Imagine exiting an escape pod
from a doomed world, and now there are only you and seven others stepping onto
a washed earth to start anew. Of course, you are all elated to be alive, but
somewhere along the line it hits you; there is no one around thinking you’re
crazy, an idiot, or self-righteous for believing that people of the earth are
in peril. There is only an unnerving silence that the sounds and ways of the
wicked once witnessed are no longer around.
Wouldn’t you rather be one of
the eight and struggle with the new adjustment than be dead? Of course, we
all would. The downside is that which destroyed the civilization before the
flood also survived the flood, the sin nature of man, and as the earth is
repopulated, the sin nature will be transmitted to the survivor’s offspring,
and the weeds of sinful behavior will flourish and be bountiful once again, and
death and destruction will follow. Just look at the world around us today. One
thing history teaches us is that man doesn’t learn from history.
On the bright side, God’s
covenant with Noah is seen in the rainbow, a visible symbol, and a reminder that
God will never flood the earth again (Gn 9:8-17). I’d rather believe the
authority of the Word of God than those claiming that the polar ice caps are melting
and instilling fear of a devastating flood that is never going to happen, but
there is a greater hope. The Messiah will come through the line of Noah’s son,
Shem (cf. Lk 3:23, 36) who will propitiate or satisfy the just demands for man’s
sin, giving hope of life after death for all who accept God’s provision for
salvation, His Son’s death on the cross. Unfortunately, as in the days of Noah, there will be scoffers like the sand of the sea who will reject God's offer.
You can gather from this verse
below that the pace of Noah’s life had drastically changed, but so had his
spiritual course.
“Noah began to be a farmer, and
he planted a vineyard. Then he drank of the wine and was drunk ....” Gn
9:20-21b.
Why am I sharing this
uncharacteristic behavior on Noah’s part? Because owning the knowing and doing
of God’s will for our lives is for life,
in the eventful and the uneventful. Our lives are normally lived out in the
routine that is peppered here and there with eventful things.
“Noah began to be a farmer”
doesn’t mean he waited all those years to try his hand at farming and growing
grapes. He liked
to eat like the rest of us (cf. Gn 9:3).
“After the flood, Noah began to cultivate
the ground, and he planted a vineyard” (Gn 9:20, NLT).
“Then
he drank of the wine and was drunk” (Gn 9:21a). This particular incident took
place some years later after leaving the ark. Consider Noah had cursed his grandson Canaan (Gn 9:25), the youngest son of Ham
who was the youngest son of Noah (Gn 9:24). Ham had four boys (Gn 10:6). I am
sure he had some girls interspersed in there as well. Normally, females are not
mentioned in Semitic genealogies.
With
the vapor canopy of the earth gone, the weather conditions obviously had changed.
It wouldn’t take long to realize the potency of the fruit of the vineyard may
have changed along with the weather. In all
of his greatness, he fell to the grapes, drunk. This should serve as a warning
on how an indiscretion can cause us to lose our reputation.
It doesn't mean that Noah did
not rebound from this moment of drunkenness, nor can we assume getting
intoxicated here was the first time during his 350 years that the grapes got
the best of him after the flood either, but his time after the flood was
uneventful except for this recorded moment of indiscretion. It does seem
anti-climactic in light of his first 600 years (cf. Gn 7:11). Noah died at the
age of 950 (Gn 9:29). He was one of only seven men recorded in Scripture to
live over 900 years! There are a lot of candles on that cake!
The verb “became uncovered” (Gn
9:21b) should probably be viewed as reflexive; Ham did not uncover his father.
He probably stared at his father’s nakedness and delighted in telling his other
two brothers. The motivation for doing so is unclear. So, after Noah became
sober, in his oracle he cursed Canaan, Ham’s youngest son, not Ham (Gn 9:24-27;
cf. Deut 27:16).
I agree with this one erudite commentator
on Genesis that people get “mired in the morass of fruitless speculation”
concerning the meaning of Ham seeing Noah’s nakedness. So much so that I am of
the opinion that it overshadows the question of why was Noah drunk in the first
place? We can speculate until the cows come home on that or what was Ham’s
motive or Canaan’s involvement, but the fact remains Noah got drunk on wine.
Incidentally, wine was not the problem here; the misuse of it was; I say that
as a teetotaler. What lead to this incident was not an accident. Noah was not
in the will of God at this juncture. What a departure from Genesis 6:9. Such
deviation always produces negative consequences; are you with me?
Noah’s drunkenness also reveals
that the removal of all the unbelievers from the earth or environmental changes
or relocation does not palliate the sinfulness of believers. The sin nature is
alive and well anywhere on earth wherever man is. Good luck with finding “paradise” on earth. Look
at the world today, torn by the same sinfulness of man that can be traced all
the way back to those eight godly survivors of the great flood who traced their
innate sinfulness back to Adam (cf. Rom 5:12).
If you hadn’t noticed, the impartiality of the Word of God pulls no punches, revealing the faults and virtues of all the saints of God. This is expected given the holiness of God and His intolerance of sin. Everyone loves a scandal involving stalwarts of the faith. People pretend to be horrified when something happens to a spiritual giant, but in reality, they are inwardly relieved that the flaws are revealed, or think or say things to others about so and so in order to feel better about themselves. It's called by a weird word, schadenfreude, those who delight in the misfortunes of others. Such are the practices of small-minded, insensitive people plagued by the same sinful nature.
It is critical as believers to
focus on owning the knowing and doing God’s will for our lives for life,
offering no excuses, and taking full responsibility for any digressions or
indiscretions. Admittedly, it will feel kind of awkward leaving the results
with God in doing His will because we have all been overly exposed and indoctrinated in measuring
success or failure by results. We are not saying here that results are
unimportant, but that God owns the results of our knowing and doing His will,
not us.
This world of unbelievers in
Noah’s day rejected God’s will for their lives and suffered a catastrophic
failure due to unbelief. Why was Noah successful before and during the flood
and for an undetermined amount of time after the flood? Because he did what God
commanded him to do.
“And
Noah did according to all that the LORD commanded him” (Gn 6:22; 7:5).
As
great as Noah was, we can learn from his mistake that knowing and doing the
will of God for our lives is for life,
not a sequence of cherry-picked moments on what to obey and what not to obey or
pretending to be a Christian. This principle for biblical success never stops
as long as we are breathing. There is no arrival point where things are
spiritually automatic. The enemy waits to pounce on anyone of us who claims to
believe to make the choice to suspend pursuing the knowing and doing of the
will of God for our lives. The world may praise you for your achievements, but
before God, there is no biblical success apart from Him, only failure. If it
happened to a spiritual giant like Noah; it can happen to any one of us who
believes.
When
we allow God to own the results, He rightly gets all the credit, right?! When
we take ownership of knowing and doing God’s will for our lives for life according
to the teaching of Scripture, we are successful in the sight of God (cf. Josh
1:8). When we don’t own obedience, we invite unnecessary and avoidable problems
into our lives. Noah would testify to that. <><
“For
whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we
through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope” (Rom 15:4).
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