18 of Genesis 9. It says, "...and the sons of Noah
that went forth of the ark were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, and
Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah,
and of them was the whole earth overspread." Every man, woman,
and child that's on this earth right now And if we can go back
in time, we can trace our lineage to either Ham, Shem, or Jacob. Every one of us. That's who we
came from. And Noah began to be a husbandman. He began farming.
And he planted a vineyard. And he drank of the wine and
was drunken. And he was uncovered within his
tent. He went and grew some grapes.
It takes a while. And he took those grapes and
he put them in vats and fermented them. And it takes a while. And
then he racked the wine, is the term. He got the wine off the
leaves, the dead yeast at the bottom. Those carboys. And he bottled it. And it was good. And it was so
good, he kept going with it. You know, he got drunk. And he
wasn't just tipsy. He didn't just have a warm, fuzzy
feeling in him. He was laid up drunk. And he was naked in his
tent. Verse 22 says, And Ham, the father
of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two
brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment
and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went in backward and covered
the nakedness of their father. And their faces were backward,
and they saw not their father's nakedness. And Noah awoke from
his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he
said, Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants, shall he be unto
his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord
God of Shem, and Cana shall be his servant. God said, God shall
enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and
Canaan shall be his servant. And Noah lived after the flood
three hundred and fifty years and all the days of Noah were
nine hundred and fifty years and he died. This text here is absolutely
beautiful. I was laid up drunk and he got
mad and cursed one son and the other two they just did what
was right and covered him. Oh, what beauty there is here. What
a story of the gospel we have here in front of us. And rightfully
so, there's a lot of things that ought to be addressed publicly
in this world. Drunkenness, we ought not be drunk. All things
are legal. A believer is entitled to anything the Lord has made.
We're not under the law, but not all things are expedient.
It's not convenient in all things. In all things, we ought to use
moderation. We ought to do those things. And there's so many people
that look down their noses at somebody that drinks too much
while they're popping pills. Or they say you ought not to
do that too much while they're drinking an 80-ounce soda or whatever,
you know. Mankind looks at extremes and
excess and all things to fill the lust of their bellies. And
we ought not do those things. It's been preached, too, the
disparities of Sodom and Gomorrah in this text. And it's true.
I won't comment on it, but you can read a little deeper into
it. Something was done. Ham gazed upon his father. He didn't just happen to see
him. He gazed upon him, and something
was done, and Noah knew something was done. And he cursed him after.
Those things are bad. And boy, we can sure get our
heads nodding on that, can't we? We can pick whatever the
Lord has attempted us in and say, that's horrible. And Paul
told them there in 1 Corinthians 6, he said, and such were some
of you. That would put us in the right mind, wouldn't it?
If we're looking down our nose on somebody, we're not convicted
in our sin. That's all there is to it. It's as plain as it
is. This was Noah. This was God's prophet. We looked
there in Timothy 1 earlier, didn't we? We read that. This was God's
prophet. And at this time, God's only
prophet on the entire earth. This was Noah. This was the one
that found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And then the Lord
came and told him about it. He said, I'm going to destroy
the earth and you're going to build an ark. I'm going to save you, Noah.
Noah believed God. He obeyed Him. He got to work.
He built the ark as he was told to do. And he was put in that
ark. And he was sealed with pitch. sealed into the ark with the
blood of Christ on the inside and the out, and he spent a year
in that ark, fully provided for. He saw firsthand, those eight
people, eight souls in that boat, saw firsthand God's punishment
of sin. There was no confusion. Noah
didn't have his doctrine a little askew. He was a grown man. He
fully understood what the ramifications of sin were. Finally, that dove
He had sent out, it came back with an olive branch in its mouth
to Noah, and it landed gently on His finger. What a picture
we have! God the Holy Spirit coming with
peace in its mouth, speaks peace to our hearts, speaks comfort
to our hearts. And where did it land? On Him. Sticky finger. It landed right on Him. God commanded
that dove to come to Him. What a picture we have. And then
the Lord had Noah come out of the dry ground. And the natural
man would have wanted to stay close to that ark. Could you
imagine that? Why don't you walk 40 miles away from that ark?
Everybody had kept me alive for a year. Maybe we can just, as
long as we know it's within an arm's width, as long as we know
it's within a day's walk, we might need that thing again.
The Lord sent him out of it. And he didn't look to a place
to plant crops. He didn't look for shelter. He didn't start
digging a well because they needed fresh water. He built an altar
and He sacrificed to God a sweet smelling savor. He took all the
clean beasts and sacrificed them. And He pictured Christ our sacrifice,
our propitiation, our bloody accepted sacrifice. And that
sweet smelling savor to the Father, it was accepted. And because
God was pleased in His heart by this sacrifice, He put it
in Noah's hand to provide, He made a covenant with Noah. not
to flood the earth again. He said, for those that I have
seen the sacrifice, condemnation will not come to. That's what
it meant. People were scared to death. Well, it still floods.
It flooded Tom, didn't it? He didn't say he wasn't going
to bring floods. He said, I ain't going to kill
you in wrath. That's what he meant. That's what it means. A covenant of
grace, a covenant of substitution, a covenant of blood of our Lord
Jesus Christ That was going to be stirred up in Noah's mind
often. How is it going to be brought
into remembrance? He hadn't been given the Lord's Supper yet,
had he? He hadn't been done these things. How is Noah going to
remember these things? He's going to forget he's a man just like
I am. God gave him a token. He gave him a token. He gave
him a rainbow. He said, every time you see that
dark cloud coming, and you start wanting to know how far away
that ark is, and you're going to have to replant these crops,
you're going to see in the sky that the blood's closest to me,
and all you're going to see is royalty. the violent, the robes
of Christ. You're going to see His righteousness
high and lifted up. And you're going to remember
that I've promised that those that He's died for will see no
condemnation. What a sign! We have that. Several of us saw it this last
weekend. Go outside and see a rainbow. The Lord let us still have that.
We ain't got a tabernacle to go look to. We can look up and
you see a rainbow. Boy, you know what that means.
A believer still has a token in our day. What a blessing that
is. And I thought of this too as a type of Adam. Noah was the
head of the earth. That was the main man. That's
the boss. He was in charge. Just of his family. But they
wouldn't know about what's alive on earth. He's a head honcho. In charge of everything. Given
much responsibility. Much responsibility. Noah was
a blessed man, wasn't he? What a blessed man Noah was to
live through these things, to see these things, have God speak
to you and tell you. I love you Noah. You found grace
in my eyes. I'm going to make a covenant with you and I'm going
to remind you of it often. Put him through all these things.
What a blessing that was. The Lord said that Noah was a
just man. He was perfect in his generation.
That he was righteous in his sight. You're holy Noah. He was
a sinner saved by grace is what he was. What was our hope of
being saved? There's so many brethren I know
that struggle with assurance. God didn't say Noah was perfect
for now. You're saved for now, Noah. That's
not what he said, was it? What the Lord says is true. And
what he does and says, he keeps his word. What he declares holy
must remain holy. He doesn't change. He doesn't
change. Was the Lord abundant in mercy
and grace to Noah? Was the Lord tender and kind
and loving and long-suffering with Noah? Here's the story we
ought to get out of this text today. There was a righteous
man, a holy man on earth, and he fell in sin. And he was exposed. He was naked. Someone accused
him of his sin. A great accuser came, whispering, and then someone else covered
his sin. Does that sound familiar to you? Didn't we read this a
few chapters back with Adam? If you're God, then tell what
happened to you. Tell what He's done for us. This is proof that
the Lord wrote the Scriptures through a man, not man alone.
Sin wasn't left out. It wasn't ignored. It wasn't
pushed underneath the rug. It was on full display. Moses
wrote of these things. Moses wrote of his death. His
strike in the rock the second time. He knew what he was. Jonah wrote the book of Jonah.
Jonah ends with a question mark. What's the answer to God's question?
Jonah wrote Jonah. Boldly tell. I'll tell you what
I am. You're looking at a wretch standing in front of you. I'm
a horrible, wicked man. Left to myself. But apart from
the grace of God, I'm nothing. They admit that. Paul said these
things were left in the Scripture for our learning. We have a lot
to learn. We've got a bunch to learn. What
can we learn from this short passage? There are some things
we can learn from this. Noah was just. He walked with
God and he failed. He failed. One of the old writers
said, the best of men are only men at their very best. Patriarchs,
prophets, and apostles, martyrs, fathers, reformers, Puritans,
all are sinners who need a Savior. Holy, useful, honorable, in their
place, but sinners after all. I thought, what's the highest
title I could have? How far up the food chain could
I move? A sinner saved by grace. John's
got a wonderful article in Bulletin. I wonder if he worked at Public
Works. After God saves a person, they
still have an old nature with them. It doesn't go away. Paul
knew this. That's why he wrote in Romans. And it doesn't matter how long
you walk with the Lord, how mature you are, the highest title you'll
ever have is a sinner saved by grace. Noah was 600 years old. 600. He wasn't a feeble, weak
man. He was strapping. He was a strong
man. And he walked as a man that believed
God in that world that hated him before the flood came. And
by God giving it to Noah, he walked with integrity in a wicked
world. He was a child of God and he
acted like it. And he held true to worship. Do you know that?
Everybody's worshiped. There wasn't no churches. There
wasn't an absence of churches on the face. There were peoples
worshiping, dressing up every Sunday and doing all kinds of
things. But he held worshiping the true God before the flood
came and after the flood came. What does this mature, wise,
experienced man do? He grows a vineyard and he gets
drunk on purpose. It wasn't an accident. He's a
grown man. He'd been around the block once
or twice. He knew what was coming. And he did it on purpose. And
he uncovers himself and he passes out. All that any one of us need is
a temptation and the Lord lift his hand from us and we'll act
on it. And to think that you won't, you're grossly confused. The Lord needs to teach you something
different. And He may just bring it to your front door. He may
put a square in your living room to teach you something. It'll
be rough. It'll be hard. It'd be a good thing to know
what our weakness is. Paul wrote to us in Galatians
6 and said, Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which
are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of meekness, considering
thyself He says, you know what you are. I know what I am. Lest
thou be tempted also. He says, bear one another's burdens
and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if a man think himself to
be something when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. As soon
as we start putting on airs, we're deceiving ourselves. We're
lying to ourselves. Our old man doesn't improve with time. You
can sit underneath the gospel for decades, and we can grow
in grace, and our flesh is just as vile and as wicked as it's
ever been. It's still in us. We're still
in it. And we have a daily fight against it, a warfare against
it. And some days are just harder
than other days. Some days aren't that hard. Some days are tougher
than others. But when we think we've got a
handle on it, when we think we've really got this beast dialed
in, and I've got a chain on it, trouble's on the horizon. Scriptures
say, wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he
fall. Solomon told us, pride goeth
before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Next thing
we can learn, we never sin alone. Someone always gets hurt by it.
and it can tarnish a man's witness in the gospel for generations
to come. After the flood, Noah lived 350 years. What does everybody know about
Noah? He built an ark and he got drunk. What we do affects
others. It affects our children, affects
our generations and those around us. The last thing we know of
God's prophet was his fall. What does everyone know about
Jonah? Peevish prophet. Boy, he's quick tempered. Pop
off at the mouth, disobedient, ruffian. This boy would be hard
to deal with. What about David? Oh, as that
lady Bathsheba and his buddy Uriah had him killed so he could
take his wife. That's what we remember. That's what our mind
goes to. This should teach every person
that hears it. Salvation must be all of grace. Here's God's
prophets throughout time. And we see them, and we see their
faults, we see what they truly are, and they tell you about
it. They wouldn't bash away from it. They wouldn't cover that
up. Oh, I'm not as bad as I used to be. Hogwash. They tell you
plainly what they are. And I'd say, God save me, in
spite of myself. Because that's how it has to
be. Man can't do it himself. Clean living ain't going to do
it. Noah, you could ask him a question. How are you better than all them
people that just drowned in the flood, Noah? What do you think
he'd say? Well, get up early. It's how
I'm not. Only God's grace made a difference.
That's it. This shows us that salvation
is all of grace from the beginning to the end. The whole way. All of God's servants throughout
the scripture, every one of them have sinned and come short of
the glory of God. Every one of them in this day,
the one you're looking at, have sinned and come short of the
glory of God. That should teach us our need of righteousness,
our need of the Lord our righteousness, our substitute. We need His righteousness
to stand before a holy God. And of ourselves, we ain't nothing
but naked, uncovered, and sinful. No righteousness of our own.
Now, we're not to make excuses for sin either. Not for Noah's,
not for what we did wrong. What he did was wrong. He shouldn't
have done that. What I've done in the past is
wrong. I shouldn't have done that. But thanks be to God for
His Word. If I dwell on my sin, I get so
low I can't look up. I just wallow in it. I know what
I am. I know what I am. I read His
Word in the first John. It says, My little children,
these things I write unto you that you sin not. Don't do it.
Knock it off. You know better. Don't do those
things. And if any man sin, proper translation
is when you sin, It's coming. It's going to happen. You're
still in this body. When you sin, we have an advocate with
the Father, Christ Jesus the righteous. We have an advocate. We have a go between a mediator,
between us and the holy God that we just offended, and it's Him.
Just like that rainbow. What's between us and the Lord
in heaven? That rainbow. Christ's blood, His righteousness,
His finished work. That's what's between us. That's
what we look at. When a believer sins, and we
will, we have an advocate with the Father, and His blood will
wash away all sin. Those things I could preach on,
it's wrong. Homosexuality is wrong. Abortion is wrong. You
shouldn't murder folks. Don't steal stuff. Don't lie
to folks. If you got a job, work hard. I tell you all these things. What's the difference in any
of them? That it comes short of the glory
of God? Can a worm look down on another worm? Y'all in the
dirt, ain't we? Every one of us. We're under
the dirt. It's where we like darkness.
Ain't no difference. What would it take to save the
worst person you could think of in your mind? And you. Worst person I could think of
is me. Takes the blood of Christ to save somebody, don't it? It
has to die for them. It has to be their substitute. One more
thing we can learn from this story. We need to give constant
attention to the Lord's Word. We need to give constant attention
to prayer. And constant attention to the preaching of His Word.
Our Redeemer taught us to pray, didn't He? He said, lead us not
into temptation. Because we don't know the difference.
If you go looking for a yes, you're going to find it. That's
all there is to it. If you can try to excuse something,
well, the Lord made this and He made that. He says everything's
legal. Like old Jonah getting on that
boat. Well, if the Lord didn't want me to go, He wouldn't have
had a ticket for me. He'd have been booked up. We need to not
be led into temptation. The Lord has to do that. And
through that, through the hearing of the Word preached, through
seeking His Word, we're brought to pray, Lord, You must keep
me. You must keep me. We have a total dependence on
the Lord for all things. All things. My next breath, I'm
dependent on Him. My salvation, my eternal security,
my food, anything it is, I'm dependent on Him. We never begin
in the Spirit and end up perfect in the flesh, do we? We begin
in the Spirit, we walk in the Spirit, and we end in the Spirit.
Our flesh does nothing but sin. Now, the accuser. The curse and
the blessing. Look here, verse 22. Genesis
9, 22. And Ham, the father of Canaan,
saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brethren without. What did Ham do? He published
his father's sin. Ham took pleasure in telling
his brothers about it. He didn't honor his father. He
didn't protect the name of his father. It could be that Noah's
probably chasing him over the same thing. And instead of having
compassion on the head of his family, he spoke about it. There wasn't no billboards in
that day. I got to thinking a lot about that this week. When we
was up in Canada, we saw a billboard against abortion. And across
the street from a bookstore, adult bookstore, West Virginia,
there's a big billboard up telling them what they was doing wrong
and all those things. There wasn't billboards in that
day. There was only eight of them. Eight people. It was a whisper. What
does the scripture say about that? Whispering and rumoring
and gossiping. Hey, do you know what happened?
Hey, guess what? You know what dad did? I don't want to say
anything, but he didn't have to yell. There's
only three of them. What may seem so harmless to us, God looks
on the heart and hand revealed his heart, his true heart. How
do we know what come out of his mouth? That's how we know what
revealed in him. Ham was a God-hating rebel. He
hated his father, and he hated his father's God. Well, he didn't
do nothing that bad. His daddy was naked, and he was
just trying to help out. No, he wouldn't. No, he wouldn't. We see what
happens, don't we? This wasn't a misguided teenager. That's
portrayed often. This wasn't a young adult that's
just trying to figure things out and coming to his own way.
Ham was at least 100 years old. At least 100 years old. He knew
what he was doing, and he did it willingly. Just as Noah fell
into drunkenness willingly, so did Ham. There's always tares
next to the wheat. There was a tare on that ark.
Ham wasn't a believer. In this world, there'll always
be wolves among the sheep. It'll always happen. There'll
always be hypocrites. There'll always be false believers,
chameleons, coming in with the right things to say to keep everybody
happy. Don't offend nobody out there.
Don't offend nobody in here. And there must be heresies among
you." That's what the Scriptures say. It ain't going to go away.
As long as this earth is, that's how it will be. The body of Christ,
His local assemblies, they will never be rid of accusers. Whether
in the flesh or in the mind, the accuser will always be with
us. There is no repentance in hand. No apologies. No begging for forgiveness from
His Father. It says in verse 25, Noah said, Cursed be Canaan. A servant of servants shall he
be unto his brethren." Even when Noah cursed him, it didn't even
faze him. It didn't faze him. He probably thought, well, dad's
just mad. It's a blow over. Man, he'll
be alright. Get him some water. Get him a
V8. Use a cocktail juice. That'll perk him up a little
bit. It's a blow over. God cursing him just as he cursed
Cain. That was a spiritual curse. It
was a spiritual curse. Outwardly, it looks like they
prospered. He cursed his youngest son, too,
Canaan. Nimrod was one of his sons. Became
mighty, it says. We'll look at that here in a
couple weeks. Babylon became mighty. Egypt became mighty.
That was all his people. Sodom and Gomorrah, huge cities,
metropolitan areas. Lots of commerce, business. Business
was booming. But they were cursed. That's
all Ham's offsprings. Just as that great accuser of
the brethren, Satan himself, he bruised the heel of Christ
and it appeared to the world to be a great victory. But it
was only accomplishing the Lord's will. It was only to magnify
His name, to bring Him glory. And Satan's head was crushed.
He was cursed, wasn't he? Canaan was Ham's youngest son.
Put a picture. What was the land of Israel going
to go into? You just read it. That land of milk and honey.
That land that was built. It was prepared. Wells was dug.
Honey was there. Beehives kept. Canaan did it. What's that? They're serving
the Lord's people. He used them to serve Shem. Well, at that time, Shem and
Japheth. We'll see that in a second. His
curse fell on the lineage of Ham. Lord's Word says He will
visit the iniquity of the fathers on all them generations to come.
How true that is. Oh, that us fathers would bow
to God and obey His Word and seek Him earnestly for our own
sakes and for the sakes of generations to come. Here's the blessing. Shem is the father of the Hebrews.
All the Hebrews come from Shem. Our Lord Jesus Christ came from
Shem. That's three of them, right? Ham, Shem, and Japheth. Japheth's
the father of the Gentiles. All the Europeans and that area. Romans. That's Japheth's offspring. Both of those picture God's elect.
They both refused to dishonor their father. They refused to
expose his sin because they too had their sins covered. They
had their sins covered. They too had been forgiven much.
They loved Christ and they loved the ones that Christ died for.
That was their father. That was their head. That was
their brother too. And they loved him. They loved Christ in him.
It says in verse 23, And Shem and Japheth took a garment and
laid it upon both their shoulders. and went backward and covered
the nakedness of their father, and their faces were backward,
and they saw not their father's nakedness. They didn't go out
and tell anyone. They loved their father, and they honored him,
and they kept their mouths shut, and put that garment on their
shoulders, just as Christ's garment was on his shoulders, walking
backwards with pity and covering our sins. That's what was done
for them. They didn't go out and say nothing
to nobody. Solomon told us in Proverbs 10, Hatred stirreth
up strifes, but love covereth all sins. If there's a strife,
if there's a disagreement, a bunch of hurt feelings, and people
gossiping, that's Satan's work. That's who's doing it. You got
some bad thoughts and some bad things to say, and hating somebody
or just whispering. Hey, you know about Solomon talking?
That's the devil's works, what it is. Hatred stirreth up strife,
but love covereth all sins. They acted like somebody who
had experienced grace, didn't they? Shimon Japheth. They acted
like somebody that had been loved first. They know something about
forgiveness. They know something about grace.
They know something about love. Aren't you glad God doesn't expose your
nakedness? Doesn't take all the thoughts of your mind in the
last hour and put it up on a big screen for everybody to see?
Call the attention of the world to it? that He covered you in
His own garment, that He bore your burden. True love from the
Lord in a person's heart covers sin. That's what it does. Peter
had experienced this. He wrote to 1 Peter 4, and above
all things have fervent charity among you, have fervent love
among you, for charity cover the multitude of sins. Not just
one, all of them. Because Christ loves what covered
our sins. Where did these boys learn this? Where did they get
it? Adam, he was perfect. He fell
in sin and his nakedness was exposed. He knew he was naked.
And God slew a lamb and covered him. How did Shem and Japheth
know that? Their daddy told them. Noah told
them. If he was the Lord's prophet
of a generation, I think he'd tell it at home, couldn't he? He'd tell them what the Lord
did for him. Noah Falls was naked and was covered by another. Shem
and Japheth, they showed the conduct of a true believer. They'd
been forgiven, and they forgave. They'd been covered, and they
covered. They were loved, and they showed love. Gossiping and
slandering people don't believe God. They don't believe His Word. Those who whisper behind others'
backs don't believe God. They have never been given a
new heart, and they've never had a work of grace in them.
That's what shut up sin is. I know what I am. How could I
say bad about somebody else if I know exactly what I am on the
inside? Verse 26, and he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem.
What did God's prophet do? He didn't just bless Shem, he
blessed the Lord God of Shem. Praised him. And Canaan shall
be his servant, and God shall enlarge Japheth. And he shall
dwell in the tents of Shem, and Cana shall be his servant. Those
three boys. one that sought to expose the
sin of another, and two, a picture of God's elect Hebrew children,
and a picture of God's Gentile children, all saved by grace,
saved by the love of God, had a work of mercy done in them,
go in and cover, and their land shall be blessed. Jew or Gentile,
bond or free, Japheth or Shims, it doesn't matter, they're one
in Christ, aren't they? Why are they living in the same tents?
They're one, they're a family, they're the body of Christ is
what they are. And Noah lived after the flood 350 years. That's a long time. Nothing else
recorded, is it? And all the days of Noah were
950 years, and he died. That's the end of every man. We all have an end. And I pray
the Lord would come to us and show us His mercy and grace.
Show us our need of it. Show us truly what we are. Show
us we need a Savior. We need righteousness. We're
not righteous. We need His wisdom. We need His blood to cover us
in our nakedness and our sin. Give us repentance to turn from
ourselves and turn from our idols, which is our self, to Him and
bow to Him and worship Him and praise Him. Because we all are
going to die. And you'll either die as Ham,
in your sin, in your thoughts, in your own way, or you'll die
under the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And see no condemnation
like we saw with that rainbow. Wouldn't that be something? The
Lord's going to save His people. There ain't a one of them going
to be left out. There ain't a one of them going to be left behind.
They're in His hand, and it's as sure as anything can be. Because
He swore it by His name, He could swear by no higher. Well, I feel
like I'm just laid up drunk. I'm drunk on myself and pride
and everything else. It don't matter what you feel. Who's your substitute? You stand
on your own? I don't want to stand on my own. No, I need Him. The Lord returns to Him, amen.