Noah’s Ark and the Flood: Sunday School Lesson

GENESIS 6

How many of you guys have ever heard someone make a really, really silly promise or prediction? You know the kind I’m talking about?

Well, listen to this story.

A few years ago, this one guy named Harold….true story.

He got up and he told the entire world that destruction was coming and they were all going to die. He even gave them a date! May 21, 2011 was the end of the world.

People started to believe him. They made t-shirts. They made signs. They took to Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and started telling everyone to get right with God. They went on CNN and FOX News and some people even got married quickly because they didn’t want the world to end before they could!

As the days drew closer, people sat and wondered…. What would happen? Was the world really going to end? The people who believed it would throw more and more money into making sure that everyone knew it. THE WORLD WAS GOING TO END!

Well…. It’s 2016 now, and the world definitely didn’t end! You know what happened on May 21? A whole lot of nothing. A lot of rain. A LOT of rain. People thought he was so crazy, that one guy even tweeted, “Harold called. The Lord is running late. Bad weather.”

Funny joke, right?

Here’s another one. Watch this clip from an awesome movie called Chicken Little.

It’s safe to say both of those guys, well…. They looked kind of ridiculous later, right? The world didn’t end on May 21 as Harold said, and well…. Chicken Little had only felt an acorn hit his head.

There have been a LOT of people who have predicted the world will end one day…. A lot of people who said they knew the time and the place. And none of them have been even remotely right….
…. Well, except one guy.

But in order to talk about this man, we have to go wayyyyyyy back in time. So I want everyone to rewind…. Ready?

(Have kids stand up, make a rewind sound with their mouths, and spin around like a VCR that’s being rewound–not that they really know what that is! You might even have them sit facing a different direction than before to signify we’re in a different time period)

Okay, so who remembers the things God created?

You’re right… Now, does anyone remember what day God created rain?

(Kids may give answers—they’re all wrong unless they say that the Bible doesn’t say he created rain).

Can you believe there was once a day when there was no rain?

That’s right. No rain. No rain at all. People walked outside and they just… Well, it was clear and sunny. All the time.

Then, all of a sudden, something changed…

This old man, who had a history of saying really crazy stuff that never came true, started to tell people that there was going to be water falling from the sky! He told everyone he met! “Hey you, water’s going to fall from the sky!” “Hey mister, the oceans are going to flip upside down and be on your head, you know?”

How ridiculous! But he didn’t stop there…. He took it even further.

“God told me it’s going to rain!” He said loudly, probably yelling at people as they passed by. People who didn’t know who God was. They didn’t believe in God. “It’s going to rain so hard we’re all going to drown! The world is going to end!”

Okay, so this would kind of be like if I told you that mud was going to start falling from the sky, and there would be so much mud that we would all drown in it…. And that a Flying Spaghetti Monster told me that.

How many of you would believe me?

Well, nobody really believed Noah, either. He looked pretty crazy. But nothing is too crazy for God.

So how would you feel if God told you he was going to destroy the whole earth with a lot and a lot and a lot of rain?

Scared? Hopeless? Confused?

Noah was probably all of those things! But, God is good, and God gave Noah a way out.

You see, God told Noah to build this thing called an ‘ark’. A boat. Something that would float on the water. He told Noah when he built it, his entire family and the animals in the world could climb aboard. God told him exactly what kind of wood to use. God told him exactly how big to make it. How wide to make it. How tall to make it. He told him where everything should go. God gave Noah better directions to build the ark than IKEA does to build furniture. God was really on his game!

And even though Noah was laughed at and ridiculed, Noah did what God told him to do. Can you imagine what his life must have been like?

Noah would walk to the store to buy wood. People would laugh at him.
He’d go buy a hammer. People would laugh at him.
He’d start building. People would laugh at him.

They called him names and taunted him, but Noah knew one thing they didn’t know.

God was in control.

And when God was in control, there was always a plan. God’s plans never needed a backup plan, because His plans never failed. The same God that created the entire world had a plan for Noah’s life, a plan to save Noah.

So Noah trusted God.

Now, you might be wondering about all of those other people. Sure, they didn’t believe in God or follow him, and they were sinful, but is that really a reason to flood the whole earth?

It’s kind of like the story of Adam and Eve. Remember what happened when Eve sinned?

She got banished, right?

But we talked last week (see entire series here) about how that wasn’t a punishment from God, that was grace. God was saving her from a life of sin and sorrow.

That’s what God was doing with these people, too. He was saving them from a life of sin and sorrow. He was giving them a chance for a savior.

And Noah? He was giving Noah the chance of a lifetime. To save himself and his family and to repopulate the Earth. To start a new family of God’s children who would follow Him and love Him.

(end lesson by singing “Arky, Arky”)