that have been given in the pupil’s book without being first presented
in the class, it will be interesting to see how well the children have
succeeded in getting at the facts.)
What was our picture for this last week? How many people were there in
it? What were they doing? What was the name of the man who is called “the
father of all who play upon the harp and the organ”? So we found from our
Book which tells us of the beginnings of things, that way back in the
ages of long ago people learned how to make instruments of music and to
play upon them. To-day we have wonderful instruments, great pipe organs,
violins, pianos, cornets and other instruments of brass, and whenever
we see these or hear their music we will remember that the Bible tells
us that the one who first thought of making music in that way was named
Jubal.
When a man is taking care of large herds of cattle, what does he need to
find for them? It is not easy to find pasture for a great many cattle,
and it would be very tiresome and even impossible to go back every night
to the home. It would not be comfortable to sleep on the ground with no
protection from the rain or cold. Who was it that first thought of having
a tent to live in, and carrying it with him wherever he went? So Jabal
was the father of all such as take care of cattle and live in tents. Are
there any people to-day who live in tents all their lives?
(With a class of boys the reference to Tubal-cain could be introduced
by asking for a penknife and getting the pupils to tell of the man who
first thought of making tools and weapons out of metal. Ask if anything
is being invented to-day. Lead the children to see that the possibilities
of discovery and invention are by no means exhausted, and help them to
realize the wisdom and love of God in giving to man power to think out
such things.)
LESSON 6
The Building of the Ark
=Teaching Material.=—Genesis 6:5 to 7:5.
=Pupil’s Reading.=—Genesis 6:5, 9, 14-22.
=Memory Text.=—Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so
did he. Genesis 6:22.
LIGHT FROM OTHER BIBLE PASSAGES
Psalm 103:17, 18; Proverbs 1:33; 19:16; Jeremiah 18:7-10; Ezekiel
33:14-16; Matthew 24:35-39.
FROM THE COMMENTATORS
The narrative here becomes more circumstantial than it has been in
chapters four and five, for the Flood is the first event of crucial
importance since the Creation and the beginnings of man upon earth
(chapters one to three), of which Hebrew tradition told. The Flood marks
the end of a past age and the beginning of a new one; it is thus an event
in which the purposes of God may be expected to declare themselves with
peculiar distinctness; and it is, accordingly, treated as the occasion
of a great manifestation both of judgment (chapter 6) and of mercy (8:15
to 9:17). The Flood is a judgment upon a degenerate race: Noah, with
his family, is delivered from it on account of his righteousness; as
humanity starts upon its course afresh, new promises and new blessings
are conferred upon it.—_The Book of Genesis_, _S. R. Driver_.
What, then, is the purpose of inspiration? Is it to insure that we shall
have clear and infallible information on certain questions of geology and
astronomy, or on the way in which God created the heavens and the earth?
Is it to keep us from mistakes about the history of Israel?... Surely
not. God had no intention of giving us an encyclopedia of scientific
knowledge, and thus depriving us of the discipline of acquiring such
knowledge for ourselves.... Inspiration is concerned with what is to
us of infinitely more importance—even the guidance of our conduct,
the building up of noble characters for God. It has been well said
that conduct forms three fourths of human life, and it is with these
three fourths that the inspired writings have to do. Their inspiration
therefore consists not so much in their infallible science or minutely
accurate details of history, as in their teaching God’s will and God’s
relation to men.... These writings concern themselves with the great
moral and spiritual facts, duty, character, moral responsibility, the
happiness that comes from harmony with the will of God. Their object is
to teach the eternal contrast between Righteousness and Unrighteousness,
Obedience and Disobedience, Selfishness and Self-sacrifice, Purity and
Lust; to teach men that God is on the side of holiness and good, that his
help and sympathy are near in the fierce fight with temptation, and that
even when the fight is lost and the life defiled, there is a way back to
holiness and God if men will but earnestly seek it.—_How God Inspired the
Bible_, _J. Paterson Smyth_.
They (the Scriptures) conveyed to the Hebrews, and they still convey to
us, the worthiest conceptions of God and of His relation to the world and
men. They are a standing witness to the fact that the nation of Israel
enjoyed a peculiar revelation of the true God. If the “folk-lore” of the
Hebrews, like that of all other peoples, was inconsistent at many points
with our modern knowledge of nature and history, yet it was so purified
among them, under the guidance of the Spirit of God, from all taint of
heathenism, that, as it stands in the opening chapters of Genesis, it
contains nothing inconsistent either with the religion of Jehovah or with
the fuller revelation of Jesus Christ.—_The One Volume Bible Commentary_,
_J. R. Dummelow_.
AIM
=To present the ideal of unquestioning obedience to the commands of God,
and through the story to deepen the impulse to choose and do the right.=
LESSON PREPARATION
A careful study of the passage of Scripture assigned for the teacher in
this lesson presents much that is interesting and many points that are
puzzling. For one’s own information and satisfaction it would be well
to read the article on the Deluge in any good Bible dictionary and to
consult commentaries on the narrative. But in preparing the lesson for
the pupil attention must be centered on the story as given in the verses
that the pupil is to read. The simple account of the one man who was
“righteous,” “perfect [or blameless] in his generation,” and who “walked
with God” in loving obedience, when the “wickedness of man was great in
the earth,” and “every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only
evil continually,” is one that makes a strong appeal to the children. The
building of the ark; the surprise of the people as they saw a boat built
upon dry land, and their undoubted ridicule of Noah; his opportunity
for preaching righteousness; the completion of the ark and the going
in of the animals, Noah and his family, are the elements of a story of
surpassing interest, which carries also a strong religious impression in
its emphasis upon obedience and its reward. The negative side should not
be dwelt upon.
The teacher will need to note carefully just the point in the story
where this lesson ends. The story is so generally told as a whole,
including the building of the ark, its completion, the going in of
animals and people, the coming of the rain, the rising of the waters, the
final settling of the ark on dry land, and the going out of Noah and his
family and the animals, that the natural tendency will be to encroach
upon next week’s lesson without meaning to do so.
LESSON PRESENTATION
Introduction
(Have your Work Book open at page 14.) We had some rules last week in our
Work Book, and they were headed, “How to Have a Happy Home.” How many of
you read those rules? Suppose I read them very carefully now, and you
see if you think any of them might be left out of the list. Which one of
these rules do you think is the hardest of all to obey? (If the children
do not speak of it themselves, call their attention to “Be willing and
obedient,” and explain that it means not simply to do what you are told
to do, but to do it willingly and cheerfully.) It is often hard to obey,
because the command is to do some hard or disagreeable thing, and the
harder it is to obey, the more temptation there is to do unwillingly
what we are told to do, and to be cross about it. When one obeys in that
spirit all the beauty of the obedience is taken away. One who obeys
willingly will soon find that he can obey cheerfully, and it is only such
obedience that is pleasing to the heavenly Father.
The Lesson Story
I have a beautiful story to tell you to-day of a man who obeyed in just
that way. The name of this man was Noah. In his time there were many
people living in the world, but, except Noah and his family, no one of
them cared to please God, and they did not even try to obey him. The
Bible tells us that “the earth was filled with violence,” and that God
said the evil doers must be destroyed. But Noah was not one of these, and
to him God said something like this: “The people are so wicked and cruel
that I shall have to send a flood upon the earth which will destroy all
those who are doing such evil things, but I want you to build an ark in
which you and your wife and children shall be saved.” This ark was to be
a great boat three stories high, with rooms in it, and a large door in
the side. Just as soon as Noah knew what God wanted him to do he bought
the wood and hired carpenters and began the work of building the ark.
(Show the picture for this lesson.) Do you think it was an easy task
to build that ark in a land full of wicked people? Of course, when his
neighbors saw what he was doing they were curious to know what this great
building was to be. When he told them, can you imagine how they would
laugh at him for building a boat on dry land, and how they would laugh
harder still when he said there was to be a flood? It must have been hard
for Noah to stand their ridicule, but he never thought of giving up the
work. He did a braver thing than just keeping on with the building, too,
for all through the years he was at work the Bible says that he was “a
preacher of righteousness.” He told the people of the punishment that
was surely coming, and urged them to give up their wicked ways and do
the sort of things that would be pleasing to the heavenly Father. But
they would not listen, and would not believe what he told them. Still
Noah kept patiently on working and preaching until the ark was finished.
Then God said to his faithful servant, “Before very long I will bring
the flood of waters upon the earth.” Let us read what it says in the
Bible about the things that Noah was to do before the flood came (Genesis
6:19-21). Do you suppose that Noah did all that just as God had told him
to do? Let us read that next verse very carefully together: “Thus did
Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.” Is not that a
splendid thing to be said about any man? Let us read the words again and
then close our books and say them, for that is our memory text this week,
and it is one that we would like always to remember, I am sure.
The Bible says that God told Noah what he wanted him to do. How does God
tell you and me what he wants us to do? (Guide the conversation so that
the children themselves will mention the Bible, God’s message, and the
Sunday school and church where the meaning of the message is explained to
us and where we try to help each other to be doers of the Word. Teachers
at school and those who guide and direct in the home should also be
mentioned.) You see that as you obey these helpers that God has given to
you, you are learning to do according to all that God has commanded you.
What has Jesus said of those who hear the Word of God and keep it? (Luke
11: 28.) “Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did
he.” Shall we not ask the heavenly Father to help us to be so strong to
obey and so willing that something like that may be said of us too?
Prayer
(To be used if the conditions in the room and the spirit of the class
make possible a quiet moment in which heads may be bowed, and the words,
softly spoken by the teacher, heard by all the members of the class.)
Our Father in heaven, we are glad that we have the Bible with its stories
of people who loved and obeyed thee in the long ago. May we learn from
these stories how to be more obedient to-day. Help us to be cheerful,
loving doers of the Word. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.
LESSON 7
THE CORRELATED LESSON
Use your own copy of the pupil’s book, and let the children talk over the
lesson on the Building of the Ark freely and informally. If you should
find that any one of the class has been dwelling in thought upon the
people outside of the ark, and wondering why it was necessary that all
of them should be destroyed, have them read Genesis 6: 11, and help them
to see that people who choose to live in sin cannot be saved from its
consequences. “Evil shall hunt the violent man to overthrow him” (Psalm
140: 11. See also Galatians 6: 7, 8).
People were sowing violence and reaping violence. Human life was not
respected. God’s laws were scorned and ignored. There had to be a new
beginning for the world, if there were to be any people left in it.
Do not refer to this side of the question unless the children speak of
it. If they do, emphasize the patience of God and the warnings that were
given through Noah’s preaching and the added force that his words would
have because of the actual building of the ark going on daily before
their eyes.
Give the children this name drill, telling them not to answer any
question that cannot be answered by a name. Who lived in the Garden of
Eden? Who was told to build an ark? We had a story about two brothers:
what was the name of the older one? The younger? How many people
went into the ark? (This should not be answered because it cannot be
answered by a name.) Who is said to have been the first to make musical
instruments? Who is called the father of all who live in tents? What is
the name of the book in which our lessons are found?
Who is said to have been the first man to think about making weapons and
tools out of metal? What is the name of the first story in the Bible? In
that story what did God make first? What did God call the light? What
name was given to the darkness? What was the gathering together of the
waters called? What is the light that rules the day? What is the lesser
light that rules the night? What other lights are there in the sky at
night?
LESSON 7
The Flood and the Rainbow
=Teaching Material.=—Genesis 7: 6 to 8: 22; 9: 12-17.
=Pupil’s Reading.=—Genesis 8: 6-20; 9: 12-17.
=Memory Text.=—I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token
of a covenant between me and the earth. Genesis 9: 13.
LIGHT FROM OTHER BIBLE PASSAGES
Isaiah 54: 9, 10; Jeremiah 33: 19-21, 25, 26.
FROM THE COMMENTATORS
The Noachian covenant guarantees the stability of natural law. The
covenant with Abraham was confirmed in its promise to Isaac and Jacob and
insured a blessing through their seed to all nations.... Of still greater
significance was the covenant at Horeb or Sinai.... It was really a
constitution given to Israel by God, with appointed promise and penalty,
duly inscribed on the tables of the covenant which were deposited in the
ark.—_Bible Dictionary_, _Hastings_.
As the expulsion from paradise and the exile of Cain gave to mankind
a _new chance_, a fresh start, so with the flood. Wickedness had by
this time so prevailed that the earth needed to be washed from sin; but
God did not repeople it with a new race set above the possibility of
wrong-doing—rather, the race of man was given a new opportunity. The
moral necessity of the catastrophe is emphasized by God’s long attempt—in
the preaching of Noah for a hundred and fifty years—to win men back
to goodness, to induce a voluntary change of heart. The outstanding
feature of the story is the covenant, which henceforth runs through the
history of Israel, and of the spiritual Israel.... The emphasis laid
upon the sanctity of life is especially worthy of note. The sons of Noah
might well have believed that God held life cheap after its widespread
destruction. Observe, therefore, the insistence upon this command, and
that its sanction is still the same as before the almost universal
appalling wickedness—that man is made in the image of God. The principle
of the flood is not destruction but salvation, as was that of the
sentence of death upon Adam. By the flood the danger of departing from
God was emphasized for all generations.—_Telling Bible Stories_, _Louise
Seymour Houghton_.
This word (covenant) occurs some two hundred times in the Old Testament,
and the idea lies at the root of the whole conception of law among the
Jews. Covenants as made between men, form the beginnings of civilized
government.... The word is also used of the relation of God to man; of
his justice, his unchangeable nature, and his protecting power, on the
one side, and the corresponding duties devolving upon man, especially as
embodied in the law of Moses, on the other. A series of covenants (with
Abraham and his successors, with Israel in the wilderness, with David)
runs through Old Testament history. The particular idea in the covenant
with Noah is that of the uniform working of God in nature and of his
loving care for his creation. On these two ideas are based all physical
science, which could not exist if there were no laws of nature, and all
religion, which otherwise would become mere superstitious dread of unseen
powers.—_The One Volume Commentary_, _James R. Dummelow_.
AIM
=To associate the thought of God’s promises with the rainbow, and to show
that his promise is to bless and that our part is to obey=.
LESSON PREPARATION
There are so many details in this story that are interesting to children
that the main task in preparing the lesson, after becoming thoroughly
familiar with those details, is so to arrange the different items that
the climax shall stand out clearly, and the full force be given to the
point of greatest teaching value as stated in the aim of the lesson.
LESSON PRESENTATION
Introduction
One summer day Alice and Kate and Robert were playing out under the trees
on the lawn and having a fine time, when it seemed to them as if the sun
had been put out as suddenly as an electric light is turned off. They
looked up and saw that there were heavy black clouds all over the sky.
“Run,” said Robert, “it is going to rain.” They hurried as fast as they
could, but had barely time to pick up their toys and rush to the veranda
before the rain came down in torrents. They found a sheltered place where
the rain did not beat in and settled themselves to play, but they had
hardly started a new game before the sun shone out as suddenly as it had
disappeared a few minutes before. “It has stopped raining,” said Alice.
“Yes,” said Kate, “but look at those dark clouds.” Robert ran to the
steps that he might see the clouds better, and exclaimed, “O, come quick
and look! It goes all the way across the sky.” What do you suppose he
saw? Have you ever seen a rainbow? What is the first thing you do when
you see one? Probably we all want to do as Robert did and call every one
within calling distance to come and see it, for it is so beautiful. In
the long, long ago I suppose children did that same thing when they saw a
rainbow, but I am sure they did something else too. I think they ran to
their mothers or fathers and said, “Won’t you please tell us the story
of the rainbow?” The story of which those fathers and mothers always
thought when they saw the rainbow and the one which they told to their
children is the one that I am going to tell to you to-day. Perhaps they
called it just what it is called in our books—the Story of the Flood and
the Rainbow. It is another story about the man who built the ark. What
was his name? (Review briefly.) What is the verse which tells us how Noah
obeyed God?
The Lesson Story
Finally there came a day when God told Noah to take into the ark his
wife, his three sons and their wives, together with “every beast after
its kind and all the cattle after their kind and every creeping thing
that creeps on the earth after its kind, and every bird after its kind.
And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two, of all flesh,
wherein is the breath of life.” When all were safely in the door was
shut. Then the rain came and the waters rose high and higher until all
the mountains were covered. Upon the waste of waters the ark floated.
Days and weeks and months went by, still the waters were over everything.
Then God caused a high wind to pass over the earth and the waters began
to go down. One day Noah opened the window of the ark and sent a raven
out and the raven did not come back. Then Noah sent out a dove, but the
dove found no rest for her foot and came back to the ark, and Noah took
her in. After waiting seven days more, Noah sent the dove out again and
at evening time of that day she came back and in her bill she brought an
olive leaf. The olive trees grow only in valleys, so Noah knew that the
water must have dried off the earth. He waited seven days more and sent
the dove out again, but this time she did not return. Then Noah removed
the covering of the ark and looked, and behold the face of the ground was
dry. And God spake to Noah saying, “Go forth from the ark, thou and thy
wife, and thy sons and thy sons’ wives with thee. Bring forth with thee
every living thing, both birds and cattle and every creeping thing that
creepeth upon the earth.”
So Noah and his family once more stood in God’s sunshine upon the dry
land. The first thing that Noah did after leaving the ark was to build an
altar to the Lord and offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving. God was pleased
with Noah’s sacrifice and gave him a promise that never again should
the earth be destroyed by flood, and he said: “While the earth remains,
seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night
shall not cease.” Just then the sun shone brightly against a dark cloud,
and a brilliant rainbow spanned the sky. God said, “This is the sign of
the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature
that is with you, for endless generations. I do set my bow in the cloud,
and it shall be a token of a covenant between me and the earth.”
So with the bow shining against the cloud mothers and fathers told this
story to their children. To them the rainbow was the sign of God’s
covenant—his promise to bless the earth and all who live upon it. They
remembered something else when they saw it and that is that they had
a part in the covenant. God’s part was to bless; theirs to obey. The
rainbow will remind us, too, of God’s promise. When we see it stretching
across the heavens, in our hearts we will praise the heavenly Father for
his loving kindness, and ask him to help us to be his obedient children.
How glad we are that he has said, “for endless generations,” because that
means that his blessing will be for always and always.
THE PUPIL’S BOOK FOR WORK AND STUDY
Show the picture for this lesson and have the children repeat the memory
text as they see the rainbow in the picture.
NOTE.—If you have not already done so, read about the Rainbow Bookmark,
on page 24. You will need one to use in teaching next Sunday’s Correlated
Lesson.
II. STORIES OF THREE PATRIARCHS
LESSON 8
We enter now upon the second period of our course, and for the next
thirteen lessons will follow the fortunes of the three great patriarchs
of Jewish history. The same lesson of simple and unquestioning obedience
is found in these stories, with an occasional negative lesson, showing
the consequences of disobedience. As the promise to Abram points to the
coming of the Messiah, in whom all the nations of the earth were to be
blessed, the Christmas Lesson chosen for this year is upon the Song of
Mary, which ends with a reference to the promise given to her as the
fulfillment of the promise given to Abram.
THE CORRELATED LESSON