Transcription downloaded from https://sermon-library.fbcmustang.org/sermons/103635/a-covenant-and-a-curse/.

Disclaimer: this is an automatically generated machine transcription - there may be small errors or mistranscriptions.
Please refer to the original audio if you are in any doubt.


[0:00] So tonight we come to Genesis chapter 9, so you can open your Bibles with me there.!

[0:30] And this quote-unquote discovery would eventually lead to a wave of hope sweeping across all of Europe, this hope of the new world.

[0:43] This new world was a place where humanity could start fresh, where everyone could have and experience a just society and live in true freedom.

[0:55] And some even speculated, perhaps this is the earthly kingdom that Christ had promised to us. Pilgrims came over across the Atlantic Ocean with so much hope and so many expectations, but not long after they got here, it would be a world marked by bloodshed and stained by slavery and filled with problems.

[1:24] This new world quickly lost its shine because of sin. The pilgrims realized that they could escape tyranny.

[1:37] They could not escape their sin. They could run away from persecution and escape it, but they could go nowhere and get rid of the sin that was within their hearts.

[1:48] And we encounter something similar in Genesis 9 with the story of Noah. Noah. God has completely wiped the planet clean through the flood. He's gotten rid of all evildoers.

[2:00] And it's just Noah and his family with a fresh start. Maybe this will be a righteous world now. Maybe the sin that they experienced in chapter 6 will be a thing of the past.

[2:16] This new world begins with so much hope, so many expectations, but it quickly turns back into looking like the world that God just destroyed with the flood.

[2:27] So tonight, we'll see a covenant and a curse. Those are familiar terms to us, but we'll see a covenant and a curse. Firstly, the covenant. Chapter 9 verse 1 says, And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

[2:51] God once again blesses Noah. And this blessing should sound familiar to you if you've been with us. This is very similar to the blessing that God gave to Adam and Eve in chapter 1 to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

[3:04] And so we see that after the flood and in this new world, God's original purpose is continuing through mankind. He still wants them to exercise dominion.

[3:15] He still wants them to raise up new image bearers that represent him on earth. And even the dominion that Adam and Eve experienced over the animal world still continues.

[3:27] Verse 2, And so this dominion, this power, this authority that mankind has over the animals in the beginning still continues after the flood, sort of.

[3:53] There's a major change. This relationship between mankind and the animal realm is now marked by fear and dread. The authority that Adam had over the animals was one of peace and harmony, and now fear is the primary marker of this relationship.

[4:11] The dominion continues, but the relationship is stained by sin. And it's true even in our day that most animals in the world fear us or view us as some kind of threat.

[4:24] Whether it's a squirrel or a shark or a giant squid, my worst nightmare, or sasquatches. I think they exist. They're just scared of us.

[4:35] I'm just kidding. So, why? Why does fear mark this relationship? Why is it that there's fear from both sides in terms of our relationship with the animals?

[4:48] Ultimately, because of sin. And John Calvin, he said this, it's really fascinating. He says, So it's kind of a funny way of thinking about it, but he's saying, like, why are there shark attacks?

[5:10] Why are there horrible things that happen? Because we are sinning against God. And we have brought sin into this world. We continue to make sin flourish in the world through our actions and our choices.

[5:20] And the result is there's fear that marks this relationship between us and the animals that God created. And he gives them new food to eat in verse 3.

[5:30] He says, Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. And so now Noah and his family are allowed to eat animals.

[5:44] And this would also contribute to the fear that marks the relationship. But he says, As I gave you the green plants, now I give you everything.

[5:55] And in the beginning, Adam and Eve in the garden would have been vegetarians. They're only eating plants. But now, God allows them to eat animals. Which is kind of a dark way of saying it.

[6:06] It's like, we're fine calling it beef, but eating a cow just sounds grotesque. But we're now enabled to eat meat. Eat the animals that are on the earth.

[6:18] Eating this food is one of God's many kindnesses to us. Eating steak is not sinful. Praise God.

[6:29] Anyone like steak? I love steak. I'm happy about this verse. Eating steak is not sinful. And being vegan is not some sort of moral high ground.

[6:40] Okay, so when I was in high school, back in... It was like a moral high ground to be vegan. Okay, so people would be vegan by choice.

[6:52] They're like, I'm not going to eat an animal or anything that comes from an animal. So I'm not just going to eat chicken nuggies. I'm not going to eat eggs either. Because I'm better than everyone. And so it was like this moral high ground that people had.

[7:03] But according to the Bible, this is something that God has given to us. And we should hold on to this freedom that the Lord has given us. We should enjoy these things with thanksgiving and happiness.

[7:15] Because the Lord has given them to us. But then he goes on to describe the importance of blood. Starting in verse 4. But you shall not eat flesh with its life.

[7:31] That is, its blood. And so he equates, Moses equates, inspired by God here, that life and blood. Blood is critically important to our lives.

[7:42] Blood in the Bible is synonymous with life itself. And even today, our circulatory systems are so critical to our health. If your heart is not pumping blood like it should, that's a major problem for your body.

[7:57] If the blood your heart is pumping is too highly pressured or not highly pressured enough, that's also a problem for your health as well. Our blood is so important. And the Bible has said this for thousands of years right here in Genesis 9.

[8:11] But this for a while was out of step with modern medicine. And by modern, I mean like 1700s. So go back with me. And they would practice something called bloodletting.

[8:22] Have you guys heard of this? So it was like, if you were sick, you had the flu or the rona. The problem was you had bad blood. And so they would just kind of poke you and let some of your blood drain out, thinking the sickness would leave with it.

[8:37] But that's a major problem because people would die from losing blood. You need blood. And so now our medical practices are more in line. We'll give you blood transfusions. We'll give you extra blood if you're sick. And the Bible says here in verse 4, the life is in the blood or the life is its blood.

[8:57] And so as we think Moses is laying the foundation for what would come later, in order for a sacrifice to die, its blood would have to be shed. Its blood would have to be poured out.

[9:09] Its life would have to leave it. And they were not to eat it. They were not to consume it in any way like the pagans did. It was to be poured out on the ground like water, Deuteronomy 12 says.

[9:21] So in order for something to sacrifice and to pay for sin or forgive sin, its blood has to be shed. And this is important even as we get to the New Testament because Jesus, when he's establishing a new covenant with his people, he celebrates the last supper with his disciples.

[9:38] And what does he say? Take and drink. This is the blood of my covenant shed for you. Jesus is this ultimate sacrifice that pours out his life, pours out his blood to atone for his people's sins.

[9:54] In verse 6, And so God so highly values our lives as human beings that he will not let murder go unpunished.

[10:20] Every murder will be punished and must be punished. And so the law set up here is a death for a death. And there's two situations he gives here.

[10:32] One is an animal killing a man. So from every beast, I'll require it. And also the second scenario is a man killing a man. And so later the Bible will also establish this.

[10:43] But if an animal kills a person, that animal must be put to death. That animal needs to lose its life. And this is actually similar to how our law is set up in our world today.

[10:57] And the second situation he gives is if a man murders another man. So from his fellow man, I will require a reckoning for the life of man. So if a man kills another man, the killer must be killed.

[11:13] This is what we call the death penalty or capital punishment. If you take another human's life according to God's word, your life is required as payment.

[11:26] And this rule still marks just societies today. And think about it. If God is upset or frustrated or angry when an animal, just a brute beast, kills a person, how angry must he be when an image bearer decides and thinks about acting in this way?

[11:46] God is angry with these things because he values us as image bearers. In verse 6, it's kind of put into a poem.

[11:58] Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. The act of murder requires death.

[12:08] Why? What's the reason giving for this? At the end of verse 6, it says for or because God made man in his own image. God is against murder because it's an attack on his image bearers.

[12:26] It's a refusal to be fruitful and multiply. God has blessed them and said, be fruitful and multiply. And someone who is willing to murder and take the life of someone else is refusing to listen to God, refusing to contribute to his plan for the world, and is actually eliminating someone from this planet.

[12:46] And God sees this as an attack on his glory. So a couple of takeaways from this. One, we're still made in the image of God. Even though we're sinful, even though sin has marked and stained our world, we are still representatives of God to a degree.

[13:02] We're not exactly like Adam and Eve were without sin, but we still bear his image. And another takeaway is we are different than animals. That may be an obvious statement to you, but a lot of people in this world think like, we're just highly evolved animals.

[13:17] You know, there's animals and like another step up and then there's people. The Bible puts us in a completely different category than animals. We bear the image of God and that gives us dignity and honor because we represent who he is.

[13:32] And there's no animal prohibitions here, okay? So he doesn't say if an animal kills another animal, then one of the animals needs to be put to death. So you know, if a gorilla kills a zebra, I don't know, the gorilla wanted to get out of the jungle for a minute.

[13:45] There's no like, the gorilla needs to go on trial, okay? That's just the circle of life. Lion King. So there's no requirement from animal to animal, only as it affects the image of God and his life on earth.

[14:05] Now, why does God include this? Why does he say this? It's a fresh start. There's just a ton of death in the flood. Why bring this up? God is expecting the sin of Cain to continue.

[14:17] God is expecting for there to be more Cains that rise up and kill their brothers. God's expecting the sin of murder to continue to happen in this world. And so he's giving them a law to govern themselves when this sort of thing takes place.

[14:33] And you might think like, wouldn't this just be an unending chain of events? Like look at verse six. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. So if person A gets murdered by person B, person A is gone, now person B needs to have his life ended by a person C.

[14:50] And this would just go on and on and on. Like where would this stop? Why is this law put in place? Well, the Bible also makes a distinction between murder and putting to death.

[15:02] Murder is motivated and marked by hatred. Putting to death is a matter of justice. And so the Ten Commandments, it says you shall not murder, which is not the same thing as you shall not kill.

[15:15] And so who has this power today in our society? It would be the government, which can be a scary thing, but in Romans 13, Paul says, the government does not bear the sword in vain. They have the right under God to end the life of those who take life.

[15:31] And so God ultimately will not let murder go unpunished. And verse seven says, and you be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.

[15:46] And so we see once again, this kind of bookends the first section. God doesn't just want humanity to not murder. That's not the goal. He wants them to multiply. He wants them to spread his image across the face of the earth and represent him everywhere.

[16:01] And verse eight, we get a little transition. It says, then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, which includes us to this day.

[16:16] Verse 10, with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark, it is for every beast of the earth.

[16:27] And so God says, I'm establishing my covenant with you. This is something he promised to Noah back before the flood. And now he's giving us the actual content of this promise. And this promise extends to all the animals, but he only speaks to mankind.

[16:42] He only speaks to us, but it includes the animals. And verse 11, I establish my covenant with you. Okay, long introduction. What's the actual covenant, God? That never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood.

[16:57] And never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. Now, some people reading the book of Genesis who don't want to fully believe the Bible will say, yeah, that flood that Noah lived through, that was just a local flood.

[17:12] That was just like some flash flooding that he experienced in his neighborhood, like didn't affect the whole earth. Well, there's a lot of problems with that. One, if that was a local flood, then God promised to never do that again.

[17:28] But we have local floods today. We had some flash flooding in my neighborhood a couple weeks ago because it just kept raining. There's flooding along the east coast where the hurricane hit. And so if this is only talking about a local flood, and we have local floods today, then God isn't really speaking truthfully here.

[17:46] And so we have to believe this flood we've read about for the last few weeks encompassed the entire earth, just like the Bible says, because God is always faithful to his word.

[17:58] Now, I'm gonna read verses 12 through 17 for you, which is a little bit long for reading section, but it's talking about the sign of this covenant. How do we know that he will keep this covenant? Verse 12, and God said, this is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for all future generations.

[18:20] I've set my bow in the cloud and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh.

[18:36] And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.

[18:51] God said to Noah, this is the sign of the covenant that I've established between me and all flesh that is on the earth. The rainbow is the sign of the Noahic covenant.

[19:05] God's covenant with Noah is signed and symbolized by this rainbow. And what's fascinating is verse 15 says this is primarily a reminder for God.

[19:15] And it's not as though God will forget his promises or forget his word, but he says that when the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature.

[19:28] That's actually verse 16 as well. The rainbow is the sign of God's promise to never flood the earth with water again. And when God makes a covenant, he usually provides a sign with that covenant.

[19:47] So God makes a covenant to Noah and the sign is the rainbow. He makes a covenant with Abraham and the sign is circumcision. He makes a new covenant with us, his church. And what is the sign?

[20:00] Do we have signs? Two of them. Baptism and the Lord's Supper. These are signs that the Lord has given us to remember his faithfulness.

[20:13] And so just like he does with his covenants, he gives the rainbow as the sign of it. And so when we see the rainbow, we should remember that God remembers his promises.

[20:24] When we see a rainbow, we should remember that God remembers his promises. Now the rainbow has kind of been taken, right? The rainbow has now become a symbol or a sign that represents homosexuality and transgenderism and all kinds of sexual perversity that God hates.

[20:43] And so the rainbow, originally intended by God as a sign for his covenant and still is, has been taken over in our culture and twisted in our culture, just like many people do with God's word.

[20:58] But we need to remember and hold fast to what God has said the rainbow is for. It's to symbolize his grace and his mercy and his promises to his people.

[21:11] And this rainbow is a natural sign. Many of the other signs are things that we participate in. This one is something we simply observe happen. It happens in nature all around us.

[21:22] And some people trust science and don't believe in God. And they look at us and will mock us and the Bible on this point, like a rainbow.

[21:34] That's not miraculous in any way. One of these guys is Neil deGrasse Tyson. I don't know if you guys know him, but he's an astrophysicist, brilliant guy, knows a lot about physics and stuff.

[21:44] I think he's the only person smarter than my brother-in-law who's a neuroscience something, I don't know, but he's smart. And so he, I saw this video of him recently and there's this guy back in the glory days of social media when people just posted what they were doing and didn't try to fake an experience for likes.

[22:01] But you had to have a video camera back in those days. He's walking on the mountains and it's kind of goofy. Like he sees a rainbow and he's like, oh my goodness, what does this mean?

[22:12] And it's a double rainbow and he starts like weeping. It's kind of a weird video, honestly. But Neil deGrasse Tyson's like making fun of him and he says, this is how someone responds who doesn't know physics.

[22:24] And so he's saying, if you just trust in science, if you know science, you'll have an explanation for why the world is the way that it is. And science is helpful.

[22:36] I love science. Not good at it, but I love it. Respect it. But science can tell us what is happening, but science can never tell us why something is happening.

[22:48] So science can explain perfectly why a rainbow happens. It can tell us what is happening, but it cannot, it does not have the power or the ability to tell us why the rainbow exists in the first place.

[23:02] And rainbows are fascinating. Like no two people see the same rainbow because it's sort of an optical illusion. Well, some of us are colorblind. So that affects.

[23:14] But if you're standing 10 feet away from someone, you know, it's really, have you ever seen a rainbow like from the side? It's usually from pretty head on. And it's actually how a rainbow works.

[23:26] Most people see it from pretty much head on. And so you can be standing 10 feet away from someone and technically be seeing different rainbows. Anyway, fascinating stuff. Science can tell you all that. Science cannot tell you why the rainbow exists in the first place.

[23:40] The Bible can tell us that. And so science is great. Keep it in its place. Let it explain what is happening. Don't trust it for answers of why.

[23:50] Now verse 16, it says, when the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant. This covenant cannot be revoked.

[24:01] This covenant cannot be changed. This covenant will stand forever and ever while the earth remains. And these signs are intended to provoke questions.

[24:12] And so my kids always get excited about rainbows. And I do too, honestly. And they're always, Charlie, he's about to be three next month, which is crazy. His favorite question right now, why?

[24:24] Everything. Kind of gets annoying sometimes. Don't tell them that. But we see a rainbow and he's like, why? Why is there a rainbow? And I'm like, well, I don't know. And I point him back to Genesis 9.

[24:36] This is God's promise to never flood the earth again. Why? And so these are signs intended to provoke curiosity. And baptism does the same thing.

[24:48] Our daughter Amelia has sat with us while baptism happens. And she says, why are they getting baptized? I want to get baptized. And so these signs are intended to provoke questions and to help our faith.

[25:01] And this is what the rainbow is a symbol of, this everlasting covenant that God has made with us and all the creatures that are alive even today. And also the rainbow symbolizes a weapon of warfare.

[25:15] It looks like a bow. And so it's as if God has finished launching his arrows of judgment at the earth and hung up his bow in the cloud saying, I will not execute everyone on earth like that again.

[25:32] So we've seen the covenant. Secondly, we see a curse. A curse. Starting in verse 18. The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

[25:47] Ham was the father of Canaan. If you ever have a boy someday, these are great names to pass on to the next generation. Long down the road.

[25:59] These three were the sons of Noah. And from these, the people of the whole earth were dispersed. And so the entire population of the earth today can trace its lineage back to these three men.

[26:11] One of these three men. And then ultimately to Noah. Ultimately to Adam. And so all of the billions and millions of people that exist on earth today come from this one little family that came off the ark thousands of years ago.

[26:28] As we trace these men through history, Shem is the father of Semitic peoples like the Jews. Ham and his descendants resided in Africa and part of the Middle East.

[26:46] And Japheth, we know from history, kind of went west more towards Europe. But now why does he mention Canaan in verse 18? That's the only grandson of Noah that's mentioned here.

[26:57] Ham was the father of Canaan. But let's keep reading. Verse 20. Noah began to be a man of the soil and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered or naked in his tent.

[27:17] Noah sinned. Noah rebelled against God here. There's no indication that he was unaware of what would happen.

[27:29] He rebels against God. And it's shocking to us. Noah was spared from God's judgment along with his family, but he was not spared from sin.

[27:41] And just like the pilgrims that came over here, he escaped destruction, but he did not escape his sin. And it's shocking because Noah had conducted himself with utmost faith and honor.

[27:53] He stood alone against an entirely godless generation of people that were wiped off the face of the earth. He stayed faithful. He did everything that God told him to do.

[28:04] But here now in this safety, with a sin that should have been easily resisted, he loses self-control. He loses honor. He loses respect and becomes a laughingstock for one of his sons.

[28:21] He stood against the world and was faithful. And yet he failed to be watchful during safer times. He failed to keep a guard on his heart after he'd been delivered by God.

[28:38] And this is the first time we get an up-close view of sin since the garden. We've seen sin described broadly across the face of the world, but this is the first zoomed-in shot of sin we get since Genesis 3.

[28:53] Now, why did Moses include this? This was something he could have easily left out. He didn't have to put Noah on blasts like this. Like, why did he include this? The Bible does not look past sin.

[29:07] The Bible speaks truthfully even about its heroes. The Bible doesn't hold back and whitewash history. The Bible doesn't hide the sin of the saints on its pages.

[29:21] The Bible is truthful and honest. And there are no perfect people in God's kingdom. Adam listened to the serpent.

[29:32] Noah was drunk. Abraham didn't always trust God, and neither did Moses. David himself was a murderer and an adulterer. Fast-forwarding to Peter, the leader of the apostles, he denied Jesus.

[29:45] The only perfect person is Jesus. All the rest of us are sinners, and we need to be honest about that. We should not try to hide that or cover that up.

[29:58] But Noah sins against the Lord here, and then the sin is made worse by one of his sons. Verse 22, And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside.

[30:15] Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father's nakedness.

[30:29] Now what was Sam's sin? Ham's sin. What was Ham's sin here? Ultimately, he dishonored his father. He's the first person in the Bible who did that.

[30:42] He did not give honor to his dad. Now is simply seeing his dad in this state necessarily sinful? No. So I think this seeing, this look, implies a gaze.

[30:58] And then he also told it to his brother. So rather than coming to his dad's aid and helping him, he gossips about him and slanders him and seems to mock him.

[31:11] And he not only seems to have found it funny, but he also exposed it to his brothers as well. Did you see dad? LOL. There's a text probably.

[31:24] And we see that not everyone who experienced deliverance from judgment truly belonged to God.

[31:36] Ham had experienced the same deliverance that his brothers and their wives and his parents had experienced. And yet he did not trust in the Lord.

[31:49] And we see this played out in history as well. The same is true for us in the church today. There are people who are regularly connected to our church, meaning they show up on Sundays, they show up on Wednesdays.

[32:02] Outwardly, they seem to be connected, but they do not belong to Jesus. And in time, that will be revealed. This has always been true within the people of God.

[32:14] There are outsiders who attach themselves and for a while seem to be with them. But Shem and Japheth, instead of exposing what was uncovered, they covered what was exposed.

[32:29] They refused to behold their father in such a shameful state, and they acted with honor and dignity toward their sinful father. And many of you, we face with a difficult situation.

[32:44] You, just like all of us, are called to honor your father and mother, even if they're sinful, even when they rebel against the Lord.

[32:58] And there are difficult situations to address with that, but some of you have walked through those or maybe are walking through that right now. How do I honor my parents in a situation where I can see that they're wrong?

[33:11] I think Shem and Japheth are a great example. They acted in an honorable way even when their dad was in sin. Now, in verse 24, where it says, when Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him.

[33:37] Now, how did Noah know? He was asleep. He was blacked out. Like, how did he know? Well, it's kind of like, have you ever fallen asleep in the car and then like woken up the next morning in your bed? Anyone?

[33:49] Okay, yeah, all right. Several of you, all right. You kind of know what happened, right? Like, I fell asleep in the car. My parents carried me in. So you were asleep for that whole thing. You were not coherent during that, but you kind of know what happened.

[33:59] And so Noah wakes up, knows something has happened, probably asks Shem and Japheth what took place. He knows what happens. Then he utters a curse and blessings.

[34:11] And these aren't spoken just out of anger. This isn't Noah just flying off the handle because these are prophetic. These are predictive of what the course of life for these boys will be.

[34:25] And so we can see that Noah has had time to think and hear from the Lord and likely repent of his sin as well. He says, cursed be Canaan.

[34:42] Ham was the one that did this. Canaan's been mentioned several times, but now Noah just kind of shockingly passes over Ham in silence and curses his grandson who wasn't really involved in the situation it doesn't seem like.

[34:57] Why did Noah say Canaan's name instead of Ham? It's a bit shocking. What we learn from Canaan throughout history is that he was likewise evil.

[35:12] From who his sons were and how he acted, he was not an innocent party either. But why mention Canaan?

[35:23] Well, we need to remember who Moses was writing to when he wrote Genesis. Moses is writing to the Israelites when they're about to go possess the land of Canaan.

[35:35] They're about to enter into the promised land that God had given them and Moses is writing Genesis in part to form their identity, who they are, where they've come from. And God through Moses is showing that these Canaanites have been wicked all the way back to Ham.

[35:54] All the way back to this family coming off the ark. And he uses this word cursed. This has been used of the serpent in Genesis 3.

[36:04] This was used of Cain after he killed his brother and now it's used of Canaan. And the curse on him is a servant of servants or a slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers.

[36:18] And this is in the Hebrew language a superlative. This is how they state something in an absolute sense. So for us, we would say we've got good, better, and best or bestest.

[36:32] You know, like that's the absolute status of being better than everyone else. And that's how the Hebrew language uses this. So you've got song of songs, king of kings, Lord of lords, and here Canaan is cursed to be a slave of all slaves.

[36:48] Shall he be to his brothers? Verse 26, he also said, Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant.

[37:05] Verse 27, May God enlarge Japheth and let him dwell in the tents of Shem and let Canaan be his servant. So remembering that the Jews traced their lineage back through Shem, let Canaan be his servant.

[37:24] This would have been fulfilled as Joshua leads Israel into the promised land and conquers the Canaanites. Canaan was subjected to the people of Israel.

[37:35] And verse 27, let Japheth dwell in the tents of Shem. This will ultimately be fulfilled in the new heavens and the new earth as Gentiles who are far off dwell as one people with Abraham and his descendants.

[37:54] And Canaan will be his servant. And then verse 28, after the flood, Noah lived 350 years and the days of Noah were 950 years and he died.

[38:10] And so the same fate befalls Noah that came upon all those people in Genesis 5. If you remember back to Genesis 5, that genealogy, it's like, and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died, and he died. And Noah likewise died.

[38:25] Noah was not the chosen one. Noah, his name means rest. He was not the one who would ultimately bring rest because he experienced death. He rebelled against God too, and he died.

[38:39] I mentioned earlier that this was the first zoomed in view of sin we've seen since the Garden of Eden. I've also said a couple of times along the way that the way the Noah story is told is really similar to what happened to Adam and Eve.

[38:53] So let's look at some of those similarities now. Remember back to chapter 8, verse 1, there was a wind or a spirit going over the waters causing it to drive the waters away just like there was in the beginning.

[39:06] Then dry land appears just like God created in the beginning. Then the birds and the animals are blessed and told to be fruitful and multiply in chapter 8 just like they were in chapter 1. And then Noah is blessed in the exact same way that Adam and Eve were.

[39:22] Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, have dominion over the beasts, the birds, the creeping things and the fish and he's given food to eat.

[39:33] There's a covenant made. In Adam's case, this was the covenant of marriage. In chapter 9, verse 9, this was God's covenant to never flood the earth with water again. And then, after the covenant, there was a sin involving fruit.

[39:47] Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree that God told them not to eat. Adam became, or excuse me, Noah became drunk with the fruit of the vine. This sin led them to nakedness and shame and hiding from God which led to a human covering of that shame.

[40:05] Adam and Eve tried to make clothes for themselves. Shem and Japheth covered Noah's shame. And after this leads to a curse in Genesis 3 of the serpent and all creation and in chapter 9 of Canaan.

[40:20] The way these two stories are told show us that Noah was a very righteous man but he was just another Adam. He too was sinful.

[40:32] He was not the Savior. So who can deliver us then? Only God Himself. We don't just need a righteous man. We need a perfect man. We need someone who's not just righteous by faith but is righteous by nature, by who He is.

[40:48] We need Jesus who is God in the flesh who has always been and ever will be righteous. Jesus is the one who has dominion and sovereignty over all of the things that He has made and He is the perfect image of God who has shed His lifeblood for sinners like us.

[41:09] All of us are like Adam. All of us are like Noah. We've rebelled against God. but Jesus has not sinned but He died for ours so that we who are not righteous can live in His righteousness.

[41:31] Jesus is our only hope of escaping the curse and consequences of sin. Will you trust Him? We as people are bad enough to go to hell but we cannot be good enough to go to heaven.

[41:47] We need someone who is righteous and obedient for us and Jesus is the only one who can be that. And one day He will make all things new. One day He will renew and restore creation where there will be no sin.

[42:04] And the only way to that world the only door to that world is Christ. We can't work our way there we cannot make our way there so we need to stop that and find our rest find our Noah in Jesus.

[42:21] Our Father we thank You for sending Your Son who is not just righteous by faith but was righteous because of who He was before You.

[42:32] and He is now our faithful High Priest who has not only offered sacrifice for us and atoned for our sins but is now interceding for us right now.

[42:48] And Father I pray we would be righteous like He was. And thank You for giving us His righteousness so that we that we're sinners can be counted perfectly righteous in Him.

[43:04] I pray for the students here that they believe this I pray that I would believe this and that we would live accordingly Lord convict us of our sin lead us to repentance and glorify Yourself in us and in Jesus name we pray Amen.

[43:15]  Amen.