Dear God, keep us safe. Help us to do your commandments, not just think about them.
Last week we looked at some of the problems in the world, mainly violence and selfishness. Unfortunately it didn't end there, but as people increased on the earth so did it's problems. It grew worse until God had enough.
But fortunately for us God found one man who still tried to do what God wanted. That man was Noah. Without Noah, we wouldn't exist, as all people of the earth are descended from him (as well as Adam).
He alone tried to do what God wanted. Everyone else was only interested in themselves. They didn't bother about a god, or if they did it was to invent a god that suited them, a god that would allow them to indulge in their own pleasures, give them a sense of importance and power and allow them to justify violence in the name of religion. And if that sounds familiar nothing has changed today. Jesus likens the last days to the days of Noah.
God asked Noah to build a boat so he, his family and animals God selected would be saved. The rains fell, the floods rose and all life left outside was destroyed.
OK, that's the story as you already know, but what has it got to do with us?
In order to be saved God asked Noah to do something. Not just think/believe/trust, actually do something about it. It involved work, and in Noah's case, very hard work. In its design, the ark was a box, admittedly a big box, but its sole function was to carry animals and Noah and his family. But it would have taken a very long time to construct. It was in the middle of nowhere, so to his friends and neighbours it would have seemed a silly thing to do.
Here's where we come in; sometimes the same happens to us. God asks us to do something and to those around us it seems silly and a waste of time, but at the end it is the difference between life and death.
God has asked us to give some of our time to him. To worship him as he wants and to commit our lives to his way. It isn't as hard as what Noah had to do, but it is the way God has said that we will be saved. Actually, it's very easy.
God has said that the earth will be destroyed, not by water (as he gave the sign of the rainbow that that wouldn't happen again like it did with Noah) but God has appointed a day when everything that does not please God will be removed.
We have to make sure that we are 'in the ark' when the time comes. There was a lot of people who left it just a little too late.