Please rise with me for this reading of the word. This morning's reading is gonna be from Genesis chapter eight through chapter nine, verse 17. And verse one reads as follows. Then God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the cattle that were with him in the dark. And God caused the wind to pass over the earth and the water subsided. Also the fountains of the deep and the floodgates of the sky were closed and the rain from the sky was restrained. And the water receded from the earth going forth and returning. And at the end of 150 days, the water decreased. In the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark rested upon the mountains of Arath. Now the water decreased steadily until the tenth month. In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains appeared. Then it happened at the end of forty days that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made, and he sent out a raven, and it went out flying back and forth until the water was dried up from the earth. Then he sent out a duck from him, and to see if the water was abated from the face of the land. But the dove found no resting place for the sole of its foot, so it returned to him and into the ark, where the water was on the surface of all the earth. And he stretched out his hand and took it and brought it into the ark to himself. He waited yet another seven days, and again he sent out the dove from the ark. And the dove came to him evening, and behold, its beak was freshly picked olive leaf. So no one knew that the water was abated from the earth. And he waited yet another seven days to send out the dove, but it did not return to him again. Now it happened in the 601st year, on the first month and the first of the month. The waters were dried up from the earth, and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and behold, the surface of the ground was dried up. In the second month, on the 27th day of the month, the earth was dry. Then God spoke to Noah, saying, Go out of the ark, you and your wife, your sons and your sons' wives, bringing out with you every living thing of all the flesh that is with you, birds and animals and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, that they may swarm on the earth and they may be fruitful and multiply on the earth. So Noah went out and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him. Every beast, every creeping thing, every bird, everything that moves on the earth went out by their families from the ark. Then Noah built an altar to Yahweh, and took of it every clean animal and 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 the days of the earth remain, see time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summertime and winter, and the day and night shall not cease. And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And the fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the sky with everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea into your hand they are given. Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you as with the green plant I give to you. However, flesh with its life, that is its blood, you shall not eat. Surely I will require your lifeblood from every living thing I will require. And from every man, from each man's brother, I will require the life of a man. Whoever sheds blood, man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed. For in the image of God, he is made man. As for you, be fruitful and multiply. Swarm on the earth and multiply. Then God spoke to Noah and his sons with him, saying, as for me, behold, I establish my covenant with you and with your seed after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, of all that comes out of the dark and every beast of the earth. Indeed, I establish my covenant with you and all the flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood. And there shall never again be a flood to destroy the earth. Then God said, this is the sign of the covenant which I am giving to be between me and you and every living creature that is with you for all successive generations. I put my bow in the cloud and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. And it will be when I bring a cloud over the earth and the bow will be seen in the cloud. And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. and never again shall the water become a flood and destroy all flesh. So the boat shall be in the cloud, and I will look upon it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth. And God said to Noah, this is the sign of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth. You may be seated. This week's message is titled The Noach Covenant. Now often, the Noahic covenant is focused only on the verses, chapter nine, verses eight through 17. But we need to understand all of this in its entirety. In these two chapters, you have the story of the gospel really over and over and over again. And we'll cover more of this next week when we visit the sin of Noah recorded at the end of chapter nine. But leading up into and including the Noahic covenant, the whole point of the covenant points to a very specific feature of the gospel. And the Noach covenant has several distinguishing features. First, it was made to Noah and all his descendants, as well as every living creature, and that's the earth in general. Second, it's what we call an unconditional covenant. Third, it was sealed with a sign. And fourthly, the significance of the sign. And as we get into our verses today, I don't honestly want to spend a ton of time on chapter eight, verses one through 14, but I want you to understand what they represent. Those verses are significant in the aspect of apologetics for Noah, his Ark, and all of his descendants. In them, creation scientists have been able to trace back or follow the civilizations that would arise out of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now, there have been claims that the ark has been discovered or that we know exactly where it landed. But to date, all those claims have been proven unlikely at best. But the discovery of the ark is not really what's needed to prove God's word. However, it would be a significant find if we did find it. The other significance of these verses is that creation scientists also believe the flood of Noah's day generated the ice age. And that would have occurred a few hundred years after the flood. And these verses help prove that theory because of the warm oceans from tectonic movements and volcanic action resulting in a lot of evaporation. And so the dust in the atmosphere from volcanoes produced a cooling effect. This would have created conditions for snow and ice to form and cause an onset of a massive ice age. And so during this time, ocean levels would have been lowered, forming the land bridges and the world in various places that enabled the animals to actually move across to different places after the after the earth was broke up into different places. These verses also continue the narrative of the initial part of the covenant that we're going to cover today. Ultimately, that God made with Noah before the judgment command, and that was to preserve Noah and his family and the animals with him. and the land animals and their kinds of the world, that was all Genesis chapter six, verses 17 through 19. And as part of fulfilling that promise, then God sent a wind over the earth, presumably to help dry up the waters, and he also stopped the rain and the water coming from the fountains of the deep. So now you have the water receding. These verses also give us the Ark came to rest on the mountains of Arrak. Now, note the text does not say Mount Arrak. It says Mount Tens. It landed on a range of mountains that include Mount Arrak. So understand. So you have Mount Arrak that is inside the region of the mountains of Arrak. And the Ark landed in the mountains somewhere in the entire region. Now, creation geologists don't believe the ark could have landed on what we today call Mount Ararat, and that's likely because the mountain was formed at the end of the volcano, or end of the flood, excuse me, due to volcanic activity in those mountains, which would have included Mount Ararat. And so we really don't know exactly the location where the ark landed, except in the area that we call today of Mount Ararat, or the Mountains of Ararat. And that mountain range is in eastern Turkey, and then likely extended further east into Armenia. And then lastly, these verses also give us a timeline of the flood. And so if you add up all the days and nights from the time the rain started till Noah and his family exited the ark, it's approximately one year. That's what we know, their time on the boat. That's not necessarily the time the rain was there, the time the flood was there. We're just talking their time on the boat is roughly a year. Now, as we get into the rest of these verses, I want to flip these verses almost completely over and actually deal with the direct covenant that God would establish in chapter nine, and then I'm gonna show you how that plays out in the rest of our verses today. So if you would, jump with me to Genesis chapter nine, verses eight through 17, and I wanna break these verses down for you in the easy parts of the Noahic covenant. And before I do, we also need to realize that when we get into this covenant, This is the first time the word covenant is used in the Bible. So it's very specific to what this is doing. And a covenant, what that what covenant mean is a promise that is a binding relationship. It is binding like a contract. And sometimes God made what we call conditional promises, conditional covenants, and it's conditioned on people's obedience. Other times he made unconditional promises, which means God has decreed them they are going to happen and they will not change. So the parts of the Noahic covenant are as follows. We covered a little bit earlier, but I'm gonna give you the verses. So first is who was included in the covenant, which is verses eight through 10 of chapter nine. Second is the unconditional covenant, what that means, which is verse 11. Third is the sign of the covenant, verses 12 through 13. And then lastly, the reason for the sign, which is verses 14 through 17. Now, as I said, the first is who's included in the covenant, which is significant to the fact that this covenant is a promise to all people and all living creatures. Generally, God's promises focus on his chosen people. But this one is for all all of Noah's descendants, which is all of us. But this also means the covenant is still in effect, and it will never not be in effect, which leads to our second part of the covenant, which is in verse 11. God makes an unconditional covenant to the animals and man. This means the promise cannot be broken. An unconditional covenant means once God has started it, it doesn't ever change. He promises to never send another flood like that that had occurred. Secondly, this covenant also deproves false theologies like dispensationalism, because we're not in a new dispensation. And the Noah dispensation hasn't been exhausted as dispensationalism teaches. This is a continual covenant, and the other covenants are added to this one. This isn't removed. In verse 12, then God said, This is the sign of the covenant. Verse 13, I put my bow in the cloud. Now, just as circumcision was the sign of the Abrahamic covenant, the bow in the sky or excuse me, the bow in the cloud is the sign of the covenant. Now, most are aware that God was speaking of the rainbow, but honestly, the text is low. And hear me in this. That text, that meaning of bow, is a war bow. It is a hunting bow. It is to be used by archers and bowmen. And so understand the significance of this. As we discussed, the Nephilim giants, these evil, mighty warriors that in battle defeated hundreds by themselves. But in the flood, God goes to war, and he destroys every living thing except the eight people and animals that he alone saved in the first place. And now God says, you will know that I will never war like that again, because I am putting my weapon up on the weapon rack for all to see. This is a sign to never miss the fact that God is the most powerful warrior in the entire world has ever seen. He is also the most gracious in his salvation of his creation. And the why is given then in verses 14 through 17. And God says that from then on, his bow is to be seen as a sign of the covenant. Whenever we see a rainbow, we should realize that God's weapon has been left on the weapon rack not to be used again, meaning there will never be another global flood. And the whole lesson is to us is when we see his bow resting on that rack, we should always be reminded of God's faithfulness and his amazing grace. But we should also be reminded that God is holy and he's righteous, who has a holy hatred for sin and who will not allow sin to go unpunished forever. And just as God provided a way for Noah and his family to be saved in the ark, he also provided a way for us to be saved through Jesus Christ. No one, his family were saved from the wrath of God that came in the flood, just as those who will be saved by Christ from the wrath to come. First Thessalonians 110 reads and to wait for his son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath to come. And all of that truly points to one single whole point of the covenant. And so often I was taught and heard that the whole point of the Noahic covenant was the promise to not judge us with the great flood again. And then immediately when someone's teaching us, they say, the next judgment will be by fire. And so that's the false lesson and it's missing the whole point because you missed all the verses that come up to the Noahic covenant in chapter nine. The whole point, there's one single point and it's this, the sanctity of life, all life. but especially of those that are created in the image of God, which did not and does not include the Nephilim. And God addresses this before He makes the covenant with Noah in Genesis 9, verses 1-7. Look at those verses with me, chapter 9, verses 1-7. The first sanctity of life is to fill the earth, found in chapter 9, verse 1. As God told Adam and Eve, He now instructed Noah and his family to be fruitful and multiply so that the population would increase and fill the earth. And remember, the backdrop of this is death. That's what's happened. You have the floods come in, they kill everything, and then God says, be fruitful and multiply. Everything around them is dead. And even after destroying everything and everyone, God says, children and life are a good thing. Create more of them. Bring in more life. Verse two, the sanctity of life continues. Once again, God gives man dominion over the animals. Into your hand they are delivered, but now there's a difference. Now the animals will generally be fearful of man. This is to protect the animals and to cause them to mate and reproduce. Verse 3 and 4 coincide together to form Another form of the sanctity of life. In verse 3, God changes man's diet to allow the eating of animals, including some animals changing their diet as well. Originally, we read in Genesis 1, 29 through 30, Adam and Eve and the animals were all vegetarians. And there was no death in the world before sin. Now in Genesis 9, God tells Noah not that just originally to eat plants, but now he's giving them all things. So from that time on, humans could eat animals as well as plants. There's no restriction given on which animals they could eat until the specific restrictions are given to the Israelites and Leviticus. But the point of this is the cycle of life that God had caused since the sin of man. Now man and animals would die and return to the dust. The dust would produce plants for which some animals would consume, and then man and some animals would then consume those animals that ate the plants, and the cycle would repeat itself. And this is the whole point of the third aspect of the sanctity of life. Each one in that cycle is attached to the other for life. You have a life and a death cycle. The land is to be cultivated and tended, as well as the animals. In verse four, God ties this aspect together for us. This same aspect was reiterated for the Israelites in Leviticus, but has never been revoked before. And we read, however, flesh with its life, That is, the blood you shall not eat. But the main meaning and emphasis of this verse is life. Life is associated with blood. In Hebrews 9, 22, we are told, and without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. And the explanation of verse four is given in detail in Leviticus 17, 11 through 12. For the life of the flesh is in the blood. and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life. Therefore I said to the sons of Israel, no person among you may eat blood, and no sojourner who sojourns among you may eat blood." Okay, so blood represents the life that was given by God. Man can eat the body of the animal, but the blood, which represents life, belongs solely to the Lord. The life of the animal sacrificed was accepted for the life of the sinner. The blood made atonement for the soul and should never be looked upon as just something common. Amazingly, what's interesting is there's so many diseases associated with the blood of animals. And so then by removing that blood when you're harvesting an animal and then cooking them, diseases are almost completely eliminated. which further protects the people of God once again. Which brings us to our last sanctity of life in verses five and six, and that is the penalty for murder. And the penalty is given here is death for death. In fact, God says, surely I will require your lifeblood. Require is a judicial term, God is the judge in that setting. And what is happening here is what we call the foundation for civil governments are being set up. And the primary role of government is to maintain law and order and to be the sword of justice. This points directly to Romans 13, where you have that actual setup even more solidified. And recall back when Cain killed his brother Abel, the Bible did not give it any indication that there was civil law set up at that point, which is why God judged him and set him off as a wanderer. But now the role of kings and magistrates and governments will be to punish evildoers. That's their job, that's their assignment. And there's two aspects in this which these verses give. The first, if an animal kills a human, then the animal is to be killed. And we do need to abide by this still today. It was spelled out to the Israelites as part of their civil law as a nation as well. If an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall surely be stoned and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner of the ox shall go unpunished, Exodus 21, 28. And even in our present world, if an animal kills a human, usually that animal is caught and is put to death. This actually occurred in our own town about five years ago. We had a 2,000 pound bull that got out of the university vet clinic. It trampled his owner to death and injured a few others. And as it ran through town, eventually a police officer put the animal down. That is the civil magistrate working properly. That's what they're there for. The second aspect of this is the authority for capital punishment for murder. is given for humans as well. The willful taking of a human life must be punished. And this obviously implies that laws were to be set up to maintain law and order and punish those who commit crimes. For the Israelites as a nation, capital punishment was enacted, not just for murder, but also other sins as well. However, capital punishment for murder was given to mankind as a civil law for governing human activities. This has never been revoked. This is why we go back to the unconditional covenant. It's never gone away. Now, there's always been a way of ensuring the crime has truly been committed. In Deuteronomy, we read the Israelites were to establish guilt. On the mouth of two or three witnesses, he who is to die shall be put to death. He shall not be put to death on the mouth of one witness, Deuteronomy 17.6. And this was reiterated in the New Testament in 2 Corinthians 13.1. This is the third time I'm coming to you by the mouth of two or three witnesses. every matter shall be confirmed." But the key point, the key point is the sanctity of life. Now, many have stated, if you're pro-life, then how can you be pro-capital punishment and still have sanctity of life? And these two verses are specifically how, but not only them, the entire chapters of chapters 8 and 9 are why. The whole point is the sanctity of life. And if you commit murder, you have not only taken a life, but you've thrown your own life away. And the most valuable thing that can be taken from you is your own life. And this is why it's taken justly. This is why issues like abortion and euthanasia are not hard for a true believer. And it's do you actually protect life and believe that it's a sanctity or not? And so then we get into the last part, which is, what about the killing of people during war? In the Old Testament, we read many wars, including wars where God specifically instructed the Israelites to go and do battle with evil people. And it's obvious that killing during such a war is not sinful in itself, yet you can have murder in war. David was a good example of that. We live in a sin-cursed world, and so sadly, there will be forces of evil that need to be stopped. And this too is carrying out the sword of justice for governments by going to war. And Ecclesiastes states there is a time for everything. But those who have never gone to war, never worked in that kind of world, never held a friend dying, Understand, movies and books tend to romanticize war, to make it like it's all puppies and rainbows and it's glory and all these things. Sometimes war is necessary. Hear me, it is never romantic, ever. It's bloody and it smells of death in such a way you never forget it. And that's the whole point. If you truly understand the sanctity of life, then you understand the need for war. This is the same reason that Noah understood this very thing. Noah was in the middle of a war. He landed essentially at ground zero of a war. Everything when that door opened was dead. There was destruction everywhere from a war that God won, by the way. just governments with equal weights and measures. Meaning, if you commit evil, the government is to come with the sword for your life, because it believes in preserving life. And so God brings us back around in verse seven, which is really beautiful. Right after the section with the death of humans by animals or willful acts of other humans, God once again has told Noah and his family to be fruitful and multiply. So after God sets up the civil government with laws in regards to killing of humans, it's as if God is saying, instead of thinking about killing, place an emphasis on producing life. And just think, if all people actually valued the sanctity of life today, how that would change our actions. These detailed elements of the sanctity of life are what God meant broadly when he spoke in chapter eight, verses 15 through 19. Go back with me to chapter eight. God spoke to Noah to tell him to lead the ark with his family and with all the land animals and that everything had been preserved. And then God said the animals were to swarm the earth, which means they would reproduce after their time. God also told Noah to be fruitful and multiply. In other words, treasure the sanctity of life and reproduce it. And this is the beauty, this is the beauty of 820. God has destroyed every living thing, not on the ark. It's been an entire year. Then God ordered Noah and his family off to be fruitful and multiply with an undertone of treasuring the sanctity of life. And in verse 20, Noah gets it with minimal explanation from God. Everything that we've covered up to this point Noah got beforehand. All that was covered up to this point wasn't for Noah, it was for us. Verse 20, Noah got it. Verse 20 reads that Noah built an altar to Yahweh and took of every clean animal and every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. He built an altar, but notice there was no instruction or command from God to do it. Noah just did it. He had a specific command or a specific call into the ark and another out of it, but the altar and the sacrifice being already a divine institution for religious worship, Noah did not wait for that command to express his thankfulness and his understanding of the sanctity of life. Now you may be thinking, wait a minute, how is he understanding the sanctity of life if he just took many lives in that sacrifice? Noah, in this act, understands where all life comes from. It comes from God. And those that have received the mercy of life from God should be forward in returning thanks and doing it not of constraint, but of willingness. If God is pleased with anything, He is pleased with those who have faith in Him. And realize, Noah was now turned out into a cold, desolate, dead place, where most would have thought the first care for him and his household would have been to build a house for himself. But instead, he begins with an altar for God. God is the first, and therefore must be served first. And Noah knew that. And so Noah begins with God. Now, we didn't cover the animals in great detail last week because I wanted to cover it here. But the animals on board of the ark, Genesis chapter seven, verses two through three reads, You shall take with you every clean animal by sevens, male and his female, and of the animals that are not clean to a male and his female. also the birds of the sky by sevens, male and female, to keep their seed alive on the face of the earth. And understand the sacrifices in Leviticus and further were to be clean animals. And though his stock of livestock was so small that had been rescued from ruin and so great of an expense of care and pains, yet he did not grudge to give God his dues out of it. Noah could have said in this moment, I only have seven of each and must one of these seven be killed and burnt for sacrifice. Would it not be better to defer to wait until we have an abundance? Now, to prove the sincerity of his love, his gratitude, he cheerfully gives that seven to God as an acknowledgement that it was God's in the first place, owing to him. Serving God with our little is way to make it more. And we must never think that our sacrifices are wasted on God. And so Noah offered sacrifice upon his altar, every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, the odd seven that we read of. Now it offered only those that were clean, for it is not enough to just sacrifice. We must sacrifice that which God appoints, the failure that Cain made. So the question sometimes comes up of what or whom was Noah sacrificing. There's no need to sacrifice for the sins of the dead. They paid for that with their lives. At this point, there hasn't been a full revelation of the sacrificial system that will be revealed in Leviticus. And so some think that this is a picture of a peace offering. But the peace offering described in Leviticus 7 is a sacrifice that worshipers could eat at the end and celebrate with God. And so the purpose of the offering was to consecrate a meal between the parties before God and share it in fellowship with everyone in the region. So in that, you would use only part of the animal or grain would be burnt on the altar, and the rest was given to the worship and poor and hungry. And the meal was to be eaten within a single day. And then any leftovers would be burned as well. But none of the rest of the peace offering is mentioned in our verses today. And so up to this point, scripture has given only one reason for sacrifices to be made, and that's for the sacrifice for sins. And this is what we saw in the garden before the fall of man and in the request from God between Cain and Abel. And although the scripture does not give us the exact sin, it would appear Noah was aware of his and his family's need for the removal of sin, even after they were saved and considered righteous. But here's the truly amazing thing. Those that are closest to God are the most scrutinous of their own sins, because they hate sin, as their father hates it. And those that hate it confess it. And in Noah's case, before the Savior had come, he offers sacrifice, as his father had demonstrated to his forefathers. Now, I want to explain a little more about the significance of the sacrifice in regards to the rest of these two chapters. The opening chapters of the book of Leviticus gives specific details regulating these various types of offers. What I want to look at today is the heart and soul of what is the sacrificial system, because fundamentally there are two things that underlie these sacrifices that God ordains and commands of his people. And this is what Noah understood. The first one is expatiation and the other is a consecration. Now, on the one hand, if you have an offering of sacrifice, which is at the same time rendered as a gift, we ask the fundamental question, how do we perform worship, or what is worship? And if we would have asked Noah or a true Old Testament saint, they would have given an answer something like this, the chief element of worship in the life of a believer is making an offering or a sacrifice of praise. And it starts very early in the Old Testament Remember, we did Cain and Abel, and how God delighted in the offering that was given by Abel, but he rejected the offering that was given by Cain. And that's because Cain was filled with fury and envy and jealousy against his brother, and rose up and took his life. But Abel's sacrifice was a sacrifice given to God in an attitude of faith, in a posture of praise and thanksgiving. But from early on, the form of sacrifice, the whole system, the sacrifice grew and enlarged and took on deeper and deeper meanings, so that the sacrifices that were brought began to indicate the principle of an expatiation. And expatiation is at the heart and core of the Old Testament sacrifice. Now, there are two words that we often hear in theology, and we sometimes stumble over them, which is expatiation and propitiation, and they're slightly different. And the term expatiation has to do with removing of defilement, or removing sin. And so when we look at the New Testament, we are told on the cross, Christ made an expatiation for his people. He removed their sins from them and took them upon himself. Now remember, on the Day of Atonement, two animals were used in the Old Testament. There was a lamb without blemish that was to be offered on the altar of sacrifice. There was also to be a scapegoat. And when the scapegoat was presented, the priest would lay his hand upon the back of the goat, symbolizing the transfer of the sins of the people back to the goat. And that's why he's called the scapegoat. That's why when we use the term scapegoat in our words today, it's for someone who's being made responsible for something that went horribly wrong that they were not responsible for. And so that person then becomes the one who is blameworthy, even though they didn't do anything. And so on the Day of Atonement, the sins of the people were transferred to the back of the goat, and then the goat was driven outside the camp, out into the outer darkness, away from the presence of God, into the place of darkness, into the place of defilement. And the sins were symbolically removed from the presence of the people in God. That's what's meant by expatiation. And that's what John the Baptist had in his mind when he sang the Angus Day in the New Testament. When he saw Christ approaching, he said, behold, the lamb of God who take away the sins of the world, because Christ is both the lamb and the scapegoat. When he bears his sins on his own person, in his own person, he expatiates our own sins. but also there's the concept of propitiation, and the difference is found in the prefix. X means out of or from, and it has a horizontal dimension of removal or remission of sin, sin being sent out into the outer darkness, so that's on the level of the earth. And the Lord says, east is from west, so far I removed your transgressions from you. Propitiation, on the other hand, is vertical. Okay, it has to do with how you stand before or in front of God. And so we get this word propitious from it, where the propitiation is a sacrifice offered, and God is to satisfy the demands of His holiness, to satisfy the demands of His justice. And so the sacrifice is in the Old Testament, this idea of satisfying the demands of God's holiness and justice, so that His wrath would be set apart. So that is where the vertical and the horizontal come into play. On the one hand, God's justice is satisfied. On the other, our sins are removed from us all, which they find their culmination in the work of Jesus. Now, the key to this whole sacrificial system in the Old Testament is the idea of substitution. Sometimes we speak of the substitutionary atonement in the New Testament. as well as the idea that substitution is rooted and grounded in the Old Testament. Now, when the sacrifices were brought by the people of Israel, and they went through the rituals that were prescribed in the book of Leviticus, one of the things that gets missed is major sacrifices had six acts, or six different steps that were to be followed in this procedure. The first three were accomplished by any regular Israelite by themselves. And then the last three were accomplished by the work of the priest. And so what would happen is when the sacrifice was brought for an animal sacrifice, a burnt sacrifice, the person was required to bring an offering that was of their own possession. So it actually meant something to them. That is, the animal that was being sacrificed, you had to own it. You had to have purchased it. If the same thing occurred for grain or any other offering, it had to come from your own property. And this personal property became an extension or representation of you. And so the Jew would bring the lamb or the goat or ram or whatever it was that he was bringing for his offering, and he would first lay his hands on the animal, just as the priest did on the Day of Atonement with respect to the scapegoat. But in regular everyday life, the individual Israelite would lay his hands on the sheep or the ram, symbolizing the transfer of his personal guilt to the animal. And then the offering was to be killed specifically by the owner. Again, that's teaching you the sanctity of life because you're the one that has to terminate it. because of you. And after he killed the animal, the third step was that he had to bring it to the priest. And then the priest would take the blood of the animal and sprinkle it around the holy places and then offer the animal on the altar of sacrifice. But the sprinkling of the blood on the altar or the mercy seat that was done was to symbolize still one more important concept tied to sacrifice, and it was the idea of the covering. But the whole process here is killing, sprinkling, and burning. Now, as I said before, the Old Testament principle was that life was in the blood, not because the Jews had a primitive form of anatomy or the circulatory system. They didn't make an absolute identity between blood and life. It's a symbolic relationship here, the idea of shedding blood is symbolic to giving up life because the penalty for sin is death. And so that the death of the substitute is what's required for the penalty to be fulfilled. So the idea of blood was symbolic of giving of the entire life of the animal. And now we understood that these offerings and sacrifices that were made in the Old Testament were typical. That is, they foreshadowed the supreme atonement that was to come and the final transaction of redemption which Christ offered himself as a perfect sacrifice once and for all. And the author of Hebrews labored that point, raising the question, can bulls and goats take away the sins? Obviously no, these animals are not sufficient to be adequate substitute of the life of a person who is guilty before God, but they symbolize the promised redeemer who would be the lamb without blemish, who would give his life as the ultimate sacrifice once and for all. Now I mentioned these rituals were the killing of an animal, then the sprinkling of blood, and then finally the burning. And the burning on the altar of sacrifice was part of it being offered as a gift to God. Now, don't miss this. Obviously, God doesn't need to consume these animals. He had no need for them, okay? But the idea was Israel did. The aroma that rose to heaven from the burning of these sacrifices was considered by God to be sweet and pleasant and delightful, and it's because they're changing their hearts to do it. And that is if the sacrifices were offered with a proper spirit of penitence and true faith. And this is the spirit in which Noah sacrificed to the Lord in verse 20. And then in verse 21, it says, and Yahweh smelled the soothing aroma. And Yahweh said to himself, I will never again curse the ground because of man. And so in verse 21, this is the attitude which God approached the covenant he would create with Noah. Now, don't miss the fact. God is sovereign. God knew all these things were going to occur. But it gives you an idea of how this progressed in these chapters. God had used judgment and death to teach Noah the sanctity of life. And Noah got it. Imagine a year on a boat knowing everything is dead, coming off that boat and finding death and destruction, literally everywhere and everything. And instead of Noah being focused on death, focused on himself, he recognizes the sanctity of life and his dependence on the need of a savior and a holy God who is that savior. And he makes an altar to, hear me, the God of the universe, the God who saved him. And he takes one of each of the clean animals, the odd seven, leaving six of each kind of clean animal. And he sacrifices that life for himself and for his family. And in verse 21, it pleases the Lord. There's only one thing that will lead you to act like that, to be like that, as righteous as Noah was in that moment, and that is your relationship with the God of the universe. That is why back in Genesis 6-9, it said Noah was a righteous man, blameless among those in his generations, and then lastly, Noah walked with God. And then through the pages of his word, we now have the same lesson. Amen.