Straight to the Heart

In just four weeks time, copies of “Straight to the Heart of Genesis” and “Straight to the Heart of 1 & 2 Corinthians” will hit the bookshelves. I’m very excited. 

The first three volumes in my series of devotional commentaries have received some great reviews. They have already sold twice as many copies as the average Christian publication, and I’ve received lots of encouraging messages about how God is speaking to people as they read them. That’s why I can’t wait to share some of the chapters from Genesis and Paul’s two letters to the Corinthinans. In fact, I’m going to post a couple of chapters between now and publication, to give blog readers a sneak preview of volumes four and five.

Here is the chapter on Noah’s exit from the ark in Genesis 8:1-9:17.

STRAIGHT TO THE HEART OF GENESIS: FIRST THINGS FIRST

“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.” (Genesis 8:20)

If you are anything like me, you probably find life a bit busy at times. I’m a husband, a dad, a friend, a son, a church leader, a writer and a few things besides, so twenty-four hours in a day just doesn’t feel like enough. You probably know the feeling.

Noah, however, took it to a new level. When he emerged after a year on the ark, he was faced with the mother of all to-do lists. Human civilization had been destroyed, and he was in charge of the reconstruction. He was head of the sole surviving human family, so he needed to build shelter and fences to corral their animals. There were skeletons to clear and fields to prepare, as well as planning and ploughing and planting. Noah might have buckled under all of these priorities, but instead he found strength by attending to the most important one. The first thing Noah did when he stepped out of the ark was to lay down his tools and come before the Lord in worship.

Don’t overlook the boldness of Noah’s decision. It was a deliberate statement of faith that it all begins with God. It was God who had warned him to build a boat because judgment was coming, and who had given him the exact dimensions he should use. It was God who had shut the ark’s door and caused it to float, while all his sinful neighbours drowned in the floodwaters outside. In recognition of this fact, the first thing Noah built was not a house or a cattle-shed, but an altar on which he could offer blood sacrifices in praise to the Lord as the God of his salvation. He knew enough about the Gospel to offer only the blood of clean animals and birds on the altar, and he praised God that somehow this “lifeblood” was able to atone for his sin. He confessed that he and his family had not been saved from the Flood because they were blameless, because every inclination of their hearts had been evil from childhood, just like all the others. He grasped that the Lord had saved them by grace through faith, and that this was somehow to do with sacrificial blood. His first task was to build an altar to proclaim that his salvation had begun with God.

He also built the altar because he understood the Sabbath principle which the Lord had taught to Adam. Just as Adam’s first day in Eden was spent resting and enjoying the unearned delights of God’s creation, so too Noah’s first day in God’s new creation was also to be spent in rest and thankfulness. The Lord emphasizes this three times in 8:17, 9:1 and 9:7 by giving Noah the exact same command he gave to Adam in 1:28. The reason we stress over our own lists of priorities is that deep down we think we have the power to achieve them. Noah grasped that his task was way too difficult for him to achieve on his own, so he decided to “Sabbath” and let the work begin by grace with God.

 Noah was not merely thinking of himself. He was restating God’s manifesto for the Family of God. He was tenth in line from godly Seth and would become the father of the entire human race, so he deliberately refounded the Family of God as a group of people who trusted that all they needed came from God and not from themselves. Noah was determined to rid his family of Cain’s polluted influence, even if it meant delaying the work of reconstruction, and even if it meant killing some of the precious animals he had saved through the ark.  

 The Lord was delighted. This was the first blood sacrifice for over a year, and its smell was such a “pleasing aroma” that it stirred him to reply. He declared in 9:6 that man was still made in his image, and made his first explicit covenant with the human race in 9:8-17. Never again would he wipe out the earth with a flood, but would preserve its seasons faithfully until his fire fell on the final Judgment Day. He took sunshine and water, two of the essential elements on which all terrestrial life depends, and combined them beautifully to form a rainbow in the sky as a perpetual reminder of his everlasting covenant. When we make it our first priority to spend time with God, we do the thing that pleases him most and provoke him to bless us on a scale unimaginable.  

 Every great believer throughout the ages has pursued this same principle of first things first. Daniel was in charge of a third of the vast Persian Empire, but he handled the pressure by making it his habit to go home three times a day to give himself to fervent prayer. When Martin Luther was assaulted by the conflicting demands of writing, preaching, Bible translation and church leadership, he commented famously: “Tomorrow I plan to work and work, from early until late. In fact, I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer”. Even Abraham Lincoln confessed from the White House that “I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day”. Most of the people who have played a great role in God’s plan of history have had this one thing in common: They each made sure that their days began with God.  

Noah grasped this lesson through the symbolism of a wooden ark and a slaughtered sheep, but we can see it far more clearly through the bloodstained cross to which those pictures pointed. His was the task of reconstructing human civilization, but ours is the greater task of preaching and demonstrating that God’s Kingdom has come. His was the task of repopulating the face of the planet, but ours is the greater task of calling every nation to be saved. Our task is every bit as oversized as Noah’s was when he disembarked onto the mountains of Ararat. Like him, we therefore need to set aside our own to-do lists in order to stop and rest and trust the Lord that our success depends on him alone.   

 Someone once said, “When I work, I work, but when I pray, God works.” Let’s begin each day by resting in God’s presence and letting him work on our behalf through grace in response to our prayers at the foot of the cross. When we put first things first, the rest of the day can fall into place as well.