Part 6

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

I wonder what you will think about the next time you see a rainbow in the sky. Tell me what God said about the rainbow to Noah. God’s promise to Noah is only one of hundreds of promises that are in this book, and the best of it is, those promises are for you and me as well as for the people who lived in the days when the Bible was written. Do you see the bookmark I have in my Bible to-day?[3] It has in it the colors of the rainbow, which people have called the “bow of promise,” and that is one reason why we like to have a rainbow bookmark for the Bible. It reminds us of such beautiful promises as this: “I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go.” “I am with thee and will keep thee whithersoever thou goest.” This bookmark is useful in another way. The Bible has how many books? Now those sixty-six books are not all of one kind. Some are poetry, some are sermons, some are history and some are law. These ribbons mark the different kinds of books and so help us to handle the Bible more easily. Some day you will know all the kinds of books that the ribbons mark, but just now you need only remember one. The red ribbon marks the first five books which are called books of Law. (Have the children repeat this.)

LESSON 8

The Call of Abram

=Teaching Material.=—Genesis 11:27 to 12:9; James 2:23.

=Pupil’s Reading.=—Genesis 11:31 to 12:9; James 2:23.

=Memory Text.=—By faith Abram, when he was called, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. Hebrews 11:8a, c.

LIGHT FROM OTHER BIBLE PASSAGES

Joshua 24:1-3; Nehemiah 9:7, 8; Isaiah 41:8-10; 51:1, 2; Micah 7:20; Acts 3:25; 7:1-5; Romans 4:13; Galatians 3:6-9; James 2:23.

FROM THE COMMENTATORS

Either during the reign of Hammurabi, or shortly before he established his rule, the migration of Abram from the Babylonian city called “Ur of the Chaldees” in the biblical narrative, into the land of Canaan, is supposed to have occurred.... Though he and his descendants, for a long period, were dwellers in tents, living a nomadic tribal life, like that of their near relatives, the nomadic Arabs, he had come from a country of considerable civilization, where writing and the keeping of records were common, and he had not left that state of civilization behind, ... for “the power and influence of Babylonia had been firmly established for centuries throughout the length and breadth of western Asia.”—_The Rise and Fall of Nations_, _J. N. Larned_.

With the spirit of the true prophet, Abraham leaves behind all that men usually cherish most and sets out on his long journey. In Canaan also he disregards his personal interests and is intent only upon knowing and doing the will of God.

Self-sacrificing, courageous, obedient to the voice of God—he is supremely worthy to be the father of a prophetic nation. Blessed was the race that had such a character held up thus prominently before it!—_Heroes and Crises of Early Hebrew History_, _Charles Foster Kent_.

In the simple, unhesitating faith with which Abram acted at once and to the fullest, on every intimation of the Divine Will, lay the supreme distinction which gained him his two unique titles—the “Father of the Faithful,” and “The Friend of God.”—_Old Testament Characters_, _Geikie_.

AIM

=To present again the ideal of unquestioning obedience; to give an impulse toward the attaining of this ideal by showing that the obedient are friends of God and a source of blessing to their fellows.=

LESSON PREPARATION

Besides the study of the Bible passages, and what the commentators have to say concerning the incident of our lesson, there are many legends of Abram which are intensely interesting and relate to the protests which he made against the idolatry of his father and of the people among whom he lived. [See History for District and Graded Schools, Ellwood W. Kemp, chapter on “What the Hebrews Taught the World”; _Leben Abraham’s_, by Beer, quoted by Geikie in Old Testament Characters; The Talmud.] In studying this story with the children in mind we must remember that our own point of view concerning leaving one’s country and kindred to go out, not knowing whither, is a far different one from that which the children themselves will have. To them moving has in it the attractive element of novelty, and all the charm of the “unexpected” in every day’s experience for some time after the move has been made. They have not yet become so thoroughly attached to the place where they live as to be able to comprehend in the least the sacrifice that Abram made, and if we could examine the contents of their minds by some kind of X-ray process, we would doubtless discover that they were looking upon Abram’s experience in that respect as one to be coveted. This may explain why teachers of Junior children have often found this story tame and uninteresting from the children’s point of view.

LESSON PRESENTATION

Introduction

You may be quite sure that any child old enough to be in the Junior Department has had stories of the Pilgrims and Puritans several times in his day school course. One good way of introducing this lesson, therefore, would be to question concerning the Pilgrims, and why they came to this country, developing the fact that they cared more to worship God as they thought they should than for anything else that life could give. They were ready to give up their comfortable homes, their friends, their relatives, and go into a strange land where no homes awaited them, and suffer privations, cold, and dangers, because they knew that in that strange land they would be free to worship God in their own way. From this it would be easy to pass to the story of a man who took his family, his servants, and all that he owned and went into a strange land of which he knew nothing, because he had heard the voice of God telling him to go.

Another method of approach would be by calling attention to the names by which some men have been called, which they have won for themselves by the things that they did. George Washington was called the father of his country. Why? To-day we have a story of a man who earned a much more wonderful name even than that.

The Lesson Story

It was a long, long time after Noah and the seven who were with him went out of the ark and heard God’s covenant with them and saw its beautiful sign in the sky. Now there were many people in the earth, and though they were not so wicked as the people had been before the Flood, they had forgotten the God to whom Noah built his altar and offered sacrifices, and from whom he heard the promise of blessing. Instead of worshiping Him who is the maker of the heavens and the earth, they were worshiping the sun and the moon and the stars, and even idols made by men. Of course they could not obey the God whom Noah served when they were giving all their thought to idols, neither could God speak to them, because they would not listen to his voice.

Among the people who were descended from Shem, the oldest son of Noah, there was a man named Terah, who lived in Ur of the Chaldees. He made up his mind to take his family and move away from the place where he was then living to Canaan, a country far from Ur. We do not know just why he decided to do this, but he started from Ur with his son Abram, his nephew Lot, and Abram’s wife, Sarai. They did not go to Canaan, but stopped at a place called Haran, and there Terah died. Terah was a worshiper of idols, but Abram, his son, had somehow kept the faith in the one true God, and did not bow down to the moon or stars or to idols of wood or stone. Because Abram loved the heavenly Father, God could speak to him, and Abram could hear God’s voice, and his love made him wish to do just what God asked him to do. So it happened that at Haran Abram heard God speaking to him, and saying, “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee.” God did not tell Abram where he wanted him to go, he only said, “I will show you the land,” but he gave him a wonderful promise, for he said, “I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.”

Now, Abram not only loved God but he believed that God knew what was the best for him, and that God would do just what he promised. So Abram did leave his country and his relatives and friends. “By faith Abram when he was called, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.” Taking his wife, his nephew, his flocks, and servants, he started from Haran, and God led him down into the land of Canaan, the very land to which Terah had intended to go when he left Ur. No doubt, as Abram journeyed he kept saying to himself as he entered a new part of the country, “I wonder if this is the land where the Lord wants me to live.” But as no sign was given, he kept on until he came to Shechem, in the land of Canaan, and there he found that he had reached the land to which the Lord had called him to go. Let us read from the Bible just what happened there (Genesis 12:6, 7). The Canaanites were heathen people, and on all sides Abram saw idols and idol worship. But he knew something far better than that, and as he journeyed through the land he built altars to the true God and offered sacrifices wherever he pitched his tents.

In all this Abram was earning a name for himself, though he did not know it. He loved God so much that he listened for his voice. When God spoke he obeyed gladly; and he showed his love by praise and prayer and worship. Would you like to know the name that Abram earned? It is one that has been given to him through the thousands of years since he lived, and it is the most beautiful name that anyone could ever have. He is called “The Friend of God.”

PUPIL’S BOOK FOR WORK AND STUDY

Ask the children if they would like to see the place in the Bible where Abram is called the friend of God, and help them to find James 2:23. Then show them the first line on page 25 of the work book on which they are to write the last four words of that verse.

LESSON 9

THE CORRELATED LESSON

What did I tell you the first five books in the Bible are called? (Books of Law.) What is the color of the ribbon for those books in our rainbow bookmark? Let us see how many of our memory texts belong with the red ribbon. Where is the verse that tells about the creation of the world? (Genesis 1:1.) Where is the verse that tells what God gave Adam to do in the Garden of Eden? (Genesis 2:15.) There was one about Noah—where will we find that? (Genesis 6:22.) And one about the rainbow—(Genesis 9:13). All these are in the first book—the book of Genesis, and because that is one of the books of the Law I will give you a red slip to mark the place of each of those verses. What was the verse about hiding from God? That verse was in the book of Jeremiah. Let me tell you how to find it. Open the Bible in the middle. What book is there? (Psalms.) Now turn to the right and you will find first Proverbs, then Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon and Isaiah, and then comes the book we are looking for—Jeremiah. Turn through the chapters until you find the 23d, and the 24th verse of that chapter. This book belongs in a group of five that are called books of the Major Prophets and they are marked by the green ribbon. (Give the children a green slip and let them put it in as a mark for the memory text in Jeremiah.) What was the verse about love? That is in one of the books of the New Testament. If you take the part of your Bible that is to the right of Jeremiah and open that part in the middle and then take the right hand little part and open that in the middle, you will find you have 1 Corinthians. Then you can find the 13th chapter and the 4th verse. The ribbon for these books, which are called Letters, is violet, so we will put a violet slip in to mark the place of this memory text. (The only other text which they have had is Hebrews 11:8a, c. They can find that by turning to the right from 1 Corinthians, and that may also be marked by a violet strip of paper. Drill by having the children find the verses by subjects.)

LESSON 9

Giving Lot the First Choice

=Teaching Material.=—Genesis 13:1-18.

=Pupil’s Reading.=—Genesis 13:1-13, 18.

=Memory Text.=—As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise. Luke 6:31.

LIGHT FROM OTHER BIBLE PASSAGES

Psalm 119:36; Proverbs 1:19; Matthew 6:19-21; Luke 12:15; John 13:34; Romans 12:10; 1 Corinthians 10:24; 13:1-13; James 2:8.

FROM THE COMMENTATORS

This choice of Sodom as a dwelling place was the great mistake of Lot’s life. He is the type of that very large class of men who have but one rule for determining them at the turning points of life. He was swayed solely by the consideration of worldly advantage. He has nothing deep, nothing high in him. He recognizes no duty to Abram, no gratitude, no modesty; he has no perception of spiritual relations.... It was Abram’s simple belief that God’s promise was meant and was substantial that made him indifferent as to what Lot might choose. His faith was judged in this scene, and was proved to be sound.... Wherever there is faith the same results will appear. He who believes that God is pledged to provide for him cannot be greedy, anxious, covetous; can only be liberal, even magnanimous.—_The Expositor’s Bible_, _Genesis_, _Marcus Dods_.

AIM

=To lead the children to admire the kindliness and unselfishness of Abram, and to exhibit a similar spirit in their own daily lives.=

LESSON PREPARATION

After you have read carefully the story of this lesson answer for yourself these questions: What is the most important teaching point in this story? How can I arrange the material of the story in such a way as to bring that point into strongest perspective? Abram gave up to another what he had a perfect right to take for himself. Would Junior children generally regard that as a foolish thing to do, and, therefore, lose all the force of the lesson if too much stress should be put upon that phase of the truth? What is the Junior child’s highest conception of what must be done in order to obey the Golden Rule? What elements in Lot’s character stand out clearly in this transaction? How does he exhibit indifference toward the best welfare of his family?

The consequences of his choice come out in later lessons, and are exactly what might be expected, but, of course, these must not be touched upon in this lesson. The only point which needs emphasis here is the statement of verse 13.

LESSON PRESENTATION

Introduction