Jesse Tree Day #3

This ranks up on the list as one of my favorite days in the Jesse Tree Advent. God's promises in our life and how we see them reflected through the flood!

Symbol: Rainbow

Scripture: Genesis 6:11-22; 7:8-17 (The Message)

Topic: The Flood

^11-12 As far as God was concerned, the Earth had become a sewer; there was violence everywhere. God took one look and saw how bad it was, everyone corrupt and corrupting—life itself corrupt to the core.

¹³ God said to Noah, "It's all over. It's the end of the human race. The violence is everywhere; I'm making a clean sweep.

^14-16 "Build yourself a ship from teakwood. Make rooms in it. Coat it with pitch inside and out. Make it 450 feet long, seventy-five feet wide, and forty-five feet high. Build a roof for it and put in a window eighteen inches from the top; put in a door on the side of the ship; and make three decks, lower, middle, and upper.

¹⁷ "I'm going to bring a flood on the Earth that will destroy everything alive under Heaven. Total destruction.

^18-21 "But I'm going to establish a covenant with you: You'll board the ship, and your sons, your wife and your sons' wives will come on board with you. You are also to take two of each living creature, a male and a female, on board the ship, to preserve their lives with you: two of every species of bird, mammal, and reptile—two of everything so as to preserve their lives along with yours. Also get all the food you'll need and store it up for you and them."

²² Noah did everything God commanded him to do. (I love that verse!)

^6-10 Noah was 600 years old when the floodwaters covered the Earth. Noah and his wife and sons and their wives boarded the ship to escape the flood. Clean and unclean animals, birds, and all the crawling creatures came in pairs to Noah and to the ship, male and female, just as God had commanded Noah. In seven days the floodwaters came.

^11-12 It was the six-hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month that it happened: all the underground springs erupted and all the windows of Heaven were thrown open. Rain poured for forty days and forty nights.

^13-16 That's the day Noah and his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, accompanied by his wife and his sons' wives, boarded the ship. And with them every kind of wild and domestic animal, right down to all the kinds of creatures that crawl and all kinds of birds and anything that flies. They came to Noah and to the ship in pairs—everything and anything that had the breath of life in it, male and female of every creature came just as God had commanded Noah. Then God shut the door behind him.

^17-23 The flood continued forty days and the waters rose and lifted the ship high over the Earth. The waters kept rising, the flood deepened on the Earth, the ship floated on the surface. The flood got worse until all the highest mountains were covered—the high-water mark reached twenty feet above the crest of the mountains. Everything died. Anything that moved—dead. Birds, farm animals, wild animals, the entire teeming exuberance of life—dead. And all people—dead. Every living, breathing creature that lived on dry land died; he wiped out the whole works—people and animals, crawling creatures and flying birds, every last one of them, gone. Only Noah and his company on the ship lived.

A long time ago there lived a man named Noah. God told him to build an ark because He was going to flood the Earth. Noah thought He was crazy but he did as he was told and tried to convince everyone else to prepare for the flood. To make a long story short...Noah and his family lived and everyone else drowned. Can you imagine? Can you picture what is must have felt like to realize that you were the only living people left on the entire earth? It must have been horrible! But then came the day when the rain stopped, and a rainbow filled the sky. A sign of God's promise to never destroy the Earth with water again. A promise to Noah that He would be faithful to reward him for his obedience.

Today, thank God for all of the promises that He has placed in your life. Also, pray for strength that you might be able to do what God calls you to do. He might not be asking you to build an ark, but it might feel that big. Regardless of what it is, know that God promises great things to those who obey him. And His plans for you are always perfect!