A brief overview for Sunday School teachers of Lifeway’s “Explore the Bible” lesson of Genesis 8:10-22 for Sunday, January 14, 2024, with the title, “Land!” 

A video version of this overview is available on YouTube at:

INTRO:  ??? Can you share a time when you celebrated, because God brought you out of a difficult situation???

(FOR EXAMPLE: After I had been sick and out the ministry for two years in 2013-14, the Lord raised me up and I got well, and was called to pastor at Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church in Morganton, NC, in 2015. A friend of mine saw the picture of me standing at the front of the church and said I had a look of satisfaction on my face: I did; I was rejoicing in what God had done in raising me back up out of a difficult situation!)

You/your group can share times when God brought you out of difficult situations — Then say something like: In today’s lesson we see how God brought Noah and his family out of the difficult time of the Flood, and delivered them to dry land again.

CONTEXT

Last week we studied the wickedness of earth, and God’s judgment that was coming upon them in the Flood.

Chapter 7 ends with :24, “The water prevailed upon the earth one hundred and fifty days.” It was a somber note His judgment upon the earth and all its wickedness.

But then Genesis 8:1 begins with a great expression that you may want to share as you give the context for this lesson: “BUT GOD”! BUT GOD!  Mankind was wicked; the earth was judged and covered with water — “but God”! (In Hebrew it’s literally, “But remembered God”)

Now, I plan to take some time here in this “context” section with this phrase, “But God.” It just reminds us of the difference that God can make in a situation: “But God.” 

??? Let’s read some other examples of this: (You might copy these verses on slips of paper and distribute them before class them to volunteers to read:

— “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Genesis 50:20)

— “Day after day Saul searched for him, but God did not give David into his hands.” (1 Samuel 23:14)

— “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” (Psalm 73:26)

— You killed the Author of Life. But God raised him from the dead.” (Acts 3:15)

— “For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8)

— “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able.” (1 Corinthians 10:13)

What is common in all of these verses? “BUT GOD”! The difference He makes in all of them.

One of the most famous examples of this phrase in the New Testament is in Ephesians 2, where the chapter opens with a description of the depravity of all mankind, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”

It talks about how we were all lost in sin.

But then :4 begins: “BUT GOD”!  “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).” 

We were all lost, BUT GOD makes the difference for us by sending Christ to save us. “But God.”

You might then talk about the difference that “But God” makes in some different situations you know of today. 

For EXAMPLE:

— Cheryl & I have a friend who has served with our IMB, who is home with cancer, and they have just told her there is no treatment, and have put her on hospice. Humanly speaking, it’s just a hopeless situation — “BUT GOD”, right? But GOD! Because God is in the equation, we know, #1 that He can do anything, and He can heal her, even of pancreatic cancer, if He so wishes. “But God”!  But also, if He does NOT choose to heal her physically right now, we can know “But God,” it is not hopeless; that He has a big plan that we can trust, and also “But God,” because He sent Jesus we know that the moment she closes her eyes here on earth, she will open them in glory! It’s a horrible situation — “BUT GOD” makes the difference for her and her family. “But God.”

(Lead your group to share other situations, in which GOD makes a difference: “But God …”)

And then =, “We will see in our text for today, how God made a big difference here in this bad situation in Genesis 8 as well. “But God”!

What we see in :1-9 is that “God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the water subsided” (:1)  Verse 4 says as the water went down, “the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat.” 

Verse 7 says Noah sent out a raven that flew around. :8-9 tell us he sent a dove that flew about and returned, for there was no place to land. 

This brings us to our focus passage:

OUTLINE

I. WAITING ON THE LORD (:10-19)

II. THANKING THE LORD (:20)

III. TRUSTING THE LORD (:21-22)

TEXT:

I.  WAITING ON THE LORD (:10-19)

??? You could introduce this section by asking: “When’s the last time you had to WAIT on something for what seemed to be a long time?

(Cheryl & I went to Pinkerton’s BBQ in San Antonio on our vacation — and we went at 2:30 so I figured there would be no line — but we had to wait for an hour. We’d put off lunch until we got to San Antonio so we could eat something fun, so we were really hungry, and that hour, and that line, really seemed to drag. But it was very good! In fact I had some of the leftovers for lunch today!)

You/your group can share times you had to WAIT: then say something like: Noah had to learn to wait, too. We see this several times in :10-19, and elsewhere in this whole story. 

— :10 “So he waited yet another seven days …”

— :12 “Then he waited yet another seven days …”

Even after the dove didn’t return in :12, Noah didn’t just “hop out”! He had to wait. 

Verse 14 says “in the second month, on the 27th day of the month, the earth was dry.’

THEN :15 says, God told Noah when to go out: “Then God spoke to Noah, saying, (:16) Go out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons’ wives with you (:17) bring out with you every living thing …” etc. 

Then :18-19 tell us that Noah and everyone/everything went out.

BUT IMPORTANTLY, THEY DID NOT GO UNTIL GOD TOLD THEM!   This is a key. They waited on the Lord. This is so important, and such an uncommon thing in our days of haste.

Sometimes we hear people say things like, “Don’t just stand there; ‘Do Something!’” As if just doing anything were better than doing nothing.

(You might copy that expression “Don’t just stand there, do something!” and post it, and have your class discuss it: is that always right?

The answer of course is NO!  SO many times we get into trouble by “just doing something” instead of waiting for what God really wanted us to do.

THEN you might show another page like this picture I pulled off the internet: “Don’t just do something; stand there” with a quote from Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God”! 

Talk about the difference between those two: the importance sometimes of just WAITING ON THE LORD. It can be one of the hardest, but most important things for us to do. We often just want to “jump ahead” of God, but we need to learn to wait.

EXAMPLE of Saul in I Samuel 13. Samuel had told him to wait on him to make a sacrifice before the battle with the Philistines, but the hour was getting late, :8 says the people began to scatter from him, so :9 says “he (Saul) offered the burnt offering.” Verse 10 says as soon as he had finished offering it, Samuel came. And he told him, “Your kingdom shall not endure. The LORD has sought out for Himself a man after His own heart.” But Saul showed he was NOT a man after God’s own heart by not waiting on the Lord. Instead he “just did something” and it cost him, big.

How many times does our “just doing something” cost US too?!

— In practical things like food: taking it out of the oven too soon will ruin it.

— In relationships, jumping into something too soon can cost us

— Spiritually speaking, doing things without waiting on the Lord can cost us too — just like it did Saul. How many times do we as individuals — and as churches — “just do something” but we don’t really wait on God?  There is a good lesson for us here: we need to learn to wait on the Lord. 

+x Psalm 130:5-6, “I wait for the Lord, my soul does wait, and in His word do I hope. (:6) My soul waits for the Lord like the watchman for the morning, Indeed more the watchman for the morning.” 

We need to learn to be patient. We need to learn to wait on the Lord. Challenge your group this weekend: some of you may be in a situation right now where God wants you to learn to trust Him, and wait. DON’T “just do something”! Wait on the Lord! It will be worth it if you do! 

II. THANKING THE LORD (:20)

:20 “Then Noah built an altar to YHWH, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.”

To me, this was a remarkable act of faith. ???WHY do you think that might be such an act of faith???

(There were very few animals — only seven of each kind for the whole earth — perhaps a few more now, a few months later — but that he would sacrifice some of the very few animals that there were to multiply and cover the whole earth was a remarkable act of faith! I might have been thinking, “There aren’t very many animals left; I need to be very careful with these; don’t waste any right now!” 

Matthew Henry wrote: “He (Noah) might have said, ‘Have I but seven sheep to begin the world with, and must one of those seven be killed and burnt for sacrifice? Were it not better to defer it till we have greater plenty?’ No, to prove the sincerity of his love and gratitude, he cheerfully gives the seventh to his God, as an acknowledgment that all was His.”

We can always make excuses, can’t we, for not showing our gratitude to the Lord the way we should. Noah did sacrifice, some of every clean animal, and he did it at a time when it was a very costly sacrifice to do it. And of course we see that the world did not suffer as a result. He just trusted God to provide through his sacrifice.

This should challenge some of us today, who might tend to look at our circumstances and say:

— I can’t tithe; I don’t have enough money

— Our church can’t reach out or start new ministries; we don’t have the resources.

And things like that. 

??? You might ask your group to share: did you ever give to the Lord when it was difficult to do so???

(Cheryl & I have had a few times when it was a real sacrifice to give our tithe; but we have done it — and God has so blessed us over the years.

In fact, I will share that last summer, our church was expanding our facility and building a new fellowship Hall, and we needed to do this expansion with cash. We asked everyone to make a sacrificial gift. I will be honest; it was not a very good time for us to do make a gift like that, but I felt like I needed to do it along with our people, and we made what for us was a sacrificial gift. Again, being very honest, I did realize this until putting this lesson together — but I just balanced our checkbook from the holidays, and I could not believe how well we came out. God poured out blessings for us, more than I could have imagined. He blesses when we make sacrifices in faith.

You/your group may have some specific instances of this that you can share — and that would be a great thing to do, especially here at the beginning of the year, when many people need a challenge to start off the year faithfully in their giving.

(You might want to line up someone to share a testimony on tithing or giving, and how God blessed it.)

THEN I’d ask: ??? What does :21 say God’s response was to Noah’s sacrifice: “The LORD (YHWH) smelled the soothing aroma …”. “Soothing aroma” means it was pleasing to Him. Noah’s sacrifice pleased God.

In the same way, the sacrificial offerings that WE bring, when resources seem scarce, will be pleasing to God, because those sacrifices come from faith. And it is faith that pleases God, as Hebrews 11:6 reminds us.  

III.  TRUSTING THE LORD  (:21-22)

Noah and his family had been through a lot; they may have had a lot of uncertainty and questions: this big flood had come and destroyed everything. Was everything going to change now? What would the future be like?  In the midst of all that uncertainty, God gave a promise. After smelling the offering, He says in :21, “I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done.” 

Then He makes a very specific promise in :22:

??? What exactly does God promise in :22 that will continue?

— “seed time and harvest” 

— “cold and heat” 

— “and summer and winter” — these are all SEASONS

— “and day and night” 

These basic things: day, night, seasons, will not be disrupted.
We don’t need to worry about that. God has promised they will continue. 

This tells us that our security is to be found in the promises of GOD. There is SO much insecurity in this world, that can make us anxious. 

(You might ask your group: ???“What are some of the causes of insecurity in our world today?”???

Answers might include: international war/nuclear war; economic depression/collapse;  crime; mobs/violence;  etc.

Sometimes it can seem like everything is just falling apart. But the Christian has a security, a confident outlook in the world that comes from God’s word. We know that there are things that will NOT change: the seasons, the day and night, and so on. They WILL continue, God has promised.

??? And how long does God say these basic things will continue???
(:22 says, “While the earth remains.”

So, we know that one day this world WILL come to an end. II Peter 3:7 says God will end it in fire (as in 9:11 God says never again will He destroy the earth with a flood). 

But as long as the earth is here, God says, these basic things will continue. He has promised it, and we can rely on it. 

Of course one of the all-time popular hymns, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” comes from :22, 

“Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest, sun, moon, and stars in their courses above, join with all nature in manifold witness, to Thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love. Great is Thy faithfulness …”.  

If you sing in your class/opening assembly, this would be a good song to do this week. And/or quote it somewhere in this point in class. 

This is something many of us in our anxious, uncertain world need today: a reminder that there are things we can count on in this world: those seasons coming; on day and night. 

Edward Dolnick’s book, The Clockwork Universe, is about Sir Isaac Newton and the other scientists who kicked off the scientific age of discovery in England. In the Preface, Dolnick writes that these men believed that “God was a mathematician … He had written His laws in a mathematical code. Their task was to find the key.” He concluded: “All these thinkers had two traits in common. They were geniuses, and they had utter faith that the universe had been designed on impeccable mathematical lines. What follows is the story of a group of scientists who set out to read God’s mind.”

So Dolnick said all these scientists who made such revolutionary discoveries, did so because they believed there was a God who had faithful, mathematical laws that could be discovered. Everything we know scientifically, is based on the faithfulness of God in His creation!

And just like those scientists, we today can have confidence, even in a world that often seems chaotic, because God is a faithful God. And if we ever doubt it, we can just look at the laws of His creation, at day and night, sun, moon, and stars, and the returning seasons.  They all show us Who God is, and that we can trust Him and His promises.  

(Then you might conclude: we’ll talk some more about His promises next week, as we move to Chapter 9, and the promise of the rainbow!)

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