Genesis 8:20. 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.
The very first thing that Noah did when he got off the ark was to build and altar to God. He didn’t build a house to live in first, or explore the land around him. Nope. First things first – talk to God. Noah knows that God has been kind to him and saved him from the terrible flood. And God’s kindness makes Noah want to repent.
Repent? Do you know what that means? To repent is to turn away from our sin. But wasn’t Noah the good guy in this story? Wasn’t he the only righteous person? Remember Day 31: I am favored. Noah was chosen by God because of grace alone. If Noah was righteous it was because he trusted God, not because he was good.
How do we know that Noah was repenting when he built an altar and prayed to God? Our verse says that Noah offered burnt offerings on the altar. In the Old Testament, the burnt offering was the offering of atonement and dedication.
Atonement means to cover up. At the burnt offering you might pray, “God, please forgive me and cover up my sins.
Dedication means to recommit to obeying God. At the burnt offering you might pray, “God, please help me to stop sinning and obey you.”
Noah’s story shows us a very important truth: FIRST God is kind to us, THEN we repent of our sins. First, God rescued Noah, then Noah built an altar and repented with burnt offerings. We don’t repent in order to get God’s kindness and love; we repent because we already have gotten his kindness and love.
As he always does, God receives Noah’s offering of repentance. God always hears us when we are praying in repentance. Listen to what God says after Noah’s prayer of repentance:
Genesis 8:21-22. 21And 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. 22While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”
God not only forgives Noah, but he also makes promises to Noah and to all of us. God promises to never again flood the Earth and destroy everything. And God promises that there will always be seasons and days – While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease. God promises not only that he won’t destroy the Earth, but also that the Earth will always take care of us. It will always give us what we need to survive – the food, warmth, and sleep our bodies need. This is all God’s kindness.
But God’s greatest kindness to us will be Jesus. Jesus, the God-Man, will come from Heaven to Earth to be our final burnt offering. When Jesus dies on the cross for us, his perfect life will cover up all our sins forever. And that is what makes our repentance and dedication to God possible. Because Jesus took our punishment for sin, we can know for sure that we are always forgiven and always loved. Now we can know that God will always take care of us, not just with food, warmth, and sleep, but with everything we need in order to trust him and love others each and every day.
Questions: Do you know how to repent? Do you know how to tell God that you are sorry for your sin and how to turn away from that sin? How does knowing that Jesus loves us make repenting easier?
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