THURSDAY May 15th
Genesis 8:22
‘While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.’
I couldn’t move on from the flood account without looking at this verse, for it clearly show to us that God is in control over all that he has created. The flood was an obvious indication that God is in control regarding mankind, although man thinks he oversees his own destiny, he couldn’t be more mistaken. In just ten generations man was so utterly depraved, with the intentions of his heart being continually evil and so God stepped in. I mentioned while speaking on a Sunday evening recently about reset moments and this is one of them. Sadly, we will see how it was not very long before the sinful intentions became apparent again, but a part of this reset was the establishing of what we call the four seasons to allow the cycle of life to continue. And God has been continually faithful, despite the ongoing depravity of mankind.
It is summed up in the words of the well-known hymn that itself draws from Lamentation 3:22 ‘The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness’. The hymn says:
Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above,
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.
And because of his mercy and love God set a bow in the cloud as a sign of a covenant between himself and the earth. The covenant was that he would never again send a flood to destroy all flesh.
But this doesn’t mean that God will not deal with sin nor the sinner! No, instead he sent his Son into this world to give the opportunity to all men and women to come to a place of repentance, to turn from their sin to serve the true and living God and since the day of the flood, and ongoing especially since the time when Christ died and rose again, God is acting with patience not willing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance. But the day of God’s amazing grace will one day end and this will usher in the day of God’s vengeance and wrath which will be poured out on all who have failed to believe. Just as we have seasons on this earth, so there are seasons in God’s plan and purpose, today is the day of salvation, the seasons of his mercy, grace and favour. If you have not yet repented and asked Jesus into your life, then do it today, while there is still time, before this season of grace is over.
And one last thing—the bow that God placed in the clouds has been hi-jacked and misused to represent the sinful and depraved sexual deviations that we see in our modern society. This is not something new, it happened in the days of Abraham and Lot and God will not be mocked, as he punished then, so he will one day punish all who have rebelled and acted in ways that go against the standard that he set regarding marriage and sexual relationships. The bow in the clouds which we call a rainbow was and still is God’s sign, and those who have abused it and misused it like every other sinner, which includes each one of us needs to come to repentance.