Genesis Chapter 8 Part 3: Noah Builds an Altar

The flood is over.

The ark has landed. The door is open. The ground is dry. Eight people are standing on a brand new earth for the first time.

And the first thing Noah does is not survey the damage.

He does not count what survived.

He does not plan the new civilization.

He does not build a house or plant a garden or hold a team meeting about what comes next.

He builds an altar.

And what God does in response to that altar contains some of the most important and most honest theology in the entire book of Genesis.

In this lesson we go verse by verse through Genesis 8:20 through 22 and find three verses packed with content that most Christians have never been taught.

In this lesson we cover

Why the first structure built on the new earth after the flood was a place of worship and what that reveals about the character of Noah and the priority God expects from His people

The Hebrew word mizbeach, altar, and how this moment begins a thread of sacrifice that runs through Abraham, Moses, the Temple, and lands finally at the cross

Why God provided seven pairs of clean animals in Genesis 7 and why the answer is hidden here in Genesis 8:20 - He was planning for this moment of worship before the flood even began

The soothing aroma, reach nichoach in Hebrew, and how this phrase runs from Genesis 8 through the entire Levitical sacrificial system all the way to Ephesians 5:2 where Paul uses the exact same language to describe the sacrifice of Jesus Christ

The contrast with the Gilgamesh Epic at its sharpest - the Babylonian gods gathered around the post-flood sacrifice like flies because they were starving while the God of Genesis responded in grace

Why the sacrifice was acceptable - and it was not the mechanics of the ritual. It was the faith behind it. Salvation has always been by grace through faith and Genesis 8 is one of the clearest early proofs

The Lord said to Himself - God making the most binding kind of promise by making it to His own nature

The most honest verse in Genesis 8 - the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth - the same diagnosis as before the flood, producing a completely different response this time

Why the flood did not fix the human heart and why nothing external ever will - the only answer is what Jesus called being born again

Seedtime and harvest shall not cease - the covenant of natural regularity - and why this verse is the theological foundation for the entire scientific enterprise

The problem of induction identified by the philosopher David Hume and why the secular scientific worldview cannot answer it but Genesis 8:22 can

Why the founding scientists of the modern era - Kepler, Newton, Faraday, and Maxwell - built their work on exactly the foundation this verse provides

How the Canaanite god Baal and the annual battle with Mot explained the seasons and why Genesis 8:22 demolishes that entire religious framework in one sentence

The soothing aroma running from Genesis 8 through Leviticus to Ephesians 5 and what it means that the language God used to describe Noah’s sacrifice is the same language Paul uses for the sacrifice of Christ

Why the promise of seedtime and harvest belongs to the present age and what Revelation 22 says replaces it in the new creation

This lesson brings together biblical theology, ancient Near Eastern studies, the history of science, and the Gospel in a way that most Genesis teaching never reaches.

This is part of our ongoing verse by verse Genesis Bible study series covering creation, the image of God, the Fall, the line of Cain and Seth, Enoch, Noah, the flood, and the entire sweep of early Genesis with Hebrew word studies, ancient Near Eastern background, early Church Fathers, modern apologetics, and New Testament connections in every lesson.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

And welcome back. Now, before we start today, I want to update you on a few things. Several of you have asked me how to support this ministry, this uh podcast, the show on Facebook and YouTube. Um, if you're on Spotify or Apple, the simplest way is just to click the support this show link. It's just below any of the episodes. You can click there and they give you options for either supporting or subscribing, which really helps out a lot. Um, if you're on Facebook, uh it really helps if you just follow, if you like, share, and comment. I I love private messages and text, uh, but the more the show is interacted with, the better it is. And so that really helps out. If you could share that with everyone you know and then make comments on the episodes, that helps a lot as well. Um, if you're on YouTube, the easiest thing to do is to subscribe and share and comment. You can subscribe with the show, but then click the share button and put that on your social media pages and ask people to subscribe to the channel uh that is Dr. Nathan Lott. Now, we do have some really, really big news coming up in the next couple of days, maybe the middle of next week. Uh, this is going to be a huge ministry that we are going to be launching. And I hope it's something that uh my brothers and sisters of Christ will get behind and support. Um, and we're gonna fill you in on all of that next week. Just stay tuned and you'll be able to see what's going on. The easiest way to do all that is just to follow the Facebook page, uh, Nathan Lot, and you'll be able to see all of the things that are happening, and um, I think you're gonna be really excited in what we're what we're doing. Now, for the lesson, we walked all the way through Genesis chapter eight together over the last couple of lessons, and we saw that God remembered Noah and the wind moved the waters, and the ark came to rest, and the the raven went out and didn't return. The dove went out three times, the the olive branch was brought back, and Noah waited for God's word before stepping outside. And then uh on the word of God, Noah came out. And now we come to the final three verses of Genesis chapter eight, and they were among the most significant or important three verses in the entire book because what Noah does first, the very first act of man, after stepping off of the ark onto a new earth, tells us everything about who Noah was. And what God does in response, what he says, what he promises, what he commits to, tells us everything about who God is. Noah does not survey the landscape. Noah doesn't go and plant crops, he doesn't build a house, he doesn't organize a government, he doesn't go looking for other survivors. What Noah does, he builds an altar. The first structure erected on the new earth after the flood is a place of worship. And the smell of that worship rises to God, and God responds. And what he says in his response is one of the most theologically layered promises in all of Genesis. And so let's read this together. Genesis chapter 8, verses 20 through 22. Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. The Lord smelled the soothing aroma, and the Lord said to himself, I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth, and I will never again destroy every living thing as I have done, while the earth remains seed time and harvest, and cold and heat and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. In these three verses we see one altar, one aroma, one promise, and a world that will never be the same again. Now, let's start off by talking about the altar. This was not an altar to his own survival. This was not a monument to his own faithfulness, not a memorial to what he had endured. It was an altar to the Lord. Um, this is the defining act of Noah's life after the flood. And it is entirely consistent with everything we know about Noah. He walked with God, he obeyed what God commanded, he waited for God's word before leaving the ark. And the first thing he does on this new ground is to worship. There was one fourth century writer who wrote about this act saying, Consider how great was the virtue of this righteous man. He had just come through the most catastrophic event in history, and he emerged onto a world stripped of everything. And his first thought was not for himself, but it was for God. And he built an altar, he offered a sacrifice, he put God first in the new world just as he had put God first in the old. This is not a small observation. This is the mark of genuine faith. Genuine faith does not worship God only in prosperity, it doesn't worship God ever when just when everything is fine. Real faith worships God first on new, uncertain ground, with everything ahead still unknown, because worship is not a response to your circumstances. Worship is a response to who God is. Now, careful readers will notice something worth addressing here. This is not the first sacrifice in Scripture. In Genesis chapter 4, verse 3 through 4, it records Cain and Abel bringing offerings before the Lord. And Genesis chapter 3, verse 21 shows God providing animal skins, implying an animal death to cover Adam and Eve. But this is the first altar explicitly built and named in Scripture. In many modern churches, we have altars where people will go and pray. But consider what the word altar really means. The Hebrew word for altar comes from a root meaning to slaughter or to sacrifice. An altar is literally a place of slaughter, a designated set apart location where the offering is made and the blood is shed. The building of an altar is deliberate. It's a structured act of worship. Noah does not offer a spontaneous sacrifice on the ground where he stands. He builds a place, sets it apart, and designates it for God. This is the beginning of the long Old Testament tradition of building an altar that will run through Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and ultimately to the temple in Jerusalem where the altar stood at the center of Israel's worship. Now, next, Noah, it says that Noah took every clean animal and every clean bird and offered burnt offerings. Now we understand why God told Noah to bring seven pairs of clean animals. We raised that question back in the lesson on Genesis chapter 7, verse 2. Why seven pairs of clean animals when only one pair of each species was needed for preservation? This is why. The extra pairs were not for food. They were not for breeding surplus. They were meant for this moment, for the altar, for the offering. God provided for the sacrifice before Noah even knew the sacrifice would be offered. The seven pairs of clean animals in Genesis chapter seven were God's advanced provision for the worship that we would find in Genesis chapter eight, before the flood even began. God was already planning for what worship would look like on the other side. This is the kind of God that we serve. And Noah, without being instructed, takes of every clean animal and every clean bird, not reluctantly, not calculating the cost, but he gives generously from the very first moment of the new world. The burnt offering in Hebrew was the offering in which the entire animal was consumed. There was nothing that was held back. Everything was given. It's the idea of a total surrender in an offering to God. It's expressed in the complete burning of the sacrifice. And this is exactly what Noah's entire life had been about: a total, complete sacrifice. Everything that God had commanded, nothing held back from him. Now, notice the words here that the Lord smelled the soothing aroma. This language will raise a question for careful theological thinkers. Does God have a nose? Does God literally smell things? And this is what theologians call an anthropomorphic language. It describes God in human terms to communicate something true about his nature and a response. We saw the same thing in Genesis chapter 6, verse 6 when we read that God grieved in his heart. And so the soothing aroma is a Hebrew idiom that appears throughout the Mosaic sacrificial system. It means a pleasing, restful, satisfying response. And the so the sacrifice was received, the offering was acceptable, and God was pleased. Now, you have to contrast that with the ancient Near Eastern flood stories, and because it's a really totally different thing. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, which we've talked about extensively after the flood, the Babylonian gods needed the sacrifices that were made because they needed food. They were dependent on human offerings for their sustenance. The God of Genesis does not gather around Noah's altar like a hungry creature. He smells a soothing aroma. He is pleased, not fed. He responds in grace, not in desperation. The contrast is the entire difference between the God of the Bible and the God and all the every other God in the ancient world. The gods of Babylon needed humanity. The God of Genesis doesn't need anything. He chooses to be pleased by the worship of the hearts from those people whom he made. Now that leads us to the question asking why this particular sacrifice was acceptable. And here we need to be theologically careful. Why did God accept Noah's sacrifice? Was it the quality of the animals? Was it the completeness of the burning? Was it the act of sacrifice itself that produced God's favorable response? And the answer to those questions are no. The sacrifice was acceptable because Noah was a man of faith. We established that from Hebrews chapter 11 in our earlier lessons. It was by faith that Abel offered a better sacrifice than Cain. And the same principle applies here to Noah. The offering is the expression of the faith that comes from the heart, the total being of the man, not the cause of God's acceptance, but the fruit of it. And this is one of the most important distinctions in all of Old Testament theology. God was not bound by the mechanics of a sacrifice. God was not appeased by the right ritual correctly performed. God received the sacrifice of a man whose heart was turned toward him and whose life had demonstrated that turning consistently. Think about what's written in Isaiah. In Isaiah chapter 1, let's go to verse 11 through 13. Isaiah chapter 1, 11 through 13. It says, What are your multiplied sacrifices to me, says the Lord? I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle, and I take no delight in the blood of bulls, lambs, or goats. When you come to appear before me, who requires of you this trampling of my courts? Bring your worthless offerings no longer. So God rejected the sacrifices of Israel in Isaiah chapter one, not because the sacrifice was wrong, but because the hearts of the people were wrong. Noah's sacrifice was received because Noah's heart was right. And salvation has always been by grace through faith. Always. Noah was not saved by the building of the ark. Noah wasn't saved by the flood waters. And Noah wasn't saved by the sacrifice. Noah was saved by grace through faith. And the ark, the waters, and the sacrifice were all expressions of that faith. Consider what Paul wrote in Ephesians chapter 2 in verses 8 and 9, when he said, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. The principle was not an invented thing in the New Testament. It runs all the way back to Genesis. Now, next comes, in my opinion, one of the most remarkable phrases that we find in Genesis chapter 8, when we read, the Lord said to himself. The Lord said to himself, didn't say to Noah, he didn't say to the angels, he said to himself. What's happening is we are being granted access in these verses to the interior counsel of God, to what God says within himself, to the personal commitment he makes, not announced to the new world, but resolved within his own being. And this is an extraordinary literary and theological move by Moses in writing this. He is not reporting what God told Noah. He is reporting what God resolved within himself in response to the worship that he just received from Noah. And what God says to himself is the most important thing he has said since the beginning of the flood. The first part of God's interior resolution is, I will never again curse the ground on account of man. This is a direct reference back to Genesis chapter 3, verse 17, where it says, cursed is the ground because of you. God is not reversing that curse in its entirety. The toil, the thorns, the sweat, those consequences will remain. But God is committing to never again adding to the curse on the ground through the judgment of this scale. No more flood-level destruction, no more global uncreation. The ground will not be judged again in this way. And the reason God gives this for this promise is breathtaking. And here is the verse that stops most careful readers called it. It stops me every time I read it. That's what he says. For the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth. Read that again. For the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth. Now wait a second. In Genesis chapter 6, verse 5, before the flood, we saw that every intent of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually. And that diagnosis was the reason for the flood. And now after the flood, God says the intent of every man's heart is evil from his youth. It's the same diagnosis before the flood and after it. So the flood did not fix human nature. And this is one of the most honest statements in all of Genesis. And it raises a direct challenge to every utopian vision, every political program, every social revolution, every scheme for human improvement that promises to fix people from the outside. The most catastrophic global judgment in human history. 150 days of water prevailing, the elimination of every human being on earth except for those eight people. And the human heart came through the flood exactly what it was before. Broken, bent towards self, and evil from youth. And the water cleaned the earth, but the water didn't clean people's hearts. Now, here's where this gets really interesting. In Genesis chapter 6, verse 5, the same diagnosis was the reason for the flood. Every intent, only evil, therefore I will destroy. In Genesis chapter 8, verse 21, the same diagnosis is the reason for the promise. The intent of man's heart is evil from his youth, therefore I will never destroy this way again. Same diagnosis, opposite conclusion. Why? Because the flood proved that judgment alone does not solve the human problem. You can judge a corrupt world, you can wipe the slate clean, but you cannot wash away the corruption from the human heart with water. And God, in his infinite wisdom, draws this conclusion to himself. And because I see it, I will not try to fix it this way again. The promise of no more flood is the implicit announcement that a different solution is coming. No judgment from without, transformation from within. Now, Ezekiel chapter 36, verse 26, we've mentioned this a couple of times in previous lessons, when it says, Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I'll remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. The flood could not do what Ezekiel chapter 36 promises. The flood cleaned the earth. The new heart has to be given by the Spirit, and that will clean the person. And the one through whom the new heart comes, the one who makes all things new from the inside out, the same one, the whole story of Genesis has been pointing toward since Genesis chapter 3, verse 15. The promise in Genesis chapter 8, verse 21 is not just a promise. It's the implicit opening of a door toward a redemption that the flood could never accomplish, one that would save us in the future. Now, the second part of God's resolution confirms the first. And he says, I will never again destroy every living thing as I have done. This is the unconditional commitment that will be formalized and symbolized in Genesis chapter 9 with the rainbow covenant. And we'll look at that in our Genesis chapter 9 lessons coming up. But here, before the rainbow, before the formal covenant language, God makes the promise to himself. And a promise made by God to himself is the most unbreakable promise. There is no higher authority to appeal to, no external party who could release him from it. When God commits to himself, it is as certain as his own nature. Consider what the writer of Hebrews says. In Hebrews chapter 6, starting in verse 17, it says, in the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise that the unchangeableness of his purpose interposed with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us. Two unchangeable things, God's word, God's oath. In Genesis chapter 8, verse 21 is God making both to himself in the silence after the sacrifice, and the world has never been flooded again. Now, the final verse of Genesis chapter 8 is one of the most profound in the entire book. It says, While the earth remains, sea time and harvest, cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. While the earth remains, this phrase tells us something very important. God is not promising that the earth will last forever. He is promising that while it lasts, these rhythms will not cease. The earth is not eternal. It will be renewed. The New Testament is clear on that, that the earth will be renewed. And 2 Peter chapter 3, verses 10 through 13 describes the elements dissolving as a new heaven and new earth are coming. Revelation chapter 21, verse 1 says, the first heaven and the first earth pass away. But while the present earth remains, seed time and harvest will not cease. And so what God does here is He lists six paired rhythms. Seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night. Actually, it's four paired listed, but Moses describes them with a full range of natural regularity. And what this is is a covenant promise. God is committing to the regularity of the created order. What he's saying is the seasons will come, the harvest will follow the plantings, the sun will rise, the sun will set, and the world will operate according to predictable patterns. Before the flood, the world had been disrupted, the fountains of the deep burst open, the floodgates of heaven were open. And so the normal rhythms of creation were suspended for over a year. And now God says, I am restoring the normal rhythms. I am committing to their regularity for as long as the earth stands. Now, the point in this lesson where I want to go really dives deeper into Christian apologetics because Genesis chapter 8, verse 22 contains something that has enormous implications for the philosophy of science. Modern science depends on one foundational assumption, and this is the assumption. This assumption is not provable from within science itself. It is a philosophical presupposition that makes science possible. The question that every philosopher of science must answer is this Why should we expect the universe to behave regularly? Why should the laws of physics that operated yesterday still operate tomorrow? And this is known in philosophy as the problem of induction. It was the great Scottish philosopher, David Hume, who identified this in the 18th century. He pointed out that there is no strictly logical reason to assume that the future will resemble the past. We assume it will, but we cannot prove it. And the scientific worldview has no satisfying answer to Hume's problem. It simply assumes regularity because regularity is what we observe. But it cannot explain why the regularity should exist in the first place. I hope that you caught all that. Let me say it this way. Genesis chapter 8, verse 22 explains why regularity exists. God says, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease. God promised the regularity of the natural order. The reason that science works, the reason the laws of physics are constant, the reason we can run an experiment today and expect the same result tomorrow is because the God of Genesis chapter 8 committed to the regularity of his creation. The great founding fathers of modern science understood this. It was Kepler who discovered the laws of planetary motion who said that he was thinking God's thoughts after him. Isaac Newton, who formulated the laws of gravity, wrote more about theology than about physics and believed the universe's regularity was an evidence of a rational creator. Michael Faraday, who discovered electromagnetism, was a committed Christian who saw natural laws the fingerprint of God. James Maxwell, who unified electricity and magnetism and light, was a devout believer who connected the consistency of natural laws to the faithfulness of God. These were not primitive thinkers who had not yet discovered naturalism. They were the founders of modern science. And they built their scientific work on the foundation that Genesis chapter 8, verse 22 provides, from a God who promised that the created order would be regular, consistent, and discoverable. The secular scientist borrows, has to borrow, from the biblical worldview every time he or she assumes that tomorrow's experiment will follow the same laws as today. Genesis chapter 8, verse 22 is the reason that they're right when they assume that. Now, think about the ancient Near Eastern background, the seasons and the gods, the little g gods. In the ancient Near Eastern religious world, the seasons were not regular by covenant promise. They were the product of ongoing divine conflict. And in the Canaanite religion, the cycle of seasons was explained by an annual battle between Baal the storm god and Mott, the god of death. And when Baal defeated Mott, the rains came and the crops grew. But if Mott defeated Baal, drought, death, and famine followed. And so the seasons were not a promise, they were the outcome of a war between unstable divine forces. In the Egyptian religions, the flooding of the Nile was an action, the action of specific deities that had to be appeased and managed through ritual. The regularity of the harvest was dependent on the mood or the favor of competing divine forces. In the Mesopotamian religion, similar cosmic battles between gods produced or withheld the seasonal rhythms. Humanity was at the mercy of divine politics that could change at any moment. In Genesis chapter 8, verse 22, we see all of that demolished. There's no battle between gods. There's no need to appease the flood deity. There's no uncertainty about whether the seasons will come or the seasons will go. It's simply that God promised seed time and harvest shall not cease. The God who made the seasons governs them by covenant, not by conflict. This single verse overthrows the entire religious framework of every single civilization surrounding ancient Israel. And it provides the theological foundation for the scientific enterprise that would eventually emerge from the biblical worldview. Now, let's talk about what this passage speaks to us today. Genesis chapter 8, verse 21. The intent of every man's heart is evil from his youth. The flood didn't change this. And if the flood didn't change it, nothing will. Not education, not legislation, not social engineering, not wealth redistribution, not better systems. Our culture places enormous faith in external solutions to internal problems. Fix the environment, fix the systems, fix the structures, and the people will be better. They'll behave better. Genesis chapter 8, verse 21 looks at the most radical external reset in all of human history, a flood that eliminated every human being except for eight, and says the heart came through unchanged. So the problem is not the environment, the problem is the heart. And the only solution that addresses the heart is the is one the rest of the Bible offers. It's not a reset, it's not a judgment, it's a new birth, a new heart, a new creation from the inside. In John chapter 3, verse 3, Jesus answered them and said, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. He said, born again. He didn't say reformed or improved or reset by an external judgment. He said, born again, a new creation from within. And that's the answer to Genesis chapter 8, verse 21. And Jesus is the complete answer to the human condition of sin. Now, I want to draw one more application from this passage before we close out today. Noah's first act on new earth was worship. Not planning, not building, not surviving, but worship. And this sets a pattern that runs through the entire biblical narrative. Abraham enters the promised land and builds an altar. Genesis chapter 12, verse 7. Jacob wakes from his dream of the ladder to heaven and worships. Genesis chapter 28, verse 18. Moses leads Israel through the Red Sea and they sing, Exodus 15. David brings the ark back to Jerusalem and he dances. 2 Samuel chapter 6. Solomon finishes the temple and the glory of God fills it. 1 Kings chapter 8. The people of God have always responded to new ground with worship first. Because the one who has been brought through judgment by the grace of God knows that the first debt is not to the future. It's to the one who made the future possible. And here's the application. Whatever new ground you're standing on today, whatever crisis that you just came through, whatever floodwaters that are finally receding in your life, here's what I would challenge you to do. Before you do anything else, build an altar. Worship before you plan. Thank God before you survey what is left. Because the God who brought you through deserves the first thing on the new ground, not the leftovers that you have after everything else is figured out. Now, let me show you a few New Testament tie-ins here to help kind of emphasize what we just talked about. Notice the phrase, the soothing aroma that appears in Genesis chapter 8, verse 21. This becomes one of the most significant phrases in the entire Old Testament sacrificial system. It appears over and over, Leviticus and Numbers describing the burnt offerings, the grain offerings, the peace offerings, all of them described as a soothing aroma to the Lord. And the Apostle Paul uses it to describe the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. In Ephesians chapter 5, verse 2, he said, and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. A fragrant aroma. The same language, the same phrase from Genesis chapter 8 to Leviticus to Ephesians chapter 5. Noah's burnt offering on the altar of the new earth was the first in a long line of sacrifices that pointed forward to the one sacrifice that made all other sacrifices unnecessary. The soothing aroma that pleased God in Genesis chapter 8 was a preview of the pleasing sacrifice of the Son that satisfied the justice of God completely and permanently. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 14 says, For by one offering, for what? One offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. One offering, one soothing aroma, one sacrifice that closed the account that every altar since Noah had been making payments toward. Now let me bring all of Genesis chapter 8, as we close out this chapter. Let me bring all of Genesis 8 together. Genesis chapter 8 begins with God remembering, and it ends with God promising. And between the remembering and the promising, we see a wind that moves over the waters, an ark that comes to rest, a raven that goes out and doesn't return, a dove that goes out three times, an olive branch that comes back, a patient man waiting for God, God opening a door. Eight people in a world of animals step into new ground. And the first thing built on that new ground is an altar. Genesis chapter eight is the chapter of new beginnings, but it's also the chapter that is the most honest about what new beginnings cannot accomplish. They cannot change the human heart, which is why Genesis chapter eight is the chapter that most powerfully points forward to the gospel. The flood was the most extreme external judgment God ever sent, and it left the heart of man unchanged, which means what was needed was not a flood. What was needed was the cross, not water from outside, not blood from within, but a reset of the world, a new creation with the person. And then Jesus and his perfect blood being sacrificed, being shed for you and for me. And that's what Genesis chapter 8 is reaching for. And that's what the rest of the Bible delivers. Now, next week we will dive into Genesis chapter 9. We will look at the rainbow covenant, the institution of capital punishment, uh, the blessing of Noah's sons, the curse of Canaan, and what it means that the new world begins with the same broken man. Now, I hope that you've enjoyed today's lesson. And until next time, I hope that you have a blessed day.