Noah and the Ark

TEXT: Genesis 6, 7, 8

A LONG, long, long time ago there lived a man named Noah. Noah loved God very much and prayed to Him every day. God loved Noah, too. Noah had a wife and three boys.

Mr. and Mrs. Noah and the three boys loved God. The whole family prayed to God and were happy to do anything God wanted them to do.

There were lots of other people in the town where the Noah family lived. These people did not love God one little bit. They were very, very naughty and bad. Anybody that does not love God is always naughty and bad because they do not have God’s love in their heart to help them be good. When you love God you just want to do good things. You do not want to do anything bad.

God would talk to Noah and tell him things to do. Noah could always hear what God said because he was listening in his heart for God’s voice. Noah was very careful to mind God all the time.

One day God talked to Noah and told him to build a great big, big boat. This was to be the biggest boat in all the world. God wanted the boat to be called an ark.

This great, big boat had to be big enough to hold all of Noah’s family and two of each of the animals and birds and everything that God made when He made the world. All the things that were alive. God wanted two of each kind to have a place in this ark boat.

God told Noah not to wonder what He would do with the big boat. God told Noah what it was for. You want to know what God told Noah? It is in the Bible so we can know what happened. God said, “Noah, I am going to make it rain and rain and rain.

It won’t stop raining for a long, long time. Noah, you and all your family and two of each of the living things I made, are going to have to live in this big boat while it is raining. You will be warm and dry there.”

Noah had never made a boat before but he did not worry about how he was going to do it. He did not say, “I can’t.” Noah knew God would help him know just how to do it. God knows everything and just how to fix everything. He will tell people how to make things if they will pray and ask Him.

God told Noah just what kind of wood to get, how big to make that biggest boat in the world, how many rooms to put in it, where the only window had to be, and all the rest of the things Noah had to know to build that boat.

This ark boat was really God’s boat because God planned it and told Noah how to make it.

It was such a big, big, big ark boat it took a long, long time to make it. People could hear the bang, bang from the hammers pounding of Noah and his three boys.

The people that lived near Noah would look at that big boat and how they would laugh at him and make fun of him! They might have asked, “What are you making such a great, big boat for, Noah? There isn’t any water around here for a boat like that. That is too big.”

“God told me to make this ark boat,” Noah would say, and then the people may have laughed real hard. They thought Noah was very queer to say that God told him to build a boat. They did not believe in God, so God could not talk to them as He did to Noah.

Noah told the people it would rain so much it would cover all the ground and the mountains. “You had better pray,” Noah would say. “If God said He will make it rain that much, He will do it. I will need this big boat then.”

Noah and his boys just kept working on the boat, no matter what the people said.

Sometimes people who live here in the world today laugh at other people for minding God. Other boys and girls might do it to you, too, but you just pray for them. They do not understand about God and how He can make them kind and good when they pray.

Little boys and girls who go to Sunday school can be just like Noah was. They can go right on doing what God tells them to do no matter how hard their little friends might try to get them to be naughty.

One day the boat was all finished. How big it looked! God was so happy with Noah for minding Him! Noah was happy, too.

Now God said, “Noah, you and all your family must go into the boat. Take Mrs. Noah and your three boys. Take the wives of the three boys, too.” They went into the ark.

Animals started to come from everywhere. Two here, two from over there. They went right into the ark boat. Birds came, too. Oh my, so many living things, both great big and tiny, tiny ones!

Look, the Noah family is there, and two of each of all the living things God made are in there, and enough food for each one. What happened then?

Noah did not even touch the door of that ark boat at all. Slowly, slowly, it started to shut. Do you know who did it? God did it. God shut the door of that great, big boat, Himself. He shut it tight. It would not blow open, no matter how the wind blew.

Splash! Splash! Splash! What was that? Faster and faster came the hard rain that God had said He would send someday. The rain had started!

It rained and it rained and it rained. It never stopped raining for a long, long, real long time. God made that rain keep falling just like He said it would. What God had told Noah was true. The rain had really started and no one could stop it but God.

The ground was all covered with water and it was so deep that the people could not walk on it any more. Now the people wished they had not laughed at Noah. Noah was right after all, but it was too late for them to make a boat now.

After a while all the big, high trees were covered with water. Even the tip-top of the tallest tree did not show any more. It rained and it rained, and it rained some more. Now all the big, high mountains were covered with water, too. There was not even a little tiny top of a mountain showing anywhere. The whole world was just like a great, big ocean with no land at all.

It had rained for forty days and nights. It did not stop even once, all that time.

Where was the big, big ark boat with Noah and his family? Just floating along on top of all that water. They were nice and warm, all the animals were fine.

Noah and his family were glad they had listened to God and minded Him. We are always happy and safe when we mind God, too. He takes good care of every little boy and every little girl who loves Him. Yes, He does. He takes good care of big people, too.

At last the rain stopped. The water went away.

God told Noah it was time to come out of the big ark boat and to let all the animals and birds out, too. It must have seemed good to see the bright sun again.

The first thing that Noah did was to thank God for keeping them all safe from that big rain.

God talked to Noah and said, “I am going to put a beautiful rainbow in the sky.” This was a, promise from God that it would never rain so hard and long again.

When you look up in the sky and see a pretty rainbow just know that it is God telling you He will never make it rain like that again.

Just think — we can see the same kind of a rainbow that Noah did a long time ago! God is taking care of you, too, just like He did Noah.