Read through this lesson with your parents and then study the highlighted referenced scriptures in your own Bible. This will increase your understanding and enable you to prove this material for yourself. In our last lesson we learned about Cain and Abel and what happens when people don t control their anger. If you remember, Cain became angry and jealous when God accepted Abel s offering but didn t accept his. Then Cain refused to listen when God told him to control his anger and he ended up killing his brother, which was a terrible thing to do! God punished Cain by sending him away. However, God did this to help Cain, not hurt him. He wanted Cain to learn that it s always best to obey Him. When we don t obey God, and do what we want instead, it usually ends up hurting us and others. But when we obey God and do things His way, it makes everyone happy. Many years passed and during that time Adam and Eve had other children. When those children grew up, they got married and had children, then their children grew up and had children, and before long there were lots of people living on the earth! You might think that God would have been happy to see the earth populated with so many people, but He wasn t. You see, Satan the devil, who had tricked Adam and Eve into disobeying God, was still trying to get people to do things that weren t right. And by this time, most people were thinking and doing LOTS of wrong and evil things. In fact, the people were SO wicked and violent that God decided to send a great flood upon the earth and destroy them all. But there was one man who wasn t wicked. His name was Noah. And because Noah obeyed God, God decided to save him and his wife, their three sons (Shem, Ham and Japheth) and each of their wives from the flood. So God told Noah to build an ark or a big boat to keep them safe from the waters that would cover the earth. Noah Builds a Boat However, God didn t just tell Noah to build a boat, He told him exactly HOW to build it. God told Noah how long it should be, how wide it should be, how high it should be, what the inside should be like and what kind of wood it should be made of. At first Noah must have been a little overwhelmed. The boat God asked him 1
to build was going to be HUGE and Noah didn t live near the sea and had probably never seen a boat this large before! But Noah built the boat exactly as God told him to and a good thing too, otherwise it might not have floated when the flood came! (Genesis 6:5-22). While he was building the boat, Noah was also busy doing a lot of other things. You see, God had also told him to take two of every kind of animal onto the ark. So Noah had to build pens for them. He had to gather food for them and food for his family. Then he had to store it all in the ark. And while Noah was doing all of this, he was also warning the people around him about the flood. The Bible tells us that Noah was a preacher of righteousness (2 Peter 2:5) that s someone who teaches people about the right way to live. So Noah probably explained that God was sending the flood because of their wickedness. He probably pleaded with them to turn from their wicked ways and start obeying God. He would have hoped and prayed that at least some of them would listen and be saved from the flood. But no one did. And when they saw Noah building a huge boat in the middle of nowhere and heard his warnings about a coming flood, they probably just thought he was crazy! When the ark was ready, God told Noah that it was going to start raining in seven days and that it was time for him to take his family and all of the animals on board. Noah knew that he was supposed to take a pair (a male and female) of every animal and bird with him into the ark. But now God told him to take one pair of unclean animals and seven pairs of clean animals with him (Genesis 7:1-3). I expect you know by now that God says there are certain animals we may eat and certain animals that we shouldn t eat. The clean animals are the ones we can eat and the unclean are the ones we can t (Leviticus 11, Deuteronomy 14). The reason God told Noah to take more clean animals than unclean animals was so there would be some for them to eat, some to use as offerings, 1 and some to repopulate the earth after the flood! So Noah took two pigs, two horses, two rabbits and two of ALL the other unclean animals onto the ark. And he took 14 cows, 14 sheep, 14 chickens and 14 of ALL the other clean animals onto the ark. Phew! That must have been a lot of 1 An offering usually involved the sacrifice of an animal. This was touched on in the last lesson and will be covered more fully in Lesson 8. 2
animals. But Noah didn t have to go out and catch them all. The Bible says that the animals came to Noah (Genesis 6:20). Somehow God made all the animals that He wanted to save walk right up to the ark! So, Noah and his family and all of the animals went into the ark - and after they were all inside, God closed the door (Genesis 7:15-16). Now, if you remember, Noah and his family and all of the animals had gone into a boat that was sitting on dry land. There wasn t any water around and it wasn t even raining. How the people outside must have laughed at them! But they didn t laugh for long because, suddenly, water from underground lakes and rivers burst through the surface of the earth and started to spurt out onto the dry ground! And then it started to rain. It rained and it RAINED and IT RAINED until the land flooded and the ark began to float (Genesis 7:10-11). I expect the people outside were VERY frightened then. Maybe they even tried to open the door to get into the ark with Noah. But of course they couldn t open the door because God had closed it. Months of Waiting It rained for 40 days and 40 nights, and all of the people and animals who weren t in the ark drowned. And then after it stopped raining, the ark floated in the water for five months! It must have felt like forever to the people inside! But eventually God sent a strong wind to make the water go down and finally the ark stopped floating and came to rest on the mountains of Ararat, a mountain range in modern day Turkey (Genesis 7:17-8:4). However, Noah and his family couldn t go outside because the earth was still covered with water. They were inside that ark for a long time, weren t they? What do you think they did all that time? Well, they would have had lots to keep them busy. They would have had to prepare all the food, feed the animals, clean out their pens, and perhaps even take them for walks around the ark! And I expect that Noah often took the time to teach his family about God and His laws. God had spared them from the awful flood, and Noah would have wanted his family to appreciate that and understand how important it is to obey God and live His way of life. 3
Finally, after three more months in the ark, they could see the tops of the mountains (Genesis 8:5). And forty days later Noah sent a raven and a dove out of the boat to see whether the water had gone down and if the birds would find any dry ground or trees to land on. But they didn t. The dove flew back to the ark and Noah picked it up and brought it safely back inside. The raven stayed outside and continued to fly back and forth until the water was completely gone (Genesis 8:6-9). A week later, Noah sent the dove outside again and this time it came back with an olive leaf in its beak! So Noah knew that the waters had subsided and that trees were growing again (Genesis 8:10-11). But he and his family waited patiently inside the ark. They wouldn t leave it until God told them to. A week later, Noah sent the dove out again and this time it didn t come back to the ark at all! Noah guessed that the ground was now completely dry so he removed the covering of the boat to check and saw that he was right! (Genesis 8:12-13). But it wasn t until a month later (verses 13-14), after Noah and his family had been inside the ark for a whole year, that God finally told them they could leave. I bet they were happy! God Makes a Promise After they were all out of the ark, Noah built an altar (a kind of table made by piling rocks together) so he could make an offering and thank God for keeping them safe (Genesis 8:20-22). God blessed Noah and his sons and then He made a covenant (or promise) to them. He promised that He would never destroy the earth again with a flood (Genesis 9:1, 8-11). And He put the rainbow in the sky to remind them AND Himself of that promise! You can read about this in Genesis 9:12-15. Of course there are still floods on this earth and even tsunamis sometimes, which may kill thousands of people. BUT there has NEVER been another flood like Noah s flood one that has covered the whole earth and destroyed all life in the process. And there NEVER will be, because God always, always, ALWAYS keeps His promises! And that s something to remember every time you look up in the sky and see a rainbow! 4
A Final Thought Genesis Have you ever wondered why God let all those people die in the flood? It seems like an awful thing to do, doesn t it? But it wasn t really. Whenever we think that God has done something awful or whenever He allows something to happen that we don t understand we need to remember that God loves all of us very much. 2 And because He loves us, He ll only let those things happen to us that He KNOWS will turn out to be good for us (Romans 8:28). It might not happen today, or tomorrow, or next month, or next year, but at some point in our lives we ll be able to look back and say, NOW I understand why God let that happen. Now I understand why it was good for me. Of course, it probably didn t seem good to all those people that they were going to die in a flood! But remember, they were VERY wicked, violent and corrupt. God let all those people die because He wanted to get rid of the wickedness on this earth and give mankind a fresh start. He also knew that one day in the future He would resurrect those people and bring them all back to life again. This will happen after the Millennium, when everyone who has ever lived will be resurrected to have their chance to accept Jesus as their Saviour and live forever in His Kingdom. 3 And when those people who died in the flood are resurrected, they probably won t want to be wicked anymore. You see, when they look around and see how beautiful the world is, and how happy people are when they obey God, then they ll probably want to learn to live God s way of life too! 2 The Bible tells us that God loves mankind so much that He gave His only begotten son, Jesus Christ, to die for us, so that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16). That s a lot of love! 3 You can find out more about this in The Holy Days and God s Plan lesson in the Holy Day series. 5