I do set my how in the cloud (Gen. 9:13a).
The stress here falls, not on the creation of the rainbow, but on the message it has for us today. Sometimes it takes a flood to open our eyes to see God. Now he wishes you to carry home the poetry and prophecy of the rainbow. The Gospel!
I. What We Most Dread, God Can Illuminate. To Noah the one thing full of terror was the cloud. Then he saw the flood. Yet it was there that the Almighty set his bow. Our God is always doing that. We thought that a cloud would be unbearable. Then came the rainbow with its hope.
Was there ever anything more dreaded than the Cross, the last indignity cast upon a slave? And yet Christ has illuminated that thing of terror, the hope for sinful men, the model of the holy life.
II. In the Most Changeful Times There is the Unchanging Purpose of God. In all nature scarcely anything is so changeful as a cloud. What a strange tablet for the pen of God! What a queer parchment to serve as the symbol of his unchanging Covenant! “Write it on marble,” we might say. But God says, “My unchanging Covenant with men is to be written on ever-changing cloud.”
Through all of earth’s change and recasting runs the eternal purpose of God. Through the endless resettings of this life, with its shifting lights and shadows, runs the unchanging purpose of God, which far away in eternity he willed for you. Happy is the man who cherishes such a faith!
III. In the Mystery of Life There is Meaning. Both the youngest child and the oldest poet sense the mystery in the cloud. Would that everyone could also see the rainbow! I am like a traveler among the hills. There is a chasm, where many another has perished, but I cannot see my peril. Then God lights up his rainbow. The ends are here on earth, and the crown is lifted up to heaven. So I feel that God is with me in the gloom. For me there is meaning in life’s mystery.
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain
That morn shall tearless he.
IV. At the Background of Joy Lies Sorrow. Underneath earth’s gladness there is unrest. If the deepest secret of life were merriment, how could the Cross interpret life? If laughter were the undertone of life, how could the Man of Sorrows be the Ideal of men? I see the rainbow on the cloud, and the Saviour on his Cross. Then I know that back of gladness there is agony, and that the richest joy is born of grief.
V. Over the Portals of God’s Dwelling There is Mercy. In Scripture the clouds are God’s pavilion. “Clouds and darkness are about his throne.” There God set his bow, a token of mercy to the world. In this early dawn the poet-prophet had the mind of Christ and saw great mercy written on God’s dwelling-place.
Have you seen that, my brother? Have you heard that, my sister? It is the sweetest syllable that ever fell from heaven into the bosom of a guilty world. The heart of God is full of mercy. Who will go out into the crowded streets under the stars tonight, crying out for the first time in years, “God be merciful to me, a sinner”? Will You?
