Genesis 8

"Then Noah built an altar too th Lord.  He took some of every kind of clean animal and every kind of clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar."

Genesis 8:20

It seems a little silly of Noah to burn up all the animals that he just rescued from the flood, right?  In the last chapter, I was wondering why God required Noah to take seven pairs of the clean animals, but only one pair of the unclean animals.  Now, it makes sense.  God knew that Noah would be sacrificing some of each kind of clean animal, and He wanted to ensure that the sacrifices didn't make the clean animals go extinct.

I think it's impressive that Noah sacrificed these animals that he had worked so hard to rescue from God's wrath.  Noah seems to understand the true meaning of sacrifice - giving up something that he's worked so hard for, and that means so much to him.  How often do we ourselves give offerings of this nature?

It's easy for us to give when we have excess.  It's pleasurable to give to those in need.  However, these kinds of offerings aren't the utter sacrifice of burning the first-fruit of your labor.  A modern equivalent would be to cash your first paycheck at a new job and then burn the bank envelope with all the cash still inside.  A burnt offering doesn't give anything to anybody - it utterly destroys the sacrifice.