Noah & Sons
In the Beginning: A Study in Genesis • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 33:47
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If you have your Bible (and I hope you do), please turn with me to Genesis 9. We’re going to look at the remainder of Genesis 9 this morning. Go ahead and keep your Bibles open in front of you.
More than one commentator has asked why this shameful account, this unfortunate mark on Noah’s background check is here. Shouldn’t some editor have left this out? I mean, really. This is embarrassing.
When I worked as a copy editor, I did a lot of freelance work and got to charge ridiculous rates (anywhere from $75-$150 per hour). For a couple of years, I edited a monthly magazine called ‘TK Magazine’—a Topeka, Kansas business magazine. It was exactly as exciting as it sounds.
One of my favorite things to do was take my red pen (every good copy editor has an unending supply of red ink to spill), circle entire sections and paragraphs of articles, and then put a slash through them. I love to cut content. Sometimes an author got too wordy, sometimes there just wasn’t room; other times, I cut what wasn’t good or what didn’t belong. I love to circle and slash.
We really have to wonder why the author or the author’s copy editor didn’t take their red-inked quill, circle this section, and put a slash right through this part of the parchment.
Here’s why this event is (and other similarly embarrassing and difficult events are) included in the pages of the Bible: Because the Bible is TRUE!
If the biblical author was making all of this up, this part of the story would not have been included. If all of this was fabricated or dreamed up, they wouldn’t begin to include some of what they do.
Neither God who breathes out the Word, nor the Holy Spirit inspiring the Word, nor the human authors who write these words are hiding anything. All the detail is here—warts and all.
Genesis 9:18-29 shares the story of Noah & Sons after the flood. Before and after the flood Noah & Sons are mentioned; they bracket the story. You can imagine that they are fairly significant; they are, after all, the last 4 men on the face of the earth.
Before the flood:
10 Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.
After the flood:
18 The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) 19 These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the whole earth.
Noah & Sons are off the ark, on the newly unflooded earth, and life is seemingly normal.
We find Noah is going back to his roots, no pun intended. Noah’s dad, Lamech, seems to have been a laborer of the ground:
29 He named him Noah and said, “He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the Lord has cursed.”
Like father, like son. Noah comes out of the ark and, among his other tasks, plants a vineyard.
The vines grow and produce grapes. Noah takes the grapes and places them in a winepress. Takes the juice and puts it in wineskins. And then waits for it to ferment and become wine.
Noah drinks the wine. And drinks and drinks and drinks some more—to the point of drunkenness. Right there is the problem. Noah drinks until he’s drunk, he proceeds to get nekkid, and then Noah passes out in his tent.
All of this is summed-up in a couple sentences:
20 Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. 21 When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent.
What does this mean? We can’t speculate. The Bible doesn’t give us very much information at all. The OT intentionally uses guarded language to describe this sin. If you’d like to speculate, feel free. There are several books with pages full of speculation, examining all the possible scenarios and situations, imaginations running wild, going places the text of the Bible doesn’t take us.
We don’t need to follow the rabbit trail, taking the immodesty of Noah and turning it into some act of fornication (as some people do).
All we know is what we read in verses 20-21. Drunk Noah uncovered himself. He lost his sense of shame and dignity. He lost his sense of decency. Immodesty took over.
Sin had floated atop the waters of the Flood and had landed in the new world. Noah—like those who perished in the flood—is imperfect; he’s very clearly a sinner.
We need to remember that nakedness is a shame only after the fall of Adam and Eve. Remember when the first couple was first brought together by God, Eve made from the side of Adam, new groom bursting forth in joyous poem:
“This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”
And then Genesis 2 closes on the young newlyweds with this sentence:
25 Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
Then, some time later, the two of them succumb to the serpent’s temptation and they eat the fruit of the tree they weren’t supposed to eat. And what do you know, but:
7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
Shame in nakedness is a result of the fall. It became disgraceful and improper after sin entered the world. Here’s good ol’ Noah buck-naked and so drunk he doesn’t even realize it—shameful.
I’ve said “naked” already more often than I’d like to in a sermon. So let’s just go for it. Let’s talk about wine. Wine is good. Wine is a gift from God.
14 He makes grass grow for the cattle,
and plants for people to cultivate—
bringing forth food from the earth:
15 wine that gladdens human hearts,
oil to make their faces shine,
and bread that sustains their hearts.
God makes…wine that gladdens human hearts. Wine is a gift, just like oil and bread.
Jesus Himself turns water into wine for a wedding. The wine Jesus made was the best wine, the good stuff. Some try to say that wine then was not like wine now; well, that’s cute, but baseless. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to suggest that wine in the Ancient Near East was anything less than a strong, high-percentage alcoholic drink.
Wine is not the problem; wine is from God. The problem with Noah, the problem with other characters in the Bible and in history, the problem amongst people today is not alcohol. The problem is the overuse and abuse of alcohol. Mankind is talented at taking good things, God-given things, and using them to excess and for our destruction.
Noah did nothing wrong in planting the vineyard. He did nothing wrong in making wine. He did nothing wrong in drinking wine. What Noah did wrong was drink way too much wine. He drank to the point of drunkeness; he drank until he passed out. Not good.
An Important Truth: The point of reading the Bible is not to find role models and moral examples.
Especially when it comes to the OT, a lot of people, a lot of the notes in your study Bibles, a lot of commentaries highlight the moral example and character of certain Bible characters.
“Be ‘a Ruth’ or a Proverbs 31 woman. Be like David. Be courageous like Joshua. We all need to be more like Paul.”
That’s not the point; the Bible doesn’t set out to give us a bunch of role models and moral examples. Even Noah—righteous, upright, walk faithfully with God Noah—even Noah fails and falls.
No person is ultimately worthy of our following—and certainly not blindly or unconditionally.
Noah is not our model. Jesus is.
Noah is not our model. Jesus is.
We aren’t trying to be more like Noah. We need to be more like Jesus. This is true.
Noah has a pretty cool resume. He’s got a good track record up until this point (at least in what’s recorded for us). Everything we’ve heard about Noah up until this point has been beyond positive.
The Bible refers to Noah as righteous, blameless among his generation, full of faith, obedient throughout the course of his walk with God—even when God commanded him to do crazy, never-done-before type stuff like build an ark and gather animals and bring them in by twosies-twosies. Noah even finds his name scattered throughout the New Testament and in the “Faith Hall of Fame” in Hebrews 11.
Noah is one impressive fella, in so many ways. But Noah is just a man, which is to say Noah is flawed and sinful; he’s so far from perfect it would make your head spin.
Noah is not a model of moral excellence. He’s not an example for us. Noah is us—a sinner, desperately in need of grace from God.
Let’s also note, real quick, before we throw Noah and ourselves right under the bus; before we start thinking less of ourselves because of our Noah-like failures, please remember:
Salvation does not equal automatic transformation. Even believers, covenant members, people of faith fall into sin.
Salvation is the beginning, the start of the journey of sanctification and growth.
Don’t get down on yourself. Every single one of us sins and fails, routinely; even the great men and women of the faith sin and fall and fail.
When all of this happens with Noah, he’s like 600 years old. If he doesn’t have his walk with God perfected at 600-years-old, who’s to say that you’ll have it all sorted out at 30 or 50 or 70? You think John Hough has it figured out at 136? Not quite.
This story about Drunk Naked Noah illustrates just how easy it is to be led astray from covenant loyalty, no matter your age or your station.
You will never be perfect this side of heaven. You will fall short. You will mess up. You will stumble. That’s the normative experience of the Christian. Don’t start believing otherwise.
Being a Christian is not a matter of how well you can do; it’s a matter of belonging to Christ and growing to be more and more like Him by the power of the Holy Spirit. Sanctification (being made holy) is a process. Your Heavenly Father, the indwelling Holy Spirit, the always-with-us Christ will see to it. Understand it’s a process and believe, deep down, that the Triune God will not give up on you.
Noah is not our model. Jesus is. Jesus walked among us, lived an exemplary life of perfect obedience and sinless perfection. He did right, all the time. Never for a moment did Jesus do anything less than perfect. He ruined the curve for the rest of the class. There was no hint, not one ounce of error or blame in Him.
And this is good news for us. This is the gospel. We needed a substitute; someone to take our place. Someone to live a spotless life before the Father. We don’t have it in ourselves. We won’t find this in Noah or Abraham or David or John or Paul. Only in Jesus.
Jesus is our model. Our guide. Our Teacher and Shepherd. We are to follow Him and model our lives after Him. And when we fail at following Him and modeling Him, if we are united to Him, our shortcoming and failure is covered by grace and His perfect righteousness imputed to us.
Noah is not our model. Jesus is.
When we get to verse 22 of Genesis 9, we have the second mention of Ham. And once again, the text mentions that Ham is the father of Canaan.
Twice before Ham does anything, twice before anything happens, we’re introduced/tipped off to who might be one of the major players in the story: Ham.
With a name like that, you’re bound to be some kind of comedian, or maybe just a pig.
(I’m sorry. I become a Dad and all of my jokes become Dad jokes).
Ham’s claim-to-fame is one verse:
22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside.
Once again, we have very few details. We don’t know much about what happened. What we know is what we find in verse 22.
Ham apparently entered his father, Noah’s tent, saw him passed out drunk and uncovered, and then went and shared his father’s disgrace with his brothers.
It’s a bizarre incident (again, where’s the copy editor?). A son walks in, sees his father naked, walks out, tells his brothers.
But it gets even bizarrer.. The story gets stranger and stranger.
23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.
24 When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said,
“Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
will he be to his brothers.”
Ham walks in on his father, tells his brothers what he saw, and he’s cursed. His family line is cursed, so much so that the judgment of God is to fall upon them.
It seems like a rather minor sin to see your father naked. Of all the imaginable sins, that doesn’t seem to be near the top of the list.
And it seems almost incredible that a relatively minor event would have such major consequences. It would be like failing to use your turn signal and doing 40-to-life at Sing-Sing.
Ham’s sin might seem trivial, but it’s not.
The sin of Noah wasn’t minor; his drunkenness and nakedness are disgraceful. It’s a shame that Noah became intoxicated, lost control, and exposed himself. That can’t be underplayed or justified.
Noah’s sin wasn’t minor and the sin of Ham wasn’t minor, because no sin is minor.
No sin is minor.
No sin is minor.
The fact of the matter is, though, in demonstrating to us that sin had survived the food, God could have picked a thousand sins. Because Noah was a sinner, his wife was a sinner, their sons and their wives were sinners, God could have picked any number of sins to illustrate their fallenness.
“But God picks what appears to us to be somewhat a ‘minor sin’ to demonstrate to us that there doesn’t have to be some kind of severe heinousness connected to a sin to make it a sin. The smallest iniquity—the smallest iniquity—can have disastrous repercussions and consequences. The sooner we learn this, the better.” - John MacArthur
Some people think if you can just avoid “the big ones”, you’ll make it. Maybe that’s you. But, friends, that’s simply not the case. The Bible teaches that the “little sins” also devastate families and entire nations.
In Joshua 7, a man named Achan steals some shekels and a robe from the enemy camp. It’s not like he murders a bunch of people. He steals just a few items and his entire family is put to death. What’s more, we read God’s anger burned against the entire nation of Israel because of this one man’s theft.
Ananias and Sapphira tell a simple, white lie (no big deal); they lie about how much money they made selling some of their property before giving it to the church, and they both fall down dead (check it out for yourself in Acts 5).
I believe God purposely chose this account—Noah’s drunkenness and indecency, Ham’s impropriety and gossip—God chose these “small, not-that-big-of-a-deal” sins to make a point.
God could have chosen any number of sins out of their lives. I’m assuming Noah and Mrs. Noah, Shem and Mrs. Shem, Ham and Mrs. Ham, Japheth and Mrs. Japheth are very much like you and me. They probably don’t make it past their first cup of coffee without sinn
God could have chosen any number of sins—great and small. But God chose this to make the point that it’s not just murder and adultery and fornication; it’s not just the “big sins” that damn us.
It’s those smaller, more “respectable sins” like those demonstrated here—disrespect and gossip and a lack of self-control. "Small sins” and “big sins” equally mark us as sinners deserving of judgment; deserving of judgment just as much as murders and rapists and adulterers.
No sin is minor, not when you’re dealing with and relating to a Holy God.
We might be able to compare ourselves to someone who has done some “really, really bad stuff” and come out looking pretty good from our point of view.
The next time you’re tempted to do that, go ahead, Christian, and compare yourself instead to the Almighty, Sovereign, Supreme, Wholly-Perfect, Holy God and see where you stand. You’ll find yourself positioned so far below the standard of righteousness, it’s not even funny.
We might be Noah. Or maybe we’re Ham. Whichever it is, we are not good enough. We are not good. Our sins are not minor, and our sinfulness is no small problem.
Upon realizing what Ham had done, his brothers do what he should have done upon seeing his father in that state of immodesty. They cover Noah without looking upon him.
Ham and his line are cursed, and we see the effects of this as the stories and generations continue.
Throughout the OT, the Canaanites are one of the greatest sources of temptations for the people of Israel. The Canaanites are held up as examples of what not to do. The Lord tells them: you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan.
The sins of one (Ham) set the course for generations on down his line (Canaan).
The curse of Canaan stands against the blessing Noah gives to both Shem and Japheth.
With these blessings, Noah acknowledges God as the author of life. And the line of promise is now narrowed to Shem’s offspring. The Snake-Crusher will come from Shem. From Shem comes Abraham; Abraham, Isaac; Isaac, Jacob; and on down to Jesus.
Good News: Hope rests outside of us.
Good News: Hope rests outside of us.
This is the reminder of the rainbow. The rainbow we read about before we read these awkward, sad verses reminds us that God is in control of the events of world history. He has made promises and they will come to pass, regardless of us or our sinfulness.
It’s really good news that we can look to someone other than ourselves for hope. If you’re hoping in yourself and your abilities and your goodness, I’m afraid that you will be sorely disappointed.
If Noah was our hope or the hope of mankind, we would be in a world of hurt. For one, Noah is imperfect. Even more significantly, Noah lived for a while and then he died.
28 After the flood Noah lived 350 years. 29 Noah lived a total of 950 years, and then he died.
We don’t put our hope in dead men. Our hope is the One who died, was dead for 3 days, and rose victorious from the grave.
Hope rests outside of us. Our hope, our joyful assurance is in Jesus Christ—the Sinless, Spotless, Eternal, Risen Savior.
I, for one, am glad no copy editor took their red pen and attempted to edit this out.
How else would we realize that Noah is not our hero? Only Jesus is. Our sin—your sin and my sin—is no minor offense. It’s a huge problem. And in the person of Jesus, His only Son, God gives HOPE to sinners like me. In the person of Jesus, there is forgiveness and grace and eternal life for the worst of us to enjoy. And it’s FREE!
Friends, stop believing you are good enough. Stop trusting in yourself and start trusting in Jesus today.