#DailyDevotion The Rainbow Is The Sign God Won’t Wipe Us Out With Water…There’s Always Fire

Genesis 9:8–17 ⁸God told Noah and his sons: ⁹“I am making My covenant with you and your children after you ¹⁰and with every living being that is with you: birds, domestic animals, and all wild animals that are with you, as many as came out of the ark, yes, all the animals on earth… ¹²God said: “This is the sign of the covenant I am making with you and every living being that is with you, for all ages to come: ¹³I have put My rainbow in the clouds to be a sign of the covenant between Me and the world. ¹⁴Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow is seen in the clouds, ¹⁵then I will remember My covenant with you and every living being of every kind of flesh: Never again will the waters become a flood and destroy every living thing. ¹⁶When the rainbow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember there’s an everlasting covenant between God and every living being of every kind of flesh on earth. ¹⁷That,” God told Noah, “is the sign of the covenant I am making with everything that lives on earth.”

Noah and his family had just witnessed the total destruction of the earth. There are a lot of movies out there today where it seems like everyone but the main character was wiped off the face of the earth, but eventually, they find a few stragglers, some friendly and some foe. This was not the case for Noah and his family, eight persons in all. Not only that, but the only land and air animals that were alive came off the boat with him. The LORD seemed to have made the grass of the fields and the trees of the forest begin to grow or maybe he just called them into being as he did during creation (the Bible doesn’t say). If you watch one of those movies though, you may get an idea how they felt as the came off the boat after many months and saw the destruction.

Oh, why did the LORD wipe out all life, men, women, children, and animals? Because mankind had become utterly corrupt. Evil was good and good was evil. We can only look at how evil pervades the world today to see perhaps what sort of things man was getting into. The LORD thought it was best to start over with Noah and his family, whom all of us are descended from. (More of this later maybe)

Seeing the devastation, the LORD makes a promise, a covenant with Noah, his family and all life on earth. He needed to be comforted. We need to be assured as we watch floods take over certain portions of land. God will never kill all life by a flood. So that we may be assured of that the LORD put a rainbow in the clouds as a sign of this covenant. When it rains, we can look up, see the rainbow and remember the LORD’s covenant with us.

It is a shame that wicked evil people have taken this sign of God’s mercy and kindness and use it as a rallying flag for their perversions. Perhaps they have forgotten the LORD is coming again in judgment and this time with fire. All we can do is point out their sin (while removing the log in our own eyes first) and point them to Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins. We should not hate them. They are those, fellow descendants of Noah, for whom Jesus Christ died so they may be free from their sin and live. We all, wicked and evil as we are, now have Christ Jesus’ cross as a sign of a new covenant in which our Father forgives us our sins and remembers them no more.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your covenant in the rainbow. We are all those more grateful for the covenant of the cross of Christ. Grant us repentance and faith in Christ so we may live. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

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