Noah’s reluctance to exit the ark without divine bidding was apparently informed by the tremendous episode of judgment and salvation he had just witnessed/experienced. It was clear to Noah that God was no one to be trifled with. It was equally clear that God was a God who kept his promises. The only sensible thing to do, in light of who God had just revealed himself to be, was to cast himself entirely upon God’s mercy and obey his word, even to the minutest detail.

Noah’s first deed upon exiting the ark — at least as recorded in Scripture — was to build an altar and offer unto God sacrifices. He did this from the “clean” animals and birds which had accompanied him and his family on his recent water-based adventures. God, for his part, smelled Noah’s sacrifices and apparently found the scent agreeable (Gen. 8:20). Calvin is quick to point out the anthropomorphic and anthropopathic nature of this statement, lest anyone think that God actually has nostrils or, even worse, actually deems pleasing per se the “filthy smoke of entrails, and of flesh.”

Calvin is, of course, equally keen to discover what it was about Noah’s sacrifices that particularly pleased God, in order to learn how we might perform acts of worship that bring pleasure to the one who has redeemed us from the flood-waters of sin, death, and hell.

Calvin ultimately discovers two ingredients in Noah’s worship that rendered it pleasing to God. The first is Noah’s faith. Faith is, according to the author of Hebrews, the sine qua non of pleasing God (Heb. 11:6). Noah was a man who, by virtue of his recent experiences, had a fair share of confidence in God. Even when Noah had removed the door of the ark and found the earth dry (Gen. 8:13), he remained in the ark until God bid him leave it (Gen. 8:15). “Thus we see,”Calvin observes,

“…that by a continual course of faith, the holy man was obedient to God; because, at God’s command, he entered the ark, and there remained until God opened the way for his egress; and because he chose rather to lie in a tainted atmosphere than to breathe the free air, until he should feel assured that his removal would be pleasing to God.”

Noah’s reluctance to exit the ark without divine bidding was apparently informed by the tremendous episode of judgment and salvation he had just witnessed/experienced. It was clear to Noah that God was no one to be trifled with. It was equally clear that God was a God who kept his promises. The only sensible thing to do, in light of who God had just revealed himself to be, was to cast himself entirely upon God’s mercy and obey his word, even to the minutest detail. It was this very remarkable sense of God’s reality and power, and God’s utter trustworthiness, which informed Noah’s sacrifices and rendered them fragrant to God. Such faith should, of course, inform every person’s worship of God: “This general rule, therefore, is to be observed, that all religious services which are not perfumed with the odour of faith, are of an ill-savour before God.”

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