Lesson 5 - The Flood:
Two Lifestyles and Their Results
Genesis 6-7 - www.bible.com/bible/59/gen.6

Does it really make much difference how we live? Good so often goes unrewarded while evil persists without punishment. No wonder we find life so disappointing. Even though these chapters don't answer all our questions, they show that eventually God's justice becomes evident in human affairs.

The last chapter recorded how sin became more open and noticeable in Cain's family. Now the author describes the spread of this moral cancer throughout the human race. He contrasts two very different ways of living and their results.

God looked for someone who would follow Him, and He found Noah. Have you ever felt like you are the only one following God and everyone else around you is going their own way?

God asked Noah to do something he didn’t understand, for a situation he had never before experienced. God told Noah to build an ark because there would be a flood. Noah had never heard of a flood before, because there had never been rain before. No rain, ever, anywhere on earth.

But please notice how God gave Noah everything he needed to be able to build this ark to withstand something he’d never even heard of. Noah couldn’t know the kinds of storms his ark had to endure. He couldn’t even imagine how long he and his family would live inside this thing made of wood and lined with pitch. But he followed God’s instructions to the smallest details.


And while he built, he also preached what was coming. Not a single person he spoke to about God’s coming judgment had ever heard of rain either. In Matthew 24:38 Jesus compares the time before His return to these days when Noah preached God’s warnings. We today also cannot imagine what God’s judgment on this earth will really be like, but He asks us to be just as faithful to spread His warnings as Noah was in his time. God’s judgment of evil is coming, and there will be only one way of escape from this judgment too, just as there was only one way in Noah’s time. Jesus is our way of escape. Believing in Him, asking Him to save us by His grace is the only safe place for anyone.

*What words in Genesis 6:5 and 11 emphasize the extent of the wickedness in this time?
*From recent newspaper headlines or front-page stories, how do you see our civilization looking like the one in which Noah lived?
*In what situations have you felt embarrassed because of your obedience to God?
*The New Testament compares the severe judgment in the days of Noah with the judgment that will be poured out at the return of Christ. How can you urge those around you to seek refuge in Christ?