1. "The fact that this quote is no longer so well known simply speaks to the effectiveness of forces opposing the family that have been increasing in their temporary successes of eclipsing a fundamental social reality of God's creation."

2. "As God made us, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, are our most basic social reality. These relationships predate nations and economic systems and political philosophies. The family is the microcosm of the larger world, the preview of the larger society."

3. "The relationships that you grow up with are the very ways that we're often shaped in the way that God made us. And that's the way he's instructed his people."

4. "Our sins are not merely discreet transgressions of this law or that law, but rather they are reflection of our understanding of who God is in our lives."

5. "The flood may have cleansed sinners from the world, but it didn't cleanse sin from the human heart. Verse 21 is the only critical sentence of Noah and of anything he did in almost a millennium of living on this planet."

6. "One of sin's deceptivenesses is always lies to us and tells us that it'll just hurt us if we do something that's wrong, we'll absorb the effect. And yet that's never fully true, is it? The effects always echo on to those around us."

7. "Sometimes it is wise to confront someone. Sometimes it is wise even to bring others into it. That's not what this passage is about. There are other passages that are about that. But sometimes it is wiser with some situations and in some sins, to simply let the matter die with you and commit it to prayer."

8. "We work hard to know the truth and still think the best of others. If we're not going to do that, then we're just wasting our time here talking about being a church full of sinners that are redeemed. The moment we start thinking we're a church full of perfect people, we've lost the gospel, friends. We are all sinners, all in need of redemption."

9. "So, friends, when we're caring even for those who don't have the power to care for themselves or to accuse us of doing wrong, we should know that God sees and that God cares about every person made in his image."

10. "Noah had been the one they had such great expectations of back in that ancient world. You look there in chapter 5, verse 29. This is the one who shall bring us relief. They thought they were partly right. Noah was righteous and effective. He built the ark, led his family through the flood, and was now, with his last years, re-establishing civilization. And yet, after all that, we see this example of sin in Noah's life here in chapter nine."

Observation Questions

1. In Genesis 9:20-21, what specific actions does Noah take, and what is the result of these actions?

2. According to Genesis 9:22-23, how do Noah's three sons respond differently to their father's condition? What specific details does the text provide about their actions?

3. In Exodus 20:1-17, where is the command about honoring parents placed within the Ten Commandments, and what promise accompanies this command?

4. Looking at Genesis 9:25-27, what are the three distinct prophecies Noah makes about his sons and their descendants?

5. In Matthew 6:9-10 and Mark 14:36, how does Jesus demonstrate proper honor toward His Father?

6. From Genesis 9:28-29, what final details does Moses provide about Noah's life, and how do these details connect to the pattern established in Genesis 5?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why might God place the command to honor parents as a bridge between the commands about worship and those about treating others?

2. How does Ham's response to his father's sin foreshadow the later characterization of the Canaanites in the Old Testament?

3. What is the significance of the text mentioning that Shem and Japheth walked backward and did not see their father's nakedness?

4. How does Noah's failure after the flood demonstrate important truths about human nature and our need for redemption?

5. Why does Moses include the detail that this was the only recorded criticism of Noah in nearly a millennium of life?

Application Questions

1. When was the last time you had to choose between exposing someone's sin or covering it in love? How did you handle that situation?

2. What specific challenges do you face in honoring your parents during this season of life? How might you better demonstrate honor to them this week?

3. How do you currently handle sensitive information about others' failures or struggles? What principles from this passage could help guide your response?

4. If you are caring for aging parents, how can you maintain an attitude of honor even when they may not remember or recognize your efforts?

5. What boundaries do you need to establish in your life to protect yourself from vulnerability to sin, especially after times of spiritual victory?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Proverbs 17:9 and 19:11 - These verses provide wisdom about how to handle others' offenses and demonstrate discretion, reflecting the example of Shem and Japheth.

2. Ephesians 6:1-3 - This passage expands on the fifth commandment and its application in the new covenant, showing its enduring significance.

3. Luke 2:41-52 - Jesus' interaction with his earthly parents demonstrates perfect submission while maintaining his primary allegiance to his heavenly Father.

4. 1 Peter 4:8-11 - These verses teach about loving others despite their faults and using our gifts to serve one another, principles demonstrated in Noah's family story.

Sermon Main Topics

The Foundational Role of Family in God’s Creation

The Centrality of the Family in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:1-17)

Three Questions About Noah’s Story (Genesis 9:18-29)

The Ultimate Hope in Jesus Christ

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Detailed Sermon Outline

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The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.

I wonder if you've heard that line before.

My guess is, if you're over 30 or 40, you have heard that line before. But if you're under that, you may not have. It's the refrain of a forced stanza poem in praise of motherhood, published by the American poet William Ross Wallace. It was published the year the Civil War ended, 1865. The poem was popular.

The refrain moved into an even higher level of well-knownness, frequently alluded to and quoted as a self-evident truth, a kind of proverb. The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world. Certainly when I was in public schools, it was often appearing in children's biographies of great men extolling the importance of the role of the family and the home, and especially of motherhood and women in shaping the world that in those days seemed to be run by men.

The fact that this quote is no longer so well known simply speaks to the effectiveness of forces opposing the family that have been increasing in their temporary successes of eclipsing a fundamental social reality of God's creation.

As God made us, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters are our most basic social reality. These relationships predate nations and economic systems and political philosophies. The family is the microcosm of the larger world. The preview of the larger society. The headwaters of the mightiest rivers of whole peoples can be found in the homes filled with infants and children today.

America has sunk into an unintended experiment to demonstrate this in a drastic way by having a birth rate that has plummeted so much in recent decades that more and more empty nurseries today foreshadow the fundamental challenges ahead for us as a nation.

The family.

When I'm getting to know somebody, I ask about their family. If you and I have ever had a conversation longer than a minute or two at the door or somewhere else, I have probably asked you where you're from, maybe what your mom or dad did, things about them and maybe even their parents. Because I assume in getting to know your family, I'm getting to know you, maybe in ways even more than you might at first think. The relationships that you grow up with are the very ways that we're often shaped. In the way that God made us, and that's the way He's instructed His people.

He has given us commandments about how we are to relate to each other. We often read these Ten Commandments in our services and I think if you notice there is a central role given the family even in these commandments. Let's take our Bibles and look over at Exodus chapter 20 for just a moment right now. I want you to see this.

Understanding this is part of the way our passage today stops being a little oddity that Mark must have accidentally cautioned, cordoned off by itself to preach to us, and it starts becoming in your mind, oh, that's why that's the first human interaction given after the flood. I think you'll begin to understand. So let's look at these Ten Commandments. Let's notice them. Exodus 20:2, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in the heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love Me and keep My commandments. Number three, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain. Number four, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant, or your livestock or the sojourner who's within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. The fifth one, Honor your father and your mother.

That your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God has given you. Six, you shall not murder. Seven, you shall not commit adultery. Eight, you shall not steal. Nine, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

10, you shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that is your neighbor's. If you keep reading the text, you find that these 10 commandments were given to Moses and for them the people of Israel on two tablets of stone. And people have often noted the coherence of the first four of those commandments being about God and our worship of God. And the last five of them being about our interactions with each other.

And that fifth one, honor your father and mother, is kind of in that second set, but then it's the first one in that second set. It's almost like maybe that's sort of part of the first set. Because honoring your father and mother is taken to be so near to what it means to worship the Lord only as your God. That authority that God has entrusted normally to the parents in the lives of the children, especially in their minority, is what God has done to begin to introduce the idea of loving care.

In human experience. Now, no parents are perfect. None of us were parented perfectly, and none of us who have children have parented perfectly. But still, there is that role that we have. Now, once we begin to see that, you see that idea, then you can begin to also understand, really throughout the Old Testament, you see in the people of God, as they displace other nations, that the complaints the prophets always make about the other nations are usually two.

That they're idolatrous, that's the first four commandments, and they're immoral, that's the second tablet. And normally those things are related. Sometimes even the worship, the idolatrous worship, is itself immoral. Those two things are related. And the place where they cross is in this honoring your father and mother.

That's the root of the place where the authority of God normally begins to do its work, its refining, restraining, teaching work in the life of the growing person. What you begin to see through this is that all of our other sins are essentially reflections on our attitude about God Himself. That our sins are not merely discrete transgressions of this law or that law, but rather they are a reflection of our understanding of who God is in our lives. So let me give you a simple illustration. I go down to the corner market on Fourth and East Capitol.

And Connie has told me, she needs a can of green beans. And I go down there and I buy some pasta. And I didn't not hear Connie, you know, I heard her tell me she wanted the green beans. And yeah, I say that I love her, say I really appreciate the dinner she's making, and I buy the pasta, and I bring back the pasta. You can say, well then, Mark, you've simply, you've done something wrong there in that simple purchase of something that she didn't ask for.

But I would say there's something more going on. If I knew what she wanted and I didn't have any moral objection to getting the green beans, then why didn't I get those? Those seem to speak to something to the relationship itself. It's far more than just getting the wrong item. Something else is going on there.

So friends, in the Old Testament, when we're seeing sins go on, yes, there are individual transgressions, But if we want to understand them and their spiritual significance at the best, we'll understand that our specific sins reflect something about our relationship with God himself. That when we know something is God's desire and we don't do it, our sin is not merely that particular sin, but rather it's a reflection of a larger disjunction, a larger break, a larger rupture. Between our relationship with God and with His world around. He told us to live in a certain way and yet we have chosen to do something else. Given that, is it any surprise then that in the first account of human interaction after the flood, we find a painful illustration of the centrality of of honoring parents as a part of honoring God, and as a predictor of what will happen downstream in the future.

The very people that Moses is preparing the Israelites to displace in Canaan, idolatrous people, immoral people, are depicted in this premonition, this warning story of their ancestors' behavior in his own family.

So this one, I grant you, strange incident ends up standing at the headwaters of the history that's about to unfold and in which the Israelites themselves are caught up and in which we too may be in ways more than you've thought of before. Solomon the wise would later say so much better than he could live. Unless the Lord builds the house, they that labor labor in vain.

Three questions for this first family story from the New World. Number one, what did Noah do? Number two, how did his sons respond? And number three, what happened to Noah? Number one, what did Noah do?

Number two, how did his sons respond? And number three, what happened to Noah?

And as we think about these three questions, we'll be thinking about what it all means for us today. We find this final part of the story of Noah that we've been following since we started it back in chapter 6, verse 9 here in Genesis, chapter 9, verse 18. Let's turn there now. Genesis, chapter 9, verse 18. Verse 18.

You'll find it on page 7 in the Bibles provided if you're looking at one of those pew Bibles.

Listen as I read.

Genesis chapter 9 beginning of verse 18.

The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed.

Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine, and became drunk, and lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father's nakedness.

When Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, 'Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.' He also said, 'Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant.' After the flood, Noah lived 350 years. All the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years, and he died.

To try to help us conceive of how this story functions, I want to call to your mind those incredibly elaborate setups of dominoes that I trust we've all watched one time or another. I mean involving thousands of dominoes in intricately set up that then fall in some extraordinary rhythm and patterns and with a kind of precision that when it works right is just amazing and so attention absorbing. I take it by the smiles on your faces you have all spent a little too much time watching those videos at one point or another in a busy day. Well, I think this story functions a little bit like that. When I first looked at this story, it appeared to me, as I think it must appear to some commentators that I've read, a bit of a random story, a bit strange, offbeat, what's it doing there?

But the more I stared at it, the more I saw, oh, this is springing into clear view very central matters. It perfectly sets off the conflict that there is. Between the godly and the unrighteous, between those who will know God's blessing and those who will know God's curse. And it revolves around this central command to honor your father and mother, and whether or not that's obeyed. And in fact, the descendants of the ones who do not honor their father and mother themselves become both openly idolatrous and immoral.

And yet the others are those who are blessed by God because of their relationship with God. So we could begin to trace from this point throughout the Scriptures the cursings that happen, the failures, the defeat of the enemies of God. And on the other hand, the blessings of God on those who in fact honor the Lord and honor the parents that he leaves as his vice regents temporarily in our lives. I think this is shown supremely in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, and especially in those places where Jesus is recorded as speaking to His heavenly Father. With that command of honor your father and your mother ringing through your mind, just recall some of Jesus' prayers that He prayed.

If we go to Matthew chapter 6, Matthew chapter 6, this of course is in the Sermon on the Mount. It's well known. It's a prayer we frequently pray or pray parts of it. We're instructed by it as Jesus meant His followers to be.

And you look there in verses 9 and 10 of Matthew chapter 6, pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed, that means revered, honored, Be youe name, you, Kingdom come, you, will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That prayer to conform our will to God's will is the kind of main field of the recorded words of the Son to the Father during the incarnation. In fact, if you go on to a second prayer tonight, go over to Mark chapter 14.

Mark 14:36, when Jesus is in the last night of His ministry before He's crucified, you see this famous prayer prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. Mark 14:36, and He said, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from Me. Yet not what I will, but what yout will. Do you see how He was honoring His Father and His Father's will in that most crucial and trying hour?

And then the third and last prayer that I would bring to your attention is John 17. John 17, that Jesus had prayed just a little bit before that prayer, that same evening. I won't read the whole chapter. Let me just point out a few of the verses. Listen for this theme as we see this epitome of the relationship of the human to God, of the incarnate Son of God to His heavenly Father.

John 17. Look at verse 4. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. Down in verse 6, I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.

We're down to verse 11, I'm no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you, Holy Father, Keep them in youn name, which youh have given Me, that they may be one, even as We are one. Down to verse 17, Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. And then finally, verse 21, that they may all be one, just as yous, the Father, are in Me, and and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent Me. You see how the conformity of the Son's will to the Father was fundamental to the ministry of Jesus Christ.

And it becomes typical of what we as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are to know and be and experience and exemplify in our own lives so that the command that was first given in the Ten Commandments to all of us in our families we can see is an echo of a much deeper reality. So again, listen to those three simple questions that I gave you at the beginning. What did Noah do?

How did Noah's sons respond and what happened to Noah? I think these three questions will lead us through this text and help us to notice what's important for us too today. Okay, first, what did Noah do? Let's look at the first few verses, verses 18 to 21 again.

Noah, here, and this is Genesis chapter 9 verse 18, the sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah. And from these people, from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed. Noah began to be a man of the soil and he planted a vineyard.

He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. All right, in verses 18 and 19 we see that Noah repopulated the world. The whole world was part of one family. Still is, ultimately. We know that Paul says this in Acts 17 verse 26, God made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth.

Originally, of course, that was true of Adam. But once the flood happened, that became true also of Noah. And then in verse 20 we see that Noah became a Mediterranean farmer and vintner. He had been in construction most of his life. Now he plants a vineyard.

And then we come to the point of this particular passage there in verse 21, Noah became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent.

Friends, the flood may have cleansed sinners from the world, but it didn't cleanse sin from the human heart. Verse 21 is the only critical sentence of Noah and of anything he did in almost a millennium of living on this planet. Now that doesn't mean that it's the only sin Noah ever committed, but this is the only one that is drawn to our attention. I'm not saying that Noah was otherwise without sin, but it is interesting. The presentation of Noah throughout chapters 6 and 7 and 8 and nine is otherwise positive.

And I think that makes this line both less important and more. Less in that Noah is still considered a paragon of virtue and righteousness in the way he lived, regardless of this one incident. But more and that for such a man in such a position, head of his family, basically prophet, priest, and king at this point of the entire world, for such a man who had long centuries of knowing God's faithfulness, for such a man to sin so should cause even the oldest and longest traveled saints among us to check ourselves. If blameless Noah can be overcome and undone by a grape, we shouldn't think too highly of ourselves. We shouldn't think we're beyond effective temptation.

Noah was to take dominion over the ground, but instead the cursed ground was dominating him through its produce, turning man into a beast in the way he lived. The fruit of the vine may be a blessing, but even God's blessings can be misused and to misuse them is to sin.

And it was disgracing to Noah and caused him to be in a shameful state. And let me just unsatisfy you right now, we don't know exactly what Noah's uncoveredness entailed. It's interesting, as I reflected on it, Moses shows a Shem and Japheth-like discretion in the way he recounts this story. This modesty even in recounting these embarrassing follies of Noah. Why would Noah have done this?

We can't be sure. Why have you committed the last sin that's on your conscience right now? Sin never makes sense. We do know that Noah had Just been through the most amazing human trial and survival in the construction of the ark for centuries. It's filling the flood, wiping out life on the planet, and then resettling afterwards.

And sometimes, you know how after a big task you feel to kind of let down, feel to kind of sigh, and you can let your guard down? Is that your experience the way it's mine?

Who among us would have experienced that more than Noah? It may be those times after some big victory is won that our spiritual guard is down and that we become more susceptible than normal to sin. Be careful, friend, be careful. Confess your temptations honestly to your fellow Christians, your fellow church members. Enlist their prayers and their sympathy and their encouragement.

We protect others from sin by our own holiness.

Proverbs 20 verse 1 gives us important counsel here. Proverbs 20 verse 1. This is the kind of verse that would have thundered from this pulpit in the first 50 years this pulpit was here. It's probably occurred a little less commonly in our pulpit since then. Proverbs 20:1, Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise.

I pray that God will help you and me not to follow Noah's example here. Much more we could say, but we should move on. Because Noah didn't protect others here because he wasn't holy. So how did his sons respond? That's the second question.

How did Noah's sons respond? What did Noah's sons do? Well, our passage gives us two contrasting answers. And we begin with Ham's response. Look there in verse 22.

And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. And then look at what resulted down in verse 24. When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, 'Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.' He also said, 'Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Shem. And let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant.' so what exactly did Ham do?

And what was the result?

What Ham did was in some way to witness his father's sin and its resulting compromise and even humiliating position it left Noah in. Some scholars suggest that the words used here in verse 22 so closely resemble language in Leviticus chapter 18 you can make a note to read that later this afternoon if you want, so closely resemble language in Leviticus chapter 18 that we should assume that some kind of sexual assault is indicated here. And this could have been the case. We're not told more explicitly. The fact though that Moses records here, not that Ham uncovered Moses' nakedness, which would have been like the construction of Leviticus 18, but rather that Ham saw the nakedness that Noah himself had uncovered.

I think may make that a little less likely than what some scholars and even study Bibles assume is the case. Again, Moses here is not specific in recounting exactly what happened, but what is clear is that Noah's embarrassment, which should have been covered up by Ham as a way of honoring His father, was instead somehow treated wrongly, casually, sinfully by him in his seeing, maybe staring, and aggravating it all still further in his going and telling his two brothers about it outside, not in low and soft concern, what can we do? But in what feels more like gossiping and that about his own father's shame.

The opposite of the call to honor your father and mother. You see how this fifth commandment then is standing for all the others. You see that in disobeying this command to honor father and mother, you begin to verge to disobey God Himself, to serve others, and also toward things that are not in and of themselves moral and good in the way you treat others.

Ham's disobeying this fundamental human obligation foreshadowed all of the disorder and sin that was to reign in his own family descendants, the Canaanites, who would be marked by idolatry and immorality. And you can read through the rest of the first few books of the Bible and see that talked about. Moses later quotes the Lord on Leviticus 18, in Leviticus 18, evaluating the practices of the Canaanites as all of these abominations so that the land became unclean, and warned the Israelites not to follow in their example, lest the land vomit you out when you make it unclean, as it vomited out the Canaanites before you. So by recounting this sin of Ham here, Moses was helping the Israelites to understand why they should go and dispossess the Canaanites by recounting Noah's curse Moses was encouraging them with the knowledge that they would triumph over these Canaanites in the Promised Land because it had been prophesied, foretold by the Lord through Noah in this incident. So Noah's cursing here in verse 25 is what usually brings readers to these verses.

Really, these words are a kind of prophesying by Noah over his sons. It's not so much effective words that cause reality to happen as it is a statement of what God will do in the future, what will unfold in history. Very much like what you see Jacob doing with each of his sons later in Genesis chapter 49 as he turns and really prophesies over each one. And in this dire prophecy about Ham's son Canaan, Noah sees only servitude and abject submission. To his more worthy brothers and their descendants in the future.

Do notice that this was not a slavery based in a racial prejudice, but rather to a particular nation whose wickedness toward God and man was foreshadowed in its ancestors dishonoring his own father this day. So this dishonoring of his father was the key sin The typical sin that then is taken to be what sadly marked those people. And it fulfills the descriptions you find of them in the rest of these first books of the Bible. This curse was to be fulfilled when the Israelites invaded and defeated the Canaanites in the Promised Land, enslaving many of them. Again, you'll notice that this curse does not apply to Ham's other sons, Genesis 10:6.

Will tell us. And it's interesting, the Ham's other sons all end up in Africa: Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya. But it's actually Ham's only non-African descendants. They were prophesied to be slaves. The way this passage was used in the past as a justification for enslaving Africans merely because of their race, is both shameful in the extreme and completely unrelated to what these words were actually about and contrary to what Scripture teaches.

We're all of one family made in the image of God. I hope you see in Ham's actions here a call for us to consider carefully how we speak of someone else's faults. It's not normally our role to increase the shame someone bears for the sins that they have committed. Brothers and sisters, we act in love to help people repent, to help people in resisting sin. But we never take past sins and gossip about them, mocking the sinner, making ourselves out to be as kind of cut above.

Ourselves probably beyond the reach of this or that particular sin. Noah may have been thinking just that when he took that last cup of wine.

And I pray that God will protect those we love from the effects of our sins. You know, one of sin's deceptiveness is that it always lies to us and tells us that it'll just hurt us. If we do something that's wrong, We'll absorb the effect. And yet that's never fully true, is it? The effects always echo on to those around us.

It hurts us, yes. It hurts our fellowship with God, but then sin always tells us that it won't hurt anybody else. And that's just another lie. Friends, sin has a blast area.

It has a way of affecting. Each of us have dents and scratches on our own souls that come in part from the sins of those around us, some of whom we've known for a very long time. And we don't want to multiply the effect of any of those things by gossiping about them. That doesn't help anybody. I guess God could have submerged the world again for this sin as the sins mounted, but instead What does he do here?

He promises a deliverer. He had promised it in Genesis 3:15, and he's going to bless the Lord God of Shem in just a moment. And we turn to that verse. But friends, that's what's going on here. We're beginning to see this dichotomy in the very first human interaction after the flood.

You know, the flood ends. We looked at it last time in Noah offering sacrifices. And this is the first account. Of what goes on. Noah becomes a farmer, he starts a vineyard, he sins.

And look at how his sons respond. Friends, the way that God is setting things up here is showing us very clearly that there is right and there is wrong, and wrong has consequences. My Christian brother or sister, how do you respond specifically to your parents' sins?

It's one thing maybe when you're young, you see your parents are still at home. Another thing is you get to be an adult. Are you ever tempted to mock or gloat over someone else's sin, some family member's sins, maybe even your own parents?

Brothers and sisters, Don't follow Noah's example here and be such a temptation to the hams in your life. Cultivate modesty yourself so that it's easier to respect you. Avoid any kind of immodesty, whether in words or in pictures you post online or like. Your immodesty may be the occasion for you being treated disrespectfully yourself by others. As Noah was here by hand.

God help each one of us never to take pleasure or to gossip about the sins of others. May He give us wisdom in how we use our social media responsibly and not for the shame of others or of ourselves. And may He give us an honoring discretion in our talking.

Ham failed to honor his father in a way we should not. But there's good news here too. Let's look at Shem and Japheth. They show us how to honor our parents even in difficult situations and the resulting blessing that we see. Look again at our passage beginning in verse 23.

Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father's nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, 'Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.' He also said, 'Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem. And let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant.

So as careless and disrespectful as Ham was in the way he looked on his father's shameful, drunken state and then shamelessly repeated it to his brothers, so careful and honoring were Shem and Japheth in the way they took care not to repeat it, not even themselves to see their father's nakedness.

Friends, it makes me reflect on how careful I try to be to avoid temptations. What situations do I refuse to put myself in that I know either would be tempting to me or could even be perceived by others as sinful? How can I listen to counsel of those around me to further guard me from sin? I appreciate and am challenged by the simple wisdom and care these two brothers took to honor their father here. So teens who are here in the congregation, and there are a lot of you hiding amongst us.

I know you're tired because of the retreat you were just on, so many of you. But if you're still with me, and it is an unusually interesting text, I bet more of you are with me than maybe often are because of the text. Let me just encourage you to find godly folks to spend time with. Because you are in the wet concrete stage of life. What I mean is, All of us are affected by each other.

So Pat is around my age. He and I hang out sometimes. We affect each other by that, no doubt. But we are not being affected like we were when we were 13 and 14 and 15. Those are what we can call the wet concrete years, you know, 10, 11, 12.

And what I mean by that is I don't have to know you very well I can just know who you're spending time with and I'll tell you what you're going to be like this time next year. That's what happens. You are affected by the people you choose to spend time with. Don't spend time with your hands. Spend time with your Japheths and your Shems.

Find wise, godly, modest people and try to spend time with them. This is what we should do, and you particularly, young people, should do: find godly friends.

So these brothers were careful not to see their father's nakedness or cause him more shame, but more than that, they also didn't go on to speak of Noah's shameful episode to others. Sometimes it is wise to confront someone. Sometimes it is wise even to bring others into it. That's not what this passage is about. There are other passages that are about that.

But sometimes it is wiser with some situations and in some sins to simply let the matter die with you and commit it to prayer. If there are too many unknowns, you don't know exactly why Noah's in that situation. You weren't there. You didn't witness it. He has no track record of this.

Sometimes it's wisest just to commit it to the Lord. Proverbs 19:11, Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense. Proverbs 19:11. One of the characteristics that I have long appreciated about the elders here that I have the joy of serving with is their discretion in sharing sensitive information. Even with each other.

We act on a need to know or a need to know how to best love basis only. There's no careless sharing of sensitive information that would embarrass or discourage someone if they knew about it. We work hard to know the truth and still think the best of others. Because if we're not going to do that, Then we're just wasting our time here talking about being a church full of sinners that are redeemed. The moment we start thinking we're a church full of perfect people, we've lost the gospel.

Friends, we are all sinners, all in need of redemption, and there is redemption for every repenting sinner who trusts in Christ. That's the good news that we have and that Shem and Japheth in their own way are exemplifying even here. As a result, we see here in verses 26 and 27, Noah praising God and identifying Shem by his worship of this one true God. And he invites Japheth into his tents. That is to share in his blessings.

I love the way God expresses this blessing of Shem through Noah here in verse 26 in terms of blessing. That is praising the Lord, the God of Shem. He knows that if he blesses God, praises God, that Shem is so identified with the true God that he will share those blessings. Because if the Lord is there, Shem's gonna be there. Shem is about following the Lord.

Popular or unpopular, he's about doing what the Lord wants, being with the Lord. He's identified with God. So if Noah can simply praise this one true God, he feels confident. He knows that Shem will be there, devoted to him and his practices. God's promised blessing after the fall of the woman's offspring, bruising the serpent, head was now narrowed and focused through Shem's line.

And if we were to keep following along in Genesis, we would see that this blessing comes down through Abram's line in Genesis 11 and 12, and then down through Isaac in Genesis 21, and then specifically through Jacob in Genesis 25, and on through Judah in Genesis 49. And it would include the ministry of Moses and the exodus out of Egypt, the blessing of God's law and God's tabernacle, ultimately of the incarnation of the Messiah, God's own Son, that we read about in the New Testament. And through the Son, that same promise then of a deliverance, of a blessing, would widen out to all of us here this morning who believe in Christ, all of us who would come to believe in Him. In this way, Shem stands at the headwaters of the blessing that God would one day build the church of Jesus Christ. And include all of us here today who are Christians, and even those of us who are not yet but will be, all of us are standing in that stream that flows from this very blessing that He declares that day on Shem.

So very practically, kids, how do you respond to imperfect parents?

If your parents are members of this church, I can promise you they're imperfect. We have no perfect members. We have looked long and hard. We have failed to find any. Even on the eldership, I can assure you, we have none.

So we only have imperfect members. So if your parents are members of the church, we know it's already been proven. They've already, in fact, admitted that they're imperfect. So how do you, as their child, respond? When you see your mom or your dad, sin or do something wrong, how do you respond to that?

Do you make fun of them?

Do you think how you can help them? Maybe one day you might need your kids to help you.

What respect do you still owe them? How can you show them that respect?

Now, if you do think your parents are sinning, kids, it is not wrong of you to talk to another trusted advice, another trusted adult, rather, to get advice to help you know how you can help your parents. So Ham here, when he talked to his brothers, was not trying to help his father. It seems like he was just spreading embarrassing news.

But if you need help figuring out what to do, talk to me. Talk to any of the pastors here. Talk to any of the people who teach you in your classes here. Talk to any of us to help figure out what would be best for you to do in loving your parents and honoring them as you should. Another application of this kind of care, as I was thinking of this week, was I was talking with this passage about this passage with my sister.

She used to be a member here. She's now down in Nashville, and she is caring for our mother who has serious memory loss. And one of the things my sister, Ree, said was that as she reflected on this passage, she was reminded by this account of how important it is for her to treat mom honorably, even if mom will have no memory of Ree not doing that.

So, friends, when we're caring even for those who don't have the power to care for themselves or to accuse us of doing wrong, we should know that God sees and that God cares about every person made in His image. And so we remember that in hospitals and rest homes and our own homes, what a privilege it is to labor and care for our parents, even as adult children of older parents.

A word to those of you here who are not Christians: I want you to see that you need the kind of care that Shem and Japheth gave to their father here when they covered up his sin. It's another image that's used in the Bible for what we need to have happen with our sins. We need them to be covered over. We need Christ's robe of righteousness to cover over our filthy rags of immorality. In exchange for our rags, He offers us His robes.

Friends, He died on the cross, as we've already sung about today, to pay the penalty that we have deserved for our sins. And yet he was raised in triumph over that, showing he had fully exhausted the punishment due, and he calls us now to turn from our sins and to trust in him. And that's a call he gives to you as well. Turn and trust in him, even today.

The two lines of consequences continue to fall. Lines of dominoes, if you will. They've been falling from the very day we saw these brothers distinguished. They would go on through the history of Israel until the Canaanites fell, and the children of Israel went on, those who were of Israel, true Israel, knowing God's final blessing. And then on into the New Testament.

And it goes on even down to today in the decisions we make whether or not to follow Christ, whether or not we will be Christians. Those two lines of dominoes are still going forward 170 years ago today.

You've missed those little historical notes, haven't you, in the sermons? You know that I would have something like that, a little signature in here. Here's one. 170 years ago today, C.H. Spurgeon became the pastor of the New Park Street Chapel, where he was to minister for the rest of his life over 30 years in London.

170th anniversary today of his becoming pastor of that church. Spurgeon had one of the most amazing evangelistic hearts of anyone I've ever read of. He was aware of those dominoes always falling, and he wanted as many of those dominoes as could be to be in the redemption side, to be of those who are delivered. And he wrote one whole little book that I read on the plane Wednesday. That I think I may have read 30 or 40 years ago, but by the time I'm this old, I forget things I've read.

But it's called Around the Wicket Gate, Around the Wicket Gate, like 70 pages long, not long at all. Spurgeon's a delight to read. And it's to those people who don't go through yet and find salvation, but they're not far off like most people are. They're the ones who are gathered up nearby, around the Wicket Gate. And he is writing this book to plead with them to go on through.

Come on in. I would encourage you to get a copy of that, Around the Wicked Gate by C. H. Spurgeon. But you answer, I am too vile. The viler you are, the more you will honor him by believing that he is able to protect even you. But I am so great, a sinner.

Then the more honor shall be given to him if you have faith to confide in him, great sinner though you are. If you have a little sickness and you tell your physician, Sir, I'm quite confident in your skill to heal. There's no compliment in your declaration. Anybody can cure a finger ache or a trifling sickness. But if you are sore sick with a complication of diseases which grievously torment you and you say, Sir, I seek no better physician, I will ask no other advice but yours.

What an honor you have conferred on Him that you can trust your life in His hands while it is in extreme and immediate danger. Do the like with Christ. Put your soul into His care. Do it deliberately and without a doubt. Dare to quit all other hopes.

Venture all on Jesus. Thank God for the way Shem and Japheth honor their father as a part of their honoring God. It's a part of doing him the honor that he was due. We'll conclude with our third question. What finally happened to Noah?

Remember Noah, except for this one sin, is called righteous. He's called godly. Always walking in the ways of God. He'd been going for hundreds of years. So what finally happens to people like Noah who are famous and important, who have all the power a Washingtonian could ever want?

They die.

We read the last two verses of chapter 9, verses 28 and 29. After the flood, Noah lived 350 years. All the days of Noah were 950 years, and he died. Friends, take your Bible and turn back just a page to chapter 5.

I know it's been a couple of months now since we looked at this, but do you remember in chapter 5? It's where we began this series. Do you see what every paragraph ends with?

It's with these words, and he died.

Noah had been the one they had such great expectations of back in that ancient world. You look there in chapter 5 verse 29, this is the one who shall bring us relief, they thought. They were partly right. Noah was righteous and effective. He built the ark, led his family through the flood, and was now, with his last years reestablishing civilization.

And yet, and yet, after all that we see this example of sin in Noah's life here in chapter 9 and even after this most heroic of lives with these final words, it is as if Noah steps back into this long line that had begun with grandfather Adam in chapter 5. And he crosses his hands and closes his eyes in death. Another of the heroes who's not enough. It would not be Noah who would finally bring us the relief that we needed. That rest we must needs get only from the one who was to come.

The incarnate Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who would never be ensnared by drunkenness or dishonoring His heavenly Father or even His earthly parents. He would live a life of righteousness completely, so much so that He would never need to die, yet He would. He would stretch out His arms on the cross to be crucified in the place of all those who would ever turn and trust in Him. That's why we sing, My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.

Let's pray.

Lord God, we pray that other false hopes that we have you would empty out and evacuate even now. Help each one hear, each one within the sound of my voice, to put their hope fully in the Lord Jesus Christ and His righteousness alone. We pray in His name. Amen.