I know you must have heard this story at school, but I feel it does us good to look back at this story every now and again in our lives.
Noah was a righteous man, he was Living with a lot of wicked men who had turned their backs on God. So the father God decided to send the big flood that could wipe out the human race.
Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, with their wives, who were the only ones who tried to live their life in the correct way.
How about this for believing in God. God told Noah to build something that would float on the water, the only trouble was Noah did not live anywhere near the water, now what would you do? Remember Noah lived before Jesus, so he did not know anything really about God taking his time, and Gods favourite word is wait, because God wants the best for our lives, God has perfect timing.
So Noah started to build the Ark. When we talk about Don’t Give Up, then Noah had that quality. Have a guess just how long Noah took to build the Ark? I will tell you in a few moments time. The ark was to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high. Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower middle and upper decks.
Now, the Ark needed to be quiet big when you think all the animals had to fit in there, 2 of each kind, so that they could make a new population of animal after the flood. Everything was completely lost during the flood.
While Noah was building the ark, people who lived around Noah could not understand Noah at all. I can imagine people stopping to take a look at Noah, and wondering what that thing was really for. People are funny animals and, yes, that does include me. What would you do?
Would you take the micky out of a man who was doing something a bit different, or would you just ask what he was doing? Maybe asking that question could have saved somebodies life, people get worried about asking questions in case they get the wrong answers. Earlier I asked you how long it took Noah to build the Ark? Well the answer shocked me. First I will tell you they did live longer in these days. I thought I had patience and perseverance, but it took Noah about 150 years to build the ark. I just thought wow, when I thought I needed to wait for three years to live with Jen I thought that was bad enough.
Noah had to do a lot of hard work every day for a long time, God told Noah to get 2 of every animal in to the Ark. People think the animals walked in to the ark 2 by 2, sadly for Noah and his family it did not quite happen like that. So Noah and his family needed to catch them. I imagine for the people watching it would have been crazy to see Noah and his family trying to catch the animals, people must have asked themselves what they were doing?
When Noah and the animals were in the ark, God sealed the Ark and Noah waited patiently for the rain. It was very heavy when it arrived, Noah could hear the rain and it lasted for 40 days and 40 nights. When Noah could hear no more rain, he sent out a dove to see if the land was dry.
The first two times the dove came back without anything, but the third time the dove went out it came back with a leaf from a tree, but Noah did not do anything until God told him to. It was many years later when God told Noah to come out of the ark.
The things I would like to bring out of the Noah story are to be patient and only do what God tells us to do.
Until the next time goodbye.