Text: Genesis 8:18-22
Date: November 24, 2021
Event: Thanksgiving Eve
Genesis 8:18–22 (EHV)
Noah went out with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives along with him. 19Every animal, every creeping thing, every bird, and whatever swarms on the earth went out of the ship, species by species.
20Noah built an altar to the Lord and took from every clean animal and every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21The Lord smelled the pleasant aroma. The Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the soil anymore because of man, for the thoughts he forms in his heart are evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike every living thing, as I have done. 22While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”
God Promises Himself to Take Care of You
As we gather for Thanksgiving worship and perhaps gather with family and close friends for a meal tomorrow, there’s a refrain that you often hear around tables. “You know, this shouldn’t be the only day we are thankful. We should express gratitude year-round.” Which is true, right? The concept of contentment or appreciation for what you have should not be relegated to one holiday. But, it is also a blessing to be able to have something like a holiday specifically focused on gratitude and thankfulness.
As we’ve been through the season of End Times at the tail end of the church year, we’ve spend a lot of time looking forward. What will Judgment Day be like? Scary or secure? How can we be sure that we are triumphant over sin and hell? We looked to Jesus’ triumph for us. And what does it mean that Jesus in our eternal King? He guards and protects us from our eternal enemies, and will bring us to be with him forever in eternal life.
That’s a lot of looking ahead to things to come, either in what will happen or fully benefiting from what what has happened. But what about in the here and now? What about November 24, 2021? What about the latter part of this week, next month, the new year? What can we expect? What has God promised? And perhaps just as important, what has he not promised?
Our lesson from Genesis that we read earlier this evening takes us back to some of the earliest events in human history. God created the world in perfection and then sin ruined it. Adam and Eve’s sins brought death and misery to God’s flawless universe. God promised a Savior, a champion who would fix what had been ruined, but the world people had to live in was filled with sin and decay, just as the world we live in is.
But in this world the life spans were long, which seems to mean that the people simply had more time to get into trouble and seek after their own desires. And as such, the more time went on, the more that promise of a Savior was in jeopardy. People stopped caring about what God had promised. People stopped sharing it with their children.
And it’s in this environment that God sent the flood to wipe out everything except the people and animals secure in the ark. Noah and his family were not likely the only believers at the time of the flood, but it’s clear they were in the vast minority. And if things kept going as they were, eventually no one would trust in the coming Savior. So the flood was both was judgment on an unbelieving world and was also saving the promises God made. That 40-day torrent of water was both law and gospel.
And it’s after this, and after more than a year waiting for the water to recede that our lesson takes place. Eventually it was safe enough for those in the ark to come out and bring the animals out as well. God directed them to come out and begin the process of starting over. Noah and his family are essentially taking on the same role that Adam and Eve had taken on many years before. They were starting over in a radically changed environment.
As they come out of the ark, Noah prioritizes thanksgiving to God for saving him and his family as well as saving God’s promise of grace. Noah doesn’t need to be told to do so. God gave him no command to build an altar and offer sacrifices. He saw what God had done and he just had to offer that in joy and gratitude.
That’s a good lesson for us. Now, of course, none of us have been among the sole survivors of a global catastrophe. In fact, we might be looking at a lot of problem head-on rather than in the rear-view mirror. It might be difficult to see good things and silver linings in our lives. But as we dig into God’s Word, we are reminded of all that God has done and continues to do for us.
Perhaps we do struggle with gratitude or contentment. Perhaps we are often focused on trouble rather than the good things in our lives. What a joy it is to know that even if those are our struggles, if those are our sins, we have forgiveness from those sins. In our baptisms, God washed those sins away as completely as the flood waters washed away all that threatened his promises. We know that forgiveness is real because those promises were realized: Jesus eventually came and suffered the most horrendous torment ever, enduring hell and dying on the cross to pay for our sins, all of them, even for those times when we’ve taken God’s blessings and especially his forgiveness for granted.
So we build our own altars and offer our own sacrifices. The forward-looking blessings are a tremendous comfort and bring unparalleled peace. We are safe from sin, death, and hell because of what God has done for us in Jesus. We will live a perfect life with our God forever in eternity.
But, as we asked before, what about the here and now? Well, as those who were been in the ark leave, God surveys what has happened. And we get a glimpse into the inner-dialogue within the triune God: The Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the soil anymore because of man, for the thoughts he forms in his heart are evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike every living thing, as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”
God promises that a global catastrophe like this will never happen again. He will not “strike every living thing” again. While God does acknowledge that our hearts are evil from little on, still those hearts will not result in God destroying the whole world again. And, in fact, things will continue to run like God designed them to run. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”
There are a couple of things to think about in all of this. Number one, what comfort! We do not need to fear that we will not have daily bread. God will continue to provide, and he’ll mostly likely provide via the natural means that he’s built into the creation around us. Nothing can supersede God in this. No natural disasters, no change in climate or environment, no mistreatment of creation at the hands of people will ever stop what he’s promised. So while we do well to treat the creation around us with respect, to take care of it, use but not abuse it, we can have the confidence that no matter what happens, the world will be here doing what it’s supposed to be doing as long as God wants it to be here.
However, this doesn’t mean that it will be an existence without trouble. Adam was promised that because of his sin, he would only raise food with great labor and effort. For Noah and his family, this “restart” to the world would also be difficult. God is not going to let things end, but it’s also not going to be easy. Sin is still a part of this world, so while there will be daily bread, it may come at great cost or with a tremendous amount of work on our part. God here promises a life-supporting creation around us, but not necessarily an easy, happy-go-lucky existence.
But we shouldn’t skip over what prefaced this promise: “The Lord said in his heart.” This is not a promise made to Noah and his family that could be forgotten. This isn’t a promise made to nature at large. This is God promising it to himself. Like the promise he would later make to Abraham where he swore by himself, the writer to the Hebrews notes that God does this because “God ha[s] no one greater to swear by” (Hebrews 6:13). This is an everlasting promise God is making to himself by himself. Nothing we can do can change it nor do we have to do anything to make sure it is kept. This is a unilateral blessing until the Lord brings this world to an end on the last day.
Your sin and my sin may make life difficult, but they will never be able to negate the promises of God. He swore by himself to preserve life on this planet until the end, regardless of what we do or don’t do. Likewise, he swore by himself to rescue us from sin and hell, regardless of what we do or don’t do. When God makes these promises, we can be sure they will be kept because all the responsibility and ability to keep them rest on him and on him alone. You will be taken care now and for eternity; God has promised himself as much. That is reason to give thanks! Amen.
