Ok, here we are with round 3 of the Bible Bathday. The aim is to transform one bathtime a week into telling a Bible story that involves water. Super fun. See the intro post here.
Story 3 – Noah
From: Genesis 6-9
What you’ll need:
An empty bath
Something that can work as a boat
Some animal and people toys (lego/duplo would work well)
What we’ll do:
Look at how people’s sin led to God flooding the earth. We will consider how scary his judgement is, but how very incredible is his grace and salvation!
Let’s do it (a possible script):
Get kids in the empty bath
Ok, now before we fill up the bath, we’re going to think about a story from the Bible today. It’s the story of Noah. But it doesn’t start with Noah. It starts with God. God looked around at everyone that he had made. Do you think they were good? No! They weren’t good. Because ever since Adam and Eve sinned, everyone has gone on sinning. (Do you remember what sin is? It is rebelling against God. Living like we are the king/queen). And it is so bad that God looks down and sees that all everyone ever does is sin! It’s pretty bad. But he has a plan. He chooses Noah, gets him to follow God and tells him to build a boat. He is about to do something big with the world.
Get the kids to pretend to build the boat that you have. (Note: if it’s just a paper boat and ends up sinking – that will be ok too – you’ll see why in a minute).
So Noah built this big boat. He called it an ark. And got brought a bunch of animals to go into the ark. Kids put some of the animal toys on the boat, but leave some out. He told Noah and his family to go into the boat. Kids put some of the human toys on the boat, but leave some out. And then he sent the rain.
Ask one of your kids to put the plug in while you fill up the bath. Make sure it’s not gonna burn your kids!!
At this point talk through with the kids what is happening as the bath slowly fills up. Talk about how scary it would be for the people and animals who aren’t in the boat. Talk about what would have happened to them. Don’t shy away from the scary details – because there is something coming that provides comfort. Talk about what is happening to the boat. Is it floating? If it does float – awesome! Talk about how safe the animals and people are in the boat. If it doesn’t float, that’s ok – get them to help it. You can contrast it to the story. With Noah – God looked after the boat and made sure it floated!
Talk through this next stuff while the bath is still full and the boat and (dead) people are floating/sunk at the bottom.
Wow! What happened to the people who weren’t in the boat? Yeah they died. Isn’t that sad? Why do you think God sent such a sad flood? That’s right – it was because of their sin. Sin is evil. It is bad. And God is so good and won’t put up with evil forever will he?
What happened to the people and animals in the boat? Yeah they were kept safe. Do you think they sinned? Yeah they did. But God chose to be kind, even though they had sinned, and he saved them. How good is that?
Jesus link
And do you know what? The Bible says more of God’s judgement is going to come one day. It won’t come as a flood – he sent the rainbow to tell us he’s not going to use a flood to judge the whole earth again. But he is going to judge sinful people forever. And it’s going to be even worse than the flood. It will be so sad. But do you know the good news? Just like he gave Noah an ark, he has given us an even better ark. His name is Jesus. Jesus drowned in God’s punishment so that we don’t have to. And if we get in the Jesus ark, we are safe from God’s judgement forever. How cool is that?! How do we get in the Jesus ark? Well we say sorry for our sin, and ask Jesus is we can get on board with him as our captain. We trust in him to get rid of our sin and to keep us safe.
Get them to pull out the plug to show that we don’t have to be afraid of any of God’s judgement anymore – not if we trust in Jesus.
Extra ideas for keen beans
Bring in a watering can to illustrate the rain
Fill the bath to overflowing. Have a mop ready haha.
We would love to hear from you about what did and didn’t work! Comment below!
Find more Bible Bathdays here