A while back in the Reader's Digest, there
was an article entitled, Parent Abuse.
We hear much today about child abuse, but
parent abuse is a problem too.
Many parents cannot express the frustration that they
feel at the rebellion and abuse that they
receive, especially from their teenagers.
And even in our society today, as people
are grown often, their young people abuse them
in neglect, in disrespect, and many other areas
of our society.
However, the Bible makes it very clear that
children are to honor their mother and their
father, to honor their parents.
Now certainly when we move from being under
their authority directly in the home, to adulthood
in marriage where we form our own family
unit, or we are released by them as
individuals to go on with our lives, not
under their direct authority anymore, that relationship does
change, it modifies as we move through.
But while I believe that that submission area
is progressively modified as we move through into
adult years, I believe that the matter of
honoring our parents is never changed.
And yet we see so much disrespect to
older people and to parents today.
In fact, I believe if we fail to
honor our parents all through our lives and
their lives, that we will incur very serious
consequences, that God's wrath and God's correction and
God's chastisement is even upon believers who neglect
or abuse their parents, or grandparents, or older
people.
Have you ever told your children the story
of the two bears?
No, not the story of the three bears,
you probably told them that one.
In 2 Kings chapter 2 and verses 23
and 24, there's a story of two bears.
We won't take the time to look at
it now, but you can look it up
later.
And it's a story that every young person
should hear.
The prophet Elisha, an older man who happened
to be bald, as men are apt to
be, was walking along one day and a
bunch of children saw him.
And they started mocking him, and they said,
Go up, thou bald head!
And they were mocking him for his bald
head, the prophet of God.
The Bible tells us that two bears came
out of the woods and tore 42 of
those children.
You say, well, that sounds like a horrible
thing for God to do.
I believe there are very serious consequences, and
I think that's why God put that in
the Bible.
Do you know in the Old Testament that
when young people were rebellious and incorrigible and
could not be straightened out by their parents,
even though they had disciplined them, were so
rebellious that they could not be straightened out
at the home level?
They weren't allowed to just go out into
society as they do in Sweden today and
give them welfare and let them live on
their own because they've divorced their parents.
Or in our society, let young people just
go out and live on welfare or those
kind of programs.
They were stoned to death.
You say, what a horrible thing that God
would ever call for that.
Yet I think the severity of the punishments,
the severity of God's dealing with those issues
shows the severity of the crimes themselves and
the abominable destruction that happens to a society
when they allow disrespect for authority to permeate
the community life.
Today in our society, the people that are
most prone to crime, to drug abuse, these
kind of things are not the hardened criminal.
We used to think of the thug, you
know, the 30 or 40-year-old hardened
criminal.
Those aren't generally the people that are committing
the crimes.
It's teenagers.
Uncontrolled in their own families, now uncontrolled in
society.
I believe in this passage today, we're going
to learn the seriousness of showing proper honor
to our parents.
We're going to look at four sections in
these verses.
First of all, the security that they had.
Secondly, the situation they were in.
Thirdly, the sins that they committed.
And then the significance and the result of
those sins.
First of all, in verses 8 through 17,
we see a tremendous security that God brought
to these people following the great cataclysm, the
worldwide flood that they had experienced.
And I believe they needed some security.
They were probably wondering whether it was going
to happen again.
I mean, they knew they were still sinners.
They knew that they still sinned.
They knew they still had evil hearts.
And I think they were just waiting if
they just did one thing wrong, or if
they just went a little bit too far,
all of a sudden it was going to
start raining again.
And maybe they wouldn't have an heart this
time.
And they'd been traumatized by this experience.
And you know, if you've been through a
traumatic experience of the loss of a loved
one, or some crime that is committed upon
you, or some horrible catastrophe that has happened
in your family, you know that you have
this feeling of possible dread and gloom that
this could happen again.
I think they felt like that, and so
God in His grace gave them His covenant.
We see this here in verses 8 through
17.
And God spake unto Noah and to his
sons with him, saying, I, and I behold
I, establish my covenant with you and with
your seed after you.
And with every living creature that is with
you, of the fowl, of the cattle, of
every beast of the earth with you, from
all that go out of the ark to
every beast of the earth, and I will
establish my covenant with you.
Neither shall all flesh be cut off any
more by the waters of a flood, neither
shall there be any more be a flood
to destroy the earth.
He made a covenant with them, a bereath
in Hebrew.
A covenant is not a contract.
Here a covenant made by God was unilateral.
It was made on behalf of Himself.
You notice as He enforces that, when He
makes the covenant, He says, and I, even
I, will establish my covenant with you.
The emphasis was on Him, not on the
people.
Praise God that our security and our salvation
is not based in us.
If it were, it would be hopeless.
We wouldn't be able to even get it,
let alone hold on to it.
But our salvation is based in God and
what He has done for us in the
new covenant that we have in Christ, that
we remind ourselves of in obedience to Him
every time we come to the Lord's table.
We're reminded of the covenant.
He said, this cup is the new covenant
in my blood.
And so we have a covenant.
God is the maker of the covenant.
The objects of the covenant are all flesh,
including us as the descendants coming down from
Noah.
And even the animals are included within the
covenant here, even as the animals were preserved
on the ark.
All flesh are the subjects of this covenant.
And the covenant is concerning this, that there
will never be another universal flood.
Now, by the way, if the flood, as
some people say, was only a local flood,
then God broke His covenant because there's been
local floods, big ones around the earth since
then.
The covenant was that there would never be
a universal flood that would destroy all flesh,
as had already happened during that time.
And so we see God making a covenant.
Turn with me to Hebrews 8, verse 10,
to see the covenant that is made with
believers, with all who are in Christ, there
is a covenant also.
Now, this covenant was made with saved, unsaved
everybody, the covenant, the Noahic covenant.
And everybody enjoys that protection.
Every person on this earth enjoys the protection
and will know that there will never be
a worldwide flood.
No matter if the polar ice caps melt
or whatever else happens, there will never be
a worldwide flood.
God is withholding the waters that that will
not happen again.
But look at Hebrews 10, or rather 8
and verse 10.
Hebrews 8, 10.
For this is the covenant that I will
make with the house of Israel after those
days, saith the Lord.
I will put my laws into their mind
and write them in their hearts, and I
will be to them a God and they
shall be to me a people.
He talks about the new covenant, as spoken
of by Christ in the book of Matthew,
that has now been made with us as
believers.
We have entered into the new covenant that
results in a new heart.
Not just an outward preservation from the flood,
but from inward preservation, from spiritual death in
hell forever.
That is the new covenant, made and sealed
with the blood of Christ.
Now, it's interesting that marriage is spoken of
as a covenant.
We speak of the covenant of marriage.
And the word covenant is the right word
to use for marriage, rather than the word
contract.
Because a contract is based on mistrust between
parties.
Isn't that why you have contracts in business?
You don't trust the guy, so you want
to see it in writing.
You want to have a legal document.
You check with your lawyer and you make
sure, because you don't trust him.
Maybe he won't fulfill his part of the
bargain.
And so you have a contract.
A contract is made between two parties on
somewhat of an equal basis.
That if one breaks his side of the
contract, well, then the other one has the
right usually to break his side of the
contract.
But marriage is not a contract, just made
between two people.
Most people in our society think so.
Marriage is a covenant, made in the eyes
of God and held to by Him.
What God has joined together, let not man
put asunder.
That's why marriage should not be broken, even
if it's miserable, even if it's rotten, even
if it's a big problem.
God says that marriage is a covenant made
before God and it should never be broken
and it cannot be broken without sin.
And so we see the covenant that God
made with us.
And you know what?
When we have a marriage, what do we
do as part of the marriage ceremony?
We give a token of the covenant.
And the preacher says, what tokens do you
give that you will fulfill your vows?
And then they usually hand the ring to
the preacher and the preacher gives it to
her and then she puts the ring in
his finger and he puts the ring in
her finger.
And that's the token of the covenant.
And for the rest of their lives, they
can look at their hand anytime and say,
oh yeah, I'm married.
There it is.
That's the token.
They might not feel married.
They might not want to be married.
But they're married.
There's the token.
The token of the covenant.
Some people have said that it was a
ring because of the eternity of our love.
But I hate to tell you this, but
marriage is not eternal.
Some of you would be glad to hear
that, but it is not eternal.
Marriage is till death we part.
It's not eternal.
No matter what the Mormons say, there's no
eternal marriage.
Marriage is till death of one of the
parties.
So there's a token given and God in
having this covenant here with mankind, he gives
a token.
And what does he give?
He gives a ring.
A ring.
We notice what the ring is in verse
12 through 17.
God said, this is the token of the
covenant which I make between me and you
and every living creature that is with you
for perpetual generations.
I do set my bow in the cloud
and it shall be a token of a
covenant between me and the earth.
I understand rainbows are really round, but you
can't see the whole thing from here.
But he gave them his ring, this circle,
this rainbow as the token of the covenant.
Now, some people, scientists that understand these things
better than I do say, well, there probably
wasn't a rainbow due to the atmospheric conditions
before the flood.
They probably couldn't have rainbows and things were
operating on a different scientific basis.
We don't know.
It looks like here, God gave the rainbow
here.
And he gave it as a token.
So that when people looked up in the
sky and the clouds were gathering and everything,
again, they think, they probably, every time the
clouds gathered here, they would think, hey, maybe
there's going to be another flood.
Maybe it's not going to stop raining this
time.
But when they saw the rainbow, they say,
oh yes, we have a covenant.
God has promised us that the earth will
never be flooded again, completely.
And when they saw the ring, they were
reminded of their relationship with God.
And so it was evidence.
The word token means evidence, that which makes
manifest a visible pledge.
This word token is used in several ways
in the Bible.
In the Old Testament, it's used of circumcision
as a token of Israel's covenant with God.
Genesis 1.14 says that the sun and
moon are tokens or signs, as it's translated
there, of God's love and care.
Every time you look up and see the
sun and the moon, you know that God
is there.
And he's promised the sun and moon would
shine as long as the earth stands.
And then we see the signs in Egypt,
the tokens that God gave of his power
to the Egyptians.
He says, I'm powerful now.
Here's my way of proving it.
And the frogs and the bugs and the
water turning to blood.
And then eventually the sign of the death
of the firstborn in every home.
He says, I'm powerful.
And here's the proof of it, the token
of it.
In Ezekiel 20, we're told that the Sabbath
was a sign or a token between God
and Israel of their special relationship.
In Isaiah 7, 14, the Lord said to
the king, he says, I'll give you a
sign.
Ask a sign in the heaven above or
the earth beneath.
And he said, no, I'm not going to
ask for a sign.
Well, God says, well, I'm going to give
you a sign.
A virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
shall call his name Emmanuel.
That's a sign.
The virgin birth of Christ is a sign
that this child is the son of God.
That was the sign.
It is an outward manifestation of some inward
reality.
You look at somebody's finger and say, oh,
she's married.
He's married.
How can you tell?
Well, there's a ring on that finger.
It's interesting that in the New Testament, we
see that the Holy Spirit is given to
us as the earnest of the Spirit, the
earnest of the Spirit, of our relationship with
God as believers.
You know what the word earnest means?
In the Greek, it's arabon, which even in
modern Greek means an engagement ring, which spoke
of a binding covenant made before God between
a man and a woman that He would
marry her, a promise confirmed by a token.
The Holy Spirit is our token of that
covenant today.
He dwells within every believer.
He convicts us of sin.
He guides us.
He prompts us.
He opens the Word of God to us.
He enables us to pray.
And if you're a believer, you know you're
a believer, and one of the reasons you
know it is because the Holy Spirit indwells
you and chastens you and teaches you and
guides you.
That's your arabon.
That's your token.
That's your sign of your covenant relationship with
God.
And you can base the security of your
salvation upon the fact that the Holy Spirit
genuinely indwells you.
Because if any man have not the Spirit
of Christ, he is none of His.
You can have the outward appearance of Christianity.
You can go to church.
You can dress right and act right and
be moral and everything else.
But if the Holy Spirit does not dwell
in you, you are none of His.
If the Holy Spirit dwells in you, you
may have your failures.
You may have your frustrations.
You may fall into sin from time to
time.
You may have difficulty going forward in your
Christian life.
But if the Holy Spirit indwells you and
you sense His presence and power and work
in your life, then you know that you
are His.
And you have the security that you will
never perish.
You will never go to hell because the
Holy Spirit indwells you as the arabon, the
token, the sign of the covenant that has
been made and sealed in the blood of
Christ.
I was reading where, in the old days,
pastors in England used to teach their people
that every time they saw a rainbow, they
should pray.
Every time they saw a rainbow, they should
pray and thank God for His covenant with
them that He would never destroy the earth
with another flood again.
And so Noah and his sons enjoyed now
unprecedented security.
They knew what would not happen to them.
We too in Christ know what will not
happen to us.
We know that we will never perish because
no one can pluck us out of the
hand of Jesus Christ in Him.
And so secondly, we see not only their
security, but we see the particular situation they
were in, in verses 18 through 20.
We have a little history now of what
happened.
And the sons of Noah that went forth
of the ark, there were three, Shem, Ham,
and Japheth.
And Ham is the father of Canaan.
You say, well, so what?
Well, you'll find out so what in just
a little while, but he's introducing a character
here.
He mentions three sons and one grandson.
There were a lot more grandsons, granddaughters.
But he mentions three sons, the three sons,
the only three sons of Noah, and mentions
one of the grandsons.
And we'll see a little bit more about
him later.
Remember Canaan and think about him.
We'll come to him later.
Three sons.
Verse 19, these are the three sons of
Noah and of them was the whole earth
overspread.
Now that teaches just as plain as can
be that everybody on the earth is a
descendant of Noah and his three sons and
their wives were descendants and that we are
descendants of those.
The major races of the world as we
understand them would basically spring out of these
three individuals.
Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Now in our day there's multiplied even more
as 150 nations over 3,000 language groups
and so many more ethnic groups and all
of that.
And we don't know exactly how that all
fits into this, but we know that everybody
goes back to Noah and to his three
sons.
Now the situation was that Noah was a
farmer.
Verse 20, began to be a husbandman.
So far so good.
He's a farmer.
And he planted a vineyard.
Nothing wrong with that.
So he's got a vineyard.
He's got a nice family life.
Got a nice little farm.
Got the security of God's covenant and his
promise.
He's got the rainbow in the sky.
No more flood.
After all those years of building the ark,
riding out the storms, keeping track of the
animals, keeping track of the kids and the
grandkids and getting it all off the ark
and getting settled.
I mean, that's a lot to go through
for a man.
Now he's had several hundred years to do
it, but I think he was coming to
a time when he thought maybe he could
settle down a little bit.
Things were really starting to click.
He worked his way through some tremendous cataclysmic
changes in his life and now things really
seem to be going well.
But as one person said, when everything seemed
to all be going well, watch out because
you're going to have a challenge.
And he did.
Because that secure, happy picture was soon shattered
by what happened next.
The sins.
Verses 21 to 24.
And he drank of the wine and was
drunken.
And he was uncovered in his tent.
And Ham, the father of Canaan, remember him,
saw the nakedness of his father and told
his two brethren without.
And Shem and Japheth took a garment and
laid it upon both their shoulders, went backward,
covered the nakedness of their father and their
faces were backward and they saw not their
father's nakedness.
Noah woke from his wine and knew what
his younger son had done unto him.
Now I believe there's a certain veiling for
decency that went on here.
But I believe there was something very, very
immoral that took place here.
I don't know all the details.
I don't care to know and I'm glad
God shielded them from our eyes.
But something very perverted happened here.
First of all, it started by him drinking.
He let down the guard after a great
victory.
You know, that often happens.
We see men in the Bible.
Today we call it a midlife crisis.
In those days they just called it sin.
Elijah has had the great victory on Mount
Carmel with the prophets of Baal.
He's won the victory of the two altars
and the fire has come down from heaven
and consumed the altar and everybody says we're
going to follow the Lord and what a
great victory.
Just a few days later we see him
by the brook.
He says, Lord, take my life.
Jezebel's going to kill me.
I don't want him to do it.
He's afraid of a woman.
He's taken out hundreds of prophets in the
whole nation.
He's afraid of one woman.
Maybe rightfully so.
I don't know.
Some women, you know, can be a real
threat.
But, here he was after the great victory,
depressed, suicidal, even.
Do you know when most pastors leave a
church after they've just completed a big building
project?
I don't know if they're exhausted or they
get proud or what happens.
I don't know.
But it's so often in people's lives the
greatest time of vulnerability to sin is after
they've had a big victory in their lives
because Satan goes about as a roaring lion
seeking who he may devour and he hits
us at our most vulnerable time.
When you've had a big victory, you feel
like, hey, I'm as spiritual as I've ever
been.
Ever feel like that?
Maybe you had some big sin in your
life.
You came to Christ and you had some
big problem and you just knew, boy, if
you could get that thing licked, you knew
that the rest of your Christian life would
just be smooth sailing if you could get
that one big habit problem licked.
And maybe you eventually got that licked and
you got it settled and you all got
it straightened out.
And you think, hey, the rest of the
things in Christian life are going to be
easy.
And all of a sudden you get bogged
down and you find that there are even
harder things to deal with, inward things of
the heart.
And I think this was a situation with
Noah who relaxed his guard.
You remember David?
Oh, he'd conquered all the kings around about
him.
He was at the height of his grandeur.
He didn't have to go out to battle
anymore.
He had his army disorganized.
They could win all the victories without him.
And so he stayed home.
What did he end up with?
Bathsheba and murder and adultery.
All that frustration and sin.
Solomon, the greatest extent the nation of Israel
ever had, and peace and glory and riches
flowing into his kingdom from all over the
known world.
He starts marrying heathen wives and ends up
bowing down before idols.
Be careful.
There's a real danger, especially when men have
achieved a certain level in their lives where
they've strived to achieve in their job, especially.
And they've gotten to that position where they've
sort of peaked out as far as their
careers go or so they think.
And that time is very dangerous because they're
often open to many, many temptations.
Women, especially, are open to this kind of
temptation when they have raised their children or
so they think.
When the children are left home, the empty
nest, often a time of tremendous vulnerability in
our lives.
Times of greatest achievement can be a time
of greatest temptation.
Vacation time, a time of great vulnerability to
Satan.
Sometimes people take a vacation from the Lord,
you know.
Take a vacation from church.
Don't have to go to church.
Take a vacation from their daily devotions.
They don't need it.
And they find themselves falling into sin on
their vacation and they come back frustrated and
slip back in their Christian life rather than
moving forward.
And so, he started drinking.
Then he got drunk.
Noah had conquered the flood.
He'd conquered all kinds of tremendous obstacles, but
the bottle got to him.
How many men who have conquered great things
and have done great things in their lives
have been done in by a little bottle?
Walter Crume, the director of the Aberdeen Serviceman's
Christian Center, was sharing his devotions with the
board meeting last week.
He said, you know, he says, my dad
was quite a well-to-do farmer.
Had several children down south and had a
very prosperous farm.
Made lots of money.
Did very well.
But then he got into the moonshine business.
Started making moonshine and selling it and began
drinking.
And it ended up that he lost everything.
Left his family.
I don't think Walt ever saw his father
after he was nine years old.
His father left.
Never came back.
He just heard recently that his father had
died on the street in Washington, D.C.
in 1972 as a bum on the street.
All because of that bottle that he meant.
How many people have been destroyed by alcohol?
And yet many people say, well, the Bible
doesn't say anything wrong with alcohol.
Bible doesn't say anything bad about drinking.
No problem.
If you think so, copy down some references
and look them up.
I won't take time now, but look at
Proverbs 21.
Wine is a mocker and strong drink is
raging and whosoever is deceived thereby is not
wise.
That doesn't sound like a commercial for alcohol,
does it?
Proverbs 23, 29 to 35 is a whole
section that says, who hath woe, who hath
contention, who hath redness of the eye.
And it goes on and it says those
who tarry long at the wine, those who
seek after mixed wine, and how they have
family problems and personal problems and health problems
and money problems as a result of the
dominance of alcohol in their lives.
Several other passages, Isaiah 5, 11 and 22,
Isaiah 28, 7.
In the New Testament, Ephesians 5, 18, be
not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but
be drunk
with wine, drunk with wine, and be drunk
with wine, and be drunk with wine, and
be drunk with wine, and be drunk with
and be and be drunk with wine, and
be drunk with wine, and be drunk with
wine, and be drunk with wine.
The Bible says in first Corinthians 5, 11
that we should not associate with a man
who calls himself a brother but is a
drunkard.
In first Corinthians 6, 10 it says that
drunkards will not inherit the kingdom of God,
those who at all are affected by alcohol
and will allow alcohol to affect their lives.
Now, that's what the Bible says.
And Noah didn't know that Noah didn't have
Ephesians 518.
But I think he should have known better,
and he sinned and he had the results
of his sin.
He drank, he became drunken and he became
uncovered in his tent.
I don't know who uncovered him.
I don't know the whole situation.
But something very perverted happened there.
You know, alcohol is a product of decay.
You don't have alcohol without decay.
It's a rotting process.
It's a decay process.
And just as alcohol is produced by physical
decay of the fruit of the vine or
whatever else is used.
So it brings moral decay into the life
of everyone who spends their time with it.
There are three steps to ruin here.
First of all, the drinking.
Secondly, the drunkenness.
And then thirdly, the immorality and perversion.
And these three steps are involved.
Wherever you find alcoholism, you will find immorality
as well.
Well, you say, well, how do you prevent
that?
How can you prevent going down that road?
Well, some people would say the way to
prevent it is to not ever get to
number two, the drunkenness to get a drink,
just don't get drunk.
I personally believe that it's much clearer in
the scriptures that we ought to start with
number one.
If we don't drink, we'll never become drunken.
If we're never drunk and we won't become
in that kind of perversion.
And so we see drink drunk, uncovered three
steps of sin on Noah's part, one of
the greatest men I've ever lived.
I think one of the greatest proofs of
the inspiration of this book is that it
tells us not only the good things about
these men, tells us bad things, too.
Now, if if we thought that you were
some great person and we wanted to elevate
you and get everybody to think you're a
great person and we wrote a biography of
your life, you think we would tell details
like that?
No, we'd say, well, they don't really need
to know that.
It was later in his life.
He'd already achieved everything.
And we wouldn't want to cast any kind
of, you know, bad light on this great
individual.
God tells us the whole story.
What about the other people in their sins?
Well, we see him and his response to
the sin and foolishness and immorality of his
father.
What does he do?
Him, the father, can he drops in to
see dad?
He goes in there and there he is.
And he sees the naked, the word see
there is interesting, it means gazed upon where
you are, it's not the normal word for
looking at.
In Hebrew, he gazed upon the nakedness of
his father.
It's the first pornography in the Bible.
He gazed upon the nakedness of his father.
And what did he do?
Did he cover him up?
Did he help him out?
No.
He goes out and he tells his brothers,
hey, come here, I want you to see
some.
The Bible says that he went joyfully, told
his brothers joyfully, told them with joy.
Is this who you're announcing some good news?
You know, the Bible says that love covers
a multitude of sins.
The Bible says that love does not rejoice
in iniquity.
You know, if we removed everything from television
that involved rejoicing in iniquity and laughing at
drunkenness and laughing at sin, we wouldn't have
very much left, would we?
Most comedy and humor is based on making
fun of people.
Making fun of people often are in serious
problems.
We were riding down the road, boys and
I riding down Montgomery Road the other day,
saw a police car, saw a truck stop
there.
And we saw a man trying to walk
a line.
You ever see a drunk try to walk
the line?
Well, he was apologizing.
He just he just couldn't walk that line.
He looked like he was walking a tightrope,
but he couldn't.
He couldn't walk the line right on the
pavement.
I guess my first reaction in the flesh
was sort of laughing.
It was a little funny.
You know, he's trying to walk the line.
He couldn't do it.
Then I was gripped by a real a
real sadness for him.
Here was a man being dominated by alcohol
who couldn't even walk a straight line, let
alone drive a vehicle properly.
But here when Ham saw his father this
way, first of all, he stares at it.
Second, he brings other people in to see
it.
You say, oh, what's so weird?
What's so special about that?
I won't take the time, but if you
want to study this, look at Leviticus 18,
six to nine, where it goes down.
The whole chapter spends time on saying, don't
look on the nakedness of this person.
Don't look at the nakedness of this person.
It goes all down a whole list of
people.
And it equates this with sexual activity.
Leviticus 20 also, verses 11 to 21.
Same way.
Won't take time to look at it.
I'm embarrassed to look at it, but you
might want to check it out if you
have some questions about Ezekiel 22, verse 10
speaks of discovering a father's nakedness and how
sinful that is.
One interesting verse is Revelation 3, 18.
It says that we were not right with
God, who do not know him, may think
that we are clothed, but actually we are
naked.
We are like the king and his clothes,
who supposedly was wearing clothes that only wise
men could see.
But actually, a little boy said he's naked.
And that's the situation most people today.
They're like Adam and Eve, they are stitching
clothes of their own, making to cover their
sinfulness and their nakedness before God.
And God says, I've got to provide a
covering for you.
And that's what God did here for Noah,
for his sin.
God allowed his other two sons to have
the sense and the respect for their father
to go in and take care of him.
That's what they did.
They didn't go in and mock him.
They didn't even get involved in that pornographic
kind of looking at their father in that
situation.
What they did was they walked backwards.
Can you see this kind of thing?
They're walking backwards and their eyes closed.
They went backward and they didn't look and
they covered their father up and they showed
respect for him, even though he was wrong.
You know, I believe that young people ought
to have respect for their parents, even when
their parents are wrong.
Even if you disagree with your parents, you
respect them.
Young people, if your parents do something you
think is unfair, unjust, not right, you still
are obligated by God to honor them.
That means you speak to them in an
honorable way.
You speak to them in a respectful way.
You don't sass them.
You don't argue with them.
You don't argue back.
You respond to them in a right kind
of a way and you submit to their
authority unless they're telling you, of course, to
do some direct sin.
And so we see here Shem and Japheth,
so many parallels to the fall.
It's like we're starting all over again.
God had to start the world over again.
I heard President Reagan talking about we're going
to start the world over again in some
speech.
You guys said I hope it would happen
last time they started over again.
Here went the whole thing again.
You know, we see so many similarities.
We see nakedness.
We see a covering provided by someone else.
We see eating a fruit, getting them into
trouble.
We see a prophecy and we see a
curse and a blessing.
This is like starting all over again and
all the same problems all over again.
You know, we could start all over again
with you.
You say, well, Adam and Eve, they messed
it up.
Noah, he messed it up.
Why don't we give the world another chance?
We'll start with me.
I'll tell you what, it'd be worse.
I think any of us would probably do
worse than Adam and Eve ever did or
Noah ever did.
If we were given the chance to start
the world over again, because we're the same
kind of people, we have sinfulness in us
as well.
I think that when Noah woke up and
he realized what had happened to him and
he had this awful, awful feeling of what
had happened, the shattering of the peaceful, secure
situation he had, he'd know now that sin
was out in the open.
He was destroyed by it in so many
ways.
But he realized that he had done wrong.
He realized his one son had done wrong.
And he also realized the respect that his
other two sons had showed for him.
And then we see the significance of it
in verses twenty five down through twenty nine.
And as a result of that situation, he
says this and he said, cursed be Canaan,
a servant of servants, shall he be unto
his brethren?
And he said, blessed be the Lord God
of Shem and Canaan shall be his servant.
God shall enlarge Japheth and he shall dwell
in the tents of Shem and Canaan shall
be his servant.
This was the Noahic curse that was put
upon Canaan.
Now, for many years, this was the proof
text for racial discrimination in this country and
especially in the south of our country, fundamental
Bible, believing gospel preaching, born again, pastors and
evangelists preached that the black people were cursed
because of this passage and therefore they deserve
to be servants and slaves and that this
was God's will and that we had to
keep them down because this was just helping
God fulfill his word with a curse on
the black race.
But that isn't what it means.
I mean, it's just, you know, it's as
simple as that.
That isn't what it means.
And you notice that Ham, who is probably
the ancestor of the African people in a
black race, among many other races, many other
people groups, was not the one that was
cursed.
He was the one that sinned, but he
wasn't the one that was cursed.
It was his one son, Canaan, Noah's grandson
that was cursed.
The curse was not upon him.
The curse was upon Canaan.
Now, let me ask a question.
Who did God use to write down the
book of Genesis?
A little quiz here.
Who did God use to write down the
book of Genesis?
Who wrote the book of Genesis?
Moses.
OK, Moses wrote the book of Genesis.
I believe by inspiration, God saw to it
that Moses included in the word here this
event about the curse upon Canaan, because what
was just about to come following Moses lifetime,
the total eradication of the Canaanite nation within
the land of Israel.
Why?
Because of this verse and because of their
expression of evil as a result of it,
because their perverted practices coming here is no
reason.
The Canaanites are the Canaanites.
They weren't black.
Notice Canaan and Ham.
Look at Genesis 10, 19.
Genesis 10, 19.
Let's see where the Canaanites lived.
I think this will start to all fit
together for you as you see how these
things go.
Verse 19 of chapter 10, the border of
the Canaanites was from Sidon.
Oh, you remember Sidon.
That's still in the news today.
Tyrant Sidon.
As it comes to Gerar and to Gaza,
that's in the south, the Gaza Strip you've
heard about in the news as they go
on to what?
Sodom and Gomorrah.
That's interesting, isn't it?
You know, Sodom and Gomorrah was peopled by
Canaanites.
Why did God destroy Sodom and Gomorrah?
Because of the immorality, the perversion within it.
Why did God then go on and destroy
the remainder of the Canaanites who lived in
Canaan by telling Joshua to kill the man,
woman and children and even animals?
Is because they were the offspring of this
perverted grandson of Noah, Canaan.
It's interesting here.
I think there's a lesson to be learned
here.
We see that Canaan's father, Ham, showed disrespect
to his father and his son is the
one that bore the curse.
I think that's going to that's going to
happen in our society as well.
So many grown people, parents are disrespectful to
their own parents.
And I know that's a tricky area, it's
difficult to care for parents, and I haven't
had to do that yet, but there's so
many people who are not don't even they
put them in nursing homes, never visit them.
They mock them.
They make fun of them about their inabilities
and they forget things and all these kind
of problems that older people have.
And they mock their own parents and neglect
them and abuse them, and then they wonder
why their own children are disrespectful to them
and don't treat them with a value and
respect that they should have.
And I believe God has a lesson for
us here as grownups.
If we do not respect our parents, we
can expect our own children to bear the
curse and even their descendants after them.
And perhaps not even in the way that
we have done it, but in perversion.
I believe that much of the immorality and
perversion comes from the fact that in our
society, there is little respect for older people.
Somebody is telling me that's one of the
reasons why it's been so hard to evangelize
Japan.
We go in them, tell they need the
gospel because they learn how to live right,
and then they look at us as Americans.
They see how messed up our families are,
how messed up our culture is, where Christianity
is supposedly dominant and they see the respect.
And I think that's one of the reasons
why they're killing us economically is because they
have respect in their culture and they have
an orderliness in their culture that we lack.
The Canaanites, you can look it up a
little bit further, Joshua 9, 23, Judges 130.
It says that it was a fulfillment of
this curse, that it was the destruction of
the people of Canaan.
And I won't go into the details of
morality when we study the archaeology of Canaan
and see the kind of things that they're
offering their children as sacrifices.
And they're involved in all kinds of unmentionable
perversions.
That's why God had them destroyed.
There's no racism here.
There's no excuse for racism in the Church
of Jesus Christ, in Christ for all one.
Somebody said 11 o'clock is the most,
is the most, what's the word?
Segregated hour of the week in America, shouldn't
be Church of Jesus Christ made up of
all people.
We're not together because this is a white
church.
We had some people come in here and
said, oh, like this church, it's a white
church.
I said, well, we don't really have as
many black people as we'd like to have
here, but this is not a white church.
This is God's church.
We're together because we love Jesus, not because
we're white.
And if you're here because you're white, you're
here for the wrong reason.
In Christ, there is a unity that transcends
racial, economic, all kinds of backgrounds.
We're all one in Christ.
Praise God for that.
We are a new nation, a holy nation
in Christ, made up of them who have
common fatherhood in Jesus Christ and therefore are
brothers here upon earth here and now.
There's no place in Christ's church for racial
prejudice, and if you've got a problem with
racial prejudice and you look down on people
of other races, you've got a problem.
It's not somebody else that's got a problem.
You've got a problem.
I need to go before the Lord and
realize that before God, God loves all people.
He's made all people of one blood that
dwell in the face of this earth.
Now, people are different.
I believe there are racial differences.
I believe there's individual differences and there's family
differences and we're all different.
But in the eyes of God, we are
of equal value to him.
And in Christ, we have a oneness that
transcends and must transcend all of those things.
We'll get into that a little bit later
as we move on through the next couple
of chapters here and see some of these
issues.
But we see Shem, he says the Lord
God of Shem is blessed.
The Semites have been the ones who have
especially been the ones that God has used
to reveal himself through, and the Jewish nation
came out of Shem and the Semites.
He begot Jehovah, revealed himself through the Semite
race, and then Japheth will be enlarged and
he will dwell in the tents of Shem.
And that's basically us in the West, how
we we are not Jewish, but we have
gotten our faith from the Jewish nation, haven't
we?
We dwell in the tents of Shem.
We fellowship with Christ through what he has
revealed through them.
And so the curse was not on blacks,
but it was on the Canaanites who were
destroyed by Joshua.
Well, just to sum it up, what can
we learn from this passage?
Several things you might want to make note
of.
First of all, we are secure in our
salvation because of God's finished work through Christ,
not our own.
My salvation is secure in him, not in
me.
If it was secure in me, it wouldn't
be very secure because I have my ups
and downs, but it's secure in him who
never changes, who has accomplished that covenant work.
Secondly, the sin of drunkenness can destroy an
otherwise peaceful home life.
Don't start to drink alcohol.
You can make that choice.
You don't need it.
You can be filled the spirit and have
all the joy you need.
Thirdly, we must not look on other people's
nakedness.
We must flee any type of pornography like
the plague.
It will destroy us.
It will pervert us and will pervert our
children.
Fourthly, we must not mock our parents when
they're foolish or when they sin or when
they are unable to do certain things.
We must respect them even when they are
wrong.
And fifthly, must show respect to our parents
even when they're wrong.
Or so that number six, that black people
are no more cursed than anyone else.
We're all cursed.
You know that?
We're all under a curse because of sin.
Black people no more curse than white people.
We're all cursed outside of Christ and we're
all blessed in Christ and we're all brothers
and sisters in Christ.
What a wonderful unit that we can have
as God blends us all together in the
body of Christ to do his will.
And then number seven, believers must set an
example of honor and respect for their parents.
I don't think there's anybody that ought to
respect and care for and honor their parents
more than believers.
We ought to set the example for the
world to see that we honor God and
honor authority because we honor those who God
has chosen to be our parents.
Let's bow in prayer.
Perhaps God has convicted your heart today as
a believer.
You say.
You've not only stepped on my toes today,
the Holy Spirit has pierced my heart with
that sword of the word and I have
some sins I need to confess.
Do business with God right now.
Confess it and don't argue with him.
Confess it to him if you know what's
wrong.
Confess that sin to him.
When our way of thinking disagrees with God's
way of thinking, it's us that must change.
So confess it to him right now.
Tell him you've been wrong.
Confess that sin to him, then ask for
his cleansing and claim it.
He said that he is able to cleanse
us from all sin through his blood on
the cross.
If we'll confess our sins to him and
then claim his power over that sin, you'd
be able to conquer it in your life,
whatever it is.
He'll give you victory.
You can't.
Don't worry about that.
He can give the victory if you're willing,
if you're yielded to him.
Then perhaps some here today say, I'm not
even saved.
I don't know God.
I really don't know him personally.
I can't say that I know in person.
I can't say the Holy Spirit dwells in
me.
I'm not sure I'm saved.
I'm not sure that I'm going to heaven
when I die, but I want to be
sure that's a desire in my heart today.
How many just by the upraised hand would
say pastor?
We're happy to have with us tonight Graham
and Libby Gucci from the Bethany Christian Services.
They're quite active in this area in providing
an alternative to young ladies who might otherwise
seek abortions.
And we praise the Lord for their positive
action in dealing with this problem and leading
young ladies to Christ.
And so we're going to turn the rest
of the program over to them at this
time.
I'd like to begin by just focusing for
a few moments on a few verses of
scripture.
The verse that I would like to start
with comes in what may seem like a
very unlikely place, the epistle of James.
In the very last verse of the first
chapter, James says that pure religion and undefiled
is this, to visit the fatherless and the
widows in their affliction and to keep oneself
unspotted from the world.
When I first came to know the Lord
Jesus Christ as my own savior and began
to delve into the word, I always wondered
about this epistle of James.
And I agreed very much with at that
time with Martin Luther, who said he thought
it was an epistle of straw and he
didn't want it to be part of the
canon.
As a matter of fact, even long before
Luther, there was a long argument as to
whether it should be part of scripture or
not, because it doesn't tell me anywhere about
the saving grace of Jesus Christ.
The new life is to be found in
him.
And I wonder, why is this part of
the New Testament?
Because, after all, I'm not interested in religion,
I'm interested in a relationship, a relationship with
the living God through his son, the Lord
Jesus Christ.
And here James is telling me that pure
religion and undefiled before God is this.
However, as I have matured some in the
faith, I have come to realize, first of
all, that James presupposes the gospel message.
The people to whom he is writing have
already responded to the good news and he
wishes them to become mature.
And he presents a very practical message.
And whether we like the term or not,
the practice of our faith is religion.
And James is saying, for you who believe
in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we remember
James's Jewish heritage and background, he says, to
visit the fatherless and the widows in their
affliction and to keep oneself unspotted from the
world.
In essence, he's not covering everything, but he's
saying it's two things, personal purity and social
concern.
Personal purity and social concern.
The church has been very big on personal
purity.
At times, however, it has not been quite
so fast with social concern.
And as I read this, I began to
wonder, well, where does James come by that
statement?
What's the basis for what he's saying?
And I find that if I were to
look back into the book of Deuteronomy in
particular, I would find a good share of
his basis.
Again, it is not exclusive.
It's part and parcel of the whole social
concern that God has in mind.
But he focuses it, and that's where I
would like to focus tonight.
In the 14th chapter of Deuteronomy, towards the
very end of that chapter, in the 28th
verse, where Moses, as he's speaking to the
people, is telling them about all that God
has told him and the way they should
live their lives when they come into the
land.
And he's now talking about the tithe.
And he says, at the end of three
years, thou shalt bring all the tithe of
thine increase the same year and shall lay
it up within thy gates.
Why?
Well, because of the Levite, he has no
part nor inheritance with thee, and the stranger
and the fatherless and the widow, which are
within thy gates, shall come and shall eat
and be satisfied.
And the Lord thy God may bless thee
in all the work of thine hand, which
thou doest.
Somehow we see that Moses is telling the
people that their relationship with the widows and
the fatherless has to do with God's blessing
upon them relative to the tithe.
And then over in the 16th chapter, in
the 10th verse, it says, when thou shalt
keep the feast a week under the Lord
thy God with a tribute of a freewill
offering of thine hand, which thou shalt give
unto the Lord thy God, according as the
Lord thy God hath blessed thee.
And thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy
God, thou and thy son and thy daughter
and thy manservant and thy maidservant and the
Levite that is within thy gates and the
stranger and the fatherless and the widow that
are among you.
And then he talks about the Feast of
Tabernacles, starting in verse 13 and in verse
14, it says, and thou shalt rejoice in
thy feast, thou and thy son and thy
daughter and thy manservant and thy maidservant and
the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless and the
widow that are within thy gates.
And then turning over to the 24th chapter,
a practice that is so beautifully, beautifully exemplified
for us in the book of Ruth, where
it says, when I cut us down thine
harvest in thy field and hast forgot a
sheaf in the field, thou shalt not go
again to fetch it.
It shall be for the stranger, for the
fatherless, for the widow and the Lord thy
God may bless thee in all the work
of thine hands.
And so we see the practice of gleaning
is a provision on God's part for the
needs of society and very prevalent in that
society were the widows and the fatherless, the
orphans.
Well, we might wonder how that applies to
us today.
I mean, after all, we have overcome a
great deal of the medical problems that would
have been very, very widespread.
Men did not live to the age they
do today.
And because they died early from hard work
and everything else that was rampant at that
time, there would have been many, many widows
and many left without fathers in the land.
However, we have a new phenomena in this
world and in particular in our country today,
and I would like to identify those, the
young woman who is pregnant out of wedlock
is a woman in need and without a
husband and the child that she brings into
this world for all intents and purposes is
a fatherless child.
Now, the society in which we live has
an answer for this.
That answer is get rid of the problem,
have an abortion.
However, for many, many girls, whether they're in
the faith or not in the faith for
many, many girls, the decision is for life
and they wish to bring that child to
turn and we see from the admonition of
Moses and the admonition of James, the brother
of Jesus, that we should have a concern
for these widows, these husbandless women and their
fatherless offspring.
James also points out that it's one thing
to be concerned about this.
It's another thing to do something about it.
And James says that's where the action is.
I think the church has an opportunity today,
far beyond any opportunity that's had for some
time, as a matter of fact, to really
reach out into a society that is crying
desperately for help and need.
Now, each church may not be able to
do it individually.
It's into this context, however, through the church
that a ministry such as Bethany can minister
to serve you and to serve the widows
and the fatherless of our time.
In Proverbs 24, verses 11 and 12, it
speaks about rescue those that are perishing, hold
back those that are being led away to
slaughter.
Then it goes on to say, but we
didn't know anything about it, as if that's
the response of the hearer.
And then it goes on to say, does
not God know you will be held accountable?
We wish to be held accountable.
And it's this ministry that we'd like to
present to you this evening.
We have a short slide presentation which shows
about the work, the ministry overall, in a
sense, in concept.
Then my wife, Libby, would like to share
with you some very personal things, some, you
know, those stories that are really where the
action is as to some of the ministry
that we've been involved in over the past
few years.
How did a place like the farmhouse come
about?
Forty years ago, about, on a cold day
in Grand Rapids, Michigan, two young women were
getting ready to go to Bible school and
they heard a little cry on the porch.
They went outside and here in a basket
wrapped up in a pink blanket was a
tiny little infant, about two days old.
Of course, they took that baby in and
they cared for it.
I guess they didn't go to school that
day.
About three days later, another baby was left
on their front porch.
And these two women felt that the Lord
was leading them into opening their home for
infants just like this.
And in a short period of time, they
had many more children.
This was the beginning of Bethany Christian Home.
After a period of time, of course, there
was a need for adoption services because these
babies needed to be placed into Christian homes.
After a period of time, Bethany expanded to
other states, became Bethany Christian Services.
There were added, there was a home for
special needs children, foster care developed.
About 10 years ago, Bethany moved east, New
Jersey.
And then six years ago, they asked us
if we would start the office here in
the Annapolis area.
Actually, this was the furthest thing that I
had from my mind at that time.
I don't have time to go into all
of that, but I was the one that
was asked to be the case worker to
open this work.
After this, after I got started, I realized
that the greatest need that the girls had
was housing.
While we had this home, the farmhouse in
Annapolis, there was a young woman who came
to live with us.
This was before we even knew anything about
Bethany.
Our daughters, we have three daughters, they were
all leaving home by that time.
And this young woman was asked, we were
asked if we would house her.
She came from a southern state.
She was pregnant out of wedlock.
And she stayed with us for the whole
nine months, delivered her child and through a
Christian lawyer in town, placed a child for
adoption.
I think this was the way that the
Lord was really starting to work in our
minds.
We had, through the church, a great influence
in that girl's life.
She really came to know the Lord.
She placed the child for adoption.
And later she married a young man in
the Coast Guard Academy.
And today they have two lovely little boys
and an adopted child from Korea.
This young woman, her name is Paula, the
day that further down the line, the farmhouse
actually opened, we received a letter from her,
which I'm going to read to you.
She was very moved at the fact that
the home where she lived for that period
of time was to be a home for
unwed mothers.
And she said, I'm very busy now.
I'm program chairman for our church in the
women's work, taking a course in college and
attending a lady's Bible study.
I love it all.
Here's a poem that I'd like you to
consider.
She said that it's I'm sending you this.
You may get sick of me yet for
sending you.
She had sent me others.
If for any reason you would like to
print it, feel free.
But please put my full name and date
on it.
I don't know if you are interested in
poems like this since you're working with life,
but I would like to have you read
this.
It's entitled Young Life.
Young Life, halfway to birth, created in a
moment's mirth, enjoys his place in Mama's womb,
soon to be his private tomb, thumb and
mouth and sucking hard, tapered fingers will soon
be charred.
See blue deaths like Daddy's eyes will never
see the velvet skies.
Ten small toes in perfection lined now to
death have been resigned.
Painful needle pushing in, salting lungs and killing
him.
Mama's choice can't be denied.
My body is my own, she cried.
And so her son must die too bad.
That poem, that letter came the day that
the farmhouse opened four years ago.
As I started to tell you, soon after
I started the work with Bethany, we realized
that these girls needed a place to live
and we couldn't seem to locate another place
to to house them.
And so we thought, well, the Lord wanted
us to open our own home.
So we started taking girls in.
And soon after that, we realized that we
were not to be the house parents.
My husband teaches at the Naval Academy and
I was going out seeing about thirty five
other girls.
I had a caseload of thirty five in
a period of about a month.
It was incredible.
We hadn't even advertised and people just started
to call.
And so soon after that, Bethany said that
they would work towards the process of licensing
our home to be a home for unwed
mothers and that we have been now for
four years because of zoning problems.
Anne Arundel County is great.
I don't know if you've ever tried to
work through the county here to do anything,
but it's very, very difficult.
They said that we had to be 100
yards, 100 feet from every lot line in
one part of our house was not was
a little closer than that.
And we knew that we were going to
be having problems.
So we decided prayerfully a little over a
year ago to relocate.
This, again, is very difficult.
Everything has restrictive covenants for a house like
this.
And so we went out into the south
part of Annapolis and got five acres of
land a little over that and placed a
house.
And the middle of this next month, May,
Lord willing, we will and the volunteers willing,
we will open the home now for 12
girls rather than eight.
Our house parents are still with us.
They've had a well needed rest and we
are already doing intake.
Some of the girls are already here in
shepherding homes around the Annapolis area and we'll
be moving them in.
Now, what are the needs at the farmhouse?
We have 12 girls there, all from different
walks of life.
There is no typical unwed mother.
So I think sometimes people think, well, they're
the street girls, the girls you see down
there in Baltimore.
That is not so.
We may have one or two of those
girls, but they come from homes, missionaries, children,
ministers, children.
They come from wealthy homes, from poor homes.
It's it's epidemic.
This is a tremendous problem.
I'm sure you're very well aware of it.
And these girls that have chosen to take
the very difficult route to have their babies,
to carry their children full term are in
a way, um, really to be honored in
a sense, I know the condition that they
got pregnant is wrong.
And of course we deal with this because
we are a Christian home and we have
very much teaching in this, but nevertheless, they
are caught up in a society of relativism
and of situational ethics where what is right
today may not necessarily be right tomorrow.
And you know, the situation among our teenagers
today, it's, it's just terrible.
The pressures on them are so great.
And so we do have a very large
segment of our society of young women who
have this awful alternative to choose whether to
take the life of their baby or to
carry the baby full term.
That is why the farmhouse is there.
Now the needs.
We have the girls there and they have
very special needs.
Some of them are far from home.
We've had girl, one girl from South America.
We've had a girl from the Bahamas.
A lot of them come from around the
area, but some are from other Eastern states
and even out Michigan, um, Ohio, just pretty
much all over.
We've housed 86 girls since we started.
And now we will be taking in 12
girls.
This will give us more.
Some people say, well, that isn't very much,
just 12 girls.
When you think of all of them, well,
it's a start.
We also have a home now in Virginia
called Martha's house.
And that is also, well, that, that will
house 10 girls.
So this is certainly better than nothing.
And we're very grateful to the Lord that
he has allowed us to have this.
And he allowed us to use our home
for this way.
We have a need for special friends.
Some of you may be interested in getting
involved in this ministry.
I really appreciated the, the person that sang
the song and gave us testimony.
I love that, uh, reach out to Jesus.
He's reaching out to you.
This is really the message that we want
to, to give to our girls, because that's
really what, what is the farmhouse is all
about.
It's, um, Jesus reaching out to these young
women.
The special friend is a program that we
have.
We're actually, they're called prayer parents or prayer
partners.
Um, each girl, when she comes to the
home is assigned either a couple, a family
or a single person who will promise to
pray for that girl every single day while
she's there.
Uh, some people really get into this and
they get to know her quite well, have
her to their home, um, invite her to
their church, uh, remember her birthday.
Birthdays are very lonely time.
They're away from home.
And even if they didn't get along with
their parents too well, they're very lonely for
their parents or their, whichever parent is there
at that time.
Or they, or they might be remember them
at Christmas time or Easter time or whatever
special times that there are.
We also have need for alternative house parents.
Our house parents are there full time.
Um, they're always as an adult with the
girls.
And so they need to have a rest
every now and then.
So we do have a need for alternative
house parents, people who will come to be
with our girls in the home for a
period of maybe three days, sometimes five days.
There is a little bit of pay that
goes along with that.
We need teachers in crafts.
This is a, this is a time when
these girls have a terribly low self image.
They feel really raunchy about themselves.
And so when they can do something with
their hands and learn something, um, to put
one of their talents to use, you talked
about talents.
This is a tremendous asset in helping the
girl to, um, to reach the full extent
of the way that God has created her.
Um, so we need teachers, women or men
that can teach these girls, um, something to
do with their hands.
We have, um, the need for birth coaches.
As you saw, we had Lamont, every girl
has to go through the Lamont's class.
And so we need birth coaches who will
come to Annapolis and go through the program
with the girl at six weeks.
And then she is available to go to
the hospital with the girl.
Um, we have what we call a 52
item list.
Now there are 52 weeks in the year.
And, um, there's an item of food for
each week.
Some people cannot contribute money.
Their budget is just too tight for that,
but they can buy an extra item of
grocery each week and put it in the,
in the market basket, can of tomato soup,
can of beans or whatever it is, bring
it together.
Sometimes Sunday school classes or women's groups take
this on as a project, bring it together
and then bring it down to the farmhouse
where we really, um, do the girls do
that, uh, feed or eat from that, um,
a good share of the time while we
have been building this home, uh, we moved
the program up to Pennsylvania.
We didn't want to close it down because
the need was so great.
And when we were away from the home
churches, we realized how much we depend upon
the 52 item list.
Our food bill was doubled during that period
of time.
Um, right now we need people who will
help my husband get the house finished.
This was a modular home that was, um,
delivered to us from Greenwood, Delaware.
Have you ever heard of the Nanticoke homes?
Well, that's what it is.
It's a Nanticoke modular home.
It came in four sections put together.
It's a two story home.
At the end of the day, after they
put it together, you could see it.
You could go right through it.
The wallpapers on the wall, the fixtures are
on the ceiling, the refrigerator and the dishwasher.
No, not the dishwasher, but the washing machine
and the dryer are there.
Everything was there.
It was very exciting to watch this happen.
But then there are other things that need
to be done.
The basement has to be completed.
The, um, fire escape has to be built.
The front steps have to be built.
Nanticoke only provided the home.
The other things need to be done.
Landscaping, all of these things.
If anyone is handy at that sort of
thing, I'm sure I can tell you that
my husband, who got, got, um, roped into
this right from the beginning when I started
doing this work, would just be very, very
grateful to have your assistance.
We even had last week, last Saturday, one
of the unwed mothers who evidently loves carpentry.
And she had delivered her child.
She's now parenting her baby.
And the woman with whom she's living was
taking care of the baby.
And she came out with her hammer in
hand and Graham put her to work nailing
up, uh, sheetrock that was already in place.
We didn't have her put up a sheetrock.
That's a little heavy, but it was there.
So she did that.
Now, what does it cost to house a
girl at the farmhouse?
It costs $35 a day.
That's really overwhelming, isn't it?
But that's what it costs.
It costs a lot to save a life,
the life of the mother and the life
of the baby.
We consider the fact that the mother who
comes there and about a third of our
girls already know the Lord Jesus Christ and
two thirds do not.
So we feel that it's important not only
to save the life of that child, but
to bring that mother into the knowledge, into
at least the knowledge of the Lord Jesus
Christ while she's there.
Many of our girls have come to know
Jesus personally while they have lived there.
We have house parents who know and love
the Lord and it's, it's a, the lifestyle
it's living before them all of the time.
That is the important thing.
Many of the girls have never eaten around
the table with the family.
That's a whole new experience.
If they ate at all, they ate on
the run or they ate in front of
the television.
Mother and father, if mother and father were
both there, were on the run, both with
jobs, or maybe it was a girl that
didn't have a father, father had long since
departed, all different situations there.
Um, $4 a day for foster care for
the child.
If the girl is deciding to, or are
thinking about adoption for her child and in
the farmhouse, there are about, it's about 60
% of the girls that make adoption plans
for the children.
The children are placed in evangelical, fundamental Christian
homes.
Um, then she, the baby when it's born
goes into a, uh, Christian foster home, nothing
to do with the state.
Sometimes that word foster home has connotations of
state foster care.
It doesn't, these are just people who, who
open their home to infants rather than to
the girls.
And they will house that child for up
to maybe three, four months.
And then give that baby either back to
the mother.
Maybe sometimes she's just gotten her life together
enough to be able to take the child
back into her care or into the adoptive
home.
This is a very sacrificial job, but you
know, our foster parents absolutely love it.
And when they are without a baby, they're
calling us and saying, well, when is the
baby going to be born?
We can't stand it.
Our arms are, are empty and we, you
know, they, they don't mind it.
I'm so glad that I don't have to
be a foster mother because that wouldn't be
my thing at all.
I don't like to get up at night
and I don't like to have to give
up a baby that I've, that I've loved
and cared for.
But some people really feel called to the
Lord to do that.
There is anyone here that would like to
do that?
Let me know that afterwards.
Um, where does this money come from?
Well, we depend upon the Lord Jesus Christ
for that money.
Uh, ever since we began and this young
girl, Paula was the person that sent the
first check, uh, to the home and she
had, she and her husband have contributed ever
since.
It's just people like that who all over
the United States who have heard about the
farmhouse and have contributed.
Of course, churches have gotten interested in the
work.
They have put us on their budget.
It's like they put other missionaries on their
budget.
It's a different type of mission work, but
it is a missionary work.
Um, sometimes the girls, parents pay, they can
pay partially.
And I did the intake for the farmhouse
for quite some time.
And I would always encourage the parents to,
to participate in, uh, helping us with the
financial arrangements for their daughter at the home,
because if they have their money there, then
they're going to be that much more interested
in working with us.
And we do work with the parents as
much as we possibly can.
Oftentimes what that girl needs is to be
reunited with her mom and her dad.
The baby is not all that important when
she can get back into the fold.
Some girls have no money at all.
They can apply if they're 18, they can
apply to the state for public assistance and
they get $120 a month, 30 of that
we give to them for allowance.
They have to have a dollar a day.
To be licensed by the state, the state
tells us that we have to do certain
things.
We have to have a dietician working through
the, uh, food, uh, the meals and the
menus.
They also say we have to supply the
girls with at least a dollar a day
for their allowance.
And so we have to do this.
Some of the parents certainly, uh, supply that.
And we really do encourage that very, very
strongly.
But we really do have some girls that
have absolutely nothing.
Some of them come from homes where they
have been very severely abused and their parents
could not care less.
In fact, I've had a hard time contacting
parents.
I mean, they don't care where their girl
is or whether she's, um, having a baby
or what she's having.
And so that's, that's where we do.
We are very thankful for that little bit
of money that we can get from the
state.
Uh, generally we do have to subsidize the
cost of the girl living there.
Now, what are the benefits to a ministry
of this type?
Well, we have the girl on an average
of four to five months.
And during that period of time, we have
an opportunity with the Lord's help to redirect
that girl's life.
Um, families can be reunited.
Hundreds of parents or would be parents that
have no children are completed by having a
child.
It's wonderful.
Whenever I go to the hospital to, um,
pick up a baby and I've done that
for many, many years and look at that
little life and just think ahead, think, think
back of what might've been, because many of
the girls that we have, um, have, they,
when I really get down in counseling with
them have said the first thought they had
was abortion and they had to really fight
the temptation because nobody would know, nobody would
know that they had ever taken that route.
You know that a teenager has to have
parents permission to get her a girl to
get her ears pierced, but she doesn't have
to have a permission to have one of
the most serious operations that a child, a
girl can have.
I would love to be able to talk
with you personally afterwards.
If you have any questions, I would say
that we are in the process now of
raising $165,000.
Isn't that a tremendous amount?
We've already raised 88,000 since, uh, since
January 1st, that is to pay for the
farmhouse and for the operation expenses for both
the office and for the home, um, any
sort of giving to that, of course is
greatly, greatly appreciated.
I'm going to end my little talk and
I see I'm a little bit over here
with another poem.
This is just to encourage you.
It's called Be Strong by Malt Davenport Babcock.
And it says, be strong.
We are not here to play, to dream,
to drift.
We have hard work to do and loads
to lift.
Shun not the battle.
Face it.
Tis God's gift.
Be strong.
Say not the days are evil.
Who's to blame and fold the hands and
acquiesce.
Oh, shame.
Stand up, speak out, and bravely in God's
name, be strong.
It matters not how deep entrenched the wrong.
How hard the battle goes, the night, how
long.
Faint not, fight on.
Tomorrow comes a song.
Thank you so much.
I've just appreciated so much being with you
tonight.