Promises you can count on: God remembers!

In the good times and in the bad, what do you count on?

This fall we’re exploring the promises God makes in the Bible to Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses and the Israelites.  God makes a lot of promises, and God always keeps them.

God’s promises are promises you can count on.

Last Sunday, we missed talking about the promise God made to Noah and all creation.  Let me catch you up.

You remember the story? Genesis 6:5-9:17 tells the whole story, or you can skip to chapter ( to read about God's promise to Noah.  Let me summarize for you:  

The earth was full of wickedness and God decided to start over.  So, God washed the world clean with a flood.  

Except – Noah finds favor in God’s sight.  

So, God tells Noah to build an ark and put two of every animal in it (or two of every wild animal and seven pairs of the domestic animals, check out Genesis 6:20 and 7:1-3) along with Noah’s family.  After Noah and his family and animals are safe on the ark, God sends a flood and kills everyone else (yeah- pretty gruesome for a story that is used as a nursery backdrop!).

God sees the damage done to the creation God loves and decides that this is not the way to go.  No more.  No matter how bad humans get, not matter how much we mess things up, God’s not going to cover the earth with a flood again. 

And God sets the rainbow in the sky to remind God to remember this promise.  This is a reminder to God, not to us.  While rainbows are cool, and pretty, and I usually think of this promise God made when I see one, the rainbow is not for us.  It’s for God.  To remember.

The word for “bow” is the weapon, not the pretty ribbon we put on packages.  And I think that’s pretty significant.  The warrior hangs up his bow, and God hung God’s bow up in the sky.  And in doing so, God promises to remember

-          To remember the promise God made to Noah and all creation to not destroy it with flood

But also

-          To remember the humans that God created, to remember who we are in all our failings and brokenness. 

This is the story that the Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament) tell:  how God’s promise to remember humans and our need to be reconciled with God moves God to select a particular man and woman to bless so that through them God’s blessing flows to the whole world.

But that’s  another story and another promise!