Our scripture will be coming from:

Genesis 9:18-29 KJV
[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.
[19] These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.
[20] And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:
[21] And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.
[22] And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.
[23] 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.
[24] And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.
[25] And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.
[26] And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
[27] God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
[28] And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years.
[29] And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died.

Now it is time for our verse break down:

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 is Ham’s son Canaan mentioned here?

For two reasons.

One reason we’ll see in a moment.

Another reason is that when Moses wrote this record, the people of Israel were traveling to the land of Canaan, and it was encouraging for them to have this information regarding God’s judgment upon the people of Canaan.

Genesis 9:19
These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.

All people who have ever lived since the Flood came from these three sons of Noah. The, one blood, of Acts 17:26 is that of Adam through Noah. All physical characteristics of the whole race were present in the genetics of Noah, his sons, and their wives.

Genesis 9:20
And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:

The word began brings an ominous note to the early stories in Genesis. Husbandman - literally means, man of the soil, perhaps indicating, master of the earth, or lord of the earth.

Genesis 9:21
And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.

Here is the record of Noah’s sin. Noah had been so faithful to God that it is unlikely that he did this deliberately. His drunken condition may have been a totally unexpected result of the changed environment after the Flood.

The hard fact of the matter is that Noah got drunk, and this is sin. There is no satisfactory excuse, although many expositors have attempted to find excuses for him.

One excuse is that he was ignorant of the effect of wine since no one had been drunk before. You will notice that before the Flood, drunkenness is not mentioned as one of the sins. Well, all I can say is that this is a new beginning in a new world, but it is old sin that is still there. This incident reveals this, and it was given to answer a big question, as we shall see.

Genesis 9:22
And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.

Ham . . . saw the nakedness of his father: While many explanations have been suggested for this phrase, it is best to take it to mean merely what it says. There is no indication of any gross violation.
The phrase is not the same as in Leviticus 20:17, where it is parallel to another term used exclusively for sexual violations. The phrase indicates that this violation of privacy was merely the beginning of eventual sexual degradation.

Genesis 9:23
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.

Perhaps Shem and Japheth did not want to see their father’s dignity and authority reduced to such weakness. They did not share Ham's attitude.

Genesis 9:24
And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.

This incident could scarcely have happened till twenty years after the flood; for Canaan, whose conduct was more offensive than that even of his father, was not born till after that event.

It is probable that there is a long interval included between these verses and that this prophecy, like that of Jacob on his sons, was not uttered till near the close of Noah‘s life when the prophetic spirit came upon him; this presumption is strengthened by the mention of his death immediately after.

Genesis 9:25
And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.

Now notice what God says through Noah, which became part of the Noahic covenant. This doom has been fulfilled in the destruction of the Canaanites - in the degradation of Egypt and the slavery of the Africans, the descendants of Ham. I would have you note that God said, “Cursed be Canaan”—He does not put a curse on Ham.

A question that keeps arising is this: Is the curse of Ham upon the dark races?

It certainly is not. To think otherwise is absolutely absurd. The Scripture does not teach it. The coloration of the skin, the pigment that is in the epidermis of the human family, is there because of sunlight from the outside not because of sin from within.

There is no curse placed upon Ham; the curse was upon Canaan his son. We do not know in what way Canaan was involved in this incident. We are given only the bare record here, but we recognize that Canaan is mentioned for a very definite purpose.

Let me repeat that it hasn’t anything to do with color—it is not a curse of color put on a part of the human race. That teaching has been one of the sad things said about the black man. It is not fair to the black man and it is not fair to God—because He didn’t say it.

After all, the first two great civilizations were Hamitic—both the Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations were Hamitic.

Another question arises: Why did God give us a record of the sin of Noah?

Well, if man had written the Book of Genesis, he would have done one of two things. He either would have covered up the sin of Noah by not mentioning it at all to make Noah a hero; or else he would have made Noah’s sin a great deal more sordid than it was.

But God recorded it for His own purposes.

First of all, as I have indicated, it was to encourage the children of Israel in entering the land of Canaan during the time of Moses and Joshua. It let them know that God had pronounced a curse upon Canaan. He had pronounced His judgment upon the race. All you have to do is read the rest of the Old Testament and secular history to discover the fulfillment of this judgment. The Canaanites have pretty much disappeared.

God had a further reason for recording the incident of Noah’s sin. In Romans 15:4 we read these words: “For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.”

It was recorded to let you and I know something of the weakness of the flesh. The Lord Jesus said that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. And in Galatians 2:16 it is made very clear that no flesh would be justified by keeping the law: “. . . for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.”

So God has given us here the story of a man who fell. Revealing the weakness of the flesh. There is no use trying to make excuses for Noah. The bare fact is that Noah got drunk. Now, maybe you as a Christian do not get drunk. But, may I say, you and I may be living in the flesh to the extent we’re just as displeasing to God as Noah was.

We have, I think, a wrong conception of life in this universe that we are in. For instance, our nation has spent billions of dollars to put men on the moon, and it looks like it’s not a good place to live anyway. But we spend relatively little on how to live on this earth.

But God is concerned about training you and I how to live on this earth.

Let us not make some of the mistakes that are made in the consideration of this incident. We need to make it very clear that Noah did not lose his salvation. I trust that you understand that. It was an awful thing that he did—there is no excuse for it. It was his weakness of the flesh, but he was still a saved man.

Genesis 9:26
And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

Rather, Blessed of Jehovah, my God, be Shem, - an intimation that the descendants of Shem should be peculiarly honored in the service of the true God, His Church being for ages established among them, the Jews, and of them, concerning the flesh, Christ came.

They got possession of Canaan, the people of that land being made their, servants, either by conquest, or, like the Gibeonites, by submission, found in Joshua 9:25.

As I have mentioned before, when Moses was given this revelation from God, he was leading the people of Israel to the land of Canaan. The Israelites were descendants of Shem.

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