The Divine Covenants

The Noahic Covenant (Part 2)

We have seen that Adam was more than a private individual. He was the federal head of all mankind. Each covenant God made with men shadowed some element of the everlasting covenant. In our study of the Tabernacle a year or so ago we saw that every aspect of the Tabernacle, including the measurements, had not only a utilitarian side, but also they had a spiritual reference to Jesus. The same is true of the covenants.

In the present case of the covenant with Noah, the literal meaning is very obvious; namely, the promise with the rainbow that God would never again destroy the world with water. But there was a deeper meaning in that promise. Noah and his family had been saved from the wrath of God which destroyed the rest of the living things on earth. Now the earth was to be restored. Here was a great opportunity for a wider revelation of the aspects of the believer’s salvation. To confine the benefits for Noah to the temporal and ignore the spiritual importance, would be as blind as to fail to see Jesus’ sacrifice in its spiritual significance.

There is a very relevant passage we need to see in Isaiah 54:4-10.

· Isaiah 54:4-10,  "Do not be afraid; you will not suffer shame. Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated. You will forget the shame of your youth and remember no more the reproach of your widowhood.  For your Maker is your husband--the LORD Almighty is his name-- the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth.  The LORD will call you back as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit---a wife who married young, only to be rejected," says your God.  "For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back.  In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you,” says the LORD your Redeemer.  "To me this is like the days of Noah, when I swore that the waters of Noah would never again cover the earth. So now I have sworn not to be angry with you, never to rebuke you again.  Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,”  says the LORD, who has compassion on you.

This passage in Isaiah suggests the gospel era. The church, in the form of Israelitish theocracy is pictured as a woman who had long been barren. Comparatively few Jews had become believers in the true God. At the time of Jesus, Pharisees and Sadducees were very common. But the death of Jesus introduced better times as the Gentiles were beginning to be saved.

By now one might be asking, why did God promise not to destroy the earth again by flood?  The answer is because of the church. You see, when all of the elect have been saved the world will come to an end.

So from what we now see, while the literal welfare of the promise made to Noah concerned the temporal welfare of the earth and its inhabitants, the mystical importance had to do with the spiritual well-being of the church and its members.

· Gen 8:21-22, And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease."

This promise contained in its deeper reference to the divine pledge that as long as the saints were left on earth, God would supply all their needs according to His riches in glory by Jesus Christ.

More and more we see that Noah is a type of Jesus.

· First as the one who removed the curse from the corrupted world, and as the rest giver to those who had to till the earth.

· Second, as the heir of the new earth, where there will be no more curse.

· Third, as the one into whose hands all things are now delivered. Noah’s sons or seed were the figure of the church. With him they are blessed. With him they were given control over all the lower creatures: so the saints have been made a kingdom and priests unto God:

· Rev 1:5-6 … and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father----to him be glory and power for ever and ever!

In the passage above where God promises never again to destroy the earth by flood, note that this promise was made four thousand years ago and the fulfillment of it is to be noted as the seasons change regularly as He said they would according to the laws of nature. But not to be overlooked is that behind nature’s “laws” is nature’s “Lord.” One therefore concludes that nature’s laws did not prevent the flood in Noah’s day but now we have the promise and He has been faithful to His promise.    

· Genesis 9:8-16  Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him:  "I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you  and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth.  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."

This is the fulfillment of the promise God made to Noah in the 6th chapter of Genesis. At this point we are going to concentrate on the sign of the covenant.

In the above passage we see God setting His rainbow in the sky. Now we should keep in mind that this was the first time that anyone in the world had ever seen a rainbow. You see, it had never before rained on the earth. So God’s purpose was to limit Man’s fears against another universal flood and to provide them with a visible pledge in nature. If man had seen rainbows before it would not have had the significance as it had in this instance. The fact that the rainbow was an entirely new phenomenon supplied a striking demonstration of the harmony of Scripture. 

· Gen 2:5-6, … and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, 6 but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground---- So no rain had happened up to the time of the flood.

The first rain was sent as Divine judgment; but now God turns it into a blessing. The sunshine of heaven falls on the rain on the earth and the rainbow resulted. The rainbow is symbolically important, as the sign peculiarly connected to the covenant of Noah for, by its very nature it is an assurance of God’s mercy that He will forever keep in check the floods of deserved wrath.

The covenant of grace is beautifully expressed in the rainbow. Ebenezer Erskine, a preacher in about the 1730s, has made the following points about the rainbow:

“It is ordered by God. He created the rainbow. Likewise He has ordered the covenant of grace. The covenant of grace could no more have been made by man than could man have formed the rainbow. The rainbow was put in the sky by God once He smelled the sweetness of Noah’s sacrifice; so the covenant of grace is before us each time we participate in taking the Lord’s Supper. The rainbow is a divine security that the waters would no more destroy the earth: and the covenant of grace guarantees against a deluge of God’s wrath ever destroying any soul that by faith comes to Jesus. It is the sun which gives reality to the rainbow. So Jesus is the Son of righteousness, which gives being to the covenant of grace. Although the arch of the rainbow is high into the heavens, yet the ends of it reach down to the earth. It is the same with the covenant of grace. Although the head of the covenant is in heaven, through the Gospel, He reaches down to men on earth. Although the rainbow is a pledge against any future deluge on the earth, it is also an evidence of refreshing rain needed by the earth. So also the Spirit of the covenant of grace refreshes the spirit of the elect. The visible appearance of the rainbow is usually of short duration. It is often true that the memory of the blessings of the covenant of grace are short-lived in the believers mind. Even though the rainbow disappears, and that for long periods of time, yet we cannot conclude that God’s covenant is broken or that a flood will come and destroy the earth. So also the believer may not now see the full light of the covenant of grace, but the remembrance of it will keep his heart from fears of God’s wrath.”

The following is a quotation from Arthur Pink’s book, Gleanings in Genesis as to how he saw the parallels between the rainbow and God’s grace:

“There are many parallels between the rainbow and God’s grace. As the rainbow is the joint-product of storm and sunshine, so grace is the unmerited favor of God appearing on the dark background of the creature’s sin. As the rainbow is the effect of the sun shining on the drops of rain in a cloud, so Divine grace is manifested by God’s love shining through the blood shed by our blessed Redeemer. As the rainbow is the telling out of the varied hues of the white light, so the manifest grace of God is the ultimate expression of God’s heart. As nature knows nothing more exquisitely beautiful than the rainbow, so heaven itself knows nothing that surpasses in loveliness the wondrous grace of God. As the rainbow is the union of heaven and earth---spanning the sky and reaching down to the ground---so grace in the one Mediator has brought together God and man. As the rainbow is the public sign of God hung out in the heavens that all may see it, so the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men. Finally, as the rainbow has been displayed throughout the past forty centuries, so in the ages to come God will show forth the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Jesus Christ.” 

· Rev 4:3-4,  3 And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne.

The canopy of God’s throne is a rainbow. We understand this vision in Revelation 4 to have immediate reference to the great exercise of God’s grace under the New Testament. The fact that the rainbow surrounds the throne denotes that the holiness, and justice of God, and all His works as the Sovereign of all worlds, had to do with His covenant of peace which He has made with all believers.

So the Noahic covenant served to bring a new light and establish on a firmer basis, the faithfulness of God and His unchanging purpose. It was important to provide an assurance that was needed just after the flood that God was not going to destroy the world again by flood. There was a need for confidence to this affect. So when His people see the rainbow, we can with full confidence believe that God is mindful of His promise and that He is faithful to keep His promises.