber and build a boat. Put rooms in it and cover it with tar inside and out. 15 Make it 133 meters long, 22 meters wide, and 13 meters high. 16 Build a roof[d] on the boat and leave a space of about 44 centimeters between the roof and the sides.[e] Make the boat three stories high and put a door on one side.
17 I'm going to send a flood that will destroy everything that breathes! Nothing will be left alive. 18 But I solemnly promise that you, your wife, your sons, and your daughters-in-law will be kept safe in the boat.[f] 19-20 Take into the boat with you a male and a female of every kind of animal and bird, as well as a male and a female of every reptile. I don't want them to be destroyed. 21 Store up enough food both for yourself and for them. 22 Noah did everything God told him to do…
Noah was 600 years old when he went into the boat to escape the flood, and he did everything the Lord had told him to do. His wife, his sons, and his daughters-in-law all went inside with him. 8-9 He obeyed God and took a male and a female of each kind of animal and bird into the boat with him. 10 Seven days later a flood began to cover the earth. The water under the earth started gushing out everywhere, the sky opened like windows, and rain poured down for 40 days and nights. On the day that is began, Noah and his wife went into the boat with their three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives. 14 They took along every kind of animal, tame and wild, including the birds. 15 Noah took a male and a female of every living creature with him, 16 just as God had told him to do. And when they were all in the boat, the Lord closed the door.
For 40 days the rain poured down without stopping. And the water became deeper and deeper, until the boat started floating high above the ground. 19-20 Finally, the mighty flood was so deep that even the highest mountain peaks were about seven meters below the surface of the water. 21 Not a bird, animal, reptile, or human was left alive anywhere on earth. 22-23 The Lord destroyed everything that breathed. Nothing was left alive except Noah and the others in the boat. 24 A hundred fifty days later, the water started going down.
God did not forget about Noah and the animals with him in the boat. So God made a wind blow, and the water started going down. 2 God stopped up the places where the water had been gushing out from under the earth. He also closed up the sky, and the rain stopped. 3 For 150 days the water slowly went down. 4 Then on the seventeenth day of the seventh month of the year, the boat came to rest somewhere in the Ararat mountains. 5 The water kept going down, and the mountain tops could be seen on the first day of the tenth month…"
Noah sent out a raven and then a dove who returned, and then later another dove who didn’t return.
"Noah was now 601 years old. And by the first day of that year, almost all the water had gone away. Noah made an opening in the roof of the boat and saw that the ground was getting dry. 14 By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the earth was completely dry.
15 God said to Noah, 16 “You, your wife, your sons, and your daughters-in-law may now leave the boat. 17 Let out the birds, animals, and reptiles, so they can mate and live all over the earth.” 18 After Noah and his family had left the boat, 19 the living creatures left in groups of their own kind.
Noah gave God a sacrifice and then God said, “Never again will I punish the earth for the sinful things its people do. All of them have evil thoughts from the time they are young, but I will never destroy everything that breathes, as I did this time. As long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat; winter and summer, day and night.”
God said to Noah and his sons:
“I am giving you my blessing. Have a lot of children and grandchildren, so people will live everywhere on this earth. 2 All animals, birds, reptiles, and fish will be afraid of you. I have placed them under your control, 3 and I have given them to you for food. From now on, you may eat them, as well as the green plants that you have always eaten.”
“The rainbow that I have put in the sky will be my sign to you and to every living creature on earth. It will remind you that I will keep this promise forever. 14 When I send clouds over the earth, and a rainbow appears in the sky, 15 I will remember my promise to you and to all other living creatures. Never again will I let floodwaters destroy all life.”
Noah lived 350 years after the flood 29 and died at the age of 950.
Overall, Noah and his family lived in the ark for a total of 370 days, which is 1 year and 5 days!
God did all this so that he could wipe out all the sin and evil that existed in the world. Every single thing that breathes that wasn’t on the ark ended up dying. All those sinful people! Were people one of those things God should not have created? Does he regret it? Should he have just destroyed us and not tried again?
He did try again, with Noah and his family, but we know that earth is any less sinful now than before. But we also know that God doesn’t make mistakes, and so this event happened for a reason. Many reasons actually.
God wants us to know:
He hates sin so much! He loathes it, detests it, can’t stand it!
He is always ready to find a way to save those who love him.
Jesus is the one who ultimately saves us from those sins. The rain removed the sinful people for a time, but sin is most definitely everywhere in this world! Turn on the tv, turn on your device, go to where any people are and you will find sin. Jesus died on the cross to deal with it once and for all - for the people in the past and the people in the future - us!
Question Time!
Was there anything new in this story that you didn’t know before?
Does understanding how much God hates sin help prompt you to try harder to live a godly life? Why/why not?
