Read part 1 here.
In Genesis 8, after the judgment came on the earth, Noah and his household came out of the ark onto dry land and saw a freshly washed and new earth, with nothing of the old remaining. There he built an altar. As believers, the flood leads us to the ground for the altar; the experience of the altar is the junction between the old world and the new creation. Today, by the serving of the church as the ark, we have been led to the altar — to the slaughter on the cross — to pass from the old into the new. When we are served to the altar, we have a new beginning in which nothing of our old man remains. Recognizing this process of repentance and redemption, Noah offered a satisfying fragrance to God on the altar through burnt offerings (Gen. 8:20-21). There is an absolute surrender there; a burnt offering is wholly for God’s enjoyment. We disappear on the altar so that a satisfying fragrance can “go up,” and “ascend” to the heavens in our place.
The altar then leads us into a covenantal relationship — a bond between God and us. After Noah built an altar and offered burnt offerings whose fragrance satisfied Jehovah, chapter 8 ends with the changing of the seasons and natural cycles of the earth that God says shall not cease “[t]hroughout all the days that the earth remains” (Gen. 8:22). Chapter 9 begins with God’s blessing of Noah, His speaking forth once more of His promise, echoing the creation of man and giving him dominion over the earth, defining his relationship to the herbs, to the animals and even to men (Gen. 9:1-7). From this renewed blessing, we see that His original desire and purpose in creating man never changed; His relationship with man is one that, through redemption, can fulfill His ultimate desire. We know from the last verse of chapter 8 that there will indeed be an end to the earth — replaced by the new heaven and the new earth. And while the old earth remains and its natural courses continue, human degradation also grows worse and worse.
And so making an altar requires us, like Noah, to have a dispensational understanding: that we have come to the end of our era and are giving our all to cross over to new creation. Through redemption, man is brought back to an organic relationship with His Creator, and it was in this condition that God made a covenant with His redeemed man:
And I establish My covenant with you, that never again will all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth. / And God said, This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living animal that is with you, for perpetual generations: / I set My bow in the clouds, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth. (Gen. 9:11-13)
In the past, we may have read Noah’s story and thought it was wonderful that the Lord made a covenant with a rainbow to protect us from death, and that we have assurance that the world will never be destroyed by water again. But the bow is much more than just assurance — it is a sign of a relationship. The Christian life has two stages: one is judicial — the altar — and the other is organic — the covenant, signified by the rainbow. Through the altar, we attain the judicial ground, but through the covenant, we have an organic bond — an absolute relationship with the Lord. If there is no altar, there is no covenant, because the altar brings us back to the position in which we can have this organic relationship with the Lord. God set His bow as a sign of absolute surety of our relationship with Him — of the covenant specific to God’s people, based on the passing through of judgment and redemption, that He will fulfill His own plan on the earth through man.
The bow is a sign of the covenant, the relationship of God with His people on the earth, unto His eternal plan. It sets a time that the Lord can gain man out of his fallen, earthen condition. This is very experiential to us: while the earth remains, we seek the rainbow as confirmation of the Lord’s eternal, covenantal relationship with us. Through this covenant, genuinely saved human beings — ones who have passed through the judgment waters in the ark — experience more than just escaping death; for believers, the rainbow is a sign of our relationship to the Lord according to His own purpose on the earth — a living out of the redeemed and eternal life unto “a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and the sea is no more” (Rev. 21:1). To His people, there is “an everlasting covenant” unto an eternal kingdom (Gen. 9:16); we are living not unto the earth, but living out the eternal life on the earth through this very covenant between God and man.
(Above is part 2 of a series compiled from notes of fellowship taken from gatherings on 9/17/2021 & 9/19/2021, not reviewed by the speaker. Read part 3 here.)