Untitled Sermon (2)

VBS Teaching Script

Teaching Time 1: approx. 26 minutes

· Hi everyone and welcome to VBS! I’m Joseph and this is my wife Melissa and we’re going to be looking at what happened in Genesis chapters 1, 2, 3 and 6 this evening. The pastor in me thinks there’s no way we are going to get through four chapters of teaching in 30 minutes…but thankfully my administratively strong wife is here to help streamline things.

· That’s right! Over the next two days, we are going to dive in to God’s Word and learn about a time when the ocean was in great commotion. But before we get in to that, we want to take a few minutes to get to know you all! So when you get the beach ball, tell us your family’s name and one fun thing you can do in the water…so like if my family got the beach ball I’d say….Hi, we’re the Rabers and we love to boogie board in the ocean…now you go!

· Wow, those are some great ideas to have some fun in the water. Can you guys think of a time in the Bible when the water wasn’t so fun? …. Right, the flood itself wasn’t a fun time. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, let’s go to the beginning, in Genesis 1, and we’ll eventually catch up with Noah and the flood along the way.

· Let’s talk about the beautiful world God created back at the beginning of time. It looked quite different than it does today.

· That’s right, about 6,000 years ago, God created the Garden of Eden. It was an amazingly beautiful place, sort of like a rainforest or tropical island. The weather was perfect too…no tornados or hurricanes, in fact, there was never even a need for an umbrella! Because it never rained.

· In that perfect early world, people only ate fruit and vegetables and grains. It was a perfect paradise, made by God, with nothing bad in it. But can anyone think of something that happened in this early world that was NOT so beautiful?...Sin entered the world. The evil Satan, in the form of a serpent, came into that perfect, beautiful world and messed it up. He tempted the first two people, Adam and Eve, to eat fruit that God told Adam not to eat—and they ate it.

· When Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they were not obeying God’s command. Not obeying God’s commands is called sin, and sin is a big deal. It was a big deal for Adam and Eve, and it’s a big deal for us. In fact, every person from that point on is born sinful, or disobedient to God. That includes you and me! And God said the punishment for sin is death. As a result of this sin, this disobedience, God placed a curse on His creation, and now suffering and disease and sickness and violence and thorns and thistles are in the world.

· After sin entered the world, so did wickedness. When Adam stole the fruit, an animal had to be killed to provide a covering for him and his wife Eve. Up until that first sin, they didn’t need a covering of clothes, but now that sin arrived, they do. This was the first death in paradise, and it involved the shedding of blood. Even though that place was beautiful, we see results from the curse God placed on His creation starting to happen.

· Let’s fast forward a little in time. After the first sin in the Garden of Eden, the world continued on its way. Adam and Eve had many children, and their children had many children and so on and so forth as the earth began filling up. The people were very smart and were busy building cities, making music, and making things of iron and bronze.

· So now, we’re at about 4,400 years ago, a little before the big Flood of Noah’s time. Some history and science books say that instead of people being created by God, that people evolved from being apes, to being apelike men to being men, evolving and becoming more sophisticated, but we were created by God, intelligent from the beginning. Remember, we’ve already talked about Adam and Eve, who certainly weren’t primitive but very intelligent. They were fully human made in the image of God from the beginning.

· These people built great cities, made beautiful sounding instruments, and lived in a variety of different places. Some lived in tents, some in cities, some in houses made from bricks and some who live in caves. They are far from apelike.

· Let’s read some passages from the Bible that tell us what it was like back then. I’m going to throw this beach ball and if you catch it, have someone from your family read one of the verses printed on your “Day 1 Bible References” sheet. Then throw the ball to someone else to read one that hasn’t been read. Here we go!

· (after they read about Adam)….930 years! That’s a whole lot older than we live today, people lived long lives because the world wasn’t so polluted and sin hadn’t affected their bodies as drastically as it has ours. So think about being an artist or a builder for four or five hundred years, and how good you’d be at your job. Your skills could be amazing and definitely not primitive!

· So you see, the world was quite smart back then. But sad to say, the people in that time were very wicked. Let’s continue tossing the beach ball around this time reading from the second section of verses, describing how the world was during the time of Noah…

· Can you imagine living in a world where every thought of every person was only evil always? Wow! We hear a lot of bad news nowadays, and we sure would have been hearing it constantly back then. How many people does the Bible say were wicket again? (ALL!)

· But one man. One man was found standing for God. His name was Noah. By God’s grace, out of a world with millions of people, Noah stood for God, even when it meant he was the only one in the whole world who did. Sometimes we have trouble speaking up for God even in a small group of friends or classmates or neighbors. Can you imagine standing alone for God like Noah did?

· Let’s review Genesis 6:8-9 to learn more about Noah. Follow along on the paper with the verses…

· Genesis 6:8-9 NKJV “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. This is the genealogy of Noah. Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God.”

· Someone yell out a word you heard that God uses to describe Noah. What do those words mean?

o GRACE: receiving a gift from God we don’t deserve. Noah didn’t and couldn’t do anything to save himself. God is the One who saved him. God showed GRACE to Noah.

o JUST: means to do right, to follow God’s commands.

o PERFECT: in this verse, perfect doesn’t mean that he never sinned. Noah sinned just like we do. Everyone sins. But when the Bible says Noah was perfect, it means he didn’t have sin habits that he was intentionally doing. So it doesn’t mean he never made mistakes or sinned, but it does mean he tried to please God and not be caught up in sinful habits. By God’s grace, Noah was not like others at his time.

o WALKED WITH GOD: what do you do on a walk with a friend? You build your relationship. You listen, you talk. Noah had a close relationship with God.

· Do you think it was hard for Noah to live this way in the midst of the wickedness of the world around him? Of course! He had to stand for God. That means love God and obey Him and speak about Him no matter what anyone else might say to you or do to you. You might find yourself in a similar situation sometimes, for example, let’s say that every kid in your class is doing wrong and making fun of you for following God. If you stand for God, you will still obey Him and stay true to God, by His grace. He wants you to tell others about Him. If you’re His child, He’ll give you the strength and grace to do that through His Holy Spirit.

· One verse to commit to memory is 1 Corinthians 16:13 Watch, stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong.” Every one stand up! Get everyone to one corner of your blanket and yell together “watch!”, then we’ll run to the another corner and yell “stand fast in the faith”, now another corner and say “be brave” and the last corner to yell “be strong”! Do it again as a family.

· Let’s take some time to review what we have discussed this evening. Let’s stand up in the middle of your blanket, making a line with your family so that you can freely move to the left or to the right. I’m going to ask you some yes and no questions, if you think the answer is yes, hop to the right, if you think no, hop to the left! Here we go!

o There’s always been sin in the world.

§ No, when God first made the world, it was perfect and there was no sin.

o By Noah’s time, every thought of every person’s heart (except Noah) was evil continually.

§ Yes, According to the Bible, only Noah was still following after God.

o According to the Bible, Noah was perfect. That means he never sinned.

§ No. Noah sinned just like we do. Everyone sins, remember, this just means that he tried to please God, didn’t have sin habits that he intentionally committed and was different from those around Him.

o To walk with God, you need to be His child and spend time with Him.

§ Yes. To walk with God, most importantly, means you are a child of God. To be a child of God, you must realize you’re a sinner and that Jesus came to Earth, died on the cross, and rose again to take the punishment for your sin. If you ask God to forgive you and let you follow Him, He will, and you will become a child of god. Once you are God’s child, you can do things like read your Bible and pray to grow in your relationship with Him. Spending time with God will help you walk closely with Him!

o An example of standing alone for God is not watching a movie you know doesn’t honor God, even if your friends are doing it.

§ Yes. It can be hard to do the right thing, especially when those around you are doing what you know would not honor God.

· Listen closely as we read from Genesis 6 verses 13-16 (these verses are on your reference papers if you’d like to follow along)…

o 13 And God said to Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth. 14 Make yourself an ark of gopherwood; make [a]rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and outside with pitch. 15 And this is how you shall make it: The length of the ark shall be three hundred [b]cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. 16 You shall make a window for the ark, and you shall finish it to a cubit from above; and set the door of the ark in its side. You shall make it with lower, second, and third decks.

· God gave instructions on how to build the Ark. According to the Bible, the Ark was 300 cubits by 50 cubits. But what in the world is a cubit? This is a cubit. There is a paper in your bag that is cut to the same length as this cubit. It is approximately 20.5 inches long. So 300 of them would be about 510 feet. To put that in perspective, a soccer field is 300 feet long. So the ark was about a soccer field and a half long. The ark’s width was to be 50 cubits or about 85 feet wide, again about time and a half wider than a soccer field. These dimensions are on your reference sheet. Sometime in the next week or so, we’d encourage you to take a tape measure and walk out the space of the Ark. It is truly awe inspiring to see just how massive the ark was, and what God enabled Noah to do!

· I was just recently to the Ark Encounter in Kentucky. Wow, that place was incredible!

· I bet you learned a bunch about the Ark while you were there, think you could answer some questions for us?

· I’ll do my best!

· Well, first of all, most pictures I see of Noah’s ark are cute little rounded boats, stuffed full of smiling critters, is that true?

· That’s true that we really do normally see the ark depicted that way. But the artists who drew them didn’t check what the Bible says, because according to the Bible, which always has the right answers, we know the Ark was a very large boat with a roof over the top to protect them from the terrible stormy flood. No animals would have been sticking out. They were all safely tucked inside. And I’ll tell you, the animals that were in there were not all soft smiling critters…a lot of them were quite intimidating—especially the ones of the alligator and bear kinds!

· How was Noah able to build this ark? He didn’t have computers or even a calculator….

· That’s true, but remember, people back then were incredibly smart, likely smarter than we are today! So he was able to use his brain to figure things out, plus God was instructing Him. Plus, we know from Scripture that people then were building great cities and other things, so they probably had great machines to help them build. You shouldn’t imagine Noah having just a hammer and saw, he probably had many amazing machines and tools as well. And Noah had many years to build the huge boat.

· Okay, well even with it being as huge as it was, I still wonder how everything would fit on it. The Bible tells us animals came 2x2 and even by sevens for some. That’s an awful lot of animals and animal food and other supplies.

· It may surprise you to know that Noah was able to fit everything and still have room left over! Scientists have figured out that the Ark had the same volume as almost 500 semi-trailers like the ones you see on the highway. The animals and supplies wouldn’t even fill up half of it! And remember, the Bible doesn’t say the ocean creatures were to get on, just the land animals, birds and creeping kinds.

· Okay, but what about dinosaurs? Were they there too? How did they fit?

· There were dinosaurs on the Ark! I know, it surprised me too! Our trustworthy book, the Bible, tells us when God created the world, he made land animals on day six. That would include land dinosaurs. They were still living at the time of the Flood, because the Bible records information about dinosaurs in the book of Job, which takes place AFTER the flood. So land dinosaurs would have to have gotten on the Ark. But who says the biggest dinosaurs got on? Some dinosaurs were the size of chickens. The average dinosaur was probably somewhere around the size of a large cow. Furthermore, God wouldn’t bring the biggest, oldest animals, he would send the smaller, younger ones because they would take up less space. Plus, when it was time for the dinosaurs and all other animals to get on the Ark, Noah didn’t have to go searching for them, they came just because God sent them.

· But the Bible tells us Noah and his family and the animals were on the Ark for around a year. How in the world did Noah and his family take care of them for all that time?

· The Bible tells us God is a God of order, since God designed the Ark and sent the animals, God would also have an orderly way for Noah to care for the animals. Scientists have lots of ideas of how it could have happened, you can see these at the Ark Encounter, but the important thing is , we know this account is true history from God’s Word and we can trust that it really happened.

· A wonderful thing about all this is how Noah obeyed God, isn’t it?

· Yes, it definitely is. According to the Bible, when God told Noah to build the Ark, Noah did all God commanded him to do. He obeyed God completely and right way!

· What a great example for us. God wants us to be like Noah and obey too. Well, there are so many more fascinating things we could talk about, but we’re going to have to stop for now, but please use the website that is on your reference sheet to see how science agrees with what the Bible says! What is something you find interesting or didn’t know that we have discussed this evening about Noah and the Ark? Just raise your hand and we’ll call on you.

· Genesis 6:22 says “Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.” Noah loved God and wanted to obey Him, even though I’m sure that was a hard assignment. But that’s the real deal with obeying God—wanting to do it not because we have to, but because we love Him. Our second verse for today is from John 14:15 “If you love Me, keep My commandments.”

· When you love someone, you want to do things to please him. Can you think of an area of your life where it’s hard for you to obey? Maybe it’s obeying your mom or dad, or being kind to your brother or sister, or doing what you’re asked to do as soon as you’re asked, or obeying with a good attitude or not gossiping or watching/looking at only God-honoring TV or computer stuff.

· It is a hard thing to obey, and not just obey, but obey right away and with a good attitude. God wants us to obey with a good attitude. It’s not really obeying if we only do part of what we’re supposed to do. What if Noah would have only built half of the Ark? Or neglected to build the roof? What if he would have decided to wait until he had proof that the flood would actually come and didn’t start building until he felt the first raindrop?

· Remember, the Bible tells us that if we love God, we will obey Him. And when you obey your parents, or those who are in charge of you, it’s like obeying God, because God tells you to obey your parents. Ephesians 1:6 says “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.”

· Noah obeyed God, he didn’t talk back to Him, or have a bad attitude, or delay. The Bible tells us Noah did what was right and he obeyed everything God told him to do.

· Wow, that’s pretty incredible. Noah was like a superhero, right?!

· No, he was just a guy, and he was a sinner too. But he loved God and wanted to please Him. I’m sure he talked to God all the time and asked God to help him obey. And that’s what we need to do too!

· Later tonight, share one thing in which we want to ask God to help us obey Him with our families. We can only obey God’s grace and with His power, so let’s ask Him to help us be obedient, even in the small things!

Teaching Time 2 (approx. 7 min)

· The Bible tells us in 2 Peter 2:5 that Noah was a preacher of righteousness, so we can imagine that while he was building the Ark, he would have been telling people about the Lord (although the Bible doesn’t tell us specifically when Noah preached).

· This went on for many years, but nobody believed him except his family, there were probably people who mocked Noah.

· Genesis 7:1-9 says “Then the Lord said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation. 2 Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals,[a] the male and his mate, and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, 3 and seven pairs[b] of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth. 4 For in seven days I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing[c] that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground.” 5 And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.6 Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth. 7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood. 8 Of clean animals, and of animals that are not clean, and of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground, 9 two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah.”

· The pairs represented “kinds” of animals, not every single animal species. An animal “kind” can be defined, in a broad sense, as a group of animals that share common characteristics and can interbreed (or have babies of that kind). For instance, today we have a wide variety of dogs, but Noah would have only needed to take one pair of dogs that represented that “kind.” From these dogs on the Ark have come all the variety we have today.

· Genesis 7:16 says “And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him. And the Lord shut him in.” Amazing! Noah didn’t have to gather the animals, or even shut the door! God did it!

· Genesis 7:11 says “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.”

The “fountains of the deep” was referring to the bottom of the ocean where the ocean floor would have broken open, releasing enormous amounts of water stored underneath. Amidst this upheaval, there would also have been volcanoes erupting and earthquakes going off and all kind of other cataclysmic action down there from the breaking open of the deep. The Bible also mentions the windows of heaven were opened, pelting the earth with enormous amounts of rain from above.

· Genesis 7:12 says “And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights.” How many days did it rain?

· Genesis 7:17-20 says “17 The flood continued forty days on the earth. The waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. 18 The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters. 19 And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. 20 The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits[a] deep.”

The Ark would have risen high above the earth on the waters and all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered. Even mountains (not the mountains we have today; those were formed during and after the Flood) were covered. This flood covered the whole earth, not just part of the earth. If it hadn’t covered the whole earth, people and animals could have just moved to the unflooded parts of the earth.

· Genesis 7:21-24 says “21 And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind. 22 Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. 23 He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark. 24 And the waters prevailed on the earth 150 days.”

· What an incredible story! I can’t even imagine all the craziness that happened when the earth opened up and the earth was completely covered in water. But even more incredible, is that God saw fit to make a way for Noah and his family to be saved from destruction because they trusted in God.

· Right from the beginning, God said that the punishment for sin is death. The Flood was God’s judgment on the sinfulness of the people during Noah’s day. Those people during Noah’s day sinned, and they died. When they died, they were not in God’s family, so they were separated from god’s goodness forever and went to live in a terrible place they could never get out of.

· The good news is God doesn’t want his people to be separated from Him either. He loves us and wants us to be part of His family. So just like He offered a way for Noah and his family to be saved from His judgment on sin, God offers a way for us to be saved from His judgment on sin so we can be in His family and live with Him forever.

· As awesome as the things have been that we have talked about tonight, tomorrow night we will hear the very best news ever. So be sure to come back tomorrow night for more fun as we learn about how we can apply the story of Noah and the Flood to our lives today!