"Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything… I establish my covenant with you: 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." 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: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 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. 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." So God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth."
Genesis 9:1-3,8-17
God commanded Noah to build an ark and inhabit it with his family and "seven of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth." (Genesis 7:2-3) Obedient and faithful to God, Noah carried out his tasking as God opened the "floodgates of heaven" in sending rain for 40 days and 40 nights, flooding all the earth for 150 days and wiping out every living creature that wasn’t in the ark. Our scripture picks up after the flood as God blesses Noah, his sons and their families, urging them to "be fruitful and increase in number" in order to "fill the earth." After all, they are the only ones left. But God does something else important as he addresses Noah and his family after the flood: He establishes a very important covenant.
Although this would not be the first covenant or promise God would establish, it was His first and possibly the most important one because it dealt with everything He had created more than a select group. The flood had brought annihilation and extermination of everything that had breath on earth. God’s covenant promised it would be the last time it would happen. And this would have been awesome enough, but God wasn’t done yet. He wanted to make sure He left a sign of His promise and thus the rainbow came to be.
I don’t know about you but I love rainbows and always have even before I discovered how they came to be. There’s something simply fascinating and beautiful about them as they arc across the sky displaying their beautiful array of colors…reminding us that He loves us and will never seek to totally eliminate His creation again.
So next time you see a rainbow, look up, thank God and remember that He first showed it to Noah and his family and has shown it ever since. Thanks be to God.
In Christ,
Mark
PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
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