Written by: Paula-Marie Leech

Genesis 9 v 7-11
“As for you, Noah, I want you and your family to have many children, to grow in number on the earth, and to become many.”
Then God said to Noah and his sons, “Now I am making my agreement with you and your people who will live after you, and with every living thing that is with you—the birds, the tame and the wild animals, and with everything that came out of the boat with you—with every living thing on earth. I make this agreement with you: I will never again destroy all living things by a flood. A flood will never again destroy the earth.”

Notes
The story of Noah is a very familiar one, which I remember hearing many times during my childhood and now I read the same story to my daughter. The problem with the Noah story is that because we think we know the story, we often don’t read the whole story. We read about the ark and the flood, the dove and the rainbow but for most of us the story stops there. But there’s more, and the next part of the story isn’t all quite so cute and lovely.

God shows Noah how special he is to him by revealing that he wants the earth to be filled with Noah’s family. He then goes even further than this and gives Noah and his family a promise that will last through all generations that he will never again destroy the whole earth by a flood. For most of us floods are something that happen to other people, we see them being reported on the news, we feel sorry for the people involved and in a few weeks we have forgotten all about it. For those who have been involved in floods the memories will be much longer lasting I’m sure. 

If we think about the worst recent floods there have been, for me Bangladesh springs to mind, although this was a huge disaster, people lost their lives, their families and their homes, it was only one country. It is almost impossible to imagine that kind of flooding in every country at the same time, but that is what Noah and his family actually experienced. When we think about Noah’s experience, we realise how important God’s promise would have been to Noah, how important are God’s promises to us? 

Genesis 9 v 12-17
And God said, “This is the sign of the agreement between me and you and every living creature that is with you. I am putting my rainbow in the clouds as the sign of the agreement between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and a rainbow appears in them, I will remember my agreement between me and you and every living thing. Floods will never again destroy all life on the earth. When the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and I will remember the agreement that continues forever between me and every living thing on the earth.”
So God said to Noah, “The rainbow is a sign of the agreement that I made with all living things on earth.”

Notes
When we make promises we use words, and no matter how sincere those words are, we at sometime will make those words meaningless by breaking our promise. How many of us have said something like I promise never to do that again and then days, weeks, months or years later have done the exact same thing that we promised we would never do. 

Fortunately God does not break his promises like we do, when God promises us something he keeps his word forever. When people get married the exchanging of rings is a sign or symbol of their love for each other. The circle represents the unending love they share, their ring is something that reminds them of the vows they made on their wedding day. God also uses a sign for his promise to us, the rainbow; this reminds God of the agreement that he made with all living things on earth. 

How many of us remember what God’s promise is, when we see a rainbow? Do we remember that God is love and will never again destroy the whole earth by floods? Or do we just think about how pretty it is and look to see how clearly we can see all the colours? The rainbow is a sign of God’s promise but it also tells us something about God. A rainbow is like God; it is in a sense always there, but not always visible, it has no end, we can sometimes see it clearly, but sometimes we only see part of it very faintly. We gaze with awe and wonder at such an amazing and beautiful object made by our creator.

Genesis 9 v 18-23
The sons of Noah who came out of the boat with him were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) These three men were Noah’s sons, and all the people on earth came from these three sons.
Noah became a farmer and planted a vineyard. When he drank wine made from his grapes, he became drunk and lay naked in his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, looked at his naked father and told his brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth got a coat and, carrying it on both their shoulders, they walked backwards into the tent and covered their father. They turned their faces away so that they did not see their father’s nakedness.

Notes
Let us think for a moment about Noah, he is chosen by God from everybody else on the entire earth to survive the great flood that was to wipe out the rest of the planet. You don’t have to think too hard before you realise that God must have thought Noah was pretty special. 

So what went wrong? Well Noah, like the rest of us, is human and he also made mistakes. Noah drank too much of his homemade wine and consequently became drunk, he lay naked in his tent. Well, in our society today for some people this would be a non-too unusual Saturday morning! But for Noah it was different, he was a man of God, he knew right from wrong as did his sons. Shem and Japheth do the right thing and cover their father allowing him to have some dignity on his awakening. It is interesting to look at how Shem and Japheth cover their father, they don’t just go in and lay a coat over his body; they also turn their faces away in order not to see their father’s nakedness. At every step they take into account their father’s feelings for when he awakes, they look away because they know their father will feel embarrassment and shame when he awakes and those feelings will be heightened if they have seen him in this kind of state. 

Along with so many other well-known Bible characters Noah fails. He not only fails God but he also fails himself. How many times have we gone too far in what we have been doing and consequently failed God and failed ourselves? How often do we help people through their mistakes? Or do we just sit and judge how good a Christian they are. 

Genesis 9 v 24-28
Noah was sleeping because of the wine. When he woke up and learned what his youngest son, Ham, had done to him, he said,
“May there be a curse on Canaan!
May he be the lowest slave to his brothers.”
Noah also said,
“May the LORD, the God of Shem, be praised!
May Canaan be Shem’s slave.
May God give more land to Japheth.
May Japheth live in Shem’s tents, and may Canaan be their slave.”
After the flood Noah lived 350 years. He lived a total of 950 years, and then he died.

Notes
We read yesterday in Genesis 9 v 18-23 about Noah’s drunkenness and today we look at his reaction. When Noah wakes and hears what Ham has done he is angry and punishes him and his family. Noah then praises Shem and Japheth and gives them a blessing. We have to ask why is Noah so outraged with Ham? Is it because he is overreacting? Or does he secretly prefer Shem and Japheth? Or is he just in a bad mood because he’s got a hangover? It is more likely that he is actually objecting to Ham gossiping to his brothers about the shameful state his father was in instead of quietly doing something about it. 

Ham is not the only person that loves to gossip, our whole society loves gossip. Newspapers and magazines encourage us to gossip about the rich and famous. Friends encourage us to gossip about people we know. Gossip is part of our society and it is this that makes it so hard not to join in and become involved. There are also those people who would deny that they ever gossip, but are we gossiping when we listen to what is being said, but say nothing? King Solomon wrote a proverb that says 
Gossip is so tasty! How we love to swallow it! Proverbs 26 v 22

Father, 
Help us not to be drawn into gossiping about others, but enable us to do what is right in your eyes. Help us defend those who are unable to defend themselves, give us compassion for those suffering from malicious rumours and untruths, and give us the confidence to speak out for others.

Amen 

Genesis 11 v 1-4
At this time the whole world spoke one language, and everyone used the same words. As people moved from the east, they found a plain in the land of Babylonia and settled there.
They said to each other, “Let’s make bricks and bake them to make them hard.” So they used bricks instead of stones, and tar instead of mortar. Then they said to each other, “Let’s build a city and a tower for ourselves, whose top will reach high into the sky. We will become famous. Then we will not be scattered over all the earth.”

Notes
At this time the whole world spoke one language, can you imagine that, everywhere you went everybody would understand your language. There would be no language barrier, children in school wouldn’t learn a second language, and nobody would be bilingual. It is almost inconceivable now that the world could have been so unified that everyone spoke the same language. But things were not so different at that time there were still those people who wanted to be famous, wanted to be above everyone else and wanted to stay in their own clique.

I find it quite scary how little we have learnt from others over the years. The people who settled in Babylonia were selfish ‘let’s build a city and a tower for ourselves,’ it is the same me, me, me society that we live in today. No thought of others, let’s just do it for ourselves! ‘We will become famous’ see it’s not just the new big brother contestants who do anything for fame and fortune! We then get to the largest concern ‘Then we will not be scattered over all the earth.’ How we as people love to be together in our little groups, you see it happen from infant school to adulthood, groups of people huddled together, people scared to go or talk to anyone outside the group they know. 

We need to change this perception of Christians being a ‘holy huddle’ unwilling to talk to or spend time with someone they don’t know. God directs us to be the opposite of this. He wants us to be going out to meet people where they are at, learning their language and putting others needs before our own.

Genesis 11 v 5-9
The LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the people had built. The LORD said, “Now, these people are united, all speaking the same language. This is only the beginning of what they will do. They will be able to do anything they want. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not be able to understand each other.”
So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. The place is called Babel since that is where the LORD confused the language of the whole world. So the LORD caused them to spread out from there over the whole world.

Notes
The Lord when he saw the city the people were building said ‘Now, these people are united, all speaking the same language. This is only the beginning of what they will do. They will be able to do anything they want.’ God realised that the people would crave power and eventually would decide one of two things, either that they didn’t need God or that they were as powerful as God. Neither of these options would have been for the good of the people in Babylonia. So God decided to confuse the language enabling the natural breakdown of communication and power. 

We can learn a lot from this in our everyday life we communicate with people all the time. How often is our communication poor? How often do we mean to tell someone something but we forget? How often do we not communicate because of our own insecurities? As part of the church surely we must realise that if Jesus is to have any power in our community and our nation we as a church and we as people must communicate with others and with God effectively and efficiently. As we think about the different forms of communication we have available to us today; telephones, letters, faxes, emails and pagers to name but a few. Who is it that we need to communicate with today? 

Genesis 11 v 27-32
This is the family history of Terah. Terah was the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Haran was the father of Lot. While his father, Terah, was still alive, Haran died in Ur in Babylonia, where he was born. Abram and Nahor both married. Abram’s wife was named Sarai, and Nahor’s wife was named Milcah. She was the daughter of Haran, who was the father of both Milcah and Iscah. Sarai was not able to have children.
Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot (Haran’s son), and his daughter-in-law Sarai (Abram’s wife) and moved out of Ur of Babylonia. They had planned to go to the land of Canaan, but when they reached the city of Haran, they settled there.

Notes
‘They had planned to go to the land of Canaan, but when they reached the city of Haran, they settled there.’ This part of the reading reminded me what great planners often are. We plan all sorts of things, what we will do for our holidays, to what we will be doing in 10/15 years time. We also have expectations of where we should be in our career and personal lives. Terah, Abram, Sarai and Lot had also made plans to live in Canaan, but when they got to the city of Haran they settled there instead. 

The question we want to ask is WHY? Why did they change their minds? Was it God who told them to stay in Haran? Or was Haran closer and they couldn’t be bothered to walk to Canaan? I think the probable answer would be that God directed them to Haran because that is where they needed to be for God to use them in the way that he wanted to. How many times have we made plans that haven’t come to fruition? At the time it can be disappointing and frustrating, but afterwards we see that it was part of God’s plan for us. Do we seek God’s will when are making plans for the future? Do we listen to God when he moves us in a different direction? Are we obedient to God when we know his will for us? When I am struggling with decisions and plans for the future I often think of this song.

Father I place into your hands
The things that I can’t do.
Father I place into your hands
The things that I’ve been through.
Father I place into your hands
The way that I should go,
For I know I always can trust you.

Jenny Hewer

word-on-the-web uses the Scripture text taken from the Youth Bible, New Century Version (Anglicised Edition) copyright 1993 by Word Publishing Milton Keynes