Sermon
for Pentecost 18, October 12, 2025
Genesis
8:15-22 15God
spoke to Noah. He said, 16“Go
out of the ark—you,
your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you. 17Bring out with you every living
thing of every sort that is with you, all flesh, including birds, livestock,
and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, so that they may swarm over
the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.” 18Noah went out with his sons, his
wife, and his sons’ wives along with him.
19Every animal, every creeping thing, every bird, and whatever
swarms on the earth went out of the ship, species by species. 20Noah built an altar to the Lord
and took from every clean animal and every clean bird and offered burnt
offerings on the altar. 21The
Lord smelled the pleasant aroma. The Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the
soil anymore because of man, for the thoughts he forms in his heart are evil
from his youth. Neither will I ever
again strike every living thing, as I have done. 22While the earth remains,
seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall
not cease.”
(EHV)
Give
thanks for God’s faithfulness.
Dear
fellow redeemed,
Imagine the difficult challenges
Noah and his family faced both before the flood arrived while he built the ark
and again during the tremendous downpour that drowned the whole world except
for the people and creatures aboard the ark.
While Noah was building the ark, he surely was abused with mockery for crafting
such a great ship in a world that didn’t see rain or storms. During the flood, the strain of caring for
such a vast array of animals had to be taxing beyond our imagining. We may well wonder how it was possible that
so few people could build that large structure and then gather the supplies to
care for the eight-person crew and all those many animals and birds. The answer is that the Lord always provides,
which is why it was appropriate for Noah to Give thanks for God’s
faithfulness.
God
faithfully protected Noah and his family from destruction in the flood and
provided for all those creatures. God
faithfully carried out every last detail of the judgment He had told Noah was
coming. Yet, while carrying out His
judgment on that wicked world, God provided the means by which eight people and
all kinds of animals, birds, and creeping things were preserved to repopulate
the earth. Now, I would suppose that
Noah was very thankful just to be off the ark and no longer burdened with the
care of such a vast floating zoo.
However, Noah was especially thankful that God was faithful in keeping
His promise to provide a Savior for the world and the promises God made at that
point in time. Noah’s offering of those
sacrifices shows that he was still very much trusting God for everything. He had seen God’s faithful care. He had no doubt it would continue.
Today,
we live in a world beset with what we might call alarmism. Every change in weather, market, or
circumstance is often accompanied by dire warnings that this trouble will lead
to a disastrous future, or perhaps even the end of life as we know it. That is especially true among those who don’t
take seriously God’s warning concerning Judgment Day. While prophets of doom terrorize people with
threats of looming Armageddon, they seldom are concerned that God will bring
judgment upon the unbeliever. Noah was
eyewitness to God’s faithfulness to His warnings and in faith, Noah offered up
burnt offerings of thanksgiving for God’s faithfulness in keeping His promises.
As
those sacrifices burned and the aroma of the smoke lifted up into the sky, God
declared His promise to continue to provide for us all until that last
day. The Lord said in his heart, “I
will never again curse the soil anymore because of man, for the thoughts he
forms in his heart are evil from his youth.
Neither will I ever again strike every living thing, as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and
harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”
Thus
did God promise to care for mankind until the end of time, yet you and I might
well confess our guilt in failing to trust God’s promise as we should. We too can be troubled with worries when the hardships
of this world seem overwhelming. When
the clouds pour out too much rain, how often we tremble in fear of the damaging
floods. When the rain fails to fall in a
timely manner, how often we worry about the fields producing enough for our
daily bread. When Satan’s hoards
surround us, how often we fear embarrassment for the faith we hold in
Jesus. How often we remain silent when
we could speak boldly of what Jesus has done to rescue us from sin, death, and
the devil. Then, when the yawning mouth
of the grave appears before us personally, how often even believers wonder
about whether God’s promises really are true.
The
Bible reports that already before the flood, “Noah was a righteous man, a
man of integrity in that generation.
Noah walked with God.” (Genesis 6:9)
This doesn’t mean Noah was without sin because God’s Word is true that “all
have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) What it does mean is that Noah was trusting
the promise handed down through his forefathers from Adam and Eve, that “The
Lord God said to the serpent: ‘Because you have done this, … I will put
hostility between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head, and you will crush
his heel.’” (Genesis 3:14-15) Noah
trusted that God would send a Savior to rescue him from the darkness and evil
of this world. Because God was choosing
to save Noah and his family from the destructive flood, Noah had to recognize
that God would carry out that promise through his own descendants, and like
Abram later, Noah believed, and it was counted to him as righteousness. Thus did Noah Give thanks for God’s
faithfulness.
For
you and me as well, God has remained ever faithful. Just as we were shown this year with a
bountiful harvest even in the face of some challenging weather, God continues
to provide seedtime and harvest, summer and winter, and He will do so until
Jesus returns to judge the world.
However, much more important that even that, God was and will be
faithful to the promises He made throughout the Scriptures of a Savior from
sin—a Savior born of the seed of a woman, a Savior who would be holy and
gentle, righteous though despised by men, a Savior innocent as the most pure
dove who would bear the sins of the world as “God made him, who did not know
sin, to become sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in
him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)
The
world in its unrighteousness has remained skeptical about Jesus, but in spite
of the objection of sinners who refuse to believe, the Holy Spirit continues to
send out messengers who deliver the Good News of Jesus’ life and death on our
behalf so that the Spirit can work faith in those God chooses to believe. Because you are here, hearing the Word of God
and putting your trust in it, you can be confident that God chose you to be His
own dear child by faith. He chose you to
believe in His Son, Jesus, and receive forgiveness and life. He chose to cover you with Christ’s
righteousness so that you are counted worthy to stand in God’s presence and be
welcome in His heavenly mansions for eternity.
In
all this, you had no part in making it happen.
Rather, God was faithful to His promises and to His election of you as
one who would believe, just as St. Paul wrote to the Ephesian congregation, “He
did this when he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, so that
we would be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he predestined us to be adopted as
his sons through Jesus Christ.” (Ephesians 1:4-5)
You
might say that every time we gather in worship before the altar of our God,
every time we confess our sins, and every time we partake of the Lord’s Supper,
we Give thanks for God’s faithfulness.
We give thanks primarily simply by believing His promises.
Concerning
faith in Jesus, the writer to the Hebrews wrote, “By faith Noah, when he was
warned about things that had not been seen before, built an ark, in reverent
fear, in order to save his family. By it
he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that is by
faith.” (Hebrews 11:7) It was faith
worked in Noah by the Holy Spirit that got him to commit himself to building an
ark and then led him onto that boat that would protect him and his family from
the deadly flood. Likewise, it is faith,
worked in you by the power of the Holy Spirit in Word and Sacrament, that
brought you into the saving vessel of God’s Church, so that you won’t have to
face destruction in the judgment on Judgment Day.
In
light of the momentary troubles this world continually throws against us, and
even in the face of persecution and death, the same writer to the Hebrews
encourages us:
Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, who
is the author of our faith and the one who brings it to its goal. In view of the joy set before him, he endured
the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of
God’s throne. Carefully consider him who
endured such hostility against himself from sinful people, so that you do not
grow weary and lose heart. (Hebrews 12:2-3)
When
Noah came to faith, everything Jesus would do to carry out God’s saving plan
remained a mystery ahead of him. Noah
would never know all the good things that were to come until he entered heaven
believing God’s promise. You and I have
the history of all the prophets foretold and the fulfilment of those prophecies
in Jesus. Everything God prophesied to
rescue us from condemnation has been fulfilled in His beloved Son. God has been and continues to be ever faithful.
To
the recalcitrant Israelites, God spoke through His prophet, Malachi, “Certainly
I, the Lord, do not change. That is why
you, sons of Jacob, have not come to an end.” (Malachi 3:6)
So
that many more sinners may hear and believe, Judgment Day has not yet
come. Still, to you and me who have been
counted righteous through faith in Jesus as our Savior, the Lord declares, “Look,
I am coming soon and my reward is with me, to repay each one according to what
he has done. I am the Alpha and the
Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. Blessed are those who wash their robes, so
that they may have the right to the Tree of Life and so that they may enter
through the gates into the city.” (Revelation 22:12-14) God has been faithful to His promise to
deliver us from sin and death. He
brought us into His kingdom through the cleansing water and Word of Baptism,
and it is in that Sacrament that we were washed and dressed in the
righteousness that makes us His dear ones by faith. That is among the many reasons why today and
every day, we Give thanks for God’s faithfulness. Amen.
After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who called you into his eternal glory in
Christ Jesus, will himself restore, establish, strengthen, and support
you. To him be the glory and the power
forever and ever. Amen.
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