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 In the last episode that God unconditionally promises that he will never again destroy all life on the earth by flood. There may be local floods, but never again will there be a world-wide flood and he gives us a sign to mark that covenant in the next few verses. 

And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and 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.” So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”

(Gen 9: 12-17) 

God says I'm going to give you a rainbow as a sign of that promise. Because life is precious to him, he makes an unconditional, universal, everlasting covenant with all people to never again destroy the earth with a flood again, and the visible sign of that promise is the rainbow. I believe that this this passage [all Ch 9, 17 verses] exist to highlighting the value of life. The big point is that humans are made in the image of God and that's what gives human life it’s unique precious value. 

Let me conclude by making a couple of observations and summarising where we’ve got to. One lesson we can learn he is that spiritual blindness and sin will produce catastrophes on a regular basis. That’s something modern people are very aware of in principle, anyway? We are all becoming more and more concerned about environmental degradation and potential catastrophe that might bring. That fear is the continual reactivation of an archetypal idea in the flood story. We know deep within there’s something about the way we’re living that is unsustainable, and that will eventually create a catastrophe. It’s so interesting because people believe that firmly and deeply. Yet at the same time they don’t see the relationship between the situation today and the archetypal biblical story, ‘and how it plays out. Overconsumption, greed, all of that is producing unstable political and causing serious environmental concerns. You hear that every day in every newspaper and every TV station it’s broadcast to you constantly.We need to think biblically because there are some profound ramifications to our understanding of these early biblical stories. This determines what you think about all the great ethical issues that face us living in a modern society. This passage, I believe gives us the basis for formulating a view on the value of the planet we live on and the value of life. If we didn’t have the Bible and passages like this then we treat people, no differently to animals. Without the bible you can easily reach a view where you are allowed to slaughter innocent people just because you decide to do so. Without the Bible, you don’t have this sense of the true value of a human life. 

So, here are the overriding principals revealed in the first few chapters of this, the first book of the bible. Human life is valuable because we are made in the image of God. That's the one thing we ought to walk away with from this passage this morning. You and I are made in the image of God which means we are precious to God. Get those principles down and I think you have the basis for thinking through the value of all life from a biblical point of view. It helps one avoids extremes like all life is sacred and therefore even animals or insects cannot be killed. To the other extreme that no life is sacred and therefore life is cheap and worthless. This biblical teaching should inform your world view on a wide range of issues. This can on occasion get intensely personal. Because it means you are precious to God if you’re a little prem baby lying in a cot. You are precious to God if you’re a 90-year-old soul lying in your bed in a hospital or nursing home and you are precious to God because the bible teaches that all human beings are made in the image of God.