Genesis 9:25-27: The Curse of Ham and the Blessing of Shem and Japheth (Part Two)

(upbeat music) Amen. Well, welcome to this part two of this five-part series that I'm doing through Genesis, and it's titled Race Nations and Christian Nationalism. This series was originally gonna be three parts, but I thought it would be more fitting to add my last two sections on the table of nations and the Tower of Babel to really put this series together. Now, this sermon's gonna be a little bit longer than normal, so I'm just asking you to just get your minds ready, open up, pay attention. One of the most important sermons that I've ever written, honestly, I spent 40 hours preparing this sermon. It's about double to triple what I typically prepare for a sermon. Now, because of the sensitive nature of this topic, when we're talking about issues of race or nations or whatever it may be, there's gonna have to be a great deal of nuance, of context that is required, so that I might work through this gently, I'm anticipating how I might be misunderstood, and there's a variety of complexities that are happening around this talk this morning. Now, for that reason, this might feel a little bit more like a lecture and more like an exposition. I just don't have the luxury of reading the text and coming to the historical conclusions of the text, because it will require more explanation, understanding, and careful foundation for this discussion. Now, if you remember my last sermon that was titled, "Understanding the Curse of Ham," what that looked like historically. We examined chapter nine, verses 18 through 27, and we saw that Noah functions as a second Adam. He essentially is the new covenant head of humanity after the flood. And we also saw that his three sons, Shem, Hashem, and Japheth, were serving as covenant heads of the nations, which leads us into chapter 10, which is the table of nations. Now, from these three men, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, came these three macro races of humanity, and we have the Shemites, or as we know them as the Semites, we have Ham or the Hamites, and then we have the Japhethites. And in that sermon, we saw a tragedy unfold between Ham and Noah, a tragedy unfold between Ham and Noah, and we answered three key questions. What did Ham actually do to Noah? Why was Canaan cursed for Ham's sin? And was the curse on Canaan ultimately a curse to some degree on Ham? Those are the three questions that we answered in that last sermon. Now, in regard to those first two questions, we considered three main interpretations throughout history on this relationship of the sin of Ham to Noah. And we looked at the voyeurism view, we looked at the Sodomy view, and we looked at the maternal incest view. And we concluded that the maternal incest view had the most explanatory power specifically, because it offered an explanation for why Canaan would have some sort of curse upon him for the sin of his father. Ultimately, we concluded that Canaan was cursed because Canaan was the illegitimate seed of an incestual relationship between Ham and Noah's wife. Now, this did not mean that Ham had no consequences. As we know, Canaan's curse only existed because of Ham's sin. And seeing the curse on Canaan as ultimately a curse upon Ham required a covenantal framework. We had to look at it this as a covenantal framework that Ham and Noah, that Ham and Canaan are connected in a covenantal framework. And when we speak of covenant heads, as we are in this passage of scripture, again, we are in Genesis 9, the father represents the family line. That's something that we see throughout scripture. And we also see the line represents the father. We see that with Adam representing all humanity. He operates as a federal head. We see that if you're a part of Abraham's seed, you're represented by Abraham in some degree. We see this even in the Old Testament, Israel, whose kings, if you have a sinful king or an obedient king, essentially it affected the entire nation. We also see this of course with Jesus Christ, who was our federal head, and we are represented by him before the father. But we also see this here in the sons of Noah. The point I'm trying to make is this, in a covenantal structure, and again, I know some of you are not really mature in covenantal thinking, but in a covenantal structure, independence is simply not a category. You don't get to think as an independent individualist in a covenantal framework. The only people that think this way are individualists or maybe under a Baptist theology where you can create an interpretation of an isolated curse. So I'm arguing that to curse Canaan is to some degree to curse him. And as we're gonna see later, the curse of ham is the position of not merely the 18th and 19th century of Southern Presbyterians who were trying to push the transatlantic slave trade. Okay, that is a common objection that we see in this discussion throughout history. But the curse of ham was held by several early church fathers, like origin, hypoletus of Rome, Augustin, Epiphanetus, St. Ambrose. We also see that this position is held by many in the reformed camp, including the Magistro reformers, including Luther and Calvin, including Henry Ainsworth, Matthew Poole, Matthew Henry, Abraham Kuiper, and many others. Even the art, if you look at the cover of your liturgy, the art is by the great biblical illustrator Gustav Dory. And the title of it is the curse of ham. And so this was the historic position across much of Christendom. And so today, in part two, we're gonna turn to verses 25 to 27, and we're gonna do two things. Number one is we're gonna argue that while the curse was particularly focused on Canaan, it was generally upon ham, and to some degree, flowed down to all of Ham's descendants, which we can see in both scripture, history, and experience. Number two, what I want to do here, is I'm gonna explain the blessings Noah gave to Shem and Japheth, and to show how they have shaped civilizational history across their descendants in world history. And so first, let me begin. I wanna give some of this context, this nuance, this Lane Some Foundation, to explain why I believe this sermon is very important. Number one is that we need biblical answers to explain reality. And number two, we need to see the beauty of fulfilled prophecy because it strengthens faith. And so let me start with number one. As Christians, we believe that the Bible gives us the clearest and most honest explanations of reality. This is a good thing, we believe this, including the real distinctions that God has sovereignly and providentially established between the races and the ethnicities and the nations and the cultures across world history. And yet we live under what I would call an egalitarian regime that treats the mere acknowledgement of any sort of racial distinctions as some sort of moral evil. But what if the Bible does, in fact, actually give us clear answers for why these distinctions exist? What if the historic Christian understanding of these matters is actually correct? The more I study this particular topic, the more I am compelled about how many people held the position that I'm going to present today. But what if we're not allowed to hold that position? What if the position of almost all of church history, for example, it's similar to head coverings, you see head coverings on women all the way from the early church, all the way until about 1960? Is this something that we were wrong for almost all of church history and now just after feminism, we have finally figured it out? I don't think so. And so I believe this is the deeply frustrated position that we find ourselves in, that we can read church history. We can see the patterns in our own experience in life. We can see the chaos of denying reality. We can see the broad distinctions across races, across ethnicities, across the differences distinctions. between people. Yet we are forbidden by the cultural orthodoxy and even in the church to notice or discuss those distinctions. This past week, a group of pastors from a well-known denomination, were talking about my first sermon on this topic and said that I thought we were done with this curse of ham stuff. That was the response. And they say that while they cite quotes from all of their favorite theologians in their sermons who also hold the position that I hold. And they say this as if, well, I actually heard a few gentlemen out on the internet this last week that had reviewed my sermon. They actually said, this is heresy. This is your preaching heresy. And they said that because, well, just think about this with me. They say it as if my conclusions were not a reasonable exogetical deduction of the text. They say that all the while exceptional theologians throughout church history across many continents and across many centuries also hold the same positions. Here's the truth. Why do they call it heresy? They call it heresy not because it violates biblical historic Christianity. They call it heresy because it violates liberalism. That's why they call it heresy. And in liberalism, any doctrine that even suggests some sort of positive or negative distinctions around races or ethnicities or cultures is automatically deemed racist. And this is because egalitarianism is the west's most adored idol. Everything being the same, everything being equal. God does not create an equal world. Some are sick and some are healthy. Some are strong. Some are weak. Some are tall. Some are short. Some are rich. Some are poor. Some are elect. Some are destined for hell. You have to understand God does not create an egalitarian, flattened, and drodgenous world. He creates a world of distinctions. It is not a fair world. It is a just world. But here's the problem facing the liberals and the demons of the day. We live in the information age. Statistics, videos, photographs, news, historical documents, studies are now available to anyone who looks. And you can't, it's very difficult to hide reality, by the way. There's a big movement right now of people called notacers. What that means is that they are noticing things that they're not allowed to talk about, but everybody also notices that. What was the kind of instinctual or experiential experience of previous generations has now and is becoming more empirical. It's becoming more undeniable in today's culture. You start to see things. We can now see, like imagine back in the 1950s or the 1940s, the only thing you had maybe was something that was on the newspaper. But now you can see what's happening around the world all the time. And you can start putting patterns together. You can start doing, understanding the research of studies. There are global studies that are happening and understanding differences between people groups. And as a result, more and more people are coming to see these distinctions. They're noticing things like the generally civilized nature of the west, of white, historical, European, western nations, the generally civilized nature in comparison to say the generally unscivilized nature of African nations. In fact, I was looking today at some studies around Libya. And the first thing that popped under Google was, is it safe to travel to Libya. And I clicked it and it opened up. It says, no, there are many national bands on travel to Libya right now. And I thought, like it's just, we're noticing. It's right there. How many times have there been a travel band to France or a travel band to Poland? Probably never. So my objective in this sermon is to show how the Bible explains these civilizational distinctions. Why are things the way they are? Does the Bible give us an explanation for this sort of reality? And that is, how the blessings on Japhith and Shem and the curse of ham here in Genesis 9.25 are the cause of these, again, broad generational, disdainstional distinctions. In other words, there is a biblical answer to what we see in reality. There is a biblical answer. Now, liberalism hates it and even liberalism in the church won't let you talk about it. But there is an answer particularly between what we see in the broadest distinction, I think the most, or I'll say the sharpest distinction is between European civilization versus African civilization. And these distinctions, I think, are rather sharp and I want to explain that. They range from rates of violence and family stability to intellectual capacity, civilizational and technological and economic output. There are a wide range of distinctions that have been noticed as we have had more information. Black economist Thomas O. Genius, man, has cited in his work and I'm going to paraphrase long sections and do kind of a short little paragraph that is paraphrase from his collected statistics. It says, "A white American is roughly 30 times more likely to be killed by a black person than the reverse. Black males aged 15 to 45, just 4% of the population commit approximately 60% of the national murders. 70% of black households have an absentee father compared to about 20% of white households. These patterns extend beyond crime. The average IQ in sub-Saharan Africa is around 67 to 70 compared to 100 in white European nations. White European Europeans account for over 95% of major scientific inventions and technological breakthroughs, the vast majority of Nobel Prizes and most billionaires. Africans account for less than 1% in all three categories. These disparities extend far beyond America and the contemporary period. They persist with striking consistency across nations and historical eras from Africa to Europe, Russia, Canada and Australia. So when the gaps are this sharp, when the gaps are this noticeable, this persistent, when they're cross-cultural, people begin to ask, "Why?" Like, "Why? Why is this?" Like, "What's driving that?" It's not like a phenomenon of the last century. It's a phenomenon of the last few millennia. Is it circumstance? Or is it providence? That's the question. Is it circumstance? Or is it providence? Now, certainly, I think that some degree it's both. But at the macro level, I believe it's providence, which leads me to my second point for why this sermon is so important, which is that prophecy that's fulfilled strengthens faith. Not only does the Bible explain reality with incredible accuracy, but it also predicts the future. And when Scripture does so with such precision, its strengthens not only our trust and the reliability of God's Word, but our faith in the God of Scripture itself. And so in this passage, a Genesis 9, not only does it foretells the civilizational reality that has played out across thousands of years, you are going to see this. It also gives us a biblical framework for understanding the physical world as it actually is, which is not fair, which is not equal and not egalitarian. So let's read together verses 25 to 27. Noah said, "Cursed becane, a servant of servants, shall he be to his brothers." He also said, "Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and let Cainan be his servant." May God enlarge, Jaifeth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Cainan be his servant." Now, I already addressed some of this in my last sermon, but I think it's important to look a little further and determine if the curse in Genesis 9 is limited only to Canaan or does this curse to be a servant of servants extend to ham to some degree and all of his descendants to some degree. And again I believe it's the latter and I'm going to explain why. Let's begin with this first phrase Noah said, Noah said, "Cursed be Canaan." As we know this entire passage concerns three branches of humanity that are descending from Noah's three sons. In verse 919 it says, "These three were the sons of Noah and from these people the whole of the earth was dispersed." And this is vital. This is vital context because Noah is speaking to his sons in a covenantal manner. That is a fact. He is speaking to his sons in a covenantal manner. It's similar to what we see when you know Abraham's blessing Isaac and Ishmael or when Isaac's blessing Jacob and Esau or when Jacob's blessing all of his twelve sons. This is the type of covenantal blessing that we're looking at here. These blessings and curses they're not limited to the the lifetimes of these particular individuals. These are ancestral blessings or ancestral curses. They're prophetic words to covenant heads that affect all of their descendants. It's like when you when Jacob blessed Judah, do we think, oh it's only talking about Judah? No. We realize that it's talking about Judah's line that's going to give rise to David that's going to give rise to Christ. It's a descendant declaration. We also know that these three sons are the three kind of racial macro racial branches of the world because the very next chapter is what? Chapter 10, which is the table of nations and it's showing how all of humanity came from these three boys. And for that reason in a moment of blessing and cursing, it would be extremely strange for God to leave one entire branch unaddressed. It would be very strange to see that. So as I mentioned earlier and in my last sermon in a covenantal framework, the curse pronounced on Canaan was effectively a curse on ham through his offspring. And this again was the prevailing interpretation for much of church history. And also much of Jewish history. In fact, I used this sermon was so long I wanted to include the incredible history of Jewish history, Old Testament, extrabiblical Jewish history on their commentations on this particular passage. But I got a few of them in here. An 8th century Jewish midrash says, "Just as he cursed the earth on account of the snake, as it says, may the earth be cursed because of you. So a third of the world was cursed on account of wine, as it says, and Noah awoke from his wine." St. Ambrose said, "Ham was condemned by his father's curse." Martin Luther says, "Ham is cursed by his father, a servant of servants shall he be." That is the lowest and vialest of slaves." Matthew Henry, who wrote the longest standing Bible commentary in the history of the world, says, "He pronounced a curse on Canaan, the son of ham, in whom ham is himself cursed." Matthew Poole, he has a commentary published by Banner of Truth, and it says, "When Canaan is mentioned, ham is not exempted from the curse, but rather more deeply plunged into it." W.G. Blakely, who was also endorsed by Charles Spurgeon, and also published by Banner of Truth, said, "Though the curse of ham was formally pronounced on Canaan alone, it has been reflected more or less on the other branches of his family." Abraham Kuiper, in his book Common Grace, Volume 1, which is published by Leximpress, which is owned by Logos, Bible software, says, "The fact that now for the first time, the actual history of our human race gets underway is expressed in the prophecy that the Holy Spirit placed on Noah's lips. It led him to sketch out the lines along which the history of the world went unfold. In his full blessing on Shem, his partial blessing on Japheth and his curse on ham." And then John Calvin, in his commentary on Genesis, also published by Banner of Truth, says, "And that is to say, ham is cursed first, as if the words were framed this way. God is not content to punish ham who offended, but God's rigor and severity will have to extend further. And God shows from age to age that that lineage is an abomination to him. The first thing we have to remember about this passage is that God wanted to punish ham in all his lineage, so it is with good reason that such a sentence is pronounced on ham and all his lineage." I honestly had, I didn't have enough time to add more, there are more quotes, but here's a vital point, even if someone says, you know what, Dale, I'm not buying it. I'm not buying it, ham, himself is not cursed. This is the point. Well, if he is not cursed, we can certainly argue that he is not blessed. So even though he may not be cursed, he is certainly not blessed, which circumstances circumstantially ends us to the same place. His branch of humanity, at some degree, is being judged. Now, let's talk about this line, a servant of servants, he shall be to his brothers. The term servant, a servant of servants, it's a Hebrew superlative, and it does mean the lowest of servants, but it's not limited to actual slavery. I think there are people that have abused this to justify chattel slavery, which is wicked. From my understanding of the Hebrew word and the research that I did, it's speaking more to a political subjugation or a civil, like a civilizational subordination. It's talking more to kind of a lower of the branch of those lines of humanity. Now, the most modern commentators on this passage, they try to limit the curse strictly to the Canaanites, because they'll say, "Hey, it's just a Canaan." So they're going to try to strictly limit it to the Canaanites, and Joshua's conquest of the Canaanites. But I believe there's an interpretation failure and some serious logical problems with that position. And here I'll tell you why. The text clearly states that Canaan will be a servant of servants not only to Shem, but also to Japheth. Yet no descendants of Japheth participated in Joshua's conquest over the Canaanites. So if the curse was fulfilled, solely through Israel's wars against the Canaanites, then this portion of the prophecy concerning the servitude to Japheth remains completely unfulfilled in Scripture. So it creates a difficulty for those who want to restrict the curse and the effects of the servitude only to Canaan and the conquest of Joshua. The only consistent reading where the prophecy is fulfilled is when you interpret the curse of Canaan as a representative judgment on the broader line of Ham, not just Canaan, but actually the entire line of Ham. And why is this important? Because Deuteronomy 1821 through 22 says, "How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?" And it goes on it says, "When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken." So we have two options here. We have two options. Either Noah is a false prophet or this prophecy about Canaan is really about something more than the Canaanites. So just to kind of summarize this section here, I believe the curse falls particularly on Canaan, But generally, on the line of ham. Which means that I believe that there is a real historical subjugation of ham's descendants, not just Canaan, but all of ham's descendants, under the descendants of Shem and Japheth, which is a pattern clearly seen in world history. R.L. Dabney, he says, "Doubtless God's sentence, here pronounced by Noah, was based on his foresight of the fact that ham's posterity, like their father, would be particularly degraded in morals as actual history testifies of them." Okay, I'll wait you guys up for a second here, I know it's a lot. Ham had four sons, four sons, Canaan, Kush, Mizraim, and Put, four sons. Remember those names because we're going to go through that. Canaan, Kush, Mizraim, and Put. Now from Kush comes Nimrod, the founder of Babel, the builder of the Tower of Babel, the very first organized rebellion against God after the flood. From Kush also comes the great empires of Babylon and Assyria, which are repeated archetypes all throughout the Bible of tyrannical opposition to God's kingdom. You can see this in Isaiah 13 through 14, Jeremiah 50 through 51, Revelation 17 through 18. Now from Mizraim comes Egypt, the great enslaver of Israel, and became the classic biblical picture of worldly oppression, idolatry, a resistance to the Lord in his kingdom. You can see this in Ezekiel 29 through 32, Isaiah 30 through 31, Revelation 11, 8, and many other passages. Now Put, he's mentioned less frequently in the Scriptures, but he's consistently appearing in some kind of like war-like, mercenary position where he's supporting the himmetic people to fight against God's people. You can see that in Ezekiel 27, 10, 30, verse 5, and Nehum 39. And then we have Canaan, which I believe also is the first form, but we don't have time to go to that. But Canaan has the Canaanite nations, including the infamous cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Philistines, the Amalakites, which again all become symbols of gross immorality and opposition to God's kingdom. So all four lines of ham are marked as antagonistic to God's people throughout biblical history, and as we will see throughout world history. Now in addition to hostility, we also see kind of this biblical and historical, himmetic, servitude and subjugation. Not just with Canaan, we see it with the other three sons as well. For example, in Genesis chapter 16, I'm reading this with family worship of my own family right now, Sarah's maid servant Haggar is Egyptian. She's from Miss Rain, and is brought into subjugation under Abraham, who is a Shemite. And that leads, of course, to the chaos of Ishmael. In Genesis 41, Joseph is made second in command over Egypt. It's kind of a bit of that prophecy that Shem will kind of rule over Egypt or rule over ham. Later, in Exodus 12, 35, the 36th, the entire nation of Egypt is plundered and forced to serve Israel during the Exodus. Second Chronicles 14, 9 through 15, King Asa, which is the King of Judah, defeated Zara the Kushite, which came against him. I don't know if you remember the story, it came against him with 1 million men, 300 chariots, and you see Judah. Essentially plundering the Kushites. In Daniel 11, 42 through 43, the prophecy of the kings of the north and the south, Egypt and put, would later be conquered and ruled over by success of Japhethite and Shemite powers. We see this in world history, Greeks and 332 BC and Romans and 30 BC. In fact, Egypt was ruled over by Japhethite powers for like 300 to 600 years and put for even longer. All four branches, this is what I'm getting to, I know this is a lot of historical information, but all four branches, ham, canine, or all four branches of ham, canine, Kush, misram and put, show this historical and biblical theme of subjugation to the Shemite and Japhethite people. It's throughout biblical history and it's throughout world history. So look at that for a second, just zoom out for a minute and you're looking and you go, "Okay, all four lines create some sort of biblical thematic opposition and antagonistic peoples to God's people." And then in biblical and world history you see actually all four lines of ham being in some sort of political or civilizational subjugation to Japhethites or Shemites. You're zoomed out, you're looking at this. Now in medicine there's a process called reverse diagnosis where you would look at the results and determine the cause. Basic principle, Jesus uses this principle. Look at the fruit, determine the tree. And when you look at the fruit, when you look at the results, the historical and biblical outcomes for ham's descendants through biblical history or world history, it strongly indicates that the curse was not limited just to one branch of Canaan. No, it indicates that it was actually extended to some degree, varying degrees, to all four of the children of ham. So it is either a very strange coincidence that virtually all the nations descended from ham are biblically and historically hostile toward and eventually conquered by the nations of Shem and Japheth. Wow, that's a coincidence that goes on for thousands and thousands of years. Or the prophetic curse applies particularly to Canaan and generally to Ham's entire line. And again, I believe it's the latter. Now, before we return to some kind of greater evidence of this in world history, I want to look at verses 26 through 27, we're making it through, hang with me here. Verses 26 through 27, it says, "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." Alright, first, just do some basic exposition here. Notice that Shem is not directly blessed. Look at your text. Shem is not directly blessed, but the Lord, the God of Shem is blessed. And it's fascinating to me, if we're just going to use logic for a minute, it's fascinating to me how people can make the connection of an indirect blessing to Shem, but they cannot make the connection of an indirect curse on Ham. It's a double standard of interpretive doctrine. And that is what I mean by that is this. We readily recognize the historical outworkings of the blessing on Shem, even though it was spoken indirectly. Yet when we see the same historical outworking on the curse of Ham's descendants, many suddenly insist that it must be limited just a cadence. It's a double standard of historical interpretation. Okay, the primary blessing to Shem is this, that the Messiah would come from Shem's branch of humanity. But that wasn't their only blessing. That's the primary blessing. The Messiah would come from the Shemites. In fact, it's why he's listed first in birth order, even though he's actually the youngest child, or the middle child. I can't remember, but he's not the oldest. We know that Japheth is the oldest. John Brown Haddington. He lived in Scotland. He was a minister in the Scottish Presbyterian Denomination in the mid-1700s. And he produced this extensive commentary on world history based on this prophecy. I wish I could read the whole thing, but we'd be here until 2 p.m. and you'd be upset with me. But it's incredible because you're like watching the no-ayak prophecy unfold in world history. I'm going to give you just a couple snippets throughout the rest of the sermon. They're just giving you a little taste of the level of research and scholasticism that was put in to this work. He says in his section regarding Shem. But the countries of Persia, Syria, Caldia, Lydia, Sinia, Arabia, India, and, I suppose, most of China, were people by the posterity of Elam, Asher, Afridaks, Ludd, and Al-Qaeda. and who are the sons of Shem. The blessings bestowed upon them by God have been remarkable. The most rich or fertile parts of the world fell to their share. They formed the Assyrian, Caldhean Persian and Serus in monarchies. From the death of Noah to that of Christ, the knowledge of the true religion and the new covenant relation to God as his church and people were almost wholly confined to the Shemites, particularly to the Jews. And from them the Messiah, the Lord of Heaven, has had his human descent and from them the apostolic founders of the gospel church did spring, end quote. All right, move it on to Japhith. I wish I could spend more time here, but keep on with me. We see that Japhith actually receives two blessings, two blessings. First, God says that he will enlarge Japhith. The God will enlarge Japhith. Now in a nationalistic context, this speaks to geographic expansion, geographic expansion of Japhith's line, which by the way totally lines up with history when you realize that like half of China, Japan, Korea, Russia, Europe, America, Canada, Australia, all of it, Japhithite. Okay, so just it's like actually true in history, but just let me move on. Second, he says that to Japhith, the Japhith shall dwell in the tents of Shem. Japhith shall dwell in the tents of Shem. Now this points to two realities, okay? Number one, they will actually, the Japhithites, which they did historically, took Shemite lands. They actually came in and took over their lands. But I think that's the less focused point. The second point is better. It speaks about the Gentiles, which the Japhithites make up that group, in part at least, that they will be grafted in, as Romans 11 says, they will be grafted in to the church, that sprung forth from Shemites, are the Shemites, from the Jews. And that connection to Romans 11, man I wish I could do in another complete sermon, on that connection there. Now in the same way, a prophecy of, in the same way, a prophecy of subjugation and servant people manifest in certain biological and civilizational characteristics. I'm going to say that again, because that was big. Okay? In the same way, that a prophecy will actually produce physical characteristics in a particular person. God says, I'm declaring the ends. Well, when God declares the ends, He will also prepare the means to result in those ends. And so, when you have a prophecy, that a person is going to be a servant, then there's going to be physical attributes displayed as means in those particular people to produce those ends. The same thing is true of Japhith. If you go, the ends are, this is going to be an enlarging people that's going to essentially take over the world, or parts of the world. Then part of that prophecy will include the physical means in which that prophecy can meet those ends. And so, what does that mean? It means that Japhith was endowed with ambition. It means that Japhith had industry and high intelligence and technological capacity and virtue and artistic excellence and military prowess. Do you understand truly that 95% of every invention has come out of the European root? Like everything that is out there, your phones, your cars, your computers, your satellites, your rockets, your guns, your cannons, your ships, your orbit is coming out of this Japhithite line. A Narius, Augusta Deneas, observed during the time of the first Crusades. He says, "Those of Shem are free. Those of Japhith are noble, and those of Ham are serfs." The Westminster annotations on this passage said, "The European Gentiles, especially the Romans of the posterity of Japhith, extended their temporal empire so far as to account themselves lords of the world." John Haddington, the guy that wrote this beautiful historical commentary, he says of Japhith, a little bit a longer section, but hang with me, we're going through history for a second. He says, "The sons of Japhith were Gomer, Magog, Madame, Javan, Tubaal, Misek and Tyrus. Their descendants, the Celts or Gauls, the Tartars, the Medes, Greeks, Romans, Goths, Turks, prodigiously, prodigiously multiplied and people the whole of Europe and the northern half of Asia." And I suppose most of America, this is in the 1700s, for many ages they have been settling themselves in the original habitations of the posterity of Shem. There it is, dwelling in the tenths of Shem. About 330 years before the birth of our Savior, the Greeks, under Alexander, overrun Asia to the river Indus and for several ages held in its subjugation. Next, the Romans pushed their conquest into Syria, a Syria and Canaan, and for more than 700 years retained what they could of it. In the eleventh century of the Christian reckoning, the Saluki and Turks formed themselves into four kingdoms of Baghdad, Damascus, Aleppo, and Iconium, and quickly extended their dominion as far as the Indus. Meanwhile, Mabhugansi, with an army of Tartars and the others, invaded India and founded their Amidi Empire, which continued about 200 years. In the thirteenth century, Gangus Khan and his sons and their Tartar troops conquered the greater part of Asia. The empires which they founded in China and in Persia continued about nine generations. For about 300 years, the Ottoman Turks have been masters of a Syria, a Syria, a Canaan, and the places about. While the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the English, the Dutch, the Danes, the French have been rendering themselves masters of islands or settlements almost innumerable in the East Indies. Thus there is a scarce one single country of note, which originally pertained to the offspring of Shem, but is now possessed or governed by the enlarged posterity of Japheth. Awesome. You're just watching Bible history unfold in world history. I should say you're watching Bible prophecy unfold in world history. Ultimately, Japheth's line was chosen to be that particular race which would spread across the globe why to receive the gospel, and then to disseminate the gospel across the whole world. And it's why the Romans, which are Japhethites, occupied Jerusalem at the time of the birth of Christ. It was God's purpose to use the Japhethites to spread the gospel. What happens when Rome becomes Christian? The whole world becomes Christian, at least the known world. So we see from the Christianization of Rome through the evangelization of Europe, Russia, and parts of Asia, ultimately Christendom was established by who? The descendants of Japheth. Then you have what? The Reformation. You have the printing press. You have the translation of the scriptures into the common tongue of hundreds of people groups. Think about this. You have Japhethites who are taking the responsibility of very ambitious people. And they are translating the scriptures into hundreds of languages that are not their own. You have the founding of universities, hospitals, sanitation systems. All of these emerged from the Japhethite civilizations. Later you have the United States, Canada, Australia. Nations founded again by Japhethite peoples. And they became what? Centers of Christian missions, centers of Christian global publishing. It was British, Spanish, and later American colonialism and missionary movements that carried the gospel where? To the ends of the earth, including to the Hamid peoples. Gerhardus Voss said, "I am the one who is the most important person in the world." We should not allegorize Noah's statement. A real political conquest is intended, but such physical conquest will have for its result the coming of a religious blessing to Japheth." End quote. So all of this Japhethite enlargement occurred. Pay attention here. All of this Japhethite enlargement occurred as European ships sailed past the coasts of Africa in the 1700s where many hemitic peoples still had not adopted the wheel or developed a written alphabet or produced a multi-story home made out of stone. Think about that for a second. According to African, West African Frank Zanou. He's got incredible videos on YouTube, by the way. It was the African peoples themselves who first coined the term white supremacy. It's not a white thing. What when Africans saw white people come into Africa, they were shocked. I recently saw an image. It showed a picture of a white astronaut looking down at Earth through the window of his capsule. And then next to it, it showed the picture of an African tribesman trying to throw a spear at a drone that was taking a picture of him. And it said, "These two civilizations live at the same time." To not notice distinctions, that large, because you might be racist, is idiotic. OK, it's idiotic. There are massive distinctions between civilizations. And I think the Bible offers explanations for why. John Haddington says of the Hamites relationship to Shem and Japheth. He says, "The descendants of Ham, by his sons "cush, Miss Raim, Putt, and Canaan, "people to Africa and people and part of Western Asia. "For about 4,000 years past the bulk of the Africans "have been abandoned of heaven "to the most gross ignorance, rigid slavery, " idolatry, and savage barbarity. "Scarecely ever hath a state formed of them "that has made any respectable figure. "The Egyptians and Carthaginians accepted. "And even them had little dominion over any part "of the descendants of Shem or Japheth. "For many ages, the northern parts of Africa "were enslaved or harassed by the Assyrian, "Caldian, and Persian descendants of Shem, "and next by the Greeks, and especially the Roman vandal "and descendants of Japheth. "For 1100 years past that, "they have been enslaved by the Ishmaelite Sarasins "descended from Shem or by the Saluki and Ottoman Turks "descended from Japheth. "And what multitudes of Western Africans "are annually used for slaves by the English, "the Spaniards, the French, the Portuguese, the Dutch, "and condemned to the hardest drudgery." Again written in the 1700s. I'm getting to a close here. My hope in this sermon, in this whole series, is to demonstrate that the state of Africa is not some natural phenomenon. I believe it is a supernatural phenomenon. It's not systematic racism. It's not economics. Those things play into some of this at some degree, but that's not the driving force behind this. Since 1960, Africa has received $2.6 trillion in foreign aid, and the results have been remarkably poor. A friend of mine, he leads one of the greatest Christian charities that brings clean water to Africa. And one of their biggest ongoing problems is that they install these wells at a really high expense to their donors, who were Japhethites, by the way. And then the wells stop working. And the wells don't stop working not because of some sort of complex technical failure, but because of $5 part breaks, or because someone in that village stole that $5 part because they think that they needed it more than the entire village needed clean water. Again, Frank Zanu of West Africa, he also noted that many African nations don't even have a word for maintenance. The word maintenance, like landscaping? That's not a concept when you go to Africa. Landscaping's not really a thing there. They lack this cultural framework, this future orientation, the institutional habits required to preserve and sustain what has already been built. Vodibaka, the black reform Baptist pastor who's recently passed away, and was one of my favorite preachers on earth. He noted that in America, nobody walks, yet we have sidewalks everywhere. And he says in Africa, everybody walks, and there are no sidewalks anywhere. And he related that to the value of the dignity that comes with Western civilization. And this is a millennia-long pattern. There's something deeper than just modern arguments of systemic racism, or that the economics are not fair, or there's some sort of form of external oppression. It reflects, at some degree, a racial, a civilizational, an intellectual distinction. The only time Africa has experienced like significant civilizational blessing, and advancement, is when it operated under European colonial supervision. Essentially, when it obeys this curse, it's actually blessed. That's a weird thing to say. But think about that is that when you have European colonialism over Africa, Africa's thriving. I don't know if any of you guys, some of you older folks might understand the history of Rhodesia. Rhodesia was a phenomenon. It was an incredible place. And essentially when Zimbabwe returned back under the Nelson Mandela issue, and all that, what happened to what was Rhodesia? It returned back to its third world state. The great Puritan preacher Samuel Rutherford said, quote, "Some are by nature servants. It is good for the weaker to be guided by the stronger, which cannot be denied to have some ground in nature." Now, I have to make some clarification points so the internet doesn't hate me. First, this is not a curse of redemption. This is a curse of civilizational station. Very important point. God loves and is saving African peoples. You shall want to love and save African peoples. We want all people to come to Christ. Second, these are generalizations. These are like macro-level discussions. And the curse on himmetic peoples, it's not equally embodied in each individual African, in the same way that the japh- a- japh- a- japh- a- blessings are not equally manifested in every individual white guy. These are massive generalizations. We do have exceptional, high-thinking, incredible, black men. We have Clarence Thomas. We have Thomas Soul. We have Colin Powell. We have, I mean, there are some incredible men, but they are truly, statistically, the exception. Because the vast majority of people that stem from Africa have an IQ between 67 and 85. But when you take off the political correctness, and I'm closing here, when you take off the political correctness of today's current generation, this passage gives us answers for why Africa is the way that it is, or why symmetric peoples are the way they are, or why Europeans are the way they are, why Americans, historic Americans, are the way they are. It explains why the most dominant language in the world is what? English. It explains why the greatest spiritual blessings, the scriptures, the prophets, the Messiah come from the Middle East, the Semitic peoples. And it explains why Africans are a physical people and not so much an intellectual people. Why are the blacks taking over sports? Well, because they are a people that are dominated by physical strength rather than an intellectual strength. And why are the Europeans the ones that are responsible for 95% of the Nobel prizes and scientific discoveries? Because there is a intellectual superiority there at a civilizational level. It's a fact. Now in the end, this passage should not leave any group of people in despair or with pride. This should not leave anybody into a position of despair or pride. It should drive everybody to the foot of the cross. And here's why. The blessings on Shem and Japheth and the curse of civilizational subjugation on him. I believe they're real. I believe they're historical and I believe they're providential. But I do not believe that they are the final word. I think it should humble the Japhithites who might boast in their enlargement. And I think it should comfort the Hamite that is under some degree of historical burdens. I think it should remind the Semite people that the only value they have is if they bless the God of Shem. But God is a God of order. God is a God of order and it's our duty to submit to that order in love and in grace and to order our world and to accept the station that the Lord has given to us. And so if you're gifted, be gifted to the glory of God. If you're simple, be simple to the glory of God. Whether your Shemite, Hamite, Japhethite, every man stands equally condemned by sin and equally in need of the same blood-bought mercy of Christ. Every single one of us, I think it pauses words of the proud. Take heed lest you fall. You think you're superior at some degree? Well God has blessed you. Great. But the moment that turns into pride, take heed lest you fall. So if you preach this message to anybody, if you talk about distinctions, you talk about possibilities of biblical answers regarding race, do it in love. Do it in love. So that it drives people to Christ. So it drives people to Scripture where you can find prophecy that predicts the future. Now because the Lord and His Providence has designed our nation to be intertwined with both blacks and whites, I believe it's vital for Christians, especially right now. I have a sense that there's a growing tension of race wars that is about to boom off over the next 10 to 20 years in America and Europe between Muslims, between Christians, between blacks, between whites, there's tension that's growing. And honestly if Christians don't offer great theological instruction, then the world will. And when I mean the world, it'll be evil instruction. And so Christians need to either be willing to have these conversations, even if other Christians are screaming racism as they're doing it. But if you don't get it from people like me, you're going to get it from people who are actual Nazis, or people who are actually for eugenics, or people who are actually for dictatorships, and you're going to end up with something far worse than Christian nationalism. And so next week, I hope to offer a sermon that will be on that topic, to help figure out how Christians should think about these things, while not negating distinctions, but also by realizing that in Christ we can be unified whether you're from Shem, Ham, or Japheth. Amen? Amen. You guys made it. You made it. Let's let's pray and move on this morning. Father, we thank you, Lord. For this blessing, for your Word. Lord, we know that you have a design for the world, and that you have given distinctions. And Lord, we ask that you would help us to come to those distinctions, not with pride, but with humility. But Lord, also with order, Lord, that you would give us bravery and courage to have these discussions, that they might be done in love. We thank you for your truth, that you have not left us guessing, but you have given us wisdom. And we ask for your blessing upon these discussions as we move forward in Jesus' name. Amen.