Genesis 6:5-22; 8:6-12; 9:8-17 on September 13th, 2026
Above is audio of the sermon pulled from the video and amplified.
Below is transcript pulled from the video and formatted by artificial intelligence. There may be inconsistencies or errors.
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Imagine if you will a baby's nursery. It's adorable, right? On the wall there's a mommy lion and a daddy lion. And over there a mommy and a daddy giraffe. There are sweet mommy and daddy monkeys. Maybe an elephant or bears or some fuzzy little animals. And then you see the boat and the rainbow. Stuffed animals, wallpaper, numerous decorations. All depicting one of the most uncomfortable stories in Scripture. Somehow we turned to God wiping out nearly all life on earth into baby blankets, crib mobiles and nursery decor. We went with a neutral jungle theme just so you know. All the cute animals none of the smiting.
The story of Noah, the flood and the promise of the rainbow in Genesis 6 through 9 is kind of like God's do-over of the first creation back in Genesis 1. That first creation story began with the cosmos in complete chaos. Darkness covered the face of the deep. No light, no order, no life. But then a wind, God's spirit, swept over the face of the waters. And it was good.
By the time we reached Genesis 6 however God has started to notice that the wickedness of humans was great in the earth. Every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil. Continually. The earth was filled with violence. God's heart grieved and the Lord was sorry that he had made humans on the earth. It's not a good start, is it?
So God decides to put an end to most of it. God chooses Noah, a righteous man, blameless in his generation, along with his family to be the sole survivors. God also plans to save a pair of every species. So God proceeds to instruct Noah in ark building and flood surviving. It is a huge boat. And this ark will ensure that Noah, his family, and the pairs of other creatures will survive the deadly waters that will destroy the rest of humanity and all of the other land creatures.
Noah did all that God commanded him. After 40 days, the rain stops and the waters eventually begin to recede. And every pair of species, every pair of every species walks, crawls, hops, swarms, and flies out of the boat on to dry land, safe and sound. Life on earth begins anew.
And that's where the story could end. It could just end with God recreating everything and seeing how this new version works out. If it does well, awesome. And if not, I guess we could just wipe everyone out again and try once more. My guess is that the pattern would repeat. New life, wickedness grows, God wipes the slate for another round.
But as we know, that is not how the story ends. Instead of a message of, you better get it right this time or else, God makes a covenant, a promise. A promise of never again. Never again will this happen. And this promise isn't just for Noah, not just for his family, not even just for humans. This covenant promise is with the whole earth, all of creation. And the sign, the reminder, the visual aid for this promise is a rainbow.
God promises ultimately to work for creation's flourishing and not its destruction, even though God knows that the inclination of the human heart will continue to lean toward that which is evil. See, the flood didn't change human beings. It gave us a chance to start over, but we still carry the same baggage onto any ark that we enter.
So God makes a promise. God promises that destruction will not be the way forward. God promises another new way to deal with human sin and wickedness. And the rest of Scripture tells the story of God keeping that promise. God calls, God liberates, God forgives, God provides prophets. And ultimately, instead of sending the rain, God sends the sun. God comes as one of us, entering into our broken world to redeem it from within.
And God still will use water, but now that water carries a very different promise. Unlike the flood, the waters of baptism aren't sent to wipe us out, but to wash us clean, to give life, to make us new. And God's spirit, who hovered over the waters that creation moves in those waters now creating new life and new possibilities for God's people. God promises a new beginning.
We don't have to look very far to know that the human heart still hasn't changed. This week marks 25 years since September 11, 2001. Many of us can remember exactly where we were. We remember the horror of what human beings did to one another that morning. And we remember how quickly fear, grief, anger, and vengeance flooded into the days that followed. And 25 years later, the words from Genesis don't feel too far off at all. The earth was filled with violence.
The flood didn't fix us. More violence can never fix the human heart. But if Noah's ark teaches us anything, it's that destruction does not get the last word. God chooses redemption. God chooses covenant. God chooses life. We see it in a promise, in a rainbow, and ultimately in an empty tomb.
And just as God gives Noah and all of creation a sign of that promise, God gives us a sign too. God has given us the cross. And the sign of the cross reminds us that no matter how broken, how confused, how hurt this world becomes, God is still at work bringing life out of death.
So maybe it isn't so strange that we put rainbows over cribs. We Christians have always had a strange habit of finding God's promise in terrible things. Not because floods are good or crosses are good or because suffering or violence or death are good, but because we believe that none of them gets the last word. The worst thing is not the last thing.
The rainbow says never again. The waters of baptism say, you are mine. An empty tomb says, not even death. Because even when humanity keeps finding new ways to destroy, God keeps creating anew. When we flood the world with violence, God floods it with grace. When we bring death, God stubbornly insists on life.
That is the promise written across the sky. That is the promise traced on our foreheads of baptism. And it could have stopped there. But with God, the story never stops there. God is still always making things new. Amen.