THEME 5 GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY
SCRIPTURE [1]
People on earth did what God said was evil. Violence was everywhere. And God saw this evil. All people on the earth did only evil. So God said to Noah, “People have made the earth full of violence. So I will destroy all people from the earth. Build a boat of cypress wood for yourself. Make rooms in it and cover it inside and outside with tar.
Then the Lord said to Noah, “I have seen that you are the best man among the people of this time. So you and your family go into the boat. Take with you seven pairs, each male with its female, of every kind of clean animal. And take one pair, each male with its female, of every kind of unclean animal. Take seven pairs of all the birds of the sky, each male with its female. This will allow all these animals to continue living on the earth after the flood. Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth. It will rain 40 days and 40 nights. I will destroy from the earth every living thing that I made. “Noah did everything that the Lord commanded him.
Noah was 600 years old when the flood came7 He and his wife and his sons and their wives went into the boat. They went in to escape the waters of the flood. The clean animals, the unclean animals, the birds and everything that crawls on the ground came to Noah. They went into the boat in groups of two, male and female. This was just as God had commanded Noah. Seven days later the flood started.
Water flooded the earth for 40 days. As the water rose, it lifted the boat off the ground. The water continued to rise, and the boat floated on the water above the earth. The water rose so much that even the highest mountains under the sky were covered by it. The water continued to rise until it was more than 20 feet above the mountains.
All living things that moved on the earth died. This included all the birds, tame animals, wild animals and creatures that swarm on the earth. And all human beings died. So everything on dry land died. This means everything that had the breath of life in its nose. So God destroyed from the earth every living thing that was on the land. This was every man, animal, crawling thing and bird of the sky. All that was left was Noah and what was with him in the boat. And the waters continued to cover the earth for 150 days. But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and tame animals with him in the boat. God made a wind blow over the earth. And the water went down. The underground springs stopped flowing. And the
clouds in the sky stopped pouring down rain. The water that covered the earth began to go down.
Then God said to Noah, “You and your wife, your sons and their wives should go out of the boat. Bring every animal out of the boat with you—the birds, animals and everything that crawls on the earth. Let them have many young ones and let them grow in number.”
So Noah went out with his sons, his wife and his sons’ wives. Every animal, everything that crawls on the earth and every bird went out of the boat. They left by families.
Then Noah built an altar to the Lord. Noah took some of all the clean birds and animals. And he burned them on the altar as offerings to God. The Lord was pleased with these sacrifices. He said to himself, “I will never again curse the ground because of human beings. Their thoughts are evil even when they are young. But I will never again destroy every living thing on the earth as I did this time.
“As long as the earth continues, there will be planting and harvest. Cold and hot, summer and winter, day and night will not stop.”
[1] Genesis 6: 11-14; 7: 17-8: 3; 9: 8-13 Ibid.
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