August 28, 2016 - Noah's Ark

TONY & MICHELLE PAWLAK

MEMORY VERSE

 So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.  

Ephesians 4:11-12

So far this year we have talked about creation, Adam naming the animals, God creating Eve from Adam’s rib, and the fall of man from eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  The Devil seems to have won that round but God said it isn’t over.  He said he would send someone to crush Satan’s head!  Do you think this stopped Satan?  Of course not.

Satan had been hard at work trying to get as many people

to sin against God as he could.  After a while, Satan had been so successful that the earth was full of evil people.  The Bible says that every thought that people had was evil all the time!  God knew that humanity had become too evil to save.  However, there was one man who had found favor with God, a man named Noah.

God told Noah that He planned to destroy the earth with a

worldwide flood but that there was a way for Noah and his family to be safe.  God told Noah to build a huge boat called an “Ark.” (Ark actually means box)   It was to be 50 cubits wide, 30 cubits tall, and 300 cubits long.  A cubit is commonly thought to be about the

length from your elbow to your fingertip or about 1 ½ feet. That means that the Ark was about 75 feet wide, 45 feet

tall, and around 450 to 500 feet long!  It was about as long as 1 ½ football fields!!  Noah was also told to make it three stories and cover it with pitch (a tar like substance) inside and out to make it water proof. 

Noah was to take at least a pair (seven pairs of some) of every animal on the Ark with him and his family.  Noah was 600 years old when he and his three sons; Shem, Ham, and Japheth, entered the Ark with their wives and all

the animals. Nobody was saved from the flood except Noah and his family. 

It rained on the earth for forty days and nights and the water underground burst to the surface flooding everything over the tip of

the highest mountain!  The Earth was completely flooded for almost 200 days!  Finally God sent a wind and the waters began to recede.  The Ark landed on the top of a mountain called Ararat (Possibly in a mountain range in Turkey).  After about 260 days, Noah sands out a raven and then a

dove but both come back because neither could find a place to land.  A week later Noah sent the dove again and it brought back an olive branch meaning that there was dry ground somewhere.

Finally, sent the dove again and it did not return which told Noah that it had found a

place to land.  After about 375 days, Noah, his family, and all the animals finally left the Ark after a little over a year!  Noah built an altar and made a sacrifice to thank God for sparing them and God put a rainbow in the sky as a promise to never destroy the earth with a flood again.