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Section 1: Opening Prayer
Gracious God help us to hear this story for what it is, a new beginning, like so many new beginnings in your word and in your world. Guide us to be open to you and to each other. Amen.
Section 2: Story
Why do you think God was displeased with creation?
Do you think you would have been identified as Noah was as being up right and walking with the Lord?
Watch the Trailer for Noah
How has your view of the story changed?
How many people were there on the ark, and how many were left behind?
What do you think of the answer given by Noah to the question is this the end?
Section 3: Message
Read Genesis 6-9
What is a topic in the news now that has caught your eye or attention.
- Is this good or evil?
- Is the state of the world today good or evil?
- Do you think the Lord would destroy the world now?
Notice in the story we read that God’s promise is to never destroy the world again in the same way…
- Did the flood rid the world of sin/Evil?
- How does the promise help us when we realize that sin is still present?
- How does God saving the animals effect us in living out the conventional promise He gives us?
What does the story mean and how is God’s destruction of creation an end or a new beginning, same as the new beginning we get in Baptism.
How does the new creation/restoring of creation mimic our renewal in baptism?
How big was the ark?
Genesis 6:15 This is how you are to make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits.
How big is this?
In modern measurements, the ark would have been around 450 feet (140 m) long, 75 feet (23 m) wide, and 45 feet (14 m) high, yielding a displacement of about 43,000 tons (about 39 million kg). The inside capacity would have been 1.4 million cubic feet (39,644 cubic m), with an approximate total deck area of 95,700 square feet (8,891 square m).
Lane T. Dennis and Wayne Grudem, eds., The ESV Study Bible (Accordance electronic ed. Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2008), n.p.
As I read this I wondered how big 1,400,000 cubic feet was..
See this tells you how to make a 1 cubic foot cube with 49,152 pennies… So we would need 68,812,800,000 pennies to make the 1.4 million cubic feet.
The size of the deck in 8,891 sq m is just about the size of the land in the state of New Hampshire – which is 8,969 sq m.
Section 4: Learn and Engage
– What are 3 things you learned?
– What is 1 question you still have?
– What part of the lesson did you most identify with?
– What part of the lesson was hardest for you?
– Where have you seen God this week?
Part 5: Closing Prayer
Gracious God, you promised to never destroy the world again by a flood. Help us to work in and through the world so that it might not be destroyed again. Help us to be open to your moving and available like Noah to be used by you for the betterment of the world. Amen.