Worship Service on Sunday, September 15, 2024
Our text comes today from Genesis 9 verse 18 through 28. It can be found on page 6 in the Old Testament parts of your Bibles. “Now the sons of Noah came out of the ark were Shem and Ham and Japheth and Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was populated. Then Noah began farming and planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and uncovered himself inside the tent.”
Now, because of sin and because of what happened in the Garden of Eden, it was very, you were never supposed to be naked in public, and that was disgusting to people around you. So that’s why that’s the significance of him being uncovered inside his tent. “Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it upon both their shoulders and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father, and their faces were turned away so that they did not see their father’s nakedness.”
“When Noah awoke from his wine, he knew what his youngest son had done to him. So he said, cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants. He shall be this to his brothers. He also said, blessed to 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. Noah lived 350 years after the flood So all the days of Noah were 950 years and he died.”
Did you imagine living for 950 years? I just, that’s just craziness. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Lord, as we consider your word, let us hear what you would have us hear. Let us know what you would have us know and let us do what you would have us do. For your sake in Jesus name, Amen.
Well, we’re fast approaching a new election and we’ve got all these political commercials. So a politician dies and ends up at the pearly gates. St. Peter looks at him and finds his name in the book. So you’re a politician. Well, yes, is there a problem? Oh, no, there’s no problem. We have a policy for people in your profession. You have to spend a day each in heaven and hell and then you will be free to choose where you want to spend the rest of eternity. Why can’t I choose now?
Why do I have to spend a day in hell? Well, this is the policy. First, the politician spends a day in heaven. He sees angels singing and people playing harps. He finds heaven to be very boiling. Next, he spends a day in hell. Upon arriving there, he expects to see barren wasteland with rivers of lava and people being boiled alive. But instead, he sees lush greenery, a large five-star hotel in front of him. And at the hotel residence, or entrance, he sees Satan wearing a tuxedo and sipping a martini. This isn’t what I expected hell to be, says the politician. Oh, hell has been completely misrepresented, said Satan. You have a luxurious five-star hotel with a seven-course meal prepared by the best chefs, and we have all the sporting facilities you could imagine with a very large pool. So the politician spends the entire day playing golf and eating his meal by the poolside. At the end of the day, he sleeps in the most luxurious bed he could imagine. The next morning when he wakes up, he’s back at the pearly gates where St. Peter is waiting for him. So he says, St. Peter says, what will it be? Politician says, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I prefer hell to heaven. So the politician is transported back to hell, where he sees a barren wasteland illuminated only by the glow of rivers of lava and hears the screams of people being tortured. The air is full of the stench of sulfur. Once again, he sees Satan in his tux. What happened to the hotel, the golf course, the pool, and the greenery I saw yesterday? Says the politician. Well, says Satan, yesterday we were campaigning, today you voted. Does that hit home or what? “I promise, I promise, I promise!” And they get in office and it’s just the opposite. Be careful what you see.
Last week we talked about Noah and his obedience to God and all the things that went into preparing for the flood that God was going to send. As Noah’s story continues, we see him and his family exiting the ark and making their way into a new world after the flood. Noah began farming to provide for his family, planting many things, among them a vineyard. Noah drank his wine and became drunk. I would imagine the stress of all that he had endured being a good and righteous man got to him and his sinful nature took over. I mean, that would be the stress reliever. Noah’s own sinful and shameful action showed the foolishness of being drunk. Often times we hear people say, God’s desire to make people drunk in the spirit through the work of the Holy Spirit. That is foolishness.
Ephesians 5:18-22 tells us, “and do not get drunk with wine, for that is dispensation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks for all the things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father, and be subject one to another in the fear of Christ.”
As we know, alcohol is a depressant. It depresses self-control, wisdom, balance, and judgment. The Holy Spirit has an opposite effect. He is a stimulant and he influences every aspect of our being to better and more perfect performance. I emphasize this not to talk about alcohol or alcoholism, but to point out that Noah, being a righteous man, was still only human.
He fell to the temptations of his human side instead of embracing the Holy Spirit and praising God for completing his promise. Noah ends up unclothed in his tent. Ham, seeing his father unclothed in the tent, made fun of him and was mocking him as a father and as a man of God. The ancient Hebrew says that Ham told with delight what he saw in his father’s tent. He was determined to mock his father and was undermining his authority as a man of God. Ham allowed human nature to take over instead of the Holy Spirit.
Proverbs 14:9 says, “Fools mock at sin, but among the upright there is good will.
We are not to make light of sin or delight in it. It goes to show no matter how righteous a person is, they can be vulnerable to worldly things. So when Noah awakens and knew what Ham had done, he cursed Canaan, Ham’s son. Now doesn’t it seem strange that if Ham was the one that sinned against Noah, why did Noah curse Canaan? Perhaps Canaan was involved in the sin against Noah? Perhaps the strongest punishment against him was for Noah to prophetically reveal the destiny of Ham’s son. Maybe through Noah’s prophecy, God was telling Ham what would happen to his son.
As time went on, Canaan was the father of a near eastern people, many of whom were conquered by Joshua when Israel took over the promised land from him. Remember Israel invaded Canaan and took that land with God’s help. Because of the goodness of Shem and Japheth, they were blessed. They loved their father, therefore they protected him, and they went to great lengths to cover up their father without looking at him and not making fun of him. They did not allow their brother’s folly to influence them, even though they easily could have.
Noah was a remarkable man who served God in his own generation. Yet his last years do not seem to match the glory of his first years. Noah was a man of great triumph and of weakness. His godliness is remembered even in the New Testament. In the case of Noah, like Adam and Eve, God once again blesses mankind with both ability and responsibility to reproduce and fill the earth. What’s different In the time of Noah from Adam and Eve, is that animals would all be fearful of humanity. In the garden, God gave plant life as a food source. Now, after the flood, in addition to plants, humanity is given the permission to eat animals.
Noah lived to 950 years old. Noah will be the last to live nearly a millennium. Genealogists of Genesis 11 show a rapidly decreasing maximum to the duration of human life. Noah is a prime example that all people, even those used by God, are fallible and prone to making mistakes. Have we gotten to the point of being beyond shockability and shame in today’s world? Have we become to numb to the sin around us? We need to value God’s teaching about purity, and we need to be ruthless against sin. We have to work at refusing to let it live among us. Most of us tend to think of godliness in terms of the sins we commit or shun. A test of our Christian character is to respond to the sin of others. At times we do not find horror in sin but humor. Think about that. Sometimes when we’re watching a show, they’re doing a sinful act, but it’s comedy. We’ve gotten to that point.
Galatians 6.1 said, “If anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, each one looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted. Verse 2, “bear another’s burdens and therefore thereby fulfill the law of Christ.”
So as I was, I told you I always have somebody that I run my sermons by, and usually it’s my son or daughter-in-law or whatever. So as I finished up the sermon, my son said it was very interesting that you touched on the horror that we find humorous.
He had a very good friend. His favorite show was Friends. And he loved the show, but he said, “I can’t watch that show anymore”. And he said, “Why? Why can’t you watch it?” He said, “because there’s so much wrong with what those friends are doing that I’m finding humor in sin.” So he said, “as much as I love that show, I can’t watch it anymore”.
So, you know, there’s a real fine line and we as a person, an individual, have to decide where that line is between sin and finding humor in sin. Some sins should not be scrutinized. We should not explore them and neither should we share what we know with others.
Jude 1:23, “Save others, snatching them out of the fire, and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment polluted by flesh”. Jude reminds us of the hatred we must have for the sin and the desire of holiness to remain pure to the glory of God.”
Famous saying, “we are not to hate the sinner but the sin”. So that means don’t laugh at somebody that’s sinning. Help them. Help them not commit that sin if you know it’s a sin. We are not to stand aloof from the one who has fallen, but to take them away as from fire. We are given a choice to despise Christ and reject him and persist in sin and be cursed for eternity or we can submit to Christ, have faith in him, taking advantage of God’s grace for our forgiveness. Yes, at times we fail to keep God’s commandments as we ought, but God does not heap more upon us demands after we confess. He assures us, God assures us of the good news that he has forgiven us in Christ every week, every day, every second. The law says “do”, but the gospel says “done”. The law says “do”, but the gospel says “done”. The law says “do”, but the gospel says “done”. What does that mean? That means we are to do what God tells us to, but if we fail, guess what? We get forgiven. Christ forgives us for that. The good news is this, that if you are in Christ by faith, He has indeed forgiven your sins, and that is, He is cleansing you of all unrighteousness. The struggle is a sign of holiness. A saint is a sinner that keeps trying. Take a leap of faith even when it makes no earthly sense. Amen.
