Second Chance
Genesis chapter 9, the whole chapter. And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Sorry. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens. Upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. And for your life blood, I will require a reckoning. From every beast, I will require it, and from man. From his fellow man, I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. And you. Be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it. Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you. And with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock and every beast of the earth with you. As many as came out of the ark, it is for every beast of the earth. I establish my covenant with you that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood. And never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, this is a sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for all future generations. I've set my bow in the cloud and that shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth. God said to Noah, this is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth. The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were 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, 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 950 years and he died. Thanks for that, Ozac. Hey, just before I get started on this, I just want to thank the youth for what you guys do as leaders in this town. It was great that Dan just took that opportunity to pray. We do pray for you, but I just really want to thank you for what God is doing in your lives and what God is using you for to do in the lives of the young people in our community. Can I just ask that we just give them a clap? Is that alright? Thanks guys. And another thing I'd just like to do, and this isn't a time of appreciation, but I'd also just like to thank our musos, our sound desk people, our laptop people. Last week we had a time where, hey, musos, all the singers had gone away for some reason, and we were a little bit limited as we know. Don and Alex did a great job, but can I just ask that we just take that same thing, time, to just give them a thank you clap just for all of what you do. Thanks heaps, guys. We're going to continue our journey through Genesis. Matt asked me to speak and I said, yeah, look, that's no worries. He said, I said, what's happening? Where are we at? And he said, oh, it's just on Noah. So I just thought, that's great. Noah and his faithfulness to God and building his ark and all this sort of thing. Probably three weeks ago I decided that I should probably read Genesis chapter 9 and a little bit of chapter 8, which is what he'd asked me to speak on. As we've just read through, well, it was interesting as we read that chapter through, there's some of it that's a little bit heavy and you think, where's this coming from, where's it going? Wendy and I were having a meal at the RSL there a few weeks ago and I just grabbed my phone and we just started to read this chapter through. em To cut a long story short, we got to the last part of it where Noah's naked in his tent and his son has seen him naked in his tent, etc. And then we just looked at each other and we just sort said, well, thanks for that, Matt. How am I going to work that into a message? And we sort of actually thought that that was pretty irrelevant. Do you know what I mean? Like, in all honesty, that's what our thoughts were just as we'd sort of first read it. um Believe it or not, there's more in that section of this chapter than there probably is that is applicable to us in our everyday life than what there is in the rest of it. So we're going to just work our way through a little bit. So pardon my introduction, em but that's just sort of where we were at. I just want to read little bit out of Genesis chapter 8. Genesis chapter 8, 15 to 21. Then God said to Noah, come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives, bring out every kind of living creature that is with you, the birds, the animals, um and all the creatures that move along the ground so they can multiply on earth and be fruitful and increase in numbers. So Noah came out of the ark with his sons and his wife. and his sons wise, all the animals and the creatures that move along the ground, etc, etc, etc. Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and thanking and taking some of the animals from the clean animals and the clean birds he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart, he says this in his heart, he's not actually saying it to Noah at the moment, here's the Lord seeing what's going on and smelling the aroma of the burnt offering and to himself he is saying, never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. That's a pretty serious assumption, isn't it? Never again will I destroy all the living creatures, as I have just done. So God said to Noah, come out of the ark. Can I just share a couple of things? It's amazing when you start to research the scriptures, what you actually find and how ... I don't know much about words, but I'm going to use a word, how expounded. know that's not really a word or how wide it can all sort of just come into play. So God said to Noah, come out of the ark. Noah had been in the ark from all my research and I sure did a lot of it. There's a few varying figures I must admit. 371 days on the Ark from when they moved in. So when they went in the Ark the flood started, the rain started on that day and the springs opened up from underground. So there was water coming from both different areas. So something that I didn't realise was that the ark came back to land. and the flood started to recede. But from when the ark sat back on Mount Ararat to when God said to Noah, come out of the ark, which we just read in chapter 8, it was 250 days. that they sat there in one spot and watched the waters go down. his patience to wait on God. You think how we felt through COVID. We got locked up, shut down for a week or two. can't remember how long that was now, but a lot of us were a bit frustrated by that. But it was only a handful of days, 250 days Noah and his sons and their wives sat in the ark waiting and waiting and waiting on God. Do you wait on God for His direction, for His leading? Or do you just drop the gate and go? Let everything out to run whichever way it goes and then hope it all works out. Can I encourage you? Don't do your own thing, but wait on God as Noah did. Genesis 9. Verses 1 to 7. And God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth. It's a command that he gave Adam and Eve as well. It's a whole new start that we see here. We know that. But it is, and there's a number of things as we go through that are very, very similar. The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth and on all the birds of the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground and on all the fish in the sea they are given into your hands. m Everything that lives and moves above will be food for you. Just as I gave the green plants, I now give you everything. So there was a bonus here for Noah and for us. There was more given than what was given to Adam and Eve. Something that was interesting as I read through this and started to really look into it, and I'd never actually related this to us, but when you think through the birds, the animals, the lizards, And we've all done it. We've all approached them at different times. They don't sit there and sort of smile or create any sort of affection to us. They run. They take off. They're gone as quick as possible. And I guess here's the reason why. God said that they will be in fear of us. Just a little side issue there. So in this second event, as in we had creation with Adam and Eve, et cetera, and now we have Noah and his family. And as I say, it's a very close relationship to what God had promised to Adam and Eve. There was a condition with Adam and Eve, they weren't to eat of the fruit of good and evil off the tree. But they failed. oh There's a condition here as well. In verse 4 it says, you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. Just a little side issue, there was still a condition with what we had to do. There were some things that we have to abide by. As for you, be fruitful and increase in number, multiply on the earth and increase upon it. So God wasn't just talking to them as humans, just as an increase in number with the animals and everything else, plant life, whatever. It was just a case of, we're moving forward from here. Now is the time to establish earth again. Genesis 9 verses 8 to 17, and we've already mentioned that um this morning just on the rainbow. um God has made a covenant with Noah and with all the animals and the birds that he will never again destroy everything by flood. and he sends the rainbow as a sign, as a thing to remind everyone that that covenant has been made. I just want to read something here just quickly. As I was doing my research, I thought, well, what causes a rainbow to happen? Do you know what I mean? Yes, we know that God created it. But I thought, what actually forms a rainbow? And I never looked into that. I just want to read, and can I say this is uh the simple version of it? um There was some, yeah. When I really read the scientific version of it, was defracturing and there was something else and there was all these crazy words that I'd actually never heard of before that light does when it hits the moisture in the air. So I'll read the simple version. A rainbow is caused by sunlight, refracting, reflecting and dispersing in water droplets which separate the white light into its constituent colours. For a rainbow to form, the sun must be behind the observer and water droplets must be in the atmosphere. As sunlight enters a droplet, it bends and separates into colours, reflects off the back of the droplet and then refracts again as it exits, creating the visible arc of colours. Well, have you ever heard anything like that in your life before? I never knew. To me it was just a coloured band in the sky. But can I say to you that God's precious hand, how could any man ever come up with something like that? You think of what it takes as I read that deformer rainbow, how special is that? God's gift to us to remember the precious covenant that was given all those years ago. I just want to read from Genesis 9, 18 to 28. The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan. These were the sons of Noah. And from them came the people who were scattered over the whole earth. So Noah, a man of soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. Why a vineyard? Okay, it was probably part of what they did back then, I guess. They liked their grapes, they liked their wine. Just a little side issue on a vineyard. It takes three years for it to actually produce its first small harvest after you plant the seed. The reason why is because a vine spends its first three years putting all its energy into establishing a solid root system and the main structure of the vine before it starts to produce fruit. How precious is that image? of the strength of the root system, the strength of the structure of that vine that we have. Sorry, just the verses seem to have disappeared. I'll just quote it anyway, it's in John um where it says, I am the vine, you are the branches. God is the strength. uh and the structure that we build our Christian walk on. And we need to just trust in Him for that. We then read on where... nowhere a man of the soil proceeded to plant a vineyard. It all took time. So obviously he'd made his wine and he drank some of its wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. Ham and the father of Canaan. saw his father Noah naked and went out and told his two brothers. So when you look into this little passage, verse, it is amazing what is there and I'm not even going to try to go down the road of what some of the scholars have written because some of it is really way out there of what happened, etc. It seems for sure that when Ham went into the tent, wasn't just a quick fright and glance, uh oh, Dad's naked there and didn't give him the respect that he deserved. Noah was asleep, absolutely seemingly paralytic drunk because of the sin. Not the nakedness wasn't really the problem, I guess he had the right to be naked. But he was drunk. Absolutely out of it. Wouldn't have even known that he was naked. That's how this seems to be interpreted, so I want to share it that way. The Bible speaks in a number of different passages in Ephesians 5.18, Do not get drunk on wine which leads to debauchery, instead be filled with the Spirit. We have warnings in here about drinking. I'm not trying to focus this on drink, but it's part of the situation. Proverbs 23, 20, 21, Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat. For drunkards and gluttons become poor, And drowsiness clothes them in rags. So the point I want to bring out here is the response to someone that is in sin. And Ham, in his response, created sin as well. He judged his father. He came out and probably, it's not written in this way, said to his brothers, hey, come and have a look at the old man. He's absolutely paralytic in here. He's right out of it. Noah was a very, very special man in God's eyes. It says earlier on um in Genesis how he was a righteous man, how he lived such a righteous life. No blemishes. That's the man that God chose to save creation. So close to God, trusted God so much, yet he failed into sin. It doesn't mean that life, that he wasn't forgiven, etc. from that. But can I ask you, how do you react to people that are going through difficulty, people that are struggling with sin in their life, or something's just come across their way and they've failed? Are you somebody like Ham, who ridiculed his father and then went and spooked to his brothers about it? Is that your attitude to it? Or are you sympathetic and you want to help somebody through their tough times? So in verse 22, Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his brothers, Sham and Jephth. So what did they do? They took a garment. They put it behind their shoulders, walked backwards into the tent to their father. lay it back over their father so that he was covered. So that there didn't need to be an embarrassment. There didn't need to be a pointing out of what he had done was wrong. They tried to do the right thing by him. And can I say that's what we need to be doing for people that are struggling? We see sin in somebody's life or someone comes to us with an issue that they have, sin in their own lives. We need to encourage each other. We need to help each other along the way. I'll just read a couple of other verses here, 1 Corinthians 8, 9. Be careful, however. that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. So we have rights. We can do basically what we feel we can do before God. But this is a warning out of the scriptures in Corinthians. Be careful not to cause someone else to stumble. Romans 14.13. Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or a sister. Let's encourage those that are in need by what we do to follow Christ. Do you have a problem with something in your life that may cause somebody to stumble? There's so many things that we could list. Maybe you're somebody, and I know that there's a number of people, Christian people that don't have any worries with drink, that is totally up to you. I do not judge people on that. Can I just say to you that it's something that I chose many years ago, never, ever, ever to do. I have never tasted beer in my life. I made a decision that if I have, and this is for Norm Hopper, I'm just sharing this, okay, I'm not judging anybody. I'm just saying we need to be careful of these things. I made a decision that ... If some young person, say maybe weak in their faith, saw me having a beer. or me drinking maybe more than I should. that that could cause them to stumble, could cause them to walk away from a walk with God, or could cause them not to make a decision for Christ. So for me, Norm Hopper, I made that call that I would never go down that road. And I hope and pray that God keeps me strong enough to be able to keep walking that road. That is for me. Can I say I have a son that has made exactly the same decision? I've got no idea why. I didn't tell him he should. That's how God's laid it on his heart. But no matter what it be, be careful that what we do in life doesn't cause somebody else to stumble. And then as I said before, two brothers, Shaman Japeth, the way they responded to the sin that was in front of them, to what had gone on, it wasn't ridicule, it was we need to do the right thing. Grabbed that clothing or whatever it was, the blanket, and they covered their father. James 5.20 says to us, remember this, whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way, oh We'll save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins. Our response to our brothers that fall can be the thing that really helps them to continue on their walk with Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour. If we want to ridicule them, we're more than likely going to chase them further away. We need to love them, put our arm around them. Let them know that we're there for them. And with the strength of Jesus Christ working in their life, they'll come back through to be with Jesus. So in the latter part of that chapter, and I'll just touch briefly on this, verse 24, when Noah awoke from his wine and found out what had happened to the youngest son, what the youngest son had done to him, he said, cursed be Canaan. The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers. pretty harsh. So it wasn't Canaan that had seen his father naked and gone and started to make fun of him. Canaan was the son of Ham. But Noah chose to curse him. And I'm thinking in some of the research that I did, the reason that probably was, was because it would have been very, very difficult for Noah to curse Ham because God had only a few years earlier when they came out of the ark blessed them with so much as we read earlier on. The interesting thing is that from that one sin and from that ridicule of that sin, which comes back to what's, we need to be so careful of how we act. whole land, a whole people line was cursed. Canaan was cursed. And when you read how the Canaanites acted, they were terrible, terrible people. And that's because of a curse that was put on them because of sin that wasn't dealt with in the correct way. That's how Norm Hopper would interpret that. Please correct me if you think I'm wrong. So can I just say that in this passage here, which I never knew was hidden in these writings, there's a whole lot there about how we need to walk our everyday life with our brothers and sisters. I want to read a couple of things, just in closing. And they're things that have been written on this passage, actually. So, Baron might have said before what a precious man Noah was, how great he was in God's eyes, yet sin still crept in. We don't know whether he started with one wine one day and then two weeks later he had three or ... whether he just thought, gee, this tastes good and he just hammered it too hard. But it was wrong. There was sin there. Temptation. So there's about five little points here that I just want to read just in closing. Temptation and sin are the greatest danger of the greatest danger immediately following victory. So we do need to be careful when God's doing great things in our life like he did with Noah. You think of that whole faithful journey of building the ark, which we've already touched base on in recent weeks. And the strength that Noah had, he put up with all the ridicule that he got from everyone when he was building the ark. He was so strong and so faithful that he could do that. Yet here, the small little things of drinking wine. overtook that strength that he had. So temptation and sin are of the greatest danger immediately following victory. Point two, Satan assaults the soul with the most vigorous efforts. So if things are going well, Satan's going to use his most vigorous efforts to downturn that, let me assure you. That's why we battle so much. Point three. Idle gossip is exceedingly sinful and dangerous. These are just thoughts. They're not, well, some of them might be scriptural, but I don't have scriptural references to them. So Ham went out and gossiped to his brothers and look at the mess that Canaan's lineage ended up in. Point four, countless generations may suffer as a result of a single individual's wickedness. Kane? and Canaan both appear in these early chapters as examples of this. It is not the big temptations alone that cause people to fail, but the little ones as well. Noah could withstand the scorn of the world, the whole world, but he could not resist the overindulgence of his appetite. I've shared it with you before. I can put up with some of the big things that come my way, but it's the little tiny things that frustrate me and they create anger and frustrations and I can lose my cool a bit with the little things. We need to be careful of them. It's not just the big things. I'm sure a number of you can relate to that. And then point six, even the greatest and the best of men are no substitute for Christ. who alone is the perfect one and the saviour of all people. Noah is strong and as great as he was, without blemish, the Scripture says. It's a pretty powerful statement about any one man, but he wasn't strong enough to overcome sin. We need to be so, so careful. We need to be praying daily for the protection of Jesus Christ over our lives. Let's just pray. Dear God, I thank you so much for your word. I thank you for the truths that are hidden in the scriptures. I thank you that something that might have seemed so irrelevant, Lord, has so much in it. And I thank you for your love and I thank you for your leading and I thank you, Lord, for the joy and privilege it is to be part of your kingdom. And I pray for every one of us here that you will just help us, Lord, to daily just focus on you. Overrule the power of Satan, pray. Rebuke Satan and Lord help us to be fresh and alive in Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour, we pray. Thank you. Amen.