Do you want to know what the problem with children’s Sunday School is? It’s that you get certain bible stories ingrained in you, and you hear them so often that you believe you know everything about them. Then when you get older and you look at the same stories you can say to yourself (without even knowing it) “I’ve got this. I understand this lesson. This will be just a review for me.” Let me be the first to admit this. I did this all the time. I can’t count the times that I heard stories of Adam and Eve, of the towel of Babel, of Abram Isaac and Jacob, etcetera etcetera…
Hearing the stories over and over again isn’t a bad thing. It is good to revisit the classics. But we need to be able to get something out of each visit. What if we asked ourselves “what is there that I haven’t thought of before with this story?”
Take the story of Noah and the flood, for instance. It is hard to make it through a year or two of children’s Sunday school without talking about the ark. Everyone has heard of this story. Everyone knows everything about it, right?
I doubt it.
For starters, Noah isn’t much of a main character. He just doesn’t have many lines. The first quote from him is after the flood is gone.
What about Noah’s character? What kind of person was he? Here is how he is introduced to the biblical reader:
Genesis 6:9-22
9 This is the account of Noah and his family.
Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. 10 Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.
11 Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 13 So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. 14 So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high. 16 Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit high all around. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. 17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. 18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. 19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. 21 You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them.”
22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.
So right off the bat we know he was a righteous man, which means that he had some sort of relationship with God. That sounds good. And then we are told that he was “blameless among the people of his time.” What an interesting way of describing him, especially since right after this we are told that the people of his time were corrupt. So, compared to bad people Noah was blameless. That isn’t much of a comparison to me. It is like saying look at this dime surrounded by a lot of pennies. Doesn’t the dime look great? But what if you moved that dime to a table full of quarters? How does it stack up then?
Do you consider Noah to be a biblical hero? On the surface the answer is an immediate yes. Maybe that is the right answer. What does it mean to be a bible hero anyway? Is that title given to someone who obeys God? Perhaps. Noah certainly did that. Noah obeyed God without question. But let’s look later in the same chapter at a similar circumstance.
Genesis 19:20-33
20 Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous 21 that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.”
22 The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord.[d] 23 Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? 24 What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare[e] the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? 25 Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
26 The Lord said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”
27 Then Abraham spoke up again: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, 28 what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five people?”
“If I find forty-five there,” he said, “I will not destroy it.”
29 Once again he spoke to him, “What if only forty are found there?”
He said, “For the sake of forty, I will not do it.”
30 Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?”
He answered, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.”
31 Abraham said, “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?”
He said, “For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.”
32 Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?”
He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.”
33 When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.
Did Abraham ever question God? The answer is yes. So did Moses, and so did Mary with Jesus. Jacob actually wrestled with God. Those things are considered good things, with good outcomes.
God told Abraham he was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham argued against it.
God told Noah he was going to destroy the whole world, and Noah said nothing.
What was the consequence of not questioning God? Everyone died around him. There was no redemption. It must have been a horrible sight. This is a story of unimaginable tragedy. What was it like for Noah after the flood, do you think? We get the first and only words Noah said recorded afterwards:
Genesis 9:18-28
Genesis 9:18-28
18 The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) 19 These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the whole earth.
20 Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded[a] to plant a vineyard. 21 When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. 22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. 23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.
24 When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said,
“Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
will he be to his brothers.”
26 He also said,
“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Shem!
May Canaan be the slave of Shem.
27
May God extend Japheth’s[b] territory;
may Japheth live in the tents of Shem,
and may Canaan be the slave of Japheth.”
28 After the flood Noah lived 350 years. 29 Noah lived a total of 950 years, and then he died.
You could argue that this whole story drove Noah to drink. After what he must have witnessed, can you blame him?
What can happen when you struggle with God? What can happen when you argue with God? According to the bible you can come out of it a better person. I don’t know about you but I find comfort in the idea that struggling with God is ok. Struggling means you haven’t given up. It means you are wrestling with issues, trying to make sense of them. Struggling with God means you include God in your thinking and actions. You try to become a better person.
Noah is a fascinating character, and we can learn a lot by seeing what he did. We can also learn just as much by seeing what he didn’t do.
God Bless