Genesis 9:8-17
Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth. 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.” 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. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. There are a number of stories that are really popular to tell Sunday school children. The stories typically are ones that involve things like animals, or kids. Many of them are pretty neutral or actually kind of cute. I think one of those is the story of the calling of Samuel. Right Samuel is, is a young man, often depicted in Sunday school as a child. And he hears the voice of God and He's excited to be a prophet. And typically the end of the story before it gets to the sad part, where God tells him that his adopted father is going to die. And he has to tell Eli that him and Eli's children, we leave that part out. But a couple of the stories are kind of horrifying. And one of the favorite Sunday School stories is David and Goliath, right? Again, he is pictured not like what he was probably like a 16 year old, but he's usually pictured as a young child, and he runs out, and he's got the sling and God will protect me. And then they like they stopped the story there. Because the story ends with David like, shooting the sling, hitting the guy in the forehead. And then he takes Goliath sword out, and he cuts his head off. And he's like, Hey, everybody, look at this. Not very Sunday school, right? Perhaps the most famous Sunday School story is the story of Noah and his ark. Because we really liked the image like the cartoon image that I'm sure all of you have seen. It's with Noah, on the on the 2d boat, with the lions, like sticking their heads up over and the drafts pop out of the little top right. And then you've got the sheep on the other side, and everyone is smiling and happy and all their cartoon awesomeness. And you know what, they don't draw all of the bodies floating in the water. Right? Because the flood is not a cutesy story. The story of Noah and the ark is a story of God's judgment on the earth. And we're talking about this story. From the very end. Our reading from Genesis chapter nine, is right after Noah gets off the ark with him and his family. They build an altar and they offer a sacrifice to God, and God presents this covenant, that he will never again flood the entire earth to destroy all flesh. And then he puts a rainbow in the sky as the sign of the covenant. So that when we would look up and we see all the beautiful colors of the rainbow, we remember God will never flood the entire Earth. Again. That is the sign of His covenant. But there's a whole lot behind the story. Right? You'd have to go all the way back to the very beginning of Noah's story to get what was going on before. Genesis chapter six, the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil, continually. And the Lord regretted that He made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, I will block out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals, and creeping things, and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. So the story goes, God tells Noah to build his very famous Ark, the animals get on board, God closes the door, and then it rains. And the floodwaters come up from the deep end, and everything that breathe fresh air dies. And Noah and all of the people on the ark and all of the animals are on there for months and months and months. It rains. But then the floodwaters have to go away. And then they hit the mountain And the floodwaters have to recede, and they wait before the mud turns to grass. And then finally the bird brings back the olive branch showing the plants have grown, and you can get out and eat things that are growing. And they get off the earth is desolate. There are a total of eight people alive on the entire planet. Imagine that you can't Canyon, the destruction, the judgment and the power of God. What we see is that God uses water to destroy and judge the sin of the world. But he also uses water to preserve the faithful family, Noah and his children and their wives. And so God gives them this covenant, so that he would never again do what he just did, and flood the entire Earth and kill everything all. Right. Now you might be wondering, What in the world do Christians get from this other than a promise that God will never have a worldwide flood? And that's a great question. Because on its own, that's all there is. No flood. That's it. Until you get to how the New Testament reflects back on more on Noah and his family. In First Peter, where it says, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in whichever view that is eight persons were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this now saves you not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven, and is that the right hand of God with angels, authorities and powers having been subjected to him. Peter picks up on a theme from the Old Testament about water being used both to judge and to say, both to cleanse from evil and to make alive again, in many Lutherans when we do a baptism, we pray what is called Luthers flood prayer, which really highlights this theme. It says, almighty and eternal God, according to your strict judgment, you condemned to the unbelieving world through the flood. Yet, according to Your great mercy, you preserved believing Noah and his family, eight souls in all of you drowned, hardhearted Pharaoh and all his hosts in the Red Sea. Yet lead your people Israel through the water on dry ground prefiguring this washing of Your Holy Baptism, through the baptism in the Jordan, your beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, you sanctified and instituted all waters to be a blessing flood, and the lavish washing away of sin. So the New Testament uses Noah and the flood, as an example, a metaphor for what God does in our baptism. And so what we see and baptism through this lens, is that it one judges the sinner. To makes the saint come alive. And three, gives us a sign of the promise that God gives each and every Christian. Let's take a look at those three things. So first, baptism judges, the sinner in each of us. It's pretty clear how that happened with Noah and the ark, the waters of the flood came down and it judged the whole world the devastation would have been terrible.
Especially those first few moments as the the noise that would come outside of the ark, as the people who realized that they were too late to join Noah found the waters rising. As we consider the Florida and reflect on our own baptism, we can see within ourselves some of those things that God complained about when he looked at the whole earth and found that well, their hearts and thoughts were only about evil, as it says, evil continually. And we still have a little bit of that inside of us, don't we wear our hearts and our thoughts, even when we don't like it. Consider evil first. Consider the hard things that we don't like to do. First, until our consciences and the Holy Spirit bat them away and say, No, we're supposed to be doing something else. And yet very often, our first reaction is hostility, anger. And even if we let it go, it would be violence, right? Our life is not, and our hearts are not as pure as we would like them to be. And that is why Jesus came and died on our cross. He came to bring judgments to that kind of sin. Because the thing that we deserve actually is the floodwaters of the earth and even more than that, Death and Hell. And what we see in the cross is not just the salvation that Jesus wins for us. But him taking the wrath of God into his body. He drinks fully the cup of God's wrath on the cross, and takes that punishment for us. The cross is the judgment on sin given to the sinless one, so that we would not have to take. The amazing thing is that in baptism, the judgment that is on Christ is brought into the sinner in us. We Die with Christ, when the water is placed on our heads. That is what St. Paul says in Romans chapter six, when he tells us that in our baptism, we die with Christ, and we rise with him. Which means back when you were baptized, the sinner in you was killed by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit came down and nailed that evil guide to the cross with Jesus Christ. Which is pretty cool, right? It means that when your heart has it first reaction to sin, or violence or evil or anger, those things that you hate, and that the Holy Spirit bats away. Those are just the dying gasps of the executed one. He's on his way out. He's been destroyed by the power of God in Baptist. That's the gift that God gave you all that time ago, when he poured the water on your head. He united you with Jesus Christ in the judgment on the sinner. So that the sin in you could die. But he also makes alive, the st. That is in you. Because in baptism, we do not just die with Christ, we rise with him. Peter reflects on this as part of the story of Noah. He tells us that God preserved Noah eight souls and all and it corresponds to our own baptisms that save us. God's judgment on the earth cleansed it and he preserved a faithful family, one that would get off the ark and offer a sacrifice that pleases God. One that would be the father of all the generation. We see it also in Jesus, who after dying on the cross was placed in the tomb. And after three days rose from the dead, as the very first of all of those faithful who would follow him. His new body, the resurrected body is the image of our own body, on the day that we rise, and because he is alive, our heavenly Father gives us life to. So in your baptisms, not only did the sinner die, but the Saint Rose from the dead, to live eternal life for you at that very moment. Which means eternal life is not just a future thing that we look forward to the moment when Christ returns, and he raises our bodies from the ground, but a gift that you have now. Because you died with Christ, and you rose with Him, and His resurrection lives inside of you. So he empowers you to live, as the saint would want you to do, empowers you to walk, as St. Paul says in Romans chapter six, to walk in newness of life. So in baptism, God judges the sinner, and raises a saint to new life. And third, he gives us a sign of the promise that he made in our baptism. God did something like that with Noah, with the rainbow. When God made his promise, he said, I would make a covenant with you that I will never flood the earth and destroy all flash. And he said, his bow in the heavens, the rainbow. And it was supposed to be that anytime the rain fell, and the sun shines through it, we would look up and see a good, God will never again flood the whole earth. A nice reminder, right? And we get beautiful rainbows that are a part of that. Now, it's pretty popular amongst Christians to say, oh, when you look at the rainbow, you can see a sign of God's love for you. Which is not true. At all. Right? All you got to do is look at this. It's just a sign of this promise way back when the covenant with Noah, he's just not going to flood the whole earth. Again. He's got all sorts of other things he could do. Just not this flood, right? If you are looking for a sign that God loves you with sign of his great covenant with you, and his promise, you're not supposed to look up into the sky, no matter how beautiful that rainbow is. You look to the moment of your baptism. Because it is not just the power of God at work in you, to kill you and make you alive. It is also a physical sign of His promise, because when it happened, people saw it. Right? There were people who were there. And if you're like me, it was your parents, who were likely holding you at the time. And then someone was there when they splashed the water on your head and said I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. You might have a certificate that says it happened or photos of people in in white clothes and suits standing next to the pastor, right. If you're really lucky, your parents saved your baptismal candle. Or like me, you have this little silver cross that your parents saved as this tiny little cartoon child kneeling in prayer that I still have in my office, sitting behind my desk is I've had this since the day I was baptized. And what you can do is instead of looking at the clouds remember your baptism because this is an external and physical sign of the inward and spiritual covenant that God made with you. That at the very same time the water splashed on your head, the Holy Spirit killed you and made you alive again, destroyed the sinner and raised the saint and made you one with Jesus Christ forever.
So when you doubt or worry, or doesn't seem like the saints is doing that great a job. All you got to do is look back and remember the covenant that God made with you in that sacrament. Because he made a promise. He made a promise that he would save you that he would give you life. And you can remember that every time you see the photos, look at their certificate, or just think back. Yep, I was baptized. Because God does these things on the outside to give us incontrovertible evidence that you are saved. In Jesus name, Amen.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai