Reclaiming The Rainbow

INTRODUCTION

We’re continuing our journey through the book of Genesis in our series “Living Right in a World Gone Wrong.”

Today will be a little different in that we’re stopping to get a “birds eye view” of this story of Noah and the Flood and how it relates to living right in our “world gone wrong” today.

That’s been the driving question behind our series and the driving motivation for every Christian who’s trying to live for the Lord in a culture that rejects him.

Last week we looked at God’s covenant with Noah and the new rules established by God for this new world he created after the flood.

5 Pillars

We said a covenant is simply a formal agreement between two parties in which promises are given and commitments are made.

We examined the five pillars of a biblical covenant.

The Covenant Mediator

The Covenant Conditions

The Covenant Community

The Covenant Promise

The Covenant Sign

The mediator of God’s covenant in Genesis 9 is Noah.

He is instructed to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth; to be civil in the way that he harvests living animals for food and to establish retribution for the unjust taking of a human life.

We saw many similarities between Noah and Adam as a covenant mediator and many similarities between their covenant requirements.

The one glaring difference is that Noah’s world was a world plagued by sin. Sin ruins everything that it touches and the greater the sin the greater the ruin.

The sin that began in the garden of Eden gets passed down to every new generation and every human civilization. Including our generation and our culture today.

That’s why God’s covenant with Noah wasn’t just restricted to him and his family. It was a promise given to EVERY living creature (man/animal) and EVERY generation.

It was a promise to never again destroy the creation with water and to never curse the earth in the way God did through the flood.

The Covenant Sign

Which brings us to our message today. God’s covenant sign for that promise was a rainbow. It’s a sign we’ve seen a lot of given all the rain we’ve been having.

Genesis 9:13–17 (ESV)

13 I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16 When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” 17 God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

The rainbow was given to us by God to help us remember that God is merciful and kind. He doesn’t give us what we do deserve (mercy) and does give us what we don’t deserve (grace).

That kindness from God is meant to lead us to repentance and faith. But for many in our culture, that kindness has become a licensee for sin.

God has made a promise to tolerate a certain level of wickedness in his world. In response to that tolerance we’ve spit in God’s face.

We’ve taken a symbol that was originally meant to help us remember the consequences of sin and the goodness of God’s grace and made it a flag to celebrate the opposite.

Today’s rainbow doesn’t represent God’s mercy in withholding judgment. It represents human pride in celebrating sin!

Through the rainbow, today, we celebrate sin and make a mockery of God’s patience and mercy.

Where did that spirit of pride come from and how should God’s people respond? How do we reclaim the sign of the covenant?

That’s what I’d like us to look at in today’s message.

Pride & the Modern Self

Last year around this same time I preached a message on this topic. It was unusual in that it dealt with a lot of history, sociology and moral philosophy.

I would recommend you go back and listen to that message if you really want to understand the roots of our cultural moment.

This morning I want to take it a step further.

The apostle Paul said in 2 Cor 10:4-5 “4 For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. 5 We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ...”

There’s nothing quite as powerful as a BIG IDEA and there’s a BIG IDEA animating our culture that did most of the heavy lifting to bring us to our cultural moment.

Our cultural confusion is rooted in an idea called “Expressive Individualism.” (Carl Truman)

This worldview

elevates emotional authenticity above all else.

Conformity to any external or absolute standard is looked at with suspicion and scorn.

One’s TRUE PURPOSE is to discover their “true self” and express that to the world in defiance to any/all naysayers. “Express yourself!”

Bottom Line: the authority to define the self is located in the individual and the essence of your identity is located in your desires.

“We’ve psychologized the self, we’ve sexualized our psychology and we’ve politicized our sexuality.”

Historical Underpinnings

This didn’t happen overnight. Like most of Satan’s greatest attacks, it’s been a generational battle over hundreds of years.

You can trace these “big ideas” back a few hundred years to men like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzscheand Sigmund Freud.

Rousseau shifted the authority for defining the self away from God and some external standard of truth to the individual and their subjective opinion about themselves.

Karl Marx in a similar fashion cast suspicion on external authorities and the “institutional powers” of his day and said that the only way to find happiness and truth is to dethrone the ones in power (oppressors) and centralize their resources among the oppressed.

What Marx did for politics and sociology Charles Darwin accomplished for science and biology. The whole concept of an external divine standard or original design and teleology was done away with.

Without an authoritative external designer there can be no authoritative beneficial design. This “death of God” in Western Philosophy was what men like Fredrick Nietzsche looked at with great concern. If all truth claims are just “projecting your power” over the will of another then the human project devolves into a lawless competition of intention and will.

He correctly predicted OUR cultural moment. The death of all truth, goodness and all beauty and societal chaos that prepares the ground for an authoritarian “uberman” who successfully enforces his will over everybody else.

Freud & Sexuality

You might be asking, what does any of this have to do with sexuality and the pride flag?

Rousseau, Marx, Darwin and Nietzsche built the intellectual tradition. Sigmund Freud took their ideas and applied it to sexuality.

Sigmund Freud was a “scientist” and “science” had taken on a “god-like” authority in Western culture due to the death of God in our cultural consciousness.

Many of Freud’s ideas have been rejected today but his most foundational contribution has become a cultural bedrock.

According to Freud, our sexuality is foundational to our identity.

When you start giving new answers to these foundational questions then the implication on a culture are widespread and unavoidable.

In the book of Genesis we’ve been asking these foundational questions such as

What does it mean to be human and how did we get here?

What is the purpose for my life and how will I know?

What’s wrong with the world and how do we fix it?

The Bible gives true and helpful answers to each of those questions. It gives us a lens for understanding the world in light of

our ultimate authority: a Holy Creator God who loves us,

our universal problem: original sin and human depravity

and a unique salvation: Jesus Christ and the Gospel

Counterfeit & Consequence

Freud, along with these other Western through leaders, put forward counterfeit answers to these foundational questions.

God is not the source of truth, goodness and beauty. I am/We are.

Moreover, the most essential element of my identity isn’t the “image of God,” it’s how I feel about my sexuality.

Sin and brokenness aren’t my problem, authority and oppression are.

Jesus Christ can’t save me so liberation must come through some other means. (politics, government, etc)

I don’t think these thinkers knew the ultimate outcome of their big ideas. They were just commenting and thinking through what was happening in culture at a macro level.

The reality is we cannot escape these foundational questions. They core to the human experience/heart. They’re in there to drive us towards God.

But when you provide counterfeit answers to life’s most foundational questions the consequences are chaos and BROKENNESS.

Counterfeit worship. Counterfeit truth. Counterfeit goodness and counterfeit results.

It’s an idea as old as the Garden of Eden and the lies of the serpent. “Did God really say?”

Western Culture has essentially said “God DIDN’T say… or God DIDN’T mean… “ and we are suffering the consequences of believing that lie.

A New Social Imaginary

But these consequences are not just going to be experienced at an individual level. They are going to result in cultural chaos and cultural brokenness as well.

This is something else we’ve seen in the book of Genesis. It’s also something we’ll see in a few chapters with the tower of Babel.

Individuals cooperate and interact with other individuals to create groups.

Group cooperate and interact with other groups to create societies.

Societies cooperate and interact with other societies to produce civilizations.

And at each of those levels there’s this dynamic collective “intelligence.”

Charles Taylor called this our “Social Imaginary.”

By that he means our collective beliefs, values, symbols and practices that fundamentally shape a civilizations basic narrative and framework for living.

We all know that individuals can have beliefs but it’s also true that a collection of individuals can breed a “hive mind” that operates off of certain convictions.

That “hive mind” eventually infiltrates our cultural institutions, governmental bodies, and pop culture references.

War of Two Worldviews

This is why every popular kids movie has expressive individualism at it’s core.

“Listen to your heart.... be true to yourself....”

“So long as it’s authentic it’s okay...”

It’s in our movies, our music, our politics and our economic exercises.

The greatest and highest good is to be true to yourself and express that to the world in defiance of any and all inhibitions.

You can’t understand yourself outside of your sexuality. It’s central to your identity. Whole concepts like “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” have been invented to bolster this claim.

Any opposition to self-expression is coercive and oppressive. It must be silenced and marginalized. Liberation will come when all the oppressors are overthrown.

As you can see, there’s an irreconcilable conflict between the social imaginary of our culture and the worldview of biblical Christianity.

The Christian vision is to look UP not IN. God and his word are the fixed standard by which we come to know and understand ourselves.

We are invited to establish our identity in CHIRST not our sexual preferences. We are invited to express and grow in that with a community of other believers called the Church. Thus placing ourself in community under God’s authority.

Our hearts are deceitful and sick not reliable and true.God’s word (not politics or government) brings FREEDOM not oppression. It’s a lamp and a light not a weight to be discarded.

Why would we be surprised that the culture acts with great hostility to Christian truth?

The two ways of thinking could not be further apart.

The End of Tolerance

The problem is, when your convictions butt up against the convictions of the culture, you’re going to get push back.

Our culture use to allow for tolerance and debate on these issues, that is no longer the case when it comes to the issue of sexual identity.

In our culture, tolerance isn’t enough. Affirmation and celebration are required!

Tolerance implies you believe someone else’s view is inferior or in error. That disapproval from an outside force is anathema! Unacceptable!

For you to love someone in this culture means you must affirm and celebrate their self-understanding regardless of how they see themselves or choose to express it.

If you cannot “celebrate” another person’s sexuality then you are attacking the very core of their personal identity.

Today this even includes things as simple as “verbal disagreement” or constructive criticism.

Silencing Opposition

What do you do with those who maintain or promote such traditional codes? You silence them or get rid of them by any means necessary.

Why? Because opposition to the LGBTQIA+ agenda is tantamount to violence.

The cultural implications for those of us who consider ourselves believers are disturbing.

This explains our culture’s attack on the family. (mom and dad are authoritarian forces in miniature)

This explains why evangelical Christians are not just now unpopular but despised and violently excised from institutional power structures.

This explains the hostility to authority and tradition (Christian or any other) prevalent in our school system, music, arts, entertainment and more.

The big fight in our culture is NOT whether or not all people are allowed the freedom to “express themselves.”

The real question is WHICH people get to express themselves freely and WHO’S authority is ultimately enforced.

Christians are now being asked to affirm as true that which we believe to be false.

We are being asked to celebrate as helpful that which we believe to be harmful.

Refuse to do either and it’ll be interpreted as violence because you’re hindering self-expression which is the highest and most noble goal of Western culture.

If identity is rooted in one’s psychology then anything that negatively impacts one’s self-esteem will be deemed a weapon.

This has given rise to a whole new approach to politics known as “identity politics” which has had a toxic influence on our public discourse and create hostile forms of polarization and partisanship.

This has CLEAR and present implications for freedom of speech and religion and beyond.

Reclaiming The Rainbow

So how then should we live? How do we live right in a world that has “gone wrong?”

How do we, to use the language of Genesis, reclaim the rainbow that has been hijacked by our culture.

The life of Noah gives us a few clues.

I’ll put them under three headings:

Conviction instead Compromise (Truth)

Celebrate Don’t Just Criticize (Goodness)

Create a Compelling Counter-Culture (Beauty)

Choose Today Who You Will Serve

The first is choosing conviction over compromise. Make an intentional choice to reject compromise and serve and worship the Lord no matter what.

Noah lived in a cultural climate where the thought of every person was only evil continually.

I personally think even Noah himself was a man with big flaws and lots of brokenness. But that’s not what made him stand out from his contemporaries.

What made him stand out was a commitment to turn from his former set of beliefs and actions and begin trusting and obey God.

This first choice is a question of authority and truth. Who’s Word will carry the greatest weight in your life?

God’s word came to Noah in Genesis 6:14 “Make yourself an ark of gopher wood...”

Followed by specific instructions on how to go about it (Gen 6:14b-21)

Noah’s response? Genesis 6:22 “Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him.”

God’s Word comes again to Noah in Genesis 7:1 “Go into the ark, you and all your household, for I have seen that you are righteous before me in this generation...”

This was followed by specific instructions for onboarding his family and the animals in the ark alongside.

Noah’s response? Genesis 7:5 “And Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.”

Finally, after 40 days of rain and nearly 1 year of dealing with a world-wide flood God says to Noah in Genesis 8:16 “Go out from the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons’ wives with you.” This was followed by instructions for the animals.

Noah’s response? Genesis 8:18 “So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him.”

An Inescapable Choice

You cannot live in this world and escape a time of choosing. You will choose one or the other. It’s the consequence of living in a world of sin.

I was speaking the other day with somebody about the comments we were seeing from friends and even family on our social media.

They were mean spirited comments about conservative Christianity and their ‘non-affirming’ stance towards the LGBTQ+ community. It then got into a larger discussion on why so many people seem to just give up on their Christian convictions and go along with the culture.

My answer to that question is that the culture eventually eats everybody unless you intentionally choose to worship something else.

ETYMOLOGY: The very word “culture” comes from the French word “culte” or “cultus” which can mean “cultivation, culture, worship or reverence.”

We saw this same idea in Genesis 1 with what theologians call “the cultural mandate.”

God’s command was for us to CHOOSE him and CULTIVATE the creation by getting married, having babies and exercising dominion in this world for God’s glory and our good.

If that’s intrinsic to natural order of things based on God’s design then it would also make sense that there’s a counterfeit worship which produces a counterfeit glory for a counterfeit good resulting in counterfeit good for society.

In other words, if you don’t make a choice to intentionally worship the God of creation (actively, continually, day by day) then you will inevitably begin to worship the culture.

It eats anyone and everyone who isn’t commited to something else.

In the word of Joshua 24:15

15 And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Stop compromising. Stop wasting time. Stop tolerating evil. Stop hoping it’ll maybe go away and get better if you just try and harmonize the two.

The conflict is irreconcilable. You must choose who you will serve.

Celebrate & Pursue God’s Original Design

The second thing that Noah does that is instructive for us is celebrate and pursue God’s original design..

Namely, God’s original design for sex, marriage and family.

As we saw in Genesis 1, God’s design for the family matters because the family acts as God’s fundamental building block for the flourishing of a civilization.

Between Genesis 3 and Genesis 7 we see a Satanic attack on God’s design for the family.

It’s true in EVERY generation. Satan’s chief vector of attack for thwarting the plans of God is sex, marriage and family.

You can see this with the murder of Abel by Cain

You can see this in the contrast between the line of Cain and the line of Seth.

Then you see this in the discussion about the “sons of God” engaging in sex with the “daughters of men.”

At first this was intermarriage between the two but later devolves into the undoing of marriage all together and a free for all sexual openness.

We’re going to see the same thing a little bit later in the book of Genesis with the Tower of Babel and after that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

When God destroys the world with a flood and “resets” creation with a new mediator and a new covenant you see God’s original design RESTORED. One man, one woman, one life long covenant of marriage.

From Criticizing to Celebrating

Many times, when it comes to the discussion about God’s design for marriage, gender and sexuality, we’re quick to criticize the deviations and perversions of God’s design.

I must admit even my own preaching tends major on problems such as

sexual immorality/adultery and pornography

homosexuality, transgenderism and the LGBTQ+ agenda

Christian fathers and mothers who compromise on God’s standard

The need for Foster Care and Adoption and children to have healthy homes.

While we’ve been focused on addressing all of these negative outcomes from violating God’s design, we've neglected the more important work of celebrating the positives in God’s design.

We have an entire generation of young believers who look at the idea of God’s design for these things and think “it’s too complicated… it’s too messy… There’s nothing really good in there fore me… so I’d rather not play the game.”

As I’ve examined the research on this it’s absolutely terrifying.

People are waiting longer and longer to get married.

It’s not enough to just criticize the perversions of God’s design in the culture. We must celebrate the goodness of God’s design within the Church! Celebrate and enjoy the great gift of marriage, sex and gender according to God’s design.

Instead of letting our culture set the tone and content of our discussion around these things we ought to have Christian parents and local churches who celebrate the POSITIVES of God’s design and the BENEFICIAL GOOD of embracing it for your life.

Perhaps the reason so many single people keep waiting on marriage is because they only hear the negatives and none of the positives?

Perhaps the reason so many young people leave the church and embrace the culture’s vision of sex is because they haven’t been presented with beauty of GOD’S DESIGN - only it’s perversions and complications.

As G.K. Chesterton eloquently stated, “It’s not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting. It has been found DIFFICULT and left untried.”

Is God’s design for sexuality difficult? Sure. But those difficulties PALE in comparison to the fulfillment and joy!

Is marriage and parenting difficult? Yes. But when you push ahead and overcome the obstacles it’s one of the most life-giving things you’ll ever have experienced.

These things should not be “taboo” in the church. The should be par for the course. Just like learning the books of the Bible or God’s expectations on how we function in the workplace.

Create a “Counter-Culture” Community

The last thing I see from the story of Noah is the creation of a compelling counter-culture community.

For Noah, it was just his wife, his son’s and his son’s wives. But the point is Noah didn’t achieve this by himself.

The reason these godless ideologues are doing such damage is because of the power of the community they create.

Rosaria Butterfield was formally a lesbian and advocate of the LGBTQ+ community. She gave her life to Christ and now helps Christians to understand and navigate this complex cultural waters.

One of her most effective books was “The Gospel Comes With a House Key.” In it she talks about the power of community and how the LGBTQ+ community was SO accepting and SO kind and SO compelling to those who belonged.

The community was grounded in a counterfeit worldview. It was grounded in a hyper-sexualized expressive individualism. But the idea reached more and more people because of the pull of feeling like you “belong.”

If Christians are ever going to mount an offensive against the godlessness of our culture we’ve got to recapture the power of authentic Christian community.

Imagine a Community

I don’t mean community that is grounded in our ethnic backgrounds or socio-economic status. I’m not talking about a community build around our approach to doing ministry or our style of music or dress.

I mean a community that is grounded in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. A community that recognizes the ultimate authority of our Holy God and his Word.

A community that recognizes that sin and human depravity is UNIVERSAL which means every single member of the community is a sinner in need of grace.

A community that grieves over and protests against the ugliness and destructive nature of sin while simultaneously loving the sinful people who are made in God’s image and worthy of dignity and respect.

A community that exalts and champions the finish work of Christ as our only hope in life and death.

A community that joyfully sings about God’s power to save and continually prays for the needs of the saints and generously gives to meet those needs as well.

A community that isn’t timid but courageous. Isn’t proud but humble. Isn’t mean-spirited but firm in our convictions. A community that welcomes everyone and exalts no one other than the Lord Jesus Christ.

A community that says “it’s okay to not be okay but it’s not okay to stay that way.”

A community that champions God’s design and does whatever it takes to help the members of that community arrive as close to that design as they possibly can.

Conclusion

That is the kind of covenantal community God CAN create if we’ll allow him. That’s the kind of community that can SUSTAIN a counter-cultural movement in the face of hostility and confrontation.

And that is the kind of community that posses POWER to prevail against the gates of Hell and the destructive lies of our enemy.

But for us to build that kind of community you’ve got to go all in. We’ve got to stop being “consumers” and start thinking of ourselves a “family.”

It’s not about being served but serving. It’s not about our comfort it’s about the Great Commission.