02-CHAPTER 2 NOAH

Chapter 2

NOAH

Suppose that you were living in Iowa and one day a man came to your house and asked your father to build a boat for him, a very, very large boat. Your father might say that he could do it all right, but what would he do with it when it was finished? There is no river nor lake within a hundred miles of your home with water enough to float it and the sea is more than a thousand miles away.

He would be no more surprised than Noah was when GOD came and told him about the same thing. You see it was this way. After Adam sinned, as I told you in the first story, man knew good and evil. But instead of obeying GOD, this terrible monster, sin, which had gotten into man’s heart led him to listen to Satan more than to GOD.

For fifteen hundred years this went on and GOD was patient with these sinful people. Then the bible says the wickedness of man was so great that even his thoughts and imaginations were evil all the time. Something had to be done, for the whole earth was full of violence.

In all the world GOD knew only one man that really loved Him and his name was Noah. The Bible tells us that he found grace in the eyes of the LORD and that he was a just man and perfect in his generation. That means he was as good as he knew how to be in the evil world in which he lived. Another thing it says is that, "Noah walked with GOD," and that explains why he was just and good, for anyone who walks with GOD goes GOD’s way.

I think, one day when GOD and Noah were out for a walk, GOD said, "Noah, everything looks bad and the whole world is full of violence." When the LORD JESUS was here He explained a little more what that meant. He said that they were "eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage." Well, isn’t it all right to eat food and drink water and get married? Oh, yes, but He meant much more than that! You see, men and women had become so sinful that all they thought of was to satisfy their own selfish appetites. They ate what they wanted, they drank what they wanted, they married, were divorced and were married again. They had drinking parties and fought and murdered each other.

Then GOD continued by saying, "I am going to destroy all the earth with a flood, and Noah, I want you to build a boat of gopherwood and smear it within and without with pitch. Pitch was something like tar and filled up all the cracks so that the water couldn’t get in.

GOD gave Noah the measurements. The boat, or ark, was to be four hundred fifty feet long, seventy-five feet wide and forty-five feet high. So perfect were these measurements that even today our greatest boats are built on the same scale. The boat was to be divided into three stories, and away up on the roof or highest deck, he was to build a small dome with a window in the top of it. Also he was to put a door in one side of the boat, or Ark.

Noah was a man of great faith and when GOD told him to do anything, no matter what it was, or whether he understood it or not, he never stopped to ask how it was going to come out, but "he did as the Lord commanded Him."

In those days men lived to be very old and Noah was about five hundred years old when he began to build the ark. How long do you suppose it took him to make it? A hundred and twenty years. I think through those years, many of his friends and neighbors came over to see what he was doing. The Bible says that Noah told them what GOD was going to do to this old earth and preached righteousness to them. But they wouldn’t listen to him and not one believed what he said. I suspect they made fun of him and called him strange.

FINALLY, the big boat was done, made in every way just as the LORD had instructed.

When GOD gave Noah directions about the building of the ark, He also talked to him about other things. He said, "Noah, I am going to save you and your family from the flood and I will make my contract with you." And then He told him to take a pair of every kind of animals, birds and creeping things and put them in the ark. But of the clean beasts, that is, the ones used for sacrifices, as the lamb and young ox, he was to take seven pairs. GOD then told all of the animals to go to Noah’s ark, and they obeyed their CREATOR.

Finally, the day came when all was ready and GOD said, "Come thou and all thy house into the ark, for thee have I seen righteous in this generation."

Let us imagine we are seeing those animals marching two and two into the big boat. I think, yes, that is right, Mr. and Mrs. Elephant are leading the parade, for they are among the biggest. Here they come swinging their long trunks like band leaders’ batons, as much as to say, "Right this way. Follow us." Mr. and Mrs. Camel are next, followed by Mr. and Mrs. Lion and the Tigers. By the way, when GOD told the animals to go to the Ark, He also told them not to eat Mr. Noah or any of his family or any of their fellow animals. And they didn’t! Who is that funny looking couple that can’t keep up? Oh, that is Mr. and Mrs. Kangaroo, jumping along as usual.

Mr. and Mrs. Zebra look fine in their new spring stripes, and Oh, look! There is Doctor and Mrs. Giraffe. How proud and haughty they are, with their heads held so high. Look out for that tree branch! The chimpanzees and baboons are chattering to each other as they go along. Why! I never knew there were so many animals, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, cows, horses, bears, sheep, goats, cats and dogs. Every kind of animal was there, not one was missing.

I wonder if the creeping things will come next? Yes, slowly they are arriving, the tortoises, snails, turtles, lizards and all such creatures. Even snakes!

And now for the feathered folk. The walking birds are first, I think. I mean by that the birds that can’t fly very high or far. Perhaps Professor and Mrs. Peacock will lead them. Sure enough, there they come, stepping along in all their glory, followed by lovely Doctor and Mrs. Swan, and Messrs. and Mesdames Chicken, DUCK, goose, Turkey and Guinea.

Oh, look at the air parade, headed right for the door of the boat, and in they go! Who are they? Those in the lead must be the mono-planes, the kind made for landing on the ground. Doctor and Mrs. Eagle are leading and every once in a while, just to be noticed, they make a nose dive. Then there are the hawks, crows, ravens, owls, jays and a great number more whose names I do not know. Now come the birds of plumage, among them the pheasants and the golden birds of paradise. How very graceful and beautiful they are.

But do look at those seaplanes. Oh, no! Not seaplanes at all, just the water birds, like the cormorants, gulls, wild ducks and geese.

Listen! Don’t speak a word! Did you ever hear such wonderful music? It sounds as though heaven’s gate had been left open. Soft, sweet and full of lovely melody. Oh, it is the songbirds’ choir, giving a farewell concert! Do you hear the canaries, larks, wrens, nightingales, robins, blue birds, phoebe birds, orioles and mocking birds? What are they singing? Let us listen closely. They are singing very softly, now. I think it is a song of praise, worship and devotion to the One who loves righteousness and hates sin, GOD their CREATOR.

And now they have all gone in, the last notes fade away and are lost in the quiet and loneliness of the evening, and GOD comes and shuts the door and seals it.

Did you ever stop to think that when Noah and his family went into the big boat it was on the dry ground? He had no reason for going in only that GOD told him to and he obeyed. How foolish he must have seemed to his neighbors. I think Noah went all around and told them once more to come with him into the ark, and if they had believed, they, too, might have been saved.

Not a drop of rain had fallen, everything was dry all around the big boat and seven days passed before it began to rain. Noah might have said, "Surely there is no hurry," but no, he did "as the Lord commanded him."

Then it began to rain and rain and rain for forty days and nights with never a moment’s pause. Forty days is almost six weeks and that is a very long rain. The Bible says it not only rained out of the windows of Heaven but that the fountains of the great deep were broken up. Of course the great deep is the sea. So the waters from the sea and from the heavens began to cover the earth.

Think of the people who had refused to believe Noah. They thought he was foolish but now when it was too late, they found they were the foolish ones.

I think, that one night after the waters had become pretty deep, the old boat began to creak and rock and then to float. The higher the waters rose, the higher the boat rose. There was only one window and that looked upward toward Heaven, and Noah and his family couldn’t see the suffering and death of the drowning people around them. They were away from the judgment of sin. The same waters that drowned the people outside, bore up the boat and took care of the people inside.

The Bible says that in the last days, sin and wickedness will be great in the earth just as in the days of Noah, and that the LORD JESUS is coming again in judgment. He has sent out many messengers, like Noah, to tell the people to believe in Him and be saved. I am afraid they are doing just as those men and women did in Noah’s time. They mock, make fun and won’t believe.

The water covered the earth twenty-two feet deep on the highest mountains, and there it stayed for one hundred and fifty days or five months before it began to go back. In two months more the ark rested on Mount Ararat.

Noah thought that it was about time to see what was going on outside. So he opened the window one morning and let a raven fly out, and it never came back. Then one day he sent out a dove which flew around a little while and then returned. You see, that is the difference between the two birds. Ravens eat the flesh of decayed animals, and this raven probably found plenty of that kind of food floating around. Doves never eat anything but fruit, leaves and herbs, and so this dove came right back for there was no place for her to rest nor to find the food which she liked.

A week more passed by and then Noah sent out the dove again and when it came back it had a fresh, green olive leaf in its mouth. What a thrill it must have brought to Mr. and Mrs. Noah and their family! Now they knew that the waters had gone down so much that the trees were beginning to send out their leaves once more. The next time he let the dove out it didn’t come back. I suppose it found a nice place somewhere to make a nest in the tree.

Just think how anxious every one must have been to get out of the boat where they had been for a whole year. Finally one glad day GOD came to the door, tore off the seals, and with a great hand of love knocked and called, "Noah, come on out! It is all over. the ground is dry."

"Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons and thy sons’ wives with thee. Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth" (Genesis 8:16-17).

How happy they were when they heard that call. Here they come. See them? Noah and his family first, and then all the animals begin to wake up, have a big stretch and big YAWN! GOD had told them all to take a long nap when the rain first started to fall, and most of them are just now waking up. I wonder if they wondered what happened?

I wonder if the song birds gathered above the ark for a parting concert and sang, "Oh LORD, our LORD, how excellent is thy name in all the earth," and then flew away to find new homes in the trees of the mountains.

I suppose Noah’s family had a busy time for a while getting moved out of the ark and building new homes on a clean washed earth.

About the first thing Noah did was to build an altar, a place to make an offering for sin and to worship GOD.

GOD was so pleased with Noah for this that He made a wonderful promise to Noah and to all who should live afterwards, even down to us today. He said He would never destroy the earth again with a flood, and then He added another promise, "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."

Then GOD blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth."

He also said, "Noah, I am giving you the power to rule over the earth all that is in it. Some of the animals are stronger than you are, but I’ll put the fear of man in their hearts so that you can control them."

Last of all, I think GOD led Noah out of doors one morning just after a shower and said, "See that rainbow flashing its wondrous beauty on the circle of sky, dipping its ends to meet the waving grasses of the hill slopes? Noah, that is to be a sign between you and all men and Me. Every time I look upon the rainbow I will remember my promise not to send a flood upon the earth."

And every time we look upon a rainbow, we too, can know that GOD looks and remembers.

~ end of chapter 2 ~

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