After the Flood

Genesis 8 – 9        Review Activities for this Lesson

Do you know why God gave the first rainbow? It still has meaning for us today. All nations during Noah’s time handed down stories to their children and grandchildren about the great flood. Knowing all about it should have made them want to worship a God so powerful. Doesn’t it make you know that God will keep his promises?

After the flood, God spoke to Noah, saying “Go out of the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your son’s wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that is with you: birds and cattle and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth so that they may abound on the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”

Everyone went out of the ark as God commanded. They built an altar there to the Lord and offered sacrifices of every clean animal and every clean bird. This worship showed that they recognized God’s great power. They were giving thanks to Him for saving them from the flood.

After the flood, God blessed Noah and his sons. He told them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. He told them some other important things, too. God said that now they could have animals for food. Now they could eat the beasts of the earth, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea.

God made one thing very clear, however. Man was to kill only animals - - he must never take the life of another human being. This is because man is created in the image of God. If a man murdered another person, the murderer’s life was to be taken, too. And if an animal killed a man, that animal had to die, too.

This shows how special each person is to God. It tells us we also should respect every other person because that man is made in God’s image. Young and old, male and female, red and white, black and yellow - - all of us are special before God.

Sometimes we see people being murdered on television. It happens so often that nobody seems to think much about it. The Bible says this is what happens when people do not keep God in their minds - - they forget that people are His special creation made in His own image.

As you grow older you will have different feelings for different people. This is because you get to know and love some people better than others. But there is a kind of love that we must try to have for everyone. That is the kind of love that makes us want and work for what is good for the other person. Later, in the New Testament Jesus said we should love other people like we love ourselves. We should always try to treat other people like we would want them to treat us.

God made a promise to Noah after He had talked to him about murder. It is a promise that is still important for us today. God said. “All flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood, neither shall there be again a flood to destroy the earth.” There may be floods in a town or city but there will never be another flood like the one which covered the whole earth.

God put a beautiful rainbow in the sky for a sign of His promise. Noah could look at the rainbow and remember - - and we can look at rainbows today and think about that first rainbow. That promise is for us, too. God will never again let the waters of the earth become a flood to destroy all living things.

TALKING IT OVER

1. Do you think the flood made Noah’s family believe in God more strongly?
2. God said that after the flood the seasons would continue as long as the earth stands. What do the seasons tell us about God?
3. Noah’s family had much for which to thank God. Do you? God says the cure for complaining is giving thanks for what He has done for us.

MEMORY VERSE

“While the earth remains, seed-time and harvest and cold and heat, and winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease.” Genesis 8:22

Credits
Text by Betty Belue Haynes, originally published in Bible Talk Times. Used here with the kind permission of the author. Users are free to reproduce for use, but not for publication.