Genesis 9:18-29
Salvation to the Ends of the Earth

In 18,19 we are told in brief that the process of being fruitful and multiplying has begun. From Noah's sons the whole earth was populated (19)

  1. Noah's Fall from Righteousness (20-21)
    1. Noah Resembles Adam in Paradise
      1. Once again, man is a tiller of the soil, subduing the earth to bring forth its fruit.
      2. The blessing of the Lord is abundant on the earth. Noah is able to cultivate vines and to make wine
        1. There is no suggestion here that wine in itself is bad
        2. Too much Scripture says exactly the opposite.
          1. Note Isaac's blessing on Jacob later in this book, Gen 27:28 - May God give you of the dew of heaven, and of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine.
          2. And this is the blessing Moses pronounces upon Israel as they are about to come into the Promised Land, Deut 33:28 - Then Israel shall dwell in safety, The fountain of Jacob alone, In a land of grain and new wine; His heavens shall also drop dew.
          3. David expresses his confidence in God this way, Ps 4:6,7 - There are many who say, "O that we might see some good! Let the light of your face shine on us, O LORD!" 7You have put gladness in my heart more than when their grain and wine abound.
          4. This is "wine that makes glad the heart of man," Ps 104.15
        3. The wine itself is a blessing, a gift from God.
        4. The curse is not total; the earth yields its fruit. God is fulfilling his promise that summer and winter and seedtime and harvest shall not cease.
      3. Once again it is as though God has created a man and put him in the middle of the garden to tend it and keep it, to put it in order and subdue it to his will
      4. And so we have something of a story of a man and a forbidden fruit.
    2. But He Doesn't have Full Dominion
      1. Paradise has not been restored; there is still the shame of nakedness
        1. When God created the woman for the man, the last statement is "And the man and his wife were both naked and they were not ashamed."
        2. It was not until they sinned that they realized they were naked and sought to cover themselves.
        3. This realization, remember, was a sign of their sin, of their inadequacy and their shame.
        4. But now we have a man in the midst of his garden, eating of its fruit, and becoming naked. And his nakedness is shameful.
        5. Sin has not been taken away. Noah is not the true Savior.
        6. His righteousness - because of which God saved him in the flood - is insufficient.
        7. Even he must wait for someone greater who will clothe him with righteousness so he may stand unashamed before God.
      2. Until that time his nakedness exposes him as a sinner
        1. Nakedness is incompatible with living in the presence of God,
        2. Exo 20.26 - You shall not go up by steps to my altar, so that your nakedness may not be exposed on it.
  2. The Sin of Ham and his Brothers' Righteousness (22-23)
    1. Ham Ridicules his Father's Nakedness
      1. What exactly is Ham's sin?
        1. Many insist on reading between the lines here.
          1. Is the story just being polite?
          2. Did more go on than we are told?
          3. There are stories in Scripture where it seems clear that more is going on than what the bare narrative describes.
        2. After all, Noah's judgment seems harsh if all Ham did was see his father without any clothes on and poke a little fun at him.
          1. Wasn't it Noah who got drunk and exposed himself in the first place?
          2. So Noah's curse seems to result more from an old man's wounded ego than as a pronouncement of the justice of God.
          3. (And from Noah may indeed have felt wounded and his curse may, on his end, be petty and vindictive. Later in this book we'll see a woman scheming to have her husband bless her favorite son. And she'll succeed; Jacob will be bless and the nation of Israel will come from him. Yet, though her motives were impure, God accomplished his divine plan through them. So in this case we don't know Noah's motives. We don't need to. We know God's)
        3. But on the other hand, look at how the problem is solved
          1. Shem and Japheth back into the tent, carefully avoiding a glance at their father's nakedness.
          2. And they put a covering on him.
        4. This seems decisive. It is best to take this story at face value, understanding Ham's sin as one of disrespect of his father and broadcasting of his father's shame.
      2. The connection between drunkenness and nakedness
        1. Hab 2:15ff. - Alas for you who make your neighbors drink, pouring out your wrath until they are drunk, in order to gaze on their nakedness!" 16 You will be sated with contempt instead of glory. Drink, you yourself, and stagger! The cup in the LORD's right hand will come around to you, and shame will come upon your glory!
        2. Lam 4.21 - Rejoice and be glad, O daughter Edom, you that live in the land of Uz; but to you also the cup shall pass; you shall become drunk and strip yourself bare. 22The punishment of your iniquity, O daughter Zion, is accomplished, he will keep you in exile no longer; but your iniquity, O daughter Edom, he will punish, he will uncover your sins.
      3. That last line is the key. To expose nakedness is to uncover someone's sin and shame.
        1. Isa 47:2,3 - Take the millstones and grind meal, remove your veil, strip off your robe, uncover your legs, pass through the rivers. 3 Your nakedness shall be uncovered, and your shame shall be seen. I will take vengeance, and I will spare no one.
        2. Nahum 3:5,6 - [To Ninevah] I am against you, says the LORD of hosts, and will lift up your skirts over your face; and I will let nations look on your nakedness and kingdoms on your shame. 6 I will throw filth at you and treat you with contempt, and make you a spectacle.
        3. Ham has done this to his father.
      4. He should have been covering his father's nakedness, taking pity on his shame.
      5. Instead, he gossips
        1. As Prov 11:13 says - A talebearer reveals secrets, But he who is of a faithful spirit conceals a matter.
        2. Or again in Prov. 17.9 - He who covers a transgression seeks love, But he who repeats a matter separates friends.
      6. Ham is breaking the 5th commandment
        1. Honor your father and your mother
        2. This commandment is more about duty to God than duty to neighbor (despite the usual place at which the "tables" are divided)
        3. Parents rule with the authority of God and honor given to them is honor that is due to God.
        4. So Ham, in despising his father's nakedness and ridiculing him is committing a truly devilish act - despising and ridiculing the authority of God.
        5. He is reenacting the sin of the serpent who opined to the woman that God was not to be trusted nor his word respected.
        6. So Ham believes his father - who bears a godlike relation to him - is not to be respected but ridiculed and made the object of gossip and jokes.
        7. How Satan, as well, must have sneered to see the woman and the man realizing they were naked. He had brought them down to his accursed level.
      7. Consider this lesson children! To disobey your parents is to disobey God. To disrespect them is to disrespect God. To hate them is to hate God.
      8. Consider this lesson as well adults! For we're dealing with a man who's over 500 years old; his children are grown. To dishonor your parents, to ridicule them or make yourself look good or wise at their expense. This is to dishonor and ridicule God and make yourself wiser than Him.
      9. It's fitting that the reenactment of the Serpent's sin should come in this way:
        1. In 9:6 God has just handed over his judicial authority to men
        2. So the sin against God in this story comes in the form of sin against his appointed ruler, Noah.
        3. And Shem and Japheth take over God's role in covering their father's nakedness, just as God himself covered the nakedness of Adam and Eve
        4. And Noah, rather than God himself, will be the one to pronounce the curse on Ham, the serpent's seed, and to pronounce a blessing on an through the seed of the Woman.
        5. (If this synopsis isn't working for you up front, we'll come back to these points and expand on them in just a bit.)
    2. Shem and Japheth Cover Over Their Father's Sin
      1. Ham had exposed his father's nakedness even as Satan had exposed Adam and Eve and sneered.
      2. Their action is the direct opposite of Ham's
        1. Note the care with which they accomplish this covering: they lay a garment on their shoulders and walk backwards to cover Noah
        2. And all the while their faces are turned away.
        3. Picture it! The awkwardness of entering a tent backwards, carrying a cloak. And carefully backing up until their averted eyes recognize the edge of their father's bed. Then, sending the garment backwards from their shoulders, they lay it upon him, never looking.
        4. They take every precaution.
      3. Their action is Godlike
        1. When God saw that Adam and Eve were naked, inadequately covered with garments of fig leaves, he made garments of animal skins for them.
        2. He covered their nakedness, symbolically covering their sin and clothing them with righteousness that they might stand before him and live.
        3. So Shem and Japheth repeat this action for the poor sinner Noah.
          1. They are the instruments of God
          2. Their action is full of the grace of God.
            • No doubt Noah deserved ridicule for he was ridiculous.
            • He deserved to be shamed for his action was shameful.
            • But God had compassion upon Adam and Eve and did not give them what they deserved. Rather, he clothed them.
            • So S & J had godlike grace and pity upon their father Noah; they restore him from his fall.
  3. The Curse on Ham and Blessing on his Brothers
    1. The Curse on Ham
      1. The curse is pronounced by Noah
        1. Just as God pronounced the curse on the Serpent
        2. So Noah stands in the place of God
        3. God handed over his judgment to men in Gen 9.6
        4. Noah is now exercising that judgment
      2. Comes upon his son, Canaan (for 3 reasons)
        1. To explain to Israel why they are about to destroy all the inhabitants of the land of Canaan, showing mercy to none
        2. To illustrate a principle of headship
        3. To mirror the curse upon the Serpent in the garden
      3. To explain to Israel why they are about to destroy all the inhabitants of the land of Canaan, showing mercy to none
        1. Remember that they are the original audience - Israel about to conquer the Promised Land, taking it by force.
        2. They need to know that this is God's vengeance upon Canaan, not simply an arbitrary decision backed up by "might makes right."
        3. The point of the conquest was not that Israel could destroy anyone they chose.
        4. But as a religious act of worship to God, they were to destroy those God had devoted to destruction.
        5. And by that time, the descendants of Ham and Canaan had multiplied the sin of their father a hundred fold.
        6. Lv 18:3ff. - According to the doings of the land of Egypt, where you dwelt, you shall not do; and according to the doings of the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you, you shall not do; nor shall you walk in their ordinances…. 6'None of you shall approach anyone who is near of kin to him, to uncover his nakedness: I am the LORD. 7'The nakedness of your father or the nakedness of your mother… father's wife… your sister… your son's daughter or your daughter's daughter… your father's wife's daughter… your father's sister… your mother's sister… your father's brother… your brother's wife… 22'You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. 23'Nor shall you mate with any animal, to defile yourself with it. Nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it. It is perversion. 24'Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you. 25'For the land is defiled; therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants. 26'You shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations, either any of your own nation or any stranger who dwells among you 27'(for all these abominations the men of the land have done, who were before you, and thus the land is defiled), 28'lest the land vomit you out also when you defile it, as it vomited out the nations that were before you.
      4. To illustrate a principle of headship
        1. Adam was the head of the human race and God pronounced a curse on all mankind because of Adam's sin
        2. So Ham is the head of his household, and it is his descendants that are cursed because of his sin.
        3. To anyone who would complain to God that this is unfair, consider: It is the same principle that saves you; for Christ is your head.
      5. To mirror the curse on the Serpent in the garden
        1. Gen 3:15 - And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel.
        2. The focus now is on the seed (offspring) of the serpent, which Ham has proved to be
        3. So the curse focuses not on Ham but on his seed
        4. Not only the serpent but his seed will be crushed by the seed (offspring) of the woman
        5. That first curse envisioned all of history from the persepective of a climactic battle between the Seed of the Serpent and the Seed of the Woman
          1. For that reason Eve thought she might have given birth to that Woman-Seed when she bore Cain (who turned out to be Serpent spawn incarnate)
          2. And Lamech thought he might have begotten the rest-giver when he begot Cain
          3. How could they know the years that would unfold in the plan of God before the true Rest-Giving Woman-Seed should come?
        6. Now we have a more leisurely view of history
    2. The Blessing on Shem
      1. Shem is blessed in the name of the LORD
        1. The covenant name of God
        2. In fact it is the LORD himself who is blessed, indicating that Shem's blessing remains only while he remains faithful to the Blessed God
      2. Thus Shem and his descendants are shown to be the seed of the woman, the faithful who call upon the name of the Lord, even as men began to do in the days of Eve's grandson through Seth back at the end of chapter 4.
      3. Canaan is to be Shem's slave (the word is harsher than servant, here)
      4. This is the leisurely view of history, as mentioned
        1. The seed of Shem will fight and overcome the seed of Canaan
        2. Long after they are dead their descendants will do battle for centuries.
        3. Centuries later, Abraham, the seed of Shem will be promised the land of the Canaanites.
        4. Centuries after that Moses, the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will lead the children of Israel to the borders of that land.
        5. And Joshua, of the same seed, will bring them in.
        6. The descendants of Shem, of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob will conquer Canaan then, fighting battle after battle for 700 years until the time of King Solomon and finally there will be peace.
        7. Almost the whole panorama of OT history is laid out before us
      5. Thus the Israelites will know that God has blessed them because of the obedience of their father Shem and calls them to imitate his faithfulness.
      6. Yet the story isn't over yet
      7. As glorious as this is, it isn't the final word
    3. The Blessing on Japheth
      1. Not "enlarge" Japheth but "make room for" Japheth
        1. For from Japheth, the nations of the Gentiles would descend.
        2. They would for all the OT be strangers to the covenants of promise
        3. Yet, gloriously, when the woman-Seed finally arrives, when Christ finally comes, Shem's tent will be opened up and the Gentiles will stream in.
      2. Is 49:5ff.
      3. Now the people of God are spiritually conceived; those who are of faith are the true offspring of Shem, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, dwelling in their tents of salvation and calling upon the name of the LORD.
      4. And the conquest of Canaan is spiritually conceived - not Canaan's physical descendants but his spiritual ones, the seed of the serpent, the servants of the devil.
      5. Our warfare is not physical but spiritual.
        1. 2 Cor 10:3ff. - For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. 4For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, 5casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, 6and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.
        2. Eph 6.10ff. - Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. 11Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
      6. Take courage, the battle is the Lord's

And Noah dies, just like all his ancestors in Genesis 5 (except Enoch). Remember that refrain "and he died." Noah gets a longer story than the rest, but the ending is the same.

[Genesis Sermons] [Sermons and Studies] [Main Menu]