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UNDER THE RAINBOW
First Things, Part 9
November 18, 2007
Pastor Bob Sanders
Returning to our series on the first eleven chapters of Genesis, we come to one of the best known stories in the Bible: Noah and the ark. Even those who never read the Bible know about the trials and tribulations of Noah. Maybe you saw the movie “Evan Almighty.” Many of us remember Bill Cosby’s classic comedy sketch. You can find the ark in at least three different places in these church buildings. There’s our Noah’s Ark preschool downstairs in the Christian Education wing. Then there’s the magnificent wood sculpture of Noah and the ark and all the animals on the wall across from the nursery. And finally there’s the sanctuary itself. Look up at the ceiling. Doesn’t it look like a huge boat turned upside down? It’s meant to. Welcome to the ark!
The complete story of Noah covers four chapters in Genesis, but since it is so well-known we’re going to read this condensed version on the insert found in your bulletin.
From Genesis 6 - 9 (TNIV)
6:5-13
5 The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The LORD regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7 So the LORD said, "I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them." 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.
9 This is the account of Noah and his family.
Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God. 10 Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.
11 Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 13 So God said to Noah, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.
7:17-21
17 For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. 18 The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 19 They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. 20 The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits. 21 Every living thing that moved on the earth perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and the entire human race.
8:15-17
15 Then God said to Noah, 16 "Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. 17 Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it."
9:8-17
8 Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: 9 "I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you 10 and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. 11 I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth."
12 And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: 13 I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. 16 Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth."
17 So God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth."
There are so many ways to go at this. We could focus on Noah and how he got all the animals on board, or on why the flood shows up in so many ancient religions, or whether the ark is still around today. But the real subject of the story is not Noah, not the animals, not the flood. The real subject is God. This story is a window into God’s heart, God’s character, and it shows us three things we need to know about God: three striking truths about who he is. First, it shows us a God of judgment. Second, a God of suffering love. And third, a God of grace. Judgment, suffering love, and grace. Not easy topics, so let’s take a closer look.
Judgment
First, the God of judgment. This is the toughest one for many today. For many people the idea of a God of judgment is upsetting and outdated – something you might expect to hear in a Baptist church but not a Presbyterian. We’re fine with God as long as it’s a God who’s a kindly grandfather, a God who never gets upset at anything, a God who never holds anyone accountable. But what do we see here? I’m looking at verses 11 and following where it says, “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence,” and God saw how corrupt it had become, and God decided to wipe humanity from the face of the earth.
There it is: a God of judgment, a God of wrath. Now, this is very upsetting, very offensive to some people. A God who judges? A God who condemns and destroys? I would suggest that this part of the story is why a lot of people reject the Bible and tell you they cannot believe in a God who would do this.
So I want to be very careful and respectful in what I say here. And the place to begin is to notice what provokes God’s judgment, and that’s human violence. Verse 11 again: “The earth was corrupt and full of violence.” That’s the thing that brings on God’s judgment. In verse 13 God says, “I’m going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence.”
What does that mean? It means God stands implacably opposed to violence, to oppression, to abuse, to anything that violates human life and dignity. And what we see in the flood is God acting to save his creation from the violence that’s destroying it. The flood is meant to give the world a fresh start, a second chance. But think about this. If you don’t believe in divine judgment, if you can’t go along with a God who holds us all morally accountable, if you think it’s primitive and upsetting – then you’re going to have a huge problem with human violence. The simplest way I can put it is this: human violence wins if you don’t believe in the idea of divine judgment.
What do I mean by that? I mean that without a God of judgment, without a God of moral accountability, who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong? Who’s to say violence is wrong? Everywhere you look in nature you see violence – big animals eat little animals and are in turn eaten by still bigger animals. And we say that’s OK, that’s the natural order. But when big nations devour little nations, when big groups oppress smaller groups, we say that’s wrong.
Why? How do you know that?
Unless there’s a God of judgment, a God who declares what’s good and bad and judges us accordingly, you can’t call it “wrong.” On what basis can you say it’s wrong? How can you say something is crooked unless there’s a straight edge to hold up against it? You can say, “Torturing prisoners is wrong.” Or, “Enslaving children in India is wrong.” Or, “Raping and killing in Darfur are wrong.” But the guys torturing the prisoners and abusing the children and committing the rapes will look you in the eye and say, “No, it’s not.” So who’s right?
See, you have to have an outside reality, a moral Other, to stand up to violence and call it wrong. Without a God of judgment, you have no moral defense against evil, oppression, and violence.
And you have no emotional defense, either. For every act of physical violence there are thousands of acts of emotional violence – promises broken, trust betrayed, dreams shattered, characters assassinated. Violence goes on everywhere all the time. And when someone does that to you, when someone violates you and deeply hurts you, what are you going to do about it? I preached a sermon on this a few months ago and I said the answer to that kind of violence is to forgive. And while I still think that’s right, we do need to forgive, I’ve come to realize it’s not that simple. What I mean is if you can do that – if you can just forgive just like that and it’s over – then in all likelihood you have not really been violated. If you can forgive somebody with a simple act of the will, they haven’t really gone after your treasures, they haven’t really gone after you, they haven’t really violated you.
I’ve come to believe – as a pastor and as a counselor and as a human being – there’s only one emotional defense against violence. And that is you’ve got to believe there’s a Judge – and you’re not it. In other words, you’ve got to say, “I’m not the Judge. I don’t have the power to give people what they deserve. But there’s One who does. I don’t have the knowledge to know what they deserve. But there’s One who does. And I don’t have the right to give people what they deserve because I deserve it too, I’m flawed. But there’s One who does.” And only if you know that there is a Judge – you don’t have the power or the knowledge or the right, but there’s One who does – only if you know that are you going to be able to forgive. You need to know there’s a God who judges the violator, a God who vindicates the abused and gives justice to the oppressed – you need that in order to trust him with the hurt, and to get to the place where you can finally forgive.
Is the idea of God’s judgment something primitive or outdated? I think not. Is violence outdated? The first thing we see about God is that he’s a God who judges, a God who holds humanity morally accountable. And I’m suggesting we need that kind of God because of the reality of violence both in the world at large and in our own personal lives.
Suffering Love
But there’s a second thing we have to see about God in this story. Is there anyone here who says, “I just can’t stand this idea of judgment”? Anyone here whose skin crawls to hear about a God of wrath? Do you find it emotionally painful to think about divine judgment? Listen. There’s nothing wrong with your heart if it recoils at the idea of judgment. There’s nothing wrong with your heart if it’s filled with pain at the idea. Because there’s Somebody else – a very surprising Somebody else – who experiences considerably more distress than you do at the idea of divine judgment. In fact, your distress and your recoiling and your pain are nothing next to his.
Look at verse 5. This is one of the worst verses in the Bible: “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become.” God comes to evaluate humanity and it says that “every inclination of the human heart was only evil all the time.” Look at the words: “every…only…all.” Nobody passes. Everybody fails. And what do you get in verse 6? Not what you expected. Verse 5 shows the necessity of judgment. But verse 6 shows us the problem that creates for God.
What is God’s response when he sees what has to be done? It says “His heart was deeply troubled.” In another translation it says, “His heart was filled with pain.” You’re upset about divine judgment? God’s more upset. You can’t stand it, you want to scream when you think about it? God’s more upset. It says his heart was filled with pain. Not a little bit, not a minor ache. No, filled with pain. The Hebrew word suggests unfulfilled longing, bitter anguish, deepest frustration. It’s talking about the worst pain imaginable. That’s what God feels for his fallen, broken creation: suffering love.
A while back Nicholas Wolterstorff of Yale University wrote a powerful book after his 20-year-old son died. It’s called Lament for a Son, and in it he has this amazing line. He says, “The tears of God are the meaning of history.” What does that mean? Look at it in light of what we’ve already seen in Genesis. Back in Genesis 1 and 2 God made us in his image and tied his heart to us. But there in the Garden we said, “We don’t want You, we don’t trust You” and we turned away. That’s chapter 3, verse 7.
Now, why is there a verse 8? After we rejected God, why didn’t history end right there? Why didn’t God shut the whole thing down? Why are we still here today? And the answer is what Wolterstorff says: the tears of God are the meaning of history. We’re still here and history goes on because there in the Garden God decided to weep. God decided to stay engaged. God decided to suffer. That’s the second truth about God we see in this story: his suffering love for this fallen world.
Now what are we to do with this? We have these two seemingly contradictory images of God. On the one hand, we have a God who judges human violence. On the other, we have a God who suffers over what that judgment will bring. How can that be? How can we have a God who is both judge and lover? A God who is absolutely against injustice and violence and yet absolutely engaged with a fallen humanity? How can we have a God who is both truth and love?
Grace
I’m glad you asked. Because it brings us to our final point. The story of the flood shows us the God who judges and the God who suffers. But when we come to chapter 9 it shows us the God of grace, because that’s what the rainbow is all about. In verse 12 God says, “This is the sign of the covenant I’m making between me and you.” The word “sign” means a symbol. A covenant sign is always a symbol of God’s salvation. The Lord’s Supper is a covenant sign – the bread and the cup are symbols of his death for us. And the rainbow is a sign, a symbol that tells us about the God of grace and the relationship we can have with him.
What do I mean? Well, notice a couple of things about the rainbow. Notice, for example, that you never find a rainbow on a sunny day. Never. There will always be some dark, stormy weather nearby. And in the same way, most of us don’t discover the grace of God unless we’re in some kind of storm, some kind of trouble. We don’t find God’s grace unless something gets us to see our insufficiency, our neediness, our sin. The first thing rainbow tells us is that we’ll never find the grace of God on a sunny day. Very often it’s troubles that come into our lives that show us we need him. But whether it’s troubles or not, something has to come into your life, because to see the grace of God you first have to see your need, your weakness, your sin. You only see the rainbow when there are storm clouds around.
And then notice the rainbow itself. We all learned in junior high science that a rainbow is sunlight refracted through raindrops. It actually forms a complete 360 degree circle, but we only see one half of it. We don’t call it a rain circle but a bow because it looks like a bow – a bow that shoots arrows. But that’s the key. In verse 13 God says, “I have set my rainbow in the clouds” but the word in Hebrew isn’t rainbow. It’s literally the word for a war bow, a battle bow, a weapon.
God says, “I have set aside my war bow. I have set aside my wrath, my judgment. I’m not going to destroy the earth or humankind.” Why is he doing this? Does he think that after the flood everything will work out, that from now on Noah and his family will live a perfect life? No. God knows that from the minute they step out of the ark there’s going to be more sin, more brokenness, more violence. God isn’t naïve. But God says, “I’m laying up my bow. And that’s a sign for you. That means you can be in a relationship with me in which there is no more condemnation, no more wrath, no more judgment for sin.”
How could that be? Years ago the great Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon put it this way in one of his sermons. He said we should have known. When we look in the sky and see God’s bow we see it’s not pointed down, it’s pointed up. Spurgeon said God has not stopped being a God of judgment. But God’s aiming his arrows of judgment somewhere else. They’re going into Someone else. Where are they going?
Isaiah 53 talks about the Servant who was pierced for our transgressions. He got the arrows. Who’s that talking about? Jesus Christ. There on the cross of Christ God’s judgment and God’s love come together. On the cross of Christ God’s judgment on sin is fulfilled because it was poured out on the sinless Jesus. But at the same time God’s infinite love is fulfilled because it saves us. Think of it this way: on the cross the storm of God’s judgment and the sunlight of God’s love come together, and that’s why you have the rainbow. Jesus went into the storm of God’s righteous judgment out of love for you and for me. Lighting for him. A rainbow for us.
God’s grace is best seen not on bright sunny days, but in the midst of storms. Some of you are in the midst of a storm right now. But don’t forget there’s grace in the middle of the storm. Some of you are struggling under a terribly dark cloud. But it’s not the cloud of God’s judgment because all that judgment is what fell on Jesus. And because there’s grace in the midst of God’s judgment, there will be mercy in the heart of the storm you’re going through. You’re under the rainbow. That’s why William Cowper, who struggled with all kinds of storms including paralyzing depression, could write the words on the front of your bulletin. Listen to the final verse:
You fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds you so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on your head.
Lightning for him so there could be a rainbow for us. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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