Essential No. 9: Remember the Covenant
Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you,…” Genesis 9:8
We have seen that Noah was a man of destiny who had a call from God. He also lived a life that relied on the grace of God while living a life of character that reflected God’s favor over him. All this allowed him to build an ark that would contain and preserve all of God’s best for his life.
He was a man who learned how to wait on the Lord and after the tempest had passed, he allowed God to reboot his world. Now God was reminding Noah that despite what has happened and the devastation he faced, God will make all things good again. God reminds him of the way of the covenant.
What is a Covenant?
Simply put, it is a sacred agreement or contract. Much like a contract, a covenant involves parties, promises, and signs. The only difference when the Bible speaks of a covenant is that the main party involved is God. And that alone is enough to make it sufficiently different.
While contracts are similar to covenants, getting into an agreement with God is no ordinary arrangement. What differentiates a covenant from just another contract is because God is not just any ordinary person. His character is impeccable, His resources immeasurable, His powers unlimited, His existence timeless.
Long before Noah boarded the ark God had already told him that He was establishing a covenant with him (Genesis 6:18). It was the assurance that no matter what Noah encountered during the storm, God was going to uphold Him, and that’s a promise.
Now that the storm was over, God reminds Noah of His covenant to assure him that His promises were not just in effect during the storm but even after it. He would need this assurance to rebuild his devastated world.
A Promise to Hold on To
“I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” Genesis 9:11
To encourage Noah to face his new task of rebuilding a broken world, God had to assure Noah that a deluge of the proportion he just experienced was not happening again. Noah needed this assurance to motivate him to pick up the remnants of his life and start over.
It was God’s character and word that assured Noah that the promise can be counted upon. The storm was not meant to destroy God’s creation but to protect it from the real threat—sin. God assured him that his effort and energies were not for naught and that He would never again send a devastating flood.
This is who Jesus is to us. He is the very Ark that contains us in the midst of our storms, and the Lord of our lives who assures us when challenges come upon us, that He will never leave us or forsake us, in the midst of the storm or even after it has passed.
A Sign To Remind Us
“And God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.’” Genesis 9:12-13
To make sure that Noah remained encouraged He gave Him a sign to remind him of the covenant He had established with him, a bow. Curiously, He let the bow appear every time a measure of rain trickled. It was God’s way of reminding him that he had nothing to worry about, God was with Him and not against him.
It has been said that a rainbow is a colorful bow that points to heaven and not to earth. God’s reminder was that He was not Noah’s enemy, rather, He willingly pointed the bow to His own heart. It was His way of saying that before any harm came to Noah, He will first inflict pain on Himself.
That’s what God did when He sent us His Son, Jesus Christ. And as Christ Himself declared, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.’”
A few words stand out in Christ’s declaration above: remembrance, new covenant, body and blood. To God’s own pain He sent His Son to die a cruel death to save us (His enemies) by forgiving us our sins. This is the sign that we are to remember in the midst of a storm and even after it has passed.
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