Sunday Morning Recap: An Ark, An Altar, An Aroma

WGM President Hubert Harriman brought the final address of the 2015 International Celebration of Missions. He said he felt deeply impressed to speak about Noah.

The Bible says that “Noah was a righteous man, the only blameless person living on earth at the time, and he walked in close fellowship with God.” (Genesis 6:9 NLT)

Noah, a builder, took God’s design for the ark and brought it to fruition. And there are three things we, too, must build.

The first is an ark. We associate the ark with the judgment of God, but the ark itself was not an instrument of judgment but of salvation. What motivated Noah was the coming judgment, and that should motivate us too. Christ is coming back, and it may be sooner than we think. In light of the lostness around us and of Christ’s coming again, Dr. Harriman challenged us to “build an ark.”

Second, we must “build an altar.” As soon as Noah was off the ark, he built an altar. Our lack of altars today is an indication of the loss of divine moments. When God moves in our lives, is speaking to us, and is doing a new thing in us, we must stop at that moment and build an altar or we will miss the most important moments in our lives that have to do with saving souls.

Third, we must “build an aroma.” The Lord smelled a pleasing aroma from the sacrifice on the altar Noah had built. We need to have the aroma of the presence of Christ in our lives. The aroma the world needs to smell is that we know Christ and have been with Him.

Without God’s Spirit, we can’t do any of this. But when His Spirit comes on us, we can do things we can’t do in our own power.

We must purpose to walk before God faithfully and without blame. We need to build altars and have the aroma of Christ in us.

Dr. Harriman’s prayer as we left the sanctuary was “God, please lead us out of here with purpose and the aroma of Christ.”