A Pleasing Sacrifice to the Lord
Genesis 8:15–22
15 Then God said to Noah, 16 “Go out from the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. 17 Bring out with you every living thing that is with you of all flesh—birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth—that they may swarm on the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.” 18 So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him. 19 Every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out by families from the ark.
20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21 And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. 22 While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”
Prayer: Lord God, heavenly Father, You gave Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to become Man and to come into the world that He might destroy the works of the devil, deliver us poor offenders from sin and death, and give us everlasting life: We ask You so to rule and govern our hearts by Your Holy Spirit that we may seek no other refuge than His Word, and thus avoid the sin to which we are by nature inclined, in order that we may always be found among the faithful followers of Your Son, Jesus Christ, and by faith in Him obtain eternal salvation; through the same, Your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one true God, now and forever. Amen.
Dear Fellow Redeemed,
It’s hard for us to imagine the thoughts and fears Noah and his family would have experienced while they were on the ark. For an entire year they lived aboard the ark in their watery world. They were cut off from everything they knew, with no solid ground to stand on, no weekends off, and no shore leave. One Bible commentator notes, “Remember that these men and women were not gold-plated saints, but frail creatures of dust and feeble as frail” (Lawrence, Genesis). They had to reckon with the truth that all of humanity had now been reduced to eight. Their own existence seemingly hanging by a thread. Yet, perhaps the most distressing, was that from Scripture, we know of nothing God said to Noah after he and his family entered the ark. No news or revelation from God during those long and difficult months.
There is nothing that can be more crushing to our sinful flesh than thinking that God has forgotten us. Satan, no doubt, loves to capture our imaginations with cruel and dark thoughts. We can become disheartened and despondent when God is seemingly nowhere to be found, and everything is going wrong. But Noah and his family learned that their trust in God was not misplaced.
At the beginning of Genesis 8 we read, “But God remembered Noah” (8:1). This doesn’t mean that God had previously forgotten about Noah. Rather, this Hebrew phrase expresses God’s active, gracious, and timely intervention with intent to rescue. Through his divine activity, the Lord would bring an end to the flood by shutting off the water sources (underground and overhead) and causing wind to pass over the earth. After a year and ten days and at God’s command, Noah exited the Ark with his family and all the animals.
When Noah got off the ark, what did he do? “Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.” As a descendant of faithful Seth, Noah offered sacrifices to God following the example of his godly ancestors (Genesis 4:26) publicly proclaiming the name of the God of grace. If you consider the size of Noah’s family and the animal world at this time, this sacrifice was proportionately very likely the largest sacrifice ever offered. And this sacrifice was pleasing to the Lord, a pleasing aroma.
Noah didn’t think to pat himself on the back for his obedience to God. He didn’t boast in his righteousness or that he was one of the chosen few to be saved from the flood. He thanked God for his mercy. Noah was a sinner who needed his sins covered. He offered sacrifices, which pointed to the once and for all sacrifice on the cross for sins. It may sound strange to us to hear that these sacrifices were a pleasing aroma or smell to the Lord. But this is the language of Scripture, to show that God accepted these sacrifices which were done out of faith in his Redeemer.
Yet, Noah’s actions are so contrary to how we naturally think and act. One of the strange fads that I will never forget from high school was Axe-baths. Before our new gym was built, we did not have the best facilities, specifically, showers. So, after basketball practices or games, kids would take Axe-baths (Axe is a brand of men’s body spray). They would cover their whole bodies with this stuff to try and cover up their stink and sweat. This was also when Chocolate Axe was very popular—something I wish to never smell again. Despite what most of the players thought, this did NOT cover up the high school basketball players smell. It was a completely inadequate covering, which did not fool any high school girl—despite how much they liked chocolate!
Our default reaction to our sin is to try to cover it up. Instead of admitting that you lied to get your way, you say you just bent the truth. Instead of looking in the mirror and acknowledging that it is you who have sinned, you look out the window at your neighbor to cast the blame. When you speak poorly about someone, instead of confessing your sin of gossip, you say it was just news you thought others should know. When you hold on more tightly to the things of the world, are slow to give and quick to take, you hide your greed by claiming wise stewardship. When we try to cover up our sin by saying that we meant well, we have covered up our sin as well as chocolate axe body spray covers up the smell of a stinky basketball player—not at all.
It’s natural for us to want to cover up our sin whether we are children or adults. As God said, “The intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” We are by nature sinful and daily sin against God. If we try to come to God on our terms, with our good works and noble intentions, he will cast us away. Our Axe-baths will do no good to cover our stink of sin. We might not be able to make ourselves pleasing to God, but there is One who can.
God was pleased with Noah’s sacrifice. Why? Because all the Old Testament sacrifices, from Abel’s to Noah’s to the Priests’ in the Temple, pointed to the perfect sacrifice of the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world. Noah trusted in God’s promise of a Redeemer, whose perfect life and innocent death on the cross could alone make us pleasing to God. The flood destroyed the corruption on the earth, but only the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, could cleanse us from our sin (I John 1:7).
God was pleased with Noah. Yet while the Lord had saved Noah from the flood, I am sure the thought of another impending flood would be on Noah’s mind. But God promised that he would never flood the earth again. As an assurance of his promise to never flood the earth again and his love for Noah and all people, God said, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” These constants in our lives are not simply a result of the laws of nature, but because God is faithful to his promise.
God saved Noah through the ark. God was pleased with Noah’s sacrifice. As an assurance of God’s promise to never flood the earth again and of his mercy, he gave Noah a continual sign of the seasons, day and night. These would have been a great comfort and assurance to Noah in this new world. What about us? We know that Jesus earned our salvation on the cross. He has paid for our sins. But what continual assurances do we fallen, weak, and doubting sinners have? Like Noah, we have the seasons. But we also have something far greater—a new covenant—a New Testament.
We have God’s Word and Sacraments. Through these means, God not only reminds us of the sacrifice that Jesus won on the cross, but he actually gives to us the forgiveness he earned on the cross. In our Epistle lesson today, Paul refers to himself as one of the “servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.” These mysteries are God’s Word and Sacraments. For through these means, Christ comes to us to forgive us all our sins, cleanse us from our sin, and work in us to will and to do according to his good pleasure.
When you feel forgotten, know that you aren’t. The Lord has called you by name in the waters of Holy Baptism. You are a child of God, washed clean, truly and thoroughly. You have Christ’s word of forgiveness in absolution. Christ gives you his promise and assurance of forgiveness and life in the New Testament of his blood shed for your for the remission of all of your sins.
We need these wonderful assurances. Even after we are made children of God in Baptism, we struggle against our sin until we leave this world. We are at the same time saint and sinner. As sinners, we sin. Remember how after the flood Noah planted a vineyard and made wine and got drunk. Even God’s faithful people fall. The only thing that is sadder than someone falling into sin is when a person thinks that when they have fallen there is no way out. Maybe you have something on your mind that is troubling your conscience. It could be a sin from this morning or from many years ago. Don’t try to cover your sin. Confess it. Christ’s holy blood has covered all your sins. He does not want to leave you. He wants to save you, which is why he came to our side, born in a manger to live a perfect life for you and to suffer and die for all your sins. He comes to our side, picks us up, and forgives us our sins. Christ is our refuge which will not fail.
We come to church to receive God’s Word and Sacrament, because through these means God assures us of sins forgiven. God covers us with a pleasing aroma through faith in Jesus. As Paul writes, “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.”
Paul is saying that you smell. You really do. And we should! Not the stench of false piety, in which we try to cover our sins. As Christians, we walk in the triumphal procession, knowing that Jesus has won us the victory, forgiven us our sins, and given us the sure hope of heaven. And it is our prayer that Paul’s words remain true, that, “through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.”
Noah was not without sin, but he trusted in God’s promises, and God was pleased with him. You and I are not without sin, but through faith in Jesus, God is pleased with us. May our lives along with Noah’s be living testimonies of the mercy God has shown to us, so that the joy and peace that we have received, might be spread everywhere. Amen.