Learning from Noah's Mistake - Genesis Part 17

You know, a while back I was talking to a man about whether he could believe the Bible in its every word. And he pointed out to me the passages from the Old Testament where God instructed the Israelites when they invaded the Promised Land under Joshua to annihilate the Canaanites, men, women and children. And he said, you know, for me, this command represents a gross inconsistency in the Bible. I mean, how can the New Testament God of grace be the same God who ordered the Israelites to do something so mean, so cruel, so barbaric? He said, I'm sorry, but this destroys my ability to believe the entire Bible. Now, if you've ever shared Christ with very many people, you've certainly run into this objection. And so this is what we want to talk, at least in part, about today. What about all of this? Does the Bible present two gods, a mean, cruel God of the Old Testament and a loving, merciful God of the New Testament?

I mean, is there an internal inconsistency between the Old Testament and the New Testament when it comes to what God is really like? Well, as we continue in our study in the book of Genesis, we're going to answer these questions. And we're also going to look at an event, a bad mistake out of the life of Noah. And then we're going to bring all of that forward and talk about, well, what difference does all this make for you and me? So we got a lot of ground to cover. So you ready? Let's go. Genesis 9 is our passage.

A little bit of review. Remember, after the flood, God starts over with eight people. Noah, his wife, his three sons and his three daughter-in-laws. The Bible says, Genesis 9 18, the sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. These were the three sons of Noah from whom came the people who repopulated the earth. And we're going to pick up in the end of Chapter 9 where a number of years has now passed since Noah and his family came out of the ark.

You say, how do you know that? Well, because when we pick up the story, one of Noah's sons, Ham, already has four children. The youngest of which is a fellow named Canaan.

He'll appear here in a minute. But there's a number of years that have gone by and now Noah has grandchildren. So here we go. We're going to begin at verse 20, Genesis Chapter 9 verse 20. Then Noah began farming and planted a vineyard. And here's where the trouble begins.

Because grapes ferment and fermented grapes produce wine and too much wine can get people into trouble. And that's exactly what happened to Noah, verse 21. And Noah drank some wine and became drunk and he fell asleep uncovered, that is, naked in his tent. You say, Noah? I mean, the man who found favor in the eyes of God. Genesis Chapter 6, the man who built the ark, the man who's in the spiritual hall of fame of Hebrews Chapter 11. That Noah? Yeah, that Noah. In fact, friends, one of the greatest proofs that the Bible has integrity and that it's trustworthy is that it presents not just the successes of its greatest heroes with brutal honesty, but it presents even their failures with brutal honesty.

And here we find the Bible telling us in Genesis 9 about a really sad spiritual failure in the life of one of its greatest heroes, our friend Noah. Verse 22, And Ham the father of Canaan, of course the son of Noah, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. Now the Bible is a little foggy here in its description of exactly what took place and that's on purpose. The Bible says that Ham saw his father's nakedness, but the word here translated saw in Hebrew, the word does not mean to see something with an accidental glance and then to have shock and embarrassment like, oh no, oh my gosh, uh-uh, not at all.

In fact, the word means to see something and take delight in it. It means something far more profane and far more unholy than just a glance at something. And I don't think any more discussion here would be edifying, but just let me say that we need to understand whatever Ham did in that tent, it was totally sinful and highly offensive to God. Then the Bible says that Ham came out of the tent and told his two brothers outside. And once again, this Hebrew word just doesn't mean to narrate some facts.

It means to tell something to someone and take delight in it in some twisted way. Ham delighted in telling his brothers the unsavory news about their father and about what had gone on in the inside of that tent. Verse 23, but Shem and Japheth, the other two sons of Noah, took a garment and laid it across their shoulders.

Then they walked in backwards and covered the nakedness of their father and their faces were turned away so they would not see their father's nakedness. And when Noah awoke from his wine, he found out what his youngest son, Ham, had done to him. And as a result, with the hearts now of his three sons exposed before him, the pure hearts of Shem and Japheth, the evil sinful heart of Ham under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Noah now makes a prophetic prediction about the future of these three boys and their descendants. Verse 25, first Ham, so Noah said, cursed be Canaan, Ham's son, the lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers. Then Shem, Noah said, blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, let Canaan be the servant of Shem. And finally, his son Japheth, Noah said, may God extend the territory of Japheth and let Japheth live in the tents of Shem and let Canaan be his slave too. Now, what does God reveal to us in Noah's prophecy about these three lines of human beings that are going to develop from the three sons of Noah?

Well, let's go back and look at it. First of all, Shem, verse 26, God reveals that Shem will be the branch of Noah's descendants to whom the true knowledge of God will be entrusted. He said, blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem.

And indeed, this is exactly what happened. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, the Jewish people, the whole Old Testament scriptures, even the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah himself, all came from the line of Shem exactly the way Noah predicted right here. Then Japheth, second of all, the Bible says, may God extend the territory of Japheth. God reveals that Japheth will be the branch of Noah's descendants who will dominate the earth territorially.

And indeed, this is what happened also. Territorially, all of Europe, all of North America, South America, Australia, New Zealand, much of Asia, and even some of Africa today are settled by peoples who are direct descendants of the line of Japheth. We call them Indo-Europeans, but they're simply the descendants of Noah's son Japheth. And God also revealed one other thing about Japheth. He said, let Japheth live in the tents of Shem spiritually. God also revealed that Japheth's descendants would share in the spiritual blessings extended to Shem's line.

And indeed, this has happened too. I'm not sure if you realize it, but once the apostle Paul crossed into Europe with the gospel message in Acts chapter 16, since then the greatest spread of the gospel worldwide has not been among the descendants of Shem, rather it's been among the Japhetic people, Europe, the British Empire, North America, South America, China, where the gospel has just exploded. These are all Indo-European people, the descendants of Japheth, just like God said. Finally, Ham. God reveals to us here in verse 25 that Ham's descendants, he's omitting altogether from spiritual blessing on a macro level.

You say, what does that mean? I mean that individual descendants of Ham can come to Christ and they do come to Christ and that's fine, but as a whole Ham's line is an un-blessed line because of what Ham did in the tent of his father. And in fact, one member of Ham's line, his son Canaan, is actually placed under a curse by God. Verse 25 says, cursed be Canaan his son.

Now you say, wait a minute, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop. This doesn't make any sense. Why in the world would God curse Canaan, the son, for what his father, Ham, did when he went in his dad's tent, in Noah's tent? I don't get it.

That doesn't make sense. Well friends, that's a very interesting question. Some commentators suggest that Canaan, the son of Ham, was actually with Ham when he went into the tent and where whatever happened in the tent that Canaan participated in it. Other commentators suggest that the Holy Spirit gave Noah the spiritual discernment to see that the sexual uncleanness that Ham had displayed in that tent in Genesis 9 would take special root in his son and his son Canaan's descendants. Well, you say, Lon, which is right? Folks, I don't know which one is right. The Bible doesn't say. Both of those reasons could be right, but please notice that God did not lay a curse on all of Ham's line, just on one segment of it on the line of Canaan. Now, let's stop, take a deep breath. You all still okay?

All right, all right. So let's talk for a moment now about this curse that God laid on Canaan and about its fulfillment. The Bible tells us, Genesis chapter 10, that the descendants of Canaan, the Canaanites, were the people who inhabited what we think of today as the promised land, the nation of Israel, from before the time of Abraham, 2000 B.C., up until the invasion of the promised land under Joshua in 1400 B.C., after which, for all practical purposes, they were wiped out. And we know that these Canaanites were among the most sexually depraved people that the world has ever known. Genesis 10, verse 19, the territory of the Canaanites, the Bible says, reached from Sidon in the north, modern day Lebanon, to Sodom and Gomorrah southward. We all know what went on in Sodom and Gomorrah.

Hey, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. Friends, until 85 years ago, most of the information we had about the behavior of the Canaanites came out of the Bible. But in holiness and in propriety, the Bible had euphemized it and the Bible had sanitized this information for us. But in the 1930s, the Canaanite city of Ugarit was discovered on the Lebanese coast. And here we unearthed all kinds of clay tablets telling us about the unspeakable depravity of the Canaanites. I don't want to go into much detail, but let me just say by way of broad summary that these people routinely practiced homosexuality, bestiality, temple prostitution, where the sex act was actually a part of the worship service, sadism, child sacrifice, child molestation, and many other forms of sexual deviancy too unholy to even mention. As a matter of fact, the Carthaginians, they lived in North Africa. They were actually just a bunch of Canaanites displaced and living in North Africa. When the Romans captured them in 146 BC at the end of the Third Punic War, the Romans, who weren't exactly what I would call the holiest people on the earth, they were so grossed out by the practices of the Carthaginians that one Roman writer said, and I quote, no other people rivals them in their debauchery. William F. Albright, probably the greatest archaeologist America has ever produced, taught at Johns Hopkins until his death in 1955 said, and I quote, Canaanite religion was completely centered upon sex and its manifestations.

Sacred prostitutes were common, human sacrifice was well known, and the erotic aspects of their culture sunk to the most extreme and sordid depths of degradation, end of quote. Now, does all of this help us understand just a little bit how God felt about the Canaanite people? Hey, in Deuteronomy 12, verse 31, God says they do all kinds of detestable things that the Lord hates. In Leviticus 18, verse 30, God says they practice abominable practices. In Leviticus 20, verse 23, God says, I abhor these people because of their behavior. And this is why God commanded the Israelites, Shem's descendants, to destroy the Canaanites. Deuteronomy 7, verse 2, the Lord said, when the Lord delivers the Canaanites into your hand, you shall utterly destroy them, show them no mercy, for they will turn your sons' and daughters' hearts away from Me, and the anger of the Lord will burn against your children. Tear down the altars of the Canaanites, God says, smash their sacred stones, and burn their idols. Why? For you, Israelites, are a holy people unto the Lord your God. And the stuff these people do, you have no business being anywhere around that stuff. Friends, if you don't get anything else today, look here.

Get this. Here's the point that God's command for the Israelites to annihilate the Canaanites, it was not capricious. It was not arbitrary.

It was not mean or cruel or barbaric at all. It was an act of divine judgment against a people of unprecedented debauchery. And it was also a fulfillment of divine prophecy right out of Genesis chapter 9 that we're reading. Friends, there is no different God in the Old Testament than in the New Testament. The God of the Old Testament is a God of holiness and mercy. The God of the New Testament is a God of holiness and mercy.

There is absolutely no inconsistency whatsoever. You say, but wait a minute, Law, wait a minute. If God is a God of mercy in the Old Testament, why didn't He at least give the Canaanites a chance to repent? At least give them an opportunity to turn to God before God wiped them out. I mean, where's the mercy in how God treated these people? Oh, friends, God did give them this opportunity.

You say, really? Yeah, listen, Genesis 15, 15, God speaking to Abraham, He said, Abraham, you, however, shall be buried at a good old age. And then in the fourth generation, your descendants will come back here, back to the Promised Land, back to the land of Canaan, out of their captivity in Egypt, under the leadership of Joshua. And they'll invade the Promised Land and they'll annihilate the Canaanites.

You say, well, wait a minute, whoa, whoa, whoa. Why did God wait four generations after Abraham to do that? Listen, He tells us because, next verse, the sin of the Canaanites has not yet reached its full measure. God said to Abraham, Abraham, I'm going to give the Canaanites four more generations of mercy, four more generations to repent. I'm going to give them four more generations to turn to me and escape the annihilating judgment they deserve. But if they refuse, their sin will reach its full measure in my sight and I will wipe them out.

You say, well, Lon, that leaves me one other question. And that is, how in the world were these four people supposed to know that what they were doing was sin? How were they supposed to know about a holy God? How were they supposed to know that they should repent? How were they supposed to know that they needed to change the way they were behaving?

How were they supposed to figure that out? Oh, friends, Abraham lived in this land for over a hundred years. Isaac lived right among the Canaanites for 160 years. Jacob lived among the Canaanites.

Jacob's children lived among the Canaanites. And they worshiped God while they were living there in holiness and purity. And they spoke to their Canaanite neighbors about the true God and about the sinfulness of their behavior. God put a witness right in the middle of the land of Canaan in the person of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

These people knew the difference. And yet they refused to repent. And because they did, God did exactly what He said He was going to do.

Now let me say that if you're here today and you've never trusted Jesus in a real and personal way, the very fact that you are alive today and breathing is a testament to the mercy of God. Just like to the Canaanites. God let them stay alive to give them a chance to repent.

And that's why you're alive today, my friends. But be careful because sooner or later the mercy of God runs out. It did with the Canaanites. It will with every human being who spurns Jesus Christ.

And we never know when that's going to happen. So if you're here today and you've never trusted Christ, I urge you, don't do what the Canaanites did. Don't presume on the mercy of God. Don't spurn the mercy of God. Use it as your time to turn to Christ and repent and escape the judgment of God.

I hope you will. Now, that's as far as we're going to go in the passage right now because now it's time for us to ask our most important question of the morning. So are you ready? Okay, so this works better if you take a deep breath. Ready? Here we go. Deep breath.

One, two, three. How awesome was that? You guys are great. Yeah, you can give yourselves a hand.

Why not? You say, Hey, Lon, you know what? Everything you just shared so far was, I mean, was marginally interesting.

But I mean, what difference does any of this really make to my life? Well, let's talk about it because the lesson that's here doesn't come from the Canaanites. The lesson that's here comes from the life of Noah. Friends, Noah was a godly man. He was a man of faith. He'd just been through one of the greatest trials anybody had ever been through. And he had stayed faithful to God in the midst of all the wickedness around him. He had stayed faithful to God building an ark when people would laugh at him and make fun of him and ridicule him. But all that was over now.

He passed the test. There was a new world. There was a fresh start. All those corrupt people were gone.

Hey, that's great. But you know what? Noah forgot one very important fact. He forgot that even though all these corrupt people were no longer around, the devil still was. And so he dropped his guard. He got spiritually sloppy. He got spiritually careless.

I mean, he knew what too much wine could do to you. But he dropped his guard and when he did, Satan put him on the canvas. And he ended up dishonoring the Lord. And he ended up disgracing himself. And he ended up creating a situation where sin was able to enter the life of his family. But folks, Noah's problem here was not ungodliness.

It was spiritual sloppiness. And you know, as followers of Christ today, God warns us about this very same issue. 1 Peter 5 verse 8 says, Be sober-minded, be on the alert, for your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for people to devour. He's just not out to hurt us, friends. He's just not out to maim us, folks.

He's out to completely destroy us. And when God tells us here to be sober-minded, when God tells us here to be on the alert, He's telling us don't get sloppy. Stay strong in the Word of God. Stay strong in your quiet time.

Stay strong in your prayer life. Keep a safe distance from sin. And most of all, remember the lesson of Noah that we are most vulnerable when we are most relaxed. Hey, when we're in some trial at work, at school, in our family, up to the gills, and we're not even sure we can make it one more day, we're not spiritually sloppy then. We're on our knees seeking the Lord in the Word, praying, depending on God, because without Him we're not going to make it.

That's not the danger point. Folks, the danger point is when things are going all good and we're kind of coasting spiritually. And we're on autopilot spiritually. Hey, that's when David fell, that's when Moses fell, that's where Samson fell, that's where Noah fell. And if you and I are going to fall, that's most likely when we're going to do it. That's when we're most likely to drop our guard.

Satan's going to jump out from behind a corner and he's going to deck us. You know, when I was growing up in Portsmouth, Virginia, we had what they called phone books then. Do any of you guys remember phone books? Remember them? There was a white one and there was a yellow one. You all remember that?

Yeah, some of you don't, but some of us older folks do. The covers were just paper and they always got messed up. So my mom got these two binders that were made out of hard cardboard and metal and she would put the phone book in the binder so that the phone book wouldn't get all messed up.

Well, the phone book in it, this binder was heavy and it was quite a weapon. And I remember one day I was walking down the hallway in my house. I was about 10 or 12 years old. I was on my way to my bedroom. So at the end of the hallway, I had to turn left and I remember turning the corner. And the minute I did, the last thing I remember is this brown blur coming at me.

It was my brother, my younger brother named Brian, who's five years younger than me. He had picked up one of these phone books and using the small edge, the thin metal edge, he swung it and hit me right across the bridge of the nose as hard as he could. He knocked me completely unconscious.

I'm talking about out cold. And the next thing I remember was my maid, Coralee Goodman, leaning over me trying to revive me. Now, she didn't have smelling salts, so she was using Clorox.

You use what you got, but I guarantee you a nose full of Clorox will wake you up. I mean, I was out like a light. I never even knew what hit me.

I have never been so bushwhacked, so ambushed, so caught off guard in my whole life. But I want to tell you something, for the rest of my time living in that house, I approached the corners in my house very cautiously. 1 Peter 5.8, be sober-minded. Be on the alert, for your enemy, the devil, is hiding behind all sorts of corners, just waiting to slug you right in the face with a phone book full of sin and deck you.

God says, and as followers of Christ, we need to approach all of life by friends with the same caution that I used to approach corners in my house. So let's ask some questions as we close today. How's your quiet time doing in your Bible study? Consistent or have we gotten sloppy?

How's your prayer life going? Fervent or have we gotten sloppy? Hey, are we ordering stuff on pay-per-view or watching movies in hotel rooms when we travel that we got no business watching?

But remember, the titles don't appear on the bill. Sloppy. Are we going out on dates and going farther than we should go? Or going to parties where things are happening where we know we got no business around this stuff, but we're there anyway.

Sloppy. Are we letting lust exist in our life, but we're excusing it. We were saying, I'm just admiring God's creation. Yeah, but you and I both know what's going on really in our hearts. Or maybe you're married and as a man or a woman, you're getting way too chummy with somebody at work. And you just call it a friendship instead of being willing to hold yourself accountable for what it really is, which is spiritual unfaithfulness and adultery in your heart. Or maybe you're going to Atlantic City a little too much.

Or maybe we're visiting Internet gambling sites way too much or pornographic sites way too much. The point is, folks, this is all sloppiness. And remember the warning of the Bible. First Corinthians 10 12. Let him who thinks he stands take heed.

Watch out. Lest he fall. David thought he was standing fine. Noah's thought he was standing fine.

Moses thought he was standing fine. Hey, if the enemy can deck them, folks, please don't think he can't deck you and me. Here's the question. Are you and I walking so close to the edge that just one little flick from Satan could send us right over the cliff. And I want to say a special word to parents who are here in this regard, because, folks, our children are always going to go one step farther than we go.

That's just the way it is. And if you and I are walking so close to the edge, right on the very edge, if our kids go farther than us, what's going to happen? They're going to go over the cliff, particularly when we're parents. It is incumbent upon us to walk way back from the edge. Even if it's not a danger to you, it's a danger to your children who are going to leapfrog you.

You don't want them leapfrogging you and going right over the edge. And so if you answered any of those questions with yes, I am getting a little sloppy, then what are you going to do about it? You got enough courage? Do I have enough courage to make the changes we need to make with the Holy Spirit's help?

I hope you do. You know, one final comment. Remember that no one can avoid dropping their guard 100 percent of the time. Hey, we're just sinful human beings. No one can avoid getting spiritually sloppy 100 percent of the time. You know, isn't it wonderful, the mercy of God, that so often when we do get sloppy spiritually and we open ourselves up for what could be just the ugliest set of circumstances and consequences, isn't it great how many times the Lord in His mercy comes along and dusts our trail for us and keeps us out of that? I can't tell you how many times God's done that for me.

It's wonderful. But friends, we dare not presume on the Lord's mercy. The balance here is that God wants us to be serious and to be zealous about spiritual vigilance in our lives. And then in His mercy, in our moments of weakness, God will cover for us. But He needs us to take seriously this injunction, be sober minded, be on the alert. Satan has decked better people than you and me.

And if we drop our guard, He will deck us. God says you keep your guard up. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, thanks for talking to us today about real life. And thank you, Lord Jesus, for reminding us that the devil is alive and well on planet Earth, just like he was in Noah's day. And Lord, that if we are careless and if we are sloppy, He will punch our lights out. And so, Heavenly Father, I pray that you would speak deeply to us today.

Maybe we might need to make some changes in the way we're living. And if so, give us the courage to do that and to depend on your spirit to give us the power to do that. Father, we want to finish the race and hear you say, well done, good and faithful servant.

We don't want to get into the ditch. So, Lord Jesus, help us keep our guard up. And thank you for your mercy.

That even when sometimes we drop it, you're still there for us to protect us. Change our lives because we were here today and we sat under the teaching of the word of God. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. And God's people said, Amen. Amen.