Now we turn to our sermon text for this morning, which is Genesis chapter nine, verses 18 through 29. So you can turn there, it's on page seven of your pew Bibles. And we have been making our way through the book of Genesis, preaching an expository fashion through this section of God's word. And now we come to verse 19. Rather 18, verse 18, that's where it starts. Okay, I invite you to stand out of respect for the reading of God's word. The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed. Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine, and became drunk, and lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both of their shoulders, and walked backward, and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father's nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers. He also said, blessed be 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. After the flood, Noah lived 350 years, all the days of Noah were 950 years, and he died. The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God abides forever. Amen. You may be seated. I got an email this past week, as I do year after year from Ancestry.com. And they were offering me the most wonderful deal in order to have access to their historical records leading back to my family's early history. Now, that kind of stuff interests me. And I was tempted to sign up once again. I've been off it for a number of years. But the interesting thing is I can save you money this morning. Scripture is saving you money this morning because it's taking you back to your family's earliest history. You don't even need a genealogical record to connect the dots to get there. Here it is right here in Genesis chapter 9. You have what Ancestry.com cannot provide you. You have your earliest family's genealogy. There it is. We, each one of us, each one of you sitting right here as members of the human race, could trace the different lines of your family back through three brothers, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And ultimately, back behind them to Noah. We are all related to Noah. And back before him, of course, to Adam. There it is. your genealogical earliest ancestors. And what we see is, I mean, when I log into ancestry.com, it's all just interesting for me. It paints a picture of my family, how I got here, what the last seven or eight generations were like. But when I look at the scriptures, the genealogy they're giving us in these earliest chapters are really teaching us a lesson about ourselves. You see, sin, curse, and blessing are what we must learn from our earliest ancestors. Sons of Noah, sons of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, you must Read from this text and understand that sin, curse, and blessing are part of your story. Sin is part of our story. We know this. We don't have to have this text to show us that. We've seen it week after week after week after week. But we see it here in a particular kind of way, because here is Noah. Here's our great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather, Noah. And up till now we've known him as Noah the hero, Noah the man of faith, Noah the man who built the ark, Noah who stood strong and sturdy and built a ship in the midst of a generation that turned against the Lord. And now where do we find him? After the flood. Now we meet drunk, naked Noah, sprawled out on his tent, bringing shame upon himself and his sons. And you have to wonder, how did he get there, right? This is the guy who stood with integrity while the entire rest of the world crumbled around him. This is the one man in the whole world who was righteous before the flood came. He withstood all the temptations of his generations just to succumb to sin as soon as he's off the ark. And we see here a kind of repetition of Genesis 3. You see similar elements, don't you? There's a garden, a vineyard. There's soil to be worked. And then there's a forbidden use of the fruit of the vine. And then there's nakedness and shame. All of this basically saying to us what? If you thought that Noah was the Messiah, if you thought he was the one who would truly bring rest, if you thought that sin hadn't somehow made its entrance through the ark into the new creation, here it is. We're not talking about sunshine and rainbows anymore. We're talking about sin. And it's made its way through the ark, through the sinful heart of Noah and his sons. And here it is. made its entrance into the new creation and so it will be with us until the Lord brings it to a final end when he returns. Now, there's also right here a warning for each of us because this this fall of Noah, this this shameful situation actually brings something up close and personal to each of us. And it's this, it is a lesson, brothers and sisters, that past godliness does not guarantee future godliness. Sometimes we're most susceptible to Satan's schemes right after we've withstood temptation. Have you ever noticed that? Right after we come through this, this fierce intensity, you say, wow, I made it through that. You start to feel even proud of yourself. Say, I must be, I must be getting far along in my Christian maturity. I just said no to that sin that in the past I would have said yes to a million times. You say, wow, I must be pretty good. And then the next moment you're falling to some sin that you, you're shocked. You're shocked. You're shocked that you succumb to it. Sometimes it's in the moments after the storm, when we're least suspecting that we're hit with some sudden temptation and we give in. Unaware of the roaring lion who seeks to devour. Notice this, when all the world stood against Noah, he stood vigilant and strong. But in his own vineyard, with just his family, that's when he let up his guard and he fell. And it's so often that way with us. It's easier to maintain our integrity when we stand boldly before a world which rejects God. And you hear things said about God that you say, no, I need to stand up for my Savior. That's wrong. That's not true. That leads to death. And so you stand up against the world But then when you're alone in your own home, isn't that often where we let the irritabilities and the corruptions sneak in? And we find ourselves complacent in that place. And it's in that vineyard where sin enters into our hearts. Brothers and sisters, we must be watchful, we must be disciplined. For some of us, it's easy to stand up and to be watchful of our integrity and watchful of our morality when the world is watching, but it's behind closed doors where we crumble. And isn't this the case that we've seen even in recent months, pastors and elders who are shining examples to us in the faith crumble and fall? You say, where did it start? Well, it started behind closed doors. It started in his vineyard. And so it starts in each of yours. You must be vigilant, brothers and sisters. And this warning not only comes to us, but let me put a little edge on this. Let me suggest that this warning comes especially to the older saints in our midst. Because here's Noah. Towards the end of his life, he's past the middle years. And isn't it the case that sometimes the older you get, I've started to barely sense this, that you start to say, wow, you know, maybe I'm past that state. I'm too old for those ways. And there's a kind of complacency that can kind of tempt us to settle in. I've talked with brothers and sisters who are very wise in years, way beyond myself. And they've said that this is the case, that it feels like the years of sinful youth are behind you. And then you're surprised at the kind of irritabilities that start to come in. You say, wow, I thought I'd never be bothered by these things. I think I'd never would respond this way. That's a sin I never saw in myself. And it's not the sins of my youth. It's a different kind of sin. People in their older years are sometimes overtaken by sins they've avoided their entire lives. Noah's case in point. First Corinthians 10, 12 has something to say to us here. Let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. Past godliness does not guarantee future godliness. Neither age nor maturity provide you with an immunity to temptation. What I'm bringing before you this morning from this example of Noah is this warning that none of us, the young or the old, Baby Christians or mature Christians should take for granted the kind of schemes of the evil one. In the midst of the storm and in the moments after the storm, we must be vigilant. Especially vigilant not to take the good things the Lord has given us, whether it be wine or our spouse, and turn these things into idols that corrupt us. For Noah's sin, it's not just his own. We've seen it again and again and again in the vineyard of our own hearts, have we not? This is our ancestor. And this is the sin. Ancestry.com won't tell you that, but the Bible will. And so there's sin, but after sin follows curse. And we see this curse brought in to the family through Ham, who sees his father's shameful sin. He notices mighty Noah, his dad lying drunk and naked on the ground, and notice his response. What's his response when he walks into the tent and he sees this perverse scene of his father drunk and naked? What does he do? Well, he responds with this kind of sniggering delight in seeing his father's downfall. He's a man, here Ham is, he is a man who revels in sin. He doesn't wanna see sin covered. He wants to see it spread. And he doesn't look away from forbidden nakedness. He leans in and he looks and he even gets his brothers and says, hey, go look in there. And let me just cautiously suggest, and I know there are little ears listening, but I'm going to cautiously suggest that scholars who have read this and looked into this text and looked into it with the rest of how some of the words in this passage are used, that there may have even been a further perversity of what Ham did in his father's compromised state. At the very least, he looked when he should have been covering. But there are suggestions that something even more perverse took place. Notice what his brothers do as soon as they're, Canaan or Ham rather tells them what's going on. They take a blanket and they don't look and they walk backwards and they cover the nakedness of their father. In other words, Fifth commandment, honor your father and mother. Even when your father has stumbled, even when he sinned, there are ways to go about this that you don't shout it from the rooftops and take advantage of his compromised position. They cover him. And isn't this what 1 Peter 4, 8 says? Love covers a multitude of sins. Love seeks to cover, even when sin feels like shouting and spreading. You see, this makes Ham's corruption all the more perverse. that his brothers covered when he leaned in and looked, when he spread the sin. Noah wakes up. He learns that Ham took advantage of his shameful situation. And immediately, immediately, do you know what happens? He pronounces a curse upon what Ham has done. Now there's a surprise here. Were you surprised at the curse? Here's the big surprise. The curse doesn't come to Ham. It leapfrogs over Ham. It jumps past him. And who does this curse attach to? His youngest son, Canaan. Ham has four sons. We learned that in Genesis chapter 10. There's Cush, there's Egypt. The youngest son is Canaan. That's important. Let me just briefly say why that's important. Because this text has been twisted. And it has been twisted at key moments, even in the own history of our nation, where this very text was used to excuse the sin of slave trading. And it was used to do so because it was suggested that Ham and all that descended from him were cursed. And yet, look, who was cursed? Not Ham, but his youngest son, Canaan. Verse 24, cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers. Why did Noah curse Canaan instead of Ham? Ham's the perpetrator. Ham's the one who committed the sin. Why does it jump over him, leapfrog over him and go to his youngest son? Well, maybe part of it is it's reflecting the crime as it were, that this is a father and son crime. And so there's going to be a father, to son curse. Maybe that's part of it. Another part might be that Noah recognizes in his grandson, his youngest grandson, the same kind of perversity and love for sin that he sees in him, his youngest son. So perhaps he's seeing the family resemblance, seeing that the rotten apple doesn't fall far from the tree, so he curses Canaan. But when we understand a little bit of biblical history, we really see the key reason. Canaan was the father of the Canaanites. And who are the Canaanites? The evil nemesis of Israel. who time after time oppressed them or seduced them into walking away from God. And you have to remember where we, who Genesis was originally written to. Who was the author of Genesis? Moses. Who was he writing this down for? For all of God's people, but at that time and place, the Israelites who were going out of Egypt and into the land of Canaan, the place where the Canaanites lived. And so they would have this front row seat to seeing what the rotten fruit of Ham's youngest son, Canaan, looked like. What the curse looked like as it played out on the world stage. They saw people who did perverse things. And we read about those perverse things in Leviticus 18. You can go back and read it. There's even more there. And what do we hear over and over and over and over and over in Leviticus 18? No, less than 24 times we hear of uncovering nakedness. You see, the rotten apple does not fall far from the tree. This is what sin does. This is what the curse does. It plays out in perverse ways. And I dare say even more perverse ways than here in this text. But the Israelites could always see it and say, oh, that's where this came from. These wicked actions have a wicked source. And so what must we do? Stay away from them. Drive them out. Press them far from us. Make no provision for this in amongst ourselves. You see, there's something for us here, too. to abstain from sexual immorality, to keep ourselves pure and undefiled from the world. For we know the corruption of our own hearts. We know sin and we know it's curse. And we know that any one of us is never at any point so far that we could not stoop to these levels. In humility, we say we must keep these things far from us. The sin, the curse, as the Israelites would have observed in their own day, people enslaved to the sin of sexual rebellion against God. And so there is sin. And so there is curse. But there's also blessing. Did you see the beautiful blessing in this passage? Verse 27. May God enlarge Japheth and let him dwell in the tents of Shem. Let Canaan be a servant. But before that, blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem. Let Canaan be his servant. Blessings upon blessings poured out upon Noah's undeserving family. Noah pronounced a curse upon Canaan, but his final words are not curse, but beautiful blessings upon both of his faithful sons. Blessings which reach even to us. First, Noah said this, blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant. Now notice, there's another surprise about this text. There's a blessing here. There's a surprise about the blessing. Notice how Noah takes the name of his son, Shem, and he places it in a special relationship with the holy name of God. And you know it's the holy name of God because it's there in all caps, in verse 26, Lord. Yahweh. And there's this beautiful play on words here because the name Shem literally means name. And so you're taking the word name and you're attaching it to the holy name of God. In other words, saying what? That if you want to understand Shem, what you basically need to understand about him is he is God's man. He's telling us, Noah's telling us here in this beautiful prophecy that God's plan to rescue humanity from sin is going to come specifically through this line of Shem. This is what we see throughout the Old Testament, right? Start off in Genesis 3, 15. The seed of the woman is going to crush the serpent's head. You say, well, I wonder what seed. And you start to see humanity multiplying. And God starts slowly but surely pointing down more and more specific into one line of humanity. So he says, well, it's going to be through Noah. He says, well, which of Noah's sons? Well, it's going to be through Shem. Well, which son of Hashem? And then he's going to hone in on Abraham. And then he's going to hone in even further and further and further and further all the way until we get to whom? Jesus. Look at Luke 3, and you'll see in Luke 3 that Shem is named in Jesus' genealogy. This isn't some mistake. This isn't some random blessing. This is God identifying, placing his name, his covenant name upon one family line and showing that the course of human history is going to be reversed through a descendant of that line. The head crusher of Genesis 3.15 won't descend from Ham or Japheth, but rather through the Semitic peoples. Ultimately, we see this blessed prophecy fulfilled, the fullness of time when God sent his son, born of a Jewish woman, Mary. There it is in Genesis chapter nine. Isn't it amazing? You have to love scripture and how it connects the dots for us. There's another surprise here. The blessing comes to Shem, but the blessing isn't with Shem himself, right? It's cursed be Canaan, but it's blessed be, you think it's gonna be blessed be Shem, but it's blessed be the Lord, blessed be God. You see, God himself is the source of blessing. He will bring about his people's salvation. Man brings curse, but God brings blessing. And that's what we see throughout the whole Bible. Isn't that the storyline of the Bible? Man ruins himself, but God saves man. And it's not man's doing, not by works, lest one of you should boast, but by faith in the Lord. You see, this is what we see in the person of work of Jesus. The savior from the line of Shem is none other than Emmanuel, God with us. and he's come to save his people from their sins. So right here in the blessing, you have the very earliest hints that the savior who would come to redeem the people would be not only one descended from man, but also be God himself, the source of blessing. Why? so that no one may boast, so that no one would say, I'm a son who's avoided the curse. I'm a son who's risen above my father's failures. I've overcome sin, but rather only God would be our savior. Only God would redeem us. Okay, there's one final surprise here, and I want you to see it. There's a blessing for the third brother too. You see it? May God enlarge Japheth and let him dwell in the tents of Shem. Here's what you need to know about Japheth. He's the father of the different Indo-European peoples who would spread out over large continents, establish the Roman empire, sail to America. These are people outside of Shem's genealogy. These are Gentiles. They would come to share in the blessings of salvation, too How how does that happen Brothers and sisters if by faith you belong to Jesus Christ you are adopted into Abraham's family You have a place inside the tents of shin Yes, you belong to the in the very living room of God our Father As the Apostle Paul preached in Acts 14, 27, God had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. Do you see it? We were outside of the household. We were outside of the tents of Shem. We were on the outside looking in, saying, wow, must be nice to have God's name upon me. Must be nice to belong to God. Must be nice to have a relationship with the one true God. I wish I were there. I wish I were inside the tents. And here and there, throughout the Old Testament, you see You see sons of Ham and sons of Japheth sneak, not sneak their way in, but get their way in. You see Rahab. You see people find their way in. But by and large, we're on the outside looking in. Japheth's sons saying, how do I get that privilege? Ham's son saying, ah, would it be? to be welcomed into those tents? And here it is. Acts 14, 27, but you don't need that, because all the way, you just start with Genesis 9, and you see there is room in God's house. Cheer up, sons of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. There's room in God's family for every human being who flees sin and finds safety in the Savior. Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we look back at our earliest ancestors and what we see in the pages of scripture is a resemblance. Lord, when we're most humble, we admit is uncanny. We do the things that these men did. We follow their practices. Our hearts want what they wanted, and our hearts want what is not good. Sin corrupts, Lord. We corrupt good things. Blessed be your name. You save us, not by works we've done, but through your Rescuer, through your Son. Heavenly Father, we thank you for opening a door of salvation, not just to some corner of the human genealogy, but for all, everyone who would repent and believe the gospel, that the door is wide open to all who would come by faith. And this is good news to the nations, good news to us. We ask Lord that we would be all the more diligent to seek your face and to live, not in sinful ways which bring curse, but rather according to your word and in the path of blessing. We pray this in Jesus name, amen.