Sign of the Covenant – Genesis 9:8-17
A Peanuts cartoon pictures Lucy and Linus looking out the window at a steady downpour of rain. “Boy,” Lucy says, “look at it rain. What if it floods the whole world?” Linus replies, “It will never do that. In the ninth chapter of Genesis, God promised Noah that would never happen again, and the sign of the promise is the rainbow.” Lucy gives a smile of relief. “You’ve taken a great load off my mind.” “Sound theology,” Linus advises, “has a way of doing that.”
Every time we see a rainbow, we should be reminded of sound theology – most especially the faithfulness of God. God had saved Noah through the ark and kept Noah and his family alive for nearly a year. When the time came, God told Noah to leave the ark. At that point, God would make a covenant with Noah.
THE BASIS OF THE COVENANT:
Just as God told Noah to build the ark in chapter 6:14ff, God told Noah that He would establish a covenant with him (6:17-21). The basis of the covenant was Noah’s faithful obedient response to God’s offer of grace.
Genesis 6:22 is the key to understanding the basis of this covenant between God and Noah: “Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.”
THE SUBSTANCE OF THE COVENANT:
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God gets specifically to the covenant He is making with Noah in 9:8-17. The word “covenant” is found 325 times in the Bible. Clearly, it is an important theological concept. The word is used 290 times in the OT; 35 times in the NT. The word “covenant” is found 26 times in the book of Genesis. The first time was in 6:18. Here in our paragraph, it is found seven times.
THE SIGN OF THE COVENANT:
We are all quite familiar with the point that the rainbow is a sign – a sign, in fact, to God Himself – that He will not, again, destroy the world with water. Here is the interesting thing – the Hebrew word for “rainbow” is the same word for the bow as a weapon. The bow was a widely used weapon in Old Testament times and it became a symbol for war. God is sometimes portrayed as a warrior and can destroy His enemies with a bow (Exodus 15:3; Hab. 3:9). So, what we have here pictured is God taking His bow that had been aimed at mankind in wrath and changing it into a sign of peace, God’s peace between Him and mankind.
So, God intended that whenever man would see a rainbow in the sky, man will be reminded that God has limited Himself, He has limited His own expression of wrath. God’s bow is hanging in the sky, not notched with an arrow.
Of course, the whole point of the rainbow is to emphasize that God is faithful to His promises; He is trustworthy. We can depend on Him. We must depend on Him. That’s why we must obey Him. That is sound theology.
–Paul Holland
