A Blessing And A Curse

Take your Bibles, if you would, and turn to Genesis chapter 9. Genesis chapter 9. Be reading verses 18 through the end of the chapter. The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed.

Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father.

Their faces were turned backward and they did not see their father's nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants, shall he be to his brothers. He also said, Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant. after the flood Noah lived 350 years all the days of Noah were 950 years and he died let's pray Lord God of heaven now we pray that you would open this text to us and remind us again as you have said that what was written was written for us upon whom the fulfillment of the ages has come that you'd not just mean this as history for us, but to teach us and to help us to live for the Lord Jesus today.

So as we once more explore the text of Scripture, we pray that you would use this to conform us to the image of Christ, that we might serve him well that we might know the grace that you have for your people Father grant that we pray for your glory and our good in Jesus name amen Several years ago, a dear pastor friend of mine... Hang on, I forgot the most important thing. There we go. several years ago a dear pastor friend of mine came to me with some of the issues he was facing in his church and things had gotten so hard for him that he considered resigning and starting over in another church well the problems weren't beyond solution none are but it would take a great deal of work and no doubt a great deal of heartache would be involved i told him there was one problem that he hadn't considered.

Something I had learned by experience when I have been tempted to quit. You may go somewhere new, but you'll be taking the same person with you. Now, have you ever experienced that? You've gone to a new place, but things did not change. Because the same person went there, the same person with all his faults, same person with all his weaknesses the same person with all his sins went to this place where everything was new a change of surroundings made no significant difference because no significant difference had been made in you you ever felt that? you ever done that? well that's what you find as you come to our text this morning the last chapter in the story of Noah's family They have entered a new world.

But soon something becomes evident. No significant changes have occurred in the people, even though they're in a new world. Now again, in this reboot of the world, you hear echoes of the original creation narrative. Now we saw some of them last week, you remember? We saw that as they start over, God blesses and commands them to be fruitful. to multiply and to fill the earth.

We saw that man has dominion over the earth and must subdue it. We see that God tells man what he can and what he cannot eat And we see that he still defines man as a creature in his image And as we continue in the text I don know if you noticed it or not in the text that we just read, you still see some of those echoes. You have the main character, like Adam, what?

Falling into sin. You see, again, what? Nakedness and shame. And lastly, what happens? there's a curse, just like there was with Adam. Now, again, this is more than just great literature. It's not that Moses is a great literary writer and he's just making those parallels.

He's making a point. It announces again that sin always corrupts, sin always brings alienation, and sin always brings shame. sin has not changed the world has but sin has not but again as in Eden you find hope because God through Noah promises again deliverance, rescue and relief so once more again we see God at work in the midst of sin to accomplish his redemptive purposes of bringing the seed of the woman so that the curse of sin will finally be conquered. Now we begin with the note of God's grace in verses 18 and 19.

He blesses Noah and all of his sons. He blesses his sons in particular because from them come all the peoples of the earth. He makes that point. And the point is God's been gracious. He has allowed them or empowered them to multiply and to fill the earth. And so it starts out with a note of the grace of God.

God blessed them. They did multiply. And they did fill the earth. And as we come back to chapter 10 next week, we're going to see all of that just lined out for us. All these nations that come from these three sons. But as we look at this text, as we leave that note of grace, we need to understand the remaining power of sin.

We need to understand the remaining power of sin. Now, as we read the text, as we read this narrative, Noah begins a new life And he begins a new life as an agriculturalist He began to be a man of the soil He wasn so before but now he turns to that He takes the fruit He decides to grow a vineyard He takes the fruit from the vineyard and he makes wine. And well, he also decides to drink his wine.

And because of that remaining corruption of sin, he does not exercise self-control and soon he is drunk and naked in his tent. Along comes Ham who finds out his dad is drunk and naked. And the question is always asked, what is it that Ham did to his father? Well, there seems to be some indication here that it was more than just laughing at his father.

The word seems to mean more than merely see, as if Ham stumbled on his dad and saw that he was naked. It has the idea of to look at searchingly. Now, maybe you've read stories of, or maybe you've even been a victim of what we might call voyeurism, right? The peeping Tom, the hole in the wall that they can see through, right? If you've ever been through that, you know what a terrible feeling that is.

It robs you of dignity and privacy and you feel violated. Well, it seems to be what happened here. Only it's the even more perverted homosexual voyeurism. That's about as far as we can make it out. That's about as far as we can take it. I think that's what's going on.

But besides that, that's really bad. Right? That's really bad to take pleasure in that what's worse is then he just he dishonors his father by that and then heaps up him heaps up his guilt by then talking about it to his brothers and so not only is he guilty of this perversion but in the process guilty of dishonoring his father in the whole process of this, dishonoring his father in a very horrible way.

Shem and Japheth refused to dishonor their father by even seeing him naked. And so they put a garment on their shoulders and they walk in backwards so they don't even see their father's naked. They loved and they honored their dad and they wanted to keep his shame as private as possible. You've thought about that? Someone has sinned, you keep that as private as possible.

They kept it as private as possible. They did not want him to feel any more ashamed than he would be. Even though he brought this on himself through drunkenness. They dearly loved him. And the only thing on their minds was to keep that shame from spreading. Now the point of this is that you can change the environment all you want, but the pernicious power of sin will still exert itself.

Even in this new world, they could not escape the sin that was still within them. The world had changed, but they had not. There was still that sin. That is why God put the safeguards in, as we saw last week. The safeguards against murder, and the safeguards against cruelty to animals, and all the things we saw last week. Why did God do that?

Because the people had not changed. And sin had to at least be restrained. But the hearts of men had not changed. Here is a new world, but without the eradication of sin, you most certainly travel the same road again. The environment changes, but the corrupting power of sin remains. What does that tell us?

The conquering seed must still appear. There must be rescue and relief from the curse of sin. It is still with them. It is still with us. You remember that Noah's father Lamech looked at his son and named him Noah, which means rest, in the hope that Noah would be the one who would rescue them from the curse. And what Noah did was to give respite from the curse.

They entered a new world where they were not surrounded by all this wickedness, right? So there was respite from the curse. But Noah was not the answer Someone else must yet come and conquer Satan seed Someone else must yet come and conquer sin Someone who will conquer this corrupting power. Now, where I grew up in Wisconsin, there were two boys club camps near us.

Camp Whitcomb and Camp Mason. And what they were for was they were to take the boys out of the city, which for us was Milwaukee, take them out of Milwaukee and bring them out to the country and bring them out to camp and give them life in the fresh air, in the hopes that this would change them. Why is it that gang members can spend a summer in the country and go back and do the same things over?

Right? How about rehab? Rehab, a lot of times, doesn't work. Why not? Because you can change the environment. You can even change your habits.

But you can't change your heart. Rehab never changes a heart, does it? It takes the power of Jesus to change a heart. Why do kids from the best homes who go to the best schools, who end up working for the best companies end up embezzling funds from those companies. Because it doesn't matter if you go to Dublin-Cothman. It doesn't matter if you go to the best schools in the state.

You're still someone who's corrupted and depraved by sin. And that doesn't change. No change of the outward environment will ever change the corrupting power of sin. There must be something. No, there must be someone else. And only through Jesus is sin conquered.

Only through Christ, who has freed us by His death from the tyranny of sin, can anyone change. it is only through christ that we begin to hate the things we once loved and to love the things we once hated it is only through this promised one that anyone will ever change and as we enter as we enter this new world with no one as family the one of the first things to become evident is you can change the environment but the environment never changes the heart Only Jesus can do that Well, let's go on. We need to understand the remaining hope of God's promise. For you see, after Noah becomes aware of Ham's perversion, he becomes angry.

And in his anger, and as a result of that anger, he pronounces a curse on Canaan and blessings on his two other sons. In a way, he prophesies the future of their descendants. In a way, it's his last will and testament. These are the only words of Noah that we find. And this is the last thing that we find about him. Now the question always comes up.

There's always two questions in this passage. Number one, what did Ham do? Number two, tell us we're not sure if you read this passage enough you say why does he curse canaan and not ham why is he cursing canaan it's a good question well here's here's one way of answering it and and there's a number of reasons why i think moses wrote it this way and why it happened this way who heard this story first who heard this story first to whom was this written originally.

Remember? Written to the Israelites on their way to Canaan. To do what? To take the land. To conquer it. If you will, to wipe out its inhabitants.

And to take that land. They were going to conquer the descendants of Canaan. and you notice twice in this text that ham is identified as the father of canaan twice right ham the father of canaan you see that in verse 18 and you see it in verse 22 ham the father of canaan now why is that there i think it's there because it's telling these people that are hearing it for the first time Ham is the father of the people that you know about. You know about Canaan.

Now, I really wrestled with this. Turn to Leviticus 18. I wrestled with this scripture reading Man what a great scripture reading this morning from the Old Testament right Wow Wasn't that edifying? And you know, I wrestled with that. I said, is that a good thing to have for the Old Testament reading? And the answer is, obviously yes.

Because this was read publicly at one time when it first was written. And we need to hear these things. what and and you almost recall when you heard these words and you're following along you're going wow did he really wow right you you were repelled repulsed you hated what you heard there this is what the Canaanites were doing this is and by the way we could have gone further up in the chapter but I figured you could only take so much you know there's a whole bunch that precedes this that goes on in more detail. But the point is, this is what these people were doing.

Do you realize, I don't know if you ever realized this, but half the stuff you get in archaeological digs, you don't see displayed in museums. You know why? It's really perverted. It is extraordinarily perverted what they dig up in the Middle East. Well, in the ancient world as a whole. A lot of perverted stuff that you never see.

Why? Because these people were unbelievably perverted. And one of the reasons why God sent His people into that land to wipe them out, and people struggle with that, is because they had become so perverted to the point of, you heard it read today, sacrificing your children to Molech. Molech was an idol. He had these huge hands. You heated these hands up until they were glowing red hot and you put babies in them.

That's what they were doing. And they were doing everything else sexual perversion, the sexual perversions that we read. And that's the reason why God sent His people in as an instrument of His judgment against their violence and immorality. Now, when they heard this, Ham, the father of Canaan, what do you think they're thinking? Oh, he is their ancestor then. and so there is this idea that Ham is the one who started the whole process of them becoming as perverted as they were we have to recognize as well that there is solidarity between the father and his descendants We have a connection to Adam, do we not?

Adam sinned, we bear the curse. It's the way it is. There's a solidarity between the past and the present, and between our ancestors and us. It also tells the people of Israel that they can have confidence in their conquest of Canaan. Why? Because it says, Canaan is cursed. and what?

He will be your servant. Do you understand why later on in the book of Numbers when they come to the Jordan and they send the spies in and the spies come back and say, oh, these people are too great. We can't conquer them. Do you understand why God was so angry with them? Because he had said here, the Canaanites are a cursed people. In other words, it'll happen.

You will conquer these people. And they didn't believe what? They didn't believe the word of God. They didn't believe it. They'd heard it right here. Right here is where they first heard it.

And they didn't believe the word of God. This also stands as a warning to them. As we read in Leviticus, if they ended up being like those original inhabitants, what would happen? the land would vomit them out. They too would be cursed. It stands as a warning to them not to become like the people that they were going to displace. So that's why you read that Noah curses Canaan.

That's why Noah curses Canaan. Now we need to understand what Noah says about his sons. if we're going to understand this text and what it means to us. Canaan will, in his descendants, serve his brothers. He will be an abject slave to them, a servant of servants. He will be a slave of them because he is enslaved to his own perversions and lusts. The slave becomes a slave. now when you see Shem what do you see different there I didn notice this before but it always interesting to slow down and look at the text Do you see Who is blessed Who blessed It's not Shem, is it?

Who is it? The Lord. Isn't that interesting? Blessed be the Lord. Blessed be Yahuwah, the God of Shem. And let Canaan be his servant.

Again, Canaan is his servant. But it's interesting to notice that Shem is identified by his relationship to the Lord. And it uses his covenant name here. The Lord, this one, this one of the whole pantheon of gods that are proposed out there. This one, Yahuwah, the covenant God, the covenant keeping God, is the God of Shem. Not meaning there were other gods, but that this true God is the God of Shem.

He is the one that is identified as his God. The creator of life and the Lord of history commits himself to Shem. By the way, we get a word in our language from Shem's name. You know what it is? Semite. The light bulb should be going on.

Shem is the father of what people? The Hebrews. Alright? He's the father of the Hebrews as we're going to see. But the point I'm trying to make is God indicates for the first time that He has in His sovereign grace, for no other reason than His grace, and the sovereignty of His grace, has chosen the line of Shem to be the source of His blessings. that is the woman's conquering seed is going to come through this line.

The line of Shem. The ruler of all the earth will come through His line. Because the Lord is the God of Shem. And He has chosen Shem. Listen, for no other reason than He chose Shem. His sovereign grace opens up blessings for the world.

Alright? So he chooses Shem. He also blesses Japheth again. As God has already said to Canaan he will also serve Japheth But God promises to enlarge Japheth Now Japheth descendants are what we typically would call today Europeans and Americans Has he enlarged Japheth's tribe? Yeah, in a major way. But notice this.

Let him and let him dwell in the tents of Shem. They will dwell in Shem's tents. they will be blessed by Shem. They're in a place of blessing. And that happens in the proclamation of the Gospel. And the Jephthites, us, inherit the blessings of this covenant God through the Gospel that comes to us through Shem. However, it's interesting to note that in all of history, The Shemites never had complete military or political victory over the Canaanites and their degrading and immoral practices.

Because the victory is ultimately spiritual, and God fulfills it in the person of Jesus Christ. this is where those things are ultimately and finally and forever conquered these perversions that so that so run through our culture can only, only, ever be finally and completely conquered in Jesus Christ yesterday as Beck and I were returning home from a painting job we had we were listening to NPR and the first thing that struck us was this guy, these two guys talking, were talking about parenthood and it just seemed like wow how dark and lost these two are talking about parenthood How do you know when to push them out? How do you know when to protect them? How do you know?

You've got to get this balance. Oh, it's so paralyzing, and on and on and on, how terrible that was. And we're both thinking and saying to each other, these folks are lost. I mean you know the Bible tells us gives us all kinds of things to tell us what to do But what struck me too is all of a sudden you know one of the guys says yeah you know and I look back at my growing up and what happened to me and the choices I made and the bullying I went through and the fact as if I was straight, maybe things would be different.

And I'm going, whoa, whoa, back up the truck here. Wait a minute. Wait, we're talking about parenthood. Now we're talking about gay. Now we're, then he goes on to talk about he and his husband and their little son. It's like, wow, this is amazing.

No wonder there's so much confusion. And as I'm sitting there listening to this and thinking about it, and you know, sometimes you can lose heart and despair and say, our culture is going down the toilet. Man, how long is it going to be before, you know, and I can come up with all kinds of scenarios. And then I had to start thinking this. The gospel is the only thing that's going to conquer people's hearts.

And these perversions that we see running rampant through our culture will only be conquered by Jesus, not by laws, right? Not by laws, not by power, not by political power, but only through the gospel of Jesus. And he says to us here in this blessing that the gospel is going to go out. And the gospel will conquer. And the gospel will bring blessings. And once more, we have to see that God determines to accomplish his redemptive purpose, even in the midst of sin.

And that's where we stop with Noah's family. Noah dies. Isn't that interesting? After, remember, this all started with, these are the descendants of Seth. And boom, boom, right? A few weeks ago, he died and he died.

He lived this many years and he died. He lived this many years and he died. Noah. Whoa, what's going to happen with Noah? New world. Wow, that's great.

Noah dies. Noah dies. It's a new world, but the curse of sin is still there. And yet, and yet there is one coming who will conquer that curse God's redemptive purposes will be accomplished no matter what happens even in the darkest point of human history God will accomplish his redemptive purposes in the Sunday school today Pastor Josh was relating something that he had heard.

Well, we had both heard it at our fire conference. One of the speakers said this, we Christians, we're always begging for a seat at the table. Guess what? Our King owns the table! So let's quit begging for a seat and just start talking. Right?

Now, we can't make anyone listen to us, but we can talk. And we can speak of the one who has come in fulfillment of God's redemptive purposes to accomplish his purposes. And so the story of Noah ends with blessing. With blessing. Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem. Father thank you for your word this morning as we come to this table we reminded that You did bless the line of Shem And You blessed it with the Lord Jesus Christ the conquering King, who by His grace and by the power of the Gospel is conquering people's hearts.

Oh Father, as we come to this table, remind us again that even in the darkest points, even when sin seems to abound, the Lord Jesus Christ is there. and that your redemptive purposes will find fulfillment. Father, we thank you for the promise that we've seen today that even when the one who is called righteous falls, you will not be thwarted in your plan. Help us now, Lord, as we come to this table and as we continue our worship to look to you the One who is mighty in power and mighty in grace.

We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.