The Ark and the Alter

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Genesis 8:5-21

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Well, this morning we look to finish the 8th chapter of Genesis, which we began a few weeks ago.
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We sort of came into Genesis 8 in the first four verses and pressed on, and we're gonna take verse 22 with us into next week as we look at chapter 9.
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I think it's, of course, it's bridged over. Chapter numbers are artificial. They weren't originally written.
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They're helpful sometimes, but they're not helpful when we think that they're these walls that divide one chapter from the next, and I think verse 22 goes very well with a theme that we'll consider next week together as we look at God's covenant through Noah with humanity after the flood.
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So this morning we're really looking at Genesis 8, 5 through 21, and even there we'll reduce it down a little bit more.
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And as we've begun this chapter, we're reminded of what we read in the beginning in verse 1, how
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God made a wind. Remember wind, breath, spirit, it's all the same word in Hebrew, ruach.
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Interestingly, it's the same in Greek. It could be wind, breath, spirit. He made a wind, that's our translation, made a ruach to pass over the earth.
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I do think wind's a good translation there, but it's it's connotating the Spirit of God, and that's because it's echoing Genesis 8, as we saw last week.
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It's how the Spirit of God hovered. It uses this this language of brooding. It's ovarian language.
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It's brooding over the face of the deep, hovering over the face of the deep. It echoes
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Genesis 1, how the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the deep, so God caused the same
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Spirit to pass over the deep waters of the earth. The Spirit brings order in creation.
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The Spirit brings life, vitality out of the void of the abyss, out of the chaos of Genesis 1 -2, and so what the
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Spirit does in Genesis 1 is it allows out of that deep, out of that abyss, dry land to emerge, and with dry land, vegetation.
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The idea there's there's life, there's vitality, there's completion to the creative work of God that comes through the person of his
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Spirit. The echo of Genesis 1 continues as we move from dry lands to the emergence of plants and trees, and so that's the echo here as we move forward in chapter 8.
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He also sent from himself a dove to see if the waters had receded from the face of the ground.
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Well, the dove is reminiscent of that language of the Spirit hovering over the face of the deep.
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The dove finds no resting place for the sole of her foot. She returns into the ark to him. The waters were on the face of the whole earth.
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Verse 11, Then the dove came to him in the evening, and behold, a freshly plucked olive leaf was in her mouth, and Noah knew that the waters had receded from the earth.
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God does not, think of this, God does not initially tell Noah the waters have receded, you may now leave the ark.
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There's this whole dynamic where day by day, week by week, perhaps month by month,
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Noah has to send out this dove and wait for the dove to return and try to surmise the state of the land outside of the ark.
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There's this constant search that is testing Noah's faith. It's working on his patience day after day.
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He has to keep waiting and trusting on the Lord. So there's no revelation given. There's this resting upon this dove, the word from this dove, whether or not it's safe to depart from the ark.
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He gets that signal symbolically when the dove brings an olive leaf, freshly plucked, and it tells
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Noah that the waters have receded even at the foot of the Ararat range, because olive trees do not grow in high altitudes.
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They're not found in high altitudes. And so the idea is now it's safe to go out. Now it's receded even down to the very bottom, to the foothills.
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And so there's this picture of a dove bringing this olive leaf, and on the surface, it's just saying God is in control of his world, right?
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He's in control of the flight of the dove and the timing of Noah and his family's departure. He has his providence, which is often so gentle that it's barely recognized.
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And that's true over the flood that covers the earth, as it is over the olive leaf that's brought back to Noah. God's providence is in control.
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Of course, even since then, the dove with the sprig of an olive tree in its mouth has become a universal symbol of peace.
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And this is true when we see the dove in relationship to Christ and his baptism.
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Remember, there also the spirit descends like a dove as Christ emerges from the deep, from the waters of baptism and comes on to dry land.
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Mark one coming up from the water, he saw the heavens parting and the spirit descending upon him like a dove, like a dove, the humble dove, the dove that was the clean offering for the
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Israelites who were too poor to bring cattle to the altar of God, a gentle, humble creature, a meek creature.
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Cyprian, an old church father, says the Holy Spirit came as a dove, a gentle, joyous creature with no bitterness, no fierceness of bite, no violence of rending claws.
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This past week, I was reminded of some relatively new work that's done by a man named
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Patrick Schreiner, and he makes a big deal out of the spirit descending like a dove upon the baptism of Christ.
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For a long time, we've recognized that the baptism of Christ, especially in the context of the
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Gospels, is the inauguration of his ministry. It's the beginning of his ministry. Luke says he grows in wisdom and stature among men.
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Of course, the Holy Spirit is with him. He has the spirit without measure throughout his whole life. He was conceived by the
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Holy Spirit, and he grows, and he's under, of course, the earthly visage of his parents, and there comes this time, this moment, when he embarks on the ministry that he's been called to by the
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Father, his Heavenly Father, and that is inaugurated at the baptism. This is the heaven's part.
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The Father declares the Son, this is my Son in whom I am well pleased, and the spirit descends upon him like a dove.
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That's the inauguration of the ministry of Christ. Now, remember throughout the Gospel, we understand that Christ is the true
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King, the unrevealed and yet true King of the world, the creator of all that is according to Colossians 1, and there's been some great work by Patrick Shiner recognizing the significance of this dove.
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Not only is it an echo back to Genesis 8, for instance, which echoes Genesis 1, but also it's a pretty powerful message to the ancient world of the time, especially the
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Roman world of the time, where we get our word inauguration from. You'll notice that little root, augur, augury.
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This was a process of divinizing by looking to birds. So the idea is, if you were to read any
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Roman biography of an emperor or a ruler or some ancient king, the idea was they knew they were destined to be king or they had a sign of their rulership because they could find a bird, perhaps an eagle or a vulture, on a certain significant day, perhaps their day of birth or at a certain location as they marched toward Rome.
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There was a sign and now they're destined because of this sign to come and rule with might and force.
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And here, perhaps the gospel writers are picking up on this. What's the sign of this king's inauguration?
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It's a dove. It's a gentle meat creature. It's not a bird of prey. It's not something you'd carve a granite statue out of and put it on the stairs of your great temples and capital buildings.
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It's not some powerful creature that could tear any opposition apart. It's this gentle dove, this meek dove.
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And I think therein significantly, as we said, the dove that would be torn apart when it was used as an offering unto
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God. So very significant that Jesus takes the sign of the dove and here we have it in Genesis 8.
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If you've been tracking where we've been this past several weeks, we've seen that Noah is a type of Christ, the ark is a type of Christ.
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And now even this this dove that brings the symbol of peace, the dove that will of its kind will later be offered upon the altar in this very chapter.
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This also is a type of Christ. God instructs Noah to leave the ark.
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The waters have receded and now comes the instruction. Now comes the revelation. Now Noah has passed the test of his patience and waiting.
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God instructs him to leave the ark. Verse 15 and following. God spoke to Noah saying, God of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons, wives with you.
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Noah remains the central figure in God's recreation. So remember what we've been talking about.
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The flood is God's judgment and it's a D creative act.
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It's undoing the work of creation. If creation begins in Genesis one with the deep, the abyss, the deep waters and and the spirit of God moves upon it and out emerges dry land and from that dry land vegetation and then
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God separates the waters and out of this comes all the teeming life of creation. Well, when God judges the corrupted earth with the earth, all of that is reversed.
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Water subsumes and drowns and suffocates all life and even the dry land. Everything that's living that has breath is extinguished from the face of the earth.
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That's D creation. But through that judgment comes salvation, comes new creation or recreation.
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And that's the theme we have here. Noah is, as it were, the central figure for this reason.
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He's now the new head of a new humanity. It's as though the world has died and now there's a new world, a new creation, a new humanity.
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The world has passed through the waters of death. And so Noah is a second Adam, so to speak.
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He was in that ark and now he's led into a new world that's been swept clean by the judgment of God.
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We saw that last week in first Peter three, how the ark and those that were in it, that's a type of baptism.
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They pass through death into life. Peter says that's an anti type. First Peter three, eight souls were saved through water.
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There's also an anti type, which now saves us baptism, right? That's the picture here from death into new life.
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Water becomes a means of death for the corrupted world and yet a means of life for Noah and his household.
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Salvation through judgment. Noah comes out of this coffin like ark.
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He's been delivered from death by God's grace. He now steps out in a certain newness of life into a certain newness of creation.
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And what's the first thing Noah does when he sets foot out of the ark? Verse 20.
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Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
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The first thing Noah does is build an altar to the Lord. It's the first act he takes.
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The first move he makes is to build an altar and worship the Lord. So the bulk of our time this morning is to consider how important this is, what this can teach us.
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What does Noah building an altar show us? Well, four things come to my mind that I think we can exercise.
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First, Noah's altar shows us that worship is the priority.
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Worship is the priority. Noah, this righteous man, Noah has discerned that worship is his first responsibility to the
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God who has delivered him. Worship is the priority. God will go on to direct Noah, as we'll see next week, to repeat and echo more from the creation account.
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Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it. God will surround him and shroud him with common grace to enable humanity to once again flourish over the face of the earth.
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And yet that is not the priority. Not for Noah. Worship is the priority.
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Noah built an altar to the Lord. It's his first movement out of the ark. Now, as he steps out onto the land, he has no shelter outside of the ark, right?
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The ark has been his home. And it's not the kind of home you ever want to go back into. I can imagine that they were like, we're not going back in that thing.
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It stinks. The walls are dripping and moldy. And we have nightmares about our time in there.
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And we are not going back in there. And yet he has no shelter outside of the ark. His sons and his sons wives, they have no home to go to everything.
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Everything has been destroyed. There's so much that they would have to accomplish from that point of stepping out just to get through the next day, just to get through the next day.
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There is so much that they had to plan and think about and work toward their, as it were on the top of a mountain, just getting down the mountain is something that might take the whole day.
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But what's the first thing that Noah does? He worships the Lord. They couldn't drive their pickup truck down to Lowe's as long as it was by 9pm.
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Get some pressure treated lumber, plan out a new home, something with a nice yard, you know, white picket fence.
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They couldn't round up helpers from local towns and villages. Let's build an altar. Okay, we'll get some help later on. There's no help.
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There is, there's no humanity left other than this immediate household. There's eight souls in a whole empty world.
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Just think of all of the swirling thoughts and plans and needs of the hour. And yet the first thing
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Noah does is build an altar to the Lord. It's not like they had, you know, some prepackaged
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IKEA altar that they brought with them on the ark. Just dragging the stones to build an altar would have been a process, wouldn't it?
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If we had to go out and find stones suitable to build an altar, that might take us all day. The first thing that Noah does is build an altar to the
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Lord. If you were abandoned on an island, if you had been shipwrecked and you were crying out at sea as you clung on to the plank or perhaps a hull that was partly floating, you would just be praying,
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God, please deliver me. Please deliver me, Lord. I trust, I trust my soul to you, but please deliver me. And perhaps he brings you to the shore of an island.
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And what's the first priority when you get to that island? Oh, I'm so glad I watched all those documentaries about surviving in the rainforest.
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What did Bear Grylls say I had to do? Okay, I need banana leaves and sticks and I have to try to find something to make fire and I hope
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I have something I can use maybe to make fishing line. I have to try to find berries. These are all the things that would be going through your mind, unless you were
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Noah, unless you were Noah. The first thing that Noah would do if he were in that situation, say, well, the first thing
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I need to do is build an altar to the Lord because he answered my prayer and he delivered me. So I'm gonna build an altar.
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Berries and banana leaves can wait. Worship is the priority. You'd want to build a shelter.
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You would want to gather food. You probably wouldn't want to build an altar. You probably wouldn't want to worship, whether or not an altar was involved.
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It seems to me that worship is often the thing we think of last. It's the cherry on the top of all of the other demands of the day, rather than the priority.
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They're not only of a given day, but of our given week. Is Sunday the goal of every week?
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The Lord's Day? The day that we gather to worship him and be reminded of the things that eternity is hurdling us toward?
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Or is it just the cap on a long week? Something that kind of launches us into a new work week?
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Something that can be inconvenient? Something that we look forward to enjoying, but also getting through?
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Is worship really the priority for us? Noah has just been brought through the judgment of the flood and his mind is still fixed on the deliverance of God.
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In other words, he has not grown cold over months spent floating aimlessly in the ark, weeks filled with darkness.
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Remember, there's only one opening in the ark, and even that likely was covered in this chapter. He talks about removing the coverings.
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He's in this dark dungeon, as it were, really a floating coffin. Months and months and months on end as that little dove comes back, tired, perhaps panting, and it has brought nothing with him.
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And just the fact the dove comes back tells him it's still not safe to leave this death box. And yet his heart has not grown cold.
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He's not lost sight of the priority. Noah was a righteous man because he spent his life worshiping and sacrificing before the flood.
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And what does he do the very day he steps out of the ark after the flood? He worships and sacrifices.
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He worships and sacrifices. Stephen Charnock, the great Puritan, wrote perhaps one of the greatest works on the attributes of God.
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And it's been reprinted and you can easily find it. You can read it online for free. A good way to spend your winter months.
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If you're a reader, he says, men have naturally such slight thoughts of the majesty of God that they think any service is good enough for him.
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The dullest and deadest times we think the most fit to pay God a service.
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When sleep is ready to close our eyes and we are unfit to serve ourselves, then we think it's a fit time to open our hearts to God.
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Do you see what he's saying? Well, I've done everything I had to do today. I didn't get a lot of things I wanted to do today done.
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Now I'm so tired I can barely keep my eyes open. Now's the time I'll worship God with my thoughts.
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And you start to pray, Lord, thank you for and before you know it, it's 9 a .m. and you know, you're up for the next day.
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How few morning sacrifices God has from so many people, so many families. Men leapt out of their beds to their carnal pleasures or worldly employments without any thought of their creator or their preserver or any reflection upon his will as the rule of their obedience.
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Do you see what he's just saying? Men naturally have slight thoughts of worshiping God, but not
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Noah. And again, we track this contrast between Noah being in the line of Seth, Noah being in the line of men who called upon the name of God, men who worshipped
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God and sacrificed to him. Noah comes from that lineage. He's not a canine. He's not those who who tried to manage the curse in their own way and became proud in the way they could manage the curse.
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We found our own way to bring food out of the ground. We found our own way to build walls and cities. We're not going to be vulnerable to the curse of God.
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And so they both like like Lamech boasts that he would kill a young lad just for crossing him the wrong way.
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Men of violence and greed, men of might. And yet here's this contrast.
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You can imagine what a canine would do if a canine was coming off the ark, right? There'd be no altar. There'd be no worship.
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It would be down to business. It would be time to start building shelters and villages and towns and eventually cities.
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At least your great great grandchildren could be rulers in the cities. That would be the way a canine would look at it.
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But no is not from that line. No is from the line of promise, his first act in a new world.
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There's not a single building left standing in this world. It's a new world. And the first building, the first building is an altar.
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It used to be in New England that you couldn't build a town unless the church was built. You see, you can't have a town, you can't have people gathered around common area unless there's a church, there's a place of worship.
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And so it is here. Must be an altar first. A house can come, the shed can come, the driveway and the pool, but first the altar.
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First the altar. Noah, as the head of a new humanity, makes his first act the praise of God.
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And what kind of worship, what kind of praise does he bring? It's a burnt offering. Remember how he had brought clean animals with him, seven of each of the clean animals he brought with him on the ark.
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And he offered burnt offerings on the altar. His plan was always to worship God when he had the opportunity and means to do so.
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And that's what he does. He's not distracted. He's not put off. Noah carries on what he had known he always must do.
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As a Sethite, he knew that God had established sacrifice as a pattern for sinful man.
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He knew that God himself had provided a covering of skins for fallen Adam and Eve. And so Abel also righteously sacrifices.
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And though Cain tries to give an offering, it's rejected from the Lord. It's not a blood sacrifice.
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There's no tabernacle. There's no temple. And yet here is Noah acting like a priest. And the sanctuary is not some court in Jerusalem.
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The sanctuary is God's whole earth. And Noah is a priest sacrificing unto
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God. Now, in due time, the altar and the sacrifice become fixed. This act is further developed.
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We read of David when he establishes the place of worship. It's all about the burnt offering.
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The King David, this is First Chronicles 21. You remember how he bought the threshing floor of Orana, the
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Jebusite. Some of you women who are pregnant, if you're looking for a name, Orana is a great name.
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Orana the Jebusite. Or Ornan, perhaps. He buys it.
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He says, well, just take it. If this is what you're going to do with the land, just take it. No, I will not offer to the Lord that which cost me nothing.
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So this is going to be a place of sacrifice. I must sacrifice in order to use it. So King David said to Ornan, no,
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I will surely buy it for the full price. I will not take what is yours for the Lord, nor offer burnt offerings with that which cost me nothing.
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So David gave it to him and he built an altar there to the Lord and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings and called on the
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Lord. And he answered him from heaven by fire on the altar of burnt offerings. So this becomes the altar of the temple.
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And David said, this is the house of the Lord God. This is the altar of burnt offering for Israel.
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You see, all of this is flowing, not just out of Noah, out of the whole sephite line of sacrifice.
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And yet it's been further and further developed along the way. Noah is the bridge to this
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Levitical pattern of burnt offering. Remember in Ezra, when the people are brought back to their land, they're released from their captivity and they're brought back into the promised land.
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One of the first things they do once they come back and renew the foundations of the city is they gather around for the burnt offering.
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They recognize this is what constituted us as our people. This is our identity as the people of God.
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So in Levitical sacrifices, the burnt offerings which emit from the altar, the idea is it has this soothing aroma that ascends into the heavens.
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You know something of what it would be like if you've ever stood in the parking lot of a busy steakhouse and the wind carries it and you go, oh, it's that soothing aroma.
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Well, that's what it would have smelled like if you were approaching the altar with the flesh that was burning. If you were from a distance, it would have been a wonderful thing.
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This, you know, this is just wonderful. It's soothing. It's inviting. It's appeasing.
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That's the idea of this sacrifice. The people use their senses to envision something pleasant and yet what is pleasant emits out of something so full of carnage, right?
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What is pleasant and delightful and soothing is something that is bloody and mangled and destroyed.
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This is a picture of sacrifice. Leviticus 1, if his offering is a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish.
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He shall offer it of his own free will at the door of the tabernacle of meeting before the Lord and he shall put his hand on the head of the burnt offering and it will be accepted on his behalf to make atonement for him.
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If we're saying that this is part of what is developed from Noah, you realize Noah is offering this sacrifice.
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He's offering an atonement, sacrifice and atonement for his sin. He shall kill the bull before the
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Lord and the priest there and son shall bring the blood and sprinkle the blood all around on the altar that is by the door of the tabernacle and the priest shall burn all on the altar as a burnt sacrifice and offering made by fire, a sweet aroma to the
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Lord. Do you see? This is what Noah is doing. He's offering something to take the place of his sinfulness.
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The whole earth has been cleansed of sin. The whole earth has been cleansed of sin and Noah steps out from the ark, him and seven other people and makes a sin offering to the
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Lord. The sacrificial system is a system of guilt and gratitude.
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Sacrifices for guilt are offered because sin breaks fellowship with God and that broken fellowship that that sinful rebellion is an offense to God and warns judgment from God.
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And so there must be a sacrifice. There must be a covering. There must be an atonement. All of that we know as we'll see points forward to Christ.
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And so there's a sense in which not all the blood of beasts on Jewish altars slain as Isaac Watts would say could ever make peace, could ever atone for sin.
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Sacrifices are not only for guilt but for gratitude and certainly this is intermingled. When you recognize that the sacrifice is what's covering you from God's judgment,
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God is literally delivering you through the sacrifice and your sacrifice is also mingled with gratitude as are many of the other offerings you bring before him.
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Sacrifices of gratefulness, of thanksgiving presented to God as a response to his mercy through the blood of the sin offering.
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The point in all of this is Noah's altar reminds us that the worship of God is the priority.
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When we get to Revelation, if we pull back the the curtains as it were on what will happen when we enter into the fullness of our salvation, what is taking place?
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Worship. Worship. Worship. That's the fullness of our salvation is entering into that great celebration, that great worship, the once for all sacrifice.
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Salvation now fully accomplished, fully realized, the full consummation of all that God had promised.
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And the response is worship. The response is casting crowns down before his feet with tears and laughter and joy streaming down our faces as we all, a countless multitude around his throat, sing worthy is the
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Lamb. That's that's salvation in its fullness. We have it in a microcosm here with Noah.
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And yet, because of that second point, Noah's altar shows us that ultimate salvation had not yet come.
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Ultimate salvation had not yet come. You'd read it and almost hope that when
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Noah emerges from the ark and his family comes out and all the animals flood out of that entryway,
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Noah spared as a righteous man. Now the head of a new humanity and all that was corrupt and abominable has been wiped off the face of the earth.
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Now you almost hope now there's a new humanity. Now God is answering the curse of Genesis three.
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Now there will be a world with righteousness, justice and peace. Now the glory of the Lord will cover the face of the earth as the water covers the sea.
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There'll be no sin, no violence or corruption. And yet he builds an altar for a sin offering as the first thing he does.
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So there goes our hope for a new humanity and a full salvation. You build a sin offering because sin remains.
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And we know that sin remains because a sacrifice remains. In other words, if Noah and his family had finally achieved all that God wanted for humanity, all that God intended according to his promise of redemption, there never would have been an altar or a burnt offering.
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This is pointing us forward that there's a greater fulfillment yet to come. It's the logic of Hebrews 10 26.
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There no longer remains a sacrifice for sin. Follow the logic of that. Where there's a sacrifice for sin, there's an offense that needs an atonement.
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Noah has just been brought through the judgment of God, and yet he makes an atoning sacrifice because there's a judgment still to come.
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So he himself realizes this flood was not the ultimate flood. This deliverance is not the ultimate deliverance.
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I'm still a sinner. My sons are still sinners. Their wives are still sinners. We still need an atonement.
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We need a covering. We need to trust and depend upon God's grace. Do you see? Even though sinful humanity had been cut off worldwide, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, if not millions of human beings have been extinguished.
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When he came to the foothills in the ravines where there are corpses everywhere, he's surrounded by the dread of the judgment of God.
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Only eight souls survived that wrath when it erupted upon the face of the earth.
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And yet even just in the eight souls that were spared by the righteousness of one man, he himself included, the fallen nature is still potent.
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The corruption is still present. The rebellion is alive and well, even in the midst of the ark, during the judgment, experiencing salvation.
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Noah must build an altar because sin remains. The altar, this is the first mention of altar in all of scripture.
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We have images of sacrifice, of course, as we've already said. This is the first instance of an altar.
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Altar means place of slaughter. Noah calls on the Lord. He calls on Yahweh.
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It's the covenantal name. It's the personal name of God, because God is the covenantal God. He calls on Yahweh.
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He calls on the great I Am. He initiates the pattern of Leviticus 1. You see, the world is still broken.
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The world is still corrupted. No one knows it. If you can't see it in the receding waters or in the dove heralding peace, you can see it in that flaming altar, in this mangled corpse of a sacrificial animal, their whole flesh and all of their blood being consumed in the fire.
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It's an awful thing. It's an awful thing to have experienced. We're far removed from it.
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If we could, as we've rehearsed, I think, talking about the Passover, it would have been a horrific sight to see the rivers of blood that flowed down from the
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Temple Mount 2 ,000 years ago. Rivers of blood, as every household brought their blemishes lamb to be slain by the
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Levites. And just thousands upon thousands of animals wrangling and gasping for air and blood being poured out and entrails being put upon the altar, this constant churning of flesh, burning up to God, and rivers of blood, and it can't take away a single sin.
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Not even a single sin. It's just a placeholder. It's a bookmark for the promise of God and the sacrifice that will come.
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Year after year, rivers of blood, as if the world could be covered by a flood of sacrificial blood, and it can't take away a single sin, a single offense, the slightest rebellion.
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And yet here is Noah, and he's offering this burnt sacrifice, and we read this response of God in verse 21.
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The Lord smelled a soothing aroma, and he said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground for man's sake.
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Now just pause there. Remember our fancy word, synecdoche, which means you talk about a larger thing by just referencing a part of it, right?
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You talk about the whole boat by saying a sail, right? That's a synecdoche. Cursing the ground here is a synecdoche.
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It's emblematic of the fall, the curse upon sin. Not just the curse upon the ground, but that's a reference to Noah, who will bring comfort from the curse of the ground, right?
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That was what he was prophesied to do. I will never again curse the ground for man's sake, although the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth, nor will
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I again destroy every living thing as I have done. Now you notice the symmetry between what we read here in 821 and what we read back in chapter 6 before the flood, where the corruption and violence of the earth was abominable in God's sight, and he says, it says the
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Lord was grieved in his heart. He saw that men's thoughts were only evil continually. Well, here it is after the flood, and he says the same thing.
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He says, I won't do this again, even though the situation hasn't changed. Men still have evil imaginations from their youth.
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Yet what has changed, right? That hasn't changed. The problem hasn't changed. The curse hasn't changed.
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Corruption hasn't changed. The only thing that has changed is Noah has made a sacrifice unto
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God that pleases him. That is the only difference. Fallen man has not changed the curse, the problem, the offense, the abomination.
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None of that has changed. The only difference between chapter six and chapter eight is there a sack. There is a sacrifice that is pleasing to the
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Lord. You have to see how this is all contingent. God doesn't just say, go out from the ark.
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I'm never going to do this again. Do you see how important it is? Noah builds an altar. The sacrifice pleases God as God breathes that in and is satisfied.
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He's moved by grace and compassion to say, I will not do this again. It's a result of the sacrifice.
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Do you see? God found that sacrifice completely acceptable.
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There were altars before that sacrifice and there will be altars after it. We know that there's a greater judgment and therefore greater salvation yet to come.
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And so Noah's altar shows us that ultimate, ultimate salvation has not yet come. And that brings us to our third point, right?
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So worship is the priority. First point. Noah's altar shows us that salvation had not yet come.
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Second, third. Noah's altar shows us that ultimate salvation will come.
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Will come. The aroma of a clean sacrifice is acceptable to God.
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Look at these words. The Lord smelled a soothing aroma or a pleasing aroma. It would have been so easy just to say
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God was pleased. But we're told that God smelled, breathed in this aroma.
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It was a pleasing, soothing aroma. And we have this, this language, this manlike language, anthropomorphic language.
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The Bible uses language in this way, right? God reveals himself as my eyelids will not wearier.
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You know, my legs will not tire as I run to my people. These are metaphors. God does not have a body.
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God is not like unto us. He's infinite, eternal, unchangeable. He's invisible. He's a spirit, right?
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And yet we have this very powerful, gripping language as though God is breathing in the fumes of sacrifice and then being compelled as a result of that sacrifice to say,
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I will not destroy again. Not in this way. God was looking at Noah, seeing the altar going up in smoke, all these pure spotless animals, their throats cut, their abdomens cut open, their entrails brought out, dismembered into pieces, consumed by the fire.
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And God looks upon that, that bloodshed, that carnage, and he breathes it in and he's satisfied.
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And this is a permissory sacrifice. So this is a promise. This is a placeholder.
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Derek Kidner says so rightly, the Lord's resolve not to renew the judgment is based on the accepted sacrifice, not on the fact that man is now incorrigible.
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Of course he's not. In other words, that man is somehow now unfallen. This had been the very ground of the judgment, man's fallenness, and still calls for judgment.
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But it never prevents God from being propitiated because of the sacrifice.
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If God seems too lightly propitiated, that arises partly from the simplicity of the style, but also from the limitation of Old Testament sacrifice, which can never take away sin.
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The real propitiation in the mind of God was the sacrifice of Jesus. Let's make sure we understand that word propitiation.
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That word propitiation, the idea is, is you propitiate
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God, you satisfy God, you make him favorable to you. You somehow please him in a way that he's moved against what he would otherwise do.
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He becomes propitious. He becomes favorable, accepting toward you. And so the sacrifice of Christ is the propitiation.
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It's that which makes the Father, who is holy and cannot tolerate sin, propitious towards sinners, favorable towards sinners, pleased by sinners.
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This is what Paul says in Romans three, beginning in verse 22, the righteousness of God. He talks about the righteousness of God, which has now been revealed the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe, for there is no difference.
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All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom
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God set forth as a propitiation by his blood through faith to demonstrate his righteousness.
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Where's Paul going with this? He's partly answering, how could it be if the whole world has been in this fallen condition and there is no difference between Jew and Gentile all the way up until the sacrifice of Christ?
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How is it that anyone could have been forgiven before that if they don't know Christ, haven't come to trust in a sacrifice, right?
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There is no difference. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom
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God set forth as a propitiation by his blood through faith to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance, what
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Peter would say in his long suffering, God had passed over the sins which were previously committed to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
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Do you see what Paul is saying there? Noah and Noah's sons and Noah's son's wives and their offspring and the
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Israelites, the Israelites who worshipped year after year at the same altar that Noah worshipped that these sins were passed over in forbearance because there was only one blood that could propitiate
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God's wrath. It was the blood of Christ Jesus. God set him forth as a propitiation by his blood because in his forbearance, he had passed over sins that were previously committed.
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See, that's the righteousness. That's what's acceptable. What was what
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God was ultimately responding to was not the smell of burning animals. It's not that Noah's sacrifice was somehow accepted in the ultimate sense.
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It was accepted in the sense that it pointed forward to the sacrifice that would be accepted. There's only one sacrifice that's acceptable to God.
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That was the sacrifice of the righteous man, Christ. Noah is simply a placeholder for what is truly, only, exclusively accepted by God.
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God promises to spare the world from a judgment, a worldwide judgment as a result of this sacrifice.
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We're going to unpack next week how the sacrifice of Christ is what enables the world to be as it is.
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Why can there be seed time and harvest winter and spring? Why can fallen men enjoy regularity and good things in this life?
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It's all because of the sacrifice of Christ. It's all because of the cross. The cross purchases the world in that sense.
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It purchases grace to all men, to all flesh, even though there's only salvation for those who come to faith in Christ.
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Ephesians 5, 2. Christ loved us and gave himself for us in offering a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling aroma.
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Do you see? Ephesians 5, 2 is right there in the altar of Genesis 8. Christ is that pleasing aroma.
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Christ is the burnt offering. He's entirely consumed in God's wrath and yet propitiates
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God by his blood. Now God will be favorable to sinners, to all who come to faith in Jesus Christ.
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And it was the same experience for an ancient Israelite to go.
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Perhaps the children loved the little lamb that was raised without blemish. And because it was without spot or blemish, it was already set aside.
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It was set aside as that lamb that would cover the sins of the family and that perhaps the children took extra care of it, loved it, developed a bond to it.
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How sad it would have been to see that lamb, that gentle lamb, be gashed open and put upon an altar to be entirely consumed.
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And how they would have perhaps wept and the parents would have calmed them down. You don't understand. This had to happen.
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This is a good thing that that life, that sacrifice covers us, makes us accepted before God.
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It had to be this way. It could not be a defective lamb. It had to be this. And we come to the altar of Calvary, as it were, and we say, how could this be?
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How could they take the righteous one, the King, the one who is purity and grace and truth, whose light and love, whose burden grips with compassion when he sees ruined sinners, who goes to those who are cast out, who binds those who are broken, who returns beauty for ashes?
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How could it be that his back is flayed and he's sputtering blood and he's suffocating on the nails?
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How could it be? And we're seeing the carnage. And yet what's taking place in the divine reality is there's this fragrance from that sacrifice and it's flooding the throne room of God.
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And the Father's breathing it in and he's satisfied. He's satisfied. He's pleased.
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He embraces those that Christ dies for. He's pleased with them because of that sacrifice.
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God is ultimately responding to the sacrifice of Christ. Noah's altar shows us that ultimate salvation will come forth and last.
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Noah's altar shows us that salvation and sacrifice belong together. Salvation and sacrifice belong together.
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You know, we look to the one true sacrifice. We know we're accepted in the beloved. And yet we're called to be sacrificial as well.
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We're called to be living sacrifices. We're called to make our own lives an altar unto God. We're called to surrender completely and devote ourselves entirely to his will.
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Salvation and sacrifice belong together. They're wed together. We don't build altars out of stone anymore.
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We are the living stones of the temple. We are the lives that take place as an altar.
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And you'll only recognize this and you'll only be strengthened and empowered and desirous to do this if you recognize how all of this flows out of the sacrifice of Christ.
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I could hear it in my brother's prayer. It's only when you're meditating, when you're dwelling upon the sacrifice of Christ, that you're cut to the heart, that you don't do more for him.
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You become painfully aware of all that you do against him, of all that you do to undermine his gracious and gentle work in your life.
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It's all flowing out of his sacrifice. The fragrance of his life laid down makes us fragrant, makes us a pleasing aroma.
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We want to become more fragrant. We want to have a pleasing stature before our God. How real was that experience of salvation from judgment for Noah?
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When the ark was being lifted up and rocking back and forth and he knew everything has been destroyed and he's been saved.
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How real that was. How fixed into his life, into his experience that was.
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And yet that was just some painted picture for us of true salvation from everlasting judgment.
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We're in a greater ark, from a greater flood, unto a greater deliverance. Yet it seems less real to us.
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We're not as moved by it. And so it's harder to make sacrifice. We don't desire to build the altar first.
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We don't desire to be laid down upon it. But as the sisters you see, we're not actually contemplating upon what we've received from God.
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We're not actually thinking through what it means to be covered in the blood. Noah has seen
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God's complete judgment on a corrupted world and he built an altar, not just as a sin atonement, but out of gratitude.
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That burnt offering, every piece of it had to be consumed. And the picture was, I'm offering myself entirely to you.
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It's the olah, the Hebrew, the burnt offering, the whole burnt offering. It's what
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David could say, bless the Lord oh my soul, all that is within me, bless his holy name.
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That's karev, all within me, the inner parts. That's sacrificial language. David's like, I'm the lamb.
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Bless your name, Lord. All of me is consumed unto you. All of me is devoted unto you to bless your holy name.
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We sacrifice as an act of worship. We become a fragrant aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, well pleasing to God in how we live and how we treat each other and what we give to the work of God's work in the world and how we support and bear with each other.
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This is all part of how we become living sacrifices, aromas pleasing to the Lord. Hebrews 13, 15 and following, by him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, giving thanks to his name.
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But don't forget to do good and to share for with such sacrifices God is well pleased, you see. This is how
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Christians sacrifice now. Good works, love toward the people of God, love toward a fallen world, thankfulness, discipline, putting a guard over our mouths, guarding our hearts, walking in ways that are pleasing to him.
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Not in double -mindedness, not in slander, not in hypocrisy. This is how we become a living sacrifice.
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One more point as we come to a close. We sacrifice in order to be pleasing to the
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Lord, right? Second Corinthians 5 .9, we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to him, to be that aroma of sacrifice to him.
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You were once in darkness, but now you're in light. Ephesians 5 .8, walk as children of light, finding out what is acceptable, literally pleasing to the
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Lord. There's a process of learning how to become a sacrifice. I'll become a better sacrifice as I continue to walk with the
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Lord, as he continues to purge those spots and blemishes that make me less pleasing, less acceptable.
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The scent, the very scent, the very fragrance that we let off is given to us by Christ.
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We become an aroma unto our Heavenly Father because of the sacrifice of Christ, because of his life and death and resurrection.
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His fragrance, which is the means of our acceptance, becomes our fragrance, too, just as his righteousness becomes the righteousness we're clothed in.
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And so the more I look to him, the more I walk with him, the more I worship him, the more I talk to him, confess to him, the more
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I'm moved by him and stirred by him, contemplating him, the more fragrant I become.
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And you know what that's like. You perhaps have people in your life, people you've known, maybe people in this room that when you're near them, you couldn't explain it to someone outside of the faith.
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They have a fragrance of Christ. They just have an aroma of Christ. There's this spiritual glow without the glow, a
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Christlike scent without the scent. That's what it means to be in union with Christ. And that fragrance, brothers and sisters, to be clear, that fragrance will be a fragrance of life to those who are being saved.
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It'll be a fragrance of life. People will be drawn by that, compelled by that.
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Your brothers and sisters will be spurred on by that, encouraged by that, even as you're encouraged and spurred on by them.
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But that same fragrance, that pleasing aroma, that sacrificial covering, it's a stench of death to those who are perishing.
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And so a pretty good litmus test of whether you're being made fragrant in your relationship with Christ as whether there are people that you know that are just off put by your faith.
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Because it's nothing but the stench of death to them. Thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ and through us spreads the fragrance of his knowledge in every place for we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing to the one we are the aroma of death leading to death to the other the aroma of life leading to life.
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If we come to God by faith in Jesus and in his sacrifice, God is well pleased by that fragrance.
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If we pray in the name of Jesus, our prayers have that fragrance. Our prayers are well pleasing to him. If we live by faith and take steps of faith, we have lives that are flooded with this pleasing aroma from our
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Savior. If we give ourselves and our gifts, our means and our energy to God and to God's people for the sake of God's work in the world, our lives are flooded with the fragrance of Christ, but it will always have this effect will be the aroma of life to those who have been given life in the stench of death, that which is detestable to those who are being sealed for judgment.
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And so I put it to you, brothers and sisters, examine yourselves, whether you're fragrant in the faith, whether you have this aroma and the fruits of it and the signs of it.
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And I asked you, you unconverted, whether or not you see that savor, you're drawn to that aroma, or whether your indifference has made it something detestable, your indifference, your failure to close with Christ, your refusal to yield, to surrender your life to him, whether that shows that you know nothing of these things, you remain outside of the salvation of God.
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Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he consecrated for us through the veil that is his flesh, and having a high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, our bodies washed with pure water, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who is promised is faithful.
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Let's pray. Father, we do bless your name,
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Lord, it pains us that we cannot give more of ourselves to you, so often we hold back, we pull back,
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Lord, instead of being altars that willingly are bound to the altar, Lord, sacrifices that are willingly bound to the altar,
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Lord, we pull back, we struggle, we run. Forgive us, Lord, let us be so drawn by the love of our
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Savior, the bloody grace that has washed us clean, let that just disarm us,
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Lord, and draw us close to you, as tender children, Lord, let us come to you. With nothing in our hands,
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Lord, let us come as we are, lay down our lives, knowing, Lord, that he is the altar, even as he is the priest, that he is the one who has cleansed and satisfied and pleased you, so that we can be accepted and delighted in and loved.
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Lord, we want to be called according to your purposes, we want to be better servants, Lord, help us, help each of us to know those specific sacrifices you've called us to.
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Forgive us where we have not made them, where we have not taken steps of faith, forgive us, Lord, where, whether as individuals, as families, or as a church, we have not made your worship our priority.
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Let us remember, it's never our worship, Lord, that's acceptable in your sight, unless it's our worship cleansed through that blood, which makes everything acceptable to you, the blood of our