Rainbows (Genesis 9:8-17)
Written by Pastor Fausel   
Grace, Mercy and Peace to you …

Today, our meditation takes back to some of the earliest history of mankind, where we see God acting in love toward His people

Let no one tell you any differently, the oldest profession is not what you might have heard it to be.   The oldest profession is more along the lines of today’s greeting card writers …  with God as the author, and Him expressing His love in His Word.

So, what’s true about our New Testament readings where we hear the words of Our Lord Himself expressing His love for each of us … it’s also true of the Old Testament Scriptures as well, where God also employed His words to communicate His love.

Unfortunately, it seems in some circles today, that the further you go back into the Old Testament …  the less one takes what is being said there to be the inspired word of God, especially if you go back into the first 10 chapters of the Book of Genesis.

There’s a good chance if we were to take a vote among Christians today about the dependability of the Words that describe God’s creation in Genesis Chapter one … we might be surprised to find that, particularly in some circles, there is significant doubt of the validity of those words.

But, that’s a subject for another occasion   

But that whole question of the trustworthiness of God’s inspired Word bears with tremendous importance on the Words we have from our Old Testament reading for today … words from Genesis chapter 9 … words which record God’s speaking to His first Remnant, Noah and seven other souls, who survived the flood in the ark.

Now, it goes without saying, the historicity of the ark and Noah and the flood all fall under the same suspicion today that those words in the first Chapter of Genesis fall under …

But in case you haven’t heard it, or in case you don’t remember it from your days in Confirmation class … our Church, The Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod, our denomination, regards the Words of the New Testament and the Words of the Old Testament, all of them, as God’s inspired Word.

You see, Jesus Himself in the New Testament speaks of Adam, Eve, Noah, Jonah and others of the Old Testament as historical individuals … including their activities … like the fall into sin at the hands of Satan, the building of the Ark and the flood that followed, and Jonah’s three days in the belly of a fish.  

So, if we hold Jesus up and worship Him to be the truly God in the Flesh … why would He lie (which He can’t), or why would He perpetuate some myth if those individuals, and the working of God in their lives, where not both historical and true?

This week I was watching a made for TV movie on the History Channel about the Apollo 11 Astronauts and the events leading up to their landing on the moon 40 years ago this past week.

One scene in the movie showed several of the astronaut’s families gathered around a black-and-white TV watching a picture with very rounded corners showing the moonscape beneath Apollo 8 as it was the first manned orbiter to send back live pictures from the moon …
 
And on the TV, the voice of the astronaut on Apollo 8 announced that he had a message for the earth … And he began reading the Bible beginning with Genesis one, verse one.  I had forgotten that he’d done that!

The question that really jumped out at me was … Would that same thing happen today … on HD?  Would the TV people censor it as being too religious?  Would a Scientist/Astronaut dare to attribute the pictures being sent … to something of God’s creation?

Honestly, I seriously doubt that it could happen today … And personally I mourn what we’ve lost since 1968, and the world view that my child and her children may inherit.  Suffice it to say, Satan is still using the same question he used in the Garden:  “Did God really Say?”  And many, even many Christians, have answered, “No, He didn’t…”

Why all this creation discussion?  Well, our Old Testament reading for today, again, is from Genesis Chapter 9 … and it talks about a natural phenomena, namely the rainbow.  And here God uses the rainbow as a sign of a covenant… actually an unconditional promise, to all of creation … that He would never again bring on the earth another cataclysmic event like He had in the flood.

Now, we’re not going to get into whether or not a rainbow had ever been seen before.
 … we’ll talk about that maybe a bit in Bible class today.  But what the Words of Scripture are telling us is:  number one … there was a flood … and it came for a purpose … and God brought it about.

And number two, even if the same conditions that brought God to visit the earth with the flood the first time … were to be present again … God would not chose that course of action once more.
   
So …from this we learn some things about God and we learn some things about His dealings with us as well.  

We learn that God is just.  He can’t turn His back on sin, on immoral behavior or on ungodliness.  Sin has to be dealt with.  The flood was a direct result of that.

But, the flood brought on, in a sense … a do-over.  Begin anew with Noah and his family.  And the world in which Noah found himself was probably a lot different than the one he’d lived in prior.  Not only had the natural environment changed … so had the social, political and religious environment.

In Chapter 12 of Genesis, we’d hear about a new answer to mankind’s problem of sin … the promise of a savior from the line of Abraham. But after the flood and through Genesis chapter 11 … we see the generations after Noah building the tower of Babel… and God dispersing the human population by confusing their languages.

What was to come, however, would be another unconditional promise.  A promise with the sign of circumcision.  
And yet, in rainy day followed by rainy day, God’s rainbow was a reminder both to man and to God Himself … that a savior was necessary … because another flood was not going to come.

It is interesting to read the New Testament’s commentary on this from none other than Simon Peter … He writes in his first letter, 1 Peter 3:21: about the flood … “Baptism, which corresponds to this (referring to the flood), now saves you …”  
The flood and Holy Baptism  … connected … by divine inspiration…

There should be no doubt then … that Baptism is not a human rite … a simple ritual.  Why?  Well, as the flood had to do with the removal of sin … so does Baptism … And as Noah was saved by God from the flood … so are we saved from our Sins through Baptism.

And so, God is the actor in Baptism, because it is God who Forgives sins … and it is God who saves us.  Baptism … is His means to that end.  Again, we heard:  “Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you…”

And so… the unconditional Promise that God made to Noah after the flood with the sign of the rainbow… is sealed to each of us in our Baptism.  We are saved … through the waters.

We said a couple of weeks ago … that when God speaks of His Love for us He always does so in Jesus.   We can’t lose sight of that.  Baptism does not derive its power from the water, or the flood, but the power of Baptism comes through the water from the Word of God.

There we are, back to the Word again.  And that Word has power, because of what’s behind it: the fact that Jesus came, and lived, and died for our sins, and was raised again.

Without those facts, historical facts, Scriptural truths, Baptism would be simple water only, and no Baptism.

But because Jesus came and died our death demanded by a just God because of our sins … Baptism now not only washes away our sin, it imparts the righteousness of Christ to us.

And in so doing, the gift of God’s Holy Spirit becomes ours, so that we can live in righteousness and blessedness all of our days.  

But what’s the sign?  For Abraham, there was the sign of circumcision But for us there is no mark on the body of God’s covenant, of our Baptism through the work of Jesus on our behalf … only a change in the heart.

Perhaps … there is though.  The rainbow.  True it applies to all creation … in the words of Genesis, man, beast, fish, fowl alike.

But to a person who has been taken through the waters … I’d submit that the sign of the rainbow has very special significance.  It speaks of an undying love that would send His only Son to the cross… instead of meeting out a punishment upon us that we truly deserve.

It is a sign of God’s unconditional blessing, something only possible because our sins have been washed away.  

So maybe the last time you saw a rainbow, you might have thought of Genesis chapter 9 … and had visions of animals coming off the ark two-by-two …  Perhaps today we might see it somewhat differently.  A personal sign from God of His love for you in Jesus Christ.

He says that for certain in His Word … and He puts it in the sky for all to see.  Not a bad greeting card… love letter is it?   It truly is how God feels about YOU!

In Him.  Amen.
 

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