Morning, let's go before the Lord. Our Father in heaven, what a glorious day it is to be in your house. Lord, I pray that this morning you would cause us to position ourselves before your throne, before the throne of a holy and righteous God. It's an old children's nursery rhyme. It says, kitty cat, kitty cat, where have you been? I've been to London to visit the queen. Kitty cat, kitty cat, what'd you do there? Well, I chased a little mouse right under her chair. This morning as we go into Genesis chapter nine, there will be much opportunity to spend time away from the presence of God. I mean, not in front of his throne, but chasing mice, as it were, underneath. We need to be cautious, and I'm gonna something a little different. I'm just going to name some potential mice right off the start because I want to kind of — accountability for me and for each of us to make sure that we don't divert our attention from the focus of Genesis chapter 9, the latter half. We're going to be in verses 18 through the end, 18 through 29. But I'm going to name a couple of things here that Some of them jump obviously out to us. Some of them are ones that commentators have kind of invented over time. But I want to name what those are, identify them so we're on guard against them. One of them, population issues. Overpopulation, underpopulation, the expansion of the kingdom of man. Caution about that. Ecological and environmental issues. Drunkenness, dangers of alcohol. Sensuality or homosexuality. Racism, slavery, I mean intermarriage, all these types of things have been attributed to these passages. And we'll find as we go through this morning that it's about none of these, but it's about the sovereignty of God. And the message this morning is entitled, Advancing Toward Our Redeemer. Advancing Toward Our Redeemer. I want to kind of highlight a couple things that as I studied this week. I struggle with the text, to be candid with you. After I kind of felt like I got my brain around it a little bit, I went back and why did I struggle so much with this? And I came up with three reasons. This is not an exhaustive list, but at least three that I want to look at. One is our flesh. Paul, in Philippians 4, admonishes the Philippians. He says, finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is good repute, if there is anything excellent, if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. Then in 2 Corinthians 10, verse 5, he says, we are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. Why would Paul, writing to believers at Philippi and Corinth, say, Focus, guys. Focus. Focus on what the Lord wants you to see. Focus on the things of God. Take every thought captive. Why? Because our minds, if left to wonder, wonder towards things that are of ill repute, things that are unholy. That's what we do. We naturally gravitate toward those things, just like the mouse is drawn by the little furry critter We're just drawn to these types of things, so we need to be cautious against that. James, in chapter one, verse 14, he says, but each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. It's in us, and we're enticed by that. And as we look through this passage, we're gonna see things that our minds could be drawn toward that we need to be cognizant of. Our flesh, it distracts our focus. We desire to see things. I mean, open the newspaper, front page. What is your eye drawn to? It's not the story of the Boy Scout helping the grandmother across the street. It's the negative in our world. That's what we're, our sin draws us to that. You got on Interstate 45 when, when there's a wreck in the northbound lane, the car turned over. What happens to traffic on the southbound side? It's jammed up just as bad. People slow down to look. We want to see the train wreck. And we have to be knowledgeable of that as we go into this and be honest with ourselves this morning and say that apart from the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit, we're not going to see the Lord. We're not going to see him in this text. Secondly, second reason, I had to discover that my doctrine, my Reform doctrine is not as developed in practice as it is in theory. And I'll elaborate more on that in a little bit. But the third thing, we don't view the text in context of God's greater redemptive plan. Let me give you an illustration. We had some young men over yesterday and we had an airsoft war and had some good time shooting at them. But I thought about this yesterday. When you're aiming a gun, OK, whether it's a pistol or a long rifle, some of you are, you know, gun enthusiasts. You put your cheek down and your eye has to line up with the rear sights, and the rear sights have to line up perfectly with the front sight. But none of that matters unless all of that is lined up onto the target. And if we look at the historical and literary context of the Old Testament, think of it kind of like the rear sights. Don't take it too far, the analogy will fail, as any of them will. But if we don't line up with historical context, in our front sight has to be lined up with what is God's redemptive plan? What is His purpose for man? And then the object of that, our target if you will, is the Lord Jesus Christ. And if we're not pointed at Him in every verse, every word, every chapter in Scripture points to Christ. And if we don't see that from the beginning, we're going to miss what He's trying to tell us. Make sense? every word points to Christ. So what is the context? The context here, and this is, I just want to remind you, it's ground we've already covered. This was written, Moses wrote the book of Genesis along with the other four books of the Pentateuch after the Exodus, after they left Egypt, but before they went into the Promised Land. So Moses is providing the theological and historical framework for this advancement into the promised land. They're about to go in and slaughter nations, and there needs to be a justification for that. Moses is writing all this down and explaining in the Spirit of the Lord why they're doing what they're doing, why they're about to do what they do. It's to give them hope, to give them encouragement, and to see the grand scheme of God in all these things. Not just the capriciousness of men, not just the greed and the want of wanting to go in and take this land of milk and honey, but God has ordained it, and they need to understand that. Secondly, there's a theme that runs throughout Genesis, and it's this theme of the younger, or the older serving the younger. And God works through, look here, it's Seth over Cain, Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Judah and Joseph over their brothers, and Ephraim over Manasseh. We need to understand that we are not the products of just natural processes. or random events. God ordains the boundaries and the times and the seasons of men. We need to understand that before we even look at the text. Moses, he wrote these five books to establish the law and to remind God's people where they've come from and where God is taking them. So, Genesis 9. Verses 18, the following. He drank of the wine and became drunk and uncovered himself 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 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 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. Noah lived 350 years after the flood. So all the days of Noah were 950 years, and he died. I'm going to divide this into just four general sections this morning. We're going to look at the sons of Noah, we're going to look at Noah's shame, Noah's prophecy, and then Noah's death. So this is going to put our pathway in front of us here. First, let's look at Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Notice here this says, these were the sons who came out of the ark. This was — we don't know exactly how long this was, between the time they actually opened the door and the Lord — or the Lord opened the door and brought them out of the ark. But we know that some time has passed, long enough for agricultural cultivation to take place, the vines to be harvested, the wine to be made. We know that several years had passed. to the point that all three of these boys now had sons. We see in chapter 10 there were a total of, I believe, 16 grandsons of Noah. But what Moses is communicating here is how near they were to the judgment. They were only this far away. They came out of the ark. The people of the Israelites, when they're receiving this word from Moses, had just come out of the exodus. They had just come out of bondage. And he wanted to draw a parallel here. They both were very near to sin. He wanted them to know how near sin really is. We think of Cain. The Lord said, Cain, sin crouches at the door, ready to pounce upon you. They needed to understand that. He said, these are the three sons who came out of the ark. The Israelites, getting ready to head into Canaan, getting ready to cross over the Jordan, stood at the same type of crossroads that Shem, Ham, and Japheth find themselves at in this passage. So Ham is pointed out as the father of Canaan. There were, again, 16 grandsons here. Why is one of them named? We've got to think about the context, and we'll talk a little more about that. But Canaan is singled out as the son of Ham. And he's not even the eldest son, by the way. He's the youngest. But he's singled out, and we'll need to understand why. So Japheth had seven sons, Seth had five, and Ham had four sons. The Scripture is always looking forward. As we look through, we've seen as Pastor Voti and Pastor Paul have preached through Genesis up to the first half of chapter 9, we've seen that common theme, the seed of the woman versus the seed of the serpent. We've seen that God ordained the genealogy of Noah. We saw from Seth to Noah. And Pastor Voti talked a couple weeks ago, the whole point of that passage was to get to Noah. And we'll see that in, in two chapters from now, we'll see the whole point of, of this was to get to Abraham and to make that connection there. So the Scripture's always looking forward. It says here in the text that the whole earth was populated. We'll see more in chapter 10 and 11, the details of that. We won't cover that this morning, but this is a reminder of God's covenant faithfulness. What was the first part of the Noahic covenant? It wasn't that he wouldn't destroy the earth again. That was the second part. The first part was in verse 1, and God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. This is fulfillment of the promise that God had made. They were already beginning. Praise God, 16 grandsons already. This is the fulfillment of God's promise. Next, the New Testament in Acts 17 affirms this reality. Acts 17 says, and he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation. Confirmation of the blessing given to Noah and to his sons. There should be great hope in that. God is a God of faithfulness. When he promises something, it's gonna be fulfilled, and Noah was seeing that already in his life. So this is not really the place to discuss some of these anthropological issues or population issues, and those can be covered and should be covered some in the next couple of chapters, but that's a snapshot of Noah's sons, and we need to look at it in the context of God's covenant faithfulness. We look at things in our man-centered mind, we need more, we need greater numbers, more money, more power, more influence. Noah had three sons. God was faithful starting with a small number and was able to accomplish mighty things according to his plan with a small number. Next, let's look at Noah's shame. This is where we need to be on high alert for these little mice. Verse 20, then Noah began farming and planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and he told his two brothers outside." Commentators have speculated a lot about what the ecological differences, and wine didn't ferment prior to the flood, and it's fermenting now, and Noah was caught off guard by this. We don't know. The fact of the matter is we don't know, and for the purpose of this text, it's really irrelevant. The fact of the matter is Noah got drunk and he passed out. and he passed out inside his tent. It was probably hot, and he uncovered himself. That's all we know, and it would be irresponsible of us to read more into it than what's there. That's all we know. And again, let's not allow our flesh to go someplace the text doesn't take us. Then Ham comes in, inside the tent, and sees Noah. The drunkenness of Noah may very well have been a public sin. It's likely this was a public feast, a harvest feast, But the element of his uncovering himself occurred inside his tent. The sin of Ham was here. The two words in verse 21, it says, inside his tent. Verse 22, he told his two brothers, outside. Don't miss that. Ham sought to expand the shame of his father. He sought to take this outside to his brothers. And he sought to gloat over this. This reveals the character of Ham. This reveals the mindset of this man. Now, again, we don't want to read more into this. Noah was naked. That's it. He didn't have any clothes on. We should not read anything more into that. And again, commentators have come up with all kinds of wild speculations about other things that could have happened, and that wasn't the case. It says, it's clear, it's clear, it says that Ham saw the nakedness of his fathers. His two brothers were able to avoid seeing the nakedness of their father just by turning their head. That's all it was, just purely a visual, seeing the nakedness of their father. But Ham sought to expand the shame of his father. First Peter 4.8 says, above all, keep fervent in your love for one another because love covers a multitude of sins. I wonder if Peter had this in mind when he, when he wrote that, that he, that he had in mind this, this event with Noah. First Corinthians 13, about love, God says this, does, love does not rejoice in unrighteousness but rejoices with the truth, covers all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Ham had demonstrated his wickedness." Now, the other thing, keep in mind the context again. At the same time, Genesis is being revealed as part of the Pentateuch, at about the same time. Moses is reading the law to the Israelites. So as he's recounting this story, and he's talking about the dishonoring of his father, the Israelites are going, oh, oh, we know this one. This is number five. It's the fifth commandment here. They're able to connect those two very clearly in their minds. And this was the first, we say the vertical or the horizontal tablet of the law, this was the first commandment. Ham has violated that. The law wasn't there yet, but the Israelites were able to make that connection, that Ham had disgraced his father. Listen to this what Calvin says about Ham. John Calvin says, we see many such at this day who most studiously pry into the faults of holy and pious men in order that without shame they may precipitate themselves into all iniquity. They even make the faults of other men an occasion for harboring themselves into a contempt for God. This is nothing new. Ham looked at this and said, not only is this an opportunity to expand my father's shame, but it's quite possibly an opportunity for me to justify my own sin. To be able to look at it and say, my dad's a drunk. It's okay for me. My dad has lost control of himself. I can hold myself to a lesser standard. In fact, as Calvin points out, some use this even to draw contempt for God. And I wonder, many of us grew up outside of Christian homes. How much do we honor our parents, even those who are unbelievers? How much do we seek to magnify their shame? There's great shame in being uncovered before the Lord, to being naked before the Lord. This is the same type of thing that Adam experienced when the Lord said, Adam, where are you? He said, I was naked, I hid myself. He felt the glaring view of God upon him, and he knew he was naked. He knew he had nothing to cover him. Those of us who have lost families, there's nothing to cover them, and we know that. Why would we seek to magnify that shame? Why would we seek to expand that and dwell on that? We should honor them. We should honor them for what the Lord has done through them in us. But if we're honest with ourselves, we're guilty of the same sin as him in a lot of ways. We seek to magnify the shame of others. We seek to find things maybe more negative than what they really are. Love commands us to cover sins, not to take them outside the tent as it were. In the context of a church, context of a family, there are things that should remain private. There's things that should be covered over and be handled in grace within a family, within a church, not be taken outside. To those who, or no part of it. But let's contrast that to Shem and Japheth. They graciously, not only are they going to cover the nakedness of the Father, they didn't even want to see it. They wanted to preserve in their minds an image of their Father as the holy patriarch of the Lord. They sought to expand in their own mind and preserve in their own mind a proper view of their Father. Noah messed up. There's no way around that. Noah sinned. And, but the sons sought to minimize that. Two of them did. One sought to expand it. And there's a great difference there. Children, how do you honor your parents? If it hasn't occurred to you yet, it will soon. Your parents are gonna mess up. Your parents sin. And there'll be opportunities for your parents to be in shame. How do you handle that? How do you deal with that? Do you deal with that graciously? Do you exercise discretion and peace and grace in your home? Or do you blab and talk about what's happened? Or your brothers or sisters? Your siblings? Parents, we're equally guilty. Our children shame themselves. How do we handle that? Do we seek to help them through it and help cover them in their nakedness, as it were? Or do we seek to expand that and make it more widely known and reduce the opportunity for them to find acceptance among the greater family of God? There's a danger there. Ephesians 4.32 tells us that it says, forgive one another just as Christ has forgiven you. We have great admonition because of the forgiveness, because of the great grace given to us to extend that grace to others, especially when they don't deserve it. Look here in the text, it says, when Noah woke from his wine, he knew what his youngest son had done to him. Better rendering there is rather than he knew, it's he found out, he learned. He had to ask. He was out. Noah awoke. He was completely out of his mind under the effects of alcohol. Again, this is not the place to preach about the evils of alcohol. That's not the point of the text. There are plenty of other passages that could handle that just fine. This isn't that one. There's a warning here, clearly, but the fact is Noah awoke from his wine and he had to find out. Have you ever had to, maybe not from wine per se, but have you ever kind of woken up and said, I don't know what's going on? Dads, have you ever had, honey, what are we teaching the kids? Son, what's going on in your life? Daughter, what's going on in your heart? Have we ever kind of woken up and said, I don't know, and I had to go and learn, I had to go find out. There's grace here with Noah. So that's Noah's shame. He didn't know. He had to go to somebody else and say, I'm ashamed to admit this, I don't know what happened. I was drinking, I remember something about going to the tent, and that's the last I remember. He had to go and find out what was going on in his own family. Some of us have been there. Some of us have been there. We've come home, as it were. The Bible speaks of the spirit of Elijah coming and turning the hearts of fathers to their children and children to their fathers. There's a parallel here. Many of us as fathers have woken up, and I'm praying that those of you who haven't will. There's great joy there. And Noah is able to express that in his family. There's damage as a result, but he's able to express articulately to his family and authoritatively and powerfully what needs to happen next. So we've looked at Noah's sons. We've looked at Noah's shame. We'll spend the bulk of our time here on Noah's prophecy. It starts off with, it says, so he said. Think about that. Noah has woken up. He's had to go and find out what happened. And then he speaks. Contrast this to Adam. Adam stood silent as his wife talked to the snake. Men, there's great encouragement here. There's great conviction. There's also great hope. Noah understood that despite his sin, he had a duty to speak. He had a responsibility to stand up and declare, thus saith the Lord. His sin didn't dictate what he said to his family. His own failure could not deter him, should not deter him from what had to happen next. Turn with me to John chapter 10. Jesus has just given what's referred to as the parable of the good shepherd. He introduces this concept of himself as the good shepherd. Well, as happens frequently, he gets off to the side with the disciples, and the disciples said, what does that mean? We don't get it. Okay, I'll explain it to you. And he says this, verse 7 of chapter 10, Jesus said to them again, truly, truly I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters through me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and not concerned about the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and I know my own, and my own know me, even as the Father knows me, and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep." Fathers and men, if we look at this passage, not to reinterpret it, but to apply application in light of Ephesians 5.25, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and laid himself down for her, gave himself up for her, betrayed himself for her. How might we apply this? We're the shepherds of our home. We're the shepherds of our family. We don't get to be the hired servant who flees when the wolf comes. When trouble happens, when confusion comes into our home, we don't get to run. We have to stay and speak into that situation. Now here's where it gets tougher. What if the wolf is me? That's where Noah found himself. What if the wolf is me? He stood up with courage, not his own, but the courage of the Lord and said, listen to me, sons. Listen to me. Many of us have come from all different backgrounds. We've come to our senses, hopefully, and we need to pursue the things of the Lord. We need to have a vision for our families. We need to be able to cast that vision and communicate with them clearly the things of God. Sometimes our biggest obstacle is me. And when that happens, we need to take comfort in the Lord. I was reading something I thought was unrelated this week, and I found this that I thought was pretty neat. This is from the Articles of Religion, Church of England, 1571. Although in the visible church the evil be ever mingled with the good, and sometimes the evil have chief authority over the ministration of the word and sacraments, yet for as much they do not the same in their own name, but in Christ's, and do minister by his commission and authority, we may use their ministry both in hearing the word of God and receiving the sacraments. Neither is the effect of Christ's ordinance taken away by their wickedness, nor the grace of God's gifts diminished from such as by faith, and rightly do receive the sacraments ministered to them. which be effectual because of Christ's institution and promise, although they be ministered by evil men." This ought to be great comfort to you this morning. The ministration of God's word doesn't depend on my piety or my goodness. This is about the Lord. It's about the Lord Jesus Christ. As we are fixing our sights on him, we need to focus on his word and his plan and his providence. Noah understood this. He did. And we need to understand as fathers that we must not allow our own sin to cripple us, to render us impotent before the wolf and to say, I've got nothing to say because of my own shame. I can't do that. I have to stand and speak. Paul anticipates the obvious question. What shall we say then, Romans 6? Are we to continue in sin that may grace abound? May it never be. We're to pursue holiness. But when we stumble, we're still to declare faithfully the word of God to our families. So, what did Noah say? Noah basically said three things. He said, cursed be Canaan, bless the Lord of Shem, and may God enlarge Japheth. But before we understand what the passage is saying, there's a glaring question that jumps out, okay? We see the story, we see the event where Ham goes in, sees his father, goes out, tells his brothers, and the next thing we see is Noah saying, cursed be Canaan, huh? How does that work? How does Ham sin, and then Canaan gets cursed? How do we deal with that? Well, there's a number of theories. We'll kind of go through briefly several of these. The first one is It's kind of a linguistic explanation. And what they say is that in verse 24, when it says, Noah awoke from his wine, he knew what his youngest son had done to him. The what his youngest son, they say, well, that pronoun refers all the way back to Ham. So it's Ham's youngest son, which would be Canaan. That somehow Canaan was directly involved in this indiscretion, in this sin with their father. The nice thing is it kind of makes it a little tidier because that gives us an explanation for why Cain and the youngest son was brought into this curse. The problem is linguistically it doesn't hold up. It's difficult. You've got to really twist some things around to get there. So that's not it. Well, the second theory is Well, the other thing about that one is this theory is often advanced by those who want to see something more generational in the curse of Canaan and trace it all the way to Sodom and Gomorrah and say, well, there was some inherent sexual wickedness here that's traced all the way ahead. So they want to have Cain involved in that, and these are also usually ones that kind of enhance what took place inside that tent. So the second explanation, second possible theory is cursing Canaan was the worst way to punish Ham. The theory says, well, there's no better way to punish a man than to curse his son, which makes sense in a way, but why his youngest son? If you're going to punish Ham the most, why not punish his oldest boy, like Canaan? So that one doesn't really explain that. The third possibility, Canaan was cursed instead of Ham out of respect for Noah. And this often is cited in 1 Kings 11. You don't have to turn there, it's just two verses. 1 Kings 11, Solomon had been warned of the Lord not to chase after foreign gods. He did. And now the Lord says to him, says to Solomon, because you have done this and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant. Verse 12, nevertheless, I will not do it in your days for the sake of your father David, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son. So the theory is, okay, out of respect for Noah, Ham wasn't cursed, it was Canaan. Make sense? But again, doesn't really explain why Canaan of the four sons, and it also doesn't give us, the text doesn't, I mean, in 1 Kings, the Lord says, I'm doing this because. It doesn't say that here. We have to just speculate. I'm going to suggest to you a fourth possibility, and we need to make sure we understand this, again, in a historical context. Moses is giving a theological justification for invading the land of Canaan, for crossing over the Jordan and taking over that land. God has given it to them. And I would suggest to you that perhaps we miss this because we're looking at it backwards. We're wanting to see a cause and effect, because then it's nice and neat and tidy. We want to see that somebody did this, therefore God did that. John chapter 9, Jesus and the disciples. are out and about and they come across this blind man. And the disciple said, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his father, that he was born blind? Now they understood a little bit of the sovereignty of God because they said he was born blind and it might be his sin. They understood that God has, there's a possibility of divine action prior to birth. We see that as a theological fact. They looked at it as, okay, it's either or. It's either his parents sinned or he sinned, surely. And Jesus said, let me introduce to you a third possibility. Perhaps this was done that the glory of God may be revealed. That the glory of God may be revealed. Now, Jesus didn't say that this man was sinless, nor his parents. That wasn't the point. Ham and Japheth and Shem, none of them were sinless. That's not the point. The point is, Do we line this up with God's redemptive plan? Is God looks forward to this seed of the woman who would bruise, whose heel would be bruised, but who's the snake who would crush his head? Are we looking forward to that? And are we seeing in there the sovereign hand of God? And we know this to be true. I mean, kind of a multiple choice quiz for each, A and a B. Which of the following statements is true? We commit sinful acts, therefore we're sinners. Or, we're sinners, therefore we commit sinful acts. Let's be, obviously. Who we are, our nature, determines what we've done. Our status as fallen men. prior to our regeneration, causes us to do things in our sinful nature, in our flesh. We commit, it's not the other way around. And I think this is really a radical departure from what our culture seems to think. And that's why when you go and you talk about things like evangelism, and we were talking about it with some brothers and I were talking yesterday, you have to convince someone they're lost before you can teach, convince them they need a savior. Because most people say, well, I haven't really done anything worthy of God's wrath. I haven't done anything worthy of, I mean, I'm a decent guy. I mean, I pay my taxes and my kids are in good schools and got a good house. And we look at things from our fleshly minds and we say, we can't be that bad. When the reality of the scripture is that we are far worse than we could ever imagine. outside of the grace and the presence of the Lord in our lives. And we have to understand that. Romans 9 teaches this. Paul says, speaking of the twins being born, Jacob and Esau, he said, for though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad so that God's purpose according to His choice would stand, not because of works but because of Him who calls. And then he says, Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated. before their birth. It's not really hard for us to intellectually understand, but maybe it's hard for us to accept that God is sovereign. God does choose, and He doesn't do it capriciously. He does it to advance His plan. All of creative history is marching toward the birth, the death, the resurrection of Christ. And then from that point on, it's marching toward his coming again, to bring us home in glory to himself, to redeem us as a people, to redeem us as his bride, and to celebrate for eternity together. May I suggest that we're looking at this backwards. Canaan wasn't cursed because of Ham's sin. Ham and Canaan sinned because they were already cursed. In other words, the curse that Noah prophesies here, he's declaring a present reality, not a future event. He's declaring what's already taken place. This is present tense. Canaan is cursed. He's doing this really by way of explanation of what's taken place, more so than the cause and effect that we would kind of like to have. It's important for us to understand, as it was important for the Israelites to understand, this was God's sovereign plan. Guys, march across the river. Follow the priests, follow the ark, into the river. I'm going to dry it up. I want you to go across and take those cities. When you get there, I want you to kill everybody. That's hard for us to accept. God said, women and children too, they all got to go. This was part of God's created plan. We can't fully understand it. At the same time, again, in this whole time frame, he also wrote Deuteronomy 29, 29, the secret things belong to the Lord. There's still mystery here, but that doesn't excuse us from obedience to follow the Lord. Even when we don't fully understand and we kind of go, huh? We have to follow him. We must follow him. One of the little mice that I do want to point out, and it's actually a big rat, I think, is this concept that's been introduced really in the last couple hundred years, that this idea that Ham and Canaan, that there's a tie to racism and slavery and prohibitions against intermarriage and all these types of things, all these things that have been invented out of the fleshly minds of men. It's not in the text. It's not there. And people have done all kinds of things to justify it. There are people that we know, I have people in my family who've been taught that children of Canaan were black people, and they're somehow cursed in a way that other people aren't. And then the text, and they add to that where it says, servant of servants you will be, and they say, aha, see, that justifies slavery. Friends, we should weep. over that type of lies. This is not where the text is taking us. Again, I don't want to spend a lot of time there. I just want to point it out and say, reject it. It's not true. And it's destructive and harmful to the family of God. And we'll see even more so because we see the God, the big plan is He reunites everybody. Praise God. So there is no distinction here. Then he says next, he doesn't say bless Shem, he says, blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, which reinforces this concept of God's sovereignty. Shem, the Shemites, the Semites, were the people that God chose to extend his line. We see here that the promise that came through, that was given to Adam and Eve, that I'm going to send a seed, I'm going to send a redeemer, to save my people. God now, he narrows this and expands it simultaneously and says, okay, now it's coming through, it's gonna come through Seth. Now we see that it comes through not just Noah, but it comes through Shem. So this is blessed be God, the father of Shem. He's declaring that Shem is the extension of that promise. He's the extension of God's sovereign plan. The Redeemer would somehow come through Shem. They just came off the ark. They've just experienced unbelievable destruction. But even if this were decades later, which it probably was, an event like that you don't soon forget. They knew the awesome power of the Lord. And they also probably knew that what they saw in the flood was still just that much of His power. And they understood that how near they were to sin, and that God was going to bless them, that the promise of that Redeemer that they'd heard about still going. God hadn't canceled the check. God had not canceled that promise. Amen? He had continued his faithfulness despite the fact that the whole world deserved to be destroyed. God could easily have said, I'm done. But he appointed eight, Noah, his three sons, and their wives. He said, through them, I'm going to continue my promise. I'm going to be faithful despite the faithlessness of men." Ultimately, we see that Shem is a father of Abraham. In fact, Shem was probably alive when Abraham was born. Noah was probably alive when Abraham was born. So we see that promise carried through. And these men of God that were faithful to him were able to experience the blessing of that promise being fulfilled. Then he comes to Japheth. And he says here, may God enlarge Japheth and let him dwell in the tents of Shem. Japheth is synonymous with the Gentiles. And God's saying, I'm going to enlarge them, and then I'm going to bring them into the tents of Shem. I'm going to bring them in to the covenant promises of God. God is saying, He's expanding this beautifully here. Because all we knew up to this point was that we had this promise of a Redeemer coming to redeem God's people. And it seems to be that that group of God's people seems to be getting narrower and narrower and narrower. And then God said, I'm bringing them all together. I'm gonna bring the Gentiles into the fold, into the tents of sham. I'm gonna bring them all together. Turn over with me to Ephesians 3. Those are the words of Paul, who is known as the apostle to the Gentiles. Chapter 3, starting in verse 1, for this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for the sake of you Gentiles, if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace which was given to me for you, that by revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before in brief. By referring to this, when you read, you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ. See, there is mystery back here in Genesis 9. The mystery is something that wasn't previously revealed, but it's revealed now. And Paul's saying, here's the mystery. Verse four, by referring to this, when you read, you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, so it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the spirit. To be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel of which I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given to me according to the working of His power. Hallelujah. God's faithful. And Paul says, and he's declaring this to Gentiles, who their whole lives, their whole identity, they've been told, you ain't part of the group. You're not of the Semitic peoples. And Paul says, this is the mystery that, and he goes on to say, I'm the lowest of the low, but I get the privilege of declaring this to you. that God has chosen to save Gentiles. He's chosen to bring them into the family of God. Go back to John 10 that we read earlier. We stopped intentionally one verse short. When Jesus talked about being a shepherd, he said, I have other sheep which are not of this fold. I must bring them also and they will hear my voice and they will become one flock with one shepherd. This has great meaning to me this week. I leave Thursday to get on a plane with my family to go to Russia and bring two Russian orphans home to be part of my family, to adopt them into my home. And there's great promise to me as their father that God has promised that he's willing to bring them into the family of God. It doesn't matter where they came from, what geographical area of the world they're in, what the condition of their soul is right now, doesn't matter. God has promised that he's faithful. There's great hope here. There's great deliverance for us. It doesn't matter our background. It doesn't matter the sin of our past. It doesn't matter our heritage, who our mama was, what our daddy looked like. It doesn't matter. God has given us a promise of his faithfulness, and he says unashamedly that anyone who will believe in me and repent will be saved. We don't need anything else, do we? That's it. Finally, the death of Noah. God blessed Noah as he promised he would. He led a long and fruitful life. He lived another 350 years after the flood. He got to see two worlds, and then he got to go into a third one. What a remarkable experience Noah's life was. He's given to us as an example in Hebrews 11, in that great Hall of Fame chapter, as a man of faithfulness. Nowhere else in Scripture is Noah's sin remembered. It's not. He messed up, and he confused his family, but it's not remembered anywhere else in Scripture. Therefore, it's not the point of this chapter. Noah lived, again, probably, maybe not to sea, they may have been in different geographic areas, but he was alive at the time, most likely, of Abraham's death. I'm sorry, Abraham's birth. He lived just 19 years less than Methuselah. Long, long life. No doubt Noah kept on preaching. He preached for 100 years while he was building the ark, and no doubt afterwards. He continued to preach, and what was his message? There's a Redeemer coming, and I believe in him, and so should you. There's a Redeemer coming, and he's the only escape. He's the only hope. Guys, I've been through the flood. You don't want to go there. Noah was able to authoritatively claim by virtue of the Word of God, not his experience. His experience was powerful, but the Word of God declared to him, that there's a Redeemer coming, and he's going to be faithful. Noah believed in that promised seed. Noah believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, even though he did not even know his name yet. He believed that God was faithful and would send a deliverer. So some things I want us to remember. God's plan doesn't require large numbers. As we find ourselves in this place, in this time, moving through God's redemptive history, let's not get discouraged when the numbers aren't in our favor. As we look around our world, as Noah did, and see the wickedness, by the end of Noah's life, things weren't much better than they were before the flood. Wickedness still prevailed, even his own family. Abraham's father was an idolater. Noah was able to look into that type of wickedness and still see that Savior, and still see the Deliverer, and understand that, hey, I've seen God do amazing things with three sons. And he was able to communicate that message of hope. We must not think that we don't have enough to be used of God. We can't. We are calling God a liar if we look around at our resources, at our circumstances, and say, nothing I can do. We can't do it. God's plan doesn't require perfection, just faith in the Lord Jesus. Noah demonstrated that. There are times, you know, moms, dads, kids, we're going to blow it. God tells us, believe in me. Believe in my righteousness, not your own. Put your trust in my spirit, not your flesh. I will deliver you. You can't deliver yourself. It can't be done. God's plan will advance no matter the sin, no matter the rebellion, not even death. Noah died, just like all the rest. but God's plan still carried on. God's plan involves reconciliation to Himself. The great thing, the beautiful, glorious thing about, as we see this redemptive plan unfold, as I said, up until the death and resurrection of Christ, we saw, as it were, the narrowing of God's seed, because we were funneling down to Christ. All of history was pointing to Christ. But on the other side of the cross, it's expanding to bring in all who would believe into the kingdom of God. We will have the pleasure of worshiping in eternity with every tribe, nation, tongue, and people. God is going to have a huge fellowship people from all walks of life who believed in the seed of the woman, believed in that Redeemer. God's plan is based on His promises, not our faithfulness. God's plan is based on His character, not mine, on His ability to persevere, not mine. There's great hope there.