The story of Noah and the flood plays out in Genesis6:1-11:32. Over the course of history, as the children of Adam populated the earth, humans continued to overstep the limits God had placed on them. Their increasing disobedience caused God to reassert his lordship by engineering a fresh start that would give the human race another opportunity at obedience.
The consequence of humankind's widespread corruption was a great flood that effectively ended all but a remnant of life on earth. God’s grace preserved the lives of eight people—Noah and his family. Then God made a covenant promise to never again destroy the earth by flood.
Question for Reflection
Noah was righteous and blameless, but he was not sinless (see Genesis 9:20-21). The Bible says Noah pleased God and found favor because he loved God and obeyed him with his whole heart. As a result, Noah set an example for his entire generation. Although everyone around him followed the evil in their hearts, Noah followed God. Does your life set an example, or are you negatively influenced by the people around you?
The Story of Noah and the Flood
God saw how great wickedness had become and decided to wipe humankind off the face of the earth. But one righteous man among all the people of that time, Noah, found favor in God's eyes.
With very specific instructions, God told Noah to build an ark for him and his family in preparation for a catastrophic flood that would destroy every living thing on earth. God also instructed Noah to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, both male and female, and seven pairs of all the clean animals, along with every kind of food to be stored for the animals and his family while on the ark. Noah obeyed everything God commanded him to do.
After Noah and his family had entered the ark, rain fell for a period of forty days and nights. The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days, and every living thing was destroyed.
As the waters receded, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. Noah and his family continued to wait for almost eight more months while the surface of the earth dried out.
Finally, after an entire year, God invited Noah to come out of the ark. Immediately, Noah built an altar and offered burnt sacrifices with some of the clean animals to give thanks to God for deliverance. God was pleased with the offerings and promised never again to destroy all the living creatures as he had just done.
Later God established a covenant with Noah: "Never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth." As a sign of this everlasting covenant, God set a rainbow in the sky.
Historical Context
Many ancient cultures around the world record a story of a great flood from which only one man and his family escaped by building a boat.The accounts closest to the biblical narrative originate in Mesopotamia from texts dating around BC 1600.
Noah was the grandson of Methuselah, the oldest person in the Bible, who died at 969 years old in the year of the flood. Noah's father was Lamech, but we are not told his mother's name.Noah was a tenth generation descendant of Adam, the first human being on earth.
Scripture tells us Noah was a farmer (Genesis 9:20).He was already 500 years old when he fathered three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.Noah lived 350 years after the flood and died at 950 years old.
Major Themes and Life Lessons
The two major themes in the story of Noah and the flood are God's judgment of sin and his good news of deliverance and salvation to those who trust in him.
God's purpose in the flood was not to destroy people but to destroy wickedness and sin. Before God decided to wipe the people from the face of the earth, he first warned Noah, making a covenant to save Noah and his family. The whole time Noah and his family labored constantly to build the ark (120 years), Noah also preached a message of repentance. With the coming judgment, God provided plenty of time and a way of escape for those who would look to him in faith. But the wicked generation ignored Noah's message.
Noah’s story serves as an example of righteous living and enduring faith in the face of completely immoral and faithless times.
It's important to note that sinwas not wiped out by the flood. Noah was described in the Bible as "righteous" and "blameless," but he was not sinless. We know that after the flood, Noah drank wine and became drunk (Genesis 9:21). However, Noah did not behave as the other wicked people of his day, but rather, "walked with God."
Points of Interest
The book of Genesis regards the flood as a great dividing line in world history, as though God was hitting the reset button. The earth was returned to the primeval watery chaos that existed before God began speaking life in Genesis 1:3.
Like Adam before him, Noah became the father of the human race. God told Noah and his family the same thing he told Adam: "be fruitful and multiply." (Genesis 1:28, 9:7).
Genesis 7:16 interestingly points out that God shut them in the ark, or "closed the door," so to speak. Noah was a type or forerunner of Jesus Christ. Just as Christ was sealed in the tomb after his crucifixion and death, so was Noah shut in the ark. As Noah became the hope for humanity after the flood, so Christ became the hope for humanityafter his resurrection.
With more detail in Genesis 7:2-3, God instructed Noah to take seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, and two of every kind of unclean animal. Bible scholars have calculated that approximately 45,000 animals might have fit on the ark.
The ark was exactly six times longer than it was wide. According to the Life Application Bible study notes, this is the same ratio used by modern shipbuilders.
God rewarded him for his righteousness and obedience, saving both him and his family from destruction. The story of the Flood also demonstrates both the gravity of God's justice and the promise of His salvation. Every sin we commit grieves God, and His justice demands judgement for that sin.
The Noah's Ark story gives us many lessons to apply to our lives today. It teaches us that God provides us with a way to begin again when we make mistakes. When don't understand God's plan, we can trust Him to fill our lives with the blessings and resources that we need.
The story of Noah, the Ark, and Flood speaks an inspired and powerful message about judgment and grace, that has instructed God's people throughout the ages about God's hatred of sin and his love for his creation.
The flood wasn't an act of wanton destruction by a capricious God. God was acting to restore the goodness of his creation. God preserves one family through the flood and elevates Noah as a new Adam, placed once again in a garden on a high mountain paradise with the commission to be fruitful and multiply.
Some Christian biblical scholars suggest that the flood is a picture of salvation in Christ—the Ark was planned by God and there is only one way of salvation through the door of the Ark, akin to one way of salvation through Christ.
Noah's life can be seen as a model of patience, persistence, and unwavering faithfulness to God in the face of a faithless society. Surely it wasn't easy for Noah, but he found favor in God's eyes because of his remarkable obedience.
Noah's ark was an enormous boat that safely carried him and his family through the Flood. Their rescue and the Flood itself show us the Lord's justice, power, patience, kindness, and faithfulness. The story, while true, also points to a greater truth – the Ark God offers us.
He is faithful even when we are not. His word will not return to Him void. Noah trusted that what God said would come to pass, and it did. Before the rains came, Noah probably just sounded like a crazy old man, especially when there had never been a flood before.
The ark shows that salvation is by grace. “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD…. 'I will establish My covenant with you; and you shall go into the ark—you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you'” (Genesis 6:8,18). God only has one plan of salvation, and that is by grace.
In short, the story of Noah's Ark tells of a great rain God called down to flood the Earth. Noah and his family were the only righteous people on the Earth, and so God instructed Noah to build an ark so he, his family, and the animals he called to be brought on the boat would be able to safely weather the storm.
Sinful acts will distance us from God and hinder His plan for us. As a result, we are led astray and into disaster when we fall into sin. God is merciful, but he is also the God of justice. Just like in the story of Noah, God punished the earth due to man's magnitude of sin.
Viewed through a spiritual lens, it symbolizes purification and cleansing. Just like floods wash away impurities, the biblical flood was used to cleanse the earth of humanity's moral filth. This also goes hand in hand with the concept of Baptism in Christian faith, where water signifies purification from sin.
A righteous man, Noah “found favour in the eyes of the Lord” (Genesis 6:8). Thus, when God beheld the corruption of the earth and determined to destroy it, he gave Noah divine warning of the impending disaster and made a covenant with him, promising to save him and his family.
The Bible tells us several reasons why God chose Noah in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. In short, God chose Noah because he found grace with God, walked with integrity, was obedient, revered God, and shared his faith with others.
And Noah did all that the LORD commanded him. Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth. And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah.
I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth." I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
The ark shows that salvation is by grace. “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD…. 'I will establish My covenant with you; and you shall go into the ark—you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you'” (Genesis 6:8,18). God only has one plan of salvation, and that is by grace.
As wickedness spread on the earth, the Lord called Noah to teach the gospel to his people. Noah warned the people that they must repent and be baptized or they would be destroyed by floods. Not only did the people refuse to follow Noah's counsel, but they also became angry and wanted to kill him.
The two major themes in the story of Noah and the flood are God's judgment of sin and his good news of deliverance and salvation to those who trust in him. God's purpose in the flood was not to destroy people but to destroy wickedness and sin.
After the flood, God made a covenant with Noah and all his descendants that never again would the human family be threatened with total annihilation by flood. The sign God gave Noah to assure him of this covenant was the rainbow. “Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds I will remember my covenant.”
Introduction: My name is Nathanael Baumbach, I am a fantastic, nice, victorious, brave, healthy, cute, glorious person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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