In study and reading of the Word of God, He blesses with nuggets; I call them nuggets of gold. We are often blessed that way from the pulpit and from the fellowship with likeminded saints but in the privacy of our own room and our opening of the Word of God, those nuggets are special.

So it has been in my study of the Covenants of God with His people. A huge subject to be sure, one that I won’t have full understanding or do justice to. Nevertheless, there are nuggets for my weary heart and they come from the Lord.

As I was reading the account of God dealing with Noah in Genesis, I came to Genesis 8:20, 21, which tells us the first thing that Noah did upon leaving the ark.

“And Noah built an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and 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: for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite anymore everything living, as I have done”

I am sure I have read this account many times and yet this time I stopped and thought about Noah and his offering unto the Lord. I wondered at the sacrifice and the words ‘a sweet savor’. The Hebrew words put together are ‘a restful, pleasant scent’; a pleasing scent to the LORD. I wondered why He was pleased with Noah’s offering, why it was a sweet savor.

I found the answer to that wondering several days later as I was reading in Ephesians. That is when the Lord blessed so with Ephesians 5:2

“And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for ‘a sweetsmelling savor’. Noah offered a sacrifice to God and God was was pleased with it. Noah offered it up in faith and it was the sacrifice of Christ Himself that Noah offered, Christ who only satisfies the justice of God and appeases His wrath for the sins of His people. It is Christ who is the sweet smelling savor and whose righteousness He is well pleased with. Now surely I knew this but now I knew it again and in a special way, I had been blessed with a nugget of gold in my heart. One to hold close to. 

Are we to offer sacrifices as Noah did? The Scripture tells us what sacrifices we may offer unto God. We are to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice and we are not to be comformed to the world but to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. To think more highly of others than we do ourselves and to think soberly of our 'measure of faith'

“O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall show forth thy praise. For thou desirest not sacrifice else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” Psalm 51:15-17

We open our mouth and we praise Him, we especially praise Him when we are broken and humble in spirit, grieving our sin. We desire to know our own sin and we mourn while at the same time we behold our wounded Savior, Christ Jesus seeking always the sense of His pardoning Grace.

Christ alone can " healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds. Psalm 147:3

"But Noah found Grace in the eyes of the LORD!" Genesis 6:8