Word of Salvation – Vol. 30 No. 46 – Dec 1985
Your Life Beneath God’s Rainbow
Sermon by Prof. H. De Waard on Genesis 9: 14,15
(Suitable for New Year’s Eve
Readings: Genesis 9: 1-17; Isaiah 54:1-10; Revelation 4: 1-11
Songs: 408; BoW. Hymn 4; 374; 475; BoW. Hymn 701
Brothers and sisters, young people boys and girls,
What is the first thought that comes to mind when you see a rainbow? Thunderclouds? Pot of gold? Noah’s ark? Promise of God?
There is something very fascinating about the rainbow, isn’t there? Many songs, stories and poems have been written about the rainbow. Here is one of them:
My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky,
So was it when my life began, so it is now I am a man,
So be it when I shall grow old, or let me die!
Some time ago, I drove down the Hume highway with my family. We had just come through a heavy shower of rain and all of a sudden I saw the beautiful arch of the rainbow in my rear-vision mirror. I got excited and told the children to look back. What if one of the children, having done a little science at school, would say: ‘Don’t be silly, dad, it is just the sun shining through the rain and refracting the light into all the colours of the spectrum! That would be correct… and it would kill the excitement of the moment. The rainbow is so beautiful because it is visible against a dark and threatening sky. The rainbow is symbol of hope and peace.
So it was for Noah as he stood on the threshold of a new world and so it is for us as we stand on the threshold of a brand-new year. Let us listen then to the Bible’s message about:
YOUR LIFE BENEATH GOD’S RAINBOW
We will first look at the GATHERING CLOUDS.
Secondly, we will see God’s GRACIOUS COVENANT and…
Thirdly we will look forward to a GLORIOUS FUTURE.
Firstly, we notice the gathering clouds. A great catastrophe had overcome the world. The world had been drowned. Only Noah and his family had survived to continue life in a water-logged world. It must have been a frightening world – like Hiroshima after the atom bomb, or Darwin after the cyclone, or Mexico City after the earthquake. Death, desolation and destruction were all around.
Every time new clouds gathered Noah might say to his wife: “Oh dear, I just hope it won’t happen again! Not another flood.” The future must have been frightening.
We all know this story very well and it has great relevance for us who stand on the threshold of the future.
God had told Noah that He would destroy the world because of its wickedness. (Gen.6:13). God promised to save Noah and his family. Noah accepted God’s word in faith. When the rains were ready to drown the earth, the Lord shut Noah into the ark. (Gen.7:16). The Flood was a dramatic way of showing God’s anger against the bad, sinful record of mankind. But God remembered Noah and brought him safely through the flood.
When Noah jumped out of the ark on the waterlogged earth, he worshipped and sacrificed to God. And then, life had to go on. What would happen to him and his family? Obviously more clouds and rain would come. God said: ‘Whenever I bring clouds over the earth…! (Not if but when.) At the beginning of a new stage of life on earth, Noah had every reason to watch the clouds. God might just strike again!
In a real sense we are standing on the doorstep of a new world.
Not only are we leaving the year 1985 behind us, but we are entering a world that is changing incredibly fast. The post-1985 world will be one in which the effects of computerization and technology will increasingly be felt. It will be a world of wonderful opportunities and dreadful possibilities; a world of much leisure time and travel but also one of unemployment and poverty; a world of instant communication, yet one of smashed relationships; a world of inter national cooperation but clouded by the stupidity of the arms race.
We have no promise that human cleverness will create a paradise. We have no guarantee that the nations, having played their war-games throughout history, are going to stop making war.
On the personal level too, we have hopes – sometimes desperate hopes – hopes for happiness, health, friendship, love. I cannot give you the guarantee that in the new year all your troubles will be over. I cannot give you the certainty that all your dreams will come true. They may. They may not. There may even be gathering clouds!
In the face of that reality, we must be careful to avoid two extremes. You may be tempted on the one hand to say: I am basically O.K. I have lots of resources. I just need a bit more effort and will-power to overcome my personal problems that now hang over me like a black cloud. And so we are tempted to trust in our own power and strength, rather than the power that God provides. But isn’t it one of the lessons of the Flood-story that sinful human resources are not sufficient to make our lives go right? Look at Noah! Though he found favour in the eyes of the Lord, a little while later we find him naked and drunk. (Gen.6:8,9; 9:21). So much for his resources. Noah was not O.K. He was a man of flawed character. Why on earth did God spare him in the flood of judgement?
That is the mystery of God’s choice. Through the choosing of Noah, God remained faithful to His whole, fallen creation and to His plan to send the Saviour Jesus Christ to save the world from sin and corruption. Not Noah’s will to be good, but God’s desire to save was the secret of salvation. What a humbling thought! Even though there are demons of lust, greed and hypocrisy in my life; even though everything is wrong in my life; when I believe in Jesus Christ, God says to me: ‘Everything is alright. Your life is undergirded by the mercy of God and that is why you need not give in to despair or cynicism about the future. There is a rainbow in your life!’
The cynic says: – and that’s the other extreme – we are living under a cloud without a rainbow. Everything is meaningless. The world is being swept along by a storm which no one can control because there is no one to control it! Such a hopeless and despairing attitude is pictured in a painting called ‘HOPE’. In the painting we see a woman with a bandage over her eyes, sitting in an empty universe, trying to make music on one string of a broken instrument. A picture of hopelessness! Are we really living under a cloud without a rainbow?
2. No, we are not. Our text speaks of God’s gracious covenant.
High above the ark appeared the rainbow-sign of God’s promised faithfulness. The world may have been drowned in the flood, but the goodness of God had not come to an end. God responded with an unconditional promise of no future world-wide catastrophe until the final DAY. (Gen.8:21,22; 2Peter 3:7). God’s dealings with Noah would eventually result in a new heaven and earth on which redeemed people would enjoy the friendship and presence of God forever. The covenant made with Noah promised blessings to all mankind. In this covenant God promised regularity in nature and the restraining of evil. God also affirmed the sacredness of human life which would be protected at the pain of death for those who violated human life. The provisions of this covenant enabled mankind to carry out the mandate of Genesis 1 to subdue the earth and use all its potential for the glory of God and the well-being of mankind. As a sign that God would stick to His promises, He gave the rainbow! ‘Whenever I see the rainbow,’ God said, ‘I remember my promise to the whole of creation’.
Would the rainbow not have existed before the time of Noah? I think it did. But only with Noah does the rainbow serve as a sign of God’s faithfulness. ‘Whenever I see it, I remember’, God said. And so must we.
We also need the rainbow of hope in a world gone through two world wars; a world of violence and upheavals, hunger, fear, terrorism and meaninglessness. Unless we see a rainbow of hope, ‘we toil and love and live and eat … and yet can never tell the purpose of it all’.
We do not know what lies ahead in the year 1986. We do not know what valleys of frustration you may have to go through. Or what hopes you will find dashed. There may be family tensions or disappointment with yourself. With a firm trust in God’s promises we can face our tomorrows. For the clouds, of whatever kind, are under God’s control. ‘I bring clouds on the earth’. Nineteen eighty-six is under God’s sovereign control. Its joys and sorrows we will receive from His hands. And His hands are the hands of LOVE.
Surely that has been shown again in the coming of the child of Bethlehem. He overcame the clouds of sin, judgment and death. In Jesus Christ, we have the assurance that God does not want to destroy but to renew all things and to deliver this world from its present sinful shape. The covenant with Noah had to serve that great purpose of God’s redemption. There are limits to the covenant with Noah. It only lasts ‘as long as the earth endures…’ (Gen.8:22.). But the greater covenant of redemption tells us that God’s love for His people knows no limits. Even the clouds of Israel’s faithlessness could not wipe out the love of God. When Israel had succumbed to the terrorism of sin and rebellion, God said: ‘This is like the days of Noah to me, when I swore that the waters of Noah would never again cover the earth’. (Isaiah 54:9) ‘So now I have sworn not to be angry with you’ (Isaiah 54:9).
This is the marvellous fact about God. He remembers you and me. He does not remember our sins! But He does remember His covenant of grace. Nothing can separate you, believer, from the love of God in Christ. Not your stubbornness, not your depressive moods, not your lack of assurance. Do not let these monsters rob you of the joy of salvation. Precisely against the backdrop of our rebelliousness and impurity, the rainbow of God’s faithfulness stands out the more brightly. WE are like the clouds – fragile, always shifting. You can be on cloud-9 one minute, the next minute it all evaporates and you come crashing down to the earth of reality.
Against such a constantly changing scene, God sets the symbol of his love and faithfulness.
3. Brothers and sisters, the year 1986 is also surrounded by the rainbow of God’s faithfulness.
That being so, let us set our hearts and minds on God and His Kingdom. Let us live in purity and singleness of heart. The confusion, cares and chaos of daily living often make our lives pigsties of impurity, where God is crowded out and the sanctifying presence of Christ is resisted. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God’ (Matthew 5:8). They have a glorious future that even Noah could not have dreamed of.
In Isaiah 65:17 God promised: ‘Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth’, That’s certain hope – and how much we need it in the face of growing uncertainty. God is acting to make all things new.
That promise is reinforced in the book of Revelation. When the apostle John saw signs of the approaching end, he saw clouds, and on the clouds the risen triumphant Jesus, introducing a glorious future. The present order of things is passing away. We all must come to the last page of our life’s diary. We must all leave this waterlogged earth. No one can escape. The rich cannot bribe death or the poor evade it. The king must come to it as well as the beggar. But for all who believe in Jesus Christ, God the Master Builder will make provision, namely, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. That is why John Wesley, when he came to the end of his life could say: ‘The best of all is yet to come. God is with us.’
In heaven, the first thing we will see is a rainbow. No, not in the clouds. There are no clouds in heaven. Revelation 4:3 tells us that a rainbow encircles the throne of God! Don’t be surprised. After all, the faithfulness of God has no limits. God is utterly dependable. The rainbow stretched between earth and heaven, proclaims peace between God and man. In Jesus Christ, God has broken through our dead ends and given us hope, reaching into life eternal.
So the believer says with confidence:
I trace the rainbow in the rain…
And know the promise is not vain.
AMEN.