Open your Bible to Genesis 9:20-29: And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years. And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died.
Our Father, in Jesus’ name, speak to our hearts. Make our hearts tender. Help us to serve Thee with humility of mind. I pray, Lord Jesus, for the Spirit of God to move in our midst to honor our Lord. In His name, we pray, with thanksgiving, Amen.
I want to speak this morning on, “The Fall of Noah.” At the checkout stands in most grocery stores, there is a rack of juicy gossip magazines. You cannot help seeing them unless you put your hands over your eyes. The headlines — the National Enquirer heads the list: “Kitty Kelly’s unofficial biography of Nancy Reagan has sold millions of copies.” Whether fact or fiction, it really does not matter. The public likes it. The public likes the juicy morsel. They gobble it up and look for more. The matter of accountability in media is long since departed in most cases. If there had been a newspaper like the National Enquirer and if Kitty Kelly had been around in Bible times, Noah would have really made the headlines in his day. It would have been a bonus day in sales. You could not have recognized the story when the publisher got through with it. You would have had the name, but the story would have been all confused. As we study this passage this morning, let us consider very simply and quickly Noah’s greatness. He was the tenth man from Adam, just ten men away from Adam. The times he lived in are told about in Genesis 6. The Bible tells us this in verse 5: And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. That is the day in which he lived. He raised a family in that atmosphere. He raised three boys. Look down at verse 9: These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God. Verse 11: The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. When I open the Bible, I read about the character of this man Noah in Genesis 6:8: But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. His character was rooted in the grace of God. That is where all of us have to flee. I am what I am by the grace of God. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. Verse 9 tells us more about his character: These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man (He had a keen sense of justice and richness.) and perfect in his generations, (the day in which he lived) and Noah walked with God. God does not say that much about Abraham the friend of God. Enoch walked with God. Noah walked with God. My, what a relationship, what a privilege for a man to have the ability to walk with God! In chapter 7, I read some more. Genesis 7:1: And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. He was a righteous man. Turn to the book of Ezekiel. He was an esteemed man. God is talking about the judgment upon Israel. Jerusalem was not to be despaired. Ezekiel 14:14: Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord GOD. It mentions that twice in verse 14 and verse 20. Turn to Hebrews 11. We will come back to Genesis shortly. Hebrews 11:7 adds more to this description of the character of Noah. Hebrews 11:7: By faith Noah, (He is a man of faith. He is a man that takes God at His Word.) being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. This man was a man of character. He moved with fear. People say, “You are trying to scare me.” Yes, sir! Fear has a noble purpose. If I tell you to get off the railroad track because of the fact that the Amtrak
is just right down at the corner, and you stand and say, “You are trying to scare me,” you would not be too bright. You would not be that bright very long. Your lights would be put out. Self-preservation — God gave us that. Here is a man moved with fear to get saved. “I do not want to go to hell.” That is a noble purpose. Flee from the wrath to come. So, he did this.
NUMBER ONE, NOAH’S INVOLVEMENT IN THE WORLD IN WHICH HE LIVED. He built an ark. He prepared an ark for the saving of his house. You must remember that this was a thing of ridicule. It had not rained before. A mist went up from the ground. The whole world evidently was a tropical zone. This thick water blanketed around to stop the rays of the sun. That is probably the reason for the longevity of life. When the flood came, that was emptied. The longevity of life dropped immediately after the flood. He was the laughing stock. “Why are you building this boat on the top of this mountain? You are talking about water coming down out of the heavens, enough to cover the whole earth. You are a fool.” As he built, the laughter and the ridicule continued. He did it because he believed God. He did not understand it. He had never seen it before. There is no record of it anywhere else. It had never appeared before. He prepared an ark in the midst of an unbelieving generation. 2 Peter 2:5: And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly. He stood and preached righteousness. He was a street-corner preacher. As he worked on the ark, he preached. He preached for at least one hundred and twenty years. That is how long it took to build the ark. He was a preacher of righteousness. Go back to the book of Genesis. I find out that he built an altar unto God. Genesis 8:20: And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. He publicly displayed his faith in Jehovah God. He received a promise in Genesis 9:13: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. He was talking to Noah. He received such a promise from God that it is still there visible to the whole world. Whenever you see a rainbow, you are reminded that God made a promise to Noah that He would never destroy the world again by water. There never again will be a universal flood by water so that people would not live in fear and dread every time it started to rain. God said, “No, you relax.” It will never, never again be with water. The next time it will be fire. In the sky today, every time it rains and a rainbow shows its face reminds us that God made a personal promise to Noah and his descendants that that will not happen again. That beautiful rainbow in the sky — God did it as a promise to Noah. I am telling you Noah was a giant for God.
Let us consider his longevity. He overlapped Enoch eighty-four years. Enoch’s life and Noah's life were contemporary for eighty-four years. Down on this end of the life, he was a contemporary of Abraham’s life for fifty years. He had 950 years to draw social security. That would really mess up our system right now. His longevity was 950 years. He was 600 years old at the time of the flood. His boys were at least 100 years old. He lived 350 years after the flood.
NUMBER TWO, NOAH’S FALL. We have read about it. The Bible does not deny it. The Bible does not blow it up. It simply declares what happened. Let us look at when it happened. It happened after the flood. It happened after the years of taking a stand. It happened after the 120 years of working on the ark. It happened after a year shut inside the ark. It came after this matter of building an altar. It came in a time of relaxation. He had stood strong for God for over 600 years. I ask you a question. When you think of the man Noah, what do you think of? If you think of his fall, you are thinking of the wrong thing. That is one day out of a man’s life of 950 years. If that is all you think of, then you have missed the main part of this man’s life. This was not his practice. This was not a sin that was repeated. This was a one-time sin in the midst of 950 years. This does not excuse the fact that he sinned. God does not omit it from the record of Scripture because of the fact that he had 950 years of almost impeccable record. He does not omit it. This is one of the proofs of the inspiration of the Scripture about the heroes of the Bible. God reveals that all have clay feet. He reveals it, not in order for us to say, “Bless God, he did it there; I will do it.” No sir, it is a warning against that. 1 Corinthians 10:12: Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. It is written in the Word of God. They had four verses to describe his sin, ninety-four verses to describe his life. We have chapters about his work for God. You have four verses to describe the fall. The folks who write this garbage have chapters to describe the fall and nothing to say about if he happened to be a man who served the Lord. They would give four verses to that.
Let us look at the day of his relaxation. One day — relaxation is necessary, but relaxation is deadly. A man that is at war is alert. A man who does not understand that danger is always nigh relaxation is in danger. A man who understands that he is constantly under fire has his weapons on. David was more secure at the battlefront than he was at home. I have not changed who I am talking about. I was talking about Noah, and I will come back to him. I read about David in 2 Samuel 11:1-2: And it came to pass, after the year was expired, at the time when kings go forth to battle, that David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the children of Ammon, and besieged Rabbah. But David tarried still at Jerusalem. And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king’s house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon. It began as a day off. He slept in all day, no danger there. Yet danger was closer there than it was at the battlefield; for at the battlefield, he was prepared. In an hour, a moment of relaxation, he was totally unprepared, and he got knocked off of his feet. You had better watch relaxation. It is dangerous. You relax and then lose your family while you are relaxing. It does not take long for deadly damage to be done. In my outfit of the 473 bomb group, we lost more planes on the end of the runway than we did over the target. How could that happen? There was a crew shooting the landing: “Overhead; power off landing; pull your power; drop your landing; come in; and land; power off.” They had successfully cut the reins and pulled it around. I think the pilot must have inversely reached down to adjust the trim, and he hit the automatic pilot. The automatic pilot took over, and the plane went straight up and landed on its side. The crew was killed, and the plane burned. There was carelessness somewhere. Where? It was at home. One pilot came in, and the plane had been shot up. There was an engine out. When you have two engines, you have to adjust the plane to fly on it. You trim it. He had successfully dropped the bomb. He had successfully found his way home. He successfully was coming in for a landing, but he was tired. He had been putting on an oxygen mask for hours doing transformation. He had the excitement of a bomb run. He was tired. He was wearied. His mind was wearied. Bless God, he was home. He pulled the power off, but he forgot that the engine out there was out. When he pulled the power off, immediately the plane was out of trim; immediately the wing that had full engines working when he pulled the power off came over the top and crashed on the end of the runway. The whole crew died. What happened? He relaxed too soon. I want to tell you that relaxation is dangerous. You get away from God on vacation. They get away from church on vacation. They do not even read their Bible on vacation. Yes, the body needs relaxation, but you had better not take it easy. You forget you are under the surveillance of the enemy twenty-four hours a day. When a man is relaxed, he is in the most dangerous position of his Christian life. Noah — man, he ought to have a time of relaxation. For six hundred years, he had been at it. He was tired and wearied. He went down. His fall came in a time of relaxation. His exposure — remember sin will be uncovered. Proverbs 28:13: He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. Numbers 32:23: But if ye will not do so, behold, ye have sinned against the LORD: and be sure your sin will find you out. We have seen in the last three years how sin on national television has found people out, and the whole world knows about it. Listen, you cover sin, and God will uncover it. You uncover sin before God, and God will cover it up if you sincerely repent of that thing.
NUMBER THREE, HIS SIN OF DRUNKENNESS. He got drunk. He did not make some excuse that he did not understand it. Wine fermented — the Bible does not present something out of the ignorance of this man. He just declares that he was drunken. Proverbs 20:1: Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise. He was a man of God. He was a man who walked with God. Listen, if alcohol will do that to him, what will it do to you? His sin was drunkenness. Alcohol discovers men. The secrets will tell when they are drunk. Their purity is disregarded, and their inhibitions are removed. Alcohol disgraces men; it exposes them to the contempt of the world. He deliberately took his clothes off because of alcohol. Alcohol degrades. Men act like animals.
Let us look at Ham’s character. We have talked about Noah. Are you listening? Your response when you hear about somebody that falls into sin tells a whole lot about your spirituality. Are you glad, or do you weep? How do you feel about it? When it is one of our own, we want to close it up lest we be embarrassed because when somebody else fell, we rejoiced. That is the fallen, Adamic nature, the revelation of their spirituality.
There is a passage in Proverbs 16:27: An ungodly man diggeth up evil: and in his lips there is as a burning fire. An ungodly man digs up evil. He wants to get it up where he can relish it, expose it, and tell it. I had a man who preached in this church. He is my friend. He had a publication that pointed out the supposed sin of a fellow preacher. He filled his paper full of it. I sat down and wrote, “Please take me off your mailing list. It does not make any difference whether everything you wrote is true or false. You should have never, never put that in a newspaper.” I will tell you why a little bit later. “Cancel my subscription. I do not want to read about their falls. I do not want to relish their falls. I do not want to hear about their fall.”
Now, with the revelation of our spirituality, let us look at the character of Ham. There is something strange here. His son was connected with this somehow. Listen to the connection. I do not know why. Genesis 9:18: And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. Why are you singling him out? It is the next chapter when they do the family tree and the descendents of each of the boys. Three times in this chapter, we are reminded that Ham is the father of Canaan. Look at verse 22: And Ham, the father of Canaan. . . His grandson said, “Hey, daddy, come look here.” Ham and his son were enemies. There are those who think that some homosexual sin was committed. I do not know a thing in the world about that. The character of Ham was reflected in his son. He did not say, “Cursed be Ham.” He said, “Cursed be Canaan.” That is a son. Your character is evident already in the life of a boy that I have watched. Evidently, the Bible does say in Exodus 20:5: visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. When you read of the rest of this man, Canaan and his descendants were sex perverts. Read Leviticus 18. Here early in life, grandpa Noah saw the propensity to evil in the life of his grandson. When he woke, he knew all about it. He said: “Cursed be Canaan, the father, the child of Ham.” He awoke and knew what his son had done to him. The Scriptures say he saw the nakedness of his father. This was not a glimpse. If when he had walked in the room and his dad was unclothed, and he ran out, it would have never been mentioned. This would have never been mentioned. This was a look, a lingering look, a look that he liked what he saw. He looked in disrespect. He looked in dishonor. He looked in rebellion. He looked in resentment. Something was wrong in that man’s life in his relationship to his daddy. What it was, I do not know. He did not act like a respectful son. He did not act like a son who loved his father. You see the behavior of his two brothers. It was a look of ingratitude. This was a look of one time in all of his life. This was his dad. When he looked, he forgot the stand that dad made. He forgot the 120 years of taking a stand. He forgot that this man walked with God. He forgot what his daddy was, and he owed his daddy respect because he was his daddy. He told his brothers that he found their daddy drunk and naked the other day. That is disrespect. No son that loves his father would ever advertise and broadcast that, especially if his daddy was a man of God — never, never, never do that! That is respect and honor to dad. Young people, God’s Word still says: Honour thy father and mother; That is man and woman. That is not something that ceases when you get married. That is for life. Deuteronomy 5:16: Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. He had disrespect, dishonor, and ingratitude for all the provisions his dad had given him all those years. Proverbs 14:9 says: Fools make a mock at sin: but among the righteous there is favour. Proverbs 17:5: Whoso mocketh the poor reproacheth his Maker: and he that is glad at calamities shall not be unpunished. Are you listening? Can you imagine somebody glad at calamity? I heard a preacher make a statement like this, "We had some folks that went out on Sunday in the Gulf years ago back in the ‘40’s on a fishing expedition. One of the men on the expedition was a man who delivered the express packages at the back door of where I worked. One of the girls I had gone to school with and a barber in town went also. That ship blew up. To make a long story short, nobody survived except the barber." He tells how the guy who drove the express truck went down screaming, “I want a Coca-Cola! I want a Coca-Cola!” He told about how one by one, they slipped between the waves. This preacher said, “Serves them right. They had no business being out there on Sunday.” Now, I am not going to make some statement like that. He that is glad at calamities shall not be unpunished. If you are glad when somebody falls and you relish with delight, I am going to tell you that you will not go unpunished. God will deal with you some way somehow. Can you understand? You may not understand. You know that there are folks in this city that are Christians. There are folks who are or have been members of Calvary Baptist Church
that would laugh if I fell into sin. It makes no difference if you can laugh when somebody goes down. Your spirit is not right with God. He that is glad at calamities shall not be unpunished. In the book of Luke 13, some folks came to the Lord Jesus Christ. They wanted to tell him about the heathen that were slain when they were offering sacrifices to idols. This temple, tower, fell on them. Luke 13:2-3: And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. It did not get his attention. It brought a reminder that he was going to perish also. Think about the matter of Ham. He not only saw it; he told it to his brothers in a scornful, delighting manner. He left him uncovered. If he would have had any respect for him, he would have clothed him and covered him up. He desired to injure. Why should he desire to do that? Why should he want to tell? He had a desire to injure.
NUMBER FOUR, SHEM’S AND JAPHETH’S LOVE. I preached a sermon here. I did not want to preach it, but I preached it. It was about embarrassment. I read in 1 Peter 4:8: And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins. The title of the message was, “Forced Embarrassment.” Love covers a multitude of sin. Your children grow up, and you do not go out and advertise to the point; love just covers them up. They may sneak out and ring bells in everybody else’s eyes. What is it that covers them up? Love covers them up. It is love that covered your sins. It is love that sent the Savior. That is the love of God. Go a little further with this. The Bible does not deny it happened. The brethren did not deny that it happened. Both of them out of respect went backward. They did not want to see their father’s nakedness. They put a robe on from shoulder to shoulder and backed up toward him and covered his nakedness. They had no desire to have that in their memory. In their memories were precious memories of a man on his knees. In their memories were precious memories of a man seeking God. In their memories was a man standing to face a whole multitude of people. In their memories was a man who walked with God. They did not want to have a stamp in their image of their daddy in a place like this. Out of respect, they covered him up. They loved him. Let us go a little further. They said nothing. They said nothing. Not a word is written in the Scriptures about what they said. Turn to 2 Samuel 20. I will tell you why I told my brother to take me off his mailing list. Let us see what the Scripture has to say. 2 Samuel 1 describes the death of Saul. Saul was a bitter enemy of David. He hunted him in the holes and the caves. He made life miserable for David. He fell, and you have David weeping over Saul. Look at verses 19-20: The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty fallen! Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph. He said you do not tell it. The enemies of God will blaspheme. To put in the paper before the unsaved world and describe in detail is dishonoring God, and His Name will be blasphemed. Do not tell it! Do not tell the sin. You ought not to talk about Christians before the unsaved. Do you hear me? The unsaved listen to Christians chew one another up. They say, “That is the reason I do not want to get saved.” Just this morning, somebody told me about somebody coming to church that sat here under conviction. He saw a member of this church whose life was not up to par, and he said, “That is what I am trying to tell you. I do not want to be like that. When I get saved, I want to be saved. I do not want to be like that.” You ought not to ever put down a Christian — period — but especially not in front of an unsaved world. What are you doing? You are putting a barrier between him and Christ for him getting saved. Publish it not. They covered him.
NUMBER FIVE, GOD’S DIRECTIONS. Turn to 1 Timothy 5. We are going to talk about dealing with a leader and sin. Do you just not say anything? Do you just keep quiet? These are church instructions. It is not the church-across-town’s instructions. These are instructions to the local church. Paul is writing to his fellow Timothy giving him instructions. In 1 Timothy 5:19, Paul said: Against an elder (bishop, pastor — refers to the same man) receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses. We are not talking about accusation. “Guess what! The preacher was out on I-75 the other day, and he got caught for driving sixty-five miles per hour in a fifty-five mile per hour zone. I think we ought to bring him before the church.” He is not talking about that stuff. “Oh, you said that is right.” No, I did not say that was right. He is talking about nit-picking issues. He is talking about moral things. How many of you never broke the law? Would you raise your hand? Somewhere, you have broken the law. “He did not stop at that stop sign.” Could you stop? We are not talking about nit-picking. We are talking about moral problems. This story about Noah ought to tell you
that all men have clay feet. If you are looking for a perfect preacher, a sinless preacher, you had better look somewhere else, because he is not here. The only sinless preacher there has been is Jesus. God takes Paul in humanity, saves him, and sends him out to preach to sinful people with a sinful nature just like he has. The messenger is not perfect, never has claimed to be perfect. He is capable of falling just like anybody else is capable of falling. When he falls, his influence must be dealt with. Against an elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses. You are not to listen to all the garbage about a preacher. There is more talk about a preacher. The most talked about man in town is the preacher. If they can destroy his reputation or silence his mouth, the world and Christians will not hear him. It is worse to talk about a preacher than anybody else because of his influence not his name. Did you know when you receive an accusation that somebody gives you, a little juicy morsel, about a preacher, you have lost your pastor? You know longer sit to listen; you come now as a detective. You come now with a critical spirit. You will not ever get a thing in the world out of that man’s ministry. You sit under his ministry and dry up and blow up. Why? Because somebody told you something. When he preaches, you sit and hear that. You think, “Yea, buddy, what about this? What about that?” It hurts you more than it does anybody else. If you are a daddy, your children are going to be rebels against this ministry. Who did it? You have violated the Scriptures. Against an elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses. “Oh, I saw two or three witnesses. That ought to be dealt with.” All right, you bring that before the church, and there have the sin rebuked publicly that others may fear. You bring it to the church and say, “We have three witness. We want our preacher dealt with.” That is what the book says. I sat and dealt with one man. The church almost split. He is a relative of mine. The church had taken my deacons up to see me. I asked him, “Do you know this personally?” He said, “No sir, but so-and-so told me.” I said: Against an elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses. I quoted that verse of Scripture. If that verse of Scripture was heeded by that young man, it would have saved his life from misery and disorder. It cost him for listening. What do you do? That is God’s instruction about His leader. I could tell you some cases where this had to be done publicly.
Let us look at our lessons in Heaven’s defense. First, we have the warning against pride. 1 Corinthians 10:12: Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. He said a murmurer has fallen. 1 Corinthians 10:10: Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer. He talks about Israel coming through the Red Sea out into the wilderness, and he begins to describe. 1 Corinthians 10:5: But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness. He named the sins that caused them to fall. He put in the category of fornication murmurers. “You have fallen. You are a murmurer. You have fallen as much as a fornicator has fallen.” Read it. He stopped and said: Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.
Second, we have the warning against presumption. “Well, Noah did it. I can get away with it. I can say, ‘God, forgive me,’ and it is all clear.” 1 John 1:9: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Yes sir, but if you premeditate that, you do not get forgiveness because you do not fool God. There is no repentance in that. After Noah’s fall, it says this about Noah in Genesis 9:28: And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years. Kind of bland, is it not? He was just living. How did he summarize his last 350 years? And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years. Presumption will put you on the shelf. Presumption will rob you of the power of God. Let me tell you there are two sides of the story. There is a side of the story that comes from Ham, and there is a side of the story that comes from Shem and Japheth. Long time ago, there was a pastor of this church. He walked into my study over there. His left hand is gone. I do not talk about that. Man, my heart sank when he walked in and walked out. I thought about Samson with his hair cut. It is cut. It is over for him and the ministry. He was never healed, too presumptuous. I can say, “God, forgive me,” and everything is just like it was.
Let me close with Heaven’s defense. He came to the Garden of Eden to a rebellious couple and covered their nakedness with skin that covered their sin through the blood of His Son 4,000 years later. From Leviticus 16 on the day of atonement, the High Priest went into the holy of holies to confess all the sins of Israel. It is called the day of atonement with the covering. Their sins were all covered. One day, God is going to uncover them when He lays them on His Son. Punished with the exposure of everybody’s sins, He bares the guilty. Baalim thought he could curse the children of Israel. Balak tried to hire him, but God would not
allow him to. Balak said he would give him some more money. Numbers 23:8: How shall I curse, whom God hath not cursed? or how shall I defy, whom the LORD hath not defied? Then he says this in Numbers 23:21: He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel: the LORD his God is with him, and the shout of a king is among them. I can look down on them. I see the fallen, fighting, murmuring, fornication, and rebellion. I can see all that. Wait a minute. There was a lamb’s blood inside the holy of holies on the mercy seat. The Word of God says: He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob. He is covered. John 1:29: Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. 1 John 1:9: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 2:1: My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, (It does not say, “If any man confess his sin.”) we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: What does that mean? A believer sins, and the devil rushes up to him to say, “Hey, He SINNED!” Jesus stands covering. The Father says, “I do not know what you are talking about.” Romans 8:33: Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Boy, the devil cannot get any accusation. The Father does not hear it. The Son refutes it as our advocate. The devil has nothing to say. He surely plays havoc way down here among the saints. He will charge and charge and charge and charge. When you do that, you are doing the devil’s work. God will let you intercede, but you cannot get on your knees and accuse a Christian. I do not care where he is. You cannot accuse him. You are joining with the devil.
Let us look at Heaven’s response. God removed the sin of the world. The Bible says in Galatians 6:1: Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. You cannot restore somebody who will not admit that they have fallen. You cannot forgive somebody and restore fellowship until they repent. It is impossible. There are a lot of Christians that have tried to be restored. They cannot be restored while they will not admit they have fallen. Let me give you two illustrations, and I will quit. Hear me now. Luke 15. Three parables in one. Luke 15:2: And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them. They did not like it. God’s Son gave them this three-fold parable. I want to read it. I want to talk about the prodigal son. He could be restored even with what he was like in the hog pen. When he came home, he did not come home with a “Give me” attitude. He came home a broken man, a submissive man. He came home to face the music and plead guilty saying he was not worthy to be his father's son. He found his daddy. He did not know his daddy when he left home. When he went back home, he found his daddy. The heart of his daddy was always there. He did not know it until he had dealt with his sin. He can be restored. It is easier to restore somebody who has gone to the hog pen than it is to restore a critical, faithful attender, tither, and bitter Christian. It is a whole lot easier to restore the other. The elder son at home was bitter. “I served you these many years. I have been in Sunday School. I have served you, and you never did that for me. What is all this carrying on about these people who have been out in sin, despised God, and broken every commandment of God? I do not see why they are making such a deal with that. You never slobbered over me like that. You never paid attention to me like that these many years. He devoured with harlots.” There are many Christians you cannot restore. They do not think they need restoring. Revival starts with that child that was with the hog pen crowd. I want to tell you that if you are bitter, critical, mean-spirited, fault-finding, know everything you have done for the Lord, and say they have never done this for you, you are in desperate need because you are out of fellowship with God and out of fellowship with the man who went to the hog pen. This elder brother never knew his daddy and never knew his brother. The man that had gone to the hog pen had found the heart of his dad like he had never understood the heart of God. Why? You can restore them from the hog pen, but you cannot restore a self-righteous, bitter, critical Christian, because they do not think that they are away from God. They are serving faithfully, but they are bitter, critical, and mean-spirited. You need restoration just as much as the man that went to the hog pen. It is sad, but it is easier to restore the guy in the hog pen — the misery in his soul of a man away from God, the agony, and the shame. Can you understand that? Brother, weep over the fallen. This is the Love of God.
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