May we turn this morning to the ninth chapter of the book of Genesis. The ninth chapter of the book of Genesis. Reading a few verses commencing at verse 24. And Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest 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 Canaan shall be his servant. 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. For reasons which are obvious to all those who are familiar with this section of the Word of God, we do not read the full account of the shame which early fell upon the human race after the deliverance from the flood. We have a scene of intemperance and indecency. We enter into no judgments upon ancient men in ancient times, of which we have not the full details. But we just note in the passage that intemperance and indecency usually go hand in hand. And it is part of the shame of the human race. that these twin offenses should be so rife amongst us. Surely we do not need to enter into any details about them. I have little patience with those who read of what happened with Noah. and they rise up in pulpits in righteous indignation and denunciation of a great and good and patriarchal man. They ought to be worn by the fate of his son Ham, who also brought charges against his own father, at least by his acts. and the curse of God fell upon his posterity in consequence. Let us be careful how we think and speak of the men of God, remembering always that it is better to cover up sin, it is better to hide another shame than talk about it and expose it to the world. That was Ham's offence. to see to it that it isn't ours. The assumption is, of course, with those people who get very denunciatory about other people's sins, the assumption is that they have something to hide themselves. Beware of the man who is always talking about somebody else's sins. which is very often an escape for his own conscience. Let us remember that if there is any shame attached to the family of Noah, or to the record and history of Noah, let us remember, dear friends, that it is the record and history of the human race. And it is not the indictment of an individual, but of that sin which clings to every one in which we are warned in so many cases in the word of God to beware. We could spend a good deal of time, I don't know very profitably, but we certainly could spend a good deal of time on these twin sins of intemperance and indecency. I suppose that our feelings of delicacy on the matter would be regarded by some as being somewhat misplaced and out of date in a day such as this in which we live, in which intemperance is regarded almost as a virtue, an indecency almost as a right which people are at liberty to exercise and indulge. But you know enough about this without anyone disturbing your minds at a time when we must devote ourselves to the positive virtues of life in holiness, in purity of heart and mind. Praying God that he will have mercy upon our unrighteousness. And by the supply of his Spirit, we may rise to be better men and women than we are. I suppose that every honest soul amongst us will grant that there's a considerable amount of room for improvement in each one of us. Let our younger people too. We're just setting out upon life. Let them beware of these evils. Firstly, the evil of intemperance in these days. Less and less do we hear about the virtues of total abstinence and indulgence in the All kinds of things which pander to the flesh are being encouraged on every hand. Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand, said the Apostle Paul. Remember that it is a Christian virtue to show an example to the world around us. and even things which we could allow for ourselves as not being sinful, we abstain from for the sake of the weaker brethren. For none of us live unto ourselves and none of us die unto ourselves. Whether we live or whether we die, says Paul, it is unto the Lord to whom we must all render an account in the day which is to date. Let this suffice, therefore, as we proceed to see the marvellous division which God made in the human race, and arising out of the sin in the homestead of Noah sometime after the flood, when one of his sons insulted his own father, and the other two made reparation as good honest men would. And arising out of it, a great prophecy was uttered by Noah. And we see the providence of God in these things, that certain tendencies already appeared in one of Noah's sons. which were to characterise his posterity. Let us be careful, dear friends, as parents, lest we pass on our own evils to our own offspring. For they watch, and they know, and we live not unto ourselves, but we live again. very often in our own faults and failings, in those who come after us. You say, why should this be so? Well it is so, is that not enough? We have a deep responsibility in the matter. Think not that when the curse fell upon Ham's posterity, that it was because of something Ham did. What Ham did only revealed a tendency which would endure from generation to generation and God put his finger, his mark upon it. You see, it's a pity that all the posterity of Ham should be cast away because of what was done so long, long ago of which they had no knowledge and no responsibility. But all the posterity of Ham is not cast away. It may well be that if there are parts of Africa today where the posterity of Ham mainly live, there are parts of Africa today where there are more Christians to the square mile than there are in Great Britain. The salvation of individuals, of any family of the human race, was never excluded by what took place centuries or millenniums before. But God does make a memorial of sin, but he does it for the benefit of the human race and for the advancement of his purposes, and his purposes are always redemptive. That is, The ultimate view that God takes, the worldview of all history, is to bring to pass the purposes of grace, mercy and salvation. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. We thank God for that whosoever. It makes no difference what division of the human race we may belong to, nor does it make any difference ultimately who our father was or what our mother was, because the word says whosoever the leader. And grace does not run. necessarily in families, and nor does the curse endure in individuals of the human race from generation to generation. Else the children of the wicked or of the heathen would have no hope, and the children of the righteous could sit back in carelessness and indifference. God does not permit that. in the vastness of his wisdom, he knows how to manage not only the history of the world, but the history of each individual soul in it. Now as we read the prophecy of Noah, we see that the human race is divided into three great One section is doomed to the end of the world to a form of servitude. And whether we like it or not, whether we be accused of racialism or anything like that, the facts of history are that the descendants of Hell-Hound to this day are found in servitude. as a race. They bring to the surface no great leaders of the human race in art or culture, in education or in religion. Nevertheless, the hand of God's mercy is always over them. And there's very often a more ready response to the gospel of divine grace in that race than in the other sections of humanity. So let us preserve a balance in the matter. Now the other two sections of the human race were Shem and Japheth. Now if you look at a map of the world you will see that there are three great continents all joined together by a narrow neck of land where the Suez Canal now is. And there it is that Asia and Africa are divided. And just across the prosperous north of Asia Minor by a narrow neck of water, the great continent of Europe is separated. And so you have three clearly marked continents on your map of the globe, Europe, Asia and Africa. Europe was given to the sons of Japheth and there is not the slightest doubt about it It is an indisputable fact of history that the European races sprang from Japheth, that the Asiatic races sprang for the most part from Shem, and the African races sprang from Ham. You say, well what about the American continent? Entirely people unreserved for the sons of Japheth. For with only minor exceptions, the great bulk of the population of what used to be known as the New World, only discovered at the time of the Reformation. The great bulk of the population is European, as everybody knows. The European race is the most dynamic and energetic of any section of humanity. and is so to this day. Now the prophecy was that the inheritance should be to Shem. The Hebrew race, the Jews, come as descendants of Shem. They are the most numerous of all the human families. China, which has one quarter of the world's population, is Semitic, that is, they are descendants of Shem. The Hebrew race to them was committed. The lively word of God, the oracles of God were deposited with them through Abraham and his descendants for a long, long period of the human race until Christ came. The word of God continued in that family of the human race. During that time God permitted all other nations to walk in their own darkness and their ignorance, knowing what He would do. And yet the ignorance was never so great, but that there were tokens of the mercy of God amongst them, by which those whose eyes were opened and their ears were unstopped by the mercy of God would know where their salvation lay. Hence it is we could spend a great deal of time in vindicating the name of God in history by pointing out such great men as Job, who didn't come of the family of Israel at all, who probably lived before them. All men have been living at the same time as Abraham. We have no certain knowledge of when Job lived, but he goes back a long, long time. And it is quite evident from the dispute which took place, the disputation between Job and his three friends, with the young man Elihu in the background coming in to sum up and speak for God, such words as strike us as being amongst the most remarkable ever heard by human ears. We see in this great dialogue which took place the profound knowledge of God and of His sovereignty, and of His grace, and of the promise which lay in the human race from the beginning, so that if it was ever lost to any section of the human race, it was lost because of sin and neglect. and not because of ignorance. The Egyptians were children of Ham. They were the leading race in Africa. Probably the rest of Africa was not occupied in their day. It was a mistake to suppose the earth was full of people at the time of Abraham. It was not. Most of the human race crusted round where Abraham was. and had every reason to be in possession of the information of what happened to Abraham. And indeed we know from certain indications that they did know. As, for instance, the great Egyptian race, the dominant race of Ham in Africa at that time, and still is to this day. The Egyptian race is still the most numerous of all the nations in Africa, highly civilised as we've been seeing through the exhibition in London and the showing of it upon television screen for those people who want to be educated. This great people, great in their civilisation and in their arts and crafts, And God sent Abraham down amongst them. And Pharaoh saw Abraham's wife and wanted her. And yet Abraham was able to leave Egypt again, the mightiest country on the face of the earth at that time. And not a dog could move its tongue against him because he was surrounded by the mercy of God. He went into Egypt and came out again with his wife. unscathed and untouched. And if this was not a testimony to the Egyptians that this man was a prophet of God, and his very presence was an accusing finger against their vile idolatry and having corrupted a man to birds and beasts and four-footed creatures, so that the gods of Egypt were beetles and serpents and birds and the beasts of the field, the highly civilized and intelligent people. But marvel not at that, because when we come to the sons of Japheth, Paul arrives in Greece, as we have read. He goes to the capital city of Athens, and he finds more gods on the street than there are men. Oh, magnificent gods portrayed. Oh, the art of the Greek sculptures, which is one of the marvels of civilisation to this day. But most of their art and craft was devoted to idolatry. They all found their capital city wholly given to idolatry, the wisest race on the face of the earth, the most civilised, the most highly educated. with its philosophers and sages, its history, its poetry, its grand and wonderful culture. And with all that, in their souls they were grovelling beasts, their wallowing in intemperance and indecency, and in all that flows from a corrupt idolatry, What does Paul say to them when he reasons with them on Mars Hill, at the highest court in the world at that time of human education, art, culture and intelligence. He remonstrates with them as one reasonable man to other reasonable men. He said, for as much as your own poets admit that we are the offspring of God, we ought that the Godhead is likened to gold and silver and precious stones graven by art and man's device. In the times of this ignorance, God tolerated. He passed over century after century without judgment because he knew what he would do in the end after man had been tested with knowledge, education, reason, everything that a righteous and holy God could bestow upon him, and he'd come to this state of foul behavior and foul idolatry. God now commanded, says Paul, all men everywhere to repent. For he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained. whom he has raised from the dead. When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, they mocked. Why should intelligent and rational and educated men mock when they hear about the resurrection of the dead, or about the virgin birth of the Son of God, His miraculous life, His atoning death? Why should they mock when they hear of the resurrection from the dead? then they ought to wistfully hope that it might be true. It was their only hope of immortality and a life beyond. But like the Athenians of old, sold to death, men mock. It was fashionable then to be an idolater. It is fashionable now to be an unbeliever in anything, to have no religion except the religion of intemperance and indecency. This is what they live for. Let us eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. It is an indication of what happens to the human race in the best of circumstances, an evidence of the total depravity of the human heart, that after four hundred years of the greatest preaching the world ever knew except in apostolic times, lasting over a greater period of time than it lasted when the Christian era came in. After four centuries of the enlightenment of the gospel and the development of theology and the knowledge of the divine word and the divine grace such as the world had never known, the sons of Japheth, the European nations, have come to where they are today. What has caused it? Oh well, you see, the Christian church has become outdated, or it has lost its testimony, hasn't lived up to the times. And this much we can say about the Christian church that it has become, in our day, an anti-Christian church. And it is certainly living up to the times in which it is passing through. It's doing its best to catch up with the times too, with intemperance and indecency. Because everybody knows who knows what's going on. Therein lies the great call to you and to me to separate ourselves unto God. to turn aside from it, the wickedness and sin, the selfishness we brought with us perhaps to this service this morning, the being full up with our own affairs and our own problems, our own grievances, never thinking of God's grievance against the human race, His long suffering and His patience. The prophecy declared that after Shem the torch would be passed on to Japheth. God shall enlarge Japheth and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem. That means the European races, after many, many centuries, after several millenniums left apparently there in their heathen darkness like our forefathers in these islands. That the privileges which God granted to Shem in Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and their descendants, those privileges would be transferred to us and we should dwell in the tents of Shem. And we have the Bible. We have the knowledge of it, we have a delight in it. We have the knowledge of God through his word, the knowledge of Christ, the knowledge of the gospel, of divine grace. What an inheritance we have, dear friends, by the divine providence. And it is still with us to this day, despite the appalling apostasy of the age in which And it is a fact that it was reserved to our European races, this supreme grace of God, that we should produce, or there should be produced amongst us, the greatest theologians, the greatest philosophers, the greatest scientists, the greatest engineers, the greatest musicians, the greatest artists, the greatest poets. that culture should be raised to the highest possible level in the human race as one of the by-products of the Gospel, the Word of God. And now we are departing from it. And you go to our art galleries and make your choice between the old rooms when art was art and the new galleries where they hang the latest atrocities. And put on your And as they go round and round and you hear the music, you make your choice. You've been handling Mozart, and the great musicians of the past, and the tom-tom music of today. Which comes, where does it come from? It comes from Ham. It comes from the Negro ghettos of Los Angeles and San Francisco. That's where our rhythms have come from. You hear the drum beating of the people in darkest Africa and you can detect the same drum beating today in the beat groups of Liverpool and throughout the Western world. That's where it came from, the return to heathenism because of the decline of faith and the extinguishing of life, we no longer produce great poets, we no longer produce great musicians, we are incapable of producing great artists. Because even the very schools in which they are trained are trained in the new ideas which are atheistic and heathenistic in their origins. Why go into these things? The age is running down, dear friends. Let us hold fast to our heritage. Let us be careful of what goes on in our homes, what we introduce there and what we allow to be there. The situation is already in most cases out of hand. We are not entirely free agents in these things, but let us at any rate Be careful about our worship. Are we easily put off from coming to this house of God morning and evening? Are we glad already to take advantage of the first excuse which comes? Visitors have arrived. It's rather cold. The weather has changed. the sun doesn't shine or on the contrary it does shine and all these become reasons why we should not be in our places at the appointed time. If ever there was a day when Christian people should be in absolute earnest about the public worship of God and the hearing of his word and the support of the preaching of the word and the encouragement of it by every means in their power This is that day, and it will be increasingly so as time goes on. Let us be sensible of our privileges, the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the great juncture of history, when the flame of God's grace and mercy and truth was handed on to our forefathers in our part of the world. as endured there to this day, the blessings of God Almighty, the story of the cross, the preeminence of the Saviour, the supremacy of the Son of God, the wonderful story of His coming, His birth, His life, His works, His atoning death, His glorious ascension to the eternal throne of God on high. These are the articles of our faith. We ought to be more refreshed in our mind by them than what we are. We ought to buy up every opportunity of listening eagerly for that word which is spoken of Christ, to his glory and praise, so that we with those who went before us shall delight at the very sound of his name. Religious enthusiast of this, God granted it may be so. We need some enthusiasm these days about Christ and the Gospel and the Word of God. It is no great credit to anybody that they can be enthusiastic about all kinds of worldly things, but they cannot be enthusiastic about the salvation of their own souls, or the glory of heaven, whose name is the praise of heaven. and who will come in glory and power and when he comes in bright array and leaves the conquering line it will be glory there to say that he's a friend of mine. God grant for his name's sake. We close by singing number six. Come sound his praise abroad and hymns of glory sing, Jehovah is the sovereign God, the universal King. Number six. I hear the trumpet call for you, dear Alma Mater. With all the gifts of gold, we gave our sincere hearts. Of all we have, of all we hold, and of all you