Every time we see the rainbow we should remember God’s covenant faithfulness in sending the Redeemer to save a people for himself. Just as God had placed a rainbow in the sky to show his steadfast covenant fidelity, so there is a rainbow around the throne of Jesus Christ in glory (Rev. 4:3). We, like Noah, are beneficiaries of the mercy established in the Noahic Covenant in Jesus Christ.

The Noahic covenant was the first covenantal administration after God’s initial covenant promise to redeem and restore humanity (Gen. 3:15). It is also the first time that the word בְּרִית (Berith, translated Covenant) is used in the Scripture (Gen. 6:18). What has not been frequently observed, however, is how the Noahic covenant falls squarely in the realm of redemptive history.
Consider the following ways in which Noah and the Noahic covenant play a part in redemptive history:

The Redemptive Role of Noah as a Type of Christ

Noah was a type of Christ. He was a typical second Adam, a typical redeemer, and a typical rest giver. Like Adam, God gave Noah similar instructions with regard to being fruitful and multiplying, filling the earth and subduing it. He was not the second Adam but was a type of the second Adam who pointed to Christ.
Jesus is the second and last (eschatological) Adam who redeems his people and fulfills the creation mandates. Noah was a typical redeemer. Everyone with Noah on the ark was saved. Everyone in Christ is saved. Noah was not “the Redeemer.” He was a typical redeemer, providing typical redemption for all those who descended from him. Jesus came to redeem all those he represented spiritually.
Noah was a typical rest-giver. Noah’s name meant ‘rest.’ His father had named him ‘Rest,’ saying, “This one will give us rest from the ground which the Lord had cursed.” Noah only gives typical rest, as the remainder of the Bible bears witness to the ongoing need for redemptive rest.
Jesus is the one who finally and fully gives rest to the people of God and to the creation that was brought under the curse at the fall. He is the one who said, “Come unto me and I will give you rest for your souls.” He is the one who takes the curse on himself when he wears the crown of thorns—the symbol of the curse on the ground.

The Redemptive Foreshadowing of the New Creation

The book of Revelation tells us that the “new heavens and the new earth” will be the new Temple where God dwells fully and permanently with the redeemed. Noah and all of creation were together in the ark, as in a typical temple. This was foreshadowing the new creation-temple. Interestingly, the ark and Solomon’s Temple had three levels. It seems that the biblical data substantiates that the ark was a temple where God dwelt with his creation.
Noah also led the way into a typical new creation when he and his family stepped off of the ark and into a world that had been typically cleansed of pollution. Jesus brought about the new creation through his death and resurrection.
Noah knew that the flood had not really made “all things new,” because he sacrificed when he stepped off of the ark. The flood waters could never cleanse the evil out of the heart of man. God had destroyed the earth with a flood because “every intent of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5).
God promised never to destroy the earth with a flood again because “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Gen. 8:21). The reason for the latter declaration was that the flood was never meant to deal with man’s real problem—the sinful pollution of his heart.
Noah’s sons would populate the earth along with depraved sinners. Only the blood of Jesus could cleanse the hearts of sinners. The cleansed world onto which Noah and his family stepped when the waters receded was a type of the “new heavens and the new earth in which righteousness dwells.”
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…the war [between Russia and Urkraine has been cast] in terms of good versus evil, with Ukraine’s true believers on one side, and the fake Christian Putin on the other. Personally, I am much more skeptical about the genuine faith of some evangelicals that have tethered themselves to politicians that for decades have kept us involved in preemptive, interventionist, and illegal wars which killed and displaced millions of people. Many evangelicals have basically given neo-conservatives and neo-liberals in our government a blank check when it comes to being involved in endless wars. Perhaps it’s time to put quotation marks around the word “evangelical.”

Mindy Belz has positioned herself as an apologist for the “It’s all Putin’s fault” narrative in an article she wrote in the Wall Street Journal on March 3, 2022 titled, Ukraine’s Believers and the ‘Christian’ Putin. The quotation marks around the word Christian suggests skepticism about the genuineness of Putin’s Orthodox faith, and allows Ms. Belz to cast the war in terms of good versus evil with Ukraine’s true believers on one side, and the fake Christian Putin on the other.
Personally, I am much more skeptical about the genuine faith of some evangelicals that have tethered themselves to politicians that for decades have kept us involved in preemptive, interventionist, and illegal wars which killed and displaced millions of people. Many evangelicals have basically given neo-conservatives and neo-liberals in our government a blank check when it comes to being involved in endless wars. Perhaps it’s time to put quotation marks around the word “evangelical.”
But not Ms. Belz, she is concerned that some evangelicals have been “Lured…by statements suggesting Mr. Putin is pro-church, antiabortion and anti-same-sex-marriage.” Therefore, “some religious conservatives have been reluctant to acknowledge the Russian leader’s expansionist aims.”
Apparently, Putin’s expansionist aims are obvious to Ms. Belz, and she thinks they should be for everyone else too. Yet she is completely ignoring the insurmountable material reality of the massive eastward expansion of NATO as a reasonable and plausible explanation for Putin’s action in the Ukraine—as ugly and horrifying as that may be.
Since 1998 fourteen countries have been absorbed into NATO from the Baltic states and former Warsaw Pact. This means that America and NATO can potentially establish military bases, deploy troops, and install ballistic missiles all around the Russian Federation.
At the 2008 Bucharest Summit Georgia and Ukraine were promised eventual membership in NATO. In protest Russia announced that it would consider NATO expansion into boarder countries a direct threat to its national security, and said they would do “all they can to prevent Ukraine’s and Georgia’s ascension into NATO.” Russia did exactly what they said they would do, first in Georgia, and then the Ukraine. This should not have been a surprise to anyone who was listening. Yet to this day, the US refuses to acknowledge any of Russia’s security concerns.
Also, Bosnia & Herzegovina have enjoyed a cozy relationship with NATO since the early 1990s. In 2006 they joined the Partnership for Peace, and in 2010 they were invited to join the Membership Action Plan as stepping stones to becoming full NATO members.
Since the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine, Finland and Sweden have indicated their intention to join the alliance. Indeed, as recently as 5/16/22, the minority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnel promised that Finland’s and Sweden’s application to NATO would be fast-tracked, and he hopes that congress would approve it by August of this year. If membership is granted to these applicants it would be a total of nineteen countries added to NATO since the fall of the Soviet Union, and it means that Russia would be essentially surrounded.
Of course, none of this matters to the warmongers at the White House and in the Congress on either side of the aisle. They have their propaganda arm in the mainstream media steadily pushing the strategic lie that this is all Putin’s fault. He is the aggressor, and he is trying to reestablish the old Soviet Union. Unfortunately, many evangelicals either aren’t paying attention, or they’ve already believed the lie. The truth is that NATO is an offensive alliance, not a defensive alliance.
Moreover, what does Ms. Belz mean when she writes about “statements suggesting” Putin is prochurch, antiabortion, and anti-gay marriage? Does she mean that these are not in fact Putin’s views? Or does she mean that even if these are his true convictions, his ill-liberal political bent should be weighted more heavily by evangelicals than his stance on social issues when assessing his Christian bona fides?
What is conspicuous by its absence in Ms. Belz’s article is whether or not these traditional views on social issues are held by the neo-liberal government in Kiev, the protestant churches she claims to speak for, and the new Orthodox Church in Ukraine which broke away from the Russian patriarchy at the behest of the American State Department under Secretary Mike Pompeo.
As a whole the people of Ukraine are nearly as conservative on social issues as are the people of Russia. Evangelicals in Ukraine seem to be holding the conservative line on these issues but are increasingly being pressured by LGBTQ+ activists to soften their position. The metropolitan of the new Orthodox Church in Ukraine was caught on a prank call agreeing that the church in Ukraine needs to soften its views on LGBTQ+ issues and adopt positions more consistent with European values. This is in stark contrast to the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church which sees the whole trajectory of religious and political institutions in the Ukraine as one big gay pride parade. And he is not completely wrong on this point.
Finally, Ms. Belz cites the former finance minister in Ukraine, Natalie Jaresko. Ms. Jaresko stated that Putin cannot stand to see “a Slavic nation on his border that has a successful democracy, albeit messy. He cannot abide an example of democratic success next door while he remains an example of oppression.”
One wonders why Ms. Jaresko, a US citizen and former U.S. Department of State official, was appointed as Ukraine’s Minister of Finance in the first place if Ukraine is such a shining example of democracy? As it turns out, many of Ukraine’s top ministerial posts are held by foreigners from the US, Lithuania, Georgia, and elsewhere. Many more lower ranking positions are also held by foreigners.
Needless to say, none of these foreigners running the government were democratically elected by the will of the Ukrainian people. They were all appointed because of outside pressure from Western institutions such as IMF, EBDR, WTO, the European Union and the U.S. Department of State. With this in mind, it seems unlikely that Putin is viewing Ukraine as anything close to resembling a successful democracy. The facts would suggest that we shouldn’t either.
Jim Fitzgerald is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and a missionary with Equipping Pastors International.
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As the book of Exodus begins, Israel has been in Egypt for more than four hundred years (cf. Ex. 12:40). They are now in bondage under an oppressive Pharaoh. The early chapters of Exodus describe the calling of Moses to be the one who will lead God’s people out of slavery in Egypt. He comes before Pharaoh demanding that Israel be allowed to go and worship the Lord, but Pharaoh refuses. God then sends a series of increasingly severe plagues on Egypt. Pharaoh’s stubbornness in the face of the first nine plagues results in God’s pronouncement of a final plague that will result in Israel’s redemption from slavery. God warns that He will go into the midst of Egypt and that every firstborn in the land will die. It is in the context of the warning of this final plague that we find God’s instructions regarding the Passover in Exodus 12.
God begins with a statement indicating that the Passover and Exodus will mark a new beginning for the nation of Israel. The month of Abib (late March and early April) is to be the first month of the year for God’s people. This emphasizes the fact that the exodus from Egypt is a key event, a turning point, in redemptive history. So central is the event that from this point forward, God is frequently described in reference to the exodus (e.g., Ex. 20:2; Lev. 11:45; Num. 15:41; Deut. 5:6; Josh. 24:17; Judg. 6:8; 1 Sam. 10:18; 2 Kings 17:36; Ps. 81:10; Jer. 11:4; Dan. 9:15; Hos. 11:1; Amos 2:10). He is identified as the One who redeemed His people from slavery.
In later years, the observation of the Passover would involve the priesthood (cf. Deut. 16:5–7), but on the night of the original Passover, the responsibility for this ceremony falls to the head of each household. The head of every household is commanded to take a male lamb that is one year old and without any blemishes. This substitutionary lamb must be a symbol of perfection. As such, it foreshadows the true Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, who was uniquely without blemish (cf. 1 Peter 1:19). At twilight, the lamb for each household is to be killed.
The Lord then reveals what the Israelites are to do with the slain lambs and why they are to do it. Each head of a household is to take the blood of the lamb and put it on the doorposts and lintel of his house. God explains that the blood will be a sign. When He sees the blood on the door, He will pass over that house, and the firstborn in it will be spared from the coming judgment that is to fall on Egypt. After the lambs are killed by the head of the household, they are to be roasted and eaten with the people dressed and prepared to leave on a moment’s notice. Since the Passover is a “sacrifice” (cf. Ex. 12:27; 34:25; Deut. 16:2), the eating of the lamb is a sacrificial meal like that associated with the peace offering described in Leviticus 3 and 7. In such meals, the body of the sacrificial victim is offered to believers to eat after the sacrifice is made (Lev. 7:15).
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