I’ll pray, and we’ll do Genesis 9. This is one of the greatest texts. I’ll tell ya about it. I’ll pray.

Father God, we love you. We thank you for our chance to get together. I thank you for all the people that have joined us in this great holiday week. God, as we go into the holiday of Thanksgiving, Father God, we know that sometimes the holidays are hard, because oftentimes the greatest grief or loss or frustration comes in relation to our family. God, we know that children are a blessing. We know that it’s a blessing to have a mother and father. We know it’s a blessing to have siblings, God, but sometimes this time of year is very hard, because we don’t have parents or the parents that need. We don’t have siblings or the siblings that we need. And God, as we study the text today, I pray that we’d understand more clearly where our hope lies. God, as we see Ham, Shem and Japheth, we see conflict between siblings. As we see Noah and Ham, we see conflict between a father and a son. As we see Noah and Canaan, we see conflict between a father and a grandson. God, we see generational conflict, and we see that sometimes the most difficult thing in our life is related directly to our family, and sometimes the holidays just completely exacerbate that reality. God, I pray for wisdom as we study the Scriptures today. I pray for grace. I pray that ultimately, God, we would have something of your heart, and that you would be pleased with our time together. In Jesus’ good name, amen.

Today we’re dealing with Noah – okay, I – there’s a gal in the church, Nashville Kat, she’s a radio personality, works for a western station. She bought me a western shirt recently, and so I wore it with my boots, sort of as a tribute to Noah ‘cause he gets drunk and passes out naked in his tent like a hillbilly redneck on vacation this week. So just in tribute to him and all the NASCAR fans around the world, I thought I’d wear my western shirt and my boots. So this is my little tribute to Noah today. Didn’t bring a tent, and I’m not gonna get undressed. This is as far as my tribute goes.

As we’re dealing with Noah today, it’s one of the most peculiar stories in the Bible. The great patriarch gets drunk and naked in a tent. You think I’m kidding – it’s in the book. We’ll get there. And it’s cool when we go through books, ‘cause we talk about things we otherwise wouldn’t (like naked drunk rednecks). Like I wouldn’t do a series on that. But I could ‘cause they’re in the book. So as we go through the book, you’re gonna meet your first parents, and maybe this will make your family look pretty good and encourage ya. As we deal with Noah, the story actually begins way back in Genesis where God created the heavens and the earth. God created our first parents, Adam and Eve. Adam sinned; all of his descendants ever since are sinners by nature and choice. It goes 1,656 years through Genesis Chapter 5, at the end of which Noah is born. The only man, we are told, that walked with God in that time was Enoch over that 1,600-year cycle.

Noah, we’re told in Genesis 6, was saved by grace. He was given favor from God. By God’s saving grace, he became a friend of God, he walked with God. He became a righteous man, a blameless man. His life went well. God then spoke to Noah and told him, “I know the hearts of all the people on the earth. I know that they’re sinful and wicked all the time, even from youth. They’re not getting any better. Time isn’t healing these wounds. So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to flood the earth and I’m gonna kill all the sinners in 120 years. Noah, you’re to do two things: preach (Peter says that he did) and build this enormous boat called an ark.” So for 120 years, Noah and his three sons (Ham, Shem and Japheth) built this huge boat. The floodwaters came. Noah and his family and the animals that got brought entered into the ark. We looked at it last week. Everyone and everything died except for Noah and his family. They get off the boat, Genesis 8, the first thing he does in verse 20, he offers a sacrifice of atonement. He sheds the blood of an animal to show that he, too, should have died for his own sin, and it was only by God’s grace that he was spared.

We pick up the story at Genesis 9 this week, which is the last portion of the life of Noah. And in the middle of this genealogy, it doesn’t tell us much about people except for a little bit about Enoch and a lot about Noah. And what you’re gonna see is that Noah and Adam before him are very much connected. There’s at least a dozen parallels between Adam and Noah, the point of which is showing that because of our sin problem, we keep repeating the same mistakes one generation after the next. Both men are the fathers of humanity. We are all descendants of Adam. In addition, after the flood, everyone died, and now we’re also all descendants of Noah. So it doesn’t matter your race, your color, your creed, whoever you are, you’re a descendant of both Adam and Noah. They both entered into a new world that was brought out of a watery chaos. They’re both said to be image-bearers of God. They both are said to have walked with God. They both rule over animals. They both are given the cultural mandate to multiply, to have children, to increase in number, build a culture on the earth that glorifies God. Both men are farmers who work the ground. Both men sin against God, so there’s multiple folds through the book. Both have their sin result in shameful nakedness. Both have their nakedness covered to take away their sin. We’ll deal with that. And both are said to be in covenant with God.

Today we’ll look at the Noahic covenant. Hosea 6:7 says that Adam was also in a covenant with God, and both men had three sons. In each of those family lines, one of those sons did a grievous and terrible thing, and that’s what we’ll deal with today. We’re gonna look at the end of the life of the great patriarch, Noah. So, it starts in Genesis 9:1. “Then God blessed Noah,” and this theme of blessing appears roughly 80-some times in the book of Genesis. In my opinion, it is the great theme of the book of Genesis. Blessing is what threads and weaves the book together, and when God blesses, it shows up with children or finances or health. It shows up with marriage. It shows up with the forgiveness of sin, salvation. God’s blessing shows up a lot of different ways. But the point is that people are bad and God is good, and God blesses people. God is a good God. James says every good and perfect gift comes from God. God is a God who is good and who blesses.

And so “God blessed Noah and his sons,” – this is after they get off the ark – “saying to them, ‘Be fruitful, increase in number and fill the earth,’” the same thing that God said to Adam. God blessed and told him to have a lot of kids. Noah is standing there with his wife and his three sons and their wives, eight in total. Peter tells us in the New Testament we’re saved through the flood. God tells him, “You better fill this earth up with people.” I can imagine Noah’s wife looking at him like, “Oh, boy. This is a big planet, and I gotta fill it up.” And the other ladies, too. There’s four ladies that are supposed to fill the planet with human beings. So, you can tell what’s gonna happen next, right? Connect the dots on that. So, they’re supposed to have a lot of kids, and kids are the sign of God’s blessing. We’re gonna see throughout this text that God is a God who is pro life. God is a God who loves life, who gives life, who celebrates life, and who wants his people to be about having children and bringing life into the earth.

Goes on. He talks then about their relationship with creation. Let me set this up for ya. As we go through Genesis, we’re seeing that there is God, people, animals, and plants. And they are different. There is one God. No one is like God. Men and women bear the image of God. Animals are living beings, but they don’t bear the image of God. And plants are alive, but there is a differentiation between God, people, animals, and plants. And so God is gonna give Noah and his family orders on how to deal with other people, how to deal with animals, and how to deal with plants. This is important, because this negates evolutionary thinking. We’re not just lucky plants – right? – who moved up the food chain. We’re not just lucky plants.

We’re image-bearers of God, and, because of this, we’re gonna see that if we don’t understand our place, we will either think too highly of ourselves (as if we were gods) or too lowly of ourselves (as if we were nothing but animals). We are not animals; we are not gods. We are people made by God with dignity, value, and respect. Because of that, we’re gonna see today that the taking of a human life is different than the taking of an animal life or the taking of the life of a vegetable. That’s why today, if you go to a restaurant and someone bites down on a head of broccoli, you don’t freak out. You don’t say, “This is a broccoli holocaust. All of the broccoli is getting devastated across the earth. The broccoli has no feet, no legs, it cannot run, it has no voice with which to proclaim its innocence, it has no voting rights to defend itself. It doesn’t have arms, it can’t hold a weapon, and this broccoli is just being slaughtered unmercifully. This is a tragedy. This is a crisis.” We don’t have big signs, you know, “People for the Ethical Treatment of Broccoli.” We just don’t, because we know there’s a difference between broccoli and people, and there’s a difference between animals and people.

Now, some people don’t know this. So, we have organizations like the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, one of the former heads of which said, “A pig is a dog is a rat is a boy,” which means there’s no difference between a rat and a boy, which means if you’re driving down the street, and a rat runs into your path, and a boy runs into your path, you could flip a coin and figure out which one you’re gonna run over because they’re the same. In Christianity, the rat goes, okay? Every time. Every time. We don’t pray about it, we don’t vote, we don’t ask a Congressional subcommittee to vote. We just run the rat over in Jesus’ name, and the boy lives. Okay? We’re not animals. But if you don’t get this, when we come to these sections, what we’re gonna find is you could kill an animal, you could kill a vegetable. You can’t kill a person because we’re different and distinct. It doesn’t mean that animal life doesn’t have value. It does. It doesn’t mean that plant life isn’t to be respected. It does. It means we’re different.

So, it’s gonna talk here about how we relate to God, people, animals, and plants, the hierarchy of God’s good creation. So, what he says isn’t about the animals, is that “the fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth, all the birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and all the fish of the sea. They will be given to your hands. You still have dominion over the animals. Everything that lives and moves will be yours for food. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you” – praise God – “everything.” This is the beginning of meat. Until this point, we were all vegetarians. Now, some of you will say, “I’m a vegetarian.” Praise God. I love you. I love all vegetarians. If we all ate meat, the prices would go up. So, I love vegetarians. And when I go to a barbecue and there’s a bunch of vegetarians, I love all the vegetarians, and I eat their portions. I love meat. I love meat.

Now, it says you can eat anything, so you could eat fish, which tastes like fish, that’s my only problem with fish. If they could genetically engineer a fish that tasted like a steak, I would eat that fish. I’m not a big fish eater. My wife likes fish. That’s okay. You can eat the fish, you can eat chicken. But chicken is a little scary. Have you ever seen a chicken? It’s not a smart animal, and what they eat is a little frightful, so I eat chicken with fear and trepidation, but I’m a man of faith, so I still eat the chicken. What I really like is steak, and when I look at a cow, I just see a lot of steaks. I think cows are made of steaks. And since no one had ever eaten a cow until this point, I gotta think that the cows were big. They’d been fattening up for a while. And at this point we go from a vegetarian diet to the possibility of also consuming meat. Do you like meat? Do you like – this is the beginning of grilling. This is the beginning of barbecue sauce and hot sauce. This is the beginning of the George Foreman grill.

Now, I’ll say this, too. Steak is good and so is bacon. Bacon is glorious. And what you need to know is this: Bacon, it cooks best on a Foreman grill. This is not – this is free. This is extra. The problem with bacon is when you cook it, it splatters, so you’re all covered in bacon, which – it’s worth it, truly. But like if you look at the bacon, you can put an eye out ‘cause hot grease comes flying out of the bacon. It’s like the pig’s revenge. But if you put it on a Foreman grill, a couple magical things happen. One, it can’t splatter, and two, it cooks two sides at once so it’s quick, and you don’t have to wait for your bacon. I would just tell you, if you’re real Christians, you’ll get a Foreman grill, and you will cook bacon. And you’ll put one hand on the Foreman grill and you’ll raise the other in praise to the glorious God who allowed you to eat the meat. And barbecue sauce – oh. Grilling is – you know, it’s like after God floods the earth and says, “You know, that’s it. You’ve had a hard go of it. Barbecue.” God is so good. Now we get to barbecue.

Somebody’s saying, “I can’t believe my pastor’s not a vegetarian.” Look, you can be a vegetarian, like I said. I love ya. But now, we’re given permission to eat everything. Everything except for people. Right? We can kill a chicken but not a person, okay? One of the only reasons that we don’t eat people is because of the influence of the Christian Bible. In some places, they eat each other. We don’t eat each other because of the influence of Christian faith. We can eat animals; we can’t eat people. People are image-bearers of God; animals aren’t. If you want to eat an animal, you can. He’s gonna talk about this further, the differentiation between animal life, human life, between fish and fowl and beasts of the field and human life.

And he goes on. “But you must not eat meat that still has lifeblood in it.” Here’s what God’s saying. You can eat the chicken but it has to be dead. Right? No eating a live chicken. How many of you have seen religions where they eat live animals? They sacrifice ‘em unnecessarily. They drink blood. This is paganism. This is dangerous, like you could get pretty funky and sick if you eat a living animal, and sometimes they fight back. So you also could get injured. I think God here has a lot of wisdom. God’s saying don’t eat the living – if you want to shoot it, kill it, grill it, praise the Lord, but make sure it’s dead, that the blood is still not flowing when you go take a bite out of it. This is to protect us from just becoming savages. This is to protect us from pagan practices. This is to protect us from acting like animals. We hunt, we kill, we grill. We don’t just run out and eat living animals. Some places, they still do. Some places they eat living animals, some places they eat people. Not us. We don’t do that. We eat chicken after we’ve killed it. We don’t eat people, and we don’t eat living things. We wait ’til they are dead.

So – must not eat meat that has lifeblood in it. “And for your lifeblood” – this is the blood in a human being, this is different than blood in an animal – “I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal.” So if an animal hurts a human being, what do we do to the animal? We kill it, right? This is where if your dog is a rabid dog that hops the fence and bites and mauls or kills the neighbor kid – boom! Dog’s done. Kill the dog. Those people on TV, “Oh, it’s my dog.” Mauled a kid – it’s over. Game, set, match. We got _____. Where’s the hole? The dog’s goin’ in it. That’s the way it is, all right? It’s a dog and a kid. These are not equal, right? This kid is an image-bearer; this dog is goin’ in a hole. So, “And from each man, too,” – so what about a human being that murders another human being? This is unjustly, this isn’t war or self-defense. The Bible further articulates this later on in the Scriptures, particularly in the Pentateuch. “I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.” Here’s the point: Human life is superior to animal life because human life alone bears God’s image. We dealt with this in Genesis 1.

Now, “God’s image” means that we are made distinct and unique and special, and God’s image makes us great. Human life is great. But when we sinned, the question is then, did we lose the image and likeness of God? Are we still God’s image-bearers? Yes. Here, after sin enters the world, we are told in verse 6 that we still bear God’s image. We’re also told in the New Testament, in the book of James, that we still bear God’s image. So, God’s image makes us distinct and great, but now we are sinners, and so, we sin greatly. We’re still great; we’re great sinners; we sin greatly. And Jesus comes to take away our sin and redeem us so that we can be brought back just as God’s image-bearers and our greatness remains but our depravity is taken away. So, because human beings bear the image of God, an animal is not allowed to harm a person. If they do, the animal is put to death, and a human being is not allowed to murder another human being. This is the beginning of the rule of law. This is very important. So much of our life here in America is concepts borrowed from Scripture that we didn’t know came from Scripture, we just think that this is the way it has always been. We eat people – not people – chickens, not people, because of the influence of the Bible, and we have rule of law, not rule of might, because of the Bible.

God here begins to institute the rule of law. These are laws. Some people hate law because they’re lawbreakers. 1 John 2 says that that is the definition of sin, it’s a lawbreaker. Law is this: Law is good when it comes from God. One, you either have rule of law or rule of might. If you have rule of might, then if you’re poor, weak, elderly, young, not rich, not powerful, you have no justice. Rule of law, in theory, provides an opportunity for justice. Which means just ‘cause you’re not the strongest doesn’t mean that the strong guys get to beat you up, that there’s law to protect you. Second thing that is good with law is law is given to protect life so that we might live and have joy and peace and harmony. We can be a society. We can get along. We can respect each other.

The point of law is to put a fence around human sin within which we have freedom to live. And the other matter with law is this: If we don’t have law, then all we have is anarchy and human death. People kill each other. Law here is to preserve, to protect human life on the earth. And so we live in a society that is, in theory, under rule of law. And if it wasn’t for rule of law, there would be no justice. There would be no equality. There would be no dignity. Some of you are not that smart. Some of you are not that strong. Some of you are not that powerful. Some of you are not that affluent. Some of you are not that wealthy. And if it wasn’t for law, those who are smarter, stronger, those who are more skilled and more powerful, they would get to dominate and rule you and harm you and kill you. But rule of law prevents that, because you’re an image-bearer of God.

And so all life is sacred to God. That includes life that is unborn. God is a living God. And God knits us together in our mother’s womb, and God is a God who is about life. He is a pro-life God. It’s what he’s saying here. Not allowed to just kill each other. If someone murders a person, then that person will be put to death. This is the beginning of capital punishment. Before that, if someone murdered a person in revenge, that person would come and slaughter their family and then slaughter the person, so innocents were harmed. Here, what happens is the person who murders is put to death. This is the beginning of execution, this is the beginning of capital punishment for capital crime, so that there is justice, that the family is not unnecessarily attacked, and that that offender is dealt with justly.

Some of you don’t like capital punishment. I’m not saying that all capital punishment, as practiced, is 100 percent foolproof. We are sinners, and sometimes our system of law doesn’t provide equality, and sometimes the wrong guys are put to death. But, in theory, this is what God wants. God wants murderers to be put to death so that there is justice and human life is seen as sacred and protected. That includes human beings taking a life and animals taking human life. They both shall be put to death. This is to guarantee that we live good life on the earth and not put to death unnecessarily. And he says, “As for you, be fruitful, increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.” The point here is this: Have kids, have kids, have kids, have kids, have kids.

You’ll notice, the further we get away from God, the further we get away from the respect for human life, the delighting in the protection of law, and the further we get from the embracing that children are a blessing and a gift from God, and we become a culture of death as opposed to a culture of life. We take human life and we dishonor children, particularly those that are in the womb. God says no. You’re blessed, have kids, have a lot of kids, fill the earth. This is the same thing he said to Adam and Eve. Everyone else has died at this point and there’s eight people alive. There’s a whole planet, and they are to be about the business of having children. “Then God said to Noah and his sons with ____” – and here’s what’s gonna happen.

Now we’re gonna get into this issue of covenant. There was creation, curse, and then covenant. These are the three major moves in your Bible, thematically. Creation, God made us and everything else good. We sinned, and now there is a curse upon creation. We’re cursed. We’re living under the curse. And then God’s answer to curse is covenant. Covenant is God’s way of going back to his intentions of blessing us in creation. And here, what we’re gonna see is the Noahic covenant, God’s covenant with Noah. Let me set this up for ya. This theme of covenant is one of the most prevailing themes in Scripture. It’s hard for me to overemphasize the significance of covenant.

Covenant exists in two forms. One, there is a covenant between God and people. The Noahic covenant is between God and people. There is also a covenant between people. So like my wife and I, we are in a marriage covenant. Proverbs says that we’re in a marriage covenant. Hosea says that we are in a marriage covenant. We’re in a covenant. And so covenants are binding agreements that bring people together or people and God together in relationship. This is the Bible’s language for relationship and devotion and commitment and oneness. Some covenants are universal. They apply to everyone. The Noahic covenant, as we will see, is one of those covenants. Some covenants are limited insofar as who they are applied to. The new covenant is for those people who belong to Jesus. That doesn’t apply to everybody. Not everybody’s a Christian.

The marriage covenant is between my wife and I. It’s limited; it doesn’t include everybody. Some covenants as well are conditional. That means if you do something, then God does something, and there’s a reciprocity. Some covenants are unconditional, meaning it doesn’t matter what you do, God has made a promise to you, and he’s gonna make good on it no matter what. One of the examples of a limited number of people in a conditional covenant, which would be the opposite of the Noahic covenant, which is an unconditional covenant for all people, is found in 2 Chronicles 7:14 and where it says there, it says this, that “if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray, I will hear them and I will heal their land.” That is a limited covenant to the people of Israel and a piece of land called the Promised Land, and it is a conditional covenant that God will bless them if they repent of sin and humble themselves. So that’s a limited, conditional covenant.

It was weird, ‘cause this last presidential election, I heard otherwise good Bible teachers try to make that into an unlimited covenant, saying that it applied to the United States of America. That if we repent of our sins, God will bless our land. That’s not what it says. ______ Chronicles, all the Jews thinking about the Promised Land weren’t thinking, “Yes, if all the Republicans confess the sin of America, then Georgia will be freed.” They’re not thinking about great nations like Texas. They’re thinking about their land. The land there is the Promised Land. So, we need to be careful not to take limited covenants with particular people and apply them to all people, and we need to be careful not to take conditional covenants and make them into unconditional covenants.

The Noahic covenant is a universal covenant for all people and animals, and it is an unconditional covenant. God’s just gonna be good no matter what. That’s all my theology of covenants. There’s more, but that’s enough. Y’all look like glazed over, so we’ll just continue with the text. But you need to understand covenant ‘cause if you don’t, the Bible’s not gonna make a ton of sense. God commits himself to certain people for certain reasons. “Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him” – God says: “I now establish my covenant” – God makes a covenant – “with you” – Noah and your sons – “and your descendants after you” – that’s us – everybody on the earth is a descendant of Noah – “and with every living creature that was with you – the birds, the livestock, the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you – every living creature on the earth.” This is an unconditional covenant. God says, “I’m gonna bless you no matter what,” and this is a limitless covenant. Everybody and everything is gonna benefit from it. We still do today.

We’re still under this covenant. “I establish my covenant with you.” Here’s the promise that God makes. Here are the terms of the covenant. Here’s what God is pledging to everyone, and I want you to see this, too. God is good to everyone. God does love the whole world. In Matthew’s gospel, we’re told that the sun rises and sets and the seasons come and go on believers and unbelievers alike. That whether or not you belong to God, God is still nice and good. He gives you things you don’t deserve and he withholds things that you do. It’s where James says that every good and perfect gift comes from God. And the promise here is to everybody, including terrible people who hate God. They’re still blessed by God, because God has made a promise that he will be good even if we are bad. And he says – here’s the promise: “Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

What God says is, “Here’s my promise. No more universal floods. Maybe a monsoon here and there, maybe a regional or a localized flood where some people drown, but I’m never gonna cover the whole earth with water again, and I’m not gonna kill everybody in a flood. Doesn’t matter how much you sin, how bad you are. It doesn’t matter how much you rebel, I’m not gonna do that again.” We’re blessed. We’re blessed. You and I need not go to bed tonight cowering in terror that the flood that took the lives of everyone on earth (save eight people) is going to come again. We shouldn’t. We have God’s promise in Chapter 8, verse 22, that the seasons will continue, the food supply will continue; here, that the flood won’t come until God is done with human history and he brings it to its final end.

Goes on. “And God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come:’ – this is a universal covenant, includes us all – ‘I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds upon the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it, I will remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.’ So God said to Noah, ‘This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.’”

Here’s the next point: When a covenant is made, there is an outward sign or symbol as a reminder that a covenant was entered into. Here, the sign is a rainbow. Some say that maybe this was the first rainbow in the history of the world. I don’t know; it doesn’t say. I don’t think so. I don’t think this is the first rainbow. I think what God is saying is this: “I’m now going to infuse meaning into a rainbow.” It rains and then when the sun comes out – something we don’t get to see very much, but I’m told that sometimes the sun comes out after the rain and then there’s a rainbow. So, when you see a rainbow, it’s not supposed to remind you of gay pride. It is supposed to remind you that God kills sinners and isn’t gonna do that right now, but it’s coming in the end.

It’s interesting. Last week we looked at the dove with the olive branch has been co-opted by faux hippie peaceniks, and this week we look at God’s sign of the rainbow being co-opted by the gay rights movement. It’s curious to me. God’s so good at marketing that people who don’t even like him rip off his ideas. That’s how good God is. And so, when we see a rainbow, we’re supposed to think of God making a promise to be nice to everybody and not flood the earth. That’s the point. And God – it’s interesting, too, ‘cause this word for rainbow, some of the commentators say it’s the same word for like crossbow, like a bow that a warrior uses. And if you look at a rainbow, that’s actually its shape, and it’s definitely a rainbow, but it’s as if God is saying, “You’ve all sinned against me and made yourselves my enemies, and I’ve flooded the earth and I’ve killed you all, but now I’m hanging up my bow, and I’m gonna bless you, and you’re gonna live even if you dishonor me, and I’m not at war with you today.”

So, when we see the rainbow, we realize, you know, it coulda kept raining, but God made it stop because he’s not gonna flood the earth again, and the rainbow came out to see that God has hung up his bow. So, when you see a rainbow, you’re supposed to be reminded that we all should be dead because of our sin. That the rain should never stop and we should all drown in peril. But God is a gracious, loving, compassionate, merciful, kind God, and he has spared our lives and given us life and breath, and we have days to live because of the goodness of God. Other covenants also have symbols attached to them. Abraham is gonna have a covenant coming up here shortly in Genesis. What is the sign of the Abrahamic covenant? Circumcision. We’re gonna get to that. A 100-year-old man circumcises himself with a flint knife.

Hebrews says he was a man of great faith. Yes, he was. At a hundred years old, I don’t think I’d even be cuttin’ my French toast. You know, I mean I just – that’s a risk. That’s a huge risk. The circumcision is the sign of the Abrahamic covenant. “Oh, those are God’s men.” You can tell. You know, in addition, the new covenant that we’re in with the Lord Jesus, those of us who are Christians, has a sign or a symbol as well, and that is the communion cup. Jesus at the Last Supper says, “This is my blood shed for you. This is the new covenant,” and so he attaches communion as one of the signs of the sign with the new covenant. So when we partake of communion, it’s a reminder to us all that we’re in covenant relationship with the Lord Jesus, that we belong to him. Likewise in marriage, the reason that Christians wear wedding bands, wedding rings, is because it’s a symbol of a covenant.

Some of you may wonder, “Why do we wear rings?” Because we’re in a covenant, and covenants require a symbol so that we can remind ourselves, “I’m in a covenant here.” So, a man who takes his wedding ring off, he’s in great sin because he is not wanting anyone to know that he’s in a covenant of marriage. Proverbs talks about the woman who forgets her covenant of marriage, and she dresses very scantily, and she goes out to flirt. She turns her back on her covenant because she likes to flirt and have attention. You know, and that’s why you men, you need to wear your ring. So, when you’re at the bar after work, and you’re eatin’ wings and watching the game with your buddies, and a young lady walks up and she says, “Oh, hi, how are you doin’?” Say “I’m in a covenant. A covenant, you know.” “Well, how is work?” “I’m in a covenant. We don’t do this. You know, we don’t talk, we don’t flirt. This is – no, I’m in a covenant.” The guy who takes his ring off? It’s a sin. He’s hiding his covenant rather than proclaiming it. God proclaims his covenants because he wants them to be known and seen. God wants to look down and have the representation of his covenant be visible. We should be the same way.

So, that is the story of the Noahic covenant. Now what happens here is the story transitions from the Noahic covenant to the sons of Noah who will carry on the Noahic covenant. We’re gonna meet his boys. Now the story is this. We’re gonna see the first generational conflict. We’re gonna see the first spat between a father and son. We’re gonna see the first conflict in this new world. Eight people get off the boat, a dad, his three boys, and all of their wives. You’re gonna meet the sons. This is gonna be hard for some of you. Some of you didn’t have a great dad. Some of you dads didn’t have good sons. A lot of the conflict comes generationally. It’s nothing new – started a long time ago when sin entered the world. “The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth.” My daughter and I, she’s seven, she’s really smart theologically. We were snuggling in her bed, and I was telling her this story, and she calls ’em “Ham, Turkey and Bacon.” We laughed pretty hard over that one.

But it’s Shem, Ham and Japheth, and I can’t prove it to ya, but it’s a long theological reasoning, I believe that of the three boys, Ham may have been the youngest. And there’s a long explanation I won’t get into, but “Ham was the father of Canaan.” That was Canaan’s dad. That’s important. Moses drops that in to put the relationships together ‘cause this man’s gonna play significant in a moment. “These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the peoples who were scattered over the earth.” That is a foreshadowing of Genesis 10 next week with the nations, Genesis 11 with Babylon. We’ll get into this next week, that all the nations of the earth come through these boys, and some of these nations are really wicked, and there’s a reason for that that we will see. So, these are his three sons. My daddy had three sons. I’m the oldest of three sons. There was also two daughters. Read the story. Here’s what happens. "Noah" – this is just a weird text – “Noah, a man of the soil,” – he’s a farmer, good job – “proceeded to plant the vineyard.” Then he gets drunk and passes out naked in his tent like a hillbilly redneck on vacation. But let me back this up and explain this to ya.

Okay, your pastor is really intrigued by winemaking. I’m a peculiar cat in a number of ways; this is just one example. Growing up, I had occasionally a drink of alcohol, but by my late teens, early mid-teens, I decided I wasn’t gonna consume any more alcohol. I’d never been drunk, maybe had a couple sips of a cooler or something, and then I just said no alcohol. So, I didn’t drink for years and years and years. I got saved at 19. I went to college at Washington State University. Even on my 21st birthday, I didn’t have a drink, which – they almost kicked me out of the school for that, you know, like – ‘cause there, you either get saved or go to rehab. Those are your only options in that school, and I went through college not drinking, I got married not drinking, didn’t have a toast on my wedding night, nothing.

It wasn’t ‘til I was about 30 and I was out for lunch with Pastor Tim, and I billed a drink to the church tab. Had my – started having a sip of alcohol now and then. So, thank you for picking up that tab. And this last week I was teaching – or a couple weeks ago I was teaching for the Southern Baptists, and I billed a glass of wine to their tab ’cause they don’t believe in alcohol consumption. I said, “Oh, this’d be funny.” So, I was doing some teaching, and the first thing I did is had a drink and billed it to the Southern Baptist Convention. So – don’t tell ‘em. But this whole issue of wine is intriguing to me. I’ll say this, too. Okay, some people – we get a bad rap for a lot of things, most of which pertain to me, and they’re probably justified. But one of ’em is, “Oh, they just encourage everybody to get drunk.”

We don’t encourage anybody to get drunk. Drunkenness is a sin. Drunkenness is a sin. And no one should drink if they’re under 21 ‘cause Romans says we need to respect the governing authorities. And if you go into a school like SPU that has a no-alcohol policy and you sign it, then you need to respect the agreement that you made ’cause you’ve entered into a covenant, and you need to keep your terms of the conditional covenant. So, we’re not encouraging anybody to dishonor the authority over them. We’re not encouraging anybody to disobey the law. We’re not encouraging anybody to dishonor their parents. We’re not encouraging anybody to get drunk. Even at communion, we do wine and juice, and we say you’re free in Christ; operate according to conscience.

We also don’t want anyone to stumble with alcohol, so, if a bunch of you guys live together, let’s say, and you’re roommates, and you have a buddy who’s living with you who’s a recovering alcoholic, don’t ever bring alcohol into that house. Love your brother. More important than having a drink is loving your brother. So, don’t, you know, if you go out to dinner with somebody and they’ve had problems with alcohol, don’t order a drink. Don’t even take ‘em to a place where there’s alcohol. Just love your brothers and sisters. We’re not encouraging anybody to sin or anyone to lead anyone else into sin. That said, we do not believe – well, the Bible doesn’t teach that drinking alcohol is a sin; otherwise, Jesus would have sinned.

We don’t want to be holier than our God. Any religion where you need to be holier than your God, it should clue you in that maybe you’ve gone a little far. And Jesus’ first miracle was turning water into wine, good wine, and as I did my research on the history of alcohol, I find that most of our understanding of alcohol is driven by the temperance movement and feminism. The first guy to create widespread grape juice, it’s mentioned in Numbers, but the first guy to manufacture it is a guy named Sir Thomas Welch. Welch’s grape juice? He was a Methodist minister, part of the temperance and feminist movement. That’s how we got grape juice in communion. Only in the last 100 or so years. It’s not very old.

John Calvin, one of the great Bible teachers, he had as part of his pastoral compensation package 250 gallons of wine a year. It was given to him by his church to entertain. The Psalms say God gave wine to gladden the heart of man. Calvin apparently was very glad. Martin Luther drank beer because his wife, Katherine, was a renowned brewer, a Proverbs 31 glorious brewing woman is what she was. She apparently was a great brewer. Okay, so we’re a church that believes that God made wine, God gave wine, that we are supposed to enjoy wine and beer, we’re not supposed to get drunk or cause people to stumble. And me, I’m so peculiar that I wanted to figure out – because the Bible uses all these metaphors of wine and nobody ever uses ‘em because "Oh, we don’t drink." “Why?” “Well, the Christians said so.” “Well, do they read the Bible? The Bible doesn’t say that.” And what I find is that the judgment in the end is compared to the wine press of God’s fury and his wrath in Revelation.

Jesus says that the whole of evangelism is like workers going out into a harvest field, that he is the vine, that we are the branches. I mean there’s tons of Biblical imagery about winemaking. Being a viticulturalist, right? I mean it’s just – and so, I started thinking, “Well, I need to figure out winemaking ‘cause it’s in the Bible so much.” So, I got on a plane, and I went down to Napa Valley (this is how weird I am) this last year. A Christian lady there owns a vineyard, nice lady, took me on a whole tour of the vineyard, showing me how the vines grow, and you tend ‘em, and you gotta prop ’em up, and you gotta keep ’em from little critters that come and eat the vines in the vineyard. Song of Solomon uses that same metaphor to talk about our marriage (we need to keep the foxes out of our vineyard), and she’s showing me how disease comes in and sometimes you gotta kill one of the vines and how long it takes to harvest a vine and then how to crush the grapes, the fermentation process and wine sampling, and it’s just fascinating.

There’s another gentleman in this church who’s a winemaker over at Chateau St. Michelle, and he took me down into the vats and out into the fields and through the whole process, and I’m just fascinated by this ‘cause I’m weird. And what I find is Noah proceeded to plant a vineyard. That’s a ton of work. Like before this guy gets drunk, he has to invent winemaking. That is a devoted drinker. I mean that is huge. You can’t get off the boat and say, “Oh, that was unbelievable. A year with my relatives and a goat, and I haven’t had a shower, and my wife smells like a honey bucket at a county fair. Where’s the liquor store?” There’s no liquor store, right? If you wanna drink, you gotta figure it out. I mean you gotta plant a vineyard. This takes time. You gotta cultivate the vines. You gotta prop ‘em up. You gotta harvest grapes after the vines have matured (this takes years). You’ve gotta crush ’em. They need to ferment.

I was watching a special on TV where guys in prison – at least what they said was they take a zip lock bag with water and a slice of bread, put it in, let it ferment, filter it through their sock and then drink it to get drunk. We are wicked to our core, right? We will find a way. But Noah goes through more work than that. You know how long it takes to plant a vineyard? If you wanted to be an alcoholic and the only way you could would be to rip up your lawn and grow grapes and, you know, go through the ferment – none of – we wouldn’t be alcoholics. It’s too much work. We’re too lazy. Noah plants a vineyard, goes ahead, has a few drinks too many, he becomes drunk and lays naked in his tent. Now, this is Noah, the righteous man, right? We always do this to kids. We say, “Noah was a righteous man. Here he is on the arky-ark.” There’s the giraffe, big smile, head stickin’ out. We never have ‘em color this page, right? We never tell ’em this part. There’s no sheets in the coloring book at the Christian bookstore for this – like arky-arky, no drunky-drunky, you know, it’s just –

Now, Noah is a righteous man. He does walk with God for hundreds of years. God did speak to him. He apparently has a bad day. Just like some of you. Some of you are mature Christians, you love God, you’ve had a few bad days. Noah has a bad day. He drinks the wine, he gets drunk, and he lays naked in his tent like a NASCAR fan. So – here’s where we go with this. You think, “This is different.” Yeah, it is. It’s – the thing I love about the Bible, it shows us reality. Here’s a real Christian. Walked with God for hundreds of years, and then here he is drunk, naked in his tent. Now, let me unpack this for ya. The tent is his home. So, he lives in a big tent. So, this is his home. He lives there. He has a little bit too much to drink, goes to bed and tries to sleep it off.
Now let’s look at his sin. Is it a sin to drink alcohol? No. Is it a sin to sleep naked? No. Some of you wives should pray about that. I’ll just say that for your husbands. That’s my little “help.” It’s not a sin to sleep naked. Now, it could be traumatic for your kids but it is not a sin. So, it’s not a sin to have a glass of wine, and it’s not a sin to sleep in the nude. But it is a sin to get drunk, so Noah’s sin here is drunkenness. Some of the commentators say, “Well, he just had a buzz and went to bed. He wasn’t drunk.” Eh, looks like he was drunk. Looks like he was drunk. So, that’s Noah’s sin. The righteous, godly man, Noah, gets drunk, goes home, takes his clothes off, climbs into his bed, tries to sleep off his drunken stupor. So – this is where his son shows up.

How many of you have never heard this story? Okay, this is profoundly disturbing. I’ll apologize in advance. “Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers outside.” Now, where’s Noah? In his house, in his bed. Ham sees him. How does that happen? He’s not Superman, doesn’t have x-ray vision. He has to go into his daddy’s tent, into his daddy’s bedroom, and check out his naked daddy. Men, can you think of any – If you ask any man, “What’s the last thing you want to have happen?” he will say, “See my father naked.” They don’t make enough medication to fix that. And I would have to get drunk, too. You know, it’s just – no, you know, I mean I love my dad but I’m tellin’ ya, I would rather take a ball peen hammer to my frontal lobe than see my dad naked. Amen? Amen, gentlemen, right? You just go, “No.” Part of it is you see the future, and the future does not look good, right? It’s just –

Now, I’ll say this, all we have here are the bare details. I’ll put it that way. And some say when he walked in and saw his dad naked, he had homosexual relations and violated his dad. Also, some say that maybe he walked in and castrated his father. A little Biblical Bobbitt right there. A little disturbing, a little troubling. It doesn’t say that. So, I’m not going to. I don’t know what happened. I don’t wanna know. All I know is, if it says, “And the son walked in ’cause he liked to check out his naked dad . . .,” whatever else happened, it’s bad. It’s just disturbing. It’s like the daytime talk shows that you turn – ugh. You just don’t wanna know the details. So, here’s the problem. He has three sons. We’re gonna find out that two of them are godly and one is ungodly. It shows us that even good parents can sometimes bring forth bad kids.

Noah sinned, but he’s asleep in his bed. The guy should be left alone, right? Ham goes into the father’s bedroom, and he’s digging up dirt on his dad – he’s looking for sin. And as soon as he finds it, what does he do? He runs out, and he tells his brothers. Here he is, dishonoring his father. The sin of Ham is not just perversion, though he’s perverted, the sin of Ham is that he dishonors his dad. See, and we miss this, because we live in a culture where dad is a joke. Forty percent of kids don’t have a dad. Some of you, when I say “dad,” you just chuckle ‘cause your dad beat you, cheated on your mom, he molested you, he was violent, he was a drunk, he was an imbecile, he was a fool. A lot of you didn’t have a good dad. So, when you hear the word “father” or “dad,” it just conjures up a fool that you’re supposed to rebel against.

In the Bible, the father is a sacred title. It’s an honored office. God is our Heavenly Father. Today there’s even a big theological debate that we should not pray to God as Father because our fathers are so bad. God is our Heavenly Father. He is our perfect Father. Jesus told us to pray to God as our Father. We should not look at God in light of our dads; we should look at dads in light of God. God is a great Father, and he’s a Father to the fatherless, so even if you don’t have a dad, God will adopt you and bring you into his family. That’s the whole great metaphor of adoption in the New Testament. God is a dad, the church is a family, God adopts people into his family, just as Jesus was born to a single mother, and Joseph adopted him into his family.

You know, we live in a day when dad is just totally disrespected, totally dishonored. It’s because we’re descendants of Ham, following in his folly. I’ve got four kids. I’ve got a daughter who’s one, I’ve got a son who’s almost three, a son who’s five, and a daughter who’s seven. We would have five kids, but my wife had a miscarriage. So, we’re at four. That’s where we’re at. And I love my kids, and I like raising them. I like being a daddy. And what I find is, as I sit down to watch kids’ shows with them on TV or movies, invariably the plot line is usually something like this: There’s a crisis, the father is an idiot, and the child and the family pet save the day, and dad’s too dumb to know that there was even a problem. The moral of the story is always, “Your dad’s a joke. The family pet’s more help than he is.”

We live in a culture that continually pounds the message of the dishonoring of the father. Kids are supposed to rebel against their parents. We call it adolescence. We come up with a whole category that justifies rebellion against the father. “Oh, well, they’re at that age where they’re gonna buck authority and dishonor.” Well, that’s sin, not just a phase of life. Sometimes that phase of life can continue forever. It’s not just adolescence. Sometimes it’s wickedness that is ongoing and perpetual. And I know that many of you don’t wanna honor your father. But you need to honor your father. Of the Ten Commandments, this is one. You say, “But my father is not honorable.” That may indeed be true. In this moment, Noah is not particularly honorable.

Now, he was a man who walked with God. He was a righteous man. He was a man who was the father and the head of all new humanity on the earth. If it wasn’t for him, his sons woulda drowned in the flood and died. The least Ham can do is honor his dad, but he doesn’t. He dishonors his dad, and he wants to run out of the tent and tell the brothers and make sure that the whole family knows that dad is a big joke and a wicked, evil man, and now he is making fun of his dad. He’s making light of his dad. He’s making sport of his dad. He’s knocking his father off the pedestal as the head of the home, and that’s not good. It’s not good. He was brought into this world by his father, and he was saved through the flood by his father’s faith, and here he dishonors his father.

Ham is a terrible son, and it juxtaposes Ham, Moses does, with the other two boys. “But Shem and Japheth took a garment,” – basically like a blanket – they “laid it across their shoulders, they walked in backward” to their daddy’s tent, their heads are turned to the side, and they dropped the blanket over their dad to cover his nakedness. “Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father’s nakedness.” Ham runs out, “I caught dad in sin. He did it. He’s not a righteous man. I found some dirt on him. He looks pathetic in there. He’s just a drunk, naked old man. You go check it out. It’s hilarious.” Laughing at dad. The two sons look at him, and they say, “That’s our father. If nothing else, the least you can do is salute the uniform. This is the only dad we have.” Now, this is the low point of his life. This is his worst day. He’s in an embarrassing predicament. “We do not make fun of our father. We do not dishonor our father. We do not belittle our father.” The other two boys walk in backward, heads turned, cover their father’s shame and disgrace. They are following the example of God.

Back in the early chapters of Genesis, Adam sinned, experienced shameful nakedness. God came and covered it, covered his shameful disgrace. Here, these two boys are following the example of God and covering the shameful disgrace of their own father. It’s interesting, isn’t it? These three boys are in the same family. They come through the same life experience. They’re brought up in the same home. They have the same parenting. They’re reared under the same theology. Two boys are wise, love God, honor their father; one is an abject fool. You need to know that even some good parents bring forth bad kids. Sometimes hyper-covenantal theology will almost guarantee you that if you’re a believer, your children will be believers. Here, it says otherwise.

Noah is the only righteous man saved through the flood and his family with him, and he has three sons, and one is a wicked man. One is a wicked man. Noah is a man who preserved his family. Noah is a man who walked with God. Noah is a man who heard from God. Noah is certainly a sinner, but there should be some respect for the man as the head of the home. How many of you men, your father was a patriarch, and the sin and folly of your family, the perennial generation-to-generation of sickness, stopped with your dad or your granddad? Any of you guys have that? That was my family line. You read Genesis 5, sin, death, sin, death, sin, death, sin, death, Noah. That’s a patriarch. God grabs Noah, gives him grace, and through Noah comes a family that is redeemed and has hope.

My family – the reason I’m here today preaching and not working off my hangover is because of my dad. My dad’s name is Joe. I was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and my whole family is a bunch of drunks and thugs and criminals and people that are nothin’ to speak about. My dad got married to my mom. She got pregnant with me, and they decided that everything would stop with their kids. That’s how we got to Seattle. They said, “You know what? We’re not raising our kids around the rest of the extended family that are filled with sin and violence and folly and drunkenness and shame and nonsense.” They literally moved out here with nothing. I was a baby. That’s how we got to Seattle. My dad for over 20 year hung sheetrock as a union drywaller. He would come home at night and lay on the floor ’cause his back hurt so bad. He did that ’til one day on the job, he literally broke his back and had to go through reconstructive surgery on it. He did that to feed five kids, of which I was the oldest, and my mom stayed home with us kids.

I grew up behind a strip club down by Sea-Tac Airport, and I was the only kid that I can remember (there may have been more) in my neighborhood that had a dad. My brothers and I all make good money, happily married, own homes, responsible, don’t abuse drugs, alcohol – doin’ good. My two sisters, nice ladies, one’s in college, one’s married – doin’ good. The only reason why our family looks so much different than everyone else with my same last name is because of my dad. Children grow up in the world that their father creates. We’re not individuals. We’re not autonomous. We don’t show up on the earth with a blank slate. We’re part of a family history. And if you have a good dad, you’re born privileged. If you have a bad dad, you’re born in trouble.

My kids eat what I eat. They eat what I provide for them. They live in the home that I purchased. They drive around in the vehicle that I provide. They are raised by the woman that I married. The fact that she stays home is because it’s my responsibility to feed my family and to pay our bills. And I learned that from my dad. I learned that ‘cause everything stopped with my dad. My dad is different than the other men in our family. He’s a hardworking, faithful guy, who would swing a hammer, come home, play catch with his sons, have dinner, coach Little League, and told us, “You’re Driscoll boys. That means something. You do this, you don’t do that. The Driscoll boys are different.” I still tell my sons that. “You’re Driscoll boys. We’re different. We do things different.” And it started with my dad. Noah’s that guy. Whole family of sin, chaos, violence, and with Noah, it stops because God gets a hold of him. And now, Noah has a bad day, and rather than loving his father, respecting his father, Ham dishonors that man who saved his life and makes light of him.

You know, every one of us has a sinful father, and if we want to find a lot of things to pick at our dads about and be bitter against, we can find them because our fathers have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Some far more so than others. But the story from Noah is this: Honor your father. Have you ever had a moment where you dishonored your father and he got mad? He got that “dad look”? There is a particular dad look that it doesn’t matter if you’re 3 or 73, if you get that look, man, it is a bad day, right? Your dad’s eyebrows come off his head over to the side, his eyes come out of their socket. He takes that deep breath, and his voice drops four octaves, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” And some of you right now are like, “Oh, my gosh, I gotta go to the restroom.” There’s that dad look and that dad voice and when you get that, you’re just like – Ham’s gonna get that from Noah.

“When Noah awoke from his wine” – he’s hungover. You know this isn’t gonna go good. Your dad gets mad to begin with, and when he’s hungover, it’s not like his patience is more gracious and long-suffering. Right? He woke up from his wine, found out what his youngest son had done to him. He said – I won’t use my dad voice and shout – “Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.” Comes out of his tent. Shem and Japheth. “Dad, I don’t know how to tell this to ya. Last night, when you were drunk and naked, Ham came in, came out, made fun of you. He’s been mocking you. He’s told everybody. The grandkids know. They’ve all been making sport of you. We walked in, covered ya, but the whole family thinks you’re a big joke, and we spent the whole morning, everybody was just laughing at ya and making fun of ya.” “What? I was in my bed. I was asleep. My son snuck into my residence and he gazed upon me and then he runs out to mock me to my own family? Cursed be Canaan.”

Now, this is peculiar. Who walked into the tent and gazed upon the naked Noah? Ham. Who gets cursed? Canaan. Who’s Canaan? Ham’s son. Noah’s grandson. Did Canaan do anything? Doesn’t say he did anything. This would be like you steal from me, and I punch your son in the mouth. Your kid’s sittin’ there goin’, “What – I didn’t do anything.” Okay now, this is a difficult text. Let me explain to you what’s happening here. Noah comes out of the tent. I do not believe that he’s cursing his grandson. I believe that he’s prophesying that his grandson is already cursed, but the curse isn’t coming from Noah; the curse comes from his dad. What he does is this: Noah comes out of the tent, hears what happens, goes and finds his son, Ham, and there’s Ham with a smirk on his face and chuckling, thinkin’ he’s all funny ‘cause he’s dethroned his dad, he’s dishonored his dad, and he looks down at his grandson, Ham’s little boy, Canaan, and he’s got the same smirk and he’s got the same grin, and he’s just like his old man. And he walks up to his son, and he says, “You are a wicked, evil son, and your son is cursed ‘cause you’re his dad, and he’s just like you.”

I don’t believe he’s calling down fire on Canaan. I believe he’s stating the obvious. “He’s cursed ‘cause you’re his dad. He’s just like you. He’s a sick, twisted, perverted, coward, dishonorable little punk just like his old man. You think this is funny ‘cause you dishonor your dad? What do you think he’s gonna do to you, you fool? You can’t dishonor me and then claim the moral high ground for him to honor you. You’ve just given away all of your authority as a father. Your son is gonna treat you the way you treat me because he’s sitting there smirking with that same stupid, silly, grin as you. When you dishonor me, you dishonor fatherhood, not just your dad, and when you dishonor fatherhood, you saw off the limb you’re sitting on, and your son is cursed ‘cause you’re his old man.” Noah’s frustrated with his son. Some of you are cursed because of the father you had. Some of your children are cursed because of the father you are. Some of you are just like your old man. Drunks and thugs and perverts and cheats and sluggards and gluttons and freaks. That’s what he’s saying.

You know what? A little boy wants nothing more than to be like his dad, which is a good thing or a bad thing depending upon who his old man is. I find this with my two sons. They do whatever I do. They wanna be just like me. You know, I don’t have my books here. I have my books at home. I study at home so I’m studying in front of my kids, so my kids see me studying. Otherwise, usually pastors hole up in an office and be real Biblical, and the kids never see it. It’s not good. They say, “Well, I don’t want to be interrupted.” Well, I like being interrupted. I like the kids to see me with a book open. So, I study at home. It was interesting, the other day I’m sitting there at my desk, I’m studying the Bible. My son, Calvin, comes in. He puts a little chair right next to mine. He’s almost three. I wonder, “What’s that kid doing?” Then he comes in with his kid’s Bible, and he sits down next to me. You know, and if I’m reading “Hustler,” he does the same thing. Get my point? I mean sons are gonna wanna be like their dad. If their dad is a mess, those sons are gonna emulate their dad and likely be a mess. If their dads love God, many of their kids will grow up to love the Lord.

Shem and Japheth, they follow their father’s example. Canaan will follow the example of Ham. Shem and Japheth are gonna be guys who honor the Lord like their daddy. Canaan will be a boy who dishonors the Lord like his daddy. We’re born into a world that dad made. A patriarch is a guy who says, “You know what? I come from a line of folly and nonsense. It stops today, and the world that my kids are born into will be better because I’m their dad.” I know many of you men are – this is not an indictment on single mothers. This is not an indictment on those single men who are not yet married. Ninety-three percent of you, statistically, will be married. Most of you will become parents. Be fruitful, multiply, increase in number, kids are a blessing – we’re encouraging that.

In Christianity, there are 60 percent female, 40 percent male, between 11 and 13 million more female than male Christians. There’s just not a lot of decent guys who proclaim to belong to Jesus. Particularly in this city, which is among the least likely cities in the country that a young man would go to church, particularly an unmarried man. And it is so important to God, it is so important to me as a teacher of the Bible, that you young men, before you get married, before you have kids, that you own the responsibility of being a patriarch. That your children would be blessed because you’re their dad. That they wouldn’t be cursed because you’re their dad. That the world that you live in would be a world of loving grace and obedience to God, and by honoring the Heavenly Father, you would have the authority to call your children to honor you as father, and to make their job easy by being honorable.

I was talking to my daughter, Ashley. She’s a bright theologian. We were cuddling the other night, and I said, “Honey, what are children supposed to do to their parents?” She said, “They’re supposed to honor their father and mother.” And I said, “What things can a daddy do to make that easier?” She came up with this little list. I wrote it down. She said it’s easy to honor a daddy if he “loves God, fixes the problems that come up with his kids and his family, doesn’t yell at his kids, and spends lots of time with them.” That’s my 7-year-old daughter’s list, so that’s what I gotta do. Right? You want your kids to say, “I’m blessed because my daddy walks with God.” Not to say, “I’m cursed because I’m just like my daddy.” And some of you are bitter against your fathers. You’re just like your old man. You blame it on him and you know what? You shouldn’t be.

You can’t blame your father for the person that you are. They may have created a world that you’ve walked into that is hard and difficult, but at the end of the day, maybe you start where Noah did, not where Ham and Japheth did. Maybe you start as the patriarch who puts sin and folly to an end, walks with God, is still a sinner that has bad days, but has the possibility of raising children that are blessed and not cursed. I care about your kids. I care about your grandkids. I care about your great-grandkids. And it starts with the quality of the men. I want you men to love children, your children, and to raise them in the Lord. And I want you ladies to marry men who love children. You know, it’s so sad. Forty percent of kids don’t even have a dad. No dad. But some of ‘em are blessed ’cause it’s better than living with the old man they’d otherwise have. That’s how sad it is.

For some kids, it’s better to have no dad than the one they have. So some of you men are gonna need to also one day adopt these kids who don’t have dads and give ‘em dads. Be about redemption like Jesus was adopted. And I want you men to get a picture of redemption, fatherhood, patriarchy, responsibility, so that when they hear the name father, they just don’t smirk or grin or chuckle. There’s some honor that comes with that sacred title, and when we say God is Father, that means something so that we’re not all the descendants of Ham. So much rides on this. He concludes, “He also said, ‘Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem!’” He doesn’t bless Shem, Noah doesn’t. He blesses God. He says – he knows God is to be blessed, and that Shem loves the Lord and belongs to the Lord, and so, if the Lord is blessed, then Shem is blessed. Isn’t that great? What Noah doesn’t say is “Shem is blessed ‘cause I’m his dad.” What Noah says is “Shem is blessed because his Father is the Lord.” And Canaan is cursed because Ham is his daddy. “May Canaan be the slave of them.”

See, here’s the point. The only way Canaan can have a decent life is coming under the authority of his family. He’s not a kid who’s gonna be able to take care – he’s a fool, he doesn’t like law, he doesn’t honor, he doesn’t obey, he doesn’t respect. So he’s gonna be a slave. “‘May God extend the territory’ – the land – ‘of Japheth; may Japheth live in the tents of Shem, may Canaan be his slave.’” And it says, “After the flood Noah lived 350 years. Altogether, Noah lived 950 years, and then he died.” From Canaan comes a series of awful people. The Canaanites, they’re bad people. The Babylonians, they’re bad people. The Egyptians, they’re bad people. The Philistines, they’re bad people. They come from Canaan. Do you ever look at just messed up families, terrible cities, destroyed nations and think, “How did it get there?” I’ll tell ya how it got there. One day some meathead dishonored his dad.

One day one guy did one thing, and it set a precedent toward folly, rebellion, and disobedience that has not stopped yet. And it becomes just a whole nation of utter fools, wicked people who dishonor and disobey their fathers and their Heavenly Father. See, behind you will come children. Behind you ladies will come children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and whole nations of people. And if you love God and they love God, it could be a whole series of redemptive works. If you don’t honor God and your father and they don’t either, it could be a whole series of destructive works. See, we have this nonsense that we’re individuals, we don’t have a father and we won’t have a lineage, that we just come here as an individual, autonomous, not affected by those that came before, and not having an effect on those who will come after. And the Bible says fools think that way. Fools think that way. That we come from a family line.

If you have a dad who’s a patriarch, honor him, love him, bless him, respect him. Don’t run around looking for sin and making light of him. If you have no dad, if your dad is not a patriarch, respect fatherhood and honor your father and salute the uniform so that one day, when you have kids, whether you’re a mother or a father, your parents will respect the parental authority. That they will salute the uniform, too. And then Noah dies. See, what we’ve had is now the sin problem comes in in Genesis 3. We’ve tried to deal with it through feminism with Eve. We’ve tried to deal with it through chauvinism with Lamech. We’ve tried to deal with it through family, and Cain kills Abel. We’ve tried to deal with it with justice, and God floods the earth. There’s only a handful of people left, and the sin problem is still there. Maybe there’s hope in a righteous man and his sons, and one of those sons is a godless man who brings death and not life, who brings folly and not wisdom, who brings curse and not blessing.

We’re sort of left there, and the last word is that he died. I mean it’s not a great note of hope. And it’s that way because God doesn’t want us to have our hope in people on the earth, even righteous men who have bad days like Noah. But here’s the point: Our hope is not in this father. It’s in God, who is our Father. And it’s not in this son, Ham. It’s in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And it’s not in sons who dishonor their father and fathers who dishonor their Heavenly Father, it’s in Jesus who honors God the Father and takes away and covers our sin. See, just like Shem and Japheth covered the sin of Noah, Jesus Christ, the Faithful Son, he’s a faithful son like Shem and Japheth, he comes and he dies and he rises to cover our sin. To cover our sin, to cover our disgrace, to cover our shame. In so doing, he causes us to be adopted into the family of God, the church, where God is our Father. And now we have a Heavenly Father. We know how to parent our kids because we follow his example with us. And what we say is, “Blessed be the God of my kids. Their hope is not that I am their daddy or mommy but that God is a good Heavenly Father. I’m still gonna have sinful days, I’m imperfect, but if they can get connected through the Son to the Father, then there is hope for the future.”

And the prophesy here is given as well that God would dwell in the tents of Shem. That God would come, and he would live and dwell with Shem. What it tells us in John 1:14 is that Jesus Christ is the Faithful Son of God who has come to pitch his tent with us. See, the hope is not in the tent of Noah. It’s that Jesus has come, and he has pitched his tent with us here on the earth. The hope is not that good fathers like Noah would fix the sin problem but that God the Father would take care of the sin problem. The hope is not that all the sons would be faithful (’cause many are like Ham) but that Jesus is a Faithful Son who covers the sins of those of us who are the descendants of Noah, so that we might be blessed and not cursed, and likewise to our children. So the only hope in Genesis, as always, is Jesus. Every page of the Bible, friends, the hope is Jesus.

Some of you today need to become a Christian. You need to realize you’re a sinner, that you’re a disobedient son or daughter to your Heavenly Father. You need to repent of your sin and have Jesus’ death and resurrection cover your sin, take away your disgrace and your shame. Some of you are Christians and, like Noah, you’ve done some terrible things that you’re embarrassed and ashamed of. Today you can give those things to the Lord Jesus. He will cover your sin as a Faithful Son, and he will reconcile you to your Father, who you have dishonored no less than Ham dishonored his daddy. We can all be forgiven today, can be reconciled to the Father through the Son. We can be the children of God. Even if we don’t have a dad, God is a Father to the fatherless, and our hope is in him.

So, I’m gonna hand you over to God now. When you’re ready, we’ll partake of communion, which is the sign of the new covenant, Jesus’ body and blood shed for our sin. We’ll give our tithes and offerings, we’ll sing and celebrate. We’ll realize even if we’re worse than Ham, our dad is better than Noah, and the Son of God is more faithful than Shem and Japheth, and we have every reason to come today for forgiveness and hope and life. Amen.

Jesus, we love you. We thank you so much that our hope is not in our fathers but in our Heavenly Father, and our sin is not covered by the sons of man but by the Son of God. God, we all have been faithless and rebellious like Ham. I pray you would cover our sin as Shem and Japheth did. I pray, God, that we would forgive our dads, those of us who don’t have a dad or have been abused or molested or abandoned or discouraged or beaten down by our dads. I pray that we would forgive them so that we would not grow up to be just like them, as that seed of bitterness will grow and cause us to imitate their folly. God, for those who are dads, I pray for wisdom and grace upon us all. God, for those who are not yet dads but will be, I pray that their children will be blessed and not cursed. I pray, Lord God, that someday their dad would not point a finger at them, saying that his grandsons have been cursed and his granddaughters have been cursed because of the kind of father or mother that they have been.

God, I pray for the children in this church, that they would be like Shem and they would be like Japheth, that they would not be like Ham, and that, Lord God, their children would be blessed as well. God, we pray for our present, we pray for our future, pray for our church, and we pray for our city. We pray that you would rise up out of this room matriarchs and patriarchs. That maybe folly that has come before would stop today. We thank you for the matriarchs and patriarchs who have gone before us. Many of us were born into homes that were exceedingly better than the generation before us because our parents were obedient to your law. We thank you for the grace. In Jesus’ good name. Amen.