Today's Devotional

The Lord smells the pleasing aroma of Noah’s offering and makes a promise to Himself: “I will never again curse the ground because of man… While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest… shall not cease.” The reason He gives is startling — “the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” The very thing that had brought the flood now becomes the ground of His patience. Kent Keller brought the whole account to its point right here. “It wasn’t really the ark that covered them and saved them,” he said. “It was the grace of God.” Noah built the boat in obedience, but a hull of wood never earned him his rescue. From first to last, the flood story is about a God who saves, by grace, the people who could not save themselves. That is why Reformation Sunday and Genesis 8 belong side by side. We are not kept afloat by the quality of our work, our sacrifice, or how fervently we manage to worship. As Paul writes, we are saved by grace through faith, and not by works, so that no one can boast. Noah’s ark and Noah’s altar both point past themselves to the mercy that was holding him. So stop inspecting whether your ark is well-built enough to save you. It never was. God has sent His Son, and it is His blood that covers us and brings us safely through. Rest this week in that: your rescue does not hang on your performance under pressure. It hangs on the grace of God, made certain in Christ — and that grace does not cease.