Looking for Signs
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Let’s talk signs
Let’s talk signs
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God, our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who loved you with his very life. Amen.
It’s no secret that I don’t ecourage people to look for signs, or omens as I often call them. There is this American idea that God will use normal every day things to reveal something to you about his hidden will. So there is this story in the Old Testament of a guy named Gideon. Gideon was told by God to go fight a battle. And Gideon was heistant about it so he asked for a sign. Two signs actually. First, he too this piece of fleece, think like a wool sweater, and he put it on the ground and said, “Ok God, make the ground wet and keep the fleece dry, then I will know you are with me.” And God did. But that wasn’t good enough, so he asked God for a second sign, “Make the fleece wet and the ground dry.” And God did, like, Gideon wrung out a supernatural amount of water from the fleece, and the ground was bone dry.
We want to be like Gideon to look for a sign from God. We like to say things like, “God just give me a sign that this is what i’m supposed to do” Or like, we see a cardnial and think that its the spirit of a loved one come to visit. There is danger in looking for signs. God has not promised or even hinted that this is how he talks with us. God reveals his will to us in his word, in the Bible, that’s why we have it.
With one huge exception. The rainbow. God’s battle bow. In Genesis, we read that God placed his bow in the sky intentionally, specifically, as a sign. But not just for us. But for him. He place the rainbow in the sky to remind Himself of his promise, his covenant with all living things on earth.
The story of Noah and his floating box, (the word “ark” just means box) is one of those stories that most of us are only familiar with the children’s version. Right? The one that we paint pictures of with all the cute animals, floating in a cute boat, with bright colors and smiling faces, and for some reason, always a giraffe sticking its head out the roof becuase of how tall it is. In reality, the story of Noah and the ark is a terrifying story of God’s judgement while at the same time a comforting story of God’s faithfulness to his promises.
Let me reframe the story by asking a few questions. How bad was the situation on earth that caused God to want to destroy all of it? Like God is very patient, he’s very slow to anger, he abounds with love and forgiveness. What level of evil was in the world that would cause God to want to start over? When we look at our world today, full of sin as it is, full of sinners doing sinful things, no doubt the situation was worse before the flood. More evil. More faithless. Or as the text says, “And YHWH regretted that he had made man on the earth and it greived his heart so YHWH said, “I will blot out man whom I have created of the land…for I am sorry I made them” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.”
On a planet full of people, 8, 8 people remained faithful to God. 8 people, on the whole planet. The flood was a strong act of judgement against mankind.
But God reamind patient. It took noah 100 years to build the ark. Some say 120. I want you to put yourself in the shoes of someone living in the days of noah. You’re sitting in the local coffee shop, that crazy guy has been building his stupid boat, way far away from any possible place to launch it, and it’s laughably big. The novelty of it has worn off, but he seems stuck in his ways to build it.
Then one day, as you are sitting there sipping your iced carmel mochachino, you see a ostrich walk through town. You stand up, look at it, and it turns and heads toward the boat. “That’s weird.” you say to yoruseld. Huh. Anyway, you head back into the coffee shop and resume your drink. Wouldn’t ya know it, not 20 mintues later, you see a girafee walking down the street, two of em actually, and right behind them is a pair of lions. It’s a weird day. (keep in mind, animals and people aren’t afraid of eachother yet ,that comes after the flood)
For weeks this happens. strange, exotic animals keep showing up. Sometimes 2, sometimes 14, but therer they go. Down the road to crazy old noahs rediculous boat. After a while, you ecpect to see them. YOu look forward to seeing these strange beasts slither and fly, and crawl past. Crowds gather at the coffee shop to see the strange migration. Then one day, they stop coming. No animals today, or the next, or the next.
Then you notice that Noah and his family have stopped coming to town to buy supplies. You head past the boat, and there is no one there. No aminals, no people, nothing. You head back to the coffee shop. And it starts to rain.
The Flood is a horrific event. It is a strong act of judgement and condemnation agaisnt an evil people, a violent people. The flood shows us just how seriously God hates sin. God 100% hates sin and sin stirs God’s wrath, even to the point where he killed every living thing on the planet that was not in that little box of Noah.
God does not take your sins lightly, and neither should you. God’s judgement against sin is very, very real. Or as Jesus says in Matthew 24, “AS in the days of Noah, so shall it be at the coming of the Son of Man”
So what does this have to do with signs? We started today’s sermon talking about signs. Noah’s ark is a sign that we are to pay attnetion to.
The first sign, is a sign of great promise: The rainbow. I don’t know when it happened, I can’t point to it in history, but the rainbow has changed to like a thing of princesses and uncorns and sparkles.
In the ancient world, the most state of the art weapon, weapon of war, of hunting, of whatever, was the bow. God hung his bow up. He’s done with waging war against creation. The rainbow is a sign from God to God that he’s not doing a flood again. He’s not going to send a judgment like that ever again on his creation. He’s done with the war. So even in the most evil of times, when God is greived by the sin of the world, he will look at the clouds after the storm, and he will see, there in the sky, his weapon of war, and he will remeber his promsie to not flood the earth. The rainbow is a great source of comfort for us, as human creatures, because we will never live in the days of noah, we will never face a judgement like the flood. God is faithful to his promsie.
Secondly, the flood is a sign that points us to baptism. The apostle Peter makes this connection in his episle, chapter 3, “when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,”
Just as God saved Noah and his family in the ark, he saved them from the judgement and punsiment that sin deserves, so you are saved through the waters of your baptism. Baptism is a flood. It washes away all the filth of sin, not like bath that just removes the dirt from the body, but a connection with Jesus Christ, who gives you a good consceince, a washing, a rebirth, a renewal a new spirit within you. Baptism cleanses you from sin by uniting you with Jesus, or as Paul says in Romans, it unites you into his death, but also to his resurrection.
When we see the story of Noah, we see the comfort of the ark, how God spares us from what sin deserves by bringing us through the flood safely by uniting us with Christ. It’s even why churches look the way the do. Churches are long and thin buildings, intetnionally, to remind you of the ark. That here, you are saved from the judgement against sin. Here you learn about Jesus and what he does to save you. About JEsus life and death and the forgivness that flows freely to you becuase of what he did on the cross.
While we don’t ask God for signs, or look for signs of our own invention, we do look to the signs that God has given us. We look to the rainbow and see God’s promise to sustain his creation. And we look to the cross to see our forgivenss. We look to our baptsim to see our forgiveness. We look to Christ, God in the flesh, to see our salvaiton.