Original Sin & the Promise

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. If you would like to learn more about us, please visit us at our website at graceedmonton .ca.

You can also find us on Instagram, Grace Church, Y -E -G, all one word, or on Facebook.

You can also find us on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever else you listen to your favorite podcasts.

Please enjoy the following sermon. Well, if you would, I invite you to turn with me to Genesis chapter 10,

Genesis chapter 9, excuse me, in verse 18. And as you find your way there, you don't have to turn here.

I'm just going to make a passing reference to it. But I want to reference something that takes place in Matthew chapter 5.

In Matthew's gospel, we are told that the Lord Jesus ascended some distance up the side of a mountain, perhaps it was in northern

Galilee, or in northern Israel, along the Sea of Galilee. And there as he sat down with his disciples at his feet, and he opened his mouth, he began to teach them.

And in his opening address to his disciples, in this famous Sermon on the

Mount, our Lord began with these words in Matthew chapter 5 and verse 3.

He said, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Before he expounded upon the law, or delivered some of the most pointed warnings in all of scripture, as our

Lord entered into this greatest of all sermons, he led out with these words, first of all.

Blessed are the poor in spirit. Now there has been much discussion about what this being poor in spirit means, but perhaps one of the most clear and concise explanations is offered by one

Puritan author, who says this, he wrote, the poor in spirit are humble and lowly in their eyes.

They see their want, they bewail their guilt, and thirst after a redeemer.

The kingdom of grace, he adds, belongs to such as these. The kingdom of glory is for them.

Chief among those who are blessed in Christ's beatitudes are the poor in spirit.

And what a wonder that Christ offers the poor in spirit an endless, eternal, and perpetually glorious kingdom in heaven.

Those who recognize their spiritual neediness, who appreciate their blameworthiness before a holy

God, who thirst after their redeemer. And as we hear this, all of us would say, would give a hearty amen,

I hope, in our minds. But there is one problem, and there's always a problem, isn't there?

And it's this, that most of us do not actually recognize the fullness of our spiritual poverty.

Oh yes, we readily acknowledge that we are sinners, yes indeed. And we realize that we have a need, a true need, for a savior.

That is true. But if we were to take pause for a moment, and to peer into the fabric of our souls, if that were possible, what we would find is that while most of us do not go around throughout our days with an air of spiritual wealth, neither do we possess an apprehension of our own spiritual poverty.

But rather, most of us consider ourselves really to be spiritually middle class.

Not too high, not too low, but somewhere in the middle. And how do I know this?

Because I too am inclined to this condition. I acknowledge my need, but only partially, and only some of the time truly.

And this is confirmed, I would say, in my life, and more than likely in your life as well, if we were to examine carefully in just a few key areas of our lives.

For instance, and I think this is something that all of us can relate to, to some degree, that we do not often respond to the preaching of the gospel as those who have a grasp of our own profound spiritual poverty.

How is it that we can often hear the glories of the fullness of the gospel of the

Lord Jesus Christ, to hear about Christ in all of his wonder, in all of his majesty?

And I have been here, and I'm sure you have too, and yet sit with hearts so cold and unstirred that it is as if we had the hearts of unbelievers in that very moment.

How is it that some of us can go not only hours, but days, and to our shame, perhaps even weeks, if we are especially forgetful, without confessing our known and frequently presumptuous sins to the

God who promises to forgive? How is it that so many of us treat the full access to God that we have through Jesus Christ with such contempt that many of us would be utterly ashamed if the quality of our prayer lives was made known to others?

How is it that we can treat our sin as such a light thing when it is our soul's greatest scourge and the very blight that mars the visage of our

Savior? It is because, brethren, that while we may be spiritually poor, we are not spiritually poor enough.

And yet we have a great deal to feel spiritually poor about. And yet we often live in a partial state of self -deception.

And there are any number of places to go in our Bibles. But as it relates to the book of Genesis, at least, there are few places that are more suited for the task of showing us our spiritual poverty than Genesis chapter 9 and chapter 10.

And that is because in these two chapters, the tail end of chapter 9 and into chapter 10, what we see conveyed is the persistent and the pernicious effects of sin, the abject poverty of soul that sin begets in its victim, and the promise of a

Redeemer for whom our souls can, must thirst. So with our attention turned to Genesis chapter 9, we have a massive passage in front of us.

I'm not going to read the whole text today, but I want to start by reading verses 18 through 23.

And we will look together at what I have called original sin and the unexpected or the unanticipated, the surprising promise of grace.

So in Genesis chapter 9 in verse 18, we read this. 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 their shoulders, and walked backwards and covered the nakedness of their father.

Their faces were turned backward and they did not see their father's nakedness.

Dear friends, I want you to be blessed. I want you to be happy. And our

Lord says for you to be truly blessed, to be truly happy, to truly possess eternal life, is to know the poverty of your souls.

And the first lesson that we see that will guide us in this way, that we must grasp, is this.

The persistent nature of our original sin. The persistent nature of our original sin.

As we land in verse 18, Noah and his family are leaving the ark. And if you remember back with me to our brother

Shem's sermon last week, he explained that how after the floodwaters subsided,

Noah took an offering, made an offering from every clean animal that was in the ark.

And the Lord in turn provided him, demonstrated a covenant sign in the rainbow, making a covenant not only with Noah, but with all of humanity that he would no longer flood or would never again flood the earth, destroy the world with a flood.

And it was, if you can picture that with me, and I'm sure some of you have seen it in the inside of children's storybook

Bibles, Noah and the animals, they always seem to leave out the altar for some reason with the blood and the ash and the remnants of the offering.

But Noah and the animals outside the ark with the rainbow in the sky, it is a beautiful picture in many respects,

I do not want to detract from that, of a righteous man before the face of a gracious covenant -keeping

God. And for a moment, it may have even seemed, if we were to pause there at some point in our brother's sermon last week, that all had been put back into order.

That as the descendants of Cain were wiped off the earth by God's work of decreation and recreation, that somehow, someway, harmony had been restored.

But as we enter into the next paragraph in the story, what we find, and maybe you see where I'm going already, is an all too familiar scene.

In an account that almost perfectly mirrors the account of the fall of Adam and Eve in the garden, we find

Noah, who is described in Genesis 6 and verse 9, some of us will remember that, a righteous man, blameless in his generation who walked with God.

We find now, beginning in verse 18, this righteous

Noah, and that he has the same, the very same sinful stuff of his first parents,

Adam and Eve. And I want to show you some of the details that are included in this account, because what

I believe is happening, is that the Holy Spirit, through Moses, is seeking to communicate something.

That following this recreation of the world, the nature, the very nature of man has not changed.

But the very same persistent sin that was found in Adam was inherited by Noah, so that it may be concluded, as the author of Ecclesiastes 7 .20

said, surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins.

As Noah and his family made their way off the ark, we see in verse 19 that the inspired author of scripture identifies

Noah and his family as the ancestral parents of all the world.

If Adam is the first Adam, and Christ is the last Adam, then somewhere in between,

Noah is something like the second Adam. We find a second Adam in a second garden, with a second fall.

In a scene reminiscent of Genesis 2, Noah and his family are once again in a garden, this time in a vineyard that Noah had planted.

And I wrestled with whether I should share this rabbit trail or not, but I think it's a rabbit trail that's worth following, because I want as often as I can to strengthen, to instill a deep sense of confidence in the reliability of God's word.

But this account is not only put forward as literal history, Noah and his family in a garden post -flood, but it is corroborated by archaeological evidence, which provides a fascinating apologetic or defense for the reliability of scripture.

It is widely held, if you were to ask, and I'm not sure the name of the expert that is an archaeologist of vineyards and a vineyard culture, but if you were to ask those who are best versed in this, archaeologists widely hold that Armenia is the home of the first ever cultivated vineyards.

Now why is that significant? These cultivated vineyards originated specifically in the region of the

Cacassus Mountains, that is the mountains of Ararat, where we are told the ark landed.

And for this reason, if you were to go to one of these archaeological experts on vineyards and perhaps

Eastern Europe and into the Middle East, they would tell you that Armenia, still to this day, is referred to as the cradle of vine domestication.

The very first place that they find vine growers, vine presses, tools that are used for the trade, are right here where the ark lands, in the mountains of Ararat.

And so in Genesis chapter 9 and verses 20 and 21, we find the original vine domesticator,

Noah. But instead of finding him in the garden, enjoying the fruits of God's provision in an honorable way, he is living out the warning of Proverbs 23, 21, where it says they are the drunkard and the glutton, will come to poverty and slumber will clothe them with rags.

So here we see our ancestral father, Noah, in a garden consuming the fruit of the garden in a sinful way.

And then verse 22 tells us the outcome. Like our first parents, Adam and Eve, see the parallels with me.

He was found naked and ashamed. And then to add insult to injury, his son not only looked upon his shame, but then sinfully announced it to his brothers to further humiliate him.

So that Adam's own sons, Shem and Japheth, had to put a garment over their shoulders, walk backward, and then lay the garment over their father.

They were made to condescend to serve the man who should have had their honor.

Now what is all of this getting at? What we find in these verses, I think you're probably, if you're tracking with me, you're seeing this, is a recapitulation of the fall of Adam in the garden.

What we find here clearly teaches the doctrine of original sin, or the doctrine of inherited sin, as theologians sometimes call it.

And how is that? Well this, brothers and sisters, I want to to really have your attention for for a moment, because I think you can relate to this.

So often we dull our own sense, our sense of our own spiritual poverty, by blaming the sinful actions and attitudes that we see in ourselves on our environments, on our surroundings, on our circumstances.

And I ask you, how often have you thought to yourself, if only

I could get away from these unbelievers in my workplace, then

I could put away with foolish, or vain, or idle speech.

You see the sin in yourselves, but it's someone else's doing. It's a circumstantial issue.

Something else is to blame. Some of us, no doubt, are familiar with this.

If only there wasn't so much temptation in the world, or on the internet.

If I didn't have this phone in my pocket, with an endless supply of images and other filth, then

I would not fall into lust. Or some of us, this might be most familiar for those of you who are in the working world, especially brothers and sisters, those of you who are newer to the working world, if only

I didn't have to work 40 hours a week, then I would have time to obey

God. Then I would have time to pray. Then I would have time to seek his face.

But I want you to see this with me, that here we find Noah in an environment perfectly suited for obedience.

If ever there was an environment after the fall perfectly suited for righteousness and holiness before God, he had just witnessed the most devastating judgment for sin on this side of eternity.

Talk about sobriety. What kind of sobriety that brings. Our brother

Mack Tomlinson preached a few weeks ago and he wrote a biography on Leonard Ravenhill. I greatly appreciate

Leonard Ravenhill. One of the things that Leonard Ravenhill said is that if we just had a chance to see the judgment seat, we would never sin again.

I love our brother and he is, I trust, in the presence of the Lord right now. But I would say, based on what we see in the life of Noah, the answer is no.

You can see the whole world wiped out. You can see the most destitute consequences of sin right before you to be plopped down into paradise and it matters not.

God had just spoken to him by direct address and given him a covenant sign to show him, to remind him continuously every time it rained of his grace and kindness towards sinful creatures.

God put the whole world into Noah's hands without the presence, even for a moment, of any external influence.

And what does Noah do? He does what comes so naturally to all of us.

He does what we would have done if we were in his position. He falls into sinful disobedience just like his first parents

Adam and Eve. The entire scene here crushes any argument against the reality of original and inherited sin.

I thought about how deep do I go this way as well and I think it needs to be said, brethren, we need to be convinced of this truth, this doctrine of inherited sin, of original sin, because it is under attack.

It's been under attack since the beginning. In the fourth century

AD, the Pelagians, the followers of Pelagius, taught that man was not inherently corrupted by sin but had the choice to either sin or to abstain from that sin.

One of Pelagius' followers, a man named Celestius, said this, sin is not born with man but it is committed afterward by man.

It is not the fault of nature but of free will. Fast forward a few centuries, we read about those who came before the

Reformers, the nominalist Catholic theologians, argued that unconverted people had the ability to carry out, in quotes, pure acts of love to God through infused spiritual grace.

Martin Luther responded in his book, The Bondage of the Will, saying, Scripture teaches that the constant bent and energy of the will is evil.

Calvin reinforced this, he said, a hereditary, original sin is a hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature diffused into all parts of the soul which make us liable first to God's wrath, often called inherited guilt, and then also brings forth in those works which scripture calls the works of the flesh, what is sometimes called by theologians inherited corruption.

And today, the doctrine of original sin is perhaps, has almost been completely lost in mainstream evangelicalism.

And I know that many of you have heard stories of me speaking about sharing the gospel and someone who was a professing

Christian coming beside me and saying, Shane, we are not inherently sinful, we are not inherently evil or needy of a savior, and I looked at him and wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake sense into him, of course we are.

This is our greatest scourge, our greatest problem in the world.

Our greatest problem in the world is not that we have a small number in our bank accounts, it's not that we don't have a diversified investment portfolio, or that we didn't get into property or bitcoin or some other investment 10 or 20 or 30 years ago.

Our greatest need in all the world is the need for a savior because we are sinners through and through.

And there are groups now that will take advantage of your ignorance to lead you astray in this way, to preach to you a gospel that is no gospel at all, that does not address your greatest need.

What does the Bible teach? In Psalm 51 in verse 5, this is one that we are familiar with.

David's confession after falling into sin with Bathsheba, behold I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Right from conception, when we see little babies, and our brother Sam spoke about this last week if I recall correctly, when we see little babies we can say to them, they are fearfully and wonderfully made.

And then I think brother you missed an opportunity to quote Vody Bokom last week. Fearfully and wonderfully made and they are vipers and diapers.

Psalm 58 in verse 3, the wicked are estranged from the womb, they go astray from birth, speaking lies.

Or Romans 5 in verse 12, which is often the classic text, therefore just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned.

I was thinking about how I might be able to to convey this to you, that we are sinners by birth.

And the closest thing that I could conceive in my mind as I was doing my studies was the Indian caste system, if you're familiar at all with that.

I'm not here to commend any kind of Hindu worldviews, but simply to convey a message through this as an example.

Within this system there are those who are members of the priestly or the warrior classes.

These are those who have the greatest opportunity to own land and to move up in the world, to advance in society.

Now in a way that we will as Westerners never be able to conceive of fully, to fully understand, these people are born into this opportunity and they will live this out.

Then there are those below them who belong to the merchant and the peasant class.

They have less social status, less opportunity, but some still, they too are born into this class.

And then below all of these, below the Brahmins, the priests, the warriors, the peasants, the merchants are a people group called the

Dalits. They are the untouchables. They are the slaves and the scavengers who occupy the lowest strata of Indian society.

They too are born into this. Brethren, Hinduism may try to place different people in different stratas to elevate one above another, but make no mistake about it, there is only one strata in God's economy as it relates to man.

That all of us are born as spiritual untouchables. As we will see it in a moment, the servants of servants.

Now this is not to depress you, to discourage you, but to just show you who we are before a holy

God. We are not only the sons of Adam, but we are the sons of Noah and we are the sons of sinners, of sinners, of sinners.

Some of us, like the Laodicean Christians of Revelation 3, we might say, but Shane, I am rich,

I am prosperous, I need nothing. But what does our Lord say about these people?

He said, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, like Noah, naked.

The very nature that transformed Noah from a righteous and blameless man who walked with God, that transformed him to a drunken, naked fool, is the very nature that is alive and well in us today.

And when we come to this realization, only then will we begin to understand what it means to be spiritually poor.

There is nothing righteous that dwells in this mortal flesh. And apart from the power of God, our

Lord Jesus, gentle, meek, and mild, apart from me, you can do nothing at all.

That is who we are in our flesh. But there is still more to this.

In the subsequent verses, what we find next is not just the persistent nature of our original sin, but the accursed penalty for sin.

We read some of it in verses 24 and 25.

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.

If we fast forward to verse 27, he says, May God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let

Canaan be his servant. Now, when we begin to dig into this passage, what we find is that the role of Noah in this particular account is really secondary to the role of Ham and Canaan.

In fact, this text is not about Noah. Noah plays a small part in it, but as we will see as we enter into the genealogies, this is really about Ham.

This is really about the curse. This is really about the punishment for sin. And the curse is so grave that scholars have actually tried to reinterpret this text to better understand it, to explain it, to explain the severity of the sentence pronounced upon Ham's lineage.

When some scholars have looked at this curse and then what follows in Genesis 10, they've suggested that verse 22 is not what it appears to be.

That when Ham saw the nakedness of his father, they say this must refer to something greater, like sexual immorality.

Some have suggested that when Ham came into his father's tent and saw his father's nakedness, he engaged in an act of sodomy.

This is something I took an Old Testament survey course a number of years ago. This is a mainstream view that is taught in seminaries today.

Not the only view, but one of them. Others have speculated that it refers to Ham's violation of his mother to uncover his father's nakedness or to look upon his father's nakedness is to engage in some act of grotesque...

I won't even go there. However, I believe that we have good biblical grounds to reject both of these extreme suggestions and instead taking the text at face value, we should interpret this as Ham looking upon his father's nakedness in a manner that dishonors his father and then adding to that sin by mocking his father among his brothers.

And I would suggest that we should take this position for a few different reasons. One, I think because the plain reading of the text suggests exactly this.

That the language, the vocabulary, the use of, for instance, acts like sodomy do not appear in this text where they appear elsewhere.

But that this simply speaks to Ham looking on his father. Moreover, when we look at the actions of Shem and Japheth, as they approach

Noah, they come with their backs turned toward him, not looking at his nakedness, indicating that this was the action to be avoided.

But a third argument, I think, is because what we have here are men trying to explain the severity of God's judgment rather than merely appreciating that this basic scenario recognizes the serious and damning consequences of sin.

That even sin that may seem small, and we know this, don't we?

It was just a little lie. It was just a small sin. It was not murder. But those sins that seem small and insignificant still come with significant cosmic consequences.

And in verse 25 we find that consequence named. That Ham, and in particular, what was likely his fourth son, his youngest son,

Canaan, was accursed. And the family lineage was set apart to be the servants of all servants.

This speaks, as I have already indicated, to the lowest possible level of servitude, of slavehood.

And it foreshadows even the subjugation of Israel over and above the

Canaanites in future generations. Now if you recall for a moment, who was it that wrote the books

Genesis through Deuteronomy? It was Moses.

Thank you for answering. Good participation. It was Moses. And when did he write them?

But during his lifetime. And when did Moses live? But as the nation of Israel was traveling through the wilderness, approaching the

Jordan, ready to conquer the Canaanites. What he is doing even here is explaining the very nature of the conquest of Canaan.

That as they enter into this land, this continues to be a manifestation of God's judgment upon the lineage of Ham.

And if we turn our attention to Genesis 10, we can begin to see the fruit of this family tree, looking in retrospect to see the extent of this judgment.

At the beginning of chapter 10, we read, these are the generations of the sons of Noah.

What is that? Now the fourth of 10 that we find throughout the book of Genesis.

And then in here, in Genesis chapter 10, what we find is what is often referred to as the table of nations.

It speaks to the origins of all people in the world. And if we were to go and count all the nations, what we would in fact find is 70 nations, which if you look at the study of numbers in the

Bible, speaks to a large number and a complete number. Oh Lord, how many times should

I forgive my neighbor? Seven times? How about seven times 70? Do not stop forgiving them.

It is complete. And in verses 6 through 20, we find the sons of Ham listed.

And this is worth our time to explore. Oh, I desire in the time that we have to make you a fan of genealogies, to make you a lover and a studier of genealogies.

I was going to say this later, but it's still worthwhile. I'll say it now. Look with me at this genealogy.

Look with me, look deeply. This is what we find in verse 6.

The sons of Ham, Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan. Cush, we see, was the eldest son of Ham.

And he is historically associated with those people who lived south of the nation of Egypt.

In the Old Testament, the word Cush sometimes refers to ancient Ethiopia.

When the nation of Israel was in its prime, the Cushites were those southern most people in the known world.

Egypt and below, occupying perhaps all or most of Africa. Famously, Nimrod was a descendant of Cush.

We see him in verses 8 and 9, where we're told that he was a mighty man and a hunter.

His name can be translated as, we shall rebel. And Jewish tradition, interestingly, identifies him as the principal builder of the

Tower of Babel. In fact, if you were to go into the Middle East today, into where ancient

Assyria was, we would find places that tradition and history attributes to Nimrod.

Places like Nineveh, if you recall the of that place. We'll hear about Jonah and Nineveh and Tarshish in a little bit.

But Nineveh, as well as a place that is still to this day called Nimrod, which was the capital of the

Assyrian Empire at one time. We see here Egypt. Now Egypt, of course, needs no introduction.

They were the builders of the pyramids who settled along the fertile Nile River, ruled by the great pharaohs.

They were used by God to preserve the nation of Israel during the great famine of Joseph's lifetime.

Later they became the oppressors of God's people until the Lord brought judgment, just as was promised through Ham, brought judgment upon the nation of Egypt when he brought plagues upon them and killed their firstborn and led the nation of Israel out by a mighty hand.

Have you ever thought that maybe there is a connection between that event and here,

Ham post -fall? And this theme of oppression and of judgment continues.

In chapter 10 and verses 10 and 11. In verse 10, we find Babel in reference to the nation of Babylon, the military powerhouse that conquered the southern kingdom of Judah before they fell to the

Persian Empire in the 6th century BC. In verse 11, the nation of Assyria is mentioned, the very nation that scattered the northern kingdom of Israel.

They too were conquered, this time by the Babylonians. In verse 14, the

Kaslahim, the descendants of Ham, which became the Philistines.

They too were annihilated by the Babylonians. And verse 15 speaks to those familiar nations that the nation of Israel, as they are hearing this from Moses, are about to engage in war with.

Canaan's youngest son and the descendants, the Jebusites, the Amorites, the

Girgashites, all of those nations who end with the suffix "-ites", who occupied the land of Canaan until they were either driven out or destroyed by the nation of Israel during their conquest.

In this lineage, we not only find the curse of Ham, but we find a cursed people who were a consistent and destructive scourge upon the

Abrahamic people who all ultimately were destroyed by either

Israel or their enemies. And so we find not only original sin, that is original corruption, but we find inherited guilt, original guilt.

We see the principle of the guilt of one being passed down again and again and again.

One commentator writes, Ham, by reproachfully laughing at his father, betrays his own depraved and malignant disposition.

We know that parents next to God are most deeply to be reverenced. And if there were neither books nor sermons, nature itself constantly inculcates this lesson upon us.

It is received by common consent that piety towards parents is the mother of all virtues.

This Ham, therefore, must have been a wicked, perverse, and crooked disposition, since he not only took pleasure in his father's shame, but wished to expose it to his brethren.

And for that, dear brothers and sisters, he incurred judgment. And through him, his descendants.

Now is this too much? Is this too severe? Mark chapter 7 and verse 10.

For Moses said, honor your father and mother, and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.

So we see not only in our first point the persistent nature of this inherited sin, or this inherited transgression, corruption is the word

I'm looking for, but we see here as well the principle of inherited guilt.

Dear brethren, we have not only, and to think about this as I was reading commentaries, especially commentaries written in the

Puritan era, written by some of the reformers, the way they speak of Ham's action towards his father is in a far more severe light than we would think of it today.

We are used to disobedient and rebellious children. We are used to children who dishonor their parents, who mock them with their siblings.

Might it not be amongst our children? But even to go back a few hundred years and how parents were revered, not only have we dishonored our parents in this way, that we have dishonored our heavenly father, that the very one that is due honor, that is due glory, our allegiances, our service, our worship, our all, we have dishonored him.

And the punishment that we see on Ham and Canaan is nothing compared to that which is dished out on those who dishonor the

God of very gods, the light of very lights, the father of lights. I was reading this week a man who was reflecting on a book that he read by John Bunyan.

John Bunyan has, and this is a captivating title. You would not see this book selling very well in modern

Christian bookstores. The title of the book was The Groans of the Damned. Reflecting on this book, he said, though a soul were in hell 10 ,000 times 10 ,000 years, he would never be the nearer to coming out than he would be the first day that he went in, for it is for eternity.

The punishment that we deserve as sinners is to be the servant of all servants in the pit of eternal torment, to be the hell -sent sinners whose only company is the worm that does not die in the fire that is not quenched.

Not simply because we are of the lineage of Canaan. You might not be of the lineage of Canaan, but because of your defiance toward a good, holy, and just father for whom there was no reason to shame or to despise.

Everything that has been presented to us thus far gives us reason to account ourselves as spiritual beggars, to be spiritually poor.

But there is one last point that I want to show us, and that is the unexpected promise of grace.

The unexpected promise of grace. In verses 26 through 29 we read, he also said, blessed is 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, and all the days of Noah were 950 years, and he died.

Now I guarantee that 95 % of us have read this passage.

For those of you who like to start in Genesis at the beginning of your Bible reading, maybe you've stalled out in Exodus or Leviticus, and then started back again in Genesis.

I'm sure more than a few of us have done that. Of all the Old Testament books, Genesis is probably one of my most read books for that reason, because I get through it,

I carry on. Okay, I'm going to restart. Start in Genesis, read through it again. How many times have you read through Genesis?

And how many times in this 10th chapter, this 9th chapter, and 10th chapter have you missed this unexpected promise of grace?

You probably don't even see it now. And this is why, I'll say it again,

I desire to make you a lover of genealogies. That genealogies are not something to be skipped, but they are to be studied.

That God does not waste his breath or our time in putting things into his word that are unfruitful or useless to us.

But dear saints, when you come to these genealogies, stop, read, seek even for a moment to understand, because what we find here is the promise of grace in one of the most unexpected places.

It is, as I'm calling it, I don't think anyone else has called it this, but maybe I should write it down and market it, the

Deutero -Ewangelion. Now you remember the Proto -Ewangelion, the first gospel that we read in Genesis chapter 3 and verse 15.

Well here we see a second gospel in these verses. But how? Let's look at the genealogies.

And I didn't mention it, but there is a map in the notes if you want to reference this to see it on the map.

But in verses 2 through 5 of chapter 10, we find the sons of Japheth. And I'll just go through a few, just hop, skipping, and jumping, beginning in verse 2.

That there's Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshach, and Tyrus. That Gog, or the

Gomerites as they are sometimes called, are the historic Sumerians, who were a nomadic people who settled in modern -day

Russia, north of the Black Sea. You could probably, if the Russians did a 23andMe, would find this

Gog lineage in their blood. Of Madai, this is another word for the

Medes, a people group who lived in modern -day Iran, who were conquered by the

Persians. Now this is one you would never imagine, but Javan, this is the

Hebrew word that is translated as Greece, nearly half the time that we read that Hebrew word in our

Bibles. One Bible dictionary defines Javan as the kingdom over which

Alexander the Great ruled, whose dominion was afterward divided.

So picture that in Europe, now north of the Mediterranean Sea. Tubal and Meshach eventually settled in Asia Minor, in modern -day

Turkey. Tyrus became a coastland people along the Aegean Sea, and became the

Etruscan people who settled there. And then verse 4, I want you to see with me in verse 4.

Tarshish, right there in the middle of the verse. This is the nation that Jonah famously fled to when

God sent him to preach to the Ninevites. Now Nineveh, if you're in the nation of Israel, is north and east.

Where is Tarshish? Well, we know that it takes a boat to get there. What Jonah sought to do was get into that boat, and to go all the way to what is now sometimes called

Tartessus, which is on the western coast of Spain, all the way across the

Mediterranean Island, or the Mediterranean Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, that's what I'm trying to say. On the western coast, bordering on the

Atlantic Ocean. Where did Christopher Columbus come from? From Spain.

And where was he going? To the farthest reaches of the world. To India, he hoped. Well here, as Jonah sought to go there, he was seeking to go to the furthest possible place from the known world, or from his known world at least.

As far west, go west young man, was Jonah's motto as he went to Tarshish.

Literally to the ends of the known world. And in this way, this is just a snapshot, but if you look at the map, you see

Japheth there is north of the Middle East, north of the Mediterranean Sea, along that way.

In this way, the descendants of Japheth reflect those, or represent those people groups that span the farthest reaches of the known world.

Matthew Henry speaks about descendants of Japheth even finding themselves in the British Isles. These are the

Gentiles of the Gentiles. For those of us who are maybe Indo -European in our family heritage, these are some of our ancestors.

Those in the nation of Japheth. Now that's one half, but now let's look at verse 21.

We read the sons of Shem. Now that word Shem, we don't think of that word

Shem as something that is used often today, but have you ever heard someone referred to as an anti -Semite?

They're against someone who is of the Semite people, which is merely a shortened version of the

Shemite people, of those who are descendants of Shem. Verse 21 tells us that Shem was the father of all the children of Eber.

Now this is why it is important to study genealogies. Who is Eber? Well Eber is, we can see it is the root of the word

Hebrew. That Shem was the father of all of the children of the

Hebrews. And it's believed that this word Eber later evolved not only into the word, well

I already said this I suppose, into the word Hebrew referring to the Jewish people. But where is Eber in Shem's lineage?

We see that the name Eber in its rightful place in verse 24. Just stay with me, we're almost through the genealogies.

Where we're told that Arpachshad fathered Shelah who fathered

Eber. Now do those names at all ring a bell? Where have

I read that name Arpachshad or Shelah? If you're familiar with the genealogies of Jesus Christ, those names should echo like a struck tuning fork in an echo chamber.

Because in Luke chapter 3 and verse 35, another genealogy, see the importance of genealogies, we read about these very men and their role in the human ancestry of the

Lord Jesus Christ. In Luke chapter 3, in verse 35, the son of Sarug, the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Eber, the son of Shelah, the son of Canaan, the son of Arpachshad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah.

So where is this Deutero -Ewangelion? Where is this second gospel?

Well let's look again, shall we, now understanding the genealogy of chapter 10 at verses 26 and 27.

He also said, blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and let

Canaan be his servant. You could say it this way, blessed be the Lord, the

God of the Hebrews, God of the ancient nation of Israel and their neighboring descendants.

And then in verse 27, may God enlarge Japheth. We could substitute that with the

Gentiles, those outside of the nation of the Hebrews. But here it is, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let

Canaan be his servants. R .C. Sproul says of this, Japheth is presented as a guest or as an outsider who is drawn in to Shem and to God, finding its ultimate fulfillment in the

New Testament. The Gentiles' inclusion with the Jews.

John Calvin, oh it's a long quote but it's worth every word. He said 2 ,000 years and some centuries more elapsed before the

Gentiles and the Jews were gathered together in one faith. Then the sons of Shem, of whom the greater part had revolted and cut themselves off from the holy family of God, were collected together and dwelt under one tabernacle.

For God, by a new adoption, has formed a people out of those who were separated and has confirmed a fraternal union between alienated parties.

This is done by the sweet and gentle voice of God, which he has uttered in the gospel, and this prophecy is still daily receiving its fulfillment.

Since God invites the scattered sheep to join his flock and collects on every side those who sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.

Just a little bit more. It is truly no common support of our faith that the calling of the

Gentiles is not only decreed in the eternal counsel of God, but it is openly declared by the mouth of the patriarch

Noah. Lest we should think it to have happened suddenly or by chance that the inheritance of eternal life was offered generally to all.

Now that was a long quote, let me translate it. The inclusion of the Gentiles was not a novel plan enacted by God in the first century as a

DEI initiative on God's part. We need to include more of the Gentiles and so we'll make it that Christ himself will die for the

Gentiles also. No, rather this mystery of Christ was hidden in plain sight.

In plain sight for all of you to see and yet how many have you have seen it yet?

That the nation of Japheth, the Gentiles, those outside of the Hebrew people would one day be gathered in to one tent with God's people.

A script authored by God long before the nation of Israel of this great mystery.

Paul writes in Galatians 3 .6 this mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, under the same tent if we were to use

Noah's language and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

So that that ancient descendant of Shem who with the covering over his shoulders walked toward Noah and tossed it off to cover his shame.

That that descendant of Shem would come and cover our shame also and then what's more in a place of unexpected grace to include those amongst the

Canaanites who would also come. So you might sit here and go well maybe I'm a

Canaanite and not from Japheth. Well what do we read if we were to look again at the genealogies of our

Lord Jesus? We see Rahab in the very genealogy of Jesus.

Where did she live? She lived in Jericho on the other side of the Jordan.

She was a Canaanite. Her name means pride, insolency, savagery.

But what became of her? In Hebrews 11 .31 by faith

Rahab did not perish but in fact became part of the lineage of the

Messiah. Or what of those who are the spiritual Canaanites of that day?

We read of a man in the book of Ruth a man named Elimelech which means

God is my king. Evidently in that time in his life God was not his king because he left the nation of Israel crossed over to the plains of Moab and there he died with his sons.

What happened? But his wife returned with a woman named Ruth a Moabite and they were often lumped because they were on the other side of the

Jordan with Canaanites. They were spiritual Canaanites. And Ruth said to Naomi where you go

I will go and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people and your God my

God. So that in the genealogy of Matthew we read that Christ came through Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth.

Obed the father of Jesse. Here we have a picture of the gospel in one of the most unexpected places in the mystery or in the midst of excuse me a curse we have a mystery planted right here for us for every single one of us.

And this should come though it often does not come as those who are spiritually poor as those who are needy as the most glorious good news that we could imagine.

There's a story of D .L. Moody who once it was in 1899 he had the opportunity to deliver a pardon.

It was the Cannon City Colorado Penitentiary and he had the great delight of delivering a pardon to a woman who was imprisoned there.

And he said as he went to that that prison the penitentiary where all the prisoners were there he read the pardon aloud and identified the woman who was pardoned and he said this of her response.

He said the woman hesitated for a moment then arose gave a shriek crossing her arms over her breast and fell sobbing and then laughing across the lap of a woman next to her.

Again she arose she staggered a short distance and again fell at the feet of the matron of the prison burying her head in the woman's lap.

The excitement was so intense that Mr. Moody would not do more than make a very brief application of the scene to illustrate

God's offer of pardon and peace. And afterward

D .L. Moody said this he said that should such interest and excitement be manifest in connection with any of his meetings his evangelistic meetings when men and women accepted the pardon offered for all sin he would be accused of extreme fanaticism and undue working on the emotions.

He said strange that man prized more highly the pardon of fellow man than the forgiveness of their

God. The wonder of all wonders is that we were not killed when our first father sinned.

The wonder of all wonders is that we were not snuffed out when our second father

Noah sinned. The wonder of all wonders that again even in the midst of sin and of curse while we were still sinners

God from eternity past had appointed his son the descendant of Shem to cover the wretchedness of our sin and to bring not only one people into his tent but all people under under every nation tribe and tongue into his tent.

Dear brethren are you poor in spirit we have a great deal to be humble about we have a great deal to be poor about but we also have a great deal to be thankful about.

John Newton he once said when I get to heaven I shall see three wonders there.

I will see many people there firstly that I did not expect to see. Second I will miss many that I did expect to see and thirdly the greatest wonder of all will be to find myself there.

Let's be there with our brother let's pray. Thank you for listening to another sermon from Grace Fellowship Church.

If you would like to keep up with us you can find us at Facebook at Grace Fellowship Church or our

Instagram at Grace Church y -e -g all one word. Finally you can visit us at our website graceedmonton .ca.