Ark or altar aroma
As you read this article, I am in Ohio, visiting with my wife Cathy’s family, an annual trip we make at this time every year. This year will feature something special we’ve not done before. Next week we will be going south to Kentucky for two days at the Creation Museum and life-size replica of Noah’s Ark. We are excited to visit this unique re-creation that we have heard rave reviews of from several of our friends.
Thinking about this and the faithfulness of God demonstrated in the Biblical narrative, I revisited the original account of what happened immediately after Noah and his family and all the animals “debarked the ark”. This account is found in Genesis 8:20-22: “Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done. “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”
First of all, I can’t help but be struck by the stark contrast of what the ark aroma must have been like, compared to the “pleasing aroma” the Lord smelled from Noah’s sacrificial altar! How so like the contrast of the aroma between our everyday “stinky” self-absorbed lives, and the aroma of what we intentionally lift to God in sacrificial thanksgiving! Hopefully, we can increase the regularity of the aroma from intentional sacrificial thanksgiving offerings lifted to the Lord, to where it overcomes and replaces the “ark aroma” in our everyday lives!
When this happens, it’s like the “aroma of Christ” that Paul writes about in 2 Corinthians 2:14: “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him.” It’s not inappropriate to ask ourselves, “How do I smell to God and others?” Is the “aroma” we’re projecting pleasing or “putrid” and repulsive?
Secondly, I’m struck by the response of the Lord to the “pleasing aroma” of Noah’s altar. The “heart” of God was to never again curse the ground or bring the level of destruction that He had in the flood. Instead, the faithfulness of the seasons would be a tangible and reliable reminder of His faithfulness to His promises, and His pleasure in the “altar aroma” that we lift to Him. That pleasure brings a smile to God’s face, which, from our upside-down perspective, appears as a colorful rainbow, and serves as another reminder of God’s faithfulness to His “pleasure promises”!
My prayer is that we will be challenged and encouraged to intentionally lift to God sacrificial thanksgiving offerings from the altar of our own hearts, which will be a pleasing aroma to Him that replaces an otherwise “arky aroma”! In this way, we will be able to pass the spiritual “smell test”! So, how do you smell? (And the answer is NOT, “with my nose”, as one of my “arky aroma” friends says!)
Pastor Jon L. Pomeroy can be reached at the Sandpoint Church of God.