This is chapter nine.
We concluded our last study in the last
verse of chapter eight, where God promised that
as long as the earth remained, seed time
and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter,
and day and night would never cease.
And then after Noah came out of the
ark, we read here, God blessed Noah and
his son.
It says in chapter eight, verse twenty-one,
that the Lord smelled a sweet aroma.
He thought of who were healed.
The first thing he thought of, like that
one thankful leper, was that first of all,
he needs to give thanks.
He thought of the long period he'd been
through the ark, in the ark, and it
says God remembered Noah.
And how easy it is, after we've been
through a period of testing, that when we
come out of it, for us to forget
to thank God for his care over us.
It says, God blessed him and said, Be
fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and
the fear of you and the terror of
you shall be on every beast of the
earth, and on every bird of the sky,
with everything that creeps on the ground, and
all of the fish of the sea into
your hand they are given.
Every moving thing that is alive shall be
food for you.
I give all to you as I gave
the green plant.
From Adam up to Noah, a man was
called by God to be a vegetarian.
God gave Adam only the plants to eat.
Of course, it's quite likely that the sons
of Cain and others who disobeyed God in
other things probably disobeyed God and ate meat
as well.
But that wasn't God's will.
But now, from this time onward, we read
that God gave to Noah animals also to
be eaten.
And when we see that it was God
who gave that, not just a command.
It says in verse 1, he blessed him
and said that he could eat.
We see, therefore, that the idea that you
can be more spiritual by being a vegetarian
is actually a heathen idea, quite contrary to
God's word.
Because it says, God blessed Noah and told
him, you can eat meat.
And we read that Jesus ate fish even
after the resurrection.
I just mention that in passing because that's
one of the doctrines of demons that Paul
refers to, will be found in the last
days, 1 Timothy 4.
It says two of the doctrines of demons
mentioned there are that marriage is wrong.
You can't be spiritual if you get married.
And the other thing is that you can't
be spiritual if you eat meat.
Well, these are some of the crazy ideas
that even some Christians sometimes have.
Verse 4, only you shall not eat flesh
with its life, that is, its blood.
There was only one restriction, that the blood
of the animal should be poured out because
the life of the flesh is in the
blood.
And interestingly, that's something that God has forbidden
in Old Testament times.
And when the apostles gathered together to give
instructions to the Gentiles in Acts 15, we
read that there were three things that they
encouraged the Gentiles to abstain from in Acts
15, verse 20.
Food offered to idols, from fornication, and from
meat which has the blood in it.
It's a very simple restriction that God has
made, and it's good for us to obey
it.
And further in verse 5, And surely I
will require your lifeblood from every beast I
will require it, and from every man.
From every man's brother I will require the
life of man.
Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood
shall be shed.
For in the image of God he made
man.
Now there we see that it was God
who instituted the death penalty for murder.
God says, I, I who have created all
men, I who have made man on the
face of the earth, require the blood of
every man from whoever has killed him.
And therefore if a man sheds another's blood,
he must be killed.
A murderer must be hanged or killed in
some way.
That's not a lack of mercy.
There are, when we use our human ideas
of mercy, we can go off on crazy
tangents.
But God, who is more merciful than the
best of us and a million times more
merciful, said that a murderer must be killed,
must be given the death penalty.
And we can see that the world has
drifted away from God by that death penalty
being abolished in so many countries today.
This is another indication of man drifting away
from God.
And that is the reason why there is
so much more violence and terrorism, I believe,
because the death penalty for murder is not
given quickly.
If the death penalty were given more quickly
for murder, there would have been less violence
on the earth.
That is a simple law, but man rejects
God's word and therefore he suffers with a
wrong understanding of mercy.
And just in passing I want to say
that our understanding of mercy, like our understanding
of humility, must come from God's word, not
from the dictionary.
If we get our understanding of mercy from
the dictionary and not from God's word, then
that's how so many people have got these
human ideas of mercy which are not divine.
God is rich in mercy, but His mercy
is as different from man's idea of mercy
as the heaven is from the earth.
And there is wisdom in God's mercy, whereas
man's mercy is utterly foolish.
That can apply even in our dealing with
our children and so many other relationships.
Our mercy must be divine, not human.
Verse 7.
Now, the reason, he says, is because in
the image of God he made man.
Now, one would think that that image had
been completely defaced when Adam sinned, and yet
God Himself says that the reason why a
murderer must be hanged or killed is because
man was made in the image of God.
This man whom He has killed is a
man made in the image of God, which
means there is something of the image of
God left still even in unconverted man.
That's even found in the New Testament.
We read in James, Chapter 3, that therewith
we bless God, James 3.9, and curse
men, not believers, but ordinary men, who have
been made in the likeness of God.
And that refers primarily to the conscience when
it says that in James 3.9, that
all human beings, even unconverted, have something left
of the likeness of God.
We can say it's like a wall poster
that's been stuck on a wall with somebody's
face on it, and then many parts of
it is torn, and you can see bits
and pieces of that face on that wall
poster still.
It's something like that.
That there are bits of that image of
God still.
Of course, man defaces it more by sin
till there's almost nothing left.
He begins to live like the animal.
But as long as there is...
the voice of conscience is able to speak
to a man, and even unconverted people have
a conscience, there is still something of that
image of God.
It's not converted, but that thing which can
lead him to salvation.
And that is why even unconverted people are
religious, unlike animals, for example, who don't have
any conscience at all.
So that's just in passing that God Himself
recognizes that even in fallen man there is
still something of that image of God, and
we have no right to take that life.
And that is...
then we understand also the reason why God's
word says in 1 Peter 2, Honor all
men.
Have you seen that verse in 1 Peter
and chapter 2?
It says in verse 17, Honor all men.
And it also says in the last part,
Honor the king.
Of course, we must honor the authorities in
the land.
That is said in the last part of
that verse.
But the verse begins with, Honor all men.
Love the brotherhood, of course.
But honor all men because there is something
of that image of God in that person.
When you see the damage that sin has
done in so many people who are mad
and beggars, it should really speak to our
hearts what a work the devil has done
in defacing that image.
And still there's a little bit of it.
We are to honor all men.
And that is why it is right to
speak with respect to all human beings because
there's something of the image of God in
the most degraded, the most uneducated, the poorest,
filthiest, dirtiest person because he's a human being.
When we love the brotherhood, that's good.
We also need to partake more of the
divine nature, that we respect a human being
because he's a human being, particularly to look
at those who are beneath us in the
social level and to see them as those
who have something of the image of God.
God has created them, made them in his
image.
That conscience is there.
Therefore we are to respect in all our
dealings with other human beings.
As for you, be fruitful and multiply.
Populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it.
Similar command as he gave to Adam.
Then God spoke to Noah and to his
sons with him, saying, Now behold, I myself
do establish my covenant with you and with
your descendants after you.
This is the first time, or the first
person rather, with whom God made a covenant.
We saw that earlier in chapter 6, verse
18.
A covenant means an agreement that God made
with Noah, a picture of the other covenants
he made later on.
He made a covenant with Israel, we know.
He made a covenant with Abraham, we read
in chapter 17.
He made a covenant with Israel in the
book of Exodus.
And then we come into the New Testament,
our new covenant, and we know the covenant
that Jesus has made with us.
And this word covenant is something that comes
through in God's dealings with these individuals first,
Noah and Abraham, and then with Israel, and
then with us in the church in the
new covenant.
It's a very beautiful word.
It's like a personal agreement, which means my
relationship with God is on the basis of
an agreement that God has made.
He won't go back on it.
Think how people who are upright on the
earth will stand by their signed statements, and
that is an assurance that God gives us
if we understand the covenant, that he will
not go back on the covenant that he
has made with us.
He didn't go back on the covenant he
made with Noah.
He told him there'll never again be a
flood, and we know that for 4,000
years there's never been a flood, even though
man has been terribly wicked.
In fact, about 150 years after Noah, man's
wickedness again blossomed out when God kept his
word.
And when God says something, he will keep
it, and that's why if we try to
understand the promise in the new covenant, we
can see that God, who kept his covenant
with Noah, with Abraham, with Israel, will surely
keep it with us, and that's why we
need to understand the terms of the new
covenant very clearly.
We need to take some time, for example,
to read Hebrews chapter 8.
That is the one chapter in the New
Testament which describes the covenant, particularly the last
seven or eight verses in Hebrews chapter 8.
And you notice one thing there.
God says, I will do this, and I
will do this, and I will do this.
And to say, Lord, you have promised you
will do it.
You kept your covenant with Noah, Abraham, and
others.
You'll certainly keep your covenant with me.
But without faith, it is impossible to receive
anything from God.
So much for the covenant.
God made a covenant here with Noah, with
your descendants after you.
That means with all humanity, because all humanity
are Noah's descendants.
And with every living creature that is with
you, the birds, cattle, beasts, and all that
comes out of the ark, every beast of
the earth.
And I established my covenant with you, and
all flesh shall never again be cut off
by the water of the flood.
That was the covenant.
And God has kept it with mankind, with
all of Noah's descendants, for 4,000 years.
Neither shall there again be a flood to
destroy the earth.
Never has there been a flood since Noah's
day that destroyed the whole earth.
And God said, this is the sign of
the covenant which I am making between me
and you.
There was usually a sign of the covenant
when God made a covenant with Abraham.
The sign was circumcision.
And God made a covenant with Noah.
The sign we read here was the rainbow.
Every living creature that's with you for all
successive generations.
Verse 13, I set my bow.
We call it a rainbow, but the word
of God calls it a bow.
And it is the same word which is
used elsewhere in the word of God for
the bow which is used with the arrow.
Exactly the same word.
And God called it a bow.
The same word.
I set my bow in the cloud.
It shall be a sign of a covenant
between me and the earth.
And it shall come about when I bring
a cloud over the earth, that the bow
shall be seen in the cloud.
And I will remember my covenant which is
between me and you and every living creature
of all flesh.
And never again shall the water become a
flood to destroy all flesh.
When the bow is in the cloud, then
I will look upon it to remember the
everlasting covenant between God and every living creature
of all flesh that is on the earth.
And God said to Noah, This is the
sign of the covenant which I have established
between me and all flesh that is on
the earth.
God is light.
And when that light comes through the mists
of the rain, we see the colors of
the rainbow reminding us of God's grace.
There's a verse in 1 Peter 4 which
says, His multi-colored grace.
His manifold grace, or as the literal translation
there is, His multi-colored grace.
And that's what the bow is a picture
of.
And all the covenants have one thing common
about it, about the sign of the covenant.
And that's interesting to see right from the
beginning that the sign of the covenant was
always something that symbolized death.
We know that when Jesus established the new
covenant, he broke the bread and the cup.
And we know that that is a symbol
of participating with Jesus in death.
We know that in Genesis 15, when God
made a covenant with Abraham, he asked him
to divide a calf and separate it into
two.
And we'll come to that later on when
we study that chapter.
And the meaning there was that God was
going to, just like that calf was killed
and divided in two and Abraham had to
walk in the middle.
The Lord was saying to Abraham, I lay
down my life for you.
And Jesus said the same thing when he
broke bread.
And the same thing in the bow, in
the cloud.
It's like a bow which doesn't have an
arrow that's being fired upward towards the heavens.
It was, I believe, one of the earliest
indications that someone in the heavens would receive
the arrow from that bow and die for
the sins of the world.
There was always a symbol of death in
the sign of the covenant.
And that's what we need to see, that
in a covenant, there has to be a
faithfulness unto death.
Otherwise, there is no covenant.
And when we get into a covenant with
Jesus, if we take it seriously, it means
that I say, Lord, as I drink this
cup with you, I drink the cup which
indicates that blood which is shed in resisting
sin unto death.
And I want to do that.
And it's those who have taken that covenant
seriously who enjoy all that God will do
for them under the new covenant.
And now, the sons of Noah who came
out of the ark were Shem and Ham
and Japheth.
And Ham was the father of Canaan.
As far as we know, when they came
out of the ark, they were all equally
blessed by God, as we read in the
beginning of the chapter, because it says, God
blessed Noah and his son.
Chapter 9, verse 1.
But before the chapter finishes, there is a
curse on one of those sons.
How quickly a person who has received the
blessing of God can move away from that
blessing to the place of a curse.
That's what we see in chapter 9.
These were the three sons of Noah, verse
19, and from these the whole earth was
populated.
All of us are descendants of Noah.
And then Noah began farming and planted a
vineyard, and he drank of the wine and
became drunk and uncovered himself inside the tent.
It's a very wonderful thing that the word
of God does not cover up the weaknesses
of its great men.
If somebody were writing a biography of Noah
today, they would have left out that incident.
If somebody were writing a biography of David,
they would have left out his incident of
his with Bathsheba.
If somebody were writing a biography of Elijah,
they would have left out that part where
he was depressed, sitting under a juniper tree.
If somebody were writing a biography of Paul,
they would have left out the fact that
he yelled at the high priest once, or
that he made a mistake and shaved his
head and circumcised Timothy and did a few
things like that and quarreled with Barnabas.
But the word of God is very honest,
and I want to say it's very difficult
to find a biography like that.
It's almost impossible to find anywhere outside Scripture
a biography that is so ruthlessly honest about
even any great thing.
All the biographies that are there will only
tell us all the good things, and that
can sometimes discourage many Christians because they think
that this man never made any mistakes, whereas
the thing that encourages us about the New
Testament biographies is that they were not marveled
saints without any flaws in them, but people
who slipped up, who had the same flesh,
the same passion, who made mistakes, and we
can learn from them, but they were not
perfect.
And with all their limitations and weaknesses, God
could still work through them.
Some persons can take that as an encouragement
to sin.
Those who don't love the truth, God will
allow such people to take that as an
encouragement to sin and go astray.
But for those of us who have quite
a different attitude towards sin, who enter into
a covenant to resist sin unto blood, we
can receive encouragement from these things.
Not to sin, but encouragement when we are
tempted to feel depressed, when we see the
wretchedness in our own flesh.
And so we see here that Noah got
drunk.
A lack of self-control, that was his
problem.
Paul said these tremendous words in 1 Corinthians
9.27. He said that if I don't
keep control over my body, if I don't
buffet my body and make it my slave,
then I can preach to others and be
disqualified myself.
You can say, well, I'll never get drunk
with wine.
Maybe that's not your weakness.
Maybe your weakness is your temper.
That is also lack of self-control.
In Noah's case it was drunkenness, in your
case it's anger, just the same.
In another person's case it's sexual lust.
It doesn't matter which area the self-control
is.
It's lack of self-control, whether it's drunkenness
or sexual lust or food, inordinate desire to
be a glutton, to be so crazy after
food, good tasty food and anger, these are
all areas of lack of self-control.
And Paul says, if I don't keep a
control over my eyes, my tongue, the desires
of my stomach, sexual desires, desire to just
sleep and sleep and sleep and be lazy,
then it can go badly, no matter what
mighty things God has accomplished to us.
He says, I can preach to others and
be disqualified myself.
What do we learn from Noah?
This man who stood for 120 years, he
never got drunk in those years, when everybody
else around him was drunk.
He stood faithful as long as there was
battle.
People were mocking him, opposing him.
He was faithful.
But then he accomplished a great mighty thing
for God and he came out of that
ark, the great man of God, the great
prophet who has proved true finally.
And then, that must have worked in his
heart, what a man of God I am.
And he fell.
A warning.
As long as there is opposition, persecution, difficulties,
trials, my brothers and sisters, we are safe.
We are safe.
Some of us are praying, Lord, remove all
this pressure, remove all these trials, remove all
these problems.
Do you know what will happen?
Do you know what will happen when your
life becomes comfortable and easy like Noah's?
The same thing that happened to Noah.
He fell.
He fell when his life became comfortable and
he never fell for 120 years when he
had trial and persecution and opposition and mocking
and all those things.
A tremendous warning for us.
That's why God doesn't answer some of those
prayers that he should remove those pressures.
Those pressures are our salvation.
Those difficulties, that opposition, that persecution is the
thing that keeps us from sinning.
And when we become famous and accepted, particularly
after God has done something through us, then
we are really in danger.
Maybe God has used you to bless somebody
and then you relax and then you begin
to take it easy.
That's, I think, what must have happened to
Noah because his flesh was the same as
ours and we can understand when God has
done something through us that we can begin
to think that God has really done something
through me.
And in Noah's case, it was a fantastic
thing that God did.
What a fantastic thing.
After 120 years, he stood true to God.
Then he came out and God was really
able to do one of the greatest works
through a human being.
That teaches us that it is after a
mighty triumph in our life that we have
to be more careful to watch and pray.
You know that Elijah went up to Mount
Carmel and he brought fire down from heaven
and finished off 850 false prophets and got
the whole of Israel to worship Jehovah.
And then at the end of that, this
man, who wasn't afraid of 850 prophets, got
afraid of one woman, Jezebel, and ran for
his life, depressed, saying, Lord, take away my
life.
It is after a mighty triumph like he
had on Mount Carmel that the danger comes
of falling.
Elijah's depression is not an encouragement to us.
It is a warning.
I have heard people encouraging themselves in their
depression, saying, Elijah was also depressed.
That is like encouraging yourself when you have
a quarrel with somebody, saying, Paul also quarreled
with Barnabas.
That is not an encouragement.
That is a warning.
Elijah was depressed is a warning.
Moses lost his temper and broke the tablets
of stone is a warning.
So, Noah getting drunk is a warning.
After a mighty triumph, after God has blessed
you, that is what God told Israelites through
Moses, after you have got into the land,
after you have possessed the land, and after
you have become rich, that is the time
you have got to be careful.
See the example of Jesus in Luke chapter
5?
Luke's gospel, chapter 5, says about Jesus in
Luke 5, 15 and 16, The news about
Jesus was spreading even further, and great multitudes
were gathering to hear Him and to be
healed of their sicknesses.
This unknown carpenter of Nazareth was suddenly become,
got nationwide fame.
People were being healed.
Multitudes came from distances.
The news about Him spread.
And what would Jesus do?
Verse 16, He would often slip away into
the wilderness to pray because He needed to
protect Himself.
He had read about Noah and Elijah, and
He knew that He had to be careful
because He had our flesh, that He would
not sin even once, that that fame, that
blessing that came would not go to His
head.
And that is an example for us to
follow.
So Noah's lack of self-control is a
warning for us to be self-controlled and
disciplined in our life.
Genesis 9, verse 22, And Ham, the father
of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father
and told his two brothers outside.
Something that we all have to take a
great warning from.
There was no command in those days which
said, honor your father and mother.
That came with the law.
Maybe five, six hundred years later.
But yet it was understood that one must
respect one's parents.
And Ham's sin was that when he saw
the nakedness of his father, he told others
about it.
Of course, his father was wrong.
But that didn't make a difference.
It was still wrong for Ham to talk
about it.
Your father may be wrong in something that
he does.
It may be evil.
And you have seen the nakedness because you
have lived at home with your father and
to talk about it, whether it's your father
or your mother.
I believe that all of us need to
learn to honor our father and mother in
this way, that we do not reveal the
nakedness that we have seen of our parents
to anyone else.
Have you seen your father and mother quarrel
and fight?
Yeah, let it die with you.
What do you gain by talking about it?
All right, they didn't have victory, they didn't
have life, but we must not talk about
that.
We can repent of our past failures, but
in the days to come we can at
least have this testimony that we will not
uncover the nakedness of our father and mother.
That was why Ham was cursed.
There is a blessing on those who honor
their father and mother in this way.
But Shem and Japheth, and this is the
example for us to follow, took a garment
and laid it on both their shoulders.
They probably had a flesh, not probably, they
had a flesh just like ours, and one
wretched sin in the flesh is curiosity, curiosity
that makes us peek through cracks in the
door and makes us listen in at the
windows of other people's houses, that makes us
read postcards that are not addressed to us.
All types of things, wretched evil called curiosity,
being a busy body in other people's matters
in these subtle ways.
What is it to sit, to stand outside
another person's window and listen to what they
are talking inside the house?
That is an evil, whatever.
Even if the husband and wife are quarreling
inside that house, I believe that your evil
is greater to stand outside and listen to
it.
I don't have a shadow of doubt about
that.
I believe the man who stands outside and
listens is far more evil.
He still has none of my business.
No.
This curiosity, and Shem and Japheth could have
said, well, we want to go and cover
our father, and they could have gone facing
forwards, but no, they would go backwards.
Learn a lesson from that.
To turn our eyes and our ears away
so that we don't pollute ourselves by judging.
Why expose ourselves to the temptation to judge?
Lot of judging others comes out of this
curiosity to know what is going on in
somebody else's life and home and all that.
Some people have the evil habit of asking
other people's children and finding out what happens
in their home.
Evil, evil, evil.
Ungodly.
There we can learn a lesson from people
who lived before the old covenant.
To go backwards, eyes shut, ears shut, and
say my duty is only to cover.
That's none of my business.
And they walked backwards.
What a fantastic sense of respect they had
for their father.
Nobody taught them that.
What an attitude of heart.
And their faces were turned away.
There was no curiosity.
There was curiosity, but they put it to
death so that they did not see their
father's nakedness.
There can be a curiosity in the flesh
to see even the physical nakedness of others.
Evil, evil, filthy, demonic.
Put it to death.
It's there in the flesh to see the
nakedness of another, even physically.
Put it to death.
It is a polluted, filthy, evil thing.
An evil thing that resides in our flesh.
There we can learn a wonderful example from
Shem and Japheth.
To go backwards and turn their faces were
turned away long before the new covenant.
Turn your faces away from that physical and
any other type of nakedness that we know
there is somewhere.
What an example, particularly in these days when
there's so much of evil in this area
of people exposing their bodies.
That we learn to turn our faces away
and we put to death this evil curiosity
that wants to see the nakedness of another,
that wants to see the nakedness of another
in a newspaper or a magazine.
Is this anything?
To turn our faces away that we don't
want to see the nakedness of another in
some filthy newspaper or magazine.
Turn our faces away.
And when Noah awoke from his wine, he
knew.
I wonder how he knew.
There was some way, any way in which
he knew there was a sheet on top
of him.
He knew that somebody had put it and
he discovered.
We may think that there is no harm
in this curiosity and in this revealing the
nakedness of another, but see what happens.
Noah said concerning Ham, Cursed be Canaan.
Canaan, we read in verse 22, was the
son of Ham.
The curse came not only on the father,
but also on all his descendants.
Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants, the
lowest of servants, the margin says, he shall
be to his brothers.
He also said, Blessed be the Lord, the
God of Shem, and let Canaan be his
servant.
I just want to mention here that it
was through Shem, if you read in chapter
10 and 11, that Abraham came.
And through Abraham came Jacob and the tribes
of Israel.
And here was a prophecy that the Canaanites
would finally become servants to the descendants of
Shem.
Think on a small incident like that.
There's a saying in English that big doors
turn on small hinges.
And mighty events turned on that small hinge
that day in Noah's tent that lasted for
many centuries.
The Canaanites, the descendants of Ham, became the
slaves of the descendants of Shem.
The God of Shem, blessed be the Lord,
here was an indication that the Messiah, Jesus,
would finally come through Shem.
Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem,
and let Canaan be his servant and may
God enlarge Japheth and let him dwell in
the tents of Shem and let Canaan be
his servant.
I just want to say here, it says
in John chapter 8, a somewhat similar
incident, almost a similar incident, verse 3, John
8, 3, And the scribes and the Pharisees
brought a woman caught in adultery.
And having set her in the midst, they
said to him, that each of these women
has been caught in adultery in the very
act.
Think of the attitude of these Pharisees.
Out to expose the sin of another.
That's their only interest, to expose it, make
it known to the whole town that this
woman, publicly, I think, Jesus was in the
temple, verse 2, and there must have been
lots of other people in the temple, and
to publicly speak this woman, a lot of
people must have known this woman, and to
speak about her publicly in the presence of
all these people in the temple.
You can see something of the delight there
was in the evil hearts of these Pharisees
to expose the sin of this woman.
And in contrast, you see how the New
Testament begins.
It's a very beautiful picture to me in
Matthew chapter 1.
Matthew chapter 1, it says that when Mary
had become the pregnant with the body of
Jesus, and Joseph heard about it, verse 18.
It says, verse 19, it's Matthew 1, verse
19, Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man.
Notice in the New Testament the first description
of a righteous man in the New Testament.
Very important.
Take note of it.
He was a righteous man, and therefore he
did not want to disgrace her.
Think of that.
Desired to put her away secretly.
Think he could have said, Oh, this woman,
she claims to be pure and all that,
and engaged in marriage to me, and look
how she has behaved now.
Thank God he didn't say that, he would
have regretted it all his life when he
discovered the truth.
Think if he had gone around saying that,
and one day the angel comes and tells
him, Joseph, that is not by any evil
man, that is by the Holy Spirit.
Oh, what regret.
And think of the regret that will come
upon us one day when we discover the
truth about so many people about whom we
have spoken so lightly.
It is far safer to follow Joseph than
the Pharisees.
That is Shem and Japheth rather than Ham.
There was a curse on Ham and his
children.
We read later on that Ham was the
father of, verse 6 of chapter 10, Genesis
10, 6, Ham was the father of Cush
and Mizraim and Put and Canaan.
These are all nations that through the centuries
have been depressed and enslaved.
It is true.
It is a fact.
These are what is today in Arabia and
Africa.
Think how, what a great mighty door swung
around that small hinge.
And it was just this matter of not
minding your own business.
This matter of this pharisaical attitude of going
and exposing the nakedness of another instead of
covering it as 1 Peter 4 says, love
covers a multitude of sins.
In other words, we can say that love
has always got a sheet in its hand.
And love is always going backwards to cover.
It is one thing to go forward and
to see carefully and cover.
It is one degree of love.
A higher degree of love is that I
don't even want to see.
I want to go backwards and cover it.
I'm not interested in knowing what all evil
that person has done.
Unless I can help that person out, otherwise
I'm not interested.
Have fervent love among yourselves, it says, for
love covers a multitude of sins.
Going backwards, not forwards.
And may God give us all that fervent
love that is willing to go backwards to
cover what we see in another.
And I just want to say it is
very easy for Ham to criticize somebody like
Noah, not only as his father.
We can think of Noah as a man
of God, a servant of God, a prophet
of God, a preacher of righteousness.
And one can imagine how the devil must
have been after him for years.
Year after year after year.
The devil was after him and God saw
that.
Ham didn't see that.
Ham was like a lot of believers who
are quick to catch a fellow when he
slipped up once.
God doesn't see it like that.
God saw how Noah had resisted the devil
for year after year in all those 120
years and then he slipped up once.
What was Ham?
Ham would have been buried under that flood
if it were not for his father Noah.
And I thought it's so easy sometimes to
look at a servant of God and who
has sought to resist the devil here, there
year after year which nobody bothers to see
and then if he slips up in some
small place there are so many people quick
to point the finger ah, there he slipped
up just like Ham.
And we can ask these fellows who point
their finger where would they have been today
if they had not received the ministry of
such servants of God.
They would have been in the flood of
Babylon.
But they forget that and they are so
quick to point out something so small.
And there Ham we can say is the
father not only of Canaan but the father
of all such people that have lived throughout
the centuries including all such people who live
in the so called church who have that
attitude.
Ham is the father of all such people.
Like he says Abraham is the father of
the faithful.
Ham is also the father of many people
today who are quick to find out something.
Yeah, I can imagine that the devil was
delighted when he finally managed to trip Noah
up in a small thing after he didn't
succeed with him for 120 years to make
him compromise on his standards of righteousness.
Brothers and sisters that teaches us it's not
a safe thing to criticize an anointed servant
of God when he slips up and falls.
We can say that we have the ministry
of exposing evil.
I just want to give you a warning
here for those who are humble enough to
have ears to hear.
I believe that God gives that ministry to
very few people.
Jesus had it.
He stripped the Pharisees and said you generation
of vipers but I want to say that
less than 1% of believers are given
that ministry.
But a lot of people try to take
it up.
If God gives that ministry to a person
God will give grace to that person to
do it in the right way.
But I have seen a lot of young
people trying to imitate this ministry of Jesus
denouncing the Pharisees.
And in every case I have seen it
has damaged that own young brother's life.
He has had high thoughts about himself.
I have seen young brothers like that.
Year after year after year after year.
They never seem to progress spiritually.
And you can put this reason down at
this one thing.
They have got such high thoughts that they
think that they are there to expose the
false ministries of others.
I would encourage you my dear brothers particularly
young brothers just humble yourself.
Have small thoughts about yourself.
It is most unlikely that God has given
you that ministry.
And particularly if you think you have it
it is almost certain you don't have it.
I don't think most of us are in
that danger here but there are some of
us even sitting here who are in that
danger.
And therefore if a cat fits where it
take it seriously.
Because you can be a descendant of Ham
and end up with a ruined life in
your own case.
So it is good example we can follow
here in Shem that we are blessed and
that our children are also blessed.
Why do you want a curse to come
upon your children and your family by taking
upon yourself a ministry that God has not
given you?
Humble yourself.
Let the blessing of God come upon your
family.
So let me say that to everybody.
And we read here verse 27 May God
enlarge Japheth and let him dwell in the
tent of Shem.
That is a wonderful thing that God can
enlarge us that we can dwell in the
tents of our brothers.
Today we would stay in the same house.
Those days it was tents, today it's house.
Do you know that when you live in
the same house as your brother or your
sister and that means when you are married
first of all.
When you live in the same house with
another fellow believer what is the thing that
comes forth immediately?
When you begin say who is the one
you live with in the same house?
Usually your marriage partner.
Let's look at Shem and Japheth living in
the same tent as a husband and wife
living together.
What do they see in each other?
Nakedness.
By that I mean spiritually.
That means some failure.
Every one of us can say that you
have seen that we have seen more failures
in our own marriage partners than in anybody
else in the assembly.
Isn't that right?
What is that proof?
Does that prove you got the worst husband
or the worst wife in the whole world?
And yet you know so many things about
your marriage partner which bad things.
And you if you compare him or her
with all the others in the assembly they
all look so good.
Why?
Because you are dwelling in the same tent.
That's why you see the nakedness.
The problem is not with the other person.
If you dwelt in the same tent with
somebody else you would see just as many
weaknesses in other people.
But you are not dwelling in the same
tent.
You see them only in the meeting so
you don't know.
But when you dwell in the same tent
you see the nakedness.
And then it says God has to enlarge
you.
It says here may God enlarge Jackson so
that he can dwell in the tent of
Sharon.
It is impossible to dwell in the same
house as another brother or sister without an
enlarged heart.
You really have to have an enlarged heart
to have the sheath and to go backwards.
Think of a husband who had a sheath
always and was wanting to go backwards.
And the wife had a sheath and was
wanting to go backwards.
That really requires an enlarged heart.
Paul wrote to the Corinthians in 1 2
Corinthians 6 he said you fellows are so
narrow.
Our hearts are wide open to you.
The mark of a mature man like Paul
is that his heart is enlarged.
He can bear with the weaknesses of another.
He can even see a person caught in
adultery in the very act and have a
sheath.
That really requires a fantastically enlarged heart.
It is not easy unless a person has
really gone into the dying of Jesus and
got revelation on the sin in his own
flesh.
It is not easy to have that enlarged
heart.
We usually are like the Pharisees.
Oh this woman was caught in the very
act.
This is no story Lord.
I saw it with my own eyes.
It is not a second hand story that
somebody else came and told me.
With my own eyes.
With my own ears.
I heard it.
And we read about Jesus in Isaiah chapter
11 that in the days when he had
our flesh because he knew how deceptive this
flesh is like we heard in the conference.
There is a magnet.
The flesh is like a magnet by the
side of the compass needle always deflecting that
compass needle from the true north so that
I sincerely think true north is here.
I say I saw it with my own
eyes the magnet pointing in this direction.
I didn't see it reported.
I saw it with my own eyes the
magnet pointing in this direction.
The only thing is you were so stupid
that you did not see the magnet on
the side of that compass needle.
He didn't make allowance for your flesh.
We read that Jesus did make allowance for
his flesh.
It says in Isaiah 11 3 he will
not judge he will delight in the fear
of the Lord.
And one mark of his being so delighted
in the fear of God was that he
would not judge by what his eyes see
and he would not make a decision by
what his ears hear.
Why?
Because he says there is this magnet of
the flesh that works.
You can see Christ manifest in the flesh
from that verse.
If as people say that Jesus had a
perfect flesh then why can't he judge by
what his eyes see and his ears hear.
There was only one reason why Jesus could
not judge by what his eyes saw or
his ears heard.
That is because he had a flesh like
ours with lust in it that was deflecting
that compass needle.
And that is why Jesus did not sin.
I just want to encourage you my brothers
and sisters and encourage myself if we can
follow Jesus in this one area that I
will not judge by what my eyes see
in future.
I will not judge by what my ears
hear because I have a flesh.
If I were perfect without this flesh then
of course I can judge by what my
eyes see in heaven.
I can do that.
When I have a glorified body I see,
I say yeah, that's right.
I don't have a flesh to deflect my
compass needle.
But if we are humble on this earth
even when we see with our own eyes
and hear with our own ears we will
say yes, maybe there is some explanation for
that which I don't know.
I can't understand.
Maybe there is some good explanation why that
brother or sister did that or said that
or went here or spent his money like
that or did that to his child or
said that to the other person.
I don't know.
Maybe there is some very good reason that
is not within my boundary to pass a
judgment on that so I don't do it.
Think if you had that attitude that is
to spread a sheet.
Maybe there is some very good reason why
my wife said that or did that or
my husband said that or did that.
I can't know.
We have to die my brothers and sisters
to being specialists in analyzing the motives of
others.
We have to die to this because flesh
is a specialist.
He is a post-graduate.
He has done post-doctoral examinations and passed
in analyzing the motives of others and he
is completely wrong.
He is being trained by Satan.
The flesh has been trained by Satan to
analyze the motives.
It is sold into bondage to sin.
The Bible says in Romans 7 if we
believe it if all that we say about
the old wretched man that I am is
more than just a lot of hot air
coming out of our mouth if we really
believe it it will be no problem to
do what Jesus did not judged by what
our I.C.O. years here.
That in practical terms is to do what
Shem and Japheth did to go backwards to
say I don't know and I am not
really interested in knowing the details also.
When people come to us with all types
of tales and stories do you know what
it means to go backwards?
Somebody comes to your house with a tale
and a story about some other brother or
sister do you know what it means to
go backwards?
It means to say yes I am really
not interested in knowing all that unless I
can help in some way if I can
help if you think I can help then
please tell me all the details so that
I can help that person or let us
go together to one of the elders in
the church and let's talk to him straight
away about this particular matter because we are
concerned that is the right thing and when
somebody comes to you with a tale to
say I think that good that you have
a concern about that person let's go now
itself or tomorrow to see the elders of
the church and you also tell him what
you said to me just now you will
find many of them are not interested they
are not interested because they are not interested
in helping that person do you think the
Pharisees were interested in saving this woman from
an adulterous life?
No they did not come to seek and
to save they came to judge and to
condemn Jesus came to seek and Jesus came
to save so we need to have a
sheet and go backwards and we need to
have an enlarged heart towards all with whom
we live together in the same tent may
God enlarge our hearts as it says here
Genesis 9, 28 and Noah lived 350 years
after the flood so all the days of
Noah but 950 years and he died may
God enlarge Japheth so that he can dwell
in the tents of Shem means may there
always be fellowship between those who have learned
to cover the sins of others who were
Shem and Japheth?
Shem and Japheth were the ones who covered
the nakedness of others may there always be
good fellowship enlarged heart fellowship between those who
have learned to cover the sins of others