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“And Noah…offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled a sweet savor; and the Lord said in His heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake” (Genesis 8:20-21).
After the flood, Noah and his family came out of the ark. When he went into the ark, Noah had taken seven of every clean animal. When he came out of the ark, he was led of the Lord to offer burnt offerings with some of those clean animals, and it tells us that “the Lord smelled a sweet savour.” Why was this?
It was because those burnt offerings spoke of Christ. The Lord Jesus would not come and suffer on the cross for more than 2,000 years after the flood, but God looked on to this, and said that He would not curse the ground any more for man’s sake. God is a God of mercy, as well as justice. Yes, God will judge this world, and perhaps very soon, yet He smells “a sweet savour” when He sees the work of Christ on the cross. God knows that man can never improve through his own efforts, but in coming to Christ, our sins can be washed away. Through the value of that work sin will eventually be removed from this whole universe.
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