THE BIRTH OF JOHN AND JESUS (SPECIAL LIFE OF CHRIST STUDY)

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This week we have received more than a generous amount of rain. In fact, we were under a tornado warning on Tuesday evening. About five years ago the area where we live was hit by a tornado, and many people lost their homes. People here get very anxious when we get severe weather. They have lived through it, and they are afraid.

Everywhere we have lived, when there would be a considerable amount of rain, someone would say, “We are going to need an ark if this keeps up.” Or they will say, “I feel like Noah must have felt.” We laugh and comment in other ways, but the story of Noah and the flood is one of the scariest stories in Scripture.

When we lived in Kentucky, a lady told me a story about a Sunday school teacher who taught this lesson to a class of four and five-year-olds. She evidently made the story so realistic that the next time it rained, the parents of one of the little girls in the class found their child hiding in a closet, screaming. She was terrified that she was going to drown.

I don’t recommend stressing the death of all but eight people in the flood when we teach the story to children, but I’m afraid we don’t stress it enough when we study it as adults. That story is real. It is not fiction, and there are some great lessons that can be learned from it.

• Noah was a righteous man, and he preached to save others. For 120 years Noah tried to get the people to repent, but they would not. The world was so wicked that they wouldn’t listen to the warnings. The lesson for us is to teach the Word and obey it ourselves. If no one accepts it, we have done what we need to do.
• God gave Noah a task—build a boat that would protect him and his family from the harm that was to come. Noah built that boat exactly like he was told. He did not insert his own will or do it his way. He did it God’s way. We must carry the gospel wherever we go, teaching exactly what God commanded. We can’t insert our own view or change what the gospel says.
• When the rain began, the Lord shut the door. All the work was finished, the people had lost their chance to enter a place of safety, only Noah and his family were safe. He had done everything he could do. We have to do everything we can do to share the gospel with others.
• God always keeps His promises. Can you imagine the scene? Animals would have been struggling to keep their heads above water. People would have been beating on the door, crying, pleading, begging for another chance. The earth, once luscious, now lay in ruins. All of this happened because “the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5, ESV). God said it would happen, and Noah told the people it would happen. “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” (Genesis 7:23). God kept His promise.
  

So it will be with us. The people of Noah’s day refused to get serious about their sins. They allowed their hearts to turn from God and live in the wickedness of the earth. They became content in their sin. Paul warns us of God’s judgment, just as Noah warned of His judgment. He will repay with affliction those who have afflicted the people of God. He will take vengeance on those who do not know God and those that do not obey the gospel. Those that are disobedient will suffer eternal punishment and destruction (Second Thessalonians 1:5-12). For the obedient and the faithful, they will be glorified. They will be rewarded with a heavenly home.

Remember that God always keeps His promises. He will keep them for the faithful and the unfaithful. Let’s get serious about sin. Let’s remember Noah and the destruction of the earth. Let’s obey the gospel, teach it to others, and be faithful to death to receive our crown of righteousness.

Sandra Oliver