Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

I never realized how many rainbows there are in the world, until our trip to the West Coast.

We would get up early to travel before the Sun came up.

When it did come up it was at out back, and it was at just the right angle when we went past the irrigation systems.

The light of the Sun hit that spraying water and produced more rainbows than I have ever seen in my life.

There were irrigation systems with water spraying everywhere, and we were overwhelmed by the constant series of rainbows we were seeing.

When we came back the same way we did not see them.

The light has to be at just the right angle or they cannot be seen.

I was so impressed by these earthly rainbows that I decided to do some research on the heavenly rainbow around the throne of God.

William Wordsworth was a great lover of the outdoors and especially of the rainbow.

He wrote,

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky;

So was it when my life began

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die!

Another great poet, Longfellow, tells us of the Indian boy Hiawatha, who used to gaze in rapt admiration upon the rainbow because Nakomis taught him-

Tis the heaven of flowers you see there

All the wild flowers of the forest,

All the lilies of the prairie,

When on earth they fade and perish

Blossom in that heaven above us!

Here is a beautiful Indian tradition that says none of nature's beauty is lost, but is preserved in the beauty of heaven, as symbolized by the rainbow.

This has always been a Christian tradition too, that all the beauty that God made in time will be preserved in eternity.

Flowers will, therefore, be a part of heaven.

The rainbow has always been linked with flowers.

In Greek, the word rainbow is iris.

Iris was a Greek goddess, who rode the rainbow.

The iris flower is sometimes called the rainbow flower.

All over the world the rainbow is admired.

In Japan it is called the Floating Bridge of Heaven.

In Hawaii it is called the path to the upper world.

It is the plaything of children and adults.

Many can identify with the humorous poet who wrote,

"I went to set the sprinkler--the sun was shining hard.

I found a little rainbow living in by yard:

loopsy-dasey rainbow, blown and blurred and rounded,

with nether end in no place and tether end ungrounded.

I did not dig the borders round nor for its treasure till.

The pot of gold will soon be found--on my water bill."

Elizabeth Henley

There are rainbows everywhere, but the most amazing rainbow on record is the one the Apostle John saw in heaven.

Here is the only permanent rainbow that exists.

They fade so fast on earth, but this one is part of the furniture of heaven.

It is part of the presence of God.

It would appear to be a complete circle all the way around the throne of God.

We see rainbow cut in half because we cannot see below the horizon where the other half is.

But John saw the whole circle in heaven.

It had to be one of the most beautiful sights human eyes have ever beheld.

Beauty does not need any other reason for being.

It does not have to have a message or some symbolical meaning, for beauty is an end in itself.

It feeds the mind and the inner man.

Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God, and one of His loveliest words is the word rainbow.

Beauty is a paradox.

As we travel through the mountains and see all the wonders of the trees, and snow covered peaks, and rapid flowing streams, it is amazing that all you can do with beauty is admire it.

The badlands were beautiful, but you could not use them for anything.

All you could do is look and stand in awe at their beauty.

They serve no other purpose than just being awesome.

So much of what God has made has no practical value.

It is just beauty for beauty's sake.

God is saying by this that beauty is a practical value in itself.

We saw flowers in the state of Washington we had never seen before.

We walked a block from our motel to get a picture of the most beautiful flowering bush we had ever seen.

It was so beautiful with its hugh blue flowers, but it had no other purpose than just being beautiful.

All we,or anyone else, could do with it was to admire it.

Berghild Dahl in her book, I Wanted To See, tells of being blind for nearly half a century.

At age 52 she had surgery at Mayo Clinic and could see 40 times more.

She found it a thrill to wash dishes after that.

Here is her testimony-"I begin to play with the white fluffy suds in the dishpan, I dip my hands into them and I pick up a ball of tiny soup bubbles...I hold them up to the light and in each of them I can see the brilliant colors of a mineature rainbow."

She thanks God as she washes dishes for the simple pleasure of seeing rainbows while she washes.

That is all a rainbow is good for-to look at and enjoy.

I discovered there are even night time rainbows.

Paul Pearsall in his book, Making Miracles, tells about the lunar rainbows in the mountains of Maui.

Moisture in the clouds migrating across the Pacific pauses over the mountains, and when the moon is near full it produces a rainbow.

They are mainly silver with just a hint of the colors of the solar rainbows.

Aristotle says he saw them centuries before Christ.

The point is there are more rainbows in this world than we can imagine, and the rainbow will be a part of our environment for all eternity.

John saw a rainbow around the throne of God.

This was beautiful beyond description, no doubt, but it has more than beauty, it also has tremendous meaning, which we want to explore.

We want to see that it is a symbol of God's mercy.

When God made a covenant with Noah, and used the rainbow as the symbol of that covenant, He made it crystal clear that it was a covenant with all living creatures.

It is not just man that God cares about, but all His creatures, which are symbolized here in Rev.4 by the 4 living creatures.

The rainbow is a universal symbol.

It is everywhere in creation where there is water and sun.

It is a symbol for all creatures great and small.

Gen.9:12-16 says, "And God said, this is the sign of the covenant I am making between you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come.

I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind.

Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.

Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth."

Five times God said this covenant was with the whole of His creation.

The rainbow goes beyond God's relationship to man to include all creatures.

The rainbow is something that man has in common with the animal kingdom.

It is the one symbol that links us all together under the promise of God's mercy.

It is, therefore, so appropriate that in this chapter where the theme is nature leading God's people to worship, the rainbow should stand out as the primary symbol surrounding the throne of God.

This is the only symbol that I am aware of that is given by God to His whole creation.

The rainbow is the only symbol that I am aware of that says to every eye on this planet--I am a God of mercy.

There is a German tradition from the middle ages that says in the 40 years before the end of the world there will be no rainbow.

So every time they saw a rainbow it was a comfort, and an assurance that history would last at least another generation.