Nov 06 2005

Genesis 6

Category: Genesis All Over Again — dryvetyme @ 14:50

Who Built the Ark? Noah! Noah!
Or
How the World Generally Sucked, Big-Time

There are two general sections to this chapter: 1) WHY God chose to brings a worldwide flood of massively destructive proportions and 2) HOW God chose to protect a tiny remnant from that worldwide flood of massively destructive proportions. Yes, it’s really that simple, but not really. I feel that our goal with these chapters (Genesis 6 – 9) will be to truly tell these stories to our children and not sell them short on their depth, breadth, and substance.

If you’ve sat in (or taught) as many Sunday School lessons on Noah and the Ark as I have in my 26 years of living, you’ll remember that most lessons on Noah take about one week to go over, with Genesis 6 comprising about 2 to 3 lines of that lesson. Those lines would probably read like this: “During Noah’s time on the earth, the people were very wicked and only did evil things in the sight of God. However, since Noah was the only righteous and blameless person amongst his people, God chose to save Noah and his family. God told Noah to build a big boat/ark, capture two kinds of every animal, and generally keep obeying.” Or something to that effect… Now, I’m not diminishing the truth of those 3 sentences, but there is so much that we should be focusing on with presenting those concepts.

Let’s break this down.
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Nov 06 2005

Genesis 5

Category: Genesis All Over Again — dryvetyme @ 14:34

Chronology
Family Tree
“The Begats”
Family Ties

This will be a difficult chapter to work through, whether we’re talking about the different Sunday School classes or a pastor talking through this chapter in main service. Chapters like these always make congregations fall asleep, probably because they’re not approached in the right context or for the right purposes. What should be focused on primarily are the three following sections: v1-5 (Adam), v18-24 (Enoch), and v28-32 (Noah). Chris will (should most likely) have his The Voice/screenplay paraphrase of Genesis 5 ready Sunday morning to hand out as a reference, but I would also like the teacher to read through these verses out of another version. At a minimum, The Message can be used, but I would prefer the NIV, ESV, or NLT (or something similar) to be used in conjunction with The Voice.

1) Verses 1-5: We see that, even with the death of Abel at the hands of Cain and Cain’s permanent exile, God blesses Adam and Eve with the birth of Seth as well as many other children and many years of life (930 to be exact). Remind the kids that, even with the most horrible and tragic of circumstances, God does bless His children again and again. Furthermore, talk to the kids about how, while the names of the Moms are NOT mentioned in this chapter, a family is made complete (and biologically possible) by the inclusion of the Mother. Family lines are not accurate unless Mother is talked about and regarded as absolutely essential and necessary. We love our mothers!
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