Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Genesis 9:20-50

Sermon text from today is found in Genesis chapter 9. We return to the story of Noah and these are the closing accounts of the narrative of Noah and the flood and the rainbow. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. We’ll begin reading at verse 20 of Genesis chapter 9, reading through to the end of the chapter.

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

So Noah broke from his wine and knew what his younger son had done to him. And then he said, “Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants he shall be to his brethren.” And he said, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and may Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and may he dwell in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be his servant.” And Noah lived after the flood 350 years. So all the days of Noah were 950 years and he died.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for this day, this day of wonderful gospel to our souls, united together in the body of Christ, receiving your blessings, Father, the assurance of our forgiveness. And we thank you that you bring your word to us now in a way that will transform us. Give us hope and encouragement and warn us as well. We pray now you would bless this word, Lord God. May we understand it. May your Holy Spirit—thank you for the Holy Spirit that dwells in us, Father, individually and corporately. And may your Holy Spirit open this text to understanding and transform us in Jesus’ name we pray.

Amen. Please be seated.

So we’re going to address this text with four sections. The first section will talk about Noah’s rest, and by implication, we’ll talk a little bit again about Noah’s work. So he’s resting from work. So we’ll talk about Noah’s rest.

This is make your own outline. Again, I’m doing this intentionally. I could have easily typed this up. I didn’t do it, so you young people particularly, this is an opportunity for you to learn how to listen to a talk and if there’s major points to be able to kind of write them down to remind yourself.

So I’m speaking to a particular young person—some young people, they know who they are. So you have a piece of paper, you have something to write with, hopefully. If not, that’s your assignment for next week. But write down these elements of what I’ll be saying today. One: Noah’s rest. Noah’s rest, by implication, is work. Two: Ham’s sin. Yes, we’re going to get to that. Ham’s sin. And by implication of that or helping us to understand it, it’ll talk about the brothers’ good. He’s contrasted with his two brothers.

So Noah’s rest—implication, work. Ham’s sin—understood by the actions of his brothers. And then third: Noah’s verdict. Noah’s pronouncement of sentence. Noah declares something in response to what has occurred with Ham and his brothers. So Noah’s sentence, and that’s significant. We’ll compare and contrast it to what God did in the garden of Eden. Okay, so Noah’s sentence. And then finally we’ll talk about the bow again.

This is the context undergirding everything in this text is what has come just before it, which is the bow, the war bow of God hung in the sky. So finally we’ll talk about the bow. And may I say, by the way, that you know it is an incredible opportunity to witness every time you see a rainbow. And we see them a lot here in this particular part of the country. So to talk about this Noah narrative in a way that will open up evangelistic opportunities.

Really, the bow is the one thing you want to really kind of keep in your mind as a possible way to talk to people. I did see the movie. I don’t want to do any spoilers or anything, so I can’t really ruin it for you. I did enjoy the movie. I kind of felt like a better man afterwards, and that may be because of the “Boo” effect. When I see Russell Crowe in a role such as Gladiator or whatever, I always think of “Boo” for some reason.

And Noah’s resoluteness to follow God kind of reminded me a lot again of that. And so I want to imitate his resolve and strength of character.

You know, and remember—oh, one thing I wanted to mention about it. So all these biblical movies—Ridley Scott’s going to make Exodus—began with really The Passion, right, by Gibson. And The Passion of course is not a gospel narrative. It’s based upon—I can’t remember the particular vision now—but a vision that a particular Catholic woman had of what occurred. And so the movie is that. Now it shows the gospel story in it, and so it’s delightful, right? Good. But that’s what you’re watching.

And when you watch Aronofsky’s vision of Noah, you’re watching somebody else’s take. Now Aronofsky, who is the director, co-writer, co-producer—so Noah has been his mentor since he was in junior high. He in junior high he was asked to write a poem on peace. He wrote it about Noah’s ark. This eventually actually won an award from the United Nations. So anyway, so he’s thought about Noah a long time and he’s read a lot of Jewish—his background is Jewish, even though he’s secular. He’s read a lot of Jewish midrashes. Those are commentaries on what happened in Noah. And I haven’t seen anybody flesh that out, but it could be part of what you’re seeing in the Noah narrative if you happen to see the movie is kind of that sort of thing—just out of Aronofsky’s skull.

In any event, I wanted to retract my lawsuit for defamation of character. There is some depiction of Noah on the ark that I don’t agree with, of course, and that probably would be seen in a bad light, but the story does not generally show him with tremendous character flaws.

So, having said that, so one of the purposes of addressing this text last week and this week is to help you think about it a little bit as you get—if you’re going to see the movie—and then secondly to maybe think about discussing the movie with other people or at least the Noah narrative in the scriptures—an opportunity for witness. And that’s our last point.

So what are the four points again? You got them written down? Noah’s rest, right? Ham’s sin. Noah’s verdict. And then the context for all of this is the bow, the rainbow—the warrior bow. Okay. And that’s, you know, a great way to think of evangelistic tasks in the context of this.

So first we’re going to talk about Noah’s rest and what is he resting from. So you know, the ark has come to rest. And actually what it actually literally says—earlier in the text, the ark comes to rest and the, you know, God opens the door. He blesses the people. He gives them the covenant sign of the rainbow. He gives them a new commission in chapter 8, and it’s a new creation: “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth.”

It’s like it’s Genesis all over again. It’s a new creation. And this prepares us, of course, ultimately for understanding the coming of Jesus, the greater Noah—of which Noah and the ark and all that stuff is a type, not antitype—as seeing the coming of Jesus as new creation. You know, you have all these things built up in the Old Testament to prepare us for the coming of Christ. That’s their purpose.

And so we see new creation in Jesus. But in any event, in the context of this, we see Noah in the first couple of verses of today’s text coming to rest. Noah began to be a farmer. He planted a vineyard. Then he drank of the wine, was drunk, and became uncovered in his tent.

So you know, generally, let’s forget the details for now, but generally what’s going on here is talking about Noah’s work, and then at the end of his work, he has some wine and whatever that was—and I don’t think it’s drunkenness—but he enters into some degree of rest and relaxation, and he takes a nap, we could say. This is Noah’s rest.

And as I said last week, you cannot—if you don’t see the bookends of the Noah narrative as being the proclamation or prophecy that he would bring his people comfort, and Noah’s name meaning comfort, and then entering into comfort or rest in the narrative before us—you kind of miss the whole point of the thing.

So this is Noah’s rest, and from what work? What we said last week—based upon the New Testament interpretation of these texts—that Noah had several specific tasks. And it’s good to remind ourselves of that.

In Second Peter 2, we read that God didn’t spare the ancient world but saved Noah, one of eight people. Aronofsky has a way to get eight souls on the ark, by the way, which affirms life in the womb. Let me just say that much. Sorry for the spoiler. He started it already, but I appreciated that.

In any event, so in eight people, eight souls were saved. And it says that Noah was a preacher of righteousness.

Okay. So one of Noah’s tasks that he’s now coming to rest after the judgment and salvation comes to him and his household—one of the tasks he has is to proclaim righteousness. This is a task that we have to preach righteousness. And he does that through what his work is. But he also, I think, according to this text, spoke to people. The flood’s coming. In 40 days, Nineveh will be destroyed. Repent. They didn’t repent.

Our job—that we should enter—are you resting today from preaching righteousness this week to yourself, to your family, to other people, right? To encourage people in terms of the righteousness of God and the salvation provided in Christ. That’s what rest. Noah comes to rest from one of his tasks. And the Bible tells us one of the specific things that he did was to preach righteousness.

Now, he also—and as I said last week, those were unusual times—but our times also are filled with people who increasingly [show] corruption. The world is broken more and more, right? And so we live in not completely dissimilar times. And so we have a need to preach righteousness.

Secondly, what Noah did was he prepared an ark for the saving of his household. This is found in Hebrews 11. “By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.”

So the motivation for this is godly fear. Do we have that? Do we know the God we serve? Do we know that judgment is what’s happening? Prepared an ark for the saving of his household by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. He inherits the world. The meek inherit the world. And so are we meek? And as part of that meekness, do we proclaim righteousness to people? And then do we prepare an ark for our family?

Well, how do you do that, Pastor Tuuri? Well, the church has always seen the ark as a metaphor for the church. The ark is essentially Jesus Christ who brings salvation to us. The ark of the covenant—same word, box—this is a picture of where the blood of Christ is applied, where salvation comes.

And so the body of Christ is what we are to be in order to survive the just judgment of God upon wickedness in the world. And so, as we see the difficult times that we live in, and who knows? Maybe tomorrow the Holy Spirit blows and you know, great revival. I don’t know. But for most of my lifetime, it’s been a steady, fairly rapid slide downhill in terms of the public culture and their denial of God or attempted denial of God, and as a result doing things that are sinful and wicked.

So what are we supposed to do about that? Well, we proclaim righteousness. But secondly, we prepare an ark for the saving of our household.

What does it mean? Well, the Bible gives us clearly what it does mean, right? We read—but where does it say this? First Peter 3:20.

Okay. He was preparing—let’s see. First Peter 3:20 says, “Which sometime were disobedient when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing, wherein few, that is eight souls, were saved by water. And it goes on to say the like figure, or antitype, whereunto even baptism doth also now save us—not the putting away of the filth of the flesh but the answer of a good conscience toward God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

So we’re supposed to think about this connection between the saving by the ark and the relationship to baptism for us. And I know it’s a little different because he’s being saved by water. But water works all kinds of ways. And what he’s clearly saying is the ark is this metaphor, type that—the ultimate fulfillment is what happens in baptism. And in baptism, you’re joined to Jesus Christ who is the ark, who is salvation, who is the new creation—only in him.

And to be joined to Jesus Christ is to be joined to his body. You know, the reformers really did not have a problem saying that ordinarily there is no salvation outside of the church of Jesus Christ. Why would that bother us? It used to bother me a lot because I had a strange view of the church as some sort of ancillary thing as opposed to the body of Christ. And my point is we can talk about that later if you want to.

But my point is: if you agree that what’s talked about here is baptism in relationship to the preparation of an ark—what we want to do in preparing our family for the judgment that’s coming and is now present in our times is to build the church. That’s the ark. To get them committed to the church first and foremost.

You know, we have discussions about some of the young people, and they end up—they end up leaving RCC. Well, you know, as long as they join themselves to a church, I’m a pretty happy guy still. Well, if it’s a good church, but that’s what we want to shoot for. Don’t leave your kids out in the water where destruction comes. Make sure you use everything in your power, and make sure you—as the body of Christ who witnesses these baptisms and makes vows to these children—make sure you do everything you can to help prepare them for the world by causing them to love the church of Jesus Christ and to be committed to and part of the body of Christ.

So that’s preparing the ark. That’s the second task that Noah did.

The third task, though, is told to us right here in the text. After Noah lands, there is more work to be done. And it says he began to be a farmer and he planted a vineyard.

Well, you know, the several words in the text today need a little bit of fleshing out, and this farmer thing is one of them. Some translations say “began to be a tiller of the land.” Cassuto, who wrote an excellent commentary on the book of Genesis, and his comments are commented on by Gordon Wenham—who I also would recommend to you if you’re doing studies in Genesis—Cassuto said that a better way to translate this is: “Adam began to be a master of the earth.”

The words are a little unusual in their construction. Okay. But the idea is he’s master of the earth. So this is not just “oh you started to take up farming.” Noah—now his job is to be master of the earth, to bring it to its potential, to cultivate it. Yes. To have right relationship to it. That’s been clear in the text that we’re—our lives are inevitably linked to the created order.

Let me talk about this a little bit because I think it’s very important. It’s not quite as important as it used to be, but it is still important.

I mentioned last week that in the account in Genesis 8 of God’s covenant, you have this repeated reference—and I hope I can find it here—there’s a repeated reference throughout chapter 8. Well, actually, first of all, there’s a number of references to the destruction of all living things.

So one of the things you want to avoid as you think about the Noah story and as you go to see the movie is the idea—you know, of what they used to call it “Bambi mother theology.” Tim Keller talks about this in his sermon on this text. So you watched Bambi when you were a kid, and Bambi’s mother gets shot, and so you end up with the message at the end of the story: “Man bad, Bambi good,” right? So nature good, man bad. And that is what you want to avoid like the dickens in terms of evaluating this story.

The story says that the earth was corrupted by all flesh. Now I don’t know how that works in terms of the created order, but we read that God looked upon the earth and indeed it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. This is chapter 6:12: “All flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.” Verse 13 says, “God said to Noah, the end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is filled with violence through them, and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.”

And then in verse 17: “And behold, myself I am bringing floodwaters on the earth to destroy from under heaven all flesh in which is the breath of life.” Now he defines for us what that means. We always think man. It’s not just man. Everything that is on the earth shall die.

Verse 21 of chapter 7: “All flesh died that moved on the earth—birds and cattle and beasts and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth and every man, all in whose nostrils was the breath of life.” So the point is that in the destruction of the old order, it wasn’t God saving all flesh except for man from man. That’s not what’s happening. Man has a critical relationship to the created order. And it could well be that the effect of man on the created order has brought animals into violence, corruption—whatever it is. I don’t know what it was. But what I know is, as we read the text, God wants us to avoid a romantic interpretation of nature.

He wants us to see that all flesh that moved on the earth were killed and a few men were saved and a few beasts were saved. See connection. And then later when God makes his covenant with Noah, he says seven or eight times in chapter 8—when he talks about the rainbow and the sign of the covenant—that his covenant is with the earth. The covenant is with you and all flesh. The covenant is with you and the animals. He says it’s seven, eight different times. Read your Bibles later today. Read Genesis chapter 8. And notice that over and over and over and over—as he does with the destruction of the earth, you know, the created things are all killed off—and so he does with the covenant: the covenant is with us and the creation.

What’s the point, Dennis? Why you belaboring this? We are inevitably tied to the created order. The faith is not gnostic. We don’t think the created order is bad. Somehow it is good, and God is in the process of redeeming not just human souls but the created order. In Romans 8, the creation groans awaiting the revealing of the sons of man. We have a relationship now to the earth, and it is linked here.

And so Noah has become a master of the earth, [a] skipper. Interestingly, in an interview, said that there are two things that man are supposed to do on the earth. And he said there’s two creation accounts. I started to think, “Uh-oh. He’s going to say one’s right and one’s wrong.” He didn’t. He said there are two creation accounts. And in Genesis 1, God tells man to exercise dominion over the earth. And then he says in the late—in the second account—God puts man in a garden to guard and nurture the garden. He gives him stewardship [and] responsibilities.

In Aronofsky’s view—and how well he portrays in the movie, I don’t know—but in his view, he’s right. Those are the two deals. Dominion, mastery over the earth, but that involves caring for the earth as well and having a kindly attitude toward the whole thing, right? And not shooting little birds because you want to test out your pistol. Okay. We’ve got a relationship to the created order, inevitably linked to it.

And in Noah’s work here—that he finds rest from—and it we’re supposed to be thinking about us. We’re going to drink wine in a couple of minutes here like Noah did. And what are we resting from? We’re resting from our labor. And what is our labor? Mastery over the earth, dominion over the earth in a proper relationship to the created order. Okay. That’s what we are.

Now, how are you going to work all that out? I don’t know. But let me give you a resource. The resource is Tim Keller’s book, Every Good Endeavor. And Scott C., bless his heart, has started a book study here Wednesday evening, 7:00. And they’re going to read—they went through the first chapter last Wednesday. I highly commend the study to you.

I listen, and this is a problem. I’ve only listened to the first chapter in the forward, but it was so good. It was so good. If the whole thing’s like that, man, this is the book I’ve been waiting for on vocation for years. So if you want to know how to go about doing your vocation and your relationship to the created order properly—and not becoming an environmentalist in the sense of being a caretaker, and not becoming, you know, somebody that doesn’t give a darn for the created order and just rips it off for whatever we can get out of it, on the other hand—if you want to know the middle of that and what work is all about, that book should help you. Highly commended to you.

So Noah is resting from labor, and the labor he’s resting from is mastery over the earth. And in that mastery, notice he’s not a caretaker. I think that this is the first time vineyards are mentioned. And so Noah, as master of the earth, doesn’t just caretake the wild things that are growing and make little gardens out of them. He extends the cultivation of the garden that God had in Eden. He extends the cultivation of what God has given and improves upon it.

Yes. Man was given to improve upon the created order. God didn’t need us to do that, but he wants us to be in his image. He makes the whole thing. He gives Adam a garden and says, “Go make the rest of the world like that.” And he tells us the same thing, right? And so this implies all kinds of things about our relationship to God, our relationship to the creation, our relationship to other people, our relationship to ourselves.

You need to be a forgiven man to accomplish that kind of dominion. But my point is dominion is once more stated here. Okay. Noah—the rest, the work that he rests from is the work of being master of the earth. And then, as I said last week, not to belabor the point, the text goes on to say that in his rest he drank of the wine was drunk.

The word, as I said before, is not necessarily inebriated, falling down, found drunk. Okay? Doesn’t say that. What it says is he experienced the effects of wine—that the Bible tells us was given to us to make the heart glad. That’s all it means. Got a little sleepy, got relaxed, right? Couple of glasses of wine. Hmm. I don’t know. Maybe he got drunk. It’s possible the word could be interpreted that way. But nothing in the text gives us a negative evaluation of Noah’s action. Nothing. And just the opposite.

This whole narrative has given us over and over and over again the justice of Noah, the perfectness—by “not meaning sinless”—not being sinless—but, you know, complete, mature. This is a godly guy. Okay, that’s what the Bible wants us to know. And in fact, in Ezekiel, when he wants to say the three best guys, Noah is one of those three best guys. Okay. If all three of these guys were alive in the time they had, they could only save themselves and not their family.

So Noah’s a great guy. He’s an example. No statement in the text that Noah was doing something bad, and an ambiguous word in terms of whether he got drunk or whether he simply felt the effects of the wine. And as I said last week, the text in Genesis says that Joseph and his brothers, when they were reconciled, drank wine and became drunk. Except that the verse, the word is not translated “drunk” there, because the context obviously says they didn’t get drunk. This was rejoicing together, feeling the effects of wine.

So in his rest, the point is he’s resting from the labors that he’s been given. And that’s what we do today as well. We come to rest, comfort. We drink some wine. We have a nice meal together, right? And that’s what Noah was doing. That’s his rest. He became uncovered in his tent. Do you do that? Probably. You know, if you’re going to take a nap and you go into your house and then you go into your room, right—which is private—you might take your clothes off, your Sunday clothes off, right? Get uncovered to relax and take your nap.

There’s no disapprovation. Now it’s possible—this is the first time we’ve got wine being made. It’s possible. It’s the first time vineyards are mentioned. Maybe he didn’t know, you know, the wine can catch up with you. Who knows? I don’t know. But all I’m saying is there’s no reason to read negative things in here.

So that’s Noah’s rest. He enters into comfort. This was the prophecy that he would bring men to this kind of rest. And that’s what we do today. We come in here and hopefully we’ve preached righteousness this last week. Hopefully we’ve prepared an ark. We’ve gotten people to get into the context of the church where the grace community of God is found. And hopefully we become masters over the earth in our particular vocations and calling. And we’ve done that for six days. And now we enter into rest and we come to comfort.

You’re sitting there. We’re going to have some wine. We’re going to have a nice meal together. We’re acting on our best behavior here. Nobody’s going to swear at you today. This is a place of safety and comfort. And this is a place of rest. And it’s a place of, you know, enthronement in the new kingdom. Okay. As we’ll see, Noah will shortly awake from his rest, go about labor. And the labor will be making an evaluation or judgment on actions that happen. He’ll make a verdict because he’s a king now, unlike Adam.

All right. More about that in a couple minutes. Okay. So that’s Noah’s rest. And let’s talk about the sin of Ham.

Yeah, I promise this. Let’s talk about it. Okay. What we read is put away everything you thought, everything every people have written. And yeah, what do we read? Noah became naked in his tent. That’s all about Noah. Drinks, gets sleepy, lies down, uncovers himself by taking off his garment just like you or I typically do, right?

And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, told his two brothers outside. Now that’s what it says. Ham’s sin is seeing the nakedness of his father.

Now, all this speculation—usually from men—about sexual activity. Surprise, surprise. But I believe that’s bringing something to the text.

Now what people say is, “Well, Dennis, you got to understand this uncovering nakedness thing, and the—and what that means in Leviticus 18 in terms of relationships.” Okay? And so clearly that’s what’s going on here. And clearly this guy is doing something improper with somebody or something.

A big problem with that: it doesn’t say that Ham uncovered his father’s nakedness. It doesn’t say that. It says, “Ham saw the nakedness of his father.”

Now look it. If you’re going to try to make a metaphorical statement and then tie it to another metaphorical statement, meaning something else, you better have the complete metaphor there. Okay? You better have uncovered nakedness here in order to interpret it by uncovered nakedness over here. And if you don’t have uncovered nakedness, you got to think of, well, maybe that’s not it.

Do we see anything? Are there any texts in the Bible or in the book of Genesis, let’s say, where seeing nakedness is described?

Well, it turns out there is. It turns out there’s this text in Genesis. Now I’m going to have to find it. Let me take a moment to catch up with my—oh, here’s an interesting note. I’ll come back to that in just a minute.

So it turns out there are some other texts like this in the Bible. In Genesis 42. Remember, this is the text that helps us to understand how drinking wine may not have caused drunkenness but joy. Joseph and his brothers. Well, Joseph and his brothers tells us something about this “seeing nakedness” thing too.

Joseph remembered the dreams which he had dreamed about them and said to them—okay, so this is Joseph’s brothers come from starving Israel or Canaan to get food from Joseph, to buy food. They don’t know it’s Joseph, right? He knows it’s them. And Joseph tells says this to them, “You are spies. You have come to see the nakedness of the land.” This is repeated two or three times in this text. They say, “No, no, we just want to buy some food.” He says, “No, you’re spies. You’ve come to see the nakedness of the land.”

Now what does Joseph mean by that? He means the brothers are going to try to steal from him the control over the land, right? So you’re seeing the nakedness of the land. You’re seeing some way to exercise control over you—because it’s your land. Okay?

So what if we let the phrase interpret itself by the scriptures? We’re driven in a different direction from the sexual connotations that some want to bring to the text. And I think we’re driven in the right direction. Seeing the nakedness. By the way, do you see the irony—or not irony—but the fulfillment of stuff here? That’s exact. They’re not doing that now, but this is part of God reminding him that’s just what they did to Joseph. They tried to steal his authority by killing him, selling him into slavery, right? And what happens when they reach out against the God-given authority of Joseph? Well, they’re becoming slaves, right? They got to come begging for food, right?

Also very germane to our text, by the way. You got to be careful with this accusation of drunkenness stuff because, you know, who did that in the New Testament? That’s what the Pharisees said about Jesus and his guys. They’re wine bibbers. See? So you got to be careful. And if the text doesn’t tell us that’s what Noah was doing, you know, don’t necessarily go there.

Look at the context again. Well, in any event, so what is Ham doing? He’s not uncovering his father’s nakedness. He’s seeing his father’s nakedness. And seeing his father’s nakedness is interpreted for us in Genesis, same book, in a story that has some of the same connotations going on.

What it relates to is being able to see the defenselessness of somebody and to be able to exercise authority over them. Okay?

Now look at the text. So let’s—it’s important you look at the text here. This is Genesis 9. So you got: “Ham the father of Canaan saw the nakedness of his father and he told his two brothers outside. Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and went backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned away and they did not see their father’s nakedness.”

Okay. This is a simple little chiasm. Ham sees his father’s nakedness, he talks to the brothers. The brothers instead of joining with him and doing whatever he’s trying to do, turn away and they don’t see their father’s nakedness. Okay?

So to interpret what Ham is doing here, the Bible—in addition to giving us “seeing nakedness” in Genesis 42 and not “seeing uncovering nakedness” in the text before us—yes, you’re going to say, “Well, but Dennis, he had to uncover his nakedness.” Well, actually he didn’t. It says that Noah had already come naked when Ham comes in.

But let’s say Ham did uncover his father. Okay. Well, now you’re going to use a literal action of uncovering his father’s nakedness to prove a metaphorical action in Leviticus 18 involving sexual sin of some sort. Do you see that? I mean, you know, this over here in Leviticus 18, that’s a metaphorical statement. It doesn’t mean people literally have done that. And now you’re going to say, “Well, he had to literally uncover them over here. Well, yeah, but see, you’re mixing the categories now. An action with a metaphor.

So again, I think that explanation just doesn’t work, doesn’t fly, absolutely doesn’t work. Okay. What does work—because Noah is clearly going to pronounce a verdict at him—well, what works is that Ham is conspiring, somehow, either to shame him, assume his authority, whatever it is. And we can understand it a little bit better by what his brothers do.

They don’t go in and try to comfort anybody that’s supposedly been involved in some inappropriate relationship. They don’t do that. The text helps us to see what’s happening. The two brothers take the dad’s garment. So somehow the garment is out there with Ham at them. And the garment, you know, is what we do, right? You know, if I had a robe on, it would be a little better illustration. But you know the garment is what you do, right?

Bakers, when Charity bakes, she has a particular set of garments she wears. Our garments are related to who we are. Noah’s garments were a picture that he was the master of the earth. Okay? And so to take his garments and to leave him naked is—this is an attack. I think this is how the Bible uses clothing metaphorically throughout the scriptures. It’s to attack his authority.

And what the brothers do is they take his garment and they don’t walk in and put it over him because they don’t want to shame their father, right? They’re not conspiring with Ham, whatever he wants them to do. Instead, they walk in backwards with this garment, covering, and they put it on their shoulders.

Now it’s fascinating. If you do Bible study stuff online or at home, look up “shoulders.” Very interesting what the shoulders represent. The government will be on Christ’s shoulders, right? And in the temple, right, or in the tabernacle, the two things that support the veil are like shoulders that are covering the veil of God, covering the ark of the covenant and holy place. And don’t—you know, I’m just giving you a little seed here for you to go and look about shoulders in the scriptures and the significance of them.

You should want to do that to understand the story. Because they don’t—it doesn’t say they pick up a garment and clothe their dad. It says they walk backwards and they’ve got this covering, so that they don’t see his nakedness. And it doesn’t say, you know, they could have done it just having it hand in hand like this and throw it on him, right? Might have been easier.

This whole thing about putting it on their shoulders seems a little artificial somehow, doesn’t it? Seems a little odd. And so it leads you to want to think, well, what’s that all about? And without getting into all the details or taking time on this, I think you’ll find in your studies that these shoulders represent authority—holding things up, maintaining the order of God. You know, Aaron had the tribes of Israel on his shoulders. The key of David was given—meaning the government in Isaiah’s time—and the key was on the shoulder, blah blah.

Look up “shoulder,” but it means authority. So what we’ve got here is something going on about authority. And it seems like what Ham is doing is this: an attack on the authority of his father.

Like all young men, he is tempted to rule. Now we have another new creation story, right? We can compare this to. We have Adam and Eve in the garden, and we have the devil coming and tempting them. And was the temptation sexual? Well, some goofy guys want to make it into that, and always have over the years. Forget it. No, it isn’t.

What is the temptation to Adam and Eve? It’s for them to determine, to rule, to make authoritative decisions about what’s good and evil, to cast off the authority of father’s word, right? And to take that authority for themselves.

This is a new creation. It tells us twice in this narrative, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth.” It wants us to associate. And what do we see—Adam or Noah—right after the promise of the covenant, all that stuff happened? He’s in a garden again, right? So we got a guy in a garden, right? And we got his son being tempted by somebody somehow to sin.

And I think that the connection between this story and Adam and Eve is another pointer that this is a sin not, you know, having to do with the seventh—the—uh—seventh commandment, nor really the sixth commandment, killing your brother—but the fifth commandment: honoring your parents. Okay.

Now, why curse Canaan? Okay. Why curse Canaan? That’s the other thing people—well, see, if it’s some kind of incestuous thing, then we’ve got this product of that, and just like Ammon and Moab, you see that kind of lines up. And there is some thought about that, right? I don’t want to belittle that thinking, but there are other explanations for why Canaan.

Consider, for instance, if you took one of those Noah handouts last week, you know, these three guys are the beginning of all the other nations, right? And you know, so you’ve seen the Shemmites or the Semites—the priestly line—and Japheth, you know, becomes like the European, that whole area. And so, for instance, you can see in the times of the New Testament, you know, Semites and Japhethites—the Greek Roman culture and the descendants of Shem, right? You can see them at work.

And the Hamites, the descendants of Ham—one of his, for instance, who goes and establishes Egypt. So the whole—you know, Africa, subcontinent, that whole area—are Hamites.

Now Noah doesn’t curse Ham because he’s not cursing a third of the earth. Okay? He’s cursing a particular son, one of four sons that Ham has. Okay? So first of all, the curse being placed on Ham—or Canaan, rather—restricts it. The curse restricts it. Right?

Secondly, if I’m right that what Ham is doing is attacking the authority of his father—or at least mocking his father’s sin, which denigrates his authority to his brothers, right? If I’m right about that—then the just punishment is that Ham’s son will, you know, be the same way. And maybe Ham’s son Canaan was already being like that. You know, you always say, “Wow, geez, I wish when you grow up, you’ll have a child just as bad as you are.” You place that curse on him. And that’s kind of what is a little bit of that here.

Canaan is the one that’s cursed. But that’s why it doesn’t mean he’s the product of anything. Either Canaan’s alive now or he’s not. But God, you know, Noah seems to imply that he’s alive there at the time. Okay. Ham at this point is 100 years old. We don’t know that Canaan is alive yet, but it seems like he might have been.

So that’s another reason to think that, well, what’s going on here actually is this father’s son thing, and the curse goes on—then Ham’s son. Okay. So Ham’s sin, I think, is you know, reaching out and trying to either tear down the authority of his father, and/or, and related to that, seize the authority of father for himself and his brothers. Okay.

Let’s see if I missed anything here. Looking at my notes. Be nice if I could read my notes. I do have Occam’s razor there. You know, usually the—a lot of times—the simplest answer to a problem is the easiest answer. And here the simple answer is that Ham saw his father’s nakedness and then talked to his brothers about it. That’s what he did.

Now one more thing about this. If we take this as some sort of strange, odd sexual thing, well, it might apply to some people in Portland, but you know, it really doesn’t hit us. But if we see this as what the text, I think, tells us—that’s an attempt to rest authority or undermine the authority of father—now, that’s very germane to us, young people that are taking these notes that I hope are taking notes, right?

So we were talking about Noah’s rest. Now we’re talking about Ham’s sin. If Ham’s sin is this attack on the father, then it’s fifth commandment stuff. And that means it’s very applicable to every child. Well, actually all of us who are under authority. It’s a very direct thing. It hits us now, and it hits us with conviction about our attempts to denigrate the authorities that God has placed into our land or our attempt to wrest control away when we’re young from Dad, right?

“Don’t trust anybody over 30,” or in Ham’s case, don’t trust anybody over 600. His dad was probably about 600 years old. So that’s the way we are. Subvert the dominant paradigm, right? Question authority. Keep it weird, right? This is all attack on authority. And this is directly what’s happening here. Just like it happened in the garden incident in first creation, so it’s happening in new creation time as well.

And so it’s a warning to us, right? At the head of the list of things we want to take away for personal application about Noah is vocation. But the second thing we want to take away is: don’t succumb to the common temptation to get authority prior to it being handed to you. Okay? To wrest authority away from God-ordained officials.

And Ken—let’s just say, you know, it wasn’t that. It was just him mocking his dad. Well, you—completely appropriate application to make to your families today. You see mom sinning. You see dad sinning. You see our nakedness, our shame, okay? Our vulnerability. You see us in that. Talk to other people about it. Don’t talk to your brothers and sisters about it. Don’t tear us down—whether you’re trying to or not—by complaining to brother and sister about what mom or dad are acting like. Don’t do that. Support the authority structure of the family. Support the authority structure of the church. Support the authority structure of the business. Support the authority structure of the civil realm.

That’s what we have to do this text. And so whether it’s directly trying to rebel against authority or simply a denigration, a talking down of our folks or our parents or our dad, right? We see—my kids have seen my nakedness. They—well, better quickly follow that up. What I mean by that is they have seen me sin, right? Over and over and over again.

It’s always a temptation to our kids to think that we’re just hypocrites. Well, hypocrites don’t care if they’re being consistent or not, right? But understand that Noah—all of us—were fallen men and women. And we’re going to sin. Our kids will see that. They’re right in our homes with us. And the temptation for our kids will be to question the love of God working through their parents or to denigrate the authority or to make fun of mom or dad and talk to other people about it. Don’t do that. Don’t do that.

So I that’s my take on the fall of Ham. And that’s kind of what it is, right? It’s like another fall narrative, and Ham gives into this temptation to take away the authority of his father or at least denigrate it. Okay.

So that’s Noah’s rest, Ham’s sin—as seen by the corrective of his brothers, particularly. And then we have Noah’s verdict. And we can do this very quickly and then get to our final point. We’ll be done in just a couple of minutes. Okay.

So what does Noah do in response to this, right? The text goes on to say—as we read—then Noah wakes up. So now he’s going back to work. Okay? So he’s out of his rest, time now, and is wine rest time. This is like Monday morning, right? It’s tomorrow morning. You wake up and you get about the work you’re given to do. And here’s another aspect of Noah’s work.

He knew what his younger son had done to him. How? We don’t know. Maybe because of Ham and Japheth. Maybe Shem and Japheth told him. Who knows?

And he says, “Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants he shall be to his brothers.”

By the way, if Canaan really had done some of the things that some—or if Ham had really done some of the things people today say he did—I think it wouldn’t be the curse wouldn’t be slavery. I think it would probably be the death penalty or something worse. Okay. But no, he’s a servant.

Why is he a servant? Why is the curse that he’d be a servant to his brothers? Because that’s what happens. I mean, that’s God’s punishment. You want to not be in the proper relationship to authority? And now he’s going to make you even more servile, or service, or you know, servant-like—to other people as well. You try to throw off God’s authority here, he brings more authorities. In a way, it’s grace. He puts the bridle in your mouth because you’re like a horse, you won’t do what he wants you to do.

So I think that’s it. And the point is an obvious one and one we see over and over again in the history of the world, our own lives. And that is that when we attempt to usurp authority, we become slaves. Right? We could have a whole political commentary here on the servitude of a growing number of Americans because they want to wrest authority away from supposed, you know, fat cats or whatever it is. And so the country just becomes more and more enslaved. That’s God’s judgment when we try to throw off the authorities that God has given to us.

And I’m not clearly—I’m not condemning or condoning, rather, sin, and condemning, sin authorities. There’s stuff you have to talk about. But that you clearly make that distinction. That’s the distinction I’m making.

So that’s what Noah does. He says, “Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants. He shall be to his brothers.” And he said, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and may Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and may he dwell in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be his servant.”

So Shem is connected up. The God of Shem is the Lord. The Shem here becomes the Shemmites, the—what we think of as the Jews, the Semitic people. And they’re the ones who are the priestly group of nations that come in relationship to God. And so we see later that Israel comes from Shem, the Semites.

May Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and may he dwell in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be his servant. So Noah pronounces judgment.

Right now I want to make a very simple point here, and that is that another aspect of Noah’s work is the passing of proper judgments, making evaluations and making declarations in the context of his particular authority structure. This I didn’t know—I said that—you know, you look at Noah’s rest in relationship to his work, work. You look at Ham’s sin in relationship to the righteousness of his brothers, and you look at Noah’s verdict. And what’s it related to? If this is another creation story, right?

So we’ve talked about the connections between Noah and Adam. In Adam’s story, number one, they all fell. All three of them were judged, right? The serpent, Adam, and Eve. And this one, some don’t fall. So there’s improvement on the narrative. But what’s the other significant change? God pronounces the verdict with Adam and Eve. God pronounces it. And now man—as master of the earth, as now not just priest, which is what Adam was, but now as king—makes evaluations and judgments and declares verdicts.

God has now brought mankind to more maturity. As Noah is a mature guy, and now he’s given kingly rule, we could say, as well as priestly rule. And so Noah’s verdict shows movement and development in history. Okay. And it tells us as well that when the Christian church says we shouldn’t judge, and you know, there’s a way in which we shouldn’t—but to get rid of all judgment and discernment, all passing of verdicts—we’re being babyish again, babylike again. We’re going back to Adam in the garden.

We’re not exercising noetic care that God gives us. Adam in the garden didn’t come to Sabbath. Noah comes to Sabbath rest. Okay. Adam had toil without comfort. Very interestingly, Noah brings work. He has work, but it’s with comfort. And God says, “The land won’t be cursed anymore for your sake.” So the curse on the land is somehow changed or altered as we move from Adam to Noah.

Adam ate vegetables. Noah eats bread and wine, right? That’s what he has. And he also gets to eat meat. Adam had bread. We could say Noah—there’s no mention of vineyards or anything. Noah now has wine. And he moves from being a vegetarian to now being carnivorous, being meat-eating. I don’t see that as a negative. I see that as positive in terms of the development or maturation—is my—of this movement because man is moving from priest to king.

Now what undergirds all of this?

Okay. So the last point: what undergirds all of it? It’s the rainbow, right? Yeah.

Before we get to Genesis 9, we have Genesis 8 where God hangs his bow in the sky. Okay. What undergirds the development and maturation of man is man worshiping in response to God’s promises to us. What is the promise? Such a wonderful way to witness, right? We see a rainbow in the sky.

Now it’s like I tell you before, the Hebrew word is “bow,” like a warrior bow, and God hangs it up. Now bows are pointed in a direction, right? The string is the opposite side of the direction the arrow is going to go. So if the bow is hung like this, the arrows are pointed up. If the bow is hung like this—on the string or on two pegs—the arrows are pointed down. What do we have? We have the arrows pointed up. Why? Because the way that God moves mankind along in maturation, the way he brings us to rest, the way he empowers us to do work, right?—right?—all of that is found in that little thing we can think of with God’s bow in the sky.

And God is no longer shooting his arrows at us. He’s removed, you know, fear and loathing—sort of way of thinking about stuff. He’s removed the burden by saying that he’s taken that burden on himself. How has he done it? Because where storm and sun come together, right? No rainbow when you don’t have some kind of clouds or storm. And when the sun comes out and show what God has accomplished. It shows the sign of his covenant. The arrows, as Spurgeon pointed out in many preachers’ sense, the arrows are pointed up. Why? It’s a reminder.

Now we know that ultimately the rainbow is circular. But from our perspective, our vantage point, we see God’s bow in the sky, and we see he’s not going to curse us. We don’t got to walking around with the sword of Damocles hanging over our head with arrows ready to come down on us. That’s not who we are. The arrows are pointed up because Jesus Christ took the punishment for our sins. He received the wrath of God so that we can experience the grace of God and deliverance. Right?

How are we moved from storms to sun? You know, it’s interesting because the rainbow is a prism. You know, we read in Ezekiel it’s the throne room, the glory room. Well, a rainbow literally is prisming light. God is light. And he prisms out these different colors and blessing to us, assuring us that Jesus has paid the price for our sins. We’re redeemed from all of that.

But we’re not redeemed by a God who winks at sin, but a God who has made provision by shooting the arrows at the second person of the Trinity. And we’ve talked about this before, but what we do in worship is a prisming effect. One savior, one sacrifice seen in different aspects. There’s colors to the service. The color of forgiveness, the color of the word of God and transformation, the color of peace. Maybe we can link them up with the colors of the rainbow. And it’s all a reminder that rainbows are the manifold mercies of God to us.

The reason we can do all this stuff is because we have peace with God. A permanent peace with God. No more, he says, will I curse the earth in that way. No more. I’m not against you. I’m for you. And the basis for him being for us is the arrow pointed up that would pierce our savior’s heart.

Now the rainbow is according to Ezekiel the glory of God. In Ezekiel, he sees it when he goes up to be ordained. He sees the rainbow, the throne room of God, and it is the glory of God. He tells us that explicitly in Ezekiel chapter 1, that this is the glory of God.

Proverbs tells us that the discretion of a man makes him slow to anger. His glory is to overlook a transgression. Now that’s talking about us, but it’s talking about us as image bearers of God. The glory of God is found in the rainbow narrative in the flood account of Noah and the ark. The glory of God is the great blessing that undergirds all the other movement and development of mankind.

We’re moved along and matured in our work, in our rest, in resisting temptation to throw off authority, and in the verdicts and judgments that we place. All—what undergirds all of this is the grace of God to us through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ so that he can in justice and mercy overlook our offenses.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for this great truth. Help us, Father, to talk to other people about this week. Help us when we see rainbows to remind of our need to witness to people, to talk to them about the incredible grace and mercy of a God who shoots the arrows at himself rather than at us.

Thank you, Lord God, for the clouds and difficulties that come into our life because they’ll bring us to those rainbows where the sun meets the storm in the grace of our savior. Thank you that you will never again shoot your arrows at us because of the work of our savior. Thank you, Father, for overlooking our offenses. In Jesus’ name we pray.

Amen.