Noah, Not The Movie Series

Has everyone heard about the movie coming out next week called Noah? That was the trailer for it. Now understand that Noah, the Movie is not the same as Noah the Bible story. And they’ve tried to tweak it to make it work, as a biblical epic, but it just doesn’t.

They’ve tried focus groups and all they’ve done is made people cranky.

One Christian commentator, Barbara Nicolosi Harrington made this statement “Paramount takes liberties with ‘Noah’ that they would never take with ‘Harry Potter,’“ She goes on to say “if there’s a fan base for a source material, that fan base has a right to expect the fundamental meanings of the material to be intact.” Which is interesting because she is a script writer for a Movie call “Mary” which is about the first five years of Jesus life, which is covered in about a dozen verses in the bible.

And it’s not just a Christian concern that the film doesn’t fall in line with what we would define as the “Historical Noah Story”. A number of Middle Eastern countries have decided to ban the movie. Juma Al-Leem the Director of Media Content for the United Arab Emirates stated “There are scenes that contradict Islam and the Bible, so we decided not to show it, it is important to respect these religions and not show the film.”

So if you are looking for a grand biblical epic, this won’t be it, from what I’ve heard it is preachy, but preachy for all the wrong reasons.

Now that’s not to say you shouldn’t go see it, if you are looking for a action flick this might be for you, I’m hoping to get to see it. If the fact that it doesn’t stick to the biblical script is going to make you cranky, than maybe you should go see “The Muppets” this weekend.

This is week six of our Old School Sunday School series. Through February and March we’ve been looking at Old Testament stories and we’ve had so much fun that next spring we are going to do it again with the New Testament.

And I have heard all kinds of positive comments from people who remember their Sunday School days, and we have discovered that everyone seems to have a favorite Sunday School Chorus that they did the actions for. Probably one of my earliest memories of Sunday School were from when I was a kid and Dad was posted to Germany with the forces and for awhile we attended the Salvation Army, don’t remember going to church but I remember going to Sunday School in the basement. And they taught us, I’m in the Lord’s Army. For a five year old army brat it was an awesome Sunday School Song. Maybe you remember it, it was sung to the tune of the Old Grey Mare.

I may never march in the Infantry,

Ride in the cavalry,

Shoot the artillery.

I may never zoom o’er the enemy,

But I’m in the Lord’s Army.

But that’s not what we are singing today, instead I’m going to invite Pastor Jason to come up and lead us in a fairly new Kid’s chorus that goes with today’s message. (Rise and Shine)

And if you are thinking that song sounded familiar but you never went to Sunday School it’s because Nate Flanders sang it on the Simpsons.

The story of Noah happens very early in the Bible, in the very first book the book of Genesis and we are told that God looked down upon the earth and saw nothing but wickedness. Well, almost. In the darkness of sin God saw a promise, a beacon and that was the man Noah, the bible tells us in Genesis 6:9 This is the account of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man, the only blameless person living on earth at the time, and he walked in close fellowship with God.

Wow, and so God decided to start over by destroying the world and all that was in it with a flood. And that’s hard to get our heads around and I’ve often said that if we understood God he wouldn’t be much of a God. And because Noah had found favour in God’s eyes God instructed him to build an ark, a huge floating zoo. And into that zoo Noah was to bring a pair of each animal and his family.

And you know the story, how it began to rain, and it rained torrentially for forty days and forty nights, without stop, and if that wasn’t enough the bible tells us that all the water erupted from the earth. And the earth and all that was on it was destroyed. And then the rain stopped and after 150 days the ark came to rest on a mountain.