Genesis 9 - Part C

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That's connectwithskip.com. Now, let's get started with today's message from Pastor Skip Heitzig. And as for you, be fruitful and multiply. Bring forth abundantly in the earth and multiply in it.

I find something to be sad and very, very interesting at the same time. It seems that those people that protest against capital punishment are the very same people who support abortion. Now, here God says, as for you, be fruitful and multiply and bring forth abundantly in the earth. Abortion would be the very thing that goes against being fruitful and multiplying and filling the earth. So it's interesting. No capital punishment.

They'll be out there with banners. It's wrong. It's evil. But at the same time, they have no conscience at all in killing babies in a womb.

I want you to think of this. For the last 200 years, ever since the Revolutionary War in our country, 1.2 million military personnel have been killed. We honored a few of them tonight who weren't killed but who fought in our midst, and they deserve that honor. 1.2 million military personnel, men and women, since the Revolutionary War for the last 200 years have been killed. Every year in America, 1.6 million babies are aborted. Every year.

I'm not talking 200 years. Every single year. God says children are a blessing. Be fruitful. Multiply. Fill the earth. Fill the earth.

Multiply in it. Now, here's the fourth instruction given in this chapter to Noah, instructions that are to be perpetual and a permanent ordinance for all, and that is that life ought to be a partnership. Life ought to be a partnership. God calls it a covenant. I'm going to establish a covenant between me and between you.

Then God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him saying, and as for me, behold, I establish my covenant. You see that little word behold? Don't write that off as some little holy sounding Bible word.

Oh, it sounds so holy. Behold. Behold is a word when translated is meant to be an attention getter, as if to say everything I'm about to tell you is really important. Behold, God says, or hey, check this out.

You could translate it. I will establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, every beast of the earth that is with you, of all that go out of the ark, every beast of the earth. A covenant, a basis by which holy God and sinful man can have some sort of agreement and relationship. Now the concept of a covenant is all important. Later on, God will establish another covenant with Abraham and he'll say, the land of Canaan I've given to you and to your descendants forever after you.

It's yours. That's my covenant with you. Still later on, God will make another covenant with the people of Moses and the people of Israel, covenant of the law.

Keep this law and I'll bless you this way. All of those are agreements, covenants. Now a covenant is the basis of a relationship.

You see, here's the problem. How is it possible for holy God and sinful man to ever get together? Infinite God, finite man, what basis could there ever be for them to hang out and have fellowship? Only on the basis of a covenant, an agreement, a stipulated agreement where God makes promises. Okay, in the Bible, there's two kinds of covenants. It's divided into two classes, a conditional covenant and a unconditional covenant.

Very good. An unconditional or a unilateral covenant is where God makes a promise or gives a declaration, says I'm going to do this, period. This is going to happen, period.

I will do something, period. A conditional covenant is when God has his part, man has his part. You keep these conditions and if you keep them, then I will do this or that. In the Garden of Eden, there is what theologians call the Edenic covenant. Man occupying the garden, the Garden of Eden, the Edenic covenant.

What kind of covenant was it? Conditional or unconditional? Conditional. Hey, have fun.

Walk around, cruise around, eat anything you want except don't eat that tree. No, it's the only condition. Pretty easy.

Very basic condition. They blew it. They broke the condition. The covenant was broken. In chapter 12, God's going to make a covenant with Abraham. Five times God will say, I will do this. I will do that. I will do this.

I will do that. I will bless you. I will multiply you. I will give you this land. What kind of a covenant is that? Unconditional. He doesn't say, if you're perfect and upright and holy and everybody perfectly obeys, then I'll give you this land. God just says, you know what?

There's a portion of land I'm going to give to Abraham and to his descendants forever. Period. Unconditional. We get to the covenant of the law of Moses. Conditional or unconditional? Conditional. Make these sacrifices, obey these things, and I'll bless you.

I'll do this and that. That covenant failed. Now why did it fail? Did it fail because God failed? No, it failed because man failed.

Man was unable to keep it. God saw it from the beginning. So that covenant, the covenant of the law of Moses, the prophet Jeremiah is told by God the best news ever in the Old Testament, the old covenant. All of the covenants that we're going to be reading about before we get to Matthew are the old covenant, but there's a hint of a new one in Jeremiah 31. God says, the days are coming, saith the Lord. When I will make a new covenant, not the law written on stone, but written on your hearts.

Something internal, not external. Predicated not upon man's ability to keep it, but predicated upon God's ability through Christ to give it. That's an unconditional covenant. It's an unconditional covenant, the new covenant.

And we'll read about that in the Gospel of John coming up in verse 17 of chapter one. For the law came by Moses, but grace and truth, that's the new covenant, came by Jesus Christ. So this is the beginning of the covenant that God makes with Noah. I will establish my covenant with you.

Verse 11, he says, never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood to destroy the earth. And God said, this is the sign of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for perpetual generations. I set my rainbow in the cloud and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

It shall be when I bring a cloud over the earth that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud. Before the flood, there weren't rainbows because there wasn't rain. A mist went up from the earth and watered the earth. Subterranean sources of water brought rivers to the surface. They watered the earth. But then God unleashed the deep, as we read about, and the clouds and the rain from heaven, all of it together flooded the earth. And now we have the phenomenon that we still see today whenever there is rain or water in the atmosphere and that the sunlight filtering through the moisture of the droplets suspended in the air hit the water droplet.

It refracts the bright white sunlight into the different colors and you see red and yellow and green and purple. And isn't it amazing? It's so simple, but we still gawk at rainbows. We go, oh, look, stop, stop, pull over, pull over the car.

I know we'll be late, but look at that. Dude, it's been going on forever, but it's still cool, right? It's beautiful, but it's more than that. That simple phenomenon is a statement of God. The word in Hebrew is kaset or bow. It's the same word in the Old Testament for battle bow, where you'd have a bow and arrow in a battle and you'd bend the bow and you shoot the arrow. What I believe God is saying is here's my bow. I'm hanging my bow in the clouds. I'm putting it away. My bow is not used for judgment any longer.

I'm hanging that implement up. And now when you see my bow hung up in the clouds, it's a statement of not judgment or war, but peace. Okay, here's proof that it couldn't be a local flood, but it had to be a universal flood because God said, here's my covenant. Every time you see that rainbow, I'll never flood the earth.

If it were a local flood that happened, then God was a big liar because there have been a lot of local floods every year around the world, generation after generation. You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before we get back to Skip's teaching, understanding Genesis is critical to understanding the rest of scripture. And in his book, You Can Understand the Book of Genesis, Skip Heitzig helps you discover the meaning and message of this foundational book. Embark on an epic journey to where it all began, so you can understand the amazing story of God's love and our redemption in Christ. You Can Understand the Book of Genesis is our thanks for your gift of at least $50 today to help share biblical teaching with more people around the world through Connect with Skip Heitzig.

Go to connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888 and request your copies when you give at least $50 today to reach people around the world through Connect with Skip Heitzig. Let's continue with today's teaching with Pastor Skip. It was a universal flood as we've already gone through the evidence of that. God says, I'll never let that happen again. There will be local floods. There will be catastrophes. The sun and the rain will fall on the just and the unjust, Jesus will tell us. But never again a flood that will destroy all of life.

Now God will destroy all of life. He will uncreate what he has created in a catastrophe of fire, but never again by water. 13, I set my rainbow in the cloud and it shall be a sign for the covenant between me and the earth. It shall be when I bring a cloud over the earth that the rainbow will be seen in the cloud. And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh.

The water shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. The rainbow shall be in the cloud and I will look on it. I like that.

Not only do you and I get off on rainbows, God does. Look at that. That's cool. I made that.

I did that. And I remember what that means. The rainbow shall be in the cloud. I will look on it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth. And God said to Noah, this is the sign of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth. Now the sons of Noah who went out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. And Ham was the father of Canaan. Now all of these guys, these sons had their own children, but Canaan is especially mentioned for one reason for sure, but perhaps for more. One reason is that in a few verses you're going to read that God will curse the son of Ham, Canaan, and he will be subservient to these other guys because of something Ham does. Or it could be also that Canaan is mentioned because though the information isn't given, he was already known with a reputation.

He was already notorious so that anybody who was from around those parts or knew that history much closer to its writing than we would have heard of Canaan already and he was already doing things that demanded a certain kind of reputation. So he's the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah and from these the whole earth was populated.

We'll get more into that next week. Noah began to be a farmer and planted a vineyard and he drank of the wine and was drunk and became uncovered in the tent. Before we get into that, let me just say that of all of these three lines that we read, Shem, Ham and Japheth, and we'll read about their lineage next week and what happened to these people and where they settled and how the earth was populated, the table of nations in chapter 10. Though God is interested in all of them and they're all part of God's plan, the one that is central to God's plan is Shem. From Shem, Abraham will come. From Shem, the nation of Israel will come. From Shem, the deliverer, Messiah, Christ will come.

The one predicted in chapter 3 verse 15 that will crush the head of the serpent. So God will narrow it down and be very interested in the Shemites, or we would say Semites. You've heard the term Semitic or anti-Semitic.

It's from the word Shem. So Noah planted a vineyard, and this is odd. This is weird. He drank of the wine and was drunk and became uncovered in his tent. Now I don't know why and I'm not going to pretend to know why and I'm not going to read anything else into it that really isn't there, but the guy got drunk, took off all of his clothes, and passed out.

That's weird. His sin wasn't that he drank wine. His sin was that he drank too much wine in excess. Drunkenness is a sin. Anything that gives you an altered state of consciousness is a sin.

Be not drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Ghost, the Bible tells us. So his sin was excess. He got drunk, tore off all of his clothes, passed out.

Okay, watch what happens. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. But 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 away and they did not see their father's nakedness. Just a thought I want to plan in your mind. Do you find it interesting that Adam and Eve and Noah both sinned in the area of food? Adam and Eve took that forbidden fruit.

Noah intakes this wine and gets drunk with it. It's just interesting that the very thing God gave to bless became a curse. It was used unlawfully and here in excess. Okay, it's hard for us to understand this. We in our modern culture with every body part exposed because it's cool and fashionable and everybody does it and it's on mainstream television throughout the night.

It's hard for us to get this. So he saw his father naked. So what? The shame of having a father of a family uncovered in that culture where nakedness was seen as vulnerability. And to view it was one thing.

That was an accident. But to tell others about it, to gossip about it, to, hey, let me tell you what I found out about our dad. Dude, he got drunk, stripped off all of his clothes and passed out.

And the way it's written seems to be that he's gloating in it. Now, some scholars believe that Ham was trying to assume responsibility of the family, sort of take over the headship by finding a fault with the leader of the family and trying to usurp the authority by spreading this bad news. Well, his two brothers did it right. They found out the information. They walked in backwards.

They covered him up. It was a sign of respect. So Noah awoke from his wine, had a cup of coffee, no, didn't say that, and knew what his younger son had done to him. And he said, now notice this, cursed be Canaan.

Hmm. Why not cursed be Ham? Ham did it. Canaan didn't do it. Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants he will be to his brethren. Number one, it's possible that Canaan was mentioned because he had a bad reputation, that he also committed some kind of vulgar act. We don't know that.

The information isn't here, so I can't assume that, but it is possible. Number two, it could be possible that Noah knew the reputation of Canaan, saw the reputation of Canaan, and made a prophecy, a prediction based upon knowing the character of this young man Canaan, of what is going to happen to him. You know what it's like when you see certain kids, friends of yours, or people that you know, and you see a certain son have an attitude problem, and you just look at that kid and you know, you predict. He's going to be trouble.

I predict it. I see the way he handles authority. I see and hear his attitude. He's destined for problems. It could be that.

Or simply, it could be this. You, Ham, my son did this. Your son is also going to bring shame to your family. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, the lex talionis, that old law seen intact even way back. Now, it is true that Canaan, who became the father of the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Jebusites, etc., was the very place that God told Abraham his descendants would have forever. This is yours. This land is yours and your children and children's children forever. It was the land of Canaan. How was this fulfilled? Well, there's several stories.

I'll give you one. In Joshua chapter 9, when Joshua enters the land of Canaan, there's a group of Canaanites called Gibeonites. They dress up, and they put on tattered clothes, and they get old moldy bread and stale wine, and they just go a couple miles over the hill to the encampment of Israel, but they say, boy, we're from a faraway place, and we've been traveling for like months, and we heard about you guys. Joshua makes a covenant with the Gibeonites, not knowing that the Gibeonites were Canaanites, because God said, kill every Canaanite when you get in the land. Gibeonites said, let's figure this out. So the Gibeonites lied. Joshua made a covenant with them, but later found out that the Gibeonites lied to him.

So he said, okay, you know, I can't kill you. I made a covenant with you. God told me not to make a covenant with the people of the land, and I thought you weren't of this land, but you are, so now you're cursed. You will now be our slaves, bearing our wood, bearing our water for the tabernacle of God perpetually from generation to generation, and they did. Even into the New Testament, the remnants of the Canaanite population became servants.

Now I've got to bring something else up before we quickly move on and close. And he said, blessed be the God of Shem, and may Canaan be his servant, may God enlarge Japheth, and may he dwell in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be his servant. And Noah lived after the flood 350 years, so all the days of Noah were 950 years, and he died. Now, there is some interesting stuff I want to talk a little bit about next week about Ham, but all of chapter 10 could be entitled My Three Sons. It's all about how the peoples of the world were populated from Shem, Ham and Japheth. And so I'll tie a few loose ends together next time. Thanks for listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. We hope you've been strengthened in your walk with Jesus by today's program. Before we let you go, we want to remind you about this month's resources that will take you back to where it all began so you can understand all of God's Word more clearly.

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