Friends,
Here you can find links to the audio and video content from our most recent session. There is also a recap, the art piece of the week, and a brief look toward next week. I hope this is all helpful and encouraging and life giving to you all!
Resources
Recap
This week we looked at the second half of the Noah story. One of the striking things here is the ways we see echoes of the gospel here. Allow me to mention just a few examples.
Noah comes out of the ark and builds an altar and makes a sacrifice. God smells the sacrifice, and says, “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done” (Genesis 8:21b NIV11). God pledges not to destroy humanity again. But God also acknowledges that the flood hasn’t changed anything: humans are still evil, still prone to sin. In fact, the Bible even describes our sinfulness in strikingly similar ways here and before the flood (see 6:5). So, why the change? The only thing I can figure is this: Noah trusted God, Noah obeyed God, and Noah sacrificed to God. And so because of all that, we no longer live under the threat of a world destroying flood event. Friends, this is Jesus: God’s faithful and obedient one, who made the good sacrifice, so that, in him, God promises to preserve and protect our lives, even when we don’t deserve it.
Next, God also responds by making a covenant with Noah (and the rest of creation). He says:
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.” (Genesis 9:12–16 NIV11)
The Hebrew word here translated “rainbow” just means bow - as in bow and arrow. The warrior God is hanging it up; it’s as if God is announcing his retirement from world-destruction. But the image is potentially even more interesting: the bow is hung up in the sky, but it is also pointed up, as if God is saying, “If anyone is getting the arrow from now on, it’s going to be me. I’ll take the arrow that you deserve on your behalf.” What a fantastic description of the cross: Jesus taking from us the punishment that we rightly deserve.
Art
This watercolor used to hang in the nursery here at MUMC. I believe it was saved after our (comparatively) little flood back in February, and currently hangs in the Children’s ministry office.
For next week
Next week we’ll look at the Tower of Babel. Take a look at that story from Genesis 11. It’s a lot shorter than what we’ve been looking at so far, so maybe read it more than once. Ponder this: what went wrong here? How does God handle it? Can you find Jesus in this story?
In Christ,
Pastor Cabe
