The Place of Safety.
Remember how sin entered the world when Adam disobeyed God? Well, year after year that sin grew and spread throughout the whole world until God was sorry that He had made man at all. There was one man, however, who pleased God; that man’s name was Noah.
One Day God told Noah that He was going to deal with the wickedness of the world, but first of all, He told Noah that he was to build a great “boat.” God told Noah how he was to build it and gave him the exact measurements – telling him how to place the three decks, the cabins, the window, and the door.
Noah believed God, and he began building the “Ark”, as the great “boat” was called. He told all the people what he was doing, but they all just laughed and scoffed. Noah went on building the Ark as God had said.
At last it was ready. Then the rains came, and Noah and all his family, and two of all the animals and birds on the earth, went into the Ark with him. “God shut them in,” the Bible says. And as the rain began to fall, the people realised that Noah had told them the truth. But it was too late: they were “shut out.”
For forty days and forty nights the rain poured down, and the floods came, and all the waters on the earth burst out. But the Ark just bobbed along on the surface of the water, and although all those who were outside drowned in the floods, the ones who were inside the Ark were safe until the flood was over.
After forty days, Noah opened the window of the Ark and released a bird called a raven. Some days later he sent out another bird, a dove, and after a week, he sent out the dove again. When the dove came back the second time it had a leaf in its beak. After another week, he sent it out again, but this time the dove did not return to the Ark. Noah knew that the earth was now dry, and God told him to leave the Ark with his family and the animals.
The first thing that Noah did when he stepped on to dry land again was to build an alter and worship God – thanking Him for all His care and protection during the great flood.
God then gave Noah a promise. He promised that never, ever, again would He destroy the earth in this way. But as long as the earth remained, there would be “seed-time and harvest; cold and heat; summer and winter; day and night.” God set a rainbow in the sky to remind us of this great promise.
Now, boys and girls, there are many great lessons to learn from this story of Noah and the flood. We must remember to be thankful to God for that promise and for our food and protection that we have day-by-day, and year-by-year. But we must also remember that God says He will punish sin; that is one truth of the Bible that the story of the flood is to show us. However, we can be thankful that God has given a place of safety for us, just as He gave a place of safety to Noah so long ago. The flood is to show us how God will, indeed, punish people for their sins and judge this world at the end of time. But the Ark is to show us that God has given a place of safety where we can be safe from that punishment and judgment. That “place,” of course, is our Lord Jesus Christ, when we trust in Him and believe in Him with all our heart. As surely as Noah was kept safe in the middle of all that flood, so every man and woman, boy or girl, who believes that Jesus died to save them from their sins, will be safe for ever and ever.
I trust that you will be like Noah, and believe God, and what He says about His Son Jesus Christ, and find safety in Jesus.