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The Sons Of Noah
by Carol Balizet
After Noahs death, his three sons split up to inhabit different parts of the earth. God has a message for us through each one of his descendants. |
Contents:
Noah was a descendant of Seth, one of Adam's sons, and he was an ancestor of Abraham. When he was 480 years old, God told him to build an arc; he was 600 years old when the flood began. Noah's obedience enabled God to save the human race - through Noah's three sons who were in the arc with him.
We are all sons of Adam, of course, and in addition we are all sons of Noah. After the flood, only Noah's family survived to "go; forth and multiply and replenish the earth".; Which one of the three sons is our specific ancestor has great significance. They represent different heritages and different ways God has of dealing with His children.
Introduction to Noahs three sons
Shem
Shem was Noah's oldest son, probably born about 22 years after God's order to build the arc; about 98 years before the flood. Abraham's lineage came through Shem, and he is the father of all the Semitic races. (Actually the word "Semite;" comes from the word Shem.) He is the ancestor of the Jews and Arabs, the Babylonians, Phoenicians, Assyrians and other peoples from the region of the eastern Mediterranean, as well as the yellow races of the far east. His lineage is traced in Genesis 10:21-31.Japheth
Japheth was the second of Noah's sons. He was the father of seven sons, and the Greeks, the peoples of Europe - and all the lands they settled, such as America - are his descendants. Japheth helped Shem cover their father's nakedness when Noah became drunk. Japheth's family is listed in Genesis 10:2-5.Ham
Ham was Noah's youngest son, probably born about 24 years after God's command to build the arc, and about 96 years before the flood. His sons were Cush, Egypt, Put and Canaan, and his descendants include the Ethiopians, Egyptians, Libyans, and the black African nations. Because Ham looked upon his father's nakedness, his son Canaan was cursed. Ham's family is listed in Genesis 10:6-20.
After the death of Noah, the sons split up, going in different directions. Shem went eastward, Ham traveled south into Africa, and Japheth went westward, toward what is now Europe. To a certain extent, their descendants still inhabit these areas.
A message God has for us through Noahs three sons
The message God has for us through the three sons of Noah is this: There is an order, a sequence, for our dealings with God and we must respond in that progression if we are to reap the full harvest the Lord desires. This order is demonstrated repeatedly in the life of Jesus and there is a clear message in the pattern it reveals.
Each of Noah's sons represents a part of the human entity. Shem, the eldest, represents the spirit of man, the largest and most important part. His faculty is revelation, which of course is always the result of the touch of God in the human spirit. When God speaks, it is always to the spirit part of mankind, and the result of that contact between God and man's spirit is that man has revelation. This is the first step in the order which Noah's sons represent.
All the sons of Shem, the portions of the human race which are descendants of this man, are inherently spiritual. They have an increased faculty for receiving revelation from the spirit realm, and one result of this is: almost every religion known to man has been developed by the sons of Shem. Judaism, Mohammedism, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Marxism, Bahai, Hinduism: all were developed and nourished by the sons of Shem.
The second step involves the area of man represented by Ham, and that is the physical part. Ham was a servant; his was the duty of managing and controlling the material world around him. He was concerned with practicality; he was required to actually get up and do deeds. His faculty was obedience.
In many societies and under many regimes, the sons of Ham - the black races - have been concerned with service and obedience to other races. The curse on Canaan, caused by his father Ham's sin, was that he would be "A; servant of servants".; The outworking of this meant that he would be forced to work and to obey.
Japheth was the second born son, but the area he represents is the third in the order of our response to God. He represents the soul realm of man, and particularly the intellect. His faculty is illumination. This is the ability in man to understand, remember, correlate, recall and use knowledge.
The sons of Japheth have been the intelligentsia of the human race; the thinkers, the writers, those who exalt human reason and imagination. They function best through human wisdom. They have founded and nourished all the so-called glories of western civilization. This faculty comes last in our response to God. We understand Him intellectually only at the end of our dealings.
So this is the summary of our dealings with God: we first get revelation by hearing via our spirits, then we obey using our natural or physical faculties, and then finally we understand, in our soul's intellect, memory, emotions etc. If we respond in a different order - for example, if we wait to understand God's input before we obey, or if the thing begins in our own mind rather originating in God - we will miss a great majority of what God is communicating to us.
Possibly, if there had been no curse, no fall in the garden with one of its results being the darkening of man's intellect, we could have used a different order in our dealing with God. We could have first received revelation within our spirits, second understood with our minds and third obeyed.
But there was a fall, man's intellect was darkened and our ability to obey was greatly impaired. So while the sequence of "hear;, understand, obey" may seem right, and it may be what we prefer and indeed what we usually try to do, the fact is: it is no longer God's choice. God chooses "hear;, obey, understand".
Under the current conditions, the actuality in which we live, the progression must be:
- Step One: God touches the spirit, and it produces revelation.
- Step Two: the revelation comes and it is obeyed in the flesh or circumstances.
- Step Three: Illumination within the soul then follows and we understand the revelation and the reasons for our obedience.
The first time we see this sequence of "spirit;, body, soul" (or "hear;, obey, understand") is in the order of the synoptic gospels. Each of the four gospels depicts Jesus a little differently; the first three (the synoptic, meaning "accounts; told from the same point of view") gospels depict Him in a way that follows our pattern.
The book of Matthew was written by a Jew for the Jews, and Jews of course are sons of Shem. This book begins by describing Jesus as a Jew: "The; book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham" (Matthew 1:1). He is also referred to as the King, the Promised Messiah, divine, the fulfiller of Jewish prophecy, the Lion. This book especially presents Jesus as a consequence of spiritual revelation.
Mark's gospel was written for the Gentiles. They are the outsiders, strangers from the commonwealth of Israel. In this gospel, Jesus is shown primarily in His deeds, His actions. In what He actually and pragmatically did. He is the Ox, the burden bearer, the servant, the sacrifice. There is no genealogy: who cares about the ancestry or heritage or blood line of a slave? But we see the miracles and ministry of Jesus most clearly here in this book. He is dynamic, active, energetic. A Do-er of deeds.
Luke's gospel was written by a Greek for the Greeks, who are sons of Japheth. Here Jesus is a Man, the son of man. This gospel has the most logic as well as the most poetry; it's inspirational, full of angels, composed in beautiful language. It is also totally accurate historically and geographically. Jesus is shown as a man and that appeals to the human element in all of us - the soul realm.
It is not an accident or a coincidence that these differences and themes, the special flavors of the three synoptic gospels, show our pattern: Matthew: spirit (revelation), Mark: flesh (obedience and action) and Luke: soul (illumination and understanding). With the things of God there are never accidents; every thing, every word, every event is planned, orderly, purposeful, perfect. God is never random or haphazard. The first three gospels - like everything else of God - are in perfect order.
(The Gospel of John reveals our Lord as God, and of course it is not a synoptic gospel.)
This plan or model is also reflected in the different presentations of Jesus to humanity. Each time He was displaying a different facet of His nature and ministry, people approached Him in the order of first Shem, then Ham and finally Japheth.
At Jesus' birth, the first people to attend Him were Jewish shepherds (sons of Shem). The next group were Magi, wise men from "the; east".; From earliest church history, tradition has claimed that one of the three, Melchior, Caspar or Balthazar, was a black man. The black race is descended from Ham. The last group to see Jesus at His advent were the Romans, sons of Japheth.
There was the same order at Jesus' death. He went out from His judgement to pass hundreds of Jews lining the Via Dolorosa along the streets of Jerusalem. These people were descendants of Shem. Then Simon the Cyrene, a black man, a son of Ham, was impressed to carry the cross. He fulfilled the role of servant, a man of action and obedience. The last group were the Roman soldiers at the site of the crucifixion, who actually carried out the execution. These men were Romans, sons of Japheth.
After the Pentecost, when Jesus was being manifest as a resurrected Savior, again we see the pattern. He met first with His disciples, who were Jewish. He was revealed to other sons of Shem. Then there was the incident when Philip the evangelist met the Ethiopian Eunuch - a black man from Africa - a son of Ham. Philip preached the gospel to him, he was saved and baptized. And finally, Peter introduced the gospel to Cornelius, a Roman, a son of Japheth.
It's also interesting to see the results of mergers between these different categories of human groups. For example, the blending and unifying of the technology of Ham with the illumination of Japheth produced science. When the revelation of Shem joined the illumination of Japheth there was spawned theology.
The last of these human mergers is occurring right now: the marriage of Ham's technology and Shem's revelation, and what will be birthed is what C. S. Lewis called "the; materialistic magician", and what Winkey Pratney refers to as "psychic; technologists".; There will be supernatural power working with and through high-tech machinery. Add Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence to that, and we have the makings of a fantastic, awesome universe, one which will most desperately need saving.
Summary
To summarize the message: the three sons of Noah represent the three aspects of man's nature, spirit, body and soul. This typology indicates a pattern of response to God which is proper and appropriate to achieve God's highest goals in our lives. This sequence is seen in Scripture and throughout our Lord's life.
The way it works out in our experience is, we first hear from God through revelation to our spirits; we then obey or act upon what we have heard, not waiting till we grasp the why, the what-for, or even the how. We simple obey.
And it is then, following the obedience, that we will understand. It means in practicality that if we demand that we understand God before we will obey, we are working at cross-purposes to His highest will, and we may never progress beyond the current dealing. We will see the same problems and patterns repeat time after time and year after year with no real growth and no true understanding.
It comes down to this: God doesn't require that we understand Him, but obedience is essential. (Can we ever understand an infinite God? Not on this side of the "dark; glass." I Corinthians 13). We simply obey without understanding. Jesus Himself asked the Father "why?" on the cross, but His lack of understanding didn't mean that He crawled down from the cross, or called the twelve legions of angels which were at His disposal. He obeyed without fully understanding (at least He didn't understand the separation) and just look at the glorious result!
When we're in confusion, unable to hear God, unsure of His will, besieged and beset on every side, we should not be asking, "God;, what's going on? What does all this mean? What are you doing?" (Certainly never "What; are You trying to do?") We should be asking, "Lord;, what do you require of me? I am willing to obey you in any way. Show me the first step to take in obedience."
We don't reason our way out of the valley; we obey our way out. Then we can understand.
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