Powerpoint Pictures: Etch-a-Sketch; Lifeboat; Meerkat; Rainbow

Can you tell me what the following are photos of?  [An etch-a-sketch, a lifeboat, a meerkat, a rainbow].  These four pictures help us to understand the next part of the true story of the Bible.

In the beginning God looked at the world He made to be a perfect home for people and said it was “very good”.  But now at the start of Genesis 6 when God looked at the world He was sad.  Why?  Imagine you went home and found that your house had been trashed.  Well that is what people had done to God’s world.  So like an etch-a-sketch, when you don’t like what you see, you start again, so that is what God decide to do.  He decided to send a flood that would cover the whole earth and destroy every living thing.

But if God is going to start again, He would need people and animals to fill the earth.  Would He find someone who loved and obeyed Him and how would He keep him or her safe?  There was one man*.  “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.”* (Genesis 6:9)  God told Noah that He was going to send a flood so He warn people about what was going to happen.  He also told Noah to build an ark.

The ark was like a big lifeboat to keep Noah and his family – his wife, three sons and their wives – safe.  So miles away from the sea in the sunshine Noah got to work on building an ark, following God’s instructions.  As he did people must have laughed at him, but he kept going believing what God had told him.

When the ark was finished, God brought 2 of every kind of animals including probably meerkats into the ark.  When everyone was in God shut the door.  Then came the rain.  For 40 days and 40 nights it rained and the earth was flooded.  Every living thing apart from those inside the ark was wiped out.  After the rain stopped it took a whole year for the water to go down and for dry land to appear again.

Then Noah and his family and all the animals came out of the ark to start life on the earth again.  God promised Noah that He would never flood the earth again and put a rainbow in the sky as a sign of His promise.  So whenever we see a rainbow, we are to remember that God is keeping His promise.

Back to Noah and his family and all the people who would live after them.  Would they love and obey God or like Adam, Cain and all the other people at the time of the flood would they disobey God?