Genesis 8:21 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Genesis 8:21

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God is pleased with that offering. The Lord smelt a sweet savour. Now Almighty God does not literally take pleasure in the smell of the smoke of an offering. Obviously, the way it was done, it was to man, a very pleasant smell, a very agreeable smell, and so it is a symbol of God’s pleasure. God takes pleasure in the worship and the thanksgiving of his people. They did not understand that God had literally a physical sense of smell, and appreciated the offering for that reason. They understood perfectly that what was pleasant to them was a symbol of something, that in a much richer and deeper way was pleasant to Almighty God, who is the eternal spirit. So they were taught through these savoury smells of sacrifice that worship, and gratitude, and dedication is pleasurable to God. God in his mighty love and condescension makes himself to be pleased with the worship of his people. We cannot take this lightly. In our private devotions, we prepare our hearts, even before we pray those words of praise and thanksgiving. This is pleasing to God. His people in their hearts prostrate themselves before him.And then God says something very strange – ‘I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.’ Now, those words do not make a lot of sense when you first look at them. God is saying, I will not send another flood, or commit an act of mass judgment upon the world anymore for this reason: because ‘the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.’ Well, surely that is a reason to do it, isn’t it? That is a reason for God to judge the world repeatedly. Why was there only one flood? There are minor floods and catastrophes; there are miniature judgments on the world all the time, but why was there only one universal judgment? Has man improved as a result of the flood? No, what God says of him is still true of him after the flood: ‘the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.’ Yet he says, I will not do it again ‘while the earth remaineth’, until the end of time. So the reason given does not make sense. But this sentiment follows the Lord smelling a sweet savour. That's very interesting. It is connected with the gladness, with the feelings of God. We use these words carefully because the way God feels is altogether higher than the way we feel. But nevertheless, God feels in a divine way, immense gladness when there are people who have been brought to love him, to worship him, to lean upon him and thank him. In that context, for the sake of such people stretching into the future, he has promised to preserve the world until the last day when all prophecy has been fulfilled.

Application

If we absent ourselves from the house of worship, we say, in effect, we do not understand the importance of worship. We fail to praise and worship God in private devotions, we just rush into his presence and ask for our needs, and there is no worship, there is no thanksgiving, there is no dedication – we are showing that even as Christians we do not understand the ABC of worship. It is pleasure to God. A pleasure we can scarcely grasp or take in. In olden times, not today, it was illustrated by something that humans would find pleasurable to smell, indicating that God finds pleasure.

Questions

How was it that the flood was justified in the first place? It was justified because the heart of man and his imagination is continuously evil. Then surely judgment is still justified. Ah, but the reasoning is deeper than that. I will send a flood this once, to teach the world about judgment and that there is a final judgment coming. But I will not do it again, because, God seems to say, I would have to do it every five minutes; I would have to do it repeatedly. I will not do it again because the heart of man is continually evil. It was enough to do it once to warn the world for all time that there is judgment coming, but God’s purpose still remains to let history run its course and to fulfil all prophecy. There will not be another universal judgment until the very end, because man will never improve, and it is the purpose of God to call Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to send the prophets, to fulfil all history and to finally send his only begotten Son into the world. If God was to respond to human evil as it deserves, none of this could happen. So God tells us that he is going to exercise infinite restraint and patience and allow the world to continue in spite of sin. Noah and his sons and their wives are still fallen human beings and their descendants will be fallen human beings and the world will soon get back to the terrible state it was in before the flood, but God ‘endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory’ (Romans 9:22-23). So the passage is understandable.

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Genesis 8:21 Commentary and Bible Study

The meaning of Genesis 8:21 explained