A Righteous Man’s Sin
By Rev. Res Spears
Sin, According to the Experts • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 7 viewsNotes
Transcript
A couple of years ago, I told y’all the story of how I nearly drowned in the Indian Ocean while on a snorkeling excursion in the Maldives.
Hoping to get some good underwater photos, I’d elected to jump from the boat into deep water near a reef, and I very quickly learned the current was much stronger than my swimming skills.
And then, panic met resignation. I was pretty sure I was about to die, 300 yards or more from our boat thousands of miles from home — either by drowning or from a heart attack.
I’d been swept clear of our group and have never felt quite so alone as I did in those dire minutes that I was certain were the last of my life.
I was treading water as hard as I could, swimming toward the boat whenever possible (still holding onto my camera rig, by the way), and watching that boat recede further into the distance with each passing wave.
Finally, I saw a friend who’d also found herself in trouble as soon as she’d jumped into the water. She was clinging to a life ring, along with one of the crew who’d come to her rescue.
They began to float closer to me, and I remember calling out, just as politely as I could manage in my growing panic, “Hey, can if I grab on?”
Later, back on our little island, after I’d hugged the wife I never thought I’d see again, I confessed what had happened to me while she was on the island getting a massage. And then, our friend told us about the event from her perspective.
She’d heard my call for help, but the man who’d brought her the life ring hadn’t. “What did he say?” he’d asked her. “HE NEEDS HELP!”
And so, they’d begun moving toward me. I was able to grab onto the ring. The crew member motioned to the boat to move toward us. And soon we were aboard — exhausted, but alive.
And believe me when I say, we tipped those guys well at the end of the excursion.
I have a new respect for open-water divers since that event, and I’ve realized I’m not one of them. But I haven’t allowed what happened in that ocean halfway around the world to keep me out of the water.
And do you know why not? Because I love the water. I love the ocean, even if I’m a bit more discerning about the depths of that love.
MADDIE?
Now, I said something a bit controversial a couple of weeks ago when we began this series, “Sin, According to the Experts.”
I said that we love sin — even we who’ve turned to Jesus in faith. And the evidence I gave to support this controversial statement is that we all return to sin. We all keep sinning, even the ones among us who are followers of Jesus.
Just as I keep getting back into the ocean, because I love the water, we keep returning to sin, because we love it.
Even though we love Jesus and, hopefully, understand that He gave His life to REDEEM us from sin — to RANSOM us from sin, to RESCUE us from sin — we still find ourselves drawn back to it.
We have a knowledge and understanding of sin’s consequences. We understand that it’s destructive to us, to others, to our relationships, and to the world at large.
But we keep going back to it, anyway, even though we know the dangers, even though we’ve recognized its destructive consequences in our own lives.
We love Jesus, to be sure, but we still love sin. And we’re not quite willing to leave it in the rearview mirror. We who are experts at sin continue to demonstrate our expertise WITH sin.
We’re not the first ones to experience this conflict in our spiritual lives. Even the Apostle Paul wrestled with the flesh that enticed him back into sin. He describes this conflict in Romans, chapter 7, where he wites:
18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.
19 For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.
Now, these verses are part of a longer passage about the struggle between our sinful flesh and the Spirit of God within us. And that passage concludes in chapter 8, which some of y’all know is my favorite chapter in the Bible.
And we’re going to come back to WHY that’s one of my favorite passages in Scripture in a bit.
But first, I want to talk for a few minutes about ANOTHER expert sinner, Noah.
We’ll look briefly this morning at a few select verses from Noah’s story in Genesis.
We’ll talk a little about his righteousness. We’ll talk about his sin. We’ll talk about the consequences of His sin. And then we’ll see what all this tells us about God’s grace.
But first, we have to understand the situation that developed here on earth between the day Cain slaughtered his brother, Abel, and the day God decided to send a great flood upon all the earth.
The earth was FILLED with sin. FILLED with people rebelling against God. FILLED with people who’d decided — just as Adam and Eve had done — to try to take for themselves the authority to declare what was good and what was evil.
Writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, in Genesis 6:5 Moses is pretty direct about the situation.
5 Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Notice all the amplifying words there. The wickedness of man was GREAT. EVERY intent of their thoughts was evil CONTINUALLY.
In verse 11, Moses says this:
11 Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence.
Chapter 5 lists eight generations between Adam and Noah. And during that period things just went from bad to worse. Cain’s violence seems to have become the norm in the pre-flood world.
In fact, we can see how bad sin was by the refrain we keep seeing in that generational list of chapter 5. In each generation, Moses names the next descendant, then gives the name of that descendant’s first son, then gives his age, and then concludes with these words: “and he died.”
He lived, and he died. He lived, and he died. He lived, and he died. It’s like a bell tolling over and over again, reminding us that the curse of sin is death. And we know that sin is still in the world today, because death is still in the world today.
And the only one in chapter 5 who escapes death is Enoch, whom Moses tells us “walked with God; and he was not, because God took him.”
Before they sinned in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had surely walked with God as He walked there. God would later instruct Abraham to “walk before Me and be blameless [or complete].”
His son, Isaac, would later describe himself as having “walked before God,” as would Isaac’s son, Jacob, who also described God as his shepherd in blessing his son, Joseph.
None of those patriarchs were sinless. The Book of Genesis is a long and, sometimes, horrifying account of their sins and the times when their faith failed.
But each of them loved the Lord. And each of them trusted Him to shepherd them and guide them in His goodness.
And that’s what Moses seems to mean when he writes that Enoch “walked with God.” It’s also what he means when he writes, in chapter 6, verse 9:
9 These are the records of the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God.
Because Noah had trusted God to lead him in His goodness, God had DECLARED Noah to be righteous, just as He’d later do for Abraham, because of HIS faith.
And in the righteousness of GOD that was imputed to Noah, this imperfect man was blameless; another meaning there would be “complete.”
In other words, because of his faith in God, Noah was being transformed into the person God had MADE him to be.
That’s the same thing that happens with every person who turns to God in faith through Christ Jesus and His finished work of salvation at the cross.
Paul talks about it in Romans, chapter 8, where he says God’s purpose in salvation is to conform believers to the image of His Son, “so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren.”
We who’ve followed Jesus in faith have been saved so God can make us to be LIKE Jesus. God wants to fill His family with adopted sons and daughters who share the righteous character of Christ.
People like Noah. People who walk with God.
And that’s just what we see Noah doing through chapters 6, 7 and 8.
God tells him to build an ark, because He’s about to destroy the earth with a flood. And that’s what Noah does. Over the course of 120 years, he follows God’s shipbuilding plans to the letter.
And we can’t imagine the story of Noah building the ark without ALSO imagining the ridicule he surely would have experienced from his neighbors.
“Hey, Noah. Nice highwaters! You expecting rain?” “Well, as a matter of fact, I AM.”
Except it would’ve been worse than that. You can change out of your highwater pants, but you can’t hide a 450-foot boat you’re building in the back yard.
“Noah, you’ve never even SEEN the ocean. Now, you’re gonna captain something almost half as long as an aircraft carrier?! Where do you think all this water you’ve been going on about is going to COME from, anyway? That thing will wind up rotting into the ground, right where you’ve built it.”
And in all this, as the Apostle Peter said, Noah was a “preacher of righteousness.” He was trying to bring people to faith in God, even in the midst of their ridicule.
He’s a preacher of righteousness. And he’s obedient to God. He loads the ark with animals of every kind, just as God has commanded.
He brings Mrs. Noah and his three sons and their wives aboard. And soon, the rains come. And it rains for 40 days and nights, destroying all life on earth, outside the ark.
And finally, after 371 days on the ark, with water violently tossing them about and, at least at first, the cries of the doomed outside the boat ringing around them, Noah and his family and all the animals they’d saved set their feet back on dry land.
God had saved them from His judgment for sin. Not because of Noah’s righteousness. Noah didn’t have any righteousness of his own. That’s what the psalmist tells us. Noah’s righteousness was simply God’s righteousness imputed to him.
Noah was saved because of his faith. And his family had been saved because God was HONORING Noah’s faith.
But, as we’ll see in a few moments, having been saved from the destruction of earth didn’t mean that ALL of Noah’s family had faith in God.
But first, we’ll see that neither Noah’s faith, nor his firsthand observation of the terrible price of sin, would keep him from going back to what he apparently loved.
Remember that God had blessed Noah and the earth and that He’d then made a promise — sealed with the rainbow — to never destroy the earth by flood again.
And then, just two verses after God’s blessing and covenant, what do we see? Look at verse 20 of chapter 9.
20 Then Noah began farming and planted a vineyard.
Now, farming is exactly what we’d expect Noah to do. The family, which would surely soon be growing, would need food to sustain itself.
And there was nothing inherently wrong with Noah planting a vineyard. Wine was the safest thing to drink in an area with questionable water supplies. It can be used as a natural disinfectant, even for cleaning wounds.
And an abundance of grapes and wine would later be a sign of blessing in the nation of Israel.
So, good for Noah for getting right to work, right?
Except, then there’s verse 21.
21 He drank of the wine and became drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent.
So, maybe Noah had something else in mind besides the antiseptic properties of wine when he planted those grapes. Maybe he remembered how it felt to drink a lot of wine and decided he wanted that feeling again.
Maybe he went right back to the sins of his past, the sins before he’d been saved by God’s grace, because he still loved them.
Or maybe he’d seen so much death and destruction from the flood that he just wanted to drown it all, the way the earth had been drowned.
We don’t know. What we DO know, however, is that — at least in his drunkenness — Noah was no longer walking with God. God was no longer enough for him. And in his drunkenness, he shamed himself with semi-public nakedness.
Also, note the parallel with Adam and Eve. Their sin in the Garden had revealed their nakedness, to their shame, just as Noah’s sin here reveals HIS nakedness, to his own shame.
And, as with Adam and Eve, Noah’s sin opens the door for the sin of one of his sons, Ham. Look at verse 22.
22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside.
23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it upon both their shoulders and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were turned away, so that they did not see their father’s nakedness.
Now, whatever else might have been going on with Ham — and commentators have suggested some pretty perverse things about that phrase, “saw the nakedness of his father” — it’s clear that Ham didn’t treat his father with respect or honor.
Not only didn’t he cover him back up, he went out and made light of what he’d seen to his brothers, Shem and Japheth.
But THEY acted honorably, covering their father up without looking at him.
So, when Noah wakes up, somehow knowing what had taken place the previous night, He pronounces a prophecy, upon his sons. Look at verse 25.
25 So he said, “Cursed be Canaan; A servant of servants He shall be to his brothers.”
26 He also said, “Blessed be the Lord, The God of Shem; And let Canaan be his servant.
27 “May God enlarge Japheth, And let him dwell in the tents of Shem; And let Canaan be his servant.”
Canaan was Ham’s young son. And the curse was against him, rather than Ham, which is surprising. But this is a case of what’s called talionic justice — punishment that fits the crime, like an eye for an eye.
Since Ham had breached faith with his own family in his sin, then HIS own family would suffer because of it.
And the descendants of Canaan, the Canaanites, would take Ham’s sin of looking upon his father’s nakedness to the extreme. Their sexual sins were one of the things God warned the people of Israel against before they entered the Promised Land.
Apples and trees, as Annette and I like to say. Apples don’t fall far from their trees. The sins of the fathers are visited upon — in other words, they often BECOME — the sins of the sons. We’ll see more about THAT next week.
But look at the rest of that oracle. Notice that, speaking through Noah, God says Canaan will be a servant of servants, serving his brothers, serving Shem and Japheth and their sons.
Just as Adam and Eve’s sin in the Garden resulted in conflict between Cain and Abel, Noah’s sin of drunkenness would result in conflict between HIS sons.
Listen, even your secret sins cause damage that you’ll never know. Sin rarely ever is satisfied with destroying the sinner. It almost always has consequences that reach well beyond the one who commits it.
But the consequence I want to focus on for these last few minutes was an entirely personal one for Noah.
And it’s this: We don’t hear anything else in the Old Testament about Noah’s life beyond this event.
We don’t know whether this drunken night was a one-time thing or whether it became a habit for him. We don’t know whether he renewed his walk with God or whether he wandered away from the light of God completely.
And the silence of Scripture on this point isn’t really a good sign for Noah. If he’d repented of his sin, we’d expect Moses to have recorded it. So, there’s a pretty good chance he didn’t.
But God is gracious, and God is good.
And so, in one of the several places Noah’s name appears in the New Testament, we see something wonderful. He’s listed in Hebrews, chapter 11, as one of the heroes of faith! Look at verse 7 of that chapter.
7 By faith Noah, being warned by God about things not yet seen, in reverence prepared an ark for the salvation of his household, by which he condemned the world, and became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.
Do you see that? Drunken old Noah, who shamed himself before his sons, is listed here along with Abel, and Enoch, and Abraham, and Sarah, and all the others. He and they were “heirs of the righteousness which is according to faith.”
Once they’d placed their faith in God, not even their sins could separate them from the love of God.
Which brings us back to that passage in the Book of Romans. When we left it, we saw Paul struggling with the two natures within him: one that loved and was directed by sin and the other that loved Jesus and was directed by the Holy Spirit.
And Paul lamented the fact that he so often gave in to the sin nature, rather than following the Spirit. He didn’t do the good things he wanted to do, and he DID the evil things he didn’t want to do.
“Oh wretched man that I am!” he writes near the end of that chapter.
And that’s where I stand sometimes. I imagine it’s where YOU stand, as well. Torn between our love for sin and our love for Jesus.
That’s a terrible place to be. And that’s one of the reasons I tell you so often that my job as your pastor is to teach you to love Jesus more. Because the more we love Jesus, the less we’ll sin against Him.
Still, if that’s where Paul had left off, there wouldn’t be a lot of hope in this letter of hope. But it’s NOT where he left off. We still have glorious chapter 8, which is FULL of hope.
It’s a chapter that starts by telling followers of Jesus we’re no longer condemned. Look at verse 1.
1 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Once you’ve placed your faith in Jesus and His finished work for your salvation at the cross, you’re no longer condemned for your sins. He’s borne the punishment for them himself. For ALL of them — past, present, and future.
And because of Jesus’ great love for us — a love that caused Him to give His life for us and in our place — Paul can say in the LAST verse of this chapter that for believers, there is ALSO now no separation. Look at verse 38.
38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We’re loved by Jesus so much that He’d allow HIMSELF to be condemned for US. And we’re loved so perfectly that we who turn to Him in faith can NEVER be separated from that love, not even by our sins.
What a marvelous love is this! How can we NOT love Jesus more than we love our sin?
This week, when you face the inevitable temptations to go back to what you used to love, I want to encourage you to stop and meditate on this magnificent love of Jesus.
And I want you to take hold of the power it gives you over what USED to be your master.
You have a new master now, Jesus Christ. And He loves you with a marvelous love. A LIFE-giving love. You don’t HAVE to go back to the old master that promised only destruction and death.
This week, let me encourage you to choose LOVE.
