Genesis 8:20

“Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.”  Genesis 8:20

Just the fact that Noah willing, and without needing a command, sacrificed animals when there was a clearly short supply to God, shows how great his faith in God was.  He didn’t stop and worry that by killing and offering one of these last animals of their kind he might possibly doom that species to extinction.  Instead, he made the offering and trusted that God would provide and keep that species alive and thriving.

When the Bible tells us that God spoke to Noah, it uses the Hebrew “Elohim” while, here in verse 20, it uses the Hebrew “Yahweh”.  Yahweh, or the Great I Am, seems to be the more familiar name of God, while Elohim is more of a descriptive title of what God is.  So in verse 15 it is saying that the almighty, all powerful creator of the universe is speaking to Noah, while in this verse it is the personal deity that Noah has a personal relationship with that he is offering sacrifices to.

It is amazing that any human can have any sort of personal relationship with the most powerful being in existence, the god that created the universe.