The Grace of God Covers Our Shame

Gossip Versus Grace
(Genesis 9:18-29, Preaching: Pastor Nathan Snyder, August 24, 2014)

“Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation.  Noah walked with God” (6:9b).  Thus he heeded God’s warning about the coming flood.  Now there is a fresh start for the world.  Noah is like a second Adam.  All mankind will descend from him and his three sons (9:18-19).  And yet like Adam, Noah was a sinner, as we see from this last glimpse we are given into his life.  He gets drunk and lays naked in his tent.  The shame of this reminds us of Adam and Eve, naked and ashamed in the garden after their sin.  Then in 9:29, Noah dies, like every other sinner.  Do not put heroes like Noah on a pedestal where they do not belong.  Noah was a great man.  But he was not the Christ.  Only Jesus can undo sin, shame, and death for us.

When Ham saw his father in the tent, he went to tell his brothers.  Why did Ham feel the need to announce his father’s shame?  Maybe he thought it was funny.  Maybe he was disgusted and wanted to vent.  The text doesn’t say.  Yet we’ve probably all felt the temptation to gossip over another person’s sin.  Maybe it makes us feel lifted up to see someone else brought down.  Especially if it’s a righteous person like Noah.  The world loves to point out the failings of the faithful.  It makes us feel more secure in our own unbelief when we see the sin and weakness of those that do believe and devote themselves to God.

Ham responded to his father’s sin by gossiping.  Yet when Shem and Japheth heard about their father, they showed him grace and covered his nakedness.  This is what Christ does for all who belong to him.  He did not come into the world to gloat over our shame, or hold our sin against us, but to cover it.  He was exposed and naked on the cross for our sin, not his own.  His blood and perfect righteousness covers us.  When we receive this precious gift by faith, it changes our hearts.  We become people like Shem and Japheth.  No longer do we need to cover our own shame by gossiping about the shame of others.  Christ has covered our shame.  We love as he has loved us, and love covers over a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8; cf. Proverbs 11:12-13).  We must not put another person on a pedestal, but we must not also tear them down when we see their failures.

Noah learned of his son Ham’s extreme disrespect.  He responded by pronouncing a curse, not on Ham but on his son Canaan.  The fact that Canaan was Ham’s son had already been mentioned twice in the text (9:18, 22).  God would bless Shem and Japheth.  God is even called the God of Shem.  Japheth would dwell in the tents of Shem, but Canaan would be servant to both Shem and Japheth.  This all seems very bizarre.  Yet God was using the occasion of Ham’s sin to give a prophetic word through Noah regarding the rest of biblical history.  The people descended from Canaan would become exceedingly wicked.  The people of Israel, descended from Shem, would be agents of God’s judgment on Canaan.  Then when Christ came from the line of Shem, his gospel would in the first century spread widely throughout the regions populated by the descendents of Japheth in Asia Minor (Turkey), Greece, and Italy.  The other descendents of Ham would also be included in the tent of Shem, but the focus of these verses is on what would actually be recorded in the Bible itself regarding the early spread of the gospel.  Gossiping over a righteous man’s sin leads to judgment.  Why not rather receive the grace of God and then extend that same grace to our brothers and sisters in their failings?

Put the Word to Work:  Honor those who honor God, despite their weakness and failings.

Memory Verse from the Psalms of Ascents: Psalm 122:3-4 – Jerusalem—built as a city that is bound together, to which the tribes go up, the tribes of the LORD, as was decreed for Israel, to give thank to the name of the LORD.

Gospel Reading: Matthew 13:45-46 – The Parable of the Pearl of Great Value