Genesis 9 • Rainbow Promises

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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)

There is a war.



 There's a war in our world. There's a war in our souls, as another tries to claim us than our Savior and Redeemer.



 That one who tries to claim us and the reason there is a battle is explained in the very first prophecy and promise of Scripture.



 Remember, the Lord spoke to the tempter and said, "I will put enmity, antagonism between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed."



 He's going to crush your head, but till that time, you will strike his heel.



 There is great pain ahead until God's ultimate plan of redemption is revealed.



 And until that plan is fulfilled, that pain takes the shape of much warfare in the earth, war of good and of evil. Genesis 6, where we'll begin today and I'll ask you to look in your Bibles, begins to unfold the consequences of that warfare.



 In Genesis 6 and verse 5, the influence of the evil one moves quickly.



 In Genesis 6, 5, we read, "The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth



 and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.



 And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth and it grieved him to his heart." Verse 11 now, "Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and the earth was filled with violence."



 In verse 13, "And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth."



 You know the account that follows.



 God said to Noah, "Build an ark, for there is a flood that is coming and after years of building." God gathered the animals two by two, placed them on the ark.



 Noah entered the ark with his family and God shut them in.



 Forty days and forty nights of rain followed. The ark ultimately resting on Mount Ararat.



 And a year until the water would recede in such a way that the family could come out.



 But when they came out, God offered sacrifice of thanksgiving to God. And God's response, by the way I just gave you three and a half chapters, is in chapter 9 and verse 11.



 After the sacrifice of praise, Genesis 9 and verse 11, "God said I will establish my covenant with you that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood. And never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.



 And God said, this is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you.



 For all future generations I have set my bow in the cloud and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth."



 Let's pray together.



 Heavenly Father, you brought a rainbow after the rain and made an everlasting covenant



 that you would so redeem a people and this earth that it would be restored without possibility of flood destroying it all again.



 For that to happen, you must work and protect and be our refuge.



 Teach us how? As you point toward your Son, our Redeemer, in whose name we pray, amen.



 One of the things that I deeply appreciate about this church is its mission impulse so that we can celebrate as an entire church a global impact celebration where scores of missionaries come to this church from different parts of the world. Over half of them having once been in this church and now been sent out for God's work. And I experience the blessing of that mission impulse as you allow me to go various places to represent you. The two weeks prior to our global impact celebration, I was in South Florida, I know March South Florida but somebody's got to suffer, and ministering to Anglo and Hispanic and African pastors.



 Additionally, I was asked during one of those weeks to minister to pastors who themselves lead churches in the area surrounding the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.



 And you will remember what happened there.



 A year ago, a 19-year-old student who had been expelled took to school a semi-automatic weapon, pulled a fire alarm, and as students and teachers fled, shot and killed 17, wounded another 17.



 The poignancy of ministering to pastors on the anniversary week of that event was heightened by the fact, some of you will recall, that during that anniversary week, two survivors of the shooting took their own lives.



 And since that time, a parent associated with the shooting has taken his own life.



 I mention that because of the words that occur repeatedly in this account that may escape us as we are trying just to offer explanations of the flood. Over and over, God says, the earth was filled with violence, that the evil had spread so much across the world, that as He looked at humanity, He said every intention of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.



 And it is the profound effect of that continual and violent effect of sin upon a world that we continue to feel and experience in a world torn by violence that's helping us to explain



 what God wants us to know. And He said it grieved God to His heart that the earth was filled with violence and must in some measure tell us the purpose of God even in giving us this account.



 To be honest, virtually all of the discussions that we as Bible believing Christians tend to have about the flood is explanations and apologies regarding the issues of authenticity



 and logic of the biblical account. We debate with skeptics the construction and the capacity of the ark. Could a wooden ship really have sustained itself during such a flood?



 Could it contain so many animals and their food and their bedding for over a year?



 We debate or try to defend the expanse and the impact of the flood. Could it really have covered the whole earth? Did it form the continents? Did it carve the Grand Canyon?



 We try to explain the credibility and the culture of the time. How do we make it credible? How do we explain?



 How the dust mites got on the boat?



 Did the woolly mammoths miss the boat?



 How did the lions and the bears get along and how did the sheep survive?



 And how did the emperor penguins arrive?



 But nothing is harder to deal with and why should we believe this flood account more than any other flood account that seems to be prevalent in the nations of the ancient Near East? Why is your flood account any better than anybody else's?



 We try to explain. We offer well intended at times, speculations. I've heard them. I'm sure you have heard them. How do we explain a climate without rain? Well maybe it was vapor clouds.



 How did the animals get all the food they need? Well maybe they were in suspended animation. How was there enough space? Well maybe there was multi-dimensional space shifting that was going on. After all it was God building the ark.



 When I hear those kinds of speculations as well intended as they may be at times, I cannot help but hear echoing the words of an oft-cited skeptic, Robert Moore, who wrote, "When even these nonsensical suggestions fall, the biblical apologists have no qualms resorting to their interpretive wastebasket of explanation, the wastebasket of miracles.



 We are told that the supernatural is an essential element for explaining the divine character of the catastrophe."



 And to such an accusation I must say, guilty as charged.



 I truly believe that if you are trying to give a naturalistic explanation to a supernatural event, you will fail.



 God put His hand in the event. There was a supernatural God and a supernatural event for a supernatural purpose. And I will not be able ultimately to explain it until I'm with the Lord apart from an understanding that a miracle working God did something for a profound purpose. I mean explain all the ways you want to explain. Ultimately we see God saying, "But I shut the door.



 I put my hand in that experience." And I see and have to understand that not just because I want to make sense of the event, because I have to know that God is willing to put His hand into my world for my life, for my good, and for my refuge. If He does not put His hand into this world with all the disorder and the violence and the evil that still pervades, I lose hope.



 The purpose ultimately for the event is to remind me that I worship a God who brings rainbows after rain, restoration for ruin. He can create new worlds even for people who have messed it up terribly. If I don't understand that purpose, then I may close my heart to the truth that God intends to teach me by this account. It's the truth that I need to know and the reason that I cite to you the Parkland students' experience.



 Over and over again, God is saying the world was filled with violence.



 Every intention of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. Do you know the Parkland shooting took only six minutes?



 And God says this evil violence that was across the world was coming out of the thoughts of the intentions of humanity that was only evil continually, and I have trouble even fathoming the horror of such a world.



 Some of you, I say with deep respect, have served in the military where you have had to live for periods of time, day after day, maybe week after week, even month after month under violence that was just continuance. But it had an end, and even though it had an end, you and I know how that post-traumatic stress can continue to reverberate in your heart, in your life, in your relationships, in your dreams, and shape the world as you know it that makes it so difficult just to live.



 And I say with grief that I confess is inadequate, that those who are even among us who have experienced violent attack upon their families or their bodies that may have been just for brief moments, but it continues to scar their lives for years. At times, almost every waking moment, I grieve even to mention it because it brings it fresh back to you right now in this moment.



 I sorrow with deep grief for spouses and children in abusive households because you know how the violence can shape your lives and your relationships for so many years, long after the person who caused it is distant and dead and gone, and still influencing your life.



 And for God to say the pervasiveness of the violence was continual upon the earth is meant to have us understand the profound nature of his own grief when God who loved all that he had made, who loves his children even more than we love them, says every thought of the intentions of their hearts was only evil continually, and the violence was continuous upon the earth it filled the earth and God says and it grieved me to my heart.



 And only when you understand that do you understand why God might actually say enough of this.



 This has to stop.



 And at that point it could have been pull the plug, crush them all, lights out.



 Instead he said, "I will send a Redeemer.



 I will be true to my promise. I have said I would send one who would bring relief to my people." He would ultimately crush the influence of Satan and the promises of God are irrevocable.



 And to maintain his promise he begins to now fulfill his purpose even in this flood that we have trouble comprehending for its full significance. What's the purpose of the flood?



 Well we don't have to question that very much. We surely know it is removal of sin from the earth. Chapter 6 and verse 6, God simply says, "I will blot out all this evil flesh."



 Chapter 6 and verse 13, "I will make an end of the corruption." Yes there is an intention to wipe the slate clean, to remove the evil from the earth. It's been so pervasive.



 But that is not the only purpose.



 The additional purpose that is plain actually preceding the flood account comes in the naming of Noah.



 In chapter 5 in the 29th verse, the father of Noah is described this way. He called his child's name Noah, which means comfort or relief, saying, "Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands." And you know what must have been the first thought of those who understood what was going on. Is this the one?



 From the beginning, as God put us on that observation deck over the whole of human history, God is saying, "I will put enmity between the seat of the woman, between Satan, and what's going to happen is Satan is going to strike his heel, but he's going to crush Satan's head."



 And now when we are told, "Here is one who will bring relief from this broken world people." Is this the one? Is this the one who is promised? Is this the seat of the woman who will take care of all this?



 And we will quickly learn that Noah is not that one.



 But surely as they wondered, they are telling us what they needed.



 They needed a God who would bring relief after the ruin. They needed a God who would make provision for sinful, broken people. They needed a God who would bring peace after pain. They needed divine provision for human failure. They needed rainbows after rain.



 And God is making that clear as day for all our days because we desperately need to know it.



 Only after some pain in our family was I introduced to the concept of a rainbow baby.



 On Facebook and in photographs, the baby that comes to a family after a mother's loss during a pregnancy, the next baby who comes.



 That rainbow baby is never a replacement, never a reason to avoid tears or to deny the reality of grief.



 And yet the new baby is new life and new purpose and some means to deal with the grief



 in what God is giving us to recreate joy again.



 So also is the provision of God for all the losses that we experience as He is saying by this rainbow after this covenant of promise for people who have broken all their own relationships with Him. He is saying, "I am telling you that whatever your loss has been, is it the loss of a child, the ache of a family, the separation of a marriage undone, even if it is because of our own selfishness?



 Even if the loss of a job or the loss of health is because of mistakes that we willingly made?"



 God is saying that when the teardrops fall, they can be like the raindrops. They can be preparation for the process of God bringing the rainbows, the restoration of relief and fresh hope and clean slate and new life and new purpose.



 God actually giving us a reason to hope that that's what He's doing.



 The hymn writer George Matheson knew the grief of which I speak when he wrote the hymn that we still love to sing, "Oh, love that will not let me go."



 It was a brilliant college student, so good that he graduated from college with high honors at age 19 and at the same time received diagnosis of an incurable disease that would soon rob him of his sight.



 So this talented, able, great future young man went to his fiancée and asked if she would still marry someone who would be soon blind.



 Her response was the dagger in his heart, "I do not want to be the wife of a blind man,



 nor did anyone else for the rest of his life."



 He went to his own sister's wedding and the joy of the participants was like ripping the scab off the wound of his heart. And it was as a consequence of that pain that he wrote, "Oh, joy that seeketh me through pain. I cannot close my heart to thee. I trace the rainbow through the rain and feel the promise is not vain.



 That mourn shall tearless be."



 What mourn shall tearless be? Not tomorrow, not the tomorrows of this world, but a God who is saying even when this world has collapsed, when this world is ruined, I can provide a way of escape, not just by an ark, but by a new creation. And in that new creation, for those who have trusted in Christ to have their sins forgiven, there is new life, new hope, new relationships, renewal, even with those from whom we have been separated, bodies made right, darkness gone, tears removed, a rainbow creation after the reigns of this world.



 At one point the Queen of England, who had sung the song, asked Matheson to come and minister in the royal court and later published his sermon through all the English Empire.



 And for Matheson, it was the reminder that God can bring relief, renewal, purpose, cause, even after the reign, not grieve any less for the hurt that has been there, but to believe that God is not gone, He's not dead, that do-overs are part of the divine plan, that re-creation is something that is possible for a God who not only made the first creation, but wipes it fresh to start anew, that starting over is something that is real and we need to believe it can be real because of the purpose of a God who reveals His own nature. It's not just an ancient story.



 We need to believe that rainbows come after rain even now. I had the privilege this past week of praying with the wonderful singer from this church, Rachel Kramer, who is having the opportunity on this coming Tuesday to sing before our nation's leaders, including the president.



 But as we prayed and talked about that experience, she was quite honest about what some of you will know and that has been the extreme difficulty of the last two years.



 As the family has dealt with their now near-adult autistic son and the difficulties have been the greatest of his and their entire lives.



 So great have been the difficulties that they have had to at times come off of tour, which affects income and future and what people believe that they can do to help them.



 Rachel said, "Be sure you tell people that by God's grace," as we were teaching Weston to say the Lord's Prayer, just something that would touch him in ways that we couldn't fully explain, that the Lord has by His grace bought wonderful help and healing and refreshment into our lives.



 But it was as they're now recognizing this still kind of low point in career and experience that Rachel said, "Out of the blue comes this request to sing for the nation's leaders."



 Couldn't arrange it, but they're recognizing the rainbow after the rain. If you know Rachel, you will know she's not saying, "Where's my acclaim in this?" She is saying, "How can the Lord use this for witness?



 How can the Lord use us in this place?" But it's part of my even saying to you, we are at different phases of life, all of us, and some of you are in the flood right now, in the rain right now. And the reason we have an account like this in Scripture, the reason we have people that we love, we have hymn writers that have loved the Lord through pain, is to believe profoundly that the purposes of God are to make us know for sure there can be a rainbow after the rain, that evil does not have the final word. That is not the last chapter. The hurt and the pain and the difficulty are not the end of the story, and God is making that clear by His own promises.



 What does God promise? I read it to you. After the rain, Genesis 9 and verse 11, God said, "I will establish my covenant with you," speaking to Noah, "that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of flood." Verse 13 of chapter 9, "I have set my bow in the clouds, and that shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth." It is this message of great provision for a ruined world, but also a ruined family.



 This is a covenant where God is promising His care for a person who's going to mess up.



 I mean really mess up.



 What does Noah and his family do after the sacrifice of thanksgiving? Do you remember?



 Chapter 9 and verse 20.



 Chapter 9 and verse 20, "Noah began to be a man of the soil when he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent.



 And Ham the father of Canaan saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. The faces were turned backward. They did not see their father's nakedness when Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him.



 He said, "Cursed be Canaan.



 A servant of servants shall he be to his brothers." They have just come through the flood, through the crisis. This is the family that's supposed to take the world into a new creation without all the sin and the violence and the imagination of evil of their hearts. And what immediately happens?



 Brokenness and though it's cleaned up in our English translations, it is incest and the curse of a father on the very son that has just been with him through this awful crisis.



 Brokenness, bitterness, addiction, sexual incest immediately.



 Well, if only God had known who he was rescuing.



 If only God had known what Noah and his family were going to do.



 Wait, wait.



 He knows the end from the beginning.



 And he gave them refuge anyway.



 What are you learning about God? But he has established a covenant with his people, not on the conditions that we can measure up, but God is saying, "I will be faithful even to a faithless people. I will make a covenant promise, a prior commitment to a people that I know will mess up." And why do you and I need to know that? Because we mess up. Because we get brought through the crisis. We come through the tears and think, "If God will just bring me through this, I'll never sin like that again. I'll never do that again. I'll never be in the warfare again." And God says, "By the way, you happen to be a little bit more human than you think."



 And the struggle will return, and you may fall again, but I will not fail you, says a covenant-keeping God. It's a remarkable statement, not only of God's redeeming provision that he would be covenantly faithful to such a family, but amazing patience.



 Because it's God saying, "I will never again destroy the world by flood, even though I know what's going to happen, not just with Noah, but what's going to happen all the way forward. After all, God will ultimately send His own Son to redeem this fallen world." He knows what's going to happen. He knew before the foundations of the world were laid that He would have to be patient to collect a people who would honor Him. I will tell you honestly, when we do these radio and TV broadcasts from this place, the most common question that comes from the outside is people who say, "If your God is sovereign and He is good, why does He allow all the evil?"



 I mean, why doesn't He just wipe all the evil out?



 Why doesn't He just wipe the slate clean?



 You know what the biblical answer to that is?



 Been there, done that.



 That was the flood.



 And at the end of the flood, God says, "I will never again destroy the world by flood."



 Instead, Jesus tells the parable of what is happening in our creation right now since that wiping out is not occurring as the way of removing all evil. Jesus speaks in Matthew 13 and says, "A man sowed good wheat in his field, but an enemy came along after that and sowed the seeds of weeds."



 So when the wheat came up, the weeds came up too.



 The man's servant said, "Do you want us to pull up the weeds?" No said the man, because if you pull up the weeds, you will uproot the wheat too.



 Let them grow together until the harvest.



 What is God doing right now in a world where all of us are awaiting the harvest? If God were simply to destroy all evil in this moment, not one of us would be here for this church service.



 Our professions would disappear. Our ability to reach others with the gospel would disappear. God is saying, "I allow the evil to continue. I am so patient that I am waiting for the harvest in which the weeds will not be destroyed by flood but by fire.



 But until that time, I am allowing the harvest of nations and people and families and our own sinful souls to claim Jesus Christ in such a way that they would be redeemed before that great moment." What actually is happening is God is revealing to us in that ancient flood, not just His purpose, not just the promise to maintain a world, but the plan to redeem sinful people like you and like me who need to know that our provision is not by our hand, not by our goodness, but by a God who would put His hand into the world in a way that He knew was necessary and right. Do you know that the Apostle Peter in 1 Peter 3 refers back to the flood?



 And when he refers back to the flood, he says that what was happening as Noah was building the ark is that Jesus was preaching to a fallen world. Now, what do you think that means? Was Jesus physically appearing and His voice going out? You know that's not what the Bible is saying. Never mentions that. Instead, you must recognize that what is happening is that when Noah picks up the hammer in His right hand and He begins building that ark, in each hammer stroke, God is declaring the gospel that must be believed to a people who exist in this warfare world where violence and evil captures us and where He has made a way of escape. Noah nails and he says, "You must flee the destruction that is coming." And he has to, and he says, "Your hand is not your redemption.



 You are not your Redeemer.



 You must get on this boat if you are to be saved." And what Christ is saying to a people who are mocking Him, who are believing that they are the way out of their own evil is, "I will make a way of escape, but you must put your trust in Me, not in your hand, in My hand that is providing for you." That is your means of escape.



 And it was not just the message, it ultimately becomes the warning for all the world and all peoples and all of us for all time. After all, it was Jesus Himself who cited these events, who said in Matthew 24, "For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking and marrying and giving and marriage until the day that Noah entered the ark. And they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away. So will the coming of man be."



 He rose from the dead and He is coming again. And He comes to reap a great harvest of those who have put hope in His provision, not the work of their hand, not measuring up, not being better than somebody else who says, "My hope is not in My hand.



 I must trust in a Christ that has been provided for me, that one promise from the beginning of the world that He would crush the head of Satan in My back, He would be the refuge for My soul, that He would take My sin, My wrong, My mistakes, My selfishness upon the cross of His own shame and taking the penalty would defeat the sin in such a way that He could rise the victor over it and come again for Me and for you and to recreate a world



 of rainbows and new life and new hope and restoration. It was not the last time the hammer would fall.



 For ultimately what is happening when God put His own right hand upon that cross is that each hammer blow would again signal the gospel.



 You must flee the destruction to come. His left hand, your hand, is not going to save you. You must trust in Christ's hand to provide the way of escape. And as that message is ringing out in the pain and the frustration and the grief of His own disciples, He was accomplishing a plan of salvation so that those who knew grief would ultimately understand He provides new life and new hope and you must run to Him. He is your hope, His provision, His way, trust in Him. You must get on His boat. He is the way. He is the truth. He is the life. Trust in Him.



 Whether so work in our hearts and lives, we pray that we who need you, not our hand, to make us right for eternity, but a God who redeems and restores even the ruin that we have caused, teach us to trust Him, to hope in Him, to turn to Him, turn our eyes to the maker of the rainbow and believe that the one who restored what was lost, broken, fallen, and evil can so work for us and that's why He told us about it. Teach us of the greater Noah and the better ark, the cross that is our hope, the resurrection to which we now turn. Teach us of the one who made the way that our hope may rest in Him and our reign turned into the rainbow of a redeemer.



 With our trust in Him we pray. Amen.