Well, good morning, everybody, and happy October, Tuesday, October the 1st. This is our daily devotional. It is so good to be with you all. I tell you what, September, one of those months, we have different busy times throughout the year, but September in the church world is a very busy time because everything really gets rolling back, clicking into place for the fall. We brought on new staff, just, A lot of things in September, several funerals, lots of high stakes surgeries, all kinds of stuff. But it's good to keep moving, to keep rolling, and I'm really delighted to be back with you all. That's also part of September, right? Starting back daily devotional, starting back prayer meeting and Bible study. Started a new sermon series this week, which I don't know. Maybe my wife is right, and sometimes I just don't have good sense. Maybe it's the conquest of it. I don't know. But revelation, right? I told my ministerial friends that, and they said, wow, doing revelation. It's one of those things. Sadly, it's one of the least preached books of the Bible by the men that ought to be preaching it. And if by God's grace, I think he's given me the perspective that I would fit into that group because I want to be faithful to the text. And on the other hand, it is heavily preached by wolves out there trying to take your money, trying to do all sorts of things. Anyway, we got rolling with that this past Lord's Day. We're going to continue on this Sunday. So if you're local and in the area, we'd love to have you, but if you don't come here, you need to get somewhere. Summers, okay? Anyway, it's good to be back with y'all this morning. We're making our way through Genesis in chapter nine. Yesterday, we made it through the sign of the covenant. We talked about the nature of covenants themselves, how we don't bring anything to the table with God. It's always a source of blessing to us. always gives a sign that goes along with that covenant, something tangible. And the sign really is important because of what it points to. And of course, we talked about the rainbow. Look, it's 2024. At least for a little while. And I wonder, you know, everything on the Internet is permanent, unless this gets removed, I suppose. But I wonder, if somebody finds this in 2044, or finds yesterday's in 2044, would you have a warrant? out against you. I don't mean to be dramatic about it, but realize what I said yesterday already in some places is considered hate speech. It's considered hate speech in the United States. Don't get me wrong. The difference is it is a prosecutable, if that's a word. You can be prosecuted for it in other areas. But What I try to do more than anything else, and what I really think I do, is focus on the content of God's Word, right? You can't talk about the rainbow if you're not going to talk about the LGBTQ plus thing that's going on out there, how they have taken this symbol or tried to take this symbol and hijack it. We talked about what the rainbow is. We talked about the nature of God's unbreakable covenants. And we saw that the rainbow is a beautiful sign of God's grace, and yet it also points to his power. And those who would unstring that bow to make it straight, to take away its danger, do not understand the God of the universe. Oh my goodness, and what shall we do? And this is what I should have ended with yesterday. But what shall we do? Before we move an inch further today, we need to pray for those that have fallen for this lie. This sin is different than other sins. Not because of severity or wickedness. Not that. This sin is different from other sins because the world around you would never apply the rationale to this sin that it does to other sins. What I mean by that is this. Could you imagine a 12-year-old going to any of the local public schools around here today and talking about feeling like, you know what, I don't think I was born in the right body. I think that even though I'm a boy, I like boys, but I really think I was born a girl and all that kind of stuff. The scripture says it's not a sin to be tempted, but it is a sin to fall to that temptation. It's sexual sin. And y'all, read, if you doubt that, read Romans 1, okay? It's not only a sexual sin, it's a sign of the perversion of our time, okay? And nevertheless, nevertheless, right? The rationale that the world applies to that is it comes alongside that young person, male, female, doesn't matter, and says, you know what? If you're really going to be self-actualized, if you're really going to be true to yourself, you should pursue this. You should embrace your identity that you feel like you have. And y'all realize they're doing this with children that think it's a great idea to eat a gallon of ice cream for dinner amongst other terrible decisions. But nevertheless, they come alongside them, and they promote it, and they say, oh, how wonderful it is. And look at what our society does with homosexuality. the most brilliant, the kindest, the best dressed, the this, the that, the other. Is there anything better in modern-day America than to be a stylish homosexual? I mean, I'm telling you, by American, not all of America, but by a good portion of America, that's like the pinnacle, right? You're the funniest, the wittiest, all of these different things. Nobody talks about AIDS. Nobody talks about other scourges of that community. Nobody talks about how we refer to these people as gay and they're some of the saddest people on planet Earth and the promiscuity is disastrous because nothing has changed since Sodom and Gomorrah. Look at San Francisco. Again, the world takes that sin and encourages it. Would the world ever do the same thing with a 10 or 11 year old boy I said they go to school, right? And they love to sit there in class and strike a match and just let it burn all the way down to their fingers, right? Some people are born firebugs. They love it. They can't get enough of it. It's this penchant for fire. And they love to set things on fire. Could you imagine the world coming to that boy and say, you know what? If you're really going to be self-actualized, if you're really going to know your true self, you really should burn down that vacant building. It would be so stunning. It would be so bold and so brave. And we're with you. We're the friends of arsonists. I'm not an arsonist, but I stand up for arsonist right. I have a flag in front of my home and a bumper sticker with flames on it just to support people who love to set things on fire and destroy property. No, we never do that. What about the people who are born loving to steal, right? There are people that get a thrill out of thievery, right? Could you imagine saying, hey, kid, you know what? If you're really going to be a brave and bold human being, if you're really going to know yourself, you really should go into Walmart and you should steal that stuff. Nobody would do that, and yet these are sins too. You see the rationale, right? And so what should we do? We should pray for those that are caught in this sin. We should pray for our society that glorifies it. We should pray for deliverance and for people to realize that God can change, God can redeem. Now, I've spent way too long on that subject, but it does kind of lead into where we're going today. You know, it's not by accident, I think, that we just dealt with the sign of the covenant God made with Noah, yes, but also his descendants, that means you and me, all living creatures that he would never again destroy the earth by flood. And he gives that sign that so many have tried to hijack, and we come to what we do today. Now, you might say, well, what does this next part possibly have to do with the homosexual agenda? Well, the answer might surprise you. And I'm gonna warn you now, this stuff is gross, okay? I could class it up, I could use other terminology, but this is just gross stuff that we're dealing with today. So let me pray and we're gonna get into it. Father, we thank you for this time that you have given to us and we pray for understanding in it. Let us comprehend what your word is saying, what it's not saying also, and let us be convicted by it. Please guide us now by your Holy Spirit and we pray it in Christ's name, amen. Alright, so you got two levels to this story as it unfolds before us. This is the aftermath of the Ark. Remember all along I've been saying that Noah's not a perfect man. Remember I've been saying that, right? No sin in particular has been recorded of Noah. It's said that he walked with God, kind of like Enoch, doesn't mean that he was sinless. And we're going to see Noah's humanity really come out today, okay, that this sinful side and poor decisions on his part, okay. So we're in Genesis chapter 9. We're going to start reading in verse 18. It says, the sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father, Hanan. All right, pausing right there, just Time out just for a moment. This is one of those things that people say, aha, different authors, that kind of stuff. No, makes perfect sense that Moses, who wrote the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, would make sure that that went in there. But more than Moses, this is God breathing out his work. It's fascinating that though we have Shem and Ham and Japheth, a little parenthetical thing is thrown in there that Ham was the father of Canaan. Now, realizing that there's people from all different backgrounds that are watching this, I don't know if you are familiar with Canaan. Canaan is an important place in God's Word, an important physical location. We know that Canaan is, in fact, the Promised Land. The problem with Canaan, though, that it's full of Canaanites, okay? And no, this is not an ethnic thing. This is a behavior thing that we're talking about. Canaanites who worship Molech and other false gods and they offered human sacrifice. Wicked, wicked, detestable people groups that did horrible, unthinkable things. These are the Canaanites. So, right at the front, When Moses, who is writing this, chronicling everything that took place, but when God, who is revealing his word to us here, tells us about Noah's three sons, we get immediately who this Ham fellow is, right? And that's the first hint that this kid's bad news. If he's the father of Canaan, bad news. Okay, remember the Canaanites were the ones that God said, hey, go in there and kill everybody. It wasn't ethnic cleansing, it was God protecting his people from their rampant wickedness. All right, so that's who Ham is. Verse 19, these were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who scattered over the earth. So let's do some deduction. If Ham is the father of Canaan, then that means all the Canaanites spring forth from Ham. Again, y'all, this is not good stuff here. And then we see Noah, and we see his first real flaw. It says Noah, verse 20, Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. And no, this is not the sin. There's nothing wrong with Noah planting a vineyard. There's nothing wrong to have a vineyard. There is nothing wrong with wine. And one of these days, we'll go through and we'll see all the things that the scripture says, and I know I might offend, and I'm not trying to offend, and I'm not part of some pro-alcohol lobby or anything like that. But nevertheless, part of Noah filling the earth, subduing the earth, prospering, was him planting this vineyard. There's nothing wrong with him planting the vineyard. Side note, we got a lot of farmers who tune into this. How do you like that designation? A man of the soil. I like that, I like that a lot. But nevertheless, he plants a vineyard, nothing wrong there. And then in verse 21, this is where we see a wisdom issue. This is where we see sin crop up. It says in verse 21, when he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. All right, pausing for a second. There are things said here and things that are unsaid here. Obviously, we're dealing with a time-lapse scenario. I looked it up. There's different ideas about how long it takes to actually get wine from the first seed planted to start a vineyard to where you actually have wine that you can drink. But it is a multi-multi-year process. Could it be that it was quicker than a multi-year process? Yeah, I guess it could. I mean, y'all, you're dealing with probably, outside of Eden, the most fertile the Earth had ever been in its entire history, okay? So, is it possible that it grew super-duper fast? Yeah, it's possible. With sunlight? It's all possible, but it doesn't really matter that much. What's unsaid is it's some time. Some time has elapsed between them getting off the ark, sacrificing Rainbow, all that stuff, and where we get to this point. And what we find here, what is said, is that Noah has made a very poor decision. Not making the wine, not drinking the wine, but drinking so much wine that he lay uncovered or naked inside his tent. Well, remember I said Ham is bad news? This is why. Verse 22, it says, Ham, the father of Canaan, again, it's enunciated there who this joker is, right? He's the father of Canaan. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders. Then they walked in backward and covered their father's nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father's nakedness." All right. Now, what's going on here? We've got surface-level stuff and we've got deeper-level stuff. The surface-level stuff is very clear. Surface level is Ham goes in, sees his dad. There's a preconceived notion, I think, that he mocked him, that he made fun of him, that he made light of him. All we know is that Ham went in and saw him. And the terminology there is interesting. We'll get into that in a second. Ham saw him, went out, and told his two brothers. Big deal, right? Well, then his two brothers, instead of going in to view their father's nakedness, they got this thing going on. It's a wonderful way that this is written, this middle image where they take a garment, a blanket, something, we don't know what it was exactly, but they put it across their shoulders, almost like they lock arms with one another, and they walk into the room backwards, keep their eyes looking forward, and then they kinda, it's almost like they can shrug this garment off so that it would fall on Noah and cover his nakedness, and then they leave. That's all we get at this point. Verse 24, it says, When Noah awoke from his wine, and found out what his youngest son had done to him, he said, Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers. He also said, blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem. May Canaan be the slave of Shem. May God extend the territory of Japheth. May Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be his slave. After the flood, Noah lived 350 years. Altogether, Noah lived 950 years, and then he died. Now, we're gonna talk about Noah's death and the table of nations next, right? But for today, At first glance, this is kind of like, whew, man alive, what's going on here? Why is Noah so angry? Why does he call down God's curse? This isn't just him being angry. This is a father cursing his son. And this is Noah who walked with God, cursing his son. I don't want to get there today, but y'all, blessings and curses are real things. There's a reason why in the Associate Reform Presbyterian Church, unordained men do not offer benedictions. One of the sweetest and best things of when you finally get to be ordained after all the education, after all the examination, the trials of ordination is what we call them. One of the very first things you do as an ordained man is at your ordination service, you get to offer the benediction. And y'all, that is such a pivotal moment in my life. I look back on it. 2007, July 1st, 2007. Remember it like it was yesterday. But anyway, blessings are real. Curses are real as well. Not some magical thing, but instead, because of the authority given by God, and we'll get into this at some point in the future. We'll get into a lot of things. I didn't think we'd be getting into this when I first started this a few years ago in 10 Days to Flatten the Curve, but here we are. Side note, there are some things I wish that I could skip. But we don't do that. We roll. You know what I'm saying? All right. So what's going on here? Well, there's the obvious. Okay. Obvious surface level is this is a violation of the fifth commandment. If you're not up on your 10 commandments, remember commandment number five is honor your father and your mother. And there is a cause and effect situation going here. Exodus chapter six, beginning in verse one. Children obey your parents and the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and your mother which is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. Rewind back to Exodus again when the the law is stated in Deuteronomy. You see this promise and that is to children that when they learn to honor their father and their mother well with them. They'll enjoy long life in the land that God has given them. The original context of that is long life in the land of Canaan that I'm giving to you. Starting to connect the dots here? Think about the curse that was just laid on him. That instead of being a great nation, you will be a slave to the other nations. And there's something implied there. It's that the Canaanites would be a slave to other nations because of themselves as well. And no, this doesn't just mean physical. What this is talking about is wickedness. It's talking about sin. It's talking about the comeuppance. It's talking about the consequences of living that sort of lifestyle. And so it's a very simple cause and effect thing. But that's the surface level. We still don't understand why Noah's so angry. And we guess on the surface level that, oh, OK, well, Ham comes out. I don't know. He's talking smack about his dad. He's like, oh, Pops is in there. He says, had one too many. He's gone on a bender. And look at him. Look at him. Ha ha. That's not what's in the text. In fact, what's in the text is, again, I'm gonna read it here. It said, verse 21, when he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father's nakedness and told his brothers outside. Y'all, Hebrew is an interesting language. My Hebrew professor that is with the Lord now is convinced that when we get to heaven, we'll be speaking Hebrew. He referred to it as the pithy lip of Canaan, right? It's that language where you can say so many things. The fact is in Hebrew, remember they were riding on animal skin, and when you're doing that, real estate is very important. You need what's called the economy of words, where you can say a lot of things in a small amount of real estate when it comes to surface area, riding it out. You can say more with one Hebrew word sometimes than you can say with an entire paragraph in the English language. And so when we look at this word for when Ham looked upon, when he saw, it's fascinating if you do a word study that you find. You know the first place that this word shows up and often what its usage is? The first place we see this word really show up is when God looked upon his creation Remember how God looked upon his creation? He looked upon his creation and he saw that it was very good. Y'all, the idea, and my Hebrew professor was convinced of this, don't have absolute proof, but this is my opinion. If this is just a matter of Ham being a little disrespectful, seeing his father naked, I'm not belittling that, but there's gotta be something that explains not only Noah's anger, but Noah's curse. Ham is not even given the opportunity to repent. And I think it's because the way that Ham looked upon his father and then went out and told his brothers, he looked upon his father and saw that it was good that he was naked. As I said, there's a little bit of irony here that we just dealt yesterday with the homosexual community taking the sign of the covenant God made with Noah, with us, with all living creatures, and trying to hijack that sign to support homosexuality. There is a strong argument, I'm not saying this absolutely, it's my opinion, I don't know, but I think a very strong case can be made that when Ham looked upon his father, He looked upon his father longingly. There is a sexual context to this. Now do you see why I say I wish I could skip some things? Now do you see why I said this is just gross? It's just nasty? It is. But a lot of things Canaan did was just gross and nasty. Sin never stays the same. It morphs. It gets worse and worse. It grows in severity and nastiness. And that's what we see here with Ham. And what we find as a result is what we're gonna be focusing on tomorrow, that the table of nations would play out as it would based on what we've just read, based on the blessings, based on the curse. So what do we do with this? What's the application of this? Y'all, I would say there are many. But a big one is, in this world of ours, that tries to convince itself that it gets to define what sin is, not God. Y'all know this is swirling in the churches, and I'm way over, so I'm gonna wrap this up quickly. Y'all know what's swirling in churches out there, especially our friends in the Methodist Church. And this is nothing new, it's just something official, okay? But it's this idea that, well, the Bible says that, but it doesn't really mean it. Y'all, the Bible says what it means, it means what it says. If something is not pleasing to God and therefore a sin, if it's any lack of conformity unto or wanton transgression of God's law, it's sin. It doesn't matter if it was 3,000 years ago or three minutes ago, because God doesn't change. If God calls it a sin, it's sin. There's another application here, too, though. If you don't want to go down that road that this is a sexual perversion thing, If you just want to focus on the value of honoring your father and mother, do that too. We see that this is a serious command, a command that's not to be taken lightly. So with all of these things said, I'm going to leave you with that. This is a tough one. It's a lot to chew on, mentally speaking, but it's a worthwhile chew. Let's pray. Our God and our father, we thank you for this time and we thank you for those passages in your word that make us uncomfortable. where they point us to you. So please work in our hearts, inform our minds, let us base truth not on what we define, but on who you are and what you define. And we pray it all in Christ's name, amen. Well, I'd like to thank you all for being a part of this time. Lord Willem will be back tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. Until then, I hope you have a very pleasant first day of October. Take care.