Worship, Wrath, and the Weather: God's Post-Flood Promise Text: Genesis 8:20-22
Introduction: The First Act on a Washed Earth
When you have just witnessed the total deconstruction of the world, when you have been cooped up in a floating menagerie for over a year, when you step out onto a muddy, silent, and utterly desolate planet, what is the first thing you do? Do you start frantically planting a garden? Do you scout for a good place to build a house? Do you take a long walk just to feel solid ground under your feet? Our pragmatic, modern sensibilities would point us toward survival, toward rebuilding, toward getting things done. But Noah, the second father of mankind, does something that our frantic and godless age would find entirely impractical. He builds an altar. He worships.
This is a profound lesson for us. The first act in the new world was not agriculture, or architecture, or exploration. The first act was adoration. The first act was to acknowledge the God who judges and the God who saves. Before Noah could receive the covenant of common grace that would govern the new world, he had to respond to the special grace that had saved him from the old one. This act of worship sets the stage for everything that follows. It is the hinge upon which the history of the post-flood world turns. God's response to this worship establishes the very rhythm of our lives, the stability of our world, and the basis for all human culture until the final conflagration.
We live in a world that is, once again, drowning. Not in water, but in its own rebellion, its own filth, its own proud autonomy. And like Noah, we who are in the ark of Christ are called to be a people whose first instinct, whose foundational act, is worship. We are to build our altars in the mud of a ruined culture and send up a testimony to the God who is both terrible in His wrath and glorious in His mercy. What we find in these three verses is the pattern of true worship, the paradox of divine grace, and the promise of planetary stability.
The Text
Then Noah built an altar to Yahweh and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
And Yahweh smelled the soothing aroma; and Yahweh said to Himself, "I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again strike down every living thing as I have done.
While all the days of the earth remain, Seedtime and harvest, And cold and heat, And summer and winter, And day and night Shall not cease."
(Genesis 8:20-22 LSB)
Costly Worship and the Soothing Aroma (v. 20-21a)
We begin with the first action of a man delivered from global judgment.
"Then Noah built an altar to Yahweh and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And Yahweh smelled the soothing aroma..." (Genesis 8:20-21a)
Notice the priority. First things first. Before anything else, Noah acknowledges Yahweh. This is the definition of piety. Piety is not a feeling in your tummy; it is the right ordering of your loves and loyalties. God first. This is the principle that must govern our families, our churches, and our civilizations. When we get this wrong, everything else unravels.
And this worship is costly. Noah didn't offer the lame or the sick. He offered "of every clean animal and of every clean bird." Remember, he only had seven pairs of these on the ark. He was starting from scratch. His livestock was his future, his food supply, his 401k. And he takes a significant portion of that future and puts it on the altar. This is not token worship. This is sacrificial worship. It is an act of radical trust. Noah is saying, "The God who provided for me in the ark can provide for me on the earth." True worship always costs us something, because it requires us to dethrone ourselves and our perceived needs and enthrone God as our true provider.
The offering is a burnt offering. This is a whole burnt offering, an `olah` in the Hebrew. The entire animal, except the skin, is consumed on the altar. It ascends in smoke. This symbolizes total consecration, a complete surrender to God. Noah is not just giving a tip; he is giving his all. This is a picture of what our worship ought to be, as Paul tells us in Romans 12, to present our bodies as a "living sacrifice."
And God's response is profound. "Yahweh smelled the soothing aroma." The Hebrew here is literally an "aroma of rest." This is anthropomorphic language, of course. God doesn't have a physical nose. But this is how God accommodates His revelation to us. The sacrifice was acceptable. It was pleasing. It brought rest. But why? Was it the smell of roasted meat? No. The pleasing aroma was the faith that produced the sacrifice. More than that, this sacrifice was a type, a foreshadowing. It pointed forward to the one, final sacrifice that would truly appease the wrath of God and bring ultimate rest. Paul says that Christ "gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma" (Eph. 5:2). Noah's altar was a gospel altar. God was pleased with Noah's sacrifice because He saw in it a picture of His Son's sacrifice. Every legitimate Old Testament sacrifice was accepted on credit, pointing forward to the cross where the accounts would be settled in full.
The Paradox of Grace (v. 21b)
Now we come to one of the most stunning statements in all of Scripture, a declaration that reveals the radical, and to our minds, paradoxical, nature of God's grace.
"...and Yahweh said to Himself, 'I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again strike down every living thing as I have done.'" (Genesis 8:21b)
Read that carefully. God promises to restrain His judgment. And what is the reason He gives? Is it because man has learned his lesson? Is it because the flood worked a permanent change in the human heart? Is it because Noah and his family represent a new and improved humanity? Not at all. The reason God gives for His mercy is the very same reason He gave for the judgment in the first place. Compare this to Genesis 6:5: "Then Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."
The flood did not fix the human heart. The problem was not external. The problem is internal, radical, and congenital. "The intent of man's heart is evil from his youth." This is a clear, early statement of the doctrine of total depravity. We are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners. The corruption is not a skin condition; it is a heart condition. It starts from our youth, from the very beginning. The flood washed the world clean, but it couldn't wash the human heart clean. Noah was a righteous man, saved by grace, but he was still a sinner who would get drunk and shame himself. His sons were sinners. And they would produce a world full of more sinners.
So why does God relent? He relents not because of a change in man, but because of a change in His own disposition, based on the sacrifice. God is essentially saying, "The problem of human sin is intractable. If I were to deal with mankind on the basis of strict justice, I would have to flood the world every generation. But I have accepted this sacrifice, this aroma of rest. Therefore, I will establish a new basis for dealing with the world. I will not remove the sin, not yet, but I will restrain My judgment." This is the establishment of what theologians call common grace. God's mercy will now operate on two tracks. He will preserve the world in a stable condition through common grace, allowing the sun to shine and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust, in order to create the stage upon which He will work out His plan of special, saving grace in Christ.
The Covenant of Stability (v. 22)
This promise of common grace is then spelled out in the beautiful, poetic rhythm of verse 22.
"While all the days of the earth remain, Seedtime and harvest, And cold and heat, And summer and winter, And day and night Shall not cease." (Genesis 8:22)
This is the charter for the rest of human history. God promises a stable, predictable, and orderly world. The flood was a radical de-creation, a return to the watery chaos of Genesis 1:2. Now God promises a re-establishment of creational order. The rhythms He built into the world from the beginning will now be upheld by His covenant promise.
This is the foundation for all human endeavor. You cannot have science without a predictable, orderly universe. You cannot have agriculture without the reliable cycle of seasons. You cannot have commerce, or art, or civilization without the basic stability of day and night. God is not promising a world without tornadoes or earthquakes. He is promising that the fundamental operating system of the planet will not be subject to catastrophic failure again until the end. This is His common grace to all mankind, believer and unbeliever alike. The pagan scientist who denies God can only do his work because the God he denies faithfully upholds the very laws of nature he is studying. He is, as we've said before, sitting on God's lap to slap His face.
This promise of "seedtime and harvest" is also a gospel promise. It provides the stable platform for the cultural mandate, for man to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And it is within that growing and spreading humanity that God will plant the seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham, the seed of David, who is Christ. The stability of the natural order guarantees the stage for the drama of redemption to unfold. God keeps the lights on and the stage set so that the gospel can go forth to the ends of the earth.
Conclusion: Living on Borrowed Time and Bountiful Grace
So what do we take from this? First, true worship is our first priority. Like Noah, our first act in any situation should be to acknowledge God, and to do so sacrificially. We are to offer our whole lives as a soothing aroma to Him, which is only possible because our sacrifice is offered up in the name of the final sacrifice, Jesus Christ.
Second, we must have a sober and realistic understanding of the human condition. The world is not getting better and better on its own. The human heart, apart from regenerating grace, is desperately wicked. This should make us humble about our own remaining sin and compassionate toward a lost world that is enslaved to its corruption. The only solution for a heart that is evil from its youth is a new heart, which only God can provide through the new birth.
Finally, we must live in gratitude for God's common grace. Every sunrise, every harvest, every meal on our table is a gift, a sign of God's covenant faithfulness. He has not dealt with us as our sins deserve. He has given us a stable world, a predictable framework for our lives, so that we might have the time and opportunity to repent and believe the gospel. The regular turning of the seasons is a sermon preached to us every year, declaring that God is patient, God is merciful, and God keeps His promises. But this stability is not permanent. This age of common grace will end. The world is not under threat of water anymore, but of fire (2 Peter 3:7). The rhythms of seedtime and harvest are a temporary mercy, designed to lead us to the one in whom all God's promises are Yes and Amen. Let us therefore worship Him for His grace, trust Him for our salvation, and thankfully receive every season as a gift from His hand.