The bow was an ancient weapon of war and menace.  It’s highly symbolic then that after the flood God hangs his bow in the sky.  God had seen humankind’s wickedness and it grieved him and filled his heart with pain (Genesis 6:6) because ‘every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time’ (Genesis 6:5).   He then caused it to rain forty days and nights of rain flooding the earth.  But after 150 days of flooding God remembered Noah and his family in the Ark…  Our sermon text today, on this first Sunday of Lent, covers God’s covenant with Noah sealed with the sign of the rainbow that God might remember it and never again cut off all by the waters of flood (Genesis 9:11). The rainbow has  a profound meaning which in part we will explore today, a meaning that points to the even more profound covenantal promise of baptism by which ‘you have been saved by the resurrection of Jesus Christ’ (1 Peter 3:21).