The Tale of Two Sins Genesis 9:18-29

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One fascinating aspect of the Bible is how it records the sins of God's people.
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The Bible records commendable parts of people's lives, but it also reports the ugly.
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Let me name a few. The life of Moses is described in detail from Exodus through Deuteronomy.
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We see some wonderful things written about Moses, but his sins are also included.
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He murdered an Egyptian man who was assaulting one of his people. He questioned whether he had the ability to take the
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Israelites into the promised land, and this showed his doubt and his weakness and his lack of trust in the
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Lord. Moses later struck the rock twice and disregarded God's instruction.
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The earthly punishment for Moses' sin was that he would not be able to lead
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Israel into the promised land. Which was a great hope that they had. About 500 years later, the sins of another man are highlighted.
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The sins of King David. The Bible describes David as a man after God's own heart.
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There is no question that David was a godly man, but the Bible highlights his great sins.
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The most notable is David's sin with Bathsheba. He committed adultery with her, and to make things worse, he sent her husband
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Uriah to the front lines of the battlefield to be killed. You might wonder, how could
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David have possibly been a true believer in God if he did such a horrible thing?
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But the reality is that David is indeed a godly man. The scripture tells us that, and it records many of his good works.
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But one thing that is clear is that he was a godly man who did some shameful things along the way.
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The last man I will mention is the Apostle Peter. Peter was a man who would be martyred for the faith.
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At the end of the Gospel of John, Jesus predicted that Peter would die as a martyr, and he courageously did.
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But during the ministry of Jesus, Peter's sins are painfully described.
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Jesus told the disciples at the Last Supper that all of the disciples would fall away. Peter told him, even though they all fall away,
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I will not. Later that night, as Jesus had been arrested, a servant girl, someone who could not be less intimidating, asked him if he knew
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Jesus. Peter denied Jesus three times. In the third denial, he said,
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I do not know this man of whom you speak. This was humiliating for Peter.
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And the Bible highlights his sin. I could go on and on with other godly people in the
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Bible, but these are three examples of the sins of godly people highlighted in scripture. Now, there is a difference that we must understand between the sins of believers and the sins of unbelievers.
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There is a difference. The sins of believers are forgiven, while the sins of unbelievers are not.
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In our sermon today in Genesis, we are going to see the sins of two men. One is a godly man,
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Noah, and the other is ungodly, one of his sons. And so we're continuing our sermon series through Genesis, and today we're at the end of Genesis chapter 9.
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We're going to be looking at verses 18 through 29. The title of the sermon is
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The Tale of Two Sins. And our big idea is the contrast between the sins of a believer and the sins of an unbeliever is enormously significant.
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The contrast between the sins of a believer and the sins of an unbeliever is enormously significant.
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And there's two reasons why. The first reason is when the righteous sin, they are still
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God's people. What we saw last week is that God makes his covenant with mankind that he will never again destroy the earth by a flood.
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The sign of this covenant is a rainbow, so that every time a rainbow shows up in the sky, the Lord is reminded of the covenant that he made with Noah.
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The beginning of Genesis 9 is starting over for the human race. God told
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Noah and his family to be fruitful and multiply. The Lord repeated to them that humans also have dominion over the animals
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These two directives that God gave Noah and his family are the same directives he gave to Adam and his wife when they were in the garden.
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So as the human race is starting over, the Lord repeats this. We also saw that the
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Lord gave some new commandments. They now had permission to eat animals because at this point in history, sin had come into the world and there's death.
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And so God gives them permission to kill animals and to eat animals. And after addressing this permission and the prohibitions around it, the
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Lord instructs them on murder. In verses 5 and 6 of Genesis 9, we were told that if a murderer takes a life, then his life should be taken.
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Now in our sermon today, we are in the post -flood days. What we are going to see in the following verses is that there are two sins committed.
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The first by Noah and the second by one of his sons. In verse 18, we are reminded once again who the sons of Noah were.
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The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
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Ham was the father of Canaan. So these sons were Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
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We learned in previous weeks that there were a total of eight people on the ark. Noah and his wife, these three sons, and their wives.
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And you'll notice here that there is an editorial note in verse 18 that gives us a hint that this narrative today is focused on a conflict between Noah and his son
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Ham. As the three sons are mentioned only, Noah's son Ham has his son mentioned in the parentheses.
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We do not know how much time has elapsed since the Lord commanded Noah and his family to be fruitful and multiply.
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At this time, Noah and his wife were too old to have children. So this command in Genesis 9 -1 to be fruitful and multiply was primarily directed at Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
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At this point, as verse 18 suggests, these three sons probably already had children.
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Verse 19 makes it clear that these three sons and their wives are the ones who are populating this restarted world.
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This is what verse 19 says. These three were the sons of Noah and from these, the people of the whole earth were dispersed.
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What we will see later on this month when we continue our Genesis series after Christmas is the mass dispersion of the human race all over the world.
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And it came from these three sons of Noah. Ancestry has become a big topic as of late and it's fascinating.
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And the reason it's become popular, I think, largely is because of ancestry .com. A lot of people are using that. People are interested in where their family came from and how they came to be.
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And it is common for families to desire their family heritage to continue through offspring.
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This keeps the family legacy going. It is interesting how in England, the royal family that we see today with Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles, Prince William, and Harry, etc.,
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that these people are related to the famous English royalty of the medieval years.
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There is a certain pressure in this family to keep the royal line going. But you want to talk about pressure?
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Shem, Ham, and Japheth had pressure to populate the earth because if they couldn't have children, the human race would cease.
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And what we will see, though, is that they did have children. They had lots of children and then eventually all these peoples dispersed all over the earth.
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And we'll see that in a couple weeks. But now in verse 20, we see Noah's new occupation.
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Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. His occupation for several years was obviously building an ark.
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So he would have been like a carpenter, like Sean. Now he is a gardener. After the flood, we can see that the earth became fruitful again.
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And one of the things that Noah is growing are grapes. This is where we see the first sin of Noah mentioned.
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Up to this point, the Bible has described Noah's righteousness. But that changes here.
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And we see this in verse 21 for the first time in the narrative about him. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent.
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The Lord has designed it so that when one drinks in excess of alcohol, the brain of that person becomes impaired.
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This leads one to humiliate him or herself. And this is precisely what Noah does here.
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Noah is humiliating himself by lying naked on the floor of his tent. This is really sad when you think about it.
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And it is sad for a number of reasons. When someone humiliates him or herself through drunkenness, it is difficult to see.
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But when this happens to a godly man or a godly woman, it's even more difficult to see. As I mentioned in the introduction, the
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Bible highlights the sins of godly people. And I believe this is so to show that none is righteous.
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As the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 3 .10, there is none righteous, not even one. Only Jesus is without sin.
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The Bible makes it clear that the God -man Jesus was completely set apart from all evil. Hebrews 4 .15
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says specifically that he is without sin. Noah, a righteous man, has his sin highlighted here.
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This is the same man that was described glowingly just a few chapters earlier.
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Genesis 6 .9 described him as a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.
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During the whole flood narrative, we saw that this description of Noah was true. He was a faithful man.
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Now the author Moses highlights a dark moment for Noah. He gets drunk and lies naked in his tent, bringing shame upon himself.
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As we look at the life of Noah, this should give us hope as we walk with the Lord. The same things that were said of Noah are said of us who are followers of Jesus.
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You are considered by God to be righteous, as you are counted righteous in Christ.
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You are blameless in this generation, and you are considered one who walks with God.
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Yet, you too have moments in your life, and I have moments in my life, that we are not proud of.
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When we think of the sins of our past, or sins we still fight today, it is shameful and humiliating to think about them.
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It truly is. This sin of Noah does not change God's overall evaluation of the man.
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It doesn't change his standing with God. Noah does not become ungodly because of this sin.
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No, the words described of him in Genesis 6 -9 is a righteous man, blameless in his generation, and one who walks with God, still hold true.
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This is also true of all of you here today, who have a sincere relationship with Jesus.
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God knows that when we come into a saving faith in Christ, we have a long way to go. If you belong to Jesus today, you are in the middle of this process known as sanctification.
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This means that God is gradually making you holy. As you go through your life, little by little, day by day, he makes you more like himself.
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No Christian is without sin. This is what 1 John 1 -8 says. If we say we have not sinned, this is in the present tense, if we say we have not sinned, we deceive ourselves.
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And the truth is not in us. If you can believe this, there are actually people out there who claim the name of Christ, who say that they are now without sin, that they have reached a point where they don't sin anymore.
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And as 1 John 1 -8 says, these people are not saved. They're not saved people because the truth is not in them.
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If we say we have not sinned, the truth is not in us. But 1 John 1 -9 describes the life of a
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Christian. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
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The Christian life is one of continual repentance. True followers of God are those who gradually grow over time.
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They grow in holiness. And as my old pastor used to say, it is not the perfection of your life, but the direction of your life.
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Not the perfection of your life, but the direction of your life that counts. The Christian life is one of continual repentance and growth.
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And my old professor once said, it is not that you are sinless, but you do sin less.
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The author Moses highlights the sin of Noah to show that he was a sinner and he needed a savior just like we do.
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And this should encourage us greatly. God forgives the sins of the righteous.
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This is the first reason why the contrast between the sins of the righteous and the sins of the unrighteous is enormously significant.
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When the righteous sin, they are still God's people. And they are still
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God's people because there's this continual repentance and this holiness that is being played out.
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The second reason why the contrast between the sins of the righteous and the sins of the unrighteous is enormously significant is when the unrighteous sin, they are still
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God's enemies. When the unrighteous sin, they are still God's enemies.
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While the Bible highlights the sins of the righteous like Noah, it also highlights the wickedness of mankind in general.
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That is what we will see in the second point. Now, we do not know a ton about Ham, Noah's youngest son.
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One thing we do know and that has been made clear in Genesis is that righteous lines are typically passed down from generation to generation.
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We saw this with the righteous line of Seth and the wicked line of Cain because as a whole, the people who came from Seth's line were righteous and as a whole, the people who came from Cain's line were unrighteous.
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And I will explain this more in a bit. But first, we will see that Ham's sin is not like the sin of his father. Noah's sin is the sin of a godly man while Ham's is the sin of an ungodly man.
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And we'll see his sin here in verses 22 and 23. Their faces were turned backward and they did not see their father's nakedness.
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Noah is already in a humiliating situation. He is lying on the floor of his tent drunk and naked.
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And at this point, only God knows his sin. But now his sin is going to be made public.
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There's something about private sins becoming public that makes things even worse.
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The shame is already there with private sins, but the shame is added all the more when it becomes public.
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And we've seen this in our culture recently over the last several months. These sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations that have come out against lots of different men.
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Men in Hollywood, men in the media, politicians. And this has been an alarming thing to see.
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And one thing we must understand is that these sins were known by God, but now they're being made public.
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And the shame is enormous for the person who these claims are against, if indeed the claims are true.
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Sins are shameful when done in private, because God sees all sins. But when we sin, we sin against God.
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Public sins add to the shame that is already there. And this is part of the reason why
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Ham's sin is so horrible here. He makes the sin of a godly man public, and he does it in the totally wrong way.
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And I'll mention that here in a little bit. But what else makes Ham's sin horrible is his disregard of honoring his father.
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And this is fitting because actually in Sunday school today, we talked about the fifth commandment, honoring your parents.
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The Bible makes clear that honoring your parents is of utmost importance. The fifth commandment tells us to honor our father and mother.
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Ham did not do this. Implied in this verse is that Ham laughed and mocked his father by showing him to his brothers.
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And we can draw this out of here because of the response that we'll see from Noah in a little bit.
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How angry he was at Ham. He did the opposite of honoring his father.
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He humiliated him. Shem and Ham were so troubled by this that they had to walk backwards to cover their father with a garment.
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I mentioned it a little bit ago that a common theme in the Old Testament is that unrighteous lines tend to lead to unrighteous people in the future.
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Ham is the beginning of an unrighteous line. And from his line would come the people of Canaan.
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The people of Canaan came from Ham's son Canaan, who is highlighted in this text in verse 18.
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And then we'll see in verse 25 here in a bit. Now the nation of Israel does not start until Abraham.
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He is the father of the nation. But Moses who writes this is setting the stage for how things came to be for the nation of Israel.
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Which is why the author is highlighting these particular details. The people of Canaan who came from Ham were enemies of Israel.
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God would later command Joshua to wipe out these people because their idolatry was great and their sins were hideous.
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And God did not want Israel to intermarry with these wicked people. So we can conclude from all this information that Ham was a wicked man.
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His sin is different from the sin of Noah. Noah's sin is the sin of a righteous man, a sin that is forgiven, a sin that is repented of.
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Ham's sin is the rebellious sin of an unbeliever. Ham is not a child of God.
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It is worth noting that the attempt of an unbeliever to discover and reveal the sins of a righteous man or woman is not a noble thing.
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The motivation of the unrighteous in exposing the sins of the righteous is not motivated by holiness. The goal is that they want to show that this godly person has faults in order to justify their own sin.
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And to attempt to take away their shame. And here is an excellent quote by 16th century theologian
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John Kelvin when describing Ham exposing his father's sin. It is probable that Ham thus perversely insulted his father for the purpose of acquiring for himself the license of sinning with impunity.
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We see many such at this day who most studiously pry into the faults of holy and pious men in order that without shame they may precipitate themselves into all iniquity.
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They even make the faults of other men an occasion from hardening themselves into a contempt for God.
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Kelvin said this in the 16th century and this is so true in our day today.
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One thing that's really alarming is that when these sins come out people point their finger and they say, oh look, look how horrible this person is.
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What they fail to see is the darkness of their own heart. What these sins should do is point people to Jesus Christ.
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And that's not the goal of an unbeliever pointing out the sin of a godly person.
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Their goal is to justify their own sin. We see the goal of Ham exposing the sin of his father is not a holy desire.
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Rather he's probably doing this to give himself a license to keep on sinning. We see this all the time in our day.
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The world wants to expose the sins of the church. They want to show that these righteous people aren't any different than anyone else.
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In order to justify their own sins and take away their shame, whenever a significant leader in the church falls this is what happens.
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But God will judge the sins of those who enjoy pointing out the sins of believers just like Ham.
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Unlike Noah and all godly people, their sins are not forgiven.
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They remain enemies of God. What Ham should have done is cover his father's nakedness without telling anyone.
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That's what he should have done. The godly thing to do would have been to approach his father in private to address the sin of drunkenness that he found him in.
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Ham did nothing close to this. As Noah awakes from his sleep and his drunkenness leaves, he is rightfully angry.
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This is what he says in verse 24. When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him.
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We can assume because Noah was a righteous man that he felt sorry for his sin.
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That's not specifically highlighted in the text. But we know enough about Noah from his life that we can draw fairly that implication.
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He deserves the benefit of the doubt. But when he awakes, he is especially angry because his son enjoyed exposing his humiliation to his brothers.
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His son Ham enjoyed making this private sin public. And Noah delivers a curse to his son.
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Verse 25. He said, cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.
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Did you see those strong words? Not just a servant, but a servant of a servant. He asked the
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Lord that would happen to Canaan. This should not be seen as a prophecy that will be fulfilled in the future.
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Rather, this is his desire. This is his prayer to God. His desire is that Ham's line will serve the lines of his brothers,
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Shem and Japheth. He asked God that it would be this way. And it is hard to tell whether it came to pass exactly like this.
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God may have answered this prayer in a different way. But as you read later on in the
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Old Testament, you can see that it is the Lord's will that the people of Canaan will be as a whole an ungodly people.
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There were times when the Canaanites served Israel, specifically during the strong monarchy of King David.
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But it is hard to say how the Lord answered this prayer. This goes to show that sometimes when we pray, the
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Lord answers it differently than what we expected. He always knows what is best in his infinite wisdom.
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He always has the big picture. We always have the small picture. And so this is a good reminder. He might answer it a little bit differently.
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Now in 25, Noah delivers a curse to Ham and his descendants. In verses 26 and 27, he delivers a prayer of blessing for Shem and Japheth.
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We will start with Shem in verse 26. He also said, Blessed be the Lord, the
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God of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant. When Noah says,
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Blessed be the Lord, he knows that any good that is going to be done to Shem will be the Lord's doing. The Lord will bring it to pass.
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Now when we look at Shem, we need to highlight something very important. I mentioned last week that all roads in the
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Bible lead to Jesus. Shem is one of those roads.
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Luke lays out this genealogy in Luke 3. Luke starts with Jesus and works all the way down to Adam.
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Jesus is mentioned in verse 23 and Adam is mentioned in verse 38. But in verse 36,
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Luke writes, Noah's son
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Shem is in the line of the Messiah. The people of Israel come from Shem.
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Noah prays that Canaan would be his servant. Then in verse 27, Noah finally addresses
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Japheth. This is also a positive prayer. May God enlarge
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Japheth. Let him dwell in the tents of Shem and let Canaan be his servant.
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The name Japheth actually means enlarge. So Noah does a play on this word and says to God, he prays to God that Japheth would be enlarged by dwelling in the tents of Shem.
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We see that from Ham would come the wicked people of Canaan. Now the line of Japheth is mentioning other
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Gentile peoples. So the people of Canaan would have been Gentile peoples, but the line of Japheth is mentioning other
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Gentile peoples. And we will see where these people spread to when we resume Genesis later this month.
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But I will give you a little preview here. Japheth's people spread to Asia Minor and Europe. And one of the
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Japheth's descendants is Jovan and the people of Greece came from him. The New Testament was written in Greek.
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So that's how God has communicated to the world through the New Testament, the language of Greek. And many Greeks would later come to believe in Jesus.
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During Paul's missionary journey, many people in the
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Greek world became believers in Jesus Christ. They believed in the
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Messiah that would come from the line of Shem. So you see that connection?
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When Noah prays, let Japheth dwell in the tents of Shem, we can see that the Lord answered this prayer. What we saw in the second point are the sins of the ungodly.
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The case in point here was the sin of Ham. The people of Canaan would later on reflect the sins of this man.
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So in what we saw here, this is the second reason why the contrast between the sins of a believer and the sins of an unbeliever is enormously significant.
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When the unrighteous sin, they are still God's enemies. And if you are here today and you are not a believer in Jesus Christ, my prayer is that you would become a believer in Jesus Christ.
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That you would move from being one of God's enemies to being one of God's people.
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That you would be like Noah, a child of God, righteous, blameless, and one who walks with God.
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That you would not be like Ham. If you trust in Christ, your sins will be forgiven and you will no longer be
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God's enemy. And once you become a believer, you will still sin, but you will also grow in holiness.
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And you will be considered one of God's people and nothing can ever change that. The contrast between the sins of a believer and the sins of an unbeliever is enormously significant.
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And we've seen two reasons why. When the righteous sin, they are still God's people. When the unrighteous sin, they are still
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God's enemies. This sermon wraps up the narrative on Noah's life. In a few weeks, we'll look at this line that goes out from Noah.
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But as far as the story of Noah, this concludes today. We have spent over a month seeing
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God's works through Noah's life. The narrative on Noah is concluded with the last two verses of chapter 9 in verses 28 and 29.
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And I'll read this here. After the flood, Noah lived 350 years.
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All the days of Noah were 950 years and he died. What we saw in Noah's life is that first and foremost,
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God was faithful to Noah. And in return, Noah was faithful to God. Today, we highlighted the darkest moment recorded in Noah's life.
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But that does not change the fact that God worked through this man. One thing we must see from scripture is the way
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God works through his people. We saw how God worked through Noah. And you must understand that the same
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God that counted Noah righteous and blameless and guided him through the flood is the same
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God that you follow. This should bring us great comfort knowing that the Lord is so, so good to his people.
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He is, and if you know the Lord today, you know this. He is so good to you.
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He is for you if you belong to Christ. And if you sin, he's still for you.
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Because your standing with him does not depend on your righteousness. It depends on the righteousness of another, the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
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You are considered righteous and blameless in this generation as Noah was in his. And as you go through the
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Christian life on this journey toward holiness, you will inevitably sin, but sorrow over it will be present.
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And that brings up a good point that if you don't have sorrow for your sin, that raises the question, do you really know the
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Lord? Because if you know the Lord, you will have sorrow for your sin. This is a true mark of faith.
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One day when you pass from this life to be with the Lord, you will never sin again. And it will be said of you without qualification, without qualification.
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That you are righteous. Next week, I will be gone. And I look forward to having the associate pastor from New Life Church.
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He's going to come and preach. His name is Chandler, and that'll be a special treat. And I can't wait to hear how that goes.
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In two weeks, we will have a Christmas Eve service at our same time at 10 a .m.
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And I'm going to be preaching a sermon on Christmas and Jesus coming into the world.
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And we will continue with Genesis on New Year's Eve, as we see these people from the three sons of Noah disperse all over the earth.
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Let's pray. Father in heaven, thank you for Jesus Christ.
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Thank you, Lord, that we are counted righteous, that we are counted blameless in him.
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Thank you, Lord, that our sins do not surprise you. I'm so grateful,
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Lord, for myself and for everyone here, that when we do sin, we still have an advocate with the Father.
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Jesus Christ the righteous, as 1 John 2 .1 says, we have an advocate with the
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Father. Thank you for Jesus. And I pray, Lord, that when we do sin, that we would repent of it.
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And I do pray, Lord, that we would sin less. That we would grow in holiness and become more like you.
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And if anyone here, Lord, has not trusted in Christ, I pray that they would trust in Christ and move from being one of God's enemies to one of God's people.