A reminder for God? God needs no reminder. He is all knowing, all powerful, all present. Yet, reminding God of His covenant with Noah is the purpose of the rainbow according to Genesis 9:16.
The great flood had receded. Noah and his family survived in the ark God directed them to build. At the first opportunity Noah prepared a burnt offering before the Lord.
In response, God said, “Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth” (Gen. 9:11). As a sign of the covenant God placed the rainbow in the sky and declared, “Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures on the earth.”
The Hebrew word for rainbow is a military term meaning bow. Lamentations 2:4 and Habakkuk 3:9–11 describe God using His bow as a weapon against the earth. But Genesis 9:16 tells a different story.
The arch of the bow was in the clouds. The string laid along the ground. As a weapon, the bow was useless. It is almost as if the writer were describing God laying down His wrath toward humankind. The discarded weapon, the rainbow, became an everlasting symbol of God’s covenant with Noah and his descendants.
God had made an earlier covenant with Adam and Eve. Still other covenants would be made after the one with Noah. Each had a symbol. With Adam and Eve the symbol was the tree of good and evil in the center of the garden. As long as the couple obeyed God and avoided the tree, there was faithfulness to God. They accepted the blessing of His presence and all the other care He provided. When Adam and Eve disobeyed, they rejected God.
Later God made a covenant with Abram. Scholars call it a “royal covenant” (Gen. 15:9–21). Like with Noah, it was all from God’s initiative. Abram and his descendants benefit from God’s actions. But royal covenants anticipated that descendants would continue the ways of their fathers in order to keep the covenant in force. The symbol of this covenant was circumcision.
Still later God made a covenant with all of Israel at Mount Sinai. The symbol of this covenant was the keeping of the Sabbath (Ex. 31:16–17). The Old Testament records other covenants: Phinehas (Num. 25:10–13), David (2 Sam. 7:5–16) and a new covenant recorded in Jeremiah 31:31–34, to mention some.
Why so many? Perhaps because the human side of the covenant failed to honor its conditions? Adam and Eve ate from the tree of good and evil. Noah’s sons turned to their own wicked ways. Abraham’s descendants failed to “be a blessing.” Israel did not love God with heart and soul and mind and strength.
Evidently it was never God who needed a reminder of His covenants. It was always mankind. God spoke the truth (for God can only speak truth) when He said in Genesis 8:21 that “Every inclination of his (man’s) heart is evil from childhood.”
Yet God kept on reaching out to humankind. As one scholar noted, “The Creator kept on
re-creating, the Giver of life kept on giving.”
Ultimately God offered life, eternal life, in a new way — through faith in His Son, Jesus (Rom. 3:22). The following verse affirms that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” In other words, today’s names can be added to the litany of those who failed to meet God’s standards of covenant.
Once again God took the initiative. Jesus paid the price for sin through His death on the cross. Once again, mankind benefited from God’s actions. “This righteousness of God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. … [They] are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:22, 24).
The symbol of God’s action is the cross. There the righteousness of God met the demands of man’s unrighteousness. There the “One who knew no sin” died for the sins of the world. The cross speaks of pain and suffering. It also speaks of love and hope, God’s love for us and our hope for eternity.
The cross is a symbol that God did not walk away from mankind or from you and me because of our sin. Like the rainbow, the cross says God is not against us. He is for us. The cross says that for us the Creator kept on re-creating, the Giver of life kept on giving.
When you see the cross let it be a reminder of what God has done, what is possible for all who believe on Jesus.
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