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All right, well, if you will, go ahead and open up your Bibles to Genesis, chapter nine.
We're going to start here in verse 18.
It hit me sitting down here this morning, that since we started talking about the flood, I think every Sunday that we've talked about it, it's rained.
So don't worry if you're ready for some sunshine next week, no more flood, all right?
And so hopefully we can get us a pretty weekend.
But what we're going to see this week is we've seen the flood and now it's going to be what happens next.
And then over the next several weeks, what we'll see is kind of the formation of the world as we see it today as we journey from this point forward in generation.
So in fact, in a couple of weeks, we'll actually see the biblical record of people.
And they're not going to list countries that we're familiar with, but in a couple of weeks we'll see that post flood, within three generations, we see people as far south globally as Ethiopia, as far north as Kazakhstan, as far east as Iran, and as far west as Libya.
And so we see this spread of humanity.
We see them mobilizing.
We see civilizations built and established, all.
Coming from this man Noah.
And what we will look at this morning are the early formations of what.
We will see in future generations.
So let's read verses 18 through 21.
It says, the sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shim, Ham, and Jacob.
Aham was the father of Canaan.
And this is going to be very important for us.
Verse 19, these three were the sons of Noah, and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed, meaning that from these men that the nations are formed.
Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard, and he drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent.
And so what we're going to talk about this morning in the first introduction to this man, Noah, who up until what we'll get to eventually, we've seen in Noah's life this deep layer of dedication and obedience to the Lord, to the point when we talked about a couple of weeks ago, we talked about Noah, that Noah as God is instructing him.
We don't even have a record of Noah speaking right, which we see in Scripture, we're going to see as men encounter and hear from the Lord and converse and rationalize and talk through.
We're going to see this dialogue exist.
But we haven't heard from Noah.
Noah heard and Noah did.
But in this account, what we're going to see from Noah is a little bit different.
We're going to see Noah's sin.
And then what comes from Noah's sin is his shame.
All right?
So what is Noah's sin?
Noah's sin was drunkenness.
What is Noah's shame?
His shame was nakedness.
All right, this is here what we see.
And Noah's sin caused him to position himself both physically and spiritually in a way that created shame in his life.
And so as we start out, we'll talk about a little bit with sin and shame, but also what God uses for us to the power of the Holy Spirit of conviction.
See, because unrepentant sin produces something, just as Noah did and just as you and I do, unrepentant sin produces something in our lives that is not beneficial for us, and it's shame.
But God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, desires to see us in our sin, experience something not shame, but instead to experience conviction.
So as we talk through this, what I want us to kind of lay some groundwork on is there is a difference between conviction and shame.
And so let's talk about this just briefly as we understand this passage of scripture.
First, it can be difficult, I want to acknowledge it can be difficult to determine and to differentiate in your life and in my life the difference between shame and conviction.
Because shame oftentimes masquerades itself as conviction that you and I as followers of Jesus Christ can fall into a pattern of sin or commit a sin and think what we are experiencing is conviction.
But really what we're experiencing is shame, which isn't from God, but conviction, which is from God.
And so I want us to be able to understand the difference in a little bit in the similarities as well.
So here's where it becomes difficult.
Shame and conviction both produce things in our lives.
Shame and conviction can both produce an emotional response, but they also can produce a change in behavior.
Shame can do that and so can conviction.
The difference is, and we'll see this, is that shame's emotional response and shame's change will both be bound to sin, connected to sin and feeding off of your sin or my sin.
But convictions change is bound to the.
Forgiveness and grace of God.
There's the end goal for both.
In shame, it's stay bound to your sin.
In conviction, it's that the grace and forgiveness of God has set you free.
And the difference of those in shame, it seeks to numb the pain of the sin.
So not how do I deal with my sin, but how do I hide externally and internally the sin that I've committed?
And we see this manifests itself oftentimes in future sinful patterns, particularly in addictive behaviors.
Here's what I've done.
I don't want to deal with this.
So instead, the feeling that I feel, if I can begin to numb the.
Pain, then this is what I'll do.
However, conviction seeks to deal with the pain.
How can I grow spiritually how can I grow as an individual, as a.
Person past this that I've done for God's glory?
How can I come alongside others who.
Have done what I've done and experienced what I've experienced and come alongside with them in a partner in ministry for.
God's name and for God's glory?
You see, one seeks to suppress and one seeks to proclaim the glory of.
God in dealing with the shame that they've experienced.
Conviction is behavior focused in a way that reaffirms our identity, right?
An identity of who I am in Christ.
So is who I am in Christ reflective in who I am and the things that I do, not only just in the things I believe or the.
Things that I say.
But do we see this transformative work inside of us, this sanctification process in us as conviction draws us to that?
Whereas shame is identity focused in that it seeks or it attempts to rob you of your identity of who you are in God?
One says that I am a forgiven child of God.
That's what conviction says.
Where shame says that God can never love a person like you.
Conviction, spiritually speaking, is focused on facts while shame is focused on feelings.
That's hard for us because the fact is, yes, that I did this.
The fact is, yes, that I thought this.
The fact is, yes, that I said this.
And I'm not talking about the fact of what we have done or what we haven't done, but I'm talking about the facts of who we are in Christ.
And so shame seeks to grab ahold of the feelings which the Bible teaches us that the heart can be deceptive for us, that our feelings can keep us bound instead of the truth of God's word, of who God is and what God's done and what God wants to do in your life.
And so that's the beauty of conviction.
That's the beauty of getting caught, that's the beauty of getting called out is that I'm a forgiven child of God and that this is what God desires to do in me and this is what God desires to do through me.
Whereas shame says, no, see, this is really who you are.
That's not who you are.
You're unworthy.
God could never and would never love you.
And the reality is that so many of us have fallen into this pattern, right?
Convict shame.
What shame will do is lead to anxiety, fear, depression, broken relationships, masking and a greater whole of sin in our life.
But conviction leads to brokenness, remorse, repentance and spiritual maturity is what conviction brings us to.
And God often allows us, as we mature even to experience the beauty of conviction before the fullness of the manifestation of sin in our life, right?
And so, hopefully, on our journey with the Lord, what we notice probably very early on in our relationship with Him is that we did something, we thought something we said something and the Lord said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Here's the conviction of my Holy Spirit, right?
But as we mature in Him, what we begin to experience is as we go to think, as we go to speak, as we go to feel, we're led and as we're led by the Holy Spirit, what we begin to experience is the conviction of the Holy Spirit prior to this.
And that's the freedom that we experience.
That's the growth that we have.
But what we see in the life of Noah right here is that he sins.
And from his sin will start a path of shame and a path of sin.
Let's look at verse 22.
And Ham, the father of Canaan saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside.
Then Shim and Japeth took a garment and laid it on their shoulders and walked backwards and covered the nakedness of their father.
Their faces were turned backwards and they did not see their father's nakedness.
So now what we are seeing here is one sin, the sin of Noah that we talked about.
And we're going to see two different responses.
I thought this was interesting.
This isn't the first time that we've seen in the account of Genesis this pattern of sin.
In fact, when you look back at.
Genesis three I'm sorry, genesis three, when Adam and Eve were found in their sin by the Lord, that the account talks about, that Adam, right?
That they realized that they were naked and that they hid themselves.
And then it's interesting.
We go back and we look and see, right, kind of the same thing.
Their sin of eating, of the fruit.
Noah's sin led to a part of shame where they were exposed, and this is where they find themselves.
And so in Genesis three, we see.
God's response to their sin and God's.
Response to their shame that they're experiencing.
What does God do?
God addresses the sin, right?
This isn't because we're battling through sin I'm sorry, battling through shame that we stop addressing sin.
No, that's not the model of what scripture gives us.
It's not because we feel bad and we're beating ourselves up.
That that's not an opportunity for us to step in and speak truth.
That's not what God does.
God addresses the sin and God even gives consequences for sin.
And that's what we experience.
That's what we have.
There are consequences even in our forgiveness that you and I experience and live in in this world because we sin.
Sin brings consequences.
But then what does God do?
God covers the shame in this.
What we see in the garden, genesis 321.
And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothes them god in their sin as he addressed it.
God, as he gives them their consequences, still says in the work that I do, shame's not a part of this.
And so I cover you but when Noah was found in his sin and in his shame, what did Ham do?
He magnified it.
He magnified the sin and he exposed the shame.
This is the first response that we see.
This is the sinful response of Ham.
He goes in, he finds his dad in his sin, in his shame.
And the only thing that we can begin to understand of what Ham does in this moment is he delights in it.
He delights in the shame and sin of his father.
But what did Shim and Japheth do?
They covered him.
Not only did they cover him, but out of respect for their father, out of their respect for who he is, right?
Like we we don't think that that.
Noah is this now rogue man who.
Doesn'T love the Lord.
That's not at all what we think.
We think he's a man who loves the Lord, who sinned.
And what do they do?
They avoided seeing his shame by blocking their vision and walking backwards.
Right?
So they don't delight in it.
They don't magnify it.
They don't pour onto the shame.
Instead, they seek to work as how God worked.
And shim and japheth imitate God.
While Ham did not you see, Ham's sin is not the fact that he saw his father in his shame.
It's his delight in seeing his father in this disgraced condition, right?
So not only when we see this.
Account do we have to look at.
Ourselves and work with our sin that brings our shame.
But we also need to look at how we deal with others and how we look at others when they are in their sin and therefore their shame.
Do we do what Ham did or are we doing what Shim and Japheth do?
What did Ham do?
We gossiped about it.
He went and talked.
He went and told I don't know.
Have you ever found out about someone's sin and talked to other people about it?
Just me.
We've done that, right?
We've taken the failing of men and women of faith who love the Lord, who are seeking to follow them.
And we get that.
Hey, did you hear about so and so?
Did you hear about what they did?
Did you hear about this piece?
And in that, that land of old flesh, that sinful flesh of us kind of delights in the information that we.
Now have, and then we run and we talk about it.
And that's what Ham did.
What did God do?
God brought accountability.
God brought truth.
We're not ignoring, we're not spreading, but we're dealing with.
And then Ham magnified the shame by taking it and sharing it with others and delighting in the failures of others.
You ever did that again?
Maybe just me, right?
But the sin of that, of what we delight in in these moments, instead of magnifying conviction amen.
I see this.
I see what you've done.
I've seen what you've experienced.
I see what you're going through, and let me share with you and talk to you about the goodness of God's grace in this right.
Moving back and covering.
So then, in verse 24 through 29, we get to several verses that are kind of I'll be honest with you, kind of it's an oddity it's a little bit difficult for us to deal with because now Noah's going to speak.
And there's a lot of thought and.
A lot of theory to what Noah is saying here in this moment.
And so I want us to kind of take some time and kind of maybe unpack this a little bit and understand.
Look, 24 through 29, when Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he.
Said, Cursed be canaan a servant of servants shall be to his brothers.
He also said, Bless be the Lord, the God of Shim, and let Canaan be his servant.
May God enlarge Japh, and let him dwell in the tents of Shim, and let Canaan be his servant.
And after the flood, Noah lived 350 years, and the days of Noah were 950 years, and he died.
So here's, of all that we've seen, of all that we've experienced in the life of Noah, we get this brief little covering, two verses, this dialogue of Noah.
But what I want us to look at is now we're looking at the sin of Noah.
We're looking at the sin of Ham.
And in this dialogue that we have with Noah, that we're not 100% sure exactly who he's talking to, but we think we can draw some things from this.
We see three generations of impact from this moment, from this failure of Noah that led to his shame that came from that that then produced within it the sin of his son that is now continuing to flow down to generation upon generation.
So Noah wakes up, all right, and he finds out what happened, and based off the words he he uses, he's he's angry.
And so Noah gives us these verse 25, this he he speaks a curse, and I want to talk about that here in just a minute.
He he speaks a curse.
But then in in verse 26 and 27, he he speaks a blessing as well.
So so what is Noah doing here?
Well, here's what I don't think that Noah's doing.
If we can just kind of take a moment.
Noah is not he may be wanting to, but I do not believe that Noah, in his power, is speaking a curse into existence.
And so let me just say this.
I read this this week, and this is important for us.
Noah's words noah's a man, okay?
Noah's words held no magical powers that would define that or destin the fate of future generations.
His appeal was to God, whose will alone will account for what would become of the nations.
And so, in the sovereignty of God, what we are going to see is what we'll see happen with the nations.
Now, I don't think also of what we see in here and the curse and the blessing, or Noah's words are of prophecy, but they very well could be that they could be.
But I don't think that's what we find here.
What I think is what we're getting from Noah is a form of invocation, as Noah has experienced something from his.
Sons and he pleads with God.
He pleads with God in this moment.
Now, it's different though, because who did it?
Ham.
But what does Noah say?
Look at back at verse 25.
Cursed be canaan not ham.
Why?
Because why.
Not the curse?
Why not speak this invocation in direction to the individual who did this to you?
Right?
That's why somebody goes and attacks you and you're like, no, get their kid.
Get their kid.
Why does it know what do this?
Why do we see this in Scripture?
And I think if you'll, you'll give me some time to work through this.
I think in the ancient times, throughout we see this idea of what's referred to as corporate personality.
And corporate personality says this by nature, so who you are and by nurture.
So both in our DNA and in the environment which we are raised, the behaviors of a person will continue from generation to generation.
So what I think is happening here is when Noah curses Canaan, what he is saying is this, that sin and the effects of sin will continue on, on you and in your family, generation upon generation upon generation, both in what you've been exposed to, in the very.
Fabric of being of who you are.
And I think we see this somewhat.
From Scripture and the practicality from life.
When we talk about the doctrine of depravity of man, right in the moment that Adam and Eve took in ate of the fruit, what began in them that would continue on is that sin would corrupt every part of mankind, his mind, his will, his emotions, his flesh.
This is what we've seen over and over and over again immediately with the effects of their kids with Cain and Abel.
Right, continuing on.
That God looked down and he saw that mankind and he knew that the thoughts that the flesh was corrupted and that man thought did said all of the things that reflect this corruption of flesh.
And so we see this.
Paul talks about this in the depravity of man, of what is just wrestled in our unredeemed nature.
In Romans three, starting in verse nine, Paul says, what then?
Are we Jews any better off?
No, not at all.
For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin.
As it is written, none is righteous.
No, not one.
No one understands, no one seeks for God.
All have turned aside together they have become worthless.
No one does good, not even one.
Their throat is an open grave.
They use their tongues to deceive.
The venom of ASPs is under their lips.
Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood in.
Their paths are ruined in misery and the way of peace.
They have not known.
There is no fear of God before their eyes.
So what Paul says is that man, apart from Christ, it's not just that we're not good.
It's at our very nature that we're corrupt.
So what we see is this.
But we also see this depravity filled.
Position that we're born in until we're born in Christ.
But we also see in our experience, because Noah's, like, this is who your dad is.
This is who Ham is.
So this is who you'll be as well.
We see this what I refer to as generational sin.
Generational sin.
Let me say this.
You and I choose to sin.
No one forces that on you.
No one forces that on me.
I blame no one for my sin.
I don't blame my mom.
I don't blame my dad.
I don't blame my wife.
I don't blame my kids.
I don't blame the person that cuts.
Me off on the interstate.
I don't blame the government.
I don't blame other faiths.
I don't blame Satan.
I blame me.
I, and I alone, am my biggest hindrance in my life and in the privity that I choose.
With that said, we can create environments and cultures generationally, where certain sins are accepted.
And a lack of sin I mean, I'm sorry, a lack of repentance is modeled.
And that's what I call generational sin, where we establish cultures, where we defy the Lord and establish pattern of sin.
And we think and we live out in the sinful silliness of this is who I am, because this is who my father was, because this is who my grandfather was and this is who his father was, over and over and over again.
So how do we break this?
I'd be willing to bet that if we took and made your life a reality TV show, how many of you would sign up for that?
Right?
Not me.
Not me, right?
You guys know enough that I confess.
I don't want you seeing the other stuff, right?
You and for me, that if we put the cameras up, what we would see is you would see the sinful behaviors of me.
You would see the sinful behaviors of my wife, and then you would see, almost like a mirror, how they come out in my son or my daughter and let me invite my folks over, right?
And we see the continuation of this over and over and over again.
Until a couple of weeks ago, I.
Think it was Burger that used this phrase.
I'd never heard of this phrase before.
Have you ever heard of the phrase California Stop?
You ever heard of that?
All right, so I didn't know what it was.
I told Johnny Cobb.
Johnny's from California.
I told Johnny I was going to use this this morning.
Johnny said he, at some point in time in his life, has embraced this California stop.
He's saying no now.
No now.
All right.
I'm sorry, man.
I shouldn't have called you out on your sin and then exposed your shame in front of everybody, right?
So here's what the California stop is.
If you don't know, you ever approach a stop sign or a red light, and you're turning right, and as you approach that stop sign, you can see really far to the left.
And so as you roll to that stop sign, you kind of glance, and once you hit about 4 miles an hour, you just move that foot off the brake and put it back on the gas and just keep going, right?
That's a California stop, or otherwise known.
As running a stop sign.
Okay?
Now, a couple of weeks ago.
I.
Believe it was you, wasn't it, Grayson?
Yeah.
Grace like, this is what dad does.
Pray for me.
We're driving to school.
He's driving, and he goes to turn out of our neighborhood, and very comfortably, he just rolls up to that stop sign, and as just before he goes to stop, we accelerate on out.
I lost it.
On both of them.
Right.
Why would you do this?
Let me explain to you about tickets and points and insurance.
And I would hate for you to get your driver's license for two days later for me to call up that insurance company and say, hey, go ahead and take them off now.
And we'll take the tires off, we'll put it on blocks.
We'll park in the backyard.
We'll be those people.
And you can look at your car every day and never drive again till you're 25 and on your own.
Got to school, got home.
I got ready to go to work.
I rolled up to the same stop sign, hit 3 miles an hour.
Just kept going, right?
Just kept going.
Here's.
Why they do that?
Because they've watched their mom do it.
Right.
I'm just kidding.
She never does that.
Just me.
Right.
They learned it is in the environment now.
It's a part of we were all 15, and we wanted to get where we were going as fast as we can.
That's a part of what we got to work through with teenagers.
But they saw it, and in their heart, it was okay.
About eight years ago.
Grayson was seven, and him and his sister were playing, and they were there just me.
And Grayson has always just been very just gracious with his sister.
Right.
You got to have an Alpha, and you've got to have a person that's like, I'm really leading this, but it's in support, right.
And that's just been them.
And Emma did something.
I don't remember what Emma did.
And Grayson, at seven years old, made this noise it was like a growl, right?
And I heard it.
And I thought, oh, Lord, forgive me.
That's me, right?
That's me.
What he's seen and what his dad has modeled for him is that when you hit this point where things that you've determined need to go a certain way, that you have the freedom to respond in your anger and in your temper and in that he was not my focus.
But for a moment, Lord, he's learned that from me.
And what God gives us is the opportunity to break the patterns of generational sin so that we no longer see these patterns and just say that, well, this is just who I am, but no longer through the power of Christ and through the leading of the Holy Spirit, that this will not be who I am.
Instead, there will be the commitment to the death of the sin and the pursuit of holiness.
The breaking of generational sin starts not with the son or with the daughter, but with the mother and the father.
And to break the generations of sin is to embrace the transformative, sanctifying faith of the Gospel.
If you believe in a Gospel that saves you but doesn't change you, you don't believe in a saving Gospel.
That's nowhere in Scripture of what it teaches us, of who we are in Christ.
The old has gone, the new has come.
This is who we are.
And so the mindset, do we still sin?
Absolutely.
But is this excusing the actions that we do?
Absolutely not.
And so our pursuit is to no longer cling to the sin of what's there, but the pursuit is to cling to grace, forgiveness, the sanctifying work of the Gospel in our life.
Ephesians two four through eight says this but God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.
For by grace you have been saved and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
For by grace you have been saved through faith.
And this is not Your own doing.
This is the gift of God.
Would you pray with me?
Lord, we come to you today and we thank You, Lord, for Your grace and Your mercy and Your love.
Lord, Your word teaches us that you're.
Not stingy in mercy, but that you are rich in mercy and you lavish it upon us.
Lord, we thank you that while we were dead in our trespasses, you came and you saved us and you made us alive, not in ourself, but in You, Lord, together with Christ and in Him, so that, Lord, our position is in you, not in our sin, for which You've set us free from where we thank.
You for this work.
Lord, help us to be and to live and to leave behind.
A generation.
A culture of faith and conviction.
Lord, may we examine in our own.
Lives and see what sins we've accepted and that cling to and as so.
Shame is reigning free in our lives instead of grace.
Lord, may we be a people of grace, extending others grace, preaching grace and.
The truth of the gospel of Jesus.
And Lord, I pray if there is anyone here today, and they walked in this morning, and what reigns in their life is the shame of their sin.
Lord, I pray today by the drawing of your spirit, what will ring true in their lives.
Is the conviction as you draw them to yourself, as they.
Surrender to the truth.
Jesus died on the cross to pay for their sins, was buried in a tomb, and three days later rose again.
And just as he rose, Lord, we can too rise and walk in the newness of life, no longer enemies of God, but sons and daughters of the living God.
When it's in Jesus name, we pray.
Thanks again for listening and be sure to check back next week for another episode.
In the meantime, you can visit us@willeridgechurch.org or by searching for Willow Ridgechurch on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
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