1. "Friends, we were made to meet our Maker, and yet we have lived as if we never will. Wake up. Let today be the day you step out of a past of forgetfulness of God, of ignorance of your own spiritual life, and be aware of who you really are, because it affects you more than anyone else."

2. "The flood washed a lot of sinners off the earth, but the flood did not wash sin out of the human heart. So today we struggle with the same kind of sins that caused God to flood the world in judgment."

3. "It's not God's judgment of us that's shocking. It's his lack of judgment of us. It's like really, he has not yet stricken us down. Maybe that means he didn't really see what I did that day. But God has seen. But he's patient. He's biding his time."

4. "God is perfectly innocent. And you and I have not been. And God cares about everything that's been done to you and everything that you have done. And what that means is we are all put in the position of pain and brokenness in this life where we realize that others have caused that in us or we have caused that in others."

5. "Friend, I don't know if you're 14 or 40, but look around and see if you can see it. Notice it, because you're getting in touch with the most important things in this world and in your life. God is kind. He is merciful. We and everyone else are experiencing that, even right now."

6. "All that ark did was deliver these eight people to Ararat. And we're trying to get to Eden. We're trying to get back to God. So Ararat's pretty good. Better than dying in the Flood. But it's not where we ultimately want to go. It's at best a stopping point on the journey."

7. "The structure of the world doesn't just happen. There's a God who made it this way to reflect some truth about Himself and to bless us and enable us to live intelligently, fruitfully in an ordered world."

8. "God's mercy is dripping all over your life. Friend, I don't know if you're 14 or 40, but look around and see if you can see it. Notice it, because you're getting in touch with the most important things in this world and in your life."

9. "We preach the same thing we preached when we were started 150 years ago, that we are sinners and that our only help is in a Savior. And there is only one Savior, that is Jesus Christ."

10. "Not just surviving a flood, but getting us back to Eden and better. Those of you who are really Christians, new good intentions are in your heart really there. I know not always, and I know not only, but really and increasingly they are marking your life in this world."

Observation Questions

1. In Genesis 8:20, what was the first thing Noah did after leaving the ark? What specific details does the text provide about his actions?

2. Looking at Genesis 8:21, how does God respond to Noah's sacrifice? What specific promise does He make?

3. In Genesis 8:21, what reason does God give for His promise? How might this seem surprising?

4. From Genesis 8:22, what specific aspects of natural order does God promise to maintain? How comprehensive is this promise?

5. Looking back at Genesis 8:15-19, who exactly came out of the ark with Noah? Why might this detail be significant to the story?

6. In Genesis 8:20, what specific types of animals did Noah sacrifice? How does this connect to earlier instructions about clean and unclean animals?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why would Noah's first action be to build an altar and offer sacrifices, rather than focus on immediate survival needs? What does this reveal about his understanding of God and priorities?

2. How does God's promise in Genesis 8:21-22 differ from the way He dealt with human sin in Genesis 6-7? What does this tell us about God's character?

3. What is the significance of God making these promises in response to Noah's sacrifice rather than immediately after the flood waters receded?

4. How does God's acknowledgment of humanity's evil intentions (Genesis 8:21) relate to His promise never to flood the earth again? What does this reveal about the basis of His mercy?

5. What does Noah's sacrifice teach us about the relationship between worship and God's blessing? How might this point forward to Christ's sacrifice?

Application Questions

1. When did you last put aside urgent practical needs to prioritize worship, like Noah did? What happened as a result?

2. What evidence of God's mercy can you identify in your life from just the past week? How should this shape your response to Him?

3. Noah's sacrifice was costly - he gave from limited resources. When have you had to choose between keeping something for yourself or giving it to God? How did you decide?

4. The sermon mentioned that God's mercy is "dripping all over your life." Where do you most need to recognize and appreciate His mercy right now?

5. Like Noah, we all face an uncertain future. How does God's promise of faithfulness in Genesis 8:22 speak to specific uncertainties you're dealing with today?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Hebrews 11:7 - Explores how Noah's faith led to his righteous actions and condemnation of the world. Shows how genuine faith produces obedient action.

2. 2 Corinthians 2:14-16 - Reveals how believers become the "aroma of Christ," connecting to how Noah's sacrifice was a "pleasing aroma" to God.

3. Romans 12:1-2 - Teaches about offering ourselves as living sacrifices, providing a New Testament perspective on the kind of worship Noah demonstrated.

4. Psalm 51:16-17 - Demonstrates that God desires heart transformation more than physical sacrifices, helping us understand the deeper meaning of Noah's actions.

Sermon Main Topics

The Universal Question of Dealing with God’s Judgment

Follow Noah’s Priorities (Genesis 8:20)

Learn God’s Promises (Genesis 8:21-22)

Confess Noah’s Problem as Your Own (Genesis 8:21)

Trust God for His Provision

The Transformative Power of Christ’s Sacrifice

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Detailed Sermon Outline

- Washington’s emphasis on universal opportunity regardless of religion or philosophy.

- Universal truths about humanity’s relationship with God before covenantal promises.

- A question relevant to all humanity, regardless of belief (atheists, Jews, Christians, etc.).

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- Prioritizing worship despite the logistical demands of rebuilding.

- Acknowledgment of moral responsibility and gratitude for deliverance.

- Hebrews 10:4: “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.”

- Noah’s sacrifice required faith in God’s provision amid scarcity.

- Structuring Sundays around communal prayer, teaching, and sacraments.

- Morning devotionals as a “first fruits” offering of time.

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- Divine response to obedience, not mere cessation of the flood.

- Shift from judgment to grace, despite humanity’s inherent sinfulness.

- Genesis 8:22: A foundation for scientific inquiry and agricultural trust.

- 2 Peter 3:9: “The Lord is patient… not wishing that any should perish.”

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- Sin as an inherited condition, not merely a cultural failing.

- Parallels to Genesis 6:5’s “every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

- Necessity of recognizing personal guilt before God.

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- Romans 5:8: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

- Mark 10:45: Christ’s life as “a ransom for many.”

- Transformation from condemnation to righteousness.

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- Eternal atonement surpassing temporary sacrifices.

- Restoration surpassing Eden’s original glory.

- Participation in Christ’s death and resurrection (Romans 6:4).

• A plea for mercy, faith, and alignment with God’s priorities.

Mohammedan Jews or Christians of any sect, or they may be atheists, so long as they are good workmen. That's what George Washington, retired general, not yet president, wrote 240 years ago this very day, March 24th in 1784, to Tench Tilghman. Tilghman was Washington's longest serving aide-de-camp during the Revolution. He had been with Washington from 1776 until the surrender at Yorktown and had since then opened a store with wealthy financier Robert Morris in Baltimore. They were discussing who should be welcomed into the newly independent colonies, the states, immigration policy.

And so Washington argued for a kind of meritocracy, a universal ability of all to get ahead by their own work. And that's what Washington himself kind of exemplified. He had been brought up down in Fredericksburg, Virginia, not in a particularly wealthy family, and then he had increased his own success in life, risen through industry and a good marriage. Washington was one of that number of our nation's founding fathers who had enslaved persons and acted to keep them enslaved, and yet opposed the institution in the abstract, and even acted illegally. In order to improve the education and the lives and the skill of the enslaved people who made his plantation Mount Vernon what it was.

When Washington expressed on this date, 240 years ago, this opinion to Tench in this letter, he expressed a classically American opinion. Everyone without distinction that can, should be afforded the opportunities that they can be, they can reach for without arbitrary barriers of religion, philosophy, national or ethnic origin. Mohammedan, Jews, or Christians of any sect, or they may be atheists, so long as they are good workmen. One of the interesting features of the part of Genesis that we're in right now is we're before Abraham. We're before the special acts of salvation for a particular subset of humanity.

We are back in the ancient world in which universal principles of religion reflected in all of humanity from creation and conscience on are found. And that's what we find in our text today. As distant and strange as this great pre-flood world may have been, in these accounts of the ages between the first man, Adam, in chapters 1 to 3 and the father of our faith, Abraham, in chapter 11, there were world-shaping events that impact us and instruct us still. Our short passage this morning, just three verses, is an example of such universal truth included in these early chapters of Genesis. Now remember, the Lord instructed Moses to write this handbook of faith for the children of Israel.

He wanted them to understand who they were and who the Lord is before they undertook the conquest of the Promised Land in Canaan. And we read about that in the book of Joshua. So the task their parents had balked at out of fear, God wanted their children to be equipped for with faith. And so he inspired Moses to set down the history of the nation. And these earliest chapters that we've been studying really major in the history that they shared with all the nations around them.

There are certain things that are true about everyone. We've seen that in the evil of the pre-flood world. And we see that in our passage today as together Noah and these seven others step out onto what must seem like a new planet, a new beginning, a new history together for everyone as they stepped out of the ark. Our passage is found in Genesis chapter 8.

Beginning at verse 20, if you're using the Bibles provided, you'll find that beginning on page 6, page 6. Genesis chapter 8, beginning verse 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. 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. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. Now, the question that we're gonna pursue through these simple verses is this, what can you do about the judgment of God you face because of your sins?

What can you do about the judgment of God that you face because of your sins? That's the question that interests every man, woman, and child on this planet.

As Washington said, Mahometan, Jew, Christian, of any sect or they may be atheists. So follow Noah's priorities, learn God's promises, confess Noah's problem as your own, and trust God for provision. That's just walking through the text. I'll repeat those for you, those four instructions. Follow Noah's priorities.

Learn God's promises, confess Noah's problem as your own, and then finally trust God for provision.

So what can you do about God's judgment that your sins deserve? One, follow Noah's priority. If you look down in chapter 8 up at verse 16, The Lord commanded Noah, Go out from the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons' wives with you. And then you look down at verse 18, they do just that. And then what is the very first thing they do in verse 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. Now whether the Lord told Noah to do this specifically, which is not recorded, or Noah simply did this because of his conscience, Noah began this new world and life in it with this religious practice that he seemed to know from the ancient world before the flood. What was the religion practiced in the ancient world before the flood? Well, people seem to have a knowledge of the true God, of Yahweh, the creator of heaven and earth. If you turn back through the first few pages of Genesis, you'll see that at the Garden of Eden, and right after the expulsion, the generation of their children when they're reared, what do they do before anything else is recorded?

Well, in Genesis chapter 4, verses 3 and 4, Cain and Abel brought offerings to the Lord. It was in the next generation, during the time of Seth's children, that we read in the last verse of chapter 4, at that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord. Genesis 5 delineates the line that came from Seth, and in that line, Enoch stood out for walking with God.

And Noah was prophesied in 5:29, this one shall bring us relief or rest. That's what his name Noah means, relief or rest. And we read up in chapter 6, verse 8, Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. And then the last statement in chapter 6 about Noah is that he did all that God commanded him. So how surprising is it that as he and his family have just been rescued and they step out into a new world, Into an uncertain future, Noah builds not another ark, but he builds an altar to the Lord.

And not only does he use this, but he uses this altar to offer sacrifices to the Lord. Notice two things in particular about this. First, the nature of those sacrifices, and then their timing. The nature of those sacrifices, and then their timing. First, the nature of the sacrifices.

People have wondered, are these thanksgiving offerings, or is it something more? Like sin offerings that we're gonna see later under Moses. And it seems that though it would be natural to offer a Thanksgiving offering, I mean they've just spent a year on the ark being delivered through this most amazing of trials. So they're now stepping out into the world. They're not dead.

So quite natural to offer Thanksgiving. It seems by the word that's used, this is actually a sin offering. That's why the ESV here is translated burnt offering. The word is used again and again in Leviticus and Exodus for the offerings of atonement that will be made under the law of Moses. As the New Testament writer to the Hebrews would later summarize Moses' instructions and laws, such sacrifices as Noah offered here were intended to teach that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

So Noah, as his first act after he disembarks, leads in what one friend commented must have been the largest animal sacrifice in the history of the world per capita. I mean, given that there are only eight people in the world, and he is taking some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird, this was a gigantic sacrifice. I mean, this sacrifice would have taken hours, perhaps days, to offer. Surely after such devastation, the animal population had just sustained, common sense would say, well, let's let the food source multiply for a little while, and then we will render to the Lord some thank offering. But Noah knew that he hadn't gotten all those animals on that boat.

He hadn't sustained all those animals through that year on that boat. He hadn't gotten all those animals off that boat. He hadn't corralled them to be available for these sacrifices somehow. So Noah knew that he was not going to be stingy in his public acknowledgement of God. He would make a public statement of trust in the Lord and he would make a priority of such sacrifices.

Noah would begin his new life publicly with a moral acknowledgement of the death that he and his family had been spared, but that they knew that they too had deserved. The other aspect of Noah's action we should notice here is its timing. It's timing. First thing he does. It's a lot of stuff to do.

Everything in the world has been destroyed. I mean, imagine everything Noah knew needed to get done. His to-do list would have been unimaginable. And yet here he steps off the ark and the very first thing he does is to build an altar and make a sacrifice. My friend, if you want to deal with God's judgment that your sins deserve, you will need to make a priority of what God calls us to do in worshiping and serving him.

So find out what, find out who pleases the Lord, and take your part in that. Noah's action is the first in a long line of building altars and offering sacrifices in the religion that we see in the Bible, but also the religions that we see outside the Bible. There seems to be a human instinct somehow that we have lived in such a way that the ones who made us deserve something from us back in payment, particularly for the ways we have done wrong. The fact that Noah's first action is to worship God speaks simply and clearly and powerfully to the priority that the Lord and his worship was going to have in Noah's life and his family life as he could lead them. In the world then, and should in ours as well.

It speaks to the priority of worshiping the Lord in the world that He's made. What does that mean practically in your life? Let's just think of the week. Here we are in a new week. Well, by setting aside the first day as the Lord's Day, which is what it's called in Revelation 110, Sunday is called the Lord's Day, we set it aside for public worship.

So what that means is that we Christians, wherever we are, whatever we're doing in the world, we stop We find a group of local Christians where we are and we gather with them at the beginning of the week to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This new world that he has brought us into. It's just how we begin every week that we've been given. And that's how we give that first fruits of our time to the Lord, which then stand as a testimony that we're giving all of our time to the Lord. So we've been doing that even this morning.

We've been celebrating that resurrection, just as we sang, see the stone is rolled away, behold the empty tomb. Hallelujah, God be praised, he's risen from the grave. And as a church, we try to help each other not to build a convenient church where we can make Sunday as much as possible, like a second Saturday, so we won't be in your way. We have no interest in that whatsoever. We don't think we would really help you if we did that.

Plus there are a lot of other people out there trying to do that. There are plenty of places you can go if that's what you want. But we don't think that really helps each other most because we think that's our natural tendency. So what we need is each other to help us make a priority of the Lord in our lives. And that gets instantiated or realized by making a priority of the Lord in our week and our time, the way we spend it.

So we deliberately make Sundays inconvenient. You know, we ask for the day. You know, we meet here in the morning and then we meet again in the evening. We book in the day with praise of God. We have our main teaching here in the morning and we pray together at our five o'clock service.

Now, should you think this is just an unbelievable ask, I'll just let you know that like back when Maxine first joined the church, the evening service was at 7:45.

So we moved up to five o'clock for convenience, so that particularly those with younger children and people who want to have their supper after church are able to come for the prayer time, end the Lord's Day together, and then go back into the week the Lord has given us. That's what we're trying to do when we gather. We're trying to give our whole week to the Lord in this day as a symbol of that. And as we give our first fruits of each new week to the Lord, so we do with prioritizing him with our service, with our gifts, with our energies, even with our daily times. I know many of us try to begin our days by reading the word and meditating on it.

And praying very practically. Now that's not why we're saved, that's not why we're forgiven of our sins. If you miss your quiet time today, that may be fine. But a normal practice for a Christian, somebody who knows that they live not by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, is to give serious time and attention to meditating on God's word, to reflecting on our own lives, what it means in our lives, and we begin our days with just that practice. When we consider that this is what God has called us to do, we want to do the same with our giving.

When Paul was thanking the Christians in Philippi for the gifts that they had sent him to support his work, he called them a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God. So, friend, whatever stage in life you should think about this. Teens, what about you trying to give the first years of your young adulthood to the Lord, trying to make sure that you give these years to him as signs of giving your whole life to him that's to come. Maybe have a conversation later today with what showing God as a priority in your life. Maybe talk about this over lunch, how someone could see that.

When we consider what colleges we'll go to, or where we may relocate for a job, foremost in our thought should be Is there a good church? I remember considering a job once and one of the main things I thought about was, I don't know if there's a good church in that city for me to lead my wife and children to be a part of. And I can't follow Jesus alone. I mean, in extreme circumstances, yes, but normally the Christian life is gonna be marked by being a part of a good church that helps you follow Jesus every day. So make a priority of finding a good church first.

And then settle in with a job, and then finally where you'll live specifically. Much more we can say about that. Good things for you to talk about afterwards. But we wanna follow the example of Noah here, and if you want to deal with the judgment that you deserve for your sins, begin by following the example of Noah here in prioritizing the worship of God and the service of the Lord. So what can you do about God's judgment that your sins deserve?

We also, number two, want to learn God's promises. We want to, number two, learn God's promises. What are his promises? Noah made these tremendous burnt offerings and look what happened. Verse 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 while the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. When we read here in verse 21 that the Lord smelled the aroma of those burnt offerings, we're seeing anthropomorphic. That is anthropo man morphic form of speaking about God in the form of a man. It's common in Scripture.

Uh, things we, we're told that, his beloved are engraved on his hands. Well, it's not that God has hands. That's a way for us to understand he will not forget us. He's committed to us. So here, when it says this aroma was a pleasing aroma, it's not that God has an actual nose that he's smelling, but it communicates to us this pleasing experience that God had in seeing Noah do what he did here with this sacrifice.

This means that God approved of and liked these sacrifices. The phrase pleasing aroma occurs a couple of times in Exodus, many times in Leviticus and Numbers. The idea is that God's thoughts about mankind were prompted by his appreciation of the sacrifice. So Moses' account here moves from one of devastation in the flood to deliverance. Two things for us to notice here about God's promises.

First, when God made these promises, and second, what the promises are. First, when God made them, and second, what the promises are. First, when God made them. That's the first thing to notice. He didn't make them just when the flood waters recede.

It's not like God's going, okay, done with the flood, Noah gets off the boat, let's meet him with these promises. That is not what the text says. No, if you look down at the text again, God made these promises when Noah offered these sacrifices. Friends, that's the key, and that is a clue for us in trying to understand the Bible. It's these sacrifices, sacrifices like this we find in the Bible.

That please him. If you look back up at chapter 6, verse 7, God has this devastating resolve to blot out man and animals.

But here he promises, never again to curse the ground because of man, never again to strike down every living creature as I have done. So here's the big question: what happens between chapter 6, verse 7, and chapter 8, verse 21?

Well, the flood happens. That's true. But he doesn't make these promises just as soon as the flood ends and Noah comes out. It's specifically when Noah makes these sacrifices. That's what we see here.

The Bible would lead us not to conclude merely that the flood itself had caused this difference. No, verse 21. When the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma of Noah's sacrifices, God made these promises. In that sense, Noah's sacrifices here made possible God's blessings of life lived out on this cursed ground after the fall. I think reading this would have encouraged all the readers in Exodus and Leviticus that Yahweh accepted the sacrifices that are taught in the law of Moses.

And Moses here doesn't merely tell us of God's acceptance, he shows us what it's like by narrating what God promised so that we could actually see what God has done. God was pleased with these sacrifices, in part, because Noah was one who, we read back up in the end of chapter 6, 22, did all that God commanded him. Moses would later warn the children of Israel that if they, like their parents of the Exodus generation, would walk in disobedience contrary to the Lord, as he called it in Leviticus 26, then he says specifically, the Lord will not smell your pleasing aromas.

Three times in Ezekiel the Lord condemned the Israelites' offering of aromas to please their idols. Friends, these sacrifices are not like spells that Noah casts on God. They were signs of Noah's own obedience to the Lord and complete and wholehearted devotion to Him. Moses is here recounting a demonstration of something that had always been true but reflecting on the way God used Noah's simple decision to offer these burnt offerings suggests to us the evil destroying importance one sacrifice in the future would have.

So that's something about when the Lord made these promises, when Noah offered these sacrifices. But the other thing to know is just what the promises are specifically. We see three statements here. In the beginning of verse 21, the end of 21, and in verse 22, let's just look at each one of them. Here in verse 21, God gives perhaps the most intriguing of the promises, I will never again curse the ground.

And you're thinking, well, maybe the Lord doesn't know my yard. But He's not talking about it in that sense. No, He means something that's pervasive in our life on this planet. If you go back to Genesis 3, a word that's translated curse occurs a few times there about the serpent and the ground and in Cain in chapter 4 after he kills Abel. But that's a different word than the one used here.

And that's a more personal word that I think is more like what we think of in English with our word curse. The word here that is used for curse is almost a more physical word. It's the word you see earlier in chapter 8 in verses 8 and 11 about the waters subsiding or being brought low. It's something being brought low. So here the Lord is promising not to bring the ground low, perhaps indicating so as not to flood the world again.

It's like his promise we'll see down in 9:15, not to let the waters again become a flood to destroy all flesh. So Noah's comprehensive sacrifice here, some of every clean animal, some of every clean bird, seemed to be a kind of enactment of the Lord's having just killed every living creature in the flood, and then to elicit His promise not to do that again, His justice having been not satisfied, but His justice having been demonstrated, this sacrifice is a kind of acknowledgment of moral responsibility by Noah on the part of the human race. So Noah is the actor in acting the death of these animals, visually depicting the responsibility that we people had for the death that had just marked the planet.

Of course, the curse of the fall was not here lifted. Noah, like Adam and his sons before him, would also die. But something was being done. Some rest was being given. Some clarity was being given as to how those made in God's image could live for His glory In a fallen world, as John Selhamer put it, Noah's sacrifice has opened a way to break the power of the curse on the ground.

So salvation and sacrifice here early on in the Bible are being closely connected. Salvation and sacrifice. The next promise comes at the end of verse 21. Look there, the end of verse 21. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.

That's mainly just restating and further specifying what God had just promised. Here he explicitly promised not to do again what he had just done. Perhaps Noah's own life was still threatened from God's conclusion up in chapter 6 verse 7 that the life of all men should be blotted out. So Noah offers this sacrifice, maybe not sure what would happen, but the danger was averted at least for the time. And that brings us to the third promise of the Lord there in verse 22.

While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease. So God here promises that another feature of not again destroying the earth by the flood, another way to say it. Now remember Jesus taught us in Mark 13 that heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away. So God's promise here is a big one, a long one, But the earth is temporary. What he's promising here is that the project he began in the design of the creation is going to be continued beyond the flood, despite the fact that men's hearts are being only evil continually, like he said up in 6:5.

Even so, while the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. That doesn't mean there wouldn't be temporary local famines. There's no promise against that here, but they'll be temporary and they'll be local. Now we see here that the original order in the days of creation is being reasserted. Earth in all its reliable regularity is a creation of God and is guaranteed by Him.

So much so that the appearing of the cherry blossoms has a certain effect on us. We see in this, as we expected, this regularity of the seasons, of the rhythms of day and even night as we got up this morning. They're gifts of God to us. The structure of the world doesn't just happen. There's a God who made it this way to reflect some truth about Himself and to bless us and enable us to live intelligently, fruitfully in an ordered world.

Great little book to read on this: Benedictine Monk Stanley Jaki, J-A-K-I, the Savior of Science. Wrote it like 40 years ago. He argues that the regularity of the world and the regularity of science we can only have because of what is revealed about God in the Bible. Apart from God being like this, we wouldn't have science. So apart from, so against the idea of Bible believing Christianity being at war with science, Jaki, J-A-K-I, book called the Savior of Science argues that we couldn't even have science if we didn't have an intelligent creator, creatures made in its image, with the regularity of creation such that we could know and understand the creation and be able to grow in our use of it.

Anyway, here God promises not the salvation that he will bring to his own, but he promises the necessary conditions of life for the whole human race because he's rebuilding the whole world and that world will be the place where the special plans will be carried out. So this isn't about salvation. This is about life. So what can you do about God's judgments that your sins deserve? Learn God's promises.

Very practically, study His Word. Get to know what He has revealed as the truth about Himself and about you. What can you do about God's judgment that your sins deserve? Number three, confess that Noah's problem is your own. Noah's problem is your own.

The problem with God's promises here, the tension is laid out in the middle sentence of verse Verse 21, and I don't think the ESV helps us very well by how they've translated that first word for in that sentence in the middle of verse 21. A number of you have asked me about it this week. For the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Now that just does not make sense. God is saying a good thing he's going to do, and he's giving the reason as if because man's heart is evil from his youth.

What sense does that make? Here's what I think. We're reading here. Here's what this is teaching. That for should be read as though or even though.

Some of your translations will have that as a footnote. Better translation. That is despite. That is because in the sense that, look, we know that man's heart is always evil from youth up. So I will not base the regularity of life in this world on the goodness of man's heart.

Maybe in some sense from Adam to Noah, things were based on that, but that went downhill fast. And so that bank account of moral human virtue as the basis of the regularity of creation has been bankrupted, that is gone and shut. So God is now, as it were, independently of our own virtue, giving us these promises that he will keep the world going pretty much as is, not dependent on even if we are as bad as Noah's generation was. He will still continue the world on. So it's this new world and this new world man's sin, as it were, is factored in.

A divine wrath deserved may be assuaged by sacrifice, helped along by the prayers of the righteous, but the regular rhythms of the world will not depart from us. It will not depend on human virtue. Our depravity, which had caused the land to be cursed, would no longer threaten our entire physical existence. I'm just curious, my Christian friend, do you have examples inside your own life of God being obviously patient? Does this sound like the God you know?

A God who has all powerful, has all power and yet is trustworthy? You can rely on Him. That's one of the challenging things for people reading the Bible these days. They're presented with a God who has all power and yet is presented as completely good, unerringly right, always doing that which should be done. Well, friends, that's how the Bible presents God to us.

If you're not a Christian, you must come to see your own sin. You must come to see God's goodness in calling you to account to him. Because it's what you want to do before you have to, before your helplessness brings you before him to face the charges of how you have misspent your life. Now, when I say that, you may quickly defend yourself saying, I'm not, I misspent my life.

Well, not entirely. Yeah, it's that part that I want to talk to you about. See, it's that not entirely. God is completely good. There is no shadow of turning in him.

There's no moral equivocation. Friends, God is perfectly innocent. And you and I have not been. And God cares about everything that's been done to you and everything that you have done. And what that means is we are all put in the position of pain and brokenness in this life where we realize that others have caused that in us or we have caused that in others and we are not perfect morally.

And God is and God cares. So God will judge us. You want to figure this out. You want to think about this. This is something that you need to have in the front of center.

This is more important than you're drawing up a will. This is more important than you're having your next physical. You need a spiritual examination. You need to know what's gonna be going on with you eternally. Some people have misread the story of Noah as merely the story of a fresh start.

It certainly is a fresh start, but it is so much more than that. We don't just need a fresh start, brothers and sisters, we need a new heart. We need to know that God can change us. God's diagnosis of the human condition after the flood here in 8:21 is just as dire as it was before the flood. So the flood washed a lot of sinners off the earth, but the flood did not wash sin out of the human heart.

So today we struggle with the same kind of sins that caused God to flood the world in judgment. Our world today is longingly crying out for justice, just as much as the world was in Noah's day. That's why we read in 2 Peter 3:7, By the same word the heavens and the earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. See the central role that human actions have in all of creation being judged?

God's not coming at us for what the crocodiles have done wrong. God's coming at us for us, for what we have done that's wrong. Human actions will be at the center. We were made to display God's own image, and we have failed terribly. What are the very best of us?

Taken together, we must admit that we are fickle, struggling, ignorant, weak, mortal liars. We're not only that, but we are all that. We love the wrong things. We have bodies that even now we work and work and work to be healthy, and yet they're all decaying, and they will all decay, and they will all die. So these clues are really left to us of the moral and spiritual dissolution that there is still in the world that's not yet finally judged.

We are by nature born spiritually lost, asleep. Paul says in Ephesians, dead in our sins and transgressions. Friends, we were made to meet our Maker, and yet we have lived as if we never will. Friend, wake up. Let today be the day you step out of a past of forgetfulness of God, of ignorance of your own spiritual life, and be aware of who you really are, because it affects you more than anyone else.

You have more at stake stake in this than anyone else in the world. Wake up to see who God's word says you really are before he summons you to give your final accounting to him of your life. Noah's sacrifices, as pleasing as they were, were not enough to hide human sin from God. And your sacrifices won't be either. You can't hide from God the truth about yourself.

And the more you study the scriptures, the more you see that it's not God's judgment of us that's shocking, it's His lack of judgment of us. It's like, really, He has not yet stricken us down? Maybe that means He didn't really see what I did that day.

But God has seen, but He's patient. He's biding His time. Peter says, He's giving you and me time to repent. That's what this time is. We must be clear on this with ourselves and with others.

We can't candy coat this stuff. Friends in the fellowship that I was part of as an undergrad, we had big group meetings every Friday night where we'd have a biblical exposition. And when I got an authority there, I made sure the first talk every semester was on depravity. That is, I wanted the first talk to a bunch of arrogant Duke students to be, you deserve hell.

You are not good, you're not like the promised of the world, you're not like the great ones. You have lived so badly that you must understand that because God is good, he will judge you. Because friends, if we don't understand that, there's no place for Jesus. The idea that Jesus is just a good example is what's emptying out church after church that doesn't really believe the Bible. We preach the same thing we preached when we were started 150 years ago.

That we are sinners and that our only help is in a Savior. And there is only one Savior, that is Jesus Christ. He is the one that God has provided for us. That is the Savior that you need if you would understand and deal with the sins that you've committed and the wrath of God that your sins have deserved. Which brings us to our last point.

What can you do about God's judgment that your sins deserve. Number four, trust God for his provision. Trust God for his provision. All of this forces us to ask, what's then the basis of these promises of God? And we can look around in our own hearts and we're not gonna find a loveliness that made God have to promise these good things to us.

No, these promises are found based not in us, but based in God, it's his mercy. It's his grace that's being displayed as more fundamental than our sinfulness. The account of what we deserve positively has been spent. What we deserve negatively has been interrupted. As we've already noted, the flood removes sinners from the earth, but not sin from the human heart.

Thus, the only ongoing basis for the continuing experience of existence of the human life in this world is God's grace. In verse 21 he's saying, Look, I'm not going to base this on what you guys deserve. That clearly does not work. I'm going to base this on what I am like, and I am long-suffering and merciful, and I'm going to display that throughout the history of the world. That's what's going on.

That's what's going along in the history of nations. That's what's going along in your own personal life. God is showing his steadfast loving kindness and mercy. Noah wasn't saved by making this sacrifice, though it was a pleasing aroma. He would only be saved by his faith in God.

Remember we looked at this last week when Hebrews chapter 11. Mentions Noah specifically. It says Hebrews 11 verse 7, By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. Human nature has not changed since Moses wrote down these words in Genesis.

So any future for us must be rooted in God's mercy. This same merciful kindness of God that we and everyone else in our world are still experiencing down to this very day and this very hour. Friends, I don't know if you came in this morning in a good mood, in a bad mood, maybe had a hard time finding parking. I understand what it's like. But do you know that regardless of your specific experiences with your health or how your stomach feels right now, Now, your life is full of examples of God's mercy, and that's true whether you're a Christian or a non-Christian.

God's mercy is dripping all over your life. Friend, I don't know if you're 14 or 40, but look around and see if you can see it. Notice it, because you're getting in touch with the most important things in this world and in your life. God is kind. He is merciful.

We and everyone else are experiencing that even right now. But the full flowering of God's mercy and grace are not found in Genesis chapters 7 and 8, not even in Noah's great ark. Because all that ark did was deliver these eight people to Ararat. And we're trying to get to Eden. We're trying to get back to God.

So Ararat's pretty good. Better than dying in the flood. But it's not where we ultimately want to go. It's at best a stopping point on the journey. But we're trying to get back to God, to presence, the presence of God in fellowship with God himself.

So the sacrifices offered by Noah here are the first foreshadowings of the propitiated, the atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross in the place of sinners. We know that the ancient world long before Moses accepted the idea that sacrifice for sin pleased God. You think of Job chapter 1, when Job's children are off and they have a party. What does Job do? Job 1:5 tells us that when the days of feasts had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them.

He would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. Even the idea of individual responsibility offerings according to the how many there were. For Job said, It may be that my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually. Friends, Noah's sacrifices here pointed much further forward than Job or Moses, though.

They pointed on to the Lord Jesus Christ. This is like the morning star of the dawn of the great hope of Christ's Atonement right here. Mark, 10:45 records Jesus saying, Even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. So Christ at the Last Supper, which we hope to reenact Friday night at seven o'clock at our Good Friday Communion Service right here, or at six o'clock at our Good Friday Communion Service, Christ there said, this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Friend, this is the sacrifice that would really please his heavenly father far more than any ancient sacrifices of Noah at the altar or later in the temple at Jerusalem.

What is it? Hebrews 10 says it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. That's why Christ has offered himself in our behalf. Hebrews 10:14 for by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sacrificed. So as pleasing as the aroma of Noah's sacrifices were, beginning the human understanding of the relation of death to sin sin and sacrifice to forgiveness.

They didn't reverse the curse of the fall. They didn't transfer us from the dominion of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved son. But now in Christ, all who believe and trust in him are so transformed. Our evil intentions have been paid for and forgiven, and our hearts have been born again now to intend that which is really good. And that's true of every one of you here today who really is a Christian, not a fake-o Christian who just calls yourself a Christian, but you're not really a Christian.

The Lord knows the truth. Now, those of you who are really Christians, new good intentions are in your heart, really there. I know not always, and I know not only, but really and increasingly, they are marking your life in this world. And ultimately, they will be the only intentions you have in your heart. Until we read in Isaiah 65, Behold, I create a new heaven and a new earth.

And the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind, but be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create, until we ourselves become a pleasing aroma to the Lord. Isn't that amazing? We ourselves become that pleasing aroma. That's what we find in the Bible's final use of the phrase pleasing aroma. It's about the Lord's restoration of His wayward people in Ezekiel chapter 20 verse 41.

As a pleasing aroma, I will accept you when I bring you out from the peoples and gather you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will manifest My holiness among you in the sight of the nations, and you shall know that I am the Lord. The Lord. It sounds like we're back with him again as his people. That's always been God's plan for his people, not just surviving a flood, but getting us back to Eden and better. So we read in 2 Corinthians, For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

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. For we are the aroma of Christ.

This is the transformation that all of us here who are in Christ have begun and that Christ will complete. And it's depicted in the very lives of those we're about to see baptized here. Praise God for the provision of His abundant mercy. Let's pray together.

Lord God, thank youk for your abundant mercy. Help us to prioritize youe worship in our lives. Show us what that means. Help us to learn youn promises and believe them. Help us not to be slow to confess our sins.

And, Lord, give us the gift of faith to trust yout for your good provisions for us in Christ. We ask in His name, Amen.