Episode 153: The Real Rainbow Meaning, God’s View On Capital Punishment, & Relationship Issues (Genesis 9 Study)

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Today Counts Show Episode 153

Gary Harpst: Those people that are struggling raising families, this multiplication thing, there’s nothing more holy. Right here it’s written, be fruitful and multiply. When you build a family, you are doing the most holy thing there is, and it’s hard work. So we see that in the rest of Genesis, this family is in crisis, but God still blesses, you know.

Jim Piper: If we can lead wealth at home, we could lead probably just about anywhere. That’s where the foundation of leadership is really.

Winston Harris: Hey, everybody. Before we jump into today’s episode, we’d like to recognize all those who make this podcast possible. The Today Counts Show is supported by the generous donors of the Lead Today Community. Thank you so much for investing in shaping leaders through this podcast. And be sure to like and subscribe on whatever platform you are watching or listening today. All right, let’s jump into the podcast.

Jim Piper: Well, hello again, everybody. Welcome back to the Today Count Show. I am your host, Jim Piper. And if you are tuning in on a regular basis, you know that specifically you are tuning into the Genesis Project on the Today Count Show. And you know that we normally have, or most often we have four of us guys sitting around make believe coffee at a coffee shop somewhere conversing. through the biblical book of Genesis. And Gary does have his cup of coffee in his hands. I’ve got a mini diet Coke available to my left hand over here. But Winston and Matt will not be joining us today. Winston is under the weather and Matt is traveling. So Gary and I will start this off. We are in chapter nine and chapter nine, I guess, you know, if I were to put a fun title on it, if you could put a fun title on, you know, bad news, I would say, Noah, hero to zero. Something like that. Those that are more studious would probably call it the second fall of man, being that God just cleaned the slate. He’s given us a second chance. And here we are in a pickle again of sin and corruption and consequences of that. So we’ll be looking at that here in just a few minutes. We’ll be looking at this idea of animals as part of our diet and that God apparently approves of that way back here in Genesis. And capital punishment is introduced, covenant. And then of course, this second fall, if you will, and all of the stuff that comes with that. So we got a lot to look at. So I’ll just get started, Gary. And I think what I’ll do is I’ll read verses one through, I’m going to say three, and then we’ll pause and I’ll see if you have any thoughts. And we’ll go from there.
Genesis 9:1 says, “And God bless Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea, into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.” I mean, those first three verses are already pretty packed.

Gary: Yeah, they are. I know I do get off track, but I kind of point out to our listeners, the Bible repeats things for a reason. And you kind of notice right away that God blessed Noah and then said, “Be fruitful and multiply.” And immediately that just takes you back to the Genesis one account where God says, here’s why I’m creating you in the first place. I find it interesting having studied leadership development that there’s kind of hidden in here one of the sidebars. It’s not the main thing that’s being talked about here, but God ordained that the only way we could fulfill our purpose is to multiply. And it’s in the multiplication that we can’t handle. mean, I Adam by himself couldn’t stay on the same page with his wife. And then they had two sons and they couldn’t stay. And there’s murder. And so here we have sin again emerging and there’s only seven people.

Jim Piper: Right.

Gary: Right? But I just point out that what is leadership all about, whether it’s in your family or anywhere else, it has to do with this increase in numbers. Where there’s more than one person, you have trouble staying on the same page. So that’s almost a byproduct comment, but he emphasizes it again like he did in Genesis 1.

Jim Piper: Yeah, good point. And in our human weakness, we have a hard enough time taking care of ourselves. And then, you know, we remember Cain’s response when asked where Abel, his brother was, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” You know, pushing away all responsibility? Yeah, you know, as we’ve talked about before on this show, we can’t contain sin within ourselves. And when we do decide to love one another a lot of pain comes with that love. It’s not clean. It’s just a struggle.

Gary Harpst: Absolutely is.

Jim Piper: It’s just a struggle.

Gary Harpst: So we’re at the beginning of him talking about multiplying again and already there’s trouble in paradise.

Jim Piper: Yeah, one of the things that comfort me a little bit is, you know, right from the get go, the Hebrew name they give for God in verse one is that same one we talked about early on in Genesis, Elohim, which is the the name for God you’re going to use when you want to get the relational aspect of God. So that’s a little bit comforting that that word is being used, even though you and I know that devastation is coming around the corner here, it’s still, you know, a relational God. That helps me that he’s not giving up on us.

Gary Harpst: Oh, no, yeah. Yes, a slight part of those people that are struggling raising families, this multiplication thing, there’s nothing more holy. Right here it’s written, be fruitful and multiply. When you build a family, you are doing the most holy thing there is, and it’s hard work. So we see that in the rest of Genesis, this family is in crisis, but God still blesses, you know.

Jim Piper: Yeah. Yeah, Gary, that’s good. I mean, it’s been said, and I’ve repeated it in different venues myself. If we can lead wealth at home, we could lead probably just about anywhere. And I don’t know how much of that is hyperbole. But I think what it’s trying to say is that’s where the foundation of leadership is really learned and established, and God seems to be going right at it. His purpose isn’t changing. He’s going to stick with it. His will will be done eventually. So you also see that stubborn side of God’s love just coming through here. “All right, here we go.” And that’s how God works with me. You know, I’ll make a mistake. I’ll sin. I’ll get locked in, right, on an idea. Sometimes it takes a big jar from God for me to see things a different way. But there’s a new beginning. He doesn’t keep me there. He, you know, has me get up, dust myself off and, and keep keep going.

Gary: Yep, that’s right. He’s always got his remnant of people and his remnant inside of us.

Jim Piper: Yeah, yeah.

Jim Piper: So what do you make of this part about, you know, it seems to set up a little bit of a controversy where God says, “Look, I’ve given you these animals to add to be part of your diet. When you look at the context of what has been written, he seems to throw in, “And as I gave you the green plants, meaning you already knew about that, that’s what you’ve been living on, I give you everything.” But weren’t they already eating meat? Could we not make a case for that? There was sacrifices. At least, Abel gave a sacrifice. Certainly that wasn’t the last sacrifice.

Gary: Yeah, I mean the only instruction I remember about eating, of course, was in the garden about the fruit. So we don’t, it doesn’t say, right? It doesn’t explicitly tell us whether we are– What I notice here is the fear aspect. You know, you think about God creating a garden and everything’s peaceful and man is aligned with God and creation for a period. And then all of sudden this- man’s given the charter to have dominion and rule everything over everything. All of sudden there’s now a fear of man between the animals. And you of course see it. I mean, I’ve got crazy cats that live here every day. They’re afraid of me every day and I’m the one that feeds them.

Jim Piper: Yeah, I guess there’s two sides of that maybe. Because when I think about his proposition or his mission to us about being fruitful, multiply, I also think about that other phrase that’s often tagged on in older translations and earlier in Genesis, and subdue. And so there is a dominating piece about us, but to your point, we don’t get this idea of the garden being a dangerous place for anybody. So mankind and animal kind, seemed as though peace is implied, but now there isn’t peace.

Gary: Yeah, I agree with that. And I think, you know, the return to heaven and those sort of things, the implication is that that peace will be restored. And it appears that it’s wired in, the conflict is wired in at this restart.

Jim Piper: Yeah, especially if you fast forward to John’s vision that ultimately what we think of as heaven, which is probably a temporary holding place, the new heaven and the new earth will descend. And that tells me it’ll mirror to some degree what we’ve experienced, without the sin, the decay, the death.

Gary: Well, the lamb lays down with the lion, you know, that

Jim Piper: Right, yeah.

Gary: – peacefulness of the creation.

Jim Piper: This is all we know, so it’s so hard to imagine what an existence would be like without decay, without harming one another, without threat, with–

Gary: I’ve heard from a medical point of view, I mean again this is not in scripture or so, that some have said is this the beginning of man shortening their lifespan by virtue of eating animals and animal fat and those sorts of things. I don’t know, but God knows.
Jim Piper: No, I think I’ve heard that too. And I think that that’s not a far-fetched conclusion. That’s why, you know, I think there– I mean, let’s remember, Gary, what the preamble was to the flood, that everything was wicked and violent and everything. So to think that we weren’t already eating meat would be a ridiculous conclusion.

Gary: Yeah, I see what you mean.

Jim Piper: Right? Especially when we look at the next verse, which says in verse four, “But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.” In other words, you could call that rare and you could also call that alive. And the truth is, that missionaries will tell us in different places of the world that humans who act more in savagery would actually kill an animal and eat him right on the spot. And in some cases where the animal is not even deceased yet, and God is obviously saying that that is displeasing to him. So it says, and of course, that’s an interesting hinge on the door here, because he uses that to go into his new decree of capital punishment. But I’ll start again in verse four.

“You shall not eat flesh with its life, that is its blood.” It’s like that’s where he draws the line but there’s a purpose for it which he’s going to spill out here in verse five. “And for your life blood, I will require a reckoning from every beast.” There’s that fear thing you’re talking about, who’s going to attack who? “From every beast, I will require it and from man.” Let’s pause there for a minute. If a lion killed a man, God says, put that lion to death. That’s how I read it. And then it says, “From his fellow man, I will require a reckoning for the life of a man.” And then here comes the decree, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.” And here he gives the reason why. “For God made man in his own image. For God made man in his own image.”

So I’m reading in here, this is the clear decree, the beginning of a justice system of capital punishment. Now capital punishment, of course, is a controversial statement in cultures around the world. Probably regardless where one lives, it’s just at different perspectives and temperatures, I guess. What I think is interesting here, Gary, we were talking about this before we hit the record button, I did a little bit of research on this phrase, “Whoever sheds the blood of man.” The Hebrew there, I’m going to spell the word in English is R-A-T-S-A-C-H. My really rusty bad Hebrew would call that Rasa. In English, I might pronounce it Ratsach or Ratsach, something like that. But that’s the word for murder. So the first phrase is talking about murder.

And I’m going to go on a limb here and say because I know the book of Deuteronomy is going to go, and Leviticus and such, these books of the law. This is probably referring to first and second degree, certainly first degree murder, perhaps second degree murder. The second phrase, by man shall his blood be shed. In that phrase, the Hebrew word is haraq. H-A-R-A-G, which literally means put to death. So one seems to be more of a organized cooperative justice process and the other one a sin. One seems to be God’s ordained direction. And the reason why I say that there was probably, whether it was then or later, learned a constant growing of government and justice is that we know that we were also instructed to erect cities of refuge where criminals could find safety in various, you know, levels. What thoughts do you have?

Gary: Well, I’ve always, whenever I think about this passage and capital punishment in general, you find yourself thinking, what does mercy mean? And this is a deep topic and here’s what I’m getting at. When God looks at us, does he look at us as individuals or as a race or as a single organism? I know I get pretty obtuse here, but I find it interesting that God speaks about oneness. When Eve was guilty, Adam was guilty. And when a football team loses, the whole team loses. You know, one player drops the ball. And you think, well, that’s really not fair that there’s judgment here. I will come back to capital punishment, I promise. But it’s interesting that it says that we’re all, from birth, corrupt because of the sin of Adam, that propagated through the whole race. And you don’t really have anything to say about it. In some ways you think, “Well, that’s not fair.” Well, the work of Christ is dependent on this very same principle. Because just like it’s not fair that I am sinful because of an ancestor, Jesus died for me, and that’s not fair either. And so this oneness thing is a big deal. And so when you look at capital punishment, you have to ask yourself, does justly administered capital punishment, not something where you are put to death 30 years later, but where there’s clear evidence, is that merciful to society because it prevents hundreds or thousands of other deaths because people learn not to do that? And if you answer, “Well no, it’s not merciful to the individual,” but you look at it from a societal point of view, does it result in more or less death if justice is administered? I’m not answering that question. I’m just posing that God really looks at things sometimes differently than we do, like most of the time. And you can argue that really well administered justice is merciful to the race.

Jim Piper: Yeah, I got some thoughts on this.

Gary: Hmm.

Jim Piper: I want to say that logically, as I approach the scriptures, God seems to address nations and tribes as the broad direction.

Gary: The oneness.

Jim Piper: Yeah. But I also believe based upon, I don’t like using the term whim, but he certainly is due his whims since as you have pointed out, this is his creation. He’s the boss of this creation. When he decides to take Enoch and he decides to take Elijah, obviously, he can break his own standards of what is norm. So, you know, a broader geographical national. And then we read stories about, you know, the Hebrew people that have been captive in Babylon. And you read about the masses, you know, the nameless people. And then you learn about these three Hebrew boys, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and Daniel. And so God tends to pull, make some exceptions by pulling some out of the story. But his coming back to your point as an engineer, God has engineered his creation so well that he doesn’t really need to visit me today in some physical form, whether it be an angel or whatever a donkey. So, yeah, and I think the other thing, you know, for a contemporary side of our conversation is I think one of my troubles with capital punishment is that even though we establish what we believe is a just system or the best system we can, the advancing of DNA has already proven that we have put many to death that were innocent of murder.

Gary: Agree.

Jim Piper: They were not innocent human beings from sin, but they were innocent of the crime that they were charged with and the resulting death. But that goes back to fair. Sometimes even in our best efforts, we can’t seem to bring justice. We struggle even in the process, even if we’re trying to do it, we struggle with that.

Gary: There’s another part of our system I think is not just. Of course you get it wrong, that’s not just. There’s another principle in Ecclesiastes. God says the reason people do evil things is there’s a time lapse between when they do it and when they see the consequences. To me, the whole purpose of capital punishment, as God described it here, was preventative. He was trying to get behavior change, saying, don’t do this, because Here’s the consequence. Well, I don’t know what the average period is between a conviction and an execution of a sentence is, but it’s got to be more than 20 years. I’ve never heard of anybody. You see what I mean? So we’ve lost all connection between changing behavior. That’s the only justification I can think of biblically for capital punishment is it actually improves the behavior of society. But it certainly doesn’t when there’s a delay because that’s what Ecclesiastes says. We don’t learn when there’s a 30-year delay.

Jim Piper: Yeah, and I think we have too many examples of how some have been able to avoid that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so there’s a lot in there. But in spite of our brokenness in civilized nations, at least what we get out of this is that, you know, murder is obviously one of the Ten Commandments. And to kill something that has been made in the image of God, you know, here, it’s supposed to put the fear of God in us, you know, so to speak. And when we’re dealing with one another, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch that we’re dealing with somebody that God created in his image and his likeness. And so there should be some radiation of the fear of God into the fear in our relationships with one another.

Gary: Well, Jesus really kind of turned this whole thing upside down and made the emphasis not on the murder part, but on the image of God, because he said basically, if I think wrongly about my neighbor, it’s the same as doing it. And so this honoring the image of God is really the main point here, I think.

Jim Piper: Yeah, I do too. I do too.

Jim Piper: It should cause us to, it should bring humility into our relationships. Yeah, that’s really good. We could talk about that more. Maybe we will. Verse seven says, “And you be fruitful multiply.” You know, here it is again. And on the earth and multiply in it. And then verse eight says, “Then God said to Noah, and to his sons with him, ‘Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you and 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. I establish my covenant with you that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.’ 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. I have set my bow, rainbow, 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.'” It seems to be very redundant here. “‘And the water 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,'” referring to himself now in third person, “‘and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.’ God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.'”

Gary: This is an unusual passage in that not very often does God put reminders to Himself.

Jim Piper: Yeah.

Gary: Right? He says this rainbow is for Him to remember. So that’s unusual.

Jim Piper: Yeah, I sometimes refer to myself in the third person just for fun, you know. I think psychologically what I like about this being pinned this way is it reminds me that as far as we know, we are the only animals if you will, if I could use that term, that can actually think about ourselves. We can think about our behavior, think about who we want to be, how we want to grow, what we want to accomplish. Whereas in the animal kingdom, as I understand it, it is more response based. And so here, it’s like God steps out of himself and he’s looking at his creation. He’s looking at himself as the creator, the people he created, the rainbow. And he goes, “Well, God will remember that.” I think that is not a stretch to say, and that is the power of vision. If you can start creating a vision for what God would have for you in your life, which is clearly spelled out in scripture, it may not say what trade you pursue. But it really tells you the most important things. You have that vision for the kind of character you want to have, the way you want to treat people, what you want to do with your life. That’s a pretty powerful, powerful statement. I’m probably reading more into that than I should, but–

Gary: What I hear though, I mean the thing I take away from you mentioning is this connection about sight and commitment. We’re back to relationships. Relationships are where things are hard. Making commitments to each other defines relationships. God here is making a commitment. Then He’s giving a reminder that He made the commitment. And you know, it reminds you of this ring on your finger.

Jim Piper: Yes.

Gary: You know, the ring’s not the important thing, it’s the commitment behind it. So I don’t know, what an interesting thing going on here that the creator of the universe is deciding to make a commitment, covenant with his creatures. I don’t know, he didn’t have to do that.

Jim Piper: Yeah, I think it reverbs out of he was sorry that he made man and then he destroyed mankind minus the remnant. And now it’s a new beginning. It’s almost like the mourning process is coming to an end and there’s a new beginning even for himself in the sense of his relationship with mankind. I’m not trying to lower him down to our level. But I think that’s what the Scriptures try to do, at least in the sense of understanding that this is a God that we can have a faith relationship with.

Gary: Yeah, you talking about that reminded me. Somewhere he says in the part of that lament is man’s heart’s broken from child up. It’s somewhere in this narrative, I forget where it was. Same idea.

Jim Piper: Yeah. What do you think about that rainbow? This is just for fun. Do you think that rainbow has always been there? And he said, he picked it out, said, “I’ve saved that for this moment.” Or do you think because of the scientific theories that it hadn’t rained until, well, the Bible says that it didn’t rain until, you know, the flood came. And it wasn’t just the rain, but also, as you have pointed out, the mass amount of water inside this-

Gary: In the earth.

Jim Piper: -ball called the earth, you know, forged up and rain down. Was it that?

Gary: Yeah, you could theorize. I mean, we’re in Wonderland here. But the idea does say from the tombs of the deep, water emerged. And they’ve already discovered more water under the surface of the Earth than above by multiples still. And so one scenario would be all this water came to the surface, then evaporated and truly created the kind of system where a rainbow would be Appropriate. Does it say that? No, but that that is one scenario

Jim Piper: Yeah, and as somebody who’s been studying the Bible most of his life, I don’t see that conjecture as dangerous. I just think that’s interesting to wonder. It is funny though, even to this day, right? You’ve been with family or friends and someone will spot the rainbow and nobody ignores a rainbow.

Gary: No, no.

Jim Piper: Isn’t that funny? As we go, “Look at that.”

Gary: It is. It’s still remarkable, even after all these years.

Jim Piper: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, even the little ones that you see that are fabricated poolside and then the big ones in the sky, I mean, you see them all over. Kind of like a kaleidoscope that is there. You know, when I think about the greatness of God, I think about the elements of his creation that I cannot see beyond a microscope, that the microscope gets me to a certain size, but not smaller. Even as we continue to develop microscopes that can get smaller and smaller, there’s still more, there’s still more. And then the telescope. Even though we continue to develop telescopes to go out farther, we can’t seem to keep– There’s more. There’s more. And kind of like what we talked about last time, how do you describe that kind of a god with the limits that we have in language? It’s just hard to describe. So we’re not critics of the text or the narrative, what we’re doing is going, “Is that what we’re trying to say? Is that what he’s trying?”

Well, and then we get to this point, Gary, where as I started in the beginning, call it hero to zero, call it the second fall of man. But this is a bummer. And I’ll go ahead and dive in and this one’s going to take a little bit of dissecting. You should see my Bible right now, I got arrows pointing here and there and names underlined and question marks. Because, you know, first blush, I’m going, “Was it really that big of a deal?” And then, you know, the more you think about it, “Okay, yeah.”

So it says, verse 18. “The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan.” Now once we read further, we know why that’s put in parentheses. In other words, here comes, it’s almost like remember these names, right? So I’m going read it again. “The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth.” And then in parentheses it says, “(Ham was the father of Canaan.)” Verse 19, “These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed.” That’s important. Then in verse 20, it says, “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 in his tent.”

Let me pause there for a minute. And you can jump in too, if you want, before I continue. So we know now that this isn’t like the day after they got out of the art, because the boys already have boys and a vineyard has grown. So we can’t say what the first– I first ran to Noah’s defense. I remember this when I first read this many years ago. “Well, he probably didn’t know. He didn’t know that that stuff was gonna, you know, knock him on his can.” Always trying to stick up for the guy.

Gary: Yeah, right.

Jim Piper: Right? So I think some years has passed here. And I mean, probably decades. Probably decades because of what we’re going to learn here. Okay, so he drank of the wine and became drunk. This is verse 21, “He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent,” meaning naked, I suppose. And Ham, the father of Canaan, they’re repeating that, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside.” Okay, so we’ve got some gossip going on here, some spreading of shame, some shaming. Maybe laughter, maybe whatever form.

Gary: Ridicule. Yeah, it could be.

Jim Piper: Yeah. “Then Shem and Japeth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders and walked back into the tent,” I’m adding that. “And walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward and they did not see their father’s nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him,” I just want to pause there and say youngest son. I don’t believe this is referring to the youngest of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. I think this is referring, this would not be unusual for biblical text for a son to be a grandson or even a great grandson frankly, of a patriarch or a father. You know, we’ll often see, you know, he’s the son of so and so and so and so. So when Noah woke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him.” I’m going suggest that is Canaan. “He said, ‘Cursed be Canaan. A servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.’ He also said, ‘Blessed be the Lord, the god of Shem and let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth and let him dwell in the tents of Shem and let Canaan be his servant.’ After the flood, Noah lived 350 years and all the days of Noah were 950 years and he died.” Your turn, Gary.

[laughter] Gary: Yeah, well, there’s a lot of– There’s probably not very many passages that have been interpreted and reinterpreted and trying to figure out what this means other than what it says. You know, so one of the things I’ve certainly heard is that uncovering, the phrase uncovering is nakedness is used in other places to reference sexual related activity or has sexual connotations, but you know, I don’t know. But you know, the size of the punishment makes you think something pretty significant is going on here. I don’t know.

Jim Piper: Yeah, I don’t disagree with that. And I haven’t dived into this at a PhD level, right? I mean, I’ve done some study on it, of course, and I have probably even taught on this, you know, in years gone by from the pulpit. But it does seem, if my facts are straight, Canaan would be Ham’s fourth son, and I get that out of the next chapter in verse 6 where it says, the sons of Ham, and then he puts them in order, Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan. And then they talk about grandsons, well, daughters and grandsons after that. And so, You know, that appears to me to be pretty clearly, first of all, Canaan, and then, of course, the curse comes out not against his father, but against Canaan. But, you know, if you think about it, if your son is cursed, you’re cursed, right? I mean, you’re at least cursed in your heart, pierced in your heart. And then I think that not only the language, the linguistics that you discussed, that you just mentioned, Gary, but also the history. So you discussed that linguistically, it suggests some sort of sexual impropriety that when Canaan went into Noah’s tent, something occurred there while he was, you know, knocked out drunk. But when you follow the lineage of Canaan and to the Canaanites, they were known as a very perverse tribe in the arena of sexuality. Not to say every person was, you know, stricken with it, but it was a epidemic, let’s just say. And then, of course, as we know, became enemies of Israel as time goes on, which we will see. We’ll get to see some of that down the road.
But then what kind of helps, I think, establish that is Shem, one of the brothers, you know, again, we go back, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. So Shem, one of Ham’s brothers, that is the lineage for Jesus. So that would obviously be the earmark for that clan. And then Japheth seems to be the tribe, if I can call it tribe, that began to spread into the Western European world. So they all seem to at least broadly follow this cursing and blessing of Noah and gives a little more evidence maybe to, I think you’re right.

Gary: Yeah, is it, of course God does nothing by accident, but you wonder whether this is a type of Christ that mentions Shem first and then Japheth and that they backed up and covered up. You think what Jesus does for us, He covers our sin. And, you know, it’s just fascinating that Shem’s name is used first and that’s where the line of Jesus comes from.

Jim Piper: Well,

Jim Piper: Yeah, I think that brings up a good question. People often ask us, don’t they, Gary? What happened to the people before Jesus? If the Bible teaches that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, then how did people from ancient days, you know, how do they go to paradise? How do they go to heaven? And our answer from scripture tells us that when they followed the direction of the priests and the Hebrew people, the teachings of God and the sacrifice of whether it be a bird or a large animal, depending upon their economic ability, they were doing that in faith. And it was known to be a covering for sin, not a once and for all, you know, idea. Again, you know, whether we’re taking that too far or not, that is continuing the story. Well, actually, yeah, it’s paralleling with the story of a covering until Jesus becomes the final lamb that is shed for us.

And obviously, what is discouraging, and you said this earlier about multiplying, here we have this fresh family. We don’t know if they’ve been on, you know. We don’t know whether they have been on dry ground now for 20 years, 50 years. We don’t know. But obviously, Canaan had to be of an age where he could commit such a sin. Whatever that is. And so in just that short amount of time, we would shame our father and we would gossip about our father. And obviously not even within the, “Oh my gosh, what should we do, brothers?” But it’s inferred pretty clearly that probably the whole camp knew. It spread. It doesn’t say that, but how did Canaan find out? It doesn’t say that he mistakenly walked in. I’m assuming he got the information and out of curiosity. Then, you know, curiosity is good and bad. It leads you in good places, leads you in bad places.

So, you know, what a hurtful thing, you know, for Noah when he woke up. His own sons, his own family, son, grandson, his own family. Then that last verse was kind of fun. You and I talked about this too before we got on to hit record. In doing the math, commentators have said in these last two verses, after the flood Noah lived 350 years, all the days of Noah were 950 years and he died. And so we know Noah to be one of the heroes of the faith, but we also know Abraham to be heroes of the faith. From a world religion perspective, often called the father of the main religions, Muslims, Judaism and Christianity. So the vast majority of the world has certainly heard of Abraham. And so–

Gary: I remember seeing that timeline too somewhere, and it kind of bends your mind to think the Tower of Babel story and Abraham, that Noah was still alive by, what did you say, 50 years or so?

Jim Piper: Yeah. Yeah. One of the commentaries laid out the math and suggested this that Abram was born, you know, his original name Abram before was changed Abraham Abram was born 292 years after the flood, which the math would say that that allowed for 58 years, where Abram and Noah were on the planet at the same time. But you said that you read something in the rabbinic teachings that they might even have bumped into each other the grocery store or [crosstalk].

Gary: Yeah, you know the rabbinical history or what some of the sources they use, I’m not deeply familiar with, but one teaching I heard was that Abraham intentionally went to visit Noah and spent time with him. And you know Abraham grew up in a very sinful place dominated by the charismatic leadership that resulted in the Tower of Babel and all that. So, you know, it’s one theory that Noah’s influenced Abraham’s development that might have been a seed of that faith. But, you know, it’s not recorded in Scripture.

Jim Piper: Gary, before we close the pages on chapter nine, what are some of your main takeaways? Main takeaway, singular or plural.

Gary: You know, I find one of my bigger takeaways of all the Old Testament and it’s encapsulated here. I mean, we see the fallenness of man. We’re sick. Was it in the Good to Great? But one of the fundamental truths in that great leadership book was face the brutal facts. And then out of those facts, you then can make an intelligent plan. Well, the brutal facts are reinforced here that within one generation that they’re corrupt again. And Adam and Eve, they got to two people when they were corrupt. And so for all of us, there’s this sort of reality, the depressing part that we, there’s something broken deeply inside of us, whether you call it genetic or whatever, we have a disease. But the good news is God just delivered him and he has a rescue for us. He covers our sin. We don’t see it all unfold, but the whole Old Testament is just such evidence that nothing works except Jesus. Nothing ever worked. Even all the good kings, you know, there’s a litany of all the kings coming up here if we ever get through all those. Most of them are labeled bad kings, but even the good ones, David didn’t finish that well. Solomon was a train wreck. So, you asked my takeaways, you see and hear the mercy of God and our need for a savior. And you see it in the story of Noah.

Jim Piper: Yeah, I share a lot of that with you. The thing we haven’t talked about is, you know, we can’t take Noah off the hook. Would any of this happened if he hadn’t sinned? But to your point, it’s awfully hard to judge another man when I know that I’m a man. And then I just see God busily making his covenants that he always keeps, regardless of whether we, you know, keep ours. He just keeps pursuing us, just continues to pursue us. And it’ll be interesting to see how these three sons turn into nations as we continue to see the story progress. Gary, good seeing you. You look good. And I look forward to Genesis chapter 10. That one is going to be a little interesting as well, but once we get through 10, then we go to the Tower of Babel.

Gary: Oh, yes.

Jim Piper: And then we come to that intersection somewhere. Maybe we’ll meet Abraham and Noah in the grocery store. We’ll see what happens.

Gary: We’ll see what happens. Thanks a lot for leading us. This is always interesting and engaging and exciting.

Jim Piper: Thanks for joining us today.

Gary: Okay, bye bye.

Winston Harris: Thank you for joining us here at the Today Counts Show. Be sure to like and subscribe on whatever platform you listen or watch so you don’t miss any content. And stay tuned for more coming soon.
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